Hervé closed his eyes and shook his head. His grandfather’s had been one of those rare corpses still capable of being identified by its service tag when the main battle had ended. Following the war, his grandmother had insisted on travelling all the way to Verdun (her first and only excursion away from home) to reclaim his body. Every day after that, until her own death in 1936, she had mixed a small sprinkling of her husband’s ashes in with each evening meal. When she died, her son, Grand Jean, had reluctantly honoured her final wishes and had scattered what little still remained of her husband over her dead be-coffined body. Then he had buried the pair together, in a jointly marked grave, doggedly ignoring the outraged protestations of the curé. Hervé shook his head in wonder at the depths of affection people were capable of. Would Lucie ever feel such a love for him?
He was surprised out of his musings by the ratcheting of a door latch somewhere below him.
‘Hervé? Are you coming? Papa said he asked you to change. You are coming, aren’t you? And don’t forget…’ His mother’s briefly raised voice trailed off uncertainly.
‘And don’t forget my mask? Is that what you meant to say?’
‘You know it is. I just don’t want you to be angry. It’s Sunday. You can have a drink with Papa after the service.’
‘He told me that, too. Is there anything else I need to know?’
‘You’ll be able to talk to Lucie. You can even take her for a walk, after the service, around the square.’
‘Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. But didn’t you just tell me I was going to have a drink with Papa? My agenda is already full according to you.’
‘You know what I mean.’
Hervé sighed. Yes, he knew exactly what she meant. His mother was religiously literal in everything she said. There wasn’t even any joy in winding her up anymore – she was such a masochist, and so repellently self-sacrificing, that every joke you were tempted to play on her backfired to come back and strike you in the face. It just made you feel worse about everything. About yourself, in particular. ‘Don’t fret. I’m coming. I’m just putting on you-know-what.’
‘You’re a dear child.’
‘I’m a twenty-two-year-old war veteran with a scarred face.’
‘You’re still my child. I made the pilgrimage to Rocamadour to have you, you know.’
‘Yes, mother. I know.’
Hervé grimaced at himself in the mirror. There were occasions, and this was one of them, when he liked to make himself as ugly as possible, as though to measure the extent of his parameters. He screwed up his face and grunted – his eye was already streaming most satisfactorily. He pulled back his lips and stuck out his tongue. ‘Salut, Quasimodo,’ he growled. Then he caught the distant sound of the church bells. ‘Les cloches! Les cloches!’ He drifted around the bedroom, his hands blocking his ears, his legs bowed, his tongue lolling out, snorting through his nose and gurgling.
‘What are you doing?’
The voice echoed eerily up from the bottom of the stairs. Hervé could imagine his mother standing there, her ears cocked, her head quizzically twisted.
‘I’m beautifying myself, what do you think?’
He straightened up in front of the mirror. He felt like shouting. He felt like smashing the mirror, and the basin, and the water jug, and stomping around in the debris.
Instead, he scrabbled inside the drawer and dug out his mask. He stabbed his finger into an open pot of wild boar grease and rubbed it briskly over the inside surface. As always, when he did this, his nose began to twitch involuntarily. He pinched it tightly shut between his fingers.
Then he took a deep breath and slipped on the clammy mask – it felt as if someone were sliding the lid of a coffin over his still breathing body. He slipped the leather thong over his ear and strapped it snugly beneath his chin. There. Now he looked civilized. Now he wouldn’t put the congregation off their Sunday lunches.
‘I’m ready,’ he called down to his mother, in a fake falsetto voice. ‘Cinderella can go to the ball after all.’
The Promenade
As was always the custom in St Gervais, the church congregation split into four clearly defined groups after the service. The older, black-clad matrons gathered together in the shadiest corner of the square, swapping gossip and enjoying a rare moment of leisure before returning to their kitchens and the making of Sunday lunch, while the younger, still unmarried women in their flowery homespun dresses, most of them cut to well above the knee, most of them still sporting the pre-war fashion of bare legs and bobby socks, clustered in a twittering sunlit group near the fountain.
The family men in their short jackets and thick cords, their hats and berets thrown back on their heads, each marginally different, as though time and tide had worn them into diversely suggestive configurations, were either squaring off for a game of boules or drifting towards the bar, sudden bursts of laughter punctuating their migration, while the few remaining younger men (those with an exemption from the relève or the STO on account of their agricultural usefulness) were lurking in the shadows at the northern side of the square, eyeing the girls and waiting for them to disperse into unescorted pairs, before darting out from cover to gather up their all-too-willing prey.
Hervé stood disconsolately at the bar, alongside the older éleveurs. Thanks to his injury, he had been accorded premature entry into this elite grouping, which consisted in large part of the married men of his father’s and his grandfather’s generation. It was as if they suspected that he would no longer find a welcome amongst those of his own age, and wished to sweeten a pill that they felt, nevertheless, it was his duty to swallow. The veterans amongst them – those few who had survived the Great War and had contrived to return home intact – consequently accorded him the respect that they, in their turn, felt was their due. They would listen to him talk, nodding gravely, as if this twenty-two-year-old was one of their own, and had earned his right to the floor.
But Hervé’s secret heart was outside, in the square. He ached to be lounging out by the water fountain with the other young men, his hair glistening with salad oil, casting flirtatious glances at the girls and discussing under his breath which one was fast, which one virtuous – who had attempted what and with whom, in fantasy or in reality – for it was often impossible to tell the difference. Instead, he sipped at his Quinquina and watched his father, always the centre of the group, always joking, barrel-chested, his arms densely muscled, part way towards being fat, but still, thanks to his strength and presence, clinging to the definition of a costaud, rather than a gras. His father, comfortable in his skin as Hervé himself was not, comfortable with his place in the world, and in the scheme of things; his father, from that miraculous generation that had missed both the century’s wars, with everything still intact; happy on his farm and with his wife; fine amongst his friends, his moustaches curling dripping with wine and with bonhomie. His father as he would like to be, easy in himself, part of the earth almost, a tree amongst trees.
As if in answer to his own unspoken question, Hervé caught the edge of his reflected image staring uncertainly back at himself from the looking-glass behind the zinc. He shook his head in irritation. Wherever he went, whatever he did, he would always remain a freak. An outsider. An injured rogue male hovering on the borders of the group, striving in vain for acceptance. Might as well accept it. He would never be like his father.
He squinted despondently through the frosted windows of the bar. Lucie would be out there somewhere, bathed in the real world’s light. Would she still be waiting for him? Or would she have given up and gone to help her grandmother with the men’s lunch?
Half of him wanted her to be gone, so that she wouldn’t have to witness his ritual humiliation, and half of him desperately wanted to believe that she had held back, in miraculous female empathy, waiting for him to have done his duty at the bar.
He set his glass firmly down onto the counter. ‘I’m going outside.’
‘Yes, yes,’ his
father said, loud now, with the company surrounding him. ‘Yes. You go on outside and find your Lucie. And you can tell her from me that she’s a lucky young heifer to have a Najac chasing her tail.’
Hervé grimaced at the round of acquiescent laughter attending Grand Jean’s statement, but his real expression was safely hidden from his father and from the other men by the wax mask. ‘Of course, Papa.’
‘That’s a good boy I’ve got,’ he heard his father saying to his companions, as he left the bar. ‘My son is a good boy. I’m proud of him. There’ll be a marriage soon, you mark my words.’
There was a further chorus of tipsy approbation from the men, but Hervé blotted it out by closing the door. His eyes were already taking in the square and the people in it, like a cornered animal desperately searching for a way to flee from the approaching line of beaters.
No Lucie. He’d walk quickly to her mother’s restaurant, then, and try there. Failing that, he’d almost certain catch up with her on the road back to Canteloube. He imagined kissing her – imagined pulling her beneath the shelter of a tree and thrusting her up against the roughness of the trunk. Dominating her with his presence. Surprising her. The feeling overwhelmed him, for a moment, with its exquisite possibilities.
But then he remembered the film of wild boar grease on his face, and the horror of his twisted mouth, and he shook his head frantically, as if ridding himself of a persistently invasive insect.
* * *
Lucie had waited for him. For all of two minutes. Until her mother had taken her firmly by the arm and guided her away from the Sunday promenade – away from Hervé and from the battery of chattering girls whom she now so little resembled, and who seemed to look upon her, since her misfortune, with an awkward mixture of kindness, pity, malice and outright relief. Now, only now, did she begin to understand the way Hervé felt, and why he preferred his own company and that of his elders to the company of his peers.
As they walked back towards her mother’s restaurant, she imagined Hervé deep in conversation with the older men – discussing the war, probably, or politics. Male things. He would be happy in the bar. He didn’t really need her anymore. Their relationship seemed to have become little more than a habit for him – the coming together of two grotesques. Since her recent accident he had seemed less interested in her – detached, even – as if their friendship was now a burden to him and he had more important subjects to address.
Thrusting thoughts of Hervé to the back of her mind, she braced herself for her mother’s usual barrage of questions. What had been happening at the farm? Had Marie Léré inquired about her? Criticised her in any way? Had there been any news of Lucie’s father? Were they still sending food parcels to him? She needed more eggs – did they have them? And now the Germans were arriving, could Lucie persuade her grandmother to persuade her grandfather to raise the amount of fresh meat they sent from the farm? She would be able to pay, of course, with all the money coming in from her additional clients. Think of all those hungry officers who would be wanting lunch. There would be a brand-new market starting up, and Jeanne Léré intended to do her level best to satisfy it.
Lucie drew back. ‘But Maman, you can’t be serious. You’re not pleased that the Germans are coming?’
‘Why not? We need the business.’
‘But what you said the other day. You called them the sales Boches.’
‘Well, they are. But I don’t want to spend the next ten years feeding the same group of ageing nobodys. I want to expand. Expand to the point where we can consider moving. To Montauban, perhaps. Or even to Toulouse. That’s where the real money is. You and I could make our fortunes there.’
‘But what about the boys?’
‘What about them? They’re Gougnacs. The whole pack of them take after your grandmother. They look like Gougnacs, smell like Gougnacs and think like Gougnacs. You’re the only Belfort left. Apart from me, that is. The boys are happy at the farm and always will be. When your father comes back, all five of them will quietly rot beside their own dung heap. If any one of them had your possibilities I’d take him with us. But they don’t. I’m sorry to have to say this about my own sons, but they don’t.’
‘Maman, I’m not leaving.’
‘Neither am I. Not yet. Let’s fleece the Germans first. Do our bit for the war effort. When the Allies invade and it’s all over, then our moment will come. There’ll be a renaissance in France, you mark my words. The people in the towns will be so happy that they survived it all that they’ll spend, spend, spend. And I want to be there to receive it.’
‘You just want to avoid Papa.’
‘Why should I do that? I’d have divorced him years ago, if Vichy hadn’t made it so impossible to free oneself. Even infidelity doesn’t count anymore, and I’ve done my share of that, I can assure you. Look. I’ve given him his free workers. I’ve done my bit for France. If I’d had one more child, Maréchal Pétain would have awarded me a Bronze medal – but your father deprived me of that honour, thank God, when he let the Boche capture him. Look at me, Lucie. I didn’t ask for this war. But it’s the best opportunity that’s ever come my way to change things. To go over my old mistakes and put them right. I was nineteen and headstrong when I met your father, and I refused to listen to what my mother told me. But she was right. She knew men, and she was right. So I lost sixteen years of my life on that farm, until the Boche took your father. I’m sorry for him, of course. It was a stupid thing to do, getting himself caught like that. You’d have thought he had more sense. But get caught he did. And it’s been my salvation. His imprisonment has given me my freedom. These last four years have been the happiest of my life. And now I have a thriving business, which will be even more thriving soon, when we get that German major in our pockets. He has his eye on you. I saw him through the kitchen hatch, eating you up with his gaze – you’ve still got your figure, after all, despite the tragedy of your nose. Just make sure you’re the one who takes his lunches up to him every day. Then we can write our own ticket.’
‘Maman, you can’t be serious!’
‘I’m not asking you to prostitute yourself, for God’s sake. Just be pleasant to him. Remember to put your mother’s interests forward at every opportunity. Use him. The best connection to a man is through his stomach – the rest comes after. So I shall surpass myself cooking for him, until he can’t do without us. Think about it. Our own tame German. And commander of the town, to boot.’
Lucie looked at her mother in mute wonder. She was used to her mother’s fantasies, but this was extreme by any standards. ‘They probably won’t even come. The Germans probably sent him out here just to frighten us, and they’ve no intention of occupying the town.’
Jeanne Léré cast a knowing glance at her daughter. ‘They’ll come, my girl. Believe me. They’ll come.’
The Arrival
Hervé sat down beside the drystone wall. He unbuckled his mask and scrubbed the remains of the grease off his face with a handkerchief, grunting in satisfaction. Thank God for small mercies, anyway.
He squinted up the road. No sign of Lucie yet. This time, when he talked to her, he was going to make sure that she understood exactly how he felt. He was going to lay all his cards on the table, together with his heart, and leave it up to her whether to place her bets on him or not.
He was so taken with his card-playing metaphor that he held it up in his mind for a few moments, experimenting with it, and seeing if he could slip it into the speech he intended to make to her. The speech that would go something along the lines of: ‘I know I’m horrible to look at. I know it must be hard for you to see me as your husband. But our children won’t look like me. And the scarring will harden up, over the years…’
God no, that was the last thing he should harp on. Forget the scars, Hervé. Just talk to her as a man talks to the woman he intends to marry. Make the assumption that she’s used to your face, that she loves you as her friend and as the companion of her childhood, and take it from there. Ex
plain to her that as your father’s only son, you will one day inherit the farm. That if she chooses you as her husband, she can stay close to her family. She can only say no, after all.
He squinted anxiously up the road. It was odd, when you came to think of it, how the imminent arrival of the Germans had served to concentrate his mind on marriage.
The grumbling in his stomach reminded him that it was nearly lunchtime. He clicked his tongue in irritation. Where was she? Surely she wasn’t going to stay on in town? Her mother’s restaurant was closed on Sundays, anyway. Then it occurred to him. Damn! Perhaps she had decided to eat with her mother after all. Perhaps all the Lérés, boys included, were sitting down in the shuttered restaurant this very minute, sharpening up their pocket-knives and drooling over the unexpected fodder.
He stood up. He could hear thunder threatening from somewhere over the hill. Oh no. Not again. He would have to forget all about Lucie and hurry home to get the animals in, if it approached any closer.
He glanced quizzically up at the sky. Clear as a bell. He sniffed the air. Curious. It didn’t smell like a thunderstorm. Didn’t feel like one, either.
His eye was caught by a solitary figure on the road from St Gervais, walking towards him. He shaded his face. Yes. It was her. Had to be her. He recognised the colours of her dress. The particular rhythm of her walking. The way she swinged her hips from side to side. He thrust the mask deep inside his pocket, then buttoned his shirt up to his neck and patted himself down. He began an ungainly half-jog, half-walk, towards her. Strangely enough he could still hear the thunder.
The Occupation Secret Page 9
