Cloudless May (61 page)

“But it may be years before I see him again,” the girl said.

“Then a minute or two now makes no difference,” Sophie said. “Come. Suppose one of the maids was to come in. They will—any minute.”

“I must go,” Lucien said.

“My love.”

“Goodbye.” He pushed her towards the old woman and walked quickly to the door. Catherine ran after him. He held her off. “Goodbye.”

Suddenly submissive, she took his hand and kissed the palm, closing his fingers over it.

“Until I see you again,” she said, smiling.

Lucien groaned and ran out. He slammed the door, setting every bowl and pan in the room jangling.

“Those Sugnys! They have neither manners nor money, you shouldn't get mixed up with them,” Sophie scolded. “I don't say he's not a good lad, but what is he, after all?”

Catherine looked at her. “That's enough, Sophie.”

“Very well. . . . And you'll go to bed?”

Dropping her awkward dignity, the girl sighed, “Yes, yes, but I shan't sleep.”

The old woman turned her head aside to smile.

June 15th. . . . If Mourey were still making notes for his history of Seuilly—which supposes that he still lived not a little of his time in the future—he must have written under this date the single word “fear.” It was the day of the great fear, the first day of refugees. In the last two or three days, housewives and shopkeepers had turned their heads, with a lively or inquisitive pity, to look after some car or other as it crossed the bridge from the north. “Look. They've come from up there”—“up there” being any of the departments where, if you listened regularly to the communiqués, the army was counter-attacking, retreating according to orders received, and completing the prescribed movement in the greatest order. Few people, even ex-soldiers, understood the communiqués. This success should have gratified the writers. Of their local newspapers, one exhorted to firmness and faith, the other had adopted a tone of confusing gaiety. Newspapers from outside arrived days late and by that time were not worth reading. Not knowing quite what to think about the war, Seuilly thought—as usual—about itself and its vines and deaths and births.

This morning, a woman crossed the High Street at eight o'clock with her shopping bag, and spent an hour foraging in side streets and gossiping with her daughter-in-law: it was to see her and hear whether the boy had written lately that she came so far out of her neighbourhood. At nine o'clock, when she came back to it, she waited twenty minutes to cross. In an hour it had become gorged with traffic. Grasping her bag, she watched, as stupefied as if she were at the pictures: the cars, the farm carts, the delivery vans, the drays, the bicycles, the exhausted eyes, the children perched holding by their claws to
the sides of waggons, the bird-cages, the clocks, the child pulling feathers out of the pillow under the woman's head, is she dying?, the sewing-machine, the small monkey, the mattresses, how many mattresses?, in the lorry the heaps of children fallen together like skittles and the woman pulling on one of them, gently, not to waken the rest, the voices lamenting the dust, the old man who stumbled right to her feet, and sat with his head hanging, “I can't go on,” the two frenzied women, “You must, father, they aren't twenty miles off,” “Go on, leave me,” the two daughters going suddenly, not looking back, and the old man sitting there and sobbing, without tears, the bullet-holes, could they be?, in a car, the women jumping out and running into shops, the faces, grey, slippery, the drops of

sweat, the “Rest, let me rest,” the eyes, the eyes . . . the eyes. . . .

At last a break. Rousing herself, she scurried across the road. She must get home. The worst shock was to come—it was convenient to buy the bread last of all—she saw her baker, M. Auget, putting up his shutters. He was still in the doorway. “I kept a loaf for you,” he said reassuringly, “they cleaned me out.”

“But—what does it mean?”

M. Auget shrugged his shoulders. “How should I know? It seems they're moving house up there. We must listen to the wireless.”

“The wireless!”

“Yes, I know, I know. But what else have we?”

In her own street, the women who had not been so far as the High Street looked at her curiously. Had the daughter-in-law . . ? Was it the son . . .? She stopped to speak to two of them. In talking, she made the most of the stupefying scene, and as little as possible of the panic fermenting in her stomach. She even laughed. . . . “My goodness, if I were going to run away I shouldn't choose our big clock to lug round with me!” The others nodded. Forming in each mind—no, in each body—the seed of panic, words. . . . What should I take? linen? my wedding-dress? the silver tea-pot? .. .

Towards half-past nine Bergeot was driving in from the Manor House. His car had only to turn into the High Street at one point and leave it again after twenty yards. But at the end of every side street a little eddy of cars pushed desperately
against the main current. Bergeot got out to look. At this side, there was no shade, the sun fell on the traffic and assassinated it; what seemed delirious cries came from some of the cars, others were quiet, shut up like one of those tombs where the survivors arrange a vase, a few photographs, a chair; in the unshaded carts women sat bowed in the heat; the children, fallen sideways, lay like dead; a voice—“Jean, keep your hat, you'll get your death in this sun”; a military ambulance rang its bell without stopping, frantic—“Can't you clear these damned people off the roads? I have badly wounded men in here. Which way is the hospital?” Which way is Saintes? Royan? Angoulême? Niort? Bordeaux? “Try to sleep a little, Madeleine.”

At his wit's end, the policeman on point duty had given up struggling; for long minutes the only movement was the ripple of panic starting somewhere at the back, in the country, and dying away in Seuilly High Street in a gasp, a hand clutching the reins tighter, a child throwing his arm over his head, with a poor little scream—“Be quiet, Louis, they won't come here.”

A man seized Bergeot's arm and shook it, stammering. “You see? You see it? You. Look at it, Mr. Prefect! Look at it. My God, and this is what you want us to go through. This is your war.”

He recognised a wine-grower whom less than a fortnight ago he had persuaded to organise civil defence in his canton. This man was one of his triumphs, he and Lucien had chuckled over him. And here he was, blaming Bergeot not only for the war, but for the shock he felt seeing this fear stretched, congealed, along the road. The Prefect tried to rally him. It was no good. “You,” he kept saying, “you.” White with anger or panic, or with both together, he left Bergeot suddenly, and ran back the way he had come. No doubt he was going home to consult his wife or his banker. Bergeot shrugged his shoulders. But he was taken aback. He decided to walk to the Prefecture, and told his chauffeur to bring the car on when he could.

Looking down from the terrace of the Prefecture, across the Loire veiled by eddies of light, the roofs, the spire of the Abbey Church, brittle, curling away from a sky pale with heat, he assured himself that by now the street was clear again, there
had been an accident on the roads south of Seuilly which was holding everything up. . . . The noises of panic did not reach up here. . . . But where had this human lava come from?—and those eyes stunned by the heat; he had never looked at so many eyes, so much fear. Why hadn't he been warned? There were telephones, there were prefects and sub-prefects and secretaries, there were mayors. . . . Lucien came out. He said that the Mayor had just arrived and wanted to see him before the Defence Committee.

The Prefect felt a burden snatched from him. Nothing to do with the refugees, for the moment he forgot them; it was simply that Labenne had arrived expecting the Committee to meet on the day arranged at the previous meeting. . . . During the night Bergeot had started awake with the crushing certainty that it would not meet, there would be no Committee this or any other morning, Thiviers and the rest would ignore it. He lay awake for an hour, sweating with the humiliation.

What an ass I was, he thought, smiling. The relief drove him almost to shake hands with Labenne. Not quite. . . . He was bitterly ashamed of this instinct which could make him, for a moment, feel he ought to flatter Labenne.

“What is it you want?” he said stiffly.

Labenne had caught sight of the impulse. It strengthened his own—part pity, a larger part calculation—to make use of Bergeot by offering to save him. And it doubled his contempt for the Prefect. I can abuse him, he said to himself, I can threaten his precious Madame de Freppel—and he thinks of making friends with me!. . .

For once he was making a mistake. Bergeot had been made a fool of by his strongest habit; he was only all the more wary. He allowed Labenne to talk at length and explain that he had not been threatening, only warning; the very last thing he wanted was to make a scandal or injure anyone, he was only anxious to be helpful, he had hurried here this morning for that. It was as simple and clear as day. Bergeot must be eager to save Seuilly from a useless horror; no doubt by now he had had instructions from the Ministry; it was certain that the armistice was a matter of days . . . of hours . . . and the approach of the Germans. . . . “After all, we both came from the people, there's less difference between a village butcher and
small farmer and the village tax-collector than there is between either of us and a man like Thiviers—or a caricature like our deputy. How much better we shall be able to deal with the Germans if we present a front!” Labenne paused: he wanted to emphasise his next words. “With your official sources of information. . . .”

“In short,” Bergeot said coolly, “you're inviting me to help you in cutting up Seuilly among the Boches when they get here. Thanks for treating me as if I were one of your friends. It's something to remember. You can be quite sure I shall remember it!”

Excited by his contempt for Labenne, above all by his pleasure in showing it, he missed the hatred which Labenne was not able to keep out of his eyes. Bergeot should pay him for that grain of pity! . . . He controlled himself and smiled. . . . If Bergeot had been a little less human in his contempt, he might have remembered that an enemy moved by vanity is implacable. Labenne had been far less dangerous when he was an enemy only from self-interest—which changes so easily. Possibly, if he had thought of this, he would have acted differently during the next two days. It does some people good to know they are lost: Émile Bergeot had always been at his best when he felt least hope.

The door opened. Bergeot stiffened himself to greet the two generals and Thiviers. That they had come doubled his triumph over Labenne. . . . What a solemn fool Thiviers is, he said to himself. And Woerth, marching beside Piriac as though he were pushing a wooden giant in a carnival. He was amusing himself with these insults to money and power while he held Piriac's chair for him and smiled with a delicate reserve at Thiviers.

When they were seated, Thiviers looked round and said, “Where is our deputy? I understood from him that he was coming this morning.”

“He was,” Bergeot retorted. “And yesterday evening I invited him to stay away. Surely you saw his article in the
New Order?”

“Was it—objectionable?”

“If you object to treason! The first part suggests that we are beaten, the second, pretending to be a eulogy of Marshal
Pétain, swallows him only to throw him up again looking ridiculous. That's an old trick of his. If Master Huet had been Judas—he couldn't have resisted such a chance—he would never have hanged himself, not he; he would have spent his thirty pieces and the rest of his life in slandering the disciples. . . . I've sent the article to the Minister. It's time Huet was locked up.”

He looked at Thiviers with a slight smile, challenging him to defend Huet. Thiviers lowered his eyes and did not speak. Labenne said drily,

“Your eloquence, Mr. Prefect, is deadly. Huet is no more.”

“I never liked him,” Piriac murmured. “He looks like a fox. . . . When I was in Washington, they invited me to hunt a fox. It was rather amusing.”

Outwardly calm, Bergeot was exultant. I can do anything with them, he said to himself; I can leave Labenne to hang himself, as he will—without my taking the trouble to suspend him. . . . He even persuaded himself that Thiviers's silence was friendly. . . . He was going to go on speaking; but Piriac, making one of his minute tremendous movements, said,

“Gentlemen, it is useless for us to sit here discussing. Everything has broken down. When I came into the High Street this morning—” He could not go on. His voice, momentarily strong, failed him completely. An emotion which must have been the strongest of his life distorted his mouth. Bergeot was alarmed. He thought the old general was going to have a stroke. That would be too much—positively indecent. But Piriac still sat upright, showing no signs of collapse except the ceaseless trembling of an eyelid. Bergeot said hurriedly,

“I agree with you, General. It's a horrible sight. I shall take measures at once. In the meantime, you can see for yourself how urgent it is to prevent a panic in Seuilly. The mere sight of these unfortunate people—” If they moved your hardened nerves, he thought, forgetting that the harder the nerves the greater the weakness. “Since you wished it I gave up my civil volunteers. But our people must be given something to do. I propose to set them to work for the refugees, they can open places for them to rest—and so on–”

Labenne interrupted quietly. “Surely all these calls to arms will create the very panic you want to avoid?”

“I agree with the Mayor,” Thiviers said. “And if he, who is also responsible for the town. . . .”

Piriac moved his head. “Everything is finished,” he lamented, “my worst fears have been confirmed by these wretched people—homeless, leaderless. But I knew it already.”