Island Madness (10 page)

“So it went off, like a signal perhaps? And yet, the house is dark, the blinds are all drawn.”

“Perhaps it was just a trick of the light.”

“A trick of light? I suppose a light could do nothing else but its own trick, Mr Luscombe.”

“I might have imagined it.”

“Perhaps you imagined a daughter under it too.”

“I was just checking, Mr van Dielen.”

“How very intriguing, Mr Luscombe, how very lame and how very like yourself to be sticking your spoke in where it does not belong, as you might say.” He twirled the key in his hand. “Isobel went to a party this evening. If she is back,” he pointed to the grey, lifeless window, “she is asleep. It has been a mercirul long time since she last laid eyes on your constabuleric form and long may it remain so.” He raised his hat. “Goodnight, Mr Luscombe.”

He disappeared up the overgrown path. Ned moved on. He wanted to be home now, away from this empty world, in bed with his curtains drawn and the sky blotted out and sleep dulling his sense of impotence. He wanted to run, to hear the rhythm of his own breath in the air, hear his feet pounding along the road, but it was a foolish man who ran along Guernsey’s curfewed streets. Halfway down the Rohais Road he heard a car steaming towards him. He hurried along looking for a place to shelter. This was the hour of the black-market run, goods ferried in from the harbour or any one of the hidden bays to the south, brought in under organized eyes, stored in cellars and attics and army barracks. It would be well for him to stand in the shadow unobserved and let it pass, noting the vehicle and who might be driving. It was part of the lifeblood of the island now, strong and close, like the corrupt branch of an extended family, ready to embroil its relations in its fierce and unpredictable excesses. It could never be eradicated, not now that they were beginning to feel the pinch too. His mum’s Staffordshire White, Sally, had been stolen months back, her throat slit not thirty yards from the back door. Three pairs of hobnailed boots were all they found, or rather the bloody prints of them, dried hard in the mud and leading across the fields. They all knew what that meant. Soldiers. He had complained about it in his monthly meeting with the Feldkommandantur. Lentsch had promised to get to the bottom of it. He had heard nothing since.

There was nowhere to hide; a long wall loomed up above him while opposite ran a line of tall spiked railings. He wasn’t going to ruin a pair of perfectly good trousers in an undignified scramble trying to get over. Anyway it was too late, for now the car came sweeping up, opening the narrow road with a reckless stream of light. This was no black-market run. To be bold was one thing, to be brazen was quite another. Ned stood motionless, hoping it might pass. He could see the dark pennant fluttering at the head of the bonnet. The car drew level and pulled up a few yards ahead. The front passenger window rolled down.

“Pass,” a voice demanded.

Ned rumbled in his pocket. Crossing the road he walked up to the window and held out his curfew permit. A torch went on in the interior of the car, wavered over the card and then came up, shining ruil in his face.

“Out of uniform?” he heard. Ned knew better than ask the interrogator’s identity.

“No,” he said. “If you look at the bottom. I’m not required.”

There was a stifled giggle in the back. Ned looked down. A pair of legs could be seen, stretched out on the back seat. Nice legs. Bet they didn’t have a pass either.

“And no salute,” came the voice. “Did not the Feldkommandantur order all policemen to salute German officers when they see them. It is a rule, is it not?”

Quite why he had not saluted Ned did not know. Perhaps it was out of habit. They all tried to avoid giving the Germans the satisfaction of seeing British policemen perform this humiliating obeisance. It had become a game as well as a point of honour, a petty way of subverting a petty rule. Whenever they saw an officer approaching they would turn to study a shop window, or suddenly discover that their bootlaces had come undone.

“I didn’t know you were an officer,” Ned said. He was tired and he still had the best part of two miles to go. “It’s dark. Or rather, it’s meant to be.”

The man ignored the rebuke.

“And who else would be in a car at one o’clock in the morning, except an officer?” he asked.

Ned could not help but correct him.

“Half one,” he said.

“Half one, half two, that is not the question.”

“No.”

“Report to the Feldkommandantur in the morning.”

“What?”

“At nine. I will see that the staff sergeant is expecting you.”

“Oh, let him off, Zep. He always was the difficult one,” came the other voice, giggling again. The legs swung down. A head leant forward. The red hair was unmistakable.

“Veronica? Is that you?” Ned looked in. She was propped up in the corner, a military greatcoat thrown over her shoulders. She drew the collar around her and shivered.

“It’s me all right. And this is Captain Zepernick, Zeppy to his friends. I’m surprised your paths haven’t crossed already, him being a policeman like you.”

The Captain looked at him coldly.

“We have not met,” he said.

Standing in her presence Ned felt emboldened. He had hardly seen her these last two years except when he met her on the way to a rehearsal, halfway up the stairs. She moved in different circles now, and their old easy friendship had gone. When he saw her hamming it up, bending forward over the very lip of the stage, him at the back, holding the knowledge of her within him, he saw the reason why he abandoned her. Too eager to please, that was Veronica all over, too eager to please, too quick to suggestion, too willing to open her mouth and swallow whatever morsel was dangled in front of her. It made him angry, this disregard of her own worth. But now, despite himself, he felt his old childhood friendship surfacing. She had been a good sort, W.

“I don’t suppose you have a pass, Veronica.”

“Right first time,” she laughed. The man in front turned and put his hand in the air. She stopped immediately.

“She has no need of one,” he told Ned, watching him, studying his eyes, following his every movement. Ned leant his hand on the roof of the car. There was an opening here Ned felt obliged to employ.

“Everyone needs a pass after curfew. Even guests of the Wehrmacht.”

Captain Zepernick smiled. It pleased him when others were prepared to play their games.

“Ah, but she is not a guest,” he countered. “She is on official business.” He reached out and opened the coat to reveal Veronica’s night attire. “See? I have been questioning her. We pulled her out of bed.”

“Pushed me more like,” Veronica complained, pulling the coat back together again. “Still don’t know why he bundled me out like that. Was it something I said?”

Captain Zepernick looked back and forth, as if unsure whose conversation to augment.

“He is not content,” he said to Veronica, and turning to Ned, added, “And you, why are you on foot? You have your own car, no?”

“No. Dead as a dodo.”

“Poor Ned,” Veronica mocked, “going walkabout at this time of night. And in those shoes. Couldn’t we give him a lift, Zep?”

The Captain looked at his watch.

“No. I am late already.” He handed back Ned’s curfew pass. “And the salute. This time there is no need to report. This time, understand?
Gute nacht
.”

The car sped off. Ned continued with his journey home. Soon he had left St Peter Port and was out into the country. To the east he could see the dim outline of Saumarez Park, to the west the fresh sprawl of artillery barracks and fuel depots. In former times he would have taken a short cut through the fields, but it was not wise to do so now. This part of the island was laced with treachery, landmines and booby traps underneath the sand, razor wire along the shoreline, and inland, set in the middle of every quiet walled meadow of family farmland, a French three-hundred-pounder with a wheel-spoke of wires stretching out from the brightly painted detonator to a series of posts, nine foot high, set around the perimeter of the field. Spider bombs, they were called, ready to ensnare any unfortunate paratrooper into their deadly embrace. The cobwebs of war.

Somewhere in the dark he could hear the stamp of feet where sentries stood guard. Hugging the grass verge, careful to make no sound, Ned walked on.

Veronica looked up to the mirror. The Captain had barely taken his eyes off her since they had resumed their journey. In further defiance of lighting regulations he reached back and switched on the interior light so that she might be better illuminated. It would have been easy to move out of the range of his vision, but knowing what was expected from her, and deciding with a thumping heart to give it her best shot, she positioned herself firmly in the centre of the seat, arms stretched out. At the outset she had speculated on the likely reward she might obtain if the Captain should tnake such an attempt, which was why she had chosen the back, for what she required was for the action to impart a desire from which it might be possible to extract a long-term unambiguous intent.

She started to hum that tune the Major had played her. The Captain tapped his hands on the wheel.

“You should have given him a lift,” she said, trying not to slur her words as he pulled up a little way past the narrow gate that led to the small row of cottages and her house at the end. “He lives just round the corner.”

“No,” he said, and slamming his door behind him, pulled hers open.

“Shh,” she scolded him. “Not so loud. You’ll wake everyone.” She tried to raise herself up but he pushed her back down.

“Be quiet, then,” he said, and began to pull at her pyjama trousers. “This is why you were dancing for the Major, no?”

“Not exactly.” She raised her bottom obligingly.

She knew this would happen, though it came to her, thinking of other things, that had not the Captain wasted time in stopping for Ned, he might have chosen somewhere more comfortable or simply have let her off with a curt goodnight and a request to meet her some other time. It was the act of arresting movement, of playing with a man’s liberty, that had goaded him finally. If anything she was surprised that he waited until he got her home.

The party had been a disaster. Veronica still did not know what she had done to upset Lentsch. Why had he suddenly found her so repellent?

“Go,” he had declared, slumping back on the sofa, snagging his hand on her pyjama top, sending one of the few fastened buttons skittering across the floor. Captain Zepernick had bent down and let it roll into his hand. She knew, the moment he held it out for her, his eyes never leaving her face, what his intentions were. So did everyone else.

“If it is not too far out of my way…” he had said softly, knowing such an inconvenience to be beyond the island’s capabilities, and with Molly splashing out another large brandy, the Major’s eyes closed to everything but his own misery and Bohde looking at her as if he would like to skin her alive and describe her discomfort throughout his printed domain, she had downed her drink and accepted without even blushing.

Outside the sudden air made her giddy. She feared she might pass out or worse, throw up, but as they descended into town, bumping along the High Street, up by the bank, outside whose premises she had accepted the pass that had led her to waste three years of her life, her head began to clear from the tart whip of the wind. Then out on Rohais the Captain swore and stamped on the brake and she felt the car swoon from the violence of the act. For a moment she panicked, thinking that he had decided to demonstrate his ruthless desire on the cold ground of some abandoned playing field, but then she saw him looking back, not at her, but at a figure walking up towards them from across the road. She knew who it was the moment he took his hands out of his pockets, sinking back in relief as, in response to the Captain’s clipped demand, she heard that slow, lazy voice that had been the accompanying cadence to so much of her early life. She had always liked Ned and when they were growing up together she had thought it likely that one day the two of them might make a go of it. Indeed both families had encouraged their easy friendship, leastwise her parents and his dad. Ned’s mother was a different story. She’d been nice enough when Veronica had been a child, but come sixteen she’d wrinkled up her nose and stared at her as if she thought Veronica spent her evenings walking up and down the Pollet with her lips painted bright scarlet. But by the time her nineteenth birthday had come around even she had seemed resigned to their unspoken engagement. Veronica was taking her chiropody exams (a rudimentary affair, conducted by post) while Ned, tired of odd jobs, was looking round for something permanent. They’d had a great time in those early years, her and Ned, then suddenly, twelve months back, it all changed. Ned became older, irritable, churlish at the island’s meagre expectations, turning down the job his uncle had promised him working for the Hallivands in their greenhouse business, finding fault with every-thing around him. She remembered how they had fallen out, over a kiss. It was a reward, a trophy for a victory throw of the darts, a kiss laced with gin-and-black, pressed on the lips of an older man who had held her close in leery, beery gratitude, his audience cheering them on. It was only given in jest, a stab at grabbing the limelight before her time was no longer her own, but Ned had stomped off without so much as a flying fist. It was that abandon-ment which had propelled her more permanently into the arms of Tommy Ie Coeur not three months later, despite the tales of his drinking and womanizing that lay like well-run tramlines up and down the streets of St Peter Port. A big man, immovable like the trunk of a tree, with a punchbowl of a stomach and a crow’s nest of a beard, it was hard to understand the reasons for his success and yet, tipping his heimet at her one empty afternoon as she came out of the bank on the corner of the Pollet, it was only a matter of an afternoon in the back room of the Brighton before the two of them had their respective uniforms strewn all around her little examin-ation room above Underwood’s and not a carbuncle or a pickpocket in sight, the two of them laughing at the noise they were making for Mr Underwood’s customers below as she bounced up and down on his great white belly.