The Collaborators. Reginald Hill
move.
Indeed he and his father kept the peace till the time came to part. His mother presented him with a bag full of ‘goodies’ and his father with a piece of paper.
‘It’s a permit to use the car, the Renault. I’ll want to use it myself whenever I come to Paris and it’s absurd for it to stand in the garage all the time, so I got a permit for you too.’
His instinct was to tear the paper in half and it showed on his face.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Father, have you any idea what it’s like in Paris? The kind of people who’re still driving around in cars, well, they’re not the kind of people I want to be associated with. There’s still a war on, father, believe me!’
‘No, there’s an armistice on, you’d better believe me!’ snapped Léon Valois. ‘Face up to reality, even if you don’t like it. The facts are that the Germans are in control and likely to stay that way. With or without us, they’ll rule. Without us…well, I dread to think how it might be. With us, we can restrain, influence, perhaps eventually control! They’re a rigid race, good for soldiering, poor for politics. Believe me, Christian, my way’s the only way to build a future for France!’
He spoke with passionate sincerity but there was no place for them to meet. The one good thing about their quarrel was that it reunited him with his sister just as their row had temporarily brought him closer to his parents. She kissed him tenderly at parting and asked, ‘Is it really so awful under the Boche? I worry about you.’
‘Oh it’s not so bad really,’ he assured her.
‘No? Well, no matter what you say, one day I’ll surprise you and come and see for myself!’
She grinned in a most unseventeen-like way and hugged him once more with a childish lack of restraint before he got on the train.
He leaned out of the window and waved as long as he could see her on the platform. As he turned to sit down, the compartment door opened.
‘We meet again,’ said Delaplanche. ‘How was your trip? What did you think of Vichy?’
His eyes glanced at Madame Valois’s bagful of expensive cans, as if he were reading the labels through the cloth, and when they returned to Valois, he felt as if the man could see through to the car permit in his pocket.
‘I’ll tell you what I thought of Vichy,’ he said savagely.
Delaplanche listened in silence. Finished at last, Valois waited for approval.
‘I hope you’re not always so indiscreet,’ was all the lawyer said. ‘Especially with strangers.’
‘Strangers? But…’
‘What do you know of me?’
‘I know your reputation. I’ve read about, listened to you. I know you’re a man of the people, a socialist, some even say a…’
‘Communist? Yes, some do say that. Of course, if I were a communist, that would put me in the German camp, wouldn’t it?’
‘No! On the contrary…’
‘But Russia and Germany have a non-aggression pact.’
‘Yes, but that hardly means the communists support the Nazis!’
‘No. But wasn’t it enough to stop you from joining the communists just when you were teetering on the edge?’
The paper went up again. And the rest of the journey passed in silence, with the lawyer reading and Valois brooding on the man’s apparent detailed knowledge of his own background.
Their farewells in Paris were perfunctory. Valois felt tired yet restless. It had been an unsettling weekend and it was with a sense of relief and homecoming that he entered the apartment building. Perhaps his outrage at the idea of the car permit ought to extend to his use of his parents’ large well-appointed flat, but he was glad to find his mind could accommodate this as comfortably as it accommodated him.
The old lift had become an uncertain vehicle with lack of maintenance and power irregularities, so he headed for the staircase, ill-lit by a shrouded bulb to comply with the black-out regulations. The apartment was one floor up. He could hear a distant wireless playing music. It was a lively popular piece, but the distance, the hour and his own mood made it a melancholy sound. He sighed as he reached his landing.
Then fatigue and melancholy vanished in a trice, for terror lets no rival near the throne. There was a man crouched in the shadow of his door with a submachine gun under his arm. It was too late to retreat. The waiting man had seen him.
‘Monsieur Christian Valois?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve got a message for you.’
The man moved forward into the dim light. And the machine gun became a wooden crutch under his left arm. And the lurking assassin became a haggard, grey-haired man in a baggy suit.
‘A message? Who the hell from?’ demanded Valois, trying to cover his fear with aggression.
‘A friend,’ said the man. ‘Jean-Paul Simonian. Can we go inside? I’m dying of thirst!’
3
‘But he’s alive?’ demanded Janine for the sixth or seventh time.
‘Yes, yes, yes, how many times do I have to tell you!’ said Christian Valois with growing irritation. ‘He got shot in the head. He was critically ill for a long time but now he’s recovering. He’s in a military hospital near Nancy, but soon he’ll be shipped off to join the rest of them at some camp in Germany. But he is alive, he is all right.’
‘Why did he contact you, not me? Why didn’t he get in touch earlier? Why doesn’t he write instead of sending messages by this man Pivert?’
Janine knew how absurd all these questions must sound, but they forced themselves out against her will. The truth was, at first she didn’t believe it, couldn’t believe it, when Valois, unnaturally flushed with suppressed excitement, had burst in, crying, ‘He’s alive! Jean-Paul’s alive!’ Finally, as details of the story began to adhere, there had started these other emotions, erupting like jets of steam from a hot spring, scalding, unforecastable, uncontrollable. Doubt was there, panic, fear, anger and plain resentment. Then the door opened and Pauli, attracted by the noise, rushed in crying, ‘Maman, what’s the matter? Are you ill?’
‘No, Pauli. It’s your father. He’s alive!’
For a moment the little boy stood perfectly still. Then he sat on the floor and began to cry, not the silent, half-concealed tears she had grown used to, but howling like his little sister.
‘Pauli!’ she said, kneeling beside him and hugging him close. ‘It’s all right, my love. It’s all right. Daddy’s alive!’
And suddenly it was all right. Her sobs joined the child’s and at last her emotions ran as clear as her joyful tears.
‘I’m sorry, Christian,’ she said a little later as they sat and drank a glass of wine. ‘I didn’t dare to believe you. Do you understand that? Now quickly, now I’m calm, before Sophie comes back from shopping, tell me it all again so I can break the news to her the best way possible.’
Corporal Major Pivert’s story had been told with an old soldier’s rough directness. He had been second in command of the section in which Jean-Paul was serving. They had held out for a day and a half against a ferocious onslaught.
‘Most of the Boche just went round us, leaving half a company to mop us up. Well, we showed the bastards! Mind you, we took a pounding. It brought us real close together. We’d been a tight-knit group before, got on well despite all our differences, but being under heavy attack together, losing