When the Sky Fell Apart

by Caroline Lea

  He waited for the soldier to notice the bulges in his pockets, or catch the scent of those fish and call Halt! But he didn’t say a word, simply carried on blowing smoke high up in the air and watching it drift away.

  Surely he had to be play-acting? Any minute now, he’d pull his gun, stop Maurice and search him. He’d discover those fish and that would be that. Prison at first, but a bullet straight through his skull was most likely, once they discovered the boat without a proper licence.

  Maurice watched his feet as though they were someone else’s, taking one step after another, across the grass, and then over the paving stones. His belly was churning. Those damn fish in his pockets, cold and slippery under his fingers.

  Please let me see Marthe. To give her the fish. To say goodbye. Only let me say goodbye to her.

  Suddenly, Maurice was safely past.

  He could feel the soldier’s eyes on his back. The hardest thing was not to run. He made himself stroll, and then closed the door gently. Just as though he hadn’t a care or a worry in the world.

  He could hear himself panting. He leant against the door, blinking black spots from his vision. The house felt too warm. But it was silent—Edith and Marthe must still be in bed. Maurice had taken to asking Edith to sleep in the house if he was going to be out all night, rather than taking Marthe to her house, which looked too suspicious if a patrol saw them. He would rather have raised eyebrows from neighbours who didn’t know how to mind their own business than have soldiers baying at the door.

  Perhaps that was why he was so shaken up by seeing one at the end of the garden. Bold as brass, as if he was waiting for someone in particular. Maurice peeped out the window, breath misting the glass, then ducked down again, cursing. Damn soldier was still there, his cigarette glowing.

  As he crouched, he caught sight of the soldier’s other hand. It was curled into a tight fist, the skin was taut and shiny, as if it was too small for the bunched-up bones beneath.

  It struck Maurice as something of a puzzle. If what the French fishermen said was true, then the Germans didn’t put much stock in cripples. Why had such a specimen been allowed to survive, let alone put in the army? Shouldn’t he be in some work camp somewhere? Or being tested? Or he should have been put against a wall and shot long ago, before the war even started.

  Maurice yanked the curtains shut. None of his business and he wasn’t going to join the pot-stirrers by mulling it over and gossiping to anyone who would listen.

  The house was a mess. Edith was slovenly, although she was good with Marthe. Maurice had to clear the pots and crocks from the sink before he could wash the sea smell from his skin and the salt from his hair. He clattered the pots without thinking. He was usually careful and quiet as could be, especially if Marthe was sleeping.

  He set the last pan down on the drainer and then stripped off to his smalls. Marthe used to pretend to retch at the smell of the sea on him—she said it made him stink like a fish. Sometimes, in the old days, Maurice used to tease her by coming back early and crawling into bed next to her, without washing. He’d press against her. Kiss the back of her neck. She would be half asleep, and so she would roll over and match kiss for kiss, hot breath and her body opening under him. But then she’d catch a whiff of the sea and she’d squeal and laugh and slap him away.

  You’re the very devil, Maurice Pipon!

  She’d march him to the tin bath and throw buckets of cold water over him. Scrub his skin until it glowed red under her touch.

  He would let himself be bossed and scolded and dragged about and scrubbed by this little wisp of a woman for just as long as he could restrain himself, but then his resolve would crumble and he’d yell and try to pull her into the bath with him. When she skittered away, he’d splash her, until she’d be standing there, nightdress clinging to that milky skin. Naked underneath. The rounded warmth of her body showing through the wet nightdress. Her head thrown back, laughing, hair soaked. Like a mermaid.

  It was a crushing in his chest, that love he had for every part of her.

  But now she was too ill to talk or stand or speak, Maurice always painstakingly rinsed every trace of sea smell from his skin. If he went to kiss her after he’d been out on the boat, he always did it quickly. Mouth closed. A brush of his lips against hers, and then he pulled away. Just in case she hated the smell but couldn’t move or tell him. Because now, that mermaid’s body was her prison. Her legs might as well have been fins for all the good they were to her.

  He sighed and used the dishcloth to dry himself, which Marthe would have hated if she’d known. But it was either that or stand in the freezing air and shiver himself dry.

  He had just about towelled most of the water off when he heard a rustling in the doorway. Thinking of the soldier, his heart alarmed and he jumped, but it was only Edith, grinning at him.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t see you there, I was…’

  He dropped his fists back to his sides and held the dishcloth in front of himself and waited for her to leave or beg his pardon.

  She bustled into the kitchen. ‘Morning, my love. How were the fish? I’ve left Marthe to sleep in. She woke around midnight and then struggled to settle—she’d wet her sheets, although I didn’t notice at first. So her skin’s a little tender this morning. You know how she is.’

  Before Maurice could say a word, Edith was at the sink with last night’s wet sheets in her hand. She barged him to one side and he dropped his cloth.

  She didn’t even look up. ‘For heaven’s sake, Maurice, put some clothes on, will you? Chop chop!’

  All his clothes were in the bedroom—where Marthe was asleep—except for an old cardigan and some badly patched trousers which he kept down behind the armchair. He tried to reach the clothes without bending over and without dropping the cloth. All the while, Edith was humming away to herself and stirring those sheets around in the water—she must have known he was struggling, but she carried on smiling and stirring.

  In the end, he managed to shunt the armchair to one side and grab the clothes. He dropped the cloth for a moment while he pulled his trousers on. He thought Edith might turn her back, or go outside, or do anything else you’d expect of a woman when there was a naked man in the room. Maurice couldn’t be sure, but he thought she was sneaking a peek now and then, amused.

  Once he was dressed, he said, ‘What about that soldier, then?’

  ‘What soldier, Maurice, my love?’

  ‘The one sitting at the bottom of the garden. With the odd-looking hand.’

  ‘Oh, him! Yes, he had me in a lather too, when I first noticed him. But honestly, Maurice, he seems harmless enough. And with that hand—what damage could he do?’

  ‘Now just a minute. How long has he been here?’

  ‘Oh, not long. Perhaps three days. Mostly when you’ve been out on the boat.’

  ‘Days? Why on earth didn’t you say something?’

  ‘I didn’t want you fretting. Look at you now—imagining all sorts of horrors and don’t think I can’t tell. And him not doing anything except sitting there.’

  ‘Well of course he’s not simply sitting there. He’s on to me!’

  ‘Come now, Maurice, there’s no reason to think—’

  He slumped at the table, trying to quash his panic. ‘Well, what else would he be doing? I’m telling you, they know about the boat. It’s the finish for me. For the lot of us, most likely.’

  ‘Don’t work yourself up. If they knew then they’d have come knocking already. I’d be in prison and you’d be halfway to Germany by now. He could be about something completely different.’

  He jumped up and his chair clattered over. ‘Marthe! Oh God, you think he’s after Marthe? The prison camps! We must do something—’

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, calm down! If they were going to take her, they’d have done it by now.’

  His heart thrummed unevenly in his chest. ‘I’m going to look in on her.’

  ‘Don’t you dare! She’s asleep. Just sit yourself
down and close your eyes. You need the rest as much as she does. Panicking won’t change a thing. We go about our usual business and wait.’

  So Maurice stamped across the room, leant against the bedroom door and closed his eyes. He imagined Marthe on the other side of the door, sleeping with her hands up close to her face.

  He felt a sudden urge to weep or scream. Instead he let his knees collapse under him and sank to the floor.

  Edith was drying the dishes and humming again. She flashed him a sympathetic smile and then brought over a cup of nettle tea and squeezed his arm when he took it.

  ‘It’ll be well. We shan’t let them have her.’

  The tea was scalding. ‘I wish we could leave. There’s no way to keep her safe here—’

  ‘I know. Try to rest.’

  ‘I’m tired of all this talking. I want to do…something.’

  She smiled, sadly. ‘I know you do. But you can’t fight the whole German army, Maurice. Even if you tried, you’d be shipped off or…’ Edith sighed. ‘The best thing any of us can do is hope for things to change. We’ve nothing but time, my love.’

  CLAUDINE didn’t see Gregor for a long time after that night with the sand eels and the soldiers. She walked to school a different way; she played with Francis on another part of the beach. Thinking of Gregor reminded her of the other soldier with the hard hands, and she felt ashamed and frightened. What if the soldiers had talked to one another and Gregor knew what the horrible soldier had done to her? And that she hadn’t struggled to get away, but had let him touch her? She imagined the pity and the disgust on Gregor’s face. Every time she saw him, she would remember that night.

  So she avoided him and spent more time at home, helping Maman, who always wanted to lie in bed. If Claudine pleaded, Maman made dinner. But while she did it, her face was frozen into a pained expression, her mouth twisted like Clement Hacquoil’s, even though no fire had scorched her skin. She rarely smiled. When Claudine told her about school and German lessons, or the games they played, Maman blinked like a sleepwalker and said, ‘Hmm.’

  Once or twice, in moments Claudine treasured afterwards, Maman was more like her old self. From before Papa had left. Before Francis was born.

  When it was Claudine’s birthday, in November, Maman showed her how to cook bean crock, but they hadn’t many beans and no pork at all, so they used potatoes instead. They peeled them together over the sink. They were seed potatoes, really—Claudine had dug them out of Mr Ozouf’s vegetable patch when no one was looking.

  ‘Were you planning on leaving any potato to eat,’ Maman asked, ‘or are you peeling it all for compost?’

  ‘Sorry, I’m trying.’

  ‘Well, try harder.’ But her mouth was soft, her voice warm. ‘Look, come here. Like this, and this. Gently does it. That’s it.’

  She held her deft hands over Claudine’s, turning the potato quickly and slicing off the thinnest slivers—transparent, like wet petals.

  When she had finished peeling, she pressed the potato back into Claudine’s hands. ‘Happy birthday, my love.’ Then she kissed the back of Claudine’s neck.

  Claudine giggled. ‘A potato for my birthday?’

  Maman grinned. ‘For your birthday cake!’

  Claudine wondered if Maman would mind if she kissed her back. Next time, she definitely would.

  But when it came to eating Claudine’s potato birthday cake, Maman wasn’t hungry: she trudged back to bed and pulled the quilt over her head. Claudine tried not to mind; she shared the potato and the bean crock with Francis. They gobbled every mouthful, even though the potatoes tasted bitter and had the powdery feel of dry flour between their teeth.

  Claudine saved some for Maman—took a bowl of the bean crock into the bedroom for her, but Maman was asleep. Claudine gave it to Francis instead.

  There was less and less fuel to heat up the water, so they all shared the same bathwater in the metal tub in front of the stove. Usually, Claudine bathed Francis first—she held his hand while he kicked and splashed her and chuckled that infectious toddler laugh that always made him sound fat and happy, even though he was scrawny as a plucked chicken and far too small for an almost three-year-old.

  One evening, Claudine was struggling to bath Francis: he was making a great joke of drinking the bathwater and laughing, but she worried he would drown so she kept trying to pull his face up out of the water and he kept screaming, ‘No! Dink!’ and squirming free of her hand to slurp the water. He would choke for a moment, then giggle and say, ‘Gain!’

  ‘For heaven’s sake!’ Claudine snapped. ‘Keep still, Francis!’

  Maman came into the kitchen. ‘Come on, trouble, in you go.’

  Claudine raised her eyebrows. ‘But I can’t wash and stop Francis drowning himself. He thinks it’s funny, look.’

  Francis giggled. ‘Dink!’

  Maman rolled her eyes. ‘So shuffle on up then.’

  She helped Claudine climb into the tub and squeezed in behind her.

  The water splashed over the sides when she sat down. It was a warm feeling in the cooling water: the closeness.

  Maman held Claudine’s hand when she climbed out.

  ‘Thank you,’ Claudine said, and kissed her on the shoulder. It was wet and tasted of coal tar soap.

  After that, they squeezed into the tub together every night.

  It was in the tub that Claudine started to notice Maman’s bones. She was shrinking. When she stood up, her ribs were piano keys, stark white and striped with dark shadows.

  She stopped liking meat, always pushed it straight on to Claudine’s plate or fed it to Francis. Sometimes, if Claudine cuddled her and put her face against Maman’s stomach, she could hear it growling.

  At every meal, Claudine devoured every scrap of food (and sometimes licked the plate clean), but she still felt hollow. She didn’t ask for more food because there wasn’t any. But at night, she dreamed of eating a whole chicken and a loaf of bread and a bunch of bananas. She ate and ate until her stomach burst open and she still kept eating but the empty feeling never faded, even in her sleep.

  And when she woke, the hunger hurt.

  Before Christmas, everyone was ill. It started with a cough, which went to Francis’s chest because there was no wood to burn the damp away. Then Claudine caught it too; they coughed each other awake at night, hacking up green phlegm, foreheads burning, eyes aching, mouths feeling like they had been stuffed with wire wool. Maman sat up in the chair in their room every night, sponging their skin, fanning them cool.

  They were ill for over a week. But no sooner were they on the mend than Maman’s face had the look of grey tallow and she was coughing day and night. Eyelids like bruises, breath rattling in her chest.

  She went to bed for a week, but her cough worsened. She was awake all night with it; Claudine could hear her fighting to draw breath. When she coughed, there were dark shadows at her throat and her collarbones stood out like the beams of a broken-down house. Claudine could count every bone in her back, and the stacked bricks of her spine.

  ‘Shall I fetch Dr Carter?’ she asked.

  ‘No, no…we can’t—’ Maman coughed, eyes bulging and then gasped, ‘No money.’

  ‘Well, then, I will give him my ormer shells. He can sell them when the war is finished. They are rare and pretty. They must be worth lots of money.’

  Maman shook her head and carried on hacking. Hearing it, icy fingers clasped at Claudine’s gut.

  ‘I’ll fetch Madame Bisson, then,’ she blurted.

  ‘Don’t you dare! She’ll interfere as she always does and—’

  ‘But Maman, you are very poorly—’

  ‘No means no!’

  ‘But what if you die?’ Claudine started crying.

  Maman gave her a kiss and squeezed her close. ‘I’m not going to die. Silly goose. No more crying, do you hear?’

  But then she coughed, again, and it sounded like when the waves rattled stones on the beach. The rattling went on for a long time.
Claudine knew that, over many years, the sea could scrape solid rock down to nothing, could make huge boulders disappear. She wondered how many coughs it would take for Maman’s lungs to be worn away to nothing.

  The next morning, Claudine stopped at Dr Carter’s house instead of going to school. She hammered on the door and the window until her knuckles stung. No answer. Then she saw him walking up the hill towards her. He didn’t look thin and shadowy, like everybody else. But he looked smaller than she remembered. His eyes were sad and weary and full of little red veins.

  Claudine tried to sound calm and grown-up but her voice was high-pitched and quavering with fear.

  ‘My maman is very ill. Can you come now, please?’

  He rubbed his eyes and said, ‘Of course, young lady. Forgive my memory—it’s Miss Duret, isn’t it?’

  She nodded. ‘Claudine.’

  He had a nice face when he smiled. ‘Off we go then, Claudine.’

  When they reached the house, Maman was asleep, but the kitchen was loud with the grating rattle of her breathing from down the hallway.

  When Dr Carter came into the bedroom, she startled awake and snapped, ‘Claudine! I told you—’

  But then she started hacking. Her face went red, then white like wax, and then she fell back on to the pillows. She was gasping as though she had been running, and when she took the handkerchief from her mouth, there was a blossom of bright blood on it.

  Claudine felt hot panic course through her. ‘Can you help her, Doctor? Don’t let her die!’

  Dr Carter’s mouth was a grim line. ‘You should have called me before this, Madame Duret. Lie back. No, don’t talk. Just nod or shake your head.’

  Maman shook her head and glared.

  ‘She is worried because we haven’t any money to pay you,’ Claudine said. ‘But I can give you my ormer shells. Tourists will pay lots of money for them, after the war is over. Please take them.’

  He listened to Maman’s chest, nodding and smiling at Claudine.