The French Promise (15 page)

That was easier said than done.

In the last few days John had plummeted into melancholy. He’d been closeted for nearly a fortnight in his study,
often whispering to himself, now and then complaining of voices. When she could get through to him he’d explained that the voices were of his fellow Tommies … ‘the fallen’, he called them. She had sometimes watched him screw his face up in painful fear and she knew he was reliving gunfire and bombings.

He’d stopped all work for the family firm six months ago but his brothers – neither of whom
served at the Front – had insisted he remain on full pay. The business could easily afford it, and John was a director who had worked hard for the burgeoning grocery empire in the early days after the war. Jane knew she should count herself as fortunate to have so much generous support as well as the family having the financial means.

The bus groaned up and the conductor swung out from his platform
to assist the elderly couple in front of Jane. ‘All right, luv?’ he said, winking at her.

She smiled. His cheerfulness on this dreary night was hard to ignore. ‘Here, let me help you with that,’ she offered to the husband and took one of his bags.

‘Much obliged, dear,’ his wife said.

Jane followed them on. There were no seats left, only standing room. Jane dug in her handbag for some coins and
while waiting for the whistling conductor, she tuned out to the conversations, coughs, laughter and cramped conditions. With one hand clinging to the overhead rail, she allowed her
body to sway with the rhythm of the lumbering movements of the double-decker and fixed her gaze on the darkness of the window, whose glass mirrored her solemn reflection. She saw a tall woman, surprisingly leaner than
she’d imagined, with brownish-golden hair tied back. Her eyes looked a fraction sunken; she could see the darkish hollows beneath them and knew it was not just John who wasn’t sleeping. Her cheekbones protruded more prominently than she could recall and her coat, which was only a year or so old and had fitted her well, now swamped her.

The conductor arrived, whistling aimlessly. ‘Where
to, gorgeous?’

She gave him the bus stop, dropping the coins into his hand.

He wound out a green ticket from the machine, which he tore off and presented to her. ‘Cheer up, luv. It may not happen,’ he quipped.

Jane smiled lamely and tuned out again until they reached her stop.

‘Thank you,’ she said to the conductor as she alighted into the now more persistent drizzle.

Jane could see her home from
the bus stop – a majestic Victorian terrace. The light on the porch was burning dimly, illuminating the stained glass in the door, and the front bedroom upstairs was aglow too. But the sitting room she could see was dark, which suggested John might still be closeted in his study at the back of the house or retired. The latter would not surprise her; John would not want the housekeeper fussing
around him or having to make polite conversation with her. She was a bright, cheerful lady who worked hard, but she could talk underwater, Jane was sure.

She turned the key in the lock and opened the door, jumping to see Meggie suddenly loom out of the shadows.

‘You startled me,’ Jane admitted.

‘Sorry, Mrs Cannelle. I had just turned off all the downstairs lights and was gathering my
stuff up when you opened the door.’

Jane gave a wan grin. ‘Everything all right?’

Meggie nodded. ‘Mr Cannelle is in his study.’ She frowned. ‘He’s not eaten today.’

‘All day?’ Jane asked, pulling off her headscarf, then gloves.

Meggie nodded ruefully. ‘I tried everything. I offered him soup, eggs, sardines, sausages. I even made him a hot Bovril, but he wouldn’t touch a thing.’

Jane began unbuttoning
her coat. ‘He didn’t eat yesterday either,’ she admitted.

‘Perhaps you being home will encourage him, dear. Start with a sweet, milky tea and go from there.’

She smiled sad thanks. ‘Sorry, Meggie. Are you going somewhere?’ she said, noticing the woman was pulling on her outdoor wear as fast as Jane was pulling her own off.

‘Yes, dear. I’m off to the films with my friend, Vera, don’t you remember?’

‘I’d forgotten. Sorry. Yes, of course.
Lawrence of Arabia,
isn’t it?’

Meggie pushed past her. ‘I think I’m the last person on earth to see it!’

‘I haven’t yet, although they say Omar Sharif is very dishy.’

Meggie nodded. ‘So I hear. You’ll be all right? I won’t be late. Ten at the latest.’

‘We’ll be fine.’

‘I’ve left some cold meat out for you, dear. There’s fresh bread and some chutney
in the larder.’

‘Thank you,’ Jane said, sighing. ‘I’ll go and see John first.’ She watched the housekeeper leave and then turned to regard the stairs; just fourteen of them. But it felt like an interminable climb, her gaze fixed on the Axminster carpet in a traditional deep red and rich cream design. The swirling pattern led her to the summit and ultimately to the landing outside the
study, where a dim light leaked out from beneath the door. Jane took a deep breath and wondered what awaited her on the other side.

Be Dr Jekyll,
she pleaded silently, and found the courage to knock.

Louis nodded at the young man who emerged from the overcast day into the darker shadows of the bar and noticed how, even now after all these years, he tended to turn his face to one side. ‘How are you, young Dugas?’

‘I am well, thank you, Monsieur Blanc,’ the young man replied evenly and with no enthusiasm. ‘One bottle, please.’

‘Has he run out of his homemade poison?’ Blanc asked. There was no geniality in his remark.

Robert nodded. ‘He’s easier to handle when he’s drunk,’ he admitted.

‘His aim isn’t so accurate, eh?’ Louis quipped and regretted it. Dugas’ violence was nothing to joke about.

Robert didn’t reply; his expression remained sombre. ‘How much do I owe you, Monsieur Blanc?’ he said, digging into his pocket.

The rearing that his grandmother, Marie Dugas, had given the youngster still shone through with his polite manners and
hard-working ways. Louis felt the familiar prick of shame that the village didn’t do more for this young man. ‘Tell Dugas it’s on me.’

Robert eyed him from beneath the hank of smooth dark hair that he deliberately permitted to fall across his face.

‘I am happy to pay,
Monsieur Blanc.’

‘I know. And I’m happy to send your father into a stupor free of charge. It’s the least I can do for you.’

Robert put some francs on the counter. ‘Thank you, Monsieur Blanc. I appreciate your concern. We will be fine. He’s sick. He needs family.’

‘He hates family. He hates everyone.’

‘He is my father,’ is all Robert said as he turned.

Louis sighed and flapped the linen he’d been
drying glasses with on his counter with frustration. ‘Come back tomorrow, Robert,’ he growled. ‘I’ll have some work for you,’ he called to the young man’s back. It was something at least, Louis thought.

‘Thank you, Monsieur Blanc. I will do that,’ Robert replied over his shoulder but without looking at Louis, a small, thin silhouette in his bar’s doorway, before he stepped out, shifted the wine
into the crook of his arm and strode away.

Louis sighed. Who was going to rescue this youngster before his father killed him?

Robert began the mile’s walk home to their cottage in the unnamed hamlet, pausing to exchange a few pleasantries with the American artist who had converted one of the village’s cottages into a gallery.

As he walked he permitted himself some indulgent memories of happier
times. He realised that his best age, the time when he could recall feeling loved, was as far back as
infancy. Age five, he thought, with desperate regret: it was the height of the war in southern France; we had little food, and lived in constant fear for our lives.

‘And yet I can’t remember a happier time,’ he murmured, eyes fixed on the dusty, pebbled path ahead, wondering how he’d
allowed nearly two decades to pass by while he lived in misery.

Vivid in his thoughts was that hot, dry summer when the German planes were strafing the alpine region and the Wehrmacht had mobilised north, pushing hard to get to the northern beaches of France. And all that stood before that drilled, well-equipped, surging army was a motley band of Maquis: brave southern French freedom fighters
aided by an equally courageous group of British spies who helped to keep communication lines open to the Allies.

‘All they have to do, Robert, is halt the progress of the Germans,’ his grandmother had explained. ‘You see, if we can hold them up here, our friends from Britain and America can fight through from the north, and take back Paris,’ Marie had said with a grin of victory, while he’d helped
her repair a hole in their chicken coop. It only held three chickens by then. Marie had claimed she would rather give a limb than watch one taken by a fox or, worse, by the Nazis.

‘
Vive la France!
’ Robert remembered shouting and Marie shooshing him but stroking his hair with pride.

He recalled how the fiercest fighting had occurred on the plateau of Mont Mouchet and a tall, golden man
had come into their lives. Luc. Luc Bonet, who loved Lisette, according to his fevered ravings.

‘He looks German,’ he remembered Marie hissing at the old Resistance fighter who had delivered him.

‘You’re right. But he’s one of us. Fought like a man possessed, ran through a hail of bullets and bombs to pick up our fallen. I don’t even know his name. I hope he’ll live to tell you. He saved my life;
I’m going to try to do the same for him. Will you take him in, hide him?’

His grandmother had nodded and pointed to the shed. And that had begun the brief but happiest time Robert could recall. Neither of his parents was around then; his mother was doing her best to find work in Marseille, while his father was on compulsory work – or ‘slaving’, as Marie had coined it – in Germany. They’d
been gone from his life for two years; long enough for him to have transferred all of his affection to his grandmother. They were a tight, affectionate couple. And then they had become three, with the arrival of Luc. Livid bruising, bones at odd angles, a lump on his head that had impressed Robert enormously, sundry bleeding wounds and a slow recovery over several weeks for the concussion to
heal, and his mind to clear. But through it all Luc had become their friend, and the family they lacked.

Robert felt a familiar pang of sorrow remembering the day Luc had left them. They’d not learnt much about him; just that he was a lavender farmer from the Luberon who would rather fight the Germans than work for them. The five-year-old had hoped they’d live together forever but Luc had other
ideas.

Robert arrived at the dilapidated gate of the cottage that swung crookedly off a broken hinge and indulged for a moment longer in his recollections. He looked at his right thumb, where a tiny, pearlescent scar traced across the pad. He could recall in vivid colour the bright, blooming red pain as he’d found the courage to draw a blade across that thumb in the summer of 1943, mimicking Luc.
And then they’d joined bloods. Brothers.

‘I’ll come back,’ Luc had promised him.

And Robert had waited, surviving the war, and while the rest of Pontajou had begun to heal, Robert’s nightmare was only just beginning, for back into his cottage had returned his parents … both desperately changed, each deeply angry and resentful of the other.

Neither cared enough for the child in their
midst and Robert’s life had plunged into a misery that he was glad his bright and beautiful grandmother never had to witness.

He rubbed the scar. ‘You didn’t keep your promise, Luc,’ he muttered, having never allowed himself to believe Luc might have died. ‘Liar,’ he cursed at the vision he still held of the broad, golden-haired Frenchman who had walked out of their lives and turned one last time
at the end of the path and lifted a fist to Robert, reinforcing that he should stay strong until he came back for him.

Robert ran a trembling hand through his lank, dark hair and didn’t want to think about what had happened since then. He always regretted allowing recollections of his grandmother and Luc to surface; they did him no good.

The front door of the cottage opened loudly and Robert snapped
his attention to his father.

‘Who have you been talking to?’ he demanded.

‘Louis, at the café.’ He schooled his features not to show the scorn he felt towards the small, dark figure who possessed only two moods: either rage or melancholy, each as ugly as the other and equally damaging. He didn’t know which he preferred to face. This morning it was rage. Robert sighed inwardly. This meant maintaining
a distance, keeping his voice low.

‘Did you talk about me? Your useless father?’

‘No.’

‘Why did you go in there?’

He produced the bottle that he’d put in his pocket. ‘I got you this,’ he said, holding it out. He didn’t want to linger on that fraction of a second when he saw the self-loathing flare in his father’s eyes. When Robert returned his gaze, he saw his father’s eyes had dulled
to their usual hostility.

‘You’ve got money to burn, eh?’

‘I earn it honestly for us.’

‘Well, you can help me earn some, then. Come on, let’s go shoot some rabbits.’ Robert baulked.

His father sensed the hesitation. ‘Don’t make me drag you, Robert. I need help.’

Yes, you do
, Robert thought, and Louis’ words echoed in his mind that his father should be put in care.

‘Here,’ his father
said, throwing something at Robert, and the smell of old liquor wafted past as the man lurched by him. He caught the bloodstained sack. ‘You can be my dog,’ he sneered. ‘You can fetch the dead.’

Robert placed the bottle just inside the gate and traipsed after the man. He was several inches taller but he was not nearly as muscled as his elder. With his flat cap, the obligatory cigarette hanging
from his lip, wearing a soiled shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbow, and a waistcoat over his old trousers and boots that had not seen a smear of polish in years, his father still managed to look intimidating. He possessed larger than average hands for a man of his size. Pity me, Robert thought, knowing how those large hands balled up into even larger fists that could pound ferociously like twin maces
when they struck.

‘Come on, keep up,’ his father growled. ‘I should never have left you with your grandmother,’ he railed. ‘She turned
you into an apron-clinger. She was a useless old woman,’ his father jabbed at his mother-in-law.

Robert was aware that his father had picked over his small box of trinkets; treasured memories of Marie. Her scarf, her favourite brooch, the tiniest bottle
of lavender water, her Bible, the magnifying glass she used to read it with by candlelight, and her wedding band that Robert had eased from the dead woman’s finger. He didn’t have that keepsake any longer – his father had pawned it for francs to get drunk with.

Outside of his thoughts he could hear his father’s words, like the machine-gun fire that he heard in his dreams sometimes, railing at
him in that rapid way for brooding over an old woman’s belongings. Normally Robert would just let the snide remarks flow over him like water over smooth stone. To show temper, to even show the slightest offence, was precisely the provocation his old man searched for, needed in fact, to then move onto his next level – physical violence. Robert had taught himself to get lost in other thoughts when his
father was giving a tirade. But not today.

‘Shut up!’ he yelled. ‘You useless old drunk.’

He was frightened but didn’t regret the outburst. Maybe his father could end the emptiness by pulling the trigger on the rifle he’d just raised and pointed at his son.

His father turned. ‘What did you say?’

‘You’re a pathetic, self-pitying drunk, but not deaf,’ Robert surprised himself by accusing. ‘Do it.
Go on, do something with your useless life that the villagers can at least remember Pierre Dugas for, other than being a filthy drunk and a coward.’

‘Coward?’ his father repeated in a whisper as though he didn’t understand the word. ‘I fought for—’

‘No, you didn’t, you cringing bastard. My grandmother fought for France. She’s the one who should have been given a medal for the number of times she
looked a German army officer in the eye and lied to him. She ran messages, she took in the wounded at risk to her own life, and she kept me safe by taking the death that you should have suffered. Don’t talk to me about bravery. As for fighting for France?’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Well, if fighting for France is kissing the arse of your German overlord while you worked in a nylon factory while many
of your friends took up arms and fought … put their lives on the line and really fought for France, fought for freedom, then you have a strange idea of patriotism. No, Papa, you obediently went for your STO like a good German stooge.’

His father remained silent, mouth open, in shock.

‘Go on, pull the trigger!’ Robert begged. ‘You’ll be doing me a favour. I hope they clap you in prison
for my murder and let you rot. I wish you’d died in Germany. Then at least I could think of you proudly … my heroic father. So finish it, coward. Pretend it’s yourself or, better still, when you’ve killed me, turn the rifle on your own chest and blow yourself to hell, you bastard.’

He heard the safety catch release. It was going to happen.
Good
.

Robert closed his eyes and heard the explosive
sound of the rifle, felt the ground reach up and smash him, and briefly when he opened his eyes with the helpless shock of pain, he saw the grey October sky turn black.