The Occupation

by Deborah Swift

  THE OCCUPATION

  Deborah Swift

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  EPILOGUE

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  HEAR MORE FROM DEBORAH SWIFT

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ALSO BY DEBORAH SWIFT

  PROLOGUE

  Jersey, The Channel Islands

  August 1939

  Céline

  I shaded my eyes with my hand, squinting through the glare of my glasses. The sea stretched out before me, its dark cobalt blurring seamlessly into the duck-egg blue of the sky. In the distance a steamer puffed black smoke from its two chimneys, making steady headway between the small pleasure craft, their sails specks and splashes of white. Below, the beach was filled with multi-coloured deckchairs, windbreaks and beach towels. I sighed. Scarcely an inch of sand was unoccupied.

  I trotted downhill, the smell of hot tar in my nostrils. The summer invasion of tourists was a mixed blessing, turning our peaceful island into a kind of mad-house — everything loud and over-bright. Glancing at my watch, I hurried past the billboards that had sprung up on every building, as if shouting in red and yellow for attention: ‘Smith’s Cream Ices — Jersey’s Best!’ and ‘Tub Race — every child a winner!’

  I’d promised to meet my friend Rachel on the Blue Terrace at the Lido, and I was late. I liked Rachel, but she could be exhausting, and I was very firmly beneath her in any sort of pecking order. Hitching my beach bag over my shoulder, I hurried through the turnstile, the sun tingling hot on my bare shoulders.

  At first I couldn’t see Rachel through the splashing children, but then on the other side of the pool, I could just make out the brilliant red of Rachel’s rubber swimming cap amongst the rest of the swimmers. I narrowed my eyes against the sun.

  Rachel waved. ‘Come on!’ she yelled.

  The changing cubicle with its wooden slatted bench smelled of seawater and damp socks. I pulled on my old elasticated polka-dot swimming costume, wriggling awkwardly to get into it, and bundled my clothes and glasses into my bag. Barefoot, I tiptoed out of the changing cabin, but then gasped, hopping in an awkward dance as my feet scorched on the hot concrete.

  Dodging the squashed remains of an ice-cream sandwich, I headed for a free deckchair to dump my things and waded down the shallow steps. A sharp inhale as the cold water hit my ribs.

  Rachel’s red cap powered towards me, her arms scything through the water. She disappeared for a moment, then popped up too close, shaking droplets off her face. An armful of cold water flung in my face made me duck.

  ‘You beast!’ I shouted, cowering away, before splashing back.

  ‘Isn’t it glorious!’ she said breathlessly, before turning on her back. ‘I’m going up on the diving board. Coming?’

  She didn’t wait for an answer, because she knew I’d be shaking my head.

  I doggy-paddled from side to side, trying not to get out of my depth, but a few minutes was enough for me and I clambered out and towelled myself dry. Once I’d flopped into my deckchair, I was just in time to see Rachel bounce at the end of the board and upend herself into a perfect line. She slid into the water with hardly a ripple. It gave me a pang of envy to watch her. She was completely fearless.

  Fred would have had a go at diving, even though he was no athlete. I thought of my husband with a mixture of annoyance and affection. He never took a day off from the bakery, though he was happy whenever I did. On days like this, he knew that cooping me up next to a hot oven was a kind of torture.

  Rachel was swimming back towards me now, doing the butterfly stroke, which involved a lot of wild splashing and everyone clearing out of her way. She hauled herself out, shaking her dark curly hair free of its cap. Moments later, she was stretched out on a candy-striped towel.

  ‘I could lie here forever,’ she said.

  ‘If you did, you’d be fried,’ I said.

  A little boy in red shorts rushed past, wailing, clutching a tin bucket. ‘Mummy!’ He ran back and forth again shouting, his face wide-eyed and anxious. ‘Mummy!’

  I saw him run past a few more times, getting more frantic and tearful every minute. I heaved myself out of the chair and went over to him. By now he was bawling. ‘Are you lost?’ I said.

  ‘I can’t find my Mummy,’ he said. He looked round wildly, and I followed his gaze but could see no-one searching for a small boy. He burst into fresh noisy tears.

  ‘Let’s go and see if we can find her,’ I said. ‘She might be by the turnstile.’ I reached out my hand and his hot damp one slipped trustingly into mine.

  ‘Sorry, Rachel,’ I said as I led him off.

  She grimaced and went back to sunbathing.

  By the turnstile, a woman in cork platform shoes and a low-cut sundress was scanning the crowd. Immediately she saw us and hurried over. ‘Graham! What in blazes d’you think you’re doing?’ She grabbed him by the arm and slapped him hard across the back of the legs. The boy cried out and tried to squirm away.

  ‘Don’t smack him,’ I said, seeing red marks immediately flare up on the back of his legs. ‘He was lost. He was looking for you.’

  ‘Can’t turn my back two minutes,’ she said. ‘Little blighter never listens to a word I say.’ Ignoring me, she dragged the poor child away, still howling. I watched them go, wishing I could smack the mother the way she’d smacked the little boy.

  When I got back, Rachel was watching me. ‘Trust you. You’re always finding lame ducks,’ she said.

  ‘She didn’t even thank me,’ I said. ‘I wish all these other holidaymakers would go home. It’s so busy.’

  ‘Better than the winter.’ Rachel propped herself on one elbow. ‘Nothing ever happens here, does it? When the holidaymakers leave, we’re just left with the same old farmers and fishermen, and old women knitting pullovers. It’s so dull. And there’s no men worth looking at.’

  I surveyed the busy terrace. ‘What about him?’ I pointed to a skinny man with very white skin that was flaring bright pink across the shoulders.

  She rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at me.

  ‘You could go back home to Paris,’ I said. ‘Must be plenty of talent there.’

  ‘My parents would send me straight back. Paris is full of communists and subversives. She’s terrified I’ll get involved with the wrong type.’

  ‘And she thinks Jersey farmers are more suitable?’

  ‘In Maman’s eyes, yes. Because she knows I won’t want them. I can’t stop her matchmaking. She keeps on at me, trying to persuade me to get married to a nice Jewish boy, have a tidy little house and have lots of babies, but I can’t think of anything worse.’

  I couldn’t tell her that Fred and I had exactly those plans. She’d sneer at it, and I couldn’t bear it.

  ‘They approve of you, you know
,’ she continued. ‘They call you “that nice sensible girl from the pâtisserie.”’

  I made a face, and she went back to sunbathing. I glanced over at her brown back above her green ruched swimsuit. Was I sensible? If so, it came from fending for myself. I’d had to grow up fast. Dad was killed in the first war, and Mother died of TB more than ten years ago when I was still at school. I could still remember that panicky empty feeling of being quite alone. That was before I met Fred.

  I closed my eyes a moment, hearing the screech of the gulls, and smelling the fishy smell of crab from the stall behind us.

  ‘What’s it like, being married?’ Rachel’s question came out of the blue. I sat up, to see her looking at me with curious brown eyes.

  I didn’t want to tell her. There was something precious about how I felt about Fred that I didn’t want to share. It made me want to hug the feeling close, wrap protective arms around it, protect it from too much scrutiny. ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘Nice to have someone to share things with.’

  She turned over again. ‘Don’t you ever get bored? I mean, being with the same man?’

  ‘No.’ There was a sort of criticism in her tone that made me defensive. ‘We argue sometimes, but I think that’s only natural. He’s worried at the moment. He thinks there’ll be another war.’

  She didn’t seem to hear me. She was silent a few moments before saying, ‘I don’t think I’ll get married until I’m about forty.’

  ‘Aren’t you bothered about being left “on the shelf”?’

  She threw back her head and guffawed at me, as if I’d said something hilarious. ‘No, I like the space and freedom of my own apartment. I’d hate to be cooped up with just one person, or have some man telling me what to do.’

  The way she said it stung. It made me feel as if my life with Fred was too small; something of no account, to be dismissed with a laugh. It pointed to a nameless unbridgeable gulf between us, the tiny voice inside me that said: though Rachel was my friend, perhaps it was only until she found someone better or more exciting.

  She had a sort of vibrant attraction, a fizz about her. Even now, a young man in long trunks was staring at her and whispering to his friend. Neither of them looked twice at me. Beside Rachel I felt pale-skinned and colourless, the damp Lido heat steaming up my glasses.

  Rachel was sitting up now, rubbing Nivea into her legs. The lad who’d been staring at her gave her a cheeky wink.

  She waved back at him in a careless kind of way.

  ‘Forty,’ I said, nudging her.

  We both burst into laughter. The lad reddened and turned away, thinking we were laughing at him, and his obvious embarrassment ran through me in a matching frisson of pain.

  I slogged up the hill in the late afternoon heat, pausing to look up at the shop, proud of our window with its “Pâtisserie” sign painted in gold on a dark green background. I went round the back, knowing the front door would be shut by now, and Fred would be preparing stock for tomorrow’s baking.

  When I breezed in, it was to find Fred hurriedly closing the paper. He pushed his fair hair out of his eyes and jammed his bakery cap back on his head. His expression was one of guilt, as if he’d been caught doing something he didn’t want me to see.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Just reading the news. Hitler’s just sent a memo to Mussolini telling him that war with Poland is imminent.’

  ‘That won’t affect us, will it?’ Fred was German. His real name was Siegfried, but we’d been on the island ten years, and nobody ever called him that. We all called him Fred.

  He reached out to take hold of me and planted a kiss on my cheek. ‘How was your swim?’

  ‘All right.’

  I watched him as he strode over to the sack and began to tip flour into the huge mixing bowl. His white coat strained across the shoulders as he worked. He was avoiding my eyes, stirring amid a fog of flour, and I was filled with a sudden rush of affection for him. I loved the solid weight of him; his practicality, the slow measured way he moved about the shop.

  ‘Rachel says she can’t see herself getting married,’ I said. ‘That she’d be bored with only one man.’

  He turned. ‘Pah. I bet she changes her mind when she meets the right chap.’

  ‘You don’t think we’ll get bored with each other?’

  He stopped what he was doing. ‘What’s brought this on? Rachel?’

  I nodded. ‘It’s just that next to her, I seem to be…’

  He pulled me against his chest. ‘Silly thing. Rachel doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I can’t imagine wanting any other woman but you. The first time I saw you, I thought you looked so fresh-faced, so smiling. You lit up the place. We’re happy aren’t we?’ His hug was fierce.

  ‘’Course I am.’ I looked up into his blue eyes.

  ‘Then why would you want anything different?’

  ‘I don’t. It’s just that sometimes I think there’s things you’re not telling me.’

  ‘What things? There’s nothing. It’s that Rachel, she just stirs things up. Maybe she’s jealous of us. Ignore her.’

  He went back to sifting flour, and I went back to the shop to put away the unsold bread. But a few moments later he came up behind me, put his hands around my waist and turned me to face him. ‘I love you Céline. I love you exactly the way you are, even with your hair full of salt-water and your nose peeling from the sun. I don’t want anything to change. I just want to stay on Jersey with you forever and live out our lives here until we are old and grey.’

  His eyes were strangely intense and glassy. I kissed him tenderly, lingeringly, on the lips. His response was urgent, like it used to be when we were courting.

  ‘Let’s go upstairs,’ I said.

  It was a moment before he realised I was serious. But then he grinned back at me and pulled me by the hand.

  CHAPTER 1

  May 1940

  Céline

  At the sharp ting-a-ling of the bakery door, I turned down the wireless, which was always on now so we could keep track of the hostilities between England and Germany, and looked up to see who the customer was.

  ‘Morning, Céline.’ The postman, Ernest Jones, a farmer’s son with a ruddy, perspiring face, dumped the letters on the counter, next to the till, and waved as he breezed out again with another jangle from the bell.

  ‘Is that the post?’ Fred emerged from the bakehouse, still in his floured apron and the white cloth cap that made him look like a friendly convict. He slapped his palms together and released a cloud of white dust, before giving me a quick cuddle, pressing me to his broad chest.

  ‘Leave off! You’ll cover me in flour,’ I said, smiling and hugging him back.

  ‘Bet it’s another order from the Marine Hotel for our Viennese pastries,’ he said, wiping his hands down his apron.

  ‘Might stop you eating them,’ I said, pinching at the soft flesh at his waist.

  ‘You love me really,’ he said. ‘Good to have a bit of padding.’

  He sifted through the mail, dividing it neatly into orders and bills. Then he stopped, his fingers frozen in the act of picking up a brown envelope.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘Just a bill I expect.’ He hurried away into the back of the bakery. I paused, aware of a tightness in the pit of my stomach, but carried on stacking the loaves into the wooden crates for the hotels on the seafront. When Fred came back, his rosy face had drained to grey.

  Another jangle. Old Mrs Hedges from the haberdashery just down the road bustled in, coming to collect her brown loaf.

  ‘We’re closed,’ Fred said.

  ‘Closed?’ Mrs Hedges blinked behind her thick tortoiseshell glasses. ‘But the sign in the window says —’

  ‘Closed.’ Fred turned the sign around and held open the door.

  ‘But what about my bread?’

  ‘You’ll just have to come back later.’

  ‘But —’

 
; ‘Didn’t you hear?’ His sharp tone made me frown. Mrs Hedges backed uncertainly out of the door, an expression of disbelief on her face. Neither of us had ever heard my husband be so rude before.

  ‘Fred?’ I put a hand to his arm.

  ‘You’d better come through to the back.’ He stripped off his apron and stared at it a moment before hanging it on the peg.

  ‘Is it bad news? Is it your parents? Are they all right?’ Everyone was calling the war with Germany the ‘phoney war’ because, so far, it seemed to be all talk. I followed him through to the sitting room and perched myself on the arm of the easy chair.

  Fred didn’t sit, but paced, gripping his head in his hands.

  ‘What is it? What’s going on? Was it that letter?’

  He nodded miserably. ‘I’ve been conscripted. I have to leave for army training next week.’

  ‘What? But they’re demilitarising us. That’s what Churchill said. That Jersey’s too small to be any use to the Germans.’

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘Show me. Show me the letter.’ I pushed my glasses further up my nose.

  He handed it over. He was still speaking but I heard nothing he said. The brown piece of paper I was holding had an eagle and swastika on it. The long German words preceded a space where his name had been typed — Siegfried Huber. A wave of something cold sluiced over me. ‘No.’ My voice was a whisper.

  He looked at me. ‘I’ll be fighting for the Germans.’

  I stood up, my knees shaking. ‘No. You’re not going. You must refuse.’

  ‘I can’t refuse. If I refuse they’ll just send someone to arrest me.’

  ‘But you’ve not been back to Germany for years. You’re a baker. A master baker, for God’s sake, not a soldier. It’s madness!’

  ‘If I don’t report, they’ll court-martial me anyway and throw me in prison. Look at all this small print.’ He held out an accompanying document printed in small type. ‘The letter says I’m to leave within two days and report to the German command at Cherbourg. Kommandant Zweig.’

  ‘We’ll go somewhere. Anywhere.’