Any Human Heart

by William Boyd

  As I left the mairie and walked home through the village I felt all eyes were on me, as if I were living in Sicily, dealing with some dark tale of Mafia murders and cover-ups and undying vows of omertà. For the first time since I’ve come here I contemplate moving on.

  Brilliant, ravishing sunsets marred by the perfect horizontal contrails of high-altitude jets.

  Gabrielle and I formulate our plan. The plaque will be cleaned and restored and will be replaced with as much ostentation as possible. Then at night, after it has gone back on the wall, I will hide up in the small wood opposite the gates and observe the comings and goings. Gabrielle protests – I can see she’s thinking: you’re far too old for all this – but I’ll hear nothing of it. Between midnight and 2.00 a.m. should be sufficient. I’m confident we will catch the culprits – but what then?

  This afternoon I found an ideal place behind a thick clump of brambles that gave me a good view of the gates, about thirty yards away across the road. I laid down a plastic groundsheet and hid half a bottle of brandy under a fallen tree. It’s dark by 9.30 or 10.00 at this time of the year3 and the minimal temperature is forecast to be about 8 or 9 degrees. I’ll wrap up well.

  *

  The first night – nothing to report. In fact it was rather magical being out in the woods after midnight. It was a cool night but I stayed warm with the help of little burning sips of Cognac from time to time. I felt no tiredness: the adrenalin keeping me awake and alert. As a rudimentary weapon I had an old poker with me from the fire at home – not that I intended to use it, but it was reassuring, none the less. The woods were full of movement – crunchings, rustlings – and at one stage I was convinced there was someone walking around somewhere behind me. I was aware of a large presence parting the branches, pushing through the undergrowth, but I realized after a while it must have been a deer. Between midnight and 2 o’clock I counted seven cars and two motorbikes and the last half-hour was dead quiet. I could feel my old heart leap with excitement every time I saw the wash of lights from a car illuminate the trees. I remembered when I had felt like this before: my night drop into Switzerland in ‘44 – a few months before Benoit Verdel liberated Sainte-Sabine.

  When I came home both Bowser and Hodge were waiting for me in the hall – agitated and irritated at my unorthodox behaviour. Hodge refused to let me stroke her, she was in such a sulk.

  I called Gabrielle to report. Again she asked me to forget it: Logan, please, I don’t care what they do – I’ll just keep replacing it, they’ll get tired of their game. I said I would carry on for a few more nights. I think my sense of outrage is exacerbated by the affection I feel for this place where I’ve made my home – I can’t believe that a little cancer of spite and vindictiveness can corrupt our community in this way, a community that is as tolerant, generous and long-suffering as any I’ve encountered. I want to know who it is in Sainte-Sabine who is so ashamed of the past that he (or she?) will attempt this symbolic besmirching of a good man’s name. We shall see.

  The second night. Slightly colder with a light wind that set up a constant shushing and shifting in the treetops. Only four cars and a white van. I finished my Cognac. Bowser and Hodge did not deign to welcome me back.

  Lunched with Gabrielle. She has a kind of melancholy beauty, with her long face and her perfectly white skin. I don’t know how the subject arose, but she told me a little more about her marriage. Gilles Dupetit was older than her and had been married twice before but, as she put it, ‘he was intellectually incapable of fidelity’. The marriage had been short and she had resolved, she said, never to put herself in a position where she could be hurt in that way again. That’s why she is so upset by this new anguish that Sainte-Sabine has visited upon her. I chided her gently, reminding her that you can’t make these unilateral pacts with life. You can’t say: that’s it, my emotions are securely locked away, now I’m impregnable, safe from the world’s cruelties and disappointments. Better to take them on, come what may, I said, see what strength you have within you. Was I mistaken but, when we kissed goodbye, was the pressure of her cheek on mine just a little firmer? Am I falling a little in love with Gabrielle Dupetit? I try to imagine her naked – that pale body, those soft breasts…You old fool, Mountstuart, you old fool.

  It happened just after 1 a.m. I was beginning to feel tired – three late nights in a row was too much for me and I felt my body stiffening up in protest. Suddenly I saw a flare of headlights from a car moving unusually slowly. Then it stopped and I heard the sound of a diesel engine idling for a few seconds and then it cut out and the lights were switched off. Soon I heard a mutter of voices and the sound of footsteps coming along the road towards the gate. It was not a dark night – there was enough moonglow to cast a faint shadow. I saw two men walking along the road, one of them carrying a bulky object in his hand. The first man took up a position of guard in the middle of the road, watching for oncoming lights, while the second approached the plaque. Too late, I realized what he was going to do, but I rose to my feet, poker in hand, and blundered out of the bushes, switching on my torch and shouting, ‘Right! I’ve got you! Stop what you’re doing! I’m calling the police!’ The one on the road began to advance on me threateningly but the man by the plaque said, ‘Stop. Leave him.’ I shone my torch in his face – I thought I recognized the voice. It was Lucien Gorce, my friend and neighbour. He had just painted a black swastika on Benoit Verdel’s memorial.

  MEMORANDUM ON BENOIT VERDEL4

  Benoit Verdel deserted from the French Army in October 1939 and joined the criminal underworld in Paris, where, with a certain Valentin M., he was involved in the running of a brothel in the 1er arrondissement. As the German armies approached Paris in the summer of 1940, Verdel joined the tens of thousands of refugees fleeing southwards, where he planned to make for Bordeaux and then the Spanish frontier. In the event he reached no further than Villeneuve-sur-Lot and later took up residence in Sainte-Sabine, where he briefly worked as a farm labourer. With France divided and the Germans secure in the north, there seemed no further need to run and Verdel decided to stay put – and also renew his former profession. He rented a house in Sainte-Sabine and opened it as a maison de tolérance, staffing it with four prostitutes recruited from Agen and Toulouse. It was shut down on the orders of the Mayor of Sainte-Sabine, Léon Gorce, with the backing of other local dignitaries – the curé (Monsieur Lasseque) and the doctor (Dr Belhomme). Verdel was ordered to leave the village and the girls returned to their respective cities.

  Nothing more was heard of Verdel until 6 June 1944, when, arriving in the main square of Sainte-Sabine with six other armed men, he declared the village liberated, on the orders of General Charles de Gaulle, and under the command and control of Resistance group ‘Renard’. The mayor, Monsieur Gorce, the curé, Monsieur Lasseque, and Dr Belhomme were arrested on suspicion of collaboration with the German occupying powers and were taken to a farm some miles off to be interrogated. On the night of 7 June all three were executed – shot in the head – and were buried in a nearby wood.

  In the confusion of the last months of the war Verdel effectively ran Sainte-Sabine and its commune as his personal fiefdom. Evidence of his ruthlessness kept the population both compliant and silent. Verdel used his power and his muscle to grow rich and bought a sizeable property outside the village, La Sapinière, where, in 1946, he installed his new wife.

  However, in early 1947 a suit was filed against Verdel for murder by the sisters of Dr Belhomme and he was arrested and sent to Bordeaux gaol to await trial. Verdel was arraigned before a military tribunal and the trial lasted a full week and was extensively reported in the local press. Details of the exploits of the ‘Renard’ group were vague but Verdel’s defence was emphatic: that the three men had been collaborators and that orders issued by de Gaulle before the invasion encouraged maquisards to spare no efforts in bringing those who had given aid to the Germans to justice. What he had done in Sainte-Sabine was repeated throughout France – he was simply
following orders. Verdel was found guilty and sentenced to eight years in prison, of which he served five before being released on good behaviour.

  He never returned to Sainte-Sabine but on his release joined his family in Paris, where, over the next few years, he built up a successful business in the import-export trade. He died in 1971, a wealthy man.

  The other man with Lucien Gorce that night was a nephew of Dr Belhomme. The two of them took me back to my house and explained something of the background to the Verdel story. I went to Bordeaux on Lucien’s advice and spent a day in the archives of the Sud-Ouest newspaper. I wrote up my account of the trial and gave a copy of it, with huge regret, to Gabrielle. I didn’t stay to witness her reaction.

  But the next day the plaque had been removed and, shortly after, when I passed the house I saw it had been closed up. The caretakers said they had no idea when Madame Dupetit planned to return. I wrote to Gabrielle in Paris, saying that I was sorry that I had to be the one to tell her the true story about her father’s life but that the truth about Benoit Verdel should have no bearing on her relationship with me and vice versa. She hasn’t replied, so far.

  I also went to see Yannick Lefrère-Brunot and apologized for my presumption and impulsiveness. He was very gracious and said that as far as he was concerned the matter was closed. But as the days have gone by I feel a hot little shame myself – that I didn’t trust my instincts and presupposed a malice and venality in these people who had been so cordial and welcoming to me. Christ knows what myths Verdel had spun to his family about his war experience. His wife must have colluded in the mendacity, allowing him to turn his prison sentence into years of fortune-seeking abroad as far as his children were to be concerned. And Gabrielle too thought her father an unassuming hero, self-effacing and traumatized by his experiences. And yet he barely suffered for the murders he committed or for the reign of terror and extortion he instigated in Sainte-Sabine. I can understand the massive affront that Gabrielle’s memorial would have given to someone like Lucien Gorce. I apologized to him also. No fool like an old fool, I said. Lucien forgave me and poured me a small glass of eau-de-vie that he had made himself – it went down my throat like molten pumice. Then he said: there are things in life we don’t understand, and when we meet them, all we can do is let them alone. Sounds reasonable.

  Milau-Plage. Hôtel des Dunes. I’m later this year and the place is quieter, the beach virtually empty on weekdays, even when the sun is shining. I spend too much of my time, more often than not, musing on my folly over Gabrielle and her father’s memorial. I wrote again and still have received no reply. Reading Montaigne for solace. I think I can forgive myself and I think Gabrielle Dupetit was the last (unrequited) love of my life. I wanted to be the knight errant and expose evil and hypocrisy. At least it sounds like a young man’s dementia rather than a senile one’s.

  Storms looming. Massive anvil clouds to the north: brilliant, gleaming white at their summit shading down through mouse-grey to vein-blue to a dark, bruised grey-purple.

  The pleasures of my life here are simple – simple, inexpensive and democratic. A warm hill of Marmande tomatoes on a roadside vendor’s stall. A cold beer on a pavement table of the Café de France – Marie Thérèse inside making me a sandwich au camembert. Munching the knob off a fresh baguette as I wander back from Sainte-Sabine. The farinaceous smell of the white dust raised by a breeze from the driveway. A cuckoo sounding in the perfectly silent woods beyond the meadow. The huge grey, cerise, pink, orange and washed-out blue of a sunset seen from my rear terrace. The drilling of the cicadas at noon – the soft dialling-tone of the crickets as dusk slowly gathers. A good book, a hammock and a cold, beaded bottle of blanc sec. A rough red wine and steak frites. The cool, dark, shuttered silence of my bedroom – and, as I go to sleep, the prospect that all this will be available to me again, unchanged, tomorrow.

  On Monday I went into the barn to fetch more logs. I should have used the wheelbarrow but instead loaded myself up with a good armful. I was bending down to pick up just one more when I felt a spearing electric pain shaft through my left side, as if my armpit had been run through by a blunt, serrated-edged sword. The pain then ran down my arm, making my hand and fingers fizzle and numb with acute pins and needles. I dropped the logs and reeled back against the wall and I felt my vision darken and I heard a curious sound, a murmuring in my ears like a restless congregation. And then the pain receded and the feeling returned to my fingers.

  Dr Roisanssac said I had had a minor heart attack. He had me off to hospital in Agen for checks and I spent two days there in a room of my own (free) being monitored and examined by a seemingly endless flow of doctors. All appeared more or less back to normal. The doctors said there was nothing more that a man of my age could do other than avoid any undue strain or physical exertion. I didn’t smoke any more, my diet was fine, I wasn’t obese but there was no viable operation they could offer – at my age, again – that would ameliorate my state of affairs. Prudence was to be my watchword. And so Norbert drove me back to Sainte-Sabine and my new watchful, softly-softly life began.

  As he grew old, all Montaigne asked for was an old age free from dementia – he could cope with pain and suffering and general ill-health. And he did, experiencing terrible agonies in his final years from gallstones. Pain was no problem as long as his mind was lucid. I always thought it would be my brain that would carry me off, some morbid legacy of my encounter with that speeding post office van, but it appears more likely that it will be my heart.

  Didier Roisanssac said this to me at my last examination: look at your face in the mirror, he said, it’s not the same face you had at eighteen, or twenty-five, or thirty-two. Look at the lines and the creases. Look at the lack of elasticity. Your hair is falling out (‘And my teeth,’ I added). You still recognize that face – it’s still you – but it’s lived a long time and it’s showing the signs of that long life. Think of your old heart like your old face. Your heart doesn’t look the same organ as it did when it was eighteen. Imagine that everything that’s happened to your face over the years has happened to your heart. So go easy on it.

  The springing, young green of the elms. Rooks (and magpies), the most nervily cautious of birds. I open my front door and, half a mile away, they take to the air in agitated fright – the rooks cawing alarm, alarm.

  I came through this morning and I knew at once something was wrong. Hodge was sitting on the mantelpiece, immobile. She’s never climbed up there before but it was as if she wished to be as far from the ground as possible. Bowser was still sleeping in his basket. ‘Get up, you lazy old bugger,’ I said and went to shake him. But he was dead of course – I didn’t even need to touch him to know it.

  I experienced a form of grief so intense and pure I thought it would kill me. I howled like a baby with my dog in my arms. Then I put him in a wooden wine case and carried him into the garden and buried him under a cherry tree.

  He’s only an old dog, I tell myself, and he lived a full and happy dog’s life. But what makes me unutterably sad is that with him gone – so the love in my life has gone. It may sound stupid, but I loved him and I know he loved me. That meant there was an uncomplicated traffic of mutual love in my life and I find it hard to admit that it’s over. Listen to me babble, but it’s true – it’s true. And, at the same time, I know a part of my sorrow is just disguised self-pity. I needed that exchange and I worry how I’ll cope without it and whether I can replace it – if only it were as easy as buying a new dog. I feel very sorry for myself – that is what grief is.

  HÔTEL DES DUNES. MILAU-PLAGE

  I lunched at the hotel today: half a dozen oysters, turbot, tarte au citron. I drank two thirds of a bottle of Sancerre, then I snoozed on my bed for an hour or so before I gathered up my notebook and stick and Panama hat and made my way slowly up the duckboard path through the dunes to the beach.

  It is busy – but not high-season busy. I plant myself at my table, order a beer (what’s the name of the girl
who runs this bar?) and watch the people come and go. Later, when the sun’s heat has diminished somewhat, I go for a stroll.

  I walk among the holidaymakers and the families noting all the motley types Homo sapiens manages to produce. There are as many versions of the basic human body – head, torso, two arms, two legs – as there are versions of the basic human face – two eyes, two ears, nose, mouth. As I pick my way amongst the sunbathers I feel I am moving through a mass of incredibly unconcerned refugees. All the fritter of their individual lives is here – clothes, food, toys, reading matter – and they look, in their state of lounging undress, as if they were deprived in some vague way – that this was all they had in the world – and they were waiting for some refugee commissar or charity organization to tell them where to go next. And yet the mood on the beach contradicted this initial impression – the atmosphere is one of collective idleness rather than fear and unease. The people here participate unreflectingly in the beach’s genial democracy and for an hour or so, for a day or so, the fates waiting for them all up ahead are forgotten. The beach is the great human panacea.

  Most of the people cluster around the beach shacks and the flags marking the plage surveillée as if they are frightened to explore further, as if they need this mass proximity to truly relax. Yet wander a little further and you can have a hundred yards of sand to yourself. This is where the nudists come and as I walk slowly northwards (towards the Channel, towards Pudding Island) a girl rises to her feet from a group of sunbathers and saunters down towards the surf – a long way off now, as the tide is ebbing fast. She is quite naked and as our respective courses intersect she pauses, turns and shouts something (in Dutch) to her friends. She has small pointed breasts and a dense clump of pubic hair. Her tan is complete, opaque brown all over. She continues on without a glance at me, this old man in his cream suit. Two worlds collide at this moment, it seems to me – mine and the future. Who could have imagined that such an encounter would have been possible on a beach in my lifetime? I find it quite exhilarating: the old writer and the naked Dutch girl – perhaps we need a Rembrandt to do it full justice (remember the Hôtel Rembrandt in Paris where I used to stay?). For some reason I find myself wondering what Cyril [Connolly] would have made of such a meeting had it happened to him: delighted incredulity? Or confusion? No, I think serene pleasure –which is what I feel as I plod onward, grateful to this unknown girl with her guileless nakedness. Grateful that the beach should offer me these possibilities, these modest epiphanies.