The children would be in school. I lit another cigarette and took a few quick drags. Tommy and the others hadn’t been caught yet, not in so far as I knew, but Schiller’s surprise could well be that they had, and when I saw Rudi turn suddenly to look along the road, I felt the cigarette leave my lips to pause as the smoke trailed up into my eyes.
A breathless Alphonse Picard appeared on his balloon-tyred bicycle, obviously struggling desperately against a clock whose hands would not stop, and when Rudi challenged him, the mayor simply shouted, ‘Emergency! Out of my way.’
The wind and the rain beat against my face when I stepped outside. ‘Madame, hurry! Hurry! They’re about to shoot your son.’
‘Rudi … RUDI, IT’S JEAN-GUY. HE’S HOSTAGE. I MUST GO TO HIM!’
Continually, Picard called out to me, ‘Madame, please wait! It’s best to arrive at the same time!’
They were all in the street before that school-the children, their teachers, everyone in town. Most were without their coats and hats in the pouring rain.
Two sad-looking men had been tied to posts in front of a wall. One was younger, the other older, my son a third. I pushed my way into the crowd. A gap opened for me, but no one said a thing, and when I was at the edge of that semicircle, it was Jean-Guy who cried out, ‘MAMAN!’ nothing else. Not, please tell them what you know. Not even, Please, maman, they’re going to shoot me!
The Wehrmacht kept the crowd back. There were forty or fifty of them: lorries, cars, machine guns, helmets in the deluge. Schiller and the Oberst Neumann were near, the latter grim-faced, the former all business as a priest begged them to release my son, but he was not our regular priest. Father Damien was away in the south for the duration.
The lieutenant nodded to one of the officers. I started to cry out in anger, but bit my tongue as Jean-Guy glared at me from across that distance. He couldn’t believe I wouldn’t come to him, nor could any of the others. To them I was to be damned, and I knew this was what Schiller also wanted.
Someone tried to take the bicycle from me, but I yanked it back, had to stand firm. There was the metallic sound of the rifle bolts being slammed home, but if I offered myself in Jean-Guy’s place, I’d be made to tell them everything.
The younger of the two men found a last shred of bravery and cried out, ‘Vive la France!’
I tried to tell myself to run to my son, that nothing else mattered, but turned aside to sob, ‘No … please, no,’ and as the sound of the shots came to me, I felt Jean-Guy in my arms. They’d cut the ropes and let him go, and I was smothering him with kisses as Schiller stood over us saying nothing.
Only then did I realize that I had been pleading with them in English, and that I must have said a lot more than I could ever remember.
In my orchard, there were old apple trees much revered for their gnarled, outreaching branches and their bountiful harvests. Rudi would help us pick the apples. When he first came to us, those trees at the back of the orchard formed a bond between us.
His helmet lay on the ground catching the rain. Beside it were his rifle and, neatly folded, the greatcoat they’d issued him. ‘Rudi, forgive me.’
He made no sound. He’d bitten through his tongue and lifted his eyes to a heaven I was not sure he even believed in. The rain had plastered the dark brown hair over his brow, and as he slowly turned, I begged him again and again to forgive me. A dear, dear friend.
Jean-Guy tugged at my hand. Marie, in her white dress, hesitantly stood in the kitchen doorway, down through the tunnel of barren bows, afraid to join us, horrified by what had happened. It had been a morning of utter agony.
‘Maman, why didn’t you try to stop them from shooting me?’ He had to know-had every right to be told.
I looked into the eyes of my son. ‘Because I couldn’t. Because for all of us, there are more important things than one single life.’
I couldn’t tell him that they would all have been killed had I given up and told the lieutenant where they were, but he knew, and I knew, too, that at the moment of that execution I was thinking of Tommy more than of anyone else. ‘Don’t hate me, chéri. Just try to understand.’
Schiller was so clever. He knew that by exposing the truth to my son, he could turn Jean-Guy against me. This wasn’t to be a sudden process, but something so gradual I didn’t notice until it was too late.
10
Out over the Barbizon plain, there are distant lights in some of the farmhouses, the night at its darkest just before dawn. Instinctively, I search for the ashes of my mother’s house and find, on the near horizon, the deeper darkness of her willow.
Dupuis and Schiller kept the pressure up all through that winter of 1942. There were repeated searches, the executions of all the hostages, the endless days of waiting, never knowing if someone would talk.
I was sent to Paris for a medical examination by a German specialist, but fortunately André saw me first and gave me an anticoagulant so that I bled like a stuck pig, became weaker by the day, and was finally allowed to go home. They gave me six months to live. Actually, it was nearer to three years.
As soon as I could, I came out here to the caves to see if everything was all right. Then, as now, the gurgling of the spring caused me to feel for a foothold. Though I’m now wearing those shoes they gave me, as before, I still hear a whispered, ‘She’s not coming.’ It’s Dupuis, and it’s so like it was in that winter of 1942.
‘The loot must still be here,’ says Schiller as Dupuis lights a cigarette.
The silhouette of that gumshoe’s fedora, scarf, and threadbare overcoat are clear enough. Schiller’s behind him and taller, but even as Dupuis says, ‘It’s impossible. These caves are far too small. Rodents would have got at everything,’ the lieutenant vanishes.
‘Not necessarily,’ comes that other voice from above me and now much closer. ‘The Chevalier girl told us Lutoslawski and the American would have been very careful.’
Michèle had screamed that at them in the cellars of the Cherche-Midi but had also cried out, ‘They would never have told me where those things are hidden!’
They beat her anyway. They very nearly drowned her. ‘Cement,’ says Schiller, ‘into which stones have been pressed so as to make them look as if fallen.’
Tommy didn’t use cement, how could he have, but I manage to move a little away as Dupuis says, ‘There will definitely have been dampness.’ He’s now much closer to me.
‘Who gives a damn anyway? It’s the collections of rare coins, smaller pieces of sculpture, and icons that we want,’ says Schiller. ‘Enough to buy our way out of France and set us up in Argentina or Chile.’
‘You shouldn’t have come back. Even the Americans are looking for you. Those so-called war crimes, eh? Poland and all the rest. Without you, we could have …’
‘Dealt with her, you and the Vuittons and that former husband of hers? Admit it, you need me.’
Irritably, Dupuis pinches out his cigarette but doesn’t throw it away, not him. It’s thrust into a pocket. ‘So, what are we to do? Wait here until someone finds that you killed those two old people and left them to their geese?’
Ah, non, Henri Poulin and his wife. It’s all my fault!
The leaves make a sound that terrifies even though I’ve the Luger in hand. Wire cutters, knife, and a grenade are still in my pockets …
It’s Dupuis who says, ‘She’ll have figured us out and will have gone after the others.’
Schiller doesn’t answer, and again it’s Dupuis, ‘Vuitton simply wants out, but that wife of his is demanding a share of everything. If you ask me, our Dominique sees it as a way to buy them back into favour should anything be said, which it will be if we’re not careful. She’ll simply hand everything over and turn us in.’