“Pine for hope,” said Marthe. “And I’m going to try amber for timelessness.”
“Hope,” said Arlette. “Our instincts are always for hope. There’s something rather mysterious but wonderful about that.”
“I’m not sure it is mysterious, actually. Surely instincts are the result of noticing tiny details that the body processes quickly.”
“So quickly that it seems you were anticipating all along . . . an animal intuition. . . . You’re right, we do it all the time without thinking.”
“Exactly.”
Thinking about that conversation reassured Marthe a little. Arlette would be all right; she would read the signs and act accordingly. She would. She must not think of the other things she and Arlette had discussed. The only certainty was that others were watching.
She heard the cocks crow into an empty morning, and M. Musset departing on his bicycle soon after sunrise. Her stomach contracted, but she knew she would not be able to eat.
Musset returned at midday. “Cabot’s finding out what he can. But Céreste stinks with informants, he says. Infested by Waffen-SS too.”
Not all the gendarmes in Céreste were on the side of the Milice. Cabot was a living reminder of the fact that the police had once been trusted members of the community. Without a flicker of recognition, he had once pushed Auguste back onto the Digne bus just as a convoy of Waffen-SS and Milice were heard on the approach to the other side of the village. They rounded up five men that day, and only two returned.
Musset and Auguste had been to the village in the Woodcutter’s van, the most reliable transport for underground business. “We sent word with a small boy to the Poet in the old quarter, then met him casually by the water pump. He had no information, but they’re putting the word out about a young woman, about so tall, with her hair up in a blue scarf and lavender print apron, an innocent bystander. The last anyone seems to have seen of her, she was walking out of the café at about the time the bus was expected.”
Musset recounted the events in a voice so flat it seemed the life had been kicked out of him: a man in a three-piece tweed suit and round tortoiseshell glasses had seemed on the point of admitting to a sighting, but then quickly took his leave when a van sped past; shutters banged shut; a grey car the size of a boat had swayed to a stop outside the Mairie, and four German officers had gone in. Then nothing.
Then, as Musset and Auguste left the café, a man walked up behind them. “ ‘The Milice arrested a man who was in the café the previous afternoon, a thick-set man who played the drunk, pretending to read a newspaper,’ that’s what he said. ‘Played the drunk,’ those were his exact words. Which is worrying—”
“You didn’t ask him about a girl?”
“Too risky. The last thing I wanted to do was to come right out with it that they were connected—that I was connected too.”
“So you’ve no idea who this chap was you were talking to?” asked Madame.
“Never seen him before. He was about my age, dressed as a farmer. I didn’t want to ask, and didn’t want to give away more than I had to. According to him, anyway, the Milice had a busy day yesterday. They had a man held in the cells of the police station—the man who was taken from the café. That’s all he knew.”
“What now?”
“There’s nothing we can do. The Poet is getting a message to the Engineer, but after that, all we can do is sit tight.”
“If she’s been arrested, they’ll know that she’s the girl from Distillerie Musset,” Marthe said.
“I expect so. All we can do is accept that she must have been taken, along with Candide—and try to find out what’s going on.”
Which was exactly what the Milice would be doing too. Everyone knew that they had their methods. Words that were not spoken.
“If they have Arlette, they will connect her to us.”
Arlette in Céreste with the deliveries. The messages in Braille wrapped around cakes of soap. The other blind girls waiting to act as translators, in Apt and Reillanne, Banon and Saint-Christol. A spider’s mesh of tiny strands, only visible when the sun caught their beads of dew.
“Arlette will never break,” said Marthe. “She wouldn’t even tell me what she was doing, though I begged her to explain. She never did—it was only when she saw how I might have the answer to the problem of how to send new messages.”
“She’s young and pretty—she’ll charm her way out of there,” said Auguste, with a confidence that no one believed, though they wanted to so badly.
They heard nothing.
The feeling of threat intensified. If Arlette did not return, then sooner or later the Milice would come in her place. There was only a week to go before the night flight, when the Americans would be taken north over the mountains to the clandestine landing strip.
Kenton and Scotty were moved out of the barn. Marthe’s room on the ground floor had a trapdoor. A small room adjoining the Mussets’ contained a staircase up to the low attic, which led to another route out of the house.
Kenton was the taller and the less agile; he would find the roof space harder to pass through. And Scotty had only the most rudimentary grasp of French, so it was better he be shielded by the Mussets. Kenton would sleep on Marthe’s floor, ready to spring up if anyone arrived suddenly in the night. They had practiced the drill. Marthe knew exactly how to close the trapdoor and pull the bed into the right position over it.
The first night before they all retired, Marthe advanced on the two boys with a scent bottle and sprayed.
“Hey! What’s this?”
“A distillation made of pepper and lavender. It puts dogs off the scent. They might bring dogs.”
The American was solicitous, only knocking on her door when she assured him she was already in her little iron-framed bed. Then he came in, shut the door quietly, and lay down on a mat and a padded bedspread. She heard his breathing, but she hardly dared to speak to him. Perhaps he was already sleeping, already on his way back to a country far away.
She lay awake, her head too full. When she finally dozed off, she dreamed of waiting for the full moon. First an evening when the western sky flamed, sending great fingers of rich red light up the slopes through the trees, then the rise of the great disc that silvered the night. Then Arlette lost in a forest. The Gestapo taking Candide to Forcalquier. If he talked, they were all as good as dead. Who had betrayed them, no one knew.
She was awake again, heart pounding. Across the floor, the airman was still breathing evenly.
The Milice came on the third night.
A movement on the gravel path alerted them. For the first time she understood why the approach had been covered in tiny stones. Then their own dogs barking. She reached out wordlessly for Kenton, felt urgently for his shoulder. He started. A soft shuffling and he had left her side. He must have sprung like an athlete into the hole.
Marthe too played her part quickly and smoothly.
Her heart was pounding as she lay back in bed, now positioned over the trapdoor.
Fear pulled her skin tight. It was a hot night, but the sheet felt cold where her sweat-soaked nightdress stuck to her back.
A whistle blew. The dogs barked loudly, and there was an eruption of harsh shouts and boots stamping outside. Blows crashed down on the wood of the front door, then the kitchen door.
M. Musset shouted back at them from the bedroom window. Whatever did they want? What was so important it couldn’t wait for the morning?
“Open up! Open up!”
Leather boots on the tiled floors, drawing closer. Heavy footfalls on the stairs and along the corridor to Marthe’s room.
When the man came to the door, she was already waiting for him, blinking with sleep.
“What’s in here? Get out of the way!”
She turned her head away from his voice and said, “What is happening, what is going on . . . ?” A feeble voice, slightly stupid. “Who are you?”
The first brush of his arm against her, as if he was about
to push her aside. “What does it look like is going on?” He smelled of rank garlic sausage.
Marthe put out her hands, feeling for the door frame but making an obvious, fumbling job of it.
“I’m blind. . . . I don’t know who you are.”
She sensed a momentary hesitation on his part. “They keep me in here . . . they don’t want me to go outside. I can’t see—have you come to help me? Please help me” She patted the fabric of his uniform. “Are you a gendarme? A nice gendarme?”
He slapped her hand away. “We’re searching the house.”
“Well, I have seen nothing—how could I?”
Shuffling feet on the stairs. More voices. Then Musset, demanding that they speak to Kommandant Baumann and explain why they had come bursting into the home of a trusted businessman in the middle of the night. More noise in the corridor, and then her visitor was speaking.
“She can’t possibly know anything. She’s a halfwit farm girl, and blind to boot.”
“I know her, anyway,” said another. “She’s a mouse who sees no one.”
They retreated down the corridor. Voices were raised in the hall.
“What about the girl you had working for you, Musset?”
“Which girl? I keep lots of girls in employment!”
“The one who makes the deliveries in Céreste.”
“Oh, her. . . . Look here, we’re all just going about our business. I insist that you ask the kommandant . . .” Musset was still complaining, demanding that they contact Baumann. Wake him, if necessary. Telling them of all the times the Distillerie Musset had supplied the Germans with scarce products, and lamenting the lack of gratitude. The voices died away.
Then Mme Musset’s arms were around Marthe, and they were trembling as one.
No further sounds until the particular footfall that told them Monsieur was coming down the passage, and he was alone. Then he was holding them both.
When he did speak, it was in a low tone. “It’s all right. We’re all still here and in one piece.”
“Thank the Lord.” Madame disentangled herself.
“Just wait a while longer, my dear. Just to be sure.”
“I thought I heard a car going away down the hill.”
“So did I, but . . .”
“You think they might come back?”
“They might.”
They waited an hour before they released Kenton and Scotty from their cubbyholes.
As if he could read her thoughts, Kenton reached out and touched her hand. The Mussets had left them, urging a few hours of sleep before morning broke. But how could they sleep now? They were sitting side by side on her bed.
Marthe pulled her hand away, unsure of herself. He said nothing, and she had no way of gauging his reaction. Why had she done that? She had felt the tremor in his hand.
Very slowly, she reached out for his face. She stroked his cheek, braver now. She felt his thick hair, how it slipped straight and smoothly through her fingers. She made his brow real—real to her—then the eyes, nose, and chin. Finding the lines between imagination and reality, blurring the boundaries between sight and touch. Slowly, she moved one finger to his mouth and traced his lips. They were full and soft.
“Can I get into the bed with you?”
Marthe nodded.
She felt the shape of his shoulders and chest against her side. He was wearing a rough shirt and trousers. “I’m sorry, I can’t help it—after coming so far . . . I was scared.”
She found his lips and touched his mouth with her finger. “Put your head on my shoulder and close your eyes. Sleep here now.”
The comfort of another human body. Warm skin, limbs folding and fitting together. If he closed his eyes, there would be no difference between them.
The sun stroked the bed. Marthe was still half asleep. Then she started, realising. She had never woken up with a man before.
He was speaking to her, in a whisper, in his peculiar accent. She couldn’t make out what he was saying.
“What do you look like?” asked Marthe.
“I have blond hair and blue eyes. Quite tall, quite broad. No strange distinguishing features.”
“Are you handsome?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“Yes, you can. You just have. If you weren’t, you would have laughed and said straight off that you weren’t.”
He laughed then. “OK. You win.”
“So do the girls call you handsome?”
“Of course.”
“Really?”
“Well, my mother does.”
“She’d be a poor mother if she didn’t.”
“Very true.”
“Blond hair and blue eyes,” she repeated. “The lavender fairy.”
“Now, hang on a minute!”
“Just like the lavender fairy has. There’s an old story about the beautiful fairy called Lavandula who was born in the wild lavender of the Lure mountain. She grew up and began to wander farther from the mountain, looking for somewhere special to make her home. One day she came across the stony, uncultivated landscapes of Haute Provence, and the pitiful sight made her so sad she cried hot tears—hot mauve tears that fell into the ground and stained it. And that is where, ever afterwards, the lavender of her birthplace began to grow.”
“Did you ever see it?
“Not here, no. But I still remember the lavender fields near where my family lives. The fields there are much smaller, but I saw them when I was young.”
“That’s awful. It’s such—”
“If I hadn’t lost my sight, I might never have come here, never have discovered my true vocation. I would have been just a farm girl, never knowing what I was missing, and then a farmer’s wife like my mother, and set to repeat her life. Don’t you see, it has opened my world, not closed it down, and I shall always be grateful for that.”
“So you haven’t always been?”
“No. I could see until I was nearly eleven years old.”
“What happened?”
She liked his directness. So many people were curious but did not ask. “It was very sudden. One day, one eye became blurred. I thought I had some dust in it, so I rubbed and blinked all day. Do you remember how simple life was at that age? I blinked and kept rubbing it, waiting for the eye to clear.”
“And it didn’t.”
“No, it didn’t. I told my mother, and she told me I just had to wait patiently and all would be well. That was her remedy for all life’s ills, and for a while I believed her. Then one day my younger brother Pierre pushed me off a windowsill where I was sitting. I can’t even remember why he did it. I banged my head and sprained my wrist in the fall onto the cobblestones in the courtyard in front of the house. She took me to the doctor because she thought I might have broken my wrist, and I took my chance to tell him about my eye.”
“What did the doctor say?”
“He seemed to agree with Maman. All we could do was wait. For the next few months I concentrated hard on everything I could see with the right eye, all the while alive to the smallest variation in the left. Sometimes I seemed to make out more, but mostly I saw only fuzzy black and white, occasionally with a burst or tint of colour.
“Then one day I went to put on my red dress and found it had changed to a dull olive green in the cupboard.”
The American stroked her hair. Even now, the memory was disturbing.
“Something strange was happening to all the colours. The sky stopped being the blue I had always known and became a stormy grey-purple on even the brightest day. The pink oleander flowers were inexplicably light blue. I couldn’t understand what was going on.”
“Sounds like you’d gone colour-blind.”
“Just for a while. Then, shade by shade, they all disappeared, even the mixed-up colours. Every day the world became a darker place.”
He held her tighter. “It must have been awful.”
“I understand now, but then . . . it was very frightening. It was always there in t
he cells of my body, the doctor said when I saw him again. He had to read a lot of books to find out, but when he did, it all made sense. I was born with it, so I should be pleased I saw as much of the world as I did. I was lucky in that it came on later in my childhood, and unlucky in that it was always much more likely it would happen to a boy than a girl.” Marthe sighed. “But not in our family, it seems.”
“Do you see anything?”
“No. Though I am lucky because I have the pictures in my head. I still dream in pictures and colour, always the world of my childhood. I see the purple Judas trees at Easter lighting up the roadsides and terraces of the town. Ochre cliffs made of cinnamon powder. Autumn clouds rolling along the ground of the hills, and the patchwork of wet oak leaves on the grass. The shape of a rose petal. And my parents’ faces, which will never grow any older.
“But it’s strange how scent brings it all back too. I only have to smell certain aromas, and I am back in a certain place with a certain feeling.”
The comforting past smelled of heliotrope and cherry and sweet almond biscuits: close-up smells, flowers you had to put your nose to as the sight faded from your eyes. The scents of that childhood past had already begun to slip away: Maman’s apron with blotches of game stew; linen pressed with faded lavender; the sheep in the barn. The present, or what had so very recently been the present, was orange blossom infused with hope.
“I can understand that. For me, hot dogs are football games. Fairgrounds are oil and candy floss. Paris is garlic, and Métro stations, that pungent—”
“You’ve been to Paris?”
“I came as a student before the war.”
“I have never been to Paris, but I’d like to. What did you study in Paris?”
“French, art . . . literature. I thought I wanted to make my mark by trying to write, and Paris is where American romantic idealists come to do that. It was a year’s exchange from my college. I didn’t know a thing when I arrived. I was a baby, with baby opinions and ambitions. Pitiful, really. But now? I’ve never been so grateful for anything in my life as I am for that year. That I learned enough of the language to get by. Without that I’d be dead for sure by now.”
The Sea Garden Page 14