Read Online Casting Off by Elizabeth Jane Howard - Free Book Online

into the kitchen and tethered it in a corner, and while they were improvising a teat out of a piece of chamois leather, they heard a car door slam and men’s voices. There was no time for him to get to the concealed cellar (which meant removing floorboards) or out to the loft in the barn. She had pointed to the stairs and he had gone up them just as there was a rapping on the door. He had not dared to mount the second stairway – a mere ladder – to the attics for fear of the noise it might make. Her bedroom door was open, but the large bedstead stood high from the floor with no bedclothes voluminous enough to conceal anyone lying under it. There was nothing to do but to stand behind the open door and hope to God that if they did search the house they would not look behind it. There was an element of murky farce about the whole thing, he felt, before he heard the sounds of their departure, but even then he waited, as Michèle had taught him to do, until she called him.
    She was standing in the open doorway of the kitchen, watching the dust settle on the cart track that led to the road. She walked to the sink and spat out the clove of garlic she had been chewing. He knew now that she always put garlic in her mouth when the Germans came. ‘They do not like,’ she had said the first time they had come. There had been three of them, an officer, his driver and another one whom she thought was SS – the only one who spoke any French. They had asked a lot of questions of the usual kind, who else lived at the farm? how did she manage, then, on her own? what did the farm produce? and so on. It had taken so much time, she said, because with Germans she always behaved stupidly. She did not understand what they said, and then she would give stupid answers. Then she turned on him and said it was his business to listen for people coming – she had enough to do. He (foolishly) said something about the car engine being quieter, and then she really went for him. However they came they could kill us, she said, he could not be such a fool as not to understand that. Germans in cars could be more dangerous – officers, people who gave the orders. If he could not take the trouble to listen, he had the choice of spending all his time in the cellar where he would be utterly useless and nothing but trouble for her. For the rest of the day she neither spoke to nor looked at him, made loud noises with pans, set a bowl of soup on the table for him but did not eat herself, and muttered imprecations to the kid that he felt were meant for him. That was the blackest day since the morning he discovered that the destroyer had sailed without him. In the evening, when she called him down from his room, he saw a bottle of Calvados and two glasses on the table. She had washed herself and her hair was coiled neatly on top of her head (she had pulled it down when the Germans came so that it looked thoroughly unkempt). She asked if he would like a drink and he said, yes, very much. When it was poured and she had pushed the packet of Gauloises to him, having taken one herself, and he had lit them, he said that he had been thinking, and had decided that he should not stay. Where would he go? He should try to get a boat from Concarneau. He would not get a boat. It had been discovered that someone had left in that way and now all boats were checked by the Germans before leaving the harbour. He would not get a boat. There had been a short silence. Then he had said that boat or no boat, he ought to leave. Why? Because it simply was not fair on her . If he were not here she would be perfectly safe, would not have this constant anxiety. It was too much to ask of anyone, let alone a – he remembered floundering here – perfect stranger.
    She had stared at him for a moment with an expression he could not fathom. A stranger, she had repeated eventually. You have lived here for four months – with a stranger! No, he hadn’t meant that exactly. Just that he did not