A large old blue van, belching smoke and backfiring, pulled up by the gangplank. Mariette went over to the porthole to peep out. Portivy was tiny, just a dozen or so houses clustered around the harbour, with maybe a couple more streets behind them. She could see La Plume Rouge on a corner; it was an unprepossessing place with steamed-up windows and peeling red paint. The little port looked forlorn under the pewter sky, but she guessed it would be pretty in summer with flowers spilling over the walls, and a blue sea rather than the cold grey expanse it was now.
There weren’t many people about, just a couple of fishermen mending their nets on the quay, three women standing in a huddle gossiping, and another couple walking with baskets over their arms to the bakery. What did worry Mariette were the German soldiers. She could see six, standing in pairs, and although they seemed more intent on their conversations with one another than guarding the town, their jackboots and rifles sent shivers of fear down her spine. She’d seen pictures of them often enough, in newspapers and on Pathé News at the cinema, but in the flesh they looked bigger, tougher and very scary.
‘Ready?’ Luc asked, taking his pipe out of the pocket of his striped apron in a reminder that it was the signal. Then he went out on the deck, picked up a couple of boxes of fish and walked down the gangplank.
The van driver was old, with a cloud of white hair, gold-rimmed spectacles and a bright red muffler tied around his neck. He shouted a jubilant greeting at Luc as he got out of his van, then he walked round on the passenger side and opened the door wide as he passed along to the back doors.
Both Luc and the old man put on a great show of delight at seeing one another, laughing and thumping each other on the back, then appeared to be having a more serious conversation about the fish in the boxes. But Mariette could see that both men were actually scanning everyone in the harbour, and particularly the German soldiers.
Luc took his pipe out of his apron pocket and started gesticulating to the old man with it. Mariette’s heart was thumping so loudly, she felt sure the soldiers would hear it out on the harbour, but she tucked her bag under her arm, kept her eyes on Luc and braced herself for flight when his signal came.
He lifted his hand with the pipe in it several times, only to lower it again. She didn’t dare take her eyes off him to see what was going on all around the harbour.
Then the pipe went into his mouth.
Mariette took off like a rocket down the gangplank, squeezed her way alongside the van and curled herself into the well of the passenger seat. There was a blanket on the seat, which she pulled down over her.
She could hear the old man saying a cheery goodbye to Luc, then he slammed the back doors of the van shut, came along the side and shut the door next to where she was hiding. Starting up the engine, he yelled something about lobsters out of the window, and she heard Luc laugh, then away they went.
‘Stay where you are, my dear,’ the old man said quietly in French as the van rumbled over cobbles. ‘It’s not far.’
It was about five minutes later that he stopped. ‘You can sit up on the seat now. You can say I gave you a lift from the station at Quiberon.’
Mariette shook off the blanket and got up on the seat. They were in a narrow lane with high walls on either side. She thought it must be the back of the houses which faced the quay. She straightened her beret and smiled at the old man. ‘Do I look like someone just up from Marseille?’
‘You look like a film star,’ he said gallantly. ‘You certainly don’t look like someone who spent the night on a fishing boat.’
He drove on a few more yards and then stopped outside a tall wrought-iron gate set in a wall. ‘Through there,’ he said, and pointed. ‘Anyone asks, Gilpin brought you here.’
‘Gilpin?’ she repeated.
‘Everyone calls me that,’ he said, and reached out to pat her arm. ‘Be wary of the girls in there, and good luck.’
26
‘Could I see Celeste, please?’ Mariette asked in French of the girl who opened the back door to her knock. She was no more than fourteen, small, thin and her dress and apron were too big for her. ‘Tell her it’s Elise.’
‘Wait there while I see,’ the girl replied, and shut the door in Mariette’s face. She was left standing in a little walled yard. There were dozens of plant pots, but the plants in them were all dead or lying dormant for the winter.
The door was opened again by a plump red-headed woman of around fifty. ‘Elise!’ she exclaimed loudly, as if for someone else’s benefit. ‘I was only thinking about you and your mama just now, and here you are.’
She then wrapped her arms around Mariette. ‘When we go in, make up some story for me about falling out with your mama,’ she whispered against her neck. ‘The girls are always eavesdropping, so don’t come out with any true stuff until we can be entirely alone.’
Celeste took Mariette into a large living room, with the kitchen in front of the windows overlooking the backyard. Along with a table and chairs, and two shabby sofas, there was a chiffonier that was almost disappearing under a vast amount of china, ornaments and a hundred and one different items, from bits of jewellery to letters and medicine bottles.
It was a shambles, but the range made it very warm and it had a cosy atmosphere. It was just as well it was warm as there were three girls sitting around, dressed in nothing more than petticoats.
‘So what brings you to see your old aunt?’ Celeste asked Elise, not even bothering to introduce her to the other girls.
Mariette told the kind of story which could have been a true reflection of her when she was living at home in New Zealand: that she’d run to her aunt because her mother didn’t approve of her boyfriend and complained that she was too proud to be a servant or a waitress.
Mariette really warmed to the story. ‘She screams at me that I’ve got to bring some money in. And I would, if they’d take me on in a dress shop or an office. But I’m not cut out for cleaning, working in a factory or dishing out food, so I came here.’
She was very aware the other girls were looking astonished. Whether this was because they would rather do any kind of work than sell themselves to men – or perhaps because, for the first time, they were hearing someone owning up to what they believed in – she didn’t know which it was.
‘Oh, Elise.’ Celeste shook her head sadly. ‘You surely aren’t saying you want to work here?’
Mariette pulled a disgusted face. ‘Not the mucky stuff, Aunt Celeste, but I could be at front of house, a bit of style and glamour, like you used to do.’
She saw that Celeste struggled not to laugh, and in that instant Mariette knew they were going to get on.
An older woman in a floral apron came through a door to one side of the room, and Mariette had a glimpse of the café beyond. It was a dreary-looking place with oilcloths on the tables and rickety chairs. The woman said something about vegetables, and Celeste looked back at Mariette.
‘I have to sort this out, so we’ll talk later,’ she said. ‘You’d better have some breakfast, and afterwards you can help with some cleaning. I don’t carry passengers here, not even my niece.’
By mid-afternoon Mariette had learned a great deal about what it was like to live under German occupation, with German soldiers creating fear and menace. The girls at Celeste’s had no choice but to entertain them. If they refused, they were likely to find themselves on the next transport to a labour camp. One, a sullen-looking girl with curly black hair, said that they’d all been accused of being collaborators, and most of the local people were as cruel and spiteful as the Germans. One of the other girls rolled her eyes at this, as if it wasn’t strictly true, and Mariette wondered what the truth was.
But she did discover how a brothel was run, and some of the opinions she’d held about such places were quite wrong. For a start, she’d always thought girls were forced into prostitution – as she’d believed her mother was – but she found out that all of Celeste’s six girls had come to it of their own accord, and they quit
e enjoyed it. She’d always imagined too that only horrible, dirty old men used prostitutes, but Celeste said this wasn’t so.
‘We have many bachelors, and men who have an invalid wife, or they are simply married to a woman who refuses to sleep with them,’ she said airily, as if they were discussing the merits of a finishing school. ‘Young men come to get experience before marriage. And, of course, there are the men working far away from home, including soldiers, who need a woman. I like to think my girls give them more than just release, even a bit of affection and fun too.’
Celeste had come to this part of France in 1920, when she was twenty-six, after being a nurse in field hospitals during the Great War.
‘France was left devastated by the war,’ she said simply. ‘A quarter of our men were killed, and so many more were unable to work because of the wounds they received. There were so many weary and bitter people who had lost everything – their loved ones, their homes and their livelihoods – and most had no idea how to build a new life. I came here to try to rebuild mine.’
She paused for a moment and smiled, as if she was remembering something good. ‘I liked the quiet here, the wildness of the coast, and so I stay and opened a café. It was little more than a shed, around the back here, but it was somewhere for people to gather and talk, and maybe, because of my nursing experience, they found me sympathetic. Anyhow, it became a success and soon I was able to rent this bigger property. I had intended to make the house a hotel – indeed, I did rent out rooms at first – but one of those first guests was in fact a prostitute, and that was how it began.’
Mariette found that her previously held beliefs on prostitution were becoming blurry. She liked Celeste, and, from what she’d seen so far, none of the girls who worked at La Plume Rouge was unhappy. Celeste said that most of the German soldiers treated the girls well, and they paid more than the local men. The girls were looked after, they ate well, had regular check-ups with the doctor, and they had the company of the other girls.
But however fascinating it was to be privy to the details of how a brothel worked – something that would be unthinkable back home – Mariette was mindful that she had a real purpose in being here. She wanted to know who she would be helping to escape, and where they were hiding now.
Celeste had kept up the story of being her aunt superbly, not only making little jokes to Mariette, as if they really had a shared past, but also rebuking her for upsetting her mother and being too full of herself to take a job she thought beneath her. At lunch, when all six girls were present, she said she must insist Elise return home, and she would get someone to take her to the station for the evening train to Paris.
Mariette managed to force a few tears and protest that Celeste didn’t know how mean her mother could be. But Celeste stuck to her guns, and said a daughter’s place was with her mother, especially in wartime. ‘We’ll go for a little walk later and talk some more,’ she ended up, finally letting Mariette know she was ready to discuss their real business.
It was late afternoon when they finally went out, going down the little lane Gilpin had driven up that morning.
Celeste paused at a gate much like the one at La Plume Rouge. ‘The airman is in the basement there,’ she whispered. ‘I’m not risking taking you in to meet him. I’ll explain the plan as we walk on.’
The lane came out behind the last house along the harbour, and from there a path led through grass and sand to a few further scattered houses. The beach was around five or six feet below this path, and it was mainly rocks, but there were strips of shingle with shells here and there, leading down to the open sea, and now and again patches of sand.
‘Tonight there will be a rowing boat left down there,’ Celeste whispered, pointing to a particularly large rock. ‘The tide will be going out, and the boat will be on a strip of sand. You will push the boat straight on, following a clear path between the rocks out to the open sea. You see that buoy?’ She pointed to a large red and white buoy secured some five or six hundred yards out to sea. ‘That is what you will be rowing to. You won’t be able to see it, of course, once it’s dark, but you’ll hear its bell. When you reach it, tie the boat to it, then wait for the fishing boat to come and get you.’
‘And the airman I’m helping?’ Mariette asked. ‘Do I bring him here?’
‘No, someone else will do that. Mostly the airmen go on the regular escape route through Spain, but this one has an injured arm and leg, and he can’t make that long trip.’
‘Is the beach mined?’ Mariette asked.
‘No. Thankfully, the Germans seem to think the rocks alone are enough protection against a landing. The harbour is not mined either, because they need to come in and out all the time in their boats, but they have vigilant lookouts at the fort, and searchlights too. But you will be just out of range here, and hidden by the harbour wall. There are foot patrols all along the coast, but on a cold night the guards tend to huddle in shelters. They know all the fishing boats and won’t stop them unless they suspect something is going on. Hopefully, they will have no reason to be suspicious. Our biggest fear is that they get wind of something and send out a fast launch to intercept the fishing boat. But that hasn’t happened yet. Now, do you think you can handle rowing out to that buoy in a heavy sea?’
‘Yes, I can,’ Mariette said with confidence. ‘But I’ll need warmer clothes than these.’ She was shivering now, and her shoes would be a liability on a beach in the dark.
‘I have your clothes back at the café.’ Celeste smiled, and then reached out and touched Mariette’s cheek affectionately. ‘I would be so proud, if you were really my niece. You are a very brave girl.’
‘I haven’t done anything yet,’ Mariette said.
‘That is to come, and it can be very dangerous. The reason I asked you to bring an evening dress was because I thought it might have been necessary for you to be one of my “girls” for the evening. A seemingly drunk woman can get away with quite a lot. But with this man’s injuries we had to take a different approach and, I must admit, I am glad you don’t have to put yourself on display at the café.’
‘So I meet him here?’
‘Yes, if all goes to plan he will be in the rowing boat waiting, ready for you to jump in and take him away. We just have to pray the sentry for this section is his usual lazy self. If he comes into La Plume, as he often does, I’ll give him a large brandy to make him disinclined to go any further.’
‘What do I do, if someone does come?’
‘You have trained for that, I believe,’ Celeste replied.
Mariette gulped. It was one thing to learn the theory of stabbing someone, quite another to actually do it, in the dark, down here on a beach where just one step on the pebbles would sound as loud as a gunshot. ‘Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.’
Celeste took her arm. ‘Come on now, we’ll walk back. You must make a mental note of the way. Things can look very different in the dark, and you’ll be on your own.’
Later, Mariette found Celeste’s words to be true. Nothing looked familiar in the thin beam of her torch.
She had said goodbye to the girls and Celeste over an hour ago, playing on her reluctance to go home right until the end. Gilpin had called in, supposedly to drive her to the station, but he had only taken her twenty yards down the back lane, to a shed where the warm clothes she’d been wearing when she left England were waiting to be changed into. Gilpin drove off, and she had to stay in the shed until she heard the church clock strike seven.
Waiting gave her time to think of all that could go wrong, and when the church clock finally struck she was very jittery. Several people had walked by; each time she heard heavy male footsteps, she was convinced it was a German soldier who had been tipped off about the plans.
Once she finally set off, it was hard not to keep looking round to see if she was being followed. She had a moment of indecision at a point where the lane forked – she didn’t remember seeing that fork before, and thought she’d come too
far – but she could hear the sea, so she followed the sound and, all at once, found herself back at the beach.
The wind was much stronger now. The waves were slapping against the beach, and she could make out white horses, even in the dark. Her mouth was dry and her stomach was churning as she flattened herself against the garden wall of the last house while she checked to see if anyone else was here. But there was no one, just the sound of the wind and the sea, and she quickly ran down towards the big rock Celeste had pointed out earlier, eager to find the airman and the rowing boat.
‘It’s just me, Elise,’ she whispered in English. She knew if the airman was there in the dark, he would be anxious at the sound of footsteps. ‘I can’t see you yet. Where are you?’
‘I’m beside the boat,’ he whispered back, and it sounded as if he was only a few yards away. ‘I was afraid you wouldn’t come.’
All at once she saw him lying down beside the boat. His face looked long and pale in the little light there was. ‘Stay there while I push the boat closer to the water,’ she whispered. ‘I know you are hurt, but will you be able to climb in?’
‘I have to,’ he said, and got to his feet very gingerly.
Mariette glanced at him and saw he was wavering from the effort. She reached out and took his arm, helping him down the beach towards the water.
Returning to haul the boat down, she found it was very heavy and hard to move. The airman took a few wobbly steps to help but she reproved him. ‘No, stay there, you might make your injuries worse. I can do it.’
Putting all her strength behind it, at last the boat began to move. As soon as the bows met the sea, it became easier. Holding it tightly by the mooring rope, she signalled to the airman to get in.
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