Monsieur Orlande stood on her doorstep. Behind him, on the street, a handful of harassed soldiers hurried along banging on front doors of the other sea wall cottages with the butts of their rifles, barking orders.
‘These houses are to be evacuated,’ said the gendarme, gruffly, his eyes roving, unable to meet hers. ‘It will be safer for you all to come inland. Into the village.’
Adele folded her arms, and looked up at him. Her anger, her loathing fixated on his droopy moustache and the bulk of his stomach bulging his uniform. She noticed two buttons had popped off. Of course, he was alone and had no woman – wife or maid – to take care of such things. Surely, she thought, one of his Nazi subordinates would do a little tailoring for him?
‘And you’ve come here especially to tell us yourself?’ she muttered. ‘Why didn’t you send one of your minions from the mairie? Why didn’t you leave it to the Bosch?’
‘I want you all to come to my house. Away from the sea wall. I have a better cellar.’
‘We don’t want to come to your house, sir,’ retorted Adele, aware that Madame Ricard was at her elbow.
Monsieur Orlande glanced over her shoulder at the older woman. ‘By the look on her face, I think Madame wants to, very much,’ he said. ‘You have your family. Don’t be a fool, Adele.’
‘A fool? Is that what I am now?’ she snapped. ‘Better that than collabo.’
Adele went to close the door. Her mother-in-law put her foot in the way.
‘Adele, shut up!’ she cried. ‘Stop this now.’
Adele turned away, her throat tight in frustration, in anger and the grinding fear that she had grown so used to.
She heard Jean’s mother say, ‘… of course, Monsieur, we are so very grateful …’
Her voice was swamped by the sound of another round of salvos, thumping over the sea.
‘What on earth is going on?’ Madame Ricard asked.
‘We are being invaded,’ said the gendarme.
Adele glanced at him, drawn by the tone of his voice. His face was pale; his moustache twitching.
‘Invaded, sir?’ Madame Ricard responded.
‘They’re landing.’ He was distracted, his eyes wandering down the street, up to the sky. ‘The coastline is under fire, I’ve been told; from Quinéville to Arromanches to Ouistreham.’
‘The Allies!’ breathed Madame, incredulous.
‘Here is my key,’ Monsieur barked. ‘Take it or leave it.’
In the distance the guns boomed. Passing through the melee of activity around Montfleur harbour, Adele held onto her limping husband. Beside her walked Madame Ricard with her grandson in her arms. Sophie trailed behind them.
German soldiers, their features tight with fatigue and fear, lined up in platoons, and began to march. They were ready for action but quaking, it seemed to Adele, at the prospect of it. What a change, she thought, to the cocky, self-assured men who had harassed her, teased her, after the fall of France. Yet, still, they were immaculate: boots shining, rifles gleaming.
The residents of Montfleur, Adele noted, had other, more complex expressions as they responded to the sudden and undisputed transformation of their day: restrained glee, a glimmer of hope, and yet still, not daring to speak of it.
As they passed the Orageux Bleu, Simon, thought Adele, was less restrained. He was whistling, packing up some nets, winding some rope. He nodded to them all, first of all wary; but then he realised that now, perhaps now, he could say what was on his mind. He stepped onto the quayside.
‘This lot are being deployed south where the heavy fire is.’ He motioned towards the soldiers. ‘I reckon they are short of men. I’ve heard that the divisions are depleted because of the Eastern Front. The timing is right. The message was on the radio last night: the dice have been thrown. Did you hear it?’
‘We couldn’t make it out,’ said Adele, glancing over her shoulder in fearful reflex. She flinched as the guns out to sea roared again. She wondered at the mayhem, the chaos of battle, what the men were doing beneath all that noise. Allied soldiers on French soil? It was too astonishing to comprehend.
Jean, leaning heavily on Adele, was gazing down at his boat, idle on the high water in the harbour.
‘I long for the end,’ he whispered, his face unrecognisable with pain. ‘I so long for it all to end.’
‘Jean, here, look at this.’ Simon rummaged in a box on the boat and drew out a tricolore, folded and bound with rope. ‘Take heart because, any day soon, we shall unfurl this and fly it from the top of the mairie.’
Adele helped her husband lie down on the chaise by the empty fireplace in Monsieur Orlande’s salon. He winced as she lifted his legs onto the cushion, his throat drenched in sweat. Hobbling the kilometre over rough cobbles from the sea wall cottage to the Orlande home had taken its toll on his savaged feet. His eyes swam; his jaw was fixed.
‘I will call the doctor,’ she said. ‘He might have something he can give you.’
Jean grabbed her hands and made her sit by him. She knelt on the carpet and rested against the chaise. ‘Not yet,’ he sighed, despairing. ‘Don’t go.’
Pain made him breathless. Adele looked around the room, knowing Monsieur kept his brandy in the small cabinet. The sunny morning made mockery of the dust, revealing it lying thick on the buffet and the secretaire where Madame used to write her letters. There were empty bottles of wine discarded in the fireplace and crystal glasses lined up in a row stained with telltale smears of red, long evaporated. Next to Monsieur’s chair was a plate of cheese crumbs, manna for the mice; old pipe tobacco reeking in an ashtray. A grey cobweb extended from one corner of the mantelpiece to the wall.
She got up and found the brandy, poured a small tot for her husband. With her back to him, she herself took a sip. Kneeling back down beside him, she held the glass to his mouth.
He sipped, his eyes not leaving hers.
‘Look at me. I’m useless to you. To everyone. Lying down in this salon. His salon.’
‘Monsieur is being very kind,’ said Adele, feeling disloyal for saying so. ‘Your mother just told me, there is a good ration of milk down in the kitchen; some dried fish; some tins. But even so … I also don’t feel this is the best place for us.’
Madame Ricard came into the room. ‘What are you talking about?’ she cried. ‘The cellar is deep, safe from the bombs, the garden is full of vegetables. Doesn’t he have some chickens down there in the old stables?’
Adele reminded her that there used to be rabbits.
‘What more could we ask for?’ Madame sat down in an armchair and ran her finger over the coffee table, examining the pleat of dust she made.
‘But, Maman, this is the house of a traitor. A traitor to France … the people of Montfleur know what he has been doing for the last four years. Hobnobbing with the Kommandant.’
‘But his own wife was carted off to prison,’ cried Madame Ricard. ‘I can only feel sorry for him. A man in his position. Whatever he does, he cannot win.’
‘But now …’ muttered Jean, ‘but now the tide is turning. Adele, you take care of Sophie, Pierre and Maman. If something happens. If the hell we’re expecting reaches us … you leave me here. If I can’t manage it … whatever happens. You leave me here.’
‘But what can happen?’ Adele lifted her face to look him in the eye. ‘The Allies are here.’
‘Tomorrow might be different once again.’
They all glanced in the direction of the hallway. The front door was opened and shut with a slam. A curious rattling and squeaking came down the corridor towards them. Monsieur appeared in the salon, pushing before him a wheelchair.
‘It’s got broken springs,’ he said, ‘and it needs some oil. But it will do, don’t you think?’
‘Oh, Monsieur, thank you,’ breezed Madame Ricard. She leapt up and pushed the chair into the room. ‘Look at this, Jean. Isn’t this wonderful?’
Adele’s stomach contracted in embarrassment. Her mother-in-law’s simpering reaction to the gi
ft – just one more confirmation of the gendarme’s corruption, for which they must all be so grateful – was unforgivable. She held her husband’s hand tightly on her lap, feeling his sweat drench both their palms.
Jean coughed, and tried to draw his legs up, tried to stand. He gave up.
He said, ‘Thank you, Monsieur.’ And his voice was flat with defeat.
Monsieur Orlande’s parlour radio was not as robust or as capable as the one they left behind in the sea wall cottage, but Adele managed to trace the World Service and pressed her ear to the fabric speaker to listen to the news.
‘Tommies are in Caen,’ she told Jean. ‘Carentan is taken. They are joining the Americans via the Valognes to Cherbourg route.’
‘They’re getting closer,’ her husband said.
Adele glanced out of the Orlande salon windows at the benign summer sky, quiet now. Sporadic shelling punctuated their days, like a depraved and tuneless symphony along the horizon. The missiles had not yet reached the town, but Adele felt their presence over her head, as if she constantly wanted to duck. Out in the bocage the Germans were fighting a rearguard action, defending the peninsula from the invaders, the liberators. And the people of Montfleur were either trapped, cowering in their homes, or they had left to find a place of safety. But where, in the besieged peninsula, could they possibly go that was safer than anywhere else?
‘I’m not leaving, Jean,’ she told him stoutly. ‘I’m not going without you.’
Jean glanced at the wheelchair parked in the corner of the room. Monsieur had left it with them, and then moved into the mairie. He had a camp bed there in his office, he told them. He said he had to be on duty twenty-four hours a day.
‘Damn that man,’ said Jean, ‘but I want to use it. I want to get out. I want to breathe fresh air, blow away this awful … frustration. Will you take me out?’
She dressed her husband in a clean shirt, and found his Sunday trousers. Thick socks covered his damaged feet. She eased him into the chair and set his cap on his head. He had shaved that morning and his eyes were bright, his forehead smoothed by the rare shot of morphine she’d manage to get from the doctor that morning. She kissed his lips.
‘You are a fine-looking man,’ she told him, ‘and I love you.’
He had no need to say anything to her – his eyes told her.
‘Where is Sophie?’ he asked as she manoeuvred the chair through the front door.
‘Maman has her with her down in the kitchen. Pierre is fast asleep. I told her we won’t be long.’
‘But I want to be,’ said Jean.
Adele pushed her husband over the cobbles, through deserted streets. Occasionally a shutter would open, she would see a timid face, and she would utter Bonjour. Montfleur was holding its breath.
Out on the smooth tarmac road sweeping around the low-lying coast, the wheelchair was so much easier to push. Adele began to giggle, she began to run. The chair nearly flew as she propelled it before her.
Jean laughed, ‘I need to fasten my safety belt! But this thing doesn’t have one.’
‘You should have stolen a Bosch helmet for extra protection,’ she laughed, panting. ‘You know what a bad driver I am. I haven’t run so fast for years. I feel like I am back at school, tearing round the playground.’
The beach lay to their left, perfect with crisp white sand tickled by gentle waves. La Manche was a pure blue, reflecting the sky, with streaks of gunmetal grey where the waters were deeper, darker. The sun was hot overhead. The stupendous green of the fertile green blanket of fields nearly blinded her. Birds fluttered through the rambling hedges where big white cows poked their soft faces over. Adele stopped the wheelchair and she and Jean both reached up to stroke their noses. A vile stench hit her suddenly and she stood on tiptoe to see where it was coming from. In the field beyond, three dead cows lay in the long, lush grass, their bodies bent and ravaged by shrapnel injuries. A bleating calf bent its head, trying to nuzzle its dead mother’s teats.
Without a word, Adele grasped the handles of the chair and pushed Jean away.
A puff of wind blew his cap off and Adele ran along the road behind it as it bowled along. She caught it and planted it on her head.
‘Hey, Adele,’ he cried, laughing. ‘Give that back. That’s mine. It’s the only one I’ve got, remember.’
‘Unfortunately not any more,’ she cried. ‘I have commandeered it. I haven’t visited the hairdresser’s in months. In fact, I think they all left Montfleur weeks ago. My hair is a mess and I need to keep it covered. You’re fine without it.’
They reached the bottom of a slope that led up to the headland, the apex of the eastern edge of the peninsula. Adele braced herself and pushed hard, steering her husband up to the top.
‘Put your back into it.’
‘That’s right,’ she wheezed, ‘you do all the huffing and puffing, I’ll do all the hard work.’
She stopped at the top, applied the brake and wiped her face with a handkerchief. She put Jean’s cap back on his head, knelt beside him, took his hand and gazed out over the bay. They both fell silent, awestruck by the enormity of the sight before them. The sea swept wide to the distant south where Caen lay, marked on the horizon by the shroud of black smoke over it. The Allied armada lay at anchor, colonising the bay. Countless warships and destroyers, surrounded by flotillas of smaller boats, imposed their strength and their will on the sea, on the land, on the war.
‘Here,’ Jean drew his field glasses out of his pocket and handed them to her. ‘Take a look and tell me what you see.’
She squinted through the lenses. The terrifying mechanical bulk of the warships came into sharp view, with a blur of activity between them as small boats flitted, conveying supplies, conveying men to the coast.
‘They keep on coming,’ she said. ‘They just keep on coming.’
She spotted planes in the sky over the land, protecting and monitoring. She swallowed hard at the power – the sheer audacity – of it all unveiled before them.
‘Do you feel safe now?’ Jean asked her, as she handed him the glasses.
‘It’s as beautiful as a dream. It’s as frightening as a nightmare.’
Jean fell silent as he, too, watched through the glasses and took in the magnitude of the fleet. He put the glasses away and Adele watched him wipe his eyes.
‘If only we’d waited,’ he said. ‘We should have waited. We shouldn’t have … we shouldn’t have carried out the raid. You know … I mean the one years ago, when the children were taken. We should have waited. They were taken because of us.’
‘Jean, please.’ Adele rested her head on his shoulder and stared ahead of her at the might of the Allies, feeling the twist of pride, of delight in her gut, and the sharp guilt that raked over her heart. ‘Oh Jean, you’re shivering. You’re so cold.’
‘My legs …’ he said. ‘The pain is creeping up them.’
‘I’ll get you back home.’
‘Wait a moment. I want to look at the ships for a few minutes more. I don’t want to forget this.’
The sun beat down. The dune grasses rustled and whispered peacefully. Summer clouds jaunted across the sky and, beyond the wire that guarded France, that suffocated France, the sea looked perfect for bathing, the sand ripe for children to build their castles.
Jean lived for just a few days more, but not long enough to see the first Tommies walk into Montfleur.
As British tanks streamed up the road from the south, Adele tried to call the doctor but the telephone lines were down, the electricity cut off. In the Orlande salon, they guessed at blood poisoning. Jean was delirious, his fever intensifying; he cried, he whimpered like a child with the pain. And then, very suddenly, he became incredibly quiet. His eyes glazed over as the first shells screamed in over the rooftops and blasted holes in the houses around the square.
‘Tell them to stop,’ cried Adele, clutching Sophie in her arms as an obscene blast rocked her bones. She crouched by the chaise, shielding her daughter and buryin
g her face into her husband’s shoulder. His face was tilted away from her; his sweat felt ice-cold under her fingertips. As the blistering explosion faded, the deathly quiet returned and she dared to lift her head, she realised how still he was. ‘Tell them, Jean, tell them,’ she whispered into his sleeve. ‘There’s hardly any Germans left here anyway.’
Simon appeared suddenly at her side, his eyes staring wildly, his face white, his clothes encrusted with brick dust.
‘I just made it across the square. Oh God, get down to the basement with that child, Adele. Go.’
‘Simon, I’m not leaving him.’
‘Do as I say!’ Simon gripped her arms and picked her up as she held onto Sophie and dragged her away from the chaise. A stream of plaster trickled down from the ceiling. Glass could be heard falling, breaking somewhere in the house.
‘I want to stay! I want to stay with Jean!’
Madame Ricard hurried in and grabbed Sophie from her arms.
‘The baby is downstairs. Now come with me,’ she commanded. ‘He can no longer hear you.’
Adele looked at her mother-in-law. Her hard wrinkled face was broken with emotion and yet her cold voice sounded so reasonable and natural that Adele dumbly obeyed her.
Sheltering in the basement kitchen, Adele sensed the hours drag by, the sunlight change outside the window. The noise from the shells slowly eased to be replaced by cracks of gunfire from hand-held pistols in the streets.
‘They’re fighting house to house now,’ said Simon. ‘They’re flushing them out.’
She wondered where the Germans might be hiding. The stables at the end of the garden, or the shuttered house, empty and ghostly, next door? She held Sophie close and spoke gently to her, listened to her muffled weeping. She, too, longed to cry but was too empty, too shattered to even try.
The September Garden Page 25
