The Collaborators. Reginald Hill

the Boche dropped bombs and fired bullets at everyone on the road,’ cried Janine vehemently. ‘They could see we were a real menace. Men, women, children, animals, all running south in terror. Oh yes, we were a real menace!’

      Sighing, Mai put on his cap. Not even the best croissants in the world were worth this bother.

      ‘But you’re not hurt, are you? And the children are all right? Claude, the officer’s croissants!’

      The man put the croissants in a bag and handed it to Mai. He reached into his pocket. The woman said, ‘No, no. Please, you can pay next time.’

      A good saleswoman thought Mai approvingly. Ready to risk a little for good will and the prospect of a returning customer. The young woman was regarding him with unconcealed hostility. As he took the croissants he clicked his heels and made a little bow just as Major Zeller would have done. She too might as well have her money’s worth.

      He left the shop, pausing in the doorway as if deciding which way to go. Behind him he heard the older woman say, ‘Oh look at the poor children, they’re like little gypsies. And you’re not much better, Janine.’

      ‘Mother, we’ve been walking for days! We slept in a barn for two nights. Has there been any news of Jean-Paul?’

      ‘No, nothing. Now come and sit down and have something to eat. Pauli, child, you look as if you need fattening for a week. Claude, coffee!’

      Mai left, smiling but thoughtful. These French! Some of his masters believed that, properly handled, they could be brought into active partnership with their conquerors. With the baker and his wife it might be possible. Be correct, avoid provocative victory parades, use clever propaganda, offer them a fair armistice and business as usual; yes they might grumble, but only as they grumbled at their own authorities. But they’d co-operate.

      Alas, not all the French were like Monsieur and Madame Crozier. Take that girl, so young, so child-like, but at the same time so fierce!

      He turned left at the Bassin in the Luxembourg Gardens. As he skirted the lush green lawn before the Palace, he saw two German soldiers on guard duty. They were looking towards him and he remembered he was still in uniform. The sooner he got out of it the better. One of the joys of being an Abwehr officer was the excuse it gave for frequently wearing civilian clothes. The sentries offered a salute. He returned it, realized he was still clutching a croissant, grinned ruefully and bore right to the Medici Fountain.

      Slowly he made his way alongside the urn-flanked length of water to take a closer look at the sculpture. In the centre of three niches a fierce-looking bronze fellow loomed threateningly above a couple of naked youngsters in white marble. Us and the French! he told himself, crumbling a croissant for the goldfish.

      A hand squeezed his elbow. He started, turned and saw a thin bespectacled man showing discoloured teeth in a smile at once impudent and ingratiating.

      ‘Hello, lieutenant. Didn’t use to be able to creep up on you like that!’

      ‘Hello, Pajou,’ said Mai coldly.

      The man turned up the ingratiating key.

      ‘I was really glad when I realized you were in town, lieutenant. That Mai’s a man I can trust, a man I can talk to. So here I am, reporting for duty. Do you think you can use me?’

      Mai returned his gaze to the crouching cyclops, Polyphemus, poised so menacingly over the entwined figures of Acis and Galatea.

      ‘Yes, Pajou,’ he sighed. ‘I very much fear we can.’

      2

      Sophie Simonian was praying for her son when a knock at the door and a voice calling, ‘Bubbah Sophie, it’s me, Janine,’ made her hope for a second that her prayers had been answered.

      Leaning heavily on a silver-topped cherry cane, she went to the door, opened it, and knew at once that there was no good news in her daughter-in-law’s face. On the other hand, there was no bad news either, thanks be to God for small mercies.

      ‘Bubbah, how are you? You look well,’ said Janine embracing her. ‘Is there any news of Jean-Paul?’

      ‘Nothing. No news at all. Sit down, my dear. Where are the children?’ In sudden alarm, ‘There is nothing wrong with the children? Why are you back in Paris?’

      ‘No, they’re fine, really. Pauli sends his love, and Céci too. I’ll bring them round soon. But I thought I’d come myself first so we can have a good talk.’

      Quickly she described her abortive flight, her slow return. Unlike her own parents, Sophie had approved her decision to leave, though refusing (thank God!) Janine’s offer to take her too. Nearly seventy with a rheumatic knee, a return on foot would have been quite beyond her. Besides, she’d done her share of refugeeing almost forty years before, after the great pogrom of 1903 in Kishinev. France had offered a new life in every sense. It was here in Paris when hope seemed dead that at last she had conceived and given birth to a son. Iakov Moseich he was named after his father, and Jean-Paul, to tell the world he was a native-born Frenchman.

      Her husband had died of a heart attack in 1931. Jean-Paul had wanted to abandon his university place due to be taken up the following year and get a job to look after his mother. She had told him scornfully that his father would have struck him for such self-indulgent sentimentality. It was time to start acting like a real Frenchman and not a joke-book Jewish son.

      He certainly took her at her word, she later told herself ironically. During the next few years, he abandoned his religion, declared himself an atheist, flirted with the Communist Party, and announced that he was going to marry Janine Crozier. This last was perhaps the biggest shock of all. Some left-wing intellectual shiksa from the university she could have understood. But this wide-eyed child, of parents whose attitudes were as offensive to his new political religion as to his old racial one, was a complete surprise. When finally she had been unable to contain the question, ‘Why! Why! Why do you want to marry this child? She isn’t even pregnant!’ he had given her the only reply which could silence her: ‘Because whenever I see her, I feel happy.’

      But six years and two grandchildren later, Sophie was completely converted, and during this trying time she had derived much comfort from her daughter-in-law.

      As Janine finished her tale, there was a knock at the door and a man’s voice called reassuringly, ‘It’s only me, Madame Simonian. Christian.’

      Janine opened the door. Christian Valois was standing there, in his arms a dark ginger cat with a smudge of black hair around his nose.

      ‘Janine!’ he said. ‘Is there news?’

      Janine shook her head and said, ‘No. Nothing. Hello, Charlot, you’re fatter than ever!’

      The cat purred as she scratched him and then jumped out of Valois’s arms and bounced on to Sophie’s lap.

      ‘I met him on the stairs,’ said Valois, kissing the old lady. ‘You’ve heard nothing either, madame? Of course not. Why doesn’t he write to one of us?’

      His voice was full of concern which slightly irritated Janine. True, he was a very old friend of Jean-Paul’s, but this hardly entitled him to put his concern on a level with, if not above, that of a wife and a mother.

      ‘We are going to have some tea, Christian. Will you stay?’ said Sophie.

      ‘Just for a moment. I have to get back.’

      ‘Back where?’ asked Janine in surprise. ‘Surely there is no work for you to do. I thought everyone to do with the Government had run off to Bordeaux?’

      ‘I stayed,’ said Valois shortly.

      In fact, his gesture in staying on at the Ministry was proving rather a strain. It hadn’t taken the Germans long to realize that he had neither authority nor function. A friendly Wehrmacht officer had suggested