Island Madness (3 page)

“He has returned?” he demanded, stepping out onto the veranda.

Albert pointed to the sea.

“Did he see?”

Albert nodded. The Captain cursed in German. It was not
Donner
or
Blitzen
or that other word which Miss Molly once whispered in his ear in front of the whole company trying to embarrass him, but it was a swear word nevertheless. Albert wished that one time one of them would say
Donner und Blitzen
, if only to satisfy himself that those words were real words used by real Germans in times of anger and frustration, but though he had cooked their meals, served their drinks, ironed their shirts and stood by their side for the past two years listening to them carrying on like spoilt little madams, he had never heard one of them say it, not even when the weather was there to give them their cue. It annoyed him that they should be so wilful and choose not to do what was required.

The Captain had reached the beach and was calling out to the Major as he tried to run over the shifting shingle.

“That’s right, me old china,” Albert said, looking down. “You tell him. Donner and Blitzen. Double donner and double blitzen, with the best porcelain whistling round your ears.”

Down on the jetty the two had met up. The Major stood quite still, his towel hanging limply at his side. He would be frozen when he got back. A hot bath with a glass of brandy on the side would be what was required. Albert turned back, shaking his head. Major or no Major, he could at least cover himself up.

Two

I
t had been warm that day, the first for weeks, but now the wind was getting up again, coming in from the north, with a chili in its heart that only an island feels. Inspector Ned Luscombe was waiting for the post when he heard George Poidevin heaving himself up to the office with another tale of woe weighing down his lumbering frame.

The police station had expanded in the last few years but it was still primitive compared with what he had been used to. On the ground floor stood the cramped reception area, with its counter and one long bench opposite and a picture of the old king hanging crookedly on the wall. Behind it was the Sergeant’s room and adjoining it, with a door leading to the washroom and the yard, an even smaller room where the police doctor used to examine the drunks. There was no cell. The prison was only forty yards away. Privacy was at a premium too. Before the war, whenever anybody was arrested, a crowd used to gather on the pavement outside to listen to what was being said. It was a foolish man who confessed his sins in Guernsey’s sole police station.

There were two other floors, reached only by the outside steps that ran up from the yard. The top floor was let out to the Guernsey Amateur Dramatic and Operatic Society. Below that was Ned’s own office, as big as the rest of the station put together. Though he’d put down an old carpet to dampen the sound of the men playing cards down in the back room, if he’d been sensible he would have hauled it above his head and nailed it to the ceiling. They were a keen bunch upstairs and practised regularly.
Babes in the Wood, Private Lives, Full House
: Ned knew them all off by heart. In the middle of the room stood a large table with a long drawer underneath one side, the only article of furniture in the entire building which possessed both a lock and a key. In the far corner stood a coal stove, its cracked lagged pipe leaking a continual thin spiral of smoke. Two chairs, a filing cabinet and a torn map of the island held together with glue and brown paper were the only other furnishings. One telephone upstairs, one telephone down-stairs, a spare bicycle and the Yellow Peril pressed into spasmodic service after their brand-new five-seater had been requisitioned by the Geheimnis Polizei. That was it.

George Poidevin, foreman for one of the island’s leading con�struction firms, was a pasty man and indignation quivered on him like cooked fat on the bone. He lived above a small grocery shop which his wife ran, close to St Sampson’s harbour. Recognizing his malevolent wheeze Ned had hastily checked his desk to ensure that nothing of any note lay for George’s greedy eyes to devour.

“George,” Ned said gaily. “What brings you here? Come to turn yourself in?”

George wheezed his way over, put his hands on Ned’s desk and panted across the stained woodwork. His breath smelt of strong sausage. The man had been eating meat!

“Do you know?” he said, blinking hard. “Do you know what they’ve just told the wife?”

Ned shook his head, hoping that George’s weight might prove too much for the table’s tired frame. lts legs were splayed out like a dog caught on an iced pond. When it feil apart he intended to chop it up for firewood.

“No,” he replied. “I don’t know. What have they told her? Something interesting? Eva Braun’s favourite recipe?”

George leaned further across, resting his weight on his ten fat fingers. The table creaked. The right far leg slipped further out. Ned prayed. A little further, a little further.

“They’ve only issued instructions that they be put on heavy workers’ rations, that’s all. Can you believe it! The bloody nerve!”

Ned wasn’t sure what he was talking about.

“They, George? Who’s ‘they’?”

“Them whores! Them bloody whores. There’s my femme work-ing all the hours God sends her and Elspeth wearing her pins to a frazzle counting out their useless money and does either of them get heavy rations? Does they buggery. But it’s all right for these French mamselles, flat on their backs all day.”

It was all Ned could do to stop himself from laughing out loud. Another brothel had opened in January. There was the officers’ one over at St Martin’s, a spacious affair set in its own grounds, filled, it was said, with cancan girls from Paris; the one for the Todt officials halfway up George Street; and now a couple for the troops over at St Sampson’s. In the afternoons you could see the men standing patiently in an orderly queue stretching halfway round the little harbour, smoking treasured cigarettes or exchanging the odd rueful joke, hands in pockets, buffeted by the winds, just like the rest of the population waiting for the bread shop to open. It always made him smile. Even the Germans had to queue for something. Now that the weather was getting better, when they weren’t working the girls would start sunning themselves out on the roof, gazing out to where their homeland lay. Last year George had marched to the Feldkommandantur and complained that his wife could see them through their bedroom window.

“And so she could,” Ned had once told Bernie, laughing, “but only if she stood on a chair.” Ned rubbed his chin hard, trying to prevent a repeat performance.

“Well, it’s hard work,” he told George cheerfully. “There’s what, fifteen girls next to your place? Another fifteen down the road. With seventeen thousand troops to cater for that’s a lot of jiggery pokery called for. If you work on the principle that the average soldier expects to drop his trousers at least once a fortnight, that means that those girls have to accommodate eight thousand five hundred every week. Which means,” he did a quick sum on a sheet of paper, “two hundred and eighty-three each a week or forty-seven a day. Forty if they work Sundays.”

George Poidevin was not amused. “It’s a disgrace,” he fumed.

“‘You know what I said to them?’ I said, ‘Put it in writing and see what the States say. I’m not having my wife doling out heavy workers’ rations to French tarts without the proper papers.’”

Rumour had it that George Poidevin had once tried to slip the girls an extra loaf in return for a weekly you-know-what, and every one of them had refused. Ever since then he had been their implacable enemy.

“They won’t put it in writing, not an order like that,” Ned told him. “But they’ll make you do it just the same. Let’s face it, we’d all like extra rations, whatever we do. If those girls can wangle it, good luck to them. They don’t last long, you know. Not with the wear and tear they have to put up with.”

George had more to tell.

“And that’s not all. You know what Monty Freeman’s been told? Only to keep the bank open an extra hour on Fridays so that those trollops can waltz in and deposit their money without causing offence to us locals. That’s where my Elspeth works. Least she’s no Jerrybag. When I think of some of our girls…” He stopped short.

“Thanks, George.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

“Let’s forget it, shall we. Is that all you have to tell me or is there a purpose to your visit?”

“I wondered if you’d had any news about the break-in.”

Van Dielen’s yard had been broken into the night before. Sergeant Tommy Ie Coeur had found the fence smashed in. Nothing much stolen. A couple of containers broken into, the little office ransacked of its precious supply of tea and sugar. Papers strewn everywhere. Ned regarded him with reproach.

“George, I reported it to the Feldkommandantur. Take it up with them. The foreigns are no concern of mine. My advice is to forget it. Nothing’ll come of it. If you want to stop it happening again, put a dog in there. Something big and hungry that’ll bite the bastards.”

Ned shooed him away before Bernie came with his usual bag of treats. The less people knew about that little enterprise the better.

Bernie brought them over once every two days or so, under cover of a normal delivery. Since his garage business had slumped, Bernie had landed a job as part-time postman. It suited his lanky frame. It used to be said that Bernie was the only mechanic on the island who could lie underneath a car with his head poking out at one end and his feet at the other. There weren’t many tall men on Guernsey. Not until they came. Bernie followed fast in George’s footsteps.

“How’s business?” he asked, slumping the oily bag on the table.

“A few break-ins over at the Vale. A fight outside the Brighton. The only bit of excitement was when old Mrs Rowe stopped Tommy in the High Street the other day and asked him if he could show her the way to the black market.”

Bernie smiled. It was a nice story, even if it wasn’t true. Taking off his cap he scratched his head. His spiky hair was more suited to a lad of fourteen than a grown man nearing his thirtieth year.

“I heard there was a run-in between some artillery men and a couple of the foreigns, and,” he said, “someone got thrown out a window.”

“A gunner?”

“No. Just a foreign.”

Ned dismissed it from his mind.

“Not a dicky-bird this end.” He patted the bag.

“About twenty this week, I reckon,” Bernie ventured out loud. “Should be stood up against a wall and shot, the lot of them.”

Ned walked Bernie back down the stairs. Outside two young girls in white socks and raincoats, hats jammed firmly on their heads, were coming up the road pushing a heavy battered pram. Every day there’d be a bunch of them hanging around the State food stores, darting in and out between the horses’ hoofs and the cartwheels, picking the loose potatoes or turnips that had rolled down into the gutter. Bernie held his cap out as they went by.

“Come on, missy,” he teased, bending low. “Just one measly spud.”

The girls giggled past, the pram bouncing precariously on the cobbles. Bernie turned to leave.

“Fancy a pint later on?” he asked. “I’ll be at the Britannia.”

One of the oldest pubs on the island, it was one of the few out of bounds for the soldiers. A session in there and you catne away feeling almost normal. Most did, anyway. Since his unwanted appointment no one seetned to want to talk to Ned any more. Except Bernie. Ned shook his head.

“Better not. I’ve got a late shift on tonight.”

Bernie, cap back on his head, stuck his hands in his pockets and left, whistling. Back in the office it was time to go through the mail. Though Ned kept his office to himself, when it came to going through the anonymous letters they all took a look. Ned called them up. Peter came first then Tommy, his hands black with grease.

“The Peril still not going?” Ned asked.

Tommy shook his head.

“Perhaps Bernie should take a look,” Ned suggested.

Tommy had his pride. “There’s no need for that. I can fix it.”

“That’s what you said last week.”

The sack was still damp from its journey along the seafront. Ned untied the knot and gave the sack a shake.

“About twenty, I reckon,” he ventured out loud.

“How do they do it?” Peter asked, stroking the down on his ginger lip. Last year Ned had seen him playing hopscotch with his younger sisters on the sands at Vazon Bay. Now his outsize adolescent feet lay squeezed into a pair of second-hand boots that had once been the property of one of the policemen currently serving two years’ hard labour in Caen prison.

“Jealousy and fear,” he told him, “that’s how. Plus a few old scores to settle.”

“But how do the Post Office tell them from real letters?” Peter persisted.

Tommy pulled ostentatiously at the corners of his whiskers, as if the thickness of his own beard was evidence of how much such a baby-faced novice had to learn.

“They’re not that difficult to spot,” he said, warming his backside on the stove. “They’re nearly always written in capitals—to disguise the handwriting—and they’re all addressed to the Feldkom-mandantur.”

“There’s more to it than that,” Ned added. “There’s a meanness that marks them. That’s the thing they can’t disguise. When you see them, lying there amidst real letters, love letters, bills, notes of condolence, they stick out a mile.”

He tipped the bundie out onto the table. They were, as Tommy had predicted, all addressed to the Feldkommandantur, scrawled in furtive capital letters, sloping across the surface as if trying to evade the shame of their intent, envelopes, lined notepaper, pages torn out of a child’s scrapbook, folded and stuck down and sent with malice in the heart, most with no stamp. But today Tommy was proved wrong. As Ned stirred the pile with his fingers he uncovered an envelope addressed to him, in handwriting he recognized only too well. How many other notes had she written to him, smuggled out from the fierce protection of her father’s house, left in the crack in the wall by the drinking fountain or under the whitewashed stone on his parents’ front path? Why, he even recognized the way she underlined his name, three straight lines underneath one another, each shorter than the last.

“Good God,” he said. “I’d never have thought it.”

“What?”

“This is from Isobel, Isobel van Dielen.”

He tore open the envelope. There was no signature, but it didn’t need one.

“She wants to meet me, that’s all.”

Tommy looked over his shoulder. “That’s all? You jammy so and so.”

“No, it’s nothing like that,” Ned told him, but his heart was hammering otherwise. Yes, it could be like that. It could be.

They had met on the quayside waiting to embark, her wide-brimmed hat blown from her head and he catching it in the air as it rose to sail over into the dark waters of the harbour. She was nineteen, he twenty-seven—she on her way back from finishing school and he back on leave after his first tour as a CID officer in the Southampton police force. Though younger than him, she was the more at ease and, liking his short erop of crisp, curly hair and the bend of his mouth, unashamedly took the lead and asked him, in light of his catch, if he was a cricketer.

“A policeman,” he had replied hesitantly, fancying his chances but unsure whether it was wise to tell her the truth so early on.

“A policeman!” She had laughed.

“Yes. You find that funny?”

“No.” She threw back her head and laughed again. “Well, yes, as a matter of fact I do. A policeman!”

“There’s nothing wrong with being a policeman, is there?”