by Lily Baxter
‘But you’re dead. We buried you.’ She peered into his face as she tried to stand up, but was overcome by dizziness and she sank back onto the wet grass.
‘Sit still for a minute and you’ll be okay. I’m sorry I scared you.’
The world suddenly righted itself and she scrambled to her feet. ‘Scared me?’ she cried, pummelling him with her fists. ‘You frightened the life out of me. You were dead.’ She flung her arms around him, laughing and crying all at the same time.
‘Sorry,’ Gerald murmured, holding her in a rib-crunching hug.
Feeling his cheek wet against hers, Meg laid her hands flat on his chest, pushing him far enough away to see his face. Shocked at the sight of tears rolling down his cheeks, she stood on tiptoe to kiss them away. ‘You bloody idiot, Gerald. Have you any idea what we’ve all been through thinking you were dead and buried in the churchyard?’
He caught her by the wrists. ‘Can we talk about this somewhere else?’
‘Talk about it? We’ve all been to hell and back because of you. And you want to chat?’
‘I’ll explain everything, but if the Germans catch me I really will be dead.’
She shivered convulsively. ‘Fine, but let’s find somewhere a bit warmer. I’m freezing.’
‘No one must know I’m here.’
She thought fast. ‘There’s only one place you’ll be safe for tonight, but we’ve got to get inside the house without being seen.’
Meg closed her bedroom door and leaned against it, breathing a sigh of relief. ‘That was a close one. I thought we’d had it when von Eschenberg came down the stairs.’
‘Yes, thanks for shoving me into the broom cupboard. I’ve always wanted a mop handle rammed up my backside.’
‘Think yourself lucky it was me who found you, and stop grumbling,’ Meg said, raising a warning finger to her lips.
‘Is he in his room?’ Gerald perched on a stool next to Meg’s bed.
‘If you mean our father, then say so.’
‘I still can’t quite get my head round that. It’s going to take time for me to forgive him for the way he treated Mum and me.’
‘As a matter of fact, Pa is in his room. He’s old and sick and has been ten times worse since he heard that you’d been killed.’
‘There was no way I could get word to you.’
She sank down onto her bed. ‘Tell me everything.’
‘I was hit in the first volley of shots and the force knocked me overboard. That’s the only reason I survived.’
‘How did you get ashore? Were you badly hurt?’
‘I took two hits in the chest but I didn’t know that at the time. I couldn’t feel anything except the waves trying to drag me under. I managed to kick off my boots and when I surfaced I couldn’t see the boat – or anything at all, come to that. The current must have carried me round the point. I remember being thrown against some rocks and then nothing until I was being dragged out of the water. I thought the Germans had got me, but it must have been the Vaudins. I woke up three days later in their farmhouse loft with Simone bending over me, giving me a good telling off.’
‘Simone?’
‘Somehow they managed to fetch Dr Gallienne and Simone from the hospital. I wouldn’t be here now if they hadn’t patched me up. According to Simone my chest was like a colander and the bullets had gone straight through. I was just lucky they hadn’t hit any major organs.’
‘And have you been at the Vaudins’ farm all this time? How could Simone let us go on thinking you were dead?’
‘Don’t blame her. I made her promise not to tell anyone, not even Mum. She would have insisted on coming to see me and that would have put the Vaudins in danger.’
Meg considered this for a moment and unwillingly saw the sense of it; she nodded slowly. ‘All right, I give you that. But if you’re alive, who did we bury in a grave next to Eric?’
‘It must have been Hugh. He was at the helm and Bob and I were rowing. He was only wearing an old guernsey and I lent him my jacket because he was cold. My papers were in the pocket.’
‘But someone must have missed him by now?’
Gerald shook his head. ‘His family evacuated to the mainland at the beginning of the war. He had no one close left on the island; that’s why he risked so much.’
She reached out to touch his hand. ‘And you, you fool. You risked your life and nearly lost it. Thank God you’re safe.’
‘Maybe it would have been better if I had been killed. It would have made things simpler all round.’
‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Pa and Marie love you and they’ve been heartbroken thinking you were dead.’
He shot her a quick glance and then turned his head away. ‘And you?’
‘I love you too. I always have done but I just didn’t know what sort of love it was. Now I do know. You’re my brother, part of me, and nothing can change that.’
‘I’m so ashamed of the way I behaved. My feelings for you weren’t so innocent. D’you know how that makes me feel? Do you?’
Meg slid off the bed and gripped him by the shoulders, giving him a gentle shake. ‘That was a lifetime ago. We didn’t know the truth. You can’t blame yourself for that.’
‘No. I blame the man who calls himself my father.’ Gerald met her eyes this time and Meg recoiled at the desperation and anger she read in their dark depths.
‘You’re tired,’ she said, rising to her feet. ‘You’re still not fully recovered. I’m going downstairs to see if I can find something for you to eat. Rest on my bed until I come back and for God’s sake keep quiet.’
She left the room silently and felt her way down the dark staircase. It was not late but the house was quiet. Unusually there was no sound emanating from the rooms used by the German officers. The darkness was suffocating and the silence eerie, but Meg was cold and ravenously hungry. She made her way slowly to the kitchen. The chill rose up from the tiled floor, nipping at her ankles like a bad-tempered terrier, but she was too hungry to care about mere physical discomfort. She found some milk in the larder, and a crust of bread, which she broke in two and shoved half of it into her mouth, chewing and almost choking on the sawdust-dry crumbs. She washed it down with a mouthful of the milk and put the rest in a cup for Gerald, with the remainder of the bread.
When she returned to her room she found him sleeping peacefully and she had not the heart to wake him. Curling up on the floor, she fell into an exhausted sleep.
*
Meg awakened at first light, cold, stiff and wondering why she was sleeping on the floor. Then it all came flooding back and she sat up, listening to Gerald’s rhythmic breathing. He could not stay in her room and risk discovery by one of the family. She rested her chin on her knees, frowning. He had to be fed and he definitely needed to wash. The facilities in the Vaudins’ attic obviously did not run to such luxuries as warm water and soap was almost impossible to obtain anyway. She wrinkled her nose, wondering if she could sneak him into Pa’s bathroom. She could hear her father moving about restlessly in the next room and the solution came to her in an inspirational flash. She scrambled to her feet and tiptoed out of her room and into her father’s.
‘Pa, I need to talk to you.’
Ten minutes later Meg leaned over Gerald, shaking him by the shoulder. ‘Wake up, sleepyhead.’
He opened his eyes and stared up at her, looking puzzled and then alarmed. She pushed him back amongst the pillows as he attempted to sit up. ‘Don’t say anything, just listen to me.’
‘What?’ Gerald cried in a hoarse whisper when she finished explaining her plan. ‘You expect me to hide in the old man’s room? I’d rather take my chances with the Jerries.’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Go on then. If that’s what you’d prefer. And we’ll all end up in prison camps or shot.’
He struggled to a sitting position. ‘I can’t do it.’
‘You can and you will. No one goes into his room, apart from your mother and me. His bathroom is th
e only one that you could use without being seen, and Marie can smuggle a little extra food upstairs. If anyone notices they’ll just think that Pa is on the mend. Besides which, and he agrees with me, it will give you two time to get to know each other properly and sort out your differences.’
‘You expect me to forgive the man who ruined my mother and refused to acknowledge me as his son?’
‘I think you could try.’
‘I don’t have much choice, do I?’
‘No,’ Meg said, pulling the bedclothes off him. ‘You don’t. He’s waiting to see you. Go now and remember that he’s a sick man. Be kind to him, Gerald.’
When they were alone in the kitchen, Meg broke the news to Marie as gently as she knew how. She could only imagine the scene in her father’s room when Marie, trembling and on the verge of tears, went upstairs with the breakfast tray.
Jane gave Meg a curious look as she hurried into the kitchen carrying Jeremy. ‘And where were you last night? Were you out after curfew?’
‘Of course not,’ Meg said, opening the haybox and taking out the pot of barley porridge. ‘I went to bed early. I had a headache.’
‘Your bloke didn’t turn up then?’ Jane set Jeremy down on a chair and poured some milk into his beaker.
‘I went to see Pearl. Pass me Jim’s bowl, please.’
Jane passed it to her, frowning. ‘It’s Jeremy, not Jim. And I don’t believe you.’
‘Suit yourself,’ Meg said, blobbing some of the gooey, grey mess into Jeremy’s Bunnikin porringer.
‘Now I know you were up to no good,’ Jane said, taking the bowl from her. ‘You can’t fool me, Meg.’
There was no point in denying it and suddenly Meg felt too tired to keep up the deception. It would be better to admit that she had seen Rayner than to get into a conversation where she might let it slip that the real cause for her non-appearance at the evening meal was that Gerald had suddenly risen from the dead. ‘All right! Since I’m unlikely to be able to see him again I admit it, I went to meet Rayner. Are you happy now? Or are you shocked and disgusted that I’m no better than the other Jerrybags?’
Jane picked up the spoon that Jeremy had flung on the floor, wiped it on her apron and gave it back to him. ‘Naughty boy. Don’t do it again.’ She turned her head to look at Meg and her gaunt features cracked into a smile. ‘Not me. I had my fling with a French fisherman, Pip’s father, when I was just seventeen. Mummy and Daddy never really forgave me. They sent me to Jersey where very few people knew me. I stayed with an old aunt who employed a midwife to help at the birth, but the old hag didn’t seem to know what she was doing. If I’d had proper medical care when he was born Pip might not have been the way he is, but I’ve never been sorry that I had him.’
‘What happened to Pip’s father?’
‘He was handsome and charming but he omitted to tell me that he was married. He went back to his wife and children in France and I never saw him again.’
‘How terribly sad,’ Meg pushed her plate away. ‘Give this to Jeremy, he’s finished his already.’
Jane scraped the porridge into Jeremy’s bowl and he spooned it greedily into his mouth, watching them with his huge, pansy-brown eyes. ‘Ta,’ he said, smacking his lips.
‘Good boy,’ Jane said, automatically. ‘It was awful at the time, but I got over it. I hope you have better luck with your German. I liked him when he was here. He was a gentleman, not like some of them.’
By day, Meg went about her work on the farm, and in the evenings, after she had listened to the BBC news with Pip and Jane, Maud and Bertrand having gone to bed as soon as the light began to fade, she went to her father’s room. In almost complete darkness she perched on the edge of the bed, and Gerald sat on a chair drawn up close so that they could converse in whispers without raising the suspicions of anyone who happened to pass the door.
By the end of March the Allies had crossed the Rhine and it seemed as if the whole world had declared war on Germany. As Meg had hoped, being sequestered in the one room had brought Charles and Gerald together as nothing else could have done. They read books that she smuggled in from the shelves that still lined the upper landings and had been ignored by the Germans as being of little use and no interest to them. They played chess, dominoes and card games and sometimes, as the evenings drew out, Meg joined them. Gerald might fume and fret outwardly at being virtually imprisoned, but Meg could see that the two of them had formed a bond. They had developed a mutual understanding that would not have been possible in any other circumstances, and she was glad. Charles grew stronger, spending longer periods of time out of bed as the spring days grew warmer, but the fiction that he was a helpless invalid offered some protection to Gerald. Meg was careful to keep her father’s slow recovery a secret from the rest of the household.
She walked into St Peter Port once a week, ostensibly to visit Pearl and make a fuss of Buster, but it was the desire to learn something of Rayner’s fate that really motivated her. Not being able to see him and talk to him was the worst kind of torture, but she bore it as she had borne everything else during the long years of the occupation. If she could have disguised herself as a German soldier and walked into Fort Hommet, she would have done so, but the stronghold was on the far side of the island, and she had no means of getting there. She had not even the comfort of being able to stand outside the walls and imagine that he was only feet away from her.
Listening to the BBC on Pip’s crystal set revealed the hideous secrets of the Nazi concentration camps, making Meg physically sick. The news of the death of Mussolini and the surrender of Italy was followed two days later by the fall of Berlin and the suicide of Hitler and his mistress, Eva Braun. While the family secretly rejoiced, von Eschenberg and Hauptmann Dressler huddled in their office apparently awaiting orders, and the soldiers quartered in the stables were unusually quiet.
At the beginning of May, rumours of liberation flew round the island, and, on the eighth, Meg gathered the whole family, including Marie, in her father’s bedroom. Their astonishment on discovering that Gerald was very much alive was soon replaced by exclamations of delight, followed by the inevitable flood of questions. How had he escaped death? Who had saved him? And who was the unfortunate man they had buried in his stead? Everyone was talking at once until Pip raised his hand. ‘Shut up, I’ve got London on the radio. Churchill’s going to speak.’
Everyone was silent, hanging on to the great man’s words. ‘Hostilities will end officially, at one minute past midnight tonight, Tuesday the eighth of May, but in the interest of saving lives the cease-fire began yesterday, to be sounded all along the fronts – and our dear Channel Islands are also to be freed today.’
There was a moment of absolute quiet, and then everyone, even Charles, cheered loudly. Pip grabbed his mother round the waist and danced her round the room, Maud and Bertie clapped their hands and Marie hugged Gerald with tears running down her cheeks.
Meg took her father’s hand and squeezed his fingers. She forced her lips into a smile. The war might be over for the Channel Islands, but her own personal battle was far from ended.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The soldiers had left in a hurry, marched off by the British troops. Everything had happened so quickly that it was hard to grasp the fact that they had really gone. Meg recalled the fast-moving events as if they had occurred in a dream. Just a short time ago she had stood beside her father as Hauptmann Dressler and Major von Eschenberg left the house under armed escort. Beside the healthy, comparatively well-fed British troops, the Germans looked thin and gaunt; mere shadows of the men who had first invaded their home. Dressler had stopped and drawn himself up to his full height to look Charles in the eye. Meg knew that she would always remember the mixed emotions that had flitted across his face. He had held his hand out to her father with a ghost of a smile. ‘Goodbye, Herr Colivet. This is not how I expected it to end but it has been a privilege knowing you.’
For a moment Meg had thought her father would ign
ore the unspoken apology for five years of intimidation and virtual house arrest, but he had smiled and shaken the Hauptmann’s hand. ‘You will be as glad to return to your homeland as we are to have our island free again.’
It was all over now, and Meg made her way to the stables. She had only one thought and that was to find Rayner before he was transported back to Germany. She picked her way across piles of debris in the tack room and discovered her bicycle propped up against the wall. She breathed a sigh of relief on finding that it was in a reasonable condition, and she wheeled it out into the stable yard. It was almost impossible to believe that she was free to go anywhere she liked.
A constant stream of military vehicles clogged the narrow roads and lanes leading to town, but now they were filled with British troops. The soldiers leaned out to wave at Meg as she edged her bike between the trucks. Wolf whistles and teasing remarks accompanied her on her way and she acknowledged them with a smile, but she had only one thing on her mind as she free-wheeled down Le Val des Terres at breakneck speed. She arrived breathless and amazingly in one piece at the jetty. Abandoning her bicycle she pushed and shoved her way through the crowd. People had gathered to watch the dispirited men in grey uniforms as they prepared to board the vessels that would take them away from the island.
Meg waited all day without sight of Rayner. She returned the following morning, again without success. On the third day, when she had almost given up hope, she stood on the White Rock straining her eyes as a column of soldiers approached. The crowd pressed forward, some of them jeering and shaking their fists, other simply watching in grim silence. She recognised Rayner instantly as he brought up the rear in a group of officers from Fort Hommet. She had begun to elbow her way through the crowd when a scuffle broke out as a young girl flung herself at a young man at the head of the column, weeping and throwing her arms around his neck.
There was a brief hush, broken by a shout of ‘Jerrybag’ which was taken up in a chant. A woman rushed forward and grabbed the girl by her hair, and it took the British soldiers a few minutes to break up the fight that ensued. A burly sergeant hoisted the kicking, hysterical girl over his shoulder and carried her to safety. Undaunted, Meg pressed forward as Rayner drew nearer. She called his name, waving frantically, and he turned his head. He had seen her, of that she was certain. She had but one thought in her mind and that was to get close enough to speak to him, but before she had a chance to move she was held back by a young private. ‘I wouldn’t do that, miss. You’ve seen what can happen.’
