by Allan Massie
Jacques Maso, a journalist on the Sud-Ouest, was in his familiar place in the Rugby Bar, under the photograph of the Bordeaux XV that had been champions of France in 1914. He raised his hand in greeting and Lannes joined him, calling to the barman to bring them beer.
‘So,’ Jacques said, ‘it’s begun.’
‘What?’
‘You haven’t heard? Where have you been?’
‘I’ve heard nothing.’
‘The invasion. The Allies have landed, in Normandy it seems.’
Lannes felt a surge of relief.
‘That’s wonderful news. At last.’
‘That’s why I’m here,’ Jacques said. ‘I could hardly take it in myself, and I couldn’t stay in the office. We’re all at sixes and sevens there. Nobody knows what to write. Nobody knows what we may be allowed to write, what indeed we might dare to write. So I buggered off to think. On my own. And now you’re here.’ He picked up his glass, clinked it against Lannes’, and said, ‘To success! Victory! Liberation!’
‘But how’s it going?’
‘Nobody knows. You can’t believe the first reports that come in.
But there’s hard fighting, that’s surely certain. And, while Vichy may be finished, there’s still the shreds of a government, the Milice and the French Gestapo haven’t gone away, far from it.’
‘And the Germans are still here.’
‘Very much so. They shot six members of a Resistance group yesterday, and put up posters listing the names and proclaiming that anyone suspected of Resistance would be shot on sight. And now the Director wants me to write our editorial for tomorrow. I came here to think. It’s an impossible task, and if I strike the wrong note … what the hell can I say?’
Lannes had no answer. His hand was shaking. He couldn’t even pick up his glass: Liberation. Resisters to be shot on sight. Alain …
‘The paper’s been loyal to the Marshal. We’ve had no choice.’
‘Of course you haven’t.’
The portrait of the Marshal above the bar looked down at them: benign, fatherly, reassuring. ‘I have consecrated my person to the French people in their time of hardship.’ Everyone knew the words. Many had believed the old man. Many had been comforted by his promise to share their sufferings, Marguerite who hated politics and refused to listen to the war news among them. The Marshal was all they had; she wouldn’t hear a word against him.
‘You’ll have no news of Alain?’ Jacques said.
‘None.’
‘No news is better than bad news. When it’s over – and I pray that won’t be long now – I look forward to seeing him play again. His change of pace and outside break, a happy memory. He’ll play for France, Jean. Everyone at the club thinks so and looks forward to his return.’
‘Don’t,’ Lannes said, ‘don’t speak like that. It’s tempting the Fates, tempting that one with the scissors.’
‘You’re right of course, but often, these last years, it’s been only the thought that things might be again as they used to be that has enabled me to keep going in my dismal trade. If only I’d been a
sports writer … for four years now I’ve written little but lies.’
‘They’ll never be as they were,’ Lannes said. ‘However we come out of this it will be like stepping into a different world, utterly different. It couldn’t be otherwise. Too much has happened, too much that has been dreadful and divisive. It will be years before we can look each other in the eye without a question: so how did you behave, what did you do, in the years of the Occupation? And that’s only if the Allies win in Normandy. And if they don’t … then it will be only the Soviets who have defeated the Nazis. And what would that mean for France, for French men and women?’
‘Maybe you should write my editorial, Jean.’
‘Not my job. Yours.’
‘But what would you say?’
‘Lord knows. All I know is that we’ll have to live together whatever the outcome and that Frenchmen should stop killing Frenchmen.’
‘I can’t write that, but I’ll drink to it.’
Lannes picked up his glass and drank his beer.
***
Nevertheless it must be good news. Would the Allies have launched an invasion if they weren’t confident of success? They had the whole might of America behind them, and on the Eastern Front the Boches were being driven back, so far as he understood, by the Red Army with its inexhaustible supply of conscripts. Wouldn’t the Boches recognise that they’d had it? The screaming maniac might not, but there were surely still men of sense in Germany. He thought of Schuerle, the Junker from East Prussia. Wounded on that Eastern Front, losing an eye and his left arm, he had been sent to Bordeaux as a liaison officer. They had become friends, as far anyway as friendship was possible for them, and he had spoken of his contempt for the Nazis, and of senior officers who shared his views; at the right moment they would remove Hitler. Hadn’t that moment arrived?
Yes, it was a beautiful day. No wonder the sun was shining so brightly.
***
Even so he couldn’t climb the stairs to their apartment without a fluttering of nerves. Marguerite had had several days to brood over that wretched letter, to decide if she believed his denial. Since she had said that her trust in him was broken. Well, he had to face it …
To his surprise the door was opened by René.
‘So you’ve heard the news, chief?’
‘Yes, it’s wonderful.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The Allied invasion of course.’
‘Yes of course,’ René said, ‘but … ’
Clothilde appeared behind him, her face white and drawn.
‘Papa,’ she said.
He took her in his arms and held her tight as she sobbed.
‘What’s happened?’
‘It is sheer chance that I’m here,’ René said, ‘just at this moment, I mean.’
‘Maman,’ Clothilde said, ‘they’ve taken her away.’
‘Who? What do you mean?’ he said again. ‘Come, sit down, and tell me.’
‘These men. They came looking for you, and when you weren’t here, they took Maman away. Under arrest, they said.’
‘Who? Which men?’
‘I don’t know. There were three of them.’
René coughed.
‘There’s a paper here, chief. Left for you.’
He handed it to Lannes. Superintendent Lannes, suspended. You are charged with interference with an officer of the Milice in the exercise of his duty. In your absence, your wife has been taken into custody. She will be released if you present yourself at our headquarters. Otherwise she will be charged with Resistance. You know the penalty for that. Jean-Pierre Fracasse, Captain
He stroked Clothilde’s hair.
‘Don’t worry, darling, it will be all right.’
It was a lie of course, but what else could he say? He handed the letter back to René.
‘I’ve no choice,’ he said. ‘Will you please stay here till Madame Lannes returns. Then go to Bracal. Tell him what’s happened. Say it’s more urgent than ever that he speaks to Fabien.’
‘And if she doesn’t return? If they break their promise and don”t release her?’
‘Then take Clothilde to her grandmother. She’s out of hospital now. Say nothing about your mother, darling, just let the old lady think you’ve been sent to care for her, she’ll like that. But I think it will be all right. I think they’ll keep their word.’
I have to believe that, he thought. What have I brought on my family?
Part Two
I
The cell stank; it was two days since he had been allowed to empty the bucket. But this morning the guard had winked at him, without, admittedly, otherwise altering his stony expression. Perhaps it was only a nervous tic. Lannes spent half an hour, more or less he couldn’t tell, considering whether it was significant. Why not? He had nothing else to occupy his mind, not even a pack of cards like that wretched Aurélien.
But the strange thing was that he had been ignored, since the day after he had presented himself for arrest, asking only that Marguerite be released and escorted home. He had been told that would be done. ‘The captain’s orders, sir.’ Sir? So, even in prison, there was respect for the republican hierarchy. Remarkable. Would it be a case of ‘we request you to wear this blindfold, sir’, when they put him up against a wall to be shot? But here he was still, alive, twenty-three nights later – he had kept count of the coming and going of darkness.
It was on the second day that an officer in the uniform of the Milice had entered the cell and introduced himself as Captain Fracasse.
‘That name irritates me,’ Lannes said. ‘I can’t remember if it was Gautier or Alfred de Musset who wrote the book. Not that it matters because it’s irrelevant, Monsieur d’Herblay.’
The officer straddled the only chair in the cell as if it was a horse he was riding, and said, ‘So you know my real name. No matter. I’m Captain Fracasse now. It was Gautier by the way, they made me read it in school, very boring, but the name appealed to me, I don’t know why. No matter. You were a fool to interfere with my lieutenant in the course of his duty – and to protect such a miserable object. Why did you do it?’
‘I didn’t like his uniform. I’m a policeman. I’ve no time for irregulars. Besides they’d have taken the boy away to be beaten up and shot. That sort of thing offends me too.’
‘That’s foolishness. A boy like that, scum. You’re insolent, superintendent, to speak to me in this fashion, and stupid. You’re in my power. I could call my men, have you taken into the courtyard and shot. Just like that.’ He snapped his fingers.
‘It wouldn’t trouble me at all,’ he said.
‘I don’t suppose it would,’ Lannes said. ‘All the same, since you’re here and I’m still alive, you might satisfy my curiosity. What have you done with your daughter?’
D’Herblay raised his chin.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Marie-Adelaide, the daughter who, I’m told, adores you, despite everything. Where is she?’
‘I don’t understand you.’
It was strange. The roles were reversed. It was as if they were engaged in a dance in which they had shifted positions so that Lannes was now, as it were, behind his desk in the bureau, examining a suspect. D’Herblay’s confusion was evident.
‘Where should she be,’ he said. ‘She lives with my mother, her grandmother. I haven’t see her in years, not since … what’s it got to do with you?’
‘Give me a cigarette, will you?’ Lannes said, ‘and I’ll explain. Thanks. And a light? They took mine away. That’s better. I’ll tell you a story. Let’s see what you make of it. I got a call from your mother’s cousin, the Comte de St-Hilaire. That surprises you? A highly respected gentleman, as you know. He doesn’t think much of you, I’m afraid, but he could be wrong. Then I went to see your mother.’
He recounted his investigation in detail – including the explanation of why he had been in Jules’ Bar when the lieutenant arrived to arrest the wretched boy, Miki.
He omitted only any mention of Dr Solomons. He told him about Aurélien and Labiche’s visit to the Pension Smitt.
‘And then your Cagoulard friend, the man you stood beside when he forced that Arab boy to sign a paper setting out lying accusations about me – yes, I know about that too – went off with your daughter, the girl who, it seems, adores you, despite what you and Labiche did to her when she was only a little girl.’
***
He lay back on his bunk now, remembering, seeing again the way in which d’Herblay’s face had crumpled, and hearing his voice, scarcely more than a whisper as he said, ‘She was so sweet and my life was such a mess and she loved me and then all at once we were lovers, and it was wonderful and I hated myself for finding it so. Labiche was my mother’s lawyer then … ’
Lannes thought, that’s something St-Hilaire didn’t tell me. He must have known, he couldn’t have forgotten, perhaps for some reason he was ashamed.
‘He said he must question her, and then … my mother dismissed him and made me sign a document relinquishing all rights over Marie-Adelaide. Yes, she paid me off too, and insisted the matter must be closed, never spoken of again. Of course I submitted because I was ashamed. As for my mother, she has a horror of publicity. I can’t believe she told her cousin.’
‘Nevertheless she did,’ Lannes said. ‘Why I don’t know. Perhaps because it was intolerable to keep the knowledge to herself. Secrets are corrupting. So she shared it with the only person she could trust. But now Labiche has your daughter – somewhere – and I find it hard to believe you didn’t know. Why would he keep this knowledge from you? What does he want with her? Or from you?’
D’Herblay got to his feet. He turned his back on Lannes and pressed his face against the wall.
‘Why does he do anything? What does he want of anyone?’
He swung round to face Lannes.
‘And why should I believe you? You’d say anything to get out of here.’
‘Not anything,’ Lannes said, ‘and if you think I’m lying to you, you can still have me shot. But you do believe me. I can see you do. It’s in your face, and the questions you’ve just asked about Labiche, well you know the answer to them, don’t you? Why did you join the Milice, Jean-Pierre?’
For the first time d’Herblay smiled. It wasn’t much of a smile.
‘That’s easy,’ he said, ‘because I hate myself and what I’ve made of my life. So why not join an organisation that gives me licence to take out my hatred on others, that lets me have people like you shot. Yes, I know that decent people, respectable people like the Comte de St-Hilaire, despise the Milice. They think we’re murderous hooligans, out of control. So we are. That’s why the force appeals to me.’
‘Yes,’ Lannes said, ‘that makes sense. But ask Labiche about Marie-Adelaide. You’ve a right to know – especially since she still adores you despite everything. And ask yourself what he wants of you.’
‘I don’t need to do that. I’ve got connections, connections that will get him out of France, into Spain, when it becomes necessary.’
‘That makes sense too, and it may be that Marie-Adelaide is a means to keep you loyal. That makes sense, certainly. You’re in a fix, Jean-Pierre. It might be better for you not to have me shot. But that’s up to you of course. Meanwhile, I’d be grateful if you would leave me with that packet of cigarettes. You can get more. I can’t, not while I’m here.’
And since then, he thought, nothing, nothing until that guard’s wink – if it was a wink.
II
‘It’s your lucky day, sir,’ the guard said. ‘There’s not many as have occupied this cell have been so fortunate, and I hope you’ll bear in mind that I’ve treated you well. Haven’t touched a hair of your head, let alone putting my boot in. Haven’t even spat in your soup. All this though I’ve no cause to care for the likes of you. I’ve been on your side of the cell door myself. But you’re being released, the Lord knows why, and there are two gentlemen waiting in what they call reception for you. So get moving … sir.’
Lannes eased himself off the narrow bunk. He was stiff and his hip ached.
‘They took my stick away,’ he said. ‘See if you can find it.’
‘No need. I have it here. We look after our guests, you see.
When we don’t shoot them, that is. It’s a fine stick. I’d have kept it for myself if you’d had no further use for it, as you wouldn’t if … well, no need to dwell on that. Just remember, sir, I’ve only been doing my duty. So let’s go. You don’t surely want to hang about. You never know when they might change their mind. These days, things change so fast that you don’t know if you’re coming or going. One day an enemy of the French State, the next a hero of the Resistance. Makes me laugh, that’s what it does. It’s a topsy-turvy world, no question.’
Bracal was there, spruce and well turned out as ever in a dovegrey, double-breasted suit,
cream-coloured shirt, white-spotted blue bow-tie and polished black shoes, and with him the lean tawny-skinned spook who called himself Fabien.
‘I’m sorry it’s taken so long to extricate you,’ Bracal said, ‘but my own position has become precarious. The fact is, nobody knows what’s what now, divergent orders come from all sides. Everything’s at sixes and sevens and all the chains of authority have broken links. You’ve this gentleman to thank for your release rather than me. He has things to discuss with you and I accompanied him only to make sure that there was no hitch, no cock-up as you might say. So I’ll be off. Meanwhile, I’m as sure as one can be of anything now that your suspension will be lifted in a day or two. Welcome back, Jean.’
‘You’ll be in need of these,’ he said, handing Lannes a packet of Gauloises, and left them to a silence both seemed momentarily reluctant to break. Lannes looked at Fabien who was leaning back in his chair and smoking one of his long Italian cigars.
‘So I’ve you to thank,’ he said at last.
‘Thanks? I don’t know about that. Anyway I’m not looking for gratitude. I’m not disinterested.’
‘I wouldn’t have supposed you were. Nevertheless.’
‘Nevertheless I seem to be making a habit of it, don’t I? First, closing down the investigation into the killing of that ass Félix – and don’t pretend, superintendent, that you didn’t have a hand in that – and now getting you out of this hellhole. You look a mess, much in need of a bath and the chance to get rid of that beard. But that’ll have to wait. I don’t have long and we need to talk. So I think we should go for a drink.
***
When they were settled at a table in the back of the Café Régent, Fabien said, ‘Only mineral water for me, I’m afraid. My liver’s in a poor state, has been, as I believe I told you, since I served in Indo-China. But something stronger for you? Armagnac?’
