Pierre placed the tin back inside the missal. Pulled out a packet of Gauloises. ‘Father Rey thought you might be able to open your boxing club in a month or so,’ he said, taking a long drag on his cigarette and blowing the smoke out in rings. ‘The Lord moves in wondrous ways, don’t you think?’ He put the cigarette in his mouth and pulled his coat on. ‘I told you things would calm down.’ He turned his collar up. ‘I’ll see myself out.’

Joe waited until he’d left, picked up the missal, sat down hard on the straight-backed chair, fished out the tin of Fisherman’s Friend and pulled out the antenna.

The boys came back. Even Tommy Dauvin.

‘And is it true, Father, that you beat the Wehrmacht champion, Wilhelm Weber?’

The boys were thin, undersized, and they were cherished sons, looked after. How had that young OT lad ended up here? If Pierre was right, what had he done to merit this punishment? It was a hard price to pay.

‘Watch the footwork, Tommy.’

These lads, Joe thought, could be rounded up for no reason, set to labouring work. It wouldn’t take long before they, too, were scrawny as the devil and would thieve for a living.

Joe thought about it. The nuns grew vegetables for their own use. He couldn’t take anything that would be noticed, but no one would miss half a dozen carrots or leftover taters from tea, an apple or two. It only went to the pig. Now the evenings were getting light, there were nearly three hours after the Angelus and before the curfew and the bedtime prayer. He knew the prisoners roamed at night, scavenging, as dynamite thundered in the tunnels of St Lawrence and the ground vibrated, that great bed of war tossed and ruptured.

He put the vegetables in an enamel bowl, placed it in his basket and cycled off. He wished he had some cheese. That made a good meal, cheese and potatoes. But who had cheese in these times? The penalties for feeding the labourers were severe, but, Joe reasoned, if no one saw him, who could denounce him? Send an anonymous letter to the Feldkommandantur at Victoria College House? If he hid the food in a ditch, or a hedgerow, close to one of the camps, there was a chance a man would find it, before a feral dog or fox. And with a bit of luck, it would still be warm.

He was caught up in this war, like it or not.

Chapter Seven: Dora

CHAPTER SEVEN

DORA

London: May 1985

Dora had held Charles’s hand at Sal’s funeral, feet heavy as lead, black ribbons in the breeze while he sobbed through the Kaddish and threw the first clods of earth on her grave. He proposed to Dora a year after Sal had died.

‘I’m no good on my own, Dora,’ he said.