War on the Margins

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War on the Margins Page 11

by Libby Cone


  ‘Thank you, Albert.’

  She sat on the bed and removed her shoes. She missed Edmund already, but at least he knew where she was. Albert could probably get word to him once in a while, and see how he was doing. How long would she be here? She was so overwrought that all she could do now was sit and stare out into space. Eventually she fell asleep.

  Attorney General’s Chambers.

  Jersey

  26th June 1943.

  [To:] The Constable of St. Peter

  Dear Constable,

  I understand that you were recently informed by the Constable of St. Helier, in compliance with an Order of the Occupying Authority, that a Mrs Mary Erica Richardson (née Algernon) was missing from her last registered address, 8, Overseas Flats, Dicq Road, St. Saviour.

  I have now been requested to forward to you for your information, and to assist you for the purposes of identification, two copies of the photograph of Mrs Richardson which is attached to her registration papers.

  Yours faithfully,

  Charles Duret Aubin

  Attorney General

  [To:] The Constable of St. Peter.

  Addendum: 2 July

  Town Hall state that maiden name should read ‘OLJENICH’.

  CHAPTER 41

  St Brelade, Jersey

  8 September 1943

  At seven p.m., the BBC reported that Italy had surrendered unconditionally. At the cinema later that night, everybody knew about it by intermission. As Lucille and Suzanne worked feverishly on letters, Marlene lay on her camp bed, surveying her dark world. She thought about her trumpeter. There was no need for the soft woman’s voice intoning the names of American and British POWs on Gerry’s Front; Bruno and His Swinging Tigers had nothing more to do. She felt happy for the Italians, but knew that the little wires and crystal that had connected her to the trumpeter now connected her to a prisoner, or a dead man. How had music become so dangerous? Everything was dangerous to the Nazis; she remembered them burning books from the public library shortly after the Occupation had begun. Why were Jewish people dangerous? She, for one, was harmless enough. Well, at least until she had seen Pauline in St Helier. Where was Pauline now? She had probably not spent too much time in prison; the prisons were so overcrowded with people caught hiding food, listening to the wireless, throwing manure at soldiers, that nobody stayed for long, even in France. Unless they considered your crime so grave you went to Germany; that was bad.

  She imagined a prisoner exchange, Pauline for the trumpeter. Though they were both being held by the same side, weren’t they? The Germans hadn’t been sending out their military marching band of late; did they need a trumpeter? It was so important to be needed by them. That was how you survived. A group of anonymous prisoners became a labour pool if their work was suddenly needed. A man whose soul burned with music considered worthless pollution suddenly became bait for the hook.

  Where was he now? If he was lucky, lying on a bed in a cellar like her. Probably trumpetless, practising his key fingering on air, humming when it was safe to do so. Eating rotten vegetables. If he wasn’t lucky ... well, she was afraid to think about it. She wrote scenarios in her head about a trumpeter so essential to the ongoing war effort that the Nazis kept him and his family safe in a secret apartment, brought them food, brought him oil for his valves, or whatever trumpeters used. His playing was the only thing that relieved Hitler’s headaches, or they thought it interfered with Allied radio transmissions (though he also played secret code that helped the RAF, and sometimes he, at great risk to his life, made the headaches worse).

  She put her hands up in the darkness and fluttered her fingers as if pressing keys, playing a song to him. Then she smoothed her little pigskin blanket over her feet and tried to sleep.

  CHAPTER 42

  States of Jersey

  Department of Public Health

  Public Health Office

  Royal Square

  Jersey

  A.M. Coutanche, Esq.

  Bailiff

  Bailiff’s Chambers

  Royal Square

  Dear Sir,

  I have been receiving from various sources complaints about the feeding of political prisoners in the gaol when under the care of our prison staff.

  These complaints have become very insistent since the stopping of food from outside, or rather the reduction of this to a few kilos a month.

  Two prisoners were on T.B. Rations before admission, S. Coombs and J. Mackay-Tipping. I spoke to Dr. Bentlif about these patients and I believe he spoke to Mr Briard. Since then medical certificates have been given to the Governor referring to the necessity of both these men receiving T.B. Rations. Up to the time of writing, I am not aware that they are having these extra rations. It would appear that much unnecessary difficulty has been placed in the way of these men getting the extras they require. Both men were X-rayed and examined before admission so that there exist a good record of their condition then.

  I have reason to believe that the following constitutes a typical day’s menu:

  Breakfast. Coffee, dry bread and swedes.

  Dinner. Soup and a small portion of potatoes.

  Tea. Coffee, dry bread, and porridge.

  These men have committed no offence against our laws, yet it would seem that they are forced to subsist on a diet which greatly adds to the severity of their punishment and this whilst in charge of their fellow citizens.

  It also involves serious dangers should any of them have latent lesions of Tuberculosis.

  There are also complaints about the amount of fuel supplied as the political prisoners are in that part of the gaol which has no central heating.

  Since writing the above, as a result of pressure from Doctors Blampied and Hanna, the Governor of the prison has asked the German Authorities for permission to put these men on T.B. Rations. The German Authorities have communicated with the Attorney General who in turn has written to me asking for my opinion. I consider all this delay unnecessary and even the permission of the German Authorities need not have been sought. Action could have been taken until such time as the German Authorities saw fit to interfere.

  Yours faithfully,

  R. N. McKinstry

  Medical Officer of Health.

  CHAPTER 43

  St Helier, Jersey

  October 1943

  Erica Richardson had assumed a routine. She would awake early; this allowed her to use the bathroom upstairs, before the other employees had arrived. She would take her breakfast back in the cellar, allowing a block of light to come in through the little window by opening the blackout curtain but of course not sitting in direct view. She would walk a few laps around her bed after making it up to stretch her legs. Then she would light a candle to supplement the window and sew. She was getting the hang of it: her first efforts on Mrs Bedane’s clothes were laughable, but she quickly realized that one sewed things inside out. Soon she was able to alter a few skirts and blouses so that she could deal with the long drying time required for doing secret indoor laundry. She would take lunch in the cellar as well, always brought down by Albert. After the employees had all left and the blackout curtains were closed, she would sometimes have dinner with him upstairs.

  As they gnawed on dry, pan-scorched swedes (no butter was at hand at the moment for frying) and potato bread, he spoke up.

  ‘Erica,’ he said (she had insisted he call her that), ‘I think it has been long enough now that nobody would recognise you if they saw you for a moment.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Yes. I think you may be able to move into the house. We have an upstairs bedroom with heavy curtains that I think would be all right. After another few months, maybe you could sit in the garden if you wore your dark glasses and maybe dyed your hair.’

  She laughed. ‘That sounds funny. I would have to be more glamorous in order to not be recognised!’

  ‘I didn’t mean that you weren‘t...’

  ‘Oh, Albert, I know! It’s just funny. Wh
at did Edmund say to you the other day?’

  ‘That if I touched his little Dutch girl, he would keelhaul me!’

  ‘We’ve all grown so emaciated, never mind our ages, you couldn’t do the former and he couldn’t do the latter!’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re right. Listen, another reason I need to move you is that I may be taking in a Frenchman or a Russian worker.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘My little circle of friends tells me that there are several people in need of a hiding place. The Germans torture those Russians terribly, you know. They beat them and starve them to death.’

  ‘I’ve heard that. It’s terrible.’

  ‘Well, I just wanted to let you know so you wouldn’t be surprised.’

  ‘Thank you, Albert. I’ll try to tidy up the cellar for the next guest.’

  Another thing to occupy her time. Hoping against hope, she wondered if Albert would get two people at the same time so they could play cards.

  His name was Oleg. He was smuggled in at night. She met him the next day, after he had had a bath and a little food. He looked terrible! His scalp was half-bald and scabby, his frame devoid of flesh, his teeth rotten. He had already been at another hiding place, where he had been de-loused and given some ill-fitting clothes; God knew what he had looked like when he escaped. He did not talk much and knew just a little English.

  She sat up in her new room, a slightly stuffy bedroom with all-over heavy curtains lined with net. She had the use of a bathroom now. She asked Albert for some of his own clothes to alter for the Russian. This sewing was becoming agreeable to her. She sat on her bed during the shortening days and sewed. She embroidered her pillowcases with thread unravelled from too-long trousers. At night she listened to a forbidden wireless hidden under a wastebasket; it certainly sounded as though the Allies were getting things done in Italy. Albert was able to bring her word and the occasional note from her husband, who was getting a bit weaker but still able to care for himself with a little help from the neighbours. She did not think about the obvious: if we are ever found out, we will all be shot, or sent to a camp where even worse things are done to you. The thought could make her crazy; she became adept at not thinking it and just looking ahead to her next frugal meal.

  CHAPTER 44

  St Brelade, Jersey

  1 June 1944

  Fitful weather all spring, planes roaring overhead, soldiers mutinying, nightly German target practice. In May, several airdrops of radio-scrambling foil-backed paper occurred, courtesy of the RAF. On one was scrawled ‘Don’t worry, Jersey, won’t be for long.’ Later that month, attacks on St Aubin’s Bay. People were nervous, shyly optimistic, searching one another’s emaciated faces for information.

  That evening Lucille and Suzanne were listening to the wireless set hidden in Lucille’s ottoman, one to an earphone; Marlene was listening to her crystal set in the cellar. After the opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the European News Service announcer began the news by saying, ‘Here is the news, but first here are some messages for our friends in occupied countries:

  The long sobbing of the violins of Autumn,

  Molasses tomorrow will spurt forth cognac,

  Sabine ...’

  The sisters looked at each other, then hugged, crying, ‘The Verlaine! The Verlaine!’ The line about violins, the first line of Paul Verlaine’s Chanson d’Automne, was the signal to the Resistance to make ready for the Allied invasion of France.

  Marlene in her cellar heard the nonsense sentences, but did not understand what they meant. She sat up when Lucille came down.

  ‘Marlene, things will happen now. We are very excited.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘We cannot tell you everything, but good things will happen, dear. Do not worry.’

  The next day was filled with the clacking of the typewriter.

  CHAPTER 45

  La Rocquaise, St Brelade, Jersey

  5 June 1944

  The Trojan War will not be held.

  John is growing a very long beard this week.

  The long sobbing of the violins of Autumn

  Les sanglots longs des violins de l’automne

  Wound my heart with a monotonous languor ...

  ‘From the Italian front, a late bulletin reports ...’

  Before the announcer had finished reading the second line of the Verlaine, the line they had been waiting for, Lucille wriggled out of her half of the headphones. She threw on a wig and a coat, kissed Suzanne, and slipped out through the back door. Suzanne sat at the table in the dark, smoking, listening to the little wireless. Planes were taking off from England, laden with paratroopers. Rome had been liberated. She put the set away carefully after the broadcast, returned to her place at the table, waiting for Lucille, allowing herself another precious cigarette. Lucille returned as night was turning to day, and sat again at the table. In the old days Lucy would have been giddy with excitement, but now she wearily reported on tyre slashings, artillery sabotage and dynamite theft.

  ‘They have shut down the telephone lines,’ she said, unsure if this was good or bad, ‘I think the Kommandant will be making a proclamation. A lot of the Germans seem pretty happy, though. They are sick of this.’

  The thundering drone of planes overhead began, and continued all day, louder and louder, punctuated by antiaircraft fire from the nearby emplacements. When the windows began to vibrate with the growing percussive roar, they went downstairs to where Marlene was somehow sleeping through the noise.

  ‘Marlene,’ said Suzanne, shaking her awake, ‘the invasion has begun.’

  They brought the second crystal wireless down to the cellar and heard General Eisenhower announce the beginning of their liberation. That evening they heard the King address the Empire and most of the rest of the world. Obviously reading, and haltingly, from a text, he made the expected call for prayer and fortitude. Marlene had never heard him before. They tried to make a little party in the cellar, eating swedes and drinking wine and parsnip coffee as young men flew their large aeroplanes towards Normandy.

  CHAPTER 46

  St Helier, Jersey

  5 June 1944

  Erica lay awake in the upstairs bedroom, listening to the drone of planes between broadcasts on the wireless. This was an exciting moment; the Allies were invading from France. Perhaps the war would end soon; a thought that was probably in everyone’s mind. She missed her husband terribly; she knew he was all right, but she longed to see him. Oleg was looking much better; he was almost dapper in the clothes she had altered for him. They would all eat dinner together on Sunday evenings, when there was no risk of being seen by employees, and Albert would bring out the best food given to him by his patients. Afterwards they would sometimes play cards; she looked forward to this the most. The little risks and losses of the games took her mind off the risks of impending capture and execution. All this because of her little Jewish grandfather! He asked her to call him ‘zayde’, taught her bits of Yiddish (her mother was horrified that he taught her some words that were not very nice), gave her rides on his back. That was what she remembered of him; he died when she was ten. Now she was fifty-five, grey-haired, a little arthritic, and a fugitive from the Nazis. The world was so crazy!

  CHAPTER 47

  La Rocquaise, St Brelade, Jersey

  June 1944

  Armed soldiers were deployed everywhere; the ugly wounds of trenches filled the parks and fields. Planes roared overhead, sometimes all night as well as all day. The Germans grew increasingly tense, the citizens increasingly hopeful. Lucille and Suzanne took stock of their food supplies; the sources from France were now cut off, and Germans and citizens would be scrounging for the same potatoes and bread. Rations were cut down three weeks after the invasion. People were arrested, fined, and jailed for minor infractions. Ships left St Helier with German evacuees, then returned when Allied vessels were sighted. Some ships limped in after being damaged by bombs and torpedoes. The phone was still forbidden, the
beaches off limits. Lucille and Suzanne listened to the wireless, scribbled excitedly on their tissue paper, dropped their missives, waited. Marlene lay sleepless in her cellar. She was waiting for a soldier to come running down the stairs, a British soldier, holding chocolate bars and fruit, pulling her off the camp bed and dancing with her, telling her it was all over, she could come out now, she could find a job and a new flat and be a human being again. But every time someone came down, it was Lucille or Suzanne with swedes and parsnip coffee and words of encouragement that, like the meal itself, never cheered her more than momentarily. The aeroplanes were real, the news on the BBC was real, but so were the visits to Suzanne and then to Lucille by the Geheime Feldpolizei, the secret military police, for interrogation. They tried to laugh it off, but Marlene could see the toll it was taking on them, the exhaustion and fear in their eyes, in unguarded moments.

  CHAPTER 48

  La Rocquaise, St Brelade, Jersey

  June 1944

  The noise of a car engine was heard outside. Suzanne and Lucille sat at the table, set with silver and handmade pottery, a swede and a potato each on their plates. They dropped their forks when they saw the official car stop outside their house. Suzanne stamped on the floor to warn Marlene. Lucy was just starting to run up the stairs when, hardly taking time to knock, two officers rushed in. They recognised Oberleutnant Lung, who pulled Lucy back down the stairs and pushed her into a chair. The other officer went upstairs and Lung stayed with them on the first floor. Soon, the officer came down with the typewriter and wireless from Lucy’s ottoman. Suzanne berated herself. We must have left the earphone out. Well, the typewriter is bad enough.

  ‘You are now under arrest, and must come to headquarters.’

 

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