He looked over at Hedy laughing with Sam. “And I feel like a doting father.”
Gertie touched him on the arm. “We have to help Hedy find out what’s happened to her parents and brother. Is there anything you can do?”
Charles’s face grew serious. “Leave it with me. It may take a while, but I’ll do whatever I can.”
There were cheers as Hedy and Sam sliced into the wedding cake. Charles offered Gertie his arm. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s risk a dance. It is a celebration, after all.”
“Are you sure your toes can take it?”
“I wore my steel-capped shoes on the off chance.”
Gertie laughed. “In that case, Mr. Ashford, I’d be delighted.”
The first reports from inside the death camps came a few weeks later. It was broadcast as part of the news one evening.
“Are you sure you want to listen?” asked Sam as he, Hedy, and Gertie gathered around the radio in the living room.
“Of course,” she replied.
As Richard Dimbleby delivered the facts in clipped, urgent tones, Hedy’s eyes remained fixed forward. No one seemed to breathe while they tried to comprehend this world of a nightmare, where typhus, typhoid, and dysentery raged, where living skeletons teetered on the brink of death, where ghosts wandered dazed and lost, where civilization had left long ago and monstrous evil had taken hold. There were no words of consolation, no glimpses of hope, no chinks of light in the terrifying darkness. The world had closed in on itself. Humanity was dead. As the broadcast ended, the silence was deafening. Hedy’s gaze hadn’t moved from the same spot, while Sam’s eyes were fixed on his wife with a look of despair and longing. Gertie understood how he felt. She would do anything to take this horror away from Hedy.
“They’re dead, aren’t they?” whispered Hedy after a while. “Mama. Papa. Arno. They’re all dead.”
“We don’t know that,” said Gertie, clasping her hands together. “There are survivors. The soldiers are doing all they can to help them.”
“They burned ten thousand people alive,” said Hedy. She looked from Gertie to Sam. “How are human beings capable of such hatred?”
“I don’t know, my love,” said Sam, his voice rippling with anger. “But they will be brought to justice. They won’t be allowed to get away with it.”
She reached out a hand to stroke his face. “Darling Sam. They already have.”
Gertie had never seen so much bunting, not even after the end of the Great War. Every street, house, and lamppost was adorned in red, white, and blue flags, fluttering in the May sunshine. Margery had promised the biggest and best VE Day party in the country and requisitioned the village hall for the purpose. Thanks to Gerald, two loudspeakers had been mounted on the stage, and a catalog of wartime favorites, from Gracie Fields to Vera Lynn and others, were drifting through the town. Emily Farthing had painted a large sheet with an image of Britannia and the words “There’ll Always Be an England” and draped it like a curtain at the back of the stage. But the highlight was the food. The women in charge of the households had saved up their ration stamps and worked together to serve up a feast. Half a dozen trestle tables groaned with all kinds of sandwiches, cakes, jellies, and blancmanges.
Gertie wasn’t sure if Hedy would want to join the party. The end of the war brought peace, of course, but the word “victory” seemed ill fitting when so many had suffered and continued to suffer. There was nothing triumphant about the growing number of stories filtering from the east as death camp after death camp was liberated. It wasn’t the ending to a story. It was only the beginning.
She was surprised, therefore, when Hedy appeared on the day of the party wearing a blue skirt, white blouse, and red silk scarf. Sam stood beside her, smart in his demob suit. “We have to honor those who fought and those who are no longer with us,” she said.
“I’ll get changed,” said Gertie, wiping her hands on her apron.
It seemed to Gertie as if the whole town had turned out for the party. Miss Snipp was looking positively radiant, dressed as Britannia, with Mr. Higgins beside her, cast as a very convincing Churchill, offering victory signs to all and sundry. Elizabeth and Billy had come back for the celebration too, along with Lady Mary.
“I couldn’t think of a better place to celebrate than here,” she told Gertie.
Billy was delighted to be reunited with Hedy, although it soon became clear that he was a little peeved with Sam. “I was going to ask Hedy Fischer to marry me before you came along,” he told him with a scowl.
“Billy!” scolded his mother.
Sam put a hand on Billy’s shoulder. “Then I’m just glad I asked her before you, as I can see I wouldn’t have stood a chance.”
Billy scrutinized Sam’s face for a moment as if assessing his rival before nodding with satisfaction. “Would you like to see a coin trick?”
“Very much,” said Sam.
Billy stayed close to his new friend and Hedy for most of the day. Gertie smiled as she watched them together, thinking what fine parents Sam and Hedy might make one day.
As darkness fell, a bonfire was lit in the gardens surrounding the hall, and everyone trooped outside to continue the party, baking potatoes in the flames, dancing and singing. Some of the children had made effigies of Hitler to throw onto the fire. As soon as Hedy saw the burning pyre, she turned to Sam. “I think I’d like to go now,” she said.
“Of course. Shall we see you at home, Mrs. B?”
Gertie saw the horror in Hedy’s eyes and understood. “No. I’ll come too,” she said, linking an arm through Hedy’s as they walked into the night, leaving the whoops and cheers far behind them.
The world emerged blinking into the postwar sunlight, and Gertie followed, unsure of what to expect. After six years it was difficult to remember what peacetime looked like. Life without nightly blackouts, sirens, and air raids was cause for great celebration, but rations remained and continued to be the bane of people’s lives.
“What have we been fighting for if not to finally say goodbye to these infernal queues and coupons?” complained Miss Crow as she arrived for the book club meeting. If Gertie needed confirmation that the world really had turned on its head, she need look no further than Miss Crow, who under Miss Snipp’s tutelage had discovered a newfound love of reading.
“Oh, hush now, Philomena. The war is over. Can’t you at least be grateful for that?” said Miss Snipp. Gertie had noticed that she’d recently developed a more positive outlook on life and put it down to the influence of a certain Mr. Higgins.
“Hmph,” said Miss Crow, uncharacteristically chastened. “I suppose you’re right.” She retrieved a book from her shopping basket. “Now, this Animal Farm. I liked it as I greatly admire the pig—very intelligent animal by all accounts. My mother used to keep them when I was a child. However, I haven’t got the foggiest clue what this is all about.”
“I hope you’re not starting without me,” said Mrs. Constantine, sweeping in through the door. “I am deeply enamored by this novel. Such a clever satire of the Russian Revolution and that monster, Stalin. I do declare Mr. Orwell to be a genius.”