That night I watched Mum in the sitting room, quietly reading her book. When I told her I was going for a walk she barely even looked up. She probably knew I was going to La Petite Maison, to see the ‘For Sale’ sign for myself. That’s when I noticed Therese’s white BMW parked a little way up the road. I didn’t have to ask myself why it was there. I remembered how she’d looked at Mr McCracken at the garage. It reminded me of how they’d looked at each other that time at Les Paradis.
I now understood why Mr McCracken never told Nic off in class, and why he’d been driving around aimlessly one Sunday and jumped at the chance to run me to Les Paradis. I don’t know when he first met Therese, but Mr Prevost’s nights at the Royal must’ve given them time to meet again. Therese and Mr McCracken. What a lovely couple. She’ll change her name and move to England and wear all those clothes she bought and kept in the spare room.
I stood in the darkness outside La Petite Maison and there was the sound of things clicking into place. It was like when I’d pulled apart my Rubik’s Cube and put it back together with all the colours matching. I realised it was Nic who’d sent those nasty letters to Mr McCracken. It wasn’t just the curve of the ‘S’ and the crooked underlining, it was the fancy felt-tip pens that I’d seen her buy in Island Wide. She was always so snide about Mr McCracken, she played up in class and he never did anything about it. How long had she known? It’s probably the only reason she started coming to my house and pretending to be my friend. I was just a decoy. Wasn’t that clever? Wasn’t she clever?
I suppose I was relieved that Mr McCracken wasn’t so innocent, but I also felt pretty Stupid. It doesn’t matter how many times I come top of the class, when it comes to the stuff that’s happening around me I’m a proper (Village) idiot. I don’t understand the first thing about living human people – why they make the choices they make, why they keep secrets. I suppose I have to accept that there’ll always be things I’m not told, little things that will come out later. It might be years and years before I finally know it all.
But I didn’t need Therese and Mr McCracken to teach me that. All I had to do was look at Dad’s concluding chapters of Uncle Charlie’s Story.
The Charlie Rozier Story Concluded:
‘The Night and Fog Descend – A Son and Brother Lost’
[Special thanks Colin Turrell and Valerie Priaulx for new information supplied, credit and thanks also to Arlette Rozier]
Charlie Rozier died in late December 1965. He therefore left the story of his arrest and imprisonment during the Occupation incomplete. It fell to me, his brother and confidant, to continue alone the journey upon which we had embarked together. I have done so as best I am able.
Charlie was re-arrested by three Feldgendarmes on the morning of 13th December 1942. It was reported in the Press later that day that his father, Hubert Rozier, had been shot ‘whilst attempting to escape’. No further details were given, although it is believed that an officer on night patrol had seen Hubert walking onto the beach at Belle Grève and, after shouting several warnings, had opened fire and fatally wounded him. Hubert was clearly planning to end his life, one way or another. He had already provided the Occupying Authorities with a detailed confession, wherein he accepted full responsibility for the charges of ‘espionage’ and ‘sabotage’ that had been laid at his door. Thus and therefore, he knew he would be shot. As an ex-officer with the Royal Engineers who had seen active service during the First World War, and as a former POW and German-speaker, he fitted the enemy profile of an underground agent, even though the majority of his fellow islanders would later dismiss the idea as preposterous.
Despite Hubert’s fervent denials, the German interrogating officers remained convinced that father and son had been working as a team. The very night his father was shot, Charlie was re-arrested and passed into the hands of Achim Burkhardt and Paul Heider, two officers of the Abwehr (Espionage, Counter Espionage and Sabotage Service of the German High Command). Heider was rightly suspicious of Hubert’s confession, and promptly concluded that his death was