Island Madness (41 page)

“You heard. As long as they find the Captain far away from here, I’m safe. Isn’t that right, Major?”

“As far as I know, yes, but…”

“That’s settled, then. That canoe won’t hold four and you know it. I could try and swim but I’m out of practice. Besides I’ve got a show on tonight. Damned if I’m going to miss out on my big number.”

Ned shut his eyes. He wanted to look to his mother, to Veronica, wanted to hold them both and tell them he would take care of them, but he could not. He was leaving them.

“We’ll be needing some food, Mum,” he told her gently. “Have you any spare? Just to keep us going.”

Veronica perked up. “Take some of mine. I’ve been cooking all week.”

Ned’s mum couldn’t quite believe her. “Cooking, V? You?”

“That’s right. Proper little Mrs Beeton I am these days. Hang on a mo.”

They sat in silence while she ran next door again.

“You sure this is wise?” Ned’s mother said eventually.

Ned patted her hand.

“It should hold us well enough, if the sea’s not too big.”

“Not the canoe. Veronica’s cooking.” She got up. “Teil you what. I’ve got something that will fill you up before you go. I was saving it for the next time the Major came round to tea.”

They listened as she fussed in the kitchen. She was humming to herself as if she was almost happy. She had a son who loved her, a son with a girlfriend, a son who was escaping to safety. And she was making him tea.

Veronica returned carrying a buiging string bag.

“One potato and onion pie,” she said proudly, “some oatmeal biscuits and three slices of carrot cake.” She nodded to the kitchen. “Your mum’s doing you proud too. Where did she get it from?”

“Get what?” asked Ned.

His mother called them in. She’d laid the little table with her best tablecloth, and on it stood her four best bowls, the ones with pictures of Westminster Abbey round the rim. There was a sweet scent to the air, a smell of childhood and warm spoons. His mother pointed to the steaming bowls.

“That’s real custard in there,” she said. “Stewed apple and real custard.” She lifted the tin high in the air. “Bet you’ve see nothing like that in years. Bird’s custard powder. You’ve got your uncle to thank for that.”

Sixteen

I
t’s hard to believe that all these towers and gun emplacements and miles of tunnel have been built, not by fit young men with state-approved muscles and healthy assuaged appetites, but by men weakened by dysentery, who eat one bowl of cabbage soup a day, who sleep on planks of wood, who dress in discarded cement bags, who never wash, who shit in communal buckets, who are beaten with whips and chair legs, and who work twelve hours a day nonstop whatever their state of health. They have built this. They have.

He clambers down the rocky surface to where the machine lies, housed in a brick house, one storey high, long like a boat, unattractive like a urinal. It is a simple machine; a huge grey rectangular funnel at the top, into which are tipped the stones and granite, a long clanging chute, down which they fall, and at the bottom a row of great stone wheels, through which these stones are minced: Guernsey rock for Guernsey sand; Guernsey sand for Guernsey cement. There are two machines of this design on the island and through them Guernsey is producing the means of its own incarceration; eating its own tail. It is like one of those children’s stories that his wife used to sing, yes, he remembers that, how she used to recite those English nursery rhymes on those long foreign nights, sitting under the mosquito net, looking out over the hot night air; Jack and Jill going up a hill; the man who looked like an egg; Old King Cole; the house that Jack built. That was her favourite, the house that Jack built, for Daddy was a builder, long ago, when he had a daughter to listen to such tales. Had he one? It was so hard to know, such an improbable possibility that he had a daughter and a wife and a construction called a family, with all the constituent parts that such a compli-cated entity would involve. No, he cannot imagine it, for he waved the boy goodbye, did he not, sent him ranning home before he began this journey to his. But whether he ever possessed one or not is of no consequence, for he is of the island now and this is where he must return.

It is not difficult to climb up the small service ladder and stare down into the heart of the machine. There is the loose tumble of rock churning above the slow grinding wheels, a whirlpool of granite and flint out of which flow grains of eternity. This is what he desires, to become an infinite speek of sand, to be swept along into the body of the island, to have the sea pounding him, pressing him. To be a rock! A stone! To have the sea and the sky and the wind calling you! He is a rock! He is a stone! He jumps into the grinding pool, one leg bent sideways, one foot immedi-ately caught, the ankle taken down and squeezed so hard he cannot imagine it, his knee first cracked then flattened, and as his hands rise up and he is taken down, his soft body following, gut squirting through his mouth, he Iets forth an unbearable scream. No man can hear him, not his fellow slave workers, unloading the next wagonload, not the overseers idling their hours in the cabin of their battered lorry, not the Spanish Republican engine driver leaning out of the cab of his dirty belching engine, not even Major Ernst, one hundred yards away, tracing plans with his stick. There is the grim crushing of the machine, there is the hissing smoke from the train’s boiler, there is the rhythm of the labourers’ spades and the wheeling call of gulls, but there is no van Dielen. Van Dielen is dead now, crunched and mixed and turned to wet, dusty powder. Van Dielen is dead but not buried. He will lie in a heap for a year or more, tufts of couch grass growing atop him. The wind will come and blow him over the pebbles and onto the sweeping sand. In later years he will be run upon by bare feet and shovelled into proud buckets. He will be hurled against curving walls upon which he once walked; luminescent specks of him will sparkle in the wet sheen of the seaweed; a bone in a shrimping net; grit in a sunbather’s eye. Others will come and others will go but van Dielen will never leave. He washes in and out, in and out, lapping around the huge circumference of his family’s grave.

Seventeen

N
ed walked up the drive. Wedel was up at the top polishing Bernie’s car. He looked up and grinned.

“Inspector Luscombe. You still have no auto?”

“I’m waiting for the matching suit.”

Wedel looked back at the house. “If you have come for the Major he is not here. In fact, I do not think you will be able to see him again.”

“That’s all right. It’s my uncle I’m after.” He showed him his warrant card. “It’s official.”

He walked down the tiled corridor, putting his head round each door. All neat and tidy, except for the slight hole by the drawing room door. The dining room table was set for dinner, the drawing room redolent of cigars and hair cream. Beyond, through the French windows, he could see men and wheelbarrows and a great trench of freshly dug earth at the far end of the lawn. A couple of trees lay on their sides. At least they’d have fuel for the next winter. Above him he could hear an odd muttering, like a bad-tempered soliloquy. He climbed the stairs towards it. He recognized the voice now. On the second floor the door to one of the bedrooms lay wide open. Albert was on his knees going through the small drawer by the bedside.

“Uncle?”

Albert looked up. He held something in his hand.

“Spoons,” he said. “Teaspoons, dessertspoons, and here, tucked in his fancy underwear, the fish knives that were stolen six months ago. He’s been helping himself, the thieving bastard.”

“Who?”

“Bohde. This is Bohde’s room. What are you doing here? If you want the Major…”

Ned held up his hand and looked around. Through the window smoke was coming out of the lodge’s chimney. One law for the rich, he thought.

“Have you heard? The Major’s leaving,” he said.

Albert put the spoons back in their place and pushed back the drawer.

“I know. Only himself to blame. Should have kept his mouth shut, whatever he felt. Bad enough at the best of times, but now.”

“Now?”

“The birthday boy.” He raised himself from the floor. “They’re very sensitive about Hitler’s birthday. Don’t like anyone to spoil the fun.” There was a sparkle to his eyes.

“You know, don’t you, Uncle?”

“Know what?”

“Know that he’s coming here.”

Ned took the tin of custard from under his jacket and put it on the dresser.

“Now tell me it wasn’t you. Teil me it wasn’t you who tipped Isobel down that shaft.”

Albert said nothing.

“I haven’t quite worked it out, Uncle, which bit fits where, but then I’m not a very good policeman. You part of this smug-gling ring, too? And how did it get mixed up in all this other business?”

“I don’t know what you’re on about. What other business?”

“However it is you’re going to try and kill him. Isobel found out, didn’t she? Who through? You? Her father? What do you plan to do? Stab him to death with a garden fork?”

“Don’t talk daft.”

“Well?”

Albert stood defiant. “We’re at war, Ned.”

“So people keep telling me.”

“War means sacrifice. Laying down one’s life if necessary.”

“When appropriate. What’s the plan, then. Poisoned tarts for tea?”

“No!” Albert was shouting now.

“Well, what, then?”

“A bomb!”

“A bomb? Borrowed one of theirs, did you?”

“I made it myself. With nails and bolts, you know, like we did of old, weedkiller and sugar. Only a damn sight bigger this time.”

“You wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“I’d get close enough for it to count.”

“How? Wrap it up in fancy paper? Christ Almighty!”

Albert held his ground. “How many men get a chance like this? I had to take it.”

“And Isobel found out?”

Albert was sullen. “Isobel found out nothing,” he said. “I was there.”

“You were where?”

“When Mrs H. tried to get it out of her. They’re giving him this lunch, see. Isobel were invited. Mrs H. asked her round that morning to see if we could find out where. She came up to the Villa first, to check on the party, then walked down. As soon as I saw her go through the Lodge door I followed. I wanted to hear it for myself. I let myself in. You could taste the sharpness between them, like when you bite into a sour apple. “How lovely you are looking,” Mrs H. was saying, “quite captured the Major’s heart,” and I could hear the snap as she bit into a biscuit. She does love her biscuits, does Mrs H.”

“Never mind about the biscuits, Uncle.”

“No. In fact between you both, you and your father have made the van Dielens quite indispensable,” and Isobel said, “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” already bored and irritated. I could hear the scrape of something, like Marjorie was trying to pull the chair closer. “I’ve heard something very
interesting
,” she said, her voice hushed like she was afraid someone might be listening, “
very
interesting. A special visitor is coming, I hear, a very special visitor.”

Isobel was hardly bothering to listen and Mrs H. hummed and hawed and poured herself a cup of tea, holding it God knows how high up, sounded like a man taking a Jimmy Riddle, and then she said, “I know you’ve been told not to tell anyone, and that’s how it should be, but you can tell your old aunt, can’t you? After all, it’s not every day that a little place like this entertains a visitor of such
peculiar
stature,” and Isobel got impatient, and laughed and said, “Who’s coming then, Santa Claus?” and you could hear it in her voice that she thought Mrs H. had finally lost her marbles and I had half a mind to go in and stop it right there and then, but suddenly it was like Mrs H.’s feelings had got the better of her, this whippersnapper of a girl poking fun at her, lording it over her, and her voice went hard as granite and she spat it out. “Don’t try and hide it from me, girl,” she said, “I know who’s coming. It’s a privilege many of us would have liked to share, to have dinner with such a distinguished guest. Frankly fm surprised the Major hasn’t seen fit to ask me. I am after all about the only one left who’s used to receiving heads of state.”

“Heads of state, what
are
you talking about?” she said, irritated. “Hitler!” Mrs H. screams. “Hitler, you silly girl. You and your father are dining with the Lord High Executioner Himself, here in Guernsey on his birthday. Don’t tell me you didn’t know,” and Isobel started to stammer and said, no, that she didn’t know, that she must be mistaken, that the Major would have told her. “The Major!” Mrs H. spat the word. “Yes, the Major. Gerhard tells me everything. After the war we are going to be married.”

“Married! You and Gerhard!” I thought she’d given herself an electric shock the way she screamed it and I heard her stand up, with a clatter of plates on the floor, and Isobel gave a little cry too, as if she’d been grabbed, by the hair or by the wrist I couldn’t tell. “See that,” Mrs H. said, yelling at the top of her voice, “see that picture there. That was me, Isobel, me! That was how I looked when I was your age. You wouldn’t have thought it to look at me now, would you, but it’s true. Russell just changed the face slightly so as not to cause my father too much embarrassment. It never crossed your mind that I could have once looked like that. Well, let me tell you I had a better figure than you, I was better company than you, and most likely better in bed than you. Yet look at me now. I have his brains, his wit, and yet he barely notices me because of the one thing I have lost. And you hope to marry him! If he cannot look on me now and see me for what I am worth, imagine what he will think of you in years to come, when you will have nothing! Nothing! Not even a picture like this to remind him!” and with that she got up left the room and finding me in the corridor shooed me into the kitchen. “Best not push it any further,” I said. “Let her think you’re just jealous.” Isobel popped her head round the door and saw me, so I gave her a little wave. The next thing we knew she was running down the pathway and out of the gates. Can’t blame her of course, the way Mrs H. had carried on. But that’s the last we saw of her.”

“And yet she ran back and wrote me the note.”

“Note, what note?”

“She wrote me a note, Uncle. She was frightened. She
must
have found out.”

He thought back to that time, when he sat in that little room of hers, with Mrs Hallivand eating her biscuits, her wicker basket at her dainty feet.

“Wait a minute. Did Mrs H. go to the house that day?”

“After she met up with Isobel, yes. That afternoon.”

“And what did she have in her bag?”

“The usual stuff.”

“Sugar and weedkiller.”

“That’s right. Hidden under a cloth. It were the last lot.”

“That’s how she found out!” He got up and looked down on the drive. Wedel was leaning against the car, smoking a cigarette. He looked up and held his cigarette out in invitation. Ned raised his hands and backed away.

“When Isobel got back home her father told me that she had ridiculed her aunt for having this embroidery she’d done, which she’d found tucked in her bag, of the Major standing by the bay or something. At the bottom of the bag, he said. Only it wasn’t at the bottom. It was on top of all that other stuff, the sugar, the weedkiller. She sees the Major on this piece of cloth, lifts it up to take a better look and lo and behold, lying underneath, there they are. The next thing she knows there are voices in the kitchen and she comes out to find you and Mrs H. muttering together like a couple of amateur Guy Fawkes. She knows all about weedkiller and sugar and what you bloody do with them. I told her. Suddenly she realizes what you two are planning. She runs out of the house, forgetting her bike, and dashes home. She daren’t tell the Major. She does the only thing she can, she writes to me, hoping that I can somehow save the island from your lunacy. Only someone gets to her first. Big hands, I’ve been told. And a uniform. How did you come by that, Uncle? Borrow one of the Major’s?”

“What?”

“You were seen tipping her down a shaft!”

“I never tipped no one down a shaft. And I ain’t no murderer.”

“Not much you aren’t, trying to get us all killed.” He touched Albert on the arm. “What would Kitty have thought of all this, Uncle? She’d have hated it.”

At the mention of her name, Albert grew contrite.

“I was seized by the wrongness of it, all the wickedness here on this one bit of rock.”

“You didn’t kill her?”

“On my Rose’s grave, I didn’t. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have if I had to. But I didn’t. So.” He drew himself up, ready to be marched downstairs. “What am I to do now?”

“Dismantle it. He’s not coming.”

“Not coming?” Albert was indignant.

“He’s got another engagement.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m a policeman. I’ve been told.”

“I suppose I’m under arrest, then. That’ll be one for the record books. A nephew arresting his own uncle.”

“I can’t arrest you for trying to blow up Adolf Hitler, can I?”

“No, I suppose not.”

“There’s another reason. I’m taking your advice, making a run for it.”

“To England!” Albert gripped Ned’s arm. “When?”

“Tonight.”

“You’ll be there by morning!”

“I bloody well hope so.”

“You’ll go see our Kitty.”

“Only if you promise to keep out of mischief.”

“Look after her, Ned. She’s all I’ve got.”

“Ifyou look after Mum.”

“I’ll move in with her, if you like. I’ve had it with this lot.”

Ned walked down the stairs. His uncle followed, rubbing his duster along the balustrade as he went. A few minutes ago he was prepared to blow Guernsey to ashes. Now he was back polishing the woodwork. He’s going to escort me to the front door too, Ned thought, wish me good luck. Offer me some friendly advice.

“One thing, Uncle. I still don’t understand where you got the custard from.”

Albert rolled up his trouser leg. There was a yellowish bruise and the line of a badly healed cut.

“It were me that broke into van Dielen’s yard that night. My foot went through one of their containers. It were ruil of them. So I took a couple, sort of farewell treat. Gave one to your mother.”

“No more than two?”

“What would I want with any more? I weren’t planning to take a bath in the stuff.” He looked up to the ceiling. “Though I know of some as might.”

A picture came to Ned, of George Poidevin standing atop a pile of half-opened containers.

“Did you open any more crates?”

“Why should I do that?”

“To see what else you could find? To make it look like the foreigns had been there.”

“Foreigns wouldn’t bother to open crates. They see enough of what’s inside crates as it is. Anyway…” He stopped. “Ah, what’s the use. Go on, be off with you. And don’t you worry about the bomb.”

“You won’t try to blow up any Germans?”

“I won’t blow up any Germans.” He wiped his hand on his apron. “You row safely, now. The sea is a treacherous beast.”

“I’ll row safely.”

“And be careful of the milk over there. It curdles in the stomach, the muck the English drink.”

They all tried to get some sleep for the rest of that afternoon, the Major and the boy sleeping on his mother’s bed, Ned lying half awake on his own, listening to his mother and Veronica below. Then in the darkness the door opened quietly. Veronica slipped in under the blanket.

“V,” he whispered, “Mum’s downstairs.”

“I don’t care. Neither does she.”

She snuggled in and wrapped her arms around him. “I don’t want to…not after…”

“No.”

“I will in time, though. When you get back. You will be coming back, won’t you, Ned? I couldn’t bear it now, if you didn’t.”

“V!”

“Sometimes I feel bad about it all, Tommy and the Captain. Gerald too, of course.” She sat up on her arms. “Do you know, until just now I’d forgotten all about Gerald. And I thought he was going to be my passport to a better life. That’s all I ever wanted, a better life.” She pulled his hair gently. “Do you mind about the others?”

“I do a bit.”

“I had my eye on the Major too, you know.” She laughed and rolled over onto the pillow. “God, you must have thought me a fooi.”