CHAPTER 9

THE CORPORAL WAS OUT OF BREATH. ‘A HARD climb for an old man,’ he said. ‘You bring the pigs too?’

‘We fatten them up on the whey,’ said Papa. ‘Waste not, want not.’

‘Of course,’ said the Corporal and he looked about him. ‘Mountains,’ he said. ‘The transhumance. It must be the same the world over I expect; but back at home we have only the cows and horses. The horses, they are like yours except they have flaxen manes and tails – Haflingers we call them. But just like you do we take them all up to the high pastures in the summer; except of course we do not all go together.’

Papa was quick to explain – too quick, Jo thought. ‘The shepherds will part them up this evening,’ he said, ‘and they’ll take them off to their own mountainside. Every shepherd has his own mountainside.’

The Corporal nodded. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course. Back at home,’ he went on and he was looking straight at the hut as he spoke, ‘back at home it is just the men who drive the animals, and their dogs of course. No women, no children. You must have almost the whole village up here.’

Hubert came running across to the Corporal and looked at him through his binoculars from a metre away. The Corporal smiled and winked into the binoculars. ‘Hello Hubert,’ he said, but Jo could see he was still interested in the hut. ‘And you pass the whole summer alone up here?’

Papa leaned back against the door of the hut. ‘That’s right,’ he said.

‘Do you mind if we fill our water bottles?’ the Corporal asked.

‘Go ahead,’ said Papa.

‘Hans,’ said the Corporal, holding out his water bottle and pointing to the spring. He turned back to Papa. ‘So you have to do all the work yourself, the milking, the shepherding, the cheesemaking.’

‘Everything,’ said Papa watching the soldier as he crouched beside the spring. ‘I take the donkey down to the village once a week with the cheeses, pick up supplies and I’m back here in time to milk them in the evening.’

A shutter squeaked and banged open in the wind. The soldier at the spring looked up once and then looked again, his eyes squinting. He screwed the top on the water bottle and stood up, his eyes still on the shutter that swung back and forth now on its hinges. He began to walk towards it. No one moved a muscle.

‘That must be hard work,’ said the Corporal, but Papa was not listening. His face was frozen. Jo could feel the queen in his pocket and squeezed it until his eyes watered. He looked up at the Corporal and their eyes met. In that moment the Corporal knew and understood. Jo was sure of it.

‘Hans,’ the Corporal shouted. Hans hesitated looking from the window to the Corporal and back again. ‘Hans,’ said the Corporal, more quietly this time. ‘Kommen sie zurück. Nichts da.’ The soldier shrugged his shoulders and came back. The Corporal turned to Papa. ‘You should get that mended,’ he said. ‘If you do not, it will blow off in the first storm.’ And then he spoke to everyone. ‘Lieutenant Weissmann has sent me out to escort you all back,’ he said. ‘We shall need to start down now I think. I am sure you know that you must be back inside your homes before curfew.’

No one needed to be asked twice. Families gathered together briefly to say goodbye to their men and then they followed the soldiers past the piggery and the donkey shelter and made their way down towards the tree line. The last Jo saw of Papa he was standing at the door of the hut, the other shepherds around him. Jo lifted his hand to wave and then a rock was between them and he could see them no more.

With Christine on his shoulders Hubert walked beside Jo all the way down the mountain. Hardly anyone spoke. The soldiers walked on ahead of them, stopping every now and then to let them catch up. Once at the river everyone stopped to rest and Jo looked around for the Corporal. He was sitting on his own, his back to everyone, tugging at the grass beside him. Hubert went to sit beside him and showed him how he could make rude noises by blowing the grass through his thumbs. The Corporal seemed preoccupied and disinterested; and after a few moments Hubert got up and moved away to blow on his grass alone. Jo wanted to go right up to the Corporal there and then to thank him. He wanted to tell everyone what the Corporal had done. If only they knew what he knew they would be carrying him shoulder high into the village. As it was, when they got back home they all vanished into their houses bursting with the news of their success. Jo could hear it now, the same story in every house, about how the children would be over the border tonight and away, and about how they’d had a bit of luck up by the hut, but that otherwise it had all gone according to plan. And sure enough that was precisely the story Grandpère told Maman as soon as they got in.

‘One look through that window,’ said Grandpère, ‘and that would’ve been that. Makes me sick just to think about it. If the Corporal hadn’t picked that moment to call the soldier away then God only knows what would have happened.’

‘Perhaps it was the prayer Benjamin said this morning,’ said Maman.

‘Maybe,’ said Grandpère. Jo thought then of speaking up. He had to force himself not to. What the Corporal had done he’d done for him. It was personal and it was private and he could tell no one, not ever.

The village always seemed an empty echoing place that first morning after the transhumance, and sad too; but the mood when Jo reached school that morning was jubilant. Everyone had been told time and again never to talk about the escape, never ever to mention it; but they still gathered in conspiratorial huddles and relived their exploits. Jo was uneasy though, and he had good cause. From dawn they’d been expecting word that the children had crossed safely over into Spain. It had all been arranged. The Widow Horcada was going to let them know just as soon as Benjamin got back. But there had been no word. ‘No news is good news,’ Grandpère kept saying – rather too often Jo thought.

All through first lesson that morning Jo looked out of the window and tried to convince himself that nothing could have gone wrong. After all, what could go wrong between the hut and the border? ‘So close you could spit into Spain,’ that’s what Grandpère always said. Jo squeezed the queen in his pocket and closed his eyes for a moment. He tried to pray but he couldn’t. He tried to obliterate his worst fears, but he could not. The night had been pitch black and perfect. Papa was there to guide them over. They couldn’t have got lost. They’d go the silent way, walking on the grass not across the scree. There’d be someone waiting for them on the other side to take the children on into Spain. Benjamin and Papa would be back in the hut by midnight at the latest – Papa had said as much. They were going to rest for an hour or two before the descent, and Papa was going to bring Benjamin down as far as the river and let him go on back to Widow Horcada’s house alone. Nothing could have gone wrong. No news was good news. Please God.

‘Jo?’ Monsieur Audap was coming towards his desk. ‘I don’t think you’ve been entirely with us this morning, Jo. If you’ve seen the view out of that window once you’ve seen it a thousand times. Now, whilst I appreciate you are not a natural mathematician . ’ The door burst open and Hubert was standing there, his mouth open, straining to make intelligible words out of his grunting. He was beckoning frantically. ‘Stay where you are all of you,’ said Monsieur Audap. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’ But Jo was out of the door even before he was. Hubert took his arm and ran with him down towards the Square. By the time they reached it Jo expected to find it full of the cave children, but it was empty. There were heads at every window and people standing in the street craning to look. Jo was about to run on but a hand held him back firmly. Monsieur Audap was at his side and the school children had filled the street behind him. Madame Soulet came out of her shop wiping her hands on her apron and Jo saw her look up the street and then rush back inside and shut the door. The next moment her face appeared pale in the window, and now Jo could see what she had seen.

There was a soldier in front and one on either side, and there was someone else between them but Jo still could not make out who it was. And then he knew who it was and his heart turned cold. It looked like one person at first, but it was two. Benjamin was carrying Léah, her arms around his neck, her head buried in his shoulder. He stopped now and put her down. He crouched down and straightened her coat, talking to her all the while. Then he took her hand and they walked slowly into the Square, which was filling now with silent people. From behind Jo came the sound of running boots. Lieutenant Weissmann, the Corporal and a dozen soldiers pushed their way through the school children and into the Square. Soldiers fanned out all over the Square driving the crowd back. One of the soldiers saluted as Lieutenant Weissmann came up. Jo could understand nothing of what was being said but he heard one word repeated over and over again, ‘ Juden ’. The Lieutenant walked across to Benjamin and looked at him and then down at Léah. ‘You are Jews?’ he asked.

Benjamin smiled and nodded. ‘We are,’ he said. ‘May we sit down please? The little girl is very tired and so am I.’ The Corporal pulled out two chairs from outside the café and they sat down side by side still holding hands.

Lieutenant Weissmann looked around him. ‘Is Monsieur Sarthol here?’ he said. Monsieur Sarthol stepped out of the crowd. ‘Monsieur Sarthol,’ said the Lieutenant, ‘I must get these two down to the station at once. They’ll never get there on foot. My horse is lame, so I will need a horse, a donkey, whatever you can find.’

Monsieur Sarthol nodded. ‘You heard what the Lieutenant said,’ he said. ‘He needs a donkey or a horse.’ No one spoke. ‘For God’s sake, do you want them to have to walk?’

‘They can have mine,’ said Monsieur Audap, and then he turned to Jo. ‘Fetch her, Jo, will you?’ he said quietly. ‘You know where to find her saddle.’ Jo hesitated. ‘Fetch her,’ said Monsieur Audap, an edge to his voice.

Laurent went with him. ‘What happened?’ he said as they ran up the hill. ‘What went wrong?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Jo. ‘I don’t know.’ It was all he could do to hold back his tears.

They found Monsieur Audap’s mare and saddled her up together. Laurent held her mane as Jo slipped the bridle over her ears.

‘What’ll they do with them?’ said Laurent.

‘One of those camps,’ said Jo.

The crowd parted as they led the horse into the Square. Benjamin was talking urgently to Léah, smoothing her hair. They looked up and saw Jo coming towards them. Neither showed any flicker of recognition. Jo held the horse as Benjamin mounted from a chair. The Corporal handed Léah up to him and she sat clutching the mane, Benjamin’s arm around her.

‘You’ll be escorted to the train by the Corporal,’ said the Lieutenant.

‘And after that?’ said Benjamin.

‘That is not my concern,’ said the Lieutenant and he stepped aside.

A soldier took the reins from Jo. Jo looked up at Benjamin who held out his hand. ‘Dzi  kuj  ,’ he said. Jo took his hand. ‘Dzi  kuj  ,’ Benjamin said again. For a moment Léah’s eyes met Jo’s and held them.

The Lieutenant was frowning at him. ‘Do you know them?’ he said. Jo shook his head.

‘Of course not,’ said Benjamin. ‘We know no one here and no one knows us. The boy brought me a horse and I simply said thank you. Is it not permitted for a Jew even to say thank you?’

Jo watched them being led away, the horse’s hooves slipping on the cobbles as she was led across the Square, down the hill and out of sight. Monsieur Audap tried to gather the children together and take them back to school; but many, like Jo, drifted away homewards. As he walked home through the empty streets he gleaned from the squeeze of Benjamin’s hand, from the single word Benjamin had been able to say to him, all that he had wanted to say and was not able to say without betraying him.

The news had reached home before him. Papa was sitting hunched over the table, head in his hands. He looked up as Jo came in, his eyes full of tears. ‘You mustn’t go blaming yourself,’ said Maman. She prised his hands away from his face and kissed them. ‘We all did what we could, everyone did.’

‘Did we?’ said Grandpère fiercely. ‘I was in the Square just now. There were over a hundred of us and just twenty-two of them – and we just stood and watched them take them away.’ He looked away to hide his face.

‘What happened, Papa?’ said Jo. ‘The children, did they get away?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Papa, ‘we got them away just like we planned. Like clockwork it was. We were up at the border before midnight. Only one thing went wrong. The little girl.’

‘Léah,’ said Grandpère.

‘She wouldn’t leave him,’ Papa went on. ‘I tell you, Jo, I’ve never seen anything like it. The strength of the girl. There wasn’t much of her but she clung to Benjamin like she would drown if she let go. So we had to bring her back with us to the hut – there was nothing else we could do. Even then we weren’t too unhappy. We had a glass together in the hut, Benjamin and me, to celebrate it was, before we came down. The little girl was tired of course, so I sat her on the donkey and we set off.’ He drank down his glass and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘But then it happened. I thought it was a boar. There was a sort of snorting, growling. You couldn’t see anything, not at first. It’s funny though, Benjamin seemed to know at once what it was, almost like he was expecting it. He shouted some sort of warning to the little girl. I don’t know what he said, but I understood soon enough when that bear came lumbering out of the trees. He came right at us. Benjamin stood his ground and faced him, but the donkey took off, the little girl screaming loud enough to wake the dead. I was running like the donkey was. You don’t stand and fight a bear; but when I turned round I saw Benjamin throwing stones at it and shouting at it and the bear was backing away. I couldn’t believe it and then I remembered all about that bear cub you told me about, the one that Benjamin brought up, and I put two and two together; so I started throwing stones at him too. He was up on his hind legs and waving his paws like he was boxing and we were hitting him again and again and still he came on. Then it seemed like he’d had enough of it and he went down on all fours and just walked off. All the time we could hear the little girl crying and screaming somewhere behind us and the donkey braying down in the valley. I went after the donkey, Benjamin went after the little girl.’ Papa shook his head. ‘I should never have left him. I should never have left him. I was gone a few minutes. Took me a bit of time to calm the donkey down. I was leading him back up through the trees towards them. The little girl, she was still crying like she would never stop and he was trying to comfort her. Then suddenly there were torchlights and shouting and there were soldiers everywhere. And what did I do? I crouched there in the darkness like a frightened rabbit, that’s what I did. And I stayed there until I was sure they had gone. What does that make me, eh? You’ve a coward for a father, Jo.’

Jo put out his hand to touch Papa’s shoulder. ‘He said “thank you”,’ said Jo. ‘Benjamin, he said to thank you.’ Papa looked away.

‘Someone’s got to go up there and tell Alice,’ said Grandpère, ‘and I don’t know if I can, not on my own.’

‘I’ll come,’ Maman said, standing up and wrapping her shawl about her. ‘Jo, you can stay here and look after your sister.’ She put her arms around Papa’s neck and kissed him on the top of the head. ‘You’d better get yourself back up the mountain, those sheep won’t milk themselves.’ She took Grandpère’s arm. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

In the days that followed the exodus of the cave children an unseasonal fog settled over the village and it matched perfectly the mood of the place. Yet even when it cleared and they began to cut the hay the village seemed incapable of lifting itself out of its gloom, and that in spite of the news of the war. It was all good. France was being liberated from the north and from the south too. The end of the occupation could not be far off now, but few in Lescun could rejoice in it.

No one spoke to the German soldiers any more. When people saw them coming they turned their backs and walked away. The soldiers scarcely ever ventured into the café and if they did they were met with a hostile silence that soon drove them out. There was no more nostalgic talk of old battles, no more sweets for the children.

Jo did all he could to avoid the Corporal, not because he blamed him for what had happened to Benjamin or Léah – he knew that was none of the Corporal’s doing – but because he had come at last to see him as a man in the uniform of the enemy, a good and kindly man Jo had no doubt of that, but nonetheless an enemy too. It was a confusion he did not wish to confront. Their eyes met several times across the street but they never spoke, not until the evening Jo ran into the church porch to escape a torrential downpour, his jacket over his head. When he pulled it off he saw the Corporal standing beside him in the shadows.

‘Hello Jo,’ he said. Jo made to move away. ‘No one can see us, Jo.’ The Corporal took off his cap and shook it. ‘Hubert gave me back the binoculars.’

‘I know,’ Jo said.

‘But the little cup he made, I shall keep it. I shall take it home when this is over, and it will not be long now I think. It will remind me of this place, of him, of you.’

‘They were taken to one of those camps, weren’t they?’ said Jo. The Corporal said nothing.

‘But why?’ said Jo. ‘What for? What did they do?’

The Corporal took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘I have no answers, Jo,’ he said. ‘I know no answers, no reasons. I have thought much of that man and the little girl, and still I do not understand.’

‘He was a friend of mine,’ said Jo fiercely. ‘They both were. He was hiding up in the mountains, and do you know why? He was waiting for his daughter to come so they could escape together into Spain. He wouldn’t leave without her.’

‘The little girl, she was his daughter?’

‘That was Léah,’ said Jo. ‘His daughter’s called Anya. He was so sure she would come, but she never did.’ The Corporal put on his cap and made to move away. ‘That day up at the hut,’ Jo went on. ‘You knew, didn’t you?’

The Corporal nodded. ‘I thought there was someone inside,’ he said, ‘someone or maybe something you did not want me to see.’

‘There was,’ said Jo. ‘There were twelve Jewish children, and they escaped. All except Léah, they escaped.’ And he did not try to disguise the triumph in his voice.

‘Well, well,’ said the Corporal. ‘I suppose that’s something. Auf Wiedersehen Jo.’ And pulling up the collar of his coat he walked out into the rain.

They were carting in the hay a few days later when Jo thought he heard the sound of distant thunder. Maman brought the horse to a halt and Grandpère held up his hand. It wasn’t thunder, it was drumming. It was Hubert drumming. Christine screamed at being left behind but Jo ran on ahead anyway. As he ran down through the streets he was aware there were others running with him, all around him now; and the drumming echoed off the walls of the houses so that it seemed as if Hubert must be beating a dozen drums. In the Square they were all hugging each other and crying. ‘They’ve gone!’ Jo heard. ‘The Germans have gone!’

The bells were ringing and Monsieur Sarthol was leaning out of the window of the Mairie and fumbling with a faded tricolour that would not run out on its pole, but when it did it was greeted with such a din of clapping and cheering that Jo couldn’t hear what Laurent was shouting in his ear, not at first. ‘Hubert!’ he shouted. ‘Look at Hubert!’ Outside the café they were drinking straight from the bottles, arms around each other and dancing; and Hubert was standing by his drum and drinking wine as if it were water. He finished the bottle and raised his hands in the air, laughing till the tears ran down his face. When Jo saw him next he was dancing around the Square with Christine, it was a wild gallop more than a dance but Christine was loving it.

Monsieur Sarthol stood on the war memorial and tried to make a speech but no one would listen so he gave up and sang the Marseillaise instead, bottle in hand. By the end of it everyone was linking arms and singing with him. Then Father Lasalle was running in amongst them. ‘Quick!’ he shouted, tugging Monsieur Sarthol by the arm. ‘Quick! It’s Hubert, he’s in the churchyard. I think he’s gone mad. He’s trying to push away one of the tombstones.’ And Jo knew at once which tombstone.

He was there before anyone. The tombstone was ajar and Hubert was nowhere to be seen. He didn’t need to look in to see if Grandpère’s rifle was still there. It would be gone, he knew it. From the graveyard wall he could see Hubert springing down the hillside, the rifle held above his head; and on the winding track below the village the grey column of German soldiers led by Lieutenant Weissmann on his horse. ‘Don’t Hubert! Don’t!’ he called, and he saw Lieutenant Weissmann swivel in his saddle and look upwards. ‘Don’t shoot!’ Jo cried. ‘Don’t shoot!’ Hubert had stopped. He was aiming the rifle at the soldiers. Jo vaulted the wall and ran screaming down the hill waving his hands. He leapt the ditch and blundered through the hedges and all the while he called out, ‘Hubert! Hubert! Don’t! Don’t!’

He never saw the shooting, he tripped over a root and was picking himself up when he heard it. There were just two shots. He looked where Hubert had been and could not see him.

Lieutenant Weissmann was running up the hill towards him, a pistol in his hand. Jo found Hubert lying on his back in the long grass, the rifle still grasped in his hand. His eyes were looking at the sun but not seeing. Jo looked at the blood on the grass by his shoe and thought of the bear lying stretched out on the chairs in the Square all those years before. The blood of a man was the same red as the blood of a bear. A shadow came over him and he looked up. Lieutenant Weissmann was looking down at him. He crouched down beside Hubert and felt his neck. ‘A pity,’ he said and he stood up. ‘I am sorry, very sorry.’

‘He didn’t mean it,’ said Jo as the Lieutenant walked away; and then he was shouting after him. ‘He didn’t mean it! He didn’t mean it . ’

A few months later the war was over. The men from the prisoner-of-war camps came home, or most of them did. Everyone waited for some word of Benjamin and Léah, but there was no word; instead came the first dreadful rumours, rumours that there were some camps – concentration camps – where Jews and others had been systematically murdered. Even when there were pictures in the newspapers and reports on the wireless Widow Horcada refused to believe it. Jo clung to Benjamin’s own maxim: ‘Wait and pray,’ he had said ‘Wait and pray’; but often alone in the cold church he would cry into his hands, for he somehow knew that his prayers were too late.

Meanwhile Monsieur Audap had been making enquiries. It seemed that Benjamin and Léah had been taken first to Gurs concentration camp about thirty kilometres away. From there they had been sent on to Auschwitz. Auschwitz was a death camp, he said. There were only a few survivors, and Benjamin and Léah were not amongst them. Like millions of Jews they would not be coming home.

Grandpère broke the news to Widow Horcada and was a constant source of comfort through her dark and grieving days. It was to no one’s great surprise when the two of them got married just before the winter snows set in. Grandpère moved out of the house ‘to start all over again’ as he put it, up at Widow Horcada’s farm. He took the pigs with him and that pleased Papa who could never take to them.

Jo left school the next Summer and became a full-time shepherd. With only Rouf for company he took the sheep up to the mountains and lived in the hut as Papa and Grandpère had done before him. Rouf was all the company he needed or sought. He buried himself in his work – it was the only way to forget the gnawing pain inside him. But at nights asleep in his hut the faces of Hubert, Benjamin and Léah haunted his dreams.

One Sunday afternoon, with the cheesemaking done, Jo was resting on his bed with Rouf beside him. It was the dog who heard the voices first and lifted his head. Then Jo heard Papa coughing and Christine prattling on. They often came up on a Sunday for a picnic. Jo had to steel himself to be sociable. Papa would question him endlessly about the sheep and Christine would want her ride on the donkey. He was surprised though when he heard Widow Horcada’s voice too. He swung his legs off the bed as Grandpère put his head round the door.

‘Not disturbing you are we?’ he said.

Jo blinked in the bright sunlight and held his hand over his eyes so that he could see better. They were all there. Papa was helping Widow Horcada down from her horse and Maman had the picnic basket on her arm. Rouf was greeting Christine in his usual boisterous way, paws on her shoulders. She staggered back and sat down hard, Rouf on top of her. She laughed and everyone laughed.

‘Well, Jo,’ said Widow Horcada shaking out her skirts. ‘Have you lost your tongue? Don’t you know how to say hello to strangers?’

‘Strangers?’ said Jo.

And then he saw the girl. She was walking towards him. She had red hair that she pushed back out of her eyes and tucked behind her ears.

‘I’m Anya,’ she said.