“Tonight’s issue,” he announced proudly. “I have just been putting the finishing touches to the latest episode of A Journey Through Medievd Germany. As you can see, I have reached the Imperial city of Frankfurt am Main. With my imaginary knapsack and sturdy companion by my side we sit down at a modest inn and introducé the reader to Goethe and Schiller as well as invoking the glories of the Roman past. Also autobahns. Not bad for five hundred words.”
Lentsch glanced at it quickly.
“The woodcut is very good,” he offered. “But do you think it wise to talk of this ‘splendid meal of sausages and hard-boiled eggs’? Most people here haven’t seen a decent piece of meat for months.”
Bohde beamed.
“But that’s exactly my point, Gerhard. That’s what they have to look forward to when the war is won. German culture and plenty of German sausage.”
Lentsch studied Bohde’s face to see if he could detect any hint of humour, but Bohde was already on his way back to his seat. It was unfortunate for the island that Bohde was not only responsible for censoring its two newspapers and reading matter, withdrawing books deemed offensive to the German people in general and Him in particular, but also for organizing the variety shows and films for the troops. Frivolity was despised by Bohde. Since his arrival, low comedies, musicals and risqué nightclub turns had been replaced by military bands, lecture slides and volk festivals. The illegitimate birth rate had gone up too.
Zep slapped a hand on his shoulder. “So how was home?”
Lentsch put on the best face he could muster. “They are learning to live with it,” he said. “I did not stay all the time there. It was difficult, with Gretchen so close.”
Gretchen was the girl he was to have married, the girl who would have been his passport to promotion. A Party girl with a Party father.
“So you are still determined?”
Lentsch nodded. “I am still… Is she here yet?”
Zep shook his head.
“You think I am a fool.” Lentsch issued an observation rather than asked a question.
Zep smiled at his friend. “No, just foolish.” He waved his hand in the air. “All this. It cannot be permanent. Even we cannot conquer Paradise.”
Molly was shown in wearing slinky russet red. Lentsch couldn’t recall a time when he had seen her wearing something ordinary. She would be better liked if she did. Long and cold, that was Molly, perfectly poised, with white tapering hands and a hard questioning mouth. Slim, almost breastless, there was not a man in the room who was not hypnotized by her supple, dangerous beauty, who did not long to chance fate and hold her in a deadly embrace, to kiss poison’s mouth and survive. Lentsch could see why the Captain had kept her for so long. She set him off perfectly; carefree, hedonistic, without a thought to the fault line that ran alongside her charmed life. She would jump it when the time came. And if she didn’t make it to the other side, well to heil with it. That seemed to be her attitude. She had been with Zep for a little over a year and, generals and visiting admirals notwithstanding, ruled their social gatherings with wit, ruthlessness and sexual bravado, seeing off any competition with a lightning, almost erotic, ferocity. Being attached to the Captain had given her power once she could have only married into and she revelled in its enveloping authority. “I blitzkrieged them all, darling,” she had boasted once. “The Tennis Club girls, the bridge set wives, the Saturday morning golfers. Now if they want any social life, any fun, they do it through me. There’s a price to everything in this world.” Tonight she had brought a friend, Veronica Vaudin, who, she claimed, “was just dying to meet you all,” which usually meant someone who, if not single, had become available and was looking for a protector. Handing her coat over to one of the stewards, Veronica bounced across the floor if she was made out of India rubber. She was a compact young woman exuding a cheerful domestic good health, with strong, muscular shoulders and a luxuriant bosom. The Major wondered idly where she had been these past two years; working her way up the ranks, perhaps. She clearly wasn’t from any of the better families, she was too familiar, too forward, too… too obvious. Veronica, Molly told them, was a leading light in Guernsey’s theatrical community. Since the occupation, amateurs such as she had turned semi-professional, and now she was a regular performer at the Gaumont. Veronica held out a bare bangled arm and grinned up at his patient face.
“You should come and see our next production,” she said lightly, brushing back her flaming red hair with a brightly painted finger. “April Frolics, it’s called. Vocalism, dancing, nigger minstrels. Just the thing to ease your troubles.”
Lentsch nodded politely. He remembered her well. Two Christmases ago, as a goodwill gesture, the Feldkommandantur had decided to fund the Christmas pantomime given by the Guernsey Amateur Dramatic and Operatic Society. Lentsch had been the guest of honour. Marjorie Hallivand, in her capacity as treasurer, had sat next to him.
“This play,” she had informed him, in a tone that reminded him of his mother, “is a particularly English affair, as much a part of our culture as the Just So Stories or Alice in Wonderland. But whereas Alice has to burrow underground, here the children fly across the rooftops.”
Lentsch had nodded earnestly. He was familiar with those tales of perilous childhood, of boys and girls lost in forests, captured by witches, devoured by wolves.
“To the moon?” he ventured.
“To Neverland. Where Peter Pan lives.”
“Ah, Pan. Half goat, half man.”
“A boy,” she said reproachfully, “though he is always played by a girl. It’s a tradition of British theatre. You’ll see.”
The opening scène had been set in a children’s bedroom with huge bay windows that looked out upon a scène of huddled rooftops. It was curiously reminiscent of his own childhood bedroom, his bed on one side, his sister’s on the other. Gazing out on to the badly hand-painted backcloth it seemed almost as real as the view he had grown up with, his grandfather’s army trunk by the window, the bricked stable yard below, the surround of fields, and beyond, in the patient distance, the hidden rustlings of the marshland, wet and secret and spiked with reeds, where he and his father and would lie waiting for bloody battle to rage; the baying dogs, the smoking guns, the flurried splashes of the thick green water, and at the end, the winged custodians of this elusive paradise laid out in blood-spotted ranks on the soft green bank of moss. But however far the two of them had paddled into the still waters of the marsh’s domain, however many birds they downed or wounded and watched spiralling out of sight, it was clear to him that they never managed to breach the marsh’s true sanctum nor exhaust the dazzling plumed legions that rose in chorus to protect it. Thus he had grown up believing that he lived close to a fairy land, a place possessed of both a magical past and a visionary foture, from where men blessed with supernatural powers would rise up through the mist to capture him and take him back to their watery redoubt, an impregnable, inviolable fortress, where some hard-won glory reigned in a state of permanent ecstasy. He lived with the possibility, nay the need, of transformation and recognized the demands that would be made by whoever had the will to wield such a transcendental sword. A leader! A visionary! A man blessed with powers that went far beyond those held by ordinary men. He existed, of that he was sure. He had always existed. In earlier times he had been called King Arthur, Siegfried, and come the future He would take on other names, hold other courts, fight other battles. For the moment He lay dormant, waiting to be woken in times of utter crisis, when the world had descended into chaos. There was, Lentsch knew, a heavy price to be paid before admittance into such exalted company; much to learn and much to sacrifice. In times of doubt, when the world did indeed appear irretrievably doomed, he would open up the old trunk in the now abandoned nursery, and take out the book their nana used to read to them, Struwwelpeter, and look at the pictures of unworthy children engulfed in fire, their thumbs snipped off by the man with flaming orange hair, his huge gleaming scissors dripping bright with their fresh and foolish blood. “The door flew open and in he ran, the great long-legg’d scissor man.” Such cruel power! Such inspiring terror!