The Girl from the Channel Islands

by Jenny Lecoat

  “So they don’t intend to surrender?”

  “Most of the ordinary soldiers here would happily surrender, but the high-ups won’t stand for it. With the defenses we’ve put up in the last two years, it could be a bloodbath.” He rubbed his eyes, as if trying to press the images away. “But I suspect the Allies know that. Which is why I don’t think—” He stopped abruptly.

  Hedy felt her surge of hope ebbing away. “You don’t think what?”

  Kurt sighed deeply, from the gut. “The Allies will be looking to limit their losses. If I were them, I would press on, try to gain ground on the Continent. The Channel Islands are tiny, after all. Plenty of time to come back for them later, when they’ve pushed the enemy line further.”

  Hedy, suddenly feeling a little unsteady, sank down onto the remaining chair. “You’re saying they’ll just...go around us?”

  “Quite possibly.”

  “But if that happens, the islands will be completely cut off. There’ll be no food or fuel from France or England. How will we survive?” She felt a painful lump form in her throat. “We’ll all starve together.”

  Kurt squeezed her hand, but it brought no comfort. “Exactly.”

  * * *

  “The public telephone system will remain suspended. A section of Gloucester Street jail is being set aside for casualties, and a Red Cross flag will be placed above it. Food stocks are to be removed from out-of-town depots and brought into stores in town...”

  Baron von Aufsess paused, reading ahead down his list as if mentally sifting out some of the items. Kurt, standing a good six meters from him, swore he could hear the new chief administrator emit a small sigh. Then the baron coughed and continued, his clipped, aristocratic voice booming out across the hall. Something about potato supplies, and locals being warned away from the beaches. It was all the usual business: protect the garrison, override the populace, no surrender.

  Kurt let his gaze wander. Beyond the windows of College House the sun was blazing, gulls were gliding on the summer breeze, and far above Allied planes continued to stream across the azure sky. Now and then came the dull boom of one of the giant cannons across the Channel; last night antiaircraft guns had brought down a British pilot at Les Landes, destroying two houses.

  The baron continued to list instructions and priorities: all military were to use discretion, but come down hard on the smallest dissent; the deportation of all civilians to France could not be ruled out at this stage. Kurt looked at the haggard faces around the room, rigid with tension beneath a stoic veneer, and wondered who they believed they were fooling. It was just like the picturehouses where he’d watched Bela Lugosi films as a youth, when all the boys jutted out their chins and pretended not to be scared. Kurt’s own stomach had been churning for days now, and the acrid scent of sweat and sulfur in this room told him he was not alone.

  Von Aufsess reached the end of his list and instructed his deputy to hand out new sectional orders. Kurt was charged with checking the working condition of every truck within his compound, maximizing transport potential should the need arise. Turning to leave, Kurt spotted Wildgrube at the back of the room. Like all the secret police, he was today dressed in military uniform, the first time Kurt had ever seen him so attired. From his strutting gait and the gleam in his eye, Kurt saw that the spy relished the opportunity to appear in public as a real soldier, and was forced to admit that it gave the little goon a genuine sense of authority. Hoping to avoid him in the crowd, Kurt pressed toward the door, but within a minute found Wildgrube at his shoulder.

  “Kurt, my friend. How are you?”

  “Just fine, Erich. Looking very smart today.”

  Wildgrube played with his cuffs. “We must all be on our best game to face what is before us.” Kurt nodded, hoping that might be the end of the conversation. He’d seen little of Wildgrube since his attempt to intimidate him at the compound; Kurt had long hoped that a cold trail, combined with simple lack of manpower, had caused the investigation to be abandoned. Kurt had spotted the odd secret police minion outside his billet, and had twice curtailed a visit to West Park Avenue on the suspicion that he was being followed, but overall it seemed that Wildgrube had found other fish to fry. Kurt threw the spy a polite smile and went to move on, but felt a tug at his elbow. “Of course, recent events will necessitate a little...housekeeping.”

  “Housekeeping?”

  “Old cases, unsolved problems. We need to reduce the burden of excess feeders on the island.”

  What kind of mind, Kurt thought, divided the human population up into such categories? “So?”

  “So, we must make sure there are no ancient parasites lurking. One thing about me, Kurt...” He smirked, a cobra that had spotted a wounded mouse. “I am often commended for my scrupulous cleanliness.” He patted Kurt on the shoulder then disappeared through the doorway and down the corridor, his blond head bobbing through the crowd.

  Kurt watched him go with an indifferent sniff. Wildgrube had no more information about Hedy eight months on than he had in the week of her disappearance—he merely enjoyed the power of menace. If he had discovered anything new he’d have taken great delight in hauling Kurt into the notorious Silvertide building for questioning. Kurt decided there was enough to worry about this week—real, imminent dangers that far outweighed the niggling irritation of this idiot.

  Kurt forced his way into the gray flannel mass of the corridor, pushing past the other officers, watching their reactions to the morning’s briefing. Some were grimly silent; others opted for fake bravado, braying about finally seeing some action. He stuffed his hands into his pockets to imply endeavor and urgency, and instantly felt the lining of the right pocket, loose for some time, give way under the weight, allowing his hand to slip through to the inner layer. Glancing at the large mirror in the reception hallway to see if it was noticeable, he took in his whole reflection. Weight loss was causing the uniform to hang off him, like a schoolboy in his father’s clothes. There was a grass stain on the knee of his trousers, picked up on an awkward repair job last week, which Mrs. Mezec’s half-hearted laundering had not removed. And now he noticed a button missing from the front of his tunic, causing the fabric to gape instead of giving a crisp, smart line. The thousand-year Reich, he reflected with irony, was literally starting to fall apart at the seams.

  * * *

  “But my absolute favorite part...” Dorothea’s eyes shone with excitement as she recalled the moment. Her palms ironed flat the open pages of the scrapbook on the table. “...is where she dumps Westley at the altar and rushes for her car. It’s Peter she really loves, you see, and she realizes that true love is more important than anything.”

  “And her father approves?” Hedy traced the outline of Claudette Colbert’s face with her finger. The edges were starting to curl for want of fresh paste, and her right ear had already disappeared.

  “Her father is the one who tells her to go! He knows she doesn’t really love Westley, you see, and he wants her to be happy.” Dorothea turned the page. Shafts of golden-pink evening light slanted through the kitchen window and onto the table, creating patterns on the frayed paper and highlighting every line of Dorothea’s face. “When all this is over, I’ll take you to see it. It’s my favorite movie.”

  “I’d like that. It sounds wonderful.”

  Hedy slowly gathered up the two plates and spoons they had used for their evening meal of unsalted potatoes, and carried them across to the draining board. The potatoes had been hard in the center, and sat heavy in her stomach; now that the gas supply was shut off and they were forced to rely on the communal bakehouse, it was potluck whether what Dorothea picked up at the end of the day was cooked through at all.

  “Dorothea, do you ever think about your own parents?” The question was out of her mouth before she’d had time to weigh it, and she instantly regretted it. Dorothea always neatly sidestepped any reference to her family, making
it clear that the subject was out of bounds. But Hedy had noticed, in recent weeks, they had both been voicing more direct, personal questions than they would have dreamed of asking six months ago. Perhaps it was the sense that the end to this bizarre, enforced marriage might not be far away, though neither of them dared to venture what that end might look like.

  Dorothea kept her eyes on the scrapbook. “Sometimes.”

  “You ever think about going to see them?”

  “Waste of time. My stepfather wouldn’t allow it.”

  “Are you sure? It’s been so long.” A long silence. Dorothea slowly turned another page. Claudette Colbert gave way to Katharine Hepburn posing with a besuited Cary Grant. “Kurt says lots of older people are starting to get sick, with the shortage of food and medicines.”

  “I know.” A strip of paper bearing the words Bringing Up Baby in curly, romantic lettering escaped completely from its ancient paste and fell to the bottom of the page. Dorothea caught it and stubbornly tried to force it back into position, to no avail.

  Hedy returned to her chair. “Only... I know if I had the opportunity to see my parents just once more, no matter how painful—”

  “Hedy, I tried, okay?” Dorothea slammed the book shut, her voice uncharacteristically loud. “I went up there in February, on my mother’s birthday. My stepdad wouldn’t come to the door, said if my mother didn’t come back into the house he was done with her too.” She shrank back, ashamed of her outburst. “My grandmother wrote to them, he tore the letter up. Like he said—I’m dead to them.”

  Hedy placed a hand on Dorothea’s arm. “I’m sorry. You never said.”

  “You have enough problems of your own.”

  “It was brave to try.”

  Dorothea raised her finely plucked eyebrows, held the thought for a moment, and let them fall again. “I loved Anton so much, and I really believed that was all that mattered. But now...” She looked toward the window, and the last tips of the sun’s rays colored her eyes an extraordinary blue. “Now I’m not so sure. Even if he does come back. At least you and Kurt have each other now. Sometimes, when I see the two of you together...”

  “I’m sorry. We’re not trying to—”

  “Don’t be silly. I know. You would never try to hurt me.”

  Hedy felt a flush of shame as a dozen memories rushed in: her resentment and dismissal of Dorothea at the start, her hope that she and Anton would cancel the wedding. Dorothea must have sensed at least some of it, yet in those wide, trusting eyes there was not a speck of resentment. Hedy had just begun to phrase some kind of apology in her head when Dorothea leaned back in her chair and began to cough.

  “Do we have any mustard powder left?”

  “I don’t know, why?”

  “I’m having trouble breathing.”

  Hedy rushed to the larder and scrabbled through the shelves looking for the bottle. Sure enough, at the back was a small tin with a spoonful of mustard powder inside—she grabbed it and returned to Dorothea’s side. “I’ve got it. Give me one minute.”

  Hedy shook out some of the powder onto a saucer. From the tap she added a few drops of water, dripping it in with her fingers, and stirred it into a yellow paste. Dorothea was by now leaning back in her chair, the wheezing of her breaths coming in short, strained gasps. Hedy pulled Dorothea’s blouse open and smeared the paste onto her chest. Dorothea recoiled a little and began to whimper. “Burns!”

  “I know.” Hedy deliberately kept her voice low and steady. “But it will help. Try to keep your breaths regular. Count with me—in for five and out for five. One, two...” Her mind raced ahead. If Dorothea turned blue or began to lose consciousness, what was she to do? Kurt would not call till tomorrow at the earliest. Asking the neighbors was impossible—Hedy had never even seen them, far less judged whether they could be trusted with the sudden appearance of a foreigner on their street. “... And five. Now the same, going out. Come on, Dory, you can do it.” She scrabbled for a plan. Perhaps she could drag Dorothea onto a neighbor’s path, bang on the door then run back to the house before anyone saw her? The hospital was less than ten minutes away, surely someone would go for help? Though even there, the chances of them having any medication to help her were almost zero. “And again. You’re doing well.”

  The breaths grew shorter and more tortuous. In the fading light of the kitchen, Hedy peered at Dorothea’s features, and saw that the shade of lilac ash she most feared was now blooming on her lips. Her eyelids were drooping a little and she was starting to slump down on the tabletop. Hedy sat her back in her chair and held her upright to keep the airways open, all the while stroking her hair and keeping up a constant muttering of encouragement. But as the minutes crawled by and the hissing breaths grew weaker, Hedy knew she had to make a decision.

  “Dory, I’m going to have to go for help. Just try to hang on.” She turned to go, but felt a sudden clamp on her wrist. For a moment she barely believed it was Dorothea, so strong was the grip, but it pinned her where she stood. Then Dorothea, clinging to the struggling outbreaths as they fought their way through the fog of her lungs, pushed out the words: “No! Dangerous!”

  “I know, but the hospital is the only place we have any chance of help.”

  Dorothea’s hold, using only her thumb and forefinger, actually increased. “No! Not worth it!” She extended the fingers of her right hand and held it toward Hedy’s face. “Five minutes.”

  Seeing that the suggestion was simply causing more stress, and afraid that Dorothea wouldn’t survive her absence for longer than a few minutes, Hedy dropped back into her seat, dreading that she was making the wrong choice. Dorothea hauled in breath after breath, her face scrunched with concentration, each inhalation a private war with herself. The moments crawled by, the golden rays replaced with dim blue haze and purple shadows, and still Dorothea sat there, clay-faced, battling, until at last Hedy sensed the breaths grow fractionally looser, and the grip on her wrist released a little. Dorothea raised a finger from her limp hand on the table to indicate that change was afoot, and within a few minutes a little color returned to her lips and forehead.

  “It’s okay.”

  Relief bubbled up until it hurt Hedy’s throat. “Thank God. But next time...”

  Dorothea shook her head. “No! Never! We’ve come this far. We must reach the end now.” Then it was Dorothea’s turn to comfort Hedy, as she dropped her chin to her chest and sobbed like a baby.

  * * *

  The spider crab, wrapped in newspaper and then in a torn pillowcase, was pressed so hard against the side of his body that Kurt could feel it wriggling. He had watched the fishmonger bind the claws tight with string, but it was still an unnerving experience to feel the creature strain and fight against the confines of its human prison. It had cost him a huge chunk of his wages and a proportion of his pitiful tobacco allowance, but none of that mattered. Kurt kept his arm firmly in place as he walked up Cheapside, imagining how Hedy’s face would look when he presented her with it. There’d be no mayonnaise, of course, probably no bread either. But the ingenious contraption Kurt had set up on a recent visit, involving an old metal paint tin suspended over the fireplace, would enable them to boil the crab at home, provided they had enough wood, and eat it fresh from the shell. He thought about the two women cracking the claws, licking the delicious meat off their fingers, and smiled.

  At the corner of the road, Kurt was forced to admit to himself the suspicion that had been nibbling at the edge of his consciousness for several minutes. He was being followed. Glancing around as if checking for traffic, he scanned for a visible figure engaged in any kind of suspicious activity, and caught a glimpse of a man in a mac and trilby-style hat, fiddling pointlessly with a newspaper in a doorway. He couldn’t tell from here whether or not it was Wildgrube—the hat suggested otherwise—but the behavior certainly suggested one of his henchmen. Either way, heading straight for West Park Ave
nue at this point was clearly out of the question. Kurt doubled back into the little park, following the tarmac path toward its center then suddenly swerving back toward the north end of Elizabeth Place. If this guy was following him, these twists and turns would surely force him out into the open. Kurt knew that he was clean—the crab had been legitimately bought and there was nothing about his person that couldn’t be explained—and on that basis he felt confident about tackling the spy head-on. He began to prepare a stinging rebuke in his head, a righteous indignation at the waste of resources, snooping on German officers in their precious free time.

  As he cleared the park and headed up the street, he turned to look behind him. The man was still following, some distance away, but now making little attempt to hide his intent. He was moving slowly, and it occurred to Kurt that this might be a consequence of poor fitness, rather than incompetent subterfuge. Recent rations had been atrocious; perhaps the TB currently running rife through the local population was starting to infiltrate the sanctity of the secret police. Serve the bastards right, Kurt thought. But the thought gave him another option: to pick up his pace and make a clean getaway.

  Kurt accelerated his stride until he was in a rapid march, his long legs moving like pistons across the paving stones. Reaching the corner of Parade Road, he took a speedy left and jogged past the row houses. He knew that coming up on the left was the entrance to the alley that ran parallel with the backyards of West Park Avenue. If he managed to put enough distance between them, he might be able to slip down there before his pursuer figured out where he’d gone. But as he was about to do just that, he glanced behind him and saw that the figure was still on his tail.

  Kurt recalibrated. He was too close to the house now to take any chances. It wasn’t beyond the power or will of Wildgrube’s cronies to turn a whole street over, if they thought they might find something that would earn them credit or promotion. Kurt decided to return to his original plan and confront the spy—from here, he looked exhausted, giving Kurt an additional advantage. Pushing back his shoulders and stretching himself to his full height, Kurt walked back to where the man was now standing quite openly on the public pavement, his arm outstretched to the nearby wall for support, breathing heavily. His head was dropped in an attempt to recover, his face obscured beneath his hat.