It was late autumn and the air was crisp, the sky like blue glass. A good day for a burial. As the coffins passed, Grace gripped Bea’s hand so tightly in hers it felt like they were welded together. The sight of so many coffins was more than Grace could bear. She needed to be back in the safe sanctuary of the library, surrounded by books, not bodies. “Come on,” she urged. “Let’s go back to the library and have a cup of tea.”
“Not yet, Grace,” Bea replied quietly. “I need to see this.”
Grace nodded, understanding. It had been nearly three months since Jimmy’s death and the ripples of trauma hadn’t even begun to surface. The repercussions had been swift and savage. Jimmy’s old schoolmates were in prison awaiting trial. Jimmy’s body had been released for burial, but the Germans had banned anyone from attending, save for close family members. Her brother’s murder on the beach had stirred up high tension on the island. Aware of this undercurrent of feeling, the German authorities wanted to avoid mass demonstrations and civil unrest. Even in death Jimmy was under orders by the occupiers.
That wasn’t the worst of it. Nor the anger when the Germans brought curfew forward an hour and revoked fishing rights to punish the whole community, or the sparse little family group by his coffin. No, what had really clotted Grace’s throat with a deep anger, that day they had buried Jimmy under an occluded sky, was that Bea hadn’t been allowed to attend. Grace and Jimmy’s mother had refused to let her come, even though she’d been Jimmy’s fiancée. Try as she might, she had not been able to assuage the deep anger her mother felt toward Bea. Her golden boy was gone and it seemed the Germans weren’t enough to blame.
Grace felt nothing but empathy for the friend she had loved all her life. It was not Bea’s fault that Jimmy had been gunned down in cold blood. Her brother had been headstrong and when he set his mind to something, nothing on earth would have stopped him trying to escape off the island. But that hadn’t stopped her friend from blaming herself and no matter how many times Grace begged her not to, she bore the full crushing responsibility for his death.
“Grace, think of all those mothers who should be here to see this,” she whispered as the coffins passed, tears running down her cheeks. Twenty-nine British naval ratings were being buried in Howard Davis Park, the Island of Jersey War Cemetery, after the British cruiser HMS Charybdis had been torpedoed off the French coast. In addition, three American airmen, who’d drowned when their C-47 transport plane had been shot down off the north coast, were being buried. Bodies had been washing up like flotsam on the Jersey and Guernsey beaches for weeks.
“They died for us,” Bea murmured, not bothering to wipe away her tears. Grace knew her tears had accumulated from the funeral she had never even been allowed to attend and now they seemed to flow unchecked from a heart brimming over with grief.
“It’s an extraordinary turnout,” Grace said, casting her gaze about. People were pressed into every crevice of the graveyard. She spotted the bailiff, the attorney general, the Constable of St. Helier, alongside farmers, shopkeepers and fishermen. She spied many of her patrons in the crowds too. Ordinary people had turned out in their hundreds for the funerals of people they had never even met. After three years of occupation, islanders were making it clear that their loyalty to the Crown was undiminished.
The Germans were in full attendance too, though not this time to suppress, but astonishingly acting as a guard of honor drawn from members of the army and navy. Unlike her brother, these young British sailors and American airmen were getting full military honors, she realized, as a gun boomed into the air, sending a murder of crows flapping into the cloudless skies.
Lurking at the back of the crowd Grace spotted the man they called “the Wolf.” The names Heinz Carl Wölfle and Gestapo were synonymous. In fact, he was deputy head of the Geheime Feldpolizei, the German Secret Field Police, but given that he styled himself “the Wolf of the Gestapo” and was the most notorious German on the island, it mattered little.
Bea flinched.
“Bea, are you all right?” She looked as if she might keel over at any moment.
“I… I’m fine. It’s just the gun, I wasn’t expecting it.”
As the blur of the crowd shifted again, Grace caught a glimpse of another familiar face at the furthest end of the graveyard, standing with his back pressed against an old yew tree.
“Bea, can you spare me a moment?”
She nodded, staring at the coffins, but not really listening.
“Don’t move. I won’t be long.”
Grace skirted the graveyard, until she was next to the tree.
“Red, are you out of your mind?” she hissed. “What are you doing here?”
He turned and his green eyes lit up. “Angel Grace, I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Nor I you. Most of the German top brass are in spitting distance.”
“Those goddamn kraut bastards?” His smile slipped. “They ain’t looking for me here. More interested in this fake show of military honor. ’Sides, that commandant’s so stupid, if his brains were dynamite, he wouldn’t have enough to blow his own hat off.”
He stared at the group of German High Command, eyes narrowed in hatred.
“Jeez. What a nest of vipers.”
Red’s uniform had been replaced with rough workman’s clothes and a flat cap, but she could tell in the eleven weeks since she’d last seen him in her shed, his hair had grown and was now a muddy brown.
“I got a little help and a strong bottle of hair dye,” he whispered in her ear. “The people of Jersey are pretty darn amazing. My name’s Phillip Harris now by the way, according to my new registration card.” He grinned. “My own mom wouldn’t recognize me.”
“I do wish you’d be more careful,” she said, picking a piece of wet bark from the tree and crumbling it between her fingers. She’d never expected to see him again and it felt overwhelming. “The Secret Field Police are here somewhere.”
“You worried about me?” he asked, one eyebrow lifted.
“I’m worried about that.”
She glanced at the poster pinned to the noticeboard, not five yards from where they were standing.
There are several American aircrew at large on the island. They will attempt to obtain shelter and help from the civilian population. It is expressly announced that anyone who takes in, or extends help in any way to our enemy will be punished by death according to Paragraph 9 of the Order for the Protection of the Occupying Forces.
“You underestimate them.”
“They underestimate me. Besides, I’m not here to cause trouble, I’m here to pay my respects to my buddies.” Red shook his head.
“They were only just out of short trousers, kids really. Billy, he only joined the air force instead of the navy ’cause he hated water. My boys are a long way from home.”
A mist started to drift in off the sea, shrouding the graveyard as the German military began the solemn task of committing the bodies to the earth.
Red reached down and scooped up a handful of earth from the ground, shoving it in his pocket.
“I’m going to give this to their folks back home, so they have a little piece of their sons’ burial place.” His hands clenched into his fists. “Goddamn it! It’s all wrong. I swear to you, Grace, one day, I’m going make sure my comrades rest on American soil.”
It suddenly struck Grace—the awful loneliness of being buried on an island you had no connection to, with no one near to mourn you or tend your grave, save for a centuries-old yew tree. Out of nowhere tears began to flow.
Red passed her a handkerchief. “Don’t cry, Angel Grace,” he said softly.
“Sorry. Only my brother died. Shot by the Germans. The same night I said goodbye to you last.”
“Jesus, Grace, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say.”
“There’s nothing anyone can say,” she said quietly. “We… we just have to endure this hell, survive it somehow.”
Silently, he slid his hand through hers, squeezing her fingers in solidarity. It was the briefest of gestures, but she felt her whole world tilt.
Red began to murmur something under his breath as the bodies were lowered into the ground and she listened, spellbound.
“Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.”
She stared at him in amazement, her throat clogged with emotion.
“What? You think us American doughboys can’t recite poetry? ‘Invictus’ is my favorite poem. Reminds me to hold on to my dignity.”
He reached his hand into his coat and pulled out Huckleberry Finn.
“Thanks for the loan. That was like medicine. I’ll be needing another dose soon.”
The ceremony was nearly over. Grace scanned the crowds and in alarm saw Bea heading toward them.
“I’ve got to—” she began, but Red had already left, his tall figure sliding through the throng.
“Who was that?” Bea asked when she reached her.
“Him? Oh just one of my library patrons.”
“You seemed awfully close.”
“Come on,” Grace said lightly. “Let’s get out of here.”
Clutching Bea’s hand, she turned and they eased their way back through the crowds. Once they reached the gate to the graveyard, Grace became aware of a disturbance.
A handful of young women were being barred from entering the graveyard by a small, angry crowd. The tension was palpable and shoves were being traded.
“What’s going on?” Grace demanded. “Why won’t you let them in?”
“These Jerrybags have no right to come to the funeral of these courageous souls,” said a woman Grace recognized from the library. “How dare they show their faces!”
“How dare you deny us entry?” called back a voice. A young, dark-haired woman pushed her way to the front of the group.
“We have every bloody right to come and show our respects, the same as you.” She thrust her chin forward, her dark eyes flashing defiantly.
Grace felt Bea stiffen beside her.
“Nancy, go home.”
“Says who?”
“Says your older sister. You’re making a show of yourself.”
“You heard her,” jeered the older woman.
“That’s enough!” Grace took herself by surprise, but she felt incandescent that this tawdry saga was playing out while the earth was still fresh on the graves. “I buried my brother a little under three months ago and I can tell you now this is the most outrageous thing I’ve seen, even in the midst of an occupation.”
She swung open the gate. “In you come, girls.”
The girls traipsed in, but as Nancy passed the older woman reached across and muttered in a spiteful low voice.
“You’re Number One on the list for a haircut once your Boche boyfriend’s in prison.”
Grace stared flabbergasted at the crowd. She knew that, after so long, nerves had been stretched to breaking point, but this wasn’t who islanders were.
“Where’s your humanity?” she asked in shock.
She didn’t wait for an answer. Instead she got on her bike and pedaled off, Bea in hot pursuit.
“Gracie,” she said, catching up with her, “you didn’t have to defend her on my account.”
“I didn’t, Bea. I just think it’s wrong. We all make mistakes and now, of all times, we need a little understanding, not judgment.”
“Have you time for a quick cup of tea before you go back to the library?” Bea asked, changing the subject. “I’m not due at the post office for an hour. Mum’d love to see you.”
“Why not,” Grace agreed. “Most of my patrons were at the funeral so the library will be quiet for once.”
St. Helier was indeed strangely silent. Bea ripped off her headscarf, letting her long dark hair flow behind her and fell in next to her.
Grace shook her head. Of all the many tedious rules and regulations which her best friend despised, the one she hated most was being forbidden to ride two abreast, and the other to cycle and drive on the opposite side of the road.
“Bea,” she warned.
“Oh, sorry, am I breaking zee rules of mein Führer?” she retorted in a very bad German accent. She flicked her an impish grin and Grace didn’t know whether to feel annoyed at her impetuousness, or pleased that a glimmer of her old friend had surfaced.
In a flash, Bea swung onto the other side of the road. “Come on over and join me on the right side of the road.”
They were nearing the harbor where they were always guaranteed to see a German. Sure enough, two were standing sentry at the entry to the quay.
“Pustulant, arrogant, impotent,” Bea muttered out of one side of her mouth. Bea and Grace had a game they played where they had to sum up every German they saw with three adjectives, without ever using the same one twice. It was surprisingly hard. Ulcerated. Frustrated. Blond. Bored. Vulpine. Arrogant. Narcissistic. Mocking them stole a little of their power. At least, it always used to. Now it just seemed pointless.
“Come on, Grace,” Bea urged. “Play the game.”
They pedaled closer to the harbor.
“Humorless. Sexless. Pox-filled,” Bea called, her voice on the other side of the road dangerously loud.
“Cut it out, Bea. Get on the right side of the road before you get us both arrested.”
Bea stared back, her dark eyes challenging her.
“I think you’ll find you’re on the wrong side, Grace, and I’m on the right side.”
She shot her a look then cycled on faster, her postal uniform jacket billowing up around her.
A flash of green canvas streaked toward them. A green German-army truck had rattled round the bend of the French Harbour at terrific speed. Grace just about had time to make out the surprised look on the face of the driver as he swerved to avoid Bea. The truck impacted with the harbor wall. The crack of metal. The hissing of steam. Grace and Bea stared at the crash scene in shock.
A moment later the door was shoved open and the dazed driver staggered out.
“Quick,” Bea hissed. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
They cycled as fast as they could up Mount Bingham, the incline burning Grace’s legs, before speeding down the other side of the hill straight into the small beachside neighborhood of Havre des Pas. Bea pulled breathlessly to a stop outside Bay View Boarding House, where she lived with her mother and Nancy.
“Did you see his face?” she laughed. Her eyes were glowing, her cheeks flushed.
“Bea, that was reckless. You could’ve been killed,” Grace gasped. “The driver could’ve been killed.”
Bea shrugged.
“After Jimmy, I’d call that an eye for an eye.”
She banged down the bike stand and let herself in the house leaving Grace speechless on the doorstep. Something was happening to her friend. She’d always been what her mother would describe as “a caution.” Grace had preferred to think of her as free-spirited, as if somehow the island wasn’t big enough to contain all her chutzpah, but now, since her father’s and Jimmy’s death, something else was happening. A thick leathery crust was growing over Bea’s heart that seemed to make her immune to danger. A dark and unsettled feeling uncurled deep in Grace’s gut.
“Hello, Mrs. Gold,” Grace called as she followed Bea into the kitchen. The small room was filled with the fug of potato peelings and ersatz tobacco.
“Grace, how’s yourself, sweetheart?” Queenie Gold embraced her warmly. Grace had such a soft spot for her best friend’s mum. A Cockney by birth, she’d married a Jersey man and moved from the congested streets of Whitechapel to St. Helier after a holiday in the 1920s. She had a heart as big as the moon and an ability to barter that could shrivel the resolve of even the steeliest of market sellers. Not for nothing was she known locally as “the Guv’nor.”
“Come in, come in,” she ushered. “I’ll fix you girls some dinner.”
“No, please, Mrs. Gold, don’t go to the trouble of feeding me.”
“It’s no trouble and it’s Queenie to you.”
“What’s for dinner, Mum?” Bea asked.
“Shit and sugar,” she shot back.
“You can take the woman out of the East End, but you can’t take the East End out of the woman,” Bea joked.
Queenie pottered round the kitchen, like Mrs. Tiggywinkle. Tiny little terra-cotta pots seemed to be dotted on every surface wherever a weak pool of sunlight fell.
“I’ve been transferring little bean and gourd plants. I’ll plant them out when they’re big enough. They’ll do well in my allotment.”
“Mum gives away more than she grows, don’t you, Mum,” Bea teased, flicking her on the bum with a tea towel.
“Saucy piece,” she chuckled. “Neighbors are as close as friends and you’d do well to remember that, my girl.”
Queenie sat back at the kitchen table where she’d been grating potatoes.
“They reckon ten pounds of potatoes make one pound of flour,” she remarked, wincing as she caught her finger on the grater. “And by that time I’ll have no ends to my fingers.”
Grace smiled sadly as she took in Queenie’s red-raw fingers, not so dissimilar from her own mother’s. It was the women of this occupation who were the real heroes to her mind. Most of them had an alchemist’s gift for rustling up meals from nothing.
“How’s the library?” Queenie asked, pushing a cup of nettle tea in front of her.
“It’s my sanctuary,” she replied. “I don’t know what I’d do without my books truth be told.”
Her thoughts strayed to the indeterminable days after Jimmy’s death. Her mother’s refusal to leave her bed, strangled by her sorrow. Her father’s absence from the home. Only the library had remained unstained, a beacon of warmth and escapism, calling her in.
“I dare say.” Queenie gently placed a work-worn hand over hers.
“I’d love an Ethel M. Dell if you could set one aside for me,” Queenie continued. “One of these days, I might actually finish a page at bedtime without falling asleep. Ooh,” she lowered her voice, “I heard on the grapevine of a new book from America. Forever Amber. Bit mucky by all accounts. That would keep me up all right.” She patted the side of her turban. “Any chance?”
Grace raised an eyebrow. “Can’t see it getting past Nazi censorship, Mrs. Gold, can you? They don’t go wild for scheming strumpets.” She hesitated. “But also, I’m not sure we should be talking about grapevine subjects, even behind closed doors.” Grace realized in a moment of disquiet, that it was some measure of how far they’d sunk that even discussing hidden wireless chat and controversial books in the privacy of a home made her feel unsettled.
“Last I heard the bloody Boche ain’t fitted a listening device to my pinny, but yeah, I see what you’re driving at,” Queenie replied. “How’s your mum, ducks?”
“Not great. Jimmy’s death has hit her very hard.”
Queenie reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “We all miss him a great deal.”
“Not Nancy,” Bea interrupted, her voice scalpel sharp. “She doesn’t seem to give two hoots.”
“Bea, don’t create,” Queenie replied wearily.
“She was at the funeral of those sailors earlier, Mum! The front of her. Dad’ll be turning in his grave.”
“Oh, go easy, love. It’s not easy on her either.”
“She’s a selfish cow and I don’t know why either of you are defending her.”
“The more of a fuss you make over it, the more attractive you’ll make the relationship seem,” Queenie protested. “Forbidden love seems desirable when you’re seventeen, but it rarely ends well.”
“It’s embarrassing, Mum,” Bea protested. “You know I heard someone in the post office the other day joking that when the Germans came and we all hung out the white flags, the girls at Boots hung out their white knickers. My little sister’s a Jerrybag!”
“No, she’s not,” Queenie insisted. “There are women who consort with the enemy to get extra rations and improve their situation, I’ll grant you. Then there are young girls who see a handsome young German and think they’re in love. There’s a difference between the two.”
“Oh please. She’s as shallow as a soup bowl.”
Bea banged her cup down and stormed up to her room. Grace went to follow but Queenie caught her arm.
“Leave her for a while to calm down. She goes by the moon that one.”
“It’s this anger though,” Grace replied, remembering the crunch of hot metal on stone from the accident earlier. “I worry her rage will land her in trouble with the authorities.”
“She’s got a hot head and she’s grieving for her father and now her fiancé. Time is the only healer.” Queenie patted her on the hand and stood creakily. “Least she’s got you.”
After a small dinner of vegetable soup thickened with carrageen moss and yesterday’s gray occupation bread with a smear of margarine, Grace took a bowl of soup up to Bea’s bedroom. A sharp hunger gnawed her insides as she walked up the stairs, feeling lightheaded. What she wouldn’t do for some fluffy white bread, slathered with salted butter and apricot jam, washed down with coffee, real coffee, made from beans and not acorns. How quickly her thoughts seemed to slide to food these days.
Bumping open the door with her hip she set down the soup bowl and braced herself for tears, but instead Bea was hard at work.
“What are you doing?”
“Shut the door,” she ordered. “I don’t want Mum to hear. I was covering Mr. Luce’s round up at Trinity last week, when I started spotting these in the hedgerows.”
She stuck one of the pamphlets in Grace’s hand.
“I can’t read it. It’s all in German.” Grace puzzled. “It’s probably another proclamation.”
“No, Grace, it’s not. It’s gold dust. I took it back to the post office and one of the boys has a friendly German on side who translated.”
Grace pushed down her irritation that had it been a woman with a “friendly German on side” she’d be quickly branded and made to feel the wrath of society’s disapproval. ’Twas ever thus.
“And?” she sighed.
“They’re from an RAF leaflet drop. It’s a message from the British Government to say they have begun blanket-bombing Germany and that the Allies are winning. It’s to demoralize the Wehrmacht.”
“But what on earth have you done all this for? Making some bunting for the next fête?”
The leaflets were strung up all round Bea’s room from a washing line.
“They were wet when I collected them so I’ve been drying them out, and I’ve translated some of them into English on the back. I thought we could distribute them round the island—you know, to raise morale?”
“We?” Grace said warily. “I think I’m already taking enough risks at the library, don’t you?”
“Oh, come on, Grace,” Bea urged. “It’s great what you do, delivering forbidden books, but this is the same when you think about it. It’s words on a page that raise morale.”
Grace shook her head.
“I… I don’t know, Bea. It’s risky.”
“Look, I’ll do half on my next round, posting them alongside letters, and you do the other half.”
Grace hesitated.
“Please, Grace.” She fixed her with a look. “For Jimmy.”
Grace exhaled. “I’ll see what I can do, but no promises. I’m a librarian, not a member of the Resistance!”
“This is important. Morale is at rock bottom.” She touched Grace’s cheek, her beautiful dark eyes shining with intensity. “They’re more than leaflets. They offer hope.”
Bea was right. Other than their hidden wireless offering up the lifesaving BBC, they were totally cut off from the world, with very little to counter the tidal wave of misinformation churned out by the Nazis. It had occurred to her then how very powerful words were in a time of total war. And that, she realized in a blinding flash, was the worst of it. The Germans had stolen their truth.
Grace tapped the bottom of her teeth with her tongue.
“I suppose as a librarian my job is to dispense trustworthy information.”
“Precisely,” Bea said. “Knowledge is power, right?”
Just then a gust of wind breezed in and playfully picked up a leaflet from the top of a pile. Grace and Bea watched in dismay as it twisted and turned round the room like a kite before sailing out of the open window.
“Quick!” Bea blurted. They thundered down the stairs and out onto the seafront where they realized the leaflet had plastered itself to the windscreen of a black Citroën motor car.
Grace’s heart plunged as the vehicle slowed and a familiar figure got out and peeled it off the car window.
“Oh, fuckety fuck!” Bea murmured under her breath.
Grace knew why she was cursing. It could scarcely have been worse if it landed on Hitler’s windscreen.
He walked toward them, all sharp angles and high shine and had she not been so terrified, Grace could have laughed out loud. Bea had a theory that you could always hear or smell a German before you saw one. If it wasn’t the heavy thud of a jackboot on the cobbles, it was the powerful odor of the enemy troops, a curious mix of the linseed oil they used on their boots and a heavy, spicy cologne.
“It’s the Wolf!” she mouthed.
“Leave this to me,” Bea muttered as the Wolf summoned them to the motor car.
He leaned casually against the gleaming car, impeccable in a tailored suit, his foot resting lightly on the top of the swastika on the running board. He wasn’t as obvious as some of his fellow operatives in the secret police, many of whom swanked about the island in leather trench coats and ridiculous alpine hats. Bea could never fathom why a department set up to be covert and secret drew so much attention to themselves.
“Is this yours?” he asked in a strange accent, more Canadian than German. Rumor had it he’d spent many years in Canada before the war, lending him a charming, urbane air, entirely at odds with his real personality.
“Ummm.” Bea stumbled for words.
“Let me save you the bother. I saw it come out of the window of that house. I presume you live there.”
“Grace doesn’t live here,” Bea blurted, finding her voice. “She’s just a friend. That is mine, sir.”
He fixed his gaze on Bea and looked her slowly up and down.
“This is very dangerous material to have in your possession.”
“Is it, sir?” Bea asked, widening her eyes.
His eyes lingered on the skin above her breasts. “Do you like to play with fire, Miss—What’s your name?”
Grace felt excruciatingly uncomfortable by the exchange.
“Beatrice Gold.”
“Pretty name. Are you Jewish?”
Grace closed her eyes, felt the blood thudding in her skull.
“No, sir,” Bea replied.
When she opened her eyes, the Wolf was still staring at Bea.
“So, we are neighbors it appears. My headquarters are up there: Number 2 Silvertide.” He nodded back toward a pretty cream Edwardian villa the secret police had requisitioned from poor old Mrs. Scott. “This leaflet is from the RAF and is nothing more than pernicious, pervading propaganda.”
Grace watched in astonishment as Bea smiled demurely.
“Please sir, what’s pernicious?”
He smiled broadly, showing off a gold tooth. “You left school a little too early, I think. You know, they are teaching German in Jersey’s schools now. You should have stayed on.”
“So it’s from the RAF?” she asked, continuing to play dumb. “Only I don’t speak German, so I didn’t know.”
“In which case, why did you keep hold of it? What were you intending to use it for?”
Grace swallowed uneasily, but Bea didn’t miss a beat.
“Well, to be honest with you, sir. Toilet paper. My mum reckons it would come in handy to wipe our arses on, what with the paper shortage.”
The Wolf tipped his head back and roared with laughter.
“That’s all it’s good for, Miss Gold.”
He ran his hand along the black bonnet of his motor car and gave them an oily smile. “I like you, Beatrice Gold. You know I spotted you at the funeral earlier. You have one of those faces that stand out in a crowd.”
“Face of an angel. Least that’s what my mum says,” she said smoothly.
He opened the door and gestured for his driver to leave, but at the last moment, wound down the window. “Where do you work?”
“For His Majesty’s Postal Service,” she replied.
“Actually, Miss Gold,” he replied, his voice dangerously soft, “you work for us now, not the Crown. I’ll be seeing you around.” He chuckled and screwed up the pamphlet. “Toilet paper indeed.”
The car slid off and Bea slumped down onto the low wall in front of her house.
“Bea,” Grace gasped, “are you determined to give me a heart attack today?”
“That was a close call. What an odious little shit. Did you see the way he was staring at my tits?”
“Listen, I’ve got to get back to the library. Please, Bea, stay out of trouble.” Grace shook her head. “Face of an angel? Where do you get these things from?”
“What was I supposed to say?” Bea grinned, all mock innocence. “Is this a face which harbors seditious thoughts?”
“I’m not answering that,” Grace sighed, reaching for her bike.
“Wait one moment.” Bea dashed back indoors and returned with the satchel of forbidden leaflets. She pressed it into her hand. “Who are we to deny islanders hope?”
Grace swung her leg over her bike, sighing heavily.
“I don’t know why you put up with me,” Bea said, a slow smile spreading over her face.
“Nor do I. You’re a bloody caution.” She grinned, poking her in the ribs.
“But you still love me, right, Gracie?”
“Always.”
Fortunately the rest of the afternoon passed in a more peaceful way. The library always had a calming effect on Grace as she lost herself in the soothing rituals of shelving and cataloging. All the petty restrictions, the fear, hunger, suspicion and anger seemed to melt away within this majestic wood-paneled ode to books.
While she had been gone, another box had been left on the library steps. It was extraordinary. Before he had been deported, Ash had put an appeal for book donations in the Evening Post. Since then, barely a week had passed without a box of books being delivered by grateful islanders. In 1940 it had been a trickle, but by late 1943 it was a veritable deluge. It seemed no one was more grateful for the spiritual food store of the public library than Grace’s patrons.
She undid the string binding from the box and inhaled the mildewy smell of old books, which had been heaved from attics and shelves across the island.
“A donation, with literary love.” Grace smiled as she read the card out loud. What treasures. A P. G. Wodehouse, a Vita Sackville-West, a Georgette Heyer, The Masqueraders and Jack London’s The Call of the Wild.
These would fly off the shelves. Fiction was a rare gift. Most of the donations were nonfiction. From Birds’ Eggs of the British Isles to Pot Pourri from a Surrey Garden. At first, these had been largely untouched, but as islanders exhausted her stock of fiction, even Pot Pourri from a Surrey Garden held a certain kind of escapist appeal.
Underneath The Code of the Woosters lurked an intriguing title.
“Is Sex Necessary? by James Thurber and E. B. White,” she read out loud. A quick flick through the Penguin title quickly revealed it to be a satirical look at the intimacy between man and woman. Often, Grace had to use her judgment on whether the book was likely to be uncongenial to the regime. She decided quickly that this one would. From her brief exchanges with the commandant, she could see that he and satire weren’t well acquainted. And as for The Call of the Wild, you didn’t need to be a librarian to know that one had made it into the Nazi bonfires.
Grace hated having to censor her own stock, but rather she did it than a heavy-handed Nazi.
“Watch the desk, would you please, Miss Piquet,” she called to her library assistant. Grace took the stairs to the galleried Reading Room and checking no one was looking she moved aside a beautifully illustrated tome on birds of the Channel Islands in the Nature section, to reveal the small locked cupboard behind. Deftly she unlocked the cupboard and slid in the Penguin paperback and The Call of the Wild with the others.
“Sorry. You can come out after the war,” she whispered. Grace paused, breathing in the alkaline tang of books, savoring the feeling of safety in her sanctuary.
It struck Grace that all these banned books inside the dome were like thoughts floating around inside a forehead, which made the library a brain. The gentle, questioning, curious brain of the island, entreating all to tread the granite steps in search of knowledge. How satisfying that was!
On the lower half of the library Miss Piquet was up on a ladder busy shelving.
“How many books have we issued today, Miss P?”
“I think the question, my love, is what haven’t we issued?”
Grace and Miss P worked back to back at the round central table, issuing books and discharging them back in on return. “The nerve center of the island’s literary life,” Ash used to joke.
The library was on the first and second floors of a States of Jersey public building, next door to the Royal Courts. It was one of the oldest libraries in Britain and it was breathtaking.
Grace’s desk was underneath an enormous glass-domed roof with dazzling stained-glass windowpanes, through which fractured light poured down, like thousands of dancing yellow and blue diamonds. To her left and right ran the east and west wings, lined with 8-foot-high, graceful wooden stacks. Science, philosophy, religion and art to her left, fiction to her right. At the end of each wing sat two plush red leather chairs where a book lover could sink into the stacks and escape into the pages.
“Do you know?” Miss Piquet remarked, “I think every historical fiction author we stock is out on loan.”
“People seeking reassurance from the past, I suppose,” Grace ruminated. “You know, and so too this shall pass.” She held up their donated Georgette Heyer and Agatha Christie. “There’ll be a stampede when word gets out about these.”
“I dare say.” Miss Piquet yawned.
“Why don’t you come down from that ladder before you slide down and go home?” Grace called. “It’s been a long day.”
“Thanks, Grace, I will,” she said. “Oh, by the way, a charming gentleman came in earlier wanting to enroll.”
“Could you not do it?”
“Oh no,” said Miss Piquet, buttoning up her coat. “He was most insistent you be the one to do it. And he left something for you. It’s over there on the counter.”
Grace picked up the brown paper package containing a single slice of cake and a note.
More carrot than cake. But you’re sweet enough. R x
“Was his name…?”
“Phillip Harris,” they said at the same time. Miss P smiled and gave an almost girlish chuckle. “Delightful fellow.”
“What sort of accent did he have?”
“Strange question.” Miss Piquet thought. “Cut-glass home counties I’d have said. As English as bowler hats and bread and butter.”
Grace looked down at the copy of Georgette Heyer’s The Masqueraders and smiled at the irony. Was it her imagination or did the beautiful masked woman on the front wink at her?
“All right, Miss Heyer, don’t be getting ideas now,” she muttered.
First Lieutenant Daniel Patrick O’Sullivan, Red, Phillip Harris, or whatever name he went by, was clearly not a man scared to have found himself abandoned on a tiny island, stuffed full of the enemy.
After Miss Piquet left, she readied herself to lock up the library and deliver a few books on her way home. Grace delivered to the twelve parishes of the island, from the north with its dramatic rocky coves, to the gentle, sloping, fertile south. Roughly speaking, the island was a rectangle, 9 × 5 miles, with St. Helier, its only town, nestled on the eastern tip of the southern coast.
As the island librarian of the only library on the island, Grace was well known in all the parishes and she hoped never to betray the position of trust she was in. Grace had built a reputation of steadfastness and hard work, preferring books to dances, not that there were many of those to attend these days. She knew some younger women thought her dull, but what did she care? The library was her first love. It represented safety and security, a sense of order that the world outside its granite walls could never offer. No. Not once had she craved the recklessness of love. So why did her thoughts keep tugging back to the American?
The pale autumn sun was dipping over the rooftops by the time she’d delivered a Barbara Cartland to Mrs. Wilmslow who ran the hairdresser’s, Gone with the Wind to Edna Channing at the cleaners and the new Georgette Heyer to Audrey, who sold lotions and potions from Roberts Dispensing Chemist on Bath Street. Each little nugget of joy was received with enormous appreciation, especially when the accompanying RAF leaflet was revealed tucked inside the dust jacket and its contents digested.
Her last stop took her to her father’s friend, Albert Bedane, who ran a thriving physiotherapy practice from his imposing townhouse on Roseville Street.
She knocked softly. “Librarian calling.” There was a stirring of the blackout blind then he ushered her in.
“Good evening, Grace. What a welcome sight you are.” He massaged a stiff neck.
“Long day?”
He nodded. “Occupation aches and pains are many and varied.”
“I bet. Hopefully this will help take your mind off things.”
Albert had a penchant for Agatha Christie and had been on the waiting list for Evil Under the Sun for some time.
“You might want to pay close attention to the inside sleeve,” she added casually, taking his library card and making a note of his loan.
“You’re a veritable facilitator of joy, my dear.”
“And I took the liberty of bringing two more.” She pulled out a Dorothy L. Sayers, and a Denise Robbins. “One thriller, one romance. I wasn’t sure which genre she favored.”
He stared at her cagily and she chose her words delicately.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Bedane. You can trust me. Dr. McKinstry came to see me in the library. He mentioned you have a houseguest and given that they may be here for a while, he felt they could use some reading material to while away their time.”
She glanced at the small door which led down to the basement, feeling her pulse quicken.
Most of the island’s Jewish population had fled when France had fallen to the Nazis and taken the opportunity to evacuate to England. But not all.
“Thank you, my dear,” he said, visibly moved as he stroked the spines of the books. “What an incredibly thoughtful thing to do. I know how much these books will mean to my houseguest.”
She nodded. “A chance to escape, if only for a few chapters.”
Grace turned to leave but almost as an afterthought… “What makes you do it, Mr. Bedane? Take the risk, that is.”
“I won’t lie, Grace. The worry over who I’m helping keeps me awake at night.” He shrugged. “But if I’m going to be killed I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.”
Grace smiled, full of admiration for a man prepared to put his neck on the line to help the persecuted and opened the front door.
Outside a black Citroën swished past, showering them with a fine spray of water.
“The Wolf.” Grace scowled.
“Not ideal having him live on one’s doorstep,” Mr. Bedane replied, wiping his trousers in irritation. “Beware of that Nazi, Grace. He’s bad news.”
“I had worked that out for myself,” she replied.
“I’m serious. Grace. He’s a shape-shifter, a chameleon, who’ll do whatever it takes to impress his Nazi superiors. He’s stumbled into a position of power and he’s determined to use it.” He grimaced. “You get on home now.”
By the time Grace reached her village the rain had died off and the Milky Way stretched overhead like a chiffon scarf. A feeling she had never experienced before, like the fanning of a book’s pages fluttered in her chest.
Red had never been her favorite color. It was the color which symbolized blood, danger, heat, anger, but also, undeniably, love.
Her hopes of seeing out this war quietly were fast slipping away. A man, especially a handsome, flamboyant, devil-may-care Yank, was a complication she could most certainly do without right now. Sometimes she wished she could just fold herself away in a library book and wait out the war. What a comforting thought that was, to nestle inside the historical fiction stacks, where she knew the ending to every single story.