by Fiona Valpy
He smiled. ‘Of course, mademoiselle, I don’t wish to delay you when you are so busy. Good day.’
‘Bonne journée, monsieur.’
Her hands were trembling after this exchange. Why had he mentioned Francine’s absence just after he’d enquired after Lisette? Usually, Eliane was an astute judge of character, but she couldn’t make out Oberleutnant Farber. He was the enemy, and yet he seemed to want to be a friend. Was he genuine? Or was it simply an attempt to trick her into giving something away? How much did he know? What had he seen? Unconsciously, as she watched him disappear up the steps of the mairie, she raised a hand to stroke the silk scarf, which she was wearing knotted about her neck today.
And only then did she realise that someone was watching her from the other side of the square. A young man as big as a bear, with dark, shaggy hair.
Her heart leaped and her eyes filled with tears of joy. ‘Mathieu!’ she cried and she ran towards him as he strode forward to envelop her in his arms.
They sat at the Café de la Paix, while they waited for Gustave to arrive with the truck, holding tight to each other’s hands as their cups of bitter, ersatz coffee grew cold on the table beside them.
Eliane had so many questions to ask him, and so much to tell him.
But there was so much that she couldn’t tell him, too, she reminded herself. She couldn’t tell him that Blanche wasn’t really the daughter of her father’s cousin; she couldn’t tell him how Jacques Lemaître had appeared across the weir one night, and that he wasn’t only the baker’s assistant; she couldn’t tell him how Yves had forewarned several Jewish neighbours of their imminent deportation, giving them time to escape; she couldn’t say what Lisette had done, nor where Francine had gone. And she couldn’t tell him about her walks around the château’s garden walls. Somehow all these secrets made her feel that there was still a distance between them even though he was there, now, beside her.
‘I can’t believe you’re really here!’ She stroked the calloused palm of one of his hands and the softer skin across the back, which was sun-darkened from hours of outdoor labour; this was a hand that felt at once familiar and strange after all this time. ‘How did you manage it? How did you get here?’
‘I walked across the bridge of course,’ he laughed. ‘All official. I can assure you, my papers are in order.’ He produced a folded travel permit from the breast pocket of his utilitarian cotton jacket. ‘I’m on my way to Bordeaux for the week. To be trained for my new job. I’ve managed to get work on the railways in the Service de Surveillance des Voies.’
Eliane looked at him, confused. ‘The Rail Surveillance Service? What does that entail?’
He couldn’t quite meet her eyes as he replied, ‘I’ll be part of a team patrolling to make sure there’s no subversive action on the line between Brive and Limoges.’
‘Subversive action? What do you mean?’
‘There’s been an increase in Resistance activity lately. That line is part of the strategic rail link between Paris and Toulouse. My job will be to ensure the trains can keep running safely. The training will be in Bordeaux, but I managed to persuade the powers that be that this would be the best route for me to take to get there. I’ve got this weekend and the next one to spend with you, but then I have to return to Tulle. I tried to send you a postcard to let you know, but it was sent back to me stamped “Inadmis” because I’d put the reason for my visit on it and apparently that’s not allowed between the occupied and unoccupied zones. But anyway, here I am! Two weekends to spend with you, after all this time: it seems miraculous!’
Just then, Gustave and Yves turned up with the truck to collect Eliane. They were amazed and delighted to see Mathieu, and there was much hugging and manly back-slapping. ‘Come,’ said Gustave, once Mathieu had briefly explained how he’d managed to get there. ‘We mustn’t waste a moment of your visit. Let’s get you back to the mill. Lisette will be so happy to see you. Tell me, how is your Papa? And Luc . . . ?’
They loaded Eliane’s baskets and then scrambled into the truck, heading for home.
That evening, Eliane and Mathieu sat beside the willow tree as they had done so often before. Now, however, because of the barbed wire, they could no longer sit on the riverbank beneath the canopy of its trailing branches, so they spread out a square of canvas taken from the barn and perched higher up the bank, lifting their faces to the warmth of the summer’s evening.
Mathieu had whistled when he’d first caught sight of the changes wrought by the Germans at the Moulin de Coulliac: although the brutal-looking tangle of thorny wire partially obscured the view across the river, the butchered stumps of trees were still visible on the far bank beyond another looped barricade of the wire, which had been installed that morning once the soldiers had finished their job of clearing the acacias.
‘When did they do that to the trees?’ he asked.
‘Just today. And they added the wire over there today, too. They’re tightening the security.’
He nodded, then turned to face her. ‘I tried to come and see you before. One night last year, I managed to get a lift as far as Sainte-Foy. I walked the rest of the way, dodging the patrols on the far side because I had no travel papers then. I knew if I was caught it would be an automatic jail sentence, or deportation to a work camp. But I had to take the risk, to try to see you. I made it this far, but as I stood just over there, I realised someone had closed the sluice gates so the weir was un-crossable. I tried, but I was forced to turn back.’
She leaned closer and kissed his cheek. ‘Oh, Mathieu. I always knew you were out there, though. Even when the postcards didn’t come and my own ones to you were returned. It didn’t matter. I knew you were there.’
‘Those damn postcards. Printed boxes to tick and then space for just thirteen lines to try to say what’s in your heart, knowing it will be read and may be sent back or destroyed. It’s awful that this war has stopped us from being able to speak freely. They’ve taken our country from us and they’ve even taken away our voices.’
‘But there are some things they can’t take,’ she replied, gently. ‘Our river, for example. They can put it in a cage of wire and cut down the trees, but just look at it.’ She gestured with an open palm at the water, which the evening light had once again turned to gold. They watched the dance of the sapphire-blue damselflies for a few moments. ‘And they can’t take our hopes and our dreams, either. No matter how many rules and regulations they put in place, no matter how they starve us.’
He returned her kiss and they sat, hand in hand, watching the river flow past, carrying those dreams of theirs off into the future.
Then Mathieu said, ‘I bumped into a friend in Sainte-Foy, the guy who used to test the wines at Château de la Chapelle. He says the Cortinis are doing okay. But then he also told me a rumour about Resistance activity over here in the occupied zone. He reckons there’s a secret network that is able to get messages to and from General de Gaulle’s Free French Army, supporting the Allies. They say that people have been smuggled across the line, somehow, and through the unoccupied zone to safety. Have you heard about anything like that around these parts?’
Eliane shook her head and shrugged, still keeping her eyes fixed on the river. ‘Coulliac is the same quiet place. We’re all just trying to find enough to feed ourselves; there’s not much time for anything else.’
A sudden image of Monsieur le Comte sitting by the altar in the chapel at Château Bellevue came, unbidden, into her mind. She remembered thinking she’d heard voices, but then finding him there alone . . . Suddenly she knew for certain that her walks were passing on messages from London to the Resistance fighters in the hills above Coulliac, directing their movements, helping them to plan their activities. And she knew that this was another secret that she had to keep from Mathieu. Even as she sat holding his hand in hers, she could feel the wedge of all those secrets being driven in a little deeper, forcing them apart.
On the still evening air, the sound of a train in the far distance
gave her a welcome opportunity to change the subject.
‘Tell me more about this job you’re going to be doing?’ she asked him.
‘It’s quite a new role. The railways are taking on more employees because of the need to keep the lines open. There are more and more acts of sabotage by the Resistance, so my job is to patrol the lines and try to either prevent those acts before they happen or fix the rails afterwards so that the trains can run. For a long time now, I’ve been trying to find a way to be able to see you and still help my father. His back has been giving him real problems lately – some days he can’t stand, he’s in so much pain – and Luc can’t manage the farm by himself. So I have to be there with them – you understand that?’
Eliane nodded. ‘Of course I do . . .’ She hesitated before she went on. ‘But, Mathieu, the trains that run on those lines . . . What are they carrying?’
He looked down and plucked a stem of grass, which he carefully split with his thumbnail. ‘They carry vital supplies to and from Paris.’
Gently, she took his hand. ‘They also carry weapons and ammunition that the Germans use to kill more of our people. And sometimes they carry the people themselves. You must have seen with your own eyes the cattle trucks that we’ve all heard about, carrying our own countrymen away. Those people don’t come back, Mathieu.’
‘They’re going to work camps,’ he replied.
She shook her head, sorrowfully. ‘Women and children, whole families . . . They’re going to prison camps where the conditions are so terrible that they may not survive.’
‘How do you know that? Those are just rumours.’
She met his pleading, dark-brown eyes with her own clear grey gaze. And then she repeated, ‘Those people don’t come back, Mathieu.’
His face flushed – with guilt or anger, it was hard to tell which – and his expression grew wounded.
‘I took this job so that I could see you, Eliane. It’s been two years. I hate being apart from you. It’s just a means to an end to enable me to travel more easily. I’m holding down two jobs now, working on the farm in the daytime and on the railways at night. And I’m doing it for us, as well as trying to put enough food on the table for my family. We’re really struggling to make ends meet now that so much is appropriated for the war effort.’
She gazed towards the river again, but the light had shifted and the water was a dull brown once more now. The damselflies had gone and, trapped in its cage of metal thorns, the river seemed suddenly lifeless.
‘I know, Mathieu. I understand.’
‘We all have to make compromises these days. It doesn’t mean I’m on the side of the Germans. I have to do this, for you and my father and Luc.’
She shivered slightly, although the summer air was hot and heavy. ‘Time to go in now,’ she said, and smiled at him.
But, as they gathered up the piece of canvas they’d been sitting on and returned it to the barn, neither of them could meet the other’s eyes.
When he took his leave at the station the next day, on his way to catch the train to Bordeaux, he held her tightly, as if he couldn’t ever bear to let her go.
She kissed him, and said with a smile, ‘Good luck with the training. See you next weekend.’
He nodded, unable to speak for a moment, and then quickly turned and walked away, not looking back.
Abi: 2017
A storm is brewing, like the one that brought me here. You can feel it approaching – the heat is stifling and the night sky is so black that it’s like being inside a cave. Thick, threatening thunderclouds have put out the stars. I’ve been lying with the shutters wide open, hoping for the night to bring a little coolness into the attic room. But the hot air presses in on me from all sides, making sleep impossible.
Suddenly the room is illuminated starkly by a flash of lightning and a moment or two later thunder rumbles ominously across the blackened sky. I draw the mosquito net aside and go to the window. Another flash of lightning burns an image of the river and the trees beyond it on to my retinas like the film in a camera and I lean out to grab the edges of the shutters and pull them closed – cursing the broken metal catch, which refuses to fit snugly into its notched fastenings. I grab my shirt and use the sleeves to tie the two parts of the catch together, shutting out the next roll of thunder before it shakes the air like a bomb blast.
I scramble back to the bed. Behind the double barrier of the shutters and the netting I feel safe, knowing the storm can’t reach me here.
Eliane and Mireille must have lain like this on many occasions when they were growing up, listening to storms, watching the lightning flash and hearing the rain beat down on to the roof of the mill house, knowing that the sky’s empty threats couldn’t touch them.
To Eliane, the war must have felt a little like this storm, I imagine. At first it was something far off, gathering on the horizon but unable to reach her; but then, as it engulfed them and raged on for all those years, she chose to step out of the safety of the attic room and face it head-on, reaching to help others who’d been caught in it too.
I can feel her presence here tonight, keeping me from harm.
Eventually the gap between lightning flash and thunderclap grows longer as the storm moves off. The rain becomes a soft roar on the roof overhead. As I drift somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, Eliane appears in my mind’s eye.
‘It’s your choice, Abi,’ she tells me. ‘The world is out here, waiting for you when you’re ready. You’re stronger than you know.’
She smiles as she goes, leaving the faint scent of beeswax and lavender hanging in the air in her wake.
Eliane: 1942
During the week while Mathieu was in Bordeaux undergoing training for his job in the Rail Surveillance Service, Eliane found it hard to concentrate on her tasks at the château. It was early August and the hot, humid air seemed to drain the energy from her limbs. She felt as though she was walking through a thick soup as she watered the herbs in the garden. Even the bees seemed to move more slowly than usual, drunk on the bounty of summer nectar as they worked to fill the upper frames in the hives. Eliane collected the honey as often as she could, but she was conscious that, in a few weeks’ time, as summer turned to autumn, the precious supplies would dwindle. And she would need to take particular care to leave the bees with enough to see them through the winter now that there wasn’t enough sugar to supplement the honey supplies should they begin to run low.
But it wasn’t just the heat that sapped her strength. The memory of her conversation with Mathieu the previous weekend distracted Eliane. He was right: he was simply taking on a job that would help his family to make ends meet, as well as giving him a little extra freedom to travel from the unoccupied zone across the demarcation line so that they could meet from time to time. Why, then, did it unsettle her so? The thought of those trains carrying people to the camps appalled her. But, as well as that, it felt as though he and she had suddenly found themselves on different sides of an invisible line. It wasn’t just the official demarcation line that was keeping them apart now; they were working against one another, being pulled in opposite directions by the currents of the war.
And all the things she couldn’t say to him sat between them, as starkly impenetrable as a barricade of barbed wire.
Mathieu appeared in the marketplace in the middle of the morning. He came across to Eliane’s stall and enveloped her in a powerful hug. She kissed him and then buried her face against his heart for a moment, breathing in the smell of his cotton jacket. Usually, it smelled of fresh air and hay from the farm but, during his week in Bordeaux, it had absorbed the unfamiliar scents of the railway: diesel fumes and cigarette smoke and engine oil; the scents of a stranger.
‘I’ll go and sit at the café,’ he said, as her next customer appeared.
He crossed the place to the Café de la Paix, where he set his canvas holdall down on the cobbles and pulled out a chair at one of the round tin tables.
He sat watching Eliane
smiling and chatting as she served the small queue that had formed, but his reverie was quickly interrupted.
‘Well, hello, Mathieu! What a pleasure to see you here after so long.’
‘Stéphanie. Hello. It’s good to see you too.’ He got to his feet to kiss her on both cheeks.
Without waiting to be invited, she sat down at his table. ‘So, tell me,’ her eyes were wide and guileless as she laid a hand on his arm. ‘What brings you back to Coulliac? Oh, I have so many questions for you; you must tell me all your news. It’s so boring here these days, having to scrimp and scratch around to get enough to eat, and I can’t tell you how many hours I spend standing in queues every week. I expect it’s probably easier for you in Tulle. You don’t have German soldiers breathing down your neck every second of the day.’
‘We have the police and the civil guards, though, who enforce the rule of the Vichy government,’ he replied mildly, when he could get a word in edgewise. ‘I suspect it’s much the same.’
‘Look how thin I’ve got,’ she continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘I’m sure I must look dreadful?’ She smoothed back her long, black hair and simpered, waiting for a compliment from him.
Mathieu glanced across at Eliane’s slight figure behind the stall. Her apron strings were knotted tightly around her waist to hold in the looseness of her blouse, and the leather money belt had had a few new holes punched into it so that it didn’t slip down over her hips.
‘I suppose we’ve all changed a great deal in the last two years,’ he remarked.
Following his gaze, Stéphanie gave his arm a petulant little tap to try to reclaim his attention. ‘And just look how threadbare my dress has become. But one simply has to make the best of what one has, I suppose.’ Again, she fished for praise.
‘You look very nice, as always, Stéphanie,’ he replied, politely.
She smiled, her eyelashes fluttering, and then said, ‘Aren’t you going to order me a coffee, Mathieu?’
