Page 6 of The Island Girls

Peggy helped her passengers step off the launch and watched as Major Carter checked through everyone’s passports and tickets, aided by Rose. This was an unusual transfer today. There were three cars waiting on the quayside to take most of the passengers directly to Poole train station. With all the passengers off the launch, the flying boat crew helped Peggy, Eileen and Nora unload the luggage and crates of fruit, every one of them secretly hoping an orange or two might ‘fall’ out of the crates and into their pockets.

When the last box was heaved up onto the quayside, and the passengers were all safely installed into the cars, Major Carter and Rose prepared to drive them off to the station. Just as he was about to get into the car, Major Carter stepped back tohave a quiet word with Peggy. He cleared his throat gently and lowered his voice as he caught her eye and called her name.

‘You’re a fine seawoman, Miss Symonds. Your supervisors tell me you’re doing an excellent job,’ he began.

‘Thank you, sir. It’s as easy for me to handle this launch as it is for one of your potters to cast a china plate. I’ve been in and out of boats all my life,’ she said with a wave towards the harbour she knew and loved.

‘And how well do you handle other means of transport? Have you learnt to drive a car?’ he asked with a frown of concentration on his face.

Peggy was surprised by the question, but not thrown by the idea.

‘I’ve had a bit of a go in the grocer’s van – my friend Isabel is the grocer’s daughter and she showed me the ins and outs of it. But I’ve not much experience,’ she said, wondering where this might be leading.

‘That is good news,’ he added with a nod. ‘And so, do you think if you were asked to occasionally help out with driving passengers or goods to and from the quay by car, as well as by launch, you’d be up to the task? We would ensure you felt confident first, of course. Rose would teach you all that you’d need to know.’

‘I’d be happy to help if it was required. All part of the BOAC service, I suppose,’ said Peggy with a happy shrug.

‘Absolutely, that’s the ticket,’ said the major. ‘Well, I’d best get these chaps off to the train station, but I’ll have Rose get in touch with you about some training and then some trips when they come up. In fact,’ he said with a glance at the crates of fruit, ‘we may even need these delivered up to the Harbour Heights Hotel later today. Perhaps you could go up for a run with Rose then, and she can give you the drill?’

‘I have some passengers to take from Salterns Marina out to meet their plane after lunch, but until then it should be all quiet. I’ll come in and check with Rose when I’m done here, shall I?’

He nodded and thanked her as he stepped into the car and set off with his passengers. The flight crew had loaded the crates onto a handcart and one of the dockhands was pulling it over to the harbour master’s office, where the crew were following.

‘Driving a car now too?’ teased Nora as the three women closed down the launch and secured it before walking back into the offices. ‘You’ll be meeting more of the rich and famous than our Eileen here. You’ll have to watch she doesn’t get too jealous.’ She winked, and the three young women linked arms and laughed their way back to the office.

4

POOLE, DORSET – MAY 1940

Hans Meyers peered at the white cliffs on the horizon and watched England drawing closer with every passing minute. The ache inside his chest was spreading like a cancer to his sore gut and up into his throat, which was as dry as the dust he’d breathed as he’d fled Rotterdam. He’d spent much of the journey with his teeth clenched shut to stop the anger and tears and fear from erupting.

Klaus had talked non-stop from when he’d jumped onto the boat until Hans had finally taken him by the shoulder and told him to shut up and listen to what had just happened to him. What he’d just lost. Why his life was over. Klaus had stayed silent then, until they’d joined the other refugees at the river’s mouth and headed out to sea and he had others to talk to – shout to – across the water. The launch was meant for rivers and harbours, not the open sea, but thankfully the weather had been calm, and they had been kept safe by the sheer number of other vessels travelling with them. Hans had thought their small boat was not much use to anyone else, but when they saw the mass of humanity trying to get onto boats, he felt he had to offer space to any who wanted to brave the trip in his little open launch.Instead of just the two men as he’d imagined, his boat took twelve men, women, and children safely away from Holland’s shores.

And in the end, Hans was glad that Klaus was there. He became the go-between with the other refugees. Hans held firm at the helm for most of the trip, and Klaus did all the communicating about where they were headed, how much water was left, and if there was room aboard for any others as some of the boats were far too crowded. Hans was able to stay locked inside the dark cavern of his grief, his eyes set on the prize of escaping the hell that Rotterdam now represented to him.

Every now and then, he heard the call of a woman’s voice or the cry of a baby and he pictured them, his own wife and child, there with him, where they should have been. Katrijn and Anika: his life, his world. Why he hadn’t thought to take them away with him earlier, he would never know, and he knew now he’d never stop regretting his foolish mistake.

But now he and Klaus were simply single men travelling together. None of the others knew his history, his family, the trajectory his life had been on until just days ago. The two young men were understood to be friends, or brothers even. And regardless how the others saw them, they were all Dutch refugees – simple fishermen and their families – fleeing the Nazi onslaught. Hans gripped the wheel and bile rose in his throat as he remembered his plan to simply give up on Holland and become German. The idea of siding with the monster that had killed his girls was now so disgusting that he hated himself for ever thinking of claiming his German heritage. He harboured a niggling worry about Klaus and what he intended to do, with his German nationality and the contact he claimed to have made with the German Army. But Hans had neither the heart nor the headspace to deal with that problem.

And it was all such a mashed-together mess anyway, he mused as the blur of the English coastline gradually morphed to reveal the detail in the limestone cliffs, the trees, the beach. When a man is born in Düsseldorf, with a Dutch mother and a German father, the lines between Germany and Holland become blurred, and it is only the tragedy of war that makes the borders real.

Klaus, it seemed, was determined to offer the victors something useful to keep himself safe, and certain that German invasion would become a reality for England within days or weeks.

But the idea of claiming his German heritage now repulsed Hans to his core. And all he could see in his mind’s eye when he thought of Germany was blood: the blood-red flare smoke that had hung over Rotterdam on the day Germany had destroyed the beautiful city and everything he loved with it; the dried trickle of blood that stained the head of his precious baby girl; the blood that had drained away from Katrijn’s face; the red of the Nazi flags that had hung from the Panzer tanks.

The fleet of a hundred or so little boats, overcrowded with terrified Dutch families, had taken two days to journey here to the south coast of England from Holland, and others were now on their way from Belgium too. The horrors of Nazi attack and the swiftly gained occupation, and the threat of Hitler’s plan of total control over Europe, had become clear to every man, woman, and child swept up in the debris. Those desperate enough to escape by sea who had the means, and the contacts, had taken to the little boats with only the scantest of belongings. Yet although these folks were headed for England, what they’dseen of the speed of Hitler’s attacking armies and the lack of mercy shown to any who stood in their way told them this was no place to hide. America was their only hope and plans on how to get there occupied most of the men along the journey. England would soon be occupied by Germany as well; that was a certainty.

There was nothing but this tiny strip of water between the English coastline and the most powerful and determined army the world had ever seen, and these humble Dutch fisherfolk intended to get far, far away. Hitler was surely coming soon.

‘Do you have all the papers ready?’ asked a red-faced and exhausted-looking woman, holding a toddler on her hip as she stood on the starboard side of Hans’s launch. As she turned around to face the shore again, her heavily pregnant belly loomed before her. Her husband tapped his coat pocket and spoke soothingly to her. Her features relaxed a little and she took deep breaths as she lightly swayed along with the motion of the boat, slowly chugging towards the harbour entrance.

There was a small boat belonging to the British Royal Navy ahead of them, and another not far behind the fleet of refugees, who’d been guiding them along the coast towards Poole Harbour ever since they were first intercepted in the east, off the coast of Kent.

The sound of the water splashing the side of the boat had been the constant companion to the noise from the motors for the whole journey, and although the passengers had often scanned the skies for enemy planes, they had – so far – heard none. So, when the distant deep drone of a plane now hit the airwaves around them, a quickening, animal-like sense of mildpanic stirred them all at once. Hans’s heartbeat skipped one or two beats faster as he frowned into the skies, looking for the planes. He crouched, as did the others, ready to duck and hide, though that would have been utterly fruitless in the event of an attack. But there was just one plane, and it didn’t look to be any kind of fighter.

Hans relaxed a little as the plane flew overhead on its descent towards the vast, shallow harbour beyond. The plane was an unusual shape, with a much larger belly than any he’d seen before, and the wings seemed to be attached too high, rather than central to the main body of the plane as they were more used to seeing.

At the harbour entrance, a small gap between two long, sandy beaches, Hans took in the sight of an imposing white hotel building, three storeys high with a red-tiled roof, and dozens of windows looking straight out to sea. Between the two sides of the harbour entrance a long, low barge ran on chains that made a rhythmic chug, chug, chug sound as the ferry pulled itself on the chains across the stretch of water. Steam chuffed from the chimney stacks on either side of the ferry and it was packed with cars, army trucks, and even a bus being taken from one side of the harbour entrance to the other.

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