Island Madness (12 page)

“You like this?” the Captain demanded.

She starled to tremble, sweat breaking out.

“Yes?”

“Yes,” she said, staring hard. “It’s
gut. Sehr gut
.”

She pressed his head into her, wondering who could it be; not her father, surely. Please God, not that. Another thought brought a shudder to her. Tommy. The boots were big enough. How many times had she felt his uniform on her like this, inhaling the sour smell of sweat and spilt beer mixed with the sweet tang of wood shavings? This uniform had been dipped in a different brew altogether, cigar smoke, brass polish and on the shoulders and lapels and the collar of his shirt the scent of Molly and Molly’s perfume, a cocoon of desire. That wouldn’t protect him. Tommy would step out and split his skull open like a walnut, and they would have to drag the body away and bury him in some faraway field! The island would be turned upside down in the hunt for him. And Lentsch knew the Captain had left with her! She would be the first person they would interrogate. This could be the end of her life! She began to shake uncontrollably, in her thighs and her arms and the muscles deep within her belly. The Captain lifted her clear and grinning, urged her on.

When it was over he stood still, breathing hard. She did not know where to look, what her eyes might tell him. He was watching her closely. He had expected something more perfunctory. He was impressed.

“I must go,” he said eventually. “They are waiting for me.”

She jumped down and held the coat open against him, terrified he might turn around.

“
Gruss und kuss Veronika
. Remember?” she said, propelling him gently backwards, holding him fast with her mouth and body. She could hear breathing now, she was sure of it. She reached round and pushed open the door. He was out onto the path.

“Do you like horses?” he asked. “Riding?”

She had never been on a horse in her life. They frightened her.

“Love it,” she said. “Anything outdoors.”

“I will send a message perhaps. To your shop.”

“
Gut. Sehr gut
.” She took his hand away from her. “Now let me get some beauty sleep.”

She stood in the doorway as he walked back, hearing the soft clip of the door and the whine of the engine as he pulled away, remembering too late the clothing that lay on the car floor. Back in the shed she picked up a spade and held it across her chest, like a rifle at port arms.

“Is that you, Tommy?”

There was no sound. The breathing had stopped. She jabbed at the dark.

“Come on! Come on! You can show yourself now!”

She stabbed at the black air again, and this time made contact. There was a squeal and the boxes feil in front of her. She jumped back in fright. She didn’t care who she woke now.

“Come on! Out with you! He’s coming back, you know!”

A figure came out from behind the fallen pile, small and pale. She could smell him even in this wind.

“Pliss!”

She didn’t recognize the accent but she knew who he was, or where he came from. One of the Todt workers. He stood there, uncertain, ready to run. They saw them only at first or last light, standing in the backs of lorries, or shuffling along the road with picks and shovels slung over their shoulders. Most of the time they were in the forbidden zones, building fortifications. The islanders tried to take no notice of them. They were nothing to do with them, after all. Who in the world had seen anything like them, with their gaunt stares and dark faces, thinking incomprehensible thoughts? They looked barely human as it was. Molly had told her that half of them were from asylums, the others bad people, Communists and the like. When they weren’t locked up in their billets they were prowling about the countryside lifting whatever they could lay their hands on. But this one didn’t look so terrible.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, as if she didn’t know. He said nothing. She stood in the doorway and pointed to her mouth.

“Food? You come to steal food?”

He shook his head. As she moved to chuck him out he crouched down, raising his arm to ward off the blow. He could be no more than sixteen. Perhaps younger. It was difficult to tell with the foreigns. Must be starving to be out at this hour. She remembered the food table and how the girls had all crowded round it. They were no different, elbowing each other aside for the next greasy mouthful. It was all slave labour of sorts. She grabbed his wrist and dragging him over, pulled the cheese out from her bag.

“Eat,” she said.

He took it carefully, turning it in his hands.

“It’s OK,” she said. “Eat. It’s good.”

He held it up and took a bite. He found it hard to chew and swallow.

“Drink?” she asked, tipping her hand. “Water?”

He nodded.

“Come on, then.”

She led him along the path to the back door, where the cottage leant into the soil like an old farm labourer used beyond his years. She held her index finger to her lips.

“Shh. OK?”

The boy nodded.

X

Once in the kitchen she drew the curtains and switched on the light. The boy was white from head to foot, white on his long clumpy hair, white on his hollow watchful face and white on his anxious legs. Only the cut of his muddy jacket, of incongruous quality, gave him substance, that and the dark red well of his sunken eyes. Tied round his waist he wore a grubby pair of football shorts, and his feet were planted in boots three sizes too big for him.

She cut him a thick slice of bread and poured him a glass of milk. She had always imagined the foreigns to be quick and furtive, but he took his time, eating slowly, pausing to swallow. He held the unfinished cheese between his knees. White cheese against white knees. White milk and white bread. She wished she could give him something with a little colour in it. They were long and thin, his legs, made for climbing cliffs and stealing gulls’ eggs and falling offbikes. Legs like Ned once had, legs for legging it. When he had finished he looked to the door and began to rub his calves.

“You can’t go out like that,” she said.

The boy did not understand.

“Clothes,” she said, slapping her thigh. “
Vêtements
. You need more clothes.” She pointed to the floor. “Stay,” she commanded.

In the front room lay a pile of pantomime costumes she had brought back to mend: a couple of pirates’ outfits, some fairies’ wings, and the clothes for the lost boys. There was a pair of thick red flannel trousers in amongst thern she had patched only the night before.

“Here,” she said, coming back in. “Put these on.”

He hesitated.

She mimed for him again, tugging and straining as she tried to pull them over an imaginary pair of boots. His mouth flickered with laughter.

“Go on!”

As he took them her dad’s voice came floating down.

“Veronica? Is that you?”

The boy looked to run, but Veronica shook her head.

“Who you got down there?”

Footsteps came down the stairs. A short man in trousers and a shirt peered round the door. Since her mother had been bedridden, her father had taken to sleeping on the floor beside her in his clothes.

“What in Christendom is that?” he demanded.

“A foreign,” she said. “I found him outside.”

“Trying to rob us, the little tyke. I’ll learn him.” He raised his hand. Veronica caught it in mid-air. There was no power behind it.

“No, Da. Look at him. He’s starving, poor little mite.”

“And you’re breaking the rules, girl. You know that. Go on, sling your hook.” He made for the back door. Veronica put her weight against it.

“He’s not going till he’s properly fed,” she said. “And that’s that. Now get back to bed. What you don’t see you don’t know.”

“Get us all killed,” her father complained. “Wake Mum up.”

“How is she?”

Her father looked at the boy, who was too frightened to move, and then at his daughter. He hardly knew her any more.

“Restless. Small wonder with her daughter coming home at all hours.”

“It’s all in a good cause, Da,” she said.

“And what cause might that be?”

“Survival. More grub.”

The boy stood up and drew his jacket around him. He held his hands in prayer and bowed before them. He seemed agitated.

“
Lager Ute
” he said. “
Lager Ute
.”

“What’s he saying?” Veronica asked her father.

“That’s his billet. Near the Todt Headquarters. He’ll need to get back there before it gets light.” He held up his hand. “I don’t know why I’m doing this.”

He moved to the side dresser and bent down. They heard the clatter of the bread bin. He came up holding a paper bag.

“Egg and tomato pie. Mrs Luscombe brought it round this afternoon.” He broke it in two and stuck half in the boy’s pocket. “Now vamoose, before you get us all shot.”

Veronica took the boy to the door. She tapped her wrist.

“At night,” she said. “
Nacht
. This door. Open.” She swung it to and fro. “You
komm hier
. For food. Yes?”

“Yiss.”

“Good.
Sehr gut
.”

The boy smiled quickly again. She took his head and held it against her. He turned, and ran out into the dark.

Her father was sitting at the table, smoking the stub end of a roll-up.

“Dangerous game you’re playing, girl,” he said.

“Him? He won’t talk.”

Her father shook his head.

“Not him. I mean that.” He pointed to the greatcoat. “No good’ll come of it.”

“No? What about you up at the airport?”

“That’s different. Working for them is one thing. We’ve no choice in the matter. Having…relations is another.”

“Well, excuse me for living. And where do you think those fighters are going? Butlin’s Holiday Camp? You can see the bombers circling waiting for their escort, for Christ’s sake. That’s what you’re doing, Dad. Helping bomb London.”

Her father’s face darkened with anger.

“You don’t know the half of it, girl. I know what I’m doing and I know what you’re doing. You should have stuck with Tommy Ie Coeur. There’d be none of this nonsense then.”

“Tommy was going with every tart he could lay his hands on!”

“Well, you must have given him a taste for them, that’s all I can say.”

“Da!”

“I mean it. Thank God your mother can’t see it all.”

“I’ll move out if you like.”

“It might come to that.”

He trudged back upstairs. Veronica opened the back door and walked out into the garden, down to the field at the end, wondering if the boy had got back home safely. Home! She sighed at the impossibility of the word and feeling the tears rise up, held on to the railing and let her body shake.

Reaching the top of the hill Ned stopped and looked down. Though the moon shone full, it was a winter moon, one that bied the island of all colour. On the shoreline, a mass of shapes stood out against the sky, a gravel digger, its half-open jaw towering over the silhouette of a Henschel locomotive with its string of empty wagons. Closer by, the pocket of houses where he had been brought up, once whitewashed every year, but now left to fade in tired sympathy. No one painted their houses any more. Guernsey had a new shade now, occupational grey.

But beyond the bay sparkled. No blackout could hide it tonight, and as it danced, deep and dark, it seemed to restore to the island that sense of floating space that he had long forgotten existed. For a moment he could remember what it had been like before the grey, when the island had rung, not to the sound of marching feet and strident songs, but to sounds that had been banished by decree, sounds an active people made. For they did nothing now except shamble from one day to the next. He stood and listened. Even the tone of the sea had been changed! He could remember how it had been, the rhythm he had slept and woken to, not this slap, slap, slap, as it met thick concrete walls, but the sucking wash of it as it beat its way, back and forth, over the long expanse of pebble and sand. Time was when he would have gone down and dragged the canoe out, now one of the few craft on the island that hadn’t been confiscated or broken up. Not that he’d hidden it, that was the beauty of it. It was a foldaway canoe called a Folboat, eighteen foot long, light but strong enough to carry a load of around 700 Ibs. Dismantled it looked more like a camp bed than anything else and with the paddies hidden among the pitchforks they hadn’t given it a second glance. He’d seen an advert for it seven years ago. 2/6 a week it cost to buy then and he’d done it with the help of dad and a loan from Uncle Albert. He used to take it out regularly on spring nights like this, skimming over the huge stillness of the world, dipping in moonlight on the empty sea. In the summer Veronica came too, the two of them skirting the mute cliffs and motionless bays before she slipped in, swimming on top of the great swell, challenging the cold currents while he described safety’s circle. The island had been theirs then; they had the strength and skill to possess it, to feed in its deep waters, to embrace its age with their surging youth.

An owl called, reminding him of other hoots and chants that once broke this hushed night air; singing his way home with Bernie, their stomachs awash with beer; the skinny-dipping squeals a whole group of them had enticed once out of Veronica and Bernie’s girl and the young Elspeth Poidevin and how they had run back across L’Ancresse Common with freshly glimpsed secrets to take to bed. Everyone grew older, he knew that, and he knew too that it was not the passing of his youth that he regretted, but that it should pass into this, where their movements were constricted not by the island’s history or their own stubborn prejudices but by a homeland which had ceased to exist. For where were they now? What identity did they possess? They listened to the wireless, waiting for messages of hope and exhortation, but though London sent an armada of them to the other occupied countries, none were directed here. England kept quiet about the Channel Islands as if she were punishing the islands for letting the side down. ‘England expects that every man will do his duty’, that’s the phrase he had been taught at school. But what could they do here, with no place to hide, living amongst an enemy who was polite and considerate and bristling with power?