When the Sky Fell Apart (19 page)

‘Who is it then?' He went back to deboning the fish; no time to spare for children's games.

‘His name is Gregor.'

His jaw dropped. ‘That's a German name.'

‘Yes, he's a soldier. But he is very kind and good, and he gives me extra food when he can spare it.'

Disbelief. Then anger. Maurice clenched his fists around the cutlery.

‘A
soldier?
A
German
soldier is your friend? You foolish child.'

His knife slipped and a piece of fish shot off the plate and slapped wetly on to the floor. He cursed through gritted teeth.

‘You foolish,
foolish
child.'

Claudine's face crumpled. ‘I'm
not
foolish. He's my best friend.'

Maurice sighed. He stopped with the fish, washed his hands and sat down next to her. But his voice was still hard, lined with controlled rage.

‘You're not my child to be ordering about. But honest to God, Claudine, my love, a German soldier? You know better than that. Why can't you find some nice friends your own age? Good Jèrriais children?'

‘Because they all
hate
me. They call me a Jerry-Bag.' Her eyes filled with tears.

He took her hand. ‘Now you listen to me. They won't hate you. And they won't call you a Jerry-Bag if you stop spending time with this soldier. He's the enemy. It's common sense, Claudine. You must see that?'

The girl's lip trembled, but she nodded.

Maurice felt a stab of fear for her: she was such a strange and lonely little creature and it was plain to see that she thought highly of this soldier and truly believed he was different. But she didn't know—and why should she, child that she was—what devils men can be, especially Germans. And she couldn't see herself from the outside, how vulnerable she was and how a soldier could easily hurt a sweet and trusting child.

Silent tears shuddered down her cheeks; he clasped her in a quick, hard embrace.

‘There now, it's all for the best. You'll see.'

But even as he held her, his thoughts turned to Marthe and of the risk Claudine's blind innocence brought for all of them.

He opened his mouth to ask Claudine if she'd mentioned anything about Marthe to this soldier but then forced himself to think clearly: the girl wouldn't be such a fool, surely? This war was making him believe the worst of everyone.

BY Easter of 1941, Dr Carter no longer needed Edith at the hospital. He was rarely there himself and, if the rumours were true, he was spending all of his time caring for the Commandant. She didn't ask him about it. Some things are best left unsaid.

Instead Edith made it her business to nurse Marthe. Rationing meant little enough meat for each of them, but Edith happily scooped most of hers onto Marthe's plate and she paid trips to the butcher whenever the whisper was that there was a bit extra over from France.

Clement Hacquoil was back behind his counter. After all those months in hospital, he was nothing but skin and bone. He put Edith in mind of a puppet, moving in short, tortured bursts and then collapsing. His wife was lurking in the background, of course, pulling the strings, stitched little lips sewn up into a scowl as she watched him.

Plenty of folk didn't recognise Clement. He was a shrunken shadow of the big, bluff man he had been. And then there was his skin—his face and arms were still pink and raw, even though he was healed and hardened. The melted skin had stretched his lips back from his teeth in a vicious leer, even when his eyes were smiling.

When he spoke, his voice was a wet rasp, and he had to pause every so often to suck the saliva back into his mouth or dab at his chin with a handkerchief. If children cringed, he'd put out his tongue (which looked quite normal), or magic a tiny scrap of cooked pork skin from thin air, for a baby to chew on. People would laugh and that jittery feeling in the room would fade, for the most part.

In fact, if anything, business was better than ever for the Hacquoils. Some went to gape, but many went to show their support—solidarity for the poor man whose world had been exploded forever by those bombs.

When first he was out of hospital, Clement greeted Edith like she was his own mother, giving her special cuts of meat he'd put aside. That broken leer, that squelching lisp as he proclaimed, ‘This is the woman who saved my life. Worked miracles with her own hands, she did.'

Joan, eyes on her like little flints, would tut or glare. ‘None of your blasphemy in here, Clement. The Lord alone saves. Look, there's a queue of customers waiting while you stand gassing.'

She was jealous of the attention, perhaps, or feared that Edith's influence might grow greater than her own.

Before long, Edith noticed Joan shouldering Clement aside so that she could serve her. He soon stopped standing up when Edith came in, stopped trying to stretch those ruined lips into a smile. He would nod a greeting to Edith and pass the time of day, but his eyes slid from hers. The parcels of meat that Joan gave Edith were smaller; the extras stopped. Soon, the packages were nothing more than fat and bloodied gristle.

Edith wouldn't have been so particular if it had just been for herself—years of making do meant she could rustle soup from anything and be glad of it. But it pained her to think of Marthe going without, especially since she knew that eating meat might be a way of easing the slow drag of the sickness that was unravelling her. So where before Edith would have nodded and hurried off with her miserly brown parcel of scraps, now she squared her jaw and glared. She started opening that little packet up, right in front of the other customers, presenting the bits of meat for all to see, as close to the window as she could.

‘Ooh, but this is a bit ripe, don't you think? Maybe you haven't quite the same sense of smell, Clement, after those nasty burns. But honestly, put your nose into that. This chicken stinks like it's been roosting in a midden. Have a sniff, will you, Joan?'

The other customers crowded in, muttering at the smell and the look of the bird she held up: greenish in places and reeking like mouldering cheese.

Joan glowered and growled something at Clement, who muttered,
Sorry, sorry
, and limped off to find Edith another chicken. Shamefaced, he thrust it at her, whispering more apologies and rubbing at those shiny scars of his.

It was that way for weeks when Edith went in: a cut of pork still with mud-clogged hair bristling the skin; a rabbit that looked more like a cat to Edith's eye—it had staved-in ribs and long ropes of intestines spilling out, as though it had been squashed by a motor car.

It was on that day that Edith asked Joan if she meant to give her cat-guts for one of her potions: ‘They're very useful for calling up familiars, or so I hear.'

Joan's cheeks flushed and she shot a scalpel-sharp look at Clement. He cringed and shifted painfully out of her way as she disappeared out the back.

Clement coughed. ‘Now, Edith, I'm ever so grateful to you. What you did for me—'

She kept her voice flat. ‘Saved your life, you mean?'

‘Yes, that…'

‘No trouble, Clement. I wouldn't think to let a friend suffer.'

‘Yes, I know you mean no harm, but Joan feels… That is,
we
think…'

He was twisting a pork loin in those big shiny claws. Normally, he was gentle with the meat, even with the awkwardness of moving his ruined hands.

Edith softened her tone. ‘What are you trying to tell me, Clement, my love? I have to stop my provoking of your wife? Is that it?'

He drew a breath, closed his eyes. ‘I'm obliged, you understand, for all you did for me, with the… But—' He winced and rubbed at his scars, and then it all tumbled out in a babble. ‘You can't be coming here anymore to shop. It's not good for business. Having you and your sort about.'

Edith raised her eyebrows and let the silence stretch between them.

Clement opened his eyes and went back to twisting those ripped-up pieces of pork. Over his shoulder, Edith could see a shadow lurking behind the little piece of fabric that marked off where the shop ended and their home began.

Finally Edith said, nice and loud, so she knew Joan couldn't fail to hear, ‘That's a shame, Clement. It's been such a
convenience
for both of us. Me shopping here, I mean. It really has. In the past, I've had some
lovely
meat from you. You'd have hardly known there was a war on. It's been handy for you too, hasn't it, me coming by? I do like to help people when I can. Even Joan, bless her. It's been hard on her too, with your injuries, I've heard…'

She watched Clement carefully. Face, eyes, mouth: all suddenly frozen. The shadow behind the curtain was still.

Edith affected a jovial air, as if she were asking about the meat delivery.

‘Yes, Vibert was saying it's a terrible shame for a man to be locked out of his own bedroom of a night, and no matter how his scars might look. I can understand why you'd feel sour about it.'

Clement's expression was one of panic.

‘If you like,' Edith whispered, loudly, ‘I can mix a tonic to relax her. Perhaps she'll be less snappish if she at least lets you—'

Clement shoved a big package of meat at her. ‘Here's a decent piece of pork for you, then. If you come back tomorrow, I might have a chicken. There are some due from France. I can put one by for you. No charge, of course.'

Edith tried not to smile too widely. ‘Oh, bless you. Generous to a fault you are, Clement, my love. I'll be seeing you tomorrow.'

Joan's expression as Edith turned to leave was a treat. She'd poked that scrawny neck of hers around the curtain, practically spitting with rage.

Edith whooped as she stepped from the shop. It put her in a dancing mood, the laughter: a sort of fizz in her stomach. She skipped down the street, grinning from ear to ear. She could see folks covering their mouths, but they could sneer away because good meat would make Marthe better. And if that wasn't cause for a bit of skipping, even at Edith's age, then nothing was.

As she skipped, Edith imagined what Joan must be saying to Clement at that very moment, and that set off the giggles. In the end she had to lean against a wall because she had no puff left in her; just wave after wave of laughter.

Marthe was asleep when she arrived back home. Edith gave the neighbour's boy half a penny for watching the girl. He scampered off before she could notice that he'd been picking at the corners of her cabbage loaf again. Not that she minded. He was a skinny little runt with enormous eyes.

Edith had become used to the squeeze and grumble of her hollow belly, the feeling of being scrubbed out inside with wire wool and disinfectant. She could ignore the pinching gripe that twisted her guts most mornings. Coming over dizzy and lightheaded was trickier to master. She'd taken to chewing on raw bulbs of wild garlic, which chased off the fug of exhaustion, though she didn't much care for the way it made her breath and clothes smell.

It was all worth it, though, to see Marthe thriving. The girl was sleeping better and was undoubtedly less twitchy—she hadn't scratched the skin off her face with her nails for weeks.

Edith kept waiting for Maurice to comment, but he didn't say a word. And, if Edith was to tell the truth, she didn't think he'd noticed. Not that he didn't love Marthe: he worshipped the very bones of her: it was plain as a wash of sudden sunlight on his face when he looked at her, or in the softness in his voice when he spoke to her.

The sea tugged at his thoughts constantly. Longing was in the shadows of his eyes: the constant need to provide, to do
something
. Perhaps it was men and war—a curious sort of feebleness for them, squeezed within the enemy's iron fist. So Maurice filled his time with
doing
things. Clutching at power wherever he could find it. Always off, out to catch a fish or find the best trade for warm clothes or more bread. Or off to meet those French fishermen and garner news that the wireless wouldn't tell him. And, for all he said he was simply looking out for Marthe and that he didn't really
want
to leave the house, Edith saw that little spring in his step when he walked out the door to go off to his boat—the same lightness had surged through her after that little run-in with Clement and Joan.

Her Frank had worn that same look before he went off to fight. He'd stroked her cheek and said he was doing it for her, so she'd be proud of him. But he had been deaf to her protests, her pleas, her tears. She
wouldn't
be proud, she'd said. She didn't
want
him to go. Didn't
want
him to fight.

He'd claimed not to believe a word of it. He was off to prove himself to her. But Edith had known, even then, as a young woman not long out of her father's house, Frank's reason for going was nothing to do with her. It was all about
him
. Chasing some little fragment of himself he thought was missing; the war offered him the chance to become someone else.