Reginald Hill - The Collaborators

‘Yes, when I first knew you, that was very much how you were. But you’ve grown a lot since then, child. And you’re still growing.’

‘Am I? Have I far to go, Bubbah?’ she asked, half-mocking, half-serious.

‘Further than I care to see, it sometimes feels,’ said the old lady, for a moment very frail and distant. But before Janine could express her concern, Sophie laughed and said with her usual energy, ‘And when I said you were a good daughter, I meant to me as well as to Madame Crozier.’

The welcome they received on Christmas Eve made Janine ashamed that she could even have dreamt of staying away. Louise burst into tears of joy at seeing them and later, while she was out of the room putting the children to bed, Claude said confidentially to his daughter, ‘If you’d not come here, we were going to come round to see you tomorrow.’

‘Maman too? But she said she’d never visit Sophie’s flat again.’

Never set foot in that heathen temple had been the precise phrase.

‘I told her it was Christmas and she’d have to swallow her pride,’ said Claude. ‘She shouted at me a bit, but deep down she wanted to be told.’

‘Yes,’ said Janine ruefully. ‘I know how she feels.’

The truce lasted all that evening and even survived Janine’s amazement the next morning at the way in which rationing and growing food shortages did not seem to have affected her mother’s preparations for Christmas dinner. Probably all over Paris, housewives were performing similar miracles, she assured herself. But she had a feeling this miracle had started with a bit more than a few loaves and fishes.

Just on midday with the house rich with the smell of baking and boiling and roasting, the door burst open to admit a tall, broad-shouldered, red-bearded man, resplendent in a beautifully cut suit, pale grey almost to whiteness, a virginal silk shirt and a flowered necktie fastened with a diamond-studded gold pin. He had the look of a pirate king dressed up for his bosun’s wedding. On his arm was an elegantly furred woman with tight black curls, a great deal of make-up, bright-red nail varnish and a good figure, slightly thickening with rather heavy thighs.

‘My God, Miche, is that you?’ said Janine.

‘Cousin Janine, how are you, girl?’ Boucher cried, stooping to give her a kiss which went a little way beyond the cousinly. His beard was soft and fragrant with attar of roses.

‘I hoped you’d be here. I’ve brought a few things for the kids. Hey, this is Hélène Campaux, by the way. La Belle Hélène, eh? She dances at the Folies. Some mover! Now where are those kids? And where’s the old folks?’

‘I think they’re in the bakehouse,’ said Janine. ‘I’ll go and tell them…’

Warn them, she meant. But it was too late.

The door opened.

Madame Crozier stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the newcomers.

Then spreading her arms, she cried, ‘Michel, my dear. You’ve come!’

And with an expression of amazement which matched anything her father ever produced, Janine saw these old antagonists embrace with all the fervour of dear friends, long parted.

It soon became clear that the reconciliation had taken place some time before and obviously had much to do with Cousin Miche’s new affluence. He presided over the feast like a red-bearded Father Christmas, commandeering Pauli’s help to fetch in from a rakish Hispano-Suiza bottles of champagne, a smoked ham, a tub of pâté de foie gras and a whole wheel of Camembert. In addition there were the promised presents, a huge fairy doll for Céci and a football and a penknife for Pauli.

Janine demurred at the knife.

‘He’s far too young. He’ll cut himself.’

‘Nonsense!’ said her cousin. ‘Me, I was carrying daggers and knuckle-dusters at his age!’

This reference to his criminal past, far from offending Louise, provoked her into peals of laughter. But she went on to say, ‘Janine’s right. He’s too young for a knife.’

Pauli said, ‘Maman, it’s not all a knife. It’s got all kinds of things.’

He demonstrated, pulling out one after another a corkscrew, a bottle-opener, a screw-driver, a gimlet.

‘I can’t cut myself with these,’ he said earnestly. ‘If I promise not to open the blade till I’m old enough, can I keep it? Please, maman?’

He fixed his unblinking wide-eyed gaze upon her, not beseeching, but inviting her to retreat before the logic of his argument.

As usual, there seemed nothing else to do.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Only, Pauli, I’ll decide when you’re old enough, you understand?’

‘Yes, maman.’

‘Then promise.’

‘I promise,’ he said solemnly.

‘Janine, are you sure? He’s only a child,’ protested Louise. ‘You’re far too soft, I always said.’

‘Except when you said I was too hard,’ retorted Janine.

This small crack in good will was smoothly papered over by Hélène, who said, ‘Isn’t it lovely to see them opening their presents? I just long to have children of my own, Janine. You’re so lucky to have this beautiful pair.’

She sounded as if she meant it and Janine found herself warming to her. Soon they were deep in domestic conversation, while Madame Crozier busied herself being the perfect hostess, and Boucher and Monsieur Crozier talked nostalgically about the great cyclists of the thirties. One thing that no one mentioned was the immediate past or the foreseeable future. The Paris - indeed the France - that lay outside the door might not have existed. Christmas, always a game, was being played with extra fervour this year.

Only a child to whom all play is reality could not grasp the rules of this game. Pauli ate his dinner silently, and drank his wine and water, and looked after his little sister who still found it hard to discriminate between nose and mouth. And all the time he hardly ever took his eyes off Michel Boucher. But Janine knew, and the knowledge wrenched her heart, that it was his father he was seeing.

And now her own father, as if catching the thought, broke the rules too and said quietly when Pauli had taken his sister to the lavatory, ‘Any news of Jean-Paul?’

Janine shook her head. Boucher said, ‘That man of yours not turned up yet? That’s lousy. Have you tried the Red Cross?’

‘I’ve tried everything,’ said Janine dully. She listed all her channels of enquiry. Hélène put her hand over hers and squeezed sympathetically, while Boucher snorted his opinion of civil servants and bureaucracy.

Then Louise came in with brandy and chocolates and the subject was shelved.

When the time came for the visitors to go, Janine showed them out. After he had put Hélène in the car, Miche came back to the shop doorway and kissed her in a fairly cousinly manner.

‘It’s been great today,’ he said.

‘That’s good, Miche. And it was lovely having you and Hélène here.’

‘Yeah. Surprising too, eh?’ He laughed. ‘I saw your face! Thing is I’ve always liked your dad. He’s been good to me over the years, more than the rest of you know. All the family I’ve got, you Croziers. It was meeting Hélène that made me realize a man needed a family. So when I started doing well enough to get round Auntie Lou, I thought, what the hell. I can put up with her funny little ways.’

‘I’m glad, Miche. You and Hélène are really serious then?’

‘Do me a favour!’ he said. ‘I’m too young to be really serious. But serious enough. Look, Jan, none of my business, but about Jean-Paul, if you like I’ll have a word with my new boss, see if he can help.’

‘Your new boss. Who’s that, Miche?’ asked Janine suspiciously.

‘Doesn’t matter, if he can help, does it?’ laughed Boucher. ‘And if he can’t, then it doesn’t matter either. I’ll be in touch. Hey, what are you doing on New Year’s Eve? Fancy going to a party?’