When the Sky Fell Apart

by Caroline Lea

  To his surprise, Carter gave a strangled laugh and stood up.

  ‘As if obtaining medicine for you hadn’t landed me in this mess in the first place. What do you need?’

  THEY waited for two days for Dr Carter to bring the medicine. At the end of the second day, he knocked on Edith’s door. But, Claudine saw, he was empty-handed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Truly I am. The hospital won’t allow me anything. And taking medicine from the Commandant’s personal supply is too great a risk.’

  ‘You must have contacts in there?’ Maurice said. ‘A man like you makes friends.’

  ‘Friends? You’re talking about German soldiers.’

  ‘Yes. And you’ve spent the war cosying up to them. So there must be one of them you can trust?’

  Dr Carter looked at the floor. ‘I’m sorry. It wasn’t worth the risk. It might have given everything away.’

  ‘Don’t give me that. It wasn’t about the risk to us. You’re always about saving your own skin, aren’t you?’

  ‘Leave him be, Maurice, can’t you see he’s in pieces?’ Edith muttered. She addressed Carter brightly. ‘Come, sit, Doctor. I’ve just boiled up some nettle leaves for tea.’

  Carter sat down. He looked shaky and smaller than Claudine remembered him.

  ‘I’m not sure I would hold up under interrogation,’ he said. ‘I feel I can’t trust myself… You must think me a coward.’

  Maurice snorted and went back to mending some rope.

  Edith’s voice was kind. ‘Of course not. You’re right to worry about keeping your mouth shut—I’ve heard they don’t hold back during questioning, and pain is enough to start anyone’s tongue wagging. And we’re none of us keen to be put in front of a firing squad. Isn’t that right, Maurice?’

  Maurice scowled and didn’t look up from his rope.

  Then Claudine had a thought. A silly idea, probably, but still…

  ‘Why doesn’t Edith simply make up some of her plant medicines for the fishermen?’

  ‘Don’t be foolish, Claudine,’ Maurice said. ‘I know you’re trying to help, but you’re best to hold your peace until we have things clear. There’s a good girl.’

  ‘Well…but wait,’ said Edith. ‘Why didn’t we think of that? She’s on to something there, Maurice. I’ve plenty of remedies. We’re running out of other ideas. It can’t hurt.’

  Maurice’s voice was loud and sharp. ‘Well, of course! Why didn’t I think of that before? I’m sure the French will risk their necks for a few ground-up leaves and sticks. I know I would.’

  ‘Mocking doesn’t suit you, Maurice. And we have precious little choice. So you’re best to hold your peace, just until we have things clear. There’s a good man.’ Edith gave Claudine a wink and Maurice let out another exasperated sigh.

  Edith filled a sack with all her different powders and teas and poultices and gave it to Maurice.

  ‘We’d best hope none of us are ill,’ she murmured.

  Maurice and Edith had made Claudine promise not to tell anyone about escaping. She knew that Maman might try to stop her going, and then she would have to stay at home forever, with Hans wanting her to be a woman.

  When she knew Hans would be out on patrol, Claudine went home to visit Maman. Inside, in the kitchen, she held Claudine’s face between her hands and squeezed her cheeks.

  ‘Are you eating? The extra meat I’ve sent?’

  ‘Yes, Maman.’

  ‘I can’t stand to see you thin—you know that.’

  ‘I’m eating, Maman. The meat. The butter too.’

  The tightness in her face softened. ‘You’re happy with Edith? You look happy.’

  When Claudine thought of leaving Maman forever, everything grew dark. She walked down to the beach and looked out across the sea. It shimmered and glittered with sunlight and shadows. She imagined the yawning miles of black water breathing beneath the surface. If she looked towards England, she could only see the sky and then the stark, flat line of darkness where the horizon disappeared. It was where the wind and storms came from. Fear and anticipation made her quiver.

  She wondered where they would go in England, what they would do. Would there be bombs? At the start of the war, when the Germans first arrived, Claudine had wanted to go to England, to see Papa. But now, time and pain had taught her better: she knew he probably wasn’t there anymore. Perhaps he wasn’t anywhere, and even if he was he would be a different person now. Like Dr Carter, like Maurice. Like Maman.

  Claudine watched the waves beating against the rocks again and again. They had taught her, at school, that over millions of years, water could wear a cliff face away until it was nothing more than specks of sand to be blown about by the wind. Anything could change, they said: it was all a matter of time and pressure.

  UNDER the circumstances, Carter had thought it best to maintain a low profile. So he had stayed at home, even when he felt the walls were closing in on him.

  Whenever he thought about returning to England, he tried to picture Father’s face. But he could see only his back: the hard lines of his head and shoulders, like the crenellated walls of a fortress, dressed in his Warwickshire regiment uniform. Ypres. Amiens. The Somme. He had survived them all and returned home to the disappointment of a son who cried over a scraped knee and never took his nose out of a blasted book.

  Carter could recall the exact timbre of Father’s voice when he’d told him to get out of his sight.

  He would have to stretch the truth, he knew, when accounting his experience of the war. Any details of his care for the Commandant would be best left unmentioned. None of the English doctors, who would no doubt judge him a traitor for his actions, none of them had been on the island, under the suffocating weight of occupation, had been trapped and bullied until they no longer recognised themselves or their actions.

  Father would judge him, too, if he knew the truth.

  Sometimes, in the dark belly of the night, Carter was convinced they would all be captured. He found himself pacing the length of his hallway, as if he was already imprisoned and awaiting the German guns. At other moments, he daydreamed about what he might do if they arrived safely on the mainland.

  Will.

  Would he have forgiven Carter for the years of abandonment and silence? Perhaps he would have made a life with someone else? The thought was agonising. Still, Carter couldn’t help wishing for Will to be there, waiting for him. He couldn’t help fanning that small spark of hope, that somehow, this time, he would return to England and find himself braver.

  While Carter was in search of some sort of distraction from these thoughts, an idea evolved. It came to him in the dead of night, when his ravenous guts kept him awake. He had failed to procure medication for the French fisherman and he wanted to make a contribution to the escape—and now it occurred to him that he could barter his newest shoes for food.

  The offending footwear had remained on his doorstep for over a week. He had hoped that, by leaving the shoes in plain sight, he might have encouraged some opportunist to steal them. At least then somebody would benefit from the ‘reward’ the Commandant had pressed upon Carter.

  The shoes—glowing, mahogany leather—would have cost a fortune even before the war. In a situation where most men had been forced to wear wooden clogs or shoes that had been resoled with old bicycle tyres, Carter’s were invaluable.

  Clement Hacquoil was the man to go to, Carter was sure of it. Not just because of their shared past, but because he was one of the few men on the island who didn’t condemn Carter as a traitor. The butcher himself had been the subject of no small amount of haranguing from the islanders after openly supplying meat to the Commandant.

  Hacquoil had never intimated to Carter that he condoned his position with the Germans, and Carter had never demonstrated any approval of Hacquoil’s actions.

  But at some moments when they exchanged meat for money, with a queue of bone-thin faces clamouring outside the shop, something had passed between them. A look
of perhaps not camaraderie but comprehension.

  Carter went to Hacquoil’s early in the morning, once the usual post-curfew rush had died down.

  Clement didn’t look up from sharpening his knives when Carter entered the shop.

  ‘Bouônjour.’ The butcher’s water-logged voice crackled but Carter had become accustomed to ignoring these sounds that punctuated his speech.

  ‘Good day, to you, Clement. How are you this morning?’

  ‘Weary, Doctor. It’s this arm, keeping me awake. I thought scars had no feeling in them, but these itch in the night. I have to wear mittens to keep from scratching myself raw.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do. It may be that Edith Bisson has something to help you.’

  ‘I appreciate that, Doctor. Thank you. I’ll have a half a chicken sent over to Royal Square later. Can’t spare a whole one, but the Commandant will be happy with half. And I’ll let him know it’s on account of you. Your help.’

  ‘Many thanks, but that won’t be necessary. I don’t find myself at Royal Square much these days.’

  Clement stopped sharpening the knives for a moment. ‘Oh?’

  Carter affected a light-hearted tone. ‘Yes, he has no…need of me at present.’

  ‘No need of you?’ Clement leant across the counter. His fixed grin gave the impression that he found everything amusing, but his eyes were dark. ‘That’s not a position you want to find yourself in, is it?’

  Carter managed to squeeze a chuckle through gritted teeth. ‘Oh, I’m not concerned.’

  Perhaps it was just the slant the scars lent his face, but Clement suddenly seemed to be assessing Carter, weighing him as one might judge a lamb shank. Then his lips stretched as wide as his tight, shiny skin would allow.

  ‘Good man. Can’t change a thing by worrying, can you? So, what can I do for you then, Doctor?’

  Carter drew the shoes from his medical bag, placed them on the counter, between the chicken necks and the pigs’ trotters.

  ‘I wish to exchange these for as much meat as you can give me. Preferably dried stuff.’

  Clement laid down his knives and looked at Carter as if he had never seen him before.

  ‘And what would I be doing with those fancy shoes then? Up to my ankles in sheep guts in finest leather? A right picture I’d make.’

  Carter flushed. Why was the man being so obtuse? Perhaps this was some sort of test?

  ‘Well, of course I did not…intend them for you. I merely hoped you might be able to…trade them. On the black market. For some decent meat.’

  Clement glared. ‘I don’t know what you’re on about, Doctor. Now, I’m busy, if you don’t mind? À bétôt.’

  And damn the man if he didn’t turn and walk back behind the curtain and into his own house. Left Carter standing there, staring at those bloody shoes. It was as if Carter had proffered the decomposing carcass of a rat, squashed by a bicycle.

  Briefly, he considered shouting after Clement, but instead he made an obscene gesture at the curtain and felt immediately foolish, even though the shop was empty. He stuffed the shoes back into his medical bag and left.

  Once outside, a sudden chill twisted his guts. He leant against the wall and wondered how he could have committed such a grave error. If Clement was not involved in the black market then he’d essentially just incriminated himself.

  You damned fool.

  He was under enough suspicion because of the sulfa tablets. Once news of this event reached the Commandant’s ears, Carter’s death sentence would be expedited; he was quite sure of it.

  But how could he have been so misinformed? Before the islanders had stopped coming to him altogether for medical care, numerous patients had mentioned Clement’s involvement with the black market. And Carter himself, while he was collecting meat for the Commandant, had seen Clement whispering to islanders: the sort of back-alley mutterings that had left him in no doubt that an illicit bargain was being made.

  He began perspiring most unpleasantly, a trickle of sweat creeping down his spine. He removed his coat. However, the sun wasn’t yet up and the sea seemed to radiate cold. He quickly grew chilled and began to shiver as he walked home.

  Along the seafront, the sky was a tarnished, metallic grey, and the land, too, seemed to be shaded a dull monochrome: loops of barbed wire marked the verboten areas, overgrown by sprawling weeds; nature cared nothing for man’s edicts. The wire was coiled in neat spirals: a jagged reminder of the unspooled viscera of Hitler’s dream.

  Suddenly, Carter felt a hand tap on his shoulder. It was Hacquoil’s young daughter, a small, sickly looking child, who had run barefoot after him and now stood, shivering.

  Her voice was barely more than a whisper. Carter strained to hear her above the wind.

  ‘Does your mother or father need me?’

  He pointed at his medical bag and mimed putting on a stethoscope, as though he was talking to a deaf-mute.

  She shook her head. Carter leant in closer and caught her words: ‘Papa says to come now. But through the back door, sir. Into our house, not the shop. Don’t be seen, he says.’ And then she ran back, her feet slapping on the cobbles.

  Carter stared after her, then glanced about. The street was quite deserted.

  After a jittery minute of hesitation, he walked around to the back door of the butcher’s house. It was bordered by a small garden, immaculately kept rows of vegetables, untouched by the soldiers. He knocked lightly on the door, which was opened immediately by the same girl.

  Hacquoil was seated at the table in the cramped kitchen, staring off into the distance. He rubbed at his hands repeatedly, at that skin that had melted and fused together.

  ‘Doctor,’ he said, standing up. ‘You’re a bright man and I owe you my life…but what on earth were you thinking?’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘Coming in like that. Setting your shoes—those shoes, which the Commandant gave you—on my counter, bold as brass, and then shouting about the black market for all to hear.’

  Carter’s stomach dropped. ‘Forgive me. I’ve clearly misunderstood. I believed you had dealings with the…black market. I apologise if…’

  ‘For Christ’s sake man, stop quibbling. Sit down.’

  Hacquoil wiped his chin and gestured at the chair opposite him.

  ‘You’ve not caught the wrong end of the stick. I buy and sell and trade without the Germans knowing—or sometimes with the soldiers themselves. It takes all sorts.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘But there’s a way of going about it. What if some fellow had seen those shoes—’

  This was too much; the butcher was treating him like a bloody idiot. ‘But there wasn’t a soul there, Hacquoil. I made sure of that. What sort of clown do you take me—’

  ‘And what if someone had walked in at that moment, eh, with us having a cosy chat about the black market, and those shoes, those bloody shoes, sitting on the counter?’

  A vein pulsed at Hacquoil’s temple. On his disfigured face, it gave the impression that the thickened skin itself was shifting.

  ‘So,’ he said, finally. ‘It’s meat you’re after then? Dried stuff, you say?’

  Carter felt a hot surge of relief. ‘Oh, so you will trade then? Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can. No promises. It’s short notice.’

  Carter nodded vigorously. ‘Of course.’

  ‘It’s risky. Putting a rush on things. But as it’s you and…’ He held his hands out again, gestured at his distorted face.

  ‘Thank you. I’m most grateful.’

  ‘You haven’t seen what I can find you yet. But it’s meat you’re wanting?’

  ‘Yes, yes…ah, mostly. Dried—cured where possible. In any case, meat which won’t spoil easily.’

  Silence for a beat or two, Hacquoil’s eyes suddenly watchful. ‘Need it to last a while, do you?’

  Carter leant back in his chair, tried to look nonchalant. ‘Putting a bit by, you see, for winter. But I’d like a
decent amount. Enough to give out to patients, if they need it.’

  Hacquoil blinked.

  ‘Or anything you can find,’ Carter said, hurriedly. ‘I know times are hard.’

  The butcher drew out a pencil and notepad from a drawer and, after wedging the pencil into his shiny claw, scribbled a few notes in what looked to be some sort of shorthand.

  ‘Tomorrow morning,’ he said, ‘before curfew—so you’ll need to tread quietly, keep a lookout.’

  Carter nodded, mouth too dry to speak.

  Hacquoil narrowed his eyes and gave him that measuring look again. ‘You could have it over a few weeks, you see, the meat? You’ll get a good amount for shoes like those. The parcel will be heavy.’

  Carter squared his shoulders. ‘I would like it all together, please. I will manage.’

  Hacquoil nodded, scribbled something else illegible. ‘Off on your travels somewhere then, are you?’

  Carter went cold. Then he saw Hacquoil had shaped his face into the grimace that now passed for a smile. Carter forced himself to chuckle.

  ‘Haha! Ah, yes. Fancied a short holiday—while the weather holds.’

  They laughed together at that, though Carter felt queasy.

  Despite his trepidation, the next morning went smoothly as Carter collected the large, heavy parcel and returned home. He walked briskly and managed to avoid the patrols.

  Once home, he drained the dregs of his last bottle of whisky. High tide was two days away.

  THE day before they were set to leave, Edith walked halfway around the island, seeing as many folk as she could. She gave Mrs Fauvel some bladderwrack for her arthritis. The old woman wheezed and scowled as she told Edith that Lucy Tadier had been caught sheltering a Russian prisoner of war.

  Mrs Fauvel’s hands were like claws. They quivered as she spoke and her eyes were bright with horrified excitement.

  ‘Battered her door down in the middle of the night, if you’d believe it? Hundreds of soldiers, so they say. Dragged them out into the street—her kicking and screaming; him yelling fit to raise the dead. They’ll shoot him and it’ll be a boat to Lord knows where for her, poor love. Bailiff Coutanche tried to persuade the Commandant to send her to Gloucester Street Prison instead, but he was having none of it.’