by Hilton, Lisa
MARCH 1944
Jacky came at the beginning of spring, a few months after Papie Nadl’s death. Oriane was surprised at how kind everyone was. Betty and Andrée and Amélie came up nearly every day, one of them, and sat with her by the fire in the last weeks, knitting little things and telling her the latest gossip from the village. Amélie even kept her dirty remarks to herself, because the war was on and everyone understood that she and Laurent would have to wait to be married. Betty and Andrée were more sober now, with their brothers gone, though it didn’t stop them chattering about the dances. Madame Boissière was very busy with the school, but she came up with a bag of soap and rubbing alcohol from the chemists in Landi, and told Betty and Andrée to scrub Oriane’s bedroom within an inch of their lives.
When the pains began, Laurent went to fetch Magalie Contier on the motorbike, then sat in the kitchen at Aucordier’s with William. They drank red wine because that was the thing to do. Cathérine and his mother went up and down the stairs with horrible red bundles of rags. Oriane screamed above them and Cathérine said, ‘I bet you’re sorry now, aren’t you, you dirty bugger?’ William was so upset by the noise that in the end Madame Nadl fetched him back to Murblanc. Oriane squatted, clutching the bedpost, with the knotted bolster cover between her teeth. Magalie told her about her own first time, there had been a doctor in the village then, and Yves had insisted on having him out, he was so proud to be getting a baby. Yves and the doctor sat drinking in the kitchen while Magalie howled on the bedroom floor, and when she asked if she could have a bit of something for the pain the doctor said it wasn’t suitable for women, so when the child came they were both dead drunk, he and Yves, rolling under the buffet. Magalie had to pull her son out herself. Oriane tried to smile.
Afterwards, Laurent was allowed to see Oriane for a few minutes. The tiny baby snuffled at her breast, but her face was old and far away, bruised as though she had been beaten. Laurent reached out to touch his son, but Magalie swiped his hand away and said to get downstairs and make himself useful, the poor girl had had a shocking time. Jacky was no more than a bag of skin in her deft hands, his dark hair plastered over his scrunched up face. Laurent took the soup pot from Cathérine’s hands and, for the first time in his life, stirred food at the fire. There were potatoes in goose fat. He squashed them into lumps. He managed to get upstairs with a steaming plate and sat as gently as he could on the edge of the clean sheet holding out the dripping spoon.
14 JUNE 1944
The war had been good news for the pigeons, Père Guillaume thought as he struggled up to the belltower. The Milice had impounded every hunting rifle in the south, or so they claimed. René Larivière had been obliged to announce the abandonment of the annual Castroux Pigeon Feast last August. This was usually a delirious occasion, when the chasseurs warmed up their trigger fingers by blasting every bird in sight, and on more than one occasion in Père Guillaume’s memory, one another. The women spent a frenzied day of plucking and roasting and there was a five franc prize for the biggest bag. Unculled, the pigeons were fatter and saucier than ever, as witness the pulpy-bodied yellow chick squatting contentedly in the nest its parents had seen fit to build on top of the wireless set. Other than squirming its greasy stumps of feather, it seemed undisturbed when the priest tuned in. Père Guillaume was panting as he arrived in the loft space beneath the bell. He had hoped to hide the set in the crypt, but there was no reception, so it was as well he had slimmed down a little in the past few years. The chick squeaked and opened its beak expectantly. Père Guillaume considered pigeons to be a disreputable sort of bird, and he enjoyed the Feast as much as anyone, but he took a heel of bread from his cassock and crumbled it in the smelly nest, glad that no one could see his foolishness.
Even with the volume turned as low as possible, it was terrifying to imagine how sound carried across the valley. As ever, he refused to let himself think of it, though if he were to crawl to the porthole that was the pigeons’ doorway he would have a clear view of the flag on the tower and its twin high up on the plain. He tried to keep his mind only on the facts, on the connected logic of what he knew, but he wished he could speak English. He listened often to London, hoping that one day the clipped sounds would suddenly resolve, Pentecostally, into sense. He had even tried writing down words phonetically, then trying hopelessly to find them in the dictionary. Madame Boissière could speak a little English, he believed, and it had been very tempting to invite her to listen in, especially these last few wondrous, agonizing days, but Larivière persuaded him that they would be unfair in exposing her to the risk, particularly with François gone. But now they were there, the Allies were really in Normandy, and it had to be only a matter of time. This was confirmed by the fact that they had blocked the road to Landi a week ago, the day after the landings, though Père Guillaume was uncertain if the people understood the reason for the two heavy armoured trucks stationed above the village. He had resolved with René that they wouldn’t spread the news for the moment. It was hateful to think, but since Papie Nadl’s death in the chateau, René said it was obvious that there was an informer in Castroux, maybe more than one. So the wireless was their secret, their only link now with the world beyond the valley.
Today he was hoping to hear Père François-Xavier. Although it must be a code name, Père Guillaume felt he knew the exiled priest as a friend. He imagined him sitting in a tall house with London damp and misty outside, drinking a cup of tea. It had been so long since he had heard Mass from anyone other than himself, it was a great comfort to pray with that confident, educated voice so far away. Last week he and René had knelt down weeping in the pigeon droppings and thanked God together. The announcer’s voice came over in French, and Père Guillaume hunched over the set, steering his mind from the vehicles that squatted like hellish toads just a few hundred metres away. Père François-Xavier began to speak.
‘Today we have received a report from the Bishopric of Limoges. On the tenth of June, at Oradour-sur-Glane…’
The broadcast ended, but Père Guillaume was unable for some time to switch off the set. He slumped on the floor as the alien English voices continued. He could make out the words ‘Normandy’, ‘Americans’, ‘Allies’. When he eventually stood he felt faint and had to grasp at the low roof beam to stop himself from falling. Tentatively, he reached out and touched the chick’s head with his finger. It regarded him placidly. Pere Guillaume told himself that he must not give way to despair. As he prayed to Sainte Claude de la Colombière, he found a smile for the tiny pigeon. ‘Your mercy is boundless, no sinner no matter how great his offences should have reason to despair of pardon—’ He broke off and his palms came away wet where they had covered his eyes. What pardon could he find, what redemption?
The square looked just as usual, except that there were no uniformed men drinking in the shade outside the café. No soldiers had stopped in the village for a week now, just driven back and forth to change the watch on the road. He found René a few paces away at the Mairie, fiddling aimlessly at some papers. It had been impossible for either of them to work these last days.
‘Come in a few minutes,’ he said.
To be sure though, he let himself into the presbytery and followed the passage through to the garden, where there was a door let in to the vestry. No one would see them entering the church together. For a while they had used the confessional, but that had felt absurdly conspiratorial, and the few old biddies who came to pass the time confessing to uncharitable thoughts had remarked on the mayor’s sudden piety. Now they sat in the vestry, where Père Guillaume had tacked a thick piece of baize, which had once served as an undercloth on the altar, to the inside of the door. With the garden door locked and the hinges of the heavy church door left deliberately unoiled, it would be difficult for anyone to creep in and eavesdrop.
When René came, his face eager for good news, Père Guillaume set himself to recite the facts of what he had heard. They had come to a place called Oradour. The houses were searc
hed for arms, although none were found. The people were taken to a field and divided into groups. The men were taken to six different buildings and shot. The buildings were fired. Several hundred women and children were crowded into the church. Then the church was burned. Anyone trying to escape was shot. They shot them against the altar of the church. Six people had escaped, five men and one woman. The woman had lain hidden in a garden with bullet wounds until the following evening. The woman’s husband was dead, her son and two daughters were dead, her grandson aged seven months was dead. The number of the dead was more than six hundred. Many of the corpses could not be identified. They were being buried by volunteers from the seminary at Limoges. The village had been burned to the ground.
15 JUNE 1944
The orders had finally arrived. They were to move up to the front in Normandy in two days. From where he stood on the terrace of the chateau, von Scheurenberg could see the men breaking camp on the plain, beginning the preparations to entrain at Monguèriac. He wondered how long the journey would take. He knew that he was going to die in Normandy. When that came, his fear would return, but for now it waited somewhere beyond him, strangely comforting in its certainty, like the promise of love. It was only the journey that frightened him just now. How many hours in the stinking, stifling train with nothing to do but smoke and wonder how it would come to him? Shockingly, it had crossed his mind to see to it with his own pistol, but he knew even as he luxuriated in the fantasy that he would be too afraid. He had not been afraid in Russia; it was reflection that bred cowardice. He would have liked to have spoken about that to someone, how strange it was, except there was no one to tell. So, there were still things to do. He would address the men before they left. The Wehrmacht soldiers had been taught to say ‘I surrender’ in English, but von Scheurenberg knew there was not even that possibility for SS troops. Stand or die, Führerbefahl. They knew as well as he that they were marked men, literally, he would not have to exhort them to fight to the bitter end, to make themselves inhuman again after this soft time.
He had sensed the bewilderment from the ranks of those who had been with the division in the East, the sense of confusion when you have been in heavy fighting so long that it becomes all you know, all you understand, and after living breathless for so long in the fighting, the time to breathe lies heavy, and the sound of the wind in the trees is more terrifying than the mortars that pull your heart up into your skull and drive out fear. There were things to do. He was wearing his walking out cap, more in deference to the chateau than his visitors, and as he went in he wondered if Wurster had managed to scare the kitchen into producing something decent for lunch.
‘Excellent duck,’ observed Standartenführer Bernd, ‘it was one of the pities at Cahors that the wine was so excellent, but there was so little to drink it with.’
‘It was very thoughtful of you to bring the wine, sir,’ answered von Scheurenberg, thinking how ill-bred the man was. The duck had been good, with fresh peas and a rich gravy. Bernd looked more like a butcher than a high-rank Gestapo officer. He had somehow managed to grow even fatter in the time he had spent in Cahors. Von Scheurenberg didn’t believe in fat officers, it looked bad to the men, suggesting both weakness and the wrong kind of power. Bernd poured himself another glass of wine and began to smear a whole fresh goat’s cheese on a sliver of bread. It oozed out of the sides of his wet mouth as he munched, and von Scheurenberg shuddered in disgust. He considered lighting a cigarette to disguise the odour of sour sweat that always seemed to hang around fat people, but other people’s bad manners were no excuse for one’s own.
‘Before you leave, then?’ There was garlic in the cheese, it poured across the table in the question.
‘Everything is in order.’
‘I understand you’ve had very little trouble here.’
‘As you saw in my reports, sir.’
‘I came with twenty men.’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘They want examples made. What do you have?’
Von Scheurenberg managed a dry smile. ‘There are no Jews left in the Midi. We’ve a village idiot, but he’s harmless.’
‘What about the Maquis activity?’
‘Sir, as you know, very little. Except for poor old Bloch.’
‘What do you know?’
‘Again, very little, sir. I judged the moment was too sensitive to stir things up in the village. There was no suggestion of any activity here, never has been. Only that unfortunate nonsense with the Cahors Milice. I imagine it was one of the groups over in the Lot. Misguided reprisal. They’ll be long gone now. It was in the report.’
Bernd had clearly not studied the report thoroughly because von Scheurenberg had to explain about the death of the old man. He didn’t add that whatever happened in Normandy, it was his own belief that the French would destroy the country before long with this habit of fighting amongst themselves.
‘Do the men know it was Milice?’ Bernd’s vile fat-cushioned eyes were cunning.
‘No.’
‘They know Bloch was killed by Maquis?’
‘Yes.’
‘Interesting. You know they put a sign up in Cahors? On some statue?’
‘Léon Gambetta, sir, I believe.’
‘Yes, well, the sign said “Nach Berlin”.’
‘Quite funny, really, for peasants.’
Von Scheurenberg thought he had misspoken, until Bernd smiled, wanting to be sophisticated.
‘I’ll have my men search the village anyway. If nothing comes up, we’ll have to make do with the idiot, eh, von Scheurenberg?’ He laughed loudly to show he, too, was joking, spraying the tablecloth with crumbs.
Laurent had heard about the dance from Betty. He made a point of popping into the café regularly now, neatly dressed and clean-shaven. JC said it was essential to look as though you belonged to normal society on the outside. Betty was wiping down the tables, her fat backside straining under her apron.
‘It’s dangerous, you know, Betty,’ he said in a low voice, tapping a coin on the counter to make it obvious he was ordering a drink.
She blew her hair out of her eyes.
‘Pouf, don’t be such an old bore. Nothing ever happens.’ It was hard to remember that the people in Castroux knew nothing at all, he couldn’t warn Betty any further without giving something away.
‘Will you fetch William down, then?’
‘I could do.’
‘Oh, go on. Oriane won’t let him otherwise, in the dark.’
Laurent drank a glass of eau de noix as he tried to calculate the risk. Above all, he had to behave normally. Apart from Larivière and the priest, no one knew about the truth of Normandy, the few newspapers that made their way into the village recently were all Pétainiste propaganda. The dances had been going on in secret for over a year. Laurent assumed that they knew all about it and sensibly turned a blind eye, and Betty was crazy for dancing, for all she was so plump. If he tried to talk her out of it she would ask questions, he couldn’t afford that, he had to keep his eyes on the priority. He could coast down the hill with the engine off as he’d planned anyway, then push the bike along the track and cut around Saintonge. It would be more effort, with his leg, but it would be even safer.
‘Go on, then,’ he said to Betty, so she gave him the drink on the house.
Laurent reached Monguèriac about eleven, slowing down carefully as soon as he came in sight of the roadblock. They had cut off the bridge over the Tarn beneath the first of its high fancy towers. The clock ticked loudly in his head as he handed over the papers JC had provided. They were authorized by a Milice man and a doctor in Landi. ‘One of ours,’ JC said. He was going to the hospital to see about an infection in his stump. The French speaker asked why he was so late. That was easy, the bike had broken down and he had to fix it. He would go to the hospital now and wait until morning. Don’t be too eager, JC had warned, they’ll suspect if you seem too honest, try to seem a bit rude.
‘Search the bike.’
Laurent thanked God he had remembered to get rid of the gun. The gun Lebre had taken before he slid his neat little gutting knife into the hollow below the soldier’s ear. How could he almost have been so stupid? JC had said he should have it as his own, for Papie. But it was all right, he’d slipped it into William’s violin case as they reached the barn. The boy held his instrument like a baby all the time, it would be easy to take it back when things were over. He was safe, there was nothing in his pannier but some bread and butter and a clean shirt.
‘Show us the leg.’ It took a few minutes to dismount and take off his trousers, though Laurent did so as swiftly as he could, in case they suspected he was a diversion. He was proud of the leg, though it itched something terrible. For a week he had kept the stump bound in damp rags until it began to stink, and when he had unwrapped it this evening there was the expected cheesy fungus coating the spongy flesh. He had ripped at it with his nails until the white rind was tattered and oozing bright blood, then bound it back up with a morsel of greening bacon hidden in the bandage. In the torchlight it had the desired effect.
‘For fuck’s sake put that away!’
As they waved him on he looked at Papie’s watch and could hardly believe that just five minutes had passed. The hospital was on the other side of the cathedral square, towards the railway. He was on time and, incredibly, it looked as though it was going to happen.
JUNE 1944
Cécile Chauvignat killed the last of her secret pigs. She’d had a good price for them, over to Landi, but now the road was blocked the meat could be put to better use. She planned to give a good bit to Madame Larivière as an insurance policy. Cécile had devised a wire noose that slipped over the pig’s snout, pulled tight, and silenced the screams.
