Charlotte's eye took in Madame Galliot's torso and the huge lower expanse of black hair which looked for a moment like the giant sporran of some fabulously virile clan. Charlotte lowered her head and splashed water into her face. Above the thunder of water on porcelain and the swishing waves of women mixing hot and cold inside their tubs, there were shouted conversations and splashing. Charlotte could make out Pauline Bobotte's plump, shiny body with its pointed breasts and roll of fat around the middle that no privations appeared to have threatened. As she vigorously dried herself, the flesh of her buttocks wobbled like that of a woman in a Rubens painting, and Charlotte wondered if this was what men liked. Would Gregory like it? He would certainly enjoy being here, she thought, though he would have noted sadly the absence of Madame Galliot's daughter. Perhaps Irene was too proud to take her clothes off in front of other people. Cakes of soap, so severely rationed outside, were in abundance here; they smelt of something harsh and chemical, but there were plenty of the palm-sized pink bricks. Charlotte washed with luxurious pleasure in the deep water, replenished from the unlimited supply, and when there was no reason to prolong her immersion, she reluctantly stood up and turned towards the central bench.

She had lost weight in the months she had been in France, though to her irritation it had gone from her hands, her feet, her cheeks, places from which she had no need to lose it. She was aware that above each hipbone there was still a little surplus flesh and that a slight roundness persisted in her belly, even though the ribs above were protuberant.

As she stood by the bench and raised her leg to dry her thighs and her knees with their fine bones. Charlotte found that she was staring at Pauline Benoit, naked except for her cherry lipstick and a ribbon in her hair, or rather that Pauline was staring at her, and in particular at her groin.

Charlotte followed the other woman's eyes to the thin, inverted plume of golden hair that her raised leg only half concealed; then she looked back at Pauline, saw her eyes now on her face and on the dark, cropped coiffure. She understood what had intrigued Pauline. After almost five months in France, it was the first evidence of a mistake by G Section.

When she had put on the new dress, she took the rest of her clothes out to the washroom that adjoined the baths, where she towelled her hair vigorously and tried to arrange it in the mirror. Sylvie Cariteau combed her black bob and smiled her candid smile at Charlotte.

"Will you come and have a glass at my house after dinner with Monsieur Levade?"

"Thank you."

"To wish you good luck."

In the vestibule. Charlotte wrapped her coat about her, put on her scarf and handed in the sopping towel. It was not far to Julien's apartment, and for the first time ever, unless Pauline Benoit was going to run naked across the Place de 1'Eglise, she would reach the staircase unchallenged.

"My God, Daniele, you look wonderful," said Julien when Charlotte stepped into his apartment.

"You remember Cesar, don't you?"

The head boy of the lycee stood up and held out his big hand to be shaken, apparently not daring to offer his cheek; Charlotte kissed him anyway and accepted the glass Julien held out to her.

"We're expecting a couple more for dinner," said Julien.

"Lepidus is bringing some pate and Antony is supposed to have a pear tart. Don't ask how they manage it."

"What am I drinking?" said Charlotte.

"It's an alcohol made from apples, a sort of local calvados. Madame Benoit gave it to me. It's a little rough, I'm afraid, but I haven't been able to get much wine. I like your dress. Was that from the shop Pauline told you about?"

"Yes. It makes me look a bit like my mother, but it was the best they could do. Is everything all right for tonight?"

"Yes, there was confirmation on the BBC. It's not till midnight, but I want us to be there by half past ten. We'll meet the others there.

We've got a new man in to replace Auguste."

"Good," said Charlotte.

"Don't tell me his name. Caligula?"

"This is a serious business, Madame. As a matter of fact it's Tiberius."

"I knew it was only a matter of time before you reached the perverts."

"That's enough. Cesar, amuse Daniele, please, while I finish making dinner. I have a little surprise for you."

The prospect of action seemed to have restored Julien's old humour and Charlotte heard him singing as he clattered about in the kitchen.

Antony and Lepidus arrived together, bringing their promised contributions, which they laid on the table before helping themselves eagerly to Madame Benoit's apple spirit. Antony was a plump man with thick-rimmed glasses whom Charlotte recognised, though she did not say so, as the local optician.

Lepidus, the third member of the peculiar triumvirate, was well into his seventies, red-faced, and with a hand that shook so badly that he had to steady it with the other when he clasped his brimming glass. A minute or so later his eyes were still watering, but his hand was calm.

Julien's surprise turned out to be a brace of rabbits he had shot in the grounds of the Domaine that morning. He had prepared them in a sauce whose main ingredient was mustard, referred to on its packet by the new regime as

'condiment'. He had put some of the rice with the offal to make a stuffing and served some macaroni on the side in place of potatoes, or 'feculents' as the rationmasters called them. There was also a small heap of something orange which even in their extreme hunger Julien's guests treated cautiously.

"They call it " rutabaga"," Julien explained to Antony, who had lifted a forkful up to his spectacles for closer examination.

"I think it's something they normally give to cattle. The commissars of Vichy have strongly recommended it to their loyal, hungry people."

"Hmm," said Antony, inspecting the blob on the end of his fork.

"I don't suppose it features very often on the menus at the Hotel du Pare."

"I dare say not," said Julien.

Even Cesar, with the appetite of three men, managed only a little of the curious vegetable. Charlotte, who recognised it as swede, wanted to tell them that where she came from it was considered a delicacy when accompanying the haggis; but as Daniele she could only shrug and share their puzzled revulsion. Julien poured wine into glasses that were always empty and pushed affirmatively towards his bottle.

Watching Lepidus's lip hook avidly over the rim of his glass and suck. Charlotte "wondered to what extent political idealism was his motive in risking his life on a freezing winter's night.

Reaching the agreed drop zone was no longer the simple matter it had been before the advent of the Germans. They left the house separately, at a quarter to ten in order to beat the curfew, and were instructed by Julien to make their own way to the farm, without lights on their bicycles.

"You can come with me, Daniele," he said.

"We'll bring up the rear."

As Charlotte free-wheeled down the rue de 1'Eglise, the wind whistling through the insubstantial fabric of Dominique's overcoat, she was aware both of how much she had drunk and of the fact that, whatever the amount, it was less than half that consumed by any of the others.

She followed Julien to Madame Cariteau's house on the main road.

"We've got half an hour," said Julien, rapping on the glass of the back door. Sylvie Cariteau, her hair shiny from the effects of the pink carbolic soap, let them into the kitchen where she had set out six glasses on the cleared and scrubbed table. In answer to her daughter's call, Madame Cariteau appeared at the door to the main part of the house with Andre and Jacob.

"I don't know what all this is about," the old woman muttered, 'and I don't think I want to know, I'm a loyal citizen. Sylvie doesn't tell me anything. "

"We should have a song. A song from each of us," said Sylvie Cariteau, and sat down at the piano.

"Who'll go first?"

"Madame, Madame, you go," said Andre, looking up at Charlotte.

"I think you have an admirer," said Mlle Cariteau.

The only song Charlotte could think of was "Alouette', which she sang, with some help with the words from Sylvie and Andre. Julien drained another glass before starting up an old folk song about a man who was jealous of his wife but was cuckolded all the same.

Madame Cariteau's clucking disapproval was drowned by a chorus full of 'lala-las' with which the boys were able to join in. Madame Cariteau walked over to the piano and folded her arms across her chest. She launched herself precipitately into something that her daughter was not expecting, and there were some family words before they agreed to start again. Madame Cariteau's voice, once it had found the right key, turned out to be surprisingly clear and firm; no trace of self-consciousness blurred the high notes of the traditional song she had chosen.

Looking at the old woman's stout, worn body. Charlotte was amazed by the youthful purity that had been preserved intact within it; it was like watching a clear stream erupt from dark, decaying undergrowth.

The chorus went: "But then I was young and the leaves were green/ Now the corn is cut and the little boat sailed away." It was a song of the most self-admiring sentimentality about the different ages of a man's life. One of the verses began:

"One day the young men came back from the war, the corn was high and our sweethearts were waiting..

" and there was a silence in the Cariteaus' kitchen as though the music had exceeded the sum of its modest parts. Charlotte could not help thinking of Madame Cariteau's husband and of all the men who did not come back for Sylvie. She found tears filling her eyes and was appalled both by the feeling and by her lack of musical taste.

Julien called out a virile 'bravo' to break the mood and brought Jacob forward to the piano. He sang a tune he had learned at school, though his shyness made it difficult to understand. It was something about "To the right, to the left, please take my hand, and come and dance, and ..." but after two or three attempts the words seemed to peter out at this point.

Sylvie Cariteau sang a canon by Bach, her voice oddly coarser than her old mother's. Finally, Andre sang all the many verses of the story of a little ship that had never sailed and set off on a long voyage. The chorus involved Julien conducting with the empty wine bottle: "Sailors sail upon the waves!" It went down so well with the boys that they had to go through it again.

On the final note, Julien embraced both women warmly, kissed the boys, took Charlotte by the elbow and out into the night. They were ten minutes up the road before Charlotte had caught her breath.

In the farmhouse they met the other members of the group, standing round beneath the lanterns hung from the beam of the kitchen, smacking their upper arms with their gloved hands, drinking from coffee cups and enamel mugs they filled from an unlabelled bottle on the table.

Charlotte watched in disbelief as Cesar, Lepidus and Antony helped themselves again. One of the other men produced a dry sausage, which he cut into lengths and handed round. A youngish man with curly hair and a beard took a pistol from his jacket, emptied the bullets into his hand, twirled round the empty chamber, held it up to the lantern, checked the sights and carefully reloaded it. Most of the others had firearms of some kind. Charlotte knotted her headscarf more tightly under her chin and smiled at Cesar as she declined his offer of a sunflower-leaf cigarette. The men muttered and growled at each other as they shrugged, lit cigarettes and occasionally punched one another on the shoulder.

On the bare table Julien placed two cups to show the location of the farm building and of a barn the other side of the drop zone. Then he drew tracks in the wood with this finger to show the plane's path and the line that the men's torches must make. It was a large bomber, he didn't know what make, but it would be heaving out sixteen containers into the void. It was dangerous to be underneath because of the weight of what was coming down, so no one was to move a pace from his designated spot.

"Listen," said one of the men, slightly less agricultural-looking than the others, 'my brother-in-law was in the air force and I know a thing or two about flying. The chances of a bomber finding that little clearing and being able to drop on the lights you've described--it's hopeless."

Julien smiled tolerantly.

"They've done it before."

"Just on co-ordinates and a couple of torches, you don't think--"

" If you don't want to take part, you can leave now. Go on." The man shrugged and puffed for a moment, but stood his ground.

"It's all right. I'll stay."

"Good." Julien turned to a small man who looked from his torn clothes and bedraggled appearance as though he had spent several nights in the woods. He had an unwashed smell that reminded Charlotte of a beggar who had once lurched at her from a doorway in Glasgow, but Julien seemed to defer to his knowledge of the terrain, and particularly of a wood they needed to cross.

He told them he had heard the second BBC bulletin and that the drop had been confirmed; they would meet four more volunteers at an agreed clearing in the woods.

Julien looked at his watch.

"Is everybody ready? From the time we make contact with the other four until the drop is completed and everything has been cleared away there must be no talking. Do you understand?"

The men shifted their weight and stamped their feet on the cold stone floor. Charlotte thought they looked like ghillies preparing for a rough shoot on the estate of some minor aristocrat fallen on hard times. She saw two of them fill flasks from the bottle on the table and slip them into their pockets.

As they left the building and clattered over the moonlit farmyard, Charlotte felt the sweet illicit thrill she remembered from her childhood when, on the endless summer nights beneath the northern skies, she and Roderick would climb out of their bedroom windows, go down a ladder they had left beside the house and make for the fields.

The aching cut of the December wind brought her back to the present, but the moonlight was as white and as evenly spread as on a Highland night in August.

"Charlotte" ... admirable," she thought.

They walked in single file, obediently silent, down a narrow path beside a field in which half a dozen cows stood like iron statues.

The tramp-like man in front, who, Julien whispered to Charlotte, was a poacher, then made them drop down into a ditch and up the other side into a dense wood. Hearing the noise of breaking twigs and shuffled leaves.

Charlotte shivered at how easy it would be for a German patrol to run a machine gun swiftly down their line. After about twenty minutes they emerged on to the rim of a large clearing, which Charlotte could make out was edged on all four sides by woods.

Charlotte jumped at the sound of a creature coming through the thick undergrowth at her shoulder. She had no gun and found she had let out a small cry as she grabbed Julien's arm. The creature was followed by three others. They whispered greetings to Julien who motioned them to go forward into the field. In the twenty minutes before the plane was due, Julien placed the men with torches at intervals of a hundred yards and told the others that each of them must count the number of parachutes with the utmost care.

He took Charlotte by the wrist and positioned her on the edge of the field.

"Watch carefully, Daniele. And count. One parachute missed means we can never use this place again. And they'll be on to us."

Charlotte watched the sky, picking out the tilted saucepan of the Great Bear, from which northerly direction the plane would presumably arrive.

The thought of the English plane with men from London, Lincolnshire, perhaps from Aberdeen, that had ploughed through the night and would by dawn have taken its men home to tea and English newspapers made her feel, for the first time since she had been in France, a lurching homesickness.

Above their heads was a narrow crescent moon in a sky almost yellow with the light of sludgy galaxies. The curved shape reminded her of some lines by Victor Hugo that she could never, irritatingly, quite remember, about a careless god who had been reaping in the sky, then stopped and 'left his sickle in this golden field of stars'.

They stood in their places, listening to the darkness. The huge country lay peacefully all about them, indifferent to the whereabouts of some tiny plane. How futile it seemed. Charlotte thought: the villages in the Cevennes would still cling to their rocky defiles, the Loire would still broadly flow; the vastness of the silent, undisturbed country made their sincerest efforts look quite useless. She strained against the silence of the night. There was the sound of some night-bird, fussing over the limits of its territory, a sudden rattle in the undergrowth of the woods, perhaps a rabbit or a grounded pheasant, then the icy stillness once more all round. Then there came a sound like breath, like a soft grunt caught and stifled on the beat of a pulse. She reached out and touched Julien's hand. She pointed upwards.

"Yes?"

Julien put his finger to his lips and listened. The noise grew louder, becoming a whirring growl.

"Yes." Julien ran out into the field and shouted to the men in the line. The sound was now continuous, and above the deeply pulsing engine there was a whining note as though it was straining to slow down.

At last the plane came into sight. A black square against the white moonlit clouds, it grew swiftly in size as it began to descend on them.

With no lights, it was like a thunderous animal coming down closer and closer, until it filled the sky to one side of the torches only a few feet above their heads and made the ground tremble with the huge sonorous notes of its exhaust. Charlotte saw four vast engines, then the belly of the plane, then square rudders on the tail as it passed over them and began to climb. It dropped nothing, but started to rise and bank slowly to its right.

"What's wrong?" called Charlotte to the figure nearest to her.

"Wasn't it ours?"

"Yes." It was the man with the brother-in-law in the air force.

"It was a Halifax. It'll come back." His tone was grudging. The sound of engines was almost lost as the heavy plane made its long, heavy turn, then, at the point of vanishing, it began a slow crescendo. Once more the black, ragged square approached beneath the lights of the Bear and this time it came in almost flat on the line of the waiting torches. The noise of the propellers seemed to echo and ring off the frozen sky, and as the plane levelled out above them the moon struck a tingling reflection in the perspex canopy. At the moment the four engines seemed on the point of stalling, the belly of the aircraft broke open and heavy dark blossoms filled the sky behind it like a handful of black confetti. They swung on swift, narrow arcs and landed with a tinny sound on the hard earth. Before the plane was out of sight, the field was full of people running to the collapsed parachutes and wrenching them free of their metal cargo. In the excitement Charlotte had forgotten to count.

Julien was running round trying to find out how many parachutes had come down. Charlotte hurried over to the nearest one, where she found the poacher opening the cylinder down one side. There were three further canisters inside with two wire handles for carrying. He pulled one out, handed it to Charlotte, and pointed her to the corner of the field while he folded the parachute into the empty outer container. The squat little tube was extraordinarily heavy, and the wire handles cut deeply into Charlotte's hands. She noticed that most of the men had somehow hoisted the tubes on to their shoulders. She took off her headscarf and wrapped it round her palms to protect them as she lugged the cylinder across the field. There was a growing pile inside a small clearing at the edge of the wood where Julien was discouraging the men from opening the containers until everything had been brought in from the drop zone.

The rule of silence had been completely forgotten in the exhilaration of the moment as they smoked and laughed and congratulated themselves on the successful drop.

As Charlotte went back into the field to retrieve another of the heavy packages she heard the sound of the plane again. It came down on a different angle this time, not directly overhead, but on a slow, wide turn from east to west. As it dipped in above the clearing it seemed dangerously low, and the sound of its groaning engines made Charlotte think for a moment that it was going to stall and bury itself in the ground. A torch to her left was flashing a morse signal to the roaring, juddering plane, and as her eyes ran up along its beam.

Charlotte, alone in the field, her hair whipped against her face, looked up and saw for a second in the black open cave of the bomb bay a g down on her. His silhouette was caught for a moment, lit from behind by a light in the fuselage. Then the plane was climbing as swiftly as its bulk would permit, the engine noise rising in pitch as it completed its turn and pointed north for home.

"They like to have a look at their clients sometimes. It's their way of saying hello." It was Julien.

"Come on. Let's see what they've brought us."

Charlotte followed him back to the wood. She was shaking.

In the clearing the men were transferring the contents of the metal containers into sacks. There were Bren guns, pistols, ammunition and hand grenades; there was also plastic explosive, which the men inspected doubtfully, and a huge number of cheap-looking Sten guns with magazines and loaders. Cesar let out a cry of delight as his canister disgorged bars of chocolate, butter, tins of food and prime Virginia cigarettes, a packet of which he opened at once and handed round.

"You've got to stop them taking the parachutes," said Julien.

"They'll try and make them into clothes and anyone can see from the stitching where they've come from."

Eventually they finished burying the stores and covered the place with leaves and loose branches.

"The horse and cart'll be here tomorrow night," Julien said, 'but it's too dangerous to take it all back to Lavaurette with the Germans there. We'll have to keep it at the farm. Is that all right?"

The farmer he had turned to shrugged as he pulled deeply on his English cigarette.

"We had a visit from the police two weeks ago when we had two calves and a pregnant sow in the cellar. They didn't see a thing."

"Come on, then." The men began to file back through the wood, with the poacher leading, then out on to the narrow track. Many of them stumbled and swore as they went. One of the men passed Charlotte a flask.

Although she had already drunk more than ever before in her life she felt the bonds of comradeship required her to accept. Here was service at last in the illdefined but urgent moral cause that had first sent her south to London; here was the reason she had decided to stay in France. She was not going to appear halfhearted at this late stage.

"Are you all right?" Julien asked her at the farm, as the men mounted their bicycles and rode off shakily towards their homes.

"I think so." It was hard to say precisely. She had been frightened by the dangerous proximity of the plane and by the noise it made, then felt tricked and wounded by the vision of the single airman looking down on her. She also felt a powerful bond with these absurd drunken men stumbling about in the darkness, a sense of gratitude to them for having understood what needed to be done. She was one of them, and wanted to be closer.

Her skin felt swollen with this odd mixture of emotion as she followed Julien back into Lavaurette, her bicycle wobbling dangerously as they turned the sharp corner out of the Place de 1'Eglise.

"Will you be all right to get home?" said Julien, leaning his machine against the wall.

Charlotte nodded.

Julien put his face close to hers; he seemed to be inspecting her in the darkness. She closed her eyes for a moment. She was aware of how strange and sleepy she must appear; it was as though she were anaesthetised by drink, yet beneath the painless surface she was turbulently conscious.

"Do you want to come in? We could have a nightcap. Or you can sleep here if you're too tired to go back to the Domaine. I don't mind the sofa." Charlotte nodded and Julien took her arm as they made their way across the hall and up the stairs. He turned on a lamp in the sitting room and handed her a glass. She put it down on the table and opened her arms.

Julien embraced her and she rested her head against his shoulder.

"It's all right, Dominique, it's all right." He kissed her hair. She pulled her head back and smiled at him.

"I'm so tired," she said.

"Of course you are. It's late. It's almost dawn. And tonight was ... different."

"Yes." Charlotte wanted to explain her conflicting passions to Julien, how strong they were, how important, but she was too tired to find the words, and too drunk.

"Kiss me," she said.

She had no wish to leave Julien's apartment; she had been so long alone, so long thrown back on the resources of her own mind and feelings that she wanted to take strength and comfort from someone else.

"I'd like to stay with you," she said.

Julien appeared once more to be earnestly, almost clinically examining her face.

"Are you sure? You won't regret it?"

Charlotte smiled. She would not regret anything that brought her closer to the companionship of the men with whom she had spent the evening.

They had understood their past and they had made some effort to keep a thread intact, a link that would enable their country to survive because the connection to better days, before the Fall, though tenuous, would be unbroken.

"And Monsieur Guilbert?" said Julien.

"What would he say?"

"I don't care." She opened her hands in shrugging dismissal.

"You can kiss me again. Monsieur Levade, if you like." She saw in Julien's eyes the look of furtive schoolboy pleasure she had seen when she first kissed him in Lavaurette, as though he could not quite believe his luck. It made her start to laugh, so she had to pull her mouth away from his.

"Your face," she said.

"What's wrong with it?"

Charlotte looked at its expression, now agitated and serious.

"Nothing," she said, 'it's a beautiful face."

"Madame Guilbert, you're a very teasing, wicked woman."

"Shall we go into the bedroom?"

Charlotte sat on the end of Julien's bed; she remembered how she had slept in it the first day she had arrived in Lavaurette with her detective story, her identity fiercely subdued in that of Dominique.

Now it would be wonderful to do something spontaneously affectionate, free from the weight of anguish and uncertainty.

"My husband has a mistress, anyway," she said, as she pushed off the ugly shoes.

"It serves him right." She reached up and undid the buttons on the back of her dress; she stood to let it fall to the floor. She was not quite too drunk to calculate that, unless the cycle of her body had played an unprecedented trick, there was no danger of her becoming pregnant.

"Oh, Dominique," said Julien, running his hands down the small of her bare back, then slipping a finger inside the waistband of her new silk underwear.

"I've always wanted to make love to a stranger, someone whose name I don't even know."

Charlotte felt him slide away her remaining clothes and tightly shut her eyes, some modest hope persisting that she might thus herself become invisible. Julien pushed her gently back on to the bed and she felt the mattress shake as he tore at his own clothes.

"Quickly," she said, aware that her churning emotions might move into a new pattern that would make her want to stop, or that the serene sense of not caring might desert her.

She felt Julien's lips kissing the skin of her inner thigh and for a moment thought of what he might be seeing, and wondered whether it was yet light enough in the seepage of the grey winter dawn through the shutters for him, like Pauline Benoit, to be puzzled. She lifted him by the shoulders and felt his body loom over hers as he kissed her mouth.

Between her legs she felt the touch of his hand while he whispered in her ear.

"Madame Guilbert, you are a remarkable woman. If you were not married I might think myself in love with you."

"Please, Octave. Please."

Charlotte heard her own voice as she begged him to begin, but he kept her waiting, whispering, "Dominique, you're so beautiful," while his hand caressed her until she could take no more but reached out and pulled him into her. She felt Julien clench his body in desperate self-control. He moved slowly back and forth for a few minutes, then briefly stopped.

"Dominique," he breathed, 'this is so wonderful I feel I might disintegrate, I might break into a million fragments."

She pushed against him, reclaimed him, and he began to move more vigorously, then sigh with sad rapture as though he recognised his time was limited. Though she sensed how he tried to hold himself back. Charlotte felt buffeted by the urgency of his desire, too much so to venture off into her own imagining, and so she merely went with him, in a willing indulgence.

At the last moment she did feel a rise of feeling in herself as he groaned out her presumed name for the final time; but what name she called out in return she could not have said, as her mind was full of the picture of Julien being annihilated, as he slumped down gasping on top of her, breaking into tiny dying fragments. VI

4

For more than twenty-four hours Peter Gregory had waited and watched. He left the busy port area during the day and looked for somewhere to sleep where he would not draw attention to himself. Although he had cash in his pocket, he was wary of trying to buy food without tickets. In order to look less suspicious, he also needed to shave, but having previously borrowed equipment from Jacques (it was seldom used by the old man himself), he was not sure whether razors and blades were also rationed.

By midday the pain in his leg was so severe that he decided to risk a hotel he had seen a short walk back from the waterfront. Despite the harsh light overhead, the lino-covered vestibule had a dim, crepuscular feeling, unmitigated by the sweet smell of some recent disinfectant.

Behind the high front desk sat a woman in her sixties with greying hair piled up in a bun and thick glasses that rendered her suspicious eyes unnaturally large. Gregory stuck an unlit cigarette in the corner of his mouth to make his speech less distinct.

"Room?" he barked, laying down his identity card on the counter. In the course of the afternoon he had rubbed it on the ground and scuffed the edges to make it look less new.

The woman turned to a board behind her and took a key from its hook. She said something Gregory did not understand, in answer to which he smiled as charmingly as he could manage and yawned melodramatically. She spoke again and he thought he made out the word for money. He rapidly calculated that even if he was mistaken she was unlikely to be displeased by being offered cash at this stage, and put his hand to his pocket; perhaps it was not the sort of hotel where people actually spent the night. The exchange of money lightened the atmosphere, and it occurred to Gregory that the woman was as frightened as he was. They had told him in London that there were no fewer than fifteen police and security organisations working in France and doubtless the landlady like everyone else had something she did not wish them to find out. He climbed the stairs and went along the passage to room number 14. The grimy little window overlooked an interior courtyard in which the cooker outlet from the kitchen emitted a grey, unwholesome vapour.

Gregory lay down on the bed and, despite his best intentions of only resting, fell asleep.

It was dark when he awoke. He made his way back to the street by the harbour. There was still the same bustle of German troops unloading stores, standing behind lorries, smoking; there were still French police strutting about in pairs.

It was past midnight when he decided he could wait no longer; if he did not move soon he would faint with hunger and fatigue. When the door of the house he was watching opened at last, he went across the street and stopped the middleaged man who was leaving.

"Pascale?"

"First floor." The man jerked his head backwards and hurried off. Gregory went up the bare stairs and knocked at a green-painted door on the landing.

It opened a few inches and he found himself looking at a woman with stern, grey eyes.

"What do you want?"

"Pascale. I ... Gregory's French deserted him. He closed his eyes and felt the floor begin to buckle underneath him.

"I'm English," he said in his own language.

"For God's sake help me."

The door opened and he stepped inside.

"Take it easy," said the woman, also in English.

"My God, you're American."

He fell forward against her, and she dragged his bony weight across the room to a divan by the window.

Charlotte became particular in her work at the Domaine, as though it were something that interested her. She forced herself to take pride in the cleanliness of the floors and furniture and to make dinner, even if it was barely edible, at least a punctuation of Levade's undifferentiated hours.

She began to think more and more about home. The sight of the black bellied Halifax above her, the curious pilot making one more sweep above the benighted land before heading north for England, had made her think of those laconic men, their flying suits, their beer, their shoulder-shrugging that concealed an inglorious belief in what they did.

She thought more and more of her parents and of her brother; if he was now abroad, as he had so long hoped, they would be worried for his safety. Roderick had a way of being at the centre of improbable storms; he was always on the train that broke down, invariably in the foyer of the cinema that caught fire.

The combination of fatigue, exhilaration and the after-effects of drink made her able to postpone thinking about her night with Julien.

Then, as her mind became rested and clear, she found her first response was a self-righteous sense of loyalty to herself Why not?" she caught herself saying to her reflection when she combed her hair in the morning: it's my life, I'm responsible to no one but myself. She rather admired her own daring, and felt protective of the vulnerable being that was still there in the centre of her child, woman, it made no difference and to whom she owed her greatest allegiance. I will stick by my own decisions, she valiantly thought, as she laboured in the icy rooms of the Domaine. Yet her bravado was slowly deflated by feelings of shame and insecurity. She loved the idea of Dominique had used her without compunction for her own advantage, and regretted having descended to invoking her as an alibi for her own idle lust, betrayal or selfish need for reassurance.

Dominique represented to her the plight of a typical woman expelled from some domestic paradise by forces outside herself, and Charlotte was deeply sympathetic; for a few days her misuse of Dominique weighed more heavily with her than her infidelity to Peter Gregory. He had been for so long absent, for so long kept alive not by any realistic belief but more by her neurotic need for him, that to believe she had been unfaithful required a sophistication of feeling that was beyond her.

Slowly, however, guilt cleared its ingenious paths, and Charlotte began to suffer fears that only her fidelity had kept him living a superstitious dread that he would now give up or die. She felt she had compromised the only thing in her life that had had the redeeming power of goodness and purity; it made no difference that it was just one night, with a man of whom she was profoundly fond. Fidelity was a matter of absolutes not degree; it would have been no worse if she had slept with every man at the farm that night.

Her long patience was about to be rewarded by word from Mirabel, and, at the crucial moment, she had failed.

From day to day her most pressing problem was with Julien. She felt embarrassed by the difference she presumed in their feelings; she thought he was in love with her and that she was bound to disappoint him. Her only hope was that men, perhaps, were different in such matters and that his obvious desires for her were not necessarily eloquent of any deep feeling. Meanwhile she discovered some reflex in herself--so contradictory of her conscious feelings that she could only imagine it as a primal instinct-which craved reassurance that he did actually care for her, and that their night together would not be a single, unrepeated act. She wanted to go back to him.

Charlotte despaired at the confusion of her feelings, but managed to decide one thing clearly at least: that she would as far as possible avoid seeing Julien until her thoughts were clearer.

One morning she was washing in the icy water of the bathroom basin, splashing it all over and scrubbing with soap to store up cleanliness so she could postpone a return to the public baths. Again, she had the strange sensation that someone was watching her, but this time she did not have time to cover herself and investigate because the door was opened from outside.

"Ah, Madame Guilbert. Excuse me. I need to go out and I wanted you to know that I am expecting a delivery this afternoon. Some paints."

Levade shrugged.

"Pointless, I expect. I'll just smear them on the canvas. But you never know." Charlotte, dripping, cold, and hastily arranging a towel about her, felt embarrassment for them both. Levade simply stared at her with level eyes. She began to protest at his intrusion, but it seemed quite pointless.

"All right," she said.

"I'll listen for the door."

"Thank you. I'll be back by two."

He walked away down the corridor, and Charlotte quickly dried herself. Did he really see only through the eyes of art? Was his gaze so pure that he saw only the shapes of Renoir or Modigliani? She was slightly nettled by his indifference. At least now perhaps he'll consider my breasts as fine as Anne-Marie's, she thought, as she pulled on her clothes.

Downstairs there was a letter for Madame Guilbert. On a single sheet inside were the words: "Meet me Wednesday, 16 hours. Same place.

Mirabel."

Charlotte crumpled the paper joyously in her fist. She loved Mirabel; she loved the way he kept his word; she loved the care he had taken to make his handwriting look so French.

"I think I'm dreaming for two," Charlotte told Levade that afternoon when he had invited her into his studio to examine his new paints.

"Something has caused a great storm of dreams in me. They're not pictures, though, they're more like actions."

Levade seemed uninterested. Other people's dreams. Charlotte remembered her father telling her as a teenager, are the most tedious conversational topic on earth. You can fabricate an interest in gossip on the grounds that it at least springs from an actual experience, however trite; dreams lack even this weak claim on our attention. Dr. Gray had resented the importance ascribed to dreams by most practitioners of his science and had himself tried to hurry his patients through their recitations.

Levade was looking at the painting of Anne-Marie.

"She's a charming woman, isn't she?" he said.

"There's something powerfully feminine about her. But the painting tells us nothing. It might just as well be a photograph."

"What about the skin on her arms?" said Charlotte, though she still found it was not to Anne-Marie's arms that her eyes were drawn.

"Just paint."

The dream Charlotte wanted to tell him about was one from the night before, in which she had re-experienced the moment in her childhood when her father had betrayed her. To overcome Levade's resistance to the topic of dreams, she had to cast it as truth, as something that had happened, as in fact so far as she could tell it had.

She climbed off the bed where she had been sitting and walked across the bare boards until she stood between Levade and the light from the window, so she could be sure of his attention. Her tongue seemed stuck for a moment to her teeth; she licked her lips and looked over at him.

"When I was a child of about seven my father did something to me that has troubled me ever since. He caused me pain in what seemed like an innocent embrace. I opened my arms to him as a child would, and when he let me go something terrible had happened. Everything was changed."

Levade's hand was motionless, the paintbrush poised a small distance from the canvas.

"He assaulted you?" Levade's eyes were fixed on Charlotte's face.

"He hurt me."

She told him how she had come upon her father weeping, and how, when she had tried to comfort him something had taken place. He had pushed her away, he had slapped her ... but the pain felt worse than this, like a violation, like an end of innocence.

"Did he really hit you? Or was it more like ..."

"It sounds extraordinary," said Charlotte, 'but I don't know. There was physical pain, but I couldn't say in what part of my body. The damage he did me was so personal and wounding that I've often thought it must have been sexual. Yet the truth is that I can't remember. My mind didn't understand at that age, and I just shut it away. I was left with a fear that it might happen again. It was the most real, most powerful thing that's ever happened to me, yet I can't remember exactly what it was."

"It's not strange," said Levade.

"I understand."

"You do?" Charlotte looked at him in disbelief. For almost twenty years this half-assimilated thing had lain in her mind unconfessed a trouble to her thinking, feeling life, and she had never thought that anyone could comprehend. Levade breathed in; his face became radiant with interest and his body seemed to slough off its habitual air of defeat.

"What would a child's mind do with such an experience? It could only push it to one side and try to bury it. It's possible that you may never know what happened; it may be beyond the reach of memory. And perhaps that's not a terrible thing. Human beings can live with mystery, with unresolved conflicts." Charlotte thought of the painting he had shown her.

"Yes, but the trouble is that it affected my life. My childhood until then had been wonderful. There seemed to be no flaw in it. Although my father was not a demonstrative man, I felt surrounded by love, I was insulated from the world. Every taste and every sensation came to me with this innocence, with this guarantee of love and safety. Then, from that moment, all that certainty, all that bliss was gone."

"How did it show itself? Did it make you unstable?"

"Later, in my teens, I was ill, I was treated by various doctors. They called it " depression", but I don't think they knew what it was.

Perhaps it wasn't related to the incident."

"What did the doctors say?"

"I only told one of them. It was in Aberdeen. He didn't believe me. He got up out of his chair. He was angry."

"And what did you do?"

"I felt trapped. I had to break out of it. I ..." Charlotte was finding it difficult to breathe.

"What did he say?"

Charlotte began to sob, long, scorching breaths from deep in her abdomen.

"He said I was ... a liar ... an evil girl. He ..."

Levade put his arm round her shoulder, and Charlotte thought how strange it was that something that had been so long suppressed should emerge in the embrace of a person she had until then so distrusted.

Levade made her sit on the bed while he went downstairs and prepared some tea, which he told her would be soothing for an "English' woman. He returned with a small pot of black herbal tea and pressed a cigarette on her as well.

"There you are, Charlotte," he said, and it occurred to her that although he made an issue of discovering it, he had never until that moment used her name. Levade began to cough, a horrible, deep retching sound that left him panting and momentarily incapable of speech.

"Are you all right? That sounds terrible."

"This house is cold at night. That's all." He waved away her concern.

"How old was your father when these things happened?"

Charlotte sucked at the bitter tea.

"I was born in 1917 and I was about six, so if he was born in 1887 ' " So he'd been in the war?"

"Oh, yes. All the way through. I think he must have been very lucky. He once told me almost all the officers were killed."

"Did he tell you much about the war?"

Charlotte struggled to overcome her habitual repulsion at the thought of conflict, and her father in it.

"Not a great deal. He took us to see the graveyards when we were children. He told us it must never happen again. I think my brother and I found it hard to take in. I don't think children can understand things on that scale. Then, as we grew older, he spoke of it less and less. He became more withdrawn in every way, not just about his own past experiences."

"Did he ever tell you stories about it?"

"Not that I recall. We had a general impression of waste and death. Though I do remember one odd thing he mentioned. I remember it because it was so incongruous. It came out of the blue. I suppose I was about ten and it was one of those rare days when we did things together like a real family. We went to a loch and rowed on the water. Then we had a picnic lunch.. Gray was lighting a pipe to keep the midges off. He held the box of matches over the bowl to help it draw, then puffed a blue cloud into the thin and silent air. His wife laid out a tartan rug on the heather and took a thermos from a wicker basket.

"Would you like a cup of tea, William?"

"What? No. I'll have a dram. Did you put some in?"

Amelia Gray handed him the whisky flask in silence, and he filled the little silver lid, then raised it to his lips. The familiar spirit spread its slow comfort through his body as he propped himself against a rock and looked down towards the glistening water where his children played.

"Would you look at that lassie, Amelia? Look at the way she runs. She's like a boy."

"She's lovely," said his wife.

"We're so lucky, aren't we?"

Gray raised an eyebrow and looked over at her, his head nodding in the interested but sceptical manner he had developed in the lecture-room. There was the golden-legged girl chasing her brother up the margin of the loch; he heard her shrill, protesting voice and saw the tireless movements of her twisting body, as slim and muscular as an eel. So what was that storming sadness in her brown eyes when he spoke to her alone?

There was his boy, raw-boned, his voice already cracking with unexpected bass notes, a brave and vigorous child he had welcomed with all his proud young father's heart into a world that was still then, at that innocent time, with whatever fitful setbacks, becoming slowly and demonstrably more civilised, more habitable for his children and their future sons and daughters.

On this summer morning in the Highlands, the last coldness of the air just burned off by the sun, he could almost believe that nothing had been lost, that the powerful harmony of the rocks and water, the sound of generations and their laughter, were rolling on to some natural and joyous end. But everything had changed.

Sometimes at night he woke to find himself screaming, drenched with sweat. Usually, he was at the head of the communication trench, looking into the eyes of his disbelieving platoon commanders as he told them the attack would be in daylight. In daylight He saw their stricken faces.

Something they had concealed from one another, even from themselves, assumed at that moment the contours of a clear, impending truth. Twelve hours later, the size of it had become apparent; but even as he went among the emergency dressing-stations, encouraging the shattered men with his acquired brusqueness, Gray knew that it would take years to understand what they had seen that July morning.

He began to curse his survival. He was viewed by his men with incredulity: he not only had the will to survive, he even seemed to care who won. His unyielding efficiency, his brightness of manner and intellectual curiosity made the men fear him, as though his reserves were more than human. But the weight he carried was concealed from them; it was the burden of continuation.

He watched the companies in his battalion renewed from top to bottom as the years wore on, their officers the first to go, but only he seemed unable to attract the fatal release. He knew that each day he nerved himself to carry on was a depletion of the life he might hope to lead when the war was over. One of his platoon commanders, an inward, difficult man called Wraysford, had seen at one moment what it was costing him. He had looked into Gray's eyes and described the perfect blankness he had seen there, though Gray was doubtful whether he had diagnosed its cause. He had tried once to confide in this man, but when he reached out to him, he saw that his soul was too far shrunken down inside him to be capable of responding.

Charlotte and Roderick ate sandwiches on the rug and played with the small white dog who sniffed about the plate of hard-boiled eggs. When Gray looked at his daughter's wide brown eyes and the fine white down on her bare arms he felt indescribably old and tarnished. Yet he loved the girl, still, in his shocked and weary heart, he loved her, and he wished until the wish became an agony that he might have passed on to her a world that would have been worthy of her childish glee. Roderick had just outgrown the high point of his boy's inquisitiveness, but there were still occasions when he turned to his father for information. Now he asked about soldiers and dungeons and why kings and barons didn't simply kill the prisoners they took.

Inspired by the beauty of the open landscape, the sound of birdsong from the bright sky. Gray for once did not tersely deflect the question but answered as the father of a boy and girl should, with friendly interest and detail. The trouble with Roderick's questioning was that he was never satisfied; his endless cross-examination always drove Gray to some slight excess to make him stop.

"Of course they did, Roderick. Of course they sometimes did bad things, especially in the Middle Ages. Even in the war I fought in, it was not unheard of. Some people in my division not in my battalion, I hasten to add once had some German prisoners. It was not long after the Somme, that big battle I told you about once, when they'd seen almost all their friends killed one summer day. Then there'd been a long bombardment, day after day the shells falling, and some of the men were almost out of their mind with it. They went on a raid one night, crawling across no-man's-land on their bellies, and brought back twelve Boches. They took them down the line to the rear area, and the officer in charge told them they had to march them five miles, most of it uphill, in the pouring rain, to some depot where the prisoners would be guarded. These men were desperate, they were exhausted. At times like that you're not quite human. They had gone about half a mile, when they went into a little wood to rest.

They went no further. They asked the officer to stand aside, to take himself off a hundred yards or so, then they shot all twelve where they stood. They told the officer the Germans had escaped. He knew quite well what had happened. They left the bodies there to ' "That's enough, dear.

Roderick understands, don't you?" Amelia Gray took a big tin from the picnic hamper.

"It's such a lovely day, we don't want to spoil it, do we? Charlotte, would you like a piece of fruit cake?"

Charlotte was sitting on the rug with her chin on her drawn-up knees, and her arms wrapped round her bare legs.

"Thank you," she said, her eyes averted from her father ...

'... all that I remember," she said to Levade, as she came to the end of her version of the story.

"Otherwise he never talked in detail."

Levade stood, tapping his front teeth with the wooden tip of his paintbrush.

"I suppose such things did happen," he said.

"Everyone who went through those years could tell you some horror."

"And you?"

"I put it from my mind. I could never explain it to people who hadn't experienced it. The choice was either to think about it all the time or not at all. Then other things eventually came to distract me.

Women, painting, the pointless joy of being alive."

Charlotte looked at Levade's impassive, lined face and thought how little she had understood him.

"You fought all the way through, like my father?"

"Yes. I volunteered because I wanted to fight. I had inherited my father's love of this country. I was at Verdun. So were most of us. I was a Jew, but that was all right in those days. We were considered fit to fight and die with the rest. I was a bad soldier. They made me into a soup-man eventually. They were the most expendable. They tied a dozen flasks of wine to my belt and wound me round with loaves of bread which they'd knotted together with string. You could hardly stand up under the weight. Then at night they'd push you out, and you had to run or crawl through the fields and mud from one trench to another. To reach the hill they called the Dead Man, you'd be on your belly for an hour, and when you got there the men would spit and curse at you because the bread was caked in filth and half the wine had leaked away. The Germans knew the routes we took and used to shell them.

They only used old men or weak people like me to be soup men You didn't last long. I remember lying in the slime one night, it was in my eyes, my ears, and I looked up and saw the torso of a man pinned against a tree by a splinter of metal. It had no head, no legs, no arms. There was a drip of offal from the waist. Many years later that image came back to me. In a vision of Christ."

"How did you manage not to be killed?" said Charlotte.

"I was lucky. I was wounded. I was out for three months. When I rejoined my unit Petain was in charge. He cared for the lives of his men. We still died in thousands, but he didn't waste our lives. He understood that Verdun was where the honour of France would be held and won, but he knew the price we had to pay. To have a man like that at such a time someone who understands that all the history of his country hangs on what he does, and has the bravery to do it ... Yet he cared for us too, like a father, he worried for our lives. My God, we loved him then." Charlotte saw the rims of Levade's eyes redden, but there seemed to be no tears.

"A group of four of us came on a dead horse one night. It was difficult to avoid them. It stank as though it had been there for weeks. My friend cut a piece from its flank and began to eat it. We chose the most putrid parts to make us ill. Two of them got taken into rest, one of them died.

But I couldn't keep it down. I kept vomiting it up. There seemed to be no escape."

"But you survived?"

"Somehow. I was taken off the soup run and " went back to join the others.

" Levade unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it to one side.

"This is the first wound I had." A long red scar ran round from the top of his shoulder to his armpit, its edges raised into a purplish ridge.

Charlotte could see the rough stitching that held the two welts together, presumably accomplished by the lamplight of some field dressing-station.

"It looks worse than it was. It wasn't really bad enough, that was the trouble. I would sooner have lost a leg."

Charlotte said, "And what do you think about the Germans now? Do you hate them?"

Levade smiled.

"I hardly think about them. When I do, I pray for them.

I pray for God's forgiveness for what they have done. And what they are doing now."

Charlotte still had not spoken to Julien by the time she set off on her bicycle for her rendezvous with Mirabel.

It was an icy December day and she pedalled fast to keep herself warm. In all the time she had been in France she had never had cause to doubt the justice of her decision to stay. It must be rare, she thought, that all one's duties and impulses pointed in the same direction. She had been useful to Julien and Mirabel: she had, as far as it was possible with so little active resistance yet taking place, done her job. She had frequently visited Andre and Jacob and brought them comfort. More than this, she felt that the time she had passed in Lavaurette and the conversations she had had with Levade had helped her in a personal way. Living in the Domaine, under a different identity, had soothed and educated her.

Yet however much her staying in France had satisfied her various desires, the most important matter of all, the whereabouts of Gregory, had been set to one side. She remembered her last night of training in England when she had pulled back the curtain to see the misty moon outside, "Charlotte' unclear. She had vowed to Gregory that she would find him, and now at last she was on her way. The narrow road wound between bare fields, then through a hamlet where a farm straddled it: the house on one side, the barns and outbuildings on the other. Geese spat at her bicycle as she pedalled through, and scrawny chickens napped angrily from the rolling tyres.

After one more dip, the road swung sharply to the right, over a crumbling concrete bridge with rusted iron rails, and climbed for the last time. On the brow of the hill was the moss-covered calvary and the rutted path to the white stone house. Two thin lions sat on top of the gate posts, grimacing over the cold countryside. The stone chippings of the driveway clotted the wheels, and Charlotte dismounted, propping the bicycle against a low wall that enclosed a terrace.

A momentary thrill of self-consciousness went through her as she stood at the front door. She saw herself and her desperate errand as through the eyes of an incredulous stranger. Then it was gone, because the urgency of what she did was too great, as she turned the large handle and pushed open one half of the heavy double door.

The great staircase rose in front of her, its broad white steps illuminated by candles gripped in iron holders on the walls.

Charlotte went slowly up, feeling the lovely surface of the stone, polished by the passage of centuries, beneath her feet. She walked down the straight, broad passageway ahead, her shoes now cradled and sprung by polished oak. From the last bedroom on the right, the one where they had met before, she could see a light flickering through the open doorway, over the pinkish markings in the white distemper of the walls.

She should have breathed in deeply at the threshold, she thought; she should have sent a small prayer arrowing to heaven; but she wanted too much to hear what was waiting for her: she wanted the words that would bring him back to life. She knocked and entered the shadowy room. The two boat beds were on the right; on the left sat Mirabel with his back to her, looking through the window over the fallen tree in the garden below. Hearing her knock, he turned slowly round in his seat, and when his face came into the light of the candle. Charlotte saw that it was not Mirabel at all, but Claude Benech.

"Thank you for coming," he said.

"I knew you would."

Charlotte was too shocked too speak.

Benech was smiling.

"You were expecting Monsieur "Mirabel", I believe." Charlotte said nothing, not because her training required it and not from any sense of self-preservation, but because the absence of Mirabel meant she had lost Gregory.

Benech coughed.

"He asked me to apologise. He's been detained."

Charlotte remembered how nervous Mirabel had been the first time.

There seemed no point in denying that she knew him.

"Where is he?"

"With the proper authorities. He is an enemy and will be treated as such."

"And you. Why you?"

"Do you remember, we met in Lavaurette one day?"

Charlotte nodded.

"I've seen you."

"I have taken an interest in your life, Madame. I saw you kiss Monsieur Levade the day the Germans came. I was intrigued by you. I belong to a patriotic organisation. For some time this Monsieur "Mirabel" has been watched. Then there came a time to act. I was able to help." Benech put his hand inside the pocket of his coat.

"And this was my reward."

In the candlelight Charlotte could see the gleam of gunmetal in Benech's pale palm. She wondered if he was deranged. The orderly, articulate way in which he spoke was perhaps too controlled. She must not provoke him.

"And you're here for them?" she said.

"For your organisation?"

"Oh no. This is a private matter."

Charlotte thought of Mirabel's "French' handwriting in the note. She should have suspected. The contact should have been made through Julien, but she had been too excited to think.

"I don't know what your plans are, Madame," said Benech, 'but clearly you might feel it worthwhile to make them fit in with mine. The authorities in time of war are efficient and direct. We are fighting for the heart and soul of our country. I'm sure you understand."

Charlotte inclined her head slightly.

"They have dealt with your friend. They would be interested in you, too. And perhaps in others that you know." Benech smiled again.

"Do speak to me, Madame. You're making me feel uneasy and I'm trying to be helpful."

Charlotte swallowed.

"What do you want me to do?"

"I want you," said Benech, 'to be my friend."

"I don't understand."

"I want you to come and see me at my apartment. There you will tell me things I ask. We will develop a relationship of trust. And our friendship will of course take other paths."

"What paths?"

"The natural paths between men and women."

"Why should I do this?"

"I don't think you really need to ask that," said Benech, standing up and putting the gun back in his pocket. He walked over to Charlotte and grabbed her jaw in his right hand, twisting her face from side to side.

"Monsieur Mirabel is dead. Before he died, he talked a great deal. Don't play with me, Madame, don't play."

There was no strain in Benech's voice. Charlotte thought. In his work he was used to issuing threats and orders and to having them obeyed.

"All right," she said.

"I'll come to you tomorrow evening."

"Good."

Benech, still holding her face, pressed his mouth over hers.

"Tomorrow," said Charlotte, pushing him away. She managed a half smile "I must go now."

Benech held her by the arm.

"Don't try to leave the town," he said.

"I will track you down and find you."

She nodded.

"And if you tell one word of what's just passed between us..." Through the fabric of his coat he pushed the gun against her hipbone. He had released her arm. Charlotte moved quickly to the door.

"Tomorrow," she said, and ran down the wooden landing to the stairs. As she grabbed the bicycle from outside and rode off through the gates, she heard Benech call out after her. He had changed his mind; perhaps he couldn't wait until tomorrow. But Charlotte did not hesitate as she plunged into the darkness. She arrived at Julien's apartment in Lavaurette, ran upstairs and hammered on the door.

"Julien, thank God you're here." She was so out of breath she could hardly speak.

Julien's momentary expression of delight at seeing her was replaced by anxiety and anger as Charlotte told him what had happened. She omitted all mention of Peter Gregory, giving the impression that her second rendezvous had been merely at Mirabel's supposed instigation.

When she had finished, Julien said, "You must leave. That's the first thing we must do. Get you out."

"What about you?"

"I'll be all right. I've done nothing wrong, nothing they know about anyway. But listen, Dominique, I had some other news today. Something else that worries me. You know Gastinel, the butcher?"

"Auguste?"

"Yes. You know he left us to join a fledgling Gaullist network in Limoges. Well, I gathered from Pauline Benoit, who's a friend of his and a bit of a Gaullist herself, I suspect, that they'd been set up.

They went to some agreed place for a drop and the plane didn't come. In fact, the only other people there were the local gendarmerie, who wanted to know what on earth they were all doing. They spent the night in prison. They're certain they were betrayed by someone."

It was the word Limoges that filled Charlotte with a sense of lurching emptiness.

"Do you know exactly where this drop was?" she said.

"Pretty well. Why?"

"Have you got any maps?"

"Yes, over on the shelf From among the dusty atlases and tourist guides, Julien eventually produced a detailed map of the area. Charlotte spread it out on the floor beneath the light. She could still remember the references Mirabel had given her. She peered at the small figures at the side of the map for a moment, than ran her finger slowly across the paper.

"There," she said, her face turned anxiously up to Julien's.

"Was it there?"

"Pauline said something about a stream and a church.

Yes. Look, there they are."

Charlotte could not bring herself to speak for a moment. At last she said, "Oh, Julien. Something terrible has happened. It was me.

Mirabel asked me to take a message to someone in Limoges. I must have got it wrong, the wrong co-ordinates. But if it was one of our people, why were the Gaullists there? I don't understand. My memory is. well, almost infallible. I must have given it to the wrong person."

"Why didn't you tell me what you were doing?"

"Mirabel told me not to tell you. Minimum information. Anyway, it didn't seem important."

"He told you not to tell me?"

"Yes, he said. Whatever you do, don't tell Octave."

Julien shook his head.

"Oh, God. They've used you, haven't they?"

"I don't understand. Surely Mirabel is ' " Mirabel's like everyone else. He's under orders from the politicians.

And the English are no better than the French."

"You mean he deliberately misled me?"

"Whoever you gave the message to wasn't one of ours. It was a Gaullist. I don't quite know why the English would want to mess it up for them. But the reason doesn't really matter. What did he promise you in return?"

"I ... Nothing. Nothing, really."

"Nothing " really"?"

"Well, he intimated that he might be able to help me find someone. If I did what he asked, if we kept in touch. It was rather vague."

"The airman?"

"How did you know?"

"My father told me."

Charlotte nodded without speaking.

"You really thought he might know where this man was?"

"I suppose I did hope. I mean, he knows people, he's in touch with them. And ... And ..." It all sounded too foolish.

"Oh, Dominique, you poor girl." Julien opened his arms and hugged her tightly to him.

"You poor, poor girl."

Charlotte was reluctant to disengage from the safety of Julien's arms.

"And what should I do now?" she said.

"You must go home at once. I can get a wireless message to London. You must get out as soon as you can."

"But, Julien, I've only just begun."

"If you stay, they'll get you. The Gaullists will tell the police even if Benech doesn't. The fact that you're from England makes it worse.

Perfidious Albion."

"But we're all on the same side."

"Not now you've betrayed them."

"Oh God, Julien. What about Peter? He can't manage without me. He'll never get back now. It's only my being here in France that's kept him alive." Julien looked crushed by what she said, as though he had not really believed until then in the depth of her feeling for another man. He took her hand and said gently: "If you love him, leave tomorrow. If you stay, they will kill you. Men like Benech are worse than the Germans. If you love him, for God's sake go." Dinner at the Domaine was late that night, and Julien asked Charlotte to eat with him and his father. It was the first time she had seen them together for any length of time, and she kept imagining the ten-year-old boy returning home from school to find his tearful mother telling him that his father had deserted them. What would the distraught Madame Levade have thought if she had been told then that, twenty years later, the two of them would be sitting with a Scottish woman in the vast panelled dining room of a draughty manor, miles from Paris, the Germans in possession of their country?

"How long have you been coughing like that?" said Julien, laying his hand on his father's arm.

"A couple of weeks. It's nothing. The house is draughty, that's all." Julien raised his eyebrows. His attitude to his father was of slightly teasing reverence. Levade was not old enough to need concern or looking after, but Charlotte sensed that Julien was in some way preparing for the day when he would be. In Levade's manner towards his son there was that moving indulgence Charlotte had so missed in her own parents: he disagreed with him, shrugged off Julien's humorous remarks, but looked at him throughout with a passive and slightly incredulous pride.

In a few days' time. Charlotte thought, she would be back in London, and then she would really have no excuse for not making the long journey north to Scotland. For all the danger of her position, she found the thought of leaving unbearable.

The food she had prepared was quickly finished. Levade asked her to bring more wine and anything else she could find to eat in the kitchen.

There was a tin of sardines, some macaroni, a couple of handfuls of which she set to boil on the range, three apples and a bowl of walnuts from the garden. With these and the wine she returned eventually to the dining room, where dinner started up again.

Charlotte had recovered her composure. As she sat with the two men, prising open a nut with an old oyster-knife, she was calm enough to know that this would be her last night at the Domaine, and she was saddened by the thought. It was almost midnight when there came a thunderous hammering on the double doors of the house.

"My God," said Levade, pulling a watch from his pocket.

"Wait here." Julien had already pushed his chair back. There was something anxious in his voice that made Charlotte feel nauseously sober.

There were voices from the hallway, then the sound of numerous pairs of feet coming towards them. Julien was followed into the dining room by two men, one of whom was a uniformed German officer.

"I am Oberleutenant Lindemann," he said.

"Are you Monsieur Levade?"

"Yes."

Lindemann nodded to a small man standing next to him. He was wearing a fawn raincoat over a stiff collar and dark blue tie; he was of middle age, almost bald, with a little shiny dark hair above the ears, and a round, soft face, in which was set a pair of' wire-rimmed glasses.

Charlotte recognised him as the man who had been watching while Bernard put up the posters outside Madame Galliot's.

He came towards Levade and held out his hand.

"My name is Paul Pichon. I work for the Inquiry and Control Section." Levade gave a thin smile.

"That's a distinguished-sounding organisation." He declined the offered hand. Monsieur Pichon said, "We have taken over some functions of the Police for Jewish Affairs, which, as you probably know, has been disbanded in all but name." Levade raised his eyebrows in a gesture of ignorant indifference.

Lindemann coughed.

"We must go into a different room. There are some questions to be answered." His voice, despite its clumsy accent, was curiously diffident, as if he was not sure who was in charge.

"We'll go into the drawing room," said Levade.

"Is it open?"

"Yes," said Charlotte.

"I'll go and turn on the lights and make a fire."

Charlotte's heart was big inside her ribcage as she went down the corridor. The lights came on dimly in their gilded wall mountings. She went to the long desk at the far end of the room and turned on the lamp. The room had its usual smell of fine, old dust. Behind her she heard the tramp of footsteps on the uncovered parquet. Why were there so many people there?

There must be at least four others on their way from the hall that she had not yet seen.

Levade came into the room and gestured towards the fussily upholstered nineteenth-century furniture, but Lindemann made for the far end of the room. Charlotte busied herself with the fire, which had not been lit during the winter, and when she looked up she found the men had arranged themselves at the long desk. In the middle of one side sat Lindemann, with Pichon on his left; on his right was a German corporal, a small, sour-faced man with grey hair; on Pichon's left was a man with a mealy skin, a moustache and a nervous smile. It was Claude Benech, and Charlotte found that his smile was directed at her.

By the door into the library Lindemann stationed a single German private, while Pichon indicated to the gendarme, Bernard, that he should remain by the principal door leading back into the house.

Bernard gave Charlotte a self-conscious grimace as he took up his post. Julien sat on the edge of an armchair towards the centre of the room, while Lindemann told Levade to take a seat on the other side of the desk, so that he faced, from left to right, the corporal, Lindemann, Pichon and Benech. Charlotte was still kneeling by the fire, unable to move, when Lindemann spoke.

"I am for the moment the commanding officer in Lavaurette. I shall leave soon when ... others arrive from Paris."

"You mean the SS?" said Julien.

"I believe so. I have orders from our Military Command in Paris. I don't need to tell you the details. The administration of law during the Occupation has been carried out by the French police. You know that."

"Why don't you tell us what you're doing here?" said Julien. Lindemann opened his left hand to Pichon, who cleared his throat.

Lindemann seemed relieved to stop talking; and where his voice had carried a degree of uncertainty, Pichon seemed calm and authoritative.

"Certainly," he said.

"There appears to have been some procedural irregularities with your papers. Monsieur Levade. In June last year, as you are no doubt aware, there was a detailed census carried out by the Government of all Jews in the Free Zone. I have here the lists for this commune and your name does not appear on it. Do you have a certificate of non-belonging to the Jewish race?" Levade spread his hands in a small, contemptuous gesture of dismissal.

"A certificate of what?"

"Such papers were freely available from the Commissariat General for Jewish Questions."

"I don't know anything about these German bodies."

"It's not a German body, it's a Government department. Monsieur Levade, responsible for the various Jewish statutes. Surely even you have heard of those?"

"Confiscation of property, you mean, wearing the yellow star, persecution of '

" The policy is called "Aryanisation"," said Pichon. He paused for a moment and Charlotte saw him peer closely across the table into Levade's face.

"I think you would do well to adopt a less remote attitude. Monsieur. Ignorance, even credible ignorance, has never been a defence before the law. In difficult times citizens more than ever owe a duty of conformity and awareness. Full citizenship carries obligations. That, Monsieur, is the nub of the whole Jewish question." Levade said nothing, but glanced across at Julien, who seemed to be holding himself back with difficulty, convulsively clenching and unclenching his fists.

"Let me explain a little further," said Pichon.

"I have no wish to surprise or intimidate you. I want you to understand the full authority of these proceedings."

Charlotte stood up from the gently smoking fire; Pichon's voice carried no obvious emotion, but it made her feel sick with foreboding. Her initial relief that no attention was being paid to her was replaced by a fear that some worse fate was being prepared for Levade.

"Authority?" said Julien.

"Authority? What on earth authority can you have, some fabricated organisation who ' " We have the authority of the French government. Monsieur. The law of 2 June 1941 gives the right of internment to the local prefecture of any Jew, foreign or French. Juridically," said Pichon, removing his glasses as though to savour the word better, 'the distinction between native Jews and refugees collapsed with that statute."

"But in the Free Zone," said Julien, 'you can't ' "There is no longer a Free Zone," said Pichon.

"Surely even here in Lavaurette you have noticed that. Please let me continue. Since the events of 1940 the government, as you know, has endeavoured to maintain the sovereignty of France by vigorous independent action. The principal aim has been to collaborate with the Occupier in order to safeguard more completely that independence and, in the fullness of time, to extend its limits. All this has been successfully achieved by the Government, acting in the interests of its citizens, though the full rewards for such negotiation will not be apparent until the Allies are defeated.

However, the course of events in the summer has imposed a degree of urgency.

In June, there was a visit to Paris from Herr Eichmann, in which he proposed that a total of one hundred thousand Jews be deported from France, half of them to come from the Free Zone. In case you are still wondering about what we call the authority for such measures, you might like to know that the inclusion of Jews from the Free Zone was the suggestion of the Head of Police, Monsieur Bousquet."

"I don't believe you," said Julien.

Pichon shrugged.

"Monsieur Bousquet's deputy, Monsieur Leguay, was informed by Herr Rothke of the German Military Command in July that French nationals of Israelite stock would be included in the deportations and that Monsieur Laval had not demurred. There have been some minor administrative difficulties in dealing with families, as you can imagine.

Children have been left behind and this has caused some confusion. However, Henri Dannecker, who as most people know though perhaps not you, Monsieur is head of the German Section for Jewish Affairs in Paris, reported to Berlin on 6 July that Monsieur Laval himself had suggested that, in the case of families being deported from the Free Zone, the children under sixteen could also be taken."

Pichon looked round the silent room and smiled.

"I have a confession to make. I am a lawyer. And the neatness of the arrangement pleases me, I am bound to admit. One has so many difficulties with the question of the sphere of jurisdiction that it is a pleasure to come across a case in which everything has been done in such an orderly and co-operative way." Julien spoke in a voice that seemed blanched and weak compared to its truculent tone of a few minutes earlier.

"Laval volunteered the children?"

"Yes," said Pichon.

"I have a copy of Henri Dannecker's report to Berlin." He began to search among the papers on the table in front of him.

"It intrigued me, and I had a clerk write out the actual text. Here, if you'd like to.."

Julien shook his head.

No one spoke. Benech fiddled with some papers he had placed on the table in front of him; he seemed to be finding it difficult to suppress a smile of some kind. The corporal on Lindemann's right stared straight ahead of him.

Eventually, Julien said, "Why all this talk about deportation anyway?" Lindemann turned to Pichon.

"Please continue." He seemed to be the only person with any sense of urgency.

Pichon cleared his throat.

"One of the inevitable results of such a formal system of co-operation is that it does generate a large amount of paperwork. Many local mayors have not been able to deal with all the directives they have received from the departmental offices in Vichy, which is why various people such as myself have been dispatched to help them. The mayor of Lavaurette, for instance, an estimable man no doubt, has been grateful for our assistance. I understand that by profession he is a smallholder."

"He grows melons," said Bernard from the doorway.

"Thank you, Monsieur," said Pichon.

"Now, Monsieur Levade, we come to your case." Pichon pulled out a single sheet of paper from the pile in front of him, smoothed it down, then held it a little away from him so that it came into the long-sighted focus of his sparkling glasses.

"Absence from the census we have dealt with. Now I must ask you to show me your documentation, please."

"My what?"

"Identity card, work permit and ration card. Please don't tell me you don't possess any. Every French citizen has been issued with them. How else have you bought food?"

"I really don't know. It's possible that there's something in a drawer."

"Go and look." Pichon's voice became sharper as he nicked a dismissive hand at Bernard to indicate that he should go with Levade.

Charlotte watched as Levade stood up and crossed the room.

"Her." Lindemann nodded in Charlotte's direction.

"She shouldn't be here. Nor should he, the son," he said, looking at Julien.

"Oh, I rather think he should," said Pichon smoothly.

"I think the presence of Monsieur Levade junior is entirely ... germane. As for the maidservant, I have no objections. I think it is a good idea that the lower orders should see the proper working of the legal process."

"So do I," said Benech, fixing Charlotte with a slow, conniving smile. Levade returned to the room with an envelope which he dropped on to the table in front of Pichon.

"I don't know if this is what you mean," he said. "It's all I could find." He began to cough violently and turned his head away from the men at the table.

Pichon pulled out the contents of the envelope and inspected them.

"Indeed," he said.

"As I thought. Why are they not properly stamped?"

"I don't know what you mean." Pichon said, "I think you do. Monsieur Levade. On 11 December the Government ordered that all relevant identification cards be stamped with the word "Jew" Everyone knows that. There are notices in town, there were broadcasts.

It's the law."

Levade shrugged.

"I don't know anything about these German things, these--"

" It is not German," Pichon said, standing up and spitting out the negative across the table at Levade.

"It is a law passed by the French government which, if you had any idea of citizenship, you would have obeyed."

Lindemann cleared his throat.

"Are there other things? It's late."

Pichon sat down again. Levade shook his head slowly from side to side. Charlotte, who could only see him from behind, thought from the gurgling noise she heard that he was crying. As she went over to comfort him she recognised that the sound was of soft laughter.

"Sit down. Mademoiselle," said Pichon.

"The list of charges here is enough for me to recommend any disposal. It is only a question of what route we choose."

Julien walked over to the table. Charlotte could tell that he had made an effort to restrain himself and was going to speak carefully.

"There seems to be one thing missing from your case. Monsieur, and that is any proof that my father is Jewish. I think you will find if you take a look round the house that the evidence is that he is in fact a devout Catholic."

"Ah, indeed. The question of definition. The precedents are very interesting, and the law is developing all the time, though its basis remains perfectly clear. It is a matter of ancestry."

"My father is a second generation Frenchman," said Julien.

"He is also a war veteran."

"How admirable. When Monsieur Vallat was head of the Commissariat General for Jewish Questions he was inclined to look tolerantly on such cases; his successor. Monsieur Darquier de Pellepoix, rather less so.

Under the first Jewish statute a Jew was defined as someone with three Jewish grandparents.

Monsieur Vallat was prepared to allow religion to play a part, so in his second statute someone confessing to a recognised non-Jewish religion might be deemed to have ceased being Jewish, provided he had only two Jewish grandparents. Those with three remained Jewish whatever religion they claimed. In Monsieur Vauat's view Baptism was not conclusive, because Jewish tradition is passed down racially. Heredity is stronger than holy water. He began to talk of families in which the hereditary atmosphere was " predominantly Jewish". It is fair to conclude that Monsieur Vallat had become somewhat confused by the time he left office, though the provisions of his statute remain useful. Let us look at your family. Monsieur Levade."

Charlotte glanced expectantly at Levade. At last he was being given a chance to speak for himself, and surely he would now understand the horror of his situation. Surely he would now shake off the amused torpor in which he seemed sunk. He looked feverish and unwell.

"Come now. Monsieur Levade, would you not like to tell us a little about your ancestors, your very French ancestors?"

There was a silence in which Charlotte could hear the clock above her head. Levade began to cough again. Eventually, he spoke.

"My father was a schoolmaster in a small town near Paris. He was the most patriotic person I've ever known. He used to quote that little saying, "As happy as God in France" He was perhaps a rather innocent man, now I come to think of it, but he was very contented. He had very little religious belief. I suppose he must have been nominally Jewish at least, because his mother was, but he seemed to lack any spiritual life.

I never saw him go to a synagogue or to a church. His joy came from his family and from his country. He was always involved with Saints' Days and public meetings and celebrations. He was very conservative about the old ways." Levade smiled.

"Like a lot of fairly recent arrivals."

"Would you care to be a little more specific about your origins?" Pichon's voice had taken on a light, ironic edge.

"I think not. Monsieur. I have told you all I want to."

"I'm not sure such reticence is a very good idea for someone in your position. Monsieur Levade. Perhaps your son would care to be a little more forthcoming." Pichon looked over the top of his spectacles towards Julien, who had resumed his seat on the edge of an armchair.

Julien shook his head.

"Not if my father doesn't want to."

"Very well," said Pichon, 'let us continue with the question of definition." Charlotte noticed how much Pichon was enjoying himself. There was a forensic construction to his sentences which obviously gave him pleasure. He picked up some more papers from the table in front of him.

"Now then. Monsieur Vallat was replaced at the GCJQ in the summer. It is hardly for me to comment, but it seems he had become somewhat competitive with the Occupier. Apparently he told one of Herr Dannecker's SS officers that he had been an anti-semite far longer than the German gentleman. This was perhaps the last straw for Herr Dannecker."

Pichon gave a little laugh in which Benech briefly joined. Lindemann looked at his watch as Pichon set off again on an exposition of the French government's policy, which he explained had first been set in place in response to the refugee crisis of a few years earlier, when Jews began arriving in France from Eastern Europe. Occupation by the Germans forced certain changes in policy, and men such as Vallat objected to having their own solution to the Jewish problem influenced by outside agencies who were less strict in their definitions but probably more crude in their aims.

Eventually, Lindemann interrupted him.

"It's after one o'clock," he said. "I want to finish tonight. Please talk to Monsieur Levade."

Lindemann's voice for the first time sounded decisive.

"Very well," said Pichon, 'but I insist that this is done correctly. The difficulty of course is in establishing the religion of the grandparents. However, in recent cases of foreign Jews, the courts have been persuaded to accept a presumption of Jewishness where non-Jewishness cannot be proved by baptismal certificate or similar.

This is likely to set a precedent in the case of French Jews as well. The degree of assimilation of a Jew is not necessarily relevant.

Monsieur Vallat in theory was prepared to tolerate certain Jews who had been subsumed into French culture though not all, it must be said. The Prime Minister Monsieur Blum epitomised all that he disliked. Monsieur Vallat was again a little inconsistent on this point. Not so Monsieur Darquier de Pellepoix, who shares the Occupier's view that the Jewish influence is a racial not a cultural one, and that the most assimilated Jew is therefore the most dangerous. This has made for a greater congruence of outlook with the Occupier, and a greater efficiency. Our department has in fact been sent a copy of a telegram of congratulation received by Monsieur Bousquet, the police chief, from his opposite number in the SS, General Oberg." All the time Pichon was speaking. Charlotte was watching Levade's back and thinking of the painting of the deserted square, with the clock at twenty to four and the two figures with their sense of imminent separation. Her feeling for Levade had utterly changed; all trace of censure had now gone from it. It was partly that, since sleeping with Julien, she no longer felt in a position to disapprove of his amorous past, but more that she no longer feared him. Instead, she saw that the events of his life had not been easy, the crawling through the mud with loaves and wine roped round him, the interior battle with his art and his patient knocking at the door of his unconscious. Approval of him, or its absence, now seemed like a trivial issue; when she looked at his bowed head, she felt a horrified compassion. Pichon's skin gleamed softly in the light from the shaded lamp on the table in front of him. Charlotte thought it was the face of a man who had always been right, who as a schoolboy had had all the answers and was puzzled that his demonstrable success brought him fewer friends than he might logically have expected. The adult world to him, however, had not been disappointing; there were systems he could operate and areas of work in which his precision was valued. Behind him, painted in the plaster just above the wainscotting, were various heraldic shields, extravagant family claims and noble mottoes, bleached over by a later decoration and now showing through only as little patches of distempered colour; and over them was an oil painting, clotted with dark grease and smoke, of a traditional chateau in the Limousin.

Pichon replaced his glasses which he had been polishing with a white handkerchief. His little face looked soft and vulnerable for a moment, as he blinked his eyes rapidly like a new-born creature.

"Monsieur Levade, there are a number of courses open to me. Which one I choose depends on the degree of your co-operation. I am entitled to order your arrest and trial in the usual way, but I am also empowered to order your detention in one of a number of camps, and can further recommend whether you should be removed from there to Paris."

"And what happens in Paris?" said Julien.

"Railways, Monsieur Levade. Trains."

"If you're threatening us. Monsieur," said Julien, 'it would be better if you spelt it out."

"The law carries no threats, Monsieur Levade, only procedures. Now," said Pichon, turning to Levade, 'will you help me?"

Levade sighed heavily.

"I'm a painter. That's all I have to say." He lifted his hand to his mouth as he began to cough again.

Charlotte was watching Julien, who seemed to be trying to catch his father's eye. Levade, however, stared either down towards his feet or straight at his accuser.

"I'm going outside for a minute," said Julien.

"I'm going to find a cigarette."

Pichon gestured to Bernard to go with him, and Benech rose clumsily from the table.

"I'll go too," he said. He walked quickly across the room, and Charlotte heard his footsteps in the corridor as he hurried to catch up with the others. Lindemann spoke rapidly to his corporal; Charlotte did not understand what he said, but his attitude expressed impatience. The gilded clock on the mantelpiece showed it was nearly half past one.

When Julien returned, his face had gone a peculiar grey colour; his eyes seemed focused on some invisibly far horizon.

"Are you all right?" said Charlotte as he went past her place at the fireside, but he appeared not to notice her. It was clear to Charlotte, from her knowledge of Julien, that something dramatic had taken place outside the room.

"I want to explain something to my father in private," he said.

"No," Benech said.

Benech whispered in Pichon's ear, and Pichon said something inaudible to Lindemann, who gestured to the German private by the door into the library. Lindemann gave an order; the private crossed the room and pushed Julien back into his chair with the butt of his rifle.

Julien's voice was shaking when he managed to speak. He said to Lindemann,

"You're going to lose this war. You know that, don't you?" The private raised his rifle, but Lindemann motioned him back to the doorway.

He seemed amused.

"Not in France, I think," said Lindemann.

"Not here."

"Yes," said Julien.

"Even here eventually."

"I think not," said Pichon.

"People prefer order to resistance, as we have seen. Acts of sabotage merely lead to reprisals by the Occupier: ten hostages shot for every German killed. Any organised resistance would also open the gates to the Communists. It would mean the Americans and English would have to invade, which no true Frenchman wants. The upheaval would be terrible, especially at a time when the Marshal has just managed to set France back on a stable course."

"You're wrong," said Julien.

"Resistance will come in the end. It will come when people see that they've been misled. Your problem. Monsieur, the problem of the government you support is this that you took a gamble. You decided to act in a way that you considered practical. All considerations of honour or morality " were put to one side because they looked subsidiary in the light of events the overwhelming probability that Germany would win the war, And that, Monsieur, is the danger of that kind of politics. If its practical assumptions prove to be false, you have nothing left to fall back on, because you have already sacrificed morality. You were not just immoral. Monsieur, you committed the unforgivable crime of practical politics - you got it wrong."

Julien's voice caught on the contempt with which he spoke the final word and for a few moments his breath would not come.

Pichon laughed.

"Every plan has occasional setbacks, but there is no doubt that we will play an important part in the new European alliance."

"You will lose in Russia and you will lose to the Americans and the English in Europe." Lindemann said, "And France? Who will rescue France?"

"It doesn't really matter." said Julien.

"Provided there is still something that has not been corrupted, provided there is something worth rescuing."

Lindemann said, "We must finish. Monsieur Pichon--' " Tell me one thing," said Julien.

"If the people you deport are going to work for Germany, why do you take them to Poland?"

"I don't know," said Lindemann.

"That's enough."

"And if they are going to work, why do you take children and women?"

"That's enough," said Lindemann.

"There were two people in Lavaurette who were dragged off" in the summer," said Julien.

"What did you do with them? They were French, too."

"I believe not," said Pichon, going through his pile of papers.

"Are you referring to Monsieur and Madame Duguay? They had come from Alsace Lorraine, like many Jews down here. She was of Belgian origin. There were fewer Jews in the camps than the Government had thought, but Monsieur Laval insisted on honouring his pledge on numbers to the Germans. These people were classed as refugees. You can see here.

Look."

"But they were French, they--' " That is enough," said Lindemann, suddenly standing up.

"Is this man a Jew or not?"

There was a heavy pause before Julien eventually pulled himself to his feet. He was staring at Benech, Charlotte noticed, with a violent hatred. Something had passed between them.

"Yes," Julien said at last.

"My father is a Jew. Three of his grandparents were Jewish. It's in his blood, in his mind, in his culture, in the essence of who he is. It's in mine, too." Levade's hand was inside his shirt. He had been gently rubbing the skin below his collarbone, and Charlotte pictured his fingertips going over the risen seams of his wound. When Julien spoke, his hand stopped moving.

He turned sideways in his chair to look at his son, but, having spoken, Julien turned his head away and looked down at the floor.

Charlotte held her hand across her mouth.

It was Claude Benech who eventually dared to break the silence.

"So that makes two for the quota."

Pichon lifted his head from his papers and looked at Julien.

"I understand that your mother was French, a good Catholic." Julien kept his head averted.

"I'm a Jew," he said.

"I suggest this is something we might resolve at a later date," said Pichon.

"Take the old one," said Lindemann.

"The train leaves at two o'clock tomorrow."

Pichon gestured to Bernard.

"Take him to the police station and keep him in the cell." Charlotte stood up.

"Let me put some things in a case for him."

Lindemann nodded.

"Quickly."

Charlotte ran upstairs to Levade's bedroom, where she found an old suitcase. With shaking hands she threw in shirts, underwear, a thick tweed jacket she found in the wardrobe, washing things, the books on the table and, from by his bed, the pad of paper and the pen. She ran to the studio, where she took a Bible, a missal, a crucifix, a sketch pad and pencils.

Then she rummaged through the canvases stacked in the corner until she found the one he had shown her. It would not fit in the case, and she could not prise out the nails by which it was attached to the back of the stretcher. She began to pull at it in a frenzy; then she heard footsteps and voices calling her from the stairs. She ripped the canvas clear of the stretcher, tearing it along the edges, rolled it up and stuffed it down inside the suitcase.

She arrived breathless in the hall to find Bernard with his arm linked awkwardly through Levade's. She put the case down on the floor and threw her arms round Levade's neck, holding him close to her. She felt his touch on her back, his hand gently patting her shoulder blades, as though it was she who needed consolation.

She pulled back and he looked into her face.

"Don't worry," he said.

"I have faith in God. I'm not afraid. See that Julien's all right." His voice was calm.

Charlotte went back reluctantly down the passage to the drawing room. Pichon was speaking.

"I really think it would be better to have the proper documentation. By tomorrow lunch time, I'm sure we could--"

" Do you want me to stay or go?" said Julien. All three men were now standing in front of the fire.

He looked towards Lindemann, who was clearly undecided.

"I ... I don't know. I have to fill a quota. I wish I could leave it. Very soon all the prefectures will have officers of the SS and they can decide I

... "

He seemed at last to remember that he was no longer a drama critic but a soldier. He stood up a little straighter and spoke briskly to the German private. Then he translated, "I told him to stay and watch tonight. We come tomorrow." Benech's nervous smile became a grin of wide relief; Pichon began methodically and contentedly to clear his documents with the air of a man who has completed a demanding task, the onerous nature of which has gone unappreciated by his colleagues.

He looked at his watch and lit a cigarette that smelled powerfully of real tobacco; then he turned to Charlotte with a smile.

"There, young woman, you have seen an example of correct procedure. Remember it.

Our domestic problem solved by legal co-operation, and at no cost to ourselves."

Lindemann began to laugh. It was the first natural emotion he had shown, and it made a curious sound in the echoing room, surrounded by the silence of the winter night.

"No cost? I'm afraid not. The cost of the deportations is paid by the French government. It is seven thousand Reichsmarks for each Jew, and food for two weeks at their destination."

Pichon began to stammer.

"Surely, the Occupier would not ' " Look in your papers," Lindemann said, still snorting.

"You'll find it somewhere."

Pichon set his lips together tightly, as he followed Lindemann and Benech from the drawing room. Benech turned on the threshold and looked at Charlotte.

"See you tomorrow," he said quietly.

When the sound of their footsteps had died away, Charlotte went over to Julien. He could not look at her.

She put her hand on his arm.

"Are you going to say goodbye?" she said.

Julien shook his head and bit his lip while tears flowed from his eyes.

"Give him my love."

Charlotte returned to the hall and embraced Levade for the final time. She whispered Julien's message.

Levade said nothing, but the serenity of his expression was undisturbed. Bernard went to the door, then glanced down at his gendarme's uniform as though unsure of some order of precedence and etiquette. He stood back for the others to leave, then, when they had gone down into the cold darkness, he took Levade once more by the arm and ushered him out through the double doors of the Domaine.

Charlotte stood alone in the empty hall. She remembered the first day she had come to be interviewed, how she had looked up to where the staircase doubled back to a remote ceiling and seen Levade's bare feet quietly descending. Around her now the white stone and faded pink plasterwork had a cold, deserted feeling, as though they had never truly enclosed human activity and the paintings of family forebears on the walls belonged to a line long defunct.

She shivered in the night air that had come in through the open front doors; then, wrapping her arms around her, she went slowly and reluctantly down the corridor towards the drawing room.

The fire had gone out and the room was cold; the chairs at the long desk were left untidily at the angles to which the men had pushed them in their hurry to leave. A piece of paper from Pichon's pile had fluttered clear of his precise tidying and lay alone on the floor beneath the chair in which Benech had been sitting. Julien was in the armchair, his elbows on his knees, holding his head in his hands. Charlotte felt wary; she did not know how to approach him, so stayed a little distance away, her back to the extinguished fire.

Julien said nothing. He did not move. To Charlotte it looked as though his body were immobilised by the weight of some crushing force.

Eventually, she went to a small table by his chair and lifted his packet of cigarettes; she moved it in an interrogative gesture towards him, asking his permission, and he waved his hand.

She had no matches. She looked round the room and only at that moment became aware of the German soldier, who was standing where he had been left, in the doorway through to the library.

Charlotte went towards him. He seemed quite old to be a private soldier; his demeanour held nothing of the youthful pride and snap she had heard French people admire in the young men who had first taken Paris and Bordeaux. She put the unlit cigarette in her mouth as she approached, and he produced some matches from the breast pocket of his tunic.

Charlotte smiled and thanked him in one of the few German words she knew. The man nodded uneasily and shifted his weight.

She felt strong enough to go and sit on the arm of Julien's chair. She put her hand tentatively on his wrist.

"What happened?"

Julien put down his hands and turned his face up towards Charlotte. His complexion had the same grey colour she had noticed when he had returned to the room after briefly going out, and his eyes still seemed to be gazing beyond the walls. He coughed, and with an obvious effort brought his eyes to focus on her face.

"Benech. That man." He waved his hand in the direction of the chair Benech had occupied.

"When I went out to find cigarettes I was really going to make a telephone call, but I couldn't because of the gendarme coming with me.

And then this. this creature, Benech."

Julien's voice was toneless and flat, but at the second mention of Benech's name a trace of colour returned to his face.

"I went to the desk, I rumbled about in a drawer pretending to look for cigarettes.

Benech came hurrying up behind me and pulled me over into a corner so Bernard wouldn't hear. He put his lips against my ear and said, "If you don't tell the truth, we'll have to look elsewhere."

"What did he mean?"

Julien sighed and shook his head.

"He stood away from me a little and smiled. It was a big, broad smile. He said, "I'm a schoolmaster. It's my business to know the whereabouts of children." ' "My God."

"I said, "What do you mean?" He still had this big smile, as though he had done something clever and was taking me into his confidence. He thought for a moment and said "Mmm" He was trying to find a subtle way of saying something. Then he said, "Let's just say I always know where to look if I need a telegram sending after hours."

"Oh my God, those poor boys."

Julien nodded.

"I said, "I don't know what you mean." I had to say that. He just kept on smiling.

Then he said something like, "The numbers in the camps are disappointing, so the police have been scouring the fields and villages.

Lavaurette's a small place and two people's enough for the quota." Then he said, "For the time being." ' Julien breathed deeply and struggled to take control of himself. He said softly, "We'd better go and talk about this." He stood up and turned to the German soldier, "We're going to sleep now. Bed." He made a gesture of sleep with folded hands.

The German nodded and pointed at each of them in turn. He raised one finger, then two, then made a circle with his arms.

"Yes, together," said Julien, putting his arm round Charlotte. The soldier looked relieved at the prospect of guarding one room only.

"Come," said Julien, beckoning with his hand.

"I'll show you."

They went up the stairs and along the musty passageway, past Levade's studio, with the German's footsteps ringing out behind them.

Julien stopped outside one of the many vacant bedrooms and twisted the handle in the door. The room was large but bare, with pale grey panelling and one solid wardrobe with dark iron hinges. The German went over to the windows and looked out; he opened the catch, pushed apart the two heavy sections of framed glass and ran his hand along the sills outside as though looking for a ladder or perhaps a concealed machine gun.

He nodded affirmatively, went over to a chair in the corner and sat down.

"No," said Julien.

"You. Outside." He pointed.

The man shook his head and lifted his rifle a few degrees.

Julien said, "Man. Woman. Last night together."

The soldier looked blank.

"Can you speak German, Dominique?"

"No." She looked at the German.

"Italiano?"

He shook his head, distrustfully.

"I don't want to speak in English, it might make him suspicious," she whispered in Julien's ear.

"But I could tell you the English words and you could ask. Say, "Do you speak English?" ' Julien repeated the words slowly and some small light of comprehension came into the German's eyes.

Charlotte whispered, "Say, "Man, woman." Point to the bed." Julien said the words and raised an eyebrow expressively as he pointed.

The German angrily shook his head.

"Please, please," said Charlotte, again in German, holding her hands together and giving the man her most supplicant, flirtatious smile.

He was unimpressed.

"It doesn't really matter," said Julien.

"We'll just have to talk in front of him. He doesn't understand anyway." For a long time Julien sat staring at the bed, running his finger over the faded pattern on the cover; then he lifted his head and looked into Charlotte's expectant eyes.

"I think my father will be pleased to die. I think he has no fear of it." Julien's voice sounded unsure.

"You made the right choice," said Charlotte.

"He's unhappy. He hates what he calls his sensual urges. He's lost the ability to paint good pictures. His faith will make it easier for him." Charlotte stroked his hand.

"I'm sure you did the right thing, I'm sure you did. It must have been awful for you, but ' " I felt like Judas. I'm glad I couldn't see the expression in his eyes."

"I think he understood," Charlotte said.

"When I said goodbye and gave him your love I really think he understood." She did not believe what she was saying, and she could not bear the thought that Levade might be taken to his death believing that his son had betrayed him. She said, "He must have guessed that you had a motive.

He knew how much you loved him."

"Did you tell him anything?"

"I didn't know what to say. Why didn't you call out to him and explain?"

"Then the Germans would have known about the boys."

"Don't you think they know anyway?"

"No. I'm sure it's just Benech. He wants his own power. For the time being. I don't think the German officer was really interested, I think he just wants to get back to his unit. He's only here because of the railway junction. I don't think he's even interested in me. Otherwise he wouldn't have left me behind with this old fool." He did not look at the guard.

"I thought he was just waiting for the documents."

"He could have taken me if he wanted. I said I was a Jew. He could have told the police to take me in for not having my card stamped with the word Jew." Charlotte looked down and found she was still holding Julien's hand.

"And what are you going to do?"

"Insist they take me. Otherwise Benech will tell them about Andre and Jacob."

"They wouldn't really," said Charlotte.

"They couldn't. Not in cold blood. Two little boys. They--"

" We've gone past that point," said Julien.

"They'll do anything. This is going to get worse. I have a dreadful feeling that it's all just beginning. Everything till now has been manoeuvring. Now all hell's going to break open."

Charlotte was thinking of Levade, alone in the police cell. He had lost hope in his country and in his art; despite what she had told Julien, she thought Levade also believed that Julien had betrayed him. What else could he have thought? His attitude at the end when he embraced Charlotte in the hall was not of understanding, but of resignation: all this, his fatalistic expression seemed to say, and my son, too ... But somehow she would get word to him; no one could be left alone in such ruins.

"Listen, Julien," she said.

"I'll go and warn Sylvie Cariteau to get the boys moved somewhere safe, and you see if you can escape."

"How?"

"You said he was just an old fool. You can think of something. Perhaps he'll fall asleep."

Julien thought for a long time.

"I don't want to risk it. I couldn't bear the thought of them taking Andre and Jacob." Charlotte said, "I think you're wrong. You're important, Julien. You could carry on your work. If it's going to get worse, as you say, then you must be here to fight. I can get the boys out of Sylvie's house."

Julien shook his head.

"It's too dangerous. I'm not going to be responsible for the death of the children. I'd rather die myself. This is exactly the problem I was talking about downstairs. Suppose I escaped, suppose they took the boys and then they caught me, too? If you don't base your actions on what is right, then you have nothing left to fall back on if the practicalities fail."

"I love those boys, Julien. I'll do anything to help them. But for you to give yourself up is a futile gesture. A fine one, perhaps, but quite futile. If you stay free you can save the lives of many more people."

"I must kill Benech."

"What?"

"That's the only solution. He's the only one who knows. It's the one thing that would help and also somehow be right."

Charlotte thought for a moment.

"All right." If it meant Julien would try to escape then she was in favour of anything.

"And then what?"

"Then I'll have to leave Lavaurette. I'll go and join a network somewhere. Pretty soon there'll be proper groups of fighters, I'm sure."

"Good," said Charlotte.

"Good, that's right. And I'll make sure the boys are moved anyway, just to be on the safe side, just in case Benech has told Pichon." She paused.

"And you're not worried about killing a man?"

Julien shook his head.

"Not any more. Not that man. It's a war now. If you fight in a war you take the risk of being killed."

There was a pause as they both inspected the new plan, neither of them quite able to believe that they had come to an agreement.

Julien said, "The important thing is to move the boys quickly, so if anything goes wrong they're already out of Sylvie's house. So you must get there now. I'll deal with Benech later in the day. Then you must go to the monastery. You know where it is, the one I'm working on?"

Charlotte nodded. She felt a small metal object being pressed into her hand.

"That's a spare key to the temporary fence, on the building site," said Julien.

"Then in the morning, go straight away to the wireless operator." He put his lips to her ear and whispered a name and address.

"The operator will find a safe house for you till the plane comes. But you mustn't stay a second in Lavaurette. Do you understand? For God's sake go now." He was squeezing her hand.

"Yes, I promise. But in return I want you to keep in touch with Sylvie. See if there are messages from me. Do you promise?"

"The post office is under German control now. Since they came into the Free Zone."

"Sylvie will find a way. Promise me you'll be in touch with her." In Charlotte's mind there was already the outline of a plan for not going home. She had not finished yet.

Julien looked at her quizzically.

"All right," he said.

"But don't do anything stupid. Don't try and find him, will you? Just go home."

"You're hurting my hand," said Charlotte.

"Now how do I get out of here?"

Julien shrugged.

"Ask to go to the bathroom. Say it's urgent."

Charlotte smiled.

"I don't know the German for bathroom. I'm not going to mime it."

"If I ask he'll tell me to do it out of the window. It has to be you."

"He'll tell me to do it in the washstand. Don't look now, but there's even a chamber pot underneath."

"I have an idea," said Julien.

"Do you remember what I said about man, woman, last night together?"

"Yes."

"That's what we must do."

"In front of this man?"

"He'll have to stop it in some way."

"But ... Julien. Then, then ..." The objection that came to Charlotte's lips surprised her.

"Then I must say goodbye now. Before we ... begin."

Julien nodded. Whenever he had talked to Charlotte about love or about his desire for her, he had always been smiling, and now his face was grave. It seemed quite wrong to her, to begin in this way, without his laughter or cajoling.

"I don't want to say goodbye."

"Nor do I, Dominique. We've been friends, haven't we?"

"We've been friends." She nodded, biting her lip.

"It's a good thing to be. But I'm not your lover."

"No."

"I know about him. You must wait for him."

"I will wait for him." It was clear. There was no doubt in her mind.

"But you, Julien, I've never had a friend like this. I don't want to say goodbye to you now."

She was gripping his hand very hard on the bed.

"Don't look at me with those eyes, Dominique."

"I'm frightened, Julien."

"You'll be all right. As long as you don't delay. If something goes wrong, get in touch with Sylvie Cariteau."

"I'm not frightened for me. It's for you."

She pictured Julien slipping off in the night to kill Benech, then vanishing somewhere into the hills. There were not yet enough people for him to join, no proper network; he would be tracked down and shot. She could not bear to think of him hunted and afraid because it was not in his nature to be like that; she wanted him to be in his office, bantering with one of his Paulines, pouring out wine while he spoke into the telephone.

"I'll be all right." His solemn face at last broke open in a narrow smile. He leaned forward to kiss Charlotte on the lips.

She had seldom felt less lustful, but in the interests of Andre and Jacob she forced herself to dissimulate a passionate response. She stroked Julien's hair, she murmured as he kissed her cheek.

She lay back on the bed and circled Julien's neck with her arms. She felt his hand run up her leg and begin to lift her dress. There was still no sound from the German.

Julien was whispering, "I don't know what more I can do. He doesn't seem to have noticed."

Just hold me," she whispered back hotly in his ear.

"It's not enough. Make more noise."

Charlotte closed her eyes and felt the bed rock in the way she remembered from the night in Julien's apartment. She tried to sigh passionately, but her breath caught in her throat. His hands again lifted the skirt of her dress and began to pull at her underclothes.

She could not go on with this much longer. Of all her mixed feelings, the one that was rising to the surface was the shame of being watched.

She felt Julien lower himself on top of her, then she heard at last a sound she would never have thought welcome, a coarsely uttered German order. Julien made no movement, but continued to manoeuvre himself on top of her.

Charlotte, still with her eyes closed, heard the German voice a second time, nearer, and felt Julien's body being pushed sideways.

Julien rolled to the side of the bed and pulled Charlotte up with him. As she desperately pushed down her dress, he persisted in his passionate embraces, pulling at the buttons on her back, lowering his head to her breast, compelling the German to force Charlotte away. He pushed her strongly back against the door and shouted at Julien who was half undressed.

"Run!" screamed Julien, but Charlotte stood for a moment, her hair disarrayed, her clothes rucked and caught, unable quite to let go. As the German turned to look at her, Julien threw his arms round the man's neck and wrestled him towards the window.

"Go!" he screamed over his shoulder, and Charlotte turned, twisted the handle of the door and plunged out into the cold, dark corridor.

She ran past Levade's studio to the top of the stairs, caught the banister and, half-tripping, slithered down the wooden steps. In the hallway she thought of going for her coat, but the frantic urgency of Julien's voice was still in her ear. She heaved open the double doors of the Domaine and went down into the winter's night. She ran to the barn where her bicycle was kept.

Thinking it better to be in darkness, she did not attach the dynamo, but pedalled off beneath the arch of the pigeonnier, then, panting, swung the bike into the long drive, where she lowered her head against the freezing drizzle of the night and strained her eyes to see the potholes and the grassy verge beneath the rows of darkened plane trees.