Текст книги "The Nightingale"

Автор книги: Kristin Hannah

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“We hide here until nightfall,” Eduardo said. “Over that ridge is the Bidassoa River. On the other bank is Spain. We are close—but close is nothing. Between the river and your freedom are patrols with dogs. These patrols will shoot at anything they see moving. Do not move.”

Isabelle watched Eduardo walk away from the group. When he was gone, she and the men hunkered down behind giant boulders and inside the lee of fallen trees.

For hours, the rain beat down on them, turned the mud beneath them into a marsh. She shivered and drew her knees into her chest and closed her eyes. Impossibly, she fell into a deep, exhausted sleep that was over much too quickly.

At midnight, Eduardo wakened her.

The first thing Isabelle noticed when she opened her eyes was that the rain had stopped. The sky overhead was studded with stars. She climbed tiredly to her feet and immediately winced in pain. She could only imagine how much the airmen’s feet hurt—she was lucky enough to have shoes that fit.

Under cover of night, they set off again, the sound of their footsteps swallowed by the roar of the river.

And then they were there, standing amid the trees at the edge of a giant gorge. Far below, the water crashed and roiled and roared, splashing up along the rock sides.

Eduardo gathered them close. “We can’t swim across. The rains have made the river a beast that will swallow us all. Follow me.”

They walked along the river for a mile or two, and then Eduardo stopped again. She heard a creaking sound, like a boat line stretched by rising seas, and an occasional clatter.

At first, there was nothing to see. Then the bright white searchlights on the other side flashed across the white-tipped, rushing river, and shone on a rickety suspension bridge that linked this side of the gorge to the opposite shore. There was a Spanish checkpoint not far away, with guards patrolling back and forth.

“Holy Mother o’ God,” one of the airmen said.

“Fuck me,” said another.

Isabelle joined the men in a crouch behind some bushes, where they waited, watching the searchlights crisscross the river.

It was after two in the morning when Eduardo finally nodded. There was no movement on the other side of the gorge at all. If their luck held—or if they had any at all—the sentries were asleep at their posts.

“Let’s go,” Eduardo whispered, getting the men to their feet. He led them to the start of the bridge—a sagging sling with rope sides and a wooden-slat floor, through which the rushing white river could be seen in strips. Several of the slats were missing. The bridge blew side to side in the wind and made a whining, creaking sound.

Isabelle looked at the men, most of whom were pale as ghosts.

“One step at a time,” Eduardo said. “The slats look weak but they’ll hold your weight. You have sixty seconds to cross—that’s the amount of time between the searchlights. As soon as you get to the other side, drop to your knees and crawl beneath the window of the guardhouse.”

“You’ve done this before, right?” Teddy said, his voice breaking on “before.”

“Plenty of times, Teddy,” Isabelle lied. “And if a girl can do it, a strapping pilot like you will have no problem at all. Right?”

He nodded. “You bet your arse.”

Isabelle watched Eduardo cross. When he was on the other side, she gathered the airmen close. One by one, counting off in sixty-second intervals, she guided them onto the rope bridge and watched them cross, holding her breath and fisting her hands until each man landed on the opposite shore.

Finally it was her turn. She pushed the sodden hood off her head, waiting for the light to scrape past her and keep going. The bridge looked flimsy and unsound. But it had held the men’s weight; it would hold hers.

She clutched the rope sides and stepped onto the first plank. The bridge swung around her, dipped right and left. She glanced down and saw strips of raging white waters one hundred feet below. Gritting her teeth, she moved steadily forward, stepping from plank to plank to plank until she was on the other side, where she immediately dropped to her knees. The searchlight passed above her. She scrambled forward and up the embankment and into the bushes on the other side, where the airmen were crouched beside Eduardo.

Eduardo led them to a hidden hillock of land and finally let them sleep.

When the sun rose again, Isabelle blinked dully awake.

“It’s not s’ bad here,” Torry whispered beside her.

Isabelle looked around, bleary-eyed. They were in a gully above a dirt road, hidden by a stand of trees.

Eduardo handed them wine. His smile was as bright as the sun that shone in her eyes. “There,” he said, pointing to a young woman on a bicycle not far away. Behind her, a town glinted ivory in the sunlight; it looked like something out of a children’s picture book, full of turrets and clock towers and church spires. “Almadora will take you to the consulate in San Sebastián. Welcome to Spain.”

Isabelle instantly forgot the struggle it had taken to get here, and the fear that accompanied her every step. “Thank you, Eduardo.”

“It won’t be so easy next time,” he said.

“It wasn’t easy this time,” she said.

“They didn’t expect us. Soon, they will.”

He was right, of course. They hadn’t had to hide from German patrols or disguise their scents from dogs, and the Spanish sentinels were relaxed.

“But when you come back again, with more pilots, I’ll be here,” he promised.

She nodded her gratitude and turned to the men around her, who looked as exhausted as she felt. “Come on, men, off we go.”

Isabelle and the men staggered down the road toward a young woman who stood beside a rusted old bicycle. After the false introductions were made, Almadora led them down a maze of dirt roads and back alleys; miles passed until they stood outside an elaborate caramel-hued building in Parte Viejo—the old section of San Sebastián. Isabelle could hear the crashing of distant waves against a seawall.

“Merci,” Isabelle said to the girl.

“De nada.”

Isabelle looked up at the glossy black door. “Come on, men,” she said, striding up the stone steps. At the door, she knocked hard, three times, and then rang the bell. When a man in a crisp black suit answered, she said, “I am here to see the British consul.”

“Is he expecting you?”

“No.”

“Mademoiselle, the consul is a busy—”

“I’ve brought four RAF pilots with me from Paris.”

The man’s eyes bulged a bit.

MacLeish stepped forward. “Lieutenant Torrance MacLeish. RAF.”

The other men followed suit, standing shoulder to shoulder as they introduced themselves.

The door opened. Within a matter of moments, Isabelle found herself seated on an uncomfortable leather chair, facing a tired-looking man across a large desk. The airmen stood at attention behind her.

“I brought you four downed airmen from Paris,” Isabelle said proudly. “We took the train south and then walked across the Pyrenees—”

“You walked?”

“Well, perhaps hiked is a more accurate word.”

“You hiked over the Pyrenees from France and into Spain.” He sat back in his chair, all traces of a smile gone.

“I can do it again, too. With the increased RAF bombings, there are going to be more downed airmen. To save them, we will need financial help. Money for clothes and papers and food. And something for the people we enlist to shelter us along the way.”

“You’ll want to ring up MI9,” MacLeish said. “They’ll pay whatever Juliette’s group needs.”

The man shook his head, made a tsking sound. “A girl leading pilots across the Pyrenees. Will wonders never cease?”

MacLeish grinned at Isabelle. “A wonder indeed, sir. I told her the very same thing.”

TWENTY

Getting out of Occupied France was difficult and dangerous. Getting back in—at least for a twenty-year-old girl with a ready smile—was easy.

Only a few days after her arrival in San Sebastián, and after endless meetings and debriefings, Isabelle was on the train bound for Paris again, sitting in one of the wooden banquettes in the third-class carriage—the only seat available on such short notice—watching the Loire Valley pass by. The carriage was freezing cold and packed with loquacious German soldiers and cowed French men and women who kept their heads down and their hands in their laps. She had a piece of hard cheese and an apple in her handbag, but even though she was hungry—starving, really—she didn’t open her bag.

She felt conspicuous in her ragged, snagged brown pants and woolen coat. Her cheeks were windburned and scratched and her lips were chapped and dry. But the real changes were within. The pride of what she’d accomplished in the Pyrenees had changed her, matured her. For the first time in her life, she knew exactly what she wanted to do.

She had met with an agent from MI9 and formally set up the escape route. She was their primary contact—they called her the Nightingale. In her handbag, hidden in the lining, were one hundred forty thousand francs. Enough to set up safe houses and buy food and clothing for the airmen and the people who dared to house them along the way. She’d given her word to her contact Ian (code name Tuesday) that other airmen would follow. Sending word to Paul—“The Nightingale has sung”—was perhaps the proudest moment of her life.

It was nearing curfew when she disembarked in Paris. The autumnal city shivered beneath a cold, dark sky. Wind tumbled through the bare trees, clattering the empty flower baskets, ruffling and flapping the awnings.

She went out of her way to walk past her old apartment on Avenue de La Bourdonnais and as she passed it, she felt a wave of … longing she supposed. It was as close to a home as she could remember, and she hadn’t stepped inside—or seen her father—in months. Not since the inception of the escape route. It wasn’t safe for them to be together. Instead, she went to the small, dingy apartment that was her most recent home. A mismatched table and chairs, a mattress on the floor, and a broken stove. The rug smelled of the last tenant’s tobacco and the walls were water-stained.

At her front door, she paused, glanced around. The street was quiet, dark. She fitted the skeleton key in the lock and gave a little twist. At the click of sound, she sensed danger. Something was wrong, out of place—a shadow where it shouldn’t be, a clanking of metal from the bistro next door, abandoned by its owner months ago.

She turned around slowly, peered out into the dark, quiet street. Unseen lorries were parked here and there and a few sad little cafés cast triangles of light onto the sidewalk; within the glow, soldiers were thin silhouettes, moving back and forth. An air of desertion hung over the once lively neighborhood.

Across the street, a lamp stood unlit, a barely darker slash against the night air around it.

He was there. She knew it, even though she couldn’t see him.

She moved down the steps, slowly, her senses alert, taking one cautious step at a time. She was sure she could hear him breathing, not far away. Watching her. She knew instinctively that he’d been waiting for her to return, worrying.

“Gaëtan,” she said softly, letting her voice be a lure, casting out, trying to catch him. “You’ve been following me for months. Why?”

Nothing. Silence blew in the wind around her, biting and cold.

“Come here,” she pleaded, tilting her chin.

Still, nothing.

“Now who isn’t ready?” she said. It hurt, that silence, but she understood it, too. With all the risks they were taking, love was probably the most dangerous choice of all.

Or maybe she was wrong, and he wasn’t here, had never been here, watching her, waiting for her. Maybe she was just a silly girl longing for a man who didn’t want her, standing alone in an empty street.

No.

He was there.

*   *   *

That winter was even worse than the year before. An angry God smote Europe with leaden skies and falling snow, day after day after day. The cold was a cruel addendum to a world already bleak and ugly.

Carriveau, like so many small towns in the Occupied Zone, became an island of despair, cut off from its surroundings. The villagers had limited information about what was going on in the world around them, and no one had time to burrow through propagandist papers looking for truth when surviving took so much effort. All they really knew was that the Nazis had become angrier, meaner, since the Americans had joined the war.

On a bleak and freezing predawn morning in early February 1942, when tree limbs snapped and windowpanes looked like cracked pond ice, Vianne woke early and stared at the deeply pitched ceiling of her bedroom. A headache pounded behind her eyes. She felt sweaty and achy. When she drew in a breath, it burned in her lungs and made her cough.

Getting out of bed was not appealing, but neither was starving to death. More and more often this winter, their ration cards were useless; there was simply no food to be had, and no shoes or fabric or leather. Vianne no longer had wood for the stove or money to pay for electricity. With gas so dear, the simple act of bathing became a chore to be endured. She and Sophie slept wrapped together like puppies, beneath a mountain of quilts and blankets. In the past few months, Vianne had begun to burn everything made of wood and to sell her valuables.

Now she was wearing almost every piece of clothing she owned—flannel pants, underwear she’d knitted herself, an old woolen sweater, a neck scarf, and still she shivered when she left the bed. When her feet hit the floor, she winced at the pain from her chilblains. She grabbed a wool skirt and put it on over her pants. She’d lost so much weight this winter that she had to pin the waist in place. Coughing, she went downstairs. Her breath preceded her in white puffs that disappeared almost instantly. She limped past the guest room door.

The captain was gone, and had been for weeks. As much as Vianne hated to admit it, his absences were worse than his appearances these days. At least when he was there, there was food to eat and a fire in the hearth. He refused to let the home be cold. Vianne ate as little of the food he provided as she could—she told herself it was her duty to be hungry—but what mother could let her child suffer? Was Vianne really supposed to let Sophie starve to prove her loyalty to France?

In the darkness, she added another pair of holey socks to the two pairs already on her feet. Then she wrapped herself in a blanket and put on the mittens she’d recently knit from an old baby blanket of Sophie’s.

In the frost-limned kitchen, she lit an oil lamp and carried it outside, moving slowly, breathing hard as she climbed the slick, icy hillside to the barn. Twice she slipped and fell on the frozen grass.

The barn’s metal door handle felt burningly cold, even through her heavy mittens. She had to use all of her weight to slide the door open. Inside, she set down the lantern. The idea of moving the car was almost more than she could stand in her weakened state.

She took a deep painful breath, steeled herself, and went to the car. She put it in neutral, then bent down to the bumper and pushed with all of her strength. The car rolled forward slowly, as if in judgment.

When the trapdoor was revealed, she retrieved the oil lamp and climbed slowly down the ladder. In the long, dark months since her firing and the end of her money, she had sold off her family’s treasures one by one: a painting to feed the rabbits and chickens through the winter, a Limoges tea set for a sack of flour, silver salt and pepper shakers for a stringy pair of hens.

Opening her maman’s jewelry box, she stared down into the velvet-lined interior. Not long ago there had been lots of paste jewelry in here, as well as a few good pieces. Earrings, a filigree silver bracelet, a brooch made of rubies and hammered metal. Only the pearls were left.

Vianne removed one mitten and reached down for the pearls, scooping them into her palm. They shone in the light, as lustrous as a young woman’s skin.

They were the last link to her mother—and to their family’s heritage.

Now Sophie would not wear them on her wedding day or hand them down to her own daughters.

“But she will eat this winter,” Vianne said. She wasn’t sure if it was grief that serrated her voice, or sadness, or relief. She was lucky to have something to sell.

She gazed down at the pearls, felt their weight in her palm, and the way they drew warmth from her body for themselves. For a split second, she saw them glow. Then, grimly, she put the mitten over her hand and climbed back up the ladder.

*   *   *

Three more weeks passed in desolate cold with no sign of Beck. On a frozen late February morning, Vianne woke with a pounding headache and a fever. Coughing, she climbed out of bed and shivered, slowly lifting a blanket from the bed. She wrapped it around herself but it didn’t help. She shivered uncontrollably, even though she wore pants and two sweaters and three pairs of socks. The wind howled outside, clattering against the shutters, rattling the ice-sheened glass beneath the blackout shade.

She moved slowly through her morning routine, trying not to breathe too deeply lest a cough come up from her chest. On chilblained feet that radiated pain with every step, she made Sophie a meager breakfast of watery corn mush. Then the two of them went out into the falling snow.

In silence, they trudged to town. Snow fell relentlessly, whitening the road in front of them, coating the trees.

The church sat on a small, jutting bit of land at the edge of town, bordered on one side by the river and backed by the limestone walls of the old abbey.

“Maman, are you all right?”

Vianne had hunched forward again. She squeezed her daughter’s hand, feeling nothing but mitten on mitten. The breath stuttered in her lungs, burned. “I’m fine.”

“You should have eaten breakfast.”

“I wasn’t hungry,” Vianne said.

“Ha,” Sophie said, trudging forward through the heavy snow.

Vianne led Sophie into the chapel. Inside, it was warm enough that they no longer saw their breath. The nave arched gracefully upward, shaped like hands held together in prayer, held in place by graceful wooden beams. Stained-glass windows glittered with bits of color. Most of the pews were filled, but no one was talking, not on a day this cold, in a winter this bad.

The church bells pealed and a clanging echoed in the nave, and the giant doors slammed shut, extinguishing what little natural light could make it through the snow.

Father Joseph, a kindly old priest who had presided over this church for the whole of Vianne’s life, stepped up to the pulpit. “We will pray today for our men who are gone. We will pray that this war does not last much longer … and we will pray for the strength to resist our enemy and stay true to who we are.”

This was not the sermon Vianne wanted to hear. She had come to church—braved the cold—to be comforted by Father’s sermon on this Sunday, to be inspired by words like “honor” and “duty” and “loyalty.” But today, those ideals felt far, far away. How could you hold on to ideals when you were sick and cold and starving? How could she look at her neighbors when she was taking food from the enemy, even as small an amount as it was? Others were hungrier.

She was so deep in thought that it took her a moment to realize the service had ended. Vianne stood, feeling a wave of dizziness at the motion. She clutched the pew for support.

“Maman?”

“I’m fine.”

In the aisle to their left, the parishioners—mostly women—filed past. Each looked as weak and thin and washed out as she felt, wrapped in layers of wool and newsprint.

Sophie took Vianne’s hand and led her toward the wide-open double doors. At the threshold, Vianne paused, shivering and coughing. She didn’t want to go out into the cold white world again.

She stepped over the threshold (where Antoine had carried her after their wedding … no, that was the threshold of Le Jardin; she was confused) and out into the snowstorm. Vianne held the heavy-knit scarf around her head, clutching it closed at her throat. Bending forward, angling into the wind, she trudged through the wet, heavy snow.

By the time she reached the broken gate in her yard, she was breathing heavily and coughing hard. She stepped around the snow-covered motorcycle with the machine-gun-mounted sidecar and went into the orchard of bare branches. He was back, she thought dully; now Sophie would eat.… She was almost to the front door when she felt herself start to fall.

“Maman!”

She heard Sophie’s voice, heard the fear in it and thought, I’m scaring her, and she regretted it, but her legs were too weak to carry her, and she was tired … so tired …

From far away, she heard the door crack open, heard her daughter scream, “Herr Captain!” and then she heard boot heels striking wood.

She hit the ground hard, cracked her head on the snow-covered step, and lay there. She thought, I’ll rest for a bit, then I’ll get up and make Sophie lunch … but what is there to eat?

The next thing she knew, she was floating, no, maybe flying. She couldn’t open her eyes—she was so tired and her head hurt—but she could feel herself moving, being rocked. Antoine, is that you? Are you holding me?

“Open the door,” someone said, and there was a crack of wood on wood, and then, “I’m going to take off her coat. Go get Madame de Champlain, Sophie.”

Vianne felt herself being laid on something soft. A bed.

She wet her chapped, dry lips and tried to open her eyes. It took considerable effort, and two tries. When she finally managed it, her vision was blurry.

Captain Beck was sitting beside her on her bed, in her bedroom. He was holding her hand and leaning forward, his face close to hers.

“Madame?”

She felt his warm breath on her face.

“Vianne!” Rachel said, coming into the room at a run.

Captain Beck got to his feet instantly. “She fainted in the snow, Madame, and cracked her head on the step. I carried her up here.”

“I’m grateful,” Rachel said, nodding. “I’ll take care of her now, Herr Captain.”

Beck stood there. “She doesn’t eat,” he said stiffly. “All the food goes to Sophie. I have watched this.”

“That’s motherhood in war, Herr Captain. Now … if you’ll excuse me…” She stepped past him and sat down on the bed beside Vianne. He stood there another moment, looking flustered, and then he left the room. “So, you are giving her everything,” Rachel said softly, stroking Vianne’s damp hair.

“What else can I do?” Vianne said.

“Not die,” Rachel said. “Sophie needs you.”

Vianne sighed heavily and closed her eyes. She fell into a deep sleep in which she dreamed she was lying on a softness that was acres and acres of black field, sprawled out from her on all sides. She could hear people calling out to her from the darkness, hear them walking toward her, but she had no desire to move; she just slept and slept and slept. When she woke, it was to find herself on her own divan in her living room, with a fire roaring in the grate not far away.

She sat up slowly, feeling weak and unsteady. “Sophie?”

The guest room door opened, and Captain Beck appeared. He was dressed in flannel pajamas and a woolen cardigan and his jackboots. He said, “Bonsoir, Madame,” and smiled. “It is good to have you back.”

She was wearing her flannel pants and two sweaters and socks and a knit hat. Who had dressed her? “How long did I sleep?”

“Just a day.”

He walked past her and went into the kitchen. Moments later he returned with a cup of steaming café au lait and a wedge of blue cheese and a piece of ham and a chunk of bread. Saying nothing, he set the food down on the table beside her.

She looked at it, her stomach grumbling painfully. Then she looked up at the captain.

“You hit your head and could have died.”

Vianne touched her forehead, felt the bump that was tender.

“What happens to Sophie if you die?” he asked. “Have you considered this?”

“You were gone so long. There wasn’t enough food for both of us.”

“Eat,” he said, gazing down at her.

She didn’t want to look away. Her relief at his return shamed her. When she finally did, when she dragged her gaze sideways, she saw the food.

She reached out and took the plate in her hands, bringing it toward her. The salty, smoky scent of the ham, combined with the slightly stinky aroma of the cheese, intoxicated her, overwhelmed her better intentions, seduced her so thoroughly that there was no choice to be made.

*   *   *

In early March of 1942, spring still felt far away. Last night the Allies had bombed the hell out of the Renault factory in Boulogne-Billancourt, killing hundreds in the suburb on the outskirts of Paris. It had made the Parisians—Isabelle included—jumpy and irritable. The Americans had entered the war with a vengeance; air raids were a fact of life now.

On this cold and rainy evening, Isabelle pedaled her bicycle down a muddy, rutted country road in a heavy fog. Rain plastered her hair to her face and blurred her vision. In the mist, sounds were amplified; the cry of a pheasant disturbed by the sucking sound of her wheels in mud, the near-constant drone of aeroplanes overhead, the lowing of cattle in a field she couldn’t see. A woolen hood was her only protection.

As if being drawn in charcoal on vellum by an uncertain hand, the demarcation line slowly came into view. She saw coils of barbed wire stretched out on either side of a black-and-white checkpoint gate. Beside it, a German sentry sat in a chair, his rifle rested across his lap. At Isabelle’s approach, he stood and pointed the gun at her.

“Halt!”

She slowed the bike; the wheels stuck in the mud and she nearly flew from her seat. She dismounted, stepped down into the muck. Five hundred franc notes were sewn into the lining of her coat, as well as a set of false identity papers for an airman hiding in a safe house nearby.

She smiled at the German, walked her bicycle toward him, thumping through muddy potholes.

“Documents,” he said.

She handed him her forged Juliette papers.

He glanced down at them, barely interested. She could tell that he was unhappy to be manning such a quiet border in the rain. “Pass,” he said, sounding bored.

She repocketed her papers and climbed back onto her bicycle, pedaling away as quickly as she could on the wet road.

An hour and a half later, she reached the outskirts of the small town of Brantôme. Here, in the Free Zone, there were no German soldiers, although lately the French police had proven to be as dangerous as the Nazis, so she didn’t let her guard down.

For centuries, the town of Brantôme had been considered a sacred place that could both heal the body and enlighten the soul. After the Black Death and the Hundred Years’ War ravaged the countryside, the Benedictine monks built an immense limestone abbey, backed by soaring gray cliffs on one side and the wide Dronne River on the other.

Across the street from the caves at the end of town was one of the newest safe houses: a secret room tucked into an abandoned mill built on a triangle of land between the caves and the river. The ancient wooden mill turned rhythmically, its buckets and wheel furred with moss. The windows were boarded up and anti-German graffiti covered the stone walls.

Isabelle paused in the street, glancing both ways to make sure that no one was watching her. No one was. She locked her bicycle to a tree at the end of town and then crossed the street and bent down to the cellar door, opening it quietly. All of the doors to the mill house were boarded up, nailed shut; this was the only way inside.

She climbed down into the black, musty cellar and reached for the oil lamp she kept on a shelf there. Lighting it, she followed the secret passageway that had once allowed the Benedictine monks to escape from the so-called barbarians. Narrow, steeply pitched stairs led to the kitchen. Opening the door, she slipped into the dusty, cobwebby room and kept going upstairs to the secret ten-by-ten room built behind one of the old storerooms.

“She’s here! Perk up, Perkins.”

In the small room, lit only by a single candle, two men got to their feet, stood at attention. Both were dressed as French peasants in ill-fitting clothes.

“Captain Ed Perkins, miss,” the bigger of the two men said. “And this here lout is Ian Trufford or some such name. He’s Welsh. I’m a Yank. We’re both damned happy to see you. We’ve been goin’ half mad in this small space.”

“Only half mad?” she asked. Water dripped from her hooded cloak and made a puddle around her feet. She wanted nothing more than to crawl into her sleeping bag and go to sleep, but she had business to conduct first. “Perkins, you say.”

“Yes, miss.”

“From?”

“Bend, Oregon, miss. My pa’s a plumber and my ma makes the best apple pie in four counties.”

“What’s the weather like in Bend this time of year?”

“What’s this? Middle o’ March? Cold, I guess. Not snowing anymore, maybe, but no sunshine yet.”

She bent her neck from side to side, massaging the pain in her shoulders. All this pedaling and lying and sleeping on the floor took a toll.

She interrogated the two men until she was certain they were who they said they were—two downed airmen who’d been waiting weeks for their chance to get out of France. When she was finally convinced, she opened her rucksack and brought out supper, such as it was. The three of them sat on a ragged, mouse-eaten carpet on the floor with the candle set in the middle. She brought out a baguette and a wedge of Camembert and a bottle of wine, which they passed around.

The Yank—Perkins—talked almost constantly, while the Welshman chewed in silence, saying no thank you to the offer of wine.

“You must have a husband somewhere who is worried about you,” Perkins said as she closed her rucksack. She smiled. Already this had become a common question, especially from the men her age.

“And you must have a wife who is waiting for word,” she said. It was what she always said. A pointed reminder.

“Nah,” Perkins said. “Not me. A lug like me don’t have girls lining up. And now…”

She frowned. “Now what?”

“I know it’s not exactly heroic to think about, but I could walk out of this boarded-up house in this town I can’t fucking pronounce and get shot by some guy I got nothing against. I could die trying to bike across your hills—”