When the Sky Fell Apart

by Caroline Lea

  The southern beach of St Aubin’s Bay had been chosen for the execution. It was overlooked by a large stone wall, which would provide ample viewing space for those islanders eager to watch the spilling of foreign blood.

  Father Gillard had been called out early to perform absolution. He was an elderly fellow, arthritic and asthmatic. He was also hard of hearing. Initially, having staggered to Soulette’s cell, he struggled to comprehend the situation.

  ‘But this man is not ill,’ he wheezed. ‘I was instructed to perform the last rites. There must be some misunderstanding.’

  Carter shook his head. ‘I am afraid not.’

  ‘But he is not dying.’

  ‘He is set to die this morning. By firing squad.’

  ‘To be shot? But he is only a boy. What barbarism is this?’

  ‘I thought everyone knew: he was captured while trying to incite rebellion. The Commandant has sentenced him.’

  ‘And you tolerate this, do you? The murder of children?’

  Something in the accusatory tone forced Carter to protest, ‘He is hardly a child. He is twenty-one years old.’

  ‘Still a boy. Look at him, Doctor.’

  Carter felt his defensive stance fade; the priest was right. For heaven’s sake, how on earth could he justify this? He tried to steel himself, Father’s voice in his head, mingling with the Commandant’s until the two became indistinguishable: This is war! And yet, the truth spoken by this gentle, frail priest was so much more profound: This is murder! He is a boy.

  Carter stared at him: mottled skin, covered in spider veins. He listened to the faint stridor on each of the priest’s inhalations. He was, in all likelihood, not long for this world himself. But the conviction of his faith was like a talisman against fear.

  The body carries one certainty within it, from the moment of birth: one day it will fail.

  Carter managed to keep his voice calm, in spite of the accusation in Gillard’s eyes.

  ‘I will leave you with Monsieur Soulette now, Father,’ he said. ‘Thank you for your help. You have been most kind. I’m sure you will be of great comfort to the young man.’

  Carter left the cell, walked down the corridor at a brisk pace and out into the open air. He found a secluded spot and sat down in the shade of some trees, taking out his hipflask. He drank a measure of whisky, then another. Single malt, hot and peaty, but he would have drunk rubbing alcohol with as much relish if it could have annihilated thought and care in the same way.

  He closed his eyes and leant his head against a tree trunk. The bark was rough. It must have been two hundred years old, that tree. An oak. It would be standing long after he had gone. He stood, wrapped his arms around it, then struck his forehead against the trunk. Then again, a little harder. He felt the bark pierce his skin. He longed to curl his arms around himself and weep like a child.

  EDITH hadn’t gone to see the poor French boy butchered. A public execution with the crowds gawping at the blood—it was something from the Dark Ages and she’d have no part in it. She heard folk gossiping about it afterwards, of course: the young lad’s bravery and Dr Carter’s cowardice. But her tears and her rage couldn’t revive the dead or give Carter a backbone, so she tried not to dwell on it, tried to think instead on Marthe and Claudine and her baby brother.

  Francis was growing more bonny by the day. Rationing had thinned his limbs, whittled his tiny fingers to the bone, but his face was round and merry. He laughed often and was an affectionate little soul; he would often run to Edith, arms stretched high, shouting, ‘Cuggwl!’ until she swept him into her arms and held him close.

  Children change the way you see things.

  Edith had sworn to Maurice that the soldier sat at the end of the garden didn’t bother her. But still, after a good few days of him watching them, Edith found herself more reluctant to go out. She’d taken to drawing the curtains at the front of the house firmly shut, and she stopped the children from going into the front garden when he was there.

  Claudine was suddenly peculiar about the subject of soldiers—she shied away from them in the street, almost as though she was frightened—so Edith didn’t want to put the wind up her by telling her there was one sitting out in front of the house most days.

  One morning, she had to go to Hacquoil’s and fetch the meat ration. There was no way around it, and she would have to use the front way because the steps at the back were too steep for her to carry Marthe down safely. But the soldier had been sat there all morning. Edith’s skin was crawling with the feel of his eyes on her. Luckily, Claudine was at school.

  After a morning of procrastination, Edith pulled herself together and made herself lift Marthe into the wheelbarrow. She had found an old bedsheet to carry Francis, and he sat on her hip and bounced up and down.

  ‘Me go for ride!’

  Fretful as she was, it made Edith chuckle.

  She walked as fast as she could down the path, trying to keep her eyes down. Counting her steps. Just ten and she was at the gate.

  She was nearly past him when he said, ‘Halt!’

  Her heart leapt. ‘Sorry, we mustn’t stop,’ she managed to mumble. ‘Ever so poorly, she is. Sehr krank. I think it’s contagious. You’re best to stand back, sir.’

  He didn’t budge. He put his hand into his jacket pocket.

  Oh Lord, this is it. Maurice will never forgive me.

  She was ready to claw his eyes out before she’d let him touch Marthe or the child.

  But then he brought out a photograph. Himself with a woman—must have been his wife, and a baby. He indicated the woman and then pointed at Marthe.

  ‘She is same. Also ill.’

  Edith stared at him in the photograph and then looked at the man in front of her, his tentative half-smile. He had a pleasant face. Those blue eyes, so common to the Germans, but also a soft mouth without an ounce of cruelty in it. Once upon a time, when she’d cared for such things, she’d have called him handsome.

  ‘Your wife? She’s poorly too.’

  He nodded.

  ‘I’m sorry for you then.’

  He sighed, sadly. ‘She fall and hit on her head. After, she is not the same. Something is…gone.’ He shrugged and then stroked the face in the photograph.

  ‘Poor girl. Hard for you, is it? Being away from her. You miss her?’

  ‘Yes. But…’ He exhaled. ‘I must make the Fatherland. Something good and strong. A good life for my son. Germany is a hungry place—there is much anger. My son has enough but many have nothing, and this anger is like a…sickness. I want better for him.’

  He reached into his pocket again. Edith tensed, ready to clobber him if he tried anything crafty. But he drew out two apples and gave one to Marthe and one to Francis.

  Then he rubbed at the tight, shiny skin on that lame arm of his—it was red where it was stretched over the bones. Close up, it didn’t look so much like a withered arm. More like it had been chewed up and spat out at some point. The fingers fused together and bunched, and the whole lot of it webbed with scarring. His lips tightened in pain when he moved it.

  She was about to reach out and touch it, suggest some remedy for that ruined skin, but he sat back down on the wall and waved her on.

  She didn’t mention to Maurice that she’d spoken to the soldier. Nor to Claudine.

  In any case, Edith had other things to worry about. Much of her time was spent making remedies, now that everyone had taken against Dr Carter. She had people wanting to see her for all sorts: the usuals of cuts and scrapes and broken bones, and most of them were mended easily enough with creams and bandages and sticks to use as splints.

  But then there were the other sicknesses, things that should have gone to Carter, really: the woman with the cancer growing like a child in her belly, or the man with a leg which had overnight become numb so the poor fellow couldn’t walk.

  Edith did what she could for them, mostly by guesswork. She didn’t charge a penny or even ask for a share in their rations, much as she
would have liked some more food for Marthe and the children. But it wouldn’t have felt right: taking payment for a medicine that was more hope than anything.

  She said the same thing every time: ‘You’d be better off seeing Dr Carter, you know that, don’t you, my love? I can only do so much; he might have a cure.’

  A few folk—those in so much pain that life was torture—nodded and sighed. But most people shook their heads and spat on the ground.

  When she didn’t have Claudine with her, Edith used the front door. The German soldier always watched her come and go and they smiled, sometimes nodded at one another, like neighbours. He reminded her of Frank: that bright humour in his eyes, though Frank had looked smarter and happier in his uniform. But perhaps the soldier fidgeted because his arm bothered him?

  One morning, as Edith walked past, he winced and scratched at his left arm again, and she held up a hand.

  ‘Wait there a moment.’

  She fetched a jar with a salve in it, along with an old shirt of Frank’s.

  ‘Your arm, please,’ she said.

  He hesitated, then held it out.

  She knelt down next to him. ‘It pains you.’

  ‘Some small pain, yes.’

  ‘Don’t give me that rubbish. I’ve seen your face when something touches it.’

  He shrugged. ‘Yes, it is hurt, but I… Sometimes I do not feel when it hurts. I do not know how you say this.’

  ‘You’re used to the pain, so you don’t notice it? But that doesn’t mean it’s not hurting. I’ve something here that might help. I call it a poultice.’

  He looked mistrustful for a moment. But then he said, ‘You and my wife. Before she is ill… You are the same. She is also kind.’

  Edith started to rub on the ointment. ‘I do my best. Now, this will sting a little. Keep still—fidgeting won’t make it hurt less.’

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘Nothing magical. Mostly onion juice and mustard seeds. The poultice keeps it compressed. It should start to break down some of this nasty scarred skin. That’s what’s giving you the pain. It shouldn’t be hurting as much. Is it?’

  ‘No. Some small better. And so soon!’ He smiled, then he sniffed the poultice and wrinkled up his nose.

  ‘Doesn’t smell like fine French perfume, I’m afraid. And the smell seeps into your blood, so you’ll be breathing out onion fumes. But it’ll see your arm right, over the weeks. Less painful. I’ll change it every day.’

  ‘Danke.’

  ‘No bother. A fire, was it? That did for your arm?’

  ‘Nein. A big machine. On the farm. I was a foolish boy.’ He shrugged and smiled again, that sweet, sad smile.

  ‘You can’t protect children from life,’ Edith said. ‘Things happen. One moment, and then everything is different, forever.’ She patted his hand. ‘I’ll be back to change that tomorrow.’

  BY the second February under German rule, every day had started to tug on Maurice, like the wrenching hand of a ticking clock. He’d nearly been caught mooring the boat a few times, though luckily he’d seen the patrol before they’d seen him. He thought about applying for a licence, but that would have meant awkward questions about why he hadn’t declared the boat before.

  And then there was Marthe. She’d seemed to be improving for a while, eating more and so on. Then a sickness went around, and of course she caught it.

  He and Edith were up with her day and night. They took it in turns to sit with her and encourage her to take water. They had no sugar, so they gave her the brackish leftovers after boiling potatoes. She brought it straight back up, time and again, shrinking before their eyes. Watching her fading filled him with a desperate, burning rage, but there was nothing to do except sit and wait and hope.

  In the end, she turned a corner, but the illness left her even weaker than before. She needed food, and plenty of it, and there just wasn’t enough. Even with the black-market bits, the extra from the butcher and the fish Maurice caught, it was never enough. It struck him that he could try sneaking out at night and stealing food from the Germans’ rations when they were out on patrol and never mind the risk to himself.

  But that soldier made everything impossible. Sat on the wall, smoking. Watching. He was there every time Maurice set foot outside his house, and if he wasn’t sitting there, he was waiting at Edith’s. Wherever Marthe was, the damned soldier followed.

  But he never said a word to Maurice. Just watched, as Maurice crept past him, eyes on the ground. He knew it was only a matter of time before there was a pounding at the door and they came to take Marthe away.

  Edith claimed the soldier was a good sort. She’d bandaged up that bad arm of his, and it looked better afterwards. The soldier smiled his German smile at Edith, and sometimes they stopped and talked about the weather, or food. Once the soldier gave Edith a little of his bread.

  But it didn’t change the fact that he was the bloody Bosche and Maurice couldn’t stand to look at him, sitting there as if his bloody uniform gave him the right to do whatever he bloody well wanted.

  By spring, Maurice was barely going out for fear of being caught. Everyone was thinner and they were all at each other’s throats. Though they had returned to their mother months before, Claudine had carried on bringing Francis over and they shared whatever food they could spare with the children.

  Claudine seemed hungry and sad, but Maurice was thankful that she no longer mentioned her German friend: in fact, she seemed nervous of the soldiers and Edith took great care not to let her see the one who was sitting at the end of the garden. Nothing to be gained by making the girl fret, Edith said.

  One day, Maurice discovered a different way down to the boat. It meant sneaking past one of the bunkers the Bosche had built, but there weren’t any patrols behind it: they seemed to think no one would be brave or stupid enough to come that close—and at least he didn’t have to walk past that damned soldier and watch the suspicion creeping over his face.

  Maurice scrambled over the barbed wire and ran past the bunker, and then came to a steep hill. It was while he was trying to run down it without falling that he saw the broad, flat leaves of a potato plant.

  He stopped dead and looked about. There were hundreds of the plants, sprouting in among the weeds. At first, he thought he might be mistaken: all the crops were closely guarded by the Bosche. Surely they wouldn’t allow stray plants to grow without guarding them? Then he realised: he must be standing on a côtil, one of the steep, south-facing banks where the farmers planted their early new potatoes to give them the greatest sunlight. Somehow a farmer must have planted some potatoes and the Germans had since wired the field off without noticing the crop.

  Maurice looked around. Not a soul. He didn’t question his good fortune but dug down with his hands, hoping the potatoes wouldn’t be rotten or blighted. He scrabbled in the soil, into the roots. Nothing. He dug a little further and his fingers closed around something hard. He dragged out a grubby little pearl.

  Maurice chuckled, kissed it and put it in his pocket, then dug and uprooted seven more. All small, but they would be packed with goodness. He’d have to gather as many as he could before they were discovered by someone else or before the farmer tried to gather his crop. His guilt at stealing was momentary: starvation breeds savagery.

  He hurried back home and fetched three sacks and a fork. But on his way back, the soldier stopped him, pointed at his bulging pockets.

  ‘What is this?’

  Maurice pretended not to understand. The soldier asked again. It pained Maurice to show him but there was no refusing the Bosche. Slowly, he drew out a potato, hoping it would be unrecognisable, small and soil-covered as it was.

  The soldier grinned. ‘For eat, yes?’

  Reluctantly, Maurice nodded.

  ‘Where are you finding?’ Bloody man was still smiling.

  Maurice sighed. ‘Follow me.’

  He half expected the soldier to stop him from clambering over the barbed wire but he followed w
ithout question. Maurice glanced sideways: the German was just as thin as him.

  When Maurice showed him the plants, he clapped him on the back.

  ‘Die Taschen, bitte. Bag, yes?’

  Maurice reluctantly gave him a sack and took one himself. But it was a tricky business, digging deep with the fork and sifting the soil, then picking the potatoes out and putting them into the sack—and the soldier had only his one good hand. When it was his turn with the fork, he couldn’t dig deep enough to reach the potatoes. The whole business would take too long and a patrol would easily spot them, perched as they were on the face of the côtil. It didn’t ease Maurice’s mind, either, that the soldier kept looking around as if he was frightened of being spotted himself.

  ‘Look here,’ Maurice said, ‘I’ll take the fork. You pick out the potatoes and throw them in the sack.’ He mimed the actions.

  It was much easier, working together. They didn’t say a word, but there was a soothing sort of rhythm in the repeated dig-sift-throw.

  When they had filled the three sacks, the soldier said, ‘This is all.’ They carried one each and the third sack, the heaviest one, between them.

  Maurice knew when they returned home, the damned soldier would take them all, to share out among his Kraut friends.

  I’ll have to creep back after curfew.

  But, to his amazement, the soldier walked to Maurice’s shed, stowed one of the sacks behind the door and threw an empty sack over it to hide it. He tapped Maurice’s chest and smiled.

  ‘For you.’

  He pointed at the other two sacks and tapped his own chest. ‘For me.’

  ‘Thank you. That’s wonderful.’ Maurice forgot himself then, forgot he was a blasted soldier and shook him heartily by the hand. ‘You should come in. To eat. Essen?’ He pointed to the house and brought his fingers to his mouth in the universal signal for eating.

  The soldier shook his head. ‘Thank you. I cannot.’ He pointed at one of the sacks. ‘I must take this for the Commandant.’