Page 68 of The Little Island Flower Stall
Bella shook her head wonderingly.
‘Yes,’ Celestine said. ‘If I were hearing this story for the first time, I’d be shaking my head too. I don’t know what any of us was thinking.’
‘What did he tell you about why he was there? It must have been good if it convinced you to hide him.’
‘He’d never wanted to go to war. He told us he’d always felt he was on the side of wrong but his father had made him go to fight. He’d been stationed at the tunnels, and when he saw how the men there were treated, he couldn’t stand it any longer. He’d planned to run away?—’
‘You mean he was going to desert?’
‘If you want to put it that way, though I detest the expression. It makes it sound like cowardice, but it was often braver to run than to stay and follow orders, especially when your reasons to run were so just.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean…I was only trying to understand.’
‘I know you didn’t. He helped some of the slave workers escape and then ran with them. I think he’d hoped the confusion would cover his tracks, as well as helping some of them get away. He thought his superiors might assume the escaped prisoners had taken him and killed him or something. Or that they would be so busy looking for the escapees that they wouldn’t even notice he was gone. Seems silly now, doesn’t it? That either of those schemes might stand a chance of working.’
‘So he ran to the garden and that’s when you found him?’
‘He’d been there for three days. We’d seen soldiers walking around, and they seemed to be looking for someone. We thought it must be the escaped workers, but I suppose they’d been looking for him too.’
‘How long did this go on?’
‘Oh, we kept him there for a good month. Used to go and chat to him. He was funny. I liked him a lot. I know it was wrong – we all did – consorting with the enemy. Our parents would have flayed us alive if they’d found out. But he seemed just like us when we sat with him. It didn’t seem possible that he could be like the others. He didn’t want to be at war; he wanted to be at home riding his bike and swimming in the lake near his house. I was a child, but he wasn’t much more than that himself.’
‘What happened to him? You said you kept him hidden for a month? What then?’
To Bella’s horror, Celestine burst into tears again.
‘Oh God!’ Bella flapped. ‘What did I say? I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to upset you!’
‘I didn’t mean it to happen.’ Celestine sobbed. ‘I didn’t mean to give him away!’
‘You don’t have to tell me anything else if you don’t want to. Not if it’s going to make you this upset.’
‘It was my fault, my stupid…If only I’d kept my mouth shut. I didn’t realise anyone could hear us talking, I…Oh, Bella! I’ll never forget Violette’s face when she learned the soldiers had come for him and taken him away. I’d never seen hatred like that before, but I never meant him to get caught.’
Bella pulled her into a hug. ‘It’s OK. I’ll make us a cup of tea. It’ll be all right.’
Celestine pushed Bella away. ‘I don’t want tea.’
‘A brandy or something? What can I get you to make it better?’
‘Nothing will make it better. What’s the use in trying to make it better after all these years? I can’t change what happened.’
‘You can’t change what happened by beating yourself up over it either,’ Bella said. ‘You’ve been carrying all this guilt for most of your life and…what? You think you deserve it? Is that why? How old were you? A kid! Whatever happened, you didn’t deserve to suffer your whole life because of it.’
‘Violette suffered. I ruined her life too. She suffered because I couldn’t keep a simple secret.’
‘It was anything but simple. It was a huge burden for three young girls.’
Bella wrapped an arm around Celestine’s shoulders and pulled her close. She ought to have left it at that. She ought to have persuaded her great-aunt to put it all behind her, but something in her wouldn’t let it go. She had to know the whole story. She knew the truth about everyone apart from Klaus. What became of him? It seemed to matter now more than ever.
‘I was careless,’ Celestine said. ‘It was life and death, and I should have understood that. It could easily have got the threeof us killed too – Violette, Anais and me. If it had come to light that we were the ones hiding him, we’d have been dragged away. We’d seen it happen. There was a woman in another town who hid one of the escaped workers. She was arrested and nobody ever saw her again. She’d been executed. Everyone knew the story – the Nazis made sure everyone heard it as a warning to us not to cross them. But none of us silly girls realised when we were helping Klaus that it could have been us; we could have been dragged away and shot if we’d been discovered.’
‘They wouldn’t have killed children…’ Bella said, knowing how hollow that sounded as soon as she’d said it.
‘They executed Klaus. Eighteen years old. Scared to death. They shot him. Violette was inconsolable. She went mad when she found out. She wanted to go and find the people who’d done it and kill them. She didn’t care what might happen to her…’ Celestine shook her head slowly. ‘She always was a hothead. Did things without a thought of the consequences. She’d always seemed so wonderful and exciting to me. I wanted to be like her – we all did. But after Klaus was killed, I was frightened of her. She was worse than ever. She told me never to speak to her again, and I didn’t. It was Anais who told me a couple of months later that Violette was expecting and that it was Klaus’s baby. I was horrified. She swore me to secrecy, but I wouldn’t have dared breathe a word about it to anyone even if she hadn’t. Like I said, most people worked it out. People tried to guess who the father was. Some people thought it must have been your uncle Roland, but we all set them straight on that.’
‘Anais was still your friend after Klaus was taken away?’
