J. Janes - Hunting Ground

‘Why won’t you tell us your real name?’

‘I can’t. Not yet. Not until I’ve remembered it.’

Everything I own is packed into one small brown cardboard suitcase. The shoes they gave me after the camps, the skirt, blouse, coat-all such things have been neatly placed in readiness. I won’t sleep tonight. The pills they’ve given me have been flushed down the toilet. In the privacy of my room, even in its darkness, I will remember while there’s still time.

One spiralling leaf fell from a golden beech, and then another and another. In the silence of the forest, the sound of leaves breaking away and coming to rest was all around me. Poland had been utterly smashed in less than fifteen days. Now, virtually the whole of the German army sat on our border and those of Belgium and Holland. When would it come, the invasion? When would the posturing stop?

I remember that I had a feeling I must do something, but there was also a lethargy. I’d been betrayed by my husband’s infidelity with my sister, was mixed up and still trying to sort things out. Then, too, there was a latent danger, a frustration at the butchery, the arrogance, the whole attitude of the Nazis, a hatred, yes, but buried then-hidden just beneath the leaves like the ground.

I had come home from Paris. We’d had a treasure hunt, me and the children. Most successful. The source of the earrings my sister had been given. The faceted citrine droplets.

Jean-Guy had found the jewel box in the attic-pewter-bound, with a lock and, fortunately, its key. The box had been buried beneath some things, wrapped in an old shirt. The treasures of my father-in-law’s mistress, recovered at her death, I supposed, by some lawyer-ah, the French, you have to know them to believe such things.

Had she killed herself? I wondered. Had that been it? There were cameos, bracelets-one of black opals, another of rubies, sapphires, ivory, and jet …

Another and another of rhinestones, the cheap and the gaudy intermingled with the good as if the giver had known the difference, but the recipient hadn’t.

Russian silver. An emerald-and-diamond tiara, a priceless thing. Far too much for even the best of the other contents of that box. Something for a princess or an empress, something especially made by a court jeweller. One hundred or 150 years old, perhaps a little more.

The central emerald was almost round-a broad and stunningly deep green oval larger than the last joint of my thumb. Perfectly matching faceted emeralds, some square, others round or rectangular were all held by finely beaded, very thin wire gold, while scrolls, and swirls of diamonds in silver ran between the emeralds-1,031 diamond brilliants, 46 emeralds.

Now you know why I was worried.

Hidden in the forest, I took that thing out of my canvas shoulder bag. I’d wrapped it in a chamois and, for a moment, I simply stood there gazing down at it.

The sound of the leaves came to me again. Everything in me said to put it back and run-take the children to England and claim no knowledge of it. But, ah, mon Dieu, I didn’t know what to do. It was Jean-Guy’s buried treasure, and he was very angry with me for having confiscated it. Oh, for sure, he wouldn’t tell his father, not for a while. The attic had always been off-limits for the children. Jean-Guy knew this. On pain of death he wouldn’t confess, and if death didn’t suffice, the shame of being ostracized would, but for how long? Soon the whispers would begin. Soon Marie would pry the secret from him and … Would he give the secret away at school?

I ran my thumb over the encrusting stones. I tried to think of where it might have come from. Marcel? I wondered. Jules himself? Had my husband found it in some forgotten drawer at the Louvre and simply brought it home?

Marcel was a pal of his, an artist of sorts, a freeloader. I could never understand why Jules and he got on. Always smoking, always gassing about, that one-both the mouth and the other. Posturing. Of all of my husband’s friends, I had liked him the least.

Jules would miss the tiara if I were to take it from him and go to England, but I couldn’t do that, not yet. First, I had to find out the truth.

‘Madame, my apologies. It’s the weather, the times. Perhaps if I might come in? A cup of coffee, a glass of wine?’

The weather … the times … The local people always blamed one or the other. The war. ‘ Monsieur le maire, what is it you want with me?’

Self-consciously, the portly mayor of Fontainebleau took off his fedora and ducked his shoulders as if to launch himself through the door. When I didn’t step aside, he let me have it. The English … they had no respect. I could see this in his expression. ‘It is not you I wish, madame. It is your husband.’

‘Jules …’

‘Oui.’ Picard mopped his florid brow and tugged uncomfortably at the knot in his tie. I would not be easy to deal with. ‘The taxes, madame. They haven’t been paid in some time.’

The taxes. Anxiously wiping my hands on my apron, I stepped aside. ‘I was in the kitchen, you understand. We’re canning pears. Please, you must forgive me.’

Preserving pears in a place like this! The mayor went to put his fedora on the Louis XIV side table then thought better of it. A pair of small, alabaster baigneuses caught his eye. He couldn’t help but look at them. The naked bathers were magnificent. Such breasts, such hips … ‘Madame,’ he managed, hurrying after me until those shoes that had taken him everywhere, to the farm of his brother, the slaughterhouse of his cousin, even to the council chambers, scuffed a carpet of exquisite design. There were tapestries, too, and paintings. His wife would badger him for details.

We entered the kitchen, he to exclaim, ‘ Ah, merde alors, what is this?’

Having blurted it out of shock, he quickly retracted the exclamation. ‘Pears,’ he laughed. ‘But, of course, it’s that time of year.’

The kitchen was a shambles. On the tiled floor to one side of the cluttered table, a freshly shattered jar of preserves had spread shards, juice, and halves of fruit nearly everywhere, while on a stool in front of the big cast-iron range my son, wearing a giant bib and worried frown of an alchemist, stirred an all but overflowing cauldron.

On her hands and knees a blonde-haired, weeping child of three made futile attempts at mopping up the mess but had miraculously not yet cut herself. Chocolate sauce, half-eaten, sampled bowls of stewed pears, mounds of peelings … his eyes settled on the neat rows of jars. There was an army of them.

Pears … the sweet aroma of them was everywhere, and outside in the courtyard, there were bushels still to come.

I shrugged and gave him a sheepish grin. I thought to say ‘provisions for a siege,’ but didn’t dare. ‘It’s their first time at canning, you understand, but they’re doing such a good job I’m going to have to reward them.’

Surprisingly, the pears were tasty-he had realized I’d put cinnamon sticks in with them-and when the chocolate sauce had been added by the little girl … ‘Do you like cooking, Marie-Christine?’ he hazarded.

The spoon dribbled sauce on the floor. Shyly, hesitantly, she looked up at him and then mysteriously away and all around the room. After a moment, she whispered, ‘Je préfère les chats, monsieur.’

Jean-Guy was more direct. ‘It’s fun,’ he said seriously, ‘but not so much as picking them.’

I sent them out to gather windfalls. Nothing was to be wasted. Responsibility had to be delegated to give them a sense of self-worth.

Over a glass of wine, a Château Coutet, a Barsac and not inexpensive, Alphonse Picard apologized profusely and wiped his handlebar moustache. ‘Between us, madame, it’s those people in Paris. They’re always after money. A little here, a little there. They never stop. Now more than ever, of course. If there’s some reason …’