The Things We Did for Love

by Natasha Farrant

  She left him to it and began to open doors on to a series of rooms, all different and yet, with their stripped and covered furniture, all very similar. She turned back to Luc. The forest through the open windows looked close enough to touch.

  ‘It’s like Hansel and Gretel,’ she said. ‘The house in the woods.’

  ‘It’s hardly gingerbread. And there’s a distinct lack of witch, unless there’s something you haven’t told me?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  She opened another door. ‘I just found the giant’s bathtub.’

  ‘Here’s another bedroom.’

  ‘Another one!’

  ‘This one’s amazing.’

  The room at the end of the landing was painted an old rose pink, with views over both sides of the house. The furniture here had not been covered. Four gilt-framed armchairs stood around an inlaid table before one of the windows. The bed, a four-poster, was hung with green velvet, the mattress covered with a matching counterpane trimmed with gold brocade.

  ‘I can’t work out if it’s spectacularly vulgar or actually quite enchanting,’ said Luc.

  ‘A bit of both, I think,’ said Arianne.

  She sat on the edge of the bed and felt the velvet slide beneath her fingers. Luc stood with his back to her, silhouetted against the light, but in her mind’s eye she saw a different figure bending over her, recalled the smell of antiseptic, pressure as a plaster was applied to her knee. Someone else hovered in the background, a white dress, a blaze of copper hair. She closed her eyes again, willing her mother’s shadow to come forward but it was no good and she fell back against the cushions.

  The bed’s canopy was panelled and each panel bore a different carving – grapes, a flower, a sleeping cat.

  ‘Still thinking you’re the Queen of England?’ Luc had turned and was looking at her.

  ‘I was wondering who would make a bed like this. Also what it would feel like to sleep in it.’

  ‘You could always stay and find out.’

  ‘It wouldn’t feel right.’ She left the bed and began to walk round the room, trailing her fingers over the dust-coated furniture. ‘They brought me up here when I hurt my knee. Madame Lascande gave me a sticking plaster.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can recreate that for you.’ He smiled as she came to stand before him in the half darkness.

  ‘The tea party was quite enough.’

  ‘Did you like it?’

  ‘I loved it.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  Everything in that room was filtered. Light, sound, even space seemed to contract so that Luc felt much closer to her than he was. Her breathing became difficult again.

  ‘We should go,’ said Luc.

  *

  Her face, the way it glowed in the half-light! He had to tell her. If she was to understand him, she had to know the truth.

  She waited outside while he shut up the house.

  ‘Hold out your hand,’ he said when he joined her. ‘And close your eyes.’

  Her eyelids were so smooth they didn’t look real. Her lashes swept the top of her cheekbones. She opened her eyes as soon as he dropped the key into her outstretched hand.

  ‘I found it hanging in the kitchen.’

  ‘I shouldn’t take it.’

  ‘You have to, it’s a present.’

  They set off together towards the drive.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ she asked. ‘The tea party, I mean.’

  ‘To make you happy, of course.’

  She looked pleased but puzzled.

  ‘I just wanted to,’ he said.

  The shadows were lengthening and the light in the woods was veering to blue. Birds sang all around them, trying to hold on to the dying day. He cleared his throat. He had to tell her, now.

  Arianne walked beside him, lost in thought but looking happy.

  ‘I suppose you have heard all sorts of stories about why we came back,’ he said.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You have to promise you won’t repeat this.’

  They had reached the old signpost to Lascande.

  ‘Let’s stop here.’

  For a moment he feared she would not stop. He was struck by the irrational fear that if he let her go now he would never see her again. She would walk out of his life down the green twilit path, away from him and his untold story, and the last good thing in his life would be lost.

  Arianne placed a hand on top of the signpost, walked around it slowly, came to a halt just before him and smiled.

  ‘I promise,’ she said.

  He swallowed. ‘On second thoughts, let’s walk.’

  Courage! he told himself, and began.

  ‘You know we went to stay with my grandfather when the war started?’

  ‘Everyone knows that.’

  ‘For the last two years, we had these German officers staying with us, pretty high-ranking ones. They kicked us out of all the good rooms so we had to move up to the attic. Maman and I tried to ignore them but Grandfather was so desperate to do the right thing, I mean for them to see he was doing the right thing. He even locked me out at night if I was late. He told them there was a curfew and I had to learn. That’s when I learned to pick locks.’

  ‘How awful,’ she said, but he could hear her thinking is that all? He pressed on.

  ‘They brought him presents. Coffee, sugar, cigarettes – you know the sort of thing. One of them spoke pretty good French. He was really into Napoleonic history, just like Grandfather, which got him all into thinking you know, they’re not so bad, we’re lucky, look at Poland. I think – well, Maman thinks – it made him feel better about what happened afterwards. After a while they started to ask him for information. There was this family living in our street, they’d been there since the beginning of the Occupation. Two parents and a little girl, Jewish. False names and everything, we found out afterwards. Anyway one morning we woke up and they were gone.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Arianne quietly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Luc. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Where did they go?’

  ‘Where do people ever go when they disappear, Ari? He couldn’t see that he’d done anything wrong, denouncing them. Said that this was France, nothing bad would happen and that anyway it was because of people like them there was a war in the first place. He got a whole carton of cigarettes for them. He tried to give some to Mother, but she threw them back in his face.’

  ‘How did that go down?’

  ‘He said she was obviously a communist and he never wanted to see her again.’

  ‘Your poor mother.’

  ‘She was shaking afterwards. It was so unlike her to answer him back. Afterwards she wouldn’t stop crying but we left within twenty-four hours. She still cries all the time. It drives me nuts.’ He stole a sidelong glance at her. ‘I know that sounds harsh. I just don’t know what I can do. She’s started going to church again, which is good except she's planning this weird memorial mass for my father. I mean, he died over seven years ago, and he never went to church. I think it’s all part of her rebelling against Grandfather – he hated Papa. Honestly, life at home . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. It’s just heavy. And I can't stop thinking about the little girl they took away. I can’t get her out of my head.’

  They had stopped where their paths parted by the edge of the wood. Luc scuffed the ground with his foot.

  ‘You did say, if I wanted to talk.’

  ‘I’m glad you told me.’

  ‘Remember when we fought? It started something, didn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It did.’

  ‘Are you shocked?’

  ‘Those poor people.’

  ‘You promise not to tell.’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘Right then.’ He hesitated. ‘I’ll see you in school.’

  ‘Luc?’

  He turned back. He could hardly see her in the shade of the wood.

  ‘That last room. Why do you
suppose they left it uncovered?’

  His answer slipped out before he even had time to consider it.

  ‘For us,’ he said.

  April 1944

  i

  Alois Grand had taken to writing letters and burning them. The Captain was right, he didn’t want Clara to know, but it helped to feel he was talking to her.

  ‘Today was difficult,’ he wrote. ‘Today there was no time to sort them, the ones who should die from the ones who should have lived. God will know his own, the Captain said, which is something a French bishop said, apparently, when he had the same problem. We don’t line them up any more, the Captain doesn’t like it. He says there’s no sport in it and we have to give them a chance.’

  There wasn’t much sport Alois could see in shooting unarmed civilians as they ran to escape an enclosed space in the dead of winter, but the Captain insisted. ‘There’s always a way out. If they make it, we let them go.’

  ‘If you let them go, they’ll freeze.’

  ‘We have a job to do,’ Alois wrote. ‘To rid the Eastern territories of Jews. Jews and Communists. Jews, Communists and anyone else who disagrees with us. The Captain goes on about the survival of the fittest. The local militia did it for us at first but he doesn’t trust them any more.’

  It was one way of coping, Alois supposed, turning the whole campaign into a game. They all had their ways of dealing with it. Transfers, suicides. Just getting on with the job.

  ‘You might as well,’ reasoned the Captain. ‘Someone else will only take your place if you don’t. If you refuse, I might even have to shoot you.’

  ‘Would he do that?’ asked one of the newer recruits.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Alois.

  Given the choice – which he wasn’t – he preferred the pits. March them out, shoot them in. Don’t look, don’t listen, shovel over earth or lime and leave. At least it was efficient. Letting them make a run for it was messy. Men, women, old people, kids – none of them stood a chance but it didn’t stop them trying. He sometimes wished one of them would stand still but they always ran, and the gathering of their bodies afterwards was gruesome.

  ‘Today a child did get away. We were in a clearing in the forest. Two machine guns, ten rifles, two dozen villagers at a time. More of a battery farm than a hunt. He was a skinny child, about Wolf’s age. He made straight for the trees. We all saw him, but he was so damn quick. We didn’t talk about it, but I think we were all glad.’

  *

  The child did not make it far. The Captain returned from his morning hunt the next day to tell them he had found his frozen carcass curled like an animal beneath a shrub. One of their comrades, a former schoolteacher, went into the forest and shot himself. Daft, said the Captain, and daft, Alois agreed, because it didn’t do to contradict the Captain. I am only obeying orders, he wrote to Clara. But I’d like to come home now. He burned that letter too.

  ii

  Paul had been trading in information ever since his sister returned from her tea party at Lascande, but he was growing weary of it.

  ‘No, they haven’t kissed,’ he sighed.

  Romy Dulac squirmed.

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘If they’d kissed, she would be unbearable. She’s only just possible to live with as it is.’

  ‘But they’re so often together.’

  ‘All moony and dreamy and locking herself in her room . . . Sol’s with them a lot, you know. And when they’re alone, like when they go for walks and things, they just talk. They don’t even walk close together. Once I saw his arm brush hers, and she jumped like a scorched cat.’

  ‘You’re sure there’s nothing else?’

  ‘His mother’s happy because he doesn’t go out so much to play cards. Sometimes she goes to church with my Auntie Elodie, and sometimes he wears blue-striped underpants with purple spots. Look, I don’t want to be rude, but can you pay me now?’

  A flicker of panic crossed Romy’s face, and he pulled a handful of coins from his pocket.

  ‘I’ll double your money for some proper dirt on Luc.’

  ‘Triple it,’ said Paul.

  *

  Romy had been in love with Arianne for seven years and eight months. He would never forget it: eight years old, morning break. Two weeks into the first term of a new year and he was already hiding from bullies. No matter that he had grown over the summer, that an operation on his club foot had reduced his limp, that his mother had defied his father and bought him less hideous spectacles. Eric Lherbe and his gang of thugs still made his life a misery, until she caught them at it. Fierce and tiny, her curls sticking out like a dark halo around her head, she retrieved his exercise book from the toilet, kicked Eric in the balls, elbowed one of his henchmen in the ribs and, in a tone he later recognised as her great-aunt’s, told them that they should be ashamed of themselves.

  ‘You were incredible!’ cried Romy as the bullies ran away. In the ardour of his admiration, he forgot to feel ashamed. An image came to him, recalled from a history book, of a girl in a suit of armour on a white horse. ‘Like Joan of Arc!’

  Arianne looked horrified.

  ‘Without the burning, obviously,’ he tried to explain, but as she swept away from him, her victory won, he was certain of two things: that he loved her; and that, to her, he was nothing.

  Her indifference hadn’t mattered until now. After the news came about her father, when she spoke to nobody but her brother, he waited for her every morning and walked her to the station in silence. When other friends turned away, defeated by her unhappiness, Romy remained faithful. He left flowers for her on her birthday and brought chocolate every Easter, he wrote poems he never showed her. Over time, he liked to think he had tamed her. She began to smile at him when she came out on school mornings, and shortened her stride to match his limp. Sometimes, when his father’s temper made him late, she waited for him. Once, when it was obvious he had been crying, she had pressed his arm to show she understood.

  It was not much, but it had been enough.

  But now he was back and she never waited any more.

  ‘She has a copy of his timetable,’ said Paul. ‘Sometimes she goes in early just so she’s on the same train as him. Sort of accidentally on purpose. He does the same thing. I know,’ he added, not without arrogance, ‘because it was me who got them the timetables.’

  ‘Well, get me one too.’

  Monday morning, and he set his alarm clock early, bolted breakfast and set off down the footpath which led from his house to hers. He did not have to wait long. She flew out of the house as the church clock chimed the half-hour. She was wearing a pink dress which he was sure had once belonged to her cousin – Solange had caused a sensation almost falling out of it at a picnic last summer, but it looked different on Arianne’s slight figure. Her hair was tied back again, a new style for her which showed off the heart shape of her face and made her eyes look bigger. It suited her, though he missed the old tangles.

  She swung into the lane and he tried not to mind that she did not even look to see if he was waiting.

  ‘Ari!’

  ‘Romy! I didn’t see you!’

  ‘Class doesn’t start till ten today. Didn’t anyone tell you? Maths teacher’s away again.’

  ‘I know, I’ve . . . I’m working on a project. I need the library.’

  ‘I’ll walk with you.’

  ‘Why are you going so early?’

  ‘I, oh. You know. Things to do.’

  He should tell her now, while they were alone, but he could not think how to do it. He could barely speak, anyway. She made no allowances today for his leg and he panted just to keep up with her.

  ‘Why don’t you slow down and get the next train?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s not a problem.’ He grimaced a smile. ‘What’s the project?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You said you were working on a project.’

  ‘Can you really not walk any faster?’

  They turned
the corner into the main street and there he was. Leaning against the station wall, dark blond hair pushed back from his face, schoolbag flung over his shoulder. Arianne’s face lit up. Romy walked on, exaggerating his limp, forcing her to slow to his pace.

  ‘I suppose you heard about his grandfather?’

  The way she froze, the way she wouldn’t look at him – she knew already! For the first time since Paul delivered his information, it occurred to Romy that in muddying Luc’s name he wasn’t doing himself any favours either.

  Once his father had shot a doe out of season. The fawn standing over her mother’s body looked just as Arianne did now.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she stammered.

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have said anything if it didn’t matter.’

  ‘Drop it, Ari, all right?’

  ‘No.’ Her shoulders were squared now, her chin raised. ‘I want to know what you meant.’

  ‘I think you know what I meant.’

  ‘I don’t know why it matters,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why you even care.’

  ‘It mattered if he hadn’t told you,’ he sighed.

  They had almost reached the station. Arianne turned to look at him, and there was not a trace left of the stranded fawn. ‘I don’t know how you found out,’ she hissed, ‘but if you breathe a word of this to anyone, I’ll make your life hell, do you hear?’ Her eyes blazed at him. ‘People in glass houses, Romy. People in glass houses.’

  She hated him, and the worst of it was that he could see why. Luc was peeling himself away from the wall, glancing from Arianne to Romy. Romy could have cried.

  ‘Better hurry,’ said Luc. ‘Train’s due any minute.’

  She walked between them, but her eyes kept sliding towards Luc. Romy thought he had never seen her like this, so coiled and tremulous, like a bird about to sing or a cat before it pounced. They paused to cross the road. Luc slipped a hand beneath her elbow – did it with such ease!

  If he said anything, he would lose her. But he had lost her anyway.

  ‘We were just talking,’ he said, ‘about your grandfather.’