Hamilton, Donald - Novel 01 (16 page)

     
"And then?" Madame
Faubel
asked, unimpressed.

     
Branch glanced at her.

     
"What would a nice kid do?" she
asked. "Where would a nice kid go?"

     
"Her folks
...
?"

     
The woman shrugged her narrow shoulders.
"Perhaps.
If she would.
But
she would still need special food and care."

     
"Her folks weren't poor," Branch
said.

     
"You can see that?" Madame
Faubel
asked. "No, she is from good family. But
everyone is poor in
France
today.
France
is poor."

     
"Why doesn't she want to go back to
her folks?" Branch asked after a pause.

     
The woman looked at him. "You do not
know. There were so many coming back. At first to be received with cries of
joy, and then with sympathy only, and then only with embarrassment: what was to
be done with them? They were
sick,
they cried at
nothing, they jumped at small noises. They could not work. They could only
eat.... Would you go back to be greeted with hollow cheerfulness, sympathy, ma
pauvre
enfant, what have they done to you?
and
then in bed at night to hear them talking below, knowing
that they are wondering how they are to feed and care for another one. When one
has been pretty and never sick a day ... The woman rose. "She is better
with us. She can feel she is useful. Here is Georges." Branch rose and
brushed the leaves from his coat.

     
They stood watching the chinless man come
down the steep road slack-kneed, sliding a little in the loose dirt of the
ruts. Branch looked at the woman beside him.

     
"Just the same," he said.
"It seems a damned piddling occupation for intelligent people. Is
Jeannette's husband really very important?"

     
Madame
Faubel
shrugged her shoulders. "I do not know," she said. "They did not
tell me. They said: Duval, Louis, age thirty-five, height, weight, description,
place last seen, believed to be trying to reach
America
.
Tickets,
money, passports.
The sentence is death. Execute." She turned to
look at Branch directly. "There has to be some payment," she said.

     
Mr. Hahn slid to a halt before them and
caught his breath. "Nothing," he said.
"Absolutely
nothing.
As I told you."

     
"Well, it is better to be sure,"
Madame
Faubel
said dryly. She crossed the road and
started down the hillside. Mr. Hahn made a protesting sound and took the gun
from his pocket, pointing it at Branch. The woman looked back. "
Don't be a fool
," she said irritably. "He came
this far of his own accord, did he not? He will not run away before he has seen
her."

     
"Well, I'11 keep behind him,
nevertheless," Mr. Hahn said. "In case he should change his
mind."

     
They left the road, and, sliding on the
dead leaves, worked down the sparsely wooded hillside to a footpath, where they
turned. Branch looked around and the older man, following him closely with the
gun, said, "You didn't think we would give you the right directions, did
you?"

     
Branch shrugged and did not look back
again. The path had suffered in the recent rains and his low shoes gave no
support to his ankles when he slipped. Whenever he slipped he thought of the
gun in the hand of the man behind him and felt the muscles of his back
contract. He estimated that they had passed well below Parks' house and were at
least a mile down river from it when the woman at last turned upward and
labored to the top of the ridge, stopping there to catch her breath. As he
reached her Branch saw a group of summer cottages through the trees ahead. It
looked almost like a suburban development, with hedges, terraced small lawns,
and a graveled road leading out of sight towards the main highway.

     
They went forward and stopped to scrape
the mud from their shoes on the gravel, then going on along the road past the
first of the five houses, all obviously closed for the winter, forming an L on
the top of a bluff overlooking the junction of a creek and the river. The trees
on the bank below had been thinned to improve the view and, looking down,
Branch could see a boathouse on the point, and a pier with a diving board, and
two boats moored in the shelter of the creek.

SHE
WAS ON HER FEET when they came into the living room from the screened porch.
"Phillip," she said. "Phillip!"

     
"Hi," he said, stopping inside
the door, mindful of the gun, to see what they wanted him to do next.

     
Paul
Laflin
swung his feet off the large davenport that, with two deep chairs, formed a
group about the fireplace at that end of the room. The nearer portion of the
room looked barren and open and naked; the rug taken up from the floor to be
stored for the winter, and the light maple furniture set back against the
walls. The blinds were drawn on the bare
uncurtained
windows against the sunlight outside.

     
Paul
Laflin
looked at them over the back of the davenport as Mr. Hahn, still holding the
gun, closed the door behind them.

     
"Did you have a pleasant walk?"
the younger man asked ironically.

     
"Very pleasant," Mr. Hahn said.
"Invigorating."

     
"Phillip," said the girl,
hesitated, and came to him across the naked varnished floor. She took his
wrists in her hands. "Are you all right, darling
How
did they catch you?"

     
He looked down at her, glad, as always, to
be able to look a little down. She looked so tall when you saw her alone. It
surprised him that her nearness still had the power to leave him slightly
breathless. It seemed a very long time since he had last seen her; and he had
been quite prepared, only two hours before, to leave and never see her again.

     
"Are you all right?" he asked.
"You look like you could use another shower."

     
She smiled a little and stood unmoving as
he took a handkerchief from his pocket and scrubbed at her face. Her face was
dusty but unmarked and, except for a run in one stocking, her clothing was
intact.

     
"Where's your coat?" he asked.

     
"I left it down there," she
said.
"In the cellar.
I didn't want ... It
already ripped a seam when he twisted my arm.

     
"Did he hurt you?"

     
She glanced at Paul
Laflin
,
standing on the hearth now, talking to the others; and she laughed abruptly,
looking back at Branch.

     
"No, darling, he didn't hurt
me." Suddenly she said. "I wouldn't mind it if it wasn't so
dreadfully humiliating, Phillip. On the floor feeling your stockings pop and
your coat come out at the seams ..." She stepped back, touched back her
hair at the temples with her knuckles, her hands dusty; then rubbing her hands
on her skirt and lifting them again to roll up the trailing wisps of hair at
the nape of her neck. "I'm going to die if I don't get out of this suit
pretty soon," she said, looking down at herself distastefully. "I've
been wearing it for years. What did you do with my
...
?"

     
"The girl's got it," he said.
"The suitcase?"

     
She nodded, her eyes watching him.
"Do you hate me, darling?"

     
"No," he said. "It's all
right." He could not keep a little stiffness out of his voice. If she only
had a black eye, he thought, a black eye or a cut lip, anything.

     
"I couldn't help it," she said.
"He twisted my arm. I couldn't ... It was so ... undignified." She
laughed quickly, watching him. "That's rather a dreadful thing to admit,
isn't it, Phillip?"

     
"How did they catch you?" he
asked after a moment.

     
"Parks," she said. "I was
simply dead for sleep, darling. I arranged for the boat and paid him and just
fell on the bed with my clothes on. He must have called them while I was
asleep. They let him keep the money.
All of it.
For calling them."
She touched his arm. "I'm so
sorry, darling. Why did you come? You shouldn't have come."

     
"What did you expect me to do?"
he asked deliberately. "After you almost blasted out my eardrum?"

     
"Don't be cruel, Phillip," she
whispered, looking down at the toe of a dusty black low-heeled pump. When she
raised her head her mouth was angry. "How did they catch you,
darling?" she asked sharply.

     
"They didn't catch me," he said.
"I just came."

     
She smiled coolly. 'Wasn't that... a
little stupid? I thought you'd at least ..."

     
"I'm not very good at guns," he
said. "It was either come or get out of there. Why do they want me,
anyway?"

     
The anger died from her face. "I
don't know," she said wearily. "I didn't ask them."

     
He watched her as she turned away,
nervously touching her hair, to look at them, and found himself vaguely sorry
for her, because she was afraid, and because there was a run in her stocking,
and because her yellow suit was a little grubby and a little baggy at the seat
and elbows and her lipstick was not quite even any longer. He went forward and put
his arm about her shoulders. She stepped free of him with a quick angry
movement. He followed her as she walked towards the davenport and made her way
around it to the three of them standing there.

     
"Well?" she asked with an upward
inflection.

     
"You're through?" Mr. Hahn
asked, smiling. "You have settled everything. We did not want to
interrupt..."

     
"All right, Georges," Madame
Faubel
said.
"All right.
Watch the Lieutenant." Her pale narrow face was expressionless as she
turned to the girl. "The ship," she said, "the name of the
ship."

     
Jeannette Duval shook her head. The large
young man, smiling a little, stepped forward; the girl backed away from him,
then, in the space between the davenport and the chair, stopped, standing
rigidly awaiting him, her hands in the pockets of her jacket.

     
"No?" asked Madame
Faubel
softly.

     
She shook her head, watching the man, at
the last moment freeing her hands, but too late to ward off the blow that
struck her in the chest and knocked her heavily to the door. After a little she
swept her skirt down mechanically and rose, shaking back her suddenly
disheveled hair, and backed away from the davenport. Paul
Laflin
followed her deliberately, feinted, laughed as she dodged, and struck her
accurately on the chin only hard enough to knock her down again. Sobbing a
little, she scrambled to her feet and he hit her a third
time,
and she did not rise, but pushed herself up to sit, gasping and breathless, in
the middle of the bare door.

     
If she weren't so tall, Branch thought
irritably, if she didn't have such damned long legs. Madame
Faubel
had crossed the room to touch Paul
Lafiin's
sleeve.
The girl looked up, the side of her face gray with the dust of the door, and
covered herself with a clumsy movement, raising herself from the floor to draw
the skirt about her.

     
"Princess McGregor," she panted.
"Princess McGregor.
Day after tomorrow."

     
"And the signals?" the woman
asked.

     
The signal was a red light shown three
times in a certain fashion. The girl buried her face in the striped yellow wool
of her rumpled skirt and began to cry. Madame
Faubel
turned away.

     
"Paul," she said. She looked
back. "Paul!" she said, sharply.

     
Paul
Laflin
looked up, a curiously rapt expression slowly fading from his face. He settled
his sweater over his hips and buttoned the jacket of his suit and followed the
woman to the davenport, looked back, and glanced at Branch.

     
"Take them downstairs, Paul,"
the woman said. She glanced at the large young man. "No. Take a walk. Walk
up to the road and back."

     
"I'll take them down," Paul
Laflin
said.

     
"You will do as I say," the
woman said. "Walk up to the road. Take a pail and bring some water on your
way back. Georges will ..."

     
"I'm all right. It isn't
necessary." The young man's voice was irritable.

     
"Well," said Madame
Faubel
, and glanced at him sideways. "Well, all right.
But I want no monkey-business with the girl. We are not Nazis."

     
As he walked across the room in obedience
to the jerk of Paul
Laflin's
thumb, Branch-could feel
his feet throbbing angrily. The girl had stopped crying and, approaching her,
he knew that crouching there she was waiting and listening and trying to
identify his footsteps, although she did not look up until he stopped above
her. Then she raised her streaked face and, reaching up, raised herself with
the aid of his hand, awkwardly, her clothes loose and ridiculously awry about
her long body. She leaned against him for a moment to set her feet properly in
her shoes, then, not looking at herself or touching herself, walked ahead of him
towards the door where Paul
Laflin
, grinning a little
at her appearance, waited. When she passed him the large young man flicked his
fingertips smartly across the rear of her skirt and laughed when she was unable
to control a start.

     
"All right," he said, and looked
at Branch, "Hurry it up, you."

     
"Just a minute," said the
woman's voice. "Mr. Branch."

     
Branch was aware of the girl, turning to
look at him with an expression of bright malevolent anticipation. Her teeth
showed minutely white in her stained face. He knew that she was not aware of
her expression and could not help it. It was her turn to watch.

     
"Come here a moment, Mr. Branch,
please," said the woman politely from the end of the room.

     
Branch turned and walked across the room,
his shoes loud on the bare floor. Madame
Faubel
took
his arm and guided him around the davenport to where Mr. Hahn was spreading a
chart of the bay on the gray mohair cushions. The man and the woman looked
strangely impermanent, still wearing their hats and outer clothing, as if they
had just come or were just about to leave. The chart was new and crisp and
colored in clear blues and yellows.

     
"Do you know what this is,
Lieutenant?" the woman asked.

     
"How would I know what a chart
is?" Branch demanded. "I'm just a reserve officer."

     
"Be polite," Madame
Faubel
said, smiling. "It never hurts to be polite,
Lieutenant."

     
"It's a chart of the bay,"
Branch said.
"Grice Point to Point Darby.
C and
G. S. Number 1278, corrected to 1944. Scale one to eighty thousand. All
soundings in feet at mean low water-" The woman slapped him across the
face. He stepped back and set the glasses level on his nose again.
"Well," he said. "If you have to ask stupid questions
... !"

     
"Please show us," the woman said
briskly, "where a ship would be just before dawn if it were planning to
reach
Baltimore
by
noon
.
Baltimore
is about eighteen miles
above Signal Point."

     
He thought
,
I
know where
Baltimore
is, all right, you don't
have to tell me where
Baltimore
is. Over the back of the
davenport he could see the girl's figure in the doorway, arbitrarily untidy in
silhouette against the sunlight on the porch. He could not see her face. The
wind through the doorway tugged at her disordered hair and clothing. He thought
that it had really taken very little to make her come apart.

     
Madame
Faubel
held down the chart as it moved in the draft from the open door. "For
Heaven's sake, Paul, close the door before you freeze us to death."

     
Paul
Laflin
pulled the door to with a loud sound.

     
"You are going to take us, you
know," Mr. Hahn said, smiling, to Branch.

     
Branch looked away from the girl. "Am
I?"

     
The woman slapped him a second time, her
face impassive. Cut it out, he told her silently, looking down at her, cut it
out, cut it out,
cut
it out. It seemed to him very
strange that what these people had been through should have led them to the
conclusion that the way to make a man do something was to beat him up.
Or perhaps not so strange.
Perhaps they had discovered, from
personal
experience, that
it worked. He straightened
his uniform cap and pushed his glasses back along his nose.