The Beekeeper's Promise (Page 28)

They kept Lisette at the Gestapo headquarters in Castillon for three long nights and three long days. And then the miracle the family had been praying for happened.

Eliane was up at the château on the afternoon of the third day since Lisette had been taken. She’d left Blanche in Gustave’s care, in the hope it would be a good distraction for him to have to look after the little girl instead of sitting at the table with his head in his hands, helpless and despairing.

Madame Boin had taken one look at Eliane’s strained expression and pale cheeks and had insisted she could manage in the kitchen on her own, sending the girl outside into the fresh air.

Away from the oppressive, anguish-filled atmosphere of the mill – even if only for an hour or two – Eliane willed herself to concentrate on her work. As she picked up her hoe she took a crumb of comfort from the bees, who were carrying on about their business as usual.

Being in the garden grounded her, and she felt she could breathe just a little more easily as she focused on her tasks, weeding and watering, tending her lovingly planted herbs. The scents of thyme, rosemary and mint reminded her of Lisette’s healing concoctions. And then, all at once, she knew that her mother would come back to them. She could feel it in her bones and in the blood that coursed through her veins. It was more than hope: it was complete certainty.

She was dead-heading the roses that clung to the wall by the garden gate when she looked up, startled, at the sound of a vehicle. Her hands began to tremble as she caught sight of a grey uniform. Oberleutnant Farber leaned out from the driver’s seat and beckoned to her, urgently.

Tightly gripping the pair of clippers she held, Eliane walked towards him. The jeep’s engine was still running.

‘Come with me, mademoiselle. Don’t be afraid. Your mother has been released. She’s in Coulliac. I’m going to get her.’

Eliane hesitated, then raised her eyes to meet his. She had seldom looked at him directly – or at any of the soldiers – but now she saw, beyond the sombre uniform, that his face was open and honest-looking and that his eyes, which were almost as blue as Jacques Lemaître’s, held a look of gentle compassion. Her hands were still shaking, but she set down the clippers and got into the passenger seat. She was acutely aware that this was the vehicle that had carried Lisette away three days earlier and, for a moment, a chill of fear seized her. Could she trust his words, or was she, too, being arrested? But that expression she’d glimpsed in his face was so honest and so utterly human that, instinctively, she knew she did trust him.

Lisette was sitting on the wall beside the fountain in the middle of the square. How she’d got there from Castillon no one knew. She had simply appeared, limping into the place, not looking to her left or her right as she made her way towards the water that splashed in the stone bassin surrounding the fountain. The women queuing outside the bakery to collect the meagre rations of bread for their families watched her cautiously, casting sidelong glances towards her. Stéphanie, carrying an empty shopping bag, whispered to her neighbour.

Lisette’s hair had come loose from its usual neat plait and her clothing was dishevelled. Despite there being no obvious outward signs of physical injury, everything about Lisette seemed to have been broken. She scooped up a little water in her hands and used it to wash her face.

Then one of the women left her place in the line and went to her. She sat beside Lisette and offered her a frayed handkerchief, before taking her hands and whispering words of comfort and encouragement.

When the jeep pulled into the square, the woman sitting beside Lisette hastily got to her feet. Seeing Eliane, she looked relieved. ‘See, Lisette,’ she urged. ‘Your daughter has come to get you.’

But Lisette just sat, looking blankly at the water that sparkled where the sunlight played with the drops cascading from the fountain.

Eliane gathered her into her arms. ‘Maman,’ she whispered. ‘I’m here. Come back to us. They took you away. But you can come back to us now.’

Slowly, Lisette’s eyes focused on Eliane and she raised her hand, tracing her daughter’s cheek with her fingers. She still didn’t speak, but she nodded, barely perceptibly, and let Eliane help her to hobble to the jeep. They sat, side by side, in the back. Eliane wrapped an arm tightly around her mother, as if that might make the strength and life flow back into her, but Lisette gasped and flinched in pain so Eliane quickly loosened her grip.

Oberleutnant Farber, who had remained in the driver’s seat, put the car in gear and drove them out of the square towards home. As they passed the queue outside the baker’s shop, Stéphanie turned to watch them go. ‘Special treatment for some,’ she remarked, loudly enough for everyone to hear. Most of the women standing in the line ignored her, but one or two pursed their lips in disapproval and nodded.

When the oberleutnant dropped them back at the mill, Gustave came to the door at the sound of the jeep’s engine. Tenderly, gently, he took Lisette into his enveloping embrace and held her for a long time, standing beside the barbed wire that clad the riverbank. Eliane took Blanche inside and began heating water, which she carried to the bathroom for her mother.

Only when she had washed and changed into the clean clothes that Eliane had put out for her did Lisette begin to return to them in spirit. She held Blanche on her knee; and Gustave kissed her wet hair, then gently began to comb out the tangles in its smooth lengths. Blanche cupped her maman’s face in her little hands and planted a kiss on her cheek. As Lisette hugged the little girl, and as the love of her family began to permeate to her core, the light started to return to her eyes and the colour to her face.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Gustave asked her later that evening, once Blanche was in bed and Yves had gone out to shut up the mill for the night. Eliane froze in the middle of clearing the table of the supper that her mother had hardly touched.

After a moment’s hesitation, Lisette began to weep, quiet tears of despair. Then she spoke, her voice low, the words fracturing here and there. ‘They were beating a boy in the room next door. I heard his screams. I kept thinking, That could be Yves. I kept wanting the noise to stop. But then when it did stop, the silence was even more awful.’

The tears rolled down Eliane’s face as she watched her mother, not wanting to move in case Lisette stopped talking again.

‘And you?’ Gustave whispered. ‘What did they do to you?’

She shook her head and then looked round at him, her expression determinedly defiant. ‘They did nothing to me, Gustave. Because I didn’t let them. Whatever they did, it couldn’t touch me. You see, I decided that I wasn’t there, in that grey-walled room. I was back here, at the moulin, with you.’

Gustave wept then, too, and she held him and rocked him, hushing him as she would do a baby.

When there were no more tears left to cry, Lisette smiled at them both. ‘But, you know what? They got away. Francine, Amélie and Daniel. The others, too. It was obvious from what the Gestapo were asking me. And, in the end, they had to accept my story. After all, the truck was searched both going and coming back across the bridge and it was empty. Eventually, they sent the police to speak to Madame Desclins. She verified that I’d been to visit her on Sunday night and showed them the medicaments I’d left for her. They had to let me go.’

Yves came back in from shutting down the mill for the night and she turned to him, her eyes suddenly as bright as they’d ever been, the woman they so adored restored to them again. ‘They got away, Yves! They all got away.’

Abi: 2017

Dissociation, I think they call it, when you go somewhere else in your mind so that you can bear the unbearable. That’s what Lisette managed to do during those three days and nights of untold horror when she was being questioned by the Gestapo. Sara told me that Lisette had been able to remove herself from what was being done to her, to imagine that she was somewhere else, to transport herself away from the grey-walled room and back to the love of the moulin. Now that’s strength. ‘Resilience’ is another word the therapists often use. ‘You need to build up your resilience,’ they say. Easier for some than for others, I guess. But I think Lisette is a good example of what it means.

I used to do the same sometimes, going out of my body. In bed, with Zac, at first his love-making was a heady mix of tenderness and passion. But then it turned into something else; something angry and loveless and oppressive. That’s when my mind would leave my body and I would imagine myself somewhere else – anywhere but there, with him.

I could sense his need to dominate, to possess, to control; he would give affection and then withdraw it, until I became confused and frightened. I grew unrelentingly watchful, unable to relax for a second, waiting for the next outburst, or cutting remark, or a glance in my direction that made me freeze, knowing that whatever I said or did next would be a trigger for his anger.

Once I had started the Open University degree course, I didn’t feel quite so trapped in the apartment. I had other places to go – even if they were still mainly only in my head. I was doing a degree in English Language and Literature, so although I ventured out of the apartment less and less often, ordering my books and studying online, writers like Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and George Eliot helped me escape into other worlds. I got good marks for my essays, too, and, little by little, I started to believe that I might be able to get a good degree at the end of it.