‘Very heroic.’ Monsieur Vernhes had a very flat, unemphatic voice, Suzie noticed, yet his tone was sneering. ‘We should drive them out ourselves, not sit here waiting for de Gaulle and the Allies to arrive and do it for us. If we wait for them, it could be winter before the Germans are gone. Can you hold out that long?’

‘Well hold out as long as we have to, provided there’s no killing.’

‘So there’ll have to be a massacre before you’ll act?’

‘Don’t spoil the day,’ Madame Ariane begged. ‘We’ve been round this track before. Let’s see if there is any reaction to today’s demonstration. Let’s see what happened at Longas.’ The schoolmaster was not placated. ‘Look at this place,’ he said. ‘We’ve taken it over; it’s in the hands of the Party and the people now. The mayor, the gendarmes, the local authority, they’re running it now and neither Vichy nor the Germans can do anything about it. That’s what we want at Lepech.’

‘No we don’t,’ said Henri. ‘What we want is the Germans out. We don’t want the Party in. And if we’re allowed to choose, we won’t choose them.’

‘We’re the party of the martyred, the shot, the deported. We’ve done everything to rid this country of the fascists and we’ll run it when they’ve gone.’

‘Others resisted too, from the very first.’

Madame Ariane was looking from one man to the other anxiously. Suzie thought, she is caught between the two of them, like me between her and Sabine. One is powerful and has to be soothed; the other she agrees with, but can’t show it. So she speaks with a calm voice to try to prevent a quarrel. She doesn’t want to be forced to choose. She would choose Henri, of course, anyone can see that. And would I choose her or Sabine?

‘If we were questioned,’ Madame Ariane said to the girls when they were ready to set off for home, ‘it’s most unlikely to happen, but if there was a denunciation …’ She seemed to be talking more to herself than to them, convincing herself that she had taken no risks. ‘But if you were questioned, you would say that we went for a picnic.’

‘You’re telling us to lie,’ Sabine said.

‘I want you to omit part of the truth. But, yes, if you were obliged to reply directly to the question, did you attend the Fourteenth of July celebrations at Lavallade, I think you should lie.’

‘The sisters said we must always tell the truth, whatever it cost us.’

Madame Ariane gave a small smile, not looking at her stepdaughter. ‘Sabine, let’s have no more of this. If you decide to sacrifice yourself because of your fidelity to absolute truthfulness, I can’t stop you. I just ask you to remember that you have no right to implicate others. I think that even you, with your religious scruples, might hesitate when truthfulness demands a list of names. Some people die under torture rather than do that.’