PART TWO

Summer 1942

14

Andre Duguay was running down an overgrown alley between two fields. It was a short cut his mother had forbidden him to take for fear of the adders thought to nest in the long grass, but Andre was in a hurry. The muscles in his fatless thighs slid up and down beneath the rim of his shorts; his calves, on which the baby whiteness of his skin was acquiring a dim honey-coloured gloss in the course of the summer, propelled him. bounding over wiry bramble traps, the ruts of long-dried mud, the sleeping serpents.

When he arrived at the road, panting, he hesitated for a moment. Left, right He was still too young to know the difference, but he knew the school was that way, up the hill: his route must therefore be towards the woods. He followed the road for ten minutes, walking to regain his breath, then running a little to make up time. Eventually, he saw the path he recognised and heard the frenzied barking of a German shepherd dog as the sound of his first footfall reached the farmyard. Andre walked cautiously nearer. Often his father had told him what to do when confronted by dogs, but still he had the urge to stroke them: in the rough diagram of his understanding, animals were with children against an adult "world of rules and obligations. He stood still, offered the back of his hand to the dog and made no move to cross its territory until the animal backed off, its hairy tail swishing, its growls diminishing to a provisional acceptance.

Andre climbed the steps on the outside of one of the neglected outbuildings. A door was open to a gloomy room with a stone sink in one corner. A purplefaced woman in a headscarf, known to Andre only as Marion's mamie, was pouring fat from a pan over the top of a duck's leg in a glass jar. She looked up as Andre stood hesitantly in the doorway and let out a greeting in the cracked accent of the region, which Andre was too shy to return. The old woman continued with her greasy work, sealing the bottle with a rubber washer and a glass top. Andre looked nervously round the room, in which three ducks in different stages of dismemberment lay on a long dirty table and a row of blackened pans hung from a beam. Marion's mamie wiped her hands down the front of her apron, exchanging the fresh fat for accumulated layers of older lard transferred from the cloth to her sliding palms.

"Have you come for some eggs?" She rolled across the room like an old sailor, the heel of her hand stuck into the flesh above her hip.

"Yes." Andre's voice had the clarity of a treble bell, especially when he was unsure of himself.

"Please," he remembered.

"I can only let you have four. Have you got the money?"

Andre took a twist of paper from the pocket of his shorts and handed it to her. The old woman opened it and counted the coins inside. She nodded. "I'll put them in a paper bag for you. Don't drop them, will you?"

Andre shook his head vigorously, opening his eyes and pulling his lower lip down in a self-mocking grimace. Eggs were vital.

He went gently down the steps, the memory of first negotiating stairs on all fours still fresh in his mind often, when no one was looking, he still went up the stairs at home like a dog and moved off across the farmyard, holding the paper bag tight.

"Thank you," his father's absent tones prompted him to call in his clear voice, setting off a renewed spasm of barking.

The church spire of Lavaurette came into view as Andre rejoined the road. His mother had told him the whole excursion would take about an hour, and had smiled impatiently when he asked her, "Is that a long time?" Andre clutched the eggs by the top of the twisted paper bag: both his parents had brought him to the edge of tears in their eagerness to impress on him how important it was that the goods came home intact.

Lavaurette was a place that would not die. In the waiting room at the hotel de ville were photographs from the nineteenth century, and there was one that showed the main street in 1910, before the cataclysm.

Small enterprises spilled in black and white from the front rooms of almost every house: tobacconist, carpenter, draper, coiffeur, greengrocer. Young and middle-aged men leaned against doorways, smoking; out of the camera's narrow angle they were working-in the fields, in the giant stone quarry a bicycle ride to the south and in the factory just outside the village. And then there were no men any more, there was only a crudely carved Marianne whose chiselled face, designed to show triumph, looked as though it were blinded by the list of names of the dead that rambled on, up and down the stone pedestal at her feet, through families, through streets, through the ribs and lungs of Lavaurette.

In the years since the Great War it had declined from the character and status of a small town to that of an overgrown village. The main structures were still there: the hotel de ville was an ambitious Second Empire building with fine tiled eaves; there was a cobbled square in front of it with a neoclassical post office and stern municipal buildings. A plane-flanked avenue led to the railway station, a place of captured somnolence with faded lettering on cream plaster walls; there was a goods siding with rusted buffers and two platforms for the passenger trains that eventually connected their handful of travellers to the main lines for Bordeaux and Clermont Ferrand. The journey to Clermont was the same as it had been since the line opened in 1882, but the trip to Bordeaux now involved crossing the demarcation line into the Occupied Zone. On the train there were inspections of documents, and beneath the great tubular vaults of Bordeaux Stjean there were German troops. How well behaved they were, it was agreed by all the travellers: how disciplined, polite and neatly dressed.

Although there now existed a new generation of twenty-year-old men, Lavaurette had for many years depended on the vigour of its women: Mlle Cariteau, who ran the post office, a tall, strong-jawed woman of forty whose efficiency was marked by a virile manner and a big, white-toothed smile, a natural wife they said, with no men available in her generation to marry; or Madame Galliot, widowed in the war and left with a baby daughter, whose ironmongery served as a meeting place for the other women of Lavaurette who were unwelcome in the male atmosphere of the Cafe du Centre.

Whatever the dramatic nature of its changes and whatever the violent reasons for them, Lavaurette retained in the eyes of casual visitors a sense of continuity with more innocent days-a time before the holocaust, when such a village might have seemed as close to paradise as anything that humans had contrived. It certainly, at least, looked old-fashioned, with its three squares, its narrow shuttered streets and its hard-retained dignity. Far enough south to have hot summers, it was sufficiently northern to be wholly French, with no trace of Spain, Liguria or the Languedoc. With a shrinking population, there had been no need to build new houses; and while the soil of the surrounding farmland varied in quality, it had, until the Occupier's ravening expropriations, been good enough to supply an ample market on Saturday mornings; the priest was still respected and his church was full.

It was impossible to tell if everything was really lost, because so much seemed to carry on unharmed.

Andre came to the bottom of the Avenue Gambetta, where he received a wave of greeting from the butcher. Monsieur Gastinel, Lavaurette's only selfproclaimed Gaullist, a man whose low-grade sausages, inventive cuts of would-be steak and dishes of prepared offal were available more readily to those who, like him, had been inspired by General de Gaulle's passionate broadcast from London, in which he had claimed that the fight for France went on and that only a battle, not a war, was lost. A scrap of lamb breast or a spoonful of veal muzzle in brine would sometimes find its way into the rationed bags of those who denied the legitimacy of Vichy and believed that the true spirit of the Republic was now in exile overseas. Whatever the business of the other shops, there were hardly any goods on display; the only thing of which there seemed an abundance was portraits of Marshal Petain. His wise and kindly face stared out on to the street, mounted, framed, sometimes surrounded by swathes of crimson velvet or perched victorious on a marble plinth. The snowy moustache and the saviour's tolerant eyes said: we went wrong and we are being taught a lesson; we cannot say how long this improving penance must last; we brought this upon ourselves and now we must see the error of our ways.

The older villagers remembered that Petain had once been the hero of France, when he had seen off the Germans at the Battle of Verdun in 1916 and been the first leader to show a concern for his men's lives. His ramshackle government of 1940, which had voted to dissolve the republic and grant itself full powers, was now the only haven in the storm. The Marshal was a good man, they said; and in any case the people of Lavaurette had nowhere else to turn.

Andre kicked a flinty stone along the edge of the road. When he got home he would go out into the garden with his younger brother Jacob and continue to excavate the small trench beneath the chestnut tree which served as a moat to the castle they were building with old boxes. Andre was almost seven, Jacob only four, but their mother treated them alike.

Having borne them, fed them, cleaned them, she could not break the bond of touch. Though Andre could easily dress himself she liked to help him, so that she could feel the packed little muscles beneath his skin. She ran her hands through his black hair and felt the soft spokes of it trickle out over the webs between her fingers.

Before going to bed herself, she still crept into Andre's room and kissed every part of him when he slept naked in the summer, his left arm flung back behind his head, his right arm hanging limp, his golden skin tingling soft beneath her lips, his low breathing undisturbed by her self-indulgence.

Andre pushed open the door to Madame Galliot's ironmongery and went shyly across the scrubbed boards up to the counter. He felt in his pocket for the second twist of paper his mother had given him, with which he was supposed to buy candles. Half a dozen people were standing round the counter, talking loudly, preventing him from catching Madame Galliot's eye.

"I think it's long overdue," Madame Galliot was saying.

"The Marshal's the first person who's had the courage to grasp the nettle, that's all. For years they've been undermining us, keeping all the best jobs to themselves, swindling proper French people. The day when they said no Jew should be a school teacher any more, that was the best day we've seen round here for a long, long time."

Andre waited his turn. The shop smelled of coir matting, camphor and galvanised buckets. Behind Madame Galliot's indignantly nodding head was a pointed step ladder she used for fetching down the graded boxes of washers and nails from the top shelf. The shaved floorboards led down the interior of the shop into a secondary room, less pungent, stacked with pans, casseroles, stiff yard brooms and long shelves full of crockery with sets of china laid out round cavernous lidded soup tureens.

"I didn't know Duguay was one of them," said an old man called Roudil.

"He seemed like a nice enough type. He was no trouble to anyone and I don't think his business was dishonest."

"Oh, but the mother, though. A typical Israelite," said Madame Galliot.

"They changed their name to Duguay to take us all in."

Hearing his family name, Andre found the courage to speak. The group of people at the counter split apart to let him in and he walked forward, holding up his money.

"Have you any candles, please?"

Madame Galliot's rolling eloquence came to a halt. Her hands flew up to the side of her head, where they pushed nervously at the orange hair that was escaping from its net. She settled her spectacles and gave a turkey-like cluck as she bent down to open a cupboard behind her.

There was silence among the other five adults, who anxiously avoided looking at one another, or at the boy. Roudil coughed and ran his hand over Andre's hair.

"All right, young man? Off to play now, are you?"

"Yes. I'm going home." Seeing the old man's worried but kind expression, Andre was bold enough to add: "I'm building this castle with my brother. From old boxes. My father's helping."

"That's nice, then," said Roudil.

"A castle."

Silence returned, apart from the sound of feet shuffling on the splintery floor. Madame Galliot handed Andre the packet of candles and took his coins. She raised them close to her face to count them out.

"You owe me ..." She hesitated.

"Tell your parents..." She paused and looked at her feet; then, with a great effort, as though moving into unknown commercial territory, she said, "You can owe me the rest."

"Thank you. Goodbye, Madame."

The adults watched in silence as the boy swung the door closed, causing the bell to jangle briefly, then started to skip up the street.

Andre had a natural, loose-limbed action. His feel slithered over the ground with a rhythmic rustle, like wire brushes going over a snare drum. Skipping tired him no more than walking; it was his natural means of going up the hill towards his parents' house in the street behind the square. It was time for him to eat and drink, and he knew his mother would have something ready for him. She had tried to explain to him that it was difficult, these days, to give the children enough food, let alone the things they used to like. Andre didn't understand the reasons for this shortage, and in any case his mother always used to come up with something. The front door of the house was closed, which was unusual. Andre stood on tiptoe and reached up for the knocker. As he did so he saw that a star had been painted on the door. Some dribbles of yellow paint ran from the swiftly daubed diagonals.

He banged on the door again, but there was no answer from inside. His mother had often told him that if he should ever return and find no one there he was to go next door to Madame Redon and ask if he could wait in her house. With the eggs and the candles still clutched in his hand, Andre went through to the old widow's house and again raised his small fist. He saw a movement through the half-open window on the first floor, but no one came. It was very odd. If Madame Redon was in the house, why would she not answer the door?

Andre found his happy poise begin to crack. Just as his mother still liked to treat him as a baby, still wanted him physically attached to her, so in a way he felt that the things he could do the errands, the hesitant reading - were only fragile accomplishments, and that the real bases of his world were still panic and helplessness. He sat on the step of his own family's house and felt tears coming to his eyes.

"You'd better come with me." The voice seemed to be in his head almost at once; in his loss of control, Andre had no sense of the passage of time. He looked up through red eyes and saw a youngish man hold out his hand. He did not know the man, though he had seen him in the village.

"My name is Julien. I'll look after you."

Andre reached out his hand and felt the man take it; some order returned to his existence.

"What's happened? Where's my mother?"

The young man did not answer; he looked afraid. Andre, seeing that something had happened which was beyond the power even of a friendly adult to explain, and seeing that it had happened to his parents, began to sob.

"What is it? Where is she? Where is she?"

The waiting room of the hotel de ville was filled with bewildered people, some sitting on the benches along the wall, some crowding up to the desk behind which a short-tempered clerk was trying to answer their questions.

Their inquiries were to do with obtaining permits or papers within the mayor's gift permission to leave building waste in a disused quarry, access to food coupons, the right to travel. The room had the smell of bodies confined for too long. Julien Levade held Andre's hand tightly as he forced his way to the front of the crowd. Resistance to him initially came in the form of looks and closed ranks; then, when it was clear he was paying no attention, women began to remonstrate with him.

Julien, who was a reasonable man, explained to them that a boy had lost his parents, that his errand was more urgent than theirs.

"I apologise, Madame, please excuse me. It's not for me, you understand, it's for the child. See how upset he is."

They looked. Andre had never been in the hotel de ville before; its vaulted hall, its marble stairs and now its room of bewildering officialdom had frightened him. He held more tightly to the hand of the strange man, hoping he would find a thread of order that would restore things to their proper place. The man seemed to think that the clerk would know where his mother was and Andre had no reason to think otherwise. Perhaps she was somewhere behind the counter, in a room at the back of the building. Since she was so powerful and had alone explained the world to him, he could not imagine how she might allow anything bad to happen to herself.

"I don't care what the matter is, you can't just push your way to the front."

"That's right. We've all got problems. You wait your turn like everyone else." Julien elbowed the woman to one side and leaned across the counter. He took the clerk by the arm and pulled him forwards.

"This child was sitting in the street outside his house. On the front door they've painted a Star of David and his parents have disappeared.

What's going on?"

The clerk tried to pull himself out of Julien's grip. The forms he had been handling fluttered to the floor.

"Let go of me! What do you think you're doing? Let go!"

"You heard what I said." Julien released Andre's hand so he could hold on more tightly to the clerk.

"Tell me what's going on. I heard rumours this morning. Extra trains at the station and things like that."

The clerk was visibly indignant at having both wrists in a stranger's angry grip and anxious to resettle his half-dislodged glasses.

"Let go of me. I don't know anything about it. It's nothing to do with the hotel de ville. You'd better go and speak to the police."

Julien pulled the clerk a little closer. Very quietly, he said, "You do know something, don't you?" Then he pushed him away, as though the feel of the other man's flesh had become repugnant, reached down again for Andre's hand and pushed his way back through the reproachful crowd.

Julien and Andre walked through the streets of Lavaurette. It was now late afternoon and the tables outside the Cafe du Commerce were starting to fill up. Despite the hot weather, the customers were properly dressed, the men in collar and tie, the women in dresses with handbags and polished shoes. Older men and women were making their way back from the baker's shop with their evening bread beneath their arm or poking out from shopping bags. From some of the houses that Julien and Andre passed the smell of dinner was starting to drift through open windows: not the rich meat-heavy smell of two years ago, but still passably aromatic with combinations of food saved, or extemporised from hidden stores. The church bell in the Place de 1'Eglise was striking six emphatically, a few seconds late, as it had done for a hundred and sixty years.

Andre's panic now precluded thought as he ran and stumbled alongside the striding Julien. The gendarmerie was on the other side of Lavaurette, across a gravelled forecourt, near to a shaded area where the men played boules. Julien pushed open the double doors and pulled Andre across the hall into an anteroom where a heavy ceiling fan was stirring the clotted air.

He rang a bell on the desk and they heard the sound, further back in the building, of a door grinding open.

A gendarme appeared, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his uniform, as though interrupted in an early evening snack. He shook hands with Julien, who knew him from his frequent rounds in Lavaurette: Bernard, an amiable enough man, who gave the appearance of being bored by his work.

"I'm trying to find out what's happened to this boy's parents." Bernard looked over the counter to where Andre stood, holding the fabric of Julien's trouser leg.

"What's his name?"

"Duguay. They live in the next street to mine."

Bernard's gaze flickered; then he looked down. He coughed and picked up some papers from the ledge below the counter.

' I think. let me see ... yes ... Duguay, Duguay, Duguay ... just a minute ... Yes, here we are." His finger came to rest on a typed list.

"Well?" said Julien.

"What's happened to them?"

"Oh well, I don't really know. It's nothing to do with the gendarmerie, you understand. Some sort of order from the Government as far as I know."

"Yes, but what happened?"

Bernard looked unhappy "I ... I think ... Listen, do you want to come into the office for a moment, leave the boy here?"

Julien looked down at Andre's hopeless face. To be left for a moment in an anteroom was not the worst problem he was now confronting. He nodded and followed Bernard through a glass door.

"I won't be a minute, Andre."

Andre sat on a rush-seated chair against the wall and swung his legs. He had stopped crying, but his mouth was filled with a peculiar taste. He felt extraordinarily aware of himself: of his breathing, his skin, the room about him. The seconds would not pass: it was as though time had stalled and had somehow wrapped itself around him with this dry flavour of abandonment. Bernard lit a cigarette in the office.

"It's nothing to do with us," he said, pulling an ashtray out from beneath some papers on the desk.

He sat down at his chair and indicated a seat on the other side.

Julien shook his head and stayed standing.

"Just tell me."

"We had a visit from the Vichy police. Those bastards, I hate them. Don't get me wrong, I like the Marshal. I respect him. But those men.. Anyway, this officer comes along and shows his papers and says he's got a list of people in the region."

"Jews?"

Bernard nodded.

"Well, Lavaurette, you know as well as I do what it's like. No one's been or come since the war, really. Immigrants, I mean.

It's not like Paris or Clermont. I didn't know the Duguays were ... I'm sure I've seen them in church. Anyway, there was a train coming up from the south, Montauban, Agen or somewhere. A special train and they had to be on it. That's what we were told."

"A special train?"

Bernard flinched at the sound of Julien's voice; there was an incredulous, unforgiving edge to it. He looked up at him, but could not hold his gaze. Julien said, "So then what happened? They came and took them?" Bernard swallowed.

"You probably heard what happened in Paris last month. There was a huge round-up there and they took them to some sports stadium. They had to put it off a bit because they suddenly realised it was the thirteenth, you know, the day before July the fourteenth and they thought it wouldn't be ... wouldn't be ..."

"Festive?"

Bernard coughed. Julien could see the sweat beginning to dampen his shirt collar where it dug into his neck. The cigarette had left a single strand of tobacco on his lower lip.

Bernard looked up at him and his eyes were pleading.

"I'm just a gendarme, I do what I'm told, I don't mean any harm. I just go about the town and try to help. I just ' " You did it yourself, didn't you?

"What?"

"You arrested them yourself, didn't you?"

Bernard's eyes went back to the desk. He rested his chin in his cupped hands and sighed. The breath came out jerkily.

"If it hadn't been me, they would have got someone else to do it. That family was going on the train one way or another, that's what you have to understand." Bernard stood up. He seemed to be rallying: he met Julien's eye again.

"Anyway, I don't have to explain to you. I've told you what I know because. well, because I know you. Because you asked. But if you think anyone in Lavaurette is going to blame me for obeying orders, you're mad. This is a law-abiding town. We respect the Government and we do what we're told.

That's the only way forward."

"Where's the train taking them then?"

"That I don't know. There are a number of refugee camps where ' " The Duguays are not refugees. They're French. They live here."

Bernard shrugged.

"Well, that's where they'll take them. It's just until the end of the war. Apparently she's a foreigner, and they haven't been here long. All these people pouring in from abroad, they have to be sorted out. I'm sure they'll be all right."

"Didn't the documents show where the train was going?"

"I dare say they did, but I didn't see them. I was just told to deliver the family to the station." Bernard looked down.

"Then they were angry because I only brought the parents."

"Why didn't you take the children?"

"I couldn't find them. The little one you've got, he must have been out in the fields. The other one, I ... I couldn't find."

"But he's only three or four. I've seen him often with his mother. She wouldn't have left him on his own,"

"I couldn't find him. That's all I'm saying. We weren't given enough time. I wasn't given the train time until this morning."

"Not like the gendarmerie to be so slipshod." Bernard said nothing. He took another cigarette from the packet, poked the loose tobacco in with his finger and thumped the little tube on the side of his desk. He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead before lighting the cigarette.

He offered the packet to Julien who shook his head.

"I wonder where he is," said Julien.

"The little one. Jacob, I think his name is.

"It's a mystery. Probably with a neighbour or something. Now, hadn't you better go and look after the other boy? They'll be back, you know."

"Aren't you going to arrest him? I'm sure they'd put on another train for him."

"You're a difficult bastard, aren't you? Can't you see, I'm trying to help you? As far as I'm concerned, both boys have vanished. Now for God's sake take him away."

"Tell me where the other one is. Tell me where the other one is and I'll never mention your part in this to anyone. This whole interview will be forgotten." Bernard's tongue ran out over his lips and this time he found the shred of tobacco. He pulled it back with his front teeth and worked it to the front of his tongue, from which he picked it with his finger and thumb.

"She was sobbing. The mother, she was clinging on to me. She wrapped herself round my feet so I couldn't move." Bernard turned his back on Julien and looked out of the window. He pushed it open, and from outside came the sandy thud and metal click of boules; they heard deep, laughing male voices, then the peaceful sound of glasses and a bottle of past is jangling on a tin tray that the waiter was bringing from the cafe.

"I was worried we were going to be late for the train. The father was weeping too. They begged me. I didn't know what to do. I shouldn't be in these situations ... It was terrible." Bernard's voice began to shake.

He turned back from the window. He had gone scarlet in the face and his fists were clenched by the side of his uniform.

"They took the child to the door of the cellar. He was screaming. The mother was hysterical. She was lying on the floor. In the end the father had to drag her off. He pushed the child inside and locked the door. I ... I had to let them do it. Then I got them out and took them by the back streets. We didn't use the avenue. I shouldn't have done it. I'm in trouble now."

Bernard was shaking. He rubbed the back of his sleeve across his purple cheek, where a tear had run.

Julien said, "You're not in trouble. I'll take care of it. Where's the key?" Bernard put his hand into his pocket and silently withdrew a rusted iron key, which he handed to Julien. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. Julien, who had remained pale and apparently impassive, looked at him and put his head interrogatively to one side.

Bernard's confusion of feeling resolved itself into fearful anger.

"It's not my fault. I didn't want to do any of this. Don't look at me like that. I have a wife and family, too, you know. They're my first priority, they're the ones I have to think of before anyone else, before any Jews or anyone. You're not married, are you? Well, you wouldn't understand. If this gets out I'm finished. Do you promise me? Do you give me your absolute word?"

"Yes." Julien laid his hand on Bernard's arm.

"I give you my word. I'll say nothing of what's passed between us. In return, when they ask you about the children, you just stick to your story. They weren't there, and you don't know where they are. All right?" Bernard nodded. Julien held out his hand and Bernard took it. As Julien was opening the door to leave, Bernard said, "Why are you so interested in these children? Why have you taken it on yourself?"

Julien sighed.

"It was just a chance. I saw the child and I thought I should help. It was an accident."

He went back into the anteroom, where Andre was still sitting on his chair, hoping for time and the world to start again.

"I think we're going to have to be very careful now," said Julien, as they came into the Place de 1'Eglise.

"I think it would be a good idea if I went on ahead to make sure everything's all right. You stay ..." He looked around and stopped, as though some idea had stirred in his mind. '... in the church. I'll come back and get you in a minute." Andre sat in a dark corner chosen by Julien, looking at a statue of a marble saint, a cloth or handkerchief clasped in her cold fingers. The moment pressed on him with unwanted clarity: the smell of old incense, the wood on his thighs, the statue of a woman who was not his mother, the pile of cloth-covered books on the ledge beside him. It was not real.

"All right. Come on." Julien was standing in the doorway.

"Do your parents leave a key somewhere?"

Andre nodded. Along the wall of the house was a narrow alley that led to a side entrance to the garden. Julien followed him over the stony path and Andre pushed at a wrought-iron gate whose opening caused a sweet-sounding bell to jangle.

The Duguays' small garden had a flowerbed at one end in which a moat was being dug; at the other end, adjoining the house, was a brick-paved terrace with over-arching ironwork twined by prodigal jasmine. Andre bent down and lifted up a stone from under which he pulled out a key. He opened a door into the kitchen. There was a choking smell from a stockpot on the cooker which had burned dry. Julien turned off the heat beneath the blackened mess. The table was set with four places; there was a carafe of water and six slices of bread in a wicker basket.

"Where's the cellar?"

"This way."

The Duguays' hall was cool and dark; there were pink glass light fittings on the wall and a large framed sepia photograph of a Duguay forebear in uniform with medals and drooping moustaches. Julien fitted the key into the lock and turned it. He took Andre's hand as they made their way down the dark stairs.

"Jacob? Jacob? Are you there?"

Andre called as well, a theatrical note in his high, clear voice.

"Jacob?"

"We need a candle. Do you know where they are?"

"I bought some from the shop. I ... I've left them somewhere."

"There must be some other ones in the kitchen. Go and have a look. I've got some matches."

While Andre was gone, Julien made his way slowly down the steps, dragging his hand along the cold stone wall.

"Jacob?" he called softly. "Jacob?"

Andre's voice hissed at the top of the steps.

"I've found one." Julien first lit a match to show him the way down, and then the candle Andre held out to him. The cellar had a beaten earth floor and a row of empty wine bins against one wall. The candle threw shadows up to the thick wooden beams that supported the hallway and kitchen above.

"Look." Andre was pointing. There was a heap on the floor in the corner. As they moved closer, the light of the candle showed it to be a small boy, curled up on his side, asleep.

Andre reached out and touched him.

"Jacob." His whisper was frightened and urgent.

"Jacob." He shook his brother's shoulders and the boy stirred and sat up. Then he climbed abruptly to his feet, his eyes wide.

Julien wondered what they would do. In his experience, sisters and brothers at this age did not embrace unless in some demonstration of false sentiment demanded by their parents.

Andre took Jacob's arm rather formally and kissed his hand. Jacob said nothing, but looked round in bewilderment. The candlelight showed the big, dark eyes, sunk in his face, fogged by sleep and confusion. Andre held out his arms to him and Jacob went into his embrace, treading on his foot, staggering a little, as though it was an unnatural process they had learned from watching older people.

"Monsieur? What shall we do now?"

"I think you'd better come with me. My house is in the next street. You can stay with me until I find you a better home."

"Where's my mother?" said Andre.

"I don't know. She and your father have gone somewhere on the train. They had to leave in a hurry, otherwise they would have said goodbye." Julien knelt down and held the boys' hands.

"You're going to have to be brave. It may be some time before you see your parents, but you must try not to worry. I'll make sure you are properly looked after. You can trust me. I'll help you."

He felt four eyes running back and forth across his face in the gloom, then knelt on the beaten earth and clasped the two small, wiry bodies in his arms. Towards ten o'clock that evening Julien Levade went down to the Cafe du Centre. The streets of Lavaurette were shiny from a sudden summer storm, and he walked carefully over the unlit pavements. Through half-closed shutters and windows re-opened after the rain, he heard the murmur of voices; a harsh kitchen light showed a tired man re corking a bottle of wine while his wife cleared dishes from the oilcloth-covered table. In the dark street there were occasional signboards on the outside of the houses: a dealer in paraffin, an upholsterer, a repairer of electrical goods. Few customers were ever seen to go into these premises, but an afternoon knock on the door with a broken wireless would invariably raise someone, even if it was only a child, who, with lip-licking concentration, would write out thick brown labels and tie them to the goods to await the father's return. Julien ordered a glass of wine at the bar of the Cafe du Centre.

Monsieur Gayral, the owner, a stooped, defeated man of only sixty who looked twenty years more, pushed it across the zinc-topped bar. His untrimmed eyebrows hung down either side of his face in superfluous emphasis of his despondent manner. Madame Gayral, who was waiting in the dining room, was a fussy, proper, little woman with brightly dyed red hair and all the energy her husband had surrendered. Gayral was nevertheless a popular host because he was so discreet: nothing that was said in the Cafe du Centre was repeated by him, and his melancholic manner stretched to apparent deafness in the face of extreme opinions or gossip of a prurience (usually speculations of paternity) shocking even by the standards of the bar. Among those who had benefited from his discretion Gayral enjoyed a reputation as a man of great wisdom, albeit guarded, and a startling dry wit, the more legendary for being unexpressed.

Julien had not eaten, but was wary of the dining room. Even in the days of plenty, Madame Gayral's cuisine had been nervous. She disguised her lack of confidence by serving many different courses in the hope, presumably, that one of them at least might please.

Following a thin soup might come ham and a piece of melon, some sliced herring in vinegar, then a knob of preserved duck with peas, a damp green salad, then a grilled sausage with puree of potatoes, a trolley of cheeses and various milkbased desserts. It all added up to less than the sum of its parts; the diners typically felt bloated yet unsatisfied.

Under the Occupation, by which the Vichy Government agreed that the Germans needed to eat more than the French, and that France, as well as paying 20 million francs a day for the privilege of being occupied, should yield the best part of its produce to the Occupier, dinner at the Cafe du Centre had become hazardous. It was only Madame Gayral's inspired idea to hire Irene Galliot, the ironmonger's daughter, as dining room waitress that kept the male clientele faithful. Irene was her mother's daughter, they agreed by which they meant formal, unyielding, almost pitiless yet strangely more handsome.

Roudil Gallandy believed that this proved Madame Galliot must herself have been a beauty when young; most people thought it showed only that old Galliot,

"whom some of them remembered from before his death in the spring slaughters of the Chemin des Dames in 1917, was not the girl's father. Irene had thick, wavy brown hair, slender legs with only a hint an exciting hint to many of the men in Lavaurette - of peasant heaviness about the hip, a numbingly effective if rare smile, aristocratically (suspiciously) fair skin and a face which, although it was of a kind that might perhaps not wear well, could only fairly be described as beautiful. It was Irene's day off, and Madame Gayral was clearing the plates in the dining room from those disappointed male clients too slow-witted to have worked out the waitress's weekly time-table. Madame Gayral's absence in turn meant that conversation in the bar was even more unguarded than usual. Even Gayral himself was fired up to speak, and his opinion was granted a surprised but respectful silence.

"Some people say Laval's not to be trusted, but I say he's a very clever man. Every time one of these Communists shot a German soldier in the Occupied Zone the Germans would take ten innocent people and execute them. Now Laval's done a bargain. Now we have French police in the Occupied Zone, and they administer discipline. That's how it should be: France policed by the French, occupied or not."

There was a pause while the others took time to digest Gayral's opinion. A man called Benech, who was a schoolmaster, said respectfully, "You may be right there, you may well be right. But you must admit that the Boche soldiers have behaved impeccably in the face of great provocation, too."

Gayral nodded.

"Not that great," said Julien, "The odd isolated incident, but really hardly any '

" Oh, those wretched Communists," said Benech.

"When will they ever learn? They're as bad as the R.A.F with their bombing. The sooner the English face up to the inevitable the better for all of us." Benech had only recently started to come to the Cafe du Centre. He allowed himself only two drinks each evening, yet elicited a certain respect for his vigorous opinions. Gayral began to speak.

"I heard a story about a big factory in Clermont. I'm not going to say which one." Two or three heads nodded in approval of his discretion.

"The chief was visited by some Englishman who told him the R.A.F were going to bomb his factory because it was making machinery the Germans were taking for their war effort. This Englishman said if the chief gave him a copy of the plans of the factory he'd make sure they dropped their bombs on the right targets, just the vital bits that would be impossible to replace, and no one would get hurt. If he refused, they'd just bomb the whole thing. The factory owner told him to prove he was really in touch with the R.A.F by getting them to fly over the next night and drop a single bomb in a field outside the town. Well, apparently they did.

And the chief gave the man his factory blueprints and two nights later they came over and destroyed the vital machinery, exactly according to plan."

"How did this Englishman come to be in France?" said Roudil.

"They come by parachute. There are hundreds of them."

"It's that monster Churchill," said Benech.

"He's the most selfish man in Europe. For the sake of his own glory, he's prolonging this dreadful war. Why can't he accept the inevitable?

If the Marshal the Marshal, the victor of Verdun, if you please accepts that the Boche have won the war, why can't this foolish man see it? And where were the English when we needed their help in the Great War? They stayed at home."

"I think some did come over," said Roudil.

"I think not, my friend," said Benech.

"Anyway, why should this factory owner help the English? It's against the law. The Marshal made that clear when we entered into the " way of collaboration" with the Occupier. Those were his actual words, and quite right, too. We have to think about our future and our children's future.

This war's only going to last a year or so it's a drop in the ocean and when it's over we'll be in a position to take our place in the new Europe." Roudil creased his ancient face a little as Benech propounded his clear and trusting view. Benech had a thick, straight moustache and grey, peeked skin; he spoke as a man who feels the flow of history is at last vindicating his long-held beliefs.

"I think it's a little more complicated than that," Roudil said.

"The Marshal's playing a double game. He seems to go along with everything they ask, but he's waiting for his moment. He may be old, but he's shrewd, that one. Look how he's kept the sovereignty of France alive.

You tell me another country in Europe which has kept its independence after being occupied. Norway? Sweden? Belgium? Oh, no, he's a canny one, the Marshal, and we've not Seen the last of his cunning."

"What exactly is this sovereignty worth?" said Julien.

"An old man in a hotel room with powers that no one voted him, doing what he's told by the Germans. Is that sovereignty? While Paris is occupied and the Republic is dead?"

"Oh, the Republic" the Republic," said Benech, sipping at his second glass.

"The Republic killed itself. I'd have thought anyone could see that after the mess Monsieur Blum and his Jews made of things. If it took the Germans to bring us to our senses, then frankly I'm glad of it. And I'll tell you another thing we need another couple of years to put everything straight. If it takes the presence of the Occupier to give the Marshal time to get the country back on course, then so be it." Julien had heard this view so many times before that he was tired of arguing with it. In a way he admired its logic. To believe that being occupied by a wellbehaved foreign power enabled you to put in place, peacefully, the conservative internal reforms your country had long needed seemed not only practical but also rather gamely philosophical.

Under the influence of this Panglossian strain of thought, you could view the situation as not only convenient but lit up by a sort of providential optimism. Instead of quarrelling, Julien said to Gayral, "I hear your son's coming home." Gayral smiled.

"Yes, at last. It's taken for ever to get him back from Syria. But I can tell you, there's one boy who'll be glad to see the back of that desert!

We expect him home next week."

"He wasn't tempted to join the winning side, then?" Julien could not resist teasing him.

"Which side?"

"The Free French. The units that defeated him."

"Free my foot! They're just a few brigands run by the Americans and the English. In my boy's regiment there were just two men who went over to them. That's how popular they are!"

"And the rest have come home?"

"Of course they have!" Benech interrupted enthusiastically.

"There may be work to do here, you know. You've read about the Allied landings, haven't you? They think the English might try and invade in the north. The Marshal says we've got to be ready to see them off. I tell you, it won't be a pretty sight, especially if the Americans join in."

"The Americans," said Roudil incredulously.

"What's it got to do with them?"

"They've sent a representative to the Free French," said Julien.

"Well," said Benech, 'that shows just how much they know." He laughed in rich amusement.

"Poor old Americans! They really have got the wrong end of the stick." Roudil cackled at the humour of the situation; Gayral gave a grunt. Benech's amusement was so tearfully rich and his beliefs so apparently guileless that Julien also found himself smiling.

Charlotte was sitting in a red armchair in a flat in Marylebone, trying to overcome her twists of gastric nervousness sufficiently to concentrate on what Mr. Jackson was telling her.

He was prowling round the room, hitching up his trousers, tucking in his shirt more tightly as he talked. She followed him with her eyes until he disappeared behind a standard lamp, when she had to turn in her seat and strain her head to bring him back into view.

"I know it's a bit rushed. We're not really doing it by the book, I'm afraid, but of course there isn't actually a book, as I'm sure you appreciate." Jackson stopped by a desk in the window and picked up some papers.

"Your reports are awfully good, I must say. And the French bods said you could pass for a native. They don't say that about many people, you know."

"Are those the Free French?"

"Heavens, no, they won't talk to us. De Gaulle's running his own little networks and never the twain shall meet. Anyway, my chaps said you were first class."

"It's very kind of them. I don't think it's quite true." Jackson raised a scholarly eyebrow.

"Let me put my little proposition to you. Did you bring the letter by the way?" Charlotte handed him the envelope containing a brief instruction to present herself at the flat. Jackson slid it into the pocket of his flannel trousers.

"There's a relatively new network not far from Limoges which was started by one of our best chaps. It's called Violinist."

As he spoke, Charlotte was calculating: Limoges to Clermont ...

Probably not more than 250 kilometres, all in the Free Zone. A three-day bicycle ride; perhaps four days it was a long time since she used to ride to the Academy in the mornings with a basket full of books.

'... so your task is really very simple. First you're to accompany Yves. We wanted to call him Hugues, but he has too much trouble pronouncing the "u" He's a Lancastrian, and I'm not going to tell you his real name because there's no need for you to know it. He's an extremely able man and although he does speak the language, our tame Frenchman wasn't too happy with his accent-a little more Burnley than Bourges, if you take my meaning.

You will therefore act as his chaperone, keep him from having to talk to anyone, until you're safely arrived at the house near Uzerche, where he'll join forces with a very busy little network and you wish him bon voyage. All clear so far?" Charlotte nodded.

"Yes. Quite clear. You'll give me more details at the time."

"Of course." Jackson gave a froggy smile.

"Maps, money, addresses, not to mention the jolly old cover story. They'll be plenty to learn by heart, but they say you've got a memory like an elephant, if you'll forgive the expression."

"I'll do my best."

"Jolly good. Now the second part of your job is even simpler. We want you to deliver a set of wireless crystals to one of our operators in the area. These little chaps are very light and easy to carry. The drawbacks are twofold: they're very fragile, and they can't be disguised as anything else. The wireless operator you're going to see has had a little accident I'm not quite sure how it happened but anyway, she needs a new set. You'll be given a suggested meeting place and time, naturally, and the rest is up to you. I suppose it's possible they'll ask you to do a drop rather than actually meet the girl. You know: leave them in the ladies' excuse-me or some such thing." Jackson gave a little laugh.

"And then what do I do?"

"Then? Then, my dear Miss. Gray, you come home. The return flight."

"The same place, the same plane?"

"No, I rather doubt that. I think you're going over in one of the big boys, a Whitley probably. They may want to drop some stores at the same time. You'll come back in a little Lysander, I imagine, something that can actually land. So. What do you think of all that?"

Charlotte licked her lips and tried to generate some saliva over her dry tongue.

"It sounds very straightforward."

"It is, it is! Now, listen, I don't suppose I could interest you in a bite of lunch, could I? Got to feed you up, you know, food's wretched in France.

Can't take you to my club, alas, for obvious reasons, but there's a jolly good little place round the corner. Do you like fish?"

Everything began to happen swiftly. Jackson gave responsibility for Charlotte to a woman called Valerie Kay, a stern, academic person of the kind Charlotte imagined to have been among the pioneers of women's education at the ancient universities. She had wiry brown hair pulled back tightly and a manner which at every turn seemed to emphasise the seriousness of the undertaking. The cover story was the first and most important aspect of preparation. Charlotte was to be called Dominique Guilbert; she was born in Paris in 1917, married to a clerk in Angouleme who was now a prisoner of war in Germany, and was travelling to see her sick father who lived in Limoges.

She had been partly educated in Belgium, to allow for any falsity of accent: the French contempt for 'the little Belgians', she was told, was such that even the most bizarre non-francophone noises could safely be ascribed to a brief period in Brussels. The details of the cover took them two hours to go through, at the end of which Charlotte was given a day to learn them, and the names and addresses of contacts, by heart before reporting to the flat in Marylebone, where she would be tested.

In addition to a cover name, she was given a field name, Daniele: good agents, she was told, could manage under interrogation not even to divulge their cover name, and such double security was helpful to other people in the network. From now on she was to be Daniele in all her dealings with them.

Charlotte wrote a letter to her mother saying she would be away on official business and would contact her when she could. She told Daisy she would be away for a fortnight and to let anyone else have her room in the meantime if she wanted. Daisy gave her a long, worried look, then let her go. Valerie Kay took her through the cover story, bit by bit, with added cross-examination from an emaciated Frenchman who fired questions through a slowly gathering cloud of cigarette smoke. Charlotte missed Mr. Jackson's cheery presence, but they seemed satisfied by her response.

"Of course, there is one other thing we haven't mentioned," said Miss. Kay.

"Your hair."

"What about it?"

"It's not a very French colour, is it? I've booked you an appointment for two o'clock with a French hairdresser in Brook Street. The dye should last for several weeks unless your hair grows very quickly."

Charlotte nodded, wishing she did not think that Miss. Kay was taking some unkind pleasure in the idea of turning her hair a dull brown.

At four o'clock, cropped, brunette, Charlotte returned to the flat for the final preparations. The door was opened by a butlerish figure she had not yet met: he stood aside to let her pass, then took her firmly by the elbow and showed her to a bedroom.

"Wait here, please. Miss.. Someone will be in shortly."

Charlotte looked about the neat room, which had fitted wardrobes and a watery seascape above the bed; there was a dressing table in the window with a floral frilled skirt, but no make-up or hairbrushes.

She sensed it had been a long time since anyone had actually slept here. Charlotte felt both calm and excited: what she was doing was not only right but also somehow inevitable. Her life and her education had led her to this point; she was not frightened to be returning to a country that she loved and which in her mind was associated with a completeness of civilization. She was confident she could carry out her simple errand, yet the prospect brought an intoxicating feeling of escape.

Unlike so many people caught beneath the bombs in London or trapped by the German army and the French bureaucracy, she had the liberating privilege of action.

The door opened, and Charlotte smiled broadly to see Mr. Jackson again.

"Goodness me, what a splendid job they've done. You look as French as Joan of Arc." He placed a brown paper parcel on the bed.

"These are some clothes I want you to put on. They're of French manufacture or, if not, we've sewn French labels into them. The pockets have a few shreds of French tobacco and some dust from the area you're going to.

There'll be one complete change in your suitcase and two spare sets of underthings. Someone'll be along for you in a minute."

It was with some sadness that Charlotte undid her knee-length, navy blue skirt and slid it down over the ivory slip. G Section had taken no chances with their idea of what French women wore under the Occupation: woollen knickers, coarse stockings, apparently to be held up with the provided pair of garters, calf-length skirt and poorly knitted pullover.

Charlotte laced the clumpy shoes and looked at herself in the mirror of the dressing table.

The door opened again.

Valerie Kay came into the room to gather up Charlotte's own clothes.

"We'll keep these safe for you until your return," she said, her expression communicating disapproval as she folded the bundle into a sheet of brown paper.

"In a minute I'll want you to go to the bathroom and take off any make-up, but please wait here until you're called."

Charlotte sat on the edge of the bed and waited. She could hear several other voices in the flat and a continual opening and closing of doors.

Something was going on. The caution and periphrasis that had so far characterised her dealings with these people had suddenly been replaced by short words and quickening steps. Charlotte had the impression that at least three other people like herself were being briefed and prepared, and also, for reasons of security, kept from seeing one another. She could not help smiling at the thought of the butler going to and fro, of false identities being taken up and trousers being dropped behind different doors; but presumably it would be worth it to be incapable of showing any sign of recognition if ever she should meet one of these people at night, at Bordeaux Stjean, beneath the scrutiny of an SS officer.

The butler reappeared and took Charlotte down the corridor to another bedroom, which was fitted with what looked like a dentist's chair.

"Sit there, please. Miss.."

A few minutes later, following more footsteps and banging doors, a short, white-haired man came in and introduced himself as Mr. Legge.

"And you are ... Let me see," he said, looking at a clipboard hanging from the side of the chair.

"Daniele."

"That's right."

"Open wide."

"I beg your pardon."

"Open wide, please. I'm going to replace your fillings. Let's have a look. Not too bad. Only six that I can see. You must have had a good dentist when you were young."

"The Belgians are famous for it."

Legge seemed too old and frail to be able to pump the drill mechanism hard enough with his foot for the bit to turn to its full effect; the silvery Scottish fillings were thus chiselled out piece by piece, to be replaced by a heavy, gold, and presumably French mixture. As the old man ground on, Charlotte wondered bitterly whether they had assembled the metals from the very area of her intended drop. After two false starts, one of which involved the butler pushing her back against the wall and covering her eyes with his hands. Charlotte was eventually delivered to the sitting room of the flat, where Jackson had first outlined to her the details of her mission.

"Daniele," he said.

"Welcome. Do sit down." As she did so, he gave her his froggiest, most reassuring smile.

"How do you feel?"

"I feel all right," said Charlotte honestly, calmed by Jackson's manner.

"I could have done without the dentistry."

"I know, I know. Most of our people think I'm mad, but my view is simply that anything we can do to protect our agents is worth doing.

That's all. Now I think we may be in luck. With "Charlotte", I mean. Does that name mean anything to you?"

"Of course." She pointed through the window towards the sky, where a crescent moon gleamed white.

"Nothing else?" Jackson grinned.

"Certainly not."

"Jolly good." He straightened his face and coughed.

"Now, once you've delivered Yves to Uzerche, you're to leave him there and make no attempt to contact him. Understood? He'll be with friends there and he won't need you. Then you take the crystals to this address, go into the hairdresser's and repeat the lines written here." He pushed a piece of paper across the desk. The hairdresser's was in a town called Ussel. Charlotte read and memorised the contents.

"Got that?

Good." Jackson took the paper back and tore it up.

"We're pretty much ready for the off now. Sometimes we have to keep people hanging around for ages, either here or in one of our houses in East Anglia. But the weather forecast's first class. Bright as a button all the way to Limoges. As far as your return journey's concerned, you're to do as instructed by the local Frenchman. It's just possible you'll' hear from our man there who's running Violinist. He's called Mirabel, but he's very busy and I expect the Frenchman can handle it. I don't have a name for him, but he'll tell you at the drop. There'll be a plane to bring you home in a week or ten days. The local chap'll have the gen from his wireless operator. All clear?"

Charlotte nodded.

Jackson sucked in his breath.

"This is all terribly straightforward, but of course if it all goes well, and I'm sure it will, we might find you something more exciting another time. Do you follow?"

"Of course." Charlotte nodded.

"Now there's just one more thing I must tell you about." Jackson settled himself on the edge of the desk.

"Sometimes people get very lonely over there. You can tell no one about yourself, you have very little human contact with anyone at all. You're only going to be there for a week, so I'm sure you'll be fine, but even a week can seem a long time. Be prepared for it and don't let it affect you. Are you subject to feelings of loneliness?"

Not exactly loneliness, thought Charlotte: bereavement, desolation, despair.

"Not particularly," she said.

"Not really."

"Good. You'll receive your final briefing from one of my staff at the aerodrome. He'll also give you a small package with the crystals in it. I normally like to come myself, but as you've probably noticed we've got a rather busy day. Quite shortly I'm going to introduce you to a young woman who's going to be with you from now until you get on the plane - a sort of a chaperone, really. You can call her Alice.

All the girls who do this job are called Alice. She's just there to keep an eye on you, make sure you don't absent-mindedly slip a packet of Craven A into your pocket and so forth. She'll even have to accompany you to the you-know-what. It's all perfectly usual, but before we say goodbye I want to wish you luck. It's an awfully simple little job, but the first time's always a bit tense. I'd like you to have this."

He held out a small box, tied with an orange bow. Inside was a silver powder compact.

"Thank you," said Charlotte.

"It's lovely. It's not too expensive for a girl like Daniele?"

"Dear me, no. It's French, too. Look at the maker's name." Julien Levade's office was on the first floor of one of the larger streets of Lavaurette. A double outer door opened from the street on to a courtyard on the far side of which the main entrance led into a gloomy reception area that smelled of floor polish and caporal tobacco. The receptionist, a plump woman in her thirties called Pauline Bobotte, directed visitors to any of the half-dozen enterprises in the building, and worked the small telephone exchange, parroting the number in her uncompromising accent and prodding in the little plugs with their frayed cords. It was a matter of unquestioned routine for her to listen in on any conversation she chose, and no visitor, however long he had waited in the hall, however urgent his appointment, was allowed to interrupt her deft manoeuvres.

"Mademoiselle Bobotte?"

"Yes?"

"It's Monsieur Levade. I wondered if you had one second ... not if you're busy, of course."

"It's not time for coffee already, is it?"

"Very nearly."

"I'll see what I can do."

Ten minutes later, Pauline Bobotte entered Julien's office with a small white china cup, slightly out of breath from the slippery climb. Julien thought it better not to ask where she procured the coffee she was a resourceful woman with good connections among the local shopkeepers as well as a reliable intimacy with a businessman from Toulouse, who frequently stayed in Lavaurette on his way north. Pauline Bobotte was capable of discretion in her turn. For instance, she never asked why various callers referred to Monsieur Levade as "Octave', nor why it was always these people who seemed to be making urgent assignations.

There was a time to keep silent and listen.

The price Julien paid for the coffee was a brief, slightly flirtatious conversation with Mile Bobotte, in which she asked him about his work, and he questioned her about her home life, implying that she concealed from him the large number of suitors who kept her busy.

Pauline Bobotte went to look at the plans on Julien's drawing board.

"You haven't made much progress, have you?" she said.

"I'm at the stage of creative thinking. Beautiful shapes are forming in my head. Marble staircases are rising up out of nowhere. Fountains are shimmering. I'm wondering whether there should be peacocks on the lawns."

"Well, I hope you're going to put some bedrooms in this hotel."

"Really, Mademoiselle, bedrooms, bedrooms, is that all you think about?"

"You Parisians are all the same," said Pauline Bobotte sternly to hide the beginnings of a blush.

"Quite impractical. If a traveller stops off" for the night he wants a good comfy bed, that's all. He doesn't want peacocks and fountains."

"I thought we'd keep the cloisters, perhaps put some tubs of flowers along here, geraniums, pansies. What do you think?"

"I think it's a shame to wreck a lovely old building. Why can't it carry on as a monastery?"

"There hasn't been a monk there for years. Everything passes, everything changes."

"Well, I'm surprised people have got enough money to do things like this nowadays. It's all we can do to keep body and soul together."

"On the contrary, the Occupation has provided ideal circumstances for the shrewd businessman. Life will resume. There will be full hotels and rich clients. Whether they'll be French or German, of course, I really can't say. But my employers are prepared for all eventualities and they have no doubt taken care to offend no one. Listen. I think I can hear the telephone." Pauline took the empty cup, reluctantly, and made her way downstairs. A few seconds later, Julien's telephone rang.

"I'm just putting you through," he heard Pauline's voice say.

"Octave?" said a man's voice.

"Yes," said Julien.

"Auguste. It's on. Ten thirty. Understood?"

"Yes."

The line, to Pauline Bobotte's irritation, went dead.

Charlotte waited an hour and twenty minutes, dressed as Dominique Guilbert, sitting on the edge of the bed in yet another room in the flat. There was a short knock at the door and an expensively dressed woman, a little older than Charlotte, came in and introduced herself.

"Daniele? I'm Alice. I'm going to look after you now." Charlotte took in the woman's tailored suit, her crocodile handbag, and felt the dowdiness of her own mousey hair, her clothes, the cumbersome shoes.

"The car's waiting downstairs. It's about an hour's drive. Do you need the loo?"

"Alice' had what Charlotte recognised to be a smart perhaps affectedly so English accent. Although she was not in uniform, she reminded Charlotte of what Cannerley had said about the fanys being as posh as Queen Charlotte's Ball.

"No, I'm all right thanks. I went when I took my make-up off."

"Super. If you're quite ready then, I think we'll make our move." Alice opened the door a few inches and received an affirmative nod from the butler at the end of the corridor.

"All right, my dear. Here we go."

Charlotte followed Alice to the front door of the flat, a brief' Good luck, Miss." from the butler following her out on to the landing.

A black Riley was waiting at the foot of the steps outside, a uniformed fany standing chauffeur-like beside the open rear door. She took Charlotte's roughened brown suitcase and stowed it in the boot, while Charlotte sank down on to the red leather seat. It was early evening and a newspaper seller was barking some incomprehensible sound. The driver moved a switch in the walnut dashboard and Charlotte heard the indicating finger slide out from the side of the car as the three women pulled out into the traffic and headed north towards St. John's Wood. Julien finished the dinner the housekeeper had made earlier and left on top of the cooker. He wiped a piece of bread round the edge of the plate to soak up the remains of the gravy generated by the concoction of meat and vegetable. He never asked what the ingredients were in case it put him off, but tonight's effort had been almost palatable, helped by the half-glass of red wine he had thrown in while reheating it.

He poured the last of the litre of Cotes du Rhone into his glass and lit a cigarette. It was nine thirty. He could not conceal from himself the fact that he was enjoying this very much indeed: he was in perfect time, he was just drunk enough and it was a beautiful, star-packed night. He carried the dishes through to the kitchen and left them by the sink; then he went round the apartment closing the shutters. The high ceilings and the bare floors made it noisy; he left his shoes by the door so as not to disturb the family who lived on the ground floor. He filled a small flask with brandy and slipped it into the pocket of the old leather jacket he took from the row of pegs in the hall. He could not remember when these excursions had taken on such an alcoholic character, but it now seemed indispensable. He checked that the bedroom window was open and noted with pleasure how well the housekeeper had tidied the room: the great wooden-ended bed and its antique canopy looked positively seigneurial, he thought. No one else had wanted this ancient, draughty apartment; only an architect would have been foolish enough to rent it. He put on some heavy boots, patted his pockets to make sure he had cigarettes and took a small rucksack from beside the front door.

Inside were four electric torches and some spare batteries.

Julien clattered down the stairs, forgetting as always, until it was too late, that his footsteps would cause a scuffling from behind the concierge's door. He strode across the hall but was not quite fast enough.

"Out again tonight. Monsieur Levade?"

"Absolutely. I'm meeting my fiancee at the station. She's just arrived from Lyon."

"I thought she was from Paris."

"Oh, that's a different one," said Julien, as he supped through the front door.

"Good night."

He went round to the side of the building where he kept his bicycle. He connected the dynamo to the wheel and pedalled off, the thin beam of his front lamp expanding to a handsome glow as he accelerated into the village. On the main road out of Lavaurette, just before the school, was a solid, spacious house that belonged to Mlle Cariteau, the post-mistress. Julien left his bicycle propped against the railings at the side and went cautiously to the back door, where he knocked on the glass.

"Who is it?" A manly figure with a woman's voice moved in silhouette across the lit blind on the door.

Julien smiled.

"It's me. Julien."

A bolt was slid, the door opened on to a large, untidy kitchen, and Sylvie Cariteau offered one cheek, then the other, in greeting.

"Good evening, Madame." Julien went to shake hands with Mlle Cariteau's mother, who sat in an easy chair by the vast, blackened fireplace.

"Sit down." Mlle Cariteau pulled back a chair at the table, which still bore the remnants of the two women's exiguous dinner. She poured Julien a glass of wine and pushed it towards him over the pitted oak surface.

Julien looked at Mlle Cariteau. He needed to do no more than raise an eyebrow.

"All right?"

She nodded.

"All right. They're asleep. My mother looked after them today." Mlle Cariteau opened her hands and glanced towards the rafters. Julien followed her gaze. He had never been upstairs, but it was easy enough to imagine from the outside of the house that it had ample unused spaces.

"We have twelve bedrooms," said Mlle Cariteau.

"How are the children, Madame?"

He always had some difficulty, as a Parisian, understanding exactly what Madame Cariteau said. Although she was probably no more than seventy, a lack of teeth added to the puzzle of her accent.

"They were frightened. The little one, Jacob, wept all morning, then suddenly he seemed to cheer up. I gave them some paper and pencils and they did some drawing. I heard them laughing together in the afternoon.

The older one kept asking me when his parents were coming back." The old woman drew her lower lip up over both gums and shrugged.

"I don't like to let them downstairs, that's the nuisance of it." Julien sighed.

"We'll have to try to work something out."

"Leave them for the time being," said Mlle Cariteau.

"We can manage."

Julien looked interrogatively towards the mother, who gave a sour little nod of agreement.

The Whitley smelled of raw machinery: oil, tin, rivet. Charlotte felt a pair of hands pushing on her backside, then a shoulder being added to the shove. She sprawled inside, almost unable to move for the bulk of the parachute, and lay down as instructed by an R.A.F sergeant across the bomb bay with her head and shoulders propped against the side of the fuselage. Somehow, despite the training, she had been expecting seats.

"Yves' followed her into the plane and took up his position opposite. He gave her an encouraging wink. Charlotte was filled with a sudden certainty that she was going to feel sick. The lack of any view, the mechanical smell and her sense of anxiety reminded her of sitting in the back of her father's shooting brake on long drives across the Highlands, with the windows half fogged by rain, the air heavy with pipe smoke, her view bounded by the back of her parents' heads and Roderick's bare knees beside her.

There were several wooden crates stowed at one end of the fuselage with parachutes attached. In addition to Yves and Charlotte, there were two RAP

sergeants on board, who would act as dispatchers when they reached the drop zone. The engines started up while the two men checked that everything was securely strapped; then one of them settled himself between Charlotte and the partition that separated them from the nose section, which contained the controls and the flying crew. He patted her on the thigh and grinned.

"All right, my love?" Everyone seemed to be from Lancashire. The plane came to a halt and the engine noise increased. Gregory would know what this meant: perhaps they were waiting for a signal. Then they had it; and the plane began to roar and shake as it committed itself full-heartedly to the runway. The whole body of it seemed to tremble with the effort of making this unnatural transition; metal, weight, loading, bodies and gravity fought against the bull-like perseverance of the engines until, reluctantly, against nature, the plane hauled itself up off the ground.

Until her training at Manchester Charlotte had only once been in an aeroplane, when she flew to Rome to complete her Italian course; all her journeys to France had started with the boat train at Victoria and finished at the Gare du Nord. The peculiar thing about this plane was that it seemed to be pointing downwards: there was a clear upward slope from nose to tail.

After a few minutes she asked the sergeant why this was and he told her it was just a characteristic of the Whitley, nothing to fret about, and that they were in fact climbing steadily. From a cardboard box he produced some cups and a thermos, from which he poured tea. Yves accepted with a smile and Charlotte, thinking her stomach might be happier with something to work on, did likewise.

"I've got something a bit stronger if you'd like it," said the sergeant, holding up a flask. Charlotte remembered her father telling her how the rum ration would come up to the front in the last war before the men were required to go over the top into the storm of steel.

"What is it?" she said.

"Rum."

She shook her head: she did not need that kind of courage to drop into an unoccupied field in the country for which she yearned. Yves also declined, and the sergeant replaced his flask in the box.

"We'll be going over the French coast at Cabourg," he said, 'then down over Tours. We'll have to have the lights off soon. I suggest you try and get some sleep. I'll not let you miss your stop. Oh, and by the way." He was having to shout to be heard over the engines.

"If you hear gun fire that's probably our lad in the rear turret just testing his equipment. Doesn't mean Jerry's on our tail. All right?"

Charlotte had not known there was a gunner on board, but it seemed a vaguely comforting thought. Yves smiled and nodded; he seemed to be dropping off already. The dim lighting was extinguished as they crossed the Channel, and in the darkness Charlotte tried to picture Cabourg below them. She thought of how she had sat in Monsieur Loiseau's shady garden with her book. In the shaping of one man's imagination, this Norman seaside town, renamed Balbec and moved a little to the west, had offered a version of unstable paradise.

After the journey of the little train and the bewitching sight of the small band of girls on the beach, the furtive grandeur of the hotel itself had been the setting of snobbery, humiliation and the narrator's kiss declined by Albertine, the object of his love. Yet as a teenager, reading Proust's novel for the first time, Charlotte had seen Balbec as a place which had encapsulated some perfectly developed society, where an intense feeling might be properly valued, not dismissed merely because, like all things, it passed.

She did not really understand what the jealous narrator meant when he suspected Albertine of enjoying 'hidden pleasures' with Lea and the other women. Now perhaps there were Nazi officers in the hotel dining room; all the bedrooms where once the wealthy inhabitants of the Faubourg St. Germain had changed from their modest woollen bathing costumes into their evening dresses and white ties were occupied, four at a time, by murderous young men in grey uniforms. Perhaps the gorgeous world of the book was more than just fictional; perhaps it was untrue.

Eventually Charlotte felt the sergeant's hand once more on her thigh.

"We're starting to go down, love. We've passed over Tours and we're coming near Limoges. We're going to drop the stores first, then the two of you. Obviously if we did it the other way round you might get a nasty surprise dropping on top of you. He's going first, then you. Now I'm going to show you the line because I want you to be happy that you're firmly attached." He pointed to the connection between the parachute and the static line that would jerk it open as soon as Charlotte was clear of the undercarriage.

"See? Nice and firm. No worries?"

Time."

Both sergeants went forward to the drop hole, which was just behind the cockpit partition. They hauled the two halves of it open and beckoned Yves and Charlotte to come forward. Charlotte peered into the darkness.

At first she saw nothing, and then she could make out the twinkle of lights in a small town. She felt a stinging in her eyes.

The other sergeant gestured them back to their places as the plane began to descend, though he himself stayed by the hatch. The pilot seemed to be having difficulty in getting the heavy bomber on line, and it pitched and heaved weightily as he fought to level off at the prescribed height.

Charlotte felt sweat erupt on her palms as the engine roared, faded and roared. She swallowed hard and forced out saliva; she saw the sergeant by the hatch mouthing something anxiously, but could not hear for the sound of the engines. Then she saw his thumbs go up and she lip-read the word 'lights': somewhere in the heaving darkness below was a farmer with a torch and Charlotte's heart filled with absurd love for him.

The sergeants began to push out the crates, and they could feel the heavy jerk beneath the fuselage as the strops paid out and ripped open the parachutes. Six crates went down in quick succession, then the plane climbed and began a long banking turn to come in for its second run.

"You lot now," grinned Charlotte's sergeant as he beckoned them up to the hatch.

Yves offered Charlotte his hand.

"Good luck." They squatted by the hole as the heavy plane once more bucked and plunged its way round.

Interior lights were switched on in the fuselage and a red lamp appeared on the wall above the hatch. Yves's sergeant pulled him forward, watched the light until it turned green, then heaved him out into the night.

They heard a bang and a flap. Charlotte's sergeant pulled her by the arm to the edge of the hole; she sat with her feet dangling in the darkness. She saw his anxious eyes straining up at the red light. Then he kissed her cheek and hurled her through the floor.

She was driven upside down, then sideways, by the blast; she had no breath, no sense, then she felt the straps of the parachute dig into the flesh on the bottom of her thigh-bones as the canopy opened and the straps took her weight. The parts of her body, which seemed to have been dispersed about the sky, head there, legs far behind, stomach somewhere back in the fuselage, began to reassemble themselves about one central point provided by the pull of gravity on the webbing between her legs. The momentum of the plane meant that the parachute was still oscillating in wide, sickening arcs, but beneath the nausea and the fear Charlotte felt the exhilaration of the drop and the safety of knowing, from the pressure of the straps, that she was safe. The ground hit her while she was still swinging, much before she expected, and she cracked her elbow as her legs-irreproachably together - could not stop her hurtling sideways on impact. She felt earth and grass smacking into her face and entering her mouth. For a moment she lay still, unable to move or breathe. Slowly she gathered herself, bit by bit, and climbed to her feet.

As she breathlessly took in the solid facts of her arrival, smacking the disc on her belly to release the parachute, looking round at the beams of torchlight in the darkened field, she felt no fear, only the irresistible uprising of happiness. In the farmyard the three men worked swiftly to unload the crates from the cart while the rib by horse snorted in the moonlight.

"Almost done. Just wait one minute."

Yves and Charlotte did as they were told; neither could think of anything to say, but they found themselves continually smiling at one another. One of the men produced their suitcases from an opened crate.

They were led into the house and introduced properly to Octave, Auguste and Cesar. Having been trained by a G Section visitor, the men were scrupulous about using only these names, and Charlotte found it difficult to penetrate even this elementary cover to guess what kind of people they were. They did not seem like farmers. The one called Octave was in his late twenties, dark, with a twitchy, humorous face; he spoke quickly and in a markedly Parisian way. Cesar looked like a schoolboy, tall, with big hands and a low voice, but clumsy and deferential in his manner, as though embarrassed by his education.

Only Auguste looked like a man of the region: he was solidly made, with a high colour and a shaggy moustache that seemed prematurely grey. He also took charge of the cooking, producing a five-foot length of thick sausage, which he cut into shorter pieces and threw into a frying pan on the range.

Cesar fetched a round loaf of heavy bread from a cupboard and Octave filled their glasses with wine.

As they drank each other's health. Charlotte had the impression that it was not the first wine the men had drunk that night. When the sausages were almost ready, Auguste broke half a dozen eggs into the pan, then served the whole lot on two plates.

"But what about you?" said Charlotte as Auguste joined the other men at the table and sat back with an expectant look to watch his visitors eat.

"We've already had dinner."

Charlotte calculated that in addition to three fried eggs she had two and a half feet of sausage on her plate.

None of the three men would be available to help them in the morning, so they spent several minutes going over maps and making sure that Charlotte and Yves knew where they were and where they had to go. They admired the false papers that had been made for them in London in a grey stucco-fronted house on the Kingston by-pass, Mr. Jackson had told Charlotte with dry enjoyment. The next day they would walk to the station at Lavaurette, a distance of about five kilometres, and take a train; Octave told them to take what they wanted from their cases for the night, and he would arrange for them to be left at the station: walking across country with suitcases might look suspicious.

When Charlotte could eat no more, she pushed her plate into the middle of the table and over-rode Auguste's exclamations of surprise and disappointment by persuading Cesar, who had been watching with insatiable adolescent hunger, that he might help her out.

The men said goodbye and shook hands warmly. Yves and Charlotte would be quite safe for the night; there was no need for them to worry.

Octave wrote down his office telephone number on a piece of paper, showed it to Charlotte, then, when she had memorised it, put it in his pocket.

"There are hardly any Germans in the Free Zone," he said.

"But you need to watch out for the Vichy police. And be careful with gendarmes, though most of them will turn a blind eye. I'm sure you've been told all this."

Yves nodded. The more time she spent in his company, the more Charlotte liked Yves; he was a calm, taciturn little man, but he had the light of a wicked impatience in his eyes.

They found two bedrooms upstairs on either side of the farmhouse.

Offered the choice by Yves, Charlotte picked the one whose bed had a bolster.

She had kept back from her suitcase one of the G Section French vests, which she wrapped over the part of the bolster on which she intended to lay her face. She had also retained some washing things, though these were less useful since the farmhouse had no running water.

As she pulled the shutters noisily together. Charlotte glimpsed the rear light of a bicycle, wobbling from side to side, as Julien Levade tipsily tried to keep his balance with the weight of Charlotte's suitcase on the metal luggage rack above the rear wheel.

Mlle Cariteau's house, despite its open position on the main road and its numerous large windows, seemed incapable of capturing the light.

The upstairs room in which Andre and Jacob were lodged admitted only slats or wedges of summer sun across the window seat and on to the worn floorboards; the long interior corridors, lined with vast wooden-fronted wardrobes, were in perpetual dusk.

As the days went by, Madame Cariteau, thinking it might stop their thoughts from roaming, tried to settle the boys into the semblance of a routine. She had one or two children's books left from the childhood of her own daughter, and she found a doll and some wooden toys in one of the wardrobes. Sylvie had been a good girl, an easy child to bring up, with a naturally hopeful attitude, despite having no father. So many children in Lavaurette were in the same situation that, although Sylvie might have felt it as a sadness, it was never a peculiarity. But, while the relationship between mother and young daughter had been happy and fruitful, it had also been a long time ago.

Madame Cariteau found that her touch with small children seemed to have gone; she fought to remember how to talk to them, what they required for entertainment. Luckily, the elder boy seemed to have picked up the rudiments of reading, so, after lunch, when she dispatched Jacob to his bed to rest, she took Andre on her knee and went through Sylvie's old books with him.

It was a narrow decision as to whether Andre Duguay or Madame Cariteau was the better reader. Her greater experience of having seen groups of letters clustered on shop fronts or road signs made her able to recognise some long or complex words, as she would have recognised a human face; but Andre's dogged phonetic technique helped build up the sounds of words that had defeated Madame Cariteau. After some days of resting his head against the old woman's bosom, inhaling her unwashed, ancient but oddly comforting smell, Andre in any case came to know the story of the crocodile and her missing egg so well that he barely needed to look at the words. Madame Cariteau was impressed by his scholarship and by her own unsuspected aptitude for teaching.

To his question, "Where is my mother?" she gave her response in the same words: "They've gone away, but they'll be back. Until then you're quite safe with us." By never varying this formula she managed to make Andre feel that the question was less and less worth framing; and from a hundred times a day the frequency with which he asked it declined to half a dozen.

Madame Cariteau enjoyed looking after the children, and saw it as a natural act of female kindness. Although she accepted that Jewish people were dishonest and anti-French, and that the Vichy legislation to restrain their activities and confiscate their businesses was overdue, she didn't see how the little ones were to blame: after all, it was not Andre or Jacob's fault that they were born Jewish. Her daughter's view was more developed, which was why it was she who had been approached by Julien to look after the children in the first place. That was her business, Madame Cariteau thought: Sylvie was entitled to any opinions she liked, but none of them need affect her own attitude.

Andre, meanwhile, just wanted to be happy, and, having been happy all his life, was driven naturally towards this regular state of mind.

Sylvie Cariteau told her mother she thought he was 'adaptable', and praised him for it, but it was a blinder craving than that. Because he had no power to change his circumstances, his will to survival and his legacy of natural content deceived him into experiencing them as bearable.

Yet something was checked in him. Without his mother's constant touch, he shrank a little; his movements became less fluid; he walked more often than he skipped; he remembered himself more, never any longer forgetting to say please or thank you. Slowly, too, he began to register his father's absence; he missed his physical bulk and the stability it represented; he missed the feeling of bodily release that followed their wrestling matches. And for all the way the observable changes were so small, he also still had fits of misery.

"I think we should speak French, don't you?" said Charlotte.

"All right," said Yves.

"Just as well to get in practice."

They walked down a cart track until they came to a small country road with high hedgerows and cow pastures on either side. The sun had a midday strength by only ten o'clock; the sound of cattle-bells came from distant fields, in some of which the hay had already been rolled into huge circular bales. Charlotte felt well rested and at home; the events of the previous evening had for once driven tormenting thoughts of Gregory from her mind and she had slept well.

The brightness of the late summer sunlight made the landscape look almost surreally French; the farm buildings and the vegetation were so typical that they verged on exaggeration: everything is safe, they seemed to say, everything is unchanged. Yet Charlotte also felt the fraudulence of her own position and imagined that it would be clear to anyone they met. What else could she and Yves be but two British people who had parachuted in last night, bent on undermining the French government and its German masters?

When they eventually passed a young man on a bicycle and exchanged a brief greeting. Charlotte felt an impulse to declare herself, admit the game was up and ask him to take her to the nearest police station; but neither this man, nor an old woman in a farmyard, nor Bernard, the gendarme, whom they passed on the outskirts of Lavaurette, paid them any attention at all. When she told Yves what she had felt, he admitted to the same sensation, and they agreed to put out of their minds at once the peculiar and infantile idea that their true identities were so apparent.

Even so, when they had retrieved their suitcases from the stationmaster's office and gone to the ticket window. Charlotte could not help feeling surprised at the ease with which the first francs she unrolled from the large bundle provided in London were accepted by the clerk, or at the weary manner in which he went through the routine of issuing their tickets.

The idea of being someone else, of being Dominique Guilbert, born in Paris, married to a clerk, was in fact appealing to Charlotte. The anguish of Peter Gregory's presumed death meant nothing to Dominique Guilbert; nor was Dominique in the least affected by the lesions and unresolved knots of Charlotte Gray's childhood: she had her husband and her sick father to think about. The train did not leave till two o'clock, so Charlotte and Yves went into Lavaurette for lunch. The dining room of the Cafe du Centre was half full, mostly with men. Charlotte's eye raked over the waitress an attractive, disdainful young woman, too aware, in Charlotte's judgement, of her good looks and the effect they had on men. She brought them a small meal of indifferent quality and afterwards abruptly clipped the coupons from the Kingston bypass.

They walked back to the station and waited for the train. Before joining the established network in Uzerche, Yves had business to do in Agen a large town further to the south-west. The slow connections out of Lavaurette meant that they would spend all afternoon on the train, and Charlotte bought some newspapers to pass the time. She gave one to Yves, though she was not sure how much of it he would understand; the French he had talked to her so far had been worse than Mr. Jackson had suggested. His other skills must be of a high and unusual quality for G Section to have risked him. Charlotte thought; perhaps one day she would discover what they were.

III 4

Twenty minutes on foot from Lavaurette was a house with slate-covered towers and a low, rectangular courtyard that included an arched pigeonnier, surrounded by abundant but untended land. It was not quite a chateau, though it was almost big enough; it was known in the town, to the postman and to its very few visitors, as the Domaine. It was not the sort of house that anyone in Lavaurette wanted to live in: it was too remote, too draughty, too imposing. It was impossible to heat in winter, and in summer impossible to fill, with its echoing salon, immense panelled dining room and numberless bedrooms, none sealed or closed but all kept in a state of suspended life, the beds made, the floors not exactly clean but swept occasionally, the decorations faded but intact.

A family must once have lived here, though even the most fruitful parents could not have filled all the rooms; it would have needed cousins and visitors to justify the half-dozen servants' bedrooms in the attic, and to prevent the long, connected spaces from imposing their silence. For many years the undisturbed volume of the rooms had swelled against the practical limits that contained it; the air seemed to have expanded within the confines of the house until it could spread no further and had instead become thicker, turning back on itself, and cloaking such movement as there was with quietness.

It was early morning in the Domaine; wood pigeons were calling in the trees beyond the long grass, and the climbing sun was already striking deep inside the house through the open shutters on the east side.

In one of the smaller bedrooms the house's single inhabitant was sitting up in bed and frantically searching his memory; he was trying to remember if he had dreamed. By his bed was a large pad of paper with pencil notes and sketches, put there for the purpose of instant recollection; but one page had taken him three months to fill, and neither the images nor the words seemed to be of any consequence. The man scratched his thick white hair and sighed.

Nothing.

In the corner of the room was a small shrine. On a table, a figure of the Virgin was set on a lace cloth, with a missal and some candles.

The man climbed out of bed, a little stiffly, rubbed the tendon behind his ankle, and made his way over to the shrine, where he knelt down to pray. As a convert to Catholicism, he was anxious to do everything the right way, but as a Jew he could not quite shake off a more conversational style of dealing with his Maker. He prayed for himself and he prayed for his departed friends, may God have mercy on their souls, whose names he kept in the missal and spoke out loud. His own family name, Rutkowski, had been changed by his father to Levade, in what he believed was a compromise between the phonemes of his adored, adopted country and an acknowledgement of his Hebrew origins.

He said a brief prayer for his son Julien and for the other children he had sired but had not known. He fiercely regretted that he could feel no tie with these scattered people, whose ages varied from forty to ten; he did not even know if there were four or five or six, though he believed there was a daughter in Limoges. Since his ten-year conversion to Christianity, he had felt troubled by this negligence. The Domaine had only one bathroom, a minimal space whose door was disguised as the last of a series of cupboards, reluctantly conceded its bare existence in the otherwise dry landscape of the upper floor.

It was a long and inconvenient walk for a sixty-two year old man to make each morning, but he was unwilling to change to a nearer bedroom because he believed the one he had chosen had particular dreaming qualities.

Levade's tenancy of the Domaine had been the subject of hostile discussion in Lavaurette. He was reviled by Madame Galliot as a lecher and by Monsieur Benech as a Jew; Madame Gayral believed he was a Satanist. At any rate, he was indisputably Parisian and peculiar; although occasional visitors, including priests, had been seen to take the turning to the Domaine, Levade himself had never set foot in the Cafe du Centre, had never been seen to buy food or tobacco. He had a housekeeper, a girl from another village who was thought to be mentally defective, and his son took him food and wine once a week a further reason why Julien, though not disliked, was regarded with caution in Lavaurette.

The main bedroom in the Domaine, an airy, high-ceilinged chamber whose floor-length windows granted long clear hours of light, was rumoured to be the centre of whatever unsavoury, un-Christian activities it was that the old man enjoyed. No reliable witness had returned with a description of the bacchanalian squalor to which he had reduced what was once the parents' bedroom, a sacred place at the heart of the family, at the centre of an old, traditional house. An hour after rising, washed, dressed and dreamless, Levade made his way to the locked door of the principal bedroom.

The newspaper Charlotte read on the train was the first indication she had of how greatly the country had changed since her last visit. She had previously found French newspapers arid and charmless She had been influenced by the way in which they had been introduced to her as a teenager by the father of her exchange family, Monsieur Loiseau, who spoke reverently about Le Figaro and its great, murdered editor, a Monsieur Gaston Calmette, who had had the honour of being the dedicatee of A La Recherche du Temps Perdu. Dutifully she had persevered through reports of stock exchange movements, foreign policy and structural developments at the Justice Ministry.

The paper she nicked through on the train to Agen seemed less interested in reporting than in propaganda: fatherland, patriotism and the dangers of Bolshevism were invoked in almost every article. She counted eight photographs of Marshal Petain, who seemed to be presented as a sort of supra-political figure, giving the reader an excuse not to have to think about public affairs. There were cheerful reports of leagues and societies dedicated to the rebirth of traditional folk songs, and pictures of children in a variety of uniforms. To Charlotte they looked like English brown shirts or Hitler youth, though oddly enough there was hardly any mention of the fact that France was partly occupied and wholly subjugated by the Nazis.

The society encouraged by the uncritical articles was one of camp fires, khaki shorts and breeding. A cartoon showed a Spirit of France with its arm round a uniformed child; the figure that embodied this sacred spirit was not a bannerclenching Marianne but a giant Gaul in a skirt, with a blond walrus moustache and shoulder-length fair hair.

To Charlotte it was as though England beneath the Blitz had chosen to invoke the spirits of Caratacus and morris dancing.

The tone of the articles was not just stoical or resigned, but extraordinarily cheerful: a new Europe was being built, and the finest brains of France's bureaucratic class-by a natural sequence of logic, therefore, the finest brains in Europe-were at the heart of this process, working from a number of hotels in Vichy. It was accepted that some political power had been temporarily ceded, but this was viewed by the writers of all three articles on the editorial page as a worthwhile manoeuvre. They argued on strategic grounds that the Germans would provide a strong framework within which French interests could best operate after the imminent end of the war.

On tactical grounds, they said, the current state of emergency helped hasten through some overdue reforms, such as terminating the democratic excesses of the Third Republic. And on moral grounds they thought that a degree of mortification of the flesh (rationing, curfews) was not only well deserved, but would renew the national vigour that had fallen into a state of flabby, Jewish decadence. Charlotte offered the newspaper queasily to Yves, who shook his head silently, as though unwilling to risk his French in front of the three other people in the compartment.

After an hour the door slid open and a policeman asked to see their documents. He wore a different uniform from any they had seen before, but the three French people in the carriage seemed unsurprised by his request and meekly offered up their papers. Charlotte looked out of the window while he examined the identity card of Dominique Guilbert, checked its photograph against her averted face and wordlessly handed it back. She noticed that Yves managed to look both resigned and slightly truculent at yet another official's questioning his bona fides; the policeman himself seemed irritated by his task and slid the door closed with a minimal grunt. Charlotte had to check the beginnings of a smile of elation; she turned it into a yawn as she surveyed the passing countryside of southwest France. The phrase that came to her was 'piece of cake'.

At half past six the train eventually slowed beside a steep, wooded hill in which Charlotte could make out occasional patches of white stone and a couple of houses. Agen, Agen, barked the station tannoy in a jangling south-west accent. Yves and Charlotte descended from the train and walked along the platform to the main concourse, where they found a left-luggage office.

Yves carried a small briefcase.

Across the street from the station was a wedge-shaped building painted pale blue, with ridged plasterwork like a wedding cake, called the Cafe Hotel Terminus.

"We'll meet there after you've taken me to my address," said Yves. Instead of taxis, there were only horse-drawn carts outside the station. In Agen itself there were hardly any cars, and those that there were moved ponderously, powered not by petrol but by charcoal-gas engines-a cumbersome cylinder stuck into the boot. In atmosphere the town was fully southern: the street that took them down to the Boulevard de la Republique had roof tiles and wrought iron balconies of an almost Italian kind; yet at this time of day, the hour that in Rome or Naples would have seen the chattering passeggiata, there were few people on the streets and nothing for them to look at in the shop windows except photographs of Marshal Petain. There was a sullen, despondent air that the hot evening and the sound of women's voices through open shutters did nothing to dispel. A young man came toiling towards them on a bicycle, pouring sweat from the effort of pulling an adapted trailer in which sat two elderly, self-conscious people in Sunday clothes.

For the first time Charlotte felt frightened. The fear -was not of being arrested or deported, but a visceral response to the place itself. There were no Germans, there was no coercion; but this southern town, with many dark-skinned people, not French in the same way as Vichy or Illiers, seemed utterly adrift, in a state close to breakdown.

She hurried Yves down narrower streets towards the address whose location, and the route to which, they had both memorised. They made their way swiftly and unchallenged through the hot, pathetic town; they seemed almost the only people with anywhere to go.

They rang the bell on a door next to an empty cafe and heard footsteps on the stairs inside. A woman with a headscarf opened the door, and after what seemed to Charlotte an unnecessarily protracted exchange of coded reassurances, took Yves inside the house with her.

"Two hours," said Yves as he closed the door behind him. Charlotte walked a long loop back towards the station, as slowly as possible, to pass the time. She found that her lips were moving silently and that she was talking to Gregory, as she often did when she was alone. Her conversations with him served different purposes according to her mood, though the premise on which they all operated was that he was not dead.

Not dead, she thought, as she sat in the bar of the Hotel Terminus; not dead in either sense: still breathing, somewhere in France, and the love she felt for him, which existed between them like some fragile but ferocious third entity, that too was still alive.

Was it only the effort of her memory that sustained it and was that effort bound to be worn down, in the end, by the passage of time? She believed not. The survival of the feeling was in some ways more important to her than the survival of Gregory himself. The existence of that transcendent emotion had allowed her to escape from the confines of her personal history; it had granted value to her life.

It did not seem to matter whether it had first flared then, or then, at that, or this, or any other moment, because if it was real and had value, then it existed outside time.

Yet she did miss him. Simply, like a child removed from its mother, like any being taken from its source of love, she yearned for him now, here, this instant in the bar of the hotel, where she drank foul, dark coffee.

With her hands she longed to stroke his hair; the pores of her skin missed his touch; she felt sick and closed-off inside because the natural fluency of her thought had become shaped by conversation only with him. She did not feel the shapeless despondency that had afflicted her at various times before: on the contrary, she felt directed, almost galvanised. But the weight of her anguish over Gregory this one missing airman, this unreliable, perhaps (she shook her head as her lips moved) unworthy man filled her whole upper half, diaphragm, lungs, ribs, shoulders, with such crushing gravity that the sighs with which she was obliged to displace it shook her entire body.

She looked up from her table and saw Yves standing above her, looking down a little curiously.

"All right?" she said.

He nodded.

"We should perhaps find somewhere to stay the night," said Charlotte.

"Here?"

"It's rather gloomy, isn't it?" said Charlotte.

"I'm sure we could find somewhere a bit more cheerful. Shall we go and explore?"

Yves nodded again, and Charlotte left some coins on the table. She forced all thoughts of Gregory from her mind, trying to channel their unwanted energy into a renewed concentration on the assigned task of looking after Yves.

The problem of room-sharing was one that Yves raised diffidently, in English, in the park to which he directed Charlotte to be sure of not being overheard. It was peculiar enough that it should be she, not he, who did the talking in the hotel, he explained, but downright suspicious that she should then book two rooms. Of course, their identity cards would show they were not married, but that in a way made their travelling together far more plausible: a man would only ever take his mistress, never his wife, on a business trip such as his cover story described, and that was one thing, whatever the changes undergone by this traumatised country, that would still be understood by any real hotelier. His intentions, he would like to reassure her, were of course Yves dozed upright in an armchair in the corner of the room, having absented himself in the passage while Charlotte undressed. The bed was of three-quarter size, guaranteed to compel intimacy between two people but spacious enough for one to stretch out. For all her comparative comfort, Charlotte slept badly. Through the thin walls she could hear a couple making love, she with whinnying abandon, he with dogged grunts and floor-rattling shoves. The single lavatory at the end of the passage flushed on and off throughout the night while unembarrassed footsteps pounded back and forth over the bare boards of the landing.

Charlotte was relieved to be back on the train, heading north, the next morning. There were no seats available and almost no room to stand. Everyone on the train seemed to have at least three large pieces of luggage, and the purpose of most of their journeys, to judge from the smells that came from their suitcases, was to buy and bring home food.

Order seemed to have broken down under the burden of numbers; at one of the many halts on the way north she saw young men wriggling on to the train through the windows.

At Uzerche, Charlotte delivered Yves once more to his destination. Here he was in deep cover, according to Mr. Jackson, and no longer needed her guiding hand. His further movements were of no concern to Charlotte, and, on the G Section model of minimum information, she was strongly discouraged from inquiring about them. She gained the impression that he would be returning to London, perhaps even on the same flight as her, but did not ask. Until then her only contact with Yves would come as a result of wireless messages from London via the operator in Uzerche; communication between there and the Lavaurette area was unpredictable, though such messages as were received would pass through

"Octave'.

In Uzerche, the connection was established much more quickly than in Agen: the retired schoolmaster at whose suburban house they arrived had been expecting them for some hours and seemed relaxed about the contact.

He introduced himself as Gerard and invited Charlotte to have a drink before she made her way. It was mid-afternoon, and Gerard, a tall, courteous man, took a tray of drinks out on to the terrace at the back of his house where two black dachshunds were sleeping fatly on the gravel. He was a widower, he explained, and the dogs were his chief companions; it seemed clear to Charlotte that they were certainly receiving the better part of his meagre food ration. Gerard spoke of his visits to England in the 1920s and of his particular love of the Lake District; his punctilious and enlightened attitude seemed unperturbed by public events, though this civil equilibrium, it seemed to Charlotte, must have required him to avert his eyes.

Their drinks were finished, refilled and finished once again. Gerard's remarks to Charlotte took on a valedictory air. Yves looked at his watch.

Reluctantly, Charlotte stood up to go, and both men escorted her back into the house. She kissed Yves on either cheek as they stood in the hall and shook Gerard's hand.

When she heard the door close behind her and began to walk off down the quiet street, she felt for the first time a panic of loneliness.

Meanwhile, on a grey London evening, Cannerley was waiting in Sir Oliver Cresswell's outer office, twisting the cufflinks in his shirt beneath the scrutiny of an elderly secretary. He assumed there must be something unusually important behind the summons he had received by telephone that morning. This time he had made sure he was early.

"Come in." Sir Oliver appeared briefly at the door, which he left slightly ajar.

"Sit down."

Cannerley perched on the single hard chair that faced the desk. Sir Oliver stood with his elbow resting on the mantelpiece. For such a mentally scrupulous man, he kept a remarkably untidy office, with tottering piles of paper and two or three parched plants. The room was panelled, and above a long table against one wall was a reproduction of the Goya portrait of the Duke of Wellington. Sir Oliver sat down at the desk and looked out of the window.

"You remember our little chat the other day? Well, I've been thinking about it. And a little notion has occurred to me."

"Really?" Cannerley tried not to notice how unpolished his superior's shoes were.

Sir Oliver coughed.

"Are you familiar with the pattern of French resistance, such as it is?"

"Certainly. I wrote a paper on it. It was B-listed, but ' " Of course you did. Well, as you know, the Communists have been the only active group so far. But our government's not worried about them.

They have the whole weight of the Occupant and Vichy and the French populace against them. The problem is that there are now a number of Gaullist outfits starting up."

Cannerley leaned forward.

"I haven't heard much about them."

"There's been nothing to hear. Their policy is to wait for the moment to strike.

"Long-term action", I think they call it."

Cannerley laughed and Sir Oliver wiped the back of his hand swiftly across his own mouth.

"Meanwhile they're in the market for arms drops.

Their main network was infiltrated from the beginning by Abwehr agents. But although it's very small beer at the moment, our masters feel the Gaullist movement is something that needs to be watched."

Sir Oliver had a rolling 'r', which made a phrase like 'arms drops' problematic; it gave it an inappropriate smack of the nursery.

Cannerley found that this childishness made the whole enterprise sound paradoxically more frightening.

He tried to concentrate.

"I didn't know anyone took de Gaulle seriously."

"They don't. But if the war continues to run the Allied way ..."

"Even so," said Cannerley.

"Old Joan of Arc with his merry men in Carlton Terrace ... I mean, for a start, he's been sentenced to death by the French government!"

Sir Oliver sighed.

"Like the French, we have to think of the likely configuration of Europe after the war. We have to consider all alternatives, however preposterous. We want to be the first country in the new Europe, albeit with some American support."

"What about the Russians?"

"Good God, I can assure you there are plans to shake hands with our Russian friends as far East as possible." Sir Oliver gave a shudder.

"Meanwhile, the spiking of the Gaullist networks would serve a number of purposes. It would be a setback for the Abwehr. It would clear the way for G Section networks and stop de Gaulle getting too big for his boots.

It would help keep French resistance under British control. And of course the Service would come out smelling of roses. It's a happy coincidence of idealism and self-interest."

Cannerley smiled.

"Is the word we're looking for Realpolitik?"

"I do hope not. Anyway, it seems to me quite feasible that Fowler-or Mirabel", as they apparently call him over there-should wish to speak to the Gray girl now she's in his area. He asks her to run a little errand for him and she passes on the information-if that's the right word-to the local Gaullists. False times, wrong map references and so on. Gentle havoc ensues. The idea is that the confusion should be as public as possible, to do maximum damage to the General's reputation."

"How will he persuade her?"

"He'll have information she wants."

"What about?"

"About what motivates her."

"Patriotism?"

"Yes," said Sir Oliver.

"What else?"

"Some love of France?"

"And?"

Cannerley felt sick. He licked his lips. "The airman."

Sir Oliver inclined his head slightly.

"I see," said Cannerley.

"He'll tell her where to find him."

"Only if she otherwise proves insufficiently ... ductile."

"But suppose he's dead."

Sir Oliver opened his hands in a modest shrug.

"To be honest, I don't think it terribly matters."

"I see. So long as she doesn't find out, you mean." Cannerley drew on a short life-time's habit of self-control. He continued to be businesslike.

"And Fowler's all right, is he?"

"Oh, yes," said Sir Oliver.

"Most obliging. A small-time rogue, superficially very respectable and thus terrified of having his tax irregularities made public." He coughed.

"A fairly typical G Section appointment."

Cannerley smiled briefly.

"And the girl's up to it?"

"It's just a message. Regular fany work, as you pointed out. And it keeps it all at arm's length from Fowler. We'll need him again."

"But won't G Section want to claim responsibility?"

"I very much doubt it. They're supposed to be co-ordinating resistance, not misleading other factions.

"Setting Europe ablaze" and so forth." Sir Oliver subdued another smile.

"In theory."

"And they'd be embarrassed to admit that they'd got this girl banging round like a loose cannon."

Sir Oliver nodded.

"And that their local chief's a crook. Of course, if it does backfire, then G Section are in the soup."

"I see."

"And you may well think that a consummation even more devoutly to be wished.

However, for the time being the discrediting of the Gaullists must remain our first objective. The great thing is that it's all completely risk-free."

"Except for the girl."

"Possibly." Sir Oliver took a cigarette from a silver box and tapped it briefly on the desk.

"She's horribly exposed, isn't she?" said Cannerley. He had a sudden picture in his mind of Charlotte's brown eyes, trusting, slightly bashful, when he had first outlined some possibilities to her at the Ritz.

"And she's not even an agent, she's just running an errand."

"They say she speaks very good French."

Cannerley ran a hand over his smoothly shaved chin. He knew he looked doubtful, but he couldn't help it. He had an unpleasant feeling in his stomach. It was like the time as a child when he had tried to show off to his friends on the beach at Polzeath. He had swum far out to sea and waved.

It was only at that moment he knew that he could not possibly make it back to dry land without help.

"There's no gain without risk, Cannerley." Sir Oliver peeled off his smudged spectacles and took some papers from the desk, which he held up almost flat against his face to read.

"Yes, but what would happen if it went wrong?"

"Well." Sir Oliver looked up.

"Let's think. What would happen to someone who excited the wrath of a group of French guerrillas and of the German security who had penetrated them..

"Quite apart from the German military and the French police."

"The likely outcome," said Sir Oliver, 'is not something I feel I could predict with any degree of precision."

Cannerley pursed his lips.

"But do remember that the nature of this war in France is likely to change. If the Allies are successful in North Africa then the Germans will want to go into Southern France as well. There'll be no more Free Zone. The more things go against them, the harsher they'll be on the countries they occupy. And that means that they will eventually provoke real resistance. Even in France."

"And we'll be in the best position to run it," said Cannerley.

"Precisely," said Sir Oliver.

"This is just a little warning shot.

Things will get much rougher. Fowler'll have to get a move on, though, because I think the girl's due to come back soon. Anyway, I just thought you'd like to know. Since you put the girl their way."

"Absolutely. Thank you."

"Joan will see you out."

When Cannerley left the building he went for a walk along the Embankment. The Thames was sluggish and grey as it drifted down from Battersea and Vauxhall. It made him think of fast-flowing French rivers, like the Tarn and the Dordogne, of action and sabotage, and of what Charlotte Gray might be doing. It was not that he particularly cared about her; that was not the problem. The difficulty was that he was frightened. Everyone he knew had made an accommodation with the War, with the demands on their lives of a national emergency, and it seemed to him that he had been drawn into the wrong compromise.

His father was still living, weakening for consecutive days, then briefly reviving. When he was dead, Cannerley felt that an understanding of the world, a way of dealing that was tactical, discreet, yet based on certain given principles, would die with him.

He had believed Sir Oliver and others of an intermediate generation had inherited this unwritten, almost mystical understanding; but now in Sir Oliver he saw only the practical aspect of it: the maneuvering for position, the promotion of one set of interests over another, regardless of its intrinsic merit and with no thought for the human consequences.

When his father died, Cannerley thought, there would be no one in the world whom he could unconditionally admire.

I am a coward, he thought: I'm trapped and I'm too frightened to move. The nature of his "work meant that there was no one with whom he could share his worry. His only choice was to carry on, to act, more than ever, by the book. IV

By the time the train arrived in Limoges, the windows were steamed up with a misty drizzle, which. Charlotte found as she left the station, had wrapped itself about the whole grey town.

She had not had a full stomach since the night of her arrival, but Limoges was the kind of place that should have been able to offer every variety of comfortable, traditional dining modest enough to draw on the fertile local farms, large enough to support big restaurants with menus of Parisian ambition. Charlotte pictured one of those slightly surprising French dinners, such as the one she had had with the Loiseau family in the rue de Toumon, which seem to be coming to a close only to erupt again with the arrival of a loosely set omelette or a pair of roast quails on fried bread.

It was easier to go shopping alone as a woman than to dine alone, and Charlotte exchanged her bread coupon for six ounces of dusty loaf. Her monthly cheese ration having been exhausted by lunch at the Cafe du Centre at Lavaurette, she was obliged to buy a small piece of fatless cheese for cash from a conspiratorial and suspiciously well-fed creamery owner. He mentioned the possibility of Bayonne ham and tinned peas as well, but Charlotte told him she would be back another day. That night she sat down on the bed in her hotel room in Limoges and laid out her possessions. There was a small black velvet package lined with foam rubber that contained the set of wireless crystals; a silver powder compact; French branded toothpaste and brush; sanitary towels (made in Toulouse) discreetly pressed on her by Alice at the aerodrome; a piece of paper with scribbled train times she had copied from the hall of the station at Limoges, carefully using French numerals (the fat nine with its short stalk and little upward tail; the one with its great looping sidepiece; a four with only a minuscule vertical); a detective story of the kind that might interest Dominique Guilbert, purchased in Uzerche; a spare set of Dominique's clothes, two sets of underwear and a folded raincoat. There was also an awkwardly large sum of francs which Dominique was, if asked, obliged to carry for hotel bills and to pay for her father's medical care.

Charlotte was forced to confront the fact that she was now candidly frightened. It was dangerous to be in Limoges, because this was where Dominique's father was supposed to be, and it would be easy to expose her story. It was too complicated, however, to get to Clermont from any other point of departure; it would take too long and might cause her to miss her plane back. For the same reason she had, with some relief, ruled out the possibility of bicycling. She set out the bread and cheese on the table and took a glass from beside the bed. The only water in the room was in a bidet, concealed behind a greasy curtain, and Charlotte felt her face assume its minister of the kirk expression at the thought of it. In the bathroom at the end of the landing she scrupulously washed, then filled the tumbler and returned to her room to dine.

Oh, Peter, she thought, raising her glass and staring at the faded floral wallpaper ahead of her: there is no point in dinner without you, without gin or candles or your rumbling voice. But when she most wanted his words in her head they would not come. She could choose only between her own, obsessive thoughts and the disapproving tartness of Dominique For eight or nine days after the news of Gregory's disappearance his face lay flat against the retina of her memory: exact, complete, an image through which all else was filtered. Then, one morning, she woke up and it had gone.

Although she could have described his features pore by pore, even drawn a likeness, the unity, the character itself had disappeared. However she turned the kaleidoscope, the pattern would not come back into focus and she was tormented by its absence.

There was the sound of a church bell striking nine and Charlotte went to look out of the window. She could see over rooftops down a clenched little side street to the angle of a cobbled square; there were a few lights showing behind closed doors, but there was no one outside.

In its peculiar way, this must be what Mr. Jackson had warned her against, this haunting loneliness. Jackson could have known nothing of the burden of Gregory's absence, but even without that it was bad enough. There was no one in whom she could confide; no one in whom her real self could find answering warmth; and even this glorious country, where once she had only to breathe to feel accompanied and fulfilled, had so lost touch with its prelapsarian self that it had become a foreign land.

She went back to the table and looked down at the dusty crumbs; she ran her fingertip through them and tried to hold her thoughts together.

In Lavaurette, Julien Levade was attempting to find out what had happened to Monsieur and Madame Duguay. For two years there had been great movements of displaced people across France, and the division of the country into zones, one occupied, one nominally free, had made it almost impossible to trace individuals. Although Laval's insistence that the Vichy police be responsible for the maintenance of law in the Occupied as well as the Free Zone might have given a greater unity to police or town hall records, it had been accompanied by an increased secrecy about the movement of Jews. While people of Benech's opinion viewed policing of the Occupied Zone as a sign of how much French autonomy remained, Julien feared that it simply allowed the Gestapo to let the French police do their interrogation and their lolling for them.

He had seen large camps for Jewish refugees being built throughout the Free Zone by the Vichy government, unprompted by the Germans, and could not understand his country's reluctance to take in these refugees; it puzzled him that every new arrival from the East was so furiously resisted. Unwilling to accept them, the Government was still more loth to help the refugees escape, even when it became clear that the Germans had designs on them: instead of encouraging them to leave through the free southern ports, it put them behind barbed wire to await an unspecified disposal.

Most of these people had come from Poland, some from Germany, a few from other European countries. When Julien was told that French Jews were also being rounded up in Paris, he had at first dismissed the rumour as Communist-inspired. His grandfather Max Rutkowski had loved his adopted country with the passion of the immigrant who has found the civil freedoms denied him at home and become embedded in his new society. His admiration of France was increased by emotional gratitude, so that he ascribed even his professional success and family harmony to the beauty and justness of the heavenly civilisation in which he lived. Although Max Rutkowski's own father was Catholic, he was proud of his Jewish blood, and of the religion in which he had been brought up, and felt confident enough to acknowledge it in the Paris suburb where he lived.

By the time he became engaged to a French Jewess, Rutkowski had, for administrative convenience and out of love for its French sound, changed his family name to Levade, but he had no hesitation in bringing up his son, Auguste Levade, in the faith. Although, in the third French generation, the question of nationality was less urgent for him, Julien had, through his grandfather Rutkowski and his father Levade, acquired a reflexive admiration for his country, which his patriotic education had enforced.

Julien's mother, with whom he lived when his father left them soon after Julien's tenth birthday, was a French Catholic whose family could trace its bourgeois path back a hundred years or so into respectable obscurity. Julien survived his father's departure apparently unharmed; his naturally even temperament absorbed the shock and helped his mother to do likewise. His work at school continued to earn the praise of his teachers, who thought it easily within his power to realise his ambition to be an architect.

Julien's involvement with resistance activity at first owed as much to high spirits as to political conviction. He was unsure about the lugubrious general in London; although he liked the idea that only a battle, not a war, had been lost and that a pure spirit of France was being kept alive overseas, it was difficult to say with certainty that this untested, slightly comic person was its one true guardian. The Communist Party was banned, since, through its connection with Russia, it theoretically supported the Allies. Julien had attended a secret meeting in Limoges, where they talked of sabotage and armed resistance, but he felt uneasy about the Communist plans for France, their enthusiasm for Stalin and most particularly for the way they had, a few years earlier, helped derail the Popular Front, the one government for which he had ever felt enthusiasm.

It took an approach from Mirabel on an earlier mission to force Julien into action. His aims seemed attractively simple: blow up as many trains as possible and set up networks which would eventually help kick out the invader.

It was the simple, non-political vigour of his language that attracted Julien. By running errands, taking calls and helping to dispose of parachuted stores, Julien accepted that his actions, however rustic and drink-assisted, did amount to a political statement of a kind.

Although he felt a shiver of unease about showing disrespect towards the Marshal, who had been the national hero of his boyhood, he was unsentimental enough to see the deficiencies of the Government. He was not inspired by its unprincipled haggling over the question of sovereignty, and feared that when the force of Russia and America came to bear, as it surely would, the clinging to the illusion of autonomy would be not a bargaining weapon, but a liability that the Germans would exploit.

The disappearance of Monsieur and Madame Duguay changed everything. The look on Bernard's face provided Julien with an instant of clear and shocking revelation: a chain of compromise and inertia, at no single point perceptible as choice in moral colours, had had in the end a cumulative effect. The complicity of an honest man, thinking only that he wanted to be back with his family for dinner, had closed an evil circle. From that day Julien's flirtatious high spirits concealed a new determination: everyone, he presumed, had his own moment of clarity, but for him the revelation was provided by the look of blameless guilt in a gendarme's eye. His rage, after its first eruption in the hotel de ville, was concealed from the people of Lavaurette. He thought it would be safer that way; but in his subsequent search for information, Pauline Bobotte's switchboard became a hot blur of activity.

Charlotte packed with care in the morning, checking that nothing extraneously British could somehow have found its way into her possessions. Only my thoughts, she said aloud, as she made one final sweep through the room and fixed her mind on her destination: Ussel.

The station at Limoges was already full by the time she arrived, forewarned by experience, half an hour early for her train. She had a cup of coffee in the buffet and, with the taste of roasted wheat seeds in her mouth, made her way down the platform.

The scene reminded her of the countryside on the day of her arrival; there was an element of unsettling caricature. Although it was really she who was being deceptive, it seemed to her that it was the other way round: that the travellers going about their business, the traffic of the provincial station, the manners, dress and customs of the people, indistinguishable from those that had entranced her on her first childish visits, were in fact part of a conspiratorial drama. When the train slid into the platform, however, there was not even the rudimentary attempt at patience that she had learned to accept as the French version of Edinburgh queuing; there was a surge round each door which forced back into the carriages several passengers who were trying to dismount. A few disapproving people, including Charlotte, quickly surrendered to the inevitable force of numbers and joined the press for places.

By force and good luck she found a seat, though there was no room in the rack for her suitcase, which she had to carry on her knees. She could see by the easy way many people threw their bags around that they were empty; when they returned that evening to Limoges from their destinations in the surrounding countryside, the cases would be heavy with eggs, ham, sausage, oil of any kind, and would exude the smells she had noticed on her previous journey with Yves. After the bad temper of boarding had receded and the train had been going for half an hour. Charlotte felt an unmistakably festive air creep into the compartment and found it answered in herself by the double exhilaration of her journey. It was another hot day. The flashing pastures through which they travelled were radiant with a yellowish-green light; the darker shades of the knotted forests and the glimpsed browns of the trunks and branches of oak trees in the established lines that edged the hills made it possible to believe in a future as well in the past they brightly evoked.

Charlotte took out Dominique's detective story and began to read. A man's body was found by his concierge in the hallway of his apartment of the seventh arrondissement; a silver dagger protruded from between his ribs. The concierge was helping a melancholic inspector with his inquiries; the detective would proceed to interview the occupants of all the other apartments in the block, and the author might or might not give some indication as to which one was the murderer. Charlotte found that the only thing that might have been interesting the process of detection had, by a convention of the genre, to be withheld from the story, or there could have been no surprise denouement. After his first fruitless morning the detective went for lunch in a cafe in the Place St. Sulpice, and Charlotte was horrified to hear her stomach roar its envy of his dish of the day: a sausage and lentil stew with green salad 'anointed with thick oil'. The woman opposite her smiled her sympathy as Charlotte begged her pardon for the noise. The young man next to her, perhaps the woman's son, opened a bag on his lap and offered Charlotte the end of a loaf from which extended the edge of a thick piece of ham. After her protestations and his insistence, she took it, and was drawn into conversation.

Charlotte had provided Dominique with a sister in Clermont-Ferrand to cover her intended visit to Gregory's garage mechanic, and the residual Calvinist in her was shocked by the facility with which she described this Germaine's invented life. The young man looked interested, and Charlotte tried to curb her imagination. She touched on the sober subject of her father's illness, then focused the conversation firmly on the others. Both mother and son, as they turned out to be, seemed friendly enough, but there were five other people in the compartment and two in the doorway who could overhear their conversation. Not all would be as sympathetic; and one thing her training had stressed was that the French far outnumbered the Germans in the number and diversity of their police and security services.

It had been a mistake to accept the sandwich and to talk, but she had been hungry and she had been lonely: she wanted to be addressed by someone, even a stranger and even under a false identity. To extricate herself, she began to yawn, and, when a gap of suitable length occurred in the conversation, she feigned an improbable mid-morning sleep.

Ussel in late afternoon, under light rain, was smaller and more pathetic than it had looked on the map. There were garages and squares and shops, but it had the feeling of a trading post, a village that had spread back off the strip of the main road that steeply bisected it. Charlotte sheltered with her suitcase in the bar of a hotel, waiting for the time to pass till she could go to her rendezvous with her hairdresser, Antoinette.

She felt absurdly self-conscious; now that the moment had come for this furtive action her hands seemed heavy, her face a self-advertising confession of guilt. Ussel was much higher than the places she had so far visited; the air was thin, as well as damp, and she felt cut off from the rest of France.

The prospect of pursuing her journey still further, to the volcano-ringed heights of Clermont, on a passionate gamble of her own devising, seemed a foolhardy plan that could have been conceived only by someone at sea level and slightly unbalanced.

She ground the heel of Dominique ugly shoe into the floor of the bar and brought her lips together. She would proceed. At ten to seven she left the hotel and went out into the rain. She walked up the main street and forked left towards the church. She moved briskly, not wishing to catch the eye of anyone in this unvisited town. The streets revealed themselves like photographic prints emerging in solution from her acquired memory. On the Avenue Semard, near the station, she came to the door of a hairdresser's shop; ignoring the "Closed' notice she pushed it open and went inside.

The row of chairs was empty and the room had a sweet, steamy smell. At the far end was a bamboo curtain through which emerged a small white dog, barking feebly and wagging its tail. There was the sound of a wireless playing a facetious song by Charles Trenet. Charlotte held the handle of her suitcase tightly and stood her ground; a woman's voice called to the dog to be quiet. Still no one came, and Charlotte had the feeling she was on the edge of a debacle. She had come a long way to this stuffy little room; and, now that she was here, was it all quite real?

The bamboo curtain divided again and a tall, handsome woman in a blue pinafore came down the step into the salon.

"I'm afraid we're closed, Madame."

"I made a reservation for seven o'clock."

"What name, Madame?" The woman went over to the appointments book on a table by the door.

"Daniele."

The hairdresser ran her finger down the page, snapped the page over as though searching further forward in the book, then turned it back.

"Daniele ... Daniele."

Charlotte felt a line of sweat run down her spine.

The woman turned and, for the first time, looked Charlotte deep and direct in the eye.

"Bad weather for a wash and set."

Charlotte smiled broadly.

"They said that whatever the weather I must insist on Antoinette."

"They were quite right. She's the best."

Antoinette stepped forward and took Charlotte by the hand.

"Let's go through to the back," she said, leading the way through the curtain. They sat at a table in a gloomy kitchen, drinking wine that Antoinette poured from an unlabelled litre bottle.

"You look tired," she said.

"How long have you been here?"

"Do I?" Charlotte's fingers went to her face and pressed the soft skin beneath her eyes.

"Yes, I suppose I haven't slept much for various reasons. A few days. I'm going back to England soon, as far as I know. I have to have confirmation by wireless."

Antoinette had a deep voice and a quiet, sympathetic manner; she had large dark brown eyes and thick, slightly tousled hair, cut just above the shoulder. Watching her as she spoke. Charlotte put her age at about thirty-eight; she had a ruby ring on her right hand but nothing on her left. It was impossible to resist the impression that she was too cultivated to be a hairdresser; something in her manner suggested education and experience beyond trimming and drying.

"They've done a good job on your hair," Antoinette said, taking a cigarette from a packet on the table.

"My God, is it so obvious?"

Antoinette smiled.

"Don't worry. Only to the expert. And your French.

It's almost perfect."

"Almost?"

"Almost."

"I was educated in Belgium. Would that account for it?"

"I think I could believe that."

The scratchy wireless, the windows steamed by rain and the odd towel hanging up to dry reminded Charlotte of the Monday afternoons of her childhood, when her mother would begin to iron the wash; there was a starchy torpor that was seductively depressing. Relaxed by the wine, she felt oddly emotional.

"Are you taking a train back tonight?" said Antoinette.

"There is one I can take tonight. But I'm not going back. I'm going on to Clermont."

"I see. Another errand."

Looking at this woman's quizzical but kind expression. Charlotte had to fight hard to repress her desire to confide.

"That's right," she said.

"You can stay here tonight if you like. There are two trains in the morning."

"Is it safe?"

Antoinette laughed.

"It's completely safe. It's like being in another country. The war and the occupation have passed us by. People are a little irritated to think that there are a lot of Germans tramping round the coast, but that's about all.

France is a big country. Our life has barely changed."

"But what about rationing?"

"We're very self-sufficient. There's a bit less to eat, I suppose, but we manage pretty well. When the garage man mends the farmer's car he gives him a chicken as well as some cash. If I cut someone's hair I sometimes ask for eggs or ham. It's all very friendly."

"It's not like that in Lavaurette, the place I first went to." Antoinette shrugged.

"It depends. Some places have more food. Some are better at working out a system that suits people. Anyway, if you'd like to, you can stay here above the shop. I'll make you some dinner, put some clean sheets on the bed and bring you breakfast in the morning. Would you like that?"

"I'd love to. Thank you." Charlotte felt absurdly touched by this offer; she even felt a momentary irritation in her eye. She blinked.

Antoinette was right: she must be very tired.

To regain her composure, she asked, "What drew you to become involved with ... wirelesses and so on?"

Antoinette sighed.

"Just a feeling. My brother and some friends of mine ... I don't imagine that we're supposed to talk too much about these things."

"Perhaps not." Charlotte, however, wanted to talk about them; she wanted to talk about almost anything: she had been too long with only voices in her head.

"What can you do here, halfway up the mountains, with no targets, no soldiers?"

"We wait. I think the time will come. There's a good deal of activity in the mountains just because they are the mountains because they're a good place to hide. The Massif Central will be the heart of the Resistance when it comes."

"And when will it come?"

Antoinette smiled.

"Do you want my honest opinion?"

"Of course."

"I think it will come when the majority of people change their minds about the likely outcome of the war. They'll want to back the winner."

Charlotte said nothing, but looked at the table, this odd pricking still behind her eyes. Antoinette seemed so weary, her opinion so devoid of idealism or belief, yet what she said had the unexciting contours of a probable truth. Charlotte stood up.

"I think perhaps I should give you the package now."

"All right." Antoinette nodded and Charlotte went to her suitcase, laid it on the floor and carefully extracted the black velvet bag from inside one of Dominique's rolled-up vests.

She watched in fascination as Antoinette's long, tapered fingers gently extracted the foam rubber casing from the bag. Inside were what looked to Charlotte like four porcelain cartridge-fuses, similar to those with which she had seen her father struggle, cursing, by candlelight. She picked one up and turned it over in her hand: a sheath with pronged terminals contained a piece of quartz whose calibration determined the wavelength of the transmission. They seemed to her extraordinarily small and insignificant to have been the object of such astonishing care and effort. She found that her lip was trembling. What possible effect on the freedom of a country could ever be exerted by this small piece of domestic hardware in her hand?

Antoinette reached out and gently took the crystal from Charlotte. She laid it carefully with the others in the foam rubber casing. Then she put her hand back on Charlotte's and squeezed it.

"Thank you," she said.

"You've done a wonderful job."

Charlotte felt the air suddenly driven from her lungs as all the conquered feelings of the last few days surged out. Antoinette went over and put her arms around her, and Charlotte stood up, the better to feel the comfort of the other woman's embrace.

They both changed before dinner. Charlotte into Dominique's slightly less dowdy skirt and jumper, Antoinette taking off her blue pinafore, tidying her hair and putting on some lipstick. They ate in a living room upstairs, and Charlotte eventually told Antoinette the reason for her visit to Clermont.

"Do you think I'm mad?" she said.

"Not at all."

"But is it dangerous?"

"A woman's allowed to go to a garage and ask a simple question. The problem, of course, is that there are so many different security forces, and you'll find more of them in a big town like Clermont.

There are a lot of unpleasant little men who have solved the problems of their personalities by putting on uniforms and telling tales. Some of them are criminals or Fascists who have seen an opportunity to have their sadistic impulses made legal. There are some very violent men.

Then there are just people who like sneaking. So I wouldn't say there is no danger at all, but with you I don't see what they could report. You arrive, you go to your garage and you leave. You don't have time to arouse anyone's suspicion. Nor do you have time to arouse anyone's dislike. Don't forget that a lot of people report their friends or neighbours to the authorities to get even over some domestic quarrel.

Weren't you told all these things before you came?"

"Yes, we were. But it's always hard to imagine. I didn't realise both how normal everything would be and yet how strange. It's so odd going into a baker or buying a ticket, and everything seems just as it was, yet you know that if you say the wrong thing you might find yourself being arrested. It's the normality of everything that seems so treacherous."

Antoinette smiled.

"This man, he must be very remarkable."

"He is." Charlotte smiled back.

"Very remarkable." She felt calm after her tears, and had focused the purpose of her journey with renewed clarity.

"Do you want to tell me about him?"

"Not really. I couldn't make you feel what I feel for him. I can only say that what I'm doing seems quite rational. The education I had was very formal, and although there was a belief that the family was important, and that it was initially held together by love between the parents, no one ever encouraged us to believe in romantic love or any such idea. In fact, most of the women who taught us would have been horrified by the thought. They taught us romantic poetry, but for the language and the metre. And I don't believe in the idea myself-not as an idea, at any rate. But I suppose at some stage you make decisions, you have to decide what seems important to you, what seems valuable. It may be for a practical reason as much as for an idealistic reason, like the people you describe who'll join the Resistance when they think it's going to win. It's a judgement. I don't believe in a general ideal, I just believe in one particular man. I believe in the purity of the feeling that I have for him and that I believe he has for me. I think its force is superior to that of any other guiding force and I can't organise my life until I know whether he's alive."

"You do love him, don't you?"

"Of course I do. And if that love reflects a susceptibility on my part, if he has somehow exploited a weakness or a wound in me, so be it.

There's nothing I can do about it; that's who I am. To behave or believe otherwise would be dishonest."

Charlotte was not concerned by the indulgent expression in the older woman's eyes. It was sceptical, but it was also compassionate; and, Charlotte guessed that, however objectively Antoinette might view her youthful passion, a part of her was likely to regret that the day when her own life might be guided by such certainty was unlikely to come again.

Under Charlotte's questioning, Antoinette revealed that she had once been married, but that her husband had deceived her so often that even the flexible limits of bourgeois marriage had been violated. He had gone to live with a young girl in Normandy and she had not regretted his leaving, particularly as there were no children who might miss him. She had had lovers, she told Charlotte, but preferred to live alone. Her best friend was her brother, a doctor in a nearby town, who had helped to finance her shop.

"I like it here," she said.

"The countryside is beautiful, the girl who works for me, Gilberte, is charming. We eat well, we drink well, even now. About once a fortnight there's a man who visits me from Clermont to spend the night." She smiled and pulled another cigarette from the packet among the empty plates.

"It's enough. I'm fond of him. Then about six months ago my brother asked me if I would help him in a little network of people he was putting together with an Englishman who had dropped out of the sky one day. It didn't take him long to convince me. I love doing it. I love the excitement of the transmissions. I'm a very happy woman." She blew out smoke through her smiling, lipsticked mouth. Antoinette insisted Charlotte sleep in her bed while she made up the sofa for herself with a pillow and a rug. There were clean sheets, as she had promised, and Charlotte felt their smooth freshness on her skin.

It was a warm night, and since G Section had omitted to provide Dominique with a nightdress she slept naked. Dominique's underclothes she had washed and hung out to dry in the bathroom, bringing back memories of Daisy's flat in London, a place which seemed not just distant but to belong to a different existence. Antoinette's bedroom was the only room in the apartment over which she had taken much trouble. The rugs and antique furniture had been chosen with care; the bed itself was of the three-quarter size Charlotte had encountered in the hotel with Yves, but fresh and deeply comfortable.

Within minutes she was asleep, lying on her back, dragging in deep draughts of even breath.

It was almost three o'clock when she awoke, crying and protesting. She sat up and felt her hair damp around the edges of her forehead. In her dream she had been trapped and tortured; the moment of betrayal was similar to the half-buried memory of her father's sinister misprision, but the violence was done not by him but by Gregory.

For all this time she had lost sight of Gregory's face in her mind, and its absence was like a confirmation of his death. Then suddenly in her dream it had been cruelly restored.

"Are you all right?" Antoinette's voice came from the doorway.

"Yes, I ... I was dreaming."

Antoinette came and sat on the edge of the bed. She put her arms round Charlotte to comfort her, and Charlotte laid her face against the broderie anglaise of her nightdress. Antoinette murmured comforting words to her and eventually Charlotte found she was drifting back to sleep.

It was thickly dark behind the closed shutters, and the clouds from the mountain rim obscured the sky. Charlotte held on to Antoinette as she lay down and crossed the borderlines from sleep to vague wakefulness and back again, unwilling quite to let go in case the same dream was waiting. She felt Antoinette's hands gently stroke her hair, found herself calmed and once more drifting. Antoinette kissed her cheek and Charlotte felt her hands caress her shoulders with soothing movements till they both slept.

At nine o'clock a bicycle turned up the long, stony track to the Domaine. The young woman who rode it was dressed in simple clothes and had no bag or luggage with her. It was as though she herself, her body, was all that she was bringing.

In Lavaurette it was another bright day and the plane trees that lined the potholed path, with their pale leaves and peeling, eczemaic trunks, were noisy with the sound of birds.

When she arrived at the front door the woman propped her bicycle against a pillar and mounted the broad stone steps; she did not sound the iron bell-pull, but pushed open one half of the arched front door with practised familiarity and let herself into the house. A light aroma of coffee from the remote kitchen was just discernible in a heavier atmosphere of old plaster, wood and unmoved air. She turned to the right and walked across the flagged hall to another double door, which led into a dining room. The sprung floor cushioned her swift pace as she crossed the huge, grey-panelled room with its twenty-seater table, at one end of which was a single candlestick, a plate and an empty wine glass. She gathered these on her way through to a pantry where she deposited them in the stone sink: washing up was not her job; that was for the maid, who, as usual, was late.

In the vaulted kitchen she took a coffee pot from the range and filled two small white cups. She took them through a scullery and out to the narrow back staircase which gave her access to the first floor without having to return to the main hall. Up the steps, past the empty servants' bedrooms she climbed, carefully watching the black liquid in her hands. There was a smell of lime from the old wood of the staircase.

She breached the frontier into the main part of the house and walked along the sunlit corridor to the principal bedroom, where she paused, put the cups down on the landing window-sill, and knocked.

Levade's voice called her in.

"Good morning, Annemarie."

The room was dominated by a huge bed with a canopy and drapes which had been rolled and pinned back. The rugs on the floor had also been pushed to one side. The floor was littered with canvases, tubes of paint, drawings on pieces of paper, messed palettes, books opened and weighted down at a particular illustration, books closed and piled, glass jars full of brushes, pots of cleaner, chisels, hammers, small boxes of nails brought by Julien from Madame Galliot's top shelf and wooden stretchers in various stages of assembly. The numerous tables in the room were covered by cloths and by more books, candles and religious statues. Levade was shaved and dressed; he had combed his thick white hair and found a clean shirt which hung down outside his trousers almost to his knees. He stood in front of the window where the north light was clear.

Anne-Marie crossed to a screen in a remote corner of the room, behind which was a paint-spattered chair with a long green silk skirt and a pair of thin-strapped sandals. She took off her own clothes and put on the skirt and sandals; then she emerged from behind the screen.

She stood in the middle of the room, bare-breasted, unselfconscious.

"Did you have a good night?"

Levade shook his head.

"No." His voice was melancholic but resigned.

"Not a thing."

"Are we going to carry on from where we were yesterday?" said Annemarie.

"I think so." Levade put down his empty coffee cup and, as Annemarie sat down on a chair in front of the window, went over to arrange the fall of the green skirt. He looked at the half-finished canvas on the easel and compared the image of Anne-Marie with the actual woman. He went back and moved her arms a little, settled her hair and fussed over the folds of the skirt.

Anne-Marie had picked up a book from the floor and skimmed through it as Levade arranged her.

"What about you?" said Levade.

"Did you dream?"

"Nothing I can remember. My dreams are so dull compared to the ones you've described, the ones you used to have."

Levade took up his brush and pushed back his hair.

"I think the last dream I had was about a month ago. Do you know what I dreamed? That I had woken up, that it was morning, that I had got up, washed, come to this room to paint, that you arrived ... It wasn't really a dream at all. It was more prosaic than being awake."

Levade shook his head and smiled. Anne-Marie crossed her arms.

The telephone was ringing in Julien's office.

"I'm putting you through now," said Pauline Bobotte. It was a Communist from Limoges, whom Julien, against his better judgement, had approached for information. He did not want to associate with Communists, but in times of war you sometimes had to be expedient. Even as he explained this to himself he realised that this was exactly the argument employed by Petain and Laval.

The difference was that his position was not merely expedient, it had moral backing; also, his judgement, unlike theirs, was sound. So he hoped.

"There was an enormous round-up in Paris last month. Tens of thousands of Jews, French as well as refugees. Apparently the police took them to a winter sports stadium. But that business a few days ago, that was the first time they've done it in the Free Zone. I'm told they'll take them to Paris and eventually they'll deport them. No one seems to know where to."

Julien nodded.

"Thank you. Will you telephone again if you hear anything?"

"That depends. We may need some help from you."

"I understand."

The line went dead, and Pauline Bobotte removed the plug from her switchboard.

Julien sighed. Tonight he would have to go and see Sylvie Cariteau and her mother. Between them they would decide what to tell Andre and Jacob, and also what to do with them. It was difficult to make out from the newspapers exactly what was happening; but, from what he had read and what he had seen, it was clear to Julien that there would be no let-up in the persecution of Jews. Whatever the Vichy government believed, the Germans were beginning to lose the war. In Julien's simple analysis this meant that their behaviour in the countries they occupied would become more exacting: they would require more money, more food and more labour.

If their armies abroad met with reverses, that was all the more reason why they would be rigorous in pursuing whatever ends they could achieve in Europe. And since, for reasons no one outside Germany could fully understand, the collection of Jews into various camps seemed central to a particular strand of Nazi planning, then life for Andre and Jacob would in the future become more, not less, hazardous.

It was partly to do with his generally optimistic temperament and partly to do with his ingrained trust in his country that Julien did not pause to consider his own position. Although his father Levade was three-quarters Jewish, wholly on his mother's side and half on his father Rutkowski's, Julien, because Levade married a Catholic, had only one wholly Jewish grandparent. Max Rutkowski's wife, though that could be computed as one and a half if Rutkowski's half-Jewishness were included. The other mathematical way of expressing it would be to say that Julien was threeeighths Jewish. Since this ridiculous fraction had never seemed of the slightest importance to him, he could not imagine that it would be of interest to anyone else in France. Tonight he would go down to the Cafe du Centre and take the temperature of Lavaurette. He presumed its dismal chorus was at least vaguely representative of what the small towns of France were thinking, if only in the degree of its ignorance. He was also expecting to hear soon from the English girl who had dropped by parachute. She was surprisingly dark for what he had expected from an English person, but the hazel-husk intensity of her eyes in the lamp-lit farm kitchen was something he could not forget.

In the lavatory of the train that was crawling towards Clermont Ferrand Charlotte read the scribbled feelings of previous travellers.

"War has been declared by the City of London," was one view, accompanied by a caricature of a Fagin-like face with wispy beard.

This had drawn agreement from another writer: "Saxon Jew + Tartar = the Beast'.

Did these statements, scored in the bold capitals of anonymity, express the true feelings of the French people? Was this what they would really say if they were free to speak? Charlotte chose to think not. Although the passion of anti-British feeling (anti-English as they mistakenly called it) continued to shock her, she did not believe, and could not allow herself to believe, that it was universal. She had only to think, after all, of her reception on the night of her arrival.

She made her way back down the corridor and resumed her seat, which the obliging woman next to her had agreed to keep reserved. Charlotte smiled at her, then looked fixedly out of the window. It had taken her only a few minutes with the Michelin Guide to work out which of the two Citroen garages must be the one she wanted. Gregory had definitely said "In the middle of Clermont'; the telephone directory confirmed that the owner was "A. Chollet'. She calculated that she could be back on the train by seven o'clock.

To her right she saw a branch line that wound up through the thermal station of la Bourboule to Le Mont-Dore. Clouds were drifting down off the mountain and the summer sun of Lavaurette seemed far away; it was beginning to feel cold in the unheated carriage.

Antoinette had woken her at nine o'clock with a tray on which was bread and jam and something that tasted reasonably like coffee. She sat on the edge of the bed and watched while Charlotte ate; she was wearing her blue pinafore, and Gilberte was already dealing with the first customer downstairs.

Charlotte hurried through her farewells and promised to write to Antoinette from England when the war was over. As she was leaving Antoinette pressed a bottle into her hand: it was hair dye.

"Just in case," said Antoinette as she kissed her goodbye. Half an hour from Clermont Charlotte began to feel a tightening of fear. A police inspection of identity cards passed with its usual swift indifference, but it reminded her of how alone and uncovered she was, without even the stories prepared for her in London. While she carried out the elementary task for Mr. Jackson and lived within the limited identity of Dominique Guilbert, she had felt a degree of protection and attachment: it had been like the moment in the Whitley when the sergeant showed her the firm connection of the static line that would ensure her safety. Now she was in free fall.

The train slunk in beneath the vaulted ironwork, snorting steam.

Charlotte gripped her suitcase and fought her way down on to the platform. In the forecourt of the station she studied a map which showed the tram routes. She crossed the street to what she hoped was the appropriate stop. There was the usual confusion of pushing people: respectable men in felt hats with clipped moustaches, small widows with jabbing elbows. Squeezed upright between two people near the entrance to the tramcar. Charlotte lodged her case between her feet and grasped at a hanging strap as the tram jolted off" towards the middle of town.

She found her way to the street at the end of the rue Blatin and looked down the broad and cloudy thoroughfare. In this weather it had a faded, monochromatic look, compounded by the fact that there were so few cars; it felt like looking back to before the war, even to before the last war. At the top of a five-storey building on one side was the painted name of Franck Gorce, Tailor. At ground floor level, behind curved railings, was a bar called the Faisan Dore with a few unoccupied chairs on the pavement.

Opposite was the curved facade of the Credit Lyonnais, its name cut in deep italics in the stone above the towering doors.

Charlotte looked down the unhindered vista of the street to the distant bulk of the Massif Central, many miles beyond but framed and set in perspective by the straight lines of the rue Blatin. It seemed typical of how the civilisation had imposed itself on the country and of how it had grown in a harmony that seemed both inevitable and impossible to disturb. The sight released in Charlotte the memory of another such street, one she had seen as a child on her first excursion across the Channel with her father. It was the view that always came to mind when anyone mentioned France to her.

She made her way along the pavement, calculating the likely distance to her destination. It took her ten minutes to see the street name, high up on a corner, and five more to reach the garage itself, which was at the rundown end of the road, where it became commercial and unkempt.

Charlotte went through the double wooden doors into the oily gloom. She was trembling. A woman in widow's black, bespectacled, with a tight, narrow mouth emerged from a partitioned area on the right.

Charlotte had somehow not expected a woman. It was very dark.

"Yes, Mademoiselle?"

"I'm looking for Monsieur Chollet."

"He's working on a car. He's down at the end there."

"Can I go and see him?"

The old woman looked Charlotte up and down. Her mouth declined at the corners.

"He's busy."

"I won't keep him."

The widow shrugged, and Charlotte took it as permission. She made her way over the concrete floor, stained black by countless drained sumps towards where she could hear some activity in the gloom. A bulky figure was bending over the engine of a large, black, front-wheel-drive Citroen of the kind favoured both by Vichy ministers and the Gestapo.

"Monsieur?"

The man lifted his face from the engine.

"Are you Monsieur Chollet?"

"Yes. That's me." Chollet was a fat man with a purple face and shiny skin; he looked too old to be the son of the widow at the doorway, but it was possible that red wine and large meals had aged him prematurely.

The stub of an unlit yellow cigarette was wedged in the corner of his mouth. Charlotte breathed in tightly and spoke again.

"A friend of mine asked me to come and see you if I should need news. He was to contact you if he was in trouble. He said you would answer to the name Hercule." It was a difficult word to say in French; Charlotte tried to concentrate on its swallowed 'r' and whistling 'u'.

Chollet grunted, "I don't know what you're talking about." In the dim light it was hard to make out his expression, but Charlotte could see just enough to think she had noticed fear in his eyes.

"It's very important," she said.

"I just need to know if you've heard anything from him. He was due a little time ago and we've heard nothing from him." Chollet said nothing, but shook his head slowly from side to side, his whole plump body a refusal to engage. Charlotte had not foreseen this: so preoccupied had she been by her own safety that it had not occurred to her that Gregory's contact might be suspicious of her. She could not think how she might persuade him that she was not an agent of some oppressive organisation. In fact, she admitted Chollet was probably right not to trust her: he was doing the safe and proper thing.

"Monsieur, I understand your reluctance. I can't offer you the identification I should have because you are not my contact. But I beg you to believe me." Chollet bent back over the engine and began to resume his work. Even to herself Charlotte had sounded like the worst kind of informer. The more the conversation went on the more she admired Chollet's response. Yet for her the situation was desperate. She had travelled many miles to find this man, and now it was going to be useless.

Gregory might be alive and in need of help. She could get him out, just as she had got Yves to his destination, but without her Gregory could never make it.

"I'm British," she said.

"I'm not an informer, I'm not with any Vichy organisation. I can prove it to you. I'm going to speak English." She said in English: "Please believe me. Monsieur Chollet, I desperately need your help. I can't say the whole war hinges on it, but my life certainly does. Please take your head out of that car and listen to me. All I want to do is to give you a telephone number.

I'll speak more English if you like. Once upon a time there was a girl called Cinderella who had two ugly sisters who went to a ball and poor Cinderella didn't have a dress... God, I can't even remember the story.

I was never keen on fairy tales."

She leaned forwards and tapped Chollet on the back. He stood up and turned round to face her again. Charlotte tried to make herself cry, to evoke pity that way, but tears were far away, and in any case some police sneak could presumably fake them as well as she could.

She took his oil-grimed, fleshy hand in hers and said in French: "Now do you believe me?" She smiled at him, summoning up as she did so every last particle of charm, candour and shameless sexual invitation.

Chollet's eyelids slid down over his protuberant eyes like a reluctant toad and his mouth pursed a minimal affirmative.

"And have you heard?"

His head moved half an inch either way.

Rain was falling on the streets outside, which seemed nevertheless bright after the interior of the garage. Charlotte walked a few yards, then leaned against a lamp-post. The fear of discovery and the exhilaration of penetrating Chollet's defences now gave way to despair.

She had come to find her lover, all the way to the volcanoes, in the darkness, and he was not there. She had come and she had failed, and Gregory was dead. Madame Cariteau was slightly loosening the bonds she had set on Andre and Jacob Duguay. To begin with, she never left them; now, she was prepared to shuffle up to the shops for half an hour if she had impressed on Andre with sufficient urgency that he and Jacob were not to leave the house or answer the door. In the front room was an old piano that her husband had occasionally played. On the one occasion Andre and Jacob had been allowed into the room they had opened the lid and begun to pick at the keys. While Jacob could only hit them with his fist, Andre could make melodic runs of single notes and, so far as the width of his hands would allow, play simple chords.

There was a piano at school, he told Madame Cariteau, and he had been encouraged by the mistress.

The stationer halfway up the hill had some sheet music which Madame Cariteau had noticed without interest on previous visits, and when she had bought some bread she went into the shop to have a look through it.

There was the odd sonata or concerto by Franck, Faure or Saint Saens, but most of the music was folk songs. She chose what appeared to her to be the simplest of these-the two with the fewest notes--and took them home for Andre. She went through the back door and into the kitchen, put down her basket and went to find the boys. The hall of the house was a spacious area that led to the barred front door at one end and, at the other, a broad, handsome staircase that rose for fourteen steps to a half-landing.

Bumping down it as Madame Cariteau came into the hall was a suitcase in which Jacob Duguay was letting out terrified screams of pleasure, as he hurtlingly tobogganed over the polished wood. Andre stood on the half-landing, where his expression of glee turned to one of doubtful innocence when he saw Madame Cariteau.

Jacob arrived at her feet, whimpering with pleasure. When he looked up and saw her, he had no reflex of guilt but began to explain what they were doing.

"We take the suitcase up and Andre puts me in and--"

" Yes, I can see what you're doing. You don't have to tell me. Andre, where did you find the suitcase?"

"It was just there," said Andre.

"It was just lying around." Madame Cariteau tipped Jacob out of the case and inspected if.

"This lives in my bedroom cupboard. Have you been in my room?"

"No," said Andre; "Andre got it," said Jacob simultaneously. Madame Cariteau scolded them for being noisy and for not staying upstairs, as she had instructed them. When Andre began to protest, she shouted at him to go to his room and stay there for the rest of the day. He turned on his heel and tried to conceal from her his trembling lip; down the dark corridor he made his damp and noisy way, slamming the door behind him when he reached his room.

Julien Levade was sketching a design for the converted cloisters when the telephone rang.

Pauline Bobotte's voice had the slightly affronted edge it always assumed when the caller was female.

"Someone called Daniele to speak to you, Monsieur Levade."

"Thank you, Mademoiselle Bobotte. Put her through, please. Hello? Daniele? Everything all right?"

"Fine, thank you. I'm back in Lavaurette. I'm outside the station."

"You must be tired." Julien looked at his watch. He could leave the office for lunch at twelve thirty and take Daniele to his apartment for the time being.

"Do you know the church? Yes? I'll meet you there at a quarter to one. It's not long."

Charlotte replaced the receiver and breathed out heavily. She had spent a night of dim waiting rooms and arthritic trains; she wanted to sleep for several days, to restore the speed to her slow limbs, to dispel the fizzing little pain in her temple and to purge the pressing anguish in her chest.

She reckoned it would take her twenty minutes to walk to the church, which left her with about forty to kill. The best place would be the station waiting room, but to sit there would be to invite a document inspection by some uniformed official. She lifted her case and trudged along the avenue until she found a track opening off between the plane trees. After a few yards she came across a fallen tree-trunk. She sat down and pulled out Dominique's detective story.

It was a strange and conspicuous thing to do, but she had the confidence of fatigue; she would not need to feign irritation if anyone questioned her. She was five minutes early at the church and was inspecting one of the stained glass windows when she heard the door grind open.

Julien walked swiftly up the aisle to where she stood and shook her hand.

"I think it would be better if we weren't seen together. I'll go ahead. It's the second street above the church, the third house on the right. I'll leave the street door open so with any luck you can get in without being seen by the concierge. I'm on the first floor."

Charlotte gave him three minutes, then set off. She found the house easily enough and made her way into the tiled hall. A young woman was emerging from a ground-floor apartment: she had wide-set blue eyes, waved blonde hair and a coquettishly thick application of red lipstick.

She smiled at Charlotte.

"Hello. You must be Monsieur Levade's fiancee."

"I ... I'm pleased to meet you," said Charlotte noncommittally.

"He's on the first floor. Well-you know, of course. He's just got in."

"Thank you."

The woman went out of the front door.

"See you later," she said genially as she closed it behind her. Charlotte climbed the stairs and knocked on the open door of Julien's apartment. He emerged from the sitting room and took her case.

"Come and sit down. I'm making some lunch."

"I met someone in the hall. A rather beautiful woman who seemed to think I was your fiancee."

"Oh, that's Pauline Benoit. She's nice, isn't she?" said Julien from the kitchen.

"Who is she?"

"She's the concierge."

"I thought concierges were supposed to be old and nosey and have their hair in curlers."

"You've been reading too many detective stories," said Julien, returning to the sitting room and holding out a chair at the dining table for Charlotte.

"No, I haven't. I hate detective stories," said Charlotte. To her irritation she found that her denial sounded unconvincing.

Julien laid a place in front of her.

"My life is run by two Paulines," he said.

"Pauline Benoit at home and Pauline Bobotte at work.

Bobotte's actually much nosier than Benoit. She listens to all my telephone calls. Benoit just likes to know about any romance that might be in the air. I have to keep her guessing. She thinks I'm a bigamist."

He disappeared to the kitchen and returned with a plate of food and a glass of wine, which he set down in front of Charlotte.

"I'm sorry about this," he said.

"It's all I've got. It's not as bad as it looks. I had it for dinner last night."

"What is it?"

"It's a stew."

"What sort of stew?"

"Don't ask. I didn't."

"Aren't you having any?"

"No. I'll... I'll have something later."

Charlotte put a little of the reheated food in her mouth.

"I understand you'll be going home next week."

"Has it been confirmed?"

"Yes. Of course, it'll depend on the weather. But it's been very clear recently and I haven't heard that it's likely to change. Will you be glad to be back in England?"

"I suppose so." Charlotte filled her mouth with the rough wine.

"I've done what I came to do," she said untruthfully.

"If you'd like to rest after lunch, you'll be quite safe here. You can sleep in my bed if you like."

"Thank you. Please don't go to any trouble."

"It's no trouble. I'll lock the front door and tell Pauline no one's to come up." When he had cleared her plate, Julien showed Charlotte into his bedroom. He closed the shutters and indicated the large bed with its lordly hangings.

"If anyone knocks at the door, don't answer. I've got the key and I'll let myself in at about seven. Sleep well." He gave her another of his guileless smiles and Charlotte reciprocated tiredly.

She pushed off Dominique heavy shoes, but thought she had better stay dressed in case she needed to move in a hurry. When she had heard Julien depart, she closed the double doors into the sitting room and went back to the bed. She sometimes found that if she lay on her front, the physical weight of her body slightly helped to crush the misery in her abdomen. She pulled the eiderdown over her and tried to sleep. His face had gone again.

Peter Gregory was sitting up in bed, anxiously watching as the local veterinary surgeon inspected his leg.

There was a fracture of the tibia, suspected but undiagnosed by the vet, owing to the primitive manner in which he had had to make his examination, by probing with his fingers. His major field of expertise was in the digestive illnesses of sheep, though he was competent with all ruminants and would even give opinions, if asked, on domestic pets.

An English airman posed problems of a different nature, largely because he could not be taken to a surgery. The vet had been contacted by a smallholder who knew that his sympathies were reliable, whereas the local human doctor was an uncomplicated Petainist, who in his spare time organised youth groups to go camping and sing songs with a marching, militaristic snap.

The vet looked up from Gregory's skinny leg and said something fast, in the regional accent, that Gregory did not understand. The elderly peasant couple who were sheltering him nodded their heads in wise agreement. As the vet explained his thoughts in greater detail, Gregory wished he had paid more attention to Madame Fanon's tedious French lessons or more often accepted Charlotte's offer of instruction. For the rest, he had escaped with bruising and cuts; what seemed to be a broken elbow now gave him no pain and the swelling had gone down. A long gash running from his thigh, over his hip and up into the small of his back had now closed sufficiently for them all to see that its swollen, septic edges had started to subside. The bruises beneath his eyes had gone from shiny purple to a jaundiced yellow, and the puffed skin had resumed its former adhesion to the contours of the skull. What hurt most was his neck and shoulders, where he had hung upside down in his straps, waiting to be cut free.

"You were lucky," they told him for the hundredth time, and for the hundredth time he said, "I know." Gregory the unsinkable, the unkillable: lucky to have survived the crash, lucky that it was so near the landing zone, lucky that he was picked up by sympathetic people ...

There was, as he already knew before taking off from England, no apparent end to his good fortune.

He had asked to be shown on a map exactly where he was, but they had no map.

They told him the names of the nearest villages, but these meant nothing to Gregory. From the window of his bedroom he could see fields of wheat divided by dwarf oaks and messy hedgerows; beyond them were woods and spinneys that climbed the undulating land, and on a distant hilltop was a tower. He supposed it was a water-tower, but its grey stone and castellated rim made it look like the remnant of a fortification. There were no houses and no roads within his view. He was lost and he could not move.

What kept him from despair was the admiration that he felt for the couple who had taken him in. They knew nothing about him and could not even converse with him, yet they were risking their lives for his.

It was not as though they could have had a sophisticated understanding of the situation; presumably they were as bewildered and scared as anyone else in this occupied country. But every morning the old woman, who had told him by shoving a finger at her breastbone and repeating the word that she was called Beatrice, brought him bread and milk; every evening the old man, whose name was Jacques, sat with him and fed him cigarettes and vinegary wine.

The vet explained that he must stay in bed. With vigorous hand movements - both palms at first pressing down, suggesting gravity and stasis, then becoming fists whose index fingers pointed firmly to the bed he made himself understood.

"How long?" asked Gregory.

The vet shrugged.

"Fifteen days?"

"And then?"

"We'll see."

Luckily, he still had some notes left on the roll of francs the raf had given him before take-off; his hosts had been able to supplement the produce of their field with butter and wine from the black market.

The vet left the room and Gregory sank back against the pillow. He took a cigarette from the packet on the bedside table. There was nothing to do but stare from the window over the vacant fields. He thought of Charlotte, of her eyes, of the life-saving intensity of her passion.

It was five o'clock when Charlotte awoke, having slept more deeply than she expected. She lay on her back for a minute, believing herself still to be in Antoinette's bedroom in Ussel. This room was bigger, however, and more bare; there was a glass-fronted bookcase against one wall and a small rush-seated chair with a pair of man's trousers thrown over it. A moment of panic and disorientation subsided as the memory of Julien came back to her: his black hair, receding a little at the temples, but the face still youthful with its dark, active eyes and swiftly changing expression. She remembered lunch, the stew, a conversation about when she would be picked up.

Charlotte stretched beneath the eiderdown and yawned. She felt a sudden need for tea: nothing else would switch her back from her sleepy siding on to the main line of the day. She climbed out of bed and straightened her clothes, then went through into the kitchen. The closest thing she could find to tea was a glass pot with some dried leaves which she thought might be camomile or verveine. She boiled some water and poured it over a handful of leaves in a cup which she took through into the sitting room and left on the table to infuse.

Soon she would be going home. She would return to her flat with Daisy and Sally, she would await further calls from Mr. Jackson. They would presumably post her to one of their holding schools, where she could help with the last-minute preparation of other agents, teach French or drive the staff cars. Since G Section had started to pay her a wage there would be no need for her to look for another job, and in the meantime she "would be free to explore London, to go to galleries or shops; she could even go up to Scotland and visit her parents. She would-resume a life, and men like Cannerley would telephone to ask her out to dinner; it was a privileged and pleasant existence that lay ahead of her: it was normal life, it was what most young women wanted. She should count herself lucky.

Yet, at the thought of it, she trembled in revolt. To leave France at this stage was unthinkable. Although she had efficiently completed both her official and her private errands, she had been drawn into the frightening destiny of the people she had met. She could not leave until she had seen whether Antoinette's prediction of resistance was fulfilled; she wanted to see the big schoolboy Cesar load up another horse-drawn cart with stores; she wanted to understand why the English were so deeply hated. And Julien also intrigued her: what made a man like him buzz round a little town like Lavaurette, alighting for a moment here, then there, in his pollination, while the majority of men of his kind and generation went quietly about their business in the tranquil streets of German-occupied Paris?

She took an end of bread from the remains of lunch on the table, dipped it in the tea and sucked. No gateway of unconscious memory swung gloriously open, but through the dusty crumbs a not unpleasant herbal taste slid across her tongue and encouraged her to take a sip directly from the cup.

She would not go back. She would stay in France until she felt she had done something worthwhile. More urgent even than this was her need to find Gregory. To fly home now would be to admit that he was dead, and this was something that she could not do. She had no idea how she would set about finding him, but merely by being in France she had a better chance. At the very least she could telephone Chollet again.

But to return to London was to give up; and if she gave up on Peter Gregory, then she was giving up faith in her own life.

She had identified her own troubles with those of the country in which she found herself. They seemed to her like two long journeys that had lost their way, each struggling now to rediscover the doubtful paradise from which they had set out. Her need to stay in France was probably, she had to admit, neurotic; certainly it seemed more compulsive than rational. But although she had long had the habit of self-analysis.

Charlotte found it tiresome.

Presumably the link between these public and private worlds was the presence in France of the man she loved, and on whom she depended for the resolution of her life. But if that was the motivation, it was buried too deep to be felt. All that she knew was a compelling urgency of personal and moral force; and she was certain that, whatever its tangled roots, she must obey it. Julien returned at six with a noisy ascent of the stripped staircase. Charlotte heard him calling down some mocking retort to the woman's voice that followed him from the hallway. He was kicking off his shoes as, slightly out of breath, he came into the sitting room.

"How are you? Did you sleep?"

"Yes, thank you."

"Good. Now, dinner. The housekeeper doesn't come on Wednesday so I have to improvise. We can't go out because I've used all my coupons."

"I've got some money," said Charlotte.

"Couldn't we ' " My dear Daniele, what are you suggesting? Not the black market, surely?"

Charlotte thought of the arrangements Antoinette had described to her in Ussel.

"Certainly not. Monsieur. I was thinking of something a little more grey." Julien ground his teeth.

"I think I know the ideal place. The Cafe du Centre."

"But I went there with Yves and ' " But you don't know Madame Gayral, do you?

"I leave it to you, but I insist on paying."

"We'll see about that," said Julien.

"I've got one or two things to do first. Suppose we leave at about half past seven?"

"That's fine. I'll read my detective story."

Julien was attentive to Charlotte's needs. He was amazed by how much dinner she was able to eat: everything on the menu and at least three dishes that were not, silently furnished by Irene in her black skirt and clean white blouse, the empty plates unsmilingly removed a few minutes later. From somewhere Madame Gayral had found a capon, some brie which had reached the point of liquefaction and some eggs she had made into an omelette with a few mean but pungent shavings of truffle. Julien ordered more wine when the first bottle disappeared and was pleased to see that Charlotte drank what he considered to be the correct amount for a woman: less than half but not less than a third of each bottle. Back in his apartment he made up the bed with clean sheets and put a carafe of water and a glass on the table. He offered her the freedom of the bookcase, regretting that he was under stocked on crime novels.

At half past ten he held the door of the bedroom open for her and told her to get a good night's sleep.

Charlotte would not go in. She said, "Octave, if I stayed here in Lavaurette, if I didn't go home, could I be of any use to you?"

Charlotte could see Julien working out the ramifications of such a decision before he spoke.

"I need all the help I can get. We're expecting a further drop of stores any day. One day perhaps we'll be able to recruit all the young men, but for the moment our job is just to exist. That's what Mirabel told me.

And it's easier to exist when there are more of you. But ' " Good. I've decided to stay. I can't go home with a job half finished."

"We'll have to tell them not to send the plane. They won't like it."

"I very much doubt that the plane was for me alone. There'll be other more important people. Yves, for instance."

"There are a lot of reasons why you shouldn't stay. I do think it's unwise. The danger, for instance, the difficulty of contacting London, the ' " But it's possible, isn't it? You do have access to the wireless operator."

"Yes, I do."

Julien stood looking at Charlotte for a long time, with his head on one side. Perhaps, she thought, he too had some private motivation.

"Daniele, you are an extraordinary woman." He looked at her fair skin and deep brown eyes.

"What on earth are you doing?" He smiled.

"What are you doing standing in my apartment in Lavaurette, dressed like that, refusing to take a small aeroplane home to safety? What on earth has brought you to this?"

"Love," she said.

"Love?"

"Yes."

"But why aren't you at home like all the other English girls, doing your ' " Scottish."

"Scottish girls, in your pleasant unoccupied country with your family and your friends?"

"It's too late to explain now. But I do love your country. I wish more of you loved mine, though perhaps one day you will. I have this one chance to change my life, to save my soul, and whether I can do that depends for some reason I don't yet understand on whether you can save your country's soul as well. ' Julien shook his head, clearly baffled, but apparently not thinking it worth his while to say so.

"Anyway," he said, 'if you're going to stay, you might tell me your name. What is it?"

"Madame Guilbert. Dominique."

Julien stood up and refilled his glass.

"The other thing is, we'll need to find you something to do a job. As a matter of fact, I've got an idea. Can you cook?"

It was mid-afternoon when Charlotte turned Mlle Cariteau's bicycle off the road and up the track between the scabby plane trees to the Domaine. Her hair was covered by the woollen headscarf that had made Julien smile; it was the only clothes purchase she had allowed herself from G Section funds, and she had bought it because she thought it made her look more like Dominique Guilbert. She caught glimpses of the house between the trees, but it was not until the path turned a right angle and delivered her beneath the arched pigeonnier that she saw it whole for the first time. For all its irregularities, its terracotta-coloured shutters and lopsided front door, she felt as though she had seen it many times before; its design was at root so typical that it seemed to have emerged from some remembered blueprint, some universal plan of French rural peace that no Revolution or genocidal war had quite unsettled.

Charlotte hauled with both hands on the iron bell-pull, and, when no one came, turned the heavy knocker that acted as a handle. The large hallway offered passages right or left as well as a staircase that doubled back above her head into the remote ceiling. For all the uncertainty of her position, the feeling that came to Charlotte as she stood in the hall was one of pure excitement: if she could spend long enough in this house, she seemed to feel, it might reveal to her some lost plan or harmony. Here she might find the missing track that led back to the past.

"Madame Guilbert?"

The voice came from above her head. She looked up and saw bare feet between the banisters as someone descended the staircase. On the half landing where the stairs turned, he came into full view: an old man in navy-blue cotton trousers, as though he was going sailing, and a shirt without its collar which hung down almost to his knees.

"Please wait there. I'll come down."

Charlotte felt some animal reluctance to go too near this man. He offered her his hand when he had walked down to where she was waiting, and she took it as briefly as she could. His grip was warm and dry and his skin was covered in splashes of paint; from his body there rose a clean, strong smell of oils. His eyes were hooded and enclosed by lined, reptilian skin, though the bright blue irises were unclouded.

"I think we'll go into the drawing room." He led the way down the left-hand passage from the hall, past two or three doors, to a long, lofty room that ran the depth of the house. It was dark inside until he had opened some shutters that gave a view of overgrown garden to the side; the freed rectangle of light revealed a room full of formal furniture of the nineteenth century, fussily scrolled and uncomfortably upholstered.

There was a mirror in a gilded frame above the marble mantelpiece and, at the end of the room, still in half-darkness, was what looked like an enormous flat desk with a reading lamp.

"Do sit down. I believe you know my son Julien. He's spoken to me about you."

Charlotte felt fine old dust rise up as she settled on the edge of a sofa. So that was Octave's real name; at the Cafe du Centre, despite his warnings, she had only heard him called "Monsieur'. Julien ... It was not bad; it had the same Roman ring as Octave, but it had a certain lightness and elegance." Yes, I know him a little."

Levade pushed his hand back through his thick hair, disarranging it into white layers. Charlotte felt the clarity of his gaze, even in the gloom; she noticed the scaly skin on his bare feet.

"He thought it's possible you might need somewhere to live for a time."

"That's right." She was eager. She did not want to live in the same place as this man, but she wanted to be in this house.

"My father's in hospital and I want to be near him. My husband is a prisoner of war in Germany, like so many men."

"I see," said Levade.

"There's a woman who comes to clean the house, but she has difficulties at home, I think. She's irregular. You could live here for nothing if you were prepared to help with the cooking and cleaning. I would give you food as well. Are you a good cook?"

"Your son asked me that. Not particularly, but I could learn. I can do the simple things."

Levade sighed and stood up.

"When will your husband come home?"

"I don't know."

"The government is sending people to work in Germany in return for our prisoners. Had you heard?"

"Yes. Three men for each prisoner. It seems a bit hard."

"It's worse than that. The Germans only want trained men, so they don't count the farm boys. Laval's latest triumph is to send eight men, four of them trained, in return for each prisoner of war. The man's a fool." Charlotte nodded.

"Don't you think?"

"I'm not sure I understand politics."

Levade nodded briefly, as though this was an acceptable position. He walked over to the fireplace and leaned his arm on the mantelpiece.

"Are you quiet? Do you make a noise in the house?"

"Not particularly. I could be as quiet as you like. Your son told me you're a painter, so I suppose ' " I used to be. Not any more. Now I put oil on canvas, but anyone can do that." Levade began to walk down into the still-dark end of the drawing room.

"I spend some hours every morning in the studio upstairs. I don't have lunch, so you needn't bother about that. I normally eat at about six, then in the evening I read. I don't want you to work while I'm painting.

You'd have to do the cleaning later."

"I don't mind. Whatever's convenient."

"I could give you some money if you liked. As well."

"Yes," said Charlotte quickly, "I was going to come to that." It would have been Dominique's first thought.

"Whatever you think is right," said Levade.

"Why not ask in the village? Of course, there's nothing to spend it on. Unless you want to buy a photograph of Marshal Petain."

"I need to save some money for when my husband comes back," said Charlotte primly.

"Very well, I'll show you a room. There are two you can choose from." Levade walked briskly out of the salon, his movement unaffected in any obvious way by age, and Charlotte followed him to the stairs. They walked along the landing of the first floor, past the locked studio, with Charlotte's eyes swivelling from side to side to take in as much as she could of the rooms revealed by doors left tantalisingly half-open.

At the end of the landing there was an enclosed area from which different corridors opened, presumably into the tower, and a narrow, plain staircase up which Levade led the way. At the top were servants' or perhaps children's rooms, with low ceilings beneath the eaves but views over the grounds towards a lake. The best of these had a threadbare rug, a boat bed made up beneath a grey silk cover, and, on the wall behind the bed, a faded toile with Watteau-like figures in the colour of antique rose.

"It's beautiful." Charlotte was more stirred than she could reasonably explain by this plain room.

"May I have this one?"

"If this is what you like. Do you have any luggage?"

"I have a suitcase, but it's with your son. He said he'd bring it later if everything worked out."

"I see. There's another thing I should mention." Levade was standing in the doorway; he was lean and not particularly tall, but his figure almost filled the narrow frame.

"Nothing you see or hear must be repeated. I live a quiet life, but I have certain small habits which I don't want discussed in the bars of Lavaurette. Do you understand?"

"Yes. Of course."

"If you should ever find me distracted or unresponsive, you must ignore it." Charlotte nodded. She felt self-conscious as Levade's eyes ran up and down her figure in its homespun clothes; she had the sensation of having been appraised. Levade's long face softened a little; it was not a smile, but it had some affirmation in it, some acknowledgement of her as a separate being.

"Will you call me at six, when you've made dinner? You'll find food in the kitchen."

Everything Charlotte saw at the Domaine confirmed her conviction that she was right to stay. She had the peace of mind that came when a difficult decision appeared to be vindicated, and with that a practical energy. It was from this house that she would find Gregory.

In the afternoon Julien went to the Domaine to fetch Mlle Cariteau's bicycle in a van he had borrowed from Gastinel, the butcher. Dominique could use one of the old family bicycles in the barn, he explained, but Sylvie Cariteau needed hers for her daily business.

Julien enjoyed it when Dominique opened the door of his father's house. They had come far enough as friends that it was right for him to offer his cheek to her to kiss, and when she offered hers in return he allowed his lips to linger for a second while he inhaled the faint smell of lily of the valley on her skin. The social contradiction also pleased him: he was intimate with Dominique and with Levade, yet she called Levade "Monsieur' and was employed by him. What his father made of Dominique he could not imagine.

He thought Levade would like her and presumed he would at once divine that she was not what she claimed to be. Julien himself was excited by the thought of the English girl Scottish girl, he corrected himself whose true identity lay like an unplumbed reef below the shallow waters of this Dominique. As he came to know her and to care for her, he was aware that he did not come to know her at all: his growing friendship was with someone who did not exist and was therefore not subject to the limits and cautions of normal relationships. Why was this so exciting? It was Levade who had told Julien in outrage about the plan to convert the monastery into a hotel. At the beginning of his exile at the Domaine in 1937, he had frequently gone there to pray. When the order had made the decision to sell, he had mentioned it to Julien as a sad development, not as a possible source of income. Levade was distressed, or appeared to be, when Julien's company submitted plans for the conversion. Later, he told Julien it was better that he should do it than that it should fall into the hands of a barbarian; and at least it meant he would see something of his son. To begin with this was not the case, as Julien was able to do most of the work from Paris; then the practice was seized by the Government because its senior partner, a man called Well, was a Jew. The development company who took over the contract wanted to retain Julien as architect, and he, already uneasy at the supine collaboration of many Parisians, felt it was a good moment to leave the capital and come down to the site. Levade was delighted by the move and encouraged him to settle in Lavaurette.

At Julien's suggestion, Charlotte went to visit Andre and Jacob at the Cariteaus' house on the way back. Julien thought that in the absence of their mother they would appreciate seeing a young woman, and Charlotte was delighted to go, feeling that here was a positive act of resistance.

Sylvie's handsome, smiling face appeared at the back door. It was half-day at the post office and she was looking after the boys while her mother was out. She called up the stairs for Andre and Jacob, and there was the sound of eager feet before they came tumbling into the room.

Jacob was still at an age when fatigue registered itself as tears, when swift storms burst in clear skies, but Andre was at the delicate moment when life was ceasing to be a sequence of unrelated sensations and was on the point of becoming something that formed a continuous and more or less coherent whole. He was fascinated by knights in armour, soldiers, heroes of the Middle Ages, Greeks, Romans and stories from the Bible. Julien had been able to acquire secondhand books by post from a dealer in Clermont-Ferrand, but while he was waiting for a new consignment he told Charlotte she would have to rely on her memory or make up new stories of her own.

The two small boys sat with her on an old sofa on the kitchen.

Charlotte felt a little nervous. It had been a long time since she won the junior Academy prize in classical studies. What had been the name of Icarus's father, who had made the wings? She recalled Persephone being carried off by Diss, but how had she finally escaped? The Trojan War she remembered clearly for the most part; in any event, she could easily extemporise battles in which her favourite heroes (Hector, Aias; Achilles was too self-indulgent) defeated others after the intervention of a sponsoring goddess. The return of Odysseus she could spin out over several visits.

Andre sat with his chin cupped in his hands, staring up at Charlotte with unblinking eyes. His concentration appeared to be tireless, and he would occasionally interrupt or rebuke Charlotte for having skimped some detail of the characters' previous lives; he wanted to have the complete picture, and there were certain details the motive power of Agamemnon's ships, the wax of Icarus's wings that were crucial to his satisfaction.

Jacob listened to part of the story, but was more easily distracted; he would light on some comic detail and repeat it several times or walk round the room acting out some private game it had suggested.

This was something of a relief to Charlotte, who did not discourage Jacob from wandering off in mid-story.

Mlle Cariteau moved efficiently about the kitchen, taking crockery to the stone sink, sweeping the floor, occasionally lilting the lid of the giant stockpot and shaking her head in disappointment at the thin and meatless aroma she released. Still, her good humour seemed imperturbable.

Jacob eventually asked the question Charlotte feared, about his parents, and she had to stop the story she was telling to Andre.

"I don't know for sure when you'll see them again. I'm afraid I can't say." Although it was Jacob who had asked, it was Andre's intelligent, reproachful eyes that Charlotte feared.

"Where arc they?" said Jacob in his unformed voice.

"I don't exactly know. I believe they may be in Paris. You must try not to worry. One thing we can be absolutely sure of: they'll come home just as soon as they can. I know they wouldn't waste a minute.

So you just have to remember that as soon as they can, they'll be on the train home."

"But why have they gone away?"

"It's a difficult time. There's a war. People have to go to different places in a war, to places they don't always want to be."

"Why did they go to Paris?"

"I don't know. I expect they had no choice. Sometimes you just have to do things when you're a grown-up." Jacob had clearly forgotten about the gendarme's visit to his parents' house.

"And when will we see them?" Jacob was more tenacious than usual.

"I don't know. I can't pretend that I do know. But I hope it'll be soon. We all hope so and every day we hope so more. We never, never stop hoping."

Although only Jacob conducted the cross-examination, Charlotte felt throughout the pressure of Andre's fixed and disbelieving eyes.

Sylvie Cariteau leaned across the sofa to pick up the book she had left on the floor. As she did so. Charlotte caught the scent of her clean skin, efficiently scrubbed in wartime as in any other, and saw the waistband of her modest skirt, stretched tight by her solid, mannish figure. When she stood up and turned back towards the table Charlotte also noticed that where the skirt met her plain and tightly tucked-in blouse a strip of her underpants had been caught and was clearly visible across the width of her back. They were of coral satin, embroidered with lace in which was woven the frivolous patterns of daisies and forget-me-nots. Charlotte wondered if Sylvie just liked flowers or whether they were evidence of some private, hopeful fantasy, cherished for twenty years in emasculated Lavaurette.

"Come again, Madame," said Sylvie Cariteau when Charlotte was leaving.

"They've enjoyed it, haven't you, boys?"

"Yes, yes, come again, come again."

That evening Charlotte had to make dinner for Levade. A stranger in the kitchen, she spent several minutes opening and closing cupboard doors. Whoever had once owned the Domaine had acquired enough plates and glasses to entertain a hundred people, but it was not until she explored a back annexe that Charlotte found anything that could be eaten. It was a little after six by the time she went in search of Levade to tell him that his dinner was ready. He had told her he worked upstairs but had not said in which room, so she knocked at every door in turn without eliciting an answer until Levade's voice, sounding dim and abstracted, answered her call, and she heard him cross the room. She waited till he opened the door, hoping to catch a glimpse of his studio, but he moved quickly through the opening, leaving her time to see only a huge bed before he turned the key in the lock.

He went silently ahead of her to the dining room, where she had laid a place for him at the head of the table. He muttered grace, then poured wine into a crystal glass and drank quickly while Charlotte went back into the kitchen to bring the food. He tucked a white napkin into his collar, as though anxious to protect his paintbespattered shirt, and leaned back in his chair as Charlotte placed some fatty terrine in front of him. The bread she had found was as dusty as everyone else's but he tore off a large piece with enthusiasm. He made no comment on the pate or on the main course, a piece of chicken she had found beneath a wire-mesh cover and reheated with a sauce improvised from what was in the larder. She had found a peach on a tree in the orchard for his dessert, and this, too, he ate without speaking.

"I'm afraid there's no coffee," she said, when she cleared his plate.

"It doesn't matter. I'm going out for a walk now. I'll be back in about an hour." Now that she was standing close to him. Charlotte could see that he was not as old as she had thought: the white hair was misleading, and his skin, though lined, was not shrivelled or shrunk.

"Was the dinner all right?"

"What?" He turned as he was leaving the room.

"Yes. Thank you. Have some yourself."

It was not exactly the gracious invitation to lay an extra place in future that she had half expected, but it was something. She didn't particularly care whether this man liked her cooking or not; she just wanted to remain in his house. She was eating what was left of the chicken in the kitchen when she heard a voice calling out in the hall. She hurried over the springy floor of the dining room and found that Julien was paying his second visit of the day.

"Ah, Dominique. Exactly the person I wanted to see. Here's your suitcase. Has my father gone out?"

"Yes. He went for a walk."

They sat at the end of the cleared dining table, where Julien poured them both a glass of wine and lit a cigarette. Charlotte "watched his humorous face begin to settle as he organised what he was going to say.

He was wearing a pale blue open-necked shirt and a shabby tweed jacket; he looked more like a week-end painter than a professional architect who had just come from his office.

"Do you like it here at the Domaine?"

"Yes, I do. It's a beautiful house. Rather mysterious, don't you think?"

"Extremely. I wouldn't want to be here on my own in the winter."

"Your father doesn't mind, though."

"No. He has ways of keeping himself occupied in the long winter nights."

"He told me he's not a painter any more, that he just puts oil on canvas. He sounded rather sad."

Julien laughed.

"Yes. He used to paint wonderful pictures. He can't get used to the fact that it's finished. He ought to feel lucky, he ought to be happy that of all the people who tried to paint he was one of the few who managed to produce something worthwhile, who got inside himself and made it all connect. But he doesn't see it like that. He thinks he's under a curse, that something is being withheld from him by some cruel, arbitrary power."

"I suppose most people are reluctant to concede that luck has anything to do with their successes."

"Yes. Particularly when luck isn't the principal element, when ability and effort are the most important things." Julien smiled.

"Which room have you taken?"

"It's a little one on the second floor with a pretty toile behind the bed. It's charming."

"Yes, I think I know that one. Presumably it belonged to a servant."

"Like me."

"Very like you, I expect, Dominique." Julien ran his hand back through his hair.

"I'm glad you're staying. I need more people. Cesar is all very well, but he has to bicycle for miles to get here. I shouldn't really tell you this, but he's the head boy of the lycee. You probably guessed."

"I wasn't sure."

"And Auguste has left us. He told me that he didn't want to work for the English any more. He's joined some network run by General de Gaulle."

"I didn't know there were any."

"Well, that's what he told me. Look, Dominique, I've had a message. From Mirabel, the man in charge. He wants you to meet him. He says it's urgent. He's got important news for you. He's going to ring again and suggest a meeting place."

"News?"

"That's what he said."

"I suppose he's going to tell me to go home at once."

"I didn't get that impression. Perhaps he doesn't know you were supposed to go back with Yves. Minimum information. Isn't that your watchword?"

"Maybe. What's he like, Mirabel?"

"He's fine. This is his third visit. I know him quite well. He's a big broad fellow very strong, physically and mentally."

Charlotte went through to the hall with Julien and said goodbye; she felt for a moment bereft as she watched him go down the broad stone steps.

She turned back into the house. What could Mirabel's 'news' be?

Presumably it was some admonition from G Section, some order to get herself picked up and brought back. Of course, she thought, there is only one important piece of news as far as I'm concerned, and that is whether Peter Gregory is alive. And in the light of her belief she allowed herself to hope, and almost to believe in the preposterous idea that Mirabel was going to bring her just such news. There was a dry taste in her mouth as she went upstairs to bed: the taste, she thought bitterly, of fantasy.

One way in which the Occupation pleased Claude Benech was that there were fewer things in the shops on which he felt obliged to spend money. Although he was generally self-controlled to the point of paralysis in disposing of his schoolmaster's salary, he did occasionally feel that his position required him to buy a new suit or shoes for work, and even to show himself on the eve of feast days at the wine-merchant to give the appearance of some civic geniality. It was with a reluctant step that he trod the streets back to his plain apartment, the shopping bag heavy with cheese, wine and unwanted madeleines. In these austere times, however, such fripperies were simply not on sale, and he could take a far greater proportion of his salary to the savings bank.

Benech flourished in Marshal Petain's new world of Work, Family and Fatherland; he would have gone so far as to say that it was the first time in his life he had been happy. Different eras suited different people, and the austerity of the new regime brought out something doughty in him: he was a man of destiny whose fated hour had come.

Work was something of a passion in any case. He had risen to certain heights at school, where the director had given him the task of administering the time-table for all his colleagues. Benech fell on this task enthusiastically; his desire for position and control outweighed any tedium involved. He flourished in the school, became the object of a silent awe among his colleagues and of fear among the pupils he had previously struggled to control. When, at the end of 1940, religious instruction was restored to schools, Benech, though not until that point a devout person, welcomed it: he had read that the Marshal believed the French army had been humiliated by the Germans because its reserve officers had been taught by Socialist teachers. When the next administration allowed religious instruction to become voluntary, Benech successfully lobbied for it to be retained at his school. He had always hated the way his fellow teachers had supported the Popular Front and various other doomed causes of the Jewish Left, and now he felt vindicated. The Government's removal of all Jews from teaching in 1940 was a move that delighted him in its elegant simplicity, uprooting with one firm. pull both distasteful cause and pernicious effect.

At school Benech organised youth groups, more or less affiliated to Catholic and national organisations; they went camping at the weekend, put on uniforms and sang patriotic songs. The fact that these groups were banned in the Occupied Zone, because of their militaristic nature, made Benech proud of them: it showed they were threatening, and that the real France had survived in Vichy.

Fatherland was a subject on which Benech felt secure. What he feared more than anything-far more than German occupation-was a Communist revolution. The Communists had come close to power in Government: they had enabled the Popular Front to come into being. As far as Benech was concerned, that was bad enough; it certainly sufficed to efface the memory of how they had also contributed to the Front's collapse.

His feelings towards the Germans were a little complicated. On one hand, he felt personally humiliated by his country's defeat, and was glad to find internal culprits in the feeble Republicanism of the Jewish Left; on the other hand, he admired the German troops and believed that Laval's long-term plan, to secure France the second seat at the top table of the new Europe, was a sound one. Meanwhile, the Communists were merely using the Occupier as a rallying point for their revolutionary ends; their real enemy was the traditional France of the centuries, not the temporary German inconvenience. The Vichy government had in Benech's view not only deftly kept the autonomy and spirit of France alive, it had vitally blocked the Communist advance. Vichy was the best the only hope of order, the bulwark against Bolshevism, and those who tried to resist it, or to resist the Occupation, were the true and most dangerous enemy. It was not a difficult stretch of logic to conclude that his enemy's enemy the Occupier - must be his friend. He would not have put it quite so bluntly, but in opposing the Communists and supporting the traditional France of Vichy, the Germans were certainly, Benech believed, on the right lines.

Their continued presence was necessary while the Vichy government sorted out the undesirable elements and set the old country back on course. Family was a less happy area of Benech's life. He had been the middle of three sons who had lost their father on the Mame. They were brought up in Lavaurette by their mother, who indulged her adoration of her eldest son, Charles, a handsome boy who eventually found work with the railways. The youngest, little Louis, was clever and, despite minimal encouragement from his mother, won a scholarship to the lycee, from which he ascended to a different social plane and away, out of their lives. Madame Benech's attitude to the middle son, Claude, was one of frank indifference. She found his coarse looks disappointing: he had wiry black hair, a long moustache from the age of seventeen, pale, mealy skin and a nervous, would-be ingratiating manner. She did not dislike him, she just did not seem to care; she talked to him as though he were a lodger whose parents had forgotten to take him home.

As far as starting a family of his own was concerned, Benech had come close to an agreement a few years earlier with a woman who worked at a bakery, but two weeks before the intended marriage she had disappeared with a farmer. Sylvie Cariteau was probably past child-bearing age, Benech thought; Pauline Bobotte could not be separated not by him anyway from her visiting Toulouse businessman; Irene Galliot... But he preferred not to remember the hilarious disdain with which Irene had met his hopeful advances. He concentrated his thoughts instead on a young woman he had occasionally seen in the village, a new arrival in Lavaurette who had apparently gone to live at the Domaine to work as housekeeper for the old Jew. There was something suspicious as well as attractive about this woman, and he conjured plans as well as fantasies for her.

In his new, contented life, Claude Benech had begun increasingly to enjoy the company of other people. He allowed himself two drinks an evening in the Cafe du Centre, where he felt the regulars viewed him with a certain respect. His opinions had been vindicated by events, and he felt confident about the vigour with which he expressed them.

As a man for whom the historic tide was running, he felt it was likely to be a matter of time only before the family difficulties of his life also fell into place. As he put on his coat and climbed on to his bicycle to go down to the Cafe du Centre, he felt certain that the world was spinning his way.

That night Charlotte lay down for the first time in her new room. She placed Dominique's spare set of clothes in a drawer and hung her skirt on a rail behind a scarlet curtain. She had so far guarded G Section's funds as though any spending might amount to an act of treason, but now she was staying indefinitely she felt sure the war effort would not fail completely if she bought some new underpants. The dense fabric of Dominique's meant that they often took two days to dry out fully, which had sometimes left her the awkward choice of putting them on damp or wearing the same pair two days running. There seemed to be no clothes at all on sale in Lavaurette, so she thought she might take a train one morning to a bigger town. She wished she had some photographs to put on the bedside table: one of Gregory, and perhaps one of Roderick, even a sufficiently ancient one of her parents.

Dominique's voice was less often present in her head these days; Charlotte found that it was she who talked more often to Dominique, explaining the things she did in her name. The idea of being someone else was attractive to her, and that, she recognised as she turned off the light and pulled up the covers, was what had so drawn her to the Domaine.

She was living someone else's life. This house was suffused with unknown histories, but instead of seeing them as a disenfranchised spectator, she had become a legitimate actor among them. By assuming a new identity, she had somehow rid herself of the restraints imposed by her own and allowed herself to join the flow of a timeless reality more urgent than the one in which she otherwise moved.

As she lay there, she remembered reading Proust's novel at Monsieur Loiseau's house and being thrilled by what the writer seemed to have done. The more you came to know a place, in general, the more it lost its essence and became denned by its quirks and its shortcomings; the suggestion of something numinous or meaningful was usually available with full force only to the first-time visitor and gradually decreased with familiarity. Yet in his book Proust seemed to have worked the paradoxical trick of making his places universal by the familiarity and attentiveness with which he described their individual characters. Charlotte was so pleased by this sleight of hand that she did not at first see how closely it was related to the effects of time; how it depended on the force of involuntary memory to release the deeper reality from the imprisonment of the years. The novel made it clear enough in the end, but Charlotte, still in her teens, had been too intoxicated by its sentences to take in its final significance. Monsieur Loiseau had not helped her; he had merely been delighted that such a French monument had so delighted his "English' guest; Charlotte later suspected he might not actually have finished the book, but was merely proud of it as a French achievement and pleased by the coincidence of sharing a surname with one of the minor characters, a woman with a house beside the church in Combray with fuchsias in her garden.

At the Domaine Charlotte seemed to be coming as close as was possible to inhabiting that more profound reality, though it was possible only intermittently; for the rest, she was limited by the practical considerations of her life. She still did not quite believe that Gregory was dead. It seemed that he had not made contact with the garage at Clermont-Ferrand, but that proved very little. She had grown so used to his absence that that was now her way of knowing him, and marginal evidence that this absence might be final made surprisingly little difference. There were moments when she gave way to grief, and her vulnerability to such outbursts was kept at a certain pitch by the sheer anxiety of not knowing; at other times, she felt her emotions were simply not subtle enough to accommodate the perpetual uncertainty.

Meanwhile there was always Mirabel, and the hope he represented.

She would carry on living, and eventually the pain would go, or at least she would reach a state of existence in which it was explained.

While she waited for this enlightenment, she experienced none of the symptoms that had caused her mother to send her, in her teens, to the psychiatrist in Aberdeen; such depressions could not take root in the changed landscape of her mind. She had become galvanised, perhaps by grief, perhaps by some more intellectual process, in a way that left no room for the failure of energy that was the precondition of such despair.

In the Domaine she felt energetic, she felt precariously alive. She was in the right place, she was sure, and something was going to happen. Out there the foothills of the Massif Central were covered with summer darkness. In a lit window of a first floor Julien was telephoning quietly, smoking, drinking brandy from an antique glass.

Somewhere Peter Gregory was hiding out, unhurt, and patiently planning his return. Downstairs, in the echoic rooms of this traditional manor house, Levade was doing whatever untraditional things he did at night.

In Bordeaux the German soldiers stamped their feet.

I am almost happy. Charlotte thought, and it is a blasphemy to be happy in such grief. Something is going to happen.

Just before three o'clock, when Charlotte was lying many fathoms below thought, Peter Gregory was woken by a hoarsely whispering voice.

"Monsieur. Time to go. Come on."

The couple stood in the doorway of his room. Beatrice held out a shopping bag in which she and Jacques had put a change of clothes, a dried sausage and a loaf of bread. The old man struggled with matches until eventually a nickering glow came up around him.

Gregory hated being woken in the night. It reminded him of days in Africa when the boy would rouse him before dawn because there was work to be done before it grew hot. The taste of aborted sleep also recalled days on the station when they would be scrambled to their planes just as the sun was rising. He lowered his legs gently to the floor. He was fully dressed in clothes that Jacques had given him, the trousers ludicrously too short but lengthened by the addition of vaguely matching material at the bottom.

He took his jacket from the chair and followed his hosts downstairs. Outside, in the farmyard, a horse and cart were waiting. Jacques handed Gregory a walking stick and carried his bag to the cart. The moonlight was splashed over the mud and dung at their feet.

"Goodbye, Beatrice." Gregory embraced the old woman and felt her hard little body sobbing in his arms.

The old man kissed him on both cheeks, his wiry bristles scorching through Gregory's shaved skin.

"I will come back," said Gregory, also close to tears.

"I will come back."

He climbed on to the cart, with Jacques pushing and helping him from behind. He settled his leg out straight on some old sacks while the driver shook the reins over the horse and moved off.

Gregory looked back at the grey buildings of the farm, three sides of a square in the darkness. He lifted his hand and waved to the old couple, minute figures, holding on to one another in the mud.