He descended the tower stairs and glanced out of the window that looked down on the farmyard. Ariane, wearing an old coat, was at work with Florence. She was holding a pitchfork in one hand and was pushing back a strand of hair from her eyes with her forearm. Theo noticed that her bare wrists, protruding between her sleeves and gloves, looked so fragile that they might snap if she applied the slightest force to any action. He paused to watch the silent co-operation of the two women. Florence had taken hold of a sack leaning against the barn wall by its two top corners and was dragging it across the cobbles. Ariane laid down her tool and joined her, taking the other end. The two of them swung it up and into the barrow, which Florence then began to push towards the animal pens. Ariane picked up the pitchfork once again and speared a bundle of hay with it.
As he stood there and observed the fluid movements of the two women hefting the sack into the barrow, Theo experienced a leap of understanding. He felt that he was witnessing, fleetingly, life at Bonnemort during the Occupation, when he was not there, when the men were absent and the women were in charge. Suddenly the idea that the SS major had been Ariane’s lover, which had so maddened him, became almost insignificant, reduced to triviality by his flare of insight.
Ariane had killed the major.
Chapter Thirty-three
Ariane was waiting for Theo’s interrogation; she wondered what she would say. He had given her warning and she knew it must come. The wariness of her expectation filled their bedroom like smoke from a blocked chimney. That night she sat on a stool in front of the fire in their bedroom, still dressed, stretching out her hands to the warmth. She heard him approaching the door and thought that the sound of the months of the Occupation had been that of footsteps: leather on wood, steel on stone, heels on rock.
* * *
The eleventh week of the Occupation. She had not counted the time at the beginning because she had not understood how long she would have to endure. They had borne it now for ten weeks and two days. She had begun counting when the major had grasped the hair at the nape of her neck and forced his tongue into her mouth. She counted back to the day they came, and forward to infinity, for it seemed as if they would never go.
The first thing that she thought of every morning was of his presence or absence. The last day, the day that Henri died, he had left early in the morning with the lieutenant and most of the unit. When the sun rose through the mist that hung in the walnut trees in the valley, she watched it with a mixture of relief at his absence and dread of his return. The morning was routine. She rode before breakfast and then spent two hours in the tower teaching the children. August should have been the holidays, as Sabine continually reminded her, but Ariane had remained firm on the need for study every morning, because it was a refuge for her as well as a discipline for them. After lunch, as the Germans were still absent, she had succumbed to the girls’ pleading and the heat, and they had slipped down the cliff path, past the tents and storerooms occupied by the troops, to the dark earthy waters of the lake, to swim.
Henri had not been at Bonnemort for the last two days. She knew that there had been fierce debates between him and Vernhes about plans for a demonstration at Lepech. Each day the desire for local action grew as the Allies inched towards Paris. When they had heard two days earlier of the landings in Provence, frustration in the Maquis camps in the forests reached an almost unbearable pitch. Henri remained convinced that they should be patient. The occupiers were contained within a narrow compass. Soon the Germans would withdraw of their own accord. All they had to do was wait patiently. But patience was intolerable for Vernhes, who wanted a victory and a public triumph. Whatever they decided to do, Ariane had told Henri, she could not be there. She would remain at Bonnemort with the girls and hear about it afterwards. Her sympathies were all with Henri on this subject. She longed for the country truly to be free, the Occupation to be at an end, to regain her own freedom. Yet a demonstration while the major’s back was turned, leading to reprisals later, seemed pointless.
In the early evening as they climbed up towards the house, refreshed by their bathe, she thought that she heard a shot, a single crack, as if a solitary farmer were out after vermin. She listened attentively, hearing nothing but the restless cawing of the rooks in the elms. Nevertheless, she hurried the girls up the path. Soon the sound of gunfire was unmistakable. They had never heard shooting before. Suzie sat huddled in a chair with a cat on her knee, stroking it rhythmically, less for its comfort than her own. Micheline plodded round the kitchen, refusing to acknowledge what she heard or what it might mean.
Ariane went to her room, resolving that when things had quietened down she would venture out with Florence to see what had happened, if any help was needed. After an hour or so the shooting ceased and the sound of engines filled the courtyard. Looking out of the window, she saw the Hispano-Suiza drawn up in front of the door. The sight of her own car always produced a lurch of fear. This was not the return of the unit in strength, just of the major himself. Later she worked out that he had fitted in this visit to Bonnemort, to destroy papers and to speak to her, after the fight on the road and before returning to Lepech Perdrissou to execute Henri and his companions. Between one job and another. She stood tapping her nails on the sill. She was afraid to leave the house now, in case she was called for. Time slipped by while she hesitated, until Florence appeared at her door.
‘He wants you,’ she said. ‘He’s in a hurry, slamming around downstairs. And watch out; he’s in a mood.’
Ariane walked reluctantly down the tower stairs. Since its occupation by the Germans the house smelled alien. Before, it had smelled of lavender and damp, a mild, elderly, feminine scent. They had taken over everything, she thought, even the air, and it now smelled rankly masculine, of cigarettes and sweat, of leather and fear.
In the library the major was alone. She recognised all the danger signs and her palms began to sweat with fear. He saw her, ignored her, moving around the room, piling up documents into open boxes that were stacked on others, already filled, by the door. The meaning of what he was doing leaped at her instantly: he was packing. The emotion that flooded through her was so violent that she found she had to hold onto the jamb to support herself.
‘Shut the door,’ he ordered abruptly.
He was bending down by the hearth, a match flaring in his hand, a flame that seemed to gush from the ends of his fingers, as if he had literally a firearm, with no need of any other weapon. The papers that he had piled there refused to obey him. The fire was too densely packed; the flames died at the edges, spluttering into a glowing fringe, smoking evilly.
‘Come and do this for me.’
She took the matches from him and loosely crumpled a few papers, so that they would catch fire. He was standing beside her, looking down.
‘We’re leaving. Do you hear? Tomorrow we’ll be gone.’
She remained crouching, pretending that the fire needed her attention, his boots just within her range of vision.
‘But you’ll hear from me. When things have settled down again, I’ll let you know. I’ll send for you.’
Is he mad, she wondered, and leaned forward to push more paper into the flame.
‘I’ll be back with my men later; there are a few things to settle in Lepech. So I’ll see you once more before I leave for good. Get up.’
She rose, stumbling, and he put his hand round her neck, his thumb painfully caressing her windpipe.
‘I’ll meet you down there, say two o’clock tonight. I should be through by then. If I’m not there, wait for me.’
He was gone. She heard a car manoeuvring in the courtyard, then driving off. By the noise of the engine she knew that he had driven away in her car. He would take it later for good, she was sure. Nothing would induce him to abandon that particular piece of booty.
Florence was in the farmyard, watching him depart.
They went out together, cautiously, not knowing what to expect. Under the trees the evening light lay a
lmost horizontal, the shadows striping the track like corduroy. With a superstitious fear that it might not come to pass, she said nothing to Florence of the news she had just received, even when they passed the entrance to the field where the Germans parked their vehicles. She could see that the guards were busy piling boxes outside the storerooms that they had used as their quarters.
Florence remarked, ‘They’re up to something. I can tell.’
The road climbed steeply and on the crest Ariane saw a line of light from the setting sun touching a low branch, its end leaf already tinged with gold, flaring like the match in the major’s fingers. The next instant they saw below them one of the German cars half off the road, its door open, its windscreen shattered. For a sudden, bewildered moment she thought that it had just happened. He’d just been killed; they would find his body slouched beside his driver’s. Then she realised that this was the wrong car and it was facing the wrong way, up the hill, towards Bonnemort. This was the result of the firefight that they had heard earlier.
She began to run down the hill, but before she reached the car Florence’s cry halted her. The man she had found was dead. He wasn’t a local. They didn’t know his name, didn’t even recognise him, but they knew at once that he was French. Not until they reached the car and discovered Philippe Boysse handcuffed to the wheel did the dread turn into reality: it was Group Rainbow that had been involved.
In the failing light they ran, bowed, through the bracken, frantically searching for the living. The next body they found was that of the garage mechanic from Montfefoul, a stout man in his fifties who had been picked up by the police at the same time as Henri a year earlier, and released soon afterwards. He had been shot through the head and the blood that had soaked from his eye socket had already darkened, the flies settling on his face. Florence was crying, quietly. Ariane could hear her saying over and over again, ‘Mother Mary, not Claude; Mother Mary, not Claude.’ A string of mucus swung from her nostrils, which she wiped away with the back of her hand. When they came upon their fourth corpse, the extent of the tragedy struck home to them. They assembled the dead, carrying the bodies between them, laying them in a line on the verge. At one point Florence said, ‘We need help. Well have to get help.’
Ariane would not let her go. ‘Someone might still be alive. We’ve got to go on until we find them all.’
Even when they left, in the dark, when they could no longer see, when they had hauled seven bodies through the undergrowth to the side of the road, closing their eyes, arranging their limbs, they could not be sure that there were not more maquisards, alive or dead, lying in the forest.
At the gates Florence stopped Ariane. ‘Don’t tell Mum yet. She’ll only worry about Dad and Roger. It looks as if they got away. So let’s not tell her until we know he’s all right.’
They all went to bed early and Ariane waited in the dark, making no attempt to read. She heard the return of the Germans late at night, and listened to their voices and engines as they worked in the field, loading their lorries. She stood at the window of the tower room watching the headlights of the trucks riding up the track, away from Bonnemort. The Occupation was over.
* * *
The silence lengthened, stretched thinner and thinner. Theo broke it.
‘It’s very curious,’ he said. ‘They left without their commanding officer.’ He paused, to see if Ariane had anything to contribute. ‘The only way to account for such an action is that he had ordered them to leave without him, saying he would rejoin them, or that he had gone ahead and they were to join him. But we know he was not ahead of them. When they left, he was still here, possibly already dead.’
Ariane made no comment.
‘How was he going to leave?’ Theo went on, thinking aloud. ‘Ah, the Hispano-Suiza. He was going to take that, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
Theo waited, letting the silence run. Finally, he asked his question. ‘Did you kill him?’
‘No.’
Her voice was sharp in its denial, but it came too quickly. She had expected the question and had rehearsed her monosyllabic answer.
Then she added, ‘But I wish I had.’
Chapter Thirty-four
Florence was crossing the courtyard when Suzie came out, wrapped in coat, hat and gloves.
‘Where’re you off to?’ she called.
‘I’m going … out on my bike,’ Suzie replied, as if she had only just decided.
Florence was already striding away from her. ‘Don’t be late,’ she said.
Her own bicycle had flat tyres, Suzie discovered, but Sabine’s was serviceable. She wiped the seat and wheeled it into the yard. She had no plan, although she had a purpose.
The colonel’s words to them the previous day had been an enormous relief. He had confirmed that her instincts had been right: Madame Ariane was not a traitor. He had put things right. He was also going to find her parents for her. There were limits, however, to what he could or would do. She had tried to explain the story of Vernhes and the major to him, but he had not understood its significance. He did not see that it explained what had happened to Sabine. She had said sadly to Sabine when he had left them to their jigsaw, ‘He didn’t understand, did he?’ She had done her best. It was like holding the piece you needed and simply not seeing which way to turn it to make it fit.
‘I didn’t expect him to,’ Sabine said.
‘So what shall we do?’
‘Nothing. There’s nothing to be done.’ Her voice was resigned. The defiance of the old Sabine had disappeared.
‘What will you do? He might …’
‘You heard what my father said. I’ll go back to Paris with you. When the war’s over you’ll go off to live with your parents and I’ll have to stay with them.’
They had worked on the puzzle for some time in silence.
‘Is that so bad?’ Suzie asked eventually. ‘I mean Madame Ariane … You were wrong about her. Isn’t that all over now?’
‘I don’t have any choice. I’d rather stay here with the aunts, but they don’t want me.’ Self-pity crept into Sabine’s voice.
Suzie said nothing more, but the problem remained with her. Could you just leave what had happened to Sabine like that? Walk away from it? The major had met a just end, terrible but satisfying. She had stood with the aunts and Micheline and Florence in the courtyard looking at his naked corpse and had been filled with awe. He had terrorised them all and now had come to this.
She lay awake that night, watching the moonlight on the wall, wondering whether Madame Ariane would be the person to confide in, and then put the idea aside. She had not been able to save herself or them last summer. And the problem was how to tell. She and Sabine understood one another. When the subject did not have to be expressed, it was possible to talk. But to begin at the beginning, to describe and explain, was out of the question.
She had hardly used a bicycle since she left Bonnemort in September and her legs ached from the effort of pedalling. It seemed much longer than six months since she had last ridden along this road to Lepech to go to mass. She didn’t go to mass any more in Paris and she missed it, in some odd way. Madame Ariane had found a religious study class at the synagogue and insisted that she attend, even though she had protested that Maman and Papa had never made her go. She reached the climb to the village and halfway up she was forced to dismount. She did not know what she was going to do or say. She simply knew that if she confronted him, something would happen, or an idea would come to her.
As she had hoped, she had timed her arrival so that the school was emptying as she arrived in the square. She propped her bicycle against the outer wall of the playground and waited until the last pair of children had dawdled out into the street. She did not know her way around the building, nor whether the schoolmaster would still be there, so she wandered from the entrance hall along the corridor and peered into the classroom. The board on its easel was wiped clean, the chalks lined up in their tray. All the seats were raised
, the desk tops closed and bare. Walking down the aisle between the double desks, she looked out of the windows set so high that only the tops of the trees and the sky, darkening now, were visible. She heard footsteps and stood waiting for the door to open.
In the dusk he did not recognise her.
‘What are you doing here so late?’ he said sharply, then, realising who she was, repeated with a new emphasis, ‘What are you doing here?’ When she did not reply he went on, ‘It’s the little Jewish girl from Bonnemort, isn’t it? What’s your name?’
‘Rahel Kahn, monsieur,’ she said politely, ‘but here they call me Suzie.’
He was holding a large key in one hand, tapping its end in the palm of the other, as if uncertain of what to do.
‘I understood you had left Bonnemort,’ he said.
‘I had, but I’ve come back.’
‘For good?’
‘No, just to visit Sabine.’
‘And she sent you to speak to me?’
‘Not exactly. She’d like to see you.’
She watched the key. He was no longer tapping, but sliding it to and fro across his palm.
‘I called at Bonnemort yesterday to ask after her.’
Suzie did not hurry to fill the long silences that were stitched together with hasty phrases.
‘She’d like to see me?’ he repeated.
‘Yes.’ She waited and then spoke fast. ‘But it’s difficult at Bonnemort. The winepress, do you know it? On the path down to the lake. She could meet you there.’
A Good Death Page 26