Cherry Durbin - Secret Sister - From Nazi-occupied Jersey to wartime London, one woman’s search for the truth

I’m a visual person and all these memories are vivid pictures I carry around in my head, pictures that bring a sense of warmth and happiness and belonging. I also have a clear picture from the age of eight of a time when Mum and I were out sitting by the pond in the garden. I noticed her skin was all yellow and I said, ‘Mum, you look like a Chinaman.’ *Later I overheard her repeating my comment to Pop and both of them laughing, but I couldn’t understand why it was funny. No one ever mentioned the words ‘liver cancer’ to me, not till I was much older, and I wouldn’t have known what they meant anyway.

A few weeks later, Mum had to go into hospital and I was taken to stay with some family friends, the Davidsons. I was quite happy there because I liked their son Donald, who was the same age as me; we did ballet at school together, co-starring in a production of Sleeping Beauty . I was going through a stage of feeling that I would rather be a boy than a girl, and Donald and I were great pals. As an only child, it was just nice to have another child in the house, someone I could play with. Mr Davidson had a film projector and we all sat and watched films in the evenings, which was great fun. I was so grateful to them for letting me stay that I tried to cook them breakfast one morning on their gas stove. In retrospect it must have been rather alarming for the family – but at least I didn’t set the kitchen on fire.

I was happy enough, but in the back of my head there was a niggling worry: if Mum was ill enough to have to spend so much time in hospital, how would she ever get well again? I didn’t ask anyone. I just tucked that worry inside me and carried on.

Children weren’t allowed on hospital wards in those days so I couldn’t visit, but once Pop drove me to the outside of the hospital and Mum came to a window near the top of the building and waved hard. She was just a tiny silhouette but it was reassuring to see her; she could still stand up and she could still wave. Hopefully that meant she wasn’t too sick after all.

And then, just after my ninth birthday, Mum was allowed home from hospital and I was taken over to our house to see her. She was lying on her side of the bed in her pink flannelette nightdress, so I clambered up onto Pop’s side to chat to her. There were tubes coming out of her stomach and she seemed all puffy and bloated, with pale, waxy skin. There were two bedside tables Pop had made from wood he had recovered from the bombed-out house in Hayes, and they were covered with medical paraphernalia: kidney dishes, syringes, pills and the like.

‘Are you better now, Mum?’ I asked, although I could tell by looking at her that she wasn’t.

‘No, darling,’ she said quietly, her voice all hoarse and breathy. She seemed very weak, as if talking was a big struggle.

‘Can I come back and stay at home with you?’

‘Not yet. You’re having fun at the Davidsons’, aren’t you?’ Pop was trying to sound cheerful without much success.

I looked at the Greek key pattern of the oak headboard and listened to the rasp of Mum’s breathing, trying to think of something good to say, something to make her feel better. Suddenly I had an idea. I jumped off the bed and ran round to her side of the bed, planning to give her a cuddle.

‘Careful!’ Pop said, putting out an arm to stop me, but not before I got round and saw that there was a white ceramic bucket full of dark red fluid on the floor, into which the tubes from Mum’s stomach were draining. It didn’t faze me as I’ve never been squeamish, but I had to watch not to kick it over.

‘Can I give you a hug, Mum?’ I asked. I couldn’t work out how I would get my arms around her with all those tubes in the way.

She glanced at Pop and he replied: ‘Not today, Cherryanna. Mum’s feeling a little bit sore.’

He drove me back to the Davidsons soon after and I remember feeling very subdued. Mum had looked so tired and ill, and it wasn’t like her not to give me a hug: she had always been a very tactile mum, someone who would let me climb onto her knee and snuggle up, breathing in her scent of 4711 Cologne and home baking. Now the smell around her was sharp and antiseptic and I didn’t like it at all. Nothing felt right. Even Pop seemed distracted and not his usual friendly self.

At the Davidsons, I shared a bed with Rosalind, the daughter, who was a bit younger than me. It was a big old bed with an eiderdown on top. A few days after seeing Mum at home, I woke suddenly in the middle of the night and I swear I saw Mum standing at the foot of the bed. I wasn’t afraid; I just looked at her, wondering what she was doing there.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’m an angel now but I’ll still watch out for you. I will always be with you.’

I’m not sure if the voice was out loud or in my head – Rosalind didn’t wake up – but I remember it very clearly, even today. Back then, in my nine-year-old’s head, I knew it meant that Mum was dead and had gone to Heaven. I wasn’t afraid of death because I went to Sunday school like all little children did in those days, and I believed in God and Jesus and angels in glowing white dresses with wings.

Mum’s angel didn’t have wings or a white dress. It was just her. It all seemed so normal that I just accepted it. She lingered at the foot of the bed for a while then faded away, and I lay awake, wondering when I would see her again and what would become of me now.

*This term, which sounds racist nowadays, was in common use at the time.

Next morning, Rosalind’s mum came into the bedroom and said, ‘You don’t need to put on your school uniform today, Cherry. Your dad’s coming to take you out for the day so wear your best clothes.’

Over breakfast, Rosalind and Donald kept staring at me in a funny way and there was none of their usual joshing. I think maybe their mum or their dad had had a word before I came downstairs, telling them to be quiet. I wondered if they knew about Mum being an angel but didn’t like to ask.

‘Would you like some jam, Cherry?’ Mr Davidson asked.

I shook my head. I didn’t feel like eating anything because my tummy was aching, but I nibbled at the edge of my toast, just the tiniest of little nibbles.

Rosalind and Donald left for school and Mrs Davidson brushed my hair for me really gently, making it all shiny and neat. When Pop arrived I put on my cherry-red Sunday-best coat instead of my school coat and followed him out to the car, his old Ford Prefect with the leather seats that I loved the smell of. We drove in silence to Gulliver’s, the florist opposite the hospital, and Pop pulled up outside, then hesitated, as if trying to work out what to say.

‘I’ve got something very sad to tell you, Cherry,’ he said at last, taking my hands in his, and I noticed that his eyes were red-rimmed. ‘Your mummy was too sick to get better and last night I’m afraid she died.’

‘Yes, I know,’ I said. ‘She came to see me and told me she’s an angel.’ I didn’t feel sad at that stage because I knew she was all right – I’d seen her with my own eyes.

He looked puzzled. ‘When was that?’

‘Last night in bed.’

He cleared his throat. ‘Anyway, we need to choose some flowers for her to hold in her coffin and I thought you might like to help me choose the prettiest ones. Will you do that?’

I nodded. We got out of the car and went into the florist, exploring the rows of big flowers and little flowers, brightly coloured and pale flowers, and in the end we decided on lily-of-the-valley because they had such a nice smell and I knew Mum had liked them.

Afterwards we went straight back to the Davidsons and Pop left me there with a hug, saying that he was very busy with all the arrangements but he would see me soon. I wasn’t allowed to go to the funeral – children didn’t go to funerals in the early fifties. I stayed at the Davidsons until the formalities were out of the way, and all that time I didn’t shed a single tear. I was quiet but just got on with my schoolwork and playing with Donald and helping Mrs Davidson in the kitchen. It was only when Pop picked me up and brought me back to our house that I realised Mum really wasn’t there – she wasn’t in the sitting room, or in her bedroom, or in the kitchen – and I began to cry. In my nine-year-old’s mind I’d somehow thought she would be, even though I knew she was an angel now. I was all muddled up.