Charlotte Gray (30 page)

She had come to find her lover, all the way to the volcanoes, in the darkness, and he was not there. She had come and she had failed, and Gregory was dead. Madame Cariteau was slightly loosening the bonds she had set on Andre and Jacob Duguay. To begin with, she never left them; now, she was prepared to shuffle up to the shops for half an hour if she had impressed on Andre with sufficient urgency that he and Jacob were not to leave the house or answer the door. In the front room was an old piano that her husband had occasionally played. On the one occasion Andre and Jacob had been allowed into the room they had opened the lid and begun to pick at the keys. While Jacob could only hit them with his fist, Andre could make melodic runs of single notes and, so far as the width of his hands would allow, play simple chords.

There was a piano at school, he told Madame Cariteau, and he had been encouraged by the mistress.

The stationer halfway up the hill had some sheet music which Madame Cariteau had noticed without interest on previous visits, and when she had bought some bread she went into the shop to have a look through it.

There was the odd sonata or concerto by Franck, Faure or Saint Saens, but most of the music was folk songs. She chose what appeared to her to be the simplest of these-the two with the fewest notes--and took them home for Andre. She went through the back door and into the kitchen, put down her basket and went to find the boys. The hall of the house was a spacious area that led to the barred front door at one end and, at the other, a broad, handsome staircase that rose for fourteen steps to a half-landing.

Bumping down it as Madame Cariteau came into the hall was a suitcase in which Jacob Duguay was letting out terrified screams of pleasure, as he hurtlingly tobogganed over the polished wood. Andre stood on the half-landing, where his expression of glee turned to one of doubtful innocence when he saw Madame Cariteau.

Jacob arrived at her feet, whimpering with pleasure. When he looked up and saw her, he had no reflex of guilt but began to explain what they were doing.

"We take the suitcase up and Andre puts me in and--"

" Yes, I can see what you're doing. You don't have to tell me. Andre, where did you find the suitcase?"

"It was just there," said Andre.

"It was just lying around." Madame Cariteau tipped Jacob out of the case and inspected if.

"This lives in my bedroom cupboard. Have you been in my room?"

"No," said Andre; "Andre got it," said Jacob simultaneously. Madame Cariteau scolded them for being noisy and for not staying upstairs, as she had instructed them. When Andre began to protest, she shouted at him to go to his room and stay there for the rest of the day. He turned on his heel and tried to conceal from her his trembling lip; down the dark corridor he made his damp and noisy way, slamming the door behind him when he reached his room.

Julien Levade was sketching a design for the converted cloisters when the telephone rang.

Pauline Bobotte's voice had the slightly affronted edge it always assumed when the caller was female.

"Someone called Daniele to speak to you, Monsieur Levade."

"Thank you, Mademoiselle Bobotte. Put her through, please. Hello? Daniele? Everything all right?"

"Fine, thank you. I'm back in Lavaurette. I'm outside the station."

"You must be tired." Julien looked at his watch. He could leave the office for lunch at twelve thirty and take Daniele to his apartment for the time being.

"Do you know the church? Yes? I'll meet you there at a quarter to one. It's not long."

Charlotte replaced the receiver and breathed out heavily. She had spent a night of dim waiting rooms and arthritic trains; she wanted to sleep for several days, to restore the speed to her slow limbs, to dispel the fizzing little pain in her temple and to purge the pressing anguish in her chest.

She reckoned it would take her twenty minutes to walk to the church, which left her with about forty to kill. The best place would be the station waiting room, but to sit there would be to invite a document inspection by some uniformed official. She lifted her case and trudged along the avenue until she found a track opening off between the plane trees. After a few yards she came across a fallen tree-trunk. She sat down and pulled out Dominique's detective story.

It was a strange and conspicuous thing to do, but she had the confidence of fatigue; she would not need to feign irritation if anyone questioned her. She was five minutes early at the church and was inspecting one of the stained glass windows when she heard the door grind open.

Julien walked swiftly up the aisle to where she stood and shook her hand.

"I think it would be better if we weren't seen together. I'll go ahead. It's the second street above the church, the third house on the right. I'll leave the street door open so with any luck you can get in without being seen by the concierge. I'm on the first floor."

Charlotte gave him three minutes, then set off. She found the house easily enough and made her way into the tiled hall. A young woman was emerging from a ground-floor apartment: she had wide-set blue eyes, waved blonde hair and a coquettishly thick application of red lipstick.

She smiled at Charlotte.

"Hello. You must be Monsieur Levade's fiancee."

"I ... I'm pleased to meet you," said Charlotte noncommittally.

"He's on the first floor. Well-you know, of course. He's just got in."

"Thank you."

The woman went out of the front door.

"See you later," she said genially as she closed it behind her. Charlotte climbed the stairs and knocked on the open door of Julien's apartment. He emerged from the sitting room and took her case.

"Come and sit down. I'm making some lunch."

"I met someone in the hall. A rather beautiful woman who seemed to think I was your fiancee."

"Oh, that's Pauline Benoit. She's nice, isn't she?" said Julien from the kitchen.

"Who is she?"

"She's the concierge."

"I thought concierges were supposed to be old and nosey and have their hair in curlers."

"You've been reading too many detective stories," said Julien, returning to the sitting room and holding out a chair at the dining table for Charlotte.

"No, I haven't. I hate detective stories," said Charlotte. To her irritation she found that her denial sounded unconvincing.

Julien laid a place in front of her.

"My life is run by two Paulines," he said.

"Pauline Benoit at home and Pauline Bobotte at work.

Bobotte's actually much nosier than Benoit. She listens to all my telephone calls. Benoit just likes to know about any romance that might be in the air. I have to keep her guessing. She thinks I'm a bigamist."

He disappeared to the kitchen and returned with a plate of food and a glass of wine, which he set down in front of Charlotte.

"I'm sorry about this," he said.

"It's all I've got. It's not as bad as it looks. I had it for dinner last night."

"What is it?"

"It's a stew."

"What sort of stew?"

"Don't ask. I didn't."

"Aren't you having any?"

"No. I'll... I'll have something later."

Charlotte put a little of the reheated food in her mouth.

"I understand you'll be going home next week."

"Has it been confirmed?"

"Yes. Of course, it'll depend on the weather. But it's been very clear recently and I haven't heard that it's likely to change. Will you be glad to be back in England?"

"I suppose so." Charlotte filled her mouth with the rough wine.

"I've done what I came to do," she said untruthfully.

"If you'd like to rest after lunch, you'll be quite safe here. You can sleep in my bed if you like."

"Thank you. Please don't go to any trouble."

"It's no trouble. I'll lock the front door and tell Pauline no one's to come up." When he had cleared her plate, Julien showed Charlotte into his bedroom. He closed the shutters and indicated the large bed with its lordly hangings.

"If anyone knocks at the door, don't answer. I've got the key and I'll let myself in at about seven. Sleep well." He gave her another of his guileless smiles and Charlotte reciprocated tiredly.

She pushed off Dominique heavy shoes, but thought she had better stay dressed in case she needed to move in a hurry. When she had heard Julien depart, she closed the double doors into the sitting room and went back to the bed. She sometimes found that if she lay on her front, the physical weight of her body slightly helped to crush the misery in her abdomen. She pulled the eiderdown over her and tried to sleep. His face had gone again.

Peter Gregory was sitting up in bed, anxiously watching as the local veterinary surgeon inspected his leg.

There was a fracture of the tibia, suspected but undiagnosed by the vet, owing to the primitive manner in which he had had to make his examination, by probing with his fingers. His major field of expertise was in the digestive illnesses of sheep, though he was competent with all ruminants and would even give opinions, if asked, on domestic pets.

An English airman posed problems of a different nature, largely because he could not be taken to a surgery. The vet had been contacted by a smallholder who knew that his sympathies were reliable, whereas the local human doctor was an uncomplicated Petainist, who in his spare time organised youth groups to go camping and sing songs with a marching, militaristic snap.

The vet looked up from Gregory's skinny leg and said something fast, in the regional accent, that Gregory did not understand. The elderly peasant couple who were sheltering him nodded their heads in wise agreement. As the vet explained his thoughts in greater detail, Gregory wished he had paid more attention to Madame Fanon's tedious French lessons or more often accepted Charlotte's offer of instruction. For the rest, he had escaped with bruising and cuts; what seemed to be a broken elbow now gave him no pain and the swelling had gone down. A long gash running from his thigh, over his hip and up into the small of his back had now closed sufficiently for them all to see that its swollen, septic edges had started to subside. The bruises beneath his eyes had gone from shiny purple to a jaundiced yellow, and the puffed skin had resumed its former adhesion to the contours of the skull. What hurt most was his neck and shoulders, where he had hung upside down in his straps, waiting to be cut free.

"You were lucky," they told him for the hundredth time, and for the hundredth time he said, "I know." Gregory the unsinkable, the unkillable: lucky to have survived the crash, lucky that it was so near the landing zone, lucky that he was picked up by sympathetic people ...

There was, as he already knew before taking off from England, no apparent end to his good fortune.

He had asked to be shown on a map exactly where he was, but they had no map.

They told him the names of the nearest villages, but these meant nothing to Gregory. From the window of his bedroom he could see fields of wheat divided by dwarf oaks and messy hedgerows; beyond them were woods and spinneys that climbed the undulating land, and on a distant hilltop was a tower. He supposed it was a water-tower, but its grey stone and castellated rim made it look like the remnant of a fortification. There were no houses and no roads within his view. He was lost and he could not move.

What kept him from despair was the admiration that he felt for the couple who had taken him in. They knew nothing about him and could not even converse with him, yet they were risking their lives for his.

It was not as though they could have had a sophisticated understanding of the situation; presumably they were as bewildered and scared as anyone else in this occupied country. But every morning the old woman, who had told him by shoving a finger at her breastbone and repeating the word that she was called Beatrice, brought him bread and milk; every evening the old man, whose name was Jacques, sat with him and fed him cigarettes and vinegary wine.

The vet explained that he must stay in bed. With vigorous hand movements - both palms at first pressing down, suggesting gravity and stasis, then becoming fists whose index fingers pointed firmly to the bed he made himself understood.

"How long?" asked Gregory.

The vet shrugged.

"Fifteen days?"

"And then?"

"We'll see."

Luckily, he still had some notes left on the roll of francs the raf had given him before take-off; his hosts had been able to supplement the produce of their field with butter and wine from the black market.

The vet left the room and Gregory sank back against the pillow. He took a cigarette from the packet on the bedside table. There was nothing to do but stare from the window over the vacant fields. He thought of Charlotte, of her eyes, of the life-saving intensity of her passion.

It was five o'clock when Charlotte awoke, having slept more deeply than she expected. She lay on her back for a minute, believing herself still to be in Antoinette's bedroom in Ussel. This room was bigger, however, and more bare; there was a glass-fronted bookcase against one wall and a small rush-seated chair with a pair of man's trousers thrown over it. A moment of panic and disorientation subsided as the memory of Julien came back to her: his black hair, receding a little at the temples, but the face still youthful with its dark, active eyes and swiftly changing expression. She remembered lunch, the stew, a conversation about when she would be picked up.

Charlotte stretched beneath the eiderdown and yawned. She felt a sudden need for tea: nothing else would switch her back from her sleepy siding on to the main line of the day. She climbed out of bed and straightened her clothes, then went through into the kitchen. The closest thing she could find to tea was a glass pot with some dried leaves which she thought might be camomile or verveine. She boiled some water and poured it over a handful of leaves in a cup which she took through into the sitting room and left on the table to infuse.