His mum wanted to know how long he’d be staying. Not because he wasn’t welcome but just so she could get things straight in her head.
‘Is that a question Ralph wanted you to ask?’
‘Of course not. What a silly idea.’
She shook her head, tried to deny it, but her eyes were shiny with tears. Billy was about to say that it wouldn’t be a problem, that he could find a million other ways of spending his next two weeks, when his mum put a hand on his arm.
‘Ralph said something else, Billy. He wants you to be happy. He wants you to enjoy yourself now you’ve got this chance. He’s got a place down in Devon. It’s nice, really nice, not big like here. It’s down by the water. It’s cosy. You can have it until you have to go back. And he’s got a little present, too. So you can give yourself a bit of a treat. That’s him saying that, not me. Here…’
She stepped across to the biggest of the bookshelves and extracted a copy of Bleak House. Inside the front cover was a manila envelope. She gave it to Billy.
‘Go on. Open it.’
Billy did her bidding. Inside was a fold of £1 notes. He counted them. Fifty quid. A fortune.
‘Think of it as a wedding present, Billy. From both of us.’ Val had found a handkerchief from somewhere. She blew her nose. ‘You remember Nell? Irene’s little friend?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘I got in touch with her yesterday once I knew you were coming. She’d like to go, too.’
‘Go where?’
‘To Devon.’ She managed a smile. ‘Where else?’
8
Hélène wanted to take the radio and ride Valmy deep into the forest. She asked Agnès to come too, enquired with extreme politeness whether she didn’t want to make the best of the still-glorious weather while it lasted, but Agnès had no taste for her company and saw through the invitation at once.
‘You want me to work the transmitter,’ she said. ‘From somewhere safe.’
As it happened Agnès was right and Hélène told herself never to underestimate this woman. She’d been through a very great deal, that much was obvious, and she had no patience with Hélène’s brand of lofty subterfuge. And so Hélène, slightly chastened, submitted to a brief lesson in how this thing worked. Fit the valves. Tune in to the desired frequency. And then transmit the message.
The message, as she expected, had to be in Morse code. Worse still, it was wise to limit the transmission to an absolute maximum of three minutes. Longer than that and you were inviting trouble. Even in the depths of the forest.
And so Hélène spent an hour in the morning refining the birthday message she wanted to send to Nathan, her husband. Her skills in Morse code were non-existent and so the message had to be briefer than she’d have liked. Also, it had to be something distinctive, something original, something that would remind him of the times they’d spent together and the promise of the times to come. Nothing domestic. Nothing banal. I want to excite this man of mine, she told herself. I want him to want me.
She saddled up and led Valmy out of the courtyard. The transmitter had been slightly heavier than she’d expected. It was housed in a grey plywood box with a rusting metal clasp and she’d had to send Malin into the cellar to find the ancient game bag that had belonged to the chateau’s previous owner. The transmitter was powered by a battery, itself surprisingly heavy, but there was room in the game bag for both.
Hélène urged Valmy into a canter. The horse had been bright this morning when she’d walked it round the courtyard, visibly enjoying itself, and she’d put this post-coital little dance down to the events of yesterday. After the oppressive heat, there was also a hint of freshness in the air and when the canter became a gallop she pressed herself low as she raced the stallion down the beaten path that led to the forest. After a kilometre or so, with the treeline looming ahead, a hare broke cover in front of them and zigzagged away towards a field of beets, but Valmy paid it no attention. Good boy, Hélène thought, feeling the weight of the battery and the awkward edges of the transmitter’s wooden box thumping against her back.
By the standards of other estates in the area, la Forêt de Neaune wasn’t large. On the particulars of sale furnished by the notaire in Tours, it measured thirty-three hectares, but Nathan, after a day spent beneath the big old oaks, had apparently regarded the figure as an underestimate. What had especially attracted him, and brought negotiations to a rapid conclusion, was the lake at the very heart of the forest. He’d dubbed it l’Étang Mustafa in his wife’s honour, and it said a very great deal about this marriage of theirs that she didn’t set eyes on either the chateau or his precious lake until all the paperwork had been signed. When she’d taxed him about this, inquiring whether her own judgement might have played a useful role in the purchase, he’d gathered her in his arms and kissed her lightly on the lips. What kind of present doesn’t come as a surprise, he’d asked her. And that was that.
Nathan had been right, of course. The forest had been the perfect complement for the chateau, somewhere deeply private she could make her own, and after the first year of living down here she couldn’t imagine her life without it. Now, reining Valmy in to a modest trot, Hélène let the stallion find its own way down through the trees towards the lake. They came here often, normally in the cool of the early morning, and Valmy liked to drink from the lake. At first Hélène had been nervous of colic or something worse, but the water – a rich greeny-brown – seemed clean enough and the horse had never come to any harm.
The étang lay before them as the land fell away, bright splinters of sunshine through the screen of trees. The previous owner had built a wooden jetty at the toe of the path that wound down to the water’s edge. The ancient punt that went with it had long since been submerged beneath the rain and the weather but the jetty, though wobbly and uncertain underfoot, was still capable of holding her weight.
She dismounted by the tiny crescent of muddy beach and held Valmy’s reins while the horse splashed in and dipped its long neck to the water. Afterwards, as always, she harnessed the stallion to a nearby tree.
Unpacking the game bag, she settled in the shadow of the big oak. By this time in the afternoon the wind had died and she sat with her back to the broadness of the tree trunk, watching for the tiny ripples of fish rising to snatch insects. The warmth around her was full of movement – butterflies, bees, the occasional dragonfly – and she’d come to love these moments of solitude. The lake attracted a variety of ducks – mallards especially – but her favourites were a family of coots, tiny shy creatures that lived deep in the rushes beyond the pier. Coots, she’d once been told, mated for life and on the rare occasions they made an appearance she always cursed herself for not bringing the remains of the previous day’s loaf. Back at the start of the summer they’d swum in a stately little line, the father and the mother with three tiny chicks bobbing in their wake, but it was a while since she’d last seen them.
Hélène lifted the lid of the transmitter box. A flock of pigeons exploded from the trees behind her and flew out over the lake. Curious to know what might have disturbed them, she half twisted, shading her eyes against the glare of the sun through the branches, but she couldn’t see anything. She knew that men from the village hunted here, mainly with traps, but that usually took place at night. In the early days she’d put the word out around the village that she’d employ a gamekeeper if it didn’t stop but as times got harder she saw no harm in allowing the odd poacher a rabbit or a hare for his pot.
Agnès, with a patience that had taken Hélène by surprise, had explained the workings of the transmitter. It was called a Paraset. First you inserted the three black valves. Then the aerial. Finally, you connected the battery and used the big dial to tune to whichever frequency you needed. She’d written down the frequency that would take her to her husband.
Hélène slipped on the headphones. Nothing. She stared at the radio, then checked her watch. Twenty-five past four. In five minutes’ time she was due to transmit. Nathan, beside t
he radio operator at the other end, would be waiting. She had Agnès’ word on that. He’d been alerted days ago, via an intelligence contact in London, the moment Malin had told her about Hélène’s birthday. Hélène pictured him now, sitting beside the receiving equipment, waiting for her to come through. Except she was kneeling under a tree in the middle of rural France trying to fathom why the damned transmitter wasn’t working.
She went through the sequence again – valves, aerial, battery. Again, nothing but silence in her headphones. Then her gaze followed the lead across the moss and she realised she’d neglected to plug the headphones in. Putain. She slipped the jack into the slot beneath the power lead and suddenly the machine was alive. She heard a whistling in her earphones, then a burst of static and a squeal or two as she inched the tuning knob around. Finally she found the wavelength that would take her to Nathan, the exact frequency, and a tiny bulb glowed red to confirm it.
She checked her watch again. Three minutes before she had to transmit. Don’t wait for any kind of invitation, Agnès had told her. Just start with the Morse key the moment your watch hits half past four.
Hélène fumbled in the bag for her notes. She’d broken down each word in the message, depending on Agnès to pencil in the Morse code beside each letter, and under the résistante’s guidance she’d spent the early afternoon practising. She had neither the taste nor the aptitude for exercises like these but the thought of her waiting husband concentrated her mind wonderfully and the moment half past four arrived she bent to the machine and began to tap.
Dash dash dot
A brief pause, the way Agnès had told her.
Dot dash
Dot dash dot
Dash dot dot
Dot
She paused a moment, trying to relax, wondering how long this first word had taken her to transmit. Garde, she thought. One word done. Six to go.
The rest followed, deliberate key work, agonisingly slow, but free – as far as she could tell – from mistakes. This, she realised, was a difficult thing to do. There was no record of the transmission, nothing to confirm that she’d got the message right, just the busy void beyond the dots and the dashes. This afternoon, in the safety of her own forest, there were no pressures beyond her own clumsiness. But having to transmit from another setting, maybe a borrowed room in a busy city, would be something entirely different. She tried to imagine it – listening ears, a cough in the hallway outside, heavy boots racing up the stairs – and her respect for her new houseguest deepened.
Finally it was done. She’d asked Agnès whether or not Nathan would reply and Agnès said she didn’t know. If a message came back it would obviously be in code and if that happened Agnès would be happy to provide a translation. That would mean transcribing the incoming dots and the dashes, and so now Hélène waited, the headphones still clamped to her ears, a notepad on her lap, her pen poised. But nothing happened. Just the crackle of static and a sudden howl as she tweaked the tuning dial, hunting for the husband she hadn’t seen for three long years.
She began to relax, still waiting, still listening in case a message came through, wondering what it really meant to be stepping into her fifth decade. She hated the notion of getting old, of time passing, but these days the notion of time itself had been so warped by the débâcle, and the Armistice, and everything else that had happened since, that it was difficult to remember the way things had once been.
Because the truth was that France had remained frozen in a moment first of disbelief and then of something close to resignation, and if Hélène was to be part of that then so be it. Like everyone else she knew, she’d retreated inwards, making private accommodations of her own – some tiny, some not – and one consequence was that she paid very little attention to waymarks that would once have been so important. A birthday? Even the arrival of her fortieth year? Who really cared?
Malin, for one. He’d been waiting in the kitchen first thing that morning when she came down to put the coffee pot on. The present he’d so carefully wrapped was waiting for her on the table. Inside was the watch she was wearing now, a 1915 silver trench piece he’d picked up from God knows where and restored to full working order. And Klimt, too, hadn’t forgotten. A huge bouquet of roses, delivered by a surly youth from the village, had arrived mid-morning. The accompanying card, featuring the swastika-clad Arc de Triomphe, wouldn’t have done her reputation much good in the village but, once again, did she really care?
She closed her eyes for a moment as a sudden shaft of sunlight settled on her face. In these most difficult of times, she told herself that her conscience – if that’s what it was – was clear, wiped clean by the knowledge that she was doing what she could for her little ménage. Having Spanish refugees, a Polish Jew and now Agnès under the same roof was never going to be less than a challenge, especially when you added occasional visits – rarely announced – from a senior Abwehr officer. Survival, as she was only too well aware, required juggling skills of a high order but so far, to her quiet satisfaction, she hadn’t dropped a single ball.
A sudden flurry of birds again, rooks this time. She got to her feet. It was nearly ten to five. She bent to disconnect the battery and then set off round the lake to stretch her legs. A tumble of clouds had appeared in the direction of the chateau and when she paused to listen she thought she caught a distant growl of thunder.
Then came another noise, much closer. It was Valmy. She glanced back. Something had disturbed him. He was pawing the ground, testing the rope she’d used to tether him to the tree. She turned on her heel and began to head back. Then she froze. A figure had emerged from the trees. It was a man. He was carrying something that looked like a crossbow. He was wearing a pair of blue dungarees and, after he’d inspected the radio, he picked up Hélène’s notebook.
Hélène felt a surge of anger. This was double trespass. Her forest. Her notebook. He looked up from the notes she’d made and she recognised the broad, sallow face and the tangle of black curls. Benoit. A farmer from the rougher pastures on the far side of the village. Like Hélène, he was a newcomer to the area. She’d had very little to do with him but she’d heard from others that he was insolite. Insolite meant unusual. In Neaune, to be insolite was never a compliment.
‘What are you doing here?’
Benoit was staring at her. His hands were soiled. He rubbed one of them on his dungarees, then nodded down at the radio. He still had the crossbow.
‘I might ask the same question,’ he murmured. There was a hint of education in his voice, even refinement.
‘Have you been watching me, monsieur?’
‘Yes. I had no choice, I was here before you arrived.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Looking for truffles.’
‘There are no truffles, monsieur. And as far as I can gather, there never were. So let me ask you again. What were you doing? And why do you need that thing?’ She nodded at the crossbow.
Benoit didn’t answer. He still had Hélène’s notes.
‘Garde bien les heures volées. Mille bises. Mustafa.’ He looked up, swaying slightly. ‘Les heures volées? Very pretty.’
Hélène wanted the notes back. Benoit didn’t move, a refusal that – to Hélène – felt full of menace.
‘What do you want, monsieur? Apart from my truffles?’
‘I want nothing. You mistake me.’
‘Then let me ask you again: why are you here?’ She gestured towards the crossbow. ‘Is it the rabbits? The ducks? Whatever else you can shoot? Is life so hard you have to play the thief?’
She’d touched a nerve. She could see it in his eyes. Like most of the few men remaining in the village, Benoit was a drinker and it showed.
‘Is there anything in this country people like you don’t own?’ he asked at length.
‘Lots, if you’re serious. But, like it or not, this is private property. If you want to come here to shoot game, there might be a possibility of some arrangement. Nothing regular, monsieur, but often
enough to keep your pantry stocked.’
‘And my mouth shut?’ He was looking at the radio.
Hélène ignored the threat. ‘You have a wife who knows how to cook?’
‘I live alone.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. I cook very well. And I sleep like a baby.’
‘Meaning?’
‘No contact with the Boches. I keep myself to myself.’
‘Then you’re lucky, monsieur. Your life is a bubble. You want some advice? Make sure it doesn’t burst.’
Benoit ignored the taunt. He wanted to know more about les heures volées. In French voler has two meanings, to fly and to steal. Benoit had opted for the first.
‘The hours that have flown?’ Hélène shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Then what does it mean?’
‘Guess.’
‘The stolen hours?’ The frown made him look like a child. ‘Why stolen?’
‘Because the Germans took everything. Even the way we measure our day. Having our clocks on Berlin time might be a small thing, monsieur, but there are still people in this country who resent that kind of theft.’
He nodded, then consulted the notes again.
‘Take great care of the stolen hours. A thousand kisses.’ He looked up. ‘So that’s the message you sent?’
‘Yes.’
‘To your German friend? With that fancy car of his?’
‘I think not.’
‘Then to who?’
Hélène shook her head. She was angry again. She’d had enough. When he asked whether the message had been a code of some sort, she told him to get off her land. When he stepped closer, wanting to pursue the conversation, she snatched the notepad from his hand. She could smell the alcohol on his breath. Calvados, she told herself. A single man living a life scored for resentment and a wilderness of empty bottles.
‘Go,’ she said again, standing her ground. ‘Unless you want the police at your door.’
‘Or the Boches at yours?’ He aimed a kick at the radio and missed. Then he made a visible effort to control himself before nodding across the lake towards the trees. ‘A rabbit or two, madame?’ He spat at her feet. ‘You’ll have to do better than that.’
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