The Hanging Garden

38

Clean and sober, he went to the hospital. An open ward this time, set hours for visitors. No more darkened vigils. No return visit by Candice, though nurses spoke of regular phone calls by someone foreign-sounding. No way of knowing where she was. Maybe out there searching for her son. It didn't matter, so long as she was safe. So long as she was in control.

When he reached the ward's far end, two women rose from their chairs so he could kiss them: Rhona and Patience. He had a carrierbag with him, magazines and grapes. Sammy was sitting up, supported by three pillows, Pa Broon propped beside her. Her hair had been washed and brushed, and she was smiling at him.

`Women's magazines,' he said, shaking his head. `They should be on the top-shelf.’

`I need a few fantasies to sustain me in here,' Sammy said. Rebus beamed at her, said hello, then bent down and kissed his daughter.

The sun was shining as they walked through The Meadows – a rare day off for both. They held hands and matched people sunbathing and playing football. He knew Rhona was excited, and thought he knew why. But he wasn't going to spoil things with speculation.

`If you had a daughter, what mould you call her?’ she asked.

He shrugged. `Haven't really thought about it.’

`What about a son?’

`I quite like Sam.’

`Sam?’

`When I was a kid, I had a bear called Sam. My mum knitted it for me. '

`Sam… ' She tried the name out. `It mould work both ways, wouldn't it?’

He stopped, circled his arms around her waist. `How do you mean?’

`Well, it could be Samuel or Samantha. You don't get many of those – names that work both ways.’

`I suppose not. Rhona, is there…?’

She put a finger to his lips, then kissed him. They walked on. There didn't seem to be a cloud in the whole damned sky.

Afterword

My fictional French village of Villefranche d'Albarede owes its existence to the real village of Oradour-sur-Glane, which was the subject of an attack by the 3rd Company of the SS 'Der Fuhrer' regiment.

On the afternoon of Saturday 10 June 1944, 3rd Company known as `Das Reich' – entered the village and rounded up everyone. The women and children were herded into the church, while the men were split into groups and marched to various barns and other buildings around the village. Then the slaughter began.

Some 642 victims have been accounted for, but the estimate is that up to a thousand people may have perished that day. Only fiftythree corpses were ever identified. One boy from Lorraine, having first-hand knowledge of S S atrocities, managed to flee when the troops entered the village. Five men escaped the massacre in Laudy's barn. Wounded, they were able to crawl from the burning building and hide until the next day. One woman escaped from the church, climbing out of a window after playing dead beside the corpse of her child.

Soldiers went from house to house, finding villagers too sick or elderly to leave their beds. These people were shot and their houses set alight. Some of the bodies were hidden in mass graves, or dumped down wells and in bread ovens.

General Lammerding was the commanding officer. On 9 June he'd ordered the deaths of ninety-nine hostages in Tulle. He also gave the order for the Oradour massacre. Later on in the war, Lammerding was captured by the British, who refused his extradition to France. Instead, he was returned to Dusseldorf, where he ran a successful company until his death in 1971.

In the general euphoria of the Normandy landings, the tragedy at Oradour went almost u

Every individual found guilty at the Bordeaux trial left court a free man. A special Act of Amnesty had been passed, in the interests of national unity. (People in Alsace were disgruntled that their countrymen had been picked out for condemnation.) Meantime, the Germans were said to have already served their terms.

As a result, Oradour broke off all relations with the French state, a rupture which lasted seventeen years.

In May 1983, a man stood trial in East Berlin, charged with having been a lieutenant in `Das Reich' during the Oradour massacre. He admitted everything, and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

In June 1996, it was reported that around 12,000 foreign volunteers to the Waffen SS are still receiving pensions from the Federal German government. One of these pensioners, a former Obersturmba

Oradour still stands as a shrine. The village has been left just the way it was on that day in June 1944.