Cold Winter in Bordeaux (21 page)

‘Not particularly.’

He gave a half-smile. It was a hesitant smile as if he didn’t know how he stood and was wondering whether he was in trouble or whether, perhaps, Lannes had come there for the same reason so many other men had. He scratched his thigh under the towel.

‘Have you got a cigarette?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Thanks.’

He held out his face for a light and Lannes had the image of Michel doing just that, in the same attitude, and with the same doubtful questioning look in his eyes, just a couple of hours previously.

‘Are things all right?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Félix,’ Lannes said. ‘He hasn’t troubled you again?’

The boy drew on the cigarette, held the smoke in his lungs before emitting it. He swung round to lie on the bed, pulling his knees up.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I reckon you frightened the bastard off. Thanks for that.’

‘You’ll let me know if he does, won’t you?’

‘Sure.’

Lannes was uncomfortable standing by the bed on which Karim lay apparently at ease now. He looked for somewhere to sit, but there was nowhere except the end of the bed by the boy’s feet.

He said, ‘The man who introduced you to Félix – I forget what you knew him as … ’

‘The old Jew bastard, you mean? What about him?’

‘His daughter was murdered. Not a nice woman, she procured young girls for men who like that sort of thing. He arranged what they called shows for her clients. I wondered if it was only girls.’

Karim smiled.

‘The old bastard,’ he said. ‘No, there was nothing like that. Not till Félix. He had other things on his mind when he came to call. I don’t need to tell you what they were.’

‘Pity. It was just an idea. Does the name Duvallier – Dr Duvallier – mean anything to you?’

‘You’re joking, aren’t you? Look, you know what I do and I’m not pretending with you to be other than I am, but you don’t suppose the men I go with give me their names, not their real names anyway. I didn’t know the old Jew’s name till you told me.’

He put his cigarette between his lips and left it there, screwing up his eyes against the smoke.

‘All the same,’ he said, ‘I’ll come clean because you’ve been decent with me and I reckon that as cops go you’re all right. I have heard the name. There are those who have what they call a habit. There are some who are disgusted with themselves and can only do it with what you might call a bit of help. You can guess what from, and I’ve heard it said that if you’re in need and can pay his prices, Duvallier is the doc you want. But that’s all I know. Myself, I don’t need the sort of help he can offer, and, to tell the truth, I wouldn’t recognise him if he was standing where you are now.’

‘But you could find someone who has needed that help?’

‘Perhaps, I don’t know. It’s all rumours, and in any case, I’m not a snitch. In my milieu, it’s not the thing to grass to the police. No offence meant, superintendent. Like I say, you’ve been good to me and I appreciate it.’

‘In your milieu,’ Lannes said, ‘it’s not a bad thing to have a friend in the police. Think of that, and ask around about Duvallier, will you? That’s not an order, Karim. Just think of it as a request and remember that you’re in my debt.’

‘As you say.’

The boy stubbed out his cigarette, smiled broadly, and slipped his hand under the towel.

‘There’s more ways than one of paying a debt. So, what do you say?’

‘Thank you but no. Boys aren’t my thing. You know that.’

‘Sure I do. Leave me another couple of cigarettes, will you?’

‘Have the packet.’

‘It’s not your last?’

‘If it was, do you think I’d be offering it?’

XXXI

Truth to tell, he thought as he climbed the stairs, he would have liked to go straight to bed, just to lie down and think of nothing. But of course he couldn’t, it was Christmas Eve, and in any case he knew that sleep wouldn’t have come to him.

Maurice and Clothilde were playing cards, but the boy got up as soon as Lannes entered, to shake his hand. Lannes had thought when they arrived last evening that he looked harder than when he saw him in Vichy more than a year ago, at the time indeed when news came of the German invasion of Russia. Perhaps it was just that his hair was cut shorter. All the same he had gained assurance. When he had stayed with them for a few weeks in the summer of 1940 he had been shy and nervous as an unbroken colt.

Lannes kissed Clothilde, said he didn’t want to interrupt their game, offered a drink which was politely refused, and went to the cupboard to give himself a nip of marc.

‘That’s capote,’ Clothilde said, laying her cards on the table.

‘You look as if you’ve had a hard day, Papa. Dom’s helping Maman make supper. It was made clear I wasn’t needed.’

He knew she was dying to ask if he had managed to see Michel.

He smiled.

‘It could have been worse,’ he said. ‘Go on with your game.’

In the kitchen Marguerite was standing behind Dominique and stroking his cheek.

‘I was just saying,’ she said, ‘that they should lift the curfew on Christmas Eve to let us go to Midnight Mass. It’s wicked not to. It was so lovely when we could all go together.’

It had been the one church service in the year which Lannes used to attend.

‘Don’t worry, Maman, I’ll come to the first Mass in the morning with you,’ Dominique said. ‘That’s a promise. You’ll have to wake me of course.’

‘You’re a lamb,’ she said. ‘You’ve always been that.’

Lannes thought of the mother and son he had just left in their stinking apartment, the boy caressing himself as he lay all but naked on the bed, the woman bent over the table with one hand on her glass and the other on the bottle.

He said, ‘It’s good to have you home.’

‘Your grandmother’s dying to see you too,’ Marguerite said.

‘Fortunately she is well enough to come for Christmas dinner tomorrow, along with your Uncle Albert.’

Lannes was sure she would have told Dominique this already and that the words were intended as a reminder to him. Not that this was necessary. He had after all supplied the gigot of lamb they would eat, thanks to Fernand’s connections in the black market.

‘That’s good,’ he said.

‘If only Alain … ’ Marguerite said.

‘Don’t cry, Maman. Some day it will be over and we’ll all be together again.’

* * *

Lannes had always disliked his mother-in-law and found her tiresome, but when he opened the door for her on Christmas Day, he felt an unaccustomed surge of pity. She seemed to have shrunk. The privations of the war had aged her. She might even be as ill as she claimed to be. Surprisingly too she appeared ready to be amiable. Doubtless that was on account of Dominique, always her favourite grandchild. But she even refrained from nagging Clothilde, at least for the first half-hour of the visit. Now she sat upright in her chair, dabbed at her eyes with a lavender-scented handkerchief, and accepted a glass of Dubonnet. ‘For my heart,’ she said. When Maurice came into the room to be introduced, she asked if he was ‘Clothilde’s young man’; he blushed, and Lannes wondered if he might indeed have hopes in that direction; he remembered they had got on well when Maurice stayed with them in the summer of 1940 – but that was before Clothilde met Michel. Maurice might be more suitable. Meanwhile Dominique tactfully eased his embarrassment by introducing him as his friend and ‘also my colleague in Vichy’.

As they settled themselves at table, his brother-in-law Albert began to question the boys about the mood in Vichy and to inveigh against the iniquities of the Resistance. Lannes saw the distress on Marguerite’s face and said, ‘It’s Christmas, Albert, let’s have no politics. Let us try to forget the war if only for a day.’

‘I find that hard to do, Jean, when France is so bitterly divided. How, for instance, can we not be conscious of Alain’s absence and be wondering where he is and with what scoundrels he is associating?’

‘Please,’ Marguerite said.

She was close to tears.

‘Wherever he is and whatever he’s doing,’ Dominique said, ‘he will be acting in accordance with his conscience. I’m sure of that.’

‘Can’t we just be happy for once?’ Clothilde said, rising to collect the soup plates. ‘Have you finished, Granny?’

‘It was a little too highly spiced for me.’

‘All I say is,’ Albert said, ‘we can’t hide our heads in the sand just because it’s Christmas.’

He turned to Dominique.

‘We’ll talk about it after the meal.’

Lannes, relieved, got up to carve the lamb.

‘Where did you get this, Jean?’

He pretended not to have heard.

‘We have a terrible job,’ Albert said, ‘trying to clamp down on the black market.’

The lamb was beautifully tender. Madame Parage bent her head over her plate. She was persuaded to take a second helping, even though she protested that she never had an appetite these days.

‘There’s your favourite flan for dessert, Granny,’ Clothilde said.

‘I can never eat a thing these days, but I’ll maybe just have a tiny taste.’

Clothilde exchanged a look with Lannes and bit her lower lip to prevent herself from laughing. They both knew the old woman would eat as much as was put on her plate.

So the meal passed without too much acrimony. It hadn’t been as bad as Lannes feared. He went through to the kitchen to make coffee and smoke a cigarette. Clothilde joined him there.

‘Did you see him? What did he say?’

‘He’s thinking about it.’

I hope he is anyway, he thought.

‘He said he loves you. There’s no doubt about that.’

‘But … ’ she said.

‘Speak to him about it again yourself. I hope you may find him more receptive.’

‘He’s going to visit tomorrow. I’m dying for Dominique to meet him. But I’m nervous too.’

He should speak to Dominique himself first. He might have more influence on the boy.

Later they played whist, Dominique and Madame Parage against Maurice and Clothilde, while Marguerite and Albert talked – about what, he wondered? – and he read a Maigret novel and wished it was as easy to solve crimes in real life as it seemed to be in fiction.

When at last Albert and his mother left, Clothilde said, ‘It’s terrible the way Granny always cheats. She was peering at your hand all the time, Maurice.’

‘That’s why I like to partner her,’ Dominique said. ‘We always win.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Remember how Alain used to fume and sulk.’

In bed, Marguerite said, ‘Thank you for stopping Albert. I hate it when he speaks like that. He feels things too deeply. He’s so full of anger.’

And apprehension now? he thought.

He leant over to kiss her on the cheek.

‘It went well enough, didn’t it?’

‘What sort of Christmas can Alain have had?’

There was no possible answer to that. For a long time they lay there without speaking, both hoping for sleep. He wondered how others had spent the day: Alain and Léon wherever they were, Jérôme in London, safe unless a bomb fell on him. Henri and Miriam in their anxious domesticity, that poor girl Kiki, alone with her bottle, Karim and his wreck of a mother; and then there was Michel who might break Clothilde’s heart. Yes, he must speak to Dominique about him.

XXXII

It might have been worse. There had been few tears, no open quarrels. But Clothilde wasn’t happy; she suspected he hadn’t convinced Michel. Dominique didn’t care for him. Before he and Maurice made off to the station to return to Vichy, he said, ‘You must stop it, Papa. He’s not right for her.’

‘Why do you say that? Your mother approves of him.’

‘Maman always looks for the best in people, she’s too kind. But I was shocked when I heard about this Legion against Bolshevism idea. So was Maurice. Just because we work in Vichy for the National Revolution doesn’t mean we are pro-German. You know that, don’t you? Some of the boys we work with and train, well, we’re keeping them from doing that sort of thing. And they don’t have Michel’s advantages. Of course, I’m prejudiced, I admit that. I had been hoping that she and Maurice would … he hasn’t said anything, but I’m sure he’s at least half in love with her.’

‘Sadly,’ Lannes said, ‘she’s more than that with Michel, much more than that.’

‘You must stop it, Papa.’

If only he could. He would have to plead with Sigi to break his hold on the boy, but he was sure he would fail. Try, fail, fail again, fail better, he told himself. Meanwhile there was work to be done and in these dead days between Christmas, the New Year and the Epiphany, it was at least a distraction.

* * *

Old Mangeot was at the desk in the Pension Bernadotte, a half-smoked cigarette attached to his lower lip. It had gone out and he struck a wax match to relight it, and said, ‘A Happy Christmas to you, superintendent, and there’s not much anyone can wish anyone for the New Year, is there? When is it all going to end? And how? That’s what I ask myself. I take it you’ve come to see Yvette, since I’ve been keeping my nose clean as I usually do, and I can’t think of anything else that would bring you here. The slut will still be in her bed, but that won’t worry you, will it?’

‘Since it’s Christmas,’ Lannes said, ‘I’ll pretend you don’t mean what you’re saying.’

‘Just my little joke, superintendent, just my joke. What I say is, we haven’t yet been forbidden to laugh, have we now?’

Yvette rubbed sleep from her eyes.

‘Well, this is a treat.’

She got out of bed, naked, with an abrupt sinuous movement, put her arms round Lannes’ neck and kissed him on the mouth.

‘It is good to see you,’ she said. ‘A real treat like I say. Going to join me?’

‘Don’t be silly, Yvette,’ he said, disengaging her arms. ‘Either get back into bed or put some clothes on. I don’t mind which. You’ll catch cold otherwise.’

And indeed there was a damp chill in the room. He looked away from her, out of the window over the roofs at the slate-grey sky. Instead of doing as he asked, she lit the little paraffin stove and put a coffee-pot on it. She leant over the stove, with her buttocks towards him in an attitude that Degas might have delighted in painting. When the coffee bubbled, she filled two little cups, gave him one and took the other back to the bed where she sat upright with the sheet pulled up to her breasts. Her right leg was free of the duvet and she smiled in a manner that was more friendly than inviting when she saw that he couldn’t take his eyes off it.