Marie Léré reached tentatively across and tried to touch Lucie’s hair, but Lucie pulled sharply away from her.
‘Child. All this man wants is what every soldier wants when he has a girl in his sights. A quick tumble in the hay.’
‘Mémère!’
‘I’m sorry, but you’re old enough to hear the truth now. He’ll shame you, before the village and before Hervé, and then you’ll have nothing left. And when these Germans leave, as they’ve always done, it will be far too late to rectify the damage.’
The Feuillardier’s Hut
It took Lucie the better part of an hour to reach the door of the old hut. By that time the fresh air had dissipated all remaining trace of the outraged virtue that had clung to her for the first thirty or so minutes of her walk, like the embedded head of a sheep tick. Metaphorically, at least, she was stone cold sober.
The feuillardier’s hut was situated three hundred metres above sea level, and consisted of a drystone cabanon with a tiled and weighted roof, surrounded on three of its four sides by a dense forest of Spanish chestnuts. There was a rough wooden bench carved from the split trunk of a tree, snugged tightly against the south-facing wall of the cabanon, and Lucie sat down on it, her skirt tucked over her knees, and turned her face up to the gentle May sunshine. From her new position she now had a panoramic view of the entire valley.
The familiar movements of sitting down and looking out resurrected, as if by magic, her numerous visits to the hut as a child, when she would squint endlessly into the far distance in the vain hope that she might be able to see the sea. Her father, who had merely come to collect the family quota of collectively owned marrons, had been forced to explain to her that the nearest coast in any direction belonged to the Mediterranean, one hundred and sixty kilometres to the south-east and hidden behind the upraised spine of the Montagnes Noires, or, failing that, to the Atlantic ocean tucked beyond Bordeaux and the pine forests of Arcachon, two hundred and thirty kilometres to the west – and that neither expanse was remotely visible from the Aveyron.
‘I still want to go there.’
Her father had laughed. ‘Then you’ll have to marry a rich husband, my Lucette. Because the likes of us will never get to see it. But I’m told that if you can find a large enough shell, and place it to your ear, you will be able to hear the sound of the sea from wherever you are, no matter what distance you are away.’
‘Is that true?’
‘So I’m told.’
‘And where would I find such a shell?’
‘Ah. The questions you ask.’ He had taken her onto his lap and cuddled her, his unshaven face pressed tightly to her softness, the rough smell of him her comfort.
Smiling at the memory of her father, Lucie unwrapped the oiled paper from around her flan de l’Aubrac and began to eat. Her glance drifted unconsciously towards the village.
One part of her half expected to see Hervé lurking near the tree-line. He had taken to shadowing her in recent days, but just out of earshot so that she couldn’t reasonably vent her irritation at him – in her present mood she would have welcomed the chance to confront him and give him a piece of her mind. The other part of her dwelt, more disturbingly, on a tantalising fantasy vision of the stern German major searching frantically for a seashell to offer her in lieu of his silver cross.
When she had finished her flan, she lay back against the hut, closed her eyes and allowed her thoughts to dwell, ever so briefly, on the German’s face. Sometimes, when she was serving his lunch, she would gaze in mystification at his profile. His skin had browned in the spring sunshine, and at these moments she was overcome with a guilty longing to run her hands through his hair or along the thin white scar at his temple and then down across his ears, and cheeks, and lips, to see if he was real. Just like you would to a horse.
Only two days before, he had done something quite unprecedented, even for him – he had offered to play her some of his own music.
‘I didn’t realise you wrote music,’ she had answered him, her breath catching in her throat at the implied intimacy.
He had shaken his head, smiling. ‘Oh no. I didn’t write it. What I am going to play you was written by a man named Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He was just twenty-two years old and living in Paris, when he composed it.’
Without further ado she had settled herself down in an alcove of the library, not quite sure what she was about to hear, but determined, above all things, that she would never let on to him if it displeased her.
‘I shall play only the first movement of three. The theme and variations. The others are too difficult.’
‘What’s it called?’
‘It doesn’t really have a name. Just the Sonata in A, KV 331.’
She had been tempted to ask him why it didn’t have a name. Everything had to have a name. But she had kept her thoughts to herself. ‘I’m ready.’
As he leaned towards the piano, he had smiled one of his gentlest smiles. ‘You’ll have to forgive me if I slip up. I’m sight-reading.’
She had bobbed her head graciously and he had begun to play.
It was at that exact moment, somewhere deep inside the opening few bars of the sonata, that she had realised with an awful pain-inducing clarity, that she loved him.
She had continued to watch him intently, almost proprietorially, during the remaining ten minutes of the movement, her complexion flaring, her shoulders stiff from the effort of not drawing attention to herself.
He had made a small mistake during the concluding passage, and had corrected himself, smiling wryly and mouthing an almost inaudible ‘ah!’ Then, almost immediately, he had fluffed again, to finish on a final shame-faced flourish.
She had noticed, in her heightened state, that he had begun to sweat across his forehead and that his hands trembled as he closed the score. At first, Lucie had not been sure whether or not it was appropriate for her to clap, and by the time she made up her mind to do so, it was too late.
‘You didn’t like it.’
Lucie rose to her feet, the blood draining from her face. ‘Oh no. It was beautiful.’ She searched in her head for words that would communicate the intensity of what she was feeling without betraying her state of mind. ‘I just wanted to be the music. To float down it as if I were floating down a river with the water warm around me. It was a strange sensation. Because in real life I’d be terrified of even stepping into a river. I can’t swim.’
‘You can’t swim?’ He parroted her last words, his mind still running on her puzzling response to his music-making.
‘Will you learn the rest? And play it to me one day?’
‘Are you serious?’
‘I would like to hear it.’
‘Then of course I shall.’
Her heart had stopped hammering, and the feeling was slowly returning to her limbs. She felt heavy with embarrassment and with the knowledge that she was standing in a room alone with him, not singing, not listening to music. She knew that she must do something very fast or he would notice her condition and move towards her, triggering a disaster.
She took a hurried step towards the door. ‘Thank you. Thank you for playing for me. It was a nice thought.’
He bowed to her from behind the piano. ‘It was my pleasure. I’m glad you liked it.’
‘And you will learn the rest?’
‘Consider it done.’
She was almost at the door when she realised, with a sudden abrupt shock of recognition, that he knew exactly what she was feeling, and that, despite this knowledge, he had chosen to let her go.
The Tower
Hervé squinted down the rifle sights. He took a deep, sucking breath and then held it. He could almost taste the thump of the bullet hitting the German’s body. The shock on the bastard’s face. The blood blossoming across his chest, darkening the already black smudge of his uniform shirt. The sudden lurch backwards, like a punctured buck. The white of shattered bone showing livid through the exit wound.
At fi
rst it had struck him as odd that the Boches, normally so efficient in matters of military expediency, had not bothered to man the church tower. But then he had remembered the German major’s invariable presence at Sunday Mass and his studied politeness to Father Lebrun, and he had been unable to repress a smile of triumph at the thought that the man’s absurd and misplaced piety was now set to become the direct cause of his death. Poetic justice or what?
Hervé had dunned the silenced Lebel off Jean-Baptiste a few days before, following a tortured, and at times angry, conversation with Lucie’s grandmother. He had given, as his pretext, that he intended to stalk and kill the black goat that had for so long eluded the Maquis, thereby providing desperately needed meat for the men. So yes. He would kill the wild goat too, when he escaped on to the Causse and fulfilled his promise. He would even eat the sweetbreads himself, and with gusto, for he knew that he would not be able to return to St Gervais again until it had liberated itself. But first he had another purpose for the rifle.
Von Aschau moved unexpectedly out of Hervé’s line of sight, spoiling the possible shot. Hervé blotted his bad eye with the sleeve of his shirt, then brought up his great uncle’s looted pair of First World War field glasses and squinted through their cracked and mouldy lenses. It was almost obscene watching a man this closely, he decided. It wasn’t like watching an animal. More like watching two people making love. You were both predator and victim at one and the same time.
The German came shakily back into focus. He was facing someone at the library door. Talking to them. Hervé’s breathing quickened. He had followed Lucie’s progress across the courtyard. Noted her familiar welcome from the guard. The swift, elegant way she took the steps, her basket on her arm. The way she manoeuvred a smiling passage through the front door, which the guard held open for her.
He had been tempted to shoot von Aschau a little after that, trusting that Lucie would hurry up to the library and find him stretched out across the piano, spouting blood onto the carpet. But something inside him wanted to see them together. Wanted to catch them himself. Malicious gossip was one thing, the evidence of his own eyes, another.
The piano stool was perfectly positioned for a killing shot. Hervé didn’t like the idea of shooting a man in the back, and in the normal run of things he wouldn’t have done it – but then this man was no ordinary target. He would be doing the whole town a favour by extinguishing him. The thought of reprisals hovered at the edge of Hervé’s consciousness like the outstretched finger of a neglected God, but he refused to countenance them. He was simply doing what he had to do. He declined to go any further down the line than that. He would not allow himself to think of consequences until it was all over.
Lucie appeared briefly in the frame of the window. She and von Aschau were discussing something. The German was holding a sheet of paper in one hand and was explaining something to her. Lucie stood very close to him, nodding her head. Von Aschau threw his arms out wide, as if encompassing the whole room, then pointed down at the floor. Whatever were they talking about? If only he could hear them. Hervé tried to focus the binoculars onto Lucie’s lips, but the ingrained mould prevented any detailed observation.
Von Aschau took his seat at the piano and pinned the piece of paper he had been waving to the easel. Lucie went to stand in the bend of the piano and then immediately looked away, as if her attention had been caught by a member of some imagined audience. It was clear that the German was still talking to her, but Lucie’s face was averted from him, as if she were no longer engaged in a conversation but was listening instead to a detailed set of instructions.
The German swayed back and scrutinised the piano keyboard. Then he flexed his fingers, leaned forward and began to play. The distant blurred sound of the piano seemed to reach out across the space between the closed window and the church tower in which Hervé was hiding like an outstretched claw.
Hervé replaced his field glasses on the stone floor and picked up the Lebel. He would kill the German while Lucie was singing. That was the way to play it. The thought was hot in his head, like the shameful ideas he had entertained while watching Lucie’s dress ride up her legs, all those weeks before, beneath the vines. He swung up the Lebel and focused through the sights onto von Aschau’s back.
The sound of Lucie’s voice momentarily stayed his finger. He recognized the song at once. ‘Embrasse-moi’. Lucie had sung it with her father accompanying her, at a méchoui before the war. How old had he been then? Seventeen? Eighteen? And Lucie? Three, maybe four years younger? He remembered her gawky presence on the stage. The affectionate way her father had encouraged her to give her best in front of the rambunctious crowd. But most of all he remembered the eyes of the villagers upon her; some charmed, some drunken, others lustful. The more religious, certainly, even disapproving.
Hervé had gazed around, watching the watchers, proud of his Lucie, knowing that one day she would be entirely his – knowing that there was no question in his or anyone else’s mind about that fact.
And then the war had come, and changed everything.
He concentrated back down the sights, the sweat popping from his forehead, filtering down the scarred runnels above his master eye. He would shoot the German when Lucie finished her song – at the exact moment when she turned towards him, looking for applause. That would show her. She’d never be able to forget the image of the bastard’s face closing down in front of her. Perhaps he’d try for a head shot. Make it even more dramatic. Maybe shoot her, too. Maybe shoot himself.
He shook his head wildly, muttering to himself.
Now Lucie had turned towards the German and was singing directly to him. Her voice had a flirtatious ring to it, and there was an expression on her face that he had never seen there before – that made her seem exquisitely beautiful to him, despite her disfigurement.
If I’m unhappy, kiss me
If I seem too nervous, kiss me
If we argue stupidly, my darling, kiss me
If my friend Ginette is too coquette with you, kiss me
Just one of your kisses can calm me
Hurry up and kiss me
The German was getting up from his seat at the piano. Lucie was watching him. For one frozen moment neither one of them moved towards the other.
The rifle seemed to have become an extension of Hervé’s arm – his eye along the sights a fragile wire linking him to the scene forty metres away. Such an easy target. All he had to do was pull the trigger.
The German moved towards Lucie. She stood waiting for him. Hervé saw the German hesitate for a fraction of a second – a fraction of a second in which he might have loosed off a successful shot – then take the final pace towards her.
Lucie stepped inside the circle of his arms. Von Aschau lowered his head towards her upraised face.
Hervé let the gun fall. If he shot now, he would kill both of them.
He watched the kiss as if he were watching an execution. After a moment he turned away. He allowed himself to slide down the retaining wall he had used for a brace, the rifle between his legs. It took only a small movement to bring the barrel of the rifle up between his teeth. He leaned forwards and felt for the trigger, but the extension of the silencer on the already long barrel meant that he couldn’t reach it.
In what seemed like slow motion he took the barrel out of his mouth and steadfastly unscrewed the silencer. Then he replaced the barrel between his teeth and reached forward again, but the butt of the rifle mimicked his movement, sliding on the flagstones, the barrel rattling off his bottom teeth and coming to rest unthreateningly against his chest. Hervé sat back, his head frozen against the wall.
He felt cold – colder than he had ever felt before. Colder even than at Tours, when the searing phosphorous had clung to his skin like white-hot treacle and he had known beyond any possibility of a doubt that his life was set to change forever.
PART FIVE
St Gervais Du Mont-Boisé, Aveyron, France.
May 1944
>
Dominoes
Wednesday 31st May 1944
‘So?’ Meyer was setting out the dominoes, his meerschaum pipe dangling from his mouth like an inverted question mark. ‘Would you like me to beat about the bush, or put my question directly?’
‘And what question is that?’ Max crouched down by the fire and blew on the embers. Even though the weather was perfectly acceptable, both men found that long habits, born in the bitter cold of successive Russian winters, died hard.
Meyer finished overturning the pieces. ‘I’ll beat about the bush then.’ He took out his pipe and swirled the dominoes around in front of him. ‘As far as the unit is concerned, our training is on schedule. The men are coming on well. So well, that I think you should consider promoting Schmidt to Rottenführer. The men trust his judgement. He’ll make a first-class sergeant-major one of these days – if he manages to survive that long, that is. Eberle, on the other hand, should be demoted. The man is a liability. He spends all his spare time pestering the local women and is causing bad blood amongst the townspeople. We will have a serious incident soon, you mark my words.’
Max straightened up from his crouch. He gave the fire one final poke. ‘I thought we were here to play dominoes? You can save your grouches for the next staff meeting.’
‘Grouches?’ Meyer cleared his throat. He suspected that he was sailing close to the wind, but refused to be distracted from his goal. ‘I haven’t got any grouches. I’m simply trying to conduct a war.’
The Occupation Secret Page 19
