‘The old man slowed me down.’
‘I doubt it. He can walk all day without breaking a sweat – you say that in English?’
‘Yes, M’sieur. We do.’
‘I think that you are out of condition, Englishman: like a man newly out of hospital.’
Then he laughed a big pealing laugh that filled the small porch. The bowls players joined in. The boy and old man joined in. Bastards. When His Worship had had enough of the joke he wiped his brow again, and said, ‘What do you want? Food?’
‘Yes. For three. I have companions.’ No harm telling them what they knew.
‘I know. I have two men watching over them. They will be safe. Are you in charge?’
‘No. One of them is a Major.’
‘No matter. It is the rule of some people’s lives: no matter how high in the ranks you rise, you still end up making the coffee, and fetching the supper. Maybe you are one of those.’
‘Maybe.’
‘No matter. I am one. Look; I am their Mayor, and yet the lazy swine expect me to deal with you myself. Maybe you be Mayor one day.’
‘I would be honoured.’ He smiled when I said that. A little inward smile. It was the first really clever thing I’d said all day. He called over a man he called Gaston, took his wine from him and pressed it on me, saying, ‘You stay here, and toast the République. Stay here. I will bring food for your journey. You will be safe if you stay here. You have money, of course? ‘Then he asked me, ‘Why are you smiling, my friend?’
‘There is no right answer to your question, for me. If I say yes you might steal my money; if I say no, you might say, no sale.’
‘I think you can pay,’ he told me. ‘Clément’s daughter told me so. I will get you what we have most of: bread, wine and cheese. OK?’
‘Fine.’
‘No eggs, no meat – unless you eat rabbit.’
‘Fine.’
He threw me an insulting mock salute as he strolled away. And winked his left eye. Its purpose was either to keep face in front of his subjects, or to warn me not to panic. I began to panic. There was a notice in Ancien French on a brass plate on the door which led into the chapel. I could just make it out. It told how a local laird, the Duc du something or other, a Templar Knight, was discomfited at this very spot (probably by distant relatives of the people I could see around me) in defence of his religion and the chapel. Only our Gallic neighbours would use a word like discomfited, when they meant that the poor bastard had been chopped to pieces with sharp agricultural instruments. Maybe the panic I began to feel was a residual of what he had left behind him in his last moments, sunk into the stone, like his blood. That had happened in 1307. It can’t have been a very good year to be a Templar.
A pretty, dark-haired girl turned up hauling three bottles of wine and a big stone jar of what turned out to be water. Then she went back and returned with flat loaves of bread and a round cheese. I could have fancied her if I hadn’t been so nervy. That, plus the Luger pistol she wore in a holster on a stout leather belt cinched in around her waist like a corset was a discouragement to the amorous. The Mayor didn’t return with her; he went back to his game of bowls. Sir Francis fucking Drake. I asked Clément, ‘Is that his daughter?’
Clément gave me his gaps, and laughed.
‘She’s my daughter. Clémentine. He wants her, but all he can do is look. His wife would geld him.’
‘Who do I pay?’
‘Me. I found you.’
‘How much?’
‘Fifty invasion francs or fifteen dollars American.’
‘That is a lot, M’sieur Clément.’
He shrugged. They call it the Gallic shrug. It’s what the French do when they’ve fucked you over, and want to lay the blame on God. He said, ‘You’re still alive.’
I paid him. I got it at last. These folk were old-fashioned bandits, lurking beneath their castle walls to waylay careless strangers like me. He escorted me away from the cathedral with its grotesques, and back down the way I had come. Giving him sly sideways glances, I was sure that they had been carved from life. The boy with the Sten had disappeared, but the girl with the Luger walked at my other side. As we neared the gate through the walls Clément spat in the road, and laid a hand on my arm to slow me. He was carrying the wine, me the food, and the girl the water jar. He said, ‘I think that you’re going to make me an offer, either for the girl, or for the Boche gun she’s wearing.’
‘Which would be best?’
‘An offer for the gun would not offend.’
‘Ten dollars?’
‘Done.’
‘The food cost more than that.’
‘Food and drink are short. We have hundreds of Boche pistols. Officers can’t fight. They threw them away as they ran. Give him the gun, girl.’
She unbuckled the belt, and passed it over as if she was granting me a bodily favour. Who knows? Perhaps she was. She thrust her hand into a pocket in her skirt and came up with a fistful of 9 mm bullets for it. I buttoned them into my Chaplain’s battledress blouse pocket. I couldn’t help watching the way her breasts moved under her shirt. Her father couldn’t help watching me watching.
It took another half-hour to drag the vittles back to Kate on my own. Clément’s duties had ceased once he saw me from the premises. England was standing alongside the car sharing a cigarette with a mad-looking youth with a Schmeisser machine pistol. It didn’t look as if his rudimentary French had dented their relationship. Raffles was still asleep at the wheel; or looked that way.
‘There you are!’ the
