‘At this precise moment, that seems really stupid to me.’
She turned to him with tears in her eyes.
‘Stupid?’ she said. ‘You think it’s stupid? I think it’s … unfair.’
They had come to Antoine’s rock, and she stopped, putting her hand on the rough stone.
‘I can see him. As if he was here! Yes, it’s unfair. It’s all unfair.’
‘I regret it. And he regretted it too. He would happily have put your hand in mine.’
She smiled. Two tears trickled down her golden cheeks. Jean was silent in the face of her strikingly natural beauty. At her side, he told himself, he would have forgotten everything.
‘I’ll never meet anyone like you,’ he said.
‘No. Never. And don’t try. I’ll never forgive you.’
He put his arms around her and kissed her. He tasted orange blossom on her lips. She pushed him gently away.
‘No more than that. It’s lovely like that. When are you leaving?’
He recounted his flight from Paris, where he would soon be called back. Saint-Tropez was a refuge. Caution dictated that he should not move from there until he received word.
‘Say nothing to Théo,’ she advised him. ‘He’s on the Germans’ side, because they’re winning. When they lose, he’ll be on the British side.’
She smiled, sure of herself, and added more quietly, ‘So it’ll be me who leaves. I’ll go to the mountains and stay with my cousins.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s better. Let’s not tempt fate.’
She thought everything through, with a disconcerting thoroughness. In this family the women were the thinkers, while the men spent their time in pursuit of pleasure.
‘We’ll go back,’ she said. ‘I need to stay with Maman. She’s so sad. You know, Antoine was her real partner. Théo’s her baby. She lets him have everything.’
They walked back to the hotel. Marie-Dévote, a black and watchful silhouette, observed them as they came. Jean wondered if she had seen them kiss, though it was unlikely. But Marie-Dévote did not need proof. She guessed and, like Toinette, thought it was better to separate two beings who were so strongly attracted to each other and could not come together without offending against the natural order of things.
Next morning it was left to Théo to explain.
‘Toinette, she was choking with sorrow. I’ve taken her to the mountains, to her cousins’. The air’s thinner up there. She’ll breathe better. You wouldn’t think so, but she’s delicate, that one, delicate like the orange blossom.’
Jean remembered the taste of her lips. He spent the rest of the day so sadly quiet that Marie-Dévote took him aside.
‘Antoine, he didn’t want to hurt anyone, ever. If we’re too unhappy, he’ll start worrying himself sick up there. Don’t stay here. Go with Théo. He gets around with his truck, sees some countryside. When you’re passing, you can drop by our cousins and kiss Toinette. She’ll be glad you haven’t forgotten her.’
He and Théo crisscrossed the back country, as they had done the previous year. Théo was building up his business. Everywhere he was greeted, bottles were uncorked, goat’s and sheep’s cheese, home-made bread, black olives in vinegar, dried figs in salt water, tomatoes and cucumbers were brought out from cool larders for him. He lingered, argued endlessly, passed on the evening news from the wireless: Rommel was at El Alamein, the Wehrmacht was besieging Sebastopol, the Japanese had landed at Guadalcanal. Never before had Théo pored over the atlas so closely. Toinette was exaggerating: he was not ‘on the Germans’ side’, but gleefully, and at a safe distance, followed the victories on both sides. The deployment, on Independence Day, of the first American bombers, B-17s, over Germany gave rise to intense excitement. To hear him, the war was like a world championship: he sought not the victory of good over evil or evil over good, but only wished the match to carry on until all the adversaries were exhausted.
‘You’ll see,’ he said in a sudden flight of prophecy, ‘they’ll finish up on level pegging, a draw. No one will have deserved to win and no one deserves to lose. Remember, it was Théo told you so.’
They called on Toinette. She was not at home. She was picking lavender on the mountainside with her young cousins. While Théo was chatting Jean asked to be shown which way they had gone. He found them in the scrub on the side of a hill of wild lavender, each girl carrying a cotton bag, wide-brimmed straw hats on their heads. From the path he would have found it impossible to say which one was Toinette. They wore the same grey smocks and the same aprons, and were singing in Provençal, their piping girlish voices mingling with the sharp call of the cicadas. A face looked up and called to Toinette.
‘Té, Toinette, he’s here.’
So she had talked about him. He felt intensely proud to have been the subject of a confidence. The girls straightened up, charming figures on the blue-washed hillside dotted with the green of small oaks. He recognised Toinette when she put down her bag and smiled at him under her straw hat. Her lovely tanned face and light eyes were calm. She had pushed up her sleeves, baring her arms, the same golden brown as her legs.
‘I came to say goodbye.’
‘I thought so. You’re leaving then? It’s a shame.’
She smelt naturally of lavender, a fresh smell that would for ever, from that day on, remind Jean of her. Her three cousins kept their distance, consumed with curiosity. Toinette held out her hand.
‘No,’ he said. ‘No shaking hands. We kiss our loved ones.’
He kissed her lightly on both cheeks and added, ‘I’ll write to you.’
‘Yes, that’ll be nice … Send me a postcard, to say which countries you’ve been to.’
He knew as well as she did that he would not, that it had been delightful and now it was over, that their feelings would vanish in the infinity of their parting. Whether it was the heat or emotion, fine pearls of sweat were forming on Toinette’s face. Her soft olive skin glistened. She wiped her brow with the back of her wrist.
‘It’s hot,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how you can wear a jacket. It’s easy to see you’re from the town.’
She picked up her bag. In a moment she would bend over and carry on picking. Jean would have given anything to stop her.
‘Goodbye then,’ she said. ‘And safe journey!’
‘I won’t forget our walk to Antoine’s rock,’ he murmured very quietly.
She shrugged her shoulders modestly, then murmured in turn, ‘You’ll have long forgotten it when I still remember it.’
From the farm came the hoarse bellow of the truck’s horn.
‘Théo’s getting impatient,’ Toinette said. ‘Don’t make him wait. He doesn’t deserve it. He loves driving so much. You know … it makes him different from everyone else.’
She bent down to pick a stalk of lavender and held it out to Jean.
‘Keep it … for a little while.’
She smiled. After he had gone, her cousins would comfort her. He turned to the three girls, three young cooked plums whose eyes shone under the brims of their hats. One of them, at least, looked almost as pretty as Toinette.
Marceline’s message summoned him to Lyon. He spent three weeks there in the company of a short man in glasses, whom he met each day at a different point in town: Place Bellecour, at the Tête-d’Or park, at Perrache station, in obscure bistros — Le Pot, La Baleine — where at the bottom of a few steps you entered a low, dark room. The short man was a wonderful connoisseur of the few places that served the best Beaujolais. It was his only weakness. Actually, to be fair, he had another: he had no sense of humour. When Jean grew tired of his Boy Scout precautions and allowed himself a mildly sarcastic remark, the man looked so hurt that he was filled with remorse. He learnt in dribs and drabs what was expected of him, entering, by small steps, into an unreal, hushed world whose organisational charts reflected an unknown hierachy. He quickly realised that Marceline’s recommendation had been of the highest. He was not considered a run-of-the-mill operative; important things were expected of him. Leaning on a terrace bar at Fourvière with his companion one day, he confessed to him, ‘You must be mistaken. I only joined your organisation because I had nothing better to do.’