Island Madness

by Tim Binding

  For the past three weeks he had been engaged in building a connecting passage between the hospital and what would be ammunition stores, with an escape shaft set halfway between, some seventy-five feet high, an iron-rung ladder strapped inside. It was hard work, with falling roofs and unexpected subsidence taking their toll, but despite the danger it was along here, in a dark abandoned recess, now hidden behind one of the giant air filters ranged along the main corridors, that he had fashioned his tiny room, four foot high and three foot square and lined with sacking. To begin with, he did not know what he would do with his invention, nor why he had spent back-breaking minutes furiously hacking at this illegal excavation, for it was not an escape route leading to an outside salvation, it was a cell constructed within a prison. But in the days when he had dug it out, chucking the earth into his wagon, tipping the evidence of his own private domain into the waiting lorries, it came to him that what he had created was not an exit, but an entrance, not a hiding place, but the beginnings of a state of being, and that if he were careful enough and constructed it cleverly, he could expand it, build other rooms, food stores, sleeping quarters, listening posts. He would learn the tunnel’s secrets, its nocturnal habits, and adapt to its calling. He would feed and clothe himself from their provisions, take warmth from their furnaces, run wires from the generators, tap into the air compressors. He would wear a stolen officer’s cap and a pair of good boots and on his leather belt would swing a torch and a dagger and a length of rope. He would fashion a new world, unsuspected and bidden, one which he would command and one which would grow in power. He would take the old man in with him. Others later on. Burrow under the whole island. When they were secure they could bring some of the whores down. Start a new civilization. Rot the other world from the inside.

  He’d crept over to the old man as soon as he’d got back, wakened him with broken piece of pie held under his nose, thrusting out his arm to show off his new-found prizes.

  “Look,” he had whispered, a touch a pride in his voice. “Trousers too!”

  The old man had taken the pie and held it gingerly to his mouth. His teeth, loose in his reddened gums, moved sideways as he bit into it. He worked a piece slowly round his tongue, chewing carefully and swallowing hard.

  “How’d you come by all this lot?” he had asked.

  “Farmhouse,” the boy had told him. “Off a line.”

  Wiping the crumbs back in from the corner of his sore stubbled mouth, the old man reached out and touched it.

  “That’s real quality you got there, son. Sticks out a mile on you. They’ll be wanting to know how you’ve come by it. You’d best dirty it up some more or they’ll hang you up on the hooks and beat the shit out of you.”

  He’d taken the old man’s advice, pushed the jacket up and down the floor, rubbing sawdust and dirt into the material. Fighting over that dead rabbit had helped.

  He looked for the old man in the line of men hacking at the granite wall, but couldn’t see him. Perhaps he’d been sent further in. Peter, that was his name. Same name as his father. Sonya had been his sister’s. And his? He could hardly remember. He hadn’t had a name for such a long time. He was just feet now, feet and arms and runny shits, all wrapped up in a brand-new coat. This would get him through the coming months. Pillow, blanket, coat. He patted it lovingly. What a night that was, the car coming quietly up that wild stretch of path, him crouched underneath the gorse hedge, the rain starting to get up. The car had stopped not a body length from him. Everything foot level. Door open. Black rain on the car’s mudguards and the shine of a cape and a man’s boot, stepping into the squashed wet of the puddles, door swinging open and the light inside shining on the hatted head sleeping in the back. Low mutters from the man, sensing the urgency and the hurry of it. Not hunting cats in the headlights at this hour; nerves and fear afoot, something quick and something bad. Then the man had pulled the door open and out the figure fell. With the hat and the jacket and the way the body rolled on the ground he had thought it another man at first, a stumbling drunk, but then as the hat slipped off and began to roll across the ground he saw the back of her legs and the fall of her hair. Then her face was staring at him along the spongy ground, six foot away, open eyed, bare Ups grinning on her face like blade work on a pumpkin and her dress slapping in the mud like a hooked fish on a river bank. The man had chased the hat and stuffed it in his pocket and then had starled to drag her off, one leg in each great hand, the dress riding up over her arse, bare and moon-white, her arms trailing high above her head, her outstretched fingers leaving trails in the flattened grass, the jacket peeling up over her, like she was one of the jig-a-jig girls, stripping for him even though his back was turned, first one arm and then the other, over her shoulders and head, blown back to the bush where he crouched, his heart tight in the grip of such close danger. Reaching one of the shafts the man picked her up and counting to himself, one, two, three, lifted her clear, her bare feet swinging over the hole, before he lowered her carefully into the deep of it. Down she went, until all he could see was her head and her mouth, luminous and vile, drowning in the night air. Then, not fifty yards away, the boom of a gun went off, and hiding his face he felt the earth recoil. When he looked again the air shaft stood empty and the man was running back to the safety of his car, bumping down the road without lights, the engine gunning out of sight. And as he crept round and tugged the jacket free it seemed to him that she had been brought to her underground tomb, not by chance nor for her captor’s indecent pleasure, but to offer him the means by which he might survive in his. He knew what they had done to her, what she had suffered. He did not feel sorry for her. It was what happened, what the world was made for. All the rest was a delusion. He had seen it before. Seen it with his sister that night. One after the other they came, dropping their trousers round their ankles while their predecessor hopped back into his, laughing coarse encouragement, some queuing up for a second or third time. The officer in charge, a tall, handsome man with not a speek on his uniform, had come round to their cottage that afternoon and ducking through the low doorway, had stepped in, dusting off his cap with determined politeness. There was just him and his father and sister left. Their mother and the baby had been taken into the church, along with Grandmama and all the others. The officer had looked around the room with interest, the only room they had, and picking up a sample of Sonya’s embroidery work had held it out, questioning her with a friendly look. His sister had nodded and, smiling, the officer had replaced it back on the dresser with care. Then, noticing his parents’ bed hidden at the back, he had gone over, drawn back the curtain and patted the snug, high mattress.

  “Good,” he said to his father. “Teil your daughter to keep it nice and warm. This is where we’re all going to fuck her tonight.”

  His father had wanted to end it for them that afternoon, but there was no gun for him to do it quickly, to shoot them both and then turn it on himself, just the gutting knife and the rolling pin and Grandmama’s walking stick she used to whack his legs with, and he couldn’t bring himself to use any of those. So they sat, the three of them, praying and singing soft songs of their homeland, hoping that the soldiers might go away or forget. When the time had come and the officer had put his head round the corner, tapping at the watch he held in his hand, his father, weeping, had shaken his head, imploring him, pointing to her youth and the trust she had placed in his ability to protect her.

  “Do not worry,” the officer had told him, “I understand,” and slipping the watch back into his pocket, had taken him out and shot him underneath their broken window. The soldiers had to step over his outstretched arms to come through the door. They had come through the door all night.

  Six

  Wedel parked the car at the top of the road. As the two men set off down the hill a group of nurses appeared on the brow of the other side, laughing and chatting. On seeing the Major approach they feil silent. One of them waved nervously. Lentsch nodded.

  The house was b
athed in a blank grey daylight, the blinds drawn, the pinned-back slatted shutters rattling in the spasmodic wind. Ned hesitated by the gateless entrance. Even when he had come here before, when there had been life and brazen purpose to his visit, it had seemed to him then that despite the thought that had gone into its construction and the young woman whose willing form would lead him up the stairs or out into the lush wilderness at the rear, this was a house in which footsteps and voices and words of love would always ring hollow, one where its occupants would always appear transitory. Perhaps it was true what his old man had claimed. “Some houses,” he used to tell him, “are built for crime, for misery, desertion. It doesn’t matter if you’re a saint or a sinner, the bricks and mortar will get you in the end.”

  The garden was more overgrown than he remembered, a tumble of weeds and grass. Last night’s clouds had hidden the worst. Lentsch moved forward.

  “I tried to persuade her to do some gardening,” he told Ned, brushing aside a drooping bramble. “I even sent Albert over for a couple of hours, but like her father, she showed no real interest.” He held the offshoot back for Ned to pass. “A garden should not be like this,” he called out after him. “It does not speak well of the home.”

  Ned stood before the door and reached for the knocker. Thinking better of it, he laid it gently back against the brass fitting.

  “It’s just possible,” he said, “that there may be something he would not want to tell me in your presence. Perhaps it would help if halfway through you took yourself into the garden, or went off and read a magazine. Improved your English.”

  “My English is not good?”

  “It was a joke, Major.”

  Before he could grasp the heavy ring again, the door swung open. Ned could not be sure but it seemed to him that when van Dielen saw who it was the slightest trace of a smile played across his small and careful face. Ned swallowed. He felt as if his voice were trapped inside, ashamed to show itself. Isobel’s father swung the door wide. He spoke in that clear, lilting voice which seemed to mock everyone but himself.

  “Here you are at last, Mr Luscombe. Uninvited as always, but this time I will concur that I cannot deny you. And the Major too. A very particular delegation, if you’ll excuse the observation.”

  “This is a bad business, Mr van Dielen.” Ned looked sideways at the Major, conscious of his echoing of Lentsch’s earlier remark.

  “A bad business.” Now it was van Dielen’s turn to repeat it, and he elongated the phrase, accentuating its awkward banality. “Is this what you’ve come to tell me?”

  He said nothing more but stepped back, flinging his arm out in an exaggerated gesture of hospitality. Ned and Lentsch walked in. There was no hall to speak of. The front door opened on to a set of tall French windows and beyond a large drawing room. Nothing had changed. It was still as bare a room as Ned had ever seen, with glass at the back and glass at the front, with rugs and strange furniture scattered across the wooden floor. “As friendly as a barred cage,” Isobel used to say. At the back, slowly rising to the balcony, rose the tubular staircase with its polished steel handrail. Ned could hear the fall of discarded shoes as she moved towards it, hear the soft swish of her dress against the balustrade, her bare feet squeaking on the polished wood as she climbed above. His eyes rose involuntary to the corridor and her closed bedroom door. Van Dielen gestured to the steps leading down to the bar.

  “Come and join me, why don’t you? My first guests of the new year.”

  He led them down to where a half-empty bottle of brandy stood. Van Dielen poured himself another glass.

  “A dreadful extravagance, I’ll admit, but under the circumstances.” He waved it at the two uncomfortable men. “Will you not join me, gentlemen? It is of the highest quality.”

  Ned looked to the floor. The Major was unfailingly polite.

  “Some other time, perhaps,” he said.

  Van Dielen was in the mood for repeating awkward phrases.

  “Some other time. Now there’s a thing to conjure with. From which would you have me choose? The future or the past?”

  Ned tried to break in. “Mr van Dielen…”

  “I favour the past, though whether the present past or the faraway half-remembered past, I am in something of a quandary. Perhaps that infamous bicycle ride of yours, Mr Luscombe. I should have not treated you so harshly. I can see that now.”

  “Mr van Dielen, there’s no call to—”

  “Had I known then what I know now, I would have invited you in and given you the run of the house. Brandy, cognac, rum, they’re all stocked here. You could have helped yourself to anything you liked. Asked me for a cocktail. I make very good cocktails. They all said that in the East.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “And as for that bicycle. I have nothing against the bicycle so long as it is maintained in good working order. I would have bought her one in due course. It was only a matter of time. Do you still have your bicycle, Mr Luscombe?”

  “I sold it.”

  “We saw a tandem in the desert once. A tourer. The woman was riding in front, straining hard, pulling all manner of panniers and rucksacks strapped to the sides and back, while her man was seated behind, feet up on his handlebars, reading a newspaper. How we laughed! ‘What a very naughty fellow,’ I said, ‘for not doing his fair share.’”

  “‘No, no, Daddy. That’s not the point,’ she said. ‘It should be the other way around.’ She was only nine then and already conversant with the uses of men. Pigtails on such an old head. Do you like pigtails on a girl, Mr Luscombe?”

  “Pigtails?”

  “On a girl they are correct, but not on a woman, I think. On the Continent, in Germany and Austria, my own country too, they are fond of pigtails on both girls and women. Why is that, I wonder?”

  “I have never given it much thought.”

  “No. Well, you wouldn’t, would you. But is that not true, Major?”

  “Indeed.”

  “The young girls that took your fancy, they had pigtails, did they not?”

  “Some of them, yes, I am sure. And my sister too.”

  “Your sister?”

  “Yes.” The Major tapped his top pocket. “I showed you a photograph of her once, when I came here.”

  “And she wore pigtails in both childhood and…?” He let the word fall.

  “For a time.”

  “There you are, then. And Isobel, did you ever wish that she might gather her locks and wear them in plaits, like your lady-friends back home?”

  Now it was Lentsch’s turn to falter.

  “I never imagined such a thing,” he stammered.

  “You see! It’s true! You would have preferred pigtails! She was too knowing for you, was that it? Was that what brought her down? That she was too knowing. And here we are the three of us, who brought her such a treacherous gift.”

  He took another gulp, choking as he swallowed hard.

  “Forgive me. I am not a great conversationalist. I know how to talk, indeed in English and in German and my own native tongue I am somewhat gifted in mastering the technical differences of vocabulary and regulations, you understand. Where I fall down is in the thing that counts, the art of conversation. The words I produce, the manner in which they are delivered, their overall intent and appearance seem to demand the immediate cessation of that of which they seek to be a part, although I find myself unable to understand why.”

  “No.”

  “I am doing it now, in this very modern and open design, blocking off all avenues of conversation even as I speak.”

  “This is not a time for conversation, Mr van Dielen.”

  “No. You are right, Mr Luscombe. Ned. May I call you Ned? It is what she called you, after all. I am her father, am I not? Have I not that right too, even though I have been unpardonably rude to you in the past?”

  “Thinknothingofit.”

  “You said that last night, did you not? When I met you by our front gate?”

 
; “What?” Lentsch looked surprised.

  “Did you not know, Major?” Van Dielen delighted in Ned’s discomfiture. “Last night I returned from my dinner with Major Ernst to find the Inspector here scuttling about outside our house like a crab looking for a shell.” He tapped Ned on the knee. “You must be truthful with the Major, Ned, or he will lose his little German temper.”

  “This is true?” Lentsch sounded shocked.

  “I was walking home late. I thought I saw a light.”

  Van Dielen leapt upon the uneasy explanation.

  “The light? Yes, I remember.” He stared Ned in the face. He should have been a policeman. “There was no light or I would have seen it too, while taking my farewell of Major Ernst. The only light shining that night was the one burning in your jealous heart.”