Tim Binding - Island Madness

“ Wasser, ja? ”

Van Dielen nods.

The guard runs forward and throws the contents over him, pushing down the shingle, chucking a shovel after him. The others move back down, and with their heads down, start loading. Van Dielen follows their action; shovel in, shovel out, up in the air and throw. Shovel in, shovel out, up in the air and throw. His gravel lands short. The guard screams and shouts, sliding down, hitting him on the side with a handle of a spade. He falls. He lies there panting. The guard hits him again across the legs and walks away in disgust. The man next to him gestures him to get up, and pushing him to one side shows him how it should be done.

He watches. He shovels. He shovels all morning. He shovels all afternoon. The gravel flies through the air and lands in the truck. The truck is filled. He feels no pain.

At the end of the day the guard hands each man a stamped chit which entitles him to the evening meal. They walk back to the compound clutching them as if they were children holding tickets to a circus. The old man talks to him constantly, a smattering of English and German and another language he cannot recognize, though he does not seem to care or notice that van Dielen replies not once. A smile, a shrug of the shoulders, a shake of the head, are all he can manage, and even they are used not as contributions but rather as aids to his enigmatic silence. He is no stranger to the compound. He has passed it many times, on his way to the Manor House to see Ernst, driving past the huddles of men squatting on the scuffed earth. There are many groups such as his on the road now, trudging back to the compound, limp from the day’s work. He stands in line and shuffles to his soup. It is pale and warm. Grease swims on the inside of his tin cup. He is given bread too, hard and gritty, two thin slices.

They eat before going inside. His hut has the number seven written on it. There is a door at either end and a narrow passage-way down the middle. Inside men are already lying on the two-tiered level of planks. The old man steers van Dielen along. Halfway down he stops opposite a young boy curled up on the top plank. He has red trousers. His hair is white. He has a mucky old jacket round his shoulders. The old man indicates the space opposite while he slides onto the plank underneath the boy. The young boy reaches down and grabs the old man’s hand. They shake. The old man pulls his hand in the direction of the newcomer. The boy raises his head, smiles and winks at him. It is a beautiful smile, calm and full of tenderness. Van Dielen closes his eyes. There is nothing of van Dielen left in him now. Everything he has known or done or said is seeping out of the very pores of his skin. He is fading fast.

Bernie leant over and, putting his glass under the brass tap, pushed himself another drink. Ned handed over his glass. They listened to the steady stream of beer foaming in.

“What time’s kick-off?” Bernie asked softly.

“Half twelve,” Ned replied.

“Well, drink up, then. You don’t want to be sober when you get there, do you?”

They were alone in the Britannia, and the doors were closed. They sat up at the bar, looking through the thick panes of distorted glass to the little Continental square across the road. A couple of soldiers sat on the bench built around the oak, while another tried to wash his face under the pump. It was barely past breakfast.

Bernie took a tentative sip. “Weak as water,” he pronounced, adding, almost as an afterthought, “No news, then?”

Ned sighed. There was no news.

“How can a man like that vanish into thin air?” Bernie asked, as if a hole in the ground, a chuck over the cliff top, or little bits of the man fed to one of the hungry pigs might not have been a probable end.

“Beats me,” Ned confessed. “I’ve got half the force out knocking on doors, there’s military patrols beating the restricted areas, boats on the look out for floaters. Even George Poidevin has got in on the act. Everywhere I go I see him bouncing behind the wheel of their works lorry, peering over the walls, jumping down into ditches, searching for his boss. Never thought of George as a St Bernard before, though he’s got the girth for it. Trouble is, apart from him and the Germans, no one wants to know.”

Bernie laid his drink on the dark polished wood.

“Stands to reason, seeing as he was one of them.”

“We’ve all got to live, Bernie. There’s a lot of families that would have gone to the wall by now if it wasn’t for the likes of van Dielen,” he said. “He’s just doing his job.”

Bernie spat the beer back in his glass.

“He’s doing more than that. He’s betraying his country, making money out of them fortifications.”

“And the men that drive his lorries? The electricians he employs, the plumbers? Are they all traitors too?”

Bernie was stubborn. “It’s one thing being ordered to do it. It’s another lining your pocket. We’re at war, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“That’s just it, Bernie, the rest of the world might be, but we’re not,” Ned countered. “You might get a couple of schoolboys chalking victory signs on bicycle saddles, but what can grown men do? Blow up a fuel depot? Shoot a soldier? You know what would happen if we did, and for what? The truth is we’ve all got to get by the best we can, whether we like it or not.”

Bernie looked at him carefully.

“You should take a long look at yourself. You can’t see it, but you’re getting too far in with them.”

“I’m not in with them,” Ned said sharply, knowing it to be partly true. “You seem to forget. Some of us have to work with them. We’ve got no choice.”

Bernie prodded Ned’s arm. “I know. Don’t think I don’t. Now drink up, there’s a good chap. You and me are going to get quietly sozzled.”

“But I’m Chief of Police, Bernie. I’m not allowed to get drunk.”

Bernie leant over the bar and began to pour another couple of pints.

“Not today you’re not,” he intoned. “You’re Ned Luscombe, in need of beer. Now do as I say and stop arguing.”

If van Dielen was on the run it was difficult to know how he had escaped with patrols out looking for him, posters hearing his description pinned on every parish noticeboard and the announcement proclaimed in every newspaper of the substantial reward available to whosoever delivered him up. Half the island had already claimed the prize. Letters, telephone calls, confidential whisperings in Ned’s office. Van Dielen is hiding in Mrs Merrill’s attic; he’d been seen stretching his legs up at Groper’s Farm: none of it true, but in Mrs Merrill’s attic they found a stack of carpets four foot high, looted from abandoned houses on evacuation day, and in Groper’s Farm they disturbed three fat and unregistered pigs slumbering in an underground pen. Under the guise of cooperation people were exorcizing their grudges.

Lentsch regarded these false alarms with resigned acceptance. He was not in charge, anyway. Albert had told Ned that since the night they found her the Major could hardly manage to put his boots on the right feet, let alone administer the island.

“Going down faster than a bishop’s trousers,” Albert said one evening over his third pint. “Pitiful to see a grown man acting that way. We all have our time of trouble. Any man worth his salt shifts it on his shoulder like a sack of coal and carries on as best he can. The Major’s gone weak at the knees.”

Albert had become a regular at the Britannia. It was almost like old times. It had starled that late afternoon when Ned had caught him struggling up the police stairs with a bloody tree in his hand.

“Uncle, what on earth are you doing here?”