When the Sky Fell Apart

by Caroline Lea

  ‘She will die, Maurice. I need you to know that. Eventually, the disease will kill her. But this rapid degeneration, these secondary infections—I can’t help feeling that they must be preventable, with the right treatment.’ He took Maurice’s hand between his own, felt the strength there. ‘You’ve been admirably heroic. You can’t let it beat you.’

  ‘Her illness, or the occupation?’

  ‘Both.’

  CLAUDINE’S mother had stayed in hospital for weeks. But even after she returned home, she kept coughing, a noise like the stuttering rattle of a far-off car engine. Sometimes it startled Claudine awake, and she clenched her fists, willing Maman to draw her next breath.

  Spring was wet and cold. In April, Dr Carter came to see them again, and when he listened to Maman’s chest he frowned.

  ‘You need decent food and you need some warmth in this house,’ he said. ‘It’s not good for your lungs, the damp and cold.’

  Maman’s smile was all teeth. ‘And where, pray, am I to find wood?’

  His face was grave. ‘Have you any trees on your land that might do?’

  She shook her head and tried to talk but the coughing stole all her breath.

  Claudine said, ‘We saved some trees through the winter to use in spring, but the soldiers came and chopped them down while Maman was poorly in hospital.’

  Dr Carter nodded. ‘I happen to have some extra wood I’d be very happy to give you.’

  ‘From the Commandant?’

  Maman slapped her hand on the quilt and hissed, ‘Claudine, don’t be rude!’ She directed a tight smile at Dr Carter. ‘My apologies. And thank you, but we really can’t—’ She started coughing again.

  Claudine looked at her feet. She hadn’t meant to be rude.

  Dr Carter looked tired. ‘It’s a perfectly reasonable question. Yes, it is from the Commandant, and it is more than I can use, really. I would be glad to give it to you.’

  ‘Truly?’ Claudine smiled.

  Maman glared. ‘Claudine!’ Her face was hard. ‘Thank you, Doctor, but that won’t be necessary—’

  ‘Maman! We need more wood, you know we do—’

  ‘That’s enough, Claudine!’

  Claudine bit her lip and risked a glance up at Dr Carter. His face was white, apart from two bright spots of colour burning in his cheeks. His eyes met hers and she experienced a momentary flicker of recognition that she had never felt towards an adult before. She suddenly saw his sadness and how hard he worked to hide it. Then he blinked and it was if the shutters had dropped back down and he was the doctor once more.

  ‘I understand entirely,’ he said. ‘Please let me know if you change your mind. I’ll be back tomorrow.’

  After he had gone, Maman’s voice was sharp. ‘We’ll not be taking wood from that man, do you hear?’

  Throughout the slow, wet spring, Maman kept on coughing and growing thinner and thinner. The shape of her skull crept out from beneath her yellowing skin. Claudine tried to go cockling on the way home from school, but the seabed was empty. Sometimes she found one or two, but she always gave those to Francis.

  Then, one afternoon in May, there was more light and warmth in the air and Claudine felt the chill fade from inside her bones. She stretched in the sudden sunlight on the way home from school, but when she saw the house she could tell that something had changed. There was smoke coming from the chimney and a smell like Sunday roast dinners from a long time ago. Before Papa left.

  The kitchen was steamy, and Maman was humming when Claudine walked in.

  Maman whooped, a sound she hadn’t made in years.

  ‘Darling!’ she cried. ‘We’ve been waiting for you! Where have you been? I thought the chicken was going to burn!’ She hugged Claudine so hard it took her breath.

  ‘Chicken?’

  ‘Real chicken! A whole one! Fresh. With potatoes and carrots, parsnips and gravy. And bread and jam for pudding. Pudding! With butter—real butter! I hope you’re hungry, my love.’

  ‘I am! But how…? Where did you find a chicken?’

  ‘I didn’t find it, my love. I—well… Hans is going to…share it with us. Hans, this is Claudine. Say hello, sweetheart.’

  That was when Claudine saw the soldier standing over in the corner by the sink.

  ‘Hallo, Claudine,’ he said, smiling.

  She froze. It was the soldier with the pig-snout nose who had eaten all of the sand eels and pulled her on to his lap and put his hands all over her and inside her knickers with his hard fingers.

  Claudine backed away.

  Maman dragged her forward by the wrist. ‘Stop being shy, you silly goose! She’s having you on. Come on! Here, you can drain the potatoes for me. We’ve even butter, Claudine! Did I say? Real butter—four ounces—can you imagine?’ Her voice was falsely bright, like a stone made shiny with spit.

  Claudine took the potatoes and drained the pan. The steam billowed around her face so she could see her breath going in and out and in and out. She put the potatoes in a dish next to Hans.

  ‘Danke, Liebling,’ he said.

  When Claudine said nothing, Maman snapped, ‘Manners, Claudine!’ and she finally muttered, ‘Bitte.’

  But you wouldn’t take the firewood from Dr Carter, she thought.

  It didn’t make any sense, this world of loyalties that shifted like steam.

  Maman smiled and laughed and wolfed down the chicken, while, sickened, Claudine stared at the food on her plate. All she could see was Hans’s face, his white teeth, and his long, hard fingers.

  The beach was a fine place to be wretched. The sea sometimes blue or green or purple or grey. Never the same but always there. Everything smelt bitter and fresh and clean. Time slipped away and thought disappeared.

  Claudine could breathe easily there. She dug holes until they filled with water and she watched the sandhoppers drown. Then she rescued them one by one and they leapt away to safety.

  Suddenly she felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Gregor.

  Something inside her broke and she started to shake and she couldn’t stop sobbing, wave upon wave of grief and fear. At first she put her arms around him. He felt safe and warm, like home or Papa. But then she remembered how ashamed she was and she thought of everything he had done and she pulled away.

  ‘I’m going home.’

  ‘What have I done that you are so sad, Claudine?’ he asked. ‘I have not seen you. You are running from me, I think.’

  He went to put his arm around her again, but she flinched and moved away.

  ‘Why were you mean?’ she said, suddenly, as she stared at the bruise-black sea.

  He sat next to her. ‘Mean? What is this?’

  ‘I saw you. You were so mean to those poor prisoners, just before the execution of the Frenchman. Why?’

  ‘You saw this Frenchman killed?’

  ‘No. But I saw you shouting at the prisoners. And you watched while the other soldier…’ Her voice cracked. ‘It’s rotten, you’re all rotten!’

  Gregor was quiet for a long time. Then he took an apple out of his pocket and offered it to her. She shook her head.

  His face was thinner and his skin was like old paper. She remembered that night on the beach, when the other soldiers dragged him away. She felt a surge of pity for him, swiftly followed by shame at what had happened to her, at what he had allowed to happen to her, and anger at how he had treated the prisoners.

  ‘The men,’ he said. ‘The Häftlinge. I think this for a long time. It is mean—this is your word, yes? Rotten. Yes? So I try not to hurt them. I am good man to them.’ He crunched on his apple.

  Claudine frowned. ‘But you shouted. And then you let a man get beaten and then…’ She spread her hands, unable to speak.

  ‘It is a hard thing,’ Gregor said, at last. ‘Before, for a long time, I am good to these men. And the men do not work hard for me. They are lazy for me. The soldiers, my comrades, they laugh at me. I am soft, like a woman, they say. They hit me. They tell me to hurt the H
äftlinge. This will make them work better. I am not hitting. I never do this. But now I see other men hitting and I am not stopping them…’

  ‘But hurting people is wrong.’

  ‘But these are not men, Liebling. I know this now. They are like animals. A cow works and she pulls for us, yes? And if she is too slow, we teach her to be fast.’

  ‘But…that’s different.’

  ‘No, not different. The cow works, yes? We strike her and she works harder. She makes something for us. She is then more than a cow—she is a…how do you say it?…Bildner.’

  ‘Builder?’

  ‘Yes. So she is now more, better. You understand?’

  ‘Ja. I think so.’

  But she didn’t—not really. How could good, kind Gregor believe such terrible things? It was so confusing, the twisted line between right and wrong, good and evil. Gregor was good, she knew, and yet he could behave like a monster. Was everyone such a confusing mixture? In Hitler’s black heart, was there a tiny glow-worm of tenderness that made him kind to children? She thought of Dr Carter, who was so good, so kind, and yet he helped the Commandant, which was wrong, surely?

  Gregor held out the other half of his apple, with a smile. Hunger scrabbled in Claudine’s guts.

  As she ate, she spoke haltingly about Maman and how she had been miserable and poorly all through the winter and into spring. She told him about Hans being at home. She wondered how much he knew of what had happened on the beach that night.

  ‘He scares me, Gregor,’ she said quietly.

  Gregor’s mouth was set in a thin line. ‘This is not a good thing. We must help you. We must think of…something for help you.’

  Claudine said, ‘I don’t understand about you.’

  ‘Warum?’

  ‘You are so kind and yet—’ She nearly said it: he was kind to her but so awful to those poor men. Instead, she said, ‘You are good to me, even though you are a soldier.’

  ‘How can I be rotten for you?’

  He grinned, pleased with himself for using the unfamiliar word. Then his face grew serious.

  ‘I have a boy, a son. In Germany. I think that I want him happy. You are a child. War is cruel.’

  He shrugged, an open-handed gesture that contained the difficulty of all the ideas he couldn’t say in English, or perhaps couldn’t say at all. ‘It is good for being kind to children. This is what I hope for my boy.’

  After a long time, the air became ragged: biting gusts scraped their cheeks. The sea turned slate-grey and Claudine could feel rain waiting in the cold wind.

  She didn’t talk about the night on the beach. The sand eels. Hans.

  Claudine knew she had to go home.

  As she stood up, Gregor reached out to her. ‘This Hans,’ he said. ‘I will not let him hurt you. Don’t be frightened.’

  But Hans came to their house every day, all through May. He brought bags of food and he brought medicine for Maman, too. She stopped coughing and started singing while she cooked. Her piano-ribs faded and filled with plump flesh. By the summer, her face was round and happy.

  Francis started to sleep instead of crying. Claudine’s stomach didn’t gripe all the time. It was easier to run without feeling dizzy.

  Hans brought her a wooden hoop and a stick to play with outside so that he and Maman could go and lie down together. A toy for a child, but she played with it anyway. She tried not to listen to the grunts and groans from Maman’s room.

  She wondered where Papa was fighting. They had received one tattered letter, via the Red Cross nearly ten months ago (and it had been dated from two months before that, June 1941), which had been very bright and talked about the heat, as if Papa were enjoying a holiday. Some sentences were black blocks of the censor’s pen. Papa had written, I like to think of you, safe in Jersey.

  Maman had scowled when she read that and thrown the letter to the floor. Claudine had picked it up and tucked it into her pocket. She had read it again and again, trying to understand what had made Maman so angry.

  Hans was kind to Claudine. Called her Liebling. Sometimes, he patted her on the head or stroked her hair. Sometimes, he stood behind her and squeezed her shoulders. Or he put his hands on the back of her neck and rubbed it, very gently, so that it almost tickled. His touch sent spiders skittering into her stomach.

  Maman watched. Once, after he had gone, she said, ‘Hans is very kind to you, my love.’

  ‘Yes, Maman.’

  ‘He’s never hurt you, has he?’

  Claudine imagined the shock and disgust on Maman’s face if she told her. Perhaps she would make Hans go away. But perhaps—and this thought was more terrible—perhaps she wouldn’t. Might she blame Claudine somehow, for making Hans do those terrible things to her?

  ‘No, Maman,’ she replied.

  ‘Do you like him?’

  Claudine looked at her face. Maman was smiling, truly smiling. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes were bright, like they used to be before Francis was born. No trace of her black mood. If Claudine told Maman what had happened, she knew that Maman’s darkness would return, along with the squeezing hunger.

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘You’d never know he was a soldier, really, would you? Not a German soldier? To look at him, he could be English or French. Or even from Jersey, except that his hair is a little light.’

  ‘Shall I peel the potatoes?’ Claudine said.

  One day, Hans brought another chicken then took Maman to the bedroom.

  Claudine knew how to cook vegetables and fish, but she had never cooked a chicken before. She didn’t know where to start with it: what to do with the feathers and feet and head. So she took it to Edith’s house.

  ‘Goodness, child, I must be dreaming. A chicken? A real chicken. Come, let me hold it.’

  Edith was showing Claudine how to pluck the chicken when she suddenly stopped.

  ‘What’s this then?’

  She was pointing at the chicken’s foot: the skin was green.

  Claudine grimaced. ‘Is it bad?’

  Edith’s voice was hard. ‘Where did you find this bird? Or who did you steal it from, I should be saying.’

  ‘No one. I didn’t steal it.’

  ‘Well, what’s this?’ She beckoned Claudine closer so she could inspect the foot. It wasn’t mould but green paint.

  ‘There’s only one man I know who paints his chicken’s feet green so they don’t go missing. This is Oliver Le Marchand’s bird, stolen from his coop just yesterday morning. Making a right old song and dance about it, he was.’

  Her cheeks burning, Claudine told Edith how a soldier had become friends with Maman. How he had been giving them lots of food. How Maman was happy.

  ‘She sings, Edith. And she hums and laughs for no reason.’

  Edith stood and looked out of the window. The wind was flattening the grass and shaking the gorse bushes.

  ‘Are you angry?’ Claudine asked.

  Edith shook her head.

  ‘Do you think Maman is a bad person?’

  Edith shook her head again and gave a sad smile. ‘Those that live on hope die of hunger, my love.’

  ‘Should I take the chicken back to Mr Le Marchand?’

  ‘Take it back,’ Edith laughed. ‘Are you mad, child? First thing he’d do would be skin you alive. Second would be to eat that chicken. Which I must say, I quite fancy a bit of. It would also do Marthe the world of good.’

  After that, whenever Hans brought a chicken, Claudine took it to Edith and helped her to strip and gut it. Edith kept the innards for paté and stews. Maman never asked where the giblets had gone, but she must have known that Claudine was taking the birds to Edith’s house. Perhaps it was because Maman knew Edith had cared for the children when she had been in hospital, or perhaps it was because Hans and the food had turned her into a different person, but she didn’t seem to mind.

  When Claudine watched Edith and Marthe and Maurice eating the paté, it made Hans’s eyes on her body and his hands on h
er skin seem to matter less.

  EDITH had thought Maurice a fool for fretting when the soldier disappeared for those days. What was the worry? But then, after she’d seen him help Maurice take Marthe over to Dr Carter’s, she started to bother over it. It kept her up all that night and worried her over the weeks that came after: was he a spy, reporting back to the Commandant? The darkness makes monsters out of thin air. Still, what with fretting over Marthe too, Edith didn’t catch a wink of sleep.

  Three weeks later, at 5am and with the air still freezing, Edith stamped outside to fetch some wood. The shed was thick with the darkness—her little candle blinded her to anything past the reach of her arm. But she could see the pile of oddments that she’d heaped in the corner to hide the wood.

  She took one of Frank’s old rakes and prodded off the old newspaper and the sacks (they could use them for fuel once the wood ran out). She was just poking the last piece of newspaper when it moved and gave a moan.

  Edith screeched and ran from the shed back into the house. Was it an ambush? Or an escaped prisoner of war? They could be violent, half starved and desperate as they were.

  She leant against the door, trying to think where she could find her sharpest kitchen knife, her heart still going ten to the dozen when there was a rat-a-tat-tat at the door.

  ‘Leave me alone. I’ve nothing for you.’

  ‘Helfen Sie mir!’

  She opened the door a crack. There he was, the soldier: crouched on her doorstep, that ruined arm held up like an offering.

  She gasped. ‘You frightened the life out of me.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I suppose you want to come in?’

  ‘Thank you.’ He rushed past her into the house and then cowered in her kitchen, looking all about as if he was the one with an army after him.

  ‘You look dreadful. Whatever’s the matter?’

  ‘I must…hide.’

  ‘Hide? From whom?’

  He laughed but there was no joy in it. ‘My countrymen. They take me, I think.’