Max turned towards her for the very first time, his blue eyes incredulous. ‘But Lucie, don’t you understand yet? Everyone here is going to imagine the worst about Najac. It’s inevitable. And I can’t do anything about it. I can’t tell them what really happened.’ He picked fretfully at a piece of flaking paint on the casement. ‘It’s no longer safe for you to remain in town.’
‘What about my mother?’
‘Your mother is perfectly well able to look after herself. She’s not directly involved in all this. But you are. It won’t take long for people to put two and two together and make it five.’ He made a cutting motion with his hand, as if he wished to strike out at an invisible enemy. ‘I wish to hell I’d never asked my men to patrol that tower.’
‘Then Hervé would have shot you down.’
Max shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think so. Not after what he told me two days ago. In the cells.’ He glanced up almost guiltily, as if he had been on the verge of betraying a confidence. ‘But all that hardly matters now, does it? In the situation we find ourselves in?’
Lucie sat watching him, her hands folded in her lap. ‘Thank you. Thank you for sparing Hervé’s life.’
Max closed his eyes. His voice sounded weary. ‘There’ll come a time when you’ll wish to God I hadn’t.’
‘I don’t think so.’
Max eased himself away from the sill and took a tentative step towards her. ‘While you are in here, I can protect you. Outside, I can do nothing. You must realise that?’ He gestured towards the darkness.
‘No one will hurt me.’
‘Oh, Lucie. How can you think that? You’re far too young to understand the depths to which human nature can descend. The people out there are ashamed of themselves. Ashamed of France for giving in to us. For letting herself be raped. And they daren’t turn on us, don’t you see? We are far too strong. We would decimate them. So, their only possible answer will be to turn on people like you when we are gone.’
‘The Maquis have turned on you.’
‘The Maquis.’ He shook his head disparagingly, his frustration at her intransigence momentarily threatening to spill over into anger. ‘They are the least of our worries. But they are the people you must fear the most.’
‘I don’t fear anyone.’ She hesitated, her eyes wide in the semi-darkness. ‘Only you, perhaps.’
‘Me? Fear me? That’s grotesque.’ Max strode off down the library, snapping closed the shutters and flicking the curtains shut behind him as if he wished to blot out Lucie’s words – and the entire outside world – in one explosive movement. ‘We shall have to smuggle you out of here, then. It’s madness. But you leave me with no possible alternative.’ He paused, as if expecting an answer. When none was forthcoming, he cleared his throat self-consciously. ‘I shall arrange with Meyer to have you taken to a safe place as soon as it is possible to do so.’
‘And my mother?’
‘Her too. If she so wishes.’
‘And where will you send us?’
Max walked over to the piano and switched on the electric lamp. He stabbed his finger at a map of Southern France he had been perusing earlier that evening. The outsized shadows thrown by the lamp lent weight to the content of his words. ‘My family owns a villa. Here. Directly overlooking the bay of Cannes. We have owned it for nearly a century. But it is closed. Mothballed. In fact, no one has visited it in more than a decade. An elderly couple keep the place aired and the house and garden in repair for us. I will send you and your mother down there.’
‘Thank you.’
Max closed the map. ‘It’s not as straightforward as it sounds. The entire Mediterranean coast is sealed off against a potential seaborne attack. And now that Rome has fallen, things will be even worse; the invasion could come at any time, and our troops will be nervous and on their guard. I will provide you with a laissez-passer, and a letter giving you permission to open up the house and bring it into order for my next leave. It may just work. Madame Colin must be nearly eighty by now. And her husband older still. No one will ever think to look for you both down there.’ Max sounded unconvinced by his own words.
Lucie sat silently, watching him.
Max glanced awkwardly away from her, as if his attention had been caught by a sudden movement in the far corner of the room. ‘What did you mean when you said you were afraid of no one – only me?’
Lucie stared down at her hands. ‘I don’t know. Afraid of what you can make me do, perhaps. Afraid of myself.’
Max focused his gaze somewhere over the top of Lucie’s head. There was a visible ticking at the corner of his left eye. ‘But I won’t ever make you do anything you don’t want to do. You must have learned that much by now. Don’t you trust me?’
‘I didn’t mean it that way, Max.’ She glanced up at him, a profound weariness illuminating her face. She waited patiently until he lowered his eyes to meet hers. ‘I don’t know why I said it. In fact I hardly seem to know anything anymore.’
Grand Jean
11 pm: Monday 5th June 1944
Grand Jean sat across the table from his son, his brow creased in anxiety. ‘There can be no question of your going up onto the Causse tonight. Look at you. Look at what those bastards have done to you. You’d never make it. Not even as far as the bergerie.’
Hervé hunched forward and coughed up a gobbet of soup. He put down his spoon and felt slowly along the contours of his chin, as if he were palpating a boil. ‘There’s something wrong. I can’t seem to hold stuff in. One of the Schleuhs kicked me in the face with his boot. I think my jaw is broken.’
Grand Jean appeared not to have heard him. ‘I can’t understand it. Can’t understand it at all. Why would the sergeant-major do such a thing? Why would he take you out, make you dig your own grave, and then spare you?’ He shook his head incredulously. ‘Flairac, you say?’
Marguerite Najac made a face at her husband. ‘Stop worrying the boy, Jean. Look at him. Can’t you see he’s exhausted? And what does it matter where they were going to shoot him? He’s alive, that’s what counts. God has returned him to us. Now he has to eat.’
‘But Flairac is thirty kilometres away. How could he have walked such a distance after what they did to him?’
‘Because he’s his father’s son, that’s why.’ Madame Najac tucked a woollen blanket over Hervé’s shoulders. ‘Jean. The fire. The boy is icy cold.’
Hervé caught at his mother’s hand. ‘Maman. I can’t stay here. If the Schleuhs change their minds and decide to come looking for me…’
She brushed his hair back, her fingers instinctively untangling the knotted strands as if they were a skein of wool. ‘You will stay the night in your own bed. This is your home. If the Boche come, your father will drive them off.’
Hervé ducked his head out from underneath her fingers in mock amazement. He peered at Grand Jean, who was obediently stoking the lou cantou with slow, determined movements. ‘He’ll drive them off? With what?’
‘A pitchfork, if necessary.’ His mother was deadly serious.
‘That I would like to see.’
‘You mind your manners.’ Grand Jean straightened up from the fireplace, his eyes glistening with martial fervour. ‘I’ve still got a shotgun hidden away in the barn.’
‘A shotgun? Are you serious? Why did you not tell me? If they find that they will surely kill you.’
‘Nobody’s going to find it. And nobody’s going to kill me. We Najacs aren’t disposed of so easily.’
‘Still.’ Hervé found himself unconsciously acknowledging his father’s fleeting compliment. ‘I…’ He coughed up some more soup, his eyes streaming. ‘I don’t suppose you have any cartridges left for it?’
Grand Jean finally noticed his son’s distress. Grunting his concern, he strode over to the door and grabbed the first piece of clothing to hand – his Sunday best jacket. ‘What’s the use of a shotgun without cartridges? It would be like a cart without a horse. Or a man without a woman.’ He scowled at his wife
to forestall her protestations about his use of his one good coat. ‘Marguerite. Look after your son. I’m going over to fetch Raoul. He’s the finest man I know for setting bones.’ He glanced across at Hervé. ‘He’ll soon sort that jaw out. Ridiculous not to be able to eat your soup.’
Marguerite Najac snatched an anxious hand to her throat. ‘But you can’t, Jean. He’s Lucie’s grandfather. What will they think? And it’s the middle of the night. He’s…’
‘He’s my neighbour and my friend. My son needs his help. He will come.’
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Raoul Léré straightened up from inspecting Hervé’s jaw. He wiped his bloodstained hands on the rump of his trousers out of long habit, tactfully avoiding the exposed tail of his nightshirt. ‘The bone is smashed. No doubt about that. I’ve done what I can with it, but it needs wiring up by a proper physician. The nose, I am pleased to say, is intact, so at least he can breathe freely. I’ve drawn what remains of the teeth, but he’s got an infection in his lower gum. That’s where all the pain is coming from. An iodine pansement ought to sort him out, now that I’ve opened up the wound again. That and a few litres of tisane. For the bruises and grazes on his body, you must rub him with wild boar grease. You have some, Margot?’
Marguerite Najac nodded. Her eyes were fixed anxiously on her son, as if she expected to heal him by the simple intensity of her gaze.
‘He must rest above all things. He shouldn’t be moved for at least two days. Make him some garbure, Margot, with meat, if you have it. Then pulp it and strain the lees through a muslin sieve – that’s the only way he’ll be able to get it down.’
‘I can’t rest. It’s impossible.’ Hervé jerked himself up from his position on the kitchen table, his jaw clutched in both hands, his eyes streaming. ‘I have to warn the Maquis. Tell them there’s no danger. Not to change their plans.’ His voice emerged as if from a sealed box. ‘When I didn’t turn up for the food drop this afternoon, they will have realised something is wrong.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll do that.’ Grand Jean shook Raoul Léré’s hand. ‘First thing in the morning, before dawn even, I’ll start up. Just tell me where to go.’
‘But Papa, it could be dangerous. They might think I betrayed them. They might ambush you. Jean-Baptiste is farfelu at the best of times.’
‘Staying here could be dangerous too. You and your mother will be running more risks than I shall.’ Grand Jean turned to his wife. ‘I still think we should move him up to the feuillardier’s hut, Marguerite.’
‘He’s staying here.’
Grand Jean made a face at Raoul Léré. ‘You see? I’m not master in my own house anymore. It’s all the fault of these Germans. She’s worse than the Geste, this woman.’
Marguerite Najac made a dismissive motion with her hand, but she was visibly pleased at her husband’s acknowledgment of her force of character.
‘So what will you tell them? What will you tell the Maquis?’ Raoul Léré’s gaze was focused with single-minded intensity on Grand Jean’s face.
Grand Jean hitched his shoulders uncertainly. ‘How do you mean?’
Raoul glanced across at Hervé. ‘About why the Germans spared your son.’
Grand Jean hitched his shoulders again, this time more expansively. ‘Well, I don’t know why they spared him. So how can I tell them what I don’t know? Best just to tell them he escaped while the Boche were transporting him to Montauban. We’ll avoid complications that way.’
‘But Hervé knows why they spared him.’ Raoul Léré’s face had taken on the demeanour of a man forced to strike an unanticipated deal with the devil for the salvation of his immortal soul. ‘Don’t you, Hervé?’
Both Grand Jean and Marguerite Najac turned expectantly towards their son.
‘It was because Lucie pleaded for his life with the German major. There can be no other possible reason. Isn’t that right, boy?’ Raoul Léré took out a handkerchief and scrubbed absent-mindedly at the dried bloodstains on his hands, his eyes still fixed on Hervé.
‘It’s true.’ Hervé nodded slowly. ‘It’s true what he says.’
‘Is that right?’ Grand Jean cocked his head. He, too, was watching his son with intense concentration. ‘If she did that, then the Maquis ought to be told about it. We owe it to Raoul. She’s his granddaughter. Whatever she’s done, however unwise she’s been, she’s still our Lucette. We don’t want anyone hurting her.’ He drew himself up. ‘In fact, now that I know she saved my boy’s life, I shall make sure of the thing myself.’
Raoul Léré had achieved his objective. He clamped a battered and frayed corduroy cap on his head and cracked a wintry smile. ‘I wish you’d tell the same thing to her grandmother. She hasn’t mentioned Lucie’s name since she drove her out of the house. If one of the boys says something or if I bring the subject up, she leaves the room. That woman is more obstinate…’ He hesitated, realising he was about to go beyond his own deliberate boundaries. ‘Thank you, Jean. For doing that for Lucie. I’m obliged to you.’
‘I’m obliged to you for treating the boy, Raoul. More than I care to say.’
PART SEVEN
Central France.
Tuesday 6th June to Saturday 10th June 1944
The Invasion
5:45 am: Tuesday 6th June 1944
Meyer stood silently at the entrance to Max’s bedroom. He was relieved to find no obvious signs of the girl’s presence. It was not so much that he disapproved of her – men would be men and women would be women, that was the way of things – but civilians and war did not go together. It was as straightforward as that. Look at Russia. When you left it to the professional soldier – order. Bring in the civilians and the politicians and the bureaucrats – chaos. And female civilians were the worst of all. A single sniff, and you had trouble. Even sensible men acted like complete idiots.
Meyer gripped his scar in anticipation of a possible cramp and dropped into an ungainly crouch beside the bed. ‘Major. Wake up.’
Max turned towards him, his eyes, through long habit, instantly alert. ‘What is it, Paul? What do you want?’
‘You must get dressed immediately. It’s urgent.’
‘Is it the invasion?’
Meyer nodded.
‘In force?’
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
‘An hour ago. Maybe more. Schmidt was on radio watch. He picked up a rogue transmission from the BBC. He immediately tried to confirm the information with Headquarters, but there was an insane amount of traffic and he had problems getting through. I came over directly once we received final confirmation.’
‘What time is it now?’
‘Five forty-five.’
‘Where have they landed? The Pas de Calais?’
‘No. Normandy. The Cherbourg peninsula, we think.’
Max struck himself on the forehead with the flat of his hand. ‘Verdammte Schweinerei.’ He threw off his nightshirt and began climbing into his long johns.
‘What are your orders, Herr Sturmbannführer?’
Max shut his eyes. His heart was beating uncomfortably fast. But he felt a curious sense of exhilaration, also.
He pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger and took a deep breath, unconsciously reverting to a habit he had picked up on the Russian front when forced to make snap decisions under pressure. ‘Firstly, tell Kremmler to signal an immediate request to Corps for rail space for our tanks and assault guns; there’s bound to be a shortage of flatcars and I want us in at the very top of the list. Hanauer owes me a favour, and this is the moment to call it in.’ He opened his eyes and stared abstractedly at Meyer, as though he were pondering a move in a closely fought game of chess. ‘Next, forcibly requisition all the wheeled vehicles you can find in and around the town. I want our gasoline transported separately from the tanks, in whatever expendable conveyances we have to hand. No excuses. No exceptions.’
‘What else?’
‘The Maquis will have rec
eived orders to slow us down on the road to Montauban. Send out scout cars and motorcycle teams in a ten-kilometre radius – visibly – and with orders to fire on anything that moves. All the exits to town are to be kept clear. Even the ones we do not propose using. That should confuse them sufficiently.’
Meyer hesitated. ‘And the girl? What will you do about her?’
‘That’s my problem.’ Max eased his shoulders into his braces. ‘Pass Kremmler my instructions. I’ll be with you in ten minutes. The men must be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. I want no excuses.’
‘Jawohl, Herr Sturmbannführer!’ Meyer could hardly keep the exultation out of his voice.
‘And Paul…’
‘Yes?’
Max shook his head. ‘Nothing. Forget it. I’ll be straight down.’
L’Embuscade
11 am: Wednesday 7th June 1944
Hervé allowed his chin to drift forwards onto his chest. His eyes closed, and his mouth fell open. He began a series of stentorian exhalations.
His senses were still reeling from the litre and a half of wine he had drunk that morning at breakfast, to fortify himself against the continuing pain in his jaw. All he wanted to do now was to sleep. As he dozed off, an unbidden image of the St Gervais church tower wafted through his unconscious mind. Now why was he thinking of that all of a sudden?
His head snapped back as he jolted himself awake. Bloody fool. Now was hardly the moment to be giving into the insidious lethargy that had been dogging him ever since his escape from Flairac. The Maquis would be arriving in less than thirty minutes to lay their charges. The plans and locations for the ambush had been finalised months ago in his presence. Grand Jean had confirmed them with an initially sceptical Jean-Baptiste, yesterday during his trip onto the Causse. All Hervé had to do was to stay awake and await their arrival.
The Occupation Secret Page 28