Hitler's Girls (13 page)

I suspect I myself am also a target for further attack. In the eyes of Muller and his friends I am in possession of the secret code which will release the Nazi millions intended for the wretched Monica.

Altogether, I am unable to decide whether I am the hunter or the hunted. If it were not for the pleasant sense of anonymity here at the
Trois Frères
, I would be on the verge of anxiety. If it weren’t for the charming good manners of the other diners, I would sense trouble and persecution on all sides.

Here, I had nothing to fear. The young couples, the middle-aged and elderly alike, are well dressed, well bred, and a pleasure to dine among. They appear to be multi-national. I counted a Danish grandmother and her family; an industrialist
from northern Italy who spoke of his estates near Salerno; three Belgians; and a party of Norwegian landowners—not to mention the numerous French tables, each with its individual rolled napkin and horn ring. As my friend Jennifer Devant would say—and there is no denying Jennifer can be a wee bit of a snob—the class of the clientèle must reflect on the good table at the
Trois Frères
. She would surely have been able to point out an Austrian Archduchess or two; indeed, on passing the table nearest the door on my way out, I was unsurprised to overhear a lively conversation in German, but with that unmistakable upper-class Austrian accent, regarding the superiority of the
Boudin
served over the Saddle of
Lièvre
, stewed in its own blood with red wine.

But for me this is no light-hearted account by a
bon viveur
of a journey through France. No “horror movie,” as my colleagues at Edinburgh and Aberdeen are prone to describe the classics of the past such as
Dracula
or
Frankenstein
, could do justice to the very real horror with which I was soon to be visited.

After smiling carefully at the concierge of the
Trois Frères
(I did not receive so wide a smile in return as I had hoped; there was even a quiet request for information as to the whereabouts of my
bagages
, to which I could only give the stern rejoinder that the airport authorities at Nice and Marseilles
were concentrating on little else) I walked out and set off with purpose towards the crest of the hill.

I was immediately surprised by the amount of traffic in this little village.

There were not just cars parked in serried rows down both sides of the place to the
Grimaudière
(clearly a rival establishment) at the foot of the hill, but also a host of motorbikes, and even coaches—which, as I have so frequently complained to the Scottish National Trust, can instantly remove the ancient romance of a castle or fortified dwelling. Nothing distresses me more than a walled garden where the coaches are invariably instructed to moor, like metal whales in pellucid waters.

A very different class of people from those in the diningroom of the
Trois Frères
had now arrived in the village.

They were thugs, to be absolutely frank. Music blared from tinny contraptions clamped to the sides of their heads. Tattoos were visible on their bare arms. And, is if to underline the lack of suitability of their attire, a light rain began to fall.

Were these the unemployed? I was even more astounded to see this crowd of undesirables pour into, of all
venues
, the very hostelry from which I had just emerged.

I feared for my haversack and the contents of my wallet, I confess—until I remembered that I no longer possessed them. I castigated myself for believing the lie I had only just recently
used against the concierge: thus are criminals caught out just when they least expect it.

I determined to press on, nevertheless. France is a country of a revolutionary nature, after all. These distinctly lower-class people, workers from a local factory perhaps, had come to protest their pay and conditions. Unlike the British, who would never be seen storming the dining-room of the Savoy Hotel in their anger at homelessness or low reward for labour, the French clearly had no qualms as far as broaching the
Petit Trianon
that was the charmingly rustic restaurant of the
Trois Frères
.

I thanked my lucky stars that I was no longer inside and caught up in the inevitable brouhaha. There was certainly not time, in my quest for Monica’s daughter, to become involved in Trade Unionism and so on. I increased my pace to a brisk trot; and, possibly due to the effects of the
soufflé Grand Marnier
(supplement twenty francs but of course not yet paid for), I finally arrived fairly breathless on the crest of the hill.

There was something reassuring about finding a small school perched there. There was nothing else in the way of buildings as far as the eye could see. The rest of the village was hidden under the hill. The sound of children’s voices floated out of the window into a rudimentary playground, a strip of cement surrounded by wire fencing.

Straight ahead, I saw a range of mountains so large and magnificent they could only be the Luberon. A fine, sweet air seemed to waft over from the distant range… and once more I was reminded of the auld alliance between the country of my origin and France. The love the Scots and French hold for each other; their joint hatred of the Sassenach; the tragic queen whose homes I used to show—how completely enthralled the French were by the melancholy romance of Mary, Queen of Scots.

I felt for a moment that the French might save me. But this was madness. The
bons bourgeois
who sat over their gigot in the
Trois Frères
would want nothing to do with a penniless Scotswoman other than to report me to the police. The
ouvriers
, to judge by the specimens recently disembarked from the coaches in the village square, would think nothing of beating me up and leaving me for dead.

A pristine rainbow formed at the base of the Luberon mountains; and—yes, I confess I was carried back once more to my childhood, oblivious to danger. The sound of an ice-cream van as it climbed the last steep gradient of the hill gave me a strange sensation of hope.

I felt close to my journey’s end. That is the only way I have of describing my sudden happiness and lifting of spirits. There might even be gold at the end of this rainbow—but I didn’t want
it, and I wouldn’t take an ounce of it, not with its provenance in death, torture, and theft.

I walked along the road a while, looking down on a great plateau alive with scrub and heather and small bees which danced in the just-opening blooms.

Just below the plateau, where it dipped at last into a descending staircase of terraces, meadows, and meticulously planted vines, stood an ancient tower. It was an ancient chateau in fact: the tower, circa 1170, and the long, calm grey castle which flanked it, had been added at least two centuries later.

A cloud of white pigeons rose into the sky from the tower. A few needle-thin apertures served as windows. It was then, foolish though it may appear, that I felt my greatest hope. This hope would soon be dashed, destroyed, and stubbed out, like the finest spray from a rocket, exploded in a dark cupboard and never seen again.

But at that moment I was euphoric. The voices of schoolchildren were perhaps responsible for my joy.

I paused before going down once more into the village.

I was, I confess, deliberating on the best method, while bereft of luggage, of washing my smalls.

I had settled on a plan for a brief wash and rinse-through of my undergarments in the
en suite
bathroom of my room at the
Trois Frères
, and I had decided that drying them on the
radiator in my room might—if French habits with
chauffage
were more liberal than they had been in my freezing student days in Pairs—be efficacious, when the words came straight from the playground at me.

I was once more transported to Edleston.

“Ell, Dell, Dominel…”

The correspondences between the old French scores and the children’s games of southern Scotland returned to me. Had I not gone to the trouble, as an adult, of tracing those old playground games? I had even gone so far as to write to Monica, for we had loved the words so: “Zeenty, teenty, figery, fell.”

My voice rose with the others. Of course, the words were not all the same, but, as the children raced back and forth in their Starting Games and as they fell into the chant of “French and English”—or “German and English” as it was known a century after the Napoleonic wars—we entered, without the bairns being of course aware of it—into rhythms and syllables that went back to Celtic times.

Now the children formed teams, four to a side. They paid no attention to me whatsoever, as they took prisoners, declared themselves victors, shrieked in defeat.

“Jean, can you remember those games we used to play?”

I looked even further back into the past, the shore of an island … the ruined chapel… the hopping, skipping game we
played on the uneven cobbles, cobbles as old as the first traces of Christianity to reach those Hebridean isles.

“An, tan, ternera…” The old counting words came back to me as I stumbled down the hill, past the refined bungalows that made up the sparse outskirts of the village.

I had the code. I knew, somehow, that it was this that Monica had searched for, the words to the games… the chants that went with skipping and jumping…

At the back of the ruined chapel on the island of St Ronan’s stands a man.

I am there. I do not want to think about this man. He has come to visit Monica.

She is six years old and this is her birthday. I am her best friend, I have been brought to meet her real mother and father, though she doesn’t even know who they are.

Of course. The cake, with the number six in pink icing dribbled by the expert hand of Mrs. Douglas… the skipping, counting games Monica and I played together on the long slabs that marked the tombs of buried crofters. The number two, tan in the old sheep-counting rhyme, the symbol of diversity, the principle of strife and evil. “Three times two makes six” in Monica’s high, delighted voice, as we run and hop and skip up to the cake.

And the man, a tall, fair stranger, who stands in the shadows of the ruined chapel… I hear him speak, and see the fair woman
gaze up at him submissively. He says the numbers will bring a fortune to the child. “Isolde,” the fair woman says and smiles, and she lifts a hand that wears a ring as pale blue as her eyes.

* * * * * *

I stop where the road widens, where the place with its tired plane tree and smart new red roof of the
Trois Frères
lie placidly below me.

The two small bars in the village are bursting with newcomers.

The restaurant is full, though my table, now with its napkin tidily tucked in a ring, awaits me as I come in.

I indicate that I will not be long upstairs. The French, as I had reason to know on the occasion of my séjour as a student with the parsimonious Mme de Bérenger near the Madeleine, will refuse to serve dinner if one turns up even ten minutes late. And I was anxious to sample the potage du cresson and the filet de sole Bercy promised for the evening meal.

I take ten minutes to bathe myself: I was still wet through from the showers on my expedition to the schoolhouse.

The concierge smiled with his old sincerity and vigor when I assured him that I would be taking my place very shortly in the dining-room.

“But yes, Madame.” A gold tooth glinted at the back of a mouth blackened by a half-century of strong, local wine. “Madame’s husband awaits her upstairs. Madame will be delighted to be reunited… and with the
bagages
…”

Before I could make any movement of my own, I was being transported to the second floor of the
Auberge Trois Frères
.

The sight which greeted my eyes when I turned the key was a man reclining on my bed drinking a whisky and soda (with no coaster) on my bedside cabinet and smoking a pipe, which was resting in an ashtray into which I had placed my hairpins.

I do not in principle have anything against men being admitted to the rooms of female students. Like many others, I have read of the results of repression on great minds, such as Sylvia Plath.

However, the ease and familiarity of the pose adopted by the ex-journalist and Foreign Correspondent Jim Graham was such that I found my breath taken away. I shall pass over the equal familiarity of his greeting—indeed, it was little wonder the desk staff had considered us man and wife—and report the news, which is grave.

It was impossible to prevent myself from noticing that my uninvited visitor had removed his shoes, and that an unpleasant odour emanated from feet in cheap nylon socks. It occurred to me
that this man was in need of a wife, without doubt: an instinct, doubtless, inbred in my generation of women reared on Doris Day films and mothers grateful for the end of war and lack of men.

The feeling was of course stifled as soon as it arose.

“A good thing you managed to ring Jennifer Devant from the bar. Better still, that an old newshound thought to ring the Avondale Club for news of your whereabouts and then was able to call in a favour and get a fast plane ride.” He paused, then murmured, “Just like the old days.”

And how I wished he had not. But Jim continued seamlessly:

“You know, Jean, it’s always been a dream of mine to have an apartment in the South of France. What do you say to a flat-hunt, when all this trouble is over? Something in Juan-les-Pins—a little place with a balcony, what they call a glimpse of the sea. Whaddya say?”

Jim Graham’s information, after he had, at my insistence, extinguished his pipe, was as follows:

“I have to tell you,” Graham proceeded, “that you are in grave danger. Only by assuming an identity as your spouse was I able to enter this auberge, which is filled with the cream of the international neo-Nazi movements. As it is, I narrowly escaped Peter Müller—yes, your estate agent friend—as he arrived in his Ferrari ten minutes ago. I deduce it was him, after his enthusiastic greeting by the proprietors of this establishment.”