Free When the Sky Fell Apart by Caroline Lea

disregard that.
    ‘Good morning to you, Doctor. Nasty cough there. Shouldn’t you take something for that? It can’t be good for business when the doctor himself is ill.’
    ‘Ha, yes.’ Carter paused, then said, ‘Marvelous colours in the sky today.’
    ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’
    She didn’t turn around; she had just spotted a very nice patch of ragwort. The farmers hated it because it poisoned the cattle, so she didn’t often happen across it, which was a crying shame—it made for a most relaxing tea, in the right quantities.
    She waited for him to be on his way. But she could see him from the corner of her eye, shuffling his feet in those fancy English leather shoes of his, and she sighed.
    ‘Well, as long as you’re going to be standing there, you might as well make yourself useful. Hold this, will you?’
    She heaved her basket up. Carter staggered a little under the weight.
    ‘You, ah—you do know that’s… ragwort , don’t you?’
    ‘Well, if I didn’t then I wouldn’t be gathering it. Dangerous to pick plants you don’t recognise. They could be poisonous.’
    ‘So you’re aware, then, that this is nightshade?’
    ‘Why do you imagine I put a blanket at the bottom of the basket? You don’t want the stuff on your hands or clothes, that’s certain. Even a little of the juice can give you the runs for days.’
    He laughed. But when he saw she was serious, he fell silent. She carried on digging while he stood staring out over the sand dunes and towards the sea.
    The island was like a beautiful jewel: formed by years of pressure and compression, shaped by the elements and then constrained and combed and ordered by the metallic tools of man. The result was a savage, wild and rugged land with the long grasses gusted about by the wind, toothed rocks jutting from the soil, crusted with lichen: thousands of attentive gold and black ears, gaping at the slightest whisper of the wind.
    Further inland, the precise hedgerows and straight lines of the farmer’s fields, geometric crafting of grass and plough. And then the sea, the endless, gasping sea: when the tide swept away, the rocks jutted out of the mud like teeth from a smashed mouth. Stippled in limpets and winkles, heaving with seaweed: rock pools bubbling with life. To the east, picture-perfect houses, like clutches of crafted eggs, nestling by the golden beaches. To the west, the vast mudflats where children could pour salt into a hole in the mud and a razorfish might pop out like a conjuror’s trick. The steady breaking and wombing of the sea, metronomic measure of seeping time.
    But nothing ever the same: everything sharp and fresh, as if it had been cut out of paper new each day.
    Now the land had Germans swarming across it, hacking into the landscape, roving over the hills, lounging on the beaches. The islanders didn’t look at them, if they could help it: Edith had seen the way everyone’s eyes slid from the soldiers practising their marching drills on the beaches where tourists usually sunbathed.
    Edith liked to gawp at the scenery as much as the next person, for all she’d lived on the island more years than she’d care to count. But Dr Carter’s eyes had a glassy look about them. Away with the fairies, Edith’s mother used to say, and she’d give her a smart clip around the ear to bring her back sharpish.
    ‘What do you want from me then, Doctor?’
    He pulled his eyes from the view. ‘Nothing in particular. That is to say, I don’t know what I need, really.’
    By Crie, by the time the man had come around to saying his piece they’d both be dead and buried.
    ‘Well, Doctor, I can’t help you then. À bétôt .’
    She made a great show of struggling to heft her basket again.
    Carter took it from her. ‘Please. Allow me.’
    He fell in beside her as she walked. She set off, briskish, said not a word. Most folk would crack and say something in the end, given long enough in silence with a stranger.
    Carter was no different