When the Sky Fell Apart

by Caroline Lea

  Carter froze. ‘But I—I can’t. The…hospital needs me and I—well…’

  ‘Ah, yes, the hospital. Do not fear. Other doctors work there, no? You will work for me, yes? My man to keep.’

  Carter felt the blood seep from his face. Some primal instinct shrieked at him to run, to scream. But he sat, metal taste of adrenaline in his mouth, and forced himself to sip slowly on the last of his whisky while he searched for an escape.

  ‘But surely you must have a doctor of your own? Someone who is…familiar with you. A German doctor. Someone you trust?’

  ‘But I trust you. I trust that you will never tell anything about my body. If I have a German doctor? He whispers to soldiers of mine. They drink together, talk too much. My German doctor, he tells stories, about me, my body, yes? They laugh, drink. He tells all. What now? My men know everything. It is true, I can punish this doctor. But every one of my men? Ha! There are limits to every man’s power, is that not so?’

  Stupefied, Carter could only nod. What on earth was the man hiding? What medical condition could he have that must be concealed from his men? Syphilis, perhaps? Gonorrhea?

  The Commandant smiled and clapped his hands together.

  ‘So. We decide. You are my doctor. You must care for me—give me medicines. And you will not tell anyone about my body. You understand?’

  Carter did. Suddenly, he understood completely. The knowledge slid into him, clean, effortless and efficient as a surgeon’s blade.

  Weight gain. Bloated face and ruddy complexion. Thinning hair. Tired, bloodshot eyes. Shortness of breath.

  Cushings.

  Carter wondered if the German knew, or if he suspected some disease of sexual origin. If Cushings was left untreated, it was almost always fatal. High blood sugar, high cholesterol and high blood pressure: heart attack or stroke. Of course, a simple prescription of steroids and some minor dietary changes could render the condition perfectly manageable.

  But does he know that? Did he know what was making him suffer?

  Carter examined those bloodshot eyes: ink from textbooks and scribbled pencil notes flashed through his mind: headaches and sleeplessness with accompanying chronic fatigue. If he suspected some sexual disease, then no wonder he felt shame and wanted to conceal it. Or perhaps he simply wanted to disguise any sign of weakness from his men.

  The Commandant said, a little louder, ‘You are mine now. Day, night. Für mich. All times. And you say nothing. Yes?’

  Perhaps this knowledge was the shred of power Carter needed to keep himself alive. The German thought he was dying—that much was apparent. Carter had seen the haunted look in a thousand patients before. That mixture of anger and frustration, along with a pleading hope for the diagnosis to be incorrect or for the symptoms to instantly subside. And the consequences for Carter if the Commandant worsened were horrifying.

  He shook his head. ‘There are other doctors.’

  ‘I have chosen you, nichts?’

  ‘Yes, but…I wish to continue working in the hospital. I can do great good there.’

  This drew a surprising and disturbing reaction: ‘In hospital, yes? With the poor? The diseased? The rats and the lice? What have they done, these creatures, these animals, to have your time and care? You would rather treat men, I know, Doctor, than these stupid beasts. Is that not so?’

  Carter’s mouth dropped open.

  The Commandant continued. ‘I remember you are English too, no? Many of your English friends are in Ravensbrük. You like to join them, yes? You will need warm clothes. It is very cold, I think. Many do not feel when their toes fall off.’

  He chuckled. It echoed around the room. When Carter still didn’t speak, the Commandant took his silence for an agreement.

  ‘You make the right choice, Doctor,’ he said.

  In the days after his meeting with the Commandant, Carter paced the landscape in directionless agitation. When he tried to recall it later, he found he had no memory of that chasm of time: whether he walked or ran, whom he might have seen or what he might have said. A blank vacuum in his memory, filled with the hiss of a glowing fuse.

  He had a vague recollection of gazing out at the sea, but far clearer in his mind was the Commandant’s sweating face. Those tiny, savage eyes. That harsh German voice as he called the populace animals and filth. His amusement at Carter’s discomfort. The barely veiled threats.

  Carter heard his blood hammering in his ears again. Sometimes that could be an indication of a brain tumour. He bent double, breathed into his cupped hands.

  Pull yourself together, Tim.

  He forced himself to straighten and to look at the view and to focus on the horizon. Gradually, the nausea subsided, his pulse dropped, and the black spots faded from his vision.

  The landscape was a glazed expanse of sea, punctuated by rugged rocks and boulders. At high tide, these were almost completely covered, then exposed when the sea retreated. Jagged brown fangs rearing from clagged grey mud. Not a soul for miles. A world that had never been tamed and could not be civilised or inhabited. Barren, desolate, glaring.

  He walked. Shingle crunched beneath his boots, which, he noted, needed repairing: a sole had started to peel away. Queasily, he remembered the Commandant’s polished leather shoes, his pressed shirt, which showed no signs of wear.

  I like a man to be neat.

  The Commandant would not be refused—that much was clear. Were Carter fool enough to rebuff his ‘offer’, he had little doubt that he would find himself serving a lengthy sentence behind the walls of the local prison. If he were lucky. Given his illegal status in the island as an Englishman, however, it was more likely that he would be transported to mainland Europe. Of the Jèrriais who had been sent to Ravensbrük, none had returned.

  But the Commandant repulsed Carter, not only for his bloated, wheezing body, but for that diseased mind. He could not imagine handling the man with care, with humanity, when his beliefs and values were so utterly repellent.

  You do not want to work with the filth. The animals.

  And how could Carter look any Jerseyman in the eye, knowing himself a traitor? How would he be able to treat his chosen countrymen when they knew him to be a coward? All the trust he had built up with the Jèrriais community would be obliterated once news of his service to the Commandant became common knowledge.

  He turned and started to stride home. He would wash and refresh himself, sluice the salt from his skin and the shingle from his shoes. Make himself neat.

  He was allowed to see the Commandant immediately.

  The German greeted him with a broad smile and a moist handshake, which lasted too long.

  ‘You have good words for me, Doctor?’

  ‘I’m sorry. But I must—decline. I am afraid. Most regrettably.’

  He blinked. ‘Decline? This means no?’

  ‘Yes. I—I am afraid so. My presence at the hospital is really… it really is most vital. I cannot abandon my post.’

  Chest tight, Carter waited for the rough hands of the guards. He half expected the Commandant to shoot him on the spot; even fearful, and desperate as he was, the comfort of his own integrity grounded and steadied him.

  But he nearly collapsed when the Commandant smiled and said, ‘Of course. I understand. You are the hero, yes? A brave man, strong man. Big man, yes?’

  He laughed and clapped Carter on the back, leaving his meaty hand to rest on his shoulderblade. Hot and heavy, the hand of fate.

  Carter sweated all night over that laugh. What it meant. He didn’t have to wait long to find out.

  The next morning, he arrived at the hospital to find pandemonium. The corridors crammed with soldiers, some brandishing guns—the nurses in a hell of a state: running, shouting, waving their hands.

  Sister Huelin found Carter immediately. Her face was pale.

  ‘They say the building is needed for official business. We have to be out by midday. On the street. Patients and all. We’ve nowhere to go. For heaven’s sake, some of the pa
tients are under aseptic care. And what about drips?’

  Panic gripped Carter. She must be mistaken, surely?

  ‘What do you mean, we’ve to be out? This is the hospital. They can’t evict us.’

  ‘The soldiers say they need the building. They say we must leave.’

  ‘That’s absurd! There must be some misunderstanding.’

  ‘That’s what we thought. But they’ve a written order. From the Commandant. It’s addressed to you.’ Spots of colour burned in her cheeks and she gripped his arm. ‘You must stop this, Doctor. It’s madness.’

  Carter recognised the soldier nearest to him as Hans Haas. He was ordering patients from their beds and herding them towards the door, waving his gun in their faces.

  ‘Now look here,’ Carter snapped. ‘What is the meaning of this? You cannot simply seize this building for your own purposes. It is the hospital, for God’s sake. You must leave at once. At once! And put that damn gun away!’

  But Hans didn’t flinch.

  ‘The Commandant, he say, Danke schön, Herr Doktor.’

  Hans passed him a letter, the swastika emblazoned at the top, the Commandant’s signature at the bottom.

  This hospital is to be used as a military centre, effective immediately. The medical provision for Jersey residents must be completed in a different location. Failure to comply with this order will result in the imprisonment and deportation of hospital staff and patients to Germany.

  The Field Commandant

  Carter felt, with sudden horror, the petrifying sense of his own helplessness. He remembered vividly the ring of the Commandant’s laughter.

  ‘But this is…absurd. Where am I to take the patients?’

  Hans smirked.

  ‘This is too bloody. The whole business. It’s foul. It will amount to murder, do you hear me? Putting these patients on to the street. Might as well take this’—Carter jabbed his finger at Hans’s gun—‘and shoot them in the head.’

  Half an hour later, Carter burst into the Commandant’s office.

  The German was sitting in his armchair, puffing on one of those damn cigars. For a moment, Carter allowed himself to imagine knocking it from the man’s mouth and grinding it under his heel, then striking the Commandant’s smug face with the glass ashtray. He’d heard of a man murdered that way. It was all a matter of force, timing and positioning.

  The Commandant gave a broad smile. ‘Ah, Doctor. I was thinking of you.’

  Carter clenched his fists. ‘What the devil do you think you’re doing? Put a stop to it! I demand that you call off your…dogs this minute.’

  The Commandant didn’t move. ‘Your friend,’ he said slowly. ‘The woman with plants. I think perhaps she is a witch, yes? This is what people say. My guards will take her to the prison. She will go tomorrow to Germany. And the butcher. He is deformierten. He makes me disgust. He will go too.’

  ‘No! You can’t!’

  Rage. Pure, physical and visceral. Carter had never felt anything like it. He wanted to tear into the man’s muscles with his bare hands. Sink his teeth into that smiling face. Slit his throat open and watch him bleed.

  The Commandant’s smile didn’t falter. ‘You will serve me, yes? This is the sensible thing. The clever thing. You are a clever man. You sit. A drink, yes. Cigar.’

  Carter accepted the objects that were pressed into his hands. He drank. He smoked.

  When he could gather breath to speak again, Carter made the Commandant promise not to touch the hospital patients or staff. Clement. Edith. And in return…

  ‘It is done,’ the Commandant said. ‘Welcome, Doctor. No words for me now?’ He patted Carter’s cheek. ‘Do not be sad. You have your hospital.’

  Carter looked straight ahead at the flag, the desk. Those photographs.

  ‘Thank you,’ he rasped. ‘Very much.’

  The Commandant leant in very close. His hot breath stank of sour whisky. ‘You will see the animals at the hospital one time each day,’ he whispered. ‘No more. You understand? The rest of the day, you are mine. For me. Yes?’

  Carter nodded.

  The Commandant chuckled and clapped Carter on the back, then slid his hand up to squeeze the nape of his neck. As one might clasp an errant dog.

  ‘You are clever man. Do not do something foolish.’

  Trapped, Carter unwillingly accepted a pair of new Italian leather shoes, which the Commandant ordered him to wear in place of his ruined pair.

  When he hesitated, the Commandant said, ‘You will be neat, yes? You obey me in all things now.’

  WHEN Edith told Maurice that Dr Carter wouldn’t be able to help him after all, she half expected him to lose his head over it.

  But all he said was, ‘Well, that’s that then,’ and carried on gutting the mackerel into her sink.

  She looked up from the wild garlic she was crushing. It seeped into the blood, the smell of it. She would stink like a Frenchman for days.

  ‘You’re not angry?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course I’m angry! My wife might die or be taken from me at any time. My chance of escape has gone. Without someone to care for her while I row, I’m stuck. Not enough food, except what I bring in the nets. Can’t walk ten yards without seeing the Bosche. And any one of the filthy swine could be the one that reports on Marthe. Let alone the rats scuttling about in search of information to give the Germans for scraps of food. But I’m not letting them take her. So that’s me done for.’

  He stabbed the knife into another fish.

  Edith set down her pestle and mortar. ‘I’m sorry, Maurice. It’s dreadful. If there were anything I—’

  ‘Thank you. You’ve been marvelous, all you’ve done for Marthe. The care you take of her, of both of us.’ His voice quavered.

  She couldn’t stand to see a man cry. ‘Come now, dwelling on it won’t change—’

  ‘I’m not. I mean to say, I’m simply…I’m thinking on what’s to be done.’

  She patted his shoulder. ‘We’re safer staying and never mind the soldiers—we can protect Marthe, between us. Who knows what would have happened if we’d tried to escape? Nowhere to hide on the open sea, is there?’

  Maurice’s mouth was hard with trying not to weep; Edith felt a flash of guilt at the false hope she’d dangled in front of his nose when she’d mentioned escape, knowing she’d never believed it would come to that.

  He sighed, pressed his finger against the tip of the knife.

  ‘But it’s them breathing down our necks, day in, day out. Not knowing who to trust. Do you know, I was talking to Richecoeur yesterday. He told me that Mary Blampied was taken off to prison for a week for having two wireless sets. She has an extra upstairs for her poor mother, who can barely shift out of bed because of her arthritis. It was a tip-off—a note from one of the neighbours, probably.’

  Edith nodded and picked up the pestle again, crushed another garlic stalk.

  ‘Petty jealousy. It’s a poor turn of events when you’re looking askance at the neighbours. I’ve heard all sorts about folk using the Germans to settle old scores.’

  ‘Yes. That’s the worst of it. Wondering who would want to see me taken down a peg. Thinking who I might have riled in the past. I’d have the lot of them, I would. German, Jèrriais. Do them in.’ His hand gripping the knife shook.

  ‘Hush, that’s foolishness talking. You’ll do no such thing. You’ll carry on—we all will. Marthe will be well; you’ve me to look after her. Just keep your head down.’

  She told him one of the better stories she’d heard: about Joanna Mourant, who had hidden a whole Christmas dinner from a patrol.

  Maurice was still frowning. ‘How did she manage that?’

  ‘Pretended to be tucked up in bed and dying from smallpox. And the dinner tucked up with her.’

  ‘She didn’t!’ A grin started nudging at the corners of his mouth.

  Edith hooted. ‘She did! A whole turkey and half a pound of potatoes in bed with her. More than an hour they searched that hous
e—they were on a tip from Joan Hacquoil—and they didn’t find so much as a single sprout.’

  In the end, Maurice went off to his boat laughing and Edith could get back to minding Marthe without fretting over him.

  Not that she resented tending to Marthe. A sweet thing, she was. Besides, how else could Maurice have found food? There were enough folk starving by then, without Edith letting it happen on her own doorstep—and to an innocent like that poor girl.

  Edith still thought of Marthe as a girl, even though she was in her thirties. But at nearly twenty years her senior, Edith felt old enough to be Marthe’s maman, and what with her wide eyes and her tiny little body—not an ounce of spare flesh on it—Marthe put her in mind of a sickly child. Sat propped up in Edith’s own bed, hair spilling over onto the pillows, she had stopped her groans, for the most part. Instead, she made little crooning noises as Edith combed out that blonde hair and gave her sips of hot, sweet tea. Made from potato peelings and dandelion leaves, of course—sweetened with the juice from slow-cooked barley.

  Marthe had put on a little flesh under Edith’s care, for all that she didn’t believe in mushing up her food and spoonfeeding the girl.

  When Maurice told Edith to mash her food, she smiled and nodded and shunted him out the door to his boat. Then she did exactly as she pleased. Put some pieces of carrot and potato, big as her finger, on a little tray in front of Marthe. Edith could see her staring. Then those big eyes flicked back to Edith, to see if she would be pulping them up and forcing them down her.

  But not a bit of it—Edith carried on dusting, brewing up acorn coffee and boiling limpets, just as if she didn’t know Marthe was there. And sure enough, in a minute or so, Marthe was patting her hand on that tray, trying to grasp the little sticks of carrot and potato which Edith had smeared with just a touch of butter that she’d traded her good housecoat for.

  Couldn’t do it, of course. Poor girl’s hands and arms wouldn’t do her bidding, hadn’t done in these past two years. She gave a little yowl, and the tray and food toppled on to the floor.