‘It’s from my brother,’ I said.
‘Ah yes, a very good man in the party. Nice he is keeping in touch, yes?’
‘Yes sir. Thank you, sir.’
I made my exit as soon as I could.
Bloody Horst.
I’m not jealous, I told myself.
But then I realised. He could already be there by now. Imagining Horst in my house, his boots on my carpet, made me want to shout all the German curse words I could.
I was powerless. Would the Germans in Jersey behave the way they did in France? What about Horst? Would he watch as the police rounded up the Jews?
When I got home I struck a match, set light to the letter and watched it shrivel into ash in the ashtray.
My trousers grew baggy at the waist because not only was food harder and harder to come by, but the worry of my double life, and what might be happening in Jersey, ate away at me. I could barely sleep. Every noise outside made me leap from bed sweating. I’d survived more than two years as a Nazi interpreter but knew it was only a matter of time. Radio operators barely lasted a month, and I knew sooner or later I’d slip up and reveal my links to Félix and his undercover Resistance. The reason I’d survived so long was because the focus of the Nazi interrogations had shifted away from Resistance saboteurs and onto people who might be hiding Jews. Thirteen thousand Jews had been ‘cleansed’ from the city in that awful round-up the Germans called Opération Vent Printanier — or Operation Spring Breeze.
In Félix’s house, the tragedy of this round-up had given them renewed impetus. It now seemed essential to resist. We sat around the table to plan our next attack.
‘Our own countrymen, rounding up whole families like animals,’ Antoine said, stubbing out his cigarette. ‘I would never have believed it.’
‘If we can’t trust our own police, who can we trust?’ Félix said.
‘No one,’ Jérôme snapped, with a sharp glance in my direction.
‘Lay off, Jérôme,’ Antoine said. ‘Without Édouard, we’d still be working on guesswork.’
‘The police had no choice,’ I said. ‘The Gestapo wanted to take only the men and women, but the French authorities knew they’d be saddled with their children. There are no separate ration books for children. Of course, if the children starved, Germany would blame France, and it would look bad for the French. More negative propaganda. So the police were ordered to help and round up whole families. What was the fate of a few Jews against the great name of France?’
‘Bastards,’ Jérôme said.
‘Not just that,’ I added, ‘but they thought it would be more orderly if the whole family went. It would look less threatening. Like a family outing. And they’d go more quietly if they were taken by their own countrymen.’
‘Was it really so calculated?’ Félix shook his head.
‘Have you ever known the Nazis be anything less?’
‘Where did they take them?’ asked Antoine. ‘Have you found out?’
‘From what I can gather from the memos, they went from the Vel’ d’Hiv stadium to somewhere called Auschwitz — Brzezinka. It’s a camp somewhere in Poland.’
‘What goes on at the camp?’
‘Nobody knows,’ I said. ‘I’ve tried to find out, but I just meet a brick wall. But I do know this: they don’t come back. And there’s a notice I’ve just had to translate that says anyone hiding Jews or assisting them in any way will be shot.’
Silence.
‘All right,’ I said, realising I’d hit a nerve. ‘I can see I shouldn’t ask any questions.’
As food grew scarcer, my extra food rations dwindled to non-existent, and I was forced to queue with everyone else. I passed Soldatenkaffeen, where plump-bellied soldiers sat at tables laden with sausage and potatoes, then was obliged to wait three hours in line for my two-ounce ration of minced rabbit. The long queues, the unfairness of it all, made me shift from foot to foot, unable to be still.
I looked down at my shoes, which were already old when I left Jersey. The soles were coming apart from the uppers, and shoes couldn’t be had on my coupons. I’d need to get them fixed. When I’d been given my soft brown paper parcel of meat, I shoved it in my pocket and headed to a shoe repair shop I’d seen on a neighbouring street.
The shop sold various sorts of hardware as well as repairing shoes. I showed my coupons to the cobbler in the shapeless dark suit.
‘Ten minutes,’ he said. ‘I’ll do them straight away if you’ll wait.’
I stood in stockinged feet as he whisked the shoes through to the back where I could hear the tap of his hammer and the whirr of the grinding machine as he resoled them.
I glanced at his calendar with a faded picture of a canal boat and the peeling posters for slug pellets. I browsed the shelves. They were half-empty. A few tins of Paulin’s shoe polish, some Bon Ami sink cleaner. Then I saw it. Paint stripper. Nitrocol. Three bottles on the bottom shelf.
I picked one up and turned it round to read the list of ingredients. And there it was: nitromethane. I was about to put it back when a movement behind the door made me thrust it under my coat and wedge it under my armpit.
The cobbler held out my shoes for me to see, then plonked them down. ‘All done.’ His smile revealed more gum than teeth.
Keeping my left arm clamped to my side, I swiped the shoes off the counter with my right and clutched them to my chest. I sat on the stool provided and shoved my feet into the shoes. What the hell was I doing? But I couldn’t put the damn bottle back now. He was watching me.
‘Rheumatism,’ I said, awkwardly tying the laces.
‘That’s why you don’t fight, eh?’
I nodded and smiled ruefully, thanked him again. As soon as I got on the street, I began walking away as fast as I could. ‘You’re wrong,’ I said under my breath. ‘You said I don’t fight. But I do.’
The glass bottle was slippery under my arm, but a strange exhilaration filled me, making my steps lighter in my newly soled shoes, my walk full of bounce. I don’t know what made me steal the bottle. It was an impulse. But I couldn’t untake it.
In doing it, I had made myself free. I was neither in thrall to the Germans, nor to the French, nor to the English. I had made a free choice. It was this that made me feel alive: to be able to choose.
The night was warm, and every time Félix switched on his torch, crowds of moths and midges fluttered into the pencil of light.
‘Keep it steady,’ Antoine said, as the beam swung away.
‘I heard something,’ Félix said.
We paused, like deer in a forest. The distant noise of a car. Jérôme was on watch further up the track, on the road near where we’d left our bicycles. His cigarette made a red pinprick in the dark. When he didn’t move and the noise faded, we resumed digging. So far, we had destroyed a viaduct and a bridge, and this was to be our third derailment, though the last had failed because the pipe bombs were unpredictable. So much depended on the quality of the ingredients, and in wartime, they were never reliable. Today we had my nitromethane and a new type of fertiliser that Jérôme had found in someone’s outhouse.
The rail tracks glimmered under our light as we buried the metal pipes under the creosoted planks and attached the detonators. Four pipes set to go off at ten-second intervals. I wiped an insect from my face, breathing the sour smell of fertiliser. The small nub of plastic explosive was the last thing, jammed into the end of the pipe. I sighed, satisfied, and mentally crossed my fingers. You could never tell with untested ingredients.
‘Ready,’ called Félix.
The armaments train was due soon. We needed to be well away before it derailed.
Antoine stood up. ‘All set.’
‘Go.’ I dived off the embankment beside the track, rolling in a breathless tangle.
There was a flash like lightning and an enormous boom. I covered my head as gravel and debris spattered over me. A clank of metal. Seconds later, the heavy crump of three more explosions. The ground shook.
‘Jesus, that was some blast!’ Antoine said. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’
We ran towards Jérôme and leapt onto the bicycles. I wondered what the state of the track was, but we didn’t dare look back.
‘Car!’ yelled Félix.
Ahead of us, an armoured truck with slit headlights was bumping down the road. I swerved off the road to the right, following the others as they dragged the cycles into a brake of trees. Had they seen us?
The truck passed without stopping. Near the rail track a patch of grass was burning, a flare that would surely announce where we’d been. After about a hundred yards, the truck slowed and the tailgate dropped down. Against the light, there were silhouettes of armed soldiers. They climbed the embankment and headed down the track towards the fire.
Another set of lights. A second truck approached from the other direction. The headlights made us all crouch lower.
We’d chosen the place because it was an obscure junction, away from houses. It had taken us half a day to cycle here from the city.
Where had those two trucks come from? It was too much of a coincidence.
Silently Félix gestured for us to lay low. Torches flashed across the road and in our direction, but we were just out of range. We pressed ourselves flat to the ground. It was a good thing we were all in dark clothes. My heart thudded against the ground. I daren’t look up. Any movement would attract their attention.
Their voices carried in the still air. They were arguing about whether to search for us or try to stop the train. The train was full of German soldiers on the way east, they said. I closed my eyes. I hadn’t known that. Félix had told me it was a train full of armaments. If it came off the tracks, I’d be responsible for the men’s deaths.
The noise of engines coughing into life. Shouts of ‘Schnell!’
They’d chosen to stop the train instead of coming after us. One truck to go further up the track past the damage, the other to the main signal box. Thank God. When the road was silent again, I looked up.
‘That was unlucky. The blasts were too big,’ Antoine said. ‘They’ll intercept it.’
‘It will put the line out of action though, won’t it?’ I said.
Nobody answered. For some reason I felt guilty, even though the failure was nothing to do with me.
We climbed on the cycles and pedalled into the darkness.
‘Why didn’t you tell me the train would be full of troops?’ I said to Félix.
‘The bigger question,’ he said, glaring accusingly, ‘is how did the Germans know where we’d be?’
CHAPTER 23
Céline
Rachel moved into Tilly’s old room and for a few days I almost forgot she was there, except for the fact my shoulders grew knots and I had a permanent feeling of panic every time a German came into the shop. Fortunately, I was not someone people noticed much, and so the fact I was scrounging for extra rations barely raised an eyebrow. The evenings were the best, when I could lock all the doors and we could settle downstairs by the range and chat over weak tea and the cobbling together of meals from whatever ingredients I could glean.
Mrs Flanders was our lifeline. She still had a wireless set — verboten, of course — but she was so avid for news that she risked keeping it, wrapped like a baby in blankets, beneath bales of straw in the barn. Ghoulish gossip was Mrs Flanders’ reason for existence; without it she’d probably shrivel up and die. So in the evenings after work, as we peeled beet to make sugar syrup, I could tell Rachel the news from the World Service.
Horst telephoned to tell me his driver would collect me on the Saturday evening, so when the day arrived Rachel helped me get ready in my one good dress, a dark floral print with padded shoulders and a cinched-in waist.
‘What’s he like, this Horst?’ Rachel asked, as she fastened the little buttons at the back.
‘I don’t know him that well. In Vienna, I always found him a bit intimidating. And he treated Fred in a condescending big brother-ish sort of way, belittling his career as a pâtissier. He once told Fred that baking was weiblich, womanly, right in front of me. It was clearly supposed to be an insult, and he was totally oblivious to the fact he’d just insulted me too.’
‘Sounds like a dream date.’
‘I’m hoping he’ll tell me some news about Fred. He can find out about him through the German network, and I’m desperate to know how he is. Though it feels really strange; somehow, I can’t really imagine Fred as part of an invading force.’
‘He probably looks different in uniform.’
I stared at her then. It was something I’d never thought of. How stupid. I’d always just imagined him in the clothes he wore at home. And suddenly I could see it; that the uniforms were a big part of the intimidation.
I shuddered. ‘Don’t let’s talk about it,’ I said. ‘I just have to get through this one night.’
‘I’d better go upstairs. He might be early,’ Rachel said.
When she’d gone, the house fell to silence again. I was ready far too soon, but we couldn’t risk anyone coming unexpectedly, so I wanted to be waiting. I sat on the edge of the armchair, steeling myself, my palms sweating with nerves. It would be so easy to slip up, to forget and to say ‘we’ instead of ‘I’.
In the event I was at the door as soon as I heard the car. It was a shiny black monstrosity called a Horch, with glaring headlamps and a gleaming chrome radiator like something from a film. I made a great fuss of locking up, although I felt like I was acting a part. The chauffeur held the door for me, with a ‘Guten Abend, Frau Huber.’ As I climbed in, I saw the curtain at the window twitch.
Rachel, you fool! I prayed the chauffeur hadn’t seen it and gripped tight to the leather seat as the car slid away from the kerb. Wait till I got home, I’d have words to say to her. I began to wonder if I could really trust her to be careful enough. She’d always been a bit flighty, a bit reckless. For the first time, the real spectre of deportation to a German prison camp made me shudder in my seat.
I was deposited by the harbour outside the Pomme d’Or hotel and told to go into the lobby to Reception. In my plain wool coat, I felt too dowdy for the grand entrance and the sleek interior, with its silver bucket for umbrellas and the elaborate display of starched roses on the front desk. I was about to go to ask the porter where I might find Horst when he appeared before me.
‘Céline!’ he said, grasping me by the shoulders and making two loud air kisses. ‘I’ve reserved for us a table in the restaurant.’
‘You mean here?’
He must have seen my consternation. ‘It will be more relaxed here,’ he said easily.
Relaxed for him, perhaps. For me, it was the equivalent of being inside a wasp’s nest. All male eyes turned to me as we passed through the lounge, though the Germans soon looked away through lack of interest. On the other hand, I was greeted by resentful stares from the waiters, who, as far as I could see, were all islanders with whom I was all too familiar.
Horst pulled out a chair for me in the mirrored dining room and sat down opposite. The room was full of uniformed men dining in great good humour. Most seemed to be in naval uniform and were chatting in German in groups of three or four. Glancing around the room, I could see only a few other women, and they all seemed to be in evening dress — accented with red lips and plucked eyebrows, and the flash of white gloves and jewellery.
I flushed as I struggled out of my coat, and I handed it to the hovering waiter. I was woefully underdressed, I realised. But then again, what could I do? I was in my only dress that wasn’t used in the shop or on the farm.
Horst laid a small parcel next to my plate.
‘Oh, Horst, what’s all this?’
‘Open it,’ he said.
I tugged off the bow on the box and slid it open. Bas Le Bourget — transparents comme l’air, I read. French stockings, flesh-coloured and wrapped in cellophane. Again, heat rose to my face, partly because Fred had never in his life given me such an intimate gift, and partl
y because I knew these had come from France, another occupied country just like Jersey.
‘You can wear them next time we dine out,’ he said, leaning in and patting my hand. His palm was unpleasantly hot.
‘Thank you,’ I said, uncomfortable. ‘It was a sweet thought.’ I withdrew my hand, closed the lid, and asked to see a menu.
‘Sorry, but there’s no menu. The rationing, you see. But usually we have something reasonable here.’
Reasonable? I was aghast when they brought me fresh tomato soup with a crisp bread roll, roast chicken with runner beans and roast potatoes, and a pear and apple upside-down pudding with custard. We hadn’t seen a fresh tomato for years, nor eaten anything sweet, except carrots and turnips, let alone the luxury of custard. I’ll swear it was made with eggs too.
I couldn’t help thinking of Rachel, at home with my empty larder, and the lumpy flour they supplied us with, which only made hard bread. It was torture. I couldn’t help enjoying it, but at the same time I could hardly swallow for the thought of all the other islanders saving their one egg for a special occasion.
Horst packed away his dinner in a business-like way, whilst extolling the virtues of German efficiency. ‘We are building everywhere on Jersey — tunnels, bunkers, walls. It will really put this island … how do you say it? On the map. This will be the strongest place in Europe when the Führer he finish it.’
‘Why, Horst? Why does he need Jersey? We don’t understand.’
‘Because from here we are close to France, and to England, which we will have under our control soon enough. It is ideal place for German command. A good stronghold. And besides, it is very beautiful, ja?’
‘But will it still be beautiful once you’ve built all that? Everywhere I go, there’s the stink of concrete and men building. And as for our beautiful beaches, they are full of mines and barbed wire.’
Horst tightened his lips, picked up a napkin and pressed it to his mouth. I had offended him. ‘The English, it is their fault. All the building work is necessary because of the English. Once the English cease to threaten us, then we’ll clear the beaches again, and life here will become more … more pleasant.’
The Occupation Page 17