A Good Death

by A Good Death (retail) (epub)

  Micheline and Florence were standing immediately behind him; their sobbing had ceased. They had been inventorying the dead man with him. He turned and walked them away from the body.

  ‘And the rest of them?’ he asked.

  ‘They left during the night. They didn’t sleep here.’ This was Madame de Cazalle speaking. ‘They seem to have gone definitively. They’ve taken everything.’

  ‘It’s the same down below, in the village. The Milice have gone too. They’re on the run.’

  ‘No reprisals,’ said Florence. ‘They’ve gone for good.’

  ‘Ah, let’s hope so,’ said Petignat. He looked round helplessly. He was feeling distinctly ill. He’d had nothing to eat yet and he had seen enough death to make you heave.

  ‘You need a drink,’ Madame de Cazalle said. ‘Let us give you something, a glass of brandy.’

  They’d walked through to the farmyard, leaving the body where it was. He noticed that the linen boiler was already lit, and steam was seeping out at the edge of the lid. They must have been up early to do the laundry and then found that thing in the courtyard.

  So he had to do it. Dealing with the body was nothing, it was no more than a pig’s carcass to be carted away. But telling the women about Henri, telling Micheline that her husband had been shot by this very guy, that was worse than anything he’d ever had to do.

  They’d sat in Micheline’s kitchen, and it was as if the social order was inverted. Micheline and Florence sat down. Madame de Cazalle poured him some brandy. The old girls had disappeared. He told them, straight out, what had happened yesterday. They wouldn’t believe him at first. They made him repeat it, begin at the beginning, but where was that? The beginning for him was when the Germans burst into the Gendarmerie and he was herded into the square with the rest of the men. That’s when he’d seen Henri, but it wasn’t the beginning for him, it was the end.

  ‘He was already wounded,’ he said, as if that might comfort them. ‘I don’t know how, but they only got him because he was wounded.’

  Micheline was sobbing, racking her chest. Florence’s tears flowed down her cheeks, her mouth turned down like a clown’s. Madame de Cazalle was the worst. She turned to the sink and retched. Nothing came. She probably hadn’t eaten that morning either, what with the body and all. But she continued to try to throw her heart up until at last she spat out a gob of greenish phlegm.

  Petignat had had it by then. He threw back the dregs of the brandy and left. He lugged the body away by himself, because he couldn’t leave it there and he couldn’t ask for help. What more could he do? That’s the way it was. And he still had the eight bodies on the road to deal with.

  * * *

  Theo rode on to Pechagrier. It was all the more important now, he thought, to identify someone from Group Rainbow who could tell him about the events of that night from the viewpoint of the Maquis. How did their movements fit in with those of the Germans? Who were the attackers, who the attacked? He had caught glimpses of Henri’s Group Rainbow in Lepech in the afternoon of 17 August, in the battle at Bonnemort in the early evening, then at their final tragic appearance in the square when Henri was shot and six others hanged. But what was the rationale behind these actions? What had they been trying to achieve? The Russian who might tell him was not to be found. A thread of smoke emerged from the chimney of his cottage and a dog barked furiously from within, but he could raise no other response to his knocks and calls. With regret, he once again abandoned his attempt and rode back to Bonnemort.

  Chapter Eleven

  After lunch, Theo took the mallet, wedge and saw and set to work on a pile of logs. Sabine obediently performed some chores for Micheline and then, pushing the wheelbarrow, she climbed up the hill to join her father.

  ‘I’ll take them down and stack them,’ she volunteered.

  Theo paused to wipe his brow with his forearm. ‘Can you manage?’

  ‘I carried heavier loads than this when we had the pig-killing,’ said Sabine. She stacked the first load and trundled down the path with it.

  ‘You didn’t like the village school,’ Theo remarked when she returned. ‘How long were you there?’

  ‘Two years, until Suzie came. I didn’t mind it. I mean, it wasn’t like the convent, but it was all right.’

  Theo found these unemphatic opinions hard to interpret.

  ‘He was a tough teacher, was he, Mr Vernhes? Was he any good?’

  ‘Yes, he was good. He made us all learn. Even the boys. Everyone was frightened of him.’

  ‘He used to thrash them, did he?’

  * * *

  For Sabine her father was an unknown quantity. Even before his wartime absence, when she was at the convent, she had rarely seen him. She had idealised both her parents when she had thought they were dead; now that her father had been resurrected, he did not live up to her imagination’s construction. Madame Ariane, as much as she detested her, understood what was said to her. In fact, it was a fault in her that she was so quick that little escaped her eye. Papa, she now realised, for all that he was so important according to the aunts, understood nothing. He had obviously interpreted Aunt Marguerite’s remarks about Vernhes’ beating the children as meaning that he beat the other children. It had simply never entered his head that the schoolmaster had beaten her. It was inconceivable to him. So what could one say to someone who understood nothing at all?

  It was true that the village school had been all right. She had found it alarming at the beginning, especially the presence of boys. The big ones now stayed until they were fourteen. This improvement had been brought in by the Popular Front, she had been told, although the boys themselves, eager to get a man’s job, or needed on the farms, complained of the waste of their time. In the playground, as a newcomer, she was subject to some rough treatment at first. But she was so submissive that interest in tormenting her soon ceased. As she put on no airs and made no claims for herself, she was soon left alone. She had no friends.

  Vernhes was another matter. He concentrated on the top class and she did not immediately encounter him. But she heard of his fearsome reputation, which kept the tyrants of the playground unmoving in their seats while he lectured them. They even liked him for it. He was ‘a good one’, she heard. He stood for no cheek and belted anyone who sauced him. When they at last came face to face they recognised one another at once. A bully, as her experiences with Antoinette and Sister Barbe had taught her, always knows a victim. And she felt the same trembling pleasure of being selected which she used to feel when Sister Barbe’s eyes rested on her in a thoughtful way.

  Vernhes had been taking two classes at once, for history, for which subject he would dictate the topic for the week and check their exercise books for spelling errors. This was his republican method of dealing with the Vichy curriculum, her stepmother had commented, not unsympathetically, when Sabine had complained of the boredom of it. Sabine wrote swiftly and then watched him as he repeated the phrase and waited for the slower pupils, their tongues projecting from between their lips, their pens grasped tightly in their fists, to finish. He read on, but she did not hear. He stood above them very upright, as still as a hovering buzzard, his eyes grey behind his steel-rimmed spectacles. He caught her eye and held her gaze.

  ‘What was the last phrase, Sabine?’ he asked gently. She jumped, looking hastily at her copy.

  ‘… led to defeat, full stop,’ she read from the bottom of the page.

  He moved forward menacingly. ‘What have you been doing that you have been so left behind? Marie-Jose, please repeat, so that Sabine can catch up with us. Sabine, wait behind at the end of the afternoon for your punishment.’

  * * *

  ‘Do you miss your friend?’ Theo asked. He searched for the child’s name. ‘Suzie. It must have been nice having a companion.’

  ‘No,’ said Sabine, decidedly. ‘I liked it when she was here, but she taught me bad things.’ She was looking away from him, at the rooftops below them. ‘I’m glad she’s gone.
’

  Theo raised the mallet and struck the wedge, driving it deeper into the circle of wood. ‘I’m surprised. I thought you were supposed to be good friends.’

  ‘We were. But things happen to change your mind. Anyway, she’s Jewish.’

  The cylinder of tree trunk that he was working on suddenly sprang apart, and the metal wedge flew out. ‘Watch it. Stand back.’

  ‘She was Jewish, was she?’ he said, half to himself. He wondered why he had not guessed at once when he heard Pascal Wolff’s story.

  Sabine bent to gather up the split logs.

  ‘Did you know she was Jewish?’ her father asked her. ‘She was in hiding, was she?’

  Sabine hesitated. ‘We all knew, in the end, after the Germans had gone. Your wife told us.’

  He ignored the rudeness of her reference to Ariane. She kicked the log pile, stubbing her boot against it repeatedly. ‘The sisters used to say that the Jews were the killers of Christ and we must pray for their conversion. And Sister Barbe once told me …’

  Theo tapped the wedge into the next log, gently at first. He supposed that his marriage to Ariane must have affected his views more than he realised. He was surprised how shocked he was to hear what his daughter was saying. Yet it was no more than he had been accustomed to accepting, articulated less childishly, in remarks made by fellow officers. He remembered at their second meeting, at the lunch for her friend the Socialist member of Parliament, Ariane had been lighting a cigarette, jutting her chin forward to meet the proffered light and saying, ‘We Dreyfusards …’ And he recognised then that he had deserted his own kind, who could never admit that Dreyfus was other than a traitor simply because he was a Jew.

  ‘What difference did it make, that she’s Jewish?’ he asked. ‘She was a nice little girl. You liked her. She was your friend.’

  ‘No, she wasn’t. She didn’t like Lou Moussou.’

  ‘Lou?’

  ‘The pig, the pig, Papa. There must have been Lou Moussou when you were a little boy. There’s always Lou Moussou here. Lou Moussou was a secret pig, hidden from the Requisition, and when we had to kill him, she was pleased. I cried and cried. Jews don’t like pigs.’

  Theo did not know how to reason with this sort of thing.

  ‘You must remember that not everyone is as besotted about animals as you are,’ he said impatiently.

  It had begun to rain as they loaded the last split logs onto the barrow and retreated to the house. In the library with the aunts, Sabine brought out a large board supporting a skeleton jigsaw. She dumped the aunts’ atlas on the floor and placed it on the table.

  ‘Will you help me?’ she asked her father. Theo would rather have sat watching the flames, doing nothing, but he was playing his paternal role today, so he sat down beside her. The border was complete and a section on the right had been built to show a pattern of leaves and tendrils.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t there a picture?’

  ‘There is.’ Sabine was already bending over the board, moving pieces with the tips of her fingers. ‘But you’re not allowed to look.’

  ‘Hmh. I always use a picture. I can’t even guess what this is.’

  ‘It makes it more interesting.’

  * * *

  That night after dinner Theo stayed by the fire to drink his brandy when the women had gone to bed. A tap on the door interrupted his thoughts. Florence entered.

  ‘I came to see if you needed more logs.’

  ‘No, you didn’t. Come here.’

  She stood in front of the fire; he took her hand. ‘So you are to be married. Who is this Claude?’

  ‘His parents have a farm in Quercy; it’s called Les Lunes Hautes.’

  ‘And how did you meet?’

  ‘He came here to the Maquis.’

  ‘Running from the compulsory labour service?’

  ‘No, he’s older than that. He’d got into a fight with the Milice, so he just left home.’

  ‘Sit down. Tell me, you knew what your father was doing?’ She sat opposite him, leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, her face highlighted by the fire. ‘Not at first. Not until two years ago when Georges was arrested and Roger went into the Maquis.’

  ‘He was enormously brave, your father. Your mother, too.’

  ‘Mum never thought of the risks. She just did whatever was necessary for Dad. And she can’t help helping people. When the Germans were here, she’d dress a cut or a blister for them, just as if they were the Resistance.’

  ‘Tell me about Henri’s group.’

  ‘It was called group Rainbow, that was Madame Ariane’s name for them. Last year there were about forty young ones escaping from compulsory labour service and then another dozen or so older men who had gone underground for one reason or another. Mr Nikola, the Russian, gave them training with guns. He’d been a soldier fighting against the Bolsheviks. Not that we could practise, because we had hardly any ammunition, but at least we could handle them.’

  ‘You too?’

  ‘Yes, even me. I can dismantle a Bren with the best of them.’

  ‘But you were legal, not in hiding. What were you doing?’

  ‘Messages, mostly, by bike. Things got very bad here once the Germans came. It was very risky. I used to ride miles, me one night and Madame the next. There was a curfew, but in the darkness you could always hear them coming. And the little roads were in our hands. They didn’t dare use them.’

  He hoped she would go on. He couldn’t bring himself ask her directly about Ariane, he could only hope that she would say something more. Instead, she rose and said, ‘So, goodnight.’

  He saw his last chance and stood up too, putting his arms around her shoulders. ‘What happened here?’ he asked urgently. ‘I need you to tell me. No one else will.’

  She turned away. ‘You mean Madame?’ she asked evasively.

  ‘No one will ever say. You can ask anyone you like and no one will tell you. I don’t know, I wasn’t there. I didn’t see; I didn’t ask. But I think I know why.’

  ‘Yes?’ he prompted her, drawing her down again beside the fire.

  * * *

  They’d been out together one afternoon in late June, she and Madame Ariane, a few weeks after the Germans had arrived, and were returning home. It had been a hot day; they still had a long way to go, at least fifteen kilometres, when the chain of her bicycle slipped off. She put her bike in the grass and the two of them were working on it when they heard the sound of vehicles, big ones. They looked at one another and Madame had closed her eyes and sighed. Florence knew how she felt. She was tired and couldn’t be bothered to take the bikes into the forest to wait for them to pass. They had nothing to hide on them, so they’d take no notice.

  Two German vehicles, one a car and the other a truck with soldiers in the back, passed them and stopped. As soon as they saw the car, they knew who it was. The major had commandeered Madame Ariane’s own car, the Hispano-Suiza that she had arrived in at the beginning of the war, and he drove around the countryside in it. That didn’t do Madame any good.

  The lieutenant, the one with the eyepatch, jumped down from the truck and came towards them, speaking in German, smiling, friendly. He was gesturing towards the lorry and she could guess that he was offering them a lift home. Madame did not smile. She stood up and replied in German, shaking her head, bowing a little. He was insisting; she was refusing. He shouted to the soldiers in the truck and two young lads climbed down, seized the bikes and loaded them into the back.

  Madame was furious. She walked away along the road. Florence ran after her. The vehicles came slowly behind them, stopped again and more or less forced them in, her into the cab of the truck, Madame into the car, also in the front, between the driver and the officer. Florence wasn’t fussed; she was glad of the lift home. Then she saw the way they were going. They didn’t take the little road that cuts directly to the crossroads by the Bonnemort track; they were going round through the village.

  She said to the driver,
with gestures, ‘Turn there, it’s quicker.’

  He had shrugged and pointed to the car leading the way. When they came to the village, she knew what to do. She put her head down between her knees, so that no one could see her. In the truck they just laughed and the sergeant put his elbow on her back, as if she were an armrest. She could see how, if you let yourself talk to them, you could quite soon be laughing and joking with them, like with any group of lads.

  In the car in front Madame hadn’t flinched. She just sat upright, seen by everyone, riding in her own car with the German officer. When they arrived home, she didn’t speak to the major, but she was angry with the lieutenant. Florence didn’t understand what she was saying, of course, but she could see that he wasn’t annoyed. He replied to her and all the soldiers laughed, as they unloaded their bikes.

  * * *

  ‘So I’m sure it wasn’t what you think.’

  ‘What do you think I think?’

  ‘You think what all men think, what the men who did that terrible thing to her thought. They jumped to wrong conclusions.’

  ‘And your father?’ he asked, stroking her hair. ‘What happened to him?’

  She had relaxed against him. Now he felt her shoulders become rigid beneath his arm and the muscles in her thigh lying alongside his tensed. She got up again, smoothing her hair.

  ‘There was a gun battle on the track. And he was shot in no the village square, as Mum told you. But there’s more to it than that. It was an ambush. But who ambushed whom? Was it the Resistance ambushing the Germans or the Germans the Resistance? I’ve asked, but no one will ever tell you. He was betrayed, I’m sure.’ He could see the runnel of a tear slide down her cheek. ‘I’d like to know who did it. We got the German, but not the French, the ones who betrayed him.’