Mists over the Channel Islands

Chapter 1

chapter

St. Helier, Jersey, Channel Islands

Words failed Dr. Ivy Picot, so she sketched her father with gray-flecked hair, packing to go to war.

In his office, Dad buckled his medical bag. “Have no fear.”

“Perhaps I should fear the Germans, but I don’t.

” Ivy drew her father’s rounded cheeks and chin, so much like hers.

With the fall of France certain and the Channel Islands too distant for Britain to defend, the British troops and Jersey Militia were evacuating.

“I’m proud of you. The militia needs their medical officer. ”

Dad engaged Ivy with a gaze as soft as the black leather of his bag. “I meant you mustn’t fear for the medical practice.”

Ivy stifled a wince. Since she was a woman and only one year out of university, patients often asked for the “real doctor.” Would they trust her without Dad’s experience behind her?

“You come from a long line of Doctors Picot, and you may be the finest yet.” Dad’s brown-eyed gaze drilled into her. “Come along.”

Ivy set her sketch pad on Dad’s desk—her desk for now. How long until he returned?

Would the Germans invade the Channel Islands or ignore them as inconsequential? Could Hitler resist planting his flag on British soil? What would happen if they came? The horrifying stories from Poland and the Netherlands and Belgium . . .

Ivy shuddered and followed her father into the waiting room of the surgery. Since the Nazis loved to provoke panic and despair, staying calm seemed an appealing act of defiance.

Dad slipped on his overcoat. “Fern will be a good help to you.”

“She will.” Ivy pinned on her hat. In April, her older sister had taken their mother’s place as receptionist when Mum went to England to care for her ill father.

“You’re each strong where the other is weak. Don’t forget that.”

Ivy’s only strength lay in medicine. Even then, she relied on her father’s wisdom. A fluttery sensation filled her stomach. How could she run the practice without him?

“You’re ready, Dad?” Charlie clomped down the hall, his face alight. “I wish I could fight too.”

Ivy pulled her twelve-year-old brother to her side, resisting the urge to brush back the shank of black hair hanging over his brow. “Let’s finish school first, shall we?”

Charlie screwed up his handsome face. “The war will be over by then.”

Ivy certainly hoped so. “Are you sure you don’t want to evacuate?”

“I’m not afraid of the Nazis.” He pulled himself tall but barely cleared Ivy’s shoulder. “Besides, you need a man around the house.”

Charlie’s voice had yet to change, but Ivy gave his narrow shoulders a squeeze.

“If you evacuated, Ivy . . .” Dad said.

If she evacuated, Charlie would too. “And who would care for our patients?”

“Indeed.” A sad wisp of a smile rose. “War makes for difficult choices.”

How unfair that Dad should have to make those difficult choices twice in one lifetime. “I know—now I know.”

Dad’s gaze swept the walls of the ground floor of the family home, La Bliue Brise, where he’d been raised, where he’d raised his own family, and where he practiced. “In times of peace, we choose amongst many good and pleasant paths, but in times of war . . .”

Ivy’s throat tightened. “No path is good or pleasant.”

“Not pleasant, no.” He aimed one finger at Ivy. “But you can still choose the good. You must.”

She managed a nod. What could possibly be good about Nazi soldiers coming to their beautiful island?

Dad picked up his luggage and led the way out onto Bath Street.

In the skies above, puffy clouds edged with light played in the cool breeze, oblivious to the turmoil below.

Bill and Fern Le Corre came down the road with their twin seven-year-old sons. Billy and Freddy scampered to Dad and hugged him, then Ivy.

“We don’t want to go to England.” Tears swam in Billy’s dark eyes. “Mummy doesn’t want us to leave.”

“But Daddy says we must,” Freddy said.

One look at Fern’s quivering chin and Bill’s stony chin, and Ivy took her nephews’ hands and led them down the street toward the harbor. “What a lovely adventure you’ll have. Your grandmother can show you where she played as a girl before she came to Jersey.”

Ahead of Ivy, Fern clutched her husband’s arm and tipped up her exquisite heart-shaped face. Her eyelashes fluttered over her wide-set eyes. “Please stay, Bill. I need you.”

“Then come with me. Stay with your mother.”

“I will not leave Jersey. It’s my home. And Ivy needs me to run the practice. Right, Ivy?”

Ivy did, but she wanted no part of their discussion, so she told the boys to count the houses they passed to distract them from their parents’ ongoing argument.

“I’m in the militia.” Bill strode with a military bearing as if to prove his point. “It’s my duty to fight for our island.”

“How can you fight for our island by leaving it?”

“We already discussed this. I refuse to stay when I can fight for Britain.”

“At least let me keep my boys. They’re all I have.” Fern’s voice warbled.

Those boys had reached their limit with counting, so Ivy had them look for their chums on their way to the docks.

So many children. Schoolchildren, like Billy and Freddy, evacuating alone.

Younger children with their mothers. Men of military age, off to enlist in the British Army.

All jostling each other, hefting luggage, skirting the mass of abandoned cars.

Ivy clutched the boys’ hands so she wouldn’t lose them in the crowd.

Alexander Coutanche, the Bailiff of Jersey, had urged people to stay, but hundreds filled the Weighbridge area by the docks and circled the gardens around the statue of Queen Victoria.

“My decision is final,” Bill said to Fern. “The boys are evacuating to England for their safety. Join them or don’t. That’s your decision.”

Fern jerked her head to the side.

“Come now.” Bill’s voice sweetened. “May I have one lovely smile before I leave?”

Ivy ripped her gaze from their farewell, hugged her nephews, and sent them to Charlie for one last hug from their beloved uncle.

She fell into her father’s embrace and absorbed his scent of wool and pipe tobacco and disinfectant, his strength and wisdom and cheer. Somehow she had to make do without him. Somehow she had to relieve his worries, his guilt about leaving. “I’ll miss you, but we’ll be fine.”

“I know you will.” Dad’s voice went gruff. He spun away to hug Fern, and then he and Bill led the boys down Albert Pier extending over the turquoise waters.

Fern’s face wobbled between grief and anger, and Charlie’s between grief and stoicism.

Ivy linked arms with them, one on each side. “We’ll make do. We will. As long as we look after each other.”

Something too manly and resolute crossed Charlie’s face. “And choose the good.”

The family. The practice. The patients.

“Yes,” Ivy said. “We’ll choose the good.”

Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Thursday, July 2, 1942

The Gestapo knew how to follow a man far better than Gerrit van der Zee knew how to avoid being followed.

The sensation of being watched heated the back of Gerrit’s skull, and he walked right past the door to his own apartment building.

Sixteen months had passed since he and his best friend, Bernardus Kroon, had dissolved their resistance group. Sixteen months since he’d done anything warranting arrest.

Yet that familiar heat persisted. If the Germans had arrested one of his former colleagues, they could have extracted names under torture.

Gerrit’s grip tightened on his attaché case. Every time he had turned a corner on his way home from work, he’d discreetly scanned the street behind him. But discretion created blind spots.

His next movements had to be smooth, swift, and innocent. He couldn’t afford to step into a Gestapo trap, but he did want to go home.

To still his mind, he counted to ten.

Stopped. Glanced at a house number. Frowned. A quick back-and-forth as if lost.

Spun on his heel and retraced his steps.

What had lain behind him now lay before him. No one on the street stopped. No one ducked into a doorway. No one stood reading a newspaper.

Two businessmen passed, discussing a supplier who owed them a shipment. A young mother carried a bundle on one hip and a baby on the other. An elderly couple leaned on each other as they shuffled over the flagstones.

The back of Gerrit’s skull cooled, and he strode on, casually surveying the neighborhood.

When he reached his building, he studied the house number while checking out the side of his eye in case anyone had doubled back.

No one had. He exhaled, slipped inside, and shut the door behind him.

A man stood by the staircase, a gray homburg shielding his lowered head.

Gerrit’s heart seized, and he groped for the door handle. He’d walked into a trap after all.

The man lifted the brim of his hat, revealing Bernardus Kroon’s pale blue eyes and ruddy complexion.

The air rushed from Gerrit’s lungs. “Ber—”

Bernardus pressed one finger to his lips, then pointed upstairs.

Only the most important of reasons would compel Bernardus to break their silence, so Gerrit led his friend up to his flat.

In early 1941, Dutch Nazi thugs had murdered Dirk de Vos, the editor of their underground newspaper. With the Germans cracking down on the Dutch resistance with arrests and executions, Gerrit and Bernardus had shut down the group and parted ways.

Inside the flat, Bernardus tossed his hat on the coatrack, went to Gerrit’s phonograph, and lowered the needle. Strains of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major frolicked in the air.

Bernardus’s shoulders slumped, and he rolled his eyes at Gerrit as he sat in one of the two armchairs by the stove. “You need better records.”

“You need better taste.” Gerrit allowed a little smile and pulled the second chair closer to his oldest friend. “You’re alive.”

“So are you. No mean feat nowadays.”

“Which is why we aren’t supposed to meet.”

Bernardus flicked up the smile he always gave when he disregarded Gerrit’s advice. “Have you joined another resistance group?”