Charlotte Gray

by Sebastian Faulks

  Back in his apartment he made up the bed with clean sheets and put a carafe of water and a glass on the table. He offered her the freedom of the bookcase, regretting that he was understocked on crime novels. At half past ten he held the door of the bedroom open for her and told her to get a good night’s sleep.

  Charlotte would not go in. She said, ‘Octave, if I stayed here in Lavaurette, if I didn’t go home, could I be of any use to you?’

  Charlotte could see Julien working out the ramifications of such a decision before he spoke. ‘I need all the help I can get. We’re expecting a further drop of stores any day. One day perhaps we’ll be able to recruit all the young men, but for the moment our job is just to exist. That’s what Mirabel told me. And it’s easier to exist when there are more of you. But—’

  ‘Good. I’ve decided to stay. I can’t go home with a job half finished.’

  ‘We’ll have to tell them not to send the plane. They won’t like it.’

  ‘I very much doubt that the plane was for me alone. There’ll be other more important people. Yves, for instance.’

  ‘There are a lot of reasons why you shouldn’t stay. I do think it’s unwise. The danger, for instance, the difficulty of contacting London, the—’

  ‘But it’s possible, isn’t it? You do have access to the wireless operator.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  Julien stood looking at Charlotte for a long time, with his head on one side. Perhaps, she thought, he too had some private motivation.

  ‘Danièle, you are an extraordinary woman.’ He looked at her fair skin and deep brown eyes. ‘What on earth are you doing?’ He smiled. ‘What are you doing standing in my apartment in Lavaurette, dressed like that, refusing to take a small aeroplane home to safety? What on earth has brought you to this?’

  ‘Love,’ she said.

  ‘Love?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But why aren’t you at home like all the other English girls, doing your—’

  ‘Scottish.’

  ‘Scottish girls, in your pleasant unoccupied country with your family and your friends?’

  ‘It’s too late to explain now. But I do love your country. I wish more of you loved mine, though perhaps one day you will. I have this one chance to change my life, to save my soul, and whether I can do that depends for some reason I don’t yet understand on whether you can save your country’s soul as well.’

  Julien shook his head, clearly baffled, but apparently not thinking it worth his while to say so. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘if you’re going to stay, you might tell me your name. What is it?’

  ‘Madame Guilbert. Dominique.’

  Julien stood up and refilled his glass. ‘The other thing is, we’ll need to find you something to do – a job. As a matter of fact, I’ve got an idea. Can you cook?’

  7

  IT WAS MID-AFTERNOON when Charlotte turned Mlle Cariteau’s bicycle off the road and up the track between the scabby plane trees to the Domaine. Her hair was covered by the woollen headscarf that had made Julien smile; it was the only clothes purchase she had allowed herself from G Section funds, and she had bought it because she thought it made her look more like Dominique Guilbert. She caught glimpses of the house between the trees, but it was not until the path turned a right angle and delivered her beneath the arched pigeonnier that she saw it whole for the first time. For all its irregularities, its terracotta-coloured shutters and lopsided front door, she felt as though she had seen it many times before; its design was at root so typical that it seemed to have emerged from some remembered blueprint, some universal plan of French rural peace that no Revolution or genocidal war had quite unsettled.

  Charlotte hauled with both hands on the iron bell-pull, and, when no one came, turned the heavy knocker that acted as a handle. The large hallway offered passages right or left as well as a staircase that doubled back above her head into the remote ceiling. For all the uncertainty of her position, the feeling that came to Charlotte as she stood in the hall was one of pure excitement: if she could spend long enough in this house, she seemed to feel, it might reveal to her some lost plan or harmony. Here she might find the missing track that led back to the past.

  ‘Madame Guilbert?’

  The voice came from above her head. She looked up and saw bare feet between the banisters as someone descended the staircase. On the half-landing, where the stairs turned, he came into full view: an old man in navy-blue cotton trousers, as though he was going sailing, and a shirt without its collar which hung down almost to his knees.

  ‘Please wait there. I’ll come down.’

  Charlotte felt some animal reluctance to go too near this man. He offered her his hand when he had walked down to where she was waiting, and she took it as briefly as she could. His grip was warm and dry and his skin was covered in splashes of paint; from his body there rose a clean, strong smell of oils. His eyes were hooded and enclosed by lined, reptilian skin, though the bright blue irises were unclouded.

  ‘I think we’ll go into the drawing room.’ He led the way down the left-hand passage from the hall, past two or three doors, to a long, lofty room that ran the depth of the house. It was dark inside until he had opened some shutters that gave a view of overgrown garden to the side; the freed rectangle of light revealed a room full of formal furniture of the nineteenth century, fussily scrolled and uncomfortably upholstered. There was a mirror in a gilded frame above the marble mantelpiece and, at the end of the room, still in half-darkness, was what looked like an enormous flat desk with a reading lamp.

  ‘Do sit down. I believe you know my son Julien. He’s spoken to me about you.’

  Charlotte felt fine old dust rise up as she settled on the edge of a sofa. So that was Octave’s real name; at the Café du Centre, despite his warnings, she had only heard him called ‘Monsieur’. Julien . . . It was not bad; it had the same Roman ring as Octave, but it had a certain lightness and elegance. ‘Yes, I know him a little.’

  Levade pushed his hand back through his thick hair, disarranging it into white layers. Charlotte felt the clarity of his gaze, even in the gloom; she noticed the scaly skin on his bare feet.

  ‘He thought it’s possible you might need somewhere to live for a time.’

  ‘That’s right.’ She was eager. She did not want to live in the same place as this man, but she wanted to be in this house. ‘My father’s in hospital and I want to be near him. My husband is a prisoner of war in Germany, like so many men.’

  ‘I see,’ said Levade. ‘There’s a woman who comes to clean the house, but she has difficulties at home, I think. She’s irregular. You could live here for nothing if you were prepared to help with the cooking and cleaning. I would give you food as well. Are you a good cook?’

  ‘Your son asked me that. Not particularly, but I could learn. I can do the simple things.’

  Levade sighed and stood up. ‘When will your husband come home?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘The government is sending people to work in Germany in return for our prisoners. Had you heard?’

  ‘Yes. Three men for each prisoner. It seems a bit hard.’

  ‘It’s worse than that. The Germans only want trained men, so they don’t count the farm boys. Laval’s latest triumph is to send eight men, four of them trained, in return for each prisoner of war. The man’s a fool.’

  Charlotte nodded.

  ‘Don’t you think?’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand politics.’

  Levade nodded briefly, as though this was an acceptable position. He walked over to the fireplace and leaned his arm on the mantelpiece. ‘Are you quiet? Do you make a noise in the house?’

  ‘Not particularly. I could be as quiet as you like. Your son told me you’re a painter, so I suppose—’

  ‘I used to be. Not any more. Now I put oil on canvas, but anyone can do that.’ Levade began to walk down into the still-dark end of the drawing room. ‘I spend some hours every morning in the studio upstairs.
I don’t have lunch, so you needn’t bother about that. I normally eat at about six, then in the evening I read. I don’t want you to work while I’m painting. You’d have to do the cleaning later.’

  ‘I don’t mind. Whatever’s convenient.’

  ‘I could give you some money if you liked. As well.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlotte quickly, ‘I was going to come to that.’ It would have been Dominique’s first thought.

  ‘Whatever you think is right,’ said Levade. ‘Why not ask in the village? Of course, there’s nothing to spend it on. Unless you want to buy a photograph of Marshal Pétain.’

  ‘I need to save some money for when my husband comes back,’ said Charlotte primly.

  ‘Very well, I’ll show you a room. There are two you can choose from.’

  Levade walked briskly out of the salon, his movement unaffected in any obvious way by age, and Charlotte followed him to the stairs. They walked along the landing of the first floor, past the locked studio, with Charlotte’s eyes swivelling from side to side to take in as much as she could of the rooms revealed by doors left tantalisingly half-open. At the end of the landing there was an enclosed area from which different corridors opened, presumably into the tower, and a narrow, plain staircase up which Levade led the way. At the top were servants’ or perhaps children’s rooms, with low ceilings beneath the eaves but views over the grounds towards a lake. The best of these had a threadbare rug, a boat bed made up beneath a grey silk cover, and, on the wall behind the bed, a faded toile with Watteau-like figures in the colour of antique rose.

  ‘It’s beautiful.’ Charlotte was more stirred than she could reasonably explain by this plain room. ‘May I have this one?’

  ‘If this is what you like. Do you have any luggage?’

  ‘I have a suitcase, but it’s with your son. He said he’d bring it later if everything worked out.’

  ‘I see. There’s another thing I should mention.’ Levade was standing in the doorway; he was lean and not particularly tall, but his figure almost filled the narrow frame. ‘Nothing you see or hear must be repeated. I live a quiet life, but I have certain small habits which I don’t want discussed in the bars of Lavaurette. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘If you should ever find me distracted or unresponsive, you must ignore it.’

  Charlotte nodded. She felt self-conscious as Levade’s eyes ran up and down her figure in its homespun clothes; she had the sensation of having been appraised. Levade’s long face softened a little; it was not a smile, but it had some affirmation in it, some acknowledgement of her as a separate being.

  ‘Will you call me at six, when you’ve made dinner? You’ll find food in the kitchen.’

  Everything Charlotte saw at the Domaine confirmed her conviction that she was right to stay. She had the peace of mind that came when a difficult decision appeared to be vindicated, and with that a practical energy. It was from this house that she would find Gregory.

  In the afternoon Julien went to the Domaine to fetch Mlle Cariteau’s bicycle in a van he had borrowed from Gastinel, the butcher. Dominique could use one of the old family bicycles in the barn, he explained, but Sylvie Cariteau needed hers for her daily business.

  Julien enjoyed it when Dominique opened the door of his father’s house. They had come far enough as friends that it was right for him to offer his cheek to her to kiss, and when she offered hers in return he allowed his lips to linger for a second while he inhaled the faint smell of lily of the valley on her skin. The social contradiction also pleased him: he was intimate with Dominique and with Levade, yet she called Levade ‘Monsieur’ and was employed by him. What his father made of Dominique he could not imagine.

  He thought Levade would like her and presumed he would at once divine that she was not what she claimed to be. Julien himself was excited by the thought of the English girl – Scottish girl, he corrected himself – whose true identity lay like an unplumbed reef below the shallow waters of this Dominique. As he came to know her and to care for her, he was aware that he did not come to know her at all: his growing friendship was with someone who did not exist and was therefore not subject to the limits and cautions of normal relationships. Why was this so exciting?

  It was Levade who had told Julien in outrage about the plan to convert the monastery into a hotel. At the beginning of his exile at the Domaine in 1937, he had frequently gone there to pray. When the order had made the decision to sell, he had mentioned it to Julien as a sad development, not as a possible source of income. Levade was distressed, or appeared to be, when Julien’s company submitted plans for the conversion. Later, he told Julien it was better that he should do it than that it should fall into the hands of a barbarian; and at least it meant he would see something of his son. To begin with this was not the case, as Julien was able to do most of the work from Paris; then the practice was seized by the Government because its senior partner, a man called Weil, was a Jew. The development company who took over the contract wanted to retain Julien as architect, and he, already uneasy at the supine collaboration of many Parisians, felt it was a good moment to leave the capital and come down to the site. Levade was delighted by the move and encouraged him to settle in Lavaurette.

  At Julien’s suggestion, Charlotte went to visit André and Jacob at the Cariteaus’ house on the way back. Julien thought that in the absence of their mother they would appreciate seeing a young woman, and Charlotte was delighted to go, feeling that here was a positive act of resistance.

  Sylvie’s handsome, smiling face appeared at the back door. It was half-day at the post office and she was looking after the boys while her mother was out. She called up the stairs for André and Jacob, and there was the sound of eager feet before they came tumbling into the room.

  Jacob was still at an age when fatigue registered itself as tears, when swift storms burst in clear skies, but André was at the delicate moment when life was ceasing to be a sequence of unrelated sensations and was on the point of becoming something that formed a continuous and more or less coherent whole.

  He was fascinated by knights in armour, soldiers, heroes of the Middle Ages, Greeks, Romans and stories from the Bible. Julien had been able to acquire second-hand books by post from a dealer in Clermont-Ferrand, but while he was waiting for a new consignment he told Charlotte she would have to rely on her memory or make up new stories of her own.

  The two small boys sat with her on an old sofa in the kitchen. Charlotte felt a little nervous. It had been a long time since she won the junior Academy prize in classical studies. What had been the name of Icarus’s father, who had made the wings? She recalled Persephone being carried off by Diss, but how had she finally escaped? The Trojan War she remembered clearly for the most part; in any event, she could easily extemporise battles in which her favourite heroes (Hector, Aias; Achilles was too self-indulgent) defeated others after the intervention of a sponsoring goddess. The return of Odysseus she could spin out over several visits.

  André sat with his chin cupped in his hands, staring up at Charlotte with unblinking eyes. His concentration appeared to be tireless, and he would occasionally interrupt or rebuke Charlotte for having skimped some detail of the characters’ previous lives; he wanted to have the complete picture, and there were certain details – the motive power of Agamemnon’s ships, the wax of Icarus’s wings – that were crucial to his satisfaction.

  Jacob listened to part of the story, but was more easily distracted; he would light on some comic detail and repeat it several times or walk round the room acting out some private game it had suggested. This was something of a relief to Charlotte, who did not discourage Jacob from wandering off in mid-story.

  Mlle Cariteau moved efficiently about the kitchen, taking crockery to the stone sink, sweeping the floor, occasionally lifting the lid of the giant stockpot and shaking her head in disappointment at the thin and meatless aroma she released. Still, her good humour seemed imperturbable.

  Jacob
eventually asked the question Charlotte feared, about his parents, and she had to stop the story she was telling to André.

  ‘I don’t know for sure when you’ll see them again. I’m afraid I can’t say.’

  Although it was Jacob who had asked, it was André’s intelligent, reproachful eyes that Charlotte feared.

  ‘Where are they?’ said Jacob in his unformed voice.

  ‘I don’t exactly know. I believe they may be in Paris. You must try not to worry. One thing we can be absolutely sure of: they’ll come home just as soon as they can. I know they wouldn’t waste a minute. So you just have to remember that – as soon as they can, they’ll be on the train home.’

  ‘But why have they gone away?’

  ‘It’s a difficult time. There’s a war. People have to go to different places in a war, to places they don’t always want to be.’

  ‘Why did they go to Paris?’

  ‘I don’t know. I expect they had no choice. Sometimes you just have to do things when you’re a grown-up.’ Jacob had clearly forgotten about the gendarme’s visit to his parents’ house.

  ‘And when will we see them?’ Jacob was more tenacious than usual.

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t pretend that I do know. But I hope it’ll be soon. We all hope so and every day we hope so more. We never, never stop hoping.’

  Although only Jacob conducted the cross-examination, Charlotte felt throughout the pressure of André’s fixed and disbelieving eyes.

  Sylvie Cariteau leaned across the sofa to pick up the book she had left on the floor. As she did so, Charlotte caught the scent of her clean skin, efficiently scrubbed in wartime as in any other, and saw the waistband of her modest skirt, stretched tight by her solid, mannish figure. When she stood up and turned back towards the table Charlotte also noticed that where the skirt met her plain and tightly tucked-in blouse a strip of her underpants had been caught and was clearly visible across the width of her back. They were of coral satin, embroidered with lace in which was woven the frivolous patterns of daisies and forget-me-nots. Charlotte wondered if Sylvie just liked flowers or whether they were evidence of some private, hopeful fantasy, cherished for twenty years in emasculated Lavaurette.