Cold Winter in Bordeaux

by Allan Massie

  ‘I don’t know,’ Dominique said. ‘Perhaps it’s just that this present bunch is a poor lot. A year ago most of the kids were enthusiastic. Now they seem sullen and reluctant. They don’t want to learn anything.’

  ‘And isn’t there a reason for the change?’ Maurice said. ‘Mightn’t it be because we ourselves no longer believe in the value of our work, and our disillusion communicates itself to them?’

  ‘You mean we no longer believe as we once did in Vichy or the National Revolution?’

  ‘Well do you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘One of us had to say it.’

  ‘And if we don’t, if we have lost faith,’ Dominique said, ‘what then?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s beastly cold. There’s a real gale blowing up. And I think it’s going to snow.’

  ‘The kids’ll be frozen up there.’

  ‘I suppose they will,’ Maurice said. ‘We might as well finish this bottle, don’t you think? It’s not just us, you know. The mood in Vichy’s changed. Even my father’s on edge. Before we set out, he said goodbye to me in a way in which he has never said it before, almost as if he thought he might never see me again. He kissed me on both cheeks and held me close to him. I felt for the first time that he loved me and also that he’s afraid. I’ve never known him like that, though, actually, there was nothing unusual, let alone dramatic, in our parting – we were only about to set off on this trip which is now routine for both of us, and he is just off to Bordeaux, on family business, he said.’

  Dominique picked up his glass and swirled the wine round.

  ‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ he said.

  ‘That’s an ominous opening, it usually precedes bad news.’

  Maurice smiled and lit a cigarette.

  ‘Go on, then,’ he said, ‘No secrets between us, we agreed long ago, didn’t we?’

  ‘You know François, don’t you?’

  ‘I know several. Which one?’

  ‘Mitterand, he was in the camp with me. We met him with your father once, didn’t we?’

  ‘Oh,’ Maurice said, ‘that François. He’s rather a pet of Papa’s, one of our rising intellectuals, he says. I never know how serious he is when he speaks like that. There’s usually mockery in the background. What about him?’

  ‘He’s forming a network, asked me if I’d like to join, a network of ex-prisoners-of-war, he said.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘What does it sound like?’

  ‘Resistance?’

  ‘Yes. He didn’t spell it out, but … ’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I said I didn’t know, which I don’t. I said I’d have to think about it, talk it over, with you, I said. We do everything together, I said. All right, François said, bring him in, the more the merrier.’

  ‘I wasn’t a prisoner of war.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter, apparently. What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  There was a knock on the door. A small boy stood there, shivering.

  ‘I want to go home,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid.’

  Dominique got up and put his arm round him.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘We’re all afraid sometimes, and sick for home. It’s all right.’

  * * *

  The girl kissed Léon on the mouth for the first time.

  ‘Did that surprise you?’ she said.

  It had of course, but he wasn’t sure which answer she expected, or hoped for. So he said nothing and smiled.

  ‘You didn’t want it, did you?’ she said. ‘I know you don’t really like girls.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘I can always tell. I kissed you because I’m afraid.’

  ‘We’re all afraid,’ Léon said. ‘Or we should be. Being afraid keeps you wary.’

  It was what he wanted to believe, but being afraid also made it more likely you would give yourself away. That morning, when he had stepped out of the metro at the Odéon station and a policeman had asked for his papers and stood examining them and frowning for what seemed like minutes before he nodded and handed them back, he had almost wet himself. He couldn’t tell the girl that.

  ‘I can’t sleep these days and I can’t eat either,’ she said. ‘I put the food in my mouth and chew and chew and I can’t swallow. When’s it going to end?’

  ‘We just have to keep going,’ he said. ‘Give me the stuff.’

  ‘Here it is. I’m glad to be rid of it. If you’re caught with it … ’

  ‘I know. Transcribe, send and burn. That’s my orders. That’s what I do.’

  ‘Do you think we’re doing any good?’

  ‘Yes, of course. We must believe that.’

  ‘It’s a pity you don’t like girls. I’d like you to fuck me.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t. Not really. I’d better be going.’

  This was the danger moment. Crossing Paris with this paper in his pocket. If he was stopped – but he wouldn’t be, he had to believe he wouldn’t be.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But you’ll be all right. Go and have a glass of wine. That’ll set you up. I’m really sorry. It’s just nerves, you know.’

  He kissed her on the cheek, gave her a hug, as if they were indeed lovers parting for the moment, saying goodbye.

  Two hours and he would be free of it. Then dinner with Chardy at ‘a little restaurant I know where they’re understanding’. His attentions were becoming pressing, but he would hold him off, ‘nothing doing’ he would say, politely. He wondered where Alain was, as he did several times every day. And at night. Of course at night, always at night, every night.

  * * *

  Alain lay in the ditch. His leg stung. The bastards had winged him as he crashed through the trees. There had been just a moment when the policeman had relaxed his grip, and he’d torn himself free, kicked him on the kneecap and ran. Now there was silence. The cars had driven away. Or he thought they had. Couldn’t be sure, might have been other cars. He held himself as still as possible, trying not to breathe. Silence, blessed silence. They’d been betrayed. That was obvious. Who had chosen that house for the meeting? It was crazy, a building with no back exit. The Gestapo were ready for them; their cars had driven up within minutes of the meeting starting. Bastards.

  ‘You can come out now. It’s safe. They’ve all gone.’

  He raised his head. An old man with a beard, wearing a dirty raincoat.

  ‘I was gathering sticks in the wood, broken branches, for firewood. I saw it all. You were lucky.’

  Alain got to his feet. No reason not to trust the man.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘That was a close one.’

  ‘You’re wounded.’

  ‘I’m all right. Just a flesh one, I think. In the calf. That’s all.’

  ‘Lot of blood, though. Are you sure you’re all right? I’d take you home with me, only my wife, you understand?’

  ‘Course I do.’

  ‘You should get away in case they come back to search for you. It’ll soon be dark, and then there’s the curfew. You don’t want to be stopped in the street, and you bleeding. Bound to be suspicious.’

  Thanks for stating the bloody obvious, he thought.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said.

  ‘Know where you’re going, do you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘of course I do.’

  But he didn’t, he hadn’t thought about it, he didn’t know where it was safe to go. They might know where he was lodging. They probably didn’t, but they might.

  ‘That’s all right then,’ the man said. ‘I’ll collect my firewood and be off. Take care. I don’t know what they want you for, but I wish you well. Terrible times.’

  Walking hurt, each step. He hadn’t thought of that. He was cold too, and wet, there had been a couple of inches of water in that ditch. He would have liked to go into a bar and get a brandy, but the way he looked there would be questions. Bound to be. When he was back in th
e city, he tried to quicken his step. It was still cold, a wind blowing from the mountains, but he was sweating too, and felt dizzy. Twice he stepped into the shadows of a cul-de-sac when he heard a motor. Only the Germans or the Vichy police had wheels.

  He found himself in the Place Bellecour, where he had met Raoul ‘under the horse’s tail’. It was Raoul he had heard shout ‘run’ when he broke free from the Boche. Where was he now? Were they torturing him already? Or would they keep that for the morning? He walked on trying to look like a boy going home from work. There was a bicycle leaning against a wall and he was tempted to steal it. But he didn’t dare. In the morning if he got through the night he would go to that bistro in the Place Morand. The patron knew something of what Raoul was. He might be willing to help him, put him in touch with another Resistance group, or at least get him out of the city.

  He recognised where he was now and knew his destination. He climbed the stairs – no concierges in Lyon as the girl had said – and banged on the door. He hoped she would be alone. If she wasn’t…

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘It’s Richard. Remember me?’

  She had a torch in her hand.

  ‘The electricity’s failed,’ she said and shone the light in his face.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You look awful. What’s happened? I knew you were trouble.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he said, ‘nothing important. Are you alone? May I stay the night?’

  * * *

  ‘Do you know what proves that God – if He exists – has a sense of humour? It’s the male genitals. They’re so ugly, so grotesque, even repulsive, and yet they afford us such delight.’

  Jérôme looked at what he had written, and giggled. It was what Guy, the Englishman who had picked him up in that pub in Poland Street, had said just before he passed out in his flat in Mayfair, and he had been able to slip away into the blackout, happy that nothing had happened. But he couldn’t write that in his novel. It was too absurd. Besides he’d given the line to the priest who was possibly trying to seduce his young hero, himself really, though he wasn’t yet sure how far he would have him go, and in any case they were words he couldn’t possibly have spoken without stepping out of character. This was the problem – his novel kept darting off in wrong directions. It’s because too much is happening to me, too quickly, he thought; I’m not really ready perhaps to write what I want to write. He tore the page out of his notebook and crumpled it up. He’d found Guy interesting with his talk of Berlin in the Twenties, but he’d gone home with him only because the blond sailor boy he’d arranged to meet hadn’t been there. He had left a message for him with the barman, so there was still hope.

  L

  Edmond de Grimaud was elegant as ever in a grey suit of English flannel, a cream-coloured shirt and blue white-spotted bow tie. His black shoes were highly polished, and when he stretched out to take a cigar from the box on the table beside his armchair, there was a glint of gold from his cuff-links. They were in the little room off the back of the hall where they had first talked in the spring of 1940, a month before the Battle of France, and Edmond had wanted to be reassured that Lannes’ investigation into Gaston’s murder wouldn’t involve, or compromise, his son Maurice, who had been Gaston’s pupil.

  ‘It’s good of you to come,’ Edmond said.

  Lannes nodded, and looked over Edmond’s shoulder at the vast still-life painting behind him, a painting featuring more dead birds and animals – a couple of hares and what might be a roe deer – than seemed decent.

  ‘I had dinner with Maurice and Dominique before I left Vichy. They’re well, you’ll be glad to know, in good form.’

  ‘It was a pleasure having them both with us for Christmas,’ Lannes said.

  The house in the rue d’Aviau was more like a mausoleum than ever. He wondered if Jean-Christophe was sitting in what had been the old Count’s chair with his bottle by his side.

  ‘Their work is appreciated, you know,’ Edmond said. ‘It’s worthwhile and they are growing up to be fine young men. I wish I could say that it’s a credit to both of us as fathers, but I have to confess that I have myself too often been negligent of my paternal duties. Doubtless that’s not the case with you. From what Maurice tells me you are a close-knit family.’

  Lannes made no reply. He watched Edmond clip the end of his cigar and apply a match to it. This talk of family, he wondered if Edmond would speak of Sigi’s ridiculous suggestion that the old Count had been his father and that they were half-brothers, Edmond and Jean-Christophe, and Sigi and himself as the Count’s bastards. Surely not. Nevertheless, something was different in Edmond’s manner; it was as if their relationship had changed, as if what had been at best armed neutrality was easing. He had never doubted that Edmond had authorised that attempt on his life in the summer of 1940 and yet now they seemed to be meeting almost as friends. And, according to the man who called himself Fabian, Edmond had ‘vouched’ for him in Vichy when Félix had lodged that complaint.

  ‘Did you listen to the Marshal’s speech at Christmas?’ Edmond said. ‘When he told us to look up at the stars in the sky? Some thought that a reference to the American flag. Was that your impression?’

  ‘It didn’t occur to me.’

  ‘That’s interesting. I would have thought it might have.’

  ‘No,’ Lannes said. ‘If the old man was making an appeal to the Americans he should have flown to Algiers when he had the chance.’

  ‘You think so? Do you believe the war is lost?’

  ‘Which war?’

  ‘A good question. They’re on edge in Vichy. I don’t mind telling you that if only because I have no doubt you will have guessed that this is the case. As it happens, I was speaking to Monsieur Laval only last week. Would you like to know what he said? That there are only two people who can save France. One is himself – of course – the other is de Gaulle. It depends, he said, on who wins the war. What do you think of that?’

  Lannes took a packet of Gauloises from his pocket, tapped out a cigarette and lit it. He inhaled, blew out smoke, and said, ‘I know very little of these things, I’m only a policeman who tries to do his job, but I’m prepared to believe he may be right. Is that the answer you’re looking for?’

  ‘Oh my dear fellow, I wasn’t looking for any particular answer.’

  He’s beginning to wonder if he has backed the wrong side, Lannes thought, and whether he can extricate himself. Of course he’ll probably have friends in London himself. He had always suspected that Edmond had belonged to the Cagoule, the secretive right-wing conspirators who had worked before the war to undermine and destroy the Republic, and though it was probable that most of the Cagoulards were in Vichy, others were rumoured to be with de Gaulle, one reason why the Left distrusted the rebel General who belonged to a Catholic and Royalist family.

  ‘It’s a mess certainly,’ Edmond said. ‘We’ll all be lucky if we come out of it alive. You had a visit from a friend of mine the other day.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘There’s no need to fence with me, superintendent. A man calling himself Fabian, a very distinguished officer.’

  Edmond paused, seeming to examine the nails of his right hand.

  ‘You impressed him,’ he said. ‘ “A careful man.” That’s how he put it. “One who knows when to say nothing.” ’

  ‘As I recall, I had nothing to say.’

  ‘Not about that shooting? Nothing to say?’

  ‘Nothing. It wasn’t my case.’

  ‘Fabian accepted what you said.’

  Edmond switched his examination to the nails of his other hand.

  ‘But of course he didn’t believe you,’ he said. ‘Neither do I.’

  ‘As you like,’ Lannes said.

  ‘The man Félix was a nuisance, I give you that. He was also – you won’t deny this – someone with whom you had, as one might say, crossed swords. I’ve seen the photographs, superintendent – the photographs of you with a boy and of the same boy with
the German officer – Schussmann, wasn’t it? – who shot himself, the boy whom Félix was attempting to use to compromise him. What do you say to that?’

  The blue-grey smoke of Edmond’s cigar hung between then, then dissolved.

  ‘I would say it doesn’t amount to anything.’

  ‘Of course it doesn’t, but, as it happens, I’ve an excellent memory for faces, and when I was in Paris last week, I came upon the boy. He was dining at Lipp with an old friend of mine, the novelist Joachim Chardy. What do you make of that?’

  ‘What should I make of it? So the boy’s in Paris – assuming you are right and it’s the same boy. A mildly interesting coincidence. I don’t see the relevance.’

  ‘Chardy, Schussmann, Félix, all of the same inclination, and the same boy. Only an interesting coincidence?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. I’ve never read any of your friend’s novels.’ Edmond smiled.

  ‘I don’t expect you’d like them. Clever but trivial. Naughty schoolboys and tales of the seminary. Dumas is more to your taste, I think your son said. So who killed Félix?’

  ‘How should I know? As I said, it’s not my case. But a bullet in the back of the head, I’m told. Sounds like an execution. So: the Resistance perhaps.’

  ‘That would be convenient. For everybody. For you, especially, superintendent, these photographs, you know.’

  Edmond got to his feet. He stood with his back against the mantelpiece.

  ‘I don’t care about Félix,’ he said. ‘We all agree he was a nuisance. We’re well rid of him, we can agree about that too.’

  He drew on his cigar, crossed the room to a table by the bookcase and poured two glasses of wine from a decanter. He passed one to Lannes.

  ‘Your health, and farewell to Félix. More than a year ago, superintendent, I helped you when the advocate Labiche was trying to destroy you or at least your career. You won’t have forgotten, I’m sure. I’ll go further and do you the courtesy of believing that you are grateful to me. I won’t say you’re in my debt, nevertheless … well, things are changing; the wind’s shifting, that’s obvious. It may be that I will need your help, not immediately, but some day, even if it’s only to put in a word for me. You understand, I’m sure. I don’t need to spell it out. Meanwhile we can agree that the Resistance, or some element of it, executed Félix. That anyway is what I shall report to my superiors. Nobody else will question you about it. I guarantee that. What do you say?’