The Champagne Girls

by Tessa Barclay

  ‘Yes, I was naturally anxious to see ‒’

  ‘But how could you get there?’

  She explained about the tunnels. ‘You’re a stranger to these parts, captain, but us Champenois know how to get about the country even if the enemy are thick on the ground.’ She told him the legend about Old Madame, sheltering in the caves and coming out to find the Uhlans in her courtyard.

  ‘Well, then, it has its dangers, this troglodyte transport!’

  ‘I suppose so, but it’s also very useful. The Rhenois, for instance, will be able to live relatively safely in their city despite the German shelling ‒ they’ll just take to the caves.’

  ‘Not very healthy, though?’ He had a great distaste for the idea of underground life. He was a southerner, devoted to the sunny openness of Provence.

  ‘Well, it isn’t good for rheumatism, that’s true. But on the other hand, I could take you by the hand and lead you to a spot that’s quite possibly on the far side of the German lines.’

  ‘No!’ he said, raising his eyebrows.

  ‘Yes,’ she insisted, but she could see he didn’t believe her.

  The Red Cross lists were pinned up in the hall of the Mairie on the evening of the following day. With a crowd of others, Gaby went to find out what had been learned. In the flickering light of high-swung oil lamps, they read and exclaimed and groaned or laughed at the news they saw.

  The names of Gavin Hopetown-Tramont and Alys Hopetown-Tramont were listed among the dead. ‘Killed by shellfire at Chalons Crossroads.’ Nicolette de la Sebiq-Tramont was among the wounded: ‘Present whereabouts, Chalons Hospital.’ But where was Elinore? Her heart beating hard in her breast, she hunted among the sheafs of paper and found her at last. ‘Missing: Elinore de la Sebiq-Tramont, aged five, last seen at Chalons Crossroads.’

  Gaby allowed herself to be edged out of the way as yet another anxious Rhemois searched for relatives. She went blindly out into the street. The sky was lit up by a green flare as the French gunners tried to illuminate the terrain to the north. Under its baleful light she made her way back to the hotel.

  It was just possible to get to Chalons. She bribed her way aboard a travelling wagon. The journey was quicker than others she’d undertaken in the last month or two. In Chalons she was set down in what had once been the fine main street, hurried to the hospital, and asked for Netta.

  ‘Are you a relative, mademoiselle?’

  ‘Her cousin.’

  ‘Papers, please?’

  ‘Papers? To see a sick woman?’

  ‘Mademoiselle, we’ve had enemy agents here picking up information from the refugees. We have to be careful.’

  Her papers were in order. The Red Cross matron sighed, returning them to her. ‘Mademoiselle, we have an official telegram for Madame Tramont. We haven’t dared give it to her as yet.’

  ‘A telegram? From whom?’

  ‘The Department of War, mademoiselle. Her son Pierre was killed in the Battle of the Aisne.’

  ‘But that’s impossible!’ Gaby cried. ‘He couldn’t have completed his training ‒’

  ‘Oh, mademoiselle, every unit had to be thrown in to drive back the Germans! I hear there were fifty thousand casualties …’ The matron’s florid face crumpled into tears. ‘Young boys … With their whole life before them …’

  Gaby sat listening to the mourning voice. She tried not to hear it. Pierre dead?

  After what seemed an eternity the matron was speaking in a firmer voice. She had dried her eyes. ‘Will you take her the telegram, mademoiselle?’

  ‘Give it to me.’

  She was given the envelope, and a little girl in Red Cross uniform was to guide her. Netta was in a warehouse taken over by the medical authorities. It was heated by a stove at the far end. Someone had tried to clean the grimy windows but with scant success. There were no curtains. Truckle beds and mattresses took up most of the floor space.

  Netta was sitting on a packing-case in a borrowed dressing-gown. One arm was in a sling, she had a dressing on her face held in place by a bandage. Her once-beautiful hair was badly brushed and piled up in a tangle. She looked up wildly as Gaby approached.

  ‘I haven’t seen her!’ she cried. ‘Have you? Those people who took her, they’ll be looking after her ‒ don’t you think so?’

  ‘Netta, it’s me, Gaby!’

  ‘It’s not as if I wanted to let go of her ‒ but they offered a lift, she was so tired, poor little thing ‒ walking for nearly two days.’

  ‘Netta, don’t you know me?’ Gaby knelt by the packing-case, took her cousin’s wildly gesturing hand. ‘Netta, it’s Gaby. I’ve come to take you home.’

  ‘Home? Home ‒ of course, that’s where she is! Of course she’d go straight there as soon as she realised she was lost. She’s always a good little girl ‒ never strays far from home.’ Netta dragged her hand away. ‘Who are you? Are you from the Red Cross? They said … Someone said …’

  Gaby turned to the little escort. ‘Can she be taken home?’

  ‘I think so, I don’t think there’s much we can do for her here. But of course she must be officially discharged. Matron will have her papers. Come along.’

  Between them they got Netta to her feet. She came with complete docility, inquiring as they went whether they had seen her daughter and if she had had anything to eat today. ‘She has to have milk every day. The doctor said milk is very necessary for good teeth. But milk’s very scarce, isn’t it? And so are potatoes ‒ I’ve noticed it’s difficult to get potatoes. Do you know where there are any?’

  At the matron’s office there was a short wait. Then Gaby was called in to sign official discharge certificates. ‘I hope your cousin will make a good recovery. She has had great misfortunes. How did she take the news of her son?’

  ‘Oh, good God, the telegram ‒ I forgot all about it.’ Gaby automatically put her hand in her pocket for it, but couldn’t find it. Then she realised she’d been holding it in her hand until she set her cousin down on a bench outside the matron’s door. She turned quickly to retrieve it.

  Too late. Netta was sitting on the bench with the opened telegram in her hands. She looked up as Gaby appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Gaby!’ she gasped. ‘It says … my son … Oh, Gaby …’

  With the paper still in her hands, she fell forward. The little auxiliary nurse leaped to catch her, but her thin arms were not strong enough to hold her.

  Netta fell to the floor. Gaby threw herself down to help her, to lift her up.

  But even as she put her arms around her, she knew it was too late. Her cousin had come to the end of her resources. Grief and despair had won.

  Chapter 16

  The ruts in the lane had been frozen by the late spring frost. But the ice over the puddles broke under Gaby’s heavy clogs. She could feel the cold water sometimes flow against her ankles in their thick wool stockings. In front of her face, her breath made a silver fog.

  Overhead the stars of early morning were bright and clear, except when they were dimmed by an occasional gunnery flare. Somewhere to the west, a barrage was being put up ‒ she could hear the yammering of the guns, see the flash of exploding shells.

  She trudged on, shoulders hunched in her coarse peasant’s coat. Over her arm there was a basket containing a man’s suit, worn and much mended; a small sack of potatoes; and two vegetable pasties, made the previous morning by herself in the kitchen at Calmady.

  If anyone stopped her, she was going to Rethel market to sell these items. She was Berthe Amouillet of Bazancourt, and she had the papers to prove it ‒ good forgeries, provided by master engravers for French Intelligence.

  Her briefing for this mission had been somewhat alarming. ‘We have an agent on the run behind the German lines, mademoiselle. He has a rendezvous already arranged but we can’t get to it because the enemy’s on his trail and we’ve had to close down the network. It needs someone who knows the area to go there by an unexpected route and give him fresh clothes, new papers,
and accompany him to a fresh safe-house.’ Major Garouche had then paused, screwed his monocle in his eye, and added, ‘Of course you are at liberty to refuse this assignment if you wish. You are a civilian ‒ no one can force you to risk your life.’

  Gaby had been recruited for French Intelligence when her remark to the provost-captain filtered back to them; that she could take him by the hand and lead him to a spot behind the German lines. It had dawned on the HQ staff that this was literally true ‒ that the Champenois knew an underground network of caves and passages in their chalk landscape. Mademoiselle Tramont knew more than some because she had access to the notebooks of an old friar who had made a hobby of excavating in the countryside.

  For the last eighteen months she’d been leading small parties of men ‒ with now and again a woman ‒ to egress points north and north-east of Rheims. Some of them came out in No Man’s Land, some of them came out about three-quarters of a mile behind the front line. She herself had gone on one or two forays, mainly to take messages to agents in place.

  The one she was going to help now had been out of touch for over a week. ‘Our problem is, mademoiselle, that the Germans may have captured him and put someone else in his place.’

  ‘How am I to know? Is there a password?’

  ‘Yes, but they might have got that out of him. In any case, we’ve had to junk them all ‒ the Boches captured a lot of information when they raided one of our points in Laon.’

  ‘What you’re saying is, there’s no way of knowing whether this man is ours or a plant put there by the enemy?’

  ‘Exactly. But we do desperately want to get him out of the trap before it closes, if he’s still at liberty and able to travel.’

  ‘Am I to bring him back through the tunnels?’

  ‘No, we’ve a place for him all fixed up. He can rest there …’ Major Garouche hesitated. ‘There’s … er ... a possibility … er … that you might do something else for us.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You speak German, I believe?’ She nodded. ‘Could you speak German like an Alsacien?’

  ‘We-ell … I could speak it convincingly enough to dupe a German, but not another Alsacien, if you see what I mean.’

  He looked pleased. ‘Well, we’ll leave it for now. A lot depends …’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On how you find our man. All we can tell you is he’s going under the name of Emile Cellier and he’s supposed to rendezvous at the ruins of the Church of Our Lady in Pettiloul every night as from the 10th May.’

  ‘And what if the man who’s there is a German?’

  The major sighed, took out his monocle, polished it, and put it back in his eye. ‘I can only say, mademoiselle, that you’ll have to use your instinct. If he strikes you as … not quite genuine, you’ll have to pretend you stumbled on him by accident.’

  ‘Oh, thank you very much,’ Gaby said.

  ‘You would like to withdraw?’

  But of course she couldn’t do that.

  She had wanted with all her heart to do something to pay back the wounds the Germans had inflicted on her family. So many dead, so much suffering ‒ and no one except herself and her brother left to take up arms against them. Her father was too old and unfit for military service and, besides, it had been decreed that he was of more use to the nation in helping to save the wine trade. ‘After all,’ said the Mayor of Rheims to him, ‘when we finally gain the victory, we must have champagne to celebrate with, mustn’t we?’

  Gaby’s brother David was on the Western Front now in Flanders. No question of an easy post behind the lines guarding some railway station or power works. Men up to forty-five were being called up for active service these days. The casualties had been horrifying since the war began. This new form of war ‒ trench warfare, with huge guns firing from safe positions miles behind the lines took a dreadful toll.

  Her little Cousin Elinore had at last been found, after a month of searching. The peasant family who offered her a lift had gone on with her to their relations in Niort. It had taken some time for them to realise that they ought to contact the Red Cross and say they had in their charge a little unknown child, answering to the name Elinore or Nora, whose parents had been last seen in Chalons.

  Gaby had gone to collect her and take her to relations in Touraine. Frederic’s father was dead now, but distant relatives gladly offered to give the little girl a home in that safe region until the war in Champagne should be over.

  Nora had clung to Gaby as she said goodbye. ‘You will come and get me, won’t you?’ she begged. ‘You won’t forget all about me again?’

  ‘We didn’t forget, Nora. We just couldn’t find you.’ Gaby held her tight. This little cousin was the only survivor of the branch of the Tramont family through Aunt Alys and Cousin Netta. The Germans had killed the rest. Oh yes, they had killed Netta too. Netta’s heart had broken because of what they had done to her parents and her only son.

  Gaby looked up now at the stars. They were beginning to fade just a little. It must be about four in the morning. Any moment she should sight the ruined steeple of the church of Our Lady. She had heard the sounds of men on sentry duty now and again, but each time she had quietly faded away among the trees. Now she skirted the woods to stare down the shallow slope.

  Yes, there was the spire. She saw the glint of water or ice under the starlight ‒ shell-holes full of cold winter rain, the rain that had reduced the whole countryside to one great mudbath. Whatever else she would remember about this war if she survived, the main thing would be the mud. Men marching through mud, guns being dragged by straining horses covered in mud, mud thrown up in a great lacey roundel when a shell landed, mud on her clogs, on her clothes, sometimes on the very bread that she put to her lips.

  She took off her clogs. They were too noisy for this dangerous moment. She went quietly down the slope, through the ruins of one or two village houses. In among the stonework of the church she thought she sensed movement.

  ‘Monsieur?’ she whispered.

  No reply.

  ‘If there’s anybody there, please come out you’re frightening me.’ It was said in the patois of Champagne, with a whimper of fear in it.

  A man’s silhouette appeared against the starlight.

  ‘Well, what is there to be afraid of?’ he said in a gruff tone.

  ‘So there is someone here! I thought so! Hiding like that, scaring a good respectable woman! Who are you, anyhow?’

  He gave a grunt of laughter. ‘If you must know, Madame-in-a-Fright, I’m Emile Cellier.’

  ‘Oh, you are, are you! Let’s have a look at you, Emile Cellier!’ She got out a box of matches and in the shelter of the wreckage struck one. She held up the flame in cupped hands, and then dropped the match at once. ‘Why!’ she gasped. ‘I know you! You did legal work for my family ‒ Marc Auduron!’

  ‘What ‒ who’s that ‒ by God, it’s little Gaby Tramont! What the devil are you doing here?’

  ‘Looking for you, as it happens.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘And why not me?’ she challenged, falling back into the curt patois of the region. ‘You need a change of clothing ‒ I suppose you don’t care who brings it, my faith!’

  ‘Gaby,’ he said in wonder. ‘Gaby Tramont!’ He took her hand in both of his and shook it with vigour. She could feel that he was chilled through, but the grip was strong and with a warmth of its own. ‘How did you get into this business?’

  ‘It’s a long story. How did you?’

  ‘Oh, it seemed a thing I could do … There wasn’t anybody to be hurt if I came a cropper, you see.’

  ‘But your wife …?’

  ‘I lost my family in an artillery attack at the beginning of ’fifteen.’ There was a pause. She didn’t know what to say. There had been so much loss … ‘Well, little Gaby ‒ did you bring me dry clothes? I’ve been wearing these soaking-wet things for two days now.’

  ‘Yes, and in my basket, two tartines ‒ are you hungry?�
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  ‘Famished!’

  She put the food into his hands and, half-smiling in the darkness, heard him wolf it down. She produced from a pocket a tiny bottle of spirits, of the kind that the peasants took into the vineyards with them to wash down their midday snack. She gave that to him.

  ‘Ah,’ he sighed, ‘now I begin to feel half-human again.’

  ‘Get into these dry clothes. That’ll complete the process.’

  Without false modesty he peeled off the wet jacket and trousers. She turned away, although it was dark enough not to matter. After a moment he said, ‘I’d better bury these old things.’ When that was done he inquired, ‘Now, who am I? Have I got papers?’

  ‘You’re my husband Gustave Amouillet. Just a moment, your papers are in a safe place.’ She delved into the bodice of the thick serge dress. ‘Here ‒’

  ‘Oh, they’re warm!’ He laughed softly. ‘I find that charming …’

  ‘Come on now, Marc ‒ this isn’t the time for tomfoolery. You’re a hard-working, heavy-handed peasant from Bazancourt and we’re on our way to Rethel to try to buy a second-hand paraffin heater because your widowed father has the rheumatics and must be kept warm. Right?’

  ‘Right.’

  They set off. She saw at once that he was accustomed to letting himself slip into the landscape. He walked with the steady, somewhat heavy tread of the peasant. He let her carry the basket instead of, gentleman-like, taking it from her.

  As they went they exchanged news. He’d been out of touch for a little over a week, with a German search party hard on his heels. She told him the group at Laon were ‘blown’, and he swore under his breath.

  ‘Oh, God, Gaby ‒ one of them was a boy of fourteen …’

  He explained that he had been working behind the lines for about fifteen months. ‘I learned German during my law studies, it made me useful.’

  ‘What have you been doing?’

  ‘Sabotage. Occasional information. I don’t know what’s in store now ‒ presumably I’ll have to be given a new identity and a new station if Emile Cellier is known to the Burgerwehr.’

  ‘Well, it won’t be Gustave Amouillet. He’s a temporary figure because the papers, though good, are for an imaginary man.’ The best papers were those belonging to someone who had died. That was one of the things the underground agents did ‒ they called it ‘corpse-robbing’, they took the papers from casualties of shelling or accident to be used again where possible.