Tug of War

Chapter Ten

‘A wart on the backside, was it, then?’ Dorcas enquired without emphasis. ‘Aren’t you going to tell me what makes Dominique so distinctive?’

She’d waited until her lemonade and Joe’s black coffee had been served in the cool interior of the tea shop they’d used the previous day before she referred to their interview. A pair of elegant old ladies nursing matching apricot poodles were taking a very long time choosing the brand of tea they would have served in china cups. They spent even longer deciding which cakes their sculptured pets would prefer but at last, their order given, changed and given again, they settled to look around and smile indulgently at the kind uncle entertaining his niece at the next table. A civilized scene until Dorcas struck up. Joe wondered if they spoke English.

He breathed deeply. Would he ever become accustomed to this wild girl’s free way of speaking, her irreverence bordering on rudeness? He blamed Orlando. His loose life and the dubious characters he chose to associate with had had a devastating and probably irreparable effect on a child who lurked behind sofas, listening, understanding and copying speech and manners that ought never to have been exhibited in her vicinity.

‘No? Well then — a birthmark in an intimate place? A dislocated penis perhaps?’ she said, her voice rising. ‘There’s a boy in our village whose father has trouble with his tyres and his tubes. .’

He had learned the wisdom of cutting her off the moment she called in evidence ‘a boy from the village’. More of them than he privately thought possible had uncles who’d passed through Port Said and sisters who’d worked in armaments factories. All had returned only too willing to share their worldly knowledge. And, at the end of the chain of information apparently, was Dorcas.

‘One more attention-grabbing word and my lips are sealed for ever in the matter of Dominique’s distinction,’ he growled. He waited for and accepted her silence with a nod, then went on: ‘Let us say. . front elevation, left of centre, port-wine stain, so slight and so centrally placed as to escape the examination accorded by the medical establishment.’

‘Interesting! We shall have to return to the doctor and ask him to look again. I say, Joe, this seems to me like proof positive that he’s who she says he is.’

‘Well, thinking ahead — as I’ve been taught! — I rang the good doctor when I slipped back to the hotel just now. While you were buying postcards.’ To his chagrin, Joe couldn’t hide his pleasure at scoring a point over Dorcas. ‘I asked him to supply further and better particulars regarding Thibaud’s nether regions. We’re in luck. It’s the day for the patient’s weekly bath and delousing and Varimont agreed to bring forward Thibaud’s time and instruct the orderlies who officiate at these ablutions. He’s intending to supervise the operation himself and record anything interesting. I’m to ring him for a report this afternoon.’

‘So, we should know very soon that Thibaud is French and we can carry on with our journey?’

‘I rather think we’re committed to spending a day or so with the Houdart family,’ said Joe. ‘It’s all fixed. I telephoned to say we’d arrive the day after tomorrow for the weekend. And besides — it would be a shame to pass up the chance of wearing your blue dress.’

‘You’ve made your mind up to see each of these claimants, haven’t you? You’re ignoring what the Inspector had to say. And what you said yourself — “I’m only here to establish whether he’s English or not” — that was just so much blather. You can’t resist a puzzle, that’s what. And you can’t bear to leave the solving of it to anyone else.’

‘I honestly don’t believe that there is any way of establishing that he’s English,’ said Joe patiently. ‘But, on the other hand, there may be a way of proving decisively that he is a Frenchman which fills our aims just as neatly. And that’s what I’m going to attempt to do. Yes, I’m going to take a look at the other claimants, hear their stories. . I thought Thibaud was probably a fine man and I would like to see his problems resolved. And I don’t fall victim to the first romantic tale I’m told. Now, when you’ve finished that. . I’m off to see the widow Langlois. She claims that Thibaud is really her son, Albert. She lives in a small village a few miles away from here. Martigny. Do you want to come?’

The countryside rolled by, patchwork squares of green and gold seamed with narrow white threads of chalk roads as they drove eastwards. The caterpillar stripes of the vineyards gave way increasingly to fields of ripe corn where the harvest was well under way. Teams of heavy horses pulled fantastical pieces of machinery, toiling alongside workers a good number of whom were women in pinafores, headscarves and clogs. They stopped work at the sound of the engine and shaded their eyes to stare with suspicion at the oncoming motor car before responding to Dorcas’s cheery wave.

‘The natives don’t seem particularly friendly,’ she said.

‘If you’d had your village destroyed and the land laid waste by several warring armies swarming all over it you’d learn to take a long careful look at foreigners motoring through. And here we are. Martigny,’ he said, parking in the market square and looking around. ‘The new Martigny. Bit hit and miss. But it’s an attempt. They’ve got their priorities right, you see — the café, the inn, the boulangerie, the school and the mairie. . pretty bell tower. . And the place we’ve come to visit is there on the corner opposite the boulangerie — the grocer’s shop.’

‘Le Familistère,’ Dorcas read out. ‘Succursale no. 732. Guy Langlois, Patron. Were you prepared for a patron? I thought we were coming to see a woman?’

‘We are. Yes. The claim was made by a mother. Well, let’s go and see if she’s at home.’

A bell clanged over the door as they entered and two customers turned from the counter to stare at them. Joe doffed his hat and gave the usual polite French greeting. There wasn’t much to delight the eye in this dim and cluttered space. The staples of existence were on display in packets, tins and jars, their dull ranks enlivened by a smoked ham and a saucisson or two suspended from the ceiling. Joe guessed that the women of the village did their shopping for fresh food in the weekly market, the token line-up of wooden boxes of faded apples, wrinkled oranges and time-expired lettuce offering little temptation. When the ladies had finally snapped their purses shut, picked up their shopping bags and left, the elderly man behind the counter turned his attention to them, an ingratiating smile vying with curiosity to enliven his heavy features.

Joe introduced himself, watching the smile flicker and die as he proceeded. He handed over his letter of introduction and his Metropolitan Police warrant card and waited while both were inspected with the greatest care.

‘So, you’ve come out all the way from Reims to see my wife? Why was this necessary? She gave her statement some weeks ago and she has nothing further to add. We await the Department’s final decision on the affair. And it is a civil, not a police matter anyway.’

‘Your son’s identity, sir — ’ Joe began and recoiled before the interruption.

‘Not my son, if you don’t mind! My wife Henriette’s son — and the man in question is most likely not even that,’ he said darkly. ‘It’s nothing but a mare’s nest. A waste of everyone’s time. The lad’s dead and gone. . years ago. . and I for one do not want the whole sorry business raked up again.’

Joe let the man’s explosion of bad humour roll away before replying mildly. He decided to borrow the ingratiating smile as window-dressing for his explanation: an international angle to the case had developed and, in confidential tones, he spoke of the involvement of the recently formed international police force with its headquarters in Lyon. Monsieur Langlois must be aware of Interpol? Even if he wasn’t, Monsieur Langlois could not help but be impressed by the respect in Joe’s voice as he mentioned it. And Scotland Yard’s assistance had been sought by this august body in an attempt to resolve the question of the unknown soldier’s possibly English nationality. This appeared to be not an unwelcome proposition to Langlois and he was just sufficiently impressed to fling up the hinged section of the counter which allowed access to the rear of the shop.

‘Oh? Well, in that case, you’d better come through then.’

He pulled back a curtain yelling, ‘Julie! Come and mind the shop!’ and a young girl slipped by them to take up her place by the till.

They followed their guide through into a storage area full of tins, boxes and flour-sacks and at the far end of this a woman in a high-necked blouse and copious cambric pinafore was sitting at a table weighing out kilos of sugar. She turned to look at them, incurious and unsmiling.

Joe thought that the woman he now greeted as Madame Langlois was all that was conjured up by the word ‘drab’. Her clothing was outdated and faded, her face was square, coarse and expressionless. Her dark hair, beginning to streak with grey, was divided precisely down the centre of her head by a parting through which the scalp gleamed like candle-wax.

‘A policeman to see you, Henriette,’ her husband announced and then, smirking: ‘It seems this loony of yours is actually an Englishman who took the wrong turning in the war. What a fuss about nothing! Well. . things to do. . busy man. . I’ve wasted time enough on this silly business. . I’m off to do my deliveries. I’ll leave you, Commander, to spell it out to her. My advice: be firm and speak slowly. Be prepared to repeat everything. Don’t fall for her nonsense.’

He bustled off leaving them facing a woman no longer expressionless. The stony features, released from their rigidity by his departure, registered a hatred of such a startling intensity that Joe rocked back on his heels. She collected herself and, slowly assimilating the news so callously delivered, shook her head from side to side like a puzzled ox.

‘Is this true, sir, what he says?’

Her bosom began to heave, she sniffled and rubbed a hand over her dusty face.

Alarmed by this show of emotion, Joe thrust his handkerchief at her and hurried to contradict the information fired at her by Langlois.

‘So the truth of it is that nothing is yet decided? And you have seen my son? Yesterday? Tell me how he was. Are they treating him well? I should like to visit him but Guy will not spare me.’ She brightened and began to take off her pinafore and smooth her hair. ‘I should like to hear what you made of him. Albert. He’s called Albert. Will you come through to the parlour and I’ll ask my daughter to prepare us some coffee. Does the young lady drink coffee? Or would you prefer a glass of milk, mademoiselle, and some bread and chocolate?’

He had never had a more receptive audience, Joe thought as he sipped his coffee and accounted for his presence in her pin-neat parlour. He launched into a cheerful account of his meeting with the patient and told the story of Dorcas and the pink biscuit.

Once again the tears threatened to flow.

‘Albert loved those biscuits!’ she said. ‘He wasn’t allowed to have them from the shop, of course, but I used sometimes when he was little to sneak a broken one for him when Guy was looking the other way.’

‘Madame,’ said Joe tentatively, ‘I can’t help noticing that the patient whom you declare to be your son does not resemble you or your husband.’

‘He is not Guy’s son,’ she said. ‘It’s no secret. Albert is illegitimate.’

She cast a wary glance at Dorcas and Joe reassured her: ‘My niece is au fait with the details of the case and is older than she looks. Quite the woman of the world, in fact.’

She nodded and stumbled on. ‘You will have passed on the road in the neighbouring village an inn. The Croix d’Argent. A staging post between Reims and Paris. I was an orphan of the village and sent to work there on my fifteenth birthday. In 1889.’ She paused, choosing her words. ‘I knew nothing of the world. .’

Joe sighed. He could guess the whole sorry tale.

‘I was six months pregnant before anyone — before I myself — realized what was happening. They threw me out into the street. I was taken up by Langlois. You will have noticed that he is an ugly man with the manners of a boar. He had had no success in finding a wife. He married me and I have been his slave ever since. He disliked Albert. He wanted sons of his own. Fate decided that I should produce daughter after daughter for him and after each girl his anger would increase. “What kind of a woman are you? You can produce a son for a stranger and only girls for your husband?” He was never kind to Albert. And poor Albert! If only he’d looked like me! But the boy was born the spitting image of his father.’

‘You know his father’s identity?’

‘No. I only know that he was like no man that I had ever seen before. A beautiful man. Tall, fair, blue-eyed like Albert and — a German.’

She grasped Joe’s arm. ‘Sir, I have never disclosed as much to Langlois.’

‘I understand. Be reassured, madame — your information is for my ears alone. It must have taken some courage to defy opposition and start on your identification?’

‘I could not have done it without the support of the schoolmaster,’ she said. ‘It was he who came to us last spring, waving a newspaper. Monsieur Barbier had taught my Albert. He liked him and took a special interest in him because he was a clever boy and he pitied him in his situation with his stepfather. He showed us the photograph and assured us that it was Albert. He never forgets any of his pupils, Commander. And I recognized my son, of course. M. Barbier is not impressed by my husband and, in the way of bullies, Langlois defers to a stronger man. He allowed me, grudgingly, to go to Reims with Barbier to see my son. It was the schoolmaster who wrote out my official claim form for me. He always knows what to say.’

‘Can you tell me what evidence you submitted apart from the visual identification?’

‘Photographs.’

She went to a sewing table and automatically looked about her, although they were unobserved, before taking from the bottom three creased photographs and a bundle of letters.

‘I showed these to the director.’

The first photograph was a formal one taken on the steps of the pre-war school building on a clear, sunny day. The children, in their grey school smocks, were excited and overawed by the camera. M. Barbier stood on the right, the proud shepherd of his flock. The flock was, with little variation, dark-haired and chubby. Albert, on the left, stood out from the crowd with his light build and fair hair. His ethereal features, framed by a neat white collar, tugged at Joe’s heart over the gap of a quarter of a century. He wondered if Dorcas, stickily breathing chocolate fumes over his shoulder, had seen it: the same unfocused expression of dislocation and sadness, of other-worldliness that they had seen in Thibaud’s face.

In the second photograph the Langlois children were lined up in height order in a studio, grinning at the camera over their right shoulders. Four dark girls with square faces and dark eyes. Adrift by a few inches at the back and gazing at the middle distance Albert hovered, an alien presence.

The third was also a posed photograph, taken in Reims. The grown Albert looked straight at the camera this time, alone, defiant, wearing with some dash the tight tunic, red jodhpurs, knee-high boots and saucily tilted casquette of an artilleryman.

‘He loved horses, you see. He was very good with them. M. Barbier managed to steer him into the artillery.’

Joe passed the photographs to Dorcas.

‘What a fine man,’ she said quietly. ‘You must be very proud of him, madame.’

‘Always,’ was the whispered reply. ‘Always.’

‘Can you tell us when you last saw your son?’

‘It was in April 1917. We’d returned after the 1914 invasion thinking it couldn’t happen again. Papa Joffre had sent them all packing, hadn’t he? But we were wrong. They came again and it was worse this time. Hardly a village survived the bombing and the burning. We were caught up in it all. And it was just days before that when Albert turned up suddenly on leave. He’d walked all the way from somewhere up by Laon. .’ She hesitated, trying to remember.

‘The Chemin des Dames?’ Joe supplied. ‘Was he involved in that battle?’

‘That’s the one. Chemin des Dames. He was in the Fifth Army under General Nivelle. Albert told us he was on leave,’ she added uncertainly. ‘Langlois said it was all a lie. They wouldn’t have given leave to anyone at such a bad moment, he said. Albert must have deserted.

‘Albert was wearing his own civilian clothes, helping us to load our things on to the cart, when someone shouted, “The Uhlans are coming!”’ She shivered with remembered terror at the panic-raising call. ‘And the Boche flooded in. They shot the mayor who’d dared to confront them and rounded up fifty hostages. The usual behaviour. And when they retreated they set the houses on fire, marched the hostages out with them and fired cannon at the village until it was rubble. One of the hostages was my son. I never saw or heard from him again until I went to Reims last spring.’

Joe, who had been discreetly jotting down dates, closed his notebook. ‘I wonder. . is there anything at all, madame, that you could add to the information you have already given to Inspector Bonnefoye? Any detail of a personal and perhaps physical nature that might distinguish Albert? A scar or a birthmark of some description? A mark of which a mother might be aware?’ He could think of no more discreet way of phrasing his question.

She looked embarrassed and awkward. She opened her mouth to speak and decided not to. Then, shrugging: ‘The usual childhood marks. . scuffed knees. . cuts and bruises from falling off horses and out of trees. That sort of thing. Would you like to see his letters?’

As Joe agreed to this sudden shift of focus Dorcas stood and asked politely if she might be excused. She’d like to go back into the shop to buy some of the delicious dark French chocolate to take home. . better than anything they could get in England and made here in the village? They readily agreed to this tactful withdrawal from the next stage of the enquiry which promised to be rather tedious for a young girl.

Joe was intrigued by the small collection of letters written in a good copperplate hand on torn scraps of writing paper. One or two of the messages were almost obliterated by ominous brown stains. At the start jaunty and optimistic (and addressed solely to ‘ma chère maman’), the letters had become progressively sombre and hopeless. The most recent one was dated April 1917, just a week or two before his last appearance in the village. He spoke with despair of stalemate, with anger of the deaths of men in his company, the never-ending bombardment, the foul conditions in the trenches. He ended by saying he was just about to be called up the line to the front ranks again.

Joe looked for signs of censorship but found none. A second reading impressed him with the clever wording. No militarily sensitive information, no names, no positions were given. The censor’s pencil would have hovered and found no precise target and yet the tone, truculent and mutinous throughout, was deserving of censorship. It occurred to him that perhaps even the censor by this stage in the war had been of the same mind.

Had Albert, in his despair, nipped out the back way after all, as his stepfather claimed? It was probable, Joe decided. Or had he served his spell in the front line and been rewarded with an eight-day pass? It was at about that time that the army’s grievances, increasingly loud, had been heard, Joe calculated from the little he knew about the French end-game. Pétain had replaced the failing General Nivelle in the campaign of the Chemin des Dames and conditions for the men in the field had improved. Home leave had been granted again. It was possible.

He said as much to Madame Langlois who drank in every soothing word. So absorbed had he been by the letters and the eagerness of the mother to share them with him, he had lost track of time and wondered at last what on earth Dorcas could possibly be doing.

Laughter down the corridor reassured him. She came in, pink and smiling and obviously the best of friends with what Joe took to be the youngest Langlois daughter.

‘This is Julie, Uncle Joe.’

Julie giggled and bobbed. She gave Joe a long and appreciative stare before her bright eyes flashed a message sideways at Dorcas.

‘I’ve cashed up and locked the shop, Maman,’ she said in a voice which had none of the grating hesitations of her mother’s. ‘Dorcas has been telling me all about London. Did you know she came from London? And we’re the same age! She’s sixteen too! Are all English girls so small?’

‘Oh, I’d say Dorcas was pretty much average size for her age,’ said Joe easily.

‘Uncle Joe, I hope you don’t mind but I’ve offered Julie a lift into Reims. It’s early closing today and she’s visiting her married sister. She was going to catch the bus but I said we were going straight back and could drop her off.’

‘Well, certainly. If her mother agrees. Delighted,’ said Joe.

Slightly dubiously, her mother gave her consent, commenting that such an offer would at least save the bus fare and she didn’t see how Monsieur Langlois could have any objection, and they set off with the two girls installed on the back seat whispering and laughing together.

Joe made no attempt to tune in to their conversation, pleased to hear Dorcas chatting with someone more or less her own age and relieved to be free to marshal his thoughts.

On arriving in Reims, Julie asked to be dropped off in the centre in the Place Drouet d’Erlon and, with warm exchanges of addresses and promises, she finally skipped away.

‘Nice chat, Dorcas?’ he asked as she slid over into the front passenger seat.

‘No. Rather terrible in fact, Joe. You weren’t listening, were you? Look, drive over into the Promenade, will you, park under a plane tree and I’ll tell you.’

Disturbed by her serious tone, he did as she asked.

‘I was just trying to help. I thought that woman wasn’t telling you the full truth. I thought I’d find one of the girls — in fact there’s only that Julie, the fifth and youngest, left at home — all the others got married and went off as soon as they could — and try to find out a bit more about life chez les Langlois. She didn’t know much about Albert. She was an afterthought. Born in 1910. So she was only four when Albert marched off to war. And she only saw him once or twice when he came home on leave after that.’

‘So her opinions may be misleading, you’re warning me?’

‘Yes. I think she echoes her sisters’ views and they may have been influenced by their charming father. She dismissed her half-brother as “that weedy Albert who disappeared”. But she does seem close to her mother. Julie wants to leave home as well. She’s not really here to see her sister — did you guess? She’s come to meet a young man she’s walking out with. It’s all right, Joe — her mother knows all about it. Madame Langlois is making her own plans, you see. Julie knows her mother’s up to something. She thinks that if she’s granted custody of Albert her mother will come into a lot of money from the state as well as his pension and Julie’s certain she’s planning to do a bunk. She’s going to use Albert to finance her escape from old Langlois. They’re blackmailing each other — you keep quiet about my plans and I won’t split on you. . that sort of thing.’

‘So the worm is turning after all these years? She’s going to scoop up her son, run away and live with him on the basis of his pension? Shows a bit of spirit! I thought I’d glimpsed a certain steely resolve. . well, tinny resolve, perhaps, in her demeanour.’

‘You didn’t quite understand, Joe.’

‘What can you mean?’

‘When you asked about the distinctive marks on his body I thought she reacted in a strange way and changed the subject. I mean. . you might have expected: “Oh, gosh, yes — that day when the nappy pin slipped!” or something like that. I thought she was covering something up. And she was.’

For a moment she sank into dejection and uncertainty.

‘And Julie told you. . what?’ he prompted.

‘That Albert was beaten quite badly as a child. It’s likely that he will have traces on his buttocks, isn’t it? Would he still have scars after all these years?’

‘It’s possible,’ said Joe. ‘Look, I’m speaking to Varimont this afternoon. That should tell us more. Perhaps in their search for dramatic wounds — sabre cuts and the like — little domestic marks have gone unregarded. But they would represent incontrovertible evidence all the same.’

Dorcas was hardly listening. ‘”Little domestic marks”? Joe, how can you speak so lightly?’

‘I think you mean “dispassionately”. If I let myself be moved by pain and death I would make mistakes. But this is information we must have, Dorcas. I know it’s really none of our business — it’s a French affair and let’s hang on to that.’ And, rattled by her petulant silence: ‘What on earth do you expect me to do? Tell tales to Inspector Bonnefoye? Encourage him to go out, confront Langlois, and belatedly wag a minatory finger at the wicked stepfather? “It’s come to my attention, Langlois, that you were unkind to your stepson thirty years ago.” He’d laugh at me.’

Dorcas sighed wearily.

‘Old Langlois may have failed to charm us, Joe, but you can’t dismiss him as entirely evil on the sample of behaviour we witnessed. Albert was beaten as a child, I’m certain of that, but it wasn’t his stepfather who beat him.’