The Beekeeper's Promise (Page 35)

Abi: 2017

How do we find the resilience to hang on? Those years of starvation and isolation from the outside world must have taken such a toll on Eliane and her family. But the Martins had so much to hold on to: they had a community; they had each other.

When I was most alone, when I felt myself withering and dying like a plant deprived of water, light, nutrients, something in me made me reach out. Some deep-seated instinct for survival kicked in, just as I felt the last of my strength leaching away.

It was nothing dramatic. In fact, it probably would have seemed completely insignificant to a casual observer. When Sam, a cheerful, friendly girl in my tutorial group, suggested going for a coffee, instead of making my usual excuses and ducking out, I found myself saying, ‘Okay. That’d be great.’

I surprised myself. I hadn’t meant to say yes. As the small group of us crossed the road to a local café, my mind whirled. What was I doing? Zac would be furious. What would I tell him? But still, something made me stay with the group; follow them through the door into the bright warmth of the coffee shop, pull up a chair, order a latte. And, for the next forty-five minutes, I remembered what it felt like to talk and laugh easily with a few friendly people, to join in the grumbling about the impossibility of making head or tail of Ulysses – let alone writing a coherent essay on the book – and to listen in to snippets of other people’s lives.

For those forty-five minutes, I remembered what it felt like to be me.

Of course, there was trouble when I got home. I sensed it the second I turned my key in the door. Zac sat on the sofa facing the entrance to the flat, an almost-empty bottle of red wine on the coffee table in front of him. The television was on, but he wasn’t looking at it. He was staring into mid-air and his eyes were as bitterly cold and dark as the winter night beyond the plate-glass window behind him.

He didn’t focus on me, just sat there, deliberately waiting for me to make the first move. Cat and mouse.

I hung up my coat, slipped off my boots and then turned to him with a smile that I hoped convincingly camouflaged the fear that flickered behind it. I could feel my shoulders tensing, and I made my hands uncurl when I realised they were clenched into tight fists.

On the way home, I’d considered various excuses. There’d been an ‘incident’ on the tube (how often had I myself considered stepping off the edge of the platform into that beckoning void, seeking oblivion in the rush of the approaching train?). Or, on a whim, I’d decided to take the bus home (‘Big mistake – the traffic was a nightmare!’ I could hear myself saying to him). But then that little flicker of Self that had burned a tiny bit more strongly during three-quarters of an hour of coffee and conversation, simply came out with the truth.

‘Sorry I’m a bit late. A few of us went for a coffee after the tutorial.’ My tone was light and breezy. Maybe I’d get away with it. After all, it’s not as if I’d done anything wrong.

But I knew, really, that I wouldn’t get away with it. I knew what was going to happen. I knew I wouldn’t be going for a cup of coffee after a tutorial again.

Yes, that’s definitely the word. Dissociation: when your mind leaves your body – a way of bearing the unbearable.

Eliane: 1943

Despite the long shadow cast by the seemingly interminable war, Monsieur le Comte was as chivalrous as ever to his German ‘guests’, and they continued to allow the frail old man the use of his library and his chapel each day. In the kitchen, Madame Boin’s grumbling occasionally boiled over in frustration at the lack of decent ingredients and the monotony of the food she had to prepare: scraps of horsemeat were often all that was available from the butcher and she swore that once the war was over she would never, ever eat another turnip or topinambour again.

With increasing frequency, the count continued to ask Eliane to take her afternoon walks around the garden walls. The silk scarf had faded from wear and grown a little frayed at the corners, even though Eliane washed, ironed and mended it with the utmost care each weekend, but its rich pattern was still clearly distinguishable.

As she walked around the walls these days, though, Eliane’s sense of unease was heightened. Whose eyes were on her? She tried to put out of her mind the miliciens who had visited her market stall that day so many months ago now, the local man and his colleague with the darting tongue and eyes of a snake, and instead she told herself that Yves and his fellow maquisards were watching over her.

Jacques had become a more frequent visitor to the mill after Yves had left. Eliane was grateful to him for the helping hand he lent Gustave when he could, and occasionally he brought word that Yves was fine, doing well with his new band of brothers, and wanted his family to know that he was keeping his feet dry and changing his underwear regularly, as instructed by his papa and maman. This last bit of news had made Lisette smile broadly – ‘That really is Yves all over,’ she’d exclaimed. ‘His usual cheeky self!’

Eliane also noticed that Jacques seemed in no hurry to leave the mill house after he’d dropped in to deliver his messages or bring them some bread from the bakery. He would often stay on, sipping a tisane and asking Eliane about her day. They never seemed to speak of anything very consequential, but she sensed a deepening connection between the two of them and couldn’t help noticing that he kissed her goodbye these days and seemed reluctant to walk back to his lonely apartment above the baker’s shop.

For her part, she found herself thinking of him now and then as she went about her duties at the château or played with Blanche at the mill. The way his hair flopped over one blue eye; the way his face lit up when he saw her; the way his expression changed from serious and focused to relaxed and laughing in rapid succession: these were the facets of his character that made her feel as if it were a summer’s day, even when the sky was overcast. He played his part so well, having been among the local community for some three years now, that she had almost forgotten he was an Englishman who would most certainly disappear back to his homeland one of these days.

As the bitter chill of winter loosened its grip on the land and the first wild daffodils pushed their way through the muddy grass along the riverbank, the Martins breathed a sigh of relief that at least now things would be getting a little easier for Yves in whatever hillside cave or forest clearing he made his home.

In the newspaper there were increasingly frequent reports of Resistance activity – bridges and railway lines had been sabotaged, and the food depot outside Coulliac raided. While such stories described the incidents in the most disapproving terms, they also gave many hope that the tide of the war might be turning. But the subversive acts never went unpunished: people were taken for questioning by the Milice and the Gestapo. Some returned to their homes, beaten and broken, unable to look their neighbours in the eye, having been forced to divulge snippets of information – true or surmised – under torture. Others never returned. Sometimes whole families were rounded up.

And in the distance the trains still rumbled by, ominously, heartlessly, laden with their cargos of human suffering.

That spring, France began to reverberate with rumours of an imminent Allied invasion. The occupying army remained on high alert, forced to remain stationed in France, while the Russians launched concerted attacks on the eastern front. But the weeks wore on and no invasion came. Eliane sensed that the soldiers occupying Château Bellevue were becoming increasingly tense, although they still appreciatively downed bottles of the count’s wines from the cellar with the meals that Madame Boin cobbled together from whatever food was available.

The country was starving now, and there were frequent power cuts. Food prices were sky high, but the Martins continued to make ends meet by trapping fish in the sluice channels and foraging in the woods and hedgerows. Soon, though, the relative bounty of spring dried up in the harsh glare of the summer sun. Only Eliane’s bees continued, unaffected, as they busily harvested nectar from the wildflowers that were resilient enough to withstand the heat.

‘Papa! What are you doing here?’ Eliane was surprised to see her father when he appeared at the kitchen door of the château. He was breathing hard, as if he’d been running, and sweating in the heat. A powdering of flour stuck to his clothes, which hung loosely from his once-sturdy frame, and there was a smear of dust across his face.

He leaned against the doorframe for a moment to get his breath back. ‘Monsieur le Comte – is he here? I need to speak with him, urgently.’

‘Why yes, I think he’s in the chapel.’

‘Can you go and get him for me? It’s safer if I wait here in case anyone’s about.’

Eliane presumed that by ‘anyone’ he meant the Germans, a few of whom were off duty that afternoon and had retired to the shade of the terrace off the drawing room to drowse after lunch.

She nodded and hurried across the yard to the chapel door, knocking and trying the handle, but it was locked. She heard the faint mutter of voices from inside again, and then the scrape of a chair and the count’s footsteps coming slowly up the aisle accompanied by the tap of his cane on the ancient flagstones of the chapel floor.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you, m’sieur, but my father is here. He says he needs to speak to you urgently.’