Sadly Lucy did know, having learnt about it at school, albeit in brief. Perhaps that’s why she wasn’t as shocked as he was. She put her hand out and rubbed his arm consolingly and then began reading the letters in more detail.
To the Gestapo, my neighbour has a wireless. I hear it through the wall. Search under the floorboards at …
To the Nazis, my neighbour Dorothy Paquin frequently stays out after curfew. You should look into it.
For the Guernsey Kommandant, the grocer Mr Lagarde in Albecq operates a black market service. Keeps items under the counter for his friends.
To the Secret Police, I’ve seen some of those foreign slave workers going in and out of Adele Caron’s house after dark. She volunteers for the St John Ambulance and has been dressing their wounds and giving them her rations.
‘This makes me hate humans,’ Will said, his jaw clenched.
‘It’s not easy reading,’ Lucy agreed, wondering about the fate of Dorothy Paquin, Adele Caron and the others named and shamed in the letters on the wall. Hundreds and hundreds of Guernsey men and women, their ‘crimes’ laid out for the Germans to act upon. And that was only what was shown here.
‘This is self-righteousness,’ Will said, a hateful tone in his voice. ‘But why the anonymity?’ he asked, pointing to more than one that was ambiguously signed, ‘A Friend’. ‘Why not reveal yourself? After all, you’re grassing up your friend, your neighbour: why not tell the Nazis who you are to further yourself in their eyes? Why hide yourself? It’s not even maliciousness for self-improvement. It’s maliciousness for the sake of it.’ He was raging and Lucy was wondering if he regretted coming here now. She was starting to regret it.
Will had moved away. At the final row of letters covering the wall he had stopped. Lucy was done. She couldn’t read any more now. It was too much. She had no idea how Will was still reading given how much he clearly hated reading them.
How many of these people had been informed on, arrested, imprisoned, died? Did these people know what would happen to those they’d informed on?Did they know it would lead to arrests? Did they know it would lead to deportations and imprisonments? And if they did know, is that why they did it? Lucy gulped. How many were mothers of small children? How many were being lied about in these letters? How many—
‘Lucy!’ Will called. ‘Come here.’ His eyes were wide with shock and he raised his hand and pointed at a particular letter on the wall.
Lucy moved over and followed his finger. She read the letter Will pointed out to her in disbelief. ‘No,’ she said simply, her brain refusing to process what her eyes had just read once, and then again to be sure. ‘No,’ she repeated, horrified as she read the words‘… at Deux Tourelles,’written on an informant letter.
Chapter 19
1940
Tensions were running high at Deux Tourelles since the announcement that the Nazis knew spies had landed on Guernsey. There was no hiding the announcement in the newspaper. The whole island was talking about it and so in the end they had been forced to tell Mrs Grant, who had cried uncontrollably. The orders had struck fear into all inside the house.
In accordance with German military law and in agreement with the Hague Convention the penalties provided for are the following:
• Espionage – Death penalty.
•High treason – Death penalty or penal servitude for life.
• Assistance to espionage – Penal servitude: up to fifteen years.
Jack had three days to give himself up or the hunt would begin and punishments would be enforced. Jack would be executed, and for assisting him, Persey, Dido and Mrs Grant faced imprisonment for a very long time. How old would Persey be in fifteen years? Forty. And Dido thirty-nine years old when they were released. If they survived. Mrs Grant … would she survive?
They watched Jack with alarm over the following two days as his state of mind disintegrated. He spent the majority of meals staring blankly at his plate, not hearing anyone who spoke to him, and every time a German staff car pulled up he stared wide-eyed at the doorway of whatever room he was in, expecting to be grabbed, arrested, interrogated. But each time it was only Stefan returning to the house.
Persey, Dido and Mrs Grant had decided not to give Jack up. Doing so was their duty, and they had no idea if they could trust the Nazis to keep their word that Jack would be treated as a POW and interned somewhere safe for the duration of the war if he handed himself in before the deadline, or whether he would be taken and shot as a spy. But whether he gave himself up would have to be his decision.
‘You can’t trust a Nazi to keep their word,’ Jack had spat, fear in his eyes. ‘I wish I’d never come back now. I could have been back in England, sitting tight now the British Expeditionary Force has been turfed out of France. I could have been safe and I wouldn’t have put you in this position.’ He opened his cigarette case and, finding it empty, threw it onto the kitchen floor.
Persey wanted to tell him he was safe here, but it would have been such an incredible lie that she simply couldn’t bring herself to say anything soothing at all. What would happen to her and Dido when the Germans realised the spy they were looking for was Jack and that they had harboured him all this time? Perhaps she could say they had no idea? Would any of them believe that? And what kind of interrogation tactics would they use on her, on Mrs Grant, on Dido? The thought of the secret police or the Gestapo torturing Dido made Persey feel sick and she ran out the back door and bent over, waiting for bile that never came.
‘Are you all right?’ Stefan’s voice came from the end of the garden in the darkness. He’d been sitting on the bench and moved swiftly towards her.
‘Yes,’ she lied. ‘I think I ate something I shouldn’t have.’
‘You are not worried?’ he said.
‘Worried?’ she said cautiously.
‘Yes, about Jack.’
‘W-why …’ she stuttered and then started again. ‘Why would I be worried?’
