Daughter of Catalonia (18 page)

Philippe was at the café when she arrived, painstakingly assuring Colette that his back was better, and that he had eaten a decent lunch. He was standing as straight as possible at the bar drinking a tiny coffee when he spotted Madeleine. He gestured to her to come forward, and immediately broke through Colette’s anxious questions.

‘Colette,’ he cut in. ‘Can you tell me where Daniel is? Upstairs? Well, Madeleine here has been doing some research into Luis’s death, and there are a couple of things we need to ask him. I’d like you to come with us too, if you can. Can you leave the bar now?’

As Colette nodded in bewilderment, he called to the barman that Madame was going up to her apartment for a while, and led her ahead of Madeleine up the steep stairs. Philippe in command! Without him Madeleine knew she would never be climbing these stairs.

He was equally decisive when they reached the apartment. They found Daniel cleaning his shoes in the homeliest possible fashion. Madeleine was intensely relieved that there was no sign of his father. She was not sure how she would have faced Jean-Pierre Perrens right now.

Daniel rose to greet them, kissing Madeleine on both cheeks, and Philippe asked after the fishing before suggesting they should all sit down.

Confronted with two bewildered faces, he launched straight into speech.

‘Daniel and Colette. In the last few days Madeleine has been learning a lot about her father’s death. I took her to his grave, but I also introduced her to the son of the man who was with him when the Germans attacked him. This young man Jordi took her to the camp where Luis was living, where he was shot. And he told her some things which his father had said. Madeleine, I think you should tell again now what you heard from Jordi.’

All eyes turned to Madeleine. Colette was gripping one hand in another. Daniel’s face was unreadable. Madeleine’s stomach was churning now, and she wished she could sound one fraction as assured as Philippe.

‘It’s true,’ she began, ‘that Jordi was able to tell me some things. You see, his father was captured by the Germans that day and tortured, and they taunted him with information about who had betrayed them.’

She looked towards Colette, in desperate apology. ‘They told him that Monsieur Perrens was the man who had denounced the camp to the Germans.’ She was relieved
that her voice didn’t seem to be trembling. Colette reached for her son’s hand, and cast an anxious eye towards the hallway, as though her husband might appear at any moment.

Madeleine continued. ‘
Tonton
Philippe has told me that you found out, and tried to warn my father. That you sent him a letter, but it didn’t reach him. He told me …’ Now her voice was trembling after all. ‘He told me that Daniel carried the letter up to him at Amélie-les-Bains.’

Colette held Daniel’s hand as if frightened to lose him. She tried to speak, and failed, then looked over at Philippe, who nodded.

‘Just tell her, Colette,’ he said, almost tenderly. ‘She knows anyway, and she just needs you to confirm it’s true.’

Colette held his gaze for a moment, then looked musingly at her son’s hand in hers. ‘I am so sorry, Madeleine.’ she spoke in a whisper. ‘I’ve lived for many years now with the shame of what my husband did, and the anguish of knowing I didn’t manage to warn Luis in time.’ Colette looked at her son. ‘I think Daniel has understood over the years what his father did. He has said some revealing things sometimes, hasn’t he, my son?’

Daniel looked down at the floor and answered in a mumble. ‘Yes,
Maman
, I have understood.’

Madeleine didn’t know how to continue. But there was only one way to the truth, and that was to speak.

‘But that’s the main point of what I wanted to say,’ she blurted. ‘You see, the Germans who tortured Jordi’s father told him one other thing. They said that Monsieur Perrens
denounced the camp, and then his son showed them the way to it.’

There was silence. Daniel looked up, startled, and Madeleine felt a huge wave of relief. This is news to him, she thought. He didn’t do it.

Colette made to speak but Philippe stopped her.

‘No one is saying Daniel did anything wrong, Colette, if he did what his father told him to at the age of nine. But there was a clear assertion from German guards who had no reason to know of Daniel’s existence. For myself I can’t imagine that Daniel would have known the way to the camp, but I’d like to hear Daniel tell us what happened without anyone speaking for him.’

Daniel still looked as startled as before, his eyes now fixed on Philippe. He said nothing, and the silence stretched between them.

‘Just tell us, Daniel, what you did that day. You came up to Amélie-les-Bains with the letter. You had a lift with Paul the market gardener, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’ Then more silence.

‘So tell us.’ Philippe’s voice was insistent.

Daniel looked at him helplessly. ‘
Tonton,
I came up with Monsieur Paul, as you said. And I came to the house – your house,
mon oncle
– before lunchtime. You were at the school.’ He seemed to be struggling with himself, and then with a deep exhalation of breath he continued.

‘I wanted to take the letter to
Tonton
Luis, and I thought I knew where the camp was, but I was wrong. I got lost and never found it.’

‘But why did you want to take the letter to Luis?’
Colette broke in. ‘It was addressed to Philippe, not to Luis! You didn’t even know it was for Luis!’

There was another long silence, too long, while Daniel’s eyes were fixed on his mother, and then he spat words at her, words that sounded as if they were being wrenched from him. Words that fell between him and Colette with a meaning all to themselves as he withdrew his hand from hers.

‘I knew it was for him. I heard you and Papa arguing that weekend. I knew everything,
Maman
! Everything, do you hear? I knew what was in the letter. Not just that Papa had betrayed him, but the rest as well. I heard you …’

Colette looked aghast. ‘My son!’

‘Yes, but not your only son,
Maman
.’ The words exploded from him. ‘I had heard what Papa said, but I could hardly believe it. I wanted to see
Tonton
Luis myself and ask him if it was true. I used to hear you, you know, you and Luis, in the front bedroom, talking as if you didn’t want anyone to know. I didn’t know what you were doing, but I knew somehow that I mustn’t go inside. But I didn’t really understand how that could have made you pregnant.’

The word ‘pregnant’ was torn from him, and Colette just sat, her face set in horror. Madeleine felt slightly sick, and held the arm of her chair to steady herself. Philippe sat quietly, watching them all, a look on his face which might, incongruously, have been one of peace.

A skim of tears filled Daniel’s eyes as he continued. ‘I heard him as well, telling you that he was going to be moving to a new camp on the road above Amélie-les-Bains, and that if ever you needed to reach him you could find
the camp up that track, and to look out for a turning on the right. So I went up there and looked, but I must have missed it. It was all just trees. I was looking for ages, and seemed to climb halfway up the mountain, and then I was scared, and I knew
Tonton
Philippe would be finishing school, and that I ought to get back. So I gave up, and just went back to Amélie-les-Bains and gave the letter to you, Uncle. You never knew that I had come up from Vermeilla in the morning, not the afternoon. But I never found him. I never found him, I tell you! And I didn’t lead any Germans to his camp!’

Madeleine could see the young child, deeply disturbed, with all of his simple faiths shaken to the core, combing a mountain path in the heat of a June day, becoming more and more distressed as he floundered, lost and alone, gripping that all-important letter in his sweaty young hand. And the letter? It warned of Jean-Pierre’s betrayal, but did it also tell Luis that he had made Colette pregnant? Colette his mistress? Suddenly, the real meaning of that quote from Voltaire came back to her, ringing out clear as a bell from her schooldays. It was not despair, but the weakness and pathetic errors of man he was writing about, and the first law of nature he was calling upon was that man should forgive and understand, because we were all weak together. Was that what Luis was writing, an admission to Elise of his affair with Colette? Was that his weakness?

Colette’s face told the truth. She looked bleak and inexpressibly tired, and frightened. She looked at Daniel, who had his eyes fixed on the floor, and then at Madeleine, whose eyes were fixed on her. She raised her hand as if to
ward off Madeleine’s gaze, and then finally she spoke.

‘What my son is saying is true, Madeleine. The reason why Jean-Pierre denounced your father is because he discovered I was pregnant, and he knew very well that it wasn’t him who was the father. He was unable, Jean-Pierre, to be a real husband after the accident. It was a lonely life, on my own running the bar, keeping everything going. And for your father … for Luis life was also very lonely, with his wife and children so far away. It was just for comfort, you know. Just for comfort. He used to talk to me of Elise, and I knew how much he loved her. He came down sometimes to Vermeilla to scout for information. He maybe came once every three or four months, no more. And sometimes we would snatch some time together.’

She looked again at her son, who wouldn’t meet her eye. ‘Don’t blame me, Daniel,’ she beseeched. ‘We hardly ever met, and I could number our actual encounters on the fingers of one hand. The last time he came was in February that year. I was pregnant already, but I didn’t know it. Soon after that I knew, of course, but there was no way I could tell Luis. I could maybe have sent a letter to Philippe to pass to him, but I just couldn’t. It seemed such a dreadful thing to do to him. I knew that at some time he would come back down to Vermeilla and then I would have to tell him. And I knew that at some time I would have to tell Jean-Pierre. But in the meantime I just carried on as if nothing had happened, and sometimes I could forget that I was pregnant and going to have a child who was not my husband’s. It was only three or four months of pretending, but it seemed longer.

‘And then came that weekend, when Jean-Pierre confronted me. I was six months pregnant by then, and women in the village could see clearly that I was expecting. There was some muttering, but not much. After all, no one else knew for sure that my husband and I couldn’t … that he couldn’t father a child. It was easy enough just to behave like any other pregnant woman and brazen things out. But not with Jean-Pierre. When he found out he simply exploded. He frightened me. For years he’d just been depressed and withdrawn and fearful, but there was something desperate about him when he realised that the whispers in the village were true. I suppose it confirmed everything that was worst in his life. He was impotent, I was running our lives and playing the man’s role, and finally now he was a
cocu
, a cuckold, and his wife had been deceiving him with a man who was a hero, a real man, and worse, that I was going to bring that man’s child into the world!

‘It was so terrible that that was the weekend that Daniel came to see us. I hadn’t seen you for months, my son, and I was so happy to know you were coming, but that whole weekend turned into a nightmare. I kept you downstairs as much as I could, “helping” me in the bar, but then he came down too, and started acting like the life and soul of the party with the customers. Customers!’ she spat. ‘They were all Nazi scum, but he buried himself with them and after a while it dawned on me what he was doing. It hadn’t occurred to me that he could be so bitter as to turn traitor just to get his revenge on Luis.
Mon Dieu
, I was so frantic. That’s when you must have heard, my son, because that
night I could not keep quiet. I hoped you were sleeping, but I had to find out what he’d done. And he was so pleased with himself! Triumphant, even. As though he’d proved now who was the real man, who had the real power. I never hated him more.’

Colette’s voice petered out, and she sat still. Only her hands kept moving, twisting round and round, crushing a customer’s bill she had brought up the stairs without thinking, and she cast another glance towards her husband’s room down the corridor.

Philippe reached out and touched both her and Daniel, and then spoke almost meditatively to Daniel, who hadn’t lifted his eyes from the floor.

‘When you told us you were scared up there on the hill, when you were looking for Luis, was it just because you got lost, Daniel, or was there some other reason?’

‘Some other reason?’

‘Yes. Did you see something? Or hear something that frightened you? You know, you were up there on the afternoon when Luis was shot – when the German militia came. I think they saw you. They would be local militia from Amélie-les-Bains – they would know who you were. I think they used that to bait poor Enric in his jail.’

‘I didn’t see any Germans!’ Daniel’s denial was emphatic, inflamed.

‘But did you hear anything? Did you hear any shots?’

‘Shots? You mean the hunters?’

‘There wouldn’t have been any hunters, Daniel. Not at that time of year, and not during the occupation.’

Daniel was thinking hard. Colette too was alert. The
miseries were forgotten as Daniel tried to bring that afternoon back to his mind.

‘There were shots,’ he agreed. ‘I didn’t know what they were for or where they were coming from. They seemed to be coming from a long way off, kind of muffled. I suppose that was the effect of the trees. It’s funny – I’d forgotten. Completely forgotten. But now I remember I was frightened, a bit. I didn’t feel safe, so I decided to head back. My God, don’t tell me I heard Luis being killed?’

‘I think so, Daniel, and I think that it’s a very good thing that you missed the turning to Luis’s camp. You didn’t know that the Germans were already on their way, close behind you. If you had found the camp, I think you too could have been killed.’

‘Or my arrival could have put Luis on his guard!’ Daniel’s voice was bitter. ‘If only I’d had enough sense to find the way. How could they find their way so easily, when I missed that track even though I was looking for it?’