The Winter Ghosts (13 page)

I looked down into the still surface of the water. My cheeks were hollow with lack of sleep and my eyes, rimmed with exhaustion, stared back at me in the uncertain daybreak. Fabrissa’s reflection was less clear. I turned, scared that she might have slipped away. But she was still there.

‘I feared you had—’

‘Not yet,’ she said, reading my mind.

‘We don’t have to go back.’

‘There is still a little time left.’ She smiled. ‘I should like to tell you something of myself, should you have the heart to listen.’

My heart leapt. ‘Anything you want to tell me, I would be honoured to hear.’

I hadn’t smoked all night, I suppose because nobody else had. Hadn’t even thought about it. But now I fished in my pocket and pulled out my cigarette case and matches.

‘Do you mind?’ I said, taking one out and tapping it on the silver lid.

Fabrissa leaned towards me. ‘What are they?’

‘Gauloise,’ I replied. ‘I’m a Dunhill man in the normal run of things, but they’re impossible to get down here.’

I offered the case to her. She shook her head, but seemed transfixed by what I was doing. She watched intently as I put the cigarette in my mouth, then cupped it with my hand, struck the match and held it against the tip. Her eyes grew wide as a wisp of smoke wreathed up into the dawn air and she reached out, as if to wind it around her fingers like thread.

‘It is beautiful.’

‘Beautiful?’ I laughed, charmed. ‘That’s one way of putting it, I suppose.’ I snapped my case shut, returning it and the matches to my pocket. ‘You’re remarkable. I can honestly say I’ve never met anyone like you before.’

‘I am no different from anyone else,’ she said.

I smiled, thinking both how wrong she was and how delightful she did not realise it.

We sat in silence for a while. I smoked. She fixed her eyes on the dark horizon, as though counting the stars. Were there actually stars? I can’t remember.

Then I heard her catch her breath and knew Fabrissa had been arranging her story in her mind, as I had done. I crushed the remains of my cigarette beneath the sole of my boot and turned to listen. I wanted to know everything about her, as much as she would tell me, anything. Tiny details. Irrelevant, beautiful details.

‘I was born on an afternoon in spring,’ she began. ‘The world was coming back to life after a hard winter. The snow had melted and the streams were flowing again. Tiny mountain flowers of blue and pink and yellow filled the fields of the upper valley. My father used to say that on the day I was born, he heard the first cuckoo sing. A good omen, he said.

‘Our neighbours came with a loaf they had baked, white flour, not coarse brown grain. Others also brought gifts: a brown woollen blanket for winter, furs, an earthenware cup, a wooden box containing spices. Most precious, salt wrapped up in a piece of cotton, dyed blue.

‘It was May. Already, the shepherds and their flocks had returned from their winter pastures in Spain and the village was full of life and sound - the women chatting in the square, the wooden treadles of their looms clattering on the cobbled stones.’

She paused. I was happy to wait. I wanted to let her tell her story at her own pace, in her own way, as she had allowed me to do. Besides, the pleasure of listening to her voice was such that she could have recited a laundry list and still it would have rung like music in my ears.

‘My birth was seen as a sign that things might be changing for the better,’ she said. ‘And my mother and father were well liked and respected in the village. They were loyal, honourable people. My father wrote letters on behalf of those who could not read or write. He explained the ways of the courts to those who needed representation or his help. Each fulfilled the role most suited to his character.’

‘I see,’ I said, though I did not.

‘After years of violence and denunciation, it seemed our enemies had set their sights elsewhere and, for a while, we were at peace. There were, of course, the usual struggles, disagreements common to communities living in the shadow of war. But they were isolated incidents, not part of a systematic reprisal. And although we all knew someone who had been taken, most people were released with no more than the punishment of wearing the cross.’

Instinctively, my hand moved to my pocket. I took out the scrap of material and laid it across my knee.

‘This was a way of marking people out?’

I looked down at the tattered piece of cloth, the yellow faded and sour. I had heard of the Germans inflicting penalties on civilians -
The Times
had written of it - but nothing like this.

‘It was intended to humiliate, certainly,’ she replied. ‘But when so many were branded in the same way, it became a sign of good character.’

‘A badge of honour.’

‘Yes.’

Realising now it might be a symbol of her survival and that, therefore, she might wish to keep it, I held it out.

‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have taken it.’

She shook her head. I hesitated, then returned it to my pocket. It was hardly an orthodox love token, but it was all that I had.

‘The raids became more frequent. Whole villages arrested, or so it was said - men, women, children. In Montaillou, little under a day’s walk, everybody over the age of twelve was taken before the court in Pamiers. The interrogations went on for weeks. People talked of it in hushed whispers, behind hands and closed doors. Even so, we hoped our village was too small to matter to anyone but us.’

For the second time in so many days, my school-master’s dusty words came back into my mind.

‘A green land soaked red with the blood of the faithful,’ I murmured.

The effect of my words on Fabrissa was immediate. Her eyes lit up.

‘You know something of our history?’

‘Very little, I’m afraid. Only that this region is no stranger to conflict.’

‘You will know, then, of the endless years spent fearing those we loved would be taken from us in the night. Never knowing whom to trust, that was the worst of it. Seduced by promises of safety and wealth, there were those who became spies. Who betrayed their own. I feared our enemies, but did not hate them.’ She hesitated. ‘But those who turned away from who they were and joined the fight against us, it was hard not to despise them.’

I nodded. In the early days of the War, I suppose it must have been during George’s first leave home, I’d overheard him and Father talking through the study door, left ajar. I remember him explaining how he bore no hatred towards the ordinary German soldier, the men like him who fought for their country, fair and square. Father nodding, ‘yes, yes’, and the air thick with cigarettes and whisky. But for those who would not fight, the Conchies, or those who spied for the other side, he had nothing but disgust. And as I listened in the hall, excluded from this man’s world, I heard the admiration in Father’s voice. And, God help me, I was jealous.

‘I didn’t realise the Germans were active in this part of France,’ I said, as much to myself as to Fabrissa, trying to push away the unhappy memories. I knew the roll-call of battles - Loos, Arras, Boar’s Head Hill, Passchendaele - each as notorious for the huge loss of life as for any supposed military success. But I couldn’t recall any significant engagement below the Loire Valley.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I was young, but already I knew that the war was not about faith, but rather territory and wealth and greed and power.’

‘Yes,’ I said, thinking of George’s contempt for the politicians who sent good men to die.

The light was thickening, giving shape back to the world. I glanced at Fabrissa and saw how very pale her skin was, its patina almost blue in the dawn.

‘Then, one day, it happened. The soldiers came for us.’

My heart hit my boots.

‘Look here, there’s no need to . . . if it’s too much.’

How I wanted to save her from the pain of remembering. How I wanted to put my arms around her and tell her everything was all right. But of course, it wasn’t. How could it be?

Fabrissa gave a tiny shake of her head, but did not falter. And I understood that, having started, she needed to see things through.

‘It was December,’ she continued. ‘A bright day, very cold, with a glancing white sun and blue skies. In the afternoon, the light lingered for just a little longer than usual on the mountains, golden light draped like a skein of silk across the snowed peaks of the Sabarthès, of the Roc de Sédour. Everywhere painted in gold and white. And although it went against what we believed, I remember thinking how hard it was not to believe that God’s hand had created such a day.’

I looked at her then, touched by so simple a statement of faith. Already, the joy of that memory had gone. Her expression was serious once more.

‘When night fell, everyone went to the Ostal for the
fête
.’

‘The
fête de Saint-Etienne
?’

She nodded. ‘There was a rumour that soldiers had been seen in Tarascon, but we assumed it was too distant to concern us. We suspected, too, that our enemies had lists of names, knowledge of possessions and old allegiances that they could only have been given by those who lived, hidden, amongst us.’

‘Those who were not forced to wear the yellow cross?’

‘It was not as simple as that,’ she said, then paused. ‘What we did not know, as we gathered for the feast, was that a troop of soldiers was already making its way up the valley. The rumours, this time, were true.

‘My parents, my brother and I had spent the best part of the previous two days with my mother’s family in Junac, on the other side of the valley. Our return journey had taken longer than expected, and the cold had taken its toll on my brother.’

‘You have a brother?’ I said under my breath, knowing, even as I said it, that it was idiotic for me to take pleasure in this similarity between us. ‘An elder brother?’

‘He was three years younger,’ she said quietly.

‘Was?’

She shook her head. I was furious with myself for having jumped in. Had I not yet learnt that Fabrissa would tell the story in her own way and in her own time?

‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have interrupted.’

‘As we drew close to home, a boy came running out of the woods. He was in a state of shock, swallowing his words and talking too fast for us to hear what he was saying. My father managed to calm him and, with great patience, coax out of the terrified child that . . .’

She broke off, her eyes wide.

‘That what?’

‘That there had been massacres. That villages lower down the mountain had been put to the torch. Of old men, women, cut down where they stood. Children, too. Of the fields running with blood.’

I turned cold. ‘Good God.’

‘We had no way of knowing if the reports were true, of course,’ she continued. ‘There had been many false alarms in the previous weeks. We could not be certain.’