Night Without Stars by Winston Graham Page A

intermittent, but it was still gushing off the gutter.
    I said: “I half guessed that. Or that you’d separated. Of course I wasn’t sure.”
    She said in a flat unemotional voice: “He was in the Resistance, Giles. He was one of the leaders although he was only twenty-three. He was a journalist; it helped him to get about. Even during the occupation they were allowed some freedom of movement if they pretended to be—not unfriendly. He volunteered for active sabotage work. He was a man without fear—full of high spirits, reckless. Just being with him was an adventure. I met him in February three years ago, and we were married in the April. Six weeks afterwards he was arrested. In May they hanged him in the public square in Nice. They left his body hanging there for a week.…”
    I said after a bit: “ I’m so very sorry. I’d no idea.”
    â€œThey left his body hanging there for a week. Every day I used to pray, dear God, may they have cut him down—but he was still there. I used to tell myself it wasn’t the Jacques I knew and loved, that Jacques had gone, was far away. But it didn’t work. He was still there … moving when the wind blew, changing colour …” She put up her hands to her face with a sort of defensive movement, but decked it. “ You understand then why people have to be buried—before your image of them is destroyed.”
    I didn’t say anything. Now that the rain had stopped you could hear the stir of the sea down below.
    â€œI still dream about it,” she said. “I wake up sweating all over. That’s funny, isn’t it? …”
    I said: “ You were very much in love with him.”
    â€œYes. I was very much in love with him.”
    Neither of us said anything then for a long time. There was a canary somewhere chirping in a cage.
    â€œOh, well,” she said. “We had six weeks—though he was away half that time. It’s as much perhaps as you cart expect, isn’t it?”
    â€œI don’t know. I don’t know the answer at all.”
    â€œFather Mathieu talks about resignation to the will of God. I spoke of that to—to someone I know—and he said the will of God is the priest’s name for anything that looks like the will of a stupid ape.”
    â€œIt’s a point of view.”
    â€œWell, hasn’t it been so in your case too? Doesn’t everything seem wanton, aimlessly wicked?”
    â€œâ€¦ You should have asked me six weeks ago. I’d have cheered for your friend then. Now one feels faintly less worked up. That’s your doing.”
    After a minute she got up. “ Have you a cigarette, please?”
    I lit one for her and knew that her lips weren’t quite steady. I said: “God knows, I’m completely uncertain about everything. We all are these days. But it’s all much too difficult to put in simple terms.”
    â€œCan it be put in any terms?”
    â€œI don’t know.… As for you …”
    She stirred her coffee, which must have gone cold. “As for me?”
    It was on my lips to say, “There’s Pierre Grognard,” but I knew somehow that it wasn’t so. She might be going to marry him, but he didn’t make up for the man she’d really cared for.
    â€œSomething may work out.”
    â€œYes,” she said. “Something may work out.”
    I turned at a sound in the doorway behind us, and Alix said:
    â€œAh, Mère Roger, this is my English friend, M. Gordon.”
    Mère Roget had a deep voice and a hard hand. I pictured her as a woman of about sixty, formidable and untidy. She wore carpet slippers.
    â€œGordon is a French name, m’sieu.”
    â€œIs it? It’s also English and Scottish.”
    â€œThere is a village near here called Gourdon, which is also known as the Eagle’s Nest because it is high in the mountains.”
    â€œThat is