House with Blue Shutters, The

by Hilton, Lisa

  It was very cold, William was grateful to get back to the kitchen fire. He wanted to play the violin, but his head was too full of the snoring man. He opened his mouth halfway and made an experimental snorting sound, rattling the air at the top of his nose. Perhaps he should hide in the barn, but it was so icy outside, he couldn’t bear to leave the room again. He sat on the edge of the fireplace and snored to himself, making a little grunting tune, up and down, until he heard the noise of a boot on the frozen ground. He knew the sound of Laurent’s walk, the heavy sole and the lighter tap of the crutch, so he wasn’t afraid when the door was pushed open. Laurent was carrying an armful of logs.

  ‘Come on, William, give me a hand. What are you doing sitting around like a granny?’

  William considered. He snored again, loud enough to make Laurent start, but Laurent didn’t seem to understand. ‘Shh!’ he added, triumphantly.

  ‘That’s right, William, but not now. Now I need you to help me with the wood, see?’

  ‘Man,’ said William, ‘do-do man.’ He sang a little bit of the song to help Laurent see, ‘Do-do, nenet do.’

  ‘William, so help me I’ll come over there and clout you if you don’t get off your lazy backside right now. Stop it!’

  Now Laurent had an angry voice and William felt tears in his eyes, he was trying so hard. He took the logs from Laurent, put one on the fire and stacked the others neatly to the side.

  ‘That’s better, now,’ Laurent’s voice was soft again.

  Why didn’t he see? He tried a bleating sound, like a goat.

  ‘The goats, William? Is there something?’ William nodded so hard his head rattled inside, and they went out together.

  The snoring man was still there. Laurent looked about for a stick, but the clear patch in front of the shed was bare. ‘Stay here, William,’ he whispered, then threw the door wide, shouting, ‘Hey, you! What do you think you’re doing?’

  The man woke as swift and silent as a cat, coming upright and snatching the cap from his face in one move, rising to a stooped stand under the low ceiling. He held both hands wide away from his body. Laurent could see the whites of his eyes in the dimness, their brightness shocking him just for a second so that he stepped back. He recovered and kept his voice loud, ‘Get out here then, where we can see you.’

  The man moved towards him, leaving the blanket coiled in the shape of his body like a discarded shell. As he stepped into the light he laughed.

  ‘You can stop that then,’ he said in Occitan. ‘Bonjorn, Laurent.’

  All the explanation Laurent needed was in the cock of Jean-Claude’s head towards William, the speculative widening of the eyes. Whilst he understood, he was uncertain how to act. It was cold, JC was probably hungry, but immediately the simple solution to this became tangled with difficulty. At least it was William who had found him, not Oriane. He put an arm around JC, clapping him on the shoulder, trying to seem hearty.

  ‘It’s fine, William. This is my friend. He came to look for me, see?’ Oriane would not return for several hours, they had a little time.

  William banged the logs down as loudly as he dared. The snoring man was not a bad man because he was eating terrine by the fire with Laurent, with lumps of rabbit in it, but William had found him and he was piling the logs while they sat there. He had tried to show the man his violin, but Laurent told him to unload the wood from the wagon and stack it in the barn. Snoring man’s voice was higher and lighter than Laurent’s. He was talking and talking while Laurent said yes yes, he didn’t stop even when his mouth was full of bread and something else that William suspected might be walnuts from the jar in the buffet in brown wine, just talked with gummy teeth and crumbs in his beard. William could hear every word of the conversation perfectly, and would have perhaps understood a great deal more than Laurent suspected, but words were the least interesting of noises, even when they were addressed directly to him. Still, sometimes he had to speak. His fingers were crabbed and purple from the icy air, stiffening so they hardly bent around the wood. He opened the door. ‘Lazy backside!’ he crowed loudly, knowing quite well that this was rude.

  The snoring man laughed, ‘He’s right, Laurent. I should be off.’

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘Best not to say. But you’ll do as I told you?’

  ‘I’ll try. Here, take some bread. And my coat, take my coat.’

  The snoring man stuffed the bread into his pocket. Laurent was pitched awkwardly on his crutch, trying to wriggle out of his jacket.

  ‘No, better not. I’ll do fine. Adieu, Laurent.’

  ‘Adieu.’

  They shook hands. The snoring man waved to William as he passed him in the yard, but he did not go out to the road, he turned back to the path and disappeared down the hill past the goat house.

  ‘Come on, William. Do you want to go for a ride?’

  William took his violin as usual, and Laurent did not prevent him. They set off towards Murblanc to fetch the motorbike.

  The Larivière house was on the edge of the village, above the church on the Landi road, a fine building with a row of tall, green-shuttered windows on the first floor. By the time they arrived, their ears were skinned from the frost. William stretched his legs to the ground as Laurent had shown him, steadying the bike so that he could dismount more easily. When Madame Larivière opened the door, a rich mist of stew steamed around their noses. ‘We were about to have lunch,’ she said wearily.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Laurent began, ‘but I need to speak to the mayor. Could you take William into the kitchen, please, Madame?’

  ‘Well, no, I don’t think so. This isn’t a soup kitchen, you know, Laurent Nadl. You can both come back later.’

  Laurent didn’t have the words for this, didn’t know how to make her understand. He leaned forward, ‘I’ve seen Jean-Claude.’

  He shouldn’t have come out with it like that, she called out and began to cry, and it was some while before Monsieur Larivière persuaded her to sit quiet in the kitchen while Laurent explained. The two men went into the parlour, which was as cold as the tomb, despite the thick crocheted curtains at the window. Laurent thought longingly of the kitchen fire and chicken in thick gravy with shallots.

  ‘Well, Laurent?’ Larivière was upright in an armchair, his fingers digging in to the worn red upholstery. Laurent handed over the letter Jean-Claude had given him, and stood politely by the window. The valley looked different from here, raw and flat where the land ran to the Landine, the fields scoured with cold. The chateau hill seemed steep and aggressive, though perhaps that was because from the mayor’s window the flag was squarely in view, its red more vivid than ever in the thick white winter light. Laurent stared out, feeling the silence thicken behind him, hoping that the other man would not weep. He did not turn back until Larivière spoke.

  ‘So he was in Spain?’

  ‘He said so, yes. In Paris before that.’ Jean-Claude had told him very little. All Laurent’s memories were contained by the moment in which he saw Jean-Claude’s face. Already he mourned his unappeased longing to speak, to know that Jean-Claude remembered. He sensed that JC’s past was occupied, pressured down by what had happened since, so that what was huge in Laurent took up only a small space, now, in him. He had said nothing about the leg, though perhaps that too was because a time when Laurent was whole was no longer present or interesting to him. Laurent had listened, and agreed without thinking, and now he had begun it.

  ‘He said that what he wanted to tell you was in the letter. He was very sorry that he could not pass by to see his mother.’ JC had said nothing of the kind. ‘But he had come to tell you something else, that is, I’m supposed to tell you, so you know what to do. He said he was lucky to find me up at Aucordier’s, he was planning to come down to Murblanc tonight.’

  ‘Go on.’

  JC had asked Laurent to repeat what he told him, slow and clear, with the names. Since the recruiters had come for the Relève, when Emile Chauvignat had left alone,
it seemed as though Castroux had been forgotten. But with the failure of the new law, the government was finding even conscription for the STO inadequate. More workers were necessary for Germany to win the war.

  ‘They’re desperate, do you see?’ JC had asked excitedly, spitting crumbs. ‘Sauckel can’t meet the quotas, the Reich is demanding more and more labour. It’s the beginning of the end.’

  There was a list of names of réfractaires, and the Milice had resorted to shanghaillage. Laurent pronounced it carefully. It meant raids on whole quarters in the towns. A cinema audience had been impounded in Toulouse and the men marched away to the train there and then.

  ‘And how does Jean-Claude know all this, about the Service du Travail?’

  ‘He’s been in Cahors. He said he’d come from there. He told me a list.’

  ‘Of Castroux men?’

  Laurent felt as though he was repeating a lesson. ‘Not you or me. No one over sixty. François Boissière, Nic Dubois, Jean Charrot, Yves Contier, Bernard and Marcel Vionne—’

  ‘Hilaire?’

  ‘Charrot? Yes, but he might be able to get exemption if he proves he mills as well as bakes. Otherwise yes. Not William Aucordier, obviously, and the other lads are seventeen.’

  ‘So seven, if we count Charrot.’

  Laurent felt out of breath, but not relieved. He had done what JC had asked, but in doing it he saw now, he had begun something that would not stop, and that made him want to draw the bobbled wool curtains closed.

  ‘And this, this “shanghaillage”?’

  ‘He doesn’t know exactly. He said soon.’

  ‘And did my son give you any more instructions?’

  ‘No. He had to go, he said you would know what to do.’ Larivière was turning JC’s letter in his hand, there was no gladness in his face, and Laurent pitied him his wife waiting eagerly in the kitchen, pitied the single scrawled sheet.

  ‘You see what he’s done, don’t you, Nadl?’ Larivière spat out angrily. ‘He’s left us no choice. Do you see that?’

  Laurent did see, and yet did not feel tricked, or trapped, though he had begun to be afraid. Oddly, he felt happy. He realized that he had been waiting for something without knowing really that he was waiting. JC had known that he, Laurent would understand, that he could look with clear eyes, easy even, and imperative because of what they both knew. So he had not forgotten.

  JANUARY 1944

  Georges Tinville debated between the two sheets of La Dépêche his wife had retrieved from the coal scuttle. He had reprimanded her that morning for lining the cat’s box from the pile of newspapers. Minette had given birth to two tabby kittens on the portrait of Monsieur Henriot, the new Minister of Information. Georges suspected that grey tom he had seen hanging around on the quay. It was going to be a bright day, the sun was already striking off the Lot through the bedroom window, causing the looking glass to glare as he strapped on his leather belt. Georges enjoyed wearing his uniform. He fastened his black tie carefully over the khaki shirt and smoothed down his trousers under his stomach. His dark blue jacket was neatly pressed on the bed, next to the holster. That was a shame now, but one couldn’t expect everything with times as they were, and appearances were what mattered. He considered November 1940, ‘Toulouse a fait au Maréchal Pétain l’Accueil le Plus Enthousiaste’ and June 1942, ‘Le Maréchal est Acclamé avec un Ferveur et un Enthousiasme Indescriptibles’. He settled on the later piece, as being less significant a date and rolled it tightly, working the paper into the holster until it was satisfyingly full. With the belt in place it didn’t look too bad, nothing like what he’d handled in 1916, but still.

  They would be two hours or more in the truck from Cahors to the village, and Georges opened his lunch packet before they had passed under the viaduct. Sausage, wonderful really, but the smell alerted the others and Georges had reluctantly to offer his greased paper until there was hardly a decent bite left. Selfishness, that was the problem. It was just a matter of making them see that, these réfractaires, that with a bit of cooperation things would be better for everyone. It came down to patriotism in the end. Georges saw himself putting a firm hand on one of these young men’s shoulders, explaining that he understood his reluctance to leave, but that it would work out better if they all did their bit. There would be no need for strong arming. They were peasants, after all, probably had barely left their little village, it was natural they should be apprehensive, but duty was duty. The sausage was a bit oily, and as the truck began to climb along the twining roads above the town Georges felt queer. He stared hard at the white stones beside the wheels as they bumped along, shoulders rod-straight, setting an example.

  It was after eleven when they reached the division camp on the plain. Georges gulped gratefully at the cold air, saluted the sentry smartly and asked for Obersturmführer Hummel, who was waiting as arranged with the map and the list. The first checkpoint was a big farmhouse on a rise above the Landine river. It looked a prosperous sort of place, Georges wouldn’t have minded betting there was a cow or two with no certificate, but he had his orders. They were not to raise an alarm. Two women came out at the sound of the truck, mother and daughter, they looked like, plain as brass nails both.

  ‘Milice,’ said Georges, and saw that their papers were in order.

  ‘Does Laurent Nadl live here?’

  The older of the two women answered,’Yes, with his father and grandfather. They’re both over sixty. Then there’s me and Cathérine.’

  ‘I need to see him.’

  ‘Well, you’d best come in then, Monsieur. He’s having a bad day with his leg.’

  Georges could see that they lived in the one room, like all country people, though the house was a good size. Nadl was lying on a truckle bed in the corner of the kitchen, his good leg stretched out and the stump discreetly covered with a blanket. He wore a muffler and a thick jersey despite the heat from the range. A crutch was propped against the table.

  ‘Your exemption paper?’

  ‘I’m sorry, you’ll have to ask my mother to fetch it. I’m bad today.’

  ‘Where?’ asked Georges, when he had seen the second category classification.

  ‘Verdun.’

  Georges leaned forward and shook his hand.

  ‘Vive Pétain.’ They looked into one another’s eyes for a moment.

  ‘Vive Pétain.’

  As they drove away, Georges explained to the others, ‘Verdun, that means something, that does. He’s a hero, that man.’ He ran his finger ponderously over the map, to where the bakery was marked in the village square.

  In the kitchen at Murblanc, Yves Contier whipped off the blanket and fumbled frantically at his left leg, strapped tight beneath him and tucked into a pillowcase.

  ‘Christ, I’ve had my big toe in my bollocks for hours.’

  ‘Shh,’ hissed Cathérine, though she was laughing, ‘you’ll have to stick it back in a minute. They might come back this way.’

  The village wasn’t much to speak of. A scrappy square with a few chestnut trees, Vionne’s boucherie with a home-made sign in the window reminding the housewives to bring their coupons, the café with the usual row of old has-beens on the bench outside. The boulangerie, Georges noted with approval, had a large photograph of the Maréchal above the counter.

  ‘Milice,’ he said importantly to the skinny girl who watched over three flûtes and a quartet of deflated-looking brioche. ‘We need to see Hilaire Charrot and Jean Charrot.’

  ‘My father’s at the mill,’ she replied. ‘He’s there every day now, since Jean left.’

  ‘Jean is your brother? Jean Charrot?’

  She rubbed a dusty hand over her face. ‘Yes. It’s been hard without him.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mademoiselle, but we have our duty to do.’ He flicked his head authoritatively towards the raffia curtain that separated the shop from the family kitchen.

  ‘Search it.’

  While the other three went through, he stared at the girl, who return
ed his gaze incuriously with bright, curranty eyes. Georges had recovered from the effects of the sausage and the sharp air had made him feel peckish. He eyed the brioche.

  ‘Would you care to try one, sir? Of course, they’re not what they were, since we can’t get the butter, but you’re very welcome.’

  ‘Don’t mind if I do.’

  When his colleagues returned, rather floury about the jackets, Georges saw that Thierry was looking disapprovingly at a few crumbs, which had somehow become lodged in the shirt crease above his belly. He straightened his shoulders and looked stern. ‘Well?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Where’s this mill then?’

  The girl came out from behind the counter, popping up a wooden hatch, and pointed through the doorway. ‘Down to the river and then right back on yourself along the bank, past the old barn. You can’t miss it, though it’s a bit of a walk.’

  ‘There’s no road?’

  ‘No sir. Father uses the wagon to get along, but you’ll have a hard time of it with your lorry. The ruts are something terrible with the rain we’ve had, and now all frozen up. It’s best to walk.’

  Georges thought he might send the others and wait behind, but the matter of the crumb had already undermined him. Several miles on rough, icy ground was more than he could bear to think of.

  ‘Come on then, where’s your brother? We’re serious, you know. The Milice doesn’t have time to play games.’

  ‘I told you sir, he’s not here. He went off with his friends Marcel Vionne, and Nic Dubois oh, months ago now. To Toulouse they said. They were going together to look for work in the factories, but we’ve not heard a thing. Nor Betty next door at the café neither.’

  ‘You can tell your father we’ll be back, and he’d better be here with his papers. If he’s a miller it should be in order. Good day.’

  Georges marched out, letting the door slam. The bell tinkled shrilly, and the girl kept her face towards the ground. Georges struck his pencil through three of the names on his list and made a question mark against the miller. Thierry rolled his eyes.