Dark Summer in Bordeaux (10 page)

‘But a patriot?’

‘Whatever that means today. Like you I’m a servant of the Republic.’

‘Quite so,’ Villepreux said, ‘even if we are no longer supposed to speak of the Republic but only of the French State. And Edmond de Grimaud is a pillar of that State who has close German friends. I need more for my dossier, superintendent, and I trust you to help me. Who knows? If you do so you might solve both your cases. I’ll be in touch. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think my sister is ready to take the children home. And that tiresome little dog.’

So that’s your cover, your excuse for being here in Bordeaux, Lannes thought, damn you. He watched Villepreux approach the woman he said was his sister. The little boy ran up to him and clasped his hands round his knees. Villepreux swung him up and round and on to his shoulders and the boy crowed with pleasure. The family party moved slowly away. The little dog now trotted at his mistress’s heels accepting that playtime was over. Lannes watched them drift out of sight. Out of sight wouldn’t be out of mind, unfortunately. Should he pass on a report of this conversation to Edmond? Was that part of the agreement he had reluctantly made with him, inasmuch as there was any agreement? No reason to do so. Besides, if the Bureau was interested in Edmond’s activities before the war, there wouldn’t be much he could do about that. Except cover up; you could always try to cover things up. It was the one thing at which the political class really excelled.

He would go home, perhaps stopping for a drink on the way. A glass of beer on an early summer afternoon. But home too was uninviting. It was a long time since he had been able to shelve his guilt opening the apartment door.

Crossing the Place de l’Ancienne Comédie, he saw Clothilde. She was sitting at a café table with the young German lieutenant billeted on their neighbours. For an instant they caught each other’s eye, then, simultaneously, both looked away in denial.

XVI

Léon slipped the duplicated sheets into his satchel and called up the stairs to Henri to say that he was closing the shop and going home. He checked both ways to make sure the street was empty before locking the door. It was a week since his humiliation, and in that time Schussmann had not visited the shop and there had been no sign of the man who called himself Félix. Perhaps Schussmann had been transferred from Bordeaux, and he would be safe. But he couldn’t persuade himself that this was so. Fear had laid a frost-chilled hand on him. Two or three times he had resolved to speak to Alain’s father, but his nerve failed. If he had come to the shop, even if to call on Henri, he might have dared to blurt it out. Not all of it, certainly; he would never surely be able to speak of the worst, of the shame.

The terrace of the Café Régent in the Place Gambetta was crowded. Two tables were occupied by German officers drinking beer. The prosperous Bordelais acted as if their presence was normal, as if they had accommodated themselves comfortably to the presence of the Occupiers. Léon entered the café and was relieved to find Alain already there, alone at a table at the back of the room. He was reading a book. So Léon was able to watch him for a moment unobserved. He wasn’t sure he could trust his voice.

If Alain knew what he must never know, would he despise him or be indignant on his behalf? Either would be intolerable. Either would reduce him to tears. He swallowed twice and approached the table. Alain looked up and smiled.

‘I couldn’t sit outside,’ he said, ‘watching the Boches drink beer as if they were in Bavaria. Are you all right? You don’t look all right.’

Léon sat down.

‘Seeing them made me nervous,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’

Alain closed his book. ‘Kafka,’ he said. ‘Appropriate, don’t you think? “Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K because without having done anything wrong he was arrested one morning.” That’s the first sentence, you know. It’s the way things are now, isn’t it? You’ve brought the stuff?’

‘Yes.’

‘Give me one. I’ll leave it in the toilet. I brought some drawing-pins.’ When he returned, he said, ‘That’s a start. It looks good. But we shouldn’t hang around.’

When they came out into the square, Alain said, ‘I’d have liked to watch people going in and out and see the expression on their faces, but . . . ’ ‘But it’s a luxury we have to deny ourselves.’

‘Exactly. Come, we’re going to meet a couple of mates from school who’ve agreed to help.’

‘Is that wise?’

‘We can’t do it all ourselves and they’re good mates. Of course they know nothing about the production side. It’s better they don’t. We’re meeting them at the railway station. It’s a place where nobody knows us, where it’s natural to meet by chance.’

The two boys were waiting at the station entrance as if on the lookout for girls. Alain clapped one on the back and said, ‘This way.’ He led them through side-streets and down to the quai, without saying anything. The quai was deserted. Alain heaved himself up on to the parapet and sat there swinging his legs.

‘Good,’ he said, ‘introductions. This is Athos,’ he said, indicating Léon. ‘And this is Porthos and this is Aramis.’

‘And you’re d’Artagnan, I suppose,’ said the large solid youth he had called Porthos.

‘What’s the point of this?’ Aramis said. He was a slim fair-haired boy with a sulky mouth. ‘We know each other.’

‘You don’t know Athos,’ Alain said, ‘and you don’t need to know him as anything but Athos. He’s the brains of our network.’

‘Network?’ Porthos said.

‘That’s what it’s going to be. When you find a new recruit, you give him a false name. That way, if we are taken, we don’t know his real name and he doesn’t know ours and so neither can give the other away.’

‘But we know each other by our real names,’ Aramis said.

‘That’s unavoidable. We have to start this way, but from now on, we know each other only as the musketeers, and I’m our only link in common.’

Léon gave them each a leaflet to read. They expressed approval; ‘This is incendiary,’ Aramis said. Léon blushed with pleasure and handed each a sheaf.

Alain said, ‘Never put them up where you can be seen. Always post them where they will be seen. This is just a start. We have to encourage people to see that things don’t have to be the way they are. All right?’

‘All right.’

‘And remember this isn’t a game. It’s dangerous. We’re still in the war, or rather we’re renewing it. We’ll meet tomorrow to see how it’s gone. The municipal swimming-pool would be a good place. Four o’clock?’

As they were about to part, Aramis turned to Léon.

‘I’ve seen you before, Athos, but I don’t remember where.’

‘It’s better that way,’ Léon said.

When the others had left, he said,

‘I’m going to make a drawing of the Cross of Lorraine and duplicate it. Then we can just scatter it around to show that de Gaulle has supporters here in Bordeaux.’

‘Great idea.’

‘Tell me about Aramis. He thinks he knows me from somewhere, but I don’t recognise him.’

‘Doesn’t matter, but, as you said, keep it that way. Now let’s start our own distribution. It feels good to be doing something, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Léon said, ‘as long as all four of us remember to be careful.’

‘Are you afraid, Léon?’

Léon lifted his gaze to look his friend in the eye.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I admit I am.’

‘Good,’ Alain said. ‘So am I. Fear makes you cautious, which is what we have to be.’

XVII

Lannes remembered how most mornings when he was a boy his mother had had to call him several times to get up and ready for school. Occasionally she had stripped the bedclothes off and even given him a smack on his thigh to wake him up properly. Now, sleep deserted him long before the early summer dawn and he slipped out of bed quietly so as not to wake Marguerite. He put on a dressing-gown. In the kitchen he filled the coffee-pot and set it on the stove. His clothes were over the back of a chair; he had taken to undressing there in order not to disturb his wife. It was a long time since they had made love. Perhaps they would never do so again. There must be many marriages like theirs in France now where nothing was said because what might be said was painful or frightening. Their last time of real intimacy had been in the weeks when he was recovering after being discharged from hospital following the shooting outside the Hôtel Splendide. Even Dominique’s return had only brought them together again for a few days. Perhaps if he had explained his role in securing it, things might have been different, but he could not claim credit for the shameful deal he had made with Edmond de Grimaud. And now he was perplexed by his conversation with the spook which meant he must choose one betrayal or another.

The coffee was sour. In the years of peace he had learned to prefer coffee without sugar, but this ersatz stuff, more chicory than coffee and God knows what else, needed sweetening, even though the sugar ration was small. Another compromise; he restricted himself to the shallowest of spoonfuls, and lit his first cigarette of the day. He opened the window and leaned out to savour the cool clear air of early morning, and to watch the swallows, martins and swifts swooping and diving like demented acrobats. He surprised himself in a moment of happiness. Usually he shaved in the kitchen, in cold water. Today he would stop at the barber’s on his way to the office. He dressed and drank another cup of the vile coffee which this time he improved with a slug of marc.

Clothilde came in, barefoot and in a dressing-gown, and kissed the top of his head. She took a glass of milk from the press and settled herself at the table cupping her chin in her hands.

‘You saw us, Papa, didn’t you?’

He thought how much he loved her, how much he was afraid for her, and didn’t pretend not to understand.

‘He’s very nice,’ she said, ‘he’s sweet actually. Dominique likes him too. You disapprove, don’t you?’

‘Nothing good can come of it, nothing but unhappiness I’m afraid.’

‘You’d like him, I’m sure, and, though he’s a German, he’s shy and polite. Besides, this war – well there’s no war, is there? Nobody’s fighting, not here in France, or anywhere much as far as I can see. Manu is in the army just as Dominique was, not through his own choice. He doesn’t even like Hitler much. When I ask him about him, he just makes a face. Rather a funny face. Maman wants to ask him to dinner, or lunch on Sunday. When you meet Manu I’m sure you’ll like him, really sure.’

‘Clothilde darling,’ he said, ‘things won’t stay the way they are and then what?’

Then what indeed, he thought, as the barber stropped his razor, He wondered if Schnyder would ask him about his meeting with the spook. But of course he wouldn’t. The Alsatian was cagey, no cards on the table for him. Lannes remembered that he had been born a subject of the Kaiser’s Reich. He might not like the Nazis and the Occupation. Lannes was pretty sure he didn’t. He might not care for Vichy and have no enthusiasm for either collaboration or the new European Order of which they spoke. Again Lannes was confident this was so. But Schnyder was going to avoid engagement either way. The fence might be uncomfortable, but that was where he had prudently settled his buttocks. Lannes didn’t blame him. Was his own position any different, any braver or more honourable? He got a photograph of the Spaniard, Sombra, from his desk, called Moncerre in and told him to take it to the Pension Bernadotte and to the bar below, and see if he could be identified as the man who had called on Professor Labiche.

‘Sure,’ Moncerre said, ‘but he’s not the killer. The garotte’s his method, remember. The blunt instrument’s a bit too crude for chummy.’

‘You’re probably right, but it would be nice to make the connection.’

There was another pile of paperwork to be dealt with, passed on by Schnyder with a note which almost contained an apology. If Moncerre did get the answer he hoped for, he would himself call on old Marthe, the housekeeper in the rue d’Aviau, and see if Sigi was indeed back in Bordeaux. He was sure that anything Sombra did was authorised by him – and that led the trail back to Edmond in Vichy. He wondered if he should have said something about this case to the spook.

The young man who emerged from Labiche’s office fitted the description Mangeot had given, vague though that had been. René Martin hesitated for a moment, unsure whether it would be wise to accost him in the street. However, the clerk turned in the opposite direction, stopping at a kiosk to buy a newspaper, doubtless to read over his lunch. Martin followed him at a distance till he saw him turn into a brasserie in the Cours du Chapeau Rouge. He quickened his pace and was relieved to see that his quarry had taken a seat at a table for two against the wall in the back of the room. Without an apology he settled himself opposite the clerk who was evidently a regular customer, for the waiter greeted him with a handshake.

‘The usual?’ the waiter said. The clerk nodded, and Martin said, ‘Bring me the same.’

Martin showed him his identification and said, ‘We can talk here, which will be more convenient for you, or you can accompany me to the station.’

‘I can’t think that we have anything to talk about.’