Alderney - He should never have slipped up, having to cop to a youthful knowledge of Marion. Though Gisbonnhoffer himself had seemed interested solely in re-hashing old times and having a chat about his fiancee, and certainly had not lifted so much as a finger to hurt or attempt to physically persuade him, this other devil, 'Specialist Joseph' as he had heard him called, seemed to find some sick pleasure in hurting him without any clear objective. He never even asked any questions. He just hooked him up to that damned machine and started playing with the switches.
There were moments where Mitch found he desperately longed to be asked something, just so he could break (in whatever way was wished) and be released (even though probably only momentarily) from its sadistic grip.
Sark - Farm of Blind La Salle - The Nazi law forbidding assembly had not kept many away. Stephen, himself, seemed the only one unsurprised by this.
It had been decided Robin and Wills would attend the funeral service, Carter and Djak (now de-loused) would be hidden in one of the barns further afield (though not in the 'shit shack' hideaway, things not that desperate, yet). Carter had sensed something of a weird new tension between Wills and the Gypsy boy since their time in La Salle's washhouse. Before Wills had left them to their waiting game in the distant barn, the RAF pilot had asked about it.
"Oh, that," Wills had said, averting his eyes slightly. "We had a bit of a dust-up, we two...over the bath."
"Really?" Carter replied. "I have always heard the highest praise for the hygiene of his people."
"Well," Wills confessed, "'twas not over the bath, in point of fact. He wouldn't take off his clothes and get started, and when I went after him about it, his shirt ripped in the scuffle, and he drew a knife on me."
"A knife?" Carter asked, throwing a sideways glance at the boy. "Thought we'd shaken him down as good as could be at Mrs. Rufford's."
"So did I," agreed Wills, knowing a sheen of sweat was probably starting to bloom on his upper lip at the questioning over the last forty-five minutes he had just spent. He resettled the shirt he had found to put on about his shoulders, thankful for its relative warmth. "He seemed to think I was set to rape him." He swallowed hard, surprised at how difficult it was proving to continue to invert the gender pronouns.
Carter muttered what had the sounds of a very eloquent curse in a language Wills could not understand, he assumed Russian. But he knew it was not directed at him, it was for the Jerries, and their camps, and their soulless behavior toward their fellow man that would put such fear (such a very real fear) into a boy. Believing he could expect harm even from among his new protectors.
"Don't worry," Carter referenced the fact he had not been there to smooth things with translating, "it won't happen again."
"No," Wills half-coughed. "That won't happen again." He was not sure when the best time would be to bring up the subject of Djak's female status. Whether it would be best to share it first with Carter, or wait until he could speak to be understood well enough to Djak to ask him...her what her wishes in the matter were. Was it more likely she would be sent away from the unit if it were known? Was it possible Robin might flinch at housing and operating with a girl, a woman, so close to his men? Would he expect that her sex might cause trouble, division or distraction?
Wills wasn't sure. Might be best to take it up with Mitch first, if only one could truly depend upon him keeping his mouth shut.
At the farmhouse as Stephen greeting mourners, he was feeling good about the turn-out, feeling pleased with the outcome of his session with the flier.
"Where are you from, in America?" he had asked shortly after sharing with him what his new identity would be.
"New Jersey," Carter had told him. "A city called Hoboken."
"A Jerseyman after all!" Stephen had nearly clapped his hands.
"Jersey boy is more the term used there."
"Yes, but don't you see? What a gift we have been given-we needn't even lie when others ask where you have come to me from. 'Jersey' we shall answer, clear of conscience, and never afraid of slipping up or forgetting."
Carter smile came on slowly at the former rector's delight.
"We may thank the Lord," Stephen instructed, "and the good works of Jersey's long-ago Bailiff and governor, Carteret, who received that auspicious colonial land grant from Charles II, and so dubbed this territory on which your Hoboken sits, 'New' Jersey." He leaned in for a moment, as though selling a joke, "though I think he could not have imagined us, nor our present predicament."
But here was Robin, and by the feel of the air about him, not simply arrived only to join the ready-to-begin service. Oxley stepped close to him and warned, "there are soldiers sighted, three visible, coming up the lane."
Stephen did know Oxley would have exchanged significant looks with Wills Reddy at this dismayingly dire news.
But Stephen was not to be deterred. He did not attempt to keep the news secret, but turned and shared it with the ten others present. Surely, he felt, whether to stay or go, or attempt to hide in the wake of their imminent discovery was up to each individual's conscience and potential fortitude in the light of possible imprisonment.
"One of my men," he referenced Robin, "has seen soldiers on the lane. Their only destination, I think, can be the house. You each must do as you must, but I will have us start the service now, that we may finish what we may before their arrival." He inclined his head over to where he last knew Dick's parents to be located, and put on a hopeful expression.
The tiny gathering had sung two short hymns when a fist was heard at the very near front door. Not entirely like the angry pounding of the other night, but reminiscent enough that he knew he should feel fear at the sound of it. But he did not. Everything in the world was here for him, save Louise. If now were his time to part with life, she was the only regret that he would carry with him to his last breath.
He knew that if she were here she would have spent the past hours bicycling from tenement to tenement to invite mourners to attend, and she would have thought his holding the service indoors, rather than out on the lawn to accommodate a larger crowd, somewhat chicken-livered, or at the very least, reserved.
La Salle signaled for Wills to open the door.
Three Germans, an odd number of soldiers, walked in. They said nothing, scanning the small gathering, noting those in attendance. They wore sidearms, but no rifles. They took no seats (there were none left, most present already stood) and did not speak.
Silence fell. Since silence, to a blind man, was like utter darkness to those sighted, Stephen worked to illumine it.
Because the soldiers had not introduced themselves, simply arriving much as had the other mourners, though a little late, he did not know who they were. He simply had to trust that Robin and Wills were present, and, he knew, would do the utmost possible to protect the Sarkese gathered here to mourn Dick.
And so he went on as though nothing of particular note had taken place. "We are here today to mourn Dick, who was a much-loved, and loving son, a good friend to many, and above all, a child of God." He cleared his throat, an unusual show of nerves for him, but he had not spoken in a service for many years now. "In my life I have known many things. I have known kindness, and I have known cruelty. I have heard the stories of many people, with lives different from my own, concerns and cares-emotional crises that do not mirror my own. But I will say this: when we look at these past trials, these past struggles, our lives and our focus before the war-what are they to us, now? In light of the world as we now see it, as we now struggle against it? Are they not like ridiculous, silly worries-the foolish buzzing of a fly-in comparison with displaced loved ones, sons in harm's way, the map of the world re-ordered, food and warmth, kindness so hard for many to find?
"What do our past woes of gossip or small gluttonies have to do with nineteen hundred and forty three? Where every day we are asked to make choices; to betray, to lift up, to contribute to what is wrong, or act upon what is right? All the while knowing the consequences.
"These past days, sitting with Dick, both while he lived and yet worked for me, with me, and then, sitting with him when I am the only one of us two with a spirit still on earth, I begin to think that I understand what is, what will ultimately be the greatest challenge of our generation. The most substantial crisis of our time.
"Certainly I have spent many hours wrestling with it. I do not doubt you have, as well, though you may not have seen it in such a grand sense. It is, simply, this: how can a benevolent God allow suffering? Does the world being as it is make God less powerful? Less God? Why do the undeserving suffer? Dick? (Though I do not believe he suffered for long.) The Giddons family? Is there a method to it? Is there a work to be done in it?
"The answer I have will not satisfy all, and some not at all, but it is this: God does not promise us earthly ease. He does not promise that we will not have to take a stand in our lives, that persecution and bereavement will not occur. He promises us the end. And Dick now has his end, with God. The cares of this world, the suffering he witnessed and any he may have endured are foreign to him, wiped away, now."
Stephen thought of the unexpected Germans in the room, he thought of Robin Oxley and, farther away from the house, the RAF pilot with whom Robin had such a deep grievance. "The question of suffering will endure," he said, "for when the suffering of 1943 has passed, and, we pray, removed itself from our beloved Islands, it will exist somewhere else in the world, as it has since time began. But for now, I call for forgiveness. For faith that the end will come, the promised end, and that, when it does, we would do well to learn to reconcile ourselves to one another.
"For whomever triumphs in this war, this transient (though it is so hard for us to see it as so) combat will one day end, and we must again coexist in the world. So let us be reconciled to one another, for now, and for the future. Let us resist, with all that is within us, and All that we might beseech from without, repaying evil with evil."
Slowly the mourners began to file past the wooden casket holding Dick. No one spoke as might usually be the case at a small family funeral, the Germans dampening any version of normal behavior among those in attendance, most of whom were convinced arrest was minutes away, especially after the nothing-short-of-seditious homily La Salle had just given.
The three Germans approached Stephen. The atmosphere in the room fell further silent, the air immobile. The first man stopped and extended his hand for the shaking. "Sir," the man said, his heels nearly clicking together with the salutation.
"ReichKaptain Lamburg," asked the former rector, surprise in his voice at recognizing a man he had met only a handful of times at Chief Pleas, "it is you?"
"Ja," admitted the soft-spoken officer, the highest-ranking German permanently billeted on Sark (the island not large enough to require the oversight of an Island Kommandant). "My friends and I wished to pay our respects to your man, Giddons, and his family. I trust we have not distressed anyone present?" His delivery of the question, though slow and considered, as was his way, rang with an unforced sincerity.
"We are privileged you came," Stephen told him, his own left hand coming to locate Lamburg's right, put out for the shaking.
The ReichKaptain leaned in to offer am earnest word of caution to the rector, "Mr. La Salle, your tenement is valuable to the feeding of our forces. You have not proven a problem of any kind. And while I respect your words just now, as do the men here with me, you must be more vigilant in your discretion in days to come. As with your run-in with Gisbonnhoffer," the ReichKaptain allowed himself a glance at La Salle's ears, "I will not always be able to shield you as I would wish to shield all Sark from the brunt of the Fuehrer's harsh designs on these Islands." He unclasped Stephen's hand, bringing his hand to grip the blind man's bicep in a gesture of comfort. "Please, will you now have sufficient manpower to work your acreage?"
Stephen nodded, and thanked him for inquiring.
"Perhaps," Lamburg continued, "I might come by sometime when it is convenient for you, and your many chores, and we might discuss further (though prudently) some of the philosophy you have just shared so eloquently in your discourse?"
Guernsey - Barnsdale Estate - It was late, after midnight, but not late enough yet to leave for the Nightwatch. She should have been excited, champing at the bit, as it were, to return herself to the airwaves. In doing so to save whatever lives of women Kommandant Vaiser may have set aside in St. Peter Port for shooting tomorrow if the Nightwatch again failed to broadcast.
She had slept some time following dinner, but she had had no time to tune to BBC, no time to discover any true Island news to share between the records she would play. Perhaps she would have to reference the Guernsey women taken and executed...she hated to think of it...in her name. Perhaps it was best to remain silent on that account and not mention it. The voice of the Nightwatch again broadcasting would prove enough of a slap in the face of the Germans, surely. No, it would be the Sanctus of Faure's Requiem. It would irritate the Jerries she had not chosen the Mozart, instead. Austrian, like their sick little Chancellor. No, not much in common, one hoped, with the Fuehrer and Wolfgang Amadeus.
She went over in her head the things Robin had instructed her to say, the coded phrases and words he needed her to work in, particularly about Carter's escape.
But her mind would not stay obedient and on-task. She kept finding herself looking into the waters stirring slightly in the Barnsdale indoor pool. It was a modest swimming pool, if such could be said for such an extravagance (much less such an extravagance that still managed-through Gisbonnhoffer's bequest-to function and be maintained during the limits of the Occupation).
One entered into the natatorium through the estate's attached hothouse, far less a planting shed than a display area for the flowers and plants of which the island's mild climate encouraged the proliferation.
The hothouse (which would have been dubbed 'the conservatory' at home, were it larger and more grand in its furnishings) held several benches and rattan chairs, but she found she rarely ever stopped in there, always convinced it seemed like getting waylaid mid-journey. The swimming pool had ever seemed the appropriate end-destination in this wing of the house to her. The always damp (whether from heat in winter or the oppositional cool of summer) tiles smelt of something freeing to her, the occasional statuary ringing the water (and one rather large piece, drilled for a fountain, within in) had, in her vacationing child's mind (and even, she had to confess, now) seemed a merry dance of satyrs and water nymphs, a rite mere mortals were not meant to witness.
This was her place of contemplation, the sun streaking through the many glass panes in the day, the low and subdued electric lighting in use here of an evening birthing its own breed of self-reflection, though no furniture in the space ever proved as comfortable as the inviting waters, the half-giggly, half-soothing feeling of the fountain's fall over one's head, one's face, like a rite of Poseidon.
Sir Edward had not understood the need for a swimming pool at his family's island estate. He had noted that Guernsey was rife with beaches, and ocean aplenty. As this estate was merely a house for summer holidays, what need of an oversized indoor 'bathtub'?
But Marion knew her mother had wanted the pool. Had wanted a solitary place to be near the water, without the public attention, without worries of propriety. And, of course, as always, she had outfitted it with the utmost taste. Like a Roman bath excavated on the Nighten property, its statuary, its ancient tiles and mosaics still in tact, Marion doubted there was another such refined bathing room in all His Majesty's realm.
It was here she had learned to swim before graduating to the choppy sea shallows.
Something stirred in the dark behind several large palm fronds.
"Who's there?" she called.
Elerinne Vaiser stepped out and showed herself, her eyes taking in the impressive space around her.
"Oh," said Marion, "Elerinne."
"Please, Lady Marion, do not call me that! No one ever calls me that. Call me Eleri. Why are you so sad? Do you mind so very much going to the shops with me tomorrow?" The girl's conversation had much in common with the pool's overflowing fountain. "Are you in any pain?"
Marion smiled in spite of herself. "I imagine I shall be fine tomorrow for visiting St. Peter Port with you."
"Oh, I am that glad! What a wondrous place this is," Eleri's eyes shone with appreciation of it.
"Well, it is not such a large pool..."
"You have seen larger?"
"Well, yes..."
"Inside of a house?"
"Certainly, one or two, even, in London."
"How amazing. How very breathtaking it must've been."
"Possibly," Marion agreed. "Though I dont think anyone spoke or thought as well of them as you do this."
"Are you sad?"
As with many interactions since the Occupation, Marion had to weigh her words carefully, never speaking the fullness of her feelings. "Oh, I was only thinking. Thinking about how I had wished my children to learn to swim, here. That is all, a bit of melancholy."
"Oh, dear," Eleri reacted quite starkly to her confession. "Did the prisoner that kidnapped you, did he do something to prevent you from being able to ever have babies?" A combination of horror and morbid curiosity mixed within the girl's eyes.
"No!" Marion answered, in a rather parental tone to calm what seemed to her oncoming hysteria. "Certainly not."
"Well then, why would you be sad? Why could your and Lieutenant Gisbonnhoffer's children not learn to swim here? Or is it that you think the Germans will lose the war, and you will have to leave this place and retreat to Germany to live? You would miss it, I think, such a place of magic."
Eleri's barrage of chatter left Marion's solitary thoughts struggling to keep up. "Patience, Eleri! Or I shall not be able to answer word one of your questions!" Despite her melancholia she found herself smiling at the girl's unabashed eagerness. "Do you always fly at people so?"
"Well, Lady Marion, I have never met a real lady before. That is, my step-father and my mother are out quite a bit in society. He is a baron, of course, but any 'ladies' or noblewomen I met with them were always overly plump grandmothers. And they wore plenty of diamonds, but certainly such stones did little to add to their allure. Not that I saw my mother above once a year, of course."
"Well," began Marion. "The first thing I must ask is you stop addressing me as, 'Lady' Marion until you can manage to be less heavy-handed in your delivery of it. I feel as though you are hammering it at me like a nail too stubborn to sink into the wood. You are meant to be my-mine and Geis'-guest here, so you must call me simply, 'Marion'. Especially if I am meant to call you Eleri so informally."
Fraulein Vaiser's demeanor altered in an instance, her eyes glowing with barely reserved curiosity. "Lady-Marion, do you like my father?"
"Your father, why-the Kommandant." Marion struggled to contain a sigh at the powder keg of a question. "You must understand, Eleri. He is very powerful here among the Islands. And we would do well to remember that, and respect him and his position accordingly."
"Well, not you, I'm sure."
"Whyever would you say that?" fear flooded Marion with a speed (in her relative exhaustion) that surprised her.
"Well," Eleri explained her logic, "Lieutenant Gisbonnhoffer certainly would not let anyone treat you with anything less than the utmost of respect and courtesy."
"Eleri," Marion asked, "have you even seen Herr Geis to be introduced to him?"
"Well, not exactly, no."
"Then how can you be so certain of the strength of his feelings for me?"
"Well, you're...look at you." Eleri was nearly rendered speechless as she tried to articulate the world she had stumbled into as she understood it. "You're amazing," she referenced Marion's kidnapping (about which she had learned much in her short time here), "and brave and...plucky, and how could any man not be? And he's asked you to marry him, right? To be his and only his alone, forever, right?"
Her fear allayed, confident she was dealing only with an in-love-with-love young woman, Marion let the sigh out. But it was not an unkind one. "Eleri, I think you had best get to bed."
"Where have you put the driver for the night? Is he out in one of the garages?" she stood on tiptoe, as if she might see them through the glass from here, "I wanted to ask him about a scarf I was missing."
"He has been housed with the other men on staff, on the upper-most floor. But propriety," Marion felt quite certain this was a word with which the girl had little familiarity, "dictates that it is too late to disturb him. I shall have him sent to you first thing tomorrow."
"Yes, well, thank you." Fraulein Vaiser moved to exit back out into the hothouse.
"Please remember," Marion called after her, "you are welcome to swim, anytime."
London - Grey Goose Gentlemn's Club - One of the club's staff had brought Sir Robert, Earl of Huntingdon the letter he was studying over during a time in which he usually would be studying one of the day's papers.
He did not know the other members of his club (mostly men of his age or older, as the younger generation were for the most part gone off to the war) had begun to whisper about him when he was not around. To muse on the complete change in the Earl of Huntingdon. Several had wondered, at the inexplicable infusion of gregariousness his nature displayed, if he hadn't succumbed to drink, or possibly (after all this time) women.
Surely something had to be accounted for, for a man once thought the utter definition of staid and dependable, the very embodiment of 'Keep Calm, Carry On'-ness to display a new lightness in his step, to engage in conversations that did not so much as touch on the international situation, stocks, business or government.
He seemed more often at the Grey Goose club these days, or perhaps he was in London the usual amount, yet his presence was simply more notable of late.
Just days ago two of the valets had actually paused belowstairs to wonder in awe, and check and see if the other had noticed it as well: something about the corner (just the smallest, barely-there corner of the Earl's eye) that brought to mind...one could hardly articulate it to the other...something of the Viscount, of Robin Oxley (may he rest in peace) who had more than made his mark (and had so relished the making of it) in his day at The Tripp Club, at which one of them had priorly been employed. How could this be possible? A man, who in his son's life had so rarely (if ever) resembled him, suddenly and surprisingly taking on a mischievous glint? A crinkle of impish mirth where neither crinkling, nor imps, nor mirth had yet occurred before?
The Earl read his piece of mail without the slightest awareness of the stir he was causing among his peers, men so unused to being stirred.
It was from Lady Sophie Miller. "It has been proposed that we ask your permission to plant a wintertime victory garden in among the flower beds of Kirk Leaves' conservatory. As you know better than do we, the warm water pipes buried in the floor and walls will prevent any freeze from robbing us of our harvest. As for the worthwhile nature of the venture, we shall reap the delicious rewards of our labor, and learn something of Science along the way. However, I have been quite strict with the children that we must not begin the task without your permission, and, we do hope, your attendance at the planting. Little Nan is quite decided that you must yourself spade into the first bit of earth."
He chuckled out loud, entirely unmindful of the fact that he was in the club's reading room, where noise of any sort (save the ungovernable snores of the eldest members) was forbidden. Truly, he could not have enjoyed any snippet of financial news any better.
Bravo, he thought, Bravo, Lady Sophie. Really, her tenacity and dedication to the children that he had agreed to take in at Kirk Leaves in the wake of the Blitz and other reasons of wartime displacement (several there had been evacuated from the now-Occupied Channel Islands) left him surprised and (and this he had not felt in a very long time) quite pleased.
He had always known Lady Sophie to be of a kindly bent, and more involved with the raising of her son, Mitch, than most women of her station, who left such tasks up to nannies and nurses. But her handling of the child tenants at Kirk Leaves had left the Earl convinced that, again, excepting her elevated station in life, she would have made a remarkably fine school mistress.
In the beginning of his decision to accept displaced English children and house them at Kirk Leaves, he had agreed only to take in boys (it seemed to him best, he had some level of familiarity with boys), and four at most.
But it had been no more than a week later that Lady Sophie had arrived for a visit, taking him to task over the many still-unused bedrooms (she had, he believed, called them 'legion') and closed-up wings of the manor.
She had given a compelling (for her), if scattered speech on patriotism and brotherhood, and the next thing he knew, seven more boys had arrived, two with several sisters from which they had not wished to be parted. And so, girls, too.
Lady Sophie had visited again. And again. He had begun to fear she was throwing over other meetings on her social calendar to stop in and check on the children. She spoke less and less of who was wearing what, spent less and less time musing on the loss of Mitch, and ways to commemorate his untimely death. Her bustling nature suddenly seemed to have found a meaningful purpose, an entirely unsilly expression.
He could see in her such a craving, such a tender heart for these (at present) parent-less children, confused in new surroundings, some quite alone even when with the group. And as the summer holiday had drawn to a close he had finally given in, and took it upon himself to ask her to oversee the children's education during their time at the manor (however long it might prove).
She had taken to it like a duck to water. The children were not from prominent families. One or two had never lived with indoor plumbing until coming to Kirk Leaves. None had ever known a life with servants, or dressing for dinner. Lady Sophie had enthusiastically insisted on elocution and deportment lessons to go along with the reading and sums.
And now, it would appear, they were to take on gardening produce. (Something he was quite sure Lady Sophie had never attempted before, the only cabbages she would have encountered, cabbage roses, cut for the vase on her drawing room piano.)
He let his mind imagine, for a moment, the conservatory-his wife's beloved retreat-mulchy with radishes, turnips and winter tomatoes in and among some of the (what he was told were) exotic plants so assiduously seen to by Wadlowe and tended by the gardener kept on staff.
Unexpectedly a memory pinched him. His son, his Robin had been seven (close in age to Perry, living at Kirk Leaves now, though Perry was lesser in height). He had been so very proud, pulling his father by the arm into the conservatory, outlining his magnificent plans. A plantation, like those in the Virginia colony, only to be at Kirk Leaves! The boy had taken the Earl's best tobacco and 'planted' it, sprinkling it in rows he had scratched into the loamy soil with a stolen silver shrimp fork.
Oh, the look on the boy's face! The Earl had no heart to tell him it would not grow, no more than a planted pound sterling.
He had thanked Robin as effusively as his nature allowed, accepting his young son's admirable intention to supply his father with homegrown pipe tobacco.
He thought about how, even years later, Robin grown, when he, himself walked past that particular patch of soil he would always search with his eye, scouring it for any shoots, any possible evidence that something was growing.
He knew now that it was not tobacco plants he had felt stirring there, growing, it was only another leap forward in the love of his son, (so very much) his wife's child. So like her he had feared not knowing how to raise Robin once she had died...Sir Robert shook his head to clear the cobwebs of memory. A garden to be planted in his conservatory. Surely, he must be there, ceremonial spade at the ready. Little Nan was quite right. Now, he must be certain they had at least one good row of tobacco, for luck. He chuckled and patted the pocket of his suit coat, his leather pipe tobacco pouch within. Yes. Good.
Barnsdale - the uppermost floor - male staff dormitory - He had never been in service, known a few blokes here and there who had. Most of whom had lost their positions from nipping into their employers' wealth one way or another. Of course, they were no doubt the exception to the rule for those in service. After all, in his pre-war line of work one rarely met a bloke without a bust or two for some mischief or other on his record.
He sat on the narrow iron bed, probably not dissimilar to those in some of the orphanages he'd had the misfortune to bounce between as a young boy. But though the frame was quite utilitarian, the mattress proved well-tended and comfortable, the linens fresh, and (at least in this) he had to give the Nighten family credit for doing right by their employees.
It was a little before one in the morning and yet he still found his mind going back to what there had been of supper. He tried to tell himself it had not been such a monumental occasion, only it had been a long time since he had sat down to...well, in truth, a long time, meaning never. There had been courses, and the selection of polished silver utensils by his plate seemed to go on forever.
At one point he recalled Marion thanking Fraulein Vaiser for her generous rations' contribution to the spread.
There had, in fact, been a choice for dessert of treacle sponge or apple suet pudding. Ignoring the implied choice, he had taken some of both, sorry to note there was no way to transport such delicate English ambrosia back to the rest of the lads on Sark.
He had wondered if this was always how the 'other half' lived. After all, due to the Occupation they were supposed to be in straitened circumstances (certainly everyone else on the Islands was), but if this were 'straitened circumstances'...Blimey, he might consider wedding Gisbonnhoffer, taking on the unwanted daughter of the Kommandant, if it brought one two choices of dessert.
And the damask wallpaper above the handsome chair rail. Well, he certainly had no experience admiring such, but between the dining room's swanky surroundings and the way Sir Edward and Marion had outfitted themselves, dressing especially for the meal (even Fraulein Vaiser in a frock clearly borrowed from Marion's closet), his eyes felt as though they had been on a veritable tour of priceless antiquities and Old Master's paintings at the National Gallery. It had nearly been difficult, in the space of that room (that meal), to recall that not only was it 1943 (and not 1922), but that there was a war going on. And them in the very belly of it.
A knocking at the sleeping room's door broke him away from his reverie.
"Yeah, come," he called, to whichever of the staff needed to speak with him.
The door pushed slightly open, then sprung open all the way, showing the Kommandant's daughter in its frame before she stepped through and pulled the door shut behind her, sealing them both off from the men-only hallway.
"Mind you, Fraulein," Allen said to her, "I don't think they take too kindly here to girls wandering about among the male staff's dormitory. Might not be too safe for you, either."
Her hair was in a braid wrapped around her head several times in the crown-style. The braid was perhaps less severe than it had been earlier in the day when she had first disembarked the German supply ship she had sailed on from France. She still wore the stylish (though not tailored for her) periwinkle frock she had borrowed for dinner. She held her shoes in her hand.
He looked at her with one eyebrow raised, the other uncertain of whether to join it, or further punctuate his curiosity at this surprising turn of events. His mouth (he did not try to curb it) began to curve into an uncertain smile.
"Mr. Allen," she began, her breath somewhat rushed, no doubt from the steep incline of the servants' stair (the only passageway with access to this floor). She took a step closer.
"Dale," he encouraged her, "please." He chose to ignore propriety (she certainly had thrown it out the window by coming up here), and did not stand in her presence, but remained seated on the bed.
"I, there was, that is, a...scarf..."
She threw herself at him with such force that he almost fell back onto the mattress, his hands not free to catch himself.
She had no trouble finding his mouth, nor, surprisingly (or perhaps, not) did she lack passion in the act she had taken upon herself to practice upon his person.
A far cry from his trespass upon Marion before dinner. He purposed early on in the kiss not to dead fish her, whatever her reasons for forcibly snogging him, he was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.
He did find it necessary to slow her down a bit, settle her, lest her teeth split his lip, her tongue end up in a knot. But other than that, he let her have her way.
Momentarily she came up for air. Not sure what she thought might be going to happen next, he made certain he was in control of his hands, and that they were removed from any proximity to her person.
"Well," he said, as always with a gift for understatement. "That was unexpected."
She had taken up a seat on the mattress beside him, and had begun to studiously examine her own hands. "I dont want to," she began, not finishing. "That is," she lifted her eyes to his, still managing somehow to look up at him through her lashes in a fetchingly distracting way. "I don't really want to go to bed with you."
"Naw," he agreed, shaking his head, surprised to be charmed by her schizophrenic manner. "Didn't think you did."
Her chin shot up, her eyes turned sharp. "Why not?"
"Well," he teased, "you're just up here to ask about yer scarf, aren't you?"
She did not immediately grasp the teasing. "My scarf? Oh, no. There is no scarf."
"Oh," he commiserated, "No scarf. Well, what brings you to seek me out, then? Our scorching chemistry at dinner? During which you spoke to me not once? Belief that if you distract me you might rob me of my billfold and its very few Reichmarks and scrip?" He grinned at his own cheekiness. "Or are you here to test my loyalty to the Kommandant?"
She scoffed hard at the name. "I am here to convince you to help me escape this island, and return to France."
"Really?" It was his turn to scoff. "And what makes you think I could help you do that?" His mind saw the disappointment in her face. "Oh, yes, so you were throwing yourself at me, offering up your body as a sort of...good-faith payment?"
Her eyes registered a hurt he had not put there. "Am I not pretty enough?"
"How's that?" he asked, "not pretty enough?" He lifted her chin with his hand. "You have, I would have to say, and I pride myself on being honest and fair in such matters, more than the average allotment of pretty."
She brightened. "I am? I do? Really?" Her face fell again, "but not to-die-for beautiful. Not like Lady Marion. Men would do anything for her. Don't you think? I mean, you're a man."
He did not scoff at this, nor did he grant it any credence. "And you are yet a girl. How old are you, Ellie," he improvised her a nickname. "Seventeen?"
"Nineteen," she announced with sharp pride, "and soon enough twenty."
"Ah, well, even then, you're not done sweetenin', yet. Hasn't your fiance told you as much? Surely such a lucky man would have written plenteous love notes for you to memorize about how fond he is of your face, the curve of your earlobe? That spot between your brows that telegraphs your thoughts?"
"My fiance?"
"Yes," he recalled to her, "Yanick, the Jewish Communist Resistance fighter the Kommandant is so intent on keeping you away from?"
"Oh," the spot between her brows wrinkled. "I'm not engaged to Yanick."
"No? Well, that's an encouragement, I suppose. A man might not take too kindly to another accepting such 'lip service' from his future bride, even in the case of it being used to grease the wheels of an escape."
"I don't know if he would mind."
"Not the jealous type?"
She shrugged. "I can't say for sure. I don't know him very well."
"Don't know him very well? But you ran away from your school twice to marry him!"
"Well, yes, I did that," she agreed, her words halting. "But I only really met him once, when I found him searching the school's larder for something to steal to eat. He is a great man, Mr. Allen."
"Dale."
"...With important principles of honor and self-sacrifice, love of his fellow man. If I can find him again I know we will be together. We are made for each other."
He half-chuckled. "Look, Hen, I have no way to get off this island without your father's approval. Taking you anywhere other than St. Peter Port tomorrow would be risking my life, a risk a bit too high to make-even for fated-to-be not-yet-lovers who met in a convent school larder."
"Do you have a girl?"
"What? Just the one? No."
"I could be your girl, I could go to bed with you."
He exhaled. "Wouldn't change that I value surviving this war more than your romantic happiness." Finally, he stood. "Now, off to your room and bed with you."
What he saw before him was a dangerous (mark his words) dangerous girl standing on the cusp of womanhood whose slightly still-clumsy ways did little to distract a chap from what would obviously sooner rather than later blossom in their place: a woman who would know her own power (no longer having to consult a man's opinion on her looks, her appeal), and, if not soon shown how to curb and appropriately express it (and cultivate other important qualities), would use it (as she had tried tonight) to manipulate and control those (especially men) around her.
In this he saw, very much, how she could be the Kommandant's child; hungry for power and control.
The offer of sex was merely a last-ditch plan, now, tonight, her eyes and demeanor showing transparently to him how worried she was he would go for it, while at the same time being afraid he mightn't. Soon such tactics would graduate into more of a game, a libidinous chess match, and those she might choose to practice it on less kindly than he.
He found he did not care to imagine her growing into such a woman. He found himself rather pleased, actually, that of all places she had been sent here, to Lady Marion's estate to live and grow. To sweeten. Surely an acquaintanceship or friendship with Marion, with the woman behind the Nightwatch, could only mend one's course in such matters.
She had stood obediently and moved to the door to leave, as he had directed. Taking her hand off the knob she turned, slightly biting her lower lip. "Kiss me again before I leave?"
"Wot?" Now there, truly, he knew himself to be charmed, such daring to be found among such natural timidity. Dangerous, he thought. Dangerous. "Wotcher want out of me now?" he asked in jest, "Keys to the Duesenburg?"
"No," she said. "Just the kiss. You kiss good."
"Yes, well, don't think you're massaging my pride, there, you little minx. 'Heard that one before, haven't I?" But he looked at her, there, all but squinching her eyes shut and puckering, and feelings of danger seemed much further away as he thought to himself: 'What would Clark Gable do?'
And so, he did.
...TBC...