It might take a long time, and her part might be small, but she had to do it. After all, they were all being held prisoner now. It was just that for some, you couldn’t see the bars.
Chapter 24
October 1943
Over the course of a few months the residents of Deux Tourelles fell into step alongside each other once again. It was a strange exchange: the loss of Mrs Grant for the return of Stefan, but Persey tried to squash the array of emotions she had felt at his return. She hated herself when she felt remorse when he left for work, and loathed herself even more when she caught herself smiling when the front door sounded as he returned. Why did she have to feel this unidentified emotion whenever she thought of him?
The house was so quiet without the constant thrum of Mrs Grant in the kitchen or around the house, cleaning and laundering. Jack was only marginally buoyed on hearing the deported Islanders were being held together so his mother would be with people from home. And there were no longer the comforting smells of something delicious being created from scraps and uneventful rations. The very fabric of the house had changed. Dido and Persey had been cleaning and attempting to cook, laundering, folding, taking turns queuing dutifully at the grocer’s, baker’s and the butcher’s, not that there was ever much of excitement available. And rations seemed to be getting worse, with only milk rations having increased marginally.
Stefan managed to get hold of slightly more food than theynormally had access to and every now and again he would wordlessly place a precious, small piece of meat on the cold stone in the larder for Persey to find. Autumn was drawing in and the blackout times were changing. Try as she might she still couldn’t get her head around German time on the island and its strange habit of bringing the darkness too early or too late depending on the time of year.
Dido was singing tonight. Since their row, their relationship had been strained. There was still sisterly love between them, but it appeared to be stretched very thinly now from Dido’s side. As far as Persey knew, Dido was still seeing her German man but now Dido kept her cards very close to her chest about it all.
After a muted dinner one evening, Dido stood to leave.
‘I will accompany you if you do not mind,’ Stefan said. ‘I am in sore need of an evening of gaiety.’
Persey had long since given up offering to accompany her sister. For one thing, she couldn’t face sitting in a room full of what Islanders affectionately described as ‘greenfly’ due to the colour of the uniforms. And for another thing, she had ‘work’ to do, listening to the wireless, the act of which had long been rendered complicated by Stefan’s return. She had promised Doctor Durand she would try to listen as often as possible, and she’d managed to, very discreetly, listen to as many broadcasts as she could over the past months, writing down what she heard and delivering it to him. She suspected it was a newspaper contact who was writing up her shorthand into English and then printing the resistance newspaper. Either way, she didn’t want to know. She had chosen moments to listen at night when both the news was being broadcast and when Stefan was out – the two of which hardly ever seemed to coincide.
She hoped that the risk she was taking had helped Islanders in some small way, knowing what was happening miles from Guernsey … knowing that slowly, so slowly there were gains being made by the Allies. If only it would progress faster though.
She’d seen a copy of the illicit news sheet at Doctor Durand’s house one evening as he’d proudly brandished it, and explained that he intended to let patients read it as they came and went from his surgery. She glowed with pride. She had helped do this. She had helped offer hope to Islanders who had no idea what was happening in the theatre of war. People knew snippets of detail and it was, in part, because of her.
She’d listened intently when the BBC, who knew of the radio confiscations throughout other occupied countries, had listed detailed instructions how to go about making a crystal radio set, which often involved the use of headsets that hardly anyone on the island owned. It was little surprise that there had been a spate of theft of receivers from telephone boxes across Guernsey.
Persey was now grateful that they still had their wireless. But that was only half the battle as she’d had to confess to Jack and Dido what she was doing as they too avidly listened to the news broadcasts when Stefan was out. She could hardly sit and scribble notes for half an hour without them catching on. She’d expected to be berated for her dangerous activity, but on telling them what she was planning, Jack had simply said, ‘Good girl. Another one in the eye for the Germans.’
Dido had looked at her sister and had simply said, ‘There’s now two of you in this house engaging in clandestine activity. Please be careful where it leads.’
Before she went to work, Persey delivered the news she’d written to Doctor Durand, if she’d managed to listen without Stefan present. Doctor Durand, in turn, delivered it to his newspaper contact. She didn’t want to know who the contact was or who the other Islanders were who were listening to the broadcasts. The fewer people who knew about the others in the chain the better, in her opinion.
She knew she ran the risk of being discovered with sheets of news on her person and so she’d pulled on her clerical skills, writing it in shorthand on carbon copy pads she had liberated from theoffice. She reasoned that if she came across a sudden German checkpoint en route to Doctor Durand’s she could dispense with the sheets by ripping them into tiny pieces and scattering them to the wind and – if need be – she could fall back on the carbon copy and deliver it later in the day without the need to listen to the wireless again later that night or rack her memory for the specific details of the news reports, the exact number of Allied wins and Axis losses – for that was surely the way round it should be.
Then, to be sure to evade detection that little bit further, she folded the sheets up and lined her brassiere with them. It made for a most uncomfortable bicycle ride, the paper scraping against her bust as she cycled. But it was nothing to the horrors rumoured to be being carried out across Europe, and so she put up with it.
That evening, Persey pulled the wireless out of its hiding place in the pantry. Was it her imagination or did it get heavier each time? Usually Jack lifted it in and out if he was home. His frenetic comings and goings had decreased over the past month, but he was still openly flouting curfew, even with Stefan in the house, especially with Stefan in the house – taunting him, she imagined. But Stefan had, so far, not noticed the baiting or if he had, he just didn’t care enough to comment.
She checked that the front and back doors were locked and she left the hiding place open, ready to lift the wireless back into place and cover it over should the Germans knock at the door. It was still nerve-racking, and she went to the cabinet to help herself to a drop of Stefan’s last bottle of brandy. She needed to calm her nerves, but she knew others on the island were engaging in far more frightening activities. Doctor Durand was hiding Lise, and had been for the greater part of three years. The least she could do was hide a wireless.
She looked through the bundle of shorthand notes she’d made. She really should burn them now they’d served their purpose. Dido had told her as much, absolutely horrified to find out Persephone had kept hold of them for the time being. But every time she pulledthem out to burn them she found herself rereading them, filling her with something almost like joy – knowing that what she’d been doing had helped in some small way. It was all she had.
She tuned in and listened as the comforting chimes of Big Ben announced the news at nine o’clock in Britain.
‘This is the BBC … and now for another piece of good news.’
She sipped her brandy and began writing, then paused, not quite able to believe what she’d just heard.‘Italy has today declared war against Nazi Germany.’
Her pencil hovered over the paper and she opened her mouth and exclaimed, ‘Oh my word.’ This was it. This had to be it. The end had to be soon if even Germany’s closest friends in war were now turning against them. Remembering too late she was supposed to be writing she quickly continued her shorthand. She’d missed a bit, but the thrust of the matter was still there. When the news finished, she sat back as the announcer told listeners to stay on for the BBC Orchestra. She’d have dearly loved to listen to that, but it wasn’t worth the risk. As it was, Stefan could walk in at any minute and she still had to lift the—
‘I did not know you still had your wireless,’ a voice came from the kitchen doorway. ‘Have you had it all this time?’
Persey leapt. In her haste to switch the offending article off, she knocked the glass of brandy over, the remnants of its sticky contents spilling across the table.
She stood and then leant quickly forward and switched the radio off as if by doing so she could somehow spirit it away. Like a child playing hide-and-seek and simply covering their eyes. She stood and stared at Stefan and he stared back at her. He looked at the sheets of paper on the table. It was too late to hide them. The front door had been locked. She had been sure of it. She had bolted it herself. She’d intended to unlock it after she’d finished listening.
‘How did you get in?’ she asked in horror.
‘I didn’t get in. I was already in. I have been reading in my room.’
