House with Blue Shutters, The

by Hilton, Lisa

  ‘Shut up, Ceba.’

  ‘Ceba? Onion?’ Oriane put her hands on her hips. ‘Get out, the lot of you. You should be ashamed, Monsieur Boissière, showing yourself up. Just you go home to your wife now. And as for you three, your mothers will be hearing about this. Go on, out!’

  ‘Oriane, we really can’t. Up there, the tents. We can’t be seen on the road.’

  ‘Is this business to do with Papie Nadl, then?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘And you want to stay here? You could come into the kitchen you know. There’s no sense freezing out here.’

  ‘We can’t.’

  ‘Well, make yourselves useful then. You three, get that lot of hay down for me. It’ll warm you up. I suppose I’ll go and see if there’s some soup in the house, will I?’

  They nodded sheepishly, tired little boys, but later, when she returned for the empty soup pot, the hay was on the floor of the barn, and the four men were gone.

  ‘He’s pissed himself.’

  ‘Never mind that. Is he breathing?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think he hit his head. Look. We shouldn’t of did it, Thierry, we shouldn’t of come.’

  Eric felt his arms wet with moisture, though his skin felt strangely hot in the freezing air of the cellar. He started to cry. ‘I think we’ve killed him, Thierry. You killed him, you did.’

  The bones of Thierry’s face stood out sharp in the lamp light, his eyes were bright pinpricks and his breath came rapidly, as though he had been running. Eric sat on the floor next to the old man’s body and hid his face in his arms, gasping. Thierry kicked at him savagely. ‘Get up, get up, you stupid cunt. We have to get him out, put him in the truck. Move!’

  The sour smelling form huddled in the damp blanket was pathetically light. Eric supported it under one shoulder, cooperating at least, though his face was dazed and smeared with tears. Thierry’s thoughts were already moving ahead, probing the walk across the yard. They would have to get rid of it. There were plenty of places they could hide it, up on the plain, one of the shepherds’ huts, maybe, where no one would come until the spring. Eric wouldn’t talk, he was sure of that, though he needed a story he could understand, something he could go along with.

  ‘We could say he was a Communist,’ said Eric doubtfully, ‘like that schoolteacher.’

  Thierry considered. There was no way they could get the body out of the chateau unnoticed, no possibility of merely hiding it and expecting it to vanish. He spoke gently to Eric, his own fear passed.

  ‘There’s no need. We didn’t kill him. He’s old, he was probably a bit frightened. His heart gave out when he, when he fell. That’s all.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a shame. We’ll make a report, then we’ll get on home.’

  Von Scheurenberg was able to notice, from the part of himself that somehow stood back from all that was happening, the significance of his own lack of dismay. He would have bawled them out once, these two snivelling incompetents in their pathetic uniforms, but as it was he simply needed them to be gone. It wasn’t important any more, one old man.

  ‘Tell them to see the mayor, then,’ he told Hummel swiftly. ‘Then get him home. They’d better take Sternbach to translate. Just get the lot of them out of my sight.’

  Hummel clicked his heels and the door closed. Von Scheurenberg looked at his watch and saw that it was several hours before he could decently have a drink.

  When Laurent arrived back at Murblanc that night, pleased with what he had accomplished, it was to find his mother and Cathérine sitting shocked in the kitchen. They had not even lit a lamp. Papie lay stretched out on the table. There was no need for an explanation.

  ‘William was here,’ said Cathérine. ‘He kept trying to wake Papie up.’

  Laurent looked at his grandfather, shrivelled and broken. As far as he knew, the old man had never done harm to anyone. His mother was weeping behind her hands.

  ‘Go for the priest,’ he told his mother. ‘Cathérine, put me a clean shirt and something to eat in a bag. I have to go out, but I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

  He approached his mother, trying to think of some words of comfort, but he settled for touching her gently on the shoulder. She did not look up.

  Outside, as he kicked the bike into life, he could feel the sweat on his skin turning to ice. He knew he wouldn’t find JC in Cahors, but if he waited a while, he would find someone who could. Papie’s donkeys raised their heads at him as he rode up the lane, and he looked for their sad patient eyes in the dark.

  JANUARY 1944

  François twisted in his blanket and looked around the low room. The moon was so bright through the one tiny window that he could clearly see the smoke-stained beams standing out on the whitewashed ceiling. The other three appeared to be sleeping. At least it was finally warm. They had come to Aucordier’s, two of the strange brothers he had noticed so long ago at the dance in the barn. He didn’t know their real names. The older called himself Pastre, the younger, whose eyes were peculiar, one brown and one blue, huge and startled in his wan face, said he was Lebre. ‘Hare,’ Marcel had told him. They had filed in silence down the rise where Oriane Aucordier kept her goats and then tracked along the hedgerows to the river. The two brothers had hardly broken their stride, just waded in, though the stream was running strong and the painful water was waist deep. François’s trousers were stiff as they began to climb towards Saintonge, emerging from the fields to cross the road at a run below the Chauvignat place, then along a cart track for a while until Pastre pointed to a tiny path that wandered off through the chalk. They took it as the night fell around them, panting and stumbling with only the steady sound of the brothers’ boots ahead to keep them in line. After what seemed like an hour or so, François felt the trees recede and the moonlight came clear.

  They were in a hollow, with two ivy-covered ghosts of houses, a suggestion of walls and a doorway, and beside them a tiny hump of a building with a cross standing out clear from the roof against the sky. The doorway was a round, elfin-sized arch with an empty niche beside it. François guessed this must be one of the ancient chapels on the pilgrim route, forgotten for a thousand years. The brothers passed on, disappearing into the thick wood. When François and the others came up, stumbling, they saw a low house, the ground floor banked so deep into the earth that only half its wooden door was visible, with a flight of stone steps in the old manner leading to the second floor. There was one room, not even a fireplace, just a hole in the ceiling. Beneath them, unseen animals stirred, the grassy mildewed breath of cows and the sharp stink of goat.

  Pastre and Lebre lit a candle stuck into a saucer, took some ancient bread from a wooden press and warmed a thin, greasy soup in an iron cauldron over a trivet set on the heap of smouldering charcoal, which filled the room with a thick woody stench. The bread was edible soaked in the sour liquid, and they passed around a jug of wine, drinking straight from the lip. The brothers solemnly handed each of them a blanket, then took themselves to sleep at one end of the room. Beyond their names, they had not spoken a word. François thought of Charlotte, of when he might see her again. Though he tried, he was unable to believe that this was anything more than an adventure, a sort of camping trip that he might have undertaken with his pupils, Baden-Powell style. Perhaps because if he believed it, he would have to begin to be afraid.

  They stayed a week at the hamlet before Laurent and the other one came. François wound his watch carefully every evening, since they were buried so deep here they could hear no church bells and it was his only way of counting the days. With nothing to read, he was wretchedly bored. The lads, Nic, Marcel and Jean, or Ceba, Nenet and Pan as he tried to call them, seemed unconcerned by the total lack of distraction. They helped Pastre and Lebre with the two cows and four goats, mucking out the filthy byre, collecting firewood from the perimeter of the clearing, then sitting silent for hours, dozing and staring at the coals, or playing hand after hand of cards. The livi
ng space reeked with tobacco and the salty, cheesy fug of six men. François insisted they boil water in the cauldron each day to wash at least their hands and faces, which seemed a novelty to Pastre and Lebre, but there was no means of shaving and the prospect of a strip wash in the slashing, icy wind was unbearable. He grew used to the stench, and it was preferable to shivering outside and looking at the mud.

  Each day two loaves and a pot of wine were left in the doorway of the little chapel. François guessed they were delivered by the third brother, who was perhaps young enough to have remained legitimately in the world. Sometimes there were a few greyish carrots or a bag of squelching, half-rotten potatoes. They ate one loaf in the morning, soaked in coffee with fresh milk, and in the evening there was the inevitable vile soup, and scrapes of curdy, ammoniac cheese. At first François was irritable from the combination of permanent hunger and lack of a book. After a few days he was grateful for the meagre food, it made him duller and more anxious to sleep. One night he thought he heard Marcel crying, and another he heard little mews and gasps, rustling fumbles from the brothers’ corner. Beastly, but then what did one expect, if this existence had been their whole life?

  François was overjoyed when he went down to the chapel one morning to collect the supplies and saw Laurent Nadl and another man sitting on the lintel above the miniature door. They were breakfasting on one of the loaves. Laurent’s companion was about the same age, neatly dressed in a jacket over a thick sweater, though when he sprang down François could see the weariness around his eyes and the greyness of his skin.

  ‘Morning, Prof!’ he called cheerfully.

  ‘This is Jean-Claude, sorry, Mula,’ said Laurent, scrabbling down less gracefully.

  ‘Laurent. Is it over? Can we go home? Charlotte…’

  ‘Call him Moto,’ said the other man curtly. Laurent smiled as though he had said something funny.

  ‘Look, Laurent, can’t we just stop all this business with the names? We all know each other anyway, so what’s the point? Are we leaving now?’

  ‘The point,’ said Mula slowly, ‘is that you forget everything. You’re Prof, see? So when they capture you, and you get tortured, you can’t tell them anything. Get it?’

  François was appalled. He looked to Laurent for help, but Mula started laughing and Laurent joined in.

  ‘We had you there, eh, Prof? You should see your face.’

  So François began to laugh too and for the first time, in that cold morning, nowhere, it began to feel all right.

  They moved that night. Mula remained with them, but Moto had stumped off down the path, back to the real world. Once again, the two brothers led the way and they followed in a line, heads down, shoving their frozen hands into their pockets whenever the track was clear enough to avoid the risk of falling. Mula walked in front of François, who was shocked to see he carried a long hunting knife, the blade winking horribly whenever it caught the light of the now-thin moon.

  ‘Boar,’ Mula hissed at him, but François sensed he had the knife out more for pleasure than protection. They walked for hours, and though François had no sense any more of their direction, it seemed they were going in a sort of circle, bearing left above where he thought Saintonge had been and dropping down once more into the valley. He looked at his watch when Mula stopped to light a cigarette. Four in the morning. ‘Nearly there, Prof.’

  ‘There’ was one of the shepherds’ hovels, hidden beneath an overhang of rock. François guessed they were now below the plain. There was no door, but the roof was sound. Mula said they couldn’t light a fire, but Pastre produced a little brass pot of coals from the blanket tied around his back, like the ones François had seen in the orchards, warming the pale petals of the plum trees. They slumped around it, pulling their blankets tight.

  ‘Right then,’ said Mula. He was the leader, had been the leader from the moment he arrived. François felt curiously light, obeying him. He realized it had weighed on him, that sense of always having to maintain a position of authority, before.

  ‘I’ll be back here at midnight. There’s some grub in a basket there. Get some rest and don’t leave the hut.’

  In a few seconds, the night had swallowed even the sound of his boots. For the first time since he had left the schoolhouse, François slept well.

  Hummel didn’t think he should say so, but in his view it was a poor show. This was serious enough for von Scheurenberg to be taking an interest, surely? He should be with them. His presence would be a reassurance to the men at the camp, who were apparently vengeful and restive. As it was, von Scheurenberg had merely told him to make a full report. The boss was behaving strangely, that was for sure, and it would have been good to discuss it with a superior officer. Grenadier Koller was waiting for him at attention in the mess tent, looking stiff and guilty. Hummel took out his notebook.

  ‘At ease, Grenadier. Now, tell me exactly what happened. Take your time.’

  The private cleared his throat, still rod-straight despite the order, obviously scared.

  ‘It was o-four-hundred hours, sir and I was patrolling the perimeter with Grenadier Bloch.’ He paused, as if uncertain how to go on.

  ‘Forget the official speak, Koller. Just say what happened.’

  ‘We had the third patrol, sir. We’d just made a round and I was standing outside the cabin. I was having a smoke.’

  ‘What was Grenadier Bloch doing?’

  ‘He was taking a piss, sir.’

  ‘So he was a way off?’

  ‘Yes, sir, by the fence.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I heard something and I turned around. I couldn’t see Rudi – Grenadier Bloch – so I shone my torch, but then something hit me on the head and I fell down. I don’t know what happened for a bit, I felt myself being dragged across the ground. They stuffed something in my mouth, it might’ve been a scarf, and there was something tied around my eyes. I struggled to reach my gun, but it was hard to breathe, it happened so quick. Then I heard them moving about in the cabin. I don’t know how they broke the lock. We don’t have the keys, the Oberscharführer keeps them. There were a few of them, I think, because I could hear different footsteps moving about. Then they hit me again, see?’

  He bent his head and Hummel saw a huge greenish bruise at the base of the harshly shaved skull.

  ‘They’d taken off the blindfold, but I still couldn’t see, it was pitch dark. They’d tied my arms and legs. I tried to stand up, then I rolled to the wall and started kicking as hard as I could. After a bit, the others came and we found Grenadier Bloch, sir.’

  Hummel knew already what they had found. Bloch had been garrotted with a thin wire and there was a single deep wound beneath his left ear. Someone had known what he was doing. The man was propped up inside the cabin under a V-sign, daubed on the wood in his own blood. He dismissed Koller under guard. He would be disciplined, Hummel thought, though he didn’t think the man could be blamed for having a cigarette.

  They had not taken much, just what could be carried. Six rifles, four service pistols, and the mortars. They must have had a vehicle, or they couldn’t have got away quickly enough. No one had heard anything, the men maintained. There was something else that Hummel found no one to tell, which was that he was impressed.

  When Oriane awakened to the sound of the latch downstairs, she hoped for a few short, stupid seconds, that it would be Karl. She did not call out his name. Rubbing her hands across her face dispelled any guilty signal of disappointment. When Laurent told her that he needed her to take her big laundry basket down to Murblanc that day she was grateful that he seemed to need her help. He said she was to put a few things in the basket, sheets or something, and he made her wait outside the humped shape of the old bread oven and took the basket inside. When he emerged he was listing, struggling to maintain his balance against his crutch. She could see the tendons standing out in his wrists.

  ‘I’ll help you carry it up the hill, it’s heavy. Put it in the kitchen and don’t look ins
ide. Do you understand, Oriane? Don’t look inside. I’ll be back for it sometime.’ They said nothing as they walked up the hill, and Oriane tried not to show her fatigue, holding her arm stiffly away from her body, as though her belly wasn’t there.

  ‘Do you want to eat?’ she asked when they reached the thin warmth of the fire.

  ‘I could do with something.’

  She heated up the soup, the cabbage leaves roiling under the spoon, broke the bread into it so it would soften. He was sitting at the table, she was conscious of his silence at her back, and that the last time they had been alone together like this she had made him coffee and he believed himself her lover. There had been nothing since but silence between them, never anything but silence. As she set the dish on the table the baby kicked under her ribs and she giggled without meaning to.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Here.’ Slow, she drew his hand towards her belly, somehow feeling he would pull back angrily, but he allowed his big warm palm to come to rest on her blouse and the baby spun and tumbled beneath their skins.

  ‘He’s playing! I can feel it.’

  The baby somersaulted, as though he was rolling down a bank, a meadow in summer full of flowers. They would watch that together, one day. Laurent removed his hand softly and took her own, and they looked at one another for the first time in months, too full of words to speak.

  ‘You’re a good girl, Oriane. You’ll see, it’ll all be different soon.’ He watched her shyly. ‘I’ve been making him a cradle, well, a little basket, in good oak. He won’t be able to fall out if he tries.’

  ‘We can put him outside, under the trees. He’ll like that.’

  She watched him eat his soup. After he had gone she waited ten minutes or so until she looked beneath the soiled clothes where the snout of the gun peering out at her was no surprise. So now she knew something about Laurent, something she was sure was connected with Papie’s death and the disappearance of the lads from the village, and Monsieur Boissière’s confused face in the hay. She pushed the basket into the corner under the stairs and laid a brush across it, to look as if she had been interrupted at her work. Of course they would not think to look here, she imagined Laurent was counting on that, that it would be too obvious. He had told her not to look because he wanted to protect her, because he was afraid.