The Postcard (26 page)

There were some redeeming acts of kindness. A Flemish wardress brought her a Bible, blunt scissors to cut her toenails, and some tattered books. She looked into her face as if Callie was a human
being worthy of respect. Sometimes her soup had extra meat floating in it, enough to chew and feel the nourishment. To survive, she must find a sanctuary in this dark place. Survival of the spirit
was its own form of resistance. Her training had briefly touched on how to survive in prison. She kept on tapping her Morse code but no one answered. Was she alone on this upper floor? She had a
pencil to make notes in her Bible margins. She even asked for a priest, but none turned up. Every night she did battle with the bugs that would feed on her if not caught. There was a whole army of
them in her straw mattress that she would never overcome.

Each day, she retreated into a form of mental exercise, taking one bit of her life, stripping it into minute detail and recalling every pleasant part she could. How the loch shimmered in the
sunlight at Dalradnor and the snow on the hills glistened in the sun. She visited every room of the house, the stables, the gardens where the roses were in full bloom. She rode Hector again and
relived her childhood sitting in a tree with the twins from the farm, Niven and Nairn. She took the train from Milngavie into Glasgow and visited all the famous department stores, pausing to admire
the Argyll Arcade full of jewellery shops. She smelled the chalk and ink in Miss Cameron’s classroom. In this way she could leave the four walls and roam at will into the Scottish
countryside.

This treat had to be earned by an hour of stretches and poses to flex her slack muscles and calm her breathing. How she’d cursed the PT trainer for increasing repetitions and making her
sweat, but now the exercise was a lifesaver. She pressed her arms against the wall to strengthen her upper body, ran on the spot, but with so little decent food she knew not to exhaust herself.
There were occasional showers when she relished the icy chill to cleanse her body and got rid of her lice-ridden clothes. Her periods had ceased, which was a blessing, but she was wasting away in
this place.

There were good days, but also bad days with too much time to dwell on all that she was missing. What had she achieved? Only failure and betrayal, and there was always the terror that
she’d never see her son again. At night, it took all her willpower and bloody-mindedness not to go mad with these dark thoughts. There had to be hope that the Allies would arrive one day.

Bombing raids were more frequent. It was after one such night raid that the door opened and the wardress shouted at her to get dressed: ‘
Schnell. Alles einpacken!
’

What a joke; all she had was a ragged pillowcase with a change of underwear, a Bible, and a stump of a toothbrush. Did this mean the end? She hardly dared to hope after all this time.

‘Am I free?’

The wardress laughed. ‘Agents like you will never be free. Special orders from Berlin, you are to be sent to somewhere safer in Germany. Your escort is waiting.’ For once, the woman
did not look her in the face but whispered as she left, ‘You will need more than good luck where you’re going.’

Callie was amongst a group of women bundled into a truck with no windows, escorted by guards onto a train and sealed in a darkened compartment with more guards. They travelled east through the
darkness for days and nights. Eventually, exhausted, starving, aching, they were pushed off the train in a siding with their luggage and marched for many miles under female guards before being
shoved through the large iron gates of a labour camp north of Berlin at a place called Ravensbrück. Little did Callie know that she was entering
L’enfer des Femmes,
the
Women’s Hell.

Desmond blew out the six candles on his birthday cake. Mima had made a sponge rolled into an engine shape, covered in real chocolate powder and dotted with dolly mixtures.
Jessie had given him magic colouring books and knitted him a new jumper made from unravelling the wool from one of Mummy’s old ones, kept in her trunk for when she came home again. Granny
Phee gave him a pound note to spend on anything he liked, and some sweetie coupons too. He’d invited three boys from school for tea and they played football and tag in the garden until the
gong rang.

He liked being six but he wished Jacques and the girls were still here to play with him. They were now back in Guernsey, and the house wasn’t the same. Jessie was going to leave him too as
he was too old for a nursemaid now. When Mummy came back, he’d be sent away to school, Granny said, but he liked the little school in the village and he was now in Mr Pearson’s class.
He could read all the posters in the shop and on the church notice board. He didn’t want to go away.

When he grew up he wanted to be in the Royal Air Force like Sergeant Kane, Jessie’s special friend. He was tall and wore a scratchy uniform with stripes on his arm. He brought him bits of
a Jerry plane, which he swapped for marbles in the playground. The sergeant teased him about his curls and threatened to cut them off. He told him he looked like a ‘Sheila’, but Sheila
Prentiss in his class didn’t look a bit like him.

Jessie would be going to Australia after she was married and he would be a page boy at the wedding. Bob Kane said boys shouldn’t dress up, but Jessie said he was going to wear his kilt and
jacket, and that kilts were worn only by the bravest of soldiers. She said that she’d not marry him if Desmond couldn’t wear his kilt and carry the ring.

Granny Phee came home from the theatre for the Easter wedding in the parish church. It was exciting seeing all the other airmen, their uniforms making an arch up the path and the villagers
standing by the gate to watch the bride going in. She did look pretty in a pink frock and carrying a bouquet of flowers, and on her head she wore a pink hat covered with net. All her sisters wore
dresses and carried posies. The church was so full of flowers it made him sneeze. He wore heather on his jacket for good luck.

They had a special tent in the garden for the guests to have tea and photographs. How could Jessie ever leave him and go so far away? He couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t
there at night to tuck him in or comfort him if he had a bad dream. Granny Phee said when the war was over Jessie would go on a big ship across the world to make her home with Sergeant Kane and
meet his family, who had a farm just like Jessie’s family had, but he didn’t want to think about that now.

‘Why can’t I go with her?’ he asked.

Granny looked shocked. ‘You don’t belong to her. When your mummy comes home, she’ll be looking after you,’ she replied, pointing to the photo in the silver frame.

He didn’t know who that lady was and he didn’t want her to come back. He wanted to go with Jessie on the big ship and be a pirate on the sea and live with Jessie for ever. It was bad
enough after the wedding when she went on holiday with her husband to Edinburgh for a few days in a hotel. It was such a relief to see her back in the house again, and she brought him some
Edinburgh rock and a tie to match the tartan of his kilt. He had run to meet her, clinging to her. Granny had been kind and kept showing him pictures from her stage book and school pictures of his
mummy with pigtails and school uniform. Sometimes they had lived in London, but that house was bombed and now Granny had to live here when she wasn’t with the Stardrop Troupe, but she
didn’t run around or play games outside like Jessie. She liked quiet games and listening to the wireless while he played ludo and snakes and ladders with Jessie before bedtime. Granny was
always making trunk calls about Mummy to people he didn’t know.

There’d been trouble at school when someone said his dad must be a conchie. That meant he didn’t fight in the war. He told them to shut up and he hadn’t got a father – he
didn’t need one – and the older boys laughed at him and called him ‘a right wee Jessie’. ‘You can’t have a baby without a dad!’ He didn’t understand
what they meant so he kicked out at them and it turned into a fight. Mr Pearson came into the playground and called them into line. They all got six from the tawse on the palm of their hands for
fighting.

Although it hurt, Desmond didn’t cry until he got home. There was no one to tell what had happened. Jessie had gone to see her husband off on the train to the docks and came back all
teary-eyed, so he couldn’t tell her. Everyone was sad. Granny Phee was sad because there had been no more postcards from Mummy for months. Everyone was whispering in corners, behind
doors.

One day, Granny came into his bedroom and said Mummy wouldn’t be coming home for a long time so he must be brave and not cry. They were trying to find out where she was, but he
didn’t mind her being lost. All he could think about was if Jessie left him behind when she went on the ship. Then suddenly there was a holiday from school and the bells were ringing
everywhere to tell them war was over and won. They flew flags from the top of the school hall and had a tea party in the village street with buns and sandwiches, jelly and pop, even though it was
raining. Then they went into the parish room for dancing while Jimmy Baird played his accordion. Miss Armour sat at the piano and they had a sing-song, and everyone was laughing even though there
was still fighting far away.

Jessie said Sergeant Bob was going to have to carry on over there until it ended but once it was finished she’d be on a list of sailing brides to be with him, and Desmond started to
cry.

‘I want to come too. Don’t leave me here. I want to stay with you.’

She cuddled him. ‘I know, hen, but it wouldn’t be right. You belong to Miss Caroline. She’ll come back soon to be your mammy.’

He shook his head. That was no comfort at all.

In the half-light of dawn the women were corralled through the gates by snarling dogs and armed guards. All Callie could see was row upon row of barrack huts. The women were
pushed into one hut for processing, stripped and deloused with powder, all their body hair shaved in front of men eyeing their nakedness. Callie was given a faded uniform of blue shirt and a skirt
that might once have been red, a headscarf to cover her bald head. There was no protesting at this humiliation. They were all too stunned and weary by the long journey. All her belongings from the
outside world were taken from her, but she managed to hold onto her boots. She was registered as Charlotte Blanken, a Belgian political prisoner, this status indicated by the red triangle badge on
her sleeve along with a number. They were marched out into the cold and taken to more wooden huts, told to find a space for themselves by female warders with black armbands, who walked up and down
with whips to keep order.

The hut had a central aisle and three-tier bunks jam-packed with human beings, crammed like animals in cages. The smell made her want to vomit – a rank odour of urine, sick, sweat and fear
– but she was too shocked to do anything. Her one thought was: how do I survive this?

After almost a year of solitary confinement, to see this teeming mass of humanity overwhelmed her: stick-thin females dressed in rags, staring at her with hopeless eyes, hollow cheeks and white
skin. She had heard rumours of such camps, but to find herself forced into such a place made her shake with horror. Panic rose as she searched for a single face that looked alive with a little hope
left. No one said anything, showed much interest in her arrival. She was just one more body to squeeze work out of until she gave up or was disposed of.

Months of honing an instinct to survive made her hide her true identity. Here, as in St-Gilles Prison, she was Lotte Blanken, Belgian nursemaid and French speaker. This was no place for
Caroline, the true bit of herself, a mother with a son who lived in Dalradnor, and who has trained with the SOE. Those precious facts were like hoarded gems, her currency for survival. They might
starve her body but her true self must be hidden from view. They mustn’t touch this bit of her soul for if they did she’d be lost for ever.

She heard someone speaking French and then others replying. Was this a barracks of foreigners? She sought out the voices and stood before them, introducing herself.
‘Lotte, et
vous?’

She was in luck. They were recent arrivals, eager for any news of the outside world. She told them what she knew about the liberation of France. An older woman with white hair grasped her hand.
‘It won’t be long then; Holy Mary, hear my prayer.’ She crossed herself. ‘I am Celine. I was arrested for helping soldiers to escape forced labour. My husband was shot. This
is Madeleine, and this Marie. ‘Why are you here?’

Callie told them her cover story. She was a nursemaid to a fine house near Bruges who had travelled with the family abroad and spoke English. She’d helped airmen escape down a secret line
and for that she was betrayed. They accepted her story without question. She only wished it were true. The truth was far more mundane. She had done nothing to help the Resistance but survive, but
she was now a witness to all of this.

‘We’ve heard that the new internees are being sent off to work in other camps – farm work, indoor work or road building – but you have to look young and strong. They work
you to the bone and then it is the crematorium,’ said Madeleine, holding out her hand to Callie. She was short, with dark eyes and a stubble of black hair. ‘You might as well know how
things are in this hell on earth. Thousands of women live here, packed like sardines in a tin. There’s a place they call the Youth Camp, where you’ll be sent if you are sick. No one
ever returns from there.’

Callie listened with a sinking heart. ‘One more thing,’ the girl added in a whisper. ‘Watch the warders, especially the one with the whip and the thick plaits. She will smile
and help you at first, give you extra bread, but she wants a fee. She takes her favourites to a place where you must satisfy her desires and when she tires of you, watch out. Even more . . . there
are some who’ll set their dogs on you if you look at them, just for the fun of it. I’m sorry, but you have to know these things. To them, we are all animals, just numbers, but in here
we have names and lives we once lived.’