When the Sky Fell Apart

by Caroline Lea

  He’d cried, ‘What on earth?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, darling,’ she’d said. ‘Look at this mess. Now just you sit tight and let me clean it up.’

  She had tried to push him away when he sat her back down. She kept apologising for the state of the kitchen, and all the while she was sitting there with her legs raw and burnt and bloody. Holding her own skin in her hands.

  He’d steered clear of the previous doctor, Dr Laird, up until then, but there was no escaping that time. He diagnosed Huntington’s Chorea.

  Maurice didn’t care what it was called. He just wanted to know what to do, how they could avoid the fate her mother had suffered. But Laird had shaken his head and said there was nothing to be done. She would worsen and would need full-time care—sooner rather than later, as the disease progressed faster in younger people. ‘Frightful business,’ he’d murmured.

  And, in the end, it would cause an infection, which would kill her.

  Sorry, old chap.

  Maurice had taken himself out for a walk. Stood on the cliff and bawled at the sea and the sky. Bent double with grief, he had screamed and sobbed until his breath ran out.

  That was when he tried having that girl to tend her. But then, after he’d had to send her packing, he thought, I can’t do it. I can’t leave Marthe with anyone again.

  Once the war started and France was occupied, Maurice would sometimes see the French fishermen who had managed to sneak out on to the sea, and they would tell stories of women being raped and gutted. Poked at with guns and knives before they were slit open like fish. Children shot at in the street for playing out after curfew. Or simply picked off, like stray dogs.

  There were the other stories, too: Herr Hitler had it in for the Jews, it seemed—they were being rounded up all over Europe and put into camps where, Maurice imagined, they were forced to work for the Germans, or heaven knows what. And other types were taken off to work camps too: people who were crippled or too ill to care for themselves, gypsies. Homosexuals as well, but the fishermen laughed about that.

  But he couldn’t laugh at any of it. He could see that they didn’t think it funny, not really. They laughed too loudly and for too long. And then there were lingering shards of silence when they all thought about their women and children.

  So Maurice gave it all a good deal of thought while he scrubbed at the floor. By the time he had finished, he knew Claudine was right: they had to be out, before the Germans arrived. Never mind the journey—he would row until his back snapped in two.

  He packed up a suitcase, just a few bits and pieces: clothes and so on for both of them, and some of the lavender soap that Edith had made for Marthe to help her sleep. Food and plenty of water, and that was it. He knew the soldiers were expected any hour.

  His boat was moored up close to shore—he could carry Marthe down. She might sleep in the boat, if he was lucky. He could be on the mainland within two days, if he rowed hard.

  But it was just as before, when he’d wanted to evacuate on that collier. Would Marthe leave the house? The tears began when he picked her up. Then, when he reached the door, she screamed and thrashed around as he’d seen small children do. Corded tendons on her neck, limbs flailing, lips stretched back so her face was more animal than human.

  He tried to talk to her, to explain the way of it. Shush, shush, this is for the best, my love. But shush and listen now. For God’s sake, Marthe. For God’s sake.

  But she was shrieking so loudly he didn’t think she could hear him. And who knew if she could understand, in any case? He’d never seen anything like it—she was normally gentle as a kitten. He had always been the one with the temper.

  He had to bundle her over his shoulder, pin her arms and legs. She kept straightening her limbs and flailing out so he couldn’t pass through the door without hurting her. He hadn’t a free hand for the suitcase, so he booted it in front of him.

  Marthe was moaning something that sounded like the word no, even though she hadn’t uttered a word to anyone in months. She began howling it, over and over again.

  ‘Nononono!’

  Next she started scrabbling her hands around and clawing at his back with her nails. Some days she couldn’t even lift her own head from the pillow, but now she was flaying the skin from his back. And, as he began walking down the hill, the noise drew people from their houses. Folk began staring and whispering and then looking away and then back again, mouths agape.

  Maurice ignored them and walked on. Let them talk.

  At the bottom of the hill, Madame Le Cornu peered out from behind her washing. She tutted and shook her head.

  A few fellows were digging a ditch nearby. They laid down their spades and scowled.

  ‘There now, Maurice!’ they called. ‘Steady on!’

  One of them, Benest, had his hands raised. Held them out in front of him, as if Maurice was brandishing a gun. ‘Easy now, fellow. Let her go. Easy does it.’

  Maurice pushed on, as though the chap were a strong wind. Noise to walk through, nothing more.

  ‘Come, Maurice,’ Benest said. ‘No need to hurt her. Put her down.’

  Hot lance of fear and rage. ‘I’m not hurting her!’

  Marthe screamed again.

  Benest balled his hands into fists. ‘Now, Maurice, I don’t want to take her from you. But listen. Put her down. She’s distraught. She’s frantic. Put her down now, will you? There’s a good man.’

  Breath sobbing in his throat, Maurice set Marthe down on a nice, soft patch of grass, sank down next to her and buried his face in her hair. She was trembling all over.

  He shushed her, and then he kissed her slack mouth. The fellows stood, gawping. Their hands still in fists.

  Maurice took a juddering breath. ‘Nothing to worry about, lads. One of those days. The Germans coming—she’s panicking. You know how it is.’

  Benest nodded. ‘It’s a worry for the ladies. You’ll look after her, Maurice. And gentle, eh?’

  ‘Never you worry. I shan’t let them touch a hair of her.’

  He lifted her up and walked up the hill and back home, kissing her face with every step. The neighbours stood watching. Madame Le Cornu carried on pegging her washing—later she’d be off to tell Madame Hacquoil every detail.

  Maurice tucked Marthe back up in their bed and stroked her hair from her forehead to help her to sleep. All the while he stared at the picture of the empty cross above their bed. A piece of the frame had been chipped away. Oh, that needs fixing.

  Something to think upon.

  He was glad, so glad, that when he next looked down she wasn’t staring at him any longer. He wrapped his body around hers and tried not to think of those marching boots and shouting voices and their guns, growing closer, closer all the time. He half expected to hear a hammering on the door.

  He worried it backwards and forwards for most of the night. He watched the dark shadows on the ceiling turning into snarling animals. Then men marching, unfurling like endless skeins of wool. Gleaming guns held high. Then he saw clouds. Then aeroplanes, their toothed stomachs vomiting out bomb after bomb.

  When he opened his eyes, it was light outside. The shadows were memories and Marthe was stirring.

  But, as if he was still trapped within his dream, there was a steady, insistent pulsing in his head, like the blood thrumming in his ears. He scrambled upstairs, drew back the curtain and pressed his face against the grubby glass.

  Movement. He could see it on the road up from the beach. Blur of green, as if the very trees were marching.

  He breathed out hot, panicked air on to the glass and scrubbed it with his sleeve, then pressed his face against the cold window.

  The hazy green gradually formed itself into bodies and legs and marching boots. And bristling black guns, glinting in the morning sun.

  FROM a ramshackle jetty that had been hastily pieced together after the bombings, Dr Carter watched the enemy arriving.

  The area around the harbour was packed with bodies, more so
than the morning of the first large evacuation. Everyone jostling for a front-row view. But each was also reluctant to be standing in the firing line. They were all sweat and teeth and hot, rattled breath. Carter had the feeling that at any time chaos could erupt.

  The Bailiff, Alexander Coutanche, had ordered white flags to be hung out in plain view wherever possible, as per the Germans’ instructions. In defiance, some of the islanders had hung out long johns instead of bedsheets.

  The ship had docked a few minutes earlier. It was a beastly thing: an enormous dark grey battleship, brash with guns, monstrous mouth gaping to allow the soldiers to march from its belly. It seemed to Carter, at that moment, as solid and immovable as the ground beneath his feet.

  The soldiers were ordered and disciplined, forming lines and saluting as one before disembarking the ship. Their boots hit the ground in an exact one-two-one-two marching rhythm. It echoed through the ground, into his singing blood—before long it seemed that his heart pounded along to the same tempo.

  Carter reviewed his vital signs as he might examine a patient: heart rate, raised; blood pressure, raised. Mouth quite dry, palms unpleasantly damp. His fear was useless, he knew: it would change nothing. And yet, seeing them for the first time, he was frightened. Enough to make him wish he had returned to England.

  The men themselves were young: lads in their early twenties, for the most part, some younger. Each looked unwaveringly ahead, not allowing their eyes to wander for even a second, in spite of the strange surroundings. The personal and collective discipline put him in mind of a muzzled wolf.

  They were all in rude health, too: ruddy cheeks and solid, well-muscled bodies, not a wheezer or a limper among them.

  Carter tried not to feel nauseous. What a fool he had been to imagine that this invasion could be anything other than catastrophic. But still, just as his fear could not change the dreadful fact of the Germans’ arrival, his panic would not improve matters.

  So he returned to his post at the hospital with a cold fist of horror in his stomach but forced a spring into his step. He smiled and tried to reassure the farmers and fishermen who were winding their way uneasily back to their homes. He had always been conscious that one in his position must attempt to guide and protect those around him.

  An appearance of unruffled calm was something he’d cultivated since childhood. He could still remember the harsh bark of his father’s laughter as he said, ‘Trembling, are you? I’ll give you something to tremble about.’ Then, inevitably, came the slipper, the cane, the back of his father’s work-roughened hand. So, since fear changed nothing, Carter had taught himself not to feel it; or, at least to conceal it, even from himself.

  The hospital staff were terrified—that much was clear as soon as he set foot on the ward.

  The nurses looked up from their bandaging and all conversation stopped. Even the patients, those who were able, lifted their heads to stare. The same question was in every set of eyes.

  Carter waited until he had complete silence and attention before announcing, ‘Nothing to worry about. Not a thing. They seem civilised enough. Very ordered. There will be no riots or pillaging, I would bet my life on it. Now, how is Monsieur Hacquoil today?’

  He didn’t really need to ask. He could see even before he checked the charts that the poor chap was worsening.

  Quite apart from his fever and rapid heart rate, which indicated the onset of infection, his colour was poor and his pupils unresponsive. His body was slowly shutting down, in spite of their best efforts. Much as it pained Carter to admit it, he’d need to move Hacquoil to a larger hospital with more sophisticated treatment methods and access to a wider variety of medication.

  A larger hospital on the mainland might also be able to attempt skin grafts on his burns. The best they could do in Jersey was keep his wounds clean, change his bandages and drain the pus.

  Carter had intended to evacuate him when the collier left but had worried that Clement might not survive the journey. Given his rapid deterioration, however, it was clearly a choice of moving him and giving him the chance of survival or keeping him on the island and attempting to provide for him a comfortable death.

  It was this alternative that Carter planned to present to the Commandant later that day. He would need the German’s permission to evacuate Clement to the mainland.

  The Commandant had established himself in the States of Jersey Buildings in Royal Square—the seat of legislation in the island. All the locally elected officials and the King’s own representative had offices there. It was the vacant office of the Lieutenant Governor (the King’s representative) that the Commandant had chosen as his headquarters. This, too, was part of Jersey’s complicated relationship with England, which had taken Carter some time to fathom: while the Channel Islands were free to make their own laws and exist almost entirely independently of the mainland, the King appointed the Lieutenant Governor to serve as de facto head of state.

  Of course, that would all change now.

  One of the Germans’ instructions before arrival had been that the Lieutenant Governor was to leave, which seemed farcical given that his power on the island was negligible: he simply served as a royal figurehead, a reminder to the islanders that, although they might have French names, they still belonged to the English throne (although, after talking to Madame Bisson, this was not a thought Carter would voice aloud).

  The departure of the Lieutenant Governor again reminded Carter that he really should have left for the mainland. He was English-born and was not permitted by the Germans to remain on the island. But he was prepared to take that risk—his patients, after all, needed him.

  Besides, his old life in England was over now: he had ruined everything. The memory of Father’s fury and disappointment when they parted was painful to recall. Jersey had provided him with a fresh start. A clean slate, which would stay clean, as long as he remained careful.

  Carter’s move and his new life were born out of a desire to make amends, somehow, for the distress he had caused, to shape something like hope from the dead ashes of his past.

  The Lieutenant Governor had clearly departed in a hurry—the Union flag was still displayed above the large oak desk. As Carter entered the office, the Commandant was overseeing the hanging of its replacement: the red and black swastika.

  The Commandant was slightly corpulent and red-cheeked, but he seemed affable enough. He put Carter in mind of a child’s imagining of St Nicholas. Except for the Nazi uniform, of course, and when Carter offered his hand to shake, the Commandant gave a straight-armed salute and barked, ‘Heil Hitler!’

  Carter tried to push his mouth into a smile. ‘Yes, quite. Heil… Very pleased to meet you. Apologies for my poor German—I don’t speak it at all, really.’

  The Commandant sat back in his leather chair, unblinking.

  Carter took a deep breath. ‘Thank you for agreeing to see me. I know how busy you must be, what with the, ah, settling in and so on… Please allow me to introduce myself. I’m Dr Timothy Carter.’

  A faint smile now hovered around the Commandant’s thin lips. Carter felt a surge of irritation.

  ‘The local doctor…physician? Medical…?’ He tapped on his stethoscope.

  The Commandant’s smile widened and the prim little mouth parted. ‘Carter. This is English name, yes?’

  His voice was heavily accented with the guttural sounds so characteristic of native Germans, but his pronunciation was perfectly clear.

  Oh Lord. If he admitted to being English then he instantly put himself at risk of imprisonment or deportation. While Carter’s mind whirred, trying to fabricate a reason for his English name, the Commandant spoke again.

  ‘And your voice—I understand this easily. You do not have the strange accent of Jersey.’

  ‘I, ah—’

  ‘Yes, you are English.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘No English should be here.’

  ‘No, I—’

  ‘But you are doctor. Medical men are useful, no? In war?’<
br />
  He was moving too quickly for Carter to keep pace, though he did latch on to this last idea.

  ‘Ah—yes, of course. I am very useful, as you say. I mainly work in the hospital, although I also engage in home visits, where necessary.’

  The Commandant’s pale eyes narrowed. ‘Useful. Yes.’

  Time swung like a scythe. Carter waited, his heart a clenched fist. Don’t show your fear.

  ‘The island is very pleasant. Much sunshine. This is healthful, yes?’

  A reprieve. Carter exhaled.

  ‘Oh, yes, sunlight is very beneficial. And I agree, the island is very beautiful. Of course, a little less beautiful after…recent events…’ Come on, Tim. He coughed. ‘The bombs. They have damaged the land and people were also injured in the…attack. Some died.’

  The Commandant shrugged. ‘Of course. This is war, yes. Injury, death. This happens.’

  His tone hadn’t altered from when they had been discussing the weather, and Carter felt a chill. The man simply didn’t care. He spoke hurriedly now.

  ‘Yes, so, what I mean to say is, ah, the…difficulty I have concerns one of my patients.’

  ‘Yes?’

  Carter stared at the black swastika above the German’s head and clenched his jaw. His father’s voice had entered his head. For heaven’s sake, Tim! The point is?

  Father had always been impatient with what he saw as his son’s scholar’s sensitivity. Carter was a long-limbed, fine-boned aberration in a family of stocky, brusque farmers, and Father, while proud of Carter as a sharp lad, had no time at all for his airs and graces.

  In other words, his feelings.

  Now, facing the Commandant, his legs shaking, Carter quashed this fear.

  ‘The man in question is a burns victim.’ He kept his voice firm, matter-of-fact. ‘One of the bombs… Chap was caught in the blast and injured. Ah…very gravely injured indeed. Terrible burns. He’s in a bad way, Commandant, I don’t mind telling you. A very bad way.’