The guards stopped the men by a section of land marked out in a rectangle with pegs and rope. They divided the prisoners into four gangs, each with their own guard. Joe was pushed towards the third gang and marched to a pile of rubble and stones. To the side of the mound, Joe could see the sea and a long, sandy shore curling round. It should be full of waders prancing and dancing. He longed to see their jigs, hear their calls, to sit still as a millpond and wait for them to hop and frisk. That would calm his soul, as it always had. It was the silence that Joe couldn’t fathom, a land without the chatter of birds. You could talk back to them, mimic their cry, wait for their answer.

A blast in the distance shook the ground. It lingered in his ears.

He heard first that raucous, grating cry, saw the large white wings as it flew up and away. A gannet. Long grey beak and eyes kohled up like one of those American film stars with loose morals. On its own. Gannets weren’t solitary birds.

‘Anfangen,’ the guard was pointing to sledgehammers that lay on the ground. ‘Kleine Stücke.’

The hammers were all the same size, with a hefty head on them and a handle a yard long. It would take some strength to wield that. Some of the men were already crushing the stones, scattering them into small pieces. Joe took off his clerical jacket and laid it on the ground, lifted the hammer, swung it behind him and smashed it down. The force of the blow, the weight of the head, took Joe off balance and pulled him over.

The boot caught him in the ribs.

‘Aufstehen!’

Joe didn’t understand the words, but he got the meaning. Pushed himself up and lifted the tool and swung it again. And again. Dared not pause, dared not look towards the shoreline, to search for the lonely gannet, for meandering, carefree birds. The aggregate piled up and one of the other gangs shovelled it into a wheelbarrow. Joe could hear the sound of pickaxes in the distance.

Joe kept an eye on the sun as it drew lower in the sky. His arms and shoulders ached, his muscles were tender and torn. A whistle blew as the sun grew low and the men downed their tools, formed into a line. Joe looked for his jacket, but it had gone. The men began to march and Joe saw that it was a trench they were digging, footings, he guessed, for more fortifications. Other labourers joined them as they left the building area, started along the road.