The Darkest Hour

by Roberta Kagan

  I went upstairs and looked through the door to Rachel’s room. The partition was splintered, and torn bits of paper littered the floor, but scrawled in wax crayon on the back of the wall hundreds, no thousands, of times, over and over, was a red letter ‘V’.

  Behind the ruined wall, the long makeshift bed still bore the imprint of Rachel’s warm body. The Tilley lamp was still on, and the book she had been reading lay open, face down. The Midnight Folk, by John Masefield, the green embossed hardback I’d had when I was seven years old, and kept, even though it was tatty, because I was fond of it. I picked it up and read the familiar lines:

  * * *

  Waking up, he rubbed his eyes: it was broad daylight; but no one was there. Someone was scraping and calling inside the wainscot, just below where the pistols hung. There was something odd about the daylight; it was brighter than usual; all things looked more real than usual.

  ‘Can’t you open the door, Kay?’ the voice asked.

  There never had been a door there; but now that Kay looked, there was a little door, all studded with knobs of iron. Just as he got down to it, it opened towards him; there before him was Nibbins, the black cat.

  ‘Come along Kay,’ Nibbins said, ‘we can just do it while they’re at the banquet; but don’t make more noise than you must.’

  Kay peeped through the door. It opened from a little narrow passage in the thickness of the wall.

  ‘Where does it lead to?’ he asked.

  ‘Come and see,’ Nibbins said.

  Chapter 19

  I hardly slept, thinking of Rachel huddled in a cell somewhere, and the more good news we had, the more restless I became, doubting if the official announcement of victory in Europe would ever come. If it didn’t, then my trial would no doubt sentence me to a long journey to Germany, but this time, as a proven enemy of the state, it certainly wouldn’t be a pleasure cruise.

  When I heard the metallic bang of the letterbox, I ran to fetch the newspaper, hoping for news about where Rachel was being held. It was just one sheet – a full-page spread from the Bailiff, Coutanche, urging everyone to listen to the broadcast from the BBC. It would be relayed in St Helier from loudspeakers, but we shouldn’t hoist Union flags until after the end of hostilities announcement came.

  Was this it? Was this really it? Had we killed a man for nothing? I had to hear it with my own ears. I walked shakily towards the town, but nothing seemed to have changed; in the distance, the stark silhouettes of German soldiers with rifles were manning the gun towers.

  But the square before the Pomme d’Or hotel was different. Before I even got there I was jostled forward into a road packed to bursting. Then I realised, there were no German soldiers stopping us from gathering. The noise of voices was like the whooshing rush of sea over pebbles, everyone speaking at once.

  Goodness, the whole of Jersey must be here! When the crackling voice of Churchill finally came through the loudspeakers, the crowd around me erupted into cheers, but were quickly hushed to a pregnant silence by Churchill’s voice.

  * * *

  ‘Hostilities will end officially at one minute after midnight tonight – Tuesday, 8th May – but in the interests of saving lives, the “cease fire” began yesterday, to be sounded all along the front, and our dear Channel Islands are also to be freed today.’

  * * *

  At the words ‘Our dear Channel Islands’ the crowd went wild.

  The elderly man next to me lifted me up and swung me round and planted a smacking kiss on my lips.

  A skinny woman in a battered felt hat tutted. ‘‘‘Dear Channel Islands” indeed. If we were that dear, why didn’t they help us? We’ve been bullied and half-starved for the last five years.’

  ‘But it’s over,’ I yelled, ‘No more “verboten”!’

  And, finally, even she had to smile.

  It was impossible to hear the rest of the speech; it was just a background fuzz against the whoops and shouts all around me. Silence fell again for the Bailiff, who mounted the podium amid a great cheer and clapping of hands, to tell us that the navy were already on their way from England to arrange the surrender of the German forces on the islands.

  I wondered where Rachel was. It seemed a bitter blow that she couldn’t be here with me, and that she’d been taken so near the end. I cursed Fischer and his pig-headed devotion to duty. But the mood of jubilation was infectious, and I was soon joining in the singing of English songs, with tears running down my face. The curfew was forgotten. Nobody slept. We couldn’t. We were high on adrenalin and hope.

  After the jubilation, the bakery seemed a sad, empty shell. I ran my hand along the bare counter and thought back to before the war, to the smell of apple pie and Fred’s cheerful face. I didn’t go upstairs. I couldn’t face the splintered wall, the painful memories, or the room where Horst had died. Nothing would be the same again; I could never get that back. This place would always be a place of both light and shadow. I kept wondering where Fred died, whether Horst had been right, and that he’d really been shot, or whether Horst had just said that to hurt me. Somehow, I’d have to find out.

  The next day, more huge crowds filled the roadway below the Pomme d’Or, which had been selected as the new Jersey allied headquarters. With the rest, I longed for the actual landing of the British troops.

  When they finally arrived, the sight of brown uniforms disembarking made me crumple with relief. Right in front of me, a young London Tommy was mobbed, as people surrounded him, anxious for news about relatives or friends or conditions in England. Curfew and all other restrictions were completely forgotten. Grey-green uniforms were replaced by brown and khaki as the Germans hid in their billets or aboard their ships. White crosses sprang up on the German ships and guns.

  Queues of dejected Germans crowded the beaches as prisoners of war. Their defeat played out in the dejected set of their shoulders and their trailing feet. How quickly power could turn one nation into a bully, and how soon that power evaporated, running through their fingers like a fistful of sand. I strained to see the Germans’ faces, wondering if Wolfgang was amongst them, and hoped he would be treated well, glad I never had to witness those last desperate moments as he hurled Horst’s body into the sea.

  Behind me, a familiar voice rang out. ‘There she is, the Jerrybag!’

  I turned. It was as if everything happened in slow motion. Mrs Hedges pointed an accusing finger at me, and from the crowd, a group of men and women burst out and grabbed me by the shoulders.

  All I could see were the wide-open angry mouths shouting at me as my arm was almost wrested from its socket. One of my shoes fell off as I scraped along the pavement, resisting as I was pushed and pulled forward.

  ‘Stop!’ I shouted.

  But nobody listened. The crowd were chanting, ‘whore, whore.’

  Outside the barber’s shop, someone kicked me forward. I was surrounded by a sea of faces. In the crowd I saw Mrs Soulier, her arms folded across her chest, shouting with the rest. Four men were holding another poor woman down. She had a placard around her neck with the word ‘Jerrybag’ scrawled on it. Blood dripped from cuts on her scalp as the barber hacked off her hair.

  She looked up at me.

  ‘I did what I had to do,’ she said. Her eyes met mine, and we exchanged a glance of understanding.

  They dragged her off the chair, and they would have thrown her in the water, but for the fact she twisted and leapt away. I watched her run through the crowd as they kicked and spat at her and threw stones, but I didn’t see much more because someone grabbed my shoulders and pressed me down hard onto the chair.

  Rough hands pinioned my arms to my side and the sharp edge of a cardboard placard scratched across my face. I felt my hair tugged away from my scalp. There was a clash of scissor blades, and a whisper of hair fell past my face.

  ‘Stop!’ A familiar voice from the crowd. ‘Leave her alone! This woman’s no traitor!’

  Rachel. I turned my head to try to see her, but it was jerked ba
ck by a slap on the face. Thank God. She was still here on Jersey and not on a ship to Germany.

  ‘Stop!’ she cried again, this time she’d made it through the crowd, and stood before us, hands on hips, her face contorted and red with anger.

  The grip on my arms didn’t loosen, though I struggled.

  ‘Mr Scott, she saved my life. She hid me all that time. You’ve got to listen! The Germans were just a cover. I’d be dead by now if it wasn’t for her kindness.’

  A man’s voice from behind me: ‘She’s a sympathiser! Mrs Hedges says she’s married to a German.’

  ‘She’s a widow,’ yelled Rachel. ‘Her husband died fighting, you imbeciles! Let go of her!’

  The grip on one of my arms loosened, and Mr Scott stepped forward. ‘The Germans told me you were dead.’

  ‘I was in hiding,’ Rachel said. ‘Please, Mr Scott. Let Céline go. She’s suffered at their hands more than most. I know because I saw it.’

  ‘She could have said no.’

  ‘So what would you do with a gun at your head?’

  ‘Jerrybag!’ came a lone female voice from the crowd.

  Rachel turned, eyes blazing. ‘If she’s a Jerrybag then so is every last woman on the island. We’ve all had to collude with them one way or another to stay alive, haven’t we?’ She glanced round the surly faces. ‘Well, haven’t we?’

  Something about her conviction, her steely glare, made the crowd fall silent.

  ‘We’ve all suffered at their hands,’ Mr Scott said. ‘They imprisoned me for six months for employing you.’

  ‘So let’s not make ourselves as bad as them,’ Rachel retorted.

  Rachel plucked the placard from around my neck and cast it on the ground. ‘And before you call anyone else names, look to your own consciences.’ She pulled me up from the chair.

  ‘Jerrybag!’ the same woman called again.

  Rachel rounded on her. ‘You stupid woman. The war’s over. Do you really want it to go on? They give us peace, and you want to fight your own people? Good people who’ve never done anything to harm you?’

  Silence.

  ‘Come on, Céline, we’re going home.’

  When I stood up, nobody stopped me. Rachel’s hand on my arm was steady and strong. With as much dignity as I could muster with only one shoe, we walked through the crowd.

  ‘If you want it, your position’s still open at the bank,’ called Mr Scott.

  ‘Thank you,’ Rachel called back over her shoulder. ‘I’ll be in on Monday.’

  Our safety seemed too fragile to risk stopping, and I was too scared to speak. We didn’t even turn to look at each other until we reached the top of the hill. Then, wordlessly, we hugged.

  ‘I thought they’d scalp you,’ Rachel said. ‘I was more terrified of them than the Germans!’

  ‘Liar,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I needed a haircut.’

  Our fear was too tender yet for laughter. She squeezed my arm and interlaced her fingers in mine. I stared out to sea, then my gaze shifted to the fragile border between land and ocean, between Jersey and the rest of the world.

  Rachel’s eyes were trained on the grey landing craft filling the bay, at the queues of soldiers leaving. ‘I can’t believe they came at all,’ she said. ‘And now I can’t believe they’ve gone.’

  ‘It seems unreal, the difference a single day can make,’ I said. ‘And that some piece of paper signed in another part of the world can turn things on their head.’

  She let go. ‘I’ll miss Wolfgang. He was … he was not like the others.’

  ‘That man – he’d do anything for you, the great soft thing. He knows he can find you here on Jersey, and maybe he’ll come back one day,’ I said. ‘It seems odd that soon those beaches will be emptied of mines, and the children will be back to dig sandcastles and play hopscotch and eat ice creams. And no one will remember.’

  ‘I’ll remember,’ Rachel said. ‘I’ll remember that even in the worst of times there are still good people.’

  ‘I’m not sure. When people ask us what part Jersey played in the war, we’ll just seem like cowards.’

  ‘There’s more than one way to fight though, isn’t there? Like not buckling under and giving up.’

  I smiled. ‘It’s not very heroic.’

  ‘Heroic isn’t what matters; it’s survival that matters; to witness it and then move on. To be here to build a new and different future.’ She reached out to wrap her arm round my waist.

  ‘You sound like Churchill,’ I said. ‘You’ve missed your calling!’

  ‘Let’s go home,’ Rachel said. ‘When the British let me out of the jail, they gave me a little present.’ She put her hand in her pocket and drew out a twist of white paper containing a black powdery substance.

  ‘What is it? Gosh, I’ll have to buy new glasses.’

  ‘You don’t need them for this. It’s the most English thing you can imagine.’

  I sniffed it. ‘Tea!’

  We limped back towards the bakery arm in arm, through the bright summer sun that smelt of hot tarmac, as the shouts and cheers from the town grew fainter.

  Outside the front door we paused. We can do it, I thought. We can brave the past and find our future.

  Author’s Note

  During World War Two, the Channel Islands were the only part of the British Isles to be occupied by the Germans. This story is based on several true accounts, although I have welded them together and compressed them into a fictional narrative. For more on Jersey’s Occupation, I thoroughly recommend Madeleine Bunting’s excellent book, The Model Occupation. For an overview, the BBC history site has several pages on this topic. Though fictional, Céline and Rachel’s story was inspired by the true story of Dorothea Weber, who helped her Jewish friend Hedwig Bercu by hiding her from the Germans. More on this surprising real life story can be found here.

  Thank you to my first readers Emily Johnson and Susan Abbott for their suggestions, and to my editor, Richard Sheehan.

  You can find more of Deborah’s WW2 fiction on her website.

  The Astonishing Past – Do sign up for Deborah’s monthly Newsletter for snippets of history, book chat and bargain books.

  http://www.deborahswift.com/what-i-do/#more-235

  About the Author

  Deborah Swift is an English author of historical fiction. Before publishing her first novel Deborah worked as a set and costume designer for theatre and BBC TV. She also developed a degree course in Theatre Arts at the Arden School of Theatre, where she taught scenography and the history of design. In 2007 she took an MA in Creative Writing at Lancaster University, and since then has juggled writing with teaching. Deborah has been published by St Martin’s Press, Pan Macmillan, Endeavour Press, Accent Press and Sapere Books.

  Read More from Deborah Swift

  Code Name Camille by Kathryn Gauci

  Synopsis

  Code Name Camille

  * * *

  Paris 1942-43: A traitor in the Resistance threatens to bring down the entire network.

  * * *

  When the Germans invade France, twenty-one-year-old Nathalie Fontaine is living a quiet life in a village near the Pyrénées. She heads for Paris and joins the Resistance. A chance encounter with a stranger who offers her work as a model with a well-known Parisian couturier, leads the network to suspect a double agent in their midst. In a race against time, they must discover the traitor before he brings down the entire network.

  Chapter 1

  Sometime around 6:00 pm on a wet, autumn day in 1942, twenty-one-year-old Nathalie Fontaine arrived at Paris’s Gare Montparnasse. The journey from her hometown near the Pyrénées had taken just over three days. Finally, she had made it. Paris, the city of lights; a place she had wanted to visit for as long as she could remember, albeit under different circumstances. She was cold, exhausted, and hungry, and she had one thing on her mind – to join the Résistance and rid her country of its Nazi occupiers.

  As she stepped down from the carriage with he
r suitcase, she had no idea what that would entail. Such is the idealism of youth. But she did have a name and address; her only contact in Paris, and it was this that she pinned her hopes on. Filled with travellers, guards, German soldiers, and the Gestapo, the station looked identical to the other major railway stops she had passed through. At Montparnasse, they were out in force, checking identity papers and hauling terrified people away on a whim. The look on the people’s faces spoke volumes. Paris was under siege, a city where its inhabitants lived in the shadow of German oppression

  A man with a tanned complexion, clad in a dark grey overcoat and fedora, asked to see her documents. She gave him a sweet smile and handed them to him. After a thorough check, he returned them, minus the smile, and indicated for her to move on. She breathed out a sigh of relief. How she loathed these people. Yet despite her parents’ reluctance to allow her to leave, it was little things like this that spurred her on. She knew she’d made the right decision.

  Outside the station, she stopped to get her bearings and headed for the metro in the direction of Pont de l’Alma. An hour later she arrived at rue Frédéric Chopin, a pretty street of elegant 19th century buildings with slate grey roofs, a short five-minute walk from the bridge. It was now dark and most of the shops had closed, except for one, a florist – La Vie en Fleurs. She checked the address – 29 rue Frédéric Chopin. She had reached her destination.

  Outside the shop, underneath a green and white striped awning, stood a colourful display of baskets and rustic boxes of cut flowers and plants. A row of light-bulbs, strung up under the awning, twinkled through the soft rain, casting a warm glow over the blooms. A picture-perfect setting: romantic, serene, and inviting. The door opened and a slim woman in her late fifties, her hair tied back in a neat roll, came out and started to clear away the flowers with as much care as the display she had created. Nathalie crossed the road towards her. When the woman heard the footsteps on the cobblestones, she turned to look.