She threw herself against his chest, burying herself in him, in his smell, like a child in its blanket. ‘I don’t care what happens to me. I only want to be with you. I’d die of grief if anything were to happen to you.’
He took her by the hand and hurried her on through the darkened maze of the buildings. At one point he hesitated, pressing a finger to her lips, fancying, despite the hissing in his ears, that he could make out the tentative sound of footsteps somewhere behind them. After a moment’s frustrated indecision, he shook his head and turned his attention back to the matter in hand. ‘Can you see any white numbers? They should be painted on the bulkhead, near the bridge.’
‘What bridge? There’s no bridge here. And what’s a bulkhead?’
He grinned at her through the darkness. He hustled her up against the stanchions, and used the movement as an excuse to nuzzle her neck, inhaling her familiar scent – confident in her again. ‘Come on. We should be able to see better from here.’ His eyes searched the shadows on board the nearest vessel. ‘Look. I think it’s a three. That means we need the next boat along.’
He had already started to edge further along the quay when he halted without warning and dropped into a crouch, pulling Lucie down beside him.
‘What is it? What’s happened?’
‘Are you sure you can’t hear anything?’ He felt around inside his jacket and withdrew the Luger. ‘This damned hissing. Half the time the noises I hear are going off inside my own skull.’
She shook her head. ‘No. There is someone. I can hear him too. You’re not going to shoot him, are you?’ Lucie instinctively drew back from the pistol, as if it were threatening her and not some indeterminate enemy.
‘Of course not. Then we should be totally lost. But if he’s a guard, I may need to use the barrel to knock him out.’
Lucie snatched at his arm. ‘But that’ll be just as bad. They’ll miss him come morning, and search all the boats.’
‘Shh. Wait here. I won’t be long.’
‘You won’t do anything dangerous? You will come back?’ Lucie had a sudden, overwhelming sense of what it might be like to be entirely alone in the world.
He reached for her face in the darkness. ‘Of course I will.’
Max moved silently away from her on his rope-soled shoes, casting at right angles from their position. Now he could easily make out the stertorous sound of breathing just a few feet away from him, and smell the unmistakeable odour of cheap alcohol filtering through the night air.
There was the sudden thud of flesh meeting an unyielding substance. Then a cry. ‘Putain.’ Then a brief silence broken only by the busy sound of rubbing fabric.
Max hissed through his teeth. ‘Hervé? Is that you?’
The answer came from five feet away to his right. ‘Of course it’s me. Who did you think it was? Maréchal Pétain? I’ve walked into one of these bloody bollard things.’
Max could feel the tension draining from his body. ‘You damned idiot. I might have shot you.’
Hervé blundered towards him, looming out of the enclosed darkness. ‘That would have been a good joke. You could have told it to your future children. Do you know how I won your mother? I shot the competition. By mistake, of course. While I was trying to sneak her away from him by night.’
‘You’re drunk again.’ Max grabbed Hervé by the shoulders, steadying him before he could career into yet another obstacle and bring it down. Half his mind was still on the dock area surrounding them, straining to hear any untoward sounds through the unholy clamour going on inside his head.
When Hervé had regained his equilibrium sufficiently to manage something more than a mere stumble, Max guided him back towards Lucie. A miasma of stale alcohol bled out through Hervé’s sweating pores, as if his liver were no longer acting as an effective filter.
‘What are you doing here anyway?’
‘Lucie woke me up when she came into my room with that letter. But I pretended to be asleep. Then I heard you both creeping out like thieves.’ Hervé raised his voice. ‘You need me, you know. You’ll never get out of here without me.’
‘Keep your voice down, you bloody fool. You’ll get us all shot. For God’s sake go back home where you belong.’
‘I don’t belong anywhere. I’ve got no home.’
Lucie touched Max’s arm, placatingly. ‘Let me talk to him. Please, Max. I know him. I know what this is all about.’
Max hitched his shoulders in mock despair. ‘Be quick then. We have very little time. If we’re not in place in twenty minutes, we might as well surrender to the Gestapo and save them the trouble of finding us. That’s if this maniac doesn’t betray us with his bellowing first.’
‘Where’s the difference?’ Hervé’s voice was badly slurred. ‘This whore’s already given herself up to the SS. And willingly. Why not fuck the Gestapo for a change? Spread it about a little.’
Lucie stepped swiftly between the two men, her hands raised protectively. ‘No, Max. Let me deal with this. He doesn’t mean what he says.’ She grasped Hervé by the arms and hurried him away, although taking care to remain within Max’s earshot.
‘Shame on you, Hervé,’ she hissed, under her breath. ‘Shame on you for talking to me like that. You didn’t read my letter, did you? You didn’t even look at it?’
Hervé shook his head. His eyes were sullen behind their token film of drunkenness. ‘Read the letter? Since when do I read letters? Have you forgotten who I am, Lucette? This is Hervé standing in front of you. The Hervé who left school at twelve, because he could only think of hunting. The uneducated Hervé. The stupid one. The one who can hardly read or think. He’s just a peasant farmer, this Hervé. But an honest man, perhaps – one who knows where he belongs. Not like others I could mention.’
Lucie could almost feel Hervé falling away in front of her – the scales dissolving from his eyes. A sudden, bittersweet pang of loss overpowered her. ‘Did you at least see the money we left you?’
‘I’m not taking money from a woman.’
Lucie sighed. ‘It’s not from me. It’s from Max.’
‘Then I’m not taking money from a Schleuh.’
‘But you’ve saved each other’s lives. Who better to take money from?’
Hervé pulled away from her. ‘He’s stolen you from me. I hate him.’
‘That’s the drink talking. You don’t hate anybody.’
‘If he hadn’t come to St Gervais, you would have married me. That’s true, isn’t it? You would have become my wife? Despite my face.’
‘Hervé, if Max had never come to St Gervais, I would be only half a person. You would have married half a woman.’
‘I don’t understand. Why do you speak in riddles all of a sudden?’
Lucie stepped back from him, sighing. ‘Neither do I. Understand, I mean. If that’s any consolation.’
‘So you don’t want me with you?’
‘Oh Hervé, it’s not that. But what would you do in Spain? The same thing would only begin all over again. You would resent my being with Max, start drinking, and then cause some disaster to happen. Listen to me. Listen carefully. I love only three men in this world.’ She laid her hand gently over his mouth to stop him interrupting her. ‘My father. Max. And you. My father because of who he is to me. Max because of what he is to me. And you because of what you were to me. Don’t you see? Don’t you understand?’
Hervé parroted her speech. ‘And you because of what you were to me.’ His face twisted in the darkness. ‘And what did you think I was to you, that night back in January, heh? I could have had you. I was this close.’ He circled his thumb and forefinger in front of her eyes, with only a tiny gap left free.
Lucie pulled back from him. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Don’t tell me you don’t remember? In the field.’
‘Hervé. Stop talking nonsense. It’s not funny.’
‘Don’t pretend you didn’t realise it was me?’
‘It wasn’t you.’
A sound broke through the darkness. Lucie felt herself being pushed aside, almost in slow motion. Her head was swimming and her knees felt weak, as though she had inadvertently inhaled some ether. ‘Max. No. Leave him alone.’ Her voice seemed to come from far away – as if she had briefly caught up with an echo of herself, and then lost it again.
There was the crash of falling bodies. The explosive outpouring of breath. The sound of blows and curses.
‘Stop it. Please. Both of you.’
‘This time I’m going to kill you.’ Max had the pistol to Hervé’s head. He was astride Hervé’s body, his forearm locked beneath his neck. His eyes were wild with hate.
Hervé’s voice was muffled by Max’s arm. ‘Go on. Do it. Pull the trigger. You’ve been aching to.’
Max shook his head. ‘No. I’m not going to shoot you. That would be far too easy. I’m going to beat you to death for what you did to her. Finish the job that Eberle and Siebe started. And I’m going to enjoy every minute of it.’
Lucie threw herself between the two men. ‘Max. No. He’s lying. It wasn’t him. He would never touch me like that.’
‘But you heard him. He admitted it himself. Admitted violating you. It all makes sense to me now. That was no stranger who attacked you. It was this filth.’
Lucie took Max’s face in her hands. ‘Listen to me.’ Max was already raising the pistol. ‘No, Max. If you love me, listen.’
Max hesitated, the pistol poised above Hervé’s head. ‘I’m listening. It’s not going to save his miserable life, but I’m listening.’
‘It wasn’t him. You are only believing what you want to believe. What he wants you to believe.’
‘Don’t talk nonsense.’
‘It wasn’t him.’
‘How can you expect me to swallow that?’
‘Because I’m telling you, that’s why.’ She pushed the hand that held the pistol away from her, as if it were diseased. ‘I’ve known Hervé all my life, Max. He’s a part of me. I know how he moves. How he thinks. I can read his face. His thoughts. I even know his smell. He’s like a brother to me. He would never hurt me. It wasn’t him. Believe me. It was another man. Please. Don’t do it. Don’t destroy everything we have left.’
Max lowered the pistol, rocked by the note of conviction in Lucie’s voice. ‘I don’t understand. Why would a man lie about a thing like that?’
‘Is it really so hard to imagine?’
Max sighed, and eased himself painfully to his feet. He looked down at Hervé, more in pity now than in anger. ‘Do you hate me so much, then? So much that you would force me to kill you for something you didn’t do?’
Hervé dropped his head. ‘I don’t understand a thing anymore. I don’t even know who I am. What I am. Why I do things. Everything’s wrecked. Everything’s spoiled.’
Lucie moved towards him. She helped him struggle to his feet. ‘You were my youth, Hervé. The companion of my childhood. You were all bound up with the land, and with my feeling for it. Now that the land has been taken from me, I must look elsewhere. You understand that, don’t you?’ She reached forward and took his face in her hands, refusing to be put off by his instinctive attempts to turn aside and conceal his scars. ‘Max isn’t tied up with all that. Wherever we go, he will be himself. He has no choice anymore in the matter. And so I can be me. Wherever you go, Hervé, St Gervais goes with you, and I simply reflect that.’ She reached forward and kissed him gently on the forehead, aware that she was terminally alienating him with her words. Aware that there was no turning back anymore. ‘So, you see? You must go back. At least then I will know that I have someone left to speak for me. To my father. To my grandmother when she is able to hear again. To my brothers. Can you do this for me?’
Hervé could still feel the imprint of Lucie’s lips on his forehead. ‘And this would mean so much to you? This speaking up?’
‘It would mean everything, Hervé. It would mean everything.’
Claustrophobia
4 am: Saturday 17th June 1944
‘Are you quite sure he’s gone? He’s not simply hovering out on deck somewhere? Or lurking under a pile of nets, waiting to give us away with his stench of alcohol? It’s worse even than the spirits of these dead fish we seem to have found ourselves in amongst.’
Lucie let out a sigh in the darkness of the foul-smelling cuddy. Every word that Max said was unnaturally dampened by the proximity of the walls, which were nowhere more than three inches away from their faces.
‘I’m sorry, Lucie. You know I don’t mean what I say. I’m just angry with him for thinking he can play God. For calling you a whore.’ Max reached forwards and kissed her on the neck. ‘It doesn’t matter how much he thinks he loves you. There’s no excuse.’
Lucie shook her head, so that he could feel her movement against his lips in the darkness. ‘He didn’t mean it.’
‘He never does. That’s the problem. He just launches himself in whichever direction he perceives as a threat.’
She glanced coquettishly at him over her shoulder. ‘A bit like the German army, then?’
Max had the grace to laugh. But Lucie could sense that he wasn’t satisfied – that the profound anger he felt against Hervé still lurked somewhere just below the surface of his civilized veneer. Max felt betrayed by this former enemy whom he had, against his better judgement, slowly begun to think of as a friend.
Lucie recognized this inborn mistrust of Gallic irresponsibility as a by-product of the Germanic in Max. She instinctively knew that she must circumvent it, and not approach it head on. And that she could do this best by using the armoury of her womanhood. Firstly, via frivolity. Secondly, through sex.
She twisted her head around so that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek. ‘He told me he’s going straight back to that farm where he got the food. They’ve got three daughters, apparently. He’s decided that if they turn out to be anything like their mother, he’ll choose one of them and persuade her to marry him. That way he’ll finally have some peace, and eat well into the bargain. He wasn’t too impressed with your cooking, it seems, that first day.’
Max snorted, and eased himself into a more comfortable position. ‘I can feel a cramp coming. In my bad leg.’
‘Here. Let me rub it for you.’ Lucie was sitting inside his legs, with her back to him, her head against his chest. Max’s back was supported on some canvas she had tucked in behind him, with his head bent forwards almost over her shoulder. ‘There. Is that better?’
‘I don’t know how long I can hold this position.’ Max took a series of deep breaths. ‘I’m claustrophobic. Always have been. Ever since my brother locked me inside a cupboard when we were both young children. Small spaces get me into a cold sweat. I’ve got to have room to move my shoulders.’
Lucie’s eyes widened. ‘But what about tanks? They’re small spaces.’
Max laughed. ‘Why do you think I rode on top? With my head sticking out?’
‘I’d always assumed it was bravery.’
He gave a sarcastic snort. ‘Naked fear.’
Lucie rested a finger on his lips ‘Shh, Max. Someone is coming down.’
They both fell silent, listening. There was the sound of shuffling. The rustle of something being moved. Voices raised in what sounded like a joke.
‘What language are they speaking? Is it German?’ Lucie’s heart was pounding inside her chest. At any moment she expected a soldier to throw back the door of the cuddy and drag them out.
Max hesitated, his mouth near the shell of Lucie’s ear. The barrel of the Luger was sandwiched between them, pointing at the door.
‘No. It’s a form of Spanish, I think. Or maybe Basque. We’re still in the clear.’
They waited, the sound of their breathing resonating in the enclosed space. After a while the footsteps clattered back up the companionway and silence descended.
‘Are they gone?’
‘Yes. I counted three down. And three have gone up again.’ Max gl
anced at the luminous dial of his watch. ‘We should be leaving harbour at any moment.’
‘What if the port authorities decide to check the boat out after all?’
‘Then we’re dead.’
Lucie took a deep breath. ‘You’ll shoot me, if they come? I couldn’t stand to be taken again. I realised that just now, waiting for them to find us.’
Max fell silent, considering her words. After a long, uncomfortable pause, he shook his head. ‘No. Don’t even ask it. It would be an impossible thing for me to do.’
Lucie felt for his hand in the darkness. ‘Let’s hope they don’t find us then.’
Fish Heads
6 am: Saturday 17th June 1944
The sound and movement of the boat changed the moment they were outside the protection of the harbour walls. The vessel began a twisting screwing motion, its planking protesting, as if it felt itself better suited to more gentle pursuits.
‘I’ve got to get out of this bloody matchbox. Believe me. I’m serious.’
‘It’s too early, Max. We’re too near port.’
‘I don’t care.’ Max unlatched the door and eased himself out of the cuddy, dragging his injured leg after him. He took a deep breath of fresh air, then limped over to the galley table and threw himself down onto the bench, with his head resting on his arms. ‘Thank God for that.’ He placed the Luger on the table in front of him.
‘The crew will find us here.’
‘They won’t come down for a bit. Not until they’re well away from the harbour and the patrol boats. Is there anything to eat?’
‘Max, you can’t be serious?’
‘Panic always makes me hungry. I wouldn’t go back inside that cupboard again for a million francs.’ He rubbed at his ear. ‘I wish I could hear properly. All I get is this hissing all the time.’
The Occupation Secret Page 37