War Brides

by Helen Bryan

  “I didn’t think the Germans controlled that part of France yet…” said Frances.

  “The Vichy police—the Milice—help the SS. They do what the Germans want. They take people from Gurs and send them to another camp at Drancy, near Paris. From there, the prisoners are taken to a prison in Poland, at Auschwitz.”

  Her voice faltered. Rachel had not minced words in her letter. They would keep looking for her family but Tanni must be prepared for bad news. “My friends say Auschwitz, where my parents and Bruno’s mother are, is very bad, that terrible things happen there, more than anyone knows…the Germans say they will eliminate all Jews from Europe, from the face of the earth, even. If my parents, Bruno’s mother, are there, God protect them. But it sounds as if Klara and Lili are not. Yet.”

  Evangeline twisted a strand of hair. The Free French she knew in London talked about Auschwitz and the other German camps with horror. Some of their members had fallen into Nazi hands and two had escaped with stories that were almost too terrible to believe. Evangeline had been appalled by what she heard. She had asked if the British government knew about the prisons. The Frenchmen had snarled that the British were not interested in anyone’s hides but their own.

  Now Evangeline nodded. “I think the news is censored to avoid scaring folks any more. Everyone would just give up otherwise.”

  “Is that true that no more foreign children can come here now?” demanded Alice.

  Tanni nodded.

  “S’outrageous. We mustn’t stand for it.” It was unlike Alice to question authority. “Bloody won’t stand for it, I say!”

  The others were even more astonished to hear Alice swear.

  “Perhaps Father would know if’s a way to get round the law…” Frances mused, trying to focus. “But knowing him—” she broke off.

  “He’ll prob’ly say rules is rules. What then?” Elsie knew that the admiral came from the class who made the rules, and made them to suit themselves. If they didn’t fancy a law they changed it. People like Bernie and herself broke it and went to prison. Anyway, what came of the government’s bleedin’ rules? Bernie had shown her a newspaper story about a ship full of refugee children torpedoed en route to Canada because the law stopped them coming into England.

  “Good fing your Agnes and Vi’let and them others are in Yorkshire and not on that, innit?” Bernie had said, meaning to be comforting. The ship had been the City of Benares, Elsie remembered. Many children had drowned while their ship burned and sank. She had felt a wave of such hatred for the Germans that she nearly choked. And she hated the British officials who had sent the children to sea. No difference between them, really.

  Suddenly Elsie was grateful to Evangeline’s bossy mother-in-law for persuading Mum to take her family out of London. Bernie had been right: even if they were all separated, the little ones were safe in Yorkshire near Mum, away from the bombs and German fiends who torpedoed children. Even if Agnes had her hair all cut off, it wasn’t the same as being taken away by the Germans or drowned. She shivered—Mum would have said someone had walked on her grave.

  Evangeline tried to think of something to cheer Tanni up. “Maybe the girls will be all right. Lots of French hate the collaborators. The Free French in London send the Resistance supplies and guns and Resistance people rescue our pilots if they’re shot down and get them home before the Germans capture them.” Then Evangeline remembered something else she had overheard. “Maybe the Quakers have got them out of France. An organization called something like Secours des Enfants smuggles Jewish children over the Swiss border. And there’s the Chemin de Liberte, which goes over the Pyrenees into Spain. It sounds like a long walk over a mountain pass, but people do it, it’s not impossible. Maybe they—”

  Evangeline’s familiarity with wartime France was surprising. “How do you know so much?” Alice demanded.

  “Er, at the, um, clinic last time I was in London, one of—one of the nurses was married to a Free French officer and, er, we chatted.”

  “‘Careless talk costs lives,’” Alice snapped, quoting a War Office poster. “And I can’t see why this nurse would talk so much.” She imagined Evangeline being arrested as a spy and smiled.

  “Even if the Quakers could get them away before the Milice find them,” said Tanni, tracing the route with her finger, “Klara might be able to walk through the mountains to Switzerland or Spain, but Lili is weaker and slower. She depends on Klara for everything. And Klara would never leave her.” They must believe I abandoned them, she thought sadly.

  The clock in the hallway chimed one. Alice had taken up her knitting, but her eyes weren’t focusing well and she kept dropping stitches. There was a silence while everyone thought. The small fire flickered in the grate, shifting the shadows on the walls.

  “Isn’t there anything we can do?” asked Evangeline when she came back carrying Johnny. “I mean, to help the girls escape some way?” She thought of her own desperate flight from New Orleans.

  “They need a way out of France, which is a problem with the Germans everywhere. And then a way to get into England, which is a problem because it’s illegal.”

  “What about unofficial, like?” asked Elsie. “Could they get into England wivout anybody findin’ out?”

  Alice stabbed her knitting needles viciously into the tangled mess that would have to be unraveled in the morning. Too much brandy had given her a headache. She was fed up with the war. The War Cabinet didn’t have to sit knee to knee in the coal cellar with her mother, night after night. Bother the War Cabinet! And bother Mummy, she thought, forever whining, “What would your father have said?”

  The familiar refrain went on and on in her head. “What would your father have said!” She was tired of wondering what her father would have said if he were there on every single occasion, including this one…she felt sleepy, but the refrain echoed in her head “What would your father have said?”

  She wanted to snap that she knew exactly what her father would have said!

  “Black Dickon’s gang used that for forty years,” he would say, pointing to a spot where the mouth of an old smuggler’s cave tucked into the cliff. “It’s just visible at low tide, large enough for a low boat to slip in unseen. Right under the excise men’s noses.”

  Alice! Her father was beside her. You can’t have forgotten, right under the excise men’s noses.

  “But…Defense Zone now,” Alice muttered.

  We drew maps, said Alice’s father firmly and was gone.

  “Yes, Father, maps,” Alice said.

  Alice was as dotty as her mother, Frances decided.

  Evangeline raised her eyebrows. “Tea, anyone?” she asked and disappeared into the kitchen. She came back with a tray and cups.

  “Smugglers,” said Alice, taking hers, “did it.”

  “Alice, we’ve all drunk more than we’re used to. Have your tea. Did what?”

  “Pay ’ttention,” said Alice. “Another way into England, well, there is one. Smugglers’ tunnels. Used to be a lot of smugglers along this coast. They brought in things from France, like lace and brandy and tobacco, so they didn’t have to pay duty. If they were caught they were hung—that’s how serious it was. Anyway, my father had an old book about the parish, and a famous smuggler named Black Dickon had a cave…excise men never found it. Apparently they could just get a boat in it at low tide, but otherwise when the sea comes in the entrance is blocked. The smugglers unloaded inside and used tunnels to carry the contraband away from the coast.”

  “Alice, that was a long time ago—”

  “No, listen! Father and I found it! We used to go for a walk together every Saturday afternoon and we found it at low tide. He became quite excited, made maps to work out where the tunnels might have led because the parish book said there was an entrance in our churchyard. Father thought it possible, and that probably the de Balforts had been in on the smuggling, because Gracecourt was such a fine house.”

  Elsie’s eyes narrowed. “Can you smuggle f
ings from France today? Like people?”

  “Dangerous. Although…it must have been dangerous all those years ago when the king’s soldiers hanged the smugglers they caught. And the government must think it’s possible, because there are loads of posters up, warning Germans might get past the coastal defenses and to be on the lookout,” Alice replied.

  It was amazing what you learned when people assumed you didn’t understand French, Evangeline thought, saying, “Hand me the map. Somewhere off Brittany, the Resistance operates escape lines. They pick up RAF pilots right under the Germans’ noses and take them across the channel. It’s got an odd name.” She ran her finger along the Brittany coastline. “Here! Plouha. It’s got high cliffs. Could the Resistance be persuaded to send two children along with some English pilots, do you think?” asked Evangeline.

  “Evangeline, the children are hundreds of miles away from there,” said Frances impatiently.

  “True, but the Resistance needs money and a lot of other things, ammunition, guns, medicine, and radio transmitters,” said Evangeline thoughtfully. “For enough money, they’d do anything.”

  “Money! How much? And where would we get it?” asked Alice.

  “That’s the problem…”

  “Not necessarily,” said Frances. “There’s Aunt Muriel’s jewelry. The solicitors thought she’d lost it or sold it, but she’d hidden it. I found it in the cellar and it’s mine now. She left it to me. Look at these—they’re worth a fortune.” She unclasped the pearls she was wearing and passed them round. “And there’s more—bracelets and diamond clips and things. Even a tiara. They’d be worth thousands if they were sold. That should be enough.”

  “But even if we could contact the Quakers and even if they agreed to take the girls away from Gurs, how would they get to the coast? Would the Resistance take them all that way? And even if someone agreed to bring them across the channel, how would they get them past the authorities into England? We couldn’t ask RAF pilots to break the law by smuggling children in, and anyway, I daresay they’d be met by the authorities.”

  “And once they got here, it would be impossible to hide foreign twins in Crowmarsh Priors,” said Frances, thinking ahead. “Everyone knows everything. Where else could they go?”

  “I know a place no one would notice—no one likely to tell the authorities anyway!” exclaimed Tanni. She was remembering when she had visited Tante Berthe in Bethnal Green before the war and seen two well-dressed Englishwomen staring at a line of black-clad children following their father. Penelope Fairfax’s friend had commented on how alike the family of Hassidic children looked and wondered how the family could tell them apart.

  But it was Penelope’s casual comment, “Sometimes one can quite see why the Germans…” that had made Tanni’s blood run cold. Now it gave her an idea. “In London where my friends live, there are whole streets of large Jewish families. Many are very old-fashioned and dress their children in long, dark clothing. The English see only the clothes and think all the children look the same. Two more children would fit in without the authorities noticing—as long as they could get identity cards and ration books.”

  “Nuffink easier than laying ’ands on ration books, Bernie says, not even worf forgin’ those ’cause so many go missing from the post office. You can buy ’em on the cheap.”

  “But would any family take the risk? They’d be arrested if they were caught, Tanni,” said Frances.

  “Well, what about the people hiding the twins in France now? They’re at risk of being shot,” said Tanni. “A rabbi I know always says to save a life many things are permissible, and this would save two. So I’m sure someone would be willing. I’ll have to ask carefully and not mention any of this to Bruno yet,” she added. There was a new note of firmness in her voice. “In fact, it is better that he doesn’t know.” In case he forbids it, she thought. She had never had a secret from Bruno, but now there was no choice.

  “How would we get them from Crowmarsh Priors to London? The train wouldn’t be safe. There’s Albert Hawthorne, for one thing. He knows everything that goes on.”

  “Bernie’s ever so good at getting things when they’re wanted. ’E can get a car and petrol and ’e will too if I tell ’im. Never mind restrictions. Oh, don’t turn up your nose, Alice! ’E’ll see the girls up to London safe and sound, if ’e knows what’s good for ’im. See to their ration books too, ’e will.”

  “If we could get them there before anyone saw them…” said Frances slowly.

  They looked at each other, then everyone stared at Alice. “Do you think the smugglers’ tunnels still exist?” asked Frances.

  “Probably.”

  “If they do,” said Evangeline, “can people still get through them?”

  “If they haven’t collapsed. It was a long time ago.”

  “Mustn’t get ahead of ourselves,” said Frances. “We don’t know where the tunnels are, whether anyone would agree to bring the girls, whether—”

  “When you’re desperate, you find a way,” said Evangeline with feeling. She whispered to Frances so that Alice couldn’t hear, “We could ask the French people I know in London whether they would take the jewelry in exchange for bringing the children.”

  Frances nodded. Then she said aloud, “Alice, did you keep your father’s maps?”

  “I think so. We must have. We’ve boxes and boxes of his papers stacked in the hall at the cottage. Mummy’s been after me to sort them and move them to the box room. We trip over them every time there’s an air raid. But one thing at a time,” said Alice primly in her best schoolmistress voice. “I’ll find Father’s maps and try to work out where the cave is. And we need to find out if there really is an entrance to the tunnels from the churchyard. Even if it’s there it may have collapsed, so someone will have to go down and see and I don’t know who could—”

  “At home I loved caving with my brothers and Lau—If you find the tunnels I’ll go down on a rope and see what they’re like,” Evangeline volunteered. “I don’t mind. I’ve done it lots of times.”

  “Do we tell anyone else?”

  “No! If Tanni’s not going to tell Bruno, we shouldn’t say anything to anyone else. Not even Bernie. One step at a time.”

  “Shouldn’t we mention it to Oliver? If we’re prowling in the churchyard he’s bound to wonder what we’re up to.”

  “No,” said Frances, “better not. He would want to save the children, of course, but he’s awfully conscientious. He might disapprove if it’s illegal. And it must be. Let’s not tell him until we have to. Unless we’re very, very careful we’ll all go to prison, and then there’ll be no one to help Lili and Klara.”

  Tanni felt guilty. Tante Berthe would be aghast if she knew what they were discussing. But she had to do something, she had to. The baby kicked and she squirmed on the sofa. Suddenly something else was happening…

  “Tanni! What’s the matter! Oh…oh dear!” exclaimed Frances.

  Tanni’s face was screwed up and she gripped the armrests hard as a fierce contraction took hold. She let out a deep groan, “Oohh!” A stain spread on the sofa as her water broke.

  “Now we must send for Sister Tucker,” exclaimed Frances.

  “That’ll be the baby comin’ all right!” exclaimed Elsie. “Took Mum the same way—’er waters broke all over the place, and next minute Vi’let were there, ’owlin’ ’er ’ead off! Alice, ring Sister Tucker—quick!”

  19.

  London, November 1941

  The night that Frances celebrated her birthday and Tanni went into labor, the German bombers that had disturbed the birthday party in Crowmarsh Priors flew on to hit London hard. The sirens screamed across the city, and in the streets firewatchers and air raid wardens hurried to their posts, while ordinary people rushed from their homes or the pub into the nearest Underground station, clutching children, bedding, and gas masks. The rattle of ack-ack fire opened up on the approaching planes, followed by the first pounding explosions on the outskirts. As they c
ame closer, people pushed harder to make their way into the shelters. The air raid wardens blew their whistles violently in a bid to prevent panic.

  Arc lights sliced up through the night sky between the silver barrage balloons as the bombers flew over and building after building disintegrated in an avalanche of masonry and broken glass. Flames erupted and devoured whatever was left inside, seeking a whiff of gas from a damaged main or a store of paraffin.

  From the east, over the docks, there came a roar so loud it drowned out everything else. London shook. A warehouse where rum was stored in barrels had taken a direct hit, and a river of flaming liquor spilled into the street. A gasometer was damaged and a lone repairman went up swiftly, silhouetted in the searchlights as he fought to stop it exploding.

  Even deep underground they felt the reverberations. At her WRVS canteen post on a platform Penelope Fairfax tried to smile calmly as she poured tea and doled out buns or cigarettes. She hoped the two lads who had come in drunk and arguing wouldn’t overturn the lavatory cubicle again. It smelled terrible already, a fug of unwashed bodies and urine, with cigarette smoke and dust shaken loose by the bombing. It got in one’s hair and nostrils and made everything gritty. Wearily Penelope wiped her hands again on the damp tea towel they used to mop up spills. She felt sticky and badly in need of a bath.

  The hurricane lamp in a far corner went out. Children whimpered in panic. “Miss, oh, miss, the lamp,” called a woman urgently, panic in her voice too. They were all afraid of the dark—anything could happen: people were robbed, girls raped, and the rats came out, searching for crumbs, scurrying over the sleepers.