Free Cold Winter in Bordeaux by Allan Massie Page B

hadn’t seen him for years and then he came here one day.’
    ‘And so?’
    A tear trickled down the count’s fat cheek and when he reached out for his glass his hand was shaking and he didn’t dare take hold of it.
    ‘You despise me, don’t you? But you don’t understand, nobody understands what it’s like to want something so much and to be afraid. Afraid of myself and of … do you know what comes between me and sleep? Night after night? I run my hand up a young girl’s skirt and stroke her soft thighs. That’s what I do in my mind and for a moment I’m happy. But that’s all it is, I can’t help myself, and then when I do fall asleep I have nightmares. I told him to go away. I haven’t touched a girl, a real girl, for years, and I told him to go away. You must believe me.’
    ‘I’m ready to believe you, but there’s something else, isn’t there? He didn’t go away, did he? He wanted more.’
    It was a hunch, no more than that, but then it was a hunch that had brought him here, to this house which reeked of corruption, where there had long been, as old Marthe put it, much wickedness.
    ‘He wanted something from you, didn’t he? And he came with an invitation, I think.’
    Jean-Christophe wiped his eyes, but the tears continued to flow, and it seemed as if his whole body was shaking.
    Lannes said, ‘It’s best if you tell me.’
    ‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything. She was a terrible woman. Once, years ago, she … she supplied me with what I wanted, and it was wonderful, and then, and then … ’
    ‘She blackmailed you, didn’t she?’
    ‘She said she would send photographs to my father if I didn’t pay. So I paid, what else could I do, and it went on and on. She’s dead now of course and I don’t know who has the photographs, but till I learnt of her death I had thought it was all over because she couldn’t send them to you people without questions being asked about how she came by them, and my father is dead. So I was, I won’t say happy, because I don’t know what that means and haven’t for years, but at least safe. And then he came with what he called a proposition. Have you noticed his eyes? Only the brown one has any life in it, the blue one is dead. And this proposition … ’
    ‘Yes?’ Lannes said, no more than a mild prompt, for he realised what a relief it was for Jean-Christophe at last to speak of what he had fearfully hidden for so long, the relief of confession; so often over his life as a policeman Lannes had known such moments when the dam breaks and what has been repressed floods out.
    ‘He said they were staging a show. I knew what he meant. I’m not a fool whatever you may think, and for a moment I was tempted, excited. You find that disgusting, I suppose, but that’s because you don’t understand what it is to be like me. To be walled up, because that’s what I’ve been for years. But then what he said next frightened me. There’s a German officer lodging here, he’s a cousin, some sort of cousin of my sister’s late husband, and he said he knew he would be interested, so would I please bring him along. How could he know that – that he would be interested, I mean? I told him, again, to get out, because I was afraid. I don’t mind admitting that to you now. I was afraid. And then he said it was my patriotic duty to do as he asked, and his brown eye glittered. I wouldn’t have thought a brown eye could glitter, but it did.’
    ‘And then?’
    ‘Then she was dead, I heard she was dead, and I was so relieved that the bitch was dead and I hadn’t had to speak to Colonel von Feidler.’
    ‘But you would have done so?’
    ‘I don’t know. I thought I had no choice and then I thought if I did nothing, nothing would happen.’
    I thought if I did nothing, nothing would happen. The words sounded in his mind as he crossed the public garden, a chill wind in his face. For the first time he felt sympathy for Jean-Christophe: I thought if I did nothing,