‘In return for my friendship and loyalty?’ He wiped that swarthy nose with a knuckle. ‘A look, I think, at that thing you’ve brought back.’
The tiara. ‘It’s in my suitcase with the box. It’s all there, even the earrings that his father gave me.’
Marcel found us two cups and filled them, adding a liberal dash of cognac to both and a little more to his own. Pawing through my lingerie, he took out that box, for I’d wrapped it in a slip and Tommy had, of course, smuggled it back into the country.
Greed has a way of lying just beneath the skin. Marcel’s pores were craters whose hollows were filled with black, but there were also bumps that seem to breathe, red swellings that the years and the drink had only encouraged. ‘So, it’s really back,’ he said, and heaved a grateful sigh, still couldn’t believe what was in his hands.
‘Now maybe, mon ami, you’d be good enough to tell me how you two came by such a thing in the first place? That’s exactly as the tiara of the Empress Eugénie would be if it was real.’
He was startled. ‘Me? But I had nothing to do with this. I only learned of it from your son.’
Timidly, I touch one half of the kitchen door. I rub one of the windowpanes and peer inside. Cobwebs are everywhere. Everywhere there’s rubbish. No furniture-not even my kitchen table, on which I used to knead the bread dough and cut or shape it into sculptures.
A litter of broken plaster lies where I used to stand. The bare ribs of the lathing are exposed in the ceiling above. There are old rags, glass, bits of china-Marie’s Peter Pan bowl, her coveralls …
Some pots. Splintered boards. Clots of dust. They even took the stove. Soot marks the place where the chimney pipe was torn away. The door to my storeroom is gone, but a corner of splintered shelving reveals that it is empty, and I can’t move, can’t breathe. It’s all rushing back to me. ‘Jean-Guy,’ I cried out. ‘Marie … darlings, look who’s here.’
‘Maman!’ They flung themselves into my arms. Wet kisses, hugs, and caresses. They were all over me like puppies, and I was all over them.
I throw a shoulder against the door. In anger, I kick and shove, but it’s useless. I haven’t the strength. What have they done to me in the camps?
The coach house is empty-more debris, more litter. No packing cases. None, only broken bales of mouldy straw and brass shell casings-9 mms, some 7.92’s, a blood-soaked German tunic, and forage cap. These guys were from the Waffen SS.
A rusty crowbar. I bring it down at that kitchen door of mine and hear the glass shatter, hear the sound of a Messerschmitt’s guns, the explosions of its cannon shells as they hit the road, the car, the kids, and myself. God help us, everything! Jésus … cher Jésus …
Dust settles on the road as a stunned silence enters and the door swings open. There is a last tinkle of falling glass, a silence that reminds me of that road during the great Exodus from Paris immediately before the fall of France, but then I’m back here in time again, back to that January 1940.
We sat before the stove, the three of us. Marcel had taken himself off, and I didn’t care where. I had an arm around each of them. It was very cosy and all the rest, and we watched the flames through the little gaps of the draught plate in the firebox door. The aroma of baking bread warmed us and to this was added the scent of the split pine, which crackled as it burned.
Marie tugged at my sleeve and lifted her big hazel eyes to mine. ‘Maman, qu’est-ce qu’une salope?’
For a moment, I couldn’t answer. Georges and Tante Marie were behind this, but what else had they said?
‘A woman who has been unfaithful to her husband.’
‘Unfaithful …’ Marie puzzled over this. She scrunched up her nose and twisted her mouth from side to side. ‘Is it like animals?’ she asked.
Jean-Guy said nothing but, from his stillness, I knew he was alarmed and I wondered what was being said at school.
He was not long in confessing. ‘You ran away with Monsieur Tommy. Everyone says you did.’
‘And what did you tell them?’
‘That he was good and kind, and that he’s going to come back if Papa doesn’t look after you better!’
Wisdom in a child? Note this, too. Note also that my son had been placed in a most delicate position. On the one hand, there was his father, whom he still adored. On the other, was Tommy, whom he missed with a small boy’s longing. It wasn’t fair.
In the morning, we went for a hike. I had to see the stone tower again, had to look over the forest. Tea from the thermos in hand, and the children nestled against me, I tried to forget things, tried just to let us be ourselves as it was before, but when three biplane fighters drifted lazily over the woods from the little airfield near mother’s farm, Jean-Guy insisted they were Morane-Saulniers. ‘Four-zero-sixes, maman, just like the model that hangs above my bed.’
The one I had patiently helped him to build, that father of his having seldom been home and of far too little patience.
The fighters began to climb. Like graceful birds above the tapestry of winter, they soared. Each of them rolled over and over as they fell away and the sound of their engines gradually dwindled on the frosty air.
‘Flut … plut! Flut … plut! Prr …’ Marie giggled. Pursing her lips, she gave the engine noise again then frowned fiercely and said, ‘Dive … Dive … Mm-rmm! Blum, blum … T-te! T-te! Mm-rmm! Look, Jean-Guy, they’re coming around for another pass. They’ll machine-gun all those dirty Poles. Kill! Kill them! T-t-te! T-t-t-t-te!’
We had had some visitors, fresh from the war in Poland, and I hadn’t known of it until then, but they hadn’t been Polish refugees, you understand. Marie had only picked up what Tante Marie and Georges must have repeated in the kitchen.
There’s the broken head of a china doll in my hand. I’ve obviously retrieved it from the rubbish at my feet, but have no memory of having done. It was one of Marie’s favourites, and I set it carefully on an overturned packing case to remind Jules of our little daughter. Then I’m right back there again, living in the past.
‘Marcel, another cognac? Me, I think I need it.’
‘You were never much of a drinker, Lily. Why not tell me the reason.’
I gave the usual gesture. ‘This place, I guess. Coming back to it feels strange. Has something happened in my absence?’
‘The shipments from the Louvre. The crates that are stored in the attic and in the coach house.’
‘A few parties perhaps? Some new friends? That sort of thing?’
He snorted, laid his eyes on me and grinned. ‘I wouldn’t wish to say.’
‘Then tell me of that husband of mine. What’s he been up to, besides my sister?’
‘The tiara? How should I know?’
‘The friends, the new ones, who were they?’
‘Wise men from Berlin via Poland and then Switzerland, I think, and following their star.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘That I shouldn’t tell you but will.’
‘The price, please?’
He threw more wood on the fire. ‘Your trust. Your friendship. I’m not all bad. Oh, for sure, I like to fiddle a bit and borrow when I can’t possibly repay, but soon one will have to decide, eh? You, me, that old whore down the road with her shrew eyes and that husband of hers with his sticky fingers. All of us will need friends we can absolutely trust. Take me on credit so that when the time comes, the bank will repay you.’
‘Trust? You? Merde alors, why should I?’
He tossed off the cognac and reached for the bottle to pour himself another large one. ‘Because, ma chère, your husband is digging his own grave and ours.’
‘Action française?’ I asked and saw him nod.
‘A splinter group, perhaps. The Vuittons have this little scheme of theirs to not only return that tiara to France as a rallying talisman, but to store things here, there, everywhere, so that no one will really know what else is being stored. I may be a shit, Lily, but I’m not political. I’ve no feelings that way except for the safety of my ass.’