Touch (13 page)

Letting the blossom swing away into the dusk, Jenny moved off over the soaking grass. A trickle of air began to shift against her face. Like the touch of a fabric, cool and smooth. Cambric or silk. She'd almost gloated over the bolts of silk and satin, had coveted rolls of velvet, the fine weave of white cotton. The leaves on the laburnum tree whispered at the air. The magpies would be asleep over their eggs. She imagined them lying in a nest full of stolen trinkets: silver necklaces, gold rings, strands of tinsel, glass beads. They were a quarrelsome pair, tiresome and self-satisfied, like most couples.

The windows of the houses gleamed with reflections. Lights in the street beyond threw silhouettes of their chimney pots up against the sky. The garden was overgrown, going rank with weeds and neglect. Jenny remembered the cedars of Lebanon, their blue-green needles; their sweet-smelling sawdust. She would like a chest of cedar wood in which to keep white cotton sheets. Sheets that she could lift out and hold against her face and luxuriate in.

 
Jenny thought of the river and the sea again. All across the world waves were breaking against deserted shorelines. Footprints were being washed away on dark beaches, driftwood reclaimed by the tides. Somewhere there'd be a bottle with a message in it. The glass milky, scarred by years of chinking across shingle in hidden coves. Inside, a scrap of paper, some barely decipherable writing. To get at the message she'd smash the bottle on a rock against which the sea was lapping. She'd hold the glass in her hands, swinging back her arm to hurl it. Then the paper, unfolding under her fingers, written in a foreign tongue, its message incomprehensible and out of reach.

The first drops of rain fell against Jenny's face. She winced. Wind shifted leaves on the laburnum and on the lilacs, bringing another cold flurry. She looked around for her shoes but she couldn't find them in the long grass. Moisture bounded out of the air, liquefying all the scents of the garden in an instant. Jenny stood still as the rain intensified. It was one of those summer squalls that washes away all dust, leaving plants and foliage glossy and renewed. Rain filling the gutters, floating away litter, gleaming across the rooftops of the town.

Rain plastered the hair over Jenny's forehead, dripping down her face, soaking her blouse and running over her breasts. It was drenching her whole body. She turned her face towards the rain. Water splashed softly against her mouth and eyes. She held out the parched palms of her hands for the rain to fall on. Tonight the husks of seeds would swell and split. Tomorrow the first green shoots would emerge, turning slowly to the sun. The earth would be moist and dark and there would be new life stirring in it. New life. She never wanted to move from this moment. Never.

A bee entered the purple bell of a foxglove and busied itself there, smearing itself with pollen from the swollen stamens. Gustave Peythieu watched it clamber in. He had the urge to close the end of the flower with his fingers, to trap the bee inside. Instead, he rolled a thin cigarette. These days tobacco tasted like shit. It was dry, bitter on his tongue. To get any decent stuff you had to go to the black market. You had to deal with Leon Besse and his crew. Those bastards. Even at school Leon had been a little shit. But you had to be careful in a village, in a small town. What you said, what you did. You had to let some things pass by. You told yourself that some people had it coming. One day. That was all.

Gustave watched the bee fly away, dizzy with nectar. He blew a stream of smoke from his lips then picked up his hoe from where it leaned against the garden shed and carried on hoeing the curé's onions.

The sun was sinking into a patch of cloud. It sent diagonal rays of light onto the trees across the valley. Gustave paused. Sweat ran down his sides under his shirt. It was hot. He mustn't overdo it. Not for the Monseigneur. That fat capon of a priest. Gustave broke off some stems of lavender from the rock border and rubbed them between his stubby hands. His fingers were shiny with oil where he'd whetted the scythe. Lavender smelled good. It smelled of the earth, it smelled of sex, like the sheets of their bed at home.

He snapped off some more stems and put them in his trouser pocket for Amelie. She was scared these days. Scared of him, of what he might do. But tonight, after the job was done, he knew she'd let his hands wander across the soft skin inside her thighs. He knew that they'd make love and that afterwards she'd ask for a glass of water as she always did. He'd fetch it for her and then kiss her beneath each breast as he always did when they made love. Then they'd turn over and sleep. They'd been married for two years.

 
It was a hazy day. Behind him stood the church with its square tower and its three bronze bells, green with age, hung in a row. Lower down the valley was the walled cemetery where his parents were. Today mist had never quite cleared from the river. Above it the vineyards were laid out in tidy rows. The vines looked like tightly braided hair. He'd seen a picture like that once of an African woman. A Sudanese. He remembered the way her lips and earrings had glinted in the picture. And she'd been bare breasted, like a whore at her window.

Gustave took a bag of peaches from his jacket which hung from the handle of the scythe. He ate one in quick, sweet bites, stooping to let the juice run onto the ground, then spitting the stone into the water butt. Insects skated away across the dusty surface. Running for cover. Gustave looked up. The sky was still too clear. They needed more cloud for the drop, the merest sliver of moon. The hoe sliced through the young leaves of a dandelion. He wasn't afraid. As for hidden radios and call signs – leave that to others, those who were in deeper than he was. He was used to surprises from people he hardly knew, or thought he knew. The way a loaf of bread was suddenly thrust into your hand in the marketplace, the weight of it telling you there was something interesting inside. To the gendarme guarding the mairie it was just another loaf, another box of eggs.

It was easy and he wasn't scared, even if his wife was. Poor Amelie. Perhaps after making love he'd have a small glass of cognac. Even in this war life was not so bad if your tastes were simple. And if you were lucky. He chased a beetle with the shiny steel tip of the hoe. He was lucky.

 
Gustave squinted at a buzzard as it circled above the valley. Before the war the gamekeepers had kept them down, but now they were everywhere. Vermin. He saw the bird spiral higher on a current of hot air, flicking its wing tips lazily. A spotted flycatcher landed on a hollyhock, arching the stem like the spine of a leaping fish or the fisherman's rod. It flew in quick circles, snapping up insects then cocking its head with those sharp, dark eyes. A lizard betrayed itself, flickering near his foot then freezing into stillness. It had lost its tail in some encounter and a new one was growing from a pointed black stub that resembled a dab of tar. He looked at the finger on his left hand. The one that had been severed by a splinter of steel early in the war. Sometimes he still felt a tingling in the fingertip that wasn't there. Months of training, then a few days shivering in a slit trench. Filthy underwear and lousy food. Sweat, boredom, then apprehension, then fear. Why kill each other? For what? There was a graveyard full of answers not one kilometre from where he was working. He'd hated being a soldier: everything about it from the stinking pit latrines to blind obedience. Some men took to it. God help them, they weren't really men. A mortar shell had knocked him over and finished it. Then a German unit had overrun the field hospital where he was having his hand bandaged and they'd surrendered meekly. The enemy had even handed out cigarettes. It was a relief. The flycatcher went past him on splayed wings, almost touching his face.

 
Gustave carried on hoeing. When he looked up again the sun was flaring into the ragged branches of a large pine tree on the opposite ridge of the valley. It was time to head home.

 
Amelie was washing their sheets in the concrete cistern that he'd built outside the house. Her arms gleamed under the suds. The water here was hard. It never really worked up a proper lather.

‘Good day?'

At his voice, she straightened up and touched her coiled hair. In the sun it showed its chestnut lights and she smiled.

A tender, crooked little smile.

‘Yes, I bottled the blackberries and brought in some plums.'

She bent back down to the washing.

‘The meal should be ready when I'm through here. Go and wash.'

But he loitered beside her instead, scuffing the toe of his boot in the trickles of water that spilled from the cistern.

‘If you're going to stand there, get hold of these.'

She folded an armful of sheets like bread dough, dropped them into a basket and handed it to him.

‘Watch your hands. They're filthy!'

He touched his cap as at a commanding officer.

‘Yes, filthy with honest labour. Tilling Monseigneur's holy ground!'

She laughed at him and turned back to the grey water.

‘Almost done. Go on. Wash, wash!'

Gustave went into the cool of the house, all its shapes vague shadows after the sun. The rooms smelled of hot fruit. A basket of dusky blue plums had been laid on the table. Jars of blackberries were cooling with their lids off and the big brass jam pan had been scrubbed and left to drain on the sink. He rinsed his hands, working at the stubborn soap. Then he took the sheets through to the back garden and pegged them on the line.

 
They ate their meal almost in silence, Amelie fetching the food from the stove, even breaking his bread for him so that he could mop up the sauce. She knew when he refused the wine that something was going to happen. That crimping of her mouth told him she was scared again.

‘I have to go out tonight.'

‘Why?'

She paused with her back to him, carrying the plates to the sink.

‘Why? Don't ask why.'

Gustave went up behind her and put his hands on her waist. Her flesh was soft under the apron. He thought of later, when they'd make love. How her eyes would close as his hand slid between her thighs where the skin was unbearably soft, where she was hot and moist and ready for him. He'd surrender to her then. Not now.

 
Amelie wouldn't look at him as he got ready. She fastened the shutters, locking them on the inside. Then she sat on a straight-backed chair, her face turned away from him, her hands folded in her lap. He held his cap and stood close to her, waiting.

‘Amelie.'

Nothing.

‘Amelie, you know I've got to go.'

He reached out and pulled her face towards him, gently. She wouldn't look at him.

‘I'll be late. Don't wait up.'

She said nothing. Gustave touched his face to hers. He hated her fear. It would make him afraid too, if he let it. He was doing what he had to do. Not what he wanted to. She had to remember that. He murmured into her neck.

‘Don't wait up, but don't go to sleep either.'

He saw the sudden glimmer of desire in her face, but she turned it resolutely away.

 
Gustave left the house by the back door. He walked through the village, staying close to the houses, catching the scent of jasmine in the day's fading heat. It had gone dark quickly. He made his way back to the curé's garden, prising up a flat stone with the broken blade of a sickle that he'd hidden in the wall. He reached down inside the old drain until his fingers touched oilcloth, then metal. When he closed the gate behind him and buttoned his jacket, a cold weight lay against his belly.

Gustave took an old logging path down through the woods. It was overhung with snowberry and brambles. There was the faintest slice of moon that the clouds kept covering. He walked half a kilometre down the slope of the valley and then waited at a fork. Soon he heard footsteps, the crack and scuffle of feet on fallen pine cones and twigs. The feet stopped and a voice whispered four numbers very slowly. No names. Gustave moved towards the man, intoned his own sequence and touched his arm. They went on in silence. Another three kilometres to the drop. It was to be in the meadow of a disused farm down in the valley, where the river had planed enough flat land for a family to scrape out a living. They'd prospered for a time, even building a mill to press sunflower oil. But they were long gone. The miller's three sons had all been killed at Verdun in the first war. Their flabby faces stared out from the family headstone in the cemetery, surrounded by porcelain roses of remembrance. Gustave stumbled and righted himself. He could smell wine on his companion's breath. The fool! He let him walk a few steps in front.

The arrangement was that four other men would be waiting for them. It was their job to take the supplies away. Gustave and his comrade were there to speed up the operation, to dispose of the parachutes and canisters. The quicker that was done and the stuff was separated the better. He didn't know the other men or where the equipment would be taken. But in a few weeks they'd hear rumours of a railway track being blown up, or of a factory being sabotaged. Just rumours usually. He was a small part of the machine: that was all.

 
The others were waiting at the edge of the overgrown meadow where the ruined farmhouse and mill stood in shadow on the far side. Gustave lay on his back, listening to the river and watching the sky. Around them, grasshoppers chirred remorselessly. The clouds were lit faintly by the pared moon. His companions' faces were vague and pale. A moth landed on his cheek, startling him. It was mostly waiting. Hours of waiting and then a few moments of action. He needed a cigarette, but that was out of the question.

Gustave half dozed for a moment. In that slippage of his senses he remembered the dream from which he'd woken the night before. He'd been in his parents' house, a small cottage built into the hillside with dark, crooked rooms and hams hanging from the beams. His mother had been there, but not his father who was already dead. A red mare had somehow come inside the house. It was nuzzling his face. Its eyes were almost hidden by long lashes and its lips grazed across his forehead, touching him with the utmost tenderness. Somehow it was speaking to him. Or it was thinking words into his head. It was telling Gustave that it was pregnant with his foal. Telling him with such intimacy that its breath was delicate and warm against his face. But there was no smell of horse. No scent of sweat or dung. Then Amelie had been helping the mare to foal and it had let fall a long-legged colt that had lain helplessly in the straw, its coat dark chestnut, streaked with blood and birth-slime. The mare was licking it as it struggled to rise up. He'd begun to panic then, trying to pull it away from the foal by its mane. Amelie had stood smiling, nodding to his mother in that knowing way that women have about such matters. And all the time she'd been wearing his father's best chequered cap.

Gustave rolled over onto his stomach. No use trying to make sense of a dream like that. He'd woken Amelie by muttering in his sleep, but he hadn't told her about the dream. Instead he'd pressed himself against her curled body, finding its shape with his own. Amelie had ignored him, pulling the sheets closer. But Gustave had lain awake for a long time in this state of arousal and only began to doze again when the first light was chinking through the shutters of their bedroom. Then he'd had to rise for work.

 
One of the men was muttering beside him that the plane was late. He didn't like it. There was silence for a time except for the hoarse, rhythmical chattering of grasshoppers. Nothing happened. The starved moon slid behind a cloud, taking away its remnant of light. Gustave needed to piss. He got up and walked slowly to the edge of the clearing, relieving himself into the bracken. The moon reappeared, sailing between two clouds. In the window of the ruined mill he thought he saw something glinting. Like the suddenly uncovered gaze of a bird. The way that film of skin flickers across its eyeball. He stared towards the gutted windows again. Nothing. But now he knew what fear was, how it pushed the blood from your face and tightened around your chest. Something was wrong.

Gustave stood ten metres from the river that had shrivelled in the summer heat. Across the clearing he heard the faint voices of the men arguing. The idiots! They could at least keep quiet. That was the rule. Gustave wanted a drink; his mouth was dry as leather. He pushed down through the bracken towards the river until he was screened from the open meadow by the trees and the dipping angle of the bank. He followed the water a few metres upstream until he came to a bridge. This was where the road crossed the river before winding up to the village. Pressing his head to the stonework, he heard the faint throb of engines. Not a plane, but lorries far back on the road. He dipped his hand into the river and took a mouthful of water, swallowing his heart with every breath.