When the Sky Fell Apart (22 page)

But in the autumn the bird disappeared one night, an event that coincided with a drunken patrol stripping off their uniforms and swimming naked in the sea. The men swore blind that they had not stolen the chicken and knew nothing of its whereabouts.

The Commandant's rage at an eggless breakfast knew no bounds. The entire patrol was sent to the front line in Russia.

In an attempt to assuage the effects of the Commandant's fury, Carter searched for another chicken: the Buff Orpington prime layer was replaced by an old, stringy bird who wore a careworn expression and rarely laid eggs.

The cook despaired. Even when eggs were available, there was almost always some other problem with the breakfast: the butter was sour or there was too little of it; the egg yolk was overcooked or undercooked; it was too small or too pale in colour; the toast fingers were different sizes… The Commandant's list of grievances with his breakfast seemed never-ending.

Each substandard breakfast put him in such a foul temper that his mood could only be lightened by issuing increasingly bizarre orders to the islanders. For instance, any two people travelling by bicycle together were forbidden from riding abreast. No islander could come within fifty miles of the French coast (the Commandant refused to acknowledge that nowhere on the island was it possible to be further than thirty-six miles
away
from the French coast). And the making of black butter was banned.

This last, in some ways, caused the most frustration: black butter was a highly flavoured jam, which was made using apples, sugar, cider and butter and various spices. It was an age-old, traditional recipe, and even rationing had only resulted in various improvised additional ingredients to make the jam.

The Commandant's displeasure lay not in the foodstuff itself, which was innocuous enough, but in the making of it. This was done in a celebratory manner, with whole communities congregating and cooking together, drinking cider while they worked and generally making merry.

Despite Carter's attempts to convince him otherwise, the Commandant believed that any such gathering posed the potential for insurrection. The penalty for making black butter was imprisonment or deportation, depending on the Commandant's mood and the standard of his breakfast that morning.

However, nothing more clearly exposed his brutishness and tyranny than his actions towards Frederique Soulette, the young Frenchman who was brought to the island in October, under arrest for escaping occupied France and for attempting to support the allied forces in Britain.

Carter first became aware of Soulette's capture when there was a great furore from the Commandant's office: shouting, banging and a thud, which sounded like furniture being overturned and then feet pounding down the corridor.

To his surprise and dismay, the Commandant himself strode into Carter's office.

‘Doctor, come! I have surprise. You will like this, I think.'

He followed the Commandant to his office where he found a group of ten Frenchmen, bloody-faced and trembling.

The Commandant held up his hands, as if presenting Carter with a gift, and explained how they had been captured: Soulette and a group of nine other traitors had set sail from the Brittany Coast in the hope of reaching English shores and joining the free French forces who opposed the Germans.

They landed on the shores of Guernsey and, thinking they had arrived on English soil, walked up the beach singing
La Marseillaise
and banging a drum.

‘Stupid, yes?' The Commandant grinned.

Instead of the warm English welcome they had expected, they had been captured by a German patrol that had transported them to Jersey to be sentenced.

A few, Soulette among them, resisted arrest. Carter observed the sickening array of cuts, bruises and contusions on his face and arms.

The Commandant made all the Frenchmen kneel before him. When they refused, he booted each and every one of them until they collapsed to the floor.

Carter recalled a moment from his childhood: at the age of eight or nine, he had happened upon a group of older boys in the woods who had captured a dog, possibly feral—all bones, matted fur and wild, rolling eyes. The boys had wired shut the animal's snarling jaws and were taking turns poking at its eyes with a stick, laughing at the dog's high-pitched growls and its desperate, shuddering attempts to break free.

Carter had been half immobilised with fear, but his disgust and horror had been so powerful that he had flung himself at the boys, yelling and beating at them wildly with flailing fists. They had been in such shock at the outburst that they had let the dog go, and it had fled, howling, its poor jaws still wired firmly shut.

The biggest boy had rounded on Carter. ‘What did ya do
that
for? We was only
playing
.'

The boys had set upon Carter and beaten him senseless.

The Commandant shouted for several minutes, showering all in the room in a fine spray of saliva. By this time, the Frenchmen were, for the most part, cowering from their position on the floor. Soulette alone returned the Commandant's stare.

Carter clenched his fists.
Look away. For God's sake, man, look away.

Suddenly, the Commandant brought up his knee and smashed Soulette's jaw. A
crack
that sounded like gunfire as the bone shattered and Soulette crumpled. The Commandant began booting him in the abdomen.

Carter was torn: he desperately wanted to step forward to intervene but instead stood frozen. He despised himself for not protecting Soulette or attempting to calm the Commandant, yet
something
prevented him: a shameful, cancerous sort of fear that mushroomed with every act of violence he witnessed.

The Commandant ceased the assault only when he grew short of breath. Then he held up his hands, as if presenting a work of art, a masterpiece he had slaved over. Soulette's face was now grey and a ribbon of blood snaked from the corner of his mouth.

‘So, Doctor, what do you say for our French visitors, eh? Ugly-looking bastards, yes?' The Commandant laughed. ‘What must become of them? What must I do with these filth, these French animals?'

Some of the French still had the soft, rounded faces of boys. Plump cheeks that, no doubt, mothers had squeezed and kissed and wiped clean, not so many years ago. Even Soulette, whom Carter later discovered was the oldest at just twenty-one, even he looked as though he had not long needed use of a razor.

‘It is not for me to make decisions, sir,' Carter finally muttered. His stomach curled as he recognised that dangerous glint in the Commandant's eyes, which warned him that the German's patience had come to an end. He required an answer.

Carter thought of Edith, Clement, the patients in the hospital. All those who would suffer if he displeased the Commandant.

‘But perhaps a spell, a, ah…
short
spell in prison…in France would be a suitable…punishment,' he managed to mumble.

‘Prison, ha! You see, Doctor, you will never be the leader. Look at these men. What do you see?'

He exhaled. ‘They are boys,
leibe Kommandant,
' he whispered. ‘Just boys.'

‘No!'

He walked a slow circle around the group. Soulette was still groaning on the floor. He knelt down, deliberately placing his knee on Soulette's hand. Crackle of shattering bones like walking across kindling. The Frenchman whimpered.

‘No. Not boys,' the Commandant murmured. ‘They are, I do not know your word…how do you say?…
ermordern
.'

‘Murderers?'

‘Yes. Murderers. These boys—you call them this—these
boys
would
kill
me.'

He spat these last words, his face puce. Carter found himself hoping that the rise in his blood pressure would be too much for his heart or brain. He visualised a blood vessel bulging, bursting.

But as quickly as the storm had arrived, it passed. The Commandant laughed again, throwing back his head so that Carter could see his yellowed teeth.

‘
Nein.
These monsters, they will go to the
Konzentrasionslager
,
ja
? We will use these bodies. They will help to build. A good lesson, no, for these men who would—how do you say?…
zunicht machen
.'

‘Destroy?'

The rumours from France were clear: the camps amounted to a death sentence. Murder, teased out with agonising slowness. But how to stop it? The double-barrelled gun of fate was loaded and cocked: a single false comment would direct it at Carter's own fragile skull.

The Commandant shook his head. ‘No, we
build
. We
make
—this is our work, yes? To create? And these men, these
boys
, Doctor, they will help us.'

He booted Soulette in the abdomen. Carter couldn't prevent himself from shouting: ‘Stop!'

The Commandant turned, glowering.

Throbbing with fear, Carter murmured, ‘Sir, that young man is badly hurt. It seems unnecessary to inflict—'

‘
You
would advise me?' The German stopped, his nose inches from Carter's. ‘A
mouse
speak to a
man
? A
rat
give orders to a
god
? You dare to—'

‘But the man requires—'

‘
Silence!
Do not displease me, further, Doctor. You go too far.'

Carter drew a deep breath. ‘Might I suggest—?'

‘No! Enough!
No!
No suggestings. Your patient, the butcher. He recovers still, no?'

‘Why do you—'

‘He will not recover in prison, I think.'

Carter's heart dashed unevenly against his ribs. It was
impossible
: his every move against the Commandant was met with these wild threats.

He was about to protest further, but Soulette had struggled to sit up and was now staring at the Commandant with unconcealed hatred. The Commandant, who was an expert at reading even masked emotions in others, did not miss the defiance in the young Frenchman's glare. With calculated slowness, so as to draw maximum attention from his audience, he walked up to Soulette and kicked him in the groin, hard, twice.

Then he said, loud enough for everyone to hear over Soulette's whimpers, ‘
Die Eschreßenkommando für deise Fotze.
'

Then the Commandant came and patted Carter on the shoulder.

‘You are confused, Doctor, no? The
Eschreßenkommando
? You call this the firing squad.'

Before Carter could say another word, the soldiers came and dragged the Frenchmen away.

AS their second winter under the crush of the jackboot closed in, Edith had more and more people coming to her for help. She knew the reason, of course: they were keeping away from the hospital because of talk that Dr Carter was helping the Commandant. He'd tried to do it on the hush at first, but people noticed that he was in and out of Royal Square every day, and once the rumours started, they spread like a fire on a thatched roof.

Carter had stopped visiting Edith altogether. He no longer checked on Marthe or questioned Edith about ‘miracle cures'.

When she sat and thought about it, Edith wondered if he'd been picking her brain for pieces of knowledge he might be able to use to help the Commandant. But perhaps she gave him too little credit: other folks' whispering voices drift into your head and shape the fibre of your thoughts until the fabric you see isn't anything you've had a hand in weaving.

In the quietest hours of the night, it had even crossed Edith's mind, although she tried not to linger on it, that Carter might have been spying for the Commandant. Reporting back, or assessing what should be done with Marthe when they came to take her. But she put the notion from her mind as soon as it appeared. If she'd not had to listen to people accusing him of all sorts of villainous motivations, she would have said Carter stayed away because he was ashamed. But who knew, really? Impossible to comprehend the texture of the darkness that squats in someone else's heart.

She saw him, early one September morning, on his way from the butcher's, she guessed, from the parcel he was carrying. The talk was that the Commandant had been sending him to collect the meat because he reckoned on Clement doing almost anything for the man who had saved his life. The bloody German wasn't wrong there—the rest of the island went short because of his gluttony. And for all Clement waved those mangled hands and said, ‘What can I do? I owe the man my life,' the whispers went that the Hacquoils were in the pay of the Germans too.

So when Edith saw Carter hastening from the Hacquoils and towards Royal Square, she called out to stop him. He looked right at her, put his head down and hurried on. She had to shout twice more before he turned.

She smiled. ‘Out and about early, Doctor? I've not seen you in months.'

He flicked his eyes to her face, then looked away. ‘You know what they say: no rest for the wicked.'

‘You're looking weary. We've missed you, Marthe and I. She's much the same, in case you were wondering.'