“All right, all right, keep you flamin’ hair on. I’m coming,” Queenie grumbled, standing up creakily and pushing back her chair.
Bea had been darning socks at the table, but at the sudden rapping of the door, dropped the needle and thread, pricking her flesh.
“Who is it, Mum?” Bea asked, wincing as she sucked her finger. Door knocks like that usually came from a German fist. A cold tendril of fear unfurled inside. This was how it would come. The heavy boot tread. The knock at the door. Then she would be dragged down to Silvertide.
“The devil himself by the sounds of it,” Queenie said.
But it wasn’t the Wolf and his men.
“Grace, love, whatever’s wrong?” her mum asked. Any relief Bea felt that it wasn’t the Secret Police quickly dissolved when she saw Grace’s panicked face.
“It’s Peter Topsy. He’s missing. I just knocked at his home and his mum hasn’t seen him since yesterday morning—not that she cares. That’s two visits to the library he’s missed now. That’s not like him. He’s in trouble, I just know it.”
“Grace, love, calm down,” said Queenie. “He’ll be with a pal pinching eggs out in the countryside.”
Grace shook her head. “No… not Peter. He’s not like most boys his age.”
“So what do you want to do?” Bea asked, setting aside her darning.
“We need to get a search party together and start looking before curfew. His mum doesn’t even care that her son’s missing. It’s up to us to find him.”
Queenie was already reaching for their coats.
“Come on then. Let’s see how many of the book club we can get together. Meet in the Royal Square and we can start the search party from there.”
Thirty minutes later they had raised most of the book club based in St. Helier, including Billy, Nobby, Mr. Warder, Eric and Harold from the post office, along with Albert the physiotherapist, Dr. McKinstry, Molly and the counter staff, Winnie, Doris and Gladys.
“We’ll split up and go on our usual town rounds and see if anyone’s seen the young chap,” said Nobby.
“I’ll go to the offices of the Evening Post and see if they can run a front-page appeal for information,” said Mr. Warder.
“And I’ll try the hospital, see if he’s there,” said Dr. McKinstry.
“Come on, Grace,” said Bea, tugging her arm. “We’ll go to St. Aubin’s Bay, search along there. Maybe he was hunting for limpets and lost track of time.”
They got on their bikes and cycled down to the coast, backs hunched against the cold. A capricious wind whipped the sea into boiling, frothy white peaks and sent the gulls tumbling inland. The air was charged and static. A queer sulfurous yellow stained the horizon. A storm was brewing.
Bea suddenly felt queasy and pulled over, resting her foot on a bollard. She stared in subdued silence over the wide sweep of bay back to Elizabeth Castle. The brooding Elizabethan castle had been cut off by the tide and stood isolated and alone.
Grace’s voice rose over the wind. “I’ve known you long enough, Beatrice Gold, to know when something is wrong. You’re keeping secrets from me.”
“Don’t be daft,” Bea replied, scuffing her foot against the curbstone.
“Please, Bea. You can confide in me. Whatever’s troubling you, you don’t have to go through it alone.”
Just one more comforting word and she’d crack.
“Girls.” A figure was running toward them, waving her arms.
“Molly, what’s wrong?” Grace asked.
The florist was shaking, her face bleached white as bone.
“A body’s washed up on the shore.”
Bea and Grace began to run toward the clot of people gathered on the beach.
“Is it Peter? Please let me through,” Grace yelled.
Bea’s breath was rasping by the time she caught up with Grace.
She touched Grace’s shoulder, eased her way through the crowd.
A woman lay sprawled on the sand, her waxy face bloated, her lips bruised blue. She stared up at them with a look of utter surprise on her face. Her peroxide-blonde hair clung to her face like strands of seaweed.
“I recognize her from town,” said Molly. “She works at the Victor Hugo Hotel.”
“The brothel?” Bea asked and Molly nodded.
“I got chatting to her one day,” Molly said. “She was a nice girl, the Germans had her sent over from Paris.”
A silence fell over the wet sand as Bea digested this. Sent over. Rage crawled inside her heart. From what she could tell, women had always been commodities to be bought and sold like sugar or meat, but war had stripped away the veneer. A dead prostitute on the beach would have caused a scandal in peacetime, but during an occupation, eyes were bound to slide the other way.
“How did she end up here?” Grace asked.
“God knows, but she weren’t out for a dip, was she,” murmured an onlooker.
“Poor lamb,” Molly murmured. “I’d better go and let the authorities know.”
Grace choked back a sob and began to walk back up the beach. Bea ran after her.
“Grace, wait,” she called. Grace had made it to the road that hugged the bay by the time Bea caught up with her.
Grace was bent over, her hands on her knees. “What world is it that a young woman can be washed up like a shipwreck?” she cried. “And we’ll never discover what happened to her, or even what her name is. I can’t stand this… this endless agony.”
Grace sobbed as Bea pulled her into her arms. Her friendship with Grace was about the only thing that made sense. Would it really be so calamitous to share her secret with the one person she trusted above all?
“I love you so much, I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Bea whispered.
They held each other, two tiny insignificant souls in the eye of a storm.
An interior voice urged Bea on. Tell her. Now.
Over Grace’s shoulder, Bea saw the outline of a black Citroën slide past. She locked eyes with the figure in the passenger seat and shuddered.
“You’re cold,” said Grace, pulling back. “Come on. We’d better both head home so we’re not caught out after curfew. We’ll have to resume the search for Peter tomorrow and hope the police find him this evening.”
The moment passed. Grace blew her a kiss and pedaled away.
The horizon seemed to tremble as a streak of lightning rent the air, followed by a low growl of thunder that echoed off the sea wall.
Grace was right. Bea had built a wall around herself. During the day she went on her postal rounds, numbly, mechanically, but the fear stole up on her. How many times had she gone to the toilet to check, but there was no wetness between her legs. Her body was brewing and fermenting, creating a human being. She had to face facts now, she must be what, five, or five and half months gone?
Bea had always prided herself on her resilience, her ability to push away her feelings. She’d done it with her father and Jimmy. But there was no pushing away this dirty secret, for this one had a life of its own. Fear seemed to loop endlessly round her mind, switchblading between outcomes. She couldn’t have this baby, but how could she get rid of it?
There was a woman in St. Helier. She didn’t even live in a backstreet like some of the books in Grace’s library would have you believe. She lived over a stationer’s shop and seemed pretty harmless. But abortion was illegal and it could—and did—go wrong. Besides, how could she even think of such a thing? This life was all she had left of Jimmy, but Jersey was a small island. She’d be a social pariah. In peacetime a woman in trouble would have slipped away quietly to stay with a relative in England, but she was trapped with a secret that in about four months’ time would betray her.
This baby was her one hope, all she had left of the man she loved, the bright star in a vault of hopelessness. The picture of Jimmy in her head was slipping away. All those little habits, the mannerisms, the natural smell of him were fading. So much about a person was intangible. This baby was all she had left of their love, or proof that he’d ever existed. She couldn’t stand that the bright and handsome young man she’d known, who’d dived from the top board at the lido and delivered free milk to the island’s poor, would now forever be known as “that escapee.”
As she pedaled through the gloaming and the rooftops of St. Helier hove into view, Bea knew what she had to do. The answer had been staring her in the face all along. First, she would go to the allotment, destroy the informers’ letters that were gathering mold among the seeds and pots. Then she would come clean with her mother and face the problem with her. Her mother would know what to do. She always did.
But as she freewheeled down the hill to Havre des Pas her breath froze in her lungs. A black Citroën was parked outside their small guest house.
“You are a ghost, Beatrice Gold.” The Wolf stretched back in his chair, his long leather coat creaking as he laced his hands behind his head. Behind him hung the large inevitable framed picture.
Bea tried not to look at the portrait and instead reflected on how the Wolf had changed. Gone was the ridiculous alpine hat and in its place, a more severe look. Perhaps there was a Gestapo style guide in those Nazi magazines in the library. The thought made her smirk.
“You find this funny?”
“Not remotely. So why I am a ghost then? I can see you’re itching to tell me. Is this why you’ve invited me to the not-so-secret headquarters of the field police?”
His smile froze, those reptilian eyes flickered to narrow slits.
“It’s what we call islanders who refuse to acknowledge our presence.”
“Strange that you should dub me as the invisible presence, when it is I who choose to see straight through you,” she said. “Anyway, it’s a moot point really seeing as you’re losing this war and won’t be here for much longer.”
“And what gives you that impression, Miss Gold? Did you hear it on your wireless?”
Clumsy. He’d have to work harder than that to trip her up.
“What wireless?”
She smiled and readied herself to twist the knife.
“I heard one of your soldiers faced a firing squad last week for desertion and was buried at the Strangers Cemetery. You’re shipping out all your slaves and morale must be low as your troops look as miserable and starving as the rest of us. And you’re clearly worried about an Allied invasion. Why else have you started testing the air-raid siren every Saturday at noon?”
“Are you Jewish?” he asked, abruptly changing tack.
“It’s a nice place you’ve requisitioned here,” she said, as she surveyed the large room that looked out over the beach. “I can see why you kicked out poor Mrs. Scott,” she remarked, putting her hands in her pocket. “Who wouldn’t want a sea view?”
The Wolf steepled his hands together and gave an imperceptible nod. The blow left her reeling. Bea realized she had been struck from behind.
She cried out and whipped round in her seat. A large man in full uniform had crept in the room behind her. He must have been standing at the door all the time. He stood staring straight ahead, his eyes chillingly blank.
“Genug.” Enough. The Wolf slammed his palms down on the table. “I am getting tired of your games. Take your hands out of your pocket in front of the Führer.”
Stunned, she slid her hands from her pocket and clenched them into fists.
“This is my associate, Karl Lodburg. He is here to help you think straight, so I ask you again. Are you Jewish?”
Bea’s ear began to throb and she swallowed uneasily. She thought of the life inside her and suddenly felt incredibly vulnerable, a stab of fear piercing her bravado.
“Why would it matter if I was?” she said, feigning innocence.
“For someone who keeps her ear close to the ground you are remarkably ill-informed,” he replied, taking out a toothpick from a small box on his desk. “There have been a series of orders in the Evening Post, all Jewish people are required to register and are subject to restrictions on their movement.” He waved his hand. “Cinemas, theaters… the library. To prevent contamination.”
She felt the looming presence of Karl behind her. He was all Teutonic power and muscle, with a bicep where a brain ought to be. He had slapped her as if batting a fly. What would it feel like to be on the end of his fists? A dark cold dread inched through her.
The Wolf was using the toothpick to clean something from under his nail and Bea wondered what it was. Dirt. Sand. Dried blood?
Don’t show him you’re scared.
“I hate to disappoint you but no, I’m not Jewish and I don’t know why you would think that.”
“Gold… could so easily have been shortened from Goldberg, Goldstein, no?”
“It could. But it hasn’t been.” She fought the urge to touch her throbbing temple. “My mother is from Whitechapel. Her people are French Huguenots who came to England in 1718 and founded a Protestant church in London. She can prove it.”
Bea jutted out her chin. “And my father was Church of England, born in Jersey.”
“Interesting history lesson.”
“Not that I would have any problem myself with being Jewish. I don’t discriminate against people on the basis of their faith.”
He said nothing, just stared at her, gauging that bloody toothpick deep under his nail.
“Can I go now? Only it’s getting late and I should hate to miss curfew.”
“Take off your clothes,” he ordered.
“W-what?”
“I need to ensure you aren’t concealing any weapons.”
“This is absurd.”
“Karl, perhaps you could help?”
“No,” she snapped. “I’ll do it.”
Burning red and blistering with fury, she peeled off her postal uniform—trousers and blouse and jacket—and stood before his desk in her camiknickers and moth-eaten vest.
Her long dark hair was tucked under a chenille fishnet snood.
“That tatty hair net too,” he ordered.
She bit back a retort as she pulled it off, letting her hair tumble down her back.
“Your hair needs a wash,” he said snidely.
“Who can spare the soap?” she snapped, realizing how quickly a man’s lust could turn to loathing once his precious ego had been dented.
The Wolf and Karl looked at her as if inspecting livestock at auction, their gazes intimate and probing. Her swollen belly seemed to stand out, shining and white in the glow of the lamplight. Easy to conceal in clothes and covered by a large postal bag. Not so easy when stripped down to bare flesh. Bea closed her eyes, humiliation scorching through her. When she opened them, a sly smile had spread over his face.
“Naughty, Beatrice. Seems you are concealing secrets after all. You can go now.”
He stood up and flicked the toothpick into a waste bin. “Karl will see you out.”
The whole thing had been an exercise in power, an attempt to have the last laugh as he couldn’t make the Jewish issue stick. Bea knew that, but it made her sick to the stomach.
She dressed quickly and walked out into the hallway, where an orderly sat behind a desk.
“This way,” said Karl. Instead of leaving by the front door, he gestured to a small staircase down to the basement. Her heart started to thunder as she walked down the stairs. Karl was right behind her, so close she could smell his metallic breath on her neck.
The stairs led to a small underground corridor and there was a strange, fetid smell down in this basement, like bleach in a butcher’s shop.
“This door leads out onto the back garden, follow the path and it will take you back out to steps which lead onto the beach,” Karl ordered. Bea said nothing, just walked stiffly in the direction of the light. Just keep walking. Ten steps, five steps… All the other doors leading off the corridor were shut, except for the last door on the right. It was partially open, almost as if left open on purpose. She glanced in as she walked past. A figure sat on a bed, hunched-over and hugging his knees. He looked up as she passed, alerted by the noise and immediately his hands started to flutter.
“Peter,” she breathed, stopping.
“Out,” ordered Karl, shoving her roughly in the back. And then, abruptly, she was outside in the garden.
Bea reached the wooden gate that led to some wooden steps out onto the beach, her heart pumping with adrenaline. She waited, heard the back door slam, before picking up a stone from the beach. Slowly, deliberately, she carved a V for Victory into the back of the wooden door. “Fuck you, Nazi scum.” She swore under her breath and hurled the stone across the beach. Then she walked back across the wet sand, her mind reeling as the first drops of rain began to fall. Her fears swirled and bloomed like monsters, growing horns and teeth. She saw the Wolf’s gold tooth, his flaccid skin, the map of broken veins across his cheek. She imagined him guzzling brandy at the local brothel, untroubled by the trail of destroyed lives in his wake. A thick treacly hatred clotted in her throat.
How could this man, who arrested civilians for buying on the black market, while buying under the counter himself, and who happily threw schoolchildren in jail, wield power over them?
At least one good thing had come from this disturbing encounter. She would not destroy the letters. She would continue. Resolve. Courage. Conviction. She murmured those three words under her breath as she walked up the steps from the beach.
On instinct, she went instead to the allotment shed.
The Wolf thought he had the balance of power now, now that he knew her secret. No doubt he was already planning how best to leverage this against her. She felt sick. The way he had made her undress, the secrets he knew gave him an ownership over her.
Inside the shed, she lit a small stubby candle and listened to the sound of the rain beating down on the corrugated iron roof. Thank goodness Red had been moved on to another safe house in the north of the island, leaving the safe haven of the shed to Bea.
The floor of the shed was compacted dirt, but in the corner, underneath a bench and covered over by an old wooden pallet and gardening manuals, were the letters.
Bea lifted the wooden pallet and reached into the earth, pulling out a bundle of letters. She didn’t need to read them out. She knew their contents off by heart.
MRS. GREEN, TRINITY HILL… HAS HIDDEN HER WIRELESS IN THE SOOT HOUSE IN HER GARDEN
Please search Brompton Villa. Gt Union Road for at least 2 wireless hidden under her floorboards.
WHY IS JACK CORNU, 4 GREAT UNION ROAD, ALLOWED TO HAVE RECEIVED 1 TON OF COAL WHEN OTHER PEOPLE HAVE NONE AT ALL? ALSO CALL AND SEE HIS STOCK OF FOOD IN HIS BEDROOM CUPBOARDS. SEE WHAT YOU THINK OF IT???
Bea wondered if any of these people who had been so clumsily denounced had the faintest clue how close they had come to being searched and arrested. There was no nuance or ambiguity as far as she was concerned. It was wrong. In denouncing these people so spitefully, the anonymous cowards who had written these letters were prepared to condemn them to a prison in Germany, and for what? Rage pooled in her stomach. Who were these enemies in their midst?
Her eyes fell to the bundle beneath. The mail she had stolen from the German Post Office on New Year’s Eve.
Ninety letters that would never be delivered. Swallowing her fear, she opened one. The front of the card depicted a brilliant red sailboat, heading into the sunset. It reeked of cologne. She turned it over. A scrawl of meaningless German words covered the back. She did however recognize two of the words. Heil Hitler. She picked up another and slit it open with her finger.
A photograph fell out. A young blond man, strikingly handsome, depressingly young, stared back. To her surprise the letter was written in English.
My dear fiancée, Emilia. I have been practicing my English, so I hope you will forgive me writing to you in English, ask our neighbor to translate. He used to be an English teacher, didn’t he?
So my dearest one. I’ll be thinking of you and remember the happy hours we spent together last year at Christmas. I hope you haven’t forgotten me. I haven’t heard from you in such a long while.
Christmas has not been so happy for me this year, because I’m only happy when I’m with you. God grant that we can spend next Christmas together again. I wish only to be home and reunited with you. What I hope most is an end to this war will come soon so that we can all enjoy life again.
The letter slipped from her fingers as an awful thought dawned on her. In stealing this mail, was she being as petty and vengeful as the very people whose letters she had intercepted? This man sounded so normal and as desperate to see an end to this war as she was. Hadn’t Grace said as much? Now he might never receive a reply from his sweetheart Emilia. Guilt sneaked in at the edges of her anger. She stuffed the letter back in the hole in the ground and hastily covered it over.
She must remain focused. This choice was the right one. She had taken—no, purloined (a far less grubby word)—these letters to demoralize the enemy. So that soldier was lonely. So what? Weren’t they all? No more wrestling with her conscious. This foul ideology must be thwarted. Her conviction, her resolve must stay steady.
From her purse she pulled a cracked mirror and a stub of old red lipstick she had been saving for best. She needed to paint on some armor before she went home. Her mum would be all over it if she detected the slightest thing wrong. She loved her mum dearly, but her inherent nosiness meant she needed to know the ins and outs of a cat’s arsehole.
By the time she pushed her key in the door, she hoped Queenie might be in bed. No such luck. She could make out her faint outline in the smoky darkness, nursing the remains of a weak fire.
“Where have you been? I thought the search had been called off for this evening?”
She rose like a battleship, hands on hips.
Bea sighed and kicked off her wooden clogs, grateful for the veil of darkness. “I carried on looking for Peter.”
“And?” Queenie’s shrewd gaze seemed to permeate the gloom of the small parlor.
“The Secret Field Police have arrested him.”
All the breath seemed to leave her body in one juddering gasp. Bea stared at her usually well-upholstered mum and it occurred to her suddenly how much weight she’d lost.
“Whatever has become of this island? Still, your sister got her job back at Boots today, so that’s one small blessing.”
“How?” Bea demanded.
“The German commandant had the manager in and insisted the girls he dismissed be reinstated. And you can debate the rights and wrongs of it, madam, but now she has two jobs, it’s much needed coinage coming in.”
Bea rolled her eyes. The last thing she wanted was to get into a conversation about her Jerrybag sister. “I’m done in, Mum. I’m up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire.”
She had hoped her mum’s old childhood saying might soften her mood, but Queenie wasn’t known as the Guv’nor for nothing.
“When are you going to tell me what’s really biting you?”
Bea gripped the stair rail, wincing as a tiny wooden splinter sliced under her fingernail. The brackish smell of the smoky fire and the stench of boiled turnip turned her guts.
“Nothing that couldn’t be cured by Hitler taking a bullet in the head.” Anger iced her voice. “Give me a couple of bricks, a mallet and half an hour alone with that man.”
Queenie took her face in her hands, forcing her to meet her gaze.
“Tell me you’re not involved in anything reckless at the post office.”
Bea felt the small blood blister forming under her fingernail, so small but yet so exquisitely painful.
“Why do you think that?”
“Because you’re young, angry and impetuous.”
“Perhaps, but I’m not stupid, Mum. Now, please can I go to bed?”
Queenie released her grip and Bea trudged up the stairs, her belly hot and swollen, her world shrinking.