by Allan Massie
Since I have never been intimate with Monsieur Laval, I had had no opportunity to see him in Châteldon and to prove the truth of his words. Nevertheless I believed them. In the same way, for all her sophistication and glitter, my poor Polly has never escaped the hunting fields of the soft English Midlands. It’s the experience of riding a hunter across a ploughed field and then taking a blackthorn hedge that has made her what she is; it gave her the resolution to follow her own line all her life. And yet though she has seen things clearly, she has never seen much, because there is no definition in the countryside. And Anne? And Brittany? It’s my misfortune that I don’t know her country.
Monsieur Laval sent a car and escort for me. We travelled by night, and I reached Châteldon on a wet windy morning, when there was mist hanging from the chestnut trees on the hillsides. The castle is a solid edifice at a little distance from the village. It looks down on the valley, and there are fir trees between it and the opposite hill. There were men and women working in the fields as we approached. Two or three looked up and waved at the car, perhaps thinking it contained the Prime Minister.
To my surprise he greeted me at the door of the castle. I was equally surprised to find him wearing breeches and gaiters. I had never previously seen him in anything but formal dress, and it occurred to me that, in his country garb, his protestations of devotion to the soil seemed altogether credible. He told me he had been visiting the dairy.
‘I’m a scientific farmer,’ he said. ‘It’s in my blood, and I get more contentment from gazing on a good milking-cow than aesthetes like yourself do from gazing at an Ingres.’
He laughed, affecting an intimacy for which I was unprepared, and was nevertheless charmed by.
‘I wasn’t born in the castle, you know,’ he said. ‘On the contrary, down there in the village. We’ll take a walk in the afternoon and I’ll show you my birthplace. My father kept the inn, but he had a few acres of vines and six horses because he was also the local postmaster. I was taken away from school when I was twelve to drive the mailcart, but I managed to return and so got myself an education; and here we are. But I love the soil, it’s the source of everything. I could never leave. I could never be happy anywhere else. Before the war, even during the most intense crisis, I would return here on Saturdays, just to get myself feeling right. It’s good of you to come.’
He spoke as if his invitation had not been a command. ‘I was puzzled,’ I said, ‘and curious.’
‘Naturally.’
He let me into the library, which is a large handsome room with big windows giving a fine extensive view of the valley. One wall was lined with copies of law reports, another with collected volumes of French classics which looked as if they had been bought by the yard. A maid brought in a pot of coffee and some of those little almond cakes characteristic of the Auvergne.
‘I’m devoted to these,’ Monsieur Laval said. ‘The coffee is genuine, I assure you. Some of my German friends are good enough to make a supply available to me.’
His eyes twinkled as he said ‘my German friends’.
He poured two cups of coffee, and winced as he sipped his own.
‘I’m addicted to coffee but my wife has just insisted that I stop putting sugar in it. She’s worried about my health. It’s ironical, isn’t it, to worry about one’s health with things as they are. But of course, your patron, the Marshal, thinks about little else these days. About his health, not mine, you understand. He would be delighted if I was to drop dead.’
He settled himself in a carved chair, made of stained oak in the heavy and deplorable style of the Second Empire, and gestured to me to sit down too.
‘Let’s not stand on ceremony,’ he said. ‘I was born a peasant, a superior peasant, and I still think like a peasant. It makes me uncomfortable to let formality interpose itself in personal relations. Even my celebrated deviousness – oh yes, I am quite well aware of my reputation – is only the taciturnity and deviousness of a peasant confronted by his landlord. You’re surprised that I have asked you here?’
‘Yes indeed.’
‘We had a conversation in Paris in the autumn of ’40. Believe me, I have not forgotten it. You impressed me. And I have watched you since. In November ’42 especially. And concluded: Lucien de Balafré is a man I can trust, a man worthy of confidence. That’s rare these days.’
He smiled. His whole face changes when he smiles. It is as if he is making a present of himself to you.
‘I mentioned my German friends just now, and I saw you detected the irony in my tone. But you have German friends yourself, without irony? That’s right, isn’t it, nothing ironical in your friendship..?’
‘I don’t understand you.’
‘Oh yes, you do, but you are playing safe. I like that. I admire it. The man who lets his hand be seen is a fool. I can’t respect such a man. But I respect you. And I am not trying to deceive or trap you. Read this.’
He passed me a sheet of paper which had been lying, face down, on a little table at his right hand.
‘Go on, read it,’ he said, and stretched beyond that table to pick up one of the little almond cakes. He bit into it, keeping his eyes, as I was powerfully aware, on me.
It was a report of the visit paid to me by Rupert. It outlined our pre-war friendship. There was a paragraph, couched in general but lucid terms, which indicated that Rupert was regarded as a security risk by the German authorities, on the grounds of his connections with ‘subversive elements among the old nobility and the conservative classes’. The author of the report advised that I should be kept under surveillance. He pointed out that my brother was with de Gaulle, and that my mistress’s brother was believed to have joined the Maquis. He recommended that if any further ground for suspicion should be given – ‘and since the subject’s telephone calls are intercepted, and his mail routinely censored, it will be easy to establish such grounds’ – I should immediately be placed under arrest.
I read it twice before looking up, then waited for Laval to speak.
‘That’s from our own people,’ he said, ‘not from the Germans, though I suppose they have the same information on your German friend. Perhaps not, of course, for one can’t exaggerate the secretiveness of the different departments in a State such as theirs. Still, you see, you have become an object of suspicion.’
‘I suppose we all have our dossiers,’ I said.
He lit a cigarette from the stub of the one he had been smoking. ‘Of course we do,’ he said, ‘I’m glad you see it like that. And of course visiting me here will do you some good, in some quarters at least. Conversely, it may endanger me. That’s my risk, however. But I haven’t really brought you here to talk about that. I merely thought it useful that you should know what’s being said about you.’
His smile convinced me that it would be absurd to protest at being threatened; it was the most gentle threat.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I just thought you should see this. But I brought you here – I beg your pardon, invited you here, for you could have refused, you must admit that – because I have been, as I say, impressed by your intelligence, lucidity and, at the same time, your courage and common sense whenever we have met. I don’t hold it against you that you were one of those who told the Marshal to have nothing to do with that common intriguer, Laval. Why should I?’
That was a fantasy of course, for I was never in a position to offer such advice to the Marshal.
‘I’ve invited you here because I want your advice.’
He smiled and poured me more coffee. It was really very good coffee, with a flavour of before the war.
‘This isn’t a French war,’ he said. ‘It hasn’t been a French war since 1940, and I’m determined it won’t be again. Unfortunately, the Resistance doesn’t understand that. I would wish them to do so. But it’s a war in which France can still be destroyed. I wish to avoid that. That’s my policy. To protect France, simply that.’ ‘I’ve never doubted your patriotism,’ I said.
‘Only the
re are moments when patriotism is inadequate? I agree. You wrote an article once which impressed me, about Europe, about the need for a friendship between France and Germany. I approved it absolutely. Europe has been ravaged by our unnecessary quarrels. They threaten, even now, to destroy France.’
‘That quarrel?’
‘The remnants of that quarrel.’
‘But Monsieur le Président, even if I still believe that it is necessary for France and Germany to come together in friendship, I can’t conceive of friendship between France and Hitler.’
‘Nor, of course, can your friend Herr von Hülenberg. Nor can his friends who are all what our children will learn to call “good Europeans”. I think we understand each other. Perhaps you have some means, some subterranean means, of communicating with Herr von Hülenberg? Do please give him, if that is the case, my good wishes.’
He jumped to his feet and, crossing the room, picked up a walking-stick from a stand by the door.
‘Let us take a walk.’
The mist had lifted and the air was soft and gentle. The trees were not yet quite bare, but there was a scent of dead leaves. Smoke rose, dark grey and straight, from cottage chimneys. We made our way to some farm buildings. Two or three geese and some ducks were feeding in stubble fields. We paused by a pigsty and Monsieur Laval scratched the back of a big blue-and-white sow.
‘She’s going to be a mother again,’ he said. ‘Wonderful.’ He moved the tip of his stick so that he could scratch behind the ear.
‘You love that, my beauty, don’t you?’ he said. ‘It’s imperative of course that the German Armies are not overwhelmed by the Bolshevists. I don’t want my Auvergnat peasants to suffer as the Kulaks have suffered. And they would. So we need a strong Germany, if a different one.’
Even by the pigsty, with only his sow listening, I thought, he will use only words which can carry more than one meaning.
‘As for France,’ he said, ‘we need reconciliation, if this terrible European war is not to be translated into a civil war. Come,’ he said, ‘we’ll walk into the village. I’ll show you the inn where I was born. That will help you to understand me, yes, and perhaps even to trust me.’
‘Do you know,’ he said, as we walked down the cobbled street, ‘this is the only place in France where I can walk freely, without a bodyguard; it’s the only place where people give me good-day. They trust me, you see. They know it’s my intention to look after them.’
The inn was a mean-looking house, with a bench and wooden table outside where four old men sat playing cards. One of them removed his pipe from his mouth to pass some remark about the weather to Monsieur Laval. He replied in the local patois, and they all laughed. The innkeeper greeted him as Pierre.
‘He’s some sort of cousin aren’t you, Raoul? My father was his mother’s half-brother, isn’t that right? Give us a glass of red.’
We sat for some minutes in silence. An old woman was frying sausages on an open range, and, without being asked, brought us some on a plate. They were coarse, highly-seasoned pork sausages.
‘How good it is,’ Laval said, ‘to eat what one ate as a child.’
‘Do you think it’s possible,’ he said, ‘for you to act for me?’
‘In what capacity?’ I asked.
‘As an unofficial Ambassador,’ he said.
I accepted, and I am nervous on account of what I have undertaken to attempt. Yet I could not have refused.
Laval retains the same aim he has had throughout the war. He wishes to keep the peace in France and to save the country from Bolshevism also. To accomplish this, two things are necessary. First, an understanding must be achieved with those elements of the Resistance which are aware of the Communist menace. This means, as he admits, dividing the Resistance and making overtures to de Gaulle. He will offer to sign a pact with de Gaulle, if de Gaulle will agree to ease matters for him now by restraining his followers from making the sort of attacks on the Germans and the French State which invite reprisals.
Second, there must be a coup d’état in Germany. I am to contrive to assure Rupert that Laval is in favour of their enterprise and will do everything in his power to facilitate its success.
‘It’s a gamble,’ he said, ‘because I still think Hitler is strong enough to repel any Anglo-American invasion; but whatever the outcome in that quarter, it is necessary that we have a German government strong enough at least to compel Stalin to accept a negotiated peace in the east, and yet at the same time respectable enough to make it possible for the Anglo-Americans to give them a free hand against the Bolsheviks.
‘As for de Gaulle,’ he said, draining his glass, ‘you must let him know that the Americans have already made overtures to me to establish a provisional government in the event of their successful invasion, which will exclude him. The Americans distrust de Gaulle far more than they distrust Laval. It’s one of the few cards left in my hand.’
When I returned home Anne was at once aware of my excitement and apprehension. I told her what had happened.
‘It’s impossible,’ she said. ‘Laval has asked you to square the circle, he has sent you in search of fool’s gold, he has asked you to reconcile the irreconcilable.’
It was time, she said, to go into hiding, to join the Resistance, to flee the country.
‘There is Spain,’ she said.
‘Don’t you understand?’ she said, ‘I don’t want you dead.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
HUGH, I HAVE not been entirely frank. Why should I be? We all have secrets to protect, and sometimes when we are offered those that belong to others, we shrink from accepting the gift.
Two years ago, my Uncle Armand died. I hadn’t seen him for more than ten years, and indeed I doubt if we had met more than half a dozen times since I left Les Trois Puits with tears in my eyes and resentment in my heart. Yet, because both Armand and I had a sense of family which expressed itself in the tacit knowledge that we were, whatever happened, obliged to each other, we never quite broke contact; and when he died, he left me certain papers.
As it happened, I was not well at the time. I was indeed in a clinic, receiving treatment for what they call alcoholism – I put it like that because I cannot accept the notion that addiction to the bottle is some sort of illness or disease. It seems to me, naively, yet – I would claim – with justice, to be essentially a matter of choice. Nevertheless, despite my scepticism, I was that year sufficiently close to despair, and yet still tenacious of life, to be willing to seek treatment. It was largely a matter of detoxification; and, having escaped death, I resumed my normal pattern of life fortified. But for several months I was also timid and defensive. I consigned these papers Armand had bequeathed me to my bank. They lay there like a decayed tooth which one cannot forget but which does not imperatively require treatment. I suppose I always knew that some day they would have to be read. But I let them lie there, because I was afraid.
It was only when you compelled me to this task that I wrote to my bank asking them to forward them to me. Banks, in my experience, are rarely efficient, not even when you owe them money. Anyway, it took more than one request before they did my bidding.
Here then is Armand’s letter. I think you will find it almost concludes the story, and it seems to me that it makes it very unlikely that you will be able to take your project further, if only because I can’t see how you can impose any shape on the material you have.
Certainly, it’s a long way from your early intellectual curiosity.
I am afraid you must be disappointed. Perhaps that is why I haven’t heard from you for two months. Perhaps, even now, you have advanced to some more fruitful enterprise.
But I feel, now, rather like Ulysses. I’m damned if anything will keep me from Ithaca.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Document 14: Letter from
Armand de Balafré dated 20 July, 1984
MY DEAR ETIENNE:
I shall be dead when you receive this letter. This morning sen
tence was pronounced: inoperable cancer. Well, I am seventy-seven; no point in grumbling.
Have you observed the date of this letter? Precisely forty years ago, Claus von Stauffenberg placed that briefcase of his against the table-leg of the hut in East Prussia, and departed rejoicing that he had killed the Führer. Within a few days Lucien’s friend Rupert von Hülenberg was hanged on piano-wire alongside his friends. Hitler gloated over the film made of the executions which marked almost the last snarl of the beast. They marked in a different way the extinction of your father’s hopes also.
How ironical it seems at this distance, when the Franco-German friendship in which both believed, and to a version of which, it may be said, both sacrificed their lives, now seems so firmly established that it has become one of those facts of life, as natural as that people should drive to a restaurant in the country for their Sunday lunch. But yet there is more irony. What has confirmed that friendship has been the Russian domination of Eastern Europe which they hoped in 1944 to prevent.
Half a lifetime ago, Etienne, we told you that your father had killed himself. We had discussed this, Berthe and I, and it seemed necessary to tell you. It may not have been, as you may have guessed, true; except in the metaphysical sense that Lucien, in choosing to be a man of a certain sort of action, chose death. He was, in that last year, absolute for death.
Early in January 1944, I was back working in de Gaulle’s headquarters in Carlton Gardens, London. It was a season when rumours of the Allied landing in France proliferated, though, as you must be aware, the British and Americans declined to take us into their confidence. In particular, the American distrust of the General had reached such a point that we could not escape the knowledge that President Roosevelt was determined on only one thing as far as France was concerned: that however the liberated country should be governed, it should not be governed by de Gaulle. All this is well-known history.
