“Who’s that?”
Even though the female voice seemed to come from a long way off and sounded weak, Nelly knew instantly it was Colette.
“You’ve got to open this door!”
I’m going to die.
“I can’t! I’m locked in.”
By some miracle, Nelly’s foot nudged the gun towards her. Slimy, stinking but priceless, it was now back in her hand. She pointed it up the stairs, but Georges Déchaux hadn’t got big in the DRM or anywhere else on lack of foresight.
Both his women were prepared. Poachers turned gamekeepers, they approached their prey.
“Drop it.” Kirchner spat at her.
“Fuck you.” And as the chapel choir soared in praise to the organ crescendo, Nelly fired. First at her then Lefêbvre, before doubling up in the wet shit, still hearing their screams. Ready to vomit.
***
Silence. Then Victorine approached barefoot, her skin wheatmeal even in the dark. She held out a key and a bag weighted by stale bread and a carton of milk.
“Sod the grub,” said Nelly. “Let’s get Colette out of here.”
“I’m trying.” The blind triplet felt for the lock hole with her finger. Each second an agony. Suddenly the door creaked open and the stench hit her.
“Jesus.”
But for Nelly, nothing mattered now except her friend. A fleeting embrace. The start of tears, for both women were unrecognisable to each other.
“Did you try the hostel? Have you found Bertrand?” gasped Colette.
“Tell you later.” Nelly grabbed her hand, cold as a corpse and, as the choir and a posse of novices filed out of the chapel and into the Refectory, helped haul her leaden robe up the steps.
“We’ll see you in Heaven.” Colette touched Victorine’s cheek and saw grief where her eyes should have been. “Victorine. If you hadn’t helped me...”
“So it was you sent that message?” Nelly whispered to the triplet. “Brave girl.”
“It was nothing. But now, I must get back, or else...” Victorine locked the door then pushed past them both, her whole body shaking.
She’s terrified, poor little thing. Holy Mary, where are you?
“Come with us,” Nelly urged her.
“I can’t.”
“Well at least be careful. There are two more evil women out there and they’ll be even more dangerous now.”
“You shot them. I heard.”
“What?” Colette faced her.
“No choice, I’m afraid. But they’ll live.”
“My God...”
Victorine tapped Nelly’s arm. “You need to turn right into the chapel, at the back. There’s a door into the stores. It’s got a window that’s always open, I know, because sometimes after Compline I have to sort stuff out. ”
Then she was gone. The diligent servant with the key, caught up with the lame nun who was joined by Sister Agnès holding a white lily.
“What two women did you mean?” Colette asked Nelly. She shook with cold and fear as they crouched by the corner ready to move.
“Sssh! Never mind.” For in the seemingly empty chapel a murmur of voices meant someone was still in Confession.
Merde.
“Quick!”
The door was wedged but they pushed against it, hard and silently until it moved against baskets of new candles and tea chests of doubtful origins. Boxes stamped Moscow and Berlin, cartons of printed matter from Brussels. A full house.
“That’s bloody odd.”
Nelly set to and stacked them up against the door, while Colette stood gulping in fresh air and staring at freedom.
“Hey, look at this.” Nelly peered at a scrap of paper listing fifteen pairs of gardening gloves and eighty black shirts in varying sizes. 4,500 francs including carrier. The supplier’s name at the top torn away. “What do you make of that? Nuns don’t wear black shirts, surely?” Nelly frowned.
“Schutzstaffel.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing. I think I am going mad after all.” Colette turned it over, her eyes still smarting. “It’s got an address in Paris, in the fifth. FAO the Abbé de Lagrange Vivray. That name’s familiar from somewhere.”
“Too right. I told you about him. He’s the one running the whole shebang. What a find. So he’s not shacked up here with all the women, then. Must be too old or queer.” She tucked it in her bra.
“I’ve got to see him,” Colette said out loud.
“We, remember?”
“Oh, God, it’s been so long. I couldn’t have lasted another hour in there.”
“You don’t have to. Everything’s OK now.”
“You’re an angel, Nelly. I won’t ever be able to pay you back.”
“I don’t expect you to. I just love you.”
For a moment, Colette seemed stunned. No-one had ever said that to her before. Not even the priest. Not even Bertrand. She began to cry again, tears down her raw, white face.
“Besides, when we get out of all this, I want you to be my mum. So there.”
“Oh, Nelly. Just look at me.”
“And me. It‘s been three weeks at least.”
“I pong to high Heaven.”
“Join the club.”
“Look!”
High up on the wall, a gauze square with PSS in the corner, moved in front of a small window.
“I’ll never reach that.” Nelly sighed, as Colette helped her drag over things on which to stand.
“Course you will.”
Suddenly, Colette stopped.
“Can you hear something?”
“Shhh.”
Shouting not singing from the chapel, and the drum of boots on the tiles coming closer.
“Go!” Colette yelled.
Nelly stripped off her hated robe and threw it out of the window. Then Colette, finding new strength, pushed her friend’s feet clear of the top box and heaved her through. Colette too, dropped out into the sun as the store room door was being pounded like the recent thunder. “Tie it like this.” Colette made a rough sarong from the robe, then they ran like schoolgirls over the grass, following the sun south towards Libourne, as the bell from the Refuge tolled the half hour. More trees. Another miracle, at least until the bloody wall loomed up.
Oh, Jesus.
It was over two metres high, new brick. No hand or feet holds and its top edges studded with glass chips. That much Nelly could see. She turned to Colette.
“Pretend we’re apes, right? Not hard to imagine. You ready?” She was already halfway up the full grown Butternut, her sturdy thighs gripping the trunk. “This was the only way. Sorry.”
She reached a fork in the main branches, tested her weight on the one spreading towards the wall, then retied her robe into giant knots around her hips. Colette held her breath in horror as the girl crawled along keeping her balance as that branch creaked and bowed. When Nelly reached the end, she swung herself over into a bank of nettles. Colette winced at her cries as she began to crawl, seeing the end of the bough sag so much below the edge of the pieces of glass.
Oh darling Bertrand, help me, please!
She managed to twist herself over to the other side. Just, but not enough, and smelt the sickly sweetness of her own blood as it coursed down her arm.
“Run!”
The two ragged figures careered in the direction of the river Isle, through an uncut meadow of late Lammas grass, Colette tipping the spears with red until respite came in the form of an abandoned tractor listing on its buckled wheels.
“They’re coming!” Her breath too fast, too shallow, her carotid pumping up like a bullfrog. Nelly held her until she was calm then tore off some of her own sleeve to bind the wound.
Jesus, how she trusts me. I can’t see a single, fucking thing...
“No-one’s around,” she said. “Only us. Take a look.”
Colette raised herself to scan the field, her eyes raw and exposed without eyelashes. Then seeing nothing amiss, she leaned back in the tractor’s s
hadow letting a host of Common Blue butterflies settle on her boots.
Whose souls are these, I wonder? Such beauty after where I’ve been...
“Oh, Nelly, what a place that was. I thought I was going to die there and never see my lovely boy again.”
“Don’t think about it now. You’re free.”
“What’ll they do to Victorine?”
“She’ll be OK. She’s done her Penance, though God knows what that was.”
For a moment, Colette fell silent, then both put her hands together for the Prayer for the Dead. When she’d finished, she looked haunted. “That hostel. I know Bertrand went there.”
Nelly spat on her hem and used it to soothe the nettle stings. Then she wiped away some of the filth from Colette’s face, starting with her nose. “Colette, I must tell you something, but you’ve got to help me as well. It’s about those two women. One of them worked at St. Anne’s. I couldn’t stand her, and the others used to say she tampered with their mail, listened while they phoned. Reckoned the line was tapped, too, though I never used it. ”
Colette’s eyes widened, but the way Nelly spoke made her stomach turn over.
“Is she called Antoinette?”
“No. Why?”
“Sister Agnès called her that.”
Nelly frowned, trying to think as Colette continued. “We went there looking for Bertrand. I could have sworn they knew each other.”
“Maybe. Anything’s possible. Oh, God, all this is doing my head in.” She looked up at the sky for release. “They’re both hard bitches, probably got false IDs anyhow. I bet Lefêbvre put my dog Roger down the bog the minute I left.” Nelly paused as if to remember her faithful, almost real hound. “And the other one’s no better.”
“Who was she?” Colette’s lips felt sore and swollen in the heat.
“Romy Kirchner. So she said. I cadged some clothes from her. Actually thought I’d got genuine U.S. of A. gear.”
“You borrowed clothes? Nelly, why on earth did you need to do that?”
“Secret. Anyhow, something really scary’s going on. They followed me here, hoping I’d lead them to you.”
“Me? What have I done? Colette suddenly felt her throat dry as desert sand, her insides contract as though for a terrible birth.
“Think. You must.”
“I am... was, just an ordinary working mother doing an ordinary job. It’s never been easy, specially with Bertrand unemployed for so long after University...”
The sun glowered directly overhead, burning but not healing her blood. Triggering her pulse out of control before Nelly started cleaning her forehead in small curving strokes.
That’s nice. That’s better.
“Concentrate.”
Colette frowned, closed her eyes, surrendering to the crude, hypnotic light. She was back in that hostel foyer with the nun. The colluding smiles returned, repeating, enlarging to grotesque lips and teeth – red on white, pale on pale...
“What did you tell Agnès?” Nelly was trying to wipe her ears, following the convolutions with a thorough finger. “Think.”
But Colette was shaking with fear and anger. She pushed the girl away and stood up. “We’ve got to see the police. I must find my son.”
“Been there, done it. They just said I was bonkers.” Nelly leant closer. “Colette, just why are you so important to these freaks? For God’s sake, what have you done? What have you said?”
“Robert Vidal...” The words felt like lead on Colette’s tongue.
“Who?”
”A man I was once in love with. A priest. At my church in Lanvière.”
“I’m listening.”
And when Colette had finished, Nelly’s face had tightened in alarm.
“So you’re saying this man’s a neo-Nazi, and you gave this man’s key to Bertrand so he could poke around?” She asked, incredulous. “I don’t believe you did something so bloody stupid.”
“He didn’t find anything. I made him swear on the Bible about that.”
“How do you know? People think they can read their kids inside out, but kids are sometimes bloody clever. Supposing he did find something? Serious stuff? It’s possible. It would certainly explain a few things, for God’s sake. Just imagine, your dear Bertrand could have caused quite a bit of aggro in his own way. He didn’t want you and this Robert to be an item, did he?” She was about to add, “and who can blame him?”
Colette coloured and sat bolt upright. “You’re talking about my only child! How dare you!” But her expression told a different story. While her fists clenched and unclenched, the terrible possibilities dawned.
“I think,” Nelly stood up picking her words as carefully as the things she’d shifted from the stubble on Colette’s head, “your son got himself into far more shitty water than you’ve just been in.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
”I just have this awful feeling. Oh, Colette.” She buried her head in her hands. “Specially after what you told Agnès and those beasts in there. I think they were prepared to kill you.”
Still are, if we’re not careful, with Lefêbvre and Kirchner retired hurt – they’ll be even more dangerous.
“Me? What about him?” Colette’s cry higher than the corn buntings that wheeled upwards from the wires into the sun. “I just want to see him again.”
“Course you do. And you will,” Nelly lied badly. “I’m just playing Devil’s Advocate, that’s all. You’ve also got to remember the Secret Services are probably on to us. Going to the police again will be like stroking that same Devil’s backside.”
“That’s not true!”
“Look. Let’s be honest. Our options now are pretty nil. The main thing is to find somewhere safe to hide. Then like you said, we see that Abbott. Seems he’s the choreographer of all this shit.”
Colette sprang up, her robe falling away as she began to lope, dizzy and terrified away from the words which like a skilled chisel, had chipped away at the vision of her saintly son and created for her an impossible burden of guilt.
“Colette! For God’s sake!” Without her glasses, Nelly stumbled over the rough ground, but like a naked fugitive from Bosch’s ‘Purgatory,’ her friend disappeared beyond a line of alders, as a single gunshot tore through the air.
***
Nelly Augot’s progress back towards the copse where Colette had collapsed in fright and exhaustion, took longer than expected.
The poplars along the high uneven bank made strange configurations against the sky, alive with the palaver of migrating hordes from the north, and where the vineyards ended, great tracts of untended land bristled with the rusting skeletons of another age. It was an upturned plough she leaned on to draw breath and get her bearings. To listen with all her antennae for signs of new danger.
After that shot, she’d hidden with Colette amongst the brambles and let the afternoon take its course before leaving her to try the small town of Guizac for a replacement pair of glasses, some cheap clothes and food for the journey back to the capital. Leftover money and her ID were still intact as she’d sewn a pocket into her knickers before leaving Paris. The one practical thing to foil muggers and greedy pimps, that her mama had actually shown her.
No sound except the distant upheavals in the trees and the sighs of milkers foraging on ground to the east.
“Colette?” she whispered. “Can you hear me?” Her heart on overtime as she searched for the familiar clump of hazel and turned full circle before realising it lay behind. “Shit.”
She struggled over old furrows, her two bags bumping on the hard earth. One from a charity shop tucked away behind an auto-école, the other from Rallye that had still been open at six. Two miracles, and the third was that Colette looked rested and alert when she eventually found her.
Thank you, God.
“Voilà.”
“You deserve a medal, you really do.”
“Don’t speak too soon. We’ll look like nothing on bloody earth in this gear. Still,
we can always join a circus. The rest was all kid’s stuff I’m afraid. Hey, do you like my glasses? Two francs fifty. Not bad, hein?”
“They’re red.”
“Better red than dead.”
Colette gave her a hug. Then saw her own boots, millstones at the end of each leg, still damp and stinking
“I can’t wear these any more.” She thought of her neat row of pastel sling-backs waiting in the wardrobe at Lanvière.
“You must, in case we have to make a run for it. Anyhow, boots are trendy.” Then Nelly coughed, embarrassed that she’d found some court shoes for herself. She took her friend’s hand.
“Colette? Can I ask you a big favour?”
“Of course. Anything.”
“I’d like to come back to Lanvière with you, if that’s OK. I wouldn’t be a nuisance, honestly. I’d protect you..”
“You don’t even have to ask. Silly girl. That’d be wonderful, and good for me while I wait for...” Colette stopped short. Tears already welling up. “But what about your mama? Surely she must want to see you again?”
After a brief silence, Nelly took a breath.
“She’s a prostitute.” The word spoken with such clarity, made Colette gasp. “Open all day, we never clothe. You know the sort of thing. Enough said.”
“Oh, Nelly. You’ve not mentioned this before.”
“Bit of a conversation killer really. See, after my papa died she couldn’t get a job, even though she tried everything. So in the end... I try not to think about it too much... She’s done her best, I suppose. But it‘s why she rarely answers the phone. Always on the job...”
“Weren’t you ever tempted?” Colette asked cautiously. “After all, it’s cash in hand, isn’t it? I remember Bertrand telling me some of the girls in his year at university used to do the same.”
“No. Never.” Nelly said too quickly. ”Not after what I’ve seen, merci.”
“You poor thing. You must miss your papa terribly. I do think girls especially, need a father.”
“I never really knew him.” Nelly said matter-of-factly. “Even after nineteen years, he was still a stranger. It’s weird.”
“I can imagine.” Colette felt the same tears, the same uncertainty grip her, and as the afternoon advanced, concealing all the components of that flat uncultivated land even from themselves, the two fugitives warmed by dead men’s clothes, began their hike to the station at Cubzénaut.
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