When the Sky Fell Apart (36 page)

‘No time for that now. There's a half bottle of whisky on the top shelf in the larder. Three glasses. Wait in the kitchen.'

She clasped his poor arm as he walked past her, crammed all her feeling into that quick compression of her hand. But there's no way to convey the fierce burn of love through a momentary touch.

Maurice was sitting at the end of the garden, in Gregor's old spot. She'd thought she'd find him furious, but instead he patted the stone next to him. She sat.

‘You're staying?' he said.

Edith hesitated. ‘Perhaps. As I said, I'm torn on it.'

‘The reason you're torn—it's
him
, isn't it?'

‘Among other things. You're angry.'

‘A little. For the most part I'm thrown. You're the last person I'd have suspected of bedding down with the enemy.'

Her stomach jolted. ‘I'm
not
—'

‘Ha! I didn't mean it like that. I'm not accusing you of being a Jerry-Bag. Not at
your
age.'

He laughed, but there was something in the way he looked at her: a watchful, attentive sort of scrutiny.

She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt a heat in her cheeks like it. There was a flash of recognition in his eyes; he gave a sharp intake of breath and then coloured himself, and looked away.

Edith fixed her eyes on the shrieking gulls, sailing the wash of the wind across the sea. She made her voice brisk.

‘Well, enough fussing. It is what it is; I'll not have the Germans doing harm to anyone, if I can help it. Even one of their own. Now will you come and talk with him? He's a good man. But you know that already.'

She marched back inside, cheeks still blazing. Maurice followed, slowly. When she risked glancing at him, his eyes were wide with incredulity.

‘Come on out from behind that door, Claudine,' she called. ‘No danger now, and you're old enough to hear this.'

Claudine fell in next to her and held her hand. Edith felt a glow. What it would have been, she thought, to have a child of my own.

Gregor was standing in the kitchen, scowling. Maurice stood across the table from him, glaring back. Eyeing each other like wary dogs.

‘For goodness sake, sit!' Edith cried. ‘Both of you. Here. Drink.'

They didn't take their eyes off each other as they sat down.

Edith sighed. ‘I'll start, then. Maurice, this is Gregor. He's hiding here so that he's not dragged back to Germany and shot for the sake of some scars.'

They all stared at his arm.

‘Claudine's soldier friend was named Gregor,' said Maurice.

‘The same,' Edith said. ‘He's been good to both of us. And to you too, if you recall.'

Maurice snorted. ‘Why didn't you tell me he was here?'

‘I knew you'd not like it. In your mind, every soldier is a villain. Even one who has helped you gather food enough for months and carried your wife to Dr Carter's. You think every soldier on the island is Hitler's own disciple. But they're boys caught up in it, most of them. Just doing what they must to save their skins. Same as us.'

Maurice glared, but he didn't contradict her. ‘And you're staying here for
him?
This soldier? His life means that much to you?'

‘It isn't
only
him. But if I leave, he dies.' She didn't mention that little body in the ground, or the way the land tugged at her. It never paid to sound like a foolish old woman.

‘And without you to help us,' Maurice rejoined, ‘
we
will die. Rowing across the channel with Marthe and the two children? It's laughable. Even if I reach the boat, I'll be shot before I've rowed three strokes.'

‘And what will you do if…when you are in England?'

‘I'll fish. Find myself somewhere to live on the coast. Where Marthe can sit out on the beach without me fearing for her. She used to love dabbling her toes in the sand—'

‘And what if they sign you up to fight? Had you thought of that?'

His face was grim, his lips pulled back into a snarl. ‘I won't leave Marthe. They can't make me. But once she is gone, I'll do whatever they tell me. It won't matter anymore. Nothing will.'

Edith nodded. She could understand that sensation: life like sudden gold between the fingers because of the beating heart in another body.

‘But at least we're not being bombed,' she said. ‘Surely it's safer here, if you know what you're about, which you do—'

‘
Safer?
Nothing is safe here. Not for any of us, but especially not for the women. We've seen what the Germans have done to—' He looked at Claudine and said, ‘Sorry, my love, I didn't mean—'

Claudine said, softly, ‘It doesn't matter. You're right. We can't stay. I shan't stay.'

Sometimes, when someone is right, there's nothing more to say. They sat and they drank, refilled their glasses, drank again.

Edith didn't look at Gregor, couldn't meet his eye in case he saw her weighing his life against the child's.

There's a reason the hangman wears a mask.

She closed her eyes, balanced the scales in her mind. I could always come back, she thought. Maurice had said it—no beating heart in sand and soil. He and the children needed her more than she needed the island. Jersey had been around for thousands of years; it would be there to return to, after the war was over and Hans and his ilk were gone. She tried not to imagine a future when all the world might be German.

She tried to imagine a life without Gregor's smile, his warmth, his arms around her in the darkness.

But it would happen, one way or another, the separation. His sickly wife back in Germany needed him more than Edith did. It's a peculiar feeling, measuring out
need
and
hope
and
love
, as though they are liquids that can be crammed into cups.

Edith knew that life without Gregor would be hard to bear. After he returned to his wife, she would feel his absence like the exposed skin of a raw wound. The thought of that pain was enough to make her want to hold him here on the island as her own hostage, her moment of stolen peace.

But it is wrong to seize ownership of something simply to fulfil a yearning. Doing that would make her no better than the Germans themselves.

After countless ticking minutes, Gregor put his good hand on hers. ‘You will do best thing,' he said. ‘I cannot think bad of you for this.'

Edith clasped his hand, stroked his fingers. A thought sprouted, blossomed.

‘Maurice,' Edith said. ‘Your boat, it's big?'

He held up his hands and shook his head. ‘Oh no. Don't think of it. The last thing I'm having is a bloody soldier in on it.'

‘Why ever not? Another pair of hands at the oars.'

There was a short silence, then Gregor said, ‘I have actually only one hand.' He grinned.

The air whooshed out of Edith's lungs. Before she knew it, they were all laughing, bent double, tears streaming.

They talked long into the evening. Gregor had some paperwork he could give Maurice: a fishing licence and a late-curfew pass he had stolen.

‘I take for bribe people,' he admitted. ‘And I know where we can find a motor for your boat.'

Maurice jumped to his feet, almost knocking over the chair. ‘I don't know what to say. Edith, are you hearing this? We might actually make it across! Alive!'

‘Marvelous, isn't it?'

But after Maurice had gone and she was lying with her head on Gregor's chest, running her fingers over his hard muscles and harder bones, listening to the insistent thump of his heart, she said, ‘What will you do, eh? A German soldier in England?'

‘They will hurt me?'

‘Hurt you? I hope not. You'll be a prisoner of war. But the English aren't brutal like—'

‘Like Germans?'

‘Sorry, I didn't mean—'

‘It is not bad for you saying. I know this.'

He kissed her cheek, then her lips, pressing her against him. She could feel his need, his desperation, his simmering fear.

TURNED out Gregor wasn't a bad sort—for a German, anyway.

The night after they decided he would help them to escape, Maurice found himself creeping out at midnight with Gregor to steal the boat engine from one of the guard outposts while the soldiers were out patrolling.

Gregor kept watch, while Maurice ran and snatched the engine. They hid it in Maurice's boat, in the caves at Devil's Hole.

Scrambling down to the caves was difficult, even for Maurice: it was a sharp drop and the sound of skittering stones shattered the silent, yawning darkness below; he gripped Gregor's hand when he thought he might fall.

Time was past when he would have pushed the soldier and been glad to watch him smash on to the jaws of those rocks, broken body wrenched away by the sea, blood pluming out into the brackish water. But no more—Maurice was done with that corrosive hatred.

They sat and shared a cigarette and the last of the whisky from Edith's larder. The darkness hid his face and his arm. He could have been Maurice's friend of many years, out to help him poach oysters from the French.

The next thing Maurice had to do was meet with the French fishermen and ask them about the German boats. They agreed to keep an eye out and to draw the patrols away if the group were sighted escaping. They had their fee; Maurice expected that.

They asked for payment in medicine. Their children were catching sicknesses in their blood from a scratch on their leg because French doctors had nothing to give them.

The guilt kept Maurice awake some nights: the thought that, after they'd gone, the Jèrriais would have less medicine because they'd traded it to the French in return for safe passage. But everyone did what they must to survive.

Maurice planned to ask Carter for the medicine. He pounded on Carter's door early the next morning. He gave it a minute or so and then he hammered again. Maurice knew he was there because his fancy shoes were sat outside the door, almost as if he
wanted
someone to run off with them.

Strange
.

Another minute and he knocked again. He kept banging on and on, until he heard the scratch of the key.

The door opened a crack. Carter peered out, watchful eyes of a cornered animal, hair standing in all directions.

‘Oh, Maurice,' he said. ‘Come in, won't you. My apologies for all this.' He gestured at his chaotic living room: clothes and papers everywhere and the sort of damp and fusty smell Maurice associated with stables.

Carter looked like he'd hardly slept in the months since he had seen him last. His face was rough with a straggly beard and his clothes had that sour animal stench of being worn day-in, day-out without washing.

Carter rubbed his eyes. ‘How is Marthe? Recovering well, I hope?'

‘Yes, she is much better, thank you. Though we're down to the last tablets. I don't know what we'll do if she becomes ill again…'

‘I'm sorry.'

Nothing for it but the truth. Maurice took a breath and let it all out in a rush.

‘We're…off. Escaping. I've taken your advice. And I came to ask…if you'd help?'

‘Tea!' Carter jumped up. ‘My dear fellow, please do forgive my rudeness. Would you like a cup of tea? Only rosehip, of course—haven't had the real stuff in an age. I'll put a pan on right away. I don't have any sugar, I'm afraid. But who expects sugar these days?'

And he rushed off to the kitchen before Maurice could say anything more.

Very strange.
Maurice sat, frowning, a little dazed. From the kitchen he heard pans banging and some muttering.

‘Is everything all right in there?' he called.

‘Yes, I'm just—no bother. I'm…'

Maurice shook his head and went into the kitchen. Carter hadn't even put water in the pan. He was leaning over the hot stovetop, dry pan scorching. Eyes streaming from the smoke and he was coughing.

‘For God's sake! You'll burn the place down!'

Maurice pushed him aside, took the pan off the heat, shut the stove and sat him down at the table. As he opened the door and waved the smoke out, he felt the beginnings of fear. What on earth was the matter with him? Was he ill? Drunk? Maurice couldn't smell alcohol. The doctor was behaving as though he wasn't all there.

Carter blinked, stared at Maurice like he'd just this minute noticed him.

‘Forgive me, how rude of me not to offer you a cup of tea. It's a devil to acquire these days but I have some rosehip in. No sugar. Rationing, I'm afraid.' He shambled across to pick up the red-hot pan and replace it on the stove.

Maurice caught hold of his arm just in time and wrenched it away. ‘What the
devil
has taken over you?'

But Carter didn't say a word. He just stared at Maurice's hand clutching his arm, as if it was nothing to do with him. It must have hurt, Maurice's grip, but he kept on smiling in that same vacant way. It made Maurice think of the fixed grin he'd once seen on the corpse of a fisherman. The man had become tangled in his nets and been dragged from his boat and under the water. When they'd pulled him out, he'd been quite dead, but the pain and fear of drowning had set his face into a ghastly smile.