When the Sky Fell Apart

by Caroline Lea

  She stopped walking. What to say? Of course she was happy to help; such things came naturally to her. And even being asked was a pat on the back for Edith and a knife in the guts of the island gossips: one of the devil’s own, helping in the hospital, working alongside real doctors? The church prayer group would be spitting feathers and fasting for a week.

  And then, of course, there was the chance to save Clement’s life. She’d have felt a callous brute if she’d not agreed to help. But her maman had always told her that it paid to have people believe that they owed you something or other.

  The world doesn’t run on kindness, Edith. It runs on guilt and favours and credit.

  With the war on, who knew what the price would be on kindness for herself or for someone else?

  So she said, ‘I don’t know, Doctor, I really don’t…’

  He had been smiling—so sure she would say yes. His face fell.

  ‘But why on earth not? You’d be saving a man’s life.’

  ‘But that’s just the thing, isn’t it, Doctor: what if I don’t? What if he dies? There’s plenty of folk will be happy to think that I killed him off. The chap who was here before you hated me. He had everyone believing I was working hand in hand with the devil himself. And there’s many were happy to believe it. If Clement died—well… They’d see me locked up for murder, I’m sure. Throw me in the sea to see if I float or sink.’

  Carter tried to win her over to his way of thinking all the way back to her house, panting as he dragged the loaded basket. On and on and on he went. She let him talk. Folk always give more away when their thoughts run free.

  By the time they reached her rickety old gate, he was begging and bargaining. He promised that he would do whatever he could to lift her good name with the rest of the islanders. To hear him talk, he planned to trumpet her praises at dawn from the top of Mount Bingham, whether Clement lived or no.

  She took her basket back. The poor man was now quite exhausted.

  Edith smiled. ‘Thank you, Doctor. Most kind of you; you’ve saved my back, really you have. So, what time shall I call at the hospital tomorrow?’

  He was silent for a moment while her words sank in. ‘Then you’ll do it? You’ll help him? Wonderful woman, you won’t regret this. You’ll see! Thank you, you’re a marvel! Thank you, bless you!’

  And he actually kissed her on the cheek. Well, Edith couldn’t help herself—she let out a shriek and a giggle and he chuckled right along with her.

  Then he was suddenly serious. ‘Perhaps you’d be so kind as to help me with something else then?’

  ‘Try me, Doctor.’

  ‘My aim—that is to say, my intention—is to, well…’ He swallowed. ‘To evacuate Monsieur Hacquoil. Medical equipment on the mainland so far exceeds our own. He stands a much better chance of survival.’

  ‘I see. You need me to make him well enough to travel.’

  ‘Precisely. And also—’

  ‘You want my help taking him from the island?’

  ‘Would you? I just wouldn’t know where to start asking. For supplies, and the boat and so on. I don’t want to risk asking in the wrong places. They’re inclined to be garrulous, these island people.’

  ‘Noticed that, have you? But it’ll be a risky business: evacuating someone. There’s signs up that say they’ll shoot those who try to escape—and those that help could be shipped off to Germany. To one of their work camps.’

  ‘You’re absolutely right: it’s too much to ask. Please forgive me and forget I mentioned—’

  ‘Now, don’t get ahead of yourself. I haven’t said no, have I? Although it would be a foolish undertaking. And I couldn’t even think of leaving myself.’

  ‘No, of course not. But if you could point me in the right direction—’

  ‘I’m hoping I won’t need to do any pointing. If we can nurse Clement back to health then we won’t be talking about leaving at all now, will we?’

  ‘Certainly not. But—well, his condition is critical. It would be as well to have an idea of whom to ask if escape becomes our only option.’

  ‘Stubborn so-and-so, aren’t you?’

  Edith thought for a moment. It was dangerous, of course, but even the thought of it was thrilling: helping someone to escape, right from under the Germans’ noses, and saving Clement’s life. She recalled what Carter had said, the wild passion in his eyes when he talked about the impossibility and barbarism of letting a man—any man—die.

  She spoke slowly. ‘I know a fisherman. He has a boat—unlicensed I suspect, so he doesn’t have to give half his catch to the Bosche. He hasn’t said so, but I’m sure he’s anxious to be away from the island. I’ll have a word, if I must. No guarantees, mind.’

  ‘Of course.’ He grinned, his face suddenly bright and youthful.

  As she waved him off and watched him trudge through the long grasses, Edith felt a prickle of excitement and dread: the same sensation which swept through her when she jumped from a high rock into the dark sea, unsure if the water was deep enough to cradle her from the teeth of the hidden rocks beneath.

  AFTER the Germans came, Claudine’s mother hardly left the house. She sat in her chair and smoked. When her cigarettes ran out, she had Claudine fetch her some nettles and dry the leaves for her. The smoke smelt sour and made their eyes water.

  Coughing, Claudine asked, ‘What is the matter?’

  Maman’s eyes were dark and distant. ‘Nothing. I simply—I miss your papa.’

  Claudine remembered being curled up in her bed, the night before Papa had left on the boat. The sound of shouting. Maman crying, ‘Why won’t you stay?’ Papa saying over and over that he wanted to fight. Saying that Claudine and Maman must stay to milk the cows and tend the chickens and keep the house from the German soldiers who might take it if it was left empty.

  Maman had cried for a long time and then Claudine had heard her hiss, ‘You don’t want to fight. And you don’t care a jot for us. You’re scared. Yellow at the thought of the Germans—’

  Claudine remembered a sound like a single clap. And then another. Applause bouncing off the walls—as if Papa were giving Maman an ovation for speaking her mind.

  Claudine had known better. She knew better now, too. When Maman said, ‘I miss your papa,’ she meant something darker, and more complicated: an idea too knotted for Claudine to untangle into words.

  It was very quiet in school in September when term began, after the Germans had rounded up all the English people and put them on to a boat—the children too. They were going to a work camp in Germany, everybody said.

  Shocked, Claudine had watched the sobbing children clamber aboard, round-eyed and pleading. A German soldier had ruffled their hair and given them sweets. But the children had all spat them out over the side of the boat when the soldier wasn’t looking, just in case they were filled with deadly poison.

  It was harder to hide when the playground was quiet. Claudine remembered once seeing a dog chasing after a colony of rabbits, each tiny creature sprinting across the field, frantic paws drumming. The dog battered after them, weaving in all directions, yelping in frustration until it singled out a lone animal. Isolated from its companions, the creature was soon flop-bodied and broken.

  One morning, a boy, Jacques Benest, found Claudine crouching next to the wall. He stood, staring at her, eyes burning.

  Dry-mouthed, Claudine made daisy chains and pretended he was a rock or a tree.

  ‘Hi there, swot,’ he sneered. He sat down next to her—too close. ‘Do you know that you will be taken away by the German soldiers one day?’

  Claudine didn’t look at him. ‘No, I won’t.’

  ‘Yes, you will. Because you have black hair and brown eyes.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So you look just like a filthy Jew. And everybody knows that the Germans hate the bloody, filthy Jews. My papa says they’re rounding them all up and making them do all their work, like animals.’

  Jacques Benest had a round, soft-cheeked f
ace, blue eyes and fair hair that curled close to his scalp, like lambs’ wool. He looked like the pictures of flying cherubs Claudine had seen in books, pale hands stretched out to touch Baby Jesus.

  She stood and edged backwards until the wall was cold and hard against her spine.

  He laughed. ‘You shouldn’t be dithering. You should be running away before they catch you and do you in. You and all the filthy Jews. My papa thinks the Germans should finish them all off. Bang, bang, bang! Right between the eyes. Loud as anything.’

  He hooted with laughter. His breath smelt of apples and his mouth was crowded with strong, white teeth. Next to him, Claudine felt small and dark and grubby.

  But his words made no sense to her: she knew that the Germans had made special laws which said that Jews weren’t allowed into some shops and couldn’t come out of their houses for most of the day. But that didn’t mean that anyone was going to shoot them.

  Jacques took a step towards her, still laughing, his fists clenched.

  ‘Why do you call them filthy Jews?’ she asked.

  He stopped laughing and stared. ‘Don’t you know anything?’ He smirked. ‘I thought you were clever?’

  As long as she kept him talking, perhaps it would keep his hard fists away from her.

  ‘I haven’t any books about Jews,’ she said.

  ‘They make a great deal of money. From other people. They steal it, all the money. That’s what my papa says. No one likes them. They’re a rotten lot. And you look just like them.’

  Very softly—she couldn’t help it, even though she knew it was comments like this that made other children call her stuck-up and know-all—Claudine said, ‘But I’m not a Jew. Everybody knows that.’

  Jacques curled his lips into a cruel smile, then pointed his fingers at her forehead and said, ‘Bang!’

  Even her lessons were different, after the Germans came. The new teacher was called Madame Vibert. She put a picture of Hitler on the wall next to the chalkboard. They had to salute it every morning and say, Heil Hitler!

  The children had to learn German, and they were not allowed to speak Jèrriais in case they were secretly plotting to blow up the Germans with a box of matches or build a boat from school desks and float across the channel to freedom. The thought made Claudine smile.

  She quite enjoyed speaking German. Some words had a precision and a simplicity: hier and gut and kommen sounded almost like the English words. Two wonderful sentences were das ist gut and kommen sie hier. It was rather like speaking English with an absurd accent, and anyone could do that.

  Longer words were imbued with beauty and elegance: her mouth watered over the drawn-out vowels and blurred consonants of pflaumenkuchen, and at night she said the word again and again and dreamed of a plum cake more delicious than anything she had ever tasted.

  When she wasn’t trying to learn German, she spent many of her hours in school lost in thought over the ways that Maurice could escape and whom he could take with him on the boat.

  Dr Carter would have been a good choice, but he was confusing. Why hadn’t he left with all the other English people? When she was collecting the meat ration, Claudine heard Madame Hacquoil saying that Dr Carter was ‘a martyr to poor Clement’s cause’. When she looked up martyr in the big school dictionary, it said a person who is killed because of their religious or other beliefs. She thought he must be a very good doctor to risk being killed for his patients.

  Claudine wondered if she could persuade Maman to help, because she knew how to look after people and she was ever so kind when she wasn’t in a black mood.

  Her mother had worn her nightgown a great deal since Papa left, exactly as she had after Francis was born. When he was very little, he’d cried a lot, while Maman stayed in bed for days. Claudine had heard her hissing at Francis when he cried: Shut up, shut up, shut up! I hate you!

  At first, Edith had come to help Maman every day, but one day, Claudine had arrived home from school and the air was hot with shouting. Maman was crying and Francis was screeching while Edith stood with her arms stretched out, saying, ‘Just let me hold him, only for a minute. Just while you steady yourself. Some deep breaths, come now. I’ll take him and quiet him, there now, Sarah.’

  But Maman had held on tighter to Francis—the cords stood out on her neck and her lips curled back so she looked like a snarling animal. Francis’s lips were blue from screaming and no noise came out, though his mouth was open wide.

  Edith reached out to take him.

  ‘Get away from me, you interfering old witch!’ Maman growled.

  Then she had made Edith leave and slammed the door after her.

  At first, Edith had returned every day and knocked, imploring. When there was no answer, she left soup on their doorstep, or jars of herbs.

  But Maman wouldn’t let her in and she threw the offerings into next-door’s pig trough. When Claudine heard Papa ask Maman what had happened, Maman had snapped, ‘She was meddling.’

  Maman’s rages worsened after Edith stopped coming. That was when Papa had brought Francis into Claudine’s room. He had slept in bed next to her ever since, soft-faced and huffing, fists like tightly curled shells, breath sweet with sleep.

  She cuddled him in the night when he woke; he pulled on her hair in the mornings to rouse her, grinning gummily. But sometimes, as if from nowhere, a resentful thought snarled through Claudine’s mind: I wish you’d never been born!

  The ugliness of the thought shocked her, and she always held Francis closer and kissed him harder, so that he would never know that somewhere within her, there was a shrivelled soul that hated him.

  One morning, in late September, two soldiers hammered on the door. They stared straight through Claudine and Maman and turned their hard faces from Francis’s howls.

  They had come to take Rowan and Elderflower and all the chickens. They handed a letter from the Commandant to Maman, kept their eyes on the floor while she shouted protests. And then, deaf to the raw sound of Claudine’s sobbing, they took the animals.

  Maman continued to hurl Jèrriais curses at their retreating backs, but they carried on walking. Eventually, her shoulders sagged and she slumped back to bed. Claudine crept after her.

  ‘Maman,’ she whispered. ‘I think the Germans are evil, don’t you?’

  Maman stared at the ceiling. She could have been made of candlewax, except that the rough flannel of her pink smock rose and fell, rose and fell. Claudine reached out and took her hand. Cold, but Maman didn’t glare or snatch her hand away. Encouraged, Claudine climbed into bed next to her and stroked her hair, gently, as if she were caressing a wild cat.

  ‘I hate the Germans,’ she said, softly. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, dear,’ Maman sighed. She rolled over and stared at the wall.

  It was easier to talk to her back. Claudine counted her teeth with her tongue and said, ‘I thought we might try to escape.’

  There came a noise that might have been a laugh or a sob. ‘Fancy being shot, do you, you goose? Fetch me a glass of water, my love.’

  ‘But we would be careful. We could go at night.’

  Maman rolled back over. Her eyes were fierce and her voice was ice again.

  ‘Don’t be a fool. We can’t move without bumping into a German soldier. And how would we go unseen at night, with all the patrols after curfew?’

  ‘But we can’t stay here.’ Suddenly panicked, Claudine clutched Maman’s sleeve. ‘What will we do when all the food runs out?’

  Maman shook her off. ‘Don’t be silly. I’m sure we’ll manage. And we’ve enough food for today, even without the cows and the chooks. Don’t trouble your head with tomorrow.’

  Claudine tried to imagine not worrying. Maman may as well have asked her to be a dog, gaily wagging its tail and leaping through life without a care for where the next meal would come from. Even cows in the field lay down when they felt the threat of rain in the air. But she couldn’t say as much to Maman: it might stop her talking, send her further i
nto a black mood.

  Instead, she said, ‘But there must be somewhere else we can go? France, perhaps? I know they have German soldiers too, but there are more places to hide. It is bigger—’

  Maman’s laugh was high-pitched. ‘And risk being caught and cooped up in a work camp? We’re better off here, you cuckoo. Even with the ghastly Germans.’

  ‘Perhaps we could go to England and be with Papa?’

  Maman squeezed her so it was hard to breathe, kissing her nose roughly. ‘And what do you think people would have to say about us running away?’

  ‘It wouldn’t matter. We wouldn’t hear them in England.’

  ‘You have some funny ideas, sometimes, my love.’

  She stroked Claudine’s hair and pulled her in close again. Claudine felt a shudder pass through Maman’s body. When she peeked up at Maman’s face, her cheeks were wet. She put her head back down on Maman’s chest, in case she was ashamed to be seen crying. But Maman stroked her hair again and whispered, ‘I love you. You know that, don’t you?’

  Claudine couldn’t move, didn’t want to move because of the hum of those words, echoing in her chest like a tuning fork.

  They shared an egg for breakfast between the three of them, laughing afterwards because their tummies were still grumbling. They shouted at Francis’s tummy, ‘Crying won’t get you anywhere!’ They used thick German accents and shouted, ‘Halt den Munde!’ Sometimes pretending to be happy was enough.

  But the walk to school was always miserable. Claudine walked by herself because the other children thought her strange, odd, touched. Too clever by half.

  She walked the most pleasant way, which was along the beach, by the beaten metal of the sea. The sea and the sky yawned above and beside her. She felt she was at the centre of some enormous blue eye. The dunes towered over her; she was smaller than an ant, had less meaning than a grain of sand, or one of the blades of knife-edged, wind-whipped grass.

  Claudine knew that the sea and sky she saw also touched the lives of thousands of people, miles away, in countries she had only ever seen in an atlas. But none of those people cared about Claudine, or knew that she breathed the same air as they did. Thinking about it hurt. Not like stubbing her toe, or even like the time she had fallen and cracked her arm bones—it was a throbbing in her head and her stomach. As if every vein in her body, every loop of her gut, every inch of her skin were a beating drum.