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

by Sarah Mitchell

  ‘Daisy told me you were here.’

  Fran stiffened. You went to the office?’

  ‘Don’t worry, she didn’t suspect anything. I had a meeting.’

  ‘With Major Markham?’ Fran was confused. ‘But he was away all day.’

  ‘With Captain Holmes.’ He tugged her hand. ‘Come with me.’

  ‘Come with you? Where?’

  ‘You’ll see!’ He reached into the hedge.

  Fran blinked. ‘You have a bicycle, but how?’

  ‘From one of the soldiers. I borrowed it.’ Leaning forwards, he kissed her lips. ‘It’s not so surprising. We have lived together for many months, now some are like friends. Perhaps, being soldiers, they realise most of us only fought a war because the guns were forced into our hands. While other people’ – she knew he was thinking of June – ‘cannot understand the difference between a German and a Nazi.’

  He swung his leg over the saddle. ‘Ready?’

  The tarmac is wet with slush. Often Fran has to swerve to avoid puddles or blink away spray from the tyres. A mist of dampness settles on her hair while her chest burns from the effort of keeping up. He’s worried someone will see us, she supposes, that’s why he’s going so fast, and glancing over her shoulder to check for other cyclists, she almost loses her balance. They race beside the mauve haze of field and fen until they reach the next village, where some time last century she drank brandy with Martin. Then, just in front of a windmill, Thomas veers onto a track that heads towards the sea.

  ‘Wait!’ Fran stands on the pedals. ‘Thomas, wait!’ Stones squeal under his tyres as she cycles up to him, breathing hard. ‘We can’t go this way. The lane is blocked because of the mines on the beach.’ She points ahead to where coils of barbed wire and two upended pallets make a barricade across the mud.

  ‘Don’t you want to see the ocean?’

  ‘I would love to, but I don’t want to get us killed!’

  He touches her arm. ‘Most of the beach is safe now. And I know where to go.’ Lifting his foot off the ground, he propels himself forwards. ‘Trust me.’

  She watches him approach the barrier, slide off the seat and lever the frame between a pallet and the fence. An instant later he has vanished. Alone in the fading light, the spirals of wire with their ugly little knots appear almost menacing. Will he not wait for her? She opens her mouth but before she can call him, he reappears, clambering around the pallets without his bicycle, and beckons her forwards.

  * * *

  On the far side of the blockade they ride side by side. She had forgotten the twists in the lane, how it turns one way and then the other as if in no hurry to arrive anywhere at all. They are cycling more slowly too. With high hedges either side, it feels like their own private world. For miles there is nobody and nothing, except the beach somewhere ahead and the sky, which, when she tips back her head, is deepening in hue with the first pinpricks of stars starting to show.

  At the end of the track they dismount and leave the bikes on the ground. Thomas takes her hand and together they clamber up the shingle bank that runs west until the dune diverts from the mainland to become the ocean edge of the spit. Fran inhales deeply. The air is thick with the smell of salt, and the crash and drag of the waves seems to be coming from all directions and filling her head like a familiar, favourite piece of music. At the top of the ridge, she cries out in delight. She had almost forgotten the joy of the sea, rising and falling over itself in foam-tipped swells that blaze against the dark expanse like strings of white lights.

  ‘Can we go down to the edge?’

  There are stakes with tape strung between them dividing the beach into segments while a long metal rod lies abandoned only a few feet away.

  ‘We must stay to the right of that line.’ He points to the closest line of stakes. ‘The land is safe here. Further west, towards the spit, I am not certain if all the mines have been cleared.’

  Fran nods. Her heart is thumping with gratitude and love and the thrill of being alone with him in such a marvellous place. She wonders what June would say if she could see her now, and to her surprise feels a jolt of pity. She imagines her sister writing yet another letter or helping her mother to clear the supper dishes. The dullness of the evening as inevitable as the onset of dark.

  Jogging to the water, she crouches at the foot of the waves. The tide is retreating, each surge reaching a little less further up the shore than the previous one and depositing a trace of spittle on the gleaming stones. When she dips her fingers into the water, the cold makes her gasp.

  ‘Fran?’

  She looks up as the wave pulls back, sucking away the sand from her hand. He is standing right behind her.

  ‘They are sending me home to Germany. Me, and thirty other prisoners from the camp.’

  ‘What?’

  She scrambles to her feet.

  ‘I am being repatriated. Captain Holmes told me today. As long as Major Markham signs the papers that are necessary. Apparently, he has not been at the camp very often.’

  Fran stares at him. ‘How can they have decided already? I didn’t know anything about it and’ – desperately she tries to remember her recent conversations with Daisy but the only one she can recall of any substance was about Alice – ‘I don’t believe Daisy did either.’

  ‘Maybe the camp was told only recently. Maybe they had to pick quickly.’

  The world seems to be rocking, wobbling on its axis. She tries to gather her wits, but a single thought is filling her head.

  ‘I don’t want you to go.’

  ‘Then I won’t.’

  He takes hold of both of her wrists, circles them with his thumbs and forefingers.

  ‘But you don’t have any choice!’

  ‘I could escape, run away from the camp.’

  She can feel the strength of his grip, the heat of his skin. It seems that if he were to let go of her, she might simply collapse onto the shingle.

  ‘The weather is a little warmer. There are barns to sleep in and farmers who so badly need labour they may feed me in return for work.’

  ‘You could be shot!’

  ‘Only if they find me. They may not search for very long.’

  Her eyes fill. Much as she wants to believe him, she knows the situation is hopeless. It has always been hopeless. How foolish she was to feel so happy only moments ago. Turning her head, she fixes her gaze on the sea. She is determined not to cry. Not now. Not in front of him. ‘Perhaps,’ she manages, ‘you could write to the Home Office and ask to stay? Captain Holmes might send a letter on your behalf, since you’re such a good worker.’

  ‘They would demand to know why I want to remain here, why I am not anxious to return to my own country.’

  ‘Then tell them you love me! That I love you, and we want to be together!’ Pulling free her hand to swipe away a tear, she adds fiercely. ‘What’s so wrong about that?’

  The horizon is a blur, the vaguest shift from green-grey to grey. She can’t tell if it’s because of the falling light or the wetness pooling on her lashes.

  Thomas says quietly, ‘You know I can’t say that. You could be sent to prison. Your parents, your family, they could not support such a thing.’ He pauses. ‘I could not support such a thing. Not when it is certain they would refuse my request.’

  She glances sideways. He is staring at the sea too, his features tense and unreadable. She touches his cheek. ‘In that case, I’ll wait for you. Go back home. Go to Germany. It doesn’t matter. The rules are changing, attitudes are changing. Little by little. One day we will be able to marry. Being apart will be unbearable, but it won’t be for very long.’

  To her surprise his gaze doesn’t waver.

  ‘Thomas?’

  Still, he doesn’t move.

  ‘You do want me to wait for you, don’t you?’

  With disbelief she watches him close his eyes then open them again before finally wrapping an arm about her shoulder and guiding her away from the shoreline. At the foot
of the shingle bank, he undoes the buttons of his coat and holds out the flap. ‘Sit with me, Fran.’

  She sinks onto the stones, heart scudding with alarm while his arm enfolds her within the woollen cape. The smell of him; the trace of sweat and soap and animal musk are like a drug. In her ears the rock of the waves seems timeless, as if it might be possible to stay in the present, remain in that precise moment, by keeping motionless, by not speaking, by doing nothing except simply breathing.

  ‘You cannot wait for me.’

  For a second she thinks she hasn’t heard him right. Then, ‘You don’t believe I can wait for you? You don’t trust me?’

  ‘If I go, you must not wait for me. If I go, I won’t come back.’

  She jerks away and gapes at him in horror. Her tears have gone, blown away by shock, but a chill is spreading through her chest, worse than the cold of a winter sea or the snow of the last few months. She is certain he is telling the truth and at the same time utterly and wretchedly confused.

  ‘Two days ago, I had a letter. It was from neighbours in my village. Remember I told you I live near Eisenach?’

  She nods stupidly.

  ‘After the war the town was controlled by the Americans, now it is controlled by Russia. Until I received that letter, I wasn’t certain which side of the border my home would be, but now I know. The village is within the Russian occupation area. It is the reason why I have heard nothing for so long. Nobody can get out and because of the restrictions letters are only now beginning to come through.’

  ‘You couldn’t come back? Not ever?’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘Then I’ll come with you!’

  ‘Nobody is allowed to leave the Russian part of Germany, Fran. Not the Germans, not the British, not anyone. If you go with me, you may never see your home or family again.’

  Her body stiffens. She imagines saying goodbye to her parents, to June, to the house with its memories of Robbie, leaving forever the cries of the birds and the upturned bowl of sky over the marsh. For a split second, it’s merely a checklist in her head, and then the enormity of the hole hits her. She gasps and her hand flies to her mouth. She feels him tighten the coat around her shoulders and realises her whole body is shaking.

  He looks at her steadily. ‘So, now you understand why my best chance, our only chance, is that I escape.’

  For a moment she can’t speak.

  Eventually she whispers, ‘And your family? What about them?’

  Dropping his head, he scoops up a handful of shingle. ‘The neighbours say the house was badly damaged when Eisenach was bombed. Nobody has seen my parents or my sister since that time.’

  ‘That’s dreadful! Is that all the neighbours said?’

  ‘The message was very short. They were probably afraid if they wrote more the letter would be thrown away.’

  She gazes at him, perplexed.

  ‘They – the authorities – open letters and remove the dangerous ones.’

  ‘Dangerous ones?’

  ‘The ones that say anything the Russians don’t like.’ Flinging the stones down, he stands up suddenly and peers along the beach. ‘I thought I heard something…’

  They freeze. Fran strains her ears, listening for a voice, or the grind of footsteps on the stones, but the only sound she can detect is the constant beat of the sea.

  After a few seconds he sinks down again.

  Fran leans against his ribcage. His tunic, stiff with age and dirt, is rough against her cheek yet there is no place on earth she would rather be. This is why he came to find her at the Markhams’ house, she realises. Why he took the risk of borrowing a bicycle and bringing her to the beach. So that he could break the news to her here, where the heartbreak might be a tiny bit more bearable.

  Quietly she says, ‘I’m so sorry about your family, Thomas.’

  She feels a hiccup in his breathing, a shudder in his chest.

  He squeezes her close. ‘You are my family now.’

  He buries his hand into her hair.

  She tips back her face.

  ‘Kiss me.’

  He throws a quick glance along the beach. Then he shrugs off his coat, spreads the fabric out on the ground and lowers her on top of it.

  Fran gazes up at him.

  There are stones under her back, under her skull. As their mouths press together the pebbles shift beneath their weight. His fingers are inside her jumper, then her shirt, searching for her flesh through the layers of fabric.

  Fran traps his hand. ‘Wait!’

  He pulls back. ‘I’m sorry, I—’

  She shakes her head. That’s not what I mean. Holding his gaze, she sits up, lifts her jumper over her head and drops it to the ground. Next the buttons of her blouse, her movements steady and deliberate. A brief sensation of ice-cold air, before he is easing her backwards again, his lips are on hers, and they are both tugging and pulling at the rest of their clothes.

  There is a moment when he hesitates. A question without words. Then there is nothing but his hips hard against her own, his hand in the crevice of her thighs, and a wondrous sort of heat flooding through every fibre of her body. As the stones melt away, she hears her own breath, gasping and loud, and she guides his face onto the chalk-soft skin of her breasts and closes her eyes.

  * * *

  By the time they leave, the shoreline is dark. Hundreds, thousands, millions of stars are shining. Tiny diamonds of hope and the milky shift of faraway galaxies pepper the swathe of sea-sky. Thomas’s arm curls around Fran’s waist. Their footsteps match, crunching the shingle, their breath like lace in the chilling air.

  ‘When are the prisoners going?’ she asks. ‘The ones being repatriated.’

  ‘The day after tomorrow. Trucks will take them to a camp close to London, where the government will give them the rest of their papers.’

  ‘What! So soon? On a Sunday?’ She halts, horrified. She imagined it would be weeks away.

  ‘I think they do it like this deliberately. That way the other prisoners have no time to argue it should be them instead.’

  Fran gapes at him.

  ‘I told you, I won’t be with them. I will escape before then.’

  ‘That means tomorrow.’ She can barely keep the panic at bay. ‘You’ll have to escape tomorrow!’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But what will you do? How will I find you?’

  ‘I will meet you at the village hall. Not the day they leave, but on Monday in the evening. You might know something by then from the camp, how hard they are looking for me. Whether I need to make a very clever disguise!’

  He is trying to make her smile, but her blood is churning like the sea, frothing and foaming with fear. It feels as if a whole lifetime of living has been crammed into the last two hours. They reach the bicycles and clamber aboard. Thomas leads the way back along the lane towards the coast road. Fran follows in his tracks. She tells herself to trust him, somehow his plan will work out, that it’s only because he loves her so much that he’s risking everything.

  At the junction they turn left towards the camp and stop a little way from the gate.

  ‘I should accompany you home.’

  Fran shakes her head. ‘I’m used to doing this part on my own. And the road could be busier. Someone might see us.’ The words are no sooner out of her mouth than the clink and swish of tyres are suddenly audible and out of the dusk a dynamo lamp appears. She retreats into trees just as the cyclist draws level.

  ‘Thomas! What are you doing with a bicycle? Did someone lend it to you?’ The voice belongs to Daisy. Leaving work, slightly later than usual.

  ‘Yes.’

  There’s a pause.

  ‘Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter. You’re nearly back now anyway.’

  The bicycle moves forwards, then halts a little way distant. ‘By the way, a letter arrived for you. In the second post.’

  ‘From Germany?’

  ‘I can’t remember. No, from England, I think.’
/>
  ‘Perhaps it is about the repatriation?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Daisy’s tone sounds odd, Fran thinks. Distracted and not at all like herself. Maybe Martin is weighing on her mind again. She watches until the light from Daisy’s back wheel has completely melted away before emerging from the trees, For a moment she and Thomas simply stand together, as if testing the stillness.

  Eventually, he glances towards the gate. ‘So, now I must go…’

  Her throat fills with rocks. She wants to say something. Something normal and reassuring but all at once she can’t say anything at all.

  He tilts her chin.

  A kiss, butterfly soft.

  ‘This isn’t goodbye, Fran. I will see you on Monday.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  ‘Where have you been?’

  Fran shuts the kitchen door and unwinds her scarf.

  ‘I said, where have you been? With Martin?’

  ‘I was out, yes. Meeting Martin.’ Her mind is swirling. Although she might be looking at her sister, she’s hearing Thomas’s voice, seeing the flicker of stars over the sea, his face above her own. She ought, she supposes, to be ashamed of what happened on the beach, but instead the remembering, the reliving, provokes a hot wash of pleasure. It feels as though a torch has been lit, burning deep inside of her, something precious and vital to lessen the darkness of whatever lies ahead.

  ‘Fran!’ June grabs her arm.

  She blinks. The nip of June’s fingers, the alarm in June’s voice, drags her into the present, to the solitary lamp burning over the Aga and in the shadows at the back of the room, her mother standing with her hands clasped, as if she’s trying to stop them from flying away.

  ‘What is it? What’s happened?’ She’s thinking they’ve found out about Thomas, that he’s going to escape, even as she realises the panic can’t possibly be true and recalls that June asked about Martin and not Thomas at all.

  ‘It’s Alice.’

  Fran looks blankly at her sister.

  Their mother steps forwards. ‘Mrs Markham was here about an hour ago. Alice is missing. She hoped you might be able to help.’