by Allan Massie
Lagisquon ordered his men to release the boy.
‘Don’t even give him the kicking the little tart deserves,’ he said. ‘But we won’t accept your offer of a drink, sir. I wouldn’t let my lips touch a glass the customers of this bar have drunk from.’
He saluted again, clicked his heels and led his men out, his head held high.
Silence followed him. The bead curtain thrust violently aside swung gently in the air. Jules put the Luger out of sight below the bar counter. Miki wiped the blood from his mouth and the tears from his eyes. He was still shaking. Dr Solomons led him through to the toilet.
‘A nasty moment,’ Jules said.
‘It would have been nastier if you had pulled the trigger.’
‘I don’t allow people to insult me in my own bar.’
‘I’d have thought you’d be used to it by now. Give me another Armagnac, please.’
‘This one is on the house, and I’ll join you. Don’t think I’m not grateful, superintendent.’
‘There may be more incidents like this.’
‘I can look after myself.’
‘Oh yes?’ Lannes said. ‘If I was you, I’d close the bar till the Americans arrive.’
‘You think they will.’
‘They have to. Or the English. If it’s the English there’ll be lots of demand for what you have on offer. I don’t know about the Americans. There may be fewer among them.’
Dr Solomons returned from the toilet. He had cleaned up Miki’s face but the boy’s lips were still quivering.
‘You should keep him out of sight, doctor. I won’t be around another time.’
‘No. What a world we’ve survived into.’
‘The thing to do is survive it.’
‘We’re grateful to you. If you hadn’t been here … well, it doesn’t bear thinking on.’
He picked up his glass.
‘I needed that,’ he said.
Then he took Lannes aside and, lowering his voice, said, ‘I’ll see about Aurélien and I’ll do what I can for your friend. It should be possible. Morphine, I mean.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘If I can.’
‘I’ll be at the bar in the rue de la Vielle Tour in the afternoon. Three o’clock.’
IX
Maxim’s was crowded as ever. There were German officers there, Frenchmen in dinner-jackets and Society women in evening gowns from, Léon supposed, the best couturiers. Waiters glided between the tables with bottles of champagne and trays piled with dishes such as no ordinary Parisian had seen for four years, such indeed as most of them had probably never eaten. There was a buzzing babble of conversation and smoke rose from cigars and cigarettes. Chardy took hold of Léon’s elbow between his thumb and forefinger to steer him across the room, and Léon knew that he held him in this way to demonstrate his ownership, to show him off as his boy. Well, he couldn’t deny that he was that, in a sense anyway. Chardy protected him. He’d have been at a loss without him, and he had come to realise that Chardy felt affection for him as well as everything else. All the same he couldn’t avoid the thought that it was disgusting and shameful to be here, even though something in him responded to the seedy glamour of this scene that nevertheless represented everything that he had joined the Free French to fight against.
They were led to a table at the back of the room. There were four people there and four empty places. Léon found himself between a blonde woman and an unoccupied chair. The waiter filled his glass with champagne. Chardy began talking about his new novel; he was making a sales pitch to a film producer. His tone was arrogant, as if he would be conferring a favour by allowing his masterpiece to be made into a movie. The blonde crumbled a bread roll. She leaned over and said in an undertone, ‘I don’t think your friend is making a good impression. Are you a writer yourself?’ ‘Not much of one,’ he said. ‘Just his boy then?’ He felt himself blushing.
‘I’m not being critical,’ she said. ‘We all have to live as best we can these days. I’m a kept woman myself. I suppose I’d be dead if I wasn’t.’ She laid her hand on his and pressed it. ‘Drink your champagne,’ she said.
***
Alain rolled off the girl and lay back in the hay. He almost said ‘I needed that’ but checked himself. It would sound as if she was merely a convenience, though she was indeed that, or as if what they had done together was for him only a physical necessity. It was that too of course, but he shouldn’t leave her with the idea it was nothing more, since he might never see her again now that he had recovered and was ready to leave the farm.
‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘You understand that, don’t you.’
She sat up and pulled her knickers up from her ankles and rolled her dress down. She sniffed, twice, and he realised she was crying. He put his arm round her and kissed her on the lips.
‘It’s not that I want to leave you. It’s just what I have to do.’
‘I don’t want to know about it. I don’t want to know anything. Will I see you again?’
He kissed her a second time, gently. It was true what he said, that he didn’t want to go. He was afraid to go, and lying here with her in the hay, with her milky breath on his lips, he knew this was also what mattered, real life. It’s what we’re fighting to restore, he thought. But he couldn’t promise anything. He couldn’t give her that lying assurance. He had to go, find his unit again. He couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t.
***
Descending from the train Dominique could see no sign of François. He felt a tremor of fear, even though both his ticket and his pass were in order, and when he approached the barrier he was allowed through without question. Nevertheless the sight of half a dozen German military policemen scrutinising the departing passengers quickened his sense of alarm. I mustn’t do anything to attract their attention, he thought. I look respectable, there’s nothing to be afraid of. But he couldn’t fail to be conscious of what he was carrying in his briefcase. He wasn’t made for this, Alain would have strolled past them with an air of unconcern he couldn’t match. He wanted a cigarette, but he was afraid his hands would shake as he lit it and he would look guilty.
It was a relief to be free of the station. His instructions were clear. If François wasn’t on the platform, he was to go to the Café Voltaire in the Boulevard Maréchal Soult. Better not to ask for directions. In any case he had the town map in his head. But he badly needed to pee. Nerves, nothing but nerves. He went into the first café, ordered a lemonade and paid for it, went down the stairs to the toilet to relieve himself and found he was still trembling. Someone had scrawled the Cross of Lorraine on the wall and written ‘Laval is only a cunt’ beside it. Another hand had added, ‘And what’s de Gaulle then?’ He left without drinking his lemonade and wondered if this was a mistake.
François was sitting at a table on the terrace. Dominique didn’t recognise him at once. He had grown a moustache and was wearing a tweed suit with plus-four trousers. He looked like a country squire or, rather, an actor playing a squire.
‘The Gestapo were at the station,’ he said. ‘So I thought it safer not to go in. Not that I’ve any reason to think they were looking for me. My cover’s secure. I’m Jacques Morland, a commercial traveller in cosmetics. I’ve got a case of samples to prove it. Pleased to see you anyway. You got the papers without trouble?’
Dominique patted his briefcase. Again, he thought, this isn’t my sort of thing. François enjoys this game of nerves, I wish I could.
‘It won’t be long now,’ François said. ‘It really won’t. But the next months are the most dangerous. Look after yourself. And leave the briefcase with me – there’s nothing of your own in it, I suppose?’
‘Nothing.’
It would be a relief to be rid of it.
‘What you’re doing now won’t be forgotten,’ François said. ‘I assure you of that.’
He made it sound as if he personally would pin a decoration on his chest. Then he remembered that he had been shown a
photograph of François receiving the ‘Francisque’ from the Marshal himself.
***
Freddie , the sailor-boy, slipped out of bed and stood in front of the smeared and cracked mirror admiring himself. Jérôme turned over to look at him. There was certainly much to admire, ‘Nice as pie, aren’t I?’ as Freddie himself said. Now he pulled on his baggy Royal Navy regulation underpants and looked ordinary, even for a moment absurd. The singlet followed. He picked up his trousers and turned round.
‘Like what you see, Froggie?’
‘Not the pants.’
‘What’s under them’s all right though, intit?’
‘I wish you weren’t going.’
‘We’ve had fun, haven’t we?’ Freddie said. ‘But now fun’s over. King and Country call. I’ll be all right, you know. As my old woman says, it’s the good die young, not a limb of Satan like you, Fred. You’ll go to see her, won’t you, when I’m away, carrying the troops to liberate your belle France?’
‘Will she want me to?’
‘Course she will. She likes you.’
‘Does she know what we do, what we get up to?’
‘Course she does. The old woman wasn’t born yesterday, and you don’t grow up in the East End without knowing what’s what – ’sides if what she says is true it was her own old man, my granddad, who was the first to give her a taste of how’s your father, her and her brother, my uncle Alf, too. Catholic tastes, he had, the old bugger. So she’s not one to be shocked. Just take her a spot of gin when you call, not your red rotgut, though she’d swig that too if there was nothing else.’
Freddie was fully dressed now. He snapped to attention in front of the mirror and saluted.
‘Able Seaman Spinks reporting for duty.’
He sat on the bed, and thrust his hand under the covers between Jérôme’s legs.
‘Bit of reporting for duty here too, that’s nice. Know what the old woman says? I’m glad you’ve got that nice French boy, she says. If it wasn’t for him that Ethel Briggs would have had you putting a bun in her oven and screaming for a marriage licence just so’s she could collect the widow’s pension if you don’t come back. That’s what she says. But don’t you worry about me. I’m coming back, no question. Remember your promise. When we’ve sent Jerry packing and little Adolf ’s done for, you’re going to show me Gay Paree, the Folies Bergère and all that whatever. Now I’m off. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’
He leaned over and kissed Jérôme’s cheek.
‘Mind you, that leaves you a lot of scope.’
The door closed behind him. Jérôme listened to his steps clattering down the stairs. He looked at his watch. Only an hour till he had to be in the office, to speak to the Youth of France, tell them the day of Liberation was approaching, while Freddie was on his way to carry the troops that would – how had he put it? – send Jerry packing. He wondered if Alain, wherever he might be, might be listening in. And Léon too, with whom he’d learned the Service had lost all contact months ago and who might now be dead.
***
‘So you’ve had enough?’ Baron Jean said.
Michel looked away. This wasn’t what he had signed up for, guarding a miserable collection of stinking Jews, escorting them to a concentration camp.
‘They don’t trust us, do they, the Boches I mean?’
‘War’s war,’ de Flambard said. ‘There’s no end of dirty jobs.’
‘And this is one of the dirtiest. I came to fight the Bolsheviks.’
‘So you did. So did I.’
The baron passed him a bottle of schnapps.
‘Take a drink. Take a good drink. This present job’s better done drunk, just a little drunk. But don’t fret yourself. There’ll be plenty of fighting yet. We’ve joined the losing side, you know. They’ll need every man they’ve got before this is over.’
He leaned over and picked a louse out of Michel’s hair.
‘You’ll have every chance,’ he said, ‘to be a hero yet, my son.’
X
The sun shone out of a cloudless sky. Lannes sat at a table outside the bar in the rue de la Vieille Tour with a glass of beer untouched in front of him. He had no desire to drink, no desire to do anything. A pigeon pecked around his feet. There were fewer pigeons in Bordeaux than in the days before the war. Boys trapped them and took them home for their mothers to cook, not that there could bemuch eating on these city birds. But you could make a broth with them, women said. Rationing was more severe than ever. The doctor was late. It didn’t matter. He had nothing to do but kill time. They were all killing time, waiting. If the first months of the warhad been a phoney war, the drôle de guerre, they were now living in a phoney peace, a drôle de paix. That morning, in the kitchen, he and Clothilde had tuned in as he did every day now to Radio London. The speaker had been stern, warning all those who had collaborated with the Boches that the day of reckoning was drawing near. There would be nowhere, he had said, for collaborators to hide. But who hadn’t collaborated? Many who were now in the Resistance had done so, even the Communists who hadn’t lifted a finger or a voice against the Occupation till Hitler had committed the folly of invading the Soviet Union. And were the Communists in the Resistance now fighting for Stalin or for France?
Dominique, his gentle and honourable Dominique, he was a collaborator in the eyes of the Resistance, working for Vichy along with his friend, young Maurice, trying by his account, which he didn’t dispute, to give these boys from the poor quarters of the cities a better life, or at least show them the way to such a life. Were they to be condemned for that? Vichy was disreputable. That was, he had come to realise, undeniable. It had attracted scoundrels, like Labiche and Sigi de Grimaud, but not all who had adhered to Vichy were scoundrels. The idea was ridiculous. Somewere merely fools, like his brother-in-law Albert. And there wereothers he couldn’t be certain of. Maurice’s father, Edmond de Grimaud, for instance, a minister in the Vichy government till he was dismissed a few months ago. He was certainly no fool, and perhaps no more than half a scoundrel. In any case he himself had long been in Edmond’s debt. And the Alsatian, who sat so firmly on the fence that his buttocks were creased, what was he but a diligent time-server resolved to survive no matter how? He couldn’t despise him. In truth he couldn’t suppose he was entitled to despise anyone. As for the Marshal himself, he felt little but pity for the old man who had undoubtedly done his duty as he conceived it. If he had flown to Algiers in November ’42 at the time of the American invasion, wouldn’t they have received him with open arms? Wouldn’t the French there have cheered him – to the rafters, as the saying went? Wouldn’t he when the day of Liberation came have returned to Paris in triumph, even as it were on a white horse? But he had, as he put it, made a gift of his person to the French people, promised to share their suffering – even if his own could only have been mental or perhaps spiritual – and remained in place, powerless now, only a symbol of Lannes didn’t know what. A broken and divided France, he supposed.
For there had been an idealistic side to Vichy, at first. How could he deny that since it was represented by Dominique and Maurice? Might they perhaps in years to come look back on the time of the Marshal with tender nostalgia?
And that young lieutenant in the Milice, wasn’t he in his way a patriot? Liberty, the Girondin Madame Roland had said, as they carried her to the guillotine, what crimes are committed in your name! Patriotism too, patriotism likewise.
He picked up his glass of beer and, as he did so, saw Dr Solomons approach carrying a medical bag, perhaps for the first time in years.
He stood up. They shook hands. He attracted the attention of the waiter and ordered a plum brandy for the doctor.
‘So?’ he said.
‘So I am here as promised. That was a nasty moment yesterday. It was fortunate you were there.’
‘Is the boy all right?’
‘All right but very frightened. He had indeed … ’
‘I don’t want to know,’ Lannes said.
‘It’s better you say nothing about it.’
‘You don’t care for the Resistance?’
‘There’s more than one kind of resistance, and I don’t care for Frenchmen killing Frenchmen.’
‘But it’s happening and will continue to happen, and, as Miki himself says, it’s better to be on the winning side. Which of course he wouldn’t have been if you hadn’t been there yesterday,superintendent.’
‘Superintendent suspended, and, if that young lieutenant should find out that I am indeed suspended, or when, perhaps I should say when, he learns that, well I need only say that you should remind the boy of this probability, and tell him to keep out of sight. You also perhaps.’
‘And yet I’m meeting you here, openly in the city.’
‘So you are, and perhaps I shouldn’t have put you at risk.’
‘My dear superintendent – suspended – I’ve been at risk for years. And I’m an old man, though one, I confess, who is nevertheless still afraid of death.’
He raised his glass.
‘Your health, superintendent suspended.’
‘And yours, doctor suspended.’
‘So we understand each other, or at least each other’s position.’
‘You can still smile?’ Lannes said.
‘And why not? I’m a Jew, a member of a race that over the centuries has had only two defences against hardship, misfortune, and persecution. Our religious faith, as God’s chosen people, a faith I have never shared, and humour, Jewish humour which sees light on the dark side of things. It’s been the defence that has kept us going. Once I was a distinguished man, attending some of the best families in Bordeaux. Now I live in disgrace and, as you have seen, in thrall to what the respectable world regards as vice. But I’m still alive, superintendent suspended, still alive. Perhaps that’ssomething of which I should be ashamed, given the fate that has befallen so many of my race. The old tailor, Ephraim Kurz, killed himself, didn’t he? That surprised me.’
‘I think,’ Lannes said, ‘it was the last act of self-assertion of which he felt capable. So: Aurélien Mabire?’
