The Caves of Périgord: A Novel

said as he broke off and beamed down at her with a rather endearing foolishness on his face. “Dear Manners. Don’t you think it’s time you took me to bed?”

    Clothilde came onto the hotel terrace, looked at Lydia stretching contentedly like a cat in the sun, and glanced at Manners eating his morning croissant. Sipping her coffee, Lydia felt Clothilde’s amused gaze, and stared innocently back. Clothilde gave a distinct wink, sat down to join them, and said, “I was telephoned at home by the London Embassy late last night. They had a message that the ransom is accepted. Your father’s cave painting is being returned later today.”
    “Jolly good,” said Manners. “I’ve had a message as well, from Malrand. It was dropped off at the hotel here first thing this morning.”
    Clothilde looked pointedly at her watch. “First thing? It’s nearly eleven.” Manners blushed, and Lydia smiled quietly. “Mine came before eight A.M. A cocktail at his house tomorrow evening at six,” Clothilde went on. “Mine had a small note added—not to let our German friend know about it.”
    “Very well. It will give us a chance to ask him why his security chap has been sniffing round in our footsteps. And to see if he’s prepared to tell us about Marat and the hiding of the guns,” said Manners. “Do you have any plans today, Clothilde? Lydia and I rather thought of looking round la Ferrassie again, trying the far side of the road toward Cumont.”
    “I have some museum work I must do, and a meeting with architects about the new building. But I’m rather more intrigued by Malrand asking us to see him again,” said Clothilde. “In the meantime, I had a call from my stepfather about the parachute drop at Cumont, the one the Germans ambushed. He did an oral history project with the children at his school, getting them to interview all their relatives about their memories of the Resistance. He used some of it in his book. Something was jogging his mind, so he went back to the papers they had written, and pulled out two. I went to get them, had them photocopied, and here they are. They are very vague, but they might be significant. My mother sends you her warm regards, Lydia, and says she appreciated your delicacy yesterday.”
    Lydia covered her embarrassment by reaching for the papers. She felt a touch of relief. She enjoyed bedtime romps, but chose them with such care and infrequency that she had never got accustomed to sharing breakfasts the next morning. Conversation the morning after so often seemed so forced and fraught with forbidding amounts of meaning that the occasion cried out for the distraction of a newspaper. In the bedroom when they woke, Manners had solved that problem in the most satisfying way. But now over coffee, and feeling a little shy about her own emotions for the man and nervously hopeful that this affair would last, she was glad of the prospect of some work.
    The photocopies were of the small cahiers —notebooks—of graphed paper that French schoolchildren use, in the neat round handwriting that used to be standard. It was the handwriting that Clothilde still used, neat and legible. They took one sheaf each. Lydia’s was from a girl called Margueritte Perusin, and she began to read.
My brother Jeannot was sixteen years old when I was born, and he was the member of my family who fought with the Resistance even though he was very young. He helped with the parachute drops that came from England and America. Because our family has a farm, Jeannot was very good with horses. My mother says that Jeannot was away all night at one parachute drop near Cumont just before the invasion at Normandy when the German soldiers came to shoot the Resistance fighters and the horses they used. The Germans were very cruel. Jeannot came back home in the middle of the night to take our horses so that he and his friends could move the carts and take the English guns away. Jeannot went to la Ferrassie, but there was only one cart and it was empty because the guns had been hidden in a cave by the Englishman who was called “ capitaine .” Jeannot was frightened of the Englishman who was very fierce. Jeannot took the carts away to hide them, my mother said. My father said that he was very cross with Jeannot when he came back because he was frightened we would lose the horses. But Jeannot had boasted that the work was very important to the war. They now had special guns that could shoot at the German tanks, and when