“You don’t believe them yourself?”
She shrugged. “What’s the use? All you do is frighten yourself. I’d rather think of real things, not of ghosts and spirits.”
I put down my glass on the small side-table. “I get the feeling you don’t like it here.”
“Here, in my father’s house?”
“No—in Pont D’Ouilly. It’s not exactly the entertainment centre of northern France, is it?”
Madeleine stood up and walked across to the window. Against the grey winter light, she was a soft dark silhouette. She said, “I don’t think so much of entertainment. If you’ve lived here, in Pont D’Ouilly, then you know what sadness is, and anything at all is better than sadness.”
“Don’t tell me you loved and lost.”
She smiled. “I suppose you could say that. I loved life and I lost my love of life.”
I said, “I’m not sure I understand.” But at that moment, a gong rang from across the hall, and Madeleine turned and said, “Lunch is ready. We’d better go in.”
Today, we had lunch in the dining room, although I suspected that they usually ate in the kitchen, especially when they had three inches of mud on their boots and appetites like horses. Eloise had set out a huge tureen of hot brown onion soup on the oval table, with crisp garlic bread, and I suddenly realized that I was starved of home cooking. Jacques was already standing at the head of the table in a neatly-pressed brown suit, and when we had all taken our seats, he bowed his thinning scalp towards us, and said grace.
“Oh Lord, who provides all that we eat, thank you for this nourishment. And protect us from the conversations of evil, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.”
I looked across the table at Madeleine, and tried to put the question in my eyes. The conversations of evil. What was that all about? The voices in the tank? Or what? But Madeleine’s attention was fastened on the large tureen, as Eloise dished up piping-hot platefuls of transparent brown soup, and whether she intended to avoid my gaze of not, she didn’t look up again until her father had started to talk.
“The upper field is frozen,” he said, dabbing his lips with his napkin. “I ploughed a hectare this morning, and there was ice coming up with the soil. It hasn’t been so cold here for ten years.”
Eloise said, “There are worse winters to come. The dogs know it.”
“The dogs?” I asked her.
“That’s right, monsieur. When a dog stays close to home, and when he calls in the night, that’s when the nights will grow cold for three years, one after another.”
“You believe that? Or is that just a French country saying?”
Eloise frowned at me. “It is nothing to do with belief. It is true. I have seen it happen for myself.”
Jacques put in, “Eloise has a way with nature, Mr. McCook. She can heal you with dandelion broth, or send you to sleep with burdock and thyme.”
“Can she exorcise ghosts?”
Madeleine breathed, “Dan—” but Eloise was not put out. She examined me with those watery old eyes of hers, and almost smiled.
“I hope you don’t think I’m impertinent,” I said. “But it seems to me that everybody around here is kind of anxious about that tank, and if you could exorcise it…”
Eloise slowly shook her head. “Only a priest can exorcise,” she said gently, “and the only priest who will believe us is too old and too weak for such things.”
“You really believe it’s haunted?”
“It depends on what you mean by ‘haunted’, monsieur.”
“Well, as far as I can make out, the dead crew are supposed to be heard talking to each other at night. Is that it?”
“Some say that,” said Jacques.
I glanced at him. “And what do others say?”
“Others will not talk about it at all.”
Eloise spooned up her soup carefully. “Nobody knows much about the tanks. But they were not like the usual American tanks. They were different, very different, and Father Anton, our priest, said they were visitations from L’enfer, from hell itself.”
Madeleine said, “Eloise—do we have to talk about it? We don’t want to spoil the lunch.”
But Eloise raised her hand. “It doesn’t matter This young man wants to know about the tank, then why shouldn’t he?”
I said, “How were they different? It looks like a regular tank to me.”
“Well,” explained Eloise, “they were painted black all over, although you cannot see that now, because the rust and the weather have taken away the paint. There were thirteen of them. I know, because I counted them as they came along the road from Le Vey. Thirteen, on the thirteenth day of July. But what was most strange, they never opened their turrets. Most American tanks came with their tops open, and the soldiers would throw us candy and cigarettes and nylon stockings. But these tanks came and we never saw who drove them. They were always closed.”
Madeleine had finished her soup and was sitting upright in her chair. She looked very pale, and it was clear that all this talk about the strange tanks disconcerted her. I said, “Did you talk to any Americans about them? Did they ever tell you what they were?”
Jacques, with his mouth full of garlic bread, said, “They didn’t know, or they wouldn’t speak. They just said ‘special division’, and that was all.”
“Only one was left behind,” put in Eloise. “That was the tank which is still there, down the road. It broke a track and stopped. But the Americans did nothing to take it away. Instead, they came along next day and welded down the turret. Yes, they welded it, and then an English priest came and said words over it, and it was left to rot.”
“You mean the crew was left inside?”
Jacques tore off some more bread. “Who can say? They wouldn’t let anyone near. I have talked many times to the police and to the mayor, and all they say is that the tank is not to be moved. And there it stays.”
Madeleine said, “And ever since it’s been there, the village has been dead and depressed.”
“Because of the voices?”
Madeleine shrugged. “There have been voices. At least, that’s what some people say. But more than anything else, it’s the tank itself. It’s a terrible reminder of something that most of us now would prefer to forget.”
Eloise said, “Those tanks could not be stopped. They set fire to German tanks all along the river, and then they set fire to the Germans themselves who tried to escape from them. You could hear the screams all night of men burning. In the morning, the tanks were gone. Who knows where, or how? But they came through in one day and one night, and nothing on earth could have held them back. I know they saved us, monsieur, but I still shudder when I think of them.”
“Who’s heard these voices? Do they know what they say?”
Eloise said, “Not many people walk along that road at night any more. But Madame Verrier said she heard whispering and laughter, one night in February; and old Henriques told of voices that boomed and shouted. I myself have carried milk and eggs past that tank, and the milk has soured and the eggs have gone rotten. Gaston from the next farm had a terrier which sniffed around the tank, and the dog developed tremors and shakes. Its hair fell out, and after three days it died. Everybody has one story about the evil that befalls you if you go too near the tank; and so these days nobody does.”
I said, “Isn’t it just superstition? I mean, there’s no real evidence.”
“You should ask Father Anton,” said Eloise. “If you are really foolhardy enough to want to know more, Father Anton will probably tell you. The English priest who said words over the tank stayed at his house for a month, and I know they spoke of the tank often. Father Anton was never happy that it was left by the road, but there was nothing he could do, short of carrying it away on his own back.”