The Occupation by Deborah Swift

Author:Deborah Swift [Swift, Deborah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781913335267
Publisher: Sapere Books
Published: 2019-12-23T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

The paperboy brought the paper as I was having breakfast. Oats with milk, and a pot of weak tea with recycled tea leaves — the only reasonably sustaining meal of the day. I opened the Jersey Evening Post to see an announcement about Rachel on page two. I leant closer, my tea forgotten. It showed her identity card photograph and offered a reward for information leading to her whereabouts. The article said she was ‘deliberately evading the German authorities’ and that anyone withholding information about her would be punished.

As I pored over the small column on the kitchen table, I wondered where she could possibly go. Perhaps Mrs Flanders was right, and she’d drowned herself. But then I dismissed that thought; Rachel wasn’t a person to give up; she was far too stubborn. No, she was out there somewhere.

Troubled, I folded the paper and pushed through the door to the shop, glancing at the clock over the empty shelves. After nine, and no customers yet. It was quieter these days as we had so little to sell. The days of buttery fingers, sugar icing and Viennese pastries were gone. Now it was grey bread that wouldn’t rise, because all the flour was adulterated with sawdust or straw to bulk it out. Our good bread had to go to the Germans in the hotels first, and what was left was tough and almost inedible. We were all thinner, all tired, and all of us carried tension like a wire in the pit of our stomachs.

I heard men’s voices outside the door, and through the glass I could see helmets. What now? Were they still looking for Rachel? I tensed as the door opened.

‘Céline! So I have found you at last!’ The man in the German officer’s uniform grinned broadly at me and held out his arms as he came around the counter. For a moment, I thought it was Fred and hurried to meet him, but then I took a step back, confused. He was too tall for Fred.

The man folded me in a bear hug and then noisily kissed the air either side of my cheeks.

‘Horst?’

Fred’s brother grinned, showing even white teeth. ‘What luck I have, to be posted here. Can you believe it? I asked of course, but I didn’t expect it.’

He was taller and broader than I remembered, with the same nose and the same fair flyaway hair as Fred. But his features were flatter, as if squashed to the edges of his face, and he was ramrod straight, unlike Fred’s soft roundness. His eyes were roaming around the room, unable to be still. I couldn’t work out what it meant, him being here. Was it good, or bad?

The two men behind Horst stood respectfully at the door. Horst must be their superior, I realised.

‘But what are you doing here?’ I asked.

‘I am posted here. Lucky, nicht wahr?’

‘Since when? When did you arrive?’

‘Just yesterday,’ he replied. ‘I came straight here this morning. I can’t stay long today, because I have been selected for the Organisation Todt.

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