Rachel’s eyes were trained on the grey landing craft filling the bay, at the queues of soldiers leaving. ‘I can’t believe they came at all,’ she said. ‘And now I can’t believe they’ve gone.’
‘It seems unreal, the difference a single day can make,’ I said. ‘And that some piece of paper signed in another part of the world can turn things on their head.’
She let go. ‘I’ll miss Wolfgang. He was … he was not like the others.’
‘That man — he’d do anything for you, the great soft thing. He knows he can find you here on Jersey, and maybe he’ll come back one day,’ I said. ‘It seems odd that soon those beaches will be emptied of mines, and the children will be back to dig sandcastles and play hopscotch and eat ice creams. And no one will remember.’
‘I’ll remember,’ Rachel said. ‘I’ll remember that even in the worst of times, there are still good people.’
‘I’m not sure. When people ask us what part Jersey played in the war, we’ll just seem like cowards.’
‘There’s more than one way to fight though, isn’t there? Like not buckling under and giving up.’
I smiled. ‘It’s not very heroic.’
‘Heroic isn’t what matters; it’s survival that matters; to witness it and then move on. To be here to build a new and different future.’ She reached out to wrap her arm round my waist.
‘You sound like Churchill,’ I said. ‘You’ve missed your calling.’
‘Let’s go home,’ Rachel said. ‘When the British let me out of the jail, they gave me a little present.’ She put her hand in her pocket and drew out a twist of white paper containing a black powdery substance.
‘What is it? Gosh, I’ll have to buy new glasses.’
‘You don’t need them for this. It’s the most English thing you can imagine.’
I sniffed it. ‘Tea!’
We limped back towards the bakery arm in arm, through the bright summer sun that smelt of hot tarmac, as the shouts and cheers from the town grew fainter.
EPILOGUE
Jersey 1948
Céline
The scars of the occupation ran deep. Rachel heard nothing more of her parents. Nobody spoke of it, but we presumed they were dead. Her horror when we learned of the extermination of so many Jews, in places like Auschwitz, made it feel impossible to talk to her of Fred. My attempts to find out what had happened to him were in vain, as all my letters went unanswered. Germany was in chaos, and the subject of the Germans was closed. Nobody wanted to talk of them; the people of Jersey wanted to pretend it had never happened. Like everyone else, I had to become thick-skinned about my own pain.
I ran the bakery single-handed, worked long days, and slept exhausted at night, trying not to think of the past. Rachel lodged with me and went off to the bank every day. She was quieter now, and serious, and grateful for the security it offered her. We rubbed along well; with her I didn’t need to explain my occasional black moods or my nightmares.
One late Friday afternoon, I was just tallying the till when the door opened and an unfamiliar customer came in. She hesitated, as if she was weighing up her surroundings, before coming to the counter.
‘Sorry, we’ve not much left I’m afraid,’ I said.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, in French.
I paused in my counting, curious. She was an older woman, with a lined forehead, and creases around the edges of her eyes that spoke of both laughter and tears. Salt and pepper hair stood straight up from her forehead under a brown felt hat.
‘Are you Céline?’ she asked in French.
‘That’s me,’ I said, shutting the till drawer.
‘Thank God. It’s taken me a long time to pluck up the courage to come and see you. I’m Berenice Severin.’
The name meant nothing to me.
‘Is there somewhere private we can talk?’
‘What’s it about?’ I was suspicious.
‘It’s about your husband, Siegfried Huber.’
The name sent a jolt to my heart. I turned the shop sign to Closed without a word and led her to the sitting room.
‘Is he alive?’ were my first words.
She gave a small shake of the head. ‘It’s taken a while to search the records to find out what happened to him.’
I exhaled and sat down heavily in the chair. I was wary of this unknown woman. ‘Somebody else told me he was dead … but what do you know about it … I mean, how can you be sure?’
‘May I?’ She indicated the chair and sat opposite me, leaning forward, her hands clasped on her knees. ‘What a lovely room,’ she said.
‘Tell me what you know.’
‘We knew your husband as Édouard,’ she said. ‘He sacrificed his own life for my son. And as a result, he was executed by the SS on January twenty-seventh 1943. His execution is on record with those of the Mouvement de Libération Nationale. The French Resistance.’
‘You must have the wrong person. Fred was conscripted … into the German Army,’ I said.
She leaned forward, a gentleness in her expression. ‘No. He talked of you often, of this bakery here in Jersey. There is no mistaking you. He was a hero. A hero of the French Resistance.’
‘But how can that be? You said you knew him as Édouard. Are you sure it was him?’
‘Do you have any of that English tea? It’s a long story.’
I made tea and several hours later she had finished. I was reeling, my head filled with French names and places. From knowing nothing, suddenly there was too much for me to take in.
She put her teacup down and reached into her handbag. ‘I thought you would like to see these,’ she said. ‘Really, I would like to have shown Édouard. But you are the next best thing. You know, he always wanted to get home to you. He wanted to go to Switzerland into neutral territory, but I dissuaded him. I’ve always regretted it. If I hadn’t —’
‘We all have regrets,’ I said.
She pressed her lips together and passed me the first of several photographs. ‘This is Pierre, my son. Édouard, your Fred, knew him as Antoine. Here he is, with his wife Eloise. They met on the evacuation bus when we fled Marseille. And these are my grandchildren.’
I stared at the young man in the photos, at his brilliant smile. The children were on a beach next to a giant sandcastle. A little girl of about four, in a checked frock clutching a bucket. A toddler in rompers squinting at the camera whilst digging a hole.
‘Édouard saved my life three times. Once when I was arrested and questioned by the Gestapo. Once when a man tried to shoot us on a train. And once when he gave Pierre his papers. Without him, Pierre and I would have both been on the train to the death camps. I know it is little consolation to you, but he gave us our lives. You should be very proud.’
Berenice was staying in St Helier in a small boarding house on the seafront. When she’d gone, with promises to tell me more tomorrow, I left the shop and walked up the hill, anxious for some time alone before Rachel returned from work. My heart was full of Fred. It was as if something inside me had melted. All these years I’d been terrified he’d become like his brother, Horst. That I was wrong to care where he was, or what had happened to him. Now my shame had gone, and I was able to love him again. It would never bring him back, but the thought that, all along, he’d been the Fred I knew, made my heart ache.
My Fred. Like me, he’d made hard decisions. He would never come home, but in some sense his story had reclaimed his right to be here. He’d fought for freedom in a way I could never have imagined.
I stopped on the brow of the hill in the late evening light and gazed back over the island he’d loved. The gun turrets were still there, used by children as dens instead of by men with machine guns. In the distance, caramel-coloured cattle grazed, and farms were growing flowers, as they used to do, not just beet and potatoes. Flanders Farm had planted lavender, and the purple haze of flowers scented the air with its sharp tang. Perhaps I’d bake the French specialities that Fred used to love so much. Crois
sants and pain au chocolat. Even Viennese pastries … one day.
I imagined him back in the bakery, blowing his burnt fingers after taking a tray from the oven. I imagined him taking off his shoes and socks after a hard day, with an ‘aah’ of pleasure. I smiled and cried a little, then shook my head.
‘Chin up, Céline,’ I said to myself, hearing Fred’s voice plain as plain.
Outside the front door, I paused. I can do it, I thought. His death need not be for nothing. I can brave the past and find my future.
****
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A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed THE OCCUPATION.
During World War Two, the Channel Islands were the only part of the British Isles to be occupied by the Germans. This story is based on several true accounts, although I have welded them together and compressed them into a fictional narrative. For more on Jersey’s Occupation, I thoroughly recommend Madeleine Bunting’s excellent book, The Model Occupation. For an overview, the BBC history site has several pages on this topic. Though fictional, Céline and Rachel’s story was inspired by the true story of Dorothea Weber, who helped her Jewish friend Hedwig Bercu by hiding her from the Germans. More on this surprising real life story can be found here.
Fred’s story in France is entirely fictional. Amongst others, the following books were very helpful in giving me the research background for his story:
The Gestapo — Frank McDonough
Suite Française — Irène Némirovsky
Les Parisiennes — Anne Sebba
Avenue of Spies — Alex Kershaw
The Resistance — Matthew Cobb
Fighters in the Shadows — Robert Gildea
If you’ve enjoyed The Occupation, I would really appreciate an online review on Goodreads or Amazon, which will help other readers to discover it. I love to chat to other readers about what I’m reading too, so do look me up on my Facebook page: AuthorDeborahSwift or on Twitter: @swiftstory.
Deborah Swift
www.deborahswift.com
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My thanks go to the whole Sapere Books team for bringing this novel to publication. Huge thanks to Amy Durant of Sapere Books and to independent editor Richard Sheehan for their insightful editing. I would also like to thank the other writers of The Darkest Hour Anthology where the story first appeared, and who were the first readers to offer me feedback and suggest that the shorter story could be expanded into a novel. Particular thanks to Marion Kummerow, who organized the anthology and helped with German translation.
ALSO BY DEBORAH SWIFT
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The Lady’s Slipper
The Gilded Lily
A Divided Inheritance
Pepys Series:
Pleasing Mr Pepys
A Plague on Mr Pepys
Entertaining Mr Pepys
The Highway Trilogy:
Shadow on the Highway
Spirit of the Highway
Lady of the Highway
Published by Sapere Books.
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Copyright © Deborah Swift, 2019
Deborah Swift has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events, other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales are purely coincidental.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-913335-26-7
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