At the end of the beach he crosses up over the narrow peninsula. On the other side the Henschel engine is preparing to pull its line of empty trucks on their journey round the coast. Unnoticed he climbs aboard as the train moves off. He sits on the last truck, his feet dangling over the side, looking left and right, chugging up along the coast, past the little houses and empty lanes, past the barracks and converted greenhouses, skirting round old castles and half-completed gun emplacements, the water a dazzling deep, the rocks golden like tumbled honeycombs, past Perelle Bay and Vazon Bay, past Cobo, heading north, past all the long bays of summer where the flat roads meet the long sweep of sand, past where mothers and fathers should lie up on their elbows watching children running back and forth, shielding their eyes from the fierce bright of it, past the volleyball throwers and driftwood cricket players, past kite flyers and donkey riders and dripping ice-cream cone carriers; past shrieking horseplay and awkward bathers puiling wet costumes over embarrassed skin; past sleeping pink-eyed bellies and knotted handkerchiefs; past sandcastles and rock pools and buckets filled with salt water in which wriggling things wriggle. The gorse is beginning to flower, he sees primroses speckle distant banks. He is riding a holiday train on a holiday island.
Now the train has reached Picquerel Point and forks left, past the Church at Vale and up over the common to L’Ancresse Bay. Even before he can see them, he hears the noise of them, the sound of shovels and steam and the orders of impatient men. And there they are, a great swarming mix of them, on the beach below, pulled from every spare construction site; Poles and Hungarians, from Russia and the Spanish Civil War, travellers, troublemakers, Communists, simpletons, recipients of grudges and suspected fifth columnists, all the flotsam and jetsam of decadent Europe put to work in His cause. The train is idling now, waiting for the trucks to be filled. Directly below him a party of Todt workers are leaning on their spades. He knows what they have been doing, digging out the beach for the gravel mineer standing at the far end of the bay: sand for his cement.
The guard in charge of the group is moving down the line holding a battered bucket, from which he dispenses a ladleful of water to each man in turn. They are a motley crew. Old men mostly, nothing on their arms and nothing in their eyes, but they are practised in the art of acceptance. They do not grab at it too quickly, for then they would spill most of it, but nor are they slow, for lethargy in any form annoys the guards. Each one steadies the rim before tipping it carefully into his mouth, wiping any escaping drops over the grease of his stubble. The guard seems an amiable enough fellow, nodding to one or two of the men, sharing a roughshod joke. Van Dielen jumps down. He is standing at the head of the group but not in line with it. Hearing the noise the guard turns. He sees van Dielen at right angles to the other men, facing him. He recognizes his face but no fiirther. Van Dielen opens his mouth, touches his lips. He beckons. That’s what he wants. Though he has seen the state of his trousers and his shoes, he has no way of measuring how quickly his image has deteriorated. His hair is knotted, his skin unshaven and raw, his eyes bloodshot. There is excrement down the right leg of his trousers. To keep himself warm at night he has been using empty cement sacks with which to cover himself. In the damp air the dust from inside has hardened on his hair and his clothes. He looks strenger than the rest, but the guard knows there could many reasons for this. He may be a trustee, or have influential friends in the cookhouse. He may be able to do something entertaining—play a musical instrument, for example, or dance a jig. He might have some amusing physical attribute. They had one like that over in Alderney, a cook with a cock twenty-one centimetres long, thin and tapered like a pencil. They used to get him to toss himself off into the evening soup or pay one of the whores or one of the younger foreigns to suck him off. The cook was game for it, as long as it lasted. Poor bastards went blind after making some hooch out of iodine and potato peelings, half his hut and a couple of the girls too. Didn’t matter whether the slits could see or not, fact it made it funnier, them not being able to see who or what they were going to have to fuck next, but the cook and his mates were shot the next day and tipped over the cliff. But whatever it is that sets this man apart counts for nothing here. He has stepped out of line. The guard swings the bucket. Van Dielen gestures impatiently, mimicking the actions of the last man.
“Wasser, ja?”
Van Dielen nods.
The guard runs forward and throws the contents over him, pushing down the shingle, chucking a shovel after him. The others move back down, and with their heads down, start loading. Van Dielen follows their action; shovel in, shovel out, up in the air and throw. Shovel in, shovel out, up in the air and throw. His gravel lands short. The guard screams and shouts, sliding down, hitting him on the side with a handle of a spade. He falls. He lies there panting. The guard hits him again across the legs and walks away in disgust. The man next to him gestures him to get up, and pushing him to one side shows him how it should be done.
He watches. He shovels. He shovels all morning. He shovels all afternoon. The gravel flies through the air and lands in the truck. The truck is filled. He feels no pain.
At the end of the day the guard hands each man a stamped chit which entitles him to the evening meal. They walk back to the compound clutching them as if they were children holding tickets to a circus. The old man talks to him constantly, a smattering of English and German and another language he cannot recognize, though he does not seem to care or notice that van Dielen replies not once. A smile, a shrug of the shoulders, a shake of the head, are all he can manage, and even they are used not as contributions but rather as aids to his enigmatic silence. He is no stranger to the compound. He has passed it many times, on his way to the Manor House to see Ernst, driving past the huddles of men squatting on the scuffed earth. There are many groups such as his on the road now, trudging back to the compound, limp from the day’s work. He stands in line and shuffles to his soup. It is pale and warm. Grease swims on the inside of his tin cup. He is given bread too, hard and gritty, two thin slices.
They eat before going inside. His hut has the number seven written on it. There is a door at either end and a narrow passage-way down the middle. Inside men are already lying on the two-tiered level of planks. The old man steers van Dielen along. Halfway down he stops opposite a young boy curled up on the top plank. He has red trousers. His hair is white. He has a mucky old jacket round his shoulders. The old man indicates the space opposite while he slides onto the plank underneath the boy. The young boy reaches down and grabs the old man’s hand. They shake. The old man pulls his hand in the direction of the newcomer. The boy raises his head, smiles and winks at him. It is a beautiful smile, calm and full of tenderness. Van Dielen closes his eyes. There is nothing of van Dielen left in him now. Everything he has known or done or said is seeping out of the very pores of his skin. He is fading fast.
Ten