She began to blush, the glow stealing over her as soft a pink as the setting sun sweeping across the distant mountain.
“Perhaps we might meet on the slopes tomorrow?” he offered. “I promise only to fall in your arms,” but again she denied him, saying that this night was their last. For a brief instant, as she lowered her eyes on those words, he had hopes, but then he heard her companions giggle and, with the older woman sitting in the corner, he knew that it would not happen, and that perhaps he did not wish it either.
“I am sorry,” he said, “to meet you at the end of your holiday,” and she, safe in the knowledge that she was immune to his advances but quite prepared to flirt, replied, “I am not on holiday. I am at school.”
He took the bait readily enough.
“I thought all schoolgirls wore uniforms,” he mocked in a deliberate tone of seduction.
“Uniforms are for children and grown men playing silly games. Not grown women. We have better things to do.”
“In our country,” he said, “women have only three things. Kinder, Kirche und Küche. Children, Church and kitchen.”
She gave a little shudder.
“I don’t think I would like to be a German woman,” she said, “if that’s all they do. Must be terrible for them, poor things.”
He shook his head.
“It is a good time for us now. There was too much bad things in the world. Too much…” he rubbed his thumb against his fingers, “greed from the bosses, too little work for the ordinary man. Too much uncertainty. Capitalism. Communism. That is all finished now. We work as one. The women too.”
She glanced back at the chaperone. “You sound like our Miss Gatting. She’s taking us there next term.”
“To Germany?”
“Yes.”
“May I ask where?”
“Munich.”
“Munich! It is where I atn stationed.”
He had given her his address, but by the time he returned to his barracks he had forgotten all about her. And here she was again, swinging across the stage in black stockings and bells, with a purple cap upon her head.
“You met Isobel?” Mrs Hallivand sounded slightly put out.
“I know. It is so strange. I am sure it is her. Perhaps you could invite her to one of our lunches.”
Mrs Hallivand looked doubtful. “Her father is very protective. Before the war I would have said too protective. But now?”
Lentsch waved away her objection. “No, no. I would like to meet her. Introduce me after the performance.” His voice was drowned out by another burst of applause. Another pirate had been eaten. He lifted his programme in the air. “And Mrs Hallivand.”
“Yes?”
“After today no more riding boots on the pirates. No more arms in the air as they go under.”
But that night, behind the stage, Peter Pan had led him to Neverland too, and like the lost boys whose hands he shook so solemnly at the curtain’s call, he never wanted it to change. Standing at the foot of the garden, looking down on the wheel of gulls calling over the swollen sea, at times he could feel himself wishing that the war might never end. Yes, he missed his homeland and the beat of his birthright, yet every journey he took home was made in fear, not simply because of the danger, or the irrevocable signs of destruction taking hold in Germany’s soul, but fear for what might happen here in his absence. For unhappily Guernsey was not isolated from the world’s misfortune. It lay upon this turbulent sea, soaking up the waters of war as quickly as a sponge. Three weeks he had been away. Three weeks. A lot could happen in Neverland over three weeks. Parties, chance meetings, a crocodile’s jaw quickly snapping.
He shook Veronica’s hand. The bangles on her arm clanked discordantly.
“I am delighted to meet you,” he told her. She dropped her eyes and gave a little curtsy, which embarrassed him. Her embonpoint was certainly getting a good airing tonight. Zep, unable to ignore his natural inclination, clicked his heels and bowed low in order to take a closer look. Lentsch could see his nostrils flare as they approached the landing zone. Molly stared ahead, furious. Poor Molly, for all her sculptured poise nothing could disguise the fact that she was helplessly in love. When her guard was up, the hard quality of her character surfaced and split her haughty composure like fissures on a rock. Lentsch had told Isobel to warn her that Zep was here to have a good time and didn’t give a jot for the lot of them, but if she had said anything Molly hadn’t taken any notice, or couldn’t help herself. And why not? Zep would be kind and genereus for as long as it suited him. As Molly had once said, when they had been arguing over the dangers of fraternization: “Well, what else are we supposed to do? Stay in purdah until it’s all over? What’s the point of that? All the good ones will have been snapped up by then.”
“Yes, Molly, but what if we lose?” he had asked.
She looked at him as if he had blasphemed.
“Then I’d have to pack my bags and skedaddle,” she said. “But you’re not going to. Not if you play your cards right.”
“Not if He plays our cards right,” Lentsch had corrected.
Molly stood on her heels and kissed him a little too near his mouth. At that moment the huge boom of a gun sounded, very near, momentarily silencing the crowd. Someone drew back the curtains. Another made a nervous joke. Molly had clutched at Lentsch’s arm.
“What in Heaven’s name was that?” she said, staying close. She wasn’t frightened but she made use of it.
“Battery practice,” Lentsch told her. “Miles away.” Molly made no attempt to move away.
“I thought Isobel might be with you,” Lentsch said, unlocking himself from her grasp. Molly took the hint and backed off.
“You’ll have to wait, Gerhard,” she warned, tapping him on the lips. “Trouble at home.”
Molly grabbed hold of Veronica’s hand and pulled her across the room. Dr Mueller arrived, armed with a fresh batch of nurses from Bremen, their noses red with cold. Their first time abroad and loving every minute.
“I hope you have brought your pyjamas,” Zepernick told them as he handed out the steaming glass cups. “Otherwise no admittance to the party later on.”
Mueller ushered his flock over to where a group of officers sat. The English girls watched with guarded interest. While they regarded German men as their equals and allies, they looked upon the women as the enemy, inferior, untrustworthy and a threat, though usually there was little cause for alarm. There was a definite pecking order here, based on rank and class, that applied to both sexes and both nationalities. As a rule the German officers preferred English girls. German women, here as nurses, translators and administrators, were strictly temporary; ‘cannon fodder’, the soldiers called them. It was not unusual for a man with strong appetites to use a whore for immediate gratification, a madchen for weekends in France or an evening at the Regal watching a German film and a long-standing Guernsey girl who could give him hope and stability and a sense that somehow the war had already achieved a purpose.
Bohde stood up and shook hands with each of the nurses in turn. Lentsch couldn’t hear what was being said, but Bohde appeared to be explaining something, quickly and earnestly. Some expressed surprise, others giggled; one simply walked away. Most of the them turned to Mueller for confirmation. Bohde starled writing their names down in a little notebook he produced from his pocket.
“What the heli’s he up to?” Lentsch said. “He’s surely not asking them all out.”
“Typical,” Zep mocked. “I must try it out myself. Seduction by name, rank and number.”
The evening was starting. The room was filling up. A voice called out for the glass boot. Lentsch looked over. A young captain from artillery wanting to show off to his new chums. No chance. Someone started playing an accordion. Another started to sing. Lentsch turned to Zep and shouting above the noise, told him the dread news.