When the Sky Fell Apart (37 page)

So Maurice treated Carter as he did Marthe, when she was having one of her bad spells: he sat him down in a chair, gave him a blanket and tucked it right up to his chin. He boiled the rosehips, though he could have done with something stronger himself. He made Carter sip the tea, and sat and waited for the man to come back to himself.

After a while, Carter lost that blank, empty look. Stretched and yawned as if he'd been asleep. When he shivered, Maurice fetched another blanket, tucked it around him. He was thin—thinner than he should have been, in the pay of the Germans.

‘Thank you so much,' he finally said and gave an unsteady smile.

Maurice nodded. ‘What's troubling you then, Doctor?'

‘I've taken the Commandant's personal store of sulfa tablets.' Carter's voice was barely a whisper, his eyes empty. ‘I'm a dead man.'

‘But there's no reason the Commandant should find you out, is there?' Maurice said. ‘It's been months and nothing has happened.'

‘He
knows
. He's dismissed me.'

‘How could he know
you
took them?' Maurice's throat tightened with fear. ‘You're sure?'

‘Quite sure.'

‘Well, then—and I don't mean to give you more of a scare, Doctor—but why are you still alive? You must be mistaken. It's easy to grow jumpy when you're hiding something.'

Carter ran his bony hands through his hair and made a noise somewhere between a sob and a howl.

‘That's the worst of it! I don't know
why
I'm still alive. I suspect he is delaying the inevitable to torture me. He will enjoy the thought of me suffering. It's the worst part, isn't it? The waiting? And he'll be laughing about that. But it will happen at some point. The firing squad, I expect. Ravensbrük, if I'm lucky.'

He laughed—a savage shredding sound. There were tears in his eyes.

Maurice felt a chill in his gut. ‘Don't talk like that.' But guilt had made him breathless; if Carter was right then the other man might die because of the medicine he'd forced him to steal.

‘It's the truth. He
can't
let me live.'

Carter looked up at his window as if expecting to see a patrol there, waiting, guns poised.

Maurice found himself saying, ‘Come with us then. To England. I'm taking Marthe and Edith and the two Duret children. And…a soldier.'

‘A
German
soldier? Escaping with you?' Carter's eyes were round. ‘But that is lunacy. Can you trust him?'

‘I don't know if I can trust anyone, German or Jèrriais. But he's better off with us than with his own lot, and that's surety enough for me.'

‘And am I to translate?'

‘No, he speaks English. You can care for Marthe on the journey and I could use another pair of rowing arms—'

Maurice wavered then. Carter didn't look like much of a rower—he was gaunt and slump-shouldered with despair. The last thing we need is more weight in the boat, he thought.

But it was too late to take it back. Carter's eyes had brightened, his back straightened.

With some of the strength of his old voice, he said, ‘But how the devil will you manage it? With a soldier and children? And Marthe? I don't mean to be cruel, but…it's absurd. You'll be shot, the lot of you.'

‘And you'll be shot if you stay.'

Carter put his head in his hands. ‘How do you propose to evade the patrols?'

‘I know most of the patrol times—from the fishing, you see. The problem will be keeping the children quiet.'

Carter gave a feeble smile. ‘So I'm to play nursemaid, am I?'

Maurice sighed. No point in lying. ‘In a way. And you can help Marthe, once we reach the mainland. But we need supplies. I've persuaded some of the French fishermen to distract any patrols and to help us navigate through some of the reefs out past Guernsey so I don't take the bottom out of the boat. But they want medicine.'

‘And you want me to obtain it for you?' Carter's eyes were hard.

Maurice met his stare. ‘Yes.'

To his surprise, Carter gave a strangled laugh and stood up.

‘As if obtaining medicine for you hadn't landed me in this mess in the first place. What do you need?'

THEY waited for two days for Dr Carter to bring the medicine. At the end of the second day, he knocked on Edith's door. But, Claudine saw, he was empty-handed.

‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘Truly I am. The hospital won't allow me anything. And taking medicine from the Commandant's personal supply is too great a risk.'

‘You must have contacts in there?' Maurice said. ‘A man like you makes friends.'

‘
Friends?
You're talking about German soldiers.'

‘Yes. And
you've
spent the war cosying up to them. So there must be one of them you can trust?'

Dr Carter looked at the floor. ‘I'm sorry. It wasn't worth the risk. It might have given everything away.'

‘Don't give me that. It wasn't about the risk to
us
. You're always about saving your own skin, aren't you?'

‘Leave him be, Maurice, can't you see he's in pieces?' Edith muttered. She addressed Carter brightly. ‘Come, sit, Doctor. I've just boiled up some nettle leaves for tea.'

Carter sat down. He looked shaky and smaller than Claudine remembered him.

‘I'm not sure I would hold up under interrogation,' he said. ‘I feel I can't trust myself… You must think me a coward.'

Maurice snorted and went back to mending some rope.

Edith's voice was kind. ‘Of
course
not. You're right to worry about keeping your mouth shut—I've heard they don't hold back during questioning, and pain is enough to start anyone's tongue wagging. And we're none of us keen to be put in front of a firing squad. Isn't that right, Maurice?'

Maurice scowled and didn't look up from his rope.

Then Claudine had a thought. A silly idea, probably, but still…

‘Why doesn't Edith simply make up some of her plant medicines for the fishermen?'

‘Don't be foolish, Claudine,' Maurice said. ‘I know you're trying to help, but you're best to hold your peace until we have things clear. There's a good girl.'

‘Well…but wait,' said Edith. ‘Why didn't we think of that? She's on to something there, Maurice. I've plenty of remedies. We're running out of other ideas. It can't hurt.'

Maurice's voice was loud and sharp. ‘Well, of
course
! Why didn't I think of that before? I'm
sure
the French will risk their necks for a few ground-up leaves and sticks. I know
I
would.'

‘Mocking doesn't suit you, Maurice. And we have precious little choice. So you're best to hold your peace, just until we have things clear. There's a good man.' Edith gave Claudine a wink and Maurice let out another exasperated sigh.

Edith filled a sack with all her different powders and teas and poultices and gave it to Maurice.

‘We'd best hope none of us are ill,' she murmured.

Maurice and Edith had made Claudine promise not to tell anyone about escaping. She knew that Maman might try to stop her going, and then she would have to stay at home forever, with Hans wanting her to be a woman.

When she knew Hans would be out on patrol, Claudine went home to visit Maman. Inside, in the kitchen, she held Claudine's face between her hands and squeezed her cheeks.

‘Are you eating? The extra meat I've sent?'

‘Yes, Maman.'

‘I can't stand to see you thin—you know that.'

‘I'm eating, Maman. The meat. The butter too.'

The tightness in her face softened. ‘You're happy with Edith? You look happy.'

When Claudine thought of leaving Maman forever, everything grew dark. She walked down to the beach and looked out across the sea. It shimmered and glittered with sunlight and shadows. She imagined the yawning miles of black water breathing beneath the surface. If she looked towards England, she could only see the sky and then the stark, flat line of darkness where the horizon disappeared. It was where the wind and storms came from. Fear and anticipation made her quiver.

She wondered where they would go in England, what they would do. Would there be bombs? At the start of the war, when the Germans first arrived, Claudine had wanted to go to England, to see Papa. But now, time and pain had taught her better: she knew he probably wasn't there anymore. Perhaps he wasn't anywhere, and even if he was he would be a different person now. Like Dr Carter, like Maurice. Like Maman.

Claudine watched the waves beating against the rocks again and again. They had taught her, at school, that over millions of years, water could wear a cliff face away until it was nothing more than specks of sand to be blown about by the wind. Anything could change, they said: it was all a matter of time and pressure.

UNDER the circumstances, Carter had thought it best to maintain a low profile. So he had stayed at home, even when he felt the walls were closing in on him.

Whenever he thought about returning to England, he tried to picture Father's face. But he could see only his back: the hard lines of his head and shoulders, like the crenellated walls of a fortress, dressed in his Warwickshire regiment uniform. Ypres. Amiens. The Somme. He had survived them all and returned home to the disappointment of a son who cried over a scraped knee and never took his nose out of a blasted book.

Carter could recall the exact timbre of Father's voice when he'd told him to get out of his sight.

He would have to stretch the truth, he knew, when accounting his experience of the war. Any details of his care for the Commandant would be best left unmentioned. None of the English doctors, who would no doubt judge him
a traitor
for his actions,
none
of them had been on the island, under the suffocating weight of occupation, had been trapped and bullied until they no longer recognised themselves or their actions.

Father would judge him, too, if he knew the truth.

Sometimes, in the dark belly of the night, Carter was convinced they would all be captured. He found himself pacing the length of his hallway, as if he was already imprisoned and awaiting the German guns. At other moments, he daydreamed about what he might do if they arrived safely on the mainland.

Will.

Would he have forgiven Carter for the years of abandonment and silence? Perhaps he would have made a life with someone else? The thought was agonising. Still, Carter couldn't help wishing for Will to be there, waiting for him. He couldn't help fanning that small spark of hope, that somehow, this time, he would return to England and find himself braver.

While Carter was in search of some sort of distraction from these thoughts, an idea evolved. It came to him in the dead of night, when his ravenous guts kept him awake. He had failed to procure medication for the French fisherman and he wanted to make a contribution to the escape—and now it occurred to him that he could barter his newest shoes for food.

The offending footwear had remained on his doorstep for over a week. He had hoped that, by leaving the shoes in plain sight, he might have encouraged some opportunist to steal them. At least then somebody would benefit from the ‘reward' the Commandant had pressed upon Carter.

The shoes—glowing, mahogany leather—would have cost a fortune even before the war. In a situation where most men had been forced to wear wooden clogs or shoes that had been resoled with old bicycle tyres, Carter's were invaluable.

Clement Hacquoil was the man to go to, Carter was sure of it. Not just because of their shared past, but because he was one of the few men on the island who didn't condemn Carter as a traitor. The butcher himself had been the subject of no small amount of haranguing from the islanders after openly supplying meat to the Commandant.

Hacquoil had never intimated to Carter that he condoned his position with the Germans, and Carter had never demonstrated any approval of Hacquoil's actions.