Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  With her new rifle across her lap, she sat opposite us in the low-beamed room, also home to an old wood-burning stove whose dying flames gave no heat. Whose single bed with its moth-eaten candlewick cover, took up the length of one wall opposite the shuttered window, crowding out two beige armchairs which John had jammed together to make more room for my wheelchair. Both cloth covers bore various incisions, the odd cigarette burn and other stains. In the usual, well-worn places, they’d simply given up. Did that mean someone else lived here or had lived here for a long time? Or were they second-hand?

  I noticed her freckled hands were ringless, and she herself hardly dressed to attract a man, or anything else for that matter. Some mother, I couldn’t help thinking. Some people don’t deserve to have kids. I should know.

  *

  As my wheelchair proved too big for the room, and despite John’s efforts, I had to sit with my back to the front door. Never a good situation. I should have stayed in the car. At least with the engine running, I’d have been warmer than this.

  “Tell me,” he broke the silence. “Has a short, fair-haired Belgian guy called on you at any time in the past year?”

  “No,” was far too quick. “Should he have done?”

  She suddenly pointed at me. A knowing look in those faded, brown eyes. “I remember you as very blonde, though. Pigtails too. Such a pretty little girl. And because I wanted to look like you, I shaved off my dark eyebrows. They’ve been a mess ever since.”

  Too right. Nevertheless, unlike me, she could move freely; was nimble on her feet, despite those heavy boots, and for that I resented her twice over.

  There were no photographs or Jewish artefacts, at least not in that room. Nothing of her daughter or possible fathers. No clues whatsoever as to her past life, and I could tell John thought the same. This was just some dive tucked away in the middle of nowhere. At least from my third-floor cell in Les Pins, I could see a proper, bloody road.

  He was about to speak, but my question was ready first. I deliberately softened my voice.

  “Please - and may I call you Sophie - what else did you notice at Mas Camps? Anything, however unimportant it might seem. Gossip, whatever.”

  She blew warmth from her mouth into her cupped hands. Avoided eye contact. “There’s really nothing else. It’s all so long ago. Too many pages have turned since then, but when I think about it, if I’d not lain low near your and Madame Tremblant’s places, I’d have been shot and mutilated like all the others. Ilona, Calypso, Adamu and Risa... Thirty-six of them in all. Each one beautiful. Yes, I was spared that, but not having to watch my own daughter die in my arms.”

  Yvette…

  “Where was this so-called Home they came from?” John asked after a pause during which she stared at the cheap watch hanging loose off her wrist.

  “I can’t answer that. Not while its Devils are still out hunting.”

  My little postcard with the invitation to La Chasse again came to mind, bringing a spasm of fear.

  “How old were you at the time?”

  “Fifteen, why?”

  “Not fourteen?

  “No.”

  “From Port-Leucate?”

  The woman looked puzzled. “I was born in Perpignan. I’ve never been to Port-Leucate.”

  “Did your parents send you to that Home for safety?”

  “Originally, yes, with the best intentions. We’d all been rounded up from this area and taken to the military camp at Rivesaltes. Babies too. Worse than Argelès, and terrible to see everyone so thirsty, so ill. Fighting over food scraps in the bins. Some dying from sunstroke. Which is why our guards and senior police officers - German arse-lickers - were able to persuade the adult prisoners to let us go to more comfortable accommodation. ‘Shelters,’ they called them, until being reunited once all danger had passed.”

  She snorted in contempt. Re-positioned the rifle on her knees.

  “Of course, they lied. None of us Jews was meant to survive. That’s when I sneaked out one night while the guards were changing over and was picked up by a Spanish lorry driver. As for the other children and babies there, well, I never saw them again.”

  She drew breath, eyes moistening. “I told Yvette when she was old enough to understand, that I’d track those monsters down. I had to kill them. Kill their wives and kids. Plenty of those, so I heard. But she, brave soul, wanted to lift that burden from my shoulders. Unlike her own despicable children, I tried to get justice for her after she’d allegedly drowned in the bath, but no. Even Jules, training to be a priest, did nothing.”

  Sophie Blumenthal shook her head which I doubted had seen a brush for some time. Like me, she’d other things on her mind.

  John passed her a crumpled handkerchief.

  “Are you implying she was drowned by someone at home?”

  For some reason, her gaze rested on me. She nodded.

  “That man she’d picked up in some night club in Perpignan - little did we know what lay beneath his movie star looks, his silver tongue.”

  She leant towards us. A thin finger jabbing at John and myself. “Michel Suzman is part of the Devil’s army himself, just like his father. By the time Yvette was married with a baby on the way, it was too late. I never knew it was her father-in-law who ran those shelters. My shelter.”

  *

  My shiver became a full-blown shaking. John glanced at me before speaking again

  “And of course, you told her everything?”

  “How could I not? It was her right to know what she’d married into. What those innocent victims had endured when her father-in-law was a fit, young man.”

  And paid for it with her life. That’s what John was thinking. Jotting it down in his new, little pad.

  “So, Yvette had three children?”

  She hesitated, as if she’d already said too much while John on high alert, was waiting. “No. Four. One before they were married, but as you can understand, only immediate family knew. I include myself here, though I was treated like a disease.”

  The wood-burning stove revived enough for sparks to dance behind its murky glass, and a single flame reach upwards, instantly adding small cheer to that gloomy setting.

  “Jules, Paul and Marie...”

  “And?”

  “Joel. The only one who’d any time for me. Who was the closest to his mother but suffered for it from his father and his siblings.”

  John got up from his chair, came over and whispered in my ear. His breath hot, urgent. “Monsignor Besson at the Abbey told me Joel had been given away at birth. So, who’s lying?”

  I shrugged, aware of that canny survivor’s eyes on me. Listening, head cocked, as she must have done at Mas Camps.

  “How exactly did he suffer?” He straightened to ask her.

  “Beatings in places that wouldn’t show. Various mental punishments. Why in the end, Yvette had to send him away to a boarding school in Montpellier, where he changed his surname to Hubert. Then again, later. She paid him secret visits, but gradually even those stopped. It was awful for her. I went several times, and he was always overjoyed to see me. Once, he stayed here for a weekend, but Yvette suffered for that, so I’ve not seen him since. She’d told me before she died how he’d written to her from the Abbaye Saint-Polycarpe warning her to stay away. She’d begged him to come back to her, but no. Not while his wicked grandfather, father and his siblings were still around. Glad he was gone, they were. Is gone, perhaps...”

  I’d often seen suspicion in Joel’s wonderful eyes. The looking over his shoulder. The sense he was never relaxed.

  “Why was Michel Suzman a regular visitor there?” John again.

  She twisted round to face him. “Who said?”

  “One of the senior staff” It’s on their records.”

  She seemed defeated.

  “Listen,” I said. “You can be really proud of him. He came to work for me as a

  cook last June. He was excellent. Amazing, in fact.”

  “Was?”
>
  John gave me a death stare. Afraid perhaps I’d mention the severed finger, the microlight incident and his own abduction, never mind those warning notes he’d attributed to the Notaire.

  “I can’t lie,” I said. “He left me a week ago. But his car’s still around. He did the same over Christmas, so I’m not panicking.”

  But Sophie Blumenthal didn’t seem convinced. She sucked in her breath. Closed her eyes. Her voice barely a whisper.

  “Oh my God. I just know he’s in trouble.”

  John, ever the gentleman, leant over towards her. “You mustn’t worry. If anyone can take care of himself, it’s him. And any news we get, we’ll let you know immediately.”

  “How? I’ve no landline phone. No signal either for…”

  “I’ll come here personally, OK?”

  “He might already be back,” I added, enjoying her anxiety.

  She leaned forwards as if I was her dinner.

  “Where exactly?”

  Hang on. Not so fast...

  John’s left shoe nudged my foot rest.

  “I live in Holland now. Joel had seen my advertisement in L’Indépendant. I’d wanted a French cook over there, you see.”

  I could tell John was thinking how could I lie so easily? But haven’t I had years of practice? It’s called survival.

  “I hate having no phone here,” Sophie Blumenthal said eventually, sitting back in her chair. “But can’t, for obvious reasons. And the post won’t even come this far, so I use the Bureau de Poste in Banyuls.”

  “May I have your Box number. Just in case?” John suggested.

  She hesitated.

  “No, sorry. I do have to be careful.”

  Join the club…

  “So, you couldn’t imagine him penning revisionist, anti-Semitic material?”

  That came out of the blue. Was that hermit about to hit him? Possibly. If looks could kill...

  “My Joel? What the Hell are you saying? Never! He actually began collecting little Jewish bits and pieces while at boarding school. Unlike his sister and brothers, he was proud of our shared background. He told me so. And talking of the past, before I forget,” she fixed on me again, “you ought to know, Liesbet, that several times at the start of Yom Kippur, I’d see your Papa and brothers out after dark, grubbing around on their land on all fours. Like hungry dogs they were. I’ve never forgotten it.”

  My blood suddenly felt too cold. And not just because some huge spider was hovering from the beam above me that made my legs tremble. John got up to cover my knees with his ski jacket. It felt like no more than tissue paper in this house of secrets. But she wasn’t finished yet. Oh no...

  “Accusing each other of thieving a large amount of money. I heard every word. One of them threatened the other with his rifle. It was that bad.”

  “Are you sure?”

  A pause, in which I could hear my heart.

  “I am. The more I think about it, it couldn’t have been Christian because I’d been with him at the Café des Étoiles a few times before then. I needed cash to visit Rivesaltes and see my parents.” She lowered her head. “I was willing to try anything. Do you understand?”

  The girl who’d made Joop so jealous.

  “You mean...” My voice petered out.

  “Yes, he loved me, but I couldn’t love him. He was clever and kind and had saved my life, getting me away from Dansac and Saint-Antoine, and don’t think I wasn’t grateful. But when he took me back to that terrible camp, my parents had gone. The hell hole they called the ‘Sahara du Midi’ was deserted, and Swiss aid workers were gathering proof of the horrors, I broke down, and was found a genuinely safe house in Baixas - a room above a bar there. They and the bar owner were saints. Real, living saints. After a few years, I’d saved enough to buy here once Yvette was born. I never went near Dansac or Saint-Antoine again.”

  The oil lamp’s flame juddered, threatening to die, until she rocked it from side to side, casting her face into light then darkness. John didn’t move. He couldn’t. Her fantasy had sealed him to his seat...

  “Did you ever hear what happened to Christian, his brother and their father?” He said finally.

  She left the lamp and went to prod inside the wood-burner. “I don’t believe he, Joop and your Papa just walked away. Christian said he’d always be at Mas Camps if I ever changed my mind. Yvette used to ask me where her own Papa was. I wish I could have said his name, but no. I’d slept with that Spanish truck driver. That was it. He’s dead now, but I’ve a photo that Christian gave me before we parted.” She closed the fire’s door. Reached deep into her cardigan pocket.

  John studied the small image under the oil lamp. I turned away.

  “Talking of photographs,” he said as she reached out to retrieve it, “Alize Saporo kept yours like some sacred icon in a box on her mantlepiece. I even found a knitting pattern for a girl your age...”

  Immediately, and despite the revived fire, the room turned cold. Sophie

  Blumenthal stood rigid as marble, spitting out the words “Black Bitch. Sick, Black Bitch…”

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “Ricard Suzman’s bit on the side while his first wife was dying. Was still warm, in fact. That’s what we called his bit of stuff behind her back, but ‘Maman’ and ‘Papa P’ to their faces. They were the ones who picked me up in that bloody hay cart near Dansac where I was lost and trying to hide. She ran our home at Villedieu and another two, so we heard.”

  “So how come I found a trunk full of kids’ clothes and wooden toys at Les Pins, near Saint-Antoine de Bayrou?”

  Idiot! What was he thinking of?

  “Probably another of their so-called ’shelters.’ At least that diminutive Belgian who came here seemed to think so.”

  I stifled a small cry, suddenly needing to leave.

  “Why didn’t the noble hero, Father Diderot mention any of this to me?” John pressed on, thankfully having missed my reaction.

  “Saving his skin, that’s what. Like everyone else. Except for this gipsy boy who tried to get the other kids to escape. I never found out his name or what happened to him.”

  She looked at me again.

  “He worked for your father on the vendage, didn’t he? Before Maman and Papa P snared him too.”

  John was waiting for a reply, but my fearful mind had gone blank. The labourers all one and the same. And then, for some reason, I remembered crows...

  *

  Sophie Blumenthal snatched her photo back. Gave my wheelchair a rough shove forwards and held the front door open for the mountain mist to roll in. She handed John a brown envelope that seemed to contain more than just a letter. My first thought was ‘bomb.’ “For your little night owl,” she added. “I can’t reveal any more, I’m sorry. I need to live, to finish what I must do, before I end up like my poor, darling Yvette. Why else did I choose to hide up here? Why else?”

  Little night owl?

  Christian’s pet name for me. But why was John Lyon staring my way, as if he’d just seen a ghost?

  Chapter 42. John.

  Never have I been so relieved to escape that kind of creeping fog, ten times worse than anything the River Soar ever delivered back home. Even my Volvo’s lights couldn’t penetrate it, at least until Port-Vendres. Nor could I tell if anyone had been following us.

  “Why mention Les Pins?” Karen had demanded as I’d driven away.

  “Are you mad?”

  “Just sleep.”

  And thankfully, she dozed for most of the journey back; her breathing easy again after those revelations about herself and Christian. At least we’d kept the lid on Joel and my fun trip to Pamiers, but I was inwardly angry at her living in Holland story. How easily it had come to her. Sophie Blumenthal was sure to discover the truth about her grandson any day now. Then what? And had her account of Alize Saporo and Ricard Suzman, founding MD of the firm that built both covered trucks and a railway extension, been the rant of a tortured soul? Hardly. She’d str
uck me as a realist. A hard-boiled one, with a mission as potentially deadly as Karen’s and, if her story about the Black Bitch and her right-hand man was true, then her own life and that of the brave gipsy boy - wherever he was - could be at risk.

  *

  Now it was my turn to feel myself sinking ever deeper into a morass of lies, shifting links, some new revelation which tangled up the few stitches I’d woven together. I couldn’t do this alone. Absolutely not. Which is why, at midnight, while Karen still slept beside me, I drew up outside a MacDonald’s in Perpignan’s outskirts, and in a nearby phone booth, left a message with Robert Taillot to check out Alize Saporo’s whereabouts. If she’d indeed been the old Notaire’s accomplice during the Vichy round-ups. Also, if he could locate any kind of railway timetable for the line from Villedieu to Padaillac and beyond.

  Exiting the booth and seeing that temptingly lit window where mid-week clubbers sat munching their burgers and fries, my stomach reminded me I’d eaten hardly anything all day. Yet just one sniff of the fatty, frying meat, sent me swiftly back to the Volvo.

  *

  The almost empty valley road out of the city gave me time to think. Almost too much, because the more the woman sleeping next to me withheld, the more was I dependent on others’ memories and opinions.

  So, the Ryjkel menfolk were an intense bunch, with rivalries and jealousies like most families. However, something else, apart from the Suzman connection with them via Sophie Blumenthal and her daughter, was cattle-prodding my thoughts.

  Their criminal link to Dansac, Villedieu and Les Pins.

  In a Eureka moment while driving back through Villedieu itself, I realised that she, the rifle-bearing hermit in that shapeless cardigan and unbrushed hair, was key. The bridge between both mysteries Karen and I were trying to solve. She must, therefore, stay alive.

  *

  As Karen’s eyes were still firmly closed in sleep, I’d no choice but to park in front of another call box by the Bureau de Poste and use the last twenty francs on my phone card to call the Saint-Antoine gendarmerie in the Rue Émile Zola.