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Authors: Elizabeth Jane Howard
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feel that he had the right to jeopardize her safety.
She ignored that; she supposed it was because he was English that he felt her to be such a stranger. The cold English, people had always said, but she had not known any English person until now. They were facing each other across the table. She pulled her black woollen shawl more closely to her and folded her arms. In any case, she said, if he did leave, he would not get far. His French was not good enough for him to pass as a Frenchman, he had no papers and also it was known that he had some association with her – or would be very fast if he was caught. He did not understand this, but when he questioned her, she said that, although nobody spoke of it, something was known. Also, there was a record about her after Jean-Paul had been killed. The Germans kept excellent records of such things. So! she finished. So! She shrugged and poured more Calvados. He felt both challenged and at a loss – uncomfortably powerless. It occurred to him then that although he was deeply beholden to her, he did not like her. There was a bitterness, a smouldering resentment about her that was alienating. My bloody ankle, he thought. If that hadn’t happened, I’d have been away from here, might be home by now. And then something strange, that afterwards he could not in any way account for, happened. For a second – he became her: at least his own feelings, responses, needs, anxieties dissolved to be replaced by hers. Alone, having nursed her parents to their deaths, her man taken brutally from her and with him her future of marriage and children gone by a murder where justice had no power, she had been left to do a man’s as well as a woman’s job in this remote place. Lone women were raped by the enemy: it was common knowledge. Every single time they came, that possibility – likelihood – was there. Today she had been through the fear of that. She had got Pipette away, she had harboured himself: in neither case was there the smallest advantage to her. Her outburst about it being his business to listen for vehicles approaching the farm was perfectly reasonable. He had grown careless, and then to say that he must go, and call her a perfect stranger was both chilling and offensive.
‘I’m sorry I called you a stranger. I’m sorry you find that my French is so bad. I’m sorry I suggested going without thinking of the consequences for you—’
He had taken her hand and she now put it over his mouth. ‘Enough! You have said enough,’ she said. She was smiling – he could not remember seeing her smile before and her dark eyes had an expression that was both cynical and tender. They had become different people.
That night after supper – a stew of rabbit cooked with apple and onions – after they had bolted the doors and fed the kid they had gone upstairs and when they reached the door of her room she took his hand and drew him in. He had put his arms round her and kissed her small red mouth. ‘Much garlic,’ she had said and he had answered that he was not a bloody German, just a cold English. She had smiled again. ‘I will warm you,’ she said.
For months he had seen her in her voluminous black skirt – often with an apron added to it, her heavy fisherman’s jersey, her thick cotton blouses, her shawl – naked, she took his breath away. High, separated breasts, an unexpectedly slender waist, below which there was the generous curve of her hips, her limbs muscular and rounded, wrists and ankles delicately articulate – the revelation was a marvellous shock.
Even now, in the dusty train, he could feel his body responding to the memory of that initial sight of her.
After that first night they were no longer Monsieur and Madame , no longer addressed each other as vous , although it was some months before either recognized what was happening to them.
Here he had to stop – some way beyond that was the beginning of pain, the knowledge that there could not be a future with
She ignored that; she supposed it was because he was English that he felt her to be such a stranger. The cold English, people had always said, but she had not known any English person until now. They were facing each other across the table. She pulled her black woollen shawl more closely to her and folded her arms. In any case, she said, if he did leave, he would not get far. His French was not good enough for him to pass as a Frenchman, he had no papers and also it was known that he had some association with her – or would be very fast if he was caught. He did not understand this, but when he questioned her, she said that, although nobody spoke of it, something was known. Also, there was a record about her after Jean-Paul had been killed. The Germans kept excellent records of such things. So! she finished. So! She shrugged and poured more Calvados. He felt both challenged and at a loss – uncomfortably powerless. It occurred to him then that although he was deeply beholden to her, he did not like her. There was a bitterness, a smouldering resentment about her that was alienating. My bloody ankle, he thought. If that hadn’t happened, I’d have been away from here, might be home by now. And then something strange, that afterwards he could not in any way account for, happened. For a second – he became her: at least his own feelings, responses, needs, anxieties dissolved to be replaced by hers. Alone, having nursed her parents to their deaths, her man taken brutally from her and with him her future of marriage and children gone by a murder where justice had no power, she had been left to do a man’s as well as a woman’s job in this remote place. Lone women were raped by the enemy: it was common knowledge. Every single time they came, that possibility – likelihood – was there. Today she had been through the fear of that. She had got Pipette away, she had harboured himself: in neither case was there the smallest advantage to her. Her outburst about it being his business to listen for vehicles approaching the farm was perfectly reasonable. He had grown careless, and then to say that he must go, and call her a perfect stranger was both chilling and offensive.
‘I’m sorry I called you a stranger. I’m sorry you find that my French is so bad. I’m sorry I suggested going without thinking of the consequences for you—’
He had taken her hand and she now put it over his mouth. ‘Enough! You have said enough,’ she said. She was smiling – he could not remember seeing her smile before and her dark eyes had an expression that was both cynical and tender. They had become different people.
That night after supper – a stew of rabbit cooked with apple and onions – after they had bolted the doors and fed the kid they had gone upstairs and when they reached the door of her room she took his hand and drew him in. He had put his arms round her and kissed her small red mouth. ‘Much garlic,’ she had said and he had answered that he was not a bloody German, just a cold English. She had smiled again. ‘I will warm you,’ she said.
For months he had seen her in her voluminous black skirt – often with an apron added to it, her heavy fisherman’s jersey, her thick cotton blouses, her shawl – naked, she took his breath away. High, separated breasts, an unexpectedly slender waist, below which there was the generous curve of her hips, her limbs muscular and rounded, wrists and ankles delicately articulate – the revelation was a marvellous shock.
Even now, in the dusty train, he could feel his body responding to the memory of that initial sight of her.
After that first night they were no longer Monsieur and Madame , no longer addressed each other as vous , although it was some months before either recognized what was happening to them.
Here he had to stop – some way beyond that was the beginning of pain, the knowledge that there could not be a future with
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