Girl at the Lion D'Or (21 page)

Hartmann took up a book, but after reading a few pages he put it aside. His thoughts kept returning to Anne. He couldn’t understand what resilience and courage lay inside her. For the first time since it had ended he was forced to think about the war, an episode of such surreal horror that most people could only face it by ignoring it. Yet here, in Anne’s life, was the clear domestic connection with the bizarre nightmare of the trenches. Some parts of her story had seemed a little vague, but Hartmann recognised the events to which she referred. His first job as a junior officer, fresh from hasty training, had been to tell the weary veterans of Verdun that one more push under the dashing General Nivelle would bring them victory. He was roundly disbelieved. There were things, as Anne’s mother had remarked, which are too much for human beings to endure. When the men came down the line after their spell at the front many of them refused to go up again. They had reached a limit beyond which no amount of urging from a fresh-faced officer would propel them. They would defend, but they would no longer attack.

Antoine Lallement, a respected and senior officer, had taken the view that the men could be pushed no further, but that some sort of formal obedience to orders was necessary until the doomed attempt on the cruelly named Chemin des Dames was abandoned.

In the first week of June there had been near-panic at the scale of the mutinies in the regiments around Soissons. There were rumours that exemplary measures had been taken. An entire unit was said to have been rounded up and machine-gunned by its comrades. Hartmann was sceptical of the stories. By this time many junior officers had come up from the ranks and identified too closely with their men to have allowed such things. Nevertheless, as officer in charge of communications with the press, Hartmann was shown an order from the Ministry of War instructing that no news of executions be released without the ministry’s approval, for fear that the Germans or, just as bad, the British, should learn the extent to which morale was beginning to break down.

He had put such events from his mind, thinking only that in the end more lives would be saved if the army stood firm. He wondered now what men like Anne’s father must have felt. He had never heard of murder behind the lines before. It was not exactly surprising but it argued extreme provocation. Yet in the world of continuous noise and death which men had been able to describe only with words like ‘hell’ or ‘inferno’ normal morality was already violated. No one felt inclined to pass judgement on the private actions of others, even on murder. And yet – and here was the pity beyond his imagination – such single actions were connected; they were not entirely random or alone.

He remembered well the public outcry Anne had talked about which followed the newspaper stories that came out after the war concerning two young ensigns, Herduin and Millaud, who had been shot without trial for cowardice at Verdun. It seemed that both men had in fact been exceptionally brave and that their platoons, who had been forced to carry out the executions, did so with tears in their eyes.

He also had a vague recollection of the case of Anne’s father. There had been some uncomfortable stories about the true extent of the 1917 mutinies, and the army, or some of its senior officers, had been anxious to put themselves in a better light, particularly after the bad publicity of the Herduin-Millaud case. The story of how a private soldier had murdered his commanding officer must have seemed a good way to redress the balance and show that severe discipline had been necessary. Many of the newspapers, owned or run by members of the small élite that wielded more power than the ever-changing governments, were only too happy to print stories about the heroism of the murdered officer. Among the people Hartmann knew in Paris it was dismissed as a small attempt at propaganda and quickly forgotten. He had not paused to think how such an event might affect the lives of those intimately concerned.

He was moved also by the picture Anne had given of her parents. He thought of the small girl on her father’s shoulders and wondered what this poor man had been like, with his big moustache and tired eyes and his beloved little daughter. Anne, he thought, could only have been a child of great gentleness, big-eyed, excitable and trusting. And her mother: she sounded a simple woman, dependent on others and presumably beautiful if it was from her that Anne had inherited the light femininity of her bearing. In the brief and mundane connections between the three of them that Anne had sketched he saw a life of tenderness that was enviable. He wondered at how quickly Anne had absorbed its elements to be able to make such a person of herself.

In the past Hartmann had felt sympathy for friends who were distressed, even the odd rush of unexplained compassion, like the one he had felt for Roussel when they surveyed the house together; but what he felt for Anne was something more unsettling, a feeling which was complicated by his continuing desire for her, which one night at Merlaut had not dispelled.

As well as this aimless pity he felt awe at her composure. Her life began to look like a rebuke of his own – or so he thought – with its privilege and hedonism. It appeared to him that through no fault of his own he was now faced with the responsibility of her happiness; that by playing with her feelings he had invited her to place her trust in him, and now it was his duty to redeem the horror of her childhood.

2

H
ARTMANN’S CAR HAD
finally been mended, and the journey back to Janvilliers had been quickly accomplished – too quickly for Anne, who found that in addition to her usual tasks at the hotel there were a number of extra jobs she was expected to perform as an unofficial penance for having been away. It became difficult to keep alive in her head the bedroom, the terrace, the apple tree and the other details of Merlaut that she had tried to imprint on her memory. She didn’t mind too much, however, since something more important had been salvaged in the understanding Hartmann had showed her. The risk she had taken seemed to have been worthwhile, and the love she had felt for him was now justified and fulfilled.

While his train sped towards Paris, she went about her work in the kitchen. There came a sound of coughing from upstairs. There was always someone coughing in the Hotel du Lion d’Or. Sometimes it was a bullet-headed Marseillais who stayed once a week in the course of his work, which entailed travelling up and down the coast. Sometimes the sound was of gentility at war with a thin painful choking and came from the dark recess beneath the stairs. Often it was the rich chest-clearing roar of Bruno, preparing himself for a morning’s work in the kitchen; at other times the coughing was spectral and thin and seemed to echo down the corridor upstairs, past all the bedrooms, coming from no one knew where.

It was occasionally reassuring for Anne, when she stood in a deserted dining-room, to know that there were other people alive in the building. At times it seemed so lonely, leaning against the sideboard, swinging her foot backwards and forwards, waiting for a customer, that any noise was welcome. But then, when people came, the sense of isolation didn’t necessarily diminish. So much of what she did and said was repetition. There were always salt cellars to be filled, and bottles of oil and vinegar to be replenished from the slippery containers in the kitchen. There were always the same questions to ask: Have you decided yet? What wine would you like? What would you like for dessert? Worse than the repetition were the long spells of idleness, with only the thoughts in her mind to keep her company. While she stood by the sideboard, describing circles with her foot in the dusty parquet, her head was full of sound, and in her imagination she was dancing. When the visitors addressed her it was not necessarily to make contact with her, but merely to obtain information or give orders through a series of set phrases, so that her actual personality had not been engaged at all.

When company did arrive it was frequently in the almost indiscernible form of the head waiter Pierre, whose soundless step carried him unheralded through the hotel. He had learned to give a little warning cough when he entered a room, having often startled people who were unaware of his presence if he began speaking at once. When he organised the plates and glasses on the sideboard or in the bar, his movements always seemed to leave a thin layer of air between his hands and the objects he was touching, so that they appeared to have changed position spontaneously. Anne liked this delicacy in him, and she liked him also because he asked after her and she sensed that he was no happier in this hotel than she was. Beneath the softness of his manner there was a toughness she admired, even if it showed itself only in the end as resignation. Sometimes on an afternoon off he took her to the cinema. It was always packed with people and they often had to queue, but both were entranced by what they saw.

Anne also made friends with a girl called Mathilde, a great-niece of Mlle Calmette, with whom she went for walks in the public gardens when they could not afford the pictures. Both were devoted to Jean Gabin, and Mathilde had a yearning for Maurice Chevalier. Anne told Mathilde certain things about her life. Her childhood she glossed over, as she had done with everyone she had ever met, except Hartmann; but she told her something of her present situation, without revealing names. Mathilde, who had a young man to whom she was engaged, listened patiently, and they exchanged their views of men.

When work was finished, she would go back to the rooms that Hartmann had rented for her and play with Zozo the cat, if he was anywhere to be found, listen to her gramophone, or read one of the books she had been lent by Mathilde. She was usually tired after a day beginning at six, especially if she had been on duty in the bar, which sometimes didn’t close till one. The compensation for working so late was that she had the chance to talk to people there, and after the initial order of the drink most of them treated her like an ordinary person.

She passed her day, when she examined it honestly, in the hope of a communication from Hartmann. She resented the way her life was so dependent on the whim of another person, but not so bitterly that she was unaware of what she had to do, which was merely to wait and to be patient, and not so bitterly, either, that it changed her affection for him. As far as the strange terms of their relationship permitted, he was punctilious. He showed consideration for her position and he did his best to see her when he could, but the unforgivable thing was that he was not hers, and he was not there when she wanted him to be. She wondered if he had any idea at all of the eagerness with which she waited once he had made an assignation to see her; of the obliterating importance of these meetings in her day. In her more doubtful moments, she was sure he had not, and that there was only a painful and rather ridiculous inequality of feeling between them. Then, when she was on the point of despair, she received a telegram from Paris: ‘Delayed here. Returning Friday. Meet Saturday evening?’

She placed it on the table in her sitting-room next to the small vase of flowers and felt that the waiting had been worthwhile.

At the same time that Anne was reading his telegram, Hartmann sat down in Antoine’s office overlooking the Seine in the Quai Voltaire.

‘Have you seen the latest
Gringoire?
’ said Antoine.

‘Certainly not,’ said Hartmann. ‘I’m surprised they let
you
read such dangerous nonsense.’

‘You should look at this.’ Antoine threw a copy of the paper across the room. ‘They’re going to nail Salengro by whatever means they can. They want blood, and the sort of blood they’d like best is the blood of a leftist minister. That would be the first step to bringing down Blum’s government.’

‘But nobody believes this story about Salengro having deserted in the war. Who’d believe the word of these fascists against that of a minister?’

‘
Gringoire
says they’ve got fourteen witnesses to his desertion. Blum’s going to announce an inquiry.’

‘But why? He can’t believe in stuff like this.’

‘Of course he doesn’t, but he can’t afford to have a government in which one of his major ministers is suspected of having deserted under enemy fire – not when everyone is in a state of hysteria about the Germans invading again. So he’ll have to clear his name.’

‘I don’t think Blum should give people like this the respectability of a reply,’ said Hartmann, waving the paper in the air.

‘Have you ever met Salengro?’

‘No. What difference does it make?’

‘None at all. You’re right, in any case. He’s charming – perhaps too sensitive to be a politician – but utterly honest, and patriotic.’

Antoine rose from his desk and looked over the river. He was an imposing, grey-haired man who liked to present his worldliness as cynicism. He was ashamed of enjoying his work so much, so pretended he was only a minor functionary in a system no longer under control.

‘Our problem, Charles, is worse than that of
Gringoire
and Roger Salengro. I haven’t asked you here for your advice about a small right-wing periodical. The newspaper I am concerned about is more serious. The story they have is no more scandalous and no less, but if they print it they will be believed, because unlike
Gringoire
they are widely circulated and respected.’

‘I know. Though in their way no less venal.’

Antoine looked quizzical.

‘Be sensible, Antoine. You’re as aware as I am how much the papers are in the pocket of the bankers and the politicians – those of the right colour. Even the sainted Poincaré used to bribe them, as well you know.’

‘Poincaré was a fine man.’

‘Perhaps. All I said was that he bribed the press. Once he’d retired to Lorraine people forgot that in their rush to beatify him as the saviour of the franc.’

‘Be that as it may, we are dealing with a proper daily newspaper with a huge circulation and, in the peasant’s eyes, the authority of an oracle. The minister in question is the head of my department.’