A wave of relief hit him, knowing that he would be able to throw himself into his work and use it to forget about how his life had crumbled apart. He hadn’t forgotten that he would need to visit the Todt workers at some point and take them some of his rations, but for now he could be allowed his indulgence.
Jack dragged himself up the stairs, past his mother’s room with its permanently locked door and into his own. It was a mess, but then he didn’t care. Clothes were left where he had taken them off and his bed sheets were draped half on the floor. Johanna had her own room next door and that gave a space of her own to keep tidy. The one semblance of order in the room was his uniform that hung next to the wardrobe. It was the last piece of pride he had left, and he took great care as he lifted it from the hanger to get dressed. When he left his house he looked a different man, no longer the scruffy heap he was before but beaming in his dark blue police uniform. Even though it was an act, it was one he relished. He had to put on the act to get through. For Johanna, if nothing else, life was still worth living. He had to prove that to himself.
*
He had been assigned to file paperwork in the station office. It had probably been decided as some sort of light duty for him, but he would much rather have been outside somewhere, possibly as far away from St Peter Port as possible. He had thought about asking for a different posting as he would have done before the war, but there was likely no chance of that now. He also didn’t feel like going anywhere near the inspector’s office, lest he ask Jack how he was.
William had taken it upon himself to assist Jack, even though, as far as he knew, Jack had not indicated in any way that he needed help. At least the old desk sergeant was a familiar face, a feature of the island that Jack thought would never change.
‘Where do you think they’re going?’ William asked.
‘Hmmm?’
‘I said, “Where do you think they’re taking the evacuees?”’
Jack knew that William was trying to distract him, but it wasn’t a particularly great choice of alternative subject. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said. ‘Can we at least describe them as they really are? They’ve been deported, not “evacuated”, and we’ve all heard the rumours of the camps. They’ll end up there, then who knows?’
‘Aye. Who knows indeed? How many have gone now? And we’ve heard nothing from them. Too many. At least we hear from the evacuees in England, thanks to the Red Cross. But the ones going the other way? I guess we’ll find out if this damned war ever comes to an end.’
‘There are new rumours you know?’
‘There’s always rumours. What else is there to do on the island apart from tell stories and spread rumours? I guess it helps some people get by.’
‘No, these are serious. Not just idle gossip.’
‘Go on, then.’ Jack wasn’t really sure why he was growing impatient. He knew he should be thankful for the conversation, but he would rather talk about the weather or something more mundane.
‘They’ve built camps on Alderney. They say that the SS are holding people there.’
‘Who’s they?’
‘I don’t know really. The Germans?’
Jack scoffed. He had hoped that his work would distract him, but unfortunately it was proving to be one of those quiet days when they were left with nothing but conversation. He supposed it was strange to wish for something to happen to drag him from this reverie. But at least he wasn’t locked up in a camp somewhere.
‘Isn’t it your mother’s memorial today?’
Jack nodded. He hadn’t been expecting William to bring it up.
‘I was so sorry to hear about it. I’m sure if you asked the inspector would give you some compassionate leave.’
Jack nodded. It was his way of thanking William. He couldn’t bear to open his mouth and utter something he would regret. For the first time in what seemed like hours William stood up and left him alone, but as he did so he turned to Jack. ‘Let me know if you ever need anything. Anything at all.’
Nodding and gripping the pen in his hand as tight as possible was all Jack could do to stop the tears from flowing, as William disappeared from view.
*
Jack had asked Frederic to do something to honour Jack’s mother, and he had agreed readily. It was the least he could do for Jack’s help with the farm. When Jack saw what the man had created he felt a tightness in his chest, and reached out to grab Johanna’s arm. She wrapped an arm around him, steadying him against her body. He nodded to her to indicate that he was all right. He wondered if he would always stay bottled up, just as his mother had closed off her feelings and thoughts from him. He would force himself at a later date to tell Johanna how much he loved his mother, and how much he loved her.
Johanna knelt, bunching up the hem of her dress around her ankles, and lay some camellias next to the memorial. The pink flowers were pretty against the little wooden bench in which Frederic had whittled Jack’s mother’s name. He wasn’t sure where Johanna had got them from, but they were his mother’s favourite, and he had no idea that Johanna had known that. The two of them had become closer than he realised, and he was quietly glad of that fact. He knew now that his mother approved of Jack and Johanna’s relationship.
Johanna pulled out a letter from the pocket of her coat and handed it to Jack. ‘Your mother left you something at the house. I thought now would be the best time to read it.’
It was a letter written in his mother’s handwriting, the pretty scrawl he always had difficulty reading. Even after all these years, he still struggled with the way she wrote. Now the tears in his eyes obscured the letters even more and it took him several attempts to discern any meaning from it. It started with an apology, an apology for not being able to go on. He almost couldn’t read any more as his throat constricted, but he pushed himself on.
She couldn’t cope with the war anymore, and she had always known that she would not make it through. His mother didn’t want him to blame himself, but how could he not? There must have been something he could have done. The letter told him a little of his father, as she had once promised him she would. He was not a soldier, as she had always said he was, but he had been a good man. He had been born in London and had objected to the war, and that had eventually killed him. He had refused to fight, but still they had sent him to the front as a stretcher bearer, where he had died. His name had been James Godwin, and Jack’s mother had loved him almost as much as she loved her son. She had done everything in her power to discourage Jack from following in his footsteps.
The day that he died, she said, was the day that she had also died. Something had changed in her that she had never been able to describe. That was why she had never been able to talk about Jack’s father. Bringing him up in conversation broke her heart all over again, and while she wanted to forget him, she never could. Jack was very much like him, and James would have been proud of his son, and proud that he had found himself a good woman like Johanna, no matter what she had originally thought of her. She had been too scared to lose him, as she had lost his father.
The letter was signed with a loving kiss and a final message that Jack could now live his life without worrying about her, and live it fully. He pushed it inside the pocket of his jacket with the other letters that he kept there.
It struck him that now that his mother was … gone … he no longer had any reason to stay on the island. Maybe he and Johanna could find a way to escape to the mainland. They could live their lives together in England as his mother and father should have done, before the war had taken him away from her. He held Johanna’s hand as he closed his eyes, thinking what it would be like for them to live together in peace.
Chapter 36
February 1943
‘Sarge! Jack! There you are.’ William was almost out of breath as he cycled up to Jack, and the words spilled from his mouth in one quick burst. His breath turned to steam in the cold. ‘I’ve been looking all over for you.’
‘What is it? Calm down.’
>
The desk sergeant doubled over, putting his hands on his knees and taking wrenching lungfuls of breath. It was another minute or so before he spoke again, still desperately trying to get the words out between breaths. Jack wasn’t exactly hiding from the world, but he had deliberately cycled out to the west of the island to get some fresh air. He had spent too long moping in his house.
‘The Germans,’ he said, and Jack felt his heart rate rising. ‘They know!’
‘Wait,’ Jack said, losing control and raising his voice. He put his hands on the other man’s upper arms and shook him. Jack wasn’t normally prone to manhandling people, but he needed to know. ‘What? What do they know?’
‘They know that Frederic has been hiding Todt workers. They’re on their way there now.’
Jack pulled away. He thought about lying, but knew it was too late for that. ‘How?’ he breathed. It was all he could manage.
‘They know how many are missing, and the rest wasn’t much of a leap of imagination.’
‘But how? How could they know who was hiding them?’
‘Come on, Jack. They’ve got their eye on everything! They watch our every move, and they’ve been checking our rations, totalling everything up. Frederic had been claiming rations for family that had passed away, and the markets had been helping him. He didn’t report the deaths of some of his livestock. It’s only surprising it took the Germans so long to work out what was happening. They’ve been searching for them for months.’
Jack cursed. He had known all along that it was stupid. But after what had happened to Henry and David, he couldn’t sit by and watch the workers suffer too. They had thought they were playing the system, that no one would notice, but he should have been more careful. A part of him had always known the day would come; the Germans had a way of catching up with everything like a schoolmaster you had thought you had outsmarted, but really knew what you were up to all along. He would head up to the farm and help Frederic to move them somewhere else, then he would have to find Johanna. The time had come for them to get away from here, and he would think about how on his way to the farm. He should have done something earlier, but maybe he wasn’t strong enough after all.
He grabbed his bicycle from the wall and threw himself over the saddle. If asked later he could just say that he had been responding to a call and ask William to cover for him. He had already put himself at risk by coming to find Jack, and Jack was sure that he wouldn’t mind going a step further.
Right now, that was far from his thoughts. He rode so hard up Vale Road, his legs pumping, that the bicycle started to wobble on its makeshift tyre. He sped up past a group of German soldiers marching the opposite direction along the road, and as he went, there was a bang like the crack of a rifle. He tipped forward from the bicycle as the front tyre collapsed, spinning the handlebars, landing in the gutter next to the road. The bicycle spun over itself and landed about a metre away. He breathed heavily, winded, as he looked back the way he had come. Two Gewehr rifles pointed in his direction as the German soldiers leered at him. They couldn’t have known where he was going, even if he had been riding unusually hard.
He sat up in the gutter and checked himself over. He was unharmed, but maybe a little bruised. One of the rifles lowered, but the other stayed pointed at him. Jack’s heart was racing. He raised his hands slowly, so that the Germans did not think he was reaching for anything. As soon as his hands were in the air the soldier with his rifle raised burst out laughing and let the rifle drop to his side. It dawned on Jack what had happened then. He pulled himself out of the gutter, grumbling at his bruises and patting himself down. The hosepipe that he had wrapped around the front wheel of his bicycle had come loose; the clip that held it in place had snapped off. At speed the clip had caused the sound of a gunshot.
The Germans, still laughing, turned and continued on their march back into town. With a grimace, Jack knelt down to reattach the hosepipe to his bike. It was looser than it had been before, but it should last until he got to the farm. When he was there, he would try to find another method. This time he cycled more carefully, avoiding potholes in the roads, and keeping his speed to a safe level. The minutes dragged interminably on, the wheels turning like the hands of a clock.
Eventually the gate to the farmlands came into view at the end of the road. It was a welcome sight, like coming home after a hard day’s work. By the time he reached the gates his bike had finally given out, and he threw it to the ground as he continued the rest of the journey on foot. The old barn behind the farmhouse was abandoned. It was so far from the main road, that Jack suspected that even the Germans didn’t really know of its existence. From the look of the place it would need a lot of work to get it up and running again, and it had been enough to keep them from it. Until now.
‘Bobby?’ Jack used the name that they had given the refugee. He didn’t know if anyone was listening, and he had become used to it. It had seemed like a good joke at the time, ‘Bobby’ for the nickname people gave policemen, but right now he didn’t feel like laughing. They hadn’t given Bobby’s son a name, but the young man had not yet found his voice and spent the majority of his time hiding in the basement underneath the farmhouse. Eventually they had managed to work out that the two men were Russian refugees, captured and sent here from the Eastern Front. They could have gone into town. Frederic had managed to find Bobby some fake papers, but they didn’t risk it very often and he doubted they would have done so on a cold day like this.
‘Frederic?’ Jack called as he moved out to the where the field joined the farmhouse. The field was empty and eerily silent. Jack searched around the house for the farmer, but he couldn’t find him. There was a half-eaten meal on the kitchen table and Jack’s stomach rumbled at the sight of the food, but he didn’t have time for that now.
Turning, he ran back out to the driveway. He hadn’t noticed it before in his exhaustion, but there were deep grooves in the mud that led up to the building. They were wet, dark brown and fresh. A car or truck had driven up here in the last few hours, then it had gone away again. The only people allowed to use cars on the island were the Germans, or the police who drove for them. If either one had been here then that was it for Bobby and his son. It was all over. They would return to the camps and then there was nothing Jack would be able to do help them.
If the Germans knew who had put them there, then Jack would be in serious trouble. He looked around the farm for evidence that he had been there, rushing from the barn to the main house, but the only visible sign were his boot prints in the mud. He reasoned that they could be from anyone. There was no way anyone could know he had been there unless they had seen him, and the fields around the farm were empty.
He had to find Johanna and warn her what had happened, then they could try and find a way off the island. There had to be someone with a boat they could use. He thought of the fishermen he knew, but he wasn’t sure who he could trust. He looked at his father’s wristwatch. Johanna would be arriving home by now.
He fetched Frederic’s bike, abandoned by the side of the house, and rode back out onto the lane, making sure to cycle through the grooves that had been scored in the mud by the Germans’ vehicle. He wasn’t sure if they would bother to track him, but it wasn’t worth adding any more risk.
The bicycle rocked as he pedalled along the road, the thought of Johanna the only thing driving him on. His front wheel was struggling to stay centred and he had to keep wrestling the handlebars back to the middle. He kept going, even though his lungs screamed at him to give up. He wouldn’t. He would never give up on Johanna.
The chimneys of St Peter Port were just coming into view as the tyre of his bike gave out again, throwing him to the road. As he stood up he saw that the hosepipe was ripped into shreds. It would never wrap around the bike again and the wheel was almost bent in half. He would have to make the rest of the way on foot. He could hear Johanna’s voice on the wind, calling him closer.
*
12 February 194
3
He didn’t think he would have much breath left when he got home. The sun was lowering towards the horizon and it had taken him far longer than he would have liked as he opened the front door to the house and it squealed on its hinges. As he had done at the farmhouse, he searched for Johanna, but she was nowhere to be seen. There was a note on the kitchen table written in Johanna’s handwriting.
Jack
They didn’t give me much time to write this. They have come for me. Deporting me with the next group of English. I love you with all my heart. Johanna xx
Jack almost collapsed into the chair in front of him, but something forced him out and back into the world. Why had he left her on her own? She had always been his priority. The Germans had learnt their lesson from giving the evacuees time to prepare. Now all sense of law and order had been taken from the island. Why had he not gone to her first rather than the farm? All their plans, everything they had been through and Doctor Abbott’s help had been for naught.
A few seconds later Jack’s boots pounded on the dry earth as he sprinted up the path, thumping with each footfall. It had been a terrible mistake and he wouldn’t make it in time …
Chapter 37
All he could see was the faint light of a lantern illuminating the boat as it rose and fell in the water, moving away from the harbour. There were a few silhouettes on board, some wearing the distinctive steel helmet of the Wehrmacht. He could just about make out a shape in between them, scrabbling towards the back of the boat. Was it a woman? A hand reached out to the shore, then disappeared into the darkness.
The German Nurse Page 28