MORNING SERIAL

THE storm gulls breed out there, where there’s no vegetation. And you can see the sea swallow, on the gravelly banks of the islands, all the way from tropical Africa. And wild geese. Look, there they are, wild geese.

It had gone quiet; the knot of men had looked out over the waste of waters, into the non-human world.

And when autumn comes, the earnest young nature-lover had said in his hoarse voice, one day you’ll see the geese leave, all at once they go. They all migrate. In V-formation.

So that’s where all our planes have buggered off to, said another. Frigging well migrated. Knowing Quantz would turn a deaf ear.

Think I’ll have a go at migrating, Heini’s pal Gunther had murmured. Pregnant looks had been exchanged.

Donitz’s vicious naval police were kept busy catching and hanging deserters.

One day the hanged lad on a beech tree just outside the barracks turned out to be Gunther. Heini came sobbing to Quantz: But that’s Gunther. They’ve hanged my Gunther, Michael, violating all the codes of rank by grabbing him with his Christian name.

They had buried the boy. Michael had shaken Heini by the shoulders. Bloody well pull yourself together, lad. Get a grip. But Wolfi came to mind, his boy babied and over-mothered in Kiel, gentle as the young ornithological lieutenant, dithery, flat-footed and cannoning into things. Such sweetness of spirit as Heini possessed, combined with a noddleful of useless knowledge, seldom made for long survival.

So Michael was roughly tender with the weeping youngster, and snarled to him to keep his head down till the Brits came.

**************

The water’s lappings acted as a soporific. Michael slept and dreamed awake. The rhythm implied a banal existence, a peaceful monotony, which repeated itself like a dull lie. The lie slid into the spirit with a dissolving effect, like a pill on the tongue.

> The Element of Water by Stevie Davies is published by Parthian in the Library of Wales series www.parthianbooks.com