The Beekeeper's Promise (Page 30)

‘I can’t believe you’re really here!’ She stroked the calloused palm of one of his hands and the softer skin across the back, which was sun-darkened from hours of outdoor labour; this was a hand that felt at once familiar and strange after all this time. ‘How did you manage it? How did you get here?’

‘I walked across the bridge of course,’ he laughed. ‘All official. I can assure you, my papers are in order.’ He produced a folded travel permit from the breast pocket of his utilitarian cotton jacket. ‘I’m on my way to Bordeaux for the week. To be trained for my new job. I’ve managed to get work on the railways in the Service de Surveillance des Voies.’

Eliane looked at him, confused. ‘The Rail Surveillance Service? What does that entail?’

He couldn’t quite meet her eyes as he replied, ‘I’ll be part of a team patrolling to make sure there’s no subversive action on the line between Brive and Limoges.’

‘Subversive action? What do you mean?’

‘There’s been an increase in Resistance activity lately. That line is part of the strategic rail link between Paris and Toulouse. My job will be to ensure the trains can keep running safely. The training will be in Bordeaux, but I managed to persuade the powers that be that this would be the best route for me to take to get there. I’ve got this weekend and the next one to spend with you, but then I have to return to Tulle. I tried to send you a postcard to let you know, but it was sent back to me stamped “Inadmis” because I’d put the reason for my visit on it and apparently that’s not allowed between the occupied and unoccupied zones. But anyway, here I am! Two weekends to spend with you, after all this time: it seems miraculous!’

Just then, Gustave and Yves turned up with the truck to collect Eliane. They were amazed and delighted to see Mathieu, and there was much hugging and manly back-slapping. ‘Come,’ said Gustave, once Mathieu had briefly explained how he’d managed to get there. ‘We mustn’t waste a moment of your visit. Let’s get you back to the mill. Lisette will be so happy to see you. Tell me, how is your Papa? And Luc . . . ?’

They loaded Eliane’s baskets and then scrambled into the truck, heading for home.

That evening, Eliane and Mathieu sat beside the willow tree as they had done so often before. Now, however, because of the barbed wire, they could no longer sit on the riverbank beneath the canopy of its trailing branches, so they spread out a square of canvas taken from the barn and perched higher up the bank, lifting their faces to the warmth of the summer’s evening.

Mathieu had whistled when he’d first caught sight of the changes wrought by the Germans at the Moulin de Coulliac: although the brutal-looking tangle of thorny wire partially obscured the view across the river, the butchered stumps of trees were still visible on the far bank beyond another looped barricade of the wire, which had been installed that morning once the soldiers had finished their job of clearing the acacias.

‘When did they do that to the trees?’ he asked.

‘Just today. And they added the wire over there today, too. They’re tightening the security.’

He nodded, then turned to face her. ‘I tried to come and see you before. One night last year, I managed to get a lift as far as Sainte-Foy. I walked the rest of the way, dodging the patrols on the far side because I had no travel papers then. I knew if I was caught it would be an automatic jail sentence, or deportation to a work camp. But I had to take the risk, to try to see you. I made it this far, but as I stood just over there, I realised someone had closed the sluice gates so the weir was un-crossable. I tried, but I was forced to turn back.’

She leaned closer and kissed his cheek. ‘Oh, Mathieu. I always knew you were out there, though. Even when the postcards didn’t come and my own ones to you were returned. It didn’t matter. I knew you were there.’

‘Those damn postcards. Printed boxes to tick and then space for just thirteen lines to try to say what’s in your heart, knowing it will be read and may be sent back or destroyed. It’s awful that this war has stopped us from being able to speak freely. They’ve taken our country from us and they’ve even taken away our voices.’

‘But there are some things they can’t take,’ she replied, gently. ‘Our river, for example. They can put it in a cage of wire and cut down the trees, but just look at it.’ She gestured with an open palm at the water, which the evening light had once again turned to gold. They watched the dance of the sapphire-blue damselflies for a few moments. ‘And they can’t take our hopes and our dreams, either. No matter how many rules and regulations they put in place, no matter how they starve us.’

He returned her kiss and they sat, hand in hand, watching the river flow past, carrying those dreams of theirs off into the future.

Then Mathieu said, ‘I bumped into a friend in Sainte-Foy, the guy who used to test the wines at Château de la Chapelle. He says the Cortinis are doing okay. But then he also told me a rumour about Resistance activity over here in the occupied zone. He reckons there’s a secret network that is able to get messages to and from General de Gaulle’s Free French Army, supporting the Allies. They say that people have been smuggled across the line, somehow, and through the unoccupied zone to safety. Have you heard about anything like that around these parts?’

Eliane shook her head and shrugged, still keeping her eyes fixed on the river. ‘Coulliac is the same quiet place. We’re all just trying to find enough to feed ourselves; there’s not much time for anything else.’

A sudden image of Monsieur le Comte sitting by the altar in the chapel at Château Bellevue came, unbidden, into her mind. She remembered thinking she’d heard voices, but then finding him there alone . . . Suddenly she knew for certain that her walks were passing on messages from London to the Resistance fighters in the hills above Coulliac, directing their movements, helping them to plan their activities. And she knew that this was another secret that she had to keep from Mathieu. Even as she sat holding his hand in hers, she could feel the wedge of all those secrets being driven in a little deeper, forcing them apart.

On the still evening air, the sound of a train in the far distance gave her a welcome opportunity to change the subject.

‘Tell me more about this job you’re going to be doing?’ she asked him.

‘It’s quite a new role. The railways are taking on more employees because of the need to keep the lines open. There are more and more acts of sabotage by the Resistance, so my job is to patrol the lines and try to either prevent those acts before they happen or fix the rails afterwards so that the trains can run. For a long time now, I’ve been trying to find a way to be able to see you and still help my father. His back has been giving him real problems lately – some days he can’t stand, he’s in so much pain – and Luc can’t manage the farm by himself. So I have to be there with them – you understand that?’

Eliane nodded. ‘Of course I do . . .’ She hesitated before she went on. ‘But, Mathieu, the trains that run on those lines . . . What are they carrying?’

He looked down and plucked a stem of grass, which he carefully split with his thumbnail. ‘They carry vital supplies to and from Paris.’

Gently, she took his hand. ‘They also carry weapons and ammunition that the Germans use to kill more of our people. And sometimes they carry the people themselves. You must have seen with your own eyes the cattle trucks that we’ve all heard about, carrying our own countrymen away. Those people don’t come back, Mathieu.’

‘They’re going to work camps,’ he replied.

She shook her head, sorrowfully. ‘Women and children, whole families . . . They’re going to prison camps where the conditions are so terrible that they may not survive.’

‘How do you know that? Those are just rumours.’

She met his pleading, dark-brown eyes with her own clear grey gaze. And then she repeated, ‘Those people don’t come back, Mathieu.’

His face flushed – with guilt or anger, it was hard to tell which – and his expression grew wounded.

‘I took this job so that I could see you, Eliane. It’s been two years. I hate being apart from you. It’s just a means to an end to enable me to travel more easily. I’m holding down two jobs now, working on the farm in the daytime and on the railways at night. And I’m doing it for us, as well as trying to put enough food on the table for my family. We’re really struggling to make ends meet now that so much is appropriated for the war effort.’

She gazed towards the river again, but the light had shifted and the water was a dull brown once more now. The damselflies had gone and, trapped in its cage of metal thorns, the river seemed suddenly lifeless.

‘I know, Mathieu. I understand.’

‘We all have to make compromises these days. It doesn’t mean I’m on the side of the Germans. I have to do this, for you and my father and Luc.’

She shivered slightly, although the summer air was hot and heavy. ‘Time to go in now,’ she said, and smiled at him.

But, as they gathered up the piece of canvas they’d been sitting on and returned it to the barn, neither of them could meet the other’s eyes.