‘She always seemed happy here,’ the vicar said, which wasn’t really much of an answer. ‘Elderly people who live alone sometimes are lonely, sometimes not. We run a very busy schedule of parish events. She attended a lot of them. Church isn’t just about attending on a Sunday you know. What makes you ask?’
‘I don’t know why but I have this feeling she was lonely. The house is … sparse. No personal objects really. She had a sister but—’
‘Yes,’ the vicar said. ‘Died before her.’
‘Yes, she died long before I was born,’ Lucy said.
‘We have a stained glass window in memory of the sister. I’ll show you in a bit, if you didn’t spot it on the day of the funeral.’
‘Really? When did that go in?’
‘It was before I arrived. Dido paid for it entirely. During theOccupation there had been a German training exercise that resulted in them sending a shower of bullets through the window. They put in a piece of tatty glass that was nowhere near as beautiful as what had once been there. I believe Dido commissioned the new one in memory of her sister.’
When they finished their tea, he led her from his office into the church to look at it. The light streamed through the window. It was more modern than others in the church. It was a small side window in a narrow part of the building. A few chairs sat ready for private prayer and a stand holding tea lights already held a candle burning in memory. But the window was glorious. It was an image of the backs of a man and a woman on a beach, walking towards the sun. The blues of the sky and the yellow of the beach and the sun were captivating.
‘I believe it was a local artist who designed it,’ the vicar said, breaking Lucy’s contemplative silence. ‘You’re more than welcome to light a candle for Dido. And to take a moment.’
‘Thank you,’ Lucy said.
‘I must be getting on, but come and see us again, if you like. Any other questions, you know where to find me.’ He gestured around the church.
‘I will.’ Lucy sat and reflected quietly while looking at the window. The man and the woman lit up suddenly as the sunlight moved out from behind a cloud, streaming bright colours onto the flagstones. It is a beautiful window, she thought, and then stood up, took the taper and used it to light a candle for Dido. She smiled as she watched the new wick flicker and flame and then without really knowing why, she lit another one for Persephone, the woman she’d never met but in whose life she’d become strangely caught up. She left the two candles burning for the sisters, side by side, gave one last look at the window and turned to leave.
Lucy emailed the photograph of Dido and Persephone’s parents’ gravestone to the stonemason and he replied with a quote for areplica design for Dido. In the email was a request: What did they want the words on Dido’s grave to say?
She thumped her head onto the kitchen table as she read the email. She hadn’t thought about what it ought to say. She needed to consult her dad. She’d put that off until tomorrow. For now though, Lucy would, for the first time since she’d arrived, eschew a shower and run a hot bubble bath in the claw-footed tub and take a glass of wine and a book with her. She’d not read a single page of her novel since she arrived, she’d been over halfway through and, thanks to Clara, she now wanted to finish the novel just so she could feel as if she’d achieved something – finished something. Bloody Clara.
As she soaked in the tub in the newly painted bathroom, the overhead light a dim yellow above her as the skies outside darkened, she thought about Dido and Persephone and what life for them must have been like during the Occupation. Lucy discarded the novel and whizzed it across the floor as if it was a Frisbee so it was far enough away from any water she might spill from the bath. There was something bothering her, only she couldn’t put her finger on it. It had to do with the church. There had been something niggling at her ever since she’d been there. Far from feeling peaceful, Lucy was now starting to feel antsy. She was missing something. Only, she didn’t know what. It was something so startlingly obvious that she knew she’d laugh at herself for missing it. Only … no … she had no idea what it was. Perhaps if she slept on it, she’d be able to work it all out in the morning.
She slipped down the bath and into the water so she was completely submerged, her breath held tight and her eyes even more so, letting the dull silent chamber of the bathwater surround her. Slowly she released air from her mouth, the bubbles making the water ripple around her face, and then it came to her and she shot upright, sending water spilling round the side of the bath, cascading onto the tiled floor. She knew it would be somethingso obvious she would laugh at herself. But instead, she wanted to kick herself.
It was the graves. Dido’s parents were there, interned together in one grave. And Dido was there. But … if she had died long ago – where was Persephone’s grave?
Chapter 30
October 1943
Persephone left work, wheeling her bicycle through Candie Gardens on her way home, her jacket in the basket on the warm day. She felt as if she’d only really moved in a haze since that day she’d killed the soldier, when Jack had announced he was leaving, when Stefan had hit him, when she had told Stefan how she felt about him … When he had rejected her. Now she lived in a kind of no-man’s-land of love and affection for a man who she knew loved her but who refused to act on it; who believed she was only saying it out of some kind of gratitude for what he’d done for her. He had kept her safe. And he didn’t believe she truly loved him.
Persey stared at the statue of Queen Victoria, the island’s notorious long summers keeping the last of the seasonal flowers just in bloom at her feet, and took time to pause, to breathe in the fresh sea air that rolled from the coast through the gardens. When German soldiers said hello to her as she strolled through, she smiled politely and said hello in return. She’d never managed to bring herself to do that before. They were here. They had been for some time. That wasn’t going to change unless the Allies regained even more ground in this war. But she could no longer bring herself to pointedly ignore them. She looked at them anew. Many of them didn’t want this war. She understood that. Despitethe fact many looked as if they were having a jolly good time in the Channel Islands.
She watched one soldier purchase ice creams for a group of local children, smiling, asking their names and how old they were in stilted but try-hard English.
What would happen to those Germans after the war was over? Would they remain? Marry? Live here? Would they all leave – be forced away?
What would happen to Stefan? And to her? And to them? Would there even be a them? Not at this rate. Not with Stefan doubting her affections.
As the months rolled by it was becoming less and less likely that the Germans could win. At least, that was what Jack was saying. She’d been listening to the wireless and reporting the German losses, delivering her sheets of paper whenever she could. And she, like many other Islanders, were trying not to be too suspiciously happy-looking whenever a piece of good news sounded through the airwaves for fear the Germans would be able to easily weed out those who had likely been listening to illegal wireless sets.
But it was not always good news. Persephone was shocked when Jack had burst through the door one evening to relay the dreadful news that the Germans had torpedoed two Allied vessels off the coast of Brittany. When Stefan returned from work it was clear he already knew. Bodies of British sailors had been washing up on Guernsey’s beaches all day. In the end the bodies of twenty-one sailors and marines were washed ashore, out of the hundreds of sailors who had been killed, and the German occupying force agreed to hold a funeral for all of them with full military honours and a sixteen-gun salute. Over five thousand Islanders attended, and lay wreaths in red, white and blue in direct contravention of showing British patriotism. It was a sign of solidarity from the Islanders that Persey and Dido joined willingly, laying wreaths and saying prayers at the mass funeral for the Allied men who’d died fighting for freedom.
The next day, Persephone returned to look at the graves and to admire the near thousand strong wreaths that had been laid. She wasn’t alone. People milled, paying their respects. And as Persey rued the day Hitler had ever come to power she felt a tap on her shoulder.
‘I’ve not seen you in quite some time, Miss Le Roy.’
It took Persey a moment or two to even recollect the woman. It had been so long since Persey’s only encounter with her nearly three years ago outside her doorstep. And then Persey turned cold as she’d recognised Lise’s landlady.
Persey said simply, ‘How are you?’
