When the Sky Fell Apart (32 page)

It felt good to be saying it. Two fingers up to Hitler and all his ilk. Violence and hatred and suspicion had tilted the world off its axis, but she had to believe that, somehow, all the little acts of kindness would serve to right it. The alternative was chaos.

Edith smiled at the glimmer of hope in the soldier's eyes.

‘But first I'll have your name. I'm not having a strange man bedding down under my roof.'

‘Gregor.' He held out his good hand. She clasped it. Warm, like the body of any other human.

She settled him in her larder with some blankets. He was thin and pasty and looked as if he hadn't slept in a week. She made him eat some bread and butter.

‘I shall go to the butcher tomorrow for more meat. In the meantime, this will have to do.'

He ripped into it like a dog, wincing as he swallowed—the hunger in his guts must have been like fire for him to gobble so. Between mouthfuls he said, ‘You ask for meat. The butcher, he will know something is strange?'

‘Ha! Even if he does suspect, he's in my debt for life. And he's a decent chap really, though his wife is straight out of the River Styx. A bad woman.'

Gregor nodded. He'd finished his bread and Edith could see his eyelids beginning to droop so she settled him down with a cushion under his head. When she tried to give him a blanket, he pushed it away, saying, ‘I will make dirty.'

She stayed nearby until he began to snore, then she tucked the blanket in around him. Thin as a rail, he was. He looked like not much more than a boy, limbs uncurled in sleep, face smooth with not a trace of cunning written upon it.

Frank had looked similar when he was asleep. Strange how such big, rough men, with their guns and their uniforms, turned back into guileless children the instant they closed their eyes, as though it was all a pretence they could shrug off in sleep—boys caught up in war games.

The next day, two soldiers came marching up Edith's path and hammered on her door. She opened it and they barged in, stamping their muddy boots all over her floor. Then they sat her down and pulled out a piece of paper, waving it at her and bawling in German.

‘You're wasting your breath,' Edith said, calmly. ‘I could sooner understand a barking dog.' But she felt the beginnings of fear and prayed that Gregor wouldn't sneeze.

Eventually, she called for Claudine, who had been hiding in the kitchen. The girl crept out and stood in the corner, shoulders hunched, eyes wide—terrified of any soldier, she was.

Edith said, ‘Tell me what they're so hot and bothered about, would you, Claudine, my love?' Praying they didn't suspect that Gregor was crouching in her larder.

The girl nodded and, startled rabbit that she was, came out with a mouthful of gibberish, which might as well have been her own creation for all the sense it made to Edith. But the soldiers nodded along and spoke back to her.

Edith thanked the skies above that she hadn't mentioned Gregor to Claudine. The girl looked the picture of innocence. But after they'd finished talking, Claudine's eyes shone with tears and Edith felt her stomach thud into her boots.

‘Someone has reported you for having a crystal wireless,' Claudine whispered. ‘They want to search the house.'

A chill prickled over Edith's skin, but she made her voice light and fixed her mouth into a smile.

‘Oh, is that all? Well, nothing to fuss about. You tell them I'll fetch the wireless out and no bother at all.'

The girl stared, aghast. ‘But Edith, I can't tell them that. They'll put you in prison.'

‘Well, then, tell them they're mistaken but I'll give them something for their troubles, for coming all this way.'

‘I don't think they'll believe me.'

‘You're giving them too much credit: tell them anything you like, they'll not ponder or question. Great oafs, look at them. If they fell into a barrel of nipples, they'd come out sucking their own thumbs.'

Claudine gave a tiny snort of laughter. ‘
Edith!
'

‘That's better. You keep on smiling. Now, be a good girl and fetch some dandelion tea and one of the jarred chickens that I have in brine on the shelf in the larder.'

She looked again at the soldiers. They were gaunt, skin stretched tight across their hands. The shape of their skulls was sharp under their skin.

‘Best fetch
both
chickens.'

‘But you're saving those chickens for Christmas.'

‘The soldiers are hungry now, Claudine, my love.'

Claudine set her mouth in a thin line. ‘I
shan't
do it. We'll eat those chickens at Christmas, as you said we would. All of us together.'

Edith pulled her into a tight embrace and whispered in her ear, ‘There's a soldier in the larder. He has a bad arm, try not to stare. But we can't have the Germans searching the house. Don't tell Maurice, either!'

Claudine's mouth hung open, but there wasn't time for Edith to explain any more so she gave the girl a quick kiss.

‘Fetch those chickens out then and give them to the good soldiers. Chop chop.'

They took the chickens, of course, promising to return soon. Edith knew she would have to find a better place to hide Gregor.

AFTER the soldiers left, Claudine and Gregor sat in Edith's kitchen and talked. She could barely believe it when he said he had been sitting outside Edith's house for much of the time, watching over her and Marthe. ‘You did not see me?' he asked.

Now that she thought about it, perhaps she had seen a flash of green uniform at times, or a face that looked like Gregor's. But after that night on the beach with Hans, and then seeing Gregor with the prisoners of war, she had closed her mind off to the sight of any German soldier at all.

But looking at Gregor now—thin, vulnerable, shaking with fear—made her think again. He explained how the other soldiers had always used his arm as an excuse to shout at him or beat him and the beatings had got much worse since the news of his father's death.

‘You are kind child,' Gregor said. ‘You do not look at me as monster because of this.' He gestured at his arm.

‘I haven't noticed it very much,' Claudine said. And she hadn't. It was simply part of him, like the colour of his hair or the shape of his nose. It didn't change who he was, she thought. He had done that himself, when he had started behaving like all the stories of heartless German soldiers.

‘Why did you stay outside Edith's house?' she asked.

Gregor shrugged. ‘After time, I do not like to be with the soldiers. I like to watch the woman, Marthe. My heart hurts for her. She is ill, like my wife.' His face darkened. ‘I fear for my wife. I fear for Marthe, and for you. You are sweet child. I do not want bad things for you. And then I see Edith is good woman. So I watch and keep other patrols away—they avoid because of my arm and…my father.' He sighed. ‘And now my father is dead and the Commandant has remember me and I hide.'

Claudine tried to untangle her anger at Gregor from her concern for him. It seemed that he was a different person from the man who had played with her in the bomb shelter. She had been different then, too. A child who would believe anything.

‘I am glad you are here,' she said, realising that she meant it. ‘I am glad you are safe.'

Edith made Claudine promise again and again not to breathe a word to Maurice about Gregor.

‘He won't understand. You know how he is about the Germans. He'll have a blue fit if he knows I'm sheltering one.'

When she discovered that Gregor was the soldier Claudine had spoken of before, Edith was delighted and kept shaking her head, saying, ‘Just imagine it.'

Then she gave a puzzled frown. ‘Why have you been so skittish about the soldiers all this while, then? You can't have fallen out with Gregor—he wouldn't hurt a fly.'

Neither Gregor nor Claudine could answer this, so they sat in silent shards of time, unspoken words tattooing around them like trapped moths.

But sitting with Gregor in the quivering silence was still better than the slow poison of watching Hans and Maman. Claudine lingered at Edith's house, though she always went home before curfew.

At first, Hans brought home lots of meat and butter and even sugar. In June, for the first time since the bombing on the beach, Claudine and Maman made biscuits while Francis ran around, waving his skinny arms and shouting, ‘My tummy burst!
More!
'

They all laughed and feasted until they felt sick—Maman and Hans too. Claudine tried to close her eyes and pretend that Hans was Papa.

But he sounded different. He smelt different. Like old rust and the cloying, mushroomy stink that seeped up from the roots of fungus-covered tree stumps. Claudine imagined spores, wheeling through the air, filling her lungs.

Some weeks later, Hans came to the house without any food. Maman frowned.

‘I thought you might bring a chicken?'

Hans turned and walked out. They didn't see him for a week. They had to go back to living off their rations, but their flour was full of weevils, their potatoes were mouldy and their meat was greenish, even when they had boiled it for hours. They forced it down.

‘Hold your nose,' Maman said, ‘you'll barely taste it.'

After the meal, she scrubbed the sticky grey meat residue from the pan, her face hard with unshed tears.

‘Don't you see, they've done it on purpose?'

‘I don't understand,' Claudine said.

‘Our food being like this. They're punishing us.'

Claudine couldn't comprehend how such malevolence was possible, and yet she knew it was true: war made people ugly.

They were awake all night, vomiting.

The next time Hans arrived, Maman made a fuss of him: cooked the last scraps of their food into a potato peel pie and gave him all of the wine ration she had saved. They spent the night in her bedroom, laughing and gasping and making those animal groans. Claudine sang Francis to sleep so they wouldn't have to hear.

Hans started coming every day again. Most days he brought food. Maman always smiled at him; if he came empty-handed then she beamed wide enough to crack her face in two and nudged Claudine to do the same.

One day, he brought something that he had already skinned. When Claudine asked him what it was, he gave a sly smile and said, ‘A rabbit I have this morning catched.' But later she heard him tell Maman that it was a squirrel. It didn't taste like squirrel or rabbit.

After they had eaten it, there was a banging at the door. It was Madame Du Feu with her little boy Mark, who was hiding his face in her skirts. His shoulders were shuddering. She was crying too.

Claudine heard shouting and when she went to look, Maman was saying to Madame Du Feu, ‘You must have misunderstood.'

‘Don't you give me any of that,' Madame Du Feu snapped. ‘I'm no fool.'

Maman pressed her hands together, her eyes pleading. ‘I'm sorry, but we can't help you.'

‘Of course you can't! We all know you for what you are. Cosy, is it? Nights must be warm with a full stomach and a soldier in your bed. Filthy Jerry-Bag! Whore!'

‘Get off my doorstep.' Maman's voice shook.

Madame Du Feu started sobbing again, and her voice was high and quaking.

‘Please, we only want Tom back.
Please
, give him back.'

After they had gone, waves of nausea washed over Claudine. Tom was their cat's name. He was black and white with green eyes. He always used to run to Claudine and rub his head against her legs and purr.

She went outside. It was cold and windy, no glimmer of the July sun, just a smoky, barbed light and the shadowy trees like twisted limbs. She bent over behind the shed, convulsing. Her stomach clenched and flipped. The vomit burned her throat.

When her stomach was empty, Claudine scrubbed her mouth with a dock leaf and dried her eyes. Then she went back into the house, because Maman and Hans would need her to look after Francis while they lay down.

Claudine tried to find as much extra food as she could for the days when Hans didn't come to see them, or didn't bring food. They ate winkles, which tasted salty and sour. She went to the rock pools and caught bitter-tasting fish and shrimp so small they had to be eaten with their heads and legs on. Trying to chew them was like grinding your teeth on straw. Francis coughed and gagged and was sick, bringing up six whole shrimp, still with their prickly legs outstretched.

Claudine caught shore crabs, too. They ate them with seaweed, which was like chewing on car tyres, even after Claudine had boiled it for hours.

She watched Francis shrink again. His eyes were dark tunnels, full of tearful confusion. He had a high-pitched wail: ‘My tummy hurt!'

‘Child should be with mother,' Hans said, one day. ‘He will not cry, I think, in your bed, Sarah.'

So Francis began to sleep in Maman's bed.

When the creaking floorboards woke Claudine in the middle of the night, she knew. He stood in her doorway, a blacker shadow in the muffling darkness. She could hear the rasp of his breath, feel the heat in it. A tiny glint of light as he smiled.