55. Angelique
May 1944
England
My good handtightly grips the Lysander seat while the other arm cradles Anna. Please let us survive this.
The plane’s body rotates in the air, turning the Lysander north, the direction we need to fly to return to England. Nausea churns in my belly.
Strong vibrations travel from under my feet and up my legs and arms. Everything about me is vibrating—either due to the plane’s engine or from fear.
Holding Anna a little more snuggly to my body, I peer out the window to the moon-lit road beneath us. There’s no sign of the enemy driving along it, but that doesn’t mean we have not been noticed.
“Please, nobody spot us,” I whisper to myself, the fast cadence of my heartbeat accompanying the words. “Please, nobody spot us. Please, nobody spot us.”
My gaze shifts to the cloudless night sky, and I search for signs of the Luftwaffe. If they should happen to spot us, they would not hesitate to shoot us down. And Anna and I would be with Johann that much sooner.
But while I know he would have loved to spend more time with our daughter, to watch her grow up, he wouldn’t want her life to end now just so he could be with her. He would prefer she grows old and lives the life he never got to appreciate. My love, he died too young.
As far as I can tell, the enemy is not in our vicinity, but there’s still a risk they will be before we reach English airspace.
Please let us survive this.
I let out a shaky breath. I won’t be able to breathe properly until we have landed safely on English soil. I don’t remember being this nervous while flying to France at the start of my mission, even though I had to parachute from the plane.
We fly over fields and wooded areas that eventually give way to the French coast and English Channel. Only then do I allow myself to relax a little.
I glance at my sweet, sleeping baby. This will probably be one of the biggest moments of her life—a moment she will never remember. And because of the Official Secrets Act I signed prior to leaving England for France, I’m not sure I will ever be able to tell Anna about it. Perhaps that is just as well.
After what feels like several hours of clutching the Lysander seat, my hand cramping something fierce, the most beautiful sight comes into view…the white cliffs of the English coastline.
“We’re almost home, poppet,” I tell Anna. Not much longer and I can finally take a deep breath. Not much longer and I can finally make amends with my sister.
* * *
When Annaand I escaped France less than two weeks ago, I foolishly thought I would travel to Bristol the following day to see my sister. But things were not as simple as that.
First, I was required to debrief. And because I’d spent over two years in France, there was a lot to debrief on, especially regarding what happened with Christian.
Second, Anna and I had not been in the best health, so we were forced to stay in the hospital.
“I heard that bastard baby is a Jerry.” The curt woman’s voice comes from the other side of the door to my private room.
I don’t need to see her face to know which nurse the voice belongs to. This is not the first time I have witnessed the nurse’s scathing attitude towards Anna and me.
No one in the hospital knows why I was in France, but they somehow found out I was there. And they understand the odds of Anna’s father being a German soldier is greater than of him being French.
I cuddle Anna closer, protecting her from the hatred. It was the same hatred I witnessed directed at the Jews by those who clung to anti-Semitic views.
The doctor walks into the room, followed by the nurse who made the hateful comment.
“How are we doing today, Miss Bromfield?” His focus is on the patient chart in his hand. He doesn’t give me even a cursory glance.
“We are ready to leave.” It’s the same reply I have given him during the past week every time he’s asked me that question.
He continues to study the chart. “You and your daughter seem to be doing better. You have both gained some weight, which I like to see. There is no reason you can’t be discharged today.”
Thank God.
The hospital is an improvement over where I’ve been living for the past few months, but I am tired of the scorn I have been forced to endure. The same scorn I faced in France. I’m a single mother with no job and my baby has been branded as a Nazi.
The SOE has agreed I am not a threat to the country and I am not a double agent. I could tell the commander who interrogated me was not impressed a German soldier had fathered my baby, even if Johann had helped me on more than one occasion. Even if he had joined the maquis. In their view, I seduced information from him, the act of which the SOE frowns upon. They cannot fathom that I fell in love with him—and everything he told me was done of his own free will.
I fiddle with the heart pendant Johann gave me. Because of the British Official Secrets Act I signed, I cannot tell Hazel where I’ve been all this time. I cannot tell her about Johann. I cannot tell her any of the truth. I can only tell her lies.
The same lies I will have to tell Anna about her father.
And I hate that. Hate that she will never get to hear about Johann’s bravery. How he sacrificed his life to protect his sister and his mother and his daughter. But I will tell her stories about him. The stories that I’ll be able to share. I’ll make sure she knows what a wonderful man her father was.
The doctor signs our discharge papers, and I gather up Anna’s and my few possessions.
We take a taxi to Paddington station. I almost tell the driver to take us to a different location, only for Anna and me to then take another taxi to the station. But we’re back in London. The enemy isn’t following me. I don’t need to continue practicing the anti-surveillance skills I used in France.
I buy a train ticket for Bristol and walk to the platform. My gaze constantly scans the area for danger, for anyone who isn’t what he or she appears to be. A woman watches me with curiosity, and I have the urge to blend into the crowds, trying to escape the person my mind tells me is Gestapo.
A man brushes past me. I tighten my hold on Anna, her head cradled in the crook of my elbow. My good hand clutches the handle of my valise.
She fusses in my arm.
“Sorry, poppet.” I kiss the top of her head and walk to the nearby wall. It’s only once the wall is behind me, I can breathe a little easier.
I have spent the past two weeks dwelling on what to tell Hazel about Anna. I have to make up a fictitious boyfriend, who left to serve our country and never returned. I have to disgrace Johann’s memory with a lie I don’t wish to tell. Will Hazel believe me? If I tell her my mysterious boyfriend was RAF, will Charles ask questions I cannot answer?
I board the train and locate an empty seat next to the window.
A man approaches me in the aisle, a fedora on his head, a kind smile on his face. “Can I help you with your bag, ma’am?”
“Yes, thank you.” I smile at him in gratitude and take my seat.
I position Anna in my other arm so she can see the sky as the train moves.
The man takes the seat opposite mine. “Hello, I’m Mark.”
“Iris,” I say, sounding out the name that still feels foreign on my tongue. It’s been a while since I’ve been Iris and not Angelique or Carmen or éve. I’m not even sure if I am Iris anymore. In truth, I don’t know who I am…beyond Anna’s mother.
Mark pulls out a newspaper, and my brain goes into agent mode as I automatically catalogue his features: dark-brown hair slicked back, straight nose, lips that are slightly thinner than Johann’s were, an old scar bisecting his right eyebrow.
I stare out the window, my body tense as if expecting the Gestapo or SS to board the train and demand my papers.
I am safe. I am safe. I am safe. The Germans cannot hurt me anymore.
I repeat my new mantra the entire train ride to Bristol as Anna and I watch fields pass us. The war has impacted England with the bombings and rations, but the hope that burns in this country is brighter than the embers that smoulder in France. The English haven’t faced occupation. Their food hasn’t been stolen to feed German troops and the German populace. They haven’t witnessed friends and family dragged away to labour camps or concentration camps or to be executed.
But even so, the death and damage the Luftwaffe has levelled on London and the rest of the country is devastating. My heart breaks for the thousandth time, after returning to this side of the English Channel, at what the war has cost everyone.
An hour into the journey, Anna’s eyelids grow heavy, and she falls asleep in my arms. I tenderly kiss her brow and let my thoughts drift to the war I left behind in France, drift to my memories of Johann. Of when he and Dieter first arrived at Jacques’s farmhouse with the notice that Johann would be billeting there. Of when he told me about his sister. Of all those times he was kind to me. Of Oskar and Margrit and Sonja. Of the first time he and I kissed. Of the first time we made love. I then replay in my head all the other times we made love, which was by far not enough of them. And I replay the memory of the first time he saw and held his daughter.
His memory keeps me company for the remainder of the trip as I continue staring out the window at the fields scarred with signs of the war.
* * *
“Do you live in Bristol?”Mark asks me as the train approaches the city. This is the first time he has spoken to me since the train left Paddington station. He was busy reading his newspaper the entire way.
“My sister and her husband do,” I say as we pass the rows of brick houses near the tracks, and I try not to think about how many homeowners’ lives have been changed since the beginning of the war.
“You and your daughter are here for a visit, then?” Mark’s tone is casual, friendly. It’s nothing like the tone I faced during my debriefing or when Captain Krüger and Christian interrogated me.
I turn my head to catch him gazing at my sleeping daughter. “I’m not sure yet.” It depends if Hazel wants to see me again. “What about you? Do you live in Bristol or are you visiting family?” I don’t really care. I am only asking to be polite.
He looks out of the window, but not before I catch the grief in his expression. “I’m just here to tie up my family’s affairs.”
I nod and pray he doesn’t ask me any more questions. He doesn’t. He also doesn’t enquire over Anna’s father, and for that I am grateful. I am not ready to begin lying yet about Johann.
I never answered that question at the hospital about who her father was. Lieutenant Vera Atkins and Coronel Maurice Buckmaster knew. The captain who debriefed me knew. As for everyone else, even if I hadn’t signed the Official Secrets Act, they haven’t earned the right or my trust to hear the truth.
Maybe when the war is nothing more than a chapter in a schoolbook and the act that I signed is a distant memory, no longer needing to be abided by, I will be more open about who Anna’s father is—as long as it doesn’t hurt her. But until then, it’s a secret I have to bear alone.
The train pulls into the station. Mark tugs my bag down from the luggage compartment above my head and helps me off the train. I thank him.
“Are you taking a taxi somewhere?” he asks. “I can carry your bag to the taxi stand if you would like.”
A polite smile curves my mouth. “Thank you. That’s nice of you to offer.”
He helps me to the taxi stand and into the next available car. I thank him and tell the driver Hazel and Charles’s address.
The driver’s brow creases into a frown. “Are you sure that’s the address you want, ma’am?”
I nod. “Yes, thank you.”
“All right?” The word is drawn out in what sounds more like a question than a note of agreement.
He travels through the city that has changed so much since I was last here. Mounds of rubble replace buildings that were once homes and businesses. An icy chill invades my body the closer we get to Hazel and Charles’s neighbourhood.
We drive down a street to find a row of semi-detached houses in various degrees of wholeness. Some are still standing, others half destroyed. Dread fills my belly.
The taxi steers left onto Hazel’s street, and I gasp.
“Oh, God.” The words might have been whispered. I don’t know. My pulse is pounding loudly in my ears, and I can barely breathe.
He drives around a small crater and parks in front of the address I gave him. The building remains standing, but it has also taken a hit.
“Are you sure you want to get out here?” the taxi driver asks, sounding rather doubtful.
What a daft question. Of course I want to get out and find where my sister went.Someone in the neighbourhood is bound to know. She might be staying with a friend or a neighbour.
I block from my mind the other option—the one I cannot face.
“Yes.” I pay him without voicing any of this to him and climb out, holding Anna close to my chest.
I walk to the path leading to where the front door once stood and stop. I put my valise down next to me, my gaze not shifting from the house. I’m vaguely aware of the taxi driving away, but other than that, the world stands motionless.
Hazel and Charles weren’t in the house when it was bombed. The air-raid sirens would have gone off, and they escaped to the nearest shelter. They’re alive. I know it. I just have to discover where they went. Perhaps one of their neighbours could tell me.
Shuffled footsteps warn me someone is approaching on my left. My muscles turn to concrete, but I don’t have it in me to turn to see who it is.
“Bloody Jerrys.” The crackly voice is that of an elderly man. “I hope once this war is over, Churchill kills the lot of ’em.” The venom in his voice is enough to take out a troop of armed men.
My gaze remains on the house. “Did they escape?” My voice is not much more than a raspy murmur.
“Who? Hazel and her young’un?”
It’s only then that I look at the man. “Hazel has a child?”
“A baby. She was about this one’s age.” He nods to Anna in my arms.
My insides shift, no longer stable, ready to crumple like one of the shell-hit homes. “Was?”
He nods again. “Both Hazel and the baby died in the bombin’.”
My legs give out from under me as if they’ve turned to smoke. If not for the man steadying me with his arm around my waist, I would have gone down.
A sob is yanked from my lungs. Too late. Too late. Too late.
The only thing that barely got me through losing the man I loved was knowing one day soon I would have a chance to repair things with my sister.
But I am too late.
Anna fusses in my arm, responding to my distress.
“What about Charles? Did he get out of the house in time?”
“Charles has been dead for seven months now. From what I heard, his plane went down over France. No survivors.”
I close my eyes against his words. So many questions and possibilities twist in my head. Charles’s plane could have landed, but he hasn’t yet found his way to one of the escape routes. Or he was recovering from an injury and is on his way over the Pyrénées mountains at this very moment.
Hope flickers, but it extinguishes as quickly as it flared up. The odds of him surviving this long is low, especially if he was injured. If the Germans captured him, he might be as good as dead.
“How do they know there were no survivors?” Unshed tears turn the man blurry.
He hitches his shoulders. “I wasn’t there when his body was recovered, so I can’t answer the question. I just know what Hazel told me.”
Oh, God.And I wasn’t here for her when she needed me the most. I was in France, recovering from my wounds, waiting for Johann to return to Dr. Hubert and Rosita’s home.
I look at the house and my legs propel me towards it.
“You can’t go in there,” the man calls after me. “It ain’t safe.”
I sniff, tears dripping onto Anna’s blanket—the soft pink blanket Vera had given me when Anna and I landed on English soil. “That was my sister’s house. I need to go in there.” I need to find something that will keep her forever close to me.
“Like I said,” the man grumbles, “bloody Jerrys. The lot of them.” He spits at the ground.
“Could you watch my bag please? I won’t be long.” I don’t wait for his reply.
I’m taking a lot of risks entering the house. I know that. A wall could collapse. But if they were going to fall, they already would have. Besides, for the past year, I have done nothing but take risks. I have lost so much. I just…
I just…
I just…
The entire time Anna and I were getting ready to escape France, I feared the Nazis would capture us before we got away. I never considered the possibility my sister was dead.
I walk around to the side of the house and go in through the huge gap in the wall. I step into what was once the drawing room, a pile of rubble in the centre burying what might have been the settee. Blue sky peers down at me from the hole in the second-floor roof.
In the corner of the room is a playpen. I cautiously walk over to it, careful not to trip on the debris or step on it wrong. A stuffed rabbit lies in the corner, forgotten, dusty. I lean over the railing and retrieve the toy.
I scan the area and spot two framed photos on the bookshelf against the other wall. My progress to it is slow as I navigate several obstacles that could have once been the roof or ceiling or furniture.
I pick up one of the photos and remember the day it was taken, several months prior to Charles proposing to me. Hazel, Charles, and I were grinning at the camera, genuinely happy. Carefree. We hadn’t known at the time that three weeks later, Hitler would invade Poland, and Britain and France would go on to declare war on Germany.
On the shelf beneath the one with the photos is a carved wooden box I recognize. It used to belong to my grandmother. If not for my damaged hand and Anna nestled in my arm, I would take the box with me.
I struggle for a moment to open the lid, my fingers clumsy and uncooperative. I finally manage to lift the catch, and I pry the lid open.
I search through the contents. Letters. Old photos. Several legal documents. I pull the documents out one by one and read them. Hazel and Charles’s marriage certificate. Their will. I put them aside, not caring to whom Hazel and Charles bequeathed their worldly goods. There are a few other documents that are also of little interest to me.
I unfold the last piece of paper. A birth certificate with Hazel’s and Charles’s names listed. The date of birth is April 22, 1944. Their daughter, Elizabeth, was only a month younger than Anna.
All those times I dreamt about Hazel and I having daughters the same age had been more real than I realized. If Hazel and Elizabeth had survived, Anna and Elizabeth would have grown up to be more like sisters than cousins.
The document shakes in my hand and a new round of tears sting my eyes.
I close them, and memories of the last time I saw Johann seep in. The pride on his face when he looked at his daughter. He and I had envisioned a life together one day. A family filled with love and joy. But that life was stolen from us. It was stolen from Hazel and Charles.
The cruel words I’ve heard over the past four months about Anna’s father being a Nazi repeat in my head. The ignorance and the hatred. Johann wasn’t German. He was an Austrian who hated Hitler and the Nazis and everything they stood for. He was only a German officer because he hoped it would be enough to protect his mother and deaf sister.
He risked everything to protect his daughter and me—like I’ll do everything to protect the person most precious to us. To protect her from the ignorance she will face because her mother is unwed…and the hatred that would follow if anyone were to discover her father was a German soldier.
“From now on,” I whisper on a sob, “you are no longer Anna. You’re Elizabeth Ashley Wright. And I am not your mother. I’m your aunt who loves you so very, very, very much.” I kiss her on the top of her head as if that makes my declaration official.
With the documents and photo in hand, we leave the house. The house littered with broken dreams and broken hearts.