When the Sky Fell Apart (5 page)

And now, with the threat of the Germans' invasion, he was yet another type of stranger to them. Another foreigner, of questionable nature: they seemed to doubt that he had the same passions and fears as them, saw the world through the same eyes, felt it with the same trembling hands. He had a duty to remain calm but because of it, they thought him cold and inhuman. War had made him into, if not an enemy, then an outsider. But he knew Sister Huelin would never understand this if he tried to explain.

‘Well,' she finally said, ‘they'll feel safe down there. Although they've nothing to fear from bombs—we'll be surrendering, I'm sure.'

Carter rubbed his hands over his chin: a fine stippling of stubble when he was usually meticulous about appearances.

‘I believe you're right,' he said. ‘But what else can we do without English support?'

‘Ghastly business. Doctor, shouldn't you have evacuated by now? You may still have time to be on that last boat from La Rocque. It leaves this morning.'

‘I thought that was a clandestine affair?'

She laughed and for a moment he felt something like friendliness, a shared understanding. But then her gaze settled back into the cold, appraising look he was so accustomed to seeing in the eyes of the locals.

‘Nothing much stays hushed up on this island.' She used the kindly tone one might employ with a slow-witted child. ‘You should know that by now. You'd best hurry if you're after a spot. It's that boat for you, or else heaven knows how long of living with the Bosche. I know what I'd choose, if I could.'

‘Well, why don't you go, then?'

She blinked, stony-faced. ‘I'm no rat, Doctor. I'm Jèrriais, born and bred. This is my home. I couldn't leave it any more than I could abandon my own bones.'

Carter felt a confusing tug of incomprehension and grief. He couldn't imagine that sort of savage attachment to another place, or even to another person—the one memory of heat and warmth and love he had (other than for his poor dead mother) he had pushed firmly down until it might as well have happened to somebody else.

EDITH lost count of the people crammed onto the little pier. Whole families clustered around one suitcase, which was all they could take with them. It was going to be a hot day, very little in the way of a breeze. It made for foul tempers all around, but at least those who were sailing would have a flat crossing.

She'd brought along some ginger root just in case. Expensive imported stuff, but Edith had always tried to only charge what people could afford to pay. For some, with a gaggle of six children and with all their worldly belongings stuffed into one small burlap sack, that was precious little. Still, she wouldn't stand for seeing children going off to sea without something to stop the sickness. No way of telling whom it would strike, either. Sometimes fishermen's children were the worst.

She handed out most of her supply. Hung on to a few pieces the size of her thumb in case any woman with a babe in her belly should need a ginger tea to settle the sickness.

Most were thankful. Of course, a few turned up their noses and made the sign against evil behind their backs when they thought she wasn't watching.

It made her chuckle to imagine that some folk thought she had the devil's magic in her fingers. She didn't put stock in that mumbo jumbo. Lovely stories for children, to be sure, and the Bible was ever so good if she couldn't sleep of a night, but that was about the measure of it for her. She'd rather trust in Mother Nature than put faith in a god who was supposed to have happily killed off hordes of his own children, not forgetting his only son.

It was noted that she wasn't at church of a Sunday—she heard folks twittering about it. Still, those who wanted her help came to find her; the rest of them could do as they pleased.

She had some cod liver oil with her too, and a little St John's Wort, which she gave to those who looked especially glum. Some of the men were leaving to join the army on the mainland. It wasn't so many years ago that Jèrriais men had first swapped their pitchforks and fishing lines for guns and grenades and skipped off to fight the Germans in France. Half of them had stayed there for good.

Frank.

There was a compression within her chest whenever she thought of him, even after all these years. She remembered clinging around his neck; the shining gold on her new wedding band; the sour-wool smell of his uniform; the way her tears had stood like jewels on the stiff cloth, until he'd brushed them off, then turned to leave.

There were wives and sweethearts crying now. And, like a daguerreotype of twenty-five years before, there were plenty of howling children, clinging on to Papa's legs. Little ones pick up on moods, even when they don't fully understand. People don't give children enough credit—they're born with old heads on their shoulders.

Edith did what she could to be of some comfort. Passed a sugared almond to a child here and there. Gave some of the women a tight embrace or a kind word. Held poor Rebecca Mourant's hair back while she vomited; made sure she didn't splash her good shoes.

She saw the Duret family but didn't try to speak to them. No one likes to make a scene and she'd not exchanged so much as a glance with them since Sarah had screamed her from their house six months ago:
And don't ever come back, you interfering old witch!

Claudine's papa was the only one leaving, it seemed. He had a small bag and not much else. Off to fight, or he'd be taking the family with him, surely? None of Edith's business, of course. Not now, in any case.

Claudine had grown frail and fretful since Edith had last seen her. It tugged at her to think of how chubby she'd been as a tiny babe. Edith recalled blowing raspberries into her fat little stomach when she'd changed her nappy. Memories: holding her close, pressing kisses to a little mouth, squashed into a fish pout. Bicycling those plump legs while the chuckles juddered through her body. And now, Edith might as well have been a stranger for all the family looked at her.

Edith tried to see Claudine with an outsider's measuring gaze. She was thin-faced, sallow and ill-kempt. Wild, knotted hair and torn boys' trousers and a boy's shirt—grubby around the collar. Edith's fingers itched to go and comb out that hair and give her a good scrub and a kiss on the forehead.

Instead she watched, as Claudine turned to Sarah and said, ‘Why can't we go with Papa?'

Sarah's voice was the same cigarette-harsh rasp that Edith remembered.

‘Well, dear, they don't let women and children fight in the army.'

Claudine giggled.
‘No
, Maman. I mean to live. So we're not here when the Germans arrive. Can't we go to England with Papa and leave the war here?'

‘Be a good girl and hush yourself,' Sarah said. ‘We're staying. No point in fussing. What would Rowan and Elderflower do without us? Besides, where would we live in England?'

Claudine nodded and poked at a stone with her toe. ‘Who will care for us?'

Sarah's face was flat and impassive as she stared out at the departing boat. ‘Wave to Papa, Claudine. We shall care for ourselves.'

‘But
how?
Where will we get food? And money?'

Edith winced; she could see the hardness in Sarah's jaw and she half expected to hear the sound of a slap.

But Sarah glanced around at the surrounding crowd and knelt down in front of Claudine and took her shoulders in her hands. Edith could see Sarah's fingers digging into her daughter's flesh.

‘Gracious, what have I told you about fussing? Those are
my
concerns. Not yours. We shall manage. Do you hear me? We've nothing to fret about. So, no tears. You've to be a big, strong girl now. Understand?'

Her knuckles were white and her arms shook with the force of her grip. Claudine was pale-faced but she didn't try to squirm away and she put Edith in mind of a rabbit, lying limp in a fox's jaws.

‘No more questions then. Yes?'

Sarah's eyes were huge and bright and, for a moment, Edith could remember her as a child herself. So sweet and full of mischief. She had been like a tonic for Edith, after Frank's death—being widowed at twenty-six had stamped the life out of her, but she had slowly found herself again through the small child's laughter. Sarah had grown into a lovely young woman—generous, with a sharp wit, and Edith had been happy to help her with Claudine and then, later, with Francis, even though her forty-nine years sometimes made running around after children exhausting. But Sarah had become a different creature after Francis's birth—there was a hard darkness in her, which made her eyes and voice steel, made her quick to lash out: she reminded Edith of a caged animal, frantically snapping at any hand which came near.

Now, watching Sarah stiffen at her daughter's challenge, Edith found she was holding her breath. Then Claudine nodded and Sarah gave a quick, tight smile and let her go.

‘That's the spirit. Good girl.'

But when she tried to light a cigarette, Sarah's fingers were trembling so much that she snapped three matches in half.

Edith turned away to watch the last remaining passengers boarding the boat.

Old Monsieur Le Brun, sitting on the quay, smoking and stroking his yellowed moustache, shouted out, ‘Like rats, you are. Rats, buggering off at the first sign of trouble.'

One of the men on the gangplank stopped and called, ‘Well, I'd rather be a living rat than a dead dog. You won't even see that boot coming until it kicks you in the ribs.'

Le Brun spat a thick yellow streamer of mucus on to the quay. ‘May God forgive your desertion of your land in her time of need.'

The other men on the gangplank laughed harshly. One of them bellowed back, ‘Yes, and God forgive
you
, you damned fool, bedding down with the enemy.'

The man next to him said, ‘They'll all be speaking German the next time we see them. They'll have little moustaches. Even the women.' They laughed louder.

‘And the babies. They'll be born with blond hair and their first words will be
Heil Hitler!
'

That raised the loudest laugh of all.

Dr Carter was at the quay too, but he wasn't leaving. He had a satchel on his shoulder, a bowl of water and a sponge. He was examining all the hospital patients who were well enough to be shipped off the island.

He took his time, talking to each of his patients and their families. He handed out tablets and gave injections here and there. But he was also redoing dressings and bandages—he even gave a quick sponge bath to one of the men who must have been completely bed-bound. Real donkey work, you might say. The last doctor, the one who thought Edith was the devil or close enough, would have had a flock of nurses seeing to all that for him.

Carter finished the last dressing and then came to stand next to her, eyebrows raised as if he were asking a question. No point in pretending she hadn't been gawking.

‘Quite a bedside manner you have there, Doctor. They trust you, these folk, you know. And that's saying something.'

He gave a wry smile. ‘I would say I'm flattered. But I suspect trust is a pleasant byproduct of being in charge of the medication for pain relief. I've found myself
most
popular with those patients in need of morphine.'

‘Don't you believe it. We're an awkward bunch, we Jèrriais, or we can be, if we take against someone. But the people here don't mind you. Some might even like you. And that's something worth a pat on the back, when you've only been here a matter of months. Takes most visitors half a lifetime before they can make folk start to trust them, let alone
like
them.'

He turned to her with a quizzical smile. ‘But I'm not a visitor. I plan to stay.'

‘But you weren't born here. If you live here for the next half-century and draw your last breath on the island, you'll still be known as
that English doctor.
'

He laughed.

‘I'm not jesting. Some families here can trace their blood back hundreds of years. Back to before the Conquest, or so they'd have you believe. And, as I say, we're a tricky bunch. See, we were part of French territory here, way back, but even when we were busy rebelling against the French, we were a law unto ourselves—we weren't ever
English
. We simply chose to side with them when it came to picking our loyalties for battles. But we're Jèrriais through and through. So if you're English then you're most certainly a visitor, Doctor, and a foreign one at that.'

He smiled. ‘You paint quite a picture there. But surely you've all been English since 1066? Don't the Channel Islands belong to England nowadays?'

‘Quiet with that sort of talk. There's people here would have your eyes for saying that we
belong
to anyone, let alone the English. If anything, the English
belong
to us.'

‘You're pulling my leg?'

‘Not at all,' Edith said. ‘It's like this you see: when William of Normandy took England for his own, we were part of Normandy. Part of the conquering army, if you like. Which means that we don't belong to England—England belongs to us. Our oldest possession, she is. Never you mind that smile, Doctor. There's some folk who've gone happily off to fight for the English, and that's their choice. But there are others who would no more leave here than peel off their own skins. I'll be buried here, even if it is the Germans who dig the hole.'