Charlotte Gray

by Sebastian Faulks

  The stationer half-way up the hill had some sheet music which Madame Cariteau had noticed without interest on previous visits, and when she had bought some bread she went into the shop to have a look through it. There was the odd sonata or concerto by Franck, Fauré or Saint-Saëns, but most of the music was folk songs. She chose what appeared to her to be the simplest of these – the two with the fewest notes – and took them home for André.

  She went through the back door and into the kitchen, put down her basket and went to find the boys. The hall of the house was a spacious area that led to the barred front door at one end and, at the other, a broad, handsome staircase that rose for fourteen steps to a half-landing. Bumping down it as Madame Cariteau came into the hall was a suitcase in which Jacob Duguay was letting out terrified screams of pleasure, as he hurtlingly tobogganed over the polished wood. André stood on the half-landing, where his expression of glee turned to one of doubtful innocence when he saw Madame Cariteau.

  Jacob arrived at her feet, whimpering with pleasure. When he looked up and saw her, he had no reflex of guilt but began to explain what they were doing.

  ‘We take the suitcase up and André puts me in and—’

  ‘Yes, I can see what you’re doing. You don’t have to tell me. André, where did you find the suitcase?’

  ‘It was just there,’ said André. ‘It was just lying around.’

  Madame Cariteau tipped Jacob out of the case and inspected it. ‘This lives in my bedroom cupboard. Have you been in my room?’

  ‘No,’ said André; ‘André got it,’ said Jacob simultaneously.

  Madame Cariteau scolded them for being noisy and for not staying upstairs, as she had instructed them. When André began to protest, she shouted at him to go to his room and stay there for the rest of the day. He turned on his heel and tried to conceal from her his trembling lip; down the dark corridor he made his damp and noisy way, slamming the door behind him when he reached his room.

  Julien Levade was sketching a design for the converted cloisters when the telephone rang.

  Pauline Bobotte’s voice had the slightly affronted edge it always assumed when the caller was female. ‘Someone called Danièle to speak to you, Monsieur Levade.’

  ‘Thank you, Mademoiselle Bobotte. Put her through, please. Hello? Danièle? Everything all right?’

  ‘Fine, thank you. I’m back in Lavaurette. I’m outside the station.’

  ‘You must be tired.’ Julien looked at his watch. He could leave the office for lunch at twelve thirty and take Danièle to his apartment for the time being. ‘Do you know the church? Yes? I’ll meet you there at a quarter to one. It’s not long.’

  Charlotte replaced the receiver and breathed out heavily. She had spent a night of dim waiting rooms and arthritic trains; she wanted to sleep for several days, to restore the speed to her slow limbs, to dispel the fizzing little pain in her temple and to purge the pressing anguish in her chest.

  She reckoned it would take her twenty minutes to walk to the church, which left her with about forty to kill. The best place would be the station waiting room, but to sit there would be to invite a document inspection by some uniformed official. She lifted her case and trudged along the avenue until she found a track opening off between the plane trees. After a few yards she came across a fallen tree-trunk. She sat down and pulled out Dominique’s detective story. It was a strange and conspicuous thing to do, but she had the confidence of fatigue; she would not need to feign irritation if anyone questioned her.

  She was five minutes early at the church and was inspecting one of the stained-glass windows when she heard the door grind open.

  Julien walked swiftly up the aisle to where she stood and shook her hand. ‘I think it would be better if we weren’t seen together. I’ll go ahead. It’s the second street above the church, the third house on the right. I’ll leave the street door open so with any luck you can get in without being seen by the concierge. I’m on the first floor.’

  Charlotte gave him three minutes, then set off. She found the house easily enough and made her way into the tiled hall. A young woman was emerging from a ground-floor apartment: she had wide-set blue eyes, waved blonde hair and a coquettishly thick application of red lipstick.

  She smiled at Charlotte. ‘Hello. You must be Monsieur Levade’s fiancée.’

  ‘I . . . I’m pleased to meet you,’ said Charlotte noncommittally.

  ‘He’s on the first floor. Well – you know, of course. He’s just got in.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The woman went out of the front door. ‘See you later,’ she said genially as she closed it behind her.

  Charlotte climbed the stairs and knocked on the open door of Julien’s apartment. He emerged from the sitting room and took her case. ‘Come and sit down. I’m making some lunch.’

  ‘I met someone in the hall. A rather beautiful woman who seemed to think I was your fiancée.’

  ‘Oh, that’s Pauline Benoit. She’s nice, isn’t she?’ said Julien from the kitchen.

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘She’s the concierge.’

  ‘I thought concierges were supposed to be old and nosey and have their hair in curlers.’

  ‘You’ve been reading too many detective stories,’ said Julien, returning to the sitting room and holding out a chair at the dining table for Charlotte.

  ‘No, I haven’t. I hate detective stories,’ said Charlotte. To her irritation she found that her denial sounded unconvincing.

  Julien laid a place in front of her. ‘My life is run by two Paulines,’ he said. ‘Pauline Benoit at home and Pauline Bobotte at work. Bobotte’s actually much nosier than Benoit. She listens to all my telephone calls. Benoit just likes to know about any romance that might be in the air. I have to keep her guessing. She thinks I’m a bigamist.’

  He disappeared to the kitchen and returned with a plate of food and a glass of wine, which he set down in front of Charlotte.

  ‘I’m sorry about this,’ he said. ‘It’s all I’ve got. It’s not as bad as it looks. I had it for dinner last night.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s a stew.’

  ‘What sort of stew?’

  ‘Don’t ask. I didn’t.’

  ‘Aren’t you having any?’

  ‘No. I’ll . . . I’ll have something later.’

  Charlotte put a little of the reheated food in her mouth.

  ‘I understand you’ll be going home next week.’

  ‘Has it been confirmed?’

  ‘Yes. Of course, it’ll depend on the weather. But it’s been very clear recently and I haven’t heard that it’s likely to change. Will you be glad to be back in England?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Charlotte filled her mouth with the rough wine. ‘I’ve done what I came to do,’ she said untruthfully.

  ‘If you’d like to rest after lunch, you’ll be quite safe here. You can sleep in my bed if you like.’

  ‘Thank you. Please don’t go to any trouble.’

  ‘It’s no trouble. I’ll lock the front door and tell Pauline no one’s to come up.’

  When he had cleared her plate, Julien showed Charlotte into his bedroom. He closed the shutters and indicated the large bed with its lordly hangings.

  ‘If anyone knocks at the door, don’t answer. I’ve got the key and I’ll let myself in at about seven. Sleep well.’ He gave her another of his guileless smiles and Charlotte reciprocated tiredly.

  She pushed off Dominique’s heavy shoes, but thought she had better stay dressed in case she needed to move in a hurry. When she had heard Julien depart, she closed the double doors into the sitting room and went back to the bed.

  She sometimes found that if she lay on her front, the physical weight of her body slightly helped to crush the misery in her abdomen. She pulled the eiderdown over her and tried to sleep. His face had gone again.

  Peter Gregory was sitting up in bed, anxiously watching as the local veterinary surgeon inspected his leg.
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  There was a fracture of the tibia, suspected but undiagnosed by the vet, owing to the primitive manner in which he had had to make his examination, by probing with his fingers. His major field of expertise was in the digestive illnesses of sheep, though he was competent with all ruminants and would even give opinions, if asked, on domestic pets.

  An English airman posed problems of a different nature, largely because he could not be taken to a surgery. The vet had been contacted by a smallholder who knew that his sympathies were reliable, whereas the local human doctor was an uncomplicated Pétainist, who in his spare time organised youth groups to go camping and sing songs with a marching, militaristic snap.

  The vet looked up from Gregory’s skinny leg and said something fast, in the regional accent, that Gregory did not understand. The elderly peasant couple who were sheltering him nodded their heads in wise agreement. As the vet explained his thoughts in greater detail, Gregory wished he had paid more attention to Madame Fanon’s tedious French lessons or more often accepted Charlotte’s offer of instruction. For the rest, he had escaped with bruising and cuts; what seemed to be a broken elbow now gave him no pain and the swelling had gone down. A long gash running from his thigh, over his hip and up into the small of his back had now closed sufficiently for them all to see that its swollen, septic edges had started to subside. The bruises beneath his eyes had gone from shiny purple to a jaundiced yellow, and the puffed skin had resumed its former adhesion to the contours of the skull. What hurt most was his neck and shoulders, where he had hung upside down in his straps, waiting to be cut free.

  ‘You were lucky,’ they told him for the hundredth time, and for the hundredth time he said, ‘I know.’ Gregory the unsinkable, the unkillable: lucky to have survived the crash, lucky that it was so near the landing zone, lucky that he was picked up by sympathetic people . . . There was, as he already knew before taking off from England, no apparent end to his good fortune.

  He had asked to be shown on a map exactly where he was, but they had no map. They told him the names of the nearest villages, but these meant nothing to Gregory. From the window of his bedroom he could see fields of wheat divided by dwarf oaks and messy hedgerows; beyond them were woods and spinneys that climbed the undulating land, and on a distant hilltop was a tower. He supposed it was a water-tower, but its grey stone and castellated rim made it look like the remnant of a fortification. There were no houses and no roads within his view. He was lost and he could not move.

  What kept him from despair was the admiration that he felt for the couple who had taken him in. They knew nothing about him and could not even converse with him, yet they were risking their lives for his. It was not as though they could have had a sophisticated understanding of the situation; presumably they were as bewildered and scared as anyone else in this occupied country. But every morning the old woman, who had told him by shoving a finger at her breastbone and repeating the word that she was called Béatrice, brought him bread and milk; every evening the old man, whose name was Jacques, sat with him and fed him cigarettes and vinegary wine.

  The vet explained that he must stay in bed. With vigorous hand movements – both palms at first pressing down, suggesting gravity and stasis, then becoming fists whose index fingers pointed firmly to the bed – he made himself understood.

  ‘How long?’ asked Gregory.

  The vet shrugged. ‘Fifteen days?’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  Luckily, he still had some notes left on the roll of francs the RAF had given him before take-off; his hosts had been able to supplement the produce of their field with butter and wine from the black market.

  The vet left the room and Gregory sank back against the pillow. He took a cigarette from the packet on the bedside table. There was nothing to do but stare from the window over the vacant fields. He thought of Charlotte, of her eyes, of the life-saving intensity of her passion.

  It was five o’clock when Charlotte awoke, having slept more deeply than she expected. She lay on her back for a minute, believing herself still to be in Antoinette’s bedroom in Ussel. This room was bigger, however, and more bare; there was a glass-fronted bookcase against one wall and a small rush-seated chair with a pair of man’s trousers thrown over it. A moment of panic and disorientation subsided as the memory of Julien came back to her: his black hair, receding a little at the temples, but the face still youthful with its dark, active eyes and swiftly changing expression. She remembered lunch, the stew, a conversation about when she would be picked up.

  Charlotte stretched beneath the eiderdown and yawned. She felt a sudden need for tea: nothing else would switch her back from her sleepy siding on to the main line of the day. She climbed out of bed and straightened her clothes, then went through into the kitchen. The closest thing she could find to tea was a glass pot with some dried leaves which she thought might be camomile or verveine. She boiled some water and poured it over a handful of leaves in a cup which she took through into the sitting room and left on the table to infuse.

  Soon she would be going home. She would return to her flat with Daisy and Sally, she would await further calls from Mr Jackson. They would presumably post her to one of their holding schools, where she could help with the last-minute preparation of other agents, teach French or drive the staff cars. Since G Section had started to pay her a wage there would be no need for her to look for another job, and in the meantime she would be free to explore London, to go to galleries or shops; she could even go up to Scotland and visit her parents. She would resume a life, and men like Cannerley would telephone to ask her out to dinner; it was a privileged and pleasant existence that lay ahead of her: it was normal life, it was what most young women wanted. She should count herself lucky.

  Yet, at the thought of it, she trembled in revolt. To leave France at this stage was unthinkable. Although she had efficiently completed both her official and her private errands, she had been drawn into the frightening destiny of the people she had met. She could not leave until she had seen whether Antoinette’s prediction of resistance was fulfilled; she wanted to see the big schoolboy César load up another horse-drawn cart with stores; she wanted to understand why the English were so deeply hated. And Julien also intrigued her: what made a man like him buzz round a little town like Lavaurette, alighting for a moment here, then there, in his pollination, while the majority of men of his kind and generation went quietly about their business in the tranquil streets of German-occupied Paris?

  She took an end of bread from the remains of lunch on the table, dipped it in the tea and sucked. No gateway of unconscious memory swung gloriously open, but through the dusty crumbs a not unpleasant herbal taste slid across her tongue and encouraged her to take a sip directly from the cup.

  She would not go back. She would stay in France until she felt she had done something worthwhile. More urgent even than this was her need to find Gregory. To fly home now would be to admit that he was dead, and this was something that she could not do. She had no idea how she would set about finding him, but merely by being in France she had a better chance. At the very least she could telephone Chollet again. But to return to London was to give up; and if she gave up on Peter Gregory, then she was giving up faith in her own life.

  She had identified her own troubles with those of the country in which she found herself. They seemed to her like two long journeys that had lost their way, each struggling now to rediscover the doubtful paradise from which they had set out. Her need to stay in France was probably, she had to admit, neurotic; certainly it seemed more compulsive than rational. But although she had long had the habit of self-analysis, Charlotte found it tiresome. Presumably the link between these public and private worlds was the presence in France of the man she loved, and on whom she depended for the resolution of her life. But if that was the motivation, it was buried too deep to be felt. All that she knew was a compelling urgency of personal and moral force; and she was certain that, whatever its tangled ro
ots, she must obey it.

  Julien returned at six with a noisy ascent of the stripped staircase. Charlotte heard him calling down some mocking retort to the woman’s voice that followed him from the hallway. He was kicking off his shoes as, slightly out of breath, he came into the sitting room.

  ‘How are you? Did you sleep?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘Good. Now, dinner. The housekeeper doesn’t come on Wednesday so I have to improvise. We can’t go out because I’ve used all my coupons.’

  ‘I’ve got some money,’ said Charlotte. ‘Couldn’t we—’

  ‘My dear Danièle, what are you suggesting? Not the black market, surely?’

  Charlotte thought of the arrangements Antoinette had described to her in Ussel. ‘Certainly not, Monsieur. I was thinking of something a little more grey.’

  Julien ground his teeth. ‘I think I know the ideal place. The Café du Centre.’

  ‘But I went there with Yves and—’

  ‘But you don’t know Madame Gayral, do you?’

  ‘I leave it to you, but I insist on paying.’

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ said Julien. ‘I’ve got one or two things to do first. Suppose we leave at about half past seven?’

  ‘That’s fine. I’ll read my detective story.’

  Julien was attentive to Charlotte’s needs. He was amazed by how much dinner she was able to eat: everything on the menu and at least three dishes that were not, silently furnished by Irène in her black skirt and clean white blouse, the empty plates unsmilingly removed a few minutes later. From somewhere Madame Gayral had found a capon, some brie which had reached the point of liquefaction and some eggs she had made into an omelette with a few mean but pungent shavings of truffle. Julien ordered more wine when the first bottle disappeared and was pleased to see that Charlotte drank what he considered to be the correct amount for a woman: less than half but not less than a third of each bottle.