When the Sky Fell Apart (21 page)

The best food they caught, when it was a very low tide in September, was sand eels. It was spring tide, which happened every month in the days after the full moon. The moon dragged the sea out until it was a scribble of blue on the horizon. Then they could scramble over the rocks for over two miles and reach the sandbank where the eels buried themselves.

‘Sand eels are tasty, but they are difficult to catch. Watch me, Gregor!'

Claudine showed him how to run up and down the bank, stamping her feet very hard and sometimes stopping to slap the ground with her hands.

Gregor watched her, smiling, and then did the same. Claudine bent double with laughter at the sight of him, in his smart German uniform, running around and stamping and slapping. He pretended to fall and gave a mock cry of distress, but then he tripped backwards, arms windmilling and splashed on to his bottom in a puddle of sea water. Laughter ballooned out of them and bounced off the jagged brown rocks.

Gregor was puffing and soaked and covered in sand, but he still grinned. ‘This is game, yes? No fish coming for us today. You have made a good joke on me, Claudine.'

‘You need to wait. You'll see.'

Soon there was something shiny on the sand, wriggling. As if it was trying to jump back into the sea, but there was no sea. Just Claudine's deft hands and a sack.

She shouted, ‘Look Gregor!' It was only a small one. She slapped it with her hand to kill it and then popped it into the sack. It was best to kill them very quickly. Otherwise it was cruel, Papa always said—they couldn't breathe in the air, so it was a sort of drowning for them: their little mouths going open-shut-open-shut, gasping for water.

Gregor wasn't very good at killing them. He waited too long, staring while the poor fish flapped.

‘Smack them to kill them,' Claudine cried. ‘Like this. Hard! Don't worry, it doesn't hurt. Look! There's one, kill it quickly.'

But he just stood there, so she smacked it and then popped it in the sack.

‘Why wouldn't you kill it?'

Silence, except for the far-off breathing of the sea. They stared at one another, until Claudine saw more sand eels and ran to them.

Once they had a big sackful, they carried them back to the beach, scrambling over the rocks. Everything was grey and slimy and covered in slippery seaweed. They ran, because the tide raced in around Jersey. As fast as galloping horses, Papa used to tell her. Being surrounded by the sea meant drowning.

Before the war, visitors to the island would sometimes wander out and get stranded, bewildered by how quickly the world had turned watery. If there were no rocks, they drowned. Once, Papa found Claudine crying about it and said, ‘That's why you must always be careful.'

She wondered if Papa was being careful, wherever he was.

One day, Claudine and Gregor collected what Papa would have called a
bumper catch
of eels. Gregor could hardly carry the brimming sack.

‘We should cook some on the beach,' Claudine said.

‘Yes,
Liebling.
But not a big fire. Very small fire.'

‘But you are a German soldier, too. They won't tell you off, will they?'

‘Nein.'
He rubbed at his neck, where he sometimes had bruises.

‘Good. I'll make a fire.'

She scampered off to find some big stones. Then she dug a pit in the sand and laid the stones at the bottom. She collected large pieces of driftwood and scattered little sticks on top as kindling. Then she found a flint and asked Gregor for his knife. He frowned but gave it to her and she banged the flint against the steel, just as Papa had shown her.

It took a long time and her hands throbbed; she bashed her fingers twice. But then, a little spark. She blew it gently, piled on more kindling and kept blowing, breathing life into the spark. Lick of flame, two, and suddenly a fire, alive, so hot she had to jump back.

Claudine damped the flames with seaweed until only the red-hot ashes glowed. Thick, choking smoke billowed in their faces. She placed a large, flat stone on top of the damped fire.

‘Ready,' she said, with a flush of pride.

She gutted the bigger eels, slicing open their bellies and tugging out the slippery entrails. It didn't matter with the little eels, though—the bitter innards were barely noticeable once the fish were crisp-skinned from the fire.

Claudine offered the knife. ‘Do you want to gut one, Gregor?'

He shook his head. ‘I do not like
this
…' He pointed at the pile of fish guts.

She laughed. ‘But you're a
soldier
. Besides, you can wash your hands in the sea afterwards.'

He shook his head again, mouth set in a line, like Francis when he was being stubborn. Claudine shrugged and gutted the rest with quick fingers.

She laid the sand eels on the hot rock and they waited for the skin to turn dark brown—it was the best part: bitter and crunchy. The fish sizzled on the hot stone. Claudine flipped them with a piece of cuttlefish, so they were cooked on both sides. Some of the skins stuck to the rock but it didn't matter—they tasted delicious: sweet fish and hot, bitter smokiness.

A sudden crunching noise came from the darkness beyond the fire. Heavy footsteps.

Claudine thought of
Jack and the Beanstalk: I'll grind your bones to make my bread.

Gregor pulled her close and put a hand over her mouth. His fingers were strong. His face was hard.

Beyond the glow of the dying fire, the darkness was like a blanket muffling her senses. Claudine listened carefully. Four sets of boots. Heavy and grown-up. Dread felt like a gaping hole in her chest; it was hard to breathe.

German soldiers, come to drag them to prison for breaking curfew.

Then she remembered: they wouldn't be angry. Gregor was a German soldier; he could do anything he wanted. Claudine looked at his face. Droplets of sweat on his forehead. He still had his hand over her mouth—it was shaking.

She saw their feet first, in the light from the fire. They wore big, sturdy black boots. They had guns too, and batons.

Gregor's face had turned the colour of curdled milk.

The soldiers glared at the campfire. Unblinking. Ready to attack. The sand eels on the fire were smoking, blackened, ruined, but Claudine didn't dare move.

Her brain whirred. She pushed Gregor's hand away, managed to rasp, ‘
Hallo. Mochten Sie ihnen…
' She stopped. What was the German for sand eels? She mumbled, ‘Sand eels,' and pointed at the fire where the fish were unappetisingly charred.

None of the Germans said anything. Perhaps they didn't like sand eels. Perhaps the offer of burnt fish had made them angry?

All of a sudden they sat, laughing and talking, too quickly for Claudine to understand much of what they were saying. They began to gobble the eels, even though the hot flesh must have burned them.

For the first time, it occurred to Claudine that the German soldiers on the island were starving too. Everybody always said that they stole the islanders' food to supplement their generous rations; they made pigs of themselves, gluttonous beasts, and the islanders were famished because the soldiers were such guzzling, greedy swine. But these soldiers were like scarecrows—broomstick arms and long, thin noses. Claudine could see the harsh slant of bones jutting from their faces, sharp shadows; their fingers bumpy like broken twigs in winter.

She wondered if Papa was hungry, and if he had a sharp face and twig fingers now. Perhaps, when he came back home, she wouldn't know him. Claudine wondered if he would know her.

Perhaps war makes everything look different.

The soldiers finished the sand eels, so Claudine cooked more. They cheered and clapped. Her heart steadied and she felt a wave of happiness: she was helping Gregor's friends. She wondered why he hadn't brought them to meet her before.

They passed a bottle between them, gulping and sighing and wiping their mouths on their sleeves, belching and laughing. One of them—with very small eyes and thin lips—pretended to give the bottle to Gregor, only to pull the bottle away and snigger.

Then he shoved Gregor, hard. He fell backwards, arms and legs flailing like an upturned beetle. The soldier waited for Gregor to stand, and pushed him again. As Gregor stood up, the soldier twisted his ruined arm so that Gregor howled and sank to his knees.

Claudine shouted, ‘Stop!' But her voice was swallowed by the soldier's laughter.

‘
Aufstehen
,' he growled.

Gregor didn't move, just stared at the sand.

Again the soldier shouted,
‘Aufstehen!'
and kicked Gregor in the stomach.

Over the beat of the thudding blood in her ears, Claudine heard one of the soldiers dragging Gregor away, laughing about
guarding the animals
.

When she opened her eyes again, Claudine saw the horror on Gregor's face, and for a moment she thought that he was scared for himself, and that the soldier was going to do something terrible to him. But then he struggled and tried to wrench his arms away and run back to her. He shouted, ‘Claudine!' and his voice was raw.

His terror was for her.

The darkness engulfed him and she was alone with the other soldiers.

The soldier who had a nose that stuck up and out like a pig's snout pushed the bottle into her hand.

Claudine shook her head. ‘I'm not thirsty.'

‘
Nein. Trinken!'

Her chest was being squeezed by an invisible fist, but she managed to whisper, ‘I'm not thirsty, thank you.'

‘Jetzt trinken.'

They moved around her. Their eyes were like glittering mirrors. The tall man took Claudine's head and wrenched it back. Another soldier held her hands in a crushing grip. She whimpered. The one with the piggy face tipped the bottle against her mouth and held her nose.

The glass was cold. She had to open her mouth. It tasted sour where they had been drinking from it, but she swallowed because she couldn't breathe. Lungs burning. Throat on fire. Then she choked and they roared with laughter, a noise like baying hounds.

When they finally released her, Claudine doubled over, wheezing, then she vomited. She started to wail, a childish howl she hadn't made in years. Legs and arms trembling, her face wet with tears and snot.

The soldiers stopped laughing. The one with the pig nose said, ‘
Ah, es tut mir leid.'
He put his arm around her, pulled her on to his lap and held her close, as if to comfort her. But his arms were hard, and when she struggled, he gripped her more tightly.

She froze and tried to stop crying.

His hands were around her waist, on her stomach. His fingers moved, very slowly, like tickling, but painful, digging into her flesh.

Let me go. Please.

The soldiers sat talking and drinking and eating sand eels for an endless yawn of gaping time. Claudine was queasy, and beyond terrified. She felt a tug of longing for her own bed with Francis's heavy little body half slumped over her chest, his thumb stuffed firmly into his mouth; at nearly two, his face was stubborn even in sleep.

The man wouldn't let her go. She tried to push his hands away, but it was like struggling against rock. Those hands, cold fingers possessive of her chest, then her stomach. He squeezed her leg, near the top, where Papa used to tickle her to make her giggle.

Claudine could barely breathe.

He moved his fingers up higher, inside her underthings. Still moving. Pushing hard, as if he was trying on a tight-fitting glove. Then came a swooping pain, in waves.

After she had counted the mouth of the sea crunching on to the sand three hundred and twenty-six times, the soldiers stood to go.

They had eaten most of the sand eels, but there were still some left in the bottom of the sack. Claudine would take them home to Maman and Francis. Maman would need an explanation for her being out so late, a reason not to growl at her.

It was quiet and dark after they had gone.

Claudine counted fifty-three crunches of the waves on the sand while she tried to stop crying, tried to slow her breathing; her heart flipped in her chest, like a desperate, drowning fish.

After a long time, she stumbled home.

DURING that first year, Carter learnt that the Commandant was both volatile and vicious. His essential nature was somewhat chimerical in any case, but the Cushings exacerbated these qualities. His sudden fits of rage might have seemed comical had he not been a man of such power and influence: his temper tantrums generally boded ill for those around him. Carter did his best to mitigate his anger and deflect his brutality from the islanders, but it was a struggle, when even the most insignificant blunders could induce apoplectic rage.

Take his breakfast: daily, he demanded two eggs, soft-boiled, with well-buttered toast cut into ten even ‘fingers' made from white bread.

This breakfast caused many problems, not the least of which being that eggs, and chickens, were becoming rarer by the day. The poor, beleaguered cook managed to capture a young, plump bird and fed it precious grain and scraps, in return for its daily yield of one, sometimes two, eggs.