Charlotte Gray (20 page)

Julien sighed.

"It was just a chance. I saw the child and I thought I should help. It was an accident."

He went back into the anteroom, where Andre was still sitting on his chair, hoping for time and the world to start again.

"I think we're going to have to be very careful now," said Julien, as they came into the Place de 1'Eglise.

"I think it would be a good idea if I went on ahead to make sure everything's all right. You stay ..." He looked around and stopped, as though some idea had stirred in his mind. '... in the church. I'll come back and get you in a minute." Andre sat in a dark corner chosen by Julien, looking at a statue of a marble saint, a cloth or handkerchief clasped in her cold fingers. The moment pressed on him with unwanted clarity: the smell of old incense, the wood on his thighs, the statue of a woman who was not his mother, the pile of cloth-covered books on the ledge beside him. It was not real.

"All right. Come on." Julien was standing in the doorway.

"Do your parents leave a key somewhere?"

Andre nodded. Along the wall of the house was a narrow alley that led to a side entrance to the garden. Julien followed him over the stony path and Andre pushed at a wrought-iron gate whose opening caused a sweet-sounding bell to jangle.

The Duguays' small garden had a flowerbed at one end in which a moat was being dug; at the other end, adjoining the house, was a brick-paved terrace with over-arching ironwork twined by prodigal jasmine. Andre bent down and lifted up a stone from under which he pulled out a key. He opened a door into the kitchen. There was a choking smell from a stockpot on the cooker which had burned dry. Julien turned off the heat beneath the blackened mess. The table was set with four places; there was a carafe of water and six slices of bread in a wicker basket.

"Where's the cellar?"

"This way."

The Duguays' hall was cool and dark; there were pink glass light fittings on the wall and a large framed sepia photograph of a Duguay forebear in uniform with medals and drooping moustaches. Julien fitted the key into the lock and turned it. He took Andre's hand as they made their way down the dark stairs.

"Jacob? Jacob? Are you there?"

Andre called as well, a theatrical note in his high, clear voice.

"Jacob?"

"We need a candle. Do you know where they are?"

"I bought some from the shop. I ... I've left them somewhere."

"There must be some other ones in the kitchen. Go and have a look. I've got some matches."

While Andre was gone, Julien made his way slowly down the steps, dragging his hand along the cold stone wall.

"Jacob?" he called softly. "Jacob?"

Andre's voice hissed at the top of the steps.

"I've found one." Julien first lit a match to show him the way down, and then the candle Andre held out to him. The cellar had a beaten earth floor and a row of empty wine bins against one wall. The candle threw shadows up to the thick wooden beams that supported the hallway and kitchen above.

"Look." Andre was pointing. There was a heap on the floor in the corner. As they moved closer, the light of the candle showed it to be a small boy, curled up on his side, asleep.

Andre reached out and touched him.

"Jacob." His whisper was frightened and urgent.

"Jacob." He shook his brother's shoulders and the boy stirred and sat up. Then he climbed abruptly to his feet, his eyes wide.

Julien wondered what they would do. In his experience, sisters and brothers at this age did not embrace unless in some demonstration of false sentiment demanded by their parents.

Andre took Jacob's arm rather formally and kissed his hand. Jacob said nothing, but looked round in bewilderment. The candlelight showed the big, dark eyes, sunk in his face, fogged by sleep and confusion. Andre held out his arms to him and Jacob went into his embrace, treading on his foot, staggering a little, as though it was an unnatural process they had learned from watching older people.

"Monsieur? What shall we do now?"

"I think you'd better come with me. My house is in the next street. You can stay with me until I find you a better home."

"Where's my mother?" said Andre.

"I don't know. She and your father have gone somewhere on the train. They had to leave in a hurry, otherwise they would have said goodbye." Julien knelt down and held the boys' hands.

"You're going to have to be brave. It may be some time before you see your parents, but you must try not to worry. I'll make sure you are properly looked after. You can trust me. I'll help you."

He felt four eyes running back and forth across his face in the gloom, then knelt on the beaten earth and clasped the two small, wiry bodies in his arms. Towards ten o'clock that evening Julien Levade went down to the Cafe du Centre. The streets of Lavaurette were shiny from a sudden summer storm, and he walked carefully over the unlit pavements. Through half-closed shutters and windows re-opened after the rain, he heard the murmur of voices; a harsh kitchen light showed a tired man re corking a bottle of wine while his wife cleared dishes from the oilcloth-covered table. In the dark street there were occasional signboards on the outside of the houses: a dealer in paraffin, an upholsterer, a repairer of electrical goods. Few customers were ever seen to go into these premises, but an afternoon knock on the door with a broken wireless would invariably raise someone, even if it was only a child, who, with lip-licking concentration, would write out thick brown labels and tie them to the goods to await the father's return. Julien ordered a glass of wine at the bar of the Cafe du Centre.

Monsieur Gayral, the owner, a stooped, defeated man of only sixty who looked twenty years more, pushed it across the zinc-topped bar. His untrimmed eyebrows hung down either side of his face in superfluous emphasis of his despondent manner. Madame Gayral, who was waiting in the dining room, was a fussy, proper, little woman with brightly dyed red hair and all the energy her husband had surrendered. Gayral was nevertheless a popular host because he was so discreet: nothing that was said in the Cafe du Centre was repeated by him, and his melancholic manner stretched to apparent deafness in the face of extreme opinions or gossip of a prurience (usually speculations of paternity) shocking even by the standards of the bar. Among those who had benefited from his discretion Gayral enjoyed a reputation as a man of great wisdom, albeit guarded, and a startling dry wit, the more legendary for being unexpressed.

Julien had not eaten, but was wary of the dining room. Even in the days of plenty, Madame Gayral's cuisine had been nervous. She disguised her lack of confidence by serving many different courses in the hope, presumably, that one of them at least might please.

Following a thin soup might come ham and a piece of melon, some sliced herring in vinegar, then a knob of preserved duck with peas, a damp green salad, then a grilled sausage with puree of potatoes, a trolley of cheeses and various milkbased desserts. It all added up to less than the sum of its parts; the diners typically felt bloated yet unsatisfied.

Under the Occupation, by which the Vichy Government agreed that the Germans needed to eat more than the French, and that France, as well as paying 20 million francs a day for the privilege of being occupied, should yield the best part of its produce to the Occupier, dinner at the Cafe du Centre had become hazardous. It was only Madame Gayral's inspired idea to hire Irene Galliot, the ironmonger's daughter, as dining room waitress that kept the male clientele faithful. Irene was her mother's daughter, they agreed by which they meant formal, unyielding, almost pitiless yet strangely more handsome.

Roudil Gallandy believed that this proved Madame Galliot must herself have been a beauty when young; most people thought it showed only that old Galliot,

"whom some of them remembered from before his death in the spring slaughters of the Chemin des Dames in 1917, was not the girl's father. Irene had thick, wavy brown hair, slender legs with only a hint an exciting hint to many of the men in Lavaurette - of peasant heaviness about the hip, a numbingly effective if rare smile, aristocratically (suspiciously) fair skin and a face which, although it was of a kind that might perhaps not wear well, could only fairly be described as beautiful. It was Irene's day off, and Madame Gayral was clearing the plates in the dining room from those disappointed male clients too slow-witted to have worked out the waitress's weekly time-table. Madame Gayral's absence in turn meant that conversation in the bar was even more unguarded than usual. Even Gayral himself was fired up to speak, and his opinion was granted a surprised but respectful silence.

"Some people say Laval's not to be trusted, but I say he's a very clever man. Every time one of these Communists shot a German soldier in the Occupied Zone the Germans would take ten innocent people and execute them. Now Laval's done a bargain. Now we have French police in the Occupied Zone, and they administer discipline. That's how it should be: France policed by the French, occupied or not."

There was a pause while the others took time to digest Gayral's opinion. A man called Benech, who was a schoolmaster, said respectfully, "You may be right there, you may well be right. But you must admit that the Boche soldiers have behaved impeccably in the face of great provocation, too."

Gayral nodded.

"Not that great," said Julien, "The odd isolated incident, but really hardly any '

" Oh, those wretched Communists," said Benech.

"When will they ever learn? They're as bad as the R.A.F with their bombing. The sooner the English face up to the inevitable the better for all of us." Benech had only recently started to come to the Cafe du Centre. He allowed himself only two drinks each evening, yet elicited a certain respect for his vigorous opinions. Gayral began to speak.

"I heard a story about a big factory in Clermont. I'm not going to say which one." Two or three heads nodded in approval of his discretion.

"The chief was visited by some Englishman who told him the R.A.F were going to bomb his factory because it was making machinery the Germans were taking for their war effort. This Englishman said if the chief gave him a copy of the plans of the factory he'd make sure they dropped their bombs on the right targets, just the vital bits that would be impossible to replace, and no one would get hurt. If he refused, they'd just bomb the whole thing. The factory owner told him to prove he was really in touch with the R.A.F by getting them to fly over the next night and drop a single bomb in a field outside the town. Well, apparently they did.

And the chief gave the man his factory blueprints and two nights later they came over and destroyed the vital machinery, exactly according to plan."

"How did this Englishman come to be in France?" said Roudil.

"They come by parachute. There are hundreds of them."

"It's that monster Churchill," said Benech.

"He's the most selfish man in Europe. For the sake of his own glory, he's prolonging this dreadful war. Why can't he accept the inevitable?

If the Marshal the Marshal, the victor of Verdun, if you please accepts that the Boche have won the war, why can't this foolish man see it? And where were the English when we needed their help in the Great War? They stayed at home."

"I think some did come over," said Roudil.

"I think not, my friend," said Benech.

"Anyway, why should this factory owner help the English? It's against the law. The Marshal made that clear when we entered into the " way of collaboration" with the Occupier. Those were his actual words, and quite right, too. We have to think about our future and our children's future.

This war's only going to last a year or so it's a drop in the ocean and when it's over we'll be in a position to take our place in the new Europe." Roudil creased his ancient face a little as Benech propounded his clear and trusting view. Benech had a thick, straight moustache and grey, peeked skin; he spoke as a man who feels the flow of history is at last vindicating his long-held beliefs.

"I think it's a little more complicated than that," Roudil said.

"The Marshal's playing a double game. He seems to go along with everything they ask, but he's waiting for his moment. He may be old, but he's shrewd, that one. Look how he's kept the sovereignty of France alive.

You tell me another country in Europe which has kept its independence after being occupied. Norway? Sweden? Belgium? Oh, no, he's a canny one, the Marshal, and we've not Seen the last of his cunning."

"What exactly is this sovereignty worth?" said Julien.

"An old man in a hotel room with powers that no one voted him, doing what he's told by the Germans. Is that sovereignty? While Paris is occupied and the Republic is dead?"

"Oh, the Republic" the Republic," said Benech, sipping at his second glass.

"The Republic killed itself. I'd have thought anyone could see that after the mess Monsieur Blum and his Jews made of things. If it took the Germans to bring us to our senses, then frankly I'm glad of it. And I'll tell you another thing we need another couple of years to put everything straight. If it takes the presence of the Occupier to give the Marshal time to get the country back on course, then so be it." Julien had heard this view so many times before that he was tired of arguing with it. In a way he admired its logic. To believe that being occupied by a wellbehaved foreign power enabled you to put in place, peacefully, the conservative internal reforms your country had long needed seemed not only practical but also rather gamely philosophical.

Under the influence of this Panglossian strain of thought, you could view the situation as not only convenient but lit up by a sort of providential optimism. Instead of quarrelling, Julien said to Gayral, "I hear your son's coming home." Gayral smiled.