“Your daddy could be a rogue at times,” Bea whispered. “Did I tell you about the time he slipped a homemade bazooka under the sluice gates at the bathing pool? Brought up a dozen stunned fish and scorched my bathing suit.”
She smiled and nestled her face against the top of baby Jimmy’s peachy head. Feeling the soft, warm weight of him pressed in her arms as she fed him, she was about as content as it was possible to feel these days.
After D-Day 6 June 1944, the Allies had smashed through the German defenses, first Granville, then by August 1944, most of Normandy and Brittany was under Allied control.
In the Channel Islands, things were about as desperate as it was possible to get. Electricity and gas supplies were virtually exhausted, as were bread and potatoes. “Food” was whatever islanders could scavenge or scratch from the ground and hedgerows. The Germans were seen shooting seagulls to eat. Islanders’ cats and dogs vanished from the streets.
There were just about enough rations to support life. Only yesterday Bea had taken a look at herself in the mirror and got a start. Every rib, every vertebra, every single bone in her body was shining through her skin. Only her breasts, slightly engorged and covered in blue veins, reminded her that her body had a purpose. Every spare scrap of food helped ensure that she could continue breastfeeding. If it hadn’t been for her precious boy, she doubted whether she would even still be alive.
As the gold and scarlet leaves rustled in with autumn’s sweet embrace, it was in stark contrast to the harrowing pain she felt at the loss of Grace and her mum.
They had buried Queenie Gold shortly after Grace had been deported and half of St. Helier had come out in mourning. Bea hadn’t realized how popular her mum had been. She hadn’t been island-born, but with her salt-of-the-earth Cockney mentality, she had embedded herself in islanders’ hearts. Queenie was old-school, always looking out for and caring for people who needed her time, offering tea, roll-up cigarettes and blunt advice.
As her mother’s body had been lowered into the hole, Bea had turned away and felt like the crushing pain might just bury her along with her. She had tried to picture her in life, not death, yakking away on her allotment, 5-foot nothing of Cockney sass, shrewd blue eyes sparkling under her turban. How could such an enormous life force be reduced to dust?
Tears began to slide down Bea’s cheeks, dampening baby Jimmy’s soft hair. This felt different from her grief for Jimmy. This was her mother. Her solid, irreverent rock of a mum. Wasn’t she always just a permanent fixture? Getting up at 4 a.m. to make sure there was running water for Bea and Nancy to wash, hatching schemes, bustling about St. Helier in her pinny, smelling faintly of cooking oil, lavender and Woodbines.
The thought that she would never again rest her face against that apron, wrapped up in one her mum’s lung-busting hugs was unbearable. And she couldn’t even think of Grace’s pale face and frightened eyes staring out from the back of that army truck. How had it come to this? How had she lost three of the most important people in her life?
“I still have you, my darling boy,” she whispered. “I promise I’ll never let any harm come to you.”
“Beatrice.” The sudden voice at the door made her start and Jimmy’s little fingers splayed in shock.
“Have you finished feeding?” Mary probed.
“Yes,” she said, feeling instantly guilty. “I was just about to wind him.”
“No need. I can do that,” she said briskly, plucking Jimmy from her arms.
“But I’d like to,” Bea protested.
Mary’s face softened.
“Beatrice dear, you are grieving, as are we all, but I think you are becoming too dependent on Jimmy.”
“He’s my son. He’s dependent on me,” she spluttered. “He needs me.”
“What he needs, dear, is a respectable home. A good start in life. Too many people have seen you walking round with him. Tongues will wag. We must remember our arrangement.”
A slight light of desperation gleamed in Mary’s eyes.
“I am his mother. Remember?”
She turned to leave but stopped as if on an afterthought.
“Why don’t you express some milk and then go and stay at your sister’s for a night? I think a break from Jimmy might help you to have some… perspective.”
Bea felt like she’d been punched in the guts.
She looked at her son, her boy, nestled in Mary’s arms, his apple-red cheeks glowing under his white wool bonnet. She took in the gentle rise and fall of his tummy and felt the familiar fold of longing in her gut. It wasn’t enough to love from afar. All that mattered was being a mother to her child.
But how was it possible? Society, much less one as small and conservative as St. Ouen’s, would never allow her as an unmarried mother to fulfill that role. Sure, she could have pretended that Jimmy had made an honest woman of her before he died, but in a community so small that even a new coat warranted a village inspection, she doubted she’d have got away with it. But in her desperation she’d even considered that, until she remembered the neighbor who’d been there at their engagement drinks—the night he’d been killed!
Her head ached with the impossibility of it all.
“Very well,” she said. “I’ll go to St. Helier, but only so I can go and help in Grace’s library. I’ll be back, Mary.”
Hunger, pain and pent-up frustration shimmered between the two women. The door of the old farmhouse slammed shut.
In St. Helier, Beatrice walked down the narrow, winding streets with her hat pulled over her head. Not that anyone would recognize her. Most people walked stooped against the cutting November wind, on matchstick legs, nursing colds, flu and other ailments caused by a lack of nutrition. St. Helier was a changed place. Cold. Sickened. Haunted. And like its inhabitants, at its lowest ebb. Food was all anyone could talk about. When would Churchill send some? Were they to be starved along with the Germans? Had they been entirely forgotten by England?
She pulled her winter coat tightly around her fragile frame. She’d made it from a length of old blackout material, double-breasted with some velvet-covered buttons she’d taken off her mum’s old cushions, but it did little to keep out the bitter wind.
Bea was just about to turn into the Royal Square when she spotted the Wolf striding along with a woman on his arm. He stopped to remonstrate with Joseph the stonemason, kicking at the pile of wet sand.
“When will these infernal paving slabs ever be finished?” he demanded.
Joseph looked up with ill-disguised hate in his eyes. “Soon. Soon.”
“See that they are.”
The German soldiers on the island no longer looked so smart. Most, resigned to the direction the war had taken, shuffled about in rotting uniforms, as hungry as the rest of the islanders. Bea had recently heard of a German soldier sentenced to death for stealing food. Another bleak brushstroke of death in a picture of needless despair.
Poor sod. They were, to all intents and purposes, now prisoners themselves, trapped behind their own fortifications. Clearly this had also dawned on the Wolf. He was now wearing a military uniform, instead of his usual civilian attire, and the cynical side of Bea would lay bets that he’d done it in the hope that, upon liberation, the Allies would take him for an ordinary soldier, not the ruthless Nazi operative islanders all knew him to be.
He began walking in Bea’s direction. Quickly, she doubled back on herself, turned into a side street and flattened herself against the wall.
He walked straight past, too busy whispering in his female companion’s ear to notice her, but something peculiar was happening to Bea; a terrible sense of danger spiked the air. She was back in his interrogation room at Silvertide, the smell of blood and bleach washing over her. The street began to sway and tilt. A prickle of terror ran the length of her spine.
The ground rushed up to meet her and she curled into a ball, shuddering. She pressed her hands against her mouth to smother her sobs. “Please forgive me, Grace, I’m so sorry.” She felt as though she was made of stone: unable to breathe, unable to move her body. In the middle of Royal Square, she was paralyzed by fear and grief, run down by this suffocating occupation.
“Bea… Bea…” Slender arms scooped around her and pulled her up. “It’s all right. I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
Someone held Bea’s hands and spoke calmly to her, until finally the edges of the dark tunnel she’d found herself in receded.
“Miss Piquet… I… I don’t know what happened to me.”
A warmth snaked round her clogged feet. She looked down. To her mortification she had wet herself.
“Oh God.”
The older woman shook her head. “It’s shell shock. Many left over from the first war experienced this.”
“But I’m not a soldier.”
“But you’ve experienced the same trauma. The bombs which killed your father, the bullet which took your fiancé…”
“The arrest which took my best friend,” Bea continued miserably.
“Come on, dear. I’ll walk you to the library and you can freshen up there. Take my hand, your legs’ll feel wobbly. Tell you what, why don’t you come and help me in the library for a bit?” Miss Piquet suggested.
“I… I don’t know if I can.”
Grace’s last words came back to her. Look after my library.
“Actually… I will. If that’s all right?”
“Of course.”
Miss Piquet gestured to the sign over the door. BIBLIOTHÈQUE PUBLIQUE. Carved in granite, permanent, immovable, ancient.
“Never give up hope, Bea. There is good worth fighting for in this world. The library reminds us of that.”
After she’d cleaned herself up, Bea put in a solid afternoon’s work helping Miss Piquet in the library. Since Grace’s deportation the authorities had allowed the library to reopen, but only with a guard stationed at the desk to monitor the issuing of books. Bloody ridiculous, that this far-flung outpost of the Third Reich would consider it necessary to put librarians under armed guard.
Miss P mainly had Bea shelving the returned books. It was repetitive work but Bea found it oddly soothing, a good respite from the lonely churn of her thoughts.
She was touched by the flow of library patrons, including all the members of their now disbanded book club.
The Wartime Book Club may have been banned, but the authorities couldn’t prevent them from coming into the library and when word spread Bea was in, all the regulars stopped by. Winnie and Gladys from the post office for their weekly Mills & Boon fix and a cuddle that had Bea pushing back the tears.
Molly the florist took Gone with the Wind for the fifth time and left news of Allied victories across France.
Mr. Warder from the post office borrowed another Georgette Heyer, protesting (too hard) that it was under his wife’s orders. But it was the arrival of Arthur, the postman, who toppled her.
“The post office ain’t the same without you, girlie,” he said gruffly. “Soon as this bloody war’s over, we’re petitioning Mr. Mourant to reinstate you.”
“Thanks, Arthur, but I don’t think I made that good a job of it.”
“Don’t talk tripe. You made a damn good fist of it.”
He looked about the library and lowered his voice. “You saved lives, you can be sure of that.” He punched her playfully on the arm. “You belong back with us.”
He stomped off with an Agatha Christie and, Bea could have sworn, wet eyes.
By the end of the day, Bea felt humbled as she observed the rhythm of library life play out and realized how hard Miss Piquet worked. She remembered something she had glibly said to Grace long ago. But what about helping human beings? They’re what count, surely, not dusty old books?
Being here, in Grace’s domain, made her realize that actually dusty old books did count—they were helping human beings to escape as much as a rowing boat and a compass. Grace had always been so sure of her place, her sense of belonging to the library was what had made her so impressive.
As Bea walked back to her old home in Havre des Pas, she ruminated that half the problem was she didn’t know where she belonged anymore.
She went to push open the small wooden gate, but it was missing.
“Bea, I didn’t know you were coming home.” Her sister Nancy’s face lit up as she opened the door. “I’ve only got a plate of turnips and parsnips but it can stretch to two.”
Since their mother’s death, Bea had found an unlikely ally in her sister. For so long they had been at war over her sister’s choice of boyfriend and now in the finish, it scarcely seemed important. They were all starving and desperate for the war to end.
“Come on in,” she said, gesturing to the cold dark room, lit by a Brasso tin she had converted into a small light with a shoelace threaded through the cap for a wick. Electricity was being shut down earlier and earlier. The long bleak winter evenings loomed.
“Where’s the front gate gone by the way?” Bea asked.
Nancy looked bashful as she pointed to the wooden log basket by the grate.
“Don’t worry, I reckon Mum’d be impressed that you managed to get it off those rusting hinges.”
“Necessity is the mother of invention.”
“That’s what Mum always said.”
“True. Do you know I got so desperate I tried to buy a pound of tea on the black market last week. They were asking eight pounds, Bea! I only earn three at Boots.”
“I thought you were also working at the Soldatenheime?”
“I was, but I thought about it and I decided you were right. Working for the Germans is no good.”
“I’m proud of you, Nancy.”
“Thanks. I wish I’d always had your scruples.”
“And look where that’s got me,” Bea sighed.
“At least you did something! You can hold your head up high. I have a feeling things are going to get uncomfortable for me when this is all over.”
“Why do you say that?”
Wordlessly, Nancy slid a letter across the tabletop.
Watch your back come liberation. When the Boche lose this war, you’ll be strung up from a lamppost. The Jersey Underground Barbers.
“Nancy, this is awful. When did this arrive?”
“Someone pushed it through the door this morning while I was at work.” She shrugged. “I get one most weeks. I ignore it.” Her bitten-down fingernails told another story.
“The irony is, Heinz is gone. I’m not technically a Jerrybag anymore, but it seems a badge I’ll probably have to wear for the rest of my life.”
She scrubbed her face, her eyes haunted in the dim light.
“Oh, Nancy, where’s he gone?” Bea asked.
“I’ve no idea. He’s been shipped out. I’ll probably never see him again.” A tear broke free and slid down her cheek. The beautiful, blonde, carefree girl of only last year had lost her sheen. Bea burned with shame as she realized how savagely she had judged her sister and how right their mother had been.
“I really loved him, Bea,” she continued. “He treated me like an equal, was actually interested in what I had to say. Now I’ll probably be left with an islander who’ll have me darning his socks and making his tea.”
Bea felt ashamed that until recently she had been the one sitting in judgment. Hatred toward anyone suspected of collaboration had intensified in tandem with their hunger pangs.
“I’m sorry, Nancy.”
“Don’t be sorry. If losing Mum and Heinz has taught me anything it’s the fragility of life. Take your chance at happiness. Be a mum, a proper mum to little Jimmy. You’ll only get one chance.”
“But how? I’d forever be tainted. I’d never survive the scandal.” She pushed down her irritation at her sister’s naivety, reminding herself she was young and heartbroken.
“Who says you have to?”
“What are you talking about?”
“We received a Red Cross message from Aunty Flo in Whitechapel earlier. The usual stuff—heavily coded hints about the Allies winning the war, condolences over Mum. But she signed off…” She picked up the telegram and read. “Always a home for you girls here in London.”
Nancy’s face radiated hope.
“Don’t you see, Bea? When our liberation comes, you should take Jimmy and move to London. It’s a huge and anonymous city. Who’ll stop to question a war widow with a little ’un?”
Bea looked down and twisted Jimmy’s battered tin ring round her finger.
“It’s your chance to start over, Bea—you know, reinvent yourself.”
Arthur’s words drifted back to meet her. Do you really want to be a maiden aunt?
In that dark little kitchen, starving, exhausted and broken, a tiny tendril of hope unfurled inside her. Was it truly possible to reinvent herself?
Nancy stood up slowly. “Now let’s eat.”