Malediction

by Sally Spedding

  “Look, I could be your daughter, your mistress even.”

  Her naïvety was repellent and, as his nail found her elbow vein, she paled in pain.

  “You imposed yourself, remember?”

  He nodded to a guard who’d just redirected a family of Germans outside. “Bloody cheek, eh? Think they can come crawling all over our country as though nothing happened. Schmutzigen Krauten.” He grinned then pointed to the girl. “By the way, see this one doesn’t move from here.” His voice echoed like the rough unpredictable sea in that formal place, assembly line of the brave.

  He left his companion on one of the replica Louis XV chairs and leant over into Visitor Reception where his pass was scrutinised, and the indigo thumbprint checked. Within the minute, Duvivier was through the vast double doors and heading with his noticeable sailor’s gait towards the Instruction Centre. His steps following those of the great Bonaparte with, as far as he was concerned, the same purpose.

  Ten o’clock, and with Vidal and the others safely out of the way at the warehouse collecting his gear, he allowed himself a smile as a subaltern in Swiss uniform gave him further directions to office Number 53 belonging to the formidable général Georges Déchaux.

  ***

  After thirty metres of corridor lined with prints of the Prussian War, another young officer again checked his papers and kept them.

  The man’s wart was the first thing Duvivier noticed. Bigger than last time and more brown – like his hands – contrasting with the rest of his skin that resembled the lightest Carrara marble. The old friends’ handclasp was warm and prolonged with Déchaux’s thumb impressing three times for the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Just like old times. He could even have shared Duvivier’s genes, with the same stockiness and pugnacious profile, however, the chief difference was his baldness waxed by the sun to resemble an artificial fruit. He poured his friend a coffee from the fluted Sèvres service on his desk, then helped himself.

  “So, Number 5 is now one of us?” he asked, nimbly lifting a sugar cube from the bowl using pewter tongs. “I confess, Father, I’ve never replied to a Lonely Heart in my life.” The cube plopped discreetly into his cup. “But then we live in desperate times.” He took another. “Our friend was very smitten by Giselle Subradière, obviously.”

  “Obviously.”

  The priest too long constrained by the twin reins of the Humanae Vitae and the Pastores Dabo Vobis, felt old jealousies return.

  “Giselle, or should I say, Simone – and Patrice, let’s not forget – is a girl of many parts. Doing well.” Déchaux filled his mouth with coffee, and let it ease down his throat. “Lucky for us her catch was a fervent Dominican. I want dogs, not bitches in the front line. They have other attributes.”

  “He knows the score.” Duvivier set his hat and duffel coat aside, deciding to say nothing about Cacheux’s proclivities. “But we do have another little problem.”

  “Oh? You mean Papa is an ex-flic?”

  Duvivier stalled, discomfited.

  Merde.

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “It’s not your place to know everything, mon ami. But let me put your mind at rest. Jean-Girard Mathieu is a Front National Founder member. In the good old days I recall, he used to nuzzle next to our friends Remer and Dégrelle very nicely. In fact,” he leant forwards as though they were in a public place and might be overheard, “he took his lovely wife on holiday several times to the Costa del Soldaten. Left her on the beach so he and Léon could chinwag over the sangria.” He sat back smiling only with his mouth. “Now he’s running some workshop or other for chômeurs in Orléans. Noble stuff. Clean as a whistle, but he may be very useful. If his kid starts squealing, he’ll just be pissing in the wind. So what’s this problem of yours then?”

  Duvivier tried to keep it light, but the man’s dead-flesh face was fixed.

  “Le Bébé’s dear maman. There were too many halfwits hanging about at Longchamp for me to keep hold of her. She could identify us all. Holy Jesus knows I did my best...”

  Anger, black and visible moved under the ice. The général wasn’t convinced.

  “How long has she been missing?” He refilled both coffee cups, deliberately slopping Duvivier’s as he passed it over.

  “Twelve hours.”

  The Hauptsturmbannfűhrer studied his Kommandant. Thick set, peasant stock whose only refinement came from the German side and six years in the hortus conclusis of a Roman seminary. A layer which like the false pelt on a motherless dog would never grow, rather it could be all too easily dislodged. Nurture again defeated by nature, and the reason he wouldn’t know just yet why the Bataille boy was being detained. Duvivier was too free with his mouth, and that could make Vidal take matters into his own hands, driving maman into further dangerous waters.

  Déchaux licked his lips.

  “I heard she gave you two a lift to the Bois de Boulogne. How come you agreed to that?”

  This unexpected question made Duvivier’s eyes disappear altogether.

  How the fuck do you know? Did you bug the bloody car or what?

  He desperately tried to adopt a man-to-man banter to pre-empt any retribution from the one whose whole body language spelt out dismay.

  “I suppose she was good-looking – for a tart anyhow.” He saw Déchaux pick up a pen. “It was sunny, you know the sort of thing, summer sap rising... I am not as some would suppose, a cold fish. I do have red blood in my veins, whatever any Papal magisterium might try to deny.”

  Déchaux rolled his pen between his fingers. He normally enjoyed farce, but this was stretching things. Perilously.

  “Celibacy was your choice, Father André.”

  “At least I don’t violate my own kind. Not like Tessier,” the priest added, still on the defensive. But the military man from Reims had all the while sketched a croix gammée on to his pad and was now intensifying it with short incisive marks. His safety valve, and equally importantly, his emblem of luck.

  “He’s immaterial. But Number 2 should have put a stop to things instead of letting her see you... Risky, very risky...” He stared at the man who’d scored highly on detail in the Rorschach test, but had often missed the broader picture. His recruit, who’d smashed headstones at Carpentras so thoroughly, wasn’t one for implications.

  “My apologies, mon Général.” Duvivier knew how to play it. He’d had enough dealings with him to know when to bow out.

  “She must be found.” Déchaux picked up his second phone and dialled Internal Operations; an eyebrow raised to the sweating priest as he was connected. He covered the mouthpiece. “But keep our Bébé content until then, OK? We don’t want complications.”

  Duvivier felt blood surge to his head and turned the offending side of his face away as the général impatiently tapped his pen.

  “Description?”

  “Mid, late forties. Beige suit. Blondish. Good legs.” Leading to a nice little cunt...

  “Full name?”

  “Colette Marine Bataille. Madame.”

  “Where’s her car?”

  But Duvivier felt the man knew everything. This was just a cover, a formality, and it was insulting.

  “Still at Neuilly for all I know.”

  “We’ll trash it.” Déchaux covered the mouthpiece and Duvivier noticed the tanned hand at odds with his face, the squared-off nails. Luxury and efficiency. Chicken and egg. “That was the first thing you should have dealt with.”

  “Again my apologies.”

  “Address?”

  “Apartments Cornay. Six or eight, not sure. Rue St. Léger. Lanvière-sur-Meuse. Block of flats. The général clicked down a list on his pc and smiled.

  “Got it.” He barked into the phone. The widow was now a nuisance, whose number was coming up. “Two guards, two shifts. Penis heads, bikers. Line and Ferey will do. They have keys.” Déchaux scratched above his ear. “By the way, don’t forget the old Jew in Flat 3. Get the Apparats to deal with that too.” He put the phone down and f
aced the priest. “Is there anything else I need to know? Any other little private follies that might affect our operations?”

  For a split second the Provençal looked stricken.

  What did he mean? What else did he know?

  Was August 20th 1967 of any significance? The night his brother Hubert slithered off the Delphine’s deck into the dark hiding sea? Slippery with fish juice, the deck slats no longer wood but silver moonstone where he’d fallen... blood spots erased with his foot then a prayer to the sky for his mother’s heart, that he, Francke the ugly one, would take his brother’s place in her warm bed.

  Duvivier searched Déchaux’s face for clues but the man, whose Waffen SS father had witnessed the capitulation of the German army in 1945, hadn’t scaled the peacetime heights through stupidity; and for a moment the other felt rudderless and unnerved. Nourished on reactions and give-aways, his every move had always been designed to elicit nothing less, so now in this arid climate, his gratitude had turned to fear.

  “I asked if there was anything else?”

  Duvivier took his hat and coat in both hands as if gripping a lifebelt.

  “No, but...”

  “Secrets are the aphrodisiacs of power, and in this venture, my friend, we have none. We are all equal.”

  Duvivier tried to clear his throat.

  “Some poule tried to pick me up near the Eiffel. Called herself Yveline, little liar. There was something about her not quite right. More a bloody schoolgirl if you ask me, but I had the feeling she was after something...”

  “Where’s she now?”

  “In the entrance. I told the guard to keep her there.”

  Déchaux swivelled in his chair to face a small monitor at the end of his desk.

  “Let’s take a look, shall we?”

  Duvivier came round and saw that same orderliness unusual in men of a physical nature. The screen showed a suited man at Visitor Reception, the guard dusting his boots. Nothing more. The girl had gone.

  Salope.

  “Oh dear, Francke,” Déchaux tutted. “What did you tell this one?”

  “Nothing, for God’s sake. Just that I had some business here.”

  Déchaux saw the other’s mouth shrink to a grim line.

  “Look here, none of my business, Father, but...” he redialled Internal with his pen, while his free thumb caressed his wart, “a small step into the world of women during your formative years wouldn’t have come amiss. As for this – my how shall I call it, addendum to my nose – has never been a problem. Some, especially the young, actually like a challenge. Almost like having two cocks.”

  Duvivier coloured and fingered the crucifix in his pocket. His prayer a miscarriage of memory.

  This man’s wart is nothing to my burden.

  “Romy, kindly see if there’s a young female hanging about. Denims, blue contacts, cropped hair...”

  “Thanks.” Duvivier picked up his hat and his case.

  Romy? Another of his women?

  “A bird in the hand may yet take us to the biggy in the bush. Ah, by the way, Melon, how did you find my typing?” He offered Duvivier a Panatella, but the door was more inviting.

  “Excellent, Georges. You’re quite the Renaissance man.”

  “Number 2 rehearses in water next week, yes?” Déchaux lit the end and inhaled.

  “Correct.”

  “Four sessions with our diving chaps should brush him up nicely. No need to go to Quelern. We can do it all here. He’s cleared with Toussirot by the way. Senile old fart. Although to be fair, he has of late been exceedingly useful.”

  “Putting him away for fucking was a good idea.” Duvivier observed Déchaux’s alarmingly white face in front of him. The man whose chief possession – knowledge ‒ was more tangible and powerful than any faith.

  “I agree. But at least it gave us a chance to put our Bébé to bed for a while. Has Number 2 any problem with this? Do say.”

  “No more than usual.”

  “Keep him sweet, Father. We don’t want him shitting in the nest.”

  Someone else is doing that. Duvivier nodded.

  “He’s the best we’ve got. Can’t have him getting sentimental. Do you think I’d have recruited him with these encumbrances if he’d not been worth it?” He held the coffee pot upside down for the last of the black liquid to escape the spout.

  Duvivier watched the drips hypnotised.

  Stigmata, all over again. Hélas.

  “What happens if we find her?”

  “Not if, when.”

  “Alright, then. When?”

  Déchaux looked up, his lips stained like some character from the Commedia dell’arte. “They can play happy families, of course.” He smiled. “Somewhere in the Elusion pedion, no doubt.” He smacked down his cup.

  Duvivier knew there was something else, but his discomfiture had returned with a vengeance, so no more questions.

  “By the way, we’ve got the Xantia for Number 3. Red. See he uses it. Now listen.” Déchaux’s tone barely a whisper. “I’ll be in Szrebreniza on September 30th. New thing. Just come up. NATO needs me and that’s all I can say. Memorise my code.” He repeated six numbers until the priest got it right, stood up and gripped Duvivier’s shoulder. “To La Patrie.”

  “La Patrie.”

  Once outside, the Provençal checked for any sign of the girl, extracted his beads and with a heavy heart added his new secret to the other Sorrowful Mysteries of the rosary, while indoors in Room 53, the général took a helpful call from Libourne.

  XXII

  By 9 p.m., the gunmetal clouds had rolled in from the Atlantic and entirely conquered the sky. One month before the vendage, and already the heavy vines along the Dordogne could only nod in the gathering wind, their greenness sombre in the ominous dark. From the distant Church of St. Fiacre came the tolling not just of the hour but continuously to save the harvest from the storm, and this Colette heard in her mirrorless cell as she wiped the long sleep from her face.

  Meanwhile in the room adjoining the Chapel, Sister Rose busied herself with making it up for its next purpose. “Something’s upset the Almighty,” she said, setting out four chairs, three to go behind a trestle table, and the last on a lower level in front. “There’ll be trouble, you’ll see.”

  She spread out a white table cloth, making sure its red heart border hung as prettily as though for a party.

  Though God knows I’ve done plenty of those in my time, what the two now at rest and the triplets...

  Her rough hands kept smoothing the top, echoing her contentment. Peace at last with her secrets all shared, her burdens lifted.

  Sister Rose smiled at her handiwork, then from a Champion supermarket bag pulled out her silver polish and a cloth. The silver things were in a box under the window, and the best bit was seeing the little treasures rub up a treat for the glory of God. By now she knew the arrangement inside out, although not what it was all for, just as much of life at this Refuge in the Rue de l’Abbaye lay beyond her understanding.

  Bedpans one day, or setting out like this on another and although some tasks were more pleasant than others, she nevertheless began each with a prayer of thanks for being spared any further vicissitudes of life with a drunken husband who’d damaged his triplet daughters for soiling. Now they too had sanctuary, and for that she was grateful, even if she’d had to lie and say they’d been born blind.

  Two candlesticks, thirty-three centimetres apart, one inkwell together with pens arranged to form a cross, and finally a small salver of sand. The little woman stepped back and bowed before scuttling out in time for Vespers.

  The open half of the window played host to the night wind’s rising moan until Sister Cecilia swept into the room to pull the black curtains across, whereupon they swelled up like vast malignant sails. Best to have some air on these occasions, she thought, teasing the wicks into life with a taper.

  She then crossed herself and sat down on the right hand chair, as was the custom for the Confessor. I
t was also her duty to be first in situ with her special little book opened ready with a feather marker. Her bulbous eyes stayed constant on the door as it jarred like a death rattle in its frame. She’d heard enough of those during the past year to last a lifetime, lost souls cast out without even the comfort of the Prayer for the Dead.

  “De profundis clamavi ad te...” she began it to herself in readiness as suddenly the door opened against the draught and slammed like a thunder clap.

  The Sister Superior, Sister Agnès and Colette processed towards the table. Colette kept her head bowed, her hands in prayer, the way her parents with the help of a ruler had shown before her Confirmation. And now in this room, this place of women, she would not disappoint them.

  She knew from her dream that her very life lay in the balance.

  Thunder and bells echoed simultaneously outside as the two Sisters joined the oldest of the Pauvres Soeurs and the most experienced of her calling. Sister Cecilia. A woman whose face so closely resembled a draught horse, that in her home village in the Mayenne, she’d been known as ‘The Percheron.’

  There was no invitation for Colette to sit. The chair was simply a ruse, nevertheless she clung to it as the three began the Credo. Then Sister Cecilia was ready, her pen poised above the Book of Sin...

  “Sister, do you know why you are here?”

  “I do not.”

  “Then,” she made a show of conferring, “it is our duty as Pauvres Soeurs des Souffrances who are joined with our Holy Lord and His Holy Mother for all eternity, to read out your wrongdoing.”

  “Wrongdoing?”

  “We in our Christian wisdom call your allegations Heresy, Sister Barbara. What have you to say?”

  Colette trembled. Then a pause to save herself.

  “You are mistaken as God’s my witness...”

  Her interrogators exchanged glances of derision.

  “Come come.” The Sister Superior leant forwards, her fingers forming a pious arch, her intimacy unnerving. “You had enough to say for yourself when last we spoke. It’s all down in here.” She waved the book aloft as new thunder drowned her last words and the curtains tore at their moorings.