When the Sky Fell Apart Read Online Free Page B

the German men are like animals. I hope they aren’t. I hope nobody else is killed.’
    Her eyes shone with sudden tears.
    Maurice flapped his hand towards her, unsure how to comfort her. He tried to make his voice calm.
    ‘Now then, no one is going to kill us. Who’s been filling your head with this rot?’
    ‘It’s not rot, it’s the truth. Maman says so.’
    ‘Does she? And what about your papa? What does he say?’
    ‘Very little. Maman does most of the talking. He does a great deal of sitting. And he reads the newspaper. It’s a sad state of affairs. Everyone says so. He’s going to fight in the war, though. Will you go?’
    Her gaze was brilliant and direct—with a child’s intuition, she seemed to understand everything and yet nothing at all.
    ‘No, I, ah—I have my wife to care for. She’s…sickly.’
    They carried on filling in the holes together. By the time they were finished, it was nearly nightfall and a wet coldness was creeping in across the sea.
    Maurice turned to go back home, but the girl, to his horror, began to wade out into the water.
    ‘You’re not swimming now, surely?’ he called. ‘You should be getting home.’
    She didn’t turn around but carried on walking. ‘Maman says I’ve to bring home something for dinner, so I’m digging up cockles with my toes.’
    ‘That’s ludicrous! Go home, would you?’
    But she refused. In the end, the only way to persuade her to come out of the blasted water was by offering her some of his oysters. She came galloping out of the sea then, grinning and chattering beside him all the way up the hill.
    Again, Maurice found himself wondering if all children carried this strange mixture of ignorance and intelligence.
    The house was dark when they reached it and Maurice felt the familiar clutch of panic that always gripped him when he’d left Marthe alone.
    He stopped outside the door. ‘Just wait here, will you?’ Then he opened it a little and squeezed though the gap.
    Marthe lay where he had left her, eyes closed, breathing evenly. Maurice pressed his lips against her forehead, then picked her up and cradled her in his arms. The destruction he’d seen today had left him queasy: if the Germans would happily drop bombs on innocent fishermen and set the butcher on fire, what would that mean for him? For poor Marthe, who couldn’t protect herself?
    Suddenly he heard a voice: ‘What is wrong with her?’
    It was the girl, standing in his doorway and staring at Marthe.
    Maurice jumped. ‘Bloody hell, child! You scared the life out of me.’
    It had been so long since he’d let anyone see Marthe that he’d forgotten how she must look, with her thin arms and legs and her slack face.
    Claudine took a step forward. ‘Is she—?’
    Marthe began to groan and suddenly Maurice couldn’t stand it: the shock on the girl’s face, the horror in her eyes.
    So he snapped, ‘Wait here!’ and settled Marthe in the bedroom before ushering the girl out of the house and down the path to fetch her damned oysters.
    As they walked, Claudine prattled next to him: What was wrong with his wife? Why couldn’t she walk? How long had she been poorly?
    ‘Does it worry you,’ she asked, ‘that the Germans will hurt her?’
    He stopped walking. It was like being underwater—the silence. It filled the space between them so there was no room for words. It stole the breath from him, the helpless rage at the thought of them hurting his harmless, defenceless wife.
    ‘I shan’t let them. They shan’t lay a finger on her. I can promise you that.’
    His voice sounded hard, flat, like someone else’s.
    Claudine nodded. She looked very young, very small. Too young and too small to be on an island that was about to be invaded.
    Poor child.
    He made his voice bright and kind. ‘You must run along home. So, how many do you need?’
    He dug around in the hole where he stored the oysters and pulled a net from the water.
    Her face fell. ‘But…oughtn’t you throw oyster