Tom
St Helier, November 1940
The blare of trumpets, trombones, drums and glockenspiels resounded throughout St Helier, and crowds streamed towards the irresistible sound of the military band. Standing in the doorway of his father’s photographic studio, Tom watched as German troops marched past in their steel helmets and polished jackboots, whose metal studs clicked on the tarmac. It was a victory parade to welcome the arrival of the new German commander, and it made Tom think back to the newsreel he had seen several months before, of the Nazis stomping along the Champs-Élysées. But this was far worse. This was a victory without a battle, without even a single gunshot, a triumph over their subservience. It made him feel like throwing up.
The parade wasn’t the only thing he was watching. He was also aware that his father was darting in front of the crowd to get the best vantage point for his photographs. Since the Occupation had begun five months before, his mother had placed a sign in their shop window in German to entice soldiers to bring their films for him to develop. Her ploy had worked, and Stanley Gaskell had become the Germans’ official photographer. Their shop was always full of soldiers bringing in their films, and asking for advice about cameras. They often wanted portraits taken, and thanks to the Occupation, his business thrived.
‘They’ll want photos of today’s parade to send home,’ his mother told Stanley that morning. ‘Make sure you take close-ups of the band as well.’ It seemed to Tom that she never stopped scheming and plotting, always finding ways to make more money. It meant that they were never short of anything, but the extent to which they depended on German customers for their growing prosperity embarrassed him.
Like his home, the whole island was being Germanised. From a vantage point above the harbour, he and Frank sat on their Raleigh bicycles watching barges, boats and ships piled up with cars, bicycles and yachts, as well as cows and potatoes, all bound for Germany.
‘If they could lift the whole of Jersey out of the sea and transport it to Germany, they would,’ he said.
‘But they don’t even need to, do they?’ Frank retorted. ‘Harry says that they come into his father’s workshop and just help themselves to tyres, spare parts, spanners, screwdrivers, whatever they want.’
Harry, who helped his father in his mechanic’s workshop after school, rarely joined them on their after-school excursions, but he was always eager to hear about their exploits. Tom admired Harry, who was different from him and Frank. While he and Frank were mad about sport, impulsive and recklessly outspoken, Harry was quiet and preferred reading to outdoor activities. He always saw the best in everyone and was irritatingly honest and truthful, perhaps because he attended a Jesuit college, Tom supposed. People often commented on the contrast between the three of them, but Tom felt that their friend’s considered, thoughtful nature created a balance in their triumvirate, so his words that morning had astonished them.
‘The best way to help tyrants is to do nothing,’ he’d said.
Tom and Frank had looked at each other and then at Harry. ‘Where’d you get that from?’ Frank asked.
Harry shrugged. ‘Read it somewhere. Makes sense though, doesn’t it?’
‘Doing anything right now just gets you into trouble,’ Frank said. ‘Look what happened to those two girls who wrote that V sign all over the place.’
Tom was silent. He couldn’t stop thinking about Harry’s comment, which reverberated in his mind for a long time.
He was struggling with a problem at home. Although he was upset that his father’s business relied on the occupiers, what made him seethe was the social contact that had started up between some of the German officers and his parents, especially his mother. Once a week, their home on Gloucester Road resounded with music, the clinking of glasses, and loud German laughter. Their regular guests were officers from the Water Police, who were stationed at the Pomme d’Or. In his opinion they had no sense of humour, so he couldn’t understand why his mother laughed so much at their asinine jokes.
On those evenings, Alma seemed to be in her element. She put dance records on the turntable, Gilbert and Sullivan songs, Strauss waltzes, or Franz Lehar tunes, while his father dutifully did the rounds pouring schnapps or lager into their guests’ bottomless glasses.
It upset Tom to see Stanley being a waiter. Tom thought his attempt to look interested in the conversation, despite being ignored, was demeaning. What was even more infuriating was the way the fat officer, Gunther Kohl, gazed at his mother with doglike adoration he didn’t bother to conceal.
Sometimes during the party, Alma would grab Tom’s arm and push him into the centre of the room to boast how well he spoke German. Tom glared at her while she put him through his German paces for the benefit of their guests. It was true that he had made good progress with Professor Strauss’s tutelage, but he hated being paraded like a performing monkey in front of the hated invaders, who clapped him on the shoulder and praised his mother for her foresight in having him learn their language.
On these occasions Tom couldn’t get away fast enough, and would retreat upstairs to his bedroom, where he would spend the rest of the night trying to block out the convivial sounds of the party and his mother’s sparkling laugh.
‘I suppose next you’re going to enlist me in the Hitler Youth,’ he said one evening after their guests had left and his father was gathering up the glasses.
With a scathing look, she hissed, ‘If you’re too stupid to know which side your bread is buttered on, keep your infantile opinions to yourself.’
‘Why do you have those Krauts here?’ he asked his father. Stanley shrugged. ‘Your mother says it’s good for business.’
Tom stomped back upstairs and slammed his bedroom door.
Didn’t his parents see what the Germans were doing to their island? Barely five months had passed since their arrival, and already most of the shops were bare. Food was now severely rationed to eight ounces of meat, two ounces of butter, four ounces of sugar and ten ounces of bread a week, on an island where everything had always been plentiful.
Clothing and other essential items were almost impossible to obtain except on the black market, where the prices were out of most people’s reach. He wondered why their larder was never empty, and obtaining food and wine, as well as new dresses, handbags and shoes, didn’t seem to be a problem for his mother.
Although the seas around Jersey were rough, with unpredictable tides and dangerous coastal storms, Tom noticed that the possibility of supplementing their meagre rations with mackerel, sole or flounder encouraged many locals to try their luck. Like everything on Jersey these days, this activity was strictly controlled by the Germans, but Tom, who loved fishing, decided to apply for a permit.
While waiting for his permit at Feldkommandantur 515, the headquarters of the German civil administration at Victoria College, Tom watched two German soldiers saunter past. Two Jersey girls were clinging to their uniformed arms, looking up flirtatiously into their faces and giggling. He clenched his fists and stifled an impulse to rush up to them and yell ‘Traitors!’ Because that’s what they were. The locals called them Jerrybags, but to him they were traitors. He supposed they were the floozies who attended the dances the Germans held every week at West Park Pavilion, and danced with the enemy.
Probably slept with them, too. It infuriated but also excited him, thinking of those girls slipping off their knickers and letting the soldiers do whatever they wanted. He often wondered about sex and how he could find out more about it. He thought about Milly, who was even more innocent than he was, and often imagined the bliss of seeing each other naked and touching each other’s bodies. Just thinking about it engorged him, and he relieved that inexorable urge in the safe darkness of his bedroom.
Cycling around the island, Tom was intrigued by the proliferation of machine guns mounted on either side of the harbour mouth, and the concrete gun emplacements being constructed along Albert Pier. Others were appearing along the shores of St Aubin’s Bay. Why the enemy was bothering to construct these fortifications on an island they had virtually walked into unopposed, mystified him. It was something that he and his friends often discussed, but they never found an answer that made any sense.
When Tom’s father developed the films the German soldiers brought in, Tom noticed that many of the photographs included images of these fortifications. Some even had close-ups of the latest German night-fighter planes at the airport.
Locals were forbidden from taking photos of these sites. In fact, they needed a permit to take any photographs at all, except of their families, but the soldiers often posed in front of the fortifications. Tom, who would help his father develop the films in the darkroom, was fascinated by photos of this war materiel, and without knowing why, he began to make copies of them and paste them in his album. It gave him a sense of satisfaction to flip through the pages and know that he had defied one of their hated orders. He kept the album in a locked drawer and only allowed Harry and Frank to look at the photos after swearing them to secrecy.
German orders kept coming thick and fast, each one more restrictive than the last, and all aimed at strangling all island activities. Fishing, boating and photography were strictly controlled and sporting clubs were banned. Tom could hardly restrain himself from asking their frequent visitors, the officers of the Water Police, why they felt threatened by the Jersey Cricket Club and the Ladies’ Tennis Club, because those had also been banned. Tom’s mother, aware of her son’s dangerous opinions, kept a sharp eye on him on those evenings, and made sure that he never had an opportunity to bail up their guests with some provocative comment.
Despite all the restrictions, and the summary punishments meted out to those who flouted the regulations, Tom was horrified to hear some people praising the occupiers for their politeness and forbearance. ‘They’re not as bad as they’re painted,’ one woman commented while queuing up for her diminishing ration of meat.
Her friend nodded. ‘One of them bought my Dennis an ice cream yesterday and said he looked just like his little Hans. They miss home. After all, it’s not their fault they were sent here.’ Another chimed in with a story about her children being given chocolate by the soldiers.
Tom overheard that conversation on the West Park slip, where he and Frank had cycled that afternoon. They were surprised to see a German news team getting ready to film a group of schoolchildren lured there by the promise of chocolate. Speaking English, the announcer asked those who liked chocolate to raise their arms. Naturally every arm shot up, and the camera whirred to photograph Jersey children enthusiastically giving what appeared to be a Nazi salute.
Tom turned to Frank. ‘That weasel Goebbels will be ecstatic. I can imagine them showing this film all over Germany to show how we all love the Germans.’
Tom had heard about some of the Nazi atrocities in Europe when he and his parents had tuned in to the BBC in the evenings before all wirelesses were confiscated, and he shook his head at the gullibility of people here. How naïve they were, so easily taken in by a clicked-boot greeting, ice cream and chocolate. He was convinced that before long, the real nature of their occupiers would reveal itself. What he didn’t suspect was that he would soon discover the true nature of his countrymen, and their leaders, as well.
That discovery wasn’t long in coming. It arrived with the order to register the Jews. Tom knew that there were some Jews on Jersey, but as he didn’t know any of them personally, he didn’t give it much thought. In fact, a movie he saw one Saturday afternoon presented them in such a terrible light, that for a time he found it difficult to shake off the antipathy the film had created.
Going to the Forum, the newest and most magnificent of the three cinemas in St Helier, was one of the highlights of his week. He loved watching the floodlit Hammond organ rise from under the stage with the organist Mr O’Henry playing the melodies they all knew.
The words were printed on the screen, and everyone joined in the singing, creating a warm community spirit in the movie theatre.
On one particular afternoon, however, that spirit did not extend to the Jews. The film being shown, Jew Suss, depicted anti-Semitic stereotypes of Jews with hooked noses and devious plans. The evil Jewish character in the movie was about to abduct and rape the innocent fair-haired German maiden until, at the last moment, he was thwarted by the Aryan hero. The film ended with the Jew’s demise, which was greeted with enthusiastic applause by the Germans and their girlfriends. Tom left the cinema in two minds. It was hard not to sympathise with the hero and heroine against the evil Jew, but at the same time he was aware that he was being manipulated by the Germans’ racist propaganda. Looking around at the soldiers as the audience began to disperse, it struck him that hardly any of the Germans stationed in Jersey resembled this ideal Aryan type, and that in fact he matched it better than most of them.
He didn’t give the movie any further thought until some days later when he passed Mrs Goldman’s music shop and saw it boarded up. The German sign on the large shop window said it was a Jewish business and must be closed. It had never occurred to him that Mrs Goldman was Jewish. Several years ago, when he was learning to play the piano, he had gone there to buy the score for a couple of songs from The Mikado so he could learn to play the tunes.
He didn’t have enough money, and Mrs Goldman had let him have it for less than the marked price. Whenever he walked past her shop, she waved to him. A widow, he thought she was.
Now, looking at the empty shop with the ugly sign across the window, he wondered how she was managing without any income, especially now that food was so scarce and prices on the black market were skyrocketing.
Mrs Goldman lived above the shop, and on impulse he knocked on the door. It took such a long time for her to answer that he was about to walk away when the door opened slightly and through the narrow crack he saw her. She seemed much older and more wrinkled, and she looked at him with worried eyes. Now he was face to face with her, he didn’t know what to say and regretted the impulse that had led him to her door.
‘Why did you come here?’ she asked, and he noticed that she was craning her neck to see past him, as if to check whether someone else had come with him.
‘I just wondered if you were all right,’ he stammered.
At hearing those words, her face smoothed out, and she smiled. ‘You’re a good boy,’ she said. ‘Come in.’
Upstairs in the room that she used as a lounge room and office, with a small wooden desk at one end and a worn sofa at the other, she made room for him on a chair heaped with files, and disappeared into what he supposed was a kitchen. He heard dishes clattering, and a few minutes later she emerged with a teapot and two cups and saucers on a tray, as well as a plate with two shortbread biscuits.
With shaking hands, she poured their tea, and offered him a biscuit but didn’t take one herself.
‘I’m very worried,’ she said. ‘Now that they have handed the Germans a list of Jewish people in Jersey, who knows what will happen to us?’
‘The States,’ she said. ‘Whoever is in charge of these matters.’
That was the first time Tom had heard that their government had given the Germans a list of Jews. He was shocked. Mrs Goldman was a Jersey citizen.
‘You were born here, you should be treated the same as everyone else,’ he said, biting on his biscuit. Instead of being crunchy, it crumbled in his mouth and he realised it was stale. ‘There must be some mistake. Why would our government let them close your business down?’
She seemed to be deep in thought. Then she sighed. ‘I suppose they were just obeying orders,’ she said.