When the Sky Fell Apart

by Caroline Lea

  It was in September when she first bled. Edith gave her some cloth to put in her flannel drawers; she scrubbed them clean in the tub in the garden when no one was looking. But she had read books about it: the way the man’s seed swims into the woman’s body and makes a baby. Her body could do that now.

  When Hans found that she was bleeding, he didn’t touch her. But, lying next to her in the darkness, he said, ‘You are a woman now.’ And there was something new in the way his hands rested on her, possessive and full of promise.

  That was when she decided to run away. She had seen the cows and what the bullocks did to them. She understood the harsh animal cries from Maman’s room when she and Hans lay down in the afternoons. Grunting. Claudine knew what men expected women to do.

  At first she thought she could hide with Edith. But they would find her there. Then she imagined hiding in the sand dunes, or in the caves at Devil’s Hole: nobody ever went there, because the spirits of dead fishermen haunted them. But she wanted to take Francis with her so that Hans couldn’t hurt him in her place.

  In the end, Claudine decided she would find a boat and row to England, just her and Francis. With Gregor to look after them—and Edith too, if she wanted to come.

  That was when she thought of Maurice.

  Early next morning, when everybody was still asleep, Claudine lifted Hans’s heavy hand from her chest and tiptoed from the bedroom. When she walked past Maman’s room, the floorboards creaked and Maman opened one eye. She smiled at Claudine, made her lips into the shape of a kiss and then closed her eye again.

  Claudine ran all the way, muscles burning, and tapped on Edith’s door. Claudine thought she might be asleep, but Edith opened the door straight away, almost as if she had been waiting. Her face was puffy but she was wearing her housedress and her eyes were bright and sharp. She looked relieved when she saw Claudine.

  ‘Is Maurice here?’ Claudine whispered.

  ‘Out on the boat, my love, but he’s due back shortly. You look pale. Whatever’s the matter?’

  ‘Where is Gregor?’

  ‘See for yourself. Gregor! You can come out, dear.’

  The larder door swung open. ‘Hello, Claudine.’

  He was smiling; his face was a little fatter, more like the old Gregor. He looked handsome, with his dark hair and his blue eyes. Somehow, Edith had managed to hide him from the patrols, or throw them off the scent or bribe them into looking the other way.

  His smile faded when he saw her face. ‘Was ist los?’

  ‘Nothing, I…’ Claudine shook her head, fought back tears. She didn’t want to say anything before Maurice arrived. They might think her a fool or try to stop her from asking for his boat. She didn’t want to have to explain everything. She didn’t know how to form the words for the leaden ache in her stomach.

  ‘I don’t want to say,’ she finally whispered.

  Edith and Gregor nodded. Claudine saw them exchange a look, but neither of them pressed her. They all sat for a long time without saying anything. The skeleton clock on the mantelpiece ticked.

  When there was a knock at the door, they all jumped. Gregor and Claudine both dashed to hide in the back of the larder.

  ‘Calm yourselves!’ Edith hissed. ‘Not loud enough for a patrol. But Gregor, my love, you’d best hide.’

  Edith let Maurice in and cut him a slice of bread too. She didn’t eat any herself. Claudine could almost count the bones under the thin, yellowing skin of her hands, but Edith always said she wasn’t hungry.

  Maurice ate his bread in three big mouthfuls, without saying anything. His hair stuck out in all directions; his face was pouchy with exhaustion.

  Everything was quiet except for the sound of hungry chewing.

  Claudine felt the need to fill the silence. ‘Do you truly believe Marthe will die, Maurice?’

  ‘Goodness me, child,’ Edith cried. ‘Say what you mean, don’t hold back.’

  But Maurice gave a sad smile. ‘The medicine’s done her the world of good,’ he murmured. ‘Thank you for asking.’

  It was quiet again until Claudine clenched her fists to give herself courage before saying, ‘I want to borrow your boat. Please.’

  Maurice and Edith stared at Claudine and then looked at each other and laughed. A loud, grown-up laugh, from before the war.

  Then Edith said, ‘Well, then, Maurice, I can offer you a little acorn coffee, if you’ve time to stop?’

  ‘Thank you, I think I will today.’

  As Edith went to fill the pan, Maurice sat down at the table and gazed out at the sea. Claudine could see the reflection of the clouds in his troubled eyes.

  ‘Maurice, please can I borrow your boat?’

  He frowned and scrubbed at his eyes. ‘I’d laugh, Claudine, love, honestly I would. But I’ve spent these last few months nursing Marthe and I’m tired to my very bones.’

  ‘But I mean it! Why won’t he listen, Edith? I need to borrow his boat.’

  Edith gave her a blank look: the same one Maurice had given her.

  ‘Now, child, you’re not normally one to be an irritation. I know you mean well. But we’re not laughing now, are we? So stop jesting and sit quietly. I’ll even give you a drop of acorn coffee if you won’t say a word to your maman.’

  ‘But I’m not jesting and I don’t want to sit down and I don’t want any acorn coffee! I want Maurice’s boat!’

  She started to cry. She couldn’t make herself stop, not even when she dug her nails into the palms of her hands and chewed on the inside of her cheek and counted her teeth with her tongue.

  Edith took Claudine on to her lap and held her and stroked her hair. ‘Shhhh, shhhhh, there now,’ she said, until Claudine’s breath had stopped shattering out of her chest in gasps. Edith kissed her cheeks. ‘Come then, what’s this?’

  ‘I have to leave because I don’t like Hans. And I need the boat because England is too far for me to swim.’

  She could see Maurice’s mouth curling into a smile. Edith frowned at him.

  ‘Slow down, my love,’ she said. ‘Why this sudden worry over Hans? I know he’s a soldier, but they’re not all bad. And the food he brings. Why, you’d have starved if your mother hadn’t—’

  ‘I just don’t like him. He’s not very…kind to me.’

  It grew quiet once more. No sound but the ticking clock and everyone breathing and thinking. Claudine stared at her fingers in her lap, which had crescents of dirt under the nails where she had scrabbled at the rocks, trying to lever limpets free. She knew that Maurice and Edith were looking at each other and saying things with their eyes, so she waited for them to finish.

  Maurice eventually sighed. ‘Claudine, all of us have to be around people we don’t like sometimes. You can’t simply row off in a boat and leave folk behind. You’ll spend half your life rowing; you’ll end up with arms like a sailor. And who will want to marry you then, eh?’

  Edith chuckled.

  ‘I don’t want to row away from everyone,’ Claudine hissed. ‘Just Hans. And I want to go to England because they haven’t been invaded and they have more food. Here I have to find cockles for our dinner. But there aren’t any cockles left. So we have to eat the food Hans gives us. And I don’t like eating his food.’

  Edith stroked Claudine’s hair. ‘It shouldn’t be up to you to find food, my love.’

  Claudine nodded because her throat was aching.

  ‘The war means that lots of us do things we’d rather not,’ Edith said. ‘And I suppose you worry about people calling your maman a Jerry-Bag?’

  Claudine stared at the cracks in her shoes.

  ‘I think, Claudine, if we’re candid…I think we’re all simply doing what we must. To stay alive. Your maman has herself and two children to think about. And there’s none of us that haven’t helped the Germans out one way or another. Or taken something from one of them. Isn’t that right, Maurice?’

  He snorted.

  Edith continued. ‘So you mustn’t be too upset about all the r
ubbish about traitors and Jerry-Bags. Do you hear me?’

  ‘Yes,’ Claudine muttered.

  ‘No more talk of running away, do you hear me?’

  ‘But I still want to go to England. I hate being in Jersey.’ There was a quivering, childish fury in her voice once more.

  Edith and Maurice looked at each other again and said more things with their eyes. Claudine dug the dirt out from under her fingernails and waited.

  Edith took Claudine’s hand in hers. Her skin was leathery and sun-spotted, but her grip was strong.

  ‘We can’t take you from your mother, my love. I’m sorry. She’d never forgive us for putting you in danger. And you’d miss her, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I would. But I wouldn’t miss Hans.’

  Claudine started to cry again. Even though tears didn’t help anyone or change a thing. Even though she was nearly a woman and tears were for babies.

  Maurice sat straighter in his chair. ‘Come now, Hans can’t be so bad, even if he is a Kraut.’

  He put his hand on Claudine’s shoulder and squeezed. Memory of Hans, his hard hands, his moving fingers that were all over her and inside her, sent spiders skittering into her stomach. Claudine stopped crying and froze, squeezing her eyes shut.

  Edith took a sharp breath. ‘Claudine, my love,’ she asked, ‘has Hans ever hurt you?’

  Through the roaring in her ears, Claudine heard herself reply, ‘Every night. Even though I never talk to him or look at him. I try to be good… But I must have done something terrible to make him do that. Why does he want to do those horrible things to me? What have I done to—’

  Edith pulled Claudine into her lap again and held her tight. She smelt of the sea and clean air and fresh new plants. Claudine sobbed.

  Edith’s voice was fierce. ‘Never think that! Never! You’re a wonderful girl, there now, no need to cry, hush. Go on through to the sitting room and let me have a little chat with Maurice. Take Marthe with you, there’s a good girl.’

  So Claudine wiped her eyes and wheeled Marthe through and started reading a book about plants, which had lots of long names in it. But all the time her ears were straining for Maurice’s and Edith’s words.

  As if from very far away she heard Edith say, ‘Evil bastard, I’ll kill him. I’ll—’

  ‘Not if I do it first,’ Maurice spat.

  ‘We’ll do it together. I’ll make him a nightshade tea and you can cut his throat. We can fight over which of us is allowed to gut him.’

  ‘This isn’t a time for jesting, Edith.’

  ‘I’m not.’ Her voice was savage.

  Eventually Edith said, ‘Her face, poor love. Did you see her face? She can’t stay there. I won’t have it.’

  ‘No.’

  Edith’s voice was firm. ‘I’ll go to Sarah today. Tell her Claudine is staying with me. Helping me with Marthe. And Francis is here to keep her company.’

  ‘You think she’ll agree to it?’

  ‘Who knows? She’s all muddled, that one. Never the same since the boy.’

  Maurice grunted. ‘Doesn’t excuse her letting that sort of thing go on. If she knows, that is.’

  ‘Most folks know more than they’ll admit, even to themselves—whether she knows or not is beside the point. It’s happening and we must get the child away.’

  ‘Perhaps taking her from the house might be enough?’

  ‘What if Hans sees her on the way to school? Or we come a cropper because he knows that we’re on to him? A soldier can do anything he likes, and there’s nothing we can do to help her as long as she’s near him. I think England might be the best place for her.’

  ‘But how could I take her?’ Maurice said. ‘I’ve enough to worry about with where to go and what to do with Marthe, let alone two children. The news on the wireless doesn’t make me jump for joy, you know. England’s no better than here for a child. Bombs and the like. Then there’s food and water for the journey. Finding and storing enough to last all of us. That’s if we don’t find ourselves captured and shot on the way over. And the children, imagine the noise! We’d be arrested before we ever reached the boat.’

  Another stretch of silence and then a chair creaked.

  ‘Well,’ Edith said. ‘What if I was there to help?’

  ‘What if you were where?’

  ‘On the boat, you great oaf. What if I came with you?’

  CARTER had always been a fitful sleeper. As a boy, his mother blamed his chronic insomnia on his overactive brain. He could still remember curling up with his head on her lap, whiling away the shadowed hours between night and morning by reciting all the battles of the Wars of the Roses or all the capital cities in Europe.

  She had been a good woman: a gentle mother and a devoted wife. She coddled both of them terribly, husband and son alike, and Carter’s father had never recovered from losing her. She’d died of a heart attack after a particularly nasty episode of pneumonia.

  Father had glowered at him after the funeral. ‘Disappointment took her,’ he said. ‘All she wanted was the hope of grandchildren.’

  Exhausted and grief-stricken, Carter had snapped, ‘People do not die from disappointment.’

  ‘Still, if you’d shown but the slightest interest in any girl, it might have given her something to live for.’

  Carter hadn’t been able to meet his baleful glare, had tried to ignore the mounting guilt and shame he felt, and the suspicion, ridiculous as it was, that Father might be right.

  Carter was unsurprised that his sleep was disturbed in the weeks that followed the incident involving Maurice and the medication he had procured for Marthe. She recovered from the infection, so it had been worth the risk, in that sense.

  Nonetheless, it terrified him that he had taken the sulfa tablets that were intended to treat the Commandant. Every single one of them—four or five months’ supply. At some point, the Commandant would discover they were missing and would know he was responsible.

  But the summer blew past in a daze of sunlit days and very little of note occurred. Carter began to feel like he could afford to breathe again. Perhaps the Commandant would have no need of the medication, after all?

  Then, one morning in September, Carter arrived at Royal Square later than usual, having overslept for once. He walked briskly to his office, expecting the Commandant or one of his cronies to be there waiting, ready to reprimand him for his tardiness.

  But his office was empty. He set down his bag and prepared to sort through some prescriptions and old patient cases. It was then that he noticed that all his paperwork had been moved. Only marginally. As though someone had rifled through the papers and then attempted to return them to their original position. Some of his books had been moved too.

  He opened his drawers. The same.

  He knew, of course, that the Commandant occasionally asked one of his soldiers to examine the office and report back to him; the German had the paranoid nature common to most egomaniacs and demanded regular reports on all the men under his command.

  But this was different: the furtive way in which every area of the office had clearly been closely examined and then objects returned to their—almost, but not quite—original position. Someone had been searching for something specific.

  Carter checked the whole office again. Nothing had been taken. Even his wastepaper basket contained the same collection of aborted correspondence, old receipts and prescriptions, though all had been removed, smoothed out, read and then replaced. He couldn’t, for the life of him, fathom what the Commandant would have wanted.

  Then came the dull thud of realisation: what if the Commandant wasn’t having his soldiers search for something that was there but confirming that something wasn’t there?

  Of course: the sulfa tablets.

  Carter’s mouth was dry, heart pulsing hotly in his throat, his fingertips. He took a steadying sip of water, tapped his pen on his desk. He resisted the urge to take a gulp of single malt, to drain a bottle dry, and instead sat, waiting.


  Within ten minutes, a tall and well-muscled soldier appeared in the doorway and indicated that Carter should follow him.

  ‘Never a moment’s peace, eh?’ He forced himself to laugh, but the soldier simply scowled.

  Carter walked down the dark corridor with the sinking feeling of a man edging towards the precipice of a cliff. But when he entered the office, the Commandant was doubled over, clutching his stomach and moaning: clearly an attack of diverticulitis—his gluttony had precipitated the condition some months earlier. Abandoning all concerns about his own predicament, Carter rushed to his side and encouraged him to lie supine on the chaise longue.

  ‘Don’t talk for the moment. I will find you some morphine and water and then examine you.’

  The soldier who had escorted him was still standing to attention.

  ‘For God’s sake, man,’ Carter snapped. ‘Don’t just stand there. Fetch my medical bag! Meine Tasche! Run!’

  The lout lumbered from the room, leaving Carter alone with the Commandant, who was still breathing heavily and clasping his abdomen. In spite of everything, Carter found himself pitying him—diverticular pain was absolutely agonising. Then, too, there was the possibility of a ruptured diverticula, an abscess or even a fistula forming, all of which would increase the man’s pain and might even threaten his life.

  Watching the German’s pinched face, Carter couldn’t help imagining this outcome: the wall of the intestine swelling, bulging, bursting. The poison spreading through that huge body. He visualised the Commandant’s face, slack and innocuous in death…

  But Carter felt nothing approaching the excitement and eagerness he would have anticipated in such a scenario. In fact, he felt the usual pulsing urgency that came with knowing that a patient’s life was in danger; he felt, as he would have felt for any man, a desire to save his life. It was not simply a case of the Hippocratic Oath and his vow to take care that patients suffer no hurt or damage. It was the years he had spent battling that other enemy, Death, who was far more merciless than any man could hope to be.