by Mary Wood
Machine-gun fire drowned him out. It went on and on. Theresa covered her ears. Madness came to her in the shape of the end of the world. Bodies twisted and still, mouths gaping, eyes staring. She couldn’t stand it. This thought triggered a scream that she had no control over. It started somewhere deep inside her. Her own ears rejected the awful sound as it came out of her mouth. Hands grabbing her arms and shaking her brought it to a stop, and in nothing more than a whisper, she said, ‘14609, Theresa Laura Crompton, Officer. Special Operations Executive.’
A woman’s voice, low and incredulous, said, ‘My God, I thought you were all dead. I’m a reporter. I’ve been following our soldiers as they advanced. Come with me. I’ll take you to Brigadier General Henning Linden. He’ll know what to do.’
As she walked across the compound and through the inner gate, the full horror of what had been happening hit her. Against what she knew to be the execution wall, hundreds of bodies of German soldiers were lying dead. The sound of a single shot took her eyes further along the heap of bodies. American soldiers were walking along the bodies and systematically shooting those that were dying.
The woman looked at her and shook her head. ‘Best to forget what you see here. Come on.’
In the brigadier’s office, they sat her down. When told who she was, the brigadier checked a list in front of him. ‘Yes, ma’am, your name appears on here as “whereabouts unknown”, suspected executed at Dachau. Well, how did you get lucky, ma’am?’
Lucky! ‘Sir, I didn’t get lucky.’
Now he’d noticed that she had no teeth. Now he looked at her emaciated body. He soon lowered his eyes. When he did look up, he stood and saluted her. ‘Ma’am, the world owes you a debt of gratitude. From what I have glanced at here, just a fraction of what you have been accredited with, I am honoured to be in your presence. Are there any more SOE survivors here?’
‘I do not know. I have kept a low profile, afraid every day that they would come and take me for execution. I did not make any enquiry or tell anybody who I was. I do know there is a wing of political prisoners and French Resistance, but I have not made contact.’
‘Okay.’ Turning to the woman reporter he said, ‘Miss Garrivon, I know you’re here to report, but there are some bathrooms through there. Would you give this lady a hand and maybe provide her with some clean clothes?’ and then to her, ‘Or would you like to eat first, ma’am?’
She shook her head. She had become used to the pain of starvation, but the matting of her hair and the filth of her body and the vile things that had been done to it? Never! She needed that bath.
‘We’ll get you out of here and back to France, ma’am. I’ll contact the British Division there and get them to arrange to have you lifted out.’
Lifted out . . . Oh, thank God! I’m saved. For my children I am saved.
The September sun beamed down on her windscreen. Parking her car outside the farm gates, Theresa’s heart pounded. None of the warmth of the day reached her. She shivered with cold. It all looked deserted!
Feeling stronger in body if not in her real self, after her month in hospital and three weeks in convalescence, her heart had sung at the prospect of travelling to France to pick up Jacques. She hadn’t been home. Nor had she allowed her family to visit her. She couldn’t face seeing how normal everything had remained for them, or having to look into the cowardly face of her brother. Because comparing him to Pierre and all of the men she had fought beside, that was what she now knew him to be: a coward.
Maybe one day things would change, but in the meantime she would find a place in Paris to rent and then she would hire someone to find Olivia and bring her to them. They wouldn’t be the family that she and Pierre had planned, but Pierre would always be with them, looking over them and protecting them.
She would never be able to tell her family about Jacques, and her mother would never know about either of her children. The shame would kill her, and Pater would never forgive her for that. Not after the first time, not after he’d done all he could to protect her. Well, that’s what he had told himself, but if the truth was known, he had needed to protect her mother more. Always, Mater had to be protected.
This thought didn’t come with bitterness, because her mother was beautiful, kind and caring, but fragile – though sometimes it was clear to her that the fragility was a weapon. But at others, when Mater had cried or she’d caught her sitting in a window staring out, her hands in her lap, her face anxiously watching for Pater to come home, her whole body trembling, then her heart had gone out to her and she’d have done anything to make her happy and strong.
Taking her mind off these thoughts, she allowed her own anxiety to creep into her once more. Pierre had told his mother and father to stay put until they arrived. It had been one year and one month since they’d last seen them. Pierre had never contacted them after that. He hadn’t been able to.
The moment she was freed she’d written to tell them she would come for them, and then again from her hospital bed, giving them the address there to write to, but they hadn’t replied. Because of this she had travelled to Paris first, visiting their old home and making enquiries. She hadn’t found them, and no one could help her as none of the people around had been there long enough to have even known them. Now, as she walked up the weed-infested, gravelled drive towards the small gate in the fence that enclosed the farmhouse, her mind begged, Please, please, let them have waited!
The gate creaked as it swung back on its hinges, and the window of the bedroom she and Pierre had slept in banged open and then shut and then opened again as the wind blew it on the one hinge that still held it to the window frame. The sound was like a death knell on all of her hopes. No one answered the door. Seeing in through the windows was almost impossible, as filth from many rainstorms had left them all but blanked out. Round the back of the house the door was open. Going inside confirmed what she already knew: the farm really was deserted. Running back round to her car she frantically drove to the village to make enquiries.
Monsieur Becke had passed away, they told her. His son, as far as they knew, had moved out, but they did not know where to. He had left before the old man died, probably causing his death by doing so, some said. The old man wasn’t found for weeks after his death, and was only discovered because some boys had cycled up to the farm and had spotted starved, rotting animals and this had prompted an investigation.
Stopping at the shop as she went, Theresa bought a posy of flowers. Finding Monsieur Becke’s grave, she placed them on it. As she did so, her knees gave way. Everything that was her folded in on itself. Tears streamed down her face, wetting her cheeks and her blouse and aching in her chest as it heaved with sobs that came from her weeping heart. And just as that emptied itself, so did her soul. Help me, Pierre, help me.
It seemed she’d slept for ever. The whitewashed walls around her and the distinct smell of hospital told her where she was, but in France? Or England?
‘Theresa?’
Looking towards the voice, once so beloved to her, she wanted to spit into the face it belonged to.
‘Don’t look at me like that, old thing. I’m sorry. I – I, oh, Theresa, my darling, forgive me.’
She knew she never would. This brother of hers had taken so much from her. He wasn’t all to blame, but his early games had led to awakening something in her she’d not been able to deny. He’d taken away her childhood. No, she hadn’t to think like that, because she had given it up willingly to him and with him. Left to their own devices, they had invented a world, a grown-up world, fuelled first by his over-awareness of his sexuality and then by hers.
But she did not want to be reminded of that. She didn’t want those thoughts to taint what she had had since. She wanted him to go away.
The scream started in her soul. His look of horror turned it to laughter. Ha, even a scream scares him! She laughed in the face of this coward. This spoiler of women; this monster! But even though he’d gone, she couldn’t stop. A sharp p
ain in her thigh halted it to a giggle as she went into the kind of sleep that is almost oblivion.
When next she woke – really woke: woke to the world – and became aware of her surroundings, they told her the war had been over for five years. In the mirror a person looked out at her that wasn’t her. Eyes that were drugged and dead stared back out of a creature she’d never met, but had no inclination to reject.
Terence was there. For a moment she’d thought he hadn’t left when she’d screamed, but knew that wasn’t right.
She no longer wanted him to leave – knew she hadn’t for a long time.
‘Darling, do you know who I am?’
‘Of course. Why?’
It had shocked her to hear that he had visited every week for years, as had her mother and father, and she’d shown no signs of recognizing them. She thought she’d been with Pierre and Olivia and Jacques, but then at other times on missions, and at others the dark, dank cell had claimed her and she’d been through the torture all over again . . .
1963
This was where the structured writing ended. From here the notes were scrappy, and Lizzie imagined them to be written in times when Theresa’s mind had cleared. From them she deduced that once well enough to leave the institution she had not been able to face living at home. She had bought a house in London.
The next thing she wrote was: ‘Those bastards in that bloody hospital kept me drugged for all those years. It seems they thought me a danger to myself until my father had insisted they try the electric shock treatment he had read about. Once I showed signs of responding, they let me come round. Now it is too late to find my children. I am not well enough.’
As Lizzie read through the notes it appeared that Theresa’s existence from then on had been between reality and madness. Her thoughts at times were harrowing. At others she had written about the loss of her father and her scant visits home. Then one entry told of Rita coming back into her life, of her loving her and how she remembered the phone having rung whilst Rita was there and how what was said had sent Theresa’s life reeling backwards, landing her once more in an institution. Her brother, her darling Terence, as she put it, had taken his own life and Rita had gone and it was all Theresa’s own fault. All of it.
A later entry told of how Theresa couldn’t face her mother again, and how she felt her wickedness had destroyed everybody she’d ever loved. And that she deserved to rot in hell. But a bit after this she wrote that she knew that if she was ever to get out of the institution she’d have to cooperate, so she’d begun to allow her mother to visit.
Then another entry written after she was back home again read simply, ‘Rita is back.’ And then, ‘Today, Rita loved me and I am happy.’ And yet another: ‘Today, Rita was drunk and demanded money. If I don’t pay she will go to my mother. Help me!’
And the last entry, Theresa wrote: ‘Nothing seems real. I am cocooned in a net that tangles my mind. The Germans are within miles of me. The radio said they are escaping over the wall . . . They are coming for me. I must build a barricade. Rita will help me . . .’
‘Lizzie? Lizzie, darling.’
His voice and the endearment had her closing the now finished book. What happened to Theresa after that, she already knew. Poor Theresa. What a life. Thank God she was about to know the happiness she deserved.
‘What has upset you, Lizzie, my love?’
Jacques was on his haunches beside her chair. His eyes looking up at her held concern, and all she ever wanted and needed: love.
She wiped her tears. ‘I’ve just finished yer mother’s book. You and Patsy should read it. It is a pity there isn’t time before yer meet her. It would help yer to understand her and to know her.’
‘I know. I wish I’d had that privilege. But a part of me wants her permission to read it.’
‘Oh? Jacques, do yer think I have been wrong to read it? I only—’
‘No. You didn’t know who she was, and like you say, there was a connection with your aunt. And from what Patsy has told me, it has been the things that you have told her that have changed her thinking on our mom. So, I think you have done the right thing.’
‘When yer see yer mother, treat her gently. Forget the bad things you’ve heard. She couldn’t undo them, but she more than atoned for them.’
‘I know. I’ve had my moments of anger towards her since I arrived here and met you all and heard such things, but if Patsy can put them to one side after all she has been through, then so can I. I will give my mother nothing but love and respect.’
‘I’m so glad.’
‘Lizzie, I’m not sure I can make our drive out. I’m so sorry. I need to take Patsy to meet our grandmother. If that goes well and I can leave them, I’ll come straight back for you, but if they have difficulties with each other, then I’d feel obliged to stay with them.’
‘I understand.’ She didn’t really. Inside she felt a disappointment gnawing at her.
His smile undid this feeling as the promise in it told her there would be many more times. The feel of his kiss on her hand sealed that. She lifted his to her lips, giving him the same promise.
‘Gee, Lizzie, you’ve gotten to me in a big way.’
This whisper brushed the hairs on her arms. ‘And you have to me.’
‘I’m acting out of character. Back home I’m known as a slowcoach where the girls are concerned. They’ll never believe this. I can’t believe it myself, but I can’t deny it either. I love you, Lizzie.’
It came easy to her to tell him, ‘I love you, too, Jacques. I love yer more than I thought it possible.’
‘I want to kiss you.’
With this simple statement, the right of all lovers, the difficulties her condition posed opened up a barrier between them. A physical barrier. She wasn’t like other girls: he couldn’t just take her in his arms and pull her close to him and kiss her.
This thought had hardly settled in her when Jacques surprised her by standing up, releasing the brake on her chair and running with her to the bottom of the garden. There, out of sight of the house, he bent over her and hooked her arms around his neck and lifted her out. Holding her with her face next to his, he said, ‘Oh, Lizzie, my Lizzie . . .’
The kiss was something she couldn’t have imagined. No one had ever kissed her lips before, but even if they had, she knew it wouldn’t have felt like this. This kiss fed her soul with love. It took her whole being from her and replaced it with his. It planted a joy inside her and gave her back the life she’d lost when just a child. She was somebody. Somebody did love her.
Thirty-four
Theresa’s Fragility Destroys the Dream
When they alighted from the car, her grandmother took her hand and held it as they walked along the corridor. The gesture sealed the love Patsy had found for this beautiful woman whose heart could open to her and who had spent the first few minutes of them being together apologizing for the selfishness she’d displayed when her children were young. This, her grandmother had thought, had caused it all.
This explanation had given Patsy feelings of anger, but they had only lasted for a moment. Then in a gesture that showed a spontaneity she never knew she possessed, she’d taken her grandmother in her arms. And they had hugged. In that moment it came to her that no one was to blame. It was a set of circumstances that had happened, and none of it mattered. If she let it, it would spoil what really did matter and all that was to come in her future life.
Her grandmother hadn’t known that her way of conducting herself to keep her husband close had affected her children. They had always seemed happy and carefree to her, and she hadn’t ever thought there would be decisions her husband would think he had to shield her from. The fact that what happened to Patsy was a consequence of this was what now tore at her grandmother’s heart. Putting that to rest had been difficult, but in achieving it Patsy had opened a path for them, and she and Grandmama had run down it towards each other.
Now, after only spending a short time with her gr
andmother, it felt as though she had known her all her life. Today it felt to Patsy as if there was no ‘other’ life. Everything began from this moment that was upon her.
The plan was that as long as her mother coped with meeting her and Jacques, they could take her home for the afternoon. If that went well, there would be more visits until the time came when their mother could come home for good. Then, Grandmama had said that she would go back to York and leave the house to them. Patsy would move in with her mother. A live-in nurse would be engaged to take the strain of everyday care and companionship whilst Patsy was at work.
As for Jacques, he would return to America to continue his studies and to sort out some friends from Poland, whose story he’d told them about the evening before when he’d brought Lizzie back from their drive. It had been wonderful to see the happiness on Lizzie’s face, and on Jacques’s – and how their grandmother had taken to Lizzie.
As they had talked, the idea had come to Patsy that if Lizzie didn’t go with Jacques to America this time, then she would ask her to come and live with her and her mother. Lizzie would be just the person to help her mother. She already loved her from reading her memoirs, and she knew everything there was to know about her.
Everything would work out. Harri and Greg had phoned when she’d arrived home. They were coming home in a couple of weeks. Poor Mam and Dad, they had gone into a frenzy of What should we do about this and What should we do about that? Harri and Greg wanted a ‘do’, and Mam and Dad needed it, so that they could give their daughter a proper send-off. She and Ian had giggled at them, and then had gone for a walk to leave them to it and for her to tell Ian everything that had happened. The walk had ended in a kiss. She didn’t know how, nor did she know how she felt about it. The kiss had been nice. It had been the best kiss she had ever had, and she hadn’t wanted to come out of it. But something in her wasn’t ready. Ian had respected that, and this had deepened the feeling she had for him. She’d left him with a promise. One day. One day . . .