Hunting Ground by J. Robert Janes Page A

the nightmare will be over.
    The last of the embers glowed in the fireplace. Tommy gave a contented sigh and eased a sleeping Marie-Christine off his lap and into my arms. I knew I was at a very dangerous point. I still couldn’t get over his dropping in. He’d been to Switzerland, was on his way to England. As we left the library, I let my mind drift back over the late afternoon. The bulky cable-knit sweater, baggy brown cords, and boots were still fixed in memory. He had been down at the end of the garden, eating an apple and examining the lay of the land with the curiosity and delight of a prospective buyer. In that broken, atrocious accent, he had said he hoped the intrusion wouldn’t inconvenience me, but my delight had all but overwhelmed me, and I had begun to wonder about him.
    ‘Marie, sleep well, my little one.’ Bending over her, I tucked the covers up, added another blanket, and left the door ajar in case she should waken in the night.
    Tommy was in Jean-Guy’s room, standing by the bed, examining the model fighter aeroplane that hung by a length of string from the ceiling. In the half-light from the corridor, we were very close. He had raised two partridges just before we had found him that day. ‘Will you really take him hunting tomorrow?’ I softly asked. ‘He’s so excited, he’ll dream of it all night.’
    ‘He should. I did when my dad first promised to take me with him.’
    ‘And the permit? Will you break the law and cause me to lose my husband’s boyhood rifle?’
    A single-shot Browning, a lovely gun and just the thing because it was so light and one couldn’t miss with only one shot.
    Tommy grinned. I could see that he was just as excited by the prospect as Jean-Guy. ‘If we shoot at all, we’ll do it quietly.’
    Softly closing the door, I led him back to the library. ‘Would you like another cognac?’ I asked, my voice uncertain. The embers had all but lost their glow. The need to be held by someone was so very strong in me. The need to feel the warmth of a lover’s arms if only for a night, made me silent and ashamed.
    ‘Another cognac,’ he said throwing more wood on the fire, and took the bottle from me and replenished our glasses. ‘Tell me about your husband?’
    ‘There’s nothing to tell.’ I shook my head and took a quick sip, but had it shown, my wanting to go to bed with him?
    ‘Is your passport French?’ he asked.
    I was startled. ‘My passport … ? Ah, no. I’ve never changed it. Being married to Jules, I’ve simply taken things for granted. No one here has asked. Why should they? I’m as French as any of them.’
    This time, he sat in one of the chairs but leaned over to rest his elbows on his knees so as to be closer to the fire. ‘I assume you know, of course, why you haven’t been issued gas masks. Only those with French parents are getting them as of now. Surely, Jean-Guy has told you this. The school …’
    A scraped knee, a torn shirt. Nothing said by my son, but his pride hurt by something I hadn’t even understood: a British mother.
    I told him then that I’d wanted to take the children to England, but that Jules had said they were sending some things from the Louvre to be stored here.
    Tommy nodded. ‘That was wise of him. I’m glad to hear of it.’
    But would it help? I could see that he was thinking this over but was too conscious of my feelings to have said.
    ‘What did you do with the earrings?’ he asked.
    ‘Me? I put them back in the box where they’d come from.’
    That led to a discussion of my father-in-law’s mistress, to reminders of the Lautrecs, and finally to my showing him the contents of that box.
    For the longest time, he simply sat looking down at that jewellery, the firelight catching the intense interest over which I could have known nothing then.
    At last, he fished out the tiara. ‘It’s paste,’ I heard myself saying. ‘A fake but obviously a very good one.’
    Tommy set the box aside and ran a thumb over the