Tim Binding - Island Madness

The bomb was almost ready now. All he had to do was to get it down there. So one afternoon he and Mrs H. wrapped it up in brown paper and stuck painted paper leaves in the top and made it look like a stage palm tree for one of her blessed plays. When the coast was clear he sneaked it out of the front door and marched it on his shoulder all the way through the town, like it were a rifle, the green paper leaves blowing in his face, getting all sorts of whistles and catcalls from people he knew and some he didn’t. He’d even met Ned on the outside stairs, even got him to help him carry it up. And there it sits. At the top. By the window. Waiting.

He reads the letter out once more. “ Dearest Dad, Am in the best of health. Thinking of you always. Keep smiling. Kitty ” For the first time he hears a tremor of uncertainty in his voice, as if by speaking of his daughter’s life and her love for him rushing over the cold water, he has somehow placed it all in jeopardy. He holds the letter out, squinting at the squashed lines. It was Kitty’s hand that wrote those words, Kitty’s lips that kissed the envelope.

“Would that she could have written Dearest Mum , eh, Rose? Would that she could have written that.”

He wipes a gruff tear from his eye. He would like to see her again, just one more time. She would never see her mother again, she knows that, but, trusting soul that she is, she must hope that she might see him again one day. Is it right that he should leave her like this, cause her such grief? He presses the letter to his cheek. He wants to take it back to the Villa, to show it off to the Major and Mrs H., to smooth it out on his knee when his work is done and read it over and over again, but he dares not. He has set himself on another course and having Kitty’s words to hand, his dear Kitty, who he misses more than the rain and the wild flowers, would only distract him. He picks up the small glass vase that stands underneath his wife’s name and tucks the letter in between the green sterns.

“You keep it, Rose,” he says. “We’ll be reading it together soon enough.”

At breakfast Bohde and Zepernick were nowhere to be seen, to save all of them from embarrassment, he supposed. He spent an hour in the study writing letters, one to the Captain, one to his mother, one to his sister, both short and falsely jovial, and finally one to Mrs Hallivand, which he found most difficult of all. He wished her luck and promised that when the war was over he would return and help rehang her pictures. “Above all else,” he wrote, “tell no one about the House. Keep it a secret. They are too busy on other matters to appreciate what is within their grasp. And I will not remind them.”

The clock in the drawing room struck seven. Two hours and it would be over, sent to the Russian front or arrested, either way stripped of his rank. And all because of a picture. He was not sorry for what he had done, but sorry that he could not prevent Him coming. He could hear Albert moving about upstairs.

“Albert,” he called up. “Could you come down here, please?”

In a little while Albert appeared. He had a duster in his hand and wore an apron round his middle. On another man it would look ridiculous. On Albert it looked almost dignified.

“I am going now,” he said.

“So I gather, sir. I am very sorry to see it, Major. Very sorry. The house, we, Mrs Hallivand and I, all of us are.”

The Major handed him the key to his bedroom.

“There are some things there you might find of use. Hairbrushes, shoes, some good clothes. They are yours now.”

“Thank you very much, sir.”

“I wish I could have done more. The garden. Major Ernst. All those years of hard work gone.”

Albert shrugged his shoulders.

“We’ll get by, sir.” He stood at the foot of the stairs waiting. For a gardener he was being remarkably sanguine about the destruction of his life’s work. Lentsch turned and looked at the hall. The walls were bare.

They walked out onto the front porch. The starlings were gathering in jubilation on the lawn, pecking and probing every inch of the grass, preparing for their journey home. Lucky birds! Albert clapped his hands and Lentsch watched in awe as they rose in their hundreds, circling once before settling down again. Albert clapped a second time.

“See how disciplined they are, Albert,” Lentsch observed as they climbed once more. “How none of them ever fall out of place or crash into one another. In Germany we regard them as the most independent of birds. And yet, they conform to the narrowest of spaces.”

“Starlings,” Albert said. “I’d shoot the lot of them if I could.”

Lentsch turned. It was time to go. He held out his hand.

“I hope you will see your daughter soon, Albert.”

“There’s only two ways that’ll happen, sir, and she’s not planning to die yet.”

“Nor you, I hope.”

“There’s no telling, is there, how things turn out.”

“They say that is what makes God laugh, when men make plans.” He paused and looked the man full in the face. “There is something I always wanted to ask you, but did not, for fear of offending you.”

“Oh?”

“Your beret. Underneath? Are you with or without hair?” He did not dare use the word bald.

Albert adjusted the blue felt cap.

“Not even my Rose knew that,” he said. “If she went to her grave without knowing, so must you.”

Lentsch laughed. He was pleased in a way. “Only the barber, eh, Albert?”

“And the undertaker.”

Wedel, standing by the car, offered to take his bag, but Lentsch waved him aside, telling him to take the day off. There was nothing in it, anyway. He was only taking a few things that mattered; a photograph of his mother and father and of his home with the turret window; his sketch pad with the watercolour of the bay, a figure drawing of Isobel and half a head of Albert, taken down hurriedly on an afternoon last autumn, as he set about cutting back the fruit bushes. Ah, the fruit bushes. He could hear the grind of a concrete mixer now. In a month’s time the back garden would be gone and in its place would be another wretched gun to serve no purpose.

He walked down the path and knocked on the Lodge door, looking back up the potholed drive. The Villa would get its fresh gravel now. There was no reply. She was probably down at the theatre making last-minute arrangements to the variety show. He slipped the letter under the door.

He starled for the town, through the lanes and woods. The air was delightful, warm and light. In the well-kept gardens the camellias were in full bloom, magnolias too. Cherry trees stood in swollen clouds of colour and by the roadside crowds of crocuses and narcissi and snowdrops covered the grassy banks. Overhead gnarled beeches filtered the climbing sun rays through their fresh green leaves, and with them came the dappled songs of the thrush and the blackbird, and far above, a lark’s sonnet sung out over some empty field. Reaching the top of the road, where the postbox stood, he could see in the harbour the grey and battered naval control boat that would take him across to Jersey in an hour’s time. He saw the men working on the quayside, saw the old machinery, the faded paintwork, the threadbare uniforms. He leant against the railing and looked inshore, to the tumbling lanes and steep, squashed houses, all propped up against falling into this overburdened lock of water. And in a few days a plane would land and out He would step. He must not come! He must not come.

Dropping the envelopes in the letter box he turned on his heel and hurried up the hill. Twenty minutes later he was knocking on the door. Mrs Luscombe stood in her slippers.