CHAPTER 8
Poplar; London - Present Day
Shelagh walked up the stairs carefully, carrying the tray with the two cups of tea. When she arrived at room Aislinn stayed in, she maneuvered the tray to her left hand and softly knocked on the door with the other. When she heard a timid enter, she opened the door and mustered a small smile on her face. She still entered with a bit of caution. "Chummy, made us some tea, if you are up to it?"
"Thank you, I'd love some." Aislinn took the cup from the tray and curled her fingers around it, relishing in its warmth. Her eyes were fixed on the teacup, she didn't dare to look up at Shelagh.
Shelagh sat down in the chair, which was standing beside the bed. She had taken her cup of tea and had placed the tray next to the bedside table. She looked at her sister's demure behavior. This was not how she remembered her sister. Aislinn had always been the one who was the most outgoing of the two of them, always in for a new adventure. The wrong-going of their mission must have played a huge part in her personality change.
Ten minutes had gone by without either sister speaking a single word and the silence felt suffocating to them both. Shelagh placed her -now empty- teacup on the bedside table, she took the one Aislinn was clinging to as if it were a lifeline and placed that one on the bedside table as well. Then she took Aislinn's left hand in her own and without saying a word she pushed up the sleeve, baring her arm, showing the six digit number.
Aislinn's gaze slowly went to her bare arm and then she closed her eyes in silent surrender. Shelagh saw the tears falling from Aislinn's eyes and she gently wiped them away. She pushed the chair aside and sat down on the bed, enveloping her sister in a loving hug. "Oh, my darling sister," Shelagh whispered. "It will be all right. I'm here, I've got you!" The two sisters sat like that for quite a while. While Aislinn quietly cried, Shelagh gently rubbed her arms in comfort.
Lunteren; The Netherlands - 1944
"I can't believe you got into this!" Shelagh hissed while the plane was descending to a hight that would allow them to jump out of it.
"You got into it, before me! I have as much right to do this as you!" Aislinn retorted.
"You married a German Generalleutnant, whom we still suspect of not giving us the information he actually knows! The Germans know who you are!"
"All the better," Aislinn said, the self-satisfied tone vexed Shelagh to no end. "They know who I am, they won't hurt me."
"Or they will kill you right away!"
The tactical coordinator cut into their argument, telling them this was the time and place. They needed to make the jump. Otherwise all their planning would be in vain.
"This conversation is not finished, understood!" Shelagh whispered angrily.
"What? You want to finish this when we're in enemy territory?" But Aislinn never got a response to her question. Shelagh had jumped from the plane and already had activated her parachute. Aislinn quickly followed.
They glided towards the landing spot they had deemed safe. It was the field of a farm, the farmer was a member of the Dutch resistance and he would be awaiting them, bringing them into the safety of his home the moment they would land. A sudden gust of wind threw a spanner in the works. It lifted both girls up by several feet, and in the end they landed a couple of miles from their original landing place, in the middle of the woods. The trees obscured their vision while landing. The German soldiers, however, had seen them and when they had landed in an open clearing in the woods, they were awaiting them at gun point.
Both Shelagh and Aislinn were frantically trying to untie their parachutes and trying to get away. The baritone voice which ordered them to stop made them realize they had failed. "Drehen Sie sich um. Ich möchte Ihren Gesichter sehen."
The two young women turned around slowly, hands raised in the air to indicate their surrender. Aislinn recognized the soldier to whom the voice belonged. He was a Generalmajor in her husband's legion. Kurt Richter his name is. She had only seen him once, when they had to be in Germany to attend one of Hitler's gatherings, and at that time she and Kasimir had just gotten engaged. It had been a quick hello and there for she hoped that he wouldn't recognize her. Her sister's words had shaken her more than she had let on.
Unfortunately for Aislinn, Kurt Richter had an exceptional memory when it came to faces and names. "Ahh, Fräulein Mannion. Es ist schon eine Weile her, wann wir uns das letzte Mal gesehen haben."
Shelagh looked at her sister and she saw the look of discontent clearly. She hold her breath, anticipating her sister's next move. To appear confident and strong, Shelagh raised her chin a bit higher, but she felt anything but confident at the moment.
"Actually, it's Frau Metzger now." Aislinn had been taught the German language by Kasimir, but she refused to speak German to those soldiers. Her Scottish stubbornness was their downfall. The somewhat gentle look Kurt Richter had turned to one of stone. "Ach so. Dann wäre es vielleicht eine weise Entscheidung, Deutsch zu sprechen." He turned to his soldiers and ordered them to take the two woman into custody. "Jetzt!" He bellowed when he noticed them hesitating.
Their hands were bound behind their backs and each woman was flanked by two German soldiers. Richter stood behind them and ordered them to walk. Even though they did as they were told, they got a shove to make them start moving. Aislinn was about to protest their rough treatment, but one look at Shelagh and seeing her shake her head made her reconsider.
It was a long walk to the town centre. When they walked the city streets, people stopped what they were doing, watching the two woman in silence. Both looked straight ahead, never once looking to the side. They stopped in front of a building -clearly the town hall- and they entered. They were placed in separate rooms, in which a table and four chairs were the only furniture.
Poplar; London - Present Day
Shelagh noticed Aislinn's breathing become calmer, her weeping lessening and she dared ask the question which was plaguing her from the moment she had realized her sister likely had spent time in one of the concentration camps. While stroking Aislinn's hair, she softly asked: "Which one?"
Without looking up, Aislinn answered: "Westerbork first, then Bergen-Belsen."
Shelagh closed her eyes. She knew about Westerbork, she had been there. Her voice wavered with her next question. "How… how long?"
"Twelve months. Only two in Westerbork."
A sob escaped Shelagh. Her sister had spent a year in such horrible places, while she had been walking around freely. No wonder the lead they had become a dead end. They had sent her out of the country. When they had known about Westerbork in August of 1944, she had already been in Bergen-Belsen for two months.
"We knew too late." Shelagh muttered more to herself than for Aislinn to hear.
But Aislinn did hear and she looked at her sister with wide eyes. "You came for me?"
"Of course I came for you!" Shelagh placed her right hand gently on her sister's left cheek. With her other hand, she grabbed Aislinn's hand. "When we came back that night and noticed you were not there anymore, they wanted to go back to London. I told them, they had to go without me, then, because I wouldn't go back to London without you. While William did go back, Allister stayed with me. It was so difficult to find out what had happened to you, we were at our wits end. Then we learned from the Dutch resistance of this English woman at Westerbork and we hurried there, only to learn you were already gone, your destination unknown."
"They hoped the British government would trade me for any of their German prisoners, so they brought me to the exchange camp there. It never happened, either the Germans chose someone else to trade, or our government didn't feel the need to respond."
Shelagh noticed the dismal tone in which Aislinn spoke. She knew it was time to talk about brighter things at the moment and therefor she asked if Aislinn was up for another visitor.
"Sister Julienne doesn't strike me as the type to visit when she knows we are talking."
Shelagh smiled. "You're right about her. But I wasn't talking about Sister Julienne, nor any of the other Sisters nor the nurses."
"I haven't met any of the other Sisters yet, and the only nurse I've met is Chummy, I think she said her name was. But if it isn't any of them, then who is it?"
"My daughter."
"You have a daughter?"
Shelagh nodded. "She's two now, Patrick and I adopted her two years ago, right after she was born. I've got a son too. Stepson, technically speaking, Patrick was married before."
"And here I thought I'd find you here as a nun. Come to think of it, when I woke up, you were wearing regular clothing, that should have given me a clue. I missed so much of your life."
"We both did of each other's lives." Shelagh said. "I'm going to get Angela, so you can meet her."
"I'd love to meet her. And I'd love to meet the rest of your family as well someday."
"That day will probably come sooner rather than later. You are stuck with me now."
Aislinn smiled. "And you with me."
Shelagh was almost out of the room when Aislinn called after her. "But you were a nun right? I find it hard to believe Allister lied to me about that."
Shelagh stood still in the doorpost and turned around. "Yes, I've been a nun and midwife for ten years."
"What happened for you to leave?"
Shelagh's eyes twinkled and a smile graced her face. "I fell in love." Then she left to get Angela. Aislinn watched her sister go, with wonder.
While I do understand quite a bit of the German language, writing it is a whole different story. I had to use the online translation websites, so if any of the German phrases are a bit weird, I'll blame them =D. But here is the translation:
"Drehen Sie sich um. Ich möchte Ihren Gesichter sehen." / Turn around. I want to see your faces.
"Ahh, Fräulein Mannion. Es ist schon eine Weile her, wann wir uns das letzte Mal gesehen haben." / Ahh, miss Mannion. It has been a while when we last saw each other.
"Ach so. Dann wäre es vielleicht eine weise Entscheidung, Deutsch zu sprechen." / Oh I see. Perhaps it would have been a wise decision to speak German then.
"Jetzt!" / Now!