The Things We Did for Love

by Natasha Farrant

  ‘All locked,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t try to break them. You’ll only hurt yourself and you’d have to rip out the frames in order to open the shutters. I’m not tying you up because I want you to look after Baptiste.’

  ‘You can’t just leave us here! I’m supposed to show you the way!’

  ‘I’m sure I’ll manage without you.’

  Picot backed out of the room, his gun still pointing at Luc, stepped outside and turned the key in the lock. Luc roared and threw himself at the door. When pounding on it proved futile, he took off his shoe and hurled it at a window-pane. The glass shattered. He began to hammer away at the frame.

  ‘Luc?’ Baptiste’s voice was weak.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Please don’t leave me.’

  Luc sank to the floor and sobbed.

  vi

  From where he was hiding behind a fire hydrant, Paul heard the Captain’s jeep tear up the village street towards the market square. He looked back at home: Elodie and Solange appeared in the doorway, flanked by soldiers. His great-aunt made a big show of locking the front door. Solange was crying. Arianne was nowhere in sight.

  There was no way he could get home, not with that sentry by the wall. Paul slipped after the others, moving in the shadows.

  The loudspeakers started as he drew level with the church.

  All inhabitants of Samaroux to gather on the market square, I repeat, all inhabitants to gather on the market square.

  The voice grew louder. A tank – an actual tank! – was crawling up the road towards him, the soldier with the loudspeaker standing in the front. Behind it, Paul could see the street was full of people, soldiers banging on doors, villagers stumbling out of houses, some in slippers, one still wearing his napkin tucked into his collar. Four-year-old Felicia Brest marched out of her parents’ house with her bowl and spoon and carried on eating as the swelling crowd shuffled towards the market square.

  Sod this, thought Paul. A drainage ditch ran along the side of the church. He dropped into it. Nobody saw him.

  There was a hollow here, just big enough for him. He knew it well, having discovered it a few years back hunting for a ball. At this time of year, the entrance was overgrown with nettles, and he was wearing short trousers. The tank was rumbling closer. He gave a yelp of pain as the nettles brushed his legs and rolled in. Clods of earth fell from the ceiling as the tank rolled overhead. He had grown in the months since he had been here last, and the walls of his shelter pressed against him.

  The church bells started to ring.

  *

  From her vantage point on the roof, Arianne saw what looked like all of Samaroux walking towards the market square. There were no gunshots, no beatings. She assumed they must be emptying the houses to look for Luc. They would move on when they realised he was not here, but she would get to Lascande before them. She tried not to think about his mother.

  Her whole body ached from crouching. She shifted, dislodging a tile. It hung by one corner, wedged into place by a clump of moss. She nudged it back towards her with her foot and slipped it into her rucksack. Back against the chimney, she thought of what she would say to Luc. How would she tell him about Teresa? She saw herself arriving at Lascande, the relief on his face, felt his embrace, the stubble on his cheek, smelt his familiar smell. Where would she tell him? In the scullery with her back against the cool damp walls, or in the kitchen, on the old armchair without its springs? He would kiss her, would carry on kissing her as they made their way through the house, cupping her face in his hands, drinking her in, he would tell her he always knew that she would come, he would lead her upstairs to the four-poster bed with its velvet curtains – she would have to tell him by then. She felt ashamed of her next thought, that perhaps after all this he would not leave. Perhaps he would just lie low for a while and return when the fuss had died down, to look after his mother. The price to pay for keeping him.

  The loudspeakers were starting again. Arianne strained forwards as far as she dared to listen.

  vii

  The Captain thrust a loudspeaker at Jonas Bucher.

  ‘Loud and clear, soldier. If I hear your voice shake, I’ll have you court-martialled. Ready?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I’m promoting you to official interpreter. What’s the name of this lad we’ve been looking for?’

  ‘Luc Belleville, sir, I think.’

  ‘Here goes then. People of Samaroux! Last night a terrible crime was committed against the Army of the Third Reich by a member of this community. His name was Luc Belleville.’ The Captain stared at Bucher. ‘Well? What are you waiting for?’

  ‘Gens de Samaroux,’ stammered Jonas. ‘La nuit dernière un crime terrible a été commis . . .’

  ‘Not to me, soldier,’ snarled the Captain.

  ‘Un crime atroce a été commis la nuit dernière contre l’armée du troisième reich!’ bellowed Jonas, turning to the crowd. ‘Par – euh – Luc Belleville.’

  ‘I want you to tell me where he is.’

  ‘Je veux que vous me disiez où il est.’

  ‘This boy . . .’ the Captain nodded towards Romy, and a soldier pushed him forward, ‘has helped me. Now it is your turn. I’m sure you know the rules. If I cannot find the culprit, somebody must pay.’

  Romy stood before the crowd with his face drained of colour and a cold sweat bathing his palms. The crowd stared back, hostile, but Gaspard Félix, the butcher, stepped forward.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he mumbled, ‘I mean often, he likes to roam the woods.’

  ‘We’ve searched the woods, fool.’ The Captain answered Félix directly, and the crowd stirred at the revelation that he spoke French. ‘Where does he go?’

  The butcher gulped and wiped his hands on his apron.

  ‘I’ve got men beating the woods in a three-kilometre radius. How much further do you propose I go?’

  Gaspard Félix trembled.

  ‘How much time do you propose I devote to the hunting of this wretch? Answer me!’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘You don’t know.’

  The Captain seized the butcher by the collar and dragged him to the top of the church steps. He gestured for Jonas Bucher to follow him.

  ‘It is obvious to me that Luc Belleville did not act alone.’

  ‘Il m’est évident que Luc Belleville n’a pas agi seul,’ yelled Jonas.

  ‘I am giving the accomplices of Luc Belleville the chance to step forward now. I will count to twenty. If nobody comes forward, this man will be shot.’

  ‘Je vais compter jusqu’à vingt. Si personne ne se manifeste, cet homme sera exécuté.’

  Monsieur Félix began to cry.

  ‘So count, soldier,’ sighed the Captain.

  ‘Me?’ said Jonas.

  ‘No, you incompetent fool, Father Christmas. He’s standing right behind you.’

  One, two, three, four . . .

  The soldiers on the edge of the square kept their guns trained on the crowd. The people of Samaroux shifted. From where he stood, Alois saw how some of the younger men eyed the soldiers from beneath lowered lids, assessing their chances. Do not run, he muttered under his breath. You fools, whatever you do, do not run.

  . . . nine, ten, eleven, twelve . . .

  Father Julien finished saying his prayers and stepped forward on the count of fifteen.

  . . . sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen . . .

  On the count of twenty, Romy joined him.

  viii

  The loudspeaker on the market square had stopped. The clock struck the hour. Three o’clock, and the air was still. Arianne strained forward to listen. A lark rose from the fields behind her, and she was struck by the fancy that if she reached out far enough, if she could just stand on tiptoe on the ridge pole, she might be able to touch it.

  The lark’s song faded, carried on the breeze.

  ix

  We are no longer ourselves, the Captain once told Alois in a Belorussian stable. This
was how he justified his actions. It was not he who ordered his men to fire the machine guns which sent the first five hundred into the gravel pit. Not he who walked among the dying and the dead, shooting any body that moved, or who gave the act of ethnic cleansing the rules and structure of a blood sport. Not he, not really he, who stood before the massed villagers of Samaroux on the market square on this quiet day in early summer, staring at a village priest and a boy.

  ‘How very . . . unimaginative,’ he said. ‘The priest with a taste for self-sacrifice and the traitor with a conscience.’

  A look passed between the two before him. The priest nodded a fraction before turning to the Captain.

  ‘We two are responsible.’

  ‘The boy who stands beside you now betrayed you earlier.’

  ‘And now he is paying the price.’

  ‘I know what you people do to those who betray you, you so-called Résistants. You’re as merciless as the rest of us. Don’t pretend you don’t want to tear him to pieces.’

  ‘God tells us to forgive.’

  ‘God also tells you not to kill, but that didn’t stop your lot last night.’

  ‘We are angry.’

  ‘So am I,’ growled the Captain. ‘But at least I’m not a hypocrite.’

  ‘Not a hypocrite, no.’ Father Julien smiled. ‘Though I think, perhaps, you are the devil.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ hissed the Captain. ‘I don’t believe this child was responsible for what happened to my men, I don’t even know what this lad we’ve been chasing has to do with it. But someone has to pay. I’ll show you what the devil can do.’

  As two privates hustled Father Julien into the church, Alois had a fleeting vision of a different scenario – anarchy, the Captain annihilated, the morning’s explosion forgotten as the army of the Third Reich roared northwards towards home. They would cross the border in secret, mend roofs, tend livestock, hide until the end of the war. They would become human again.

  The vision did not last long.

  ‘Time for plan B,’ murmured the Captain, and as Alois’s vision faded he saw that the boy Romy was back in the crowd and that his father was holding him by the hand. He could not avoid this, then. There had never been any other plan, only this one, the one they had rehearsed so many times before in the villages of Eastern Europe.

  ‘Time for plan B,’ repeated the Captain, and fired his gun to give the signal.

  x

  They were coming back! If she craned her neck enough, Arianne could just make out the edge of the market square where a column of children stood in a crocodile along the wall of the church. No sign of Paul but that didn’t mean anything from this distance. She shuffled to her right. The ranks of women came into view and she saw – she was almost sure – Elodie’s crown of grey curls, the bright pattern of Solange’s dress.

  They were coming down the street. Thierry, Marc, Jérôme and a dozen other men she knew, but why were there soldiers with them? A dozen of them, carrying rifles, with more following with heavier equipment.

  ‘Halt!’ They stopped in front of her house and she drew back. She heard another order, but did not understand it. Her first thought was to run. What with the cries of protest from the village men, the shouted orders, the repeated slamming into the garden door, it was possible they would not hear her . . . She had stuffed her shoes in her rucksack before climbing out of the window. The thing was to do it now, while they could not see her.

  They were kicking in the broken door in the wall, the door beside the holm oak which led into the old dog run beneath her. She heard the sound of breaking glass, and the group of men she had seen walking down the street were herded in – she recognised Thierry’s voice as he intoned the Marseillaise.

  ‘Silence!’ shouted a German voice.

  ‘Oh go to hell,’ said Thierry, but the singing stopped.

  Arianne risked a look behind her. Other men were being marched down the street. She recognised Sol’s father, Gaspard Félix and farmer Legros. She thought she heard a cry to halt as they drew level with the Renault garage, and watched with mounting dread as they were pushed inside.

  Something terrible is going to happen, she thought. Soldiers were pouring in from everywhere. They were wheeling heavy machines down the street, machines which looked like . . .

  I can stop this. They are looking for Luc. I can help them find him.

  The moment she thought it she knew it was the right thing to do. Quick, now, before you change your mind . . . she remembered Solange’s words from earlier as she scrambled to her feet. Quick, now! Turn him in, turn yourself in! Tell them what you know!

  A volley of shots rang out and the world exploded.

  She felt the house shake beneath her under the impact of the machine guns. She covered her ears to block out the screaming, closed her eyes and clamped her mouth on to the fabric of her dress. The screaming gave way to moans. Arianne pressed her fingers harder into her ears and tried to pray.

  No words came, only images. Her father nursing his pipe, her mother’s hair against the white of her pillow, Luc on the terrace at Lascande with a tray of tea and biscuits . . . There were new sounds now, grunting and shuffling as bodies were dragged across the dog run into the house. Arianne stuffed her fists into her mouth. Luc’s eyes, Luc’s mouth, Luc’s smile . . . the images no longer came.

  The moaning had finished and now she could hear whooping and the sound of engines. A jeep screeched to a stop by the house. Down below, she caught a glimpse of a soldier spreading straw around the dog pen. Somebody laughed.

  They were burning everything. Smoke was rising, around the village, around her. It carried the smell of kerosene and something else, acrid and sweet and nauseating at once. Soldiers were still gathered in the road below her, shouting words she did not understand. Sparks flew up around her and the smoke grew thicker. She could no longer see the street but the soldiers’ voices were growing more distant as they made their way back to the market square.

  They had gone. No one saw Arianne as she crept off her perch and half crawled over the roof, or heard her cry as she threw herself off. She landed badly but ran barefoot over grass and gravel until she reached the edge of the orchard. There was a gap in the old stone wall where the foundations had collapsed. Elodie was always complaining about it, ever since the deer had broken in. Arianne threw herself through it. Brambles tore at her arms and caught at her rucksack. She shrugged it off her shoulders and glanced back.

  No one had come after her. She yanked herself out of the brambles and fell on to the grass, nursing her swelling ankle.

  xi

  Paul considered every part of his body, focusing on a few square inches at a time, and concluded that everything hurt. His neck and shoulders ached from not being able to sit straight, his legs had gone dead, his back was stiff and his arms were covered in nettle rash. Worst of all – and this had almost driven everything else from his mind – his bladder was stretched to bursting point. He had passed the point of nearly wetting himself, and moved on to a throbbing cramp which made him worry that he was doing some serious damage to his tackle. Sounds were muffled in his underground bunker. He had been aware of somebody shouting through a loudspeaker, then of somebody counting. A gunshot right above him made him leak a little. He tried to listen more carefully then, but it was very quiet. He manoeuvred himself round so that he could lie on his side with his shorts undone, pointing into the grass outside his lair. The Captain’s second gunshot sped things up and everything felt better. He rolled his shoulders just a little, and wriggled his toes to get some feeling back into his legs.

  His sense of relief did not last long. As he became aware of the dampness of the ground beneath him – he had not succeeded, then, in peeing outside his den – he heard the sound of wailing. Now that the blood was not pounding in his ears he could hear muffled gunshots – not directly above him, like last time, but further away towards the village, though hard to make out where with all the screaming. His stomach cr
amped and he worried that now he might soil his pants. It was cold beneath the ground. He pulled his knees up towards his chest and wrapped his arms around them. He tried to blink back his tears. Then, realising there was no one to see him, he let them fall.

  xii

  Some of the women tried to break away. One, with a baby on her hip and a toddler clinging to her hand, had to be struck several times before she understood she could not go home. Her little girl began to scream. The woman hoisted her on to her free hip and joined the throng being herded into the church.

  ‘What are they doing?’ stammered Jonas. ‘Why are they going into the church?’

  ‘Well it’s not to pray, is it?’ said Alois through gritted teeth. The young soldier’s panic was getting to him. He wanted to tell him to find someone else to stick to, except that none of the other men could be trusted not to shoot him. With the exception of the new recruit, they all wore the same expression, one he knew only too well. Eyes glazed, faces shining, they were wound so high one wrong word from Bucher could be the end of him.

  ‘Just do as you’re told,’ muttered Alois. ‘And for Christ’s sake stop asking questions.’

  A wooden rattle rolled out from the sea of feet. A child ran after it, a girl with round limbs and pudgy knees and tangled hair falling into her eyes. Jonas leaned down to pick up the toy. Alois willed him not to look at her but it was too late. Jonas and the girl were smiling at each other.

  ‘I’ve got a sister,’ said Jonas.

  ‘Stop!’

  A figure was fighting its way out of the church, pressing against the crowd. The priest, his black robes covered in dust, struggling to walk with his hands tied behind his back. Damn, thought Alois. What the hell were we supposed to do with him?

  ‘I will not allow this!’ The old man spoke passable German, for a Frenchman.

  ‘I’m not in charge,’ said Alois.