Dark Summer in Bordeaux (27 page)

‘Go there straight away. Tell nobody. Not even your mother. Understand? But give me her address and when you’ve been got out of Bordeaux, I’ll see her myself.’

‘She won’t care what happens to me – except that I won’t be bringing any money in.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true.’

‘You don’t know her.’

When he had got the address and sent Karim off to Fernand’s, with instructions that he was to present himself as the new kitchen assistant, Lannes’ thoughts turned to Léon. Perhaps Miriam knew where he was. Or Alain?

XXXIX

Alain woke early before the sun had broken through morning mist. He got out of bed, careful not to wake Dominique. He picked up his clothes and, dressed only in his underpants, went through to the bathroom. He flapped cold water on his face, brushed his teeth, and, dropping to the floor, did twenty-five press-ups. Then, from a wide stance, he touched his right toes with his left hand, his left ones with his right, repeating each exercise twenty times. He ran his hands over his body and was happy to find that he hadn’t raised a sweat. He dressed in a white singlet and blue cotton trousers and went barefoot through to the kitchen where his father was already up, sitting over his coffee, with half a dozen cigarette stubs in the ashtray. He poured himself coffee from the pot and sat down facing Lannes. For a moment they sat in silence, companionable silence. Alain thought, ‘I’ve got to tell him,’ but still hesitated.

Lannes said, ‘Have you seen Léon recently?’

‘Why, yes, of course, we’re good friends as you know and . . . why do you ask? Is he in trouble of some sort?’

‘Henri’s worried about him. He has taken to being out of the shop.’

‘I expect he gets bored. There aren’t many customers now, he says.’

‘Do you know where his mother lives?’

‘No idea. Miriam would know of course.’

‘Yes of course.’

Each had something to tell the other. Neither could find the words to speak. Across the courtyard a baby began to cry. Alain pushed away the lock of hair that fell over his left eye. Lannes lit another cigarette and smiled at the boy.

‘I like these early mornings,’ he said. ‘You’re well muscled now.’

‘I have to be for rugby, but . . . ’

‘But?’

‘Nothing. Who’s the Comte de St-Hilaire?’

‘What a strange question. Why do you want to know?’

Alain twisted his finger in his hair.

‘My friend Jérôme took me to see him. He’s his godfather, and some sort of cousin. Léon came with us. He asked me to say he would be pleased if you were to pay him a visit. I don’t know why.’

‘Go on. There’s something else, isn’t there?’

Alain hesitated, got up, crossed to the window, and leaned there with his arms on the sill. His legs were long and straight. He’s almost grown up, Lannes thought.

‘You have to go on,’ he said.

Alain turned, very slowly and lifting his chin looked his father in the face.

‘That’s just it,’ he said, ‘going on. We – the three of us – it’s intolerable here, the Occupation. For years perhaps. And Vichy. And I don’t know what. So . . . ’

It all spilled out in a rush of words: de Gaulle, Free France, London, North Africa, what the Comte de St-Hilaire had arranged, and finally, ‘You must see, Papa, it’s what we want to do and what we have to do, need to do, really. You can’t disapprove, you think as I do, about things, don’t you?’

Lannes said, ‘It’s what I was afraid of.’

‘Afraid?’

‘Yes, Alain, afraid. All fathers are afraid for their children, and the more spirited the children are, the sharper the fear . . . ’ He thought, Alain’s the brightest, I’ve always known that, and it makes him vulnerable because he sees himself as a winner always, but he also has the biggest dark side of any in the family, which he keeps so well concealed most of the time that people can know him, think they know him well, and never be aware of it. But I’ve always known it was there. I’ve seen it on the rugby field where he has moments of meanness, and he’s the only one of us who might kill or die for an idea. Which is why Marguerite doesn’t understand him, why she is impatient with him as she isn’t with the others and calls him selfish. I’ve always known he could go off the rails, and though what he is proposing to do isn’t that, I don’t know where it will lead him. I admire him and am afraid for him and I’m envious of him because I wish I had the courage to break away myself instead of which I’m bound to this wheel of duty and responsibility . . . And then in his whirl of confusion he thought, but, despite the danger he is running into, and will be in whatever use they put him to, he may yet be safer than if he stayed here fretting in Bordeaux, where he might get involved in something that was stupid as well as dangerous. Which is how eventually I shall put it to his mother.

Alain said, ‘I didn’t know if I could tell you. I thought of just leaving a note. And then I knew I had to speak. It would have been cowardly not to. But you won’t tell Maman, will you, not till I’ve gone.’

‘No, I won’t,’ Lannes said, knowing this was treachery. But speaking would be treachery too.

He embraced Alain, hugging him close and then kissing him on both cheeks.

‘I’m afraid for you, that can’t be avoided, but I admire you too.

We must always try to do what seems right and feels necessary. Now I must go to work.’

‘Thank you, Papa. I promise I’ll . . . ’

‘Don’t promise anything. It’s better that way.’

As he descended the stairs he thought, it’s a solution for Léon too, but what of Miriam and his mother? And what can the Comte de St-Hilaire want of me?

It was a beautiful June morning. The sun shone, leaves on the trees sparkled after night rain. There was a song in his heart that he couldn’t account for. He must tell Fernand that there would be only one boy to get out of Bordeaux. Then he understood why he was happy: he had never felt so close to Alain. It’s crazy, he thought, I’m a beat-up policeman with a lousy job, in hock to the Nazis in our beautiful occupied city in our lovely humiliated France, and my boy has just confided that he’s embarking on a ship that may sink at any moment for a voyage that may lead him to destruction, and I’m happy. It makes no sense, except that it makes a lot of sense. I’m so proud of him and so afraid for him.

The Alsatian was wearing what looked like a new suit: double-breasted, dove-grey with a thin pale pinstripe. His shirt was cream-coloured, his tie maroon, and there was a white carnation in his button-hole. His black shoes were highly polished.

‘I’m bidden to lunch with our new Prefect,’ he said. ‘We are, apparently, to discuss ways in which we may advance the national revolution. Our first preoccupation, I’m informed, must be the means of preparing for the New European Order.’

‘Good luck to you,’ Lannes said.

‘Oh, I don’t take it seriously, as you may imagine. But it’s necessary to go through the motions. Talking of which, Kord-linger has been badgering me. He wants to be kept informed about the course of your investigations.’

‘And you told him that was a matter for the French police?’

‘Not precisely. There’s no point antagonising the man. And unfortunately he is by no means a fool, not your bull-necked Prussian with a block of wood for a head.’

He perched on the corner of Lannes’ desk, and swung his foot.

‘So have you anything for him? We really don’t want to stir him up.’

‘Enquiries are proceeding. You can dress it up in bureaucratic guff if you like, but the only conclusion I’ve come to so far is that Schussmann was even more of a bloody fool than I had supposed. I don’t suppose you want to tell him that, however.’

‘Don’t think it would serve.’

He clipped the end of a cigar and lit it with a match.

‘We’re going to have to give him something,’ he said. ‘Someone actually.’

And it doesn’t matter to you what happens to whichever boy we select as victim, Lannes thought.

‘It’s not so easy,’ he said. ‘Still, you can tell him I’m devoting my time to it and hope to have something for him in a couple of days. Meanwhile you might ask him if I could be given a copy of Schussmann’s suicide note. I’m assuming there was one. And a diary, if he kept one’

‘He’ll never agree to that.’

‘Tell him co-operation’s a two-way street.’

Schnyder smiled.

‘I’m glad to see you still keep your sense of humour, Jean.’

‘What else is left to us?’ Lannes said.

German proverb, he thought: when the Devil is hungry, he eats flies.

He left the office, with no purpose in mind. It was simply that he found the place oppressive, and in any case there was nothing for him there but paperwork, none of it of any importance. It was better in the streets where the Bordelais went about their business with an appearance of unconcern, so thoroughly had most of them now accustomed themselves to the Occupation. What else was there for them to do? It wasn’t even as if real life was in suspension. On the contrary, real life is whatever it is here and now. Lannes knew well how easily men could reconcile themselves to life behind bars. Those who rebelled against prison were the exceptions. Even first-time offenders, let alone old lags, made a routine for themselves in a matter of weeks, sometimes even days. Life goes on wherever you find yourself. He thought of Yvette, stretched out invitingly on her bed; how else should she be expected to behave? He went into the Rugby Bar to telephone the Comte de St-Hilaire’s residence and made an appointment for that afternoon. Then he called Fernand to check that Karim had presented himself and to say that other arrangements had been made for the other boy. He drank a glass of beer and thought about Alain and why he had made no effort to dissuade him, as he had put the case against going to Vichy to Dominique. Was it because he believed that, against all appearances, Hitler would yet lose the war that Dominique’s course seemed more dangerous? And yet it was Alain who risked being killed.

When the Comte de St-Hilaire joined him in the salon where the butler had asked him to wait, Lannes, like Léon there before him, was conscious of the shabbiness of his suit, also of the exhaustion which was the result of the empty wandering hours since he had left the office. St-Hilaire extended his hand, asked him to sit down, and then waited without speaking while the butler brought in wine and poured each a glass.

‘My son said you wanted to see me. He also told me what you are doing for him and his friends.’

‘And does that displease you?’

‘Say rather that it alarms me.’

‘Yes, of course it must. You will understand it was my godson who approached me and told me that he and his friends were determined to find a way to join the Free French. I have to say that I didn’t try to dissuade him, and not only because I approved his determination. I took it on myself to make arrangements because I was in a position to ensure that the first steps at least should be safe, or as safe as anything can be now, and because I feared that any action they might take themselves would be as dangerous as it was rash. How does one deal with the impetuosity of youth and the ignorance of innocents? Have you come to reprove me?’

Despite the question, there was a flinty arrogance in his tone.