Lentsch had sat in the dark and rolled his thumbs together, waiting for this Peter Pan. He could not understand why he had to be played by a woman but when she swung through the bedroom window, clad in a tunic of brown and green, he knew the reason. It was a typically British affair, an erotic fantasy based on denial and repression, where the body’s natural beauty had been gagged and hidden from view. He studied the girl’s form intently as she began to stride about the stage aping the thrust of virility with what she took to be a male stance, hands on hips, legs apart, head up. She was a rider, he deduced, with rider’s muscle in her flanks and long hours in the saddle giving spread to her rear. After searching for something (he could not quite determine what), she feil asleep. Lentsch was just about to ask Mrs Hallivand to explain, when another figure thundered in after him waving a tinsel wand. There was no ambiguity as to her sex.
“That’s Tinkerbell.” Marjorie Hallivand whispered. “A fairy.”
Lentsch tried not to laugh.
“A little…” he gestured carefully with his hands, “…full for a fairy, don’t you think?”
Marjorie placed her hand on his arm. “According to the author, Tinkerbell is slightly inclined to embonpoint.”
“Embonpoint?”
“Generosity of the bosom. Veronica is simply made for the part.” She sniffed. “A little overenthusiastic, our Veronica. But she means well.”
“Ah.”
“But we have some nicely brought up girls here as well,” she emphasized, like a guide describing a favoured resort, a claim she would not have made so lightly had she foreseen the change of circumstance the next two years would bring. “Most of the girls here are very natürlich, very slim. It was a holiday resort you know, before…” Her voice trailed off.
And will be one day again, according to Bohde, Lentsch had felt like telling her. After England had fallen and the war in the East concluded, this would be where tired soldiers of the Reich could come and recoup their strength. Guernsey would become a giant holiday camp, with beaches to bathe in and horses and nice slim girls to ride on. It was all nonsense, of course. England was not going to fall. Not now. Guernsey was Germany’s island of dreams. Neverland.
Mrs Hallivand had turned and, lifting the coat from her lap, revealed a small box of chocolates.
“I’ve been saving them up for a special occasion,” she confessed. “I know it sounds silly, but I feel like I’m at a first night at the opera.”
She opened the lid and peeled back the crinkly black paper. Lentsch floated his hand across the three rows, pretending to choose one to his liking. There was an increasing air of intimacy about Marjorie which he found disturbing. Though he had taken all that was hers, her house, her furniture, the source of her family’s fortune, and though on clear evenings she would sit by her narrow stone window and hear her husband’s enemies drinking their way through his wine cellar, it was clear that for all that Marjorie Hallivand enjoyed his company. They were of the same class, after all, shared many of the same interests. He remembered her expression of relief mingled with admiration when he had first stepped into the Villa’s library and remarked on the three Russell Flints hanging on the walls, two portraits of gypsy women bathing and a landscape.
“Surely they suffer too much light here,” he had said, putting out his hand as if to protect them.
“That’s what I’ve been telling Maurice for years,” she admitted, standing next to him. “The middle one is Northumberland, you know. On the east coast.”
“Ah, the east coast. I sailed there once. Norfolk. With my father.”
“I have another nude of his upstairs,” she told him. “Smaller. I don’t suppose I could take it with me?”
Lentsch had carried it over that very afternoon, wrapped in sacking, and had spent an hour with her while they found the best place to hang it. Standing back they looked at the young woman’s body with detached frankness.
“He gets the texture of her skin so very well,” she ventured. “The fullness of her young flesh, almost aching to be touched. It is difficult, to get that feeling.”
The Major shifted in his shoes, determined not to be embarrassed.
“The breasts are a little too stylized, don’t you think? A little too perfect, a little too…”
“Pert?”
“Exactly.”
“Young girls tend to be like that, though, especially the models he used. I knew her, you know. Quite a heartbreaker in her day. Lovers by the score. Of course, in those days, that was what Paris was for.”
“Paris?”
“It’s where I learnt about life, Major, where I learnt how to live it. You know it?”
“Certainly I know it. After Berlin, Paris is my favourite city.”
Mrs Hallivand clasped her hands. “It’s so long since… You must tell me all about it,” she determined. “And in return I shall tell you all about…all about the House!”
Lentsch did not understand.
“Hauteville,” Mrs Hallivand explained. “Victor Hugo’s old house. I am a trustee.”
She had taken him there straight away. The interior had been maintained exactly as it had been left it in ‘78—dark and heavy like a museum, with an echoing silence embedded in the walls that only long-stilled buildings can maintain. Threading their way through, Lentsch felt as if he had landed upon a treasure island and been led to a hidden chest which, when opened, revealed jewel upon jewel. She showed him the Gobelin tapestries, the table belonging to Charles II, the fire screen made by Madame de Pompadour. She led him before the great bed built for Garibaldi, but never used, and invited him to lie on its untouched length. Together they climbed up to the small glass house at the top where in each of the two corners facing the sea stood a little table where the author had written, always standing. Lentsch could hardly bring himself to speak.
“This is wonderrul,” he exclaimed.
“Isn’t it.”
“Wonderful. You could do anything here. Write books, paint, rule the world.”
“Oh, we don’t want any rulers of the world here,” Mrs Hallivand had chided him. “We’ve got enough of those already, haven’t we?” She caught her breath, startled by her own indiscretion. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, no,” he assured her. “You can say anything you like to me. But there are others, though, to whom you should be more circumspect.”
“Circumspect.” She repeated the word. “Are you as good with your own language as you are with ours?”
Lentsch would not let the compliment deflect him from his warning.
“My fellow officers, Captain Zepernick for instance.”
“But he seems such a charming fellow,” she said. “So polite.”
Lentsch shook his head.
“He is not?” she questioned.
“Oh, yes, he is,” Lentsch assured her. “But don’t let that deceive you. The Captain is from the new ruling class. He belongs to a different party than you or I. He is good company, but everything that takes place must do so on his own terms. If you are in his circle you are safe. If not…”