Lorna Cook - The Girl from the Island

‘You should hear some of the ridiculous names of the kids that Molly’s at school with. I can’t spell half of them,’ Clara said.

‘She looks older than Dido,’ Lucy said, examining the teenage girls in their bathing costumes, wet hair around their faces.

‘She looks taller, which is not always the same thing,’ Clara reasoned, looking at Lucy who was two inches taller than Clara and always had been since they were sixteen. Clara looked at her watch. ‘Molly and John will probably be hopping up and down wondering where we are.’

Lucy opened the lid of another box. This one was older, sturdier, browning with age. Inside was a stash of papers, wafer thin, carbon copies as if ripped hastily from a receipt pad. Each page was filled tightly with indiscernible lines, swoops and squiggles. Lucy groaned, recognising it at once as shorthand, something she had half-heartedly toyed with learning almost a decade ago on her graduate trainee course when she’d temporarily been a journalist on a local newspaper. But she’d bunked off from most of the classes, realising she could type faster than she could compile shorthand.

Clara peered down at the papers. ‘What on earth? Was someone blind drunk when they wrote this?’

‘It’s shorthand.’ Lucy laughed. ‘Strokes and loops represent words. Phonetically I mean. At first glance I can’t work out any words on this page and …’ Lucy looked at the next one. ‘Maybe only one on this one. I’m so rusty.’ She didn’t dare tell Clara she’d skipped most of the classes.

‘What’s the one word you can make out?’ Clara asked as she stood.

Lucy studied the pen marks. ‘I think I’m guessing more than anything.’

‘Go on …’ Clara said.

Lucy folded the papers up gently and replaced them in the box. ‘I’m not sure but … I think, possibly, it says “resistance”.’

Summer 1940

Persephone jolted as the bedroom door was pushed opened so abruptly that it crashed into the wardrobe behind it. Her younger sister Dido ran into the room, blonde hair falling from the pins in which she usually kept it elegantly rolled, blue eyes flashing with a mix of fear and excitement.

‘They’re here, Persey,’ Dido said. ‘The Germans. They’re actually bloody here.’

Persephone closed her eyes, tipping her head down, letting her brown hair fall around her face. ‘We knew it would happen. I just didn’t think it would be so soon.’

After the trucks laden with tomatoes had been bombed in the harbour at St Peter Port, as they waited for export to England, the Islanders had all known it was only a matter of time before the Germans walked in. When the British army had demilitarised and left the island only days before, it was as if the door had been held wide open for the Nazis.

‘Do you think it’s too late to leave?’ Dido asked, glancing down at their mother. She had been in bed with influenza for the best part of the week and Persey was more than a little worried.

‘Yes. It’s too late. How would we ever get off the island now? How would we get Mother off? She’s too sick to be moved. It’s why we never went days ago. I thought she would recover sooner. I thought we’d have time,’ Persephone muttered.

‘There must be a way,’ Dido remonstrated with panic in her voice. ‘There’s always a way. If only Mother—’

‘It’s not her fault, Di. You could have gone without us. There’ve been boats leaving for England for days. You could have got on any one of them.’

‘I didn’t want to leave you, then.’

‘But now?’ Persey asked.

‘Now it’s different,’ Dido explained. ‘Now they’re actually here. Planes have been landing. Troops have been seen. I could go and see if there’s a boat or … It’s the best time to go, now, before the Germans get their feet under the table, before they know what’s what.’ Dido sat on the end of the bed, causing a dip in the mattress and making their mother murmur in her sleep. ‘What do you think, Persey? Shall I go and see?’

Persey reached out for her sister’s hand and spoke softly. ‘It’s too late now. I wished you’d gone when I told you to.’

‘So do I.’ When Dido spoke next she whispered. ‘Do you think it’ll be awful? Do you think there’ll be …?’

‘What?’ Persey asked distractedly as she dipped a cloth in water and bathed her mother’s head. Her temperature raged and the fever had yet to break. Persey knew she needed to summon the doctor. She wondered if the telephone lines would be cut now the Germans were here. Not so soon, surely. If so, she would have to bicycle the few lanes to the doctor’s house instead of telephone.

‘Rapings?’ Dido said, her blue eyes wide. ‘Killings.’

‘Dido! How can you ask such a thing?’

‘It happens everywhere,’ Dido said with offence. ‘They’re the invading force, remember. They aren’t going to be our friends. Don’t they always just kill the men and rape the women? They’re going to want to show they’re in charge.’

‘By killing us?’ Persephone asked. ‘Hardly a way to run an Occupation, is it? Killing off the inhabitants. I think they’ll want us toeing the line, alive.’

‘More’s the pity,’ Dido replied and then glanced at their mother. ‘She’s getting worse, isn’t she?’

‘Yes,’ Persey said rising. ‘I need to telephone the doctor. I don’t think I should wait any longer.’

Dido grimaced. ‘As long as he’s not been rounded up and shot already.’

The doctor’s wife advised Persey that her husband had just that moment left to visit a patient at La Villiaze and gave the address. If she was quick, she could cycle out and catch him there before he moved to his next appointment. Persey took little time pulling her bicycle from the garage and pedalling fast along the lanes. It hadn’t occurred to her she would be going past the small airport until she approached it.

She paused long enough to stand at the periphery of the airfield and stare. She wasn’t even aware she was doing it she was so captivated by the scene before her. A Guernsey policeman in his British uniform – who Persephone knew only in passing – was standing, looking grave, next to a group of men whose trousers were tucked into thick black boots and whose vibrant red arm bands contrasted with the light of the white swastikas they bore. Four or five Luftwaffe planes were parked, their tails bearing the distinctive Iron Crosses, and one flew over her to land, its engines roaring loudly in her ears. Its wheels bounced for a moment as it hit the grass runway before it turned and parked. It was a scene from a nightmare, surely.

Thank God Jack wasn’t here to see all this. The housekeeper’s son had lived in with the family and his mother at Persey’s house since they were old enough to learn to walk, after his father had died as a result of injuries in the Great War. Jack was roughly the same age as Persey and had been the brother she and Dido had never had. Persey was grateful that he’d quit his job in the bank and left Guernsey weeks ago. He’d joined up in England ready to fight the Germans even though, as a Channel Islander, he wasn’t required to do so.