The Beekeeper's Promise (Page 31)
When he took his leave at the station the next day, on his way to catch the train to Bordeaux, he held her tightly, as if he couldn’t ever bear to let her go.
She kissed him, and said with a smile, ‘Good luck with the training. See you next weekend.’
He nodded, unable to speak for a moment, and then quickly turned and walked away, not looking back.
Abi: 2017
A storm is brewing, like the one that brought me here. You can feel it approaching – the heat is stifling and the night sky is so black that it’s like being inside a cave. Thick, threatening thunderclouds have put out the stars. I’ve been lying with the shutters wide open, hoping for the night to bring a little coolness into the attic room. But the hot air presses in on me from all sides, making sleep impossible.
Suddenly the room is illuminated starkly by a flash of lightning and a moment or two later thunder rumbles ominously across the blackened sky. I draw the mosquito net aside and go to the window. Another flash of lightning burns an image of the river and the trees beyond it on to my retinas like the film in a camera and I lean out to grab the edges of the shutters and pull them closed – cursing the broken metal catch, which refuses to fit snugly into its notched fastenings. I grab my shirt and use the sleeves to tie the two parts of the catch together, shutting out the next roll of thunder before it shakes the air like a bomb blast.
I scramble back to the bed. Behind the double barrier of the shutters and the netting I feel safe, knowing the storm can’t reach me here.
Eliane and Mireille must have lain like this on many occasions when they were growing up, listening to storms, watching the lightning flash and hearing the rain beat down on to the roof of the mill house, knowing that the sky’s empty threats couldn’t touch them.
To Eliane, the war must have felt a little like this storm, I imagine. At first it was something far off, gathering on the horizon but unable to reach her; but then, as it engulfed them and raged on for all those years, she chose to step out of the safety of the attic room and face it head-on, reaching to help others who’d been caught in it too.
I can feel her presence here tonight, keeping me from harm.
Eventually the gap between lightning flash and thunderclap grows longer as the storm moves off. The rain becomes a soft roar on the roof overhead. As I drift somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, Eliane appears in my mind’s eye.
‘It’s your choice, Abi,’ she tells me. ‘The world is out here, waiting for you when you’re ready. You’re stronger than you know.’
She smiles as she goes, leaving the faint scent of beeswax and lavender hanging in the air in her wake.
Eliane: 1942
During the week while Mathieu was in Bordeaux undergoing training for his job in the Rail Surveillance Service, Eliane found it hard to concentrate on her tasks at the château. It was early August and the hot, humid air seemed to drain the energy from her limbs. She felt as though she was walking through a thick soup as she watered the herbs in the garden. Even the bees seemed to move more slowly than usual, drunk on the bounty of summer nectar as they worked to fill the upper frames in the hives. Eliane collected the honey as often as she could, but she was conscious that, in a few weeks’ time, as summer turned to autumn, the precious supplies would dwindle. And she would need to take particular care to leave the bees with enough to see them through the winter now that there wasn’t enough sugar to supplement the honey supplies should they begin to run low.
But it wasn’t just the heat that sapped her strength. The memory of her conversation with Mathieu the previous weekend distracted Eliane. He was right: he was simply taking on a job that would help his family to make ends meet, as well as giving him a little extra freedom to travel from the unoccupied zone across the demarcation line so that they could meet from time to time. Why, then, did it unsettle her so? The thought of those trains carrying people to the camps appalled her. But, as well as that, it felt as though he and she had suddenly found themselves on different sides of an invisible line. It wasn’t just the official demarcation line that was keeping them apart now; they were working against one another, being pulled in opposite directions by the currents of the war.
And all the things she couldn’t say to him sat between them, as starkly impenetrable as a barricade of barbed wire.
Mathieu appeared in the marketplace in the middle of the morning. He came across to Eliane’s stall and enveloped her in a powerful hug. She kissed him and then buried her face against his heart for a moment, breathing in the smell of his cotton jacket. Usually, it smelled of fresh air and hay from the farm but, during his week in Bordeaux, it had absorbed the unfamiliar scents of the railway: diesel fumes and cigarette smoke and engine oil; the scents of a stranger.
‘I’ll go and sit at the café,’ he said, as her next customer appeared.
He crossed the place to the Café de la Paix, where he set his canvas holdall down on the cobbles and pulled out a chair at one of the round tin tables.
He sat watching Eliane smiling and chatting as she served the small queue that had formed, but his reverie was quickly interrupted.
‘Well, hello, Mathieu! What a pleasure to see you here after so long.’
‘Stéphanie. Hello. It’s good to see you too.’ He got to his feet to kiss her on both cheeks.
Without waiting to be invited, she sat down at his table. ‘So, tell me,’ her eyes were wide and guileless as she laid a hand on his arm. ‘What brings you back to Coulliac? Oh, I have so many questions for you; you must tell me all your news. It’s so boring here these days, having to scrimp and scratch around to get enough to eat, and I can’t tell you how many hours I spend standing in queues every week. I expect it’s probably easier for you in Tulle. You don’t have German soldiers breathing down your neck every second of the day.’
‘We have the police and the civil guards, though, who enforce the rule of the Vichy government,’ he replied mildly, when he could get a word in edgewise. ‘I suspect it’s much the same.’
‘Look how thin I’ve got,’ she continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘I’m sure I must look dreadful?’ She smoothed back her long, black hair and simpered, waiting for a compliment from him.
Mathieu glanced across at Eliane’s slight figure behind the stall. Her apron strings were knotted tightly around her waist to hold in the looseness of her blouse, and the leather money belt had had a few new holes punched into it so that it didn’t slip down over her hips.
‘I suppose we’ve all changed a great deal in the last two years,’ he remarked.
Following his gaze, Stéphanie gave his arm a petulant little tap to try to reclaim his attention. ‘And just look how threadbare my dress has become. But one simply has to make the best of what one has, I suppose.’ Again, she fished for praise.
‘You look very nice, as always, Stéphanie,’ he replied, politely.
She smiled, her eyelashes fluttering, and then said, ‘Aren’t you going to order me a coffee, Mathieu?’
Once they’d been served a bitter brew in tiny, thick cups, Stéphanie watched as Jacques Lemaître emerged from the baker’s shop for his morning break and walked over to the fountain to chat with Yves Martin, who had arrived on his bike.
‘Who is he?’ Mathieu asked. ‘I don’t think I recognise him.’
Stéphanie turned to him, as if surprised. ‘Jacques? He’s the baker’s assistant. He’s been here a while. As you can see, he’s great friends with the Martin family. Haven’t they told you about him? He’s often hanging around with Yves. And Eliane, too,’ she couldn’t resist adding.
‘They haven’t mentioned him,’ Mathieu shrugged. ‘But then we’ve hardly had any time to talk really.’
‘So, tell me what’s been keeping you so busy?’ Stéphanie turned her full attention towards him and leaned closer as she listened to his explanation of his training for the job on the railways.
‘Oh, Mathieu, it’s so reassuring to know you’re looking after the safety of everyone. Not that I ever go anywhere by train these days. Or anywhere at all, really, come to that. Was Bordeaux wonderful?’
He shrugged again. ‘If you like that sort of thing, I suppose. It’s a city. Too many people for my liking really.’
Increasingly irritated by his inability to play along with her attempts at flirtation, Stéphanie slouched back in her chair again, surveying the market square. Just then, Oberleutnant Farber emerged from the mairie. She nudged Mathieu.
‘There’s another one of her new friends that I bet Eliane hasn’t mentioned to you.’ A spark of malice glinted in her eyes, but Mathieu didn’t notice it as he watched the German approach Eliane’s stall.
The officer said something to Eliane and Mathieu saw her smile and nod. Then she reached into a basket beneath her table and placed a jar of honey in front of him. He counted out some money and passed it over and she slipped it into her money belt. But the soldier seemed in no hurry to move off straight away. There were no other customers at the stall and so he stood and chatted with Eliane for a while longer. Mathieu saw her smile again and adjust the bright scarf that was knotted about her neck.