‘For me, for us that are left, you have only to ask.’
‘Good.’
I sit in the sun and warm myself. Just a corner of the town hall can be seen, the hôtel de ville et Feldkommandantur, and I remember Matthieu and the others, but they came later. First there were the two robberies, then the interrogations, then my children and what they had inadvertently revealed to Georges and Tante Marie.
The soup is thin, as I’ve requested. Just a few slivers of onion, a little grated pepper, cheese baked on top, with butter, real butter. This I can’t believe. It hurts to look at it, to smell the aroma. Such simple things we all took for granted.
The bread is crusty. When broken, it soaks up the soup. The coffee is real. Matthieu flutters around. His wife has come out of the kitchen but is afraid to approach.
I tell him the soup is excellent, exactly what I need.
‘Was it hard for you?’ he asks. He’s all upset and twisting his hands in that apron of his.
‘It doesn’t matter. Look, I need some quiet, eh? I must think things through. I have a job to do and must be careful.’
He nods. Ah! he understands and says, ‘I’ve heard that Monsieur Jules and his friends are back.’
‘Then you know it will be wise for you and your wife to say nothing of me. Not until I make contact with you again. Hey, listen, my friend, can you get me some nine millimetres?’
He understands and leaves the restaurant. I finish the soup by running the bread slowly around the plate so as to catch the last droplets. Memory comes.
I drain the coffee cup.
Dupuis waited. He was very grave. He knew and I knew that somehow my children had betrayed me and that Georges and Tante Marie had much to say.
I’m right back there: 3 June 1941. In a gesture of sympathy or whatever-me, I don’t know-Dupuis had taken this opportunity to show a little compassion.
Before witnesses, of course, he fed me a bowl of soup and a coffee. A last supper.
‘Madame, please, it’s time to go.’
I got up and walked out to his car and we drove to the house. Marie … I remember that she was wearing her pink dress, with the white socks and glossy black saddle shoes. She was getting tall-growing like a weed. Her hair had been severely brushed, and it glistened as it fell below her shoulders.
She was so pale and frightened she didn’t say a thing. Jean-Guy eyed me suspiciously. No doubt Georges had been filling him full of things-adultery, the de St-Germain name, et cetera.
‘Monsieur Tommy,’ said Tante Marie. That old hen was bristling by the stove, just waiting to spill it all.
‘What about him?’ I asked.
‘He was here,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that correct, my husband?’
Georges nodded. ‘The boy has told us, madame.’
‘Of course, Monsieur Carrington was here, but that was ages ago, and the inspector remembers this.’
It was a gamble, but it worked. Luck was with me again. Jean-Guy had told them of Tommy’s earlier visit, when Dupuis had first come here looking for him on a charge of murder, February 1940.
‘But he’s been back since?’ hazarded Dupuis.
Both of my children shook their heads. ‘Ah, no, monsieur, he couldn’t have. He would’ve gone to prison, n’est-ce pas?’ said my daughter, widening her lovely eyes.
‘Prison,’ said my son. ‘He’s a bad one, Inspector. A number. I hope you catch him.’
Dupuis was exasperated with that old couple and gave them the blazes for being so stupid, but at the door he said, ‘We both know it won’t be so easy the next time.’
Matthieu Fayelle returns to take the dishes away. As he reaches for the soup plate, a spill of cartridges leaves his hand. ‘There are more if you should need them.’
As my hand closes about them, I say, ‘Get me a Schmeisser, two fully loaded magazines, and a grenade. Have them ready for me.’
‘But surely the police …’
‘You leave the flics out of this! Dupuis is with them at the house. It’s a private matter, Matthieu. I want no interference.’
Down through the beeches, I can see the millpond before the small, quaint farmhouse of the Poulins, whose white stucco and green shutters form a tidy place where geese are force-fed while the husband basks in the sun. It’s a scene out of Sisley. Good people, those two. Before the war, I used to bring the children here in my little car to buy eggs and goose livers. While they were with Madame Poulin, I would bathe at the far end of the pond behind a screen of reeds. Henri Poulin would stand in his flat-bottomed punt, pretending to fish, and I didn’t mind if he saw me. I rather liked the idea. It was, in a way, a chance for me to repay him.
Janine and Michèle came for a visit early in July of that summer of 1941, and the three of us rode out here on our bicycles. The pond is southwest of Fontainebleau, on the road to the village of Ury, so you pass through the forest and, for us, it was to be a little holiday.
They had both obtained an Ausweis for the weekend. Michèle had asked the general who was interested in her to help, so we had two days and the weather was perfect. Marcel was at the house and when that Saturday’s school was out, the children would be with him.
It was a chance to talk. Our bicycles lay in the grass behind us, we on the blanket Janine had brought. A wicker picnic basket provided everything, along with two bottles of Château Latour-Blanche, the 1927, my having plundered my husband’s cellar. Bees hummed among the daisies, buttercups, and sky-blue chicory. Nini lay on her back, Michèle on her tummy. Me, I sat right where I’m sitting now. ‘We have to leave it for a while,’ I told them. ‘Lie low. Let Schiller and Dupuis plug away, but don’t do anything to stir things.’
It’s Michèle who said, ‘Henri-Philppe told me there’s to be a big auction this autumn, that it looks like Göring’s Luftwaffe will finish off the Russians and the Wehrmacht will be in Moscow by then.’ The Germans had invaded Russia on 22 June.
‘And you … what do you think about it?’ Janine asked her.
‘Me, I don’t even want to talk about it!’
‘Idiote!’ said my sister. ‘The Boche are going to lose.’
‘But Göring will still be there for the auction. Henri-Philippe’s certain a notice has been sent to Hofer. They always send notices to him when something’s coming up. Jules is in on it, too. He and the Vuittons have been over the lists of works that are to be sold. Now leave me be!’
She was so near to tears, we let her rest. I even lowered my voice. ‘Nini, I meant what I said. That trip to Paris with Dupuis finished me. I’ve the children to think of.’
‘And Tommy?’ she asked.
‘I’m going to ask him to take the children and me to Switzerland or out through Spain. It’s worth the risk. I can’t stay here.’
She flung her straw away. ‘Neither are possible! If they were, Tommy would have done it. Besides, we have to move people. Those places are reserved for them.’
This was my little sister. The Midi beauty was still there, the black gloss of her short hair, the flounce of it as she tossed her pretty head or settled those dark eyes on me. ‘Nini, Georges and Tante Marie have become a problem. They watch the house constantly and report everything.’
‘So what are you going to do about it?’
‘Me? Are you crazy? If anything should happen to them, Schiller and Dupuis would immediately suspect me and you know it!’
‘Not if you were to do it the right way.’
Ah, merde, I couldn’t be hearing this, but her words were to haunt me for months. ‘You try to be so hard, Nini, but underneath it all I know who you really are.’
‘Then you have failed to realize that the Boche are going to be driven out of France. Russia will be the end of them. More and more, the Reich will have to move its forces to the east. Dmitry says it’s only a matter of time before the tide turns, that Stalin’s going to suck the Wehrmacht in and crush them. One hard winter is all it’s going to take. Their supply lines are far too long as it is, and they must know it, too.’