The Beekeeper's Promise (Page 33)
PART 3
Eliane: 1943
In November 1942, the occupying German forces took control of the whole of France, moving troops into the previously unoccupied zone. But in Coulliac the removal of the demarcation line made little difference – if anything, there seemed to be more roadblocks than ever and the checkpoints on the bridges remained in place. Movement within the country was still forbidden without the necessary papers, and it was just as hard to obtain an ausweis as it had been before.
Day after day, Eliane waited for a postcard to arrive from Mathieu. The cards she sent to him disappeared into a void, unanswered. Any reply, even the officially proscribed thirteen lines of bland, censored news about last season’s wheat harvest, would have let her know that he’d forgiven her for not telling him everything and that he trusted her again. But none came. She told herself that perhaps he had written but that delivery had been refused, even though she couldn’t quite believe that version of events.
Frost had nipped the night air and mist shrouded the river as Eliane set out for work early one February morning. She could hear voices – Gustave and Yves were doing something alongside the sluice gates – but she could only dimly make out their figures. They seemed to be trying to lift something heavy out of the river, so she walked across to see if she could give them a hand. The mist shifted, swirling and clearing slightly for a moment, and she gasped. At the sound, Gustave turned and shouted at her, ‘Stay back! Don’t come any closer.’
But she’d already seen the body of a man caught in the entrance to one of the sluice channels. Yves was using his horn-handled penknife to cut the man’s clothes free from the barbed wire that had snagged them with its sharp talons.
Together, father and son heaved the body on to the bank. River water flowed from the man’s saturated jacket and trousers but then, as Eliane watched, the water began to run pink, quickly darkening to a deep red. His torso was riddled with bullet holes.
Gustave ripped open an empty flour sack and used it to cover the corpse as best he could.
‘Who is it, Papa?’ Eliane asked. She hadn’t got a clear look at the face, which was bleached and bloated from its time underwater. For one terrible moment, she thought it might be Jacques Lemaître.
Gustave shook his head, his expression grim. ‘Not someone I recognise. But a maquisard, I’m sure. The Germans are intent on stamping out the Resistance. They must have caught him and executed him.’
Yves, who was kneeling alongside the body, lurched suddenly to one side and vomited on the grass. Gustave patted his back, murmuring soothingly, and then, when Yves’ retching had stopped, helped him to his feet.
‘Eliane, help your brother back to the house and tell Maman what’s happened.’
‘What do we do now, Papa?’
‘I’ll wait until nine o’clock and then go and report this at the mairie.’ His face was almost as pale as Yves’. ‘Do you feel strong enough to go to work, Eliane? I think it would be best to try to carry on as normal as much as possible.’
She nodded. ‘I’ll be okay.’
‘And Eliane?’
‘Yes, Papa?’
‘Have you got your scarf with you? I have a feeling you may need to go for a walk later on today, once this mist clears.’
She pulled the scarf from her apron pocket and showed it to him. Without a word, she tied it firmly over her hair and then took Yves’ arm to support him as she led him back to the mill house.
Abi: 2017
As I get ready for bed, I think of the part of Eliane’s story that Sara has told me today. I lean out of the window to reach round and pull the shutters closed and in the moonlight the river flows past, making its way quietly onwards towards the sea. I hear the flutter of leather-winged bats in the darkness as they swoop over the black water of the pool above the weir, and I shiver. It’s hard to picture the horror of the dead body floating there; Gustave and Yves pulling it from the sluice, Eliane helping her brother back to the house.
I settle the heavy iron catch in place to close the shutters tightly against the image. Jean-Marc has been in today to mend the fixings and now the catch fits snugly, shutting out the bats and the moths and the other winged creatures of the night. He’s given me some dried-lime-blossom tea, as well, and I’ve brought a cup of it up to the attic bedroom to sip. It smells sweetly of summer days.
I stretch my legs out languorously beneath the sheets as I sip my tisane. It’s a novelty, feeling able to take up so much space. When I shared Zac’s bed, I used to lie on my side, right by the edge of the mattress, taking up as little space as possible. I would shrink from inadvertently touching him, not wanting to risk waking him. I made myself smaller and smaller, until I wondered whether I might disappear completely.
I finish my tea and set the cup back on the bedside table, reaching to turn out the lamp. In the darkness beyond the shutters, I hear the faint splash of a fish as it leaps and then dives back into the mysterious depths of the river.
As I begin to drift towards sleep, thoughts and memories swim in and out of my head . . . A dead body looks like it’s made out of wax. What’s left behind looks unreal once the life has gone out of it. I wonder what it is, that spark of life that is extinguished. What it is that makes up our Self. I came so close to losing it, my own Self. I thought that it had died inside me. But somehow the spark survived . . . Somehow, at the last moment, just as it was about to be extinguished for good, it flared into life again.
Eliane: 1943
Gustave had been right: on the day they’d pulled the body of the maquisard from the river, the count had asked her to walk around the walls of the garden again, once the pale winter sun had burned the mist out of the river valley. It had been a longer walk than usual, though – three times around, and in an anticlockwise direction. Beneath the headscarf, her scalp prickled with sweat, despite the chill of the day, and she felt more exposed than ever to the eyes of whoever the unknown watchers were, out there somewhere. She couldn’t get out of her mind the image of the man’s body caught in the barbed wire and she felt queasy and ill at ease as she walked. Relief flooded her body as she stepped back across the threshold into the château’s kitchen afterwards, and she busied herself with tying up bundles of the plants she’d gathered so that they could be hung above the range to dry back at the mill house.
When she arrived home that night, there was no one in the kitchen. ‘Papa? Maman? Yves?’ she called. She heard the creak of floorboards overhead as quick footsteps walked to and fro. She went upstairs to find Lisette pacing back and forth in Yves’ room, taking clothes from his wardrobe and folding them into a canvas duffel bag. From next door, Blanche began to wail from her little bed in the corner of Lisette and Gustave’s bedroom.
‘What’s happening?’ asked Eliane, bewildered.
‘Yves is leaving,’ Lisette replied. Anguish etched lines on to her face and made her look much older, suddenly. ‘When your father went to the mairie this morning, to report finding the body in the river, the mayor’s secretary handed him a notice to give to Yves. It’s a new law – the Service du travail obligatoire. They’ve posted an ordinance about this Compulsory Work Service in the square today, too. Instead of sending workers with particular skills, they’re now going to send entire age groups to the work camps. Yves has been told to report in a few days’ time for transportation.’
‘Yves . . .’ whispered Eliane. She thought of the trains that rumbled past in the distance. And then another thought occurred to her. ‘And Mathieu? It will apply to him too.’
Lisette paused as she folded a woollen jumper. ‘Yes, but don’t worry; Mathieu won’t have to go. The ordinance stated that certain classes of worker are exempt, like the police and the fire service. And those in the Rail Surveillance Service.’
A confusion of emotions buffeted Eliane, making it was hard to think straight. ‘But Yves . . . In a work camp . . .’
Lisette pressed her lips together and shook her head. ‘Your brother’s not going to a work camp.’
‘But you’re packing his things . . . ?’
‘He’s decided to go into hiding with the maquisards. Tonight. He and your father are just sorting out a few things in the mill to make it easier for Papa to run it singlehanded, so I said I’d pack for him. He can’t take much . . .’ Lisette broke off, unable to speak as a sob constricted her throat.
Eliane stepped forward and put her arms around her mother, to hold Lisette as she wept into the folds of the jumper she was still holding, her shoulders heaving.
‘What can I do?’ Eliane asked.
Blanche’s cries grew more frantic from the next room and Lisette smiled, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Go and comfort the little one. Take her down to the kitchen and give her a camomile infusion. I’ll be down in a minute. And Eliane – we need to put on a brave face when we say our goodbyes to Yves. Let’s give him the memory of our smiles and our love as a leaving present. From here on, he’s going to need all the strength we can give him.’
Blanche’s dark curls were damp with tears and she reached her arms out when Eliane bent down to pick her up, clasping her hands behind Eliane’s neck and hanging on tight, as if she’d never again let go.