J. Janes - Hunting Ground

Again, I’m frisked, but now his breath comes quickly, and I ask myself, How many times have I smelled those peppermint-flavoured anise bonbons on that breath of his, that face pressed close to mine?

‘So we’ll take a little detour,’ he says, ‘and you’ll tell me what we would like very much to know.’

Snatching up the Schmeisser, he tells me to head for that old stone tower, but me, I haven’t told you how it came to be that I spent more than nine months with Tommy and the maquis of the Auvergne. We blew up a lot of things, caused trouble in widespread places, even infiltrated back into Paris to link up with Michèle and the others.

As at my final capture in the late autumn of 1943, there’s still so much to say yet no time now to say it, for the Forest of Fontainebleau, that hunting ground of kings, opens out below us and I’m reminded of my daughter and son, of the fighter planes we once saw, of Jules and me, and then of Tommy and me.

For me, the tower and the edge of this cliff are to be both the beginning and end, yet I’m not unhappy. To fail in life is nothing; to learn to live with it everything, and I’ve felt again the loves I once knew, have heard again the voices of my children and my friends.

Dupuis mentions the clinic and asks how I managed to get there.

‘The British liberated Bergen-Belsen on the 15th of April. From there, I went first into a military hospital near Bremen, but there was trouble with my chest, so when I asked to be sent to Switzerland, to a clinic, they took it upon themselves to do all they could for me.’

‘The Médaille de la Résistance was awarded posthumously.’

‘Was it? Ah, bon , but you see, I had no wish to let people know I was alive. I wanted to be dead, Inspector.’

‘But they had the numbers that are tattooed on your arm? Surely, those would have given them your name?’

‘Quite obviously they couldn’t have had it on their lists. So many people died at Bergen-Belsen, sixteen thousand in one month. Me, I should have died, too, and probably that was all the Free French really knew. In any case, it was no gift to have been spared. On the contrary, it was and is to my everlasting shame. They killed my friends. Michèle … I saw them chop off her head.’

‘So, the cave, madame. Where is it?’

‘Not far, but you’ll need me to point it out.’

Dupuis shakes his head but doesn’t smile. ‘I’ll give you a few minutes while the sun is still with us, then I’ll kill you simply because I must.’

‘And Schiller, what of him?’

‘After I’m done with you, I’ll kill him and the others.’

What others, I wonder, except for my husband? ‘Could I have another cigarette?’

He tosses me the packet, but it sails over the edge of the cliff as if by accident, so I feel for my blouse pockets and tell him, ‘Maybe I have some others.’

That knife … it was in my sleeve, and when I raised my hands, it slid down under the blouse to end up next to the scar, trapped against skirt and belt. ‘ Ah, bon , Inspector, there’s a packet in the left pocket of my blouse.’

‘Give me one.’

‘I must unbutton my coat first. Is that okay?’

‘Hurry then, the sun is almost gone.’

As I slip my hand under the sweater, I pluck open the blouse. ‘The entrance to the cave, Inspector, it’s not easy to find. We tumbled a lot of rocks down in front of it. Sixty million francs worth of stuff are hidden there. Old francs, you understand. Probably a lot more. Dürer, Rubens, Rembrandt, and Cranach … lots of those. Some lovely paintings by Gauguin and Renoir, boxes and boxes of collectors’ gold coins. Other ones, too.’

He reaches out with the match to light my cigarette, and I lean towards it, knowing that he’s forgotten what the sun on the horizon can do to the vision. Drawing in, I feint suddenly to the left, ramming that knife into him with a quick upthrust to the guts while seizing the gun in his hand.

Shock registers. He gasps and tries to grab me as blood rushes into his mouth and he coughs, then blurts, ‘Your children …’

Nothing else.

The sun is gone, but through the open gates to the château I see the dark silhouette of a car I haven’t seen in years. It’s parked behind the little Renault André had used, and I know at once its colour is a dark forest green, see at once Tommy sitting on my steps, eating an apple. There’s a cake beside him, a splendid cake. ‘ Maman, please! He will eat it all.’ Marie … can my children really be in there?

Jean-Guy has long since been forgiven, but if they are, I must somehow let him know that what he did doesn’t matter anymore, that I love him just as much as Marie.

The driveway curves through the tall, sear grasses. There are cedars of Lebanon. From their cover, I watch the house and try to figure out what to do, but the images keep coming at me. Dupuis and I on that road to the Three Gables. Those two guards, me asking to have a pee, his, ‘Try to make a run for it and you won’t get far.’

I did, and Tommy and Nicki and Janine were right there to help. Gunfire all around us. A hail of bullets, Dupuis cowering behind the car with pistol in hand. An explosion as the first of the lorries went up, then another and another as I ran.

Trees, dawn in the forest-almost a year was to pass. We had come back to raid the house and try to kill the Reichsmarschall. There were thirty of us. Jean-Guy had been my contact in the house, but it was Marie who cried out, ‘ Maman , they are going to kill you!’ and I knew Jean-Guy had betrayed us.

Suddenly, again, there was gunfire all around me, but this time I’d been smashed to the ground, hit with the butt of a rifle. Broken teeth, broken lips, as hands dragged me up for more of it, and I was flung against the courtyard wall to hug those bricks. Ragged firing still came, short bursts of it, and every time I heard it, I cringed because I knew what was happening to those who’d been caught and that my son had done this thing because his father had told him he must and he felt betrayed by the mother who ran away to be with the terrorists.

Blame me, if you must, not him. Never him.

The side door to the cellar opens, and I step into the darkness and over the place where Rudi and I buried Collin. Then it’s the cave and broken glass-glass everywhere. A rat scurries away. I know that must have been Tommy’s car. Only someone like Tommy or Nicki would have gone after what was rightfully theirs no matter what, but where is he now and where does Schiller have my children? And will Jean-Guy betray me again?

I remember that man I encountered who first came to the house and then to the station at Avon, that offer of a light and his, ‘Were you in the camps, madame? Please, I ask only because I’m looking for someone.’

Tommy must have got him to do that because of the telegram I’d asked Dr. Laurier to send to Fairfax, Gordon, and Scharpe in London.

The storeroom is pitch-dark and full of rubbish. The shelves have been toppled over, the cupboards smashed. There are splintered boards, broken bottles, tin cans, even some of what must be dried beans or peas that have escaped the foraging rodents. Automatically, I gather up some of these last and stuff them into the pockets of this coat they gave me. Food must never be wasted.

Ah, merde , stop living in the past, I tell myself.

The kitchen is next, me seeing it as it once was and now must be, for moonlight breaks briefly over the orchard and even the Schmeisser in my hands casts a shadow. Cautiously, I step into the corridor, but there’s so much debris it’s hard to pick my way through without making a sound. Instead, it’s an agony of delays.

Listening hard, I find I do smell tobacco smoke, but it’s thin, just a trace. Even so, I lift my eyes to the ceiling above, but there’s not a sound, and when, halfway along the corridor I encounter Jules, I immediately know it’s him by the feel of his face and hair. Schiller has shot him in the chest, but where is Tommy? Has he also been killed? He would have called out my name and hurried up those front steps, not known, not suspected Schiller or any of the others would be here.