Shock registers. He gasps and tries to grab me as blood rushes into his mouth and he coughs, then blurts, ‘Your children …’
Nothing else.
The sun is gone, but through the open gates to the château I see the dark silhouette of a car I haven’t seen in years. It’s parked behind the little Renault André had used, and I know at once its colour is a dark forest green, see at once Tommy sitting on my steps, eating an apple. There’s a cake beside him, a splendid cake. ‘Maman, please! He will eat it all.’ Marie … can my children really be in there?
Jean-Guy has long since been forgiven, but if they are, I must somehow let him know that what he did doesn’t matter anymore, that I love him just as much as Marie.
The driveway curves through the tall, sear grasses. There are cedars of Lebanon. From their cover, I watch the house and try to figure out what to do, but the images keep coming at me. Dupuis and I on that road to the Three Gables. Those two guards, me asking to have a pee, his, ‘Try to make a run for it and you won’t get far.’
I did, and Tommy and Nicki and Janine were right there to help. Gunfire all around us. A hail of bullets, Dupuis cowering behind the car with pistol in hand. An explosion as the first of the lorries went up, then another and another as I ran.
Trees, dawn in the forest—almost a year was to pass. We had come back to raid the house and try to kill the Reichsmarschall. There were thirty of us. Jean-Guy had been my contact in the house, but it was Marie who cried out, ‘Maman, they are going to kill you!’ and I knew Jean-Guy had betrayed us.
Suddenly, again, there was gunfire all around me, but this time I’d been smashed to the ground, hit with the butt of a rifle. Broken teeth, broken lips, as hands dragged me up for more of it, and I was flung against the courtyard wall to hug those bricks. Ragged firing still came, short bursts of it, and every time I heard it, I cringed because I knew what was happening to those who’d been caught and that my son had done this thing because his father had told him he must and he felt betrayed by the mother who ran away to be with the terrorists.
Blame me, if you must, not him. Never him.
The side door to the cellar opens, and I step into the darkness and over the place where Rudi and I buried Collin. Then it’s the cave and broken glass—glass everywhere. A rat scurries away. I know that must have been Tommy’s car. Only someone like Tommy or Nicki would have gone after what was rightfully theirs no matter what, but where is he now and where does Schiller have my children? And will Jean-Guy betray me again?
I remember that man I encountered who first came to the house and then to the station at Avon, that offer of a light and his, ‘Were you in the camps, madame? Please, I ask only because I’m looking for someone.’
Tommy must have got him to do that because of the telegram I’d asked Dr. Laurier to send to Fairfax, Gordon, and Scharpe in London.
The storeroom is pitch-dark and full of rubbish. The shelves have been toppled over, the cupboards smashed. There are splintered boards, broken bottles, tin cans, even some of what must be dried beans or peas that have escaped the foraging rodents. Automatically, I gather up some of these last and stuff them into the pockets of this coat they gave me. Food must never be wasted.
Ah, merde, stop living in the past, I tell myself.
The kitchen is next, me seeing it as it once was and now must be, for moonlight breaks briefly over the orchard and even the Schmeisser in my hands casts a shadow. Cautiously, I step into the corridor, but there’s so much debris it’s hard to pick my way through without making a sound. Instead, it’s an agony of delays.
Listening hard, I find I do smell tobacco smoke, but it’s thin, just a trace. Even so, I lift my eyes to the ceiling above, but there’s not a sound, and when, halfway along the corridor I encounter Jules, I immediately know it’s him by the feel of his face and hair. Schiller has shot him in the chest, but where is Tommy? Has he also been killed? He would have called out my name and hurried up those front steps, not known, not suspected Schiller or any of the others would be here.
Or would he have?
Stepping over the body, I finally come to the foot of the main staircase and feel the pile of papers I had earlier gathered, but all thought of my torching the house must now be set aside. Everything in me wants to call out to my children and to Tommy, yet I know if I do, Schiller will only use them against me.
Climbing the stairs at a crouch takes forever, and when I feel another body, I know it’s Tommy. Silently leaning the Schmeisser against the wall, I run my hands over him, feel his neck, try to find his pulse, duck my head down, and try to listen to his chest.
He’s alive, but just, and I must somehow get him to a doctor. The front of his shirt and jacket are soaked with blood. Though I want to help him, I can’t. I must continue.
Schiller I find in the bedroom my husband and I once shared. He’s over by what remains of one of the French windows I used to look out of even when naked, knowing always then that my reflection would be caught in the mirrors, and that if Jules was present, he’d be looking at me in them as well as directly at myself.
Flattened against the floor, I wait as the moon comes free of cloud. Schiller stirs but has he seen me, and where, please, are my children? Has he also killed them?
The moon goes in, and I start to move towards him, and when, finally, I feel a shoe, I discover that its lace has been tied in the double knot I taught my Jean-Guy to use.
His ankles have been tightly tied with what must be the arm of one of my blouses. He’s lying flat on his back and will be much taller, but I mustn’t touch him anymore, for if he’s alive, he might try to tell me what’s happened and that will give Schiller a warning.
Instead, the lieutenant has tied a length of cord to the boy’s wrists, which are also tightly bound and stretched out, flat to the floor, but now I know my son is alive, for I can hear him breathing.
Everything in me wants to tell him he’s been forgiven, that I understand why he betrayed us, but I can’t even do that.
A match is struck, and I know all is lost and flatten myself against the floor, but the flame goes out. Now there’s only the glow from the end of that cigarette, but the memories rush in, and I’m naked before the lieutenant. My left breast is held, and as he smiles, the salaud teases the nipple to a hardness I can no longer bear.
Again, the moon comes out from behind the clouds, and I realize that I haven’t screamed as I did then and many times more, but where is Marie?
She’s sitting upright between his outspread legs, he holding her against him, and her wrists will be tightly tied by the other end of that cord. If Jean-Guy makes a move, she’ll telegraph this to the lieutenant and he’ll simply start shooting.
Though he and Marie are still maybe four metres ahead, and Jean-Guy is now two behind, I know I haven’t a chance, but that food I picked up in the storeroom is definitely dried peas. I always kept seeds for the garden in a can. Flicking one well to the side, I hear it hit the far wall.
Nothing else happens. The moon takes its time, the clouds closing over as I flick another and another towards the opposite side of the room knowing I absolutely must do something or Tommy will die without help.
But again nothing happens. Schiller’s far too clever.
Moving forward, avoiding that cord, I work my way towards him and Marie and finally find that her ankles haven’t been tied, but her breathing can hardly be heard, and I wonder if she’s wounded and try to still the rising panic.
‘That’s far enough,’ he says. ‘Now you’ll tell me where that stuff is and help me, or I’ll kill the three of you.’
He’s not asked for the Luger yet, but must have that Walther P38 of his against the back of Marie’s neck. ‘You’ll kill us anyways, so why should I tell you anything?’
‘Because I’ll let the children go.’
I touch Marie’s hands, feel her fingers anxiously grasp those of my left hand, and know if I yank, she’ll come towards me, and I can fire at him without
hitting her.
‘You’re never going to go anywhere,’ says Tommy from behind us. He’ll have that Schmeisser I left.
Schiller fires two shots towards that far doorway, me I just give him all I have and grab my daughter.
There’s snow on the ground, and from the window of the kitchen in my father’s house, I can see Tommy and the children going for a walk with our dog.
That time of the hunting ground has passed, and I’m now much better. Really I am. Me, I’m happy to say Dr. Laurier took my advice and stayed out of sight until it was all over. I call her less and less now, and she keeps saying there’s no need unless I feel I must.
It’s only once in a while that I wake up in the night, crying out in terror. Tommy’s there, and if not him, then the children. It’ll take time—years, I suppose. Perhaps never. But me, I’m okay. Kneading bread dough and making such lovely sculptures, catching up on life and doing so many things. Come spring, I’ll be back in my garden.
Apart from some damage, we found the paintings and other things generally in excellent shape. Most were returned to their rightful owners or placed in trust for their descendants if found alive. Those pieces that were Nicki’s went to his remaining children, since both he and Katyana didn’t survive.
My sister died with them, as well as Clateau and the others. Besides Matthieu Fayelle, only Marcel survived—he hadn’t been with us, hadn’t been involved in that last effort at the house. He remains the Marcel I once knew, painting in poverty, cadging money whenever he can, and talking big as always. Me, I’ve sent him a little money. Not too much, you understand, but enough.
And Tommy? you ask. Tommy was taken during the attempt on Göring’s life, but managed to escape in Paris and to remain free in spite of that accent of his. When he could, he came back to the house on his own and took the children with him to Spain and looked after them as if they were his own. For him, the last days of the war were spent in Britain working for the S.O.E., the Special Operations Executive, who refused, for his sake, to let him return to France until after the Liberation.
He searched for me. Of course, he did. That’s partly why he left the artwork in that cave, although there were also questions of ownership that the firm had first wanted to settle.
And why didn’t he point the finger at Dupuis, the Vuittons, Jules, André de Verville, and Schiller? Why, when he knew so much? Me, I think he was waiting until I came home.
*** Improved time-pencil fuses came later: one-half, two, five-and-a-half, twelve, and twenty-four hours in colour codes of red, white, green, yellow, and blue, respectively.
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Copyright © 2013 by J. Robert Janes
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Hunting Ground Page 33