The Girl from the Channel Islands

by Jenny Lecoat

  “How are we expected to survive, with no supplies and no outside help?”

  “The garrison reckons it can hang on till January,” Kurt replied, “if it takes control of all provisions. But it’s going to be harder for me to get hold of anything for you. And if the Allies don’t push across France quickly, then...”

  Hedy went to the kitchen window, touching the blackout blind with her fingers, remembering the sights and smells of the outside world that she had tasted the other night. The kitchen suddenly seemed a great deal smaller.

  Kurt rose and slipped his arms around her waist. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. Churchill will have to relent if things get bad. We’ll all get through this.” But there was little conviction in his voice.

  Hedy sighed with a deep resignation. “Who knows? Secret police or not—this winter may kill us after all.”

  The three of them sat down at the kitchen table, and after a while Dorothea brought out a packet of playing cards. They played for tiny pebbles from the back garden, sitting in silence, unable to think of anything else to say. Summer was over. The nights were cooling fast, and the sunsets were slowly creeping their way toward the afternoon. Far away across the Channel, the rumble of distant guns could be heard, occasionally rattling the windows in their ancient frames.

  * * *

  Tick-tick-tick. The kitchen clock ran on its hypnotic rhythm in the darkness. It would be another hour before the electricity supply returned, and the last candle had been used days ago. Now even reading, the last pleasurable activity left, was impossible after late afternoon. Rumors in town suggested that within two months there would be no electricity at all.

  Hedy huddled by the kitchen fireplace, holding out her hands toward the warm ashes to extract the last heat. Next to the hearth, the log basket sat empty, nothing but tiny remnants of twigs and dried-up leaves scattered at the bottom. Dorothea had spent all the previous day “wooding” on Westmount, collecting any small sticks and kindling she could find, but every able-bodied person in town was doing the same, and the ones with proper, sharp saws were walking away with the lion’s share. It didn’t help that even the paltry bundle of twigs Dorothea did manage to bring back was soaking wet, and would take days to dry out in the cold, damp house.

  Hedy sat back and listened to the rain beating on the windows and bouncing off the concrete in the yard. It had been raining for days, weeks. The wettest November for ten years, the locals were saying. She felt her stomach growl again, and the twinge of pain that she suspected was the start of an ulcer. Kurt had recently complained of the same thing—even officers were going hungry now. Last week he’d told her that a number of ordinary soldiers had been arrested for violent outbursts and theft from domestic properties. Hedy had wanted to put an additional bolt on the kitchen door, but Dorothea tried every hardware supplier in town and could find nothing. Perhaps, they reflected, it didn’t matter that much—any burglar looking for food was far more likely to target the farmhouses of the country parishes, which sometimes still contained the carcasses of rabbits or a few homegrown vegetables. No point in breaking into a town property that had nothing in it.

  Kurt’s predictions had turned out to be true. Wildgrube and his cohorts had lost all interest in Kurt since the abortive house raid, and had evidently given up on finding Hedy too. The three of them had slowly gained confidence that the soldiers would not return, and in recent weeks Hedy had started sleeping in the spare room at the back of the house. It was wonderful to lie in a proper bed and be able to get up in the night if she needed to, though bizarrely she slept more fitfully there, having adapted over the months to the life of a bat in the attic. Truthfully, no one was sleeping well anymore. Who could sleep with a hunger so extreme it gnawed at your organs and pushed acid up your throat as soon as you lay down? Last night they had had absolutely nothing in the house to eat until Kurt had arrived with a tiny portion of German sausage and a crust of something no one would describe as bread. Two days before, Dorothea had fainted at the bottom of the stairs.

  Hedy heard the latch turn on the front door and Dorothea hurry in, slamming it behind her. Scrambling to her feet, Hedy went to meet her. They were so attuned to each other’s sounds and movements now that any tiny change of mood was immediately obvious. Hedy watched her fold down her umbrella with the two broken spokes, spattering raindrops all over the floor, and stand dripping in the hallway. Dorothea’s eyes were red and her mouth was pulled tight in a poor attempt to stem an outburst.

  “What’s happened?”

  “I just saw Mrs. Le Cornu, the old lady down the road, crying in the street. Her cat’s gone missing. She thinks the Germans took it.”

  “No!” Hedy’s hand flew to her mouth.

  “She says the same thing happened to her neighbor. They trap them and shoot them, apparently, then cook them at their barracks. I’ve noticed there are no dogs around lately, either.”

  “But that’s horrible!” She remembered Hemingway’s fluffy gray face nuzzling her cheek and prayed that he had escaped that fate.

  “It’s all horrible. Everything’s horrible. I’m so sick of it.” The tears began to run down her cheeks. “I was queuing outside the butcher’s—there was a rumor that they had some rabbit, but it wasn’t true—when this fight broke out between two women. A proper fight, they were hitting each other—all over a couple of rotten apples in the market.”

  She let out a strange little moan then slid down the wall until she was crouched on the floor, sobbing into her hands. Rainwater from her coat and hair pooled around her on the linoleum.

  Hedy crouched down beside her and put an arm around her. “It’s all right.”

  “No, it’s not all right. It’s happening all over,” Dorothea wailed. “Everyone’s so hungry and angry! There’s nothing in any of the shops, and we can’t even forage for limpets and winkles till the next low tide, and then everyone else will be doing the same.”

  “What about your cousin?” Hedy bit her lip. They both knew it was a stupid pointless question, but Dorothea pretended it was reasonable.

  “The Germans are taking everything from the farms. I doubt he could feed his own children, never mind us.” Words failed her for a while, crushed by the weight of her misery, then she took a deep breath. “I’m so stupid. You know, when Kurt said back in June that the Allies might not come for us, I didn’t believe him. I pretended I did, but I was sure they’d come. My mother always loved King George—we always stood for the national anthem—but I never thought he’d let this happen. I thought they would send a ship, something...”

  Hedy hugged her close. “If they had, the Germans would have fought back—it would have been a bloodbath. We might all be dead now.”

  “Perhaps that would be better!” In the darkness of the hallway, her pale skin was almost translucent, and Hedy could clearly see the blue veins beneath the surface. “Perhaps it’s better to die quickly, fighting, than to sit around helpless, waiting for it.”

  “But we’re still here.” Hedy drew her closer. “We’ve survived so long, Dory, against the worst odds. We’ve fought back in the only way we could. We can’t give up now.”

  Dorothea was still crying, but it was a different kind of weeping now, quiet, resigned. “I’m not sure I have the strength, Hedy. I’m so tired, and everything hurts all the time. Sometimes”—she wiped a dollop of snot from her nose—“sometimes I wish I’d just have an asthma attack in the night and not wake up.”

  “Don’t say that!” Hedy heard her voice, shrill and desperate. “I need you, and so will Anton. We just have to hang on. Kurt will always bring us whatever he can. And it can’t be much longer. It just can’t.”

  Dorothea shook her head. “I don’t know...”

  “I know! Belgium is liberated now. The Americans are already crossing parts of the Rhine. The Allies will win, Dory, everyone knows it. We just have to get through the next few”—she couldn’t br
ing herself to say months, though that was what she was thinking—“weeks.”

  “I’m just so tired. So, so tired.”

  Hedy pressed her face against Dorothea’s downturned head and closed her eyes. The rainwater on the floor was soaking up through the hem of her dress, adding a new layer of cold, but she took no notice. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do, but sit there, rocking gently on the hall floor, watching their own breath steam in the cold air, and listening to the relentless tick-tick-tick of the kitchen clock.

  TWELVE

  1945

  Evening Post

  8th May, 1945

  I appeal to you to maintain your calm and dignity in the hours that lie ahead, and to refrain from all forms of demonstration.

  ...I feel that the conclusion of the Prime Minister’s speech this afternoon will be the appropriate moment for the hoisting of flags, and I make the strongest appeal to you, in the interests of public order, not to fly flags before that time.

  I was present last evening at the release from custody of the majority of political prisoners, and I am doing all in my power to obtain the immediate release of the remainder of them.

  I shall make known to you immediately any further developments.

  A. M. Coutanche, Bailiff

  This was a new smell, Kurt thought, as he shuffled into the main hall of College House with the other officers. Not the usual mixed scents of damp uniforms, body odor and leather. Not even the stink of fear that had pervaded in the early days of the land invasion. He couldn’t place it at first, but the answer lay in the expressions on his colleagues’ faces, the dejected slope of their shoulders, and especially in the undisguised curses and questions skimming through the room. Questions no longer muttered in corners or the silent corridors of officers’ clubs, but spat forcefully with rage and resentment. It was defeat.

  He gazed through the same leaded window he had looked through so often before, struck by the precious blue sky and bouncing white clouds, and mentally repeated some phrases on a loop, trying to make the news real to himself. It was all over. Hitler was dead, Germany was finished, the great dream of the Fatherland was no more. Millions of lives lost or wrecked, all for the fever dream of a nation too consumed with fury and ideology to see its own reflection. All for a mirage. All for nothing. Kurt tried to figure out what he was feeling, but all he could identify was a sense of relief.

  The day of reckoning was no longer a possibility somewhere in the future. Within days—perhaps hours—British troops would be landing on these shores, and every man in this room would be going to jail. Some of them would be put to death. With a strange detachment, Kurt wondered if he would be one of them. How tragic, he thought, to have survived this long, to have kept alive the woman he loved, only to be snatched from the earth now, when happiness was finally possible. But he felt no fear or self-pity, just an eerie calmness. Nothing was any longer within his control—all his responsibilities were in the past. Perhaps that was part of the odd aroma in this room today—the passive pleasure of release from duty. The future was out of their hands.

  Baron von Aufsess, standing on a desk at the end of the room, spoke in a confident voice as if dispatching notices for any normal day. “I have been informed,” he said, “that Mr. Churchill will address the British nation via the BBC at three o’clock this afternoon. I have received orders that we are to prevent the public from hearing any such illegal broadcast...” He hesitated here, and gave a little cough that seemed to Kurt more about punctuation than clearing his throat. “However, as we also have it on good authority that British naval ships are already on their way to the islands carrying orders for our immediate surrender, I have given permission for the broadcast to be available to any of the local population in possession of a wireless.” A soft murmur went quickly around the room. Everyone knew that at least half the locals on the island either had their original radios or an illegal crystal set. “Meanwhile,” von Aufsess continued, “you will be aware that I will be speaking with the Bailiff today regarding the release of ration stores, and that the Bailiff has urged the islanders to act with restraint, and not get any foolish ideas of retribution.”

  Kurt grimaced, on the edge of laughter. Even now, they couldn’t shake off that underlying assumption of superiority! What a shock the coming days would be.

  The baron dismissed his officers, and minions passed around instructions on hastily handwritten cards. Kurt skim-read his orders and tucked them into his breast pocket. Moving slowly through the crush toward the door, he managed a quick glance at some of the other orders handed out. Remove...destroy...dismantle. It was clear that the Area Command’s priority now was an island-wide concealment of what had been going on here for the last five years. Mountains of paperwork, private German food stores, anything that could be viewed by the Allies as contrary to the Hague Convention. Kurt buttoned his tunic and set off from College House with the rest, but instead of heading to the compound to bonfire stock lists as instructed, he turned at the bottom of the hill and headed for West Park Avenue. To hell with them—what could they do to him now? And at this moment he needed to see Hedy more than anything.

  The streets were buzzing with locals, many of whom had clearly abandoned work for the day. Some grinned at him as he passed, filled with vengeful glee. Others shouted insults. Several women had gathered to watch four German privates desperately whitewashing over the giant red cross that had been painted on the wall of the officers’ club nine months earlier, in a desperate attempt to save it from bombing. The whitewash turned the cross pink, but its outline remained stubbornly visible, to the growing panic of the paint-spattered soldiers. Kurt snorted at the pertinence of the image. Not enough whitewash in the world, he thought to himself.

  In defiance of the appeal, many Union Jacks and Jersey flags were already being openly displayed in private windows. They had appeared from nowhere, after years stashed away in attics and cellars, or hidden in the storage rooms of shops. Crossing Val Plaisant, he spotted a beaming old gentleman placing speakers on his windowsill, ready to broadcast further news to all and sundry that afternoon. Kurt felt the man’s joy and couldn’t help smiling. It felt strange to be surrounded by so much happiness and to know that your own demise was the cause of it.

  At Dorothea’s house, he tapped his usual coded knock and was quickly shown inside. Dorothea was resplendent in the dress she had worn for her wedding but rarely worn since. Hedy was wearing the gray floral cotton frock and ancient cardigan she had been in most days for the last eighteen months, but Kurt’s heart dissolved when he looked at her. There was a gleam in her eye he hadn’t seen in months, and the featheriness of her movements as she skipped around the house reminded him of illustrations in fairy stories. Her hair, though still not back to its original length, was now curling around her jawline, its rich tawny color as beguiling as ever.

  “We had a whole tin of salmon between us for dinner last night!” Hedy bubbled. “It was the last thing left in the April Red Cross box, but apparently the British ships are bringing relief parcels, so we decided to give ourselves a treat!”

  “Quite right too.” Kurt reached out and touched that hair, marveling at its softness. “Do you have somewhere to listen to the speech at three o’clock?”

  “Dory fetched the wireless back from her grandmother’s house. She walked right by a German soldier at the top of the road, pushing it in the wheelbarrow, and he didn’t even ask to look under the blanket! That’s when we knew, when we really understood that it was all over.”

  He wound her tresses around his fingers. “The British boats will be here tomorrow. You should go down to the harbor to greet the Tommies—it’ll be quite a day.”

  “Come with us?” Dorothea suggested, peering at her reflection in the mirror of her empty powder compact.

  Kurt glanced toward Hedy. The look between them said everything.

  “I think I may be required elsewhere.�
��

  Hedy took his hand from her hair and led him into the privacy of the front room. “I’ve got a plan. As soon as I’m certain it’s safe, I’m going to go to the Jersey States offices to tell them everything. I’m going to tell them about you, and how you helped me.”

  Kurt tried to look pleased and grateful. “Well, I appreciate that—”

  “I’m sure that the British will have to round you all up initially. But they can’t treat you all the same. They’ll want to identify the leaders. But I’m living proof that you’re in a different category.”

  “Hedy, I’m an officer.” He tried to speak gently. “That has certain implications.”

  “At first, yes, but the British judicial system is very fair. Once they know the whole story, I’m certain they’ll make exceptions. I mean, they might decide not to imprison you at all.”

  Unwilling to snatch this moment from her, Kurt indulged himself, falling into those sea-green eyes one more time. As sunlight poured in from the window, bathing them both, he pulled her toward him and held her, relishing the warmth of her body, the softness of her breasts through his tunic, the security of those skinny arms around his neck. Then he kissed her, long and deep, and took a deep sniff of her neck, breathing in the natural perfume of her skin. Finally, he pulled back and forced a beaming smile.

  “I need to go, sweetheart. I have so much to do. Enjoy Churchill’s speech.” And with that, he set off toward the east and his billet.

  * * *

  Hedy and Dorothea gazed at the crowds around the harbor in astonishment. The shouting, singing and cheering seemed to fill the sky. Like a giant, chaotic whirlpool of humanity, eddies and swirls of faces circled in different directions, all trying to reach the next vantage point, or reach a friend lost in the melee. The greatest surge of people was on the West Park side, where streams of British soldiers were now pouring off the troop carriers in the bay and trudging their slow, shambolic path through the thousands of well-wishers. Old farmers stretched out their arms to shake hands with them, women young and old threw themselves at the newcomers, showering them with kisses. Eager fingers reached across every gap, begging for the cigarettes and sweets in every soldier’s pocket.