“Asked his help! You might as well have asked him for a broken neck and had done with it.”
Ned stepped off his bike. “She’s been safe with me, I can promise you, Mr van Dielen.” He held out his hand. “Ned Luscombe, sir.”
Van Dielen gave him a long look. “Luscombe. I had a man who worked for me once with that name.”
Ned felt relieved. “My father, sir. He was one of the chippies working here. Laid the floor, I believe. He’s not working much now. Lung trouble.”
Van Dielen nodded. “I thought I recognized the name. Well, Mr Luscombe, let me inform you that from now on your family’s name is of only interest to me in that I never want to hear of it again. Particularly when it has the misfortune to have the Christian name Ned placed in front of it. Do I make myself clear? If I catch you near my daughter again I’ll put the police on you and have you arrested.”
Tempted though he was, Ned did not confront him with the obvious retort. Isobel put her hand to her mouth, as she had on the boat coming over, and flashing him a quick look of guarded humour, turned away. Ned busied himself with the discarded bicycle to prevent himself from further stoking the man’s ire. Two days later she sent him the first of those hurried notes of exhortation, dropped through the letter box, instructing him that he was to be on the beach at six thirty the next day, and because of what had passed they broke into laughter the moment they met and then almost immediately fell silent, because she was where her father had forbidden her to be, with the man he had forbidden her to see, the sound of the swimming sea reminding them of their former conspiracy. They moved towards each other quickly and kissed, and with time running out became lovers without hesitation and without caution, on the soft belly of a damp cave.
“Your father does not like me,” he said, shaking the sand from his clothes.
“He doesn’t like anyone much,” she told him lightly, as if it were a small idiosyncrasy, like not eating meat or fearing mice. “We don’t do as we’re told.”
“We?”
“Humans. We don’t always run to plan.”
“Neither do roads and bridges all the time, I suppose.”
“Yes, but you can mend a road, pull down a bridge. He can work it all out on paper beforehand. We don’t obey such laws. We’re not predictable that way.”
“Oh, no?” Ned said and pulled her close again.
“Well, some things are,” she agreed. “Why do you think I wrote you the note? Just to go swimming again?”
For the remainder of his leave the notes came whenever the opportunity to meet arose. There was no real need for them. It made their affair more their own, more fun, that was all. They would meet down by the water lanes or in the abandoned semaphore station where watchers once stood, expecting Napoleon’s army, and occasionally, when she was at her most defiant, her most wilful, her most erotic, she would instruct him to present himself at the house, where he would be charged to seek and find her, in the soft clearing in the broad-leaved wild of the back garden, idly flicking through fashion magazines halfway up the stairs, or waiting in her own room, where to his constant agitation they would challenge the restless noise of the blinds with a restless rhythm of their own.
He tried to keep the romance quiet, but it was hard on an island Guernsey’s size. Though his dad thought it was simply holiday skirt he was chasing, Mum knew better. She could tell by the manner in which he parted his hair and walked out of the front door with a clean handkerchief in his pocket every morning that this wasn’t a two-week excursion, that this could be for all seasons. She kept quiet, ironing his shirts, brushing down his only jacket with a damp sponge, watching him set off down the lane through the kitchen window, hoping that his heart wouldn’t break, hoping that she was worth it. Uncle Albert was the only one who found out. He came across the two of them early one evening. They had their arms locked around each other, hardly able to take one step forward without the propulsion of another blind embrace. Albert was carrying an unwieldy bunch of delphiniums, destined for his wife’s grave, and was masked from view until it was too late to hide.
“You sure you can manage that?” Ned called out, embarrassed that his uncle should have caught him out, and Albert, recognizing his employer’s niece, wiped his hand on the side of his trousers and gave him a look which asked the same question.
“This is my uncle Albert,” Ned warned her, moving her forward, “the one I told you about.”
She took his hand.
“It’s you who I have to thank for my tummy troubles, I believe,” she admonished, and when Albert looked nonplussed, added, “The loganberries! Up at the Villa!”
Albert smiled. “And I thought it was them pesky birds,” he said.
“No. Just me. Ned here will have to arrest me,” and she took hold of Ned’s arm and hugged herself against him.
“Looks like it’s you who’s got him under lock and key!” Albert told her. Ned blushed.
“I have that,” she boasted, adding, “You won’t tell them, will you?”
“Them, miss?”
“Our elders and betters.”
“Nothing to do with me, miss, what you do.”
“Then I shall call you Uncle Albert too,” she promised him, and picking out one long stem for herself, kissed him on the cheek.
“He’s a great man,” he told her, as they watched him walk slowly away. “We used to go rabbit bombing together.”
“Rabbit bombing, what’s that?”
“You never do that? Bit of old pipe, a cup of sugar, some weedkiller, shove it down the hole, and boom!”
She put her hand to her mouth. “That’s horrible! The poor rabbits.”
Her horror was genuine. Ned changed the subject. He had told her too much.
His leave was soon over. After he returned to the cramped CID office in Southampton the letters came first from St Peter Port and later from Zurich, where she went for the winter. A week before Christmas they arranged to meet in London, she on her way back home, he on his day off. He waited for her by Eros in clothes bought, like the swimsuit before, especially for the occasion, but the moment he saw her stepping out of a cab, he wished he had not come. His suit was cheap and awkward while her clothes feil about her as free and as light as a summer rain. They were neither sure enough in their affection nor experienced enough as lovers to take themselves to a London hotel and order up a room, but instead repaired to a tea house and sat with their love affair lying broken on the table before them. Theirs had been a holiday romance, nothing more, he the native, she the tourist, despite her claim to the contrary, and it was foolish to pretend or hope otherwise. To hide her discomfort she talked of how she’d just learnt to ski, what fun it was and how he must try it. He wondered whether she knew the gulf she was digging between them. They parted, promising to meet again in St Peter Port for the New Year, but December ended and the old year was washed out and they did not join hands to watch the new one surge in. He went over to Pleinmont with Bernie, and she? why, thanks to Mrs Hallivand’s introductions she had made something of a hit that winter, sprinkling her elusive charm over the season’s parties like a rare flurry of Guernsey snow.
Coming back from their celebrations, he and Bernie decided to take a New Year dip and hurried down to the bay. It was one of those frozen nights, clear and utterly still, and though they stood on the jetty and dived in, it was all they could do to turn and strike out for the shore before the cold seized their limbs and dragged them down into its liquid heart. As they rubbed themselves down, Bernie pulled out a half-pint of plum brandy and took a swig before passing it over. Up above were the lights of the Villa Pascal, as keen as any lighthouse. At that moment the doors were flung open and they could see, racing along the sloping lawn, four figures with flaming torches in their hands, running round the garden in crazy circles. Three men and a girl whooping and laughing, the men calling her name, imploring her to dance, to kiss them each in turn. “Come on, Isobel,” Ned heard. “Forfelt! Forfelt!” and laughing she broke free and ran back in. The men followed, the windows shut. The shrieks and laughter were banished in an instant.