The Caves of Perigord_ A Novel - Martin Walker [48]
“You did choose well, Manners, coming to this restaurant,” she said, calculating that he must have reconnoitered the place, and the street, and discussed the meal and planned his parking in advance. Very flattering that he was going to such pains.
“Picked it out of the guidebook,” he mumbled. “Lucky, really.”
Manners gasped with pleasure as they climbed the steps into the Jean Moulin building, and found a small exhibition spread before them. He pounced at once upon a tiny motorcycle that looked like a child’s toy. The label said that it was a type developed to be dropped by parachute to help the Resistance leaders get around.
“I learned to drive on one of those,” he said fondly. “My father brought one back from the war. It’s still in one of the outbuildings somewhere. Made a fearful racket, and pumped out tons of gray smoke.” He squatted down to peer more closely, occasionally glancing up at her with enthusiastic delight. Lydia found herself smiling back in what felt like genuine affection. Friendliness, perhaps, she told herself. He was very appealing in this boyish mood.
“The old man never said it was a Resistance bike,” he said, rising. “I remember when the tires rotted, and I tried to fit an old set of scooter tires. No good—too fat.”
Lydia steered him toward the reception desk before some other military antique drew his attention. She had made an appointment with the curator of the museum library, an elderly man with a small red ribbon in his lapel. He came down to greet them, casting an appreciative glance at her before clasping Manners’s hand in both of his. Once in his small office upstairs he poured three small glasses of a golden wine, insisting that they drink to the honor of the late capitaine.
“He was always the capitaine to us,” said the old Frenchman, speaking serviceable English. “Whatever rank he reached later. We all liked him, because he was always cheerful, and could make us laugh. He was a very good leader, the kind who led without your noticing that he was in charge. He taught me how to strip a Sten gun. That was in Toulouse, when we liberated the city.”
“I had no idea you knew my father,” said Manners. “That makes our job a lot easier. He never spoke much about the war, so I’m really trying to find out more about what he did, the people he knew, and whether any of them could still be found. I’m very pleased indeed to meet an old comrade-in-arms—and hope to meet some more.”
“We are very few, those who remain,” said the old man. He looked at Manners neutrally, then at Lydia—the look of someone who had learned caution in a hard school. “Not everyone wants to remember. The war was a long time ago. So long, we even get Germans coming here now. There was a time we would have kicked them out, but you cannot blame the young ones. And half of the people in Wehrmacht uniform weren’t Germans at all. There were Russians, Ukrainians, Latvians, Poles—all hauled into the German Army. Some of them even joined us. And some of our worst enemies were other Frenchmen.”
“You mean the Milice?” asked Lydia, thinking he might need some gentle prodding. She had read about the pro-Nazi militia who supported the Vichy regime.
“Not just them. But they were bad. They and the Gestapo were the worst. We had political problems too, in those weeks around the Liberation. The Communists, mainly, and some black market people. A long time ago.” He shrugged and pushed across the desk toward them a small pile of books in French, and a folder containing some microfiche.
“I prepared this for you, after Mademoiselle telephoned me,” he went on. “I knew your father from late June of 1944, when he came south to help train us in the Maquis and take us into Toulouse. But he was in Périgord and the Massif for months before that, so I have put some books and memoirs together about the Périgord