Island Madness (16 page)

Ned covered her giggling mouth and turned her over.

“Be quiet now,” he said, pinning her loose arms high above her head. “It’s my mother. All right?”

“I know,” she boasted. She bounced her hips against him. “I’d like to meet her.”

“Not now,” he said, untying the belt of her jacket, conscious of their desire.

“Later, then.”

“Why? I’ve got your father to steer clear of. Now you’ve my mother. We’re evens.”

“Not really,” she told him, looking down at his insistent hands. “You couldn’t charm my father however hard you tried. But I could charm your mother as easy as pie.”

Her jacket and blouse lay open. He was barely listening.

“You could?”

“Yes. Don’t you know? I can charm anybody I want to.”

Now when he tried to form her name in front of his mother and place it alongside the other word filling his mouth, death, it was as if he were acknowledging for the first time the strength of his failed affection, the bitter ground that he had trodden upon.

“Isobel. It’s Isobel, Mum. She’s dead,” he said, stumbling over her Christian name as if he had no right to use it. “Killed.” He felt himself blushing. It was almost as if he were admitting to the deed himself.

“Isobel! Dead!” she said, echoing her son’s own exclamation. “But how!”

“That’s what they want me to find out,” he replied, walking out into the front room, indicating the Major, who stood awkwardly in the light of the doorway. He turned and lowered his voice. “I just came back to let you know I’m all right. I’ll have a quick wash while I’m here. There’s no telling how long they’ll keep me.”

Ned went upstairs. The Major, conscious of the silence and the requirements of his upbringing, took off his cap and advanced. Ned’s mother stepped into the room and faced him. In the kitchen the dog growled, and as she looked back, ready to draw attention to him as a means of conversation, she noticed the half ring of dirt on the flagstone. Ned had failed to put the basket back in its proper place. The circle of dust proclaimed their duplicity like the cheap sparkle on a brass wedding ring.

“Stop that nonsense,” she scolded quickly and shut the door. “He still hasn’t got over this morning,” she explained, adding, “You gave us all a proper fright.”

The Major bowed his stiff apology. “I did not mean to alarm you at such an hour.”

Ned’s mother sniffed. It was not the time that mattered.

“We’re all early risers here,” she told him, in a tone one might tell a stranger the nature of one’s religion.

“He has told you the news?”

“Yes. Dreadful.”

“I need his help, Mrs Luscombe.”

“I can see that.”

“I must take him away again.”

“To the house, yes.”

“You know it?”

“Dad helped build it before he passed away.” She saw the Major’s quickly masked look of incomprehension. “Ned’s father,” she explained.

“Ah.” The Major looked relieved. “He died recently.”

She nodded, wiping her hands on her dress.

“It must be hard for you,” he continued, anxious to win the battle of apologies. “Your bereavement and then us here, the two things so close together.”

“Well, you coming took my mind off Dad going, I must say.” She heard Ned moving about upstairs. “And he’d be back in England now, learning foreign ways. So I’ve got you to thank for that as well.”

Lentsch opened his hands.

“You see. Even the German army has its uses. But I must warn you. He is still learning foreign ways.” She smiled despite herself.

Ned’s clattered down the stairs. They stepped back.

“What?” Ned said, ducking into the conversation. His mother, fussing through her embarrassment, handed him his coat and shooed him out of the door.

“Mind your manners,” she reminded him softly, but he was already out on the path. The Major bowed his head and followed. She stood in the doorway, still wary, shaking her head, remember-ing not the blank look of sorrow she had seen on her son’s face not five minutes earlier, but that former time, in the coming of the last New Year, when Isobel had given him up, that resolution week Ned had spent drinking, long and deep, behind the closed doors of the Britannia and the rogues’ bar halfway down Hauteville, the same ill-lit, damp back room where he had thrown Veronica over, the product of another imagined slight. She had seen the weakness of the male sex in him that week, for he had done the thing that a thwarted man does, treating the world as if he was its only deserving occupant. Though he had shown an indifferent face to his mates, what a spoilt complexion surfaced when only his mother and father were present! Even at the New Year’s Eve party over at Bernie’s house, it had been Ned’s private bitterness, uttered quickly in his father’s ear, that had soured their celebratory drink, rather than the rattle sounding in Dad’s chest. “Happy New Year, son,” Dad had offered, clinking his ruby glass, a gesture to a continuity he knew to be illusory, and Ned dismissed the attempt with an impatient snort, and, grabbing Bernie by the arm, had declared that the two of them were going out to wash the bastard past away, downing whatever was in his glass, not the muiled beer on offer, but something strong and vicious, in three savage gulps before escaping to a chorus of drunken cheers. He was too busy inhaling that spiteful strength from the room to notice how Dad had flinched, conscious of the gathering speed of his mortality and the burden it placed on them all. A carpenter all his life, clever with his hands, by then he could barely climb the stairs unaided, one of the many handicaps he had tried to keep from their son, not for fear of worrying him, but in an attempt to maintain his own fragile pride. The first full day of Ned’s visit, Dad had woken to bad lungs, hawking bloody lumps into his fisted handkerchief, and as she had helped to dress him, with him sitting on the edge of the bed, an unlit roll-up stuck on his lip, panting as she pulled his trousers over his legs, the bedroom door had swung open. Across the passageway Ned sat on his bed in a cruel parody of their hidden pantomime, and for a moment the two men looked at each other. What an unwelcome mirror they both saw. Then Dad had pushed the door shut, and with his temper let loose from the slam of it, shoved her down onto the floor. From then on, during Ned’s stay, sheer bloody-mindedness had willed his body to confront tasks that had been beyond him the six months previously; carrying potatoes in from the outhouse, gathering fallen logs in the garden, even working the wet sheets through the mangle out in the yard, both of them knowing that when Ned returned to the mainland this need for exertion would pass. And so it proved, but not simply passed, for this impetuous gesture had evaporated what small reserves of energy Dad had left, and with the damp weeks of January seeping in the cold and clammy bedroom walls he took to his bed again. Yes, she would mourn the passing of Isobel, not simply for the brutality of her death, but for what it might do to her son. He had abandoned both family and faith in his careless pursuit of her and with the news he had brought back now, she feared he would never recover. Isobel would be preserved for ever, the ghost of her figure ready to rise up between him and the life he had yet to live.

She watched as Ned climbed into the car, easing back onto the leather upholstery as if he was as familiar with its cushioned panels and pale armrests as he was with the pedalled chair sitting on its polished pedestal in the barber’s shop opposite Underwood’s. Then the Major stepped in, hiding her son from view. He put his hand inside his jacket and drew out a silver case. She saw her son’s hand floating over and, closing her eyes, shut the door fast, thankful that Dad had not been alive to witness such a close and crowning capitulation.

Ned could feel the acid rising in his stomach. He rubbed his chest, then despite the fact that it eased the pain, stopped. Lentsch was looking at him intently. Ned pulled his handkerchief up to his mouth and let the clear bile run.

“Stomach complaint?” Lentsch queried, bringing his voice under control.

Ned nodded.

Lentsch fumbled in his pocket.

“Chalk,” he said, holding out a silver case of small white tablets. “From home.” He patted his stomach. “I too have this malady.”

Ned chewed on the tablet.

“This is a bad business,” Lentsch said. “I have given strict instructions. There will be no reprisals. People must know we believe in the rule of law.”

The calm of Lentsch’s chili reassurance seemed to thaw a shard of frozen recklessness in Ned’s heart.

“Is that why you deported all the British-born last month?” he asked.

Lentsch looked to the floor.

“Has not England interned all Germans, taken them to some place of detention, where they can be watched, kept under guard?”

“I don’t know.”

“Of course they have. It is only sense. Even if you believe that they will not plot against you, you must do this. For security. Do not worry about your English friends. They will be looked after.” He took out a chalk pill and popped it into his mouth. “Who knows? They may even get more to eat.”

Ned was annoyed. Even now the ever-present subject of food loomed large.

“But you promised us that no one would be deported. Except…”

He let the word die in the air between them. There had been only three of them, a nurse, a hospital cleaner and the woman who had taken a job on one of the big farms just a few months before the invasion. Ned had seen her once, herding cattle along the back lanes in the summer rain, slapping their backsides in affectionate exasper-ation, her determined face softened by an unhurried contentment. She’d been studying agriculture at a college in Reading and had come over as soon as she’d heard about the job. Even at the time people said she was being foolish, coming so close to the Continent, but she wouldn’t listen. To work outdoors, to work with animals, that was all she wanted, and Ned supposed that once here it hadn’t seemed possible that it would ever be taken from her, that she could be removed. And with her red hair and fair skin who was going to know? As long as she kept quiet and didn’t show herself, as long as she called the cows, cleaned their stalls, sang to them softly while wiping down their warm pink udders, surely she was safe? And so the days became weeks and the weeks months; the cows were led out in the morning and milked in the afternoon, and in the evening the meal she sat down to was a family affair. But early last year she had been informed upon—that was the whisper, though the unremarkable ratchet of official machinery was Ned’s more tutored guess. Whatever, she was gone by April, despite the farmer’s pleas. The family had held a farewell party for her the night before and still talked of her and her way with his cattle, wondering how she was faring, hoping, as they had all promised themselves that tearful evening, that one day she might return. The Major grunted.

“In war it is not always possible to keep one’s promises,” he admitted. “We expected the war to be short. Now it is long. The island’s significance, its specifications, have changed. To begin with it was to be an example of what the British could expect when we had won the war. This is what it will be like when you find us in the Cotswolds and Coventry and your town spa of Bath. This is what you will hear, this is what you will read, this is what you will see, marching down your streets. Though what is yours will be ours, we will respect it, strengthening all that is good, weeding out all that is corrupt. But now it has changed. The islands have become mixed up in the whole sorry plot. Now they are part of the military strategy.” He cleared his throat before changing the subject. “There is something else I must say before we arrive at her house. Though her death at the hands of an islander would be purely a civilian matter, there is the matter of her father. Working for the Organis-ation Todt he holds the honorary rank of major and comes under military jurisdiction.”

“Even though he’s English?”

“He is also Dutch, Inspector, and did much work, roads, bridges and so forth, before…” he gestured in front of him, “all this happened. His work here is of the utmost importance. He and Major Ernst.” He crossed the two long fingers of his right hand. “You know Major Ernst?”

“Only by sight. A stout gentleman.”

Lentsch grinned. “You are too polite. A little fat man, who I am told has to wear a corset under his uniform. If that is what you can call it.”

Ned sidestepped as best he could.

“I wouldn’t know about that. He likes to be on parade though, he and his men. Out in all weathers, gymnastic displays, marching up and down the Esplanade. They’re quite good once you’ve got over their spades.”

He drew a picture of an upended shovel on the condensation, then quickly rubbed it out. Lentsch sighed.

“He and van Dielen had been dining together last night, review-ing the fortification plans.”

Ned nodded, as if hearing this Information for the first time. “Are they not ended, then?” he asked.

Lentsch bridled sufficiently to let Ned know he had overstepped the mark.

“The Organisation Todt does not come under my jurisdiction. It answers only to the military.” Now it was his turn to draw upon the steamed up window, and from his reluctant fingers came the overelaborated letters
Org. Todt
, with the winged eagle perched in between, clutching its founder’s name in its talons. Lentsch circled it, then rubbed his picture out too, but in enmity rather than in haste. “It is a most powerfiil organization,” he warned, “and gaining strength at every turn. Major Ernst does not want you brought into this. He would like everything to be dealt with by the Geheimnis Polizei, to let the Captain go to work on whoever he sees fit.”

“And you do not?”

“The Captain is less mindful of the island’s sensibilities than I. He and his men would start jumping on suspects like a pack of dogs. The goodwill we have built up over the last three years would vanish in a matter of hours. We need the cooperation of the civilian population, Major Ernst more than anyone. He cannot rely on conscripted labour alone.” Lentsch faced Ned. “You are lucky you live here. Anywhere else in Europe and hostages would have been shot already. This is not the way for Guernsey. We must preserve what we have already achieved. Believe me, there are amongst us many who love your islands.”