Island Madness

by Tim Binding

  “And so she could,” Ned had once told Bernie, laughing, “but only if she stood on a chair.” Ned rubbed his chin hard, trying to prevent a repeat performance.

  “Well, it’s hard work,” he told George cheerfully. “There’s what, fifteen girls next to your place? Another fifteen down the road. With seventeen thousand troops to cater for that’s a lot of jiggery pokery called for. If you work on the principle that the average soldier expects to drop his trousers at least once a fortnight, that means that those girls have to accommodate eight thousand five hundred every week. Which means,” he did a quick sum on a sheet of paper, “two hundred and eighty-three each a week or forty-seven a day. Forty if they work Sundays.”

  George Poidevin was not amused. “It’s a disgrace,” he fumed.

  “‘You know what I said to them?’ I said, ‘Put it in writing and see what the States say. I’m not having my wife doling out heavy workers’ rations to French tarts without the proper papers.’”

  Rumour had it that George Poidevin had once tried to slip the girls an extra loaf in return for a weekly you-know-what, and every one of them had refused. Ever since then he had been their implacable enemy.

  “They won’t put it in writing, not an order like that,” Ned told him. “But they’ll make you do it just the same. Let’s face it, we’d all like extra rations, whatever we do. If those girls can wangle it, good luck to them. They don’t last long, you know. Not with the wear and tear they have to put up with.”

  George had more to tell.

  “And that’s not all. You know what Monty Freeman’s been told? Only to keep the bank open an extra hour on Fridays so that those trollops can waltz in and deposit their money without causing offence to us locals. That’s where my Elspeth works. Least she’s no Jerrybag. When I think of some of our girls…” He stopped short.

  “Thanks, George.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

  “Let’s forget it, shall we. Is that all you have to tell me or is there a purpose to your visit?”

  “I wondered if you’d had any news about the break-in.”

  Van Dielen’s yard had been broken into the night before. Sergeant Tommy Ie Coeur had found the fence smashed in. Nothing much stolen. A couple of containers broken into, the little office ransacked of its precious supply of tea and sugar. Papers strewn everywhere. Ned regarded him with reproach.

  “George, I reported it to the Feldkommandantur. Take it up with them. The foreigns are no concern of mine. My advice is to forget it. Nothing’ll come of it. If you want to stop it happening again, put a dog in there. Something big and hungry that’ll bite the bastards.”

  Ned shooed him away before Bernie came with his usual bag of treats. The less people knew about that little enterprise the better.

  Bernie brought them over once every two days or so, under cover of a normal delivery. Since his garage business had slumped, Bernie had landed a job as part-time postman. It suited his lanky frame. It used to be said that Bernie was the only mechanic on the island who could lie underneath a car with his head poking out at one end and his feet at the other. There weren’t many tall men on Guernsey. Not until they came. Bernie followed fast in George’s footsteps.

  “How’s business?” he asked, slumping the oily bag on the table.

  “A few break-ins over at the Vale. A fight outside the Brighton. The only bit of excitement was when old Mrs Rowe stopped Tommy in the High Street the other day and asked him if he could show her the way to the black market.”

  Bernie smiled. It was a nice story, even if it wasn’t true. Taking off his cap he scratched his head. His spiky hair was more suited to a lad of fourteen than a grown man nearing his thirtieth year.

  “I heard there was a run-in between some artillery men and a couple of the foreigns, and,” he said, “someone got thrown out a window.”

  “A gunner?”

  “No. Just a foreign.”

  Ned dismissed it from his mind.

  “Not a dicky-bird this end.” He patted the bag.

  “About twenty this week, I reckon,” Bernie ventured out loud. “Should be stood up against a wall and shot, the lot of them.”

  Ned walked Bernie back down the stairs. Outside two young girls in white socks and raincoats, hats jammed firmly on their heads, were coming up the road pushing a heavy battered pram. Every day there’d be a bunch of them hanging around the State food stores, darting in and out between the horses’ hoofs and the cartwheels, picking the loose potatoes or turnips that had rolled down into the gutter. Bernie held his cap out as they went by.

  “Come on, missy,” he teased, bending low. “Just one measly spud.”

  The girls giggled past, the pram bouncing precariously on the cobbles. Bernie turned to leave.

  “Fancy a pint later on?” he asked. “I’ll be at the Britannia.”

  One of the oldest pubs on the island, it was one of the few out of bounds for the soldiers. A session in there and you catne away feeling almost normal. Most did, anyway. Since his unwanted appointment no one seetned to want to talk to Ned any more. Except Bernie. Ned shook his head.

  “Better not. I’ve got a late shift on tonight.”

  Bernie, cap back on his head, stuck his hands in his pockets and left, whistling. Back in the office it was time to go through the mail. Though Ned kept his office to himself, when it came to going through the anonymous letters they all took a look. Ned called them up. Peter came first then Tommy, his hands black with grease.

  “The Peril still not going?” Ned asked.

  Tommy shook his head.

  “Perhaps Bernie should take a look,” Ned suggested.

  Tommy had his pride. “There’s no need for that. I can fix it.”

  “That’s what you said last week.”

  The sack was still damp from its journey along the seafront. Ned untied the knot and gave the sack a shake.

  “About twenty, I reckon,” he ventured out loud.

  “How do they do it?” Peter asked, stroking the down on his ginger lip. Last year Ned had seen him playing hopscotch with his younger sisters on the sands at Vazon Bay. Now his outsize adolescent feet lay squeezed into a pair of second-hand boots that had once been the property of one of the policemen currently serving two years’ hard labour in Caen prison.

  “Jealousy and fear,” he told him, “that’s how. Plus a few old scores to settle.”

  “But how do the Post Office tell them from real letters?” Peter persisted.

  Tommy pulled ostentatiously at the corners of his whiskers, as if the thickness of his own beard was evidence of how much such a baby-faced novice had to learn.

  “They’re not that difficult to spot,” he said, warming his backside on the stove. “They’re nearly always written in capitals—to disguise the handwriting—and they’re all addressed to the Feldkommandantur.”

  “There’s more to it than that,” Ned added. “There’s a meanness that marks them. That’s the thing they can’t disguise. When you see them, lying there amidst real letters, love letters, bills, notes of condolence, they stick out a mile.”

  He tipped the bundle out onto the table. They were, as Tommy had predicted, all addressed to the Feldkommandantur, scrawled in furtive capital letters, sloping across the surface as if trying to evade the shame of their intent, envelopes, lined notepaper, pages torn out of a child’s scrapbook, folded and stuck down and sent with malice in the heart, most with no stamp. But today Tommy was proved wrong. As Ned stirred the pile with his fingers he uncovered an envelope addressed to him, in handwriting he recognized only too well. How many other notes had she written to him, smuggled out from the fierce protection of her father’s house, left in the crack in the wall by the drinking fountain or under the whitewashed stone on his parents’ front path? Why, he even recognized the way she underlined his name, three straight lines underneath one another, each shorter than the last.

  “Good God,” he said. “I’d never have thought it.”

 
“What?”

  “This is from Isobel, Isobel van Dielen.”

  He tore open the envelope. There was no signature, but it didn’t need one.

  “She wants to meet me, that’s all.”

  Tommy looked over his shoulder. “That’s all? You jammy so and so.”

  “No, it’s nothing like that,” Ned told him, but his heart was hammering otherwise. Yes, it could be like that. It could be.

  They had met on the quayside waiting to embark, her wide-brimmed hat blown from her head and he catching it in the air as it rose to sail over into the dark waters of the harbour. She was nineteen, he twenty-seven—she on her way back from finishing school and he back on leave after his first tour as a CID officer in the Southampton police force. Though younger than him, she was the more at ease and, liking his short erop of crisp, curly hair and the bend of his mouth, unashamedly took the lead and asked him, in light of his catch, if he was a cricketer.

  “A policeman,” he had replied hesitantly, fancying his chances but unsure whether it was wise to tell her the truth so early on.

  “A policeman!” She had laughed.

  “Yes. You find that funny?”

  “No.” She threw back her head and laughed again. “Well, yes, as a matter of fact I do. A policeman!”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being a policeman, is there?”

  “No. But surely not on Guernsey?”

  “As a matter of fact, no. But why not?”

  “No reason.” She laughed again. It was a laugh that was used to hearing itself, natural and confident, part of her speech. “Have you ever talked to any of the policemen there? They’re not the brightest of fellows, you have to agree.”

  Ned felt obliged to defend his compatriots.

  “There’s not much call for Bulldog Drummonds on our side of the water,” he answered.

  “So you came to England.”

  “That’s right. Lots of thieving and murder to keep me busy here.”

  “Murder!” She gave a little shiver, although she was neither cold nor frightened. It pleased her to move in such a way, a kind of parade of what he was to her and what she might be to him. She had restless good looks, with light coloured hair, a wide mouth and eyes that darted this way and that. Though she spoke as if she was English, her skin was of a foreign colour. There was heat and distance to it, a touch of leather to the texture. She was nearly as tall as he was and stood close to him, closer than a young woman should, squaring up to him almost like a man. She fixed him with her blue eyes and shook the set of her bobbed-cut hair, intent on discomfiting him further.

  “Have you ever…?” She wrapped her arms under her breasts and shivered again. She was captivating. She smiled at a passer-by.

  “Only one.” Her theatricality irritated him, so he added, quite truthfolly, “Killed by a horse.”

  “A horse!”

  “Struck him on the head. With his hoof.”

  “Probably being mistreated, poor thing. I hope you didn’t arrest him.”

  She put her hand in front of her mouth, laughing at her own joke. His mother used to tell him that girls who put their hands in front of their mouths were not only common but most probably deceitful as well, but the manner in which she pressed her fingers to her pursed lips did not seem to indicate either of these character flaws. It was sitnply shamelessly seductive. Assuming that she was a tourist, and anticipating the possibility that his leave might be brightened by this unexpected opportunity, he turned the hat in his hand.

  “So this is yours?”

  “It was on my head, if that’s what you mean.”

  “It’s a man’s hat.”

  “You think I stole it? It’s my father’s. Was my father’s. I persuaded him to let me wear it.” She took it from him and set it at an angle on her head. “Looks better on me, don’t you think?”

  “That depends. I’ve never seen your father, have I? I don’t even know his name.”

  “No?” She took the hat off and turned it over and pointed to the marking on the label.

  “His initials, see? You know what they stand for.”

  Ned peered and blushed violently. He hardly knew where to look. The girl smiled victoriously. She’d enjoyed the joke many times before.

  “Van Dielen,” she said, laughing at him again. “Nothing else.”

  “Van Dielen?” He could not keep the note of surprise out of his voice.

  “That’s right. Why? Has he broken the law?”

  No, he had not broken the law, but as soon as she mentioned the name he knew that despite the island’s size she was lost to him. So he wished her a pleasant summer and walked away, watching her later as she presented her first-class ticket for her private cabin, while he, an old hand, walked briskly to the wooden seats around the tunnel, and sat, with his greatcoat over his knees, waiting for the hour of midnight to strike, when the hooter would sound and the sea would churn. He could have chosen to go inside, to have a few drinks and a rolling kip on one of the hard slatted seats, but he preferred it out on deck, where he could sit, nursing his thoughts, travelling through the windy dark to the dawn outline of his home town.

  Ned knew of the van Dielens. The whole island knew of the van Dielens and to whom they were related. Mr van Dielen, half English, half Dutch, had made his money first from construction work in the Middle East, and latterly in the great road-building programme snaking its way across Europe. Returning to England, hoping to capitalize on his expertise, he had found that he no longer cared for his abandoned homeland, not because it was strange to him, but because it was revealed as all too familiar. His life abroad had been lived as an outcast stuck in an outpost, out of sorts with his surroundings, forcing changes on a sleeping landscape, but England seemed unable to wake to his and others’ futuristic call. Coming back with an attractive wife and a marriage-able daughter he discovered that all that was required of him was that he should settle in and build bungalows and mock-Tudor suburbs with perhaps a new ladies’ room for a country railway station thrown in for good measure. There was nothing in England’s architectural plans that loomed large and impossible and wondrous to behold, nothing that sliced through the earth changing its people for ever; and as for the dinners and the young men he was expected to entertain on behalf of his daughter’s matrimonial expectations, it was difficult to fathom which he detested the more, the stuffed game he forced into his mouth or the stuffed shirts who produced barking buckshot out of theirs. So he settled on Guernsey, which was of England but not English, where the policemen acted under English law but the climate did not, where the signs were in English but where the natives, bred to bear a naturally taciturn disposition, spoke a language he could choose not to understand; above all a place where his wife and daughter could use the moneyed high life as a springboard to all the other social ports of call and from where the rich pickings of his Continental business beckoned.

  And so, being an engineer, he built a house to suit both his temperament and his purpose, combining in its design his intense desire for solitude with a showman’s desire to display his architectural talents to the full. Ned knew the building well, for his father had been one of the carpenters contracted in to lay the floor. It stood, not on one of the grander roads leading out of St Peter Port, nor in the quieter more expensive reaches to the south, but on a dusty back road wedged in a dip between two hills, cramped for space and overlooking a row of undistinguished bungalows, surrounded by a riotous, unruly garden, with plants pushed into the earth to let do as they please; rot, run riot, fill the air with maddening seed, it did not matter to him, as long as they formed some impenetrable barrier between him and the road beyond. Through this fairy-tale tangle could be seen the front of the house, bulging out like an unwanted pregnancy, awkward and eye-catching, with plate-glass windows running from floor to ceiling. “Wouldn’t catch me living in it, not even if you paid me,” his father used to say. “A shit in a showroom would be more private.” The van Dielens moved in three months after
completion, in May ‘38, surrounded by pink walls and tubular furniture, with rugs instead of carpets, something hooded, straight out of a blacksmith’s, in the middle of drawing room instead of a proper fireplace and, most peculiar at all, no curtains. Suspended above the grey metal window-frames hung reels of grey slatted metal blinds which, when lowered, shook and rattled at the slightest provocation and were only brought into use when decency demanded. Certainly Mr van Dielen didn’t care to use them, propped up at the curved cocktail bar he had built, sitting there alone surrounded by dancing semi-quavers and empty high stools. In the evening those who walked past would see him swirling something thick and cloudy in a strangely shaped glass, thinking about his dead wife, who lay in the cemetery half a mile away, drowned not two months after their arrival and his daughter, whom he hardly knew, packed off to finishing school. But, it was supposed, the house had done its job, and worked, like its owner, on some unfathomable law of incongruity: the long balconies and wide windows protected not by locks and curtains but by brambles and palm trees and rash-inducing rhododendron bushes; a house closed to all, yet with the owner perpetually on view; a man who talked to no one, but who himself was a constant talking point.

  And they all talked about him, there was no doubt about that; what he was like to work for (firm but fair), his trips abroad, his determined, lonely life. He had bought out three concerns on Guernsey by then, a builder’s yard, a brick works and a contracting firm, and within six months had put two more out of business. He was a small man, small and intense, with a stooped back and dark eyebrows and a clipped moustache which worked up and down. He walked, said Ned’s father, like a clockwork toy, as if someone had just wound him up, oblivious to his surroundings. You half expected him to topple over, or stumble up against some unopened door, legs still whirring. He was always in a hurry, no time for idle chatter, just an awkward muttered greeting, head back down, and the sound of his breath rushing past. When he was here he could be seen in his green Norfolk jacket, marching his wicker basket down to the market to place a spider crab or small live lobster on top of the rest of his meagre shopping before pushing his charge back up Victoria Road and home. That was another conundrum that was brought to his account. A builder of roads and bridges, he owned no vehicle and had no garage built for one. Ned’s old school friend Bernie Ie Cocq had tried to interest in him in one of his machines with a free bicycle thrown in for his daughter, but he would have none of it, telling Bernie in a curt letter that as he had his legs and his daughter, when she was here, had her horse, he would be grateful if he kept his suggestions to himself, a letter which Bernie had placed in the little office above his garage, next to his postcard of a fleshy French girl dressed in fat suspenders. So he had his legs and Isobel her horse—which is how Ned met her the second time, as he hurtled down on the butcher’s bike he had won years back in a raffle, shaking down the steep dry rut of water lanes, his legs splayed out, his eyes closed, gathering glorieus speed remembering those summer rides with Bernie and Veronica Vaudin, until he heard the scream and opened his eyes to see a horse, a bloody horse, standing stock-still with a girl upon it, up in the stirrups, crying out in fear that he might harm them both. He wrenched his hands sharply to the right and ended up capsized upon the fern-thick bank with his legs in the air, his spine jarred and a bicycle wheel humming in his ear. Only when the horse moved closer, prancing nervously on the stony ground, did he realize who the rider was.