The Collaborator (16 page)

I
take out the book that Angie gave me. ‘This is a present from Mrs le Brocq,’ I tell Millie. She presses up against me on the sofa. Her hair needs washing: I breathe in its sweet, complex scent. ‘Well, read me a story, then, Mummy,’ she says. I open the book. She frowns.

‘There aren’t any pictures,’ she says. ‘No. We’ll just have to imagine them … The sprig of restharrow is still held between the pages. Millie takes it and holds it lightly between her finger and thumb. I turn to the first story.

‘’’There was once a man from Guernsey who took the boat to Sark …’”

Millie is immediately pleased. A smile unfurls over her face. ‘We’ve been there, haven’t we, Mummy? We’ve been to Sark,’ she says.

I remember how we made the boat trip, one summer day before Eugene left, before the war began. We took lettuce and
Marmite sandwiches and home-made lemonade. Sark is a small peaceful island, with no motor-engines, no cars—a place of deep, dreaming lanes between overhanging hedges, of lovingly tended gardens lavish with flowers; and there are great seabird colonies there, on reefs and islets offshore, on L’Etac and Les Autelets. The birds rise in the air like a white smoke, and the noise of them reaches a long way over the sea.

Millie is attentive—proud that the story tells of a place that she knows. I read on.

‘’’The man was an excellent marksman, and planned to do some shooting, to put dinner on the table. He sat on the cliffs above Havre Gosselin, and saw a flock of wild duck that flew in a perfect circle, and seemed untroubled by the sound of his gun …’”

Millie has a pensive look.

‘D’you think they weren’t proper ducks? D’you think it was really magic, Mummy?’ ‘Yes. I think so.’

She sighs with pleasure, content that this is a tale of the uncanny. She strokes the pressed flower absently over her face.

“‘‘When the man returned to Guernsey, he went to see a white witch—a
sorchier
—for advice …”’

I’m about to explain, but Millie nods, familiar with the word.

‘‘‘The
sorchier
told him to shoot at the duck with a special bullet—a bullet of silver, marked with the sign of the Cross. So the man took the boat back to Sark and sat on the cliffs above
Havre Gosselin. In the bright, still air beyond the edge of the cliff, the ducks flew in their perfect circle. The man shot his silver bullet, and the bullet hit one of the ducks—just catching its wing, not killing it.”

‘“On his way back home in the boat, the man noticed a girl among the other islanders—a girl who was pale and shaken, with a terrible wound in her hand …’”

Millie’s eyes shine. She knows about the kinds of things that happen in such stories—the dazzling metamorphoses, the things that are not as they seem.

‘That was her, wasn’t it, Mummy? The girl was the duck he shot at. The girl could do spells and could make herself into a duck …’

‘Yes, I think so,’ I say.

But I’m only half listening to her. The story stirs me in some way that I couldn’t explain or express. I see the scene so vividly—the little boat, grey sea, grey sky, the girl’s black, black hair and her white racked face: how she shuddered with pain, and the bright blood dripped from her hand.

I turn the page.

‘’’The man knew she was the duck he had shot, but he looked at her and said nothing. And for many years afterwards, he kept silent—speaking of what had happened only on the day of his death …’”

Millie is thoughtful.

‘He was sorry, wasn’t he? He shouldn’t have shot her. That’s why he didn’t tell anyone …’

I think about that moment, when they looked at one another, these two—the girl with her forbidden magic, the man who had
wounded her hand. Did she understand then, when he looked at her, that he wouldn’t tell, that he would keep their secret?

This moves me, in the story—the complicity between them.

PART III:

OCTOBER 1940-SEPTEMBER 1941

I
take rainwater from the water butt that is meant to be good for your hair. I wash my hair and curl it. When it’s dry I shake out the curls; my hair smells fresh, of the countryside, from the rainwater I washed it in. When I’ve finished the clearing up after tea, I put on my best navy dress. It’s made of silk shantung, and the dark gleamy fabric has a prismatic sheen, like oil on water. I look at my face in the mirror of my dressing table. It’s a three-way mirror, reflecting into itself, and my many reflections recede from me, all bright-eyed, flushed and scared, as though I contain a multitude of eager, anxious women.

Blanche comes into my bedroom in her pyjamas, to say goodnight.

‘You look nice, Mum,’ she says. ‘You haven’t worn that for ages.’

There’s a question under her words.

‘I just felt like putting on something nicer,’ I say.

‘That dress is ever so pretty,’ she says. ‘You could go dancing in that. You don’t really look like somebody’s mum any more …’

She looks at me wistfully—perhaps a little enviously. Then she turns away from me, running her finger over the music box, the blurry Impressionist picture of two girls at a piano.

‘May I?’ she says.

‘Yes, of course.’

She winds the handle. The music sounds like the chiming of many tiny bells—chill and silvery as ice or glass. Blanche sways slightly, in time. Almost any music will make her start to dance—even
Für Elise
on a music box.

I feel a pang for my daughter. It should be Blanche who’s dressing up, not me. It’s the special time of her life—she should be going to dances, being courted.

‘Blanche. You never went to another of those parties with Celeste.’

‘Like the party at Les Brehauts, you mean?’ ‘Yes. Aren’t they happening any more?’ ‘Oh, yes, I think they still have them,’ she says. ‘I don’t mind if you want to. Really. As long as you’re safe. As long as you get a lift home.’ ‘I’m fine, Mum.’

‘But you seemed to enjoy it when you went …’

There’s a frown pencilled in on her forehead.

‘Well, it was fun at the time,’ she says. ‘I liked the dancing. But I prayed about it afterwards, and then I decided it wasn’t the right thing to do …’

‘Oh. Did you, sweetheart?’

It still startles me—this streak of religious fervour in her.

‘The thing is—they ask you out, the German boys,’ she says. ‘But that wouldn’t be right, would it, Mum? To have a German boyfriend?’

This surprises me. I didn’t know she thought this. ‘Well, that depends,’ I say vaguely.

‘I wouldn’t want to do that,’ she says. ‘And you wouldn’t like it either, if I did that.’ Her gaze is on me, blue as summer skies. There’s such clarity in her.

‘Well, obviously there are people who wouldn’t approve. But if he seemed a good person … My voice trails off.

‘But you can’t tell, can you really?’ she says. ‘I mean, you can’t be sure.’

‘What about Celeste?’ I ask. ‘Is she still going out with Tomas?’

Blanche nods.

‘She likes him a lot,’ she says. ‘I really don’t think she should, though.’

‘Does she know what you think? About it not being right?’

‘Yes, of course, Mum. We talk about everything, me and Celeste. We don’t have secrets,’ she says. ‘But she says I’m wrong, she says he’s not like the others …’

‘Well—maybe she’s right—maybe he
isn’t
like the others …’

The music from the music box slows as it comes to an end, and you can hear the clunking and whirring of all the tiny parts inside. Blanche closes down the lid of the box.

‘I still wouldn’t do it,’ she says. ‘What I think is—how can you ever really know someone? How can you ever be sure what they’re like?’

‘But don’t you think you can tell—if someone is a good person? Even if they’re on the opposite side in a war?’ She gives me a doubtful look, as though I just don’t get it.

Once the girls and Evelyn have gone to bed, I sit in the kitchen and wait for him. Shadow heaps up in velvet folds against the walls of my room, and doubt creeps into me. Blanche’s words are in my mind.
How can you ever really know someone?
I see it all so clearly now: that this was a wild, irrational notion—rash, impulsive, all wrong. And as I sit there in the shadow, I make my decision. I shall tell him that he can’t come in—that I have changed my mind. Because our relationship is wrong for so many, many reasons. He will understand; or at least, he won’t be surprised. Perhaps I should take off my shantung dress, put on something more workaday. Perhaps I should blow out the candles that I have lit upstairs in my room—

I hear his knock. My heart lurches. I go to open the door.

He doesn’t quite smile at me. I see at once that he too is nervous, and this touches me: I know I can’t tell him to leave. I have already chosen my path: I can’t turn back now.
Choose
not to turn back now.

‘Vivienne …’

I love the way he says my name—slowly, like a caress.

He comes in, stands in front of me in my passageway. I feel a flicker of desire at his closeness—but more diffuse, more ephemeral, than the desire I felt before, when he ran his finger down my face: just a thread, a whisper.

I turn and lead him up the stair, intensely aware of all the people who are asleep in this house. I show him where all the creaks are, murmur to him where not to tread on the stair. My heart beats fast, like a thief’s. I am a thief in my own house.

I open the door to my room and usher him in. I close the door behind me, turn the key in the lock. The sound is eloquent in
the quiet between us. I turn around to face him, my body pressed to the door.

I’d expected to feel self-conscious, even ashamed, in this moment—as he stands there in the candlelight, looking and looking at me, as though he will never look anywhere else. Yet an absolute joy startles me: that we are here together. I have a sense of infinite freedom, in this little room—that we could do anything here—in this place where the war doesn’t come, behind this shut door. When he takes me in his arms the joy floods me, and the sense of his infinite preciousness—running my fingers across his face, feeling the bones beneath the close-cropped skin of his head: as he moves his hands all over me, possessing me with his touch.

Before, with Eugene—years ago, when we sometimes still used to make love—I was always somehow outside it, withdrawn, observing myself. Looking down from the ceiling, remote, untouched, removed: split in two—part of me doing, part watching. But here, now, all of me is present in every touch, every caress: I’m intensely aware of the hardness of his body, the scent of his skin all around me, his mouth exploring my mouth; and the movement of his hand on me, so I am shaken and shaken, as though I am falling apart. He puts his hand on my mouth. ‘Shh,’ he says. ‘Shh …’; and then him inside me, my body wrapped all around him: hiding myself in him, hiding him in me.

Afterwards we lie together, quietly. I open my eyes, and see that my room is just the same as before—and this astonishes me. I feel as though I have travelled a great distance or entered a different country.

His uniform is lying on a chair. The sight jars, reminds me of all that I’ve chosen to put from my mind. I look away; I tell
myself—all that is part of another life, his life when we are apart. It says nothing about who he really is, here with me in this room.

He kisses me, his mouth just grazing mine. ‘Thank you,’ he says.

I feel a sudden light happiness. It seems so strange that he should thank me, when he has given me so much.

I lie with my head on his chest, listen to the quiet beat of his heart. He has his hand in my hair. For a while, we say nothing: but the silence is the sweetest thing. I hadn’t known that sex could take you to a place of such peace.

And then I hear the sound I dread—footsteps, and someone trying my handle, and then a knock at my door.

‘Hide under the covers,’ I tell him.

I wrap my dressing gown round me, unlock the door.

I’m so afraid that it’s Blanche—that she will look past me into my room and at once understand everything: why I was wearing my best shantung dress, the conversation we had. But it’s Millie, in her candystripe pyjamas, her feet big and ponderous in her knitted bedsocks. Her eyes are wide and staring but I don’t know what she sees; her face is dazed, unfocused.

‘Mummy, there are bees. There are bees in the house.’ Her voice thin, shrill, brittle.

She’s still living her nightmare. The reflections of my candles are held in her eyes, in tiny immaculate images.

‘No, sweetheart. It’s just a dream …’

‘They’re in my bed, Mummy!’

I crouch down, hold her. Her heart pounds against my chest, as though her heart is my heart. There are smudges of blue shadow round her eyes.

‘There aren’t any bees,’ I tell her.

‘Mummy, there are bees in my hair. I can hear them … I ran and I ran but I couldn’t escape.’ Her voice is a thin bright juddery thread.

I stroke her hair.

‘It’s just a dream,’ I tell her. ‘There’s nothing to be frightened of.’

‘Can’t you hear them buzzing?’ she says.

I take her back to her room. Guilt washes through me. I wonder if this is my fault, that she is troubled like this. Did she see something, hear something? I listen carefully, make an extravagant show of looking in every corner, to prove there are no bees. Then I sing her to sleep. I don’t think she saw Gunther. But the sense of peace has left me, its smooth still surface fractured, splintered into a thousand glittery shards.

When I get back to my bedroom, he has dressed.

‘Is she all right?’ he asks me.

‘Yes. She’s asleep now. I don’t think she saw anything … He takes me in his arms.

‘Vivienne. Will we do this again? I would love to see you again, my dearest. Would you want that?’

His questions flood me with happiness. ‘Yes. Please …’

But Millie’s nightmare has troubled me. I feel the enormity of what we have done—of what we are planning to do.

‘Gunther. Can we really do this without anyone knowing? Can we really keep it secret? It has to be completely secret—from Evelyn, from the girls. From everyone …’

‘We’ll be very careful,’ he says.

I take him down to the door. I watch him as he leaves, walking across the gravel: walking back into his other life. There’s a silver spill of moonlight over my yard, so bright he casts a shadow.

I go back to my room. My body, my damp bed, smell of him. I’m missing him already.