Chapter 20
chapter
St. Helier
A sour chord from the piano jangled through the drawing room, and Ivy flinched.
Charlie started the piece again, but without his usual joking apologies for missed notes, and he’d missed many.
Ivy set aside a patient chart and picked up Thelma Galais’s. In the past month, Thelma had declined rapidly, as if the diagnosis had given her permission to go home. Every day, Ivy visited, wanting to boost her spirits. But if anything, Thelma was more peaceful.
Curled up in the armchair by the electric lamp, Ivy finished her chart notes, with the persistent heaviness of grief in her chest.
More sour chords and grumbles from Charlie. His fingers formed taut triangles on the keys.
Ever since the Ormer arrived in St. Helier this afternoon, Charlie had acted jumpy.
Ivy capped her pen. “I saw RAF planes today.” Charlie had never mentioned any attacks.
“Hmm?” His head notched up, but he didn’t meet her gaze.
“A hard day at sea?”
A terse shake of his head. “I’m fine.”
No, he wasn’t. He’d once told her every slight from friends, every accolade in school, every humorous incident. She expected more distance as he became a man, but not like this. Something serious had gnarled his hands.
Ivy filtered her sigh through her lips to conceal her concern. Her chart notes complete, she opened her sketch pad so she could finish her drawing of a horse for Demyan Marchenko.
He was recovering from his injury and had been transferred to the Hooper farm in Trinity Parish in the northeast, which sheltered two other escapees.
When Demyan was healthy enough to work, the ring planned to dye his hair black and issue false papers.
In the meantime, his confinement had made him restless, especially after months of slavery.
Ivy brought books, but what he loved most was watching the farm horses from his window.
He kept threatening to steal away for a ride.
Ivy let her pencil sweep curving lines for the horse’s tail. Perhaps her drawing could satisfy his longing and keep him indoors.
The clock chimed eleven o’clock.
Already? Since she liked to go to bed before the electricity turned off, she’d set the clock to chime five minutes beforehand. She hated to waste precious candles and matches, but she lit two candles and placed one on the piano top.
She didn’t wish to retire until Fern came home, so Ivy could share the latest Red Cross message. Mum and the boys were safe and sound at Ivy’s grandparents’ home in the English countryside, and Dad and Bill were busy with their regiment, which trained soldiers somewhere in England.
The electricity flicked off. Eleven o’clock—when curfew started now. The Germans kept changing it. “Fern isn’t home yet.” She didn’t have a curfew pass as Ivy did.
Only a grunt from Charlie.
The front door opened and closed downstairs. Thank goodness. Curfew violators could be arrested and fined.
Ivy shielded her candle as she went to the top of the stairs. “I’m glad you’re home. Curfew—”
A giggle bubbled in the darkness downstairs. “I assure you, I was perfectly safe from arrest. I saw a show with my friends from College House.”
A building requisitioned from Victoria College that served as the German field commander’s headquarters, and another chord from Charlie dripped sour acid in Ivy’s gut. But voicing her disdain for her sister’s companions would solve nothing. “What show did you see?”
“Show?” Fern emerged from the darkness into the faint glow of Ivy’s candle. “Oh, nothing to speak of. A trifle.”
Fern climbed the stairs with a sleepy-eyed smile, a smile familiar but from the past, and Ivy couldn’t place it.
“Did you enjoy it?” Ivy asked.
“Oh yes.” Another giggle bubbled up, bubbled into Ivy’s memory to the last time she’d heard that giggle and seen that smile.
When Fern had been falling in love with Bill.
The sour acid chewed into Ivy’s stomach, contracted it with pain. No. It couldn’t be.
“Oh, dear. Poor Ivy.” Fern paused a few steps below Ivy with her hand on the banister. “Look at you in your ratty old dress at home on a Saturday night. You ought to make friends and live life.”
Ivy’s tongue snagged on her objections. “Not like you.” Her words didn’t make sense, but she couldn’t think well enough to correct them, not when confronted by that dreamy smile.
“Oh yes. You have your scruples.” Fern passed Ivy on the landing and headed up the second flight of stairs. “You’ll find scruples make rather poor company.”
Ivy fumbled for the doorjamb leading to the drawing room, leaned back, covered her mouth. Was Fern falling in love? With a German?
“Excuse me.” Charlie edged past Ivy with his candle, his head down.
“Did you—did you hear?” Ivy’s words strangled in her throat.
“Mm.” Charlie climbed the stairs. “Good night.”
Her brother, her sister, her whole family—falling to pieces. No one to turn to. No one to lean on.
Save one. She squeezed her eyes shut. “Lord, help me. Help us.”
St. Peter’s Parish
Sunday, June 27, 1943
“It’s over.” Charlie leaned against the cabinet in the Jounys’ kitchen, his arms crossed tightly across his chest.
After church, Charlie had invited Gerrit and Bernardus to “hike,” meaning to meet at the farm, but Gerrit and Bernardus had planned to spend the warm day at the beach with Willy Riedel, part of their campaign to cultivate friendships with their OT colleagues.
Something in Charlie’s tone had implied this was no Sunday picnic, so they’d split up for the afternoon.
Gerrit sat at the table and motioned to another chair for Charlie. “What’s over?”
“Everything.” Charlie shoved away from the cabinet and marched toward the oven. “Yesterday, on my way to my meeting place, that man—the man in the hat—he was outside.”
Gerrit pulled off his OT cap. “Gestapo.”
“He didn’t see me.” Charlie strode toward the sink and fiddled with the curtains, even though they were already drawn. “I went straight back to the docks. Marie refused to see me—spooked. I forced my way in. Not gentlemanly, but I was worried for her.”
And for himself. Gerrit murmured his acknowledgment.
Charlie planted his hands on the rim of the sink and hung his head. “Members of the network have been disappearing, arrested. Marie’s afraid she’ll be next. I tried to convince her to come here with me, but she won’t.”
“Oh no.” Gerrit set his elbows on the table, set his head in his hands. How many had been arrested? What horrors must they be going through?
What if they had Gerrit’s maps? What if the Gestapo suspected the presence of secret ink? They could develop it. Trace the maps to Gerrit—and worse, to Charlie.
“What are we going to do?” Charlie’s voice cracked, from terror, from youth.
Gerrit dragged up his head. “What can we do? We must stop sending maps.”
“I know. I know.” Charlie ruffled his black hair, mussed it up.
The Gestapo might be looking for Charlie. “Don’t return to France. Find a new job, go back to school, anything.”
“No, no.” Charlie trod the kitchen floor and smoothed his hair. “If they suspect me, and I stopped making trips . . .”
Gerrit’s eyes slipped shut. “You’d look guilty. They’d know where to find you.”
Mumbles and footsteps crossed the kitchen. “I’ll have Aunt Opal remove the map in my jacket, and I’ll burn it.”
“Don’t.” The quickness of his reply surprised him, and his eyes popped open. “I’ll keep making maps.”
“Why? It’s futile.”
“I don’t know.” Gerrit ran his hands up and down the brown wool of his trousers. “The situation may change. All I know is I must draw maps. I’ll keep stashing them in your aunt’s fabric basket, keep making them until I run out of silk or ink.”
Charlie plopped into the chair, and his body sagged. “Did I do something wrong? Lead the Gestapo to my cutout?”
“No. You did nothing wrong. You followed procedure and—”
“What if I didn’t?” Charlie’s eyes went wild. “Not on purpose, but what if—”
“Don’t.” Gerrit thumped his palm on the table in front of the boy. “We can’t control everything. We can only do our best, which you did.”
On the table, Gerrit’s fingers splayed wider and wider. Just as shining his lamp under the glass illuminated maps so he could trace them, shining light on the opposite side of a problem illuminated the truth.
His gaze swam up to Charlie, strengthened, cleared. “Only God knows everything. We don’t. We can’t control everything, nor should we try. Do your best, yes. Always do your best. But the results . . .”
“Trust in God’s good plans.” Charlie’s face relaxed. “My mum always told me that. She says his plans are ultimately good. Temporarily they may not seem good, but ultimately they are.”
“He’s faithful.” Gerrit ground out the words, ground them into his mind. It was true, but his brain fumbled to fully grasp it. “We have to trust him for the results, and in the meantime keep doing what is good and right.”
Charlie gave a half-hearted chuckle. “Even if that means doing nothing?”
A strange peace smoothed out his soul. “Even if.”
“Arthur!” Opal Jouny called from out in the drawing room. “Arthur! We have visitors.”
Gerrit sat up stiff and straight. The signal to hide, to stash his drawing supplies and slip into the wardrobe. An agricultural inspector must have come.
But where could he hide in the kitchen?
Charlie’s gaze darted around in the same quest.
And yet . . . Charlie had reason to be at the farm, and Gerrit wasn’t drawing maps, just talking with a known friend over lukewarm blackberry leaf tea.
Gerrit raised one hand to soothe his young friend and lifted his teacup to him.
“Ivy,” Opal called. “What a pleasant surprise.”
Charlie burst out in a grin, but Gerrit tensed. He did not want to explain his presence—his invasion of her aunt and uncle’s home.
“Stay there, Ivy,” Opal said. “I’ll bring out the tea.”
“I’ll help.”
“No, no. It’s already made. I’m afraid it’s cold though, since I turned off the fire.
” Opal opened the kitchen door, shut it, and glared at Gerrit, her finger to her lips.
Apparently she didn’t want to explain his presence either.
She grabbed a scrap of paper and wrote something to Charlie, then assembled her tea tray and returned to the drawing room.
Charlie turned the paper to Gerrit. It read “Silence! You told her you were hiking.”
Gerrit nodded.
Charlie scribbled on the paper. “I hope she doesn’t stay long. We can’t move.”
Indeed not. Even slipping out the back door would make noise from scraping chair legs and creaking hinges. They were trapped—and trapped in the rudeness of eavesdropping.
Yet his ears strained toward Ivy’s lilting voice.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” Opal said. “Your uncle hasn’t hurt himself in weeks.”
Ivy’s laugh stirred something in Gerrit’s chest—yet tightness restrained her laugh.
“Are you all right, dear?”
“I’m fine myself,” Ivy said, “but I need to talk to someone. I feel quite alone.”
Gerrit frowned and resisted the urge to look at Charlie. He thought they were close.
“You’re never alone,” Opal said.
“I know. I’m trying to lean on God, but God also gives us family and friends. And this—I need to talk to someone, and it needs to stay in the family.”
Gerrit winced and glanced at the back door. He wasn’t family. He shouldn’t listen. But he couldn’t leave without making noise, making a scene.
“What’s wrong, dear?”
Silence pulsed. Was Ivy speaking in a low voice or not speaking at all? “I’m worried about Charlie and Fern.”
Charlie’s eyebrows jumped high.
“Oh?” Opal said. “Why are you worried about Charlie?”
“He’s been tense since he returned from France yesterday. He won’t tell me what happened.”
Charlie scrunched up his face. He couldn’t tell his sister his resistance contacts had been arrested.
“He’s becoming a man,” Opal said. “He’ll be sixteen soon.”
“I know, but I’m afraid something’s horribly wrong. I want to help.”
Regret pinched Charlie’s dark eyes.
Anyone could see how much he loved his sister, and Gerrit picked up the pencil. “Do something nice for her tonight.”
Charlie nodded a few times and wrote “I’ll take her to a Sunday show.”
Gerrit smiled at the boy. If only he could take Ivy to a show and hear her laugh.
Opal was speaking. “And you know he makes wise decisions.”
“He does. He’s grown up so much. Dad and Mum would be proud. I wish I could trust Fern to make wise decisions too.”
“Oh dear.” Opal’s voice stiffened.
“I don’t know how to say this. Fern’s been staying out late with—as she says—her friends from College House. Germans.”
A flat murmur. “I’ve heard the rumors.”
“Rumors?” Ivy’s voice climbed. “Oh no. What have you heard?”
“I’m sure it’s nothing.”
“It isn’t a group, is it? It’s one man.” A sob.
Gerrit clenched his fists, stopped himself from rushing to Ivy, holding her to his chest. Fern was married. How dare she carry on with another man, much less an enemy soldier?
And Charlie—his face drew long, pale.
“Now, now,” Opal said. “Rumors are often wrong.”
“Not this one.” Ivy sobbed the words. “She’s acting as she did when she was falling in love with Bill. Oh, poor Bill. And the boys.”
“Three years Bill’s been gone. Fern never forgave him for leaving.”
“But he had to do his duty. He would have hated himself had he stayed.”
Charlie’s expression warped with confusion, grief, anger.
Gerrit could no more comfort the brother than he could the sister, and he clamped useless hands together.
“She won’t listen to me,” Ivy said. “She doesn’t respect me.”
“She won’t listen to me either,” Opal said. “If it’s true, she’s already justified it all—the consequences to her marriage, her reputation, your reputation and Charlie’s.”
A loud groan from Ivy. “I promised Dad I’d look after the practice, look after the family. I’m failing.”
Gerrit’s fingers stretched toward the kitchen door. How could she think that?
“Oh, Ivy.” Her aunt spoke in a gentle tone. “You care deeply for your patients and your family. Everyone can see. Charlie and Fern are responsible for their own decisions. You are not.”
Ivy couldn’t control such things.
Neither could Gerrit.