Tom
St Helier, May 1942
If only she knew! Tom could hardly suppress a triumphant smile whenever he glanced at his mother over his breakfast of scrambled eggs. If only she knew that the night before he and his friends had made a decision that would change all their lives. For months now the idea had been teasing them, daring them to act. They had taken a solemn vow not to divulge their secret to anyone, not even their parents, and they’d sworn that no matter what obstacles stood in their way, nothing would stop them from planning to escape. But in a perverse way he wished his mother did know, so that he could boast about it. He longed to tell her that soon he’d get away from Jersey and from her. Would she be upset? Probably not.
Although Tom knew that it would take months before they were ready to escape, he was on such a high that he could hardly keep still. He couldn’t wait to get away. Only the day before, a couple had stopped him on the Esplanade and hissed that when the war was over, they would charge his mother with collaboration. ‘Just let me know when, and I’ll be happy to back you up,’ he’d retorted, and left them standing with their mouths open.
But by the time he, Frank and Harry met again to discuss their plans, the euphoria had subsided, and a fog of anxiety settled over them. Harry, the most cautious one of their trio, was the first to voice his concerns.
‘How are we going to get hold of a boat? I mean the Krauts have made it almost impossible …’ he began.
‘I’ve figured that out,’ Tom broke in. ‘I’ll get a fishing licence, so they won’t suspect anything. You two will need to get one as well.’
He expected them to show more enthusiasm, but Harry was still frowning and even Frank was unusually subdued.
Pulling at the lobe of his left ear, as he usually did when he was thinking, Frank said, ‘I reckon we’re putting the cart before the horse. Where are we going to get the money to buy a boat?’
A despondent silence followed. Tom and Frank were still at school, and Harry wasn’t paid for working in his father’s business. They both looked at Tom, who knew what they were thinking.
‘She doesn’t give me any money,’ he said. ‘Reckons I get more than enough because she pays for my schooling.’
It was a misty afternoon in early autumn, and they were talking at the far end of Frank’s garden, out of earshot of his mother and little brother. The days were becoming shorter, and as the sky darkened, swallows flew above the beech and alder trees. Frank was crushing a handful of fallen leaves, and while they mulled over their situation, the only sound they heard was the occasional cheeping of birds and the rustling of the leaves in Frank’s hand.
Tom felt flat. It was like the time he’d hooked a big halibut and was reeling it in with all his might when, with a sudden lurch, it got away.
His mind was churning as he cycled home. Shops and offices had already closed, and people were cycling or walking home. Getting hold of petrol would be another problem, he thought moodily. There had to be some way of raising money without arousing suspicion. There had to be. But keeping anything secret was almost impossible in a community where everyone watched everyone else for any sign of illegal activity. That night he tossed and turned in bed, calculating the amount they would need to buy everything for the journey. It was far beyond the meagre sum the three of them had in their money boxes from delivery tips and birthdays. They might as well dream of going to the moon. But one thought kept hammering in his head. He couldn’t give up. He had to find a way.
Next morning he woke with a clear mind and a plan that seemed foolproof. Several afternoons a week, his mother sent him to the Pomme d’Or after school to deliver bulging envelopes to Gunther Kohl, her protector at the Water Police. Tom had noticed that the hotel was always deserted at this time, with the Navy and Water Police staff on patrol duties in the harbour in the afternoons. Near Kohl’s office was a flight of stairs that probably led to the bedrooms upstairs. Now he had the answer.
That afternoon the envelope was fatter than usual. When he handed it over, Kohl beamed, his face smooth and shiny as if basted with butter as he patted Tom’s shoulder and complimented him on his German. Tom, who usually shrank from these displays of geniality, smiled back. It dawned on him that his friendly relationship with the head of the Water Police would now work to his advantage.
After receiving his envelope, Kohl always slid it into a drawer in his desk, locked his office, and then left the hotel. Usually Tom headed straight home, but this time he loitered around Royal Square and waited. When he saw Kohl striding towards the harbour, he sneaked back inside the hotel through the side door and flattened himself against the wall of the long corridor. His heart thrummed in his ears as he waited to make sure that no-one was around. If challenged, he would have trouble explaining why he was still there after Kohl had left.
On tiptoe he climbed the carpeted stairs, treading gingerly, one step at a time, as if balancing on a tightrope. He stood outside one of the rooms with his ear to the door but heard nothing from inside. He took a deep breath and was just stretching out his hand to try the door handle when a loud voice from the bottom of the stairs made him jump.
‘Hey you! What are you doing here?’
His knees shook as he turned around. It was the cleaner, a local woman in a big apron with a scarf tied into a large knot on top of her head, holding a bucket, mop and broom. Her face was red and bloated, and her eyes were sunken in her puffy cheeks.
‘I’m looking for Officer Kohl,’ he said, trying to keep his voice steady.
Banging her bucket down on the floor, she stood there with her hands on her hips and eyed him suspiciously. ‘Well, you’re looking in the wrong place, sonny. I don’t know what you’re up to, but you’ve no right to be here.’
He cursed under his breath. Of all people, it had to be someone who had never seen him there before. He was trying to gather his wits to invent an excuse but she was already at the top of the stairs, fixing him with an accusing look that promised trouble.
Then she said, ‘You’re Mrs Gaskell’s son, aren’t you?’
His heart sank. Like many locals, she probably despised his mother, and would undoubtedly welcome the opportunity to embarrass her by dragging him to the police or, what was worse, telling Gunther Kohl she had found him snooping around the Pomme d’Or. He wouldn’t be able to fob Kohl off with an excuse. Kohl would tell his mother, who wouldn’t rest until she got the truth out of him. And their plan would end before it began.
All this was racing through his panicked mind as he returned the cleaner’s stare with what he hoped was a nonchalant expression. Clearing his throat, he shifted from one foot to the other and muttered something about a message for Officer Kohl, while she surveyed him with eyes that made him think of raisins stuck in a lump of dough.
Then she said, ‘As a matter of fact, I was going to drop in to see your mum after work today to get one of them bottles of French burgundy,’ she was saying, and with a shrewd look she added, ‘How about you save me the trouble and deliver it yourself?’
He breathed out again. So she was on the grog.
‘Officer Kohl will be back tomorrow morning,’ she was saying. ‘I’m off now, love. So you’ll come over this evening? Number 73, St Saviour’s Road.’
Was it his imagination, or did she give him a knowing look? Either way, he sensed that they had reached an unspoken agreement. She wouldn’t cause him any problems. But just in case, he made a mental note to put in a packet of Gauloises with the wine.
The cleaner trundled off downstairs without giving him another glance, and a few moments later he heard the side door slam behind her.
Tom looked at his watch. He had to hurry. In an hour the Navy and Water Police people would be back. One good thing about the Krauts, he thought, they were obsessively punctual. He tried the handle of the door again. To his relief, it opened. These Krauts obviously trusted each other. The room was spartan, with a bed, a small desk with a framed family photograph, and a large wooden cupboard against one wall.
He winced as the cupboard door creaked open. Then his eyes lit up. He was gazing at shelves stacked high with boxes of cigarettes and bottles of French wine and cognac. Slipping off his haversack, he stuffed a few boxes of Gitanes and Gauloises hurriedly into it and left, carefully closing the door behind him.
He proceeded to raid two other rooms, each time taking care not to disturb the neat piles. He ran downstairs and slipped out by the side door after glancing around to make sure no-one saw him.
From that day, he no longer objected to delivering his mother’s envelopes to the Pomme d’Or. Surprised by his sudden willingness, she remarked it was good that he was finally coming to his senses. He used each errand to increase his stash of cigarettes and an occasional bottle of wine from the other rooms, but he never took so much that the theft would be noticed. French cigarettes were only available on the black market, and by undercutting his mother, he sold them quickly to his friends. He tried not to dwell on the irony of the situation, that his mother’s illicit activities were working in his favour.
Emboldened by his success at the Pomme d’Or, he started to pilfer money from his mother’s cash register whenever she left him in charge of the shop. He stifled his occasional twinges of conscience with the thought that what he was doing wasn’t really wrong. After all, he was only taking stuff from the invaders who were stealing everything from them. Just evening up the score a bit. And as for stealing from his mother, that served her right. She was robbing everyone blind.
Frank concurred with this reasoning. As the pile of Reichsmarks grew, their goal moved a little closer, and they thumped each other on the back, but they agreed not to tell Harry the source of the money. He was so honest, he’d probably refuse to join them if he knew how their escape was being financed.
Four months later, Harry’s eyes widened when they told him they’d collected enough money for a boat. With a meaningful glance at Frank, Tom muttered that his grandma and an uncle had chipped in for his birthday to help him buy a fishing boat.
But buying a boat proved more difficult than they had envisaged, as there were very few for sale. After they’d been looking for several weeks, Frank rushed in to Tom’s place one Saturday and announced that he’d heard of a man in St Mark’s Road who had a twelve-foot dinghy for sale.
But after checking it out, Tom came back looking glum. ‘It’s no good. It’s been in dry dock for ages, and needs caulking and painting,’ he said. ‘We’d better keep looking.’
When another two months passed without finding a better boat, Tom came to a decision. ‘I reckon we’d better buy that dinghy while it’s still available.’
Frank was pulling at his earlobe. ‘It’s crazy to buy a boat in such awful condition,’ he argued.
Harry settled the argument. ‘We’re running out of time,’ he said. ‘We decided to leave with the spring tides when the seas will be calmer. Well, it’s nearly winter now, so if we don’t buy that dinghy and get it fixed, we’ll have to wait another year. And we still have to get hold of an outboard motor and petrol.’
After considerable haggling, the owner agreed to sell the dinghy together with the outboard motor and some petrol. It seemed that their biggest worries were over.
Tom decided to store the dinghy in his uncle’s yard. Uncle Phil was his mother’s brother, but he and Alma, who he often referred to as The Shrew, didn’t get on and rarely talked to each other, so Tom was pretty sure he wouldn’t tell her about the boat.
He’d told his uncle that he and his friends were planning to go on fishing trips, and as Uncle Phil wasn’t a curious type, he didn’t question it, although he did look askance when he saw the warped planks. ‘You boys have quite a job ahead of you fixing those leaky timbers,’ he commented in his laconic way.
It was a much bigger job than they had expected, and they spent every spare moment working on it. If they wondered about the dinghy’s seaworthiness, they kept their doubts to themselves. Under Tom’s direction, they stuffed oakum and putty in between the warped strakes to seal them, and then painted them with linseed oil. Each time they filled the boat with water to test it, they held their breath, hoping it had stopped leaking.
While Frank and Tom continued to work on the dinghy, Harry, who knew more about engines than they did, took the outboard motor apart, cleaned it and tuned it. When he pulled the starter rope and the engine fired, he beamed with pride. When the boat was finally waterproof and in working order, they cheered and did a celebratory war dance. It looked as if their worries were over.
Bit by bit, they collected compasses, life jackets and binoculars, and as they surveyed their growing pile of equipment, their sense of wonder at their own achievement grew. Their adventure was taking shape and their dreams would soon be realised.
One morning as Tom cycled to school, daydreaming about the look on his mother’s face when she discovered that he was in England, he had an idea that made him stop in his tracks. He suddenly saw his chance to match the feats of the fictional heroes in the spy and adventure stories he loved to read. He would buy a map of Jersey, and while he and Frank were riding their bicycles around the island, he would pinpoint on the map the site of all the German emplacements, bunkers and fortifications. As soon as they reached England, they would hand over their map of Hitler’s defences and provide Britain with invaluable military information.
‘That’s brilliant!’ Frank said when Tom told him about his plan. But Harry, who didn’t accompany them on their cycling expeditions, didn’t share their enthusiasm. ‘It’s too risky,’ he pointed out. ‘What if the Krauts see what you’re doing?’
Tom dismissed his objection. ‘They won’t suspect us.’
Shortly after that, Tom had another brainwave. The photo album! Over the past two years, he had collected prints of the photographs his father had developed showing German soldiers posing in front of tanks, night-fighter planes, troops and anti-aircraft guns. His album contained photos of practically every piece of German military ordnance on Jersey. What a windfall for the British that would be. And how they’d admire three Jersey schoolboys who had risked their lives to help the war effort.
Although they had sworn not to tell anyone about their plan, they realised they’d need outside help after all. They didn’t know anything about navigation, and without help they wouldn’t be able to plot their course across the Channel to England.
Harry suggested contacting a seaman he knew. Captain Beaumont used to skipper the tugboat in the harbour before being replaced by a German. He’d be the ideal person to help them, but it meant having to induct him into their secret.
When they arrived at Captain Beaumont’s cottage, he was sitting at the window in his captain’s cap, puffing a pipe as he gazed across at Plémont Bay. After Tom explained why they needed his help, they held their breath waiting for his response.
The captain was blunt. ‘This is absolutely insane,’ he said. ‘Your dinghy isn’t suitable for these treacherous waters, and you’ll probably drown or be shot. The best you can hope for is a long stint in one of their concentration camps. Either get a boat twice the size of this one or forget all about escaping. I don’t want to have anything to do with this.’
Then, seeing their crestfallen faces, he softened. ‘I’ve told you what I think, but if you persist in going ahead with this dangerous scheme in spite of my advice, I’ll try and help you, even though I’m dead against it.’
Tom was silent all the way home. He felt as if a bucket of icy water had been thrown over him. He wasn’t familiar with the seas around Jersey, having only paddled a canoe around the inshore reefs. Suddenly he remembered stories he had heard over the years about unpredictable storms at sea and treacherous tides that had caused ships to capsize and men to drown. But he kept his brooding thoughts to himself. He wasn’t going to be the one to chicken out.
While they were making their plans, the Germans imposed ever-increasing restrictions on every aspect of life, including owning livestock and fishing. Tom felt that their grip was tightening, and he was appalled by the collusion of the States, whose officials meekly adopted all the rules, and handed over lists of their Jewish residents. Thinking about Mrs Goldman, he felt guilty that he had become so engrossed in his escape plans that he hadn’t given her a thought and feared that it was probably too late.
But the aspect of life that infuriated him the most was what was happening under his nose, at home, where the drunken parties with the Krauts continued, and his mother flirted blatantly with the officers, especially the head of the Water Police. Watching his father sitting in an armchair in an alcoholic haze, a balloon of French cognac in one hand and a cigar in the other while his wife carried on like one of those cheap French whores the Krauts were now importing to Jersey, enraged him even more. Distressed by his father’s humiliation, he felt like snatching the cigar and cognac from his hands and yelling at him to act like a man.
The only person he would regret leaving behind was Milly. After his jealous outburst at the Slip, he had brooded about their argument over the German officers, but a few days later, when he’d calmed down, he apologised, and he thought she forgave him.
It was more than a year since that incident.
He hadn’t seen much of her lately, partly because all his spare time was taken up with preparations for their escape, and also because she had left school at the end of the summer term and their paths rarely crossed. He heard she had landed an office job at an insurance firm, which surprised him, as she didn’t have any secretarial experience, but he supposed that her pretty face had made up for her lack of typing and shorthand.
He was thinking about her one Saturday as he cycled along the Esplanade, enjoying the crisp freshness of the winter afternoon. He knew he couldn’t leave Jersey without confiding in her despite their vow not to tell anyone. Surely if he swore her to secrecy, she wouldn’t tell anyone. But what if she told her obnoxious friend Dolly, who disliked him and would probably blab?
The Esplanade was crowded with parents and children, some of whom were pulling their fathers’ reluctant hands towards Gino’s kiosk, enviously eyeing the lucky children whose parents could afford to buy an ice cream.
Tom was leaning against the stone wall licking a chocolate ice cream when his heart started racing. Milly had just appeared at the far end of the Esplanade.
She looked more grown up, older and more sophisticated. Instead of bobby socks she wore nylons, and her hair was parted in the centre and swept back from her heart-shaped face in marcelled waves. He preferred the way she used to look.
Without waiting to finish his ice cream, he tossed the cone into a rubbish bin and started striding towards her, relieved that Dolly was nowhere to be seen. He would tell Milly about his plans. If he couldn’t trust her, who could he trust?
She stopped walking, looked around, consulted her wristwatch, and looked around again, as if expecting someone. He paused. Someone was hurrying towards her from the opposite direction and the blood drained from Tom’s face. It was the same German soldier who had bought her an ice cream over a year ago. A moment later, their laughter floated in the air as he watched them walking away together.