I watch them pass. My heart is loud in my chest.
One of the prisoners is limping. As I watch, he stumbles, falls. He’s left behind; he tries to get up but he can’t—he’s too weak, too hurt, perhaps. One of the guards turns, goes back to the fallen prisoner. My first stupid, innocent thought is that at least he will help the man to his feet. But he’s shouting something in German—you can tell he’s cursing the man. The prisoner struggles to get to his feet, but falls back, helpless. The guard stands over him, hits him with the butt of his gun: hits him again and again, so I hear the sound of it, the gun hitting flesh, hitting bone. It’s far too loud in the silent lane. The man on the ground moves slightly, puts his arm over his face in a small hopeless gesture of self-protection, but then his arm falls away. Bright blood leaks from his mouth. The guard lowers the gun and wipes the butt on the grass. I tell myself he will walk away now: perhaps the man could still live, perhaps when the work gang has gone I could go to him and help him. . . . But the guard takes a step back and starts to kick the man’s head, kicks it open. I hear the sound of the crack of the boot on the skull. There’s a lumpy red seep from the wound that I don’t want to see or to think about—but my eyes are fixed there, and I can’t drag them away.
I have a quick impulse to run to the guard, to stop him. I even take a few steps toward him, but something pulls me back—the thought of my children and Evelyn, the people who need me to care for them. A tremor goes through my body. I stand there, trembling, torn. The guard looks up, sees me, shrugs. He doesn’t care that I’m there, that I’m watching everything he does. He’s casual; he has no guilt. He kicks the man on the ground again, goes on and on kicking, long after the man on the ground is utterly still, the heavy boot breaking the broken head.
The blackbirds carry on singing, the flowers are holding up their vivid heads. I can’t understand why the countryside looks just the same as ever, all bright with gilded springtime. This brightness seems an outrage to me.
The guard walks off, leaves the dead man lying—as though he is nothing, worse than nothing. I vomit into the ditch.
Chapter 47
MILLIE IS PLAYING in the kitchen. She doesn’t look up at me; she’s intent on her play.
“See, Mummy, it’s a wedding.” Her dolls are in a procession across the kitchen table. “I’m going to have a wedding,” she says. “I’m going to marry Simon. I’m going to wear a big fur coat with purple roses on.”
There’s a splash of yellow sun on her, and all across my kitchen.
I put the basket of mushrooms down on the table.
“Ooh. Mushrooms. I love mushrooms. When can we have them?” she says.
I try to answer her, but my mouth won’t seem to work properly.
Millie looks up at me then. She frowns.
“Your face looks funny,” she says.
“Does it?”
I can’t say, Don’t worry, it’s nothing to do with you: can’t begin to form the words.
“Mummy, tell me.” She’s worried. She gets down off her chair and comes to wrap her arms around me. “Tell me what the matter is. Mummy, did you hurt yourself?”
“I just need a moment on my own,” I say. “Could you give me that, sweetheart?”
She takes her arms away from me. She stares at me. There’s a frightened look on her face. This is something that I have never asked for before.
“Perhaps you could play in the garden? Just for a moment?” I say.
She goes, but keeps turning to look back at me. Her eyes are wide and alarmed.
I sit at my table. The dark, earthy scent of the mushrooms is filling me with nausea. The thing I saw replays in my mind: I can’t interrupt it or make it stop. I hear it, see it, so clearly: it’s more vivid, more real, than the things around me in my kitchen—Millie’s scattered dolls on the table, the ranks of jars on my shelves. All these familiar, substantial things seem flimsy to me, unreal.
Shame washes through me, a bitter hot shame—that I didn’t rush out and plead with the guard, didn’t grab his arm and implore him to let the man go, didn’t do anything. I go through it over and over. I tell myself, Of course I couldn’t have stopped him. I’m a helpless, defenseless woman, and I have my family to think of, my family who depend on me. He would have hit me too, or shot me, or had me put in prison, if I’d done that. I made the right decision. . . . But knowing I couldn’t have stopped him doesn’t shield me from feeling the shame. It’s as though by witnessing this terrible thing I have shared in the guilt of it, that it has become a part of me.
I sit at my kitchen table for a long time. At last, Millie comes and tugs fretfully at my sleeve.
“It’s dinnertime. I’m hungry, Mummy.” Her voice high-pitched, aggrieved. “And I want to play with my dolls.”
I get up and carry on with the things that have to be done, moving slowly through the rooms of my house as though I am wading through deep water.
But later that day I go back to the lane by Harry Tostevin’s field. Not for any clear reason: it’s just some inchoate sense that I owe this to the man I couldn’t protect. The body has been taken away. It’s all just as it was before, as though nothing ever happened here.
I cycle slowly back through the flowering land and all the brightness of springtime. I have my eyes wide open, but all I can see is the dark.
Chapter 48
I SIT ON THE bed. I’ve planned what I will say, but now I’m with him the words won’t come. In the shivery light of my candles, the cabbage roses on my walls are absolutely black and tremble as though they are shaken by a secret, silent wind.
He’s turned a little away from me, taking off his clothes. His face seems made of shadow.
I clear my throat, which is suddenly thick.
“I saw something,” I tell him.
Perhaps he hears the shake in my voice. He stops undoing his shirt. He waits.
“I was picking mushrooms up near the top of the cliff . . . where there’s a break in the hedgebank, on Harry Tostevin’s land. Harry has a farm there. . . . I saw something in the lane there. I stood in the field and watched it.”
I don’t know why I’m giving him all these irrelevant details. Perhaps it’s a way of putting off the thing I have to say.
He stands there, his shirt half undone, his questioning gaze on me.
“I saw a terrible thing,” I say. “I saw a guard kill a man—one of the men in the work gangs. Just because the man fell over. He beat him and kicked him to death.”
Gunther’s eyes are on me, trying to read me.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he says, carefully.
“It’s not that I saw it—it’s that it happened at all,” I tell him.
He chews his lip, as though he’s struggling to find the right words.
“Bad things happen in wartime. You must know that,” he says then.
“But he did it so casually, as though it didn’t mean anything.” My voice is shrill. “As though it was just part of his day’s work.”
Gunther clears his throat.
“Vivienne,” he says quietly. “It is very easy to kill. To start with, maybe not so easy. But after a while it is very easy to kill. Maybe that shouldn’t be so, but it is.”
I don’t ask how he knows this.
“You mustn’t think about it,” he says. “You must try not to dwell on it.”
But all I can see is the man who was beaten to death. He is there between us. He will always be there between us.
“I can’t just decide not to think about it,” I say.
“I know you probably blame us, but it was nothing to do with us,” he says.
“How can it not be to do with you?” I hear the sharpness in my voice: you could cut yourself on it. “You’re part of the German army.”
When I say it baldly like that, I suddenly think of what I am doing—loving him, giving so much of myself, all the love I could never give Eugene. In this moment, I see with absolute clarity how others would judge me for it.
And might be right to judge me.
He shakes his head.
“No, Vivienne. It’s a different organization. Like I told you—it’s the OT. They’re in charge of all the fortifications and the work camps. We’re not responsible for them. We can’t control what they do.”
“There must be something you can do,” I tell him. “You can’t just let this happen. This savagery.”
“Vivienne, we can’t stop it, we have no power to stop these things.” He sits beside me, reaches out toward me. His touch is urgent: he holds my wrist too tightly, his fingers dig into my skin. “We have to think of our families, of the people who depend on us, who need us to stay alive for them. If you protest they send you to the Russian front,” he tells me.
“How do I know that you’re not just saying that?” I ask, in a little shred of a voice.
My throat feels sore, as though saying this has hurt me.
He looks startled, that I could suggest such a thing—could accuse him of lying to me. Seeing this offers me just a crumb of reassurance.
“It’s happened already,” he tells me.
“When? What happened?”
“One of our officers protested about the treatment of the prisoners. He was down at the harbor when one of the prison ships came in. They sent him there, to Russia,” he says. He’s speaking very quietly; I can scarcely hear him. There’s something new in his voice—a jagged splinter of fear. “It’s hell on earth, in Russia,” he says. “It’s a death sentence.”
I wish we had more news, more understanding, of the war. I know so little.
“Why? What’s happening there?” I say.
“We came very close to Moscow,” he says. “But then winter came, and many were frozen alive.”
“Oh,” I say.
“There are men on this island who’ve killed themselves rather than be sent there. Or tried to break their legs in a fall so they couldn’t fight anymore.”
“I’ve never heard of that,” I say.
“There was one incident only last week. It happened in St. Peter Port. A man threw himself from a wall and died. You have to believe me. This is the trap that we’re in. . . . There’s nothing we can do,” he says.
“There must be something,” I say again. But sounding less certain.
He hears the concession in my voice. He kneels in front of me, takes my hand, and holds it between his—carefully, as though I am very fragile, as though if he moved too suddenly, something might break.
“I’m not a hero, Vivienne,” he says. “I want to come through this war alive. I want to see my son again.”
I remember what he told me about his stepfather, how his stepfather beat him. I think of what life has taught him. Keep your head down. Don’t protest. If you keep quiet, perhaps they will come for someone else, not you.
“Yes, I know that,” I say. “I understand that.”
I let myself be reassured. I tell myself that he has no choice, he can’t stop it. It’s what I want to be told—that it’s nothing to do with him, that it’s all beyond him. . . .
He sees the change in me. He puts his hands to my face. I feel his heat go through me.
“My darling, can’t we leave all this on the other side of the door?” he says. “Can’t we forget the war for a while? It’s just you and me here. . . .”
But it isn’t. Not anymore.
Chapter 49
A FEW DAYS LATER, I’m busy in my kitchen when I hear a sound of rattling and clinking from the living room. I go to see what is happening.
Evelyn is on her knees in front of the china cabinet. The glass door is open; she’s taking out the china piece by piece and laying it down on the carpet—all the cups and plates from my flowered tea set that survived the break-in.
“Evelyn, what are you doing?” I say gently.
She turns, gives me a stern look.
“Someone’s coming, Vivienne. We want to be ready,” she says.
“Who’s coming, Evelyn?”
“You know, Vivienne.” Conspiratorial—as though this is a secret. “Careless talk costs lives,” she says. “But we want to be prepared.”
“Evelyn, no one’s coming. It’s just the four of us here—you and me and the girls.”
I kneel down beside her. I put my hand on her arm, hoping my touch will bring her back to reality. She shakes my hand off.
“We have to be ready,” she tells me. “Someone has to keep an eye on things.”
She reaches into the cabinet, takes out another cup. She holds it close to her face, studies its intricate, formal pattern of flowers and ribbon and leaves, with a puzzled look. Then, it’s as though she loses interest in it—her hand goes suddenly limp. The cup slips from her fingers, falls to the floor, shatters. At the sound of breaking, a shudder goes through her.
She peers at the broken pieces, as though they have nothing to do with her. She picks up a flowery shard and stares at it, trying to make sense of it.
“Someone broke a cup, Vivienne,” she says, austere and disapproving.
“I’ll see to it,” I say.
“Someone’s in trouble,” she says.
“It doesn’t matter,” I tell her. “No one’s in trouble. You should just sit down now.”
I help her to her feet and into her chair.
“But we can’t just sit here and twiddle our thumbs,” she says. She’s a little breathless: the movement has exhausted her. “We have to get out the tea things. We might not be ready in time.”
I know I have to humor her.
“We’ll be ready,” I tell her.
She picks up her knitting. Her sherry-brown gaze glides vacantly around the room.
“Someone’s coming,” she says. “You mark my words. Someone’s coming.” But she sounds less certain now.
I go to find the dustpan and brush, to sweep up the broken pieces.
When I come back she’s almost asleep, her breathing slow and labored, her eyes closing: you can see how her eyelids are netted with tiny lavender veins. I take her knitting from her and wrap her blanket around her knees.
Chapter 50
JULY: THE SCHOOL summer holiday. Millie plays with Simon through the long lazy days of summer, going off after lunch each day, taking the old school satchel with an apple in, bringing it back full of treasures: a milk-white pebble, a twig to make a catapult, a silky indigo feather from a crow. She’s thin—both girls are far too thin—but her skin has a flushed, healthy look. She has permanent scabs on her knees, and grass stains on her dresses, and a cocoa-powder spill of freckles on her nose.
There’s a day when she doesn’t come back when she should. Tea is ready on the table, and the shadow of my pear tree reaches out over the yard, fingering the wall of the house. I go to the gate, peer anxiously through the orchard and into the wood, fearful that Simon may have led her into some new mischief.
But at last she comes rushing in, waving to Simon, who is running off up the lane.
“Millie, you’re late. I was really worried.” I’m cross, because she frightened me. “Next time, you’re to come back earlier. If this happens again, I won’t let you play out anymore.”
My admonition slides off her.
“It was really fun, Mummy. Me and Simon played in the barn.”
“Mr. Mahy’s barn, you mean?”
“Yes. I said, Mummy.”
I think of Peter Mahy’s barn—the rickety ladder to the hayloft and all the old farm machines.
“You must be careful when you play there,” I tell her. “You mustn’t go up the ladder.”
“We didn’t. We were very careful,” she says.
“And I hope you stayed well clear of Mr. Mahy’s dog.”
“We went like this.” She walks across the room elaborately on tiptoe. “The dog didn’t even see us.”
When tea is over, and Evelyn has gone to her room and Blanche is on the sofa, rereading one of her favorite Angela Brazil books, Millie comes to the chair where I’m sitting with my darning. She puts her ar
ms around my neck.
“Can I tell you a secret, Mummy?” she says. “A big, big secret?”
She smells of the outdoors, of apple-green days, of pollen and leaves and warm bracken. I feel the touch of her dark silk hair on my skin.
“Yes, sweetheart.”
She whispers in my ear, a melodramatic stage whisper.
“There’s a ghost in Mr. Mahy’s barn. We saw a ghost,” she tells me.
A little judder of anxiety goes through me. She’s six: she should be able to tell what’s just imagined by now.
“Millie, listen to me. It’s fun to play make-believe sometimes. But ghosts aren’t really real.”
“Yes, they are. You can see them.”
“No, sweetheart. They’re just stories—like witches and all the things in our fairy-tale books.”
She gives me a dubious look.
I feel guilty. I’ve told her too many fairy stories, encouraged her to believe in all sorts of imagined things. So when Simon talks about werewolves or ghosts—like when he told her about the varou that haunts the lane to Torteval, that gobbles up bad children—she believes him.
“Witches are just stories. But my ghost is real,” she says.
“No, sweetheart. Ghosts are just stories too.” I remember how I explained it before, when I read to her from the book of Guernsey tales. “They’re stories that people make up because they’re afraid of the dark. Simon’s been teasing you again.”
The Soldier's Wife Page 20