Black Dogs (17 page)

She was addressing the dogs, in English, then in French. She spoke forcefully to hold down the sickness. In the confident tone of a dog owner she commanded the larger dog which stood with its front legs set apart, still growling.

‘Ça suffit!’

It did not hear. It did not blink. On her right its companion eased forwards on its belly. If they had barked she would have felt better. The silences that interrupted the growls suggested calculation. The animals had a plan. From the jaws of the larger dog a drop of saliva fell on to the path. Several flies were on it in an instant.

June whispered, ‘Please go away. Please. Oh God!’ The expletive brought her to the conventional thought of her last and best chance. She tried to find the space within her for the presence of God and thought she discerned the faintest of outlines, a significant emptiness she had never noticed before, at the back of her skull. It seemed to lift and flow upwards and outwards, streaming suddenly into an oval penumbra many feet high, an envelope of rippling
energy, or, as she tried to explain it later, of ‘coloured invisible light’ that surrounded her and contained her. If this was God, it was also, incontestably, herself. Could it help her? Would this Presence be moved by a sudden, self-interested conversion? An appeal, a whimpering prayer to something that was so clearly, so luminously, an extension of her own being, seemed irrelevant. Even in this moment of extremity she knew she had discovered something extraordinary, and she was determined to survive and investigate it.

Still holding the rock, she slipped her right hand into her rucksack. She pulled out the remains of the saucisson they had been eating the day before, and tossed it to the ground. The smaller dog was there first, but ceded to its mate immediately. The sausage and its greaseproof paper were down in less than thirty seconds. The dog turned to her, drooling. A triangular shred of paper was trapped between two teeth. The bitch nosed the ground where the sausage had been. June returned her hand to the rucksack. She felt something hard between the bundles of folded clothes. She drew out a penknife with a bakelite handle. The larger dog took two quick steps towards her. It was ten feet away. She transferred the rock to her left hand, put the bakelite in her mouth and opened out the knife. She could not hold it and the rock in one hand. There was a choice to be made. The knife with its three-inch blade was a last resort. She could only use it when the dogs were on her. She balanced it on top of the rucksack, handle pointing towards her. She took the rock in her right hand again and pushed back against the tree. Her terrified grip had warmed the rock through. She drew back her hand. Now that she was about to attack, her left leg was shaking more.

The rock hit the ground hard and sent a spray of
smaller stones across the path. She missed the larger dog by a foot. It flinched when the stones rose into its face, but it held its ground and lowered its nose to the place of impact, still hoping for food. When it looked at her again it twisted its head to one side and snarled, a nasty breath-and-mucus sound. It was as she had feared. She had raised the stakes. Another rock was in her hand. The bitch flattened its ears and slipped forwards. Her throw was wild, hopeless. The rock spun out of her hand too soon. It fell feebly to one side and her unweighted arm thrashed the air.

The big dog was down, ready for the spring, waiting for one moment’s inattention. The muscles in its haunches quivered. A back paw scrabbled for better purchase. She had seconds left and her hand was round her third rock. It went over the dog’s back and hit the path. The sound caused the dog to half turn and in that instant, in that extra second, June moved. She had nothing to lose. In a delirium of abandonment she attacked. She had passed through fear to fury that her happiness, the hopes of the past months, and now the revelation of this extraordinary light were about to be destroyed by a pair of abandoned dogs. She took the knife in her right hand and held the rucksack like a shield and rushed the dogs, shrieking a terrible aaaaaaa!

The bitch leapt back. But the big one went for her. It sprang up. She leaned forwards to meet the impact as the animal sank its jaws into the rucksack. It was on its hindlegs and she was supporting it with one arm. She was buckling under the weight. The dog’s face was inches above hers. She thrust upwards with the knife, three quick jabs to its belly and sides. It surprised her, how easily the blade went in. A good little knife. On the first stroke the dog’s yellow-red eyes widened. On the second and third,
before it had let the rucksack go, it made high-pitched piteous yips, a small dog’s noise. Encouraged by the sound and screaming again, June lunged upwards a fourth time. But the animal’s weight was in retreat and she missed. The swing of her arm threw her off balance. She sprawled forwards, face down on the path.

The knife had left her hand. The back of her neck was exposed. She hunched her shoulders in a prolonged, trembling shrug, she drew in her arms and legs and covered her face in her hands. It can come now, was her only thought. It can come.

But it did not. When she dared lift her head, she saw the dogs a hundred yards away and still running, back the way they had come. Then they rounded the corner and were gone.

Bernard found her a quarter of an hour later sitting on the path. When he helped her to her feet she said tersely she had been frightened by two dogs and she wanted to turn back. He did not see the bloodied knife and June forgot to pick it up. He started to tell her how foolish it would be to miss the beautiful descent to Navacelles, and that he could deal with the dogs himself. But June was already walking away. She was not one to force sudden decisions like this. When he picked up her rucksack he saw a curving row of punctures in the canvas and a streak of foam, but he was too intent on catching up with June. When he did, she shook her head. She had nothing more to say.

Bernard pulled on her arm to make her stop. ‘Let’s discuss it at least. This is a radical change of plan, you know.’ He could see she was upset and he was trying to keep his irritation under control. She pulled free and
walked on. There was something mechanical in her step. Bernard caught up with her again, puffing from the weight of two bags.

‘Something’s happened.’

Her silence was assent.

‘For God’s sake tell me what it is.’

‘I can’t.’ She was still walking on.

Bernard shouted, ‘June! This is outrageous.’

‘Don’t ask me to talk. Help me to get to St Maurice, Bernard. Please.’

She did not wait for a reply. She was not going to argue. He had never known her like this. He suddenly decided to do as she asked. They walked back to the top of the gorge and crossed the pasture in the gathering violence of the heat, towards the tower of the village château.

At the Hôtel des Tilleuls June mounted the steps to the terrace and sat in the broken shade of the lime trees, gripping with both hands the edge of a painted tin table, as though hanging from a cliff. Bernard sat across from her and was drawing breath to ask his first question when she raised her hands, palms outwards, and shook her head. They ordered citrons pressés. While they waited, Bernard told her about the caterpillar train in some detail, and remembered his observation about the alien nature of other species. June sometimes nodded, though not always at the right moments.

Madame Auriac, the owner, brought their drinks. She was a busy, maternal lady whom they had christened Mrs Tiggywinkle the night before. She had lost her husband in 1940 when the Germans crossed the border from Belgium. When she had heard that the couple were English and on honeymoon, she had moved them to a room with a bathroom, at no extra cost. She carried on a tray the glasses of lemon juice, a glass pitcher of water with its Ricard sign
and a saucer of honey in place of sugar which was still rationed. She sensed that something was not right with June because she set down her glass with care. Then, an instant before Bernard did, she saw June’s right hand and, mistaking the blood there, she took it in her own and exclaimed, ‘That’s a bad cut, you poor wee thing. You come inside with me and I’ll take care of that for you.’

June was docile. Mme Auriac held her hand as she stood. She was about to allow herself to be led away into the hotel when her face twitched and she let out a strange high note, like a cry of surprise. Bernard was on his feet, appalled, thinking he was about to witness a birth, a miscarriage, some spectacular feminine disaster. Mme Auriac was steadier and caught the young Englishwoman and eased her back into her chair. June was overcome by a series of arid, stuttering sobs which broke finally into wet, childlike crying.

When she was able to speak again, June told her story. She sat close to Mme Auriac who had called for cognac. Bernard held June’s hand across the table, but she would not take comfort from him at first. She had not forgiven him his absence at a critical time, and the description of his ridiculous caterpillars had kept her resentment alive. But when she came to the climax of her tale and saw Bernard’s expression of astonishment and pride, she interlocked her fingers with his and returned his loving squeeze.

Mme Auriac told the waiter to fetch the Maire, even if he had started his afternoon sleep. Bernard embraced June and congratulated her on her daring. The cognac was warming her stomach. For the first time she realised that her experience was complete; it was at worst a vivid memory. It was a story, one which she came out of well. In her relief she remembered her love for dear Bernard, so
that by the time the Maire came up the steps to the terrace, unshaven and groggy from his interrupted nap, he came upon a happy, celebratory scene, a little idyll, with Mme Auriac smiling on. Naturally enough he was irritable in his demand to know what had been so urgent as to drag him out of his bed into the early afternoon sunlight.

Mme Auriac appeared to have some power over the Maire. When he had shaken hands with the English couple, he was told to sit himself down. He grumpily acquiesced in a cognac. He cheered up when Madame had the waiter bring a pot of coffee to the table. Real coffee was still a scarce commodity. This was from the finest dark Arabian bean. The Maire raised his glass a third time. Vous êtes Anglais? Ah, his son who was now studying engineering in Clermont-Ferrand fought alongside the British Expeditionary Force, and always said ...

‘Hector, that’s for later,’ Madame Auriac said. ‘Here there is a grave situation,’ and to save June the effort of repetition, she told the story on her behalf, with only minor embellishments. However, when Mme Auriac had June wrestling with the dog prior to stabbing it, she felt she had to intervene. The villagers waved this interruption down as irrelevant modesty. At the end Mme Auriac showed off June’s rucksack. The Maire whistled through his teeth and gave his verdict. ‘Ç’est grave.’ Two wild hungry dogs, possibly rabid, one of them irritable from its wounds, were certainly a public menace. As soon as he had finished this drink he would round up some locals and send them down the gorge to track the animals and shoot them. He would also phone down to Navacelles to see what could be done from that end.

The Maire appeared to be about to stand. Then he reached for his empty glass and settled back in his chair.

‘We had this once before,’ he said. ‘Last winter. Remember?’

‘I didn’t hear about it,’ Mme Auriac said.

‘It was one dog last time. But, same thing, same reason.’

‘Reason?’ Bernard asked.

‘You mean you didn’t know? Ah, ç’est une histoire.’ He pushed his glass towards Mme Auriac who called out to the bar. The waiter came and murmured in Mme Auriac’s ear. At a gesture from her he drew up a chair for himself. Suddenly Mme Auriac’s daughter Monique who worked in the kitchen appeared with a tray. They lifted the glasses and cups so that she could spread out a white table cloth and set down two bottles of vin de pays, glasses, a basket of bread, a bowl of olives and a handful of cutlery. Out in the vineyards, beyond the shady terrasse, the cicadas intensified their hot dry sound. Now time, afternoon time, which in the Midi is as elemental as air and light, expanded and rolled billowingly outwards across the rest of the day, and upwards to the vaults of the cobalt sky, freeing everyone in its delicious sprawl from their obligations.

Monique returned with a terrine de pore in a glazed brown dish just as the Maire who had filled the fresh glasses with wine was beginning.

‘This was a quiet village at first – I’m talking of ’40 and ’41. We were slow to organise, and for reasons of, well, history, family disputes, stupid arguments, we were left out of a group forming round Madière, the village along the river. But then in ’42, March or April, some of us helped make the Antoinette line. It ran up from the coast around Sète, across the Seranne, through here, into the Cévennes, and on up to Clermont. It cut across the east-west Philippe line to the Pyrénnées and Spain.’

The Maire, misreading Bernard’s consciously blank expression, and the fact that June was staring at her lap, offered a quick explanation.

‘I’ll tell you the kind of thing. Our first job for example. Radio transmitters brought in by submarine to Cap d’Agde. Our section moved them from La Vacquerie to Le Vigan in three nights. Where they went after that we didn’t want to know. You understand?’

Bernard nodded eagerly, as though suddenly everything was clear. June kept her eyes down. They had never discussed their war work together, and were not to do so until 1974. Bernard had organised inventories for numerous drops along different routes, though he had never been directly involved with so minor a line as Antoinette. June had worked for a group liaising with the Free French on SOE policy in Vichy France, but she too knew nothing about Antoinette. Throughout the Maire’s story, Bernard and June avoided each other’s eye.

‘Antoinette worked well,’ the Maire said, ‘for seven months. There was only a handful of us here. We passed agents and their radio operators north. Sometimes it was just supplies. We helped a Canadian pilot to the coast ...’

A restlessness on the part of Mme Auriac and the waiter suggested they had heard this too many times before over the cognac bottle, or that they thought the Maire was boasting. Mme Auriac was talking in a low voice to Monique, giving instructions about the next course.