Charlotte Gray (43 page)

From the back of the shop he produced a burgundy-coloured dress, with a discreet pattern of golden curlicues, made in light wool, like a Limousin version of paisley.

"I think it's exactly your size," he said encouragingly.

"If you'd like to try it on."

In the changing room Charlotte slid off Dominique skirt and jumper. She looked at her reflection and smiled as she pulled on the dress. It was cut high at the neck but rather tight over the bust; she pulled it from the waist to loosen it, and smoothed it over her hips. The hem swung loose below her knees. With Dominique's porridgey stockings it did not exactly look elegant, but it was well made and, while middle-aged in style, it was at least slightly feminine. Charlotte walked into the shop and turned round a couple of times in front of the mirror.

The shopkeeper told her it fitted perfectly.

"Very, very pretty, Madame."

"How much is it?"

"Aah." He held up both hands and then leaned forwards to put his mouth against Charlotte's ear.

"You are from the country, I think, Madame?"

"Yes."

"Shall we say ... could you manage ..." His voice dropped to a whisper, '... a leg of ham?"

"I beg your pardon," said Charlotte through her laughter.

"A shoulder then."

"Monsieur, I'm sorry, I think there's some misunderstanding. I can give you cash."

The shopkeeper's mouth turned down sadly.

"I have cash, Madame.

That's not a problem. The trouble is, I have nothing to spend it on." Charlotte smiled.

"What about the clothes in the window? Are they for sale? How much for the dress? A whole pig?"

"At least. Made into ham, into chops and black puddings. One could begin with the belly roasted in sea-salt, or the liver fried with onions in butter and olive oil."

Charlotte eventually persuaded him to accept some of her G Section bank notes in return for two pairs of silk drawers and the woollen dress. He made them all into a parcel and tied it with string, carefully knotting and snipping, as though he knew it might be all the work he had that day.

The winter sun was still bright when Charlotte stepped out of the shop and began walking. She had plenty of time before taking the two o'clock train and intended to look at the cathedral, but was sidetracked by the noise of a crowd. She followed the sound into a square she recognised as the one obliquely visible from her bedroom when she had spent that first night in Limoges. A man with a megaphone was standing on the steps of a monument and addressing about three hundred people, many of whom carried placards and flags.

Charlotte moved to the edge of the crowd, from which she sensed a surprising degree of animation.

The word 'assassins' was used frequently by the speaker and was angrily echoed by the crowd. It took Charlotte some time before she understood that the object of this term and the focus of the crowd's hatred were the men of the R.A.F. She was startled at the passion they evoked.

Their bombing raids over France had killed hundreds of civilians, according to the speaker, and all of the deaths were quite unnecessary.

"They say they're destroying German installations and French factories that supply the German war effort, but that's a lie. The English have always been our enemies and the Monster Churchill is prolonging the war for his own selfish ends!

This is war for Wall Street, war for the City of London, war for the Israelites!" The name of Churchill was greeted by a wide range of expletives from the throaty crowd, the most common of which was "Jew'. A couple of drums started up a regular beat, though the people could not decide whether the chant should be

"R.A.F-Assassins' or "Churchill, de Gaulle Jew!": the first had a good hammering rhythm, but the latter had a catchy, iambic quality. Charlotte looked at some of the banners and placards being waved and saw the usual demonic faces of ringleted, black-coated figures, depicted in the act of thieving, hoarding and plotting in connivance with the British, Russians and Americans. One had a photograph of a Lancaster bomber imaginatively decked out with stars of David.

Poor Gregory, Charlotte thought as she moved quietly away from the square. She glanced back once over her shoulder at the crowd, whose breath was making angry statues in the freezing air.

By five o'clock she was back in Lavaurette. Pauline Bobotte told her that Monsieur Levade was busy, so she left some packages of food she had brought for dinner at the desk and made her way slowly towards the public baths. The thought of the drop that evening had chased away the bitterness she felt at watching the demonstration: the people who would hold the torches in the field did not see things in that way; nor did Antoinette, patiently tapping out her messages in the drizzly hills of Ussel.

The public baths had been installed eight years earlier by a socialist mayor anxious that Lavaurette should move with the times. They had become popular during the fuel shortages, though even now they were disdained by the town's elite who preferred to wash in cold water or not at all than to mingle with the shopkeepers and the proletariat.

In the tiled vestibule Charlotte was given a ticket and a towel by an old woman stationed in a glass-fronted box. On the opposite wall was a giant framed photograph of Marshal Petain, looking down indulgently on his clean people; beneath it, to the words Work, Family, Fatherland, a local sign writer had neatly added: Hygiene.

Although it was only a few minutes after six, the baths were already almost full. A long, concrete-floored space had eight tubs on either side, and was divided down the middle by wooden benches with attached rails at head height on which were hooks for clothes and towels.

Charlotte could taste on her tongue the steam that rose up against the cold air and made it difficult to see if there was room for her. She walked along the duckboards until she came to a free place, where she put her parcel on the bench and began to undress.

As she quickly slipped Dominique's brassiere over her shoulders and ran it down her arms, she found herself addressed by a naked Mlle Cariteau, who was about to climb into the bath next to her. Charlotte was unsure of the etiquette and found herself blushing, unseen, in the steam.

Sylvie Cariteau was making conversation in the positive and factual manner she favoured in the post office and Charlotte did her best to respond in the same style.

Sylvie Cariteau turned away and walked round her bath to feel the temperature of the water. Charlotte watched the departure of her strong back and solid haunches with relief as she quickly finished undressing and climbed into the high-sided bath. On her other side was Madame Galliot from the ironmongery, though without her glasses and with her hair let down her back it was a moment before Charlotte recognised her.

Naked, she seemed younger and less formidable. She walked up beside Charlotte's bath and leaned over to take one of the bars of soap that were perched on the taps. As she did so.

Charlotte's eye took in Madame Galliot's torso and the huge lower expanse of black hair which looked for a moment like the giant sporran of some fabulously virile clan. Charlotte lowered her head and splashed water into her face. Above the thunder of water on porcelain and the swishing waves of women mixing hot and cold inside their tubs, there were shouted conversations and splashing. Charlotte could make out Pauline Bobotte's plump, shiny body with its pointed breasts and roll of fat around the middle that no privations appeared to have threatened. As she vigorously dried herself, the flesh of her buttocks wobbled like that of a woman in a Rubens painting, and Charlotte wondered if this was what men liked. Would Gregory like it? He would certainly enjoy being here, she thought, though he would have noted sadly the absence of Madame Galliot's daughter. Perhaps Irene was too proud to take her clothes off in front of other people. Cakes of soap, so severely rationed outside, were in abundance here; they smelt of something harsh and chemical, but there were plenty of the palm-sized pink bricks. Charlotte washed with luxurious pleasure in the deep water, replenished from the unlimited supply, and when there was no reason to prolong her immersion, she reluctantly stood up and turned towards the central bench.

She had lost weight in the months she had been in France, though to her irritation it had gone from her hands, her feet, her cheeks, places from which she had no need to lose it. She was aware that above each hipbone there was still a little surplus flesh and that a slight roundness persisted in her belly, even though the ribs above were protuberant.

As she stood by the bench and raised her leg to dry her thighs and her knees with their fine bones. Charlotte found that she was staring at Pauline Benoit, naked except for her cherry lipstick and a ribbon in her hair, or rather that Pauline was staring at her, and in particular at her groin.

Charlotte followed the other woman's eyes to the thin, inverted plume of golden hair that her raised leg only half concealed; then she looked back at Pauline, saw her eyes now on her face and on the dark, cropped coiffure. She understood what had intrigued Pauline. After almost five months in France, it was the first evidence of a mistake by G Section.

When she had put on the new dress, she took the rest of her clothes out to the washroom that adjoined the baths, where she towelled her hair vigorously and tried to arrange it in the mirror. Sylvie Cariteau combed her black bob and smiled her candid smile at Charlotte.

"Will you come and have a glass at my house after dinner with Monsieur Levade?"

"Thank you."

"To wish you good luck."

In the vestibule. Charlotte wrapped her coat about her, put on her scarf and handed in the sopping towel. It was not far to Julien's apartment, and for the first time ever, unless Pauline Benoit was going to run naked across the Place de 1'Eglise, she would reach the staircase unchallenged.

"My God, Daniele, you look wonderful," said Julien when Charlotte stepped into his apartment.

"You remember Cesar, don't you?"

The head boy of the lycee stood up and held out his big hand to be shaken, apparently not daring to offer his cheek; Charlotte kissed him anyway and accepted the glass Julien held out to her.

"We're expecting a couple more for dinner," said Julien.

"Lepidus is bringing some pate and Antony is supposed to have a pear tart. Don't ask how they manage it."

"What am I drinking?" said Charlotte.

"It's an alcohol made from apples, a sort of local calvados. Madame Benoit gave it to me. It's a little rough, I'm afraid, but I haven't been able to get much wine. I like your dress. Was that from the shop Pauline told you about?"

"Yes. It makes me look a bit like my mother, but it was the best they could do. Is everything all right for tonight?"

"Yes, there was confirmation on the BBC. It's not till midnight, but I want us to be there by half past ten. We'll meet the others there.

We've got a new man in to replace Auguste."

"Good," said Charlotte.

"Don't tell me his name. Caligula?"

"This is a serious business, Madame. As a matter of fact it's Tiberius."

"I knew it was only a matter of time before you reached the perverts."

"That's enough. Cesar, amuse Daniele, please, while I finish making dinner. I have a little surprise for you."

The prospect of action seemed to have restored Julien's old humour and Charlotte heard him singing as he clattered about in the kitchen.

Antony and Lepidus arrived together, bringing their promised contributions, which they laid on the table before helping themselves eagerly to Madame Benoit's apple spirit. Antony was a plump man with thick-rimmed glasses whom Charlotte recognised, though she did not say so, as the local optician.

Lepidus, the third member of the peculiar triumvirate, was well into his seventies, red-faced, and with a hand that shook so badly that he had to steady it with the other when he clasped his brimming glass. A minute or so later his eyes were still watering, but his hand was calm.

Julien's surprise turned out to be a brace of rabbits he had shot in the grounds of the Domaine that morning. He had prepared them in a sauce whose main ingredient was mustard, referred to on its packet by the new regime as

'condiment'. He had put some of the rice with the offal to make a stuffing and served some macaroni on the side in place of potatoes, or 'feculents' as the rationmasters called them. There was also a small heap of something orange which even in their extreme hunger Julien's guests treated cautiously.

"They call it " rutabaga"," Julien explained to Antony, who had lifted a forkful up to his spectacles for closer examination.

"I think it's something they normally give to cattle. The commissars of Vichy have strongly recommended it to their loyal, hungry people."

"Hmm," said Antony, inspecting the blob on the end of his fork.

"I don't suppose it features very often on the menus at the Hotel du Pare."

"I dare say not," said Julien.

Even Cesar, with the appetite of three men, managed only a little of the curious vegetable. Charlotte, who recognised it as swede, wanted to tell them that where she came from it was considered a delicacy when accompanying the haggis; but as Daniele she could only shrug and share their puzzled revulsion. Julien poured wine into glasses that were always empty and pushed affirmatively towards his bottle.

Watching Lepidus's lip hook avidly over the rim of his glass and suck. Charlotte "wondered to what extent political idealism was his motive in risking his life on a freezing winter's night.