‘I’m not stealing, Maman.’
‘It’s not stealing. It’s looting. No one will notice if you walk off with a few stray bottles. If you’re caught, you can always persuade the guard that they’re for spicing up the major’s sauces. I can trade them later with the mayor against black market beef.’
Lucie pursed her lips and shook her head.
Jeanne Léré hitched her shoulders in irritation. ‘Well, you can take a sow to water, but you can’t make it drink.’
‘I’m not a sow.’
‘That you aren’t.’ Madame Léré busied herself whisking the whites of two eggs, some butter and a sprinkling of flour into a saucepan. ‘You could do worse than smarten yourself up a little, though. There’s a world of difference between that pigsty kitchen of your grandmother’s, and the house of a German Commander.’
Lucie raised her eyes in mock disdain. After a brief hesitation, however, she stood up and strolled, as casually as she was able, into the dining room. With a swift glance over her shoulder, she placed herself in front of the full-length vestibule mirror, near where the diners usually hung their coats. Lucie had few of her mother’s coquettish mannerisms, and she simply stood there, drinking in her image in the glass, as if she were examining a store mannequin.
First, she conducted a detailed inspection of her nose and face. When this was done, she sighed deeply, drew in her chin, and gazed down at the swell of her breasts. Satisfied, for once, that there was something about herself she could approve of, she smoothed her skirt across her hips and let her hands continue on down her flanks, straightening and unpleating the material.
‘You see. Just look at yourself.’ Madame Léré loomed up behind her, snapping her out of her reverie. She bunched some of Lucie’s hair in her hands and made as if to pin it up. ‘Men like to see the back of a woman’s neck. They like to imagine kissing it.’
‘I don’t want anyone kissing my neck.’
‘Oh? Really?’
‘No, I don’t. Really.’
Jeanne Léré let Lucie’s hair fall back across the collar of her blouse. ‘Well, I’m not exactly surprised, in the circumstances. The thought of Hervé slobbering over it must be quite off-putting.’
‘Maman, you’re disgusting. He can’t help being scarred.’
‘And you can’t help being a desirable little package, in spite of the tragedy with your nose. Why cast yourself before swine? Let him marry someone like Lise. She’d make a perfect farmer’s wife. No imagination. No wits. And she’d be pathetically grateful for any man at all to pay attention to her.’ Jeanne Léré, catching sight of herself in the mirror, began automatically rearranging her own hair. ‘You should be setting your sights on the de Joinville boy. Yes. That’s it. Tell them you saved their cellar from being looted. Or that the Germans were going to burn all their books but you begged them not to. Then they’ll be forever in your debt. Flutter your eyelashes at the boy and he’ll be hammering at your door with a pickaxe before you know it. They might even stump up and send you to a good surgeon in Switzerland to have that nose straightened before your wedding night. Then you could start a new life in the Pacific. They’ve got land out there. You could open up a restaurant. Invite me out to help.’
‘Maman, you’re a dreamer. People like the de Joinvilles don’t even know we exist.’
Madame Léré threw up her hands. ‘What else is there to do around here but dream? The reality is hardly appetizing. I’m thirty-eight years old. I’ve got twelve – well, maybe fifteen at a pinch – good years left in me, when I have something still to offer men. You’re at the beginning of your life, Lucie. Your mother is just trying to steer you in the right direction.’
Lucie turned away from the mirror, the after image of her broken nose still resonating in her head. ‘I know, Maman. Really. I know.’
Anticipation
Max abandoned his unwieldy shirt buttons and stared morosely out of the window. His face felt numb, as if a dentist had attempted to inject his gums with Novocaine and had inadvertently struck the needle through his cheeks instead. He pinched the bridge of his nose, then palmed his eyes, but still it did no good.
There was a clattering at the door, and Meyer entered bearing a tray with a cup and a coffee pot on it, his eyes alert and questioning.
Max hesitated, then hitched his shoulders in surrender. ‘I’m sorry, Paul. I don’t know what got into me.’
Meyer put down the tray. ‘I do. Three bottles of wine.’
‘Apart from that, I mean.’
Meyer straightened up, easing his back. ‘Max. You’re an officer. You’re trained to think. If I were you, I’d forget my training for once, and chalk last night down to experience.’
Max took a deep breath and raised one numbed eyebrow. Meyer rarely used his Christian name, and then only when he was winding himself up to delivering him a lecture. ‘I suppose Berger found me?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Hmm.’
‘Don’t worry. The thought that you are human after all will impress the men. Every good Bavarian has the God-given right to get drunk now and again. Your stock will go up, not down.’
‘But I’m meant to be their commanding officer.’
‘And the Teppichfresser is God. So what? It still doesn’t change the colour of snow.’
Max burst out laughing. ‘No. I suppose it doesn’t. Still, I never thought I’d feel nostalgic for the front. But I sit here and I can’t think what to do with myself. Surrounded by all this luxury. These books. These paintings. I’m not used to it anymore.’
Meyer gave a snort. ‘It won’t last long. Better make the most of it. The Tommies will cross the channel soon, and then we’ll all wish we were back here, pigging it in St Gervais, out of range of their spam and their stewed tea – not to mention their PIATS and their rocket launchers. I suppose you want some breakfast?’
‘What’s the time?’
Meyer rocked his head from side to side disapprovingly. ‘Nearly eleven o’clock. Berger decided to let you sleep in a little before calling me.’
‘I’ll wait for lunch then.’
‘Lunch from the restaurant?’
‘Yes. Lunch from the restaurant. They’re sending it over at twelve. Have you any objections?’
Meyer sucked in his cheeks. ‘I’ll go then. Leave you time to shave and spruce yourself up.’
Max looked up angrily. ‘Spruce myself up for what?’
‘For lunch, of course. How can you face a freshly cooked young spring chicken looking like that?’ Meyer’s face was set in stone, betraying nothing. ‘Oh, and by the way, this coffee is the real thing. So drink it before it gets cold. I’ve discovered an interesting source.’
‘You didn’t happen to compensate this interesting source of yours with looted champagne, did you?’
Meyer backed slowly out of the room. ‘Now whatever gave you that idea, Herr Major?’
* * *
Max dabbed the towel gingerly over his face. It really wasn’t his morning. First, he’d had to endure the righteous Lutheran flail of Meyer’s disapproval. Then he’d cut himself twice whilst shaving, only to discover that he’d left his styptic back in Montauban. And now his head was throbbing even more damnably than before – in fact he fancied that he could feel the nauseous void in his stomach thrashing itself unmercifully against the derelict floor of his brainpan.
He crouched down and sucked some water out of the tap. At that precise moment in his life he would have given one arm, his eye teeth and his next two promotions for just half a tumbler of undiluted Underberg.
Clutching the towel to his face, Max stumbled back into the bedroom. He tossed back his third cup of black coffee. Christ. Meyer was right. Even cold, the coffee was excellent.
He stumbled to the window, his temples pounding, and glanced down into the courtyard. A sentry he didn’t recognise was strolling back and forth across the cobbles, staring disconsolately at the ground.
‘Are you the only one?’ Max
called out, his head protesting at the effort.
The sentry, caught napping, sprang rigidly to attention, his eyes scanning the empty yard for the source of his commander’s voice.
‘I’m up here, man.’
The sentry squinted up into the midday sun. ‘No, Herr Sturmbannführer. There’s another guard at the back of the building. We change over every half an hour, Herr Sturmbannführer. There is nothing whatsoever to report, Herr Sturmbannführer.’
‘Good. Excellent. Well done. Someone will be arriving shortly with my lunch. A young woman. Let her in immediately. There’s no need for a body search. She’ll be coming every day from now onwards’
The sentry rocked back on his heels, visibly relieved that he hadn’t received a dressing down. ‘Jawohl, Herr Sturmbannführer.’
Max ducked back inside the house. Perhaps they’d be sending someone else, and not the girl? A transvestite Maquis assassin, perhaps, to fulfil Meyer’s grumpy prophecy? That would be a splendid joke. He couldn’t very well insist on the girl’s presence, now, could he?
Max stared gloomily through the window glass, as if his glance alone could conjure her up. What was it about her, anyway? Was it that first look she had given him at the shrine, the look of a frightened fawn? Had that summoned up his hunters’ instinct? Or was it the shock of seeing a beautiful woman transgressed? The incongruity of that ruined nose, set in a face to die for? Or perhaps it was the way she had stood up to him in the restaurant, her chin jutting, her hands clasped stiffly behind her back? ‘We can hardly say no, can we?’ So much self-possession for a girl straight from the farm. But those dreadful clogs. He couldn’t for the life of him fathom why he was so interested in her.
He grinned, despite his lingering hangover. What if he were to buy her some new shoes, the next time he visited Montauban? Maybe even some silk stockings from the black market? Give them to her as a pourboire? That would spice up their relationship, for a certainty.
Disgusted with himself, Max let out an explosive groan. ‘Oh for God’s sake, von Aschau! Why don’t you buy her some exotic underwear too, while you’re about it? Show some finesse for a change?’
He twisted angrily on his heel and made for the library. Better to play some music. At least he had some control over that. It wasn’t adding to, or subtracting, from the world. It wasn’t forcing square pegs into round holes. And the way he played now, no doubt, after years of scarcely touching a piano, it probably wasn’t anything at all.
Tafelmusik
To Max’s surprise he found that he rather enjoyed the slow process of limbering up, of leafing through a partition, of running through the few simple exercises that he still remembered from his teenage years, when he had practised for five or six hours at a stretch and had fleetingly considered making the piano his profession. And yes, the Pleyel was out of tune. But it was containable. Bearable. As, praise be to God, was his headache.
He started tentatively on the first Bach Prelude, playing at half speed, feeling his way through the piece. A deep satisfaction burgeoned inside him, and he gradually allowed his numbed fingers to speed the tempo, to add a little resonance to the notes, so that they began to sound familiar – to make up a recognizable tune. At one point he even stopped, mid-bar, to stare at his hands, as though they were in some way disconnected from him, and he their carrier – the captive blood supply of two distinct and radically independent beings.
The unexpected movement brought to mind a concert he had once attended in Vienna, given by the one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein had played Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, a work which he had commissioned from the composer. Max had sat through the entire thirty-minute duration of the piece overcome with guilt at the pathetic extent of his own ambition compared to that of the driven being above him, who had lost an arm in the Great War and had then spent years painstakingly relearning his technique.
Now Max gazed down at his own two hands, and reflected on his luck, his intactness – savouring it for the first time in years – and vowing, in the light of that remembered experience, never again to fall prey to the sort of fatalistic self-pity that had so overwhelmed him after the battle of Kursk, when he had known for certain that there was no such thing as hope left in the world. From now on he would thank God, and not complain to him as he had tacitly done last night.
‘Your lunch is ready, Monsieur.’
Max let his hands fall languidly onto his lap, as if he were acknowledging applause at the end of a particularly difficult piece. ‘What’s that you say?’
Lucie was scrutinizing him from the door, a quizzical, bemused expression on her face. ‘Your lunch.’
Max snapped to attention. ‘Ah yes. Of course. My lunch.’
How long had the girl been there? Had she heard him playing? Had he spoken aloud, perhaps, in his daydreaming state? Damn hangovers and their perfidious effects. Max perused her, calmly, inevitably, as if her presence in the room reflected some unspoken agreement between them.
Lucie was wearing a short-sleeved floral summer dress cut tight against her breasts, and felt pantoufles of the sort that are reckoned, by certain French matrons, to act as an indispensable aid in skate-cleaning kitchen floors. Her hair was freshly brushed, but Max could detect no powder or any other signs of female frippery on her face or person.
‘I’ve laid it downstairs, on the dining-room table. I hope that’s all right? First, there is soup. Potage aux orties. With nettles, watercress and potatoes. Then poulet à l’estragon, which I shall prepare while you are eating your soup. Then my mother has made you her speciality of crème caramel with goat’s milk. You’ll like it, I think. People have been known to travel from ten kilometres away just to taste it.’
Max frowned as if he were having difficulty in making out her accent or was somehow nonplussed by her flippancy in discussing food after the serious tenor of his thoughts. ‘Doesn’t she need you over at the restaurant?’
‘You are being charged for my services, Monsieur. If you would rather I left straightaway, and save the money, I could abandon everything for your orderly to attend to.’
Max’s right hand moved across his face, self-consciously playing over the cuts made by his razor – testing for puffiness around his eyes. He was tantalisingly aware of Lucie’s bare knees peeking out from just below the hem of her dress, and the almost luminous channel of muscle that ran down the front of her calves to curve in above her ankles.
‘No. That won’t be necessary. I’m only too happy to pay. Just so long as I’m not to be bothered with any domestic nonsense – clatterings, squeakings, clankings and so forth – while I’m working. Will you be bringing all my lunches?’
‘If you wish, Monsieur. I’ll try my hardest not to make any noise.’
Max glanced up. Was the girl laughing at him? Making fun of his pomposity? Well, he could hardly blame her in the circumstances.
‘Let’s see how this one tastes first. Then I’ll decide.’
Now what the devil had made him say that? To use that sort of tone with her? Was it the hangover speaking? Or did he perceive her all-too-obvious physical attractions as some sort of threat, and wish to alienate her?
‘You were very silent when you came in,’ he continued, more placatingly. ‘I didn’t hear you at first.’
Lucie attempted to smile in a vain effort to disguise the scale of her disillusionment. Her embarrassment at his brusqueness. ‘You were playing. I didn’t want to disturb you.’ She hitched her head a little to one side, as though addressing someone not very bright. ‘You do realise the piano’s badly out of tune, don’t you?’
Max grimaced. ‘Yes. I had realised that. Do you know of someone – in the village, perhaps – who could tune it for me?’
She straightened up, restoring her face to its former businesslike demeanour. ‘I think so. Yes.’
‘Then I’d be very grateful if you could send him along. I like to play a little when I have the time, you see.’
�
�You were playing exercises?’ Lucie couldn’t fathom why she was continuing the conversation – all she had to do was to make for the kitchen and she wouldn’t have to suffer his presence anymore.
‘Well. Not exercises exactly. I was playing Bach. The beginning of the Preludes and Fugues. They are exercises of a sort, I suppose. But I haven’t played for a long time. So I was playing slowly, and very badly.’
‘Do you ever play real music?’ Lucie could feel her heart thumping inside her chest. Some hidden part of her was perversely intent on getting the German to acknowledge her as a person in her own right – to acknowledge her as something more than just the girl sent over to bring him his lunches – even if that involved swimming, for just a few more moments anyway, alongside the sharks.
Max rocked back on his stool. ‘Real music? How do you mean?’
‘Well… you must have heard of Lucienne Boyer? The sort of music pianists play to accompany her songs.’
Max was on the verge of saying something terminal, something along the lines of, ‘I’m sorry, young lady, but what you are talking about is Music Hall kitsch. We are speaking here of Bach…’ when some happy instinct stopped him. Was it her inherent dignity as she stood there by the door, one foot in the room, the other prepared, as it were, for flight? Or was it a more venal instinct – the prelude to a seduction, perhaps, when ground is prepared and traps are laid? He was as unaware of his own motives as she was of the danger she was putting herself in, revealing herself so easily to the enemy. ‘No. Who is Lucienne Boyer?’
‘You haven’t heard of…’ Lucie’s face exhibited terminal shock. She took a sideways step away from the protection of the door, and then two further steps into the room. ‘She sings. She’s given concerts all over the world. She’s France’s Ambassadress of Song. She’s married to Jacques Pills, you know.’
The Occupation Secret Page 12
