Brussaud said thinly, ‘They had my sister.’
Looking at Rosie, who was on his left. I was on her left, and Amélie was facing us, on Brussaud’s right. Rosie told us, ‘His sister’s name was Denise.’
‘You know that, uh?’
‘Jake – Jean Samblat as you knew him – told me about her when I joined the réseau. And I think you and I talked about her, at one stage. She’d started the escape-line you worked in – to which you’d been released by BCRA, were then taken on by Countryman, SOE, after the escape-line was blown and amongst other problems you had no access to a pianist. But you were saying – because they held your sister hostage, was it, that you betrayed us?’
‘Denise had been a mother to me. From infancy, I was devoted to her. It was through me they tracked her down. A woman by name Gabrielle Vérisoin with whom I was in contact – had made friends with – I’d told her about Denise, how desperately concerned I was for her – and Gabrielle offered to act as post-office. She was – I thought, and she may have thought so too – inviolate. Married to a rich man with friends in high places, Vichy loyalist – in fact he was nothing of the sort, but—’
‘Gestapo traced your sister through your approach to her?’
‘And back the other way. I think she was already being watched. They arrested her – in Paris. Abwehr had been hunting both of us – it was Abwehr who’d broken into the escape-line.’
‘So Abwehr turned you, Gestapo were holding her.’
‘They said unless I gave them what they wanted they’d send me pieces of her – at first, fingers with her rings on them, then—’
‘Jesus.’ Amélie had whispered it, flinching. She and Rosie exchanging glances, and Brussaud continuing, ‘– then whole hands, or—’
‘What did they want, exactly?’
‘Oh – details of what you were calling Operation Hardball—’
‘Details you didn’t have.’
‘– and the identity of Countryman’s new pianist.’
‘Me.’
‘Yes.’ He’d stubbed out the cheroot. ‘But – believe me – please – I resisted, tried to stall them, play for time – honestly, I swear it, I —’
‘Eventually gave them the lot – or all you had—’
‘To save my sister. One couldn’t stall for ever. Try to understand? I know it’s – difficult, on the face of it I was – I mean, it’s like speaking of another person – myself, but under such enormous strain – and anguish for her – and they were in a hurry, weren’t going to—’
‘Were they going to release her? Straight swap for us?’
‘They were bringing her down to Castres, the prison there. Said they were. Then release her to me, and when they did so we’d have made a run for it. I thought…’ Looking Rosie in the face now, his own eyes like bruised, wet slits behind those lenses… ‘What will you do with this – apart from destroy me this afternoon? Oh, his book—’
‘That’s one thing. The others he wrote were fiction, this can be for real. Are you going to address the conference?’
‘If you could only see – comprehend – how it was with my sister, how I couldn’t possibly have—’
‘Did they release her to you? When you recovered from wounds you should have died of?’
‘She was dead before that. The first time they had me in – at the préfecture at Narbonne, when they told me the Gestapo had her, I could save her if I played ball – she was dead then. The Abwehr told me Gestapo had fooled them.’
‘D’you think that was the case?’
‘All I know for sure is it marked the birth of André Brussaud.’
Rosie thought about it, and nodded. ‘That’s – understandable.’
Amélie had concurred. A gesture, murmur of assent. Sympathy, even? Rosie looked queryingly at me now: I said something like ‘Damn-all to do with having Ben murdered fifteen or sixteen years later.’
‘No. Certainly is not. And whoever it was he hired…’
Staring at him. Could hardly have expected an answer – and didn’t look like getting one. He was gripping his walking-stick horizontally in front of him in both hands: maybe to stop them shaking. She reminded him, ‘It was me they were trying to kill, and you must have paid them to do it. You wanting me dead – you the instigator, my husband’s murderer. The only others concerned would be the ones you hired. Your colleagues – bosses, fellow diplomats, whatever – wouldn’t have known about Voreux, your treachery, any of that – how could they? You’d hardly have told them, would you?’
‘If I withdraw – that’s to say, the indication was, if I withdraw – don’t speak at this luncheon, don’t attend it – then you don’t speak either?’
I said – her glance had invited comment – ‘Letting you just run off home to Réunion – reputation unsullied?’
He’d shut his eyes. ‘I have a wife in Réunion.’
‘I did have a husband in Australia.’ Insisting, then: ‘I’m right, aren’t I, solely your decision to take out a contract on me – couple of bosh shots then the one that misfired, killed my husband?’
‘I’m sorry. Terribly, genuinely – I mean yes – yes, I—’
Amélie said, ‘If we’re going to this Memorial Mass – I certainly am—’
Rosie asked Brussaud, ‘Are you?’
Hands over his face. Yellowish putty-colour streaked with ivory and sweat- or tear-damp. He looked, truly, like death. Shaking of the head and jowls more like trembling. Grasping the stick again, knuckles white; a croak of ‘I will not attend either Mass or the lunch. I’m not a well man, I—’
‘Well, in that case…’ Rosie had pulled back a little from the table, was reaching down for her bag. ‘Remember once asking me to get you one of these?’
Small screw of paper. Untwisting it, and its contents spilling out on the table-top – a gelatine capsule two-thirds of an inch long, the gelatine itself clouded with age.
‘Didn’t have one for you then. This was of a much later vintage, one I kept as a souvenir.’ Poking at it with her forefinger. ‘We were told they were extremely quick-acting – one’s teeth wouldn’t even get to meet, they said. Might have some use for it now, Marc?’
He’d been staring at it, now met Rosie’s surprisingly calm gaze. Calm, but deeply interested. Brussaud’s eyes returning to the capsule lying ten centimetres from his left hand – that hand’s fingers having loosened themselves from the stick. He was, clearly, considering the offer. Looking at Rosie again now, though, and I heard him mutter, ‘You see – my wife—’
‘Yes.’ A double nod. ‘Yes, well.’ A small sigh. ‘You’ll just go, then.’ Her fingers retrieving the capsule – rewrapping it in what might have been a toffee-paper, twisting its ends to close it before dropping it in her bag. Looking at me then, and across at Amélie: ‘St-Sernin’s for us now, and we’d better—’
‘But – excuse me—’
Eyes screwed up and seeping, that left hand clawing in her direction – towards her bag. The bag, not her, he was looking at. ‘If I may change my mind, I—’
‘What?’
She’d got as far as turning her chair my way, in the course of getting to her feet, was looking at him sharply, surprisedly, as if – well, my impression, this – as if she’d to all intents and purposes finished with him, been thinking only of getting as quickly as possible to the Memorial Mass and had been almost startled – irritated, maybe – by this reminder of his presence, continued existence even. Amélie and I were already up from the table, Amélie on her way round to this side of it, hissing, ‘Have you any idea of the time? We’ll never—’
‘Saying you would have a use for it?’
Affirmative grunt. Breath coming in short, urgent gasps. ‘If you’d – beg you, be so kind—’
‘No.’ She was with us, heading for the door, wasn’t bothering even to look back at him. ‘No, Marc. I won’t. I think you just have to live with it. All of it. Alain Déclan, for instance – remember him? Excuse us now…’
>
First published in the United Kingdom in 2006 by Sphere
This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
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United Kingdom
Copyright © Alexander Fullerton, 2006
The moral right of Alexander Fullerton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788630399
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Staying Alive Page 34