Totally committed to his play, he brought the train up to the station. You saw it in the pinched, aristocratic face, the hawkish nose, thin upper lip, tight smile, dark brown eyes that hid so much and tried so hard to analyse, sometimes with great success, sometimes with utter cruelty, believing as he had, that he’d said and done the right thing. Marie-Christine would have destroyed things-not intentionally, ah, no, she would want only to help or to build a little something herself.
He had mountains and valleys, roads and tunnels-bridges, railways, houses, farms, so many things, and I could understand, of course, why he had wanted it all to himself. Jean-Guy was only seven when it all started, and I remember a day in late August 1939, remember the sight of him playing in the sandbox. The faded orange-red brick of the courtyard always trapped the sun, and I remember those bricks as if it were yesterday and I were still there: the warmth that emanated from them, the smell, the roughness. And anyway, who was to say France wouldn’t keep the Germans out, but if she weakened and couldn’t, what then? France and Britain would have to go to Poland’s aid, but if they did, and I took the children to England, Jules and I would part company-he’d never let me have the children, not if he could stop it. First it was the Saarland, then Austria, then Czechoslovakia, and now Poland.
Through the tall French windows of the kitchen, I could see the children outside and I wondered, as I have so often of late, whether I ought to take them to England.
It was quiet now, no more fighting, no more tears. Should there be any errors, however, they are my own, and for these I apologize. Dennis Essar, of Brock University, very kindly assisted with the French, as did the artist Pierrette Laroche, while Professor Schutz, of Germanic and Slavic Studies at Brock, helped with the German. The Hunting Ground incorporates a few words and brief passages in French or German. I abhor it, but feel the times must never be forgotten.
As with the St-Cyr and Kohler mysteries, I do not condone what happened in German-Occupied France during the Second World War. Occasionally, the name of a real person is used for historical authenticity, but all are deceased, and I have made of them what the story demands. Though I have used actual places and times, I have treated these as seen fit, changing some as appropriate. The Hunting Ground is a work of fiction based on fact.