Bea locked the cubicle door behind her, pulled down the toilet lid and sat down heavily. With trembling fingers she yanked down the waistband of her slacks and rolled down the thick rubberized corset, until the pink swollen flesh of her bump was revealed. The relief was immense. Also immediately the fluttering began, a drum roll of kicks as her baby squirmed inside her. Relief gave way to guilt as she took in the thick grooves across her flesh where her waistband had been digging painfully into her compressed abdomen.
She placed her hand on the delicate skin. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
What a god-awful mess. How could she have been so impossibly stupid? It wasn’t like her mum hadn’t warned her and Nancy enough times about the shadowy fate of girls who found themselves “in trouble.”
Bea closed her eyes and tipped her head back until it was resting against the cool green-and-white-tiled wall. She had to tell someone and soon. But who? How could she tell Grace the truth now of all times? Since Red’s arrest two days earlier she’d walked about as if in a trance, convinced somehow it was her fault.
Bea had already had to let her waistband out twice. People had begun to notice. At the last book club, Molly had asked how on earth she’d managed to put on more weight when all around her people were nothing but skin and bone. Admittedly Bea was clueless when it came to the details of a confinement, but even she knew that in roughly two months’ time, a rubberized corset would no longer conceal this baby.
Her heart began to pick up pace as she imagined, what then? Her baby would be taken from her, that much she knew. No matter that she could love this child, that it was all she had left of Jimmy, in the eyes of society this baby would be illegitimate. A bastard. An occupation secret to be shunted off quickly to a cold and loveless institution, then quickly forgotten.
In peacetime, she’d have been packed off to the Weymouth Home for Wayward Girls across the water, but that was no longer an option. Now she’d have to give birth on the island and live so close, yet so far from her baby. Her and Jimmy’s baby. In that moment the longing to see Jimmy was exquisite. She pictured him loping over the fields toward her after a day’s toil, face filthy with dust, hair flecked with hay, his lazy laughter as he grabbed her and kissed her neck. Like a lantern show the image slid away to be replaced with him bleeding to death on the cold stone beach, surrounded by Germans with guns.
A horrific thought struck her. What if the occupying authorities got involved? What if, as the child of an enemy of the Third Reich, they could lay some claim over her baby and take him or her? A terrible vision of the Wolf plucking her baby from her stole though her mind.
“You all right in there?” called Doris and Bea jumped.
“Fine. My nose is awful stuffy is all.”
“That’ll be those gas-combustion engines they’re using on the busses now. One hell of a noisy, smelly affair.”
“Yes you’re probably right, Dor,” she called back.
Bea stood up, reluctantly pulling up the thick sheath of rubber, and made herself a promise. No more carrying on. This afternoon, she would tell Grace. And Grace could come with her while she broke the news to Queenie. Grace would be a calming influence when Queenie Gold flipped her lid.
Her heart raced as she stood up quickly and for an awful moment thought she might faint. She held on to the back of the door and in the darkness her mind tumbled. Poison pens, secret babies, stolen letters… it was a tangled web of such deception and complexity. And nestled right in the heart of it was that bastard Wolf, who would love nothing more than to sign her arrest warrant.
Bea made her way back to the sorting room when Winnie called through to her.
“A visitor at the counter for you, Bea.”
Monday dinnertime and the queue for postal orders, stamps, pensions and savings snaked along the middle of the post office. Standing nervously to the side of the queue was a young couple.
“What are you doing here?” Bea said coldly to her sister, ignoring the Luftwaffe pilot by her side.
“Please, sis,” said Nancy softly, “can we talk?”
“I’ve nothing to say to you. You’re a bloody disgrace. And as for you,” she said, finally addressing Nancy’s boyfriend, “the German Post Office is on Beresford Street.”
Bea looked at the man who had captured her sister’s heart. She could understand if he was some sort of strapping blond Adonis, but all she saw was a smallish man—a cigarette paper over 5 feet 5 inches—with slightly too fleshy lips and hair the color of wet sand.
“Would you please deliver this to your mother this afternoon?” he asked, sliding a brown paper package over the counter.
“Do it yourself,” she said, turning to leave.
“Please, Bea,” Nancy called after her. “I’d deliver it myself but I’m due back at Boots, and it’s urgent.”
“We really would be most grateful,” said her boyfriend.
“Oh it’s the royal we now is it?” Bea felt the anger surge up inside her. Hormones, hunger and grief were a heady mix.
“Did Nancy tell you our father was killed when your lot bombed the harbor?” She was aware her voice was shrill and people in the queue were staring, but she couldn’t stop.
“Take your package and get out before I get called a Jerrybag too.” She pushed the package back at him with all her force. It skidded over the polished counter before landing on the floor with a smash.
Nancy looked horrified as a stain of damp seeped over the brown paper. “Oh Bea, what have you done?” she breathed.
“What have I done? I never asked you to come in here.”
“Do you know what was in that?”
“No and I don’t want to.”
“It was a vial of insulin,” Nancy persisted. “Precious insulin. For Mum.” She broke off as tears filled her eyes.
“What are you talking about? Mum’s not ill.”
Nancy sighed and gripped the counter. “She has diabetes. She’s had it for years apparently.”
“Wh-What? Why keep it a secret?”
“You know Mum. Never one to make a fuss. Dr. Lewis has been getting her insulin but all his supplies have run out now. Heinz has a friend who works for the German hospital and he’s been sneaking supplies of insulin for Mum, but even they’re running short.”
The room seemed suddenly to empty of oxygen.
“Mum desperately needed that medication.”
Bea felt as if her legs were crumbling.
“I don’t understand,” she managed at last. “How come you know and I don’t?”
“Because she didn’t want to upset you further after Jimmy died. She’s trying to protect you. That’s all she ever does.”
Nancy shook her head, judgment clouding her face. “But the only person you think about is yourself. Haven’t you even noticed how ill she looks? Come on, Heinz.”
Bea stared after them open-mouthed as they left the post office.
“Show’s over.” Mr. Mourant took Bea’s arm and led her back into the sorting room. “What did I say to you, Bea?” he murmured under his breath, his voice barely containing his anger.
“If that Luftwaffe pilot decides to report you, you could be court-martialed for that insolence. You could land us all in it.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Mourant. It won’t happen again.”
“No, you’re right. It won’t. Next month we have an opening at the Red Cross office. You can start work there, after the Whit Sunday bank holiday.”
“But… but I’m a postwoman. I deliver letters.”
“Do you?” he said, challengingly. “Deliver the letters, that is?”
“Y- yes, of course I do.”
“Well, still, all the same. You can finish this month, then that’s it. I’m relieving you of your duties. Better you be there.” He looked at her searchingly. “Out of temptation’s way.”
“But I love working for the post office,” she protested.
“And when the occupation is over you can return. Besides, the Red Cross isn’t all bad. You’ll still be helping people. Those messages are islanders’ only link to the outside world. It’s a very important job I’m entrusting you to.” And then in a softer voice, “Believe me, Bea, I’m doing you a kindness. I’m protecting you.”
“Who from?”
“Yourself, my dear.”
Bea stormed into the sorting room and grabbed her postbag, shaking from the force of her boss’s approbation.
“What’s biting you, girlie?” asked Harold as she swept out the door into the yard.
Bea pedaled hard in the direction of Havre des Pas, finally flinging her bike down in her small front garden. She found her mother in the kitchen.
“Oh hello, love. Come home for your dinner?” She tailed off. “Whatever’s wrong?”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were sick?” Bea demanded.
“I’m not.”
“Not yet you’re not, but what happens when the insulin runs out?”
“Well, it won’t, because Nancy’s boyfriend has a supply.” Her face softened. “You know, Bea, he’s really not a bad lad.”
“I… I just can’t believe you’ve kept this a secret from me all these years,” Bea cried.
“It’s not a secret. Your father knew, but it’s not for you and your sister to know.”
Queenie wiped the table down with vim and vigor, like she always did when she was agitated. “’Sides. I’ve coped with it most of my bleedin’ life and would have carried on doing so were it not for this occupation.”
Bea’s anger deflated and she sank down into a seat.
“Oh, Mum, I’m so sorry. Nancy’s right. All I’ve been thinking about is myself. I didn’t stop to see what was happening in front of me.”
“Heh, heh. Come here,” said Queenie, pulling her roughly up out of the chair and into her arms. She laid her head against her mother’s wrap-around apron and thought back to simpler times, when the most trouble she got into was for stealing jam tarts. How far away those childish pursuits seemed now.
In the silence, a voice urged her. Tell her.
“I’ll be all right,” her mum said, her chest gently heaving against Bea’s ear. She smelled of cinnamon and Sunlight soap. “Takes more than that to finish Queenie Gold off. So now you know the truth. Your turn.”
Bea’s eyes snapped open and she drew back.
“What do you mean?” she asked, her voice a hoarse whisper.
“What are you—six months?”
Bea stood statue-still.
“Do you take me for a fool? In my old neighborhood they reckoned I could smell a pregnancy. I know a girl in trouble when I see one. I’ve been waiting months for you to come clean.”
Bea had no more strength left to deny it. What was the point? And as she nodded all she actually felt was relief. She closed her eyes, waited for the slap, the screaming. It was what she deserved.
Instead, her mother laid both her hands gently on her tummy.
“A boy I reckon.”
“A… aren’t you cross?”
“And what would that achieve? It’s Jimmy’s I take it?”
Bea nodded. “The night he was killed.”
“How many times did I tell you to keep your hand on yer ha’penny?” Queenie sighed as she sat down at the table and began rolling a cigarette. “You aren’t the first unmarried girl to let a boy cross the dotted line and I dare say you won’t be the last. I knew that quick tongue and velvet smile of yours’d land you in hot water!”
“Does that I mean I can keep him?”
Queenie said nothing as she licked the edge of her cigarette paper and Bea felt a soft feathering of hope for the first time since Jimmy’s death. Could she actually be a mother? She didn’t know the first thing about babies. In fact, they terrified her. And yet. This was her child, hers and Jimmy’s.
She stared at her mother, anticipation stealing her breath.
“Of course not, love,” Queenie said gently. She lit her cigarette and sighed out the smoke.
“We’d never survive the scandal. Illegitimacy is a stain that never washes off.” Her words hung heavy. “And what about the poor baby? Think of the life you’ll be condemning him to. The same folk who go around branding homes with swastikas will quickly be branding him a bastard,” she said shrewdly and, with brilliant clarity, Bea suddenly realized she was right. She and her child would be despised, cast out, social pariahs in a goldfish bowl.
Her throat locked. “So what do we do?”
“I know a small maternity home in the north of the island. In about a month, you’ll leave your job. I’ll go in and say my friend needs help on her farm.”
“No need,” said Bea miserably. “They’re making me leave to work at the Red Cross office. I just need to work a month’s notice.”
“Even better. You won’t take the new job. We’ll move you up to the home instead. I have a discreet friend who can make inquiries. She’s helped plenty of girls who found themselves in trouble with their German boyfriends. There are women on this island who might be prepared to foster a child, until we’re liberated. Then the baby can be adopted in England.”
Bea looked out of the window. Outside, the sky looked like it had been freshly painted, blousy clouds scudding through the blue like sails on a ship. The truth was out and the sky hadn’t fallen in. Just like that her mum had a plan that made it all sound so easy. The trouble was, Bea knew it would be easier to hand over her heart than her and Jimmy’s baby.
Tears began to slide down her face.
“In a year or two, when it’s all over and the Germans have left, you’ll move on from all this. I promise,” Queenie said, stroking her head. “You have to ’cause you’ve no other choice,” she said with brutal pragmatism. “I’m from the no choice but to get on with it generation, and now, my love, so are you.”
“I better get back to work,” said Bea, feeling like the ceiling was shrinking down on her head.
“That’s the ticket. Just one more thing. Tell no one about this. The fewer people know that you’re in the family way, the better. That includes Grace. Especially Grace.” She picked a strand of tobacco from her tooth. “This can’t get back to Jimmy’s mum. It’d destroy her.”
Bea nodded.
“Not good enough,” she said, a chill lacing her voice. “You have to promise me.”
“I promise.”
Queenie’s face softened, compassion returning to her features.
“Good girl.” She rummaged inside her handbag and pulled out a stubby tube of Yardley’s Renegade Red. “Paint your face on. Show ’em your flag’s still flying.”
But even with her lips stained vermilion red, Bea still felt utterly defeated. How could she not have seen what was plainly staring her in the face? She reached for her mum and wrapped her arms around her as if love alone could hold back sickness. “I’m so sorry, Mum.”
“Hush, child. I’m the parent. It’s for me to worry about you, not the other way round.”
Bea went on her afternoon round, deliberately leaving the library to last. She parked her bike against the steps of the Bibliothèque Publique and went in search of Grace.
She found her studying something on the desk, a frown etched over her face.
“What’s up? Someone not paid their fine?”
Grace looked up, her face bleached of color. She had pinned her long blonde hair back into a chignon with a pencil and most of it had escaped, tumbling down her shoulders.
“Grace? What’s wrong?”
“I’ve been absolutely out of my mind with worry over Red and now…” She choked back a sob. “They’re closing down the book club!”
“What? They can’t do that!”
“They can and they are.” She held up a letter. “This was just delivered from the commandant’s office.”
“But why?”
“Because your book club broke the rules.” The voice seemed to come from on high. The girls looked up to see the Wolf leaning over the mezzanine railings.
Casually he walked down the stairs and came to join them at the desk.
“You read poetry that was offensive and uncongenial to the Third Reich.”
“We did no such thing,” Grace protested.
“Really?” He pulled out a notebook from his pocket.
“‘The Soldier’ by Rupert Brooke?”
“But that’s about the last war, not this one. I consulted with the Feldkommandant’s office on this very issue. I was told that books which are disparaging and provocative against the Third Reich are verboten. It does not apply to texts that are objective representations of battles or historical events.”
“And what about this one? ‘Little Jersey bombed and mined, For us, warfare has proved unkind, But after all the stress and strain, A great height we will rise again.’”
“That was a spur of the moment poem written by one of my patrons,” Grace protested. “I didn’t even know she was planning to read it.”
“It is deeply offensive to the Third Reich and damaging to morale. I do not blame the commandant for shutting down your group.”
A shadow passed over Grace’s face.
“It was you, wasn’t it? That censor who was on duty reports to you. He was never asleep.”
He smirked. “Amazing how people let down their guard when they think they’re not overheard.” He turned to Bea and she felt the blood in her veins turn to ice. “Amazing too how many secrets people are keeping on this parochial little island, isn’t that right, Miss La Mottée?
“Your American boyfriend is behind bars. Your book club is over. I suspect there is more, but don’t worry. I will uncover the truth.”
Grace’s head slumped into her hands.
“Please. Whatever you may think of me, I beg of you not to shut down the book club. You don’t know what it means to islanders. It’s a lifeline.”
“Then you should have censored your reading more effectively.”
“Censor my reading?” Grace repeated in a daze. “I’m a librarian. If I censor people’s reading, I may as well steal their thoughts.”
The Wolf shrugged then snapped his fingers. As if on cue three men dressed in black appeared from behind the stacks.
“Search the library,” he ordered. “And her office.”
“No, please,” Grace cried, opening the counter hatch and running out. “Please stop. We’ve already surrendered all the books on your list. There is no point.”
Grace wept as his men went round, sweeping books from shelves, pausing from time to time to shake loose their pages.
“Many of these books are old and fragile, please be careful. You’ll ruin them.”
“Continue,” the Wolf ordered before turning to Grace. “I do admire your carefully constructed amiable bookworm disguise, Miss La Mottée. Now please close the library until we have conducted our search.”
Bea held Grace as she choked back sobs.
“How can they do this, Bea?” she wept. “First Peter and Red, now this! What more do they want from us?” She held her hands to her eyes to block out the sight, but at the sound of tearing pages, Bea knew they may as well have ripped out her friend’s heart.
“Everyone OUT!” the Wolf ordered, turning to Bea. “That includes you.”
“Go,” Grace said quietly. “Don’t make it worse.”
Bea felt a thick hatred clot in her veins. “Very well. But I’ll come back later to help you clean up.”
She left, tears blurring her eyes and followed the stream of stunned people as they filed out of the library.
Outside, her heart began to hammer in her chest as the scales fell away. She knew what she had to do. She had been fooling herself to think that the Wolf was an idiot. He was a dangerous man, hell-bent on ruining them both.
Bea cycled to the allotment, and stuffed the stolen German letters, along with the informers’ letters she hadn’t delivered, into her postal bag. It was a risk, but one she knew she had little choice but to take.
At the post office yard she found Arthur tinkering with one of the delivery vans.
“Can I have a word?”
“Whatever’s wrong, girlie?”
“I’ve got a big problem and I know I’m risking both of our lives, but you’re the only person I can turn to. My father always said you were a man you could hang your hat off.”
Arthur’s craggy old face fell and Bea prayed her leap of faith wasn’t misplaced. She opened her bag enough to let him peer in.
“I need a safe hiding place for some unwanted post. I’d destroy them but I think they’ll prove useful after the war.”
She clutched her tummy, her heart pounding so hard she could hear it pulsing in her ears.
“Calm down, girlie.”
His rough voice was barely above a whisper as he drew her back behind an old Ford van.
“I know somewhere the Germans will never look.”
“Where?”
“Les Vaux Sanatorium. It’s only used for TB patients. There’s a room in the basement there. I’ll move the letters there.”
“And they’ll be safe?”
He nodded. “I reckon so.”
They paused as a pair of old men in crumpled caps passed by on the street outside, well out of earshot, but you never knew.
“But how can you be sure?” she whispered once they’d passed. “This is my doing. I don’t want this to come back on anyone else here.”
“The Hun are terrified of tuberculosis. Trust me, they steer well clear of the place.”
Bea had so many questions. What else went on in the basement of the TB sanatorium? Who else knew about it? But she knew better than to ask. The relief that she had spring-cleaned her own business was immense.
“Thank you, Arthur.”
He nodded as he took her postal bag from her, his face grim.
“I warned you not to get mixed up in any of this business, girlie.”
“I’m sorry, Arthur. I couldn’t stand by and watch such a diabolic thing going on.”
Arthur raised his eyes to the heavens.
“No, I dare say you couldn’t. God knows your father would have done the same. But,” he raised his finger, “I hear you’re off to work at the Red Cross office soon and I’m glad of it. You keep out of trouble. Please God we are close to victory.”
She reached up and kissed his weather-beaten cheek.
“Don’t worry. Nothing bad’ll happen to me.”
“The invincibility of youth,” he sighed.
“How can people turn on each other?” she asked on impulse.
He shrugged. “Spite. Hunger. Rewards. Who knows. But what you have to remember, Bea, is that those who denounce are in a small minority.”
“P’raps. Trouble is, you begin to doubt everybody.”
“Be cautious with your trust and keep your trap shut. A still tongue…”
“Keeps a wise head. I know, I know. That’s what my mum always says.”
He laughed. “Saucy piece you are, Bea Gold. Go on, be on your way.”
She turned and cycled back to the library to help Grace with the clear-up and despite the banter with Arthur, a terrible unsettled feeling seeped over her like hot oil.
Outside the library she paused on the steps to catch her breath. Local stonemason Joseph Le Guyader was re-laying some of the paving in the Royal Square. He worked diligently, scooping up sand and patting it down to lay foundations, rolled-up cigarette glued to the side of his mouth. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a straightforward job like that? He must have sensed her watching as he glanced up and smiled. Slowly he drew a V in the wet sand, before placing a thick slab over the top. Bea returned his smile and opened the library door.
She found Grace on her knees in the middle of the library, like a fallen angel, surrounded by piles of scattered books. The search had shaken free the dust from the stacks and motes spiraled in the prism of sunshine streaming down from the glass dome above. You could taste the adrenaline and shock in the air.
Grace looked up, her beautiful green eyes puffy from crying. It was hard to tell which was the most wounding to her, Red’s arrest or the closure of the book club.
“Where do we even start?” she cried, looking around at the piles of books.
Most of the shelves had been swept of their books. The library had been trashed.
“Look at my library. Just look. How could they?”
“Did they find anything?” Bea whispered, sinking to her knees beside Grace. Grace took a juddering breath and shook her head.
“I don’t think so.” She pulled a key from the sole of her shoe. “The others are still locked in the secret cupboard behind the nature stacks.”
She managed a slight smile.
“Clearly Birds of the Channel Islands don’t represent a threat to the Third Reich.”
Bea gently pulled Grace to her feet.
“That’s my girl. I know it’s awful that they’ve closed down the book club but at least they haven’t found anything to warrant shutting the library down.”
“But where do we start?” Grace asked, surveying the chaos.
“We start at the beginning. Come on. You picked me up after Jimmy’s death, now it’s my turn.”
She gave her an irreverent grin. “Besides, I know you’re dying to teach me the finer points of cataloging.”
A rumpled smile crossed her friend’s face, halfway between a sob and a laugh.
“That’s the spirit,” Bea laughed. “Don’t let that Nazi bastard get to you. He’s only doing this ’cause he knows they’re done for. His control is slipping away.”
“I suppose I should be grateful they didn’t find my hidden books. Oh and the best of it is, every single book we are donated now needs to be sent straight to them to be read and cleared before I can loan it out, to check it’s not uncongenial to the regime. My library feels tainted.”
She pushed trembling fingers through her hair. “It’s all my fault.”
“What? Why?”
“I told Red I loved him. I should have known he would have appeared in town and I should have protected my book club. I failed to see the danger I was putting us all in.”
She touched the delicate skin at her throat. “It’s as if I have a noose round my neck which gets tighter by the day.”
Bea hugged her tightly, swallowing her own pain. Grace had eloquently summed up precisely how she herself was feeling.
“I’m sorry, Bea. Some friend I am. I haven’t even asked you yet what it was you wanted to talk over with me.”
Bea remembered her mum’s warning. “Oh, Mum’s not well is all. She’s got diabetes. She’s had it for years apparently. I just can’t fathom why she didn’t tell me.”
“Your mum’s a proud and stubborn woman. Like someone else I know.”
Bea felt Grace studying her, reading her like a book. “Are you sure there’s nothing else?”
Bea bent down to pick up a book so she couldn’t see her expression.
“No, nothing else. Come on, let’s get your library back in apple pie order.”
They worked in silence and Bea could tell Grace was freighted with despair over the events of the past 48 hours. Every book those barbaric men had torn from the shelves was wiped gently with a soft cloth and replaced to its rightful spot.
“How long has this library been going for?” Bea asked as they worked.
“Over 200 years.”
Bea gazed up at the glittering dome roof and was struck by the enormity of its history.
“It strikes me that an institution which has already survived for so long will be around long after the Nazis have left, long after you and I have popped our clogs.”
Grace ran her finger up the spine of the beautiful burgundy-and-gold hardback she was holding and finally a smile curled the corners of her lips.
“You’re right. Wars will come and go…”
“But the library remains,” Bea finished.
She reached for Grace’s cold fingers and squeezed them tight.