She managed to utter the saving words without undue priggishness but it was already too late, the deed was done, and the boy’s transfigured face spelt out the innocence of his emotion. His weapon had now started to shrink and wilt, he uttered brief smothered cries of pleasure and buried his face between her breasts. This would not do, and she was about to take a more forceful and definitive line when providentially they heard the latch of the kitchen door down below click open, and a step fall upon the kitchen flags. In the most miraculous way the boy disappeared – as if into thin air; it was an act of the purest de-manifestation! He slipped out of sight and sound so swiftly that she could not even formulate her aroused reproach, and even began to wonder whether she had not dreamed the whole episode. But no, the little pool of semen was there, proof positive, with droplets caught hanging in her bush. She dozed again, or tried to, until the reappearance of Sam and the renewal of his caresses, his cool flesh turning warm under her responses. They made love once more and slowly, a little wearily; and because the incident and her own arousal made her feel a little guilty she felt overburdened with the truth and the desire to confess – or nearly as possible! She needed to feel a vicarious absolution in this richer, deeper coupling with her mate. “I’ve been raped,” she said, but in such a way as to make it sound a jest. Obligingly he took it as such and said, “By what – by a dream, or a wish, or a clergyman’s thought?”
“Yes,” she said, but not specifying.
“Well, you are pretty warmed up,” he said, with a mock sigh of sadness. “One always has to thank the other, l’Autre, the Lodger, the sod …”
“Homosexual ploy, that,” she said, proud of her new analytic skill. “Ah, the public school.”
“If there were world enough and time,” he said, most unexpectedly, and bit into her bottom lip until it hurt intolerably. “Constance, you as my ideal girl will always keep a gilded dildo for doldrums – as when I go to the wars, like.” She felt him deeply, deeply sad.
“You authorise me, my Lord?”
“Anything you do is fine,” he said. “Only because it’s you, that’s how I feel it.”
“Only because it’s me?”
“That’s it, that’s how I feel it.”
They lay staring into each other’s eyes as if mesmerised for a long moment before he turned on his elbow and groped for a life-saving cigarette. “My dear,” she whispered, and put her arms upon his shoulders which were still cool from the waters of the weir. He did not mean a word of it!
As absolution that was all there was and it would have to do.… And now, remembering these past events, so sharp in memory’s focus, she told herself the real reason for her decision to stay – it had not even been clear to herself until a moment ago. The truth was that for all these people Sam was not dead, he was still in an unspecified somewhere which would one day divulge him again and restore him, blithe and unharmed, to this landscape, to these people. It made her a little shamefaced to realise this, for she had rather strong views about sincerity; but she needed time to herself, time to stare Sam’s death out of countenance. Here she could live without having to give an account of herself or of him. For how long she could not tell, but evidently one fine day, when she could resume life to the full, there would no longer be the need to cheat. She would assume his death before the world.
The fire in the range blazed up now, and their dinner which consisted of a large ragoût of various palatable scraps, conjured from God knows where, and eaten with that rarity, a home-made loaf, smelt marvellous. The children came down and announced that the beds were blazing. Their mother despatched them to bed betimes to save fuel, but they refused to go unless their father gave them a glimpse of the family of ferrets which he had just managed to acquire. They were kept in a large wooden mousetrap of the old-fashioned kind, one with several compartments, almost like a small apartment. Blaise said, “To call in the farm-guns as the Germans did could have spelt starvation for many – perhaps it still does, who can say? But I thank God for the warrens of rabbits in the forest, and for these little fellows. I had ten conies yesterday. Aren’t they pretty?”
The ferrets were sleek as very tiny greyhounds; they slid about their cage with an evil composure, their eyes gleaming as they made a queer little clicking sound. The children were given their glimpse but not encouraged to caress the little animals. “To bed,” cried their mother. “Kiss the ladies goodnight and off you go!”
Constance did not fear that the son of Blaise would risk renewing his addresses as she had successfully quelled him by hinting that if there were any renewal of such behaviour she would inform his father of it. The boy turned pale and from then on avoided her stern eye whenever chance brought them together. The threat weighed heavily upon him, as well it might. Nevertheless now, after such a lapse of time, the event itself did not weigh so heavily, and she kissed him lightly, giving his shoulder a squeeze. They locked up the little duty car in the great barn of the Bastide where Blaise lived as caretaker to absentee tenants; it would not do to let the motor freeze in the whirling mistral which had risen upon the night, like an outrider of the coming snow. They said goodnight and locked themselves in the kitchen, having blacked out the room with scrupulous care. Nancy Quiminal played a hand of solitaire on the kitchen table in order, as she said, to calm her spirits before sleeping. Constance brewed a tisane of sage – she had picked some in the field outside the house.
When they crawled into their tepid beds and bade one another goodnight Constance felt that for her the war had really begun; this was her first night of it and Sam was still alive, had been unobtrusively salvaged from the wreck of the world.
Both girls slept badly, unaccustomed to the sense of emptiness engendered by the country noises which came to their ears from the garden with its sombre greenery and tall pines and chestnuts, and from the strip of forest which lay beyond the high road. It was not fear, but strangeness which bade them rise before first light and set the old oven going to brew morning tea. They had begun to move imperceptibly into winter – the dawn showed it with its sullen crimson gashes, its clouds wind-scarred from the fitful mistral of the night before, its ringing frost upon the highroad leading to town. Quiminal remarked upon it when the little duty car rumbled and skidded downhill to the town, and added, “Now our troubles begin; the cold will soon strike.” But they were in good heart after all, the trip had refreshed them, and they supported the insolence of the soldiers at the checkpoint on the bridge with a vexed resignation. Now they could see the point of having a uniformed driver to conduct them, for he would bear the brunt of such encounters with the soldiery. It was as good as having an armed guard. “Paradoxically enough, our dangers will come from the maquisards when once they form – if ever they do.” The loathing and despair engendered by Vichy was apparent from her tone.
But good news awaited them in the form of permission to travel about the area replenishing medical stocks in hospitals and clinics, and this task was delegated to Constance, as the newcomer, a fact which rejoiced her. Here was a chance to move about, to restore her contact with the Provence they had once known as a playground; it was as yet not quite a cemetery, despite the depredations of the Germans. Even in chains, like this, denied all the brilliant trappings of its bullfights, Corsoes, village fêtes, religious or secular foregatherings – its life-giving ethos of pious joy and unbridled paganism: even now as it was occupied and defeated, it emanated life and hope. So long as there was one point of light in the bleak world there was hope. And Constance was irrationally proud that it was England which had fed this flame. Though the defeat and the betrayal hung heavy, people had begun to feel that it was redeemable. It was sufficient to hope for the moment. And in the final analysis hearts rose to realise that already France Libre under its youngest General had twenty thousand French volunteers under arms … None of this could be said; but in every look cast at a German soldier or at a member of the Milice there was a buoyancy which conveyed the thought. The insult was there to b
e read, which is why both the Huns and their instruments took special pride in their routine cruelties. It was their reply to the silent reproach of the public’s charged silence. A new kind of hate had been born, and it was with anger that they filled the trains to bursting point with poor half-demented souls from the camps, bound for the better equipped camps in the north. It was with deliberate pride that they ordered them to go slowly, at a walking pace, through the town and over the famous bridge, so that everyone could see their captives. In olden times they would have impaled them and stuck their heads on pikes to be exhibited along the walls, over the gates of Avignon. Yes, but the enormous numbers of such quarry precluded such a medieval gesture, or else certainly the Nazis would have revived it, as they had revived ritual beheading.
Sentiments and emotions such as these are difficult to express to oneself unless they are illustrated by some concrete instance which stands forever as a marker, a history which clinches the matter. So it fell out for them.
One such train, full of children and adolescents – some girls – slowed to a halt upon the main line at dusk, in a light skirling snow. The doors of the wagons were open or ajar and from them flowered these pale, exhausted faces in abstract expressions of estrangement or grief. It was a bereavement just to see them and to know oneself helpless to aid them. The Red Cross truck was crossing the sidings below the main road when the lights held it up for the train to pass; the whole expressive object with its penitential cargo of suffering passed directly across the vision of Constance as she crouched beside the driver. Their own cargo consisted of medical supplies bound for Nîmes and its clinics, but it also contained a treat of one hundred whitemeal loaves for the children. The flour had been hoarded and saved with great difficulty, and every week this little offering was given to the young, either in Aries, Nîmes or Aix. It was not much, but it cost thought and time – and a certain sharp practice. As chance would have it, Nancy Quiminal was at Constance’s side, for she had asked if she might be given a lift as far as the Lycée, and she shared the sombre vision with her friend. But she was quicker-witted than Constance, for as the train lingered at the level crossing she gave a sudden gasp as an idea came into her mind; and before anyone could ask what she was at she had leapt out of the car and thrown back the tarpaulin which sealed the back. “Come quick,” she gasped, and before she even fully realised the intention behind the gesture Constance followed suit, bounding into the road under the dully amazed regard of the uniformed driver. They seized the two laundry baskets filled to the brim with fresh loaves of bread, and dragged them up the concrete slip to the waiting train, uttering little breathless cries to attract attention. It was like feeding seagulls; the hands floated in their anxiety above and around their upturned white faces – the wagon stood too high off the permanent way for them to hand the loaves, they must pitch them. But not one fell down, not one was missed, while here and there on the frozen faces glimmered something which approached a smile of gratitude, or perhaps something more inscrutable, like an expression of desireless fatigue and pain.
The baskets were almost empty when the expected reaction came; a whistle blew once, twice – a piercingly urgent note. In the distance, way down the long platform, a slim figure in the uniform of a Nazi lieutenant gesticulated and shook his fist to mark time with the string of imprecations he was uttering – too far away to be audible. But the action was sufficient to bring down retribution on their heads, for nearer at hand some burly civilian figures who looked like stevedores or lorry-drivers broke into a jog trot towards them, growling like mastiffs, their boots striking sparks from the concrete of the platform. One undid his belt as he ran, the other brandished as a weapon a pair of long wool-lined leather gloves, elbow length – murderously heavy. The two girls saw them advancing out of the corner of their eyes, but they kept their minds resolutely upon the task they had set themselves, and by the time the first two men reached them in a scuffle of boots and a welter of guttural oaths and snarls, their baskets were empty, down to the last loaf. Then the sky flew apart as the men – they appeared to be either Czech or Russian muleteers – waded in with their blunt weapons and crashed them down upon their poorly defended heads. They cried out in protest of course, but this only enraged their assailants and the blows redoubled in violence. They shrank down, shielding themselves as best they could with their arms, but to little avail. They were beaten to their knees, and then even lower until they were almost on the ground, gasping under this punishment.
By now the youthful officer was also upon them, his pale face contorted with a rage which hardly allowed him to speak, uttering imprecations and orders in a voice which sounded almost like that of an adolescent. Here a moment of inattention came to the rescue of the two girls crouching on the platform. The German’s language was obviously foreign to the two peasants and they turned heavily round upon him in order to try and understand what he wanted of them. It was only a moment, but it sufficed for the quick-witted Nancy to cry, “Quick! Run for it!” And suiting the action to the word both girls raced along the platform, their feet barely touching it, or so it seemed: like duck upon the surface of a lake. The men turned growling and started to pursue them, but in a half-hearted surge which ended at the gate of the level crossing. Their quarry had darted sideways into the narrow streets of the town, while the driver of their car had had the wit to reverse into a nearby side street to await their return. Meanwhile they still ran frantically, in tears with rage and excitement at the humiliating beating they had received, but also aware that their escape had been providential – further down the platform they had seen soldiers running up, their rifle butts at the ready. One blow could crack a skull.
They burst at last into a small estaminet known to Quiminal and under the stolid and unimaginative stare of the landlord behind the bar – a man known for his Vichy sympathies – asked if they might dress their wounds in his toilet. Nancy had a lump on the back of her head, fortunately masked by her hair, and a mass of smaller contusions; Constance a black eye and a cut temple which would necessitate the wearing of dark glasses for a good week. It was mercifully limited, though both had aches and pains, bruises and sprains almost everywhere. And shock: they were still pale and trembling at their own audacity. By the time they went back to the bar the expressionless peasant behind it had set up two glasses and plenished them with yellow rum and sugar upon which he now poured hot water before pushing them forward and motioning to them with his head to drink. It was a generous gesture considering his sympathies and in view of possible consequences for himself – for already a platoon of soldiers wandered down the street checking identities, perhaps (one never knew) searching for them?
They took their drinks to the darkest corner of the establishment and drank gratefully, in this way calming themselves down before any further action. They decided to separate, Quiminal being quite near her objective; so Constance set out alone and managed to find her car and driver in a side street. Snow had begun to fall; the train had vanished into the slate-grey skies of the northern hills. Their journey was not a long one – Nîmes lay about an hour away, tucked into its dry scaly heaths called garrigues. But checkpoints were many and quite systematic, and even their quasi-official status availed them nothing. But it was at one such checkpoint near Bezouce that a familiar figure from the past floated into her presence with his arms spread to embrace. It was like some archaeological survival from a forgotten epoch – Ludovic the Honey Man, whom they had encountered in the Cevennes, and along the dusty roads of Provence so often, so very often. He was one of those unforgettable figures of the local genius who bear the full Mediterranean stamp: generous, copious, inexhaustibly rich in humour and earthy vivacity.
He walked like a bear emerging from its grotto, arms spread wide, radiating a massive benevolence. He recognised her at once – he had a peasant’s eye sharpened by a lifetime of fairground practice. No country fair had been complete without the presence of this great expert, who blazed and roared and crackled like a
forest fire, cajoling, teasing, provoking, inspiring his customers to invest in one of his choice honeys – “honeys from the bosom of Nature, perfumed by the Virgin herself” as he was accustomed to declare – though in prevailingly Protestant country he used other terms. “My God,” said Constance, “It can’t be true.… Ludovic!” Moreover he had with him his honeycoach as he called the great furniture removal van which he had had adapted to the needs of his exacting craft, his hives.
His horse, disshafted, cropped the grass in a nearby ditch; his capacious honeycoach with the back let down stood in a field beside the checkpoint. He had been busy selling his produce – his young son was still at it – to the German troops who manned the post in a good-natured way. Also to the passing traveller who, while his papers were being checked, strolled across to buy a pot of this “veritable nectar of the gods”. It was more than an apt word spoken in jest – it was true: there was no honey on earth as delicately perfumed as the honey manufactured by Ludovic, for the simple reason that he followed the blossoms with the rotation of the seasons and took his cleverly constructed hives with him. It was work of great refinement and delicacy, like the blending of a fine wine. His great coach had been decorated by a local artist with scenes from the Fete of the Tarasque – the mythical dragon-monster of Tarascon which enjoyed a whole festival procession on its own; this gave it some of the sharp brilliance of a Sicilian country cart with painted sideboards. In this contrivance he jogged his way about, following an exacting itinerary which began in High Provence with the first chestnut blooms and linden, and gradually descended the slopes of the Cevennes towards the plains; in his mind he had a complete map of his choicest blooms and their location. And with each flavour he had recourse to one of his four “widows” as he called them, who busied herself with the bottling and labelling of his produce. He also carried in his head a clear and detailed chronological chart of the various country fairs of which he was such an ornament. But just in case of doubt he always carried with him a copy of that extraordinary great compendium of learning, Le Lahure: les foires de France. From these pages he could tell you the time of day, year, hour of every festival and fete, not merely in Provence but in the whole of France. It was his only reading matter, and when he had nothing to do, while “the bees were working” as he put it, he would lie under a tree reading it with massive attention; and when he tired of it he spread a red handkerchief over his face and slept massively and often convulsively. After every seventh snore his whole face contorted and he appeared to swallow a large mouse. Then, recovering, the sound would be renewed. They sat together now under a bush by the cart, to discuss matters again, after so long a time apart.
The Avignon Quintet Page 78
