Sunlight streamed into the studio to find the pots, the shards on the floor, the dust that eddied in the air. When it touched the glazes, it brought out the colours, a royal blue, a deep jade green, the ochres and the browns, the earthy, rusty reds I have always liked best.
My mother sat at her potter’s wheel. The kiln had been fired up. The place was very warm, and sweat trickled down her forehead. There was clay on the robust hands. Not for a moment did the wheel stop. The vase must be finished. After all, the Germans would buy it, and the money could be used for other things.
All the time she worked, we talked. Occasionally, the dark eyes flashed at me. Most times, they were swift and hard-worried. She was all French, that one, a Midi from the south, no longer the shapely young thing my father fell in love with but still … ah, there was that something. The liveliness of the eyes, the dark lashes and eyebrows, the hair that was pinned back. One could’t define it. She exuded a kind of earthiness, had a ready laugh.
The face was broad. Wisps of hair shot from under the red polka-dot bandanna. The hair was jet black, no signs of grey. The lips were firm-Janine’s lips and eyes. Yes.
Hairs sprouted from a mole on her neck, and she didn’t give a damn about those anymore.
‘You must bring the children with you, Lily. That way, the Boche will be less suspicious. Children always distract people. Bank robbers should use them.’
A little of the clay left her fingers, for she’d gestured-couldn’t help but talk with her hands. ‘Have they questioned you?’ I asked anxiously.
‘Them? Bien sûr, why not? They question everybody but the geese. I let them allocate me wood for the kiln.’
‘Don’t try to be too tough, maman. I’m warning you.’
‘Me?’ A shrug. A slip of encircling hands up the vase, the fingers deftly shaping the lip. ‘Oh, for sure, chérie, you know I’ll be careful. So, you are still in love with this one, eh?’
Why is it that the potter’s hands are often suggestive of something other than working the clay? ‘Well?’ she asked.
‘Yes, and very much, and you know this.’
‘Janine, she isn’t interested in him?’
My mother always knew she could bait me. ‘Janine had better leave him alone.’
The vase was cut off and placed on a board to dry. The wheel stopped. The hands were plunged into a bucket of cold water and rubbed together. The fleshy forearms were bare, the old plaid shirt and pink sweater rolled up above the elbows. ‘Janine,’ she said, and gave a nod. ‘She regrets what happened with Jules. For her, the experience was painful.’
‘She wanted to show me what he was like.’
‘Now I hear he’s got two others,’ she said and clucked her tongue. ‘One is eighteen, the other twenty-three. Janine says they have to report to the Gestapo, that they’re really mouchardes placed in his bed by the Vuittons. Men will mumble things in their sleep.’
Informants. We looked at each other. It was an uncomfortable moment. ‘Is Jules under suspicion?’
Again, there was that tartness. ‘The Boche don’t even trust their friends, especially those who work for them.’
‘But there’s something else, maman. Please, you must tell me.’
The hands were dried and warmed at the kiln. Sweat stained her front between the sagging breasts. A cigarette was needed. This she puffed at as if it was her last, then raised her eyebrows and held it out to me.
Three times then within a week, I’d shared cigarettes with people. ‘Inhale, idiote! Don’t waste it! You girls … Pah, what is the matter with you both?’
I handed the cigarette back to her. She said, ‘The Vuittons suspect Jules of being too soft. They want you and Janine out of his life. It would be easy for them to arrange but for the moment, Jules still has Herr Göring’s support.’
‘But only for the moment?’
‘Ah, mon Dieu, how many times must I tell you not to display your feelings like a billboard? Certainly, Jules is playing a very dangerous game, but the Vuittons need him and so does Göring, so the Lieutenant Schiller must bide his time.’
Nini had told her far too much, but I asked, ‘Did Nini tell you where Tommy was?’
My mother went into the kitchen. From its window, the fields of the Barbizon Plain spread out for a couple of kilometres before rising a little into the forest.
‘The Caves of the Brigands, but you mustn’t go there.’
I remembered the ratissage and the roadblock, but asked, ‘Why not?’
‘Because the Germans are looking for him-for a tall man. Someone must have seen him crossing the fields.’
‘Then Tommy stayed here last night, and it wasn’t just Nini who told you things?’
She nodded. There was a quivering to her lips, and she turned away to hide this. It was all her fault. She was blaming herself for having let him leave, and now the Germans were searching for him. ‘I was afraid to tell you,’ she finally confessed.
I took her by the shoulders and said, ‘I’d better go and find him later on. He’ll need me, maman. His accent is terrible, and he’s far too tall for most Frenchmen.’
‘They don’t know who the man is. I’m sure they don’t.
‘Then everything will be all right, and I can give him the things I’ve brought.’
‘He’ll be in one of the caves.’
There was a small, abandoned airfield nearby. During the Defeat, the men who operated this field wrecked what planes there were and hid ammunition in some of the caves, but the Germans quickly cleaned those out. Almost a year had passed, but this wasn’t time enough for them to have forgotten the location.
‘You’ll only lead them to him, Lily.’
‘Not if I’m careful. I’ll wait until after dark. I’ll go there then.’
Suddenly, I had to see him. Nothing else mattered, not our safety, our lives, not even my children.
The night is dark. There’s no moon. The clods of earth break beneath my sabots. I stumble several times. When I reach the abandoned airstrip, I pause among the wreckage and hear the wind in the tattered canvas.
There were no lights on back then when I turned to look across the plain towards Barbizon and then towards the house of my mother. The blackout had seen to that. It had turned the French into a nation of nocturnal prowlers.
I’d left the wireless set with mother. It would be better that way because I might not have been able to find Tommy and, anyway, Nicki was the one who knew how to use it.
Crossing the little airstrip took only a few minutes. Surely, the Germans must have remembered this place, but they had far better airfields and their attention was now elsewhere. Perhaps we’d be safe after all. Perhaps this thing could be used some day to bring in planes from Britain. The wreckage was all down at one end where the hanger used to be.
Pretty soon, my stumbling got worse. At one place, I fell and cried out; at another, I feared I’d sprained my wrist and sat holding it, rocking back and forth.
In among the boulders and the rock walls, there was brush, the trickling of a spring. I was sure I’d got the right place. The Gorges d’Apremont were off to my right, the land rising into the forest.
The Grottes des Brigands … I needed to cross the road-the one that ran to the north, northeast, a T-junction, the leg of which led westward to Barbizon. I’d come along that road that day. The Germans had let me out not far from there.
The sound of the water returns, and with it, that of the wind in the poplar leaves and I’m right back there on that night. I can feel it all.
‘Don’t move. If you do, you’re dead.’
‘Tommy …’
‘Sh!’
His hand slipped over mine. We waited. Perhaps ten minutes passed, maybe fifteen. Then someone not far from us lit a cigarette. Momentarily, we saw that moon face with its puffy pouches beneath the cow’s eyes that were widely spaced, the bushy eyebrows, dark bristles of a beard that was seldom if ever closely shaven. The neck of the grubby shirt was open, the jacket unbuttoned.