The Collaborators (18 page)

‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ said André.

‘I’ll be here,’ said Simonian.

He heard the other move away, then he was alone, as he’d been alone in the German hospital, concentrating all the resources of his heart and mind on simply staying alive from minute to agonizing minute.

When at last the dawn came, he knew he was going to survive. Birds sang, the air grew warmer, flies buzzed around his leg, attracted by the scent of blood. The narrow stream dimpled with sunlight. He watched its waters flow by barely a foot from his face, and in his imagination he followed them, bubbling into the broad, smooth-flowing canal which in a few miles became the Marne and slid down to Charenton where it joined the Seine, whose long and winding course bore his mind through Paris, his birthplace, and across the sullen face of captive France, till finally it spilled into the grey swell of the open sea whose long waves beat on that so close but so inaccessible shore where men still walked, and talked, and fished, in freedom.

8

It was Bastille Day.

Some used the holiday as an occasion for defiance, flying tricolours, getting quarrelsomely drunk, singing songs patriotic and martial. The Boche largely ignored such acts, with the contempt of hard reality for empty symbolism.

Christian Valois had been invited to lunch at his boss’s home in Neuilly. He observed no dancing in the streets on his way there. His boss, Marc du Prat, had returned to Paris a month after the Occupation, but Valois noticed that the Carot sketch hadn’t returned to its place on the office wall. Trust in the Occupiers clearly only went so far.

It was a dull lunch. Even the most collaborationist of guests seemed inhibited by the contrast between the occasion and its circumstance. A lot of shop was talked. General approval was voiced for the fiscal policies Laval had introduced in the three months since his return to power. Professionally, Valois agreed. It seemed to him imperative to defend the franc against the ever-present threat of runaway inflation.

On the other hand, he understood why Delaplanche’s reaction to the prospect was delight.

‘That’s the way to radicalize your petit-bourgeois!’ he said. ‘Devalue his savings and let him know it’s the Boche to blame.’

‘Yes, but Laval…’

‘Laval’s a collaborating bastard who’ll be guillotined from the ankles up when this war’s over,’ said Delaplanche grimly. ‘Don’t start seeing both sides of
anything.
You’re an actor. Play your part, but don’t ever forget the real world.’

‘That’s all right, but I never get into that real world,’ said Valois stubbornly.

‘Shooting squareheads, blowing up trains, is that what you mean? Each man must offer what he’s best at, Christian. What you are doing - will do - is worth any amount of blood and mayhem.’

Valois was not convinced and even less so after the Bastille Day lunch. He left early, pleading pressure of work.

When he got back to the flat the phone was ringing. It was impossible to say, of course, but he had a sense it had been ringing for a long time, and immediately found himself thinking ‘It’s mama, she’s ill; it’s Marie-Rose; she’s had an accident; it’s…’

It was Janine. He recognized the voice at once and with considerable irritation, as though she had got him to the phone by a confidence trick.

‘What do you want?’ he said angrily.

‘It’s Jean-Paul…oh please, Christian, can you come round here? Please!’

‘Is he ill? Can I speak to him?’

‘No!’ she cried wretchedly. ‘No! Please. I don’t want to talk…I’m in the hallway…’

Suddenly he saw her quite clearly, her thin expressive face full of pain, standing in the draughty hallway of her apartment building, aware of God knows what attentive ears behind every doorway. He had hardly seen the Simonians at all since they moved. In this too he had obeyed Delaplanche’s injunction, helped by a slight but unmistakable chill which had touched his friendship with Jean-Paul.

Now he was overcome by a longing to see him again, and to see Janine also, to be with someone who, in joy or in pain, was simple, direct, whole-hearted and completely open.

‘I’ll come at once,’ he said.

She met him on the landing. They embraced and she almost dragged him into the flat.

‘Where’s Jean-Paul?’ he asked.

‘He’s gone,’ she said. ‘That’s why I rang. I’m so worried, I don’t know what to do…’

‘Where are the children?’ he intervened sharply, thinking quite rightly that this was a question guaranteed to steady her down. He was right.

‘I took them to the bakery this morning to spend the holiday there,’ she said. ‘I told my parents I was spending it at Bubbah Sophie’s with Jean-Paul. That didn’t please my mother, as you can guess…’

‘No. All right. Tell me about Jean-Paul.’

‘He’s been gone since Saturday. Before he went out, he said he’d probably not be back that night, perhaps not Sunday either. Naturally I asked him where he was going.’

‘And he said?’

‘He just laughed and said,
Fishing.’

‘Fishing? Does he fish?’

‘Not that I know of. He seemed very excited. I was very unhappy. I imagined all kinds of stupid things…even another woman…’

Christian Valois shook his head. For him this kind of secretive behaviour by his friend meant only one thing. Delaplanche had carried out his implied promise and once Jean-Paul was out of the apartment, he’d made sure he was recruited into an active Resistance cell. He felt a pang of pure envy.

He wanted to comfort Janine with this more likely theory, but hesitated. For a man not to return from a dirty weekend could simply mean he’d enjoyed it so much he’d decided to make it a dirty week. But not to return from a sabotage attack…

She saved him from the debate.

‘I don’t think it is a woman,’ she resumed. ‘It doesn’t feel like a woman. It feels more like…something sinister. Oh Christian, I think he may have got mixed up with the Resistance! You’d think he’d done his bit, what he’s been through, and he’s not well…how could they use him? How did they contact him?’

Valois said guiltily, ‘Perhaps it’s not…’

‘The house is being watched.’

‘What? Are you sure?’

‘Oh yes. Last night there was a man. I saw him. Well, Pauli noticed him actually. He doesn’t miss much, Pauli. But I kept my eyes skinned after that. He was there for hours.’

‘Has he been there today?’

He couldn’t keep the note of accusation out of his voice.

‘No, of course not. You don’t think I’d have asked you to come round if he had been, do you?’

‘It didn’t occur to you they might have more than one man?’ he said sarcastically, going to the window. The street seemed deserted.

‘No,’ she said, stricken. ‘Oh God, Christian, you’re quite right about me, I’m stupid. Who do you think it is? The Gestapo?’

Curiously his mind was less concerned with that than with the revelation of her knowledge of his past assessment of her.

‘I don’t think you’re stupid,’ he said. ‘And I think if the Gestapo had any interest in you and me, we’d be down at the Rue des Saussaies, or somewhere worse.’

He spoke with more confidence than he felt and his next question was in contradiction to that alleged confidence.

‘Janine, have you spoken to anyone else, either since Jean-Paul went, or before, about your worries, I mean?’

‘No!’ she said emphatically. ‘Who would I speak to? I wasn’t going to worry his mother with it and I’d get precious little sympathy from my mother, I’m afraid.’

‘I see that. But what about, well, someone else, someone not so close, but close enough,’ he said gently.

For a moment of sheer horror she thought, he knows I’ve seen Mai! Then he added, ‘Like your cousin, say.’

‘Miche! You don’t think I’d say anything to Miche?’ she cried almost gaily. ‘Not because he works for the Boche. Oh, I do know all about that, Christian, I’m not completely dense. But because he’s feckless, that’s why. No, I haven’t told a soul. I couldn’t. That’s why I was desperate. That’s why I had to involve you. I’m sorry, I really am.’

Valois was embracing her, murmuring unwanted consolations. He was also holding her a little too close.

She broke away and said, ‘It’s not a shoulder to cry on I need, Christian. It’s practical help. What can I do?’

‘Nothing,’ he said, immediately businesslike. ‘I’ll ask around, see if I can find out anything. And I’ll call back here tomorrow night, all right? If anything happens in the meantime, ring me at the flat, or at my office tomorrow.’

‘Yes,’ she said.

She made no effort to detain him. There was in her a strength which had merely needed to touch one other person to be renewed.

He kissed her on the cheek and left.

In the next twenty-four hours he discovered very little and nothing of comfort. His main hope for help and assistance was Delaplanche, but it turned out the lawyer was away on another of his ‘business’ trips. And a carefully accidental encounter with an old acquaintance working in the Ministry of the Interior elicited the news that there’d been an abortive terrorist attack on some canal barges at the weekend.

‘Happily they were expected. I gather some gabby tart opened her mouth as well as her legs.’

‘They were captured, you mean?’

‘Killed, my dear chap. Our squareheaded friends don’t mess about, you know,’ replied the other, almost admiringly.

What was it Jean-Paul had told Janine he was going to do?
Fishing?
The link between that reply and the canal attack was too strong to be ignored.

He went round to Janine’s flat that night uncertain what to tell her. It was a desire to postpone the moment as much as natural circumspection which made him check out the neighbouring streets thoroughly for signs of surveillance.

There was nothing. He went in and rang the bell.

The door opened. Janine stood there, her face pale and enigmatic. There was a mark on her brow, like a circular weal.

‘Janine!’ he said, stepping forward, his arms outstretched.

He never reached her. His right arm was seized at the wrist, twisted downwards so that he was spun round, screaming in pain. Then he was dragged into the room and hurled forward on to a sofa. When he twisted round and tried to get up, a pistol muzzle stamped its cold circle into his brow. Behind it stood a bullet-headed middle-aged man in stained and smelly overalls who looked ready to kill him.

‘It’s all right! Please, it’s my friend. The one who I told you about. Christian, are you all right?’

Valois nodded uncertainly as the gun was slowly withdrawn. He didn’t speak; at the moment he couldn’t speak. He knew he’d come very close to soiling his trousers.

‘This is Henri, Christian,’ bubbled Janine, both frightened and excited. ‘He’s been with Jean-Paul. He’s hurt, but he’s alive. Thank God, he’s alive!’

Valois pushed himself upright.

‘Where…where is he?’ he stammered.

The man called Henri described what had happened swiftly and succinctly.

‘Everyone bought it, except André and Jean-Paul. Our whole group wiped out, just like that!’

He shook his head at the horror of the thought.

‘There’s the three of you left,’ urged Valois.

‘Two.’

‘What…?’

‘No. Not your friend.
My
friend,’ said Henri dully. ‘André. Our boss.’

They’d got a local doctor with the right attitude to look at the wounded men. He’d transferred them to a house in the area whose owners were also sympathetic. But they had to be moved out by Friday.

‘Their son-in-law’s a gendarme; he’ll be visiting this weekend. They’re not sure how he’d react. I came back on Monday. I was due in at work, I’m with the Sanitation Department, and I didn’t want to be noticeable by my absence. They were checking us very carefully, I noticed that. I didn’t know why, but it bothered me. Still, there was no sign of activity round my house, so I thought it might be all right. I checked André’s place and that seemed all right too. Then I came on here, just to be sure.’

‘We noticed you,’ said Janine.

‘Did you? Not so bloody good, am I? Not so bloody good at all!’ He spoke with a bitter vehemence which seemed out of all proportion.

‘It was my son who spotted you. He misses nothing,’ said Janine soothingly.

‘Then I wish to hell he’d been with me when I checked André’s place!’ exclaimed Henri. ‘I told him it was OK. He wasn’t so badly hurt, you see. He wanted to get back as soon as possible to repair the damage and make arrangements to get Jean-Paul back too. So he came back yesterday. I didn’t try to see him. Act normal, he said. That meant a day with my in-laws. So I didn’t go back to André’s till this evening. Oh Christ, you should’ve seen it! Everything smashed up, blood everywhere. They’d been waiting for him, the bastards, waiting!’

He put his head in his hands and let out a racking sob.

‘What about his family?’ demanded Janine aghast.

‘A daughter. She was away, thank God. I’ve sent a message to her telling the poor kid to stay away. After that, all I wanted to do was find out who’d betrayed us.’

‘So you came round here!’ exclaimed Valois indignantly, understanding the mark on Janine’s brow.

‘Yes. I’m sorry. I soon realized it couldn’t be her. Sorry, love. Then you came, Jean-Paul’s best friend, the lady said. People often confide in their best friends.’

‘And they often confide in their tarts!’ said Valois. ‘For God’s sake, what kind of ramshackle organization are you?’

He passed on what he’d gleaned from his friend in the Ministry of the Interior.

‘Oh shit,’ said Henri wearily. ‘Arlette.’

‘You know her? Then why haven’t you been arrested?’

‘Because André was the only one whose address she knew. Me she’d know as a dustbin man, nothing more, and there’s hundreds of us. As for Jean-Paul, she’d know nothing at all about his background, he was so new to us.’

‘But André knows all about you, and Jean-Paul too?’ cried Janine in alarm.

‘André won’t talk,’ he said sadly. ‘I saw the blood, remember? I doubt if they got him to Gestapo Headquarters alive.’

There was a moment of silence, intense as prayer.

Then Janine said, ‘Please. What about Jean-Paul?’

‘He’ll live, but he has to be moved. We need transport. All I’ve got is a sanitation truck!’

‘I can get a car,’ said Valois quietly.

‘What? With a proper permit, you mean?’

‘Oh yes. A proper permit. Very proper.’

He’d never used the car since his father got him the permit. Despite even his pretended reconciliation, he baulked at openly joining the small privileged bunch of private drivers. Delaplanche had agreed, saying, ‘We want you well placed when this is all over, and I don’t mean well placed dangling from a lamp-post!’

‘You must be important, mister,’ said Henri, regarding him distrustingly.

‘He is,’ said Janine. ‘Christian, you can’t get mixed up in this. It could ruin you. All right, lend us the car and the permit. If we get caught, we’ll say we stole it.’

‘It’s in my name,’ he said flatly. ‘I can get away with it. You can’t.’

‘He’s right,’ said Henri. ‘We’ve no choice.’