by Janet Tanner
‘Why did they do it?’ Lola demanded furiously. ‘They are barbarians! They know the island is undefended!’
‘Maybe they didn’t know,’ Charles said, wondering whether he should tell Lola that the girl who had been caught in the blast outside his office had been Nicky’s girlfriend, Vivienne. He decided against it. What good would it do? It would only upset her more. And he had other things on his mind.
‘I’m wondering if it would be a good idea to move out of St Helier,’ he said, it’s a prime target if they decide to drop more bombs. There’s always my cousin Dorothy’s cottage over at St Peter. It’s been empty since they evacuated to England and I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.’
‘No, I am not leaving my home,’ Lola said firmly. ‘But I’d like to know what the Germans think they are up to, all the same.’
‘As regards that I’m afraid we shall just have to wait and see,’ Charles told her.
It was not long before they found out.
‘Everyone is to fly a white flag of surrender, otherwise we shall be bombed again,’ Charles told Lola.
Understandably the news made her even more furious.
‘Fly white flag? Never! Is humiliating!’
‘I’m afraid we have no choice,’ Charles said mildly. ‘I’m not prepared to see our home go up in smoke to save your pride. We’ll hang out one of the big white tablecloths from the restaurant.’
And Lola, though sickened by the prospect, could do nothing but concur.
A few days later Vivienne regained full consciousness. She opened her eyes to see her mother sitting beside her hospital bed and immediately asked the question that had been buzzing round her fevered brain all the time she had been semi-conscious.
‘Is Nicky safe?’
Loretta reached for her daughter’s hand, squeezing it. Over and over again in her delirium she had called for Nicky and Loretta, who knew more than Vivienne realised, had put two and two together regarding Viv’s presence in Conway Street at the time of the bombing.
‘Yes, he’s safe,’ she said softly.
To her alarm two huge tears squeezed out of the corners of Vivienne’s eyes and ran down her cheeks.
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘It’s true, darling. He was wounded and he is in hospital, that’s probably why he hasn’t written to you. But he is safe. That nice young man from the Tour Agency told me. He’s been here quite a few times to visit you, you know.’
Viv looked puzzled. She didn’t know any young man from a Tour Agency – did she? But that was not important. The only thing that mattered was that Nicky was alive.
‘Could I talk to him, do you think?’ she asked, forming the words with difficulty because her lips were very dry. ‘ On the telephone?’
‘The young man from the agency?’ Loretta asked, startled.
‘No … no … Nicky, of course. If he’s in hospital they must have a telephone.’
Loretta felt sick inside. She did not want to tell Vivienne in her present condition that whilst she had been drifting in and out of consciousness the Germans had occupied Jersey. The swastika was now flying over the Town Hall – which they had made their military headquarters – and all telephone lines connecting the island with England had been cut.
‘We’ll see about that when you’re better, young lady,’ she said, summoning all her dramatic reserves and remembering a part she had once played in repertory of a strict young nurse. ‘Just now it is most important for you to rest and regain your strength.’
‘So that we can go to England, you mean?’ Viv murmured and again Loretta declined to tell her the truth – that Viv’s injuries had prevented them from flying out of Jersey before the Germans arrived. Now there could be no question of them leaving. Like it or not they were now trapped along with the rest of the islanders for the duration of the war.
Chapter twelve
1940–1942
The Germans came to Jersey and suddenly nothing was the same. They were not unfriendly, if anything they seemed only too anxious to get along with the islanders, and their priorities were buying up everything they could lay hands on in the shops, swimming and sunbathing on the golden beaches and chatting up those local girls who were not above fraternising. But soon the rules and regulations they imposed and the lack of liberty was getting everyone down.
In many ways, Sophia thought, the awful tedium was worse than the stomach-churning terror she had experienced when she had first seen the hordes of German troops marching through the streets. Nothing was fun any more. The pictures showing at the cinema were all German with English sub-titles and dances and concerts had to be over in time to be home by curfew. It wasn’t so bad for Catherine and Paul – Catherine still had her tap-dancing classes at the Donald Journeaux School of Dancing, and Paul and his friends seemed to have great fun seeing how many regulations they could break without getting caught (though Lola had threatened him that she would come down harder on him than any German if she found out he had been crawling under the barbed wire to get to the beach or painting V-signs on walls and pavements – it was much too dangerous to be taken so lightly).
In the long evenings the only entertainment was playing cards, ludo or table skittles, or gathering around the piano to sing whilst Sophia played all the old favourites. But even the piano was no longer the joy to her that it had once been. The occupation had put an end to her hopes of gaining a place at a college of music – cut off from the examining boards practice began to seem pointless and Sophia, angry at the injustice of it, had no heart to play at all unless she was pressed into it by Lola.
All in all war was not a lot of fun, Sophia thought. And living in an occupied country was about as miserable as you could get.
Sophia was all alone at home one afternoon in the autumn of 1941 when a German officer came knocking on the door of La Maison Blanche.
When she looked out of the window and saw him there, looking extremely tall and extremely official in his immaculate grey uniform, her heart missed a beat and she wondered if she could hide and pretend there was no one at home. But it seemed a dreadfully cowardly thing to do and besides Sophia was not at all sure that he had not seen her peeping around the curtains. If he had he might force his way in and that would be worse than ever. Nervously she went to the door and threw it open.
‘Yes?’
Face to face the German officer looked bigger than ever and inwardly Sophia quailed. But to her surprise he smiled at her pleasantly and clicked his heels.
‘Good afternoon, fraulein. Is your father at home?’ he asked in perfect English.
Sophia shook her head. ‘No, he’s out, and my mother too. They have gone to see my little sister dancing in a concert.’
‘And you have not gone?’
‘No. I had too much homework to do.’
‘Ah! I hope you are one of the students who are doing well with your German lessons. Some, I understand, do not wish to learn our language. This is a great pity. If we do not speak the languages how are we ever to understand each other? However, that is not the reason I am here. I have come to tell you that I need your house to provide accommodation for some of my men.’ He said it all in exactly the same tone, friendly and conversational, so that for a moment Sophia could hardly believe she had heard him correctly. She knew, of course, that the Germans had requisitioned a good many hotels and guest houses; when they had first occupied the island the Carterets had half expected La Maison Blanche to be on the list. But somehow they had escaped. Now Sophia stared at the tall handsome officer in blank horror.
‘I shall have to come back when your father is in and speak with him officially but perhaps while I am here you could show me the facilities,’ he said and she felt a bubble of hysteria rising. He might have been a visitor asking for a guided tour before booking a holiday!
‘No!’ she said sharply. ‘I’d rather you waited until they are here.’
For the first time she glimpsed the hint of steel beneath the pleasant exterior. B
lue eyes flashed coldly and the smile became fixed.
‘It would be most convenient if you were to show me around now,’ he said authoritatively.
Sophia began to tremble again. She stood aside and he strode past her into the hall, looking around him with a critical eye. ‘Hmm, yes, this I like, better than the big hotels, less impersonal. Now, how many rooms do you have? Show me please.’
Sophia showed him, her resentment growing.
‘Good, good,’ he said when they had finished their tour. ‘The guest house is ideal for some of my men, and my fellow officers and I will take oyer this part – ‘‘the annexe” did you say it was called? It will make nice mess rooms for us.’
Quite suddenly Sophia’s indignation overcame her fear.
‘And where are we supposed to live?’ she demanded.
The officer looked surprised. ‘Oh, I am quite sure you will find somewhere. You do not, after all, need all this room for five of you. And your furniture you can leave behind. It will suit us very well.’ He looked around, noticed the piano and walked over to it, lifting the lid and tinkling lightly on the keys. Sophia was outraged.
‘That’s my piano!’
‘Really? You are musical? That is good. My son is musical too. And one of the other officers is a good pianist. We shall enjoy your piano, fraulein. Now I will leave you. My compliments to your father – please to tell him I shall be moving my men in next week. Good day.’ He clicked his heels again, still smiling the same pseudo-friendly smile.
When he had gone Sophia burst into tears of fright and fury and sheer helplessness.
‘It’s the limit!’ Lola cried when they returned from the concert and Sophia told them what had happened. ‘They can’t do this to us! I shall tell them I won’t move from my home!’
‘It’s no good taking that attitude,’ Charles soothed her. ‘ If you ask me it’s a good thing you weren’t here when the Jerry came or you’d be on the waiting list for prison by now. If they want the house they’ll have it and that is all there is to it. We’re lucky they’ve let us stay here this long.’
‘And where are we supposed to go?’ Lola demanded.
‘There’s always my cousin’s cottage over at St Peter. We’ll go there. It’s small, but we can manage. We shall have to.’
‘And what about our valuables and the bottles that we buried in the garden? And all the vegetables you’ve worked so hard to bring on?’
‘We’ll dig them up when it gets dark – Paul can help me. The potatoes are already harvested and we’ll pull the carrots and parsnips. There isn’t much we can do about the cabbages – we’ll take a week’s supply and leave the rest, though I must say I begrudge leaving the Germans so much as a single Brussels sprout!’
Paul and Sophia looked at one another. They had both had the same idea. It was surprising how often they thought like twins.
‘Shall we?’ Paul asked with a mischievous twinkle.
‘Yes,’ Sophia nodded.
That night after the vegetables had been harvested they crept out, found Charles’s watering can in the outhouse and filled it with a bottle of the disinfectant that was used to keep the drains of the guest house sweet. With just the smallest amount of water to make it go further they sprayed all the remaining cabbages and Brussels sprouts.
‘I wouldn’t like to be a German with them served up for my dinner,’ Paul said, chuckling, and Sophia agreed. She very much hoped that the biggest helping would be on the plate of the one who interfered with her piano!
From the moment they moved out to the cottage everything seemed to get a great deal less pleasant.
It wasn’t so much that the cottage was too small for them, though it was certainly cramped – ‘No room to swing a cat!’ as Lola put it – with only two bedrooms and a small loft under the eaves that Paul had for his room when he had made a rope ladder to reach it. It wasn’t even that it was so far out of the way at St Peter after being used to living in St Helier. It was simply that the war had been going on longer and the occupation was biting.
Food was in short supply now, not just luxuries but everyday fare too. Sophia began giving music lessons to a farmer’s daughter in exchange for half a pint of milk and a half dozen eggs, but Lola’s prudent little stockpile of flour, sugar and currants had long since run out and the cakes and puddings she had once made were nothing but a sweet memory. Pea pods and blackberry leaves went into the teapot in place of tea leaves and Paul and Sophia often cycled to the coast, crept under the barbed wire that edged the beaches and filled a jamjar with sea water which could be boiled off to provide salt. And it was not only food that was scarce. Charles, who had always enjoyed a pipe of tobacco, took to smoking dock leaves and rose petals, and when Lola’s broom wore out he replaced the bristles with lengths of rope.
As for new clothes, there were none to be had. Here Catherine, who was still growing, came off worst, for even when Charles cut the toes out of her sandals they were soon hurting her again and when her skirts became too short to be decent Lola had to scout around to find something to make her new ones. At first she achieved this by cutting up dresses of her own and when they had all gone she used the faded chintz curtains which had used to hang in the girls’ bedroom and which she had dared to bring with her when they were turned out of La Maison Blanche.
When the first crop of wheat was ready for harvest in the fields near the cottage all three Carterets went to the farm to offer their help, working as hard as they could to earn half a sack to take home to Lola. But on the second day Sophia was disgusted to discover Paul snuggled in a corner of the barn with the farmer’s daughter – a big brawny girl of his own age.
Sophia had known Paul was developing an interest in girls. She had seen him flirting often enough, trying out the power that had come from growing to be nearly six feet tall and almost as good looking as Nicky. She had even covered up for him a few times when he had sneaked out on his bicycle to meet one or other of them because she knew Lola would not approve. But discovering him with the beefy, red-faced farmer’s daughter shocked her sensibilities and somehow marred the golden image of her elder brother.
‘How could you, Paul! She’s hideous!’ she chided the moment they were alone. Paul flashed her a wicked grin.
‘You won’t be so bad tempered about it if I can get us an extra bit of butter or even some bacon. Can’t you just smell it now, sizzling away?’
‘That’s immoral!’ Sophia snapped, but she could no longer really blame Paul. The prospect of a rasher or two of bacon was already making her mouth water.
A day or two later there was news of yet another restriction. All wireless sets were to be handed in to the authorities.
‘My wireless set!’ Paul exclaimed, as horrified as Sophia had been at the loss of her piano. ‘I saved up for ages for that!’
‘And how will we know what’s going on?’ Sophia chimed in. ‘We shall really be cut off if we can’t listen to the wireless.’
‘I don’t think we have any option,’ Charles told them. It’s so big, Paul, it would be very difficult to keep it hidden. But perhaps …’ He broke off, a sly twinkle in his eyes. ‘Perhaps we could get someone to make a little crystal set for us. That should be easy enough to hide. It would be a risk, of course – the Germans would deal very harshly with anyone caught breaking such an important regulation. If you can be fined for riding your bicycles two abreast and sent to prison for insulting Hitler, I dread to think what the punishment would be for holding a wireless set illegally. But I think I’m prepared to take that chance.’
‘Do you know someone, Charles, who could do this for us?’ Lola asked. She was beginning to look gaunt, her violet eyes huge in a face that was fast losing its smooth roundness.
‘I think so, yes. Do you remember Jack Ozouf? He was a wireless operator on my ship. I ran into him the other day and we were talking about old times. I think he could make a crystal set – if we could provide him with the bits and bobs he would need.’
‘Wh
at sort of bits and bobs?’
‘Well, something to make a head piece for a start. I should think a telephone receiver would do very well. We could creep out after lights-out, Paul, and get one from the telephone box down the road.’
He looked at Paul and winked. Paul grinned enthusiastically, enjoying the new found bond of solidarity with his father which the occupation seemed somehow to have strengthened. Paul knew that Charles knew about more than one of his escapades, and he also knew that Charles had not told Lola, who would have been horrified at the risks he took when he joined his friends to daub the town with V-signs or played football with a German helmet, and the feeling of conspiracy that came from knowing he had not only escaped German retribution but also Lola’s fury was a heady one.
‘When can we do it?’ he asked.
The sooner the better, I should think – before someone else gets the same idea,’ Charles said drily.
So Paul’s precious wireless set was dutifully handed in, Jack Ozouf was contacted, and the first black moonless night Charles and Paul crept down to the telephone box, cut through the flex and brought the handset back. Their hearts were pounding and their palms damp but they were as triumphant as if they had captured Hitler himself.
When the crystal set was made Lola wrapped it in Catherine’s shoe bag and hid it beneath a loose floorboard in the bedroom. Every evening it was brought out so that they could listen to the news and then hidden away again. And though their nerves were always on edge for fear of discovery they all felt a sense of profound satisfaction that they were managing to outwit the Germans over this, if nothing else.
At the end of the summer term Sophia left school. With things as they were there seemed little point in staying on and she was lucky enough to find a job right away – as a junior receptionist with one of the dental practices in St Helier.
‘Mr Shenton says he will train me as a dental nurse if I like,’ she told Lola.
‘Ugh!’ Catherine said, squirming, and Lola merely looked sad. ‘I suppose it will do for the time being. But I still hope when the war is over you will be able to go to music college in England,’ she said.
