Lucy scanned the walls as files and leather books littered the interior. In truth, she’d had enough staring at walls today. At Deux Tourelles she’d been painting all morning, shifting furniture into the centre of rooms, laying down dust sheets and familiarising herself with which paint colours she’d chosen for each room as she’d totally forgotten since the trip to the DIY shop. Once she’d started with the roller, she had become unstoppable and had put the first coats of a beautiful ‘drawing room blue’ in the main sitting room and a pale ‘estate green,’ in the dining room. It had made all the difference. She’d just made a start on the hallway with a dove grey, deciding to pick out the skirting boards in a variation of the grey tone for a subtle pop of difference when a reminder had sounded on her phone and she’d forced herself todown tools, shower off all the paint she’d somehow flicked into her hair and make her way into St Peter Port to meet Will at the archives.
When the research assistant had shown them where the visitor desks were Will had taken hold of Lucy’s hand and held it up. The sudden move had made her gasp, but he’d just looked at the streak of dark blue paint she’d failed to scrub off, smiled and let go of her hand gently.
‘Drawing room blue,’ she muttered, still reeling, not unhappily, from the shock of Will’s touch.
He smiled knowingly. ‘Swanky. How long do you have to paint the entire house?’ He made a face indicating the mammoth task ahead of her.
‘We’ve booked the photographer for next week so I’m cracking on with it. I’m quite enjoying it, actually. It’s pure therapeutic joy. Apparently, the estate agent has already got someone interested, would you believe? Clara only signed the paperwork this morning. It’s not even on the open market yet but there’s a family from the mainland been looking for a large home in Guernsey for a while, so the agent says.’
‘It might not matter at all if you don’t paint it then,’ Will suggested. ‘If they’re already keen.’
She looked at the blue stain on her hand and thought of the hours she’d put in, the hours of painting left to go. ‘Don’t say that,’ she groaned.
‘OK,’ the woman said, returning. ‘Here’s the information you requested.’
‘Requested?’ Lucy asked.
‘I called ahead,’ Will replied. ‘Asked for anything relating to the house in the Germans’ files. There’s a small research charge, but it’s worth it. Look at this place. I wouldn’t know where to start.’
Lucy gave him an impressed look.
‘I know. Aren’t I clever?’ he said with a smile.
The woman continued. ‘I found only two documents relatingto the time you mention. Deux Tourelles crops up in a few of the German military records left behind—’
‘Yes,’ Will cried triumphantly. ‘I knew they didn’t take their records with them.’
‘We’re lucky,’ the researcher said. ‘They destroyed a lot of them. But we have a good record of the day-to-day running of the Occupation. A few non-essential files are in German, but those we have translated into English show the name of the house only crops up a handful of times, in particular in staff accommodation files, deportation files—’
‘Deportation?’ It was Lucy’s turn to interrupt. ‘What kind of deportation?’
The researcher handed them a box and smiled. ‘Shall I let you find out?’ She pointed them in the direction of the research tables telling them to come to her if they needed anything explaining or wanted to call up any further documents.
They sat and Lucy opened the box, not really sure what to expect in the bundle that the researcher had just outlined.
The deportation orders had been typed into a list and there were a few lines of text relating to a Mrs Matilda Grant, residing at Deux Tourelles in 1942, Occupation: Housekeeper. She was listed among names slated for deportation in September 1942.
‘This is the English being sent home?’ Will asked.
‘No, you mainlander,’ Lucy teased. ‘This is the English being sent to Germany. To camps.’
He nodded as Lucy continued, ‘All non-island-borns were sent to civilian camps for the duration of the war.’
‘Why?’
‘Some convoluted retaliation against German citizens being taken prisoner by the Allies elsewhere in the crazy realm of war.’
He shook his head. ‘OK. That was news to me. What else is in here?’
Lucy turned to the next document: Feldkommandantur files relating to staff passes and staff accommodation. ‘TheFeldkommandantur was the division in charge of running the Occupation,’ she explained briefly. ‘Food supplies, utilities, infrastructure and keeping the civilian population in check.’ Will gave a mock-yawn and Lucy nudged him in the ribs. ‘This is serious,’ she chastised.
They read the complex file listing ranks and serial numbers until she found on the page a Captain Stefan Keller, who had been billeted at Deux Tourelles from near on the beginning of the Occupation until some time in 1943. Further information followed about the size of the house and the availability of suitable accommodation before the following entry showed the next available property and listed another officer being billeted and so on and so forth down the page.
‘This can’t be it?’ she said. ‘Where’s Persephone? Where’s Dido?’
‘Perhaps there was no need for the Germans to mention them in their files? I only asked for help looking up the house in relation to the Germans. Or if they did, maybe they’re in the German-language files that the researcher mentioned. Hang on,’ Will said and leapt up.
He returned a few minutes later. ‘She’s going to find the Identity Registration Forms for the sisters for us.’
