Tug of War Read online

  ‘And you must meet the Commander’s niece, Dorcas,’ said Aline. ‘A young lady as clever, I suspect, as she is pretty – which is to say, very!’

  Georges followed her waving hand to the sofa where Dorcas was once again sitting in uncomfortable proximity to the hound Bruno. He stared and took in the scene at once. ‘No! Don’t get up, mademoiselle!’ he said and went over to shake her hand. ‘We know better than to disturb old Bruno when he’s settled.’ He sat down by her side with no further ceremony and began to talk. The boy smiled a lot, Joe thought, for a sixteen-year-old. He had thick chestnut hair like his mother but there the similarity ran out; his nose and chin might, flatteringly, have been called decisive. Not love’s young dream, Joe was relieved to note, but better than that – his face was full of the promise of character. And a good character at that.

  Dorcas smiled back and replied. The boy laughed and whispered something. Dorcas laughed. They both patted the dog. So far so good, then. Joe felt free to turn his attention back to Houdart and answered his keen enquiries about Sir Douglas and London which he appeared to know well.

  Conversation flowed and Joe was surprised to hear, distantly, a clock sounding five, the signal for the party to break up evidently. Aline rang for the footman to have them shown to their rooms adding: ‘We will be dining at seven. Earlier than you are accustomed to perhaps? But this is the country not Paris or London and we have our country ways. Our country cooks too! I hope you like simple hearty food? Foie gras? Smoked haunch of wild boar? Poulet au champagne? Do join us for drinks in the salon when you come down.’

  As they climbed the stairs a step or two behind the footman, Joe leaned towards Dorcas and hissed at her: ‘That trick of whispering magic into dogs’ ears, miss – does it work on boys?’

  She gave him a knowing look. ‘Oh, yes, it does. Trouble is – you can only use it once on a human. I’m saving it up.’

  Joe woke to the insistent serenade of a song thrush perched on the parapet in front of his window and groped for his wristwatch. Seven. Eight o’clock breakfast had been declared so he had plenty of time for a shower. He scrambled out of bed and slumped on to the stool in front of the dressing table to check that he’d survived the night. Incredibly, he had no headache, not a sign of the hangover he had expected. And yet he’d drunk a large quantity of excellent champagne, he remembered. Jokingly, the family had chosen a different champagne from the estate to accompany each of the courses, promising the more usual parade of Pouilly and Clos Vougeot the next day.

  He frowned at his dark unshaven features incongruously framed by the ornate gilded mirror and decided that the blue and white draperies of toile de Jouy did him no favours. He blinked and yawned and wandered off into the adjoining bathroom to start his day.

  At ten to eight he tapped on Dorcas’s door and tapped again, disconcerted to hear no reply. Odd. She didn’t have many virtues but punctuality was one of them. She never kept him waiting. Had she overslept, worn out by the strain of appearing at a dinner party? They had sat down eight to dinner, the numbers swollen by neighbours chosen, Joe guessed, for their youth and animation. Dorcas, discreetly dressed in blue silk and Lydia’s best pearls, had looked very pretty and she’d behaved, he remembered, impeccably, seated between Georges and Charles-Auguste; every time he’d glanced in her direction she had been listening or talking with enthusiasm, even laughing. A strain on a girl, anyway, and he wouldn’t blame her if she was intending to have a lie-in.

  The manservant of the previous evening hurried down the corridor. ‘Mademoiselle is not in her room, monsieur. She went out riding at six this morning with Monsieur Georges.’

  ‘She did what? Riding? Good Lord! But what on earth would she have been wearing?’ was Joe’s disconnected thought.

  With no sign that he found the question strange, the man replied: ‘Jodhpurs, sir, a shirt and a pair of riding boots which the young lady had in her luggage. She lacked only a hat but we were able to supply this item from stock.’ And, responding to Joe’s discomfiture: ‘They expressed their intention of returning in good time for breakfast. At all events, sir, breakfast is a meal young Master Georges would always be prompt to attend. And it is a very informal occasion you will find. They suggest you join them. If you will come with me?’

  The two young cavaliers were already settled at the long table in a beamed breakfast room towards the back of the house and halfway through their meal when Joe arrived. They were still wearing their riding gear and their only concession to civility was to have removed their boots and lined them up by the door. Georges rose politely to his feet and greeted him, stepping over in his socks to the buffet to bring him coffee in a large silver pot.

  ‘We’ve got the place to ourselves,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Maman never comes down for breakfast – she has it in her room and appears at about ten. She’s expecting to see you then, by the way, to show you the estate and tell you her side of the story. If she hasn’t already.’

  ‘And your uncle Charles?’

  ‘He’s left to go and finish some work in the vignoble. It’s coming up to the time of the vendange and the next few days are crucial. Conferences every morning with every hoary old expert in the vicinity! Milk with that? There’s croissants if you’d like them? Boiled eggs? Ham? Baguettes? Butter from the farm? Cook’s strawberry jam?’

  ‘All of that in any order,’ said Joe and, sniffing and looking around, ‘What’s that disgusting smell? Smells like wet . . . oh, hello, Bruno, old man! I say, is he allowed under the table in his present state?’

  ‘Don’t try to move him! He got a bit wet rolling about in one of the seven springs. Joe, you must go and look at the stables,’ Dorcas said and, turning to Georges, ‘Joe’s a top-hole rider! Why don’t you offer him a ride on Taranis?’ she suggested slyly.

  ‘I think I’d need to know what his name meant first,’ said Joe warily.

  ‘Gaulish God of Thunder, sir,’ said Georges. ‘And your reservations are well founded. We never offer him to guests,’ he added reprovingly with a forgiving grin for Dorcas. ‘But I would like to snatch a few words with you myself, if you wouldn’t mind . . . Dorcas thinks I should speak to you, sir. I mean, don’t let me put you off your breakfast or anything and I haven’t much to say, I suppose . . .’ He began to run out of steam and shuffled his large feet in embarrassment.

  ‘Rubbish!’ said Dorcas. ‘You’ve got important things to say and Joe’s a good listener. That’s what he’s come all this way for – to listen. Go on, you’re to tell him, Georges!’

  Georges was pleased to be so encouraged but something was still holding him back.

  ‘Not the easiest thing in the world – taking up a stance opposite to that of your mother,’ said Joe. His slight smile and sudden inward focus suggested a personal understanding of Georges’s dilemma. ‘But let me tell you I don’t find it at all unusual or shocking or even disloyal. I’ve met three families in the course of this case and none of them have been in agreement over the identity of the patient in Reims. Everyone involved has his or her own genuinely held opinion or evidence to put forward and I’m working with the French police to collect and evaluate it. It’s important that I hear your views. You are, after all, likely to be significantly affected by the outcome, aren’t you? Pivotal, I’d say.’

  The boy nodded miserably. His good humour had faded and his young face, suddenly serious and drawn, gave a foretaste of the handsome man he would become. Still he debated with himself, unable to speak.

  ‘Look, I’ll come clean,’ said Joe encouraging. ‘I have no authority in France. I’m just here to find out whether the gentleman in question may be English and to help Inspector Bonnefoye where I can in an advisory capacity. Sir Douglas . . .’ The boy brightened and nodded at the mention of his name. The Brigadier was obviously a welcome and respected guest. ‘Sir Douglas sent me to offer a hand. We just want to arrive at the truth. If you disagree with your mother’s interpretation of the situation you’re quite entitled to your view. B
elieve me – I’ve heard many discordant views so far.’

  He spoke at last, slowly. ‘The word “discordant” is hardly up to the job . . . say rather, disloyal . . . destructive.’ He looked at Joe steadily over the table. ‘What I have to say will destroy for ever my relationship with my mother – whom I love very much – and more than that, it could destroy her. Ruin her life. And what is the evidence of a boy who was seven years old at the time worth? I’ve gone over and over what I saw. Every day I have lived with it. I can’t any longer believe in what I know. In the evidence of my own senses.’

  Joe was becoming alarmed by the boy’s tension, his staring eyes, his hands, clenched and tugging at the tablecloth, and wished he could undo what he’d started. The dog, disturbed, gave a warning growl to the room at large, not quite knowing at whom to direct his unease. But Georges was pressing on, unstoppable now.

  ‘It’s been growing in me like a canker all these years. I don’t think I can pretend any longer that I don’t know. I’ll crack up if I don’t tell someone and yet I know I risk infecting everyone around me with the filth that will burst out . . . Sir, will you help me? Will you listen and promise to take no action against anyone I may involve? I could have got this terribly wrong, you see . . .’

  Joe opened his mouth to deliver a formal and clear police warning. ‘Anything you say, young man, will be taken down . . .’

  But he caught Dorcas’s pleading expression and, bewitched – he could only later excuse himself on grounds of bewitchment – heard himself instead giving the asked-for, impossible and thoroughly unprofessional assurances.

  ‘I know that man they’re keeping in Reims is not my father,’ whispered Georges. ‘He can’t be my father because . . . my father, Clovis Houdart, is dead. But he wasn’t killed in battle, sir. I was there when he was murdered. Nearly ten years ago.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Joe wondered if, over the hundreds of miles of land and sea that separated them, Brigadier Redmayne on his Scottish grouse moor was troubled by the curse he sent winging his way. That mosquito now settling on his left cheek – would Sir Douglas ever attribute the sharp sting to Joe’s summoning up of a stab of silent invective?

  Dorcas was speechless. Joe guessed that the intimacy of the young pair had not progressed as far as this startling admission and could feel that she too was taken aback.

  Joe replied calmly. ‘Have you never spoken of this to your uncle?’

  Georges shook his head. ‘To no one.’

  ‘What a burden to carry by yourself all these years, my poor old chap!’ said Joe. ‘But, you say it yourself, you were only seven years old at the time of this terrible event – if indeed it ever occurred – and I agree, a seven-year-old is quite likely through simple inexperience to put a wrong interpretation on scenes he’s witnessed. Why don’t we all look at it again with adult eyes and see if we can make sense of it?’

  Georges looked at him more hopefully.

  ‘Tell me some more.’

  Judging by the boy’s silence that he had no idea where best to begin, Joe led him into a conversation, pouring out more coffee all round and trying to avoid anything resembling a police interview of the ‘Where did you last see your father?’ type. He remembered a Victorian painting with that very title. Sentimental, colourful and full of narrative power, it had been his favourite. A Royalist family had been arrested in their own home at the time of the Civil War by a company of Roundheads. The Cavalier father was missing, fled. His young son, a boy of about six, stood proudly, stiffly upright, in his blue satin suit on a stool facing up to interrogation by a squad of frozen-faced, dark-clad and totally menacing Parliamentarians. The boy’s older sister stood behind him in her white satin dress trimmed with pink rosebuds and she wept into her hands. His sister Lydia wouldn’t have wept, Joe always thought. She’d have given them what for. He identified with the boy and sent himself to sleep each night making up stories of increasing complexity with which he might have fooled the chief interrogator. For a change he sometimes played the part of this man who, on closer examination, seemed to have a more kindly face than the other soldiers. He leaned forward over the desk, keen and clever.

  Instinctively, Joe had always understood that it was here the danger lay. They would never have succeeded in beating information out of such a boy but one sympathetic word, one well-placed question politely asked and he would be in the net.

  Very well. Time to play the kindly chief interrogator.

  ‘How often did your father come home during those war years?’ he asked. ‘I know leave was hard to come by . . . men went for years sometimes without seeing their families.’

  He was on the right track. Georges replied at once. ‘Hardly ever. That’s the problem. I’m very confused about the times when my father came home. Once, he came home in the night and he’d had to go away again before I woke next morning,’ he said. This had obviously been a sharp cause of distress. ‘He left a toy horse on my pillow. My mother was always waiting. When she wasn’t out in the fields or at the hospital working . . . She would sit moping by the window or sometimes on the top step with the dog . . . we had a greyhound in those days. And she would talk all the time about what my father would say and do, how proud he would be of me when he came home. And he did come home. Three times in as many years. I marked them down in my day book. But it was always for a very short time and he’d have to ride off again. I’m not complaining, sir. It was like that for every child at that time. Millions of us were left fatherless. Some lost both parents. I’ve been lucky.’

  Joe was glad to hear the boy’s refusal to indulge in self-pity.

  ‘Were you not evacuated to a safer place?’ Joe asked. ‘Couldn’t help noticing the bullet holes on the façade.’

  Georges smiled. ‘Maman refuses to have them filled in. She says they’re a part of the history of the house and there they’ll stay. And yes, we did go away sometimes to my grandparents in Paris when the war came dangerously close. But mostly we stayed and hoped for the best. We had lots of soldiers through the house, billeted on us. And glad to have them. We always felt safer with men about the place. Maman cheered up when the house was full. She forgot about waiting and moping. And she felt she was doing her bit. She was very good at it. She’d sing and play the piano for them, cook whatever we had. Dress their wounds.’ He grinned at Joe. ‘She may look like a butterfly but she’s actually as tough as old boots. And she expected everyone to pitch in, even me, though I was only small. I remember working in the fields with frozen hands in winter, keeling over in the heat in summer and never daring to complain. I’ve never lost the habit.’ He held out with pride large square hands callused like a coachman’s.

  ‘Maman had a poster fixed up at the gates to encourage us all. A call to action to the women and children of France from the Prefect.’ He smiled and spoke the remembered words with emotion: ‘“Debout femmes françaises, jeunes enfants, filles et fils de la Patrie! Remplacez sur le champ du travail ceux qui sont sur le champ de bataille. Debout! A l’action! Au labeur!” “On your feet! To action! To work!” Hard work though! But we did it. We managed – just about – to take in the fields the places of those who were on the battlefields. We were even used as an overflow for the hospital once and I had to help with the laundry.’ He shuddered and pulled a face to disguise his passing horror. ‘That was a low point.’

  ‘Yes, you did it, old son, you did it!’ murmured Joe. ‘Kept the country going.’ And, after a pause, ‘I’m wondering what nationalities you had here? Actually – you might well have had me! I was based very close by.’

  ‘We did have a few English. Maman liked them the best. So did I. They were my good friends while they were here. Some of them came back several times. And some wrote to me when they got back home after the war. They missed their own sons, I think, or their little brothers, and I got quite spoilt. We still get Christmas cards from one or two. I have a friend called John who never forgets to send me a birthday card even when he’s sol
diering abroad. And we had French units of course. Mostly French. There was a day when we almost had Germans!’

  He smiled. ‘They made a terrible mistake. It was at the time when the whole area was swarming with all three armies. No time to get away – we just had to sit it out. We had a squad of English cavalrymen with us at the time when suddenly someone shouted that the Boche were on their way. And a German staff car was spotted coming down the drive. Just driving down as bold as brass! An officer and his driver. They’d taken the wrong turning and thought they were approaching their billet for the night. Sitting ducks for the English marksmen. They fired warning shots over their heads and called to them to surrender. The Germans fired back and those are the holes you see in the front of the house. They were taken alive but wounded and sent off for interrogation.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ said Joe. ‘I may even have carried out that questioning myself!’ He was reasonably sure that he hadn’t but Georges seemed excited at the coincidence and he decided to spin out the story. ‘I was with Military Intelligence recovering from a shoulder wound. We were brought an officer with a leather bag in his possession. Lots of bloodstained rubbish in there but also a map which quite obviously showed von Kluck’s forward planning. We were delighted to have it. Particularly as it showed he was planning a manoeuvre that played straight into allied hands. We didn’t get an awful lot else out of the officer but his sidekick, a taxi driver from Berlin, sang like a song thrush.’

  His confidence won, Georges listened to a few more extracts from the war diaries of Captain Sandilands. ‘I say, sir, would you like to see my record of the war? My notebook? It’s very . . . well . . . naïve and badly written but it does give the dates when my father was about the place.’