The Prisoner (25 page)

Marc’s strategy of using Lanier’s cockiness to dig out the truth had worked well, but Marc was in a state over the situation with Jae and he’d not anticipated Lanier’s taunts making him so angry.

As Lanier swept past the bed, Marc stuck his leg out and Lanier stumbled. He kept upright, but his head glanced off the upright of the nearest bed. It didn’t hurt much, but the two eight-year-olds were highly amused.

‘You want a fight?’ Lanier asked, bunching his fists.

Marc and Lanier had fought dozens of times over the years and the score was pretty even. Part of Marc’s brain was saying
back down, don’t be crazy
, but he was stressed out and on some primitive level he really fancied trading punches.

‘In the back field, right now,’ Marc said. ‘Unless you’re chicken.’

‘I’m not scared of you,’ Lanier said.

Boys used the back field for fighting because it was behind the burned-out barn, well out of sight of the orphanage and convent.

Lanier looked behind suspiciously as he led the way downstairs, half expecting a shove in the back. By the time they vaulted the wall at the back of the orphanage, word was spreading that there was going to be a big fight.

The field had knee-high grass. The sun was dipping and the ground was covered with wood splinters and chunks of brick, where a German dive bomber had crashed into the barn two years earlier.

Lanier threw the first blow. Marc dodged.

As an audience of younger boys clambered over the wall, Lanier kept punching and Marc kept teasing. The onlookers thought Marc was scared, but he was tiring out an over-aggressive opponent, exactly as Instructor Takada had shown him on CHERUB campus.

‘Are you fighting or running?’ Lanier spat.

His next punch was high and Marc used the opening, smashing his fist into Lanier’s nose. As the crowd gasped, Marc threw a left right combo and Lanier was flat on his back in the long grass.

‘Who’s brave now?’ Marc shouted, as he spat in Lanier’s face, then backed off to let him stand up.

The instant Lanier was on his feet, Marc launched a vicious kick. His bare heel connected with Lanier’s stomach. As Lanier doubled over, Marc brought his knee up, smashing his nose for a second time.

There were gasps from the crowd as Marc grabbed Lanier by the throat, throttling him as he drove him back several metres and slammed him hard against the charred wooden side of the barn. When Marc let Lanier’s neck go, all he could do was snort blood and hold his arms weakly over his face.

Orphanage fights were usually accompanied by cheers and jeers, but Marc’s ruthless display of combat skills had stunned sixty boys into silence.

Lanier was completely at Marc’s mercy and he had a menu of techniques he’d learned on CHERUB campus. He could punch Lanier unconscious, twist his arm up behind his back and break it, smash a palm under his chin and shatter his jaw, put him in a headlock and snap his neck to paralyse him for life.

Marc hadn’t admitted it to himself upstairs, but he’d known he had the skills to win. It was Marc’s way of showing Lanier that something significant
had
happened in the two years since he’d run off, but he now had no desire to finish Lanier off.

This fight was no fairer than if he’d picked on one of the eight-year-olds, and Marc suddenly hated himself. The moment when his knee crunched Lanier’s nose had felt beautiful, but that made him no better than people like Alain, Fischer and Tomas when they’d beaten him.

Marc was confused and tearful as he backed away from Lanier. Sisters Peter and Madeline had noticed the train of boys heading into the back field and the younger lads dived for cover as the nuns ran around the side of the barn.

‘What in the name of God?’ Sister Madeline shouted.

She saw Lanier propped against the barn, half unconscious, with bloody hands and face. Marc was three paces further back, sobbing because he felt like he’d turned into the kind of bully he’d always sworn he’d never become.

Sister Raphael was old school. She worked every hour keeping orphans fed, washed and orderly, but didn’t much hold with touchy feely stuff. When she saw Marc was still upset half an hour after the fight, she made an indignant grunt and told him to pull himself together.

Boys who broke orphanage rules got extra chores, or a thrashing. Marc felt ridiculous baring his bum and bending over a desk for a chubby nun, fifteen centimetres shorter than he was. The sting of the metal-tipped cane felt like a visit from an old friend, and when he had half a dozen red welts across his buttocks, Marc got told to pull up his trousers and stop the ridiculous snivelling.

Marc sat on the front steps of the orphanage in moonlight. The hard stone after a thrashing was painful, but he didn’t budge because he felt he deserved it as punishment for beating up Lanier.

Every now and then Marc heard Lanier moan as Sister Madeline treated his injuries in the medical room under the stairs. When he saw a slim figure walking a bike up the front path, Marc thought he’d started hallucinating.

‘Hey, you,’ Jae said softly.

She’d changed out of her farm overalls to go into town. She looked like the Jae Marc knew before he’d left, in a summer dress, cardigan and smart leather sandals. Only the dirt packed under broken nails gave the game away.

‘I thought I’d have the devil’s job getting inside to speak to you,’ Jae said. ‘And here you are, right on the front step.’

She sat next to Marc on the step and rested her head on his shoulder.

‘Where’s your dad?’ Marc asked.

‘Home,’ Jae said. ‘One of the Luftwaffe officers who lived with us got him and Felix released. They’ve emptied our grain silos, and shut the bakery in Beauvais down. Daddy will probably have to go to court. He’s brushing it off, but I can tell he’s worried.’

‘I beat the shit out of Lanier,’ Marc confessed.

‘Good,’ Jae said resolutely. ‘I
hope
he’s in a lot of pain.’

Marc shook his head. ‘I laid into him and I enjoyed it. All my life bullies have thrashed me or beaten me up. I don’t
ever
want to act like that.’

Jae put her arm around Marc’s back.

‘There’s evil in us all,’ she said. ‘When I was little, I used to play with my older brothers down at the pond. A baby duck got separated from its mum. My brother caught it in a bucket and planned to look after it, but he beat me in a board game. So I threw his duck out of the house and let my other brother take the blame for it.’

Marc laughed uneasily. An imperfect world seemed to matter less if Jae was around.

‘Did your dad say anything about me?’ Marc asked. ‘If I turn up at the farm tomorrow morning, he’s not gonna come chasing after me with a shotgun or anything?’

Jae thinned her lips and looked determined. ‘He’s got other things on his mind right now. But I’m growing up and he’s short of labourers on the farm. So Daddy can like it or lump it, but I am going to carry on seeing you.’

*

After Jae left, Marc realised he was
madly
in love with Jae and found it scary that someone else had such power over his emotions.

Had Marc punched Lanier out, the other orphans would have regarded him as a conquering hero, or at least showed the kind of reverence his physical dominance deserved. But beating Lanier senseless, then spending three hours snivelling and staring into space had earned Marc loony status instead. Even his ultra-loyal bunkmate Jacques didn’t know what to say.

The next morning on Morel’s farm passed as normal, but at lunchtime Jae told Marc to have lunch with her at the main house, rather than hiding out by the pond.

‘Will I live?’ Marc asked warily.

Jae shrugged. ‘Daddy’s eyes didn’t bulge
much
when he asked me to fetch you.’

After they’d stripped wellies and washed hands in the boot room, the Morels’ cook served Marc and Jae chicken and wild mushrooms, cooked in wine and served with boiled potatoes.

Marc was touched, realising that Jae had given up a meal this good every time she’d gone to the pond with him. But he expected her dad at any second and found himself apologising to the cook, because his nerves meant he could hardly swallow a mouthful.

Marc thought he’d escaped the encounter, but just before 2 p.m. Morel walked into the servants’ dining room. The incident with the Requisition Authority had knocked something out of him. His hair looked flat and he lacked the casual authority that usually made him so intimidating.

The cook gave Morel a plate, but he struck an eccentric pose, eating quickly with a large serving spoon while standing over the kitchen counter.

‘Do you read and write well?’ Morel asked.

Marc found Morel’s tone offensive, as if being an orphan meant he was ignorant.

‘I speak, read and write well in French and German, sir,’ Marc said, as the small amount of lunch he’d managed to eat did back flips in his stomach.

Morel smiled slightly. ‘German. The language of our future, perhaps?’

‘Hope not,’ Marc said, although he regretted it instantly because Morel was close to the Germans who lived in his house. But on the other hand, wasn’t the German-controlled Requisition Authority prosecuting him?

Marc tried to stay calm and stop over-thinking.

‘I bloody well hope to see the back of the Boche too,’ Morel said. ‘They’ve left a job for you. Come upstairs.’

Marc and Jae both stood, but Morel made a
down-down
gesture at his daughter.

‘You go back to the fields. I only need him.’

Marc looked anxiously at Jae. He remembered what she’d said the night before about her father having to get used to him being part of her life, but her determination did him no good if there were a couple of burly farm hands waiting upstairs with horse whips.

Marc sized Morel up as he led the way out of the basement. He was slim like his daughter, average height. But with Morel it had always been his money and status that was intimidating, not his physique.

‘I’m not well liked by my staff,’ Morel said. ‘Do you think it likely any of them will denounce me to the Requisition Authority?’

The farm workers constantly slagged Morel off for his tight pay, and reluctance to invest in farm equipment, while no expense was spared on the lavish family house. But Marc sensed this wasn’t the time for brutal honesty.

‘Everyone moans and groans,’ Marc said. ‘I don’t think there are many fans of the Germans out there.’

‘I
could
go to prison for selling my grain direct to the bakery,’ Morel said, as they reached the ground floor, and turned on to the much grander staircase leading up to the first. ‘Felix and I would probably have stayed behind bars if I didn’t have friends high up in the Luftwaffe. They’re doing what they can, but Tomas has always disliked me, so I expect he’ll keep baying for blood.’

Marc nodded sympathetically. ‘I’ve heard of people deported to Germany as tobacco smugglers, just because they were non-smokers taking a few packs of cigarettes to relatives.’

‘The officers who board here tell me it’s not much better for Germans,’ Morel said sourly. ‘German men go into the military, the women into factories, while their children are indoctrinated at school. This entire continent has been enslaved by a tiny cult of brainless thugs and racists.’

Morel stopped on the first-floor balcony and looked at Marc, to see if he’d understood what had been said. Marc realised he was being sized up and tried to think of an intelligent answer.

‘I just hope the Russians can hold out until winter bogs the war in the east down again. By spring, the Americans should be much better prepared.’

‘So you believe the Allies can win?’ Morel asked, as he approached a set of ornate double doors. ‘Or just hope?’

‘Believe,’ Marc said firmly. ‘I’m less sure how much of France will be left standing by the time everyone else finishes fighting over it.’

Morel was clearly satisfied by Marc’s answer and laughed as he opened the double doors.

‘Speaking of destruction,’ he said.

Marc had never been beyond the main hall and servants’ area of the Morel house. He was stunned to find himself in a library which ran the entire length of the first floor. There was also a collection of curiosities: scientific instruments, fossils, a huge wooden globe.

The Requisition Authority had been through like a tornado, pulling thousands of books from shelves until it was impossible to move along the aisles. It was a shocking scene, but Marc was mainly just relieved that he wasn’t being dragged out to the stables for a whipping.

‘It should take you two or three days to put everything back in place,’ Morel said. ‘Work quickly, or I’ll be most displeased.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Marc said.

He jolted when Morel’s fingers dug into his shoulder.

‘And the matter of my daughter,’ Morel said chillingly.

Marc felt like as if every drip of water had suddenly been sucked from his body.

‘I was your age once,’ Morel began. ‘Fathers protect daughters because they know
exactly
what races through the mind of a teenage boy. It’s why we get so uncomfortable when we see some randy young bull like you, with eyeballs wandering up his daughter’s legs.

‘Marc, I love my daughter more than anything else in the world. I can see how much Jae likes you and if I broke you up it would only drive a wedge between us. But if you ever treat her with anything other than absolute respect, I guarantee you a thrashing that will make the worst Director Tomas gave you look like a pillow fight between two six-year-olds.’

‘I’d never do anything to hurt Jae,’ Marc said, as he placed his hand over his heart. ‘I swear on my life.’

Two days later

‘Daddy misses my brothers,’ Jae explained, as she stood with Marc in the boot room at the back of her house. ‘I think he actually rather likes having you around.’

Marc had spent the day reshelving library books, and felt guilty because he was clean and dry, while Jae had spent a stormy day in the fields.

‘I don’t get why you’re outdoors while I’m warm and dry in the library,’ Marc said. ‘Mind you, I’ll be finished by tomorrow lunchtime.’