Lorna Cook - The Girl from the Island

Persey’s eyes fogged with fresh tears. She wanted to say no and to shout, Don’t you dare come back. But she couldn’t speak anymore. She wiped her eyes and nodded as the three men turned and walked nonchalantly down the drive towards the car parked at the gate as if they hadn’t a care in the world.

‘What in God’s name do you think they wanted?’ Doctor Durand was the first to speak.

‘I don’t know,’ Persey whispered, confusion rattling around inside her mind.

‘We’ll find out tomorrow,’ Dido said quietly.

It was real. The Germans were here, the arrival of the enemy was upon them and Persey knew she would forever remember the day her mother died as the day the Germans arrived.

In bed later, Persey was unable to sleep, unable to cry anymore, unable to think. Visions of her mother holding her as a child, buckling her shoes for her on her first day at school, fixing her grazed knee when she’d fallen from the tree house at the end of the garden. That tree house was gone now. So was her mother.

She stared at the ceiling and then in an exhausted resignation moved to the window, lifting the tight-fitting blackout blind out of place and staring down the driveway towards the field in the distance and the single cottage that bordered their small, two-acre grounds. It had been abandoned only yesterday by the Jewish owners, who had sailed to England to escape the Nazis. If it hadn’t been for the moon casting a bright light down onto the pasture she’d not have been able to see anything but she’d have known what she was looking at; the view imprinted on her memory. She’d been born in this house. She’d never known anything else, never wanted anything else.

Her mind wandered aimlessly as she placed the thick blackout frame silently on the carpet of her room. The Germans were here now; why was the blind needed? But Mrs Grant had a copy of the Evening Press with the horrific announcements from the occupying force littering the pages. Things were to continue in much the same way, for now. Tonight the blackout wasn’t in place to prevent the Germans from bombing Guernsey – it was to prevent the British from bombing the island and driving the Germans into submission.

Unthinkable really, that the British would bomb Guernsey now. But then, prior to the last few weeks it had been unthinkable that the Germans would occupy Guernsey, yet it had happened. So why not the former?

‘The world has turned upside down,’ she whispered to herself. She looked towards the garage, its wide doors left open. She hadn’t closed the house properly for the night and she stared as the moonlight bounced a silver light off the bonnet of her father’s car, taunting her, telling her that she had let everyone down today by letting her mother die and now, her father’s car was visible to any German who wanted to take it; inconsequential as it was in the grand scheme of things.

Persey pulled her dressing gown from the hook behind her door and made her way along the landing. She stopped at her mother’s closed door and put her hand against it. The undertaker had been – promptly summoned by Doctor Durand – and her mother was no longer in the house but still Persey didn’t know why the door had been closed. She opened it wide and looked in. The pain was too great in her chest, looking at her mother’s things, items that she knew her mother would never touch again. Her hairbrush on the dressing table, her book – open and face down. Her mother had been too weak to read it for so long. How had Persey not registered that? Her mother’s face flashed in her mind and, guiltily, Persey closed the door again and with it closed her own eyes, hoping it would take the pain away. But it didn’t.

Doctor Durand had said there was nothing he could have done. The influenza had taken over and her mother’s lungs, weakened from when she’d caught tuberculosis as a child, had been the root cause of her demise. But still Persey blamed herself. Why hadn’t she telephoned earlier? Why? There might have been something Doctor Durand could have done.

She continued downstairs towards the garage. She would shut the doors and return to bed to try and force sleep to come. But as she closed the first door she heard a noise at the back of the garage where her father’s tools still hung. She stood still. It had sounded as if someone had backed into the wall and knocked one of the spades or rakes hanging from the tool hooks. The clatter of metal on brick died out as quickly as it had started, as if someone had grabbed at the implement to silence the noise.

As soon as the word ‘Hello?’ fell from her lips she knew it had been a mistake to speak. She turned to run away but wasn’t quick enough. Her foot had barely moved an inch before she saw someone lurch towards her, grab her by her dressing gown and pull her back inside the garage. Almost as quickly, the man’s other hand clamped around her mouth and the scream that came from her was silenced, heard by no one inside the house.

The man kept his hand over her mouth as he stared into her eyes through the slit in his knitted balaclava. ‘Don’t say a word.’

Persey nodded in startled agreement and then slowly the man lifted his hand from her mouth. Immediately she reneged on her agreement not to speak and realising she was looking at the housekeeper’s son cried, ‘Jack! What on earth are you doing here?’

‘For Christ’s sake, Perse, shh.’

She was quieter when she spoke this time. ‘We thought you were in England. We thought you’d joined up weeks ago.’

‘I was. I have.’ He spoke quietly and pulled her towards the back of the garage, as if the extra few feet of space between them and the house would make all the difference.

‘How are you here then?’ she asked with wide eyes.

‘I’ve been sent back,’ he said proudly. He looked at her expectantly, awaiting her reaction.

‘Are you that terrible at soldiering they’ve returned you already?’ She hadn’t meant to be funny but Jack laughed.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m only back because they needed to find someone local – someone who knows the lay of the land. And then, with any luck, I’ll be gone again, bursting with information to help win the war.’

Persey stared. ‘Are you a spy?’ she asked blankly. ‘Oh, Jack, they’ll kill you. You know that, don’t you? The Germans. There are so many of them. I’ve been past the airport and—’

‘And how many of them are there?’

Persey thought. ‘I don’t know. Lots. And I’m sure more will be landing imminently. And then of course troops will be coming in their droves by boat from France. You shouldn’t be here. It’s far too dangerous.’

He looked proud. ‘That’s exactly why I am here. Listen, do you think you could go past the airport again and take another look? Sit tight for a while, watch how many planes come and go over the course of the week?’

‘Are you asking me to spy for you?’

‘No, I’m asking you to spy for Britain.’

Persephone rubbed her hand over her tired eyes. It was too much. It was all just far too much.