War Brides

by Helen Bryan

If the girls were in either place, they would eventually fall into German hands, if they were not in German hands already. It was only a matter of time before they died or were sent to one of the larger concentration camps as his son had been—and his younger children. So, he rationalized, it wouldn’t matter if he informed the doctor of their existence and that of their parents. All he could think of was bread.

  He knew that Dr. Joseph’s wife had been taken to the women’s camp. The inmate had seen her there across the wire. She was emaciated and probably tubercular, but she was alive.

  To ease his conscience, the inmate weighed up the advantages to the Josephs. If he told the doctor about them and their daughters, the authorities would soon find the girls if they were in a French camp. They would be brought to Auschwitz without delay and the Josephs would be reunited in one of the cells in the medical-experiments block.

  He knew that there was no hope for anyone in this place of horror, but for a little while the Joseph family would be together, and as subjects of medical experiments they would be given soup and porridge, maybe even an onion or some boiled cabbage. And he himself would have extra bread…

  So he would not be increasing the Josephs’ suffering if he exchanged the information for bread. Quite the opposite. For a time their lives would be better. Until the end. He did not think too long about what always happened in the end.

  He would do it.

  As the prisoners shuffled out of the door to empty their buckets of dirty water, the last inmate paused in front of the doctor’s assistant and asked permission to speak. He had information that parents of twin girls were here in camp and that the children could be traced.

  The doctor listened and made notes in his precise handwriting. He smiled. He would give the order for extra bread when he had all four of the subjects safely in his laboratory. But that would not take long. Given the Fuhrer’s interest in the project, he would soon have the Joseph children if they were at Drancy, at Gurs, or even in the vicinity of the displaced persons’ camp. Meanwhile he ordered the Joseph parents brought to the experimental wing and given blankets and soup.

  24.

  Crowmarsh Priors,

  January–May 1942

  When Frances went away over Christmas and stayed away for weeks afterward, Oliver missed her. When he saw she had returned his heart lifted. After morning service on that first Sunday, he kept hold of her hand while he asked if what he had heard was true, that she had been assigned to some committee in London.

  “Yes. Land Girl welfare thing. Father’s volunteered me.” Frances rolled her eyes. “You can imagine the sort of thing—are we doing enough to keep Land Girls’ spirits up, encouraging their moral welfare? We need to keep them on the straight and narrow, apparently. Especially now that the Americans have arrived with, um, all sorts of things like chocolate and Coca-Cola. Some of the girls are being—er—led astray.”

  “If there’s any pastoral assistance I can give, if I can be any help at all,” he said earnestly, still holding her hand, “please let me know.”

  Frances dropped her eyes. “Thank you. It’s good to know I—we—can call on you.”

  Frances had been told to use the Land Girl Welfare Committee as cover to explain her absences. It was part of an agent’s work, but she hated lying as she gazed into Oliver’s clear brown eyes. Honesty was so deeply engrained in him that it would never occur to him to lie about anything. What would he think of her if he knew?

  Her thoughts turned to the mock exercise she had been assigned. It was the final test for all recruits, and Frances had been hoping for something daring, such as blowing up a target under the noses of the authorities. Instead, she had been sent home to Crowmarsh Priors and ordered to carry on as a Land Girl, but do keep a close surveillance on the de Balforts and to make regular reports of any of their friends and acquaintances who visited. It was very tedious indeed: there were no longer any visitors at Gracecourt. Also, it would be uncomfortable to make ostensibly social calls herself to keep Hugo and Leander under surveillance, particularly as it involved seeing Hugo, whom she would much rather avoid. Worse, Oliver might get the idea that she was encouraging him—as indeed might Leander and, above all, Hugo himself. Frances, who had always cut up rough at the slightest hint of discipline and having to do what she disliked, thought “Bloody hell!” But she bit her lip and followed orders.

  Meanwhile Frances, Evangeline, Elsie, and Alice were determined not to let Tanni down. Evangeline said the plan was no more outlandish than other plans that had worked. No one thought to ask her what she was talking about. Elsie was still beside herself over the loss of her mother, Jem, and Violet, and for her, fighting the Germans was personal now. She took out her fury on the rats, but she had plenty to spare. Even Bernie was alarmed by the new steely glint in Elsie’s eye.

  Only cautious Alice held back: she said the plan had been conceived in a moment of drunken madness, and she was sorry, but really, they must see it was completely irresponsible…

  The other three gave her no peace, and finally Frances exercised her considerable powers of persuasion: “Alice, darling, of course you’re right, and perhaps it is rather daring, but what else can we do? We might be sentencing the children to death if we do nothing! Do we want that on our consciences? Anyway, we’re friends—one for all and all for one, as we used to say at school.” She had used the motto freely during her school days, when she was inciting her friends to wild escapades that had invariably landed everyone in trouble. Alice, on the other hand, had been a model pupil. “We can’t possibly do it without you,” Frances urged. “You are indispensable, Alice! You’re the only one who can find the tunnel!”

  “Oh, all right,” said Alice finally, against her better judgment but worn down by flattery. She had never been included in the “one for all” thing at school, never had friends, and never felt in the thick of things. She only hoped they would not all be arrested.

  “Besides, we need your good sense, Alice, to keep us steady!”

  Alice suppressed a little smile. She could quite see that. She felt important already.

  Oliver was startled when Alice told him that she, Frances, Evangeline, and Elsie had decided to tidy the appallingly overgrown churchyard. Faith manifested itself in the most unexpected ways, he thought.

  From his study he watched in amazement as they tackled the area around the Great War monument first, where it was just possible to see that a patch of ground was now bare near eight new graves, all with jam jars of snowdrops propped against homemade markers. Elsewhere, only a few weathered headstones were visible above the blanket of nettles, brambles, Virginia creeper, and ivy that had taken hold, then climbed up the sides of the church and the squat bell tower.

  Alice unearthed a pair of rusty clippers from a drawer in the vestry, and as a miserable January gave way to an even colder and wetter February, Oliver grew used to seeing one or another hacking away when she had an hour to spare and it wasn’t too dark to see what she was doing. Alice came after school when she didn’t have a knitting session, a first aid course, or air raid warden work, or on Saturday mornings after she had sat with her mother for a bit. Evangeline nipped in for a few moments snatched between the children, the garden, the chickens, and her hunting expeditions. Even Elsie surprised him by stamping into the church in her work boots demanding, “Where’s them clipper things, then?” Frances came on Sunday afternoons, when the Land Girls were off duty. Oliver offered to help her once or twice, but she had said no, firmly, she knew what she was doing.

  Sitting at his desk now trying to compose his thoughts for a Lenten sermon, his attention drifted to Frances, who was there now. He watched her slim figure bending, clipping, and tugging. She paused occasionally to swear when she ran a thorn into her hand. She had a neat waist, he thought, and a pretty shape even in those trousers and that baggy jersey. The thought made him smile. He did not think of himself as a man who noticed women’s figures…

  Bruno came home on unexpected leave for a f
ew days at the end of February, and Tanni, though happy to see him, was nervous lest she give something away and was almost relieved when he left.

  Progress in the graveyard stopped when it snowed heavily in early March. When it finally thawed Elsie stomped in with her case of cyanide and pushed about in the undergrowth. “Huntin’ rats,” she said to Oliver.

  “Don’t rats do most damage where food’s stored? Pantries and barns?” asked Oliver, puzzled. “Do you find many in churchyards?”

  “Everywhere, rats are, you’d never credit it,” Elsie the expert assured him. “Burrow around, rats do, graves an’ that. You want to get them in the spring, er, when they’re nestin’, you know. ’Scuse me, must get on. P’raps people ought to keep out of the churchyard on account of the danger.”

  “Well, no one’s ever been attacked by rats here,” said Oliver mildly.

  “But there’s poison and ’orrible traps and such like all over, ’idden. Cyanide! Very dangerous, cyanide. Don’t want any of the kiddies gettin’ hurt. Or poisoned and dyin’ a ’orrible deaf,” said Elsie darkly.

  “Oh dear! I’ll put up a notice.”

  By the end of March the strain was wearing Tanni down. Rachel had written to her with a brief update that, if their information was correct, the Germans were sending large numbers of children to Auschwitz. Now that Germany and America were at war, the American Quakers in charge of the relief work in southwest France were being arrested, and the helpful American consul in Marseille had been recalled. Rachel was doing what she could to find someone in Gurs who could verify that twins reportedly living on a distant farm were Lili and Klara, but the weeks went by with no word.

  One day Evangeline returned from London to tell Frances that a colonel in the Free French had agreed that, for a price, the Resistance would transport the children, if they could be found, along one of the rescue lines used for the RAF. However, they might not be willing to do it until midsummer when farm vehicles and loads of straw would make it easier to hide two children and move them across France to Brittany.

  Then out of the blue Richard wrote to say that he had a fortnight’s leave at the end of April. He and Evangeline would go to the coast and have a proper holiday.

  The others were thrilled for her. “This will stop you moping, darling!” exclaimed Frances.

  But Evangeline seemed oddly subdued at the prospect, though the others bustled round to help her get ready.

  Frances took a critical look and said, “Really, Evangeline, you have rather let yourself go.”

  Evangeline was surprised when Tanni voiced her agreement. Her English had improved as her confidence had grown, and she sat a protesting Evangeline down in the kitchen and trimmed her unruly tumble of dark hair with the sewing scissors. “Much better! I know you don’t care how you look, Evangeline, but think of his morale!” she exclaimed, admiring her handiwork. “Now for your nails!” She handed Evangeline the nailbrush. Later she cut up an old pillowcase to make a fresh collar and cuffs for Evangeline’s least shabby frock.

  Frances ransacked Glebe House for something suitable to give Evangeline and came up with two precious sets of lace-trimmed silk knickers and chemises. It was now against clothing regulations to use silk or sew lace on underwear, but Frances said she didn’t see how anyone could check. Evangeline protested she had everything she needed, but Frances overrode her. “Darling, it’s practically your honeymoon. You had no time together after you got married because Richard went straight off to sea. Women’s underwear these days is too gray and dreary and dreadful for words. Sometimes I can’t bring myself to wear it at all.”

  “Frances!”

  “Well, I can’t—it scratches dreadfully. And here’s a hat, a rather fetching one, I think! You’re not to meet Richard in that disgraceful old trilby that belonged to his father.” Frances presented her with a hatbox. “And gloves. They were Aunt Muriel’s, and she’d had them since the Flood, but at least they’re kid. Here’s a pair of stockings—and a petticoat.” Tanni tucked the nightdress and peignoir Frances had given her into Evangeline’s case, with a bottle of whiskey from Bernie, sent via Elsie, who was going to move into the Fairfax house and help Tanni with Maude, Tommy, and Kipper while Evangeline was away.

  Evangeline thanked them all, but said, “I really shouldn’t be leaving you with so much work…”

  “You’d think she had honeymoon nerves,” said Frances to Alice. “Don’t people get over those?”

  “How would I know?” snapped Alice.

  Next morning, with Richard’s train due at eight, everyone but Alice gathered in the Fairfax hall waiting for Evangeline to come downstairs, to make sure she had not backslid when getting dressed. They were all surprised how smart and trim she looked. She glanced at her reflection in the hall mirror—a sleek, dark-eyed stranger stared back, one she hadn’t seen even when she met Laurent in London, an Evangeline she had thought she had left behind her the night she ran away. She blew a kiss to them all, picked up her suitcase, and set off for the station, leaving five-year-old Kipper in a howling tantrum because she was going away. Elsie had to put him in a headlock to keep him from running after her.

  She walked slowly, but she was still too early for the train. She waited nervously on the platform, listening for it and trying to remember what Richard looked like.

  When it pulled in, a tall naval captain got off. Evangeline waved and walked slowly toward him. “Richard?”

  His weather-beaten face broke into a smile and he came striding toward her.

  “Darling! You’re even more ravishing than I remembered!” He swept off his cap and kissed her hard right in front of Albert, then swept her up and swung her round in a bear hug on the platform until she was breathless. The hat Frances had lent her went flying. “Richard, put me down!” Evangeline gasped but couldn’t help laughing. He did so and took her case, then Evangeline repinned her hat and smiled nervously at him as they waited for the next train. He seemed older than she remembered and exuded command.

  He put an arm round her and looked down hungrily at her upturned face. “I keep thinking you’ll disappear like you do in my dreams.”

  “Nonsense!”

  They stepped into a carriage and Richard swung Evangeline’s case into the overhead rack, then made sure she had the window seat. He checked their tickets and put them into his pocket. He had made all the arrangements for their holiday. Evangeline sat back in her seat with a magazine he had brought her, unsure what to do with herself, but thinking what a novelty it was to be looked after.

  “Every day I think how brave you are to be in England, my darling, when you might be safe in America with your family.”

  “No,” she said quickly, “I don’t want to be there, I want to be here.”

  “I’m a lucky man. Now,” he said, taking her hand firmly, “letters are all very well, but lots don’t get through, and then there’s the censor. You can’t imagine how I’ve longed to hear about everything you’ve been doing at home.”

  Evangeline had dreaded being cooped up for two weeks by the sea with a man who was almost a stranger, and at first, with Richard watching her so intently, she could only smile stiffly and give brief answers. She mustn’t think of Laurent—she must put him out of her mind for now! But it was evident Richard really wanted to hear all about her and Crowmarsh Priors, and in the effort of telling him, somehow, her reserve melted and she began to relax. When she was with Laurent she was always on edge, wrestling with jealousy or worried about what he was doing with the Free French. After their lovemaking, they talked about Paris or the band: he was preoccupied with his own precarious existence, less and less interested in Evangeline’s life in a small English village, with her garden and the evacuees.

  By the time they arrived at the guesthouse, Evangeline felt that the fortnight would be manageable. It was clean and comfortable, and the gray-haired lady who ran it had a son in the navy. She gave the Fairfaxes her best room, decorated in a faded toile print, with a sea view and a four-pos
ter bed. She winked at Evangeline and said that most nights she could manage “a nice bit of fish” for them if they should fancy a quiet supper in.

  The nice bit of fish often turned out to be a lobster or a boiled crab, which she served them in the small parlor, on a table laid by the fire with the blackout curtains drawn. Every night Richard asked if Evangeline wouldn’t prefer to go out to a restaurant or a nightclub, but she insisted she was most comfortable curled up next to him on the sofa, listening to the wireless and chatting, much nicer than a smoky, noisy nightclub, she thought. She spent most of her time with Laurent in places like that.

  Richard didn’t want to talk about life at sea. He wanted to know about everyday things in the village and was entertained by Evangeline’s tales of Tanni and Johnny and of Anna being born in Lady Marchmont’s morning room and of how Evangeline went hunting on the de Balforts’ land because it was so hard to manage on rations and there were still pheasant and rabbits to be had, and even wild ducks on the ornamental lake. Fortunately the gamekeeper had died, so she hadn’t been caught.

  “Poaching! You?” Richard roared with laughter. She told him how Kipper trailed after her like a puppy, about Elsie and the rat catching, and how Lady Marchmont had tried to marry off Alice to the vicar and Frances to Hugo.

  A shadow crossed Richard’s face at the mention of Alice. “Darling, I have a confession to make. I’m afraid I was once terribly unkind to Alice. We were engaged. Then somehow, when I met you, that was it for me. I was bewitched or something.”

  Evangeline put her hand across his lips. “Ssh. I know. I hadn’t been in Crowmarsh Priors long before Lady Marchmont was dropping hints, and I soon figured out why Alice hated me. But…nothing that happened to either of us before matters now,” she said, suddenly wishing it could be true. Everything was just so…so normal, so happy with Richard.

  They went for walks. After so long at sea, Richard noticed everything, was thrilled to see the first crocuses and daffodils. And every night they made love in the big four-poster. Evangeline was shy at first, but to her surprise it was wonderful. Richard paid as much attention to her in bed as he did out of it, and night after night she lay happily by his side after he had fallen asleep, feeling oddly content and secure. The nightmares disappeared. When she guiltily tried to conjure up Laurent’s face she found she couldn’t, so she curled up against Richard and laid her cheek on his shoulder and went to sleep.