by Tim Binding
When in mixed company, they spoke English for the most part, for the benefit of the girls, unless it was an obscene comment or to do with military matters, a needless precaution in either case, for most of the girls understood a good deal by now. That was to be expected. What surprised these men, still dressed in their once-feared uniforms, was how quickly the women had embraced their way of life, aping their manners, sharing their interests, even imitating the rhythms of their speech. All the girls spoke English as if they were foreigners themselves; out riding, playing tennis, at the card table; even in the abandonment of the bedroom, those declarations of sexual ardour were announced with the breath of the Fatherland on them. But sometimes the men reverted to their own tongue simply to remind themselves who they were and why they were here. It was so easy to forget. Here were no partisans, no sniper’s bullet singing out from behind a wall, no troop trains blown to pieces: at worst just a muttered, sullen acquiescence, and at best the warmth of the Gulf Stream, the round of beaches and the spread of girls on which to exercise one’s limbs.
The Captain advanced carefully across the floor, Molly wriggling slowly in his grasp. She leant back and shook her shoulders. The bottle started to rock.
“Take care,” Bohde called out. “You’ll break it.”
Lentsch waved the warning away. “Never mind the wine,” he urged. “It’s the record you must be careful of. Hold her still, man! Hold her still!”
Molly held out her arms and shimmied in defiance, laughing as the record began to slide forward over the Captain’s head.
“Come on, Zep!” she cried. “Straighten up!”
The bottle crashed to the floor. The record dropped into her outstretched hands. Standing by the door Albert turned and went to fetch a bucket and mop. Molly advanced upon the Major.
“Sorry about that, Gerhard,” she said, holding the record out in front of her. “Blame Zep, not me. His mind must have been on something else.”
“I am sure of that,” Lentsch told her. “You make it so hard for all of us.”
They had met at the Casino earlier that evening. Formerly a hotel on the Esplanade, it was now Guernsey’s most favoured club, where officers were permitted to entertain civilians. A gaming room could be found at the back, as could a small, unpleasant restaurant. The rooms above, each furnished with a bed, a washbasin and a wooden coat hanger, served primarily as rudimentary quarters for when the drinking had taken too heavy a toll, and at other times for perfunctory and indiscreet sex. Many used it for the former, few the latter. It was not done to be seen coming down the club stairs with a local girl following in your tread. The equilibrium of the island demanded, on the surface at least, that its womenfolk be treated with respect.
The focal point of the club was the long room at the front which overlooked the port and the sea beyond. In the summer, when the windows were thrown open, Lentsch and his friends would sit deep in the leather armchairs, their feet on the window sill, drinking Sekt and watching the endless harbour traffic and the determined scurry of civilians, trying to keep their spirits up. But tonight the curtains had been drawn and a fire blazed at the far end. It was comfortable in there. Tankards with their decorated tops hung along the length of the bar, imported beer racked up behind. Pictures of smiling maidens advertising Leica cameras and Junker’s water heaters were propped up behind the bar, while the walls were decorated with photographs of units celebrating the comradeship of war, cooking up a rabbit stew outside a Normandy farmhouse, standing atop a KI 8 outside Dieppe, horseplaying on the boulevards of Paris. Pride of place belonged to gilt-framed reproduction of Padua’s Leda and the Swan, Leda’s shameless nudity stretched high above the fireplace. Those who could drain the club’s two-litre glass boot without drawing breath were hoisted aloft to plant their kisses on whatever part of her body they chose, though out of all who had attempted only Zep and a fighter pilot, long since downed, had achieved that honour.
From the raucous laughter that burst forth as he walked in, Lentsch could tell that everyone was determined to put the events of the past month behind them, everyone that is except Sondefuhrer Bohde, who sat under the portrait, reading some directive or other, his upturned nose twitching in the air. The Captain was there too, standing up at the bar, one foot on the rail, stirring a bowl of ruby-red punch. Watching him, ladle in hand, exhorting a young navy officer to take a cup, it seemed to Lentsch that the Captain grew younger, taller, more handsome and more self-assured by the day. He was what every officer of the new regime aspired to be, a law unto himself, backed by the precedence of naked power and charmed good looks. Last summer he had scandalized Bohde by driving around the island late at night, lights blazing, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts and a cap, Molly and various hangers-on piled in the back, breaking all the curfew, blackout and speeding regulations known to man.
“It’s not right,” Bohde had complained over breakfast. “Here am I, trying to impress upon the population the importance of rules and regulations, and there is the Captain tearing about as if he is on holiday!”
“But he is on holiday,” Lentsch told him. “We’re all on holiday. That’s the trouble. We’ve been here so long it’s metamorphosed into a way of life.”
“Well, I’m not,” Bohde had shouted, “and neither is my blue pencil. I shall write to Headquarters.”
Bohde had thrown down his napkin and, spluttering with impotent rage, stomped off upstairs to sulk. Everyone liked Zep, with his practical jokes and his generosity and his treasonable imitation of Dr Goebbels, who, to Bohde’s fury, he had nicknamed Mahatma Propagandhi. Bohde could rail as much as he liked. He couldn’t get close to Zep and he knew it.
Seeing Lentsch walk in, Bohde pulled himself up from his chair and trotted over, carrying a sheet of newsprint in his arms as if he had come to show off his first-born. Without asking Lentsch if he had enjoyed his leave, he thrust the precious burden under his nose.
“Tonight’s issue,” he announced proudly. “I have just been putting the finishing touches to the latest episode of A Journey Through Medievd Germany. As you can see, I have reached the Imperial city of Frankfurt am Main. With my imaginary knapsack and sturdy companion by my side we sit down at a modest inn and introducé the reader to Goethe and Schiller as well as invoking the glories of the Roman past. Also autobahns. Not bad for five hundred words.”
Lentsch glanced at it quickly.
“The woodcut is very good,” he offered. “But do you think it wise to talk of this ‘splendid meal of sausages and hard-boiled eggs’? Most people here haven’t seen a decent piece of meat for months.”
Bohde beamed.
“But that’s exactly my point, Gerhard. That’s what they have to look forward to when the war is won. German culture and plenty of German sausage.”
Lentsch studied Bohde’s face to see if he could detect any hint of humour, but Bohde was already on his way back to his seat. It was unfortunate for the island that Bohde was not only responsible for censoring its two newspapers and reading matter, withdrawing books deemed offensive to the German people in general and Him in particular, but also for organizing the variety shows and films for the troops. Frivolity was despised by Bohde. Since his arrival, low comedies, musicals and risqué nightclub turns had been replaced by military bands, lecture slides and volk festivals. The illegitimate birth rate had gone up too.
Zep slapped a hand on his shoulder. “So how was home?”
Lentsch put on the best face he could muster. “They are learning to live with it,” he said. “I did not stay all the time there. It was difficult, with Gretchen so close.”
Gretchen was the girl he was to have married, the girl who would have been his passport to promotion. A Party girl with a Party father.
“So you are still determined?”
Lentsch nodded. “I am still… Is she here yet?”
Zep shook his head.
“You think I am a fool.” Lentsch issued an observation rather than asked a question.
Z
ep smiled at his friend. “No, just foolish.” He waved his hand in the air. “All this. It cannot be permanent. Even we cannot conquer Paradise.”
Molly was shown in wearing slinky russet red. Lentsch couldn’t recall a time when he had seen her wearing something ordinary. She would be better liked if she did. Long and cold, that was Molly, perfectly poised, with white tapering hands and a hard questioning mouth. Slim, almost breastless, there was not a man in the room who was not hypnotized by her supple, dangerous beauty, who did not long to chance fate and hold her in a deadly embrace, to kiss poison’s mouth and survive. Lentsch could see why the Captain had kept her for so long. She set him off perfectly; carefree, hedonistic, without a thought to the fault line that ran alongside her charmed life. She would jump it when the time came. And if she didn’t make it to the other side, well to heil with it. That seemed to be her attitude. She had been with Zep for a little over a year and, generals and visiting admirals notwithstanding, ruled their social gatherings with wit, ruthlessness and sexual bravado, seeing off any competition with a lightning, almost erotic, ferocity. Being attached to the Captain had given her power once she could have only married into and she revelled in its enveloping authority. “I blitzkrieged them all, darling,” she had boasted once. “The Tennis Club girls, the bridge set wives, the Saturday morning golfers. Now if they want any social life, any fun, they do it through me. There’s a price to everything in this world.” Tonight she had brought a friend, Veronica Vaudin, who, she claimed, “was just dying to meet you all,” which usually meant someone who, if not single, had become available and was looking for a protector. Handing her coat over to one of the stewards, Veronica bounced across the floor if she was made out of India rubber. She was a compact young woman exuding a cheerful domestic good health, with strong, muscular shoulders and a luxuriant bosom. The Major wondered idly where she had been these past two years; working her way up the ranks, perhaps. She clearly wasn’t from any of the better families, she was too familiar, too forward, too… too obvious. Veronica, Molly told them, was a leading light in Guernsey’s theatrical community. Since the occupation, amateurs such as she had turned semi-professional, and now she was a regular performer at the Gaumont. Veronica held out a bare bangled arm and grinned up at his patient face.
“You should come and see our next production,” she said lightly, brushing back her flaming red hair with a brightly painted finger. “April Frolics, it’s called. Vocalism, dancing, nigger minstrels. Just the thing to ease your troubles.”
Lentsch nodded politely. He remembered her well. Two Christmases ago, as a goodwill gesture, the Feldkommandantur had decided to fund the Christmas pantomime given by the Guernsey Amateur Dramatic and Operatic Society. Lentsch had been the guest of honour. Marjorie Hallivand, in her capacity as treasurer, had sat next to him.
“This play,” she had informed him, in a tone that reminded him of his mother, “is a particularly English affair, as much a part of our culture as the Just So Stories or Alice in Wonderland. But whereas Alice has to burrow underground, here the children fly across the rooftops.”
Lentsch had nodded earnestly. He was familiar with those tales of perilous childhood, of boys and girls lost in forests, captured by witches, devoured by wolves.
“To the moon?” he ventured.
“To Neverland. Where Peter Pan lives.”
“Ah, Pan. Half goat, half man.”
“A boy,” she said reproachfully, “though he is always played by a girl. It’s a tradition of British theatre. You’ll see.”
The opening scène had been set in a children’s bedroom with huge bay windows that looked out upon a scène of huddled rooftops. It was curiously reminiscent of his own childhood bedroom, his bed on one side, his sister’s on the other. Gazing out on to the badly hand-painted backcloth it seemed almost as real as the view he had grown up with, his grandfather’s army trunk by the window, the bricked stable yard below, the surround of fields, and beyond, in the patient distance, the hidden rustlings of the marshland, wet and secret and spiked with reeds, where he and his father and would lie waiting for bloody battle to rage; the baying dogs, the smoking guns, the flurried splashes of the thick green water, and at the end, the winged custodians of this elusive paradise laid out in blood-spotted ranks on the soft green bank of moss. But however far the two of them had paddled into the still waters of the marsh’s domain, however many birds they downed or wounded and watched spiralling out of sight, it was clear to him that they never managed to breach the marsh’s true sanctum nor exhaust the dazzling plumed legions that rose in chorus to protect it. Thus he had grown up believing that he lived close to a fairy land, a place possessed of both a magical past and a visionary foture, from where men blessed with supernatural powers would rise up through the mist to capture him and take him back to their watery redoubt, an impregnable, inviolable fortress, where some hard-won glory reigned in a state of permanent ecstasy. He lived with the possibility, nay the need, of transformation and recognized the demands that would be made by whoever had the will to wield such a transcendental sword. A leader! A visionary! A man blessed with powers that went far beyond those held by ordinary men. He existed, of that he was sure. He had always existed. In earlier times he had been called King Arthur, Siegfried, and come the future He would take on other names, hold other courts, fight other battles. For the moment He lay dormant, waiting to be woken in times of utter crisis, when the world had descended into chaos. There was, Lentsch knew, a heavy price to be paid before admittance into such exalted company; much to learn and much to sacrifice. In times of doubt, when the world did indeed appear irretrievably doomed, he would open up the old trunk in the now abandoned nursery, and take out the book their nana used to read to them, Struwwelpeter, and look at the pictures of unworthy children engulfed in fire, their thumbs snipped off by the man with flaming orange hair, his huge gleaming scissors dripping bright with their fresh and foolish blood. “The door flew open and in he ran, the great long-legg’d scissor man.” Such cruel power! Such inspiring terror!
Lentsch had sat in the dark and rolled his thumbs together, waiting for this Peter Pan. He could not understand why he had to be played by a woman but when she swung through the bedroom window, clad in a tunic of brown and green, he knew the reason. It was a typically British affair, an erotic fantasy based on denial and repression, where the body’s natural beauty had been gagged and hidden from view. He studied the girl’s form intently as she began to stride about the stage aping the thrust of virility with what she took to be a male stance, hands on hips, legs apart, head up. She was a rider, he deduced, with rider’s muscle in her flanks and long hours in the saddle giving spread to her rear. After searching for something (he could not quite determine what), she feil asleep. Lentsch was just about to ask Mrs Hallivand to explain, when another figure thundered in after him waving a tinsel wand. There was no ambiguity as to her sex.
“That’s Tinkerbell.” Marjorie Hallivand whispered. “A fairy.”
Lentsch tried not to laugh.
“A little…” he gestured carefully with his hands, “…full for a fairy, don’t you think?”
Marjorie placed her hand on his arm. “According to the author, Tinkerbell is slightly inclined to embonpoint.”
“Embonpoint?”
“Generosity of the bosom. Veronica is simply made for the part.” She sniffed. “A little overenthusiastic, our Veronica. But she means well.”
“Ah.”
“But we have some nicely brought up girls here as well,” she emphasized, like a guide describing a favoured resort, a claim she would not have made so lightly had she foreseen the change of circumstance the next two years would bring. “Most of the girls here are very natürlich, very slim. It was a holiday resort you know, before…” Her voice trailed off.
And will be one day again, according to Bohde, Lentsch had felt like telling her. After England had fallen and the war in the East concluded, this would be where tired soldiers of the Reich could
come and recoup their strength. Guernsey would become a giant holiday camp, with beaches to bathe in and horses and nice slim girls to ride on. It was all nonsense, of course. England was not going to fall. Not now. Guernsey was Germany’s island of dreams. Neverland.
Mrs Hallivand had turned and, lifting the coat from her lap, revealed a small box of chocolates.
“I’ve been saving them up for a special occasion,” she confessed. “I know it sounds silly, but I feel like I’m at a first night at the opera.”
She opened the lid and peeled back the crinkly black paper. Lentsch floated his hand across the three rows, pretending to choose one to his liking. There was an increasing air of intimacy about Marjorie which he found disturbing. Though he had taken all that was hers, her house, her furniture, the source of her family’s fortune, and though on clear evenings she would sit by her narrow stone window and hear her husband’s enemies drinking their way through his wine cellar, it was clear that for all that Marjorie Hallivand enjoyed his company. They were of the same class, after all, shared many of the same interests. He remembered her expression of relief mingled with admiration when he had first stepped into the Villa’s library and remarked on the three Russell Flints hanging on the walls, two portraits of gypsy women bathing and a landscape.
“Surely they suffer too much light here,” he had said, putting out his hand as if to protect them.
“That’s what I’ve been telling Maurice for years,” she admitted, standing next to him. “The middle one is Northumberland, you know. On the east coast.”
“Ah, the east coast. I sailed there once. Norfolk. With my father.”
“I have another nude of his upstairs,” she told him. “Smaller. I don’t suppose I could take it with me?”
Lentsch had carried it over that very afternoon, wrapped in sacking, and had spent an hour with her while they found the best place to hang it. Standing back they looked at the young woman’s body with detached frankness.