The Collaborator (12 page)

T
he next day I make my final cup of coffee, scraping the last trace of powder from the bottom of the tin. The coffee is very dilute: it’s really just hot water with a faint brown colour. I take it to the table outside my door. I’m going to pretend it’s the real thing.

It’s another lovely September morning. There’s a haze of cloud softening the sky, and all around me the slow dance of autumn—the weaving flight of lazy insects, leaves spiralling down from the trees. The dew has just dried from the nasturtiums that grow up the walls of my house; their flowers glow scarlet, orange, saffron in the sunshine. Flimsy, dusty sparrows peck near my feet, unafraid; birds are always so tame on islands. Through the open door, I can hear Millie playing. I have put her dolls’ house out on the kitchen table for her: it’s a rather lovely old toy that used to belong to Iris and me, with glittery candelabra and scraps of watered silk on the walls. She’s singing a breathy, tuneless song as she rearranges the little dolls in the rooms. I let the peace of the moment settle on me like a blanket. For a moment, it’s as though the Occupation hadn’t happened.

There are footsteps in the lane. A pigeon breaks out of the pear tree, with a sound like something torn. I look up. Captain Lehmann is at the gate to my yard; he has his hand on it, to push it open.

‘May I?’ he says.

My heart pounds. I know I have to say no. I shall tell him I want nothing at all to do with him: that our talk in the dark of my orchard was just an aberration—I wasn’t myself, I was frightened for Blanche, it should never have happened at all …

‘Yes, all right,’ I tell him.

He comes in, closes the gate quietly behind him. He stands in front of me, looking down at me thoughtfully. There are three other chairs, but I don’t invite him to sit—though this makes me feel uncomfortable, it seems so impolite. Sitting, I’m very aware of how big he is—aware of his rather heavy body, and how he’s so much taller than me. But he looks different in daylight—less imposing than in my moonlit orchard. His head is close-cropped, so you can see the strong shape of his skull; his hair is pale grey in the sunlight. I wonder how old he is—perhaps ten years older than me.

Anxiety seizes me, not knowing why he’s here. Have I done something wrong or broken some rule? I remember yesterday morning with Johnnie: how openly we were speaking. What if the Germans overheard? Was the door closed when we were talking? I was careless. I didn’t think to check that the door was properly shut. My heart skitters off.

Captain Lehmann clears his throat.

‘I came to tell you that we have coffee,’ he says.

‘Oh.’

He smiles at my startled expression—a slight crooked smile.

‘Max brought some back from France—too much. It is very good coffee—coffee beans. Perhaps you would like some for your family?’

I think of the coffee, imagine how good it would taste. Made from beans, the French way. I used to make coffee in that way sometimes, back before the war. I love good coffee. I imagine the rich roasted smell, the kick as the caffeine slides into you—the world around you becoming more vivid, more sharply defined.

I shake my head.

‘It’s kind of you to offer, but no, I can’t take it,’ I tell him.

I hope I’ve got the balance right—that I’m courteous, but clear. From now on I will do everything correctly. Johnnie has reminded me how to behave.

Captain Lehmann doesn’t say anything. The silence stretches out between us and panics me. I have to say something, anything.

‘I mean it. I can’t take it. It wouldn’t be right,’ I say again. But perhaps I’m protesting too much.

He looks at me with a little quizzical frown. The light shines searchingly on him, on all the detail of his face—the lines in his forehead, the jagged scar on his cheek. His eyes are the dense, rather melancholy grey of woodsmoke.

‘But I think you like coffee,’ he says.

I’m intrigued, in spite of everything.

‘What makes you think that?’ I say. Then know I shouldn’t have asked—I shouldn’t have given him anything, shouldn’t prolong this conversation.

‘I have seen how you bring it out here to your table in the sunshine,’ he says. ‘How you wrap your hands round the cup. This is a special moment for you. A peaceful moment …’

I try to shrug—dismissing this. Though it’s true.

‘And that, I think, is not good coffee,’ he says, pointing to my cup, his frown deepening. His expression makes me smile, I can’t help it: he has such a disapproving look, as though my coffee is an affront to him. ‘That is just coloured water.’

‘I’m used to it,’ I tell him.

He shakes his head, almost sadly.

‘But you could do so much better than that. Why not?’

His words hang in the air between us.

‘No. Really. I don’t want it. But thank you …’

I’m willing him to go, but he just stands there, looking at me.

I shouldn’t have smiled. I try to make my face very stern, very sure.

‘Captain Lehmann. I mean it. I don’t think we should talk like this. I don’t think it’s appropriate …’

But I can’t finish my careful speech. He moves rapidly towards me: the words dry up in my mouth. For a brief, alarmed moment, I think he is going to hit me. Then I see that he is swatting a wasp from my sleeve.

I half stand, dodging the wasp, knocking against the table. My apron snags on a nail, and the things in my pocket tip out—a couple of clothes pegs, one of the dolls from Millie’s dolls’ house; his silver cigarette-lighter. We watch as the lighter falls and lands with a small, clear crunch on the gravel. In the sudden stillness between us, the sound is shockingly loud.

My face is burning.

‘Well, Mrs de la Mare,’ he says, with a kind of mock-gravity. ‘That is mine, I think.’

‘You left it in the orchard.’ My voice sounds high and naive. ‘I was going to return it. I was going to bring it back to Les Vinaires …’ The words spilling out of me.

I pick up the lighter and brush off the dust and place it on the table. I can’t quite hand it to him. In the silence all around us, I can hear the tiniest things—Millie’s breathless song from the kitchen, a sparrow light as a leaf that lands on a branch of the tree. I can still feel the place where he touched my sleeve, the thin flame running over my skin.

He is about to say something, but then thinks better of it. He reaches out and takes the lighter. He isn’t smiling, but there is something pleased about him.

‘Good morning, then, Mrs de la Mare,’ he says, and leaves me.

I realise that the coffee that I have made tastes horrible. I take it into the kitchen and tip it away down the sink.

I
t’s darker in the evenings now. I draw the curtains earlier, turn on the lamp. Shadow reaches out its fingers from the corners of the room. I read a new story to Millie, from our fairytale book. We sit on the sofa together, and Blanche sprawls on the floor with her magazines, and the lamp spills its light across us, bright as petals that fall from a flower.

The story tells of a soldier who is returning home from the wars. I think of the tale of the dancing princesses that I read to Millie the evening before we nearly went on the boat: in that story too there was a soldier coming back from a war. In fairytales, there are always wars, and men who go off to the battlefield: and then—some of them, the lucky ones—who make their way back home. I think about this, as I read: how in these stories, war is a given, a part of the condition of life, like the ageing and eroding of the body, like stormy weather. War is what men do—and the reasons are never explained. And to return from a war is a protracted, testing journey: the soldiers have epiphanies and encounters with the uncanny as they return from the battlefield, as though the things they have suffered open them up to the unseen.

Millie is pressed against me. I hear the slight wet sound as she sucks her thumb. She’s looking at the picture; it shows a soldier walking up a simple storybook road that winds with perfect symmetry towards blue distant hills. You can’t see the soldier’s face, yet you can see how weary he is, so profoundly weary of war: you can read all his longing for a quiet life. It’s written there in his hunched worn body, the way he trudges along.

Millie has the hypnotised look she always has when I read to her, scarcely blinking.

‘The soldier’s like Daddy, isn’t he? Daddy’s a soldier,’ she says.

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘Where is he?’ she says.

I wonder how real her father is to her. She was only three when he left.

‘I don’t know where he is exactly, sweetheart. We don’t get news any more, because of the Occupation. But I’m sure he’s thinking of us, wherever he is.’

‘All the time, Mummy? Is he thinking of us
all
the time?’

The question hurts, with a dull familiar ache, like when you press on a bruise. I’m sure Eugene thinks fondly of his children; but if he thinks of a woman on Guernsey, I know it isn’t me. But I’m always so careful in these moments—careful never to hint that there was anything wrong between us. Careful never to let our unhappiness show in my voice.

‘I’m sure he thinks of us all the time,’ I tell her.

I read how the soldier shares his last crust of bread with a beggar, and, to thank him for his kindness, the beggar gives him a magical sack; how the soldier boldly captures Death in the sack. The soldier is at first triumphant and celebrated by
all. But he later comes to regret what he did: because now that Death is conquered, there is no escape from this world, and the hordes of the weary old surround him, accusing, yearning to die. There’s a picture of Death, with a white bald head and narrow slitted eyes, yellow like a wolf’s eyes.

Millie pulls her thumb out of her mouth. She’s frowning slightly, pensive. Her wet thumb shines in the lamplight.

‘But nobody wants to die,’ she says.

‘Maybe if you’re very old.’

‘Like Grandma? Does Grandma want to die?’

‘No, I’m sure she doesn’t. I mean—much older than that … I think perhaps that very old people can start to feel rather tired …’

But my voice doesn’t sound very certain. Perhaps the story is wrong. Perhaps it’s as Millie said, and nobody wants to die.

I read her the rest of the story, thinking of the soldier. I see him so exactly: but not as he looks in the book. Well, maybe in some ways like the picture—the tattered clothes, the trudging step, as he follows the long and winding road that will bring him back to his home: but in my mind the face of the soldier is Captain Lehmann’s face.

This makes me feel uneasy: as though even the thoughts in my mind are betraying me.

O
ctober. The Luftwaffe are bombing London. They fly over every evening: there’s terrible devastation. Londoners are sheltering in the Underground at night, with singsongs to keep their spirits up. Morale is high, we are told, in spite of all the destruction. I’m so afraid for Iris and her family.

Through the early days of October, we don’t see much of the German soldiers next door. Captain Lehmann has disappeared. Sometimes when I’m out in my yard, I seem to hear footsteps behind me, and I turn, expecting to see him there, resting his hand on my gate, looking at me with that look he has—courteous, and perhaps a little amused. But there’s no one. Or I’ll be cleaning in my bedroom, and I’ll hear a car in the lane, and I’ll look cautiously out of the window—but it’ll just be one of the other men who live there.

It’s a relief, in a way. I don’t know how it would be if we met again. A hot embarrassment washes through me, even imagining such a meeting. I tell myself— Perhaps he’s on leave. Perhaps he’s even been posted elsewhere. Yet when these thoughts enter my head, I feel a quick surge of something like anger. How could
he go without telling me? Why didn’t he say goodbye? And then I think— Why on earth would I expect that? Where does this anger come from? I have no right to this feeling. He owes me nothing.

One day I leave Millie with Evelyn and cycle down to St Peter Port. The shelves in the shops look emptier now, but I manage to find a joint of pork and some bread. At the ironmonger’s, I buy broad bean seeds and a tray of winter cabbage seedlings. I know it’s time to dig up my flowers and plant my garden for food.

I’ve arranged to meet Gwen for tea. When I get to Mrs du Barry’s, she is there already, at our favourite table at the back of the shop, where we sat on the day of the bombing. It seems an age ago now. I ask how she is, and she says she’s fine, but I wonder whether that’s true: she’s wearing a pilled old cardigan, and she hasn’t put on her lipstick, and she seems too thin, her bones too clear in her face. I know I must look much the same—we’re all shabby, tired, resigned now.

Mrs du Barry brings tea and biscuits; the biscuits are made with potato flour, but she still has proper tea. We drink gratefully, sitting in companionable silence, looking out over the harbour, at the red-tiled roofs, the water, the seabirds lifting into light, all the glitter and sparkle and white wings over the sea; and the enemy warships at anchor, and the soldiers on the harbour road. I know we’re thinking the same thing— How could this happen
here?

‘We hear them marching at night sometimes,’ she tells me. ‘Along the main road. Marching and singing at the tops of their voices. It gives you a chill. It’s like they’re saying—
We’ll show you
who’s in charge here … After that, it’s hard to get back to sleep … But you must be less aware of all that, down at Le Colombier.’

‘Yes, I suppose so. It’s still very quiet down there … Though there are German soldiers at Connie’s place next door.’

She’s half opened her mouth to take a bite of her biscuit. She’s suddenly still, her biscuit poised in her hand. Her eyes widen.

‘What—at Les Vinaires?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh. I didn’t know. You never mentioned it before.’ She frowns.

I feel all the heat in my face.

‘They keep themselves to themselves,’ I say.

‘I can’t believe you never told me,’ she says.

‘They’re very quiet. To be honest, we’re not all that aware of them,’ I say.

I’m not quite looking at Gwen; I look past her out of the window, where in the clear air the other islands look close enough to touch. I think—Why did I say,
to be honest?
I read somewhere that it’s what people say when they’re not quite telling the truth.

‘It must be a pain though,’ she says. ‘You must feel they’re constantly keeping an eye on you. I mean—there’s that window in Connie’s house that looks out over your yard …’

I feel that I’m lying to her. Or, if not exactly lying, keeping part of me concealed. I hate this.

‘I suppose you can get used to anything,’ I tell her.

I tell myself—that whole strange thing with Captain Lehmann, those awkward, halting conversations—it’s all in the past. I’ll never see him again. So it’s stupid to feel so guilty—as though I’ve done something wrong.

‘And how are the girls? How’s Blanche?’ she asks me. ‘Enjoying Mrs Sebire’s?’

‘Yes. Though I think she still wishes we’d gone on the boat … She went to a party at Les Brehauts. It was German soldiers and island girls.’

‘Oh,’ says Gwen, digesting this.

There are little sharp lines between her eyes. Something unsaid floats past me. I feel a slight shift between us, like a weed growing up between stones.

Then she shrugs, and the moment is passed.

‘Well—young people need a social life.’ I know she doesn’t approve, but she’s making allowances as it’s Blanche. ‘It
is
hard for them—with half the island men away, and all the shortages, and no new clothes in the shops … Look, I brought you something.’ She pulls a piece of paper out of her bag—a recipe she’s written out for macaroni cake. ‘This doesn’t taste all that wonderful, but it fills you up,’ she says.

I thank her, too effusively. I think we’re both relieved to move the conversation on.

The shop bell jangles; we turn as two people come in—a German soldier with a Guernsey girl. I know the girl by sight—she was in the same class as Blanche at school. She has a heart-shaped face and hair the colour of barley-sugar, and unlike most of us, she’s put her make-up on—peach frosted lipstick, pale powder. She has a delicate sheen. When they sit he reaches over the table and takes her hand between his.

Gwen shakes her head.

‘How can she?’ she says, almost under her breath. ‘How
can
she?’

I don’t say anything.

‘I mean—being polite is one thing. They’re human beings too. And I can just about understand Blanche wanting to go to that party. I mean, let’s face it, young people need to get out …’ She’s trying to find the place to draw the line: wanting to show where she stands, to say—This is all right, but
this
is unacceptable. ‘But
that …
I just don’t understand it. It’s going too far. I mean, when all’s said and done, we’re at war with them. They bombed us. I just don’t see how she can possibly live with herself.’

I don’t say anything.

I think, What would Gwen think if she knew—about me and Captain Lehmann? But there’s nothing to know, about me and Captain Lehmann.

‘Viv—are you sure you’re all right?’ Her eyes are searching my face. ‘You don’t seem quite yourself,’ she says.

‘I’m fine, Gwen. Honestly.’