Island Madness (20 page)

“Does it shock you so very much?” Lentsch asked. “That I should feel like this?”

“Of course not.”

“But that she should feel for me in this manner, perhaps. Is that it?”

“Not exactly.”

“But it is part of it.”

“It’s not you or her, is it, Major? It’s the circumstance.” He walked back into the bedroom. “Three years ago it wouldn’t have mattered one way or the other. Just one man losing out against another. But now it’s all muddled up with nations and honour and serving one’s country.”

“She was betraying England, that is what you thought?”

“No, but many people did.”

“She was a brave girl, braver than all of you, fighting for what she believed in, fighting for what she loved.”

“I don’t follow.”

Lentsch took a deep breath. “She found it difficult sometimes, feeling for me, our countries at war, of what others might think of her. I felt that while I was away something had happened that upset her more than usual.”

“I thought you said you hadn’t seen her.”

“I did not. I talked to her late afternoon.” He sighed. “I was not going to tell you this. It was a private moment, and we had very few of those. As you know I was not meant to know about that evening.” He smiled. “It was a secret, a
Geheimnis
. It was one of our favourite songs, Hilde Hildebrand’s ‘
Liebe Ist Ein Geheimnis
”, “Love is a Secret’. I rang her here, to tease her, pretending I knew nothing.” He sat down on the bed and recited their conversation as best he could.

“That was all?”

“Yes. She rang off, and though it was…” the Major tapped his knee in search of the right word, “…abrupt I did not ring back.”

“And when she didn’t turn up,” Ned persisted, “why didn’t you send the car here? Or come yourself?”

“I was afraid,” Lentsch admitted. “Perhaps she no longer wanted to see me. I had always told myself that if she became frightened or wanted it to stop, I would do nothing to prevent this. She was a young woman. It would not be right. Later I was ashamed.”

“Ashamed?”

“The parties. The drinking. Most of the girls are very…willing. Last night with Isobel not there, suddenly they did not seem right. They were not ordinary parties any more, they were like a worship to a false god. After it was over I was glad she had not arrived. In my mind I had decided that it would be the last party.”

Ned moved to the window, rubbing the breast of his jacket. Perhaps this was the right moment to show him. He could hear the palm trees, brushing against the window. The blinds were down. He put his hand into his pocket, half drawing the letter out, but a sudden squeal from outside drew him to the window again. Ned eased the metal slats aside, their metal syncopation sending shivers of memory skittering round the room. Across the way, in the garden of the bungalow opposite, the group of women they had seen earlier were chasing each other across on the small lawn in bare feet, their army greatcoats flapping round their ankles as they ran. Reaching the far end they stood in line and turning round began to call out impatiently. Almost immediately two men appeared. Ned recognized both, Major Ernst and the island’s censor, Captain Bohde. Ernst carried a huge rubber ball. Bohde struggled through the door with a black tripod and camera which he tried to balance on the uneven ground.

The girls cried out again. Bohde dismissed their exhortations with a wave of his hand, first bending to look through the viewfinder and then trotting over to where the girls stood. Holding a small object to one of them he pointed to the coat and then the sky. The girl shook her head. He repeated the performance, nodding vigorously. Shrugging her shoulders, the girl dropped the coat with a swift movement.

“Jesus Christ.”

“What is it?” Lentsch got up. Ned held his finger to his mouth and beckoned him over.

Below the girl stood in the pool of her overcoat. She was quite naked underneath. Bohde was scampering back to his camera with the eagerness of a small boy while Ernst held out the ball to the woman in mock-ceremonial fashion. She accepted the gift in like manner, the scoop of her long breasts swinging down over her arm. Her legs were planted wide apart, a triangular echo of the dark smudge of her sex. The other girls disrobed too. Standing in a circle they started throwing the ball to each other, their tanned bodies forming a series of static tableaux, now a living question mark, now a figure O. When they were finished Bohde dragged the camera closer and began photographing each girl individually. Ned felt his mouth go dry. He had never seen anything like it. Ernst was walking round with a little notebook, measuring their calves and their heads, wrapping the tape-measure against the prow of their breasts. Bohde marched into the house and returned with a tray of brandy glasses. The girls put their greatcoats back on and rubbed each other warm. Ned let the blind fall back into place. He was sweating.

“Quite a view.”

Lentsch seemed unperturbed. “Not so extraordinary as you think. In Germany there are many who bathe like that.”

“Not much bathing going on over there, Major.”

“Bathing in the air. Back home there are whole parks built specially for it. We call it
Nacktkultur&mdash
; freeing man from the evils of modern life, coming closer to nature, improving both the body and the mind. Swimming, tennis, walking, even special inns to eat and drink. Men, women, children, all of different ages, different backgrounds. The maths professor and the factory worker. The countess and the shopgirl. It is very popular.”

Ned was unconvinced. “Well, it won’t catch on here, I can tell you. Can you see my uncle and Mrs Hallivand going for a stroll together with nothing on?”

The Major smiled. “No. For them I think such moments have passed.”

Ned was adamant. “I don’t care who does it. It’s all wrong. Measuring girls like that. Taking photographs with their legs at all angles.”

Lentsch sighed. “You are right. For some the human form alone, the thing that has captured the imagination of countless artists and sculptors for thousands of years, is not enough. It has to be measured, placed in categories, organized into ridiculous geometrie shapes. A face is no longer a face, you understand, a nose no longer a nose. They are parts of a greater scheme. This is the Major for you. What you saw there was what they term ‘research’.”

Ned’s laugh was without a trace of humour. “If they were civilians I could have them all arrested for those photographs, let alone anything else.”

“We are a nations of camera owners. Turn a German upside down and photographs will fall from his pockets.” Lentsch leant over and pulled the slats down again. One of the girls had thrown off her coat again and was standing on the medicine ball, walking it across the lawn.

“She has great poise, that one,” he observed. “She should be a dancer, with such balance.”

“Do you know any of them?” Ned asked him, unable to prevent himself looking again.

“They were at the party last night. Dressed,” he added.

“And Major Ernst?”

“Ernst! He was having dinner with Herr van Dielen, remember.”

“What about Captain Bohde there?”

“Naturally. First at the club and then at the Villa.”

“All the time?”

“No. He left the Casino earlier than the rest of us. He had work to do at the newspaper office. He was at the house when we returned.”

“How did he seem?”

“Bohde? The same as usual. Not at ease. He does not fit in with the rest of us.”

“I tnight have to question him. About the time in between?”

Lentsch thought for a moment. “Inspector. It is better if you understand that you cannot ‘question’ any of my subordinates. You ask. You understand the differente? Very well. We can ‘ask’ him together. I will talk. You will listen.”

Ned nodded. The girl was walking the ball back towards the bungalow, her hands on her head. Ernst was clapping. As she drew near, he placed his hands under her arms and lifted her off. A sudden phrase, like the snatch of a song, came into his head.
She could not tell Lentsch, she could not tell Lentsch, she tvrote him the letter ‘cause she could not tell Lentsch
.

“Do you think Isobel ever saw anything like that from up here?” he asked.

Lentsch shook his head.

“If she had she would have told me. It would have been a huge joke to her, especially if she had seen Bohde with his camera. Bohde is a terrible old woman.”

“What about Ernst? Do you think he could have asked her to take part in this ‘research’?”

Lentsch shook his head again. He’d suggested it once himself, of course, that she sit for him. They were upstairs, lying side by side, in his little single bed. It was the first time they had gone to bed together in the afternoon, the first time that he had seen her naked in the afternoon light, or the morning for that matter. He was the shyer of the two, turning his back to her, folding his clothes carefiilly across the back of his chair while she pulled everything off in a heap and hopped straight into bed. Afterwards he lay there uncomfortably. His arm was going to sleep and his neck was caught at an awkward angle. Sensing his discomfort she raised herself up and kneeling on the foot of the bed looked up out of the window. He did not know why it should be so but it seemed to him that the light shifting over her now was quite different from the light falling on her when she had been partially clothed. Could this be true? Perhaps, unlike the moon which only reflected and never possessed, there was something within the body which made skin glow, not simply the passage of blood and oxygen but an inner light wherein the spirit lay. He recalled the day in Munich when, clothed in the mantle of disapproval, he had stood and marvelled at Gauguin’s reviled dark and fleshy figures and compared them to the stillborn forms from the brushes of approved painters like Johan Schuit and Karl Truppe. Their women, for all their glowing health, were rendered of the flesh, but not of the blood. Their skin was flawless, flat, denied the blemish of movement. The eyes of God had not fallen upon them. He saw that same look this morning in Isobel’s dread immobility, in the strange quiet of her flesh, the imperfect whiteness of her skin, the stillness of her body. The eyes of God had left her. But he did not think of such matters that afternoon in the bare domain of his bed. He thought of the light and her movement and the impossibility of their freedom. He reached out and run his fingers down the small of her back. She turned and moved over him in anticipation. He smiled quickly, raising his hands in protest.

“No, no,” he pleaded. “I was just thinking. If you could keep still for an hour I would like to paint you as you are now.”

“What?” She smacked him playfully on the arm. “Where would you hang it? In the front room for all your friends to gawk at or up here where Albert would have to dust it every day? I know. You could give it to my aunt. She likes a good picture. You could tell her which bit you like painting the best. My feet. My hands. This.” She bent down and placed her breast in between his lips. Lentsch felt her desire harden in his mouth.

“But quietly,” he insisted, holding still her hips. “Just in case.”

“Oh, I forgot. Mustn’t awake Auntie from her afternoon nap.” She giggled and stretching up had proceeded to give voice to her indiscretion until he too became enveloped in its untroubled and careless cry.

Lentsch snapped back to the question.

“Ernst? No. He would not wish to anger her father.”

“And Bohde?”

Lentsch shook his head. “He would not want to anger me.”

“What if her father had been mixed up in it? What if he and Ernst and Bohde had all tried to make her do something and it had all got a bit out of hand?”

Lentsch pulled at the blind again. The garden was quite empty now, save for the solitary tripod.

“His own daughter?”

“It has been known,” Ned told him, “fathers offering their daughters up to friends, fathers taking daughters for themselves. Happens all the time here. Maybe there’s more to what we’ve just seen than taking pictures. Maybe they tried to involve Isobel. Maybe she resisted.”

Downstairs the front door slammed.

“He’s leaving,” the Major announced.

Ned went to the window. Van Dielen was hurrying down the pathway with a bundie of papers under his arm. Ned felt tired. He wanted to go back to sleep, to walk round to Bernie’s house and get drunk.

“I understand his anguish,” the Major said, “but he should not do that. Not without permission first.”

“Not to worry,” Ned told him wearily. “I’ll post one of my men outside. He can take a statement from him when he gets back. Right now I should go and talk to Mrs Hallivand and find out what that coffee morning was all about. He wouldn’t mind me telephoning from here, would he, to see if she’s in?”

“He might not mind,” Lentsch agreed, “but there is no telephone at the Lodge. Why don’t you telephone your uncle at the Villa. He will know if she’s there.”

Lentsch dropped Ned at the Villa’s gateway.

“You will keep me informed of everything?” he said.

Ned leant against the car. The letter crackled in his pocket.

“Of course,” he said.

“Wedel will deliver a special pass this evening, permitting you to be out when you please, but not, you understand, exactly where. This is a personal favour. Do not abuse it.”

Wedel winked at him as he threw the car into a gravel-spitting turn. Ned straightened his hat and stepped up onto the lodge porch. This was where Uncle Albert and Auntie Rose had lived. In the summer Auntie Rose used to sit out on this veranda, a bowl of peas or runner beans in her lap and the saucepan by her feet, watching his cousin Kitty walking up and down the drive on the stilts his father had made. Now the porch was stacked with wood, a woman’s bicycle propped up against the railing. Ned knocked on the door with his knuckles. Albert appeared almost at once. His beret was a mite askew, Ned thought.

“Uncle!”

“Ned.”

“She’s in, then?”

“Aye. Wipe your feet. She don’t care for footmarks.”

Ned squeezed past Albert into the small passageway.

“I don’t remember it this cramped,” Ned whispered.