The room felt too small for such big statements.

André was still seated on his bed, but he had swung his legs up on top of the quilt, using his hands to do so, and arranged them straight, the way you do cutlery. He no longer wore the brace. He reached for a cigarette from a packet on the bedside table.

‘In America,’ I pointed out, accepting a cigarette not because I wanted one but because he’d offered it, ‘Edgar Hoover and Joe McCarthy are yelling blue murder about reds under the bed, but that’s not far off what is happening here too. Is that what you think?’

‘Exactly. We must be so careful. There is a desire for change in France. We are a country on the edge. Governed by constantly changing coalitions. Nothing is stable. Look at the violent demonstrations in the Champs-Élysées demanding independence for Algeria from France.’

‘You don’t think it’s scare-mongering?’

He turned his head sharply to look at me in the chair. ‘Do you?’

I shook my head. ‘You think Russia is trying to destabilise France?’

‘Trust me, Eloïse. I know for a fact that the First Main Directorate of the MGB – that is the Soviet Intelligence agency – maintains a network of surveillance over sensitive positions in society and is infiltrating foreign governments and businesses. They are expert at insinuating themselves into industrial plants, as well as taking up posts in educational institutions to assert control over young minds. I tell you, it is happening all over France right now.’

‘Laniel’s government should be putting a stop to it.’

‘The man who should be leading us is General Charles de Gaulle. His day will come again, and when it does, things will change.’

‘André, why didn’t you tell me that you used to come down to Serriac at weekends?’

The question caught us both by surprise.

He exhaled a grey skein of smoke to hide behind.

‘Was there a girl?’ I pressed him. ‘Someone special you came to see?’

‘No.’

‘Why then? If I am to help you, André, I need to know what is going on.’

He lay back against the pillows, staring up at the ceiling. ‘The American airmen like to come into town on a Saturday night.’ His words were slow to emerge. ‘I used to come down from Paris to mix with them, play poker to get them drunk. They are discouraged from coming into town by their senior officers because trouble has a tendency to flare up.’

The light in the room was drifting away, the way the haze drifts over the marshes. A fat mosquito was buzzing against the window.

‘Do you have a girl in Paris, André?’

‘No.’

‘Too dangerous to allow anyone close?’

‘No, in Paris their blood is too thin. Their hearts are too small. Not like down here. Here blood runs deep.’