Xanthe
St Helier, April 2019
Xanthe jolts awake, cold dread spreading through her body. It’s her first night in the rented house and in the blackness that surrounds her, she feels there’s someone in the bedroom. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she tells herself, but her heart is racing and her hand trembles as she switches on the bedside lamp, just to make sure. Of course there is no-one there, and she lets out a long breath, not realising she has been holding it in. ‘Am I three years old?’ she mutters to herself, trying to shake off the irrational fear. She supposes it was a figment of her overwrought mind, the result of the stress built up over the past few months. Thank God I’m in Jersey, she reminds herself.
When daylight streams into the bedroom, she opens her eyes, tired but relieved that everything feels normal once more. No ghosts. She glances at her watch, surprised how late it is, and springs out of bed. She has one hour to get to the Royal Yacht Hotel to meet Daniel Miller.
Inside the café, Xanthe is gazing at the black-and-white photos of historic sailing ships on the walls when he arrives. Daniel is wearing grey jeans and has a bag slung across a black T-shirt with a Ralph Lauren logo. He isn’t wearing socks and his dark hair is fashionably dishevelled. It’s a long time since she has paid so much attention to a man’s appearance, and, glancing down at her flower-patterned leggings, she pulls at the loose white T-shirt, which has bunched up around her waist, and wonders what her clothing says about her.
He shakes her hand and places his bag on the vacant chair between them.
‘So, how’s your accommodation?’ he asks.
‘It’s an old house with a big garden, a neglected orchard and an interesting past,’ she says. While she speaks, she fiddles with her hair, hoping he doesn’t notice that she’s trying to twist it into a tidier knot at the back.
‘Sounds like The Secret Garden. Did you find a mysterious little boy hiding behind the wall?’
At the mention of the house, she feels uneasy. It’s as if the invisible ghost of the previous night has just brushed against her and settled on her shoulders. It reminds her of the feeling she had the night when she stepped into Sumi’s room, just before she found her friend’s lifeless body behind the door.
In the silence that follows, she tries to shake off that memory and calm her breathing.
‘An interesting past?’ Daniel is saying. ‘How do you mean?’
Xanthe takes a deep breath. ‘Apparently decades ago the owner planted a vegetable garden and kept chickens, but then for some reason the house stood empty for ages before the current owner had it renovated. The agent implied there was something mysterious about it, but that’s all she said.’
The waitress, a young Italian girl with a thick plait down her back and a wide smile, hands them a menu. Without glancing at it, Daniel orders a pot of Irish breakfast tea, but Xanthe, who hasn’t had breakfast, reads the entire menu twice before asking for eggs Benedict and a flat white.
The waitress frowns. ‘Flat white? What is this?’
Xanthe explains, and the waitress beams. ‘Allora, café latte!’
Daniel looks amused. ‘They obviously don’t get many Australian tourists in here,’ he says. ‘Did you go to the Jersey War Tunnels yesterday?’
‘It’s an amazing museum,’ she says. ‘Those eerie sound effects made my skin crawl. It was like stepping back into the past. I had no idea what went on here during war. But of course you do.’
‘I’m hoping to find out more while I’m here.’
This seems the right moment to ask about his thesis. ‘What made you research the Jews of Jersey?’
He leans back in his chair, folds his arms, and narrows his eyes before replying. ‘I’ve always wondered about the conditions that made the Holocaust possible. Could it happen anywhere? Did it have anything to do with nationality or personality? What systems were in place that enabled governments to carry out Nazi racial laws?’
She is listening intently. ‘But why Jersey? There couldn’t have been many Jews here.’
‘That’s exactly what makes studying the Holocaust here so important. You know what they say – the death of one person is a tragedy, but the death of millions is a statistic. If I can examine what happened here, and how it happened, I might be able to understand the process through which this legalised killing machine was able to accomplish its goals.’
While he speaks, she notices that he spreads his hands as if to emphasise his words, as if pushing the air aside to make space for them.
This is the first time she has heard him speak at such length, and sound so animated, and she envies the passion he feels for the subject. Once she felt that passion for medicine, and she feels sad for its loss. She sighs and attempts to focus on his words when the waitress arrives with their food. Her chatter, along with the clatter of knives, forks, plates, cups and plates puts a temporary stop to their conversation.
As soon as the waitress walks away, Xanthe takes a sip of her coffee, pulls a face, and pushes the cup away.
Daniel is watching her. ‘No good?’
‘It’s awful. All I can taste is hot milk.’
Daniel beckons to the waitress and asks her to bring a small jug of espresso coffee.
After tipping the espresso into her cup a few minutes later, Xanthe looks thoughtful as she bites into her eggs Benedict. She is still thinking about what he said about the Holocaust, and wonders if he’s Jewish.
‘Eggs Benedict OK?’ From the bemused expression, she realises he is making fun of her. It occurs to her that he probably thinks she is one of those entitled young women who find fault with everything.
‘Perfectly fine,’ she says tartly. And can’t resist adding, ‘Thanks for asking.’
He looks as if he is trying not to laugh, which annoys her even more, especially as he is looking straight into her eyes, challenging her to see the humour in the situation. She has never liked being teased and looks back at him without smiling.
After a pause, he says, ‘I gave you a very long answer to your question. It’s just that once I start talking about it, I can’t stop, and I forget that other people aren’t as interested in it as I am. I hope I’m not boring you.’
No longer annoyed, she shakes her head. ‘Not at all. It’s a fascinating subject. But what made you decide to research this now?’
He pours himself tea from the pot and stirs two teaspoons of sugar into his cup. ‘Luck, really. And synchronicity. The Jersey Archives have recently released wartime documents that haven’t been available before. So for the first time we’ll be able to find out exactly what happened here and which hands signed the papers.’
Xanthe thinks back to Edward de Courcy’s reaction when Daniel mentioned his thesis. ‘You’ll be popular!’
Daniel nods. ‘I know. I think I’m going to ruffle quite a few feathers. Especially as my relative Mr de Courcy is the Bailiff.’
‘Bailiff? I thought that was someone in charge of a property.’
Daniel chuckles. ‘Well, in a way it is, but the property in question is Jersey. The Bailiff is the highest official in the government.’
‘I know you weren’t surprised by his reaction,’ she says slowly, ‘but I don’t understand why he got so shirty.’
Daniel hesitates for a few moments and looks out of the window. She takes advantage of the pause to look straight at him. He’s not conventionally handsome but there’s something about his gaze that hints at hidden depths, and reminds her of a French actor in a recent Netflix crime series whose name she has forgotten. And there’s his sexy cleft chin.
He is looking at her, and she hopes he hasn’t noticed that she has been appraising him. ‘I could spend the rest of the day trying to answer that,’ he says. ‘But the short answer is that every country has its myths, its patriotic historical narrative, and resents efforts to question it. Does that make sense?’
She nods. ‘So you’re the new broom that’s going to sweep uncomfortable truths out of their dark corners.’
‘Exactly. And that’s why my illustrious relative got so defensive.’
‘Do you think he has something to hide?
She has left most of her coffee, but Daniel pours himself more tea, which by now is almost black. ‘Not necessarily. But as the Bailiff, he is deeply entrenched in every aspect of life on the island, so it’s as if someone threatened to shake your family tree. Even if you didn’t get on with all your relatives, you’d probably resent a stranger searching for skeletons in their closets.’
While she is digesting this, he looks straight into her eyes again with that compelling gaze and she looks down at her coffee cup. ‘Xanthe.’ It isn’t the beginning of a sentence, it’s a statement, and she waits.
‘That’s an unusual name. Greek, isn’t it?’
She stifles a smile. So while she’s been wondering if he is Jewish, he’s been wondering if she’s Greek. ‘The name is Greek, but I’m not. My parents chose it because in Greek mythology Xanthe was the daughter of Asclepius, the god of medicine. He was represented by a serpent wrapped around a staff, and that’s become the symbol for doctors ever since. Almost everyone in my family is a medico.’
‘So was that your destiny from day one?’
She gives a wry smile. ‘Pretty much. But I was a willing victim. There was never anything else I wanted to do.’
Suddenly everything blurs, and she is embarrassed by the tears welling up. I might as well have the words failed doctor tattooed on my forehead, she thinks as she dabs her eyes with her napkin.
‘I’ve got something in my eye,’ she mutters, but although he looks sympathetic, she can tell he isn’t fooled, especially as the more she dabs, the faster the tears keep flowing. She can’t understand it. She isn’t given to weeping. She didn’t cry when she found Sumi dead in her room, or when she was so depressed that the eternal unknown seemed a preferable option to the life she knew. She didn’t even cry when she told her parents that she was quitting her job, or when she saw the look on their faces. But for some reason sitting in a Jersey hotel with a man she hardly knows, she feels so unexpectedly vulnerable that her tears are flowing and she knows that if he asks any questions or even pats her shoulder, she’ll make a spectacle of herself, and break down in the café.
But he doesn’t say anything. He unzips his bag and appears to be searching for something. She is grateful that he has given her time to compose herself without embarrassing her with questions or comments. When her eyes are dry, she looks up and sees that he is leafing through some documents.
‘I have to go to the Archive Office,’ he says, replacing the papers and zipping up his bag. ‘They’ve promised to find some documents for me.’ He looks at her for several moments before asking, ‘Do you feel like having dinner with me tomorrow night?’
They shake hands and say goodbye, and as she walks out of the café, her heart is beating a little faster.
She strolls around Royal Square, past imposing bank buildings and the gilded statue of Queen Victoria, imperiously majestic on her pedestal, then pauses at the kiosk advertising charabanc rides. She is trying to figure out what these are, when she hears a man calling her name.
She turns and sees Bill McAllister walking beside a much older man who towers over him. Despite his advanced years, his companion holds himself ramrod straight, as if he has a two-metre pole lodged inside his spine.
‘This is your lucky day,’ Bill tells Xanthe. ‘If there’s anything you want to know about Jersey, Bob Blampied is your man!’
Bob gives her a firm handshake. The eyes gazing down at her under a shock of white hair look like two bright cornflowers in a ploughed field.
‘That’s supposing this lovely young lady wants to know anything,’ Bob says.
‘I certainly do,’ she says. ‘Are you a guide?’
The men exchange an amused glance. ‘Among other things,’ Bob says, and they burst out laughing like good friends sharing an in-joke.
‘You couldn’t have a better guide,’ Bill says. ‘Bob has a history that almost goes back to the Norman Conquest.’
‘Longer!’ Bob shouts, and they both roar with laughter again. Turning to Xanthe, he says, ‘I’m over ninety, you know.’
She suppresses the urge to tell him that he doesn’t look it. Bob seems to be the kind of person usually described as a local character, and the prospect of having a tour guide in his nineties intrigues her, specially one who seems so entertaining. ‘Do you really take people on tours of the island?’
‘Only special people,’ Bob says with a gallant bow. ‘Just say when.’
‘How about tomorrow?’
‘I’ll be there at nine. Can you put up with an old codger for the whole day?’
‘I can if you can,’ she retorts with a laugh.
Back in her rented house that afternoon, she finally unpacks. She hangs up her clothes in the old mahogany wardrobe whose door squeaks whenever she opens and closes it. There are more drawers and shelves than she needs for the few clothes she has brought, and she is about to go downstairs when the large painting above the fireplace catches her eye.
It depicts an idyllic English rural scene in the style of Constable. Farm workers with pitchforks are loading hay onto a wagon beside a willow-lined stream, but it’s not the painting that attracts her attention, but the fact that it tilts to one side. Crookedly hung paintings have always offended her love of symmetry, a trait that has either irritated or amused the people in her life.
She goes over to the painting and places her hands on either side of the gilded frame to correct the alignment, but it’s heavier than she expected, and before she can straighten it, it crashes to the floor.
Cursing herself for being so clumsy, she bends down to make sure it hasn’t been damaged. A corner of the frame that struck the floor has chipped off, but luckily the painting has landed face up and is intact. She breathes a sigh of relief and makes a note to buy some WD40 to oil the squeaky door of the wardrobe, and something to fix the corner of the frame.
When she stands up, her gaze is drawn to the area above the fireplace where the painting had hung. The plasterwork is rough and uneven, and the colour of the paint doesn’t match the rest of the wall.
She wonders if the painting had been hung there to conceal the sloppy workmanship of the plasterer and painter. Curious, she palpates that part of the wall, and a bit of plaster crumbles in her hands.
‘Now I’ve done it,’ she mutters, and sinks onto the bed. ‘I’d better go downstairs before I bloody wreck the place.’ She turns to leave the bedroom, but something compels her to turn back and run her hands over that spot again, and this time she feels a hollow space behind the plaster, a cavity in the chimney.
Down in the kitchen, she makes herself a Nespresso, and as she sips it, she reflects on what she has seen. The rough plaster, the mismatched paint, the outsized painting covering the gap in the wall can’t be accidental. They must add up to something more than the careless patching of sloppy work.
She runs upstairs and plunges her hand into the chimney cavity. She touches something solid, a box of some kind, perhaps. As she tries to push it out, she wonders if she will find jewellery or cash hidden inside. By tilting it on its side, she manages to drag it out along the base of the cavity.
Instead of buried treasure, she is looking at an old-fashioned radio encased in walnut, with shortwave stations marked on the dial. A pair of leads dangle from it, one attached to a pair of earphones. Disappointed, she wonders why anyone would go to so much trouble to hide an ancient radio. Some instinct prompts her to plunge her hand inside again. There is something else in there, and she holds her breath as she extracts it. This time she is even more astonished. It’s a thick notebook, and as she flicks the pages, she sees they are filled with neat handwriting written in ink. The label on the brown paper cover says Mass Observation Journal.