Never Anyone But You

by Rupert Thomson

  “I’m waiting for my sister,” Claude said.

  “Your sister?”

  “She’s over there.” Claude pointed to me. “She had some questions.”

  He held out a hand. “Papers.”

  Claude took out her identity card and gave it to the officer. He scanned the card.

  “Schwob,” he said.

  “It’s a German name,” she said calmly. “It was given to people who lived in Swabia.”

  He stared at her, then turned and moved towards me. The leather jacket, the square jaw. The American accent. He reminded me of a gangster from the movies, and I wondered if this was a look he had cultivated.

  “I’m Wolf of the Gestapo,” he said. “You have questions?”

  “I’m sorry, but my English is not so good. This man is helping me.” I indicated the soldier behind the desk.

  The soldier told Wolf he had been explaining how the curfew worked. He said I was a simpleminded woman from some far corner of the island. Simpleminded. I smiled to myself. The soldier had been completely taken in by my performance.

  Wolf was eyeing me coldly. “This is not a place where you come for information. There are other places for such things.”

  “I’m very sorry,” I said.

  “You should not be here, not unless you’ve been arrested. Do you want to be arrested?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then get out,” he said. “Now.”

  Once we had left Silvertide, I told Claude we had been lucky not to be detained.

  Claude looked straight ahead. “It was worth it.”

  The rain had stopped, and a light breeze was blowing. In the harbor the boats rocked on the dull green water.

  “Wolf of the Gestapo,” she said. “Who does he think he is?”

  We were crouching by the fire in the big room, our knees almost touching, no lights on. Upstairs, George and Edna were asleep. As for the Germans, they had finally moved out, taking their horses with them. It was a cold clear night, and the full moon laid gray shapes on the floor by the window.

  “What if we get caught?” Claude said.

  She looked feverish, the skin under her eyes moist and livid, like leaves trapped beneath a stone. She had told me she had a temperature. Also, she had run out of English cigarettes. She was smoking a cheap French brand that hurt her throat.

  “We won’t,” I said, “not if we’re careful.”

  “But what if we are?”

  We had heard that “antifascist enemies of the Third Reich,” as they were known, were being sent to a camp in France where they were beheaded with an ax, and though the rumors were unsubstantiated it was clear that executions had been taking place. It was also clear that we fell into the category of “antifascist enemies.” We were in breach of all manner of Nazi regulations. Since the ban on radios, more than ten thousand sets had been handed in. We had surrendered two radios of our own, but we had kept a third, which we hid in the sideboard, under a pile of napkins. Weapons were banned as well—obviously—and yet we had held on to Claude’s revolver. What’s more, I had failed to report my knowledge of German to the authorities. That was another offense. There was also the fact that Claude appeared as “Lucie Schwob” in the official records. Strictly speaking, she wasn’t a Jew—she had only two Jewish grandparents, and they were on her father’s side—but “Wolf of the Gestapo,” as we had mockingly taken to calling him, had remarked on her name, and sooner or later, I felt, she would begin to attract attention, especially since orders restricting the movement and behavior of Jews had been proliferating in the last few months. Finally—and this rendered our other crimes more or less irrelevant—there was our propaganda campaign. We had started using a more elaborate signature—Der Soldat ohne Namen und sein Kameraden—which suggested a growing network of resistance and dissent, and our leaflets were beginning to find their way to every corner of the island. Though the network existed only in our imaginations, we hoped it might constitute a reality for the Nazi high command.

  “We need to be prepared for the worst,” Claude said, “don’t you think?” She was scratching her left arm, her nails leaving grazes on the pale skin. Shadows leapt and shifted on her face.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ve already thought about it.”

  “You have?”

  “Kid would have to be put down. He’s old. We couldn’t leave him to fend for himself.”

  “I don’t want to think about that.”

  “Edna would take him to the vet. Or George—”

  Claude was still scratching.

  “In any case,” I said, “I’ll make sure we’re ready.”

  “But how?” She fumbled for a cigarette.

  “It’s better you don’t know.”

  “You’ll take care of it, though? You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “So if we lose, we win,” she said in a low voice.

  She wasn’t stupid. She knew that our illegal activities might put us in a position where the only option would be to take our own lives, and she had just realized that I was willing to go with her. She would be able to die without having to abandon me. It had always been a dream of hers that we might leave together, like guests who had wearied of a party. We would slip away unnoticed, climb into a waiting car. Off we would go, into the dark…Angry with myself for having allowed our conversation to drift so close to one of her obsessions, I threw a handful of twigs onto the fire. Sparks burst upwards, scarlet against the blackened brick. It occurred to me that she might be hoping we would be discovered. She might want to be caught. Then she would have the perfect excuse. Perhaps that was why she had changed her mind about leaving the island, and why she had seemed so excited on the night the Nazis bombed St. Helier. All her brave talk about defeating fascism…This wasn’t about ideology or principles. This was nothing more than an elaborately conceived suicide pact. I felt she had outmaneuvered me, and I took a certain pleasure in making the case for our survival.

  “I’ll see that we’re prepared,” I said, “but I don’t think it will be necessary.”

  “You don’t?” The note of disappointment in her voice seemed to prove my theory.

  “No one will suspect us. Why would they?”

  We had always kept ourselves to ourselves, I told her. Apart from the Colleys and the Steel family, local people knew virtually nothing about us. We were two French sisters who lived in the house next to the church. We wore men’s clothes and took our cat for walks along the beach.

  “They think we’re bohemian,” I said. “A bit deranged.”

  “That’s how they see us?”

  “Honestly, Claude. You live in a world of your own.”

  There was an imperceptible shift, and another Claude emerged, withering and haughty. “Is there another world? I hadn’t realized.”

  I rose to my feet. “I’ll see if there’s more wood.”

  Instead of making for the garage, though, I stood on the lawn and stared up into the sky. Huge clouds hung about, their edges silvered by the moon. Away from the fire, I felt the rawness of the night. I walked over to the new concrete wall that stood between the end of our garden and the beach. Earlier that year, in February, half a dozen German army trucks had parked on the slipway. We watched from an upstairs window as slave workers unloaded sack after sack of cement. They resembled the men we had seen from the bus—starved, unshaven, dressed in rags. Through Edna, we learned that the entire length of the bay was to be fortified. Claude paced up and down, her arms folded tightly across her chest. The bastards, she said. They’re going to spoil our view. At least we still have somewhere to live, I said. We knew of several people who had received requisition orders, and had been forcibly ejected from their homes. Bastards, she said again. The wall took three months to build. The slave workers, who were mostly from Spain and Eastern Europe, were always co
llapsing, or being beaten, but we didn’t dare to intervene. All we could do was slip them items of food or clothing when the guards weren’t looking. I remember only one moment of light relief. That spring, Claude came downstairs with something bunched up in her hand. What have you got there? I asked. Something for the workers, she told me. She showed me two pairs of fine wool socks. That time Michaux visited, she said, before the war. He left them behind. She gave me a sly grin. Do you think he’ll mind?

  I climbed the ladder we had placed against the wall and stood on the top, looking out over the beach. A recent storm had tossed a quantity of seaweed up onto the sand, where it lay in black uneven rows, like scribbled instructions in a language I couldn’t decipher. My smile faded. Was it true, what I had said to Claude? Would we continue to outwit the Nazis? There were times when the whole thing felt like a parlor game, something we had dreamt up for our own amusement, to stave off the boredom and frustration of the war. It felt so innocent and playful that it was hard to believe we were breaking the law. We were taking such big risks, though, day after day. It would be a miracle if we got away with it.

  Before dawn one morning, I left Claude sleeping and went downstairs. No one else was up. In the kitchen Kid pushed his small striped head against my leg. I picked him up and kissed him.

  “Kikou,” I whispered. “How are you, Kikou?”

  His head smelled faintly of burnt coffee, as always. After I had fed him, I walked outside. It was a crisp January day, the sky turning gray above Le Frêt.

  I left the garden by the side door and crossed the slipway. The sea was sluggish, as if it too had been asleep. Once in the churchyard, I picked my way through the graves and went out through the gate behind the Fishermen’s Chapel. Instead of climbing through the trees, I took the path that led to the groyne or jetty that extended sideways into the bay.

  Stepping down onto the concrete, I noticed a pale object in the water on the side that faced the open sea. At first I assumed it was debris—a container of some kind, a piece of torn canvas—but as I drew closer I realized I was looking at the body of a woman. She was floating face down, and she wasn’t moving. A deep, dark laceration curved down her back, between her shoulder blades, and another ran across her thigh, just above the knee. Her hair, which was dyed a bright peroxide blond, flared out around her head like a ragged halo. I thought briefly of Ophelia, though this woman was no longer young.

  I looked over my shoulder. No one about.

  Not wanting to leave the dead woman where she was in case something happened to her while I was gone, I took off my espadrilles, my jacket, and my trousers and climbed backwards down a rusty ladder. I swam every day for most of the year, though rarely in the winter, and the water I lowered myself into was so cold that it chased the air from my lungs. There was an eerie, dull silence now I was on the side of the jetty that faced the ocean, and I felt a stab of fear I could not explain. It was as if the woman was a lure, and I had put myself in danger.

  I reached for her shoulder. Her flesh was lard white and resilient, but also slippery. Gripping her high up on her arm, I began to steer her towards the end of the jetty. Strands of her long hair wrapped themselves across my mouth. I couldn’t see her face. It was beneath the surface. Though it seemed likely she had been dead for several hours, I kept feeling that she was trying to communicate with me. I felt she might come alive. Lift her head and look at me, her eyes bleached and empty. Pushing the thought away, I kicked hard. The wide arc of the bay came into view.

  Once we were clear of the jetty, the current took hold. It was dragging us sideways, towards the east end of the bay, and I had to fight to stay on course for the beach below our house. By the time I reached the shallows, the muscles in my arms were aching, and I was breathing hard. About fifty yards away, a woman in an overcoat was walking on the sand. I stood up and waved.

  “Can you help?” I called out.

  The woman came over and stood at the edge of the sea with her hands on her hips. It was Constance, the adopted daughter of Mrs. Brown, who ran the café at the far end of the beach. Constance was a strong swimmer, and was known to have saved more than two dozen people using equipment she had herself invented. I noticed her glance at my shirt, which had stuck to the flat place where my left breast used to be.

  “Is she dead?” Constance asked.

  I looked down at the body that was bumping gently, almost affectionately, against my leg. “Yes.”

  Taking off her coat and shoes, Constance helped me haul the woman out of the water and up onto the sand. We turned her onto her back, and I saw her face for the first time. Her eyes had a glazed or puzzled look, as if she had just been told a joke she didn’t understand. She had a scar on the right side of her belly, where her appendix had been removed. Her lips were a strange dark mauve.

  Constance asked who the woman was.

  “I’ve never seen her before,” I said. “She was on the other side of the jetty. I thought I should bring her in.” I began to shiver.

  “You did the right thing.” Constance picked up her coat and draped it over the woman’s face and body. “I’ll stay here. You go and get warm—and telephone the authorities.”

  I returned half an hour later, with Claude, Edna, and George. I had brought Constance a blanket, but she said she didn’t need it. Bending, Edna lifted the coat and peered at the woman’s face.

  “I’ve seen her in town,” she said. “She’s a prostitute.”

  Claude spoke to Constance. “Do you think she might have killed herself?”

  Constance shook her head. “People don’t come to St. Brelade to kill themselves. If they drown on this beach, it’s usually because they don’t know what they’re doing.”

  Not long afterwards, an ambulance drove down the slipway and out across the firm, damp sand.

  It was a few days before I heard the story. Edna was right. The dead woman was a prostitute who had been working in St. Helier. The year before, the German authorities had opened a brothel in the Hotel Victor Hugo, and a number of women had been brought over from mainland France, principally from Normandy. It had not been a success. Perhaps the women were lacking in youth or charm—most of them were over thirty, and some were almost fifty—or perhaps the German soldiers preferred to find girlfriends on the island. Whatever the reason, business was so slow that the establishment was closed down in late November, and the German authorities arranged for the women to be returned to the mainland on a freighter captained by a Dutchman. There were two hundred German troops on board as well. After departing from St. Helier in a dense fog, the ship ran aground on the rocks off Noirmont Point. Most of the passengers drowned. The bodies of thirty-six Germans were recovered from the sea, and they were buried in the cemetery next to our house, but the authorities denied the existence of any prostitutes.

  I never did learn the woman’s name.

  A couple of months later, when Claude and I called in at our tobacconist in St. Helier to buy cigarette papers, we found the woman who ran the place talking to a gray-haired man in a fawn-colored Crombie. We waited patiently as he railed against “the filthy foreigners” who had arrived in such great numbers. At first I assumed he was referring to the occupying forces—there were twenty thousand German troops on the island at the time, one for every two members of the local population—but as the conversation continued it became clear that it was the slave workers that had upset him.

  “They’re riddled with disease,” he said. “Typhoid, tuberculosis, dysentery—there’s no telling what you might catch.”

  “Most of them are criminals, apparently,” the woman said.

  The man nodded. “Some are homosexuals too. They were in Russian prisons before the Germans brought them here.”

  “My neighbor caught one of them in her garden, stealing—”

  “Typical.”

  I could feel Claude’s outrage building and put a hand on her arm to res
train her, but it was too late.

  “You’re repellent,” she said, “both of you.”

  The shopkeeper lowered her eyes, and the old man’s cheeks reddened, as though he had been slapped.

  “Now look here—”

  “Those people are innocent,” Claude said. “It’s the Nazis who are the criminals.”

  “You’ll get us into trouble,” the old man said, “talking like that—”

  “And as for you two,” Claude went on, “you’re even worse than the Nazis. At least they have the courage of their own convictions.” She turned towards the door, then stopped, one hand on the doorknob. “I won’t be shopping here again.”

  “You’re not welcome here,” the old man said.

  The woman still hadn’t spoken.

  We left the shop, Claude slamming the door behind us.

  I approved of the stand she had made. How could I not? Too many people on the island thought that if the slave workers were mistreated it was because they had done something to deserve it. Nevertheless, I thought her outburst ill-advised. It was a bad time to be making enemies. The Germans had been offering rewards to informers, and there were always those who were prepared to turn in their neighbors in exchange for extra food rations or a cash payment. Some betrayed out of a sense of self-righteousness or self-interest: they believed that if you resisted the Germans you were breaking the law. Others exploited the situation to settle old scores. With one phone call, you could ruin someone’s life while at the same time bettering your own.

  Outside, on the pavement, I put an arm round Claude’s shoulders, and we set off for the bus station. It was a mild April day, all bustling clouds and splashes of sunlight, but her face was pinched, as if with cold. I decided not to mention my misgivings. There wasn’t any point.

  At that time, George was working at the Soldatenheim as a cook. In principle we disapproved, but there were distinct advantages. Sometimes he was able to smuggle food out of the kitchens, and we would feast on luxuries like cake and cheese. As a rule, though, all we had to eat was turnip soup or dandelion soup or soup made using weeds. Even Kid ate soup. We became inventive. I blackened slivers of root vegetable in the oven and ground them into a powder. When added to boiling water, this provided us with a decent substitute for coffee. Edna managed to extract flour from potatoes, and also, being Edna, alcohol. Once, I went out hunting with a butterfly net and caught a sparrow. Claude made sardonic jokes about a Sunday roast. Since we had a large garden we were luckier than most, but we still grew weak from lack of nutrition. If I made the slightest effort—if I swept the floor, or mowed the lawn—I would break out in a sweat that smelled oddly bitter, like the sap of plants. If we didn’t wear belts our trousers fell down, as though we were in a Charlie Chaplin film. That winter, we only had electricity for two or three hours a day, and not at all at night, and hunger gouged at us, keen as a knife. Even Claude suffered, since she seemed to have had more of an appetite since the arrival of the Nazis. We often went to bed for twelve or fourteen hours at a stretch, curled round our empty stomachs. There was no wood left; it was the only way of keeping warm. We drifted in and out of consciousness. If we talked, we talked about the past. Do you remember the evening in Shakespeare & Company, when Joyce read from Ulysses? Do you remember his voice, so light and reedy, hardly a breath between the words? What words, though. What words…And what about the time we saw Josephine Baker at the Folies Bergère? She had nothing on except a few pink feathers. We were sitting so close that her sweat landed on our clothes. Remember? The past: it was hard to believe that any of it had happened. Dalí, and Breton, and Kiki singing pornographic love songs to Man Ray. The psychoanalyst, Lacan, forever running off with other people’s wives. The night we watched Murnau’s Nosferatu with Charles-Henri Barbier. What had Barbier said afterwards that made us laugh so much? You should have auditioned, Claude. You might have got the part. Jacques Viot making films of his own, Desnos broadcasting on the radio. Even our recent visitors, Michaux and Jacqueline—even those last golden days before the war…