The Things We Did for Love

by Natasha Farrant

  ‘Who did you send?’ asked Jarvis.

  ‘You know I can’t . . .’

  ‘Who?’ hissed Jarvis.

  ‘Luc Belleville,’ muttered the priest.

  ‘That child! That impetuous, hot-headed . . .’

  ‘He is not as hot-headed as you think,’ said Father Julien. ‘I have been preparing him for months, and I believe he is ready.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  Father Julien said nothing.

  ‘Julien?’

  ‘He never came home this morning,’ admitted the old priest.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Jarvis. ‘Dear God and Christ Almighty.’

  Together they watched Teresa Belleville cross the market square.

  ‘Go and talk to her,’ said Jarvis.

  Father Julien grimaced as he drained his cup. He never would get used to the taste of chicory.

  ‘I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation,’ he said.

  ‘There had better be, my friend.’ Jarvis’s usually genial face was sombre. ‘For all our sakes, there had better be.’

  vi

  Romy obeyed his father, of course he did. When had he ever done anything but? He was still in his room and still moping when the Captain arrived, accompanied by the Milice officer and Jonas Bucher.

  He opened his window to listen as his mother went out to greet them. The Milicien, Officer Plondier, knew his parents well. He did the talking. The soldiers – a private and a captain, Romy recognised the uniforms – stood beside him. The private held a notepad and pen. The captain frowned as he followed the conversation.

  ‘We are looking for two men,’ said Plondier.

  ‘We’ve not seen anyone here.’

  ‘We need to talk to your husband.’

  The delivery boy was sent to the mill to fetch his father, who arrived minutes later. The Milicien introduced the officers and explained their visit. Last night’s explosion, two men seen running from the scene, no clues. They were investigating all the neighbouring villages. Could he help?

  The occupying army being hungry for wood, Jo Dulac had done well out of the war. Orders had doubled over the years of the Occupation and even if prices were lower and credit terms more awkward than he might like, he wasn’t complaining. His boys were earning real wages in a proper German factory and there was bread and meat on his table. He knew what people said about him in the village, but he didn’t care. War was war. What mattered was being on the right side, and if that meant landing others in it – well, they were asking for it anyway. He took a personal pride in always having an answer, but this morning’s interrogations of his usual spies had drawn a blank.

  ‘Gentlemen, I’m afraid I can’t help,’ he said, and Romy savoured his discomfiture – the way he held out his hands, so obviously the underdog! ‘I’ve heard of nothing last night but a teenage lovers’ tiff.’

  ‘Ah, young love.’ The Captain’s voice was gentle, his French accented but correct. ‘So painful.’

  Nobody seemed to know quite how to react to this. Romy smirked. The others looked away but the Captain was already walking back towards the jeep, settling himself in the passenger seat with every appearance of ennui.

  ‘We’ll be off then,’ said the younger man, also in French. ‘Sorry to have troubled you. Officer Plondier says you have been very helpful in the past.’

  Plondier shook Jo Dulac by the hand. ‘Could have been anyone,’ he muttered when the others were out of earshot. ‘We got no warning about this one. Don’t be fooled by that Captain, neither. We’ve been around every village in a fifteen-kilometre radius and he’s hopping mad. Frankly, it don’t matter who did it. Any old scapegoat will do.’

  ‘Look into it, Monsieur Dulac,’ called the Captain as the jeep moved off. ‘This lover’s tiff. You never know. A jilted lover is always – ah, my French is so rusty – like a loose cannon, I think that is the expression. I don’t care for cannons. Bring me news, shall we say, ah, before noon?’

  The jeep took off in a cloud of exhaust. Jo turned back towards the house. Up in his room, Romy grabbed his boots.

  ‘Romy!’

  If he was quick, he could clear the landing passage and be out of the back door before his father reached the top of the front staircase.

  ‘Romy!’

  Jo erupted on the landing and roared at the sight of the empty room. Romy was gone, flying down the back stairs as fast as his gammy leg allowed him. His mother’s bicycle was leaning against the wall. He seized it and leaped into the saddle.

  By the time his father burst out of the house, Romy was gone.

  vii

  The Captain’s men had moved on after breakfast, piled into a convoy of trucks which carted them and their salvageable material a few kilometres across country to the edge of a lake where they had come to another halt. Tailgates were lowered and men jumped down, scattering around the shore to smoke or stretch their legs. There was room in the truck now to lie back. Alois turned up his collar and closed his eyes, tilting his head to the sky. Sunlight warmed his face.

  Shadows over water, dawn breaking over the countryside, stars in the night sky above their cottage. The high notes of the flute she played so well.

  Clara. Her name meant light.

  The first time he saw her, she was standing with the sun behind her on the threshold of his forge, her dress a flimsy halo around her body, all long limbs and smooth curves, her features lost to the shadows. He blinked as she stepped into the forge and became more though not wholly ordinary, a fragile body in a simple dress, dark gold hair smoothed in the nape of her neck, the scent of bergamot and roses. ‘I’ve come about Frau Blume’s firescreen.’

  Her eyes were violet coloured, he saw.

  ‘You are Alois Grand, the blacksmith?’

  The screen was imitation Art Deco, black mesh with pewter flowers, copied from a picture of a country house her mother had shown him in a magazine. He had never made anything like it before.

  ‘You’re an artist.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’

  She ran her fingers over the mesh of the screen before tracing the contours of a wrought-iron tulip.

  ‘I wish I could make something like this.’

  ‘I could teach you if you like.’

  Nine years later, he still couldn’t believe he had said that. The thought of her in the forge! That hair streaked with sweat, those curves beneath a leather apron, that face reddened by work!

  ‘I would love that.’

  She smiled. He smiled back.

  *

  ‘What are you looking so happy about?’

  The Captain had returned. Alois ignored his question.

  ‘What do we do now?’ he asked.

  ‘We wait.’

  ‘What for?’ asked Jonas Bucher.

  The older men turned to stare at him.

  ‘For orders,’ said the Captain. ‘What else?’

  viii

  Arianne was in the garden collecting vegetables to cook with the knuckle of ham she had managed to extract from the butcher in lieu of the andouillette, when Father Julien appeared at the gate.

  ‘I am looking,’ he announced, ‘for Luc.’

  ‘Well, he’s not here.’

  ‘I’m a little worried he doesn’t seem to be anywhere.’

  ‘You’re worried? Don’t make me laugh.’

  ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean.’

  ‘There’s no point pretending.’ Arianne glared at him. ‘I know all about your little circus.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Father Julien walked over to sit on the garden bench, removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Arianne followed him, merciless.

  ‘Last night,’ she said. ‘The bomb.’

  ‘It’s best if we don’t talk about it.’

  ‘That’s rich.’

  ‘What did he tell you?’

  ‘Is he hurt?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Oh God!’ Arianne’s hands flew to her face. ‘He’s dead, I k
now he’s dead!’

  ‘This is disastrous,’ said Father Julien.

  Arianne jumped to her feet. ‘I have to go and look for him. I have to find him.’

  Father Julien gripped her by the wrist. ‘You have to stay here.’

  ‘How can I?’ she cried.

  ‘Think, Arianne! A hot-headed young man, well-known for his shame of his collaborationist grandfather, who makes a public scene at the arrest of a Jewish family and disappears days later, the morning after an explosion on the railway causes the death of numerous German soldiers? The Milice are already crawling all over the countryside. It won’t take them long to put two and two together.’

  ‘Just let me run to Lascande to see if he’s there,’ she pleaded.

  ‘No, Arianne! Do you think they won’t know about you? Do you think, when they find you roaming alone in the woods, they won’t know you are out looking for him, and use you to lead them to the men he is hiding?’

  ‘But they could find me here!’

  ‘Better that. I can protect you here. Now, I’ve spoken to his mother. Luc left last night on the last train to visit family in the south. She would have gone herself but she hasn’t been well. There was no time for him to say goodbye, we don’t know when he’ll be back. Is that clear?’

  ‘Luc hates his family in the south.’

  Father Julien tightened his grip on her wrist. ‘I said, is that clear?’

  There was no sign now of the jovial priest who had taken her to the Bellevilles’ party only a few weeks before. His ferocity might have seemed comical had she not been so afraid.

  ‘If Luc is hurt or killed, there is nothing you can do. They’ll be watching you. Believe me, they’re not stupid. Swear by Almighty God you will not go. If they have any reason to suspect anyone in this village, any reason at all, the consequences will be dire. Swear it!’

  Arianne sobbed. ‘I swear.’

  ‘Good.’ He hesitated as he prepared to go through the gate. ‘Faith and love, child. This is when we need to be strong.’ He drew the sign of the cross over her head and was gone.

  ix

  Jo Dulac didn’t go straight after his son. Instead he made a detour through the village and stopped to speak to Teresa Belleville.

  ‘He’s not here,’ she said when she came to the door.

  ‘Where is he, then?’

  ‘He’s gone south to visit family,’ she said calmly. ‘Not that it’s any of your business.’

  Like hell, thought Jo. He ran into a group of lads off for a game of football and asked if they had seen Luc, but none of them had. Solange Lafayette was sunning herself on the market square with some other girls. She told him nothing either, but her cool gaze faltered when he asked if she knew about the boy’s quarrel with her cousin.

  He pressed on to Arianne’s house but fell back when he saw her in the garden talking to Father Julien – he never had liked the priest, his way of looking at you as if your soul were on display. Jo had nothing to reproach himself with but still, a man’s soul was his own. The girl trudged back into the house when the priest was gone, and just by the way she walked he knew the boy wasn’t with her. Time was pressing on. He weighed up his chances – Arianne Lafayette or his son, who was more likely to squeal?

  There was no contest.

  *

  The fountain in the woods had been a gift to the parish from its priest in 1837. It boasted naked cherubs with broken harps, a faded statue of the Virgin Mary and a square pool at ground level, thick with weeds. Romy had never understood why a priest would donate a fountain, nor why having donated it he would choose it to be built such an impractical distance from the village.

  The bench beside the fountain was damp and the air was cold. His throat began to hurt, the legacy of an untreated bout of tonsillitis the previous winter. It wasn’t much of a hiding place, but he had run here often as a child to escape a beating and he couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. He closed his eyes and wondered – not for the first time – what would happen to him when he got home. He couldn’t think now what running away had achieved.

  ‘Useless.’

  So his father had found him.

  ‘Did you really think I wouldn’t remember this place?’

  ‘I didn’t think you cared,’ muttered Romy, but Jo had him by the ear and was dragging him towards the road.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

  ‘Your lover boy’s vanished,’ said Jo.

  ‘So?’

  ‘Stop messing about.’ Jo had brought his beloved pre-war Renault out for the occasion. He shoved Romy into the passenger seat and started the engine. ‘You wouldn’t have run if you didn’t know something.’

  The car broke down a few hundred yards short of where the Germans had set up their new camp beside the lake and they had to continue their journey on foot. Romy asked no more questions. He knew that in his father’s mind there was a dignity to a motorised entrance, even if the engine was powered by a wood-burning generator. What with Romy’s limp and the sweat rings flowering beneath his father’s armpits, turning up on foot just didn’t have the same authority.

  They had reached the Limoges road. From their vantage point higher up the hill, he could see an agglomeration of khaki vehicles and men in feldgrau uniforms. He was reminded, absurdly, of the summer camps he had so loathed as a child.

  ‘I suppose you think this is wrong.’ Jo Dulac came to stand beside his son. ‘Telling on a school friend. You want to do the brave and decent thing.’

  ‘Luc Belleville is not my friend,’ said Romy, ‘but I don’t understand what it is you think he’s done.’

  ‘He’s gone missing, that’s what he’s done. Look at you, standing up for your girl’s lover, all selfless and noble. Even if he hasn’t done anything yet, he will one day. So we shop him. They go after him and leave the rest of us alone.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to say to you. And even if I did, I’m not a grass.’

  ‘A grass?’

  Jo grabbed his son’s jaw and leaned into him, so close Romy could smell the sourness of his breath. ‘Is that what you think I am? Little coward. I fought in the last war. I’ve seen what people do to each other, given half the chance. Heard of Tulle, hero? They hanged a hundred civilians there last week, and sent another five hundred to the camps. I don’t grass, son, I contain. I give them what they want and stop the rot from spreading. You’ll do the same if you know what’s good for you.’

  ‘I don’t know where he is!’

  On Sunday I will go with you to Lascande. Something about the way she had said it. On Sunday. As opposed to now. Oh God.

  ‘You do know,’ said Jo. ‘I’ve never seen you look so guilty. And you’ll tell that Captain what he needs to know, even if I have to beat it out of you. If you make a fool of me now, I’ll kill you with my own hands.’

  They found the officer who had come that morning sitting on a fallen tree trunk by the edge of the forest, cleaning a rifle. A big man sat beside him, apparently writing a letter. Jo coughed. The Captain looked up and frowned.

  ‘Do I know you?’ he asked in French.

  He’s forgotten! Romy’s heart soared. He’s actually forgotten us!

  Jo cleared his throat again. He looked smaller here. He might have done better than others out of the war, but compared to the Captain and this colossus he looked as ragged as the rest of them. Even now he was tugging at the sleeve of his jacket, twisting it round to conceal the more obvious mend, the one which ran along the inside seam from his wrist all the way up to his elbow.

  ‘You came to us earlier,’ he said, and this time Romy winced at his obvious fawning. ‘I own the sawmill up at Samaroux. You asked me to investigate a quarrel. A lovers’ tiff?’ Spoken out loud, the words sounded ridiculous, but the Captain’s brow cleared in recognition.

  ‘Informant,’ he told the big man. Romy winced again. ‘Well?’

  ‘My son.’ Jo cleared his throat again. ‘My son overheard something.’

  Th
ey were all looking at him.

  ‘I . . .’

  The Captain sighed. Jo Dulac glared at his son.

  ‘It was nothing, really . . .’

  The Captain’s fingers were long and tapered, his nails shaped and polished. They would look at home wrapped around a champagne flute or a cigar, those fingers, playing the piano or the violin. Right now they were tapping the holster of his revolver. Romy gulped.

  ‘Just tell me what you know,’ suggested the Captain. The fingers had stopped drumming to settle on the handgrip of the revolver.

  ‘Twenty-three German soldiers died last night.’ Romy shivered. Did the man ever raise his voice? ‘If you know something, you had better tell me. I can’t answer for the consequences if you don’t.’

  ‘He’s leaving,’ Romy muttered. Even as he said this he knew that it would not be enough. The Captain raised an eyebrow.

  ‘He wouldn’t say where.’ Romy stared at the ground as he spoke. ‘She begged him and begged him to tell her, but he wouldn’t say. I think he’s going to join the Maquis.’

  The Captain laughed. ‘That’s hardly news. Every able-bodied man in the country is trying to do the same. They all want to be heroes now the Americans are near, with their barefoot soldiers and the farm tools they use instead of guns.’ He beckoned Romy closer and whispered against his ear. ‘You’re hiding something.’

  Containment, his father had called it. He knew what Arianne would think of that. The bile rose from his stomach.

  ‘Two men.’ Romy’s mouth was so dry he could barely speak. ‘He had to hide them.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ he wept. ‘She asked and asked, but he wouldn’t say where. She doesn’t know, she kept asking, but he wouldn’t say!’

  ‘Who else knows?’

  ‘Nobody,’ stammered Romy. The Captain grabbed him by the collar and pressed his thumb into his throat. Jo stepped forward. The big man held him back.