Hunting Ground (7 page)

* * *

The memories … that weekend … I was sitting in front of the fire when my sister came up behind me. ‘You’re being too quiet tonight. Don’t you want to join us?’ she asked.

I shook my head. ‘I’m tired. It’s the children, Nini. They take the stuffing out of me sometimes.’ I forced a smile, then drew the shawl more closely about my shoulders.

‘Want another vermouth?’

‘I think I need it. Has Simone taken Jean-Guy up to bed? Check for me, will you? He’ll procrastinate, and you know how she is with him.’

Janine gave my cheek an affectionate touch. ‘You do look tired. Has André spoken to you yet?’

‘Of what?’ I asked, sitting up in alarm.

‘About the tonic he wants you to take. He says you look as though you need iron.’

‘
Ah, merde!
Am I to be dissected like one of his patients? I’m quite all right. André does not have children.’

‘You’re angry with me.’

I turned away. ‘Of course not. Why should I be?’

Neither of us said a thing. Janine didn’t move but kept her hand on the back of my chair. I wished we could have a little tête-à-tête like old times, but that could never be. Not now. ‘Nini, what will we do with them tomorrow? Sit around all day worrying about the war? Let’s take them to Pincevent, to the sand pits, and then, why then to the millpond.’

I had said it like a person pleading for her life. Somehow Janine found the courage to look at me and touch my cheek again. ‘You really are worried. What is it? Why don’t you tell me?’

Did she really want the truth? ‘It’s nothing. It’s just a feeling I have about this war. Me, I want the weekend to be like it used to be for the two of us.’

‘Then I would like that, too. Yes, I would.’

The breath of her perfume lingered with the lightness of her touch, and as I turned to watch her leave the room, Janine caught sight of me in one of the mirrors that flanked the doorway, and for an instant saw the depth of my desperation.

Then she was gone from the room, her bright skirt swaying in such a businesslike way, and I returned to my gazing into the fire. Pincevent, why had I suggested we go there? It was down in the valley of the Seine, on the river flats just at the bend above where the Seine and the Loing were joined. Thousands and thousands of years ago, it had been a ford in the ancestral Seine, the migratory route of reindeer herds at the close of the last Ice Age. Nomads had hunted them and worked the nearby cliffs of chalk for flint. Now dredges mined the sands creating craters and mountains as if the place had been a battleground, which it had, after a fashion, for the river would have run red with blood and the slaughter would have been terrible.

I could hear the shrillness of our childhood shouts as we had hunted imaginary reindeer much to the delight of our father. I could hear the quiet exclamations as we found, in some discarded ball of clay, the imprint of a long dead leaf, the hard spear point or scraper of Magdalenian man. How beautifully those people had made their stone tools, how clever of them to have done such things. The relics of later ages had been there, too, all churned up by the dredges, and our father, showing as much delight as ourselves, had introduced us to each period of history. Bronze daggers, bits of iron or tile, some coins from late Gallic times, others from the Romans who had conquered them. So much, and in the warmth of a summer’s sun, my sister, having eluded us, sitting proudly atop the highest mountain of sand with delight in her lovely eyes and a great big grin.

There’s a time for tears and a time when one has shed far too many. Dmitry Alexandrov found me all alone by the fireplace and, for a moment, I think he was struck by the way I must have looked like someone out of the past. The suit I wore was of light beige velvet, the needlepoint of a darker shade of brown. Very Russian, very tsarist, worn that evening, but not because of him.

The lace blouse was ruffled, and at the throat, pinning a silk kerchief, was a bit of antique silver. How in keeping I was with that drawing room, with the sumptuousness of it. The furnishings were nearly all from the mid-eighteenth century, some still covered with the original Beauvais tapestry.

Before the soot-blackened grey marble of the fireplace there was a pair of superb gilded bronzes, one of a running stag, the chase, the other of a griffin. Above the mantelpiece, there was an ornate antique clock he couldn’t quite place. Meissen … it might be. If so, a small fortune at any one of several dealers in Paris.

Even at a time of war, such things would have had value.

‘Madame, your apéritif. Janine has asked me to tell you that Jean-Guy has successfully been put to bed. She’s now up there with him.’

‘And Simone?’ I asked, anxiously drying my eyes.

Alexandrov drew in a breath, for the poignant look I’d given must have reminded him of Katerina or of Alyosha, someone out of Dostoevsky at any rate. ‘Madame de Verville’s in the kitchen. Your husband’s with her.’ You need have no fears on that score.

I took the vermouth and swallowed a sip to steady my nerves. As it went down, my eyes began to water again, and I realized that he had deliberately added cognac. What was it with him? He looked not at me but into me, stripping away everything but the truth.

‘What is it you do in electrical engineering?’ I asked.

He let the hardness of my voice pass. ‘The generation and transmission of electrical power. The electrification of the railways, which will surely come on a much more extensive scale once this war is over and won.’

But won by whom? I wondered. ‘The wireless?’ I asked. ‘Have you knowledge of that?’

His eyes gave nothing away. ‘Of course, but it’s more a hobby than anything else.’

Was it? ‘Could you fix one? Mine has too much interference, too much of the …’

‘Static?’

‘Yes.’

‘Please.’ He indicated that I should show him the way. As I got up, I handed him the glass and he tossed off the rest. ‘That’s only to make sure it won’t be spilt on your lovely carpets.’

How thoughtful of him. The price … The weekend would cost us a fortune we didn’t have. Still, there was the wireless.

‘Does the aerial run up to the roof?’ he asked. ‘The forest, the hills …’

Had he looked the place over even then? ‘No. I’ve strung ten metres around the outside of one of the windows in the library. Until recently, I was getting London very clearly. It’s a loose connection. A wire, I think, that runs between the tubes. When I tap the console, the static increases.’

‘Have you any solder—a bit of scrap silver perhaps? Something with which to fix it more securely?’

Dmitry mended the set using an edge of the brooch I was wearing and the heat from the poker of the kitchen stove. The brooch had been one of those from the jewel box, and Jules hadn’t even noticed my wearing it.

An uncomfortable silence settled over the dining room table, a pause, and then the muted sounds of hesitant cutlery, the accidental ringing of crystal on china as a wineglass was hurriedly set down.

I waited for Jules to answer. When he didn’t, when he gave Janine, who was sitting on his right, a little more wine, I said, ‘The taxes, my husband. Why haven’t they been paid?’

The wine bottle paused. Michèle Chevalier blanched and swallowed with difficulty. Dmitry Alexandrov, who was sitting opposite her beside Marcel, went on eating as if nothing untoward had happened. Henri-Philippe Beauclair, alarmed for sure, hesitantly fingered the tablecloth.

The Vuittons waited with bated breath. This was news, scandal, embarrassment, the hour of decision too, no doubt.

‘Well?’ I demanded harshly.

‘Well
what
?’ Jules lowered the wine bottle and set it carefully on the table among the tall-stemmed, air-twist glasses and the golden Meissonier candlesticks.

‘You know very well.’

‘This is neither the time nor the place to discuss such matters.’

I put my knife and fork down. ‘When else is there time? We’re never alone for a moment. Pardon, please, Simone, André, Henri-Philippe, Michèle … I didn’t mean to imply that you are not welcome and gladly, but the taxes haven’t been paid and something must be done about them.’

‘They’ll be paid next week.’

‘How? You’ve nothing in the bank but a few thousand francs. They’ve written about a loan you took out some time ago. I know, my husband. I opened the letter.’

For a wife to have done such a thing in France at that time or any other was to commit a sin far worse than adultery, but Jules simply looked at me and, for the first time that weekend, a sadness came into his eyes, and I realized he understood the matter only too well.

The candlelight flickered and threw shadows on the walls where bluebirds and doves—all sorts of birds—sang silently from the exquisite prison of their flowering cherry trees. From the belle-époque chandeliers came the sparkle of diamonds among their many-faceted crystals.

‘I’ll have to sell something, I suppose,’ he said at last.

He looked so handsome. Even then I had to confess that given but the slightest opportunity I would have forgiven him.

‘Such as?’ I asked sharply.

‘
Merde,
how should I know? A painting. Can’t you understand what a place like this costs? Can’t you understand that the price of everything we might sell is down?’

‘Either of the Lautrecs in your bedroom would fetch two hundred forty thousand francs at least,’ commented Marcel dryly.

Vuitton glanced at his wife. Henri-Philippe looked as if he had swallowed something he shouldn’t have but didn’t want the hostess to know.

‘The dancers?’ exclaimed Jules, the argument bound to flare into absolute outrage now. ‘How could I possibly sell those?’

‘Quite easily,’ said Marcel, ‘but they would leave shadows on the walls to remind you of the loss.’

He knew—oh, how he knew my husband, almost as well as I, if not better. The sweaty red silk kerchief was still knotted about his swarthy throat. The bristles were still there under the chin and on the cheeks.

Subdued, Marcel had hardly spoken a word at the table. He had been short of money and had tried to borrow without success. Now I understood his outburst perfectly, or so I thought at the time.

‘Of course,’ he shrugged, ‘there’s another matter. Perhaps you should ask your charming wife about it.’

The smile from Jules was swift and unkind, the looks from the Vuittons of broken glass. ‘What did you do with it, Lily?’ he asked.

‘With what?’ I managed.

‘The jewel box.’

Jean-Guy, that brooch … ‘I don’t know what you mean. What jewel box? Your mother’s? It’s locked up in the bedroom, in the bottom drawer of that armoire your father bought.’

There was only the two of us now, one at either end of that table, the faces of the others but a blur to me. ‘You know very well what I mean,’ he said. ‘Where is it?’

I shrugged, gestured with my hands, and tried to lie my way out of it, then foolishly said, ‘What box? What jewellery? Is this something you’ve hidden away and tried to keep from me?’

He smiled again, triumphantly now, but then let it fade, and I knew, as he glanced at the Vuittons, exactly how much he resented my intrusion into his affairs and theirs.

‘It was in the attic, Lily. Some bits and pieces my father gave to Angélique Morin.’

‘His mistress!’ I said, wondering what the hell the Vuittons had to do with it?

Jules ran an agitated hand through his hair and then let me have it, ‘Yes! The woman who meant more to him than my mother ever could.’

‘So?’

‘So I want it back. All of it, Lily. If there’s to be any selling to pay the taxes or whatever, I’ll be the one to make that decision.’

‘And myself? Don’t I have some say?’

‘It’s not your concern. What I do with my family’s home and finances is my affair and mine alone. To put it bluntly, it’s none of you business. Jean-Guy will inherit everything.’

I was shocked. ‘And Marie? Does she get nothing? Would you give everything to your son and nothing to your daughter for fear she would marry and someday inherit it all should Jean-Guy die? God forbid such cruelty. In a father who should care, it’s shameful.’

‘Lily, I want the jewellery. What did you do with it?’

‘Me? Pah! I know nothing. Ask them—ask your friends. Ask Marcel here. Perhaps he knows. Perhaps he was short of money.’

At an urgent knock, one of the nurses entered, saying, ‘Dr. Laurier, excuse me, please, but …’

‘Well, what is it?’ asked Dr. Laurier. ‘I told you not to bother us.’

‘I’m sorry, but there’s an urgent call from Paris, form an Inspector Gaétan Dupuis. He’s asking if we have a patient by the name of Lily de St-Germain.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Two thirty-seven.’

‘Tell him to call back at a decent hour. There’s no one available to talk to him at present.’

‘He won’t take no for an answer.’

‘Then tell him we don’t have any patients by that name.’

The nurse leaves us and Dr. Laurier says, ‘Would you like me to make us some coffee? I’d offer a cigarette, but Zimmermann has said they’re out of the question.’

‘No, I’m fine. Thanks for listening.’ She’s so polite, so calm, has such a soft voice, but are we to avoid Dupuis like the plague?

‘We’re they all killed?’ she asks.

‘Not all of them, no.’

‘Jules—your husband?’

‘Jules wasn’t killed.’

‘Marcel?’

‘That I can’t tell you. I simply don’t know.’

‘But not your husband and not the Vuittons? Lily, exactly what have you in mind?’

‘Nothing. I simply want to go home so that I can remember how it was.’

‘But you’re burdened with guilt?’

‘Because I survived when others who were far more worthy didn’t. Because there are things I did for which I’m ashamed.’

‘You desperately need help. You know this, don’t you?’

‘What I need most is to remember. You see, they robbed us of everything else in the camps. They even tried to steal our memories, to ridicule them, to debase them, to grind us into the ground. I can’t lose my memories, not until …’

‘Until what?’

‘Never mind. Look, the least you can do is leave me alone. I don’t
want
to talk to you. I never did! It’s far too hard for me. So hard, I feel like I’m breaking to pieces!’