Dark Summer in Bordeaux

by Allan Massie

  He took Léon by the shoulders and hugged him, kissing him on either cheek, like a general bestowing a medal. Then he did the same to Jérôme.

  ‘All for one and one for all.’

  When Alain had left them, – ‘because my grandmother’s visiting and Maman will be offended if I’m not there – not that I want to listen to the old woman’s moans and it’ll be still worse if that pompous prick my Uncle Albert is there too’ – Léon said to Jérôme, ‘There’s something I must tell you, you’re the only person I can tell.’

  ‘My dear, I’m flattered.’

  ‘But not here,’ – ‘here’ would always be a sacred spot, the place of commitment, the place where Alain had hugged and kissed him – ‘somewhere quiet where we can sit down and not be in danger of being overheard.’

  ‘The bookshop?’

  ‘Not there either.’

  Félix, he thought, Félix might already have heard the news about Schussmann, Félix might come to seek him out – like an ogre in a fairy tale.

  ‘It’s a lovely afternoon,’ Jérôme said. ‘We could go and sit in the public garden, it’s not half an hour’s walk.’

  They stretched out on the grass. Jérôme had chattered, about this, that and nothing as they crossed the city, but now he fell silent. Children ran about playing while their mothers, weary of the privations of war and the difficulty of caring for their families in these grim times, took a welcome opportunity to rest, relax and even perhaps forget for a little that things were as they were. A boy of about ten was flying a kite. A peacock strolled across the lawn. It was a wonder nobody had yet carried it off for the pot. Jérôme chewed a blade of grass.

  ‘There’s no hurry,’ he said.

  Léon was very pale. There were dark circles under his eyes, pain and perplexity in his look. It was as if in a few days the pretty boy had become a careworn adult. And yet there was also something of the bewildered and unhappy child in him too.

  ‘Did Alain ever mention a German officer who came quite often to the bookshop?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think so. If he did it made no impression on me.’

  ‘Then I suppose he didn’t. He was a nice man, a bit boring, even pathetic. Genuinely interested in French literature. He bought a couple of early editions of Gide.’

  Jérôme smiled.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I can guess. His interest wasn’t only in books.

  You don’t need to spell it out. So?’

  ‘So his attentions were noticed.’

  Léon paused, looked Jérôme full in the face for the first time since they had settled themselves in the garden. The dam burst. The story flooded out. Félix’s contempt, his threats, even – head hanging again – the rape, the humiliation and despair, the dinner with Schussmann, the misery of the Hotel Artemis, the shame, Schussmann’s letter, the shame intensified, Alain’s father. He kept nothing back, excused himself nothing, spoke of his fear and self-disgust.

  ‘I never thought of myself as a Jew before the war,’ he said. ‘We don’t practise, I thought of myself as French, as French as you are.

  But do you understand why just now when Alain said what he did, I hesitated to say “Yes” as immediately as you did? If it had been anyone but Alain, I would have said no. Do you despise me, Jérôme?’

  ‘Despise you? If your story wasn’t so terrible, I might be offended by such a suggestion. I think you’re a hero.’

  Léon was near tears again.

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ he said, ‘but thank you.’

  ‘It’s not ridiculous. To have had this experience, to have suffered as you have, and to have kept it to yourself, and survived, that’s heroic. I couldn’t have done it.’

  ‘But then you’re not a Jew. That’s something I have learned about myself: that I really am Jewish. We suffer and survive in silence. It’s what we have learned over the centuries.’

  Jérôme took hold of his hand and squeezed it.

  ‘All for one and one for all,’ he said.

  ‘But you won’t tell Alain, not any of it.’

  ‘Not if you don’t want me to.’

  ‘I couldn’t bear him to know. You’re the only person I could bear to tell. I’m afraid it would disgust him. He doesn’t even guess what I am, I’m sure of that, how I feel about him, how much I want him, even though I know it’s impossible.’

  ‘No, he’s very innocent, Alain. Perhaps it’s what we love in him.’

  The peacock picked his way over the grass, his tail-feathers now resplendently spread.

  ‘That bird thinks he’s a German,’ Jérôme said. ‘He believes he owns the garden.’

  ‘I feel better,’ Léon said. ‘I don’t know why, but I feel better.’

  ‘That’s the beauty of confession. The Church has known that for centuries. There’s no confessional in the synagogue, is there?’

  ‘How should I know? I’ve never been in a synagogue in my life,’ and for the first time in days, Léon found himself laughing, remembering how when he had suggested that Jérôme had seen him in the bank, he had said, ‘I’ve never been in a bank in my life.’

  ‘Alain’s right,’ Jérôme said, ‘we have to get to London.’

  ‘I know, but . . . ’ ‘But?’

  ‘My mother and my aunt.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I think you have to speak to Alain’s father about them.’

  XXIX

  The brown envelope lay on the desk, and Lannes couldn’t understand why he didn’t open it. More than once he felt around it, made as if to insert his thumb under the flap, only to lay it down again. He picked it up and ran his tongue round the edges, and replaced it on the desk. He lay back in his chair and lit a cigarette, got up and crossed the room to look out of the window, but if you had asked him what he saw he couldn’t have told you. Was his reluctance occasioned by the fear that the contents of the envelope would reveal nothing of significance, or the suspicion that what was revealed was something he would prefer not to know? He couldn’t find an answer to these questions.

  It was a relief when a knock on the door came as a distraction and old Joseph entered to say that a young woman wanted to see him.

  ‘To my mind she’s a tart but someone’s had a go at her,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if she was asking for it, but there you are, it’s a wicked world.’

  Yvette had a black eye and a swollen mouth, and was trembling. Lannes took a bottle of Armagnac from the cupboard, poured out two glasses, gave her one, and said, ‘Drink this and take your time.’

  She winced as the spirit touched her lips. He put the brown envelope away in the top left-hand drawer of his desk which he locked.

  ‘It was that effing Spaniard,’ she said, and took another sip of the brandy. ‘He came back and I thought I knew what he wanted, well, you know what Spaniards are, and I was ready to oblige, because, why not? It’s what I do, isn’t it, and he was smiling and speaking sweet as honey. So I named a price, because he’s not the sort I would give it to for nothing, not like the old gentleman, or’ – she smiled – ‘you yourself, superintendent, whenever you feel like it. But he said, still soft as a cream cheese, that it wasn’t that he wanted, but to ask me again if I was sure the old gentleman hadn’t given me anything to look after. “Or perhaps he hid it in your room. You won’t mind if I take a look, will you. I’ll even pay you to let me do so.” “I’m not having you grub around among my knickers,” I said, and then, because he was still looking all right, I thought, why the hell not, and told him that there had been an envelope but I had given it to you. That’s when he went wild and began to clobber me, shouting out that I was a bitch. I screamed and Madame Mangeot came along the corridor, doubtless as fast as she could in her carpet slippers which she always wears on account of her bunions, and told him to bugger off. “This is a respectable house,” she says, which it ain’t, but I tell you I was that grateful to the old cow. She’s not so bad really, not like her rat of a husband. I can tell you he wouldn’t lift a
finger to help anyone, and indeed when I’d tidied myself up and set off to come here, he was cowering behind his desk, pretending he’d seen and heard nothing. “Call yourself a man. . . ” I said. I don’t mind telling you I was scared when I stepped out into the street in case the Spaniard was hanging about. But he’d buggered off, doubtless because old Madame Mangeot had spoken of calling the police, which she wouldn’t have done because they don’t like having police in the hotel. So here I am, and what I want to know, is what the hell is it all about?’

  She downed what remained of the brandy and held out her glass for more.

  Lannes said, ‘I can’t tell you that, because I haven’t opened the envelope myself yet.’

  And now that you’re here, he thought, I’m even less sure that I’m going to, because of the fear that what it contains would indeed be something I would rather not know about.

  She took another mouthful of brandy and moved her tongue around in her mouth.

  ‘The bastard’s loosened a tooth too,’ she said. ‘So what do I do now? How do I know he won’t come back?’

  ‘He’s got no reason to,’ Lannes said. ‘I don’t think you need worry about him again. Not now that he knows I have the envelope. It was just temper that caused him to lose control. In any case I’ll have him brought in and we’ll make sure he doesn’t bother you again.’

  He went through to the inspectors’ room, and told young René Martin to see the girl safely back to the Pension Bernadotte.

  ‘I ought to warn you that she thinks you’re quite a dish,’ he said, and was amused to see René blush.

  Then he turned to Moncerre and said, ‘You’ve kept tabs on Sombra, haven’t you? I want you to find him and bring him in. He’s just beaten up that girl, and it won’t distress me, for once, if you should find it necessary to rough him up. If you get him this evening, it won’t do him any harm to spend the night in a cell. I’m off home.’

  Back in his office, he took the brown envelope from the drawer and slipped it into his pocket. He put the brandy bottle back in the cupboard and was about to leave when old Joseph knocked at the door.

  ‘This was left at the front desk for you,’ he said, and handed him an envelope. It contained a single sheet of the cheap paper cafés supply to their customers.

  ‘Do you really not want to know who your true father was, superintendent?’

  At the desk he asked who had left the letter.

  ‘Some street kid. Just handed it in and scarpered.’

  ‘If he comes again, you’ll detain him. That’s an order.’

  XXX

  The Comte de St-Hilaire was a man of great distinction in Bordeaux, as his family had been for generations. His grandfather had been one of the founders of the exclusive Primrose Club and he himself had been its President. His vineyard in the Médoc produced a premier cru Claret. In the city itself he had a fine house in the Allée de Tournay which Stendhal had once called the most beautiful street in France. He had never engaged in politics, for he despised the Republic while indulging in an equally profound contempt for Action Français and the Royalists. He thought the famous Mayor of Bordeaux, Adrien Marquet, a vulgar fellow, and had an aristocrat’s disdain for Fascism. No doubt, if compelled to choose, he would have opted for it rather than Communism, for at least the Fascists were unlikely to deprive him of his property, but he regarded both faiths as manifestations of the deplorable twentieth century. His family had been Huguenots in the time of the religious wars, but he himself had long ago discarded any remnants of religious belief. He was a Voltairean sceptic and viewed the Catholic Church as a deplorably superstitious survival. He owned racehorses and collected pretty women. In his youth he had enjoyed a formidable reputation as a seducer of his friends’ wives – though in truth he had few friends, merely acquaintances with whom he was on easy conversational terms. For ten years now he had been recognised as the acknowledged lover and protector of Adrienne Jauzion, though she had come to bore him as almost everything did; and it amused him now to observe her toy with entering on an affair with that policeman who had been sent from Paris to command the Police Judiciaire. At the age of seventy he ignored the Occupation. It was something the French had brought on themselves by their folly and their contemptible politics. He placed no more trust in Marshal Pétain than in the God of his forefathers.

  It amused him to read Mauriac’s caustic novels about his native city, though he found the author’s fervent Catholicism ridiculous. But so, to his mind, was almost everything. Life was something without reason, to which you had been condemned. The only thing was not to make a fool of yourself.

  Jérôme was in awe of his godfather, dazzled by him also. He admired his massive indifference. Yet he had received occasional indications of what was almost tenderness. ‘You may be a little idiot,’ the Count had said once, ‘but then most people are, and there are moments when you are not without intelligence.’ And Jérôme, while in awe, also sensed that behind the imposing façade – itself as forbidding as the limestone of which the grand houses of the city were built – there was a disappointed romanticism, as if his godfather reproached himself for finding so little worth doing. And so he now nerved himself to call on him and present him with his problem. One thing was certain: the Count might tell him that what he proposed was foolish, but he would not demean himself by betraying him – not even to his mother and stepfather. So it was with a mixture of trepidation and hope that he presented himself at his godfather’s door.

  The butler showed him into a salon on the ground floor. The furniture was Louis Quinze, the paintings mostly ancestral portraits, though there was also a delicious Fragonard of nymphs bathing and a Courbet still-life of bread, fruit and a jug of wine. He didn’t dare to take a seat but stood by the window, twisting his fingers and seeing nothing.

  ‘My dear Jérôme, to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?’

  The count crossed the room with a firm step and long countryman’s strides. He wore an English tweed suit and there was a monocle in his left eye. He overtopped Jérôme by several inches and as he leaned forward to greet him with a perfunctory kiss on the cheek, the scent of an expensive eau-de-Cologne mingled with the smoke from the cigar which he held in his right hand dangerously close to Jérôme’s hair.

  The butler re-appeared carrying a silver tray on which there was a claret jug and two glasses. He poured the wine and left the room without speaking.

  ‘I don’t know how to begin,’ Jérôme said.

  ‘You might sit down anyway.’

  The count drew on his cigar and smiled.

  ‘There’s a fraudulent novelist, name of Malraux – you of course may admire him, dear boy – whom I once heard start a conversation with the question, “So, what do you think of the Apocalypse?” That was not an enticing opening.’

  ‘I should think not,’ Jérôme said. ‘As for me, I don’t even know what the Apocalypse is. Something to do with four horsemen, isn’t it?’

  ‘Famine, pestilence, war and death, quite appropriate for our wretched times indeed.’

  ‘That’s what I want to ask you about,’ Jérôme said. ‘The times we live in.’

  ‘My dear boy,’ – the count removed his monocle and, taking a square of chamois leather from his waistcoat pocket, began to polish the glass – ‘why should you suppose that I have anything to say on the subject?’

  Jérôme took a sip of claret to fortify himself, and found that his hand was shaking.

  ‘Because it’s intolerable,’ he said, ‘the times – the situation we’re in – they’re intolerable, for people of my age, that is . . . ’ ‘And so?’

  ‘That’s it, you see. Vichy, the Occupation . . . it’s intolerable . . . so, two friends and I’ – he gulped and found himself unable to look his godfather in the face – ‘we’ve decided, we want to get out, get to London, to join de Gaulle. There, I’ve said it. I wasn’t sure I would be able to, but I have.’

  He raised his eyes. To his surprise the count was
smiling.

  ‘And so you come to me?’ he said. ‘To share this confidence? I should be honoured.’

  ‘You don’t disapprove?’

  ‘My approval or disapproval matters nothing. But I shall say this: if I was your age, I might feel as you do. These friends, would I know who they are, or rather who their parents are?’

  ‘No, they’re not of our class’ – Jérôme felt himself blushing as he said this. ‘One is a school friend, his father’s a policeman. The other works in a bookshop. He’s a Jew.’

  ‘And I should care about that? If he’s a Jew he may have enough brains for the three of you. You won’t know this, Jérôme, but my father was a Dreyfusard. He was asked to resign from the Primrose Club, but refused, saying they might expel him if they chose but he wasn’t going to resign. He told them that anti-Semitism was a sentiment unworthy of France. He had a high idea of France, if not of the French, rather like that mad general you want to join in London.’

  ‘You think he’s mad, Godfather?’

  ‘He must be mad to suppose that any but a handful of the French retain a sense of honour. All they care about is their property. I speak of course as a man of property myself. I’m aware of the irony.’

  The count replaced the monocle in his eye and picked up his glass.

  ‘Your health,’ he said. ‘You’ll hurt your mother, but you know that. It’s the fate of mothers to be wounded by their sons. I take it you want my help. I’ll think about it. Ways and means.’

  He got rather stiffly to his feet. It was clear to Jérôme that the conversation – discussion? – was at an end. The count crossed the room and opened a drawer in a Buhl cabinet. He took out a small blue leather-covered case, and held it out to Jérôme.

  ‘Open it,’ he said. ‘I was born in 1870, the year of our first German débâcle. I was forty-four when the last war broke out. I never saw service at the Front, but the English gave me that medal for the liaison work I did with them. That old fool Pétain distrusted the English even then, but they fought magnificently. We thought our war was the Apocalypse too. I had a good friend called Cameron, a colonel in a Scottish regiment. He was killed a week before the Armistice. He was a colonel but not yet thirty. I’ve never forgotten him. So I approve of your intention, Jérôme. I’ll think about it. Meanwhile, you will please bring your friends to see me. We’ll have lunch. A meal smooths over embarrassments. I’m proud of you. Your grandmother was the only woman I ever really loved. And lost, sadly lost, to my cousin who had been my closest friend.’