Chapter One

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Guernsey, British Channel Islands, June 1936

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There were too many of them, of course, to fit into just one car, so Kitty waited at the harbour with her father while her mother and siblings went on first. Twenty minutes or so later they pulled up in front of Les Sauvarins, the old manor that was to be their new home. And the tears of frustration she’d managed to hold in for the entire, miserable journey finally spilled over – for everything was chaos already.

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“I say!” called Edward, her father, leaping out of the taxicab, hooting with laughter, stowing away the sketchbook he took with him everywhere. “Is that a goat?”

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Kitty’s younger sister Raven’s head appeared briefly above the gate. “There are two of them!” she cried breathlessly.

Their mother, Clara, appeared, a saucepan in one hand, wiping the back of the other across her brow, for it was hot. The removal men who’d accompanied them over from England in the lorry were there already, carrying in tea chests.

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“We seem to have inherited a pair of goats along with the house!” Clara said, laughing, “and a donkey into the bargain.”

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In the deep front garden, shaded by a massive yew, Kitty saw Rowan, Indigo and Sage, her three younger brothers, alternately chasing and being chased by two excited honey-coloured goats that seemed intent on butting them in their behinds. At the foot of the high granite wall surrounding the garden, meanwhile, a donkey cropped at a flowerbed.

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“A neighbour brought them over,” Clara told her husband. “He said they belonged to your uncle, and he’d been paid to look after them until we arrived. I told him we’d be perfectly happy for him to keep them, but I think he was only too glad to get shot of them. They’re apparently a local breed – isn’t that right, Mr Le Marchant?”

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The lawyer overseeing the transfer of the property, who’d accompanied Kitty’s mother and siblings in the first car, was looking even more ill at ease than when he’d first met them off the ferry. Kitty was all too familiar with this reaction – her riotous family generally had this effect. She rubbed away her tears without bothering to try to hide it. They were all far too excited now to notice she was crying.

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“Yes, that’s… that’s right,” the lawyer said, unable to take his eyes off the three darting boys, who’d now scrambled up into the tree and were swinging upside down from its branches, teasing the goats leaping about below.

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Edward, laughing so hard it set off his cough – the lingering consequence of being gassed at the Somme – jumped up onto the wall, flipped open his sketchbook and began to draw his children at play. Kitty could see the removal men watching the commotion, throwing one another furtive glances. All that was needed now was for her father to start calling them “my fine fellow” or asking if they minded if he sketched them at work too, and her mortification would be complete.

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“Perhaps, Mrs Garland-Fry, I might show you the outbuildings,” the lawyer ventured, “and the beach. There’s even a cave that—”

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“A cave!” cried Indigo. “Let’s find it – and go for a swim!” There was a clamour of approval.

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“Go with them, Kit, there’s a dear,” Clara sighed, “and make sure they don’t drown. Just one moment, Mr Le Marchant, then I promise you shall have my full attention.”

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“Why does it always have to be me?” Kitty asked. “Why can’t Raven do it?”

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“Please, darling, for once can’t you simply do as I ask?”

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Raven shot Kitty a triumphant look.

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“I suppose you’ll need towels,” Clara said. She went from box to box, then shook her head. “Dash it, I haven’t the first idea where they might be. But look, here are the bedsheets. They’ll have to do.”

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The boys jumped down, the two youngest immediately divesting themselves of all their clothes. The lawyer – or advocate, as he’d told them lawyers in Guernsey were known – stopped mid-stride and turned back rapidly to Clara, face pale; this, clearly, was a step too far.

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“My goodness, is that the time?” He glanced at his watch. “Well, Mrs Garland-Fry, I… I don’t believe I’ve omitted anything,” he said quickly. “As I mentioned, there’s a couple of employment agencies in St Peter Port, but usually the best way to secure domestic staff is to advertise. You have my card. Now, I… I really must be getting back.” Taking one last horrified look at Kitty’s brothers, he raised his hat and left.

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The boys raced off ahead, with Rowan, the eldest at thirteen, in the lead, as always. Kitty followed, her tears flowing freely now – for it was almost too much to bear. She was very nearly seventeen, brimming with longings so fierce it often felt they might tear straight out of her chest.

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They’d been about to move to London – London! – and she’d felt herself poised on the threshold of a world just about to reveal all its promise. Then her father’s wretched uncle had died and left them this place, and the dream had died. For what glorious experiences, what life-changing adventures could there possibly be waiting for her here?

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Chapter Two

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Berlin, Germany

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Lukas packed the parting gifts he’d bought for his friends: coffee, chocolate, a brisket and a box of cherries. He put in a stick of butter, too – then took it back out; he didn’t want it to look too much like charity. Telling his mother he’d be back soon, still scarcely able to believe he must bid goodbye at all, he headed to the U-Bahn and got on the next train heading east towards Tempelhof.

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Once at the right building he climbed the stairs and knocked softly on the apartment door, announcing as he did so that it was he; one didn’t just knock randomly on a Jew’s door in Nazi Germany. The moment he was inside, however, the food was forgotten.

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“Lukas! Oh, dear Lukas,” cried Anna Apfelbaum. “Thank heavens you’re here!” She paced back and forth, and the air was heavy with a sense of dread. Her younger sister Sigrid, in her wheelchair, was quietly weeping, while Klaus, his friend Fabian’s younger brother, was in tears, too, trailing after his mother in the manner of a much younger child.

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“Viktor ought to have been back hours ago!” Anna said. “Fabian went to look for him, but now there’s no sign of him, either. What if they’ve been arrested?”

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“Where was Herr Apfelbaum going?” Lukas asked.

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“To meet an old friend from the Association of Jewish Frontline Soldiers, in the park near the Ullsteinstrasse.”

 

She looked around furtively, lowered her voice, as if worried there might be people hidden in the very walls of their apartment, noting down what she said. “He took a pamphlet against the Nazis with him. I don’t know where he got it. He wanted to show his friend there’s still resistance. I told him to burn it! What if they’ve found it?” She began to tremble. Lukas made her sit, told Klaus to bring a glass of water.

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“I always tell him to be more careful, to think of us,” she said, “but he believes the world is still decent; that most people, underneath, still think like him. And he hasn’t even got his medicine – for injuries received fighting for their country, this same country that now calls us its enemies!”

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“Look after your mother,” Lukas told Klaus. “I’ll see if I can find them.”

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Anna grasped his hand.

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“Thank you, dear Lukas. Sometimes I think you and Margaret are the only true friends we have left.”

He nodded, gave a half-smile, headed back to the door – his heart heavy with unbearable guilt. That she should thank him. He, who, along with his mother, was leaving Germany that very night. For unlike the Apfelbaums, they were classed as Aryans.

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“Please be careful,” she said. “Don’t… don’t do anything to endanger yourself. I’ve been praying to the Blessed Virgin, asking for her intercession. She’s a mother, too, of course, and a wife, and she knows what’s in my heart. Just when I think I’ve reached the end of my endurance, she always helps me find the strength to bear the load.”

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Lukas went back down to the street, consumed with guilt still, but at the same time filled with awe. Anna Apfelbaum had not been born Catholic, but the strength of her faith in the Christian God would put most Catholics to shame. Like generations of German Jews before them, the Apfelbaums had converted to Christianity. For most, this was merely a logical, entirely administrative step to improve their own life chances and those of their children, allowing them to avoid the stigma of being Jewish in a country that had always been antisemitic. But Anna believed in the goodness of the Christian God with all her heart, tried to live up to His precepts, as did the rest of her family.

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This, however, meant nothing in the eyes of the Nazis. For them, Jewishness wasn’t just a matter of which god you worshipped, it was a physical taint in the blood.

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He reached the main road. The last of the daylight was leaching from the sky, and everything felt airless and brittle. Two enormous black Mercedes cars filled with high-ranking Schutzstaffel officers roared past, horns sounding. SS guards stood on the running boards, laughing above the roar of the engine, commanding people out of the way and forcing oncoming cars to swerve. They owned Berlin’s streets now, and they knew it.

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And Lukas hated them with every fibre of his being. As a Roman Catholic priest in training, he well knew this black hatred was against the teachings of Jesus. But even Jesus Himself, he thought, as he hurried down the darkening road, would surely have been hard-pressed not to despise the Nazis, He who had expelled the moneylenders from the temple in righteous anger. Ah Lord, help me find my friends, he prayed now. And make me worthy of You.

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He went past a stand displaying the latest copy of Der Stürmer, with its crude, antisemitic cartoons of hook-nosed Jews raping young, blonde German women. These had all been taken down in central Berlin, where, with the Olympic games soon to take place, they might offend the sensibilities of foreign visitors. Here, though, where tourists were unlikely to venture, it was business as normal.

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He passed Meyer Konditorei, a coffee house which for as long as anyone could remember had been Café Markowitz. The Markowitzes had also owned the boxing club behind it, where he’d once learned to fight. But they, like so many other German Jews, had been dispossessed, forced to sell their business for a pittance and flee.

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He headed along the Rheinstrasse, past the ubiquitous red swastika flags that always made it look to him as if the city was seeping blood, calling out Herr Apfelbaum’s Christian name as loudly as he dared, rather than his clearly Jewish surname. He felt less hopeful with every step – for despite his encouraging words to Anna, he feared the worst. The Nazis would haul you into custody for an off-colour joke about Goebbels; what might they do to a Jew in possession of an anti-regime pamphlet?

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It occurred to him that he ought to make enquiries at the local hospitals. He was about to set off when he heard boisterous young voices singing the slogan Heute gehört uns Deutschland, und morgen die ganze Welt – “Today Germany is ours, tomorrow the whole world.” A gang of Hitler Youth boys rounded the corner, shaking charity collection tins; this constant, menacing pressure for donations to Nazi causes was part of daily life now, and it was too dangerous not to give, just as it was too dangerous not to give the Hitler salute when required. He slipped into an alleyway before they could see him.

Then one of them gave a shout: “Hey! What the hell’s going on? Puking in the street? This is the Adolf-Hitler-Platz, you filthy old pig! Have you no respect?”

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Lukas looked out, heart in his mouth. One of the leaders, no more than fourteen or fifteen years old, was shoving at a figure hunched over in the shadows. The boy shone a torch in the man’s face, and Lukas saw that, just as he’d feared, it was Viktor Apfelbaum.

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“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, you drunken sot! I’ll report you to a policeman!” He was already feeling for the whistle attached to the lanyard around his neck.

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“Wait! Please, wait!” Lukas hurried over. “It’s not what you think. My uncle suffers from a stomach complaint, the result of a war wound. I’ve been looking for him everywhere. He’s been out with his friends from the Stahlhelm,” he invented, “and didn’t come home.”

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The Stahlhelm – Steel Helmets – was the association of German veterans from the 1914-18 war.

The Hitler Youth youngster glared at him, outraged to find his authority questioned. How had everything in Germany become so horribly inverted, Lukas wondered, grown-ups now in thrall to the cruel vagaries of children, the whole country ruled by criminals and thugs?

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Then, “Heil Hitler!” Herr Apfelbaum said, hauling himself upright, giving the Nazi salute and turning to the boy with a smile. “A false alarm. As you see, I haven’t dirtied the pavement, my young friend. I was merely experiencing a spasm of pain. Forgive me, I was shot in the stomach back in 1916 on the Eastern Front, at Lake Naroch.”

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All at once there was an awed respect upon the boy’s face. “Lake Naroch? I thought barely anyone taken prisoner there came back alive!”

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“I was one of very few, and I don’t mind telling you, boys, there were many times I thought I’d never see our beloved Vaterland again. After the Bolshevik vermin took me prisoner, they put me to work on the Murmansk railway. That’s how I lost these.” He held up his left hand, from which two fingertips were missing.

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The youths pressed closer, a hush descending – the Nazis had little regard for much but afforded a measure of respect to those who’d seen real combat.

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“Frostbite,” Viktor said. “I’m lucky that’s all I lost. Have you ever experienced an Arctic winter, boys? I’ve watched men’s hands and noses turn blue in front of my very eyes, seen people drop into the snow and be frozen solid minutes later. I swore I’d make it back to Germany alive, and so I did. And they awarded me this for my courage, a little something extra to go with the Iron Cross I earned back at the Marne.” He opened his coat, showed them what was pinned inside his lapel.

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“The Iron Cross First Class and clasp!” they chorused, straining to see, their faces so close their breath must surely be misting it up. The decoration was rare, and Lukas knew Viktor wore it now whenever he went out, as many former Jewish soldiers did, to prove their loyalty to their country.

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“Now, what is it that you’re collecting for?” asked Viktor, feeling in his pocket.

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“The orphans,” they said.

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“A worthy cause, indeed!” He produced a five Reichsmark coin and slotted it into the leader’s tin. It was an extremely generous donation, and they chorused their thanks. “From me and my nephew both, all right?”

“Heil Hitler! Thank you, sir!”

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“No, thank you, boys, for your excellent work. Get home safe now. Heil Hitler!”

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And off they went, rattling their tins, heading towards the tavern opposite. Once they were at a safe distance, Viktor Apfelbaum bent and vomited into the gutter. Afterwards, Lukas helped him upright, gave him his handkerchief.

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“Appalling little bastards,” said Viktor under his breath, “though, of course, their minds have been thoroughly poisoned by their elders – the Nazis know only too well how easily children are bent to their will.”

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“What happened?” Lukas asked.

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“They rounded everyone up outside the park and wouldn’t let us leave. Apparently, a senior Nazi was about to be driven past; I think they must have had information about an assassination attempt. I was convinced they were going to search us, but once he’d gone past, they let us go. I don’t mind telling you I’ve never been so scared in my life.”

“Have you got rid of it?”

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“I managed to drop it in the canal.”

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He took the arm Lukas proffered, and Lukas noticed how threadbare the sleeve of his coat had become. There was no money. Like all other Jewish professionals – teachers, civil servants, doctors – Viktor Apfelbaum, an eminent lawyer of many years’ standing, had been barred from his profession. They headed back towards the Apfelbaums’ apartment and, half an hour or so later, finally climbed the stairs. The door opened, and Fabian appeared.

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“Thank God,” he said, hurrying out to help. Frau Apfelbaum came and, on seeing her husband, sagged into a chair by the door, while Klaus, sobbing, buried himself in his father’s arms. Lukas felt his own throat swell.

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“Come in,” Fabian told Lukas, with a smile. “Have a brandy.”

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Lukas saw the food he’d brought was still where he’d left it, by the door. As Fabian bent to pick it up, Frau Apfelbaum took Klaus by the hand and led him through to the sitting room beyond, her husband following, one arm still around the boy’s shoulders. The murmur of their voices drifted back down the hallway.

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“That’s kind of you, but I really must be going,” Lukas said, not wishing to intrude. And anyway, he really did have to leave.

“All right.” Fabian took Lukas’s hand. “If you’re sure. Thank you, dear friend. You know what I mean. Few in Germany are prepared to associate with people like us still.”

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“Such people are beneath contempt.”

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“You’ll write, won’t you? From your little island – which, from what your mother always says, sounds like the very Garden of Eden itself. I’ll miss you. We all will.”

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“And I you. But I’ll be back once everything’s settled. So, it’s only goodbye for now.”

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“You’re mad,” Fabian said. “For heaven’s sake, stay there. They need priests in England just as well as here, and you could live in a country that actually has a future.”

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“My duty is here, as you well know. Say farewell to your parents from me,” Lukas said. “And here.” He passed his friend an envelope. It contained money. “For Klaus. No, don’t say anything. Please, just take it.”

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Fabian nodded. It wasn’t the first time Lukas had done this. They’d been friends since they were boys, and the things that passed between them didn’t always need words. Lukas had arranged for the Apfelbaums to continue to receive money while he was away, though he didn’t tell Fabian this.

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“God be with you, Lukas,” Fabian said. Briefly they clasped one another.

“And with you, too. With all of you.”

​

With a heavy heart he made his way back to Wilmersdorf. A couple of months previously he’d been a seminarian in his first year at the Sankt Vitus Seminary in Berlin, with every expectation of moving into his second, albeit after six months’ compulsory Nazi Labour Service. He’d never been aware of any desire greater than to answer the call to the priesthood he felt at work powerfully within him.

But his mother, Margaret, an Englishwoman by birth, had suffered several years of increasingly ill health and bad nerves. Her husband, Lukas’s stepfather, worried not only about his wife’s deteriorating health but the rising Nazi threat, had been about to move them both to Guernsey, where Margaret had grown up and her father still lived.

​

But then his stepfather had died suddenly of a brain aneurysm – and his mother had suffered a full nervous collapse, necessitating a stay in a psychiatric hospital. And Lukas had known they must leave at once. For the Nazis were now forcibly sterilising people deemed to suffer from hereditary physical and mental disorders, and his mother was still, just about, of child-bearing age. And not only that, but she was also British-born and now had no husband to protect her. Who knew what the Nazis might be capable of next? If, God forbid, it were to come to war, they might even intern her.

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Then, to top it all, had come news that her father, Lukas’s grandfather, was at death’s door after suffering a stroke. His second wife – Margaret’s mother was long dead – wrote to say that he wished to see them both one last time and wanted Lukas’s help to sell his stockbroking business and put his affairs in order; apart from his wife, they were his only family.

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And so, it had been agreed with Father Leopold, rector of Sankt Vitus Seminary, that Lukas would interrupt his studies for a year. Which, with his Labour Service due to take place straight afterwards, would mean a whole eighteen months away. He would be nearly twenty-one when he finally took up his studies again and could hardly bear to think of it.

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Finally, he got back to the apartment – to find it almost completely bare, the removals company having been already to collect the last of his mother’s things. All that was left were their suitcases, standing sentinel by the door, and the old sofa which had come with the apartment in the first place, on which his mother now sat, looking about her.

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“Isn’t it strange?” she said in English, the language they always spoke with one another.

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Yes, Lukas thought. Strange, and rather diminished. He’d spent the larger part of his youth here, and yet it felt as if all the years had made not the least impression.

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“And look what I found.” She held out his dead father’s gold pocket watch, engraved with the von Harnitz-Winterberg family crest. It had been missing for years. “It was down the back of the sofa all this time,” she said. “I suppose you must have been playing with it when you were a child. Here. You may as well keep it.”

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He took it.

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“Not an awful lot to show for thirty years spent in another country, is it?” she said with a sigh. She looked out of the window across the rooftops. “It was all worth it for the blessing of you, my darling. But still, I wish… I just wish things had been different.”

So do I, he thought. His mother coughed, an awful, hacking cough left over from her last bout of pneumonia that never seemed to bring any relief. The sea air in Guernsey, the milder climate, would do her the world of good, the doctor had said. And perhaps, Lukas thought, it might also mean that he himself could at last shed that nagging sense of guilt that had weighed on him all these years – that her unhappiness was down to him, because she’d insisted on staying in Germany in order that he could be raised as a von Harnitz, even though the noble name meant nothing to him.

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“Go on, then,” she said. “Go and say goodbye now or you’ll miss him. He’s saying Mass this evening. Then, when you’re back, we’ll head off.”

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He went back out. He’d been putting off the leave-taking from Father Leopold, that final step which would make it all real.

He set off down the Kleiststrasse, his feet heavy and reluctant, as if carrying him to his doom. Finally, he reached the Sankt Vitus Church, its crucifix silhouetted against the high, pale moon. He tried to take strength from it – and at the same time prayed for strength for the whole of the German Catholic Church, that suffered so greatly at the hands of the Nazis; its priests persecuted and arrested, its funds stolen, schools and youth groups shut and publications suppressed, the business of its seminaries, even – the Sankt Vitus Seminary next door included – interfered with, new restrictions and controls imposed all the time.

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Finally, he stood before the presbytery door. The housekeeper let him in with a wistful smile, knowing why he’d come, and conducted him through to Father Leopold’s private sitting room. But he was far too agitated to sit and wait. Instead, he went through the door at the opposite end, which led into the sacristy, where the vessels and sacred objects and priestly vestments were stored. He loved this place more than any other on Earth, and, as he looked about him, its very ordinariness seemed to cleave his heart with sadness.

He’d been coming here since he was a boy, ever since he’d first arrived in Berlin with his mother and stepfather and become Father Leopold’s altar server, back when he was parish priest here at Sankt Vitus. It was in this very room he’d first felt God calling him, where he’d been filled with an overpowering sensation of birds made from pure sunlight flying through the high-up window and streaming straight into his soul, and a voice, clearer than anything he’d ever heard, saying: “Follow Me, Lukas, and be My priest.” He’d fallen to his knees; and it had felt as if all the light in the world was caught up inside him, and he could barely contain it.

He looked around at all the dear things he knew so well: the credenza with Father Leopold’s chasuble and stole already laid out on top, the cabinet with the cruets, holy oils, the ciborium and chalice. It pained him to see these sacred objects now sharing the space with a basin that caught the drips that came through the ceiling, and wooden blocks wedged into the ever-growing gaps between the window and its rotting frame. The church and seminary had long suffered from subsidence, but it was getting steadily worse: the ancient crypt beneath the church had recently had to be buttressed and sealed up with bricks – because of the Nazis’ anti-Church policies there were not the funds to properly repair it. He drank in the precious things and tried to impress them on his mind. For he would not help serve another Mass here for many months.

​

Then Father Leopold came in, his kind eyes full of emotion, and Lukas felt a weight settle in his throat.

“Ah, I thought I’d find you in here,” the priest said.

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“Forgive me, Father!” Lukas blurted. “I know my duty is to my family, but I can’t help feeling I’m deserting my duty to both God and my country.” He meant it sincerely, but hearing himself say the words, he sounded just like a petulant child and was ashamed.

Father Leopold guided him back to the sitting room. “Your duty, my son, is to serve God. Which is to do what’s right – take your mother to safety. I know this is difficult for you, and I shall miss you terribly, too. You’re the closest thing to a son a priest can have, though I should probably not admit it; but there you are, I am human and imperfect. There is something special in you, Lukas, a sort of spiritual radiance. I always knew God would one day call you to Him; I believe I knew it even before you knew it yourself. That is often how it happens – others are often able to discern a priest’s calling even before he does so himself. God will be with you every step of the way.”

“You’re right, Father, I know. I just don’t know how I shall bear it.”

​

“The Lord will give you strength. Accepting God’s will is integral to the vow of obedience you will one day make. ‘Trust in the Lord with all thy heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.’ Let that be your mantra while you’re away. Now, let us pray.”

​

Afterwards, he told Lukas to be sure to send him the Seville marmalade and Scottish shortbread he loved so much, along with the British crosswords that Lukas’s mother had first introduced him to – German crosswords lacked the clever wordplay he particularly enjoyed.

“And the solutions, too, mind, for the week before!” Then he told Lukas to wait while he fetched something – and returned bearing an aged missal, bound in fine, brown leather. Lukas recognised it immediately: Father Leopold’s own father had given it to him many years before on his ordination.

​

“It’s yours now,” the priest said. “May it serve to remind you of God’s plans for you – and my love.”

And Lukas’s throat swelled once more so that he could hardly speak. Which was just as well, for he hardly knew what to say.​​