Here his mother had fled from the heat of Algerian summers and the deadening routine of the cantonment. Here Theo had come every holiday of his childhood in the golden age before the Great War. His father was killed at Ypres before Christmas 1914; the aunts had lost their five sons by 1918 when Theo himself entered cadet school, aged just eighteen. The women’s fervent prayers on his behalf caused the war to end just in time to ensure his survival. The luck that had saved him from the carnage of the western front continued to shine on him in peace. He enjoyed his profession and was proud to be an officer in the best army in the world. He managed his career with some success so that he did not have to spend years in a barrack yard in the desert. After a suitable time, when he was promoted to captain, he married, Louise, a distant cousin; a daughter, Sabine, was born; his wife died.

The general was speaking now. Wiping his lips firmly with his napkin, he began the urgent subject of the moment, the cleansing of France. The question of what was to be done with the supporters of the previous regime was not new, but it had become urgent. The courts martial that had been planned must be set up, region by region, to deal with the crimes of Vichy. It had to be done as rapidly as possible in order to contain the popular fury which, since the landings in Normandy, had erupted in summary justice all over France. For the men of London, and above all for the general, it was necessary to seize control and to reforge national unity. For the Resistance leaders in France it was another matter. They wanted revenge for the deaths of their comrades, for the tortures, deportations, requisitions they had undergone.

‘France requires us to forget, to concentrate on the reestablishment of the authority of the Republic,’ the general was saying now.

‘But some examples must be made …’

‘Of course, the guilty must be punished, the leaders, but it would be a disaster to rummage through the injustices of four years to try to right every wrong. France must be strong and united to take her rightful place among the Allies at the peace conference. We must put the past behind us.’

The two guests glanced at one another. They had stayed and suffered and now the exiles came back to tell them to forgive their enemies. They did not want to give up one of the sweetest fruits of victory.

‘We must examine what went on in the local administration,’ said one of them. ‘And in the police, the town halls … It was there that Vichy weighed on the people.’

‘It is these areas, in particular, that have to be controlled,’ the general contradicted him. ‘They are precisely where individual resentments and personal enmities are exercised. We want no revolutionary justice. The state must take over as soon as possible. Some terrible scenes have been enacted, shaving of women’s heads, beating of men, even here in Paris.’