Caravaggio's Angel (12 page)

Then he vanished again; what might have happened to him this time, she had no way of knowing. She thought of going over to the rue d’Assas to check on the house, but decided not to, partly because the place still filled her with revulsion, partly because it was possible she was being followed and she didn’t want to risk endangering any of his plans. Grimly, automatically, she went on with her life, but as the months passed, she feared the worst. The hard-est thing, she found, was that there was no one she could talk to. Emmanuel’s appearances and disappearances were things she had never mentioned: as far as the world was concerned, her husband was dead or in England.

And then, one day, there he was again, waiting for her when she returned from work, sitting in the old armchair by the window. He told her he’d had to vanish, fast. For the moment, however, the danger seemed to have abated. Their old life resumed, though not quite as before. Emmanuel was warier, his appearances even more spasmodic, and he no longer asked her to run errands for him. It seemed that the network had been betrayed by one of the people at the bookshop, and it wasn’t safe to use any-one who had been even tenuously connected with it.

Two months after his return, she knew she was pregnant.

Emmanuel was horrified. He would have liked her to have an abortion. When she refused, he suggested she go home to have the baby at La Jaubertie. At first she just laughed. But the more she thought about it, the more appealing the idea seemed. It might thaw her mother, who since Robert’s death had retreated into fanatical Catholicism. And (since there could be no question of Emmanuel living with her) it would be better than trying to manage alone in Paris.

She left in May: she was two and a half months gone. The journey took three days in trains that were infrequent, slow, and full to bursting. Her father met her at the station: on their way back to the house, she told him she was pregnant. When she asked if he was pleased he gave her a look she remembered from when she was ten years old, and had said something unexpectedly stupid. ‘Of course I’d
like
to be pleased,’ he said. ‘But whose child is this, exactly? I sup-pose you do know?’ And she remembered that as far as the world was concerned, Emmanuel was dead.

So she told him the whole story – how Emmanuel had escaped, and was working for the Resistance. And he sighed, and said they’d better not mention that to her mother. She wasn’t to be trusted – Robert’s death had unhinged her slightly, she blamed it on his Communist friends, she was a hardline Pétainist. And there was a German staying in the house – an officer, one of the occupying force, billeted on them. He was living in Robert’s old room, and her mother was very friendly with him. So – discretion. They’d think of some story. Meanwhile Juliette should keep quiet.

Unfortunately, pregnancy isn’t a secret anyone can keep for long. Their old
bonne à tout faire
Suzanne guessed immediately. She, too, assumed Juliette had been sleeping around – and this time, there could be no explanation. That was when Juliette took in how hard life might become. So she began to do the kind of heavy work that might bring on a miscarriage – like digging the vegetable garden. Which was how she met the German. He offered to help, and she told him to go back to Germany – that would be the best help he could give her. Then, realizing how foolish she had been, she waited for some reprisal. But it never came.

By then she’d told her mother about the baby – and told her, too, it was Emmanuel’s.

‘Back from the dead?’ her mother mocked. ‘What d’you think I am, blind?’ she’d asked bitterly when Juliette finally confessed. Juliette explained that he was moving around, and thought she’d be safer at La Jaubertie. Which of course could mean only one thing – the Resistance.

‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’ her mother asked. She was very angry. ‘You thought I’d denounce him, is that it?’

What could Juliette say? It was exactly what she’d thought.

The showdown cleared the air, and things became easier. The atmosphere lightened, and the coming baby was acknowledged, if not joyfully welcomed.

By this time Juliette knew the German better. He was called Kopp – Helmut Kopp. In civilian life he was an architect, and came from Hamburg. He was good-looking – tall, blond, with high cheekbones and grey eyes: a true Aryan. They’d got talking one day when he found her in her father’s study. He said he wanted to look at the picture. He’d guessed it was a Caravaggio – one of his favourite painters. And by the end of the conversation, Juliette had to admit that she rather liked him. As her mother had said, he was just another human being. One day he asked her when the baby was due. She told him, December.

He said, ‘I like the idea of a baby. Such a normal thing in all this craziness.’

‘I wonder if you’ll still be here then.’

‘Do you hope I won’t?’

‘Of course,’ she replied, but they both knew that things had got too complicated for ‘of course’. After that she tried to avoid these encounters: her feelings about him were too confused.

At the beginning of December, most of the German troops moved on, and Helmut with them: military exigencies demanded their presence elsewhere. Juliette’s mother mourned his departure – he had been such an addition to the household, so cultured, so delightful – and to her shame, Juliette, too, found herself missing him.

The baby arrived on 31st December, at three in the morning: a boy, called Antoine after Juliette’s grandfather. He was a big baby, and wakeful. During the next months, she spent many night hours walking about the house with Antoine suspended in a sling on her hip, trying to lull him to sleep. It was during one of these perambulations that she became aware of her father’s hidden life.

It was April, 1943: Antoine was just over three months old. As usual he had begun to cry after his evening feed, and continued inconsolably until midnight. Tired of walking the dim rooms she decided to vary her route, and descended the staircase to the garden room. She paced along the front, then turned towards one of the small towers at the back. She had just reached it when its door began to open.

She opened her mouth to scream, but was so paralysed with horror that as in a nightmare no sound came. The door opened wider – and her father emerged, holding a hurricane lantern in one hand and a shopping basket in the other.

It was hard to say which of them was the more astonished. Juliette, anxious not to wake the baby, whispered in the low croak that for the moment seemed to have replaced her voice, ‘Papa! I thought it was burglars! What on earth are you doing?’ Her father started as though he had been stung. The hurricane lantern went out, leaving everyone in the dark. And Antoine, roused by the sudden switch from light to dark, or by his mother’s transmitted terror, began to bawl. She hugged him close, jiggled and kissed him, but he yelled inconsolably on.

‘Shush,
petit
,’ Etienne said. ‘You’ll have the whole house-hold down.’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Juliette, angry with relief. ‘There’s only Maman, and she’s not going to get up because Antoine’s crying. What on earth were you doing?’ she asked again.

He shook his head. ‘Nothing that need worry you. Go back to bed.’

Two days after the midnight incident, they had a visit. Lunch was over, it was a sunny afternoon, and Madame de Beaupré, who however mixed her feelings regarding her daughter was unequivocally besotted by her new grandson, was walking him round the park in Juliette’s old pram. Juliette, as often in these periods of respite, was in her father’s study. She was dozing over a novel when a sharp knock on the door brought her to abrupt wakefulness.

Her father, who in his capacity of mayor was used to these interruptions, said, ‘
Oui
,’ and went on writing. The door opened, and in marched three Germans in the uni-form of the Gestapo. They must have arrived while Juliette was asleep. Craning out of the window, she could see their car parked by the tower.

Etienne put down his pen. ‘
Alors, messieurs?
’ he said politely.

One of them said something in German. Etienne shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, messieurs, I don’t speak German.’

The youngest of the three visitors came forward and repeated the request, this time in French. ‘Monsieur, we would like to search your house.’

‘Search my house? What for?’

‘We have information that some people we are looking for were seen in this area. We are searching all the houses in the village. I must remind you, you should tell us if you know anything about this.’

‘But of course I’d tell you, I’m the mayor, that’s my job,’ Etienne said politely. ‘By all means search. I’m afraid it’s rather a large house. Do you want me to show you round?’

‘Thank you, we can do it,’ said the officer.

‘Will you begin here?’ Etienne gestured round the room.

The Germans, clearly somewhat embarrassed, looked around. There was in fact, as Juliette knew, a secret door behind one of the bookshelves, leading to a space in the wall, which at this point was two metres thick. It had been a favourite hiding-place in the games she and Robert used to play with their friends when they were children. No one knew who had made it, or why, though it probably dated from the wars of religion. She watched as the Germans blundered past it and wondered whether anyone was hidden there. It seemed unlikely.

They left the room and moved on. For the next three quarters of an hour they could be heard moving round the house, carefully shifting and replacing furniture, opening cupboard doors. Etienne continued with his interrupted business. Juliette, looking out of the window, saw her mother approaching with the pram, got up and went out to meet her. ‘The Germans are searching the house,’ she warned, as her mother wheeled the old-fashioned perambulator with its sleeping baby into the garden room.

Leaving Antoine asleep, they mounted the stairs. Overhead, footsteps sounded on bare boards. Then the young French-speaking officer appeared on the stairs, fol-lowed by his colleagues. ‘Can you show me please how to get to the space under the roof, and the cellar?’

Silently, Juliette indicated the doors in the small towers. ‘Please be as quiet as you can,’ she said sternly. ‘I don’t want the baby wakened.’

The Germans disappeared, and they joined Etienne in the study.

‘Are they still here?’

‘They’re in the cellar,’ Juliette said, watching him.

Etienne nodded: he seemed unmoved. He continued calmly with his work, while Juliette and Véronique sat in tense silence. Twenty minutes later there was a knock on the door. The Germans had finished, evidently without finding anything. The one who was in charge, a fleshy, burly man with a florid face, clicked his heels. ‘
Danke, Herr
Bürgermeister
.’

Etienne nodded and went on writing.

One sunny day in early July, Emmanuel arrived at La Jaubertie. The Beauprés were away for a couple of days at a cousin’s first communion, and Juliette and Antoine were sitting out on the grass, Antoine practising crawling, while Juliette picked wild strawberries to share with him. Intent on her task she didn’t hear the footstep – and then, when she looked up, there he was, standing before her. ‘
Bonjour
,’ he said, and dropped down on to the grass beside them. ‘
Bonjour, mon bébé!
’ He picked up Antoine, held him up in the air, pretended to drop him, and caught him in the nick of time. Antoine laughed madly, and Emmanuel did it again.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Juliette said. The whole thing seemed unreal. She half-believed this wasn’t the real Emmanuel at all, but an apparition. However, when she put out a hand and touched him, he seemed solid enough – though even thinner than before, and older-looking, his hair receding, and new lines on his face, which was grimy and stubbled. But real.

He told her he’d been moving around – impossible to get in touch. But he was working nearby, at least for a little while. He couldn’t stay, for reasons they both knew – he’d waited to come till he knew Juliette would be alone.

‘You can stay tonight, at any rate. Papa and Maman won’t be back till tomorrow evening, and I told Suzanne I’d look after myself.’

Later, Juliette looked back on those fleeting hours as the nearest she ever really came to happiness. At the time, though, it was almost impossible to enjoy them fully, because the future, in which nothing was certain, was already almost upon them. At five in the afternoon on the second day, Emmanuel said he must be off. Her parents would be back soon, and in any case, he had an appointment to keep.

‘Shall we see you again?’

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘it’s just a question of where and when. I’ll try and drop you a line.’

So life went on, with its absence of young men, its short-ages, its bitterness. People heard that their sons had died working as slave labourers in Germany. In Meyrignac the Kommandantur was blown up, and in reprisal twelve local men were shot in the pétanque alley, under the plane trees. There were rumours of refugees – airmen who had been shot down, Jews on the run from deportation – but no one ever admitted having actually seen one. Antoine continued wakeful, but Juliette, on her nocturnal perambulations, avoided the garden room. Occasionally a postcard would arrive for her, unsigned, but proof that Emmanuel was still alive, and still thinking of her.

And then, suddenly, the Germans were in vicious retreat. In St Front, there was panic: troops were rumoured to be burning and raping in the next village, and for a day and a night the entire population (fortunately it was summer) took to the woods. One of Etienne’s friends, the owner of a nearby château, rang to say that they had had a looting party. The local Gauleiter had had his officers make a list of all the antiques and artworks they had noticed in the various châteaux where they had been billeted, and the Germans were systematically removing them, to be sent back to Germany ahead of the retreat. ‘They’ll be round at your place next,’ he said. ‘You might just have time to hide your best pieces.’

Juliette, Etienne and Véronique stood in the study around the Caravaggio. It was by far the most valuable item in the house, and Helmut, who had been so struck with it, must inevitably have mentioned it. Véronique wanted to hide it in the secret space behind the bookcases. But Etienne wouldn’t let her. ‘If they know about it they’ll know we’ve hidden it – in any case, imagine the mark it’ll leave – and they’ll tear the place apart to find it,’ he said. ‘I’d rather sacrifice one picture than lose the house.’ He was adamant. Nothing was to be hidden. If the Germans came, they came. ‘What does it matter?’ he said. ‘It’s only things. If that’s all we lose, we’ll be a good deal luckier than most.’