The English Girl: A heartbreaking and beautiful World War 2 historical novel

by Sarah Mitchell

  ‘Hello? I’m still here… No, I’m afraid I don’t have either an initial or an address, but I’d be happy to take both of those numbers… Indeed. Thank you.’

  Martin replaces the receiver and paces a circuit of the Chinese rug with the page he has just torn from the notepad clasped between his thumb and forefinger. Both his mother and Daisy are out, braving the polar drifts with hats and galoshes to buy milk and eggs from the local shop. This opportunity may not come again for quite a while.

  He returns to the telephone and dials the operator.

  ‘City of London 419.’

  When the connection is made the voice on the line is young and brisk. And entirely unfamiliar. Martin ploughs on.

  ‘I’d very much like to ask you some questions,’ he says. ‘About an examination you may have conducted in August 1941 for the army medical board.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you.’

  ‘I understand the difficulty,’ Martin says, ‘with patient confidentiality. Only in this case I’m the patient who you may have examined, so you see it really doesn’t—’

  ‘No, you don’t understand.’ There’s an exasperated sigh. ‘I’m a doctor of medieval literature. A professor. You’ve got the wrong person.’ Before Martin can apologise, the call is terminated.

  A female voice answers the second number. ‘Old Street Practice.’

  Martin says. ‘I’d like to speak to Dr Sands, if I may?’

  ‘Dr Sands?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There’s a tiny pause. ‘Dr Sands is no longer in practice. Would you like an appointment with one of the other doctors?’

  ‘I don’t want an appointment.’ Through the front window Martin spots his mother and sister turn the corner and begin to navigate the ravaged road towards the house. ‘I simply need to speak to Dr Sands. Perhaps you have his home telephone number, or an address where I can write to him?’

  ‘Unfortunately, that isn’t possible.’

  ‘I wouldn’t ask,’ says Martin, ‘but I’m concerned about—’

  ‘Dr Sands passed away,’ the receptionist says quickly. ‘Such a lovely man. He died several years ago, so obviously I can’t give you a telephone number for him. Though if it’s a personal matter, perhaps his wife…?’

  ‘No.’ A wild goose-chase to precisely nothing. ‘It’s a medical matter.’

  The front door clatters open.

  Voices and footsteps from the hall.

  ‘Am I cold? I’m so bloody cold I need a long hot bath and tea with a shot of rum to warm me up. I can’t believe I shall have to go back to work on Monday. They better have found me and Fran a heater, or we’ll freeze solid! Martin, are you there?’

  ‘One last thing,’ he tucks the telephone closer to his face. ‘When did Dr Sands die? Do you happen to know?’

  ‘Not off the top of my head, but it won’t take me a minute to find out when he stopped working. I’ll check the old appointment diaries.’

  ‘Martin, where are you?’ Daisy’s voice is practically a wail. ‘Mother and I are utterly exhausted and completely drenched. In places the snow must be five foot deep. There’s barely anything on the roads. If this weather keeps up for much longer, we’ll be using the German prisoners to distribute food parcels. Be a darling and make us a cup of tea. Or something stronger!’

  ‘July,’ the receptionist is saying above the rustle of a turning page. ‘July 1941 is when Dr Sands left the practice, and I remember the cancer already being quite advanced. I believe he died within a matter of weeks.’

  ‘Do you think,’ Martin lowers his voice, ‘that Dr Sands might have conducted a medical assessment for the army in August 1941?’

  ‘I’m quite certain that he wouldn’t have done. By July Dr Sands was only seeing his regular patients on days he felt well enough, and he most definitely didn’t sit on any medical evaluations for the armed forces as late as August.’

  ‘Martin?’ Daisy bursts into the drawing room as he is laying the receiver back in the cradle. She stops in her tracks. ‘Who was that?’

  For a split second he almost tells her. Perhaps she would fathom an explanation for why his medical report is signed by a doctor who probably died before the examination took place. He considers her bright, uncomplicated face. Then again, perhaps he should find out a little more information before involving his sister in God knows what. He slips an arm around Daisy’s shoulder. ‘Just an old school friend. Nobody you know. Let’s go and make that pot of tea.’ He glances back at the telephone as if the helpful receptionist might still be there, and with an answer to his questions. ‘Afterwards, I might brave the elements and go for my walk.’

  A little further along the coast June is washing dishes. Fran drying. Their mother has accompanied their father to the hospital. Seeing him on the passenger seat swamped in blankets, his face pinched by the pain of movement, it seemed incomprehensible to Fran how anyone might think a bitterly cold journey followed by an hour of tests and assessments could possibly improve his health. Nevertheless, despite the awful conditions on the roads, their mother refused to miss the appointment to which an old friend had offered to take them before Christmas. Fran had wanted to go as well, but her mother insisted that she stay with June and hold the fort, as if the threat of an invading army appearing at the bottom of the garden had not entirely gone away.

  Fran continues to rub the same plate with the tea-towel, carefully wiping every inch of the blue-and-white china. Any distraction to stop herself from glancing at the kitchen clock. She tells herself that Vivian Markham’s accident has made her over-anxious, too quick to assume the worst. A second later she lifts her head again. Nearly three o’clock.

  ‘They’ve been a long time. They left before ten.’

  June shrugs.

  ‘Perhaps they didn’t get seen at the hospital on time? Maybe the snow has kept some of the staff away, so they’ve had a long wait?’

  June washes another plate, rinsing off the soapsuds under the cold tap without looking at her sister.

  Fran sighs. June has barely said a word to her since Christmas. At first Fran was too absorbed by her own emotions to notice her sister’s curtailed sentences, a one-word reply where before a river of easy conversation might have flowed. Then she assumed the empty landmark of the New Year – the new start that was never new, or the start of anything at all except the calendar – and the miserably short days of early January had pushed June’s mood even lower than usual. Yesterday, however, she returned from work chilled to the bone to find June and her mother laughing in the kitchen. ‘What’s so funny?’ Fran pleaded, unbuttoning her sodden coat. ‘Do tell?’ By way of answer, June exited the room and the atmosphere deflated as though Fran had taken the toasting fork to a balloon.

  She places the dry plate on the table and reaches towards the draining board. Instead of a plate, her hand touches June’s elbow.

  ‘What’s going on? Why won’t you speak to me?’

  June moves her arm away. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Yes, there is! You’ve been acting queerly ever since Christmas. As if I’ve done something awful to you and I’m supposed to know about it.’

  June holds a saucepan clear of the water and examines the efficacy of her cleaning. ‘I imagine that you do know about it. I’m quite certain you don’t need me to spell it out for you.’

  As Fran stares, the silence begins to jangle with awful premonition, like church bells ringing chaotically and all at once somewhere in the distance.

  Placing the saucepan next to the sink, June swings around. ‘If you really can’t think, you could always ask your German friends.’

  ‘So, it’s the Christmas visit,’ Fran says cautiously. ‘You’re still angry about that?’

  June doesn’t reply.

  ‘The invitation was Mother’s idea, not mine! You know very well it was the church that suggested asking German prisoners to come for Christmas, and that Mother wanted us to be one of the families to extend the hand of friendship.’
>
  June breathes one beat, two beats. Then, ‘Well, you certainly did that. I would say the hand of friendship was well and truly extended!’

  The room grows very still.

  Heat is spreading through Fran’s chest. ‘What do you mean?’ she says, although she’s horribly afraid she already understands.

  ‘I saw you.’ June swivels back to the washing-up bowl, as if she can’t bear even to set eyes on her sister, grabs another dirty plate and shoves it under the water. ‘I saw you in the vegetable garden. I saw you and Thomas. And not just’ – she chokes on a sob – ‘not just kissing. You were engrossed in each other. Like you might not stop! Like you couldn’t stop!’ She throws a quick glance at Fran with eyes that are wide and incredulous and full of tears. ‘What were you thinking?’

  ‘Where?’ Fran whispers. ‘Where were you?’ The garden had felt alone and private. A secret world, belonging to her and Thomas. The notion of being watched by June stains like ink or chip-fat the purity of the falling snow, the precious, giddy memory of ice and fire.

  ‘Mother asked me to draw the upstairs curtains. I was standing by your bedroom window… Fran, how could you? How could you do that with a German soldier?’

  Fran swallows. It feels as if a pine cone has lodged in her throat.

  ‘I think I love him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I love him.

  ‘No, Fran.’ June wipes her cheek with the back of her hand. ‘Don’t say that. Please don’t say that. You can’t mean it.’

  ‘I do mean it.’ Then, with wonder. ‘And Thomas loves me too, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘He’s a German soldier!’

  ‘He’s not a soldier. Not anymore. The war is over! Why shouldn’t we love each other? The church asked families to befriend the prisoners. Even Mother and Father believe it’s the best way to stop a war from ever happening again.’

  ‘You don’t want to be friends, though, do you? From what I could see it looked like you both want a good deal more than that!’

  ‘So what if we do?’ Fran finds she is practically shouting.

  The words ring through the kitchen and die away, as if they have reached an unexpected dead end.

  Eventually June says, ‘It’s not possible, Fran.’ Her voice has become low and grim.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Think about it, Fran, for just one moment.’

  ‘I’ve thought about nothing else since Christmas! Just because Thomas is German doesn’t make him a wicked person.’

  ‘How can you say that? You hardly know him!’

  ‘I do know him. I feel like’ – she takes a juddering breath – ‘I feel like I know him better than anyone else I’ve ever met. I’ve felt that way since the moment I laid eyes on him. It’s like recognising somebody from long ago, yet thrilling in a way I can’t explain. Like sunshine through a stained-glass window, lighting up colours I’ve never even seen before!’

  June steps forwards and grabs Fran’s wrists. ‘You have to stop this! This… this nonsense!’

  ‘I don’t think I can!’

  ‘You have no choice!’

  Fran gapes at her.

  The space between them opens, a fissure splitting the earth.

  June takes a breath, drops the dishcloth into the bowl. ‘Come and sit down.’ She steers Fran to the kitchen table, pulls out two chairs. ‘Listen’ – the voice of a schoolteacher, a businesswoman – ‘the Germans are brutes—’

  ‘Not all of them! Only the Nazis!’

  ‘Fran, look what they did! The death camps, the Jews they slaughtered. Millions of lives destroyed by fighting and bombs. The horror—’ June stops, continues more steadily. ‘Even if you’re right, even if it was only the fascists, most of the families in this village have suffered dreadfully in the war. We lost… We lost Robbie. But we’re not the only ones. Every family is grieving for somebody. Nearly the whole of the cricket team was killed on D-Day. The Blunketts lost two sons. Imagine how awful, how unbearable, it would be for them to see a local girl stepping out with a German prisoner. Imagine how Mother and Father would feel. The shame of it.’

  Fran says, quietly, desperately, ‘Mother made a toast at Christmas. To peace and friendship.’

  ‘Peace, yes. Everyone wants peace now. Friendship? Well, maybe one day that might happen. But not romance, Fran. Not marrying a German. Not love. Living here would be impossible. You must see that. Thomas would never be given a job, and nobody would accept you – or your children.’

  ‘I could go to Germany!’

  ‘Why would things be different there? We won the war, so they probably hate the British even more than we hate them. And besides, what about us? Your family, your own flesh and blood?’ She takes both of Fran’s hands in her own so that Fran can feel the warmth of her sister’s flesh, the blood pounding beneath the wet residue of the soapsuds. ‘Could you really leave us, Fran?’

  Fran’s whole body starts to shake. Once at school she fainted, her class presentation floating out of reach as the world turned black, one piece at a time. Now it seems like the room is disintegrating around her, as if any object she touches must instantly crumble to nothing in her fingers.

  ‘It would be the final straw for Father, Fran. We’ve already lost Robbie; he simply isn’t strong enough to stand losing you too.’

  For two, perhaps three seconds the sentence hangs like the blade of a guillotine, before June gets to her feet and says in a normal voice. ‘I’ll finish clearing up. Why don’t you go for a walk? Clear your head before they get back from the hospital.’

  * * *

  Outside, Fran picks her way over the snow and ice, barely conscious of which road or direction she is taking. It’s as if her sister has stood her in front of a mirror and pointed to a dozen scars blighting her face. Although she might close her eyes for a moment and ignore the ugliness, eventually she has to open them and confront the awful blemishes with June’s voice jabbing in her ear: How could you, Fran? The shame of it! It would be the final straw for Father. She wonders exactly how much June has told their mother and whether the reason she wasn’t required on the hospital trip was so June could hold the conversation her mother couldn’t bring herself to start.

  Fran stops, clenches her eyes for real. She sees Thomas’s face, the flood of light just before they kissed. Already the image has a fantastical quality, like a film she once watched, or a scene imagined from a book. How could you, Fran? Easily, is the answer. Willingly. Longingly. What would Robbie say, if he had survived the war, if he were alive today? Probably, Fran, supposes miserably, something very similar to June. She remembers the crowd who gathered to watch the prisoners arrive, the raised fists, the baying, the deliberate choice of location in front of the cricket team memorial. The tide of fury dragging the whole village along. Until the rules changed at Christmas, she could have been prosecuted for so much as talking to Thomas outside the camp, let alone pressing her mouth to his, flinging wide her heart, forgetting every inhibition. It is she who is out of kilter, out of step, out of spirit, with the rest of the world. She and Thomas. And June is right, a relationship between them is utterly unthinkable.

  She is walking again, west now, along the coast road where tyres have flattened the snow into dimpled trenches that are easier to follow than the buried pavement. On the horizon the sun hangs low, gilding the grey bowl of sky and casting yellow fire across the pockets of ice between the marsh and the shingle spit. She tries to distract herself with the landscape, makes herself notice the fingers of light, the white emptiness and the calling birds. In her haste she forgot to bring gloves. Pulling the sleeves of her sweater over her wrists, Fran realises the wool is still damp from the grip of June’s fingers. How could you, Fran? She quickens her step. A little later she is shaking her head, as if her ears are full of water, as if to forget Thomas she must physically dislodge every memory of him, every trace.

  ‘Hello, Fran.’

  For an absurd instant she believes she has conjured him up.
>
  ‘Is everything all right? You seem rather distressed.’

  But it is not Thomas.

  She blinks. Touches her hair. Tries to still the whirling chaos. Her mouth opens instinctively. ‘A headache coming on, I think. The cold wind, perhaps. I should have worn a hat.’

  Martin’s features crease with concern. His head tips slightly to one side. ‘We must get you indoors. Somewhere to warm up.’

  She lifts her gaze, expecting bare fields, icy mudflats, wanting to acknowledge both the charity of the suggestion and its impracticability, and sees to her astonishment that she has nearly reached the village where Martin and Daisy live. A hundred yards ahead is the first cluster of cottages and on the next corner the welcoming lamp of the local hotel. A second later Martin has her arm. A minute or so later he is pulling on the heavy wooden door and a rush of warmth is billowing around her ankles.

  All at once there is a bar, a log fire spitting in an iron casket, and a wide selection of empty tables. Martin ushers Fran towards a chair upholstered in faded velvet and helps to remove her coat.

  ‘I’ll fetch you a brandy.’

  Unlit lamps and the greenish light of late afternoon give the room a brackish feel that is far removed from the kitchen with June, or even the turning world. In a dreamlike haze she watches Martin approach the counter and raise his palm to get attention. She can’t remember if she has ever drunk brandy before.

  When he returns he sits down carefully and positions his chair a respectable distance away. He gestures at their drinks. ‘I thought I’d join you.’ There’s a grimness to his tone and with surprise Fran notices that his mouth is a straight, humourless line. He raises his glass without waiting for her. ‘Cheers.’

  She reaches for her own glass. The kite tail of fire from throat to stomach makes her choke in surprise. She wants to gag. Instead she takes a second gulp and feels the heat flare rapidly through her blood, and with it a certain kind of bravado, a steeliness, a fatalism. With a final slug, she empties the tumbler.