Читать книгу The Girl from the Island - Lorna Cook - Страница 8

Summer 1940

Persephone jolted as the bedroom door was pushed opened so abruptly that it crashed into the wardrobe behind it. Her younger sister Dido ran into the room, blonde hair falling from the pins in which she usually kept it elegantly rolled, blue eyes flashing with a mix of fear and excitement.

‘They’re here, Persey,’ Dido said. ‘The Germans. They’re actually bloody here.’

Persephone closed her eyes, tipping her head down, letting her brown hair fall around her face. ‘We knew it would happen. I just didn’t think it would be so soon.’

After the trucks laden with tomatoes had been bombed in the harbour at St Peter Port, as they waited for export to England, the Islanders had all known it was only a matter of time before the Germans walked in. When the British army had demilitarised and left the island only days before, it was as if the door had been held wide open for the Nazis.

‘Do you think it’s too late to leave?’ Dido asked, glancing down at their mother. She had been in bed with influenza for the best part of the week and Persey was more than a little worried.

‘Yes. It’s too late. How would we ever get off the island now? How would we get Mother off? She’s too sick to be moved. It’s why we never went days ago. I thought she would recover sooner. I thought we’d have time,’ Persephone muttered.

‘There must be a way,’ Dido remonstrated with panic in her voice. ‘There’s always a way. If only Mother—’

‘It’s not her fault, Di. You could have gone without us. There’ve been boats leaving for England for days. You could have got on any one of them.’

‘I didn’t want to leave you, then.’

‘But now?’ Persey asked.

‘Now it’s different,’ Dido explained. ‘Now they’re actually here. Planes have been landing. Troops have been seen. I could go and see if there’s a boat or … It’s the best time to go, now, before the Germans get their feet under the table, before they know what’s what.’ Dido sat on the end of the bed, causing a dip in the mattress and making their mother murmur in her sleep. ‘What do you think, Persey? Shall I go and see?’

Persey reached out for her sister’s hand and spoke softly. ‘It’s too late now. I wished you’d gone when I told you to.’

‘So do I.’ When Dido spoke next she whispered. ‘Do you think it’ll be awful? Do you think there’ll be …?’

‘What?’ Persey asked distractedly as she dipped a cloth in water and bathed her mother’s head. Her temperature raged and the fever had yet to break. Persey knew she needed to summon the doctor. She wondered if the telephone lines would be cut now the Germans were here. Not so soon, surely. If so, she would have to bicycle the few lanes to the doctor’s house instead of telephone.

‘Rapings?’ Dido said, her blue eyes wide. ‘Killings.’

‘Dido! How can you ask such a thing?’

‘It happens everywhere,’ Dido said with offence. ‘They’re the invading force, remember. They aren’t going to be our friends. Don’t they always just kill the men and rape the women? They’re going to want to show they’re in charge.’

‘By killing us?’ Persephone asked. ‘Hardly a way to run an Occupation, is it? Killing off the inhabitants. I think they’ll want us toeing the line, alive.’

‘More’s the pity,’ Dido replied and then glanced at their mother. ‘She’s getting worse, isn’t she?’

‘Yes,’ Persey said rising. ‘I need to telephone the doctor. I don’t think I should wait any longer.’

Dido grimaced. ‘As long as he’s not been rounded up and shot already.’

The doctor’s wife advised Persey that her husband had just that moment left to visit a patient at La Villiaze and gave the address. If she was quick, she could cycle out and catch him there before he moved to his next appointment. Persey took little time pulling her bicycle from the garage and pedalling fast along the lanes. It hadn’t occurred to her she would be going past the small airport until she approached it.

She paused long enough to stand at the periphery of the airfield and stare. She wasn’t even aware she was doing it she was so captivated by the scene before her. A Guernsey policeman in his British uniform – who Persephone knew only in passing – was standing, looking grave, next to a group of men whose trousers were tucked into thick black boots and whose vibrant red arm bands contrasted with the light of the white swastikas they bore. Four or five Luftwaffe planes were parked, their tails bearing the distinctive Iron Crosses, and one flew over her to land, its engines roaring loudly in her ears. Its wheels bounced for a moment as it hit the grass runway before it turned and parked. It was a scene from a nightmare, surely.

Thank God Jack wasn’t here to see all this. The housekeeper’s son had lived in with the family and his mother at Persey’s house since they were old enough to learn to walk, after his father had died as a result of injuries in the Great War. Jack was roughly the same age as Persey and had been the brother she and Dido had never had. Persey was grateful that he’d quit his job in the bank and left Guernsey weeks ago. He’d joined up in England ready to fight the Germans even though, as a Channel Islander, he wasn’t required to do so.

The policeman caught sight of Persey and nodded his head by way of a solemn greeting. The German men he had been standing with turned to look at her with interest. In fear of being noticed, she looked away, mounted her bicycle and pedalled until she had left the airport far behind her. When she was down the lane, Persey jumped from her bicycle and threw it down onto the ground. Its wheels spun wildly from the abrupt action as she bent down at the side of the lane and was violently sick into the hedge.

Persey caught Doctor Durand as he emerged from his patient’s cottage stepping towards his motorcar and he looked more than a little surprised to see her.

‘Persephone, are you quite all right?’ he asked. Doctor Durand was her father’s friend of old. The two had known each other since school, and while her father had gone into accountancy, his friend had chosen to heal. With her father gone, the doctor had always kept a considerate eye on the remaining inhabitants of Deux Tourelles.

‘The Germans are here,’ Persey relayed to him.

The doctor stepped away from his vehicle and closed the door. He took in Persephone’s face, which she knew must look pale. ‘Yes, I saw. Over at the airport. Hard to believe, really.’ There was momentary silence before he continued. ‘You didn’t cycle out here to tell me that, did you?’

‘No. It’s mother. She’s getting worse. Will you come and see? After you’ve seen your next patient of course.’

‘I’ll come now. I can’t get your bicycle in the motorcar though. All right if I leave you in my wake and see you there?’

Persey nodded.

‘It means you’ll have to ride past the airport again. Didn’t get any trouble from any of the Germans, did you? Not sure whether it’s a good idea you being on your own. We don’t know what they’re like.’

Persey also had no idea if it was a sensible idea being alone. ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll pedal fast. Just in case.’

She watched the doctor drive away in the direction of Deux Tourelles and stood watching aircraft stream in one by one overhead, descending towards the airport. Everything had changed. In just a few short days, their island wasn’t their own anymore. They had been bombed and now they were going to be … what, exactly? She didn’t know. The reports from other nations that the Germans had already steamrollered their way into had not been good, had not been complimentary about Nazi behaviour. What kind of fate were they all to suffer? And for how long?

When Persey arrived home she felt a sense of relief at seeing the doctor’s car parked in the sweep of the drive. Everything would be all right now. The Germans might be on the island in droves, her mother might be sick, but for the next half an hour or so Doctor Durand would know what to do; would administer medicine of some kind and Persey and Dido’s mother would recover. And then tomorrow would be another day. Or would it be the beginning of hell? The beginning of Nazi Occupation? She paused in the garage where she propped her bicycle in its usual space against the wall near father’s old Wolseley Series II motorcar. Other than Jack giving it a run around the island every now and again to keep the engine ticking over, it had been parked there ever since father’s death two years earlier.

That day, her father had returned home from the golf club in time for supper, muttering something about needing to pop into his study for just five minutes before they dined. It was only when the housekeeper Mrs Grant had finally sent Persey to fetch her father before the gravy congealed that she discovered he’d passed away, slumped at his desk, chequebook on the table, pen in hand. A stroke, Doctor Durand had said. No warning; he’d been in peak health until then, which was of very little comfort to anyone.

Persey reached out and touched the bonnet of the car before she left the garage, as if it would bring her closer to her father. But of course it never did.

From inside the entrance hall Persephone could hear the faint sound of someone weeping. She stood still and moved inside without closing the door and realised that it was two people weeping, not one. She was rooted to the spot, unable to move, unable to ascend the staircase; instead she stared up towards the wooden banisters of the upper landing.

Doctor Durand appeared at the top of the stairs and looked down towards Persephone. ‘My dear,’ he started. ‘I am incredibly sorry …’

Persey’s shoulders slumped. She knew what he wanted to say and she wouldn’t let him. ‘No.’ She shook her head, holding his gaze, daring him to say it. ‘No.’

The combined sounds of Dido and Mrs Grant crying drifted towards them in the silence on the staircase.

‘She’s not dead,’ Persey started. ‘My mother is not dead.’

‘I am afraid so. I’m so terribly sorry.’ He looked as if he wanted to say something else but closed his mouth, clearly thinking better of it.

In the shock that hit Persey she thought she knew what he’d been about to say: Why didn’t you telephone earlier? It was a question she now asked herself. She hadn’t been quick enough. Hadn’t seen the signs in time, had let the fever rage for too long. And now … if she stayed standing here and didn’t move, it wouldn’t be real. If she didn’t go into her mother’s room and see her, in bed, no longer breathing … it wouldn’t be real, wouldn’t have actually happened.

‘But …’ Sobs prevented her speaking until she eventually uttered, ‘But … I was only gone from the house for half an hour. An hour, at most. I think. She can’t … in that time?’

Doctor Durand was spared answering as Dido appeared at the stairs.

‘Oh, Dido,’ Persey cried. Dido stumbled past Doctor Durand and down the stairs towards her sister, who was still rooted to the floor, and the two embraced.

‘It’s my fault. I should have …’ Persey started.

‘It’s not your fault, Persey, it’s not,’ Dido said into Persey’s hair between sobs. Persey felt her sister’s tear-streaked face dampen her own.

Dido pulled back from her sister and looked past her towards the front door. But it was only when Persey caught Doctor Durand looking in the same direction that she felt compelled to turn and follow their collective gaze.

Her eyes were blurred with tears and so Persey wasn’t able to make out the features of the man standing in the doorway, or those of the two other men behind him. But the uniform told her all she needed to know. That dark jacket, belted at the waist, eagle insignias embroidered onto the breast and the peaked cap that shielded the man’s eyes. His head was tipped down as if … ashamed? No, Persey thought. But if not that, then what?

He spoke perfect English in a German accent that should have surprised Persey but didn’t. He was German. Of course he was. And he was in the entrance hall of Deux Tourelles.

‘I appear to have called at a difficult time,’ he said.

‘Yes, you bloody have,’ Dido cried. ‘How dare—?’

Persey grabbed her sister’s hand, clutching it tightly, stopping Dido from saying anything she shouldn’t in the presence of the enemy. But she herself was unable to speak, unable to save the situation. She blinked in disbelief at the past few minutes, at the sudden loss of her mother and the surprising arrival of the Germans not only on the island but also at her front door, their jackbooted feet on the welcome mat of their home.

She nodded, only able to whisper an almost silent, ‘Yes. It is a dreadful time.’ She gulped back tears. ‘We have had a death.’

‘Then I apologise at my poor timing.’ He looked behind him at the two men who had accompanied him, his face now cast in the shadow from the peak of his cap. ‘I will return tomorrow.’

Persey’s eyes fogged with fresh tears. She wanted to say no and to shout, Don’t you dare come back. But she couldn’t speak anymore. She wiped her eyes and nodded as the three men turned and walked nonchalantly down the drive towards the car parked at the gate as if they hadn’t a care in the world.

‘What in God’s name do you think they wanted?’ Doctor Durand was the first to speak.

‘I don’t know,’ Persey whispered, confusion rattling around inside her mind.

‘We’ll find out tomorrow,’ Dido said quietly.

It was real. The Germans were here, the arrival of the enemy was upon them and Persey knew she would forever remember the day her mother died as the day the Germans arrived.

In bed later, Persey was unable to sleep, unable to cry anymore, unable to think. Visions of her mother holding her as a child, buckling her shoes for her on her first day at school, fixing her grazed knee when she’d fallen from the tree house at the end of the garden. That tree house was gone now. So was her mother.

She stared at the ceiling and then in an exhausted resignation moved to the window, lifting the tight-fitting blackout blind out of place and staring down the driveway towards the field in the distance and the single cottage that bordered their small, two-acre grounds. It had been abandoned only yesterday by the Jewish owners, who had sailed to England to escape the Nazis. If it hadn’t been for the moon casting a bright light down onto the pasture she’d not have been able to see anything but she’d have known what she was looking at; the view imprinted on her memory. She’d been born in this house. She’d never known anything else, never wanted anything else.

Her mind wandered aimlessly as she placed the thick blackout frame silently on the carpet of her room. The Germans were here now; why was the blind needed? But Mrs Grant had a copy of the Evening Press with the horrific announcements from the occupying force littering the pages. Things were to continue in much the same way, for now. Tonight the blackout wasn’t in place to prevent the Germans from bombing Guernsey – it was to prevent the British from bombing the island and driving the Germans into submission.

Unthinkable really, that the British would bomb Guernsey now. But then, prior to the last few weeks it had been unthinkable that the Germans would occupy Guernsey, yet it had happened. So why not the former?

‘The world has turned upside down,’ she whispered to herself. She looked towards the garage, its wide doors left open. She hadn’t closed the house properly for the night and she stared as the moonlight bounced a silver light off the bonnet of her father’s car, taunting her, telling her that she had let everyone down today by letting her mother die and now, her father’s car was visible to any German who wanted to take it; inconsequential as it was in the grand scheme of things.

Persey pulled her dressing gown from the hook behind her door and made her way along the landing. She stopped at her mother’s closed door and put her hand against it. The undertaker had been – promptly summoned by Doctor Durand – and her mother was no longer in the house but still Persey didn’t know why the door had been closed. She opened it wide and looked in. The pain was too great in her chest, looking at her mother’s things, items that she knew her mother would never touch again. Her hairbrush on the dressing table, her book – open and face down. Her mother had been too weak to read it for so long. How had Persey not registered that? Her mother’s face flashed in her mind and, guiltily, Persey closed the door again and with it closed her own eyes, hoping it would take the pain away. But it didn’t.

Doctor Durand had said there was nothing he could have done. The influenza had taken over and her mother’s lungs, weakened from when she’d caught tuberculosis as a child, had been the root cause of her demise. But still Persey blamed herself. Why hadn’t she telephoned earlier? Why? There might have been something Doctor Durand could have done.

She continued downstairs towards the garage. She would shut the doors and return to bed to try and force sleep to come. But as she closed the first door she heard a noise at the back of the garage where her father’s tools still hung. She stood still. It had sounded as if someone had backed into the wall and knocked one of the spades or rakes hanging from the tool hooks. The clatter of metal on brick died out as quickly as it had started, as if someone had grabbed at the implement to silence the noise.

As soon as the word ‘Hello?’ fell from her lips she knew it had been a mistake to speak. She turned to run away but wasn’t quick enough. Her foot had barely moved an inch before she saw someone lurch towards her, grab her by her dressing gown and pull her back inside the garage. Almost as quickly, the man’s other hand clamped around her mouth and the scream that came from her was silenced, heard by no one inside the house.