Island Madness

by Tim Binding

  “What the heli’s he up to?” Lentsch said. “He’s surely not asking them all out.”

  “Typical,” Zep mocked. “I must try it out myself. Seduction by name, rank and number.”

  The evening was starting. The room was filling up. A voice called out for the glass boot. Lentsch looked over. A young captain from artillery wanting to show off to his new chums. No chance. Someone started playing an accordion. Another started to sing. Lentsch turned to Zep and shouting above the noise, told him the dread news.

  “Ernst wants to get his hands on the place.”

  Zep looked amused. “What’s wrong? Worried he’ll catch a dose in one of his own brothels?”

  Lentsch shook his head. “Not here. The Villa. I came over with him on his plane.”

  Zep nodded. Lentsch wasn’t surprised. Zep knew most things. Underneath his bonhomie lay a still and watchful mind, poised to strike without a moment’s warning, though what aroused Zep to this action Lentsch found hard to determine: duty, irritation, boredom? Or was it simply the need to devour—like a man’s need for regular sex? Certainly Zep’s appearance after dispatching one of his victims was almost post-coital; happier, fresher, more relaxed. If anyone could deny Ernst his goal it would be him.

  “He made a point of telling me,” Lentsch went on. “If we don’t find room for him, he’ll try and get rid of us. And if that doesn’t work he’ll concrete the place over. Just to ruin it.”

  Zep seemed unconcerned.

  “Well, why don’t we accommodate him?” he suggested. “We could always get rid of Bohde. Ernst can’t be any worse than him.”

  Lentsch disagreed.

  “I’m not so sure,” he argued. “Bohde maybe a bore, but he’s quiet enough.”

  Zep snorted in derision, but Lentsch was not to be put off. “We don’t know what Ernst might get up to,” he insisted. “Isn’t there any dirt on him you could dredge up? Stop him in his tracks.”

  Zep ignored him and looked around the room. Molly was introducing Veronica to the artillery officer, holding his arm while she accepted a light for her cigarette. Zep’s face hardened for an instant, and then he asked the first thing that came into his head, simply to regain the momentum of conversation.

  “Good flight?”

  Lentsch shrugged his shoulders, but, remembering the landing, said, “Teil me. Are you aware that civilians are trying to undermine the safety of the airport?”

  Zep grinned. “You mean the runway?”

  Lentsch nodded. “Ernst muttered some nonsense about grass growing overnight.”

  Zep nodded. “The groundsmen have been cutting the grass extra close so the wheels find it hard to grip. So we’ve had…” He banged his hands together.

  Lentsch was worried.

  “Shouldn’t something be done about it? That’s exactly the sort of thing Ernst would report back like a shot.”

  Zep shook his hand.

  “I let them cut it like that when nothing important is coming in. We have lengthened the runway anyway. That way they think they are doing something for their country. They keep their self-respect and in all other matters regarding the airport do as they’re told. That way everyone is happy.”

  Lentsch was unconvinced. “But surely it might encourage them to do something worse.”

  Zep disagreed. “Never. They know what would happen if they did.” He sliced his throat. “The lot of them.” He banged his glass down. “Come on, Gerhard. Tomorrow we think of how to put a spoke in Ernst’s wheel and other matters. Tonight we drink and make love.”

  They had finally got back to the Villa at eleven o’clock. Albert was in the drawing room standing guard over the food—two rhubarb pies, a plate of corned beef sandwiches, three cold chickens and a bowl of baked potatoes with a jar of gooseberry jam by their side. Before the girls trooped off to the billiard room to change, they had all crowded round stuffing themselves as fast as they could. Lentsch went up to his room to fetch his round of cheese. As he came down the stairs he saw Veronica slip one of the potatoes into her handbag. Encouraged by her success she leant in and grabbed a chicken leg. Stepping back she raised the meat to her mouth before letting it fall. As her hand moved to close the clasp, she turned suddenly to where Lentsch stood, watching.

  “Whoops,” she said. “Greasy fingers.” She picked it out. “You want?”

  Lentsch put his cheese down on a small table and took it from her without a word. Perfume rose off her like tar in a heat haze. He held the leg out to her half-open mouth. Leaning forward, she bit and wrenched and chewed as he held it firm, and then, defiantly, bit again. Her lips were wet and fat and without guile.

  “Here,” he said, handing her the cheese. “Before the others get to it,” and he turned, so that he would not know, one way or the other, what she might do with it.

  Out in the hall again he picked up the phone and gave the operator Isobel’s number. He let it ring for a minute or more. There was still no reply. Bohde came down the stairs smelling of hair oil.

  “Girlfriend flown the coop?” Bohde asked in malicious innocence.

  Lentsch changed the subject.

  “What was all that about, back at the Casino,” he asked, “with all those nurses Mueller brought?”

  “Ah.” Bohde gathered himself up. “It’s to do with my research.”

  “Research?”

  “I am making a study of the German breast. In art and life. I have asked them if I may not take certain measurements. They are not only nurses, you know. They were all in the League of Girls.”

  “And they’ve agreed?”

  Bohde nodded.

  “As young Germans with a healthy outdoor look on life, they understand the purpose behind my project. It is nothing to do”—he raised his eyebrows as if he had found some pornographic postcards hidden under Lentsch’s bed—“with smut. It will all be carried out under proper conditions. I have promised them that when applying the tape measure I will wear gloves. Warmed beforehand, of course.”

  “Of course.” Lentsch couldn’t stop himself from smiling.

  Bohde retreated a step to gain height.

  “I knew you would poke fan, Gerhard,” he shrilled. “Which is why my findings will not be carried out here. Major Ernst has very kindly lent me the use of his garden. It is very private there. He is lending me some of his foreigns for comparison, too.”

  Lentsch felt a sudden chili in the air.

  “Ernst? What’s Ernst got to do with it?”

  Bohde’s smile was the epitome of complacency. “He is as committed to the protection of the German form as I am. He was one of the key speakers in the Naked and Education Congress of ‘38. Together we hope…” He faltered.

  “Yes?”

  “To further the cause of Naturism. This…” he swung his arms out, “could be its home.”

  Lentsch was appalled. Ernst had got one foot in the house already.

  “I didn’t know you two were so well acquainted,” he said coldly.

  “We have much in common. This afternoon he came back specially to chair an illustrated discussion on communal nudity and the pubescent male child.” Bohde thrust himself forward again. “The genitals,” he said, patting the front of his trousers, “once they become hidden under woollens and such, find it difficult to distinguish between that…” he nodded in the direction of the drawing room, “and the correct thing.”

  “What’s wrong with the women here?” Lentsch protested. “There’re all white, Anglo-Saxon.”

  Bohde looked at him smugly.

  “But they are not German, Major, and therefore, whatever their ‘credentials’, they cannot be of the same quality. If this is true of art and music, which it certainly is, it must be true of life itself. You should come to one of our lectures. They’re really most instructive.” He sidled past into the drawing room.

  It was one o’clock now and the party showed no signs of flagging. Veronica wore plain pink flannelettes while Molly was dressed in a pair of purple silk pyja
mas tucked into a spare pair of Zep’s riding boots. Bohde lay in an armchair with one eye open, watching Wedel dance with one of the few nurses who, despite Zep’s strictures, was still dressed in her uniform. Of Isobel there was no sign. Lentsch sat disconsolately on the sofa, his head swimming with an evening’s drink and music he had not played to her. He turned to Veronica. He wasn’t sure what he wanted now. Hilde Hildebrand’s voice came on the gramophone, her low confessional soaring into that empty space of helplessness. Liebe Ist Ein Geheimnis. Love is a Secret.

  “Isobel is not coming,” he announced. He felt he had said it before, but it needed to be said again. “I had things to give her,” he continued. “Records of Teddy Stauffer and Zacharius.” He stopped for a moment. He had so looked forward to talking to her and now she was not there the conversation was bursting out of him whether he liked it or not. Perhaps this woman would understand.

  “Zacharius is our own Stephane Grappelli,” he told her slowly. “He was taught by Kreisler, you know.”

  Veronica did not know, nor had she ever heard of Kreisler, but she nodded all the same. All she understood was that Lentsch was feeling sorry for himself. If she managed to lift him out of his lovesick gloom, who knows, he might forget Isobel altogether. At times like this a girl’s fortune could change overnight if she picked the right moment. But she would not do anything yet. First he had to sink a little deeper into despair.

  “My father has many Kreisler records,” he continued wistfully. “Brahms, Beethoven…” He looked across to where Bohde lay before raising his voice. “Even Mendelssohn.” He lurched back onto his original tack. “Do you know, Veronica, the leave before last I saw Django Reinhardt. I was this close.”

  He stretched his hand from his nose to hers. She leant back and rolled her pyjama top back up. Lentsch saw she had managed to insert a glass bead into the dimpled flesh of her belly button. Veronica caught his stare.

  “Do you ever go dancing?” she asked, sticking her leg out and wriggling her toes. “I bet you know some wonderful clubs.”

  He brightened at the recollection of them.

  “I do!” he exclaimed, as if they could hop in a taxi and be taken to one there and then. “Paris, Berlin, Munich.”

  “Before all this happened that’s what I wanted to do, branch out into clubs. Dancing and singing.”

  “Singing?” A note of hope rose in his voice. He could understand so little tonight. “You are a singer too?”

  “Light operatic,” she explained. “Of course it would have to be different for clubs. Different clientèle. More sophisticated.”

  Now he remembered. She was a singer! He beamed at her. “There is a song named after you, you know,” he said, clutching her hand. “Such a song!”

  Veronica did know. Nearly every German who tried to put his hand up her skirt had told her that there was a song named after her.

  “You don’t say,” she said. “Do tell.”

  “A very famous song. Gruss und Kuss Veronika!”

  “I don’t know if I want to be grussed. Even by an officer.” It had always raised a laugh in the past. Lentsch tried to ignore the flutter of her eyelids.

  “No, no,” he insisted, pointing across the room, momentarily glad to evade her eyes, “I have it somewhere. You must hear it.” He lurched across the room, bumping into Zep and Molly locked into a slow embrace. Squatting down by the radiogram he starled to leaf through his box of records. It was hard for him to lift each one out and focus on the label, harder still for him to prevent them slipping out of their sleeves. Finally he found what he was looking for and held it up triumphantly.

  “Veronica! “Gruss und Kuss”,” he called out. “You listen.”

  Ignoring Zep and Molly’s protests he changed the record and hurried back. As the music started he took up Veronica’s hand again and began waving it in time to the music, lost in its jaunty refrain. Veronica started to hum along. It was that sort of tune. Lentsch was entranced.

  “You know it already! You may keep it if you like.”

  She squeezed his hand. “I’d love to, not that I deserve such a present.”

  “Isobel is not present.” Lentsch blurted out. “She should be here.”

  “Well, I’m here.”

  “Of course you are. Everyone is here, all the Swingheimes of Guernsey.” He waved his hand across the room, knowing before he opened his mouth again that he was about to speak foolishly. “You are very lovely. Like a picture. I would like to paint you. Perhaps tomorrow?”

  Veronica held her breath. She could push it a little further and suggest that she stay the night, or thank him for a perfectly lovely evening and go home. She would have liked to stay the night, if for no other reason than to have a good look upstairs and a decent breakfast tomorrow, but she had the feeling that in his present condition come the morning he would regret it. She should leave and wait for him to call on her. The trouble was he was so drunk he probably wouldn’t remember asking her, but there was just a chance. It was worth the risk. If he and Isobel were splitting up…There were not many better prizes on the island than Major Gerhard Lentsch. She patted his hand.

  “Of course you can. One more glass of champagne and then you must get Herbert to drive me home.”

  “Helmut,” he corrected. He struggled to pull himself upright. “Champagne and brandy. That’s what I need. Is what everybody needs.” He raised his voice. “Wedel, bring me the bottles. Veronica is having another drink and then she has promised to dance for us. A dance like they do in Turkey. All belly.” He patted her stomach.

  “Gerhard, darling,” she said, sufficiently pleased with herself. “I shall do no such thing.”

  Lentsch’s face grew serious. “Then you shall walk home without a pass and be arrested and brought before the magistrate. And I shall instruct him to be very severe. A fine of what…what do you think, Bohde?” he called out. “Bohde!”

  Though he had drunk enough to be unable to utter another coherent word until morning, Bohde had enough training to recognize the voice of a superior officer. He dragged himself out of his slumber and began to blink.

  “We need your advice,” Lentsch explained. “What do you think the punishment should be for a young English woman out on the streets after curfew, dressed only in her very finest bedclothes, and,” he shouted, deciding to let the room know her little secret, “with this in her satchel?” He snatched her bag and brought out the cheese. “See?”

  Hearing the others laugh Bohde puzzled for a moment, concerned that if there was a joke to be had, it should not be at his own expense.

  “Ask him,” he said slowly, eyeing the swaying couple with obvious distaste. “Black marketeers are his concern.” Zep, his head buried in Molly’s neck, elected not to hear.

  “There’s no point in asking him,” Lentsch argued. “He’s worse than all of them put together. As far as the Captain is concerned there should be no curfew at all for girls over sixteen. Isn’t that right, Zep?”

  Zep looked up. “No curfew for good-looking girls,” he countered. “The rest should be deported to Alderney.” He laughed. “Ugly girls for the Todts and the turnip-eaters. Pretty girls for us. An island of nothing but pretty girls.” He turned his attention back to Molly, opening her jealous mouth with a hard kiss.

  Lentsch turned back to Bohde. “See what I mean? The man’s no use at all. So what’s it to be, Bohde?”

  Bohde sat up and stared over from across the room. There was no pleasure in his face, not even a trace of an alcoholic leer, which was what Veronica expected from men in his state. She started to fidget with the tassel of her pyjama cord, feeling uncomfortably naked beneath her costume. Bohde lit his cigar slowly and bunching his fingers round the thick stem held it out in an almost obscene manner. The room had gone quiet.

  “I would fine her one hundred Reichsmarks,” he declared finally.

  A chorus of disappointment was thrown round the room. Only Bohde could think of something so prosaic. He held up his hands. The mutin
y ceased.

  “And as it is unlikely that a woman of her means could find such a sum,” he continued, “I would make her…” he made a crude sucking sound with his pursed lips while twirling his cigar in the air, “…and so forth on a couple of these. Flush her innards out. Then we’d see what else she’d stolen.” He sank back into his chair.

  “That’s the only way you’ll ever get anyone to smoke them,” Zep called out.

  Veronica sat, staring unhappily at the floor. Lentsch attempted to lift her spirits.

  “Don’t worry, my dear. Bohde has no sense of humour. I know exactly what I would do.”

  “And what would that be?” she asked timidly.

  “Confiscate your pyjamas!” He slapped her thigh. “Now go on. Make me happy. Dance.”

  In the hall the phone started to ring. Lentsch started up, thinking it might be Isobel, but Helmut was already out of the door. Watching Veronica cavort round the room, showing her stomach to the half-bored remnants of the night, Lentsch couldn’t help but contrast her with Isobel. She would never demean herself in this manner, and he would never ask her to do such a thing. Her flirtations were of a different class altogether. The other girls looked on, uncertain whether Veronica’s performance was undermining their status or improving it. Their faces were nervous, intent, looking for signs, conscious of their precarious position and what might be expected of them. What was it that brought them here? Lentsch wondered. What did they hope to get out of it? Was it simply that they imagined that they were hitching themselves to the winning side? At first perhaps, though not now. Albert maintained that it was the uniform. Was that it? Certainly it was more attractive than that sad brown affair the British were forced to wear. Some women might be drawn to it, but so many, so readily, so often? Molly had told him, in a moment of disarming frankness, that it was down to the physical stature of the men themselves. “You’re all so much bigger than what we’re used to here,” she had yawned, delighting in the ofïhand crudity of her remark. “It’s such a change to have a man who doesn’t look like some troll from the Hall of the Mountain King. Compared with what we’re usually saddled with, you lot look like gods.” Gods! As usual, Molly’s remark was not completely flippant. Though in reality they were nothing special, just ordinary soldiers possessed with ordinary charms, capable of ordinary cruelties, to begin with they must have appeared to be quite extraordinary—conquerors of Europe, sublime in their authority, correct in their conviction, tall and tanned and sounding the death knell of corrupt cultures.