Marie-Thérèse's mother, Madame Le Couteur, the former actress, looked across the table at her resurrected daughter
with quiet but unending wonderment. 'A miracle,' she kept whispering to Ormerod. She was thin and lined and grey, only
her eyes indicating her youth.
She had provided a good meal; soup, veal and vegetables,
fruit and local cheese, with a large bottle of wine. Ormerod did
not care that it was by courtesy of the Germans and he ate
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gratefully. Marie-Thérèse was asking Clovis about school. The boy was seven. He answered eagerly. He had almost forgotten his mother. Suzanne, who was six, was anxious to join in the conversation. She spilled her food in her excitement.
'Mama, we are learning a new nursery rhyme,' she announced. 'It is like Boule Boule.' Marie-Thérèse smiled across at Ormerod. 'That is French for Humpty Dumpty,' she explained.
'Back to our friend Le Blanc,' he observed. She grimaced at him. The little girl was anxious to tell more. 'It is like Boule Boule,' she repeated. 'It is called "Humpelken-Pumpelken".'
Ormerod saw the little girl's mother go pale across the table. 'That is German,' she whispered. She stared at the girl. 'They tell you that?'
Suzanne did not realize the tone. 'It is funny,' she said enthusiastically. She began to recite. 'Humpelken-Pumpelken ...'
'No!' Marie-Thérèse almost shouted at her. The two children turned quickly to face her, frightened. The grandmother looked astonished. Ormerod regarded her stonily. 'No,' she said more softly. She touched the little girl's hand. 'It is not good, a rhyme like that.'
The grandmother's mouth trembled. 'It is good for
her,'
she said, her voice low, but with a touch of threat. 'She is the one who has to go to school.'
The boy Clovis stood up and went moodily to the window. He lifted the curtain and stared out a few moments. There was still silence at the table. The boy said casually, without turning around: 'There are soldiers in the street.'
Madame Le Couteur moved more quickly than either her daughter or Ormerod. The door was already bolted. She pulled the boy away from the window. 'Quick, go to your bed.' Then to Marie-Thérèse, 'Go up and get under the children's beds,' she said sharply. 'Perhaps they will not trouble the children.'
She began frantically to clear the extra plates and dishes from the table, taking them into the small kitchen and almost throwing them into a cupboard. Ormerod followed Marie-Thérèse up the narrow stairway. His heart seemed to echo
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against its close walls. The children had two neat nursery beds against opposite sides of the room. They were already quickly undressing and getting between the sheets. Marie-Thérèse crawled beneath her daughter's bed and Ormerod squeezed narrowly beneath the boy's. He drew his large feet up so that his knees were against his chest. His bulk was pressing into the bedsprings above him and swelling the mattress under the child's body. He lay still, sweating, afraid for all of them.
After two or three minutes there came a knocking at the door. Ormerod's breath seemed to die in his lungs. He heard the grandmother hurrying up the stairs. 'Clovis,' she whispered to the boy. 'Go down and open it. Don't speak to the man. Just let him in.'
Ormerod felt the boy leave his bed. He thought the grandmother had gone to the adjoining room. He wondered why she had not answered the door herself. He waited, his pistol against his chest. Beneath her daughter's bed, Marie-Thérèse had also drawn her gun. She held it against her cheek as she lay on her stomach facing the door.
Clovis went down the stairs, a slight figure in a white nightshirt and bare feet. He made some play with the bolt of the door and then eventually opened it. Two German soldiers were standing in the street. They seemed nonplussed at being confronted by a small boy.
'Papa?'
asked one.
'Mama?'
'Grandmere,'
corrected the boy. The soldiers moved nearer.
'We must come in,' said one. They were both ordinary private soldiers, carrying rifles. They scanned the room. Clovis turned away from them and hurried back up the stairs.
'Grandmere;
called one of the soldiers politely. They went into the room and he called loudly,
'Grandmere!'
The second soldier looked at the table. 'Grandmother drinks a lot of wine,' he said, picking up the near-empty bottle that remained on the cloth.
'You are a wonderful detective,' said the other unimpressed. 'She has probably drunk it for two days.' He called again,
'Grandmere!'
Her reply came from above them, up the stairs, but they did not hear what she was saying. The soldier gave the other a nod.
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They went, still civil caution at each step, mounting the stairs, one behind the other. The stairway went directly into the children's room. The two men in their helmets went in and stood looking with embarrassment at the wide-eyed Suzanne.
'Grandmere?'
said the first soldier again.
The answer came immediately. Around the door jamb leading to the other room came the elderly Madame Le Couteur. She was naked and she had unravelled her long ghostly hair and taken her teeth out. In her hand she had a cracked glass of wine. She was skinny and leathery, her bones projecting all over her body, her belly distended, her legs like sticks, her breasts like lolling dog's ears.
'Bonsoir, mes petits soldats,'
she murmured seductively. She took a swig of wine and rolled it horribly around her toothless gums.
'My God, Herman,' muttered the first staring soldier.
'I cannot believe it,' said the other. 'It is terrible.'
The crone began to advance on them. She left the support of the door jamb and staggered across the floor. The little girl began to screech. Clovis, who was clever, shouted: 'Leave the soldiers, grandma. Don't hurt them!'
Madame Le Couteur grinned wolfishly. She swayed her boned hips and made her eyes glisten. The horrified Germans backed towards the stairs. The first man got his sidepack and his waterbottle caught in the narrow entrance. Herman gave him a push. They both clattered metallically, half falling down the stairs. Madame le Couteur reached the top and stood there like a sexual nightmare.
'Mes petits soldats allemands!'
The two Germans were still gazing up the stairs, stupefied. The old lady began scratching herself violently. That was the end. They opened the door and fled into the dark street. One got his rifle jammed in the door as he went.
When Marie-Thérèse and Ormerod emerged from their hiding places they went down the stairs where the children were already with their grandmother. She was sitting with the table cloth like a cloak around her, bent over the table, her old head in her bony hands. She was weeping.
Her daughter fetched a blanket and wrapped it over her shoulders. She kissed the children and sadly sent them upstairs
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again. Eventually the old woman was able to speak. 'It is as
well I was always a good actress, a
comedienne,'
she sniffed
through her tears.
'It is indeed,' said Marie-Thérèse softly. 'There has never been a performance like that.'
Ormerod was without words. He put his hand on the blanket
on the grandmother's shoulder. She looked up at her daughter.
'You must go now,' she said stiffly. 'You will only bring disaster
to this house. Go away and do not return until the war is
finished. Then and only then can you decide what rhymes your
children must sing at school.'
That night, in the enclosed darkness of the hay barn, they lay together on the bales. She needed his comfort and he needed her warmth. Sadness lay heavily upon her after seeing her children and knowing her husband was a traitor.
'He is in Rennes,' she said to Ormerod in the dark. 'He returns to see the children once a month. The rest of the time he is working for the Germans.'
'Maybe he is working undercover against them/ suggested
Ormerod without much hope. 'There must be some who have infiltrated. They're the bravest of the lot.'
He felt her shrug in the dark. 'It is not so. I would be lying if I tried to tell myself that. I should have known. He was not interested in politics or the serious life. I was always. He was only interested in comfort. Now he gets that by treason.'
As though it were something to do with what she had said, as if it were some symbol against her husband and her marriage, she slowly undid the buttons of her trousers. Then she
lifted the front of her thick jersey to expose her sleepy white
breasts. 'These are yours,' she whispered to Ormerod. 'Suck them.'
He put his mouth to the dim, small nipples and touched them with his tongue. His large hands went inside the parted trousers
and he slowly and firmly pulled them away from her thighs and down her slim legs. His hands enclosed her buttocks.
'You are good to me, Dodo,' she said wearily.
'And you are good for me,' he said, adding, 'Dove.'
'You have kindness,' she said. I can never have kindness.'
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'I have never enjoyed a woman before,' he said. 'Not before.'
'We give something to each other then.'
They loved and then lay against each other in the dark, warm-smelling barn. Ormerod slept fitfully and then, in the first light, he heard a movement outside. He lay still, hoping it might be a fox or a stray cow. But it had the sound of a man. He touched Marie-Thérèse's face to warn her. She sat up in the shadows holding her pistol, while Ormerod, his gun in his hand, eased himself down to the floor. Outside it was chill and scarcely light. He moved cautiously around the side of the barn and then around the back. As he turned the corner Jean Le Blanc rose from behind a derelict farm cart and struck him on the back of the neck.
The blow missed the vital point by a fraction because Ormerod had just begun to turn and because Le Blanc had been drinking cognac. It knocked Ormerod sideways against the barn door. He looked up to see a boot travelling towards his hand and his gun. The gun took most of the boot's force and went spinning across the muddy yard. Le Blanc's bald head had a dull shine like lead in the dawn light.
Ormerod rolled away from the wall and got behind a rusty wagon to gain some respite. The heavy Frenchman came after him, but Ormerod dropped down and crawled beneath the wheels. The boots tried to kick him again. He doubted if Le Blanc would risk shooting him. Almost absently he wondered what Marie-Thérèse was doing. She was, in fact, standing in the shadow of the barn, watching, her fear of Le Blanc holding her. 'Jean,' she said in only a whisper. 'Leave him. Why do that?'
Her countryman turned and spat in her direction. She backed away as if the gob was a bullet. 'No,' she pleaded again. She walked out into the slimy yard and Le Blanc, moving at her, gave her a fierce push which sent her backwards against the barn wall. It knocked all the breath from her, but her interruption had given Ormerod time to breathe. Now he came out from beneath the farm cart and staggered forward as Le Blanc turned away from the girl.
The big bald man seemed surprised to see him. He may have been confident that he had damaged Ormerod enough to knock
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any fight from him. Now he stood with the early light settled on his unpleasant face. He was one of the few men that Ormerod
had ever seen who looked worse when he was smiling. He had a smile now. Ormerod swung his fist in the direction of the smile but Le Blanc hardly needed to move to duck it. The
two big men collided and Ormerod had some luck because the
Frenchman slipped on some dung in the yard and fell backwards. Ormerod fell on top of him and rising away from the other man's body quickly punched him full on the jaw before he had time to move his head away.
For a moment, even in that poor light, Ormerod saw his
opponent's eyes glaze. He tried to think of an unarmed combat
ploy he could use. He abandoned the idea and settled for crudely hitting Le Blanc on the jaw once more.
The Frenchman's head went back and Ormerod thought that
was the end. But as he climbed away from the prostrate man,
Le Blanc's foot came and caught him a sickening kick between
the legs. The force of the blow sent him stumbling back, hold
ing his groin. It took Le Blanc some moments to get up, but even that was ample time. He went for Ormerod with cold rage, throwing another kick at him which the Englishman
managed to avoid by staggering out of range. He needed to get
his breath back. The old farm machine standing there was a
reaper with circular pointed tines sticking out like a wheel of
rusty needles. Ormerod retreated behind this and rubbed his
crotch. He bent almost double with the sickness and looked up
to see the Frenchman coming after him again with that look that only a truly evil man can summon.
It was like a slow comedy scene, Ormerod dodging around the farm machinery while the Frenchman stalked him. Both
were coated with dung and mud. The stench was in Ormerod's
nose, making him want to retch more than ever. But he had
gained some time. Suddenly, as Le Blanc followed him around
the flank of the barn, he leapt out as if he had been waiting in
ambush. The sheer ferocity of the attack surprised Le Blanc who fell back under the battering of Ormerod's large fists. For
a moment he swayed and Ormerod grasped him like a bear and
forced him back onto the pointed tines of the old machine.
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They stuck through Le Blanc's clothes and punctured the skin on his back. He was hanging there and Ormerod gave him a final punch to settle it.
Ormerod staggered back, swaying like something caught in the wind, then moved towards Le Blanc, and, watching for the leg trick this time, pulled him across his shoulder in a fireman's carry. There was a dung heap portioned off with a stile-like fence. Breathing in sobs he pushed the Frenchman against the wooden railings.