The Tin Snail

by Cameron McAllister

Camille took this in for a moment. “So now you’re trying to build another one to make it up to him?”

  “Except that I destroyed that as well,” I said despondently.

  She studied me closely, all signs of her earlier spikiness gone. For the first time since I’d arrived in the village, I thought she almost looked sympathetic. But before she could say anything, her father called up from downstairs.

  “I have to go,” Camille said, turning to head back through the window. Before she went, she paused and smiled. “I hope you get to build your car one day. Goodbye, Angelo.”

  And with that she was gone.

  After she’d left, I sat by myself for a while, staring out across the rooftops into the great black unknown. After my excitement at turning back at the crossroads and roaring into the village on my father’s motorbike, I couldn’t believe all my hopes had come to nothing.

  Eventually I climbed down, somehow managing not to dash my brains out on the cobbles below, and set out across the square for home. After a couple of meters, however, a crunch of gravel alerted me to someone behind.

  “Hello?” I said, peering suspiciously into the darkness.

  Silence greeted my question. I was about to head away when I heard it again. Someone was definitely out there—and now they were approaching. A prickle of fear tugged at my collar.

  “Who’s out there?”

  A figure suddenly loomed out of the darkness.

  Philippe.

  “Oh, it’s you,” I said, trying not to betray any fear.

  He was staring at me coldly. “I wonder what her father would say if he knew you’d been meeting his daughter up here.”

  “Actually, he sent me up there,” I replied, trying to sound confident but not succeeding. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  Philippe took a few steps closer, his eyes icy with hatred. “You know, he isn’t really her father.”

  “What?” I mumbled, confused.

  “Her mother was a German sympathizer during the war. And Camille’s real father was German.”

  For a second I was too dumbstruck to form any kind of response.

  “I guess that makes her the enemy in this war,” he sneered, before looking me up and down. “Angelo. Italian, isn’t it?”

  “What if it is?” I answered, my mouth dry.

  Philippe leaned in close, his breath filling the air with steam. “They say your lot are going to join the Germans. So I guess you and Camille will both be on the enemy’s side.” He suddenly spat in my face. “Traitor!”

  I felt a fog of rage envelop me, and I was about to leap at him when a voice called out from the road just beyond.

  “Angelo?”

  I spun round to see my father approaching.

  “Did I interrupt anything?” he asked suspiciously.

  For a moment I was paralyzed. Should I tell him about Philippe’s vile accusations?

  “Philippe was just telling me how fascinated he is by foreign cultures,” I heard myself say sarcastically. I didn’t want to be beaten up by Philippe, but equally I wasn’t having my father fighting my battles for me.

  Philippe glanced at me suspiciously, clearly wondering if this was some kind of game. In the end he obviously decided I wasn’t worth the bother, and sloped off into the night.

  “What were you fighting about?” my father asked.

  I thought about lying, then decided against it.

  “Camille.”

  “Ah. You’ve made an enemy there, then,” Papa observed.

  “I don’t know why. She clearly hates me as much as he does. Anyway, what does it matter, if I’m leaving in the morning?”

  “Actually, that’s what I came to tell you. You may not be able to.”

  I felt my heart about to burst with relief—but why wasn’t my father more excited about this miraculous change of events? “Your mother rang to say she’s stuck in Italy,” he continued, more solemn now. “She can’t travel back tomorrow after all.”

  “Why?” I asked, suddenly feeling a twinge of anxiety.

  “Italy has sided with Germany,” my father explained. “If there’s a war, they’ll be the enemy. France isn’t letting anyone else in or out across the border.”

  If I’d been ecstatic about the news that I didn’t need to go home tomorrow, now I felt only panic.

  “Will she be okay?”

  “Absolutely. It just means that for the moment she has to stay put with her father. And you will have to stay here. You can imagine she’s pretty upset about it.”

  By now my mind was crowded with thoughts. My father must have seen my alarm, because he put a comforting hand on my shoulder.

  “Everything will be fine, I promise. For now, we must keep ourselves busy with that confounded car of yours. Finishing that is more important than ever now.”

  But another, darker fear had crept into my thoughts.

  “What about you?” I asked grimly.

  “What about me?”

  “You’re Italian. Won’t you be seen as the enemy too? They might think you’re some kind of spy….”

  My imagination was in danger of running away with me. Was Philippe right after all? Would my father end up an enemy in his own country?

  But Papa ran an affectionate thumb over my cheek.

  “If I manage to make this car, they won’t think I’m the enemy. I’ll be a national hero. And it’ll all be down to you.”

  He swept me up into his arms and held me tightly for the first time since I’d destroyed his car at the motor show.

  Christmas in the village of Regnac should have been idyllic. The morning broke with a gentle flutter of snowflakes that left a light dusting like caster sugar over the frozen fields and streams. Everything was sparkling. But despite my relief at being able to stay and help with work on the next prototype, I was worried about my mother.

  Coming to the village was supposed to help bring my parents closer together—or so I’d foolishly hoped. Now they were farther apart than ever. And with talk of war becoming more urgent all the time, the likelihood of Maman returning anytime soon was receding.

  At least I had the car to distract me. Work on the next model began almost before Marguerite’s Christmas pudding had been eaten. With our bellies still stuffed with rabbit and foie gras from Benoît’s farmyard, Christian, my father and I slipped away from the table early and tramped across the snow-covered fields to start work inside the freezing tin workshop.

  There, day after day, and sometimes straight through the night, we could be heard hammering and drilling and welding new designs—always behind locked doors to keep prying eyes at bay. No one outside our small circle was allowed to know what we were up to—especially not Victor or his son.

  As for Philippe and his poisonous remarks about Camille’s mother, I decided to ignore them. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t desperate to ask her about it, but that felt like it would be playing straight into Philippe’s hands, so I kept my questions to myself.

  Far more important was the problem of the car’s suspension. But as days turned into weeks and then months, Christian’s dream of getting the front wheels to “speak” to the back seemed nothing more than that: a dream. How long could it be before the Germans beat us to it and Bertrand’s nightmare came true?

  There was one small breakthrough, however: a problem with the water freezing in the car’s cooler system was fixed—mainly because the weather finally stopped being so cold. The last of the snow showers passed and the ground slowly thawed, opening itself invitingly to the first warm rays of the sun. The muddy ruts, until recently full to the brim with freezing slush, dried and became soft and gooey like cake batter.

  During this time my mother rang from Italy every day. Between us, me, my father and Christian had constructed an elaborate lie to fool her into thinking I was going to school. To be fair, my father did have some vague notion that something ought to be done, and even made some inquiries about me starting at the village school, along with Camille. But
the threat of war made it seem rather pointless.

  After a while, even Maman stopped nagging about it, and accepted—for the moment, at least—that I was better off hidden in the depths of the countryside, far away from any potential German invasion. Or Italian, for that matter.

  Gradually my father, Christian and I become regulars in Victor’s bar. Papa would rather have gone almost anywhere else, but since there wasn’t anywhere else, he had no choice. There was also the small matter of Dominique—or rather, her confectioneries.

  Whether it was her croissants stuffed with praline fondant or her chocolate-centered macaroons, we were hooked. I think that was why my father seemed to relax about being imprisoned, as he called it, in the village. So long as he had a supply of sticky delicacies and strong, sweet coffee, he wasn’t grumbling—or not much more than normal, anyway.

  My memory of the little café and pâtisserie across the road from the workshop in Paris, where our adventure had first started, slowly faded as I melted into village life.

  A second plate of macaroons was now sitting empty on our table, along with several glasses of frothing lager and a soda for me.

  Christian, unsurprisingly, was an incorrigible gambler, and I had now been instructed in the dark art of poker—Texas Hold ’em, to be precise.

  To begin with, we used empty pistachio shells as betting chips. But as the weeks and months passed, the pistachio shells were replaced with small change and then small-denomination notes.

  More often than not, Benoît joined us. He would sit sipping his pastis noisily, his two teeth rattling on the rim of the glass. At regular intervals, his daughter, Amandine, would bustle into the bar to bark an order at him to come home for dinner. Short and thickset, and barely out of her teens, she already had a large mole like her mother’s jutting out of her chin. Benoît would nod and reassure her that he was about to come, then pour himself another pastis and stay exactly where he was.

  Félix was also a regular player. But as he said virtually nothing beyond the odd grunt and his face never gave anything away, it was impossible to work out if he had a good hand or not.

  Dominique would generally hover somewhere near the back, preferring the anonymity of the shadows. I had learned from Benoît that, as well as making chocolate, Dominique had once been a promising musician. She might even have been a star, but when she met Victor in her teens, she had fallen completely under his spell. Now—except for special occasions—she almost never played, preferring to keep her viola carefully packed away.

  Seeing that our plate was empty, she was now heading over to replace it. As she slid a fresh saucer of pistachio macaroons onto the table, Christian looked up and caught her eye. His smile was so dazzling and infectious, it seemed to startle her. She lost her grip and the saucer fell to the floor, cracking in two. As we quickly scrambled to pick up the biscuits, Christian kept reassuring her that no harm had been done.

  “See,” he said, dusting one of them off and popping it whole into his mouth. “As delicious as ever.”

  Flustered, Dominique smiled shyly and hurried back into the kitchen.

  “Funny, isn’t it,” Christian sighed after a moment, watching her disappear. “Beautiful women in villages like this. They always end up married to potbellied oafs like Victor.”

  Benoît chuckled, his chest rattling. “You know, she turned me down once,” he rasped. “Probably because I only have a farm while Victor has a bar.”

  “Or because you’re old enough to be her grandfather, you old scoundrel,” Christian snorted.

  “I thought you were already married?” I asked Benoît.

  “Marguerite’s only my first wife,” he joked with a roguish smile, before placing another bet. “If you really want to chat Dominique up, you’ll be wanting to come to the beauty contest tomorrow.”

  “Victor’s wife’s in a beauty contest?” Christian asked, even more intrigued.

  “Not his wife, you fool. Cows.”

  “You’re having a beauty contest for cows?” I asked, bewildered.

  “And pigs. We hold it every year in my barn. Come along, if you like.”

  “I can’t think of anything I’d rather do,” my father said insincerely as he played what he clearly assumed was his winning hand. “Three jacks.” He started to scoop up his winnings, only for me to show my four tens, trumping him easily.

  Papa narrowed his eyes at me sardonically. “Tomorrow you definitely start school.”

  —

  The following evening we strolled down the hill from the test track to Benoît’s barn, where a large party was already in full swing. As we entered, it was hard to tell which smelled more rank—the cow dung or the unique aroma of Benoît’s home brew.

  Benoît himself was sitting at one end of the barn playing a long snakelike instrument called a serpent. A distant relative of the tuba, it was made of walnut, with six finger holes like a recorder. Benoît’s cheeks were puffed out like a gnarly old toad’s as he blew on the strange twisted horn.

  At his side sat Victor, his large beer belly heaving in and out as he squeezed his accordion. He was accompanied by several other locals on a collection of instruments, including Félix on a huge French horn.

  Tucked away to one side sat Dominique, playing her viola. The annual beauty contest, it turned out, was one of the few occasions when she still got to play, and she threw herself wholeheartedly into the folk tunes and ballads.

  Marguerite was in charge of pouring out beer and wine from several stone flagons set up on a long trestle table at the back. Amandine was also helping. I saw her cheeks flush radioactively as Christian asked her for three tankards. She handed them over, batting her eyelids, until she saw her mother glowering at her.

  Christian brought the beer back over and Papa eyed his tankard with suspicion.

  “Are you sure this isn’t for external use only?”

  “The trick is not to smell it,” Christian assured him.

  My father held his nose and poured the entire tankard down his throat in one go. As he finished the last drop, he wiped his chin and took a moment to reflect.

  “I can definitely say that it tastes every bit as bad as it smells.” He handed his tankard to Christian. “Fill me up.”

  Meanwhile, I glanced around the barn and spotted Camille whispering into the ear of one of Benoît’s prize cows. She was wearing a checked frock specially for the occasion, and her hair was hanging loose, a tangle of unruly red curls almost covering the tiny dung beetle I saw pinned to her cardigan.

  Suddenly I realized that I was being watched. Philippe was glaring malevolently at me from the other side of the barn. Since the night we’d nearly come to blows, I had hardly seen him. In fact, I’d even begun to wonder if he was steering clear of me, embarrassed by his vicious outburst. But if he was, he wasn’t looking guilty now; he looked like he wanted to kill me.

  I wasn’t going to be intimidated, though. Undaunted, I walked across to Camille, feeling the heat of Philippe’s gaze with every step.

  “You’re late,” she said, looking up at me with a wry smile. “We’ve already judged the pig contest.”

  “I only came to wish you luck,” I said with a smirk. As I sat down beside her, I noticed that for once she didn’t move away.

  “You know Philippe is still staring at you,” she said after a moment.

  Before I could answer, my nostrils caught a scent of something sweet and exotic.

  “Do you smell that?” I asked, my nose twitching inquisitively.

  “Émilie’s been at the artichokes again,” she replied, nodding to Benoît’s cow, which was munching away contentedly.

  “No…it’s chocolate.” My eyes scoped the barn. Sure enough, there on a table near the back was a vat of Dominique’s legendary dark hot chocolate.

  Moments later I was bent over my mug, allowing the steam to waft around my face like a soft chocolaty blanket—just like I used to in the café back in Paris.

  “You always do that, don’t you?
” Camille said, watching me curiously.

  “What?”

  “Stick your face in it and grin like an idiot.”

  “No, I don’t.” But of course I did.

  “I’m going outside,” I said abruptly, and began to head out into the darkness.

  After a moment Camille joined me on the damp grass outside. The air was crisp and cool after the sweaty beer fumes in the barn.

  “So, have you finished that car yet?” she inquired. “Everyone’s talking about your bet with Victor.”

  “Yeah, well, at this rate he’s going to win,” I muttered. “Anyway, I’m not allowed to talk about it.”

  “Why?” she asked casually. “Because I might be a German spy?”

  For a moment I didn’t know what to say. Did she know the vicious rumor Philippe was spreading about her? Before I could ask, a shadow fell across us.

  Philippe had left the barn and was now studying me coldly. I felt my fingers clench instinctively into a fist. If he was going to attack me, I would make sure I left him with at least something to show for it.

  “Having a cozy little chat?” he sneered. “I should have known you two would be whispering together.”

  “Why?” Camille asked. “Are you jealous?”

  “Of a kid like him?” He turned and looked at me with undiluted hatred. “If there’s a war, I’m going to make sure I get posted to the border with Italy,” he spat. “That way the first person I kill will be a dirty Italian, just like you!”

  It was all I could do not to let fly at him there and then. But instead I swallowed my anger, pretending to be confused.

  “That’s strange….” I frowned. “Last I heard, your daddy was going to make sure you worked in a back office somewhere so you never had to fire a shot—”

  I was about to congratulate myself on my clever put-down when my head was filled with a blinding flash. Philippe’s fist had crunched into my jaw like a train hitting the buffers. Next thing I knew, I could taste dirt in my mouth and was sprawled on the ground.

  At first everything was blurred. I shook my head in a desperate attempt to get my eyes to refocus, until at last I was looking at just one of Philippe again, towering over me. Suddenly I heard a strangled growl welling up from somewhere deep inside me; then I launched myself at him with everything I had.