Dark Summer in Bordeaux (29 page)

Clothilde was alone in the apartment when he returned. She was bare-legged in a summer dress, with sandals on her feet. Her face glowed.

‘You’re looking very smart, darling. Are you off somewhere?’

‘Just to the cinema.’

‘With your German?’

‘Manu? No, Papa, that’s over. I took your advice. Anyway his unit’s been recalled. Just with Dominique and a friend of his from the legion.’

And it’s the friend, he thought, who accounts for the excitement you are trying to suppress.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’ll bring him back afterwards?’

‘Depends on how long the movie lasts. The curfew, you know.’

‘Yes, of course, the curfew. Where’s your mother?’

‘She went to see Granny. Apparently she’s got a pain. I must fly or I’ll be late.’

She gave him a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek.

‘Don’t worry, Papa. I’m happy.’

‘I can see that.’

‘You worry too much. You know you do. And it’s pointless.’

It was strange to be in the apartment alone with the sunlight slanting in and falling on the bowl of pink roses on the table. It felt wrong. He couldn’t settle to read, but found nothing else to do. Pointless to worry? How could he not? He put a record on the gramophone: Ravel’s Bolero. Quite the wrong music, with its insistent gathering tension; but he couldn’t bring himself to take it off and play something else. He lay back in a chair and closed his eyes. The music stopped and there was only the whirring as the turntable went round and round. He fell asleep.

When he woke he heard Marguerite busy in the kitchen.

‘You look terrible,’ she said.

‘I always do when I wake from an afternoon sleep. You know that.’

‘You didn’t used to. How I wish you weren’t a policeman. I’ve always felt like that, but it’s worse now. It’s not only that you are always exhausted, it’s because I’m convinced you have come to hate the job itself.’

He felt closer to her than he had for months, but all he could reply was: ‘How would we live if I wasn’t?’

She looked away, lowering her eyes.

‘I would feel that I was running away,’ he said.

‘And why not?’

‘The war and the Occupation won’t last for ever.’

‘Won’t they?’

‘I’m sure they won’t. How was your mother?’

‘It’s her liver, she says, but I think it’s mostly boredom and bad temper. And she complains about rationing and worries about money.’

‘Don’t we all? It’s a lovely afternoon. Come for a walk, eat an ice-cream in a café? We haven’t done that for a long time.’

He took her hand as they strolled to the Place de l’Ancienne Comédie, and thought that this was how they had walked through the streets before they were married and indeed in the early years of marriage, when she was still only a wife and not a mother. Was it the thought of Clothilde’s face, glowing with happiness as it had been that afternoon, which awoke this feeling of tenderness in him? He was ashamed to remember that only a couple of hours previously he had been imagining Yvette lying naked on her bed. He squeezed his wife’s hand and found the pressure returned.

He ordered an ice-cream each and a citron pressé for Marguerite and a marc for himself. Their silence in the sunlight was companionable, without strain. They spoke first of Dominique.

‘You’ll miss him,’ he said. ‘So will I of course,’ he added, as if his first words suggested indifference.

‘Of course we will, but he is so eager to do good, and he says this work is so worthwhile, that it would have been selfish to try to persuade him to stay at home. Birds must fly from the nest, I do realise that, Jean.’

‘Who’s Clothilde’s new boy? Have you met him?’

‘Oh yes, he’s charming, quite charming, a well-brought-up boy from a good family, I’m sure. I told you that young German was merely a passing phase.’

‘Well, it seems you were right there.’

‘Of course I was. I do know our children, Jean. As for this boy – he’s called Michel – he is good looking, which isn’t so important, and has lovely manners.’

‘Very different from me then,’ he said.

‘Oh I don’t know,’ she smiled. ‘Nothing wrong with your manners, not when we were young anyway. Even Mother approved of you then.’

‘Not so as I noticed,’ he said, and returned her smile.

‘You don’t need to worry about Clothilde. I know she irritates me and I’m sometimes short with her, but she’s a sensible child really, and as for this boy, when you think of how she is deprived of so much that she should enjoy at her age, I can only be happy to see her engaged in what is probably only a flirtation. It’s Alain who causes me concern. I never know what he is thinking or what he wants and he is so intense that I am really afraid he will do something stupid. I know you think he’s perfect, Jean, just because he plays rugby and reads books, but I am so anxious for him, and not only because he never speaks to me about his feelings, unlike Dominique who tells me everything.’

It occurred to him that this might be the moment, when for the first time in so long they were really talking to each other, to tell her of Alain’s intentions. But he had promised him not to speak of his plans till he had gone.

‘We have to trust our children, all of them, to do what they think best,’ he said.

‘That’s weak, Jean. Alain’s too young and immature to know what is good for him.’

XLI

Lannes kept well back from the platform as the train pulled out, ten minutes late in leaving. Alain had slipped out of the house, early, as he quite often did, before his mother was awake. He met Léon and Jérôme as arranged in Gustave’s Bar near the station. It had been Lannes’ suggestion, and he joined the boys there. They were nervous, all four. Only Jérôme managed to assume an air of gaiety and make jokes.

‘There’s no need to be anxious,’ he said, ‘my godfather’s plans never go wrong’ – an assurance that failed to reassure Lannes; he felt his stomach tightening. Gustave brought them coffee and croissants as if it was an ordinary morning. Lannes ran over words of advice in his mind, but couldn’t bring himself to utter them. He sensed they were eager for him to go, to leave them on their own with their adventure; he was the odd one out. They had no need of him.

Léon said, ‘You will see to my aunt, won’t you? And . . . ’ ‘Of course I will. She’ll be relieved, I think, that you are getting away, and, as I’ve said, there is nothing you could do to protect her if you remained here. Your mother too will be happy to think you are safe. They’ll both know that you are acting for the best.’

‘I feel guilty nevertheless,’ Léon said. ‘I did speak to Henri, as you told me to. That was bad enough. He wept.’

‘He’s fond of you. What about your parents, Jérôme?’

‘My godfather’s invited them to lunch, and I gave him a note for my mother. It’s all right. He’ll see that she doesn’t try to interfere, to do anything to stop us in Marseilles. We can trust him.’

Alain was very pale. He had thought about this moment for so long, been so eager for it, and now the adventure he had imagined was all but underway, and for the first time he wondered if he would ever see his mother and father, sister and brother again. That at least was what Lannes read in his son’s eye, and his thought was confirmed when Alain stretched across the table, took hold of his hand, and pressed it hard.

‘You mustn’t worry,’ he said.

‘Of course not,’ Lannes said. ‘I have every confidence in you.’

If only that was true. He did indeed have confidence in his son, but disclaiming worry, anxiety, fear, that was a lie, and Alain knew it as surely as he did himself.

In a fortnight it would be a year to the day since the first motorised column of German troops had crossed the bridge over the Garonne and rolled up the cours Victor Hugo while the Bordelais had stood watching, powerless, mystified, silent and ashamed. Now, for the three boys . . .

‘It’s strange,’ Jérôme said. ‘I really feel as if we were off on our holidays.’

‘Gustave,’ Lannes said, ‘bring us a bottle of champagne, please.’

The cork popped. Glasses were poured. It was a moment of solemnity.

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

Jérôme raised his glass and clicked it against the others.

‘To the Liberation!’ he said.

Léon drank with them, but remained silent. Lannes thought, he can scarcely contain his excitement, and yet he is ashamed, as the others aren’t, to be abandoning his family to their uncertain future here in Bordeaux.

‘It’s time you were off,’ he said.

He embraced them all, clasped Alain tight to his breast and kissed him on both cheeks, like a general who had just pinned the Croix de Guerre on his uniform.

They set off for the station. As they entered it, Léon turned and looked at the Hotel Artemis across the street.

Lannes followed at a distance, keeping in the background. When at last the train pulled out, and the smoke from the engine drifted away, he felt desolate. His son was off to fight for France, and he was trapped here in Bordeaux. Tomorrow the boys would be in Algiers, and he had to account to Kordlinger for his inability to satisfy his demands. Meanwhile he would play truant, keep clear of the office till he was sure the boys had arrived in Algiers, just in case he had an unannounced visit from Kordlinger.

He was surprised to find Henri downstairs in the bookshop, sitting at the desk which for months had been occupied by Léon. More surprising still, Henri was sober. He had shaved and was wearing a suit and a collar and tie.

‘Yes,’ Henri smiled. ‘I’ve been letting myself go, I know that. It’s Léon who has shamed me into pulling myself together.’

‘It’s good to see you looking yourself,’ Lannes said. ‘All the same, would you object to locking up so that we can talk upstairs, over coffee perhaps?’

Henri still moved uncertainly.

‘I don’t know if it can last,’ he said. ‘My sobriety, I mean. But, as I say, it is Léon’s example that has shamed me into making an effort. If he can risk his life in this way, then I can at least try to stay off the booze, during the day anyway. It’s good to see you, Jean. The boys will be all right, won’t they? Léon told me what was arranged. I’m afraid for them, I have to admit that.’

‘One can’t not be. We live in fear. We’re condemned to live in fear. But I had already had to make plans to get Léon out of Bordeaux.’

He told Henri about Schussmann and the attentions he had paid to Léon, about the spook Félix, and Schussmann’s suicide, and Kordlinger’s demand.

‘Poor boy,’ Henri said. ‘To bear that weight while I sat drinking myself silly up here, and to say nothing about it. Terrible, but I’m grateful to you for telling me, and all the more relieved that he has got away.’

Lannes had told him all he knew, not all he suspected. But there was no need to burden Henri with that.

‘It’s possible,’ he said, ‘that this chap, Félix, the spook, may come in search of Léon. You’ll let me know if he does.’

‘But it’s not likely, is it? With the German dead.’

‘No, it’s not likely.’

‘And that poor Aristide – are you any closer to finding his killer?’

‘I know who killed him,’ Lannes said. ‘But there’s nothing to be done about that. It really doesn’t matter.’

Which was true, even if he hadn’t given his word to St-Hilaire.

‘There are many reasons to kill, Henri,’ he said, ‘but, outside the class of professional criminals who for the most part kill only to escape arrest or on rare occasions because they have been hired to do the job, you may be surprised how often the motive is respectability – the need felt to protect it, I mean. Take Schussmann. He killed himself because he was afraid – at least I suppose that was the reason, and I can hardly blame him for being afraid.

But he refused to collaborate with Félix because to do so would have cost him his self-respect. I don’t think it was patriotism or anything like that. From my observation and from what Léon said about him, he was a decent enough chap, certainly no Nazi and not even much of a soldier. Respectability and fear are brothers.’

‘You knew he planned this and you said nothing. You didn’t try to stop him or tell me about it.’

‘What would you have done if I had?’