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

by Sarah Mitchell

‘What do you think I said?’

  Fran grows still. Her heart is pounding against the confines of her ribs. She badly needs his answer to be the same one his interrogators required. Yet surely that is an impossible thing to ask of a man whose blood is German, who must have lost friends and comrades to the guns of the Allies, and who believes his family to have been killed in a bombing raid?

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know!’

  She locks onto the smooth, black buttons of his coat.

  ‘Fran? Please…’ He tugs her hair, gently at first then harder until she lifts her gaze. ‘Tell me what you think I said!’

  Conviction burns from his eyes. It’s true, she thinks, with wonder. I don’t feel cold when I’m with you, I don’t feel anything but joy. She touches his face and says slowly, ‘I don’t believe even the tiniest part of you to be a Nazi, or that you hoped Hitler would win the war.’

  For a long moment he holds her gaze. Then he says, ‘For the first six months of the war a Jewish man, a friend of my father, lived in our basement. He stayed with us until my father found enough people who were willing also to take the risk of hiding his friend as he travelled across Germany to escape. I fought in the war because I had to, because there was no choice, because if I had refused, my parents and my sister would have been shot as well as myself. And at the interview I told them that history will say it is a good thing that Germany lost the war and our country will be scarred by shame for many years. But I also said that you cannot ask me to celebrate that defeat when my home is in ruins, when I have heard nothing from my family for so long, and when I and my fellow men are still kept prisoner although the war has been over for many, many months.’

  He stops as if to gauge her reaction.

  But Fran is already struggling upright. Cupping her palm around his head she draws his mouth towards hers. Then all at once she breaks away. ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’ He nods, but she says it anyway. ‘You’ll be repatriated. Now you’ve passed their test, they’ll send you home. That was the purpose of the interview, wasn’t it? To help them decide which prisoners at the camp will go back to Germany first.’

  ‘I should have pretended to be a Nazi, to stay longer with you.’ His tone is serious.

  Fran doesn’t reply.

  They are so close she can see the brush of stubble beginning on his jawline, the comma of a scar just above his left brow, the pucker of determination on his chin that deepens even while she looks at him.

  ‘I want to marry you.’ He says the words at normal volume, so that the loudness seems to have an energy all of its own and ricochets around the painted walls. ‘I love you, Fran. I want you to be my wife.’

  She opens her mouth. What he has said feels both as normal and obvious as saying it will snow again tomorrow or be dark by five o’clock, and at the same time as impossible and ridiculous as saying that he wants to sail to China or have breakfast with the king. She buries her fingers into his hair. She can feel his skull, and beneath the bone the blood and soul of him that slot together with her like a jigsaw puzzle.

  ‘We can’t. It’s not allowed.’ Her voice is thick with emotion. ‘Just being here together is against the law.’ A copy of the local newspaper had been left on the kitchen table that morning, open to a photograph of a woman who had been fined twenty pounds for fraternising with a German prisoner. Although the article didn’t specify the nature of the fraternisation, Fran suspected the woman’s actions were a lot less culpable than her own. The temporary respite over the festive season was over. And fraternisation could simply mean talking with a German or offering gifts of food or cigarettes. It barely began to describe the raw intensity of her meetings with Thomas.

  She was still standing, glued to the kitchen floor, when she heard June’s voice in her ear. ‘The magistrate was far too lenient, if you ask me. That woman should have gone to prison.’ All day, Fran has been wondering why the paper happened to be turned to that particular story, if June had arranged the pages deliberately. And if her sister was responsible, was that because of what she had seen at Christmas or – more worryingly – because she had guessed what Fran was doing now?’

  ‘Are you scared, Fran?’

  She swallows. She imagines her own face blazing from the front of a newspaper. ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘We could stop meeting?’

  ‘No!’

  She is already kissing him. The fold-out chairs shift and creak.

  ‘Stand up.’ His breath is hot on her face.

  His arms circle her waist and his mouth finds hers. As she opens her lips, a rush of sweetness floods her throat. She feels his hand reach between the folds of her coat and burrow through the layers of wool until he is stroking the cotton of her bra. Her own hands pluck at his clothes, searching for his skin, while her tongue presses deeper. She is aware of fabric falling, the brush of something soft around her calves and realises their coats are on the floor. As he reaches inside her dress, she feels his fingers tug gently at a button, then hesitate. Catching hold of his wrist, Fran stares into his eyes. Her pulse is beating so fast her blood is singing in her ears. I don’t want anyone but him, she thinks. Even if June were to walk in, I wouldn’t care. Slowly and deliberately she unfastens the front of her dress until the opening is wide enough for the material to slide over her shoulders and fall free to her waist.

  ‘Fran!’ He drops to his knees and buries his head on her stomach. Against the texture of her vest, his breath is heaving. She is about to pull the garment off, when he sits back abruptly. ‘I must stop. We must both stop. Before it is too difficult.’ His gaze is a kaleidoscope of blue.

  Her belly feels cold where an instant earlier there was heat and flames. The words, I don’t want to stop, are on the edge of her tongue, teetering like a high-board diver. She closes her eyes, opens them again and gazes over the top of his head. Outside, a piece of panelling or tarpaulin is slapping steadily against a wall and the light inside the hall has become mercurial. She wonders if it is snowing again. She can’t remember the last time she saw the sun, not properly without a gauze of cloud. The winter seems endless, the previous summer a dreamlike memory, or something imagined from a book, and next July and August as remote and invisible as another century or becoming old like her parents.

  Shivering, she slips her dress back over her shoulders and does up the buttons. She feels shy, suddenly, almost ashamed, and at the same time a defiant sort of regret for what didn’t happen. Thomas gets shakily to his feet and passes over her coat. Neither of them looks at the other. Eventually he says, ‘Did you know a band is going to play here? In one week from now.’

  ‘A band? What kind of band?’ Although Daisy mentioned something about it the other day, she asks, glad of the distraction.

  ‘German prisoners are going to make a concert for the village.’

  She stops threading her belt. ‘Is that allowed? Will they sell tickets?’

  ‘Yes, it is a new thing, but there can be no tickets and we must be careful not to have private conversations with anyone. The concert is free for anyone who would like to listen.’ He frowns. ‘I hope people will come. It is supposed to be a gesture of friendship. Of new beginnings.’

  ‘Will you play?’

  ‘A little. I do not play well. I will also help to set out the chairs and welcome our guests.’

  ‘You’d better not seem too familiar with the hall, or people may start to wonder why that is!’ She flicks him half a smile, before looking away.

  ‘Fran…’ He grabs her wrist, lifts her palm to his lips. ‘I stopped because I want you. I want you so badly I can’t trust myself.’

  She feels herself dissolving, thinks, It’s going to happen all over again. Every time he touches me, I turn into someone else. Or rather, I become myself, whole and fully alive. She wrenches the thought aside. ‘I’d like to hear the concert. My mother won’t leave my father at home on his own, but I’ll try to persuade June to come with me. It would do her g
ood to go out somewhere.’ And to see the prisoners entertaining the village. Perhaps she should also mention the concert to Martin? She rejects the idea the instant it presents itself, and a surge of guilt makes her swallow a sigh.

  As she puts on her gloves, she realises Thomas is watching her. ‘We must go.’ She tries to keep her voice bright.

  ‘Yes. But first…’ He pulls her close.

  His lips graze her mouth.

  Already she’s counting the seconds to the next time, like holding her breath underwater.

  Eventually he lets her go.

  And they both turn towards the door.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  5 March 1947

  Martin kills the ignition and leans back in his seat. The sudden hush is disconcerting because it means there’s nothing now to stop him from getting out of the car. He peers again through the window. The number on the gatepost is most definitely 83 and, he chides himself, is likely to stay that way for whatever length of time he continues to stare at the ironwork.

  Dr Dandy’s practice was not difficult to find, located, it seems, within a large residential house. The army board assessment must have been conducted somewhere else, however, because he has no recollection of this busy road on the outskirts of the city, the elm trees stationed at intervals along the pavement, or the wide front door with its white plaster portico. As far as he can recall, the examination happened on a back street, similar to the grubby type of place he imagines a woman might in desperation go to terminate a pregnancy. He remembers an unheated anteroom, blue linoleum peeling from the floor, a row of wooden benches – and a handful of other young men who refused to make eye contact with him or anyone else. Because they already knew the score, Martin thinks bitterly – why they were there, the choice they were making, the bartering of self-respect in exchange for safety.

  Unlike him, they were not being duped by their own mothers.

  Sweeping his fedora from the passenger seat, he exits the car and strides through a veil of slush up the gravel path.

  The woman behind the reception desk lifts her head as he enters, revealing a small, weary face with a deflated quality. Her surprise on seeing Martin solidifies as she consults the register in front of her. ‘Dr Dandy isn’t expecting any more patients today.’

  ‘I don’t have an appointment.’

  ‘Oh. Is it urgent? Have you injured yourself?’ Her gaze skates the length of Martin’s torso as if counting limbs or checking for bandages or blood.

  ‘I’m not ill. I need to discuss a personal matter. And yes, you could say it’s urgent. In fact, I consider it to be very urgent indeed.’

  ‘I see.’ She doesn’t sound particularly interested.

  Martin wonders if perhaps this is a regular occurrence, unhappy patients presenting themselves for unexplained reasons. Perhaps they are usually more considerate than to do so late in the afternoon. He realises he is spinning his hat, passing the rim through his fingers like a steering wheel.

  Grudgingly, the woman stands up. ‘Wait here. I’ll go and see if Dr Dandy is available. What is your name, please?’

  He stills his hands. ‘Travis-Jones. Martin Travis-Jones.’

  ‘And will Cyril… the doctor, know what it’s about?’

  ‘There’s a very good chance that he will. Yes.’

  He perches on the edge of a chaise longue that is covered in fading velvet and affixed to the frame with brass studding. The piece seems more suitable for a bedroom or drawing room. Seats of varying types are set around three walls papered with a red-and-gold stripe. The fourth is occupied by the reception desk, together with an imposing painting of a warship and smoking guns. The area, Martin surmises, must once have been a morning room, while another part of the house has been converted into a surgery for Dr Dandy’s consultations.

  The woman pads across the hallway and taps on a door. An inaudible sputter of conversation floats across chequered tiles. When she returns, her expression appears more sunken, more set than ever. Martin supposes she is anxious to get back to the peace of her book or knitting, or whatever else she was doing when he arrived. ‘The doctor says he’s busy at the moment. You’ll need to make an appointment.’

  He lets the fact of the empty waiting room swirl around them both for a moment, before placing the fedora carefully on his knees. ‘I intend to wait here until the doctor has time to see me. This is the first day for weeks the roads into the city have been passable. Even if the worst weather is over, there might be flooding when more of the snow melts, and my village could be cut off again. I’m sure the doctor can spare a few minutes.’

  There’s an uncertain silence. He tries to meet the woman’s gaze, but she turns towards the passageway as if expecting Dr Dandy to appear at any moment and berate her for Martin’s stubbornness. He has the sudden insight that she’s Dr Dandy’s wife. And that she’s not terribly happy.

  ‘Kindly inform the doctor I’m here to discuss a medical assessment conducted for the army in 1941. That might jog his memory. And if it doesn’t, then’ – he presses his lips together – ‘well in that case tell him Dr Sands sent me.’

  He sees the woman jump, as if stepping on a tack or an electric wire, before scuttling back across the hall. He hears her knock, followed by a flare of rising voices before the clunk of shutting wood mutes the crescendo and Martin is alone again.

  A minute passes. Two minutes. Five minutes. He consults his watch. Daisy told him the concert in the village hall would start at five thirty and already the time is quarter to four. Since she hadn’t wanted to go herself, Martin almost invited Fran to join him. He didn’t in the end for the very reason he couldn’t be certain how long this wretched business would take. And – he peeks into the deserted passageway – it appears his caution was well placed.

  The hat slides to the ground and he retrieves it with a sigh.

  The unpredictability of his timekeeping wasn’t the only reason he didn’t ask Fran. There was bound to have been some pretext or other – her job at the camp, the weather, being tired, needing to help her mother – why she couldn’t say yes. Since their outing to the cinema he has managed to see her only once. Throughout a brief lunch the Saturday before last, she seemed to glow with energy, burn with an inner fire as if a spotlight were trained upon her, yet she ate practically nothing and every so often appeared on the verge of making an announcement, only to cast him an unhappy glance and close her mouth an instant later.

  A cloak of disappointment settles with a rustle around Martin’s shoulders. The nature of that unmade declaration, her relentless busyness and parade of excuses are, of course, perfectly clear. She doesn’t care for him after all.

  From somewhere in the house a clock peals the hour. Martin rises to his feet and heads into the hallway. A little further along the corridor he finds another door. Pressing his ear to the panelling, he hesitates for no more than a second before rotating the brass knob and walking inside.

  Immediately, the countenance of Dr Dandy, lifting in astonishment from the papers on his desk, is familiar. Two minutes earlier Martin couldn’t have begun to describe the man’s appearance, yet now he is confronted with a pair of close-set eyes and glassy domed forehead, he is transported back four and half years, to that same face inches from his own as an ice-cold stethoscope was pressed first against his chest and then his back.

  ‘I thought my wife told you to make an appointment.’ The sentence is an admonishment, not a question.

  ‘This will only take a minute.’ Martin closes the door behind him. ‘I’ve travelled a long way today and don’t intend to have made the journey for nothing.’ He sees another, smaller doorway beside the doctor’s desk, which is presumably how his wife escaped in order to avoid further dealings with the difficult man in reception. ‘My name is Martin Travis-Jones.’

  The doctor blinks. ‘And?’

  ‘In August 1941 you examined me and found that I was unfit for service.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s quite impossible.’


  ‘I can assure you it’s not. I remember the occasion… I remember you, very well indeed.’ He fancies the doctor’s face flickers briefly.

  ‘It’s impossible because I was not authorised to conduct medical assessments for the army. My specialisation is mental disorders.’ The man gestures towards the wall where a gilt-framed certificate displays a diploma in psychological medicine. ‘Are you suggesting you have a report signed by me?’

  ‘The report is signed by Dr Sands.’

  ‘Then I don’t understand why you might think—’

  ‘Dr Sands didn’t write the report.’

  ‘I’ve heard enough of this rubbish!’ The doctor calls through the smaller door. ‘Mary? Where are you? I need you to see this gentleman out.’

  Martin steps forwards. ‘We both know I wasn’t seen by Dr Sands! We both know I was examined by you! And we both know the report is false!’

  The doctor stands up. He is a short man with a short, thick neck and Martin can see his Adam’s apple bobbing furiously in this throat. ‘Now listen to me, what you are saying is slanderous. I’ve every mind to call my solicitor. I’m afraid I must ask you to leave immediately.’

  ‘A statement is only slanderous,’ Martin says quietly, ‘if it is untrue.’

  The doctor doesn’t reply. He glances over his shoulder, but there’s no sign of his wife. After a while the silence seems to burrow into the noise and bluster of the previous minutes like a knife prising open a tin and laying bare the inside.

  Eventually Martin says, ‘It so happens I am familiar with the law of slander because I’m a solicitor.’

  There’s a pause.

  I shouldn’t have said that, Martin thinks. The law won’t help me now.

  The doctor gives him a slow, thin-lipped smile. ‘In that case I wonder why you are here at all. I don’t suppose your profession would look kindly upon one of its own dodging the draft. I’m sure you’re well aware that refusing to serve His Majesty’s Government is a criminal offence?’