The Darkness We Leave Behind (The Love and War Series) | eBook

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A Time to Say Hello
A Parisian suburb, October 1968

Henri Moreau stood at the mirror in the narrow hallway of his apartment, buttoning up his gabardine coat. Hetty, their tiny ginger cat, rubbed herself against his leg. It was a Friday morning, his favourite day of the week, the one day of the week he had somewhere to go, friends to meet. And, as a bonus, today he and Isabella were expecting a visit from their daughter and granddaughter. ‘What time did you say they’d be here?’
His wife, in the bedroom, shouted through. ‘For the hundredth time, Henri, around lunchtime, maybe early afternoon.’
‘Excellent,’ he said to himself, straightening his tie. Had she really said it a hundred times? Probably, yes.
Isabella had left the radio on in the kitchen. He could hear a reporter reporting from the Summer Olympics. It may have been October but it was still summer in Mexico. Isabella came through and joined him in the hallway. ‘Why don’t you invite your friends back here one day?’
What an awful idea, he thought. ‘We’re fine where we are. You look nice,’ he said, changing the subject. She was wearing a green dress with a small blue cardigan he hadn't seen before.
‘I’m meeting friends too. I’m sure I told you.’ She took her coat and her wide-brimmed hat from the hat stand. ‘I’m back to school Monday so might as well enjoy the freedom while I can.’
He patted his pockets, making sure he had his cigarettes and lighter and, just in case, a handkerchief. Hetty had disappeared.
‘Have you heard the news, Henri?’
‘About the Olympics, yes.’
‘No, not the Olympics. About that court case.’
‘What court case?’
She pushed him aside from the mirror and angled the brim of her hat. ‘About the collaborator.’
‘What about it?’
‘Oh, nothing, Henri. Forget I mentioned it. You forget most things,’ she added under her breath. ‘Right, shall we leave together? I’m ready if you are.’
‘Yeah. Sure.’
Together, they caught the lift down from the fourth floor to the ground.
The morning was cold; a moisture in the air, a sharp wind blew about the fallen leaves that had gathered on the pavements. Isabella always walked too fast for Henri and he had to make an effort simply to keep up. She waved at a couple of girls on bicycles he assumed were her pupils. He wanted to ask whom she was meeting but feared she’d already told him and that he’d forgotten – again. And anyway, he wasn’t that interested. He’d only have been making conversation. His memory hadn’t always been this bad. But he did remember Suzanne and Ruby were due at some point today. Did Isabella say lunchtime? He wasn’t sure. He couldn’t wait. He hadn't seen his granddaughter for six months. They lived down south in Aix-en-Provence, some seven hundred kilometres away. Ruby was six already. The same age as… No, he couldn’t think it. But the comparison was natural; he did it all the time, he’d look into his little granddaughter’s eyes and tried to see the resemblance. He tried to stop himself, but the pull was always too strong.
They were approaching the Metro station. Nearby, to the side of a small park, stood the statue of some nineteenth-century man in a long cloak, a former mayor of the borough, whose name Henri could never remember nor why he should merit a statue. In fact, no one knew but it had become a meeting point, and indeed Henri spied a man pacing on the sandy path in front of it, checking on his watch.
They reached the Metro station. ‘Well, have a nice day,’ said Henri.
‘And you. Will you be OK?’
‘Of course. Why shouldn’t I be?’
Isabella pulled on the lapel of his coat. ‘You know why.’ She pecked him on the cheek, and descended into the station, throwing him a final glance over her shoulder. ‘I’ll see you this evening.’
Henri watched her trot down the steps. Yes, he thought, he knew why she’d asked him that. Isabella knew what he was thinking about. He thought about her every day, lived with that ache continually as if he had a stone permanently lodged in the pit of his stomach. Time didn’t alleviate the pain; if anything, it seemed to magnify as he got older. And today especially, was hard, for today, the 17th October, would have been her birthday. Some things you never forget.
The cafe was just another two hundred or so metres further down the street. With hands in pockets, he looked up at the sky and the dark clouds scudding by. He heard a squeal of laughter; the man at the statue was hugging a woman with such intensity, he’d lifted her off the ground. Henri smiled as he sauntered along; how nice it must be to be that much in love, to be so overjoyed to meet someone. He passed his barbers, where he went every other Tuesday. Jacques, the barber, a dwarf, needed to stand on a wooden box but he knew his way around with a pair of scissors. Jacques caught Henri’s eye and lifted the brim of an invisible hat by way of acknowledgement.
A couple of hardy men sat outside the Cafe du Flore. Inside, the cafe was half full, mainly of older men, like himself, mostly sitting by themselves, enjoying a cup of coffee and a cigarette, reading their newspapers. A couple of men were playing draughts, leaning forward in their chairs, deep in concentration. The radio played pop music in the background. He sidled across the black and white, two-toned floor and hung his coat and hat on the hat stand, glancing at himself in the large mirror bearing the Coca-Cola logo. ‘Good morning, Jean,’ he said to the waiter behind the counter. ‘Am I the first?’
‘No, monsieur, they’re already here.’
Sure enough, Henri found his three friends sitting at their usual table in one of the booths, sitting beneath a low-hung lamp with a large floral-patterned shade. On the wall behind them, a large wooden plank depicting a painting of a multi-coloured cockerel. A copy of Le Monde lay folded on the table. ‘Good morning, gents.’
He shook hands with his friends: Gustave Garnier, Roger Béart and Antoine Leclerc.
‘Shall we order?’ asked Garnier, pushing his glasses up his nose. ‘The usual?’ They agreed on the usual – black coffee and a large pastry each.
Jean, the waiter, took their order, committing it to memory.
Gustave Garnier had been a teacher, and, by his own admission, not a particularly good one. French literature was his main subject, a connoisseur of nineteenth-century French poetry plus a bit of Shakespeare thrown in. He wore an ash-brown jacket with elbow patches, the patches lined with grease, and thick-rimmed brown glasses. He, like Moreau, was in his mid-fifties.
Roger Béart was a good fifteen years older than the other two. He’d fought with the French cavalry during the Great War, serving in the Palestinian desert. He wore his age like a badge of honour – his heavily lined face, his eyebrows too bushy, his moustache unkempt.
Antoine Leclerc, the youngest amongst them, a self-employed architect who, only occasionally, joined them on their Friday morning meet ups. The others, Henri Moreau included, were, by their own admission, grizzled old men while Leclerc still viewed life as exciting and anticipated the future with a degree of optimism.
‘Have you seen this?’ asked Béart, the older man. ‘Two black athletes at the Olympics.’ He pushed the newspaper across the table.
The front-page photograph showed three athletes on the podium, two of them black, both with their hands raised in the air, their heads bowed. ‘Are they wearing gloves?’
‘It’s the black salute,’ said Garnier. ‘You know, black power and all that.’
‘They’re standing up for what they believe in,’ said Leclerc, the younger man. ‘That takes courage, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t see the point,’ said Garnier.
‘You don’t see the point?’ said Leclerc. ‘Christ, man. If more people stood up like these men…’
‘Like we should have, you mean.’
‘Yeah, well. Maybe.’
‘We can’t all be heroes,’ said Moreau.
A solitary cheer erupted from nearby. One of the men had won his game of draughts.
‘Your coffees, gentlemen.’ Jean deposited their coffees and pastries. ‘You stay more than an hour, you have to buy more.’
‘Don’t you worry, young man,’ said Béart.
Jean, who wasn’t a day under sixty, raised an eyebrow. Tucking the tray under his arm, he saw the newspaper with the photo of the black athletes. ‘They should strip them of their medals for that little show of defiance. Bloody blacks, you can’t trust them.’
‘Yeah, thanks, Jean. We’ll call you when we need something.’
‘Huh.’
They watched him retreat to the counter. Garnier took a knife and delicately cut into his pastry. ‘Have you seen this other story, about the trial of that woman?’
‘What woman?’ asked Béart.
Garnier, picking up the newspaper, read aloud: ‘Her victims called her ‘The Lady with the Truncheon’; infamous for wielding her club against the Jewish inmates at the Nazi-run camp in the Parisian suburb of Drancy. For twenty-three years she has evaded justice but yesterday at Le Palais de Justice, sixty-eight-year-old Hilda Lapointe, a former guard at the wartime internment camp, was found guilty and sentenced to five years for maltreatment and war crimes.’
‘Drancy? Did you… did you say Drancy?’ asked Moreau.
‘You heard. Have you not read about this? Christ, where have you been, Henri?’
‘He lives under a rock,’ said Béart.
‘It’s been front-page news all week,’ said Garnier. ‘Here…’ He passed the newspaper to Moreau. Moreau glanced at the mug-shot photo of the woman.
‘I’ve not heard about this. I think my wife mentioned it this morning but…’ He folded the newspaper and left it on the table. He looked down at his plate, not wanting to look his friend in the eye.
‘You all right, Henri?’ asked Leclerc. ‘Don’t you like your pastry?’
‘No, no, it’s… I’m fine.’
‘Five years?’ said Béart. ‘Is that all? Five years – that’s sod all. She’ll be out in three. If I had my way, I’d hang her, the bitch. Any Frenchman, or woman, who did the Nazi’s work for them should be strung up, in my opinion.’
Now, it was Garnier’s turn to avert his eyes. ‘It’s not always black and white, you know, Roger.’
Béart made a pfft sound as he licked his fingertips.
‘The interesting thing,’ said Garnier, ‘is that her friend, the music conductor, stuck up for her.’
‘What music conductor?’ asked Moreau.
‘Can’t remember his name. Everyone just calls him “The Maestro”.’
‘What did he say, this Maestro?’
‘You can read it here. Basically, she helped him out during the war, so he stood up in court as a character witness for her.’
Béart laughed. ‘Well, that’s his career up the spout. Serves him right, the stupid bastard. I hope Hilda Lapointe appreciates the effort.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Leclerc.
Moreau took a second look at Hilda Lapointe’s photograph. She looked so sure of herself, he thought, so hard, like a woman with an unforgiving soul. Her eyes bore into him, defiant, cold, calculating. He trembled slightly. Just looking at her gave him the jitters. He took a large gulp of coffee, and turning the newspaper over, looked back at the photo of the black athletes. He could cope with that; their picture didn’t make his blood run cold, the word ‘Olympics’ didn’t make his throat turn dry like hearing, or seeing, that most hateful of names – Drancy.
‘Listen,’ said Béart, jabbing the table with his finger, ‘anyone who worked at Drancy was a bastard. That place was simply a holding camp for the Jews before they shipped ’em off to Auschwitz. Oh, the people who worked there can deny it as much as they want, but they knew, they bloody knew.’
Moreau shocked himself as much as his companions when he slammed his hand against the table. ‘Stop, will you? Just stop talking about it, OK?’
Béart and Garnier exchanged knowing looks. ‘Jeez, Henri, what’s the matter?’ asked Garnier.
‘We’ve hit a raw nerve,’ said Béart. ‘That’s what’s the matter.’
‘Just leave it, will you?’
Moreau felt a hand resting on his sleeve. It was Leclerc’s. He didn’t want it there, didn’t want the young man’s concern. ‘Has something upset you, Henri? Is it all this talk about Drancy?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘I was there, you know, at Drancy. Were you at Drancy, Henri? Did you work there?’
‘No!’
Béart shook his head.
Leclerc removed his hand from Moreau’s sleeve. The four men sipped their coffees in silence, unable to look at each other. Béart lit a cigarette. Garnier turned the folded newspaper over and left it in the middle of the table, surrounded by their crumb-laden plates, the photo of Hilda Lapointe staring up at them.
A family of four came into the cafe, opening the door and bringing the cold inside with them, the two small girls immediately lightening the atmosphere. They took a table near the door and the girls argued over who was sitting where. Dad slapped one, the nearest, on the thigh. The girl bit her bottom lip, trying hard not to cry while Mum admonished Dad, who threw his hands in the air with exasperation.
The draught players had packed up their game and now leant back in their chairs and talked over each other.
The father of the family tried to order but Jean kept shaking his head, as if saying they’d run out of this and run out of that. Moreau could sense the man’s frustration, even at this distance.
Moreau then spoke. He hadn't planned it; in fact, he’d planned on saying absolutely nothing, but the words seemed to slip out of him, quietly, without fuss. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I was at Drancy. Briefly. Not even a day but yes, I was there.’
He looked down at his lap but from the corner of his eye, he could see Garnier and Béart exchange looks again. Béart tapped his temple.
‘You don’t have to tell us, Henri,’ said Leclerc.
‘Why not?’ said Béart. ‘If he wants to, let him. I mean, how long have we been meeting here?’
Moreau looked at him and realised the man was sweating, his skin glistening under the weak light bulb of the lamp. ‘Long enough,’ he said.
‘Exactly. We know each other of old–’
‘But are we friends?’ asked Leclerc. ‘Truly? You don’t even like us, Roger.’
Béart laughed. ‘Antoine, you’re a sentimental fool. And you, Gustave, I’ve met tadpoles with more backbone than you–’
‘Thanks.’
‘But what am I but an embittered old bastard living on my own, with no one to talk to from day to day? So, are you my friends?’ He looked from Moreau to Garnier to Leclerc. ‘Yeah, you’re my friends. And why? Because we each have something missing in us,’ he said, thumping his heart. ‘We have much in common with this conductor fellow, this Maestro. He’s one of the most famous men in France but he still can’t break from what happened to him during the war. And now it’s destroyed him. We are all widows – or widowers – of the war, each one of us. Though, for me, it wasn’t the last war that undid me, but the one before. The result is the same. So, the three of us, sometimes four, we meet here every Friday and we talk and talk, and I look forward to it. But you know nothing about the gaping hole where my heart used to rest, and I know nothing of yours, Moreau, or you, Garnier. But it’s there. I know it; we all know it. But we never give voice to it. And you know, I reckon this conductor might be happier now than ever. Yes, his reputation’s been destroyed, but perhaps this trial has finally released him from his demons. And I reckon it’s time we released ourselves from our demons too.’
‘What are you saying, Roger?’ asked Garnier.
‘We confess.’
‘Confess?’
‘Yes. It takes a man who’s been eaten from the inside to see it in another. We sit here every week and have done so for years. I declare the time has come.’
‘My God, man, you’re right,’ said Leclerc. ‘What do you say, Henri?’
‘My granddaughter’s arriving tonight. Or lunchtime, I can’t remember now.’
‘So?’
‘If she knew, if my daughter knew what I did, they’d never speak to me again.’ He twisted a napkin around his fingers. ‘But you’re right. I’ll tell you my story; that is if you’re sure.’
Béart nodded. Garnier smiled. ‘Perhaps we should order another round of coffee first before Jean chucks us out.’