The Gathering Storm

by Bodie Thoene

  19

  Besides Eben Golah, there was another familiar face among the volunteers at St. Mark’s: Madame Rose, the incomparably competent manager of children and canal boats, who had rescued our lifeboat off the beach at Dunkirk. Madame Rose was a missionary who had spent a lifetime after the Great War caring for the orphans in Paris.

  Madame Rose’s broad face and bowed mouth gave her the appearance of a smiling bullfrog. I liked her immediately. The light of her faith shone on her face.

  She said in a gravelly whisper to my Jessica, “All glory to God. Not one of them is lost. Not one.”

  Madame Rose held an infant in her arms. The flock of children who leaned against her was asleep on their feet. Hermione led them away to a quiet corner beneath the towering pipes of the great organ and helped to bed them down.

  Eben continued, “But now, because they are aliens, Madame Rose’s children have been brought here with the others. All will be sheltered here until there is determination of their status.” He raised his eyes and suddenly at all the exits of the building we saw uniformed and armed members of the Home Guard appear.

  Jessica and I exchanged unhappy glances. Jessica asked, “All who are here at St. Mark’s?” I peered around at little knots of mothers and children. One group especially drew my attention. There was a heap of toddlers, tumbled together like puppies, who were sound asleep beneath the altar window depicting the outstretched arms of Jesus on the cross. The words Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not echoed in my mind.

  Mac nodded somberly, confirming: “All.”

  We had known from our arrival in England that aliens were placed into three categories. Class A was openly pro-Nazi. Those had been arrested and interned when the war broke out the previous September. Class B involved refugees without papers. They were restricted in their movements and required to report their activities. Class C, which included Jessica and Eva and me, listed a category of refugees who had lived in England for at least six years, or who were vouched for as being from Allied nations.

  Over the past few weeks, after the Nazis broke through the lines in France, innocent victims of Nazi tyranny had been rounded up by the British government. The classification system had broken down. Interned in substandard camps, Jews were imprisoned all together with Nazis, Jew-haters, anti-Nazis.

  Now this.

  “What can this mean?” Jessica’s eyes reflected the horror of memories from our days in the Reich. I knew her thoughts replayed the horrors of the secret police knocking in the middle of the night, of neighbors who had disappeared, never to be heard from again…like Varrick’s family.

  Mac explained, “Everyone here must endure the classification process. Evaluation, you see.” He gestured toward the black squares and white squares of the checkered floor in mute definition of what he meant.

  Eben’s tone was meant to be oil on troubled water. “The British government must make certain. Must be certain that everyone here is…friendly.”

  The youthful features of a Great War soldier frozen in marble gazed across the throng. Was he to be the depiction of their protector…or their jailor?

  Jessica’s eyes brimmed as she looked over the sleeping women and children, then shook her head in disbelief at the guards standing at every door. “Friendly?”

  Eben took Jessica’s hands. “Your father was a great man. He sacrificed everything. And you are Americans.”

  Jessica nodded. “You are saying that I, and my family, will not be interrogated again?”

  Mac replied, “You are free to go home if you wish.”

  Such a declaration of our freedom after a night among the suffering was unacceptable to Jessica. “Lora?” Her gaze was steady into my eyes.

  I thought of the mothers with their exhausted children who had witnessed the brutality of war and somehow survived. I reviewed again how abandoned I had felt at the loss of my former life. It had been so hard to grasp my new identity. How impossible was it for all these so recently torn away from everything familiar? “No, Jessica. Let’s stay with them,” I answered. “They will need someone who understands the language of suffering to speak for them.”

  Jessica thanked Mac and Eben. “You knew before you asked us.”

  I said, “We must speak for those who have no voice.”

  Eben fixed his eyes upon mine. “You are truly your father’s daughter.” And then he bowed slightly and took my hand. “I am sorry for your loss. The Lord, Yeshua, once said, ‘If you do it unto the least of these…you have done the kindness to Me.’”

  I replied, “Where else could I go in my brokenness but to my suffering Lord?”

  Eben Golah appeared deeply touched at hearing those words. He bowed and kissed my fingertips in a gesture of profound respect. With that he turned and wordlessly went to speak to the British officer in charge of the incarceration. I watched him closely as he gestured toward me and Jessica. No doubt he was explaining who we were and demanding utmost respect for our position.

  We spoke only of practicalities: food and clothing and bedding. How long would these unfortunate souls be held prisoner? Where would they go if they were released? Where would they be imprisoned if they were not?

  I slept on a pew in the St. Mark’s choir loft and remembered Varrick. It made me sad and then angry that I couldn’t see his face more clearly in my memory.

  I mourned what might have been for our lives. More separation than time together. I regretted the loss of our future much more than what was in our past.

  Only when the great hall of St. Mark’s lapsed into the quiet stirring of exhausted women and children did I allow myself to think about these things. I considered what all these dear people around me had lost. My own loss was put into perspective. The past was irretrievable. The world as we had known it had vanished. The future was uncertain. We who had survived to see this moment only had this moment in which survival was a certainty. The refuge of England’s green shores, to which a merciful God had surely brought us, was only a temporary haven.

  I was awakened by the tramp of English boots as a military guard entered the church vestibule. The sorting out of alien sheep and goats had begun.

  Male refugees who slept in the crypt at St. Mark’s were rousted out, rounded up, and escorted under guard to an undisclosed location just after dawn. Most were French who had escaped through Dunkirk. Some were fishermen from the coast who had sailed their vessels with a few family members and friends. I pitied them all. Wives and children cried out as their husbands were led away.

  Madame Rose consoled Jessica and me. Her thick American twang was tinged with a hint of Gallic accent. “Perhaps those who are young enough to serve in the military will be drafted into a Free French fighting force and trained to drive the Hun from the soil of France. We shall pray it happens thus.” She embraced a young Frenchman in the line and called him by name. She instructed him that he must keep his eyes on God. I understood her admonition. “Maurice, from the time I saw you as a child, I knew the Lord has His hands on your shoulders.”

  The young fellow replied, “Madame Rose, I was an orphan, alone with my brother in the streets of Paris. It was you who raised me and my brother to trust in God. But now I tell you this, in the crypt beneath this church lies entombed General Hudson Lowe. He was the very man who guarded the Emperor Napoleon in exile on St. Helena after Waterloo. It is not a good omen for those of us who are French to sleep in the tomb of Napoleon’s jailor.”

  Like a French grandmother, Madame Rose kissed him farewell upon each cheek and said, “Even in exile the Angel of the Lord encamps around those who revere Him. Only trust God, Maurice. You will not be in exile long.”

  There were tears in the gruff old woman’s eyes as she hugged the weeping women and bade the Frenchmen farewell. I prayed the Lord would hear her petitions for them and that they would soon find their life’s purpose in battle, lifting up their trodden nation from beneath the Nazi jackboots.

  More news came by messenger mid
morning. Madame Rose, because of her American citizenship, could return to America, but without her orphans. She read the message and angrily strode out of the church. She appealed to the American ambassador face-to-face. Within an hour she and the children of her Paris orphanage received the papers that allowed them to find haven in the tiny Welsh community where my cousin Elisa and her mother and several other children lived. This was good news.

  Jessica rocked Shalom as the documents arrived. Madame Rose opened the thick brown envelope and smiled broadly. “Well, well.” She leveled her gaze on my sister. “I received the permissions. Jessica, you and Shalom and Gina and the girls must come along to Wales as well. And Lora too. When the invasion begins, things will be difficult here in London. Come with me and the children, back to Wales. I will need your help.”

  Sizing up the sun-bronzed old woman, I had the sense that beneath her wings, all would be well. Her spirit exuded safety, and unseen angels stood guard over those she loved.

  “We’ll be safe in Wales,” Madame Rose said. “I saw that road blocks have been set up everywhere in the south. Overturned carts and automobiles. Across the roads. Manned by civilians.” We all knew that such things would not stop the Nazis. “For the children’s sake, you must come to Wales and help me. We can do what my sister Betsy and I did in Paris after the last war. So many little ones will need our care.”

  Jessica agreed immediately, but I did not. Feeling the hands of the Lord upon my shoulders, I knew some other destiny awaited me in London. The fleeting thought came into my head that perhaps I would stay in London and die. I was not unhappy at the possibility of death.

  I said quietly, “I can’t go to safety when so many here face peril. Jessica, you know that.”

  Jessica replied, “So like our father. But you should come with us.”

  “If the Nazis invade, every hand will be needed here in London. I can better fight those who killed Varrick and William and Papa if I remain on the front lines.”

  Jessica looked up at the great window above the entrance of the church: Christ the King, returning in glory to redeem His own. With the blackout curtains drawn back, the light beamed through his face. The flames of the seven candlesticks that represented the churches of Revelation chapter 2 seemed especially radiant.

  “Perhaps before this war ends we will meet Christ Jesus in the air,” Madame Rose remarked, following Jessica’s eyes. “And then it will not matter that one is here and the other there. We will all rise together to meet Him.”

  Such an argument transcended time and space, life and death. Jessica nodded in agreement that I should remain in London. She promised if the island fortress of England held out she would come back to visit me from time to time and bring the baby with her for visits.

  So it was settled. I went home to our flat to bathe and change as Jessica packed up her meager belongings for the journey north to the safety of Wales. I confess that I did not care for my own life or my safety. Whatever was to come upon London and England, I hoped that I could die fighting. I expected to die. My heart only longed to go home to heaven and see Mama and Varrick and Papa very soon.

  Civilian refugees from Holland, Belgium, and France continued to trickle in throughout the next week. Those who claimed some link with America were escorted to St. Mark’s for shelter.

  No matter how tenuous a connection, anyone with a distant relative in the U.S. was among the blessed. I could hear the chattering throughout the hall:

  “My father’s aunt lives in Chi-ca-go.”

  “My great uncle moved to America after the great war. A musician. I think he works in Hollywood.”

  “My brother-in-law’s brother…”

  “Philadelphia!”

  “Pittsburg.”

  “Texas.”

  “Atlanta.”

  Without documentation the authorities could not be certain about any story, and all U.S. visas were marked Pending. This meant pending a work permit, or pending a guarantee of sponsorship, or pending proof of familial relationship.

  With Eva’s help, we set up tables for processing applications that would be submitted to the American Embassy. Eva, who spoke several languages, would check the pitiful attempts at written English and conjugate verbs properly in order to add some air of worthiness to the documents.

  Were the applicants worthy to go to America? Are they worthy? Will they be worthy?

  We knew the answer to these questions would lie in the hands of some junior clerk in the basement of the American enclave. The power invested in someone we had never seen, nor would likely ever meet, made us aware of how a whim or a hangover could change the course of a life irrevocably. If the answer was no, then the refugee might face long-term internment in England.

  It was Eva who began the practice of laying hands on the documents and praying over each. We prayed with her and soon we looked up to see the haunted faces of the hopeful survivors all around us.

  Within days Eva had begun a Scripture study for women in the hall. She stuck to the Old Testament because there were so many Jews among our group. There were not enough Bibles to go around, and the women shared with one another.

  It was rare that a visa was granted. When travel papers did arrive, this was cause for great celebration.

  Hope and sorrow had made sisters out of these who were the flotsam and jetsam of war. Like the beams of a dozen ships broken on the shoals, these shattered lives joined together to be built into a new ship. The women of St. Mark’s carried one another’s burdens and cared for one another’s children. They had come to England not knowing one another, but they became a family in those first days.

  I cannot think of any other shelter in London in which there was such camaraderie and hope.

  20

  It was past mid-June 1940 when the certainty of what we were facing came home to every soul in Britain.

  Eben rapped twice on the frame of my open office door. I glanced up from the stack of refugee documents I was translating.

  I smiled, but he did not return my greeting. “France is lost,” he said. “The Nazis are marching into Paris.”

  I closed the file containing the account of three Jewish sisters who had escaped from Calais. “We knew it was coming.”

  “Come on, then. Churchill is speaking on BBC.” Eben waited for me in the hall as I cleared my desk. We hurried from the church into the Star and Garter public house. The radio behind the bar was turned up full volume. The pub was packed with men and women who neither spoke nor moved nor lifted pint glasses to sip.

  Churchill’s droning voice penetrated a haze of cigarette smoke:

  “…The battle of France is over. I expect that the battle of Britain is about to begin…. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows he will have to break this island or lose the war….”

  Beads of perspiration glistened on Eben’s forehead. His gaze was riveted on the radio. He unconsciously clasped my hand in his and raised my fingers to his lips. It was not a kiss but a protective gesture, as one might reassure a child that all would be well in the end. Still, I felt the intimate warmth of his tenderness uncoil in me. I longed to have strong arms around me. My feelings for him at such a desperate moment startled me. I gently pulled my hand away, and only then did he look down at me in surprise and embarrassment.

  Churchill’s dire warning continued:

  “If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science….”

  The ominous truth of the prime minister’s warning could only be fully believed by those who had already seen and survived the perverted, eugenic, pseudo-science of the National Socialists in Germany. Abortion, sterilization, euthanasia, socialized medicine, which selected who should liv
e and who must die: these were only the tip of the iceberg in Germany.

  Matters of life and death had gone far beyond who was physically acceptable to the state.

  Now the state granted the right to live only to those citizens who agreed with the right of the state to kill those who disagreed.

  Eben took my hand again, and this time I did not pull away from him. Churchill, who had for years been warning the world of what was to come, had finally been proven correct.

  “…Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”

  So the broadcast ended, and everyone in the pub stood and with tears began to sing “God Save the King.”

  From across the room I spotted Mac and Eva. I could tell his lips moved, as mine did, with the words of America’s version of the song, “My Country ’tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Liberty…”

  Our spontaneous hymn ended with three cheers as strangers embraced one another in a show of solidarity and grim determination in the face of death.

  Eben enfolded me in his arms. I laid my cheek against his chest as the crowd roared. The room reeled around me. He kissed the top of my head. His left arm encircled me as he shook hands with the men in the room. My eyes closed, I leaned against him for what seemed like a very long time.

  The voice of Mac McGrath brought me round.

  “Eben!” he hailed.

  Eva chimed in. “Lora! Lora! What do you think?”

  I hugged her, and she held my face in both her hands. There were tears in her eyes. “So, it has come to this at last,” she said to me in French.

  Mac corrected her, “English, Eva. You’re going to be an American.”

  We made our way to an empty table littered with empty pint glasses. Eva remarked, “I will be an American. Like you. I promised Mac I will speak only American. The French will soon be speaking German, I think.”