‘A grateful patient, unable to pay in Reichsmarks, gave me the benefit of his black market hoard today.’
‘And you cycled home with it in your bag? Are you mad?’ Mrs Durand asked. ‘What if you’d been stopped?’
Doctor Durand gave Persey and Lise a guilty look as he fetched glasses.
‘Thank you for coming,’ he said, handing a glass to Persey. She sniffed it with delight as if she’d never smelt sherry before. ‘Gosh, heaven,’ she said, taking a sip. ‘Thank you for inviting me. I know how hard it is, making food stretch without having an extra mouth at the dinner table.
‘Charming,’ Lise said good-naturedly, nudging Persey in the ribs as she put the jug of water on the table.
‘I didn’t mean you. I meant me! Speaking of which, I brought some money with me. It’s so difficult to get a substantial amount from the bank these days without someone wagging their finger at you in suspicion so I’ve brought what I could for now and I’ll try to get a bit more in a few weeks.’
She handed the Reichsmarks to Doctor Durand who looked confused. ‘What’s this for?’
‘For Lise. Don’t argue,’ Persey said as he started to protest. ‘It’s to help with the little extras and I’ve brought more fruit from our kitchen garden for you. While I can get away with smuggling it out, I thought I would.’
Mrs Durand took the net bag of food. ‘That’s most kind. And it will certainly help.’
Lise clutched Persey’s hand. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘It’s the very least I can do. I also brought you some books to help pass the time. Not sure if you’ve run dry here. I’ll swap them over in a few weeks if you like. And if there’s anything else you need, you know you just have to ask.’
Lise looked as if she was going to cry and Percy squeezed her friend’s hand in return.
Mrs Durand opened the range door and brought out a pie.‘Vegetables only I’m afraid but I’ve managed to get a bit of suet so we’ve a pudding for after.’
‘Smells delicious,’ Persey enthused.
‘I’ve evaporated a bit of sea salt so that should go some way into making the pie digestible,’ Mrs Durand admitted, placing a little dish on the table. ‘Help yourself.’
‘Have you seen any of those poor foreign workers yet?’ Lise asked. ‘Mrs Durand heard they’ve been sent from all over the mainland.’
‘Most are being treated appallingly, I think,’ Persey said as Doctor Durand served the pie. ‘Starving, some of them, from the tattle I hear in town. Mrs Grant thinks it’s only a matter of time before our vegetable patch gets raided in the night. We were thinking about trying to get a laying hen if we could, but there may not be any point. It may get stolen and eaten. The state the island’s in now,’ Persey mused.
‘It’s not better on Jersey, either,’ the doctor said.
‘You must hear a lot more than we do, in your line of work.’ Persey reached for the salt and cast an apologetic glance at Mrs Durand for having to use it. ‘You get out and about all over.’
‘You’re the one with the radio,’ the doctor pointed out.
‘Yes, but I don’t hear anything about what’s happening here. What do you know, that I might not? If you know about Jersey do you know about Alderney?’ she asked, avoiding eye contact with any of them. She so desperately wanted to know what Stefan might be doing; wanted to be able to picture him on the island, if he was still there.
‘I do actually. I treat a few fishermen on the odd occasion. Pay me in fish mostly, now. Sadly not this week,’ he said, prodding his vegetable pie. ‘They’ve heard things down at the harbour, not sure how true it all is,’ he said.
‘Such as?’ Persey prompted.
‘Alderney’s turning into a fortress. Much like here.’
‘Oh, is that all?’ Persey reached for a glass of water and took a sip.
‘A huge foreign workforce there now.’
‘Foreign workforce?’ If those on Alderney looked as sad as those on Guernsey, it didn’t bear thinking about. So that’s why Stefan and his translation skills were required.
‘None of our islands are going to look the same after all this,’ Mrs Durand said. ‘The amount of concrete … I’ve never seen anything like it. And there’s no sign of it all stopping. The coastline is turning grey with concrete. And the RAF must know what’s going on here and yet … nothing.’
‘Why must they know?’ Persey asked, curious as to how they could possibly know anything that happened here. Spies perhaps?
It was Lise’s turn to guess. ‘You’ve seen the Allied bombers going over, surely? They aren’t that high as they leave the British coast. They must be looking down here, seeing it all change.’
