by Jan Harvey
I knew Rory couldn’t swim so I unstrapped my sandals. I reckoned I could wade in, if I could find a way though the vegetation, and grab Scooter’s collar then I could pull him towards me. I weighed it up, making the presumption that the river could not be so deep where there were reeds. There was a small fallen tree I could cling to as well, but even before I had time to think about it, Rory had jumped in, there was a splashing sound and he was suddenly up to his chest in the frothing water.
‘No, Rory, no!’ I shouted. ‘Let me.’
He looked shocked as the cold hit him. ‘Scoot!’ he called but he lost his footing and water filled his mouth. He coughed and spluttered, flapping his arms about. It was like a film, watching a man drowning in slow motion, his hands scrambled back towards the rotted wooden structure but he didn’t reach it, he sank under the water and then, when he emerged, his face was white and he was utterly terrified.
I tried to make my way through the foliage, but great fronds of hogweed were stopping me and nettles with nasty sharp prickles were spiking into my calves. My blouse ripped as I slid down a steep muddy bank. I was hurtling down towards the water, my hip grinding against a protruding rock, and my feet were losing all purchase in the mud.
At that moment, I heard another splash and between the shouting and the dog, who was now whimpering mercilessly, I could hear the sound of strokes cutting through the water, rhythmic, strong. I scrambled back up the bank, using holes in the craggy surface for purchase and managed, feet slipping and sliding away from me, to grab hold of a thin tree trunk and haul myself back up.
Then I could see the water again, coursing between the reeds and under the overhanging trees, but as I ran along the side of it there was no sign of anyone. Then I saw Scooter, who had been swept further down. He was struggling to stay above the water and his snout and black eyes were all I could make out. Even further along, two shapes were splashing and creating undulating waves in the middle of the widening water: Steve and Rory.
Rory was flailing. He looked like he was fighting Steve off, then I realised he was panicking. The river was very deep and he was dipping under the surface and reappearing as he struggled for breath. Steve was trying to grab him and he too was losing strength. I ran down the edge of the river, hampered by the rugged rise and fall of the bank. Then the river turned a corner and I had to run around the swimming pool, its glassy waters rippling from edge to edge.
‘Martha!’ Steve had grabbed Rory from behind and he had him safe, cupping his chin with one hand and pulling him backwards towards the bank. He was in the widest part, the silent current buffeting him. He was finding it almost impossible. With all his might, he raised a hand out of the water and pointed. There, on the top of the next bank, was an old life-saving ring, orange and a dirty grey, hanging on a rotted post. I ran to it, my ankle giving under me as it hit a divot, but I limped on and grabbed it.
When I looked to see where they were, somehow they had separated again and Steve was looking everywhere for Rory, he was spinning around in the foaming water. Rory was behind him, the two of them were trying to find contact with the riverbed, but it was just too deep. I threw the ring as hard as I could and it hit the water with a thudding splash. The force of throwing it made me lose my footing and I fell, crashing heavily into the tangle of reeds and nettles, and my ankle buckled with a loud crack as I hit the ground.
78
It was a “dreich day” as the Scottish Amshersts would say, a great bruise of a cloud hung low over the city as I looked down at the address on the scrap of paper, Trevise’s writing was spider like.
The road was narrow, widening only slightly at the midway point, and there I could see a small turret above a deserted café. Opposite was a large door with the carved head of a man set high above an arch. To each side were a handful of apartment windows and two had window boxes. I identified the one I was looking for, white and ornate. It was quiet in the anonymous street, and when a woman appeared from a small doorway to my left, I took her by surprise. Her eyes were haunted and full of trepidation, she looked at me uneasily. Even then, months later and long after the occupation, fear was ingrained in her everyday existence.
There was a huge wooden door, a blue that had been sun-beached to grey. I pushed it open as Trevise had instructed and slipped inside. There were doors to each side of a dirty cobbled courtyard and more above my head. I took the metal staircase slowly, it was not sound, and it reverberated under my tread. As I reached the gantry, I caught a glimpse of a curtain moving top right, and a sallow face dipped back out of view.
Her flat was number four. Unlike the others, the brass numeral was gone, but there was contrasting paint where it had been.
I knocked.
There was no answer.
I rubbed away a layer of dirt in the small side window and peered in but it was in vain, I could see only the blurs of a room through a thick, dusty net curtain.
I tried knocking again, even though I knew it was fruitless. Trevise had warned me. “She’s long gone, old man, ran off ages ago.” His words were ringing in my ears as I leaned over the balcony wondering what to do next.
The door to my left creaked as it opened and the sallow-faced woman, dressed in black, was looking at me.
‘What do you want?’ she snapped. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I am looking for Madame Roussell.’
‘Madame! Ha, that’s a laugh. Madam more like.’ She was a rough sort, something akin to a kitchen maid or cleaning lady.
‘Did you know Madame Roussell?’
She threw back her head and laughed again, a nasty bitter sound.
‘Oh yes I knew her, tart that she was. I saw what she did to that Englishman too.’
I stepped closer to the woman and she backed away a little, not someone of great nerve, but a weasel woman made desperate by war.
‘I’d be able to tell you more if I had a few francs to aid my memory.’
Close up her teeth were black, rotted holes ringed her gums. I felt inside my trouser pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. She snatched them from me, feeling some of the rims with dirty fingers as if she didn’t trust their worth.
‘Yes I knew her. I saw it, what happened. It was a late afternoon, August, the sun still fierce. There was shouting, in German, and soldiers were coming from both ends of the street, I could hear them. The man came careering round the corner, I thought he would fall and he nearly did, but he balanced himself somehow.
‘She was on her balcony, like I was. I had been watering my window box and the water was dripping down into the street, that must have been why he looked up. He didn’t take any notice of me but he saw her and there was a connection, but they said nothing. The noise of the footsteps was nearer, bearing down on him. She raised four fingers to him and he ran across the street and crashed through the doors beneath us. Then he was taking the stairs two at a time, I heard him. I closed my balcony windows, but I didn’t close the shutters, it would have made me look suspicious.
‘I watched through the small window next to my door. He was banging on that door, her door, number four, but she didn’t let him in.
‘They were coming see. It was too late. They poured into the courtyard, four, six, eight grey helmets, those terrifying uniforms, heavy boots stamping on the walkway. He had his back to them when they shot him. He was wearing a white shirt and the blood it was everywhere. Red. Bright. Glistening. Yet he wasn’t dead.
‘They carried him down the stairs with his feet dragging behind him. He was limp, like a rag doll. It was me, of course, who swilled down that blood; she’d never have done anything like that, that’s how she was, pompous, above herself, like a duchess she was.
‘Have I seen her, you ask? No, and I hope I never see her again. She was a magnet to men, and very dangerous, yes very dangerous.’
79
I opened the terracotta pot and shook out t
he pale grey ashes. They caught on the breeze and splayed in an arc around me, then fell across the petals of the fading roses. It was the very least I could do for him, in the garden he loved.
Steve was standing a couple of yards away giving me a few moments to myself. He didn’t need to be with me, I was well aware he could have played no part but instead, in spite of everything, he had helped me.
My ankle was stiff and the strapping felt too tight, I had to hobble to turn around and look up at the house. There was a dense colourless cloud descending on it, a mantle of gloom shrouding its pale, ochre frontage.
‘Do you want me to make a marker or something?’ Steve asked as I limped back to him, clinging to his arm for support.
‘No, there’s no point,’ I shook my head sadly. ‘Before long, this will be a housing estate, and it will all be gone. But Scooter will be in Rory’s knot garden forever and that seems so right somehow.’
I felt the tears welling up in me, the hard rock-like feeling in my throat seemed to have been wedged there since the previous week and I could not swallow it down. It corresponded with the pain in my heart that was sharp in its intensity. I didn’t tell Steve that, there was a lot we would never discuss now and much between us that we would both never understand.
‘Are you going to see him?’ Steve asked. He looked so sad and so incredibly forlorn. It was as if we had both lost our point of reference, there was so much to rebuild, a long road ahead of us.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am.’
80
‘You’ll want to see inside, no doubt,’ the old crone said as I stood looking at the metal steps where they had shot Henry and dragged him away. What did she say? A rag doll? Thoughts ran around my head like hot rods, red hot, searing into my brain. I was gripping hard on the iron balcony as I turned to face her.
‘You can gain entry?’
‘I have a key.’ The woman nodded. She reached back inside her doorway and dangled before me a set of keys. ‘I was to hand these keys to a man called Laurent Ducas if he ever came here. He was allowed to stay here, but he was the only one, no one else. I presume you are not him.’
‘No,’ I replied. Ducas was a lover no doubt, in on the scheme, someone who knew she had gone to England and would be using her apartment in the interim. Another victim no doubt, waiting for her return. My mind was racing.
‘I suspect Mr Ducas would have paid handsomely for this key when he turned up,’ said the old woman with a repulsive smile.
I took out my wallet and peeled off some notes. She grabbed them and hugged them to her chest as, with the other boney hand, she handed me the key.
The door didn’t open fully; it was wedged against the mat. I bent down and moved it and, as I did, black beetles scurried in all directions. The three doors, left right and centre, were closed. I glanced over my shoulder at the crone who was watching me with great interest.
‘Thank you. That will be all,’ I told her.
The central door opened into the salon. Two tall windows graced the room, shutters half closed. The light, dull and insipid, flattened the shadows and shapes around me. In the places it fell, tones of grey, muted colours and dark shadows met the eye. Every stick of furniture was worn and dirty, the armchairs full of slits in the tattered fabric. There were a few cheap pieces of wooden furniture but they were dilapidated and damaged. There was no carpet square, only bare wooden floorboards. At the other end of the room there was a table, a makeshift desk. I picked up a book, it was a woman’s novella, I forget its title. There was a writing pad, some stamps, and a number of letters wedged into a metal rack. I pulled them out, and yes it felt wrong, but I would answer to the gods later.
The first was a letter from her bank. It was telling her that no more funds were available in her account and she must make good her overdraft. The language was to the point, not a polite request. There was another, a bill from a costumier for a suit and a black evening gown, to be paid in full within seven days. Another was from a hat shop.
There were two more notes of no consequence, but at the bottom of the pile was a small folded piece of thin paper. From what I could see, it had been written in a hurry, in French, the lines of writing sloped upwards at the ends. There was a date, 6th September then it read: “Confirm that I have brought the date forward and I will be escorting you. All arrangements are as discussed with Trevise, but I’ve made sure it is just you and me. This is fate, my darling.”
It was signed with a cross for a kiss.
I slid the letter into my pocket.
The bedroom led from the salon. It was compact and contained a single bed pushed up against the wall and a small armoire. The few clothes left inside it were worn and, as I touched the hem of a white blouse, I saw that it was frayed. On the small table next to the bed was a picture frame. I lifted it up and saw the face of Cécile Roussell, her hair glossy and swept into a high pompadour, a pearl necklace at her throat. Seeing her gave me a chill. She was in a bar, rows of bottles behind her Dubonnet, Ricard, Absinthe, and the bar man was standing behind her left shoulder, a thin pencil moustache topping off his broad grin. Then I saw the mirror behind him and in its pale reflection was a man with a camera, his face obscured by it, but behind him, the street outside, was a way of tracing her.
81
‘I am so sorry,’ Rory was lying in the hospital bed, the tubes and wires gone, the blankets folded neatly over him, recently straightened. ‘I couldn’t stop him, he just jumped in.’
‘I know. Perhaps he fell, dogs do know these things. I’m sure they can tell if the water isn’t safe.’ I was fishing for words – I had no idea if that was true.
‘Not him, he was more of a “do or die” kind of a dog. I guess this time he…’ Rory’s pallor was sickly, his voice rough.
I pulled up a seat and placed my hand on his. ‘We spread his ashes in the knot garden. It seemed the right place.’
Rory nodded. He gazed out of the window and I suspected that he was fighting back a tear, but I couldn’t tell. ‘I loved that garden. Thank you for doing that, I’m glad he’s in there before they start…’ His voice trailed away again.
I wanted to tell him then that I loved him, that in other circumstances, in another time or place, I would be with him for the rest of my life. I was thinking about this when he suddenly coughed and his head tipped forward so that I could see the shaved patch and stitches in his scalp. He had been unconscious when they’d brought him in. I suspect he had nearly died. How I wanted to look after him because I couldn’t bear that he would be in that house on his own and he had no one.
‘My oldest is coming to stay with me,’ he said, his voice rasping a little. It was as if he knew what I was thinking. ‘She’s on her way over. I’ll be fine.’
‘Good,’ was all I could say.
I leaned over and kissed his cheek, taking in the smell of him, the fresh outdoors scent was replaced by disinfectant and medical smells, but he was still my Rory.
‘Take care of yourself, Rory.’ I withdrew and, as I looked over my shoulder, he raised his index finger. It was a simple, small gesture that meant the world to me.
82
I had ripped the photograph from its frame and I was staring at it, studying every part of it. There, reflected in the mirror behind the photographer’s shoulder, I could see familiar arch of the Cour du Commerce Saint-André, the famous street where Joseph Guillotin practised how to kill victims cleanly. I knew exactly the location; I remembered the narrow cobbled passage from a school trip. One of her hauntings. The memory made my blood run cold.
I locked her apartment, and on handing the key back, I asked the woman if she knew anything of the whereabouts of Cécile or the man Ducas, but if she knew she was not telling. I made my way through the narrow streets of the Latin Quarter and as I reached the café, the heavens opened. My hair was dripping wet under my hat, water running down the inside of my collar fo
r I had no scarf.
The boy behind the bar was young, a scrawny neck and thin red scar across his cheek. I ordered coffee and wiped the water from my face and neck with my handkerchief. It was only a second or two before I caught sight of the man with the pencil moustache, he was wearing a white apron, just as he had been in the photograph.
‘Garçon!’ I called him over and he was soon at my side.
‘How can I help you, sir? Would you like a towel perhaps?’
His humour, on other occasions, might have garnered a smile from me but I was otherwise occupied.
‘Do you know of a Madame Cécile Roussell?’
He looked right, then left, suddenly shifty. ‘Who asks?’
‘I am looking for her. I owe her some money.’
‘You are English?’
‘Yes.’
‘Related to Henri?’
‘You know him?’
‘Yes, he was our friend. We owe him everything.’
‘How so?’
The bartender pulled out a chair and sat down. He opened a packet of cigarettes and when he offered me one, I took it.
‘Henri was working undercover with the Resistance. We knew him as Charles Rainier, but he used other identities. We were a safe house for him – he slept in our cellars from time to time. There were others, a woman, Florence and an older man, but we didn’t know his name. They were helping us overthrow the Bosches.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘They came one night. He was in a townhouse, boarded up, not so far from here, a Jewish family had owned it. The Bosches were tipped off, it seems, it was of course common in those days. Collaborators. Anyway, he escaped and was looking for somewhere to hide. Cécile had met him a few days before and they had struck up a friendship. I trusted her, I’ve known her off and on for twelve years in here and round and about. He was here at about eight that morning and I told him to make it to her apartment, the streets are like warrens, narrow alleyways and the like. Sadly Cécile said he never made it, she never saw him.’
