The Beekeeper's Promise

by Fiona Valpy

  ‘What’s happening?’ asked Eliane, bewildered.

  ‘Yves is leaving,’ Lisette replied. Anguish etched lines on to her face and made her look much older, suddenly. ‘When your father went to the mairie this morning, to report finding the body in the river, the mayor’s secretary handed him a notice to give to Yves. It’s a new law – the Service du travail obligatoire. They’ve posted an ordinance about this Compulsory Work Service in the square today, too. Instead of sending workers with particular skills, they’re now going to send entire age groups to the work camps. Yves has been told to report in a few days’ time for transportation.’

  ‘Yves . . .’ whispered Eliane. She thought of the trains that rumbled past in the distance. And then another thought occurred to her. ‘And Mathieu? It will apply to him too.’

  Lisette paused as she folded a woollen jumper. ‘Yes, but don’t worry; Mathieu won’t have to go. The ordinance stated that certain classes of worker are exempt, like the police and the fire service. And those in the Rail Surveillance Service.’

  A confusion of emotions buffeted Eliane, making it was hard to think straight. ‘But Yves . . . In a work camp . . .’

  Lisette pressed her lips together and shook her head. ‘Your brother’s not going to a work camp.’

  ‘But you’re packing his things . . . ?’

  ‘He’s decided to go into hiding with the maquisards. Tonight. He and your father are just sorting out a few things in the mill to make it easier for Papa to run it singlehanded, so I said I’d pack for him. He can’t take much . . .’ Lisette broke off, unable to speak as a sob constricted her throat.

  Eliane stepped forward and put her arms around her mother, to hold Lisette as she wept into the folds of the jumper she was still holding, her shoulders heaving.

  ‘What can I do?’ Eliane asked.

  Blanche’s cries grew more frantic from the next room and Lisette smiled, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Go and comfort the little one. Take her down to the kitchen and give her a camomile infusion. I’ll be down in a minute. And Eliane – we need to put on a brave face when we say our goodbyes to Yves. Let’s give him the memory of our smiles and our love as a leaving present. From here on, he’s going to need all the strength we can give him.’

  Blanche’s dark curls were damp with tears and she reached her arms out when Eliane bent down to pick her up, clasping her hands behind Eliane’s neck and hanging on tight, as if she’d never again let go.

  Eliane soothed her. ‘Hush, ma petite, it’s alright. Everything’s going to be alright.’

  ‘Eyann, where Yves?’ Blanche asked. She’d been slow in learning to speak (‘And no wonder, after all she’s been through,’ Lisette had said), but was beginning to make strides with her vocabulary now – although ‘Eyann’ was the closest she could get to Eliane’s name.

  ‘He’s coming. He’s helping Papa, but he’s going to come and give you a big hug. He’s got to go away for a little while, but he’ll come back to us again.’ She fervently hoped that she was telling the truth, for her own sake as much as for Blanche’s.

  ‘Yves come back soon?’ Blanche asked, the lashes surrounding her big brown eyes still spiky from her tears.

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘I hope so,’ repeated Blanche, nodding emphatically. ‘Soon.’

  Eliane steeped a few dried camomile flowers in some warm water and then strained the liquid into a little china cup decorated with butterflies, which Blanche loved. She sat and rocked Blanche on her lap, singing softly to the little girl as she sipped her soothing tea.

  The door opened, allowing a gust of chill winter air to invade the warmth of the kitchen for a moment, and the men walked in. Gustave was making an effort to appear calm and positive, focusing on practicalities and giving Yves snippets of advice. ‘Keep your feet dry, or you’ll regret it. I’ve waxed your boots well for you. Listen to what the others tell you – they’re experienced now. And I’m sure there’ll be more like you joining soon, who think it’s better to have to survive in the wild than to be incarcerated in a work camp.’

  Yves was quiet, far more subdued than usual, and he seemed to Eliane both older, suddenly, and frighteningly young. She wanted to weep for him, her little brother, forced to make this choice, forced away from the warmth and love of his family home to live on the run, sleeping rough with a band of strangers. But she reminded herself of Lisette’s words and forced herself to smile at him instead. She didn’t trust herself to speak, in case she broke down, but she nodded at him and then softly began to sing one of Blanche’s favourite songs – to Yves as much as to the little girl in her lap: ‘Il y a longtemps que je t’aime . . .’ I’ve loved you for so long . . .

  Yves gripped her shoulder briefly, and her voice faltered for a moment, but she took a deep breath and carried on again as Yves stooped to plant a kiss on Blanche’s curls. The little girl reached up and put her arms around Yves’ neck, smiling and joining in the words of the song as she hugged him.

  He tore himself away as the song ended and left the kitchen abruptly, taking the stairs two at a time with his long, loping strides.

  After a few minutes he reappeared, carrying his pack in one hand and with his other arm wrapped around Lisette’s waist. She had dried her earlier tears and, like Gustave, was trying to put on a brave face.

  There was a soft knock at the door and Eliane swivelled round in her chair to see Jacques Lemaître on the threshold. He nodded at them all and clasped Yves’ hand, shaking it firmly.

  ‘All ready?’ he asked, without preamble. ‘It’s time to go.’

  Yves nodded, his throat constricting so that he couldn’t get the words out to say goodbye to his family. He hugged each of them in turn, holding his mother for several, silent seconds. Over his shoulder, Eliane saw Lisette’s eyes close and a momentary tremor of the intense pain of parting flicker across her features.

  Finally, Yves let her go and shouldered his pack. Jacques clapped him on the back and then smiled at the family. ‘Don’t worry; we’ll take good care of him. I’ll get a message to you whenever I can to let you know how he’s doing.’

  ‘Thank you, Jacques. God be with you.’ Lisette extended a hand towards Yves once again, to touch her son one last time, but he had already turned and begun to walk towards the door. So she let it fall, plucking at her apron. Eliane reached out and took it instead, squeezing it tightly to give them both strength.

  And then the door closed behind Yves and Jacques and they disappeared into the bitterly cold night.

  Since the beginning of the year, a new kind of French police force, the Milice, had been commissioned to work alongside the Gestapo. In the market that weekend, as she set out her few remaining pots of honey and beeswax alongside a couple of jars of apple preserve, to which she’d added nigella seeds to mitigate the sourness of the fruit in the absence of any sugar, Eliane was conscious of a pair of miliciens in their brown shirts and blue jackets, who lounged beside the fountain, watching the comings and goings in the marketplace. She vaguely recognised one of them as a local man.

  Stéphanie walked past the miliciens, carrying her basket, and smiled at them as she flicked her hair over her shoulder. The younger of the two men stood up a little straighter and made a comment that made her stop and turn back towards them, apparently showing them the contents of her basket. She laughed and simpered as they engaged her in conversation for several minutes. As Eliane watched, Stéphanie leaned in closer, as though to share a confidence with the men, and then glanced over her shoulder towards Eliane’s stall. The policemen looked up, following the direction of her glance, looking appraisingly at Eliane. After a few more exchanges, Stéphanie continued on her way, casually flicking an imaginary speck of dust off the cuff of her blouse and avoiding meeting Eliane’s eye as she passed by the honey stall.

  The miliciens strolled towards Eliane, taking their time, their breath forming little clouds in the cold morning air.

  ‘Good morning, messieurs,’ sh
e said, politely, when they reached her stall.

  ‘Mademoiselle Martin, isn’t it?’ asked the man whose face she’d recognised.

  ‘Oui, monsieur.’

  ‘Tell us, mademoiselle,’ the man spoke with a low voice, but it held enough malice to make her hands tremble as she adjusted the gingham cloth on her table, ‘where might we find your brother these days?’

  She looked him straight in the eye and the light of her steady, grey gaze appeared to unsettle him slightly. ‘I wish I knew, m’sieur. We haven’t seen him for ages.’ She held the man’s eye contact, refusing to be the first to look away.

  At last he blinked and glanced down at the sparse collection of jars on her stall. His colleague’s eyes darted to and fro, and the man repeatedly licked his chapped, scaly lips, reminding Eliane of a snake.

  ‘And your boyfriend? Mathieu Dubosq isn’t it? Do you ever hear from him?’

  Eliane glanced at him, startled. What did Mathieu have to do with Yves? Surely he was busy working to protect the railways. She took a quiet breath to calm herself, reminding herself to be careful not to give anything away. ‘I haven’t heard from Mathieu since he left Coulliac. I believe he’s back home in Tulle. He’s not my boyfriend anymore.’

  The snake sneered. ‘She lies so well this one, doesn’t she?’

  The first milicien frowned. ‘Well, if you should happen to hear from either of them, you’ll be sure to let us know, won’t you, Mademoiselle Martin? We have a few questions we’d like to ask them, regarding certain acts of subterfuge, including the destruction of state property.’

  The pair sauntered off, pausing here and there to question the other stallholders. The few inhabitants of Coulliac who’d ventured out early on that chilly morning silently drifted away at the sight of the policemen. The Milice had already gained a reputation for being worse than the Gestapo for their ruthless brutality towards their own countrymen. Their native language and local knowledge – including knowing every informant in the area – made them an even greater threat.

  Eliane watched their progress around the market square. The stalls were far fewer in number now, with little produce to spare at the end of another harsh winter. Food was so scarce that almost all families had jours sans – ‘days without’ – when they scarcely ate at all. At the mill, they were eking out the last of their supplies and she had dug up the final few potatoes and turnips from her riverside potager only yesterday. Her stomach rumbled and she glanced up at the iron-grey sky, longing for the first signs of spring, when the woods and fields would reawaken, becoming a natural larder once more, and her bees would set to work to create new supplies of honey from the blossom on the fruit trees.

  And then she heard the sound, miraculously, as if she had conjured it out of the sky: the rusty creak of the first grey cranes flying overhead. There were only a few, the vanguard of males making their journey of thousands of miles to the northern breeding grounds. The females and the younger birds hatched the previous year would follow later, in vast, trailing skeins of thousands of birds at a time, which would appear over the horizon, filling the blue spring skies with their cries. Her heart beat a little faster. The sign of these first grues of the year was a message of hope. Just hang on – spring will come again.

  She hoped that, wherever he was, Yves could see the birds too.

  And she hoped they had flown over Mathieu as he ploughed the muddy fields of the farm and prepared the ground for that year’s crops.

  As she watched them disappear to the north, she willed them to take an eastern course, to fly over Paris, creating a line of connection between herself and Mireille. ‘We’re all still here,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Just hang on – spring will come again.’

  Abi: 2017

  How do we find the resilience to hang on? Those years of starvation and isolation from the outside world must have taken such a toll on Eliane and her family. But the Martins had so much to hold on to: they had a community; they had each other.

  When I was most alone, when I felt myself withering and dying like a plant deprived of water, light, nutrients, something in me made me reach out. Some deep-seated instinct for survival kicked in, just as I felt the last of my strength leaching away.

  It was nothing dramatic. In fact, it probably would have seemed completely insignificant to a casual observer. When Sam, a cheerful, friendly girl in my tutorial group, suggested going for a coffee, instead of making my usual excuses and ducking out, I found myself saying, ‘Okay. That’d be great.’

  I surprised myself. I hadn’t meant to say yes. As the small group of us crossed the road to a local café, my mind whirled. What was I doing? Zac would be furious. What would I tell him? But still, something made me stay with the group; follow them through the door into the bright warmth of the coffee shop, pull up a chair, order a latte. And, for the next forty-five minutes, I remembered what it felt like to talk and laugh easily with a few friendly people, to join in the grumbling about the impossibility of making head or tail of Ulysses – let alone writing a coherent essay on the book – and to listen in to snippets of other people’s lives.

  For those forty-five minutes, I remembered what it felt like to be me.

  Of course, there was trouble when I got home. I sensed it the second I turned my key in the door. Zac sat on the sofa facing the entrance to the flat, an almost-empty bottle of red wine on the coffee table in front of him. The television was on, but he wasn’t looking at it. He was staring into mid-air and his eyes were as bitterly cold and dark as the winter night beyond the plate-glass window behind him.

  He didn’t focus on me, just sat there, deliberately waiting for me to make the first move. Cat and mouse.

  I hung up my coat, slipped off my boots and then turned to him with a smile that I hoped convincingly camouflaged the fear that flickered behind it. I could feel my shoulders tensing, and I made my hands uncurl when I realised they were clenched into tight fists.

  On the way home, I’d considered various excuses. There’d been an ‘incident’ on the tube (how often had I myself considered stepping off the edge of the platform into that beckoning void, seeking oblivion in the rush of the approaching train?). Or, on a whim, I’d decided to take the bus home (‘Big mistake – the traffic was a nightmare!’ I could hear myself saying to him). But then that little flicker of Self that had burned a tiny bit more strongly during three-quarters of an hour of coffee and conversation, simply came out with the truth.

  ‘Sorry I’m a bit late. A few of us went for a coffee after the tutorial.’ My tone was light and breezy. Maybe I’d get away with it. After all, it’s not as if I’d done anything wrong.

  But I knew, really, that I wouldn’t get away with it. I knew what was going to happen. I knew I wouldn’t be going for a cup of coffee after a tutorial again.

  Yes, that’s definitely the word. Dissociation: when your mind leaves your body – a way of bearing the unbearable.

  Eliane: 1943

  Despite the long shadow cast by the seemingly interminable war, Monsieur le Comte was as chivalrous as ever to his German ‘guests’, and they continued to allow the frail old man the use of his library and his chapel each day. In the kitchen, Madame Boin’s grumbling occasionally boiled over in frustration at the lack of decent ingredients and the monotony of the food she had to prepare: scraps of horsemeat were often all that was available from the butcher and she swore that once the war was over she would never, ever eat another turnip or topinambour again.

  With increasing frequency, the count continued to ask Eliane to take her afternoon walks around the garden walls. The silk scarf had faded from wear and grown a little frayed at the corners, even though Eliane washed, ironed and mended it with the utmost care each weekend, but its rich pattern was still clearly distinguishable.

  As she walked around the walls these days, though, Eliane’s sense of unease was heightened. Whose eyes were on her? She tried to put out of her mind the miliciens who had visited her market stall that day so many mo
nths ago now, the local man and his colleague with the darting tongue and eyes of a snake, and instead she told herself that Yves and his fellow maquisards were watching over her.

  Jacques had become a more frequent visitor to the mill after Yves had left. Eliane was grateful to him for the helping hand he lent Gustave when he could, and occasionally he brought word that Yves was fine, doing well with his new band of brothers, and wanted his family to know that he was keeping his feet dry and changing his underwear regularly, as instructed by his papa and maman. This last bit of news had made Lisette smile broadly – ‘That really is Yves all over,’ she’d exclaimed. ‘His usual cheeky self!’

  Eliane also noticed that Jacques seemed in no hurry to leave the mill house after he’d dropped in to deliver his messages or bring them some bread from the bakery. He would often stay on, sipping a tisane and asking Eliane about her day. They never seemed to speak of anything very consequential, but she sensed a deepening connection between the two of them and couldn’t help noticing that he kissed her goodbye these days and seemed reluctant to walk back to his lonely apartment above the baker’s shop.

  For her part, she found herself thinking of him now and then as she went about her duties at the château or played with Blanche at the mill. The way his hair flopped over one blue eye; the way his face lit up when he saw her; the way his expression changed from serious and focused to relaxed and laughing in rapid succession: these were the facets of his character that made her feel as if it were a summer’s day, even when the sky was overcast. He played his part so well, having been among the local community for some three years now, that she had almost forgotten he was an Englishman who would most certainly disappear back to his homeland one of these days.

  As the bitter chill of winter loosened its grip on the land and the first wild daffodils pushed their way through the muddy grass along the riverbank, the Martins breathed a sigh of relief that at least now things would be getting a little easier for Yves in whatever hillside cave or forest clearing he made his home.