The rabbit at his first snare was still alive. He didn’t enjoy finishing them off, but it was a necessary evil. He grabbed this one with both hands, pulled the neck and gave it a sharp twist. It broke with a satisfying crunch. By the time the bell rang for morning lessons, school was a distant memory.
ii
Romy never set an alarm. Why should he, with his mother always there to wake him? His first thought when she came in was for Arianne. His second was that the light streaming in through his windows – he always slept with his shutters open – was brighter than it should be.
‘It’s half-past seven.’ His mother’s voice was not much more than a whisper, the result of twenty-five years of marriage to his father. ‘There’s no school today. I would have let you sleep, but your father wants to talk to you when he’s finished opening the mill.’
‘Oh God.’ Romy’s heart sank. ‘What does he want now?’
She set about tidying his room, a pointless task because he would only untidy it when she was gone. He liked his things to be just so, but had learned from long experience that it was pointless telling her. She moved from the collection of birds’ eggs on his mantelpiece to his desk.
‘Don’t look at those! he cried. She was holding his latest poems, his hopeless attempts at a sonnet to Arianne. ‘Give them to me!’
She must be bad today, he thought, as his mother tucked his handwritten pages into a physics textbook, stacking that with a pile of detective novels.
‘There was an accident last night.’ She looked at him at last with troubled eyes. The last light had left them when his brothers left. The shadow of her latest bruise was still visible beneath her cheekbone. ‘They’re saying there was a bomb on the railway track, a train came off the rails. An awful lot of people died. I think he wants to talk to you about that.’
She would have stayed to help him dress if he had let her. He had to push her out of the room and even then he could hear her hovering outside his door. He limped over to his wardrobe. He would visit Arianne later, once the boring business with his father was over, and he wanted to look his best.
He finished dressing and opened his window. The saws down at the mill were running. His father would be home soon. People would be pressing him for answers, and he would be squeezing his informants, including his son, for information. Jo Dulac never cared too much about the truth of the reports he gave. The Milice needed guilty verdicts as surely as murderers needed victims. It didn’t really matter who paid the price, as long as somebody did. The ghost of an idea began to form in Romy’s mind, but he threw it out at once.
Joan of Arc would never betray one of her own.
iii
‘So what happens now?’
One of the new privates, just out of school by the look of him, sat by Alois Grand’s side, huddled in a blanket. The bandage wrapped around his head in the early hours by an overwrought medic was already slipping down over his eye, making him look even younger. He pushed it back up with an impatient gesture and bit his lip as he surveyed the makeshift camp the Captain’s men had set up a hundred yards from the railway line in the aftermath of the explosion.
‘Why are we still here?’ he asked.
‘We’re waiting.’ Alois was skinning a rabbit and did not look up as he replied.
‘But why us? There were thousands of men on that train. They all left in trucks this morning. Those who weren’t dead.’
‘I think you’ll find the dead went in those trucks as well. Or didn’t you see them?’
The young man shuddered at the memory – the worst of the wounded loaded into ambulances on stretchers, the dead thrown into closed trucks wrapped in makeshift shrouds. He stuck out his chin, stubbornly.
‘Why are we still here?’ he repeated.
‘Mind yourself.’ Alois held the rabbit up by its ears and slit it from breast to arse. Blood and innards spilled out, splashing the young man’s boots. ‘Captain caught these this morning,’ he said. ‘There’s not a lot stops the Captain from going hunting. Not even something like last night. Even in Russia, he hunted most mornings.’
The private’s name was Jonas Bucher. His literature professor at school had had a secret fondness for the Russian nineteenth-century novel, and shared his enthusiasm with a few selected students. He found that he could quite easily imagine the Captain galloping on horseback across a frozen steppe. Jonas had no love of army life, but he couldn’t deny that men like the Captain gave it a certain frisson.
‘I would love to see Russia,’ he sighed.
Alois Grand’s eyes, as black as the Captain’s were blue, fixed him with their famous stare. ‘Aye, well.’ He shrugged, and turned his attention back to the rabbits. ‘Reckon Russia’d be nice enough without a bloody great war in the middle of it.’
He roasted the meat on skewers pulled from his kitbag, and they ate it sandwiched between pieces of French bread, washed down with thin coffee. The Captain returned at the wheel of an Army jeep just as they were finishing, a nervous-looking man in French Milice uniform at his side and two armed privates in the back.
‘Got us a little investigation in the area,’ he called out to Alois. ‘Orders from on high.’
Alois Grand grunted. Jonas Bucher looked at him in surprise. The big man’s fists were clenched, his knuckles white.
‘I need a fluent French speaker. Preferably one who can drive as well.’
‘I speak French!’ Jonas Bucher scrambled to his feet and saluted. His bandage slipped down again over his eye.
‘Climb aboard then, soldier!’ The Captain laughed and leaned out to pluck the bandage from Jonas’s head. ‘Can’t have an invalid driving me.’
Alois closed his hand over the open window of the jeep. He had a fleeting vision of himself immobilising it, locked in an eternal battle of wills with the Captain.
He cleared his throat. His mouth was dry. ‘When do we head north?’ he asked.
‘All in good time,’ said the Captain. ‘How was the rabbit?’
Alois let go of the car.
‘We saved you some,’ he muttered.
‘I’m not hungry. You know it’s the sport I like,’ said the Captain. He tossed his head at the French milicien, indicating he should get into the back. ‘When you’re ready, soldier.’
The Captain waved as the jeep leaped forward. Alois wiped his skewers on a cloth and announced that he was going to wash.
*
A stream ran amongst the trees. He followed its course upriver until the incline steepened and he came to a place where a pool had formed. He fell to one knee, plunged his hands into the water and splashed his face several times before standing again to undress.
He had jarred his shoulder in the crash and winced as he unbuttoned his shirt. Somewhere behind him a twig snapped and he whirled round to face the noise, pulling his revolver from its holster. Another snap, and he caught sight of the rear end of a doe. The gun returned to its holster. Alois dropped to his knees.
Clara loved the river back home, even when it was raining and the mist hid it from view. She could walk for hours, pressed up against him under an umbrella, guessing at the silhouettes of the container ships sailing inland from the North Sea.
‘Did you see it? Wasn’t it amazing?’
‘Amazing.’
The memory felt more like a dream. He hadn’t seen the point then of ships one could not see but now, closer to home than he had been for years, he was beginning to understand. Something to do, he thought, with faith and with believing.
Birdsong, the gurgling of the stream, a breeze rustling the forest canopy. Alois Grand hugged his knees to his chest and closed his eyes, opened them and thought he caught a glimpse of something, a woman’s dress, a sheet of white blonde hair. He thought he heard her call and turned his head in the direction of the sound. Somewhere in the forest, a bird’s cry made a mockery of his imaginings.
It was not Clara. How could it have been? Alois lay full length on the bank of moss and plunged his head into the
icy stream. Water tumbled on to the back of his neck. He closed his eyes and didn’t come up until he saw stars.
iv
Any minute his father would be home. Romy checked his reflection in the mirror. He liked the way the new hairdresser in town had cut his hair so that it swept in a wing across his forehead. His horn-rimmed glasses made him look intellectual rather than plain short-sighted, and his best shirt, with only one small mend under the collar, was crisp and freshly laundered. Compared to most of the youth of Samaroux, he was positively foppish.
A door slammed downstairs, followed by the sound of footsteps. Romy leaped away from the mirror. His bedroom door flew open.
‘Where were you last night?’ His father never did waste time with preliminaries.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘After curfew.’
‘Nowhere.’
‘Don’t give me nowhere. I heard you come in, the racket you made. Where were you?’
‘Walking.’
‘Where?’
‘In the woods.’
‘Why?’
‘It was nice. It was . . . poetic.’
‘Bleeding poetic!’ His father’s fist shot out and cuffed him round the ear. ‘You look like a pansy with your hair like that.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Where were you?’
‘I told you, in the woods. This conversation . . .’
‘Where? When? Why?’
‘. . . is going round in circles.’
‘I’ll give you circles.’
Romy smirked. A mistake. His father stepped closer. Nostrils flared, he looked like a bull about to charge. Romy took a step back.
‘I want to be proud of you, son.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And you do know what happened last night? Your mother told you?’
‘Yes, sir!’
‘And you heard nothing, on your poetic walk? Nothing that made you think, that’s a bit odd? Nothing you think the people investigating this incident – they will investigate, you know they will – might consider interesting?’
His second’s falter was enough. Jo grabbed him by the wrist.
‘You know something.’
‘You’re hurting me!’
‘I’ll hurt you a whole lot more if you don’t tell me what it is.’
‘It’s nothing . . . Ow!’
Romy staggered towards the bed, nursing his wrist. Jo leaned against the doorframe, waiting.
‘You know what’ll happen if you don’t say.’
No, thought Romy, I don’t know. I don’t know if you will beat me or take it out on Mother, use the horsewhip or your fists. I don’t know if you will lock me in the cellar or in my room. He remembered Arianne’s voice last night – proud, full of unshed tears – and stood a little taller. He might hate Luc and fear his father, but he would never betray her.
His father pushed himself away from the door and began to walk across the room. Romy shrank.
It wasn’t even as if he knew that much. Could he say just a little, enough to appease his father?
‘Well?’ asked his father.
‘I heard a quarrel,’ whispered Romy.
‘What about?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Who was it?’
‘It was just a man, I mean a boy. And a girl.’ He fell silent. His father sighed.
‘Tell me this isn’t about Arianne Lafayette? Don’t waste my time.’
Romy fixed a point on the floor just short of his father’s boots.
‘Girl like her, she’s never even going to know you exist. And do you know why?’
Perhaps, if he blinked, the tear collecting in the corner of his eye would not run down the length of his nose as it was threatening to do.
‘Because you’re a loser. A pathetic, useless human being. What were you doing? Listening at her window, hoping to hear her at it with her lover?’
The tear exploded into a circle on the floor. Others followed. He did not dare look up.
‘What was the quarrel about?’
Still Romy stared at the floor. He steeled himself for blows, but none came. He heard the door open. ‘Don’t leave your room.’
Romy drew his knees into his chest and wept.
v
Today was supposed to be as normal as possible, wasn’t that what Luc had said? So why hadn’t he come home last night? He would be all right – wouldn’t he? She had no proof that the train crash was his doing. She tried to recall his exact words. Two men. I have to meet them and hide them. Not, I have to blow up a train. Would he have told her, if that had been the case? And did he even know how to blow up a train? What if . . .
Arianne howled and shook her head to dispel images of Luc captured, Luc wounded, Luc lying dead somewhere in the forest. Luc was probably at Lascande, so carried away by his own heroism he didn’t see the point in coming home. Unless it was her fault, for not being nicer to him . . . She threw off the apron she had donned to placate Elodie before she left, grabbed a basket and braced herself to go out. Doubts assailed her as she opened the front door. What if Luc were to come while she was out? Would he wait? She should leave him a note. But saying what? And surely a note smacked of desperation? She compromised by leaving a notepad and pencil in the middle of the kitchen table, and the back door unlocked. If he came, he could leave her a note! And she wouldn’t be long if she managed to avoid the queues.
Perhaps, she thought hopefully as she walked towards the shops, it was all a mistake. Perhaps, trying to clear his mind after the night’s activities, he had gone for a run in the woods this morning. He often did that when there wasn’t school. It was perfectly possible that he had slipped out without waking his mother, and not returned before she left for morning church. Probably right now he was home, eating breakfast, planning to come and find her. Possibly he was going to apologise and tell her he had changed his mind about leaving tonight.
She tried not to look for him too obviously, but strained to catch a glimpse of him from the corner of her eye. No sign, and though she had not expected one, she was disappointed. She picked up the dried split peas Elodie wanted at the general stores, toyed with the idea of running home then shrugged and joined the butcher’s queue.
A hand tapped her on the shoulder. She whirled around, but her face fell at the sight of her cousin.
‘No class.’ Solange beamed. ‘So good.’
‘So good,’ Arianne assented.
‘The parents are being awfully gloomy about the whole business, but I was thinking about a picnic. What do you think? Will you come with Luc? I’ll try and gather a bunch of jolly people.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Ah, go on! You two never do things with the rest of us!’
‘This queue’s taking forever.’
‘Ari, are you all right?’
Arianne’s face crumpled.
‘Something’s wrong,’ said Solange.
‘We just had a fight.’
‘But you two are OK? I mean, if you two aren’t OK . . .’
Gaspard Félix appeared at the door of his shop to announce he had run out of meat. The queue dispersed, muttering.
‘He promised Auntie an andouillette. She’s been waiting ages.’
‘Sneak round the back of the shop when everyone’s gone. We don’t have to do the picnic, you know. We can just spend the afternoon together if you’d rather, just the two of us. It’s ages since we did that.’
‘No, have your picnic.’
Solange looked hurt. Arianne kissed her and she brightened. ‘Shall I call round anyway, in case you want to come?’
‘Do that . . .’ Arianne trailed off. Teresa Belleville had just stepped out of the baker’s shop further up the street. ‘I have to go.’
She called out as she drew closer, but either Luc’s mother did not hear or she did not want to talk. By the time Arianne reached her house, the door was already shut.
There was no point asking her anyway. It did
n’t matter if Luc was home or not. She would stick to her guns. If he wanted her, he could come and get her himself.
*
Father Julien sat with Jarvis outside the Café du Commerce, wishing the mayor would stop asking difficult questions.
‘It had nothing to do with anyone in the village, nothing at all,’ he repeated.
‘Who, then?’
‘What are you so worried about?’
‘What am I worried about?’ The mayor stared at the old priest incredulously. ‘Didn’t you hear about what happened at Tulle? The reprisals there?’
‘That was a completely different situation. There was a battle, hand-to-hand combat.’
‘They hanged over a hundred people. From lamp posts. As your mayor, I am ordering you to tell me what this village’s involvement was with last night’s explosion.’
‘I’ve already told you. Nothing.’
‘I know you’re hiding something.’
Father Julien sighed. ‘Léon, as your oldest friend, believe me when I say you know all you need to know. The men who blew up the tracks came from a different region altogether. By tonight, they will have left the area. They are nowhere in the village. The explosion took place ten kilometres from here, there is nothing to link it to us. As mayor of this village, it behoves you to keep calm. It would do no good at all if people saw you panic, no good at all.’
‘So what was your involvement? Why would you even know about any of this, if it had nothing to do with you?’
The old priest shifted in his chair.
‘Julien?’ said the mayor. ‘I know you’re hiding something, and I know you’re worried.’
‘I was asked to send someone to see them safe.’
‘Oh for pity’s sake!’
‘This is important work, Léon!’ Father Julien leaned forward in his chair and clutched Jarvis’s sleeve. ‘Anything which slows the progress of German troops towards the north . . . This is our time, don’t you see? Now is when we must draw on our reserves of courage, strike down the enemy in our land, stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies . . .’
The Things We Did for Love Page 9
