Charlotte Gray

by Sebastian Faulks

  She was, as usual, incredulous, and wished she had a watch against which to double-check the claim of the violent alarm clock. Seven o’clock? It was still dark; it couldn’t be more than four or five. Reluctantly, she remembered that this was what she always thought, and that every morning the hands of the sullen Louis XVI clock in the dining room, mendaciously ticking in its absurd lacquered cabinet, pointed out her mistake.

  The day proceeded as it had begun, cold and dispiriting, until noon, when there was a call from Julien. The wireless operator had heard a coded message on the BBC and Mirabel had confirmed the codes: there was to be a drop on Thursday. Mirabel would not himself be there, and had entrusted Julien to pick up and store what was landed. They were expecting supplies, arms and explosives. It was to be the biggest drop of the war so far, and reflected London’s expectation that, with the Germans in the former Free Zone, the action would become increasingly open. Julien sounded almost ecstatic with excitement, and Charlotte wondered what Pauline Bobotte would make of the news as she worked away with her busy plugs and headset. Julien thought it a good idea for Dominique to come into Lavaurette for dinner that evening to discuss ‘tactics’. Charlotte knew the single tactical refinement to determine would be whether she or César rode the more decrepit bicycle, but was persuaded to accept, as Julien must have known she would be, by his use of the word ‘dinner’.

  Wearing both of Dominique’s jumpers under her coat, her hair beneath a scarf, Charlotte set out on her bicycle, lowering her head against the flat drift of rain.

  ‘Good evening, Madame. Monsieur Levade told me he was expecting you. A horrible night to be out, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlotte, a little put out that she had got no further than two paces into the hall before Pauline Benoit’s door opened. ‘Though you look as though you’re going out yourself.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. I have no choice,’ said Madame Benoit. ‘Duty calls.’

  Charlotte did not bother to think what she might mean; she was hungry, and the prospect of even Madame Gayral’s cuisine in all its scorched uncertainty was enough to put other thoughts from her mind as she hurried up the stairs to Julien’s apartment.

  Julien sat her down in front of the fire and poured her a glass of wine. He seemed to find it hard to settle, but kept getting up and going off into a different room on some urgent but undisclosed business. Charlotte ascribed this nervousness to his worry about the imminent drop. He re-entered the room for perhaps the fourth or fifth time and filled her glass again. ‘So, Dominique. You all set for Thursday?’

  ‘Yes, Octave. Quite ready, thank you.’

  ‘For God’s sake call me Julien when we’re alone. I can’t bear this stupid Octave thing.’

  ‘I apologise. I thought . . . All right. Julien.’

  ‘Does my father know you’re going?’

  Charlotte crossed her legs and settled back a little further into the armchair. ‘I imagine so. He’s given me the whole day off. Your father seems to know a good deal about me.’

  ‘Well, I can assure you it wasn’t me who told him. I’ve been absolutely—’

  ‘Relax, Julien. I wasn’t accusing you. Your father seems interested in certain aspects of my life, though not what I might be doing tomorrow. For instance, he’s guessed that I’m Scottish, or English as he calls it, but I don’t think he has any curiosity about why I’m staying in Lavaurette. Or perhaps he was just too tactful to ask.’

  ‘So what are these “aspects”?’ said Julien.

  ‘Personal things. He knows my name, for instance.’

  ‘Your real name?’ A look of intense anxiety passed over Julien’s face, which Charlotte presumed to spring from a worry about security.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And why did you tell him?’

  ‘I was lonely.’ She was glad Mr Jackson could not hear this abject excuse.

  Julien nodded and made to speak, then stopped as though on reflection he considered this a reasonable explanation. He sighed and stood up. Charlotte watched as he walked across the floor to the dresser to collect the wine bottle. In the tall, echoing room, with its austere furniture and pale colours, he looked for a moment vulnerable, a solitary man set against the background of his imagination.

  ‘You drink too much,’ said Charlotte, meaning to break his introspection.

  ‘Probably.’ He rolled his eyes as though she was always nagging him and smiled; it seemed to work.

  ‘Have you booked a table?’ said Charlotte.

  ‘No. We’re having dinner here. Hadn’t you noticed the smell?’

  ‘I did notice something,’ said Charlotte. ‘I thought it kinder not to mention it.’

  Julien drank more and more wine and Charlotte had to hold her hand over her own glass when he tried to refill it. He talked about the weather and how it could affect the operation; he muttered about Gastinel, whom he no longer bothered to refer to as ‘Auguste’, and cursed him for losing interest.

  ‘Typical little shopkeeper just worried about filling his own till,’ he said as he cleared the soup plates and brought in a china dish with slices of pink meat in gravy which he claimed were veal he had acquired from a friend of a friend. He had hardly begun to eat before he lit a cigarette.

  ‘How do you manage to look so clean always?’ he said abruptly.

  ‘It’s a wonder if I do. The stove that heats the wood takes about three days to warm up the tank. I only have one bath a week. Otherwise I wash in cold water.’

  ‘You could use the public baths,’ said Julien. ‘That’s what I do.’

  ‘I didn’t know there were any.’

  ‘Behind the Place de l’Eglise. They’re in an old school building. They’re very popular these days because fuel’s so short.’

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’

  ‘You don’t look as though you need it. You look like the kind of woman who’s always fresh and sweet-smelling, a little dab of scent behind the ears . . . Let me smell.’

  He went over to where Charlotte sat and nuzzled his face into her neck, inhaling deeply. ‘I knew it,’ he said, ‘delicious.’

  Charlotte pushed him away. ‘You’re drunk, Julien.’

  ‘Not really.’ It was true; the dramatic amount of alcohol he swallowed seemed to have almost no effect on him except perhaps to make him slightly more affectionate: Charlotte sometimes wondered why he bothered.

  Julien pulled up a loose chair next to Charlotte and reached out to her. He looked down at where his hands had imprisoned hers, then up into her face. His dark eyes were, Charlotte conceded, undeniably beautiful.

  ‘We’ve been through some things, haven’t we, Dominique? Whatever happens to us now, I think we’ll remember.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlotte, ‘though sometimes I feel guilty about having enjoyed it so much.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Julien. ‘As though we can’t be taking it seriously. I think that’s the point I’m trying to make. You think I’m your friend, and I am. You think that because we laugh together and work together then that limits the kind of friendship we can have. I don’t think so. I don’t think romance needs to be solemn. You can laugh with someone and still sleep with them.’

  ‘Of course, but—’

  ‘I want to sleep with you, Dominique.’

  ‘Julien! I don’t think you can just ask a woman straight out like that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Charlotte did not know why not.

  Julien said, ‘Suppose there’s a German ambush on Thursday night and we get killed by our fat German and his troops, mown down by machine guns. We would never know what it was like and, and . . .’

  ‘It’s a bit unlikely,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘Well, maybe . . . I hope so. But wouldn’t you like to anyhow?’

  ‘It’s not a question of what I would like to do, it’s a question of what is right.’

  ‘But would you like to?’

  ‘There could be worse things, I imagine.’ She squeezed Julien’s hands.
‘I do like you, Julien, I promise you. I like you without reservation. But there’s another man.’

  ‘It’s not quite without reservation, then.’

  ‘Not quite.’

  She leaned over and wrapped her arms round him. Julien laid his head on her shoulder, then raised his face to hers. Charlotte kissed him and, feeling his tongue slide between her lips, expected some violent retribution for her infidelity. Nothing in fact stopped her from kissing Julien and allowing him to run his hands over her; nothing except the fear that she was leading him on too far. She disengaged herself, reluctantly.

  ‘I won’t sleep with you, Julien. Now I don’t know if you want to go on kissing me or whether that would make things worse.’

  ‘I think perhaps it would make things worse.’

  Julien stood up, ran his hand through his hair and, with an effort of self-discipline that seemed to weigh down his body, cleared the half-finished plates and took them out of the room.

  Peter Gregory was standing in the Mayor’s parlour. The Mayor was in his nightshirt, dishevelled and unwilling. Gregory was desperate.

  ‘I need papers to get out of France.’

  ‘How will you go?’

  ‘Spain.’

  ‘Do you have money?’

  ‘Yes. I take trains. I can’t walk very far.’

  ‘But you’ll have to walk across the Pyrenees.’

  ‘Then my leg . . . better.’

  The Mayor shook his head. ‘It’s a very long way. I’ve never been that far myself. I’ve never been further than Toulouse. You won’t make it. Not with the way you speak French. And if I give you an identity card with the name of our commune on it, then it’s not only you but we who’ll end up in trouble.’

  Once, Gregory had not much cared if he saw England again. Now it seemed to him to be the only thing he wanted; and, if he didn’t make it, then to die in the attempt would be an almost equally gratifying outcome.

  If only he had told Charlotte on the night he left. If only he had gone back, broken into the flat, woken her and told her how much he loved her. He twisted the ring on his finger, round and round. He would not move from the Mayor’s house. There was no particular reason to trust the shaky line of sympathisers, beginning with the vet, that had brought him there, but he had no other grounds of hope.

  ‘Monsieur, I would like to help, but I must put the well-being of the commune first.’

  Gregory did not really understand. Although the Mayor was disparaging about Gregory’s French, it did not occur to him to adjust his own speech in any way: he rattled away, gurgling, self-righteous, idiomatic.

  The door opened and a woman came into the parlour: the Mayor’s wife in a long nightdress, her hair beneath a cotton cap, her face dramatically white.

  She looked at Gregory, crouched against the sofa, his leg at an angle obviously troubling him. In his midnight fatigue and in the enclosure of his pain he looked out to her and tried to summon up a remnant of flirtatious charm. God knows what I must look like, he thought, in Jacques’s old clothes – how thin, how red-eyed. It’s pathetic.

  It was his only chance. He smiled at the woman and began his laborious, ungrammatical explanation once again. He adorned the story with smiles and shrugs which he hoped were winning. The woman left the room abruptly and Gregory stopped talking. His mouth now tasted of defeat and words could not form in it.

  The Mayor looked at him, coughed and nodded. He, too, was silent. Gregory again cursed his inability to speak the language: if only he had talked more with Charlotte when she offered. The thought of her gave him a new resolve.

  He calculated the practicalities. He would walk by night, steal food. They would give him a map. When he came to the Pyrenees he would trust to luck; if he could not find a guide he would follow the compass . . . It was not possible.

  The woman returned with a tray on which was a bottle of spirit and three glasses. She poured one and handed it to Gregory. He thanked her warmly. As he raised the small glass to his lips, he thought of Leslie Brind taking down the glass yard from above the bar at the Rose and Crown. The fellowship of these men, foolish, drunk as they were, was not a reason to die but could be another reason to live. The liquor on his tongue freed the words and, thinking of these men, he began once more.

  ‘You imbecile!’ the woman screamed, and Gregory was stunned by her fury. Her face was so twisted by anger and indignation that it took him a moment to see that she was talking to her husband. ‘Give this man a card! If you delay one moment longer I’ll pack my bag and leave you.’

  ‘But, my dear, I must think about the commune.’

  ‘If you’re not man enough to take responsibility for your actions in the town then God knows why you’re Mayor. You’re certainly not the man I married. Give me the cards.’

  ‘There aren’t any here. They’re at the Mairie.’

  ‘Then you will get one first thing in the morning.’

  ‘But he’ll need a photograph.’ The Mayor’s fleshy face was set about with anxiety.

  Gregory had recognised the word ‘photograph’ and was rummaging in his pocket. ‘Notes for pilots’ by Wing Commander H. S. Verity DSO, DFC. He knew it by heart: ‘You should carry a standard escape kit, some purses of French money, a gun or two, and thermos flask of hot coffee or what you will. Empty your pockets of anything of interest to the Hun, but carry with you some small photographs of yourself in civilian clothes. These may be attached to false identity papers. Change your linen before flying, as dirty shirts have a bad effect on wounds. The Lysander is a warm aeroplane, and I always wore a pair of shoes rather than flying boots. If you have to walk across the Pyrenees you might as well do it in comfort.’

  Gregory handed the Mayor two photographs.

  4

  THE PAINTING THAT Levade had thrust at Charlotte was the only one he still owned from the best period of his work. He had kept it back when he sold the others, from some suspicion developing even at the time that the planets in his mind had moved into a favourable but temporary conjunction that would never come again.

  Charlotte looked at it for several minutes; by the time she had finished she was less sure what it was she had seen than when she began. There was a square in a French town, painted in a clear and representational manner; the colouring was flat, the shadows thrown by the buildings were hard-edged: there was no deliquescence of form or colour as in an Impressionist painting; on the contrary, the technique was so realistic that it drew attention to itself. But against this assertiveness there was an element of mystery: the square was deserted, a clock on the church showed twenty to four, as though this blank hour of the afternoon were significant. Two figures in a side street faced in different directions, apparently trapped by some melancholy misunderstanding. The picture was suffused with a sadness that was both particular and irresistibly suggestive.

  What gripped Charlotte was the sense of being strongly moved by a mysterious emotion, yet having the release of that feeling repeatedly closed off by the ambiguity of the image. In the days after she had seen it, Charlotte thought that perhaps what made it so affecting was that Levade had given the impression of seeing through the surface of the world into some deeper reality: he had unpicked one’s natural assumptions of the way things looked and reassembled them in a different way; then, as one tried to adjust to this altered, truer state, the constituents of the picture once more unravelled. It was an entrancing feeling that Levade had evoked, but it was not reassuring; the powerful yearning, brought on by the immediate certainty that he had disclosed something profound, was frustrated by a metaphysical limitation. Perhaps there was an element of truth he had not been able to find. Perhaps he had reached a point beyond which it was not possible to go.

  When she asked him why he no longer painted in this way, he sighed. ‘It’s simple,’ he said. ‘It’s because I no longer dream. As a young man I painted in a very traditional way. Before the war I had a studio with some other people in the rue Carpeaux. We’d see what Picasso
and the others were doing, and although I thought it was important I couldn’t find my own version of it, my own language. I kept on painting in the style of artists I admired, Courbet, or Degas, then later like the early Matisse. When I returned to Paris after the war everything seemed to have changed. Suddenly I found I wanted to paint quite differently, and the subjects suggested to me the way they should be treated. They seemed to come to me more or less complete in dreams. At least, I didn’t puzzle over how I should treat them, I just had to record them, as they were.’

  Charlotte was sitting, once more at Levade’s invitation, on the bed in his studio. ‘And these dreams that came to you, were they of places you knew, or were they imagined?’

  ‘Most of them are the places of my childhood. It was as though there were a landscape inside my head which I’d forgotten, and it was restored to me bit by bit each night. Perhaps it was the effect of the war in some way. I would wake up each morning and find that another small piece of myself had been rescued and returned to me, though, of course, it now looked different. In the passage of time it had become more charged. My dreams seemed to capture the full meaning – something that had not been apparent at the time.’

  ‘How long did this go on?’ said Charlotte.

  ‘For about five years. No more than that. All the good paintings I’ve done were in that small period. After that, something shifted, something changed. Although the process seemed to be spontaneous, I think there was also an element of will. I spent many hours at the easel – there was that sort of self-discipline – but apart from that I was unaware of any intellectual effort, although I suspect it was more than I realised at the time. When you’re painting at that pitch of concentration, your mind is partly passive, you’re in a state in which you surrender to the impulses you feel, but there’s something active as well. You’re making sure at the very least that the impulses stay in the right constellation. There’s push and pull; even letting go is quite a conscious act. The fact that you’re not aware of the active part doesn’t make it any less demanding. Many painters become worn down by their efforts – Derain, for instance, in my view. Perhaps in the end that’s what happened to me. I experienced it as a loss of these spontaneous dreams, but maybe I was really just exhausted.’