‘Nothing, it’s the dog. I’m sure it’s asking us not to stay. To leave. It’s trying to warn us. That’s it, it’s trying to tell us that something here doesn’t want us.’

‘Franck, is that the only excuse you can come up with for going back to Paris?’

‘No, Lise, I’m serious.’

October 1914

October 1914

The mornings were even more disquieting than the nights. Before the war, days would begin peacefully. The sun gently roused the leaves; light and noise built gradually as robins and blackbirds began to sing. Birdsong spoke of blue skies. But now the soundtrack to dawn was provided by wild cats, a much darker theme. Birdsong signalled survival. When birds sing it is to announce themselves, to mark out a territory. Lions do the same, but their raucous growling thunders out like falling rocks. When you’re woken by those noises they stay in your head all day and haunt you until sundown with the fear of being eaten.

Three months is enough to form a habit and in the village there was now a little saying, born of people’s natural tendency to create proverbs and elevate them to the status of principles: ‘If to a lion’s roar you wake, all day long you tremble and quake.’ Couderc, however, declared himself enchanted by the roars. And in this he was like the children. When they were in bed and heard the lions, they prayed for the noise to continue. To them, the cries of the lions were like the call from a promised land. It was as if the animal magic of the fairy tales and fables they were made to read at school had come to life. Hearing the wild beasts told of a full-size circus or some other tempting world. Fortunately, the hill was too steep and too off-putting for the children to attempt to get near the lions. And like their mothers, they were too exhausted to try to run away. In August they had worked hard to bring in the harvest and the hay, and then moved straight on to ploughing and sowing the new crops, doing it all without the men, at a time when there was no more manure, no oxen and no energy. School had started, but after class the children did not go home to do their homework. They were in the fields until sunset. As well as pulling potatoes, there were walnuts, chestnuts and mushrooms to harvest, all of which required bending low, something the old people could no longer do.