CARCASSONNE
‘May I come in?’
Marianne stared at Lucie. Her blonde hair was immaculate and her red lipstick perfectly applied, but she was a shadow of the bright, vivacious girl she had been. She was also holding a suitcase.
‘Oh Lucie,’ she sighed wearily. ‘I don’t want to argue.’
‘Please, Marianne, I’ve got nowhere else to go.’
Marianne could see Lucie had done her best to disguise the fact she’d been crying. But her eyes were red and swollen and the powder failed to disguise how pale she was. Marianne was still angry, but their years of friendship pulled at her heart strings. With a sigh, she leant forward and took the suitcase from Lucie’s hand and drew her inside.
‘What’s happened now?’ she said.
‘My father’s back.’
‘Oh,’ Marianne said. She put the suitcase down at the foot of the stairs, then linked her arm through Lucie’s. ‘Come into the kitchen,’ she said. ‘I’ve got apples stewing on the stove.’
‘Wherever did you get apples?’
Marianne didn’t reply. ‘Sit down, I’ll be done in a moment.’
Lucie took off her hat and gloves. ‘They smell delicious.’
Marianne continued to stir, the wooden spoon banging against the metal side of the saucepan.
‘I found a little cooking brandy Marieta had squirrelled away at the back of the larder,’ she said.
Lucie waited patiently while she took the pan off the heat, covered it with muslin cloth, then left it to stand on the dresser.
‘So,’ Marianne said. ‘Your father.’
Lucie nodded. ‘He and six other POWs arrived in Carcassonne yesterday. I’d forgotten what it was like. Tiptoeing around him, trying to second-guess his mood.’
‘What happened?’
‘At lunchtime he went to find some of his old LVF buddies at the Café Edouard. No doubt to boast about how tough he was, how he’d survived being in prison, how he ran rings around the guards.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘Well, of course everyone wanted to buy him a drink, and so . . .’ Lucie shrugged.
‘Someone said something about Max?’
‘Your neighbour,’ Lucie said, jerking her head in the direction of the house next door. ‘What’s he called?’
‘Fournier.’
‘That’s right. They got talking and Fournier said something about how ashamed my father must be . . .’ Lucie broke off. ‘Well, you can imagine. The next thing, he was storming back into the house, shouting at my mother, demanding to know if it’s true.’
‘Lord,’ Marianne said softly, taking her hand.
‘My mother tried to calm him down, told him I was out, but he was in no mood to listen. She cut her head on the corner of the cupboard, but she stuck up for me.’ She stopped. ‘For once, Marianne, my mother stuck up for me. Told him it was gossip. That I’d hardly left the house for weeks.’ She paused again. ‘When he demanded to know where I was, she said I’d gone to the market.’
‘Did he believe her?’
Lucie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He was so drunk, he could barely stand up. I could hear him banging into the furniture. I stayed in the bathroom, praying he wouldn’t be able to get up the stairs. I knew he’d pass out eventually. Once I heard him snoring, I crept out and my mother told me to go before he woke up.’ She looked at Marianne, tears brimming in her eyes. ‘I packed and came here. I’m sorry.’
‘Are you saying that she’s turned you out for good?’
‘It’s him or me,’ Lucie said. ‘It’s always been that way. What’s she to do?’
‘Oh, Lucie.’
‘I know you don’t want me here, I know you hate me at the moment. But I didn’t know where else to go.’
‘I don’t hate you, you little fool,’ Marianne said, ‘I just . . .’
She stopped. There was no point going over it all again.
‘I did try to telephone to warn you about Captain Authié. I was telling the truth. And I swear I didn’t tell him anything else. He’s going to help me, I know he’ll keep his word.’
Marianne swallowed a sigh, realising Lucie was determined to hold on to the only chance she thought she had. She got up, went to the larder and poured two small glasses of red wine.
‘Still no news about Max then?’ she said.
Lucie shook her head. ‘I have no rights, I’m not his wife or a relation. No one will tell me anything.’ She glanced at Marianne, then let her gaze slide back to her lap. ‘Captain Authié is the only person, the only one who’s offered to help at all. And I have to know how Max is, I have to. That everything’s going to be all right.’
‘It will be,’ Marianne said mechanically, knowing the odds were against it. Every day the news was worse. ‘It might take a little time, but we will find out what’s happening.’
‘That’s the thing,’ Lucie said desperately. ‘I don’t have time.’
‘Of course you do. We’ll find out why Max has been arrested, and then you can at least write to him. I know it’s dreadful waiting, but a few days here or there won’t make any difference.’
Lucie shook her head. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘Understand what?’
Lucie drew in her breath. ‘I’m pregnant,’ she said.
‘Oh.’ Marianne sat back in her chair. ‘I see.’
‘We were careful. I don’t understand how it happened.’
‘Oh,’ she said again, then, ‘Does Max know?’
She shook her head. ‘I wanted him to be the first to know.’ She looked up. ‘We wanted to get married, you know we did, but . . . he didn’t want to put me at risk. He was thinking of me.’
‘Do you think your mother guessed?’
‘I have been dreadfully sick.’
‘Perhaps she was thinking of you after all.’
‘Maybe.’
They heard the kitchen door open and Suzanne came in from the garden. She looked at Lucie with surprise, then put her hand on Marianne’s shoulder.
‘Everything all right?’
‘Lucie’s pregnant,’ Marianne replied.
‘What!’ said Suzanne.
‘Her father’s back and Fournier told him she’d been seen out with Max. She came here to get away from him.’
‘I’ve nowhere else to go,’ Lucie said.
Suzanne folded her arms and leant back against the dresser. ‘You can’t stay here. Fournier’s next door and his sister’s always at the window, snooping and passing on information.’
Lucie rubbed her face with her handkerchief. ‘But what am I going to do? No one can know.’
Marianne and Suzanne exchanged glances. Suzanne shrugged. ‘It’s up to you,’ she said.
Marianne thought for a moment, then she sighed.
‘Lucie, listen. I’ve heard nothing from Sandrine, and that’s unlike her. And she needs to know that someone’s looking for her. I sent a telegram, but we were thinking of going to see if things are all right.’
For a moment, hurt shone in Lucie’s eyes. ‘You were going to go without telling me?’
‘Do you blame us?’ Suzanne said sharply.
‘But I . . .’ she began, then shook her head. ‘No, I suppose I don’t.’ She paused. ‘When were you going to go?’
‘As soon as we can,’ Marianne replied. ‘You’d better come with us. You’ll be safer there with Liesl and Marieta until . . .’
For a moment Lucie looked relieved, then her expression changed. ‘But if I leave Carcassonne,’ she said, anxiety mounting in her voice, ‘how will Captain Authié contact me when he gets permission for me to visit Max? I can’t leave.’
‘Lucie, stop,’ Marianne said sharply. ‘You’ve got to get it into your head that you can’t trust Authié. He only made the promise to get you to talk about Sandrine. He’s not on your side. Certainly not on Max’s side.’
‘But I’m not interested in politics,’ Lucie protested. ‘I’m not trying to cause trouble. I just want to get on with my life with Max, that’s all.’
‘Those days are gone. The occupation affects everything we do, whether you choose to accept it or not.’
Finally, tears began to roll down Lucie’s cheeks. ‘There must be something.’
‘You need to think of yourself now,’ Marianne said firmly. ‘Of the baby. That’s what Max would want you to do.’
‘How far gone are you?’ said Suzanne in her abrupt way.
‘Three months.’
She did the arithmetic. ‘Due in January.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Haven’t you seen a doctor?’
‘How can I?’ she wailed. ‘I’m not married. They’d want to know who the father is. I can’t.’
‘You don’t show,’ Suzanne said.
‘I haven’t been able to keep anything down for weeks.’
‘All the more reason to get you to the country,’ Marianne said. ‘A few weeks of Marieta’s cooking and you’ll be your old self. We’ll carry on trying to find out what’s happened to Max, without Authié’s help. You mustn’t worry any more.’
Lucie was picking at a thread of cotton on her sleeve, thinking about what to do. Marianne smiled. Lucie had always been the same. Holding any set of views passionately, but just as likely to turn round and do the precise opposite.
‘What do you say?’ she asked.
When Lucie raised her head, Marianne saw her eyes were now dry. ‘Would it help if I could get hold of a car?’ she asked.
Marianne looked at her, then at Suzanne, then burst out laughing.
COUSTAUSSA
Sandrine and Raoul were in the woods beyond the Andrieu farm, with six empty glass jars, Raoul’s service revolver and some ammunition. Sandrine had tied her hair back off her face and was wearing an old shirt and a pair of slacks of her father’s, held up with a leather belt. Raoul’s hair was short – cut by Sandrine in the bathroom – and he’d shaved off his beard. He looked more like his old self, the face on the poster, but nothing like the man the Couiza police were looking for.
‘Bend your knees and set your feet further apart,’ he said. ‘No wider than your shoulders. The first rule of marksmanship is that the position and hold must be firm enough to support the weapon.’ He paused. ‘So, are you comfortable?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Raise your right arm, straight in front of you,’ he said. ‘The gun’s got to point naturally at the target. Otherwise the recoil will knock you off balance.’
‘It feels all right.’
‘Good. Now, close your left eye, focus with your right. Look down the barrel, through the sight. Make yourself breathe, slowly, in and out, get used to the position.’
‘Can I shoot?’
‘Be patient!’ he laughed. ‘This isn’t about firing a shotgun at a rabbit, whatever lessons those country boys might have taught you. It’s about precision, putting the bullet where you want it to go. About being patient.’
‘I am being patient,’ Sandrine protested.
He laughed again. ‘Now slowly, very slowly, squeeze your finger towards you; you’re gently pulling the trigger, not jerking at it. Squeeze it. Keep your eye all the time on the target, don’t look at anything else, just keep the target in your sight. Then, and only then, when you’re ready, shoot.’
Sandrine felt a strange calm go through her. The steady beating of her blood in her ears, an awareness of each of the muscles in her neck, her arm, connected all the way down to the tip of her right index finger on the metal trigger. She ceased to be aware of Raoul or that he was watching her. She exhaled, then, slowly, squeezed. At the last moment, the barrel jumped and the bullet went high.
Frustrated, she let her arm drop. ‘What happened?’ she said, cross with herself.
‘It’s what always happens to start with.’
‘It didn’t used to happen.’
‘A shotgun’s a very different weapon.’
‘I meant Yves’ father’s revolver, a souvenir of the war.’ She paused. ‘The last war, I mean.’
‘Who’s Yves?’
‘Just a boy from the village,’ she said quickly. ‘It was a long time ago.’
‘I see.’ Raoul looked at her. ‘The shot must be released and followed through without any change to your firing position. You anticipated the shot, so at the very last second you lost your aim.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘It’s a common mistake. You blink, your arm moves, the bullet misses its target.’
Raoul came round and stood close behind her, touching her shoulder, her elbow, moving her arm a little higher. Sandrine could feel his breath on her cheek, the sweet smell of soap and tobacco. She felt herself blush.
‘Now,’ Raoul said, once he was satisfied with her position. ‘Try again.’
Sandrine took aim. Determined to do it right, she counted down in her head, like swimming in the deeper part of the river at Rennes-les-Bains, slow and steady, breathing in, breathing out. This time, she squeezed the trigger and imagined the bullet shooting down the barrel and out. This time, the glass shattered.
‘There!’ she said with triumph, turning round to face him.
‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘We’ll make a marksman of you yet.’
‘Haven’t we practised enough?’ she said. ‘It makes me nervous being out here.’
He smiled. ‘There’s no one about.’
Raoul leant forward, aligning his arm with the length of hers. Now he was folding his hand over hers, helping her to raise the gun, her exact shadow. Heat flooded through her, making her aware of every inch of her skin, of his skin, of his breath on the back of her neck.
‘Now,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Try again.’
When the shadows were beginning to lengthen, Raoul and Sandrine returned to the house.
She put her head around the door into the salon. Liesl and Marieta were playing ‘vingt-et-un’. Marieta had more colour in her cheeks. Liesl seemed to have recovered from her attack of nerves. Sandrine went back into the hall.
‘I can’t find Monsieur Baillard,’ Raoul said, appearing at the end of the corridor. ‘I wanted to tell him about my star pupil.’ He took her hand and held it tight.
‘What is it?’ she said, feeling the urgency in his grasp.
‘I was going out of my mind at the thought of not seeing you again.’
Sandrine raised her hand to his cheek, and all the words, spoken and unspoken, shimmered in the air between them. Then, sharp, a glimpse of how life might have been. In different times, not these times, the vision of years of marriage and love and company. The smile slipped from her lips.
‘If something happened to you, I don’t think I could bear it,’ she said.
‘Nothing’s going to happen to me,’ he said.
‘You can’t say that.’
‘I can look after myself.’
Sandrine sat down at the bottom of the stairs. ‘When you were taking refugees across the border, when you were risking your life for people you didn’t even know, probably wouldn’t see again, what were you thinking?’
He sat down beside her. ‘Mostly you’re not thinking at all, only about where to sleep, where the next meal’s coming from, if there are police or patrols about.’
‘Were you scared?’
He laughed. ‘All the time. It’s how you survive. Fear keeps you on your guard, keeps you safe.’ He threaded her fingers through his. ‘You think about one day at a time. Today’s the only day that matters.’
‘And if things never change?’
‘They will,’ he said quickly. ‘They have to. We’ll keep fighting, more people will come over to our way of seeing things, we won’t . . .’ He stopped. ‘Things will get better, you’ll see.’
Sandrine looked at his serious, proud face, his restless eyes bright in his tanned face, then put her arm around his waist. Sensing a change in her, perhaps, Raoul felt suddenly awkward.
‘What?’ he said, nervous now.
Sandrine stood up and took a couple of steps up the stairs. ‘Today is what matters, that’s what you said.’
‘Yes . . .’
‘And you can’t say you’ll be all right, because you don’t know. We don’t know what will happen when the sun rises tomorrow.’
She kicked off her shoes, which fell clattering back down to the floor, then turned and walked up the narrow stairs, feeling his eyes on her. She didn’t know what she intended, not really. Only a voice in her head telling her how little time they might have.
Sandrine stopped, turned then. Looked back at him. Watched as Raoul ran his fingers over his hair, glanced at the shoes lying like an invitation on the floor, not sure what he was supposed to do.
She smiled. In slow motion, it seemed to her, he started to walk up the stairs, then faster, taking them two at a time, until he was standing in front of her.
‘Today is what matters,’ she said again.