Xanthe
St Helier, April 2019
Why do people risk their lives to help others? That’s the question going through Xanthe’s mind as she sits beside Bob Blampied in his vintage sports car. He has the hood down as usual, and she regrets not pulling her hair into a ponytail because the spring breeze is blowing it all over her face and into her eyes. Pushing her hair back, she glances at Bob. With a jaunty peaked cap over his fine white hair, and big sunglasses, no-one would take him for a man over ninety.
At the end of Longueville Road, Bob waves his arm in the direction of the coast.
‘Whenever I pass St Aubin’s Bay, I can still see the Germans rolling out miles of barbed wire along here in 1940. We had German soldiers swarming all over the place – twenty-seven thousand of them in a place this size, can you imagine?’ He
shakes his head as if he still has trouble believing it. ‘It was all so long ago, but the funny thing is that I remember it more vividly than things that happened yesterday. I suppose that’s what old age does to you.’
He parks the car by the waterfront and they watch the foam-crested waves fountain against the granite sea wall. Turning towards her, he says, ‘Did you know that the ratio of soldiers to civilians here was higher than anywhere else in Europe? That’s because Hitler thought Churchill was going to use our islands as a stepping stone in the Allied invasion of Europe. They thought they’d bomb England to smithereens, bring Britain to her knees in no time, and turn Jersey into a holiday resort for German soldiers.’ Then he adds, ‘Which it already was.’
He releases the handbrake, but before turning on the engine, he says, ‘I haven’t asked you where you’d like to go today, young lady.’
‘No special requests. Happy to leave it to you.’
She means it. It’s a privilege to spend time with this remarkable man who lived here throughout the Occupation. She still can’t believe her luck that a man who seems to have stepped out of the pages of Hugh’s journal is driving her around Jersey and sharing his stories with her. It’s almost as good as having Hugh as a guide.
Hugh’s journal has plunged her headlong into the past. As if, like Alice, she has fallen through a rabbit hole and landed in a more vibrant and interesting world.
‘You mentioned a Dr Jackson who was part of your network,’ she says casually. ‘What was he like?’
From Bob’s nostalgic expression, it seems that her question evokes a flood of memories. ‘He was the one who formed our rescue network. A real dynamo, he was. Nothing was too much trouble for him. And so selfless. You know, he stayed in Jersey to look after his patients when he could have evacuated with his wife.’
Xanthe feels a surge of excitement as she waits to hear more about Hugh, especially about aspects of his life she doesn’t know, but just then the driver on the other side of the parking area pulls out without looking and is heading straight for Bob’s rear fender. Bob hits the horn just in time to avert the crash, muttering about bloody hopeless drivers.
‘Sorry about that,’ he says.
She hopes to resume their conversation about Hugh Jackson, but Bob’s attention has been distracted.
‘You need eyes in the back of your head these days. Now, back to the important issue of the day: where are we going to have lunch? Do you like seafood?’
‘I love it.’
Backing the car very carefully out of the parking space, he says, ‘I know just the place. They have crabs this big!’ For an instant her heart stands still as he takes his hands off the wheel to demonstrate.
As they drive along the west coast, past St Brelade, she observes Bob’s obvious enjoyment as he drives his sportscar along the winding country lanes.
Her eyes linger on the evocative place names of the farms and manor houses they pass – Le Marais, Le Clos de L’Arsenal, Les Peupliers – and she asks Bob if his surname is also of Norman French origin.
He shakes his head. ‘My Blampied ancestors were among the Huguenots who fled to Jersey after the massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day. That was during the persecution of the Huguenots by the Catholics in the sixteenth century.’
He points to a Martello tower along the road and sighs. ‘Wars, rebellions, religious persecutions. Nothing ever changes. Despite what Santayana wrote about the importance of remembering history, no-one ever seems to learn from it.’
His comment about religious persecution seems a good introduction to a discussion about the way the Jews were treated on the island during the Occupation, but she is suddenly distracted by the view unrolling before them – the superb sweep of St Ouen Bay, whose glorious beach seems to stretch forever. On their right, an impressive round tower overlooks the sea.
‘La Rocco Tower,’ he says. ‘It was built during the Napoleonic wars to protect the bay from French attack. Then during the Second World War, Hitler was convinced the Allies would land right here, so the Germans fortified it.’
She is gazing at him with admiration. ‘You know a lot of history.’
‘My mother used to say that if you live long enough, you can’t help picking up a huge amount of information and a little bit of wisdom along the way,’ he chuckles. ‘Well, I’ve certainly lived long enough to pick up a bit of the former. Not sure about the latter.’
Then he adds, ‘I’ve always been fascinated by history. That’s why I’ve joined our local historical society.’
He’s being modest again. Xanthe knows from Wikipedia that he’s the president of the Jersey Historical Association, which makes her feel guilty for concealing an important record of life during the Occupation.
She hasn’t lied, but she hasn’t been truthful either, and she comforts herself with the thought that her deceit is temporary. When she has finished reading the journal, she probably will donate it to the historical society. For now, she feels as though Hugh has entrusted her with his diary, and she must guard his secrets.
When they reach L’Étacq at the northern part of the beach, Bob parks the car, and they pass a grassy area facing the sea where people are sitting on wooden benches as they gaze at the turbulent surf.
‘Let’s go into the vivier,’ Bob says.
‘Vivier?’
‘Bunker. This fishery is inside a German bunker.’
They descend into a cavernous hall with thick cement walls. Jovial fishmongers are bantering with customers who are eyeing the fish and crustaceans swimming in the large tanks. Behind them, some red-faced cooks in white caps are lowering Jersey Royal potatoes into sizzling oil in wire baskets while others are boiling crustaceans and frying fish fillets. Xanthe watches this incongruous scene with a sense of unreality, a fish shop located inside a grim wartime structure erected to conceal troops and weapons.
‘You’ll never get seafood as fresh as this,’ Bob says, steering her towards a fishmonger who is holding up the biggest crab she has ever seen.
‘Good to see you, Bob,’ the fishmonger says, resting curious eyes on Xanthe. ‘Brought your girlfriend today, eh?’ Turning to Xanthe, he says, ‘You’d better watch him! A regular Casanova, he is. Different girl every day!’
‘How are the new fishing regulations affecting you?’ Bob asks.
The fishmonger sighs. ‘The bloody EU trawlers are fishing in our waters and people who wouldn’t know one end of a fish from the other are passing laws that affect the whole industry. Isn’t that always the way? Those who can, do, and the others go into parliament and make life difficult for the rest of us.’
A few minutes later, she and Bob are sitting outside, tucking into their crab and Jersey Royals. This is the most succulent crab she has ever tasted, and with each bite she makes blissful sounds, like the presenters of TV food shows when they sample the chef’s gourmet dish.
Sunbeams are silvering the crests of the waves that roll endlessly along the wide beach in front of them, providing a mesmerising soundtrack of booming surf. Gazing at the magnificent landscape, Xanthe washes her crab down with lager, and wonders if this is the right time to bring up the question she wants to ask, when Bob leans towards her with a conspiratorial smile.
‘Tell me, what really made you come to Jersey?’ he asks. ‘Did you leave a heartbroken beau back in Sydney?’
‘Nothing like that.’ She pauses. ‘I don’t really know why. It’s a mixture of things. Wanting to get away, mostly.’
To her relief, he doesn’t ask what she is getting away from. He just studies her with his steady gaze, and nods as if he understands, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world for a young Australian doctor to run away from her hospital job and her family to a tiny island on the other side of the world where she doesn’t know anyone.
She is on the point of mentioning her distant Jersey relative, but as she has no intention of following up that connection, she decides against it. Instead, she returns to the topic he sidestepped earlier when he deflected her compliment about being heroic.
‘Last time we met, you told me you were only nineteen when the Occupation started. I’d love to know why you decided to help those escaped slave labourers. You must have known the risk you were taking. How come you did it?’
Bob is staring out to sea, but from the faraway look in his eyes, she senses that he isn’t seeing the Atlantic waves but scrolling back to the past. ‘You know, I hardly recognise that young whippersnapper now. Young people don’t weigh up consequences like old fogeys do. They think they’re invincible. It’s all action and very little thought. I suppose I was aware of the risks, but there was the excitement, too. An adventure. I wasn’t just helping the prisoners, I was defying the Germans as well. Doing my bit to resist.’
This still doesn’t answer the underlying question that has been on her mind all day. ‘You hear about cases where there’s a fire,’ she says, ‘and lots of people are standing around, horrified, but only one person charges into the burning house, in spite of the flames. Or a surfer is being attacked by a shark, and of all the people on the beach who watch the attack, only one dives in to fight off the shark. What makes people forget their own danger to try and rescue strangers? What made you do what you did?’
He counters her question with another. ‘What made you decide to become a doctor?’
She shakes her head. ‘Various things. But I wasn’t risking my life to do it,’ she begins, and then stops as it occurs to her that it almost did cost her life.
‘But there was something in you that made your choice inevitable. And there was something in me that made it unthinkable for me to stand by, see people being mistreated, and do nothing. I don’t know what that something was, but I couldn’t ignore it. Later you try to analyse your actions, and come up with all kinds of possible motives, like your conscience, your subconscious, Christian morality, patriotic duty, or the categorical imperative to do the right thing. One theory might be correct, or maybe all of them are, but you’ll never really know. That’s irrelevant anyway because at the time you don’t stop to think and weigh things up. You act on impulse. When you think about it later, you might be astounded by the risk you took. Perhaps the power of the soul is stronger than the urge to survive.’
He looks at her and raises his white eyebrows in mock horror. ‘We’re getting into deep philosophical waters here.’
Xanthe drains the last of her lager and wipes her mouth on a thin paper serviette. The answers to these questions obviously lie in the imponderable depths of the human psyche. She thinks about Daniel, as she has so often throughout the day, and wonders what he has found out at the Jersey Archives.
‘What do you think of the way the Jersey authorities dealt with the situation here during the Occupation?’
Bob considers her question for some time before replying. ‘They made some mistakes, no doubt about it. But it’s easy to be wise after the event, isn’t it? If only we could live our lives all over again with the benefit of hindsight. I think what people don’t understand is, they were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t.’
‘Isn’t that the excuse given on behalf of all collaborationist governments, like Vichy and Norway?’
He gives her an approving nod. ‘You know your World War II history. But our situation was different. We were a tiny island, with no mountains, nowhere to hide. There was a lot of fraternisation, which was inevitable given our close proximity with the Germans, but that’s not the same as collaboration. And in my opinion, the States behaved superbly in what was a very tricky situation.’
She is about to challenge him with a question about the Jews who were betrayed, dispossessed and deported, but he is looking at his watch. ‘I’m afraid we must drive back. I am being interviewed by the BBC this afternoon for a program to coincide with Liberation Day.’
‘Liberation Day?’
‘May 9. If you’re still here, I think you’ll find it interesting. And it might answer some of your questions.’
Back in the house an hour later, Xanthe keeps glancing at the time. She is impatient for Daniel to call, impatient to be in his arms and hear his passionate voice murmuring how much he wants her. She inserts a coffee pod into the Nespresso machine and while the aroma of coffee fills the kitchen, marvels at the coincidence, synchronicity, serendipity or whatever it is that has brought her and Daniel together. What were the chances of falling in love with another Australian on a tiny island on the other side of the world? Perhaps this is what they call kismet, something she has always scoffed at. But whatever you call it, it’s a miracle, and she can’t stop smiling.
Upstairs in the bedroom, she opens Hugh’s journal, curious to find out more about his relationship with Aoife, but a moment later she puts it down and thinks about Bob’s question. She knows why she wanted to become a doctor. The issue is not why she did medicine, but whether she wants to give it up.
Back in Sydney, she knew she had to get away from the hospital and everything connected with it before it destroyed her. But now she is no longer sure. Hugh’s experiences have stirred something dormant, reawakened her excitement about being a physician. He has made her think about her own shortcomings. In staying at his post and not abandoning his patients, he seemed to reproach her for being self-indulgent. Despite the enormous personal price he paid, and the problems he faced, he continued to take care of his patients. And he didn’t do it from a sense of duty, but because it was wired so firmly into his DNA that it was impossible for him to do otherwise. She is convinced his ego wouldn’t have been fragile enough to be deterred by the toxic culture of a hospital, or the arrogance of registrars and specialists. Maybe not even by a colleague’s suicide. So perhaps the question she should consider is simply whether she is willing to revive her lifelong dream of healing people. She thinks back to her discussion with Bob about risk. Would she be one of the bystanders, or the one who dashed into the flames?
Her mind returns to the scene on the road where she worked on the unconscious man, and she recalls the elation she felt when his heart started beating again.
Daniel had commented that she was born to do this, and that’s what she had always believed, but her mission had been obliterated by humiliation, stress and anxiety. By her wounded ego. Did she really want to abandon what she had always believed was her vocation?
She is so deep in thought that when her phone buzzes, she jumps. It’s Daniel, and he suggests meeting for a drink at the Cock and Bottle in thirty minutes.
She is the first to arrive at the pub and orders a Stoli on the rocks while she waits for him. It’s pleasant to sit outside on this mild spring evening, a breeze ruffling her hair, which brushes her shoulders. She has left it loose, the way he likes it. The banks, offices and shops have closed, and people are hurrying home after work.
She has just emptied her glass and is considering whether to have another when she looks up and sees Daniel coming towards her. He places his bag on a chair, leans over and kisses her, a long lingering kiss that promises further pleasures.
‘I’ve been looking forward to this all day,’ she says when she finally breaks away.
‘The vodka, you mean?’ He says it with a straight face.
‘Of course,’ she teases back.
‘Another?’ he asks. She shakes her head, and he goes inside to order his Campari and soda.
‘So what did you find out today?’ she asks when he comes back with his drink.
He pauses before replying. ‘I know this sounds dramatic, but I’ve come to the conclusion that the Jersey authorities became part of the structure that made the Holocaust possible. Like the lawyers in Germany, the Jersey lawyers became part of that killing machine simply by doing their job. And they didn’t seem to realise that they were breaking their professional code of conduct.’
Xanthe frowns. This is getting complicated. She wants that second vodka after all. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, lawyers aren’t supposed to divulge the names of their clients or their clients’ businesses, but many of them did. They not only identified Jews, and compiled lists of their assets, but they handed them over to the Germans simply because they were required to by law.’
He is warming to his subject, and she sits forward to concentrate. ‘I read a letter from a law firm about one of their clients. They couldn’t tell if she was Jewish or not, but they informed the authorities about her, just in case. The fact that this law was immoral, evil and pathological didn’t seem to affect their judgement. It was the law, and that was all that mattered.’
He pauses to shake the ice cubes in his Campari before continuing, and she notices that he is speaking more rapidly than usual.
‘Sorry if I’m giving you too much information,’ he says. ‘Long story short, the lawyers here unquestioningly accepted the creation of Jews as a distinct legal category. Anti-Semitism became part of the normal legal system of Jersey, and anti-Jewish laws became ordinary laws to be implemented like any others. So Jews became a legal category, singled out and identified through normal legal and administrative processes. And no-one acknowledged what was happening.’
‘I had no idea it was like that here during the war,’ she says.
‘It was like that in most occupied countries, but the interesting thing for me is that it did happen here, despite the myth of British moral superiority.’
Xanthe is silent, trying to reconcile what Daniel has told her with what Bob and the other members of the rescue network had done. ‘But there were many people at the time who risked their lives to shelter escaped slave labourers,’ she argues. ‘You can’t lump them in with the lawyers and public servants.’
‘There are always exceptions, like the people who rush into burning buildings.’
As soon as he says this, she feels a jolt. It isn’t just that he is unknowingly echoing her conversation with Bob. It strikes her for the first time that she had rushed out of a burning building herself.
‘I think I’ve been trying to run away from myself,’ she says slowly.
He reaches across the table, cups her face gently with his warm hands, and looks into her eyes. ‘Maybe you’ve been running towards yourself,’ he says.