Charlotte Gray (48 page)

"Julien, thank God you're here." She was so out of breath she could hardly speak.

Julien's momentary expression of delight at seeing her was replaced by anxiety and anger as Charlotte told him what had happened. She omitted all mention of Peter Gregory, giving the impression that her second rendezvous had been merely at Mirabel's supposed instigation.

When she had finished, Julien said, "You must leave. That's the first thing we must do. Get you out."

"What about you?"

"I'll be all right. I've done nothing wrong, nothing they know about anyway. But listen, Dominique, I had some other news today. Something else that worries me. You know Gastinel, the butcher?"

"Auguste?"

"Yes. You know he left us to join a fledgling Gaullist network in Limoges. Well, I gathered from Pauline Benoit, who's a friend of his and a bit of a Gaullist herself, I suspect, that they'd been set up.

They went to some agreed place for a drop and the plane didn't come. In fact, the only other people there were the local gendarmerie, who wanted to know what on earth they were all doing. They spent the night in prison. They're certain they were betrayed by someone."

It was the word Limoges that filled Charlotte with a sense of lurching emptiness.

"Do you know exactly where this drop was?" she said.

"Pretty well. Why?"

"Have you got any maps?"

"Yes, over on the shelf From among the dusty atlases and tourist guides, Julien eventually produced a detailed map of the area. Charlotte spread it out on the floor beneath the light. She could still remember the references Mirabel had given her. She peered at the small figures at the side of the map for a moment, than ran her finger slowly across the paper.

"There," she said, her face turned anxiously up to Julien's.

"Was it there?"

"Pauline said something about a stream and a church.

Yes. Look, there they are."

Charlotte could not bring herself to speak for a moment. At last she said, "Oh, Julien. Something terrible has happened. It was me.

Mirabel asked me to take a message to someone in Limoges. I must have got it wrong, the wrong co-ordinates. But if it was one of our people, why were the Gaullists there? I don't understand. My memory is. well, almost infallible. I must have given it to the wrong person."

"Why didn't you tell me what you were doing?"

"Mirabel told me not to tell you. Minimum information. Anyway, it didn't seem important."

"He told you not to tell me?"

"Yes, he said. Whatever you do, don't tell Octave."

Julien shook his head.

"Oh, God. They've used you, haven't they?"

"I don't understand. Surely Mirabel is ' " Mirabel's like everyone else. He's under orders from the politicians.

And the English are no better than the French."

"You mean he deliberately misled me?"

"Whoever you gave the message to wasn't one of ours. It was a Gaullist. I don't quite know why the English would want to mess it up for them. But the reason doesn't really matter. What did he promise you in return?"

"I ... Nothing. Nothing, really."

"Nothing " really"?"

"Well, he intimated that he might be able to help me find someone. If I did what he asked, if we kept in touch. It was rather vague."

"The airman?"

"How did you know?"

"My father told me."

Charlotte nodded without speaking.

"You really thought he might know where this man was?"

"I suppose I did hope. I mean, he knows people, he's in touch with them. And ... And ..." It all sounded too foolish.

"Oh, Dominique, you poor girl." Julien opened his arms and hugged her tightly to him.

"You poor, poor girl."

Charlotte was reluctant to disengage from the safety of Julien's arms.

"And what should I do now?" she said.

"You must go home at once. I can get a wireless message to London. You must get out as soon as you can."

"But, Julien, I've only just begun."

"If you stay, they'll get you. The Gaullists will tell the police even if Benech doesn't. The fact that you're from England makes it worse.

Perfidious Albion."

"But we're all on the same side."

"Not now you've betrayed them."

"Oh God, Julien. What about Peter? He can't manage without me. He'll never get back now. It's only my being here in France that's kept him alive." Julien looked crushed by what she said, as though he had not really believed until then in the depth of her feeling for another man. He took her hand and said gently: "If you love him, leave tomorrow. If you stay, they will kill you. Men like Benech are worse than the Germans. If you love him, for God's sake go." Dinner at the Domaine was late that night, and Julien asked Charlotte to eat with him and his father. It was the first time she had seen them together for any length of time, and she kept imagining the ten-year-old boy returning home from school to find his tearful mother telling him that his father had deserted them. What would the distraught Madame Levade have thought if she had been told then that, twenty years later, the two of them would be sitting with a Scottish woman in the vast panelled dining room of a draughty manor, miles from Paris, the Germans in possession of their country?

"How long have you been coughing like that?" said Julien, laying his hand on his father's arm.

"A couple of weeks. It's nothing. The house is draughty, that's all." Julien raised his eyebrows. His attitude to his father was of slightly teasing reverence. Levade was not old enough to need concern or looking after, but Charlotte sensed that Julien was in some way preparing for the day when he would be. In Levade's manner towards his son there was that moving indulgence Charlotte had so missed in her own parents: he disagreed with him, shrugged off Julien's humorous remarks, but looked at him throughout with a passive and slightly incredulous pride.

In a few days' time. Charlotte thought, she would be back in London, and then she would really have no excuse for not making the long journey north to Scotland. For all the danger of her position, she found the thought of leaving unbearable.

The food she had prepared was quickly finished. Levade asked her to bring more wine and anything else she could find to eat in the kitchen.

There was a tin of sardines, some macaroni, a couple of handfuls of which she set to boil on the range, three apples and a bowl of walnuts from the garden. With these and the wine she returned eventually to the dining room, where dinner started up again.

Charlotte had recovered her composure. As she sat with the two men, prising open a nut with an old oyster-knife, she was calm enough to know that this would be her last night at the Domaine, and she was saddened by the thought. It was almost midnight when there came a thunderous hammering on the double doors of the house.

"My God," said Levade, pulling a watch from his pocket.

"Wait here." Julien had already pushed his chair back. There was something anxious in his voice that made Charlotte feel nauseously sober.

There were voices from the hallway, then the sound of numerous pairs of feet coming towards them. Julien was followed into the dining room by two men, one of whom was a uniformed German officer.

"I am Oberleutenant Lindemann," he said.

"Are you Monsieur Levade?"

"Yes."

Lindemann nodded to a small man standing next to him. He was wearing a fawn raincoat over a stiff collar and dark blue tie; he was of middle age, almost bald, with a little shiny dark hair above the ears, and a round, soft face, in which was set a pair of' wire-rimmed glasses.

Charlotte recognised him as the man who had been watching while Bernard put up the posters outside Madame Galliot's.

He came towards Levade and held out his hand.

"My name is Paul Pichon. I work for the Inquiry and Control Section." Levade gave a thin smile.

"That's a distinguished-sounding organisation." He declined the offered hand. Monsieur Pichon said, "We have taken over some functions of the Police for Jewish Affairs, which, as you probably know, has been disbanded in all but name." Levade raised his eyebrows in a gesture of ignorant indifference.

Lindemann coughed.

"We must go into a different room. There are some questions to be answered." His voice, despite its clumsy accent, was curiously diffident, as if he was not sure who was in charge.

"We'll go into the drawing room," said Levade.

"Is it open?"

"Yes," said Charlotte.

"I'll go and turn on the lights and make a fire."

Charlotte's heart was big inside her ribcage as she went down the corridor. The lights came on dimly in their gilded wall mountings. She went to the long desk at the far end of the room and turned on the lamp. The room had its usual smell of fine, old dust. Behind her she heard the tramp of footsteps on the uncovered parquet. Why were there so many people there?

There must be at least four others on their way from the hall that she had not yet seen.

Levade came into the room and gestured towards the fussily upholstered nineteenth-century furniture, but Lindemann made for the far end of the room. Charlotte busied herself with the fire, which had not been lit during the winter, and when she looked up she found the men had arranged themselves at the long desk. In the middle of one side sat Lindemann, with Pichon on his left; on his right was a German corporal, a small, sour-faced man with grey hair; on Pichon's left was a man with a mealy skin, a moustache and a nervous smile. It was Claude Benech, and Charlotte found that his smile was directed at her.

By the door into the library Lindemann stationed a single German private, while Pichon indicated to the gendarme, Bernard, that he should remain by the principal door leading back into the house.

Bernard gave Charlotte a self-conscious grimace as he took up his post. Julien sat on the edge of an armchair towards the centre of the room, while Lindemann told Levade to take a seat on the other side of the desk, so that he faced, from left to right, the corporal, Lindemann, Pichon and Benech. Charlotte was still kneeling by the fire, unable to move, when Lindemann spoke.

"I am for the moment the commanding officer in Lavaurette. I shall leave soon when ... others arrive from Paris."

"You mean the SS?" said Julien.

"I believe so. I have orders from our Military Command in Paris. I don't need to tell you the details. The administration of law during the Occupation has been carried out by the French police. You know that."

"Why don't you tell us what you're doing here?" said Julien. Lindemann opened his left hand to Pichon, who cleared his throat.

Lindemann seemed relieved to stop talking; and where his voice had carried a degree of uncertainty, Pichon seemed calm and authoritative.

"Certainly," he said.

"There appears to have been some procedural irregularities with your papers. Monsieur Levade. In June last year, as you are no doubt aware, there was a detailed census carried out by the Government of all Jews in the Free Zone. I have here the lists for this commune and your name does not appear on it. Do you have a certificate of non-belonging to the Jewish race?" Levade spread his hands in a small, contemptuous gesture of dismissal.

"A certificate of what?"

"Such papers were freely available from the Commissariat General for Jewish Questions."

"I don't know anything about these German bodies."

"It's not a German body, it's a Government department. Monsieur Levade, responsible for the various Jewish statutes. Surely even you have heard of those?"

"Confiscation of property, you mean, wearing the yellow star, persecution of '

" The policy is called "Aryanisation"," said Pichon. He paused for a moment and Charlotte saw him peer closely across the table into Levade's face.

"I think you would do well to adopt a less remote attitude. Monsieur. Ignorance, even credible ignorance, has never been a defence before the law. In difficult times citizens more than ever owe a duty of conformity and awareness. Full citizenship carries obligations. That, Monsieur, is the nub of the whole Jewish question." Levade said nothing, but glanced across at Julien, who seemed to be holding himself back with difficulty, convulsively clenching and unclenching his fists.

"Let me explain a little further," said Pichon.

"I have no wish to surprise or intimidate you. I want you to understand the full authority of these proceedings."

Charlotte stood up from the gently smoking fire; Pichon's voice carried no obvious emotion, but it made her feel sick with foreboding. Her initial relief that no attention was being paid to her was replaced by a fear that some worse fate was being prepared for Levade.

"Authority?" said Julien.

"Authority? What on earth authority can you have, some fabricated organisation who ' " We have the authority of the French government. Monsieur. The law of 2 June 1941 gives the right of internment to the local prefecture of any Jew, foreign or French. Juridically," said Pichon, removing his glasses as though to savour the word better, 'the distinction between native Jews and refugees collapsed with that statute."

"But in the Free Zone," said Julien, 'you can't ' "There is no longer a Free Zone," said Pichon.

"Surely even here in Lavaurette you have noticed that. Please let me continue. Since the events of 1940 the government, as you know, has endeavoured to maintain the sovereignty of France by vigorous independent action. The principal aim has been to collaborate with the Occupier in order to safeguard more completely that independence and, in the fullness of time, to extend its limits. All this has been successfully achieved by the Government, acting in the interests of its citizens, though the full rewards for such negotiation will not be apparent until the Allies are defeated.