Island Madness (25 page)

“Neither were you. Neither was Tommy. So what’s new.” Her voice seemed far away. He got up slowly, careful not to bang his head. But she had gone.

One foot on the stairs and Mr Underwood came running out.

“You have a visitor,” he warned her. “I had to unlock the door myself.”

Captain Zepernick was sitting in her chair with his boots on her desk, writing a message on the back of an envelope.

“Captain!” She looked back, afraid that Ned might have followed her. She hated it when he thought badly of her. “Is this official? Something to do with your feet?”

“With my feet, no.” The Captain swung his legs down onto the floor. “Tomorrow afternoon. I was hoping you might come for a drive.”

“A drive? What, just you and me?”

“Yes. That is not to your liking?”

“No, no, it’s just…what about Molly?”

He did not reply but reaching out ran his hand slowly up the back of her leg. It seemed to take a good quarter of an hour to reach its destination, stopping on the way, retracing its cruelly deliberate journey. His breath came quietly, intently. She did not move.

“You didn’t expect me again?” he asked.

“I didn’t know.”

“Good. I like that.” He stood up, his hand lifting her slightly. “I liked very much the other night. Very much.”

“Did you?”

“Very much? And you too, I think?”

“Yes.” A He and a truth in one word.

“It is unusual so early on. The way you…”

“Yes.”

“I will be here at four. If you sit by the window you will see when I arrive.”

“Will I?”

He stretched out a finger and traced the tremble of her lips.

“The mouth too next time, I think.”

“Really?”

“Yes. In my car perhaps, or a house I know. Maybe here.”

“There’s no telling, is there.”

She kissed him. Captain Zepernick stepped back and smiled.

“Till tomorrow, then.”

She felt was lost and afraid, the penny rolling over Ned’s cold hand. Her heart was leaden, her arms heavy by her side. She stood in dread of herself, of what she had become. She didn’t want to say yes. She couldn’t say no. She opened the door for him.

“Till tomorrow, then.”

Nine

H
e is not hot but he feels the heat of the sun. He is not thirsty but he imagines the pitiless depth of the desert on his cracked lips. He wants to embrace the world but his hands have lost all sense of touch; he wants to look out onto visions of grace but there is only a lumpen grey mass moving before him. He never loved anything as much as his constructions, never felt for his flesh and blood the way he did for his bricks and mortar. He could fashion those latter materials, mould them, break them in his hands. He could lean over his desk at night and see them outlined on the transparent paper; he could walk in loam and clay and watch the ground give birth to their skeletal form. He had not bothered with buildings to house mortal men. His were monuments to power, to organization, orchestrating the ceaseless trudge of humanity. It was movement he had craved, movement and design, and this island had seen some of his greatest creations. He had shaped the white Observation Towers in one of which he now sits; he had welded the eagles’ nest gun emplacements onto the granite grip of rock; he had let loose the great swim of concrete upon the land. How he had loved those grains, the powdered weight of it lying in the sack, the thick slop of it churning in the mixer, pouring out grey and glutinous into wet, waiting moulds. What a revolutionary mixture it was, what deceptive strength lay in those unassuming seeds, how soft they seemed, how easily they hardened, what creations they spawned. And like all living things it could only spring to life after water’s hydrogen kiss. In his youth he had worked on a packet steamer and had stood once on its creaking deck watching the ice world of Greenland gliding past and he knows that concrete possesses the same treacherous beauty. Like the rush of an avalanche it can cover the landscape in one swoop, obliterating dip and hollow, inventing new worlds of flattened beauty. It is hard and impenetrable but is able to bend its shape. It possesses both depth and resonance, and though he has seen instances of decorated concrete, most notably in the concrete house of Norfolk, Home Place, where the surface is studded with flint and clay tiles and local brown stone, he prefers his concrete unmasked, with only the pattern of the wooden board marking its austere exterior. Concrete should be naked, unashamed. It should stand in defiance of the elements. It is the product of a new age, a powdered miracle. Man will be dwarfed by its power, its dormant energy. They will wander among its pillars and frescos and marvel at its unremitting strength. They will stand in awe listening to the echoes of their own tiny footsteps vanish in its great booming hollows. There will be cities of concrete, he knows it, cities with stadiums and railway stations and vast temples to new religions; there will be housing complexes, ranged over the ground like the spokes of a wheel, long rows of rectangular flat dwellings, two, possibly three storeys high, each equipped with a window box and a little balcony from which mothers can watch their children pushing scooters on the concrete paths below. Planes will land on concrete, ships will doek alongside concrete. The land will be crisscrossed by great ribbons of it, on which hundreds, nay thousands, of black blunt-nosed cars will run; free movement, free power and thus freed desire. Thought as action. Action as design. It is just the beginning. In a drawer under his draughtsman’s desk there lies a plan of the islands and the mainland and, joining them, two concrete bridges rising high above the sea, one from Cap de Carteret to Jersey, the other, further up the coast, from Flamanville to Guernsey, for when the war is over, those who have carried out His instructions will need to take themselves, their fiancées, their families, to a place of recreation and rest, where they may walk and tumble and gather strength. What better haven than these small islands, where everything can be tuned to their needs, Jersey for officers and high government officials, Guernsey for the other ranks? He had shown Dr Todt his design late one evening, and before the doctor could raise the obvious objection, had admitted that by its very nature the project would consume a high percentage of the labour force needed. “But think of it,” he had declared, “the longest bridge in the world built solely that the good and industri-ous might be rewarded.” Todt had warmed to the idea, reminding him of that other discussion they had taken part in, during his official visit to England in ‘37, and their meeting with the Minister of Transport. There had been talk of a bridge across the Channel then, and, ever the visionary, Todt had suggested that the enterprise should be seen not simply as a matter for England and France but as a European concern. The Minister had been polite but evasive, and later van Dielen realized that he should have taken this false enthusiasm as a warning against the British and their myopic view of the world. He should never have attached himself to England, he had reflected, he should have moved straight back to Europe. When they were discussing the coming weeks that night over dinner, with Ernst holding his glass in their air as if he could see the future whirling in the sparkling liquid, in a moment of rare frankness, he had shared his notion with Ernst, hoping that he might pass it on to Speer, whom he knew only slightly, but Major Ernst had looked at him strangely and said, “What makes you think that the traffic will be from the Continent? From England I think, and not for a holiday.” He did not understand then, and he chooses not to understand now.

He has spent his days in the Observation Tower above Gull Rock, near where his daughter was found. The tower is hollow and silent. There is no one working here now, nor will there be for the next few weeks. Over at Choet it’s a different matter. The watch-tower there will have men crawling in and out like bees in a hive.

There are five levels to these towers, and unlike their defensive predecessors, built in another age, they face almost exclusively to the sea, ignoring any danger that might emerge from the hinterland. Only from the roof, reached by an awkward twenty-foot climb, can one see an uninterrupted three hundred and sixty degrees. The island, say the towers, is ours. There is no danger within. Each floor looks out onto a different level of sea, viewed through long curving slits which elongate the seascape. The ocean looks wide and flat, squashed into a solid vertical plane. Paradoxically, for these are direction-finding towers, built to enhance the accuracy of the guns, the overall effect is to distort distance.

Since he has been here he has observed nothing, least of all direction. It has rained almost constantly with an accompanying thick mist. Waking that first morning it was as if he had been born again into a cocooned world of white, a fairyland of floating spirits, and when the wind came and blew away a veil or two, the water appeared as elusive, shimmering silver, chemical, amniotic. He is becalmed, floating like a baby, standing by the aperture hoping to see the soul of his daughter float past, lying on the roof waiting to hear the beat of her heart coming from the looming flap of a gull, white on the wing. He wants nothing now but for the island to have an eternal untouched life, and for him and those he has lost to be a part of that eternity. But this perturbs him, for he worries that within the structures he has built, there might lie a fatal, undetected weakness, similar to the one which must have run through his family life. Either that or the island harbours some grudge against him. But why? What has he done? Has he not woven round it a most marvellous protective shell, one which will keep the sea at bay for a hundred years? Is not the island made whole? Is it not tended and watered and kept in good order as never before? And what was asked from it in return? Nothing but that it might take his family to its bosom. He tries to remember the colour of his wife’s eyes or the first time Isobel spoke but he cannot. He tries to picture his daughter as a little girl, running barefoot in an Egyptian courtyard, but though he can see the chickens scattering in her wake he cannot see her or even detect the sound of her voice above their flapping squawks.

He does not move much, except when needs must, when he crosses the room to the high narrow window at the back, under which he drops his trousers and deposits whatever he can onto the cold concrete floor. He is glad to be alone, for he has done with speech. He has nothing more to say. Time will not restore this faculty, for though time might heal a memory or set a fractured soul, time cannot shine light where no light can escape. His speech had been designed for buildings and viaducts, to describe the sweep of roads, to weigh structure in balance. He has no phrases to summon a wife or conjure up a daughter. He has used up all the words that were in his command; his vocabulary is obsolete, redundant, a faulty design. He is lost for words.

He finds it difficult to sleep at night. The damp sea air rushes in through the openings. There are scufflings and scratchings below. It is cold. Every so often he can hear the voices of soldiers in one of the gun emplacements a quarter of a mile away, a guffaw of laughter, a snatch of song. He marks the passage of time from the beam of the slit-eyed headlamps shining forth from the hourly motorbike patrols which bounce towards him along the high cliff road before disappearing down the wooded hill, only to be recaptured minutes later, out of the rear window, as they cruise up along the road that runs the length of the bay, the insect buzz of their engines fading fast. The road has its hidden travellers too, padding shadowy footfalls, or the stealthy creak of what, a handcart, a bicycle? So much dark activity.

He has not eaten for two days, but today, as he shakes out his coat, which he uses as a pillow, he discovers a large bar of chocolate within one of its deep pockets, a gift from Major Ernst, a far and distant figure who he can remember only by an overbearing shape. He tears back the wrapping and pushes it into his mouth. It is difficult to chew, for there is nothing to chew on. It is evasive like his memory, hard to dislodge: it glues to the roof of his mouth, coats his tongue and, when he attempts to swallow, large lumps stick in his gullet. Though he knows he should not, he eats the bar as quickly as he can, licking the waxed paper clean, smearing his mouth and beard. Almost immediately he feels sick. He feels his stomach lurching, feels the green bile of it rising. He feels giddy, his breathing becomes problematic, a hand is clutching at his heart.

He can smell the stink of himself and that of the room. He needs to get out, to break free. He charges down the circular steps, out of control. Halfway down he retches; he bends double; he straightens up. A great spray, sudden like a geyser, leaps forth from his mouth, splashing onto the walls and down in front of him. Then another. The volume is excessive, the noise unbearable. His hand slips on the running smear. He skids down the stairs, spraying once more, vomit on his shirt and trousers, before stumbling out into the open air, gasping, grabbing handfuls of grass to wipe himself clean. He needs to rinse his mouth out with water. Water! It is not hunger which assaults him. It is thirst.

He sets out across the scrubland, to the hill and the bay below. The dying wind tugs at his shirt. He falls a number of times, breaking a shoelace as he scrambles back up. Once on the road, he half trots down the hill, and at the bottom, jumping down from the sea wall, he starts to walk along the beach. It would be easy for him to be caught; snagged on the barbed wire, between whose Unes he walks, a foot or leg blown off by one of the landmines he unwittingly avoids; arrested by one of the motorcycle patrols; shot at by one of the convoys of artillery men. But no one appears during his twenty-minute walk of the bay. It is as he suspected. He no longer exists.

At the end of the beach he crosses up over the narrow peninsula. On the other side the Henschel engine is preparing to pull its line of empty trucks on their journey round the coast. Unnoticed he climbs aboard as the train moves off. He sits on the last truck, his feet dangling over the side, looking left and right, chugging up along the coast, past the little houses and empty lanes, past the barracks and converted greenhouses, skirting round old castles and half-completed gun emplacements, the water a dazzling deep, the rocks golden like tumbled honeycombs, past Perelle Bay and Vazon Bay, past Cobo, heading north, past all the long bays of summer where the flat roads meet the long sweep of sand, past where mothers and fathers should lie up on their elbows watching children running back and forth, shielding their eyes from the fierce bright of it, past the volleyball throwers and driftwood cricket players, past kite flyers and donkey riders and dripping ice-cream cone carriers; past shrieking horseplay and awkward bathers puiling wet costumes over embarrassed skin; past sleeping pink-eyed bellies and knotted handkerchiefs; past sandcastles and rock pools and buckets filled with salt water in which wriggling things wriggle. The gorse is beginning to flower, he sees primroses speckle distant banks. He is riding a holiday train on a holiday island.

Now the train has reached Picquerel Point and forks left, past the Church at Vale and up over the common to L’Ancresse Bay. Even before he can see them, he hears the noise of them, the sound of shovels and steam and the orders of impatient men. And there they are, a great swarming mix of them, on the beach below, pulled from every spare construction site; Poles and Hungarians, from Russia and the Spanish Civil War, travellers, troublemakers, Communists, simpletons, recipients of grudges and suspected fifth columnists, all the flotsam and jetsam of decadent Europe put to work in His cause. The train is idling now, waiting for the trucks to be filled. Directly below him a party of Todt workers are leaning on their spades. He knows what they have been doing, digging out the beach for the gravel mineer standing at the far end of the bay: sand for his cement.

The guard in charge of the group is moving down the line holding a battered bucket, from which he dispenses a ladleful of water to each man in turn. They are a motley crew. Old men mostly, nothing on their arms and nothing in their eyes, but they are practised in the art of acceptance. They do not grab at it too quickly, for then they would spill most of it, but nor are they slow, for lethargy in any form annoys the guards. Each one steadies the rim before tipping it carefully into his mouth, wiping any escaping drops over the grease of his stubble. The guard seems an amiable enough fellow, nodding to one or two of the men, sharing a roughshod joke. Van Dielen jumps down. He is standing at the head of the group but not in line with it. Hearing the noise the guard turns. He sees van Dielen at right angles to the other men, facing him. He recognizes his face but no fiirther. Van Dielen opens his mouth, touches his lips. He beckons. That’s what he wants. Though he has seen the state of his trousers and his shoes, he has no way of measuring how quickly his image has deteriorated. His hair is knotted, his skin unshaven and raw, his eyes bloodshot. There is excrement down the right leg of his trousers. To keep himself warm at night he has been using empty cement sacks with which to cover himself. In the damp air the dust from inside has hardened on his hair and his clothes. He looks strenger than the rest, but the guard knows there could many reasons for this. He may be a trustee, or have influential friends in the cookhouse. He may be able to do something entertaining—play a musical instrument, for example, or dance a jig. He might have some amusing physical attribute. They had one like that over in Alderney, a cook with a cock twenty-one centimetres long, thin and tapered like a pencil. They used to get him to toss himself off into the evening soup or pay one of the whores or one of the younger foreigns to suck him off. The cook was game for it, as long as it lasted. Poor bastards went blind after making some hooch out of iodine and potato peelings, half his hut and a couple of the girls too. Didn’t matter whether the slits could see or not, fact it made it funnier, them not being able to see who or what they were going to have to fuck next, but the cook and his mates were shot the next day and tipped over the cliff. But whatever it is that sets this man apart counts for nothing here. He has stepped out of line. The guard swings the bucket. Van Dielen gestures impatiently, mimick-ing the actions of the last man.