In the three days since Bea’s arrest, Grace had alternated between pragmatism and outright panic. As it had been a bank holiday the library had been closed so she hadn’t even had the escape of work and her fears churned on an endless loop around her mind. Her mother was so terrified, she’d insisted that Grace not leave the farmhouse all weekend, leaving her to do nothing but pace and fret. Pace and fret.
By five o’clock on Tuesday morning, the weather was so muggy, with thunder rumbling over the island, that she abandoned any notion of sleep. Grace dressed and cycled to the library, relieved to be out from the oppressive house. Lightning split open the dark skies over the ocean as she pedaled along the bay into town. In the distance she could smell burning.
When she reached the library, to her surprise, a lone figure sat hunched on the steps.
“Thank goodness you’re here,” said Molly. “Grace, you must come with me to the hospital.”
“It’s Bea, isn’t it?”
“We need to hurry. We might already be too late.”
“Too late?” she gasped. “Is she sick?”
“Just come with me.”
They ran through the deserted streets, a sense of foreboding building inside Grace with every step, but instead of the General Hospital, Molly led her to the Dispensary, the maternity hospital on St. Saviour’s Road. An armed German guard was posted outside the entrance.
“What’s going on, Molly?” she panted, groggy with exhaustion. “Please just tell me. Is Bea sick?”
She felt a roaring start in her head as Molly gripped her wrist and shook her head.
“No, you ninny. Look at where we are! She’s giving birth!”
“Giving birth?” Grace repeated in a daze.
Molly led her up a maze of corridors then pointed to a door.
“You knock. I’ll wait here.”
Grace knocked softly and then pushed open the door, her heart going like the clappers. This was madness, insane. Bea wasn’t having a baby. She couldn’t be.
Inside, Dr. John Lewis, a medic well-respected on the island for his formidable work ethic, was looking at his stopwatch and counting.
“That’s good, my dear. The contractions are about a minute apart. It won’t be long now. I’ll tell you when to push.”
Bea was on the hospital bed on all fours. Her face was waxy and pale, save for a livid yellow and purple bruise on her cheekbone. The image was so shocking, Grace stumbled back.
“I can’t give birth, it’s too soon,” Bea whimpered.
“Your baby certainly doesn’t seem to think so,” Dr. Lewis replied calmly. “He, or she, is ready to come out and meet you.”
“I can’t.” Bea wept helplessly. “I can’t do this.”
“In my experience, that’s usually a sign that the baby is about to make an appearance. Now rest and gather your strength for the next contraction.”
In that moment a silence stretched over the while tiled room and Bea turned, her eyes widening.
“Grace… Oh, Grace. You came.” She shook her head. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
Snapping out of her torpor, Grace threw her bag on the floor and ran to Bea’s side.
“What for?”
“Aren’t you shocked?”
“Well, yes, a little, t-this wasn’t what I was expecting to find,” she stammered.
As understatements went, it was a whopper.
She coughed to clear her thickening throat.
“Good grief, you’re having a baby.” She stroked back a strand of wet hair from Bea’s forehead and a sudden thought dawned on her and the emotion nearly floored her.
“Oh, Bea, is it—?”
Bea nodded. “It’s your niece or nephew.”
“Oh, my love. I don’t know what to say.”
Bea looked spent. Her cheeks slick with sweat, her wet hair plastered to her face.
“You must hate me for lying and I’m sorry, so sorry, I never planned any of this.”
“Never mind all that. I’m here now, Bea. What can I do?”
“You can help me get her off this bed for starters,” Dr. Lewis said through gritted teeth. “Believe me, this baby’ll come a lot quicker with gravity on its side.”
Together they heaved Bea off the bed and almost immediately another contraction seized her. Grace watched wide-eyed, breathless with admiration, but terrified for her friend as the pain seemed to take her away to another place.
“Take my hand,” she urged, cupping her palms. Bea rammed her fist into it and bore down, her eyes squeezed shut as she tipped back her head and bellowed with all the fury and might she possessed. Her face was etched with a feral fury, her eyes were tightly shut, as if she might find the strength she was looking for in the darkness.
“That’s it, push… push… Now stop,” Dr. Lewis ordered.
“I can’t do this,” Bea roared.
“You can and you are,” Dr. Lewis replied, getting down on his knees. “I can see baby’s head. Now on the next contraction one last big push.”
Bea’s wild screams seemed to bounce off the tiled walls as the room filled with a fecund smell.
Grace cried helplessly as her friend’s eyes rolled back in her head, her fingernails tearing into the skin on her palm. “Come on, Bea, come on.”
And then the brutal, bloody, beautiful business of birth was done and Dr. Lewis was wrapping a baby in a white towel. “Pass me that clamp in the dish,” he ordered Grace.
Grace watched, stunned, as he cut the cord between mother and child.
“Oh, Bea, you did it,” Grace cried, tears unashamedly rolling down her cheeks. “You have a baby boy.”
One hour later, with her baby son sleepily feeding at Bea’s breast, the entire thing felt like a surreal dream.
“I’m going to see if I can arrange for you both to have a nice cup of tea,” said Dr. Lewis, discreetly leaving the room. Grace waited until the door softly closed and she heard footsteps squeaking up the corridor.
“I can’t get over this, any of it,” Grace murmured. “I’m ashamed that you didn’t feel you could tell me.”
Bea couldn’t even tear her gaze from her son and his tiny scrunched-up face.
“Never mind that, Grace. What does it matter now? He’s here and isn’t he the most exquisite thing you’ve ever seen? I can’t believe me and Jimmy made something so beautiful.” She shook her head in disbelief. “He has my whole heart in these hands.”
His tiny little pink fingers were clutched around Bea’s so tightly it was as if their bodies were drawn together like a magnet.
“He is—” Grace swallowed. A spear-thrust of tangled love and grief rippled through her. She couldn’t find the words to express what it felt like to be looking into the eyes of her brother Jimmy. “He is perfection.”
Finally Bea looked up at Grace. She had never seen such bittersweet pain etched on her friend’s face and it knocked the breath from her. “It’s as if Jimmy has returned to me. How can I leave him? It’ll kill me.”
It was a dramatic statement but one which Grace believed. How could any mother be expected to part with the helpless little person they had just delivered into the world?
Bea looked around the room, fear exploding on her face as if she had suddenly remembered the fate which lay outside the door.
“They’ll come knocking for me soon, Grace, to take me back to prison.”
She could see almost see the unraveling of her friend’s thoughts.
“I bet there’s a guard on the door, isn’t there? How long before that black Citroën pulls up outside? Oh God.”
Grace scrubbed her face wearily. The idea came to her from somewhere deep inside her self-conscious, tangling her shattered brain with the complexity of it.
Her memory reached back for a precious offer, shored away for a time when she would need it.
If ever I can help you, you know where to find me.
“I think there’s a way, Bea,” she said quietly. “Please God it’ll work. You have to trust me.”
She passed her finger lightly over her best friend’s brow.
“Do you trust me?”
“Grace,” she said warily. “What are you going to do?”
“What needs to be done. I have to go soon, but before I do, might I have a cuddle with my nephew?”
“Of course. But, Grace, please tell me what you’re planning. Don’t do anything you might regret.”
Gently Grace scooped up Bea’s son and held him as if he were made of porcelain.
He lay perfectly still, swaddled in a white blanket, only his little face peeking out from the nest. He stirred and yawned, his eyelashes fluttering in a dream. Grace was spellbound. Hadn’t she had hoped one day to have a baby of her own? With Red. In dreamier moments in the library, hadn’t she imagined such a life for herself?
She squeezed back bitter tears as she realized that even if his dream of their life together after the liberation had been possible, it would surely never happen now. Not after what she was about to do.
“Hello, little chap,” Grace whispered. “You’ve got a grandmother at home who needs someone like you to lift her up. And we will make sure you hear all the stories there are to tell about your brave daddy.”
She bent down and kissed his velvet cheek and felt her heart clench with pain and fear at the dark abyss that lay ahead. One which she must walk in to, in order to save her family.
From the maternity hospital, Grace walked slowly back into town via Havre des Pas, seeing the beauty of the ocean as if for the first time. The sound of the waves rushing in, usually so calming, sounded like a giant mournful sigh.
The smoke from the bombings which had drifted over from northern France was clearing and the sun was burning through. The sunrise was spectacular, like someone had rolled out a bolt of shimmering orange silk across the ocean.
Grace stood for a long time on the jetty to the bathing pool, playing out endings to her story, alternatives to what she knew needed to be done. But in truth, if she were to save her best friend and her nephew, there was only one course of action.
Her heart cruelly took her mind to Red and the pain of losing the only man she had ever loved threatened to demolish her. He would need an explanation. But how to explain that she was putting her best friend’s future ahead of theirs, sacrificing her safety for Bea’s? Would it be cleaner, easier, safer all round, if his love could be turned to hate?
One hour later, she was resolved as to what needed to be done. She walked through the maze of back streets to the doctor’s door.
He answered quickly.
“Dr. Hanna. I’m so sorry to disturb you so early, but I need your help. Do you think you can get me into the prisoner-of-war library today? I urgently need to speak with Red—I mean, Lieutenant Daniel Patrick O’Sullivan.”
He was shaking his head before she’d had a chance to finish.
“Not possible, my dear. Visits are strictly forbidden. We managed it before on account of you delivering books, but it’s not a chance I’m prepared to take again.”
The disappointment was like a blow to the solar plexus.
“But I can tell you that prisoners are permitted to take a short daily walk in a fenced-off park next to the compound at 11 a.m. There’s a spot, I believe, by the barbed wire where one could, if one were determined enough, converse with a POW without being seen.”
She breathed out. “Thank you, doctor.”
Back in the library, Grace went about her morning duties like an automaton, counting down the minutes to 11 a.m. She laid out the morning newspapers, managed some shelving and dusted down the stacks.
The soothing daily rituals provided no comfort this morning. How could they when they might be her last and that, Grace realized with an enormous tearing wrench, was the worst of it. She was about to give up the two great loves of her life.
At 10:30 a.m. she tidied her desk, and checked for the hundredth time she had the key to the cupboard where the forbidden books were stored. Next she wrote a letter to Dr. McKinstry.
When she’d finished, she picked up The Book Lovers’ Anthology and let the pages drift open. A passage was lightly underlined in pencil, written by a past bibliophile for a future book lover. It could have been written for her.
I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not love reading. Thomas Macaulay.
It was oddly comforting.
“Miss Piquet, I need to pop out.” Her voice cracked and she stumbled on the words. “Run an errand. Not sure when I’ll be back.”
“Grace, my dear, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
She looked at her loyal library assistant, an unassuming, dependable woman, the kind who almost never put herself first and wondered why it was, in war, it was so often women who bore the brunt. When this terrible occupation was over, would historians ever study the home front in the way they were bound to with the battlefront?
Would they ever appreciate the relentless suffering of working-class women like Queenie Gold, the solidarity shown by women like Louisa Gould, or the quietly heroic battle of public servants like Miss Piquet? She supposed not.
“You’re a real treasure, Miss P, and I adore you. Shame on me for not saying it before now.”
“Grace, are you sure you’re all right?”
She swallowed. “Perfectly. Won’t be long,” she lied.
Grace turned quickly and forced herself to walk out of her library. She knew if she made the mistake of looking back at her beautiful book-lined palace she’d never find the mettle to carry out her plan.
As she passed under the granite BIBLIOTHÈQUE PUBLIQUE sign she felt her heart cleave in two.
She slipped like a ghost out of the Royal Square, quietly posting her letter to Dr. McKinstry into the mouth of a red postbox at the top of Broad Street.
All around her people went about their morning business with a weary sense of inevitability, picking up rationed gray bread from the bakers, queuing up outside the communal bakehouse with that evening’s tea in a clay pot.
Nothing was quite as it seemed anymore in St. Helier. The bric-à-brac antiques shop a few doors up from the post office was now a front for the black market. The hairdressers up the road offered news from the BBC from a crystal set hidden behind a drier. Outside a paperboy called out fake news from the censored Evening Post.
Grace felt oddly detached watching the daily routines of town life play out, knowing the chaos that lay ahead.
At the park next to the prison, she found the place the doctor had mentioned by the barbed wire. Children’s footsteps were stamped in the soil. This spot was doubtless a magnet for curious local kids.
At precisely 11 a.m. the prisoners filed blinking out into the park and her heart simultaneously soared and plunged when she spotted Red’s lean figure lope out.
“Red,” she hissed. His pal nudged him and she saw him mouth something in his ear, clearly lewd, as immediately the other POWs started wolf-whistling.
Red bounded over to the perimeter fence.
“Grace. God it’s good to see you. Ignore those chumps. They’re only jealous ’cause I have a beautiful fiancée and the best prisoner-of-war library. Boy, you oughta see how popular it is, Grace. Why only yesterday…” He tailed off. “Grace, what is it?”
In a trance she reached her hand out to the wire.
“Ouch, careful, Grace. It’s sharp, that wire.” She didn’t even feel the pain.
“Grace, you’re bleeding, what’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry, Red. I thought I could do this, but actually I can’t.”
“What? Why?” She never heard him sound this panicked before. “Wait, if it’s location I’ll move to Jersey. I don’t care where I live as long as it’s with you.”
She shook her head, breathed out as the pain began to stab at her finger. Good. She deserved it, for it was nothing compared to the pain she was about to unleash.
“No, it’s not that. It’s us. I… I’ve been thinking and it’s all too complicated. Better we end it now before any real harm is done.”
“Before any real harm is done?” he repeated in astonishment. “Baby, it’s a little late for that. I’m in love with you.”
She closed her eyes so she didn’t have to see his expression. “We’re just not compatible. I’m…” She readied herself to stick the knife in. “I’m not even sure I really love you.”
“Please, Grace, don’t do this,” he begged. “Don’t break my heart.”
She opened her eyes. The agony on his face was more than she could bear and she reminded herself why it had to be this way. It was easier to get over someone you could hate. Better he think she simply didn’t have the guts to see it through. That way he could rail in anger, tell his buddies he was led on by some flighty young woman.
He stumbled back from the barbed wire.
“No, no, no! I don’t believe you. You do love me. I know you do. Why are you doing this, Grace? Why? What’s changed?”
“I got carried away by the romance of it all and now you’re here and I’m on this side of the fence,” she said coldly. “It doesn’t take a genius to see it was never going to work.”
Grace didn’t even recognize her own voice.
“Please don’t go. I beg of you, don’t leave like this… I don’t understand.”
In the distance a whistle sounded and tears filled his eyes.
Grace turned around, his pleas stabbing like tiny knives as she ran from the compound, her soul screaming. She had just broken a good man’s heart as well as her own. Actually, she’d done more than that. She had crushed a hero’s hope beneath her heel.
What a thing to do.
How quickly a life spent in pursuit of happiness, literature, culture, service to others could be dismantled. It took her less than an hour to leave the library, scoop out Red’s heart and then arrive at Silvertide.
By now Grace was so numb, she scarcely felt anything as she knocked at the headquarters of the Secret Field Police.
She captured the memory of Bea cradling her baby—Grace’s nephew—and held it in her mind as she requested a meeting with the Wolf.
An orderly pointed her to a wooden chair in the corridor reception area and she sat down and crossed her legs with her handbag perched on her lap, looking for all the world as if she was waiting for something as mundane as a dentist’s appointment. She fought the urge to get up, wrench the door open and run.
Think of why you’re here, Grace. Bea’s happiness. The future of such a fresh and innocent life. All this was more important than her suffering. Family came first. It was such a universal truth.
That baby changed everything.
Her brother’s son was just hours old. She smiled as she remembered the sweet snuffling noise Jimmy’s son had made, the musky biscuity smell of him. Grace felt she could buckle under the sheer weight of love and the responsibility that came with that.
“Well, this is a surprise.” The Wolf’s odd, half-German, half-Canadian accent dragged up her spine like a cheese grater.
She sat up straight. “You were right.”
He smiled coldly. “You better come into my office.”
“I hear you enjoy deals, Herr Wölfle,” she said surprised at how confident she sounded despite her thundering heart. “You have my friend in custody for intercepting mail and warning Louisa Gould.”
He said nothing, just reached for a cigarette and lit it.
“We both know that you don’t have a shred of evidence on Bea to get a clean conviction,” she went on, knowing that if she didn’t play this right, they would both end up in the dock.
“Go on,” he said, blowing out the smoke. A blue haze hung between them. A ridiculous Alpine cuckoo clock ticked on the wall.
“What if I were to give you information that could lead to a triumphant outcome for you? I should imagine your Nazi superiors would be impressed with a confession that could wrap this whole case up nicely.”
“You want to cut a deal?” he said at last, picking a shred of tobacco from his lip. “The librarian is about to turn informer? I confess, I’m almost disappointed in you.”
“I’m not here to inform on my fellow islanders. Now are you interested in what I have to say?”
He leaned back, his leather chair creaking, enjoying the game.
“Yes, Miss La Mottée. If you give me something concrete, I will consider releasing your friend.”
The words came out cleaner than she could ever have imagined.
“In that case, it was me who warned Louisa Gould. Not Bea. Me who gave Louisa the Russian–English dictionary.” A slight tremor, but still the words came as she unhooked the key from a chain round her neck and slid it over the desk. “Me who’s hiding verboten books and distributing them around the island.” She smiled contemptuously. “I’ve been doing everything in my power to thwart your Nazi regime.”
And it struck her then that it was all true.
The only secret she omitted? The one hiding in a basement not two minutes’ walk from here. That she would take to the grave.
“So I guess that makes you right about me all along.”
He leaned back and steepled his fingers. The silence dragged out as he processed her confession.
“Drink?” he asked suddenly, pulling a bottle of black-market Scotch from his drawer.
She shook her head.
“It’s a pity really,” he said as he poured. “I had you down as having more guile. I never bought the prim librarian act.”
He drank deeply from the glass and sighed, his stale breath turning Grace’s stomach. “I confess too. I’m almost disappointed this all turned out to be so easy.” He laughed, lifting one finger from the glass and pointing it at her. “But note the word, almost.”
The alcohol colored his cheeks to a high shine. “This is a very fine moment for the Third Reich.”
In true bureaucratic fashion, he pulled a piece of paper from his desk and slid it over to Grace. He pressed a pen into her hand and patted her gently on the shoulder. Grace’s soul shriveled. All the effort and dedication to her library, all the hours spent reading and wrapping islanders in the solace and sanctuary of books. Four years of surviving. All distilled into this one agonizing moment.
“If you will write down your confession in full and sign it your friend will go free.”