Charlotte Gray (35 page)

That was her view, at any rate, and she would not be afraid to express it. Since arriving at the Domaine, she had learned that the quality Levade most seemed to value was frankness. His honesty about himself had prompted in her a reciprocal candour, and nothing would be gained by saying less than she meant. The only trick with Levade was to pick the right moment, not to trouble him when he was distracted by work.

When she heard his slippered footstep on the sprung floor of the dining room she made some tea and took it into him. His face was white, and there were grey smudges round the sockets of his eyes; his skin, she thought, was oddly expressive and changeable for someone of his age. His head hung still over the blue bowl of tea she placed in front of him, and she could sense the awful weight of sleeplessness suggested by his heavy movements. He would be better in an hour or so, when he had drunk more tea, smoked cigarettes and walked in the grounds of the house.

He lifted his head.

"I've been thinking, Madame Guilbert. I think perhaps we know each other well enough now, you and I, for you to come to my studio sometimes in the afternoon."

Charlotte's reply was made incoherent by her surprise and by her uncertainty about what he wanted: she did not know whether Dominique Guilbert would thank him for the privilege, ask for more money or indignantly to refuse any such idea. Levade smiled at her evident confusion.

"I just need a little help with tidying my papers to begin with. I suppose the room could do with cleaning as well. It must be two years since I let the last girl in there."

"I see," said Charlotte.

"That'll be fine."

As she recovered her balance, Levade said, "Of course there are other things you might help me with."

Before Charlotte could discover what these might be, the telephone rang in the hall and Levade indicated by a nod of his head that she should answer it.

"Dominique!" It was Julien, in an excited state.

"They've done it.

They've done it, they've broken through, they've overrun us, they've '

"Julien, what are you ' " Now it's all-out war. No more Petain, no more deals, this is it.

They're here in Lavaurette, they're everywhere."

"Do you mean they've - ' " Yes, they poured through the line last night, whole divisions, they've taken over the entire country. They're heading down to the sea to protect the coast, but they're leaving their soldiers everywhere. We're going to have our own little German in charge. Come and see, Dominique. Come on." Charlotte ran back into the dining room to tell Levade, who shook his head and swore.

"I want to go to the village," said Charlotte.

"Do you mind if I ' " No, go on."

In Lavaurette, everyone seemed to be on the street, murmuring in closed groups or looking in silent horror at the convoy of German motor vehicles that had pulled in along the side of the Avenue Gambetta. A small boy marched up and down in front of them with exaggerated goose steps until rescued by his mother. Charlotte found Julien surrounded by gesticulating people, who included two familiar to her from the Cafe du Centre the quiet schoolmaster Claude Benech and Roudil, the veteran of Verdun who had placed his trust in the Marshal. For the first time since she had known him, Julien seemed to have lost control of himself; he was berating the other two men and pointing at the parked German lorries.

Charlotte knew with a panicky conviction that she must stop him at once. She ran into the knot of people and grabbed his elbow; Julien glanced sideways at her, then carried on his tirade. He was shouting at Roudil, some insulting words about Petain.

Charlotte took his arm again.

"Julien, you must come with me. You're needed at the Domaine. You must come now." Julien looked at her once and pushed her hand away. Roudil's lined and weathered face had set horribly still; then his lower lip began to tremble, and large shameful tears rolled out from his closed eyes.

"As for you," said Julien, turning to Benech.

"You ' He got no further. Charlotte reached up to him and clamped her mouth over his. She wrapped her arms tight around him and squeezed as hard as she could. When she felt Julien's body slacken a little, she let go. With her lips still close to his, she said, "You must come now.

Your father needs you. Do you understand?"

Across Julien's gradually sobering face there ran successive expressions of surprise, alarm and furtive schoolboy pleasure. At least he understood, Charlotte thought, as he coughed, collected himself, and apologised briefly to Roudil, who was wiping his cheeks with a handkerchief. Julien and Charlotte walked up the hill, unspeaking flinching beneath the curious eyes that followed them.

Two or three times Julien began to speak, then checked himself.

"I've been foolish, Dominique," he finally brought himself to say.

"I must thank you for stopping me when you did."

Up in the square, in front of the Hotel de Ville, they sat on a bench and looked down. They could still see the German convoy, half a dozen troop-carrying lorries with canvas lashed over supporting hoops, an armoured car and a requisitioned black Citroen of the kind, Charlotte recalled, Monsieur Chollet had been working on in Clermont. German soldiers were sitting on the sandy roadside drinking from enamel cups while their junior officers went in search of provisions. Charlotte watched Julien's face but did not dare to speak. He rested his chin in his hands, then shook his head.

"Perhaps this is a good thing, I don't know. Perhaps ..." He shrugged.

"At least it now means we're all in it together, there must now be a general, unified resistance ... And yet, I just can't believe it to see those men in uniform, those stupid farm boys and factory hands from Hanover or Bavaria or wherever it is they come from, here in Lavaurette ..

Somehow in Paris it seemed different.

It was easier to think of it as diplomacy that had gone wrong and to see the German troops as just a new and rather impatient kind of police. You could see it all as just another political mistake-God knows, we'd got used to those. But here, they look so alien ... " He shook his head.

Charlotte felt very much for him in his confusion and in the frustrated sense he seemed to have that all of this could somehow have been avoided.

"We must be very careful. Octave," she said.

"I know. And, by the way, you called me by a different name just now. When you kissed me."

"I know. It would have been foolish to call you "Octave" in front of people who know that's not your name."

Julien looked at her, narrowing his eyes, not into their usual candid smile but into something more perplexed.

"You're a remarkable woman, aren't you, Madame Guilbert? Very decisive."

"When I was sixteen I had a school report that said I was too passive." Julien let out a great snort of laughter.

"Passive! My God."

"Anyway," said Charlotte.

"Someone must take control in these circumstances."

"I liked it when you kissed me."

"It was nothing."

"What do you mean?"

"It was political."

Julien's full smile came out.

"I see. And it would take a comparable emergency for it to be repeated?"

"At least."

There was a pause, and Julien looked down at the ground, sketching patterns in the dust with the rim of his shoe. He said, "Do you remember when you first decided to stay, and you said you felt the real action had not begun?"

"Yes."

"What do you feel now?"

"I feel this is it," said Charlotte.

"But I don't feel downhearted. I think the enemy is now out in the open, and that's a good place for him to be where you have him in full sight." Julien pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one.

"I know the Germans will try to squeeze us, they'll try to make us work for them in some way. And there'll be a war here in the south. Some people won't like that, they'll put the keeping of order above everything."

"But you want to see fighting?"

"Of course I do. And you couldn't say we've been hasty. It's two and a half years since we were invaded." He smiled.

"You look worried."

"Yes," said Charlotte.

"I was just thinking of all that quiet work you've done from your office the times you've telephoned me at the Domaine or left a message with Cesar's mother, all the calls from the wireless operator, the times you've spoken to the Communists yes, don't look surprised, I know you've had no choice from time to time and all this without once giving a glimmer of how you truly felt. I hate to think that all your work might be spoiled by one foolish outburst."

"It's not true that I've given no indication of what I think. I was always honest about the failings of Vichy. Then, when I started this activity I thought it would look suspicious if I suddenly changed my tune. So it's become a double bluff."

"But you've got to do something about this morning. That was too much." Julien laid his hand on hers.

"You're right. I shall go to the Cafe du Centre this evening and I shall confuse them. I'll say that on balance we have no choice but to co-operate with the Germans. I shall use the word " realistic"."

"Good."

"Why don't you come too?" Julien looked into Charlotte's face.

"Servant girls don't go out to bars. And I'm a married woman."

"I know, but after this morning everyone will think we're sleeping together anyway."

"So are you saying we might as well?"

"No, I didn't say that, I ' " Listen, Julien - I'm going to call you that this one time. You're a wonderful friend to me. I've never had a friend like this before. I can't tell you how much it's meant to me over these last few weeks.

It's not just that we're co-operating professionally, as it were, we'd be friends anyway. Don't you feel that?" Charlotte's voice was eager and loaded.

"Yes." Julien did not sound nearly as sure.

"Yes, of course, Dominique."

Then why does he look so hurt? Charlotte thought, as she removed his hand from hers and gave it back to him. She said, "I must go back to the Domaine. I have work to do. Will you telephone this evening and let me know if anything happens?" Charlotte walked down to where she had left her bicycle, outside Madame Galliot's ironmongery, and on the way she went past the war memorial and its chiselled Marianne, with her seasick expression and her eyes dazzled by the list of names on which she stood. On the Avenue Gambetta the German lorries had started their engines and were beginning to move off in a loud, turning line to the south. Claude Benech was puzzled by developments. He had not expected to see German soldiers on the streets of Lavaurette. Their presence suggested either that the Occupier felt at liberty to override Marshal Petain at any time it suited him or that there was a threat of Allied success to the south that made defence of the French ports imperative. He could believe neither of these possibilities. Of one thing he was quite sure, however: the German occupation of the whole country increased the chances of Communist disorder.

There would be hotheads, like Julien Levade perhaps, and other more sinister Bolshevists, who would try to turn this new development to the advantage of their long-held wish to undermine the traditional France.

Benech had thought a good deal about politics in the last year or so, and had grown quite confident of his analyses and predictions. If he was right, it would mean that a man such as himself, a patriot, would need to become firmer and more vigilant. Of course, that did not mean he had to be ponderous or crude: he would carry on as normal, and what could be more normal than a visit to the Cafe du Centre?

Irene Galliot greeted him with her minimal politeness as she swayed through the bar on her way to the dining room. Benech's eyes hung on the sight of her tightly-skirted rump as she smacked the swing doors open with her hip, bending a little forward to keep the four plates of food she carried away from her clean white blouse and, in doing so, inadvertently granting Benech a glimpse of her smooth cleavage, whose shadow was abbreviated by a prim yet suggestive line of white lace. Then she was gone, and Benech turned sadly back to the bar, where Gayral pushed over his drink.

The wireless was playing on a high shelf, a song of inappropriate frivolity about an absconding postman.

Benech inveigled himself into a conversation with a group of other men, who included Roudil and Julien Levade. Their talk was soft and depressed. Benech noticed how solicitous Julien was towards Roudil, bringing him coffee from the bar and inquiring about his building business.

The quiet mood of the room was violently interrupted by the sound of Marshal Petain on the wireless, swiftly turned to maximum volume by Gayral. The dozen people in the bar stopped what they were doing to listen to the old man's girlish voice with its dry, hesitant cough. Drinks were held half-way from the table. Irene Galliot froze in the doorway with a pile of empty plates. Roudil's ancient eyes looked up imploringly to the wireless as though he might actually see the face of the great soldier who had understood the plight of men such as himself in the furnace of Verdun, who had been their saviour then.

At the end of his hopeful, patriotic and unapologetic address, Petain played the Marseillaise. The sound of the reluctant, rumbling march filled Benech with a cool certainty. Roudil, he noticed, covered his face with his hands. The emotions provoked by the music were evidently powerful: even Julien Levade appeared to be struggling to contain some turbulent inner conflict. Once a week, after she had cleared breakfast and seen Levade safely into his studio. Charlotte took over the bathroom for the morning.

The wood-burning stove that heated the water generally did so well enough for one deep bath, in which she washed her hair with a powerful concoction from the recesses of Madame Galliot's shop.

As she lay in the water. Charlotte tried to prepare herself for what Mirabel might say to her. Until the Germans arrived her existence, apart from visits to Andre and Jacob, had been free from risk.