Island Madness

by Tim Binding

  All these things he knew but until that moment when he returned to the Villa with an idea of who the birthday guest might be he had not gone on the offensive and that was what was needed, for a plan came into his head, a design of such diabolical ease it made him feel giddy, like he had just stepped off a boat. He stood stock-still in the drawing room, the name Lidichy ringing in his head, thinking how it could be done. Lidichy. Lidichy, the spirit of Lidichy. If that was what they did in memory of one of his favoured sons, what would they do to an island which tried to assassinate the man himself? Even if he did not succeed, even if he merely maimed him, or killed part of his entourage, what a cruel and merciless fury would be unleashed? But first confirmation was needed, confirmation that this was not the imagining of an enfeebled old man. It came in drips and drabs, nothing definite; the Captain being fitted for a new uniform, Molly in an almost permanent state of sexual excitement, a sudden surge of activity down by the harbour. It was seeing the soldiers unloading a large foreign car, seeing the sweat and muscle of them, with the crane swinging, men shouting, that finally drove him to action of his own. Coming back to the Villa and realizing that Molly and the Captain had decided to take an afternoon bath, he stepped into the Captain’s room and lifted his diary from the top pocket of his jacket, the sound of water gently slapping, the low mutter of voices, nervous assurance. Leafing through February and March, the pages were so thin he feared he might tear one in his haste, but then there it was, April the 20th, studded with exclamation marks, with a time, 11.30; the confirmation of his dreams. That was all he needed. He replaced the notebook quickly, unable to remember which way up it had been, and was halfway down the stairs before he remembered that he had not rebuttoned the pocket, shutting his eyes and pulling himself back up, only to meet the Captain coming out of the bathroom door.

  “Yes?” The Captain held the towel tightly round his waist. It was a rule of the house that when they were there Albert did not use the main stairs.

  “The water, Captain,” he said. “I was concerned that there might not be enough seeing as there are two of you in there. I was wondering if you wanted me to burn some more of our fuel. We’re quite low, though.”

  “If I had wanted more fuel I would have asked for more fuel. You should not be here Albert. You know this.” He shook his hair and looked down at the gathering pool at his feet.

  Albert coughed. “I don’t wish to sound impertinent, Captain, but that bath in there was not built for two. Britishers bath alone. We find it cleaner that way. What with you and Miss Molly and the water all in the bath together I am a bit worried about the weight. There’s the billiard table underneath to consider as well as your safety. If you were to crash in on it, it would ruin the lie of the cloth.”

  He hopped down the stairs, delighting in the Captain’s silent rage. “Get a hold on yourself, Albert,” he said, doubled up with laughter and fright, “or you’ll sink the boat before she’s been bloody launched.”

  So he formed his plan. Not a gun, not a knife, not a personal attack at all, nor a group of dedicated men hiding with rusty old rifles behind some drystone wall, but a bomb, a good and faithful bomb, certain in its effect, uncertain as to its origin, a bomb designed by traitors and partisans, built with lies and complicity, a bomb that would scatter shards of suspicion all over the island, covering friend and foe alike. And he could help there too. A packet of weedkiller in the boot of the Captain’s car, a map of the island where X marked the explosive spot tucked in under the tissue in Bohde’s drawer; something for some of the islanders too, a van Dielen container the bomb’s packing case, one of the Captain’s security passes slipped in Molly’s vanity bag. What fun they would have with them all!

  But he needed somewhere safe to make this bomb. The cellar? The lean-to at the back of the lodge? And then he saw Mrs H. on her way to Hauteville, and thinking of the house, though he had never been inside and never wanted to, he saw at last how it could be accomplished, where it could be assembled without fear of interruption, in Victor Hugo’s house, with only Mrs Hallivand allowed through the front door, and he, the odd-job gardener, clipping the hedges at the back. And he went to Mrs H. that evening, brought her a fat rabbit and skinned it in the kitchen while he told her who was coming and what they must do. “If we could cut the head off, Mrs H., think how it would bring all this to an end,” and gave her a lot more fanciful stuff, about the underground and short-wave radios and Commandos coming out of the sea to save them, and she, silly old woman that she was, saw herself in the centre of things again and agreed, briefly worried about bloodshed and killing, but placated, believing like all women that war could never be as bad as it is, never understanding its cruel and insatiable capacity until it rushed over them like a flood tide. “Cut the head off, Mrs H.,” he said, holding down the skinned corpse, sawing through the bloody neck. “That’s what Winnie expects us to do. Cut the head off. Watch the body run round in circles.”

  Hauteville House it was, then, with Mrs H. carrying the materials in her little basket; sugar, weedkiller, nuts and bolts nicked from the garage. It was good to keep her going; it stopped her thinking too much. She was Little Red Riding Hood on her way to see her grandmama. She could outsmart the Wolf]

  He began to assemble his bomb. Clock, batteries, bits of Plasticine to hold the wires firm. But still he needed to determine where to place it. Though it was not necessary for him to plant it exactly where Hitler might be, it had to be close enough to activate that instinct for rage and retribution on which he was depending. Fifty feet would be enough. Every morning he walked into town sifting through the pavement gossip but he heard nothing of note. Every afternoon he chanced his arm and went through the Captain’s room to see if he had left any papers, but he could find nothing there either. Every evening he stood, fighting back the yawns while he served them late-night drinks, for he had started on the stealing rounds by then. Weedkiller was not a problem, he had packets of it back in the Lodge, but he needed more sugar, once as plentiful as grains of sand, now as precious as the grit kernel of a pearl. By day he accepted invitations for morning coffees and high teas in the hope that he might discover whether it would be worth his returning, tyre iron in hand. By night he broke in.

  The days grew closer. The Major was due to return. Licence to roam would be at a premium. Isobel had come round Thursday, asking about the party, complaining about that fat oaf Ernst, who was always hanging around her house, trying to engage her in conversation. “I wish Daddy could deal with someone else,” she had said. “They’re just like Siamese twins!”

  Of course. Van Dielen! They’d be preparing certain fortifications for his inspection—a gun emplacement, a lookout tower. Van Dielen’s yard might have the details. That evening, with the Captain and Molly at the cinema, Bohde at the printers, he walked down to van Dielen’s yard and under the noise of the clanking cranes and whistles of steam kicked in the wooden fence with the toe of his boot, and scrambled through. There had been a great pyramid of crates he had to climb over, and at one point he slipped, putting his foot through one of wooden lids. Jammed fast it were and though he didn’t like it much he had to switch on his torch to free it. That’s when he saw them, rows and rows of tins. Custard! He’d always known George had been involved in the black market but never on this scale! He’d taken a couple, thinking there wouldn’t be tnany opportunities left for him to enjoy a bowl, thinking too that when the time came, he might try and arrange a little something for George in his plan.

  The hut had proved a disappointment. Nothing there at all except blank order forms and bills of lading stuck on a nail next to a calendar of film stars. He’d scooped a handful of invoices in his pocket, appropriate confetti for his unsuspecting bride, taking the tin of tea and packet of sugar with him as well, to make it look like the foreigns again, messing the place up like they might. Poor bastards got blamed for everything.

  He got back to the Villa to find Molly and the Captain having a flaming row upstairs. Thinking the h
ouse was empty, they were in tull throat. Albert stood at the foot of the stairs and listened. He could hear it all. The Captain was getting jumpy. Suddenly it had dawned on him how serious this visit might be. “Well, why not me,” she was yelling, “if Isobel can, why not me? Afraid I can’t hold a knife and fork properly?”

  “You’re not van Dielen’s daughter, that’s why.” The Captain was trying to explain. “Her father was a friend of Dr Todt. It’s out of my hands completely. You’ll be there, Molly, but not at his table. It’s the best I can do.”

  A dinner! They’re giving him dinner. He hotfooted it over to Mrs H. and told her invite Isobel for coffee the next day; Isobel came round and pretended not to know anything about it. He didn’t know whether to believe her or not, but, as luck would have it, by that lunchtime it no longer mattered. He found out, going down to see to Mrs H.’s shoes. Up at the big school, St Elizabeth College, which had been empty for two years or more, a bunch of workmen were busy painting the place up. They had a big dining hall up there, probably the only place big enough on the island to get all the dignitaries in that would be coming, Guernsey’s lot and those ferried over from Jersey too. But St Elizabeth College were no use to him. He’d never get within a hundred yards of the place. Then walking back, down the road from the police station, outside the Royal Court House, he saw a soldier carrying in that blessed picture. More work going on inside too, hammering and painting and hanging up their flag from a pole on the roof. The Royal Court. Guernsey’s Parliament! They were going to be presented to him. Perhaps listen to one of his speeches, not that they’d understand a blessed word. Perhaps they’d have to swear allegiance to him, or give him a big key. A presentation at the Royal Court, lunch at St Elizabeth’s. Maybe the other way around. Either way he’d have to go past the police station, have to be driven beneath the little room at the top where Guernsey’s Amateur Dramatic and Operatic Society rehearsed; Mrs H.’s fiefdom. If he could get it up there he’d be in clover. He could set it off himself when he passed, or hang it out of the window perhaps, like a real drainpipe. The slate of Guernsey wiped clean, ready to start afresh. Whatever they said afterwards about what had gone on here, they couldn’t deny what they had done in the end! He would be saving Guernsey’s soul!

  The bomb was almost ready now. All he had to do was to get it down there. So one afternoon he and Mrs H. wrapped it up in brown paper and stuck painted paper leaves in the top and made it look like a stage palm tree for one of her blessed plays. When the coast was clear he sneaked it out of the front door and marched it on his shoulder all the way through the town, like it were a rifle, the green paper leaves blowing in his face, getting all sorts of whistles and catcalls from people he knew and some he didn’t. He’d even met Ned on the outside stairs, even got him to help him carry it up. And there it sits. At the top. By the window. Waiting.

  He reads the letter out once more. “Dearest Dad, Am in the best of health. Thinking of you always. Keep smiling. Kitty” For the first time he hears a tremor of uncertainty in his voice, as if by speaking of his daughter’s life and her love for him rushing over the cold water, he has somehow placed it all in jeopardy. He holds the letter out, squinting at the squashed lines. It was Kitty’s hand that wrote those words, Kitty’s lips that kissed the envelope.

  “Would that she could have written Dearest Mum, eh, Rose? Would that she could have written that.”

  He wipes a gruff tear from his eye. He would like to see her again, just one more time. She would never see her mother again, she knows that, but, trusting soul that she is, she must hope that she might see him again one day. Is it right that he should leave her like this, cause her such grief? He presses the letter to his cheek. He wants to take it back to the Villa, to show it off to the Major and Mrs H., to smooth it out on his knee when his work is done and read it over and over again, but he dares not. He has set himself on another course and having Kitty’s words to hand, his dear Kitty, who he misses more than the rain and the wild flowers, would only distract him. He picks up the small glass vase that stands underneath his wife’s name and tucks the letter in between the green sterns.

  “You keep it, Rose,” he says. “We’ll be reading it together soon enough.”

  Fifteen

  At breakfast Bohde and Zepernick were nowhere to be seen, to save all of them from embarrassment, he supposed. He spent an hour in the study writing letters, one to the Captain, one to his mother, one to his sister, both short and falsely jovial, and finally one to Mrs Hallivand, which he found most difficult of all. He wished her luck and promised that when the war was over he would return and help rehang her pictures. “Above all else,” he wrote, “tell no one about the House. Keep it a secret. They are too busy on other matters to appreciate what is within their grasp. And I will not remind them.”

  The clock in the drawing room struck seven. Two hours and it would be over, sent to the Russian front or arrested, either way stripped of his rank. And all because of a picture. He was not sorry for what he had done, but sorry that he could not prevent Him coming. He could hear Albert moving about upstairs.

  “Albert,” he called up. “Could you come down here, please?”

  In a little while Albert appeared. He had a duster in his hand and wore an apron round his middle. On another man it would look ridiculous. On Albert it looked almost dignified.

  “I am going now,” he said.

  “So I gather, sir. I am very sorry to see it, Major. Very sorry. The house, we, Mrs Hallivand and I, all of us are.”

  The Major handed him the key to his bedroom.

  “There are some things there you might find of use. Hairbrushes, shoes, some good clothes. They are yours now.”

  “Thank you very much, sir.”

  “I wish I could have done more. The garden. Major Ernst. All those years of hard work gone.”

  Albert shrugged his shoulders.

  “We’ll get by, sir.” He stood at the foot of the stairs waiting. For a gardener he was being remarkably sanguine about the destruction of his life’s work. Lentsch turned and looked at the hall. The walls were bare.

  They walked out onto the front porch. The starlings were gathering in jubilation on the lawn, pecking and probing every inch of the grass, preparing for their journey home. Lucky birds! Albert clapped his hands and Lentsch watched in awe as they rose in their hundreds, circling once before settling down again. Albert clapped a second time.

  “See how disciplined they are, Albert,” Lentsch observed as they climbed once more. “How none of them ever fall out of place or crash into one another. In Germany we regard them as the most independent of birds. And yet, they conform to the narrowest of spaces.”

  “Starlings,” Albert said. “I’d shoot the lot of them if I could.”

  Lentsch turned. It was time to go. He held out his hand.

  “I hope you will see your daughter soon, Albert.”

  “There’s only two ways that’ll happen, sir, and she’s not planning to die yet.”

  “Nor you, I hope.”

  “There’s no telling, is there, how things turn out.”

  “They say that is what makes God laugh, when men make plans.” He paused and looked the man full in the face. “There is something I always wanted to ask you, but did not, for fear of offending you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Your beret. Underneath? Are you with or without hair?” He did not dare use the word bald.

  Albert adjusted the blue felt cap.

  “Not even my Rose knew that,” he said. “If she went to her grave without knowing, so must you.”

  Lentsch laughed. He was pleased in a way. “Only the barber, eh, Albert?”

  “And the undertaker.”

  Wedel, standing by the car, offered to take his bag, but Lentsch waved him aside, telling him to take the day off. There was nothing in it, anyway. He was only taking a few things that mattered; a photograph of his mother and father and of his home with the turret window; his sketch pad with the waterc
olour of the bay, a figure drawing of Isobel and half a head of Albert, taken down hurriedly on an afternoon last autumn, as he set about cutting back the fruit bushes. Ah, the fruit bushes. He could hear the grind of a concrete mixer now. In a month’s time the back garden would be gone and in its place would be another wretched gun to serve no purpose.

  He walked down the path and knocked on the Lodge door, looking back up the potholed drive. The Villa would get its fresh gravel now. There was no reply. She was probably down at the theatre making last-minute arrangements to the variety show. He slipped the letter under the door.

  He starled for the town, through the lanes and woods. The air was delightful, warm and light. In the well-kept gardens the camellias were in full bloom, magnolias too. Cherry trees stood in swollen clouds of colour and by the roadside crowds of crocuses and narcissi and snowdrops covered the grassy banks. Overhead gnarled beeches filtered the climbing sun rays through their fresh green leaves, and with them came the dappled songs of the thrush and the blackbird, and far above, a lark’s sonnet sung out over some empty field. Reaching the top of the road, where the postbox stood, he could see in the harbour the grey and battered naval control boat that would take him across to Jersey in an hour’s time. He saw the men working on the quayside, saw the old machinery, the faded paintwork, the threadbare uniforms. He leant against the railing and looked inshore, to the tumbling lanes and steep, squashed houses, all propped up against falling into this overburdened lock of water. And in a few days a plane would land and out He would step. He must not come! He must not come.