“Do you know what Nicolas told me?” Suzanne said, as she topped up Aurélie’s steaming beaker of cider.
“Nicolas the baker’s son or Nicolas the schoolmistress’s nephew?” asked her father.
“The baker’s son.” Suzanne splashed cider into her father’s cup. “He said he’d had a letter from Father Christmas. Father Christmas wrote that he was mistaken for an airman and shot in the foot and that was why he wouldn’t be delivering any gifts this year—but not to worry, he’ll be all recovered by next Christmas. Wasn’t that clever, now?”
“That was Madame Lelong, the postmaster’s wife,” said Aurélie’s father. “She wanted to make sure the little ones wouldn’t be crying for their presents.”
“But it’s horrible,” Aurélie burst out. Her cup was empty; she couldn’t remember drinking it. Her tongue felt thick with the cloying taste of the cider. “Father Christmas—shot. What have we come to?”
“It was a kindness.” There was a warning in her father’s voice.
“Kind? To tell the children we’ve killed Father Christmas?”
“Not killed,” said Victor patiently. “Only wounded.”
It was monstrous. “Don’t you think Father Christmas ought to come after all?” She looked around at the others, their faces slightly blurry in the candlelight. She hated herself for not having thought of it before, for not having contrived something. It hadn’t occurred to her. Because she had been taking too many walks with Lieutenant von Sternburg? Max. He had asked her to call him Max and she had, because it advanced their cause, that was all. “The books from the library . . . I could give every child a book.”
“Do you really think the village children yearn for Aristophanes?” asked her father.
More than her father ever had. He had never been a great reader, another rift between him and her mother.
Guilt made Aurélie fierce. “At least it would be something.”
“With our arms in it? They would know where it was from in an instant.”
Yes, but they would also know someone had cared.
Aurélie tried desperately to think what else they might bring. If she’d had her old room, she might have ransacked the useless trivialities, the little luxuries she had taken so for granted. But now she slept in a garret above the kitchen, sparsely furnished. A coin for each—if they’d had the coins to give. If they wouldn’t have to worry about the coins being confiscated, the children punished for receiving them. So many things had been made illegal, it was hard to remember them all.
“Here,” said Suzanne, coming unexpectedly to her aid. “We’ve some nuts put by. If we tie them up in a bit of cloth with some string, it will be enough. Just so they can see Father Christmas made the effort after all.”
“Give them here,” said Victor. “I’ll parcel them out.”
Aurélie’s father looked at her sideways. “And who’s to deliver these parcels?”
It felt like a challenge. “I shall.”
“After curfew?”
“Didn’t you just say there’s no curfew for a de Courcelles?” Ordinarily, she’d never have spoken so to her father. He was the head of his house, and due respect.
But he didn’t take her to task for it. “I didn’t say it quite like that. All right, then. If you’re determined.”
She hadn’t been determined, but he seemed to have determined it for her. Aurélie squinted at her father. The fire in the kitchen smoked; she couldn’t tell, but she thought he was, obscurely, pleased. Because she was thumbing her nose at the Germans?
But this wasn’t about the Germans, she reminded herself. It was about the children. And Father Christmas.
Why, then, did she feel as though she had been managed?
“You will be careful?” said Suzanne, handing her the basket. She was beginning to look worried. “If they’ve sentries out . . .”
“They’ll all be at the feast.” Aurélie wasn’t quite as sure as she sounded. She doubted Hoffmeister would ignore so obvious a precaution. He’d probably enjoy denying some man his Christmas revels, making him sit outside in the cold. “They wouldn’t shoot a woman.”
Never mind that they had before and probably would again. Why did they say these things when they all knew them to be untrue? But Suzanne and Victor were nodding along as though they didn’t know as well as she it was all lies, as if any of them believed what she had said. Was it because the truth was too unpalatable to bear? Like lying to the children about Father Christmas, only they were lying to themselves, trying to make themselves believe that the old rules still applied.