by Allan Massie
‘And if I don’t see him.’
‘I’ve no doubt you’ll manage to get word to him.’
Outside, in the street, he felt for a moment curiously lighthearted. For a moment.
XII
Lannes knew that he really didn’t want to see Karim again. He had had enough of the trouble he associated with the boy, and, though this time Jacques had said that Karim claimed he could help him, Lannes found it hard to believe. If he kept the appointment it was only because being in the office or at home were equally disagreeable options, and he could think of little except Labiche. This worried him; the man had become an obsession. He hadn’t spoken to him for more than two years and yet his face, with its expression of sour arrogance, was always before him. He was also uneasy, Fabien had got him out of the hands of the Milice, but he couldn’t escape the suspicion that he was himself a pawn in whatever game the spook was playing. Nothing in his conversation with Edmond de Grimaud had dispelled that thought.
To his surprise Karim was already in the bar, leaning back in a chair with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.
The bar was almost deserted, as so many were in these days, but when Gustave said, ‘I reckon you’ll want the back room again,’ Lannes agreed and, having asked about the family and heard that the grandchild was pure delight, nodded to Karim and made his way through. Karim sauntered after him, the cigarette still held dangling in the manner of a gangster in a film.
‘You’re looking very pleased with yourself,’ Lannes said. ‘Sit down.’
Karim did so, took the cigarette between his thumb and third finger, and smiled.
‘Maybe yes, maybe no. You remember that priest, well of course you do. It’s odd. I knew just what I intended to say, and now find it difficult. You ever feel like that? I suppose you don’t, being a cop and all that.’
‘Get on with it. I don’t have all day to waste.’
Which, he thought, was a lie, because his afternoon was as empty as a deserted house.
‘He came to me again,’ Karim said.
‘I’m not surprised. He told me you had such beautiful eyes. Go on.’
‘Did he now? Well then … ’
He broke off as Gustave came in with an Armagnac for Lannes and a lemonade for him.
‘Everything all right?’
‘Fine, thank you.’
Karim waited till the door had closed behind Gustave.
‘Well then,’ he said again. ‘I told him nothing doing, bugger off, because, like I said, what he wants isn’t my sort of thing. Then he began to cry. It was disgusting. I mean, have you ever seen a priest weeping?’
‘There’s a line in the Bible which says, “Jesus wept.” Is this story going anywhere?’
‘Oh yes, but I don’t much like where it’s going. That Félix my old woman shot, it seems he’s the priest’s brother. He said, “I know you didn’t kill him, but I believe your policeman friend did.” “Why should you think that?” I said. “Information,” he said, “from those Félix was working for, higher-up ones. He’s not going to get away with it.” I told him it wasn’t like that. I even told him the old woman did it, and that she’s now dead. “Convenient,” he said, “but I don’t believe you. So your policeman friend’s a marked man.” What do you make of it? It sounds crazy to me.’
‘It’s a crazy world,’ Lannes said. ‘It makes no sense. But you were right to tell me. And if I was you, Karim, I’d make myself scarce. Things may be different in a few weeks, but if there’s anywhere you can go, anyone you can safely hole up with, do that. If they try to pin Félix’s death on me, there’s a fair chance you’ll be tagged as an accessory to the crime. But what puzzles me is why you looked happy when I came into the bar.’
‘You don’t understand, do you,’ Karim said. ‘Give me a cigarette, will you? Thanks. You really don’t understand and I suppose that because of what I am and what I do, you think I’m … never mind what I think you think I am. The point is, I’ve got human feelings.
You’ve been good to me, got me out of trouble a couple of times, and passing on this warning’s the first thing I’ve been able to do in return – even if the warning frightens me, it’s better you should know what that slimy priest said than you shouldn’t. So, if I looked happy, that’s why.’
‘I’m sorry. I owe you an apology.’
‘What’ll you do?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lannes said. ‘I’d hoped we’d heard the last of Félix, but it seems he’s almost as big a nuisance dead as he was alive. I’ll think of something. But, as I say, you should keep out of sight well away from Father Paul and whoever is behind him, whether that’s the spooks or the advocate Labiche. It could be either, though I favour the latter. And thank you. As Jacques says you’re not such a bad kid.’
‘Jacques said that? Really?’
‘Yes, but don’t tell him I told you. And don’t get your hopes up. Remember he goes for girls and indeed is engaged to be married.’
‘And so?’
Karim smiled broadly.
‘And so?’ he said again.
***
It didn’t make sense. Even if the priest was playing a double game – Fabien too perhaps – why should he have approached Karim? Did he expect him to pass the message on? ‘Your policeman friend’s a marked man.’ Marked by whom and for what purpose? Any legal action – if he was thinking of legality – could surely be taken only after the Liberation. Which meant … what did it mean? He had no idea.
Heavy clouds had gathered while he was in the bar, but it was still hot, oppressively hot, scarcely a breath of air, not even when his steps took him to the river and he leaned on the parapet watching the water slide away below him. Whatever game was being played, he had lost control of its development. Was he a pawn or a hunted animal? There came a crackle of thunder, immediately overhead, and a flash of lightning, then a burst of rain. He didn’t move, continued to gaze at the river, till the rain penetrated the jacket of his suit and he felt his shirt stick to his body. The thunder rolled, the lightning lay for a moment yellow on the water, and when he turned his head to the left, westward, the fringe of the sky was pale blue lit up by gold.
XIII
For a moment Léon didn’t recognise the girl sitting diagonally across from him in the Metro. It was only when their eyes met and she gave a small, scarcely perceptible, shake of the head that he realised it was Anne who had been his liaison with the group, who passed on the messages and information he was trusted to relay to London. Then she had failed to keep an appointment, three days in succession, first by the statue of Le Marchand de Masques in the Luxembourg Gardens, then at the brasserie in the Rue de Buci which was the first back-up rendezvous and finally on that bench in the Tuileries Gardens, and he had known that the Group had been betrayed or somehow broken, and that Anne which wasn’t of course her real name was either dead or in prison. That was when and why, alone and afraid, he had accepted the refuge and protection offered him by Chardy who had first approached him as a likely pick-up in a bookshop in the rue de Tournon. And now here was Anne, sitting demurely in the Metro, and again giving that small shake of the head.
She got up as the train pulled into St-Michel. He followed her out of the station, at a distance he thought discreet, watched her cross the Boulevard, followed her along the rue St André-des-Arts and round the corner into the rue Mazarin where she entered a little bar. He waited for five minutes, smoking a cigarette, and leaning against a wall at the junction of the streets. When he was sure nobody had followed her in, he eased himself off the wall, and, assuming a casual air, strolled into the bar. She was alone, standing at the counter. For a moment he hesitated – had she indeed intended him to join her? But then she turned towards him, and held out her cheek to be kissed. ‘Late as usual,’ she said, for the benefit of the barman. ‘It’s meant to be the woman’s prerogative, isn’t it? Coffee? Two coffees then,’ and led him over to a table in the window.
‘I couldn’t believe it.�
��
‘Neither could I.’
They didn’t speak more till they were brought their coffees and had drunk them.
Then Anne said, loudly, ‘We’d better go, or we’ll be late.’ In the street she said, ‘Have you a room?’
‘Yes, in the Place Contrescarpe.’
‘We’ll go there, then, shall we?’
In the room she took off her skirt and lay on the bed. He sat beside her. They kissed.
Later she said, ‘I always fancied you, but I was sure you didn’t like girls. You’ve changed haven’t you.’
‘Or grown up,’ he said, thinking of Priscilla. ‘Now tell … ’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I can’t. It was too horrible. Have you been in Paris all the time?’
‘Yes, I didn’t have anywhere to go, didn’t know what to do.’
‘But you’ve survived.’
‘Yes, I’ve survived.’
Shamefully, he thought.
‘Clever of you to have found this room. It’s safe, isn’t it?’
‘I think so. I didn’t find it. It belongs to a friend.’
‘Oh … that sort of friend?’
‘If you like. He lives with his mother and he’s had this room for years. I don’t have to tell you why, do I.’
‘He won’t come in, will he?’
‘No, he left Paris yesterday, for their place in a village near Versailles. He’s afraid of what’s going to happen.’
‘Oh,’ she said again. ‘And you didn’t go with him. You weren’t tempted?’
‘No. I wouldn’t miss it for worlds. Besides his mother went with him.’
‘That’s good, because tomorrow we sign up with the FFI. You know about them, don’t you, even though the circles I guess you’ve been moving in stink, don’t they?’
‘I suppose so, but I’ve learned one thing, that nothing is as simple or straightforward as I used to believe. For instance, you guessed I was queer. Did you also guess I was Jewish?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘You’ve told me your secret. I’ll tell you mine. Before the war my father used to say, “That fellow Hitler may be a disaster but he has the right idea about the Jews.” And my mother agreed. So there: if your friend was a collaborator as you imply, my dreadful parents were fierce anti-Semites and supporters of Doriot’s Fascists. So we both have reason for shame. Didn’t your friend mind that you are Jewish?’
‘It’s on my mother’s side only. My father wouldn’t let me be circumcised. So he never suspected.’
‘Lucky you, in the circumstances, I mean. What’s your real name?’
‘Léon.’
‘Nice name.’
‘And yours?’
‘Berthe. Not such a nice name. I prefer Anne. I’m going to stick with Anne, if we come through.’
She stretched out her hand and stroked his cheek.
‘I want you to make love to me, Léon. Make love as if there was no tomorrow. We may both be dead soon.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘we’re survivors. I don’t know what you’ve gone through, since we last met – one day you’ll tell me – but you’ve survived. That’s the great thing. Me too. We’re going to be all right. We’ll cheer General de Gaulle outside the Hôtel de Ville. I was presented to him once in London, you know.’
‘Did he speak to you?’
‘Yes. He looked down his big nose at me and said, “Stand up straight, young man.” ’
He leaned over, kissed her lips lightly, and unbuttoned her blouse.
***
Michel crouched in the fox-hole. Sweat ran down his face and the back of his neck. There was an itch in his groin and another in his toes – he hadn’t had his boots off for three days now.
‘These fucking guns are no good,’ Corporal Jean said, for the third time that morning. ‘If this is German engineering at its best, no wonder the war is being lost.’
They had been issued with Jagdpanthers which stood under their camouflage netting. They would fire well enough so long as you aimed them at a target straight ahead of you, but they had no revolving turrets, so that you had to heave the whole gun round if the attack came from the flank, either flank.
‘Fucking useless,’ Jean said again.
‘At least they’re light.’
‘Which means we can take them with us again when the order comes for the next retreat. Great way of delaying our flight.’
‘They’re what we have,’ Michel said.
When they were pulled back five kilometres the day before, they had travelled along a road lined with half-shattered lime trees. Bodies hung from the branches, bodies in the uniforms of a Wehrmacht reserve battalion. Cardboard notices were pinned to their chests, branding the dead as cowards and subversives. One of them was a boy who looked younger than Michel, blond like him. In the distance, astonishingly, they had seen peasants harvesting. Poles, Michael supposed.
‘Yes, Poles,’ Jean said, ‘the buggers France went to war to defend. Crazy.’
***
Jérôme hauled himself out of the lake and lay on his towel on the grass, letting the hot sun dry him. Only the sound of an aeroplane was a reminder of war. Wood-pigeons cooed from the trees across the lake and if he raised his head and looked beyond the trees, he could see cattle grazing, red cattle with white faces, ‘my prize Herefords’, Sir Pringle had said. He knew now this wasn’t the correct form, and he had come to address him as ‘Edwin’, though he still thought of him as ‘Sir Pringle’. Lines from the book Sir Pringle had given him – ‘so that you can understand the real England, dear boy, the essence of England’ – ran in his head: ‘Into my heart, an air that kills/ From yon far country blows;/ What are those blue remembered hills?/ What spires, what towers are those?’ Beautiful lines which he had tried to render into French, but it hadn’t worked. They sounded dead in his version, in his language.
He shouldn’t be here. He should be in France. But he was happy to be here. He turned his face and felt the sun hot on his cheek, and drifted into a half-sleep.
A shadow fell over him. He looked up to see Sir Pringle with a glass in his hand and his face wet with tears.
‘I got through to the Air Ministry,’ he said. ‘There’s no doubt, I’m afraid. Max’s plane didn’t return, they’ve written it off.’
***
Dominique was in a sub-prefect’s office in a small town in the Ile-de-France. He had delivered François’ message, a message of reassurance that the sub-prefect, despite his record of loyalty to Vichy, was well regarded by the Resistance on account of his role in enabling so many young men to evade the draft for compulsory labour service in Germany.
The sub-prefect had smiled.
‘For years patriotism has worn a double-face,’ he said. ‘I’ve done my duty to France as I conceived it, nothing more than that. But I confess your friend’s message comes as a relief, one I didn’t expect in these savage times. I had even warned my wife to prepare for the worst. Well, let us open a bottle of wine. You served in Vichy yourself, I think.’
‘Yes,’ Dominique said, ‘with responsibility for the boys of the Chantiers de Jeunesse.’
‘And now you’ve changed sides – like my friend François himself.’
‘That’s not what it feels like,’ Dominique said. ‘I was taken prisoner in 1940. I’ve always detested the Nazis, but it seemed to me that the Marshal was France. I still think so really, that’s what he was, then anyway.’
‘Yes,’ the sub-prefect said. ‘That’s what he was.’
They drank, smoked, and talked in a mood of harmony achieved. Then, towards midnight, they heard footsteps on the stairs, and the door opened and a young man, a boy really, stumbled over the threshold and into the room. His face was streaked with mud and blood, and he was trembling, his whole body shaking.
‘Thomas,’ the sub-prefect said, putting his arm round the boy and settling him in a chair. ‘Thomas, who has attacked you? Who has done this to you?’
‘You know him then?’
‘Yes, his father’s secretary-general of the local Mairie.’
The boy retched and began to sob.
‘He’s only sixteen,’ the sub-prefect said. ‘Only sixteen.’
It as a long time before the boy was able to speak, and then he said only ‘my father’ before he broke down again.
They sat, waiting in silence. The night was hot and the scent of honeysuckle wafted in through the open window.
‘I’m afraid,’ the sub-prefect said, ‘afraid of what he’ll eventually tell us. I know his father, a good man, but … ’
‘But what?’
‘He used to be a Communist, an ardent one. Then in ’39, disgusted by the Nazi-Soviet Pact, he tore up his Party card, and after the debacle he became an enthusiastic supporter of the Marshal and the National Revolution. You see why I’m afraid.’
‘He’s bleeding again,’ Dominique said, ‘we must bandage his throat and get him to hospital.’
‘Certainly, but … ’
‘What?’
‘We have to hear what he has to tell.’
It took more than an hour for the boy to do so. He spoke haltingly, his voice now almost inaudible, now rapid, his words tumbling over themselves in his confusion, his body still twitching, as he relived the horror of the last hours. Dominique had difficulty in following the narrative, but this was its gist, as far as he understood.
The boy had been at home with his father. They were playing chess – he repeated time and again that he had moved his queen to put his father in check, as if it mattered. Maybe it did because he recognised one of the armed men who broke into the house, an old comrade, Joseph the garagiste – ‘They used to play chess when I was a little boy,’ he said again and again. They forced them at gunpoint into a lorry and drove them out into the forest. He tried to break away, but was hauled back and hit on the face with a rifle butt. Then they were both tied to trees. One man slashed his father’s face with a knife and Joseph said, ‘We’re going to kill your boy before your eyes, traitor.’ They kept calling him traitor and my father said, ‘Let the boy go, kill me if you must, but let him go, he was never in the Party.’ ‘They slashed him again,’ the boy said, ‘and then something worse, I can’t repeat it, and my father screamed. My father screamed, like when you cut a pig’s throat.’
