Free Hunting Ground by J. Robert Janes Page B

glass or two of wine. Nothing from the cellar, but make a big fuss over them. Everything depends on our being designated.’
    Everything, even if they were worried about a fake.

3
    At midweek, in the late afternoon, I took the children and walked down the road to see Georges and Tante Marie. The Morissettes had been retainers of the de St-Germains for years. Tante Marie had had a good deal to do with the raising of Jules. Childless, Georges looked up to him as he would to a son who had gone off to university and become a success.
    The news I was bringing wouldn’t sit well, but what else could I have done? Someone had to tell them their services could no longer be afforded. Not that Jules ever paid them much. Five hundred francs every quarter, sometimes seven hundred. What they didn’t get in cash, they more than made up for in bread, cheese, apples, pears, vegetables, a few old boards, some wire and nails, tools now and then, an old coat, whatever they could manage to scrounge or borrow. I’d have done the same, of course. Still it wasn’t fair of Jules to have forgotten to pay them this past quarter nor to have asked me to let them know. It could only bring trouble for me.
    Leaves blew about on the road or piled up in the ditches where Jean-Guy went to kick them. Marie-Christine kept stopping to examine something, an ant, a bug, a last butterfly that warmed itself. All about us the air was cool and full of the scent of autumn. The road went up and down over gentle rises and for a moment, one precious moment, there was nothing else but the three of us and the open road.
    Then the cottage came in sight, laid against the woods, basking in the last of the sun. Georges was splitting firewood in the yard. Tante Marie was taking in some laundry. Stuccoed years and years ago, the cottage was in need of repair. One old horse, a gaggle of geese, a few scruffy chickens, and a pig kept them busy. They had little else to do now but live from day to day and gossip.
    I knew that’s what they’d do once I’d told them the news. Straight off they’d hitch the horse to the wagon and go into Fontainebleau to see Tante Marie’s sister. Had they told her already of Tommy’s visit? Had Jules been informed of it and said nothing?
    As Jean-Guy called out to them from the top of the last hill, they both stood still, rooted to their little plot of earth. Suspicion, a wariness of strangers, the sharp divide between the classes—all these and more ran through my mind.
    Georges Morissette was seventy-two; Tante Marie, who knows? Some said sixty-five; she said sixty-one, but that couldn’t be. Some said eighty, and it was those who had felt the acid of her tongue.
    Georges lowered the axe and ruffled Jean-Guy’s hair. Marie-Christine clung to me, intuitively understanding that her brother was the favoured even though she bore Tante Marie’s name.
    ‘Madame, is something the matter?’ he asked.
    ‘Ah, no. We’re just out for a walk. It’s so beautiful, isn’t it? All this?’
    I indicated the last of the autumnal colours. He was mystified. Giving a shrug, Georges lifted a hand to scratch the grey stubble of a cheek, then got under the double chin and did the throat. ‘Beautiful … perhaps, but the winter, eh? That’ll be something with all this talk of war. You should be splitting wood like me and not strolling about.’
    ‘We’ve already done the wood. Today, we took up the last of the onions, didn’t we, Marie? Jean-Guy, he has come home from school at noon to tie them in perfect bunches. Together we have hung them from the beams in the storeroom.’
    Georges clucked his tongue and slid his thumbs under the broad straps that held up the baggy, faded bleu de travail yet let his stomach move with ease. Squinting into the sun, he pushed back his black beret and rubbed his forehead until a glint of opportunity came into his dark brown eyes. ‘You mind the mice like I told you. That old place, it needs work, madame. My cousin’s