‘She didn’t have much choice. Look, she’s a religious neurotic, she’s a bit crazy, she’s a very sad and lonely woman, but she’s no informer.’
‘Not sure I agree. But if it’s not la comtesse, then who?’
‘Who knows? The butcher? The baker? The candlestick maker? Say nothing to anyone, Marie-Claire. Not even to the priest.’
‘You think the priest …?’ Marie-Claire crossed herself.
‘Not yes and not no. I don’t know. That blocked-off cave dates from the Revolution. A tunnel once ran all the way from the church to the chateau. It saved village priests from the guillotine. Doesn’t mean that every priest since then has known, but it means they might know. Don’t trust anyone. Don’t take chances.’
Marie-Claire did not know if her husband was dead or alive, but in the weeks that followed she took the baby in her belly as both comfort and sign. The Americans were in Normandy. They were coming.
The Americans arrived in Paris.
The Liberation arrived with a pealing of all the bells in the village church.
The baby of Marie-Claire tried to arrive but he never had time to draw breath.
All night Marie-Claire was in labour with the midwife promising, promising, promising.
But then the midwife sent for the priest.
The moment she saw the priest, Marie-Claire told Capucine, she sang the memory to the infant Capucine – this musical movement was slow and profoundly sorrowful, adagio lacrimoso – that moment lasted and lasts forever and ever, world without end. The priest is standing forever at her bedside waiting to baptise the bluish-purple baby who will never cry out. The midwife slapped the coiled monkey-shape gently on the shoulders, then sharply, then pummelled the tiny lungs, but no sound came.
‘A boy,’ the midwife told Marie-Claire.
Time stood still. Marie-Claire grew one hundred years old in one minute.
She wiped her cheeks with one corner of Capucine’s shawl.
Time passed. Time must have passed.
The priest came to her door very early one morning. ‘God takes, God gives,’ he said. ‘A life is lost, a life can be saved. There is something that must be done.’ The priest led her through the woods to the gardener’s cottage. It was still dark. There were branches piled against the secret back entrance to the chateau cellar where her husband had hidden in the pre-dawn hours before he was caught. The priest did not even glance in that direction.
Who informed?
Who informed on Christophe le Jardinier?
There was a star above the hidden entrance to the cellars.
‘You see?’ the priest said to Marie-Claire. ‘A sign from God. Who of us can understand his ways?’
‘Do you think God will forgive collaborators?’ Marie-Claire asked.
‘His mercy is infinite,’ the priest said.
Christophe le Jardinier was standing at the door of his stone cottage with a baby, a girl child, in his arms. ‘This is the duty God has assigned to you,’ the priest explained. ‘I will leave you to your task, Marie-Claire. And you, Monsieur le Jardinier, to your penance.’
‘Christophe?’
‘I am her father,’ the gardener said, after the priest had left. ‘Her mother was Lilith.’
‘They caught Lilith too?’
‘No. The nuns at the convent in Tours have been hiding her. She died in childbirth. The baby is three weeks old.’
‘Christophe,’ Marie-Claire said gently, taking the child. ‘This baby is at least five months old, maybe more.’
‘No,’ the gardener protested. ‘No! That’s not possible. Lilith died in the convent. Three weeks ago.’
‘The war is over, Christophe. If she died three weeks ago, why wouldn’t the nuns have sent for you?’
‘There wasn’t time. There are soldiers everywhere, Americans, British, Canadians, Australians. The convent is still dealing with chaos.’
‘Why wouldn’t they inform you of her death? Think about it, Christophe. Why wouldn’t they summon you to the funeral?’
The gardener leaned back against the doorframe of his cottage, his face contorted. He closed his eyes. He took the baby back from Marie-Claire and held her against his chest, the tiny heart beating with his. ‘The nuns were overwhelmed,’ he said. ‘They told me Lilith was at peace when she died and they placed our baby in the Mother Superior’s arms. Lilith’s last words were, Tell her father that all is well. The nuns swore to me that was the truth.’
‘May it be so,’ Marie-Claire said, crossing herself. ‘Pray God, may it be so. You have her child. Your child. The nuns must have hidden the baby after Lilith was taken. She must have been taken close to the end, same as my husband. That would have put the nuns at great risk.’
‘Lilith died in childbirth,’ the gardener insisted. ‘My daughter is three weeks old.’
When Cap was four (or five?) years old, the husband of Marie-Claire was dropped off in the village square from a military jeep driven by American soldiers. Dental records, the American soldiers explained. We think this is where he belongs, but he doesn’t remember too much. The Gestapo had him and then he was in an Allied hospital. He doesn’t remember his name.
When Marie-Claire saw her husband, she first screamed and then she fainted.
When Cap was about five (or six?), two events dominated village talk.
La comtesse is returning with an American son, the village said. The news was everywhere, bouncing off garden walls. It filled the church like the sonorous din of the organ.
Marie-Claire is enceinte again, the antiphon chanted. Her husband, who still does not remember his name, her husband who nevertheless smiles when his wife comes into the room, her husband is the father.
Gloria in excelsis Deo, sang the angels in the organ loft.
This baby – the product of the reunion of Marie-Claire and the husband who does not know his name – this baby lives and Marie-Claire brings her baby to the gardener’s cottage every day for a month or so. She prepares the evening meal then she leaves the family to fend for itself. She has a running joke. ‘Manna from heaven,’ she says, leaving a platter of food on the kitchen table. She hoists her own baby onto her shoulder. ‘Capucine found the platter on the doorstep. The angels don’t know if she is five years old, or six, but they know she can look after this house.’
‘Angels brought you,’ her father tells Capucine.
‘But you don’t look like one,’ her brother says. ‘You look like a monkey.’
Capucine punches him on the arm.
When Marie-Claire explains that she cannot come anymore, she needs to stay home, she needs to care for her own baby and her damaged husband, Petit Christophe says: ‘You will have to hire a housekeeper, Papa. As well as the extra farmhands.’
‘What he means,’ Cap’s father explains, ‘is that the butcher has offered Petit Christophe an apprenticeship, and Petit Christophe wants to accept.’
Cap looks from her father to her brother, sensing some shadow in the air. ‘Is that good?’ she asks.
‘I’ll be able to bring home offcuts of meat,’ Petit Christophe says. ‘The parts no one wants to buy. Free food. You can make sausages and rillettes. Marie-Claire can teach you.’
‘I already know how. She already taught me.’
‘So. More food. No cost.’
‘Nothing is without cost,’ the gardener says.
‘The countess is coming back,’ Petit Christophe tells Capucine. ‘She’s bringing her American son.’
‘You said she’d never come back.’
‘I was wrong.’
‘Her son’s the same age as you,’ Cap’s father says, but Petit Christophe contradicts: ‘He’s younger.’
‘They’ll be spreading money around,’ Petit Christophe explains. ‘Papa will earn more, the butcher will earn more, I will earn more, and I won’t have to live and die a farmhand.’
This is the way it goes. The countess is willing to hire extra labourers from the village for the vines and the orchard
and the potager. She also trains domestic servants for the chateau. The gardener himself hires a housekeeper, Noisette, part-time, for cleaning and laundry and cooking the evening meal. Father, son and Capucine rise at dawn and fix their own breakfast. Then Petit Christophe rides his bicycle into the village and enters the cobbled courtyard of the establishment of Monsieur Monsard, boucherie.
After her brother has left, Cap climbs her favourite apple tree and drops over the high stone wall into the chateau courtyard. A boy in a blue dress stands watching.
‘You are not allowed in here,’ he says. ‘You have to stay outside the gate.’
‘Papa told me you were coming back. Why are you wearing a dress?’
‘Go,’ he says, pointing.
‘I won’t go. Does your maman make you wear dresses? My brother says your mother is crazy.’
‘Maman prays a lot,’ the boy concedes. ‘I’m an answer to prayer. I’m a gift from the Virgin Mary. That’s why I wear blue.’
‘Going to wear blue dresses all your life?’
The boy points to the gate. ‘Go,’ he says. ‘Maman says I am not to talk to you because you are dirty and wild.’
‘You want to climb the tree and escape? That’s how I get in.’
‘You are not allowed inside the gate.’
‘I never come through the gate. You want to see the secret entrance to the cellar that no one remembers?’
‘Where is it?’
‘In the woods. Nobody knows where except my father and my brother and Marie-Claire and me. Can’t show you,’ she says, ‘this side of the wall.’
‘What’s in the secret cellar?’
‘Nothing’s in it. People used to hide there.’
From the window of the chateau a voice calls.
‘It’s Maman,’ the boy says, alarmed. ‘I have to go.’
When Petit Christophe cycles home from the village, he and Cap work together in the potager throughout the long twilit evenings of the summer, though Petit Christophe does not always come home. When he does, he is a patient teacher, almost as good as her father. ‘You can’t get the best tomatoes or beans, year after year,’ he explains, ‘unless you take precautions in between.’
He teaches her to mix lime and bone meal in the right proportions and how to work this mixture into the soil. He teaches her the cover-crop routine. He explains why the farmhands grow winter wheat, winter rye and clovers, and then plough them in. Together, with garden forks, they work the stubble into the earth. ‘The soil gets exhausted, just like we do. You’ve got to find a way to let it sleep, to give it fresh juice. This is the best way. It’s like falling in love.’
‘You mean like you and Chantal?’
‘What do you know about me and Chantal?’
‘I saw you kissing in the slaughter yard.’
Petit Christophe pushes his fork into the soil with a furious boot. ‘Did you tell Papa?’
‘No. I’m not a snitch.’
‘Good. Look, Cap …’ Her brother leans on his pitchfork. ‘The butcher and Papa, during the Occupation, they were on different sides. Not on different sides, exactly, because everyone hated the Boche. But they had different opinions about how to … about what we should do to survive.’
‘Papa was on our side.’
‘What has he told you?’
‘Nothing. He didn’t tell me anything. You did. You said Papa worked for the Resistance, like our mothers. And like Marie-Claire’s husband. It was terrible, what the Boche did to her husband.’
‘Yes, it was terrible.’
‘Did the Gestapo do that to our mothers?’
Petit Christophe crosses himself. ‘Don’t think about it,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about. Nobody knows. The butcher was afraid they would do that to everyone.’
‘So he joined the German side?’
‘It wasn’t so simple, Cap. No one was for the Germans but everyone was afraid. No one will talk about it, ever. So, see, me working for Monsieur Monsard, Papa doesn’t like it.’
‘I don’t like it either,’ Cap says.
‘Why not?’
‘Because you don’t come home as much.’
‘Sometimes I’m just too tired at the end of the day and Monsieur Monsard gives me a room. Less food expense for you and Papa. I’ll come home when I can.’
‘Was the butcher a collaborator?’
‘Who told you about collaborators?’
‘Marie-Claire did. She says even kids did it for money.’
‘Did she say which kids?’
‘Yes. She thinks Michel Monsard was doing it. He always had extra money, she says. She blames him for what happened to her husband. She thinks he saw something and told his father, and his father informed.’
Petit Christophe lays his pitchfork, carefully, tines down, at the edge of the bean patch. He sits down beside it. He begins picking beans, one by one. ‘That was such a bad time, Cap. I don’t like to think about it at all. Can you bring me the basket?’
‘Are you sure the beans are ready?’ Cap asks.
Petit Christophe goes on picking, making a small mound of beans in the basket. ‘Marie-Claire shouldn’t talk about that time. Especially not to you.’
‘She doesn’t exactly talk to me. She talks out loud to herself. Is it true about the butcher and Michel?’
‘Everyone needed money and food.’ Petit Christophe snaps a bean between his teeth and eats it raw. ‘These are good,’ he says. ‘We weren’t allowed to eat our own beans, back then. The butcher couldn’t keep his own meat. The Boche took everything for their army. Eat, Cap. Eat while you can.’
Cap takes a bean from the basket and snaps it with her fingers and eats. ‘Michel just wanted to eat?’
‘Yes. Doesn’t mean I forgive him, but I don’t forgive myself even more. I did something stupid.’
‘What?’
‘I told him there was a safe house in the woods where people hid. I didn’t show him where it was, thank God. It’s that stupid sort of thing you do when you’re a kid. You just can’t keep a secret and you want to show off.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Told his father what I told him, I suppose. So what happened is all my fault.’
‘Does Marie-Claire think that?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know what she knows. I don’t know what anyone knows. And I don’t know anything either, Cap. No one does, no one talks, but we all have suspicions. Probably we all have bad dreams. I know I do.’
‘Marie-Claire told me that Papa never let the Boche into our cellars and he never let them take any of our wine.’
‘The Boche did go into our cellars and they did take the wine. La comtesse told them: Take what you want. What they never found was the cave blocked off from the chateau. It’s blocked off inside. You can’t tell. Did Marie-Claire tell you what the Gestapo did to Papa?’
Cap shakes her head.
‘Then I don’t want to tell you either.’
‘Tell me,’ Cap begs. ‘Otherwise I will have nightmares.’
‘You’ll have nightmares anyway. I have nightmares. They hung Papa up like a steer and beat him till he was wet with his own blood and turned purple.’
Cap squeezes her eyes shut and claps a hand over her mouth. She cannot speak.
‘I shouldn’t have told you,’ Ti-Christophe says. ‘I had no right. And no right not to.’
‘How do you know what they did?’
‘Because I watched them. Michel Monsard and I were hiding in his bedroom and we peeped out the window and both saw. Papa doesn’t know this and I don’t want him to know, but I know he told the Boche nothing. You need to understand, Cap. I think that’s why the butcher is hiring me. To make amends. I’m sure Michel told him I saw. I just want you to understand why it’s not so easy for me to come home now that I’m working for Monsieur Monsard, and it’s not easy for Papa either. You must never mention any of this to anyone ever.’
Cap feels her heart beating so fast that she is afraid it
will fly out of her ribcage like a bird. ‘I told the boy in the chateau,’ she confesses. ‘About the safe house. I couldn’t keep a secret either. But I didn’t show him.’
‘You must tell him you made the story up.’
Cap crosses her heart. ‘I promise,’ she says. ‘But Monsieur Monsard and Michel … does everyone know?’
‘Everyone suspects. I think I’m the only one who knows, and Michel and his father know I know, and they’re afraid of me. They would like me to disappear, but I am biding my time. I will make Michel pay and I will make the butcher pay.’
‘What people did Papa hide in the cellar?’
‘What people do you think?’ Petit Christophe asks.
‘I don’t know.’
‘People who had to get out of France.’
In the lake in Central Park, a mini-whirlpool forms between two rocks. Perhaps the wake of a boat causes this, perhaps the webbed feet of the ducks. The liquid funnel yawns wider and wider and the morning sun fills it with flame. Cap is mesmerised. She is staring into the cast-iron stove in the kitchen of the gardener’s cottage of the Château de Boissy, just outside the village of St Gilles.
She is wrapping a rag around the hooked hotplate-lever and fitting it into the slot on the iron circle that rests on the black surface of the stove. In spite of the multiple folds of cloth, the heat is fierce against the palm of her hand. She lifts the plate with her right hand and with her left pushes wood chips through the hole into the furnace. Flames leap out and lick at the rag around her hand. She leans as far back as she can but her cheeks feel scorched. With her left hand, she reaches for more kindling and feeds the fire. The wood spits and crackles and snaps.
She lets the iron plate settle back into its circular groove and wipes her hands on the rag. Her face is flushed.
She lifts a pot of water from the stone floor and sets it over the plate. The pot is so heavy that she almost trips forward and sears herself. This has happened. She breathes heavily. She moves slowly and carefully, having scalded her arms and legs more than once. She wishes Petit Christophe came home more often to lift the pots.
She returns to peeling potatoes. She and her father are never short of food, though the menu is limited. Potatoes, carrots, beans, eggs, the birds her father shoots, the fish he catches in the Vienne, the flesh of chickens that are no longer laying, whatever Petit Christophe can scavenge from the carcass-cutting room at Monsieur Monsard’s: tripe, tongue, pig’s trotters, tête de veau, pork intestines and the fattiest parts of hog shoulder from which Cap makes rillettes. To a hungry stomach, rillettes on toast taste like the sacrament. But now it is more often Cap who has to go to the butcher’s to collect.
The Claimant Page 15
