Island Madness

by Tim Binding

  He unbuckled his belt and let his trousers fall.

  “I don’t believe so. I have found out all about this boy. His name is Peter. He is from a village in the Ukraine. He is fifteen years old. His father was shot for partisan activities. He is the wearer of Isobel van Dielen’s jacket and has been wearing it since the time of her death. He is billeted in Saumarez Park and every day he marches to work from there to the tunnel. You did not see him climb into lorries and you did not see him from your surgery window. But you have seen him, that is true. Teil me where.”

  She hesitated.

  “If you do not I shall have your father shot.”

  “What!”

  “He has been trying to sabotage the airport runway. Mowing the grass too short. It is a very serious matter.”

  “Oh, God!”

  “I can prevent this, if you tell me all I want to know.”

  “Oh, God!”

  “You must tell me everything, Veronica, and then it will be all right. But before you talk, we do this…”

  He took himself in his hand and looking down, slowly pushed himself in. She stared past him. There was a shadow in the doorway. She began to tremble.

  “Oh, God, no.”

  The Captain grinned.

  “That’s better. Just like old times, eh, Veronica?” He quickened his pace.

  “No,” she said, struggling as the shadow moved quickly forward. “No, keep away,” but the Captain pushed her back and held her fast, savouring the spectacle of her writhing hips and half-hidden sex, as the pleading cries which only made him more determined drowned the sound of the bare feet and the swing of the are and it was only when he felt the breath of disturbed air and saw the look on Veronica’s face as she tried to break free that he turned and saw the outline of the boy standing on tiptoe behind him with the dark shadow of the wooden foot coming out above his head. The boy swung with all the weight of all the pickaxes he had ever held, swinging the wooden foot by its short chain, true and sure, so that the heel landed in the centre of the Captain’s head, cracking it open like a walnut, so hard that Veronica felt the blow jolt up through her womb as the Captain jerked first in then out of her, and dropped to the ground his knees on the floor, his hands trailing down over her twisting body, his broken head resting between her legs, blood seeping out of his mouth and his nose. She lay there, rigid, panting, unable to move. The boy stood before her, the foot and chain swinging back and forth. There was a sound of water running onto the floor and she could smell the sour scent of urine rising. She tried to move. The Captain’s head bumped down onto the workbench, his hands on either side of her knees. The boy moved forward.

  “Kaput,” he said, and pushed him over with his foot.

  Ned and the Major carried the body through the back garden and out into the field, then pushed the car through the opened farm gate. They sat him in the front. Ned closed the gate and walked up the road. Lentsch looked down at the body of his friend. There was blood seeping out of his ears and down his nose. He leant in and wiped his face clean.

  “You could have been a good man,” he said. “Whatever you did, I am sorry for you.”

  Ned returned. “It can’t be seen from the road,” he said. “As long as no one finds it in the next six or so hours we should be all right.”

  Together they tore branches from the hedge and laid them over the roof and against the boot. Lentsch stood back, and surveyed their work.

  “We cannot leave it for long. When we go we must take the car down to the bay with us. That way when they find him, they will not connect his death with anyone here. It will be quicker for us too.”

  “Won’t they miss him?”

  Lentsch looked at his watch. “Everyone knows how the Captain likes to spend his afternoons. By nightfall, though, they will be worried. More so as I have disappeared too.”

  “We’ll be gone by then,” Ned promised. “We’ll row out to the Casquets, tuck up in one of the little inlets while the patrol boats pass, then head straight out. We’ll be low in the water, so slow and steady, that’s the trick. Slow and steady. You can do that, can’t you, Major?”

  Back at the house Veronica was shaking in spasms. Ned’s mother was sitting with her, holding her hand.

  “I’d have done the same myself if I’d thought it would save them.”

  Veronica lifted her head. “Where’s the boy?” Her concern was dragging the fear out of her.

  “Cleaning up. You picked a good one there.”

  “Well, I was good at choosing, first time round, any road.”

  Ned knelt down beside them. He’d never thought he’d see the day nis mum and Veronica were holding hands.

  “You know we’ve got to go, Mum.”

  “It’s where you would have been all along if Dad hadn’t gone at such an awkward time.” She turned to Veronica. “His father always was a difficult so-and-so.”

  The Major returned with Peter following in his wake. Another unlikely couple, Ned thought.

  “The outhouse is quite clean,” the Major said. “We scrubbed the floor together.”

  Veronica sat up and patted the arm of her chair. The boy sat down, shy at first. Through the open back door the first chili of the evening fluttered through.

  “It’s going to be cold out there,” Ned said. “We should all be wearing waterproofs. I don’t know if we’ve got enough spares.”

  “Lard, that’s what you need,” Veronica prompted. “Before you set off, you should strip, the lot of you, and cover yourselves with it, head to toe.” She ruffled the boy’s hair. “And to think I’ve just given you your first wash in months. Couldn’t have chosen a worse time if I’d tried.” She stood up to go next door. “You’d best rub it on each other. That way you’ll get a good covering all over.”

  “I’ll do yours, then, shall I?” Ned offered. His mother laughed.

  Veronica cuffed him quickly. “I’m not going,” she said.

  “What?”

  “You heard. As long as they find the Captain far away from here, I’m safe. Isn’t that right, Major?”

  “As far as I know, yes, but…”

  “That’s settled, then. That canoe won’t hold four and you know it. I could try and swim but I’m out of practice. Besides I’ve got a show on tonight. Damned if I’m going to miss out on my big number.”

  Ned shut his eyes. He wanted to look to his mother, to Veronica, wanted to hold them both and tell them he would take care of them, but he could not. He was leaving them.

  “We’ll be needing some food, Mum,” he told her gently. “Have you any spare? Just to keep us going.”

  Veronica perked up. “Take some of mine. I’ve been cooking all week.”

  Ned’s mum couldn’t quite believe her. “Cooking, V? You?”

  “That’s right. Proper little Mrs Beeton I am these days. Hang on a mo.”

  They sat in silence while she ran next door again.

  “You sure this is wise?” Ned’s mother said eventually.

  Ned patted her hand.

  “It should hold us well enough, if the sea’s not too big.”

  “Not the canoe. Veronica’s cooking.” She got up. “Teil you what. I’ve got something that will fill you up before you go. I was saving it for the next time the Major came round to tea.”

  They listened as she fussed in the kitchen. She was humming to herself as if she was almost happy. She had a son who loved her, a son with a girlfriend, a son who was escaping to safety. And she was making him tea.

  Veronica returned carrying a buiging string bag.

  “One potato and onion pie,” she said proudly, “some oatmeal biscuits and three slices of carrot cake.” She nodded to the kitchen. “Your mum’s doing you proud too. Where did she get it from?”

  “Get what?” asked Ned.

  His mother called them in. She’d laid the little table with her best tablecloth, and on it stood her four best bowls, the ones with pictures of Westminster Abbey round the rim. There was a sweet scent t
o the air, a smell of childhood and warm spoons. His mother pointed to the steaming bowls.

  “That’s real custard in there,” she said. “Stewed apple and real custard.” She lifted the tin high in the air. “Bet you’ve see nothing like that in years. Bird’s custard powder. You’ve got your uncle to thank for that.”

  Sixteen

  It’s hard to believe that all these towers and gun emplacements and miles of tunnel have been built, not by fit young men with state-approved muscles and healthy assuaged appetites, but by men weakened by dysentery, who eat one bowl of cabbage soup a day, who sleep on planks of wood, who dress in discarded cement bags, who never wash, who shit in communal buckets, who are beaten with whips and chair legs, and who work twelve hours a day nonstop whatever their state of health. They have built this. They have.

  He clambers down the rocky surface to where the machine lies, housed in a brick house, one storey high, long like a boat, unattractive like a urinal. It is a simple machine; a huge grey rectangular funnel at the top, into which are tipped the stones and granite, a long clanging chute, down which they fall, and at the bottom a row of great stone wheels, through which these stones are minced: Guernsey rock for Guernsey sand; Guernsey sand for Guernsey cement. There are two machines of this design on the island and through them Guernsey is producing the means of its own incarceration; eating its own tail. It is like one of those children’s stories that his wife used to sing, yes, he remembers that, how she used to recite those English nursery rhymes on those long foreign nights, sitting under the mosquito net, looking out over the hot night air; Jack and Jill going up a hill; the man who looked like an egg; Old King Cole; the house that Jack built. That was her favourite, the house that Jack built, for Daddy was a builder, long ago, when he had a daughter to listen to such tales. Had he one? It was so hard to know, such an improbable possibility that he had a daughter and a wife and a construction called a family, with all the constituent parts that such a complicated entity would involve. No, he cannot imagine it, for he waved the boy goodbye, did he not, sent him ranning home before he began this journey to his. But whether he ever possessed one or not is of no consequence, for he is of the island now and this is where he must return.

  It is not difficult to climb up the small service ladder and stare down into the heart of the machine. There is the loose tumble of rock churning above the slow grinding wheels, a whirlpool of granite and flint out of which flow grains of eternity. This is what he desires, to become an infinite speek of sand, to be swept along into the body of the island, to have the sea pounding him, pressing him. To be a rock! A stone! To have the sea and the sky and the wind calling you! He is a rock! He is a stone! He jumps into the grinding pool, one leg bent sideways, one foot immediately caught, the ankle taken down and squeezed so hard he cannot imagine it, his knee first cracked then flattened, and as his hands rise up and he is taken down, his soft body following, gut squirting through his mouth, he Iets forth an unbearable scream. No man can hear him, not his fellow slave workers, unloading the next wagonload, not the overseers idling their hours in the cabin of their battered lorry, not the Spanish Republican engine driver leaning out of the cab of his dirty belching engine, not even Major Ernst, one hundred yards away, tracing plans with his stick. There is the grim crushing of the machine, there is the hissing smoke from the train’s boiler, there is the rhythm of the labourers’ spades and the wheeling call of gulls, but there is no van Dielen. Van Dielen is dead now, crunched and mixed and turned to wet, dusty powder. Van Dielen is dead but not buried. He will lie in a heap for a year or more, tufts of couch grass growing atop him. The wind will come and blow him over the pebbles and onto the sweeping sand. In later years he will be run upon by bare feet and shovelled into proud buckets. He will be hurled against curving walls upon which he once walked; luminescent specks of him will sparkle in the wet sheen of the seaweed; a bone in a shrimping net; grit in a sunbather’s eye. Others will come and others will go but van Dielen will never leave. He washes in and out, in and out, lapping around the huge circumference of his family’s grave.

  Seventeen

  Ned walked up the drive. Wedel was up at the top polishing Bernie’s car. He looked up and grinned.

  “Inspector Luscombe. You still have no auto?”

  “I’m waiting for the matching suit.”

  Wedel looked back at the house. “If you have come for the Major he is not here. In fact, I do not think you will be able to see him again.”

  “That’s all right. It’s my uncle I’m after.” He showed him his warrant card. “It’s official.”

  He walked down the tiled corridor, putting his head round each door. All neat and tidy, except for the slight hole by the drawing room door. The dining room table was set for dinner, the drawing room redolent of cigars and hair cream. Beyond, through the French windows, he could see men and wheelbarrows and a great trench of freshly dug earth at the far end of the lawn. A couple of trees lay on their sides. At least they’d have fuel for the next winter. Above him he could hear an odd muttering, like a bad-tempered soliloquy. He climbed the stairs towards it. He recognized the voice now. On the second floor the door to one of the bedrooms lay wide open. Albert was on his knees going through the small drawer by the bedside.

  “Uncle?”

  Albert looked up. He held something in his hand.

  “Spoons,” he said. “Teaspoons, dessertspoons, and here, tucked in his fancy underwear, the fish knives that were stolen six months ago. He’s been helping himself, the thieving bastard.”

  “Who?”

  “Bohde. This is Bohde’s room. What are you doing here? If you want the Major…”

  Ned held up his hand and looked around. Through the window smoke was coming out of the lodge’s chimney. One law for the rich, he thought.

  “Have you heard? The Major’s leaving,” he said.

  Albert put the spoons back in their place and pushed back the drawer.

  “I know. Only himself to blame. Should have kept his mouth shut, whatever he felt. Bad enough at the best of times, but now.”

  “Now?”

  “The birthday boy.” He raised himself from the floor. “They’re very sensitive about Hitler’s birthday. Don’t like anyone to spoil the fun.” There was a sparkle to his eyes.

  “You know, don’t you, Uncle?”

  “Know what?”

  “Know that he’s coming here.”

  Ned took the tin of custard from under his jacket and put it on the dresser.

  “Now tell me it wasn’t you. Teil me it wasn’t you who tipped Isobel down that shaft.”

  Albert said nothing.

  “I haven’t quite worked it out, Uncle, which bit fits where, but then I’m not a very good policeman. You part of this smuggling ring, too? And how did it get mixed up in all this other business?”

  “I don’t know what you’re on about. What other business?”

  “However it is you’re going to try and kill him. Isobel found out, didn’t she? Who through? You? Her father? What do you plan to do? Stab him to death with a garden fork?”

  “Don’t talk daft.”

  “Well?”

  Albert stood defiant. “We’re at war, Ned.”

  “So people keep telling me.”

  “War means sacrifice. Laying down one’s life if necessary.”

  “When appropriate. What’s the plan, then. Poisoned tarts for tea?”

  “No!” Albert was shouting now.

  “Well, what, then?”

  “A bomb!”

  “A bomb? Borrowed one of theirs, did you?”

  “I made it myself. With nails and bolts, you know, like we did of old, weedkiller and sugar. Only a damn sight bigger this time.”

  “You wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  “I’d get close enough for it to count.”

  “How? Wrap it up in fancy paper? Christ Almighty!”

  Albert held his ground. “How many men get a chance like this? I had to take it.”


  “And Isobel found out?”

  Albert was sullen. “Isobel found out nothing,” he said. “I was there.”

  “You were where?”

  “When Mrs H. tried to get it out of her. They’re giving him this lunch, see. Isobel were invited. Mrs H. asked her round that morning to see if we could find out where. She came up to the Villa first, to check on the party, then walked down. As soon as I saw her go through the Lodge door I followed. I wanted to hear it for myself. I let myself in. You could taste the sharpness between them, like when you bite into a sour apple. “How lovely you are looking,” Mrs H. was saying, “quite captured the Major’s heart,” and I could hear the snap as she bit into a biscuit. She does love her biscuits, does Mrs H.”

  “Never mind about the biscuits, Uncle.”

  “No. In fact between you both, you and your father have made the van Dielens quite indispensable,” and Isobel said, “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” already bored and irritated. I could hear the scrape of something, like Marjorie was trying to pull the chair closer. “I’ve heard something very interesting,” she said, her voice hushed like she was afraid someone might be listening, “very interesting. A special visitor is coming, I hear, a very special visitor.”

  Isobel was hardly bothering to listen and Mrs H. hummed and hawed and poured herself a cup of tea, holding it God knows how high up, sounded like a man taking a Jimmy Riddle, and then she said, “I know you’ve been told not to tell anyone, and that’s how it should be, but you can tell your old aunt, can’t you? After all, it’s not every day that a little place like this entertains a visitor of such peculiar stature,” and Isobel got impatient, and laughed and said, “Who’s coming then, Santa Claus?” and you could hear it in her voice that she thought Mrs H. had finally lost her marbles and I had half a mind to go in and stop it right there and then, but suddenly it was like Mrs H.’s feelings had got the better of her, this whippersnapper of a girl poking fun at her, lording it over her, and her voice went hard as granite and she spat it out. “Don’t try and hide it from me, girl,” she said, “I know who’s coming. It’s a privilege many of us would have liked to share, to have dinner with such a distinguished guest. Frankly fm surprised the Major hasn’t seen fit to ask me. I am after all about the only one left who’s used to receiving heads of state.”