When the Sky Fell Apart (26 page)

Carter remembered the bite of Father whipping him with a willow wand when he wept: the sting of the switch across his buttocks or his palms. To toughen him up, Father had said, after Carter had come home with filthy, mud-spattered hair, his school clothes clagged with mud. Some other boys had chased him and pushed him into a ditch. Father had punctuated the whipping with admonishment: ‘Next time
(Crack!)
turn and fight!
(Crack!)
'

After a long time, Edith emerged, wiping her eyes. She pushed past the guards and marched off down the corridor.

Carter had to scurry to keep up. ‘Thank you, Edith. I am most grateful. You are a good woman, you really are.'

She waved her hand to shush him. ‘Enough! It isn't right, this whole business, you see that?'

A hot flood of shame roared at his cheeks. ‘You're absolutely correct. It's terrible.'

‘Disgusting.'

‘I wish I could do something.'

‘You might as well be putting lipstick on a cow before it goes off to the slaughterhouse.' She stopped walking and glared. ‘And what do you think you're doing, letting the child be beaten half to death like that?'

‘I…I
tried
to stop it. But there was very little I could do.'

‘Yes, I can see you did very little.'

She scowled, while he stood and stared at his shoes again. The rich glow of leather: sunlight on autumn leaves in a land before war. He wanted to hurl the damned things into the fire.

When Edith tutted and set off walking again, he followed. How could he make her understand, without putting her in danger? He could imagine only too well her response, if she knew the Commandant had threatened her: she'd march straight to Royal Square to give him a piece of her mind.

‘You're a good man, Doctor,' she said. ‘So how can you stand it? Treating the Commandant? Helping him,
support
ing him.'

‘I'm not—'

She stopped again and held up her hand. ‘None of your rubbish now. The
truth
. I've always thought that you're no traitor or collaborator. You're a decent man, stuck in a tricky spot.'

He gave a humourless laugh. ‘It's more than a tricky spot—and not simply for myself.'

What to say? He couldn't endanger her by intimating anything of the Commandant's threats. But he also couldn't bear the disgust in her eyes.

He sighed. ‘I'm quite powerless, I'm afraid. Especially as he has made threats to…to close the hospital if I don't attend to him.'

‘Indeed? Why haven't you mentioned it?'

Carter shrugged, bitterly. ‘To you and me, it is an explanation. To others, it would simply seem an excuse.'

Edith nodded. ‘I see that. But there's no explanation or excuse for what's happening to that poor boy. And now you've dragged
me
into it. I feel sick to my stomach.'

She was right, of course, but she didn't understand; it wasn't just a case of protecting himself.

By the next day, Soulette's contusions had faded to a jaundiced yellow and by the execution date, as Edith had promised, they had all but disappeared. His face still had an odd slant to it, but the Commandant would be satisfied.

The southern beach of St Aubin's Bay had been chosen for the execution. It was overlooked by a large stone wall, which would provide ample viewing space for those islanders eager to watch the spilling of foreign blood.

Father Gillard had been called out early to perform absolution. He was an elderly fellow, arthritic and asthmatic. He was also hard of hearing. Initially, having staggered to Soulette's cell, he struggled to comprehend the situation.

‘But this man is not ill,' he wheezed. ‘I was instructed to perform the last rites. There must be some misunderstanding.'

Carter shook his head. ‘I am afraid not.'

‘But he is not dying.'

‘He is set to die this morning. By firing squad.'

‘To be shot? But he is only a boy. What barbarism is this?'

‘I thought everyone knew: he was captured while trying to incite rebellion. The Commandant has sentenced him.'

‘And you tolerate this, do you? The murder of children?'

Something in the accusatory tone forced Carter to protest, ‘He is hardly a child. He is twenty-one years old.'

‘Still a boy.
Look
at him, Doctor.'

Carter felt his defensive stance fade; the priest was right. For heaven's sake, how on earth could he justify this? He tried to steel himself, Father's voice in his head, mingling with the Commandant's until the two became indistinguishable:
This is war!
And yet, the truth spoken by this gentle, frail priest was so much more profound:
This is murder! He is a boy.

Carter stared at him: mottled skin, covered in spider veins. He listened to the faint stridor on each of the priest's inhalations. He was, in all likelihood, not long for this world himself. But the conviction of his faith was like a talisman against fear.

The body carries one certainty within it, from the moment of birth: one day it will fail.

Carter managed to keep his voice calm, in spite of the accusation in Gillard's eyes.

‘I will leave you with Monsieur Soulette now, Father,' he said. ‘Thank you for your help. You have been most kind. I'm sure you will be of great comfort to the young man.'

Carter left the cell, walked down the corridor at a brisk pace and out into the open air. He found a secluded spot and sat down in the shade of some trees, taking out his hipflask. He drank a measure of whisky, then another. Single malt, hot and peaty, but he would have drunk rubbing alcohol with as much relish if it could have annihilated thought and care in the same way.

He closed his eyes and leant his head against a tree trunk. The bark was rough. It must have been two hundred years old, that tree. An oak. It would be standing long after he had gone. He stood, wrapped his arms around it, then struck his forehead against the trunk. Then again, a little harder. He felt the bark pierce his skin. He longed to curl his arms around himself and weep like a child.

EDITH hadn't gone to see the poor French boy butchered. A public execution with the crowds gawping at the blood—it was something from the Dark Ages and she'd have no part in it. She heard folk gossiping about it afterwards, of course: the young lad's bravery and Dr Carter's cowardice. But her tears and her rage couldn't revive the dead or give Carter a backbone, so she tried not to dwell on it, tried to think instead on Marthe and Claudine and her baby brother.

Francis was growing more bonny by the day. Rationing had thinned his limbs, whittled his tiny fingers to the bone, but his face was round and merry. He laughed often and was an affectionate little soul; he would often run to Edith, arms stretched high, shouting, ‘Cuggwl!' until she swept him into her arms and held him close.

Children change the way you see things.

Edith had sworn to Maurice that the soldier sat at the end of the garden didn't bother her. But still, after a good few days of him watching them, Edith found herself more reluctant to go out. She'd taken to drawing the curtains at the front of the house firmly shut, and she stopped the children from going into the front garden when he was there.

Claudine was suddenly peculiar about the subject of soldiers—she shied away from them in the street, almost as though she was frightened—so Edith didn't want to put the wind up her by telling her there was one sitting out in front of the house most days.

One morning, she had to go to Hacquoil's and fetch the meat ration. There was no way around it, and she would have to use the front way because the steps at the back were too steep for her to carry Marthe down safely. But the soldier had been sat there all morning. Edith's skin was crawling with the feel of his eyes on her. Luckily, Claudine was at school.

After a morning of procrastination, Edith pulled herself together and made herself lift Marthe into the wheelbarrow. She had found an old bedsheet to carry Francis, and he sat on her hip and bounced up and down.

‘Me go for ride!'

Fretful as she was, it made Edith chuckle.

She walked as fast as she could down the path, trying to keep her eyes down. Counting her steps. Just ten and she was at the gate.

She was nearly past him when he said, ‘Halt!'

Her heart leapt. ‘Sorry, we mustn't stop,' she managed to mumble. ‘Ever so poorly, she is.
Sehr krank
. I think it's contagious. You're best to stand back, sir.'

He didn't budge. He put his hand into his jacket pocket.

Oh Lord, this is it. Maurice will never forgive me
.

She was ready to claw his eyes out before she'd let him touch Marthe or the child.

But then he brought out a photograph. Himself with a woman—must have been his wife, and a baby. He indicated the woman and then pointed at Marthe.

‘She is same. Also ill.'

Edith stared at him in the photograph and then looked at the man in front of her, his tentative half-smile. He had a pleasant face. Those blue eyes, so common to the Germans, but also a soft mouth without an ounce of cruelty in it. Once upon a time, when she'd cared for such things, she'd have called him handsome.

‘Your wife? She's poorly too.'

He nodded.

‘I'm sorry for you then.'

He sighed, sadly. ‘She fall and hit on her head. After, she is not the same. Something is…gone.' He shrugged and then stroked the face in the photograph.

‘Poor girl. Hard for you, is it? Being away from her. You miss her?'

‘Yes. But…' He exhaled. ‘I must make the Fatherland. Something good and strong. A good life for my son. Germany is a hungry place—there is much anger. My son has enough but many have nothing, and this anger is like a…sickness. I want better for him.'

He reached into his pocket again. Edith tensed, ready to clobber him if he tried anything crafty. But he drew out two apples and gave one to Marthe and one to Francis.

Then he rubbed at the tight, shiny skin on that lame arm of his—it was red where it was stretched over the bones. Close up, it didn't look so much like a withered arm. More like it had been chewed up and spat out at some point. The fingers fused together and bunched, and the whole lot of it webbed with scarring. His lips tightened in pain when he moved it.

She was about to reach out and touch it, suggest some remedy for that ruined skin, but he sat back down on the wall and waved her on.

She didn't mention to Maurice that she'd spoken to the soldier. Nor to Claudine.

In any case, Edith had other things to worry about. Much of her time was spent making remedies, now that everyone had taken against Dr Carter. She had people wanting to see her for all sorts: the usuals of cuts and scrapes and broken bones, and most of them were mended easily enough with creams and bandages and sticks to use as splints.

But then there were the other sicknesses, things that should have gone to Carter, really: the woman with the cancer growing like a child in her belly, or the man with a leg which had overnight become numb so the poor fellow couldn't walk.

Edith did what she could for them, mostly by guesswork. She didn't charge a penny or even ask for a share in their rations, much as she would have liked some more food for Marthe and the children. But it wouldn't have felt right: taking payment for a medicine that was more hope than anything.

She said the same thing every time: ‘You'd be better off seeing Dr Carter, you know that, don't you, my love? I can only do so much; he might have a cure.'

A few folk—those in so much pain that life was torture—nodded and sighed. But most people shook their heads and spat on the ground.

When she didn't have Claudine with her, Edith used the front door. The German soldier always watched her come and go and they smiled, sometimes nodded at one another, like neighbours. He reminded her of Frank: that bright humour in his eyes, though Frank had looked smarter and happier in his uniform. But perhaps the soldier fidgeted because his arm bothered him?

One morning, as Edith walked past, he winced and scratched at his left arm again, and she held up a hand.

‘Wait there a moment.'

She fetched a jar with a salve in it, along with an old shirt of Frank's.

‘Your arm, please,' she said.

He hesitated, then held it out.

She knelt down next to him. ‘It pains you.'

‘Some small pain, yes.'

‘Don't give me that rubbish. I've seen your face when something touches it.'

He shrugged. ‘Yes, it is hurt, but I… Sometimes I do not feel when it hurts. I do not know how you say this.'

‘You're used to the pain, so you don't notice it? But that doesn't mean it's not hurting. I've something here that might help. I call it a poultice.'

He looked mistrustful for a moment. But then he said, ‘You and my wife. Before she is ill… You are the same. She is also kind.'