The Collaborator (11 page)

I
pass into my orchard between the quiet old trees, whose branches are bending already with the weight of swelling fruit. I am safe at last: no one will find me here. I only have to cross the lane, and I will be home.

It’s completely dark now. The moon is high above my orchard. Where the apple leaves are silhouetted against its whiteness, they are black as a rook’s wing, and precise as though cut with a blade. I walk on through the soft dark and the scent of apple leaves.

‘Mrs de la Mare.’

A sudden voice in the darkness behind me. No footfall.

Just for a moment, I’m so frightened. All the fear that I try to keep tamped down leaps up at me out of the night: all the terror.

I spin round.

‘Mrs de la Mare,’ he says again.

It’s one of the men from Les Vinaires. Not Captain Richter, who told me off about the curfew: it’s the other man, the one I saw in the lane, the one with the scar. His face is shadowed, and I can’t see his expression. He’s standing now, but he must
have been sitting on a tree stump when I passed him: that’s why I didn’t see him. All the detail of his uniform is blotted out by the dark. ‘Oh,’ I say.

I bite my lip, to stop it trembling. I hope he didn’t see my fear. I desperately don’t want him to see it.

‘You shouldn’t be out, Mrs de la Mare. It’s ten o’clock. It’s after the curfew,’ he says.

I think of what Captain Richter said.
Don’t make things difficult for us.
I remember the threat in his voice.

‘I know. I’m really sorry. But there was something I needed to do,’ I say.

I’m shaking. I think—Why is he here in my orchard? Was he waiting for me? These questions frighten me. I force myself to breathe, drawing all the chill sweetness of the night air into me.

‘Whatever it was could have waited,’ he says. ‘There are penalties. You shouldn’t forget that.’

I dig my fingernails into my palms, to try and stop myself trembling. I think—Perhaps if I explain, perhaps then he won’t be angry …

‘I walked over to Les Brehauts,’ I say. ‘To the party. My daughter’s there.’

He doesn’t say anything. He waits. It’s so quiet that I can hear the distant murmuring of water, from the little stream in the Blancs Bois, and the stream that runs down the lane. And I can hear his breathing, and the quiet click as he clears his throat.

‘I walked through the fields,’ I tell him, ‘and I thought that no one would see.’ I won’t—maybe
couldn’t
—explain what happened: how I went there intending to march in and bring
her back home. How something changed in me when I looked through the lighted window. ‘I wanted to see what had happened to her. I wanted to know she was safe.’ The words come tumbling out; my voice is shaky and shrill.

‘Your daughter Blanche?’ he says.

‘Yes.’

I’m disconcerted that he knows her name, as though it is something he has stolen from us. But of course he must have noticed us, must have heard me talk to her, looking out over our yard from the window of Les Vinaires. The thought of him watching us troubles me. I wonder what else he has learned about us.

The white raw moonlight falls around us; the darkness under the trees is deep, and fretted at the edges with the cut-paper shadows of leaves. I can’t see his expression, and I don’t think he can see mine. When he turns towards me, his face is entirely in shadow.

‘Someone will bring her back. You don’t need to worry about her. One of the boys will give her a lift at the end of the evening,’ he says.

I feel his eyes on me.

‘The thing is—she’s only fourteen,’ I say. ‘I wasn’t happy with her going. She shouldn’t have gone.’ Then I wonder why I said that. Showing him my weakness, that my daughter has defied me. ‘I just wanted to see—that she was all right …’ My voice trails off, feebly.

‘And what did you see, at Les Brehauts?’ he asks me.

I think—What did I see? I think of Celeste in her cornflower dress, with all the shine spilling from it; of Blanche leaning on the piano, flushed, a little scared; of all the young men in
their uniforms. Of the loveliness, and all the wrongness, of it. All these thoughts are muddled up in my head, confusing me. I don’t say anything.

‘I hope it wasn’t too alarming,’ he says. There’s a thread of amusement in his voice.

‘They were dancing,’ I say stupidly.

‘Stefan has a lot of gramophone records,’ he says. ‘Stefan likes Cole Porter.’

I notice the way he calls the man by his Christian name, to me. Not calling him by his surname and rank. It isn’t casual: I know that this is some kind of concession he’s making.

‘Perhaps a cigarette?’ he says.

He takes out a packet of Gauloises and offers me one. This startles me. Then I think, If I were in trouble, would he be offering this to me? Perhaps he isn’t going to do anything too dreadful.

I hesitate. I know I shouldn’t accept anything from him. But here in the dark of the orchard it doesn’t seem to matter. It’s just a cigarette. My hands are still trembling as I take it, and I know he sees this.

He takes out his lighter and leans in towards me; his face is close to mine. He has a faint scent of the day—of leather, sweat, of the smoky rooms he has been in. He cups his hand against the night breeze. In the flare of the flame, his skin is briefly, startlingly red. I see the knotted veins, the pale hairs on the backs of his hands.

I usually smoke Craven A. I inhale, and cough like a girl. I’m embarrassed.

‘It is too strong for you?’ he says.

‘No. It’s all right,’ I tell him.

I’m grateful for the taste of tobacco, on my lips, on my tongue. The smoke rises up between us, like breath on a white morning.

‘Your husband is fighting, Mrs de la Mare?’ he says. ‘Yes.’

‘I also am married, and I have one son,’ he tells me. ‘Hermann.’ His voice smudges, softens. I hear the tenderness in it. I’m surprised that he’s telling me so much. ‘He is fighting. He is in the Luftwaffe. He is seventeen, just three years older than Blanche.’

‘He seems so young to be fighting. I always feel that—seventeen is so young,’ I say. ‘Yes, it is young,’ he says.

‘You must be very proud of him,’ I go on, unthinkingly. It’s how you always respond when someone speaks of a son at war. Then all the crassness of my remark slams into me. This son of his—the son that he loves so deeply that his voice is softened as he speaks his name: this son is bombing our airfields. I feel I have betrayed something. My hand instantly covers my mouth, as though to stop myself from speaking treachery.

He’s watching me, as if he’s trying to read my thoughts in my face.

‘Yes, I am proud of him,’ he says. ‘We are all proud of our children, are we not, Mrs de la Mare?’

‘Yes.’

He shifts a little. I hear the creak of his boots as he moves, and the crunch of dried-out apple leaves under his feet. A bat flits around us, too small to be properly seen, elusive as a half-formed thought.

‘When did you last see your husband?’ he asks me.

‘He joined up last September,’ I say. ‘He was home on leave a few months ago. But I don’t suppose I’ll see him again now—until the war is over.’

‘You must miss him.’

‘Yes.’

I take a breath, as though to say more, then stop.
Do I miss him? Do I really miss Eugene?

I feel him reading something into my hesitation. The silence spills over between us and scares me. I want to, have to, break it: but I don’t know what to say. Nothing feels safe to me.

‘These are complicated times,’ he says. ‘For all of us.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, they are.’ Grateful.

The moonlight falls on him briefly, and I can see the scar on his face. A thought sneaks into my head—a startling curiosity, wondering how that scar would feel to the touch. Thinking that, it’s as though I can feel it, under the tips of my fingers, the different texture where the skin is frail and glossy and stretched. I feel a jolt of desire—so out of place it makes me breathless, all the wrongness of it. Around us, the streams cry out with a hundred little voices.

‘My name is Gunther Lehmann. You should call me Gunther,’ he says.

As though we may speak again. But we won’t, I tell myself. It will never happen again.

I know he expects me to tell him my name. But I have given too much away already.

‘I must go in now,’ I tell him.

‘Yes. Of course,’ he says.

I leave him there with his cigarette, under my apple trees. I feel his eyes on me as I walk across the lane that is shining
like a river in the moonlight. My body feels clumsy, strange, as though it’s fixed together wrongly. I pass through my gate and, gratefully, into the familiar gloom of my house.

I sit in the kitchen and wait for Blanche. I don’t turn on the light, just sit there. The moonlight slides into the room, and the ordinary things look changed, unreal, in its cool whiteness.

After a while, I hear the man’s slow footsteps crossing the road, then on around the corner to the gate to Les Vinaires. I wonder what he was thinking, all the time he stayed there smoking in my moonlit orchard.

At last, I hear a car pull up in the lane. I hear Blanche’s cheery ‘Goodnight’ and the banging of the car door. She comes in, very silently, takes off her shoes at the door, puts them down so softly. She doesn’t see me.

‘Blanche.’

She turns; she’s flinching. It’s as though she’s afraid I will hit her—though that’s something I’ve never done.

I switch on the light. She blinks, dazed by the sudden brightness.

‘You shouldn’t have gone—when I told you you couldn’t,’ I say. ‘That was wrong of you.’

She nods. She says nothing. She has a puzzled look. Things are not happening quite as she expected them to happen.

‘Was it a good party?’ I ask her.

‘It was quite nice,’ she says carefully. I can smell the wine on her breath, and the hazy scent of French cigarettes that hangs about her. Her gestures are loose and fluid, her eyes very bright, her lips and teeth stained mulberry-dark with the wine. ‘It felt a bit funny, talking to the German boys,’ she says.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes. I can see that it would.’ ‘Though I think you could get used to it,’ she tells me. ‘After a while, you wouldn’t think it was odd.’ I don’t say anything.

‘I met a friend of Tomas’, his name was Karl,’ she tells me. ‘He comes from Berlin. It was sad, he told me how his little sister died. It was in a bombing raid. He showed me her picture and I couldn’t believe she was dead. She had little pigtails …’ She moves her hand over her face, cautiously, as though her features might surprise her. ‘He was trying not to cry when he told me,’ she says.

‘Blanche—you are never to go out again without telling me,’ I say.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Yes, I know. I’m sorry.’

‘I need to know where you are. If you want to go to one of those parties again, we’ll talk about it.’ ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Yes, of course.’

She turns to go—anxious to reach the safety of her bedroom while I’m still conciliatory.

I take Evelyn her morning tea and toast. She’s sitting up in bed, waiting, in her tea-rose silk bed-jacket, her back as straight as a reed. She has an air of triumph: there’s something she’s longing to tell me.

‘Someone came in late last night. A little bird told me,’ she says.

Immediately I imagine that she saw me and Captain Lehmann in the orchard. Guilt washes through me. But I tell myself—I
had
to talk to him, I had no choice. I can’t afford to alienate him, when he’s living next door: when he has so much power
over us. I’m about to explain this to Evelyn, but she has more to say.

‘Someone came in late. I heard the car in the lane … I’m not surprised you look worried, Vivienne.’

She’s talking about Blanche. I feel a rush of relief. Evelyn’s room looks out over the lane: perhaps the car would have woken her.

‘Blanche went out,’ I tell her. ‘There was a party. She’s young, she needs to get out.’

‘I hope she wasn’t doing what she shouldn’t,’ she says. I smile at the old-fashioned phrase.

‘I’m sure she wasn’t,’ I say. ‘She went with Celeste, her friend. You know how Blanche loves dancing …’

Evelyn is quiet for a moment. Then her eyes seem to glaze over. The thread of the conversation has slipped from her grasp.

‘Someone came in late,’ she says, looping back.

‘Yes. But everything’s fine,’ I tell her.

‘It’s all such a muddle. It’s so confusing, Vivienne. I don’t like it being confusing.’

‘Try not to worry,’ I tell her.

She picks up her teacup. Her hand is unsteady: the tea in the teacup trembles.

‘What are we coming to, Vivienne? Where will it end?’ To that I have no answer.

L
ater, when I’m out in my yard, I glance across to my orchard. There’s something lying on the tree stump that dazzles in the morning light. I cross the lane to investigate. It’s Captain Lehmann’s cigarette lighter, lying there, catching the sun.

Immediately, I worry that someone will see it—one of my daughters, or Evelyn, or someone walking past in the lane. That they will find it, and know it was his, and wonder what he’d been doing here, on my land: that they will work the whole thing out, the conversation, everything. I can’t just leave it lying here and wait for him to come back for it.

I pick it up. The metal has been warmed by the light of the sun—it’s almost burning on my skin. When I look at it shining in the palm of my hand, I have a sudden memory of his presence, vivid and immediate. I see his right hand holding the lighter, his left hand cupping my cigarette, sheltering it from the night air that might threaten to put out the flame. I half imagine I can smell the faint scent of his closeness. I can see the grace in his gesture, the veins that show through his skin.

I put the lighter in my apron pocket. I tell myself I will take it round to Les Vinaires, and give it to one of the men there so they can return it to him. That some time soon I will do that.

But I don’t.

T
here’s the cheerful jangle of a bicycle bell in my yard. It’s Johnnie, jumping off his bicycle, grinning when he sees me. ‘Morning, Auntie Viv.’

He always calls me Auntie, because our families are close.

He follows me into my kitchen. He’s whippet-thin, with unruly hair and his mother’s vivid eyes, brown as conkers. Every time I see him he seems a bit more of a man—a shading of stubble on his chin, his shoulders a little more square—yet his face is still the trusting, curious face of a child.

He has a bag of potatoes for us. He dumps them on the table and pushes his hair from his eyes. There’s a breezy energy about him.

‘Present from my mum,’ he says. ‘Your mum’s an angel,’ I say.

I offer him coffee, though there’s only a scraping left in the tin.

‘Water will be fine,’ he says.

I bring him a glass: he gulps it gratefully down.

‘So how are things at the farm?’ I ask him.

‘We’re breeding rabbits—that’s the latest. You should try it, Auntie … My mum isn’t all that keen on bumping them off, though,’ he says.

‘Just don’t ever tell Millie,’ I say. ‘She doesn’t approve of eating things that have fur. She’d be appalled at the lot of you …’

He grins, his nose wrinkling. I love how he looks when he smiles.

‘My mum told me Blanche has a job,’ he says.

‘Yes—at Mrs Sebire’s.’

‘She’s like a cat, that Blanche,’ he says. ‘She always lands on her feet.’

There’s a sliver of admiration in his voice.

‘I hope so.’

There’s a splash of September sun on us. Happiness opens out in me, with my kitchen full of sunlight and warmth, and Johnnie here at my table—his vividness, his wide white smile, his hair falling over his face.

‘So—Jerry been giving you any trouble, Auntie Viv?’ he asks.

I nearly tell him about the Germans next door, but something stops me. It’s not important, I think; there’s really no rush, I’ll tell him some other time.

‘No, we’re fine here,’ I tell him, vaguely. ‘It’s so secluded here. You’re not very aware of it all …’

His fingers are moving in restless jazz rhythms across the top of the table, as though he’s at a keyboard: Johnnie can never keep still.

‘I’ll tell you one thing for free, Auntie. We won’t take it lying down, me and my mates. We won’t let them walk all over us. That’s something you can count on, I promise,’ he says.

The thing that Gwen said enters my mind—how the young men have been left without any way to be men. A chill moves over my skin.

‘But what can you do?’ I ask him. ‘There are so many of them—they’re everywhere. What on earth can anyone do?’

‘There’s always something,’ he tells me. ‘Maybe just a small thing. You’ve got to do what you can. That’s what me and Piers think.’

I remember what Gwen had said about Piers.
He’s a funny lad. He’s too intense. He seems too old for his years …
‘I don’t really know Piers,’ I tell him.

‘Piers has got brains,’ he tells me. He lowers his voice: there’s a thrill of conspiracy in it. ‘Piers is clever … Piers has a lot of ideas. He’s got this scheme for painting V-signs, like they’re doing on Jersey. V for Victory. We’re sneaking out after curfew, putting V signs all over the place.’

‘But what good will that do?’

‘It’s all about morale, Auntie.’

‘Well, just you be careful,’ I tell him. ‘You know how your mother worries about you …’

He shrugs but doesn’t say anything. A frown slides into his eyes. I sense that I’ve let him down in some way: that he’s disappointed in me, because I don’t share his excitement. I’m just another disapproving adult—not quite his friend any more.

‘Another thing, Johnnie—I hope you’ve got that shotgun of Brian’s well hidden,’ I say.

There’s a fragility about his face at the mention of Brian: a translucence.

‘There’s no way I’m going to part with that. But I won’t let them find it,’ he says. A little stubbornly—not quite answering directly.

I have said something I shouldn’t have said. Anything touching on Brian is locked away inside him, in a secret room, marked No Entry.

‘Johnnie, I mean it—about being careful,’ I tell him.

He makes a slight gesture, flicking something away.

‘We’re going to do our bit. Make some trouble for them. You do what you have to do, Auntie Viv,’ he tells me.

‘But you could end up in prison. Or worse.’

He ignores this. I can tell it isn’t real to him. He leans towards me across the table, his clear, eager eyes on my face.

‘Tell you what, though, Auntie. I’m pretty disappointed in some of the islanders,’ he says.

I find myself looking away from him—just not quite meeting his gaze.

‘They’re pretty spineless,’ he goes on, ‘some of the folks who live here. Giving Jerry a bit too warm a greeting, if you ask me. Putting out the Welcome mat.’

I see myself talking to Captain Lehmann in my moonlit orchard. I can’t imagine why I did that—what kept me there all that time. I feel a hot surge of guilt. In the pocket of my apron, pressing against my leg, I can feel his cigarette lighter that I somehow haven’t managed to take back to Les Vinaires.

‘Still—there are plenty of us who’ve got the right idea,’ says Johnnie. ‘We need to give them a bit of bother. Until we win the war.’

We’re silent for a moment. The words hang in the air between us—glittery, rainbow-coloured, but weightless, ephemeral as
soap bubbles blown around on the wind.
Until we win the war.
I think of all those newsreels we’ve seen, of Hitler’s army surging through Paris, like some unconquerable flood. I imagine them marching into London, see the lava flow of them—up the Mall to Buckingham Palace, on to Hyde Park Corner and Marble Arch. I can see it so clearly. They’ve come here to our islands, they’ve come the first step of the way—just walking in so effortlessly. This is Britain’s future—a future of Occupation. This is what we will all have to learn to accept …

‘Johnnie.’ I hear the catch in my voice. ‘Do you truly think we can win? In your heart of hearts? In spite of everything that’s happened?’

He fixes me with his warm dark eyes—so trusting, a child’s eyes.

‘Of course I do, Auntie. You’d better believe it. The British are never defeated. And till we win—well, me and Piers, we’re going to do what we can.’

I look at him as he sits at my table, the syrupy sunlight falling on him. He’s still just a boy, urgent, reckless. I remember him at six or seven, playing with Blanche in the woods: how he’d climb the tallest trees, showing off, so desperate to impress her. And mostly that’s how I understand this fighting talk of his—that it’s just a boy’s bravado—and especially since his brother died. That he’s seeking to live for Brian—to be bold as his brother was bold. It’s how he shoulders the burden of being the one who’s left alive.

But just occasionally I wonder if Johnnie has something that I don’t have. Sometimes when he’s with me I could almost believe we could win.

‘Well, I’d better be going, then, Auntie.’

‘Lovely to see you, Johnnie.’

I follow him out to my yard, which is full of wind and sunlight, a few yellow leaves from my pear tree cartwheeling over the ground. Summer is sifting down into autumn. Soon, everything will be falling apart in a last brave flurry of brightness.

‘You know what annoys me, Auntie?’ says Johnnie, getting onto his bike. ‘The way you hear folks saying that they’re glad it isn’t any worse—that Jerry’s so polite to us—that it isn’t as bad as they thought. Some folks are almost
grateful …
But you know what I think, Auntie Viv? They haven’t even
started
yet. Folks think this is it—that this is how it’s going to be. But what I think is it’s only just beginning.’

I open the gate and he cycles off, lurching all over the lane as he turns around to wave to me.