Of Tommy’s and Nicki’s getting safely into Paris, there had, as yet, been no word.
The dawn has come. The house is still. There’s no sign of Dupuis or any of the others. They’re afraid to show themselves, but from where I’m sitting in the forest, I can watch the place and remember.
I never once questioned what I should do about that pilot. For me, his life was precious. I remember, though, that his hands were black, that the encrusting scabs leaked pus and the fingers couldn’t move as he lay in the spare bedroom next to Marie’s. I’d locked the door and had brought him some soup. ‘Can you sit up a little?’ I asked.
He was only nineteen, just a boy, had been flying aeroplanes since the age of sixteen. ‘In the bush,’ he had said, and I had seen the dream of it in his eyes and known he wanted only to go home to Canada.
His name was Collin Parker. He was tall, big, and once strong; more than filled the length of the bed. I set the soup down and took hold of him under the arms. Collin pushed himself up with his feet.
He gave a sigh, didn’t complain. ‘How are things?’ he asked in a whisper.
‘Okay. Schiller’s interrogating Henri-Philippe first, in the library.’
The soup-a broth of chicken stock, finely chopped vegetables, and a little wine-was just what he needed, but he couldn’t eat much. He was too weak. ‘You’re going to have to turn me in,’ he said.
We both knew this, but I told him to hang on. ‘Once Michèle and Henri-Philippe get to Paris, André de Verville will come. He’s a very good doctor.’
‘Can’t you trust anyone local?’
‘They give me no reason. Fontainebleau is replete with collaborators and Boche. Now eat, please. At least a little more.’
His Bristol Beaufort had been on coastal patrol out of West Malling in Kent when the weather had socked in. They’d drifted off course and had been shot down over Rouen. Collin had crash-landed in a field. Of the others in the crew, he remembers only the flames and the screams, which are with him all the time. His hands had been welded to the stick, but somehow he’d been thrown clear or had gotten free of the wreckage, though with no knowledge of this.
Luck played such a part in things. Luck found him with a farmer who passed him on to another and another so that he made a wide detour around Paris only to find himself alone at our railway station in Avon.
Luck caused Henri-Philippe and Michèle to get off the Paris-bound train and pause to stand beside him. He’d been trying to make sense of the timetable, had thought he might head for Spain. Henri-Philippe noticed that his hands were leaking through the shabby woollen mittens he’d been given; Michèle asked if he might, perhaps, need a little help in reading the timetable.
I’m the one who cut the mittens off. ‘Now try to sleep.’ I left the soup-I could get that later. I closed and locked the door, wiped my hands on my apron, and tried to tidy my hair.
That house … How it all comes back to me. The corridor was long and filled with such lovely things, but it passed by the open door to the library. Their voices were muted, for they were sitting at the far end of the room, facing each other across the small oval of a Louis XV gilt-wood table. The Louis XIV chairs were really very uncomfortable, and Schiller had chosen the setting, even the furniture they’d use.
Henri-Philippe would be able to look out the French window to see Rudi standing guard at the gate, and if Schiller wanted it, knees would touch ‘accidentally’ to generate increased fear, and we would’t know what he’d asked Henri-Philippe or what answers had been given.
Pale and afraid, Michèle was waiting for me in the kitchen. She’d brushed her lovely light brown hair and tied it behind with a dark brown ribbon. The blouse and heavy cardigan suited her, but she couldn’t panic, couldn’t weaken. ‘Just answer readily,’ I told her. ‘Repeat if necessary, but don’t offer information. Let him do the digging.’
Henri-Philippe was not allowed to talk to her or to me. That bastard sent him outside so that he could watch the house and wonder what was going on. Michèle was in there a long, long time, and when he’d finished with her, she went straight to her room in tears.
Then he sat by the window, at that table with his answers, and finally in the uniform of the SS at last. ‘Is your daughter glad to be home?’ he asked me.
‘Of course.’
‘Perhaps now you’ll be a little more friendly, Frau de St-Germain. Perhaps you’ll find us Germans not so bad.’
I stood and waited but didn’t look out the window, for I knew Rudi would be blowing on his fingers and that Henri-Philippe would have tried to share a cigarette with him. Rudi would have had to refuse such a kindness simply because Obersturmführer Schiller was with us and Oberst Neumann had warned Rudi to behave as one of the Occupation’s troops should.
‘Tell me about Michèle,’ said the lieutenant.
‘There’s nothing to tell. They’re just a couple of young people who ran away like everyone else when the blitzkrieg came. Now they’ve finally obtained permission to return home to Paris.’
‘Yet they don’t do so immediately. They stop off to see you.’
‘Is there something the matter with that? They were worried about my sister and anxious for news.’
‘Your sister, yes.’ He turned the pencil in the fingertips of both hands as if it was the shaft of a millwheel and he the miller of us. The flaxen hair was precisely parted, the jackboots gleamed. ‘The girl’s a violinist, I gather. Is she good?’
‘Certainly.’
He smiled that tight little smile that buckled the scar as he said, as if doubting me, ‘Friends of your sister. Associates?’
I shoved my hands into the pockets of my apron. ‘Associates in what, please?’ Marie, where is she? I wondered. Jean-Guy, he was at school.
The pencil was set aside. The fingers tidied the papers before a smoothing hand passed over the back of his head. ‘Let’s leave that matter for the moment. Please … please have a seat. You must be tired, cooking all those meals, doing all that laundry. A woman’s work is never done, is it? Georges …’
I waited. I tried not to show any alarm. ‘Georges?’ I asked.
‘Says that the war will turn you into a good housekeeper since nothing else could.’
‘Georges and Tante Marie have always been critical of my efforts. It’s only understandable.’ But had they told him about Collin or said anything about Tommy and Nicki?
Schiller lit a cigarette, sat back, and took his time to study me, and I had to wonder, was he really asleep that time I went into his room?
‘You’re a strange one, Frau de St-Germain. Why the visits to Barbizon and that farm of your mother’s?’
‘To arrange for a farmer to take care of the place and share the harvest. There are three hectares. One I wish to have planted in alfalfa for my rabbits and his cows, one in wheat, the other in potatoes if we can get the seed. Good cash crops, Herr Obersturmführer. Is there anything wrong with that?’
‘You must show me the place. Perhaps I can be of assistance. No … no, there’s nothing wrong. It’s just that the girl tells me she’s never been there, to the house of your mother, but the boy says that before the war they both went there with your sister.’
Such a simple thing. Who would have thought he’d even ask?
‘Well?’ he insisted. ‘What about it?’
Again, there could be no hesitation. ‘That I really wouldn’t know, Lieutenant. They’re friends of my sister’s as you’ve said. Neither of them have been there with me.’
‘So why would the girl deny she’d been there?’
Merde, what the hell was I to say to this, since it was me who had really taken them there that first time to meet up with Nini? ‘To save me trouble, perhaps. Michèle knows I’ve recently been to the farm a couple of times. She probably thought I’d not been given the necessary permission. For myself, Herr Obersturmführer, I wouldn’t make too much of it. Oberst Neumann has asked her to give a little recital for him in Fontainebleau tonight. It would be a shame to make her so nervous she couldn’t perform.’