GUERNSEY - outside Cabaret Alstroemeria - Gisbonnhoffer scowled with a vengeance. He knew he needed to see Marion home - or back to the place she was currently calling home - at this point in the night, but he also knew that his best bet for further distinguishing himself (and for advancement) was on staying nearby as the ailing Joss Tyr was moved - at his suggestion - and installed into the living quarters above Ginny Glasson's shop across the alley from the Cabaret.
His leaving the scene of such a shrewd triumph of cleverness in front of the OberAdmiral could lead to its easily being claimed - or exploited - by another officer in the bustle and inherent confusion that would follow.
He looked at the very few vehicles (cars - and those permitted to drive them - a rarity here) lining the street, waiting patiently (and with no expectation when they might choose to exit) to collect their owners. Like them, the Kommandant's driver was also meant to be here, waiting for the evening's entertainment to conclude. Of course, the show had been unexpectedly cut short by Tyr's out-of-nowhere collapse. But still.
Nearly ten minutes passed before the irritating Mr. Allen appeared with the Kommandant's car.
Geis turned his glower to the man now getting out from behind the wheel. "You have taken yourself off to Sumarez Street, no doubt," he sneered at the man, reaching out to remove several long, dark hairs that had become entangled in the brass buttons of the chauffeur uniform's coat.
As Geis referenced the well-known address of the brothel run by-and-for-Jerries on the island, Allen did not miss the look of distaste that momentarily flooded the face of Marion, but found himself uncertain as to its root cause. Either she was disgusted with such unfit-for-a-lady's-ears subject being discussed so openly and indecorously in front of her (in which case her distaste was firmly with Geis), or she had taken offense at the idea that he had attended upon such a place (in which case, naughty him).
Well, he could have told her, had she asked, that he for one took no pleasure in the company of a girl who couldn't say no, and that further (unlike the un-observant eyes of Herr Geis), he well knew every girl housed down on Sumarez to be a bottle blonde.
The darkness of the lengths of hair Gisbonnhoffer had pulled from his uniform should have been an immediate indication that he had been anywhere but Sumarez. But, as Allen was keen to keep his actual altercation with both Eleri and the Island constable well under wraps, he gladly accepted both Gisbonnhoffer's rebuke, and Marion's censure, not bothering to set either of them right.
As they drove into the night, navigating the rural stretches of the road to Barnsdale by only moonlight due to the blackout, Gisbonnhoffer attempted to compensate for missing a further chance to make an impression with his ultimate superior on the Islands by warming himself with the thought of the confidence Prinzer had placed in his canny suggestion, and by wondering: might he be able to maneuver around Vaiser (rather than through him), and manage to gain favor (and perhaps even a position) with Prinzer directly?
Marion Nighten sat in the car next to her inescapable Jerry lieutenant, and marveled that even now, in his quietest moment, at his least talkative, she carried within her the odd feeling that she could understand his mood. They had lived closely with one another for nearly four years, now.
He was not - never was - an effusive man. Words were not his strength. She had in the past often found this a great encouragement - that in addition to sharing his company, she rarely had to also share his articulated thoughts. But even so, she had learned his moods, his body language and his small habits, as one is bound to do.
He sat, head and even body tilted away from her, toward window and door, his long legs ever needing to be off to the side in smaller spaces such as this. But as a rule he faced his knees toward her, not like now, where they rested nearly against the door's handle, his chin inclined toward the glass as though he studied the various levels of black in the passing landscape.
He had not spoken aloud for some minutes.
"You are upset," she announced.
"I'm fine," he replied, and she could almost see his fingers tense in their spot settled upon his thigh. "Let us not discuss it."
She could not see much in only the moonlight, and him in a black suit, but her eyes slid toward him nonetheless as she issued something of a challenge. "I had imagined the man that still so zealously seeks out my company would no longer shut me out of his thoughts."
Rather than rising to the occasion and opening himself up to her, he chose to apologize. "Forgive me, Marion," he told her, his eyes not meeting hers, but still fixed somewhere out the automobile's window. "At present I'm not very good company."
"Has the Kommandant angered you?"
"No," and here his tone took on a certain tartness. "The Kommandant undermines me whenever possible. That's not unusual." He gave a half-sigh, on the exhale, and nearly under his breath adding, "...just like with the fisherman."
Her brain lit up like neon in a sign at his words. "What's that?" She tried not to pounce on the word 'fisherman' too eagerly, and scare away whatever he might share with his guard down, share without thinking.
Had Allen heard?
No. The sound-muffling curtain was pulled closed between the auto's rear seat and the driver's, and Geis had decidedly been speaking under his breath.
She waited for him to answer her query. Tried to maintain the disinterest in her posture.
His jaws locked, emphasizing the sharp sloping of his chin, but he spoke through it. "I am only recalling how your kidnap and rescue, the escape and capture of the flyer, was my project, and the Kommandant took it away from me."
He let out something between a huff and a scoff. "Smoothly, trickily, and from under my nose." And here his tone returned to one of put-on boredom. "As he does with so very many things."
She nearly caught her breath at this statement. It was unlike Geis to criticize his betters, in particular Vaiser. She reminded herself that he had drunk rather more wine tonight than he might usually do on such an occasion. She hoped by staying silent he might say more, but she saw his eyes go toward the curtain (imperfectly) cutting off Allen in the front seat from overhearing them, and with a stamp of his foot against the floorboards, he seemed to have ended his confessional. "I have overspoken. Again, forgive me, Marion," he asked her, and his lips almost smiled, though grimly. "I am not myself."
"I rather think you more yourself than usual," she dissented, a studied crease between her brows.
At this, his eyes finally came up to hers, seeking them out among the blackness of the car's interior. He settled onto them, in no hurry to look away, undistracted by the nighttime scenery they passed by, or by her beguiling frock, and she let him search there within her eyes for what he could, let him find what he might - hiding (or visible) - there in the depths of herself, knowing enough about this man to hate him. To more than once have wished him dead. And yet, contradictorily knowing enough as to (insofar as some things) understand what there was to be understood about him.
He had dismissed the driver, Mr. Allen, outside the boundaries of the Barnsdale estate, realizing that Marion would not willingly venture even beyond the outermost gates of her family's estate, after her earlier declaration to him. Together they had watched and listened as the car disappeared within the borders of this, one of the few still well-kept homes and grounds on the islands entire.
A brief walk (though clumsier for Marion in her heels than he would have expected), and they were at the edge of Mr. Thornton's very meager lawn.
Marion felt a certain degree of relief, largely confident that there was next to no chance Geis had any desire to lay himself down here, among the dirty peasantry, among the semi-barnyard and crude cottage that stood for a home - even if it were to mean bedding her. No, if that's what his next move was, she was confident they would at present be standing somewhere more plush, with carpets and clean linens; something to drink, and food for...later.
"Forgive me," her own words surprised her, as she unexpectedly echoed his apologetic tone from before. "I am very tired," wishing to conclude their time together, and indeed, needing to get free of him in time to make the Nightwatch.
"Yes," he agreed with her, his mood, if not changed, then at least submerged as he brought his hands toward her in an embrace surely they both knew she had no way of rejecting, and kissed her mouth.
As he kissed her, he brought the back of his hand and knuckles to feather across the side of her face. Less engaged in the act than he, her eyes opened to see his fingers, his palm, and a shiver ran through her that she could neither stop, nor lessen.
There, in the cabaret's low light, that hand - Geis' hand - extended toward Robin, a match between its fingers lit for the fag already between her risk-taking husband's lips.
As anyone might in accepting such a light, Robin reached for Gisbonnhoffer's palm to steady and guide the end of the cigarette toward it, and to prevent himself from getting burned. A common gesture, a social gesture. On any night one might see it a thousand times. Less invested with significance than the 'how-do-you-do' handclasp of hello.
Robin's hand, his once-broken finger unable to match the curl of the rest of his grip. The hand of the man she once knew, of a certainty, was about to kill Thomas Carter - over her.
Geis' hand, holding the match - the igniter - toward a man he would gladly see tortured and killed, had he but known whom he was. The hand of her enemy. Of Robin's enemy. The hand that killed Mitch. The nails smoothly shaped in the salon. The fingers long, as the shanks of a tall man (which Geis was) would be. His touch cool, tending always toward detached. A hand that made nothing. A hand that destroyed.
God created the world in six days, rested on the seventh. And on the eighth day, Robin loved Mitch. Then, and forever. And here Robin was, cruelly tangled in an unwitting gesture of magnanimity with Mitch's killer, just as she was now tangled in the same man's amorous, adulterous embrace.
Clem had once, showing off, tied her a knot - a Turk's head. For sport, he had challenged her to undo it. She had tried and tried to separate the strands from one another, to pull them apart. To no avail. In the end, in a fit of temper and frustration, she had grabbed for his knife and slit them everyone, until the many sections lay there no longer in a cohesive, continuous string, no longer connected in any way, but cut, fraying, and of far less use than before.
Would it also cost them so much? To free themselves from this third man caught against their will, against their desire, who had woven himself into their own, inseparable tangle?
"You know, 'nachkuss'?" Geis asked her, under his breath between kisses. "A word for all the kisses that have yet to be named? To me there is 'marionkuss'. A word for all the kisses that have been lost, and must needs be made up for."
She felt Gisbonnhoffer's hand drop to the netting of her dress, felt his fingertips cascade down along the embroidery until he found the bodice, and, still kissing her, clutched at the fabric, and what there was of her within it. His fingertips extended to the top of the solid fabric, and tried to make their way down, behind it - only to be frustrated by the well-attached netting which proved a barrier to his present desire.
Giving up a frontal assault, he brought his hands around to her bared back, where the barring netting extended only minimally beyond her shoulders. Here he found an opening to plunge his hungry fingers between the dress and her skin, snaking their way below her arm and around to her side.
Their embrace was very close now.
But try as he might, his arm would extend no further between the fabric and her skin, and at best, his fingertips found only the beginning side swell of her breast, and were left, in their travels, unsated.
"Lady Marion? Is that you?" came a voice, clearly of the old man. It was half-timid, and firmly (due to curfew) located within the cottage.
Marion pulled away to respond, but before her words were fully said, Geis brought the hand that had been warmed by her own flesh up to her chin where he held her, though lightly, and without the need of force.
"I will come again," he told her. "But next time, when we drink this liebestrank - this love potion - I think...I think we will not stay here."
She neither nodded nor disagreed, but did take a step back to relieve her chin of his grip.
"Goodnight, then, Lieutenant Gisbonnhoffer," she said, her head slightly a-tilt as she made to take the short walk to the cottage door.
He reached to try and grab at her arm or hand to turn her for one final moment, but she was too quickly out of easy range. "Geis," he asked of her, and perhaps it was the trees, or the soft ground under his feet, or even the tranquil moon shining down on them, but there was no edge to his voice, no demand as he asked, "please, Geis."
She turned back, but only for a moment, capitulating with a nod, but without saying the name.
Of course she had known his timetable would be far accelerated now. There was something absurd, Marion supposed, about a man more or less telling you that the next time you met would be in the bed of his choosing, and yet you withholding the use of his first name.
Very well.
"Geis," she agreed with him.
He no longer recalled the earlier upsetting possibility of further missed opportunity back in St. Peter Port. In his mind there was little room left for anything but stars, and the further promise of the heavens beyond.
Nightwatch Windmill - It had not proven impossible to arrive in time for the broadcast. But neither had there been much time to properly thank Thornton for his assistance in shooing away Geis. Marion had changed her clothes so quickly in the darkened cottage she had not even taken time to find a modest corner to do so. The night itself had proven all the cloak of modesty she needed.
Just as it had concealed what she was sure would have been the relief in Thornton's eyes that she had not only been returned safely back to his cottage on that night (she knew he had harbored some doubts that she would be), but also that he need not fret over supplying her a parcel of ever-more hard-to-locate nibbles to carry her through her nighttime trek to the windmill and radio transmission.
She had eaten at the Cabaret. She had accomplished at least that much this night: a filled belly that would have to carry her through who knew how many future meals where enough (much less 'plenty') and satisfaction were both chronically in short supply.
Of late she had found herself growing somewhat impatient with her own selection of records. She had not bought music since the Occupation began, nearly four years ago. Not bought it, nor, usually, been able to hear it. There were the verboten selections overheard on BBC Radio, though they were more often classical than popular.
In a way, like the Occupation, her record collection froze the world, within it time (at least forward-running time) petrified and held its shape like amber. Benny Goodman had never had another hit record. Bing Crosby, Hildegarde, no longer saw the insides of recording studios. July, 1940: with the Nazis, the death of music. More and more she felt here she only managed, for the Islanders - for herself - to play and air its extended eulogy.
And her collection - despite its (once, she thought) impressive size - was showing wear. She guarded and tended the black disks as zealously as any mother bear, and yet - occasional scratches happened. Grooves grew over-deep, threatening to distort the sound from over-playing. The constant fear of warping or - don't even think it - shattering from their current, crude warehousing here in the windmill's damp, semi-earthen half-cellar.
She wondered if they would be seen as museum pieces now, back at home. Drifted away from popularity, no longer the artists, the tunes or tempos Londoners wished any longer to hear, to dance to.
She would ask Robin, then, grill him on it good. If he had been in London (as he had said) as recently as February '43 he would know, might even be able to tell her some of the newest recordings. But she would not ask him to sing them - no. She found herself giving a shallow smirk. She could not, after all, expect her precious husband to excel at everything.
She set the needle down on Rogers and Hart's "Manhattan," a song she rarely played, as it reminded her of Freddy singing it - and, she knew (though at the time she had tried not to know) meaning it, hoping for it.
How different a feeling it gave her, how different was her enjoyment of it, casting instead herself and Robin in the roles of 'boy and girl'.
"We'll go to Yonkers/Where true love conquers/In the wilds./And starve together, dear,/In Childs'./We'll go to Coney/And eat baloney/On a roll./In Central Park we'll stroll,/Where our first kiss we stole,/Soul to soul."
But then, Robin had never seen Manhattan - much less been to America, and they studiously (well, at least she studiously) avoided future plans. The making or the imagining of them. She strongly suspicioned he might, might make them. She knew, at least, that he did not see the war as she did: neverending, unwinnable. Knew that he did not doubt one day the islands would be free and she and he free to leave them if they wished.
They spoke of tomorrow, sometimes, but only ever in 'the day immediately following today'. On rare occasion they had reason to discuss something a week away. But that was not so different from any Islander, really. One never spoke of next year - even farmers who had all their life had their mind tuned to next year's harvest. What could next year bring? Two years? A decade? Even, a fortnight? Best not to borrow tomorrow's troubles today.
Daydreaming, castles in the air - these were things for celluloid lovers projected on cinema screens.
And maybe, just maybe when she was all alone, without Robin to catch her out at doing it, things for the woman who was the Nightwatch to allow herself - if only for the length of a song - to spin girlishly for her own - if acknowledged, brief - pleasure.
"Our future babies/We'll take to "Abie's/Irish Rose."/I hope they'll live to see/It close./The city's clamor can never spoil/The dreams of a boy and goil./We'll turn Manhattan/Into an isle of joy."
The record turned, obediently, the song playing on. She took out her pocket handkerchief and attempted an impromptu polish of the table-top chrome microphone, trying to shine it so that at least the barest glint of the lantern she had with her might shine off its surface.
As ever, conscious of how much of the song was left to play out, she foolishly considered her sudden desire for a pickle - several jars still housed here among her now meager supplies. An irresponsible thought, really. After the sumptuous array she had, only now mere hours ago, feasted upon, she had no business raiding a pickle jar, whose contents she would need to depend upon far more in days to come.
Still, not entirely convinced, and her reliably nocturnal appetite piqued, she rose from her seat and walked toward the snugly packed corner of the half-cellar, leaving her back to the rickety wooden steps and only-access door.
She could not have said what it was that caused her to turn about, what change in the air or noise she might have sensed that propelled her to do so.
A second before turning to meet...whatever, she paused, her eyes in the low light making an inventory of what was about her that might prove useful, her mind announcing, with disappointment, that her 'just-in-case' pistol was at least three (far too) long steps to the left.
A man, who was decidedly not Robin, stood between two half-ancient wooden support beams that held up much of the remaining roof (and therefore the floor of the windmill proper above), and stood as the terminus for what was left of the two largely-rotten railings that bordered the stairs. He was dressed from head-to-boot in the uniform of His Majesty's Royal Army, spotless as a cadet turning out for his first official review on the parade grounds.
The sight of this impossibility took her breath as certainly as had the angel Gabriel presented himself at her windmill.
His hair was dark, though difficult to gauge in its depth and tone due to the surrounding darkness. His jaw tended toward square, though not sharply so. His cheekbones were satisfyingly high, and well-complimented both his nose and brow. His skin was of such a smooth, perfected consistency that he showed no beard whatsoever, despite his age belying that.
The only thing that detracted from his overall appearance of polish-and-shine was that, even in the darkness, she caught the hint of long shadows below his eyes (which themselves were hard to look away from), shadows she felt sure upon sighting that she was not meant to have discerned, much less decoded. Something within her (something of herself that more than understood such shadows) told her that they were deep, bone-etched (though such was anatomically impossible), unmappable caverns at the base of the mind-dazzling waterfalls that were his eyes.
This was the sort of man you found yourself (against all better judgment) drawn to at a dinner party, or, in the interest of self-preservation, learned quickly to avoid.
Still at quantifying his eyes, she failed to immediately register the revolver he held on her.
"The Lady Marion Nighten," his voice was like warm chocolate, thickly coating whatever it touched. His accent perfection: he could have announced for BBC. "You have been found guilty of treason, collusion, collaboration, consorting with the enemy, and murder." The waterfalls became wild torrents, more foam than crystal water. "Prepare now to accept the justice of those you betrayed as it will be meted out to you."
Even at the top of the windmill's cellar stairs where he had stopped short upon realizing Marion was not alone, Robin Oxley heard the pistol cock - sounding like a thousand other pistol cocks he himself had enacted - or had enacted upon him.
He felt for his own sidearm, cursing soundlessly that due to the steep slant of the stair and the low-hung cellar ceiling, without risking a descent of at least five (sure to creak) steps, the best he could even see to aim at was arse and Achilles' tendons. Hardly a solid way to stop a man from taking his shot. His shot at Marion.
He held his breath, determined not to make a sound, wondering how long he dared risk Marion before he would be compelled to interfere - and praying that he would not miscalculate such a time, nor waste it when it arrived.
Unconcernedly, its volume just loud enough to be heard a foot - no more - beyond the cellar door, the Nightwatch and its song cycled on, out into the Guernsey night. "And in the station house we'll end,/But Civic Virtue cannot destroy/The dreams of a girl and boy./We'll turn Manhattan/Into an isle of joy!"
...TBC...