The Beekeeper's Promise

by Fiona Valpy

  Once they’d been served a bitter brew in tiny, thick cups, Stéphanie watched as Jacques Lemaître emerged from the baker’s shop for his morning break and walked over to the fountain to chat with Yves Martin, who had arrived on his bike.

  ‘Who is he?’ Mathieu asked. ‘I don’t think I recognise him.’

  Stéphanie turned to him, as if surprised. ‘Jacques? He’s the baker’s assistant. He’s been here a while. As you can see, he’s great friends with the Martin family. Haven’t they told you about him? He’s often hanging around with Yves. And Eliane, too,’ she couldn’t resist adding.

  ‘They haven’t mentioned him,’ Mathieu shrugged. ‘But then we’ve hardly had any time to talk really.’

  ‘So, tell me what’s been keeping you so busy?’ Stéphanie turned her full attention towards him and leaned closer as she listened to his explanation of his training for the job on the railways.

  ‘Oh, Mathieu, it’s so reassuring to know you’re looking after the safety of everyone. Not that I ever go anywhere by train these days. Or anywhere at all, really, come to that. Was Bordeaux wonderful?’

  He shrugged again. ‘If you like that sort of thing, I suppose. It’s a city. Too many people for my liking really.’

  Increasingly irritated by his inability to play along with her attempts at flirtation, Stéphanie slouched back in her chair again, surveying the market square. Just then, Oberleutnant Farber emerged from the mairie. She nudged Mathieu.

  ‘There’s another one of her new friends that I bet Eliane hasn’t mentioned to you.’ A spark of malice glinted in her eyes, but Mathieu didn’t notice it as he watched the German approach Eliane’s stall.

  The officer said something to Eliane and Mathieu saw her smile and nod. Then she reached into a basket beneath her table and placed a jar of honey in front of him. He counted out some money and passed it over and she slipped it into her money belt. But the soldier seemed in no hurry to move off straight away. There were no other customers at the stall and so he stood and chatted with Eliane for a while longer. Mathieu saw her smile again and adjust the bright scarf that was knotted about her neck.

  Finally, the oberleutnant picked up his jar of honey and sauntered back to the mairie, pausing to speak to one of the German guards on the steps before he disappeared back inside.

  ‘It must be nice to have friends in high places,’ Stéphanie commented, with studied insouciance. ‘She has an advantage, of course, because she consorts with the Germans every day up at Château Bellevue. It’s very useful to have such special dispensations – the Martin family seem to eat much better than the rest of us around these parts. They’re forever showing off and handing out scraps to us charity cases. And, while everyone else has to hand over their produce, Mademoiselle Eliane is allowed to keep her honey and sell it. I’ve also heard she wangles extra petrol vouchers so that her father can fetch and carry her in that truck of his.’

  Mathieu drained his coffee’s bitter dregs and set the cup rattling back down on its saucer.

  ‘I don’t think that’s right, Stéphanie,’ he said.

  But she could see that her comments were getting a reaction from him, and that spiteful spark danced in her eyes once again. She sighed, as if in great sorrow. ‘Oh, Mathieu . . .’ She laid her hand gently on his arm once more. ‘I hate to have to be the one to tell you . . . I know how close you were to Eliane before you left. But, as a friend, I feel I have to let you know the truth.’

  ‘The truth? What do you mean?’ She certainly had his full attention now.

  ‘Look,’ she nodded to where Jacques Lemaître was approaching Eliane’s stall now. ‘See how she flirts with everyone. The baker’s assistant, that German officer – she didn’t wait long after you left, I can tell you.’

  Mathieu’s face flushed red with anger. ‘That’s not true! That’s not Eliane.’

  ‘I’m afraid it is, these days, Mathieu. Of course, one has to try not to judge too harshly – war does terrible things to change people. But you see that scarf she’s wearing?’

  He nodded. She’d been wearing it last weekend, too, he recalled.

  ‘Well, they say it was given to her by her German lover. Where else would she get a scarf like that around here? She shows it off everywhere she goes.’

  ‘But she told me it was a present from her sister, in Paris,’ he retorted.

  Stéphanie laughed, lightly but scornfully. ‘Is that what she said? The only present the Martins have received from Mireille is that baby she appeared with. People say that Eliane’s not the only Martin sister to consort with Germans. Mireille dumped her illegitimate child with her family and then hightailed it back to Paris as fast as she could. We all thought it was odd that she should want to get back there so quickly, but of course the lure of the high life, being wined and dined by German officers at the best restaurants, must have been irresistible once she’d offloaded the child. They concocted that story about it belonging to a cousin of Gustave’s to try to cover up the family’s shame.’

  The blood had drained from Mathieu’s face now and his skin was beaded with sweat, sallow and clammy despite his farmer’s tan.

  ‘I don’t believe any of what you say, Stéphanie,’ he said, sounding sickened.

  She shrugged her narrow shoulders. ‘Don’t believe me then, Mathieu. I know it must be a terrible shock for you to hear the truth. All I can do is tell you what’s really been going on, for your own sake. I hate to see you being made a fool of. But it’s all the same to me whether you believe me or not.’ She stood and tugged the skirt of her dress into place, then smoothed back her hair. ‘Thanks for the coffee, Mathieu. And good luck with the job. Come back and see me sometime if you’re passing this way.’

  With a glance at Eliane to make sure she’d noticed the company Mathieu was keeping, Stéphanie stooped down and kissed him goodbye.

  Mathieu sat, shell-shocked, replaying Stéphanie’s words in his head. After a few minutes, Yves appeared, wheeling his bike. ‘Salut, Mathieu! Mind if I join you?’

  ‘Please do. Some sane company would be most welcome.’

  Yves grinned at him. ‘Yes, I saw Stéphanie making a move on you. That girl never stops trying, I’ll give her that!’

  ‘Who’s that guy you were chatting with by the fountain?’ asked Mathieu.

  ‘Jacques? He’s a good mate. Works in the bakery, so I got to know him from delivering the flour.’

  Mathieu noticed that Yves, who was usually so open and candid, didn’t quite meet his enquiring gaze as he said this.

  ‘Not that there’s much flour to deliver these days, of course,’ Yves continued. ‘We’re grinding chestnuts now. Maize and oats as well. Reduced to eating animal feed. But I suppose it’s the same on the other side of the line too? Tough times . . .’

  And Mathieu realised that the conversation had been well and truly diverted from the subject of Jacques Lemaître. For some reason, Yves didn’t want to talk about this great new friend of his.

  Mathieu looked across the place and Eliane caught his eye and waved. She adjusted the silk scarf so that it lay straighter and then began to pack up the stall.

  Instead of going across to help her, as he normally would have done, Mathieu sat, watching her thoughtfully and letting Yves’ stream of inconsequential chatter wash past him.

  He was quiet in the truck on the short drive back to the mill house and then scarcely touched the lunch Lisette had prepared for them, using vegetables from Eliane’s potager to make a rich broth that was served with chestnut bread, soft goat’s cheese and, in honour of Mathieu’s visit, a few slices of precious dried ham from the cave behind the pigsty.

  The good food turned to sawdust in Mathieu’s mouth, poisoned by the doubts that Stéphanie had sown in his mind.

  When they’d finished their meal, he said, ‘Come, Eliane, let’s go for a walk along the river.’

  She took his hand in hers as they set off, and curled her fingers around his broad knuckles, but he barely reciprocated. As t
hey followed the riverbank, picking their way along a narrow, dusty path that skirted the coils of barbed wire, she asked him, ‘Mathieu? Is something wrong?’

  He stopped and turned to look at her. Then he reached out and touched the rich silk of the scarf that she still wore knotted loosely around her neck. ‘Who gave you this?’ he asked, his voice barely louder than a whisper.

  She dropped her gaze. ‘I told you – it was a gift from Mireille.’

  ‘Eliane,’ his tone was pleading now. ‘Tell me the truth. Where did you get this scarf?’

  She looked up, meeting his eyes again. ‘I’m sorry, Mathieu. I can’t tell you.’

  ‘I see,’ he said, quietly. ‘And Blanche . . . ? Who are her real parents?’

  She frowned slightly, confused at the change of subject. ‘I’m sorry, Mathieu, I can’t tell you that either. I want to tell you the truth. But the truth is that there are things I cannot tell you.’

  He turned to face the river, where the water was incarcerated in its cage of steel wire. He seemed to be struggling to speak and he swallowed several times before saying, ‘Oh, Eliane. What has this war done to you?’ His voice trembled with the unbearable pain that was tearing his heart in two.

  She reached to try to hold him, but he turned away from her. ‘Mathieu,’ she said, ‘look at me, please.’

  With an effort, he faced her again. He bit his lip hard, and his eyes were red-rimmed, stung by the tears that he refused to let fall.

  ‘This war has done the same things to me that it has done to you,’ she said. Her voice was calm and firm, where his had been so full of emotion. ‘I have had to make choices and decisions, just as you have done. All any of us is trying to do is survive.’

  ‘But Eliane, the war can’t last forever. So what happens afterwards? When it’s over, every one of us will have to live with the things we have done.’

  ‘Yes, Mathieu,’ she replied. ‘We’ll have to live with the things we’ve done. And every one of us will have to live with the things we haven’t done, as well.’

  They stood in silence for a while and then turned and walked back to the mill, each cocooned in their own thoughts.

  ‘What do you want to do now?’ Eliane asked him as they reached the final part of the track to the mill house.

  He shrugged. ‘I’ve been away from my father and Luc long enough. If I leave now, there’s a train I can catch from Sainte-Foy that will get me home tonight.’

  A tear ran down her cheek then and fell on to the scarf, staining the scarlet silk border a dark blood-red. ‘Mathieu,’ she choked, ‘I’m sorry.’

  He nodded, unable to speak again for a moment. And then he said, ‘Do you remember what I said last weekend? That they’ve taken our voices, as well as our country.’

  She raised her eyes to his. ‘They can’t silence us forever, though. The day will come, eventually, when the truth can be told.’

  He shook his head. ‘The truth seems to be such a very complicated thing all of a sudden. Sorry, Eliane, but it’s best that I collect my things and go now.’

  She went with him as far as the bridge. She watched him show his papers to the guards and then be waved across. And as he walked away, unable to look back at her, the line that separated them seemed to have become more impossible than ever to cross.

  PART 3

  Eliane: 1943

  In November 1942, the occupying German forces took control of the whole of France, moving troops into the previously unoccupied zone. But in Coulliac the removal of the demarcation line made little difference – if anything, there seemed to be more roadblocks than ever and the checkpoints on the bridges remained in place. Movement within the country was still forbidden without the necessary papers, and it was just as hard to obtain an ausweis as it had been before.

  Day after day, Eliane waited for a postcard to arrive from Mathieu. The cards she sent to him disappeared into a void, unanswered. Any reply, even the officially proscribed thirteen lines of bland, censored news about last season’s wheat harvest, would have let her know that he’d forgiven her for not telling him everything and that he trusted her again. But none came. She told herself that perhaps he had written but that delivery had been refused, even though she couldn’t quite believe that version of events.

  Frost had nipped the night air and mist shrouded the river as Eliane set out for work early one February morning. She could hear voices – Gustave and Yves were doing something alongside the sluice gates – but she could only dimly make out their figures. They seemed to be trying to lift something heavy out of the river, so she walked across to see if she could give them a hand. The mist shifted, swirling and clearing slightly for a moment, and she gasped. At the sound, Gustave turned and shouted at her, ‘Stay back! Don’t come any closer.’

  But she’d already seen the body of a man caught in the entrance to one of the sluice channels. Yves was using his horn-handled penknife to cut the man’s clothes free from the barbed wire that had snagged them with its sharp talons.

  Together, father and son heaved the body on to the bank. River water flowed from the man’s saturated jacket and trousers but then, as Eliane watched, the water began to run pink, quickly darkening to a deep red. His torso was riddled with bullet holes.

  Gustave ripped open an empty flour sack and used it to cover the corpse as best he could.

  ‘Who is it, Papa?’ Eliane asked. She hadn’t got a clear look at the face, which was bleached and bloated from its time underwater. For one terrible moment, she thought it might be Jacques Lemaître.

  Gustave shook his head, his expression grim. ‘Not someone I recognise. But a maquisard, I’m sure. The Germans are intent on stamping out the Resistance. They must have caught him and executed him.’

  Yves, who was kneeling alongside the body, lurched suddenly to one side and vomited on the grass. Gustave patted his back, murmuring soothingly, and then, when Yves’ retching had stopped, helped him to his feet.

  ‘Eliane, help your brother back to the house and tell Maman what’s happened.’

  ‘What do we do now, Papa?’

  ‘I’ll wait until nine o’clock and then go and report this at the mairie.’ His face was almost as pale as Yves’. ‘Do you feel strong enough to go to work, Eliane? I think it would be best to try to carry on as normal as much as possible.’

  She nodded. ‘I’ll be okay.’

  ‘And Eliane?’

  ‘Yes, Papa?’

  ‘Have you got your scarf with you? I have a feeling you may need to go for a walk later on today, once this mist clears.’

  She pulled the scarf from her apron pocket and showed it to him. Without a word, she tied it firmly over her hair and then took Yves’ arm to support him as she led him back to the mill house.

  Abi: 2017

  As I get ready for bed, I think of the part of Eliane’s story that Sara has told me today. I lean out of the window to reach round and pull the shutters closed and in the moonlight the river flows past, making its way quietly onwards towards the sea. I hear the flutter of leather-winged bats in the darkness as they swoop over the black water of the pool above the weir, and I shiver. It’s hard to picture the horror of the dead body floating there; Gustave and Yves pulling it from the sluice, Eliane helping her brother back to the house.

  I settle the heavy iron catch in place to close the shutters tightly against the image. Jean-Marc has been in today to mend the fixings and now the catch fits snugly, shutting out the bats and the moths and the other winged creatures of the night. He’s given me some dried-lime-blossom tea, as well, and I’ve brought a cup of it up to the attic bedroom to sip. It smells sweetly of summer days.

  I stretch my legs out languorously beneath the sheets as I sip my tisane. It’s a novelty, feeling able to take up so much space. When I shared Zac’s bed, I used to lie on my side, right by the edge of the mattress, taking up as little space as possible. I would shrink from inadvertently touching him, not wanting to risk waking him. I made myself smaller and small
er, until I wondered whether I might disappear completely.

  I finish my tea and set the cup back on the bedside table, reaching to turn out the lamp. In the darkness beyond the shutters, I hear the faint splash of a fish as it leaps and then dives back into the mysterious depths of the river.

  As I begin to drift towards sleep, thoughts and memories swim in and out of my head . . . A dead body looks like it’s made out of wax. What’s left behind looks unreal once the life has gone out of it. I wonder what it is, that spark of life that is extinguished. What it is that makes up our Self. I came so close to losing it, my own Self. I thought that it had died inside me. But somehow the spark survived . . . Somehow, at the last moment, just as it was about to be extinguished for good, it flared into life again.

  Eliane: 1943

  Gustave had been right: on the day they’d pulled the body of the maquisard from the river, the count had asked her to walk around the walls of the garden again, once the pale winter sun had burned the mist out of the river valley. It had been a longer walk than usual, though – three times around, and in an anticlockwise direction. Beneath the headscarf, her scalp prickled with sweat, despite the chill of the day, and she felt more exposed than ever to the eyes of whoever the unknown watchers were, out there somewhere. She couldn’t get out of her mind the image of the man’s body caught in the barbed wire and she felt queasy and ill at ease as she walked. Relief flooded her body as she stepped back across the threshold into the château’s kitchen afterwards, and she busied herself with tying up bundles of the plants she’d gathered so that they could be hung above the range to dry back at the mill house.

  When she arrived home that night, there was no one in the kitchen. ‘Papa? Maman? Yves?’ she called. She heard the creak of floorboards overhead as quick footsteps walked to and fro. She went upstairs to find Lisette pacing back and forth in Yves’ room, taking clothes from his wardrobe and folding them into a canvas duffel bag. From next door, Blanche began to wail from her little bed in the corner of Lisette and Gustave’s bedroom.