Three

 

The Château de Frager was situated in what had once been parkland at the southern edge of the village. It was badly neglected, with broken fences and fallen trees destroying the symmetry of the wind-breaks. The house itself was a square ugly building of grey stone, with high windows, cornices and ledges under a mansard roof. Like the estate, it was also neglected, and the gardens, hedges and yew walks were ragged with lack of attention.

When the Germans appeared, the Baronne de Frager was still at dinner and they were shown into the room by a frightened old manservant. The German colonel, a thickset, blond man with a paunch, bowed from the hips.

‘Colonel Klemens, madame,’ he said, stiffly polite. ‘117th Pionierbataillon, 7th Sicherungsregiment. These gentlemen are Major Klein-Wuttig and Captain Tarnera, of my staff. I’m taking over from Colonel Marx of the 9th. My guns are at Rolandpoint and my tanks, under Captain von Hoelcke, are at St Seigneur, where there’s more room. As Néry is central, headquarters will be here.’

With her companion, the Baronne had risen, an old, old woman like a dry stick, with hands that were knobbly with arthritis. She was small but her slimness made her seem taller, and her face, crossed with wrinkles like a spider’s web, was rigidly expressionless. Despite her great age, her hair was a bright red and was quite clearly dyed. For lack of anything better, she had been toying with an andouillette, one of the tripe sausages of the region, and, long since bored with it, was only too willing to push it aside and wait for the German to enlarge on what he’d said.

He had moved away, his eyes roving restlessly across the walls, the furniture, the painting over the fireplace. He seemed to have forgotten her, and one of the other officers, the handsome pale-faced youngster with cold blue eyes and reddish hair whom he had introduced as Major Klein-Wuttig, pointed at the floor between his feet. ‘We shall require the best rooms, old woman!’ he said. ‘You’ll be given two hours to move into the servants’ quarters.’

The German colonel brushed him aside. His manner had none of the other’s hectoring arrogance. ‘Who lives here, madame?’ he asked.

The old woman’s eyes flashed and she glanced at her companion, a withered old man as ancient as she was herself, dark-skinned, faintly spanish-looking, with a beak of a nose that was as thin as a scimitar.

‘I live here,’ she said. ‘With this gentleman; a manservant, Joseph; a girl, Euphrasie Doumic, who comes every day from the village to act as maid and do the laundry; a cook, Henriette Scholl; and a gardener, Gaston Psichari, who lives in one of the outbuildings. He is considered to be simple.’

Colonel Klemens nodded. ‘There’s another one, I’m told. A young man. Your grandson, perhaps.’

The old woman’s face tautened. ‘My grandson lies near Sedan,’ she said. ‘You killed him in 1940, as you killed my husband and son in 1914.’

Klemens inclined his head. ‘I regret as much as you do the tragedies of war, madame. Then your great-grandson, perhaps. Where is he?’

The old woman sniffed. ‘I’m sure he won’t be breaking the curfew,’ she said. ‘He’s probably in bed with a girl somewhere.’

Klemens turned away, staring at the walls again. The Baronne stared after him. She was dressed in what appeared to be a shabby kaftan, beneath which was what had once been a fashionable evening dress, though it now looked faded and as if it badly needed replacing.

‘This is my home,’ she pointed out acidly. ‘It’s been declared a museum. Under Occupation law, museums cannot be occupied.’

Klein-Wuttig turned stiffly. ‘We know that old chestnut,’ he said. ‘The minute you hear us coming, you grab every bit of rubbish you’ve got and stuff it into the place and say it’s a restricted building. You won’t get away with it here.’

The colonel turned from examining the picture.

‘Madame, I know perfectly well that my predecessor, Colonel Marx, occupied this place. I intend to also. We shall use the mairie for offices. I shall need to see the maire.’

The old woman’s head jerked up. ‘I am the maire,’ she said. ‘The de Fragers have been maires of Néry-le-Château since before the Revolution. My great-grandson will take over from me when he is old enough and – ah – has acquired some sense of responsibility.’

The German turned to the old man alongside her. He was as odd a figure as she was, with his hollow cheeks and sagging clothes. He had a monocle on a broad black ribbon jammed in his eye and wore a toupee that looked as artificial as the Baronne’s hair.

‘Name?’ he barked.

The old man jumped. ‘Balmaceda, monsieur. Edgar Balmaceda.’

‘Relation?’

The Baronne’s head lifted again. ‘Monsieur Balmaceda is an old friend. He’s an artist.’

‘Not a very good one, I’m afraid,’ Balmaceda said gently. ‘I know about art but I have little skill.’

The German was staring round him. There were a few small artefacts about the room and he picked up a pottery figure and studied it. ‘I’m interested in art myself,’ he pointed out. ‘I shall enjoy being surrounded by such things as I know you possess.’

‘Then I hope,’ the Baronne snapped, ‘that you’ll manage to keep warmer while you’re doing it than I have. The central heating’s always been inefficient and now there’s no coke and no coal because you Germans have taken it all. My fireplace has not seen a fire since January, 1942, and I’m driven to wearing my late husband’s sheepskin coat which he wore as a cavalryman in the High Atlas years ago in a better war than this one.’

Klemens’ expression remained unaltered. ‘The valley’s surrounded by trees,’ he pointed out. ‘There’s plenty of wood.’

‘There’s less than there was because you’re taking that, too, to pay off the costs of the Occupation – as you’ve taken the church bells, the gates and the railings of every house in the village that possessed them – and work has been forbidden in the forest since your last brush with the Maquis.’

Klemens was obviously not interested in the village’s woes. His eye was held by the picture over the empty fireplace. It was surrounded by fading wallpaper, as though what had originally hung there had been much bigger. It showed a pond with weeping willows and two or three girls in classical poses staring at the water. ‘Would that be a Corot?’ he asked.

The Baronne’s mouth, wrinkled as if it were stitched, stretched in a sarcastic smile. ‘It would not,’ she said. ‘Some insignificant artist. I don’t even know the name.’

‘You have other paintings?’

‘I’ve told you. This place is a museum.’

‘What does it contain?’

‘Nothing worthy of your attention. This is an out-of-the-way place.’

Klemens frowned. He seemed to be growing angry. ‘We shall see,’ he said. ‘We shall see.’

 

By the following morning there were three lorries in the street and German soldiers were everywhere – several of them sitting on the wall of the hump-backed bridge, smoking, so that the two men in the box of the mill wheel could smell the fragrance of their cigars and cigarettes. Alongside the bridge the ground sloped down from the road to the stream where they had knelt to wash their faces the night before, and the Germans had torn down a fence and built a fire there to make coffee.

The first villager to appear was an old man in a beret, blue smock and trousers, his feet in the banana-yellow rubber boots all French farm-workers seemed to wear. He was carrying a fork and a sickle and he edged along the wall past the Germans as though afraid they might stop him. Doors began to open and a few children appeared, wearing black school pinafores over their clothes, to stand staring at the Germans as they gnawed at pieces of dark-coloured bread. One of the Germans offered chocolate but the children shook their heads and edged away.

By this time, Urquhart was hanging on to his sanity only with difficulty. His foot seemed to be breaking out of his boot with the pain of his injury. His whole leg felt numbed by it, and it seemed to be threading its way insiduously up into his body so that he couldn’t think and hardly dared to move.

The previous day’s sun had gone and the morning was chilly, with a cold wind blowing through the ancient wood of the mill box so that, in their wet clothes, the men inside were wretched and cramped with not moving. During the late afternoon, a German scout car appeared and they could see a German sergeant giving orders. Eventually the lorries disappeared, grinding slowly up the street, and as it began to grow dusk, Urquhart glanced up and down the empty village. Seeing no one, he cautiously lowered his injured leg and began to climb down. It was difficult and painful and he had to take a long time. A door clicked as he was halfway out and he struggled hurriedly back to shelter. The priest had emerged from the presbytery and in the last of the light they saw he was a burly man with a vast paunch, grey hair and thick spectacles. He was smoking a curved pipe and holding a glass of red wine. Walking across the road towards the mill pond, he stared down into the water as though looking for fish. He appeared to be singing to himself.

 

‘Au bois, mesdames,

Au joli petit bois.

Qu’est-ce qui s’y promènera?’

 

He paused; then, moving along the stream nearer the mill box, still staring into the water, he began to sing again.

 

‘Attention, messieurs.

Attention, s’il vous plaît.

Il y a une sentinell-e

Au-delà du petit pont.’

‘The bugger’s warning us,’ Urquhart breathed.

‘He can’t be.’

‘He says there’s a sentry at the other side of the bloody bridge!’

Neville was inclined to disagree, even to disbelieve Urquhart’s claim to be able to understand French. With the youthful arrogance of the university graduate, nothing, he felt, that had been picked up in a village school and added to during nine months’ campaigning in the north could measure up to his own capabilities. ‘It’s part of the song,’ he said. ‘It’s obviously part of the song.’

Urquhart turned on him furiously, his anger increased by the nagging pain in his foot. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he snapped, ‘I know what it means! He was telling us to be careful!’

The priest had turned back to the presbytery now and they heard him sing again:

 

‘Attention, messieurs!

Il arriv-e tout de suit-e.

Attention! Attention!

Attention un moment d’plus!’

 

Finishing his wine, he spat into the stream and turned in the doorway, smiling, as a German, his rifle slung, appeared within the field of vision of the men in the mill box.

‘By Christ, he was warning us!’ Neville said.

 

Immediately the cold feeling of being alone was replaced by a warm one of being among friends. Somewhere, in this outlandish little village, not very pretty, obviously not prosperous, there was someone who was prepared to help them. It had seemed that in the whole wide land of France there had been no one, but now, suddenly, Urquhart felt sure they were surrounded by allies.

It was just growing dark when the priest reappeared. This time he was carrying a string bag containing a bottle and half a loaf of bread. On his head he wore a dusty black shovel hat, and his old grey boots – like those of a farm-labourer – splashed in the puddles as he trudged out of sight, conducting a conversation as he went with the invisible sentry.

Hungry, cold and cramped, they had lapsed into a shivering half-sleep when a sharp click above their heads made them jump. In his surprise, Neville almost fell off his perch. A faint, fading torch shone on their faces, and above them they saw a trap-door. Because it hadn’t been opened for years, they hadn’t noticed it in the shadowy interior of the mill box, but it had obviously been placed there by the mill owner in the days when the mill had worked, to repair and oil his wheel.

‘Messieurs!’ A low hoarse voice whispered to them. ‘Suivez-moi! Par ici!’

Neville glanced at Urquhart and the voice came again. Urgently.

‘Vite! Vite!’

Coming to life, Neville scrambled to his knees and, reaching up, grasped the edge of the trap-door. Stiff with twenty-four hours of crouching, he almost fell, but a strong hand came down and, grabbing his clothing, dragged him through so that he sprawled on a worn wooden floor thick with dust and old flour. Urquhart followed him and, as the trap-door thudded softly to, in the light of the torch they could see the great stones of the mill and a pile of empty grey sacks.

‘Ça va, mon vieux?’ The shadowy figure in front of them spoke in a hoarse corncrake voice. ‘Vous parlez français un peu?’

‘Oui.’

‘Pas les deux?’

‘Si. Tous les deux.’

‘Oh, mon dieu!’ The Frenchman sounded amazed. ‘Not just one Englishman who speaks French, but two! Quel sang-froid!’ He grinned. ‘Father Pol told us you were here. He saw you from the presbytery.’ He tapped his chest. ‘Me, I am Hyacinthe Reinach. Sometimes they call me the Alsatian or Boche d’Est because I came here originally from near Strasbourg. My trade is wood, and this is Néry-le-Château. During the Revolution they called it Néry-le-Fond, but we don’t like change much round here and after it was over they changed it back again. You are from the aeroplane that crashed near St Seigneur-du-Ciel?’

‘It sounds like it.’

The Frenchman looked puzzled. ‘But, messieurs, there were seven bodies in it. The Germans found them all. It was a Lancaster, and they carry only seven.’

‘This one carried nine.’

The Frenchman grinned and spread his hands in a gesture of pleasure. ‘Then you are safe, my friend. They assumed there were no more.’

They followed the Frenchman down a set of wooden steps to the yard and, entering a building smelling of horse-dung, climbed through a sliding wooden window which had lost its slats. Beyond, they found themselves in another yard which appeared to belong to a forge. The Frenchman said nothing and opened a gate which led into a narrow lane fringed with grass. Still without speaking, Urquhart grinding his teeth at the pain in his foot, they moved along a wall to a point where the stones had collapsed, leaving a narrow gap. At the other side was a high ugly building surrounded by stables.

‘Château de Frager,’ Reinach said.

‘The Germans are here,’ Neville whispered in a panic.

Reinach nodded. ‘But not on this side, monsieur. Leave it to me. I’ve worked here on and off for years. Repairing furniture. Replacing panelling. At the moment I’m repairing the Baronne’s bed. The de Fragers have fornicated in it, slept in it and died in it for three hundred years. No one will question me.’

They followed him between tall old outhouses until they were standing beneath the great building which reared up above them with steep roofs, turrets and chimneys, on a small mound that rose gently to the front and fell away steeply at the back, so that there was an extra floor behind and below the rest of the house. In front of them stone arches were stuffed with winter hay, at which Reinach dragged so that a whole wedge of it, tied with string, came out. Behind, there was a narrow gap against the wall like a passage.

‘We’re not a wine region,’ he whispered. ‘But if we’re wealthy we still have cellars to store it.’

He slipped behind the hay and motioned to them to follow. A yard or so along, there was a great square door of thick worn planks that hung awkwardly from a crumbling pillar. Beyond it was an arch and another broken door, and beyond this a vaulted cellar containing empty wine vats on gantries. Stonemason’s tools lay about, together with square blocks of stone.

‘It goes right back under the château,’ Reinach explained. ‘With half a dozen smaller ones leading off. They stuffed the harvest in here when the Germans came in 1870 and 1914. In 1940 they were too damned fast. You’ll be safe here.’

He disappeared, closing the door behind him, and they sat down in the darkness to wait. Neither of them spoke, both of them conscious of the emptiness of their stomachs and the dry dusty atmosphere of the cellar. After a while, they saw a glimmering of light between the cracks in the door and stood up as it opened. Reinach was the first to appear, followed by an old manservant in a green baize apron and black alpaca jacket carrying an acetylene lamp. They saw, now that the light fell on Reinach’s face, that he was a large squarely-built man in blue smock and trousers, with a flat cap sideways on the back of his head. He gave them a wide grin that showed a mouth only half-filled with teeth. Behind him was a tiny woman withered as an old apple but with outrageously red hair. She was dressed in what appeared to be a long sheepskin coat. With her was an old man wearing a toupee, his thin frame hidden in a shabby overcoat.

‘Madame la Baronne,’ Reinach introduced and the old woman held out her hand.

‘You must kiss it,’ Reinach whispered, and Neville bent over the withered claw.

‘You’re welcome here,’ the old woman said in a cracked ancient voice. ‘The de Fragers have lived here for three hundred years.’

She gestured with her thin fingers, quite unperturbed, as though she received escaping aircrew every day of her life. ‘My great-grandson, the Baron, should be here to welcome you, too,’ she went on, ‘but he’s away on business at the moment. He’s a good de Frager, however, in spite of his youth – not like some who carry titles these days. The Vicomtesse de la Chattel at Bourg was once a chorus girl and has a lover who works the black market. She’s even a collaborator and what can one say about someone who collaborates?’

She sniffed as though she’d caught the whiff of a bad smell. ‘The old aristocracy’s been infiltrated by the middle class, of course, and lack of money has kept most of us from shutting out the vulgar, but this family at least has escaped the need to “manure the land” with moneyed marriages. Our title dates from the Monarchy; not the Empire, which doesn’t even impress the servants. The people one sees in the salons nowadays are either nobodies or Germans. Three times I’ve seen those filth in my country. They’re upstairs in my salon now.’

The old manservant produced cheese and a bottle of wine and, turning her back abruptly, the old woman headed for the door. Reinach paused and winked. ‘She’s not such a cold fish as she looks,’ he whispered as she disappeared. ‘Look, I’ll show you something.’

Deep in the cellar, he indicated an arch almost blocked in by a half-built wall. Beyond the old stones that were being used, in the light of his torch they could see paintings stacked one against another in the dusty shadows. Alongside them were vases, glassware, chairs and roped trunks.

‘The Baronne’s,’ he said. ‘Her husband collected them for her. But she cuckolded him with the old boy with the wig. He’s an artist and she was his mistress. He used to come to copy the old masters and he had dozens in his attic in the end because they were at it for years; every time the Baron went out, he dropped his brushes and they popped into bed.’ Reinach gave a little cackling laugh. ‘When the Baron finally died and they were free to do as they pleased, they were too old to enjoy it any more.’

Neville indicated the paintings. ‘What are they doing down here?’

‘When the Germans arrived in 1940, they made it an Occupation law that museums weren’t to be abused or occupied, so everybody grabbed everything they valued, declared it a treasure, and stuck it in the château so the Germans wouldn’t steal it. But they occupied the place anyway, in the end, and when that fat idiot, Goering, started grabbing everything we couldn’t get the stuff back.’

The empty mouth widened. ‘When this lot didn’t arrive on time, we grabbed our chance and stuffed everything that was worth anything down here and filled the château with rubbish. Théyras the mason’s building the wall. One more day and it’ll be bricked up, and then they’ll never know there’s anything behind it. They won’t even know the paintings existed.’

 

The following day seemed interminable. Urquhart knew his temperature had risen and the pain in his foot now was agony. Neville suggested taking the boot off but, guessing that they hadn’t finished their wanderings, Urquhart refused in case he couldn’t get it back on and spent the day in a blur of pain.

As the faint cracks of light they could see through the door disappeared with evening, Reinach returned and they slipped out of the cellar into the darkness of the courtyard. There was no sign of life as they edged between the outbuildings into the park.

It was difficult following Reinach among the trees and Urquhart kept blundering blindly into bushes. They seemed to have walked right round the village, with his mind only a red blur, when they breasted the brow of a hill and saw a faint chink of light below them and made out a huddle of ancient buildings surrounded by a windbreak of horse chestnuts.

As they began to descend, it started to rain. At first it was only light but it soon grew heavier until it plastered their hair over their eyes and they were spitting it from their mouths.

‘Mon dieu,’ Reinach spluttered. ‘C’est comme unevache qui pisse!’

Vaguely aware of a dog barking, Urquhart saw a woman muffled against the weather, a man’s heavy coat over her shoulders, a man’s hat pulled down over her eyes, a man’s boots on her feet. Then he was being pushed blindly up a ladder into a loft full of straw. Conscious of the drip of rain through the roof and the warmth generated by the cows below him, he felt the place whirling about him and, putting his head back in the straw, he quietly and entirely without fuss slid into unconsciousness.