Page 11 of The French Wife

‘If I’m not allowed to go down to the cellar, perhaps you could go down yourself and bring up a sack of potatoes while I get the chicken in the pot,’ she said.

He grunted and got to his feet, took a bunch of keys from his pocket, went to the cupboard for his flashlight, strode across the room and unlocked the cellar door. A blast of cold air came from it as he disappeared down the steps. Amélie filled a pot with water and set it on the range. Then she dunked the chicken into the water, sprinkled some salt and dried herbs over it, and put on the lid.

When Bruno came back carrying a sack of potatoes over his shoulder, he locked the cellar door and pocketed the keys, then went back to the table, sat down and took a swig of his beer. Amélie took enough potatoes for the meal from the sack, put them in an enamel bowl and took it to the sink to peel them.

‘So when are you going to quit your job at the mairie?’ Bruno asked.

Amélie sighed. ‘Much as I’d like to do that, I don’t think I can. The Germans are in control in the town, and they’ve ordered me to work for them. I can’t do anything about it, Bruno.’

‘I knew no good would come of you working there,’ he said, harking back to a subject that had been a source of bitter conflict between them since Amélie started her job two years ago. That was when things had first got tough at the farm.

She ignored him, concentrating on scrubbing the brown earth from the potatoes and peeling off their thick skins. Bruno had moaned about her job right from the start, even though it was he who had suggested she should go out to work to supplement their finances. Even before France had declared war on Germany in September 1939, one by one Bruno’s able-bodied itinerant farmworkers between the ages of twenty and twenty-five had been called up to the French army. Although he was able to keep a core workforce of older men, that first winter he’d struggled to keep the farm going and cover all the ploughing, planting and maintenance that was needed if the place was to turn in a profit the following spring.

The farm was an unusually large one for the area; around fifty hectares all told. It was the result of the merger of two smaller farms – Bruno’s family farm and the land Amélie had inherited from her father, Philippe Benoît, who’d died shortly after she married Bruno. The main crop was grapes for wine, but they also grew cereal crops and olives, were self-sufficient in vegetables, kept a couple of cows for their milk, pigs for slaughter and chickens for eggs.

Without sufficient workers for the grape harvest in 1940, the farm began to founder. And when the Germans invaded France in May of that year, produce was requisitioned by Vichy and the occupiers, who would only pay a fixed price for what they took. It then became impossible to make a profit, and things started to look really bleak for the farm. Bruno sold what produce he could on the black market, which was risky, but he soon turned his attention to Amélie, who at that time was recovering from her third miscarriage in as many years.

‘You might need to think about getting a job yourself,’ he’d said one day over supper. She’d looked up at him, surprised, knowing he disapproved of women being independent and earning their own money. Until that point, he had made it clear that her place was in the home, cooking and cleaning and looking after his welfare.

She’d brightened at the suggestion; her soul-sapping ordeal over the past three years had sent her into a downward spiral of despair. Although she’d tried to distract herself by supervising the redecoration of the house, she’d still felt lonely and redundant. Here, finally, was a chink of light. Perhaps, if she could get away from the farm and Bruno’s controlling presence, even for a few hours a day, she might find a way out of the darkness.

‘I’m happy to do that,’ she’d said, filled with a mixture of trepidation and excitement at the thought of going out to work. She had a typing qualification, which she’d gained at a private college in Narbonne after she left school, paid for by her father. He, in contrast to Bruno, had encouraged her to gain some skills and qualifications. You’ll need a few strings to your bow as you get older. You don’t want to be entirely dependent on your husband, my girl.

But despite her father’s encouragement in that area, he had been happy to push her into the match with Bruno Garnier, colluding with Bruno’s father so the two neighbouring farms would one day be joined. She didn’t blame him. He’d worried about leaving the responsibility of all those hectares to a naïve girl in her early twenties, and he’d known he didn’t have long to live. And, besides, in those days Bruno had been different. She’d known him since they were children and had admired the strong, independent young man he appeared to have grown into. He’d always been arrogant, true, but back then he was a fine figure of a man, with a mop of dark hair and a magnificent physique. He would ride about his land on a striking black horse, overseeing the workers, making sure everything ran like clockwork.

Amélie applied for a few jobs in St Marie – one with the doctor, one doing the accounts for a land agent, and finally the one at the mairie. When Claude Colbert had offered her the job, she’d been thrilled. Bruno had appeared to be pleased at first, but it soon became apparent he couldn’t bear her spending her days outside his orbit of control. As soon as she’d started working there, he’d started to berate her about it.

‘I don’t like the thought of you in that office with all those men,’ he would say.

Amélie would shrug. ‘What can I do? It is mainly men who work at the mairie, Bruno.’

‘I can just see you, making eyes at them. Especially that puffed-up idiot, Colbert.’

‘Why on earth would you think that? I wouldn’t dream of it, I just get on with the work.’ She knew it was useless protesting, though. He would always assume the worst. She was well used to his jealous rages.

‘I just don’t like you working with that man. You’re with him all day. People will talk.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Bruno.’

‘I have my reputation to think of. I don’t like you being there and I think you should leave.’

‘But, Bruno, we need the money. We depend on it.’

Although Bruno was happy to take her entire wage packet every week, he still complained about the fact that the house was no longer as clean and tidy as it had been before, and that he had to wait longer for his dinner in the evenings. Despite that, he resisted her requests to ask Lili to do more in the house, insisting she was there to work on the farm.

He still expected Amélie to fit in all the household tasks she used to do before she went to work, including the farm accounts, and within a few weeks she was exhausted. But she battled on and never once regretted taking the job. To her it was a lifeline. It got her away from the farm and enabled her to mix with other people during the day. It lifted her spirits and made her feel useful for the first time since she’d married Bruno, over ten years before. And having a job helped her to forget the empty feeling inside that had been building ever since she’d lost her first baby.

‘If you’re not going to give it up, you’ll have to be very careful,’ he said now, looking at her with one eyebrow raised, bringing her back to the present with a jolt. ‘Even more careful than before. You know what I mean, don’t you?’

‘Of course,’ she said.

She did know what he meant, and the thought of going to work for the Germans each day, walking into the office past the tanks and soldiers with their guns, while back at home members of the Resistance were being sheltered, planning their missions, storing their equipment, filled her with fear.

The next morning, Amélie woke with a start to the sound of Bruno’s dogs barking crazily from where they were shut up in one of the barns. She sat up, alarmed. The dogs only barked if there was an intruder about, or a wild animal. Foxes, deer and wild boar would sometimes stray into the courtyard at night, making the dogs howl and bark, but it would be rare for a wild animal to come anywhere near the buildings in daylight, and she could see from the grey light inching between the shutters that dawn was breaking.

Bruno was already up. She could hear him moving about in the kitchen below. That wasn’t unusual; he was often up and out in the fields early when there was work to do. November was usually a quiet month, but for the past few days he and the men had been working on the olive harvest. There were a few fields of olive trees on the rocky slopes of the river valley that were too steep for vines. The olives had to be picked by hand. It was difficult to harvest them without the manpower Bruno had had at his disposal before the war, but olive oil was a useful commodity, and he wasn’t going to miss out on that income.

Amélie got out of bed, shivering in the wintry chill, pulled on a dressing gown and went out into the passage, heading towards the bathroom. She paused, surprised to hear the sound of an engine – or was it more than one engine? – on the track that led to the house. Bruno had both a farm truck and a tractor, but she knew the sounds of their engines well and this was different. Besides, they were shut up in the barn, and he didn’t use either vehicle for the olive harvest on the steep hillside. These engines were far louder and throatier than either of the farm vehicles. She rushed to the small window at the end of the passage, pulled back the lace curtain and peered out. She gasped at what she saw: two armoured cars full of German troops were heading towards the courtyard gateway, followed by a van and the dark-green officers’ car she’d seen on the square the day before.