by Allan Massie
‘Compromise me? I suppose it would. But why not?’ She poured two glasses of wine from a bottle sitting on the window-ledge where it had been pushed behind the curtain. ‘We’re not just French and German. We’re two people, individuals. I refuse to be bound by a stereotype.’
‘Two individuals. A poet and her reader.’
He raised his glass to her.
‘We’ll go to the Flore,’ she said. ‘There won’t be any other Germans there.’
He understood what she meant.
‘You’re a brave girl,’ he said, responding to her pride, and proud too of the trust she offered. ‘But won’t that embarrass you? Compromise you further?’
‘And if it does?’ she said.
Third war: Philippe Torrance.
I haven’t, I’m aware, been just to Torrance. He is a man to whom it is hard to do justice. I disliked him so the only time I met him, at Virginia Fernie’s table. I have disliked what I have read of his work. Even the early stories which delighted Lucien now seem dated, tainted with affectation and insincerity. In the fifties he wrote a long novel of the Resistance which won prizes; I found it disgusting. His reputation faded in the changed mood of the Fifth Republic; he died a few years ago. Even to the end, or near the end, he retained a constantly renewing bank of admirers, mostly young girls. He made a fool of himself during the Events of May ’68, proclaiming that he was a Maoist. Obviously he was everything too late, a man who just missed every bandwagon. Yet there must have been something there which I am too prejudiced to detect.
He almost missed the bandwagon of the Resistance. Lucien’s refusal to introduce him to Laval infuriated him. His writing became angrier, more extreme. As Lucien observed however, polemics ill became him; his talent evaporated in rage.
Throughout ’41, even after the invasion of Russia, he was a fervent man of the Right. He fulminated against Jews, celebrated the importence of England. Yet a certain Norman caution prevailed; he never burned the boat that had brought him to any shore. Two things happened in the New Year which caused him to shift his opinions. He began to suspect that the Soviet Union would hold out and turn the war; and Drieu La Rochelle refused a short novel which he had hoped to publish in the NRF. Torrance discarded his beret, bought a roll-neck pullover, began to frequent the Flore and the Deux Magots. He cultivated Gaston Hunnot, an old friend with whom he had never, cautiously, quite severed relations. He began to spout a lukewarm Marxism, toy with the ideas that would later be called existential. So many people were shifting ground in these months that his own recantation was hardly noticed, his former opinions easily forgotten. There were not after all many people who would have liked to be judged by last year’s opinions.
Nevertheless, when he threatened to denounce Mathilde, it was the German authorities he had in mind. It would of course have been an anonymous denunciation, and it was only fear and prudence which persuaded him to deny himself the pleasure. All the same he was delighted when he heard she had been seen in the Flore with a German officer.
‘I always said she was playing a double game,’ he said.
He had himself gone into hiding for a week, straight from the offices of L’Echo de l’Avenir. That week stretched out in his conversation and memory.
By the end of the evening Mathilde was a little drunk.
‘You don’t need to worry,’ she told several people in the café, ‘Rupert hates the Nazis, he hates the war, we’ve been talking poetry, not politics.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
IN NOVEMBER ’42, the war took a new turn for France. On the night of the 7th and 8th the British and Americans launched Operation Torch against French Algeria and Morocco. At four o’clock in the morning the American Chargé d’Affaires in Vichy, S. Pinckney Tuck, delivered a letter from President Roosevelt to the Marshal. The President emphasised how France had been humiliated by Germany, which was now threatening to occupy French colonies also. Roosevelt seemed unaware that Algeria was not a colony, but a département, of France. However, he assured Pétain that the American forces had been instructed to co-operate with local officials responsible to Vichy.
Lucien heard the news on arrival at his office at eight o’clock. He was told that Tuck would call on the Marshal at nine. It was at once apparent to him that a moment of choice had arrived. He sat at his desk and smoked a succession of cigarettes, unable to give his attention to the papers that lay before him.
‘I realised,’ he wrote in one of those papers which I found in the Château de l’Haye, ‘that everything which we had refused to consider hitherto had now become inescapable.’
Document 12: Manuscript of Lucien de Balafré,
undated, possibly part of his confession
We were the Republic, and the territory of the Republic had been violated by the Americans and our erstwhile allies, the British. They committed this act of aggression under pretext of friendship, but it was nonetheless aggression directed against a sovereign State, against France. That was an argument I would have found no trouble in sustaining.
But France was not a free agent. Half the country was occupied. Monsieur Laval had been forced as Prime Minister back on the Marshal. The Head of State could no longer choose his own Ministers. These were also incontrovertible facts.
Moreover, the act of aggression was not primarily directed against France, however it insulted our dignity.
On the other hand, it must bring even greater suffering to France. It invited the Germans to move into the unoccupied zone. It threatened to destroy even more completely the authority of the Marshal.
These were my first reactions. We had of course expected such news; nevertheless we were struck dumb by it. No one had made preparation for a development which was inevitable. Once again it was clear to me that politics is a matter of reaction to the unwilled and unwelcome. It was true that Admiral Darlan happened to be in Algiers where his son was suffering from infantile paralysis. ‘There are no advantages in that,’ Laval was reported to have stated. ‘The beautiful Admiral is the last man to play a hand intelligently.’
There was a cabinet meeting that morning at eleven o’clock. Half an hour before it was due to begin, I received a message from Dr Ménétrel. The Marshal wished me to attend, as a confidential aide. I was surprised by this because I had had no conversation with the Marshal for at least six months, and believed either that I had offended him or that he had simply forgotten me. It was difficult for him these days to remember things.
The room was bathed in autumn sunshine. The Marshal had greeted me with a firm handshake, but had said nothing to enlighten me as to why I had been summoned. His step was confident, he seemed cheerful. He even hummed a little tune.
‘At least it’s not Auprès de ma blonde,’ one of the secretaries whispered. ‘That’s always a prelude to disaster.’
‘Monsieur Laval is late,’ the Marshal said. ‘But then I believe he was up half the night, and driving here from his house at Châteldon. They let me sleep till seven o’clock, you know, which was considerate of them.’
Did he say this on purpose, to indicate to us that he was acquitting himself of responsibility? Or was he ironical: to arouse our pity?
Then Laval bustled in. He hadn’t shaved. He didn’t apologise to the Marshal for being late, but at once sat in his appointed seat, stubbed out a cigarette, and lit another. He spoke without removing it from the corner of his mouth, taking charge of the meeting.
‘I see some unfamiliar faces. Some of them I know from elsewhere. Well, you’re welcome. It’s right that, in the gravity of the present situation, some of you Under-secretaries should be intimately involved and share responsibility for our decisions.’
He smiled, enjoying the disturbance which he expected his words to cause. But I was calm, for I have always accepted that my adherence to the government, my expressed faith in our moral validity, assures me of the responsibility of commitment.
Laval proceeded to give us a full account of the situation. As ever I was impr
essed, no longer reluctantly, by his lucidity and candour. He didn’t pretend it was anything but perilous.
‘It’s the most dangerous situation we have found ourselves in since 1940,’ he said. ‘Our decision this morning will again determine the fate of France.’
He looked straight across the table at the Marshal, who pulled out a red spotted handkerchief and blew his nose loudly. He emitted a series of trumpetings. Laval watched him till he had finished.
‘We have suffered an act of aggression,’ Laval said. ‘There is no question of that, and there has been no provocation. The United States, a power with whom we enjoy diplomatic relations, has invaded French territory.’
He paused again.
‘Has anyone any comment?’
There was silence. The Marshal was still dabbing at his nose with his handkerchief. He gave a little snuffle which might almost have been a laugh. Sunlight lay on the table between them, and Laval’s cigarette-smoke coiled towards the ceiling.
‘Good. We have reached a point of choice.’
‘The Americans,’ someone said, ‘have guaranteed our sovereign integrity.’
‘Ah, quite,’ Laval said. ‘And we have reports of an attempted Gaullist coup in Morocco, while General Giraud in Algeria has broadcast an appeal for all French forces to desert to the so-called Allies. Our sovereign integrity is in splendid shape. Nevertheless, that observation makes a valid point, which, you won’t be surprised to hear, I have anticipated. I have already told the German Ambassador that we are requesting his government to issue a declaration guaranteeing the integrity of both metropolitan France and of our empire. Such a declaration, I have assured them, would prevent the emergence of a dissident movement in North Africa.’
There were murmurs of assent round the table.
‘Meanwhile,’ Laval continued, ‘it is necessary that we consider offers of help which we have already received from the Axis powers, and to do this, in conjunction with the request already made by Admiral Darlan in Algiers, that the Germans provide us with air support against Allied shipping in the vicinity of the port. Now I confess to you that there is good reason for hesitation with regard to this request. It runs the risk of calling down the thunderbolt upon us. Nevertheless, it is important to understand the implications of whatever decision we make. Is that not so, Marshal?’
‘Important?’ the Marshal coughed. ‘Yes, it’s important.’
‘If we decline to accept the German offer, we shall lose Algeria. If we accept it, we shall lose more. For it will be followed by a demand that we declare war on the United States and Britain, and, it seems to me, unless this is accompanied by the guarantee of our territorial integrity which I have sought, then … Gentlemen, what then? We must be reserved in our response.’
A little later the meeting broke up, much unresolved. Ménétrel plucked me by the sleeve.
‘Don’t go. Come to the Marshal’s office.’
I accompanied him upstairs.
‘This has shaken the Marshal,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t know where he stands. He doesn’t trust Laval, but he dare not do anything about it. It’s all a scene of indescribable confusion.’
‘Things will get worse,’ Pétain said, pressing my hands. ‘They’ve escaped my control. Even Darlan is acting independently. There’s no respect left, no obedience, no chain of command. It’s all breaking up, I would be better dead. On the other hand, France needs me more now than ever. Isn’t that so?’
I was dismayed by his appearance and manner. In my diary that night, I confided: ‘Physically, the Marshal is still robust. He has, they say, good hours. But morally, it is as if he has suffered a stroke. Anne said to me this evening: “It’s like coming out of a matinée performance into the streets and finding that it is already dark.” I know just what she meant. It is imperative that I get away for a few days to my home in order to think, but that is impossible. Ménétrel made it quite clear to me that the Marshal is relying on me, though he couldn’t say what for. The fact is that the confusion in the Marshal’s mind mirrors the confusion of France. He is our King Lear, that’s all.’
Over the next few days events moved with cinematic speed and the confusion of a mystery story. Laval flew to Berchtesgaden to see Hitler. We were not told what he hoped to achieve. Darlan was instructed to resist, disobeyed the order, and the Marshal rubbed his hands as if satisfied. The Admiral then proclaimed a cease-fire. Meanwhile, came the most appalling news.
On the night of 11 November, the anniversary of the Armistice in 1918, while Laval was still engaged in discussion with the Germans, Hitler issued an order to German forces to cross the demarcation line into unoccupied France at seven o’clock the following morning. We were told it was for our protection. ‘Germany,’ Hitler said, in the message he sent to the Marshal, ‘has decided to defend the frontiers of your country side by side with French soldiers, and at the same time the frontiers of culture and European civilisation.’
Ménétrel woke me at five o’clock.
‘The Marshal has need again of your literary skills,’ he said, in that tone which has always left me uncertain whether the doctor is a buffoon or an ironist. I found Pétain sipping coffee. He was wearing a dressing-gown and nightcap. It is the only time I have seen him in such disarray.
‘It’s all breaking up,’ he said. ‘I thought I had already lived the darkest days of my life. Monsieur … Monsieur … Monsieur de Balafré’ – he seemed to summon my name from recesses of despair – ‘I must broadcast. Will you prepare a draft?
‘We protest. We accept. We are compelled to accept. All is gloom.’
So I had to set to work to persuade the French people to face reality again.
Is there no end to reality? I asked myself.
Two days later I was witness to a conversation between Laval and the illustrious General Weygand. Throughout Weygand has been a robust pessimist. It sometimes seems he takes pleasure in exposing the worst.
News had been brought by René Bousquet, Secretary-general of Police, that he had received an order from Himmler to place Weygand under surveillance.
‘I assured the Germans, of course,’ Bousquet said, ‘that you were the Marshal’s guest and that I would answer for you myself.’ ‘No need,’ Weygand replied, ‘the order places me in a position of honour.’
‘Of course,’ Laval said, ‘it is quite unnecessary. You may disregard the order, Monsieur Bousquet.’
Bousquet withdrew, and Weygand, mindless of the fact that Ménétrel and I were both present, turned on Laval.
‘You see how it is,’ he said. ‘Your policy of collaboration is dividing the country from the Marshal. Authority is fleeing.’
‘What do you expect me to do?’ Laval said. ‘I’m certain that if the Anglo-Saxons win this war, France will be surrendered to their Russian ally, and that will mean Bolshevism.’
‘Your policy,’ Weygand said, ‘in effect makes us the accomplices of Bolshevism. Every French worker sent to Germany becomes a Communist, and so do all his family and friends. Your policy, Monsieur Laval, is opposed by 95 per cent of the French people.’
Laval smiled. It was a curiously impish smile. He waved his cigarette at Weygand.
‘The figure is probably 98 per cent,’ he said. ‘Don’t think I don’t see the situation even more clearly than you do yourself. I’m determined to save France in spite of itself, to make the French people happy no matter what they think. You, General, are guilty of the sins of pessimism and defeatism.’
When Weygand left, Laval beamed at us.
‘In spite of the immediate facts, I’m an optimist. The fundamental question hasn’t changed. It remains: who is going to win the war? My money is still on Germany. But even if it wasn’t, I have to take account of the immediate question, and that is: what happens to France and the French people while the other question is being decided? Remember this, gentlemen, we are all playing a double game. Some of us however know that, and have another card up our sleeves.’
In this sta
te of secrets, there are no secrets left.
That afternoon, General Weygand was arrested by the SS as he drove from Vichy to Gueret, and taken to Germany.
‘He was always a lucky bastard,’ the Marshal said.
I left the Hôtel du Parc that afternoon in acute depression. Yet there was still little hint of winter in the streets. The cafés resounded with laughter and well-dressed ladies walked their toy-dogs on the boulevards. Except that the town was full, it might have been any gentle autumn afternoon, and people were obviously thinking of what they would have for supper rather than of the state of the war. Our concerns in the administration seemed to me neurotic, and a troop of schoolboys passing me pulled off their caps and chorused ‘Good afternoon, sir.’ They had recognised me and I realised I must have addressed their school on one of my many visits. I stopped them and asked if they had a lot of homework, and they assured me they were heavily burdened. ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Good.’
Anne was putting a casserole in the oven. She asked me if I would be in for supper. I told her I hoped to be, but it depended. I might be called back to headquarters at any time.
‘That’s why I thought a casserole,’ she said. ‘It’s rabbit again, I’m afraid.’
I sat down and stroked the cat. I knew Anne was eager to hear what had happened, but for a moment I wanted to pretend to be living an ordinary life.
She said, ‘It’s finished, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘but it’s another turn of the screw.’
And the screw kept on turning. You would have thought it tight fast, but still events turned it.
We had first the news of Darlan’s defection.
‘He hopes,’ the Marshal said, ‘that the Americans will set him up in my place. Darlan. Nobody would kill anyone, or die himself, for Darlan. I named him as my successor only to keep him out of mischief. Well, and he has got into mischief nevertheless.’
