‘Yours,’ he said. ‘Hop in.’
Janine had watched him drive away: assertive, positive, athletic. She’d felt envious. What must it be like to be a man and be able to adapt your environment to your needs instead of having to mould your needs to your environment! These men could do anything! Finding a lost husband, or providing food and fuel within the hour, it was all one to them.
But as she shivered hungrily to bed that night, she made a bitter adjustment to her conclusion.
Promising to find a husband; promising to provide warmth and nourishment; promising to come back from the wars safe and sound and soon; it was these resounding promises that were all one to them. All vibrant with sincerity, and all completely vain.
2
It was an April evening, but the wind that met Christian Valois head on as he cycled back to the family apartment in Passy was full of sleet. He carried his bike up the stairs and into the apartment with him. Cars had practically vanished from the streets. There was little petrol to be had and, in any case, you needed a special Ausweis from the Germans to use one, so bikes were now pricey enough to attract the professional thief.
As he took off his sodden coat, the phone rang.
The line was poor and the female voice at the other end was faint and intermittent.
‘Hello! Hello! I can’t hear you. Who is that?’
Suddenly the interference went and the voice came loud and clear.
‘It’s me, your sister, idiot!’
‘Marie-Rose! Hello. How are you?’
‘I’m fine. Listen, quickly, in case we get cut off. Are you coming down this weekend? Please, you must, it’s my birthday, or had you forgotten?’
She was seventeen on Saturday. Seventeen. A good age, even in awful times. But could he bear to go to Vichy? His parents had urged him frequently to join them, or at least to come for a visit. So far he had refused. But Marie-Rose’s birthday was different. Despite her youthful impertinence his sister adored him and he was very fond of her.
He said, ‘I don’t know. The weather, it’s so awful…’
‘Damn the weather! Please, please, it won’t be the same without you.’
‘I’ll see,’ he said. ‘I won’t promise but I’ll see.’
Shortly afterwards they were cut off.
The next morning, spring finally exploded with all the violence of energy too long restrained. On the Friday afternoon, he caught the train to Vichy.
At the crossing point into the Free Zone, they were all ordered out to have their papers checked. Valois had had no difficulty in getting an Ausweis. When your father was a Vichy deputy and you were a respectable civil servant, you were regarded as quite safe, he thought moodily.
Not everyone was as lucky. Somewhere along the platform an argument had broken out. Voices were raised, German and French. Suddenly a middle-aged man in a dark business suit broke away from a group of German soldiers, ran a little way down the platform, then scrambled beneath the train.
Valois jumped into the nearest carriage to look out of the further window. The man was on his feet again, running across the tracks. He was no athlete and he was already labouring. A voice cried, ‘Halt!’ He kept going. A gun rattled twice. He flung up his arms and fell.
He wasn’t dead, but hit in the leg. Two soldiers ran up to him and pulled him upright. He screamed every time his injured leg touched the ground as he half-hopped and was half-dragged the length of the train to bring him back round to the platform.
Valois turned furiously from the window and made for the platform door. There was a man sitting in the compartment who must have got back in after him.
He said, ‘I shouldn’t bother.’
Valois paused, realizing he recognized the man.
‘I’m sorry? It’s Maître Delaplanche, isn’t it?’
‘You recognize me?’
The lawyer’s face, which was the living proof of his Breton peasant ancestry, screwed up in mock alarm.
‘You’re often in the papers, and I attended several meetings you spoke at when I was a student.’
‘Did you? Ah yes. I seem to recall you now.’ Face screwed up again in an effort of recollection as unconvincing as his alarm. ‘Valois, isn’t it? Christian Valois. Of course. I knew your father when he practised, before politics took him over.’
Delaplanche was well known in legal circles as a pleader of underdog causes. Whenever an individual challenged the State, his opinion if not his counsel would be sought. He had spoken on a variety of socialist platforms but always refused to put the weight of his reputation behind any programme except in his own words, ‘the quest for justice’.
‘Nice to meet you,’ said Valois. ‘Excuse me.’
‘I shouldn’t bother,’ repeated the lawyer as Valois opened the door on to the platform. ‘I presume you’re going to make a fuss about the chap they’ve just shot? I’ll tell you his story. His papers were obviously forged. He made a run for it and got shot. He’ll turn out to be a blackmarketeer, or an unregistered Jew, or perhaps even an enemy agent. All you’ll do is draw attention to yourself and get either yourself or, worse still, the whole train delayed here a lot longer.’
‘That’s bloody cynical!’ snapped Valois. ‘I thought you were famous for fighting the underdog’s battles.’
‘Against the law, not against an army,’ said Delaplanche. ‘Against an army, all the underdog armed with the law does is get fucked!’
He smiled with the complacency of one who was famous for his earthy courtroom language. On the platform German voices were commanding the passengers back on to the train. Delaplanche picked up a newspaper and began reading it. Feeling defeated, Valois stepped down on to the platform but only to return to his own compartment.
His gloom lasted till the train pulled into the station at Vichy, but lifted at the sight of his sister, long black hair streaming behind her, running down the platform to greet him.
They embraced. Since he last saw her she’d become a young woman and a very beautiful one. She tucked her arm through his in delight and led him to where their mother was waiting.
‘Where’s father?’ asked Valois as they approached.
‘Busy. He sends his apologies.’
‘No. I understand. Without his constant efforts, the country would be ground down under the conqueror’s heel.’
‘Shut up and behave! I don’t want my birthday spoilt!’
He just about managed to obey the injunction, but there were difficult moments. Vichy disgusted him with its opulent façades all draped with tricolours. Everywhere he looked, red, white and blue, like make-up on a leprous face. He preferred the stark truth of those swastikas he could see from his office window flapping lazily over the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli. The people, most of them, were the same. ‘Like characters on a film set,’ he told his sister. ‘Or worse. Vichy is like a folk-tale village in a pop-up book. Only a child thinks it’s really magic.’
‘I agree,’ said Marie-Rose. ‘It’s so boring here. That’s why I want to come back to Paris with you!’
He looked at her in alarm. This was the first he’d heard of this idea and the more he thought about it, the less he liked it. In Paris, by himself, his decisions only concerned himself; it was