Tim Binding - Island Madness

Albert rested his burden on the banisters.

“Running errands for Mrs H. like an overgrown scout. Stage prop for the spring show, she says. Weighs a bloody ton. Half the leaves have dropped off already. You any good with a paintbrush?”

“I’ve managed to avoid the amateur dramatics this long, Uncle. I’m not for getting to be drawn in now.”

“Well, give me hand anyway, and let’s lay this bugger to rest. I’ll buy you a pint afterwards.”

“Done.”

That’s how it had starled. Ned would come in after work, around six. Albert would walk in sometime later, waving his finger at the barman. “Last refuge for a sane man,” he would announce. “It’s a madhouse up there.” Since Isobel’s death the Villa’s moorings had been cut loose. The house lay adrift in a sea of uncertainty, the captain indifferent to its plight.

“Every morning he comes down for breakfast,” Albert had complained, “cuts all over his face where he’s nicked himself shaving, buttons half undone, hair not combed proper. He sits there moving good food around his plate, like it was something the dog had sicked up, the Captain and Bohde both staring at the tablecloth, pretending not to notice.”

“At least they have some sympathy for him, even if you don’t.”

“Sympathy’s got nothing to do with it. They’re just hoping he’ll bugger off so they can help themselves to his grub. Moment he’s out of the door they’ve scraped his plate cleaner than a sergeant-major’s mess tin. Can’t wait for him to go and dread him coming back. Not that he’s any use in the Feldkommandantur by all accounts. Sits in his office all day staring out of the window, blubbing into his handkerchief. You see him much?”

“Most mornings,” Ned admitted. “Not that there’s much to report these days.”

“No sign of the Dutchman, then?”

“The Major thinks he might have thrown himself off a cliff, that he’s lying underwater somewhere along the coast with a handrul of stones in his pocket.”

Albert sniffed.

“Water would have kept him down a day or two, water would have moved him about bit, but unless he weighed himself down with an anchor he’d have popped up by now with his face half gone and his feet busting out of his boots. It’s what the Major needs, though, a good ducking. That’d bring him to his senses.”

“You’re being too hard on him,” Ned countered. “He’s had a shock.”

“He’s a soldier,” his uncle countered. “He should be able to cope with shocks. The Captain takes him aside every now and again, trying to talk some sense into him, but he won’t listen. Won’t go down to the Casino, mopes about the house playing those blessed records, wanders about the lanes late at night in his ciwies. Looking to get himself shot, if he’s not careful.”

“He won’t get shot.”

“No? The Captain’s thinks he’s playing a sort of Russian roulette, deliberately going to the restricted areas in the dark. He’s asked Wedel to follow him, but he just seems to slip out, unnoticed. God knows where he gets to.”

Ned knew where. He had first appeared on the Wednesday after van Dielen’s disappearance, quite late, about nine. Ned was just about to go to bed. A knock on the door and there he stood, a bunch of leeks in his hand, and a large rabbit in a cage.

“I did not ask your uncle’s permission,” he confessed, waving the cage in the air. “But with your mother not being well, he will not disapprove.”

Ned had pulled out one of the last bottles of cider Dad had made, and sat him down. He sat there holding his glass, not saying a word, barely noticing what he was drinking. The crackle of the small fire made him look up.

“Your mother?” he asked suddenly. “She is not here?”

“Upstairs. She goes to bed early. I was just about to follow, before you showed up.” Lentsch half rose out of his chair. “No, no, Major. I didn’t mean that. I’m happy to stay up. Mum has a nasty habit of sleepwalking. I should stay up, to make sure she’s safe.”

Lentsch sighed. “This is what soldiers hope to do. Kill the enemy and keep their mothers safe. You are lucky. Your mother is safe. Mine is not. It is only a matter of time before the bombing in Hamburg starts. I am surprised it has not already happened.”

Ned tried to reassure him. “They’re only going after military targets, railway lines, factories, dockyards. It may not mean much but they’re bloody well trained. They know what they’re doing.”

“That’s what you hear on the radio. It is not the truth. You are bombing the ordinary houses. Germany is like a bonfire. Such terrible fires.”

“I thought your mother lived in the country.”

“We have two places. An apartment in Hamburg and a house in a village, some miles away. My sister is working in Hamburg, in administration. They will not let her go. So my mother stays with her. Once I imagined that I might be able to bring them here! I thought here was safe. I was wrong about that too. No news?”

Ned shook his head. “I’ve only so many men.”

“You think he is alive?”

“I don’t know. He’s either hiding, kidnapped or dead.”

“Half the island thinks he killed her. They think he killed her and that we have spirited him away.” He picked up the paper lying on the floor. “This speaks of him as our ‘trusted friend’, of how ‘impossible’ it would be for him to get to the Continent without our knowledge, when in fact, if he had the use of a boat, it would be quite easy under cover of darkness. It is clear what the writer really thinks.”

“I am surprised Bohde let it pass,” Ned said.

“It reflects badly on me, that is why,” Lentsch admitted. “Bohde is testing his muscles. He wants a fight.” He threw the paper down to the floor. “You see that this is not true, that I would not protect him.”

“You might not. Others would.”

“You are thinking of Major Ernst.”

“I’m thinking of Major Ernst. There’s his headquarters at Saumarez Park. It’s big enough to hide a battleship. He could even be keeping van Dielen there against his will.”

“I have no jurisdiction over Ernst. Neither have you. He can do as he pleases. Despite that I do not think he has anything to do with it. He is too ambitious to scupper his chances over a girl.”

“Ambitieus men overreach themselves, Major, especially ones with a fondness for naked women in their back garden.”

“Perhaps. But Ernst would not do this other thing, put her down a shaft. It is too risky. He would throw her over a cliff, he would blame a couple of foreigns, shoot them before any one could prove otherwise.”

“Unless the father knew.”

“But then he would have told us. Van Dielen is ambitious too, but sacrificing his own daughter?” The Major sat on the edge of the armchair. “Inspector Luscombe?”

“Yes?”

“I cannot call you this,” he confessed, “not if we are to join, you and I. We are both too close to her for this formality, you understand. When there is just the two of us, you will have to be Ned.”

“That as may be, I’m sorry but I can’t call you…” He stopped. He had no idea what Lentsch’s Christian name was.

“Gerhard.”

“I simply can’t.”

“No. I understand. Just Major, then.”

“Just Major, then.”

That was just the beginning. He’d come round most evenings. Ned’s mother started lighting the fire early, wasting their precious supply of fiiel to make the room ‘look cosy when he comes’. He would bring them gifts in return: a packet of rice, a length of smoked sausage, fresh bread. They would sit at the kitchen table and eat from cracked plates, Ned’s mother having to prompt her son to pass the potatoes or to cut the Major another wedge of pie, and Lentsch, conscious of this untutored hospitality, would beckon her gently into conversation, lead her to where her memories of the island’s earlier times lay, offering in return stories of his own domestic past, his mother and father, the sister he missed and the eternal foolish ways of youth. There were no obvious parallels to their lives except those which made them both sigh at what it was that had turned such seeming placidity so awry; parallels of loss, of dashed expectation, of soft memories which made the austerity of the present only more intense.