Chapter 19
chapter
St. Lawrence, Jersey
The men strode through the arched entrance beside a narrow-gauge railway.
Inside the lantern-lit interior, the temperature dropped.
“Construction is slower than planned.” Schmeling’s voice reverberated off the plastered walls. “We’re low on cement and explosive charges. At least these stubborn islanders are now sharing in our suffering.”
Gerrit murmured as if agreeing. A month earlier, on the day he’d returned from leave, the RAF had sunk a supply boat and a German patrol boat.
In reprisal, the Germans had reduced the weekly bread ration from four-and-a-half pounds to three pounds and twelve ounces.
According to Charlie, this hurt the poor most of all, since the wealthy could afford the high prices for unrationed foods.
Gerrit walled in his words as he turned left, heading deeper into the tunnel complex. If the Germans were suffering due to Allied air raids, what was that compared to the suffering they’d inflicted throughout Europe?
Surely Germany had no lack of medications, no diabetics dying for want of insulin.
Charlie had returned Gerrit’s satchel with a note, unaddressed and unsigned, in flowery but strong script, stating, “On behalf of the patients and physicians of Jersey, I thank you.”
Not only had Ivy Picot’s compassion overcome her pride, so had her manners.
The men passed a squad of workers unloading bags of cement from side-tipping railway wagons while a guard yelled at them. Demyan Marchenko’s squad, and the man met Gerrit’s eye without showing recognition, which was wise.
Marchenko grew gaunter and gaunter, and Gerrit’s hands coiled. How dare the Germans complain about suffering when they treated their workers so inhumanely?
Schmeling led Gerrit and Bernardus down a rough tunnel to the right, where construction had stalled. Foreign workers poked at the roof with poles to knock down loose rock, and they loaded the rubble into railway wagons.
Dangerous work. In April, falling rock had killed two Polish workers in these tunnels, and an accident and explosion in similar tunnels at Grands Vaux had caused multiple casualties.
Water dripped down the rock face, and the scent of damp stone filled the tunnel. Gerrit and Bernardus had come to take measurements and rock samples for the next phase of construction.
Cries rose behind him, from Marchenko’s squad. A wagon tipped to the side, and half a dozen bags of cement tumbled to the ground. Split. A powdery cloud rose.
“Imbeciles,” Schmeling said. “That’s good German cement.”
Shouts and cusses emerged from the pale cloud, fists raised to strike, to block.
A glint of steel. The guard raised a rifle, struck a man in the head.
“No!” Gerrit cried. The guard would kill the man, and Gerrit turned to run.
Someone gripped his arm. “Don’t,” Bernardus said, low and fierce.
“Let the guard do his job.” Schmeling wrinkled his nose. “Such carelessness must be punished.”
Thuds of blows on bone. Shouts. Screams.
“One thing,” Bernardus said with a growl. “One thing only.”
What good was Gerrit’s one thing of drawing maps if he let a man be beaten to death?
He yanked his arm free and sprinted down the tunnel.
Ahead of him, the guard and Marchenko stood wrestling, the rifle flashing between them.
A shot ricocheted, slammed Gerrit’s eardrums.
He dropped to squatting, covered his ears.
The guard staggered backward, crumpled to the ground—his neck, his chest a mess of red.
“No . . .” Gerrit lurched down the tunnel. His ears rang.
Marchenko turned Gerrit’s way, his face wide with disbelief and devastation. Then terror contorted his features. He would be executed. No trial. No defense. No mercy.
“Get him!” Schmeling yelled, and footsteps thumped behind him. “Get him!”
Marchenko startled, and he bolted for the entrance.
“Halt!” At the corner, Schmeling shoved past Gerrit and leveled his pistol.
“No.” Gerrit’s voice strangled in his throat. Another shot pummeled his ears.
Marchenko grabbed at his arm, bounced off the wall, and turned down the tunnel toward the exit.
Schmeling followed.
“Herr Oberbauführer!” Bernardus waved him down, running hard. “Wait! We’ll catch him, van der Zee and I. We’ll catch him, bring him back. You can make an example of him.”
“Yes!” Fire crackled in Schmeling’s eyes. “Go! Quickly!”
Bernardus had already rounded the corner.
Gerrit shook his head, tried to shake off the ringing, forced his feet to move, to walk, to run.
What was Bernardus thinking? They couldn’t bring Marchenko back to be executed. They had to let him escape.
Yes, that was Bernardus’s plan—hold Schmeling back, put up a good show, let Marchenko slip away, stall the manhunt.
Gerrit raced down the tunnel.
Outside in drizzly daylight, Marchenko careened up the road to the left, with Bernardus sprinting after him.
Gerrit willed himself to catch up, but why? Gerrit might have been blessed with longer legs than his friend, but Bernardus knew what to do with what the Lord had given him.
Put on a good show. Gerrit drew his pistol from the holster for Schmeling to see.
The road made a sharp right hand turn uphill through dense woodland.
Up ahead, Bernardus gained on Marchenko.
“Let me go!” Marchenko yelled in English. “I’ll fight you. I won’t go back.”
“We want to help,” Bernardus said, just loud enough for Marchenko to hear. “Keep going, around the next bend.”
Gerrit’s breath came hard, and his feet pounded the damp road. Through a break in the trees, he scanned downhill toward the construction site. In a haze of mist, Schmeling and a few others stood in the tunnel entrance. No running, no vehicles.
The road bent to the left.
“Stop,” Bernardus said. “We want to help.”
“I won’t go back.” Marchenko gripped his arm, the sleeve tinged deep red, but he slowed to a walk. A halting walk.
Bernardus thumped to a stop and held up both hands. “We want to help.”
Help—yes. Gerrit pointed his pistol at the hedgerow. “I’ll fire a shot, make them think we’re chasing you.”
“Good idea,” Bernardus said.
Gerrit pulled the trigger. Branches exploded, and leaves flew every which way.
Would his eardrums ever recover?
Marchenko glared at them from under the arching branches of a tree. “How can you help?”
“We know someone,” Bernardus said. “I’ll take you there.”
“Who?” Gerrit said. They knew so few people in Jersey, and who lived in this area? “The Jounys? No.”
“They’re good people and clever. They’ll help him.”
“The Germans will send out a manhunt.” Gerrit waved toward the Jouny farm.
“We have no time to argue. Marchenko, come with me. Gerrit, pretend to search for ten minutes or so, fire another shot or two, then return. Tell them we split up. And pray.”
Gerrit stared at his friend’s back as Bernardus jogged up the road with the Ukrainian. What if the Germans searched the Jouny farm in their manhunt? Not only would they find Marchenko, but they might find evidence of Gerrit’s work.
One week after his close call, Charlie had picked up his “mending” and new cutout procedures, and Gerrit was sending maps and diagrams—sometimes two or three at a time—sewn with care by Opal Jouny into Charlie’s jacket.
Each map drawn at a desk in the farmhouse. Gerrit was careful to clean up, but what if he’d missed something?
Gerrit groaned and ran up the road to continue his fake search.
At the crossroads, Bernardus had turned left, so Gerrit turned right, ran a couple hundred meters, and fired a shot at another innocent hedgerow.
What else would he have Bernardus do? On his own, Marchenko might request assistance from an islander who wasn’t discreet, or worse—an informer for the Germans.
This was the only way they could save Marchenko’s life.
Pray, Bernardus had said. Gerrit slammed his eyes shut and prayed as if many lives depended on it. Which they did.
St. Helier
Thelma Galais pressed a hand over the bandage on her arm, bleeding from a minor injury which should have healed days ago. “Nothing can be done?”
For acute myeloid leukemia? Nothing, and Ivy’s jaw quivered. “Oh, these Germans.”
Thelma raised her hazel eyes, edged with red. “Sweet Ivy, you mustn’t become bitter.”
“But if they hadn’t come—”
“Would that change your treatment?”
No good treatments existed for the disease. “No, but you’d have better food. You’d be less prone to infection. And Edna and Frank would be here.”
Thelma’s face buckled, and she glanced around her drawing room, the same room where they’d learned of the deportation order. “I do wish I could say goodbye.”
Ivy had promised Edna she’d look after her mother, but she’d failed. Her vision wavered.
“Come now, brave Dr. Picot.” Thelma offered a watery smile. “Would your father cry delivering such news?”
Ivy wiped her tears. “For you, he might.”
Thelma tutted her tongue. “Do you have a drawing for me?”
With a shaky breath, Ivy collected herself and thumbed through her sketch pad. “You might be the only person on the island who will like this.”
Having given up on hiring a receptionist, Ivy had hired a girl as a housekeeper, and Aunt Ruby was serving as receptionist.
The housekeeper had accidentally left out a bag of breakfast meal, and Ivy had found a long-tailed field mouse poking his little brown head from the bag. After sketching him, Ivy had shooed him from the house and given the oats to Uncle Arthur for his livestock.
“Isn’t he precious?” Thelma traced the penciled whiskers. “You have a gift. Most people see mice as pests, but you see beauty.”
All the frustration and grief and indignation of the past three years frothed inside. “The Germans—they destroy all the beauty in this world, and I—I can’t see God’s goodness.” A sob hiccupped, and she clapped her hand over her mouth, over her horrible words.
Thelma traced the ragged hole in the bag of meal. Her wavy silver hair, pulled in a low chignon, framed her lowered face, her flickering eyelids.
What must she think of Ivy?