The Gathering Storm (26 page)

Love was so dangerous, I thought, as I looked out over the human
driftwood that had washed onto England's shores. Once they had been teachers and housewives and women waiting for their men to come home from work. They had cared about shoes and silverware and school reports. They had mirrored beauty, anger, affection, and expectation. They had identified themselves by where they lived, and who their neighborhood greengrocer was, and how many family members were coming to supper on Christmas Eve.

~ 207 ~

All that was gone. What were they now? Who were they without all the things they had believed made up their lives?

I heard the door of the sanctuary open and close. Eva and her Mac, now safely returned from Dunkirk, entered. They were surrounded by a little flock of ragged children. I stood. Jessica stood with me. Eva waved with some amazement at the tranquility of the sleeping refugees. Hermione saw her duty and hurried off to fetch more tea.

And then I spotted him...just behind Mac's right shoulder. It was Eben Golah. He seemed like a ghost who had stepped from the past to remind me of a time when there might have been a way to stop this...all this.

My heart beat the message.
"Too late...too late...too late..."

Eben was unchanged. His resolute expression was unmistakable. His gaze fixed on the baby in Jessica's arms. And then he looked at me, full on, taking me in, just as he had when we were in Switzerland.

His look seemed to say to me,
"So, Lora. We have come to this moment at last. The German church shrugged and accepted the socialist plans of Hitler as though it was the will of God. The German nation has shut out the light of Christ. And now the churches of England and the world must shut in the light."

It came to me that Eben was not surprised to see me standing erect among the wreckage. It had all come to pass, just as Eben predicted.

As I helped a mother and two children settle in the side chapel, I felt Eben's gaze upon me. I remembered our encounter beside the pasture in Switzerland when I foolishly proclaimed my love for him. What a child I had been. It had ended with Eben threatening to tell my father.

Now I was not a schoolgirl but a woman, and a widow.

~ 208 ~

I did not want to speak to him—not now. The deaths of Varrick and my father were too fresh to try to make small talk. The reality of what had befallen the world since that blissful summer was too painful. My infatuation for Eben was long over, leaving behind only a residue of embarrassment.

He did not approach me but waited at the top of the aisle until I finished my task.

I glanced up, hoping to appear uninterested in his presence. His gaze was strong and full, taking me in like an embrace. I raised my hand in a slight acknowledgment as I scanned the dimly lit auditorium for Jessica and the others. Jessica was in the back of the church. I walked toward her. It was enough for Eben.

He lowered his chin and met me, blocking my path. He took my arm and guided me into an alcove/'Lora, my White Rose." Handsome. Confident. Unchanged. Arrogant?

"Just Lora."

"Never...just."

"Too much has happened for us to have this conversation as if I am a child you can tease and flatter."

He bowed slightly. "Of course you are right, Missus Kepler."

"You heard about Varrick?"

"Eva told me, yes. I'm sorry. And for the loss of your father. A great man."

"It doesn't seem to matter how great or good, does it, Eben?" I felt angry. Bitter. "My father dead in his prime. My husband killed before we could have a life together. It's all too late."

"Yes." His intense green eyes seemed to see into my soul. "I am sorry for you, Lora."

"Thanks. I suppose your sympathy should make me feel better, but it's too fresh, Eben. And all that talk—all those meetings—what good did it do?"

"You're here. You and thousands of others made it out."

"A drop in the bucket, and you know it."

"Every drop matters, Lora."

~ 209 ~

Ashamed, I answered, "Of course. Every...what I meant was..."

"Yes, I know what you meant. You were listening to us. A white
rose clinging to the banister. You bloomed above us in your little loft while we talked about saving millions."

I remembered that summer. I had not cared when they spoke of saving lives. Selfish and vain, I had thought only of how much I loved Eben. At the memory, the blush climbed to my cheek once again.

"What is it?" Eben asked.

"We were all young and innocent then, weren't we? White roses reaching for the light?" An angry tear escaped, coursing down my cheek.

He was silent for a time, as if he heard a distant voice. Raising his index finger to my face, he caught my tear and raised it to his mouth, tasting my sorrow. Eben whispered, "Lora. White Rose."
Then his hand caressed my cheek so tenderly I could not draw back.
A moment more he held me with his eyes before he left.

B

esides Eben Golah, there was another familiar face among the volunteers at St. Mark's: Madame Rose, the incomparably competent manager of children and canal boats, who had rescued our lifeboat off the beach at Dunkirk. Madame Rose was a missionary who had spent a lifetime after the Great War caring for the orphans in Paris.

Madame Rose's broad face and bowed mouth gave her the appearance of a smiling bullfrog. I liked her immediately. The light of her faith shone on her face.

She said in a gravelly whisper to my Jessica, "All glory to God. Not one of them is lost. Not one."

Madame Rose held an infant in her arms. The flock of children who leaned against her was asleep on their feet. Hermione led them away to a quiet corner beneath the towering pipes of the great organ and helped to bed them down.

Eben continued, "But now, because they are aliens, Madame Rose's children have been brought here with the others. All will be sheltered here until there is determination of their status." He raised his eyes and suddenly at all the exits of the building we saw uniformed and armed members of the Home Guard appear.

Jessica and I exchanged unhappy glances. Jessica asked, "All who are here at St. Mark's?" I peered around at little knots of mothers and children. One group especially drew my attention. There was a heap of toddlers, tumbled together like puppies, who were sound asleep beneath the altar window depicting the outstretched

arms of Jesus on the cross. The words
Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not
echoed in my mind.

Mac nodded somberly, confirming: "All."

We had known from our arrival in England that aliens were placed into three categories. Class A was openly pro-Nazi. Those had been arrested and interned when the war broke out the previ
ous September. Class B involved refugees without papers. They were
restricted in their movements and required to report their activities. Class C, which included Jessica and Eva and me, listed a category of refugees who had lived in England for at least six years, or who were vouched for as being from Allied nations.

Over the past few weeks, after the Nazis broke through the lines in France, innocent victims of Nazi tyranny had been rounded up by the British government. The classification system had broken down. Interned in substandard camps, Jews were imprisoned all together with Nazis, Jew-haters, anti-Nazis.

Now this.

"What can this mean?" Jessica's eyes reflected the horror of memo
ries from our days in the Reich. I knew her thoughts replayed the horrors
of the secret police knocking in the middle of the night, of neighbors who
had disappeared, never to be heard from again...like Varrick's family.

Mac explained, "Everyone here must endure the classification process. Evaluation, you see." He gestured toward the black squares and white squares of the checkered floor in mute definition of what he meant.

Eben's tone was meant to be oil on troubled water. "The British government must make certain. Must
be
certain that everyone here is...friendly."

The youthful features of a Great War soldier frozen in marble gazed across the throng. Was he to be the depiction of their protector...or their jailor?

Jessica's eyes brimmed as she looked over the sleeping women and children, then shook her head in disbelief at the guards standing at every door. "Friendly?"

Eben took Jessica's hands. "Your father was a great man. He sacrificed everything. And you are Americans."

Jessica nodded. "You are saying that I, and my family, will not be interrogated again?"

Mac replied, "You are free to go home if you wish."

Such a declaration of our freedom after a night among the suf
fering was unacceptable to Jessica. "Lora?" Her gaze was steady into
my eyes.

I thought of the mothers with their exhausted children who had witnessed the brutality of war and somehow survived. I reviewed again how abandoned I had felt at the loss of my former life. It had been so hard to grasp my new identity. How impossible was it for all these so recently torn away from everything familiar? "No, Jessica. Let's stay with them," I answered. "They will need someone who understands the language of suffering to speak for them."

Jessica thanked Mac and Eben. "You knew before you asked us."

I said, "We must speak for those who have no voice."

Eben fixed his eyes upon mine. "You are truly your father's daughter." And then he bowed slightly and took my hand. "I am sorry for your loss. The Lord, Yeshua, once said, 'If you do it unto the least of these...you have done the kindness to Me.'"

I replied, "Where else could I go in my brokenness but to my suffering Lord?"

Eben Golah appeared deeply touched at hearing those words.
He bowed and kissed my fingertips in a gesture of profound respect.
With that he turned and wordlessly went to speak to the British officer in charge of the incarceration. I watched him closely as he gestured toward me and Jessica. No doubt he was explaining who we were and demanding utmost respect for our position.

We spoke only of practicalities: food and clothing and bedding. How long would these unfortunate souls be held prisoner? Where would they go if they were released? Where would they be imprisoned if they were not?

213

I slept on a pew in the St. Mark's choir loft and remembered Var-rick. It made me sad and then angry that I couldn't see his face more clearly in my memory.

I mourned what might have been for our lives. More separation than time together. I regretted the loss of our future much more than what was in our past.

Only when the great hall of St. Mark's lapsed into the quiet stirring of exhausted women and children did I allow myself to think about these things. I considered what all these dear people around me had lost. My own loss was put into perspective. The past was
irretrievable. The world as we had known it had vanished. The future
was uncertain. We who had survived to see this moment only had
this moment
in which survival was a certainty. The refuge of England's green shores, to which a merciful God had surely brought us, was only a temporary haven.

I was awakened by the tramp of English boots as a military guard entered the church vestibule. The sorting out of alien sheep and goats had begun.

Male refugees who slept in the crypt at St. Mark's were rousted out, rounded up, and escorted under guard to an undisclosed location just after dawn. Most were French who had escaped through Dunkirk. Some were fishermen from the coast who had sailed their vessels with a few family members and friends. I pitied them all. Wives and children cried out as their husbands were led away.

Madame Rose consoled Jessica and me. Her thick American twang was tinged with a hint of Gallic accent. "Perhaps those who are young enough to serve in the military will be drafted into a Free French fighting force and trained to drive the Hun from the soil of France. We shall pray it happens thus." She embraced a young Frenchman in the line and called him by name. She instructed him that he must keep his eyes on God. I understood her admonition.

~ 214 ~

"Maurice, from the time I saw you as a child, I knew the Lord has His hands on your shoulders."

The young fellow replied, "Madame Rose, I was an orphan, alone
with my brother in the streets of Paris. It was you who raised me and my brother to trust in God. But now I tell you this, in the crypt beneath this church lies entombed General Hudson Lowe. He was the very man who guarded the Emperor Napoleon in exile on St.
Helena after Waterloo. It is not a good omen for those of us who are
French to sleep in the tomb of Napoleons jailor."

Like a French grandmother, Madame Rose kissed him farewell upon each cheek and said, "Even in exile the Angel of the Lord encamps around those who revere Him. Only trust God, Maurice. You will not be in exile long."

There were tears in the gruff old woman's eyes as she hugged the weeping women and bade the Frenchmen farewell. I prayed the Lord would hear her petitions for them and that they would soon find their life's purpose in battle, lifting up their trodden nation from beneath the Nazi jackboots.