The Road Between Us (43 page)

But with the collapse of the hated old order has gone all his structure, all his certainty. This has been a place of work, of
exhaustion, of death, but food was provided every day. Barely enough to keep a man alive, it was true. But barely enough is still enough.

Anselm feels another stab of hunger, of thirst, of self-pity. How long has he been unconscious? It must be days judging by the corpses on the beds by the door. He feels as if he is the last man alive in the world. Now he must walk this alien planet alone. Except he cannot walk.

How is he to survive until … Until what? Until Charles gets here? He knows that he must not pretend, even to himself, that Charles will be coming for him. But he cannot help it. Charles
will
come. He knows it, if only he can stay alive long enough. Can he do that? As if in answer to this he feels pins in his leg. Teeth. A rat has bitten him. He chases it away with the stick, but it doesn’t go far. It senses his vulnerability, the delicious whiteness of his bones.

Anselm stares at it. A stillness holds. He realizes what he must do before the Valkyrie returns, where he must wait for Charles. He moves his improvised crutch and, neither fully living nor dead, takes his first excruciating step towards the door.

Charles and Lehague try to keep their balance as they stand in the back of a half-track rumbling through the mist into a square near Nancy cathedral. The Cross of Lorraine has been freshly painted on its side and dust is sticking to its wet coat. An eerie muffled sound can be heard above the noise of the engines, even above the pealing church bells. It is a soft clapping, rising from the blurred forms of women and children lining the road. They have emerged after days of hiding in their cellars to applaud their liberators.

Charles wonders where they have got their flags from, because they are waving not only tricolours but also Stars and Stripes. As he focuses on them he sees they are made from rags, cut-up shirts and curtains.

Closer to the square, the crowds swell and women in their best summer dresses surge forward, blowing kisses, waving their hats and holding their fingers up in victory signs. After four years of
occupation, the sense of relief and joy for some is being expressed through tears.

An impromptu exchange of goods is going on between the crowd and the tank crews, flowers for chocolates and cigarettes, each being tossed in the air like ticker tape. The advance is slow, bumper-to-bumper through narrow streets littered with abandoned gas masks, defaced portraits of Hitler and the burnt remnants of swastika flags.

Standing on a mangled nest of black metal and still-smoking rubble, a boy is playing an accordion. One woman appears from behind an armoured personnel carrier, half on its side in a ditch, its tyres taken, and raises her arms to be dragged on to a passing Sherman. As she is lifted, her shawl snags on the tank track and she has to jump down, divesting herself of the garment. She laughs as she watches it being chewed up. An elderly man whose toothless mouth has folded in on itself is standing above the crowd on a wrought-iron balustrade. He is giving a salute. Charles salutes back and smiles, but the smile is false. Because of the now-permanent ache of his thumb, he is feeling feverish. There is sweat on his chin and brow.

And now he sees that a mademoiselle has clambered on to his half-track. If she senses how distracted Charles is, she doesn’t show it. Instead she presses her lips firmly to his. He is surprised by the wetness of her kiss, by the taste of tobacco and smell of alcohol on her breath.

‘
Merci!
’ the girl says, finally breaking off. ‘
Vive l’Amérique! Merci!
’

Charles smiles as the girl moves to kiss Lehague, smearing his cheeks with lipstick. She gets a better reaction from him, a squeeze of the buttocks as he tips her backwards. When her hat falls off, she reaches down to pick it up and almost loses her footing as the half-track swerves. And now the girl is jumping off without her hat, running to the next vehicle behind theirs. Doughboys are holding out their arms to drag her up. She grabs an officer’s cap and puts it on. It is too big for her.

An old man by the side of the road is holding out a bottle of
wine and the driver grabs it, takes a swig and passes it back to Charles. He takes a gulp too, feeling parched. When he wipes his mouth, he smears oil across his cheek. There is a pungent smell of sewage in the air.

Come nightfall, the Americans in their bivouacs and tents enjoy the generosity of the young women of Nancy. Lehague joins them, but Charles finds a hotel overlooking the cathedral and sits there sketching. Holding the charcoal loosely, he records from memory the sights of the past few weeks: the body hanging from the tree, the young men executed by Lehague, the charred remains of the French half-track crew. That they were like the piece of charcoal he is drawing them with occurs to him only when he has finished.

He is too tired to sleep well and passes the hours of darkness shivering under a blanket. The ache in his thumb seems to be increasing and, in the morning, he notices a smell. Something sickly. Realizing it is coming from his bandage, he unravels it and sniffs. The thumb has turned pasty with black blood. Has it gone septic? He searches again for his antibiotics. When he fails to find them, he rebandages it and wanders outside. As he makes his way across a park of tussocky grass wet with dew, he sees tank hatches opening to allow the lovers of the night to return to their homes.

Later that morning, Charles sees a dozen, sad-faced French women being rounded up and led into the town square. Here he watches as a crowd gathers, two men produce scissors and the women are held down in chairs as they have their hair shorn. Some have a swastika daubed in tar on their foreheads.

Charles taps a man on the shoulder and shrugs to ask what is going on.

‘
Collaboration horizontale
,’ the man says.

When the cut hair is piled up and burned, the sulphurous smell carries to Charles’s nostrils and lingers there. He has to look away. Sleeping with the enemy is a crime to which he can relate.

As the crowd disperses, another young woman is dragged by her hair into the square. A latecomer. It soon becomes apparent her
treatment is going to be different. She is wearing a nurse’s uniform and, as its front is ripped, her brassiere becomes visible. Instead of cutting her hair the men look at each other and then haul her off down an alley. Judging by their lurching gait, most of them are drunk.

Charles follows. When he catches up with them the nurse has had half of her clothes torn from her and one hand is covering her chest, the other the join of her legs. One of the men, unshaven and heavily built, takes his jacket off and slips his braces from his shoulders. He then unbuttons his flies, tugs his trousers down and positions himself on top of the girl, forcing her legs apart. When she tries to resist, he slaps her face and, running a greedy hand over her hips, kisses her. She is hysterical now. Her whole body seems to convulse as she sobs.

Charles takes out his Webley and fires a shot in the air. As the crowd turn round as one, he shouts in English: ‘Leave her alone! Everyone back!
Tout de suite!
’ He pushes his way through them to get to the nurse. Still pointing his gun at the crowd, he puts an arm around her waist and lifts her up. When the man who had been about to rape her grabs her arm and pulls her back, Charles shoots him in the foot. The rest of the crowd back away and, as the man falls to the ground cursing, Charles leads the nurse back down the alley. Seeing an open door, he moves a stiff yard broom out of the way and ushers her inside. There is a man’s coat hanging up in the hall. He takes it off its peg and hands it to her.

‘
Merci
,’ she says, her voice clotting with tears. ‘Sank you.’

She turns to the wall as she slips the coat on.

Charles checks the alley. ‘I think they’ve gone.
Ils sont partis
.’

‘I speak some English.’

While the nurse sits down at a table stacked with casserole dishes, pans and soup tureens, Charles fills a carafe of water from the tap. He then sees a bottle of cognac on a shelf and, reaching for that instead, pulls out its cork with his teeth, pours a glass and hands it to her. She cups it in trembling fingers, takes a sip and notices her lip is bleeding. ‘Here,’ Charles says, dabbing at it with a hanky. He
pours himself a glass and then lights two cigarettes, handing one to her.

‘I prefer cigars,’ she says, taking it from him. ‘But right now I will smoke anything.’

They sit down and, as they face each other across the table, Charles takes in her high-planed cheeks and her wide, dark eyes. Still wet with tears, they look like melting chocolate. Her upper lip protrudes more than her lower, as if bruised and pushed out by her teeth. It makes her look sulky and hot-tempered. With her olive skin and her curly brown hair, tousled from her ordeal, she has the wild and exotic look of a gypsy.

‘You are American?’ she says.

Charles shakes his head. ‘English. How are you feeling?’

‘I’ll be OK.’

The nurse notices the scars on Charles’s cheek. ‘What happened?’ she says, without sounding the ‘h’.

‘A fire. Aviation fuel.’

‘You are a pilot?’

‘I was. Once. What’s your name?’

‘Inis. Yours?’

‘Charles. We’d better go. Find some proper clothes for you. I have a friend who can protect you.’

When Charles and Inis find Lehague, he is stripped to the waist, with a towel around his neck. He has his back to them as he trims his moustache in the side mirror of an ammunition truck. ‘Ah, Charles,’ he says when he sees their reflection behind him. ‘I was looking for you.’ He turns and kicks over an upturned helmet filled with boiling water. The small fire it had been resting on is extinguished with a hiss and a feathery column of smoke rises up.

‘I have word from the Resistance in Alsace that the Natzweiler-Struthof camp has been evacuated,’ he says, dabbing his clean-shaven cheeks with the towel. ‘They are taking them across the border to Dachau. Force-marching them. Those too sick to march are being left behind.’ He takes a drag from his cigarette. Exhales slowly. ‘Your friend is German, yes?’

Charles misses a beat. ‘How did you know?’

‘They think he might have been one of those left behind.’

‘How do they know it’s him?’

‘They don’t, but there were only a handful of German prisoners in the camp and one was known as “the artist”. He was left in the sanatorium.’

‘Have they got him out?’

‘No one is going near the camp. Typhus.’

‘So what’s the plan?’

‘There is no plan. We will have to wait until the Allies reach that region. It could be weeks.’

Charles looks at Lehague. ‘I cannot wait.’

‘I’m sorry, Charles.’

‘I’m going to see if I can borrow a jeep. We could be there in a couple of hours. What about this?’ He pats the door of the truck. ‘Would anyone miss this?’

‘The Americans won’t let you.’

‘Then I won’t ask them.’

The major studies Charles for a moment, then nods and pats him on the shoulder. ‘Maybe you should ask them. Go to the top. I’ll come with you, for the sake of the Entente Cordiale.’ Lehague notices the nurse who seems to be wearing nothing but a man’s overcoat. ‘We haven’t been introduced …’

‘This is Inis,’ Charles says.

Lehague kisses her hand. ‘
Enchanté
. And I am François.’

Charles stares at his comrade. He had never thought to ask his first name and it seems somehow strange that he has one. He looks up at the sky and, shielding his eyes against the gritty gust of wind, wonders if this is the mistral arriving.

Under tumbling clouds, Charles, Lehague and Inis – now changed into a spare nurse’s uniform from the hospital – come to a perimeter of barbed wire that is guarded by two machine-gun emplacements. They show their papers to a sentry whose eyes linger hungrily on the nurse and are then directed to the end of a long row of jeeps and fly tents. Here they come across an
arrangement of bigger tents, some with kitbags piled up outside them like sandbags. The hessian smell of the guy ropes pricks the air. A field shower, mess tent, three latrines and two field kitchens suggest this is headquarters for the Nancy campaign. A chalk sign a few yards further on confirms this: ‘XII Corps/ 35 & 80 Inf Div HQ (Group Planning)’.

‘We’re here to see General Eddy,’ Lehague says. ‘I am Major Lehague, liaison officer to the FFI. This is Captain Northcote. He’s with the British Army.’ He does not introduce Inis.

‘Take a seat,’ an NCO says with a chewy Bostonian accent, ‘I’ll let him know you’re here.’ He balances on one leg as he pops his head around a flap and says something Charles cannot hear. He is smiling at him when he returns, then, when he sees Charles’s scarred face in full profile his smile drops. He looks flustered and pretends to search for something on his desk. ‘Five minutes,’ he says.

As he waits, Charles takes out his sketchbook and begins sketching Anselm’s face. Inis winds her watch. Lehague removes his kepi and massages his temples with small rotations of his fingers.

The NCO turns to a portable typewriter on his desk, feeds in a sheet of paper and begins typing using one finger only, each time circling the key for a moment before touching it. Exactly five minutes later he looks up and says: ‘You’d better just go in.’

The General, whose narrow lips seem to contradict his jowly face, is staring at the field telephone in his hand. He cranks it twice, listens to its earpiece and mutters:‘Goddamn.’ He does not look up as the three enter but instead signals them in with impatient rotations of his mottled wrists. He studies a file on his desk next to a helmet with two stars on it then looks up and, seeing the discoloured skin across the side of Charles’s face, frowns, his round-rimmed spectacles making his eyes look smaller than they are. Then his expression softens. ‘How’d you get that?’

‘Bombing raid.’

‘I see. Well, they can do wonders these days. Skin grafts and so on.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The General seems distracted again. ‘So, gentlemen, ma’am, what can I do for you?’