The Little Parachute

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘But have you returned to pray there since?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Each day, I …’ But why was this one from Paris looking at her like that?

  ‘Would Father Nicolas have realized who the betrayer of Doumier was?’

  ‘NO! How is it that you can think such a thing? I have three children. My husband …’

  ‘Calm down. It’s safe here. We’re alone. I’ve checked. You weren’t being followed. Stop worrying so much.’

  ‘Me, I can’t help but worry. I hate myself for what I’ve done. If anyone finds out, they’ll …’

  Burying her face in her hands, she swiftly turned away to sob, ‘This war, it is crucifying me! No one will understand. How can they?’

  Hands took her by the shoulders. Véronique tried to avoid them but they pulled her round and made her bury her face against a shoulder to cry until a breath was caught and held, and she could finally nod and say, ‘Please, it’s all right. I just have no one I can talk to about it.’

  The Gestapo Munk had made her a deal. Marie-Hélène let her gaze sift over the woman. Véronique Dussart didn’t look the type to betray anyone and this might have caused the terrorists to be less suspicious but not now, not after Doumier had been arrested and the mayor … ‘What has happened to monsieur le maire?’

  ‘I don’t know! Can’t you see that’s a part of what’s troubling me? They simply came and took him away.’

  The Gestapo, wondered Marie-Hélène, or had it been Kraus? ‘Would you like a cigarette?’ she asked, only to see the woman shake her head and hear her saying, ‘No … No, I don’t want to accept anything more from you people. It’s hard enough for me to have told you Father Nicolas is also involved.’

  ‘Then you must tell me if any of them suspect you.’

  ‘They won’t. They all think it was Angélique Bellecour.’ There, that too, had been said, thought Véronique bitterly.

  ‘You told people she was the one,’ sighed Marie-Hélène, but it was a complication that couldn’t be allowed to interfere.

  ‘Must you accuse me so with your eyes?’

  ‘Just answer me. My life is in danger too, so we’re in this together.’

  ‘Then, yes! Even though she is my friend and has helped me lots with my children, with food she brings in from where she lives.’

  ‘But will she now try to determine the source of this accusation?’

  ‘No! How could she? I’m not a risk to you. I won’t tell anyone we’ve met. Why would I?’

  A cigarette was necessary if only to calm the woman and when she had lit one, Marie-Hélène picked up her blouse and brassiere and laid them on the nearby bushes. ‘Does the sight of my breasts bother you?’ she asked and saw the woman shake her head and look away.

  Inhaling deeply, she handed the cigarette to her. ‘There, that’s better, isn’t it? Why not come and sit down? Ah! let’s bathe our feet. It’s so peaceful here. Perfect. You chose wisely.’

  Their shoulders touched. Their feet touched and their thighs, their ankles too. Their skirts were hiked.

  ‘I’ve lived in Abbeville all of my life. My brothers were always exploring the countryside and often took me with them.’

  ‘Good. I may need their help. They’re not involved, are they?’

  ‘The … the one died in the Ardennes in May-June 1940. The other, he … he has lost both legs and wouldn’t be of any use to the Résistance. For him, as well as for myself, life it is finished.’

  The cigarette was taken back, the lungs filled. ‘That’s not fair, is it? What did he do in the war?’

  The one that’s still going on, was this what she implied? ‘He was a wireless operator. Signals. The artillery shell that chose him could just as easily have chosen another.’

  Ah, mon Dieu … ‘Do these people have a transceiver?’

  So that had been what she’d been after. ‘It isn’t Henri who helps them. He only advises on the electrics.’

  Henri. Her maiden name would be easy enough to obtain. ‘And the set?’ asked Marie-Hélène.

  ‘They don’t have one yet. All right, they’re trying to build one so as to make contact with London, but Henri … Oh for sure, he works at it, he talks, he plans, but spare parts, they’re not so easy to get.’

  When the cigarette was finished, Marie-Hélène found her bag and carefully tucked the butt away in her tin. ‘Rinse out your mouth and wash your hands. We wouldn’t want anyone smelling tobacco on you. Use a little of the moss. That’ll help.’

  And then, as the woman was bending over the spring to cup a hand, ‘Who else is involved?’

  Letting the water drain from her hand, the woman warily asked, ‘When am I to hear that my husband is coming home?’

  As with the Gestapo Munk, so with herself. ‘Soon. I’ll look after it. Don’t worry. A week, ten days at the most. Count them off. As soon as I hear he’s on the train, I’ll let you know.’

  ‘I wish I hadn’t done it. He’ll hate me if he ever finds out.’

  ‘Three years without your man can be an agony, can’t it?’

  ‘How would you know?’

  ‘You’re right, I wouldn’t. I’m sorry. Now here, use my towel to dry your face but first wash it again. No tears. Hey, try to smile, eh? Everything’s going to be okay. You’ll see.’

  Véronique took the towel from her as she knelt over the water to bathe her face again. This business, it should never have happened. Never! The Résistance, the Father Nicolas and Doumier … Why had God put her in the church at that precise moment and made her feel so desperate?

  Things would be all right. This woman from Paris knew what she was doing. She would never have removed her blouse and brassiere like that if there had been any danger. She hadn’t asked about the Gestapo Munk or if she had gone directly to him with the information she had sold for so much.

  The towel was pulled and wrapped around her head. Blindfolded—suffocating—Véronique panicked, and as she fell forward, she tried to scream, tried to get a breath.

  Straddling her tightly, Marie-Hélène brought the boulder down one more time, then bowed her head in exhaustion and gasped, ‘There … there, it’s done, madame, and forgive me but it had to be.’

  Pulling the woman over onto her back, she removed the towel and threw it into the spring to soak. She washed her hands and arms, her breasts, throat and face, then ripped the yellow dress open, yanked at the brassiere until it was around the woman’s throat, and removed the white underpants to leave them caught on an ankle.

  One sandal was tossed onto the path so that it would appear as if lost while trying to escape. After rinsing the towel, she used a corner of it to soak up some of the blood, which she then smeared on the woman’s inner thighs and pubes. It would have to do. The thought of a little violence might help them to conclude what was needed, but from her bag she took a pair of scissors. Pausing for a moment, since it was a terrible thing to do, she hacked off the woman’s hair and let the dampened moss and bloodied earth accept it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘I really am, but I couldn’t let you tell them we had talked. Besides, we couldn’t have them thinking the Bellecour woman had betrayed them. Sadly it has to have been yourself.’

  Taking the scissors well into the surrounding brush and trees, she buried them as deeply as she could, was glad she had thought to bring them. Using the woman’s lipstick, she printed For Doumier on the flat white stomach that had so many stretch marks, then made the Cross of Lorraine below, added corbeau for good measure and left the lipstick there as finished business for others to find.

  Bathed and dressed. She wheeled the bike with its suitcase down to the road and was soon heading back into Abbeville. She would have to find the place she was to stay overnight, but first must try to discover what had happened to the mayor.

  * A causeway

  * A child of lov
e

  7

  An Aubusson carpet covered the floor of the Château de Bagatelle’s winter salon. It was soft and spread its delicately hued floral patterns to panelled, sculpted, mirror-hung walls that were highlighted in blue enamel and gilt but did nothing to still the panic that was in her. Angélique stood with Martin in the centre of the salon. They were alone. The Hauptmann Scheel, having told the Sturmbannführer Kraus to wait in the entrance hall, had shown them in here.

  High above them, exquisitely delicate porcelain flowers from the Royal Vincennes factory gave the chandelier the glow of welcome even in the fading light, which crept in through French windows. She still didn’t know if the mayor had been arrested and wondered if he was in there with them, for a shrieking had started up, Kraus lashing out at the Hauptmann Scheel in front of the colonel and others. The harangue was in Deutsch, and though she had picked up some from working at the Kommandantur, she couldn’t catch everything. The mayor’s name came up. That of Father Nicolas. Others too.

  A crisis. An insurrection. Terrorists—Banditen—crawling all over the place. Himmler demanding an example be made of Abbeville.

  Martin felt her leave him. He saw her cross the room to one of the windows and knew she was feeling terrible. He wanted so much to tell her everything, that she had been wrong about it all, that though she had lied to him about his father ever since that terrible day, he forgave her. He had found his voice.

  She felt him take her by the hand. ‘Forgive me, Martin. Dear Jesus, why us, eh? Why your father?’

  Why the mayor, why Father Nicolas, why that young girl who had helped them with the bicycle taxi in Paris? Why, please, Dr. Vergès or Isabelle Moncontre?

  Because they care.

  Caring isn’t enough, she said inwardly. Life is what this is all about.

  The shrieking of Kraus and the loud and angry voice of Oberst Lautenschläger came to her. They were in the summer salon at the back of the château, but had they arrested monsieur le maire and Father Nicolas?

  The château was just to the southeast of Abbeville, just off the Paris road, and it overlooked the Valley of the Somme and the wooded scarp, which here came down in gullies and hills.

  It was lovely. It had survived all the wars since construction had begun in 1752 and had taken over forty years to complete. Of the pinkish-red brick and white stone of Picardy, it had a first floor with bull’s-eye windows above the French ones of the ground floor. A grey slate, mansard roof with attic dormers rose above spacious lawns.

  But now? she asked. Now beauty and terror sat side by side. The Sturmbannführer Kraus insisted the district was under SS control. Angered, the Oberst Lautenschläger told him he would take his orders only from the OKW, the High Command, and not from the SS. He called Kraus a lout and told him to sit down.

  Abruptly, silence descended. The château, of thirty rooms at least, became so quiet Angélique swore she could hear the stirring of the swastika flag above the entrance.

  The Hauptmann Scheel had deliberately parked the car as far as possible from the château. It was at the head of a row of six others and two camouflaged lorries whose soldiers of the Waffen-SS sat about on the grass with their weapons and waited too.

  A killing campaign. A hunt for résistants, was this what was about to take place? The parachutist … Martin’s parachutist. Were they going to be blamed for something that didn’t even exist?

  ‘Your father, Martin. Do the Germans know he’s in the district?’

  And the Mademoiselle Isabelle? he wanted so much to ask but couldn’t bring himself to use his voice. Not yet.

  A servant, one of the former owner’s staff perhaps, came to scatter grain and cracked maize on the lawn through which the driveway passed and against which the vehicles were parked. As if having timepieces of their own, ducks, geese and white swans came in from the marshes to feed, but two male peacocks rushed to defend their territory. The soldiers got up to watch.

  Now the peacocks made war and the sound of them was sharp and furious as they chased the others in defiance of all that was sane.

  Martin indicated the cars and gradually some sense returned and she saw what he wanted her to tell him.

  ‘The Gestapo Munk is here,’ she said, defeated.

  Munk’s jurisdiction was not only Abbeville and the control into the zone interdite but also encompassed the surrounding countryside in the pays de Ponthieu, to the east of the Somme, and Vimeu to the west. Tolerated but barely by Oberst Lautenschläger, he was, as he had demonstrated at the control, suspicious, arrogant and cruel. A bad combination. Every time he had come into the Kommandantur, she had felt he would discover the truth about her and Martin.

  Rumour had it that Herr Munk suffered terribly from hepatitis and that this had been why Gestapo Berlin had sent him here. Rumour had it, too, that he had caught the disease in a brothel and that it still threatened others in such places.

  He didn’t like women, and certainly he didn’t like or trust the French.

  ‘Monsieur le maire doesn’t have a car anymore, Martin. He had one in 1940 and ’41 but that privilege was taken when he was caught transporting grain to feed the pigs he kept illegally at one of the farms, and now he walks or rides his bicycle like almost everyone else. Therefore, he must have come in Herr Munk’s car,’ she said emptily. ‘Therefore, he has been arrested.’

  Martin insisted she should look closer and she said, ‘That little blue Renault is the car of the sous-préfet Allard. He’s in charge of Abbeville and the districts of Ponthieu and Vimeu so has to contend with the Gestapo Munk. That other Renault, the big black one, is préfet Pallière’s. He’s based in Amiens, so the meeting here, it must be critical. But those two top policemen, they have no love for each other and if you ask me, I think M. Allard is more inclined to look the other way and let the Résistance work. He’s more than an acquaintance of the mayor. They grew up together, both fell in love with and married sisters from the same family, both went to war together, fought in the trenches, buried their comrades and …’

  They were no longer alone. The shrieking and the angry retorts had ceased.

  Steps sounded in the corridor. One by one the visitors, each putting on his fedora or military cap, left the château to cause the ducks and geese to fly a little, the swans to move away.

  The peacocks were satisfied but to this display, the visitors remained impervious.

  From behind her and Martin, the Oberst Lautenschläger cleared his throat. A big man, a giant with all-but-shaven dark grey hair and a massive brow, he had faded blue and often rheumy eyes. There were paunches under them, more so now, she thought but wondered if it wasn’t the fading light that caused her to notice such a thing. The sagging jowls also.

  ‘Ma chére Mademoiselle Bellecour,’ he said, and she could see that though he tried not to show it, he was still deeply upset and embarrassed by the ruckus. ‘You must forgive me,’ he continued in his thickly accented French. ‘Berlin are not thinking clearly. They’re so far from us, they panic. This business of Doumier, it’s unfortunate.’

  A soldier all his life, he had, she surmised, just been told in no uncertain terms that he wouldn’t be one for much longer.

  ‘Well, Martin, how did you get along with the specialist?’

  Martin gave him the broadest grin he could. He nodded, shrugged—went into such a pantomime of relief. No cutting open of the throat and installing a little wooden door. No voice machine.

  ‘The head, the brain, the hypnotism?’ said the colonel. ‘Yes, yes, I understand.’ He looked at herself. ‘You must, I gather, return to Paris in a week at which time the doctor will attempt to remove the blockage of the mind that has caused the loss of the voice. Please, it will be arranged. There’ll be no problem. If this was all I had to contend with, my days would be welcome.’

  Kraus must have told him, but the colonel could know nothing of Vergès and what
really had happened in Paris. Nothing! ‘You’re very kind, Herr Oberst,’ she said and fought to smile and to lie, yes lie! ‘Paris was lovely as always but a little different.’

  ‘Good. Yes, that’s good. My dear, please come and sit down. There is something I must warn you of. Martin, do you think you could find Frau Oster in the kitchens? Write her one of your little notes. A glass of lemonade—the real thing—and a slice of her Bremer Klaben. It’s a type of cake—sugary and with sugar dust—or perhaps you would prefer some of the gingerbread, the Pfefferkuchen she made with honey from my family’s estates near Lüneburg.’

  They waited for Martin to leave the room, he to look back at her once in uncertainty and then again.

  ‘Your son has your well-being at heart, mademoiselle. I like to see that in a boy. Now listen, please. Though it is hateful, and I despise such things, there is a rumour about that it was yourself who betrayed this surveyor to Herr Munk. Apparently the Paris trip I authorized was your reward.’

  ‘But … but I still don’t even know who Doumier was. He can’t have come to the Kommandantur. I’d have remembered the name.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I told that imbecile Kraus as much but you have to bang those types on the head ten times, not just once or twice like soldiers. They’ve never been under fire. Herr Munk didn’t deny the rumour and should have.’

  ‘Then … then you know who gave him the surveyor’s name?’

  Lautenschläger’s eyes moistened. ‘That is not for me to say. Herr Munk implies that it was received in one of the anonymous letters but I feel that one struck a bargain with a poor woman whose despair could no longer be contained.’

  ‘Not Véronique … Please, you must tell me it wasn’t her.’