War on the Margins

by Libby Cone

  Lucy fainted and slid to the floor. Suzanne stood up.

  ‘I’ll get her some water.’

  Lung nodded. Suzanne got a glass of water and slowly introduced it to Lucy’s lips as she woke up. Lucy looked around, and then shot a look of pure and fiery love to Suzanne, who squeezed her hand and fought back tears. Then she stood up.

  ‘My sister has a bad heart. She needs her tablets.’

  ‘Very well, get them,’ was Lung’s reply.

  Suzanne ran upstairs and grabbed two bottles of sleeping pills, hiding one in her trouser pocket. She showed the other to Lung.

  ‘She needs two of these every night.’

  ‘We will see to it,’ he said, taking the bottle.

  Lucille and Suzanne sat, holding hands tightly, in the back of the big car, which smelled of cigarette smoke. Lung sat next to them. The unfamiliar officer drove. The car, doubtless requisitioned from one of Jersey’s wealthier citizens, purred down the road but still bounced them up and down over the yawning potholes that nobody troubled to fill in. On a particularly rough stretch, Suzanne pulled the top off the bottle in her pocket and emptied the pills into her hand. Feigning a cough, she pushed half the amount into her mouth and somehow managed to give Lucille the rest without Lung noticing. They sat there trying to swallow the bitter tablets with saliva without tipping-off the officers. A glance of triumph passed between them. Suzanne found herself thinking, of all things, of the Love-Death scene from Tristan and Isolde. She had never liked Wagner much, though Lucy did. Her body began to feel so heavy she did not know how she would get out of the car, but they both managed it when the unfamiliar officer (Lung called him ‘Sarmsen’) pulled into the drive of Gloucester Street Prison. Lucy exuded a calm that did not seem to have anything to do with the pills. She stood up straight, fighting the void, her blue eyes luminous.

  It was very late, and after a perfunctory check-in they were ushered into a cell with a mattress, where, rapidly becoming stuporous, they sank down, hands tightly joined, and awaited deliverance. Lucy tried to tell Suzanne that she hoped Suzanne felt as good about her life’s work as she, Lucille, did, but the words stuck on her thick tongue and she was content to melt into Suzanne’s side, smell her smell, and rob the Nazis of their latest prize.

  CHAPTER 49

  St Brelade, Jersey

  July 1944

  The tapping on the ceiling was unmistakable; the pattern that they had agreed upon to mean ‘Danger! Get out!’ Marlene’s blood froze. Lucille (she thought) tapped the pattern twice; then there was silence. It sounded as though they were in the front room, taking attention away from her to aid her escape. She grabbed the radio bag and tiptoed up the cellar stairs. She couldn’t see them. Muttering a silent prayer, she lifted her coat off its nail and slipped out the back door. She was in luck; the Geheime Feldpolizei had not surrounded the house but were simply entering by the front door. All the same, their arrest was likely.

  Head down, hands in her pockets, she walked slowly and in a roundabout way to the coastal road. Lucille and Suzanne, leaving nothing to chance, had drilled this procedure into her. It was so automatic that she could do it while at first numb, and then choked with grief and fear. It was a hot evening, and it didn’t look like rain. If she raised suspicion by wearing a coat, she was doomed. But these days, nobody asked too many questions or took the trouble to report anything; they were too busy trying to fill their bellies. There were plenty of people who walked around with looks of anguish; whose loved ones were in internment camps, whose children learned German on empty stomachs, who lived in fear of their own government officials, who had seen neighbours turn into thieves and traitors.

  Marlene walked down the road and tried to think without crying. She dared not go back for her bicycle. Her tea was long gone; she couldn’t use it for bribes. She did have some money, handkerchiefs, underwear, the cup. She did not know how long it was till curfew. She had to get to some kind of shelter before one of the Germans stopped her and demanded her papers; if he wouldn’t take a bribe, she would be arrested. Then what? She kept walking. Thin, grey, unhappy people were everywhere. Their outside source of food, France, had been cut off by the invasion of Normandy.

  She turned up a side street going away from the coast; she had to hide. She needed to find an abandoned building; she didn’t want to call attention to any of Lucille and Suzanne’s friends by showing up on their doorstep. In the fading light, a couple of miles up the road, near the fortifications and the labour camp, she saw an obviously abandoned farmhouse. It was dangerous to squat in these houses; the neighbours might inform on you, and the Germans might inspect it.

  She made her way to the back of the house, where the requisite shed stood, its door hanging crookedly from one hinge. This one was long and narrow; perhaps it had housed chickens. She stood still for a dangerously long time, looking at it. Her adult life had had two stages. The first, as a clerk in the Aliens Office, had been stable, if dull. Then had come the punctuation of an overnight stay in a chapel, then her emergence as Marlene, farmworker and Resistance member. Would this shed be another punctuation mark, or rather another incubator from which would emerge a third Marlene? She wanted to continue in the Resistance, but knew she had to lie very low now. Well, she was good at that.

  She sighed and walked up to the door, which opened out at a crazy angle. She walked in and closed the door behind her. One small window at each end allowed a smeary light. A heap of straw smelling of animal dung took up the floorspace to her left; on the right, a heap of rags took up a small amount of room. She kicked the straw, trying to see where the droppings were; there didn’t seem to be any, but it smelled so vile she decided to throw it out of the door. That done, she looked at the pile of rags. To her horror, it started to move. She screamed. A head popped out of the pile; it had wild hair and few teeth.

  ‘Please! Please! Quiet! Miss, please quiet!’

  It was a man with a foreign accent; it did not sound German, but she couldn’t stop shaking.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you were under there. I’ll leave. Don’t worry, I won’t say anything.’

  ‘You live here, miss?’ A scrawny leg extended from the pile.

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Why you come in here? Please, I do not hurt you.’ A hand followed.

  ‘I came in here to hide. They arrested the people I was staying with.’

  ‘Oh, that is bad. So you are hiding, too.’ Then, the formalities completed, ‘Do you have any food?’

  ‘No, uh, yes, uh, let me look.’ She felt in her pockets, which she had always kept replenished. She found some dried swede slices. She handed them to the man.

  ‘Oh, miss, thank you. I no eat for two days. You have for you, too.’

  ‘No, it’s all right. I ate today.’

  ‘No, miss, you take one.’

  ‘No, really. It’s all right. I, I’m too upset to eat it. You have it, please.’

  ‘Thank you again.’ The bony hand crammed the slices into the partly toothless mouth.

  ‘You’re welcome.’ She began to open the door. ‘I’m sorry I surprised you. I’ll go somewhere else.’ Where, she didn’t know. Her legs were shaking so hard she couldn’t walk much.

  ‘Wait, miss.’

  The man sat up; sitting, he finally looked like a human being and not like a collection of limbs and rags. He was very thin, with a complexion even more unhealthy than that of most of the half-starved Jerseymen. Marlene realised he must be an escaped prisoner from one of the notorious labour camps. She knew of the informal network of safe houses for them; lately many of them had been raided and the locals running them sent to different camps from the ones the British-born had been sent to. If they were anything like the slave labour camps on Jersey, they were nightmarish.

  ‘Wait, miss, please,’ he said again. ‘It is good here, is safe. Do you want water?’ He extended a stoppered bottle halffilled with water.

  ‘Thank you.’

 
She drank a few swallows, took a deep breath. She was still shaking. He took the bottle back and finished it.

  ‘Are you from the prison camp?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, miss. I escape from Lager Himmelman. It was very bad.’

  She knew that if his English vocabulary were more extensive, he would have chosen more – and different – words.

  ‘I stay at a lady’s house for six months, then they arrest her a few months ago.’

  His mouth twisted, and tears glistened in his eyes before he blinked them away.

  Her tears answered his. ‘I escaped from St Helier a few years ago; I stayed with two ladies for a long time. They were arrested this morning.’

  ‘Oh, miss, they are crazy animals! What is your name, miss?’

  ‘Marlene.’ She sat down beside him, trying to stop crying.

  ‘Marlene,’ he repeated, his accent making it sound like a different name. ‘I am Peter.’

  ‘Hello, Peter.’

  He began picking up stray rags.

  ‘Please, Marlene, take some for you.’

  She did not expect this. She did not know if she should be sharing a filthy shed with this scarecrow man. What should she be doing? If she declined his offer, and set out in search of another shed, she could be picked up. Without papers, with a radio (she couldn’t bear to part with it), she could wind up in a camp.

  She accepted the rags from him, flattened them on the floor, and sat down. They began to talk about food. Peter had been slipping out at night to steal or forage from farms. He had not been able to go out for the past two nights because, as far as she could understand his broken English, the Nazis had sent out extra patrols.

  ‘We can go to the farm I was staying at,’ she said, ‘but not yet. I’m worried they are watching it. I know some other farms where they leave food for prisoners.’

  ‘Oh, that is good. We can go there after dark. Thank you, Marlene. I am very happy you came in here.’

  She managed a smile.

  ‘Excuse me, Marlene. I am going to sleep again. It is good to sleep in day, and wake in night.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right.’

  She made herself as comfortable as possible on the rags as the sun climbed higher, heating the shed. She was probably going to catch lice from his rags. She would just have to get used to it.

  CHAPTER 50

  Jersey Hospital, St Helier

  July 1944

  She tried to move her feet, but the armour was confining, and the ankle-deep water in the well numbed her up to her knees. Although at the bottom of the well, she was able to see, and had removed the gauntlet and chainmail glove from her right hand so as to hold the pistol. If she shot straight up, after an eternity, as she squeezed her eyes closed and gritted her teeth in anticipation, the bullet came singing back down the wellshaft and bounced painfully off her helmet or the armour on her shoulder. If she shot at an angle, however, the ricochet, although deafening, would send the bullet out at an angle, and sometimes she heard someone scream and blood ran down the walls of the well. She stood in the cold soup of blood and spent bullets for hours, shivering, figuring trajectories and firing up at various angles, listening for screams, other shots, catching the occasional soaring of violins. Birds in flight over the well gave her a momentary glimpse of the motion she craved, creatures going from one place to another, sure of the sustenance that awaited them, unaware of human blood. Her supply of bullets, at first coming out of nowhere, began to dwindle. She reached down and began to fish spent bullets out of the red water, feeding them back into the hungry maw of the pistol, wiping the salt and dried blood from the chamber. Eventually she used up all the bullets she could find; she felt around in the water and came up with a small fish that looked at her brightly, then cast its eyes upwards. Something was being lowered into the well; it was Lucy! She was dressed in her coquettish ‘Bluebeard’s Wife’ costume from the Birot play she had acted in, her hair unwigged and newly golden, sitting on a platform like a child’s swing, leaning on one of the ropes and touching the walls with a curious hand as she slowly descended. Finally, she slid off her swing and stood in the cold water, oblivious to the red staining her gown, and looked at Suzanne with adoring eyes. ‘My Tristan, you breathe! You are slowly coming alive to me, beloved!’ Only Suzanne’s right hand and face were uncovered by armour. Lucy grasped her hand, kissed it, and then leaned up to kiss her lips. As she kissed her, she quickly inserted a finger into Suzanne’s nostril, causing her to flinch.

  Suzanne reached up to her nose and found her hand restrained. Someone had put lead weights on her eyelids. She concentrated on lifting them for several minutes, letting the rest of her body go slack. Finally, the lids parted and she then concentrated on focusing. After an hour or a day, she looked around and found herself in a hospital bed. Curtains concealed the rest of the room from her; it was silent. The finger in her nose was a rubber tube; another tube dripped watery fluid from a bottle into her left arm. She drew on a tiny store of strength and managed a cough; her tongue felt like a loaf of dry bread in her mouth. After another week or minute, she managed to croak,’ ‘ucee, ’ucee!’

  Silence. That’s right, she thought, we’re supposed to be dead. Are we dead? Am I dead? I don’t think I am dead. Where is Lucy? After a few more furlongs of time, someone entered the room; Suzanne made her croaking sound and the curtains were parted, revealing a nurse.

  ‘Oh, you are awake. I will get you water.’

  ‘Where i’ ‘ucee? ’e alive?’

  ‘Miss Schwob? Yes, she is alive. She is still asleep.’ The old woman put a wet cloth to Suzanne’s lips; she took the moisture greedily. ‘If you can stay awake, I’ll ask Dr Lewis to take that tube out of your nose.’

  ‘My nose. Yeh, ‘ake it ou’.’

  She struggled mightily to keep her eyes open. The nurse returned at some point, and started to feed her spoonfuls of mashed swede. You couldn’t get away from them. She found she could swallow despite the tube. Some time later, after dark, a thin man in a civilian suit came in and quickly whipped the tube out of her nose, apologising afterwards.

  ‘It hurts less if it’s done fast. I’m sorry, Miss Malherbe.’ Dr Lewis leaned closer and whispered, ‘I think Miss Schwob will wake up tomorrow. I know what happened. I think I can keep you here several more days.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then they are taking you back to the jail.’ Seeing Suzanne’s anguished expression, he added: ‘I don’t think they will do anything besides question you, Miss Malherbe. They know the war is going badly, and anything they do will be held against them when it is over. Please don’t try what you did again.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Feeling more awake, she looked around through the parted curtains. She seemed to be alone in some kind of store room. It had been a small ward, the one where the diabetics had slowly died, waiting in vain for insulin. Nobody wanted to enter the room after that.

  Her wrists were tied to the bed. The nurse came back with a bedpan, which she used gratefully.

  ‘How is Lucille?’

  ‘Still sleeping, but I think she will be all right.’

  ‘Can I see her when she wakes up?’

  ‘I don’t know, mademoiselle. They are guarding you as prisoners.’

  ‘I understand.’

  She slept, and woke, and ate mashed swede with sips of milk, and used the bedpan, and slept, until one day the nurse stood over her with her clothing, such as it was. She dressed quickly, then was escorted by a soldier to a car. Lucy was in the back! Suzanne was made to sit in the front, and talking was forbidden, but the sound of each other’s little coughs was the most reassuring thing in the world. Once again, they were taken to Gloucester Street Prison.

  CHAPTER 51

  Gloucester Street Prison, Military

  Wing, St Helier, Jersey

  July 1944

  OFFICIAL RULES

  The detainee may wear the uniform, boots, and cap, and may keep only the following in his possession
: paybook, identity papers, bandages, decontamination tablets, handkerchief, watch, and wedding ring.

  Strictly forbidden: entertainment, smoking, reading, or writing/incising on the walls of the cell.

  Detainees can officially report rank, name, unit, sentence, and reason for their sentence.

  Boots are to be worn during the day. Headcovering shall be worn outside the cell.

  The detainee may shave in the morning.

  The cells and the hallway shall always be kept clean. Trash should be placed in the appropriate receptacles in the hallway, never in the water closets .

  Prison-issue blankets will be removed from cells containing blankets brought by the detainees.

  Outside exercise in the form of brisk marching is allowed with a three-metre distance between detainees. It is forbidden to use this time for sitting or putting hands in pockets.

  In the event of an Island alarm, every detainee shall proceed as quickly as possible to the unit from which he was arrested.

  UNOFFICIAL RULES

  As in all prisons, cigarettes are legal tender, even counterfeit ones made from coltsfoot or other handy herbs.

  The guards, for the most part, aren’t malicious; the officers are.

  The officers reserve the right to beat, rape, torture and kill military prisoners. Between sessions, the prisoners are still allowed exercise, provided they keep their hands out of their pockets.

  Don’t let on to the officers that Germany is losing the war; although they know this, it helps them (and you) to preserve the fiction that each setback is only temporary. This does not apply to the guards, who get all their news from the civilian prisoners with relatives on the outside; they know the Reich is fucked.

  Share your visitors’ parcels, especially with the doomed.

  Even though you are filthy, hungry, and will be freezing cold in the upcoming autumn, winter and spring; even though you have fleas and maybe lice and are beginning to worry about that bit of blood you keep coughing up; even though nice young kids are being executed after being tortured for just talking about desertion, WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T ATTEMPT SUICIDE. Chances are, you will make it through the winter and the Reich won’t. Plus we need our razors.