The Collaborators

by Reginald Hill

  ‘Well, boy, what’s your name?’

  The question was to Pauli, who was thrusting pieces of bread into his pockets.

  ‘Paul Simonian, monsieur.’

  ‘Simonian? Now, that has a flavour, certainly. And are you Jewish, Paul?’

  The boy’s eyes met his unblinkingly.

  ‘We’re Roman Catholics, sir, like maman.’

  ‘Ah yes. But your father, this Simonian, what about him?’

  Before Pauli could reply, Céci piped up, reassured by the captain’s relaxed manner, ‘Bubbah Sophie is Jewish, she told me so. The bad men took her away to Pitchipoi.’

  ‘Bubbah Sophie? Your grandmother?’

  Pauli nodded.

  ‘And your grandfather? He was a Jew also?’

  Pauli put some more bread into his pocket but didn’t reply.

  The captain finished his wine.

  ‘Time to go,’ he said. ‘Fetch them.’

  ‘All of them, sir?’ asked the soldier.

  The officer hesitated, looked at the brothers.

  Pauli said, ‘Madame Laurentin is my mother’s cousin, monsieur, not my father’s.’

  The captain laughed.

  ‘No wonder we need to deal with you people!’ he said. ‘Even the children are cleverer than half of our own adults! No. Just the young professor here and his sister. Quickly!’

  Pauli and Céci were seized and dragged from the table and out of the kitchen.

  ‘Should we get them some clothes?’ asked one of the soldiers as they dumped the children in the back seat of the car.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ said the captain languidly. ‘Hello. What’s this?’

  An ancient truck had come creaking into sight down the farm track. It shuddered to a halt as its driver saw the staff-car. Then, realizing that retreat was impossible, he set the vehicle bumping slowly forward again. It stopped by the barn. One of the soldiers approached and raised his rifle.

  The passenger door opened and out climbed Maurice Melchior. He nodded at the soldier and strolled across to the car, his sharp eyes taking in the frightened children at the door and the young Simonians in the car. He tried to send a warning to Pauli and probably it got through. But Céci was too young for warnings. Delighted to see a familiar adult face, she cried, ‘Hello, Monsieur Melchior.’

  Melchior ignored her.

  ‘Good day, lieutenant,’ he said. ‘A fine day for…almost anything.’

  ‘Who are you?’ said the officer, lighting a cigarette.

  ‘Corder. Roger Corder. My partner and I do a little business with these good people. We’re privileged to help keep many of your brave fellow officers in Lyon supplied with the fresh produce they deserve.’

  ‘You mean you’re a blackmarketeer. Why did this child call you Melchior?’

  ‘A childish nickname. She thinks I come bearing gifts of gold.’

  ‘Is that so?’ The officer smiled. ‘Go back to your truck, monsieur.’

  ‘But of course. So pleased to have met you. If I can ever be of service.’

  ‘Trooper,’ called the officer. ‘Get in that truck with these gentlemen and accompany them back to camp. If they lose their way or if the truck breaks down, shoot them both instantly. Driver, move on.’

  The car pulled away, leaving Melchior pale-faced but still smiling. As they climbed the track, Pauli got a last glimpse of Christophe. But it was too distant to see if the boy, so early acquainted with grief and terror, had yet had time to savour the still more bitter and longer lasting taste of guilt.

  3

  Janine woke up. The bedroom was full of sunlight. She glanced at her watch and realized that it was only five forty-five. These nights of early June were short. Too short. She rolled over, realized that Jean-Paul was not by her side, and suddenly knew what had awoken her. A noise at the door, voices in the next room. Five o’clock in the morning. This was Gestapo time.

  She jumped out of bed and rushed to the bedroom door and flung it open.

  Jean-Paul still in his nightshirt, Henri and another man looked at her in surprise.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I thought…’

  ‘… it was a raid!’ To her surprise Jean-Paul laughed. Interruptions of meetings of Les Pêcheurs on any pretext usually filled him with irritation. Something must have put him in a good humour.

  ‘Well, I suppose it is a raid in a manner of speaking,’ continued Jean-Paul gleefully. ‘But if you are expecting the Geste, I think you ought to wear something a little more formal, eh?’

  She glanced down, realized she was naked and retreated full of embarrassment. Beyond the door, the men laughed. She didn’t mind. It was good to hear laughter in the house especially if Jean-Paul was part of it.

  She went back to bed for an hour, but the meeting didn’t end. Indeed there seemed to be more voices. Finally she rose and got dressed. The living-room was now full of smoke. She saw at once that the full council of Les Pêcheurs was here, including Christian Valois. She smiled at him and he nodded. He’d been very wary of her since she’d rebuffed him. He’d lost a lot of weight, looked older.

  ‘Shall I make some coffee?’ she asked.

  ’Real coffee?’ asked Henri.

  She smiled and shook her head and he groaned in mock disappointment.

  ‘You’ll get plenty of real coffee soon,’ said Jean-Paul. ‘Yes, Jansy, if you would.’

  His rare use of his private name for her delighted her. Henri came into the tiny kitchen to drink some water to ease his talk- and smoke-roughened throat.

  ‘Henri, what’s happened?’ she asked.

  ‘Hasn’t he told you? The message was broadcast from London last night. The dice are cast.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  He scratched his bullet head in bewilderment and said, ‘He doesn’t tell you much, does he? It means the invasion’s close! We’ve got to do our bit to tie up the Boche from behind. There’ll be high-level conferences later on, but you know Jean-Paul. He’ll want to be sure Les Pêcheurs get their fair share!’

  He went back through. The invasion! thought Janine. She was filled with hope, with fear, and also with some resentment. Jean-Paul’s use of her in connection with Les Pêcheurs was almost solely on the domestic level. Like now. She occasionally carried low-key messages, made phone calls, left signs chalked on doors or walls. She didn’t object. The less she knew, the less she could betray.

  But he might have come to her himself with this tremendous news!

  She shook the thought from her head and went through with the coffee. After she’d made sure everyone was served, she went back into the bedroom and left them to their planning. At eight-thirty she re-emerged and said to Jean-Paul, ‘I’m going to my parents’! There should be a card from Mireille soon.’

  ‘OK,’ he said with a wave.

  As she stood in the crowded métro carriage, she wondered how many of those around her had heard and understood the BBC message. There was no way to know. That was one thing this war had changed for ever. No one who had lived through it in France would ever be able to look at another human face and be sure he knew what was going on behind the eyes.

  The thought frightened her. She prized openness so highly. This barrier of secrets which lay between her and Jean-Paul - not Resistance secrets, but reservations of thought, restraint of emotions, concealment of purpose in their everyday relationship - it was this which was the most painful change from what had existed before.

  There was a smell of baking coming from the boulan-gerie but nothing like the rich perfume which used to make mouths water two streets away. Her still expert nose told her that her father was using potato flour. Even her mother’s influence with the authorities must be waning in face of the ever-growing shortages.

  Louise Crozier was in the shop. They embraced and Janine said eagerly, ‘Any card?’

  Her cousin Mireille had written to her care of the boulan-gerie ever since they’d been forced to abandon the flat in the Quartier Mouffetard. Only open cards were
permitted and she’d written three since last she got one from Mireille, but such vagaries of the post were too commonplace to be a cause for concern.

  ‘No,’ said Louise. ‘But there’s a letter for you.’

  ‘A letter.’

  ‘Yes. It was posted through the door the night before last.’

  Her mother’s voice was displeased.

  ‘I hope you’re not getting mixed up with the wrong sort, Janine.’

  ‘Oh, maman!’ said Janine in exasperation. ‘Where is it?’

  They went into the living-room. Louise, of course, was right to some extent. A letter delivered anonymously in the night must have come through a subversive channel.

  It was addressed simply to Madame Simonian. Janine examined the seal.

  Her mother said, ‘It’s all right. It hasn’t been opened. Don’t think I didn’t want to but he wouldn’t let me.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of you, maman,’ said Janine. ‘I was checking if anyone official had been at it.’

  Now she ripped the envelope open and began to read the single sheet of paper it held.

  Madame Simonian,

  Monsieur Laurentin’s farmhand, Rom, who cannot read, has brought me your cards from the farmhouse. It is my sad duty to tell you that Monsieur Laurentin and his wife have been arrested on charges of terrorism. Their sons are being looked after by neighbours, but your children I regret to say were also taken into custody, I believe on the suspicion that they are Jewish. Since their arrest, I have been unable to discover anything further of their fate.

  Madame, if your family is not Jewish, I advise you to apply to the authorities, with all haste and with every written proof you can furnish, for the return of your children. If, however, you are Jewish, then all I can recommend is that you pray to your God, as I will surely do to mine, that He delivers them safely from this ordeal.

  It was signed by the curé of the local village.

  Janine read it once. Read it twice.

  Then she turned her stricken face to her mother and said, ‘Oh maman…’

  ‘Child, what is it? Oh God. Crozier!’

  She caught her daughter as she fell. Crozier came in from the bakehouse, wiping his hands on his apron, and froze in shock in the doorway.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he cried.

  ‘Shut up and help me. Quickly, quickly!’

  Together they eased Janine on to the sofa. Louise loosened her clothing and raised her feet on to a stool.

  ‘Fetch the smelling salts. And the brandy. And a blanket. Hurry.’

  Crozier rushed away, and, with her arm supporting Janine’s head, Louise read the letter.

  ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God,’ she said, letting the single sheet flutter to the floor.

  Her husband returned with the blanket and salts. She held the bottle under her own nose for a second before administering it to Janine, while Crozier draped the blanket over her. Then he stooped and picked up the letter.

  Through tear-filled eyes, Louise saw his pasty face go even whiter.

  ‘Where’s that brandy?’ she said sharply. ‘Can’t you do anything I ask?’

  He went out again. Janine coughed and rolled her head away from the salts. With consciousness came memory and she started to sob wildly.

  ‘There, there, child,’ said Louise, pulling her head on to her bosom. ‘It’ll be all right, you’ll see. It’s just a mistake, a dreadful mistake.’

  Crozier returned with the brandy bottle.

  ‘I’ve closed the shop,’ he said.

  ‘What’s to sell?’ said his wife. ‘Pour that brandy, will you? We all need it.’

  He poured three generous glasses. Louise downed hers in a single draught, but Janine shook her head and pushed the offered glass away. Freeing herself from her mother’s embrace, she sat upright, her gaze fixed on her father as if trying to force some reassurance from him. His face was full of love and pain as he said, ‘We’ll find them, never fear. We’ll take advice, get a lawyer, everything that can be done, we’ll do, don’t worry, we’ll find them…’

  And Louise, trying to fill out the hollowness of these words, chimed in, ‘I’ll go down to the Majestic myself and ask them what they think they’re doing, persecuting the families of honest citizens…’

  But Janine knew that they had moved beyond a world in which love, and shared pain, and protest, and promises, could deter monsters.

  Jumping up she cried, ‘I have to tell Jean-Paul. He’ll know what’s best.’

  ‘Wait!’ cried Louise.

  But it was no use. The young woman was already out of the room and next moment they heard the front door slam.

  Crozier turned to his wife. For a moment she looked ready once more to heap on his head blame for all that had happened, was happening and might happen in these terrible times. But when he put his arms around her, she did not speak or resist.

  How Janine got back to the flat in Clichy, she did not know. The meeting was still going on, but her entry was so sudden and violent that all talk stopped instantly. Jean-Paul, who’d been in mid-flow, regarded her with all his cold irritation at being interrupted. Henri tried to lighten the moment by saying, ‘God, you nearly gave me a heart attack, coming in like that.’

  She opened her mouth to speak. She believed almost superstitiously that if she could only present the facts rationally then a rational solution must be possible. But all that came out was a torrent of sobs in which all rational explanation was drowned.

  Jean-Paul, his face twisted with alarm, took her in his arms but this only made things worse. It took Henri’s unconscious imitation of her mother - ‘Brandy! Fetch some brandy!’ - to give her a focus for her chaotic emotions. Her parents loved their grandchildren enough to die for them, but they lacked the knowledge, the experience, the expertise, to help them live. These men, Henri, Christian, and above all Jean-Paul, were intimately acquainted with the world that was trying to destroy Pauli and Céci. They devoted their lives to fighting it. Here if anywhere she would find help.

  Pushing herself away from her husband’s embrace and this time accepting the brandy glass Henri offered her, she told them what had happened as baldly as she could.

  Jean-Paul seized the letter and read it with a scowling intensity.

  Henri swore softly.

  ‘The bastards, I heard they’d blitzed the Maquis down there last month. Didn’t you know that your cousin was…I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to suggest…’

  ‘It’s all right, Henri. No, I didn’t know. Mireille said that Lucien dropped them the odd sack of potatoes. If I’d thought there was any real risk, do you think I’d have…’

  She was close to sobbing again. She took a deep breath. Valois took her hand.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ he assured her. ‘They’re running out of time. The invasion force will go through France like a knife through butter, you’ll see.’

  ‘But if they’ve been sent to Germany…’

  ‘They won’t have fuel and transport to spare to send kids to Germany,’ he said.

  She looked to Jean-Paul for confirmation of this theory.

  He said bleakly, ‘They had fuel and transport for my mother.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ protested Christian angrily.

  Henri took his arm and gestured with his head towards the door. Simonian caught the gesture and said, ‘No. Don’t go. We’ll go through here. But wait.’

  He took Janine’s hand and led her through into the bedroom.

  They sat on the bed and for a minute or more simply held each other in silence. She was the first to break it.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ she asked. ‘Should we go straight to Lyon?’

  ‘To Lyon?’ He sounded as if the suggestion surprised him.

  ‘Yes. That’s where they’re likely to be, isn’t it?’

  ‘Perhaps. But they could be anywhere. We don’t even know how long it’s been. There are plenty of camps. They could even be back in Drancy by now.’

  ‘Dran
cy?’ Her eyes lit up with sudden hope. Drancy was vile but it was close. And she’d already got them out of there once.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll check,’ he said, with the quick confidence she’d been looking for. ‘And I’ll get word out to the network in Lyon to see if they can find anything.’

  ‘You don’t think we should go there then?’

  ‘Jan, the invasion’s just about to start, there’s going to be chaos…’

  She drew away from him now and said incredulously, ‘You’re not saying that you’re going to be too busy to look for your children?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid!’ he said angrily. ‘What I’m saying is, the Boche will be expecting an upturn in Resistance activity and by Christ they’re going to get it. But it’ll mean a clamp-down on travel, a tightening of security checks. Anyone vaguely suspicious is bound to be taken in. That’s probably all that’s happened to Pauli and Céci. Or some kind of protective custody. Who’s to look after them now that the Laurentins have been arrested? It could just be some bureaucratic thing.’

  ‘The letter said that Mireille’s own kids weren’t taken, just ours,’ said Janine. ‘Why should the authorities be so concerned about Pauli and Céci?’

  She was trying to stop herself from growing angry. She was trying to tell herself that these apparent irrelevances were all part of that rational process which she had convinced herself was so desirable. But they still sounded like empty consolations.

  ‘The letter! Some senile country priest taking dictation from some half-witted peasant. No, let’s find out what’s really happened first.’ Jean-Paul was sounding angry too. What was his anger concealing? Her mind reached for a solution, found one, didn’t like it, tried to draw back from it.

  ‘Jean-Paul,’ she said quietly. ‘What are you going to do?’

  No longer we. You.

  He turned to her, took her head in his hands and looked straight into her eyes.

  ‘Jan, I’m going to do everything possible, believe me,’ he said with a fierce intensity. ‘And one thing you can be certain of, if any harm comes to the children, the bastards who did it, or allowed it to be done, will pay a thousand times over.’