The German Nurse. M.J. Hollows
For Marian, my number-one fan, & for Geoff, the only level-ten G.
12 February 1943
It had been a terrible mistake and Jack wouldn’t make it in time. His boots pounded on the dry earth as he sprinted up the path, thumping with each footfall. He hadn’t had time to collect his uniform, and his civilian clothes hung loosely on him, the ankles of his trousers flapping in the cool breeze.
The birds sung sweetly, completely at odds with Jack’s current state of despair. He couldn’t stop running. Even if his lungs gave up his feet would carry on.
There was a crack of a nearby door banging shut against its frame. The town felt almost abandoned in the evening twilight. Lamps lit the hedgerows and facades of houses, casting menacing shadows across the road. The people returning to their homes after a day’s work eyed him warily as he passed. Being caught out after curfew was dangerous.
He was too out of breath to say anything. They weren’t used to seeing someone running and they feared the worst. Even the local police weren’t immune to the curfew the Germans had implemented, not without a pass. He hoped that they were too busy tonight to notice.
He could feel the old Fletcher woman’s eyes on his back, staring out of her front room window. For once he didn’t care what she thought. She could report him if she wanted to – it wouldn’t make any difference now. He was sick of being watched at every turn, by the Germans, by his own colleagues, even by his neighbours.
As he turned a corner, he saw Beth coming the other way. The smile dropped from her lips as he carried on running. He could trust her even less than the others. Not now that she was in love with a German officer. She stopped and turned to watch him go, her blue eyes following him along the road.
The road lowered down, breaking the horizon and giving him a view of St Peter Port and the sea beyond. From this distance he could only make out faint blurs of boats in the harbour, some masts rising above the surrounding buildings like cigars resting on the deep blue sea.
He jumped across a wooden fence and into farmland. He felt a momentary pang of guilt at disturbing the crops, but they were thin and bare anyway, stripped by the occupying forces and sent to the continent. The furrowed ground was dry and hard, rougher on his feet than the road had been, and he almost slipped several times.
They thought they could resist the Germans. They were wrong. He should have listened to the others. Now the occupiers had whittled them down and taken everything from them. Almost.
The soft wilderness turned to town as he kept running. He was almost out of breath, but as he passed the houses on the outskirts of St Peter Port it gave him hope. A ‘V’ scrawled on a nearby wall gave him strength. They were still resisting.
The harbour was down and to his right, through the main streets of St Peter Port. Time was running out, but he wouldn’t give up now. Not while he still had breath in his body. Curtains shifted in houses as he ran past. The sky was darkening, and he was sure he would soon run into a German patrol. So far he had been lucky, but that luck would not last forever. He should never have left Johanna, not when she needed him most. They should have escaped long ago.
What more did he need when he had the beauty of the island, the love of Johanna and his family? Death had come to the island, stalking them in field grey uniform and jackboots. All the place held for him now was horror. How had it finally come to this?
He crossed the road and made his way down a gravel path between houses, stones skittering away as his boots dislodged them. There was a shortcut between the buildings. He no longer had any pretensions of reaching the police station in time. Instead he hoped to head them off at the harbour. He had to stop them, somehow. That was all he kept thinking as he ran. No matter what it took, he couldn’t let the Germans do what they were about to do, take the only thing he had left. Not like this.
The harbour opened up in front of him. The scene he remembered so well from that terrible day the Germans had invaded. It had changed much since then – fortified and bleak, fewer boats bobbed softly in their moorings. He hadn’t stopped running, the breath almost gone from his body, but he pushed himself on, legs burning with the effort. He skidded and changed direction, towards the harbour proper. His attention had been drawn by a pair of lanterns moving along one of the piers that jutted out into the sea. The hum of a motor rose up into the air.
He jumped over a fence and almost slipped on the landing. ‘Halt!’ a German voice shouted from behind him. One of the patrols had spotted him, but he didn’t look back. As he approached the end of the pier he could hear voices, a soft pleading intermingled with clipped and harsh German. He couldn’t make out the words as they boarded a waiting boat. He wanted to shout after them, tell them to stop, but his lungs burned and no sound would come. He realised for the first time how much his heart was thumping in his chest. Feet slipped on the wet pier, and he pitched forward with a clatter. His stomach hit the ground and he only just managed to shield his face with an outstretched arm. The breath was knocked from his lungs. He tried to raise himself up, but something felt wrong. He’d broken something. With a groan he leant on his elbow and looked up.
He was too late. He always knew he would be, but he couldn’t give up hope. Not until now, when he could hear the faint whirring of the boat’s engine as it pushed away from the harbour. Even if he jumped in the icy water to follow her, he would not make it in time. Plunging to his death would not bring her back.
The sound of boots rang out along the pier, growing closer by the second, as he stared into the darkness. All he could see was the faint light of a lantern illuminating the boat as it rose and fell in the water, moving away from the harbour.