by Tim Binding
Zepernick was waiting in the car. She had sat in her waiting room on the bare chair staring out of the window, looking down on the shoppers for an hour, fearing the Captain might not come, and when she had seen the car park ostentatiously up on the pavement and had breathed an audible sigh of relief it had come to her that whatever happened to her now she could never join her fellow islanders ever again. It wasn’t so much that she had chosen sides. It was more to do with the fact that she had widened her horizons. It was what she had been looking for all along. It could have been with Gerald. It might have been with Ned. But it had happened finally with Captain Zepernick, Zeppy as he encouraged her to call him, hastened by the need to deal with the complexity of the world, to embrace its fearful multiplicity, to step into the unknown. All those shoppers below wanted to do was to return to the world as it had been. She did not. That was what she had been trying to escape from, and with a bit of peaked cap fortune, she had broken through.
He had been calling for her these past three weeks now, like Tommy Ie Coeur used to, only the Captain had better taste. At first he had simply taken her for a drive, with a hamper bouncing on the back seat. It was a simple transaction. The Captain would wait patiently while she ate her fill, but the moment she wiped her mouth and threw the napkin aside he was on top of her. It was as if someone had blown him a whistle. She had toyed with the idea of taking her time, to see how long it would take for signs of his suppressed impatience to surface, but the truth was that she found it impossible to drink champagne slowly and the food, real bread, real cheese, real ham, had proved equally irresistible, though she had made certain that there was enough left over for when she got home. It was a good job the Captain didn’t know for why. It was against the law to fraternize with the foreigns, and though Zep was all for flouting the law himself, he took a different view of those who broke it without his permission. Those men for instance that he’d found smuggling, he’d had them crying like children, he had boasted, shoving photographs of their sweethearts in their broken faces, telling them to take a good look, they’d not be seeing them again. Nothing like these for them any more, he had chuckled, unplucking her buttons. Not for a long time. Such pleasure in other’s discomfort, she had discovered, provoked his stamina.
The Captain greeted her with an unsettling and businesslike smile before gunning the car up the hill. As she hung on to the strap she began to worry that he might be starting to lose interest, for despite her undoubted willingness and the regular availability of her charms, however hard she responded to his insistent and methodical embrace, it was difficult for her to emulate the same nervous excitement that had coursed through her body that first time in the shed. Even if she could have arranged for the boy to be hiding nearby every time it wouldn’t be the same. The element of terror would be absent, and terror, though the Captain did not fully appreciate this himself, was a quality which stimulated all his senses. The boy was now as regular in his appearances as was the Captain, slipping in round the back door at around eleven o’clock, making sure he did not bump into Ned’s new visitor again. The meal would be waiting for him on the starched chequered tablecloth; a glass of milk and whatever food she had managed to cobble together. If she had time she would try and piek a few flowers and place them in the centre, in an old-fashioned drinking glass, thick, with bubbles caught up its sides. To begin with he used to push this decoration aside and stolidly chew, but he had come to expect them now, settling his nose into their haphazard midst before eating, lifting out a single stem, stroking his cheek with the tapering petals once his plate was empty. For the first time in her life she had begun to enjoy cooking. Before she went to bed she would take Da’s paper and cut out that evening’s recipe or cooking hint—vegetable rissoles, Guernsey Gache, frying-pan scones. She had quite a number of them now, tucked in the back of her appointment book, and when she wasn’t leafing through it, or sat by the window looking out across Lower Pollet and the eternal barber’s queue, wondering what the Captain might be doing and if he intended to see Molly that night, she would deal out the scraps of newspaper like a deck of cards, thinking about the ‘white waif as Da called him and the slow, reluctant manner in which he ate, as if the food’s texture and taste were of such an incomprehensible nature that he needed to savour each mouthful in order to come to some elementary understanding of its configuration. “Pity we had to be starving before you bothered to learn how to cook,” her da had grumbled, but it was said with paternal admiration rather than displeasure, in recognition of the feminine and thus devious manner of her undoubted duplicity. Once home from her time with the Captain she would take out his leftovers, lay them on the table, add to them, reshape them, and have them waiting for this pale and wild creature who in turn stuffed the remnants (and like she, he always ensured that there were remnants, conscience overcoming desire) into those deep and curiously preserved pockets before bounding out into the night and the misunderstood dimensions of his billet.
They had managed to converse by now, the boy and she, though neither understood the other’s language. Gestures, mimes, single words, pictures drawn upon a sheet of paper, these were their means. She would watch him as he described his church burning, his journey to Wuppertal in the freezing cattle wagons, the shape of which he had drawn on the steamed kitchen window, the temperature of which he had indicated by the rubbing of his arms. She had hunched her shoulders as he described the building of the great tunnel, its doomed height, its vanishing length, its impenetrable darkness; the carts he had to push, the pickaxe he must wield, the ache to be found in his limbs and then, cringing in expectation, she would watch as he put his fingers in his ears and threw himself backwards, mimicking the explosions, the disfigurement, the death that came rushing out of its mouth. He drew crude crayon sketches of his living quarters too, the number of his shed, the number of bunks to be found stacked inside, the length of wood on which each man was required to lie, and she, comprehending the confinement but not the squalor, had added in her mind’s eye a mattress, a blanket, even a pillow to that bare picture, for it was not within her remit to envisage a place to sleep without such comforts. They taught each other words, ‘bread’, ‘milk’, ‘mother’, ‘father’. “Mother?” she had asked and he had drawn the church again and the fire raging without. “Father?” she had questioned and he had pointed his arm down and had shot at the floor. She had feared to ask any other familial questions. Despite this setback they found their language entertaining as well as informative. She had begun to make him laugh. The other day she had been miming her occupation, wielding a kitchen pair of scissors, cutting imaginary toenails, holding her nose in imaginary disgust, and he had opened his mouth and laughed, not merely smiled but laughed out loud, his lips drawn back over his brown and broken teeth, his gums bleeding still from the cuts of bread crust and baked-potato skin, laughing not solely at her acting ability but at the very impossibility of her profession. It had gathered momentum, enveloping his throat and concave chest, invading his sunken belly, seizing his whole body in a lung-bursting lock. Soon he was doubled up, unable to stop, stamping his feet on the floor, banging his ribcage, clouds of cement puffing from his half-bent body, like dust rising from a worn-out carpet beaten on a line. He was swallowing laughter as a parched desert refugee might gulp down fresh water, choking on the very thing that, taken in moderation, might restore his dehydrated life. And yet it was not laughter as she knew it. It wasn’t true what someone once said, that laughter is the same the whole world over. This had sounded different, more guttural, more animal: foreign: not hugely dissimilar to the Captain’s, though his was clipped by the order of his profession and the arrogance of his age. She had picked the boy up by the hinge of his stomach and sat him on her knee on the armchair by the stove. He had quietened in calming gasps, resting his head on the same breast that the Captain had so eagerly uncovered hours before, his spittle-flecked lips wetting the patterned cloth in the same aureoled spot which the Captain’s lips had marked, his hand resti
ng underneath the swell where the Captain’s hand had rested. But unlike the Captain he lay quiet, touching not her body but the humanity within it, and she had placed the palm of her hand on his white encrusted head and with her breast flowering to the wet warmth, felt herself swoon with the sudden bloom of love and loss. So she went from laughter to laughter, from secret life to secret life, from the Captain’s athletic and addictive attentions in the late afternoon to the boy’s eloquent and exiled embrace in the late evening, two lives buried in her folds, both there by reason of capricious war, both nurturing her own needs. And thus practised in deception and dependence she began to want for armour.
The Captain drove in silence, past the cinema with its German film, up the hill with its German signs, the iron railings of the great school flicking past, the building gaunt and empty, save for a few workmen with ladders outside. She remembered when they had marched en bloc, masters and boys, to the quay and embarkation to England and the mad chaos of those evacuation days, scènes of indecision and panic, farms abandoned, houses with their keys left hanging in the back door, cattle unmilked, roaring with pain, meals left half eaten, fathers burying the few valuables in the back garden or leading their pets to the vets (four thousand cats and dogs had been destroyed in those few days, pausing only for the lorries to take the carcasses away), radios playing to vacated rooms, a sheet left halfway through a mangle, children’s scooters lying in the street; whole streets without a sign of life, as if a plague of Pied Pipers had descended and danced a whole population away. She remembered going down to the harbour that last morning, when the last ship was due to sail, working her away amongst the bad-tempered queues jostling for their money from the bank and insurance offices, emerging customers waving their twenty-pound limit in disgust, threading her way to a quayside littered with empty carts, nervous horses snorting in their harness, men trying to sell their cars for a couple of extra pounds (she had nearly bought one herself, two pounds he had been asking and she had the money in her purse, but in the interim, thinking foolishly what would her father say and where would she keep it and how could she afford to run it, someone had taken advantage of her hesitation and closed the deal for two pounds and ten shillings), a fight over an abandoned motorbike. She had sat on a coil of tarred rope and watched the pushing of backs and the spilling of luggage and the agitated cries of the wheeling gulls, and through it heard, as they all had heard, that pattering chattering sound as the children came down the road, skipping and scuffling and plodding forward with songs or sobs in their throat, two abreast, dressed in jerseys and raincoats, shorts and skirts, clutching brown-paper parcels and teddy bears, their mums and dads close by, those going with their children marching quietly behind, carrying what belongings they had managed to snatch in pillowcases and feed sacks, and those not, running alongside, calling, cajoling, darting in for a farewell kiss, pulling them out to tie a shoelace or plonk a woollen cap upon an unruly head. They had held their breath then, all of them, as they looked into this grey muffled crocodile and realized it was true. The island was losing its soul, and at that the activity resumed, more frantic, to leave this place and place one’s faith on England’s foreign shore. Da had wanted her to go with Kitty Luscombe, but she couldn’t, not with Mum the way she was. She’d helped Kitty patch up her clothes the night before, her father fussing over her as if she were a schoolgirl still, making her check and double check whether she’d got Mrs H.’s letter safe, if her embarkation paper was in order, counting and recounting the little sum of money he’d managed to put aside. She’d seen the two of them by the gangway that day, but hadn’t intruded, Albert patting Kitty on the back, then swiftly kissing the back of her hand, pressing it to his lips and then his heart before he handed her the small case and walked away. What was Kitty doing now at this very minute? she wondered. Not riding around in a two-seater convertible about to have sex with a German officer, that’s for sure, though perhaps she might be having sex with someone. War and danger did that to a body, even to someone as level-headed as Albert Luscombe’s daughter. It tingled the nerves, made you feel reckless inside.
The Captain changed gear and raced along Grange Road and the great houses of authority that hid behind the evergreen hedges and wrought-iron gates, then turned left down Queen’s Road, sounding his horn at a weary troop of shuffling infantrymen who stood back against the stone wall as they flashed past, the Captain acknowledging their courtesy, Veronica staring ahead, pretending that she was invisible to their whistling barrack-room taunts. At the crossroads he plunged over, hardly bothering to look left or right, taking the dog-leg of Prince Albert’s Road with wheels squealing. Once through the bend he pushed back the hem of her dress high over her bare knee, accelerating into the straight. She closed her eyes. She knew where they were going. It was not the quickest way, but it allowed him speed. It fed his batteries, and if there was one thing the Captain liked, it was to be fully charged up. At the end of the road he swung the car quickly to the right. She leant into him hard and stayed pressed up against him, and they turned once more, into the steep narrow streel, where halfway down he parked the car in a overgrown siding off Val Fleury Close, safe from prying eyes. She unbuttoned the flap to his pocket and eased in her hand. The key lay at the bottom, long and cold. She took it out and held it up to the light. It surprised her. It was shiny and new.
“What happened to the old one?” she asked.
The Captain took it from her, smiling, and put it back in his pocket, patting its shape through the flap. He said nothing.
The car rides and cold-weather picnics had lasted a week. Then, the following Monday when she had plumped down beside him, removed her hat, straightened her dress and asked, “Where to today?” Zep had turned the key, rewed the engine and had announced, “A surprise.” He had driven around for ten minutes, then, turning down Hauteville, had parked by Vktor Hugo’s house with its scrolled plaque set inside the wall.
“I thought I would give you a guided tour of the premises. You have never been?”
She had never been. What on earth would she want to go in there for?
“I’m not a great one for visiting museums.”
“No matter. It is not what we came for.”
“Game for?” she asked, though she knew well enough, had known it with sinking heart the moment he had uttered those words, and though it came as no great shock, what it was he expected from her, what he would always expect, there was a brief flicker of hope, when he leaped out and walked round to open the passenger door, bowing in that exaggerated manner, a greenhouse orchid produced from behind his back, that he had planned a small surprise for her, something intimate, unusual, which indeed he but only as to the placing of the old, familiar event. “From the had, Major’s desk,” he smirked once they were standing in the dark and peculiarly quiet hall, waving the key triumphantly in the dusty air as if the Major were a schoolmaster and he the prankish boy.
“What are we doing here?” she whispered, blushing at her own unconvincing naivety, and the Captain, laughing, pulled her to him and running his finger in between the rim of her collar and the damp flesh of her neck, replied, “There is no need to whisper, Veronica. We can make as much noise as we choose,” and with that started to lead her through the rooms, his hands clasped behind his back, her holding on to them like in some silly party game, the Captain releasing her now and again, like a man might let loose the slip of his dog leash, while she ran her fingers over the surface of some long gilt frame, or traced the design on some silver brocade, marvelling at the heavy shine that made every artefact appear so deep, so endless, before pulling her back en route to their destination. Finally they reached the third floor and a room entombed with dark, somnambulant tapestries, and in the centre, mounted on a pedestal, shrouded like some dormant chrysalis, stood an enormous bed. She’d seen smaller vegetable plots.
“Built for Garibaldi,” he said proudly.
Another name Veronica did not recognize.
“The father of It
aly,” he told her, walking her towards it. “The only man famous for inventing something that has not worked. This bed was made specially for him.”
“Big, was he?” she offered facetiously, nervous now to be enclosed in this heavy darkened house with this restlessly demanding man. “Or did he move about a lot?”
The Captain refused to laugh.
“He never arrived to use it,” he said, pulling back the cover. On an embroidered pillow lay a bottle of champagne and two glasses. “No one has ever used it. Until now.”
Veronica had wondered if that was true, wondered whether the Captain had not entertained a host of girls here.
“What, not even Molly?”
The Captain looked surprised.
“Molly? Molly would want to move in, so she could boast about it.”
It was the first time since that time in the surgery that her name had come up. She had been the reason for the clandestine nature of these meetings, at least that was what she told herself. She didn’t see much of Molly these days. Molly had pulled out of the amateur dramatics the same time they’d found Isobel stuffed down that shaft, just when they had nearly completed preparations for their spring variety show. Not one but two girls short, Mrs H. had complained! It sounded especially callous coming from her, but it was true. It was going to be something special this time too, the first time she was taking the lead. The Captain coughed and stood waiting. She made one attempt at decency.