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PROVENCE, 1939
For Elodie grief weighed down all her senses. She glimpsed the world behind a veil of grey.
When the new year arrived, she felt no different.
When she cooked, she did not put the radio on, or stop to listen as she once had to the stories of gossip filtering out from the front of the restaurant. No longer would she pause and smile, as she heard tales of romance, of intrigue, and of petty arguments that had waged for years… she was numb to it all, and it showed in her cooking, as without realising it, she had begun to repeat herself, making the same dish every few days, and most of them tasting pretty much identical.
The customers were loyal, and none complained.
But after several weeks of this, the good sister, Sister Augustine, stopped by the restaurant to visit her, something she had never done before.
‘I hear it is ratatouille again,’ she said.
Elodie glanced up, surprised.
‘Sister?’ she said, mustering her first smile in weeks.
‘I came to see how you are doing, since you haven’t been around.’
Elodie frowned, then carried on chopping vegetables. ‘I’ve been busy, I’m sorry.’
‘I can see that.’
Elodie put down the knife, then looked up at the older woman. They stared at each other without speaking for a while.
‘I – I just didn’t feel like speaking.’ She sighed. She wasn’t the only one. Monsieur Blanchet had stopped coming around. She’d given up asking him to visit, a few weeks after they found out about Jacques’ death. They’d tried to play a game of chess that last time, but after a few minutes, he’d knocked over his knight, his hands in his hair, and saying, ‘I can’t do this, I’m sorry.’
She had sat in her chair opposite and cried after he’d left. She didn’t blame him. Over the weeks that passed she watched him as he haunted his own vineyard like a ghost. She missed him.
Sometimes when she fell asleep at night, when the numbness left, and the grief made itself felt, when the tears began to wrack her body, she felt like she was in mourning for everyone she had ever loved. But then on other nights the grief didn’t find her. Anger did. That was when she dreamed of an island she’d never seen before, and the man who had taken everything from her. When she awoke from one of those dreams, it felt like the rage that warred within her might choke her.
She cycled through feeling numb and angry most days. Neither made her good company to be around.
Sister Augustine seemed to sense some of this. ‘These things take time. We don’t have to speak. But you know you can come see me, and just be with me; I miss your face. The roses are in bloom. You could help with them, if you want to stay busy.’
Elodie surreptitiously wiped away a tear. ‘I miss you too,’ she admitted. The loneliness she felt was overwhelming. ‘I’d like that,’ she admitted.
When she went home that night, she opened up one of Jacques’ sketchbooks from when he was a child, one of many that were now in the little study he’d used after Grand-mère had passed. A heavy tear splodged onto a page which she wiped away, making the paper warp slightly, smudging a note he’d made about a blue tit.
Pattou, the old cat, came forward to nudge her leg. She felt so flooded with anger she screamed and the cat made a hasty retreat, making her sob all the harder.
She imagined herself doing to that Nazi officer what he had done to Jacques and Herman Ludho. She imagined finding him and making him kneel before her, looking into his eyes and her pulling the trigger. Sometimes she imagined doing the same to all the other officers who were stationed there and simply lied, all those people who denied Jacques and Herman their justice.
When Freddie phoned for his weekly catch-up, he was mortified to hear her speak like that.
‘It’s just… I feel so helpless. No one is stopping Hitler, they’re all so afraid of a war and in the meantime, it all means that the horrible Nazi thugs he has employed to do his bidding for him, get away with murder.’
‘Oh, El, don’t torment yourself with that.’
She sucked in air, as she began to sob. ‘It’s hard not to, Fred. I just. I just wish we could bring his body back.’
There was a sigh on the end of the line. ‘I know, El. But you know why we can’t – not now with all this madness going on in the world.’
It was true, everyone seemed to be doing their best to appease Hitler and everything he wanted. In September, the year before, Hitler had demanded that the Sudetenland – a border area that contained an ethnic German population area in Czechoslovakia – be returned to Germany. He vowed to unleash war if this did not happen. In a bid to appease him and prevent another war, the leaders of Britain, France, Italy and Germany met at a conference in Munich and they agreed to the annexation of Sudetenland in exchange for peace.
It wasn’t just Germany. In April, emboldened by Hitler’s success with the territories he’d captured, Mussolini followed a similar path and annexed Albania. France and Britain had joined forces, vowing to protect Poland’s borders – an area known to be on Hitler’s target list.
Everyone seemed to be holding their breath and trying not to rock the boat and in the meantime it meant that they were allowing the most horrendous things to occur in the name of peace …
She closed her eyes, and nodded, though of course he couldn’t see. Freddy had told her before that the researchers at Heligoland had buried him on one of his favourite parts of the island, before they left. She had tried to take comfort in that but she couldn’t.
What she wanted was for him to be buried here but Freddy had said that would be incredibly difficult as then his paperwork might not match what they had on record. ‘El, I helped to get him false papers, as you know, and it was supported by the other researchers on the team; if the officials saw his true identity it would endanger the researchers he worked with, they could be sent to prison – especially now, given how tense things are.’
‘I know,’ she said softly, but that only aggravated her more. This awful feeling of powerlessness – that there was nothing to be done – tormented her. That Otto Busch had just simply got away with killing her husband and she couldn’t even bring his body home without risking other people’s lives.
‘Sometimes I can’t bear it,’ she whispered.
There was a swallowing sound. ‘Oh, El, I’m sorry – you have to find a way somehow, you have a child to consider, and right now there is nothing that can be done. While the German government is run by Nazis and with things so tense, this is just how things are, one day that might change, but until then we just have to accept that this is how it is.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘until then,’ but it was the latter that calmed her down slightly. The belief that one day things might change.
