Tapestry Read Online Free PDF Page B

and that of the second wife and little son?
    ‘That wife and son having been killed when the Gestapo left a bomb the Résistance had hidden on the doorstep for him,’ said Hervé Desrochers, shaking his head just like everyone else did at the thought. ‘A collabo , that’s what those people in the Résistance think he is because he has to work with a German. The wife hadn’t helped either by coming home from the flames of a love affair with one of the enemy simply because the thrusting, it was over, and that one had been sent to the Russian front.’
    ‘It was the long absences,’ muttered Dédé sadly. ‘She never knew if Monsieur Jean-Louis would come home.’
    ‘He only has a Lebel Modèle d’ordonnance 1892 six-shot, swing-out, double-action revolver. The eight millimetre,’ said Hervé with a sigh.
    ‘It’s not the 1892, idiot!’ said Antoine. ‘I don’t think he’s ever been allowed one of those. It’s another 1873. Don’t you remember that he was first issued an 1873 by Gestapo stores but that he then lost it in the Rhône at Lyon?’
    A case of arson. A packed cinema …
    ‘The 1873 uses black powder, low-pressure, eleven-millimetre cartridges,’ admitted Hervé reluctantly.
    ‘They’re almost as big as those for the British Webley Mark VI, the .455 inch.’ said Dédé with a sigh.
    ‘The 11.6 millimetre. He looks as exhausted as his geraniums,’ said Antoine. ‘ Maman says he needed that second wife and is going completely to seed in her absence.’
    ‘He needs another gun,’ said Hervé tartly. ‘That old Lebel is no match for the Walther P38, nine-millimetre Parabellum automatic Herr Kohler packs. Eight in the clip, mes vieux . Another up the spout and a little pin that sticks out to tell him all is safe but ready. Three hundred and fifty metres a second muzzle velocity and almost double that of the Mark VI.’
    ‘It’s a semiautomatic,’ said Guy. ‘ Bien sûr , you don’t have to pull the slide back when there’s one in the chamber, but Monsieur Jean-Louis, he can hit a swallow at forty paces.’
    Everyone knew swallows were among the fastest of birds but … ‘ Imbécile ,’ hissed Hervé, ‘a slug like that would blast the bird to pieces. He’s a nature lover and would never shoot such a thing!’
    ‘But those old cartridges,’ muttered Dédé, ‘they’re so tired sometimes they don’t even bother to wake up when struck by the firing pin.’
    It was a worry. Ex-champion boxer of the police academy and soccer forward, ex-sergeant in a signal corps in that other war, Monsieur Jean-Louis had been wounded twice, the left side as usual. No medals, no citations—he wasn’t a man for those but had never complained of it. ‘I always tried to duck,’ he had once said, ‘but honourably’.
    ‘BOYS, WHY ARE YOU NOT IN SCHOOL?’ came the yell.
    ‘THE STREETS, THEY ARE NO LONGER SAFE AT NIGHT FOR OUR SISTERS AND MOTHERS, MONSIEUR L’INSPECTEUR PRINCIPAL. WE ARE PROTESTING AND HAVE GONE ON STRIKE!’
    Good for Hervé.
    ‘IT’S TOO WET AND SLIPPERY FOR SOCCER,’ added Guy. ‘WE CAN’T KICK THE BALL TO YOU.’
    ‘Louis …’
    In hooded rain capes, the boys waited to see what their response would bring. Hollow-eyed and gaunt, each of the little buggers gazed guiltily up from under shelter.
    ‘Now what’s this about a strike?’ asked Louis.
    ‘We’re late,’ confessed Dédé. ‘We only wanted to see if you had arrived home safely so that the pretty lady would no longer be distressed.’
    ‘What pretty lady?’
    ‘Your chanteuse.’
    ‘She’s not mine or anyone’s but her own.’
    Natal’ya Kulakov-Myshkin, alias Gabrielle Arcuri of the Club Mirage on the rue Delambre over on the Left Bank, in Montparnasse. ‘The one who sings to eight hundred of the Green Beans and over the wireless to all the others at the front?’ asked Kohler blithely.
    Both to the Krauts and to the Allies, since those boys would also listen in and she had such a fabulous voice. ‘