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

by Sarah Mitchell

  * * *

  Some time later Fran puts down her pen and glances at the clock. To her astonishment, nearly two hours seem to have passed. She has almost completed the new lists of supplies. After checking and cross-checking between each prisoner’s dossier and a separate file that contains authorisations for transfers between camps, she’s confident there are eighty-three prisoners currently at Salthouse, with another four expected by the end of the week. Given that Daisy based her previous order on an occupancy of sixty-six, Fran has decided to increase the quantities by another third. The level of attention required to chase up prisoners’ details has proved much more gratifying than she anticipated, particularly since it quickly became apparent how badly the paperwork was organised. On more than one occasion she caught herself thinking she would suggest to Daisy they create a more efficient system, before remembering that at the first opportunity she was supposed to tell the major she was leaving. Admiring her neat columns of figures on the page of calculations, she wonders if perhaps she should offer to stay until he finds a replacement.

  ‘Time for a cuppa?’ Daisy cuts into her ponderings.

  A small table in the corner boasts a kettle, two chipped porcelain cups and a caddy bearing a picture of a Scottish golfer so worn that patches of tin shine from the lid. When the kettle boils, Daisy pours water through a strainer into each of the cups. ‘No teapot, I’m afraid. Or milk, for that matter. Here – take your pick.’ The tea poured first is a much deeper colour than the second.

  Fran selects the weaker option, curling her fingers gratefully around the heat of the china. If the window is going to be open regularly throughout winter, she must remember to wear fingerless gloves.

  ‘They’re not all beastly, you know,’ Daisy says suddenly.

  It takes a moment or two for Fran to realise Daisy is referring to her conversation with Hans. Or more accurately, to Fran’s reaction. Despite the temperature of the room, she feels her face start to smoulder.

  ‘These German prisoners probably hated the war as much as we did.’

  Fran swallows. ‘Well, they started it. And kept fighting it. And they killed our soldiers. Thousands and thousands of them.’ She stares into her tea. The dark hollows of her cheeks and eye sockets are reflected in the amber liquid. It’s like looking at a pencil drawing of a skull.

  ‘Maybe most of them didn’t have a choice. Not a proper one anyway.’

  Fran doesn’t reply. This is the perfect opportunity to tell Daisy she can’t possibly work alongside so many Germans; that her sister has convinced her accepting the job was the wrong thing to do. She should simply hand the completed order list to Daisy and leave. She wouldn’t even have to put on her coat since the room has been too cold to even consider taking it off.

  Instead a second, then two seconds, slip by and she says nothing. Gradually, the distant business of the camp begins to seep into the silence.

  Daisy says gently, ‘Who did you lose?’

  Fran’s gaze stays fixed on her cup, the rim swimming slightly out of focus. ‘My brother.’

  A pause.

  Fran thinks of saying his name. Robbie, she should tell Daisy. His name was Robbie. She opens her mouth. Takes a sip of tea.

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘It happened in June 1944, on D-Day. Although we didn’t find out for several weeks. Not for sure.’ At the time everyone had said the agony of not knowing, the uncertainty, must be the worst thing of all, but it hadn’t been. Uncertainty had meant hope, seconds, sometimes even whole minutes of time when they had convinced themselves he was still alive. The worst thing had been when the letter finally came, hearing the wild sobs of her mother behind her bedroom door, a racking, animal-like keening that sounded unlike anything Fran had ever heard before.

  And the loss doesn’t feel any smaller now merely because two years’ worth of days have passed. Robbie’s continual absence presses upon them far more than his taken-for-granted presence would ever have done. It feels like a gale perpetually raging against the flimsiest branch of a tree. Sooner or later the wood must snap, Fran thinks, and then where will they be? Her wrist quivers, and she lowers the cup onto the desk. ‘What about you?’ she manages. ‘Do you have a brother?’

  There is a fractional gap before Daisy answers.

  ‘Yes.’

  Fran lifts her gaze.

  ‘He didn’t fight in the war.’ Another hesitation. ‘He has a heart condition.’

  ‘Oh,’ Fran says, then, ‘I’m sorry.’ Yet she still can’t prevent an instinctive snap of bitterness that if Robbie had had a problem with his heart, he would still be alive too.

  ‘We didn’t realise until he failed the medical,’ Daisy continues. ‘I know you must think he’s a lucky bastard, but it hasn’t been… it isn’t as easy for him as you might imagine.’ Although her tone stays level, something desperate flits over her wide brown eyes.

  Fran remembers now, a snatch of conversation she overheard in the village shop: The lengths a man will take to avoid doing his duty, a woman had said. And the gossip about the draft dodger that seemed to surface whenever the village suffered a new death, a fresh ambush of grief. Even at the time she found the rumours unpleasant. However, her family was then so new to the village, she had no idea who they were talking about.

  Fran frowns. ‘Is he very ill?’

  ‘No, it’s not that.’ Daisy drains her tea and places the cup with a jolt. ‘He can’t forgive himself for not being able to join up, and it seems that nobody else can either. I know he’s alive, but I honestly believe he’d rather have taken his chances with the others than spend the rest of his life feeling a failure—’

  ‘He’s not a failure.’ Fran feels bad now, for her earlier flash of resentment. ‘He can’t help having a weak heart.’

  ‘That’s what I keep telling him.’ As Daisy gathers up the dirty china, her expression dips from Fran’s sight. ‘But it doesn’t seem to help very much.’

  * * *

  The rest of the day passes at the same startling speed. At about half past twelve Daisy extracts a brown paper parcel from her bag and unwraps an egg sandwich. Fran watches in mute embarrassment, wondering how she managed to entirely overlook the matter of her lunch, until Daisy grins and passes her the second half of her own. As if by silent agreement they talk about themselves, rather than the war. Daisy is twenty-two, the same age as Fran. She laughs more often than anyone else Fran knows, tipping back her chin as she does so to reveal her pearly white throat. She is more curious too, firing questions in such quick succession that Fran barely has time to ask her own. Still, by the time they have brushed the crumbs from their laps and drunk another cup of tea, Fran has learned that Daisy likes films, that she gets bored easily – I absolutely must have a job of some kind, I can’t possibly stay at home all day – and that although she’s desperate to drive a motor car, her real passion is dancing. ‘You must come to my house,’ she tells Fran. ‘We live in the next village. One day after work. I’ll teach you how to jitterbug. And then,’ she adds so easily that Fran almost misses the slight inflection in her voice, ‘you can meet my brother, Martin.’

  At four o’clock Daisy announces that this is when she normally finishes and besides, today she has to take care of Major Markham’s little girl after school. She slips the cap back on her fountain pen and gets to her feet with one eye on the clock. For an instant her face clouds. ‘To be honest, I think it’s a bit of nerve, asking me, but I could hardly say no.’

  ‘Where is Mrs Markham?’ Fran asks. ‘Is she in London too?’ An image of the beautiful Mrs Markham draped in fur, sashaying across a banquet hall on her husband’s arm, comes to mind.

  Daisy shrugs. ‘No idea, but I’m hoping this won’t become a regular request. I’ve no intention of becoming a nanny.’ She beams at Fran from the doorway, her good humour evidently recovered. ‘See you tomorrow, then? Don’t forget to lock up.’

  Fran packs up her belongings more slowly than Daisy and is careful to leave the key in
the same cubbyhole Daisy took it from that morning. Already, the long wait on the bench seems to have happened months ago. As she crosses the camp, the sky is heavy with cloud and impending darkness. From one of the huts, she can hear two prisoners talking. For a minute she stops and makes herself listen to the soft rise and fall of the alien language. Tomorrow, she supposes, she must face the task of telling Major Markham that she doesn’t want the job. Not for the long-term anyway. As she engages the dynamo to the back wheel of her bicycle and climbs aboard, she experiments with the phrases she might use to explain her resignation. I can’t work alongside so many Germans… My family doesn’t approve… They are beginning to seem like words from a theatre or radio drama, she realises. Sentences learned for a character she’s no longer certain that she’s willing to play.

  Chapter Five

  Vivien Markham is not gliding across a banquet hall. Instead she’s sitting on a bus to Sculthorpe with her handbag gripped securely on her lap. Dressed in her tailored blue coat and matching felt hat she’s very well aware that everyone is looking at her. Not staring exactly but stealing sidelong glances in a way that is meant to be, but is not, discreet. Even as she climbed aboard, she felt the gaze of the woman in the front row snag for a split second on her ankles and the real silk stockings that encase them. She should, she supposes, have made an effort to be less conspicuous, but Alex likes her in blue.

  And he particularly likes her in silk stockings.

  She shivers with anticipation – and a transitory flash of guilt that causes her to glance awkwardly at her fellow passengers. She decided not to take the car in case anyone should spot it outside the base but, given the level of interest she seems to be generating, perhaps that would have been preferable. At least Toby will be unlikely to ask her too many difficult questions this evening. His meeting in London means he’s bound not to arrive back until late; and even if she should get home after him – Viv closes her eyes in a little prayer of hope, knowing exactly what returning so late would mean as regards her meeting with Alex – she will simply say that she decided to go exploring and got herself a little lost.

  Outside the window the countryside is drear. Hedges, trees and grey flint cottages rattle indistinctly past the filthy glass. She should probably have left earlier but reasoned that arriving later in the morning might increase the chance Alex would be able to have lunch with her, perhaps take the rest of the day off. There might even be the possibility of spending the evening together. At least that’s what Viv suggested in her letter and Alex hasn’t replied to say that isn’t a good plan. Or, for that matter, to say it is a good plan. Or, even simply to say that he’s looking forward to seeing her.

  Viv makes herself breathe slowly – in and out, in and out, the same relaxation tips the doctors recommended during the war – to suppress the surge of panic that erupts whenever she confronts the fact that she hasn’t heard anything from Alex for nearly seven weeks. The trouble is, whatever calming technique she uses, her feelings, like a jack-in-the-box, are liable to spring back, unbidden and uncontrolled, the very instant she stops.

  For something to do, she snaps open the clasp of her handbag and draws out a folded piece of paper. Alex’s last letter to her is worn and creased from having been opened and reread so many times, and Viv doesn’t actually need to see the writing again to remember what it says. Nevertheless the simple sight of the words on the page invokes the sound of Alex’s voice, the warm American drawl that made her stomach turn over that very first time he stopped her in the street to ask if she was a film star because he would never forgive himself if he walked straight on by without checking.

  My Darling Girl, the letter begins.

  This is so very hard for me to write but I have to tell you, sweetest one, that I’m being posted to some God-awful remote part of the country. Norfolk! Probably Norfolk isn’t so very terrible but it’s a million miles from you and that’s quite enough to make it the worst place on earth in my eyes. Isn’t it the cruellest thing? These last few months we’ve been dreading the time when I would be sent back to the good old US of A and couldn’t believe our luck when they kept me over here. Now it turns out they had a plan all along and that plan is some dullard of a techno job at an airfield called Sculthorpe. Seems you Brits don’t want all of us Yanks to leave just yet after all! But Sculthorpe is a long, long way from you and realistically, my sweetest, I think we have to face the fact we have come to the end of our time together. My baby, believe me when I say my heart breaks at the thought of never seeing your darling eyes again, touching that softest skin, feeling you tremble in my arms…

  Viv closes her eyes, holding the page flat against her stomach. She is well aware how the letter continues. How enormously hard it must have been for her to conceal the affair since Toby came home. How dreadful she must have felt. How he, Alex, loved her more than he had loved anyone before but would never ever forgive himself if he broke up her marriage. The posting to Sculthorpe, some back-of-beyond place near the Norfolk coast, was a sign the affair was over, though he would love her always. The always was written in capital letters and underlined with a flourish, as if this demonstration of emotion might compensate for the inescapable fact that he hadn’t dared to tell her the news in person.

  As soon as the page was back inside the envelope, Viv had thrown caution to the wind and gone directly to Alex’s old base. Having paused by the perimeter fence to powder her streaked cheeks, she managed to control her voice long enough to ask in the office whether it would be possible to see Captain Alex Henderson on an urgent family matter. A heavily whiskered gentleman informed her that Captain Henderson had left the previous day. Nevertheless, the old soldier must have seen something of the anguish this response elicited because he motioned at the solitary straight-backed chair against the wall and suggested he might be able to find Captain Henderson’s new address if she would care to wait. A few minutes later he returned with a slip of paper and a cup of tea in a blue cup balanced precariously on a white saucer.

  For the next few days Viv couldn’t even get Alice to school. Pressing a hand to unwashed hair, she complained of headaches or stomach pains and persuaded Toby to drop Alice off on his way to his job at the Dispersal Centre. Her requests made her realise she wasn’t even certain what job he did there, other than some role processing the discharge of army soldiers, because he had said so little since returning from Germany. All his answers to her questions were perfunctory and at night he rolled away from her, careful, it seemed, to avoid touching any part of her body with his own. She hadn’t minded, of course, not when she was seeing Alex. She assumed he was simply taking time to adjust to being home, relieved at the space his diffidence gave her to continue the affair. Yet even in the desperate aftermath of Alex’s departure it began to strike her as odd how each evening Toby never appeared to notice she hadn’t changed out of the housecoat she had been wearing that morning, let alone ask her why that might be.

  Redemption came suddenly and unexpectedly, shortly after the very worst days had passed. One evening Toby put down his knife and fork and announced into the silence of the dinner table that he had some news. Viv was so taken aback to hear him say anything at all she simply stopped eating and waited. The following week, Toby said, he was being moved to a place called Salthouse. To run a new camp for German prisoners.

  Despite herself, Viv was intrigued. ‘Why are they opening new camps now?’ she asked. ‘The war’s over.’

  Toby picked up his cutlery, as if the question was too facile to need serious consideration. ‘The fighting might be finished but it will be a long time before the country is back on its feet. We need men to work the fields and clear the beaches. Prisoners aren’t good for much, but they’re bloody useful for that kind of dirty work.’

  Viv was perplexed. ‘Is that allowed? Surely the prisoners want to go home?’

  ‘You sound like the Red Cross. They’re starting to make a fuss about it too.’ Toby speared a lump of potato. The stew on their plates
consisted of many more vegetables than the small, gristly pieces of meat Viv had spent thirty minutes queuing for at the butcher’s.

  ‘Well, we can’t just keep them here indefinitely, surely?’

  ‘We can bloody well hold onto them until they’ve cleaned up the mess they made. And if that takes a couple of years, so be it. The little bastards should have thought of that before they invaded Poland.’

  ‘The prisoners didn’t start it!’ Viv is surprised at her own persistence. ‘Most of them are probably just ordinary men. Boys, even.’

  Toby stared at her. It was the first time, Viv thought, they had ever discussed anything political and it was certainly their longest conversation since Toby had come home. ‘I don’t imagine the camp will be operational for long,’ he said slowly, ‘but the beaches in Norfolk are littered with mines and somebody has to get rid of them.’

  It took a few seconds for his words to sink in.

  ‘The camp is in Norfolk?’

  ‘The North Norfolk coast, apparently somewhere quite remote. There’s a map in my bag if you want to look. I haven’t yet checked the exact location.’ He sounded relieved to be talking about geography.

  Without replying, Viv pushed back her chair and poured herself a large sherry from the decanter on the sideboard. Later that evening, after Toby had gone to bed, she rummaged in his briefcase and dug out a rather modern-looking half-inch map of Norfolk. Spreading the paper over the dining-room table, she studied the unfamiliar names and landmarks. Sculthorpe was easy to locate. Salthouse, harder. Not least because she made herself start her search on the furthest section of coastline from Sculthorpe. As gradually she allowed her gaze to steal further and further north her heart began to gallop, and when she finally discovered the tiny dot the force of her luck felt like a physical blow. Head swimming, she walked slowly around the table before consulting the map again, but the proximity of the coastal village to the airbase – about twenty miles – was unmistakable. Her first thought was that she must write to Alex that very instant. Instead she made herself fold away the map, return it safely to the briefcase and join Toby in bed. Upstairs, she lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, unable to tell whether her motionless husband was sleeping or wide awake. The next morning, she informed him that she didn’t want to stay in Oxfordshire. She and Alice would come to Salthouse too.