The Occupation Secret

by The Occupation Secret (retail) (epub)

  * * *

  Max parked the Kubelwagen fifty metres from the shrine and stepped out into the road. He checked his watch automatically, but he knew, without any need for confirmation, that he was early.

  He sniffed the air, then turned towards the east and monitored the steady progress of the sun. In Russia, men he knew and respected – men he had trained with, and fought with, and risked his life with – were doing exactly the same thing, knowing that today might be their last day on earth. By an absurd and apparently random throw of the dice, he had now escaped all that.

  His thoughts drifted inexorably back to Germany. What would Father Bauer think of his actions? Probably quote Herodotus back to him: ‘There is room for anything in the course of time.’ It was Father Bauer’s stock response when people acted not according to what was expected of them, but according to what he averred were their true natures.

  Max cupped his hands behind his ears and turned slowly in a 360º circle. Someone was approaching from his left. He could hear the unmistakable clatter of stones against wooden clogs. So she had come, after all.

  He climbed back inside the vehicle. If he turned back now, nothing would be lost. Lucie would be free to return to her old life, and he to his unnecessary war. The choice was his.

  He released the handbrake, letting the Kubelwagen coast noiselessly down the final fifty metre incline to the shrine. He stepped out and went to stand a few metres from the vehicle, one hand, through long habit, resting lightly on the grip of his pistol.

  ‘Is that you? Max? Is that you?’

  ‘I’m over here.’

  Lucie was standing by the Kubelwagen now, peering through the side window. She straightened up and watched him approach, her expression quizzical in the faint light of the burgeoning dawn.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s an old habit. You never stay near a car or a truck if you can help it. They are such obvious targets.’

  He moved up and drew her to him, feeling her tenseness and her fear of what they were doing slowly beginning to evaporate inside his embrace.

  ‘It’s all right. Everything’s arranged. Don’t fret.’

  He waited patiently while she changed out of her clogs and into the pair of cardboard pumps she had brought with her in her bag. Then he helped her into the back seat of the car.

  ‘You’ll have to stay back here, I’m afraid, and not in the front. Whenever we arrive at a checkpoint, lie down in the well and cover yourself with this blanket. If the worst comes to the worst and the car is searched, I will have to pretend that you are my mistress, and that we are going on an assignation.’

  Lucie bent towards him, an anxious expression on her face. ‘What is an assignation?’

  He was fleetingly tempted to burst out laughing, but managed, with some difficulty, to control himself. ‘It’s when a man and a woman meet somewhere specifically in order to go to bed together.’

  Lucie fell silent. Then, after a moment… ‘Is that what they will think we are doing?’

  ‘It’s one hundred percent what they will think we are doing. A German officer, with a pretty young Frenchwoman in his car, alone and without an escort? There can be no other possible explanation.’

  ‘And is that what we are doing?’

  ‘No. I am driving you to the coast so that you can see the sea. Then we will find somewhere to eat. And after your birthday lunch we will walk along the shoreline together until you have had your fill of it. Perhaps you will even permit me to kiss you, if I am very fortunate?’ He smiled, his eyes lit up by the burgeoning rays of the sun. ‘Then I will drive you back home again.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Il n’y a pas de quoi, Mademoiselle.’

  The Sea

  At a little after eleven they pulled over to the side of the road and ate the leberwurst sandwiches that Berger had prepared earlier that morning. Afterwards, they plundered the thermos of coffee.

  Lucie’s eyes widened. ‘But it’s real. It’s real coffee.’

  ‘The liver sausage unfortunately cannot make the same claim.’ Max threw his partially eaten sandwich out of the window. ‘I’m sure some creature will come along and finish it. But it certainly won’t be me.’ He took the remains of the other sandwich from Lucie’s hand, raised an eyebrow, and when she gave a shocked nod of the head – it was clear that she was unused to throwing food away – chucked it in the direction of its twin. He restarted the car. ‘In an hour or so we’ll stop for lunch. It is the first of June today. A little late in the season perhaps, but maybe they will still have oysters on the menu?’

  ‘Oysters?’

  ‘You must have tasted them?’

  Lucie chewed her lip uncertainly.

  ‘Ah, well. I will say nothing. Pointless raising your expectations unnecessarily.’ He glanced down at the driving mirror and saw Lucie still shaking her head in wonder behind him. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

  She sighed. ‘I don’t know. But part of me feels as if I’m dreaming this. That I’m not inside this car with you at all, but in bed with fever.’

  Max made a face at her in the mirror. ‘Who is this Fever? Tell me about him. I insist on knowing the worst.’

  Lucie, caught off-guard by Max’s flirtatious tone, laughed in delight.

  Max turned his attention back to the road, his forehead furrowing, as if he had been unexpectedly angered by Lucie’s response to his levity.

  ‘You know, I’m madly jealous. My sergeant-major tells me that you already have a fiancé. Is this true?’ The tone of his voice had subtly changed, despite all his efforts to keep it on the same flippant level as before.

  Lucie’s face closed down.

  ‘Look, I’m not trying to pry into your personal affairs, but it’s essential that I know the truth. If anyone suspects what we are doing, there could be serious trouble. It is absolutely paramount that our friendship remains a secret. It is not for me, I am asking this. It is for you.’

  Lucie hesitated for a moment, then shook her head. ‘He’s not my fiancé. He’s called Hervé Najac. He wants to marry me – expects to marry me – but I’ve never told him yes. All I’ve told him is that I will give him his answer when France is liberated.’

  Max grunted. ‘Do you think he suspects anything? I wouldn’t want him to cause any trouble. It would put me in an impossible position. You must understand that.’

  He was disagreeably surprised at the degree to which he felt possessive of Lucie. It was, he decided, quite unlike him. And yet he couldn’t deny his sense of outrage that she might ever have favoured another. She was his. He would brook no competitor.

  ‘If he suspected anything, he would kill you. He hates all Germans. I’m sorry, but it’s true. He holds you responsible for what happened to his face. He was badly disfigured in the bombardment of Tours.’

  ‘Ah. Now I know who you mean. The man with the wax mask.’ Max forced himself to inject some measure of restraint into his response. He wasn’t particularly proud of the way he was attempting to manipulate her. ‘I’ve seen him attending Mass, of course. Big father? Mouse of a mother? Is that the one?’ He realised that he was grasping the steering wheel far too hard. ‘Do you really think he could be dangerous?’

  ‘Can we not speak about him? Please? I feel as if I am betraying him when I talk to you like this.’ She reached forward and touched Max tentatively on the shoulder, as much to deny her own sense of alienation, as to placate his. ‘You won’t do anything to harm him, will you?’

  Max hesitated just long enough to subvert the content of his words. ‘Of course I won’t.’ He tried, but failed, to hide the ironical note of disdain in his voice. ‘Just so long as he doesn’t try to bushwhack me, or something equally futile.’

  Compared to the Russians, Max found the French half-hearted and lackadaisical in their response to the occupation. Far too easy to control. He strongly suspected that a man such as Najac would prefer to talk rather than to act, just like the rest of his countrymen.

  ‘Do you promis
e?’

  Max sighed. ‘What do you think I am? The sort of man who uses his position to get what he wants? Is that all you think of me, after the past few weeks?’

  ‘You know it’s not.’ She leaned forwards impetuously, anxious to get her point across. ‘You know it’s not. I wouldn’t have told you about him otherwise.’

  ‘Let’s change the subject, then.’ Max checked the time on his watch, then glanced down at the map, disguising the true expression on his face. ‘According to this, we should be about three kilometres from the coast.’ He turned around to look at her. ‘You’re serious? You’ve really never seen the sea?’

  Lucie, too, was having to make a real effort to hide her concern at the turn their conversation was taking – to disguise the fears engendered by Max’s unexpected focus on Hervé. ‘I’ve never even been away from home before. Papa took me with him to Vaour once, on the farm wagon, when he had some extra casks of walnut oil to sell, but that’s as far as I’ve ever been. I’ve seen the sea in films, of course. And in books at school. But I can’t imagine what it feels like.’

  He smiled. ‘Well, you’ll know soon enough. I’m going to hide the car. And then we shall walk. Just as with the full moon, the sea is best seen for the first time not through glass, but with the naked eye.’ Max could feel his jealousy magically dissipating with the gift he was about to give her, with the satisfaction he would receive from her enjoyment. He was becoming comfortable, once again, with the mantle of the experienced older man, guiding and protecting the younger woman.

  Later, with the car concealed down a little-used track, Max disappeared behind a tree to change out of his uniform. When he re-emerged, Lucie burst out laughing, delighted at his sudden descent into vulnerability.

  ‘You look funny. Different. I’ve never imagined you in civilian clothes before.’

  Max held out his arms and surveyed himself. ‘I looted these clothes from an upstairs wardrobe at the Bastide. Truly, I owe these mysterious de Joinvilles a tremendous debt. They have provided me with music, wine, books, maps, shelter and clothing. Perhaps I shall return after the war…’ He let the sentence trail off. ‘I think I look a bit sharp, don’t you? A bit like a pimp.’

  Lucie let her head drop for a second, and then raised it again, only half meeting his eyes. ‘I feel so stupid, sometimes, when I talk to you. There are so many words you use that I don’t understand. What is a pimp?’

  Max drew her towards him. ‘I’ll tell you later. I promise. In the meantime, I have something for you. A birthday present.’

  ‘A birthday present?’ Lucie snatched a quick hand to her face, in subconscious echo of the previous occasion he had made her the offer of a gift.

  Max pulled a small box from the front seat of the Kubelwagen and opened the lid. ‘See? Shoes. And silk stockings. You’ll have to change out of them, I’m afraid, before we drive home. But you could put them on for the time being.’ He gave an embarrassed shrug. ‘This isn’t the first time I intended to offer them to you. You remember, don’t you? The absolute fool I made of myself?’

  Lucie pretended to ignore him. She reached tentatively forwards and let the stockings glide through her fingers. ‘Oh, they’re beautiful. I’ve never seen anything quite so beautiful. And the shoes. They’re made of real leather. And the soles, too!’ Her expression briefly reverted to that of the child she so nearly was. ‘They must have cost you a terrible lot of money.’ She blushed furiously the instant the words had left her mouth, hating herself for talking like a shop girl. ‘You were right not to offer them to me, though, those weeks ago. I would have run out of the room screaming.’ She transformed her mouth into the approximation of a disapproving moue, the better to disguise the true extent of her pleasure, and also her underlying consternation at the real implications of his gift.

  ‘You could go behind the bush over there and put them on. Or inside the car, if you prefer.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘What do you mean, you wouldn’t dare?’

  ‘Someone might see me.’

  ‘Look around you. This place is entirely deserted. And I promise you that I shall turn away. No one will come anywhere near you.’

  Lucie was refusing to meet his eyes, and he realised that he was missing something – some aspect of the gift that still disconcerted her.

  ‘Perhaps I’ll just wear the shoes. They are exquisite.’

  ‘You can’t wear the shoes without the stockings. They go together.’ Max was frantic now that she should put them on. He wanted to imagine, even if he could not see, that she was sliding her legs inside them. Wanted the knowledge of her, voyeuristically, throughout lunch. ‘They go together like… well… like a jacket and a tie.’ She looked as if she were about to burst into tears, and he took an anxious step towards her. ‘Lucie? What on earth is wrong?’

  Noticing his concern, she forced out a wry laugh, although she felt more like covering her face in embarrassment at being forced to explain. ‘I’ve got nothing to make them stay up.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I can’t…’ She sighed and shrugged her shoulders despairingly. ‘I don’t wear the sort of underwear women need when they want to wear stockings.’

  This time it was his turn to flush. ‘It never occurred to me.’

  ‘I’m very pleased it never occurred to you.’

  ‘Couldn’t you…’

  ‘No, I couldn’t. You’ll just have to take my word for it.’

  He wrinkled his nose. ‘You must think me the most atrocious fool.’

  ‘No. I think you’re sweet. Stern and grumpy, perhaps, but sweet. Here. Give me the shoes. I shall try them on instead.’

  He handed her the shoes, purposely keeping his distance from her – not invading her space.

  Turning away from him, she deftly slipped off one of her cardboard pumps, and placed her foot inside one of the new shoes.

  Max found himself surreptitiously watching the movement of her hips and buttocks beneath the thin fabric of her summer skirt. His desire for her was overwhelming. He felt both aroused and ashamed at the same time, as if he were a schoolboy again, unexpectedly stumbling across an inflammatory drawing in some forgotten corner of his father’s library, knowing all the time that its perusal was strictly taboo.

  ‘It fits. How did you know?’

  ‘I didn’t. I asked the woman in the shop what size shoe a young Frenchwoman, about one metre sixty-five centimetres tall, slender, good figure, would take. And she gave me these.’

  ‘She must have thought you were mad.’ Lucie thoroughly enjoyed the rare moments when Max presented her with the opportunity to tease him, to deflate his pomposity. ‘Men don’t usually go into shops and buy women’s clothes in France, you know.’ She slipped off her other pump and stood admiring herself in the new shoes. ‘Oh, they’re wonderful. I feel…’ She let the words die in her mouth. ‘It sounds silly, I know, but I feel like a lady.’

  ‘You are a lady.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’ The words emerged in a bitter rush of breath, astonishing Max with their vehemence. ‘You know I’m not. You must be used to elegant women. The sort they show on the Pathé newsreels attending galas and things. How can you want to be with me? Look at my dress. And I can’t even speak properly. If I lapsed into our Rouergue patois you wouldn’t even know what I was saying – you’re not even French, and you speak better than me.’ She was on the verge of crying again. ‘And my broken nose. It makes me look like an apache. What will the people in the restaurant think? They don’t even know me there.’

  ‘“Thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh towards Damascus.”’

  ‘Now you’re making fun of me.’

  ‘No, I’m not. I promise. King Solomon wrote this about Belkis, Queen of Sheba, whom he later married – or so the Ethiopians claim. It’s all in the Bible.’

  He caught her giving him an old-fashioned look.

  ‘Listen. I have it by heart. This is how it goes on. “How beau
tiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince’s daughter! The joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman. Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies. Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins. Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bathrabbim.” It’s all about desire and transfiguration, you see.’

  Lucie turned away, blushing at the half-understood intimacy of the poetry.

  He reached forwards and cupped her chin in one hand. ‘So you see, I don’t give a damn what other people think about you. And anyway, I love your nose. It makes you look like no one else in the world.’ He swallowed hastily, to cover his confusion. ‘You’ve still not told me how it happened, Lucie.’

  She averted her face from his touch. ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘You might think badly of me.’

  ‘I think the world of you. You know that.’

  ‘But you won’t. If I tell you what happened, you will be angry with me.’

  ‘How can I be angry with you for something which happened before I even met you, and which obviously wasn’t your fault?’

  ‘But it was my fault.’

  He took her firmly by the arm. ‘Come on. Let’s walk. It’s not far now. You can tell me as we go along.’

  She hobbled beside him, slightly awkward at first in her new shoes, supporting herself on his arm.

  ‘Well?’

  She shook her head in distress, knowing that there was no escaping anymore the weight of his questioning. ‘A man did it. A stranger.’

  Max stopped and turned towards her. He tried not to exhibit the shock that he felt at her words.

  ‘I was walking home from Maman’s restaurant. It was dark. Mid-January still, and no moon. I could hear someone following me. The clatter of stones. At first I thought it must be Hervé, and I called out but the man didn’t answer. So I started running. I could hear him running behind me. I knew he would soon catch me, so I ran into a field and tried to hide. But he saw me. Heard my breathing. It was almost as if he could see in the dark, like an animal. He came up and took me by the arm and asked for money and food. I told him I didn’t have any. I could smell the wine on his breath and the stench of his clothes. He was obviously a vagabond; we see them a lot nowadays. Men with no work. Nowhere to go. It was so dark, I couldn’t really make out what he looked like. I tried to pull away from him, but he grabbed me tighter. I called out, and he brought his forehead down on my face, breaking my nose. And that’s the last thing I remember.’