by Lou Cadle
“I’ve slept worse places than a floor with a carpet. I’m sure I’ll be quite comfortable.”
“Suit yourself,” she said. “No, let me wash those bowls. You’re not doing it right.”
Feeling half exasperated and half amused, Antonia thanked the woman and asked to use the toilet. She was fortunate there was an indoor one, and so she carried her valise up there and made herself as presentable as possible. At least the sticks were out of her hair and the dirt scrubbed from her face when she was finished. She found a few spots of blood on her jacket and scrubbed at them. Probably the Nazi’s.
Then she went down to Will and watched him sleep for a moment. She was glad he could and hoped it meant the pain was bearable. She also hoped that whatever damage had been done to his kidneys would heal by itself. If they could extract him within a few days, she thought his chance of surviving was pretty good. But what did she know of it? She wasn’t a doctor.
She hoped, for Will’s sake, that what they’d done to his testicles had not permanently harmed him, that he’d function normally again. And that he’d be able to father children, if he desired that. He’d be a good father, kind and patient.
I could live a happy life without children, as long as I loved my husband. She pushed the thought aside. She was not likely to survive the war. She had a job to do here and now, and she needed to quit thinking of such frivolities—for so they were when the world was burning.
She touched his arm lightly, not hard enough to wake him, for herself and not for him, and then settled down on the floor and quickly fell to sleep.
A harsh voice woke her. “Get up.”
Chapter 29
“Wha—?” she said, fighting off the quilt, which was on top of her now. The light was dim—either sunset or sunrise, and she had no idea where she was for a second. Then she knew, and she sat up, blinking, afraid, but readying herself to fight.
“What are you doing in here?” The voice was familiar.
“Claude?”
“You are inside the house. This is—” he spluttered for a moment, trying to find the right word “—unacceptable. Dangerous.”
“I know,” she said, and she felt a wave of guilt. “She caught me drawing water to clean his injuries.” She reached up to the sofa, feeling for Will, and he was gone. That woke her up the rest of the way, and she was on her feet before she knew how she had gotten there. “Is he all right? Will? Bernard?”
“He is back in the barn, where he should be. And the two of you should move as soon as he can.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” She felt a wave of exhaustion, as if she had not slept at all, and sat heavily on the sofa. “How is your hand? Is it healing? I’m so happy to see you are still free.”
His voice was less angry when he answered. “My hand is fine. I had it stitched.”
“Good,” she said, and she couldn’t stop a yawn. “It’s evening, I take it?”
“Nearly.” Then his voice was stern again. “You put my—my family at risk.”
“Yes.” There was no use in denying it. “She’s hard to say no to.”
A long pause, and finally Claude sat next to her. “She is that.” The anger was gone.
“She had a gun. And a tongue that’s twice as dangerous.”
He chuckled. “You came to know her a little, I see.”
“Though she has compassion too, or she wouldn’t have cared so much about doctoring Will. Bernard, I mean.”
“I know who you meant. And who has doctored you?”
“Me? I have no injuries. I’m only tired. She fed us. That was kind.”
“And there will be more food, now that you’re awake.” He sighed. “I suppose you’re in no shape to keep walking tonight.”
“I could manage it. I’m not so sure about Bernard. Oh, Claude, they kicked him so many times, and there were studded truncheons, row after row of bloody wounds on his hips and thighs. And his poor testicles.” She shook her head, her eyes stinging with the memory of how he looked. “I don’t know how he walked the four or five miles out here like that.”
“She says you can stay as long as you need to. But I hate that.”
“If we’re in the barn, she can deny that she knew we were there.”
“Yes, there’s that. And she’s an old woman. They might just believe her if they find you and she tells them that. But you’ll have to leave the quilt here, and anything else that suggests you’ve been in this house.”
“That’s fine. And then tomorrow evening I have to listen for the radio anyway, so I’ll go as far as I can from here to do that.” She changed the subject. “How is it in town?”
“We tried to find a way to kill the scientist, Hesse. A sniper shot. But they protected him to well, and he is gone. At least our shooter was not caught.”
“Damn. Good job trying. Are the Germans searching for their escaped prisoner? Taking retribution for the blown bridge, the dead guards? Or even for the attempted kidnapping before that?”
“Their usual routine, yes. One good thing is that it has freed Leonce from surveillance.”
“How so?”
“They had someone on him the whole time. As he was innocent of either of the incidents, they seem to have gone back to thinking he was nothing more than a random drunk, just as he claimed. They needed the man they had tailing him for this new search.”
“That is a relief. He gave me a chance to get away from the radio truck with that drunken act. I may have the chance to thank him yet.”
“So you’re not leaving with the Englishman?”
“No. Why would I?”
“Because you care for him.”
“I care for you. And Genevieve. And Leonce. And France itself.”
“Hmmph,” he said.
“I have a job to do. I’m doing my job.”
“I wasn’t sure. The heart wants what the heart wants,” he said.
“My heart wants to kill more Nazis. Now that I have a taste of it, I want the whole meal. Do you have any new operational plans that can help that happen?”
“I think it’s best if you lie low for a week. They are on the hunt for whoever released their prisoner. They have no descriptions, but they are looking as closely at women as at men, and you are a stranger with false papers.”
“Genevieve is safe? And Madame Charlevoix?”
“Both safe. Their ages offer some protection.”
“Good.”
“But you might, once you get Bernard sent home, climb to the other place, the crumbling mansion, as you called it, and wait there for a week.”
“Can I get any food to take with me?”
“I’ll work on that. Rationing is so strict right now, it’s getting harder and harder.”
“You can have most of my money to buy on the black market.”
“Even that is an unreliable source of food anymore. Speaking of food,” he said, standing, “I know my relative wants to make you a meal. So go to the barn, and I’ll bring it to you.”
“Thank you. Would you mind if I use the WC first?”
He rolled his eyes. “Go on, then.”
The old woman shouted from the kitchen, “I left a hand towel for her! Don’t use mine!”
Antonia smiled. She might have a sharp tongue, but the old woman had a softer heart than she let on. “Merci,” she called back, and she trotted up the stairs.
* * *
Will was awake in the barn, seated on a crate, watching the chickens, who had settled down with the setting of the sun. “They do seem contented,” he said.
“Food, water, a few pieces of gravel,” she said. “That’s all they need.”
“We should be more like animals,” he said. “I mean, we are animals, but we do seem to make everything more complicated than it needs to be.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Except philosophical? I’m better. A soft bed felt good. Or couch, rather. The pain is less.”
“I’m glad you don’t deny having any at all.”
“Hmm, like you do?”
“I have no pain.”
“See?”
“But I don’t. Oh, a little ache where I strained a muscle, but it is much better now. In three days, I won’t recall having it.”
“You don’t feel stiff from lying on the floor?” He was grinning for some reason.
“No,” she lied. “Fit as a fiddle.”
He sang, “And ready for love.”
It sat there between them, and soon his smile faded. “Sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for. Do you like music?”
“Very much. Doesn’t everyone?”
Her French aunt had not. “Everyone sensible.”
“There you are. I’m sensible.”
“I don’t know that the sensible get airdropped into France to do the work we do.”
“Of course they do. And I am not like you. I had a very short assignment. You’re the brave one, willing to fight the Nazis on their own turf.”
“And yet it is you who risked all for the mission.”
He shook his head. “Some mission. I failed entirely.”
“It was bad luck. Bad timing. That happens.”
“At least I was the only one captured.” He looked stricken. “I was, wasn’t I?”
“Yes. No one else was harmed. Or revealed.”
“Thank God for that, at least.”
The door opened then and Claude came in, carrying a plank of wood like a tray, with two plates, two glasses, and a bottle of wine on it. “Food. She insisted on the wine.”
“Thank her for us,” Antonia said. “It’s awfully generous.”
The plates were laden with scrambled eggs and vegetables, with golden fried potatoes to the side. Claude set the tray in front of Will, but the chickens grew interested and he picked it back up. “I’ll put the hens up for the night.”
“I’ll take it,” Antonia said, and took the tray, which was heavy. “What should I do with the plates and glasses when we are done?”
“Leave them on the back stoop. Make sure no one is watching first. Then tap on the door and come right back here.”
“Of course.”
Claude shut away the hens in their small enclosure. “I’ll return as soon after dawn as I can, morning after tomorrow. She won’t hear of your leaving, and believe me, I tried to argue her out of it, so you stay right here until then.”
“Thank you,” Antonia said, setting down the tray in front of Will. To Claude she said, “Vive la France.”
“Yes, yes,” he said, still a little irritated, apparently, at all of this. And who could blame him? “Morning after tomorrow,” he said, and he left.
“A feast,” Antonia said to Will. “You probably haven’t eaten this well in some time.”
“They fed me once that I can remember. It’s all a bit hazy after the first day,” Will said.
She stilled the urge to apologize again. It wasn’t his fault he’d been caught, but it wasn’t hers either. It truly had been rotten luck. “Want to pour the wine?”
“I’ll let you do it. You probably know more than I do.”
“Not a wine aficionado?”
“Not really. Some beer back home. A whiskey or two in England, but I confess I’ve never grown fond of it. Wine seldom. My father and mother did not drink. Perhaps that is why I never took to it.”
The cork had already been removed and was loosely inserted. She pulled it out, smelled the wine, and poured two glasses. She looked around, but there was no place she trusted to set the unopened bottle where it might not spill, so she twisted the cork partway back in. Then she sat across from him, on the floor.
“I feel silly, being so much higher than you.”
“Stay where you are. It’ll be easier to stand when you’re done.” She handed him his plate. “Bon appetit.”
“Here’s mud in your eye,” he said, raising the wine glass. He tried it. “Not bad. I think I’d prefer something sweeter.”
She tasted the wine, rolling it around in her mouth. It was not a bad wine at all, two steps better than vin ordinaire. The food was even better, still warm, the eggs rich, cooked with sorrel and some other green, and there was a hint of butter. It was kind of the old woman to share what must be a rare resource.
“Claude seemed out of sorts, though I could not understand all he said,” Will said.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I forget you can’t keep up. He feels that we put the old woman at risk.”
“We did. Or I did. You wouldn’t need to be here if not for me.”
She waved that aside. “I think he did not know that she knew that he was in the Résistance.”
“They know each other?”
“Yes. It’s how he knew the barn was here.”
“Is it his mother?”
“I don’t know. We don’t talk about the details, so there won’t be details to torture—” She stopped. “I’m sorry to remind you.”
“I don’t need your words to remember it,” he said.
She ate in silence for a time, taking advantage of the warm food while she had it. “The memory will fade, I imagine,” she finally said. Her bad memories had. Even the meeting with the colonel, her pain at his words, the shock of the telegram—all that was more like a pencil drawing left all year in the sun, the lines no longer sharp and black. She hoped physical pain would fade in the mind as well, for Will’s sake.
“You were thinking of something sad.”
“I was thinking I am less sad than I have been for many months,” she said. “And I must work on my expression. If the Germans can read me as easily as you can, I won’t need to talk. They can ask questions and they’ll know the answers before I speak.”
“I don’t think a stranger could read you.”
“Are we not strangers? Would you like more wine?”
“A half a glass, perhaps.”
She gave herself the same. There was only an inch or two left in the bottle.
He said, “I don’t feel we’re strangers. I’ve talked more with you than I have with many of the men I’m stationed with. About important things, at least. You and I haven’t debated the merits of hockey.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have much of an opinion, and I’ve never seen hockey. Ice hockey, I assume you mean.”
“Yes, I did mean, and it’s a useless conversation men have. Something to pass the time. Something to do that is not talking about the real things.”
“What are the real things for you?”
“Worrying about my family and the ranch. With two of us gone—my sister is in the Royal Canadian Air Force—and very few men around to hire, I know it’s a struggle for them.”
“Does your government take a portion of the sheep?”
“They buy some, at a fair enough price. And my parents are patriots, so they don’t mind a few dollars fewer every year.”
She hunted for another morsel on her plate, but she had cleaned it. She set it aside. “I’m sure they’d like for you to be home. You still lived there when you were called up? Or did you volunteer?”
“Called up. I lived on the property until then, though not in the main house,” he said. “I wanted some privacy from them after university.”
“Did you cook for yourself?”
“When my mother let me. There’s an argument I don’t miss having twice a day. How about your folks? Do you miss them?”
“Almost daily,” she said. “They’re both dead.”
“I’m sorry. Did you tell me that before?”
“No, and I shouldn’t tell you now. But it’s hard to keep my walls up when I’m fed and feeling safe. And it’s hard to keep my walls up around you.”
“I’m glad to hear that last bit. But I’m terribly sorry about your parents. The war?”
“Yes.” She left it at that.
“And then your husband. No wonder you hate the Nazis so much.”
“All fascists, not just the Germans. People should be left alone to live their lives in peace. And
it doesn’t matter if you’re gypsy or Protestant or a Jew or African or whatever. People are people. Singling out some group for abuse is unthinkable to me. I wonder what is wrong with people.” She said, “Who in your country is singled out to be blamed?”
“There’s some French-speaking and English-speaking tension. I suppose the Indians have it the worst. I mean the people who had the land before the Scottish and English and French arrived, not Punjabs.”
“And yet you do not have a fascist government. Or is there any sign it is going that way?”
“No. We’re in the Commonwealth, though I wonder for how long. It seems one day we’ll surely be on our own. It’s hard to govern across an ocean. I think the world after the war will change a good deal. But fascism in Canada? No.”
She probably wouldn’t be around to see the post-war changes to the world. The thought wouldn’t have bothered her at all a month ago. She pushed aside the troubled feelings it stirred now. “I wonder what the next century will be like, after everyone who was in the war is gone. What war will be like then. If fascism will end.”
“I doubt it. There will always be a few evil men, and a third of the population that are easily led.”
“Like sheep,” she said.
“Sheep are not so easily led. It’s why you have dogs to nip at their heels.”
“Tell me about your dogs.”
She listened happily to his memories of childhood dogs, their antics, and how he trained them to herd. It was easier to think about than the war or her future. And she liked watching his face as he talked, how it was animated, and how easily he smiled despite his pain, the faraway look in his eyes as he remembered home.
“What?” he said.
“I’m sorry, what do you mean, ‘what?’”
“You’re looking at me so oddly.”
“Just enjoying your stories.”
“I wish you’d tell me some of yours.”
She cast back to try and remember something that would be innocuous and impossible to use against her, should the Nazis learn of it. “My parents used to have parties.” They had been of artists, radicals, and writers, lively affairs that often lasted past dawn the next day. “I was allowed to attend if I behaved. When I was old enough, for some reason, I decided I should play like I was of a domestic staff, and I carried around trays of food. At first, just olives and simple fare. But as I grew older, I started making little treats. Canapés. Nothing that required cooking, you understand, but salami, cheeses, asparagus tips, slivers of artichoke hearts and palm hearts, and so on. Tiny courgettes, raw, sliced, spread with soft cheese and sprinkled with herbs.”