Ernst leant over and tapped him on the knee, pointing down to where Albert held his daily battle with the moles.
“By the way,” he shouted over the noise of the engine. “Some artillery fellows will be coming over to your place in the next couple of days. To take a look at the lawns.”
Lentsch felt a tug of unease. “The lawns?”
“Yes. There is a feeling that we require another battery post in that area. The bay in general is not sufficiently protected.”
Lentsch looked back to the wide sweep of Moulin Huet. It was empty save for a lone fishing boat making its weekly licensed lobster trawl along the coast. It might be one of the most secluded parts of the island, suitable perhaps for a reconnaissance landing of two or three, but it would be suïcide to attempt anything on a larger scale.
“Protected from what?” he shouted back. “Nothing of any size could land there. The coves are too small, the paths too narrow. Besides we have one gun emplacement on the other side.”
Ernst nodded in agreement.
“Precisely. If on that side why not yours? We don’t want any gaps to be found when…” He stopped and looked at Lentsch hard.
“When the invasion comes?” Lentsch suggested. Ernst shook his head at the impossibility of the thought.
“When it’s finished,” he offered lamely.
“Why not lower down?” Lentsch argued. “You could dig into the cliff more. Up there you wouldn’t see so much. Besides,” he gave a wan smile, hoping to rekindle Ernst’s goodwill, “it would ruin the view.”
Ernst attempted an unconvincing look of sympathy.
“I can see that. But digging into the cliff would take more men, more materials. It would take longer. I have to balance these things.”
Lentsch looked out in dismay. It would not simply spoil the house, it would break the spell woven around it. Suddenly the plane’s engines cut out and in the silence he was standing by the French windows smoking a cigarette, listening to Isobel’s clear laughter rising up from the beach. With luck he would be seeing her tonight. He tried to think of what he might say to her, how eager he should appear. He’d had a good three days in Paris, washing away the hold of her in as many nightclubs as one man could take, but once back home he could not wait to return. He had listened to his mother and sister, feeling increasingly awkward and irritated, as if they had no right to tell him of their hardships, the rationing, the bombing raids, the barely articulated feeling of gloom. He felt strangely unaffected by it, as if it had nothing to do with him. The war might ebb and flow across continents, but it hardly seemed to matter. Only Guernsey existed. Guernsey was the best place in the world.
The plane coughed, as if to remind him of Ernst’s threat.
“Well, I shall put up a fight, I can promise you,” Lentsch told him vehemently. “There are plenty of other places to choose from. That’s if it’s necessary at all.”
Ernst tapped his briefcase as if he had the plans already under lock and key. “I understand how you feel, Major,” he said. “And if I lived there, I too would do everything in my power to keep it just so. But as it is…”
So that was it. Ernst was beginning to flex his muscles. This was going to be how it was from now on, the army pushed aside in favour of those who held everything but their own prejudices in contempt. Lentsch tried to hold his ground.
“As you say. Unfortunately there is no extra room.”
Ernst smirked.
“In war,” he said simply, “people come and go.”
The plane slithered recklessly down the grass runway. For a moment Lentsch thought that they were going to crash into one of the Junkers parked at the far end. The brakes didn’t seem to have any effect at all. Ernst, catching his look of horror, affected a blithe indifference.
“Happens all the time,” he shrugged. “They have to mow the grass extra close because it grows so fast overnight. Once a month a plane crashes.”
Ernst jumped down and sped off without another word. Lentsch hauled his baggage out and followed. On the roof of the heavily sandbagged terminal stood a sentry, stuck there with legs apart, like a decoration on a wedding cake. Below, in front of the car, waited Albert. Though in his late fifties when he had first started to work for him, Albert had possessed the wiry strength of someone twenty years younger. Now he was beginning to look his age, but his skin still retained that depth of colour that only a man who has spent his working life outside can obtain. Lentsch promised himself that this month he would get up the nerve to ask Albert to sit for him. He was dressed as awkwardly as usuaclass="underline" baggy brown jacket, woollen waistcoat and a pair of dress-suit trousers with a velvet stripe down the outside leg that had once belonged to his former employer. His blue beret was draped over his head like a three-egg omelette. Most men were expected to show due deference to their German masters and lifting one’s cap, even raising it the slightest fraction, was considered a sufficient demonstration, but not Albert. Lentsch had never seen him without it, not even when he had roused him out of bed in the middle of the night. Zep was convinced the man was completely bald, but Lentsch wasn’t so sure. A bald pate would not worry Albert unduly. It was a definite state, a fact of life, a badge of hard-won honour. A thin straggle of something blowing across the top, however, he would not appreciate, for like many men who feign indifference to their appearance, Albert was vain. One had only to look at the shine of his shoes or the fussy knot of his tie to know that. And anyway, as Lentsch had pointed out to Zep, he went to the barber’s once a month.
Albert opened the door but made no attempt to help Lentsch with his luggage.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Lentsch told him, as he laid his bags carefully on to the back seat. “Where’s Wedel?”
Albert pointed to his stomach.
“The runs,” he said. “He went mushroom picking yesterday and came back with a basket of toadstools. I told him not to eat ‘em but would he listen? “At home we eat all sorts,” he boasted. He tried to get Mrs H. to have a few but I warned her off.” A smile of grim satisfaction crept over his face. “Been up all night. Bent double. He’s better now though. Except for the squits.”
“The squits?”
“You know.” Albert made an appropriate noise.
“Ah, yes. The squits.”
Albert coughed. “We all got something wrong with us these days. I’ve sprained my ankle and got this throat I can’t get rid of, Marjorie’s got the shingles and half the girls in Boots have been going in and out of the pox doctor’s clinic faster than a spring tide. Well, they’re not handling my prescriptions any more, I can tell you that.”
They drove off. As they turned out onto Forest Road Albert tugged at his beret, as if acknowledging the sentry’s salute. It took Lentsch by surprise. Was he merely being insolent or did he see himself as a quasi-official now? He soon got his answer. A kilometre down the road the car started to edge steadily to the left. Lentsch put his hand on the wheel and eased it firmly over to the correct side.
“Sorry,” said Albert.
“It’s quite all right,” said Lentsch.
“Habit of a lifetime,” Albert went on.
“But you couldn’t drive before we came,” Lentsch reminded him.
“It’s in the blood,” Albert countered. “Like the sea.”
“You couldn’t swim either.”
“Nor can I still.”
They turned onto the Rue des Escaliers. A short journey down and then out along the cliff. Five minutes at the most. He wondered if she would be there to greet him. He looked over at Albert’s face to see if he could detect her presence. Nothing.