When the Sky Fell Apart (33 page)

What big teeth you have.

Her heart scrabbled in her chest. He leant forward and wrapped his hand around the back of her neck.

‘
Ist dir kalt, Liebling?'

‘Nein.'

He lay down on the bed and coiled his arms around her. They were big and hard and covered in hair. His body was hot as he pressed against her. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe quietly. Perhaps he would think she had fallen asleep. Perhaps he would leave her alone.

He kissed her cheek. His face was spiky. She stayed very still. He kissed her lips. She squeezed her eyes shut. She imagined that she was like a cockle, shut up tight and buried in the mudflats.

He moved his hands down over her stomach. Up under her nightdress. He pressed himself against her and held her tight, all the while his fingers moving. Hard. Something deep inside her tummy punctured. She screamed into his mouth.

‘Still sein,'
he whispered.
‘Du bist so schön, Liebling.'

He slept all night with his hairy hand on her chest. She counted her breaths and watched the shadows creeping over the walls. In the morning light, he woke, stood up and crept back into Maman's room.

He came to her bed most nights. In the day, he rarely looked at her. But when he did, he smiled or winked. It was like someone tipping iced water into her lungs. And it ached inside when she moved.

One day she said to Maman, ‘I don't like Hans.'

Maman's hands froze over the sock she was darning. Her mouth twisted downwards, as if she was chewing on a sour winkle.

‘I know you don't, my love.'

‘He isn't very…kind.'

Maman sat down next to Claudine and held her hand. ‘Sometimes you will meet people you don't like. And that's perfectly normal. You don't have to like everybody. But some people…some people you might
need
. So you have to grit your teeth and put up with them. It's part of growing up. You don't want Francis to starve, do you?'

Claudine shook her head.

‘Hans doesn't hurt you?'

She made herself shake her head again.

‘And he
is
kind to you, isn't he? Even though you don't like him?'

Maman's eyes were wide with wanting her to say yes.

Claudine nodded.

‘Good girl.'

All through the summer and the early autumn, Hans came into her bed. Sometimes he didn't hurt her, but he started to put her hands on his hot, hairy body instead. He groaned when she touched him.

It was in September when she first bled. Edith gave her some cloth to put in her flannel drawers; she scrubbed them clean in the tub in the garden when no one was looking. But she had read books about it: the way the man's seed swims into the woman's body and makes a baby. Her body could do that now.

When Hans found that she was bleeding, he didn't touch her. But, lying next to her in the darkness, he said, ‘You are a woman now.' And there was something new in the way his hands rested on her, possessive and full of promise.

That was when she decided to run away. She had seen the cows and what the bullocks did to them. She understood the harsh animal cries from Maman's room when she and Hans lay down in the afternoons. Grunting. Claudine knew what men expected women to do.

At first she thought she could hide with Edith. But they would find her there. Then she imagined hiding in the sand dunes, or in the caves at Devil's Hole: nobody ever went there, because the spirits of dead fishermen haunted them. But she wanted to take Francis with her so that Hans couldn't hurt him in her place.

In the end, Claudine decided she would find a boat and row to England, just her and Francis. With Gregor to look after them—and Edith too, if she wanted to come.

That was when she thought of Maurice.

Early next morning, when everybody was still asleep, Claudine lifted Hans's heavy hand from her chest and tiptoed from the bedroom. When she walked past Maman's room, the floorboards creaked and Maman opened one eye. She smiled at Claudine, made her lips into the shape of a kiss and then closed her eye again.

Claudine ran all the way, muscles burning, and tapped on Edith's door. Claudine thought she might be asleep, but Edith opened the door straight away, almost as if she had been waiting. Her face was puffy but she was wearing her housedress and her eyes were bright and sharp. She looked relieved when she saw Claudine.

‘Is Maurice here?' Claudine whispered.

‘Out on the boat, my love, but he's due back shortly. You look pale. Whatever's the matter?'

‘Where is Gregor?'

‘See for yourself. Gregor! You can come out, dear.'

The larder door swung open. ‘Hello, Claudine.'

He was smiling; his face was a little fatter, more like the old Gregor. He looked handsome, with his dark hair and his blue eyes. Somehow, Edith had managed to hide him from the patrols, or throw them off the scent or bribe them into looking the other way.

His smile faded when he saw her face. ‘
Was ist los?'

‘Nothing, I…' Claudine shook her head, fought back tears. She didn't want to say anything before Maurice arrived. They might think her a fool or try to stop her from asking for his boat. She didn't want to have to explain everything. She didn't know how to form the words for the leaden ache in her stomach.

‘I don't want to say,' she finally whispered.

Edith and Gregor nodded. Claudine saw them exchange a look, but neither of them pressed her. They all sat for a long time without saying anything. The skeleton clock on the mantelpiece ticked.

When there was a knock at the door, they all jumped. Gregor and Claudine both dashed to hide in the back of the larder.

‘Calm yourselves!' Edith hissed. ‘Not loud enough for a patrol. But Gregor, my love, you'd best hide.'

Edith let Maurice in and cut him a slice of bread too. She didn't eat any herself. Claudine could almost count the bones under the thin, yellowing skin of her hands, but Edith always said she wasn't hungry.

Maurice ate his bread in three big mouthfuls, without saying anything. His hair stuck out in all directions; his face was pouchy with exhaustion.

Everything was quiet except for the sound of hungry chewing.

Claudine felt the need to fill the silence. ‘Do you truly believe Marthe will die, Maurice?'

‘Goodness me, child,' Edith cried. ‘Say what you mean, don't hold back.'

But Maurice gave a sad smile. ‘The medicine's done her the world of good,' he murmured. ‘Thank you for asking.'

It was quiet again until Claudine clenched her fists to give herself courage before saying, ‘I want to borrow your boat. Please.'

Maurice and Edith stared at Claudine and then looked at each other and laughed. A loud, grown-up laugh, from before the war.

Then Edith said, ‘Well, then, Maurice, I can offer you a little acorn coffee, if you've time to stop?'

‘Thank you, I think I will today.'

As Edith went to fill the pan, Maurice sat down at the table and gazed out at the sea. Claudine could see the reflection of the clouds in his troubled eyes.

‘Maurice, please can I borrow your boat?'

He frowned and scrubbed at his eyes. ‘I'd laugh, Claudine, love, honestly I would. But I've spent these last few months nursing Marthe and I'm tired to my very bones.'

‘But I mean it! Why won't he listen, Edith? I
need
to borrow his boat.'

Edith gave her a blank look: the same one Maurice had given her.

‘Now, child, you're not normally one to be an irritation. I know you mean well. But we're not laughing now, are we? So stop jesting and sit quietly. I'll even give you a drop of acorn coffee if you won't say a word to your maman.'

‘But I'm
not
jesting and I don't
want
to sit down and I don't
want
any acorn coffee! I want Maurice's boat!'

She started to cry. She couldn't make herself stop, not even when she dug her nails into the palms of her hands and chewed on the inside of her cheek and counted her teeth with her tongue.

Edith took Claudine on to her lap and held her and stroked her hair. ‘Shhhh, shhhhh, there now,' she said, until Claudine's breath had stopped shattering out of her chest in gasps. Edith kissed her cheeks. ‘Come then, what's this?'

‘I have to leave because I don't like Hans. And I need the boat because England is too far for me to swim.'

She could see Maurice's mouth curling into a smile. Edith frowned at him.

‘Slow down, my love,' she said. ‘Why this sudden worry over Hans? I know he's a soldier, but they're not
all
bad. And the food he brings. Why, you'd have starved if your mother hadn't—'

‘I just don't like him. He's not very…kind to me.'

It grew quiet once more. No sound but the ticking clock and everyone breathing and thinking. Claudine stared at her fingers in her lap, which had crescents of dirt under the nails where she had scrabbled at the rocks, trying to lever limpets free. She knew that Maurice and Edith were looking at each other and saying things with their eyes, so she waited for them to finish.

Maurice eventually sighed. ‘Claudine, all of us have to be around people we don't like sometimes. You can't simply row off in a boat and leave folk behind. You'll spend half your life rowing; you'll end up with arms like a sailor. And who will want to marry you then, eh?'

Edith chuckled.

‘I don't
want
to row away from everyone,' Claudine hissed. ‘Just Hans. And I want to go to England because they haven't been invaded and they have more food. Here I have to find cockles for our dinner. But there aren't any cockles left. So we have to eat the food Hans gives us. And I don't
like
eating his food.'

Edith stroked Claudine's hair. ‘It shouldn't be up to you to find food, my love.'

Claudine nodded because her throat was aching.

‘The war means that lots of us do things we'd rather not,' Edith said. ‘And I suppose you worry about people calling your maman a Jerry-Bag?'

Claudine stared at the cracks in her shoes.

‘I think, Claudine, if we're candid…I think we're all simply doing what we must. To stay alive. Your maman has herself and two children to think about. And there's none of us that haven't helped the Germans out one way or another. Or taken something from one of them. Isn't that right, Maurice?'

He snorted.

Edith continued. ‘So you mustn't be too upset about all the rubbish about traitors and Jerry-Bags. Do you hear me?'

‘Yes,' Claudine muttered.

‘No more talk of running away, do you hear me?'

‘But I
still
want to go to England. I
hate
being in Jersey.' There was a quivering, childish fury in her voice once more.

Edith and Maurice looked at each other again and said more things with their eyes. Claudine dug the dirt out from under her fingernails and waited.

Edith took Claudine's hand in hers. Her skin was leathery and sun-spotted, but her grip was strong.

‘We can't take you from your mother, my love. I'm sorry. She'd never forgive us for putting you in danger. And you'd miss her, wouldn't you?'

‘I would. But I wouldn't miss Hans.'

Claudine started to cry again. Even though tears didn't help anyone or change a thing. Even though she was nearly a woman and tears were for babies.

Maurice sat straighter in his chair. ‘Come now, Hans can't be so bad, even if he is a Kraut.'

He put his hand on Claudine's shoulder and squeezed. Memory of Hans, his hard hands, his moving fingers that were all over her and inside her, sent spiders skittering into her stomach. Claudine stopped crying and froze, squeezing her eyes shut.

Edith took a sharp breath. ‘Claudine, my love,' she asked, ‘has Hans ever hurt you?'

Through the roaring in her ears, Claudine heard herself reply, ‘Every night. Even though I never talk to him or look at him. I
try
to be good… But I must have done something
terr
ible to make him do that. Why does he want to do those horrible things to me? What have I done to—'

Edith pulled Claudine into her lap again and held her tight. She smelt of the sea and clean air and fresh new plants. Claudine sobbed.

Edith's voice was fierce. ‘
Never
think that!
Never
! You're a wonderful girl, there now, no need to cry, hush. Go on through to the sitting room and let me have a little chat with Maurice. Take Marthe with you, there's a good girl.'

So Claudine wiped her eyes and wheeled Marthe through and started reading a book about plants, which had lots of long names in it. But all the time her ears were straining for Maurice's and Edith's words.

As if from very far away she heard Edith say, ‘Evil bastard, I'll
kill
him. I'll—'

‘Not if I do it first,' Maurice spat.

‘We'll do it together. I'll make him a nightshade tea and you can cut his throat. We can fight over which of us is allowed to gut him.'

‘This isn't a time for jesting, Edith.'

‘I'm not.' Her voice was savage.

Eventually Edith said, ‘Her
face
, poor love. Did you see her face? She can't stay there. I won't have it.'

‘No.'

Edith's voice was firm. ‘I'll go to Sarah today. Tell her Claudine is staying with me. Helping me with Marthe. And Francis is here to keep her company.'

‘You think she'll agree to it?'

‘Who knows? She's all muddled, that one. Never the same since the boy.'

Maurice grunted. ‘Doesn't excuse her letting that sort of thing go on. If she knows, that is.'

‘Most folks know more than they'll admit, even to themselves—whether she knows or not is beside the point. It's happening and we must get the child away.'