Tim Binding: Island Madness

“Except me. I know.”

“You’re an old man, Albert. Everyone knows you work too hard.”

“I thought you said we could share it, Tommy.”

“Carrying things up and down the stairs at your time of life. Just asking for a broken neck.”

“Half and half, Tommy. You agreed.”

“I’ve changed me mind, Mr Luscombe. I’m a greedy bastard. Always have been. An old buzzard like you don’t deserve three hundred pound. You probably would spend it on a bungalow. Bloody waste. Crack open a lot of young virgins, three hundred pounds. Sink a lot of pints on it too.”

Albert reached into the pipe.

“You’re not the only one who’s been busy smuggling,” he said. “This’ll make a bigger bang than your custard.”

“What’s that, then?” Tommy asked.

He peered down. He couldn’t see much, just a long black thing and a trickle of wire leading to Albert’s hand.

“She’s in the best of health, you know, Tommy,” Albert said.

“What?”

“My Kitty. She’s in the best of health.”

The theatre was crowded. She stood in the wings while other acts came and went. A line of dancing girls, a juggler, a troupe of Girl Guides. She could hear the low growl of the German voices, joining in the sing-song. Six months ago these voices would have been loud and lusty, drowning out the islanders with the coarse confidence of victory, but now they were muted, hesitant, sung in memory of their friends and their families and their threatened homeland.

Veronica walked out on stage half an hour into the show. Though the lights in the house were dimmed, she could not fail to see Molly in the second row, dressed in fake fur, and in the seat next to her, his hand resting on her thigh, the fat figure of Major Ernst. Further down, Bohde sat next to an empty seat. She looked out across to the rest of the audience, the uniforms, the ironed dresses, the lost, expectant faces, thinking of the Major and the boy and Ned Luscombe on the cold and friendless sea.

She started to sing, twirling her parasol, dancing around the stage, but there were tears in her eyes and her voice started to break. She stumbled forward, tripping over her shoes, trying to swallow the emptiness growing inside. He had gone! Ned had gone! He was on the seas, rowing away from her heart. She couldn’t remember the words.

“Bring back the Girl Guides!” someone shouted. “They got better legs than you.”

“More of ‘em too!”

A couple of lads began to whistle. Another hooted, like an owl. She stood facing them, unable to move, her parasol poised in mid-air. Then she heard the thump and felt the building shake. A siren went off and at the back a man jumped to his feet and started to scream.

“No need to get your knickers in a twist,” she bellowed out. “Take a look at mine.” She lifted her skirt with both hands and let it drop. The crowd roared. “Come on, Harry,” she cried down to the conductor. “Down at the Old Bull and Bush!”

She began to sway to the rhythm, banishing the ache in her soul, stretching the smile across her face.

Ned’s mother gave a start. “What was that?”

“Gun practice.” He hugged her again.

“You best be off,” she said, brushing at his waterproof as if it was his best jacket.

“You’ll be quite safe, then?”

“I’ll be quite safe. V’s just next door if I need anything.”

Ned looked her in the eye.

“Remember, tell them he took me at gunpoint. I’ve taken ours. V’s got the wireless. They’ll search the house thorough.”

“I better give it a clean, then.”

“No more sleepwalking, Mum.”

“I’m just trying to meet Dad, that’s all. I miss the old bugger, I really do.”

“So do I.”

She sniffed and blew into her handkerchief. “Do you?”

“Of course,” he said, but he wasn’t sure if that was true.

They pushed the Captain’s car out into the road and ran it down to the bay. Lentsch steered, with the Captain slumped next to him in the front seat. Ned and the boy sat in the back the canoe folded across their knees. Down by the bay Lentsch drove the car down the slipway and parked it under the shadow of the sea wall. As he got out Ned leant forward and, whipping the Major’s cap from his head, slung it in on the Captain’s lap.

“They’ll be no doubting you now,” he said.

The Major looked back to the slow rise of the island. Now, when he was leaving, Guernsey seemed more remote, more mysterious than ever.

“I feel as if I am betraying her,” he said. “Leaving her death unsolved.”

“You’re not betraying anyone,” Ned told him. “We’ll be back for her, in time.”

They unfolded the canoe and carried it over the rocks. The tide was up. Together they slipped it into the water, the boy in the middle, Lentsch in the back, Ned in front. A hundred yards out the evening mist floated above the flat calm. They paddled quickly, silently. Ned felt strong and by the dip of the paddie, and the surging cut of the sea, the boy did too. The canoe was long and taut, the slatted wooden flooring creaking as it met the cold salt water. They reached the Casquets an hour later and paddled into one of the gulleys. They sat in a cleft of cave, rising up and down in the drip of the hollow cavern, not daring to speak and growing cold, waiting for the sweep of the patrol boat to pass them by. It came as expected at around half eight. Then, as the motor faded, all was quiet. Ned eased the canoe out. The night was dark, the sea running calm. For a moment the mist cleared and looking back he could see the outline of his homeland, silver and grey and wrapped in weightless rêverie. He set the prow north and started forward. Out in the open a white swollen roller rose to greet them. He paddled hard, rushing into it, longing with all his heart.