The Things We Did for Love

by Natasha Farrant

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘He has a mother,’ said Jo.

  Romy staggered as the Captain released him and stood bent over, coughing.

  ‘A mother,’ said the Captain. ‘Perhaps that will do.’

  x

  Arianne climbed the steep stairs up to her bedroom when Father Julien left and came to stand before her window.

  Luc, stripped to the waist, standing in the stream with the water gleaming on his sunburned skin. Lying in the long grass at Lascande and on the moonlit hill, his lips on her neck, her throat . . . He couldn’t possibly be dead!

  She left her window and walked across the room to her washstand. The mirror which hung above it was tarnished at the edges, but it was serviceable enough.

  Was this what he saw when he looked at her? She reached round to undo the fastenings of her dress, letting it fall in a pool at her feet. Round shoulders, small breasts, the pleasing curve of her waist . . . Turning to look at herself from the side, she could see every one of her ribs in the mirror. Did he think her scrawny? She remembered the feel of his hands working their way down her back, vertebra by vertebra, the sweep of his fingers.

  She threw herself on the bed. Her mother had hand-stitched her counterpane, an American-style quilt, as a present for her eighth birthday. Pink, white and green, made of different fabrics, with a square of rose-coloured toile at the centre on to which she had embroidered Arianne’s initials in looping silk. Arianne had been ecstatic. Thank goodness! Marielle had laughed. Because that is the last time I ever make anything like it! She curled into a ball and pulled the counterpane close about her.

  ‘Ari? Ari, where are you?’ A clatter of feet on the stairs heralded Solange’s eruption into the room, less groomed than usual in a summer dress and faded espadrilles, her blonde mane hanging down her back, her cheeks flushed from the run up the stairs.

  ‘There you are! I couldn’t find anyone for the picnic. Oh my God you’re in your underwear! Is Luc here? Oh no, Ari, you’ve been crying!’

  Solange threw herself to her knees by her cousin’s bed and gathered her in her arms.

  ‘There there,’ she murmured. ‘I’m here, I’ve got you. There, there.’

  ‘You sound like your mother.’ Arianne sniffed and attempted a smile.

  ‘Sometimes, chérie, I feel like my mother. Now then. Talk to your Auntie Sol.’

  Solange climbed on to the bed, lay down beside Arianne and pulled the counterpane over them both so that it covered their heads. ‘Do you remember, we used to lie like this when we were little? Now, is this all about Luc?’

  Arianne sniffed again.

  ‘Did you know Jo Dulac was out looking for him? Where on earth is he?’

  ‘He’s gone south to visit his family,’ whispered Arianne.

  ‘What? He hates his family! Oh Ari, don’t cry! Where is he really?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ wailed Arianne. ‘And I’m not allowed to look for him!’

  ‘Who says you’re not allowed?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘And why not?’

  ‘It’s dangerous.’

  ‘Yes, well. Luc is dangerous. That temper. We’ve known that since the beginning.’

  The wind picked up outside and blew in through the open window. Arianne shivered despite the thick padding of the counterpane. Solange tightened her arms around her and thought of summer afternoons at Lascande, the blue horizon, the way the low rays of the sun played around Luc and Arianne’s shadows, making them shimmer, giving them haloes.

  ‘Where would you look for him, if you went? Where would you start?’

  Arianne turned on to her side to look at her and smiled sadly.

  Of course, thought Solange. Where else?

  ‘You should go,’ she declared. ‘Right now, before you change your mind.’

  ‘But Father Julien . . .’

  ‘Shh . . .’ Solange put a finger to her cousin’s lips. ‘Don’t tell me. Ari, this is Luc. The boy who lit you up inside, who made you smile again? It doesn’t matter what anybody says.’

  She threw back the counterpane and jumped to her feet.

  ‘Come on, Ari, right now!’

  She held out her hand to help her cousin up.

  ‘Now, do you have everything you need?’ she asked seriously.

  ‘Need?’

  ‘You know!’ Solange sighed. ‘To stop the little babies . . .’

  ‘Oh!’ Arianne blushed. ‘I didn’t think of that.’

  ‘Lucky you have me then! Maman’s got everything you need at home. Not that she knows I know . . . Now, pull yourself together, wash your face, get dressed, brush your hair and I’ll be back. It doesn’t do to be unprepared.’

  ‘You’re mad!’ Arianne started to laugh. Solange stopped by the bedroom door and beamed at her.

  ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘I want you to be happy.’

  Solange ran down the stairs, as noisily as she had come up. Arianne fell back against her pillow, still laughing.

  xi

  ‘You will ride in with us,’ said the Captain when Romy asked to return to the village.

  ‘I would rather walk.’

  ‘You will ride with us,’ repeated the Captain as he strode away. Jo sat a little distance away on the ground. Romy was left alone with Alois Grand. The big man held out a packet of cigarettes. Romy hesitated before taking one and they smoked together in silence.

  ‘This boy,’ asked Alois at last. His French was slow and hesitant. ‘He is your friend?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘The girl then.’

  ‘She has done nothing wrong.’

  ‘That wasn’t my question.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Romy. ‘She is my friend. At least, she was.’

  He gazed around the camp, looking for a way out.

  ‘There is nowhere to go.’ Alois looked almost sorry. ‘If you run, I will shoot you. I am afraid you are screwed, my friend. You are completely screwed.’

  Screwed, Romy repeated to himself. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

  A new contingent of soldiers had arrived from the barracks at Limoges, fresher and better dressed than the tired men from the train. They came in a convoy of armoured vehicles, guns at the ready, with ammunition belts around their waists and shoulders. They stopped by the lake. A man in officer’s uniform jumped out of the leading vehicle and strode towards the Captain.

  ‘What are they talking about?’ Romy asked Alois.

  ‘Orders.’

  ‘What orders?’

  The big man shrugged again, ‘To find our man. Wait and they will tell us.’

  A cloud passed before the sun, blocking the light. A movement in the trees caught Romy’s eye. He blinked. A small creature was crawling down the hill, and came to a stop behind a hawthorn bush. Romy glanced around to check nobody was watching and peered closer. The cloud moved on and a ray of sunlight fell upon the shaking bush, illuminating, for a split second, a head of unmistakable red. Romy’s heart lurched.

  ‘I need to pee.’

  ‘So pee,’ said Alois.

  ‘Somewhere private?’ He indicated his poor leg. ‘It’s not as if I could run away.’

  The big man tossed his head towards the trees.

  Romy limped with as much nonchalance as he could muster towards the woods, where he made a show of unbuttoning his flies, standing with his legs apart and his back to the camp.

  ‘I need you to do something for me,’ he muttered.

  ‘Sod that,’ said Paul. ‘I don’t run errands for turncoats.’

  ‘This isn’t a game!’

  ‘Are you going to pee, or what? You look a right idiot with your willy hanging out like that.’

  ‘It’s the only way I could get away,’ hissed Romy. ‘I need you to get a message to your sister.’

  ‘Suppose I just want to stay here and watch the soldiers?’

  ‘I need you,’ enunciated Romy, ‘to run back to the village as fast as you possibly can, fin
d your sister and tell her to run. Run and hide. Got it?’

  Paul was listening now. ‘What’s she done?’ he whispered.

  ‘It's not her, it's her loser boyfriend. Run and hide. That’s all. I’ve got to go or they’ll smell a rat. Run, Paul. And don’t screw up.’

  He turned, praying that nobody was watching him or if they were, that they had not seen Paul. He needn’t have worried. Every eye was turned towards the Captain, talking to them beside the lake from a makeshift platform in the back of a jeep. A light scamper from the bushes behind indicated that Paul was on his way. He felt himself go limp with relief.

  Ten minutes later, the Germans were gone, flattened grass and the charred circles of their fires the only traces of their passage.

  Midday

  i

  ‘Go now,’ Solange had said. ‘Before you change your mind.’

  Arianne dressed quickly when her cousin had gone, though her fingers fumbled with her buttons and her shoes slipped several times from her hands. Quickly, quickly! She prayed that Luc was waiting for her at Lascande, that he had guessed she would come looking for him, that he was not angry with her. Surely, she thought now, if he was dead, she would know? Surely she would feel it?

  Yes, Luc was alive. He had to be. In that moment, realising she could not live without him, Arianne made a decision. If she found Luc, if he was well enough to leave this evening to join the Maquis as he had planned, she would go with him. Her courage faltered as she remembered Father Julien’s warning, but when she looked out of her bedroom window she saw only the village roofs and a tabby cat sunning himself on the garden wall. Samaroux looked as quiet as it ever had. She ran downstairs to pull her father’s old rucksack from the wardrobe on the landing. Socks, underwear, a warm jersey. The family photograph from his desk, her toothbrush, the picture drawn for her in kindergarten by Paul – what else did one need for a life on the run? She threw in her candle, some matches and a pair of corduroy trousers.

  The church bells began to ring for midday. Two storeys down, she heard the front door open. Paul, home for lunch! How was she going to explain this to him? I’m sorry, I’ll be back, one day you’ll understand . . . The bells stopped and she realised it was too early, Paul would only just be leaving school. The footsteps grew closer, too slow for her little brother. Who, then? Her bedroom door swung open.

  *

  ‘So you’re leaving,’ said Elodie. She stood in the doorframe, her eyes on the rucksack Arianne clutched to her chest.

  Arianne nodded.

  ‘To look for the boy.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They say it’s him blew up that train.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘I didn’t say it was.’

  Elodie sat, not without grace, on the edge of the bed. Arianne, after a moment’s hesitation, sat beside her.

  ‘I have to do this,’ she said. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘France will stand or fall whether you stay home or not. But I suppose you are your father’s daughter. Have you told your brother?’

  ‘I haven’t had the chance.’

  ‘You thought you’d leave it to me to explain, you mean.’

  The old lady’s wrinkles broke into an unfamiliar smile. ‘Sweet Lord, Arianne, I never dreamed when your father left you in my care just how difficult it would turn out to be.’

  ‘We don’t mean to be difficult.’

  ‘You’re wild, the pair of you.’ Elodie reached out her hand. After a moment’s incomprehension, Arianne took it in her own.

  ‘I had a sweetheart myself, once.’

  Arianne forced herself to be patient.

  ‘What happened to him?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, he married someone else. Mother wouldn’t let me because he was going to Indochina.’

  ‘Auntie I really have to . . .’

  ‘I would have liked to go to Indochina. I heard he came home and retired near Angoulême. He’s still there today, as far as I know, surrounded by his doting family. And here am I, with you two.’

  ‘We love you . . .’

  ‘Please. Love is complicated enough as it is without making a song and dance of things. So your brother’s not home.’

  ‘Not yet,’ muttered Arianne.

  ‘You know he skipped school again today.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘His teacher stopped by the presbytery during morning break. I do hope Paul will be better soon, she said. Pointedly.’

  ‘But he promised!’

  ‘Since when does he keep his promises? Arianne, you are fifteen years old and more of a child than you think, but I shan’t try to stop you doing what you imagine is right. Just, before you go, think of your brother. I am old. I don’t think I can manage him on my own.’

  ‘You’re blackmailing me!’ cried Arianne.

  ‘Yes,’ said Elodie modestly. ‘I believe I am.’

  Arianne dropped her head to her knees and closed her eyes. ‘It’s not fair,’ she said. ‘Why do I always have to think of him?’

  ‘Because you’re all he has.’

  The air in the bedroom where they sat was still, the light from the windows a pale grey which showed up the dullness of walls in need of painting. No sound here either, other than the occasional shout of a child making his way home for lunch, the sudden cackle of a magpie. The clock struck the half hour. Arianne sat bent double over her knees. Paul then, not Luc. Not a new life of love on the run, but everything she had always known, domesticity and waiting. She hated for people to see her cry, but this time she could not stop herself.

  ‘He might return,’ said Elodie.

  ‘And he might not.’

  Into the silence of the stairwell came a new sound from outside, an unfamiliar sound they had somehow failed to notice while they were talking. Engines, not just one, but several. More than several – the wood of the stairs beneath Arianne’s feet shook with the rumble of traffic.

  ‘What is going on?’ she thought she heard Elodie say, but she couldn’t be sure because at the same moment they heard the back door flung open and the clatter of Solange running up the stairs shouting Ari, Ari, it’s too late, they’re here!

  ii

  Romy had ridden into Samaroux in the German convoy, two dozen feldgrau oblongs bristling with guns. It was lunchtime and the village was deserted. Behind the lace curtains and shutters half closed against the midday sun he imagined people rising from their kitchen tables to look at them, but nobody came out. Only Mayor Jarvis put down his soup spoon with a feeling of dread and reached for his jacket as the convoy ground to a halt across the market square from his home.

  ‘I’m frightened,’ he told his wife. She stood before him to straighten his tie, then helped him into his jacket.

  ‘They won’t stay long,’ she said.

  They might! he wanted to cry. They might do anything.

  ‘I can always warm lunch for you when you come back.’ She smiled and he saw that she too was afraid.

  By the time Jarvis crossed the square the convoy had already split up. Two vehicles remained where they were, including the Captain’s. Two returned to the entrance of the village. The rest were deployed around the village, to block the minor roads heading out towards the farms and hamlets.

  ‘Routine inspection,’ announced the Captain when Jarvis, having introduced himself, muttered offers of assistance. ‘A few questions to ask. The boy here will show me around.’

  Romy looked sick. Out of the corner of his eye Jarvis saw the curtain of the presbytery twitch and thought he caught a glimpse of the priest’s bald pate. He felt a surge of anger towards his old friend.

  ‘As mayor of this community,’ he said with a firmness he did not feel, ‘I insist upon accompanying you.’

  ‘Ah well,’ said the Captain, and Jarvis noted how Romy shuddered at his voice. ‘If you absolutely insist . . . You –’ he pointed at Jo Dulac – ‘get out. Give the man your place.’

  Teresa Belleville knew they were coming. Ever since h
er son had told her last night that he was leaving, ever since she heard about the derailment this morning, she knew that they would come looking for him, with that conviction born of fear, the sort of fear only a parent can feel, which twists the guts and hollows the heart and makes them cry, when their worst nightmares are confirmed, I knew it! I knew no good would come of it! It was already the ghost of Teresa Belleville who opened her front door to the knock of the Captain’s driver. The Captain asked his questions in German. Jonas Bucher acted as interpreter. Two more soldiers stood by the door.

  ‘He has gone to visit my family in the south,’ intoned Teresa.

  ‘When did he get permission for this journey?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘Monsieur le maire, is this true?’

  Jarvis, caught off guard, did not play his part well. He was not sure, he mumbled. There were so many applications to travel, so many permits required. He would have to check. Though yes, now he came to think of it, Luc had applied for permission to travel. It was all coming back to him, of course he had. He had a grandfather in Aix whom he loved very much.

  The Captain slapped him. Jarvis’s blue eyes filled with tears.

  ‘You remember no such thing,’ said the Captain, in French. The mayor did not contradict him.

  The Captain nodded for his men to come forward.

  ‘Where is your son?’ he asked again.

  Teresa started to cry with the second slap across her face, but did not budge from her story.

  ‘He has gone to Aix.’

  Slap.

  ‘In the middle of term?’

  ‘My father is ill.’

  Slap.

  ‘Why did you not go yourself?’

  ‘I have not been well, I am not well enough to travel.’

  She threw up when they punched her in the stomach, and soiled herself when they kicked her. When the Captain gave the order for the needles to come out, she admitted she was lying but refused to say where Luc had gone.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Bang went a needle under the nail of her left thumb.

  ‘He wouldn’t say.’

  The index of her right hand.