Grace clung to the mailboat railing, her eyes fixed firmly on the sight of Jersey, a great lump of granite rock shimmering on the horizon.
It was 1 July and the irony of the date was not lost on her. Five years to the day when the Germans first landed at the island’s airport and their ordeal began.
But now she was finally coming home to the beautiful island home she loved. Grace fought to hold back tears and control the lump in her throat.
“You nervous?” asked a lady next to her.
Grace realized she was gripping the railing so hard her knuckles had turned white.
“Yes,” she confessed.
“You live in Jersey?”
“Yes… Well, I used to.”
“Ah, evacuee returning, are you?”
Grace swallowed. How could she sum up what she had been through when she couldn’t even allow herself to sit with the memory for a moment? Her arrest, prison, the beating that had stolen something so precious from her: the escape, hiding, then the terrible sickness.
Instead she nodded. “Yes.”
There. She spotted it straightaway. The flicker of disapproval. The woman moved an inch away from her.
“My husband called your lot rats, deserting a sinking ship. Course, who am I to judge. Myself,” she pressed a gloved hand to her chest, “I could never have left my island. Roots too deeply buried you see. Not that I blame you for leaving. Well, my dear, you won’t find the island as you left, I can assure you. Course we didn’t have the bombs like you did, but…”
Grace tuned her out. She desperately needed to be alone with her thoughts, to mentally brace herself for what was to come.
As the island came into closer view, the black granite outline of earlier formed tiny white strips of sand, secret coves, rocky outlets and lush green vegetation. Her heart turned ridiculous somersaults in her chest. A Jersey mailboat passed them, chugging its way toward England, steam pouring from its funnels, the outlines of passengers just visible on the deck. All those people on board just like her, making bold steps toward rebuilding their lives. The postwar world was a giant game of chess, each move triggering complex ramifications.
Did they know she was coming? She had written Red Cross messages, plenty of them over the past month, but as she had been warned at the office, the world was still returning to normal service, and it was anyone’s guess whether they had got through. The first mailboats from England to the Channel Islands had only been reestablished in the last few days. Grace had glimpsed the bundles of letters in the hold. How astonishing it seemed, all those stories contained within those gunnysacks marked with HM Royal Mail insignia. Next to them was an even more gratifying sight. Something that had given Grace the will to live while she had waited in London for the islands’ liberation. Crates rammed full of new books all donated from the Channel Islands Book Committee, formed by the Channel Islands Refugee Club. Grace had volunteered for them for the past few months in London, drumming up donations to replace all the new books they had missed while under Occupation. Now she was personally escorting them to their new home.
The woman was still prattling on. “Don’t be offended if anyone’s iffy with you for jumping ship. I dare say it wasn’t easy over in England.”
Grace smiled weakly. “No, we none of us know what the person next to us endured.”
“Well, you certainly won’t. No offense, love. I know you had rationing in England but it wasn’t a patch on our hardships.”
“How ridiculous,” Grace snapped, slamming her palms down on the railing. “There’s no hierarchy in suffering.”
“Well, how rude,” the woman huffed. “I was only trying to warn you what to expect.”
“Excuse me, I apologize, I…” Her head started to spin and she ran to the toilet. The old Grace would never have snapped like that. But this comparison of misery just uncorked all of hers. Her mind spun with the images of it. The howling pain, the fever, the sweat-soaked nights, the blessed arrival of American tanks that meant Madame Josephine could finally bring her out of hiding. Her own liberation had passed in a morphine-induced blur and when she had finally come back to her senses she knew that something precious had been taken from her.
In the dimly lit toilet she ran cold water over her wrists and pulled down the roller towel, then smoothed down her skirt, her fingers lingering over her hollow tummy. The tummy that would never swell with new life.
She thought of him. She couldn’t ever bring herself to say his name, much less think of his face. It was as if someone had rubbed out all the memories of the happy times she had shared with him. Reading in the secrecy of the shed. Stolen kisses in the library. His marriage proposal. All gone. And all that was left in its place were blurry outlines.
Those memories belonged to the old Grace. Life had been carved into the before and after of her ordeal. “Ordeal” was such a dry word for what she had seen and experienced in that Nazi hell hole. The dehumanization, the brutality, the savage destruction of what made her a woman.
With one well-placed Nazi boot, her dream of motherhood had been crushed. Grace knew she should feel lucky. The medics at the Allied Field Hospital outside Rennes had saved her life. At the time she had been so sick she had no idea how close she had come to dying. The infection that had begun in prison and festered while she was in hiding had led to blood poisoning. A hysterectomy had been the only thing that medics could do. That and some of America’s new penicillin had brought her back from the dead. Yes, she was lucky indeed. She had breath in her lungs, a beating heart in her chest, while for millions of others, the war had devoured them.
She also knew that, though she was physically frail, she had a toughness that had been tempered in the furnace of the Third Reich. And yet, there was this peculiar numbness, like she was encased inside a sterile bubble.
Grace lightly tapped the skin over her eyebrows to snap herself back into life.
“Come on, Grace La Mottée, you can’t hide down here in the toilet.”
By the time she emerged the woman thankfully had gone and Grace was able to stand alone with her thoughts.
It was late afternoon by the time the harbor bobbed into sight. The sun was softening, burnishing the windows of the harbor offices orange and stitching their outlines in gold. Grace could have wept at the beauty of her island.
She watched as two gulls swooped and soared past, inches from her face. When she looked back she saw that the harbor was absolutely swarming with people. She hadn’t seen such crowds before, all eagerly waving to people up on deck, calling out. Hope and excitement were etched on everyone’s faces. Grace was overwhelmed with the enormity of the hours that lay ahead. The questions that needed answering.
What had become of Louisa Gould and her brother? Were her frail parents still alive? Was the library still running? And a bright, beautiful, insolent face topped with a mop of dark hair nudged its way into her mind.
Gripping her small attaché case, Grace made her way toward the gangplank.
“Sorry. Dreadfully sorry,” she blustered as she bumped through the crowds surging to get off the boat.
“Grace!” The voice was so loud she felt her eardrums quiver.
“Nancy!” Grace felt all the breath leave her body. “What are you doing?”
“I’m moving to England with…” She was so flabbergasted she trailed off and started frantically pointing down at the quay.
Grace followed her gaze and there on the quayside was Bea clutching Jimmy. Her wild curls had been tamed into neat pin-waves, which looked as awkward on her as the smart green wool suit.
She was being held in the tightest embrace by Grace’s mother, while her father stood awkwardly nearby, hands thrust in his pocket, clearly unhappy to have been dragged into the town instead of the country. And in that surreal moment, Grace knew that this was real. That these people, her people, from whom she had been parted for so long, were actually here.
Her lips opened, but no words came as she moved in a dreamlike state, knowing that at any minute her presence would unleash a storm.
“She’s back!” Nancy’s voice sounded like a siren over the heads of the crowd. “Bea, she’s back.”
Bea stared up, squinting into the sun. Her face froze. Her mother fainted. Baby Jimmy started to cry as he was thrust into Mr. La Mottée’s arms.
A sensation rose up inside Grace, higher and higher, filling every cell and particle of her body, until it reached her throat, whisking her breath away before it surged over the crown of her head. The bubble burst.
“Bea!” she cried, furiously waving her hand above her head. “Over here!”
And then Grace was not so polite as she pushed her way down the gangplank, stumbling dizzily, blindly toward Bea, before cannonballing into her arms with a solid thump.
They clung to one another, a powerful rush of love swamping them both.
“Oh my God, Grace. I thought you were dead. We all thought you were dead. We heard about the camps, the bombing of your prison…” Her body trembled as she held her so tight. Grace felt like she’d swallowed the sun as she drew back and Bea clutched her face. She was sick. Dizzy. Overwhelmed. Her thoughts were racing and not quite connecting. In the height of her fever, she’d had so many dreams of this moment.
“I… it is you, isn’t it?” Grace sobbed. “Please tell me this is happening and I’m not imagining. It’s really you, isn’t it?”
“Yes, yes, my darling Gracie, it is. You’re home. I can’t believe you’re really home.”
The tears streamed down her face as she gripped harder, incandescent with joy and relief.
“I promised you I would come home, didn’t I?” Grace wept. “I sent Red Cross messages, so many.”
“We never got them. We’ve been cut off from the whole world.”
She tore off her wool jacket. “Let me get this awful scratchy thing off so I can hug you properly.”
But she never got the chance. Mary flung herself at Grace with a deep, primal moan.
Mary La Mottée clung to her daughter, so incapable of speech that a medic was fetched to help. Taken aback at the fragility of her mother, Grace held her tenderly.
“It’s all right, Mum. There’ll be plenty of time to talk when we get home.”
In that moment, Bea’s face fell and guilt clouded her expression.
“Oh, Grace.” She turned to Nancy. “I can’t go. I’m sorry.”
Grace had already worked out what was happening.
“I was planning on going to Whitechapel with Nancy to stay with my auntie, you know—a fresh start for baby Jimmy,” she gibbered. “But I shan’t go now.” She turned to Nancy once again. “I’m sorry. Nance, I can’t do it. Not now. You understand, don’t you?”
“Of course,” she soothed. “I’ll explain everything to Auntie.”
“No, Bea. You can and you will,” Grace said, recovering her composure. “I didn’t risk everything in order that you could stay with my beautiful nephew, only to see you chuck it all away again now.”
She placed her hands gently on Bea’s shoulders and looked her square in the eye.
“I’m home now. The war is over. We have all the time in the world.”
Bea started to shake her head.
“No… no… no. This is too soon. I can’t find you only to leave again!” she protested. “You’ve made too many sacrifices for me already.”
“And this isn’t another one,” Grace insisted. “This is the satisfaction of seeing you travel to a place where you’re free to be a mother to my beautiful nephew.”
She touched his apricot-soft cheek, all rosy under a white bonnet, and felt her heart ache with the pang of love and loss.
“But I just can’t believe I’ve got to say goodbye,” Bea cried. “Please, let’s just see if they can delay the boat.”
“No, my love.” Grace caught the tear sliding down her friend’s face with her thumb.
“It is bitter, but the sweet is around the corner. I’ll be over in a matter of weeks.”
Bea looked from Grace to her mother to the boat.
“I mean it, Bea,” Grace persisted. “You and I, we are united by something stronger than friendship, something deeper. It’s always been that way. I would die for you.”
She picked up Bea’s case and kissed baby Jimmy softly on the top of his head.
“I’ll be over to see you soon, count on it. Now go on. Go and be somewhere that isn’t tainted by the past.”
She glanced at the mast that rose at the end of the quay. The swastika had been replaced with a Union Jack.
“Go in search of your freedom.”
The whistle sounded as the ship’s engines rumbled into life.
“All aboard,” yelled a steward. The ship shuddered as its mooring lines were cast off.
Bea smiled through her tears and hugged her again fiercely, as if trying to absorb the very essence of her, before reluctantly letting go. “I love you so much, Grace La Mottée.”
She glanced over at the boxes being loaded onto the back of a lorry, all marked with the stamp Channel Islands Book Committee.
“Should have known you’d wash back in on a tide of books.”
Grace smiled. “Oh, one more thing. My—”
“Library is waiting for you,” Bea interrupted with a grin. “I’ve been helping to look after it, just as I promised.”
Then she turned and stepped toward the future.
“Will you look at these books?” Grace marveled, pushing aside the tissue paper to reveal a gleaming stack of brand-new books. She pulled out the top copy, The First 49 Stories by Ernest Hemingway, and breathed in the rich alkaline smell of new paper.
“Nothing else in the world like it, is there?” Ash grinned.
It had taken weeks and weeks before Grace had felt able to leave the sanctuary of the farmhouse. The guilt that had consumed her on hearing of Louisa’s death had floored her. Not even visits from her family and the local priest could assuage the savage sense of grief and shame that had burrowed deep in her bones. All the hopes she had clung to had been nothing but cruel lies. What was the last thing Louisa had said to her in the prison yard?
I’ll be a little bit behind you.
But she hadn’t been. Instead, she had been transported further east into the dark heart of the German Reich. Louisa had died the ugliest death, in one of the foulest spots on earth. Questions haunted Grace. Why didn’t I try harder to get her to escape? Why hadn’t I physically dragged her from that prison? And the most harrowing: What had Louisa experienced in her last hours?
There were no answers to these torments and there probably never would be. In the end it was Ash who had talked her out of her home and back into the library.
“You might as well be miserable in the library,” he reasoned.
And so, as summer had gradually folded into the first autumn in peacetime, Grace had found her way back to her library. It had been like slipping into a warm bath. Just being back in her sanctuary hadn’t dimmed her grief, but it was blunting the sharp edge of it. Ash had a theory that being around books released a happy hormone in the brain, that it was almost impossible to feel sad surrounded by a forest of books. Grace wasn’t sure about that, but there were transient moments of joy where for the length of time it took to serve a patron, she forgot! And sometimes, simply forgetting for five minutes was enough.
“You were good to wait for me to return before unpacking these lot,” she said, slipping Ernest Hemingway into a natty little dust jacket. “You must’ve been sitting on your hands.”
He laughed, his little half-moon spectacles slipping down his nose.
“I won’t lie. I did have a peek, but seeing as we have you to thank for all these books, I could hardly take this moment from you.”
They locked eyes with one another as they did so frequently these days, almost as if neither could believe that they were back together in the library.
“However did you do it?” he marveled as he unpacked book after book. “It’s l’embarras des richesses. Eight hundred brand-new books!”
“I got in touch with the Channel Islands Refugee Committee after I arrived in London in January. I was interviewed by British Intelligence about my experiences and it was a secretary there actually who told me about them. I offered them my services and they suggested I drum up donations for books to replenish our stock.”
She stroked the spine of a rather beautiful new hardback on bird portraiture. “I visited all the London publishing houses and set out my case.”
“You begged, you mean,” Ash chuckled.
“Something like that,” she grinned. “Editors and librarians were fascinated to hear of the censorship we endured in the library, the destruction of our books and also of how library loans soared under Occupation. A similar thing happened in England too, you know,” she continued. “People flocked to libraries.”
“Desperate for the diversion only a really good story can bring, I guess,” Ash said.
“Precisely. Bad times are good for books.”
“’Twas ever thus,” Ash agreed.
“During the Blitz, libraries popped up in the most unusual of places. Do you know, Ash, I even visited one that was built over the tracks of an underground Tube tunnel in Bethnal Green, East London, after their central library was bombed!”
She smiled at the memory of the most unique little library she’d ever been in. “It was run by a dynamic duo, Clara and Ruby.”
“Never,” Ash gasped. “Well, I’ll be blowed, a library in a Tube tunnel! Makes the little library I formed in our internment camp seem quite pedestrian.”
“There is nothing pedestrian about you, Ash,” she laughed.
“But visiting bombed libraries in England was a comfort to me actually. We had felt so isolated here, and then to realize we were part of a bigger network of librarians working so hard to get books to people when people couldn’t get to books was inspiring, I suppose.
“Shall I tell you what else was inspiring!” she exclaimed, suddenly remembering. “Meeting your favorite author.”
Ash’s eyes widened. “You never did. Please, tell me you met my literary heroine!”
Grace couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, Ash, your face. You look like a little owl! Yes, I went to Agatha Christie’s publishers and when they heard about the popularity of Cards on the Table during the Occupation and my story, they invited me to meet her.”
“Please tell me she’s planning a new book!”
“Of course. She’s prolific. She told me how she spent the war working at a pharmacy at University College Hospital. Apparently her knowledge of poisons fed her homicidal imagination sufficiently to write a new book.”
“I can die happy.” He sighed.
“She was quite remarkable.”
“You’re remarkable, Grace,” Ash insisted.
“Bah! That’s piffle and you know it,” she said quicky. “But I have learned a lot. Some days I feel closer to fifty than twenty-seven.”
The fragments of her life, her youth, had been dashed away like tears in the rain. She touched her blonde hair, now gently graying at the temple, pulled up under a dusty turban. These weren’t the only changes war had wrought upon her. The deep groove between her eyes, the waistbands her mother had had to take in. In certain lights she looked more like a specter than a living thing.
“You’ve a beautiful soul, Grace,” Ash said, sensing her insecurity.
A silence draped the library and Grace tried her best to plaster on a socially acceptable smile.
“On the way in I booked my passage to London to visit Bea and Jimmy. I’m planning on a week in November. Is that all right?”
“You don’t even need to ask, Grace. That’s terrific news. I’m thrilled for you.”
“Yes. I suppose I ought to start looking forward, that’s what we’re encouraged to do after all. Stiff upper lip and all that…” The words crumbled away as she gripped the hardback book.
“There’s no shame in looking back and remembering,” Ash said softly. “We must never be resigned to the losses of war.”
Maybe it was his gentle presence, or being back here in her own library, but she felt a locked box open inside her. The blurred figure she had buried at the back of her mind gradually took on a face with curious green eyes and red hair.
“I met an escaped American pilot before my trial,” she blurted. “He was as potty about libraries as me.” She smiled suddenly, remembering Red’s passion, his energy.
“We talked of visiting all his favorite places together, the London Library, the traveling library. The whispering gallery at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Silly really.”
“Not silly at all. He sounds as if he’s rather special,” Ash said shrewdly.
“He was.”
“Why don’t you write to the American Red Cross? See if he made it?”
“Maybe.”
But the truth of it was, she couldn’t bear to know. Grace had read about the casualty levels of American forces in the final push through occupied Europe—that’s if he’d even made it across the Channel in his rowing boat. She preferred to imagine Red alive, pushing open the door to his home in Boston, his mom and brothers falling on him like a returning hero. Maybe even settling down into middle age with a lovely wife and a large brood. She hoped he’d hold a little piece of her and this island at war in his secret heart. Maybe get the memory out from time to time in private moments.
She glanced at the space by the office window where he’d kissed her and the terrible ache of their final parting rippled through her again. That look on his face when she’d walked away from the prison fence. She didn’t deserve him and maybe, if she was being truly honest, that’s why she hadn’t searched for him.
In London, she’d seen a bomb-battered building that was still standing but lurched toward the pavement, as if it might collapse at any moment. It seemed an appropriate metaphor for her heart.
“The truth might just surprise you,” Ash remarked. “He could be alive and trying to find you.”
“I very much doubt it.” She picked at a flap of skin by her nail and felt the shame clog her throat. “I broke his heart, Ash, and I’m not proud of that. Anyway, please let’s change the subject.”
“Very well. I know this chap’s off limits, but do you feel able to talk about what happened to you in France?”
She stared down at the hardback in her hands, of the delicate drawing of a hummingbird on the front cover, trying frantically to drink in the image of its beauty, but the other memories muscled in. A hard boot in a soft belly. Louisa’s face lit up by the flash of a bomb. Human intestines dripping from trees. Grace dared herself to delve deeper into the abyss, to picture Louisa’s face as their fingers parted, but there was nothing but impenetrable darkness.
Tears slipped down her ravaged face. The shame and grief consumed her like a living thing. “Sorry, I can’t. I can talk about the book club, life here in the library, but I have to seal everything else away, the other memories of Red and Louisa. Maybe one day.” She shuddered.
Ash put his hand gently over hers and Grace was grateful for the restrained gesture. A hug might well have demolished her.
“I understand. Catalog them like a book, then file them in a bookshelf in your mind. You can get them out anytime you like. Or simply put them away. That’s the beauty of having a book of memories: you can open and close them at will.”
Grace nodded. “That’s a really good way of putting it.”
“I’ve simply couched it in a term that a bibliophile understands.”
She kissed the Chief Librarian on the forehead, so very grateful for his gentle presence.
“Oi! No kissing in the library,” called out a shrill voice from the doorway.
“Molly,” she exclaimed, as the garrulous redhead pressed an enormous bunch of blousy pink peonies on her.
“It’s so good to see you back.” She dabbed her eye. “I—Oh bleedin’ hell, I’m lost for words.”
“That’d be a first,” laughed Mrs. Noble who bustled in behind her. Grace found herself pressed to Mrs. Noble’s chest. “I never really said thank you, Grace, not properly, for warning me. You might well have saved my life… now we know about what could’ve happened.”
Grace was welcome for the interruption when Dr. McKinstry and Peter Topsy walked in, all smiles and kisses, except for Peter, who didn’t really do kisses, or smiles for that matter.
Instead he blushed when Grace couldn’t help but hug him.
“Have I ever missed you!”
“What about Red?” he asked in his customary direct fashion. “Do you miss him?” Just the mention of his name derailed Grace and she had to fight very hard to stop herself from wanting to curl into a ball.
“Yes, I do,” she admitted quietly. “Very much indeed.”
“Mr. Bedane,” she exclaimed as the affable physiotherapist walked through the door.
“Come now, I think, after all we’ve been through, we can use Christian names.”
“Albert then,” she smiled, holding out both her hands. After they had embraced, she realized there was a woman standing behind him.
“This is Mary Richardson.”
No further explanation was required.
“I’ve waited a long time to give you this,” said the lady, rustling around in a string bag.
“I crocheted it when I was in hiding. It helped me, along with books, of course, to keep my mind occupied.”
She pulled out the most beautiful soft blanket with all the colors of the rainbow running through it.
“I had to make do with whatever offcuts of wool Albert could find for me, so I’m afraid it’s a bit of a hotch-potch.”
“I could not love it more,” said Grace, instinctively drawing it around herself. It cradled her emaciated shoulders like a soft hug. “I’ll treasure it.”
Grace plucked one of the soft pink peonies from the bunch Molly had given her and handed it to her.
The two women locked eyes and a current of understanding ran through them. Like Mary, she too had been forced into hiding. Grace didn’t need to ask to know how she was feeling.
The softness of the wool, the devotion and love that had gone into its creation, snaked a warmth around Grace’s shoulders she had not felt in a good long while. Ever since prison, try as hard as she could, she simply could never feel warm.
When all the remaining members of the book club were sitting, Ash clapped his hands.
“How wonderful to have everyone back!” He reached over and clasped Grace’s hand.
“Our dear, dear Grace is back in the fold.”
A spontaneous round of applause went up in the library and Grace felt such a rush of love for their book club. She looked around with a full heart at the proud and resilient group of men and women who gathered here weekly to read, all mourning, all living alongside the enemy but never allowing them to control their thoughts or actions.
“We are of course not all back,” she ventured. “Might I propose we hold a minute’s silence for Louisa and Queenie?”
“Good idea,” said Dr. McKinstry.
As they dipped their heads and fell into reflection, Grace gripped her kneecaps, almost as hard as she had gripped Louisa’s hand that day when she had begged her to run. She pictured the warmth of her smile, her sincerity and goodness. A woman who had lived a simple, ordinary existence, running a little country shop. She tried hard to picture her weighing out food behind her wooden counter. Not as she had last glimpsed her, too terrified and broken to run from a Nazi prison. And big, bustling Queenie Gold, killed not in a concentration camp, but whose death was inextricably bound to Nazi brutality.
When the deep silence broke, Dr. McKinstry spoke first. “They were both ordinary woman who displayed extraordinary courage. May they never be forgotten.”
“Well said,” Ash murmured. “Now before we start our book of the week, might I pick your collective brains? Grace and Miss P did an outstanding job keeping this library open under trying circumstances.”
“That’s something of an understatement,” Miss Piquet exclaimed. “It’s not every day you have a Nazi breathing down your neck at work.”
“Quite,” Ash agreed. “So it’s even more astonishing when you consider how many people came to the library to escape the grim reality.”
He held up the Library Report Grace had written before her arrest. “There were 101,703 books issued in 1944. Book loans doubled during the Occupation. On one day you issued over 1,000 books. Astonishing stuff.”
“We did read our way through the war,” Grace said.
“But those numbers have come down somewhat,” he admitted ruefully.
“Hardly surprising, is it,” Molly said. “Now people are free to go on the beaches, dance, socialize and what not, they’re hardly likely to come here, are they?”
“Don’t forget all the banned clubs that have reopened,” Winnie pointed out. “Did you know even my grandson’s tiddlywinks club was banned.”
“Ironic that Hitler should be scared of a tiddlywink,” Mrs. Moisan quipped.
The group roared with laughter.
“All the above might be true,” Ash sighed. “But we need to find a way to encourage patrons back into the library, make this a place that once again serves a need in their life.”
“I’ve an idea,” said Grace. “During the Occupation, the exchange and mart system of swapping goods was terrifically popular. How about once a week we hold a Library of Things in the Reading Room? People can come and donate and borrow an item for free, be it a football or a pair of shoes.”
“A Library of Things,” said Ash leaping to his feet in excitement. “Bravo, what a superb idea. We must broaden our scope beyond books.”
“What about a memory box?” ventured Mary. “A sealed box to place our memories?”
“A repository of regrets, you mean?” Molly laughed.
“Not just the bad things, but anything we choose to remember our Occupation by. The painful memories yes, but also the pinpricks of light in the darkness.” She glanced at Albert.
“That’s a wonderful idea,” said Grace, remembering the dark afternoon a French book lover had opened her door and safety had swallowed her. The bright new possibilities the library now presented broke through the deadening of her feelings and planted a small green shoot.
“We can leave it here for future library users to read,” Ash said.
“What about a shelf dedicated to books banned by the Nazis, to remind people why we fought for freedom of speech?” Dr. McKinstry suggested. He looked at Grace and, she swore, winked.
“Like Jack London’s The Call of the Wild.”
“Speechless at the ingenuity, sir,” enthused Ash, hopping with excitement.
“Sit down, Ash,” Grace laughed, tugging at his tweed jacket. “You’ll do yourself an injury.”
“What about a Record Library and a gramophone?” suggested Molly, leaping to her feet and taking Ash’s hands. “Then some dashing young man might finally sweep me off my feet. What say you, Ash? Will you be the Rhett to my Scarlett?”
“Charmed, madam, I’m sure.”
He plucked a peony from the bunch and dramatically dropped to one knee, holding the flower aloft. “Permit me this dance, fair lady?”
A kind of heady euphoria gripped the group as Ash waltzed Molly the florist round the library, narrowly colliding with historical fiction, to whoops and cheers from all.
“Say, this looks like fun. May I join?” a voice called from the door.
Grace had her back to the door, but something about the timbre of the voice startled her. Then she realized. Absolutely everyone in the library had frozen and was staring at her.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“It’s Red,” said Peter, a slow smile spreading over his usually serious face.
Grace could not bring herself to turn, or blink, or even move, because then the illusion would be shattered. Red was gone. There was absolutely no way in the world he could be standing here in her library.
“Grace? Angel Grace, baby, would you look at me?”
The book club stared expectantly and filled with disbelief, as Grace slowly turned.
A man was standing in the entrance, caught in the shadows of a bookcase.
In the gloom, she recognized the unmistakable silhouette. Long muscled legs, solid, broad shoulders.
Then he stepped out into the light and Grace’s heart dissolved.
There he was. Gone was the shabby prisoner-of-war uniform and in its place, an immaculate United States Air Force uniform, complete with golden wings insignia at the top of his sleeve.
It was as if a Hollywood idol had walked in, judging by the slackness of Molly’s jaw.
He was taller than Grace remembered. Thinner certainly. His face was grooved and weather-beaten, his cheekbones sharp and exposed.
But the wide, warm smile as it spread over his face, the faint dimple on his chin, was everything she remembered and more.
“You’re here. You’re really here.” The words rushed out in a shudder. She was trembling so much Mary’s blanket slipped from her shoulders.
“But how? It’s simply not possible.”
“Sometimes the impossible is possible.” He took off his cap and ran his hand through a shock of thick red hair, blinking back tears. “Especially when you have a whole bunch of good friends behind you.”
Grace turned slowly to face the book club, gobsmacked. Each and every one of them wore daft grins.
“Are you behind this?” she gasped.
“Guilty as charged,” Ash said, flushed as the pink peony he was still holding.
“After you returned to the island I wrote to Bea in London,” Molly gushed, finding her voice. “And I asked if there was anything we could do to cheer you up and she spilled the beans about Red.”
“But how did you know how to find him?”
Dr. McKinstry cleared his throat. “A few phone calls and I was able to establish that his unit was still stationed in France.”
“Then I suggested to my friend on the Victory Committee that wouldn’t it be wonderful to invite one of the American escapees over for a Victory parade,” said Albert.
“And I’m putting him up—again,” said Mrs. Noble with a proud flush on her cheeks. “Though admittedly not in my soot house this time.”
“I just can’t believe it,” Grace stammered. She clutched her chest, a queer cry echoing through the library. This was not real. It was her mind playing cruel tricks on her.
And yet…
“We just wanted to see you smile again, dearest Grace,” Ash said.
“Because we love you,” Peter said shyly.
“You’ve made that many sacrifices for others, it’s high time you put your own happiness first for a change,” added Mrs. Moisan.
“And in truth, it was only a matter of time,” Red said. “You didn’t honestly think I’d go back to America without coming to find you first, did you, Grace? What we had, what we shared, was so precious to me. I wasn’t going to give that up without a fight. You are what kept me alive after I made my escape to France.”
“Was it terrible?” Molly asked.
He shook his head. “You could say that, ma’am. Waves like roller coasters and sixty-mile-an-hour winds.”
“However did you survive, lad?”
He shrugged. “To this day, I don’t know. It was no human agency that saved me, that I know. I can only conclude the Lord was sitting on my shoulder.”
He gently touched a small cross at his neck.
“That and the thought of you, Grace. I have never given up the hope of us.”
He walked toward her and pulled her to her feet, his eyes shining with agony and love. “My feelings haven’t changed, Grace. Not one iota. I love you with my whole heart.”
“But the last time I saw you—”
“I know. That sure took the wind out of me, but when I heard about your confession, the trial and all, I knew why you’d done it. I knew you were lying to protect me.”
Grace shook her head, bewildered. He had seen right through her. But he didn’t know the new Grace. How, how could she tell him she was no longer the woman she used to be? She remembered that day in the prisoner-of-war camp, when they had talked of the menagerie they would have, of a home bursting with books, dogs, cats and of course children.
She said under her breath, so quietly only he could hear, “I am broken.”
A silence hung between them in the shape of a question mark. Something unbuttoned inside her. Goddamn it but she was done with living with lies. Hadn’t this island nearly sunk under the festering weight of secrets? No one saying what they truly meant for fear of recrimination.
The age of silence and restraint was past. It was time to live with an honest, open heart and if that cost her Red’s love, well… her gaze flicked over the stacks and settled on the breathless book group. She’d always have friends and something good to read.
“I’ll never be able to bear you a child. That privilege was stolen from me by a Nazi boot,” she said quietly. “I’ll understand if you choose to leave and I’d never judge you for it.”
He stared at her for what felt like the longest time, those green eyes of his scrutinizing hers intensely until she could bear it no longer. The joy at their reunion had soured into something darker. She saw it flash in his eyes. Frustration. Anger. And though she knew he would never admit it, disappointment.
Her gaze slipped to the small patch of brown skin at his neck and she longed to nestle her head there, to fold into the warmth of his strong, familiar body one last time. The pain rushing over her was exquisite. To come so close to the perfect love, to touch the edges of it, only to have it wrenched from you was more than her aching heart could bear.
“I’m sorry,” she said under her breath and went to turn, but all at once his arms were reaching for her, his mouth moving next to her ear.
“I don’t care what you can or can’t offer. You are enough. You always were, from the moment I first set eyes on you!”
Emotion thickened his voice.
“I can’t lie, Grace. I would have liked to start a family, but if this war has taught me anything, it’s that a family can be unrelated.” He glanced at the book club. “These days, we get to choose who our family are. And besides, Grace, this smashed-up world is full of grieving children. Maybe we could offer a home to a child who really needs it?”
She nodded slowly, his words landing in her heart.
“Beautiful Grace, you are the only woman I have ever loved and the only expectation I have is to be loved in return.”
“But why me? Why not go back to Boston and find a woman who isn’t saddled to the past?”
He shrugged. “When there was no bread, you fed me cake.”
Grace cast her mind back, to those uncertain times when gunshots rang out over the fields and she’d smuggled cake to a hero in hiding.
“We can never recover our innocence, Grace, but we must rebuild, make another life. We owe this to our dead. Yours and mine.”
The image of Louisa’s face finally came to her then, as if floating up from the murky depths, whispering a promise. I’ll be a little bit behind you, that’s all.
A tear broke free as she remembered their fingers sliding apart.
The whole library was staring at her now, waiting for her response. For a woman who dealt with words, she couldn’t dredge up a single one.
“You never gave up on your friends and the library. Please don’t give up on us,” Red said softly.
Grace remained rooted to the spot, her mind in freefall.
“In forty-eight hours my furlough is up and I have to sail back to France and rejoin my unit.”
“When will you be demobbed, sir?” asked Ash.
“Well now, that kind of depends on whether I get permission to marry.” He turned back to face Grace. “Whaddya say, Grace? Will you be mine?”
The quiet in the library was deafening.
“Nod if you want to marry him, Grace,” Peter urged. The book club stared motionless, Molly still gripping Ash’s arm.
Slowly, Grace nodded and a sob escaped her lips.
“Yes… yes, I do. I mean, I will. I will marry you.”
“Thank God,” he sighed.
He slid his hands along her jaw bone, tracing his fingers over the hollow shadows of her cheek before touching her turban, a spark of mischief returning to his eyes.
“You don’t need to hide behind this.”
He was right. She was covering her graying hair in the way she had veiled her heart. Hesitantly, Grace unknotted the turban, letting her hair slide free around her shoulders.
“You are so beautiful, Grace,” he murmured. “And boy, do I want to kiss you!” He faltered. “Can I, kiss you that is?”
Grace nodded and felt her battered heart expand with love.
And there, surrounded by the bibliophiles and books of Britain’s oldest library, he did.
The kiss was slow, deep and searching. It was a kiss hungry to make up for lost time, yet determined to savor the years that now lay ahead. A lifetime dizzyingly opened up with a man Grace knew would always cherish her. The relief was immense and when at last his lips left hers, Grace let out a breath she’d been holding since the war began.
Later it was said that the rapturous cheers and applause from the library could be heard on the other side of the island. Indeed, rumors about “that kiss” did more to boost flagging library membership than any number of Ash’s new initiatives.
No one cared about the whys or the wherefores, for in the old library, a new and uncensored love story was beginning.