The Girl Who Fell From the Sky (36 page)

But she does. She understands many things, and the things she doesn’t understand aren’t here in this southern city with the russet brickwork and soft autumn sunlight. They walk on, smiling at each other and at the guards. She even waves, and receives a mock salute in return. When they return to the flat they’re still laughing, at the brightness of the day, at their absurd conversations, at the fact that they examined the entire perimeter of the factory and all the while were taken as young lovers out for a stroll together. The flat is bare and indifferent, like Mr Potter’s office. Devoid of clues. But there are clues elsewhere, in the way they talk to each other, in the looks she gives and receives. Something new, something shocking and unexpected, is there inside her. It’s to do with Clément, with childhood and adolescence, with fear of the past and the future.

‘Shall I stay?’ Benoît asks. There’s a glimmer of uncertainty in his expression, and a hint of understanding.

She shrugs. ‘There’s nothing to eat.’

‘I know somewhere just round the corner.’ He always knows somewhere or someone just round the corner. That is how he acquired the bikes. This time it’s a small and secretive bistro owned by Basques, where they eat
garbure
and drink rough wine and she evades Benoît’s questions about what she was doing in Paris and why she has to return. But there’s an easy acceptance of the circumstances. They’ve learned this – to live
for the minute, careless of what might happen. ‘Let’s get back,’ she says, calling for the bill.

They let themselves into the flat stealthily, like thieves. In the hallway there’s a moment of awkwardness when he moves to go to the living room with the broken sofa and she stops him, her hand on his arm. For a moment they are like that, as though he is giving her a further chance to reflect. And then they go into the bedroom. ‘You know what’s wrong with this place as a safe house?’ Benoît asks.

‘Of course I do. There’s no second way out. If anyone comes in through the front door, you’re trapped.’

‘Do you feel trapped?’

‘If I do it’s a trap of my own making.’

‘That’s all right, then.’

She doesn’t really know how to do this. The last time was obvious, creeping round her parents’ house in the dark. But now, in this tawdry room with the bare mattress and the naked bulb in the ceiling, things are different. She makes a joke – ‘They didn’t teach us how to do this at Beaulieu’ – and then turns her back on him to undress. It ought to be an outrage, against everything and anything she ever imagined, against even that one time in Oxford which seemed then to have a logic to it, a justifiable part of her preparation for life here in France. But it isn’t an outrage; it’s what she wants to do. The single bulb glows balefully from the ceiling. She’d prefer it if it were dark and there were somewhere she could go to undress. She’d rather creep into the bed in the darkness and pretend that none of this were happening; but then it would be like it was in Oxford, and she’s moved on from there, hasn’t she? She’s moved into different territory, a new world. So she turns and sits on the bed, trying not to cover her breasts, trying not to put one hand in her lap to hide her hair, trying to let him look at her, accepting that the light is on and he’s standing shameless in front of the window and there are
awkward shadows cast across his body. She has never seen a man naked like this, not blatant in this way. She wants to laugh at the sight and she wants him to laugh with her. She loves his laughter, which seems to her a kind of communion, something almost sacred – it’s that which makes her desire him, though the idea of laughter as an aphrodisiac seems absurd. Yet she daren’t laugh, in case it would mean something different in this unfamiliar world. The deciphering of what things mean can be so difficult. ‘You were afraid of me the last time,’ he says.

‘I was afraid of everything then.’

‘But not now?’

‘Only some things.’

‘Not me, I hope.’

‘Not you,’ she agrees.

They lie down together on the mattress, with her entwined in his arms, clinging to him for safety as though if she lets go she’ll be swept away. He still has the scent of the day upon him, compounded of sweat and grass, a raw smell that reminds her of the farm at Plasonne: something strange but at the same time comforting. And what happens isn’t furtive and silent and bewildering as it was before, but is composed of different elements – shock and delight, the thrill of physical affection and, for a moment or two, a strange annihilation of self in the furnace of this fused existence.

‘Was that all right?’ he asks when they have finished.

She didn’t understand that you could ask such a question, as though what they have done is something you think about and practise and make good or bad, like playing tennis or learning to swim. ‘Of course it was all right. It was very all right.’

‘And you’re not cross with me any longer?’

‘I wasn’t ever cross with you. It was the circumstances. The wrong place at the wrong time.’

‘And now?’

She lies with her head in the crook of his arm looking up at
him. ‘The right place and the right time, I suppose. For the moment, anyway.’

‘What about Paris?’ he asks. ‘What happened in Paris?’

She laughs, a faint laugh that is no more than an exhalation of breath. ‘You know I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you anything.’

This time there is no wandering out of the station to look at the river. This time there is purpose and intent, and a sense of confidence. Paris holds no new fears. And she still feels the thrill of transgression, the knowledge of Benoît within her, the startling outrage of it and the comfort. Has he exorcised the ghost of Clément? Is he the man she might love? Perhaps thinking all this is what distracts her, because it is only as she emerges from the
métro
at Maubert-Mutualité that she realises she is being followed.

Anger trips over fear. Why didn’t she spot him earlier? Where has he come from? Who is he? Who has sent him? More questions than answers.

From the boulevard she climbs the slope towards the rue des Écoles and the great dome of the Panthéon. At a secondhand bookshop she pauses to pick up a photographic album from one of the bins on the pavement. The book shows Parisian scenes from the early part of the century, the days when the city seemed hopeful and gay, something exquisite created out of silver and platinum rather than the base metal of today. In the reflection of the shop window she can see her follower on the other side of the street standing with his back to her, examining something in another window. He’s a
slight figure, with his raincoat collar pulled up and his hat pulled down.

She feels the slow churn of nausea. French police? Abwehr? Gestapo? The city is as riddled with spies as a Roquefort cheese with mould.

‘Those were the days, eh, Mam’selle?’ the bookseller remarks as she puts the book down. ‘We won’t see their like again.’

She smiles and agrees that he is probably right, and walks on, trying to stroll, trying to be at ease with herself, a woman alone in the city with a man following. Again she pauses to look in a shop window – some ironmongery, a sewing machine, a step ladder that may or may not be part of the window display – and watches him swim towards her in the reflection, then stop to tie his shoelace. He stays down, apparently having difficulty, while she gazes at things she doesn’t want. Then she moves on, quickly now so that he has to struggle to keep up.

The street emerges into the great square with the bulk of the Panthéon, that temple to no god whatsoever, standing massive in the centre. She looks round quickly, trying to think, trying to remain calm. On her right is the long façade of the Sainte-Geneviève library with a gaggle of students hanging round the entrance; over to the left the architectural confection of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. She turns left and crosses the uneven
pavé
towards the church, trying not to hurry, trying to be a young woman who on a whim has decided to say a prayer. Pushing through a leather curtain she finds herself in the shadowy interior, immersed in the smell of incense and obfuscation but free for a moment. Thirty seconds, she reckons, maybe less. The skill is to throw the tail off without giving the impression that you know you are being followed. A delicate art. She looks around at the sanguine glow of stained glass, at flickering candles and shifting shadows of people at their devotions.

Twenty seconds.

The body of the church is divided across by a rood screen, an elaborate amalgam of spirals and arches. She hurries up the side
aisle and through a door into the chancel. There are side chapels on the right, one of them holding a gilded sarcophagus where candles flicker and an inscription says
Sainte Geneviève Ora Pro Nobis
. An old woman kneels at prayer before the relic of the saint.

Ten seconds.

The aisle curves round behind the high altar. Ahead is a door to the sacristy and further round the curve, tucked in a shadowy recess, a confessional. The sacristy is too obvious. She walks round to the confessional, pulls aside the curtain, pushes her suitcase inside and crams herself after it. A musty darkness, redolent of anguish and guilt, envelopes her. She holds the curtain so she can peer out like a child playing Hide and Seek.

Beside her the grille slides open. ‘Yes, my child?’

Memories come flooding through the open trap – her convent school, the duties of penance and obligation, the odious smear of guilt. On the far side of the lacework of metal is the shadow of the priest’s face. ‘Oh, I thought …’ What did she think? What could she say? Through the gap in the curtain she watches the old woman get up from her prayers at the tomb of Sainte Geneviève and take her place to wait for the confessional. Immediately behind her the man appears, walking round the curve of the apse, searching.

‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’

‘When did you make your last confession, my child?’

For a moment the man stands indecisively by the tomb of the saint. He holds his hat against his chest and she can see his face in the candlelight. And she knows him. It is the man who accosted her before, the one who followed her out onto the embankment when she first arrived in the city.

‘Years ago, Father. Four, maybe five.’

‘That in itself is a sin, my child.’

What should she say? She holds the curtain and watches the man’s movements. What is his name? She remembers. Miessen.
Maybe she even has his card somewhere in her bag. Julius Miessen. German? Dutch? French? Who is he?

‘So what else do you have to confess, child?’

‘Confess?’ She hesitates. Impure acts, that’s what they used to say at school. I have committed impure acts. And the priest would make careful enquiry as to what these impure acts might have been.

‘What nature of acts, my child?’

The man disappears into the sacristy. It’s obvious to try there: the open door, a light showing, the possibility of rooms and corridors and another exit. Should she go now while he is out of sight? ‘I’ve touched myself, Father.’

‘How many times, my child?’

‘How many times have I touched myself? I’ve no idea. I don’t keep a diary. And I’ve been with a man. Maybe that’s a little more important.’

The priest is unfazed by irony. ‘How many times have you done that?’

‘Twice.’

‘With the same man?’

‘Of course.’

Miessen reappears at the sacristy door. He’s panicking. He’s looking this way and that, and there’s something repulsive about the sleek look of his face in the light from the clerestory windows. Something shifts in her guts, fear and triumph swimming together.

‘And do you love this man?’

Does she love him? She isn’t sure. She isn’t even sure what love is. She knows fear well enough. Fear she recognises. And hate. But love? ‘I’m very fond of him,’ she whispers, ‘and perhaps he loves me, I don’t know. We seem … suited to each other.’ Why is she telling the priest this? Why isn’t she making things up, giving Anne-Marie Laroche a whole set of her own sins?

Miessen walks past, mere feet from where she kneels, and
goes down the aisle back towards the body of the church, looking round anxiously, as though what he seeks might be hiding behind one of the pillars. The priest is lecturing her about fornication, its pitfalls and dangers, its effect upon God Himself. ‘Remember, you are not your own,’ he warns. ‘You were bought at a price.’

What will Miessen’s next move be? Will he assume that his quarry has left by one of the side doors, or will he guess that she is hidden somewhere inside the building? And why, in God’s name, is he following her?

‘My child?’

‘Yes, Father?’

‘If you have finished your confession you must make your act of contrition.’

She gets to her feet. ‘Thank you, Father.’

‘Your act of contrition, my child. Your penance—’

She picks up her suitcase. ‘No penance is needed, Father. You see, my greatest sin is that I no longer believe in God.’

She steps out of the box. The church seems cool and vacant, empty of anyone who matters. She smiles at the old lady who moves to take her place in the confessional, and crosses to the door marked
Sacristie
. There is a corridor, then a room with wardrobes and hanging vestments and a gaunt, polychrome crucifix hanging on the wall. She crouches to open her suitcase, trying to do things as calmly as possible, as surely and exactly as she is able. Don’t rush.
Hâte-toi lentement
, her mother always used to tell her when picking her up and tending grazed knees. There are nail scissors in her wash bag. She uses them to cut open the lining of the suitcase exactly between the two hinges. Inside is an identity card and food coupons in the name of one Laurence Aimée Follette. She slips the papers into her shoulder bag, closes the case and straightens up just as someone comes in, a priest in a threadbare soutane looking at her with startled amazement.

‘For the refugees,’ she says before he can utter a word. ‘I
wondered where to leave them.’ She takes off her coat, folds it and lays it on the suitcase. ‘I only want to help, Father.’

She smiles and slips past him. At the end of the corridor a door opens out onto the street. Daylight brushes her face with drizzle. Students are milling around the entrance of the
lycée
across the street and Laurence Follette hurries through the throng and turns up a side street into the rue de l’Estrapade. No one seems to be following but still she goes directly across the street and then takes two right turns, which bring her round to the familiar square. Marie answers the door to her knock, Marie with her stern face and faint air of disapproval, Marie who cannot be her betrayer because she already knows where she is staying, and surely the whole point of following her from the station is to find out where she has taken refuge in the city.