“It’s true, Auntie,” Beatty insisted. “When we went missing, she never stopped looking for us, not until she found us and Billy rescued us…”

  She trailed off when she saw her aunt’s expression.

  “Gracious, she’s been rather more than a librarian to you.”

  Clara looked down at her tea and felt uncomfortable. Had she overstepped the mark? In her desperation to be a mother, had she allowed herself to get too close to the girls?

  Ruby came into the kitchen, and Clara was grateful for the interruption.

  After more tea and bread smeared with something spicy and delicious made from apples and cinnamon called black butter, it was time to leave.

  Everyone’s nervous chatter dried up as they bundled on coats.

  “Your father is at the hospital in St. Helier and they are rather strict about visiting times,” Mrs. Moisan announced at the door. “I’ve arranged to borrow some bikes.”

  As she talked, Clara was dimly aware that their appearance was causing a stir. A few neighbours had come out of their homes and were gazing curiously at the girls.

  All of a sudden, Mrs. Moisan’s face froze. An inoffensive-looking woman in her fifties clutching a wicker basket was walking up the road towards them.

  “Been to the shops, have we?” Mrs. Moisan taunted as she drew level. The woman picked up her pace, refusing to make eye contact. “I hope you choke on your food, you disgusting bitch!” She spat hard at the woman’s feet.

  Clara and Ruby exchanged stunned looks.

  “May you never know a moment’s peace for what you did.” She pointed to the girls, who both looked terrified.

  “These are Mr. Kolsky’s children. Look at them…”

  The woman started to run.

  “Look at their faces, then see if you can live with what you did!” she screamed. The woman turned the corner and vanished from sight.

  Clara gently touched Mrs. Moisan’s back.

  “That was her, wasn’t it? The woman who informed on you?”

  Mrs. Moisan nodded, her face a mask of fury.

  “I can’t believe there haven’t been repercussions,” Clara said.

  “Apparently, there’s no law that provides an appropriate penalty for those who informed on fellow islanders. It was felt the ends of justice would be best served if it was left to the people to ostracise those who were guilty of collaboration.”

  Clara’s mouth fell open. The whole thing had more than a whiff of the Wild West about it to her.

  “And so I am simply supposed to move on, like she has.”

  Mrs. Moisan kicked off her bike stand and began to cycle up the blustery seafront, her back rigid.

  The dreadful encounter hung like a dark cloud over them as they pedalled through St. Helier. The streets were busier today, shops were filled with meat and vegetables and Clara even spotted a sweet shop doing a roaring trade.

  “Your British Force 135 are doing a wonderful job of clearing up the Germans’ mess and getting our economy back on its feet,” Mrs. Moisan remarked as they looked at the queues of chattering housewives.

  It wasn’t until they paused at traffic lights that Clara saw a visible sign that the Nazis had left their mark: a large black swastika painted on the side of a house in tar.

  “Jerrybag,” Mrs. Moisan sniffed. “When a woman was caught fraternising with a German, her home was marked.”

  Ruby, Clara and the girls stared, intrigued, at the branding.

  “Please do not stare,” Mrs. Moisan said. “Believe me when I say, there were a great many more acts of resistance on this island than collaboration.”

  Her eyes shone defiantly in the bright morning sunshine.

  “Those who lay down with the enemy are outnumbered by those who subverted them.”

  The traffic moved on and she cycled off smartly.

  Ten minutes later, they pulled up outside a forbidding Victorian building, rising behind a solid granite wall.

  “Here we are,” Mrs. Moisan said.

  As they stepped inside the hospital, Clara’s head was still mired in the murky pool of retribution and anger that clearly still washed over the beleaguered islanders and the impossible situations they had faced and continued to face.

  A doctor and a nurse were sent to greet them.

  “Good morning, Beatty and Marie.” The doctor spoke warmly to the girls. “Before we go and see your father, I must speak with your family.”

  Clara’s heart thumped as she followed Mrs. Moisan and the doctor down a long corridor into his office.

  Once seated, he pulled out a file.

  “Mr. Kolsky is an extremely sick man. He is severely malnourished and suffered with septicaemia, possibly from food poisoning or dirty water…”

  He trailed off and tapped his pen against his thumb.

  “All the physical ailments are being treated and we are seeing an improvement in those conditions.”

  “But?” said Mrs. Moisan warily.

  “It’s his mind I fear for. The septicaemia, or his experiences, or both, have led to a perturbing unbalance that will require at least another six months of convalescence here and intense psychiatric treatment.”

  Clara’s heart was beating so fast, she was surprised no one else could hear it.

  “What were his experiences?” said Mrs. Moisan. “Speak plainly.”

  “Well, there will be a report gathered in the fullness of time, the horrors are still unravelling. But I understand that in Mr. Kolsky’s case, it wasn’t so much the length of time he spent at Belsen, but rather the intensity of the experience, which has led to this unbalance…” he wavered. “How could I put this to ladies?”

  “For pity’s sake,” Mrs. Moisan snapped, “the war was many things, but it was not discriminatory. It meted out its brutality to both sexes. We are women. We can take the truth.”

  “Very well. By the time Mr. Kolsky arrived, the camp authorities were trying to conceal all evidence of their crimes before the advancing Allied Armies arrived.

  “Many prisoners were forced to leave, marched to their deaths. But Mr. Kolsky remained. It was his job, I understand, alongside many others, to dispose of the dead. For the three days prior to the liberation of Belsen, he was forced to drag the dead into burial pits. He was whipped and beaten until he had dragged many thousands into ghastly mass graves.”

  “Go on,” Mrs. Moisan ordered calmly. A vein flickered in her temple.

  “I’ll leave to your imagination how unspeakable it must have been to wade through corpses, some of whom had suffered cannibalism.”

  A raw silence as they digested this news.

  “What does that do to a man?” Clara breathed.

  “He appears to be suffering a complete loss of memory of his pre-war life. We are hopeful that seeing his daughters may help to trigger some of those memories.”

  Mrs. Moisan turned to Clara.

  “This will be so hard for the girls. This is why I wanted you to come here today. They need someone whom they have come to trust.”

  Clara wanted to run from this small room with its cloying smell of carbolic, but Mrs. Moisan was right. The girls needed their father back, and he needed them.

  She nodded as the doctor rose to his feet.

  “Shall we?”

  By the time they reached the girls, who were sitting by the nurses’ station, Clara’s insides were tightly coiled.

  “Now, girls,” said the doctor gently, crouching down to speak to them, “your father is convalescing in his own room. The last time you saw him, he was forty-four years old, but I must warn you, he looks much older now. This is because of what he experienced in the camps. He will not look or act like the father you remembered back in 1940.

  “Seeing you both will be an important step in his recovery, but if you don’t feel ready, or you need more time…”

  “We’re ready,” Beatty insisted.

  “Very well,” said the doctor. “But please, it’s very important you don’t mention the camp at all.”

  As they made their way along a maze of corridors, Clara held both the girls’ hands, felt their apprehension snake up her arms and into her heart.

  A door opened and suddenly they were in a bright white room. At the centre of the room, propped up in bed with pillows, lay a very old man.

  Clara felt her breath catch in her throat. He was a skeleton with skin draped over it. He looked closer to eighty than forty.

  His hair was white and stood up in tufts like clumps of dandelions, and his skin had an odd yellow tone.

  “Mr. Kolsky,” said the doctor softly. “I have some special visitors for you. It’s your daughters, Marie and Beatrice. They have been in England and now they have come home.”

  It took him a while to adjust his gaze as slowly he turned to stare at them. His eyes were so rheumy, he struggled to focus. Clara released her grip on the girls’ hands, but Marie refused to let go.

  A slow light of recognition dawned on Mr. Kolsky’s face. His fingers inched slowly along the bedsheet as Beatty took a tentative step towards her father.

  She was the first to speak, her expression so full of love.

  “Papa, it’s me…” Gently, she took his hand in hers. “It’s me. Oh, Papa.”

  “Come into the light where I can see you,” he whispered.

  She moved forward again, and he lifted her hand to his cheek. All at once, he seemed to shudder, a spasm passing over his face.

  “Rose… My darling Rose, where have you been?”

  Beatty’s eyes snapped wide open.

  “No, Papa, it’s not Mama, it’s me. Beatty, your daughter.”

  He shook his head and tightened his grip on her hand. A storm of emotions passed over his face. Confusion. Anger. Fear.

  “Where are our girls?” he trembled. “What have they done with them?”

  He started to shake. “They must not take them, Rose. You hear me, you must not allow them to take our girls.”

  Beatty pulled her hand away and choked back a sob.

  He struggled to sit up as she stumbled back.

  “Please, Rose, you must hide the girls for their safety.”

  He was trembling now, trying to get out of the bed, but he was so weak, he could scarcely lift the bedsheet.

  The doctor rushed forward and Beatty flung herself into Clara’s side.

  “I think you had better leave now,” the doctor urged.

  As they left the room, they heard Mr. Kolsky’s fragile voice echo up the corridor.

  “Where is my wife? Where are you taking her?”

  The nurses guided them to a private room where, for twenty minutes solid, Beatty cried uncontrollably in Clara’s arms and Marie sat folded into her side. The door opened softly and the doctor entered.

  “As you can see, your father is a very ill man,” the doctor said.

  “How can you help him?” Mrs. Moisan asked.

  “There are no clear answers,” the doctor replied wearily. “We have never encountered anything like this before.

  “Your father’s brain is trying to protect him from witnessing such horror.”

  “Like a fuse box that’s blown, you mean?” Beatty asked.

  The doctor smiled sadly. “That’s exactly right. You’re a clever girl. But I promise you, my dear, we will do everything in our power to care for your father here, until he can find a way back to himself.”

  They left the hospital irrevocably altered by their experiences. The image of his emaciated body would forever remain scorched into Clara’s brain.

  “I think we need a walk and some fresh air,” Mrs. Moisan announced.

  “Yes, good idea,” Clara agreed.

  “Sorry, I meant just me and the girls,” said Mrs. Moisan.

  Clara felt as if she’d been struck. “Oh. Of course. Absolutely. I’ll see you back at the house.”

  She got on her bike and pedalled as fast as she could, so the girls couldn’t see the tears stream down her face. She cycled fast out of St. Helier, grateful for the stiff island breezes that dried her tears the moment they fell.

  Ruby didn’t say a word, just cycled after her, as they headed west, skirting St. Aubin’s Bay and onto St. Brelade’s Bay. Fields and beaches scarred with ugly fortifications flashed past, giant concrete monstrosities as impenetrable as Mr. Kolsky’s mind. Clara had never felt battered by such a maelstrom of emotion.

  Finally, exhausted, she stopped when the land ran out at the southwest corner of the island. Clara inhaled at the dramatic beauty of the landscape. The tide was out, and a causeway flanked by black rocks led to a majestic white lighthouse. In the distance, she heard a tremendous boom as the ocean battered the land.

  “Looks like we’ve reached the end of the road,” Clara murmured, dismounting from her bike. “Feels like an appropriate metaphor.”

  Her headscarf had shaken loose and her dark hair whipped around her face. She shivered as the wind picked up, scudding huge silver clouds across the headland.

  “I’ve lost them, haven’t I?”

  “Oh, Cla,” Ruby sighed, “do you really think that they were yours to lose, sweetheart?”

  “No, I suppose not. I can’t stop thinking about Mr. Kolsky and Mrs. Moisan.”

  “Listen, can you do without me?” Ruby asked suddenly. “I’ll meet you back at the house.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I promised Stan from the buildings that I’d meet with his uncle who runs a pub down by the docks.”

  Clara raised one eyebrow.

  “Ruby Munroe. Don’t get involved in the black market.”

  “No, it’s nothing dodgy, he ain’t a fence. I just need to pass on a message.”

  She leant over and kissed Clara on the cheek.

  “See you later.”

  Clara wasn’t ready to return to the town just yet and she sat down, closed her eyes and listened to the roar of the ocean. She and Ruby were due on the first boat back tomorrow.

  She lay back against the cool grass on the clifftop. The wind seemed to whisper stories, the ocean an endless shush. The pounding of jackboots would always be a haunting echo and she wondered how the girls would find their place on this war-torn island, and more importantly, how they would cope with the fragility of their father’s mind. She would have to accept that they would need to do it without her.

  She stayed there for so long, she must have dozed off because when she looked up, someone had painted the sky.

  The sunset was spectacular. Blood orange slipped into indigo. She cycled back slowly, marvelling as the night sky formed a glittering canopy over the low hills, the blackness above salted with stars.

  Clara pushed her bicycle along the Havre des Pas and was surprised to find Mrs. Moisan waiting on the doorstep for her.

  “There you are. I worried you’d got lost. We need to talk.”

  Something in her demeanor had changed.

  “Come.”

  She gripped Clara’s elbow. “Leave the bike here.”

  They walked along the promenade, past the grand hotels that bordered the front, until at last she stopped and sat on a bench. She gestured to Clara to sit.

  “I’ve been watching you with the girls. You’re the closest thing they have to a mother. I see that now. This morning you asked for total honesty and so…”

  She looked out to sea.

  “I’d like the girls to go home with you. I’m an old woman now, too lost in my grief to give them what they need.”

  “But what about their father?” Clara asked.

  “They can return on their holidays to see him. He will recover, I hope, and they can be a part of his recovery, but in the short term, the best place is by your side.”

  She smiled. It was a beautiful smile and they’d seen so little of it.

  “They need your stories, Clara, your books and your library. But mostly your love.”

  “What do the girls want?” she asked breathlessly.

  “That’s why I took them off for a walk. They are trying not to be disloyal, but they want to return with you.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded.

  Clara breathed out slowly.

  “I will take such great care of them, and I’ll bring them home on every holiday. I love it here. It’s such a beautiful island.”

  “It was and it will be again. It too needs to recover.”

  “You are so resilient.”

  A wry smile flickered at the corner of her mouth.

  “So I’m told. But I don’t want to be resilient anymore. I’m tired. I just want to live in peace, with my memories.”

  The girls and Ruby were waiting for her at the house. One look at their faces told Clara that Mrs. Moisan was right.

  “Can we come back with you to London?” Beatty asked, scanning her face nervously.

  “Of course you can,” she said, laughing and crying all at once as she touched their faces.

  They clung to each other for a long time before Beatty pulled back.

  “I was so scared you’d say no because I’ve been beastly to you. I’ve been so angry about Billy, you see, blaming myself and I took it out on the wrong person.”

  Clara smiled and kissed her forehead.

  “From the little I understand about motherhood, that’s part of the job.” She looked from Beatty to Marie. “I’ll be here as long as you both need me. And even when you don’t.”

  The next morning at the docks, the bright summer sunshine was crystalline, bouncing off the waters as the crowds made their way up the quayside.

  Mrs. Moisan looked as if an enormous weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

  “Come here,” she grinned, pulling the girls into her embrace.

  “J’vos aime bein, èrvénez bétôt,” she whispered.

  As they hugged, it hit Clara the sacrifices she was making for her nieces’ happiness. In letting them go back to Bethnal Green, she was giving them a safer way to return.

  Over their heads, Clara saw a familiar face.

  “That’s her,” she whispered, digging Ruby in the ribs.

  “Who?”

  “Barbara Vibert. The woman who denounced Mrs. Moisan.”

  She was laden down with luggage as she attempted to haul two suitcases up the gangplank.

  Ruby lit a cigarette and regarded her shrewdly through the smoke.

  “So she is. At least she won’t be around to disturb Mrs. Moisan.”

 

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