The Occupation Secret

by The Occupation Secret (retail) (epub)

  It all sounded so easy. The key to it all was that the Germans must never suspect that there was a group operating in the vicinity. Not till the final moment. Then, what glory! Hervé imagined many happy years married to Lucie, his face masked, not by wax or wild boar grease, but by the flickering light of his remembered exploits.

  * * *

  The next afternoon he took three of the boys to the top of the ridge, gave them a silent lesson in the use of the Thompson – how to hold the barrel down when they fired and not spray their own people – and showed them the sanglier trail which was, to his eyes at least, blazed clearly like a highway through the scrub.

  He patiently explained how to set a marcassin trap. ‘Look, later, when you have trapped them, you must follow the trail in the direction of the hooves, and you will find water. The sanglier often uses one trail to go to a place, another to come back. And don’t kill them all. Leave some for next year.’

  ‘Next year we’ll be liberated.’

  ‘That’s not the point. A wise hunter always leaves breeding stock behind him.’

  ‘Oh. Yes. Of course.’

  Hervé started back down the mountain, aiming to arrive home under cover of darkness. It wasn’t as if he despaired of them – these were brave, determined boys – but they had no idea of the calibre of men they were taking on. They hadn’t seen those tanks thundering past them on the road, nor the trucks, nor the cold set faces of the soldiers inside them.

  The closer he got to St Gervais and to reality, the more half-cocked he realized were their hopes and plans.

  Canteloube

  Hervé reached the borders of the Léré farm just as dusk was falling. There was still movement in the farmyard, and at the last possible moment he decided to change direction and pass a few words with Lucie’s grandfather. He didn’t try to fool himself that his activities of the previous morning had gone entirely unnoticed, and when old Léré asked him, with a twinkle in his eye, if he was transporting stone back to the quarry, he laughed knowingly, confident in the knowledge that the old man wouldn’t blab.

  ‘And Lucie?’ he asked, when the small talk had run its course.

  ‘Oh, she’s probably back by now. And pleased to see you no doubt. You’re almost a stranger here recently. Why not come in? You’re just in time to eat.’

  Hervé, whose stomach had been warning him of its emptiness for more than a day now, eagerly accepted the invitation. This way he would arrive home well after his parents had gone to bed, and would not have to face the torment of his mother’s pained recriminations and her even more anxious questions about his welfare.

  He ducked in under the low eave at the entrance to the kitchen, automatically shucking off his boots as he did so. Marie Léré was at her usual place in front of the range, but Lucie was nowhere to be seen. The boys trooped boisterously in from different parts of the farm and just as boisterously dispersed to the évier to wash their hands and faces.

  ‘You’re welcome, Najac. Find yourself a place. There’s more than enough for everyone.’

  ‘Thanks, Mémère.’

  He respected old Marie, and rather wished he had a grandmother like her, and still alive. She knew how to deal with her men, did Marie. Keep them in line, by all means, but give them the respect their work was due as well. He felt comfortable with her as with a much-used coat, and sensed that she might be his greatest ally in his courting of Lucie.

  He went over to wash his face and hands, then took his place on Raoul Léré’s right, accompanied by much shuffling and rearranging from the boys. Somehow, here, in the dim light of the cantou, the blemishes on his face no longer seemed to matter, and he felt no need to excuse them in his mind, or justify them, as he had done on the mountain, with heroic fantasies. He belonged in such a spot – just as a langoustine belonged in its nook, or a snake in its crevice.

  He wrinkled his brows, trying to imagine whether Lucie would be content to share such a life with him. It was that dragon of a mother of hers who was the problem, he decided finally. Putting silly ideas into Lucie’s head. Making her dissatisfied.

  As if reading his thoughts, Marie Léré walked across from the hearth and laid her hands lightly across his shoulders.

  ‘Your Lucette is not here. But she will come shortly. Since the Bourgeoise has her feeding the Germans, we have seen little of her, except in the early mornings and late at night.’

  ‘Feeding the Germans?’

  Madame Léré detached herself and returned to the range to stir her soup. ‘You’ve been up in the hills, taking food to our boys?’

  Hervé grunted, but his mind was still on her last statement, just as she had intended.

  ‘Next time you go up, I’ve put aside some boudin. You can take it with you.’

  ‘Thanks, Mémère.’

  He was harking to her with only one ear – the other was anxiously listening out for Lucie’s returning step. But the boys had begun ragging each other again, and Hervé soon gave up any thoughts of trying to separate the racket inside from the silence of the settling farm.

  ‘Look. I have some crème de noix.’ Old Léré was approaching him, a dark bottle held up in his hands. ‘Pre-war. We’ll open another bottle at your wedding.’

  Hervé shook his head bleakly. ‘Wedding? What wedding? I haven’t even asked her yet.’ He looked glumly down at the table. ‘If you want my opinion, she’ll say no. You know what her mother thinks of me.’ He scratched unconsciously at his face. ‘And what would she do with me, anyway?’

  ‘Why, marry you, of course.’ Léré poured a small measure of crème de noix into Hervé’s glass. ‘But you’ll have to stoke up your courage and pop the question first. Isn’t that right, boys?’

  The boys, nudging each other, slurping their chabrol, nodded vehement agreement.

  ‘Yes,’ said Marie Léré. ‘You’ll have to ask her. No beating about the bush. No holding back. The hunter doesn’t trap his quarry inside the house.’

  ‘And truffles only grow under unhealthy oaks.’ Hervé began listlessly spooning up his soup, but his appetite had vanished.

  The main part of the meal was passed in talk of stock, the spring weather, the merits and demerits of the double Brabant plough, and the prospects for the summer harvest. Hervé forced himself, out of simple courtesy to his hosts, to fake an enthusiasm that he didn’t feel.

  ‘And Gaston?’ he said finally, feeling that it was only polite to enquire about the man who, if there were still such things as miracles left in the world, would one day become his father-in-law.

  ‘He is content, in his way. Things could be worse. At least he is working. The Boche have him in Munich, labouring on a street gang. In a few years’ time he will return to us. Then things will surely change around here.’

  ‘He may come home sooner than you think.’ Hervé meant the interjection kindly, but at that moment, with the Germans scooping the cream off everybody’s pie, thoughts of the Liberation seemed irresponsible in the extreme.

  ‘That remains in God’s hands.’

  As she uttered the words, Hervé could feel the pressure of Marie Léré’s gaze fix itself unremittingly on his face – as if she wished to see through his scars, through all the protective layers beyond them, right down into the very hidden chambers of his soul.

  The Proposal

  Hervé caught the sound of Lucie’s approaching footsteps scant moments before the outside door latch finally snicked open. It allowed him a few precious seconds to smooth back his hair and to scrub at his beard with his knuckles, as if he could somehow magic away both his stubble and his disfigurement in one and the same movement.

  ‘Hervé! I didn’t expect to find you here.’

  Lucie stood frozen at the door, one arm poised to slip off her coat, her eyes wide with shock. Her hair was still awry with the moisture of the evening, and her face was flushed as if she had been running. She completed her movement, hung the coat on its peg, then disappeared into the souillarde to wash her hands and tidy h
erself up.

  Hervé had half risen to greet her, and now he hovered in place until she should decide to make a more formal appearance, his knees slightly bent, one arm supporting his weight on the back of the chair, as if he intended to cat-leap onto the table.

  Marie Léré’s voice broke through his inertia. ‘Sit down, jeun’homme, or you will give yourself a torsion. She will be back soon enough.’

  Lucie lingered for a little in the souillarde. She felt unnaturally flustered, as though she had been caught out in a white lie and saw no possibility ahead to exonerate herself. It was true that she had been avoiding Hervé these last few days, for reasons of which she herself was unaware. Now his sudden reappearance irritated her, as if he had come by on purpose to confront her for her inattention.

  ‘I didn’t expect to find you here,’ she repeated unnecessarily, as she emerged from the souillarde, her hair neater now, her face and hands freshly washed.

  Hervé barked back his chair again, almost upsetting it in his haste to greet her.

  ‘I was passing by. I thought I might see you.’

  He held out his hand formally, but Lucie chose that moment to bend forwards and kiss him on both cheeks. Hervé, taken by surprise at this public show of affection, stood with his hand extended for a full five seconds after her passage – he was only brought to his senses when twelve-year-old Bastien, the youngest of Lucie’s siblings, let out a snigger, closely followed by an ‘Aieee!’, as he received a kick on the shins from one of his brothers.

  Hervé dropped heavily back onto his chair. He began frantically spooning up the remainder of his pounti, as if he hoped in this way to distract attention from himself. Lucie busied herself at the range, helping her grandmother.

  Later, when the meal was finished, the dishes washed and the goodbyes completed, Hervé walked out into the yard, tacitly accompanied by Lucie. He was acutely aware of his unwashed state, the two-day growth of beard on his face, and the sour slept-in stench emanating from his clothes.

  ‘I’ve been up in the hills,’ he explained, apologetically.

  ‘I know that.’

  He waited for her to ask him what he had been doing, but Lucie remained obdurately silent. He felt around in his pockets for some rolling tobacco, but then remembered that he had passed all he had left over to Jean-Baptiste’s men.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Lucie looked up, an absent-minded expression on her face.

  ‘Sorry about what?’

  Without waiting for his reply, she went to sit on the edge of the cattle trough. Her feet ached abominably and she desperately wanted to take off her clogs and massage herself, but it was unthinkable that she should do such a thing when a man not of her own family was present.

  ‘About last Sunday…’ Hervé felt as if his tongue had been stretched through a mangle, trimmed off and then tied into a slipknot. ‘It was wrong of me to leave you like that. More Germans might have come along. Then who knows what might have happened.’

  ‘Without you there to protect me, you mean?’

  Hervé puffed out his cheeks. He was sweating profusely by now, the perspiration collecting in beads above his eyebrows and threatening, at any moment, to trickle down his face. ‘Well… yes.’

  ‘The Germans aren’t so bad. They haven’t violated any of us women yet. Unwillingly, at least. We’ve far more to fear from our own countryman, it sometimes seems to me, than from the Boche.’ Lucie’s hand unconsciously strayed to her nose, belying her flippant tone. ‘Vagrants and the Milice, I mean.’

  Hervé flushed crimson. The thought of Lucie being violated was perversely exciting – even her use of the word inflamed him, while at the same time drenching him in a wave of aggrieved guilt. He glanced surreptitiously down at her dress. Her bare legs were peeping out from underneath the hem. For a moment he imagined caressing her calves and all the way up her thighs – to where he had seen, that day under the vines.

  ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘What did you mean then?’

  Hervé was fleetingly tempted to swear out load. Why did women do these things? It was intensely irritating. She must know that he was working himself up to asking her to marry him. Why wasn’t she making things easier for him? He answered his own unspoken question in a sudden rush of clear-thinking. The only possible reason Lucie could have for making things so difficult for him was that she didn’t want him to put his question in the first place. Didn’t want to have to say no to him. He ground his teeth together in frustration.

  ‘You look angry, Hervé.’

  ‘No. No. I’m not angry. Why should I be angry?’

  ‘I don’t know. But you look it. As if you wanted to kill something.’

  Hervé took a deep breath in a vain effort to compose himself. Why did he always have such difficulty in controlling his moods? Before his wounding, he’d seen himself as a calm man. But some maggot had been eating at him these past four years, and now he felt rage where before he had fondly imagined himself manifesting self-control, anger where once he had seemed to feel only contentment.

  ‘Aren’t you curious to know what I was doing up on the Causse?’

  ‘You were taking food to the Maquis.’ Lucie couldn’t help herself. Sliding her clogs off, she began rubbing one foot luxuriantly against the other.

  Hervé grunted. So she knew. Well then. That made things a great deal easier. Perhaps she would think better of him now? His eyes strayed downwards. He found himself mesmerised by the actions of her feet. He wanted to crouch down and take them in his hands. ‘They’re so small.’ He almost choked on the words.

  ‘What are?’

  He flushed again, thankful for the dim light of the paraffin lamp and the even dimmer light afforded by the partial moon. ‘You know.’

  Lucie stopped her rubbing and glanced up at him. ‘You’re in a very strange mood, I must say.’ She slipped her feet back inside her clogs. ‘I think I shall go back inside.’

  ‘No. No. Wait.’ Hervé took a step towards her, his hands raised in capitulation. ‘Wait. Please. I’ve got something very important to ask you.’ He searched wildly around for something else to say – something that would buy him some precious time to think. ‘Your grandmother told me I should talk to you.’

  The minute he’d let the words out into the open, he knew he had made a serious error of judgement.

  ‘Oh, she did, did she?’

  Hervé groaned, and clapped a hand to his forehead. ‘Oh, putain. I can’t do this. Everything comes out wrongly. I just dig myself deeper and deeper into the shit every time I open my mouth.’ He was way beyond caring anymore what she might think of his language. ‘Lucie, listen. I can’t put this in any fancy way. Not like Jean Gabin, or Louis Jouvet, or Pierre Fresnay, or any other of those fancy film stars you love so much. All I want to tell you is that, even though I’m just a stupid farmer with not a lot of protein between the ears, I still want to marry you. More than anything. And our families want it too.’ He hesitated. ‘Well, everyone except your mother, that is.’ Hervé could feel himself sinking back into the morass again. He forced himself to persist with his line of thought. ‘And I want it. The question is whether you want it.’

  It was at moments such as these that Hervé wished that he had spent just a little more of his time attending at school, and just a little less time skiving off or going hunting and trapping with Grand Jean. He stood in front of Lucie, gnawing at his lips, painfully aware that he had totally destroyed any chances he might ever have had with her.

  ‘Is that it? Is that your proposal?’

  Hervé threw up his hands. He swivelled around and started off across the yard.

  ‘Wait.’

  He turned back. ‘For what? So that you can tell me off again? Make me feel lumpish and stupid?’

  ‘No. So that you can hear my answer. You’ve asked me a question, then you walk off before I can answer you.’

  ‘Well, I know what the answer is.’

  ‘And what is it?’


  ‘Go to hell, Hervé.’

  Lucie burst out laughing. He was such a dreadful sight, with his scars, and his beard, and his filthy clothes, that she felt her heart reach out to him. ‘You don’t really need me to say anything, do you? You can conduct entire conversations with yourself.’

  ‘That’s not funny.’

  She made another attempt to control her giggles, but it was useless. She was eventually forced to put up a hand to cover her face. ‘Oh, Hervé, it is. You just don’t give yourself a chance. You’ve so completely decided that I can’t possibly want you, that you don’t even give me an opportunity to speak my mind.’

  ‘Well, look at me. It’s absurd, what I am asking. I know it. You know it. The whole of St Gervais knows it. I wasn’t even around to protect you when it counted.’

  He was tempted to kick out at the paraffin lamp in his frustration, but he suspected, the way things were going for him at the moment, that he would probably only set fire to her father’s barn.

  She stood up, her face becoming serious. ‘What I feel for you has nothing whatsoever to do with the way you look. Or whether you can protect me or not. Do you believe that?’

  ‘Oh really? Well, what do you feel for me, then?’

  She hesitated, searching for the right words. ‘Friendship. Loyalty.’ For one awful moment the word ‘pity’ hovered on her lips, but she blocked it. ‘And deep, deep affection.’

  ‘Enough affection for you to marry me?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  His fists un-bunched themselves. His heart quieted. He let his hands fall limply down to his sides. ‘So will you, then? Marry me?’