Island Madness (11 page)

Zep was on top of her now, fumbling with his buttons. She could hear his boots trying to gain purchase on the road. She raised her hips but it didn’t seem to help. This was no good at all.

“It’s bloody draughty in here,” she complained.

“Where, then?”

She pushed him off and stood up. He pressed her against the car and put his hand inside the greatcoat. She flinched. His hands were freezing.

“No,” she said. “This way.”

She took his hand and led him round to the end house. Down the path stood her father’s shed. The lock had been broken so many times they hadn’t bothered to replace it any more. At the back was a small window with a workbench running off to one side. The moonlight feil upon the pitted surface and a row of chisels above. Zep stood in the doorway, looking in, as if he were a guest being shown round a hotel.

“There is no room to lie down,” he said. She sat up on the bench, put her bag to one side and leant back against the wall.

“Pretend you’re on parade, then,” she said. “Stand to attention,” and she pulled him towards her. It was an awkward posture, where movement was dictated by the needs of balance rather than desire, hanging on the side with one hand, looking over his shoulder, hoping that they weren’t making too much noise, wondering whether this was a good idea. It was why she had gone to the party, wasn’t it, to bag a decent Jerry? Moving back to step out of his trousers the Captain banged his head on something hanging down from the rafters.

“Careful,” she said and reaching up took it down from its hook.

“What is it?”

She held it out at arm’s length. “A carving,” she said, “nothing much.” She cast it to one side. “You can come back now. It’s quite safe.”

He moved up again and undid her few remaining buttons, examining what he found.

“Beautiful,” he said, meaning it.

She kissed him gratefully.

“You should have seen them when I had a bit of weight on me. Your rations have half done for our figures.”

Romulus and Remus, that’s what Tommy used to call them, ‘each one a helmet’s worth’. That first afternoon had been typical Tommy, shrugging off his duties without a moment’s thought, sitting up at the bar, enjoying his steady consumption, heimet planted on the counter, her legs swinging back and forth. Whenever the connect-ing door opened, he would place the heimet solemnly over his glass, not because he was worried he might get caught (Tommy had been caught dozens of times—fined but never dismissed, for he was fearless when it came to fighting) but because it amused him to lift his hat of high office and feign astonishment at what lay underneath. There was a playfulness within Tommy that cut away his years, an irresponsibility that captured her utterly, though the news that Ned had upped and joined the English police and could be seen swanning about Dorchester High Street in a uniform one size too large for him had helped. So it was Tommy who she walked out with against her father’s wishes, Tommy with his unquenchable thirst and huge hands, Tommy with his delicate wood carvings and his roving eye. And for a while it worked. She thought that given enough solid sustenance ‘from her, she could wean him off his flights of fancy. She didn’t give him time for anyone else. By the time mother took ill and she was needed more at home it never occurred to her that he might return to his old ways, for it was Tommy who carved the Virgin Mary that her mother kept on her sickbed beside her, Tommy who carried her downstairs so that she might be near her garden, Tommy who pushed her along the Esplanade every Sunday, but despite all his kindness, stories came winging back of Tommy here and Tommy there, and did you see him walking out of the Normandie, one on each arm? She might have turned a blind eye had she not come across him, waiting for opening time, sitting on the stone wall carving a little lighthouse with ‘To Mary-Ellen: Guernsey Memories’ carved upon it. Though he promised to mend his ways, even as he was saying it his eye flicked across to a couple of trippers sauntering down the opposite road, skirts billowing in the wind. He winked at them. Just couldn’t help it. So she chucked him there and then, him and his ring, and spent her time looking after Mum, cooking for Dad in the evenings and pruning leathery feet every morning from ten to twelve thirty and on Wednesday afternoons from half-past two to half-past four. She had some regular clients then, some of the island’s real toffs, even Mrs Hallivand. And then Molly had arrived, right after one of Mrs Hallivand’s imperial fortnightly visits. Veronica knew Molly slightly. “Ideas above her station,” her mother used to say. “With a figure like that she can afford them,” her da would reply. Molly had come about an ingrowing toenail, and they both stood by the window watching Mrs Hallivand sail down the street distributing nods and pleasantries to those who deserved them.

“I see you work under the royal warrant,” Molly observed and Veronica gave such a good impression of Her Majesty that Molly laughing added, “You should go on the stage. Come round to the Society one night. Up above the police station. We need some new blood. See if you like it. Only keep that one under your hat. Marjorie holds the purse strings.” And so she did. She was good. She had the mouth and the bottle for it. She could sing too. Every now and again she could hear Tommy’s laugh rise up through the floors. She still liked him. They started up again, unofficial. Nothing special. He’d been seen walking out with Elspeth Poidevin but had dropped her without warning. Rumour had it he was the father of her child, but it didn’t seem to bother either of them. When he was free he’d come round Tuesdays and Thursdays, just as was she was about to lock up and as often as not she’d turn the ‘closed’ sign, lock the door, pull down the blind and bounce that chuckle out of him again. She looked forward to it. Better he should be like this, hardly drunk, grateful and grinning, than stumbling into their marriage bed late at night with only the curse of failed expectation to embrace. The evenings were different. She’d started going out with a different set. Molly’s crowd. A bit more class than she was used to. She was earning a little money too, especially in the summer months. It was curious what people found under their socks when suddenly exposed to sunlight. She had a trickle of holiday-makers who came in the second or third day, their feet twitching on her carpet like flat misshapen creatures hauled up from the bottom of the ocean floor. And then she found another man. Son of a solicitor. A little dim but good-natured enough. Fancied himself as Guernsey’s answer to Noël Coward, all cravats and cigarette holders and tennis racquets. He taught her how to play croquet and mix Pimm’s No. 1. She learnt quickly. She began to read
Country Life, Picture Post
. She took the lead in plays by Agatha Christie. She acquired manners. Her voice changed, losing that slow insular edge she could hear in her parents and Tommy and all the others she had known. She could say wittier, nastier things. She saw people in the long term, what they could do, where they might be going, how she might be a part of it. She didn’t want the likes of Tommy any more. She was on her way to becoming a young lady now. She began to leave her surgery early, so that Tommy would arrive to find it locked and her gone. For three weeks it worked and then he caught her halfway up the police stairs on her way to a read-through of a new murder mystery. She was going to get strangled in her nightdress. She was looking forward to it.

“Been round a couple of times. You’re never there,” Tommy complained, his bulk filling the first-floor landing.

“I don’t open up for just anyone any more.” She smoothed down the folds of her dress and waited. She knew what she had said. She found it rather clever.

“Not even for old Tommy?” he asked.

“Not even for old Tommy,” she repeated.

“Made you something. For the shop.”

Veronica flinched. How she hated that word.

“It’s a surgery, Tommy, not a shop.”

He reached under his coat and drew out a carved wooden foot, with toes and toenails and a perfectly arched instep.

“It’s a foot. See? You could hang it outside above the pavement. Like a chemist’s.”

“Very nice.”

“I could help you hang it, if you like. Come round tomorrow say, after lunch.”

“I’d have to ask Mr Underwood’s permission first. They’re his premises, after all.”

Tommy nodded. They both knew full well she had no intention of hanging his handiwork anywhere. He looked angry.

“How’s the acting going, then?”

Laughter came from above. She looked up, worried she was missing something.

“Swimmingly.”

“Swimmingly! What sort of word is that?”

“Just a word, Tommy, like any other.”

“Well, I’ve never heard it before.”

She looked down.

“Well, pardon me for talking.”

“I better let you get on with it, then, if it’s going swimmingly.”

He turned to walk back down, and then called up again, in one last attempt.

“Your ma all right?”

She felt for him then. He had been good to Ma. More than good. He had been generous and kind.

“As well as can be expected. Come round and see her if you want. She’d like that.”

“When?”

“Whenever you want. She’s not going anywhere. I don’t have to be there, do I?”

“Suppose not.”

“Just as well if I wasn’t. Don’t want to get your hopes up, Tommy.”

“You saying there’s no point in me calling round, then?”

“Not on my account.”

“Not even if my poor old feet need attention?”

“A tank couldn’t harm your feet, Tommy. Not in those boots.”

He trod heavily down the stairs, looking back once in the hope that she would be standing there, looking down, ready to rush down those guilt-trodden stairs into his burly arms, but she was gone. Upstairs she read her lines and placed her white-powdered neck in Gerald’s trembling hands. It was marvellous. He could hardly get his words out he was so excited. Every time she slid to the floor, his hands travelled down the sides of her body a little more slowly, and when he crossed the stage to make his telephone call he held one hand in front of his trousers in the hope that no one would notice. She did, lying on the floor looking up the length of his leg, and so did Molly, winking at her from the sidelines. There was an advert she’d seen in the
Picture Post
recently from some undergarments manufacturer which ran ‘The Less a Man Feels of His Underwear the More He Likes It’. Well, Gerald was feeling his by jingo and didn’t seem too upset. God knows what he’d be like when it came to the dress rehearsal. She was going to wear her new nightdress bought from down below. Just like silk it felt, made from this new stuff, Viscana, with a satin collar and blouselike bodice, tucked in at the waist and all smooth and showy at the front. Once he’d run his hands over that it’d stick out so far he probably be able to hang the receiver off the end. She started to shake with laughter. “Keep your bust still, V,” Mrs Hallivand complained. “You’re a corpse, girl, not a badly set blancmange.” Afterwards she led him outside and with her hands set primly in her lap listened while he declared his intentions, listing his pros-pects, his father’s business, the plot of land they owned by the golf course and the hotel he planned to build. Give me six months, he promised, and I’ll be able to go to your father. You can go to my father right this minute, sweetheart, she wanted to tell him, he’s not waiting on anything, but she held her peace, told him how thrilled she was (and she was, there was no doubting it), went home, and lay in bed thinking of the house she and Gerald would live in one day over at St Martins or the posh bits of St Peter Port, and how she would wake in the morning to a clear open window and a garden beneath and the sound of Gerald going off to work. He’d be no trouble, at least not to begin with. Spunk in her hand, that’s what he’d be. And then, what, two months later, he was gone, not just Gerald but every man jack of them, across the water to join up. She’d been horrified. It won’t be for long, darling, he assured her, it won’t be for long, scrambling out of his flannels for the first and last time (a calculated surrender disguised as girlish trust), and what happens? Gerald gets washed overboard and drowns while on training! All those months wasted. Tommy imagined he could win her back with him gone. She’d seen him at Ned’s father’s funeral, and thrown him a discreet, affectionate wave, but the trouble was her tastes had changed for good by then. Gerald might have been a bit of a fooi, but at least he had aspirations, at least he had prospects. Ned was there, home on compassionate leave. She understood him now, why he had left. They made a promise to have a drink together, the day before he was due back on the mainland. The next day the Germans came. It was bad for her at first, for she had cut loose so many boats by then. But unlike all the other men she had ever known, the Germans took care of their bodies; they liked them, liked the look of them, liked the feel of them, wanted to understand them. They were like women in that way. She learnt to adapt her practices to their requirements, just like the town’s barbers. Business boomed. And as for the Guernsey Society, they had never been in greater demand. She was getting the best of both worlds. Not like poor Ned. The islanders expected him to protect them from the Germans and the Germans demanded that he enforce their rules. There he was, caught in the middle, viewed with suspicion by both sides. And how were he and Tommy getting on now, she wondered? She never had worn that nightie.

Zep put his hands under her, drawing her buttocks out into the air, sending her sprawling further back. Her head started to bang against the wooden frame. The chisels began to dance. He was in a hurry now. Putting her hands round his neck, she managed to haul herself up. It would be over soon, and he would be gone. In the few minutes left it would be important to impart to him something which he might not expect, which on reflection would remind him not simply of the fleeting desire Ned had provoked, but of a particular attraction which she alone might possess. What, though? And how to deliver it? A word, a gesture, a promise of things to come? Would the prospect of regularly betraying Molly be sufficient for his ego, or would the picture of her elegant painted face, set hard against their departure, be precisely the image to turn him against her? She pulled him close. Over his shoulder, to the side of the door, behind a pile a boxes and glass frames and old sacking she saw two boots glinting in the wan light. One of them moved cautiously. She gasped.