Hunting Ground (2 page)

Rare in this city, and beautiful, sunlight glints from the coffeepot. It may take an hour for that call to get through. Everything’s in such a shambles except for here. Almost the whole of Europe’s been torn to pieces. It’s crazy being able to sit on a terrace like this among everyday people who enjoy a smoke, cuddle tiny dogs, read a newspaper, eat cake, or stir coffee.

They can’t know why I listen all the time for the sound of hobnailed boots or for the shrieks, or wait for the beating that must come before the bullet or the axe.

‘Madame, your call to Paris.’

It’s such a civilized thing, the telephone, so everyday the touch of it makes my hands tremble as I hear the operator saying, ‘Paris, you must wait.
Allô … allô,
is that Zurich?’

‘
Ici
, Zurich.’

‘Your party’s on the line.’

‘Is that Jules de St-Germain?’ I ask.

There’s silence at the other end, the crackling of a bad connection. ‘
Oui, c’est moi, c’est Jules de St-Germain.’

‘Le mari de Lily?’

Again, there’s silence. ‘Yes … yes, I was once her husband.’

‘Ah, bon, monsieur
.’ That’s all I say. I hold the receiver from me and I hear him cursing:

‘Are you the one who sent that thing to me?’

I put the receiver down. The man behind the counter looks questioningly, but I walk out to my table to sit in the sun, to shut my eyes, and to remember.

My name is Lily Hollis—Lily de St-Germain, though I’d love to delete that upper class de. I didn’t choose to do what I did. Me, I’m ashamed to have survived.

You see, the death sentence had been passed long ago and the order had finally come down. We went out behind the hut. I remember that it was raining and that there was a wooden chopping block standing in a sea of mud. There were boot prints all around it. We could hear the guns of the approaching British. It was only a matter of hours until our liberation and yet these bastards were going to kill us.

Seven … there were seven of us women. Some fell to their knees to pray. Some stood erect and tried to sing the “Marseillaise.” I reached for Michèle’s hand and was struck hard across the face.

The rain … April’s a wretched month in the lowlands to the north of Hanover. There was always water everywhere. It dripped constantly through the roof and from the fir trees.

The axe came down. Michèle turned swiftly towards me. ‘Lily … Lily …’

I held her. I felt her frail body trembling. I couldn’t stop her tears; she was far too young.

Another of us was grabbed and flung to her knees before that thing. A boot pressed the head down as if it were a log. The axe went up …

In the confusion of those last hours at Bergen-Belsen, all but one of us died. Stricken by what had just tumbled in front of me, I was conscious only of a burst of orders, all in German. The sounds of gunfire.

Guards and executioner fled. The axe was left lying on the ground. Michèle Chevalier’s lovely brown eyes stared up at me.

I knelt. I remember reaching out to her, but I couldn’t stop shaking. Her hair had always been so like my daughter’s but, of course, they’d cut it off and shaved our heads again.

All dead … all of them. Both the men and the women, my comrades-in-arms. Tommy Carrington and Nicki. My sister, Janine. Even my two children—I’m certain they’re dead. Certain! Me, I was the only one to live. Can you imagine what a burden that’s been?

I think it was a British corporal who discovered me some hours later. I know someone took me to a senior officer who said, ‘My God, get her out of here.’

The number on the inside of my lower left forearm is blue, and when I press a finger against the skin, its seven digits open out a little and their edges are blurred.

Lily Hollis—Lily de St-Germain. No matter how hard I rub, this number will never go away, and I know that somewhere there’s a record of my name against it. There were so many of us in the camps—millions, I suppose. Such confusion at the end. Still, it’s only a matter of time until the doctors and nurses discover who I am.

But for now everyone thinks Lily de St-Germain is dead, that she died by execution in Bergen-Belsen.

You see,
mes amis,
I’ve sent them all their little black pasteboard coffins just like we did with the
collabos
during the Occupation, each with their name in white chalk on the lid, a large cross at the top, and at the foot, between the two V’s-for-Victory, the cross of Lorraine, and I’ve come back to remind them of what they did.

The children were having their rest or private time. Hopefully, Marie-Christine would be sleeping, for Tante Marie and Georges had come. Freed for an hour, I left the house but, at the road, paused to look back as if I couldn’t leave them yet.

The château was partially screened by beeches and cedars of Lebanon. Framed by tall, spiked iron gates, it was seen across a lawn that needed cutting and was bleached by the sun. Smoke trailed above the grey slate roof, thinning as it merged with the cloudless sky.

Tante Marie would look after the rest of the baking. Though she’d complain about the quality of the bread, she and Georges would eat it well enough.

I remember that I smiled then and gave a gentle laugh, for I liked the two of them and thought they must like me, though it was often hard to tell.

Brick-red flowerpots full of crimson geraniums flanked the low stone steps to the front entrance. The doors were almost French windows, for the panes of glass didn’t quite extend to the floor but stopped at a quarter panelling of wood. In the storey above, the windows were French but there were no fanlights, they were simply tall and rectangular, their balconies being an expense that was never added. Shadows made the glass appear dark and rippled.

There were five of these windows upstairs, and together with their open shutters, they occupied very nearly the whole of the wall. Above them, there were two gabled windows in the attic. Four chimneys marked the ends of the main part of the house. On the west side, however, the wing was a storey-and-a-half. Recessed, too, from the main wall, it had its own door and a window upstairs but with curved lintels of cut stone, not fanlights. Here, too, there was a chimney on the outer wall.

It was an imposing house. Stolidly French and looking of wealth, but smelling of mould and decay.

There was no question that it would soon need a new coat of paint, and I decided then that I had better do it myself. The lane led through the grass off to my left, only to swing round in front of the house. Roses grew beneath the windows, some white, some pink, masses of daisies, too …

I remembered that house as I’d first seen it. A château—
ah, oui, oui
. Even in the heat and stillness of that afternoon, I had to admit that it was very beautiful.

Crossing the road and the small pasture beyond, I entered the woods and began to climb, but at a place where some trees had been felled, I again looked back.

The Château de St-Germain sat in a clearing, nestled in a cup of land and surrounded by woods. To my right, to the east, the road continued towards Fontainebleau some seven kilometres away. From there, one of the main roads ran northwest to Barbizon and Chailly-en-Bière. It was deliciously wild, yet not wild at all. In fact, if one thought about it, Fontainebleau was only about sixty-five kilometres to the south-southeast of Paris, not far from the junction of the Loing and the Seine. The trains were good, so it wasn’t that much of a journey. The trains … there I go again. Yet it could be isolated, too. Listening to the whistles, the engines, and the rumbling of the wheels made me lie awake at night thinking of the city and wondering about my husband.

The slope ahead of me grew increasingly steep. The warm scent of beeches and oaks, of rotting leaves and humus gone dry with the summer’s heat, came from all about me. Soon, however, the forest closed around me, and I could no longer see the château.

Now I was on my own and, shutting my eyes for a moment, pausing to lean against a tree and remember my first visit here, but all I can hear now is the sound of their footsteps in the leaves, that awful crisp, dry crackling and then … why then, the ragged sound of gunfire.

Rising straight above me, a grey stone tower broke through the edge of the trees. It was Norman perhaps, though no one knew of its origins. Built so long ago, its circular walls and tumbled blocks remained a local mystery.

Patiently, I picked my way over the stones, always climbing. From time to time, I would reach a ledge and stand there breathing hard and listening to the silence, remembering again until suddenly I was running to the tower. Then, suddenly, I was at the edge of the cliff. While the tower rose behind me, the land fell abruptly to stunted scrub, bracken, patches of barren sandy soil and copses of mature trees.

Hunted over by kings, a private preserve of the wealthy from the Middle Ages right through to the Revolution and to Napoléon himself, the Forêt de
Fontainebleau
was very wild in places like this. Oak, beech, ash, birch, and poplar spread into the distance with scattered clusters of pine and clearings where they had all been felled.

There were deer, wild boar, rabbits in plenty, and foxes to be sure. There were birds, too, partridges, pheasants, and doves—the pigeons. And nearly always when I went there in the autumn and winter, I would hear the hunting horns and think of the days when hounds were fed the still warm stag and the king and his retinue dined on other things.

There was always the chance a person might find something. Perhaps a louis d’or, perhaps the jewelled handle of a dirk or buckle of a shoe. When a place has been hunted over by kings, all sorts of things can be left behind, even trip wires and grenades.

There might be brigands, too, of course. Far to the north, much nearer to Barbizon and the farm of my mother, there were gullies and caverns in which fortunes might once have been hidden. Who knows? It was just a thought, had been so then.

I gave a shrug. I filled my lungs and sighed. Every time I came here, I remembered that first time. Jules had brought me to the tower when I had come from Paris to meet his father. The tall stone walls had kept the sun out and drawn their shade. Scattered about the floor were large blocks of stone that had fallen from the battlements, but in the centre of the floor he had levered several into place as an altar, a boyhood thing. He hadn’t chosen one of the rooms in which to make love.

We had made love there, though, but that had been a long, long time ago, and Tommy … why Tommy had used the tower, too, but for purposes of his own.

That night, I listened to the wireless in the library, and they told me that at five a.m. that morning, 1 September 1939, Germany had invaded Poland. What I had feared had come to pass, and I felt alone as never before.

In the morning, I took the children to the farm to stay with mother and went on to Paris, unannounced. On the eve of war, so many had fled the city, the inbound trains had been empty. One could walk down the rue Mouffetard, as I just had, and see so few people the experience was frightening. Nothing, though, like the Exodus that came in June 1940 and a day or two ahead of the blitzkrieg. Through the morning’s haze, opalescent and diffuse, the cupola of the Panthéon rose ethereally, lifting itself up from the narrow, walled-in street to touch the sky. The Fifth Arrondissement, the Latin Quarter, was the habitat of students. Tenements; small, cheap hotels; bistros; cafés; bars; street hawkers; taxi drivers;
maisons de tolérance
,
maisons de passe
,
and
putains
who often challenged passing men in hopes of a little cash.

My sister was a sewer rat. Janine knew the worst of places. Water dripped constantly from the faucet. The gunk-plugged sink in the washroom at the far end of the corridor trapped its puddle before slowly drinking it in. Chipped enamel gave rust stains. Crinkly hairs were everywhere, some brown, some peroxide-blonde, others black. All transient.

The stench of a clogged bidet was overpowering, that from the toilet in its own little closet next door, revolting. There wasn’t a bathtub anywhere—
merde,
no! Such things weren’t necessary.

Transfixed, I listened to the water, the building, the courtyard, and the street. Why did I feel so threatened? Not by Jules and Janine, but by something else. The city. Whistles in the night. The rushing tramp of hobnailed boots. Shouts in German, cries in French.

There is no other sound like that of boots. Compressed, shut in, the windows crowd. Shutters are closed or open. Shades are drawn, but there are no balconies, and I’m running and cry out once, for I’ve stumbled and fallen. Scrambling up, I race along the street. I’ve torn my stockings—my only pair! My knees are bleeding. I’ve scraped my hand …

But I’m here, well before all that, in the washroom on the sixth floor of that ramshackle tenement. Can you imagine what it must have been like to run up those stairs, to hear their boots on the stones, their shouts, their whistles, and the dogs?

I was pregnant, damn it. Pregnant!

Forgive me—that came much later. The tenement had a narrow courtyard that opened on to the rue Mouffetard. The door to that courtyard was set in a high, wooden wall. Bolts held it shut. Garbage tins and refuse were everywhere on that second day. Cats, dogs, children with runny noses—the poor, they didn’t leave the city like others, but why had they to look at me like that? Their expressions revealed not just suspicion, but also a wariness that was tempered with fear. Yes, fear.

If only I’d known then what I know now.

The entrance to the house was from a narrow, cockeyed wooden shanty of a structure, a slot that jutted out and didn’t face directly down the length of the courtyard but sideways as if ashamed. Electrical cables, fuse boxes, and broken meters lined both walls, but there was no outer door, so it was open to all weathers and all defecators. One went up a short flight of steps then, suddenly, there was a door.

From behind the armour of a bent, wrought-iron grille, the concierge took one look at my outfit, huffed, raised her bushy black eyebrows, and snorted contemptuously.