The Beekeeper's Promise

She nodded and passed him a hunk of bread spread with home-made pâté. ‘An exceptionally good year. The bees have been busy. I think they’re making up for lost time after such a long, hard winter.’

After they’d eaten, Mathieu sat with his back against the trunk of the tree and Eliane lay on the rug, resting her head on his thigh, which was as broad and comfortable as a bolster. He plucked a stem of grass and began to plait it, his thick fingers surprisingly nimble and precise.

‘According to Monsieur le Comte . . .’ she began, but he gently pressed a finger against her lips to stop her.

‘No talk about the war today, please, Eliane. It’s a holiday, remember? So let’s take a holiday from that as well.’

She smiled up at him, gazing into his wide brown eyes until his mouth curved upwards into the generous smile that he reserved mostly for her. She closed her fingers around his hand and kissed it. And then he took her hand into both of his, the smile fading as his expression grew more serious.

‘Eliane . . .’ he began, but then had to stop and clear his throat. She stayed silent, still gazing up at his face, waiting. He went on, ‘You know we’ve talked about our future together, and that we can’t really make plans until I’ve finished my training as a vigneron and can find a permanent placement somewhere . . . And things have been a bit uncertain with this idiotic war – which, after all, we’re not going to talk about today . . .’ He lost the train of his thoughts for a moment and she remained still, quietly looking up at him with her clear grey eyes that both reassured him and at the same time caused such a confusion of emotions to rise up within him. ‘What I mean to say is – because I’ve never exactly asked you – well, not in so many words . . .’ She smiled and kissed his hands again, giving him the confidence to go on.

‘Eliane, I want to marry you!’ He blurted the words out suddenly, and his brow creased into lines of anxiety as he awaited her reply.

‘Well, Mathieu,’ she replied calmly, ‘that’s a very good thing indeed. Because I want to marry you too.’

His features relaxed then, into a smile as big as his heart. He took the plaited grass and tied it carefully around the fourth finger of the hand he held. ‘One day it will be a proper ring, I promise.’

‘That promise is worth more than any ring ever could be, my Mathieu.’

They stayed on the far bank of the river as the golden May Day afternoon wore on, in a world where only the two of them existed.

And then, just ten days after that picnic on the riverbank, the voices coming through the wireless in the library up at the château became shriller and more strident, transmitting a new sense of panic, as the news came through that the German army was launching concerted attacks on the Netherlands, Luxembourg and then Belgium. The Panzer divisions, supported from the air by the Luftwaffe, moved inexorably westwards towards the French border.

‘The Maginot Line will hold, don’t worry,’ the count assured Eliane and Madame Boin as he recounted the day’s bulletins to them. He had started taking his afternoon tisane in the kitchen so that he could tell them the latest news. ‘The British and French have troops in Belgium. We’re strategically placed to turn back Monsieur Hitler’s army.’

But then one afternoon in the first week of June, Monsieur le Comte came into the kitchen looking grave. ‘It’s bad news today, I’m afraid.’ His tea stood untouched, growing cold, as he told them that the French and British troops had been driven back to the Channel, that they were fighting a desperate rearguard action trapped along the coast at Dunkirk. ‘The remaining French divisions are still holding the Maginot Line, though. There’s still hope.’

And then every last scrap of that hope was dashed when the elite German battalions smashed through the last line of defence. By the middle of June, the invading forces reached Paris. All was chaos and confusion as the war engulfed France like a tidal wave, powerful, unstoppable, unrelenting. The president resigned and key members of the government fled, leaving what was left of the French army without leadership. The army fought on, bewildered but brave, but were quickly overwhelmed by the ruthless efficiency of the German war machine.

Mathieu came to the mill house one evening and, as they sat around the supper table, he asked Gustave and Lisette for advice. ‘I’m worried about my father and my brother. I haven’t heard from them. I know my brother was desperate to sign up for the army and go and fight, but my father needed him to help with the farm. I don’t know what to do . . .’

Without hesitation, Lisette replied, ‘You should go and see them. Family is the most important thing there is. Make sure they’re alright. Find out what your brother is thinking, support your father. The situation is changing on a daily basis at the moment. It would be best for your brother to sit tight and see what happens before he takes it into his head to go charging off to fight. And, after all, your father needs him.’

Gustave nodded slowly. ‘That probably would be best. If only for your own peace of mind. You need to reassure yourself that they are alright. It’s not so far to go, if the Cortinis can spare you for a few days?’

Mathieu nodded. ‘They’ve said I can go. We’ve just finished lifting the trellises, so the work in the vineyard is up to date for the moment and as long as this good weather lasts the vines will be fine. But . . .’ He glanced up from his plate and met Eliane’s calm gaze.

She smiled at him. ‘You need to go, Mathieu. And then come back once you know for sure that all is well.’ Her voice didn’t betray the unease she felt at the thought of his absence. But, after all, things seemed a little calmer at the moment, now that the negotiations in Paris were under way. All everyone was talking about was the armistice, hoping it would bring peace and stability to the country once again. (‘“Armistice” is just another word for “surrender”, if you ask me,’ Monsieur le Comte had grumbled earlier that day.)

She walked with Mathieu along the river as darkness fell and the chirping of birds and crickets gave way to the singing of the frogs. The couple stood a long while together beneath the shelter of the willow tree.

‘I don’t want to leave you,’ whispered Mathieu, taking both of her hands in his.

‘You’re not leaving me,’ she replied. ‘I’m keeping you right here with me, in my heart. And it’s not for long. The sooner you go, the sooner you’ll be back again. Give my love to your father and to Luc.’

He nodded, miserably, knowing that she was right. And yet, an unspoken anxiety seemed to pervade the air around them, as nebulous as the river mist that hung above the surface of the water, shifting and deceiving, creating phantoms of fear that haunted everybody’s minds nowadays.

They kissed one last time and he eventually let go of her hand and made his way back to the vineyard to pack and set off for Tulle early the next morning.

By the time the armistice agreement was signed, just a few days later, the French army was decimated. Hundreds of thousands of troops had been killed and almost two million rounded up as prisoners of war, according to the sketchy reports that still trickled through on the wireless. Marshall Pétain was empowered to establish a new French government – (‘the puppets of the Nazis,’ declared the count with contempt) – in Vichy to run the south-eastern third of the country, which was all that the Germans had allowed to remain unoccupied.

And a line was to be drawn on the map to define the area now under Nazi occupation.

‘They’ve barricaded the bridge!’ Yves burst through the kitchen door, having been out delivering flour to the local bakeries.

‘Who have barricaded which bridge, mon fils?’ Lisette asked, as she wiped the table where she’d been preparing the evening meal.

‘The Germans. In Coulliac. They’ve drawn the line of demarcation and it runs along this part of the river. The village is now in occupied France – so that means we are too. And just over there –’ he gesticulated through the doorway in which he stood – ‘just across on the other bank, it’s unoccupied territory, run by the government in Vichy. Did you ever hear anything so crazy? I had to turn back because they wouldn’t let me drive the truck across the river to finish my deliveries on the other side.’

Eliane sat, frozen, where she’d been shelling peas into a colander. Lisette shot her a worried glance and then said, trying to sound reassuring and with more conviction than she really felt, ‘Surely they can’t have closed the bridge for long. It’s probably just temporary, until they have a proper checkpoint in place. After all, people live and work on both sides, so they’ll need to be able to cross.’

Yves shook his head. ‘The mayor was there. I asked him what was going to happen and he just shrugged and said that everything had changed. The soldiers were taking down the flag outside the mairie and, as we watched, they raised their own one in its place. I tell you, Maman, there is a swastika flying in the middle of Coulliac right now.’

‘Well, some arrangement will surely have to be made.’ Lisette kept her voice calm, trying to sound reasonable, even though it felt that their world had suddenly been turned upside down. ‘What happens when I need to go across to help deliver Madame Blaye’s baby next month? And how will we get the flour to Sainte-Foy?’