by Allan Massie
‘The girl, yes. She was a witness in a case, the murder of a retired professor. We never solved it, I’m afraid. Then she was assaulted by one of the suspects.’
‘An attractive girl?’
René to his embarrassment blushed again.
‘And indeed a tart?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘And the boy, this rent-boy? What do you know of him?’
‘Only what Superintendent Lannes has told me, that he was involved in the case of that German officer, liaison officer, who shot himself, and also with a certain spook who went by the name of Félix and who mysteriously disappeared. The superintendent thought it better that you should be informed.’
Bracal smiled again.
‘That means that things really are bad. Normally you in the PJ like to keep people like me at a distance. It’s called the “need to know” policy, which means of course that we shouldn’t be told anything but what it is absolutely necessary that we are made aware of. So the mysterious disappearance of this Félix was never brought to my notice, not officially, you understand. Drink your schnapps, inspector,’ he said, picking up his own glass and draining it. ‘Why didn’t the superintendent come to give me these letters himself?’
‘I suppose because he’s suspended, sir.’
‘Oh I don’t think so, do you? It would really be much better if you were frank with me. I know that, since the Occupation, we’ve all got out of the habit of speaking the truth or saying what we really think. But there are times nevertheless when honesty is still the right policy. If I am to help the superintendent in the difficult position he finds himself in … ’
Lannes had said, ‘Tell him all you know.’ So …
‘He’s in hiding, gone under cover,’ and René recounted the incident with the lieutenant in the Milice, and how a captain in that force had come looking for Lannes, ignorant of his suspension … ’
‘Our friends in the Milice,’ Bracal said. ‘A tiresome bunch, and stupid, very stupid. They don’t realise it’s almost all up with them. What did the superintendent hope I might do for him?’
‘He told me to ask you if you might be so kind as to get in touch with what he called a senior spook, name of Fabien … ’
‘That’s flying high,’ the judge said. ‘Tell him I will if I can. One other thing, inspector. The author of these letters?’
‘The superintendent is sure they come from the advocate Labiche.’
‘Labiche? A man of influence, even power, but for how much longer? Tell the superintendent I’ll do what I can. And be sure to tell him he has my respect. Sometimes I think that respect for individuals is all that’s left to us. It has been a pleasure making your acquaintance, inspector.’
XXIII
Lannes, an only child, had always been happy on his own, happiest indeed, he sometimes thought. He was devoted to his family, and, being without religion, had no doubt that family was the most important thing in his life, his anchor indeed, without which he would drift he couldn’t think where. Work also mattered; without it these years of the Occupation would have been even more grim, intolerable really. And yet he found any day, or worse a sequence of days, in which he didn’t have some hours to himself, oppressive. It wasn’t necessary to do anything with that time alone.
Yet now this retreat had him on edge. Anxiety kept him awake when he went to bed, and when he at last fell asleep, his dreams were disturbing. Their content had fled in the morning and couldn’t be recaptured. But he woke feeling guilty.
René had come again yesterday, to report his meeting with Bracal; and it should have re-assured him to know that the judge was on his side, as it were. If it could be believed, of course, but what could be believed now? Who could be trusted? It was a foolish thought, but he couldn’t set it aside. They were all waiting, day by day, for the Allied invasion that was promised but didn’t arrive. And suppose it was defeated, as his brother-in-law Albert had so confidently asserted it would be, what would his position be then? He had never been a gambler, but everything he had done – or chosen not to do – in the last weeks had been based on the supposition, assumption really, that the invasion would be successful, the German forces withdrawn from Bordeaux to reinforce the retreating Wehrmacht, and Vichy crumble. This was why he had taken refuge in the Pension Smitt.
He dipped a hunk of yesterday’s hard bread in the bad coffee the old woman had brought him. Sunlight streaked through the dirty window-pane, suggesting, promising, a day to be enjoyed. Church bells rang. Would Marguerite be attending Mass where she would pray for her mother, for the children certainly, and perhaps for him too? He had asked young René to call on her and see that all was well. A stupid phrase; how could things be well?
Did he still love her? Another stupidity, that question. How do you define love? They were bound together, and must remain so unless she chose to snap the bond. He could never do that himself, but what he felt – tenderness, affection, pity, duty or obligation – did that amount to love? And did it matter in any case?
He lit a cigarette with a wax match. They were all in a maze. Perhaps they had reached the centre and now couldn’t find their way out. And yet the sun was shining brightly and when he forced open the dusty window, there wasn’t a cloud visible in the sky.
Marguerite on her knees praying, Miriam with whom, years ago now, he had been tempted to betray her, dying, with Henri watching helplessly over her, Alain Lord knows where and in what condition, Clothilde dreaming of Michel, Dominique also probably in church, Fernand with his new girl and strangely evasive, up to something in his son Jacques’ opinion, Yvette and that wretched boy Karim – why did he feel responsible for them all, even while he lurked powerless in this miserable pension? Had he made a mistake coming here, going into hiding?
Aurélien came through, rubbing sleep from his eyes. His sister brought him coffee and bread and left them without a word. Lannes found himself envying her utter indifference to everything except her bottle of white wine in the kitchen. Aurélien drank his coffee and dealt out his cards.
‘Don’t you get tired of that game?’
‘I’m tired of everything. It keeps me from thinking.’
‘What about?’
‘Everything. Anything.’
‘The mess you’ve made of your life?’
‘If you like. I don’t care what you think of me, superintendent. But I’ll say this. Your own life seems a mess too. If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be here.’
Lannes lit another cigarette and pushed the packet across the table.
‘Take one,’ he said. ‘I can’t argue with you there.’
‘Besides,’ Aurélien said, ‘I’ve abandoned hope of anything better. There’s some consolation in that.’
‘Did the girl, Marie-Adelaide, represent some sort of hope?’
‘Hope? I don’t know. This game’s not coming out.’
He collected the cards, shuffled them and began to deal again.
‘Does it matter if it does?’
‘Of course not. Nothing matters.’
Lannes got up, took the bottle of Armagnac from the sideboard and poured them each a glass.
‘Tell me about her father. Tell me about Monsieur d’Herblay.’
‘Another failure. What of him? I’m not a complete fool, you know. Being a failure helps me to see some things more clearly. The advocate Labiche, for instance. Yes, I’m afraid of him, you were right there, but have you ever seen a rat caught in a cage? It darts around, chews at the wire and believes it can find a way out. The more desperate it gets, the more it fights. That’s the advocate and, like you said, it’s frightening.’
‘And Monsieur d’Herblay?’
‘Another rat but one who doesn’t know he’s caught in a trap. I could see that. Therefore a fool. Who do you think will win this war, superintendent?’
‘The Allies.’
‘Exactly. I’m an idiot, a drunk and, as you told me, a queer that most people despise, but even I know that, even I can
see that. Monsieur d’Herblay can’t. So he’s an even bigger idiot.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because he signed up for the Milice, that horror-comic body of losers. They gave him a uniform and told him he was an officer, saving France, and he believed them. What an idiot.’
He picked up his glass.
‘Good brandy.’
‘What does he look like?’
‘D’Herblay? Tall, fair-haired, thin, handsome once, not now. His daughter, the little fool, is still crazy about him. That was why she came away with me when I pretended I was in love with her. Because I promised I’d take her to him. I suppose Labiche has done so. He may have kept his word for once.’
‘Yes, I think he may have done. So you were always only pretending.’
‘I don’t know, do I? Maybe I hoped when I realised she was attracted to me. And she was, really. Then I understood that she was desperate to escape from that mausoleum her grandmother kept her in. So it was easy. Yes, I was acting under instructions, but I may have hoped. So once again I’m an idiot. Do you know the truth about life, superintendent? None of it matters. Doesn’t matter a damn. I think this game’s going to come out.’
He was wrong of course. Lannes sipped his brandy and drew on his cigarette. Utterly wrong. Things matter, they matter terribly, because if they don’t, if you come to believe they don’t, then there’s nothing left. That was the choice, the ultimate real one, between nihilism and commitment. You had to hold to the belief that things could be better than they are. Deep down even Aurélien held to that, whatever he said. Why else play these endless game of Patience, one of which had at last come good?
XXIV
Jérôme trembled with excitement. Thirty years later, when he wrote his memoirs, he struggled to find the words that might recapture his mood of mingled exultation and fear. Exultation because this was the moment they had been waiting for, fear, not only because things might yet go wrong, there might be a disaster, but also fear that his voice would desert him, that he wouldn’t be able to speak the words of hope, encouragement and exhortation that he had written and had approved by his superiors; fear too, selfish but not only selfish fear, he would think so many years on, for Freddie, somewhere between England and France, helping to land the troops on the beach, playing his brave part in the Liberation. Sitting before his typewriter in his study in the rue Monsieur-le-Prince in 1974 he found himself for the moment unable to find the words. Fortunately, he remembered , his talk on that June day had been recorded, not delivered live. If the landings had failed, it wouldn’t have been broadcast.
***
Alain’s head was thrust under the water again while at the other end of the bath a German sergeant pulled up his feet. His lungs filled with water. This time he was drowning. But no, absurdly, it came to him that a drowning man sees his life pass before him, and he didn’t. A hand was thrust into the water, seized him by the hair and pulled him half-upright, while his feet were allowed to drop. He gulped and gasped for breath and bath water was spewed out of his mouth. He was hauled out of the bath and banged up against the stone wall of the cellar. It was icy cold, colder even than the water. A punch landed on his belly and he fell to his knees spluttering. Someone picked him up and threw him on to a wooden chair.
‘Had enough? Are you ready to speak? Where is he?’
He felt a hand on his neck, and heard a gentler voice. It was the Boche officer, the man who had first interrogated him.
‘You little fool, don’t you want to live? Don’t you want to see your girl again? Hold her in your arms, kiss her, fuck her? All I want is a word, one word, the name of the place where he’s to be found. Give me that, and this will stop. It’ll be over. The kind sergeant here will put you to bed, a nice warm bed where you can dream of your girl. Think of that. No?’
‘He thinks he’s tough, this one.’
‘So many of them do and they’re always wrong. Very well, you’ve asked for it.’
He felt them fix the electrodes to his genitals.
‘Switch on.’
At the first flow of the current he began to scream.
***
Baron Jean, corporal in what was now called the Charlemagne Legion, was drunk, talkative drunk, cheerful drunk, singing drunk.
Michel held him upright, his arm under his corporal’s, Jean’s around his shoulders, and staggered as he tried to march him back to barracks.
‘The secret of life, dear boy, never be sober, never be sober again. The Ivans know. Have you ever seen a sober Ivan? Never. Full of vodka, that’s what they are, fighting mad on vodka. Tell you a secret, dear boy, I’m not drunk enough and you, why you’re disgust … disgustingly sober.’
He freed an arm, dug a half-bottle of schnapps from his pocket, and thrust it into Michel’s mouth.
‘Do you know why we’re losing the war? Tell you why? It’s ’cos Stalin’s drunk and Hitler’s teetotal. Uncle Joe’s pissed as a newt and the Führer’s drinking tea. No good being a tea-drinker in war. No good. Silly little man, Adolf.’
‘Oh do shut up,’ Michel said, ‘or we’ll both end up in clink.’
***
The foyer of the Hotel des Ambassadeurs was busy, almost all the tables occupied. It might have been peace time when the rich and idle flocked to Vichy to take the waters. There were flowers in pots, roses, hydrangeas, carnations, and waiters in tail-coats moved between the tables, trays held high. Elegant women spoke in carrying voices and at the back of the room four elderly gentlemen were playing bridge, the baldest of them dealing cards with arthritic deliberation. Between each deal of four he paused to draw on his cigar, lay it in the ashtray or pick it up and draw again.
Maurice said, ‘Father told me we should wait in the bar and order a bottle of champagne on his account.’
The barman came out from behind the bar to shake hands.
‘We’ll be crowded before long,’ he said. ‘It’s only to be expected.’
‘Why so, Pierre?’
‘You mean you haven’t heard the news?’
‘What news?’
‘It’s begun. The invasion.’ He lowered his voice. ‘The Liberation perhaps. They’ve landed in Normandy. Or so they say. Of course it may be only a rumour. There’s a new one every day.’
‘Well, you’re usually first with the news,’ Maurice said. ‘My father told me to order a bottle of Mumm.’
‘I wouldn’t advise it, sir. It might be taken amiss. There are eyes everywhere, you know. Champagne – it might be interpreted as celebration.’
***
‘But they can’t.’
Chardy was indignant, but also, Léon thought, close to tears.
‘They can’t,’ he said again. ‘The contract is ready to be signed.’
‘These days, my dear,’ his friend, the film director Marcel Pougier said, with the sort of smile which in actors is called rueful, ‘you will find that anything is possible. The authorities are capricious. And your story, let’s say it’s just a little too 1940, a year we are all soon going to be happy to pretend was one in which we all behaved differently. It’s not the German censorship this time, you know. It’s simply that your producer is changing tack, and your novel – the sort of delicious thing you write so well, so unlike almost everyone else, even Cocteau – simply won’t do, my dear. Jean-Paul, for instance, can sniff the changing wind. And what does his nose tell him? That there’s a new mood, a stern morality. A story like yours would offend the Communists, and they’re going to be in the ascendancy. They’ll be the censors once the Boches have gone. Believe me. I have my little ear to the ground.’
‘It’s not fair,’ Chardy said.
‘Of course it isn’t, ducky, it’s how life is.’
‘But you were able to make your David.’
‘That’s because I’m a clever clogs.’
And you’re not was the unspoken part of the sentence, Léon thought. It was true of course. There was something pathetic about Chardy. He had reason
to be grateful to him. He’d sheltered him, provided him with that room in the Place Contrescarpe and paid the rent, because he couldn’t have him in the apartment in the rue Vanneau where he lived with his disapproving and possessive mother; and Léon knew that he might not have survived these last perilous months without his help, help that went with attentions which weren’t, certainly, always agreeable. Nevertheless on this day of wonderful news to make a fuss about the film of a novel being abandoned – it was absurd.
That’s how he put it later in the afternoon to the blonde Priscilla in the nursing home where she lived.
‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘it’s always the personal that matters most. You’ve a lot to learn, my sweet.’
XXV
‘There was nothing in the market,’ Madame Smitt said, ‘no bread, not even an egg. Half the stalls had their shutters closed. I don’t know what it’s about and my feet are sore. So if you want anything to eat you’ll have to find it for yourself.’
‘Did anyone say why? Was there any news?’
‘News? What do I care for news?’
And she shuffled off, muttering about her bunions, to give herself a tumbler of white wine.
Lannes had again slept badly. The atmosphere of the pension was oppressive, intolerable. He thought of Aurélien’s image of Labiche as a rat in a cage gnawing at the wire. Wasn’t that what he was doing himself?
Without a word to Madame Smitt, he drew back the bolt which she had slid into place shutting the world out, and stepped into the street. The morning was fresh as a milkmaid’s kiss, absurd phrase that came into his mind and wouldn’t go away, though he had never kissed a milkmaid, not that he could remember. But someone had used it in his hearing – Fernand perhaps? – and it had stuck in his mind and now rang there insistently. No matter, it suited the morning. He swung his stick. Even his hip wasn’t hurting.
He walked without intention, glad only to be free of the hole in which he had shut himself up. It had been a mistake, he had been behaving like that wretched Aurélien with his endless game of Patience. But one of them had at last come out. Was it this that had given him the incentive to return to the world? Later he would go home, see how Marguerite and Clothilde were, dare to see how Marguerite received him, whether she had accepted his denials.