Night Calypso (29 page)

‘Theo, you going to learn sax?’ Vincent called out. But it really was something said for Jesse to pick up on.

‘I done ask him that. I would be pleased to pass on what I know about this instrument to so bright a boy.’ Jesse looked at Vincent and smiled glowingly, speaking loudly, so that Theo was bound to hear from the kitchen.

‘And what did he say?’

Theo re-entered the dining room.

‘You learn what you want to,
mon garçon.’
Madeleine smiled at him when he gave her one of the few linen napkins from the Metivier trunk under the stairs.

Theo returned to the kitchen. He had no intention of joining the table this evening. But he was in and out, hovering round the shoulders of the diners. Everything had to be just so for Miss Madeleine, and there was Jesse from the Look Out, whom he was strangely ignoring, letting him speak for himself; something Jesse could do.

Madeleine had a new name now, and Theo was the first to give her that position, Vincent noticed. She was the mistress of the house, conferred by him.

Vincent and Madeleine exchanged glances, as Jesse carried on with his long tales. They could hear Theo clanging about in the kitchen. ‘You not coming to eat, Theo?’ Vincent called. There was a greater banging of pots and pans.

‘I don’t know what to believe when the boy is telling his stories,’ Jesse continued.

Vincent and Madeleine smiled, trying to get a word in. But Jesse was in full flood. They looked embarrassed as the American GI went on and on. Madeleine looked towards the kitchen door, expecting Theo to re-enter the room at any moment.

‘He seems to have infected you, Lieutenant,’ Vincent laughed. They all three laughed together. Jesse realised that he had been going on and on, much like Theo. The boy was still out in the kitchen.

‘Yes. No, I tell you. He talks, at the drop of a hat. Then he starts humming one of those calypso tunes that you hear the fishermen singing. He just makes me want to go to that island of Sancta Trinidad, up in those places that he makes sound so magical.’ He laughed with his mouth full of bake.

Vincent and Madeleine smiled, a little embarrassed, and ate their bakes and drank their cocoa. Theo remained hidden in the gloom of the kitchen, listening to Jesse’s voice.

It was then that they all heard the explosion. Theo ran in from the kitchen. Vincent, Madeleine and Jesse threw back their chairs and went out onto the verandah. The empty night sky over the gulf outside Chac Chac Bay flared up orange and red like a late sunset. It was as if the whole island shone. No one had seen light like that before, transfiguring the hills and the metallic sea. It was as if the archipelago were throwing up a new island from its volcanic ridge. ‘Boy, what was that?’ Vincent exclaimed. ‘Take care, you fall, Theo, in the darkness.’ Theo had sped out of the house, almost as quickly as he had heard the explosion, as if he had been waiting on his cue. He was on the jetty in a moment, skipping the steps and reaching the boards in no time.

‘That was a fireball!’ Jesse exclaimed. ‘That’s a ship, some ship, somewhere near, hit by a torpedo. Sounds real real close.’ Jesse had climbed onto the banister of the verandah, to see if that could help his vision in any way. But they could not see around Point Girod to where the explosion and the light had come from.

‘Must be out in the gulf, inside the
bocas
,’ Vincent suggested. ‘Inside the Boca del Drago.’

‘Yep, sure sounds like that. You got a pirogue here?’ Jesse had jumped into complete GI role. He was half figuring whether he should return to his station.

‘Yes. Theo, untie the pirogue.’ Vincent called, going down the steps to the jetty. Madeleine and Jesse followed him. Theo was
thrilled with the excitement of being and moving with Vincent and Jesse.

‘God, what was that? Take care, Theo,’ Madeleine called with her caution. The bay lit up the open gulf for a second, like an apparition.

‘It’s the flares to detect the casualties after a bombing. Let’s go out to the entrance of the bay,’ Jesse suggested.

They waited for Theo, by this time in the pirogue, pulling in the anchor. ‘The flares have died down, but we should see some burning wreck, somewhere round that point. There must be men in life rafts in the water. It’s so quiet. You’d expect to hear bombers in the air. Where are those Albacores, those Barracudas?’ Jesse was explaining the routine.

They all got into the pirogue. Madeleine sat in the stern. Theo sat in the bow. Vincent positioned himself at the centre next to Jesse. They both took the oars, fitting them into the rollocks. They needed speed. The sound of the oars grinding in the rollocks, and the dip of the oars in the water, was an added music to the night. There was the plunge and then the grind. There was the heavy breathing of the men.

‘Better put out the lantern,’ Madeleine said, bending to snuff out the flame. There was a whiff of kerosene.

There were no lights on at the convent, or at Saint Damian’s. Voices and cries came from the hospital. Vincent felt that he should be there. The children would be terrified. The nuns would be praying. The old folks would be battened down in their dark huts. Now and then there was the faint glow of a pitch-oil flambeaux. Fear called for light, despite the regulations. The far thunder had not come this close before.

As they rounded Point Girod they could see the harbour of Porta España on fire. There was no moon, only the clear sky of stars and the milky way. As they grew accustomed to the darkness, they could see the outline of Sancta Trinidad, and then the other islands in the archipelago, like the backs of whales.

The sky became filled with the drone of bombers over the gulf. ‘Here they come, at last!’ Jesse cried out, shouting in jubilation,
leaving his oar, and crouching behind Theo in the bow, to instruct the boy in the war planes. They could hear the faint wail of sirens.

‘They’re scanning the waters for targets.’

Jesse dropped the anchor. ‘Should take a hold on the rocks. The water near the cove is shallow. We don’t want to drift out into the boca or get thrown against the rocks.’

Theo was all eyes. Still perched in the bow, looking towards the burning harbour, he kept looking round to Vincent and Jesse for reassurance. He kept an eye on Madeleine, smiling at each other.

Jesse explained in low tones what might be happening. ‘They’re looking for signs of the enemy but also for casualties. Those are anti-submarine aircraft out on the gulf, and those ships are scanning the ocean floor with their Asdic sets for submarines. I bet there’s been a U-Boat attack. Unbelievable! How could it have got through the bocas?’ Jesse sounded uncomprehending.

The GI and the boy were caught up in the excitement of the moment. Theo was still keeping an eye on Madeleine.

‘How it cross the magnetic loop?’ Theo remembered his lesson at the Look Out. The loop lay on the ocean floor, between El Caracol and the island of Huevos.

‘Yes, exactly. How could a U-Boat cross without the defences knowing?’ Jesse repeated his lesson.

Madeleine sat without saying a word. Mention of a German U-Boat alarmed her. Vincent turned to look at her. All talk of the war fired her imagination, conjured her father.

They heard its engine before they saw it, moving nearby in the darkness. They could feel the pirogue rocking because of the wake that came in from the open sea, to rock them in the cove where they were hidden. They were hammocked in the swell.

It was Theo’s young eyes. He whispered sharply, ‘Look! Something, there, moving through the water. I can hardly see it,’ he whispered. Vincent and Jesse followed the direction of his arm and the pointed finger, rigid with intent, with an accuracy with which it wanted to pin down the moving shape in the water. Madeleine crouched behind them, getting up from the stern. They were a tight group, staring into the darkness.

It was Jesse who recognised what it was. Accustomed to his
watch at the Look Out, with the artillery guns trained on the sea, precisely for these targets, he recognised the conning tower, just above the dimly lit water.

‘Look like a whale,’ Theo whispered.

‘I hope those guys have got it in their sights.’ Jesse expressed the frustration of a soldier. The others watched with their own thoughts of disbelief. At first, it seemed to be coming straight at them. Then, it was making for the open ocean, through the Boca de Navios.

Escaping this way, it ran no danger of setting off signals. ‘Those bombers have lost it. Jesus Christ!’ Jesse was beside himself.

They held their breaths and watched. ‘Look, do you see him?’ It was Theo who first saw the figure, standing on the open deck below the coning tower. He was bending to fix something.

Madeleine crouched behind Vincent, staring over his shoulder. They were so close. She saw distinctly, the blond hair of the German sailor. As if from deep inside of her, she began to hear that love song she had heard that night, when she had looked from her cell at the convent, and saw the German sailor on the deck of the training ship. Instinctively she sung the words
‘Ja, ja, die Liebe ist’s allein, die Liebe, die Liebe ist’s allein.
Yes, yes.’

‘Shush, please, he’ll hear.’ Jesse was biting his lip in frustration.

Madeleine felt the love song flee across the water to the blond sailor.

‘If I’d been at the Look Out, I’d have blown her out of the water.’ Jesse changed the tone.

Vincent and Theo stared at him in shock. Vincent thought of the young man swinging his saxophone through the kitchen door earlier that evening. He too had his love songs.

Madeleine went back to her seat in the stern. The drone of the U-Boat grew fainter. They were left rocking in the swell of its wake.

Jesse lost the coning tower as the submarine dived just outside the
boca,
safe now, in the depths of the Atlantic.

Theo looked over his shoulder to where the U-Boat had dipped away. ‘He reach the ocean,’ he said, with a big O.

Jesse could not wait to get back to the Look Out, to make his report. ‘See you tomorrow, boy.’ Then he hurried through the house, out the back, into the darkness, into the bush.

Vincent prepared to visit Saint Damian’s, and decided he would row himself there. He did not like going out on his own, even into the bay. But he felt that if he hugged the shore closely, past the Chaplain’s house, he would be safe.

‘Theo, I want you to go to sleep now. I’ve got to go and check things at the hospital.’

‘I can’t sleep now, Doc.’

‘I want you and Madeleine to look after each other.’ As he left to go downstairs, he saw that the boy was already lying across his bed under the mosquito net, plugged into his crystal set. What a night he had had! Vincent stood for a moment at the door and watched Theo’s breathing, as he had done so many times before. He stared at his naked back with its serrated scar; a story still to be told, or maybe never to be told.

Madeleine was waiting on the jetty. She had the dinghy ready for him. It was easier to row the smaller craft than the heavy pirogue. ‘Let me come with you,’ she pleaded.

‘I need you to stay here with the boy. Would not be safe for us to arrive together in the middle of the night.’

‘But, Vincent…’

He saw her distress, the reasons for it. He was caught between his responsibility for his patients, and her need. In the past, he would have wanted nothing more than to have her at his side. ‘Madeleine, sweetheart.’ He reached out, almost capsizing the dinghy.

Their changed circumstances did not allow for Madeleine to be at the hospital with him. They both knew that. Her fear, created by the explosion, and seeing the German U-Boat with the blond sailor, recalling her earlier experience just before the war, left her terrified. She crouched, and leaned forward to take his hand. Vincent caught his balance. ‘I need you to be strong, to be here, for Theo. Go up to bed.’

‘Yes, I understand. Take care. But they’re my patients too.’

‘I know. But it’s better I go alone.’

Then he could not leave her, as he saw her eyes fill with tears. Her fear was more than she could cope with.

Vincent could see the terror on her face, hear the agitation in her voice, notice the darting of her eyes. She was overcome with her responsibility for Theo. Something that as a nurse would have seemed like routine had become overwhelming.

Then the memory, the image of the U-Boat moving through the black waters of the bocas, a hundred yards from where they were anchored, alarmed him more and he became infected with her fear.

He clambered back onto the jetty. Together, they looked out towards where more flares lit up the night sky, as the search for the U-Boat continued. In each other’s arms, standing at the edge of the jetty, they listened to the drone of the anti-submarine bombers, which were still circling the gulf, now spreading their search further into the
bocas.

‘It’s too late. They’ve escaped,’ Vincent said.

‘Who’s escaped?’

‘The Germans.’

‘What do you mean?’ She was puzzled.

‘You know?’

It was as if she had suddenly banished the incident from her mind.

The men who manned the U-Boat would be the same men who occupied her country, her
France.
They would be the same men who were part of her nightmare in which her father was caught. They were the same men who drove through her French village, in those dreams, in fast black Citroëns, with machine guns poking out of the windows. They were the same men on whose straining
leads barking Alsatians woke her in her hut in the hills, hounds which had caught the scent of their quarry, worrying it into the thicket of her dreams, where they had gone to earth. The same men gave out the statutory yellow stars.

In one dream, she had told him, it was Marcel, with a rifle at the door, with the
gendarmes.
He was not hunting rabbits anymore.

How could he know the images which besieged her mind? Where did the stories come from that she told herself?

Rising out of a wood, there was a clatter of rooks. There was a line of cypresses. She and a young boy running there, in their excitement at going into the woods, found that it was peopled with others who were hiding, resisting the advance of a terrible army. She heard the tramp of their boots across the fields, down the village lane.

As Vincent, again, entered with his imagination into the nightmares of Madeleine, he saw them in her face and eyes, in her fingers scraping the wall of the jetty house, digging into the pits of the broken masonry. He put his hands over hers to stop the fury. ‘Madeleine, sweetheart.’

They stood like that, looking out to sea, in the darkness, with the flares still burning over Porta España. This was the nature of their love: passion and comfort. He comforted her.

Madeleine turned to look at him. ‘Will we be safe?’

‘I think so.’

‘You saw that man on the U-Boat before it dived?’

‘Yes, there was one, closing the hatch after him, disappearing, and then the sea closed over the deck.’

‘You saw what he looked like?’ she persisted.

‘It was difficult to see. It was dark.’

‘You know, his uniform? A naval officer’s hat? A face?’

‘No, sorry. I hardly saw him.’

‘How could you not see him? His blond hair, his blue eyes, his smile. He was the one, who sang to me beneath the window of my cell, at Embarcadère Corbeaux.
Die Liebe, die Liebe ist’s allein.’

‘You want some piece of reality, some evidence, something to tell you that your dreams are true.’

‘Or not true.
C’est l’amour, c’est l’amour seul.’

‘I love you.’

She looked sad and then smiled.
‘C’est l’amour seul.’

They both looked to where the flares over Porta España were now a dull glow, beyond the island of Gasparee. The drone of the bombers had stopped. The frogs pinged and the insects sung.

In that moment, with the singing night around them, with the intermittent barking of a dog, Vincent and Madeleine turned towards each other. He held her. She was close to his chest, his beating heart, his bare arms, his open shirt, his naked neck. He was close to her face, no longer cocooned in cotton. There was her face and her hands, her arms and legs as he swooped up her flimsy skirt. There were her breasts, her new body. She called it that when she came to his bed. ‘I bring you my new body.’ They did not resist the moment now, as they made for the jetty house and lay on the hard bench. He felt her heavy black hair, her soft face, released from its taut constrictions. Madeleine felt the unshaven cheek of her doctor. Their moment was hesitant, even now, and then they chose their lips. His tongue found her open mouth, his fingers the salt of her wet flower, and then they forgot where they were.

Around them, the darkness. Out there, the war. Not far away, there were sounds which came from a world that they shared in their nursing and doctoring, a child’s cry, the pain of the disfigured. Their world rearranged itself, and settled around them.

‘Let me go now. Try and sleep.’ Vincent lowered himself into the dinghy.

‘I love you.’ She watched him disappear into the darkness.

She sat at her dressing table brushing out her hair. There was a knock at the door. It was Theo. ‘Can’t you sleep? Come, sit. Tell me what you’re thinking.’

‘What you thinking? I watch you sitting, brushing your hair. You look lost.’

‘Looking at myself in the mirror, I thought how much like my mother I was becoming. I’m becoming my mother.’ She smiled at him in the mirror.

‘What you mean? You’re becoming your mother? You can’t do that. You could do that?’

‘You know what I mean. Not literally. Of course not.’ He was staring intently at her.

‘Where is your mother?’ he asked.

‘My mother? She’s in heaven.’ Then Madeleine thought she was patronising the boy. ‘She’s dead.’

Theo quickly changed the subject. ‘So what else you thinking about?’

‘I was back in the Place de la Mairie in the village of Saint Jacques de la Campagne, where we went in summer; my mother’s parents’ home. Behind the house, the village falls away into a gorge. Deep, over the flat rocks, the cold water hurtles down from the icy heights.’

‘The Alps? Snow! I learn about that.’

‘Beyond the steep gorge, above the rocky cliffs, are fields. I liked to sit and watch the sun go down on the evening from that window. The rows and rows of lavender, so purple in the light. A blue mist.’

Theo was looking at Madeleine as she brushed her hair. ‘You miss that place. You mother bury there?’

‘Yes. She’s buried there. When I was a little girl, she used to stand behind me with a brush, telling me a story, brushing out my knots.’

‘You want me to brush your hair?’

Madeleine giggled. ‘Okay, if you want to try. Don’t pull it hard.’

‘I know how to do it. Watch.’ Theo stood behind her and pulled the brush gently through Madeleine’s hair.

‘That’s good.’

‘I know how to do this thing. I used to do it so for girl I know.’

‘A girlfriend?’

‘Nah. Just a girl.’

‘Christiana? Your school friend.’

‘Not she. Not she.’

Madeleine realised her error. ‘Well, did she have a name?’ Madeleine looked at Theo behind her in the mirror.

‘Chantal.’

‘That’s a pretty name.’

‘She, yea, she pretty.’

‘You don’t sound sure.’

‘Yes, she pretty. Man!’ Then Theo seemed distracted. ‘I tired do this. Anyway, it looking good now.’

‘Okay.’ She took the brush for him.

Theo walked over to the window and peeped through the blackouts.

‘Maybe we should try and sleep now,’ Madeleine suggested.

‘I can’t sleep.’

‘I know. A lot has happened tonight.’

‘I still seeing that submarine.’

‘Try and sleep. My eyes are closing up.’ She got up from the dressing table. ‘Good night.’

‘Don’t let mosquitoes bite.’ They laughed. Theo left her room.

Eventually, Madeleine slept, but was woken suddenly by the moan of a plane. She lay back and listened to the sea in the bay, then, again, fell asleep. Once, she thought she heard footsteps on the landing outside her room.

It did not take Vincent long to row, hugging the coast, below Father Meyer’s house. He was careful not to show any light, mainly because of the military activity in the wake of the attack. He did not want the Coast Guard coming into the bay to caution him. The lap of the oars disturbed a
jumbie
bird. The feathery owl flapped away into the higher
gommier
trees off the wet branches of the sea grapes leaning into the water.

As he approached Saint Damian’s, Vincent could see a figure standing at the end of the jetty. As he got closer, he realised it was Sister Rita. ‘Sister.’ Vincent threw the rope.

‘I’ve got it.’ The pirogue knocked the jetty, where there had been tyres to break the thud. They had all been burnt.

‘Thanks, Sister.’ Vincent heaved himself up to stand next to her. ‘You’ve obviously been alerted to the attack?’

‘Is that what it is? I woke with the explosion, and then lay awake listening for something else. There was silence in the convent, and then Mother Superior was knocking on the door of my cell. It was then that I could hear the cries coming from the hospital. Myself and Sister Marie-Paul were deployed to take the pirogue and row across the bay. There was no time to alert the boatman with the
launch. Luckily, it is very calm tonight. We took it in turns to row. It can be choppy as you cross in front of La Tinta, as you know.’

Vincent watched her tell her story in a graphic, animated way, trying to control her fear. He admired these women and that confused him, because he did not believe in what they believed in, except their dedication to care and healing.

‘Yes, it seems that a German U-Boat has attacked one or more vessels in the harbour at Porta España,’ he said.

‘We could see the flares, as we came into the open bay out of La Chapelle.’ She turned and pointed to the open sea of the gulf. There was still burning like the last of a sunset.

‘Where is Sister Marie-Paul now?’ Vincent asked.

‘She’s with the children. I came down here to see if I could make out anymore about the disturbance. I’ve been up to the huts, and tried to quieten the fears of the women. I expected to see Sister Thérèse there.’

‘You know she goes to the very farthest huts. She’s got sleeping accommodation there,’ Vincent explained.

‘Yes, of course. I just thought, that with the disturbance, I would’ve seen her. Jonah and Mr Singh were checking the patients. The young girl Christiana was with them.’

‘I see.’ Vincent did not know what Sister Rita knew, if anything, about Thérèse sleeping over at the house.

‘Docta, Sister.’ Sister Rita and Vincent turned suddenly into the darkness behind, from where the voice had come. Rattling on the gravel, the figure of Ti-Jean, on his crutches, appeared out of the gloom.

‘Ti-Jean, what are you doing out of bed?’

‘I hear the bomb.’

‘Is not a bomb, Ti-Jean.’

‘I thought I see you come in a pirogue. I up on the verandah. Watching. Then, I ent see you. So, I come to look for you.’

‘Did you? You saw me. You have eye like
jumbie
bird.’ Vincent loved the boy.

‘I come down the steps, and I thought I hear a voice, and then is you and Sister I see.’

‘Did you?’ Vincent pulled the boy towards him. He tottered on
his crutches. But he could not quieten him, nor comfort him for the moment.

‘Yes, I’fraid doctor. I’fraid too bad.’

‘Come here, Ti-Jean.’ His crutches clattered on the concrete path asTi-Jean clung to him. ‘Too bad, too bad, yes, doctor.’ He was usually so fearless, Vincent thought.

‘Okay, there’s nothing to be afraid of.’ Vincent hugged the boy. ‘Here, take your crutches, let’s all go up to the hospital and see how Sister Marie-Paul is getting on with the others.’

Vincent and Sister Rita walked up to the hospital with Ti-Jean between them. ‘Come on, Hop-Along-Cassidy.’ Ti-Jean’s limp was worse than ever.