This caused him to grind his false teeth. ‘Not the Oberst, madame, nor Obersturmführer Schiller.’
To show a little surprise was then best. ‘Georges, are you asking me to pay for your silence, and that of Tante Marie?’
Again, he lifted that axe. Again, another rabbit lost its head and then its paws. Again, blood drained on to the chopping block as he paused to study me and I had to ask myself, Does he think the Boche might now lose the war, and if so, is this the only chance he’ll get to ask me because I’ll soon be taken away and Jules will never know about the money he’s demanded?
Salaud, I wanted to cry at him but reason intruded. Capitulating, I told him, ‘Okay. You’ll have it in a few days.’
‘Tonight, madame.’
Cher Jésus, what the hell was this? He was in far too much of a hurry and that could only mean he knew far more than he was letting on. ‘Georges, I can’t possibly get it that fast and you know it.’
‘Then take some of the silver. There’s so much of it, a little won’t be missed.’
‘One hundred thousand francs’ worth?’
‘A little more, I think, since it isn’t cash and time will be necessary to dispose of it properly.’
‘On the marché noir, is this what you mean?’
There was no answer, just the ruthless emptying of the rabbits, the kidneys, the livers, and the hearts being picked out. ‘All right, there’s some jewellery from the old monsieur’s mistress-I’m sure you and Tante Marie must have seen some of it in days gone by. Perhaps if I were to …’
‘That would be fine, but the silver also.’
November’s nights were damp and cold. It was the fifth, and in a few days I’d help to rob a train, but Georges and Tante Marie only made my worries greater. Long ago, it seems, I’d taken them some silver-a gorgeous tureen we never used, a sauceboat with cherubs and angels, salt and pepper cellars, some of the jewellery, also. A diamond pin, a brooch with studded seed pearls, some cufflinks of old Monsieur de St-Germain’s that Jules was saving for Jean-Guy, a small handful of rings, a topaz, an opal-those may well have been fake, but I knew I couldn’t leave it another day. Something had to be done, you understand? Please, you must. You see I had the lives of everyone to consider, not just those of my children, or of Tommy even. Nini had gone back to Paris; Tommy and Nicki were at mother’s. Paul Tessier and the others would be counting the hours.
Schiller and Neumann were away, Rudi Swartz fast asleep, and even from my kitchen I could hear his snoring.
Jean-Guy and Marie would sleep through anything, but would Georges be out trapping rabbits or watching the house again?
Dressing in dark clothing and bare feet, I took from the cellars the six bottles of petrol I had carefully hoarded before the war and its subsequent Occupation. I found some rags.
Clouds closed over the moon. It was perhaps two a.m., and there was a heavy frost that hung along the road and over the adjacent meadow, and as the moon crept out, an ethereal light made the frost ghostly. I was alone, and dear God, would I be able to bring myself to do it?
Georges and Tante Marie kept a dog. It had no name but that. I fed it the cheese I’d brought and some pâté-things I knew it loved.
The front door was bolted, the back, too. I set the bottles down and tried the windows. There was only one whose catch Georges had forgotten to repair, making me glad I wouldn’t have to find a rock and quietly break in, but could I really do it? Me, the mother of two children?
Opening it, I climbed in to hear that old clock of theirs. Close and warm, the air was ripe with all such smells. In the kitchen, the fire had been banked, but I knew I couldn’t chance it and told myself I had to start up the stairs. It was the only way.
There were two little rooms, just enough space on the landing to turn around. The one was for the son they never had; from the other came the sound of disturbed breathing, for Tante Marie had asthma. Mucus gurgles; Georges simply snored, yet I waited. Again, I told myself, I couldn’t do it. I really couldn’t.
May God forgive me, I had to.
Those cutters made such a tiny sound, my mind magnified it out of all proportion. The wire was stiffer than I’d have liked, and as I looped it around the doorknob and then one of the railings to tie their bedroom shut, I told myself it must be done.
The smell of petrol was like no other and, suddenly, it was everywhere downstairs and over the front door, the inside and the out. The dog whined and fussed-it couldn’t understand, or could it? I nudged him away from my hands, hissed at him, ‘Bad dog. Don’t you dare bark at me!’ only to remember that he was always hungry and that he knew I knew this. ‘All right,’ I told him, and he took off like a rocket.
Then the match was in my fingers, its flame bright and brighter still as a corner of the rag caught fire. Even then, I could turn back, I told myself, but how could I, given what I’d already done?
I dragged that rag after me. I was moving fast, then to the front door I’d closed and wired, then to the windows and round the house to the back to drop it at last and run into the meadow as the place went up like a tinderbox, and I plugged my ears until the sky was filled with light and the air with their screams.
‘Madame, what has happened?’
It was Rudi, and he’d heard that dog at my kitchen door and come out to find me standing in the road.
‘The stove,’ I told him. ‘It must have been that. Georges was always going to clean the pipes but would never take the time.’
Rudi knew I was not wearing a nightgown. He could see this clearly for the moon had betrayed me. ‘Benzin,’ he said, giving the Deutsch for petrol. ‘I can smell it even from here.’
The little station at Avon is much the same. I lean the bike against the wall and walk towards the wicket. Few people are about. There are no guards, no swastikas or eagles, no signs in German, and I find this puzzling.
November’s greying light is impoverished. A flock of pigeons makes a circle, racing high above the empty tracks. Homing pigeons? I wonder. They’re against the law and anyway should all have been eaten by now.
This, too, I can’t understand.
‘A one-way to Saint-Léger, please. I don’t have an Ausweis. At the Felkommandantur in Fontainebleau, they have said …’
He looks at me and I wonder who he’s going to report it to, but he says, ‘Pardonnez-moi, madame, but there is no longer any need for such things.’ Begrudgingly he takes my money. He’s young and new. Me, I’ve never seen him before.
‘I’ve a bicycle,’ I tell him.
‘They’ll look after it for you.’
The return trip must be done by bicycle or else I must stay over. That’s all there is to it. But no one ever gets out at Saint-Léger. Thinking they won’t stop the train just for me, I drag another cigarette from the crumpled packet.
‘Madame, allow me, please.’
It’s the one from the house and I know he must be Gestapo! ‘Merci, monsieur. The train, it’s always late.’
He smiles that plainclothes smile. Very nice-looking, you’d think. A salesman perhaps. ‘It’s the war,’ he says. ‘It’ll take years to get things going properly again.’
I turn away, can’t look at him anymore-listen for the sound of the wheels-but he asks, ‘Were you in the camps, madame? Please forgive me, but I’m looking for someone.’
It’s all lies! I know that his accent is British, but that like others of the Boche, he’ll have learned that English first before the Parisian français. ‘Which camps?’ I hear myself asking, but with hand on the Luger in my pocket. I’ll shoot him if I have to.