Sometimes at night she would hear from somewhere in the depths of the house a sound like a gun-shot. Then the silence of the night returned, so dense that for a moment she could hear nothing; until there would come the choking call of a wild bird that had strayed alone into the small hours of the morning, and then the low murmur of her husband’s breath.

Tensed and flat, she lay waiting, but the sound seldom came more than once a night. Of course there were other creaks and groans: the wooden stairs would ease themselves out against the flanking wall with a mellow timber sigh, or snap with splintery temper in the contraction of the cold. There was often a remote, irregular banging from the door to the scullery in the south tower which the maid, Marie, after washing the dinner dishes, unfailingly forgot to close before going to bed. The shutters in the attic could occasionally be heard grating slowly on their thick rusted hinges, and down the long corridors of the first floor the worn planks rumbled and squeaked in a capricious but not discomforting way. At times like these Christine imagined the whole body of the house and all its contents to be shifting in its sleep, the immobile outer walls and towers not quite able to hold in equal stillness all the disparate inner parts. It was hardly surprising, when one considered the different portions of the earth and living world that had been plundered to fill the place: unrelated oxides fused to make glass and flattened into windows framed by felled and sliced trees; marble quarried and carved into decorative mantelpieces on which sat lamps compounded of different or unwilling metals; powdery plaster fixed by water in a brittle firmness unnatural to both. It was only to be expected that a little restlessness be shown at night – an aching of elemental parts which stretched to find their former selves. In this way, Christine thought, the house was like a human brain stilled by a temporary sleep which allowed the brash constituents of its personality the indulgence of a brief and limited self-expression, like a dream.

The gun-shot, then, was an intruder. It bore no relation to what the rest of the house was doing. As she went about the rooms in the morning, opening the shutters, Christine wondered what it was. There were no bullet-marks in the window-frames, no signs of violence, though many of the rooms had jagged cracks along the walls, and sometimes in the ceilings. There was a rough grey dust on some of the bedroom floors, she noticed, which didn’t look the same as the soft and colourless fluff that gathered along the shelves, most of which, she had somewhere read, was the result of the human skin’s frantic self-renewal.

When Christine mentioned the sounds she heard at night to Hartmann, he told her that all old houses made such noises, and when she pointed to half a dozen cracks along the landing and in the bedrooms he said they had always been there and that plaster shrank and had to be repainted. There was time enough, he said, to fix it.

There were other matters more pressing than the odd stray fall of dust, about which Christine also said nothing. She noticed a change in Hartmann’s behaviour and in his response to her, but she merely watched and waited. The outward forcefulness of her character was balanced by a sense of delicacy and Catholic shyness which restrained her. In matters of the flesh she felt guilty towards Hartmann and always feared the loss of his attentions. She also thought it tactically best to say nothing. She knew the workings of Hartmann’s mind and knew too that, left alone, he was likely to be entangled by his conscience, while if she gave him a chance to talk to her he might sweep her worries aside with his reasonableness.

In particular, she was distressed that he found it necessary to go to Paris for a long weekend to discuss some complicated business matter. Why did he have to make two trips, one now and one at a later, still unspecified date? Why had he not offered to take her with him on either occasion? And why did he seem so elated by the prospect of the trip when only a short while ago he had said he had no desire at all to return to the city?

She had packed his suitcase and he had told her he would be back on Monday night. She stood in the doorway of the house and waved him goodbye. He had said he would drive to the nearest big town to catch a train, since the small branch-line was so unreliable. Christine nodded in silence. She watched as he threw his suitcase in the boot and nosed the old black tourer round the edge of the house and up the bumpy drive through the pine trees.

Anne was waiting for him. It was a short walk from her lodgings near the church, up past the reservoir and out on to the main road. She had gone with her head bowed, nevertheless, and her face concealed by a headscarf. She was worried that she wouldn’t have the right clothes for the weekend: her smartest dress looked tawdry when she held it to the light, and perhaps in any case the other women would be wearing long dresses and jewellery. Hartmann had promised her the stay was quite informal, but she was uneasy.

At last she heard the sound of a car slowing down as it crossed the bridge out of town, and of its wheels turning the gravel on the roadside. There was a short blast on the horn and Anne looked round to see Hartmann gesturing from behind the wheel. She grabbed her case and ran over to him.

For some reason it had never occurred to her that they would travel by car. Where she had imagined herself sitting elegantly in the corner of a train compartment she now found the wind rushing back through her carefully brushed hair and lashing it about her face. She watched him as he drove, his face composed and humorous as he told her what he expected to happen at the weekend. Anne found herself almost unable to speak, so great was her excitement. Hartmann seemed not to mind, and, seeing this, she began to laugh at his descriptions of his friend and the sort of house he thought it would be. The tree-lined roads and small towns through which they passed were nothing extraordinary in themselves, but to Anne they seemed lit by an inner radiance, so that even the torpid peasants in the fields and sullen bourgeois in the shops were like figures from a painting or a film.

They stopped briefly for lunch in a café, but Hartmann was concerned that they should not be late. He was also worried about his car, which had never been reliable and which, he said, few garages seemed able to mend.

They drove on through thickening countryside until they reached a small village where Hartmann stopped and consulted his instructions. Five minutes later they pulled up outside a large farmhouse surrounded by stone outbuildings.

‘Remember, don’t be nervous,’ said Hartmann as he took her case from the boot. ‘I’ll make sure everything goes all right.’ He smiled at her. ‘And you’d better stop calling me “monsieur”.’

Anne nodded mutely and followed him to the front door. It was opened by a man of about forty with florid cheeks and what seemed to Anne almost comically countrified clothes of wool and leather, with tweed breeches and a yellow waistcoat.

‘My dear Charles! How are you?’ Etienne Beauvais shook his friend’s hand and then embraced him. ‘You’ve arrived at just the right time.’

‘May I introduce –’

‘Of course, of course, you must be Anne. Delighted, my dear. Charles has told me so much about you. Please come in. You’re the last here,’ he added, leading them over the flagged hall. ‘We’re all gathered in the morning-room. Now throw your cases down there and Armand will take them to your rooms. Perhaps you’d like a wash, though, after your journey? Mademoiselle?’

‘I don’t think I –’

‘A good idea,’ said Hartmann. ‘We’ll join you in a minute.’

Etienne rang a bell and a small man in an apron arrived to show them upstairs.

‘Don’t be long now,’ said Etienne. ‘We’re having a terrific time down there and the others are dying to meet you.’

His words had the opposite of their intended effect on Anne, who thought she would like to spend as much time as possible in the seclusion of her room. Armand led the way up the stairs, apparently struggling under the weight of the bags, even though Anne knew for certain that hers wasn’t heavy. He paused for breath at the top before theatrically bracing himself for the final haul down the corridor.

‘Your room, mademoiselle,’ he said, elbowing open a door and putting down the case. ‘This way, monsieur.’

Anne’s room had low beams, small windows and a large brass bed on which she sat, breathing deeply and trying hard to tell herself not to worry. As far as the other guests and even her host were concerned, it didn’t matter: as long as she was polite, then she didn’t mind if she made some social error. The difficulty was with Hartmann. She began to unpack, hoping her one good dress would have survived the journey.

There was a knock at the door. ‘Come in,’ she said uncertainly.

It was Hartmann. ‘Don’t look so frightened!’ He laughed. ‘You can leave the unpacking. They’ll send a maid to do it later.’

‘All right,’ said Anne, as if this were the most normal thing to her. ‘But don’t I have to change my dress for dinner?’

‘No. I’m not changing. You saw what Etienne was wearing.’

‘Yes,’ said Anne, feeling, to her shame, a smile twitch at the corner of her lips.

‘Well then! It’s not exactly the opera, is it? Comic opera, perhaps . . .’

Anne laughed a little.

‘Now listen, Anne.’ Hartmann took a step closer. ‘You’re going to enjoy this. There’s nothing that can go wrong. Etienne’s a very nice man. I’ve told him who you are and how I know you. He won’t embarrass you, I promise. If the other people are stuffy or difficult, just be polite and smile and give nothing away. You’re here because you’ve been invited and have every right to be here. Is that understood?’

Anne nodded.

‘There’s nothing to be frightened of. We’re here to enjoy it. Now then, have some of this.’ He took a hip flask from his pocket and offered it to her.

‘What is it?’

‘Rum.’

She drank a little and gave it back to him.

‘All right?’ he said.

‘Yes, thank you, monsieur.’

‘Not “monsieur”.’

‘All right.’

‘All right, what?’

‘All right . . .’

‘All right, what?’

‘All right, Charles,’ she whispered.

Etienne seemed to have accounted for every minute of the forthcoming weekend. Anne noticed that his brother-in-law viewed him with a benign patience as Etienne explained the vagaries of the local climate and how this had affected the production of truffles and the nesting habits of the local game birds. It seemed that there was to be an expedition on the following day in which all twelve of those present would take part. The night would be spent at a place called Merlaut, which obviously had great important for Etienne. ‘It’s an enchanted place, my dear Charles,’ he said. ‘You wait till you see it.’

Although the atmosphere was not as formal as Anne had feared, the party had been carefully chosen, and Isabelle moved assiduously from group to group to make sure all was well. Anne noticed that no one asked about her job or how she knew Hartmann. She presumed that they had all discussed her before she came downstairs, or even earlier. Perhaps that was why they were all having such a ‘terrific’ time in the morning-room, according to Etienne, when she and Hartmannn had arrived: what a scream, the Countess would have said, to think of Charles bringing down his little mistress from the local bistro . . .

She glanced over to where Hartmann stood by the window talking to Etienne’s brother-in-law. His head was slightly on one side as he listened to what Marcel was saying, yet his body was relaxed and he had even raised one foot to the wooden window-seat as a man might do in his own house. She looked longingly across at him, seeing in a movement of his hand and rush of laughter the vestigial enthusiasm of his imagined boyhood which had so charmed her by the tennis court. How was it possible, she wondered, to be awed by someone and yet to feel protective towards him too?

Some of the guests were tired from long journeys – one couple had come from Paris – and this increased their sense of relaxation when they saw that Etienne had taken charge and there was nothing more for them to think about. The men drank freely, as if they were anxious to forget where they had come from; and, as they drank, their talk became exuberant and began to include more and more people at a time, until one of them would speak to the entire room.

As they rose to go into dinner, Anne told herself again the words that had been scored into the years of her childhood: be brave, little Anne, be brave . . . her guardian Louvet’s purplish face loomed up in front of her and his philosophical finger wagged: ‘Courage is the only weapon, it is the only thing that counts.’

At dinner she found herself between the man from Paris and Marcel. They drank different wines with every course, and Etienne loudly encouraged her to drink more freely, himself setting an impressive example. Hartmann and the man from Paris appeared to be teasing Etienne, who was answering back robustly. Anne wasn’t sure if they all knew each other already or whether they had simply lighted on a jovial bond that was common to all men. There was talk of Bouvard and Pécuchet, who, she knew, were characters in a book. Since she hadn’t read it, however, she couldn’t see why the application of the names to Etienne was making the men laugh.

After dinner Isabelle said she was fed up with the sound of male voices and invited Anne upstairs where she had something she wanted to show her. Anne obeyed dutifully and the Countess followed them. Although it was a traditional farmhouse, it had been lavishly decorated inside, and Isabelle’s bedroom, where she now led them, had beautiful striped drapes and little sofas and chairs of the most delicate and expensive-looking kind. Anne found herself invited to sit at Isabelle’s dressing-table. She took a comb from her bag and began to pull it through her hair, even though, as far as she could see from the mirror, it would make very little difference.

‘Allow me, my dear,’ said the Countess, stepping forward and taking the comb from Anne’s hand. ‘Such pretty hair,’ she said, as she combed it. ‘A beautiful colour.’

‘Thank you.’

‘But why do you tie it back like this? Why don’t you use a slide? You must have this one of mine. Here.’ She untied Anne’s hair then combed it back into position before slipping a thick jewelled comb in one side.

‘But won’t you want it yourself?’ said Anne, who felt uncomfortable at having this stranger organise her appearance for her.

‘No, no. Not this evening, my dear. Do have it. It gives you such an air of . . . distinction.’

Anne retired, confused, from the dressing-table, and pretended to be looking at the pictures on the wall. Isabelle evidently had nothing in particular to show her; she had just wanted a break from the men.

‘This is my son, Gérard,’ said Isabelle, taking Anne’s arm and showing her a photograph on a chest of drawers.

‘How old is he?’

‘Nearly fourteen.’

Doing rapid calculations in her head, Anne wondered whether Hartmann and Christine would soon have children.

Through the open door there came the sound of laughter from downstairs.

‘They do make themselves laugh, don’t they?’ smiled Isabelle.

‘I wonder who they’re pulling to pieces,’ said the Countess.

‘It sounded smutty to me.’

They returned to the morning-room for coffee. Anne had never seen Hartmann like this before. She could see that he was happy and she found that she had begun to enjoy the evening herself. In any reckless undertaking, such as she considered the whole weekend to be, there was likely to be a mixture of anxiety and adventure. The latter, she decided, seemed to have gained the upper hand.

When one or two of the other couples had decided to go to bed, she went upstairs also. Her bed had been neatly turned back and there was a carafe of water on the table beside it. Her clothes had been put away and her nightdress was folded on the pillow, the recently mended tear above the hem rendered tactfully invisible. She undressed and sank beneath the covers, where she fell asleep at once, on her back, without moving.

In her dream that night she saw a man die. She screamed and ran home, where Hartmann angrily berated her for making such a fuss.

She awoke, still lying on her back, and found herself gasping for breath. There was a small window just near her head, which she pushed open. At once there was the sound of crickets and a torrent of heavy night air, filled with different scents, and cold on her face. In seconds her head was clear, and she rolled on to her side, away from the window, and fell asleep again, her dark hair splayed on the pillow.

In the middle of the morning they set off for Merlaut. It was not clear to Anne whether this was the name of a house or of a village, but it was a word spoken with great awe by Etienne. Everything at Merlaut would be perfect, unimaginable, beautiful – ah, but they must see for themselves.

Earlier that morning Anne had found that her hands were swollen with small blisters, and that one of her fingers was bleeding where she must have scratched it while asleep. The itching was intolerable, even after she had held her hands under scalding water in the bathroom. She scratched them until they were raw, scraping the palms against the waistband of her skirt.

It had stopped raining, though the air remained damp and cool for all the efforts of a thin sun. Hartmann attempted to let down the hood of the car, but succeeded only in emptying a gathered pool of water on to his trousers. Anne began to laugh. They were in a convoy of cars, set between a shiny Citroën driven by Marcel and an ugly black thing called a Rosengart that carried Armand the butler and two maids. Armand, who had been entrusted with the driving of it, had not mastered the movement of the gear lever, with the result that it emitted an even harsher grinding sound than was standard with the machine.

Merlaut turned out to be a shooting lodge, set in thick woods. It was intended that the party stay the night: four, plus the servants, could sleep in the main lodge, and the remaining eight in out-buildings and cottages on the estate.

The guests separated; some walked over the wooded hills, some went to see where they would be staying and others sat on the balcony outside the lodge, reading or listening to Etienne. Anne walked with Hartmann, who was still suffering from a headache. She teased him a little, the first time she had dared do such a thing, and he seemed not to mind.

‘They’ve been very kind, so far, these people,’ she said. ‘They’re not as frightening as I’d expected.’

‘I told you it would be all right. They’re not small-town people, you see. Most of them are Parisians who are pretending not to be. Like me. Paris makes you more tolerant, don’t you think?’

‘I suppose so. There’s one woman who gave me a terrible look last night. I’m sure she must be a countess or something. I think she’s called Mireille.’

‘A countess, yes . . .’ Hartmann looked up over the fields in front of them. ‘Mireille used to be a singer. She was in the chorus of a cabaret in Paris that was so bad it became something of a cult. It had a snake-charmer who couldn’t charm and a muscleman who claimed once to have been in a show with Josephine Baker. Mireille used to appear with several other women wearing feathers down their fronts. One night she had a note backstage from a man wanting to take her to dinner. She refused, being a nice girl, but he persisted. He turned out to be a manufacturer of pneumatic tyres from Clermont Ferrand. He was about sixty, but I suppose he was kind, because she married him. Unfortunately he died soon afterwards.’

Anne was amazed. ‘Poor woman.’

‘Yes. Though the blow was softened when it transpired that he’d left her several million francs. Now she’s married again – that man with the glasses, Pascal.’

‘Not a countess, then.’

‘No, not a countess.’

There was excitement back at the lodge where the others were taking pre-lunch drinks on the balcony. Even Marcel, the saturnine brother-in-law, was showing signs of animation. The cause of it was a shaggy German shepherd dog called Oscar who had recently arrived with his handler, a short woman in a waterproof coat.

‘He came second in the competition this year. Second out of all the dogs in France,’ said Marcel.

‘Second at what?’ said Anne.

‘At truffle-hunting, of course. What else? What other reason could there be for us to gather here at the end of a long summer in this remote little spot?’

‘And what draws a dog like Oscar to the truffles in the first place?’ Hartmann intervened, to deflect attention from Anne.

‘Oh, there are many theories, you know. One scientist maintains that with pigs there is something in the truffle that resembles the smell of a male pig. This is why sows are drawn to search for them.’

‘Do they do much better than male pigs?’

‘No, about the same.’

‘So what does this tell us of the love-life of the pig, Marcel?’

‘No, no, I am serious,’ said Marcel, crossly, as everyone seemed to be laughing. ‘And Oscar, he is formidable. When he goes into the field he is like a virtuoso. His body stiffens and tunes to the one pressing thing that animates him . . . the little black diamonds. Out of all the dogs in France, he’s the second best. And he’s only four years old. Next year, he will be the winner. Am I not right, madame?’

‘But of course, monsieur,’ the dog’s handler nodded.

‘When can we see the maestro?’ said someone.

‘Why, this afternoon. After lunch.’

‘Lunch,’ boomed Etienne. ‘A good idea.’

They sat on benches at a long table inside the lodge and an old woman materialised from the scullery with some bread and a tureen of soup. Etienne deferred here to Marcel, who sat at the top of the table. Jugs of wine were passed round and the talk was of the afternoon’s expedition. The old woman cleared the plates and brought some salad, and later some slabs of thick greasy terrine. Anne was sitting next to Marcel, who continued to lecture her on the history of the truffle. On the other side was Oscar’s handler or, more accurately, Oscar, who rested his furry head on the table between them. When she thought no one was looking Anne slipped him her portion of terrine, which he swallowed at a gulp.

‘In 1900 there were four hundred thousand people living in this region. And now?’ asked Marcel, since no one else had. ‘Less than half that number.’

‘Where have they gone?’ said Anne dutifully.

‘The Germans killed a good number of them. The rest have gone to the cities. Bordeaux, Paris, Clermont. The villages are empty now.’

The old woman brought omelettes with what looked like mushrooms stuck in them. Marcel carved open the dark yellow mass and served his end of the table. Anne already felt quite full from what she had eaten. She managed to slide part of her portion on to the wooden floor, where the dog pounced on it, before returning his head to the table and gazing fixedly up at her.

‘But it’s getting harder and harder to find these little beauties,’ said Marcel, forking a piece of truffle from his omelette.

Anne, who hadn’t realised she had been feeding the dog with anything more than a strange mushroom omelette, was frightened that someone might have seen her throwing this delicacy on the floor. To quell a panicky desire to laugh, she asked Marcel about the training of the dogs.

A dish of boiled chicken was placed on the table and the jugs of wine were refilled.

‘When they begin,’ said Marcel, ‘the trainer will wrap the truffle in meat and bury it. The amount of meat gets less and less until the dog will go for the smell of the truffle alone. Then sometimes they give him a little reward.’

‘Have you seen your lodgings tonight?’ Etienne interrupted, turning to Anne. ‘You’re in what used to be a granary. It’s very small, I’m afraid, just a couple of rooms, but it’s got a pleasant view. You can’t get the car all the way down, I’m afraid. The path’s too narrow.’

Anne was by now not sure if the meal was finishing or beginning, and the arrival of plates of carrots, celery and potatoes made the situation no clearer. The old woman went stoically about her work, giving no indication of enjoyment or distaste. The din of laughter grew and Anne found herself caught up in it. Only one thing still worried her: the way Hartmann had behaved towards her in her dream. But she would tax him with it later.

After a green salad came a tray of cheeses which made her think of Bruno and his taste for the goat’s cheeses of the Vaucluse; but the dining-room of the Hotel du Lion d’Or had ceased to exist for her. All the world seemed concentrated in this small wooden lodge in the hills, in the mingled sound of speech and laughter. She looked down into her refilled glass of wine and her eyes seemed to penetrate the bright reflecting liquid into the atoms that made it.

Before the coffee the old woman had one more surprise: an enormous open flan with a yellowish egg filling. For this she brought fresh plates, and Isabelle would take no denials from the guests as she sliced it into equal pieces. Oscar was once more Anne’s private beneficiary.

After lunch they set off to see the dog perform. Hartmann walked with Etienne, who was sweating as the sun bore down on them. He glanced back towards the three women.

‘My God, Charles, you’ve done all right there,’ he said.

‘All right?’

‘Don’t be coy, you old badger. How’s it going?’

‘To tell you the truth, Etienne, it’s not going at all.’

‘Too young, eh? Too religious? You’ll soon talk her out of that.’

‘I’m a married man now.’

‘Don’t talk nonsense. What did you bring her down here for? I tell you, if you don’t want to sleep in the granary tonight there’s others who’d like to use it.’

‘It’s difficult, Etienne. I can’t explain.’

‘Listen, Charles. For well over five years I saw you capering about in Paris. I know you. Now either you’ve lost your touch or the girl’s stringing you along in the hope of bigger presents than you’ve so far given her. You have given her presents, haven’t you?’

‘In a manner of speaking, I –’

‘Well, there you are. Girls with her looks can extract a good price.’

‘She’s not like that. She’s very innocent.’

‘She looks innocent, I admit, but you know what women are like.’

‘Do I?’

‘Stop pulling my leg, Charles. Are you in love with her or something?’

‘I don’t think so, no. I don’t know her well enough to be.’

‘Well, if it’s not that, what is it? You do want her, I take it.’

‘Yes, you could say that.’ Hartmann laughed. ‘Listen, Etienne, I want that girl more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life.’

‘So what on earth is stopping you?’

‘I don’t know!’

They tramped up the hill towards a coppice of oaks, where the search for truffles was due to take place.

‘I suppose,’ said Hartmann, offering his handkerchief to Etienne so he could wipe his brow, ‘I suppose it’s some sort of instinct. A certain kind of delicacy.’

‘Scruples?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Well, I can imagine that to you, Hartmann, such feelings must seem extraordinary.’

‘Thank you.’

Etienne gave him back the handkerchief. ‘Perhaps you’re growing up at last,’ he puffed as they reached the top of the hill.

‘Is this where we see the champion dog at work?’

‘Yes. Just over there. Where the earth is scorched. That’s how you can tell that there are truffles. It’s an interaction between the oak and the soil.’

‘You and Marcel should write a book about all this.’

‘Be quiet, Hartmann. How could I expect a city dweller like you to understand the beauties of our country life?’

The dog-handler arrived with Oscar and a smaller, grey-muzzled bitch she said was his mother. While the guests stood round in a clearing she handed the lead of the second dog to Etienne and herself took charge of Oscar. She gave a continuous series of calls to encourage him in his search and told Etienne what to do with the mother. Oscar rambled over the dry ground, sniffing here and there, before sitting down and turning to look at his handler with a long accusing stare. The mother, who was called Gyp, had a faster working style, keeping her muzzle well down among the twigs and scorched earth and suddenly digging fiercely with her front legs. Etienne pulled up what looked like a clump of earth, about the size of a conker, and displayed it in triumph to his guests, who nodded and murmured appreciatively. Gyp pulled him back to work with a tug on the lead, and was soon scrabbling at the surface of the earth again with her paws. ‘What a beauty,’ said Etienne, as he again held up the result.

‘You look at Oscar now,’ said Marcel. ‘He takes his time, it’s true, but when he gets the scent there’s no holding him.’

Anne looked at Oscar, and he looked back at her. His handler made some more encouraging noises and pulled him over to a different tree, against which he lifted his leg.

‘In this competition they buried six truffles deep in the ground in an area of twenty-five metres,’ said Marcel, ‘and Oscar, he got all but one of them in record time.’

As Oscar sniffed around the bottom of the dampened tree his mother unearthed another truffle and Etienne gave charge of her to one of his guests. The dog seemed barely to notice the change of handler but continued on her workmanlike course.

‘I don’t know about you, but I find myself slightly disappointed in Oscar’s performance,’ said Hartmann to Anne, while Marcel continued his eulogy of the dog. ‘I wonder if perhaps he may have over-indulged at lunch time.’

‘Oh, I expect he’s just getting warmed up,’ said Anne. ‘It was a big lunch, wasn’t it?’

‘I wonder,’ said Hartmann, ‘whether Oscar should have sampled all the courses.’

‘All the courses?’ said Anne. ‘I only saw her feed him some chicken.’

‘And the terrine, and the omelette and the –’

‘Oh my God,’ said Anne, ‘did you see? Did everyone else?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Despite Marcel’s increasingly irritated urging, Oscar had moved from a sitting to a lying position and closed both eyes. He was only roused from his torpor by the arrival of an old man with a pig. The memory of his lunch seemed to leave him, and the sight of the pig fired his limbs with all the animation Marcel had predicted in his truffle-hunting. He had to be restrained by two men as he leapt and snarled at the fat pink intruder.

‘The pig and the dog,’ said Marcel, who had a developed sense of the obvious, ‘together they make a bad household.’

The box was finally filled with the labours of the grey-muzzled bitch, and whatever could be rescued from the jaws of the pig.

‘Branches too heavy, not enough light and air for the truffle,’ muttered Marcel, ‘and that wretched pig. Dying out, the pig, you know. Once everyone’s got cars you won’t see them used any more. Too nasty to transport.’

After the truffle hunt they went off to their separate resting places. Hartmann drove down a narrow track that forked away from the road behind the lodge. The car juddered as its axles took the strain of the uneven ground. Finally the road petered out into a glade of pine-shaded grass and they stopped beneath a tree. In front of them was a path through the woods that dropped steeply out of sight. Hartmann took the suitcases and walked ahead as Anne looked round about her, up through the overhanging branches. Although such dense countryside was quite familiar to her from her childhood, she looked at it in wonder. Hartmann, who must have been more at home in the long carved boulevards and tangled sidestreets of Paris, remarked only that it would have been difficult getting carts full of grain up and down such a steep and narrow path: perhaps that was why they had turned the building into sleeping quarters. The path at last issued into a flagged yard on to which backed a small stone granary.

The inside was simple. The original floor ran throughout the building, though it had mats on it in the sitting-room, which had had a fireplace installed, and in the bedroom from which double doors opened out on to a recently and roughly built terrace. This gave a view down over a patch of grass to a fence with an apple tree, and thence into a valley that stretched as far as the eye could see. They could look down its whole length, seeing both flanks steeply converge in their hectic fertility, with bushes and trees tumbling and milling together into the valley floor.

Hartmann made a bed for himself on the sofa in the main room, despite Anne’s protestations that she should sleep there, then went to investigate what was held in the small storeroom that acted also as a kitchen. Armand had done what was strictly necessary to prepare the place, but not much more. There were lamps and candles under the table and a crate of wine. Hartmann left the granary and went back up the hill to the car. There was something in it with which he intended to surprise Anne later.

Anne unpacked her clothes and washed in the tub in the corner of the bedroom. She looked over to where the evening sun was coming in through the open doors, flashing rectangles over the floor and up to the edge of the wooden bedstead, and she felt her final misgivings leave her under the pressure of an intense and rising delight.

Hartmann secreted his package beneath the sofa and went to wash and change while Anne unwrapped the parcels of food that Armand had left. She had chosen to wear not her smartest dress, because it didn’t seem appropriate, but a skirt she liked that was dark and tight around the hips, yet of a cool material, with a white blouse. To this she added her favourite red earrings. Hartmann came in to join her in the musty storeroom and started as she turned to greet him, caught unawares by her radiance.

They took two chairs on to the terrace and watched the sun begin to sink at the end of the valley. There was not a house or a human or an animal in sight.

‘No birds,’ said Hartmann, pouring some wine. ‘I suppose they’ve shot them all.’

Anne smiled and said nothing, looking down into the valley ahead.

‘I wonder what’s happening at the Lion d’Or,’ he said.

‘I wonder too. But I don’t care.’

‘I expect Mattlin’s just looked in for his evening drink. He’ll be asking where you’ve got to.’

‘Do you like Mattlin?’ said Anne.

‘Yes, up to a point. Why?’

‘He’s not very nice about you. The things he said, when he asked me to go with him for a drink one evening. And other things I’ve heard him tell M. Roussel in the bar.’

‘What things?’

‘I don’t think I should repeat them. I’m sure they’re not true.’

‘Go on. I’d like to hear.’

‘He said you used to walk round to his apartment in Paris to use his telephone because you were too mean to use your own.’

‘I never went to Mattlin’s apartment, let alone used his telephone. I don’t even know what street it was in!’

‘But I thought you were his best friend.’

‘Hardly. I knew him, but I seldom saw him.’

‘But don’t you mind if someone says all these things about you?’

‘Yes, of course I mind. I was outraged when I first found that Mattlin was making up stories about me, but there’s nothing I can do to stop him. Whenever you tax him with it he just denies it. I think he tells lies about other people too.’

‘And is it true that he arranged for you to act in this big case – something to do with marsh reclamation?’

‘Of course it’s not true. How could it be? Mattlin doesn’t know anybody involved, and even if he did he’d be in no position to influence the choice of lawyers.’

Anne drank some more wine. She was relieved to hear what Hartmann said, though she didn’t understand his attitude. In his place she would have punched Mattlin on the nose.

‘Why do you think he does it?’ she said.

‘I don’t know. I used to think it might be jealousy, but I can’t believe that any more. He has as much money as I do, he has as good a life – better, he would say. His career is just as good as mine.’

‘Perhaps it makes him feel more important.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Anne. Nothing mattered to her, except that she should be exactly where she was. To make her peace of mind yet more complete, she nerved herself to put a question she had meant to ask for some time. ‘When I was in Isabelle’s bedroom she showed me a photograph of her son. It made me wonder if you and your wife had . . . had ever thought about . . .’

‘About children?’ Hartmann turned to look at her. ‘It’s impossible. Christine was pregnant, but she miscarried. Now she can’t have children.’

Anne said, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’

‘That’s all right. It’s quite a normal question. You weren’t to know the answer would be . . . sad.’

Neither of them spoke for a time. Anne was thinking how strange their marriage must be, with both of them knowing that there could be no children. Hartmann, who had long been resigned to the idea, felt no embarrassment at Anne’s question and knew he could trust her to tell no one else. His peace of mind was troubled only by her physical proximity. The silence deepened, and he began to feel in it an uneasy power, like the force that had made him stride away from her when they stood side by side in the attic at the Manor. Anne thought the quietness was like a stream that washed away the barriers between them. But the density of it gradually lessened; Hartmann poured some more wine, and caught her eye. She smiled back at him, then lowered her eyes.

‘I suppose we’d better go and have dinner,’ she said.

He nodded and went to light the lamps in the main room. He fiddled with matches and wicks until the lamps flared into life and lit up the rough walls. Anne apologised for the dinner, even as she brought it through. There were smoked sausages, heated in stock, and potatoes with mayonnaise. She had found some red beans already cooked, and had made a salad. There were some gherkins and mustard on a shelf, and Armand had provided a loaf of rough bread large enough to last a week. Hartmann opened another bottle of wine and they began to eat.

‘It was very good,’ said Hartmann when they had finished. ‘I think it was the best dinner I’ve ever had.’

She laughed.

He said, ‘I’ve got a present for you, Anne.’

Already taut with delight, Anne thought she might snap. He pulled out a heavy package from under the sofa and gestured to her to open it. She pulled away the paper to discover a gramophone, not unlike the one she had had to sell before she left Paris.

She couldn’t find any words, and, seeing this, Hartmann spoke for her. ‘I bought some records. I don’t know if they’re what you like. I asked the woman in the shop for dance music and she gave me half a dozen.’

He handed her the parcel and watched the emotions passing over her face. Still she couldn’t speak, and Hartmann found himself moved by her response. He had intended the present merely as a light-hearted gesture, or so he told himself.

‘I’ll take the plates into the kitchen while you look at the records,’ he said. In the connecting darkness between the rooms, he caught his foot and almost dropped what he was carrying. He heard Anne’s laughter.

By the time he returned she had composed herself again.

‘Can we dance?’ she said.

‘Now?’

‘Why not?’

‘What, in here?’

‘No, no, out on the terrace.’

‘But it’s dark and I can’t dance.’

‘Come on.’

Anne took a lamp and hung it from a hook on the back wall of the granary. Then she carried the gramophone and wound it up. As she looked down into the darkness of the valley she saw two moths blunder into the lamp. She remembered her hands, and wondered what Hartmannn would say if he noticed their rawness. But it was too late: she had already put on the first record.

‘We won’t disturb people?’ said Hartmann, from the threshold of the bedroom.

‘Come on, you know there’s no one near. And it’s not very loud anyway.’

‘But I can’t da –’

She took his hand, and pulled him on to the terrace. Hartmann was as good as his word: he stumbled over the rough paving of the terrace, but Anne seemed always to keep out of harm’s way and to guide him onwards. She played the records again and again until Hartmann begged to be released. At last she agreed, and they carried the gramophone, the lamp and the records back through to the main room.

Hartmann poured himself some more wine and stood with his back to the fireplace. The sleeves of his thinly striped shirt were rolled up; he pulled at his tie to loosen it and ran his hand back through his hair. His face had its usual gravity, given by the weight of the head and the dark evenness of the features, offset by a liveliness in his eyes that always had at their centre a point of light, however deep they seemed sunk. It expanded when, as now, he smiled.

It was cool in the room and Anne took her shawl from the back of a chair. She said, ‘I haven’t said “thank you” for the present yet. It’s wonderful.’

‘I hoped you’d like it.’

‘Last night, you know, last night I had this terrible dream. And it was all your fault.’

‘My fault?’

‘Yes, you were horrible in it.’

‘What did I do?’

‘You shouted at me.’

Hartmann laughed. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t think what came over me.’

‘It wasn’t funny at the time.’

Hartmann looked at her curiously.

‘But it doesn’t matter,’ she said.

‘No. I don’t think so. What matters is whether you’ve enjoyed yourself.’

‘Enjoyed myself? Oh.’ She seemed to lose her breath. ‘It’s been the happiest day of my life.’

Again he found himself caught off balance by the intensity of her response. She took a step towards him. It was dark in the room; the one lamp shone on the floor between them. She moved into the light so she was only a pace away from him.

‘I love you.’

‘I know,’ he said, ‘I know.’ He gathered her in his arms, so that her face was pressed against his chest, where her tears wetted his shirt front. He stroked her hair and felt the outline of her skull beneath it. He thought of the coils of her brain beneath his hand, teeming and looping; he wondered what was thought and what was feeling, what was soul and what was cell – and all the other imponderable things to which he would never find an answer. She clung to him with all her force as if she might draw from him something of herself, some essence which she could keep and take away with her. He could feel her breasts against him and the beating of her heart, and knew he must disentangle himself from her touch before it was too late. He pushed her away, trusting himself only to keep one hand on her shoulder.

With the other he lifted up her face. Over the bridge of her nose and the top of her cheekbones were a dozen freckles, which seemed to him to have the colour and density of those in an opening lily.

Seeing them, he lost control at last. He meant only to kiss away the wetness on her cheeks but the surge of desire was so strong he felt himself beginning to tear at her clothes. He seized the corner of the blouse she had chosen with such care and pulled it from her shoulders.

She murmured, half in remonstration, half in pleasure as she stroked his hair. ‘I love you,’ she said again, as if the words would dignify the clumsy action of his hands.

Hartmann felt the material of some softer undergarment rip beneath his fingers and saw her breasts, patterned with freckles like those on her nose, fall forward, and he lowered his head to them. He felt his hair combed up between her caressing fingers. He sensed in her touch a certain passivity, almost a remoteness, which he welcomed because it foretold submission.

He guided her backwards to the sofa against the wall, his lips not leaving hers. He tried to protect her from his weight as he moved on top. His hands ran up her legs, pushing the tight black skirt upwards, and his eyes, through a panic of urgency, saw her thighs and the dark, stretched fabric at the top of her stocking and the white inner thigh above, before his fingers met softer, fine material. He wrenched his arms free from his shirt and could hear the collar tear away from its stud. He pushed and lifted at the frustrating tangle of her clothes until he saw a soft column of fine hair, like a puff of smoke or a feather, and when he touched her there, she gasped.

‘The light, the light, please turn out . . .’

He felt a moment of desperation as if what he most wanted might be denied him at the last instant and then, after a brief resistance, there was a relief, a sensation of having come home, somewhere from which he should never have been away. Her fingers were harsh on his back where the shirt had torn sideways, and as his chest bore down on her he inhaled the hot blast of his own breath as his face and tongue moved over her upper body. He was aware of the muscles convulsing in his back and the effort that dampened the tips of his hair against his neck. Very quickly he squeezed her with all the strength of his embrace and gasped in her ear as his body arched and emptied itself in her.

When he heard her deeply asleep, Hartmann slipped away from the bed, pulled on his clothes, and went outside, down to the apple tree. He sat there, sated, guilty and amazed, until the grudging dawn made each different green of the valley distinct. Then he returned to the terrace and looked through at Anne’s motionless form beneath the blanket. He moved quietly in beside her and felt her arm sleepily reach out to him.

When Hartmann went to join the men to go shooting, Anne decided to go for a walk on her own. He looked at her for a moment, to see if she was hiding some emotion, but could see none and so went up the hill to the car.

Anne walked through an adjoining field and discovered a path that seemed to loop round through some distant woods. By now the sun had risen sufficiently high to take the chill off the morning and to shine through the tangle of branches above her as she walked. From time to time the path came out into a clearing, and once she came upon a small cottage with geese enclosed in a wire pen. A little further on she sat for a while on a bank and surveyed the sinking fields below. The countryside was similar to that in which she had spent her childhood, until it had been interrupted. She thought back to the house she had lived in and to her parents; to her own self-absorbed innocence. Would Hartmann understand if she told him what had happened? Or would he react like the people in the local town when they discovered? Did she dare to gamble his love on his reaction?

She walked on through the morning and heard a rare outburst of birdsong from the trees: not everything, then, had been shot. Be brave, Anne, she heard Louvet drunkenly saying to her; courage is the only thing that counts. If she did not tell Hartmann, then he would not truly know her and could not therefore come to love her as she loved him. But then again, it seemed mad to risk losing such feeling as he might have for her merely for some perverse idea of honesty.

Anne could hear the distant sound of a gun being fired as the heat of the sun began to grow. It was a day in which everything around her seemed to be in harmony; it was impossible to imagine that the hedgerows and the fields and the woods and streams and isolated cottages were in any other than their appointed place. Only she, a human, with her illusion of free will, couldn’t find her true position in it all.

If only the consequences of a deed ended with the grief it caused, she thought, then one could bear up until it passed. But there are some actions which dislocate the arranged order so badly that their effects are never finished, but go on and on through the years, breaking out from the lives they originally affected and contaminating all who come in touch with them. Evil, she thought; perhaps that is what evil does.

By midday, however, when she reached the lodge, her spirits had lifted; and by the time she had gone with one of the maids to the spot where the others were converging for lunch they were buoyant. The men returned from shooting in their shirt sleeves, carrying their broken-barrelled shotguns and discussing the morning’s bag – not a large one, it seemed, since only Marcel was a practised shot. Some of the guests would be returning to dinner at the farm, but those with further to go, like Hartmann and Anne, would leave that afternoon. This did not spoil lunch for Anne, since she viewed the journey back with Hartmann as something to be enjoyed even more than the picnic in the sun. She looked at him as he lay on a rug, partly shaded beneath a tree, talking to Isabelle. One or two strands of hair on the back of his neck were damp with sweat, and she could see a slight patterning of it on the back of his shirt.

They returned in Hartmann’s car to the granary to pack their bags. Anne looked around her and tried to score into her memory as many details of the place as she could. The worn rug, the bed, the roughly constructed terrace, the apple tree at the foot of the garden – all now seemed fixed in her mind with immutable precision; but she knew how details could gradually be lost from such pictures until even the outlines became faint.

The convoy of cars rumbled down from Merlaut and out on to the road. Back at the farm there were farewells to be said and Anne was made to promise that she would return. Isabelle shook hands, and Anne thanked her for what she said was the best weekend imaginable, wishing there was a way of indicating that for once there was sincerity in the polite phrases which were all she could muster. Hartmann managed to disentangle himself from the other guests, and at last they were on their way, the car creeping over the stony drive until they met the road.

They talked about the weekend and what they had thought about the other guests.

‘I don’t think I’m made for life in the country,’ said Hartmann. ‘My shooting was terrible, and these comfortable shoes – they’re agonising. I’d rather wear the ones I wore in Paris.’

After they had been driving for about two hours the wheels abruptly stopped turning. The engine made a loud clanking sound and there came a smell of burning metal. Hartmann steered the car to the edge of the road and stopped.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea. We’ll have to find a garage.’

‘But we’re miles from anywhere.’ Anne failed to sound disappointed.

‘Yes, I was aware of that, Anne. Why are you laughing?’

‘I wasn’t.’

‘It looked like it to me. Look, there you go.’

‘Well, so are you.’

‘No, I’m not. We might be here for days.’

Three hours later they had arranged with a local farmer to have the car towed to a garage. The proprietor said it was a difficult job and it wouldn’t be ready until eleven o’clock the following day. With some difficulty they persuaded him to drive them to the nearest town, an isolated place with a solitary hotel.

The manager was able to offer them a room, the last for fifty kilometres or more, he assured them.

‘Aren’t you expected back at work tomorrow?’ said Hartmann. ‘We could get a taxi and try to get you back by train.’

‘No, I’ve got the week off. The Patron said I could have a whole week.’

‘All right,’ Hartmann told the hotelier. ‘I’ll have to telephone Christine,’ he said to Anne. And tell her I’m still in Paris, he thought to himself.

Anne had now become almost hysterical with pleasure at the thought of the hours stolen back from nowhere. She began to giggle as she helped Hartmann with the luggage.

‘Will you be wanting dinner, monsieur?’ said the hotelier.

‘Yes, please. And my cousin would like to take a bath.’

‘Your cousin, monsieur?’

‘Yes, the young lady I’m with.’

‘Oh, I see, monsieur. Your cousin. Well, I’ll show you where it is.’ He scratched vigorously at his moustache as he preceded Hartmann up the squeaking staircase.

It was nearly eight o’clock, and Hartmann went for a stroll while Anne was changing. Over dinner he told her more about his past life. He chose his words with care, so that he should give an honest account of what it had been like. He never seemed satisfied until he had selected the correct combination of words, and would sometimes go back and verbally cross out what he had said before, until he was sure he had conveyed exactly what he meant. Then he looked satisfied, as if he expected that Anne would herself now register the experience precisely as he himself had done. As he spoke she watched and reflected how much his trust in her was growing, and how kind his face looked when animated. She was surprised by how little her declaration of love for him the night before, and what had followed, seemed to embarrass her, and she was encouraged by the way it seemed to have made no difference to the way he acted towards her.

After dinner he ordered brandy and they sat in the walled garden at the back of the hotel where it was still warm. No one else was in the garden, though they could hear the sound of voices from the restaurant. As their own conversation began again, Anne felt she would inevitably tell him what she had dreaded. Probably there were still good reasons not to do so, but she had always trusted more to instinct than to reason. Neither the time nor the place was perfect, but nor would they ever be. Then, once she had decided and could sense the anticipation in her stomach, the conversation would not come round to a point from which she felt she could properly begin. Hartmann’s delicacy was such that he avoided areas where, for once, she wished he would intrude.

It took her in the end some abrupt changes of course.

‘My life in Paris seems to have been very different from yours,’ she said. ‘I think I missed the glamorous times of the twenties.’

‘I’m not sure they were as glamorous as people always tell you. I remember collapsing governments and fear about the franc as much as nightclubs and artists’ exhibitions.’

‘We lived too far from the centre of Paris to know about all the attractions and the nightlife. Though we used to read about it in the newspapers of course.’

Hartmann nodded.

‘I lived with M. Louvet, my father,’ said Anne.

‘I’ve heard you mention him.’ He smiled. ‘It’s very formal of you to refer to him in that way, your own father.’

‘He isn’t my father.’ Anne leaned forward slightly in her chair. ‘My father’s dead. He was killed in the war.’

‘I’m sorry. So many men . . .’

‘It wasn’t like that. He killed a man. And then he was shot for it.’

Anne’s voice had a cold quality, as if she were reciting words already written. Hartmann watched to see if she would go on. She clenched her hands a few times in her lap.

‘I may as well tell you.’

Hartmann said nothing but watched her face, which was impassive as she stretched her mind back into her childhood. She had been born, she told him, in the Cantal district at the southern tip of the Massif Central, in a house buried so deep in the countryside that no one would have known of its existence unless directed to it.

‘My father was a shopkeeper. In the years before the war, when there were plenty of people to work the land, he became a sort of wholesaler as well. He used to arrange transport for all the local cheeses, and other produce too. It went to Aurillac and Clermont, then on to Paris. My first memory of him is when he came back on leave from the war. He had been fighting on the Marne and had done well. He had a citation for bravery. He used to play with me in the fields and tell me stories – you know, all the things a father does. It was terrible when he went back. I was far too young to know what it was all about, just that it was something awful he was going back to.

‘I used to sleep in bed with my mother at night and we would say our prayers together. She wanted to have brothers and sisters for me, but she said we would have to wait until after the war. She told me we were sure to win soon and then it would all be over.

‘My father used to write to us quite often and we were thrilled by his letters. So many people in the village had had bad news already. There was a woman called Mme Hubert, a widow, who had lost both her sons in the first year. My mother said I must be nice to her, but I hated her. I don’t know why. She became a “godmother” to two young soldiers – you know how women used to adopt young men like that. She was always writing to them and telling us how brave they were.

‘Then my father was wounded and he came back on leave. He was at home for three or four months. I think it must have been in 1916. As he got better he would tell me stories again, but never about the war – just fairy tales and funny stories. My mother was very happy to have him home and she hoped his wound would take a long time to get better. He took me all around the fields and hills where we lived. I was only a tiny girl and I couldn’t walk far, so he carried me on his back. He said I would easily fit into his knapsack and if I was lucky he’d drop me inside and take me back to war with him.

‘Mme Hubert, she said if he was fit enough to play with me he should be fighting. She said both her soldiers, her godsons, had been wounded but hadn’t left the front. I think she was jealous of my mother because my father was still alive and she had lost everyone. Anyway, he went to the military doctor at Clermont and they said he was fit to go back. His regiment was at Verdun.

‘We didn’t know much about it. He never talked about the fighting to us, or certainly not to me. I think he just wanted to talk about the things any father would, not about war and death. In the village, people had heard of Verdun and they said it was a glorious fight.

‘My father kept on writing. He didn’t say much about what he was doing. He just talked about my mother and me. He said he was the luckiest man at Verdun, with his two pretty girls to come home to . . . There were three friends, him and Uncle Bernard, who came from our village, and another man whose name I can’t remember. This other man was killed and my father was very sad about that. I think they’d kept each other going, the three of them, since the beginning. Also he said he couldn’t sleep for the noise. At one time he said they hadn’t slept for twelve days. Mostly he just talked about what he wanted to do when the war was over, and of the fun we’d have together. He worried about our safety. He’d brought in his old shotgun from the barn and showed my mother how to use it in case we ever had intruders. In fact it was a very peaceful place, but it was funny that he was worried about us when you think what he was doing.

‘He was at Verdun until the end. He said most of the army had been there at one time or another. When he came home again on leave – it was in winter, I think it was January – he had changed. He still looked handsome, with his big moustache and his brown eyes, but something had happened to him. I used to hear him talking in his sleep. But that wasn’t it. It was as if some light had gone out in him. When he looked at me his eyes were blank. Even as a small child I could see this. He still took me on his knee and he still carried me over the fields. Once he took me on his back all morning and we sat by a stream and he took out some bread and cheese and we ate it by the water. Then he squeezed me and he said, “I love you so much I can’t bear it,” and then he cried.

‘That night he told my mother and me a little bit about the war. We had a small black dog, it was something my parents had been given by a local farmer when they married. My father said it was just like the black spaniel that belonged to the commanding officer in one of the famous forts at Verdun – I can’t remember what it was called. They held out there for days. So my father said we were to be very proud of the dog. He wasn’t really a spaniel, he was a farm dog, but we didn’t mind. We pretended to give him the Légion d’Honneur, and my father laughed then, for the first time really since he’d been back.

‘My mother by this time was working in a factory. She still believed we’d win the war and my father would come back safely. I think there was this feeling then in our village. Everyone thought it was a matter of honour. But I could see her look at him in the evenings, when he was sitting by the fire, and even I could see how worried she was. Perhaps other people could sense a change in him. I remember Mme Hubert saying to my mother that she hoped he wasn’t going to be a waverer. She said “her” boys would carry on whatever the cost. “Whatever it costs, Madame, whatever it costs,” she was always saying.

‘The last night before my father went back he gave me a bracelet he had made from part of a shell. He had done a lot of carvings on bits of metal and he had made a ring for my mother. He hugged us both in the kitchen and called us his two little girls. He told us to look after one another. My mother held on to him and cried, so he couldn’t pull himself away. I watched him at last walking up the road. He didn’t turn round or wave, he just walked away.

‘The weather went very, very cold. Do you remember? We had a letter from my father saying there was a new man in charge of the army and they were hoping for a quick victory. And then we heard nothing. All through the spring it went quiet. The papers said our army had been defeated somewhere. Still we heard nothing from my father. My mother said we were certain to hear if something was wrong. Eventually there was a letter from Uncle Bernard saying my father had been wounded in April and couldn’t write, but that he was fine and sent his love.

‘We never heard again. All through that year and the next the only word we got was from Uncle Bernard who never referred to him by name, but just said something about the other fellow, you know the one I mean, he’s doing all right too. My mother said it was something to do with censors. But she was worried out of her mind. If he was so badly hurt, why didn’t he come home?

‘By now I was just about old enough to go for walks by myself, and I went over the fields to the places I had been with him and I prayed to God he would be all right. I used to play a game of pretending I was in his knapsack and then I’d jump out and surprise him and Uncle Bernard. I was quite happy in a way. I was convinced he’d be all right because he seemed so powerful to me. I couldn’t imagine him letting anything go wrong. I knew men did die in this war, but at that age I’d no idea what it was like and I was sure he wouldn’t let it happen to him.

‘My mother, though – she was worn down by worry. Mme Hubert had lost one of her “godsons” and now she wanted to know where my father was. She was always sniffing around our house, and although my mother told her everything was fine I think she could see from my mother’s face that something was wrong.

‘When the war ended we had a letter from Uncle Bernard saying my father had been affected by shell-shock and had gone off to live with a cousin in Switzerland until he was better. My mother convinced herself this was true. My father loved the mountains and it was obvious on his last leave that he had been affected by something. I was just heartbroken that he wouldn’t come back to us. Uncle Bernard was living in Paris now, and my father had asked him to keep in touch with us.

‘But another year passed, and then they put up the war memorial in the village, and they put my father’s name on it. The local people believed he was dead, even though they had had no official word of it. In my heart I never believed it. I was sure he was alive. I was sure he wouldn’t betray us.

‘One night when I was asleep upstairs there was a knock on the door. It was Uncle Bernard who had come all the way from Paris. We went and sat by the fire and he told us what had happened. He said my father had asked him never to tell us the truth, but to make up a story of how he had died in battle. Uncle Bernard said he couldn’t bring himself to tell us this, so he had invented the story about Switzerland. Uncle Bernard said he loved us and didn’t want to tell us anything that would upset us, but now he had to because there was going to be something in the papers.

‘After my father had left us that very cold winter they had to prepare for a big attack. But the men were exhausted, they couldn’t take any more. When the attack began they walked straight into the German guns. The Germans were just waiting for them. After Verdun, after all they had been through, some of the men thought they were being asked to do something impossible.

‘Uncle Bernard didn’t tell us everything that night, but he sent a letter to my mother in which he described exactly what happened. They were attacking somewhere called the Chemin des Dames. There was a restlessness among the men. One of the young officers had gone mad and my father and Uncle Bernard had pulled him out of a shell-hole where he had been screaming. Now the men wanted rest, but they couldn’t have it. They were being sent over the top straight into the guns. Uncle Bernard said if it had been at the start of the war it might have been all right, but after Verdun it was different. They were kept at the front two weeks longer than the officers promised. Finally they were sent back down the line. Sometimes they would go to quite nice billets in a town, a little way from the fighting, but this time they were in some place underground.

‘Here, behind the lines, they were allowed to sleep a little and mend their clothes. Perhaps my father did some more carving. Then after only two or three days this officer, a man who came from an important family near where we lived, came to tell them to go back up the line. The regiment that was supposed to go had mutinied and wouldn’t take its place. The men hated this officer and they refused to go. There was no plan, no plot. They just refused point blank, all of them. My father pleaded with the officer. He said the men needed a few days of quiet to get their strength back. He said they weren’t cowards, but they had been through more than any man should have to. He said they were prepared to defend but they refused to attack. This is what was happening everywhere. They weren’t cowards but they had had enough.

‘The officer was furious. He said he would make them all into water-carriers so they would get killed crawling around the trenches. The other men were urging my father on. There was a terrific argument and the officer took out his pistol. He said if the men didn’t pack their bags and start to move straight away, he would shoot them. My father said, “Go on, shoot me.” They stood face to face and the officer put his revolver in my father’s ear and told the men he would shoot if they didn’t pack up their kit. By this time some of the men were crying.

‘My father shouted at them not to move. Then he and the officer stood toe to toe shouting at each other. A sergeant came in and said he had carried out his orders and that the young officer my father and Uncle Bernard had pulled out of the shell-hole was to be tried for abandoning his position. Then there was a terrible screaming between my father and the officer, with the sergeant trying to intervene. My father tore the revolver out of the officer’s hand. Uncle Bernard said the noise of the commotion was so great that for the first time in a year you couldn’t hear the guns. All the men were shouting and stamping and my father put the revolver to the officer’s head and he shot him.

‘There was a long silence. Eventually the men began cheering and they wanted to congratulate my father, but he pushed them away and went to give himself up. A few days later, in the middle of the night, Uncle Bernard and the others were woken by a senior officer and told to fall in. Then they were marched at gun-point for half an hour till they came to a small copse. Uncle Bernard said he had a terrible feeling what was going to happen. A man with a blindfold was brought through the wood by a sergeant and told to stand against a tree. They knew it was my father. Uncle Bernard and his friends were told that if they didn’t shoot straight they would be shot themselves. The commanding officer gave the order and they all fired. They didn’t have a choice. They killed him.’

At this point Anne leaned forward in her chair and held her head in her hands. Hartmann reached out to touch her, but she pushed him away, smiling a little, determined to finish the story. Uncle Bernard told her that the extent of the mutinies had been kept very quiet so that morale would not be affected. Then after the war the newspapers had had a story about two young officers who had been shot without trial for cowardice at Verdun. It seemed that in fact they had acted sensibly and there was a public outcry.

‘According to Uncle Bernard the army had been looking for a way to get over that embarrassment for some time and the story of my father was a good way to do it. What he had done was not mutiny but murder, and the man he killed was apparently an inspired soldier, so he had damaged the national cause. This was the story the newspapers would tell, anyway. Uncle Bernard had come to warn us. He told us it might be better if we left the district.

‘My mother was too shocked to do anything. I just cried because he was dead. I felt no shame. That night I slept in my mother’s bed. She lay there trembling. She didn’t cry at all.

‘Uncle Bernard stayed with us for a bit while the story appeared in the papers. It was terrible. Even some of the big papers, the national ones, they printed some of the story because they said the crime was bad and the man he shot would have been a great officer. Also he came from a rich family. In our village and round about the papers had nothing else in them, it seemed. There were pictures of him, and the stories were full of lies. When we went out people would shout at us and throw stones. Mme Hubert was the worst. She met my mother in the shop and said, “I always knew he was a coward, but I never knew he was a murderer too.” And still the papers were full of stories. I don’t know where they found all the things they printed, but none of them were true. I just had to try to remember the father I’d known.

‘It was worse for my mother. You know the custom in some places of sending letters, anonymous letters. She was getting lots of these. Once she took me to one side, and even though I was small I could understand her. She said: “Your father was a good man. You must remember him as he was, remember the truth, and never, ever, believe the things other people will tell you. There are some things in life which are too great for someone to endure.”

‘I remembered those words. The next week a stonemason came and chipped my father’s name off the memorial to the dead in the village square. I watched my mother’s face. I will never forget it. When we got home people had put things – horrible things – through the door.

‘There were one or two people in the village who were nice to us. One man had been in the same place and he said he didn’t blame my father for what he’d done. He said the full story of the mutinies wasn’t half known yet. But most people took their lead from the papers, and Mme Hubert kept up her campaign against us.

‘Still my mother refused to leave. She said that would be giving in. Anyway, she didn’t want to leave the house she’d lived in with my father. But the letters didn’t stop. The trouble was, it was more than mutiny, it was murder. This was what people said, and I could see as the weeks went on that my mother was looking ill. She wouldn’t eat, and I could hear her crying at night.

‘One day she came back from work and she found that the little black dog, the one we had given the Légion d’Honneur to, was dead. A man from the farm said it must have eaten poison and my mother said she thought she knew who’d done it. I think this one small thing must have been too much for her. The next day, when I came back from school, I found a policeman at the door of the house. He took me to one side and told me that my mother had been found in a barn. She had taken my father’s shotgun and killed herself. I ran into the field behind the house and screamed. And then I ran and ran. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to see anyone again, ever. I wanted to die.’

Anne’s account became disjointed for a time. No one had wanted the responsibility of looking after her. Her mother’s sister had taken a strong line against Anne’s father, and Uncle Bernard proved untraceable. A local lawyer, who wound up the family affairs, discovered that Anne’s father had left quite a reasonable sum from his business and it was agreed that they should advertise for a guardian for the girl. After a while a certain M. Louvet applied and removed Anne to his house in Clermont Ferrand. She was sent to the local school, where she took Louvet’s name to hide from the shame the papers had brought on her family. What she felt on that first day at school, even she could no longer remember.

‘But what happened to this M. Louvet?’ said Hartmann.

‘I don’t know.’

‘But didn’t he help you? Wasn’t he your saviour?’

‘Oh yes, he was very kind for a time. But we moved from Clermont to another town nearby and the people started whispering. It was hateful, I can’t describe it. I . . . I won’t talk about this part.’

Anne looked down to where her hands were tightly clenched in her lap. She swallowed and smiled thinly.

‘When I was twelve the money ran out and I had to leave school anyway. We moved to another town where I was sent out to work, but the same thing happened. People began to talk, and the following year we decided to move to Paris. Louvet said we could lose ourselves there. We lived in an awful place near the meatyards in Vaugirard, then we moved to the other side of the city, to Saint Denis. Louvet was supposed to be a businessman, but he never seemed to have any work. I went to find jobs as a waitress, but it was disheartening because Louvet seemed to give up hope. His wife had left him years before and he was still disturbed by that. Although he was kind to me he used up all the money that my father had left and when I was sixteen I think he hoped I’d be like a wife to him – look after him as he got older.

‘But I didn’t want to stay in our little apartment. I wanted to be in the countryside again, where I’d come from. Paris was a terrible place to be. My wages actually grew less, not more. Do you remember the riots, a couple of years ago, when they tried to storm the Chamber? Louvet took part in them. He’d joined some league – one of these things you were talking about – something he said would make France great again. He got shot and trampled in the Tuileries gardens. I think he was drunk. He came back with his hand bleeding. It wasn’t very serious, and I put a dressing on it and he went to bed. That night he had a fever and he raved in his sleep. It was awful, the things he said. About me . . . He said he wanted . . . you know. And then he disappeared. I don’t know where he went, though he sent me a letter a week later saying he was emigrating. The letter came from Lyon. I’ve never heard from him again. I think perhaps he went to America. He sometimes talked about it.

‘Although I wasn’t sure I liked him very much, I missed him in a way. I was alone, then, in this place. I thought I had to do something for myself. Delphine, one of the girls I worked with, said there was a spare room where she lived. It was in a house near the railway leading from the Gare Montparnasse, but it was a nice room and I didn’t mind the noise. That’s when I got my gramophone, on my birthday. Delphine loved music too and we used to have dancing parties there. It was all right for a time, but I wanted to be out of Paris. I was desperate to see fields and open air. One day when I was walking past the station I picked up a newspaper on a bench. It was a country paper that someone coming into Montparnasse had left behind. I saw the small advertisement for the Hotel du Lion d’Or. I had nothing to lose by answering it. I had learned to write quite well before I left school. Perhaps that helped. Or perhaps it was the fact that I was prepared to accept low wages – anything to be out of Paris. Anyway, I packed my case and left.’

Hartmann looked at the wall of the small garden in silence and then looked back to Anne. Between the freckles there were small dry marks where the three or four tears, which were all she had allowed herself, had run. Her eyes were deep and shining in the darkness, alive with hope as she turned to him.

‘Monsieur?’

‘What?’

It was the Patron. ‘Monsieur, do you mind? It’s nearly two o’clock and we must have some sleep, my wife and I.’

‘Yes, of course. We hadn’t realised it was so late.’

Anne stood up, smiling towards Hartmann. She gathered herself quickly, picking up her handbag and her shawl from where they had lain on the chair beside her. There was something of a willed resolve in the brisk normality of her actions after the emotion of the experiences she had recounted; but there was also a new and unforced lightness about her, as though relief and growing hope had quickened the movements of her body.

Hartmann rose more slowly from his chair, looking down for a moment at the table where he pressed his hand flat. He stood aside to let Anne go into the hotel before him, moving his arm with gentle courtesy. When he looked into her face she saw that his eyes were filled with compassion.

Anne put her hand gently on his arm as she passed. As they climbed the stairs they heard the Patron lock the door behind them.