A Country Road, A Tree (24 page)

“Everyone’s in the same boat,” Suzanne says. “It’s just a question of waiting. The war can’t go on for ever.”

He nods. He thinks, it doesn’t have to. “Well,” he says. “I have to get to work.”

—

There is frost on the ground. His toes are numb in his stupid boots. He walks the long lane down to the vineyard.

The vines are bare, the leaves fallen. The lad, Fernand, is half his age, and is showing him the ropes. The light makes him squint; it is too much. Van Gogh’s paintings: those dim muddy northern scenes, the industrial dirt and misery; but then he’s bowled over by the southern light, by these sun-saturated yellows, by this exact blue. Art is such a consolation. If he himself could paint—but he cannot paint. He turns the collar up on his coat: the faint whiff of it even now, cheroots and lemon. He is marching down the vineyards with a half-bushel basket, a roll of twine, a knife, wearing a dead man’s coat, while the German Army snakes out along the lanes and trackways like poison in the blood, and he daydreams about Van Gogh, and makes nothing happen.

“Come, let me show you,” says the boy. “You must pay close attention, the knife is sharp.”

The lad is
vouvoyer
ing him, being well brought up: the state he’s in, he has hardly earned the formal mode. At the foot of the slope they step in between the rows of vines. Fernand bends, his young fingers feeling through the splayed, sinewy growth.

“Now watch.”

He takes out a stubby, vicious little knife, the steel blade scraped and scored with striations from the whetstone. He makes a swift sloping cut. He lifts away a horizontal arm of vine, dumps it into his basket.

“These ones here, they fruited this summer. They have to go.” He cuts again, lobs aside another sinewy growth.

“Right.”

The lad scrolls out a length of twine, bends the remaining shoots down to the supporting wires and ties them off.

“Like this,” he says, “One left, one right, spread just so. You understand?”

“I think so.”

The boy smiles. His teeth are white against his tanned skin. It is one of those faces that will be deep in wrinkles by the time he’s thirty. He returns to the work and with three deft cuts he finishes the vine, one to the left shoot, one to the right. “On the central shoot, count three strong buds, then cut.”

He leaves the vine standing like the Cooldrinagh roses in the autumn: neat, abrupt, having been shown who’s boss.

“Now, you—this one here. I’ll watch.”

The palm-worn haft in his right hand, he reaches into the vine and grips the summer’s growth. He copies Fernand’s sharp angled cut. The boy nods approvingly.

He ties the stems down, clips them back, cuts away the central shoot.

“Good. If you need me, I shall be off along the next row, over there.”

He gets to work. He bends, cuts, ties, straightens, dumps the waste aside. He bends, cuts, ties, straightens, dumps the waste aside. He unbuttons the coat. Later, he takes it off entirely and lobs it on to the grass and it lies forgotten.

The rhythm of the work loosens his thoughts; they begin to shift and slide. He’s no longer where he is; time passes differently: an empty train station, the rub of a blistered heel, and the evening soft, and someone watching and someone being watched. And while he drifts with these thoughts, the blade slips and sheers aside, and instead of grapevine he slices deep into the ball of his thumb.

There is a moment’s pause between the damage done and the pain of it. He lifts the knife out of the flesh. He watches as the wound opens like a little mouth: blood beads there and rolls and drips. Blood slides across his hand and falls to the parched winter grass. It’s only then that he starts fumbling for a handkerchief, and his head swims.

The boy looks over. The handkerchief is wrapped tight and useless, already red and wet with blood. The boy comes running.

—

They sit him down in the dim kitchen, where it is warm and smells of woodsmoke and onions. Madame fusses, dabs on alcohol, fixes strips of sticking plaster to hold the wound together, then binds the hand with gauze. He winces. His arm throbs up to the elbow. The blood still comes, though slower now.

Monsieur sets a tumbler down in front of him; it has an inch of brandy in it, and Madame drops a lump of sugar in and crushes it and stirs. She has a round face, red cheeks, her chin sweetly fuzzed with down.

Monsieur scrapes out a chair and sits. He pours himself a drink too. “Plenty round here are missing a finger or two.”

He nods, but then regrets it. It makes his head swim.

The farmer takes a battered old tin from his breast pocket, and proffers it. “Cigarette?”

“Thank you.” With his good hand, he teases out a cigarette and tucks it between his lips. It’s a ready-made, he notices. He hasn’t had one of those in a while.

The farmer heaves himself up to light a spill at the fire.

“It’s good?” Monsieur asks when both their cigarettes are lit.

It is toasty and soft.

“That’s American tobacco, you know.”

He takes the cigarette from his lips, turns it. Of course it is.

“I have my contacts,” Monsieur says. “So. We get hold of things.”

“Ah, for God’s sake.” This is Madame now. “Can’t you see the poor fellow’s exhausted? All the Jews are. They’re worn out, the poor things.”

“He’s not a Jew. Are you a Jew, Irishman?”

“No, I don’t have that distinction.”

Madame wafts a hand. “
Pft.
It’s all the same. Just you leave him be.”

She dumps a saucer down between them for the ash. Then she bustles off and busies herself about the stove, riddling the grate, clattering the pans, slamming the oven door.

He sips his brandy and the farmer talks.

“I wonder why you had to come here. Since you are not a Jew. And you are from a neutral country, Ireland, and so you should not be harassed in Paris, you should be able to get by. I don’t think you are a homosexual?”

He raises a shoulder. “I don’t think so either.”

“So I wonder what it was that you were up to, up there in the north.”

“This,” he says, “and that.”

The farmer nods. “A busy man. You’ll be bored here.”

“I have work.”

“But perhaps you’ll want other kinds of work.”

He rubs at the back of his neck. He suspects, but is not certain of what is not being said. The cigarette is the clue. Contraband. Supplied by the Allies to the
Maquis.
“I think my companion would disapprove.”

“Well,” the farmer says. “You think about it.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Then you tell your companion what you’re going to do.”

“Is that how it works?”

The farmer laughs, sets his cigarette down in the saucer. His wife, on the other side of the kitchen, lets out a snort.

“No.” The farmer raises his glass in a toast. They chink. They both drain the dregs. The liquid is thick and crunches with grains of sugar.

—

Suzanne has wedged a chair in between the bed and the window, for the light. A bolt of thick grey wool is spread over her knees and the counterpane. It’s a blanket; she is under commission to turn it into a coat. She is hand-stitching the whole thing. It’s trying to the eyes and on the hands. She looks up when he comes in; she says good evening, she notices the bandage. Tuts.

“What did you do now?”

“It’s nothing. Madame cleaned it up, so…” She doesn’t offer any further comment, so he just continues, “…it will be fine.”

He opens his bag, wincing, and lifts his supplies out on to the bed. The room is stuffy and cold, and there are voices to be heard from beyond the wall. She gets up and folds the fabric away, stabs her needle into it. Kneading at a shoulder muscle, she inches round the edge of the bed to inspect the haul.

One-handed, he unfurls a parcel of waxed paper. A clutch of olives. He unfolds another napkin and there is a small, fresh goat’s cheese and a cube of quince jelly. He lifts out a wine bottle; it’s unlabelled, the cork already drawn then shoved halfway back in. He plucks the bottle open, sloshes wine into a tooth glass, hands it to her. He sits. The mattress dips. The nest of olives tips over sideways, the cheese slides downhill towards him and he has to catch it and put it back. She hands him the glass. When he lifts his elbow to drink, she has to lean away. No room to park his arse, no room to lift an elbow, not even certain he can still tell one from the other any more. His head is locked solid with it all, with the weeks of it; the tumblers of his mind are rusted and they’re stuck and he can’t make them shift, and he can’t think for all the closeness, the crowding, everything jammed up around him and yet nothing within reach, everything bundled and boxed and getting under his feet and in his way.

“We are invited over for dinner on Saturday, to the Bonnellys’,” he says, rubbing at his eyes.

“Oh. Good.” She takes the glass off him again and sips.

He divides the olives, the cheese, the preserve, on to the two napkins. There is an extra olive so he gives it to her; he breaks the cheese into uneven pieces and sets the larger portion on her napkin. He hands the meal to her. They eat wordlessly, crumb by crumb, pausing to spit pits into their palms. After the last sticky swallow, there is silence between them again.

He holds up the bottle; she proffers the glass. The wine sloshes in.

“They seem to be very pleasant people,” he manages.

“Oh yes,” she says.

“Generous, too.”

“Good.”

“All this for just an afternoon’s work.”

She blinks at him. “I am doing what I can, you know.”

“I know.”

“I am going mad here, stuck here, stuck with this. My hands hurt.”

He nods. He knows.

“Just like you to be like that.”

He hadn’t realized that he was being like anything. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing ever touches you.”

She’s flushed now. “In truth, I think it’s all the same to you, all of it. If we stay in Paris and die or if we hide in a hole here and go mad, and then die all the same. You do not even notice.”

“I am not finding it easy, Suzanne.”

“Pft.”

“What?”

She looks at him, hard and level, cool with disappointment. She could say: I saw your notebook, back in the apartment, full of nonsense. You spend your time doodling and scratching things out. That is just how you are. You won’t make anything of anything at all.

But she says, “And now we are stuck here, caught like rats in a trap in this dreadful hotel. Even with all the trouble and fatigue of getting here, we are still not safe.”

“We’re alive. So we’re rather lumbered with the rest.”

“You don’t seem to care.”

“You think we should stop, then?”

“Stop?”

“Stop. Just—give up.”

She makes that movement of the mouth, the lips bunched together, the corners turned down, which passes with her sometimes for a shrug.

He could say: I know what stopping looks like. It looks like a man stepping out into the sky. It looks like the ground racing up to meet you. It looks like a black comma on the cobblestones. It looks like a pool of blood.

But he says, “Is that what you suggest?”

“I’m not suggesting anything,” she says.

“No.” He drinks, sets the tooth mug aside, picks up a crumb of cheese. His injured hand rests limp in his lap. “I see that.”

She glares at him, brittle and unhappy. Too much store had been set upon the destination. Continuance here, inhabitance—that had barely crossed her mind. Now they’re stuck with the day-to-day of it, the day-after-day of it, for as far as the eye can see, and it might as well be eternity; and they are tangled together, twining round each other; they are all elbows, feet and claws.

“Do the Lobs have a piano, perhaps, out at Saint-Michel?” he asks.

“Maybe.”

“Perhaps you could go and play there. That would be good for you. They wouldn’t mind.”

She nods.

“Maybe you could even take pupils again. There must be young ones around here who’d otherwise miss out. You’ve always loved teaching. That would help.”

She looks at him. Then she says, “You’re so much better at this than me.”

“No,” he says. “No, I’m not.”

She nods, though. And then she says, “Perhaps we can find somewhere more out of the way. A house just outside town. So if the place is raided, we won’t be stuck here like fish in a barrel.”

“I’ll ask a friend.”

Suzanne blows a puff of breath.

“What?”

“A friend.”

“What?”

“You.”

“What?”

“You and your friends.”

“What do you mean, me and my friends?”

“You make friends like dogs make puppies.”

He frowns at this. Promiscuously? With pleasure? By the half-dozen? He doesn’t ask. But Anna Beamish will have an idea or two where they might look for more out-of-the-way accommodation. And he doesn’t mention his unsettling conversation with Monsieur. No point in meeting that particular trouble halfway.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

LA CROIX

January 1943

This is the place, then: the little house on the edge of town. He climbs the creaking stairs. The wind rattles the shutters against their latches. He has Shem’s old coat on, a muffler drawn up over his mouth and nose and dampened by his breath.

The upstairs room swells wide and dim, slope-ceilinged, with a window in each gable. There is a bedstead, an armoire, a small table and chair. The walls are rose-painted plaster. Beyond the back window, there’s just rattling, tormented branches, and black birds tumbling and skittering about. Looking out of the front window, across the road, the ground falls away sharply, so he stands now above the treetops and can see all the way across the valley to the distant mountains beyond. From here, turn right and walk ten minutes into town. Turn left and the nearest house is Miss Beamish’s, only just in sight, down at the crossroads.

This is a pool of space; this is a silence wide enough to swim in. If writing could happen at all, in these days, it would happen in a place like this. Here, perhaps, he could make a little slime to ease himself along.