Wild Lavender

by Belinda Alexandra

  ‘Mademoiselle Fleurier,’ he said. ‘What a surprise. I thought I had the compartment to myself.’

  He smiled at Odette and Petite Simone. His grin seemed to tighten the skin on his face, as if there were another person underneath trying to push himself out. I was proud of Petite Simone for not screaming, for that was the effect the colonel’s smile would have had on me if I had been her age.

  ‘Really?’ I said, recovering as quickly as I could. ‘We wouldn’t want to inconvenience you. We can change if you need the compartment to yourself.’

  I was careful that my tone was one of generosity on my part, rather than acquiescence. Stars never gave up their compartments; we never gave up anything. But in these circumstances it would have been a relief to sit in the coal carriage rather than travel with von Loringhoven.

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ he said. ‘In fact, it is a delightful coincidence. I had always hoped that we could become better acquainted.’

  His gaze drifted again from me to Odette and Petite Simone; there was something treacherous in it that I did not like. I did my best impression of a pleased smile and introduced Odette and Petite Simone. We had told Petite Simone that if anyone else sat in the carriage she must be very quiet. My heart melted when I saw how tightly she pursed her lips.

  ‘I am charmed to meet you,’ Colonel von Loringhoven said to Odette. ‘I didn’t realise that Mademoiselle Fleurier had relations in Paris.’

  Odette did not miss a beat. ‘We are very distant relations and have always thought of ourselves more as friends. I used to go to watch Simone sing when she first started out.’

  Odette’s fingers were steady in her lap but drops of sweat were pooling around her hairline. Would von Loringhoven notice?

  I glanced at my watch. Two minutes to go. Once we were moving I could make an excuse for an early meal in the dining car, and after that we could pretend to sleep. The train let out a hiss of steam.

  ‘Excuse me a moment,’ said Colonel von Loringhoven, standing up. He gave no explanation of where he was going, but as soon as he was out of the compartment Odette glanced at me. Had von Loringhoven guessed something? But if we got off the train now it would look suspicious.

  ‘Look,’ said Petite Simone, pressing her face against the window. ‘There’s that man.’

  I looked out the window and saw the colonel talking to two German soldiers and pointing in our direction. The whistle sounded and the train began to shunt forward. ‘Thank God,’ I said, and almost laughed. Colonel von Loringhoven was going to miss the train. But one of the German soldiers shouted out and the train came to an abrupt stop, its wheels screeching on the tracks.

  ‘He knows,’ gasped Odette.

  ‘Let’s go!’ I screamed, picking up Petite Simone and running for the door. There were suitcases in the corridor but I struggled past them, bruising my legs and ripping my stockings. Odette scrambled after me. The conductor saw us coming. For a moment I thought he was going to block our way. Instead he said, ‘Not out this door. Go through second class.’

  We ran past the surprised-looking passengers and jumped from the train onto the platform. ‘Come on!’ I cried to Odette over my shoulder. ‘Make a run for the entrance.’

  I pushed past a ticket controller who was too surprised to react. I could see the station entrance ahead. Odette let out a shriek. I turned to see a German soldier wrestling her to the ground.

  ‘Run!’ she screamed at me.

  For a dreadful second I was torn between stopping and running. ‘Run!’ Odette screamed again. There was nothing I could do to help her. The best I could do was to save Petite Simone. Turning my back on Odette made my heart tear like a sheet of paper, but I tucked Petite Simone onto my back, kicked my shoes off and propelled myself forward with every ounce of strength in my body.

  ‘Maman! Maman!’ Petite Simone cried, and struggled, but I held her tightly. I heard Germans behind me shouting to stop or they would shoot. But I knew that not even they would shoot in a station. The entrance was a few metres ahead. My heart was cramping and I was struggling for air. I thought I was going to pass out but I was determined to escape. There wasn’t a German in sight ahead of me.

  We are going to make it! I told my trembling limbs. We are going to make it!

  A blur of blue crossed my eyes. A French policeman who I hadn’t noticed made a lunge for me. He crashed into my hip and sent me sprawling across the floor. Petite Simone tumbled forward. A German soldier caught up with us and picked her up by the scruff of her coat. She kicked and bit at him but he held her tightly. I reached towards her but the policeman brought his truncheon down on the back of my neck. I collapsed to my knees, the pain shrieking down my spine, but managed to get up again and stagger forward. The policeman dealt me another blow, this time above my ear. I called to Petite Simone but he hit me again and again on my shoulders and back until I lost consciousness.

  When I opened my eyes it was dark. My head throbbed and there was a stabbing pain in my shoulder. I was aware that I was lying face down on something hard and cold. A smell like rotting vegetation filled my nostrils. From somewhere behind me came the sound of dripping water. I tried to sit up but pain seared across my back. My arms gave way. I lapsed into unconsciousness again.

  It must have been some hours later that I woke up. Flashes of morning light flickered on my arm. I raised my eyes and saw that the light was coming from a barred window. I was lying on a stone floor, its hardness pressing into my hips and knees. There was no sound other than the trickling of water down one of the walls.

  I defied the agony and lifted myself up onto my elbows, wincing from the pain in my back and ribs. There was a straw mattress opposite the door. By sheer force of will, I managed to stand up. My head swam and my vision blurred. I swooned towards the bed and collapsed onto it, falling into a deep sleep.

  The third time I woke I saw that the sun had disappeared from the window. But I could see a patch of blue sky and the air in the cell was warmer. I guessed it was the afternoon. I had no appetite but my throat was so dry that it was painful to swallow. There was no tap in the cell. Not even a pitcher of water. Just a putrid-smelling bucket in the corner. I pressed my face against the musty mattress and wept for Odette and Petite Simone. Were they here too? Or had they been taken away?

  The grille on the cell door opened and a guard looked in. A few moments later I heard him push the key into the lock. The door squealed open and banged against the wall.

  ‘Stand up,’ he shouted.

  I could see that protesting would not do any good. I forced myself to my feet but my legs gave way beneath me. I realised that my right knee was so swollen I couldn’t close my legs. Compared to the other pains in my body, I had scarcely noticed it until then. The guard stood behind me and grabbed me underneath the arms. Another guard came in and clamped chains around my ankles.

  ‘Walk!’ the first guard ordered, shoving me forward.

  With my full weight on my knee and the extra burden of the chains, walking was excruciating. I limped a few steps then fell. The guard who had chained me stepped forward. I instinctively covered my head, expecting a blow from a truncheon, but instead he grabbed me by the shoulders and yanked me up again. The other guard put his arm around mine and supported me. I shuffled alongside him down a dim corridor. The only light came from barred windows near the ceiling. I heard a shout then an explosion cracked the air. There was silence for a while before the sound broke the air again. I had not heard it before but I knew instinctively what it was: a firing squad. Was this how it was to be? I was going to be shot?

  ‘Where am I?’ I asked the guard who was walking in front.

  ‘Shut up! Don’t talk!’

  I was taken down another corridor that ended with a flight of stairs. The guards had to lift me up them. Finally they dragged me into a room with only a chair and a light hanging from the ceiling. The guard who was holding me pushed me into the chair and handcuffed my hands behind me. Then they left without a word
.

  ‘It is a shame to see a beautiful woman in such a state.’

  The portent of evil in the voice sent a chill through me. I knew it was Colonel von Loringhoven, but I couldn’t see him. He stepped out of the darkness into the glare. My heart skipped a beat. I thought that must be how a pearl diver felt when he saw a flash of fin and tail emerge from the murky depths.

  Von Loringhoven circled my chair, studying me from every angle. ‘Can I get you anything?’ he asked. ‘Some coffee? A cigarette? Some ice for your knee?’

  I glanced down. My skirt was ripped and my mottled, deformed knee was exposed. I shook my head. There was nothing I wanted from von Loringhoven.

  He disappeared into the darkness then reappeared with a chair. He scraped the legs along the floor and propped it into position opposite me.

  ‘The first time I saw you was in 1930 in Paris,’ he said, sitting down and taking a silver cigarette box from his pocket. ‘At the Folies Bergère. What a voice, I thought. What a magnificent voice. And, of course, you were very beautiful.’

  He paused to take out a cigarette, light it and blow out a long puff of smoke. The stink of tobacco scraped down my throat. I did my best not to choke. Wherever this interrogation was going, I had to be careful. It was possible that Odette and Petite Simone had not been identified as Jews and that I had been arrested for something else. After all, Roger had warned me that the Gestapo were becoming suspicious of my activities.

  Von Loringhoven gave me a long, considered look, as if he were waiting for me to speak. Roger had once told me that the most important thing was to keep quiet for at least twenty-four hours. That would give the network time to hear of the arrest and go into hiding. I was determined to remain silent for as long as I could.

  A shadow appeared in the light. It was a man wearing a leather coat. He stepped forward as if he were going to greet me but instead delivered a blow to my cheek so forceful that my neck cracked and I saw stars.

  ‘Not on the face,’ growled von Loringhoven.

  I looked up in time to see the man swing his fist again. His knuckles slammed into my chest. The chair skidded backwards and I crashed to the floor, falling onto my damaged shoulder. I howled in pain and wriggled backwards. I tried to tell myself that the situation was real and to think quickly. But the thug’s violence was not a part of anything I had ever known or imagined. He made a run for me. I struggled to curl up but I couldn’t defend myself with my ankles chained and my hands cuffed behind me. His foot smashed into my stomach. I heaved and gasped for breath, feeling as though my pelvis had been shattered into pieces. He drew back his foot, ready to strike again. I closed my eyes, sure that the next blow would kill me.

  ‘Enough!’ ordered von Loringhoven.

  The torturer uprighted the chair, with me in it, and left the room.

  ‘You are a foolish woman, Mademoiselle Fleurier,’ said von Loringhoven. ‘The Germans and French work so well together. And you could have been free to carry on with your life as normal. But perhaps it is the company you have been keeping.’

  I could barely hear him above the ringing in my ears. The air in my throat was making a desperate, rasping sound.

  ‘Now,’ said von Loringhoven, ‘tell me what you know about Yves Fichot.’

  ‘I don’t know an Yves Fichot,’ I gasped through the pain.

  ‘What about Murielle Martin then?’

  I shook my head.

  Von Loringhoven paused. For an awful moment I thought he was going to call in the thug again. But I was telling the truth: I did not know who those people were. I had been deliberately kept in the dark regarding names. I lifted my head. It was the first time I had really seen Colonel von Loringhoven’s eyes. They were dark and beady. The eyes of a snake.

  He clucked his tongue. ‘What about your dear friend, Roger Delpierre?’

  My mouth turned dry and I swallowed. Von Loringhoven’s face broke into a smile. He was pleased to have got a reaction.

  ‘You see what I mean about your foolishness in who you choose for friends? Why would a glamorous, talented woman like you trust a lowlife like that?’ he said.

  Von Loringhoven stood up and paced around the circle of light. He came to a stop at my right side and reached his hand towards me as if he were going to caress my face. But the side of my cheek was bloody from the fall. He must have thought better of it and withdrew his hand to his pocket.

  ‘Did Roger Delpierre tell you that he loved you?’ he asked, with a slight chuckle. ‘He has told every woman he has slept with the same thing. He has used you all for his own ambitions. We caught him three days ago trying to escape from Marseilles. We only had to threaten to cut off his balls before he blabbered everything he knew about you and the network.’

  There was a taste like metal in my throat. I coughed and the pain racked my ribs. Roger? Roger had used me? The beating had deadened my senses. I forced myself to put one thought logically in front of the other, but the effort was like one of those dreams where you run and run but get nowhere.

  Von Loringhoven returned to his seat, smug in the certainty that he had broken me. There was something about his hastiness that raised my suspicions. As I repeated Roger’s name to myself, images of the work we had carried out together flooded my mind. Roger would never betray the network he had worked so carefully to build, even under torture. He had shown me once the cyanide tablet he kept in his pocket in case he was ever caught and felt himself in danger of ‘giving vital secrets away’. Besides, if von Loringhoven had found out ‘everything’ why wasn’t he using Roger’s real surname? He must be lying, I thought. He is assuming that if I think all is lost for the network, I will tell everything I know. The idea gave me something to hold on to despite the searing pain. I had to outsmart von Loringhoven at his own game. I tried to emulate Roger when he was under pressure—slowing my breathing, calming my emotions, staying focused on the essentials.

  ‘Then you know about Bruno and Kira?’ I whimpered. ‘The radio operators I took to Bordeaux.’

  Von Loringhoven’s eyes danced over me. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Delpierre told us everything about them.’

  Despite the horror of the situation, I had an urge to laugh. I hid it by tucking my head against my shoulder and pretending to weep. The Great Dane and my cat had many talents, but radio operating was not one of them. And I had not been to Bordeaux in years.

  Von Loringhoven reached over and patted my arm. ‘Perhaps your visit here will encourage you to make wiser choices in the future,’ he said.

  The colonel’s voice prickled my skin. I was sure I was in the presence of the most evil man I had ever met, but his tone was almost fatherly.

  Von Loringhoven called in the guards, who dragged me back to my cell. Later, I was given some watery soup and dry crusts of bread. Alone again, I had time to think over what had happened. Von Loringhoven had not asked me many questions about the network and none at all about Odette and Petite Simone. He had not even mentioned them. I had been beaten, true, but I had heard of the Gestapo burning people’s feet, cutting off their fingers and toes, and gouging out their eyes. In the light of those tortures, I had escaped lightly. I wondered if that was a good sign, or whether they were going to keep me until they found an Agent Bruno and Agent Kira in Bordeaux? I could understand why even the most courageous people talked under interrogation. It was the uncertainty and waiting that weakened you as much as the beating.

  When I heard the guard unlock my cell door the following morning, dread fell over me. Would today’s beating be worse than the one I had received yesterday?

  I glanced up and saw Camille Casal looking back at me. The guard brought her a chair and dusted it off with his handkerchief before allowing her to sit down. She straightened her silk skirt over her legs and nodded to the guard that he should leave. It took me a moment to recover from her appearance. But then I guessed why they had sent her. They were hoping that as an ‘old friend’ she might be able to coax more information out of me.

 
‘You are wasting your time, Camille,’ I said to her. ‘I don’t know anything about the network. I was never told a thing.’

  That wasn’t strictly true; after all, I knew Madame Ibert and Madame Goux, the doctors, André and my family in Pays de Sault. But I was prepared to die rather than give away any of them.

  Camille shifted in her seat and pulled her jacket over her shoulders, as if she had just noticed the chill in my cell. I was so numb I could barely feel anything.

  ‘Your attitude towards the Germans is what has brought you to this, Simone,’ she said. ‘They know that you are nothing but a minor link in any Resistance movement. That you were exploited because you had fallen in love.’

  Her statement stunned me. I sat back on the straw bed and leaned against the wall. Was it possible that the Nazis really did not know the extent of my involvement in the network? Perhaps the double agent had been playing a game, hedging his bets either way.

  ‘You refuse to perform in Paris,’ Camille continued, her voice booming around the cell. ‘You are difficult with the Propagandastaffel, you snubbed Colonel von Loringhoven’s hospitality at Maxim’s and then you refused to share a train compartment with him.’

  My sluggish, starved and dehydrated mind tried to keep up with this new development. I was in prison because I had hurt a Nazi’s feelings?

  ‘Why am I here?’ I asked her.

  ‘Because of your responsibilities,’ Camille said, as if she were talking to a wilful child. ‘You are a popular entertainer.’

  I sensed she was speaking so loudly for the benefit of the guard in the corridor. But she had confirmed what I had been thinking: I was not in prison because of my involvement in the network or because I had tried to smuggle two Jews out of Paris. That didn’t mean her statement stunned me any less.

  ‘What is it you want, Camille?’