Chapter 27
chapter
St. Peter’s Parish
For the past two months, Gerrit had become nostalgic for his former life in Amsterdam, confined though it had been.
In his current life, he built for Organisation Todt without the consolation of aiding the Allies, without Bernardus’s constant companionship, and without the pleasant Sunday services at the Parish Church of St. Helier.
Gerrit climbed the stairs in the Jouny farmhouse. Only on Saturday and Sunday afternoons could he forget he was nothing but a collaborator now.
He opened Bernardus’s door. In the sun-dappled room, Bernardus sat in a chair with his foot elevated on a stool—and Ivy and Charlie sat on one of the beds.
“I’m sorry.” Gerrit stopped in the doorway. “I’ll give you some privacy.”
“No, no.” Charlie stood and beckoned him in. “I have news about the network, and I wanted to talk to all of you.”
Ivy picked up her medical bag from the floor. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“Agreed,” Bernardus said.
She already knew too much for her safety, and Gerrit stepped aside to let her pass.
“Stay, Ivy.” Charlie set a hand on her shoulder. “I want your opinion.”
“You know the rules,” Bernardus said with a growl. “Each person must know as little as possible, must have only one thing. Ivy is already treating fugitives. That’s enough.”
“No.” Charlie fixed a strong gaze on Bernardus. “We’re family. In the past few months, I’ve learned how each person’s actions affect the others in the family. I won’t proceed without discussing it with Ivy. Not again.”
She gazed up at her younger brother with respect and gratitude—and a touch of sadness in her dark eyes.
Gerrit swallowed hard. “That’s only fair. If you agree, Ivy, that is.”
Ivy nodded and lowered her head, not concealing the pink creeping across her cheeks. She hadn’t met his gaze since he’d entered, not that he blamed her. Didn’t he skitter away like a rabbit every time he saw her lately?
Bernardus heaved a sigh and banged his crutch on the floorboards beside him. “I call this meeting to order. Charlie, you have the floor.”
Gerrit sat on the empty bed.
Charlie settled down beside his sister. “When I was in France yesterday, Marie took me to a safe house. The British agent was there. He’s establishing a new network, and he wants us to join him.”
“The same agent?” Gerrit exchanged a glance with Bernardus. “How did he escape arrest this summer?”
“He was in England during the rollup.”
“Convenient.” Bernardus’s eyes narrowed.
“No, I trust him.” Charlie cupped his hands over his knees. “And they found the informant and liquidated him.”
Ivy gasped and covered her mouth.
Charlie nodded to Gerrit. “They want your maps. They know the Todts are leaving the Channel Islands, and they want as much intelligence as possible before you’re sent away.”
Gerrit winced. Each week, more of the foreign workers were sent to France, and speculation flew about how long the OT technical and headquarters staff would remain.
“Regardless,” Bernardus said. “They aren’t my contacts, the people I know. I have no connection to them. How can I trust them?”
“I know nothing about such things.” Ivy pursed her mouth and gripped her hands in her lap. “However, if the British agent had betrayed the resistance, wouldn’t you three have been arrested during this rollup as well?”
Gerrit raised an eyebrow. She had a point. Plenty of time had passed since the arrests. If anyone were to have implicated them under torture, they would have already done so.
“I don’t like it,” Bernardus said.
Yet Bernardus would be less involved now. The bulk of the work would lie with Gerrit and Charlie.
“Please?” Charlie’s brow creased. “The British and Americans are driving up Italy, but everyone knows they must invade in the west to defeat Germany. They need up-to-date information. We can provide it.”
Gerrit’s foot tapped, eager to stomp on the brakes. His fingers worked, eager to draw, to do something worthwhile. Yet neither impulse was reliable.
On the floor, shadows of branches waved in the sunbeams, void of advice or answers.
Gerrit stood. “I need to think, to pray. I’ll return in half an hour.”
Downstairs in the drawing room, Arthur and Opal sat reading. Gerrit gave them a polite smile and entered the kitchen. He rested his hands on the rim of the sink. Outside the kitchen window, brown Jersey cows nibbled green grass.
“Lord, help me decide.” So many people would be affected. Charlie, Bernardus, Ivy, Arthur, Opal, Marie, the British agent, and others he didn’t know by name. Simply because he wanted to aid the Allies and undermine the Germans didn’t mean he should.
“Oh, excuse me.” Ivy stood in the kitchen doorway, her hand on the knob. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“Don’t mind me.” He waved her in.
“I was fetching tea.” She averted her gaze to the stove. “Aunt Opal made a kettle. It may still be warm. It’s only beetroot tea, but would you like some too?”
“Yes, please.” He couldn’t stop watching her as she pulled a tray from a cabinet and set it on the table. For over a year, he’d wanted to converse with her, open and free. His collaboration had stood in the way. Then his resistance work. But now that she was involved . . .
“No sugar, of course, but would you like milk?” She held up a little jug without facing him. “One of the advantages of visiting a dairy farm.”
“No, thank you. In the Netherlands, we call tea with milk kinder thee—children’s tea.”
Ivy flashed a little smile over her shoulder. “With only half a pint of milk rationed each day, we islanders are finally growing up.”
Gerrit chuckled and ripped his gaze back to the window. He had a decision to make, one that affected the lovely young woman assembling cups and saucers.
China clinked. “Does your hand still hurt? From the sprain?”
“Hmm?” Gerrit’s left hand opened and closed. Ached. “It always hurts a bit. I broke it when I was a boy.”
“You mentioned that. How did it happen? Climbing trees? Wrestling Bernardus?” A smile pushed up her round cheeks as she fetched the teakettle.
Why was he avoiding her company? Avoiding what he’d longed for?
Gerrit turned, leaned back against the sink, and stretched the once-mangled fingers.
“A boy lived in my neighborhood. He was a few years younger than I, the son of a servant from the East Indies, quite dark-skinned. The other boys were teasing him, pushing him around, hitting him.”
“Oh dear.” Ivy’s pretty mouth turned down. “Children can be cruel.”
Gerrit shrugged. “I didn’t know what to do. I was small for my age, and I’ve never been a fighter.”
“I can see that.”
Hardly a compliment to his manliness. “The boy caught my eye. I was the only one who could help him. How could I walk away and leave him? So I stepped in, tried to talk the boys out of it. They turned on me.”
The teakettle lowered to the table. “Oh no.”
Gerrit raised a sheepish smile. “At least I distracted them, and the little boy escaped. But I was beaten up. They stepped on my hand. Stomped on it.”
Ivy took a few steps closer, reached one hand toward his. Stopped. Withdrew her hand. “This reminds you of that.”
His breath—where was it? “Pardon?”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’ve never been good with words. I noticed you flexing your hand. Does today’s decision remind you of that day?”
“I don’t know.” He stared at his own hand. “I do that when I’m thinking.”
“You needed courage that day.” She inclined her head, and soft curls swished to one side. “You need courage today.”
Gerrit restrained those fingers from touching those curls. “I do.”
“You wanted to protect the little boy that day. Today you want to protect Charlie and Bernardus and everyone in your network.” One corner of her mouth dimpled the roundness of her cheek. “That day, protection required action. Today, protection might mean inaction.”
Gerrit swallowed hard. “I thought you weren’t good with words.”
Brown eyes lifted to him, large and warm and wise. “Tell me about your maps. How do they help?”
This he could answer in his sleep, and he rested his hands on the sink behind him.
“The maps show the locations of German fortifications—bunkers, gun positions, minefields, anti-tank walls, tunnels. Many are camouflaged so they can’t be seen by Allied aircraft.
I also send diagrams of those fortifications, showing the entrances, the internal layout, the location of defensive gunnery, ventilation shafts, power lines—anything that could help. ”
“I see.” Dark eyelashes fanned over those enormous eyes.
“If the Allies had your maps, they could choose their landing sites well and take the positions more quickly. That would shorten the battle, wouldn’t it?
Fewer soldiers killed, fewer civilians. You’d be protecting far more than Charlie and Bernardus. ”
And Ivy. He wanted to protect Ivy. Perhaps helping bring this dreadful war to a quick end would be the best way to protect her and everyone else he cared about.
“You were courageous that day.” Ivy nodded at Gerrit’s left hand. “You acted to protect.”
Gerrit spread his hand before him. “Today I will be courageous again, protect again.”
A smile dawned on her face, sweet and strong and bright.
Gerrit had prayed for help making a decision, but he’d never dreamed that help would come through Dr. Ivy Picot.