The Viennese Girl

by Jenny Lecoat

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jenny Lecoat was born in Jersey, just fifteen years after the Nazi Occupation of the Channel Islands. Following a Drama degree at Birmingham University she moved to London and pursued various careers as a stand-up comic, presenter and magazine contributor, before becoming a full-time television writer in 1994. She worked on a wide range of series including sitcoms, children’s programmes and dramas, until a growing interest in factual and biographical stories inspired her to revisit her island roots. Her feature film Another Mother’s Son, telling the story of her family’s resistance activities during the war years, was released in 2017. The Viennese Girl is her first novel.

  She is married to television writer Gary Lawson and now lives in Hove, East Sussex.

  First published in Australia and New Zealand by Allen & Unwin in 2020

  First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd

  Copyright © Jenny Lecoat 2020

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76087 792 7

  eISBN 978 1 76087 428 5

  Typeset by 3btype.com

  Cover design: Christabella Designs

  Cover photographs: Matt Porteous/Studio M; Magdalena Żyźniewska/Trevillion Images; Shutterstock

  Preface

  This novel is based on true events. In 1940, young Hedwig Bercu, a Jewish girl who had recently escaped the Anschluss, found herself trapped on the tiny island of Jersey when Nazi Germany invaded the Channel Islands. The extraordinary story of Hedy’s struggle for survival, including the role played by a serving officer of the occupying forces, was first documented almost sixty years later, and is the foundation for this fictionalised account. Some names have been changed.

  For more background information, please see Acknowledgements.

  For those courageous Channel Islanders whose acts of kindness, resolution and resistance under Occupation saved the lives of others.

  And for Gary.

  Contents

  1 Jersey, Channel Islands Summer 1940

  2 1941

  3

  4

  5

  6 1942

  7

  8 1943

  9

  10 June 1944

  11

  12 1945

  Epilogue 1946

  Acknowledgements

  1

  Jersey, Channel Islands Summer 1940

  The sun’s heat had begun to mellow, and the gulls were cruising for their final catch of the day when the siren sounded. Its wail climbed and fell, calling out over the jumbled slate roofs and church spires of the town, and across the patchwork of potato fields beyond. In St Aubin’s bay, where the waves lapped and fizzed on the sand, its warning finally reached Hedy’s ears as she lay dozing by the sea wall, and woke her with a jolt.

  Rising in slow motion, she scanned the sky. Now she could also hear a faint, tinny whine in the east. She tried to steady her breathing. Perhaps it was another false alarm? These warnings had become a daily event these past two weeks, each time the reconnaissance planes merely circling, then disappearing back out to sea with cameras crammed full of blurry images of main roads and harbour walls. But this time something was different. The engine sound contained a note of brutish intent, and now several tiny black dots were emerging in the distant blue. The whine became a hum, and the hum a strident drone. Then she knew. This was no reconnaissance mission. This was the start.

  For days now, the islanders had watched the black smoke rise and mushroom on the French coast, felt the vibration of the distant blasts pulse through their bellies and rattle their bones. Women had spent hours counting and re-counting the tinned foods in their larders, while the men squashed into banks to withdraw the family savings. Children had yelled their complaints as gas masks were forced over their heads. By then, all hope had vanished. There was no one here to deter the aggressors, nothing between them and their shimmering prize but flat blue water and an empty sky. And now the planes were on their way. Hedy could see them clearly now, still some distance away, but from the outline she guessed they were Stukas. Dive bombers.

  She spun around, looking for shelter. The nearest beachside café was almost a mile away. Stopping only to grab her wicker bag, she sprinted for the stone steps leading to the walkway above, and took them in three bounds. At the top she scoured the promenade; a hundred metres towards First Tower was a small seafront shelter. It contained nothing but a single wooden bench on each of its four exposed sides, but it would have to do. Hedy hurtled towards it, grazing her shin as she mistimed the leap onto the low plinth, and threw herself against the bench. A moment later she was joined by a panic-stricken young mother, probably not much older than herself, gripping a small white-faced boy by the wrist. By now the planes were over St Helier harbour, one arcing across the bay towards them, the noise of the engine so deafening that it drowned out the boy’s screams as the woman pushed him to the ground. The violent rat-a-tat of machine gunfire stung Hedy’s ears as several bullets found the sea wall and zinged off in random directions. A second later, a distant explosion shook the shelter so hard Hedy thought the roof might collapse.

  ‘Was that a bomb?’ The woman’s face was ashen beneath her tan.

  ‘Yes. Near the harbour, I think.’

  The woman gave her a brief, confused look. It was the accent, Hedy knew – even in a moment like this it still set her apart, marked her out as an alien. But the woman’s attention quickly turned back to her child.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she muttered, ‘what have we done? My husband said we should have evacuated when we had the chance.’ Her eyes fixed on the sky. ‘Do you think we should have gone?’

  Hedy said nothing, but followed her companion’s gaze upwards. She thought about her employers, the Mitchells, staggering onto that filthy, inadequate cargo boat with their screaming child, and nothing but a change of underwear and a few provisions stuffed into a brown packing case. At this moment, with the aroma of burning aviation fuel in her nostrils, she would have given anything to be with them. Her knuckles turned yellow on the slatted bench. Corkscrews of charcoal smoke drifted across the bay, and she could hear the little boy beside her sobbing. Hedy swallowed hard and focused on the questions bouncing around her brain like a pinball. How long now before the Germans landed? Would they round people up, stand them in front of walls to be shot? If they came for her, then … ? There was no point finishing that thought. Anton, the only person on this island she could call a friend, would be powerless to help her. The shelter vibrated again, and she felt its fragility.

  Hedy remained crouched silently, listening to the planes loop and dive and the crack of explosions a mile away, until at last the sound of the engines began to fade into the distance. An ageing gentleman with dishevelled white hair stumbled towards them, and stopped to peer into the shelter.

  ‘The planes have gone,’ he called. ‘Try to get home as quickly as you can. It can’t be long before they ge
t here.’ Hedy’s eyes fixed on his jacket, which was covered in dust and uneven patches of blood. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not mine,’ the man assured her. ‘Old fellow walking near the harbour took a bullet in the leg – we had to get him to the hospital.’

  ‘Are there many hurt? Or … ?’ Hedy glanced towards the little boy, not wanting to finish the question.

  ‘Some, yes.’ The man’s voice faltered a little, and Hedy felt a surge of anguish. She pressed her fist to her lips and swallowed again before he continued: ‘They bombed a line of potato trucks waiting to unload at the harbour. I mean, for God’s sake, what’s the point of that?’ He shook his head and gestured towards his destination. ‘Hurry now.’

  The man hastened away. Hedy hauled her shaking body to its feet, wished the woman good luck and set off along the promenade towards the town, wondering how on earth she would get back to the Mitchells’ – assuming the house was still there. She tried to hurry, but her skinny legs felt weak. She imagined Hemingway cowering beneath the sofa in the empty living room, his grey feline fur stiff with terror. Already she was half regretting disobeying Mr Mitchell’s instruction to have him put down. The animal’s trusting eyes had melted her heart at the door of the vet’s surgery. Now she wasn’t even sure if she’d be able to feed herself, never mind a cat.

  By the time she reached the outskirts of St Helier town she could hear the bells of the ambulances and the random shouts of desperate men trying to work as a team. Smoke rose in perfect columns from boats and buildings in the windless summer evening; cars lay abandoned on the roads at odd angles. There were a few people about: some searching for the missing, some wandering aimlessly, and one old couple on a bench, sobbing. Hedy walked on, forcing herself to put one foot in front of the other, deliberately edging her mind towards reality. The seas around the island were probably already full of U-boats. Soon she would once again be surrounded by those grey-green uniforms and hear the barking of orders. She pictured the bang on the door, Wehrmacht hands grabbing at her elbow, the house abandoned with dirty dishes still on the table. Anything was possible now. She recalled only too well the way the Germans had behaved in Vienna.

  Especially towards Jews.

  She pressed on, pushing her body weight forward, willing herself home. She needed to reach Hemingway and give him a hug.

  ‘I have these. But might they get us into trouble?’

  Anton stood in the doorway of his bedroom holding out a pair of once white, now grey, ribbed cotton underpants. Even from her seat by the window Hedy could see they had not been washed. She felt the tiniest smile creep around her lips at the word ‘trouble’; Anton could be so cautious sometimes, just as he could be absurdly optimistic at others. His face, like her own when she accidentally caught herself in the mirror, was pale with anxiety and exhaustion. Anton lived alone and Hedy suspected that he, too, had sat up for the last four nights, staring sleeplessly over deserted streets, counting down the curfewed hours with fearful expectation.

  ‘Too late to worry about that,’ Hedy replied. ‘And they said a white flag. They didn’t specify what it should be made of. Look, everyone’s doing it.’ They poked their heads out of the first-floor window into the sunshine. Below was a neat town street, lined with apartments built over shops and businesses, with doors that opened directly onto the pavement. Outside each window hung some kind of household fabric – an apron, a baby’s nappy, an ancient undergarment. Defiance in the face of defeat. Anton nodded his agreement and Hedy, taking care to use only the tips of her fingers, took the underpants and tied them to the broom handle, then eased it out of the window, resting the brush end on a chair and weighting it down with a towel. As they did so, the sound of the vehicle engines swelled in their ears. ‘Here they come now,’ Hedy murmured.

  The first car appeared at the end of the high street, clearly visible from their viewpoint – a smart open-topped Bentley filled with senior officers in full uniform. The second was a gleaming Daimler with several more. Behind them followed a dozen or so less impressive Fords and Morrises containing lower-ranked soldiers and a couple of motorcycles with sidecars at the rear – all stolen, Hedy supposed, from the garages of local residents, as the arriving military could hardly have had time to transport such vehicles from France. Even from up here, the delight on the Germans’ faces was clearly visible. Presumably after months in the cold muddy fields of Europe, the creamy white beaches and tree-lined lanes of this picturesque island had come as a happy surprise to them, just as they once had to Hedy.

  ‘Look at them.’ Anton’s voice was thick with anger. ‘You’d think they’d conquered the whole of England, not a few British islands off St Malo.’

  ‘For them it’s the first step,’ Hedy muttered.

  ‘We’re not expected to salute them, are we?’

  Hedy peered into the windows opposite. Behind every one stood morose local residents, staring with impotent hatred at their new masters. There had been no more bombs since Friday night, and the damage around the harbour and Weighbridge was already partly repaired, but everyone knew that today marked the true beginning of subjugation. Watching their captors arrive, the people willed their fury into the invaders’ hearts, their sullenness their only defence.

  Hedy shook her head. ‘They won’t make us salute. They’ll want to convince us how civilised they are – show the world how they intend to run Britain. What was it they said?’ She picked up the leaflet from Anton’s little table, and brushed away the dried granules of mud from the flower bed where it had landed. ‘Here it is: “the liberty of peaceful inhabitants is solemnly guaranteed”.’ She snorted. ‘We’ll see how long that lasts.’

  Anton squeezed her shoulder for reassurance. She felt the warmth of his hand, her first physical contact with anyone since saying goodbye to the Mitchells’ little girl, and had to chew the inside of her lip to keep the tears at bay. They stood like that for several moments, until the line of cars finally disappeared and the windows above the pavement began to close. There would be more soldiers, of course, in the coming days – many more – but the islanders had had their first glimpse of the enemy, enough for one day. Anton returned to his usual easy chair by the fireplace, carefully positioned to hide the torn linoleum beneath. It was a small, scrappy apartment, but it had a cosiness far more comforting than her ex-employers’ sprawling, deserted house, and the smell from the bakery beneath made it homely. It was a place where she had always felt safe.

  ‘There’s no point thinking the worst,’ Anton said, reading her thoughts.

  ‘All right for you.’ She slumped down on the only other chair and tucked one leg underneath her, as always. Her fingers fiddled constantly with the ribbon on her dress. ‘I’m so stupid! Why didn’t I go to America when I had the chance?’

  ‘You know why.’

  ‘I could have found the money somehow! I shouldn’t have given up so easily.’

  Anton lent forward in his chair. ‘Look, there are so few Jews left on the island – a dozen maybe? – it’s probably not worth the Krauts seeking them out.’ He must have seen the cynicism in her eyes, for he went on: ‘I really don’t think it will be as bad as it was in Vienna.’

  Hedy tossed her hair. ‘No? Even if you’re right, even if they don’t target my people, do you realise how vulnerable we’ll be now? We’re foreigners here, foreigners who speak German! We’ll be caught in the crossfire.’

  ‘The Jersey people won’t turn on us that way, they know exactly why we’re here.’

  ‘Anton, they dragged you off to that internment camp barely six weeks ago, just for being an enemy alien!’

  ‘Only until they checked things out, then I was back home again. That’s what I mean – people here are pretty reasonable.’

  ‘You Catholics!’ Her voice sounded high and jagged. ‘You think the world is full of saints! You think the locals won’t remember that the Austrians threw flowers and cheered when the Germans crossed our border?’

  Anton pushed his mop of thick dark hai
r from his eyes and sat back in his chair. Despite her affection for him, it was one of Hedy’s constant disappointments that Anton avoided arguments. It was partly a dislike of confrontation, partly a genuine desire not to cause unhappiness. Perhaps that was why she had never felt any romantic attraction towards him, despite all they had in common. How much more protected she might feel now, if things had been different between them.

  Anton shifted in his chair, manoeuvring to change the subject. ‘I must try to get some sleep tonight,’ he said eventually. ‘The bakery will re-open tomorrow. Mr Reis reckons we’ll be mobbed with people panic-buying, but I’m not so sure. I think most people will try to carry on as if it’s a normal day.’

  Hedy gave a bitter laugh. ‘Oh yes, of course. Like you say, the shops will open, order of the Commandant. And we’ll all go about our business like nothing’s happened. That’s what people do, isn’t it? We’ll hang up our blackout blinds and move our clocks forward an hour to fit German time. And we’ll tell ourselves it’ll all be fine.’ Her breath was coming in short gasps.

  Anton moved towards her. ‘Hedy, don’t.’

  ‘Everyone will walk around town, pretending we’re not terrified of being arrested. And me, I’ll sit around waiting to be packed off God knows where on the next boat. But you’re right – apart from that, it’ll be just like any normal day.’ The last words left her as a scream as she sank to her knees, the sobs jerking her body. ‘I can’t take this, Anton, not again. Please, don’t let them take me away.’

  Anton held her gently in his arms, muttering words of comfort, then passed her his handkerchief. Hedy cried into it for a full ten minutes while Anton made hot tea, and sat Hedy down in his own chair to drink it. Then he put Rachmaninov on the gramophone, and they both sat in a companionable stillness, listening to the soaring melodies until the sun began to dip. Hedy watched the sky above the rooftops turn from pale gold to pink, her thoughts in freefall. She thought about her parents back in Vienna, whose precious letters would no longer reach her. She thought about Roda, with her silver laugh and wild hair; how brave her sister had been, stuffing that envelope of schilling notes down her knickers as they pushed their old Steyr motor car into thick, concealing undergrowth, two kilometres from the Swiss border. She wondered if Roda ever made it to Palestine. Then Hedy closed her eyes and dozed for a while. When she woke, Anton provided more tea and some stale macaroons he’d taken from the shop. He gave her a leftover tinned sardine to take back for Hemingway. Finally, as the sky grew royal blue, it was time for her to go.