Tightrope

by Simon Mawer

  ‘What did you do? Can you describe what you did?’

  But she had no idea. ‘It was soldering, just soldering. Electrical components but I’ve no idea what they were. You’d have known, I suppose. We did the same thing hour after hour and if they caught you doing it wrong you got beaten and returned to the main camp. One girl tried to sabotage things …’ She hesitated, remembering – an officer being called, the item being held up, the girl being seized and dragged out. ‘She was taken out and beaten unconscious. Not by the Siemens people. By the guards.’

  There was a silence while Ned watched her. ‘I tried to do everything right,’ she admitted.

  ‘Who could blame you?’

  She sipped her wine and felt light-headed, as though she had been absolved. Perhaps that was why she mentioned the name that had been in the back of her mind the whole evening. Perhaps the wine had emboldened her. ‘Clément,’ she said.

  Ned gave the little grunt of recognition. ‘I was wondering when you’d bring him up.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘He went to Canada, to Montreal. He’s still there as far as I know. They’re building a research centre out in the wilds at a place called Chalk River.’

  ‘What kind of research …?’

  ‘It’s all very secret.’

  ‘But that project? We talked about it, remember? A super bomb. There’s been no super bomb, has there? It was all a fantasy, one of your mad ideas.’ Emotion began to break through the light-headedness: she felt resentful, as if everything had been Ned’s fault. ‘I went to France thinking there might be a bomb that would end the war and here we are, fighting to the bitter end.’

  ‘It’s not that simple.’

  ‘You seemed to think it was. Did you see Clément? When he got to England, I mean?’

  ‘Briefly. He told me …’

  ‘What did he tell you?’

  ‘He told me that the plan was for you to return from France with him. Up until the last moment he thought you were going to get in the aircraft with him. But once you’d got him strapped in you climbed down and left him there. And he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.’

  ‘He said that?’

  ‘His words. No one knew what had happened to you, Squirrel. It was almost a year later that the parents got a letter from some dubious person in Whitehall. “We regret to inform you that we have not had contact with your daughter for some time and must consider her to have been arrested.” That sort of thing.’ He glanced at her and she saw something like pain in his expression. Pain was not an emotion she expected him to suffer. ‘In fact, Squirrel, we rather assumed you were dead.’

  There was a silence. ‘They arrested me the morning after Clément left for England,’ she said eventually. ‘I was waiting on a railway platform, half asleep. I never saw them coming.’

  ‘So you should have gone with Clément, shouldn’t you? You could have got away.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Father was ill with worry. I almost felt sorry for him.’

  ‘That must have been a novel experience.’

  He attempted a laugh. ‘Maman was a pillar of strength but he rather went to pieces. Wouldn’t leave his room, wouldn’t meet people, spent a lot of time close to tears. Strange how people react in unexpected ways.’

  ‘Why should that make me feel guilty?’

  ‘Does it?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘So why the hell didn’t you get out when you had the opportunity?’ The change in tone was abrupt. That was another of his characteristics: sudden squalls of fury or laughter. Perhaps it was the frustration of being faced with irrational human behaviour. ‘Why can’t you act reasonably?’ he would scream when he was a child confronting parental decisions. But it was he who wasn’t reasonable, working himself up into a rage at such provocation, going red in the face and throwing things.

  She tried to shrug the question away. ‘It’s hard to explain now. We were on the landing ground in the middle of the night. Somewhere in the Cher Valley, near Tours. The aircraft was standing there ready for take-off and I had to make a snap decision. I decided to go back to my job, the job I’d been sent to do.’

  ‘But you didn’t. You got yourself arrested.’

  ‘I couldn’t know that at the time, could I? For God’s sake, isn’t it obvious? I thought I was out of Paris and therefore out of danger.’

  ‘Sounds pretty daft to me.’

  ‘And I wanted to get away from Clément.’

  ‘Get away from him?’

  ‘I thought, if I went with him … Oh, I don’t know, involvement or something.’

  ‘Involvement?’

  ‘Did he tell you he’d got married? And he’s got a baby as well. They’re in Switzerland.’

  ‘So why might you have got involved?’

  She looked at him, hoping to find understanding in his face, because she had none. What did involvement actually mean? She had forgotten the muddle of emotions that went with it, the fear and thrill of possession. ‘Because I slept with him,’ she said.

  ‘You slept with him?’

  ‘It’s what happens, Ned. The tension we were under, the fear of discovery, God knows there were motives enough. Madeleine was in Annecy with his wife and baby, so we were alone together.’ She laughed, feeling emotion returning, the first hints of normality. ‘Why the hell am I trying to explain? Anyway, I feared what might happen if we went off together. Maybe I’d follow him to Canada. Maybe I’d get pregnant. Maybe he’d be consumed with guilt and dump me. I’ve got no idea, Ned. You can’t predict the future, can you? But you can avoid it.’

  Ned didn’t say anything. It was almost as though he hadn’t understood. Or perhaps he was remembering all those little moments before the war, the small jealousies and triumphs within the little group of friends, the days in Geneva and Annecy, the swimming and the skiing, the games and laughter – fragile moments that seemed, in retrospect, as translucent and brittle as porcelain. ‘I suppose I’m not surprised,’ he said eventually. ‘I remember the way you were with him. And he with you, I guess. So what happens now?’

  ‘Between us? He’s three thousand miles away. How can there be anything?’

  ‘When he comes back to Europe?’

  ‘Look, Ned, it was an aberration, the kind of thing that happens in wartime. He’s got a wife and child. He’ll have to deal with that. And meanwhile, I’ve …’ she spread her hands helplessly. ‘I’ve got to get over what’s happened. Christ, I’m barely a woman any longer.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘No breasts, no periods, no inclination.’

  Her words embarrassed him. He looked round for distraction. ‘So what are you going to do now, Squirrel? You’ve said what the parents want you to do but not what you want.’

  ‘I don’t really know. Once I get my strength back I want to do something useful.’

  ‘That rules out university.’

  She laughed, understanding a joke for the first time. ‘The thing is, I don’t have any skills. Well, I can strip and assemble a Sten gun blindfolded if that’s any use. And parachute out of an aeroplane.’

  ‘The circus, maybe?’

  Another joke she understood. For a moment they laughed together and it was just like it had been.

  Debrief

  So there you have her, returned to the bosom of her family, sleeping on the broken-backed sofa in her brother’s flat, sleeping fitfully, besieged by dreams of the camp, of rows of huts rendered in grey and brown, a place drowned with rain and populated by shades. Among the prisoners of her dream there were people who had never been there in reality – her parents, her brother, even figures from her past who had no real part in her life: a teacher from her school in Geneva, a nun from her convent school in England, a boy she had once danced with at a party. Yvette Coombes pleaded with her to be her friend but her real friend was someone else, a familiar figure who held her in her arms, her Lagermutter, who looked after her, deloused her h
ead in the evenings, slept beside her, loved her. Véronique.

  She woke in the cold dawn, with the disappearing shadow of Véronique’s body against her and the usual sounds in her ears, the banging of tin canteens, the shuffling of feet, the slop of a thin gruel, all of these transforming slowly and painfully into the sound of Ned banging around in the kitchen next door. And Véronique vanished.

  ‘I’ve got a lab meeting this morning,’ Ned said when she appeared at the kitchen door. ‘Will you be all right?’

  ‘There’s a car coming for me. They want to debrief me. Sounds a bit strange. Like taking your knickers down.’ It was the first joke she had made in more than a year.

  *

  The debriefing was in an anonymous building in Queensway. Debriefing is a good name, suggesting the reverse of something positive, an undoing, a cancellation, as though at the end you might be purged. But of course it wasn’t like that at all. It was an interview at best, an interrogation at worst. It is all there on file, a dull, typed transcript that the National Archive stores like it stores so many things, mindlessly and without favour, the words giving nothing of the participants, the gaunt, wary figure of Marian Sutro on one side of the table, with, opposite her, the austere figure of Commander John Senter with his icy white hair and the icy manner of a barrister confronting a suspected child murderer. He was a Scot, from Edinburgh, but there was no gracious Edinburgh exchange of courtesies, no how are you feeling?, nothing that might put you at ease, at least nothing of that kind recorded in the transcript. Just the demand for details that she couldn’t remember about events she had forgotten and no longer cared about if she did remember them. That, perhaps, was her defence, the barrier that kept the demons at bay.

  Could she outline the events after her arrest in the autumn of 1943? She must understand that this was important, to find out what happened, who was responsible, who might face charges.

  ‘Charges?’

  ‘Criminal charges. The illegal treatment of prisoners. Other offences.’

  So she told him, dug up those memories she had buried, quietly, in the dead of night, like a murderer burying a corpse – her arrest on the platform at Vierzon station, the cramped back-seat of the Citroën Traction, the drive to Paris – while Senter nodded thoughtfully, occasionally jotting notes on a ringbound pad. On the table between them a wire recorder wound its memory into the future.

  Later the same day a car came to pick her up and deliver her back to Oxford where her parents were waiting with that attentive anxiety that annoyed her so. Was she all right? How was she feeling? How had it been?

  ‘All right, I suppose. They wanted me to remember; I just want to forget.’

  ‘Of course you do, of course.’

  Her mother had been cooking, as well as she could, seeing that rationing was still in force. There was even wine that her father could obtain from the college cellars. ‘Now all you have to do, darling, is rest and recover,’ her mother said.

  Recover seemed the right word with its hint of covering up, covering over, burying something as absolutely as possible. But the thing buried was always there, waiting for her as she slept, occasionally ambushing her when she was awake. At night she dreamed. She was in the camp, she was in prison, she was running through streets and alleys. People were pursuing her, hunting her, capturing her and locking her away. Sometimes they hit her but the blows brought with them no pain. Sometimes she was with Véronique and the others in the hut, dealing out scraps of food like an impoverished hand of cards; often she was alone, afraid and hungry while everyone around her was happy and content. Sometimes she awoke sweating and shouting, except that it seemed she had made no sound because no one in the house stirred. Through the door to her parents’ bedroom she could hear her father snoring. Furtively she crept to the kitchen and discovered bread and margarine, knowing it was for breakfast, knowing she was doing wrong but eating it just the same. Her life depended on it. Once she had finished it, guilt consigned her to a dreamless sleep and a fetid, muggy morning in which she apologised abjectly for her theft during the night like a child caught stealing sweets.

  So, like a prisoner gathering scraps of food and squirrelling them away, she began to gather up the fragile pieces of her past to put them back together into some semblance of a personality. She read a lot – but without much concentration – and slept a great deal. During the day she did small things around the house, little tasks that you might give to a child – arranging flowers, making biscuits, some weeding in the garden. Tedium was a positive thing, something to be treasured. It blended with safety and freedom, the circumscribed freedom of going cautiously to the shops with her mother – but waiting outside in case someone should draw her into conversation – or walking in the Parks with her father where it was easier because there were no people to stare at her. It became habitual, this walk, in rain or shine, as far as the River Cherwell before turning for home. He talked of what had been and she talked of what might be – how the old League of Nations had failed and what they needed now was a universal aim and belief, a belief in the rule of the people. No more rich, no more poor, everyone united in a future of shared achievement.

  ‘You sound like a Communist, my dear,’ he said.

  She thought of Véronique. ‘Maybe I am.’

  Perhaps to distract from such dangerous ideas he mentioned that they had had a letter from Clément Pelletier.

  ‘From Clément? Why on earth didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I am telling you, Squirrel. That’s what I’m doing now. It was posted in Canada, sometime last year. He said—’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘That he’d seen you in Paris.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, he did.’

  ‘He asked after you. I wrote back but of course I couldn’t say because we didn’t know anything. And even if we had …’ His voice trailed away into the silence of official secrets.

  ‘I got Clément out of France,’ she told him. ‘Did he mention that?’

  Her father pondered this information. ‘He more or less implied it. I feel he owes you a great debt.’

  ‘I’m not sure what he owes me.’ She felt a little snatch of excitement at being owed something, however nebulous. ‘Do you still have his address? I’ll write to him and tell him I’m back.’

  ‘Your mother will have it somewhere. He was in Montreal, as far as I remember. Your mother always said—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That he was soft on you. Then there was that business with the letters you wrote to each other when you were at school …’

  She attempted a careless laugh but the expression didn’t really work. Nothing much worked at the moment, all the little gestures of social intercourse felt awkward. ‘It was a long time ago, Papa. He’s married with a baby now. His wife and child were in Switzerland during the occupation. Probably they’re back in France. Maybe he is.’

  ‘Switzerland,’ her father echoed, making the name sound like the land of Cockaigne, a place of sweetness and light. ‘Maybe we should have stayed there. Maybe that would have been better for all of us.’

  ‘For me, you mean?’

  She glanced at him as he walked. In profile his face seemed old, sculpted by worry and age and something else she barely recognised in him: guilt. ‘It’s my fault, Squirrel,’ he confessed. ‘I blame myself entirely. I should never have let you go.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Father. It was my choice.’

  When they got back to the house her mother searched unsuccessfully for the letter. ‘There was another one as well,’ she added as she rifled through drawers and pigeonholes in her escritoire. ‘I’d quite forgotten. Over a year ago. Now where did I put that one?’

  ‘Another letter from Clément?’

  ‘Not from Clément. No, it was about that nice French boy you brought to stay. What was his name? Benoît, wasn’t it? I’m sure it’s here somewhere.’

  ‘A letter from Benoît?’

  ‘Not from him; about him. Now where is i
t?’

  Benoît. Memories were perceived through a kind of fog, shifting and folding and unfolding. She glimpsed things through it and then the vapour closed in again and they had gone. Benoît, sitting here in this room, plying her mother with compliments, only a few days before they left for France. He was wearing French uniform and looked wonderfully smart.

  ‘Here it is!’ her mother cried in triumph, holding up an envelope. ‘I knew I had it somewhere. Not the one from Clément. The other one.’

  The postmark was Southampton and the letter was dated 14th March 1944.

  Dear Mr & Mrs Sutro,

  My name is Alan Walcott and I’m a pilot in the RAF. The reason I am writing is that I recently met a friend of your daughter Marion, who suggested that I contact you. I should explain that on operations last December over Belgium I was forced to bale out. Subsequently, with the assistance of many local people, I escaped through France to the Spanish border. On the way I was helped by the resistance group to which this friend of your daughter’s belongs. He says you have met him and he told me to get in touch as soon as I got back to England. It has been quite a journey for me, but here I am at last, at home and with a bit of leave on my hands before returning to ops. The man’s name is Benoit but I’m afraid I forget his surname. He says he stayed with you once and he knows your daughter well. He told me he didn’t want to alarm you, but she went to Paris and has not been seen in his area for some time now. Perhaps she is working in Paris, he said. He said she is a wonderful girl and very brave.

  If you would like more information please do get in touch at the above address.

  Yours sincerely,

  Alan Walcott (Fg Off)

  She sat there with the letter in her lap and wondered. What might have happened chased away what did. Benoît, whose death she knew so little about, was dead. A mere letter wasn’t going to bring him back.