The English Girl: A heartbreaking and beautiful World War 2 historical novel

by Sarah Mitchell

  Fran descends to the kitchen, which is practically dark. The dresser, the rocker in the corner and the large pine table strewn with pins and sewing patterns are all indistinct shadows, while outside the sky is the delicate pearl of an autumn dawn. As she flicks the single light above the Aga the day budding beyond the window reverts to night. It’s too early for Fran’s mother to be up, poring over her next dressmaking assignment, too early, really, for Fran. She’s not required to report to the camp until eight, but the combination of nerves and excitement made further sleep impossible. More than that, she feels a compulsion to prepare earlier than necessary, as if any number of unexpected obstacles might threaten her punctuality. Taking a loaf from the breadbin, she slices a hunk and spreads it with margarine. Not until returning to the larder does she notice the fall and rise of the rocker and realise a split second later that June is curled upon the seat and watching her from beneath a blanket.

  ‘How long have you been there?’

  ‘Three, maybe four, hours. I couldn’t sleep.’

  Fran has been aware of June’s nocturnal restlessness since Robbie died. The night-time visits to the lavatory, the pre-dawn creak of the staircase, the morning bruises beneath her sister’s eyes seem if anything to be increasing. Fran has lain in the dark often enough herself, longing for Robbie’s loud, laughing presence to spill like sunshine through the house, to understand the pull of the kitchen. Surrounded by the warmth of the Aga and the smell of baking, by the stamp of stability and the solace of memories, it’s easier both to believe in miracles and to cope with their absence.

  The margarine is still in her hand. As she opens the larder door, June’s voice hauls her backwards. ‘I don’t know how you can do it!’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Fran directs her question towards the tins of spam and sardines, the carefully arranged rows of homemade chutneys and bottled fruit. She’s playing for time; she knows exactly what June means and immediately the excitement in her gut sputters and wanes like a candle exposed to a draught.

  ‘Take a job in the camp! With German prisoners of war!’

  ‘It’s not the Germans I’m helping, is it? I’m helping the British army to keep them locked up so the prisoners can work and be useful to us all.’ The words are those of her mother, the argument she used when Fran, riddled with conflict and doubt, told her about the conversation with Vivian Markham. Fran isn’t certain whether her mother is truly convinced by them, whether she wanted to make Fran feel better, or whether the extra money from the position at the camp is simply too tempting, given the modest income her mother’s skill with a needle and thread brings in. And she doesn’t know her father’s views on the matter at all. Or even if his opinion has been sought.

  ‘You’ll still have to talk to them. You might even have to work in the same room. Apparently, some of the prisoners are given camp jobs.’

  ‘Mrs Markham told me there was another girl in the office, and when I met Major Markham yesterday, he definitely didn’t mention working with any prisoners.’ Fran falters; the interview with Major Markham – if you could call it an interview – had been rather odd. Shortly after meeting Mrs Markham an unsigned note had been put through the letterbox telling Fran to come to the Dun Cow at two o’clock on Monday afternoon. Since the camp was tucked down a side road behind the pub, the location for the meeting was not terribly strange. The encounter with Major Markham, however, was not what she’d expected.

  Fran had spent the morning practising what she might say if asked how she felt about the arrival of the Germans. It might take some time to adjust, but she understood, given the shortage of local men, why they were needed. Or what she had done to help the war effort. She had been a Land Girl on a Norfolk farm. And although milking cows or feeding pigs was not office work, she was confident she could easily adapt. However, Major Markham had merely asked her if she had achieved her school certificate and considered herself reliable. Then he had fished out a packet of Marlboro Lights and a box of matches from his top pocket and proceeded to light a cigarette.

  Fran was in the process of assuring him that she was both reliable and hard-working when a shattering crash from behind startled her to silence. Twisting to look over her shoulder, she glimpsed Mr Graveling, the publican, on his knees surrounded by shards of glass and a lake of beer inching slowly across the flagstones. Major Markham, she was sure, was in a better position than her to view the harassed landlord, yet when she turned back, she found him on his feet, swaying slightly and gripping the table with blanched knuckles, the cigarette dangling loosely from his mouth. Uncertain of what to do Fran set her gaze elsewhere, but when Major Markham eventually sat down he seemed to have lost concentration. He didn’t respond to her answers, wrote nothing on his pad of paper and after a couple more minutes of stumbled, gap-filling sentences from Fran, he interrupted her to say that he would see her in the morning, got up and left.

  ‘All the same’ – June’s voice brings Fran back to the kitchen – ‘I don’t know how you can bear it.’

  She is genuinely perplexed, Fran realises. And perhaps her sister is right. Why would she want to spend her days in the company of German soldiers? Hitler scum, according to the locals. Men who not only killed her brother but brought such terrible, desperate sadness to everyone she knows. Maybe the reason she was given the job is because nobody else in the village would do it.

  ‘Perhaps I won’t take the position after all.’ Fran tugs at the collar of the grey jacket. Standing by the Aga, the fabric is beginning to feel hot, almost oppressive, and her earlier sense of exhilaration nothing short of ridiculous. ‘I could simply not go to the camp this morning.’ She doesn’t add that she’s not one hundred per cent certain that Major Markham will actually remember he asked her to attend. He didn’t even tell her what time she should arrive.

  ‘You must go’ – June narrows her eyes over the top of the blanket – ‘and then explain to Major Markham you’ve had second thoughts and decided you can’t possibly work in the camp after all.’

  Fran regards her sister with dismay. The idea of a damp, chilly bicycle ride to inform the major to his face she doesn’t want to work for him is worse than if she had never been offered the job in the first place.

  June reads her hesitation. ‘Go now. Get it over with. Before you change your mind. And’ – she squints through the window at the unappealing morning – ‘wrap up warm.’

  Fran gathers her handbag and goes to fetch her coat from the hooks beside the back door. The pile seems lighter than normal and when she rifles through the assortment of fabrics, she sees Robbie’s black overcoat is missing. She frowns in surprise, then with sudden insight looks at June. As if by way of answer, her sister shifts on the rocker and pulls the blanket, that is not a blanket at all, more closely towards her chin.

  Chapter Four

  Fran cycles east towards the village. To her left sits the marsh with the beach some distance beyond, a bank of shingle that after a couple of miles abandons the coastline and curls outwards into the sea. On visits before the war she, June and Robbie used to hike along the pointed finger of land to the very tip of the spit and watch velvet seals slide in and out of the water while terns and black-headed gulls strutted and dived in the shallows. Although the beach is still cut off by barricades and buried mines – defences against the invasion that never came – one day soon, she tells herself, she’ll be back there again.

  Though not, of course, with Robbie.

  She pedals even faster, before standing up to let the wheels roll freely. The push and rhythm of the bicycle have warmed her core while in the distance gold-tipped clouds float low on the horizon surrounded by banners of peach and baby blue. Instead of Robbie, she focuses on the unexpected gift of sky. On the pink-footed geese, who are beginning to cruise the mudflats, drowning out the zip of her tyres with their early-morning cries.

  And slowly she sits down again.

  At the Dun Cow she gets off the bicycle and walks the last part of the journey so a
s not to arrive red-faced and out of breath. The gate is topped with two threads of barbed wire and guarded by a bored-looking soldier in army khaki who is plainly not expecting her but seems only too happy to leave his post in search of someone who might be.

  The camp is unexpectedly small, and she can see most of the site from where she is standing. A churned-up parking area leads to a long, whitewashed building with steps to an entrance at one end. Further away about six Nissen huts and some wooden outbuildings cluster around a much larger brick structure which might be the cookhouse because crates of something like cabbages or cauliflowers have been left beside the door.

  As she waits, three prisoners come out of the furthest Nissen hut. One disappears behind a wooden lean-to and reappears with a tin pail, sloshing the contents over the rim. Immediately, the men strip off their shirts and start to splash water onto skinny, pale torsos. Fran tries not to watch but her head keeps lifting, her focus lengthening, and with a bite of self-reproach she realises she’s hoping to see if the blue-eyed German happens to be one of the three.

  Minutes later the soldier returns, marching with renewed purpose towards the gate. He tells Fran that she is expected, though not perhaps this early. She has arrived before Major Markham, but that can only help to make a good impression. Now the soldier knows she’s to join them he seems determined to be friendly, as if he’s already aware there might be a divide between the camp and the village. He smiles as he speaks, revealing a gap in his front teeth that is accentuated by a long, pink scar running from the tip of his right ear to the edge of his mouth. As Fran follows, wheeling her bike across the camp’s muddy turf, her spirits sink: she will hardly make a good impression when she informs Major Markham she no longer wants his job. She considers telling the soldier instead; however, before she can summon the courage, he has already pointed her in the direction of the whitewashed building and is returning to his post.

  The corridor inside contains a wooden bench that looks like it came from a school gymnasium. Cubbyholes stuffed with envelopes cover one wall, while the door facing the bench bears a handwritten sign saying Camp Office. After Fran has been waiting at least half an hour, a soldier strides into the lobby and without breaking momentum attempts to enter the office. When the handle refuses to budge, he turns around.

  ‘Major Markham not in yet?’ The soldier’s hair is slicked sideways and shines as if he has just stepped in from the rain.

  She shakes her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  He peers more closely. ‘Are you the new girl?’

  Fran’s chest stiffens. Not for long. She nods and holds up her identity card.

  ‘In that case, welcome!’ The soldier sticks out a palm, ‘The major gets later every day, though don’t’ – he shakes her hand with good-natured energy – ‘ever tell him I said that!’

  With his departure the office seems quieter. Outside, however, the volume is rising. Men’s voices weave a tapestry of noise. Although the lilt and cadence of the sentences seem familiar, when she listens closely the language is a mixture of English and softly guttural German, a sound she has only heard before on broadcasts from the wireless and newsreels of crowds saluting Hitler with unnerving synchronicity. The tightness in her chest intensifies.

  All at once the abrupt cough of a motor engine provokes shouting and a burst of footfall and makes Fran get up and peer around the outside door. An army truck is reversing through the gate, the exhaust spewing fumes she can smell from where she is standing. As soldiers yell orders, prisoners stream out from the Nissen huts and gather together at the edge of the parking area. Fran watches the truck shudder to a halt. The engine cuts and the German men begin to scramble aboard, each of them bending down to proffer a hand to the one up next. She is so immersed in the scene that the sudden proximity of a female voice catches her by surprise.

  ‘Well, that is something I would like to see. You lot playing football!’ The woman speaking appears to be a similar age to Fran. Dark-blond waves of hair surround a wide face that might be at risk of plainness were it not for the evident good humour playing across it, the confident slash of cherry lipstick and the friendly gaze fixed on the prisoner walking beside her. Both of them are rapidly approaching the camp office.

  The prisoner is smiling. ‘We can play football. Better than you English!’

  Fran darts back inside.

  A second later the woman comes through the entrance. She stops when she sees Fran. ‘You must be Fran. I’m Daisy.’ She follows Fran’s gaze through the open door, where the black-shirted man is walking away. ‘And he, by the way, is called Hans.’ She must catch something of Fran’s confusion, because her brow furrows. ‘We are allowed to talk to them in here, you know. The government regulations don’t stop us from doing that. As long as we’re inside the camp and doing our job, it’s hardly fraternising with the enemy, is it?’

  Fran colours slightly. She has too many questions bumping around her head to risk a reply. Instead, she watches Daisy reach into the back of one of the cubbyholes and extract a key from beneath a pile of brown envelopes which she slots into the keyhole of the locked door.

  The office has been divided into connecting rooms. In the first, two wooden chairs have been placed each side of a functional desk obscured by a jumble of files and papers. The second, Fran spies, boasts a curved-back leather chair behind a large desk bearing a magnifying glass and telephone. A stench of smoke drapes the space like muslin. Wrinkling her nose, Daisy shuts the connecting door, marches to a window and throws it open.

  ‘At least when the major’s in London we get to choose whether we breathe and freeze our behinds off or simply choke to death. When he’s here all day, I honestly think I’m going to suffocate.’

  Fran stops in her tracks. ‘Is he away then?’ She’s been worrying how long she would have to make conversation with Daisy, go through the motions of starting work, before the major arrived and she could explain that she couldn’t take the job after all.

  ‘He’s gone to Whitehall for a meeting. I don’t think he’ll be coming in at all today. Didn’t he tell you?’

  Fran shakes her head.

  Daisy squints at her and misreads whatever expression she detects on Fran’s face. ‘Don’t worry, I can show you what to do. You’ll pick things up in no time.’

  Before Fran can open her mouth, she finds she has been ushered onto one of the wooden chairs and Daisy is leaning over her shoulder and selecting a dark-green folder labelled Supplies from the top of the nearest heap of documents.

  ‘Ordering more food is the priority this morning. We don’t want prisoners dropping dead from starvation. At least not while we still need them to de-mine the beaches.’

  ‘How do I do that? I’ve no idea what to order!’ Fran’s sense of panic is growing. She can’t tell if it’s because she should by now be on her way home, because of the proximity of so many Germans, or because she doesn’t know how to even start the job. Daisy is close enough for Fran to be aware of a sweet floral scent of perfume or talcum powder and the ruby contours of Daisy’s painted mouth. All at once she’s horribly aware of her blandly powdered face, her borrowed jacket.

  ‘Here, this is what I bought ten days ago.’ Daisy pulls a sheet of paper from the file. A handwritten list – porridge (8 boxes), mutton (9–10 lbs), rabbits (18 approx), potatoes (2 sacks), cabbages (2 sacks)… – fills the entire page. ‘You can start with this, but the numbers have changed since then so the quantities will be different. You’ll have to check how many prisoners arrived last week and how many are due to arrive and leave next week.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better for you to do it,’ Fran says weakly, ‘as you did it before?’

  Daisy laughs. ‘I have to sort out the vehicles – the trucks to get the prisoners to their place of work, petrol supplies, spare parts, that sort of thing. Then there’s all the other equipment and knowing which prisoners are going where, which ones are clearing the beaches, which ones are doing the farms. Apparently a few of them
are needed in the brickworks too. And on top of all that, someone has to type Major Markham’s letters for him.’ Her gaze narrows. ‘Can you type?’

  ‘Not terribly fast. What about you?’

  ‘I used to be a typist at an RAF station. During the war, I mean. That’s why I got given the job here. Well, if you do most of the ordering, I’m sure we’ll manage somehow…’ Daisy’s voice trails off as if flattened by the weight of the tasks confronting them both. Then she adds with unexpected warmth, ‘I’m so pleased there are two of us now. Apart from nearly suffocating and dying of overwork, it’s been pretty lonely, to be honest. The major hardly spends any time in the office, and when he is here, well…’ – her face clouds – ‘the smoke isn’t the only problem.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’ll see for yourself.’

  Fran looks at her.

  Daisy hesitates. Then says quickly, ‘Often he says he has meetings which don’t seem to be in his diary. And if Captain Holmes is away the major works in his office instead, as if he prefers to be entirely on his own. Even though that room is really for meetings and the major doesn’t keep any of his files in there. She throws a glance at the door, lowers her voice, ‘Once I even found him sitting in the stationery cupboard.’

  ‘The stationery cupboard!’

  ‘Shh! Well, it’s for general storage, I suppose, but even so… He pretended he was searching for something, yet when I walked in he was just sitting on a box and staring at the wall.’ She must see something of Fran’s alarm because she adds in a business-like voice. ‘It’s nothing to worry about, really. Honestly, it’s got to be better to have a slightly barmy boss than one who shouts all the time. Look – we’d best get on or else we’ll never get those orders in on time.’