When the next administration allowed religious instruction to become voluntary, Benech successfully lobbied for it to be retained at his school.
He had always hated the way his fellow teachers had supported the Popular Front and various other doomed causes of the Jewish Left, and now he felt vindicated. The Government's removal of all Jews from teaching in 1940 was a move that delighted him in its elegant simplicity, uprooting with one firm. pull both distasteful cause and pernicious effect.
At school Benech organised youth groups, more or less affiliated to Catholic and national organisations; they went camping at the weekend, put on uniforms and sang patriotic songs. The fact that these groups were banned in the Occupied Zone, because of their militaristic nature, made Benech proud of them: it showed they were threatening, and that the real France had survived in Vichy.
Fatherland was a subject on which Benech felt secure. What he feared more than anything- far more than German occupation- was a Communist revolution.
The Communists had come close to power in Government: they had enabled the Popular Front to come into being. As far as Benech was concerned, that was bad enough; it certainly sufficed to efface the memory of how they had also contributed to the Front's collapse.
His feelings towards the Germans were a little complicated. On one hand, he felt personally humiliated by his country's defeat, and was glad to find internal culprits in the feeble Republicanism of the Jewish Left; on the other hand, he admired the German troops and believed that Laval's long-term plan, to secure France the second seat at the top table of the new Europe, was a sound one.
Meanwhile, the Communists were merely using the Occupier as a rallying point for their revolutionary ends; their real enemy was the traditional France of the centuries, not the temporary German inconvenience. The Vichy government had in Benech's view not only deftly kept the autonomy and spirit of France alive, it had vitally blocked the Communist advance. Vichy was the best the only hope of order, the bulwark against Bolshevism, and those who tried to resist it, or to resist the Occupation, were the true and most dangerous enemy. It was not a difficult stretch of logic to conclude that his enemy's enemy the Occupier - must be his friend. He would not have put it quite so bluntly, but in opposing the Communists and supporting the traditional France of Vichy, the Germans were certainly, Benech believed, on the right lines.
Their continued presence was necessary while the Vichy government sorted out the undesirable elements and set the old country back on course.
Family was a less happy area of Benech's life. He had been the middle of three sons who had lost their father on the Mame. They were brought up in Lavaurette by their mother, who indulged her adoration of her eldest son, Charles, a handsome boy who eventually found work with the railways. The youngest, little Louis, was clever and, despite minimal encouragement from his mother, won a scholarship to the lycee, from which he ascended to a different social plane and away, out of their lives. Madame Benech's attitude to the middle son, Claude, was one of frank indifference. She found his coarse looks disappointing: he had wiry black hair, a long moustache from the age of seventeen, pale, mealy skin and a nervous, would-be ingratiating manner. She did not dislike him, she just did not seem to care; she talked to him as though he were a lodger whose parents had forgotten to take him home.
As far as starting a family of his own was concerned, Benech had come close to an agreement a few years earlier with a woman who worked at a bakery, but two weeks before the intended marriage she had disappeared with a farmer.
Sylvie Cariteau was probably past child-bearing age, Benech thought; Pauline Bobotte could not be separated not by him anyway from her visiting Toulouse businessman; Irene Galliot... But he preferred not to remember the hilarious disdain with which Irene had met his hopeful advances. He concentrated his thoughts instead on a young woman he had occasionally seen in the village, a new arrival in Lavaurette who had apparently gone to live at the Domaine to work as housekeeper for the old Jew. There was something suspicious as well as attractive about this woman, and he conjured plans as well as fantasies for her.
In his new, contented life, Claude Benech had begun increasingly to enjoy the company of other people. He allowed himself two drinks an evening in the Cafe du Centre, where he felt the regulars viewed him with a certain respect.
His opinions had been vindicated by events, and he felt confident about the vigour with which he expressed them.
As a man for whom the historic tide was running, he felt it was likely to be a matter of time only before the family difficulties of his life also fell into place. As he put on his coat and climbed on to his bicycle to go down to the Cafe du Centre, he felt certain that the world was spinning his way.
That night Charlotte lay down for the first time in her new room. She placed Dominique's spare set of clothes in a drawer and hung her skirt on a rail behind a scarlet curtain. She had so far guarded G Section's funds as though any spending might amount to an act of treason, but now she was staying indefinitely she felt sure the war effort would not fail completely if she bought some new underpants.
The dense fabric of Dominique's meant that they often took two days to dry out fully, which had sometimes left her the awkward choice of putting them on damp or wearing the same pair two days running. There seemed to be no clothes at all on sale in Lavaurette, so she thought she might take a train one morning to a bigger town. She wished she had some photographs to put on the bedside table: one of Gregory, and perhaps one of Roderick, even a sufficiently ancient one of her parents.
Dominique's voice was less often present in her head these days; Charlotte found that it was she who talked more often to Dominique, explaining the things she did in her name. The idea of being someone else was attractive to her, and that, she recognised as she turned off the light and pulled up the covers, was what had so drawn her to the Domaine.
She was living someone else's life. This house was suffused with unknown histories, but instead of seeing them as a disenfranchised spectator, she had become a legitimate actor among them. By assuming a new identity, she had somehow rid herself of the restraints imposed by her own and allowed herself to join the flow of a timeless reality more urgent than the one in which she otherwise moved.
As she lay there, she remembered reading Proust's novel at Monsieur Loiseau's house and being thrilled by what the writer seemed to have done. The more you came to know a place, in general, the more it lost its essence and became denned by its quirks and its shortcomings; the suggestion of something numinous or meaningful was usually available with full force only to the first-time visitor and gradually decreased with familiarity. Yet in his book Proust seemed to have worked the paradoxical trick of making his places universal by the familiarity and attentiveness with which he described their individual characters.
Charlotte was so pleased by this sleight of hand that she did not at first see how closely it was related to the effects of time; how it depended on the force of involuntary memory to release the deeper reality from the imprisonment of the years. The novel made it clear enough in the end, but Charlotte, still in her teens, had been too intoxicated by its sentences to take in its final significance. Monsieur Loiseau had not helped her; he had merely been delighted that such a French monument had so delighted his "English' guest; Charlotte later suspected he might not actually have finished the book, but was merely proud of it as a French achievement and pleased by the coincidence of sharing a surname with one of the minor characters, a woman with a house beside the church in Combray with fuchsias in her garden.
At the Domaine Charlotte seemed to be coming as close as was possible to inhabiting that more profound reality, though it was possible only intermittently; for the rest, she was limited by the practical considerations of her life. She still did not quite believe that Gregory was dead. It seemed that he had not made contact with the garage at Clermont-Ferrand, but that proved very little. She had grown so used to his absence that that was now her way of knowing him, and marginal evidence that this absence might be final made surprisingly little difference. There were moments when she gave way to grief, and her vulnerability to such outbursts was kept at a certain pitch by the sheer anxiety of not knowing; at other times, she felt her emotions were simply not subtle enough to accommodate the perpetual uncertainty.
Meanwhile there was always Mirabel, and the hope he represented.
She would carry on living, and eventually the pain would go, or at least she would reach a state of existence in which it was explained.
While she waited for this enlightenment, she experienced none of the symptoms that had caused her mother to send her, in her teens, to the psychiatrist in Aberdeen; such depressions could not take root in the changed landscape of her mind. She had become galvanised, perhaps by grief, perhaps by some more intellectual process, in a way that left no room for the failure of energy that was the precondition of such despair.
In the Domaine she felt energetic, she felt precariously alive. She was in the right place, she was sure, and something was going to happen. Out there the foothills of the Massif Central were covered with summer darkness. In a lit window of a first floor Julien was telephoning quietly, smoking, drinking brandy from an antique glass.
Somewhere Peter Gregory was hiding out, unhurt, and patiently planning his return. Downstairs, in the echoic rooms of this traditional manor house, Levade was doing whatever untraditional things he did at night.
In Bordeaux the German soldiers stamped their feet.
I am almost happy. Charlotte thought, and it is a blasphemy to be happy in such grief. Something is going to happen.
Just before three o'clock, when Charlotte was lying many fathoms below thought, Peter Gregory was woken by a hoarsely whispering voice.
"Monsieur. Time to go. Come on."
The couple stood in the doorway of his room. Beatrice held out a shopping bag in which she and Jacques had put a change of clothes, a dried sausage and a loaf of bread. The old man struggled with matches until eventually a nickering glow came up around him.
Gregory hated being woken in the night. It reminded him of days in Africa when the boy would rouse him before dawn because there was work to be done before it grew hot. The taste of aborted sleep also recalled days on the station when they would be scrambled to their planes just as the sun was rising.
He lowered his legs gently to the floor. He was fully dressed in clothes that Jacques had given him, the trousers ludicrously too short but lengthened by the addition of vaguely matching material at the bottom.
He took his jacket from the chair and followed his hosts downstairs.
Outside, in the farmyard, a horse and cart were waiting. Jacques handed Gregory a walking stick and carried his bag to the cart. The moonlight was splashed over the mud and dung at their feet.
"Goodbye, Beatrice." Gregory embraced the old woman and felt her hard little body sobbing in his arms.
The old man kissed him on both cheeks, his wiry bristles scorching through Gregory's shaved skin.
"I will come back," said Gregory, also close to tears.
"I will come back."
He climbed on to the cart, with Jacques pushing and helping him from behind.
He settled his leg out straight on some old sacks while the driver shook the reins over the horse and moved off.
Gregory looked back at the grey buildings of the farm, three sides of a square in the darkness. He lifted his hand and waved to the old couple, minute figures, holding on to one another in the mud.
PART THREE
Autumn-Winter, 1942/3
Robin Morris was late leaving his office for lunch. He was due to meet Dick Cannerley in the bar at a quarter to one, and it was already five past by the time he managed to find a taxi.
All morning he had been in an emergency meeting. The Minister and his civil servant arrived in a state of near-panic at half past eight, having received an intercept of a German communication presuming France was on the point of declaring war on Britain.
Taxis swooped towards the building like black ticking birds; the marbled floors rang to the sound of respectably hurrying footsteps; the oak doors of the committee room ground back and forth on their iron hinges.
Morris and his senior officer. Sir Oliver Cresswell, presented the details of their own scrambled re-investigations with an air of ordered calm. Sir Oliver soothed the panting Minister and read each hastily ordered update brought into the meeting with no more than the detached interest he might give to an unfamiliar wine list.
"Our position," he said, 'is that whatever Monsieur Laval may or may not wish to do, it is still Marshal Petain who is the head of state, and if he compromises his neutrality, then his government is no longer credible."
"Bloody nonsense!" said the Minister.
"It hasn't been credible since the start, and it's not Petain who's in charge. It's Laval. The tail's wagging the dog, in case you didn't know.
Don't forget that French forces have already fought with the Germans in Africa."
"Not side by side, Minister," said Sir Oliver.
"Against a common enemy I concede, but not literally side by side."
"Comes to the same thing."
"It is admittedly a... political distinction."
The Minister, rather admirably in Morris's view, did not rise to this provocation, but became more specific in what he required from Sir Oliver and his colleagues.
"I can assure you," said Sir Oliver, 'that our chaps in the field have so far not missed a trick. Of course I do accept that the principal motive among the French people and their government is the avoidance of civil disorder, and I'm sure also that your own political analysis of Monsieur Laval's ambitions is a fair one. After all, if he believes that a German Europe with France in the position, shall we say, of consort or dauphin offers the only chance of a non-Bolshevist future, then it would make sense for him to offer armed assistance to his ally. The Germans are not, in our assessment, likely to accept his terms, however. Our understanding is that in return for French armed co-operation he has asked for a reinstatement of the 1914 frontiers with Germany."
"I can make the judgements," said the Minister.
"It's the information we're short of at the moment, particularly on the French side."
Morris shifted on his unyielding mahogany chair and neatly shaded in his own name on the distribution list of the most recent report.
"I can assure you. Minister," said Sir Oliver, 'that our endeavours are focused even more keenly on Vichy than on the Occupier. As far as the interpretation of events is concerned, there are well-established procedures, and I'm sure you would accept that a degree of processing of the raw material by ourselves is inevitable if we're not to swamp the ministry with detail." He coughed and braced his shoulders.
"Now I wonder if we could look forward a little to how we might best co-operate in the coming months. Morris has prepared a short paper which he'd now like to read to you."
Morris had received a telephone call from Sir Oliver at two o'clock that morning to tell him that he had better come up with something convincing. By six o'clock he had completed a paper he hoped was at least plausible. He had barely had time to bath and shave before putting on the new chalk-stripe suit he had had made by Cannerley's tailor. Its heavy jacket gave him an air of confident formality as he began with an assessment of the quality of information received, and went on to speculate on the procedures that might be necessary as the war developed.
"The German success in beating off the Canadian raid at Dieppe was greeted with enormous relief by the French populace. Our early reports last year on Marshal Petain's preparations for defence against Allied invasion from the Bay of Biscay and from the Mediterranean were, as you know, subsequently borne out by military observation. Naturally, as the tide of war begins to run the Allied way, the fear of invasion from the Mediterranean may appear more acute both to the Occupier and the Occupied. Our reports at the moment, however, indicate no cause for concern."
"Concern?" The Minister looked unbelieving.
"No concern that German unease might lead to any precipitate action inside France. Going into the Free Zone, for instance."
The Minister grunted, "Consort, dauphin bloody concubine more like," but said no more, which allowed Morris to give a detailed, practical analysis of future requirements in what, following departmental practice, he referred to as 'the field'.
As he slumped back against the seat of the taxi and watched the November leaves wheeling about the damp streets, Morris had the feeling of having escaped intact. The Minister's private secretary had fixed him with a nakedly sceptical look throughout the reading of his paper, which had twice caused him to lose his place and stammer.
For the rest, he felt he had earned Sir Oliver's sotto "Well done, Morris', delivered in the lobby at the end of the meeting.
"I'd just about given you up," said Cannerley, as Morris panted up the broad staircase, over the polished landing and into the bar.
"What'll it be? Sherry?"
"Thank you." Morris found his hand was trembling a little as Cannerley gave him the fiddly little glass.
"Bloody chaos back at the factory."
He glanced round the bar whose walls were hung with oil portraits of distinguished, and some less distinguished, old members, before confiding in a lowered voice: "They're convinced Laval's about to declare war on the Allies."
Cannerley laughed.
"It would certainly be the logical outcome of his beliefs. Shall we go down?
We're in the supper room I hope you don't mind. It was either that or take pot luck at the long table, and the club bores are out in force.
They appear to be indestructible. We need another Blitz, but rather better aimed this time."
"How's Celia?" Morris asked as the waiter placed a carafe of the club claret between them on the table.
"Very well, thank you."
"And the wedding plans?"
"God, Robin, you're worse than her mother. The wedding's postponed.
I'm not sure I'm quite ready for marriage yet."
"You mean you haven't finished playing the field?"
"That's a rather vulgar way of putting it, if I may say so," said Cannerley.
"I do find that the hostilities have engendered a certain... largesse among one's female acquaintance. Don't you?"
Morris had not. He shrugged.
"The shadow of death, I presume. Timor mortis conturbat me."
"Potted shrimps," said Cannerley, to the waiter.
"Hell of a price. I don't know where they get them from. But do have them, Robin, if you'd like to." He pushed back a tumbling lick of fair hair from his forehead.
Morris's menu had no prices on it, and he felt inhibited.
"No, I'll have the..." He scanned the menu for something modest.
"Sardine salad to start with. Do you remember-that girl we met on the train from Edinburgh?"
"Och aye," said Cannerley, 'the Scots lass. Thereby hangs a tale. Do you know what happened?" He leaned forward.
"You know we managed to recruit a G Section man over there? Fowler? He was supposed to get the girl to run a little errand, pass on a bit of misleading information.
In return he was going to offer some sort of gen about the whereabouts of her boyfriend."
Morris nodded.
"It's all gone rather haywire. Fowler had to get the hell out of the area.
It was all getting a bit hot, apparently. He's only just managed to renew contact."
"I thought she was only going to be there for a short time."
"Apparently the bloody girl refuses to come-home."
"Why?" said Morris.
"God knows. It's all a typical G Section cock-up."
"Does it matter, her still being there?"
"Not to us. In fact it's rather to our advantage because it gives Fowler a second bite of the cherry. But I imagine G Section are hopping about a bit."
Morris laughed.
"Anyway, I'm seeing something of a friend of hers at the moment," he said.
"A girl called Sally. They used to share a flat."
"What's she like?" said Cannerley as the food arrived.
"She's rather nice. Delightful in fact. Trouble is, she's all moony about some naval commander."
"God," said Cannerley, "I haven't had potted shrimps since before the war. They used to do them at Goodwood."
Since the hand of the clock had passed two by the time they finished eating, they were permitted to take a match from the box in the silver stand and light a cigar to go with the thin, sour coffee. Their conversation returned on a slow loop to where it had begun.
"I think it's very unlikely that Laval could pull off a declaration of war," said Cannerley, 'although I'm quite certain he'd like to."
"Why are you sure he couldn't do it?"
"Because he would try to link it with some sort of deal, and the Germans have never been interested in any sort of collaboration with Vichy."
"They let them police the Occupied Zone."
"It saves them the trouble. They allow Vichy to have the semblance of autonomy because it helps keep public order, but the Germans haven't seriously collaborated on a single issue. And even if they won the war they'd completely disregard all the sycophancy of Laval."
"No place at the top table?"
Cannerley laughed.
"They'd be a hundred yards below the salt. Not even in the same trading zone."
In a brief pause that followed, Morris said, "I'm sorry about your father. I saw the obituary."
Cannerley's face clouded.
"Yes, yes. Thank you. I sometimes feel... I don't know, it's more than just a death."
"Are you all right? You look terrible."
"Yes." Cannerley laughed.
"Yes, I'm fine. Are you playing at the weekend?"
"Yes. Worplesdon. Foursomes. I'm rather looking forward to it."
Later, they stood on the broad stone steps of the old, grey building and wrapped their coats about them as they peered this way and that in the dim afternoon, looking for the yellow lamp of a taxi.
Morris was thinking what London would be like under German occupation: sentries on guard outside the National Gallery, the Foreign Office requisitioned as the headquarters of some insane Nazi project, people scurrying through the streets to their shameful accommodations, a farcical shadow government, headed by Lord Halifax, sequestered in some genteel town in Cheltenham, perhaps, or Leamington Spa. What providence of leadership, of geography, of political will, what desperate days of hungover young men staggering to their flimsy planes on all-grass airfields had so narrowly turned away the catastrophe? He shuddered as the November wind came gusting down the narrow street from St. Martin's Lane.
In France Charlotte rose gently from the deepest levels of her sleep to find the reflected branches of the almost leafless chestnut tree undulating in watery shadow on the bare wall of her bedroom. Outside, the wind of autumn was hissing in the last dry leaves; the sound was not, despite anything the poet might have said, like sobbing violins, but like the muffled percussion of riveted cymbals.
Charlotte climbed out of bed, washed, dressed and went down the bare back stairs of the Domaine to the kitchen. The metal handles of the cupboard doors were cold to her touch; the large, flagged room held for the first time the prospect of winter. Charlotte was not displeased by it; after a Highland childhood she had never feared the rigours of the season, though she did wonder how a house the size of the Domaine was heated. She could light a fire in her bedroom in the evenings, and since Levade seldom emerged from his studio, a permanently stoked blaze in the large, marble-surrounded grate would do for him. The rest of the unused rooms would have to be shut up and left to freeze.
That was her view, at any rate, and she would not be afraid to express it.
Since arriving at the Domaine, she had learned that the quality Levade most seemed to value was frankness. His honesty about himself had prompted in her a reciprocal candour, and nothing would be gained by saying less than she meant. The only trick with Levade was to pick the right moment, not to trouble him when he was distracted by work.
When she heard his slippered footstep on the sprung floor of the dining room she made some tea and took it into him. His face was white, and there were grey smudges round the sockets of his eyes; his skin, she thought, was oddly expressive and changeable for someone of his age. His head hung still over the blue bowl of tea she placed in front of him, and she could sense the awful weight of sleeplessness suggested by his heavy movements. He would be better in an hour or so, when he had drunk more tea, smoked cigarettes and walked in the grounds of the house.
He lifted his head.
"I've been thinking, Madame Guilbert. I think perhaps we know each other well enough now, you and I, for you to come to my studio sometimes in the afternoon."
Charlotte's reply was made incoherent by her surprise and by her uncertainty about what he wanted: she did not know whether Dominique Guilbert would thank him for the privilege, ask for more money or indignantly to refuse any such idea.
Levade smiled at her evident confusion.
"I just need a little help with tidying my papers to begin with. I suppose the room could do with cleaning as well. It must be two years since I let the last girl in there."
"I see," said Charlotte.
"That'll be fine."
As she recovered her balance, Levade said, "Of course there are other things you might help me with."
Before Charlotte could discover what these might be, the telephone rang in the hall and Levade indicated by a nod of his head that she should answer it.
"Dominique!" It was Julien, in an excited state.
"They've done it.
They've done it, they've broken through, they've overrun us, they've '
"Julien, what are you ' " Now it's all-out war. No more Petain, no more deals, this is it.
They're here in Lavaurette, they're everywhere."
"Do you mean they've - ' " Yes, they poured through the line last night, whole divisions, they've taken over the entire country. They're heading down to the sea to protect the coast, but they're leaving their soldiers everywhere. We're going to have our own little German in charge. Come and see, Dominique. Come on."
Charlotte ran back into the dining room to tell Levade, who shook his head and swore.
"I want to go to the village," said Charlotte.
"Do you mind if I ' " No, go on."
In Lavaurette, everyone seemed to be on the street, murmuring in closed groups or looking in silent horror at the convoy of German motor vehicles that had pulled in along the side of the Avenue Gambetta. A small boy marched up and down in front of them with exaggerated goose steps until rescued by his mother.
Charlotte found Julien surrounded by gesticulating people, who included two familiar to her from the Cafe du Centre the quiet schoolmaster Claude Benech and Roudil, the veteran of Verdun who had placed his trust in the Marshal.
For the first time since she had known him, Julien seemed to have lost control of himself; he was berating the other two men and pointing at the parked German lorries.
Charlotte knew with a panicky conviction that she must stop him at once.
She ran into the knot of people and grabbed his elbow; Julien glanced sideways at her, then carried on his tirade. He was shouting at Roudil, some insulting words about Petain.
Charlotte took his arm again.
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