Doctor Who_ Toy Soldiers Part 2

Amalie shrugged. 'She only had that thin dress on. And she's so sensitive to the cold.' Her voice was ragged, her throat hot and dry from shouting and crying.

With a final blare of its horn, the police car at last entered the square and clattered to a halt, its dull black paint covered with dust. A smart gendarme jumped out of the driver's seat, scanned the scene briefly, then walked towards Amalie. His face was handsome, black hair forming a neat line across his forehead beneath the brim of his cap.

'Madame Govier? I'm sorry it has taken so long for me to get here. The road from Touleville is not good.'

Amalie waved away the apology, feeling sick and weary.

Somehow this arrival - the official recognition of the incident - had the effect of making it more real to her. Of making it final.

Gabrielle was gone. Maybe she was dead, like Nicolas.

Maybe even G.o.d couldn't bring her back.

The gendarme spoke softly. 'You've searched everywhere?'

Amalie nodded again. 'Everyone has helped. The whole town has been out. The children have looked in the places where children go. She's not here. She's gone.'

'And there's no one who could have - taken her away?

Legitimately, I mean? A relative for instance?'

Amalie looked away, stared at the ancient red bricks of the chateau. She heard Nadienne speak for her.

'Everyone Gabrielle knew in this part of the country is here in this square now. No one's missing.'

One of Nadienne's young bridesmaids was standing on the steps of the chateau, perhaps twenty metres away, her pink dress crimped up to the knees and slightly muddied.

Beside her stood a negro woman, talking to her.

Amalie blinked. A negro woman? Where had she come from? Was she something to do with James? But surely he would have told her if he had brought a servant.

Besides which, despite her race, the woman didn't look like a servant. She was wearing European clothes, a riding outfit by the look of it: loose-fitting black trousers, a dull red woollen jacket, and high-sided leather boots. She wore no hat. Her hair was short-cropped, greying around the fringes.

She turned, gazed at Amalie with an even, intelligent gaze, a gaze that seemed to read from Amalie's face the shock, the fear and the guilt, a.s.sess them, give a verdict. It was the look of an independent person, a person who knew her place in the world and didn't have to take orders from anyone.

But there remained the problem of what she was doing here. She certainly hadn't been at the wedding, and Amalie was fairly sure there were no negroes living in Septangy, certainly none with the independent bearing this woman seemed to have. Such a thing would have been spoken of.

She must have ridden in this morning, or perhaps even this afternoon.

The gendarme coughed, and Amalie saw that he was holding a blue notebook and a pencil. 'I will need to take some details,' he said.

'Just a moment.' But when Amalie looked round again, the negro woman was gone. The bridesmaid, Christine, was trotting across the square. She stopped in front of Amalie, a little out of breath, and started smoothing her skirt, brushing at the mud. As if that mattered.

'Christine, who is that foreigner you were talking to?'

asked Amalie gently.

Christine glanced at the gendarme, then blushed, her eyes to the ground. 'She was helping us look for Gabrielle,'

she said. 'Her name's Forrester.'

There was a pause. Amalie and the gendarme looked at one another.

'She was looking for the teddy bear that Gabrielle had,'

added Christine, blushing again. 'She said it was important.'

'The teddy bear!' Amalie stared. She remembered the tall man with the toy bear, smiling and patting Gabrielle on the head that morning. He had said that the bear was a sample.

What could he have to do with anything?

A dark pit opened up at the bottom of her mind. Perhaps the man, having won Gabrielle's trust with the toy, had come back and taken her away. Perhaps even now he was driving her to Lyons, or on the train to Paris. G.o.d knew what he had told her. Something about aeroplanes, most probably.

Gabrielle was such a fool about aeroplanes. And she had looked so pretty in that dress - so grown-up - oh, that dress had been a mistake.

The gendarme was asking something; Amalie, her stomach churning, just shook her head.

'Madame Govier - I said, when did Gabrielle obtain this toy?'

Nadienne answered, 'Before the wedding. I saw her carrying it in the church.'

'I saw it too,' said Christine.

'And the foreign woman - she knew about it, but she was not at the wedding?' asked the gendarme.

Suddenly Amalie could stand no more of it. 'Of course she knew!' she shouted. 'She is in league with him!' That would explain it, she thought: the fine clothes, the independent bearing. The woman had escaped the usual servile fate of her race by becoming a criminal. But at the same time another part of her mind was telling Amalie that it didn't make any sense, that the woman would not have stayed behind if - The gendarme was speaking. 'In league with whom, Madame Govier?'

Amalie told him about the man in the tall hat. When she had finished, he nodded, looked around sharply. 'Perhaps we should question this foreign woman. Where has she gone?'

Christine, evidently aware that this could be very important, said carefully, 'She said that she had to meet a friend, but she might be back later.'

The gendarme met Amalie's eyes, gave the tiniest of shrugs. Amalie felt the dark pit at the bottom of her mind get deeper. She remembered that her cousin James had said you could never trust the Africans, however intelligent and apparently loyal they were.

'We will look for her,' said the gendarme. 'We will find her, Madame Govier. Don't worry. I will telephone Lyons and ask them to check the roads and the railway station.'

Amalie was not convinced. She knew that it was going to need more than efficiency to find her daughter now, now that she was in the hands of - She didn't dare to think of a name for the man who must have taken Gabrielle. She looked up at the dark shape of the chateau and the heavy grey bell-jar of the sky above it.

'Gabrielle!' she murmured. 'Gabrielle! Where have they taken you?'

Hannah Tannenbaum leaned against the window, forehead pressed against the cold pane, watching the stranger make his way down the street in the frosty sunshine. He was well-fed; he walked briskly, and his eyes were bright and alive.

This alone marked him out as rich, as much as his linen suit, fedora hat and silk scarf. Perhaps, thought Hannah, he was an artist - his clothes, and his manner, were not right for an aristocrat or a professional man. She wondered what an artist was doing in Breslau, and why he hadn't been conscripted into the army.

The stranger stopped at each of the little houses in the street, seeming to examine them. He poked at the stones of the wall with the coloured umbrella he was carrying, or pressed his nose to the windows, or did both. Like a child in a street of toy shops, she thought - and that made her think of Josef, and then her heart clenched inside her and she prayed, please, please please, please.

She looked over her shoulder at her living-room, bare of everything except the hard wooden table and the chairs, and Edi's bed, which Hannah had brought downstairs for warmth.

The little girl was silent, asleep probably, her breathing rapid and troubled.

All I have left, thought Hannah, and forgetting about the stranger she made her way across the bare boards to Edi's bedside. The girl's white face was still, cold; a sticky line of pus ran over her chin from one of the sores on her lips.

Hannah spat on a handkerchief and wiped it away, as gently as possible. Edi stirred, gave a hacking cough, then shuddered and went back to sleep.

Oh G.o.d, if she's getting a cold, if she gets pneumonia - if only the rations were more, if only we could get more food - if only Josef - Josef.

'We were chasing him and he vanished.' That was what the Schneider boys had said. That he'd vanished before their eyes. They'd made out it was a game they'd been having, this chase, though Hannah had known better. The policeman, Weiss, hadn't pressed them. All he had done was a.s.sure Hannah that every effort would be made to find her son.

And oh, they had looked. Szymon and Itzhak Goldblum, their cousin Rebecca who was staying with them, all had turned out, and the old men Lutek and Artur Feigenbaum.

Even David Bau, the orphan, himself hardly older than Josef and almost as ill as Edi, had weakly insisted that Josef was his friend and he must come and help them to look for him.

They had followed Josef's trail down the railway track, they had walked around in the dark cold of the forest, they had called and called and called. Meanwhile Weiss had telegraphed Munich to see if Josef had jumped on to the train and gone there. 'No trace,' the reply had been. But railway staff, Weiss said, had more things to do than check for stowaways. Hannah knew that Weiss thought Josef had run away, possibly from the Schneiders to start with, then, once he'd started, from the whole icy starving mess that was the countryside, in the hope of finding life and warmth in the city.

Hannah's protests that he wouldn't leave her, that he knew she needed him to help with Edi, had gone unheeded.

But now, six weeks later, when he had not returned, she hoped that Weiss was right. She would forgive Josef for deserting her, forgive him anything if only he was still alive.

Please, she prayed again. Please let him be alive Please let him be alive.

Hannah was jolted back to the present by a rapping at the window. She turned and saw the red crook-handle of an umbrella rap against the pane. Startled, she put her hand to her mouth, then remembered the stranger who had been walking down the street.

She walked to the window, called, 'Yes? What do you want?'

His face appeared, pressed against the pane, his breath misting the gla.s.s. Blue-grey eyes bulged at her, a mouth grimaced. She fell back in shock. The stranger frowned, mouthed something, then frowned more deeply, his entire face creasing. There was something inescapably comic about it; Hannah wondered if he were a circus clown rather than an artist.

'What do you want?' she repeated.

The umbrella handle tapped against the window again.

Hannah hesitated, then saw the stranger shake his head and disappear from her view. She ran to the window, saw his back retreating down the street, his head swinging this way and that as if admiring the view.

She realized that she couldn't just let him go. She had to speak to him.

She opened the window, shouted h.e.l.lo. She almost asked, Do you have any food? - but that would have been begging, and Hannah did not beg.

The stranger turned, repeated the exaggerated frown Hannah had seen through the window. 'I'm looking for the mother of a little boy,' he said at last. 'And the owner of a teddy bear.'

Hannah almost fainted. Suddenly she was acutely aware of her own hunger, her own weakness, the things she tried constantly to forget in the battle to keep Edi alive until this cruel blockade was ended.

'I' she began weakly, then started again. 'My little boy is missing,' she said. 'And yes - he had a teddy bear.' She paused. The stranger remained staring at her, the deep frown still on his face. 'Have you found it?' Still the stranger didn't move. For some irrational reason Hannah began to feel hope. 'Have you -' she swallowed. 'Have you found Josef?'

The stranger marched back to her window, ignoring the door. To her amazement he put a foot, clad in a polished leather shoe, up on to the windowsill.

'No, but it's possible that I will. Eventually. May I come in?'

The Auberge de Septangy was crowded. Several young men, still in their wedding best, were playing billiards. The women from the wedding party sat around the polished wooden tables, talking in low voices. Henri, Nadienne's father and Amalie's brother, looked almost as if he were on guard at the door. He looked round the room repeatedly, his face stern. From time to time he stroked his grey moustache - which Amalie knew was a sign that he was worried. Well, she thought, he ought to be worried. But what could he do? What could any of them do, but trust in the gendarmerie, and pray.

Wearily, she signalled to Claude, behind the counter. The old man nodded, and a moment later shuffled up to her table with a small dark gla.s.s of armagnac.

'That's your fifth,' said Nadienne. At some time during the afternoon she'd managed to change her wedding dress for smart yellow travelling clothes. There were even fresh flowers pinned to her hat. Her new husband, Jean-Pierre, didn't appear to have had time to change; he sat crouched forward in his seat, his suit rumpled, occasionally scratching his head, as if unsure of his role in this unexpected situation.

But Nadienne was sure of hers. She patted Amalie's hand, said, 'Now that must be the last one. When they find Gabrielle you don't want to be drunk, do you?'

'They won't find Gabrielle.'

Nadienne glanced at her husband. 'Now, Amalie, you know they'll find her. Soon.'

Amalie shook her head. It was the one thing she was sure of, that she would never see her child again. She knew that by the way her own hand moved when she reached out for her gla.s.s of armagnac: as if it were a dead thing, a wooden thing, being pulled by puppet-strings. The burn of the brandy in her mouth, too, was unreal. As if it were happening to someone else, a different woman who hadn't lost her daughter and could still take pleasure in the taste of things.

There was a movement in the corner of her eye, outside, beyond the wide square windows of the bar. Amalie turned her head, saw the negro woman that she had seen in the square earlier. She was still wearing her riding clothes. She looked at Amalie, with the same independent, judging gaze she had used earlier, then beckoned.

Amalie jumped in shock. 'It's her!' she shouted.

Faces everywhere turned to stare at her. Voices called her name. She ignored them, lurched to her feet and strode towards the door.

'Gabrielle!' she called. 'You have got my Gabrielle!'

'For G.o.d's sake -' Jean-Pierre's voice. A hand caught Amalie's arm. She struggled to shake it off, almost fell.

'But she's out there! She beckoned to me!'

She reached the door, pushed it open. The negro woman was standing there, a slight smile on her face. A very tall young man in a morning-suit stood by her side. He was glancing uncertainly up and down the street.

'Amalie Govier?' said the woman.

Amalie nodded, unsure what to say. Had these people come to ask for a ransom for Gabrielle?

'We thought we should tell you how we're coming along,'

said the woman. 'With the investigation. With trying to find Gabrielle, that is.'

'You're trying to find her?' asked Amalie. 'But I thought - I mean, who - ?'