by Janet Tanner
Bernard returned to the front of the cottage, looking up at the upstairs windows and wondering what to do. Should he go looking for Sophia? But he had no idea where she might be.
As he stood there, pacing anxiously, a figure on a bicycle turned the corner, wobbling slightly on the uneven track, and dismounted at the gate.
‘Hello, Bernard. What are you doing here?’ asked Sophia.
Unaccountably Bernard felt slightly annoyed.
‘Where have you been?’ he asked. ‘I’ve been worried about you.’
‘Whatever for? I’ve been to the shops to get our rations, that’s all. And I wasn’t expecting you, was I? Shouldn’t you be at work?’
‘Yes, actually I should,’ Bernard said, even more annoyed by what appeared to be her perfect composure, ‘I took some time off because I thought you’d be in a state. It seems I was wrong.’
‘Oh Bernard!’ Sophia looked contrite, ‘I’m sorry if I’ve let you down somehow. Come in and I’ll put the kettle on. I’ve just been lucky enough to get hold of a quarter of real tea. I think Mrs Phillips at the shop felt sorry for me.’
Bernard followed her into the pokey kitchen.
‘Where is Catherine?’
‘At school. Oh, for heaven’s sake don’t look like that, Bernard. What did you expect, that we’d go to pieces just because Paul has gone off and left us? I assure you, if that had been going to happen it would have been when Mama and Papa were deported. At least Paul has gone of his own free will.’
There was a hard little note in her voice; Bernard looked at her, puzzled. This wasn’t his Sophia, this strangely self-possessed young woman, getting on with running her life in the midst of terrifying adversity. It just wasn’t like her.
She moved about the kitchen, putting away the groceries she had brought home in her bicycle basket, and boiling the kettle.
‘Did you know Paul was going?’ Bernard asked.
She shook her head. ‘No. It was a complete shock to me, but I suppose I am getting used to shocks. I should be – I’ve had enough of them.’
‘So … what will you do?’
‘What do you mean, what will I do?’
‘Now you’re all by yourself …’
She laughed shortly. ‘ What would you expect me to do? Carry on working, I suppose, and look after myself and Catherine.’
Bernard swallowed at a lump in his throat. ‘ You do have a choice.’
She looked up at him, the kettle in her hand. ‘Such as?’
‘You could marry me.’
He could feel the sweat on the palms of his hands; he could scarcely believe he had actually said it. He had wanted to ask her for weeks, dreamed of it, planned for it, but been afraid to take the bull by the horns.
Now with Paul gone too he wanted nothing more than to take care of her, and the intensity of his longing somehow totally obscured all fear of rejection. Surely she wouldn’t turn him down now? She had no one else; she needed him. Even the hard little note in her voice and the cold distance in her eyes did not put him off. It was a cover-up, he thought, a defence against all that had happened to her. Bernard’s heart contracted with love. God alone knew what the future held for any of them. But at least he could look after Sophia and Catherine to the best of his ability. Somehow he would make certain they were all right.
Sophia was looking at him with an almost puzzled expression.
‘Marry you?’
‘Yes. Oh – I know we haven’t been going out together very long, but I do love you, Sophia, very much, and I can’t bear to think of you stuck out here all alone, responsible for Catherine, whilst the Germans … I could make you happy, Sophia, I’m sure … as happy as you could ever be with all this hanging over you.’
‘No,’ she said, almost inaudibly. Unexpectedly the tears had come; they were filling her eyes now and running down her cheeks. She set down the kettle and raised both hands to wipe them away with her fingers, but still they were there, choking her voice and making her whole body shake. ‘Bernard, it’s so good of you – I don’t deserve you, really I don’t. But I can’t marry you, not like this. It wouldn’t be fair.’
‘Not fair? Who wouldn’t it be fair on – me? Sophia, I don’t care about fair. Don’t you understand – I love you and I want to take care of you. That’s really all that matters to me.’
‘No, no – it’s not. You deserve better than I could give you. I’m all wrung out, like a rag. I have no emotions left – nothing. It’s sweet of you to ask, but I’ll be all right, really.’
Bernard was beginning to feel sick. It was all going wrong.
‘Sophia …’
‘Please, Bernard, don’t press me. I appreciate your offer but I don’t want it. Not now.’
He turned for the door. ‘All right. I can see I’d better go.’
‘No – please, don’t go. I don’t want you to feel … Oh God, I don’t know what I mean. I’d be really sorry, Bernard, if you didn’t come to see me again. I’d miss you. But I can’t marry you. Not just now. Oh, please, you must understand …’
The tears were flowing freely now and somehow without knowing how it had happened they were in each other’s arms, Bernard holding her close while she sobbed. Inexplicably it made him feel better. Tears he could understand. They were far more human than that strange hard calm. By the time she had cried herself out he was even feeling quite hopeful. She had turned him down now but she hadn’t wanted him to go. Perhaps when she had come through this terrible emotional trough she would reconsider.
Sophia brewed the tea and they drank it, determined to make the most of the treat of ‘real tea’.
‘Well, perhaps I’d better get back to work,’ Bernard said at last, standing up. ‘Shall I come back this evening?’ She nodded and he pulled her briefly into his arms; there was no awkwardness now as he kissed her.
‘Look, love, I shan’t mention it again, but don’t forget if at any time you change your mind … well, the offer will always be open.’
Sophia nodded again. ‘Thank you, Bernard. I don’t deserve it but … I won’t forget.’
When he had gone she put her head down into her hands and sobbed again as if her heart would break.
Chapter fourteen
Jersey, 1944
‘Do you think it would be all right for Sylyie to come over tonight and listen to our wireless?’ Catherine asked one day when she came home from school.
It was June 1944 and the island was seething with barely contained excitement for word was that an invasion of France by the Allies was imminent.
Since Lola and Charles had been arrested Sophia had been half afraid to risk listening to the crystal set, which was still hidden under the floorboards, but during the last week her anxiety for news had overcome her caution. Tuning in to the disembodied voices that crackled over the air waves had become the highlight of the day and she and Catherine took turns at keeping look-out whilst the other crouched over the radio wearing the earphones that had once been part of a telephone handset. But Sophia was all too aware of the risk they were taking. Being in possession of a radio was a serious offence that warranted heavy punishment and Sophia was afraid that if they were caught she and Catherine might even be dragged off for deportation as their parents had been. She had never so much as mentioned the existence of the ‘cat’s whisker’, as they called it, to anyone with the exception of Bernard, much less invited friends or neighbours to listen in with them as somany islanders did.
‘No, you certainly can’t ask Sylvie!’ she snapped now.
‘But she’s my very best friend and her brother is away fighting too. She would really like to know what is going on …’
Sophia looked at Catherine with suspicion. ‘You haven’t told Sylvie about our ‘‘cat’s whisker” have you?’ she accused.
Catherine coloured slightly. ‘She wouldn’t split on us. She wouldn’t, Sophia, honestly …’
‘Catherine!’ Sophia exploded furiously. ‘You have told her, haven’t you? How c
ould you be so stupid! Well, I shall just have to get rid of it now. Oh Catherine, I could kill you!’
Catherine glared defiantly at her sister, wondering what had happened to the old Sophia. She was so different these days, cold and hard and very prone to flashes of temper not unlike the ones Lola had. But with Lola they had always been soon over, the memory of them eclipsed by a hug or some other gesture of loving reassurance. Catherine’s throat ached with tears as she thought of it and she was overcome with longing to feel her mother’s arms around her, holding her close, and to hear her murmuring that everything would be all right soon, as she had done when Catherine was a little girl.
‘I can’t believe you would do something like this, not after all we’ve been through,’ Sophia went on angrily. ‘What were you thinking of?’
Catherine swallowed at the knot of tears.
‘I told you – Sylvie’s my friend. I have to have friends – I’m not like you. And anyway, I trust her.’
‘You can’t trust anyone. Surely you know that?’
‘That’s a terrible thing to say! But it’s just like you – like you are now, anyway. Well, I won’t be like it – I won’t! I couldn’t bear it if I thought my friends could tell on me –’
‘Oh Catherine, don’t you understand?’ Sophia was suddenly more sad than angry. ‘I’m not saying Sylvie would betray you. I don’t think for one moment she would, not knowingly. But one careless word is all it would take. If she tells just one more person, her mother, even, and that person tells someone else, before you know it it’s common knowledge the Carterets have, a ‘‘cat’s whisker’’.’
Catherine looked a little crestfallen, but she remained defiant.
‘So? Who would tell the Germans anyway? Everyone hates them.’
Sophia sighed. She did not want to tell her sister what she knew to be true – that there were all too many islanders who would be willing to inform either in the hope of gain or, worse still, out of jealousy or spite. It was not a nice thought and Sophia shrank from destroying Catherine’s innocent trust in those around her, but it had to be done. Catherine must be made to realise how vulnerable they were, two girls living alone.
Still, the damage, if damage there was, was done now. There was no point in going on about it. ‘Look – just remember, don’t ever tell anyone else,’ she said wearily. ‘ With any luck the war will be over soon and we will be able to get back to normal. But until we do, please, please don’t chatter to your friends or anybody else about things like our radio.’
Catherine nodded. She didn’t want to be bad friends with Sophia. Goodness knows she was all the family she had left.
‘I’m sorry, Sophia, I didn’t think. But … we don’t really have to get rid of the wireless do we? I’m quite sure Sylvie won’t breathe a word.’
Sophia grimaced, looking at her watch. The radio was so precious – their one link with the outside world.
‘Well, all right, perhaps not tonight at any rate,’ she agreed.
The Allied landings began that night, wave after wave of planes passing over Jersey on their way to the French coast, and the quiet of the night was torn apart by gunfire. For a while the two girls stood at the window watching, then when things quietened down for a while they went back to bed, but they were quite unable to sleep for excitement.
At last! Sophia kept thinking. Surely now it would soon be all over! But the war had gone on for so long now that normality seemed like a distant dream.
Will it be too late for me to go to Music College? she wondered – and then almost hated herself for thinking about something so petty while men were fighting and dying and her own parents were still in captivity. Yet no feeling of guilt could reduce the importance to her of her lost dreams for her future. A whole slice of her youth had been stolen from her. Suddenly Sophia wanted only to weep, as Catherine had earlier, without really knowing why.
Motor vehicles went racing by on the road outside, voices yelled to one another in German, and after a while the guns began again. Sophia whispered a prayer to a God she had almost forgotten how to believe in, pulled the sheets up over her head and once more, vainly, tried to sleep.
Throughout the summer months the Allies continued their advance through France, liberating towns and villages that had been ground under the heel of the jackboot for four long years. But in Jersey things seemed to be getting worse instead of better. Hitler, determined not to give up the one little piece of the United Kingdom that he had been able to occupy, brought in even more troops and as wounded Germans were evacuated from France too there were many more mouths to feed and less to feed them on. As the French channel ports fell one by one the line of supplies was broken. Food could no longer come in from the outside world and Jersey must exist on what she could produce herself.
Sophia, struggling to feed herself and Catherine, cursed Hitler’s intransigence. Didn’t he know he would have to give in in the end – might it not just as well be now? But of course it wasn’t him who was eating only husk-filled bread and being glad of it, it wasn’t him drinking tea made from blackberry leaves and having to do without medicines and soap, it wasn’t him who had been forced to do without every little luxury that makes life worth living for four long years and now was having to go hungry as well. And Churchill was as bad. He was determined to starve the enemy out and if it meant starving the islanders as well – so be it.
Inevitably tempers became frayed and on occasions it was not only the German occupying force that indulged in physical violence.
One afternoon in September Catherine came home from school with a long scratch mark on her cheek and a tear in her admittedly thin-as-a-bee’s-wing blouse. She changed out of the blouse before Sophia arrived home from work, but try as she might she could not conceal the scratch and Sophia noticed it almost at once.
‘What on earth have you been doing, Catherine?’
Catherine coloured slightly. ‘Oh, it’s nothing really. Just that little cat Jeanne Pinel.’
‘You mean she did it deliberately? But why?’ Sophia demanded.
Catherine’s colour deepened. ‘She thinks I’ve stolen her boyfriend.’
‘And have you?’
‘Of course not! At least, I haven’t stolen him – he didn’t belong to her in the first place.’
Sophia’s mouth twitched. She had wondered how long it would be before Catherine began taking an interest in boys. ‘ Who is it then?’ she asked.
‘Wallace Patterson. I’ve liked him for ages and I thought he liked me, but I was afraid to hope. Then last night he was waiting for me after school. He asked me if I wanted some of his nuts and we were sharing them when Jeanne came along. She didn’t say a word then but at lunchtime today she just went for me.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘Oh, not a lot. I was too surprised. But I did pull her hair – you know she’s got those plaits so it was quite easy. We got hauled up before the Headmistress and she was furious when she heard there was a boy involved. She said we’d come to no good, either of us, and she kept us in for half an hour after school. But when we came out Wallace was outside, waiting. And he walked me home!’ Catherine giggled triumphantly.
‘For heaven’s sake!’ Sophia said sternly, but as she dished up the thin soup that was all she had been able to rustle up for supper tonight she was smiling. Her little sister was learning fast!
The following evening the girls had just finished supper when there was a loud knock at the door. They glanced at one another, fear naked in their eyes. Friends always came around to the rear of the cottage, tapping lightly and calling a greeting. But this heavy pounding was reminiscent of the morning when they had been awakened by German soldiers searching for the escaped prisoner. Sophia got up.
‘Stay here,’ she instructed Catherine. ‘I’ll see who it is.’
Her heart was beating fast as she opened the door. Outside, as she had expected, stood an officer of the Feldgendarmerie and drawn up at the gate was one of the cars they ha
d commandeered. Sophia could see several more Germans sitting inside it.
‘Yes?’ she said, trying to sound cool. ‘ What do you want?’
The officer clicked his heels. ‘We wish to make a search of your home. It has come to our notice that you have a wireless set. I am sure you are aware that is not permitted.’
For a moment Sophia thought she was going to faint. Then as suddenly, she was in control of herself once more.
‘How dare you!’ she flared. ‘Who told you a lie like that?’
The German’s eyes were very cold, very blue. ‘I am sure you know I cannot divulge our sources. But if you do not have a wireless set then you have nothing to fear. Now, are you going to let us come in or do we have to enter uninvited?’
Sophia’s mind was racing. Would they find the wireless if they searched? It was hidden, yes, but how well? The Germans must know every likely hiding place by now. And was there anything else in the house that could get them into trouble? She didn ‘t think so, but how could one be sure? Still, she really had no choice but to bluff things out.
‘All right, you’d better come in,’ she said. ‘You won’t find anything though.’
She led the way into the kitchen where Catherine had begun washing the supper dishes. Her sister glanced up, her eyes dark with fear, and Sophia touched her arm reassuringly.
The first officer was already in the kitchen, the reinforcements marching down the path. Sophia drew herself up, determined not to let them see how afraid she was.
And then her heart seemed to stop beating. That soldier of the Feldgendarmerie, his good-looking face shockingly familiar beneath his helmet … it couldn’t be … surely it couldn’t be … Dieter!
But it was. Dieter had recognised her too – she knew it though his face was totally impassive, determinedly wooden. Nerves spasmed in her throat and she almost cried out his name. But his eyes seemed to be warning her: Say nothing. She glanced swiftly over her shoulder at Catherine but there was no trace of recognition on her sister’s face. Perhaps Catherine had been too young to remember him clearly, and in any case, one face under a Feldgendarmerie helmet was very like another.