Island Madness (32 page)

“Garden path?”

“Pooling you, Major. Pulling the wool over your eyes. That wouldn’t have made her nervous. She would have enjoyed it. No, there was something else worrying her by then. She went to bed on Friday in high spirits. Early Saturday morning she hives it down here to collect the fancy dress she wants to wear. She goes back home. Mrs Hallivand summons her for coffee. Afterwards she goes up to the Villa to check the arrangements. She leaves, has lunch, and goes to the yard with her father. By the time she gets back and takes your call, something has upset her.” He paused. “Are you coming tonight?”

“If I may.”

“Oh, you may. Mum wouldn’t mind if I stopped out, but just you try doing it.”

He stopped off at the Britannia for an hour before going home. Albert wasn’t to be seen, but at the back Tommy Ie Coeur sat in a corner seat with his arm round a couple of girls. The table was ruil of empty glasses. At least he wasn’t in uniform this time.

“Inspector! Have a drink!”

Tommy lurched to his feet and propelled Ned to the bar. “What’s it to be? Beer, whisky? You like a spot of brandy, I believe.”

“They’re not allowed to sell spirits, Tommy, you know that.” Ned drew him aside. “Bloody heil, Tommy! Two at the same time, that’s going a bit even for you. Don’t they have any say in the matter?”

“As long as I’m paying they’re happy. Anyway, young Peter’s dropping in soon. It’s about time someone wet his whistle. I reckon the big one just might do the job.”

“Yes, well, just you make sure he doesn’t do anything foolish. He’s got enough family to support as it is.” He looked the girls over. He only hoped they were over age. “I’m sorry about Elspeth, Tommy. There’s nothing I could do, you know.”

“I know. I hadn’t seen her much, after we parted company.”

“Yes, what was all that about? You seemed quite suited.”

“She cheated on me, Inspector. Walked out with someone else.”

Ned nearly choked on his beer. “Cheated on you!”

“Made me look a fool. I don’t mind playing the fool, but I’m damned if I’m going to look like one.” He finished his drink in one thick gulp. “Better get back.” He waved again. “That’s right, darling, you sit on it while you can. I’ll have split you in half before the night’s out.”

By the time Ned got back home, his mother had heard the news. She banged the plates down on the table.

“He’s not with you, then?”

“He’ll be here later. We’ve been busy.”

“So I hear.” She started to set down the cutlery. When the Major had first come, she used to hand it to them, blade first. “George won’t last, not in those camps they have over there,” she told him. “Mr Freeman neither. Elspeth might…”

“Elspeth will bed down with the first guard she sees. Probably end up marrying the prison governor.”

“It’s a death sentence you’ve given the others.”

“I haven’t given them anything, Mother. They broke the law.”

“It could have been me,” she said.

“I don’t think you would have done what Elspeth did.”

“Not if I had young children to feed? Don’t you be so certain. I know of many mothers who take in their washing for some extra bread. I know a couple who take in a good deal more as well just so they can put some food in their children’s stomachs. It shouldn’t be a crime to sell food, to sell ordinary folk butler and sugar.”

“At her prices?”

“I’d pay them if we had the money! I would!”

She started to smash her fists on the table, the plates jumping, knives and forks clattering to the floor. “I’d sell my soul for a pound of butter,” she cried. “Proper butter! A pound of butter that I could spread good and thick. My soul, my heart, anything! Anything! Just a pound of butter! Anything!”

Ned made a cup of tea and took her upstairs. She sat in bed, holding it in both hands.

“Don’t spill it, for God’s sake,” he said. “There’s half our sugar ration in that cup.” He saw her grip tighten. “Don’t worry. I’ll get us some more.”

As he walked down the stairs he heard the tap on the door. The Major stood in the doorway, a bunch of flowers and a small parcel in his hand.

“Ah, Major.” He spoke loudly. He’d drunk a bit more than he meant to at the pub. Seeing Tommy so carefree with those girls had made him thirsty. “I was just about to have another beer.”

The Major stepped in and looked around. Usually he could hear movement in the kitchen. Usually she came in, wiping her hands on a towel in preparation for their handshake. The silence disturbed him.

“Your mother is not here tonight?” he enquired.

“She’s gone to bed.”

“She is not well?” The concern in the Major’s voice surprised him.

“She’s tired, that’s all.” Ned took the flowers and looked around for somewhere to put them. “I’ll take these up to her in a minute. They’ll cheer her up.”

“I brought something else too. I should not have.” He pulled on the string, proudly lifting the tin from its brown paper wrapping. “Cocoa. The Captain took it from the bank vaults. So I took it from the Captain.”

“As long as he doesn’t blame Albert.”

“No, no. I left him a little note. He knows who the culprit is. He is in a strange mood, the Captain. When I returned he was singing in the bath at the top of his voice, delirious with joy.” He looked upstairs. “Would your mother mind if I gave this to her myself?”

“Go ahead.”

He could hear the murmur of soft voices, and his mother’s sudden note of exclamation. The Major came down with the empty cup in her hand.

“She wants to sleep.”

Ned took the cup and ran it under the tap. He waved his hand over the table. “She hasn’t cooked us anything.”

“It is of no consequence. I am not hungry.”

They walked out into the garden. The Major took out his cigarette case and handed it over.

“I always seem to be doing this,” said Ned, helping himself.

“Take them all!”

Ned closed the lid and handed it back. “One at a time, Major. It makes me feel better this way.”

The two men laughed and walked to the bottom of the garden. The Major put his hand on the gate and blew the smoke into the clear air.

“Fantastic,” he said, looking up. “On such a night one wants to pretend for a moment that one is free, that the world is still and at peace.”

“I used to go canoeing on nights like this,” Ned confessed, “take my girlfriend, sleep out on one of the outlying islands.” He caught the Major’s questioning look. “No, never Isobel. We just went swimming. She was afraid of the water after her mother died. I helped her get over it. That’s how we…”

“And I taught her how to dive. She could not do that before, I think.”

“No. With me she’d jump in, both feet.”

“Holding her nose, yes?”

“That’s right.”

The two men bowed to their private thoughts, then sensing each other, looked to the sky again, waiting for the conversation to take a new direction.

“Do you have the canoe still?” the Major asked. He felt Ned’s hesitation. “No, no. Do not answer me. I do not want to know.”

“You know already, Major.”

“Of course.” He dropped the cigarette end and crushed it with his foot. “You must be clever at hiding things. I thought we had searched all your houses.”

Ned walked over and pulled it out from the back of the pigsty. He laid it out on the ground and unfolded the two lengths. The Major walked around it.

“It is quite large.”

“That’s the beauty of it. Folded up it takes up hardly any space at all.”

“No wonder we missed it.”

“There was a pig here then. That helped.”

“You ate him?”

“No, you did.” The Major started to protest. “Soldiers,” Ned explained.

Lentsch bent down and brushed the straw and dirt from the skin.

“Why don’t we try now?”

“What?”

“Now. Let us row across the water.”

“We couldn’t.”

“Yes, we could. You said yourself, this is a night for sailing. I want to go, Ned. For me the island has lost her beauty. Perhaps seeing it like this will restore it for me. I would like to think of the island as beautiful again.”

Ned grunted in acknowledgement.

“What if we get caught?”

“If we are stopped I shall say I was testing the efficiency of our patrols. They would understand that. Will we be caught?”

“Probably not. If we strike out past the promontory a good distance we should be all right. There’s no moon to speak of and we’d be very low on the water. Patrol boats would be our main worry, but we’d hear them quite some way off.”

Lentsch gripped his arm. “Come on, then!” he exhorted. “Put our differences aside. Circumnavigate the island, true explorers of the night.”

They hoisted it up on their shoulders and carried it out onto the road. The Major starled to trot down the narrow lane. He was eager, like a child, willing danger to emerge. He is crazy, Ned thought, and I am mad to be a part of it. When they reached the beach and the long road that ran alongside it, they jumped down, resting against the old sea wall along the length of the bay. The Major started to giggle.

“If the Captain could see me now,” he said. “A canoe! All these sentries and watchtowers defeated by a canoe!”

Half bent, they moved along in the shadow of the wall, before setting the craft down where the bay jutted out in a cluster of spilt rock. They waded out slowly, the craft bobbing under their hands, the water cold, the sand untrustworthy. Half a mile away on the opposite side they could see the dim outline of an observation post. To the west, across the sea, the sky hung low. There was nothing to see but the vast and empty dark, no sound except the lap of the waves and the long lonely wind. Ned held the craft steady while the Major clambered in, then pushed. As he fought to keep his balance he thought he was going to tip them both in the water, but then he was in, his legs tucked under the prow. He took up the paddie and sent them spinning out over the water.

“This is marvellous,” Lentsch called, holding his paddie out like a tightrope walker.

“Shh.” Ned whispered. “Voices carry, you know. Just do like me and hope the moon doesn’t show.”

It was a rolling world that Ned seemed to lead him into, and as they moved over its looming surface Lentsch felt as if they were sailing over a sleeping giant, feeling the motion of breathing deep and slow. It was a quiet world, despite the great whistling dark, without limit, without feeling, a world where there was only the choice of existence or oblivion; nothing in between. Isobel was here, riding in the stinging spray blowing in his face, and in the murky inlets that fled by, he could see the hidden marshes of his youth, murmuring with the fluttered ruffling of disturbed birds. Here, past the swept bays and scattered rocks, was a world washed free of men, a world immune to their cries; no reason here, no love or enmity; no emotion at all, except the wondrous surge of being. Was he cold, was he soaked to the bone? He did not know. He was not the Major, he was not Isobel’s lover, for there were no lovers or majors on this water. Even the man in front of him, who was he? An unknown! What connection did he have with him? None! Here, no one had any connection with any one or any thing. And it came to him that he did not want to exist in any other state than this: that to ride under the stars would be enough, to ride and feel the great indifferent power of the world carry you where it would, with it having no thought to you and with you having no thought to it.

He plunged his paddie in and felt the great suck of the water hold him fast as the paddie sank and stuck like a spoon drawn through syrup. He fought to raise it. Ned looked back.

“Nice and easy, Major, that’s all she needs.”

“Sorry.”

He worked the paddie lightly, trying to imitate the shadow of the man in front of him, feeling the canoe veer left and then right, left and then right, beginning to judge the depth of the blade and the swing of his arm. He was gliding forward now, gliding forward, feeling the strength of himself and his seat hard on the slatted floor, conscious of the slow welling below him and the thin, untested membrane that kept him suspended from the dreadful deep. It was black now, very black and he began to feel alone, a little afraid. Lentsch wasn’t even sure whether he could see the island at all. Surely there had been a jut of rock over there? And where was the long curve he had seen and the watchtower rising above?

Ned laid his paddie across his knees.

“We can rest up a bit,” he said.

The Major span round in his seat, panicking.

“Which way are we facing?” he asked.

Ned lifted his paddie to the stars.

“North. Towards England.”

“Are we moving at all?”

“Faster than you think.”

“I feel lost.”

“You’re not lost.”

“Have you ever been out like this before?”

“Since you arrived? Only once. I nearly didn’t come back. Kept on rowing. But I couldn’t.”

“Your mother?”

“Not just her. It was like the whole of Guernsey wouldn’t let me go, every lump of rock dragging me back. I wanted to go. I could feel the current almost willing me. It would have only taken me six or seven hours. I got so far out and then stopped. I couldn’t go any further. Every time I raised the paddie it was like there was this great magnet dragging me back.”

Lentsch shivered.

“It is like a frozen landscape, I think, the sea at night. There seems no end to it. If we died here, by some misfortune, though I might feel alone, I would not feel abandoned. It would be part of my destiny, to die here. But many men I know have died in seas much more terrible than this, seas of ice and frozen mud. They were not only alone. They were betrayed. Ah, Ned, the stories I have been told.”

There had been many ways to die in Fortress Stalingrad. The road to the airport had been only ten feet across at the beginning -a five-mile stretch from the circular railways to the last airfield and escape. By the end it was over one hundred feet wide, pressed thick and deep with the frozen bodies of fallen men. By day they had shuffled and crawled along, the bleeding and dying, hoping to climb their way onto one of the lone crazy Junkers that skidded in and out of their icy trap, but at night, when the planes had stopped and the road was jammed with broken trucks and smashed guns and the wrecks of planes that had not made it, they lay down and were covered by the ceaseless fall of snow. The following morning a fresh column would begin anew, walking on the far side of the newly dead, while trucks reared and slithered over those newly frozen forms, splintering their bones like glass. There was no need to feel guilt, these desperate men, seeing their comrades pressed into such ignoble service. They would be lying alongside them soon enough. And so the track ever widened. Fourteen thousand alone had died on that road. And then the airport was overrun, and they retreated into an even more desolate landscape of burnt-out villages and wrecked cellars, falling back room by room, house by house, street by street, compressed ever tighter. From the air it appeared as if a giant furnace was at work, liquid metal arcing in mollen shapes of chemistry, steel shafts stabbing at the burning earth, a man-made volcano for the modern age, but inside there was only the cold and the biting wind and the limitless white of the snow. Now there was no escape, except through death and that would not be easy, He had made sure of that. Lentsch had heard of whole companies of men lying atop ice-filled trenches, too frozen to move as the tanks rolled slowly over them, their blood and organs squirting out like freshly popped fruit; of packs of dogs ignoring the stiffening corpses and seeking out only the living, to nuzzle hungrily into their open wounds. There was no war now, just ways to die: death by gangrene, death by spotted fever, death by starvation, death for the common soldier, death for the conscript, death for the general, death which left unsatisfied, sullen and without pity, to attend to the next broken soul.