When the Sky Fell Apart (34 page)

‘Perhaps taking her from the house might be enough?'

‘What if Hans sees her on the way to school? Or we come a cropper because he knows that we're on to him? A soldier can do anything he likes, and there's nothing we can do to help her as long as she's near him. I think England might be the best place for her.'

‘But how could I take her?' Maurice said. ‘I've enough to worry about with where to go and what to do with Marthe, let alone two children. The news on the wireless doesn't make me jump for joy, you know. England's no better than here for a child. Bombs and the like. Then there's food and water for the journey. Finding and storing enough to last all of us. That's if we don't find ourselves captured and shot on the way over. And the children, imagine the noise! We'd be arrested before we ever reached the boat.'

Another stretch of silence and then a chair creaked.

‘Well,' Edith said. ‘What if I was there to help?'

‘What if you were where?'

‘On the boat, you great oaf. What if I came with you?'

CARTER had always been a fitful sleeper. As a boy, his mother blamed his chronic insomnia on his overactive brain. He could still remember curling up with his head on her lap, whiling away the shadowed hours between night and morning by reciting all the battles of the Wars of the Roses or all the capital cities in Europe.

She had been a good woman: a gentle mother and a devoted wife. She coddled both of them terribly, husband and son alike, and Carter's father had never recovered from losing her. She'd died of a heart attack after a particularly nasty episode of pneumonia.

Father had glowered at him after the funeral. ‘Disappointment took her,' he said. ‘All she wanted was the hope of grandchildren.'

Exhausted and grief-stricken, Carter had snapped, ‘People do not
die
from disappointment.'

‘Still, if you'd shown but the slightest interest in
any
girl, it might have given her something to live for.'

Carter hadn't been able to meet his baleful glare, had tried to ignore the mounting guilt and shame he felt, and the suspicion, ridiculous as it was, that Father might be right.

Carter was unsurprised that his sleep was disturbed in the weeks that followed the incident involving Maurice and the medication he had procured for Marthe. She recovered from the infection, so it had been worth the risk, in that sense.

Nonetheless, it terrified him that he had taken the sulfa tablets that were intended to treat the Commandant. Every single one of them—four or five months' supply. At some point, the Commandant would discover they were missing and would know he was responsible.

But the summer blew past in a daze of sunlit days and very little of note occurred. Carter began to feel like he could afford to breathe again. Perhaps the Commandant would have no need of the medication, after all?

Then, one morning in September, Carter arrived at Royal Square later than usual, having overslept for once. He walked briskly to his office, expecting the Commandant or one of his cronies to be there waiting, ready to reprimand him for his tardiness.

But his office was empty. He set down his bag and prepared to sort through some prescriptions and old patient cases. It was then that he noticed that all his paperwork had been moved. Only marginally. As though someone had rifled through the papers and then attempted to return them to their original position. Some of his books had been moved too.

He opened his drawers. The same.

He knew, of course, that the Commandant occasionally asked one of his soldiers to examine the office and report back to him; the German had the paranoid nature common to most egomaniacs and demanded regular reports on all the men under his command.

But this was different: the furtive way in which every area of the office had clearly been closely examined and then objects returned to their—almost, but not quite—original position.
Some
one had been searching for
some
thing specific.

Carter checked the whole office again. Nothing had been taken. Even his wastepaper basket contained the same collection of aborted correspondence, old receipts and prescriptions, though all had been removed, smoothed out, read and then replaced. He couldn't, for the life of him, fathom what the Commandant would have wanted.

Then came the dull thud of realisation: what if the Commandant wasn't having his soldiers search for something that
was
there but confirming that something
wasn't
there?

Of course
: the sulfa tablets.

Carter's mouth was dry, heart pulsing hotly in his throat, his fingertips. He took a steadying sip of water, tapped his pen on his desk. He resisted the urge to take a gulp of single malt, to drain a bottle dry, and instead sat, waiting.

Within ten minutes, a tall and well-muscled soldier appeared in the doorway and indicated that Carter should follow him.

‘Never a moment's peace, eh?' He forced himself to laugh, but the soldier simply scowled.

Carter walked down the dark corridor with the sinking feeling of a man edging towards the precipice of a cliff. But when he entered the office, the Commandant was doubled over, clutching his stomach and moaning: clearly an attack of diverticulitis—his gluttony had precipitated the condition some months earlier. Abandoning all concerns about his own predicament, Carter rushed to his side and encouraged him to lie supine on the chaise longue.

‘Don't talk for the moment. I will find you some morphine and water and then examine you.'

The soldier who had escorted him was still standing to attention.

‘For God's sake, man,' Carter snapped. ‘Don't just stand there. Fetch my medical bag!
Meine Tasche!
Run!'

The lout lumbered from the room, leaving Carter alone with the Commandant, who was still breathing heavily and clasping his abdomen. In spite of everything, Carter found himself pitying him—diverticular pain was absolutely agonising. Then, too, there was the possibility of a ruptured diverticula, an abscess or even a fistula forming, all of which would increase the man's pain and might even threaten his life.

Watching the German's pinched face, Carter couldn't help imagining this outcome: the wall of the intestine swelling, bulging, bursting. The poison spreading through that huge body. He visualised the Commandant's face, slack and innocuous in death…

But Carter felt nothing approaching the excitement and eagerness he would have anticipated in such a scenario. In fact, he felt the usual pulsing urgency that came with knowing that a patient's life was in danger; he felt, as he would have felt for any man, a desire to save his life. It was not simply a case of the Hippocratic Oath and his vow to
take care that patients suffer no hurt or damage.
It was the years he had spent battling that other enemy, Death, who was far more merciless than any man could hope to be.

Thoughts whirring, Carter started to examine the German, palpating his abdomen to find the area where the bowel lining had pushed through the muscle wall. The first thing he noticed was that the abdomen was softer than he might anticipate for someone with an inflamed or infected diverticula.

He asked a series of questions. Have you vomited? Have you experienced diarrhoea or constipation? When did the pain start? Indicate the level of pain you are currently experiencing, if ten is unbearable and zero is no pain at all.

The Commandant's answers were puzzling: yes, he had vomited, had been constipated for some days now; the pain had started just that morning and he would currently class it as nine on the pain scale—a point at which, Carter knew, patients were usually incapable of speech or coherent thought.

Then there was his temperature: normal, when everything suggested that he should be pyrexic. The German was not sweating excessively, and he did not have that fixed and staring look which patients often exhibit when their pain is so extreme that they can't function.

Carter busied himself looking into the mouth, ears and eyes, allowing himself time for thought. The Commandant's blue eyes were watchful, lucid. In spite of the occasional groans of pain that he gave, Carter noted that he continued to observe his every move. Sometimes, he even looked vaguely smug. Or amused? The slight shadow of a smile on his lips, when his mouth should have been a rictus of pain.

Carter felt a prickling fear across his scalp.
This is a performance
, he thought.

Just then the soldier returned with his medical bag. The Commandant sat up a little straighter.

‘So, Doctor? What medicine will heal me?'

Carter blinked. The Commandant expected the sulfa tablets, but quite apart from the fact that Carter no longer
had
the tablets, the man's condition did not demand them. Yet, if he was challenged, the Commandant was liable to fly into a rage and have Carter punished for insubordination.

The image of a dark, damp train carriage flickered across Carter's mind—the crush of bodies swaying with the forward momentum of the train, passively waiting and absorbing every movement as they clattered towards Ravensbrük.

So he decided on a compromise. ‘I will give you a painkiller, Commandant, to provide relief while your body battles the infection.'

‘Painkillers, these will cure me? Make better my stomach, yes?'

‘No. But you will be more comfortable. I believe you will recover in any case, without the need of further medication.'

Eyes bright, the Commandant chuckled. He seemed to have forgotten about feigning pain. His hands dropped back to his sides, and his breathing became regular, his expression triumphant.

‘So I do not need medicines?'

‘Goodness, no! It would be a waste—I would like to ensure that the sulfa tablets are reserved for…
emergencies
.'

The Commandant straightened up and clapped his hand on Carter's shoulder. ‘I think I am feel better already.' He turned to the soldier and said, ‘Is he not a wonderful doctor?'

Carter had a queasy moment of comprehension: in playing along with his pretence but refusing to give the Commandant his sulfa tablets, he had confirmed his responsibility for their disappearance. He should have either challenged the man outright when he found no evidence of illness, or he should have made a pretence of wanting to give him the tablets but finding them gone. By doing neither, he had revealed himself as guilty.

‘If you need me,' he finally muttered, ‘I'll be in my office.'

Usually, Carter would have been prevented from leaving until he was dismissed, but the Commandant simply watched him leave. As Carter was going out the door, the German called, ‘You must go to your house and wait there, yes. I have no need of you, Doctor.'

‘Of course. As you wish.'

Carter tried to press his trembling mouth into a smile, wondering how on earth he was going to escape the island.

SHE knew Gregor would have heard every word of their plans to escape, so after Maurice and the girl had gone, Edith opened the larder door and said, ‘Go on then, arrest me!'

His expression was so aghast, and the idea was so ridiculous that they both giggled. Then his smile faded.

He sat at the table. ‘I hurt for Claudine,' he said. ‘This Hans, he is a bad man and my heart pains for her but…this is a dangerous thing. Escape. Many people try. For some, it is easy. But so many people? And children?' His eyes were wide, beseeching. ‘I do not want them to catch you, Edith. They will not harm children if they catch, but they will kill you—' His voice cracked.

She smacked her hand on the table. ‘No more talk of killing. Or catching, for that matter. If you're going to tell me anything, then talk to me about how to escape.'

He took her hand in his. ‘I can help. I try. But if you go…'

She pulled her hands away. ‘You mercenary bastard! You're fretting about how to save your own skin, not mine! Worried about where you'll hide? Where you'll get your food.'

‘No! It is not this. I worry little for me, yes. But I think more for you—'