by Perrat, Liza
‘Did you follow me from Julien?’
‘You pedalled away very fast. I thought I would never catch you,’ he said. ‘Why are you angry?’
‘Angry?’
‘Your brother and his friend. You looked so fierce at them, and cycling away in a hurry.’
‘Oh, that. It wasn’t important, just a silly argument.’
He removed his cap and jacket, and as he lit a Gauloise I glimpsed the powerful muscles move in his neck. But I kept my gaze guarded and low, fascinated by his gun peeping from its leather sheath.
‘You’re a good skimmer, Céleste Roussel.’
‘My father taught me. He taught me everything about this river; warned me about the currents and whirlpools, and made me promise never to swim here.’
A long arm reached out, fingertips grazing my wet hair. ‘Ah yes, I see you take much notice of him.’ I reeled from his touch and he shifted sideways, and sat on a boulder, casually crossing one long leg over the other.
‘This is for you.’ He pulled a brown paper package from a pocket. ‘You might have to come a little closer to reach it though.’ He patted a spot beside him.
I couldn’t help smiling at his stiff, stilted French, but kept observing him and the package warily. Accepting gifts from the Boche was regarded as collaboration.
‘For me?’ I edged towards his rock, but kept standing. ‘Why?’
‘You were admiring them at the market, no? You can open it.’
Despite my misgivings, I tore the paper off and pulled out a packet of nylon stockings.
‘Oh they’re lovely. I’ve never had any like this. Thank you, Martin Diehl.’
‘There is more where I got these,’ he said, as a small bird in a green suit perched on a log, cocking its head as if it too, was admiring the stockings. ‘What else do you like? Magazines? Lipstick? Chocolate? Real chocolate, not false, pale chocolate. I can get what you want.’
I laughed a nervy kind of cackle. Why was the German giving me presents? Surely not because of my looks –– the unmistakeable stamp of a plain, unworldly farm-girl.
I forced a smile to cover my unease, and mask the prods of doubt at his interest in me; at his curiosity in my spat with Patrick and Olivier, cycling off to their meeting without me.
‘Why do you smile, Céleste Roussel?’
‘Nothing … your funny accent.’
‘Ah, the bad school-boy French. You did not learn German?’
‘Your French is very good. But no, sadly, I didn’t learn German.’
‘Why is this sad? So you cannot listen to our plans at the garrison?’
‘What? Listen to what plans?’
‘Do not worry, Céleste Roussel, I am only making a joke.’
‘Oh. Well, my mother didn’t let me stay at school long enough to learn anything much.’
‘Your mother is the healer-woman of the village, yes? She believes teaching you the special medicine is more important than school?’
‘Not likely. My mother thinks I’m too stupid to learn anything. Anyway, I’m not the least bit interested in all that herbal stuff, and if her remedies are no longer handed down to future generations of L’Auberge, she’ll only have herself to blame.’
‘Why do you call it L’Auberge des Anges?’ Martin said, grinding his cigarette butt beneath a black heel. ‘It is not an inn.’
‘Not these days. Now it’s just a simple farm. We don’t even have crops any longer, only the orchard and Maman’s kitchen garden and a few animals. My father said it was once the greatest farm in Lucie, but it ran into hard times during the Revolution. The farmer and his wife turned it into an inn –– The Inn of Angels.’
We were silent for a moment, listening to the gaa, gaa laugh of the green bird until it flew off into the hot twists of light. I fingered the packet of nylons again. Martin Diehl probably got them on the black market, but didn’t my mother say the black market was for everyone; that we should all have the right to the same things, and almost everyone was practising it to some extent?
‘Well,’ I said, imagining Talia’s happiness. ‘If you really can get more things I’d like some paints … and brushes and paper.’
‘So you are not only a champion pebble skimmer, you are an artist too?’ His lips curved into a smile, showing impossibly white teeth.
‘I dabble in a bit of painting now and then,’ I said, with a flippant wave. ‘Nothing serious.’
He lit another Gauloise and gathered more pebbles.
‘There are rivers where I was a boy,’ he said, flicking his stones across the surface. ‘We were swimming too, and skimming the stones.’ He squinted into the distance, to a point where the Vionne parted around a sandbank, ruffles of current lapping the edges. ‘And many orchards and fields, just like your village.’ He still clipped his words, but the voice had become faraway, like a melancholic background song.
‘You’re not a bad skimmer either, Martin Diehl,’ I said, throwing my own stones, which bounced further than his did.
‘My friends and I would have skimming competitions when we were young,’ he went on. ‘One of the boys had a beautiful sister. He would steal her underwear, and the one who skimmed his stone the best, got to keep the underwear for a night.’ He laughed and shook the blond head, as if recalling the silliness of boyhood games.
‘So, did you ever win?’
He frowned. ‘Win?’
‘The skimming competitions?’
The muscles in his shoulder tightened beneath the starched shirt as he skimmed another stone, further and more smoothly than the last. ‘I always won, Céleste Roussel.’
‘Oh,’ I said, not really sure what to say. ‘Well, me too, I like to win.’
He caught me unaware then, as he reached across and took hold of my pendant. I lurched back, imagining the same hand levelling a revolver, a machine-gun or a grenade.
‘An unusual pendant.’ He stroked the angel between his thumb and forefinger. ‘It seems old. A family … how do you say? Heirloom?’
‘I don’t think it’s worth much,’ I said, keeping my gaze away from his peculiar, indigo eyes. ‘But yes, a kind of talisman passed from mother to daughter. My grandmother believed the souls of all the women of L’Auberge are trapped inside this old bone.’
‘Very fine work,’ Martin said. ‘What is the bone from?’
‘Oh I don’t know … no one really knows. Some say a carpenter carved it for his wife two centuries ago from seal, ox or walrus tusk. Another family legend says it was sculpted long before that, for a famous midwife from the times of the Black Plague. But some think it was even earlier, and is from the bone of a mammoth. Though I can hardly believe that.’
Martin let the pendant go, his fingertips sweeping the damp hair strands splayed across my shoulders. He bent and kissed me, catching me so off-guard I almost choked.
I jerked away, my eyes darting about the tangle of willows, searching for prying eyes. ‘What are you doing? You can’t just … just kiss me like that. You’re a …’
‘A Boche? Germans are the same as all men, Céleste Roussel.’
I swivelled around, ready to stomp off, but he caught my arm.
‘Let me go!’ I shook off his grip. ‘Do you know what happens to girls if they’re caught with one of you? They shave our heads and parade us about the village for people to shun, and spit at.’
‘I am sorry.’ He gave me a small, chivalrous bow. ‘Please forgive me.’
‘I have to go. If anyone sees me here; catches me with …’
‘Will I see you again?’
‘You’re joking aren’t you?’ I said, shaking my head in disbelief as I strode off and straddled my bicycle. ‘I doubt that very much.’
I rode away without a backward glance.
6
The following morning I whisked through my farm chores, flung my tapestry bag over a shoulder and hurried down the hill to Lucie’s railway station.
I stepped off the train three stops up the line in Valeria-sur-Vionne
, a village much like Lucie, nestled in a crook of the Monts du Lyonnais.
Quietly pleased to have my sister gone from L’Auberge –– less conscious of being the flawed second daughter rather than the long-awaited son; the frail infant who shouldn’t have survived –– I’d never been to the convent where Félicité was a novice, and a schoolteacher.
I didn’t have to walk far before I found the place, a bleak gothic-looking mansion perched atop a hill.
‘Sister Marie-Félicité s’il vous plaît, ma sœur,’ I said to the nun as the heavy door opened with a rasp. ‘I know you don’t like outsiders coming here, but I’m Céleste Roussel, and I need to see my sister urgently. Just for a few minutes, please.’
The nun remained wordless, but nodded and I followed the quiet sweep of her habit down a corridor of chipped, rust-coloured floor tiles and stained walls on which ancient-looking religious paintings hung. The only light came from small candles set in carved wall sconces, and a musty odour seized my throat.
While I had expected something rustic, I was startled at how rundown the convent was. Paint was peeling off in uneven strips, revealing greenish-stained plaster. Sections had fallen from the ceiling. The wooden floor was damp and when I trod it gave way in places, as if my feet were sinking into sawdust.
My sister glided towards me, the white veil and coif flapping like two doves sewn to the sides of her head.
‘Céleste, what ––?’
‘Sorry to come and bother you here. I have to speak to you about something. It’s an emergency. I found a family –– ’
Félicité took my arm. ‘Hush,’ she said, leading me into a side room.
Besides a battered desk and two chairs, and a single cross hanging from the wall, the room was bare, and chilly despite the summer heat outside.
‘This is where guests are received,’ she said, nodding to one of the chairs. ‘Now, tell me what’s wrong, Céleste.’
‘I found a family hiding in the old witch’s hut in the woods,’ I said, and told her about the Wolfs, and how we’d taken them to L’Auberge attic. ‘They’re lovely people, but as much as I like having them at the farm, they can’t stay up there for long. It’s cramped and uncomfortable, and Maman won’t let them come downstairs, except at night, to help with housework. I keep telling her –– keep reassuring myself –– they’re safe up there, but I’m afraid for them. You know how rumours buzz around the village. And of course our mother is not happy about having them in her home.’
‘I’m not surprised she’s against concealing people, Céleste. I think she got her hand bitten many years ago, though I never knew the details.’
‘Ah yes, Maman’s dark secret.’
As a girl, I would ask my older sister why our mother was so hard and unforgiving; why I knew nothing of her thoughts and why I could never look lovingly into her cold, green eyes. Félicité said it was because a terrible thing had happened to her, but when I asked whatever that unbearable secret could be, my sister either didn’t know or wouldn’t tell me. Eventually I stopped asking.
‘I know she’d never turn the family over to the authorities,’ I said. ‘And risk the police coming up to the farm. But living with her thunderous looks every day, it’s so … so tiring.’
My sister fidgeted with the rosary beads dangling from her belt, her usually mellow gaze curdling, as always when Maman’s business was mentioned.
‘I thought they could come here to the convent? I know you have other people. Others like the Wolfs.’
Félicité sat in the chair opposite me and clasped her large silver cross.
‘We only have a few young girls. With false identities, we can pass them off under any name, and in the uniform, the students all look much the same. But an entire family?’
‘Couldn’t you get false papers for the Wolfs?’
My sister was silent for a moment, fiddling with the cross. ‘I’ll talk to Mother Superior, but it could take some time to organise. I pray these people can stay safe in the meantime.’
‘Thank you, and I’m doing my best to keep them safe for now.’ I took a deep breath. ‘There’s something else I wanted to mention. I met a German from the barracks, an officer I think. He seems to like –– to admire –– me.’ I faltered, aware of the nervous scratch in my voice. ‘He gave me a present. Nylons.’
Félicité’s eyes widened. ‘A gift from a German? You know how danger –– ’
‘Of course I do. And I’m not even sure he does like me. I mean, why would any man? Approving looks were always reserved for you. Men never …’
‘Go on, Céleste.’
‘I have a niggling suspicion he knows something about Patrick and Olivier’s group. I can’t help wondering if he’s trying to get close to me, to find out information.’
‘He might well be doing that, Céleste, it’s not unheard of.’
‘I know. So I’ve decided to steer clear of him from now on.’
‘Maybe you shouldn’t,’ Félicité said. ‘Keep away from him, I mean. This officer might be toying with you; using you to glean information, but he’s not the only one who can play such games.’
‘Games?’
Félicité took my fisted hands in hers. ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t shun this man. Let him get close, up to a point, of course. And see just how much he knows, if anything.’
I stared at my sister, certain I’d misunderstood what she was suggesting. ‘You want me to take up with a Boche? Never! Besides, you know what happens to girls ––’
‘Yes, I know.’ My sister’s dark eyes moved up the wall behind me, and fixed on the thin crucifix. ‘I also know you’re smart enough not to get caught. Besides, you’ve been hankering after joining Patrick and Olivier’s group from the start. Just think of this as your personal mission. An important, undercover job.’
‘Maman will have a fit. You know how much she despises the Germ ––’
‘But you won’t let Maman find out, will you? Just as nobody, besides Patrick and Olivier of course, can know what you’re doing. Not even your closest friends like Ghislaine and Miette.’
I pulled my hands from hers and leaned back in the chair. ‘You really think I can do it?’
‘I wouldn’t have suggested it, Céleste, if I wasn’t certain.’
‘Well, if it could help the boys’ group; keep them out of danger, I suppose I could try.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘But at the slightest sign of danger you must walk away from this man and never see him again. Don’t do anything to compromise yourself, and keep in touch with me by telephone, the one in Au Cochon Tué. And only come to the convent in an emergency. If this German thinks you know about a Resistance group, he might follow you here.’
My sister stood, and I trailed after her, back down the shadowy, cheerless corridor. As we reached the oak door, Félicité kissed me on both cheeks.
‘Keep your eyes and ears wide open, Céleste. And take great care.’
7
The heat intensified with every step as I climbed the attic ladder with a bag of sandwiches –– the sultry air the attic snared and confined, so that the Wolfs must have felt they were living in an oven.
I heard the soft tap-tap of Sabine’s steps across the parquet, and Max humming his usual tune to accompany his wife’s dancing. As I stepped up into the attic Sabine stopped mid-step and spun around, an arc of dark hair sweeping her pale face.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.’ I placed the sandwich bag on top of an old trunk. ‘Please, don’t stop. I love watching you dance.’
Talia started clapping. ‘Maman’s the best ballerina in the world, isn’t she Papa?’
‘The best,’ Max said, smiling at his daughter and his wife.
Jacob skittered to his mother’s side and clung to her legs. As usual, the little boy was clutching the toy soldier with the red coat.
Sabine sank down onto the straw mattress on which the family slept –– the only sign of their presence, which we could shove behind the panel
if necessary. She hoisted Jacob onto her lap, kissed his forehead, and opened Les Fables de Jean de la Fontaine, a favourite childhood book I’d lent her.
‘I might have found a better place for you,’ I said. ‘Somewhere you can walk around, and where Talia and Jacob can play in a garden.’
‘Please don’t put yourself and your family in any more danger for our sakes,’ Max said. ‘You’ve done so much already.’
‘It’s my pleasure,’ I said, ruffling Jacob’s hair.
‘Aren’t we going home soon?’ Talia said. ‘Your attic is nice, Céleste, but I miss Cendres. And he must be missing me.’
‘I’m sure we’ll be going home soon, Talia,’ her mother said. ‘And we can give Céleste and her maman their attic back.’
‘Did you get the paints for Papa?’ she said.
‘Talia!’ her father said. ‘Céleste can’t magically get things like that, especially in wartime.’
‘I’m trying,’ I said, an image of Martin Diehl rippling through my mind.
‘Story, Maman, story.’ Jacob jabbed a stumpy finger at the book.
‘I’ll be back up later,’ I said, moving towards the ladder. ‘To see if you need anything else.’
***
I’d almost reached the bottom of the ladder when I heard muffled sounds coming from behind my mother’s closed bedroom door. I crept across the landing and pressed an eye to the keyhole.
Maman was shaving soapflakes from the block she made with plant oils and caustic soda, into a dish of boiled water. A girl, pale as the sheet on which she lay, stared at the ceiling, her tongue darting over her lips in needle-like movements. I didn’t know her, but that wasn’t unusual. Most of the girls who came to L’Auberge for Maman’s services were strangers, travelling as far as possible from their own village.
My mother followed her usual ritual, filling the tube with water, threading it between the girl’s spread legs and pumping the soapy mix into her.
While Dr. Etienne Laforge was Lucie-sur-Vionne’s legitimate medicine man, those who were suspicious of my mother’s herbal and floral remedies referred to Marinette Roussel as the village quack –– the charlatan. Others, ignoring her curt bedside manner, spoke of her as a healer-woman and swore by her omelette of oats and sawdust, which cured both snakebites and rabid dogs.