Tom
St Helier, June 1945
The crowd jostling for a vantage point in Royal Square swept Tom along with it. Surrounded by a sea of red, white and blue flags, he was so tightly wedged against people waving Union Jacks that if he’d needed to blow his nose, he wouldn’t have been able to raise his arm.
Suddenly a mighty roar rose from the crowd. People surged forward, shouting themselves hoarse, and men threw their hats in the air. A woman’s penetrating voice rang out singing the national anthem with such fervour that people joined in, their eyes welling with emotion.
Craning forward, Tom caught a glimpse of the couple who had inspired this flood of patriotism. A thin man in a navy uniform acknowledged the crowd’s enthusiasm with a formal wave, while his beaming wife appeared to relish the adulation of the crowd. Dressed in a hat that reminded Tom of a flying saucer, with a fluffy fur stole around her plump shoulders, the Queen looked disappointingly average. Quite motherly.
That certainly wasn’t the way he would describe his own mother, and the prospect of finally coming face to face with Alma twisted his intestines into knots.
He had arrived in St Helier that morning, rage in his heart and revenge on his mind. It was a month since liberation. It had taken more than a month to make his tortuous way from the Polish–German border, through villages, past Russian checkpoints, to England, and finally to Jersey. For a fleeting moment, he fantasised that the celebratory atmosphere in town was to welcome him. But of course no-one knew he had come home.
While people around him sang ‘God Save the King’, he brooded about his journey home. Victory confused him. How come their allies had turned into enemies? He looked at the people cheering and waving and his blood boiled. They had already forgotten that the British government had washed its hypocritical hands of the Channel Islands and left them to the tender mercies of the Germans.
Alone among the thousands lining the road, he wasn’t cheering or waving a Union Jack. He had never imagined that coming home would be such a let-down. For over two years, he had longed for the moment when he would set foot in his homeland again. But now that the moment had arrived, he felt numb and bewildered. Freedom seemed to have sneaked up on him before he was ready.
It was as if the essence of Tom Gaskell, the person he had once been, had been sucked out and spat out over the course of the war, leaving a hollow husk. As though he’d been left standing on the platform after the train had pulled out of the station. He was almost nineteen, but he felt older than Methuselah.
He saw it all clearly now. What he had really longed for was release from captivity, not a return to a place where he had such bitter memories, parents he didn’t respect and a government he despised. Where he would have to face the parents of friends who had died, deaths for which he felt responsible; the mother who had betrayed him to the Germans, and the father who had become her accomplice. Where his sweetheart Milly had dumped him for a Kraut.
Looking up, he saw the Union Jack fluttering from the top of Fort Regent again. Five years before, seeing the loathsome swastika with its obscene black spider looming over the island, he had been ashamed of their surrender. Now he surveyed the Union Jack with quiet satisfaction but not the elation he had once expected.
When he looked around the crowd, he saw a few familiar faces, some neighbours from Gloucester Road, and the parents of some school friends, but they looked past him as though he were a stranger. He was disappointed until it struck him that they didn’t recognise him because he no longer resembled the schoolboy they had last seen.
After the royal couple and their entourage had moved out of sight, the crowd began to disperse, leaving in their wake the sound of excited chatter and a road littered with paper flags, but Tom stood still, uncertain where to go.
He walked aimlessly through the town until he found himself at the Esplanade. He sank onto a bench and closed his eyes. He heard Frank’s exuberant voice shouting I’ll race you! Last one buys ice creams! and saw them both pedalling full pelt down the hill towards the Italian’s ice-cream cart. And there was Milly, looking adoringly at her Kraut boyfriend who had just bought her an ice-cream cone. That was the last time he’d seen her but he still felt the ache of his shattered dreams. He sighed. What had led him to a place with so many painful memories?
He wondered if he’d ever find the courage to face Frank’s parents. And Harry’s parents. Would they ever forgive him? How could they when he couldn’t forgive himself? And yet Harry had never blamed him, not even at the end, and perhaps that made it so unbearable. It struck him, sitting there staring unseeingly at the ground, that Harry had faced his death with greater equanimity than he himself was now facing his own life. Harry had died without rancour, regret or reproach. With grace. Perhaps it was easier to die than to continue living.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, lost in thought. Then he sprang up. He had a score to settle. The prospect of revenge had kept him going in German camps and prisons, and it energised him now. Finally, there would be a reckoning.
He would tell his mother what he thought of her and expose her collaboration with the enemy. She was the architect of all his misery, his capture, the years of mistreatment and near-starvation, and the death of his friend.
Fired up, he started walking towards his old home. As he crossed Royal Square past the Cock and Bottle, he saw men crowding around the bar in a holiday mood, laughing as though they hadn’t a care in the world.
It was as though a magic wand had erased the past five years. As though the Occupation had never existed and he alone had just woken from a nightmare no-one else had experienced.
Perhaps that’s how life was. As soon as a crisis ended, people moved on, determined not to look back, as if their memories were toxic wells that had to be lidded and clamped shut before the poison contaminated their lives. But he would never forget.
His footsteps slowed when he reached the familiar corner of Gloucester Road. He stood outside his home, shocked to see it unchanged. Even the lace curtains and the crimson dahlias outside the bay window looked the same. It was like looking at a scene frozen in time.
Taking a deep breath, he raised his arm to press the keyshaped buzzer. But at that precise moment, the door opened and his father was standing there, staring at him as if trying to convince himself that what he saw was real and not a figment of his imagination.
Eventually he spoke in a hoarse whisper. ‘Tom! It’s really you. You’re home at last, son!’
For the first time in his life, Tom saw tears in his father’s eyes. There were deep lines in his cheeks and his clothes hung on him like ill-fitting hand-me-downs. Tom’s impulse was to step into his father’s outstretched arms, to forget everything, and to surrender to the nostalgia of childhood memories and the relief of being held, safe at last. Of finally being home. But then he remembered and stood back, stiff and accusing.
‘Come in, come in, you must be exhausted. I don’t know what I’m thinking, keeping you standing out here like this,’ his father was saying. ‘It’s just such a shock. You turning up like this out of the blue. I can’t believe you’re here. We were at our wits’ end wondering what had happened to you.’
Tom looked around the sitting room that had once been filled with boxes, bottles and cartons of his mother’s smuggled goods. The last time he’d stood in that room, his mother was dancing with one of the Kraut officers to raucous jazz music on the gramophone, while his father served glasses of schnapps to her German cronies.
‘All Mum had to do was ask her friends at the Water Police where I was,’ Tom retorted. He looked around. ‘Where is she?’
Stanley’s haggard face seemed to crumple. ‘She’s gone, Tom. She left me!’
‘Gone where?’
His father sighed. ‘Don’t know. Haven’t had a word from her. She always said she fancied living in France. Maybe that’s where she’s gone. As soon as the war ended, she packed her bags and went. Never said a word to me.’
Tom struggled to grasp the situation. No wonder she had fled Jersey. The good times were over and she had escaped retribution, but she had also cheated him of the revenge he’d dreamed of for so long.
His father was gazing at him as though he couldn’t get his fill. ‘I can’t stop looking at you to make sure you’re really here,’ he said.
Tom studied his father. ‘What I want to know is why you didn’t stop her from betraying me to the Krauts.’
Stanley Gaskell looked down at his hands and sighed loudly. ‘Do you really want to go over that terrible night right now? There’s not a day I don’t think about it. Let’s just sit and talk, son. Tell me what happened to you. Tell me everything. We didn’t even know if you were alive. But first let me make you a cup of tea.’
While his father bustled about in the kitchen, Tom sat on the edge of his chair, tapping his foot on the patterned Axminster carpet as his eyes darted around the room.
He hadn’t anticipated how painful this encounter would be, how conflicted he would feel seeing his father again. How difficult it would be to balance his anger and contempt with the unexpected surge of emotion he felt when he looked at his father’s worn face.
Stanley was back with the teapot. After pouring the tea with hands that shook, he sat back with an expectant expression, but Tom remained silent.
Even if he’d been capable of giving an account of his harrowing years of captivity, he wasn’t willing to do it. Maybe he never would.
Uncomfortable with the silence that stretched between them, Stanley said, ‘You must have gone through a tough time over there, but things haven’t been easy for us here either. We didn’t have any deliveries from the mainland for several weeks …’
He was about to continue but when he saw the look on Tom’s face, he stopped talking.
Tom struggled to suppress the sarcastic comment that rose to his lips. Instead, he repeated his question.
‘Why didn’t you stop her? You must have known what would happen if the Krauts caught me.’
Stanley avoided his eyes. ‘You know what your mother’s like once she makes up her mind about something. I couldn’t talk her out of it.’
Tom decided to ask the question that had tormented him for the past three years.
‘How come she knew where we were? We didn’t tell anyone.’
‘Your friend’s father, George Arundel, told us.’
Tom stared at him. How could Harry’s father have known about their plan?
‘He came round that evening to see us,’ his father was saying. ‘In a panic, he was. Harry hadn’t come home, and he was terrified because he suspected Harry was planning to escape and thought we might know something about it, seeing you two were such good friends.’
Tom was shaking his head. None of this made any sense.
‘As soon as George Arundel left, your mother said she wouldn’t put it past you to concoct some crazy plan, and we had to tell the Water Police straightaway, before you got away. She said if you escaped we’d be accused of helping you, and we’d probably be arrested.’
‘Trust her to think about herself,’ Tom said.
Stanley shifted in his chair and cleared his throat. ‘When your mother came home that night, she told me the Water Police officers had promised to give you a good telling off and bring you back. She couldn’t have known that the military police would turn up and arrest you.’
‘But you didn’t try to stop her.’
‘I told her not to go, but she wouldn’t listen.’
‘You’ve never stood up to her,’ Tom burst out. ‘You let her carry on an illegal smuggling business that made her the talk of the town. You watched her carrying on with those officers, I saw you. You even served them drinks while they were buzzing around her like bees around a honey pot. And you used to lecture me about British courage and honour! You were one of the reasons I was desperate to get away, because I was so disgusted with you.’
He ran out of breath and stopped, astonished at his own audacity. He hadn’t intended to say any of this but it had just poured out of him, as if a dam wall had burst and the mud that had accumulated over the past five years had gushed out. He was surprised at the power it gave him. Their roles had become reversed and this time he was the one in control.
Slumped in the armchair, his father dropped his head. He looked beaten, and Tom felt almost sorry for him.
‘Tom, don’t be so hard on her,’ Stanley began. ‘I do think that in her own way, she was trying to protect you.’
Tom didn’t wait to hear any more. He said a curt goodbye and walked out, slamming the door behind him.
Half an hour later, he was standing in front of Harry’s house. He took a deep breath and tried to summon the courage to face his friend’s parents. Mrs Arundel opened the door. For a moment she looked at him blankly, and then she threw her arms around him and sobbed loud gulping sobs. While they stood there, Mr Arundel appeared.
‘Why it’s Tom!’ he exclaimed. ‘Come in, come in, my boy.’
Tom sat down, wondering how to begin. This was worse than he had imagined. Their eyes were glued to his face and the only sound in the room was Mrs Arundel’s sobbing. There was no colour in their faces and no light in their eyes, as if the marrow had been sucked out of their bones.
Mr Arundel was shaking his head. ‘It’s a terrible thing when a son dies before his father. It’s unnatural, like a river flowing backwards.’
Tom was clasping and unclasping his hands. ‘I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry about everything,’ he began. ‘It should have been Harry that came back, not me. It was all my fault.’
The silence that followed seemed interminable. With a sigh, Mr Arundel put his arm around his shoulders. ‘Don’t blame yourself, son,’ he said. ‘You weren’t to know what would happen. If anyone is to blame, I am.’
Tom looked up, astonished.
‘If I hadn’t gone round to your parents’ place that night, you probably wouldn’t have been caught.’
‘But how did you know where we were? We didn’t tell anyone.’
Mr Arundel sighed again. ‘Harry had said he was going fishing with you and the other lad, but I had a strange feeling about it. A presentiment, you might call it. You see, a few days before, when Mrs Arundel was doing a spring clean, she found a map under Harry’s mattress and showed me. I didn’t think about it at the time and told her to put it back, but when he didn’t come home that night I looked for it. It was gone. That made me suspicious. It wasn’t like him to be secretive, you see. So when I thought back, I realised it was a navigation chart and it showed a route from Green Bay to England and that’s when I got very worried.’
Tom remembered the discussion the three of them had had about where to hide Captain Beaumont’s chart. He hadn’t wanted it at home in case his mother’s sharp eyes found it, and Frank shared a room with his nosy little brother, so that only left Harry. ‘It’ll be safe at my place,’ he’d said. ‘No-one will look under my mattress.’
So that’s how they had known. ‘But what made you go to see my parents?’
George Arundel exchanged glances with his wife before replying.
‘We knew your mother had friends in the Water Police, and if anyone could persuade them to look for you boys and bring you back, she could. Of course none of us envisaged that the military police would arrest you. I will never forgive myself.’
‘Harry wouldn’t want you to feel like that,’ Tom said, struggling to steady his voice. ‘He was brave to the end. He died of TB and was buried in the cemetery at Weissburg. He wanted to be buried in St Mark’s cemetery, and I promised to bring his body back to Jersey one day.’
The lump in Tom’s throat was so huge that he couldn’t say another word. The only sound in the room was Mrs Arundel’s heartbroken sobbing. Mr Arundel held his head in his hands and, too distressed to stay there any longer, Tom rose and let himself out. He didn’t think either of them had noticed that he’d left.
Relieved to be outside, he wandered around until he reached a small park on a hill overlooking the coast. Exhausted, he sank down on the grass. So many emotions in such a short time. Relief, sorrow, regret. So much to process. The sun shining through the oak trees varnished the leaves with light and revealed flashes of scarlet as robins hopped from branch to branch. On the ground, brighteyed squirrels darted among flowerbeds of petunias, asters and snapdragons. In the distance, the foaming waves frilled at the base of Elizabeth Castle, which seemed to float in the water. Further along the coast, just out of sight, was the treacherous bay from which they had launched their disastrous escape.
He closed his eyes, felt the sun on his face and breathed in the green scent of grass and the subtle perfume of the flowers, and listened to the mesmerising buzz of bees.
He felt his muscles softening. He had almost forgotten how blue and innocent the sky was, forgotten the pleasure of living without terror. He wondered how long it would take him to get into the rhythm of life in peacetime.
He thought about Harry, but this time it was without guilt. He felt he had been absolved by Mr Arundel. Perhaps forgiveness was the key after all.
On a hot Sunday afternoon in August, Tom watched people strolling past his bench on the Esplanade. Children tugged their parents’ arms to lead them to the ice-cream vendor, couples held hands, and friends chatted. Tom wondered how these people had spent the war years and what secrets were concealed behind their smiles. Perhaps, like him, they were trying to put the past behind them.
Like Mr Blampied, his boss at the insurance company where he was working as a clerk. From what people had intimated, it sounded as if Mr Blampied had been something of a wartime hero, but when Tom had broached the subject, he had laughed and said that he’d done nothing special, that they’d all had their fair share of excitement one way and another.
Reflecting on the war years, Tom thought about his mother, who had cheated him of his revenge, and he recalled the words of his fellow prisoner Pierre: Revenge is the weapon of the weak.
Tom hadn’t believed him then, probably because he’d been powerless at the time. In fact, it had been the desire for revenge that had sustained him in the camps. But now, recalling the atmosphere of jubilation during the royal visit, and watching the happy crowd around him, he envied their ability to enjoy life.
If only he could let go of his anger. He knew that even if his mother was still here, she would refuse to take responsibility for her betrayal, and no-one in authority would want to delve into wartime grievances. He could envisage years of fruitless accusations that wouldn’t lead anywhere, and would only embitter him more.
Perhaps what his father had said was true, that she hadn’t expected him to be arrested, but he didn’t think he would ever forgive her. His thoughts turned to Harry, as they often did whenever he grappled with a moral conundrum.
Harry had accepted a tragic situation that he was powerless to change, and for the first time it struck Tom that acceptance required more strength than vengeance. That perhaps the best revenge was letting go of the past, moving forward, and making the most of your life.
After a week spent inside the insurance office poring over ledgers and files, it was good to feel the sun on his face and fill his lungs with fresh air. He was thinking of going to the Grand Hotel for a lager when something caught his eye.
At the other end of the Esplanade, a young woman in a faded blue gingham dress with a white peter pan collar was pushing a small perambulator. He sat forward. There was something familiar about that dress and the silvery blonde hair that waved down to her shoulders.
She was still some distance away when she bent over to give the baby a rattle, straightened up, and their eyes met.
It was Milly.
A hammer inside his chest was threatening to smash his ribs. He had never experienced such turmoil, such a rush of conflicting emotions all at once. Shock, anger, anxiety, rancour and bitterness, but also wild excitement.
He remembered that dress. She had worn it the day they had gone to the cinema at the Forum. At that moment, his resolve to leave the past behind evaporated. He would tell her what he thought of her. Or, better still, pretend he didn’t know her.
But there she was, standing right in front of him, looking at him with a wistful expression.
‘Tom? I’m so glad to see you.’
‘Really?’ His voice was a splinter of ice. ‘You weren’t glad to see me last time we met.’
She sat down beside him on the bench and when she turned her lovely face towards him, he saw the sadness in her eyes.
Just then the baby began to whimper and she lifted it from the carriage and bounced it on her knee. His eyes slid to her ring finger. It was bare.
‘Don’t be angry with me, Tom,’ she said. ‘That was over two years ago and we’ve all been through so much since then.’
‘Have we? Tell me what terrible things you’ve been through with your Kraut boyfriend protecting you while I’ve been in prison camps all over Germany.’
He had meant to sound cool and distant and not to indulge in self-pity, but seeing her had whipped up his anger.
She continued sitting there, sad but silent, rocking the baby. He stole another look at her ring finger and curiosity got the better of him.
‘So what happened to your Kraut? I suppose he’s in a prisoner-of-war camp?’ He tried to sound casual but knew he sounded vindictive.
She swallowed and looked straight ahead without answering. Then in a voice that was so soft that he had to sit forward to hear her, she told him about Konrad’s desertion from the army and his arrest and execution.
Tears slid down her cheeks as she described the last time she saw him from her window as he was being driven to his execution on the back of a German army truck, with his coffin beside him.
As she spoke, Tom could visualise that terrible scene. He couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound trite and superficial.
‘They sentenced me to death as well, but I was reprieved,’ she said after a long pause. ‘Dr Jackson spoke to the Bailiff and he persuaded the Germans to release me.’
‘At least the Bailiff interceded for someone,’ Tom said. He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his tone.
She was looking down at her hands. ‘It was really thanks to Dr Jackson. But at that point I didn’t care if I lived or died. Then I discovered I did have a reason to go on living. I was pregnant.’
Part of him wanted to say it served her right, but he stifled his malicious thought. All he wanted to do was pull her towards him, place his arms around her and comfort her. The bench suddenly felt so hard that he couldn’t sit still, he didn’t know what to do with his arms and the words caught in his throat.
‘So you’ve had a baby to look after all by yourself. A German’s baby, too. That can’t be easy.’
The baby was gurgling and Milly wrapped the pink bunny rug more firmly around it before putting it back in the baby carriage, which she rocked gently with one hand.
‘You do whatever you have to. My mum wanted me to have her adopted but I couldn’t give her away. The neighbours whisper and glare whenever they see me, as if I’m some sort of criminal, but I suppose they’ll get over it eventually.’ Then she added, ‘Did you know I was adopted?’
He shook his head.
‘Having a baby made me realise how hard it must have been for my real mother to give me away. I’ve decided that when things settle down, I’m going to try and find her. There’s a place called L’Abbaye where they used to look after unmarried mothers. They might still have records of babies given up for adoption. I just hope that when I find her, she’ll want to meet me.’
Tom was looking at her as if seeing her for the first time. How strong she was. It seemed that life tested everyone, one way or another, and not only in times of war. His war had ended, but the responsibility she had taken on would never end.
He edged closer and tentatively took her hand. He had forgotten how small, how soft it was. Even that light touch aroused an involuntary frisson, like a slight electric current, and he glanced at her to see if she felt it as well.
She didn’t speak or return his gaze. Perhaps she was offended. He’d probably been insensitive and should have held back. He wondered what to say, but the baby started crying and Milly got up and smoothed down her dress.
‘I’d better get back,’ she said.
Then she smiled at him, the dimpled smile that had captivated him when he first saw her. ‘I’m really glad you came back, Tom.’
As he watched her walk away, pushing the perambulator, the thought of the two of them making their way alone in a hostile world choked him up.
At that charged moment he knew that his heart had cracked open and let them both in.