The bombings, everyone said, were only a prelude. In a seaside town that boasted neither industry nor ambition, there were direct hits to the playing fields of St Mary’s Hall. To Chichester Terrace and Mount Pleasant. To Devonshire Street, Pelham Street School and Tamplin’s Brewery. The town centre stank of hops for days.
August the 4th was forecast to be Invasion Day, the anniversary of the day Britain had declared war on Germany in 1914. The passage of time was marked by rumour. Next, it could only be August the 15th, the day Hitler had vowed he’d march through the streets of London. That day, too, came and went, but at last Mr Attlee spoke on the wireless. ‘The whole nation awaits zero hour. I want us all to use the waiting time, be it long or short, to the best possible advantage to our cause.’ But could the nation imagine it as Brighton could? So literal an invasion. The enemy marching up the beach.
In the town’s blackout, illicit roof squatters smoked and star-watched, refusing to be shut in any longer, while in the dance halls of the town, from the Regent Ballroom to the unmentionable Sherry’s, revellers danced through the sirens as the bands played louder. Where the nation was stoical, Brighton grew reckless.
Evelyn felt her own bleak sense of abandon. She would not be dissuaded by her husband from returning with her book to the Camp, where Mr Pirazzini lay in his bed, rattling with death but seemingly unwilling to die. He was waiting, Evelyn knew, for Mrs Pirazzini to appear. He had a dying man’s faith that decencies, even in a labour camp, would be observed; that Geoffrey would find his wife of fifty years. But Evelyn knew Geoffrey couldn’t admit to the old man that there were no reliable records; that the authorities had – in bureaucratic terms – lost his wife and her camp location; that he would inevitably die without her. Everything didn’t come right in the end. The wheel didn’t go round. Life took care of some and not of others. His faith, like the phrase, had failed him.
Evelyn pressed his papery palm in hers. All she knew how to do was open her book and read to him so that he didn’t die in a morbid, miserable hush. Words were protective. They were beats of breath and life. But who was she really reading for, herself or him?
Behind her, a makeshift screen divided her from the prisoner who’d laughed at her efforts during her first visit. Let him laugh now. He was back in the infirmary, to have the bullet extracted from his shoulder. The doctor had come at long last, a heavyset man with thick spectacles and stubby fingers. He stood in the dim light of the painted-over window, sterilizing his scalpel and forceps with the flame of a cigarette lighter.
There were no precedents, no codes of conduct in an internment camp. For Mr Pirazzini’s sake, she informed the doctor, she would stay by her friend’s bed during the procedure. She would not be moved.
Very well, he nodded, but she was not to concern herself if the prisoner cried out. Since Dunkirk, analgesics were in pitifully short supply. They had given the man two good, stiff shots of whisky on an empty stomach. It would not be a problem if she continued to read aloud as he operated. Indeed, he thought it better for her and her charge if she did so. If she felt obliged to leave the infirmary during the procedure, she should feel free. He could not attend to any faints.
He disappeared behind the screen. The heads of the two guards were just visible over the top. Then the doctor gave the order to hold the prisoner down.
The man protested, delirious and loud. ‘Butcher!’
‘I have a leather bite, Mr Gottlieb, should we require it.’
‘My God, if you amputate, I will –’
‘You are overwrought. We wouldn’t want you to bite your tongue. Now behave or I shall be forced to use it.’
Evelyn wet Mr Pirazzini’s lips with the sponge from the bowl and patted his hand. Even she was aware that the removal of a bullet could damage a limb or kill a man where the bullet had failed. Infections. Damaged arteries.
It was none of her affair.
Mr Pirazzini’s eyes fluttered. ‘There, there,’ she whispered, rubbing his wasted arm. ‘It’s Evelyn, Mr Pirazzini. I’m here, and this business won’t last long.’
A cry filled the room.
She opened her book and stumbled into the first paragraph. ‘ “The sun rose. Bars of yellow and green fell on the shore, gilding the ribs of the eaten-out boat and making the sea-holly and its mailed leaves gleam blue as steel.” ’
Another cry, deep and guttural. Mr Pirazzini’s eyes sprang open.
‘Do not allow him to move!’
She pulled her chair closer. ‘“Light almost pierced the thin swift waves as they raced fan-shaped over the beach. The girl who had shaken her head and made all the jewels, the topaz, the aqua-marine, the water-coloured jewels with sparks of fire in them, dance, now bared her brows and with wide-opened eyes drove a straight pathway over the waves. Their quivering mackerel sparkling was darkened and –”’ Was that blood she smelled? She stroked Mr Pirazzini’s forehead, but what could she say without reminding him that he was dying, not in his own bed at home, but in a neglected sickbay in a prison camp someone had conjured at the top of Race Hill?
‘“As they splashed and drew back, they left a black rim of twigs and cork on the shore and straws and sticks of wood, as if some light shallop had foundered …”’
She no longer understood what she read. Her thoughts spun.
Then, ‘Nicht – zu – stoppen.’ A hoarse whisper.
Don’t stop.
‘Is everything all right, Doctor?’ she called brightly.
‘Perfectly,’ he replied.
She heard the bullet clink in a basin.
‘Mr Gottlieb has finally done the decent thing.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘He has passed out. The prisoner has passed out, Mrs Beaumont.’
Nicht zu stoppen.
She had to wipe her eyes with the back of her hand.