Читать книгу The German Nurse - M.J. Hollows - Страница 15

Jack opened the front door gently, wary of the creaking hinges. It felt like days since he had been home but it was only yesterday. He half expected the furniture to be gone, the house forgotten and abandoned, with a patina of dust everywhere. However, the front room was exactly as he had left it, the only difference being that his mother wasn’t sitting in her chair. A plate of forgotten breakfast food – a slice of bread and some jam – sat on the table, a pile of discarded papers next to it. He was still wearing his stained clothes, but before changing he wanted to check on his mother.

Jack could hear noise in the kitchen, broken by the occasional chatter and cough of his grandparents coming from their room. So he picked up the plate and went to look. His stomach rumbled, reminding him how long it had been since he had eaten. He was tempted to eat what was left on the plate, but he thought he’d check with his mother first. She had her back to him as he opened the door, but she didn’t turn as he entered. She stood stock-still, as if waiting for something. He couldn’t tell if it was his exhaustion, or whether she shook slightly as she stood.

‘Mum?’ he asked softly, so as not to surprise her. She was like a statue, cold and immobile, if not for the faint shiver that racked her body. He moved around the kitchen table, coming alongside her so that he could get a better look, to try to see into her eyes, to see what she was thinking. Still she didn’t move. It was as if she was dead to the world. Her lips opened, silently whispering to herself. The repetition was like a mantra, as if she was reassuring herself of something. He couldn’t work out what she was saying. He placed the plate on the side and reached out a hand towards her, trying to make some form of connection between them. She drifted further away from him every day. As his hand neared her shoulder, she shook it away, this time more violently, as if it offended her.

‘I thought you weren’t coming back,’ she whispered.

It was faint, but clear enough once he could register the words.

‘I heard the planes, the bombs.’ There was more power in her voice this time, but it was still as if she was recalling a painful memory. She hadn’t moved or stopped staring in the same direction. He had seen shock like this before in his work as a policeman, when people had been told – or seen – uncomfortable things. They would switch off, distance themselves from the world to stop themselves from believing it was real. Like shell shock, the results were often crippling. After the events of last night, he was sure that there would be many more people across the island feeling the same effects. The main difference was that he had returned, when so many others hadn’t.

‘I thought you were gone, that you weren’t coming back,’ she said again, more confident this time. Jack wanted to reach out and pull her into a hug, but he knew somehow that she would stand there like a statue, immobile and unable to feel his love through the embrace.

‘I’m here,’ he replied, tilting his head to the side and trying to get her to look at him. ‘I’m here.’

‘Are you?’ she asked. ‘Are you really?’

‘Yes.’

He touched her shoulder, finally, hoping the sensation would back up his claim.

‘Your father came to me too, through the darkness. I thought he was real at first, but then he went again. Like he always does. Like you always do.’

Jack wasn’t sure what to say. His mother seldom talked about his father, least of all like this. Maybe it was because she didn’t feel he was real that she was doing so now. He had tried before to get her to talk about the father he had never known, but even on her good days she had refused, saying it was too difficult for her. Everything he knew about the man he had got from his grandfather.

‘Mum, look at me,’ he said. ‘I’m here, it’s really me. I’m safe, I’m alive.’

She turned finally, and her eyes were glassy and distant.

‘Are any of us really safe, Jack?’

So much had happened in the last few days that he no longer knew the answer to that question. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. Even in his mother’s fragile mental state, it wouldn’t do to lie to her. She would see right through him. He also hoped it would make him more real to her. Would a spectre tell the truth, or would it tell her what she wanted to hear? ‘I don’t know if we’re safe, and I don’t know what’s going to happen,’ he continued, fixing his gaze on hers and keeping his voice clear. ‘But as long as we stick together, we can come through this.’

‘I thought the Germans had taken you, that you’d gone. Gone like your father. You’re all I have, my son.’ She placed the palm of her hand against his face as she looked up at him, her skin cold to the touch.

He gripped her shoulder, trying to be reassuring, but careful not to squeeze too tight. ‘I’m here, and I will always be. I’m not going anywhere.’

The island was home, the people on it his family. His entire world was here, and he had never known anything else. Johanna had thought about leaving, but she knew that he couldn’t, not while there was still something to stay for.

‘You should go,’ she said after a moment, her voice faint. ‘Find safety. Go to England, at least the Germans haven’t got there yet and they may never get there. Please, go!’

Tears were streaming down her cheeks and she was attempting to wipe them away with the back of her hand. Jack wasn’t used to such an open display of emotion, but still he went to her and put an arm around her shoulders. ‘I’m not going anywhere. Anyway, it’s too late for that. I’m going to stay and look after you, Grandpa and Nan. Better here in our home than refugees in England.’

He held her for a while longer while the sobs subsided and his arm grew stiff.

*

The faint breeze fluttered the flag as Jack walked nearer, looking up into the bright summer sky. The Union flag was resplendent against the backdrop of the sun, its cord snapping against the pole with a sharp pinging noise. The rhythm was irregular, beaten by the whim of the wind. On other days the tinny noise would be irritating, but today it provided a sense of melancholy, the only sound against a sea of silence on an island that felt utterly abandoned. It had flown above the White Rock as long as Jack could remember, sometimes at half mast, but never removed.

Jack had volunteered for the task, but he didn’t relish it. For some reason he wanted to save anyone else from the ignominious duty. He took a hold of the cord but hesitated. He wanted one last look at the Union flag flying over the island, to cement in his mind the time before, the time when things had seemed less fraught. It was entirely symbolic, the flag and everything else that went with it, but something in him knew that symbols were more important than he or most people ever imagined.

Finally, he pulled the cord and the flag lurched its way down the flagpole, jerking with each motion of his hand. He took his time and watched the wind against the cloth. It struck him then as odd. Here he was, a British policeman in uniform, striking the flag of the Union from the town’s flagpole, removing it entirely. If the flag no longer applied to them, then what did the uniform mean? He was proud of his uniform and he had worked hard to earn it, but did it really make sense to go on wearing it? When the Germans got to the island would they strip them of their uniforms and responsibility, or would they make them wear something to represent the Reich?

They hadn’t been told anything yet, but that only made Jack more anxious. All they knew was that they had to prepare for occupation, to visibly show their surrender and to remove all British flags from view. It left them in a weird state of limbo. Jack’s job as a policeman defined him, and he had been obsessed with holding up the law since he was a child, but now he had no idea who he was in this new world.

Jack untied the Union flag from its cord and folded it. There were people on the island to whom the flag meant very little. They considered themselves Guernesiais rather than British, but it meant something to Jack. He didn’t run up a new flag. It wasn’t his responsibility. He wanted to be the last who remembered the Union flag and what being part of the empire had meant for them. He was supposed to return the flag to the bailiff, but he didn’t think he would. They wouldn’t miss it, and besides he couldn’t trust them to keep it safe. He would take it home. There was a drawer beside his bed in which he kept many of his prized possessions. The flag would find a welcome home there, until it was needed again.

For now, the hour had come for them to face their fate.

*