The Sisters of St. Croix (50 page)

“What a sad story,” Rachel murmured. “Sad and brave. I wonder what happened to them all, Sarah, Sister Marie-Marc, Marcel and the children.”

She was just reaching forward to switch off her tape recorder when Adelaide’s eyes opened again and she said softly, “It was all so long ago, so long ago.”

“Did you ever find out what happened to Sarah?” Rachel asked gently, sitting back again and letting the tape continue to run.

“Yes, I did,” replied Adelaide. “It took some time, of course. Everything was in chaos at the end of the war. The Allies discovered places like Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz. Hundreds of thousands of people had disappeared and those that had survived were refugees; no homes, no families and nowhere to go. We traced Sarah to Ravensbrück, the concentration camp for women. Some of the survivors remembered her, and spoke of how she did all she could to alleviate the suffering of those around her. One woman said that ‘Mother’ was always wherever she was needed, nursing, encouraging, keeping her faith strong to strengthen others. Even most of the German guards treated her with some sort of respect, occasionally giving in to her demands for an extra ration of food to be shared among those too weak to collect their own portion.” Adelaide gave a rueful smile. “She died as she had lived, always caring for those around her, putting their needs first. She finally caught typhus, which in her weakened state carried her off very quickly.”

“And Sister Marie-Marc? Was she with her?” asked Rachel. She had been completely caught up in Adelaide’s story and felt she had come to know the people who had played their part.

Adelaide shook her head. “I asked, of course, but no one I met remembered her. I think she probably died en route to the camp. She was in a dreadful state when she was loaded onto that lorry, and it’s unlikely she survived the journey. I imagine they went first to Drancy, the transit camp outside Paris, where the conditions were said to be absolutely appalling.” Adelaide gave a rueful smile. “Dear Sister Marie-Marc, she was so determined to outwit ‘
Les sales Boches
’ who stole her chickens.”

Silence settled round them and the old lady again closed her eyes. Rachel didn’t speak; her mind was teeming with everything she’d heard. There was such a story here; far more than she had ever anticipated when, at the suggestion of James Auckland, she’d asked the old lady for an interview. James had sent the book he had written about his grandmother’s exploits in the war to the
Chronicle
for review, and Drew Scott, the editor, had given it to Rachel to read.

Rachel had been fascinated and had rung James up to arrange an interview.

“It’s not me you need to talk to,” he said. “It’s my grandmother. I’ll introduce you if you like.”

Rachel had accepted the offer with alacrity, and here she was hearing the story, first hand, from the woman whose story it was.

“You didn’t think of writing the book yourself?” Rachel had asked her.

With a laugh, the old lady shook her head. “No, I’m far too old. I’ll be ninety in September. No, it was James who suggested it. I didn’t think anyone would be interested, but he said they would, so I left it to him.”

“And you simply told him what had happened.”

Adelaide shrugged. “I told him what I knew. I don’t know exactly what did happen when Sarah was arrested and questioned, but,” she added grimly, “having seen her and Sister Marie-Marc and the Auclons when Hoch had finished with them, I could guess.” She sighed and again lapsed into a silence broken only by the summer sound of someone mowing the grass below the window.

Already Rachel’s journalistic mind was sorting and cataloguing what she had heard, the story she would write already taking shape in her head. The details of the fear and the courage that had emerged as she’d spent the afternoon with Adelaide were safely trapped on tape, ready to be replayed as Rachel worked on her story. No simple book review now; but an in-depth piece of journalism.

“But of course I did find the twins,” Adelaide said suddenly as if there had been no lapse in the conversation. “Jacques and Julien.”

“Did you?” Rachel was startled back to the present. “How marvellous! Where were they?”

“In the convent in Paris. Father Bernard had managed to get them there and Mother Magdalene kept them. She gave them new names and managed to get them new identity papers. When I went back to try and find Sarah, I went to the mother house in Paris in case they had news of her. They hadn’t of course, but Mother Magdalene mentioned that the boys were still there and I asked to see them. They didn’t remember me, but I knew them at once.”

“And their parents?”

“Enquiries had been made about them, but nothing was known about either of them. Almost certainly they were sent to one of the extermination camps, but there was no record. They simply disappeared among the thousands of others.”

“What happened to the twins?” wondered Rachel.

To her surprise both James and Adelaide laughed. “Well, that I can tell you,” Adelaide said. “I adopted them and brought them home to England. We anglicised their name, Auclon, to Auckland. James is Julien’s son.”

“What?” Rachel stared at James in disbelief. “You’re joking!”

“Never more serious,” he grinned. “My dad, Julien Auckland, is a doctor, and my uncle Jacques is a solicitor, or they were before they retired.”

“And they’re both still alive?”

“And kicking!” James agreed cheerfully.

“It really is the most amazing story,” Rachel said. She turned back to Adelaide. “And Marcel? Did you ever discover who Marcel really was? Did you ever find out what happened the night you made your escape?”

Adelaide smiled. “Oh yes,” she said. “He told me himself.”

“But I thought he was…” began Rachel.

“So did I,” admitted Adelaide, “for the rest of the war. But he wasn’t. Because he wasn’t working with the reception party, he wasn’t out in the field when the Germans opened fire. Only he and Rousseau survived that attack. It turned out that Benoit, the young man they had been discussing, had turned traitor.” Adelaide’s voice hardened. “Like Fernand, Benoit wanted to be on the winning side and had been selling information to the Germans.” A shadow passed across her face as she added, “Needless to say, he did not survive the war. Anyway, Marcel managed to get away, and to gather another group round him. He continued his fight until France was liberated and the war ended. And then he came to find me.” Her face lit up at some private memory. “He was a lawyer. His name was Antoine Talbot, we were married for forty years.”

The End

~

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The Throwaway Children
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Gritty, heartrending and unputdownable – the story of two sisters sent first to an English, then an Australian orphanage in the aftermath of World War 2.

Rita and Rosie Stevens are only nine and five years old when their widowed mother marries a violent bully called Jimmy Randall and has a baby boy by him. Under pressure from her new husband, she is persuaded to send the girls to an orphanage – not knowing that the papers she has signed will entitle them to do what they like with the children.

And it is not long before the powers that be decide to send a consignment of orphans to their sister institution in Australia. Among them – without their family’s consent or knowledge – are Rita and Rosie, the throwaway children.

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Belcaster 1948

Raised voices again. Rita could hear them through the floor; her mother’s, a querulous wail, the man’s an angry roar. For a moment she lay still in bed, listening. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it was clear that they were arguing.

Rosie, her sister, was peacefully asleep at the other end of their shared single bed, the stray cat, Felix, curled against her. She never seemed to wake up however loud the shouting downstairs. Rita slid out from under the bedclothes and tip-toeing across the room, crept out onto the landing. Limpid green light from a street lamp shone through the small landing window, lighting the narrow staircase. A shaft of dull yellow light, shining through the half-open kitchen door, lit the cracked brown lino and cast shadows in the hall. The voices came from the kitchen, still loud, still angry. Rita crouched against the banister, her face pressed to its bars. From here she could actually hear some of what was being said.

‘…my children from me.’ Her mother’s voice.

‘…another man’s brats!’ His voice.

Rita shivered at the sound of his voice. Uncle Jimmy, Mum’s new friend. Then Mum began to cry, a pitiful wailing that echoed into the hall.

‘For Christ’s sake!’ His voice again. ‘Cut the caterwauling, woman… or I’ll leave right now.’

A chair crashed over, and the shaft of light broadened as the kitchen door was pushed wider. Rita dived back into her bedroom, making the door creak loudly. She leaped into bed, kicking a protesting Felix off the covers and pulling the sheet up over her head. She tried to calm her breathing so that it matched Rosie’s, the peaceful breathing of undisturbed sleep, but her heart was pounding, the blood hammering in her ears as she heard the heavy tread of feet on the stairs.
He
was coming up.

‘Rita! Was you out of bed?’ His voice was harsh. He had not put on the landing light, and as he reached the top stair, Felix materialized at his feet, almost tripping him over.

‘Bloody cat!’ snarled the man, aiming a kick at him, but Felix had already streaked downstairs.

Jimmy Randall paused on the landing, listening. All was quiet in the girls’ room. Softly he crossed to the half-open door and peered in, but it was too dark to see anything, and all he could hear was the steady breathing of two little girls asleep.

Must have been the damned cat, he thought. Don’t know why Mavis gives it houseroom, dirty stray. If it was my house…

It wasn’t. Not yet. But it would be, Jimmy was determined about that. A neat little house in Ship Street, a terrace of other neat little houses; well, not so neat most of them, unrepaired from the bombing, cracked windows, scarred paintwork, rubble in the tiny gardens, but basically sound enough. Jimmy wouldn’t mind doing a bit of repair work himself, provided the house was his at the end of it. His and Mavis’s, but not full of squalling kids. All he had to do was get his name on the rent book, then he’d be laughing.

Rita heard him close the door but lay quite still in case it was a trick, in case he was standing silently inside the room waiting to catch her out. It was a full two minutes before she allowed herself to open her eyes into the darkness of her room. She could see nothing. Straining her ears she heard his voice again, not so loud this time, and definitely downstairs.

For a while she lay in the dark, thinking about Uncle Jimmy. He had come into their lives about two months ago, visiting occasionally at first, smiling a lot, once bringing chocolate. It was for Mum really, but she’d let Rita and Rosie have one piece every day until it had gone. But Rita was afraid of him all the same. He had a loud voice and got cross easily.

Rita wasn’t used to having a man in her life. She hardly remembered her daddy. Mum said he had gone to the war and hadn’t come home. He had gone before Rosie was even born, fighting the Germans. Rita knew he had been in the air force, flying in a plane high over Germany, and that one night his plane hadn’t come back. There was a picture of her daddy in a silver-coloured frame on the kitchen shelf. He was wearing his uniform and smiling. Wherever you moved in the kitchen, his eyes followed you, so that wherever she sat, Rita knew he was smiling at her. She loved his face, his smile making crinkles round his eyes and his curly fair hair half-covered with his air force cap. Rosie had the same sort of hair, thick and fair, curling round her face. Rita’s own hair was like Mum’s, dark, thin and straight, and she always wished she had hair like Rosie’s… and Daddy’s.