7
THE WEATHER LIFTED a little, and by the following Wednesday when Anne again prepared herself for her weekly visit to the Manor the air had a dense chill and the clouds were high and static in a set grey sky.
At the hotel one of the chambermaids was off sick, and Anne had spent an hour cleaning bedrooms before returning to her normal kitchen routine. She had discovered a spare set of false teeth in the room used by the bullet-headed Marseillais, possessor of the explosive early-morning cough which caused the dust to tumble in the passageways.
‘Your afternoon off, isn’t it?’ said Pierre, as the cutlery and glasses changed position soundlessly beneath the flutter of his hand. ‘God bless M. Blum and his forty-hour week!’
Pierre was unable to pursue his remarks, but smiled at Anne as she was called to the kitchen by Bruno, who fixed her with his good eye and ordered her to begin work on preparing the potatoes.
‘My God, what weather,’ Bruno said, taking a large knife from the dangerous display on the wall and handing it to her. ‘Who would want to live in this lifeless town?’
Anne began to work. ‘Never mind,’ went on Bruno, taking up his newspaper again from the table. ‘We’ll all be dead before long. If the Germans don’t get us, we’ll kill each other. Civil war, that’s what it says here.’ He pointed at an item in the paper.
Anne had grown to like the people at the Lion d’Or. She ignored most of Bruno’s direst statements, and he didn’t seem to mind. Pierre was always kind to her, and she had even come to see the good side of Roland. Because her life had been so dependent on it, the kindness of people she was thrown together with was important.
The kindness of Hartmann was something of a different order, something which in her mind approached the miraculous. It still seemed wonderful to her that a man of his age and standing should have taken her side so passionately. He had understood what she felt more completely than anyone she had known. She didn’t believe that he used her, or lied to her so that he could make love to her; she thought that his defence of her was more important to him than his physical love of her. Sometimes she saw his eyes look troubled when she told him some episode of her childhood. He looked as though two emotions were conflicting in him. She thought the battle was between his indignation and his recognition that he was powerless to change the past.
She found her own confidence growing. The misgivings and the shyness she had felt when he had first made love to her were less acute. She wished that he would visit her more often than once or twice a week. When she took off her clothes and she saw his eyes on her she no longer rushed to hide; what had once seemed almost paternal in his embrace had shifted imperceptibly into being something desirable. It was not just that he took the world momentarily away; in their closer moments his dependability seemed almost to banish the past.
Just after two o’clock she arrived at the Manor. She leaned her bicycle against the side of the house and went in through the scullery door. It was the maid’s afternoon off, and Christine had deliberately absented herself, going to stay with her cousin Marie-Thérèse for two or three days. Anne took the cleaning things from their normal place and began to work. After half an hour or so the front door opened and Hartmann came into the hall, throwing his coat over one of the battered chairs that stood beside the piano.
Anne looked up from her work. ‘Good afternoon, monsieur.’
‘It’s all right. My wife’s away.’
He took her by the hand into the dining-room.
‘The cuff-links,’ he said, and lifted his hand.
‘Yes. They look nice. What have you been doing?’
‘Oh, working.’ He moved about the room, trailing his hand along the marble tops. ‘And you?’
‘Me? You know what I do.’
He looked at her. A button on her shirt had come loose and he could see one or two of the dark freckles at the top of her chest. Her hair was caught at the point of tumbling and held back, not quite successfully, from her neck and face. The earlier flush had gone from her cheeks, which were now the colour of milk, though seeming paler against the black of her lashes and the deep brown of her eyes.
Hartmann turned away and rested his elbow on the mantelpiece. He caught his reflection in the looking-glass and at once turned back into the room, this time gazing towards the window.
He heard Anne’s tread behind him and felt her lips against his ear.
‘How long is Christine away?’
He swallowed, his throat constricted by desire. ‘Three days.’
‘And there’s no one else here?’
He could feel the touch of her hair against his face and her breasts pressing against the crook of his arm. He shook his head.
‘I want to . . . ’ she began, then stopped. She didn’t know the right words. She wanted him to make love to her and make her life whole again, but how was she to say that?
She tried. ‘If you like . . . you can . . .’
While she gave way to the justness of instinct, Hartmann fought against it with all the strength of will and intellect he had.
He felt her hand tugging gently at his sleeve and he turned at last to face her. ‘Anne . . . oh, Anne.’ With a moan, he lowered his face to her shoulder and kissed the skin at the base of her neck, inhaling the smell of her and feeling the softness of her hair trail across his cheek.
She clung to him, frightened by his response.
He pushed her away. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not now, not ever again.’
She looked at him, feeling a sudden panic. She hadn’t meant to precipitate anything so final.
His voice shook. ‘There’s nothing I want more in the world. Nothing at all. I don’t mind not having children, I don’t mind living forever with a woman I barely love, I don’t mind if I die in the coming war – anything if I could continue to make love to you.’
‘I . . . . I don’t understand.’
‘I don’t understand myself.’ Hartmann placed both hands on top of his head, as if to hold it together. ‘But I know one thing for certain – that if we were to continue it would cause more unhappiness. I believe that with all my heart, and that is my reason for saying no.’
Anne watched aghast.
‘Good God, I must be mad,’ he said, striding over to the window. ‘But I know, I know.’
Even in her state of shock Anne saw clearly that Hartmann was on the verge of making some terrible decision. There was only a moment for her to plead her case, and she had had no rehearsal. All her life she felt she had suffered from the effects of something over which she had no control, but here, if only for a few seconds, she had the chance to influence her own destiny.
‘How can you be so sure?’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t mind if you stayed here with Christine . . . I wouldn’t ask for anything. It’s just that I can’t . . . I can’t live my life any more without you.’
He turned around from the window and she threw herself towards him. As he took her in his arms she felt something neutral in his embrace as if it had become that of a protector, not a lover, and she realised with a rush that something she had thought a few moments before was imperishable was now lost.
‘My darling girl,’ he murmured, as he stroked her hair. He felt like a conductor of pain.
She pulled back from him. ‘You mustn’t leave me, you mustn’t. You can’t imagine how much . . . Oh God, how can I tell you what you’ve meant to me? You seemed so perfect in everything you did. And I was so frightened of making a fool of myself. You were the most perfect man I’d ever met. I thought you were flawless. So kind, so clever, so handsome. I – oh, but you must have known . . .’
‘You’re wrong. I’m none of those things. I’ve no illusions about myself and that’s why I know you’d be better off without me.’
He sounded cold and disgusted with himself. Anne hated the deadness of his tone: it was as if there were some stranger within him. ‘But you are, you are,’ she said, looking up into his face. ‘You’re kind, the kindest person I’ve ever met. You’re tolerant, and you don’t care if people are servants or whatever. And you’re so clever – well, I think so, I think you’re brilliant. And everything you do is so right, so perfect.’
‘Oh yes. Perfect.’ Hartmann laughed. ‘I’m sorry, Anne. Oh God, I’m so sorry.’
She saw that he was using self-disgust to harden his resolve and that in this mood he might reject her not just in that instant but for all time. The panic this instilled made her begin to sob. She fought against the tears, thinking she would less easily be able to explain if she were incoherent; but she was overcome.
‘Oh God,’ she wailed, ‘this is worse than anything, worse than anything I’ve ever known.’
She began to tremble through the length of her body. ‘I can’t bear it,’ she sobbed. ‘I can’t bear it happening again. No, oh God, no!’
Hartmann said nothing. She sat down at the table and laid her face on her arms. The words that came out were muffled, and punctuated by wails. Suddenly she swung round, pushing back the chair and collapsed to her knees. She clung to Hartmann’s legs, speechless with sobbing.
He lifted her up and once more took her in his arms. She grew calmer for a moment and he said, ‘I will think of you every day for the rest of my life.’
‘I don’t want you to . . .’ she sobbed, ‘think of me. I want you to . . . be with – oh,’ and the words died away in another convulsion.
Hartmann began to guide her out into the hall. When she looked up and thought she might never see these walls again, she imagined for a moment that she loved the house as much as she loved him.
She felt herself being propelled towards the door, and screamed. ‘You can’t do this to me, you can’t do this!’ Her resolution faltered. ‘You couldn’t . . . Oh please, oh my darling please . . .’
Hartmann’s face was ugly with the effort of self-control. Anne hated the sight of it; she wanted that gentle humour back; she wanted back his strength which was to have redeemed her life.
He said, ‘You must go.’
‘No!’ She began to scream again. ‘I won’t go. You’re going to kill me, you’re a murderer. Oh my darling, oh my love, don’t make me, please, please . . .’
She was on her knees again. As he took her by the elbows to lift her to her feet she propelled herself once more into his arms.
He slapped her face hard and shouted at her. ‘You must go at once. Go now!’
Stunned, she fell silent and stopped crying.
Hartmann shouted at her again. ‘Get out of here at once. Go now!’
To her disbelief, Anne felt her fingers on the handle of the door, found that it turned under her pressure. She took a pace outside and then, struck by what she had done, stopped and looked back. She saw him. He was so beautiful to her eyes, but she heard him shout again, and found that she had begun to walk away.
He turned and flung his arms around a wooden pillar in the hall, sobbing tearlessly.