Dora settled into the chair on the other side of the fire. She would have pulled her cape around her, but it was still damp.
Geoffrey dozed off after a while. She watched him opposite her, putt-putting in his sleep, she a soft companion to his softer silence.
Dora slipped away in an amethyst dawn. The storm had blown itself out, left the sky opaque and tender and the earth with a trail of branches and scattered leaves. By day, Dora could see how the house was set in a dip on the cliff, in the face of the wind, overlooking the escarpment and its spinney of gnarled trees and, through it, the beach fenced off with the deadly bracken of barbed wire. The sea still moiled from the tempest, the waves breaking on the shore with a rhythmic roar, but beyond, the ocean and its cupola of sky melted into one and soared to eternity.
Dora stood for a moment and breathed in the briny air. She wrapped her cape round her arms and set off, sidestepping the puddles and debris of the storm. The back roads were tricky, but after St Martin the route was clearer.
She passed some children on their way to school. They were thin, knees red with cold, knobbly and undernourished. Lots of the schools had been commandeered by the Germans, Dora knew, and the children had to walk farther to their new classrooms. She wondered how many had had breakfast that morning, how many mothers had gone without.
‘You must eat too,’ Dora would say. ‘If anything happened to you, what would the children do?’
‘It’s all right, Nurse.’ She’d heard this so many times. ‘I’ve already eaten.’
But everyone felt the bite of hunger now, were thinner and shabbier than they would like, mended and made do. Dora wondered whether she would taste a torte again, lick the chocolate and cream off her fingers, stick her fork into soft plums and crumbling pastry, or savour the sweet custard of baked cheese.
There was the drag of death about the island. That’s what her father would have called it. The drag of death. Der Sog des Todes.
Midwives and sisters were allowed to live out, in approved digs. Dora and five others lived with Miss Gladys Besson who supplemented her income by taking in lodgers in the small terraced house she had inherited from her parents.
‘Paying guests,’ she said. ‘I prefer to call you my paying guests.’
She let her lodgers use the parlour, a dingy room with velvet curtains and chintz chairs, plaster cats and dogs lined up on the windowsill. She had made patchwork covers for the cushions and crocheted antimacassars which draped in virginal swathes. There was a screen in front of the fire, embroidered with an image of a country cottage and garden. Horse brasses hung on leather straps either side of the mantelpiece. Her harmonium, an ugly beast, stood against one wall and would wheeze and heave on Sunday evenings as she thumped out ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, looking at Dora to make sure she was singing too. Miss Besson grew potatoes in her back garden and stored them in sacks in the hallway and kitchen. She insisted that they all take turns to peel and grate the tubers, soak and drain the pulp and lay it out to dry, ‘now that we can’t get flour’.
The potatoes stained Dora’s fingers, so she had to scrub them clean with a pumice stone. Miss Besson made tea out of carrot and coffee out of parsnip, boiled sugar beet for sweetener and sea moss for gelatine. She watered down the jam and eked out the meagre supplies so they stretched four days instead of three. Rationing and shortages were her métier, Dora thought. She was a naturally mean woman.
The kitchen was out of bounds.
‘Private,’ Miss Besson said. She always locked it, kept the key above the door jamb. She and her brother, Pierre, used the kitchen. He was younger than Miss Besson, a short man, with Brylcreemed hair and foul breath, a chain-smoker who lit one cigarette from the embers of the last. Dora wondered where he got them, or how he could afford them.
Miss Besson did the cooking, and ate with the nurses most days in the dining room at the back of the house. They were expected to take it in turns to sit next to her and make conversation. Dora dreaded those days. Miss Besson had little talk beyond the good works of the Ebenezer chapel and the sins of others, never conversed, rarely asked a question of her neighbour, and Dora learned fast to nod and smile, although she always felt under scrutiny, without knowing why.
Miss Besson pulled on a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, hooked them behind her ears, put her hands together at the table.
‘When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which he hath given thee. Amen.’
Dora peered into her soup, a light-brown liquid in which chunks of turnip and carrot floated.
‘I hear you were up at La Ferme de l’Anse the other day, Nurse Simon,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Dora said. ‘But I arrived too late. The woman was dead. I don’t think I could have saved her anyway.’
Miss Besson pinched her mouth and closed her nostrils. ‘For the best,’ she said.
‘That’s a shocking thing to say.’
Miss Besson raised an eyebrow. ‘He knows what He is doing,’ she said. ‘Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.’
‘What are you saying?’ Dora asked.
‘Just that,’ Miss Besson said. ‘Just that.’ She dipped her spoon in the soup and sucked its contents with a noisy slurp. ‘Have nothing to do with that man, if you know what’s best.’ She paused, her spoon halfway to her mouth, her lips pinched into an oval. ‘He’s considered a pariah in these parts.’ She put down her spoon, stirred the soup, scooped up a lump of turnip. ‘But how would you know that? You being a foreigner.’
Miss Besson scraped the dregs of the liquid from the bowl and laid her spoon down with a clatter.
‘I went to an auction today,’ she said, taking Dora’s bowl and stacking it on her own. ‘The last of the Jew-boys’ shops.’ She gave a stiff smile, added, ‘I bought you all a present.’ She took the bowls to the sideboard, opened a drawer and pulled out a small package. ‘Soap,’ she said. ‘Lux. He was hoarding it, can you imagine? But that’s the sort of thing they do. Not a care about anyone else. Wouldn’t you say?’
Dora looked down at the tablecloth, turned her knife over, and back. Dared not look up, sure her face would give her away. Say nothing. She hoped one of the others would answer, but they sat in silence.
‘I’ll divide it up after dinner,’ Miss Besson went on. ‘So you all have a piece. Our Christian duty is to share.’
Dora pressed her fingers against the prongs of her fork. She could sense Miss Besson leaning over the table, a pot of stew steaming on the mat.
‘By the way, Miss Simon,’ she said, pushing the pot towards Dora. ‘A letter came for you this morning.’
Dora looked up. Perhaps Uncle Otto had managed to get something through. Perhaps the Red Cross had opened a link with the internment camp. Dora couldn’t think who else would send her a letter.
‘Unpalatable though it is,’ Miss Besson went on, ‘we need to work with the authorities.’ She picked up the serving spoon, handed it to Dora. ‘The letter is from the Chief Aliens Officer. I wonder what he wants?’
Dora gripped the spoon hard so her hand wouldn’t shake. ‘I wonder,’ she said.
Miss Besson shifted in her chair and studied Dora over the rims of her glasses. ‘I say you can always tell a Jew,’ she said. ‘They’re very dark and shifty-looking. Don’t you agree?’ She delved into her pocket, pulled out the letter and handed it to Dora. ‘Before I forget.’
Dora tucked it under her plate. She was not going to give Miss Besson the satisfaction of opening it in front of her. She probably knew the contents anyway. Steamed it open. Or island gossip. Dora wondered how many bars of Lux she’d kept for herself. She stuck her fork into a potato, blew on it to cool it down.
‘May I ask a personal question, Nurse Simon?’ Miss Besson said. She didn’t wait for Dora’s answer. ‘Do you dye your hair, or is it naturally that colour?’
‘Where would I get hair
dye from?’ Dora said.
‘Just wondering,’ Miss Besson said. Dora had seen that look before. Refugees. Can’t be trusted.
It was a clear day but cold, with the hoar frost hanging like lace and a lemon sun hovering low. Dora pulled her bicycle free of its ramp, set off with a thermos of tea and a round of sandwiches. She longed to suck the bluster of the sea wind into her lungs, feel its dance pirouette through her hair. The coastal road was closed and guarded now so she headed north, for Rozel Bay. Perhaps there she could clamber down to the beach and climb among the rocks.
She arrived at St Martin’s village, spotted the little church. Apart from Mr Laurent, there had been no one else at Margaret’s funeral. Even the neighbour had not attended. Dora had been puzzled at the time, but if he was, as Miss Besson said, a pariah, that would explain it, though it was harsh not to pay respects to the dead, whatever their sins in life. The priest was young, she’d thought, barely into long trousers. Mr Laurent had shuddered in the front pew and the priest came over, put his eulogy away and his hand on Mr Laurent’s shoulder.
She should see how he was. Whatever Mr Laurent had done to incur Miss Besson’s vitriol, he was still a man who had suffered. Besides, it took little to disturb Miss Besson for her to spit out poison. Dora had learned to brush off her venom. It was nearly three months since Margaret had died. La Ferme de l’Anse was not so far away.
The farmhouse was long and low, with three gable windows in the roof and an ancient wisteria trained along the front. There were rose bushes in the beds. The door faced the lane, but there were barns at right angles on either side of the house. With the buildings and the hill, it formed a courtyard of sorts. There were cobbles on the ground with a skin of winter mud, white with frost where the sun had not visited.
Dora propped her bike against the wall of the house and knocked on the door. There was no answer. She wished she had a paper and pencil, could leave him a note. I was passing and called to see how you were.
She turned. He was coming down the hill across the field, leading a Jersey cow with a dun hide and gentle face. He opened the gate and led the cow through.
‘Nurse Dora.’ He wiped his spare hand against his trousers, held it out. She took it, rough skin and dry, but for all its strength, a generous hand. It was hard to tell how old he was. The outdoor life weathered faces. Forty. Perhaps fifty. Older than she remembered. His black hair was flecked with grey at the temples. He had dark eyes and a crooked nose with the remnants of a scar across the bridge. Nasal fracture, Dora noted, badly set.
‘I was passing,’ Dora said. ‘Came to see how you were.’
‘That’s very kind,’ he said. ‘Let’s go into the house.’ He slapped the cow on her rump and she skipped, then ambled towards the barn.
Sitting in Mr Laurent’s kitchen, her hands round a blue striped mug of tea, Dora noted the order of the place, with its plates and cups, the Aga in the chimney breast, the scrubbed pine table and the polished tiled floor. It had a very different feel from the kitchen in Charlottenburg, for the kitchen here was for living, not just cooking, and Dora guessed that at night, when his work was done, Mr Laurent pulled up the Windsor chair close to the range, the same chair he’d sat in the night Margaret died, opened a book or turned on the wireless and wound the day down before bed.
Mr Laurent was a practical man. He cooked for himself, he told her, washed his clothes, cleaned the house and swept the yard.
‘Can’t dwell on grief. Life goes on. But it’s hard, Nurse Dora.’
‘I understand that,’ Dora said. ‘Can you not get a housekeeper?’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Without a wife to keep house–’
‘Wife?’ His forehead creased in deep puzzle lines.
She wanted to haul that word back in, wife. It had tripped out, was too soon to remind him. ‘Margaret.’
‘Margaret was my daughter,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry,’ Dora said. ‘I assumed she was your wife.’
He shook his head. ‘She was my only child.’ He paused. Dora could hear his hesitation, the sharp breaths before he spoke again. ‘Her mother died long ago.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Dora said.
He shrugged. ‘It happened. I brought Margaret up by myself.’ His voice began to crack.
‘And Margaret’s husband?’
He stared out of the window. It was a while before he answered.
‘Margaret could be a little headstrong at times,’ he said. His body tensed and he clasped his hands tight. Don’t ask more. It was a moment before he turned and faced her.
‘She wasn’t married. You may as well know. You’ll hear it sooner or later from the gossips round here. The baby’s father was a German.’
His voice was flat, and Dora couldn’t make out whether it was resignation or sadness.
‘Plenty abandon those children,’ he said. ‘Pack them off to the Westaway Creche. I wouldn’t let her.’
He wanted to talk, Dora could sense.
‘Why punish the child? It didn’t ask to be born.’ He turned to Dora, a smile on his lips. ‘My own flesh and blood.’
His eyes were almost black, the lashes thick and dark, like the kohl-lined eyes of a film star. That would explain why so few people came to her funeral. Who’d mourn a woman who went with Germans? Was carrying a bastard child of one of them? That also explained Miss Besson’s venom.
‘My father brought me up too,’ she said, trying to change the subject.
‘Then he must be proud of you.’ And did Margaret let you down?
‘He wanted me to be a doctor,’ she said. She was talking too much, added, ‘But I was a woman. They wouldn’t accept me. So I became a midwife, instead.’ That was a truth, if not the full truth.
‘That’s a fine profession.’
‘It is,’ Dora said.
‘And your father?’
‘He died. A few years ago.’ She hadn’t uttered those words for a while and the pain kicked out fresh as yesterday. ‘Out of the blue.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Nurse Simon,’ he said. ‘Truly. We’ve much in common.’
Smiling, his face, with its crooked nose, was a kind face, for sure.
‘Come and see me again,’ he said as Dora lifted her bike free of the wall and pedalled off down the lane. She wanted to say, I’d like that, very much, but thought it might be fast. There was something compelling about Mr Laurent that she couldn’t define, a gentle, alluring pull.
Jurat Clifford Orange, the Chief Aliens Officer, had a round face with grey hair and moustache and thick black eyebrows.
He coughed, a polite ahem. It didn’t fool Dora.
‘Distasteful business, this,’ he said, pulling out a handkerchief and wiping his mouth. He looked behind him, nodded to the man sitting there, a notepad on his lap. Dora wondered if he was a secretary or a reporter. ‘For me as well as you.’
‘Oh?’ She wasn’t going to make it easy for him.
‘The German authorities,’ he paused.
Authorities? What authority did they have? They were occupiers. She resented the way this Jurat and Miss Besson, the Bailiff and the States, all of them, conferred legitimacy on the invaders.
‘The authorities,’ he repeated, as if that absolved him of culpability, ‘need to be sure of,’ he searched for a word, ‘the background of all alien residents on the islands.’ He sniffed. ‘I have been tasked with the responsibility of finding out.’
He shook his head, studied her for sympathy with large doe eyes.
‘Distasteful, as I said. But what can we do?’ He smiled, as if this acquitted him too.
You can resist, she thought. Resign. You don’t have to do their dirty business.
‘Under the rules of the Hague Convention, we are obliged to obey’ – everything? she wanted to ask – ‘all reasonable demands.’ The Chief Aliens Officer stared at her, eyebrows raised. ‘We consider this a reasonable demand,’ he said. ‘A chap needs to know who he’s dealing with, aft
er all.’
The man behind him leaned forward. ‘Who knows,’ he said, ‘what they would do if we refused to comply with their requests?’
Dora moved her gaze from the Jurat to the man.
‘Sir Leonard de la Moye,’ the man said, standing up and extending his hand. ‘I’m just sitting in on this. Ignore me.’
Dora was uneasy. The Jurat alone was bad enough. Two of them made it an interrogation. Keep calm, she told herself. Say nothing. Background. That was the Jurat’s euphemism. Couldn’t bring himself to say, Jewish.
‘You are, as I understand it, a German. Am I right?’
She took a deep breath. She hadn’t been brought up to lie, wasn’t sure how well she could do it. Sir Leonard sat without moving, his eyes fixed on her.
‘No,’ she said. She heard the Jurat start, elbows sliding forward on the shiny surface of his desktop. There would be no evidence to the contrary, she knew, at least, not in Jersey and they couldn’t turn to London for proof. Besides, Hitler had declared her a non-German.
‘I was born in Sweden,’ she said.
That had been Matron’s idea. ‘I’ve destroyed your papers,’ she’d said. ‘Put down you’re Swedish.’
The Jurat raised one eyebrow.
‘Sweden,’ she added, ‘is neutral.’
He leaned back in his chair, stroked his chin. ‘But you came from Germany, I understand. What were you doing there?’
‘My father worked there.’
‘Why did you leave?’
‘My father died,’ she said. That was true.
‘Why didn’t you return to Sweden? Why come to England?’
‘My uncle took me in,’ she said. ‘I was a minor. I didn’t have much choice.’
‘And he was in England?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’ She thought fast. ‘His work, I think.’
The Jurat leaned forward and began to count on his fingers. ‘Sweden, Germany, England. Quite the cosmopolitan family, wouldn’t you say?’
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