Island Madness (26 page)

“
Wasser, ja?
”

Van Dielen nods.

The guard runs forward and throws the contents over him, pushing down the shingle, chucking a shovel after him. The others move back down, and with their heads down, start loading. Van Dielen follows their action; shovel in, shovel out, up in the air and throw. Shovel in, shovel out, up in the air and throw. His gravel lands short. The guard screams and shouts, sliding down, hitting him on the side with a handle of a spade. He falls. He lies there panting. The guard hits him again across the legs and walks away in disgust. The man next to him gestures him to get up, and pushing him to one side shows him how it should be done.

He watches. He shovels. He shovels all morning. He shovels all afternoon. The gravel flies through the air and lands in the truck. The truck is filled. He feels no pain.

At the end of the day the guard hands each man a stamped chit which entitles him to the evening meal. They walk back to the compound clutching them as if they were children holding tickets to a circus. The old man talks to him constantly, a smattering of English and German and another language he cannot recognize, though he does not seem to care or notice that van Dielen replies not once. A smile, a shrug of the shoulders, a shake of the head, are all he can manage, and even they are used not as contributions but rather as aids to his enigmatic silence. He is no stranger to the compound. He has passed it many times, on his way to the Manor House to see Ernst, driving past the huddles of men squatting on the scuffed earth. There are many groups such as his on the road now, trudging back to the compound, limp from the day’s work. He stands in line and shuffles to his soup. It is pale and warm. Grease swims on the inside of his tin cup. He is given bread too, hard and gritty, two thin slices.

They eat before going inside. His hut has the number seven written on it. There is a door at either end and a narrow passage-way down the middle. Inside men are already lying on the two-tiered level of planks. The old man steers van Dielen along. Halfway down he stops opposite a young boy curled up on the top plank. He has red trousers. His hair is white. He has a mucky old jacket round his shoulders. The old man indicates the space opposite while he slides onto the plank underneath the boy. The young boy reaches down and grabs the old man’s hand. They shake. The old man pulls his hand in the direction of the newcomer. The boy raises his head, smiles and winks at him. It is a beautiful smile, calm and full of tenderness. Van Dielen closes his eyes. There is nothing of van Dielen left in him now. Everything he has known or done or said is seeping out of the very pores of his skin. He is fading fast.

Ten

B
ernie leant over and, putting his glass under the brass tap, pushed himself another drink. Ned handed over his glass. They listened to the steady stream of beer foaming in.

“What time’s kick-off?” Bernie asked softly.

“Half twelve,” Ned replied.

“Well, drink up, then. You don’t want to be sober when you get there, do you?”

They were alone in the Britannia, and the doors were closed. They sat up at the bar, looking through the thick panes of distorted glass to the little Continental square across the road. A couple of soldiers sat on the bench built around the oak, while another tried to wash his face under the pump. It was barely past breakfast.

Bernie took a tentative sip. “Weak as water,” he pronounced, adding, almost as an afterthought, “No news, then?”

Ned sighed. There was no news.

“How can a man like that vanish into thin air?” Bernie asked, as if a hole in the ground, a chuck over the cliff top, or little bits of the man fed to one of the hungry pigs might not have been a probable end.

“Beats me,” Ned confessed. “I’ve got half the force out knocking on doors, there’s military patrols beating the restricted areas, boats on the look out for floaters. Even George Poidevin has got in on the act. Everywhere I go I see him bouncing behind the wheel of their works lorry, peering over the walls, jumping down into ditches, searching for his boss. Never thought of George as a St Bernard before, though he’s got the girth for it. Trouble is, apart from him and the Germans, no one wants to know.”

Bernie laid his drink on the dark polished wood.

“Stands to reason, seeing as he was one of them.”

“We’ve all got to live, Bernie. There’s a lot of families that would have gone to the wall by now if it wasn’t for the likes of van Dielen,” he said. “He’s just doing his job.”

Bernie spat the beer back in his glass.

“He’s doing more than that. He’s betraying his country, making money out of them fortifications.”

“And the men that drive his lorries? The electricians he employs, the plumbers? Are they all traitors too?”

Bernie was stubborn. “It’s one thing being ordered to do it. It’s another lining your pocket. We’re at war, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“That’s just it, Bernie, the rest of the world might be, but we’re not,” Ned countered. “You might get a couple of schoolboys chalking victory signs on bicycle saddles, but what can grown men do? Blow up a fuel depot? Shoot a soldier? You know what would happen if we did, and for what? The truth is we’ve all got to get by the best we can, whether we like it or not.”

Bernie looked at him carefully.

“You should take a long look at yourself. You can’t see it, but you’re getting too far in with them.”

“I’m not in with them,” Ned said sharply, knowing it to be partly true. “You seem to forget. Some of us have to work with them. We’ve got no choice.”

Bernie prodded Ned’s arm. “I know. Don’t think I don’t. Now drink up, there’s a good chap. You and me are going to get quietly sozzled.”

“But I’m Chief of Police, Bernie. I’m not allowed to get drunk.”

Bernie leant over the bar and began to pour another couple of pints.

“Not today you’re not,” he intoned. “You’re Ned Luscombe, in need of beer. Now do as I say and stop arguing.”

If van Dielen was on the run it was difficult to know how he had escaped with patrols out looking for him, posters hearing his description pinned on every parish noticeboard and the announce-ment proclaimed in every newspaper of the substantial reward available to whosoever delivered him up. Half the island had already claimed the prize. Letters, telephone calls, confidential whisperings in Ned’s office. Van Dielen is hiding in Mrs Merrill’s attic; he’d been seen stretching his legs up at Groper’s Farm: none of it true, but in Mrs Merrill’s attic they found a stack of carpets four foot high, looted from abandoned houses on evacuation day, and in Groper’s Farm they disturbed three fat and unregistered pigs slumbering in an underground pen. Under the guise of cooperation people were exorcizing their grudges.

Lentsch regarded these false alarms with resigned acceptance. He was not in charge, anyway. Albert had told Ned that since the night they found her the Major could hardly manage to put his boots on the right feet, let alone administer the island.

“Going down faster than a bishop’s trousers,” Albert said one evening over his third pint. “Pitiful to see a grown man acting that way. We all have our time of trouble. Any man worth his salt shifts it on his shoulder like a sack of coal and carries on as best he can. The Major’s gone weak at the knees.”

Albert had become a regular at the Britannia. It was almost like old times. It had starled that late afternoon when Ned had caught him struggling up the police stairs with a bloody tree in his hand.

“Uncle, what on earth are you doing here?”

Albert rested his burden on the banisters.

“Running errands for Mrs H. like an overgrown scout. Stage prop for the spring show, she says. Weighs a bloody ton. Half the leaves have dropped off already. You any good with a paintbrush?”

“I’ve managed to avoid the amateur dramatics this long, Uncle. I’m not for getting to be drawn in now.”

“Well, give me hand anyway, and let’s lay this bugger to rest. I’ll buy you a pint afterwards.”

“Done.”

That’s how it had starled. Ned would come in after work, around six. Albert would walk in sometime later, waving his finger at the barman. “Last refuge for a sane man,” he would announce. “It’s a madhouse up there.” Since Isobel’s death the Villa’s moorings had been cut loose. The house lay adrift in a sea of uncertainty, the captain indifferent to its plight.

“Every morning he comes down for breakfast,” Albert had complained, “cuts all over his face where he’s nicked himself shaving, buttons half undone, hair not combed proper. He sits there moving good food around his plate, like it was something the dog had sicked up, the Captain and Bohde both staring at the tablecloth, pretending not to notice.”

“At least they have some sympathy for him, even if you don’t.”

“Sympathy’s got nothing to do with it. They’re just hoping he’ll bugger off so they can help themselves to his grub. Moment he’s out of the door they’ve scraped his plate cleaner than a sergeant-major’s mess tin. Can’t wait for him to go and dread him coming back. Not that he’s any use in the Feldkommandantur by all accounts. Sits in his office all day staring out of the window, blubbing into his handkerchief. You see him much?”

“Most mornings,” Ned admitted. “Not that there’s much to report these days.”

“No sign of the Dutchman, then?”

“The Major thinks he might have thrown himself off a cliff, that he’s lying underwater somewhere along the coast with a handrul of stones in his pocket.”

Albert sniffed.

“Water would have kept him down a day or two, water would have moved him about bit, but unless he weighed himself down with an anchor he’d have popped up by now with his face half gone and his feet busting out of his boots. It’s what the Major needs, though, a good ducking. That’d bring him to his senses.”

“You’re being too hard on him,” Ned countered. “He’s had a shock.”

“He’s a soldier,” his uncle countered. “He should be able to cope with shocks. The Captain takes him aside every now and again, trying to talk some sense into him, but he won’t listen. Won’t go down to the Casino, mopes about the house playing those blessed records, wanders about the lanes late at night in his ciwies. Looking to get himself shot, if he’s not careful.”

“He won’t get shot.”

“No? The Captain’s thinks he’s playing a sort of Russian roulette, deliberately going to the restricted areas in the dark. He’s asked Wedel to follow him, but he just seems to slip out, unnoticed. God knows where he gets to.”

Ned knew where. He had first appeared on the Wednesday after van Dielen’s disappearance, quite late, about nine. Ned was just about to go to bed. A knock on the door and there he stood, a bunch of leeks in his hand, and a large rabbit in a cage.

“I did not ask your uncle’s permission,” he confessed, waving the cage in the air. “But with your mother not being well, he will not disapprove.”

Ned had pulled out one of the last bottles of cider Dad had made, and sat him down. He sat there holding his glass, not saying a word, barely noticing what he was drinking. The crackle of the small fire made him look up.

“Your mother?” he asked suddenly. “She is not here?”

“Upstairs. She goes to bed early. I was just about to follow, before you showed up.” Lentsch half rose out of his chair. “No, no, Major. I didn’t mean that. I’m happy to stay up. Mum has a nasty habit of sleepwalking. I should stay up, to make sure she’s safe.”

Lentsch sighed. “This is what soldiers hope to do. Kill the enemy and keep their mothers safe. You are lucky. Your mother is safe. Mine is not. It is only a matter of time before the bombing in Hamburg starts. I am surprised it has not already happened.”

Ned tried to reassure him. “They’re only going after military targets, railway lines, factories, dockyards. It may not mean much but they’re bloody well trained. They know what they’re doing.”

“That’s what you hear on the radio. It is not the truth. You are bombing the ordinary houses. Germany is like a bonfire. Such terrible fires.”

“I thought your mother lived in the country.”

“We have two places. An apartment in Hamburg and a house in a village, some miles away. My sister is working in Hamburg, in administration. They will not let her go. So my mother stays with her. Once I imagined that I might be able to bring them here! I thought here was safe. I was wrong about that too. No news?”

Ned shook his head. “I’ve only so many men.”

“You think he is alive?”

“I don’t know. He’s either hiding, kidnapped or dead.”

“Half the island thinks he killed her. They think he killed her and that we have spirited him away.” He picked up the paper lying on the floor. “This speaks of him as our ‘trusted friend’, of how ‘impossible’ it would be for him to get to the Continent without our knowledge, when in fact, if he had the use of a boat, it would be quite easy under cover of darkness. It is clear what the writer really thinks.”

“I am surprised Bohde let it pass,” Ned said.

“It reflects badly on me, that is why,” Lentsch admitted. “Bohde is testing his muscles. He wants a fight.” He threw the paper down to the floor. “You see that this is not true, that I would not protect him.”

“You might not. Others would.”

“You are thinking of Major Ernst.”

“I’m thinking of Major Ernst. There’s his headquarters at Sau-marez Park. It’s big enough to hide a battleship. He could even be keeping van Dielen there against his will.”

“I have no jurisdiction over Ernst. Neither have you. He can do as he pleases. Despite that I do not think he has anything to do with it. He is too ambitious to scupper his chances over a girl.”

“Ambitieus men overreach themselves, Major, especially ones with a fondness for naked women in their back garden.”

“Perhaps. But Ernst would not do this other thing, put her down a shaft. It is too risky. He would throw her over a cliff, he would blame a couple of foreigns, shoot them before any one could prove otherwise.”

“Unless the father knew.”

“But then he would have told us. Van Dielen is ambitious too, but sacrificing his own daughter?” The Major sat on the edge of the armchair. “Inspector Luscombe?”

“Yes?”

“I cannot call you this,” he confessed, “not if we are to join, you and I. We are both too close to her for this formality, you under-stand. When there is just the two of us, you will have to be Ned.”

“That as may be, I’m sorry but I can’t call you…” He stopped. He had no idea what Lentsch’s Christian name was.

“Gerhard.”

“I simply can’t.”

“No. I understand. Just Major, then.”

“Just Major, then.”

That was just the beginning. He’d come round most evenings. Ned’s mother started lighting the fire early, wasting their precious supply of fiiel to make the room ‘look cosy when he comes’. He would bring them gifts in return: a packet of rice, a length of smoked sausage, fresh bread. They would sit at the kitchen table and eat from cracked plates, Ned’s mother having to prompt her son to pass the potatoes or to cut the Major another wedge of pie, and Lentsch, conscious of this untutored hospitality, would beckon her gently into conversation, lead her to where her memories of the island’s earlier times lay, offering in return stories of his own domestic past, his mother and father, the sister he missed and the eternal foolish ways of youth. There were no obvious parallels to their lives except those which made them both sigh at what it was that had turned such seeming placidity so awry; parallels of loss, of dashed expectation, of soft memories which made the austerity of the present only more intense.

“You are lucky to have your son to look after you,” he once told her. “All sons wish this. The son that cannot feels that he has betrayed the one person he loves most in the world.”

“Go on with you,” Ned’s mother had retorted. “It’s I who have to look after him,” and as the three of them had laughed Ned had looked at the Major and thanked him by his smile. Ned was amazed at his mother’s transformation, the sudden lightness of her move-ments round the table as she served the supper, the glow that came to her cheeks as these meals progressed. She had even started to wear the second of her better dresses. If only he could touch her in this way, bring that faraway smile to her face. His mother was not in love with Lentsch, she was in love with being a mother again.

“He’s a good boy,” she said once, waving to him as he closed the garden gate. Ned laughed.

“He’s not a boy, Mum.”

“Yes, he is,” she replied, turning round to ruffle his hair. “You’ve just got to look at the way he holds out his plate or hugs his knees in front of the fire. You’re the same.”

Usually when the meal was over she went upstairs to leave them together, so that they might slowly dismantle the wall that still remained between them. Then the Major would pack his bags and leave home, and travel into the other Germany which had raised him, the one which had sent him here. Ned had never heard a man talk like Lentsch before, about who he was and why he was, and though some of it made no sense to him at all, asides and compliments to a world of which he had but the haziest conception, in Lentsch’s hesitant voice he found the echo of uncertainty of his own.