Work Text:
The situation on the High Street was quite impossible. Olive had been in the rations queue since nine in the morning, and the column had barely moved.
She hadn’t had her lunch, and she was on the verge of giving it all up as a bad job. That, or head to the town hall to see if the black marketeers were still plying their wares in the open. The Martels had never had to resort to such channels - - not on their own account, at least, although there had been that affair with the poor Beauchampses - - but desperate times did call for desperate measures.
She finally decided to pack it in after noon. There had been supplies enough when the Germans had first landed a year and a half ago, necessaries to be bought by the occupation Reichsmarks, but in the spring of 1942, with the cuts in meat rations and the introduction of potato rationing, things had become quite dire indeed, and by the looks of things, the shortages were just going to get worse.
It was Saturday; the shops wouldn’t be open again until next Tuesday. She would have to make the current stores last until then. Still, she knew she was one of the lucky ones. With Clive and now Philip in prison camps, and Claire shut up in a cloister which might just as well have been one, these days she only needed to make do for one person.
Fuel was scarce, as well, and in any case she hadn’t much liked to drive since Philip’s internment. She cycled the half mile back to the house.
It was tempting not to bother with lunch at all, after that, but Olive grimly made herself a scramble from the last of the cauliflower and forced it down. She needed to keep her strength up. Then she considered the remaining blackberry leaves and decided to forgo her usual cup of tea.
When the knock at the door came she nearly jumped out of her skin. She never expected visitors on a Saturday. John Forbes popped in during the week to keep Philip’s surgery going, and on Sunday he took her to church and then to see Clare in her refuge at the Cordier Hill convent, but he wasn’t due for a visit today.
In fact, Saturdays had, before Philip’s internment at Cherche-Midi, been just for the two of them. They would work in the garden, or Philip would while Olive attended to her patchwork; occasionally Olive would play on the piano. In the evening, with Clare at the Porteouses, she would cook a special dinner. They would sit and listen to music, and then, more often than not, they would find the time to enjoy each other, in a way that they had not done for more than twenty years, before the children arrived. In the dark, afterwards, she would tease Philip about how the wartime conditions were clearly stirring up his manhood.
He’d teased her right back, of course, saying how the battles he’d argued on the Controlling Committee’s behalf were almost as arduous as those fought by the Royal Navy, and he ought to be rewarded in like fashion by a robust home front.
Then October had happened, and suddenly the jokes about Philip’s valour on the front lines had turned into an all too stark reality.
In the long months of Philip’s absence, she’d not received any visitors at all, really, let alone Saturday ones. The last time someone had come to her house without an appointment …
“… You know, if you’re going to keep dropping in like this, you might look towards having my doorbell fixed,” she said, rising to her feet to address the tall, familiar figure in Wehrmacht uniform that stood on her threshold, his hat under his arm, waiting to be invited in.
As always, Colonel Richter’s manners were more than faintly infuriating. Behaving as if he didn’t have the ability to storm into any house that he, as the leader of the Occupying Power, jolly well pleased? What was the point of pretending just to keep up appearances?
“I apologise, Mrs Martel. Certainly, I can arrange to have this matter looked into, if that is your wish.”
He actually looked serious about it, too. “No, no, don’t bother. Who wouldn’t enjoy being surprised by Germans on the weekend?” He still hesitated, and she said, finally, grudgingly, “Won’t you come in?”
Colonel Richer walked into her kitchen. It was easy, as he courteously pulled out and held her chair for her, to forget who he was; to forget the fact that, over that neatly-pressed, civilised-looking uniform, he wore a service revolver, which he could have drawn at any time and shot anyone he wished and called it the natural exigencies of war.
She was aware this wasn’t particularly generous of her. The Colonel had always been unfailingly polite, and his troops’ conduct described, even by the islanders, as a model occupation. But after what had happened to Clare, to Philip, she hadn’t had much truck with generosity. Besides, as she’d told Richter at their first meeting, the Germans would not have been interested in a humane occupation, nor would he have been so willing to mitigate the misfortunes of war, if they had been in Warsaw, or in Rotterdam.
Richter seated himself across the table from her. She did her best to look at him as if she were facing a soldier across a battlefield.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”
Richter smiled, clearly choosing to ignore her frosty tones. “I had a free moment this weekend,” he said, which was probably a bald-faced lie, she didn’t believe the Kommandant of the island of Guernsey had many of those in his busy schedule, “and I wondered how you were bearing up after the events of the past fortnight.”
Olive resolutely did not permit herself to speculate on how the Colonel spent his weekends. Riding, shooting, those were the sorts of things officers did for leisure; undoubtedly Richter was no exception.
She wanted even less to think about Clare at Cordier Hill, of course, but this was where Richter’s question led her. It was true, also, that the Colonel had shown real consideration for Clare. He had arranged for her case to be postponed on medical grounds, had taken Olive to the hospital in his official car after Clare had been pulled from the sea. In the circumstances, one would have thought it common courtesy to thank a person who had shown one such kindness, even if he was one’s enemy.
Olive said, stiffly, “Thank you for asking. I spent today’s free moments in the queue for rations and came up short… It’s been a difficult winter for so very many.”
“The winter has been challenging,” Richter agreed. “And indeed, I also wished to bring you something to ameliorate those shortages.”
He had, Olive realised, been holding a small parcel in his gloved hand, which he now extended to her. She folded open the wrapping paper and uncovered what looked to be two ounces of loose-leaf black tea, tightly packed, a more rare and precious commodity these days than gold.
“Colonel Richter! Where did you get this?”
“The tea is from France,” Richter clarified. “It is the blend we drink in the mess.”
Olive knew Philip would have returned fire with some quip about Richter pilfering from military stores to give aid to the enemy, but such good-natured sniping was temporarily beyond her. All she wanted to do was to close her eyes and press the precious bundle to her breast. A burgeoning sense of gratitude threatened to overwhelm her for a moment, until she realised she would now have to invite the Colonel to stay to share in this largesse.
She managed to keep her voice level, even so. “Thank you. This is such a treat, I’ll put the kettle on right away. Please, won’t you join me.”
“If it would not be an imposition, thank you.”
They sat in silence as the water boiled, and then as the tea brewed, filling the kitchen with its invigorating, comforting aroma.
When the tea had fully steeped, Olive poured for the both of them. Cupped in her hands, the smell that wafted from her cup was like a small piece of Heaven.
“Dr Martel will be released in less than ten days,” the Colonel remarked. “I thought he might also enjoy some real tea when he returned home.”
Olive did not spare a glance at the calendar on the wall behind her that she used to count down the days until Philip’s liberation. Didn’t comment, either, that it almost sounded as if Richter had been counting down as well.
“He will appreciate it, I’m sure. On Tuesday, I’ll try again at the shops to get some things he likes for his supper.”
Richter nodded soberly. “And how is Miss Martel faring?”
Undoubtedly, the Kommandant would have been kept informed of Clare’s current convalescence with the Sisters of Mercy. “Clare is as well as can be expected. Dr Forbes has been looking after her. We shall pay her a visit tomorrow.”
The Colonel sipped from his cup, and remarked, “Dr Forbes has been looking after Dr Martel’s clinic in his absence, has he not? It is gratifying to see such helpfulness towards a colleague’s practice. As well as to his family.”
Was Olive detecting some nuance in Richter’s carefully neutral tones? It was true that, in Philip’s absence, she had come to rely on John for a great deal. Keeping the practice going for one; for another, keeping an eye on Clare, as tenderly as if she had been his own daughter. Keeping her own spirits up, too, if it came to that, in many small ways.
Did Richter disapprove? Olive shook herself. Was every conversation with him going to be like this - - a wary circling before an actual engagement of arms, with her opponent trying to size up if there was a chink in her armour or if her defences had already been breached?
It was too easy to forget who Richter was. What he was. Not just a cultured professor of ethics, who had walked under cherry trees along Trumpington Street in Cambridge, but a military colonel of an unspeakably evil regime, who might even be prosecuted for war crimes when these islands were liberated at last.
She said, stiffly, “It is gratifying, and I’m grateful to Dr Forbes for it.” In a way that she wasn’t grateful to Richter, for all that he had done for her family.
Maybe Richter hadn’t done it for her. If so, he didn’t deserve her gratitude. Philip could thank him himself when he was out of Cherche- Midi.
The Colonel smiled again. Olive fancied this time his smile was rather strained. She wouldn’t feel sorry; it served him right.
“I’m glad to hear it. And Dr Martel will soon return home, which might mean the need for help from other quarters will be at an end.”
“That rather depends on the condition in which he is returned,” Olive Martel said, with all dignity. “It may be that the need for help is just beginning.”