A Good Death Read online

  A Good Death

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Part Two

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Part Three

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Part Four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Epilogue

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Copyright

  A Good Death

  Elizabeth Ironside

  To Joan and John

  Prologue

  The invaders had left. The sun, barely above the horizon, striped the field where they had camped with long black shadows. Only a bleached light reached inside to reveal the disorder of life abruptly abandoned.

  In the early morning silence the children reoccupied the house. They walked through the open front door and found a leather suitcase standing upright in the hall, still waiting for its former owner to leave. They skirted the case and in unspoken agreement went straight up the stairs. Here were more signs of an interrupted life. In their old bedroom a sweat-stained shirt hung over the back of a chair beside the bed. The drawers of the chest between the windows were pulled out. The wardrobe door swung open revealing one black jacket, hanging hollow. Up here they touched nothing, simply sniffing the air for the scent of those who had gone. They looked at the bed, its pillows and covers dented by the shape of a body, of someone who had flung himself down on them for a moment’s rest. That mark of absence seemed to fill the house.

  Below, in the library, burned papers lay in the hearth and more lay beside the fireplace. A cigarette, half-smoked, had been ground out in an ashtray, buckling under the pressure. Beside it was the packet out of which it had been taken, nine cigarettes untouched. One of them reached out and took the cigarette butt, fitting her own lips to the faint red rim. This broke through their reluctance to touch things. As she spat out the smoked cigarette, she seized the packet and began to tear the contents to pieces so that a storm of tobacco fell to the ground. Next they found on the desk a pile of letters tied into a bundle. They picked them up and shook them onto the floor, tearing the paper as they did so. Writing paper, ink, a pen, all lay ready for the reply that would never be written. They unscrewed the inkpot and dribbled it carefully over the scattered papers. They now opened drawers and cupboards, frenziedly pulling the contents out and strewing them on the floor. After a while the fury that had affected them both abated and they paused, looking idly at certain objects, not searching for anything in particular. Odd things attracted their attention for a moment, soon to be abandoned in favour of something else.

  They found treasure in a cupboard: a flat brown paper parcel, still addressed to Major Udo Knecht. It had been unwrapped once, that was clear, then bundled back into its coverings, an unwanted present.

  They studied the writing, the unfamiliar gothic letters and German stamps, for a time before folding back the paper to discover a box with, on its lid, a picture of a knight in armour, riding on his charger, trampling a fallen enemy beneath its feet. They carried the box across the hall into the dining room and emptied the contents onto the table. Absorbed in what they had found, they ignored the overturned chair, the unstoppered brandy bottle, the pool of alcohol. Without speaking they sorted the wooden shapes, turning them the right way up, selecting those with straight edges, tentatively placing one against another to link them together.

  The sun had risen fully now and half the courtyard was out of shadow. If they had looked through the window, they would have seen the group of women gathered around the body of the man who lay naked, face down: the last one, who would never leave. But enthralled with what they had found they were oblivious to the cries and movement outside.

  They were still at work on the jigsaw when the police arrived.

  Part One

  Bonnemort

  7 September 1944

  Chapter One

  The car drove fast along the narrow lanes. The light was failing and the beam of the headlamps merged with the dusk, which still lacked the clarity of darkness. The driver gripped the wheel, leaning forward. Since their journey began they had met roadblocks and blown-up bridges, tank-trap trenches and shot-up trucks, the debris of war left deliberately or involuntarily on the road. The passenger beside him gave directions, never doubting his route.

  They did not talk. While the driver concentrated on the blurred road in the decaying light, the other gazed at the countryside with a passionate intensity of focus, devouring the scene with his eyes. For four years he had been starved of his homeland, and now he was back. He was filled with a joy composed of recognition, reunion and a triumphant sense of vindication. He had been right; he was returning victorious, resurrected. The opposite of the prodigal, he was the justified son.

  He had felt this ever since he landed in the country, three months ago. In the north, people had welcomed them, shouting and waving as they passed through the towns. Here, they had seen no one in the last few hours. The landscape was secretive, yet to him deeply familiar. It was hilly, gouged by valleys, covered with forest. The chestnut trees absorbed the evening light, breaking the horizontal rays of the sun into bewildering patterns. The car ran through tunnels of oaks whose branches closed out the sky, their meagre trunks wrapped in vivid moss. Then, suddenly, they would emerge into a high meadow and, just before the road plunged once again into the trees, they would glimpse a panorama of layered hills, the thick pelt of the forest cut away here and there on the uplands into clearings round a farmstead.

  About an hour later, night having fallen, they halted at their first roadblock. Rounding a corner, they were forced to an abrupt halt. The light from their headlamps struck two chestnut poles blocking the road which had been narrowed by a lorry parked on one side. Three figures stepped into the light. They wore berets, belts and armbands, but there all regularity of dress ceased. All were armed, two with Brens, the inefficient sub-machine gun air dropped by the thousand to the Resistance, the youngest with a Mauser rifle.

  The driver revved the engine and pulled the gearstick into reverse. The passenger took his pistol from its holster and laid it on the ledge in front of him.

  ‘Wait,’ he said. He did not attempt to get out of the car, but lowered his window so that they could make out his uniform. He had his papers ready to show them.

  ‘Cazalle, Colonel, on a mission from General de Gaulle to the Regional Commissioner of the Republic. My driver, Corporal Dorchin.’

  The youngest of the guerrillas took the papers, bending to examine them in the headlamps. While he waited, the colonel studied their insignia. These people were annoying but n
ecessary. For four years their reluctance to join the struggle, their undisciplined enterprises, their divisions and animosities had been the stuff of his days. He could see that the lorry carried the emblem of the United Resistance, the V sign with the cross of Lorraine superimposed, and their armbands were marked FFI, Forces Fran Raises de l’lnterieur. However, they did not look like farm boys, more like artisans from the nearest town, and he guessed that these men belonged to the communist underground.

  The young man, still holding the documents, gestured to the colonel to get out of the car. He led the way behind the lorry. The colonel hesitated, reholstered his pistol and opened the door.

  ‘Keep the engine running,’ he said to the driver, then nodded to the two remaining partisans to precede him. Only a few yards into the wood stood a car, one of the wood-burning vehicles in use everywhere in these days of fuel shortages. Beside it, a fire had been lit and a folding table erected. Seated there was a man in a beret and a loose, belted shirt, reading by the light of a hurricane lamp. For all the world like one of Napoleon’s field marshals on campaign, the colonel thought, or a Russian commissar. The young partisan saluted and presented the documents. His commander read them carefully.

  ‘You’re well out of your way here, Colonel,’ he said. ‘Have you lost your road?’ Although he acknowledged Cazalle’s rank, the tone was republican, undeferential.

  ‘No, I’ve already seen the commissioner. I’m on my way to visit my home for one night before returning to Paris. I come from here.’

  ‘Oh, yes? Where’s that?’

  The colonel could read the subtle wish to make him an invader, without rights on the ground. He resorted to formality.

  ‘You are … ?’ he said.

  ‘This is Gilles of Group Noix. These are his colleagues, Marius and Cyrano.’ The commissar did not introduce himself.

  ‘I’m from Bonnemort in the commune of Lepech Perdrissou.’

  ‘Ah.’ Recognition of a kind, not necessarily approving. ‘And you’re on your way to Bonnemort now?’

  ‘I am. A detour of a hundred kilometres was worth it. It’s been four years.’

  He should have read the warning then, in Gilles’ smile, the glance between Marius and Cyrano.

  ‘There’s a lot been going on at Lepech in recent days,’ the commissar remarked.

  ‘Oh, yes?’ The colonel was anxious to end the civilities and get on with his journey.

  ‘You haven’t heard?’

  ‘How could I? I’ve come from Paris. There isn’t even a phone line.’ Then he asked, because it seemed expected, ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘A German officer murdered. They only just escaped the most terrible reprisals.’

  Cazalle was not prepared to pay attention to local dramas. One dead German did not sound much in a world at war.

  Gilles added, ‘His throat was cut.’

  The commissar waited, as if for a sign of greater curiosity. The colonel did not gratify him, so he shrugged and let him go.

  ‘Not far now,’ the colonel said, speaking to himself rather than to the driver, as they got back into the car and set off once more.

  ‘I’m from here,’ he had said to the maquisards, claiming his rights as a native-born. His decision to go into exile at the time of the defeat had been immediate and visceral. He had never had any doubt, even at the most painful moment: leaving his home and his wife. Bonnemort was so remote that he had succeeded in imagining it untouched by the war, waiting for him to return to open the gates of the time-arrested castle and release its occupants to new life.

  ‘Slowly now,’ he said. ‘It’s on the left.’

  With exaggerated care the driver turned the car onto a stone track, rutted with the run-off from years of rain. A bird flew down, as if strafing the car; the driver ducked involuntarily. It flew ahead of them, its greyish wings undulating like a white flag in a breeze. At the bend ahead he saw a large dog.

  ‘Lascar!’ he exclaimed aloud. The driver’s pressure on the accelerator eased and the dog was gone. The verges were wider here and before they swung to the left, the headlights touched the form of an upturned vehicle in the ditch. Another two kilometres and they were climbing steeply. Dorchin made his first unprompted remark of the journey. ‘Bloody hell, it’s the end of the world,’ he said.

  They were over the crest now and descending sharply towards the house. He regretted arriving so late in the day. As a child he had liked to stop the pony and trap that used to collect him from the station and look down at the roofs and the smoke rising through the trees. He now recalled that vivid second when his heart seemed to loosen with relief that the place was really still there. He always feared that it might have disappeared, or never have been there at all, existing only in his imagination. This time he had no confirmation of its existence until the car drew up in front of the entrance, the headlamps shining through the wrought-iron gates, which were emphatically closed. He had never seen the gates shut, even during the Great War. In the courtyard a dog was barking.

  ‘Lascar,’ he called again, but it ignored him, joined now by a pack of rough-haired terriers, showing their sharp lower teeth and jumping on legs stiff with fury.

  He could not open the gates, for a padlock and chain secured them. There was no bell. He looked at his watch. It was only ten past ten. They must be asleep. He rattled the gates noisily, shouting, ‘Henri, are you there, Henri?’ He turned back to the driver. ‘Sound your horn, will you.’

  Closed gates and barking dogs that refused to recognise their master; this was not as it should have been. He was annoyed that he had not started earlier, travelled faster, announced his coming. The eye of a torch wavered towards them. It stopped short of the lights and he heard the voice of Micheline, Henri’s wife.

  ‘Who is it?’ She, too, was shouting, her tone resentful and afraid.

  ‘Micheline, open up. It’s Theo.’

  She advanced slowly, sceptically, the beam of her torch absorbed into the car’s lights. She wore a blue button-through pinafore and below it the hem of her black skirt drooped to her wooden-soled clogs.

  ‘Mr Theo?’ She was searching in her pinafore pocket and took out the key. They pushed open one gate each and the car slid into the courtyard, stopped; its lights died away.

  Micheline and her torch vanished, the dogs trotted back into the farmyard, and he and Dorchin were alone again. He looked up at the house, its grey shutters closed; it was deserted. Had his wife left? He led the way towards the arch into the farmyard and the house where Henri and Micheline lived.

  They met Micheline, coming from the tower that filled the corner between the main house and the farmyard.

  ‘Mr Theo, Mr Theo,’ she said, opening her arms to him. They kissed three times.

  ‘How are you, Micheline? How’s Henri, the family? It’s been a long time.’

  ‘A long time, a long time.’ She was agitated; tears stood in her eyes. For a moment she seemed bewildered, as if she did not know what to do. ‘And now you’re back.’

  ‘Just for one night, Micheline. I was at Toulouse and I had to come when I was so close.’

  ‘Let me find you something to eat. You must be starved.’

  The peasant answer to every situation: food. She was leading him across the yard towards her own door. An oil lamp stood on the kitchen table, its soft light revealing the ribs and whorls that were etched into its whitened surface. The eyes of both men were drawn to the light and fixed on a chipped white platter, heaped with figs. For years neither of them had seen such an abundance of fruit. Theo looked at the sweet, slackening skins, green, black, purple, and thought of the presents he had brought with him, the American chocolate bars. Who would want American chocolate when they had figs from their own trees? He was jolted out of the timetable of war into the rhythm of the country year. Vine-peaches, pears, apples, quinces would all be ready now. Walnuts, cobnuts, chestnuts soon. He saw Dorchin swallow, his eyes fixed on the fruit.

  Taking pity on him, Theo said,
‘Do you mind if we take a fig?’

  Micheline did not spare them a glance; she was busy at the stove. ‘Go ahead, take them. They’re yours in any case. But you need soup. The bread’s not fresh, but the soup is good.’

  She spread a cloth at one end of the table and put down two plates, placing large bowls on top of them. Dorchin was already sitting down. Theo realised that he was hungry. He had eaten at midday with the commissioner, but since then had had nothing. Micheline ladled out the soup.

  ‘And Henri,’ Theo said again. ‘Where’s Henri?’

  Micheline replaced the saucepan on the stove. ‘Henri’s dead.’

  Theo’s oldest ties were to Henri with whom he had baled hay, harvested maize, shot pheasants and gathered chestnuts in his childhood. It was impossible for Henri to be dead. Henri had always been at Bonnemort; he had been like an older brother to him. He was not old, only in his late fifties. He had never had a day’s illness in his life. But Micheline, always a robust woman, now confirmed the passage of time. Her cheeks had sunk and her wavy brown hair was dulled with grey.

  Behind him the door opened; Micheline looked over his head. ‘You remember Florence.’

  He did indeed remember Florence. She was wearing black, too, and her mourning cast grey reflections on her face, the shadows of misery. The girl he had known, too well, had been so full of energy that he used to say he could hear her hair growing. It was now cut to shoulder length and looked as exhausted as she did. He rose, shook hands, kissed her on both cheeks

  ‘What happened? When? Micheline, I am so sorry …’

  She didn’t wait for his condolences. ‘He was shot three weeks ago, three weeks to the day.’ She was at that stage when it was necessary to be precise about small things, accuracy about dates, meal times, routine duties. If she let them go, the world would fall to pieces.

  Dorchin had stopped eating his soup, his respect for the dead triumphing over his hunger. A huge rearrangement was taking place in Theo’s mind, the ivory tower of his home was falling.