“Burning? You think the Dakota crashed last night?”
“No . . . that didn’t occur to me. I was more worried that the Germans had come back. That they were sending us a message in response to what happened last night.”
“Why didn’t you say something before?”
“I didn’t see what good it would do. I’m not sure that I’m right. What was the point in worrying you when we had no choice but to stay under cover and try to conserve our energy?”
“You should have told us before now,” insisted Kenton.
“I’m sorry, I—”
“Any information—even any intuition is valuable! It’s all we have, you must understand that. We would have had time to plan properly.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I thought I was acting for the best!” Marthe was close to tears.
When Kenton spoke it was to Scotty, in English. They seemed to be weighing up the information. All she understood was “OK.”
Marthe chewed her fingernails. She hadn’t done that since she first arrived in Manosque as a child.
“We have to go, and we have to be even more careful,” announced Kenton eventually. “We have no choice.”
“Plane returns,” added Scotty emphatically. “For us.”
“And Marthe?”
She nodded.
“I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have lost my temper with you.”
They walked towards Spitfire. Marthe held herself straight and stiff. Her back prickled with the anticipation of gunfire opening up on them; they were ready at any second to dive down at the side of the road and then run for their lives.
Then, a kilometre or so from the field, Marthe sniffed. “There it is. The remains of a big fire. Still burning, I think. Can you see where it’s coming from?”
There was no doubt at all now it was coming from the direction in which they were heading. The air held pockets of warm smoke and ash.
“Can’t see anything yet,” said Kenton.
They walked on, hearts sinking as the smell grew stronger. Acrid fumes mingled with the sickly sweetness of still-smouldering wood.
“Farmhouse,” cried Scotty, then spoke rapidly in English.
“It’s the place that turned us away last night.”
Every step was further confirmation. The reek of scorched wood and plaster.
“My God . . . it’s completely destroyed! Burnt out . . . those poor people!”
“The bastards—the filthy rotten bastards!” cried Marthe. “Those people didn’t even help us!” Hot rage called tears to her eyes, but she would not cry. If she started, she feared she would never stop.
“Perhaps they had helped others before.”
“Or perhaps all they did was close their ears to the sound of the plane.”
They hurried on. The time was long past when they could have done anything to help.
There was no reception committee in the field. Marthe’s hopes had soared when she heard the first whispers, but were soon shattered. A couple of other Americans pulled themselves out of the darkness to stand with them in the shadow of a tree.
“Is there no one but us here?” asked Marthe faintly.
“No.” Kenton put a protective arm around her and pulled her into him so she could speak into his ear.
“But the plane will come.”
“It might. But we only have one torch, and without the official reception on the ground, we have no idea what the code letter is to signal that this is the landing place.”
“Perhaps they are late—or we are early.”
“I hope you’re right.”
They all knew it was hopeless, but they waited anyway. Conversation petered out as they sat on the ground with the two additional Americans. These escapees had spent the intervening day in a rocky cave in a cliff to the north. They too had smelled the burning. No one had any knowledge of what had happened to the missing four who should have been picked up when the plane returned.
Hours later the big Dakota rumbled across the sky and flew on, oblivious to the distress signal flashed with the single torch by the Americans.
Low groans of frustration were countered by the possibility that the plane might be turning to come back, as it did before. They waited, listening intently.
The sound of the aircraft’s engines faded into the night.
All around, the calm of loss.
Then the emptiness filled with furious voices arguing in English. Marthe could only presume what was being said. The prospect of another night in the woods and no food made her feel weak.
There was more urgent discussion, this time with someone speaking in French. Where had he come from—and the man who was replying?
“We’re assuming these people can be trusted,” said the first.
“Our Americans say they’re definitely Americans who were here last night.”
“Who’s the girl? I don’t think she’s all there.”
“Simple but evidently trustworthy,” said the second. “How else would these men have got themselves this far?”
“You never know who’s playing which game these days. I trust no one. And if anyone recognises the van we’ll be in trouble. . . .”
“You have to help us,” said Marthe, breaking into the exchange, willing herself to sound as determined as she could. “The van . . . is there room for the three of us in the back?”
“Oh, so you do speak . . . who are you?”
“We came with Caspian last night.”
It was clearly the best reply she could have made. “All right. Where are you trying to get to?” replied someone.
“It’s a lavender farm called Les Coulets on the Sault road. Do you know it?”
“I know it.”
“They’re expecting us, if anything went wrong.”
“All right, this way. Get yourselves inside. Quickly!”
They were pushed in like animals crammed into a pen. In the back Marthe found herself sitting on iron rods that rolled and trapped her fingers as she tried to stop herself moving with the vehicle. In the confined space they all stank of sweat and dirt.
The driver had a lead foot. They were thrown from side to side as the vehicle scaled the bends of the mountain road. When the men behind the driver cursed, he shouted at them, “Count your blessings—you’re alive, aren’t you?”
“What’s been going on?” asked Kenton.
“Ah—at least you speak French. They told us the Boches were marking time in Sault; that they weren’t coming out of their hole. Couldn’t have been more wrong, could they? They’ve been all through these roads, killing as they go. Want to leave their calling cards before they all get flushed out when your lot finally get here.”
“What happened to the reception committee tonight?”
“Some got it in the neck last night. Too dangerous for the rest.”
“So why did you come?”
The man gave a humourless laugh. “Me? Perhaps I don’t like being told what to do. Perhaps I thought the guy flying the Dakota might just be crazy or brave enough to keep to his word and come back.”
“You kept the two men here safe all day too.”
“So send me the medal when you’re chief of staff.”
A high-pitched whistle was followed by a loud metal ping at the side of the van.
“Shit!” said the driver.
“Hold on tight,” shouted the other Frenchman. “That was a bullet.”
Marthe was sent sprawling across knees and feet. The van swayed; they seemed to have veered off onto bumpy ground, still travelling at speed. She rubbed her head where it had hit something hard.
Kenton hauled her back into a sitting position, and kept hold of her. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. What can you see?” she whispered.
“Nothing. There are no windows here in the back. I can just about see through the windscreen between the driver and his mate. It’s still dark, looks like we’re back in the woods.”
The van pitched onwards. A
nother metallic ping.
Marthe gripped Kenton’s hand. She thought of her family on the Luberon farmstead, her sister Bénédicte and brother Pierre. She prayed they would be safe where they were, that there would be a way to reassure them that she had died as part of something important and honourable. She would be brave, as brave as she could be.
Without warning, an urgent change of direction slammed them all against one side of the vehicle. When they landed, the bottom of the van scraped against the ground. Then they stopped.
“Quiet!” shouted the driver. “Listen!”
Nothing.
A light wind in some trees.
Then the choking growl of another engine. It grew louder. There was a collective shudder as it passed and then went away.
“If they’re still looking for us, they’ll come back,” said the driver.
“I’m not so sure,” replied the other. “That wasn’t a serious chase. Those shots were all for show. Most of them want to get out of this alive as much as we do.”
They waited in near silence for some time. All Marthe could hear was breathing. After what could have been fifteen minutes, could have been an hour, the driver started the motor again and, carefully this time, edged them out of their place of sanctuary and back onto the road.
Then they drove as if the mistral was raging behind them.
They were dropped off at the end of a track and given directions. They were shaken, thirsty. Beyond hunger. When they began to walk again, it was on blistered feet that had swollen in their shoes. Lost in the maze of foreign paths and slopes, they stumbled upwards.
Praying they were heading towards the hamlet of Les Coulets, Marthe found herself quietly singing the old shepherds’ songs. Songs of the fight to survive. A vision crystallized in her mind, almost as if she were hallucinating: a carpet of caper flowers. White flowers with unearthly profusions of stamens like shooting stars. There had once been such a carpet at a property she had visited as a small child. She had seen the dust of dead stars there, or so she had thought, until she realised the glitter was broken glass and heard the flap of bird wings caught in the eaves of an empty barn. She was so tired she had to pinch herself back into the present.
“Any sign?” she asked weakly.
“There’s another bend ahead.”
They trudged round it.
“Here! All OK!”
“Scotty’s right . . .”
Marthe imagined the buildings huddled around a courtyard, small and modest perhaps, but generous in every way that mattered.
“It’s here, outside!” Kenton swung her round suddenly.
“What?”
“The old truck. Monsieur’s truck!”
They made it through an open door before her legs went out from under her. Through the relief, the sleeplessness and hunger, she felt Musset’s arms around her and the taste of lavender dust from his jacket as she sobbed open-mouthed against his broad chest.
7
Orange Peel and Musk
August 1944
Back at Manosque, Kenton and Scotty were hidden again. The Mussets and Marthe showed them into the cellar at the factory. Wearily they climbed down and made a false wall with wooden packing crates.
Madame sat designing labels by the shop entrance in the room above. The girl behind the counter served the customers. Marthe stayed in the blending room, pretending to experiment with new fragrances. Wrapped in a large apron that concealed his loaded pistol, Auguste guarded the back of the premises: the storeroom where the cellar door was hidden, the distilling shed and the soap kitchen.
For four days and nights, they hardly spoke, or even moved, except to take water to the Americans, and what little food they could find. Marthe stood at the table combining orange peel and amber resin with shaking hands, unable to process any emotion except fear.
A hammering on the back door.
She heard Auguste cross the storeroom floor and ask tersely who it was, then the creak of the door that was deliberately kept unoiled. A woman’s voice, and Auguste’s remonstrance.
“I need your help. I work with Xavier.” She sounded desperate, repeating the name as if it were a password.
Instinctively responding to the exhaustion in that voice, all too familiar to her now, Marthe went through to the storeroom.
“Please help me,” said the woman. “Do you know where Xavier is?”
“Who? I don’t know who you’re talking about,” said Auguste.
Marthe could smell the woman now. Fear was palpable in the sweat and dust that had dried on her clothes. This was no Milice trick. Marthe understood exactly how she could have come to be in this state.
“When did you last see this . . . Xavier?” she asked, taking her lead from Auguste. The attempt to sound as if she had never heard of Xavier rang so false she was sure the woman must know it was a lie.
“More than a week ago. When the plane came in.”
“Why have you come here?” asked Auguste.
“The only clue I had. I know about the soap packaging.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Marthe put her hand on his arm. “I think—”
“I am British, a wireless operator,” said the woman slowly, despair ingrained in every word. “I have been working with Xavier for months, organising operations throughout the South of France. I understand that you do not want to implicate yourselves in any activity, but I must know where he has gone.”
“I wish we could help you, but we can’t,” said Marthe, kindly. “But perhaps we can help in some other way. What do you need? Fresh clothes . . .”
“Can I stay with you?”
The prospect was horrifying.
“No! Absolutely not,” said Auguste. “You’ve come to the wrong place. In fact, I want you to go right now.”
“Please! I daren’t go back to where I’ve come from! I’ve tried sending messages asking for assistance, but my orders are always to sit tight and take instructions from Xavier. And to make matters worse—I think the Gestapo is onto me, they’ve tracked one of my frequencies.”
The stink of fear intensified, an animal musk, like the civet oil used in minuscule drops to add warmth to fragrance. It rose uncontrolled, overpoweringly unpleasant. Marthe could smell ammonia, too, and the iron tinge of menstrual blood.
They had to help her, somehow. “Maybe we could—”
“Please! I’m begging you!”
Auguste was resolute. “You have to go,” he said.
Marthe handed the woman a scrap of cheese she had been saving and a bar of soap. It was all she had. “We should have done more for her,” she said, after the back door clicked shut.
An odour of goat and salty dampness remained, mocking their actions.
“How could we have taken her in?” asked Auguste testily. “If the Gestapo is tracking her, we had no choice. Every minute she was here put us in more danger. She may already have betrayed us just by coming here. And a transmitter on the premises? Are you crazy? We might as well shoot ourselves.”
Two more long days and nights passed. When she heard running feet outside, Marthe had been expecting the worst for so long she had forgotten what it felt like to react normally. She shouldn’t have given the woman the new bar of soap, clearly stamped with the brand: Distillerie Musset. A stupid mistake. She had cursed herself for the implications every minute since.
The thinking part of her could only observe what the body was doing, detached and surprised. Raised voices outside the shop. A rattle of gunfire and more shouting. She tensed, primed for the attack. Could she throw the acidic liquid at the aggressors, or hurl herself at them to give Kenton and Scotty vital seconds to move?
But the sounds seemed to be coming from all directions. Shouts and running, and then—unbelievably—a cheer.
“They’re coming! They’re coming! The Allies have landed on the coast!”
By early morning of the twentieth of August, the American advance divisions streamed down
from the Valensole Plateau, heading for Digne. In their wake came the ragged figures that had been fighting for so long in the fields and farms and the shadows of small villages. They descended on forgotten paths from the hills and walked the streets with their heads held high.
Arlette was buried that day in Manosque. In contrast to the many partisan funerals where only the immediate family had dared to walk behind the coffin, officers of the Gestapo and the Milice watching hawk-eyed as the town pretended never to have known the deceased, hundreds of people turned out. Arlette’s heartbroken parents led the mourners, with M. and Mme Musset behind them.
It was touching, how many tributes there were. Even those Manosquins who had never known her now knew of her courage. “There was a bunch of wildflowers and lavender in almost every window in the street leading to the cemetery,” Monsieur told Marthe. “They honoured her.”
There was more bad news, though, when he made inquiries about the woman who had come to the Distillerie Musset claiming to be a British agent working with the Engineer. If it was the same woman, she had lasted only one night in Manosque. A defensive cordon of townsfolk had watched as she left the town; the Gestapo had swooped on her as she was risking one last transmission from a field on the road up to the plateau. She was last seen being bundled into a truck. Whether or not she was still alive, no one knew. The liberators came too late for her.
“We should have shown more courage,” said Marthe.
“No,” said Musset. “You took the only course you could. It’s hard to admit, but you did right, in the circumstances.”
“I smell her still—her terror,” said Marthe.
She would never be able to forget it.
In Céreste, too, the resistants emerged. They crossed themselves as they passed Christ on the cross framed in a fifteenth-century archway, giving thanks. There were women too, wearing short socks under leather lace-up shoes, raincoats over their shoulders, holding rifles as casually as handbags, and they gathered by the Mairie. A dirty tricolour hung from the flagpole in place of the swastika.
At the café, so the Mussets were told later, a large group of villagers listened openly on a radio set to the news coming in. The US Seventh Army was rapidly gaining ground, sweeping north through the Vaucluse.
The Sea Garden Page 17