She managed a nod. What could possibly be good about Nazi soldiers coming to their beautiful island?
Dad picked up his luggage and led the way out onto Bath Street.
In the skies above, puffy clouds edged with light played in the cool breeze, oblivious to the turmoil below.
Bill and Fern Le Corre came down the road with their twin seven-year-old sons. Billy and Freddy scampered to Dad and hugged him, then Ivy.
“We don’t want to go to England.” Tears swam in Billy’s dark eyes. “Mummy doesn’t want us to leave.”
“But Daddy says we must,” Freddy said.
One look at Fern’s quivering chin and Bill’s stony chin, and Ivy took her nephews’ hands and led them down the street toward the harbor. “What a lovely adventure you’ll have. Your grandmother can show you where she played as a girl before she came to Jersey.”
Ahead of Ivy, Fern clutched her husband’s arm and tipped up her exquisite heart-shaped face. Her eyelashes fluttered over her wide-set eyes. “Please stay, Bill. I need you.”
“Then come with me. Stay with your mother.”
“I will not leave Jersey. It’s my home. And Ivy needs me to run the practice. Right, Ivy?”
Ivy did, but she wanted no part of their discussion, so she told the boys to count the houses they passed to distract them from their parents’ ongoing argument.
“I’m in the militia.” Bill strode with a military bearing as if to prove his point. “It’s my duty to fight for our island.”
“How can you fight for our island by leaving it?”
“We already discussed this. I refuse to stay when I can fight for Britain.”
“At least let me keep my boys. They’re all I have.” Fern’s voice warbled.
Those boys had reached their limit with counting, so Ivy had them look for their chums on their way to the docks.
So many children. Schoolchildren, like Billy and Freddy, evacuating alone. Younger children with their mothers. Men of military age, off to enlist in the British Army. All jostling each other, hefting luggage, skirting the mass of abandoned cars. Ivy clutched the boys’ hands so she wouldn’t lose them in the crowd.
Alexander Coutanche, the Bailiff of Jersey, had urged people to stay, but hundreds filled the Weighbridge area by the docks and circled the gardens around the statue of Queen Victoria.
“My decision is final,” Bill said to Fern. “The boys are evacuating to England for their safety. Join them or don’t. That’s your decision.”
Fern jerked her head to the side.
“Come now.” Bill’s voice sweetened. “May I have one lovely smile before I leave?”
Ivy ripped her gaze from their farewell, hugged her nephews, and sent them to Charlie for one last hug from their beloved uncle.
She fell into her father’s embrace and absorbed his scent of wool and pipe tobacco and disinfectant, his strength and wisdom and cheer. Somehow she had to make do without him. Somehow she had to relieve his worries, his guilt about leaving. “I’ll miss you, but we’ll be fine.”
“I know you will.” Dad’s voice went gruff. He spun away to hug Fern, and then he and Bill led the boys down Albert Pier extending over the turquoise waters.
Fern’s face wobbled between grief and anger, and Charlie’s between grief and stoicism.
Ivy linked arms with them, one on each side. “We’ll make do. We will. As long as we look after each other.”
Something too manly and resolute crossed Charlie’s face. “And choose the good.”
The family. The practice. The patients.
“Yes,” Ivy said. “We’ll choose the good.”
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
