Chapter Twenty-Four #2
The man who called that afternoon was short and stocky, wearing blue overalls with a rucksack on his back.
He asked whether he might fill his water canteen at the well, and Odile sent Mathilde to accompany him in case he decided to raid the kitchen garden at the same time.
Mathilde wished she’d though to take Brioche with her, because this man was staring at her so intently that she felt uncomfortable.
He was weather-beaten, with a hooked nose and piercing blue eyes.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ she asked bluntly, once they were outside.
‘Forgive me, Madame,’ he said. ‘This may seem a strange question, but do you have a husband by the name of Jacques Duval, who runs a bookshop in Paris?’
The world spun. Putting out a hand to steady herself, Mathilde held on to the rim of the well for support. ‘Why would you ask me such a thing?’ she managed to say.
‘I mean you no harm,’ he assured her. ‘Monsieur Duval saved my life. He hid me from the Gestapo in a secret room at the back of his shop and nursed me until I was well.’
‘He did?’ Mathilde searched the man’s face avidly.
She knew that room; she and Jacques had made love there once, escaping the presence of his mother in their apartment upstairs.
To hear he’d been looking after a runaway, just as she had, filled her heart to bursting.
She’d been frustrated by his passive acceptance when the Nazis had first occupied Paris but that attitude had clearly changed.
‘But how do you know I’m his wife?’ she asked.
‘He showed me your photograph and asked me to look out for you,’ the traveller replied. ‘He was desperate for news.’
‘When were you last in contact with him?’ The crucial question.
‘It was around the middle of May last year when I left. I remember the date because the police were issuing those green tickets to the foreign-born Jews, and rounding them up when they registered.’ He spat on the ground. ‘Bastards.’
Mathilde tried to marshal her thoughts. Pierre had been killed on the second Wednesday of March, a day that was seared on her memory, so here was proof Jacques had been alive then.
Anything could have happened to him in over a year if he were hiding fugitives from the Gestapo, but she had to assume he was still alive.
‘I’m on my way back to Paris,’ the man went on. ‘I can take him a letter, if you like.’
‘That would be wonderful. Wait here.’
Mathilde ran around to the front of the chateau and up the main staircase to her room so the others wouldn’t spot her.
What could she say? She couldn’t tell Jacques where she was – that would be far too risky – or go into any detail about the past eighteen months.
In the end, she simply wrote a few lines about having been told he was dead, and how stupid she’d been to believe such a thing.
She finished by saying she loved him and promised one day they would be together again, then folded the paper over and hurried back outside.
‘Thank you,’ she said to this man who had turned her world upside down, handing over the note. ‘If . . . if anything’s happened to him, will you get word to me somehow?’
‘Do you have a wireless?’ he asked, and she nodded.
‘Well, listen to the evening broadcast on Radio Londres in about a week’s time.
We’ll send you a message either way.’ He tucked the note inside his jacket and raised two fingers to his forehead in salute.
‘You are lucky to have such a husband, Madame.’
‘I know,’ she replied. ‘I pray to God he’s still alive.’
She walked back to the kitchen in a trance, reeling from one emotion to the next. Joy at the thought of one day seeing Jacques’ dear face again; guilt over having unwittingly betrayed him; fear when she imagined his reaction on meeting Esmé.
‘Have you seen that fellow off the premises?’ Odile asked when she returned. ‘He seemed a ruffian to me.’
‘Yes,’ Mathilde replied vaguely. ‘No, he was fine.’ She took up her cloth and the silver coffee pot she’d been polishing and went back to work.
‘Is everything all right, Fleur?’ Madame de Courcy asked. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
I nearly have, Mathilde could have replied, but she only smiled and shook her head and said it was rather hot; that was all.
A couple of days later, the countess came to Mathilde’s room after supper, bringing her a cup of raspberry-leaf tea. She sat on the bed while Mathilde nursed Esmé in the low-armed chair, and now this seemed perfectly natural.
‘I’m worried about you, my dear,’ she began, coming straight to the point. ‘You haven’t been yourself since that man called by and I’m afraid he brought bad news. Would you be willing to share it? Perhaps I could help in some way.’
It might have been because Mathilde was trapped, sitting there with her baby at the breast, or maybe because the countess was looking at her so kindly, but somehow she found herself spilling out the whole story.
‘Of course, I don’t know whether something might have happened to Jacques in the meantime,’ she finished. ‘I’m hoping to find out in a week or so.’
‘Oh, you are in a pickle,’ Madame said simply, and instantly Mathilde felt a hundred times better.
‘But listen, don’t despair. There’s nothing you can do until you know for sure whether your husband’s dead or alive – and even then, it may be months or years before he comes looking for you in Provence.
There’s no point upsetting yourself now.
When you see him face to face, you’ll have to decide whether to tell him the truth and hope he forgives you, or come to some other arrangement.
’ She reached towards Esmé, who’d finished feeding and was falling asleep. ‘Shall I burp her?’
‘Thank you, Madame,’ Mathilde said, passing the baby over with a muslin cloth. This too was nothing out of the ordinary: the countess often soothed Esmé when she was crying or took her for a stroll in the pram.
Madame rubbed the little mite on her back, gazing out of the window towards the mountains. Mathilde was mortified when her daughter brought up a gobbet of milk, but the countess only smiled and mopped it from her shoulder with the cloth.
‘There’ll always be a home for Esmé at Chateau Albertine,’ she said. ‘I hope you know that.’
‘Thank you, Madame,’ Mathilde replied. ‘It’s kind of you to say so.’
Yet she felt an inexplicable shiver of unease and wished, too late, that she hadn’t confided in Madame de Courcy.
The countess was used to getting what she wanted: what if that included a baby to take the place of the grandchild she couldn’t acknowledge?
‘A home for Esmé’, she had said – not ‘a home for you’ or even ‘a home for you both’.
You’re being ridiculous, Mathilde told herself, but the feeling persisted.
A few days later, she switched on her wireless in time to hear the familiar announcement, ‘Ici Londres!’ And among the personal messages following the broadcast was this one for her: ‘The bookseller of Paris is doing good business.’