Liberation

by Imogen Kealey

  The table was laid for two. Nancy sat down, very carefully, and watched as Celeste ladled stew into white china bowls, then, sitting down herself, began to cut up a fresh loaf. Nancy’s mouth watered.

  “Do start, Madame.”

  Nancy did not need to be asked twice. The food was delicious, chicken and gravy, carrots and pearl onions, the bread light and airy. Bliss. Utter bloody bliss.

  “So, you are a very dangerous woman?” Celeste said, starting on her own supper at a more sedate pace. “Never mind, it’s best I don’t know. I just hope you’re giving as good as you’re obviously getting.”

  Nancy nodded, still chewing, then swallowed happily. “Where is your husband?”

  “I am a widow,” Celeste replied. “My husband Guy was killed during the invasion.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Celeste did not reply at once, and the click of their spoons against the china plates was the only sound in the room.

  “I manage. But it is very difficult to keep up with the farm. One does what one must. For the children.”

  The floorboard on the stairs creaked, and Nancy spun round, wondering if, for one foul moment, this whole thing, the kind welcome, the food, was just a cruel joke and the Gestapo were still in the house. It was the little girl who had disturbed the Germans’ original search. She was whip thin, long black hair almost down to her waist. She wore a pale blue nightgown and carried a teddy bear, swinging it by the paw from one hand.

  “Maman?”

  “Go to bed at once, Maria!”

  The little girl thrust out her bottom lip. “But I am hungry, and I’m not tired.”

  Celeste held up her hand. “You have been fed. Bed. At once.”

  Maria threw down her teddy bear so it bounced down to the bottom of the staircase, then stamped angrily back up the stairs. Above them a door slammed.

  Celeste went and picked up the toy, dusting him off and then sitting him in the rocking chair by the fire. Nancy could imagine the girl creeping guiltily downstairs to find him at dawn and her relief when she found he had not been too uncomfortable overnight.

  “A very dangerous woman,” Nancy said with a smile.

  Celeste returned to her chair and picked up her spoon again. “I hope so. I hope she stays fierce. It is so hard to bring up a little one by myself. She thinks I’m a tyrant, but I’m just trying to survive.”

  Nancy had an image of her mother, a familiar one, turning from the food cupboards in the kitchen as Nancy came home from school, banging the door, dropping her coat on the floor and starting to shout at her. For the first time, though, she noticed how empty that food cupboard looked, how worn and faded her mother’s clothes.

  She felt her throat tighten. “You are a good mother.”

  Celeste nodded, taking the compliment as her due. “Are you finished? Give me your dress and I shall wash it while you clean yourself up and see to your wounds. While it dries you can sleep a little, then be on your way.”

  59

  The fresh bandages on her thighs lasted about fifteen miles, but by the time the road started to climb upward, they had twisted and rolled, leaving the flesh exposed again. The ones around her ankles lasted another five. One. Two. One. Two. Pushing down with one foot and then the other, inching forward along the rough country track, deeply shadowed by oak trees. The air was cool, but the forest seemed strangely quiet, stripped of birdsong, and there was no breeze to make the leaves stir and whisper. All Nancy could hear was her own breath.

  Too steep. If the road had been flat, she could have built a rhythm, and then perhaps the pain would have dulled with its regular repetition, but the rough climbing ground made that impossible. Each turn of the wheels was a new torment. The straps from the radio set dug into her shoulders and the skin on her back where the edge of the case rested against her was slowly rubbing raw. And she still had God knew how many miles to go, almost all of them up.

  Her thoughts came in short loops and flashes. Henri reading the newspaper at breakfast before the war broke out, setting down his coffee cup. The moment in the shadowed moonlight when Antoine blew his brains out. The secretary at the Free French Forces Headquarters. Böhm, holding his hand to his bleeding face. One. Two. One… Two… She knew a junction was coming up, the moment this track joined one of the metaled roads. There would be patrols. She’d be able to turn off it again after a mile or so, but while she was on it she’d be vulnerable.

  The air was getting warm now, even under the shade of the trees. She turned onto the main road and the gradient increased a little. The blood from her thighs ran like rivulets of sweat down the inside of her leg. She glanced up. The sun was already past its zenith, and she had left the farm before dawn, so what was that—seven hours riding now? It felt like five minutes and an eternity.

  Behind her she heard the drone of a petrol engine. Shit. That meant Germans.

  She wiped the sweat out of her eyes and looked right and left. The banks rose steeply on each side of her, and the ditch at the side of the road was shallow and overgrown. She just had to keep going and hope that whoever was coming up behind her wasn’t looking for a woman with a case strapped to her back. But she needed to look ordinary, like a woman who had only gone a couple of miles, who was just on her way into the next village. Lift up your head, Nancy. Straighten your shoulders, Nancy. Smile. Look like you’re having fun. The pain shivered through her. The engine noise increased and they were on her, and passing her by, a flash of dark green, canvas, huge wheels, a low cloud of dust kicked up by the tires. She kept looking forward, head up.

  One. Two. Three wagons. They didn’t even slow down, just pulled out a little so they didn’t knock her off the road. The last one was full of German troops, in their gray helmets and greenish tunics, crammed onto benches facing each other. The private at the back on the right-hand side, a boy in his late teens, smiled at her and raised his hand, a small private wave. She smiled back, and kept smiling until they disappeared out of sight around the next curve.

  The track that led her off the main road again was rough, just earth in some places, gravel in others, with sudden pools of mud. It climbed then fell, climbed and fell. The bike wobbled and bounced over potholes dug by summer rain and grooves cut by horse-drawn carts. The daylight began to fade, and then it was only a matter of time. A twist of the path between fields, a steeper downward gradient than usual toward a wide and shallow stream, and a thick branch knocked loose in one of the sudden summer storms, not yet cleared away.

  The front wheel caught and she was thrown forward over the handlebars. For a moment she was flying forward and sideways and too slow to do anything to save herself. She landed hard on her left side and the air was knocked out of her.

  For a second or two, perhaps, she lost consciousness; it was difficult to tell given her mind had been a sort of dead white nothingness for hours. It was so peaceful here, lying on the earth. She could just hear the stream a hundred yards farther down the hill, and as the earth cooled, the air finally stirred the leaves very gently, like a hand through water.

  “Nancy.”

  There he was. Had he been away? She was so glad he was home.

  “Nancy.”

  Of course, he’d come back late in the afternoon yesterday, earlier than she’d expected, and he laughed at her, the way she threw herself into his arms, wrapped her legs around his waist. They hadn’t even made it upstairs, making love on the fancy sofa in the sitting room, hardly undressing, such was the immediate, absolute urgency.

  “Nancy, my darling.”

  Then where had they gone? The Hotel du Louvre et Paix, of course, by the harbor, where they could dine on the terrace and watch the boats coming and going as the last light faded, the fishermen carrying their baskets of lobsters straight into the kitchen where the chef waited to prepare Henri and Nancy’s supper. Had they been dancing? Ah, yes the Metropole! The barman there really understood that mixing a cocktail was an art. Nancy couldn’t help laughing, to see him so serious, but oh
my, the drinks he could make, and they always had the best bands. Nancy had seen Rita Hayworth there once, and Maurice Chevalier twice.

  “Listen to me, Nancy.”

  Back home, purring up the hill in Henri’s favorite sports car, his hand always steady on the wheel no matter how much he’d drunk. She loved to see a man drive. Then making love again. In bed, this time, and drifting off to sleep in his arms under the cool white sheets.

  “Nancy, you have to get up.”

  She half opened her eyes. He was standing between her and the French windows that led onto the balcony; the lace curtains were billowing behind him in waves. Strange, Nancy couldn’t feel the breeze. How handsome he was, her Henri. How kind to her.

  “I don’t want to, Henri darling, don’t make me,” she said.

  He just kept looking at her. Why was he sad? How could he be sad on such a beautiful day?

  “Open your eyes, Nancy.”

  “I…”

  His eyes were still kind, but his voice grew firm. “I mean it, Nancy. Open your eyes.”

  She did. Marseille was gone. Henri was gone. She was lying in the dark on a path in the Auvergne, a radio strapped to her back, blood drying between her legs, her muscles cramping, her ribs bruised to hell, crazy with thirst. And now someone was crying, great racking sobs, a terrible, heart-wrenching sound. She listened, amazed, for a full minute before she realized it was her.

  Henri, I fucked up. I fucked everything up. I’m so sorry. I was so stupid. I just… I didn’t know. The trees and the earth and the dark air said nothing. The things I have seen, Henri! The things I have done. I’ve killed men, got men killed. That girl, Jesus, what am I? Fuck, the Germans have killed children because of what I’ve done.

  Eventually, the sobbing died away. Nothing had changed. She was still here, in occupied France. The dead were still dead and the living were waiting for her.

  She pushed herself up on her knees, then, staggering under the weight of the radio, onto her feet, picked up the bicycle.

  Fournier let go a stream of frightened obscenities when he saw her. The lookouts a hundred yards down the track had tried to help and had been told to fuck off, so they’d contented themselves with walking either side of her as she reached the cook house and barracks they’d set up in a deserted farm, half a mile from the barn where she’d left them, shepherding her on her way and making sure she didn’t hit any of the booby traps they’d set along the path.

  For a moment it looked as if she was just going to keep going right through the camp, as if she’d forgotten how to even stop, but Tardivat grabbed the handles of the bike and held it. She looked at him, eyes dull and confused.

  “For Christ’s sake, someone help her!” he shouted.

  Fournier sprinted over and tried to lift her from the seat, but she pushed him away. It was a feeble push, but he stood back a pace, arms wide as she slowly climbed off. Her dress was torn and dirty, streaked with blood.

  Denden carefully lifted the radio from her shoulders, slipping her arms free. Then she collapsed. Fournier caught her and carried her, gently as a bridegroom, to the farmhouse, shouting over his shoulder for a medic.

  60

  “Nancy, wake up!”

  Not Henri’s voice. That was how she knew she wasn’t dead. That and the pain.

  “Denden?”

  “Yes, my only love, it’s me. How are you? Can you move?”

  She opened her eyes and cautiously pulled herself up on her elbows. The pain was different. Dull, throbbing, rather than bolts of agony. She realized she was wearing a thin cotton shirt, a pretty clean one too. Her thighs and ankles were bandaged and she was lying on a thick layer of blankets in a wooden cot in a small square room. Wooden floors, no glass in the windows. Bright sunshine and Denden sitting on a three-legged stool by her head.

  “Good. You’re alive,” Denden said with a deep sigh of relief. “I thought you were just going to slip into a very picturesque coma and we’d end up having to bury you here. I have already started work on a very touching eulogy.”

  She smiled. “How long have I been out?”

  “A little more than two days, if you ignore the occasional semi-lucid moment when you woke up enough to take a drink and ask if Henri was here yet.”

  Nancy noticed a paperback book on the floor beside him, a pitcher of water.

  “Have you been playing nursemaid, Denden?”

  He crossed his ankles. “When I haven’t been tapping away in a frenzy at my splendid new radio. London has made two drops to our new sites since you got back, the darlings, packed with all sorts of goodies. Including the rather fancy antiseptic creams the doctor and I have been rubbing all over the remains of your lovely skin. How does it feel?”

  She thought. “Like cold water on a hot day. Since when do we have a doctor?”

  “His name is Tanant. He’s come up to join us full time.”

  Nancy nodded. Tanant was one of the sympathetic medical men whom Gaspard had “kidnapped” on D-Day to help with the wounded, a gray man in late middle age who had moved with calm and speed among those horrors. He was most welcome.

  Nancy put out her hand, and Denden held her wrist as she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and sat up properly. Little flickers of fire ran through her muscles and when she put her hand to her neck she found another bandage on her shoulder.

  “And the war?”

  “Oh, that!” Denden said, handing her a glass and pouring a mix of water and wine into it. “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

  “Just tell me.” She took a long swallow.

  “Very well. The Germans are on the run, and the Allies have landed in the south.” He reached forward and put a hand on her knee. “Marseille has been liberated, but before you ask, no, we have no news about anyone the Gestapo might have still been holding there.” She took another drink. “So, Das Reich are desperately trying to get back to Germany before the Ruskies overrun the Fatherland and take revenge for all the shit the Nazis pulled when they invaded. It will not be pretty.”

  He paused and rubbed the back of his neck, looking at her sideways.

  “Denden…”

  “Well, if you must know, London would like us… they are rather insistent in fact, to stop a battalion of SS getting back to Germany. They suggest forcing them to ‘a permanent halt’ in Cosne-d’Allier. They think we have three days.”

  A battalion? Jesus.

  “Oh yes, and they have a Panzer tank or two with them.”

  “I don’t suppose they explained what they meant by ‘permanent halt,’ did they?”

  Denden refilled her glass. “Reading between the lines, which is tough to do in code and a signal spiky with interference, they know perfectly well we can’t take prisoners, so the implication is if we have to kill them all even after they’ve surrendered, they won’t look too hard for the mass grave. Or we can hold them if we want until the Americans come sweeping in and handle the official cleanup.”

  Nancy gave him back her glass and tried to stand up. A fresh Catherine wheel of pain shot off around her nervous system, but she didn’t fall over. For the first time she noticed her working clothes, slacks, tunic hanging from the back of the door. Did they get a laundry maid up here as well as a doctor?

  She tottered over, and giving Denden a look which said, pretty clearly, I shall dress myself thank you very much, asked, “And what do the men say to this exciting suggestion from London?”

  Denden sniffed. “The only person who is really happy is René because he’s been dying to fire his bazookas at a Panzer. The others are… inclined to be surly. It’s nearly over. They want to go home. Why risk dying and never seeing your family again when the Germans are beaten? Actually, I don’t think Tardivat cares any more. Fournier could go either way. Did you know his father ran a garage in Clermont? He wants to go back there. And Gaspard has apparently done taking orders from London now he’s been resupplied. Oh, and he’s promoted himself again. He’s a general now.”


  Nancy shrugged on her tunic, and found a clean pair of socks in the pocket.

  “Colonel Wake! Why are you putting your boots on?”

  “Time to rally the troops. And if Gaspard has awarded himself a promotion, I think I shall too, so that’s Field Marshal Wake to you.”

  Gaspard did not approve of her new title, but she didn’t give him much time to think about it. The moment she walked out of the farmhouse in her fresh uniform like Christ risen from the dead, she had them.

  Fournier took one look at her, then crossed the yard to stand at her side. Tardivat followed, and as he passed in front of her, winked. Gaspard wasn’t coming over easy though.

  “We are done! France is free!” he yelled at her when she announced her new rank and their orders. “The Germans are leaving! Why should we stand in the way? That was the whole fucking idea!”

  The men behind him shifted nervously. The urge to go home and the urge to fight back, especially now they had new weapons in their hands again, were at war within them. She guessed the urge to fight was still stronger.

  “On their own terms?” she said, straight at Gaspard, but loud enough for them all to hear. “Is that what you want? They come here, take your land, kill your people, and you’re just going to sit back and let the Americans and British get rid of them for you? Let them leave with their tanks and troops like they are on a parade? Wave them through so they can go fight the Russians after everything they have been through? What sort of men are you?”

  She dropped the pretense she was talking to him, held out her arms.

  “Gaspard’s right, I can’t make you stay. Know this, though: if you quit, France may achieve peace for a time, but you’ll never be at peace with yourselves. You can go home safely, but can you look your wives, your daughters in the face knowing you let the Germans walk over your land without striking a blow? Those Americans and British fighting to free your country, will you go whining to your mothers saying you wanted to go home? Or will you give them back their pride in their men? Will you give the women of France who have suffered and fought alongside you that gift? Give them back their belief. Deliver them their liberation!”