The Occupation Secret

by The Occupation Secret (retail) (epub)

  ‘But Canteloube is my home!’

  ‘You spent the night with a German soldier.’

  ‘I…’ Lucie turned towards her mother. She closed her eyes.

  ‘It’s no use denying it. Your grandmother heard you leaving the house well before dawn yesterday morning. She was immediately suspicious and sent Aimé out to see where you were going – to spy on you, in other words. He saw you meet the German. You embraced. Then you drove off together. Now, twenty-four hours later, you are back here.’ Jeanne Léré raised an eyebrow. She allowed her gaze to slide knowingly down her daughter’s body. ‘Was this the first time? Or has it all been going on for weeks?’

  Every instinct prompted Lucie to collapse in a flood of tears. To howl her anguish and resentment at what had happened to her into the softness of her mother’s lap. Into a bed. Into the ether. But to her surprise she found herself remaining upright in the centre of the room, her eyes dry, her shoulders squared – anger, not grief, suffusing her. ‘Will you take me in? Please?’

  Her mother made a triumphant start towards her, but some aspect of Lucie’s posture, some unsuspected strength manifesting itself through the precariousness of her gaze, stopped her in her tracks. ‘Of course I will. You’re my daughter. You belong here. I won’t have you treated like a whore in front of the whole village.’ Something invisible had shifted in their relationship, but Jeanne Léré could not as yet fully fathom what it was.

  ‘Thank you.’ Lucie’s face seemed frozen. Set in steel. Her broken nose felt numb – as though she had caught a glancing blow on the edge of a door – and her jawbone ached with the strain of holding back her tears. ‘I must go now. But don’t worry, I’ll return in good time to help you at the restaurant.’

  Jeanne Léré nodded automatically. Some dormant, unassimilated part of her was recognising her daughter as if for the very first time. Acknowledging her newly fledged womanhood. Even admiring her.

  Lucie stepped blindly out into the street. The same sun shimmered across the roof tiles that had shimmered across them ten minutes before. The same early morning breeze fanned her hair and worried at the hemline of her dress. But now, with the catastrophic change in her perceptions triggered by her mother, the sun felt colder, the breeze more searching, as if some subtle unforeseen transformation had occurred to the world in her absence.

  She hesitated for a moment, allowing the tentative, cleansing rays to bathe her face. In the absurdly short span of twenty-four hours she had given up her virginity, gained a lover and lost her home. She felt like a ship cast adrift from its moorings, veering inexorably towards a storm. She was frightened, and the fear rattled around inside her, leaving her extremities cold, her body detached, as if her physical and mental aspects belonged to two different beings – one walking, acknowledging the familiar greetings of passers-by – the other hovering beside it, furtively watching, waiting for the axe to fall.

  How long would it be before everybody knew? How long before people began avoiding her, cutting her in the street, spitting as she passed? Deep inside herself the shocked recognition began to grow that her grandmother’s precipitate actions, spurred on by her own stupidity, could cost her not only her foyer – her oustal – but perhaps even her heritage.

  As she hurried through the familiar alleys and byways that she had known all her life, Lucie felt, for the first time ever, like an outsider.

  The Capture

  She didn’t follow her customary route to the Bastide de Marmont, but chose a longer, more circuitous path instead, which took her far from the main thoroughfare and well out of the way of any chance encounters.

  The breeze had strengthened during the few moments of her walk, flattening her thin summer dress against the back of her thighs, and threatening to balloon it upwards. When she put both hands down to steady it, the instinctive movement rekindled a sudden, bitter echo of her lovemaking with Max, and she found herself remembering – as if it were a story told to her by someone else – her panic at the bloodstained sheets, her dismayed insistence on taking them into the bathroom and scrubbing them clean, and Max’s tender, amused placation of her fears. Then, later, the sham comfort of the long cosy drive back through the florescent dawn, with her head nestling in Max’s lap, only later to be confronted by the unforeseen horrors that awaited her return.

  ‘The major is not here at the moment, Mademoiselle.’

  It was the guard. A recognizable enough face by now, he stood, his Schmeisser at the ready, his cold blue eyes caressing her questioningly through the railings. Two unfamiliar guards were standing immobile, one either side of the exterior staircase of the house, their machine pistols angled across their stomachs like sashes of office. They, too, were watching her.

  ‘That’s perfectly all right.’ It cost Lucie a supreme effort of will to maintain the everyday steadiness of her voice in the face of this unwanted barrage of alien male gazes. ‘I shall come by again later. At lunchtime. If the major still wants me to, that is.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure the major will still want you.’

  Was there the suggestion of a leer on the young soldier’s face? A sting to his words? Lucie felt exposed, as if the mark of a whore had been daubed across her forehead for everyone to see and to deride. What had she done? What folly had invaded her? What madness had led her to think that she could ever hope to hide her actions from a matriarch like her grandmother?

  ‘Mademoiselle!’

  Lucie swivelled around, one hand starting to her face, her cheeks livid with prescient shock.

  ‘Up here, Mademoiselle.’

  The French, guttural and totally failing in grammar, was nonetheless tantalisingly familiar to her.

  ‘I’m in the church tower.’

  Lucie gazed quizzically upwards, one hand shading her eyes, the other vainly attempting to still her hapless dress.

  Paul Meyer took off his field cap so that she might recognise him the better. ‘Come up. Please.’

  Lucie hesitated. She knew Meyer, of course, on a semi-formal sort of a basis – even trusted him, as far as one could ever trust a German when he was wearing his military colours. Despite this fact, she stared across at the church door as if it had become an intangible barrier she was unable to contemplate passing.

  ‘I must insist. Please. I have to talk to you. It’s most urgent.’

  Meyer made a foghorn out of his hands and bellowed something down inside the tower. The church doors creaked open, and a camouflage-suited soldier curled his hand and beckoned Lucie inside.

  Lucie started reluctantly across the road. What was happening? There was the unmistakable scent of danger in the air – of foreglimpsed tragedy. The young German soldiers had a grimmer, less detached look about them – something, some event, seemed to have transformed them into hunters once again, and she and all her ilk made up their natural prey. As she picked her way up the worn church steps, Lucie understood in a sudden, unwelcome burst of insight how Marie Antoinette must have felt at the very end of a flippantly led life, when forced to ascend that final endless staircase to the guillotine.

  Meyer was waiting impatiently for her at the top of the stairs. ‘Come in, please.’ He held out a beckoning hand and ushered her up the last few steps. Then he added, almost as an afterthought. ‘You’ve no need to be afraid, Mademoiselle. No need at all. You must know that. You must understand that.’

  Lucie’s eyes ranged nervously around the room. She immediately took in the elongated rifle propped casually against a stone buttress and the familiar pair of battered field glasses resting beside it. Her heart turned over in her chest. It was Hervé. Something had happened to Hervé.

  Meyer was tugging uncomfortably at the hem of his abbreviated Panzer jacket. A Luger PO8 pistol was strapped in a holster high on his waist, and he adjusted its position, then began to fiddle with his oversized belt buckle. ‘Your fiancé. Hervé Najac. That’s his name, isn’t it? The boy with the scarred face. We caught him here early this morning during a routine patrol. He was fas
t asleep – in a drunken stupor, or so they tell me – with this rifle and these binoculars beside him.’ Meyer took off his field cap and began to slap it abstractedly against his thigh, his eyes playing back and forth across Lucie’s face. ‘He will be shot, you understand?’

  Lucie snatched a hand up to her mouth. She swayed in place for a moment, her eyelids fluttering, her face drained of blood.

  Meyer, who had been expecting quite another sort of response, gave a brief start and then, pulling himself together, strode across the room and grasped Lucie firmly by the elbows, just as her knees were beginning to buckle beneath her. ‘Come, Fräulein. Sit yourself down over here.’

  Lucie allowed him to guide her as far as the nearest wooden bench.

  ‘Put your head low. Yes. Like this. Now breathe in. Breathe in deeply. Schmidt, go and fetch a glass of water immediately.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Herr Sturmscharführer?’

  ‘A glass of water. Go and fetch a glass of water, man. Can’t you see that Mademoiselle Léré is feeling faint?’

  ‘Zu Befehl, Herr Sturmscharführer!’

  Schmidt rattled off down the staircase, leaving Meyer and Lucie alone in the tower. Meyer eased Lucie’s head down between her knees.

  ‘That’s it. Breathe. Take deep breaths. You’ve had quite a shock.’

  ‘I’m all right. Really, I am.’ Lucie stretched one trembling hand straight out in front of her, as if she were trying to measure off the distance between herself and the receding undulating floor.

  Meyer began to move away, but then thought better of it. He sat down heavily on the bench beside her and let out a tobacco-stained sigh. ‘You really didn’t know, did you?’ He felt around absent-mindedly for his pipe. ‘About all this, I mean?’ He swept his free hand around the room.

  Lucie shook her head. Her eyes were still tightly closed, and her lips were pinched shut as if she feared that she was about to gag.

  ‘What did the idiot think he was doing? Did he really intend to try and shoot the major?’

  Lucie opened her eyes. Her voice was shaky. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Because of you?’

  Lucie glanced warily across at Meyer. Only gradually did the concerned, almost avuncular quality in his voice, begin to register through her curtain of shock. ‘You know about it, don’t you? About Max and me? You’re his friend.’

  Meyer hesitated, as if unsure for a second whether to answer her question or not. Then he gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  Lucie grasped him by the sleeve. ‘Then why don’t you do something?’

  Meyer, taken by surprise at her unexpected movement and confused by Lucie’s abrupt change of emphasis, took a few distracted moments to gather his thoughts together and reconstruct them in a foreign language. ‘What do you imagine I can do? I’m a sergeant-major, not a major-general. Germany is in a state of war. Najac was waiting up here with a silenced rifle and a pair of binoculars. The whole affair is entirely beyond my control.’

  ‘But you understand why he was doing it?’ Lucie was recovering from her near faint. She was beginning to think more rationally. Deep inside herself she began to sense that Meyer might even, in the course of time, turn out to be a potential ally, and not the enemy she had at first feared. That she must, in consequence, choose her words with caution. ‘Yesterday morning my grandmother discovered, quite by chance, that I had gone away to be with Max. She must have hurried straight across to the neighbouring farm to tell Hervé. The news would have driven him half out of his mind. That’s why he came here. Can’t you see that?’

  Meyer gave a determined shake of the head. ‘Najac’s reasons and his mental condition are irrelevant, Mademoiselle. Major von Aschau will be forced to have him shot. There is no conceivable alternative. The possession of an unregistered firearm alone is a capital offence punishable by summary execution. And this is a rifle, not a shotgun. The man clearly wasn’t coming up here to shoot partridges.’

  Lucie got to her feet and stumbled across to the embrasure. She looked out over the road, across the grille fence to the Bastide de Marmont. The library windows, the piano, the bookshelves – all were clearly visible to a man with binoculars. In a sudden rush of insight she grasped the reasons for Hervé’s abnormal behaviour over the past few weeks. She turned abruptly on Meyer, comprehension dawning on her face.

  ‘It wasn’t my grandmother. She didn’t need to tell him. Hervé must have been spying on us for days.’ She could feel her voice cracking with the strain of getting her information across. ‘Why wasn’t he discovered earlier? During one of your patrols? Before he could think to bring the rifle?’

  Meyer gave a long-suffering groan. Despite appearances, he nevertheless chose to address her comment seriously enough. He began his answer haltingly, feeling for the right words.

  ‘From the very beginning of our occupation of your town, the major agreed, under intense pressure from your curé – and as an obedient Catholic, no doubt – to declare the church and its environs strictly off-limits to our troops. In terms of patrols, you understand. The day before yesterday, for reasons best known to himself, he changed his mind, and ordered us to add the tower to our patrol itinerary. It’s lucky that he did.’

  ‘Lucky for who?’

  Meyer stood up. ‘You wouldn’t want him killed, would you? You can’t be that callous.’

  Lucie lowered her gaze, her face ashen. She knew exactly which of the two men Meyer was referring to. ‘Of course not. What do you think?’

  ‘I didn’t think.’ Meyer pondered the failure of his French syntax, then tried again. ‘I thought not.’

  Lucie took a step towards him. ‘Can I see Max? Can I talk to him?’

  Schmidt’s footsteps were already thundering up the stone staircase behind them.

  Meyer gave a brusque nod. ‘I will have Schmidt escort you across to the Bastide. You can wait for him there. But the commandant will tell you the very same thing I have told you, Mademoiselle. I can assure you of that.’

  Schmidt burst into the room, breathing heavily. ‘Forgive me, Herr Sturmscharführer, but I was forced to go all the way into town to find water. There is no source whatsoever in the church. Only the Holy Water, anyway, and I thought—’

  ‘Stop blustering, man, and hand Mademoiselle Léré the cup.’

  ‘Jawohl, Herr Sturmscharführer!’

  ‘Then, when she is ready, you can accompany her back to the Bastide. You may leave her in the library. There is no need to remain with her. The place is already guarded. When you have done that, go and find the major and tell him she is waiting for him.’ Meyer glanced at Lucie. ‘No. On second thoughts, I’ll do that myself.’

  ‘Jawohl, Herr Sturmscharführer.’

  While Schmidt was handing her the cup, Meyer gave an imperceptible inclination of the head, so that only Lucie should see the movement. She managed a tentative, grateful smile in return.

  ‘Until later then.’ He glared at Schmidt. ‘You’ll make quite sure that Mademoiselle Léré is completely restored before taking her over the road? You will not act prematurely? You understand me, Schmidt?’

  ‘Perfectly, Herr Sturmscharführer.’

  ‘So.’

  Meyer hesitated for a moment at the threshold, almost as if he had some further instruction to add to his litany.

  Then he straightened his uniform, replaced the field cap on his head, and started downstairs.

  Max

  Lucie hovered near the entrance to the Bastide library, the diminishing sound of Schmidt’s steel-toed jackboots hammering down the corridor behind her. She had never been alone in here before – each visit, each memory she had of the place was suffused with Max’s presence. He was the room, and without him it reverted to being little more than an amalgamation of useless unintelligible objects – an alien place in which she had no individual rights beyond those of a servant.

  She ventured tentatively as far as the first window and stood looking out at the church. As the direction of her thoug
hts turned back to Hervé, a sudden shiver ran through her, as though someone, somewhere, were stepping over her grave. Ever since they were children, she had been aware of Hervé’s reputation as a hunter and as a marksman. He could so easily have plucked both her and Max with a single bullet and finished the thing forever. So why hadn’t he done so?

  She turned away, more rattled than she cared to acknowledge at this first unwitting brush with mortality. Perhaps Hervé did love her, after all? That was an unsettling thought. She had managed, over the past few weeks, to still her troubled conscience by repeating to herself – over and over again when necessary – that his persistent and clumsy wooing of her consisted of little more than the vagaries of geographical circumstance, the customary modicum of lust, a dash of nostalgia for their shared youth, and some belated notion, to which Hervé fancied that only he himself was privy, that the winning of her would compensate him in some impenetrable male way for his injuries. Lucie had accepted this estimation of herself modestly and without question, for her judgment of her worth to a man had always been more unassuming and more grounded in reality than that of her mother.

  In her more introspective moments she was perfectly happy to acknowledge that she had been a desirable commodity before her accident, at least insofar as the local community was concerned, but she accorded herself no further attributes beyond the routine capacity to run a home, a basse-cour and a farmer’s table. All Jeanne Léré’s wild talk of managing a successful restaurant, not to mention Lucie’s own fantasies of singing in front of an admiring audience, were just that: fantasies. As far as she was concerned, she was simply Lucie Léré, daughter of Gaston Léré and the bourgeoise, and granddaughter of old Marie – destined, like the long line of her female ancestors before her, to end her days as a farmer’s wife and as the mother of his brood. And now, here she was, all of a sudden, nothing – or rather, less than nothing. She was the German officer’s mistress.