by Milly Adams
At last Bryony found her voice. ‘Why not fetch Eddie, April, if he is up and at it yet?’ She held out her hand to Mr Torrence. ‘Would you like to come in?’ He freed his hand from around his briefcase and shook hers. She had expected a clammy, weak handshake but it was surprisingly firm, warm and hearty.
Mrs Sanderson had regained her position at his side. He said, ‘Thank you, Mrs Sanderson. Your presence will not be required now that you have delivered me safely. I will order a taxi, or take the bus back to my office.’ He turned his attention back to Bryony. ‘I hope that you can spare the time to discuss the matter forthwith. I think that would be best for all concerned.’
‘Indeed it would.’ Bryony’s voice was firm, and grim.
Stubby Baines yanked Mrs Sanderson’s arm, pulling her with him as he began to lead his milk cart away from the steps. ‘You’d best be chuntering your big arse on back to your little cottage too, Dilly Sanderson. You always did have a beak to match your buttocks, and loved poking it in where it wasn’t wanted. You best get yonself back and tend that poor old boy of a husband of yours. Unless the darned old devil ’as made a break for it while you’re ’ere flashing yon knickers. Could send ’em for parachutes, you could.’
The wheels of the milk cart crunched their way down the drive, drowning out Mrs Sanderson’s reply as she walked alongside. Mr Torrence sighed as he looked after them. ‘One does meet all sorts . . .’
‘Indeed one does.’ Bryony led him into the kitchen, to be met by Eddie, wagging his walking stick at Mr Torrence. ‘That child’s not setting one foot in any children’s home.’
Mr Torrence placed his briefcase on the table, and undid the straps. ‘Probably not,’ he said. ‘May I sit?’
‘You may,’ said April, taking a place at the table. The others followed. April removed Eddie’s walking stick from his hand and passed it to Bryony, who felt she would use it herself if Mr Torrence even suggested that Cissie should be removed from their care.
He withdrew a file from his briefcase, and from this he extracted an envelope. ‘We received this in the first post. Clearly Miss Jenkins’s solicitor was informed immediately of the accident, and managed to catch the evening post. This—’ He waved the documents he had removed from the envelope. ‘This makes clear Miss Jenkins’s wishes, which are that Cissie is to remain in your care, Miss Miller. In effect, that you adopt her, and I see from the notes that you have a copy of this same letter.’
He placed the other documents on the table and waved the letter. He coughed. ‘May I trouble you for a glass of water?’
April shook her head. ‘The kettle’s simmering. I’m sure you’d like to share our first brew of the day – fresh tea leaves, in other words.’
Mr Torrence’s face cleared. ‘How very kind. Mrs Sanderson was diligent enough to telephone our office the moment it opened, so I had to scamper here. She means well.’
‘No, she doesn’t,’ Eddie muttered.
Mr Torrence seemed to nod, but perhaps it was a trick of the light.
‘At this present time, regretfully I cannot rubber-stamp your adoption, Miss Miller.’
He steepled his hands beneath his chin, and looked from one to the other. April brought the tea to the table. Bryony leaned forward. ‘Why the hell not?’
April warned, ‘Bryony.’
Eddie slapped the table. ‘Why?’
‘Miss Miller is unmarried.’
‘But engaged.’ April poured the tea, putting the tea leaves caught by the strainer back in the pot when she had finished. Mr Torrence nodded at her offer of milk. ‘But presently unmarried.’
‘Adam’s at sea, we haven’t managed to combine our leave yet. This can’t be happening, I will not let you take our Cissie. It’s not what her mother wanted.’
Mr Torrence was reading the documents again. April sipped her tea, her eyes on Bryony. Does she think I’m going to rip his throat out with my bare hands? Bryony wondered. She reached for Eddie’s walking stick. April shook her head. Bryony almost laughed. She was only going to rest her hand on it, wasn’t she? Suddenly she wasn’t sure, because no piece of paper would separate her from that child. A child who wanted to fly, and Bryony was going to teach her. And what about her three friends, who made up an indissoluble gang?
Mr Torrence pulled at his lower lip, and replaced the papers on the table. ‘My thoughts are that Miss Miller, together with Mr and Mrs Standing, act as foster parents to Celia Jenkins until such time as Miss Miller ties the knot, as it were. So, there will be no hurry to do so. We don’t want to rush anything through. Rather too much of that going on in the world today, and too many people will look at one another over the breakfast table when peace arrives, wondering quite how they will manage to stagger on together until they die.’
He looked round at the three of them, and grinned, widely. ‘I suspect that Mr Sanderson had much the same feeling when he returned from the trenches, don’t you?’
That afternoon, when the children returned from school, they all trooped into the kitchen, their faces down to their knees because Agnes had asked Cissie where she’d be living now that her sister was dead.
Bryony blessed Mr Torrence when she explained the situation and the children rushed out to the cottage to tell Catherine and Anne, who they knew would have been worried. Bryony hadn’t even cast a thought in the direction of the two women, but to the children, Combe Lodge and its inhabitants were their world. ‘Thank God for Combe,’ she murmured.
April brought biscuits over to the table. ‘Yes, we are so lucky that we have somewhere to come home to. Do you find it makes a difference, dearest Bee?’
Bee looked around the kitchen, the dresser with its chipped plates and paintwork, the children’s drawings on the wall, just as once there had been hers and Hannah’s. ‘It keeps me sane. It, and all of us, is why I go on. I can’t bear the thought of jackboots tramping through our garden, our house. We’re so damned lucky, so far, and I’ll go down fighting for it.’
April put her arms around her. ‘No one is going down on my watch, so no need for the dramatics.’
Bryony thought of Jersey. ‘What’s happening to them, d’you think, April? Will they survive and how will they be, if they do?’
‘I don’t know, and what about Hannah? She betrayed you and my son when you went to fetch her. I’m not sure I can ever forgive her, can you?’
‘I can’t afford to think about it.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
September 1942
Jersey
Hannah adjusted her face mask, watching Sister Maria as she palpated the extended abdomen of the woman who was ten days overdue, before listening to the heartbeat through the fetoscope.
‘Well, Mrs Myers, you have a baby in a hurry at last, my dear. It won’t be long until you meet one another. Now, I wonder if you will allow student nurse Hannah Miller to feel your abdomen and listen to the heartbeat. She’s starting her nursing course, with the ultimate aim of being a midwife. We’ll just hope that it’s accredited at the end of the war. Either way, we need her. There does seem to be a rise in the birth rate, but what else is there to do, I suppose, of an evening?’
Mrs Myers and Hannah laughed in surprise. Sister Maria said, ‘I wasn’t always a nun, you know. So can our Hannah learn a little today?’
Mrs Myers nodded. ‘She can do what she likes, as long as the little devil gets on and comes out. Lazy, like his dad, seems to me.’
Sister Maria and Staff Nurse Williams laughed while Hannah took the wooden fetoscope and listened. Sure enough, there was a steady heartbeat. Sister Maria then examined Mrs Myers ‘down below’ and announced to Staff Nurse Williams, ‘Ah, two fingers dilated.’
Hannah looked at the clock. It was almost midday. ‘By teatime?’
‘I think so,’ Sister Maria agreed. She took her patient by the hand. ‘Our Miss Miller has a knack for picking the right delivery time. If I weren’t who I was I’d have a bet on it, but I dare say Staff Nurse Williams will be chalking it up on
the board.’
Again there was laughter, but another contraction began and Mrs Myers grimaced, twisting and turning. Hannah said, ‘Try to concentrate on breathing. It helps.’
Mrs Myers gripped Sister Maria’s hand tightly, and gasped, ‘Easy enough to say when you’re not going through it, isn’t it, Sister? You wait until you’re married with a brood of your own, young lady.’
Hannah looked down at the hand that squeezed Sister Maria’s, and the wedding ring. How lucky. She stopped herself. No, not lucky – how sensible, how wise. Staff Nurse Williams called from the doorway. ‘Time for your break, Hannah. I’m chalking the time up on the common-room board, so, Mrs Myers, be a good girl and produce at five, and I’ll share my winnings with you.’
‘How much?’
‘A couple of eggs from the henhouse at the back.’
‘Ah, and there I was thinking it would change my life. So an egg each, eh?’
Again there was laughter.
Hannah patted Mrs Myers’s leg. ‘I’ll be back soon.’
She slipped downstairs to the kitchen. Mrs Amos was drinking tea. When she saw Hannah she waved her to a seat. ‘Have a cuppa, and then get off and send little Elizabeth a big kiss from me. How is the little soul?’
‘Very well, and trying to walk.’ She forced herself to smile. ‘I’m knitting a cardigan which I’ll leave on the wall as usual.’
The tea was weak, but it didn’t matter. Mrs Amos pushed across one of the biscuits she’d baked.
‘I think Sister Maria wants to talk to you. It’s been a year, and there have been no children taken by the Germans.’ Mrs Amos put up a hand. ‘I know the poor wretched prisoners they’re bringing to build the fortifications say that the Germans have taken children from their areas into Germany, but this has not happened here. Elizabeth needs you, your aunt too.’
Hannah finished her tea. ‘I’m still frightened.’
Mrs Amos sighed. ‘I know, my dear, but how brave you’ve been, and how you have changed. But you cannot be as frightened as those poor prisoners who are made to work so hard. Like skeletons, they are. I put food out again last night as Sister Maria said I should. It’s all gone, and some of the lettuce was pulled in the night. I think they must come out to eat, and then go back. Poor beggars – there seems little point in trying to escape, because where can they go? We’re surrounded by water. But they do go on trying, and a very few are not recaptured. Presumably some islanders hide them?’
She looked at Hannah, who shook her head saying, ‘If so, how brave.’
Hannah took her cup and plate across to the sink and washed them. ‘The Germans are foul. On top of all that cruelty they’ve confiscated the radios again. They’ve shipped out Jews from Guernsey. They’ve deported most of those who aren’t islanders to camps on the Continent – the British, in other words. Thank heavens I’m an islander, so my daughter is too. I hate the Germans for all that they are doing.’ Not for the first time was she glad that Hans had gone. What if she had begun to feel like this when he was here? How could she and Elizabeth have escaped from that world?
Hannah put away the crockery, and wondered where the girl of old had gone, the one who thought of nothing but herself. Gone back into a time that knew no Elizabeth, the child she would die for and would protect with her last breath. A child who had taught her the value of others, and the shame of being the person she was.
She removed her white starched hat and cycled in the warmth of the mellow September. It was such a beautiful time of year. At Combe Lodge the perennials would be in the last stages of blooming, and had Bee’s box hedge survived? Had they been bombed? Was Bee flying? Were they even alive? There was so much she didn’t know, so much she didn’t deserve to know.
She kept to the right as a patrol guarding skeletal prisoners marched past. Had one of those prisoners come to the nursing home last night, was there a sort of sign that said where food could be found? Was it enough help to give them? Should they be doing more, should they be trying to hide them if they escaped?
But she was now a mother so . . .
The road curved left, then right, and sloped slightly downhill. She liked this bit, because she could soar towards Haven Farm, just as her heart felt it was doing. Hannah slowed as the farm came into sight. Her brakes screeched. She dismounted and pushed her bike down the track leading to the sties. She rested it against the wall. As she did so she heard a crash from one of the sties, a flash of movement where she knew no pig was housed. She turned away, retracing her steps. There had been patrols out, searching for escaped prisoners, prisoners with nowhere to go. She did not look back.
She walked along the road in front of the farm. Aunt Olive was weeding in the front garden, cutting down the lavender. Elizabeth was sitting on a rug, pulling at a hobby horse made out of one of Uncle Thomas’s old socks stuck on the end of a cut-down broom handle, with reins made of plaited wool. Hannah leaned on the gate and called across. ‘Hello there! Such a lovely morning.’
Aunt Olive heaved herself off her knees, and waved. ‘Elizabeth, it’s someone to see you.’ She whispered, ‘It’s Mummy.’
Hannah’s daughter crawled across the lawn. Hannah said, ‘It’s a gee-gee.’ Elizabeth sat up, and said, ‘Mama.’
Aunt Olive handed Hannah a paper bag. ‘Lavender heads. They will be nice in the delivery room, and your own bedroom. But please come and live here now, with us, this has gone on too long. No one has taken any notice, no child has been removed.’
Hannah took the lavender, her eyes on Elizabeth. She shrugged. ‘I heard a noise from a sty. It’s dangerous, Aunt Olive, to give sanctuary to anyone. The Boche will take revenge on everyone living at the farm, including my child.’
Aunt Olive looked behind her, as though searching, but for whom? She picked up Elizabeth and brought her to Hannah. ‘You go to your mummy, because we have something to show her, haven’t we, but we mustn’t tell Uncle Thomas.’
Elizabeth put her finger to her lips and nodded, then nestled against Hannah, who pulled her close, rubbing her cheek against her hair. Together they walked through the farmyard to the sties, approaching quietly. Aunt Olive called, ‘It’s just us, no need to worry.’
Again Hannah felt a surge of alarm, and fury. How could her aunt jeopardise Elizabeth in this way? She stopped, turning back. But then she heard a bark. She swung back. Vicky, Uncle Thomas’s sheepdog had died three months ago.
Aunt Olive laughed. ‘Did you really think I’d put Elizabeth in danger, silly girl? It’s your uncle’s birthday present, a replacement for Vicky – well, two replacements. Brother and sister, they’ll be good working dogs.’ They approached, and peered in the doorway. Four eyes looked back, two sheepdog puppies tumbled out of the straw.
Hannah laughed, then fell quiet. ‘I was just wondering, you see, if those of us at the nursing home should do more. What if we took in an escapee and the Germans tracked him down? How many of us would be sent to a camp? We have children, what would happen to them?
Aunt Olive slipped her arm through Hannah’s and walked back. ‘I think that’s a problem too far, let’s concentrate on our own. You see, I was talking to Sister Maria the other day. I met her in St Helier, she thought I was looking tired, and I had to admit that I find a baby just too much. Old Davy does what he can to help Tommy and Clive, who has so far avoided deportation, but I really do need you here. More to the point, Elizabeth needs you. Come back here, Hannah, because we can and should establish a family, and yes, let’s prepare a fiction about her father for the authorities, should they ever ask. We could say he’s married to someone else, or some such.’
‘But . . .’
Aunt Olive carried on, ‘The German personnel is changing all the time, and I’m sure none remember you and Hans. The islanders are too tired, too hungry to care really, or most are and will have forgotten the relationship you had with him. The Jerry-bags they object to are those who flaunt their perfume, their “gains” like that silly Cheryl. Anyone who matters knows you h
ave turned a corner. You can still nurse, in fact we want you to, to provide for your own future. We think it’s marvellous and you’ve already been at it for nine months, so to leave would be a waste.’
Hannah moved Elizabeth to her other hip as they moved into the farmyard, and then the kitchen. ‘What about Uncle Thomas?’ She sat down at the table; the oilcloth was torn and faded.
‘He’d rather the family was together, now he’s seeing you really turning things around.’
Elizabeth clambered down to the floor and crawled to the playpen, hauling herself up on the bars. Aunt Olive said, ‘See, she’s really trying to walk. Soon nowhere will be safe.’ They laughed.
Hannah lifted Elizabeth into the playpen, where she played with bricks her uncle had carved out of wooden block ends and sanded smooth. The words ‘the family’ rang in her mind. The family. After all that had happened, he wanted the family together. She could have wept, but didn’t. Grown-ups didn’t weep at the drop of a hat.
She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, watching her daughter. There was such a look of Hans about her, but that didn’t mean that she was a Nazi, it meant she was a Miller, with an Aunt Bee who was as straight as a die, and a great-aunt who was a saint, as, too, was her great-uncle.
She stood, and said, ‘I’ll talk about it to Sister Maria. Now, I must go, I have a patient in labour.’
Hannah cycled back. Parking her bike at the rear of the home, she saw that the tool-shed door was ajar. As she watched, it slowly shut. She knew that beneath the shed there was a food store, for potatoes, carrots, and now sugar beet which was being grown to help out in the sugar shortage. She turned on her heel, realisation dawning. Doors didn’t close on their own, and the cellar was almost empty – or was it? So why was she was pontificating when others were actually doing something?
The September shadows were long, and lay across the vegetables. Trugs were piled up outside the back door. Nappies were waving in the breeze. She must bring them in before the dampness came down but she needed to see if Mrs Myers would produce at five, and there was Sarah Wallace who she thought would give birth at 3.22. She was to be in attendance.
