When the Sky Fell Apart (8 page)

The Commandant's pale eyes narrowed. ‘
Use
ful. Yes.'

Time swung like a scythe. Carter waited, his heart a clenched fist.
Don't show your fear.

‘The island is very pleasant. Much sunshine. This is healthful, yes?'

A reprieve. Carter exhaled.

‘Oh, yes, sunlight is very beneficial. And I agree, the island is very beautiful. Of course, a little
less
beautiful after…recent events…'
Come on, Tim.
He coughed. ‘The bombs. They have damaged the land and people were also injured in the…attack. Some died.'

The Commandant shrugged. ‘Of course. This is war, yes. Injury, death. This happens.'

His tone hadn't altered from when they had been discussing the weather, and Carter felt a chill. The man simply didn't
care
. He spoke hurriedly now.

‘Yes, so, what I mean to say is, ah, the…difficulty I have concerns one of my patients.'

‘Yes?'

Carter stared at the black swastika above the German's head and clenched his jaw. His father's voice had entered his head.
For heaven's sake, Tim! The point is?

Father had always been impatient with what he saw as his son's
scholar's sensitivity.
Carter was a long-limbed, fine-boned aberration in a family of stocky, brusque farmers, and Father, while proud of Carter as
a sharp lad
, had no time at all for his
airs and graces.

In other words, his feelings.

Now, facing the Commandant, his legs shaking, Carter quashed this fear.

‘The man in question is a burns victim.' He kept his voice firm, matter-of-fact. ‘One of the bombs… Chap was caught in the blast and injured. Ah…very gravely injured indeed. Terrible burns. He's in a bad way, Commandant, I don't mind telling you. A
very
bad way.'

‘I see. You are doctor, yes? But you wish medical advice from me?'

The Commandant still wasn't smiling, but his eyes glinted.

Carter frowned. ‘No, no, ah, thank you. But I have reached the limit of my own and the hospital's capabilities. The patient requires advanced medical procedures, for which we have no trained staff, and medicines which we do not possess and have no hope of obtaining in the…current
situation
.'

‘This is unfortunate.'

Carter felt a swell of relief: the man understood him.

‘Yes. Quite. Unfortunate. So, as I'm sure you understand, it is vital that my patient receive medical care on the mainland.'

At this point, the Commandant leant back in his chair and stretched his pinched mouth into a wide smile.

‘I have said, Doctor, this is unfortunate. But medical care from England? This is not possible. We are at war,
nichts?
And we have very good English doctor here, yes? We do not want Doctor to return to England. He will be useful here; he has said it.'

Was this a threat or was the Commandant being deliberately obtuse? Carter wet his lips.

‘But…but I'm not asking to return myself. Nor am I requesting any sort of communication with England regarding the war. I'm simply entreating you to save a man's life. If we do nothing then the prognosis is horrifying. He simply
must
be evacuated.'

‘Impossible.'

Carter blinked. ‘Forgive me, Commandant, but I believe you misunderstand the magnitude of the situation. Without the correct medical care, this man will certainly die.'

‘Unfortunate, yes. But this cannot be helped.'

‘But
why
, for God's sake? This is ludicrous!'

Carter's voice cracked with anger. Surely the Commandant couldn't be such a brute? How was it possible to deny medical care to a dying man, regardless of the political situation?

The Commandant banged his hand upon the table, his fleshy face suddenly hard. ‘Enough! You do not question or you will regret this! This is dangerous for you. You will stop now.'

Carter was dimly aware of the shortness of his own breath, of a tingling in his legs. He swallowed but his mouth was dry. He wanted, desperately, to rectify this confusion, to make the Commandant understand… But in the German's rebuke, he felt the shadow of a gun levelled at his forehead.

‘You will not ask this again. No?'

Carter bit the inside of his cheeks, then shook his head.

The Commandant leant forward and whispered, as though he were imparting a great secret, ‘I have said it, Doctor: we are at war.'

Carter was then dismissed. A guard came to escort him from the building. Despite the weakness in his legs, Carter managed to stand and turned to leave, fear and rage simmering in his gut.

Before he reached the door, the Commandant called, ‘Wait please, Doctor.'

Carter's heart skipped: he had finally understood; he was not a monster.

But the Commandant only said, ‘Your nails. Show me.' He held out his hands.

Carter almost hid his own hands behind his back like a child, then thought better of it and let the German examine his fingers. The Commandant smiled, fully then, although it was strange to watch: cracks creeping up a wall.

His touch was cold and his skin had a fleshy, slippery feel to it, like the scum on a dead fish. Carter forced himself not to snatch his hands away, although something possessive in the man's touch made his skin crawl.

‘Your nails are very clean. How do you say,
immaculate
, yes?'

A strange detail to focus on, but Carter was so desperate to leave the room that he gabbled an agreement.

‘Yes. I cannot afford to introduce bacteria to any of my patients. I am most fastidious.'

‘That is good. I like that in a man. Dirt, I do not like. It is a sign of laziness. I do not like lazy men, Doctor.' His voice was smooth.

Carter thought of a flat-eyed snake. His stomach turned over, but not before the German dropped his hand and turned away.

EDITH couldn't lie: it had stolen her peace, watching them marching down the streets, setting up guards and patrols. Telling folk what to do. Edith had never been one for following orders, and didn't take too kindly to being told to stay in her house before sun-up and after sundown. So she didn't, and the Germans be jiggered—what could they do to an old woman like her, in any case?

The early morning just before dawn had always been her favourite time for gathering plants. When her husband, Frank, was alive, he used to complain when he woke and she was gone. Off rummaging in bushes for berries.
Stuff and nonsense.

He never put much stock in her remedies, even though she'd cured his headaches and his gout. Once, she'd bound up his broken arm with a herbal poultice, which took all the pain and helped knit the bones. But he laughed away the thought that it might have healed him. He said that he'd always mended well and had the constitution of a prime Jersey bullock. It didn't serve him very well in the trenches, mind. But there you are.

She never could face remarrying. She had no heart left to give after they brought her that envelope. Black-edged, as if the tidings it bore had scorched at the very paper. Sometimes she felt they must have buried the cinders of her still-beating heart with him in some field in France. The years living alone since had moulded her the way a prevailing wind will shape a stubborn tree into the most fantastic of fixed shapes. Independent, she was (
Bloody-minded
, Frank used to say), and that wasn't going to change for anyone, least of all for a gaggle of foreign soldiers.

They had always wanted children, Edith and Frank. Sometimes it still struck her that it would have been wonderful to see her husband's eyes in a young child's face, in the set of the jaw or the angle of the nose. The quick shout of his laughter, buffeting on a breeze. But then, she'd have been raising a child alone. Besides, there was a freedom in solitude. She could be out of bed in the middle of the night, ready to be rooting through bushes when the sun was up, and there wasn't a soul to tell her she should be elsewhere scrubbing bedsheets, or doling out the breakfast, or running herself ragged chasing grandchildren.

It was a week after the Germans had arrived and she had just discovered a wonderful patch of belladonna when Dr Carter found her. Not too much of the stuff around these days: most folks dug it up and burned it—a terrible shame and a waste. It was only poisonous if someone was fool enough to eat too much. Consumed in just the right amount it was a marvelous painkiller, even for the strongest birthing pains. It also made a truly excellent poultice for broken bones or burns and a wonderful tincture when steeped in hot water.

The previous doctor used to bemoan all manner of suspicious potions she made and plants she used, no doubt for nefarious means.
Witchcraft
, he'd called it. One of the things they had quarrelled about was that she kept belladonna in her garden.

Dangerous
, he'd said.
Potentially lethal.

She told him the truth: if folk will let their children run wild and dig around in other people's gardens and eat what they find there, then they're asking for trouble. She'd given the boy in question a good dose of warm salt and mustard water and he had vomited up all the berries, right then and there. All over her good bed of sorrel and sage, if you please.
That
was the fool mother's complaint: Edith had made her boy sick. He was bawling like she'd stuck pins in him, and when Edith told the pinch-faced mother that he was better off sick than dead, the child let out an almighty howl. The nit-witted woman shrieked at her and wouldn't believe that the salt and mustard mixture was actually the medicine her foolish child needed. So she took him to Dr Laird. He, of course, stuck his big beak in and told the mother Edith could have killed her boy.

They had tried to make her dig up the belladonna and burn it. The whole island was whispering witchcraft. Fires in their eyes, gleaming from the shadows like packs of hungry wolves. She couldn't go anywhere without people sneaking sideways glances at her and making the sign against evil behind her back. Rowan branches nailed above their doors, for heaven's sake. No one smiled when she said they'd be better off boiling up the bark and saving the liquid for winter coughs.

She'd said to Laird, ‘I've put a label next to it that says
Deadly Nightshade
for a reason, you know, Doctor. The name is quite clear and in my best writing. See, the word
dead
is plain as your face or mine.'

But he'd stirred the island up against her. She had angry fathers hammering her door at three in the morning, which was an ungodly hour even for her (and she didn't sleep much of a night in any case). Folks threatening to torch her house. And friends of years refusing to meet her eye. Silence like a stone dropped from a cliff when she walked past. Eyes sidling slyly at her, noses upturned as if she were a rotten shank of mutton on the butcher's block.

It calmed down for the most part, though, after Dr Laird left to go back to the mainland because of an odd rash and vomiting illness, which kept bothering him as long as he was in Jersey, but disappeared whenever he left the island. Frightful luck. Edith had always thought it: belladonna was a marvelous plant.

So she was up to the elbows in a nice healthy patch with plenty of good, dark berries when the new doctor (Carter, she remembered) happened upon her. He seemed pleasant enough, but you never could tell. Besides, she liked her own company when she was gathering plants; it helped her to mull things over. Put the world to rights. She hoped that if she ignored him for long enough then he might move on.

But after a moment, he coughed loudly and she couldn't very well disregard that.

‘Good morning to you, Doctor. Nasty cough there. Shouldn't you take something for that? It can't be good for business when the doctor himself is ill.'

‘Ha, yes.' Carter paused, then said, ‘Marvelous colours in the sky today.'

‘Beautiful, isn't it?'

She didn't turn around; she had just spotted a very nice patch of ragwort. The farmers hated it because it poisoned the cattle, so she didn't often happen across it, which was a crying shame—it made for a most relaxing tea, in the right quantities.

She waited for him to be on his way. But she could see him from the corner of her eye, shuffling his feet in those fancy English leather shoes of his, and she sighed.

‘Well, as long as you're going to be standing there, you might as well make yourself useful. Hold this, will you?'

She heaved her basket up. Carter staggered a little under the weight.

‘You, ah—you do know that's…
ragwort
, don't you?'

‘Well, if I didn't then I wouldn't be gathering it. Dangerous to pick plants you don't recognise. They could be poisonous.'

‘So you're aware, then, that this is nightshade?'

‘Why do you imagine I put a blanket at the bottom of the basket? You don't want the stuff on your hands or clothes, that's certain. Even a little of the juice can give you the runs for days.'