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.
The policeman caught sight of Persey and nodded his head by way of a solemn greeting. The German men he had been standing with turned to look at her with interest. In fear of being noticed, she looked away, mounted her bicycle and pedalled until she had left the airport far behind her. When she was down the lane, Persey jumped from her bicycle and threw it down onto the ground. Its wheels spun wildly from the abrupt action as she bent down at the side of the lane and was violently sick into the hedge.
Persey caught Doctor Durand as he emerged from his patient’s cottage stepping towards his motorcar and he looked more than a little surprised to see her.
‘Persephone, are you quite all right?’ he asked. Doctor Durand was her father’s friend of old. The two had known each other since school, and while her father had gone into accountancy, his friend had chosen to heal. With her father gone, the doctor had always kept a considerate eye on the remaining inhabitants of Deux Tourelles.
‘The Germans are here,’ Persey relayed to him.
The doctor stepped away from his vehicle and closed the door. He took in Persephone’s face, which she knew must look pale. ‘Yes, I saw. Over at the airport. Hard to believe, really.’ There was momentary silence before he continued. ‘You didn’t cycle out here to tell me that, did you?’
‘No. It’s mother. She’s getting worse. Will you come and see? After you’ve seen your next patient of course.’
‘I’ll come now. I can’t get your bicycle in the motorcar though. All right if I leave you in my wake and see you there?’
Persey nodded.
‘It means you’ll have to ride past the airport again. Didn’t get any trouble from any of the Germans, did you? Not sure whether it’s a good idea you being on your own. We don’t know what they’re like.’
Persey also had no idea if it was a sensible idea being alone. ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll pedal fast. Just in case.’
She watched the doctor drive away in the direction of Deux Tourelles and stood watching aircraft stream in one by one overhead, descending towards the airport. Everything had changed. In just a few short days, their island wasn’t their own anymore. They had been bombed and now they were going to be … what, exactly? She didn’t know. The reports from other nations that the Germans had already steamrollered their way into had not been good, had not been complimentary about Nazi behaviour. What kind of fate were they all to suffer? And for how long?
When Persey arrived home she felt a sense of relief at seeing the doctor’s car parked in the sweep of the drive. Everything would be all right now. The Germans might be on the island in droves, her mother might be sick, but for the next half an hour or so Doctor Durand would know what to do; would administer medicine of some kind and Persey and Dido’s mother would recover. And then tomorrow would be another day. Or would it be the beginning of hell? The beginning of Nazi Occupation? She paused in the garage where she propped her bicycle in its usual space against the wall near father’s old Wolseley Series II motorcar. Other than Jack giving it a run around the island every now and again to keep the engine ticking over, it had been parked there ever since father’s death two years earlier.
That day, her father had returned home from the golf club in time for supper, muttering something about needing to pop into his study for just five minutes before they dined. It was only when the housekeeper Mrs Grant had finally sent Persey to fetch her father before the gravy congealed that she discovered he’d passed away, slumped at his desk, chequebook on the table, pen in hand. A stroke, Doctor Durand had said. No warning; he’d been in peak health until then, which was of very little comfort to anyone.
Persey reached out and touched the bonnet of the car before she left the garage, as if it would bring her closer to her father. But of course it never did.
From inside the entrance hall Persephone could hear the faint sound of someone weeping. She stood still and moved inside without closing the door and realised that it was two people weeping, not one. She was rooted to the spot, unable to move, unable to ascend the staircase; instead she stared up towards the wooden banisters of the upper landing.
Doctor Durand appeared at the top of the stairs and looked down towards Persephone. ‘My dear,’ he started. ‘I am incredibly sorry …’
Persey’s shoulders slumped. She knew what he wanted to say and she wouldn’t let him. ‘No.’ She shook her head, holding his gaze, daring him to say it. ‘No.’
The combined sounds of Dido and Mrs Grant crying drifted towards them in the silence on the staircase.
‘She’s
