The Collaborator (34 page)

O
ctober is cold, with a wind that blusters through the wreck of my orchard, the boughs in the lanes bare and blackened with wet, above us a white rushing sky. Our daily lives take so much thought and planning and care: there’s even less food in the shops now. I’m permanently exhausted, my body heavy and slow. Yet in a way I’m grateful for all the demands of this life, which leave me little time to think. I try to keep cheerful for Blanche and Millie. I only let myself cry in the evening, when they are up in their rooms; or at night when I wake in my empty bed, and press my face into my pillow.

One late afternoon in November, I’m making tea in the kitchen when there’s a knock at the door. An assertive male knock. I think for a half-crazed moment that my desperate prayers have been answered—that he has been given back to me. I open the door.

I feel a sense of disappointment, shading into dislike. It’s Piers Falla.

‘Hello, Piers.’

‘Mrs de la Mare. I want to show you something,’ he says.

He’s abrupt, as always. His eyes seem to see right into me, that look that makes me think of a bird of prey, expecting something of me.

‘What do you want to show me?’ I ask.

‘You’ll see. You have to come with me.’ And, when I hesitate, ‘It’ll be worth it, I promise.’

I grab my coat: there’s a winter chill in the air. I warn Millie that I’m going out. I follow Piers down the lane, through the dusk that softly settles around us. He turns onto a track that leads up the wooded side of the hill, a path I’ve never walked before. I follow him through the dull, dormant woods. The colours of the countryside are muted in the gloom-russet, cinnamon, nutmeg, like the hides of animals. There’s a slight wind in the branches, and our footsteps rustle on the path that is deeply drifted with leaves.

The silence between us is awkward. Piers is not an easy person.

‘You must miss Johnnie,’ I say, to break the silence.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes, I miss him … All those things we did together—I never thought it would end like this. Just because of a stupid mistake …’

‘But it isn’t such a long sentence,’ I say. ‘He should be back in July.’

‘As long as he doesn’t get lost in the system,’ says Piers. ‘Sent off to some more terrible place.’

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘But surely that can’t happen, can it? Surely it’s better organised than that?’

‘There are rumours that it’s happened to others,’ he says.

‘Oh.’ I feel a shiver of fear for Johnnie.

We walk on up the whispering path. A jay breaks cover in front of us; its flash of blue, bright as sapphires, is startling against the sepia gloom of the wood. Around us, we hear the myriad small voices of the streams.

Piers clears his throat; the sound is too loud in the stillness.

‘Some of those things we did, Johnnie and me,’ he says, out of nowhere, and stops. Then tries again. ‘There are things I used to think mattered, that don’t matter so much any more. Things that aren’t really important …’

I know that he is saying sorry to me.

I glance towards him. His face is working: he’s trying to find the right words.

‘The way we used to do things, when the Occupation began. We were just kids then. To be honest, we were just playing around,’ he tells me.

‘You wanted to do what you could,’ I say. ‘I can understand that.’

He doesn’t seem to hear me.

‘What I’ve learnt,’ he says. ‘It’s what a person does when their moment comes. When something is required of them. What they do with the time that is given them. That’s what matters … The other things aren’t important—who you fall in love with, all of that …’

I feel uncomfortable: I don’t know how to respond. Yet at the same time I’m grateful that he said that.

We climb up the steep twisting path through the trees and their tangled shadows, and come out at the top to windy brightness and sky and all the wide air beyond the wood, where there are cornfields and the shine of the sea. The moment that is like
a birth—coming up out of the womb of our deep wooded valley and into the light.

I see with a stir of alarm that we have come to the work camp on the clifftop—the camp that Johnnie described, that I never wanted to see. The camp that Kirill came from. I see the high barbed-wire fence, the shacks where the slave-workers sleep, the wooden watchtowers. I think of the things that people say they have witnessed here. Of men left beaten and bleeding. Of a man who was hanged from a tree, and the body left hanging for days.

We move a little closer. I see that the grass in front of the buildings has all been worn away, leaving just bare earth and mud. A bonfire has been made there. Many men sit round the fire; they are thin and ragged and desolate-looking. A guard is watching them vaguely—bored, not very vigilant, absently smoking a cigarette. The men are quiet, scarcely stirring, not even talking together. They have the look that Kirill had, on that long-ago day when I first saw him in Peter Mahy’s barn, their faces blank with exhaustion.

But then, as we watch, something moves through the men like a summer wind through wheat—a sudden disturbance, shouts, a slow hand clap. I wonder what will happen. Two men get up from the ground. They have dark hair, sun-browned skin: they could be the gypsies that Johnnie said were among the prisoners here. They stand facing one another, as though they are sparring together, so just for an instant I wonder if they will fight. But they raise their arms above their heads and click their fingers in time; they sway a little and start to dance, stamping their feet on the bare earth, their rags of clothes flying wildly with the
swaying of their bodies. The other men cheer, then fall silent. I watch the gestures of the dancers as they beckon, conjure, caress. There is such eloquence in the movements they make: they speak of desire, of solace, of a brief and broken triumph. When they pass in front of the firelight, they seem to hold all that red light and warmth in their hands.

I think of Kirill—of his homeland, the stories he told, all the things he dreamed of. I think: We all have such richness in us—the lives we have lived, the people we have loved, all the things we have longed for. Wherever we go, whatever happens, we carry this richness within us. Whatever is done to us, whatever is taken from us.

And then it ends, as abruptly as it began. Their feet stamp to a close, their hands fall emptily to their sides, they sink to the earth by the fire, their shadows hunched in front of them. The watching men applaud and then are quiet. Silence falls like a leaf. It is all as it was before. Or almost as it was before.

We too are still for a moment.

I turn to Piers. In the dimming light, his kestrel face doesn’t look quite as stern as I’d thought.

‘Was that what you wanted to show me?’ I say then. ‘No.’

‘But I’m glad that I saw it,’ I say.

He nods slightly, acknowledging this.

‘This is what I wanted to show you,’ he says. ‘There’s a place in the wire—over there by that ditch …’

I look where he is pointing, to a place where a thicket of hazel trees shades over a ditch and almost reaches the fence. There’s a lot of cover. You could get very close and not be seen.

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘There’s a rip in the wire there. The prisoners keep it open. You can leave food there. Under those trees, just outside the fence. If you have any food you can spare, you can bring it here and leave it. The best time is just before curfew …’

‘What if the guard sees me?’ I say.

‘It depends who’s on duty,’ he says. ‘Sometimes they turn a blind eye. Some of them aren’t bothered, like that man there today. We’ve had other people do this. With luck, you should be all right … There’s always a risk, of course. But then you know that.’

‘Yes.’

The shadows are long now, but there are still a few tatters of light in the sky. The brightness reflects in Piers’ keen gaze.

‘I’m sorry we lost Kirill,’ he says. ‘But there are others that we can help keep alive.’

‘Until the war is over?’

‘Until we win,’ he tells me. Sounding just like Johnnie.

Will we win? I think. How can we? Is it possible? It seems beyond imagining.

‘So what do you think, Mrs de la Mare? Will you do what you can?’

But he already knows my answer.

EPILOGUE:

APRIL 1946

A
few months after the end of the war, a postcard comes for me. I cycle to St Peter Port. It’s a sunny April afternoon. The town is calm and orderly: the shops are all open, people mill in the streets. Mothers scold their children, people at bus-stops grumble—about the weather, the government, how much everything costs. I think how readily we return to the predictable life of peace-time—those of us who are left, who are lucky: we brush the dust of the past from us, sweep up the fragments, move on.

I leave my bicycle at the foot of the steps that lead up to the tea-shop. Mrs du Barry’s has closed now, but this new place has opened. You can sit on the terrace when it’s warm, and I thought it would be a good choice.

I climb the steps to the terrace. I glance back over the steep red-tiled roofs, but you can’t see the water from here, you wouldn’t know you were on an island, except for the quality of the light— that is at once soft and lustrous, and has the silvery clarity of sunlight over the sea.

The place is busy: women meeting their friends and gossiping over tea and
gâche,
men doing business, a nanny with boisterous
children. For a moment, I’m confused by all the colour and movement and talk, and I can’t see him. Then I spot him, at the table in the corner of the terrace. He’s wearing a sober business suit and tie. He looks entirely different in civilian clothes—less certain, less authoritative. He sees me and stands as I approach. He takes my hand and gives a little bow. ‘Captain Richter,’ I say.

Though I’m not sure how to address him. Germany has no army now: presumably he doesn’t really have a rank any more.

‘Mrs de la Mare. Thank you so much for coming.’

We sit. The waitress comes to our table. He orders tea for both of us.

‘You would like something to eat? A cake?’ But I can scarcely swallow, I know I couldn’t eat. ‘No, thank you.’

When the waitress has gone, he leans across the table towards me. His clear dark eyes are on me. There’s such seriousness in his face.

‘Mrs de la Mare …’

He stops, clears his throat: as though it’s too hard to say the words he has come here to say. Even for this poised, cynical man, who must have seen so many things.

But I can read it all in his eyes.

‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ I say. ‘That’s what you came to tell me.’ A shadow moves over his face. ‘Yes, I’m afraid Gunther died,’ he says. ‘I’m so sorry.’ ‘I knew he must be dead, when I got your postcard,’ I tell him.

‘He asked me to come and find you, when he was dying,’ he says. ‘I’m keeping my promise to him.’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

For a moment we are quiet. The noise of the café around us seems to withdraw, to come from some great distance.

Max takes out two cigarettes, lights them, hands one to me. As I take the cigarette, I see that my hand is trembling.

He leans forward on his elbows, looking into my face.

‘There were things he wanted me to tell you,’ he says. ‘He told me he thought you blamed him for the shooting of that Pole.’

‘He wasn’t a Pole,’ I tell him.

‘It doesn’t matter now,’ he says.

‘Yes. It matters.’ I’m surprised by the anger that seizes me— that Max talks about him as though he were just some faceless prisoner. ‘He came from Belorussia. His name was Kirill. His village was in a birch forest. He was a craftsman, a very skilled man. He made violins.’

My voice is too loud, too intense.

Max leans back slightly and makes a small, soothing gesture with his hands—as though to pacify me. ‘Anyway. That man who was shot,’ he says. But the anger is still in me.

‘I know to you it was just one incident, one little thing that happened. An unfortunate episode. It wasn’t that to me. To me it was all the brutality of war …’

‘Yes. Of course,’ he says placatingly.

The waitress brings our tea. I try to pour, but my hand is shaking too much.

‘You should let me do that,’ he says. ‘Yes. Thank you.’ He pours. He hands me my cup. I don’t drink. I’m waiting.

He leans towards me again.

‘Gunther wanted me to tell you it was nothing to do with him. He knew you were hiding the man in your house.’ ‘When did he tell you that?’ I ask.

‘He told me when we were still on your island,’ he says. ‘That when he came to see you one morning he realised what was happening. He would never have spoken to the OT about it. He wouldn’t have put you at risk. He wouldn’t ever have hurt you. It wasn’t Gunther who betrayed you.’

‘How do you know that?’ I ask him. ‘How can you possibly be sure?’

‘I can be sure because I know where the information came from. It came from Hans Schmidt,’ he tells me. ‘Schmidt saw something in your garden. He went to the OT.’

I remember the fresh-faced blond boy who would sometimes mow the grass at Les Vinaires: the cat-lover.

‘Why didn’t Gunther tell me?’ I say.

‘He was a proud man, Mrs de la Mare. As I imagine you know. Once you’d decided your love affair was over, he would never have pleaded with you or begged you to take him back.’

I don’t say anything. I know he is right.

We smoke in silence for a moment. Then Max puts his cigarette down, resting it in the ashtray.

‘Mrs de la Mare. I have to tell you,’ he says, haltingly. ‘We didn’t know the things that were being done in our name. Many of us who served in the army, believing in our country—that we had to restore our pride, to recover the land we had lost—when we saw what had been done, we wept … Not all of us. But some of us.’

‘How could you not have known?’ I struggle. There are no words big enough. ‘I mean—even here, on Guernsey—you could see the brutality.’

‘You do your job,’ he says. ‘You do what you have to do. You don’t always look around you. You don’t always think about everything.’ And, when I don’t say anything: ‘You may feel that is wrong,’ he says, ‘and you would be right to feel that. But that is how people behave. Most of us, most of the time. People behave as they are told to behave, as those around them behave. Generally, this is what happens. It is depressing but true. This is what we are like …’

‘You must have known,’ I say again.

He opens his mouth as though to speak: but he doesn’t say anything.

We are silent for a long time then. The cigarette burns in the ashtray where he has left it. He is utterly still, staring down at his hands.

At last he stirs. He rubs his hand over his face, and looks around him again—at the sunlight, the red-tiled roofs, the bright blowing sky.

‘So, Mrs de la Mare. Tell me what your life is like, since the war. Here on your beautiful island.’

I hesitate. What should I tell him? But there’s an intimacy between us, because of what he has done for me, in coming here. I’m grateful to him: I am in his debt. I decide I will tell him everything: well,
almost
everything. I owe him that.

‘My husband came back from the war,’ I say. ‘He was lucky, he survived. But we’ve agreed to live apart now.’

‘I am sorry to hear that,’ says Max.

‘He lives here in town—he bought a flat with some of his mother’s money—and I still live at Le Colombier, with the children,’ I say. ‘I give piano lessons—we get by. We couldn’t live together again—after everything that had happened …’

He nods slightly.

‘I can see it would be difficult,’ he says carefully. ‘And Blanche—d’you remember Blanche, my elder daughter?’ I say.

‘Yes, of course I remember her.’

‘Blanche is married now. She married Johnnie—the son of one of my friends. He was sent to prison in France for a while. They found a shotgun in his room …’

Max shakes his head in a tired, resigned way, as at a revelation of stupidity. Perhaps at Johnnie’s stupidity in holding onto the shotgun; or at all the pettiness of the rules that governed our lives for so long.

‘When he came home they started seeing one another,’ I tell him. ‘They married just last summer …’

I remember the wedding, picture it. Blanche in the shapely pink suit she’d made, and a little felt hat with a veil. Her blonde hair falling like water and the happiness lighting her face; and the amazed way Johnnie looked at her, as though he couldn’t believe his luck; and everyone singing, the sun shining bright, the whole church festive with flowers.

‘It was a happy day,’ I tell him.

He smiles.

‘And Millie is doing so well at school,’ I tell him. ‘She says she wants to be a doctor. Of course it’s a very hard career choice for a girl. But I’d love to see it work out for her …’

His face softens.

‘Millie is a beautiful child,’ he tells me. And then we are silent again. And I know it’s up to me to break the silence, but for an age I can’t do it. At last, I make myself ask the question. ‘How did Gunther die?’ I can scarcely hear my own voice. Max puts his hand on my sleeve.

‘It was in August ‘44, at Kishinev in Rumania. I was with him,’ he tells me. ‘He didn’t die alone.’

‘I’m glad,’ I say. ‘I’m so glad that you were with him. So glad.’ I can’t stop saying it.

I notice how he doesn’t tell me quite how Gunther died. He doesn’t say, It was quick, he didn’t suffer.

‘I have something to return to you,’ he tells me. ‘Gunther kept this always …’

He takes something out of his pocket. It’s the book of poetry that once I gave to Gunther. I hadn’t known that he’d kept it. Max hands it over to me. It has a worn, battered look, and there’s a stain on the cover that might be blood.

I flick through. The ribbon still marks the page of my favourite poem. I open the book there.

The words blur. I can’t read any more.

I turn to the front of the book, where once I wrote my name. I see that Gunther has written his own name beneath mine, so our two names are together: as lovers will carve their initials together on the bark of a tree.

And then the tears come.

I cry for a long time. The grief possesses me, my body shaking with sobs.

Max sits silently, and waits. I’m so grateful for his quietness.

When at last the crying stops, I’m aware of people glancing at me, disconcerted by so much emotion in this public place. But not surprised: for many of us have grieved.

I am lucky,
I keep telling myself.
I have my precious children. I am so lucky.
But still the pain of it washes through me. I can’t imagine how I will ever learn to bear it.

I scrub my face with my handkerchief.

‘I have to go now,’ I tell him. ‘Thank you. Thank you for coming, for making the journey. I don’t know how to thank you …’

He shrugs a little.

‘I was happy to do this,’ he tells me. ‘Gunther was my friend.’

We stand. He shakes my hand warmly.

I go down the steps to the street. I undo the lock on my bicycle and set out on the long journey back, as the sunlight mellows with evening and the shadows reach over the road. Going home to Millie; and the little boy who I know will rush into my arms when I get there; whose grey eyes will shine when he looks at me, who will smile with Gunther’s smile.