The Beekeeper's Promise (Page 43)
Lisette and Yves knelt on the hard stone flags and they both turned their faces towards Eliane. Instead of smiles of relief, though, their expressions were pale masks of horrified helplessness.
And then she saw that they were kneeling beside a prone body, bloody cloths in their hands, as they tried desperately to staunch the flow of lifeblood from Jacques Lemaître’s abdomen.
She thrust Blanche into Gustave’s arms and sank to her knees beside her mother and her brother. They both reached out their arms to try to comfort her.
‘Jack,’ she whispered, reaching for the lifeless-looking fingers of his hand, the skin already becoming waxy in the light of the oil lamp.
His eyes flickered for a moment and then opened, clouded at first, but slowly clearing to the blue of a summer sky as they focused on her face and he smiled.
He tried to speak, but instead his throat rattled and he coughed, his face contorting with pain.
‘Sssh,’ she soothed him, ‘don’t try to talk. Everything’s alright.’ She pressed his hand to her heart, willing the life to stop ebbing from him so remorselessly, praying that the ooze of dark-red blood would cease. But she knew it was already too late.
She placed her other hand gently on his cheek and his eyes closed again. His lips struggled to form words and she bent closer to hear him.
With an effort he managed to whisper, ‘You smell of honey and sunshine. Even after all that. The darkness of this world can’t dim the light that shines from you, Eliane.’
She bent lower and kissed his forehead.
And so the last breath he took was perfumed with beeswax, and the breeze that blows across the river. And, even as it slowed, faltered, and then stopped, his heart was filled with love.
They buried Jack’s body beneath a young oak tree on the edge of a small copse. The grave was unmarked, but one of the maquisards carved a long vertical line crossed by two shorter horizontals into the bark of the tree, forming the Croix de Lorraine – the symbol of the Free French Army – so that as the trunk grew the markings would expand. Eliane stood by the grave long after everyone else had left, lost in her memories of Jack. She remembered the look in his eyes when he saw her, and the way he would smile at her shyly when they were alone, in a way that was in marked contrast to his usual confidence around others. She remembered every moment of the night they’d spent in the cavern beneath Château Bellevue, the wine they’d drunk and the confidences they’d exchanged, how warm and safe she’d felt lying in his arms in that underground world where, for those few, precious hours, the war had seemed so far away.
Finally, she roused herself and gathered a bunch of autumn seed heads and berries, which she laid on the rough turfs that had been heeled in to cover the freshly dug earth of Jack’s grave. At a glance, the field margin looked undisturbed, apart from the single, forlorn posy lying in the grass. She took one last, long look, etching the spot into her memory so that she’d be able to find the young oak tree marked with the carved cross when she came to visit his grave again.
From the valley below, she heard a church bell ring. It was la Toussaint and families were filing into the churchyard at Coulliac to place flowers on the graves of their forebears. Eliane wondered, What about Jack’s family? Are his parents alive? Does he have brothers and sisters? Who will tell them of his death in a foreign land and his burial in an unmarked grave? She wanted them to know that he’d been among friends when he died. That he’d been admired and respected, as he deserved, for his courage and his selflessness. That he’d died saving her life, saving Blanche, saving Yves from a living hell. She wanted them to know that he’d been loved. But there was no way of telling them.
She was startled, suddenly, by the sight of a figure standing stock-still among the trees. It was Yves, who must have remained behind when his brothers-in-arms had slipped away from the graveside. He stepped forward and put an arm around her. Burying her face against his shoulder, she sobbed.
He stood there silently, letting her cry. And then, when her sobs began to slow and quieten, he pushed back a strand of her hair from her tear-soaked face. ‘Eliane,’ he said. ‘Listen to me. You think you have lost both the men you love. But you haven’t. Mathieu is still there. And when this war is over, you will know that you never really lost him. That he was always there.’
She pulled back, looking into Yves’ face. ‘What do you mean? How could I ever love Mathieu again? He’s on the other side now. He was working against Jacques. He’s working against you.’
Yves shook his head. ‘He’s not, Eliane. That’s all I can tell you. But you have to believe me: he’s not.’
He hugged her again and then slipped away into the trees without a backwards glance.
As she turned away from the grave and walked slowly back down the hill, her tears fell like raindrops on to the dry meadow grasses, which bowed their heads and sighed in the chill November wind.
Abi: 2017
On my next day off, Sara gives me the directions and I climb up through the fields above Coulliac to where the tree line begins. It takes a little bit of finding, but eventually I spot it: an oak tree with the Cross of Lorraine carved into the trunk.
I know that Jack’s body no longer lies here. At the end of the war, his parents were notified of his death and of the location of his makeshift grave, and so they were able to bring their son home, to lie in the local churchyard close to his family home. But I sense that a part of him will always be here, in the hills above Coulliac, watching over the land he helped to liberate.
As I stand gazing out across the valley, I can’t help comparing Jack Connelly’s funeral with the service that was held in the grand London church for Zac. I sat in the front pew beside his mother, though I could feel the waves of loathing coming off her as she angled her body slightly away from me, keeping her eyes focused on the coffin. She’d arranged it all, from the venue and the guest list to the bouquet of lilies on the fine-grained lid of the beechwood coffin. I could only imagine how desperate it must have felt for her, to have lost her beloved only son. And worse, for him to have been survived by the silly young wife whom she so hated. I could hear her thinking it, as the vicar began the service: Why is she still here when he is gone? Why couldn’t it have been Abi who died in the accident, not my Zac?
And I could feel my own guilt radiating in waves through the fabric of my black coat. It’d been weeks since the accident – long enough for my swollen, blackened knee to have begun to heal and for the bones of my arm to begin to knit themselves back together. It had taken that long for the police to complete the enquiry into the circumstances of the accident, to conduct their interviews with me and the other witnesses, and for the autopsy report to be issued. Loss of control while driving under the influence of excessive alcohol in the bloodstream – that was the official verdict.
Even though I’d told the police how I’d grabbed the wheel. Even though I knew I’d killed him as he’d tried to kill me.
The service was bad enough, although at least in the church Zac’s mother had managed to keep up some semblance of civility towards me, even if only for appearances’ sake. But after the service, in private at the crematorium, she made no pretence at all. After the coffin had glided silently away as the curtains had fallen back into place, she turned towards me as we sat on the stiffly upholstered chairs. Instinctively, I’d reached out a hand to her, hoping, I suppose, for some small gesture of reconciliation or mutual support at the very end. But she’d just looked at me with utter hatred, her eyes hard and cold, and she’d recoiled from my touch. I’d let my hand fall to my side and she’d walked off, leaving one of the funeral director’s men to help me to my feet and hand me the crutch that helped to take the weight off my knee when I walked. He’d been kind, a fatherly-looking man, and had driven me back to the apartment. As he’d helped me from the back of the black saloon car and seen me safely into the building, he’d patted my hand where it protruded from the cast on my arm. ‘Don’t worry about her, love. Grief does strange things. I’ve seen enough funerals to know they either bring out the very best or the worst in people. Everyone needs space and time to grieve.’
That was the only moment, on the day of Zac’s funeral, that tears came into my eyes. A few words of kindness offered by a stranger were the only comfort I received that day.
The accident. I haven’t thought about it for a long time. ‘Accident’ is a useful word, but I still wonder just how accurately it describes what happened. Because, in a way, it was inevitable. Not some haphazard fluke of fate but rather an unavoidable conclusion to the path we’d been set on ever since that day he first saw me, and targeted me as his prey.
We were in his car, driving back from Sunday lunch at his mother’s. He’d had a few glasses of wine, as usual, despite my anxious glances and my tentative suggestion that maybe the glass of port at the end of the meal was a drink too many.
‘Nonsense, Abigail, Zac knows his limits. I always think a nagging wife is one of the most unattractive things there is,’ his mother had retorted, pouring him a glass from the crystal decanter that sat on the polished sideboard in the dining room.