Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  “Is this tunnel still in place?”

  He shook his head.

  “All filled in. To this day, no-one will admit to knowing by whom, but it was planned as our safety route for children cruelly separated from their families by lies and false promises.”

  “Roma children?”

  “Mischlinge? Not exclusively, no. Jews and Spaniards, misfits of all kinds.”

  Puzzled by his use of that German word and ‘misfits’I pressed on.

  “How many?”

  “We’d saved the first cohort of thirty-seven. After dark, six small craft would have waited to take them down the Bayrou and along the coast to Spain.”

  I reminded myself of my interview training all those years ago. How not to feed information to the interviewee. Easier said than done. Nevertheless, I reckoned Father Diderot might be ready to talk.

  “When exactly was this? And why not their parents too?”

  “Wednesday, October 14th 1942. Despite being swamped by collaborationists, never mind the Milice, our tunnel was almost done.” He leant forwards, lowering his voice. Fish on his breath. “We’re talking of Dansac as a special kind of holding centre. These particular children had been taken from internment camps all over Roussillon, such as Gurs and Rivesaltes. Unsuspecting parents assumed their boys and girls to be in safe keeping until reunited after the war, but oh no. As I was by then, involved with the Church here, how could I stand by?”

  He’d have been around twenty at the time. Rather young to be have been ordained and in office, I thought.

  “As a priest?”

  “No. Not until 1947. Before that, I’d helped with Sunday schools etcetera At least something useful.”

  “And your parish priest? Where was he in all this?”

  Father Diderot crossed himself. Kissed his crucifix. “Father Hippolyte? One minute he’d been taking Mass on a Sunday, as usual, then the next, he’d vanished from the face of this earth.”

  “Like the Ryjkel men?”

  At this, he emitted a strange, little noise.

  “A terrible business. God rest their precious souls. If more of us had had that family’s fighting spirit, we’d never have let the Huns trample our great country to death.”

  I almost asked about Liesbet, but just then, best we kept to the other story.

  “So who conned these gullible parents?”

  A pause, in which Father Diderot fingered his crucifix. “Top brass. I can’t say any more. You understand that, don’t you?”

  I shivered, even though the room was more than warm.

  “This tunnel must have been a massive undertaking,” I then said. “Who else helped out? And what about the cost?”

  “A few trusty souls. All dead now, except me. All in Heaven. As for the cost, Alize, ever resourceful, raised money wherever she could. Her wealthy family, despite their faith, gave nothing.”

  So how come, I asked myself, she’d been in that shabby little house when I’d called round?

  He regarded me over his bifocals. “She’ll be safe, even if you, Monsieur, might not.”

  “Why’s that?”

  He leaned forwards again, fixing me with those oddly flecked eyes. “You have a hunted demeanour.”

  For one reckless moment, I was tempted to admit what I really was doing there,

  and who I was befriending at Les Pins. Herman’s murder, the threats and attacks. Father Diderot had that tone; that other-worldly look about him reminding me of a prison chaplain I’d known, who’d drawn more from his inmates than any defence lawyer. But now would be too soon. Besides, I also had to learn more. To again take him back in time...

  “Only one child survived this terror?”

  Was that a tear forming behind his glasses, or simply eyes that had spent to long witnessing the misery of Christianity?

  “Did Alize Saporo tell you?”

  “Yes. And showed me her photograph with the initials SB on the back. She was a beautiful girl.”

  “They all were. Our petits anges...”

  Then came an angry, little frown.

  “SB? Are you sure?”

  “I am. But what might those initials stand for?”

  He clamped a hand to his creased forehead as if to jog his memory. But no. Instead, glanced down at his watch, while that same tear broke free of his cheek and fell on his shirt cuff.

  Why? Was she perhaps still alive and a problem? Part of his past he had to forget? Or didn’t he know?

  “Tell me, Father,” I persisted. “Was there ever a railway going eastwards from here? I’ve heard conflicting opinions ever since arriving in the area.”

  Suddenly a flock of starlings blocked out the sun. He shifted position to watch them rise over a parade of poplars and vanish into the blue.

  “Those Devils of Dansac,” he muttered without turning to face me. “They added an existing connection going north. It had been the feldspar factories’ old line before that. Very helpful too, for Drancy, then further east to Poland. We wanted to sabotage it. But that was before the betrayal. At dead of night.”

  “Betrayal?”

  “The Resistance sent us aid money by parachute. Big money, to finish the tunnel and destroy this track. But someone got to it first. Someone with the blood of innocents on their hands.”

  So Karen’s mother hadn’t seen a ghost train after all. And I still had those two rusted souvenirs. Just then, came a tap on his door. A plump, smiling carer delivered a cup of coffee and two millefeuille fingers to the small side table next to his chair.

  “Your half hour’s up, Monsieur Lyon.” She held the door open, but clearly her charge hadn’t finished. He spent a further eight minutes adding to his account, as if unable to let it go.

  *

  “Perhaps we might keep in touch, Monsieur,” he said afterwards, as though the effort of re-living those despeate last moments in the tunnel had bled him dry.

  “Of course. You occasionally preach at Saint-Jean le Martyr, so I heard...”

  His face registered surprise.

  “I could call in there after one of your services.”

  “Indeed, and normally I’d be looking forward to it, but my health isn’t what it was. Sadly, I took my last communion there on Sunday.”

  “That’s a shame. Father Jérôme spoke highly of you.”

  A blink of recognition, that was all, but a hint of suspicion still seemed to lurk behind those glasses.

  “Thank you. Oh, and by the way, you never said where you were staying.” He scanned my face, waiting like a hungry hawk, but his carer’s hand was already in the small of my back, guiding me towards the landing beyond his door.

  Chapter 26. Karen.

  For my sake, Martine had hidden her edginess by polishing my bed struts, cleaning my bathroom and bringing me a mug of chocolat chaud which, after Thea Oudekerk’s second call and the memory of that blinding light at The Jungle fence, calmed me down.

  “Don’t dwell on your fall,” she said, as if reading my mind. “That’s the past. Look how much you’ve achieved since.”

  I wanted to take her advice, but realised nothing would be the same again. Even if my body and legs packed up altogether, my memory needed coaxing into action before too late.

  Twenty-six days of my mission remained.

  She drew the blind over the round window to neutralise the intrusive sunlight and sat next to me as I accessed the last of the three files I’d created.

  MAS CAMPS. October 1942. Rotterdam. 1946. London. 1961.

  Some thinner than others, but that was to be expected. My recall of back then was much less defined than for say, October 1969 aboard Maja for the last time, or when Moeder also died.

  Martine then read through my entry for that fateful day in Louth, and my new addition about the mysterious mirror, letter by painfully tapped letter.

  “Think, Dr. Fürst, why would anyone want to do that to you?” she persisted. “Did you have an enemy?”

  “You told me not to dwell on it.” />
  “Perhaps I was wrong, and maybe if you turn things over in your mind like I did when digging our new potager last week, you might find other situations when...”

  Our new potager? How easily that tripped off her tongue.

  “Absolutely not. And as for enemies, I’ve never had a one, not even nuisance neighbours in London or difficult patients wherever I’ve worked. Most of my life has been spent helping those worse off than myself and receiving nothing but gratitude.”

  She seemed less than impressed.

  “I can’t help feeling there might have been other times. Less spectacular, but just as deadly.”

  “Why?”

  A sideways glance. My blood pressure was again on the up. Boom, boom, boom...

  “Perhaps on that day, you were doing the most dangerous thing you’ve ever done. Perhaps that torch, mirror whatever, was the final act, the coup de grȃce after others had failed. I’m only guessing. I’ve always had a criminal mind.”

  And so you have, ma chérie...

  Yet, as she spoke, fragments, like those Moeder would cut from magazines and newspapers, fluttered into my mind.

  “You must have been a mere toddler in1962,” I heard myself saying, “but that autumn, the Cuban crisis was looming, and a fog thicker than anyone could remember, gripped London. I’d been travelling on the top deck of a bus along Southampton Row to the Strand, to meet my tutor at Kings for a reference, when I felt a push - yes, a definite push on my shoulders - enough to make me slip down four steps. If I’d not gripped the rail for grim death, then God knows...”

  “Who was it?”

  “When I turned round, no-one was there. Truly bizarre, and terrifying. My interview afterwards, a disaster.”

  “Look,” Martine said, passing me a new, lined notepad. “If you remember

  anything else, however trivial it might seem, jot it down in this. I think your John. Lyon will be very interested.”

  “My John Lyon?” I saved the file and clicked on Mas Camps October 1942

  She was still smiling. But not for long.

  “Where’s all this stuff gone?”

  “All what?” From where I sat, the screen seemed full enough. Until I took a

  closer look.

  “About you growing up at Mas Camps. You seeing those people foraging about in the vineyards in the dark. Your father and your brothers - how they got along and didn’t get along. The investigation after they’d gone, remember? The police, the pompiers, the town’s big-wigs, until they tired of it and went back to making money for the enemy... ‘

  She was right. The file had vanished. But not her tongue.

  Merde...

  “How there were no remains of any kind,” Martine continued. “How two of your neighbours ended up being killed as well, and you thinking you knew who was responsible.”

  Having snatched up the phone, I punched in the number I’d been given for Max Heimlat in Roche-les-Bains.

  “The number you have dialled is unavailable,” came the automated voice. “The number you have...”

  Damn. Damn...

  I turned to her. “Where the Hell is John? He’d go and sort this out straight away.”

  “Keeping busy, I expect. Meanwhile, I’ll type up your mother’s last letter for you, just in case that goes missing. Then,” she patted my arm a touch too hard, “we can both take a little trip into the mountains.”

  No, please no, no...

  “I can’t leave this place empty. For a start, Capitaine Serrado might turn up to prod around, even though he’d said it would be next Friday.”

  “Let me go, then.”

  “Too risky. What if anything happened to you?”

  No reply. I knew she missed our occasional excursions to Andorra and Perpignan, but best to be realistic. Why had I thought of abattoirs again? And then Mas Camps, where Vader, who on that fateful evening, had already started drinking before harnessing Edwige to the trap, was berating Moeder for having gone through with her third and accidental pregnancy. Me. How I’d put a strain on the family budget and their time. How useless was a mere meisje in the running of a big domaine.

  I’d defended her, grateful for giving me a chance at life, even though someone since had evidently decided to take it away.

  “I hope you all die,” I’d muttered while dutifully waving them off towards Sant-Antoine de Bayrou.in that terrible wind. So, here I was, driven by guilt during all those years since, to discover their secret. Even if it might ultimately kill me.

  Chapter 27. John.

  Although I’d not asked Father Diderot about either the Suzmans or Herman Oudekerk, the graphic images that former priest insisted on recounting of the victims in that tunnel, hogged my mind. In retrospect, as I drove back the way I’d come, any more questions would have made him suspicious. At least he’d been willing to talk about events of almost forty-four years ago and, while passing Les Pins on my way back to Saint-Antoine, I felt as if I’d been the Confessor for what had ravaged his soul and would surely follow him to the grave.

  Those thirty-seven children aged from three to fourteen years-old, had arrived at the church of Saint-Luc in the baking summer’s heat, in a covered truck from various transit camps in the area. Father Diderot and his helpers had then placed them in various Children’s Homes in the locality until October 20th 1942.when Dansac’s tunnel was due for completion.

  “Safe houses, so we thought,” the priest had whispered with the nurse still in attendance. “Until we ran out of money.” And then had come the shocking climax that neither he nor the other helpers could have prevented when a group of armed, masked Milice men stormed in and turned that tunnel into a slaughterhouse...

  *

  With the sudden, speedy appearance of huge, pale clouds over the mountain ranges behind me, I entered Saint-Antoine’s almost empty car park, still regretting my unasked questions, when suddenly I spotted Father Jérôme, just yards away, dressed this time, in smart casual gear that flattered his ramrod back, the toned body.

  The wind lifted his black hair off his forehead as he moved towards the Café des Étoiles and try as I might to imagine Martine’s inuendo about him and Joel in that garage, I couldn’t. He positioned himself at a table behind the plastic vines draped inside the cafe’s main window and ordered an espresso, constantly checking his watch while gulping it down. Seconds later, he was on his feet, knocking a chair over as he went.

  However, I’d blocked the doorway under the pretext of reading a poster about the next open-air paella feast, realizing what had been niggling me since yesterday. Had I misheard that Café’s barman, when he’d said that Paul Suzman and Jules, the priest were brothers? If true, then Notaire, Michel Suzman had fathered two sons not one. The older son not welcome here.

  “Excuse me, Monsieur,” said the priest, who’d not recognized me. “I’m late.”

  I didn’t move, waiting to be manhandled out of the way; to gauge if he’d been one of my attackers last night who’d messed up my face.

  “Excuse me,” he repeated. “I’m in a hurry.”

  “Another funeral is it? My, my, you’re busy.”

  “Some of us don’t have enough to do, Monsieur Lyon.”

  I blinked.

  Lyon? I’d never told him that name. Only Father Diderot…

  “Hoping for mine too, hein?”

  A lop-sided smile. “Patience, Monsieur. Your turn will come if you keep poking around. The Tanguys called us the minute you’d left them. Not the only ones.”

  Who else, I wonder?

  “Where’s Joel Dutroux?” I said, with little to lose.

  “Who?”

  “The cook from Les Pins. I met him a few days ago. He offered to show me the ropes with a microlight.”

  Those brown eyes narrowed then widened as his attention was diverted by the sound of car doors banging shut behind me. That same silver Merc. C class.

  “Jules?” Shouted the driver, having given me a death stare. Paul Suzman, no less. “Move you
r ass!”

  Before I could stop him, the twenty-six year-old pushed me aside to leap on to the saloon’s rear seat. I could swear that made four passengers including the girl, carried at breakneck speed out of the square.

  I ran to my Volvo and, keeping that silver shark in my sights, deliberately let two other vehicles come between us.

  *

  The Merc led me up into the high, cold pastures where snow still shrouded the peaks and ridges dividing France from Spain. Where the bijou spa town of Roche-les-Bains lay cradled in the Canigou’s bone-freezing lap. There followed a sharp descent and some of the tightest bends I’ve ever encountered, until signs for the Abbaye Saint-. Polycarpe jutted from the snow.

  Voilà.

  Joel Dutroux’s highly regarded alma mater.

  Chapter 28. Karen.

  Martine had been gone for twelve, long minutes, sorting out the weekly wash as we’d both decided on a full change of clothes. She’d managed to get me into a track suit like hers, much more comfortable than my usual outfits. Also, a pair of trainers not worn for years.

  As for John, part of me wanted him back, part of me not. The problem was I couldn’t rid my head of guilt about poor, dear Herman. It clung there like moss on our Mas Camps’apple trees. I was to blame for involving him. Fact. Perhaps in a roundabout way, my family’s disappearance too, was down to my behaviour. As for Moeder’s death, I’d sadly not been there to guide her properly down the stairs at her last home in Rotterdam...

  And something else. I’ve observed that occasional hardness in John’s eyes, his voice. Hadn’t he said, “once a cop, always a cop?’ Suspicious, wary, thinking the worst of people?”

  Of me as well?

  My pulse was in overdrive.

  “Where on earth is he?”

  Martine, who’d re-appeared, passed me a plate of crudités and a glass of mango juice. I noticed her reddened hands. Calloused thumbs.

  “Hopefully, he’s doing more than we ever could,” she said. “Lateness a small price to pay. And we must tell him about your missing memoir...”

  She was right, of course, and then, with rainclouds rolling in from the east, my room darkened the way he did. Those same clouds which had suddenly covered the moon over Mas Camps when shadowy strangers had invaded. When no-one believed an eight-year-old girl with too much imagination. However, I’d not imagined the growing tension between Vader and his two sons - a dry, brittle fire ready to explode. Especially the one lasting a week during that final harvest.