Cold Winter in Bordeaux (26 page)

‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said. ‘But after I saw him with my uncle, the thought of his hands on my body revolted me. He liked to boast of his connections and his aristocratic patients. I suppose he was – is – greedy too. He was always very pleased with himself. A vain man. Vain and conceited, there’s a difference, isn’t there?’

‘Yes, there’s a difference, but it often comes to the same thing, an excessive self-regard and an inability to feel for others. Thank you,’ Lannes said, ‘you’ve helped clarify my mind. Perhaps Gabrielle and Duvallier were alike, each having to be the centre of their world. You can’t use children as she arranged for them to be abused and as I rather think he may have abused them himself unless you are devoid of the sensibility that allows you to see others as individuals in their own right. All such abuse is egotism carried to a pathological point.’

‘It’s all horrible,’ she said. ‘A mess. I can manage emotions only on the stage, and I’ve cut myself off from that. But yes, tell that poor girl, Kiki, to come to see me. If you like. Not that I can promise anything.’

‘I don’t look for promises,’ Lannes said. ‘But, again, thank you.’

‘St-Hilaire respects you. Did you know that? When you sent a message asking for this appointment, I immediately called him and he said I should trust you. I can’t tell you how unusual it is for me to trust anyone.’

‘I’m grateful.’

He remembered how he had called her a copper-plated bitch and how Kiki had spoken of her as ‘the Ice Queen’. We’re wrong about most people most of the time, he thought.

XXXIX

There was a moment when Michel almost drew back. It was when he saw tears start in Clothilde’s eyes and he was tempted to take her in his arms and kiss them away. But of course he didn’t, not then, not at first anyway. He really loved her, he was sure of that, and it was terrible to be going to war without having done with her what he most wanted to do. He had kissed lots of girls, but Clothilde wasn’t just another girl, and when her lips quivered and he thought he might be killed and she wouldn’t even know he was dead, he found he was trembling himself. What was almost worse was that she found nothing to say. There would have been no difficulty if she had argued with him, or even screamed at him; he would have fought back, asserted his male superiority. ‘We men are hunter warriors,’ Sigi had told him, and this was true, obviously it was true. Men were crusaders, and the Crusade today was against Bolshevism. But this abject misery made him feel guilty.

His sister Anne-Marie had wept too, but that hadn’t mattered. It was the sort of thing sisters do, are indeed supposed to do, when their brother goes to war. ‘You would prefer me to be a coward?’ he had said; and her tears and his words merely served to confirm that he was right. As for his grandfather, the old man was simply out-of-date, beyond it. He had told him that to his mind there was no difference between Bolshevism and Fascism, which was evidently absurd. He was going to fight for France, not for Fascism; for France and the New Europe that would arrive from the ashes of War. ‘And will there be a place for Jews in this New Europe?’ the old man had asked; ‘a place for liberals and democrats, even a place for the Church? Democracy?’ In Sigi’s words, that was an old bitch gone in the teeth, liberalism was a creed for cowards and sentimentalists, and Christianity a slaves’ religion. But he hadn’t wanted to tell his grandfather, whom he respected and to whom he owed so much, that he belonged to a dead world; so he had merely said, ‘Grandfather, it’s a matter of honour,’ and been rewarded with a deep sigh and a tear-stained embrace.

There had been tears too from Count Paul, and this surprised him. ‘But you yourself have spoken of the Crusade against Bolshevism,’ he had said. ‘That was then,’ the old Russian said. ‘I’ve done wrong, been foolish, to put these ideas in your head. You will be killed and killed in a lost cause. A waste of everything you are. Stalin is stronger than Hitler, believe me, my son. Hitler is as foolish as Napoleon. To invade Russia is the act of a madman. He is losing the Battle of Stalingrad. Holy Russia has recovered its soul, and Hitler will never reach Moscow or Petersburg. My dear boy, there are lessons to be learnt from History, and one is that the Germans always lose. When Prince Andrei extolled Napoleon and called him a Great Man and a genius in war, his father, the old Prince Bolkonsky, laughed at him and said, “Who has he defeated? Only Germans. Everybody has always beaten the Germans.” Believe me; the old Prince was wiser than his son. Stalin has adopted the same strategy as Kutuzov in 1812. That wise old man said that Patience and Time would save Russia. So it did and History is repeating itself.’ And then the old Russian, the veteran of the Foreign Legion, had sobbed and put his arms round Michel and kissed him passionately, so that Michel for the moment wondered if perhaps Philippe hadn’t been right when he called Count Paul an old aunt who had indecent designs on him. This must be nonsense. It was only that the drama of the war had in some way reawakened the old man’s mystical faith in Russia and he saw the Bolshevik Stalin as the Tsar, even though he was a Red one.

None of this mattered, not really, not as Clothilde’s abject misery did. For a moment he was tempted to yield, to take the easy course and say, ‘Very well, I won’t go. I love you and I won’t go.’ It would not only be easier. It would make her happy. Her tears and sobs would turn to cries of joy, and he would fold her in his arms. There was all at once nothing he wanted more to do. But was it love or cowardice that prompted him, for he knew, deep down, that he was indeed afraid of this venture into the unknown? So, instead of yielding, he admitted his fear and then spoke of her brother, Alain.

‘I know what he’s doing, even though so little has been said to me, and we don’t think alike, we’re in a sense enemies, even though we are both, in our own minds, patriotic Frenchmen. So I respect him. But he’s your twin, and I know that he hurt you, especially as he went without speaking a word to you as you’ve told me. And I’ve seen your mother’s face when his name is mentioned, which it isn’t often, I think, because it’s too painful. For your father too, I suppose, though of course he’s said nothing to me. The truth is that Alain and I are alike. You know that ass Philippe – all right, he’s been a friend of mine and a friend of Alain too, sort of anyway, but I despise him because he thinks of nothing but being comfortable and having a safe career that will make him rich. You wouldn’t want me to be like Philippe, darling, would you? Why, even that little pansy, Jérôme, who used to waggle his backside at me like a bitch on heat, has had the courage to join de Gaulle with Alain, because I know that’s what they’ve done even if no one has said so outright. So you see. It’s a matter of honour. I love you, of course I do, when the war’s over I want to marry you, but I couldn’t love you if I despised myself, and you couldn’t love me if I was a weakling. I’m sure you couldn’t.’

He said all this, and much more, in different ways, time and again, repeating himself, and at last he held her in his arms and kissed her tears, then kissed her on the lips and stroked her cheek. He pushed back her hair and kissed her again, and said, ‘It’s because I love you,’ which wasn’t quite true, or only partly true, but was what at that moment he felt to be true.

All the same it was a relief when the next day, after a night when he had been too much on edge to sleep, he boarded the train for Paris where he was going to enlist. Sigi was with him, and Sigi was certain he was doing the right thing. In Sigi’s company all doubts dissolved, and when Sigi laughed and said, ‘I presume you left your girl in tears. That’s the proper send-off for a warrior,’ he didn’t feel guilty but smiled, a touch shyly as if he was being paid a compliment. Which in a sense he was, because it meant that Sigi was proud of him.

XL

It was a relief to close the apartment door behind him, but one that made him feel ashamed. Clothilde had said little. She didn’t need to. Her face was a picture of misery. There was no response when he hugged her. It wasn’t that she was refusing comfort, rather that nothing he might say or do could soften the blow or ease the pain. Her heart was like a cracked plate. Would it ever be repaired? As for Marguerite, her response was to sigh and murmur that she only wished Dominique was at home. He knew what she meant, and he couldn’t even take it as a reproach; Dominique was gentle, sympathetic, understanding as he wasn’t. He resisted the temptation to say that Dominique had spoken of his dislike and disapproval of Michel whom Marguerite had found so acceptable.

‘Oh yes, go to work,’ she said. ‘You always run away to work when one of us is in distress.’

Pointless to say he had no choice. All the more pointless because he knew that she was right. Work was a way of escaping from all this. And wasn’t he perhaps at fault? Shouldn’t he have played the heavy father, knowing what he did of Michel’s devotion to Sigi? From the start that had worried him, made him afraid. And then there was Michel’s perfect Aryan poster-boy beauty! Had he been a coward, simply hoping that tomorrow would never come? His own attempt to deter Michel had been miserably feeble; he couldn’t hide that truth from himself.

Well, from the day of the Marshal’s first broadcast when he had announced that he was asking for an armistice, he had known that things would get worse before they could get better. He’d used the line often enough in the dark months since. So had Bracal, others too. It was the dark truth with which they lived.

And work itself wasn’t safe. He had tried not to think of what Jacques Maso had said about the questions Félix had asked him; they were disturbing, yet what was the point of dwelling on them?

There was a cold wind blowing from the East, all the way from the Urals perhaps. He turned up the collar of his coat and leant heavily on his stick. Things must be as they must be.

Young René Martin was waiting for him in the office.

‘Have you anything for me, chief? I feel like a spare wheel on a car.’

‘Who doesn’t? No matter. I’ll be glad of your company this morning. I’m going to speak with Gabrielle’s maid again. We’ll go and have a coffee first.’

It wasn’t just to give the boy something to do. The girl might well respond better to him. Or was it just that he didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts going round and round in a circle and arriving nowhere?

They stopped off in the Bar Jack as they had done on the first morning of the case, and again Lannes asked for an Armagnac which on this occasion he poured into his coffee.

‘Are we really getting anywhere, chief?’

‘You did well alerting us to Duvallier. If there’s any progress it’s in that direction.’

‘Do you think he did it?’

‘I don’t think anything, but he puzzles me. Why did he force himself on our attention?’

The girl was in the concierge’s lodge, sitting on the edge of a hard chair and twisting her fingers round each other.

‘I’m sorry to bother you again, Marie,’ Lannes said, ‘but we’ve a couple of questions more, I’m afraid.’

‘There’s nothing to be frightened of, you’ve done nothing wrong and nobody thinks you have,’ René said, and gave her a smile which brought a blush to her cheeks.

‘You know Dr Duvallier, don’t you?’ Lannes said. ‘I suppose you met him quite often when he visited Madame Peniel?’

The girl smiled for the first time, showing her rabbit teeth.

‘You like the doctor, do you?’ René said.

‘Oh yes, he was always so kind and genial. Once when I did something to irritate Madame, he said, leave the poor child alone, she’s doing her best, and, if you snap at her, it’ll only make her more nervous. Which of course it did – she had a sharp tongue. I told you that already, didn’t I?’

‘Yes, that’s right, you did,’ René said. ‘It doesn’t sound as if she was a nice woman.’

‘She had high standards. That’s what she said, but I didn’t always know what she meant. I was often confused and she would tell me I was a stupid girl.’

‘I don’t think you’re stupid, Marie,’ René said, smiling at her. ‘I think you notice rather a lot.’

‘Would you say Madame Peniel and the doctor were on good terms?’ Lannes said.

‘Well, she was nearly always pleased to see him when he called, but I don’t know that he really liked her. I once heard him tell her she was a hard woman.’

‘And what did she say to that?’

‘She just smiled, and said she could be a good deal harder when she wasn’t satisfied as he would soon find out if he didn’t keep to their agreement, something like that, and then she noticed that I was still in the room, and told me to get out. Dr Duvallier spoke to me as he left, and said I mustn’t take everything Madame said seriously. She doesn’t always means what she says, he said, it’s because she suffered from an epi-something, I can’t remember the word, an epi-something of anxiety. He smiled as he said that and patted me on the cheek, but I don’t know, he was worried about something, I think.’

‘When was this?’

‘I can’t remember exactly, maybe ten days or fifteen before … before … ’

‘Before she was murdered?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Thank you, Marie. You’ve been very helpful.

‘But I haven’t said anything, have I?’

* * *

‘You do think he did it, then, chief.’

‘I told you, I don’t think anything, but it’s a possibility. I want you to call on him again, and make an appointment for him to come to the office again. Just a few points to be cleared up. I can trust you not to say anything that might alarm him.’

XLI

Bracal looked as unruffled as ever. His manner seemed to say, ‘I’m a functionary of the French State. Nothing I do is my personal responsibility.’ He sat behind his desk as if it was a barricade protecting him from the disorder and violence of the world.

‘But it’s nothing to do with us, Jean,’ he said. ‘I’m an examining magistrate; you’re a superintendent in the PJ. So, yes, it’s deplorable, disgusting, shameful too as you say, a round-up of Jews – French ones this time, French citizens – is indeed imminent, another train requisitioned to ferry the next consignment to the East. But there’s nothing you or I can do about it. Should we resign because we disapprove? What would be the point? Would it make anything better? Of course it wouldn’t. I don’t ask you if you have Jewish friends. That’s no concern of mine. As it happens I have, or had, friends who were Jews myself though none in Bordeaux, which isn’t surprising since I am an incomer here myself. But one of my uncles, in Paris, was married to a Jewess, a German one as it happens, and she was arrested in the Vel’ d’Hiv roundup. She’s probably dead now, poor woman. I say poor woman, though in truth I rather disliked her the only time we met, not because she was Jewish but because … oh, never mind why. As for my uncle, my mother tells me he’s desolate. But there was nothing he could do. That’s the world we live in. I think we should have a spot of brandy.’