A Bridge Across the Ocean

by Susan Meissner

  She’d been in the cellar for more than a month. Henri had learned that the network that was working to get her safely to Spain had been discovered and several of its members arrested. A new network was being formed to get downed Allied pilots and wanted Résistance fighters from their area out of France, but it was going to take some time. No one could guess how long.

  After a week, she’d begged to be given something to do, and Collette had reluctantly given her the family’s darning and mending baskets.

  She was almost happy to suddenly have a new responsibility now: that of minding Everett’s bandages, keeping him still, keeping him quiet, keeping him alive.

  But when the others left and Simone found herself alone with the wounded man, a deep sorrow had slowly come over her. Hers was a life marked by defeat. She didn’t want this man to die.

  Even as she pleaded with God silently to let him live, the American stirred. She’d been allowed to keep a lantern burning low and she could see that his eyes were open.

  “Eau?” he rasped.

  Simone reached for a flask of water that Henri had left with her and helped the man drink. When he lay back down on the straw, he reached for the bandages around his middle.

  “No, no, monsieur. No touch.”

  “Mademoiselle?”

  “Simone.”

  “Simone. See leg.” He patted his knee. “See? Medicine. Sulfa. Sulfa.” He reached again for his middle and pointed to the bandage.

  Simone felt the man’s leg and noticed a pouch strapped to his uniform pant leg. She opened it and saw a red tin. “This is medicine, monsieur?”

  “Oui. Sulfa.” He pointed to his wound.

  Simone opened the tin. It was full of a white powder.

  “Sulfa,” Everett said.

  Simone carefully unwound the bandage, trying very hard to not hurt him, but he grimaced and moaned nonetheless.

  “Shhh, monsieur,” she said, as the wound lay open before her.

  Sweat was running down his face. “Sulfa!” he said again, his voice almost a cry. He motioned to the tin.

  “All right. I see. Shhh. You must be quiet.” Simone shook the powder onto the wound as Everett writhed, his jaw clenched and his hands balled into fists.

  “I will save some for tomorrow.” She placed the lid back on the tin and set it down on the straw. When she turned back to Everett, he had slipped again into unconsciousness.

  She covered the wound as best she could and lay down next to him, watching the rise and fall of his chest in the dim light.

  Rest, when it finally came, was dreamless.

  The German with the gold tooth did not visit her in her sleep.

  Twelve

  NEAR SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND

  FEBRUARY 1946

  Annaliese slept fitfully the first night at Tidworth; every loud noise in the hallway sounded like policemen ready to burst into the room and haul her away. First to jail, and then back to Germany. Perhaps the other women and their children slept as poorly, but not from dread of discovery.

  As she dressed for the day she prayed that God would be merciful and put her on the first available vessel if indeed she could beg for such favor. Was it a very bad trespass to pretend to be someone you were not? She wasn’t sure. She was fairly certain it was a crime. Katrine had told her weeks ago that she should do whatever was necessary to get away from Rolf. Rolf was the criminal. Annaliese was the innocent one. But that had been before the accident, back when Katrine had been searching for a way for Annaliese to stay in hiding in England after she left for America.

  Katrine.

  Hearing that name all day yesterday had left Annaliese aching for the numbing silence of slumber. And even though sleep had eluded her, she hadn’t had to hear Katrine’s name over and over. Once Phoebe had fallen asleep, she’d enjoyed a sweet respite that lasted until her bunkmate awoke and asked her how she’d slept.

  She’d really had no private moment to grieve Katrine’s death. Annaliese had spent the night of the accident crouched in the St. Albans train station ladies’ room, fearful of making a sound and alerting the night watchman. The next day, with nowhere else to go, she’d made her way to Waterloo Station, moving from bench to bench during the day and again sleeping on cold tiles until daybreak, when she could use Katrine’s railway ticket to Tidworth. Even the moment of Katrine’s death she’d kept at a mental distance, though it replayed itself in her mind every time she glanced at the travel documents that were not hers.

  Annaliese had extricated herself from the wrecked car and limped back to the house where they’d been staying so that she could call for an ambulance even though she knew Katrine was dead. She hadn’t known what else to do. Through a veil of tears she’d seen the tidy collection of papers on the telephone table: Katrine’s birth certificate, her marriage license and passport, John’s affidavit that he could financially support her, the certified letter from the U.S. Army, her train ticket to the coast. Annaliese had been only a second away from picking up the phone when Katrine’s words from a few days earlier had suddenly echoed in her head.

  If only there were a way I could help you after I leave for America, Annaliese. I wish I knew of some place where you could hide where Rolf could never find you . . .

  She’d taken her hand off the phone at that moment and placed it on the little stack of documents. Blood from where window glass had cut her hand had spattered onto the table.

  If only there were a way.

  She had looked down at her feet and the purse that she had grabbed from the car. Katrine’s purse. Hers had been nowhere in sight and its contents were scattered in the brush in every direction. But she had for some reason taken Katrine’s purse when she staggered back to the house in the gathering dark, weeping.

  If only there were a way.

  When the car was discovered with the body inside, the only identifying factors would be Annaliese’s passport and purse. The car would be traced back to this house and Katrine’s grandfather, who was in India on business.

  Eventually the police would figure out that it was Katrine’s body they’d found in the car, which meant the woman who’d checked into Tidworth and boarded a ship for America couldn’t possibly be Katrine. Perhaps it wouldn’t be until Rolf arrived to identify the body that her little ruse would end. How long would that take? If the car wasn’t discovered right away, it could take several days at least. They would have to find Rolf first. And then they would have to find Katrine’s grandfather somewhere in Calcutta.

  If only there were a way.

  The next second Annaliese was stuffing her suitcase with her belongings.

  • • •

  BREAKFAST AT TIDWORTH WAS A PLATE OF WATERY EGGS, PALE sausage, and toast. The servers at supper the evening before had been Italian prisoners of war, but that morning when the war brides sat down at the long tables, fair-haired German captives, most of them teenagers with only fuzz for whiskers, waited on them. Annaliese knew Hitler had been desperate for fresh troops at the close of the war; he hadn’t cared how old they were. She kept her voice low when she spoke, but it didn’t take long for one of the servers who was refilling coffee cups to hear the German inflection in her English words. The young man leaned toward her, his whispered voice tense with anxiety and his gaze pleading for pity.

  “Bitte helf mir. Bitte?” he begged. “Ich wollte nicht kaempfen. Ich wurde gezwungen. Ich hatte keine Wahl. Bitte? Ich will zu meiner Familie!”

  In an instant the other conversations at the table stilled. Women who had been eating or spooning food into their children’s mouths stopped to gape at them both. At the far end of the table the French woman stared, an eyebrow crooked in displeasure.

  Annaliese looked away from the young man as an army officer strode forward from the corner of the room where he’d been observing the prisoners at their tasks.

  “You!” the off
icer yelled. “Back away from that woman!”

  “Bitte!” the boy continued to plead at her side. “Ich hatte keine Wahl! Ich will meine Mutter!”

  “I can’t help you,” Annaliese murmured in English, without looking at him.

  “She’s Belgian!” Phoebe said to the German man, pointing to Annaliese with her butter knife.

  “Ich will meine Mutter!” the young man yelled as the officer gripped him by the shoulders and pulled him away from Annaliese.

  “You’d think they’d put those Germans where we couldn’t see them after all they’d done!” a red-haired woman said to her tablemate.

  “How hard would it have been to give that job to a poor East Ender rather than the likes of ’im,” said another as the German man was dragged away, tears now streaming down his face.

  Annaliese couldn’t keep herself from watching as the German lad was taken from the room. A woman in a Red Cross uniform asked Annaliese if she was all right. Had the prisoner hurt her? Said anything that upset her? Did she need to speak to someone about it?

  “I’m fine. Thank you,” she answered. The Red Cross woman patted her shoulder and moved away. Several seconds ticked by before the women around them began eating again.

  Phoebe tore off a piece of toast and handed it to Douglas, who sat on her lap. “What did he want?” she asked softly.

  “He just wants to go home.” Annaliese took a bite of eggs so that she couldn’t answer any more questions.

  Minutes later the dishes were cleared away and the women were told to remain at the tables for an important announcement about their upcoming sailing date. Animated conversations popped up around the room, and a sense of excitement permeated the air.

  Let it be soon, let it be soon, Annaliese whispered to herself.

  A Red Cross matron with a clipboard in her hand stepped to a microphone at the head of the hall. She touched it lightly and the sound of her tapping echoed in the room.

  “All right, if I could have your attention, please, ladies.” She waited as the chattering at the tables quieted. “With just a couple of exceptions here, you’re all cleared for departure tomorrow morning.”

  Cheers and applause erupted all around the tables.

  Phoebe turned to Annaliese. “Isn’t that splendid! We’re leaving tomorrow!”

  But Annaliese could only smile wanly. The woman had mentioned there were a few exceptions. Exceptions.

  “I am pleased to tell you that at ten o’clock tomorrow morning you will be boarding the RMS Queen Mary for your passage to America.”

  A deafening peal of delighted shrieks exploded in the hall.

  “The Queen Mary, Katrine!” Phoebe said, squeezing Douglas tight. “We’re going on the Queen Mary!”

  Annaliese nodded absently. She knew of the Queen Mary. She knew it was England’s gem cruise liner, bigger and more opulent than even the Titanic had been. But that did not matter to her.

  Who were the exceptions? She willed the woman at the microphone to tell her.

  But the matron read off a list of instructions about luggage and baby cots and telegrams to husbands.

  Who are the exceptions?

  The woman at last finished reading off the many details, and she turned the page on her clipboard. “Now if these three ladies could please stay behind a moment. I need a word with you. The rest of you are dismissed.”

  Annaliese closed her eyes.

  “Molly Templeton, Frannie Belinsky, and Eleanor DiMarco, if you could please come see me at the lectern, please.”

  She snapped her eyes open. The woman had stepped away from the microphone. She was done reading names.

  Annaliese wasn’t one of the exceptions.

  “Come on, Katrine! Let’s go see if we can room together on the ship!” Phoebe tugged at her arm.

  She rose from the table relieved, but her heart was thumping in her chest.

  Thirteen

  From the time she was seven Annaliese had only ever wanted to be a ballerina.

  She fell in love with the way dancers made a story come alive while watching Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. It was a concession of sorts, taking a seven-year-old to the ballet for her birthday. Her father, Gunter Lange, hadn’t minded his daughter’s interest in so rich a cultural distinction as the ballet if that fascination eventually led to higher pursuits. Annaliese was Gunter and Louisa Lange’s sole child, whom they’d had later in life. Gunter believed his daughter should grow up making financially astute choices. There surely was no monetary security in a dancing career, but wealthy people were often generous patrons of the arts and frequently attended what they supported monetarily. Annaliese’s birthday wish to see a ballet had been an opportunity to mingle with Cologne’s affluent. If their daughter’s interest in dance continued, that was something that could possibly be used to their favor as well as hers.

  The Langes lived in a town called Prüm, just minutes away from the Belgian border and an hour and a half by train to Cologne. Her father was a banker, as all his family had been, and her mother kept the house, socialized with the other wives of influential men in Prüm, shopped for pretty things, and insisted that Annaliese endeavor to be just what Louisa was—comfortably married to a man of means who was respected, if not envied, by his peers.

  Gunter wanted all that and more for Annaliese. To be comfortably wealthy was not enough for his daughter. He wanted her to be in Frankfurt or Munich or Hamburg, not in some quiet little hamlet near the Belgian border. The Great War had left most of Germany in economic ruin; only the already rich could survive another financial crisis were one to come. And wealth tended to be found in the cities.

  Annaliese returned home from Swan Lake transfixed by all things ballet. Louisa promptly enrolled her in a dance class taught by a retired prima ballerina—despite the studio being half an hour’s drive away in Winterspelt—because the instructor came so highly recommended. Madame Nardin had danced for twenty-five years with a prestigious company in Vienna. The woman had connections, even though she’d been out of the circuit for more than a decade. If the lessons were going to pay off in the long run, it had made sense to Louisa to make the once-a-week drive.

  Katrine Dumont had been the first and only friend Annaliese made in ballet class and not just because the two girls looked like they could be sisters: both had the same honey-brown hair, hazel eyes, slender nose, and rosebud mouth. The others in the class had been taking lessons since they were four and five, including Katrine, who lived with her grandparents over the Belgian border in St. Vith. The steps and exercises didn’t come easy to Annaliese, and while the other girls snickered when Madame tsked and forcibly placed Annaliese’s clumsy limbs into the correct positions, Katrine watched with tender concern. She showed Annaliese how to do what Madame wanted when their teacher wasn’t looking. Madame joked from the very beginning that the only way she could tell the two girls apart was when they were at the barre, and then it was painfully obvious which one was which.

  After every class, Annaliese’s mother would ask Madame how her daughter was getting along, and when Madame would answer that Annaliese needed to practice at home or concentrate more or stop biting her nails or eat less strudel, Louisa would spend the half-hour ride home reminding her daughter how important it was that she try harder and that there was no reason to pay for the lessons if she wasn’t going to take them seriously.

  Ballet was harder than she thought it would be. Still, Annaliese loved it, and she loved having a friend who looked so much like her to be so good at it, and so willing to help. The first time Annaliese was invited to Katrine’s house, Louisa had said no, partly because Katrine lived across the border—albeit in the German-speaking part of Belgium—partly because she was an orphan living with grandparents, and partly because the girl was half-British. Katrine had been just a toddler when her English mother and Belgian father had been killed in a disastrous train derailme
nt outside Cambridge. Her father’s grieving parents, André and Helene Dumont, took her in, since Katrine’s maternal grandfather traveled too much to raise his granddaughter. She spoke both French and German as well as some self-taught English. Katrine had wanted to connect with her mother’s British roots, and her grandparents had bought recordings of English lessons to satisfy that curiosity.

  Annaliese believed all of these details about Katrine’s life to be tragically fascinating, but her mother was disconcerted by her daughter’s enthrallment with the look-alike girl in her ballet class. There was nothing to be gained by encouraging a friendship with the orphaned half-Belgian, half-English classmate. But Katrine persisted in inviting Annaliese over to her house, and Annaliese persisted in asking for permission to go. Katrine eventually figured out that Louisa desperately wanted Annaliese to do well in ballet class. When at last Katrine said that Annaliese could come home with her and practice their dances, Louisa relented somewhat. She allowed the girls to get together after class, but at Annaliese’s house, not Katrine’s. Class was on Saturday mornings, and often after that, Katrine would stay overnight and her grandfather would come for her the next day.

  It wasn’t hard for Louisa to see that despite Katrine’s unfortunate circumstances, the girl was a natural on the dance floor, and Annaliese responded well to her mentoring. In time, she allowed Annaliese to visit Katrine’s house, but never overnight. They were soon best friends, despite the border that separated their two countries and the disparate aspirations of the people raising them. While the Langes wanted wealth and stability for their daughter, André and Helene merely wished for Katrine a future without heartache in it.

  As the years went on and the girls matured both in age and technique, they performed in the same shows, attended the same dance camps, and auditioned for the same roles. Annaliese was never the natural that Katrine was, but she had a disciplined style that occasionally won her roles that Katrine was not offered.