War Bonds: A Novel of World War Two, page 19
“Carlos.” The colonel finished it for him.
“Yes. That’s it,” said Wills, dropping his head in relief. “I am—was—Carlos.”
“You got out a right many of our fliers, Lieutenant. You did a terrific job for us. But son, that was a helluva long time to stay behind enemy lines hiding yourself like that. Had they found you, no POW conventions would have applied to you, you know. You’d a been shot. It is incomprehensible that you stayed at it… what… four years?”
“I never planned to do it for so long. But it seemed I couldn’t let it go, Colonel. Gilles’ family saved my life—and dozens of others. Crossing the mountains was not easy—but after a few months, I got better at it and knew that this odd set of skills I’d developed could not be replaced easily—that people would die if I left and others had to take over my routes.”
“Well, I’m not sure if that’s hubris or courage, Lieutenant. But I do know we need both to win this war. So, what of your family? Will they forgive you for choosing to live in the woods like this, for not making your way home earlier?”
“I’m praying so, sir. And I’m hoping you can get my status here reclassified so I can see them sooner rather than later. Right now, I’m lumped in with the German POWs. They think I’m a very clever spy for Hitler.”
“Private, take this man to my office and arrange for his transfer home. You’ll need to confirm his details with the British duty officer—serial number, service unit, all that. There is also likely to be an inquiry into why you didn’t immediately return to service. That may take a bit of time, Lieutenant, but hold tight. We’ll get you home soon enough.”
And despite his peasant dress, his dirty face and hands, the long, unkept hair secured by a red bandana, Wills saluted like the soldier he was. “Thank you, sir. Most appreciative.” The colonel returned the salute, then reached to clasp Wills’ arm. He leaned in.
“Thank you, soldier. You saved my own son’s life. Did you know that?”
Wills smiled. “Delighted to hear that, sir. Truly.”
As the colonel turned to other duties, Gilles exhaled with relief, then pointed towards an exit door. He escorted Wills through a hallway, then a stairwell, to a warren of rooms and the colonel’s basement office.
“And your parents?” Wills asked once they arrived in the office. “How have they fared?”
Gilles gave a tense smile, his eyes clouding, remembering. After a few long minutes, he spoke, his voice tight.
“We lost them almost two months ago. Right after Normandy.”
“Lost them? How, Gilles?”
“It began with Sucre. I loved that little dog. She was so very smart, non? We found her dead outside the barn one morning, foam around her mouth. Then we discovered several of the cattle, lowing in pain. Poison, we think, scattered in their feed. The Gauleiter had watched our farm for years—never could get anything on us because father was so clever, always varying his practices. The collaborators knew their opportunity to expose us was closing with every kilometer the Allies advanced from the coast. They knew my father would bear witness to all they had done in service to the Gestapo these past four years. Without Sucre keeping guard, they probably had run of the house and found the trapdoor in the living room that opened to the crawl space. We kept the radio there—and there could have been documents, maps, clothing, any number of things. They were probably disappointed no one was hiding at the moment, but they’d gathered enough evidence for their purposes. My parents were taken to the churchyard and executed. Both of them hanged. I’m told they were very brave, heads high, father yelling Vive la France to his last breath. They gather everyone, you know, summon them to town to make them watch it, thinking it will encourage them to collaborate, not resist. But all it’s done is confirm the godlessness of the Boche.”
“Gilles, I am so sorry. And now. After everything. How did you escape?”
“Father sent me off to the partisans after we found Sucre. He had made the calculation. We heard over the BBC when the Allies landed and he knew anything could happen before Lille was liberated. He was always right in these kinds of judgements. Right about Petain, right about Hitler. But my parents were not the only ones caught in the final sweep. Every farmer with land adjacent to ours was arrested and killed. Their children, their livestock.” He paused, gathered himself. “It was vicious. And impels me to tell their story. My parents—who, you know, never sought any of this—saved one hundred and sixteen lives. How do I know this? Because mother tallied every one. After we sent you on your way, she placed a tiny notch at the base of her wooden spoon—her best stew spoon, the one she always used. You know the one. She counted from the very start because she knew there would be others after you. The last time I saw it, there were notches all the way up the handle. I can see her at the stove, stirring, stirring, the palm of her hand probably feeling each nick in the wood, reminding her of the lives she’d saved. Yours being the first. And after that, pilots, British and American, even a Pole or two working with the RAF. And the Jews—some who ran shops in the village, people we’d known for years. Our neighbors who lost everything. She was overjoyed we could do that. We all were.”
“And Sylvi? Is she safe?”
“She is, Lieutenant, back at the farm now, trying to put things back together with our parents gone.”
They talked a few moments about Sylvi—her determined work on behalf of the Resistance, her resolute confidence when Wills had seen in her in Toulouse. Even so, she had lost her parents. Wills offered further words of sympathy that came out muddled and fragmented as he worked to absorb what he’d learned.
“I admire my big sister,” said Gilles. “She certainly got the adventurous life she had hoped for—more adventurous than she could have imagined even three years ago. She is taking stock now, resting, deciding what to do with the farm once all this is over—whether we sell it or put the work in to restore it. She is cut of the same cloth as my parents and they were so proud of her.”
“Never forget their pride in you, too, Gilles. Barely eighteen and helping bring all those people to safety. And now, a soldier in the FFI.”
“Yes, I think father would like this,” smiled Gilles, “both of us fighting to keep France free—he in The Great War and me in this one. Vive la France.”
“Indeed,” responded Wills. “Always. And your dear parents will live on too, both in legend, and in those whose lives they saved.”
. . .
Grief over the news of Albert and Ginette’s murders stayed with Wills even as he was directed to new rooms to talk to new officials who, inch by inch, began the process of transforming him from a Maquisard into a British lieutenant once again. The sacrifice of the farmer and his wife had made it possible, Albert adhering to a moral imperative, in which, in effect, he exchanged his life for Wills’ and so many others. It was only right that Wills had followed suit. He would hold to that belief no matter who challenged it. As he received a clean uniform and dog tags with a name he had not used in four years, he hoped his wife and son, who had been bereft of his companionship these past four years, would understand his reasons for taking the treacherous path he’d taken.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
God giveth the shoulder according to the burden.
–German Proverb
London and Elsworth, 1944
Some days as she dressed for work, Beryl stood before the armoire and ran her hands along the sleeves of Gordon’s good shirts, one after the other. She remembered what it felt like to touch the crisp cotton on his arm, the way he rolled the sleeves so carefully when he worked—two times—so he would not get ink on his cuffs. She had never removed his shirts from the cramped, shared space—a testament to the strength of her denial. In the earliest days of the war, despite the terror-bombing, she still believed her family would reunite quickly and all would be set right in Europe once the right people got to the table. Four years later, the shirts no longer smelled of him—his hair tonic, his shaving cream—but still, she often brought a shirttail to her face and inhaled, hoping.
Beryl never intended to keep the news of Gordon from Colin for so many months, but circumstances conspired to delay her visit to Elsworth to tell him. It took her weeks to reach the point where she felt emotionally prepared to walk her son through this heartbreak. She wanted Jack at her side when she told him, but Jack was not soon available, given the acceleration of the air war. He was restricted to base until late spring, by which point they agreed it would be better to wait until the end of Colin’s school term. In the interim, Beryl continued to badger the War Office to locate what remained of Gordon’s things. The dog tags at the very least—evidence of his dutiful service—but what about his boots or his watch or his wedding ring or the letters she had written him? She wished to hold a thing, a tangible anchor to his beautiful, truncated life and the years he had lived apart from her. It would help her and Colin move forward—was that so much to ask? The vapid clerks had been useless in this, offering little information on what they termed “the most unusual of cases.”
Then suddenly, it was June and the wards of Grove Park overflowed with the wounded from Normandy, men who had charged out of landing craft into churning waters and onto the sand amidst shredding artillery fire. The losses were unfathomable, but those lucky enough to make it back to London had a good chance of survival, albeit without arms and legs they had left on the beach. And as the Nazis were pushed from the coast, their leader, safe in his lair in Berlin, ordered his supply of V-1 bombs be armed and aimed across the Channel. All hospital leaves were cancelled: every nurse, doctor, orderly, and ward clerk worked sixteen-hour shifts day after day, as more wounded fighters came in not just from France, then Belgium, then Holland, but from neighborhoods across central London as the buzz bombs cruised over quiet streets, hunting for victims. Despite this fresh horror—anonymized, unmanned missiles, a more sophisticated iteration of what England endured in the early months of the war; despite the volume of wounded soldiers and civilians that exhausted medical supplies and workers at hospitals city-wide, there grew a sense of optimism that this was the beginning of the end, that things might be turning and the Allies could prevail. Londoners lifted their heads, greeted one another again on the streets, chatted with waiters and news agents and bus drivers, allowing themselves to entertain notions of the future, of themselves remaining free, that the tyrant to their east would soon be forced to capitulate.
Beryl had not seen her son in six months when she finally found an August Saturday to take the train to Elsworth. As she watched the countryside from the train, the greens and golds faded now after summer’s draining heat, she placed herself back in the days before the war, when she and Gordon had taken toddler Colin on holiday to the shore, chasing him as he pursued butterflies and gathered seashells he presented proudly to his mother; the three of them drowsing in the afternoon on the worn blanket; she and Gordon watching the face of their boy as he slept, lying on his back, arms splayed as if to say he was ready to embrace the world when it arrived for him. Now she would have to tell him a very different future awaited them both.
All this had been difficult for Jack in a different way, as he grasped the depth of Beryl’s love for her husband and anticipated the grief the news would bring to Colin. He knew he could never replace Gordon, but still hoped he could interlace his future with Beryl and her son. Perhaps when the war ended—and some were saying it was a matter of a few more months—if he survived, he could stay in England and help with the drawdown, with deactivating the air bases. Then maybe muster out and stay. These ideas he kept to himself, knowing how unseemly it was to lay plans to replace a father, a husband. He found Beryl extraordinarily strong, unwavering, continuing her dutiful work at the hospital despite her own loss. He had visited her in London as often as he could through the summer, spending nights on her living room sofa, bringing chocolate bars and tea bags to her at Grove Park, leaving flowers on her doorstep, even meeting her in the middle of the night—her dinner break—to share a meal in the cafeteria. She had responded kindly to all of it, grasping his arm as they walked, kissing him hello and goodbye every time they met, too early, Jack understood, for intimacy beyond that. But he dreamt of it. The shattering things she had faced in this war had given her a depth, a grace, a wisdom he felt sure he would never find in another woman. The chaos of the war had strengthened and shaped them into better people, Jack believed, conjoining them in that way unique to survivors of catastrophe, who have only to exchange a glance to understand one another wholly, completely. Jack did not believe the folks back home would ever fully understand him now, the way Beryl did. And Colin. Jack couldn’t imagine loving his own child any more deeply and wished only to do what he could, so Colin had the full and happy life Gordon would have wanted. So, he remained available to Beryl as she wished him to be, waiting, hopeful that he would be the man to fill the chasm left by Gordon’s death.
Jack watched Beryl step from the train, dark hair a swirl of energy, smile constrained, eyes softening when she spotted him. He parked the jeep in front of Ivy’s house and as they made the trip up the cobblestoned walk, Beryl reached for his hand, her own damp, sweating. Margaret swung the door wide, nine and a half years-old now, pencil parked behind her ear, notebook in hand, a writer these days of plays and short stories.
“Mrs. C!” she cried, reaching for a hug, then quickly reading the look on the adults’ faces. “News, then, is it? Well, I’m still happy to see you both. Glad you’re here. Let me find Colin.”
“Tell him we’ll meet him in the garden, will you, sweet girl? We’ll be out back.”
They proceeded through the kitchen where Ivy waited silently, apprised of the purpose of the visit the day before.
“Shall I join you, or no?” she asked gently. “Whatever you think best.”
“Take the girls and Hugo, Ivy, and if you could, please let them know while we talk with Colin outside. And thank you. Thank you for all of this. For four years of this, really. For providing Colin—and me as well—this safe place.”
With tears in her eyes, Ivy turned to gather the other children. How could it have worked out that Gordon had died, with her own husband improbably alive behind the lines? She had tucked Wills’ wedding ring away last winter in her bureau, speaking of its provenance to no one. Oliver Dowd said talk would endanger Wills’ life and the lives of those Wills worked to save: people tended to find details of things like this so hopeful and exciting, the information had a way of getting across the Channel to the wrong people. With effort, she put it out of her head—keeping it from her son and the rest of the children, her neighbors, even the vicar. But daily, she awoke mindful of this miracle that for now she had to protect, unaware that others noticed, but could not explain, the palpable lightening of her spirit.
Jack and Beryl waited on the garden bench only a few minutes before Colin bounded out the door.
“Son,” she said, standing, clenching and twisting the handkerchief in her hands. Jack stubbed out his cigarette and stood next to her.
Looking at his mother—the anguish in her eyes, the defeat in her posture—Colin knew.
“Dad?”
She gave a single nod. He asked how, absorbing the bitter details like a boxer conditioned to withstand repeated, brutal blows, his face working to hide his grief, to drive away any tears.
“I had rather wondered about this, Mum,” he said quietly. “It’s been so long since there’s been a letter from him.”
“I’d hoped you hadn’t noticed, that with your busy life here, with Hugo and your friends, school… I had hoped to give you a few more months of—I don’t know—peace? Happiness?”
He looked at her, surprised. “It’s always there for me, Mum, always. Whether we talk about it or not. Ever since I came to Elsworth, I worried about him. I worry about you. I love Mrs. Hughes and Hugo and the people here—my God, the Dowds are practically grandparents to me. And Jack and Buck and the guys at Kimbolton. I’ll love them my whole life long. But I miss you and dad every day and I feel sick and uneasy when time passes and I don’t see you or hear from you. That’s when my mind starts to reason things out, figure out what must be happening. And when you stopped bringing new letters from Dad… I knew. I think I’ve known for months.”
His words brought a fresh swell of tears, Beryl grasping that instead of shielding her son from grief, she had compounded his pain, month after month, with her avoidance and obviation. Colin reached for her hand, then moved to embrace her. Fighting tears of his own, Jack wrapped his arms around them both and there they stood, resting, leaning against one another. Once they summoned the strength to let go, Colin leaned into his mother’s ear to say wouldn’t it have been bloody tremendous if Dad had gotten to meet their Yank.
. . .
That afternoon, Reverend Dowd paid a pastoral visit, quietly observing that Lieutenant Clarke must have been a remarkable man because look—just look—at his exceptional boy. At this, Colin and Beryl recalled Gordon in his essence, the things he loved: drawing and architecture, listening to fine music, a sassy, witty remark of the kind that drew him to Beryl in the first place. His high character, his integrity and kindness. The vicar took those little anecdotes and wove them into a narrative fabric of Colin’s particular gifts, both his wit and his many kindnesses—with the twins, at school, with the American airmen—stories that distracted Beryl and Colin and everyone else from the pain of the present moment, as the vicar intended they do. The girls giggled when Reverend Dowd described them learning to ride their bicycles, how Colin and Hugo caught them when they faltered—never once letting them fall—and how the boys tricked them into thinking they were still holding them steady when they were really just running alongside. This was among the vicar’s best talents, not learned in seminary necessarily, evident only to congregants in the midst of loss and turmoil. This simple, soothing, storytelling helped the grieving understand that life would go on because it could still contain incandescent moments of love and beauty. That this is precisely what life is, he affirmed, without saying the words: searing loss and extravagant blessing, both. The voices drew Marigold from the upstairs and she slowly wound her way through the long legs of the children sprawled on the floor, climbing into Patsy’s lap once she found her. The room grew quiet, Marigold the only one speaking with her steady purr, the right moment, the vicar determined, to lift a prayer of thanksgiving for Gordon’s life and service. It was so simple and heartfelt that Beryl extended her own prayer, thanking God for this man’s influence on Colin’s life, resolving that later—after all of this—she and Colin would find a parish to attend in London. They would. It would get them through this. Then Reverend Dowd asked about honoring Gordon more formally, about a memorial service over which he would be pleased to preside. Beryl said she would like to do exactly that. The timing would depend on the War Office, from which she still hoped to receive some of her late husband’s personal effects.
