On the day of my trial, I did my best to clean myself up. I couldn’t do much about my dress which was crumpled and dusty. But I washed myself with a rag and some water and brushed my teeth with my finger. Perhaps if I had understood what was going on in the outside world, my plight would have been clearer. As the lieutenant had pointed out, there had been few active Resistants in Paris and yet since the liberation over 120,000 people had applied for official recognition for their work in the Resistance.
‘Septembrisards,’ I overheard an FFI soldier call them. September Resistants, who joined when they saw that the Germans had lost the war. The true Resistants were reluctant to come forward because of the shame of it. But where did that leave me?
A few hours before I was expecting to be taken from my cell on the day of the trial, the guard arrived and pushed open my door.
‘Vite! Vite!’ he cried, handing me my purse, which had been confiscated when I was imprisoned. ‘Hurry! Hurry! Make yourself presentable.’
If I wasn’t so surprised by his urgent concern with my grooming, I would have questioned the difference that powdering my face and smearing on lipstick made to my dirty clothes. But I did as he told me. I dabbed eau de cologne behind my ears and splashed some on my wrists. It was only when he pushed me out the door that it occurred to me what might be going on. The trial of Simone Fleurier would be an event. If I looked as if I had been mistreated, public sympathy might turn in my favour. But to my surprise, I wasn’t taken out of the prison and rushed off to court with a police escort, as I had envisioned. I was taken downstairs to the office of Cherche-Midi’s superintendent.
The guard stopped in the corridor, which was lined with FFI soldiers standing to attention.
‘I present Mademoiselle Fleurier,’ he said.
One of the soldiers knocked on the superintendent’s door and was told to enter. He stood aside and ushered me into the office. The superintendent was an elderly man with a bald head who was shuffling papers on his desk and wearing a worried frown. There was another man by the window. The light was streaming in behind him. He was the tallest, lankiest man I had ever seen. He stepped towards me.
‘Mademoiselle Fleurier,’ he said. ‘I apologise that your plight has only now come to my attention. You will be released immediately.’
A tingle ran down my spine. I had never seen this man before but I knew his voice. It was the voice that had called out to me four years ago, telling me never to accept defeat. General de Gaulle.
‘When I was in London, I was aware of your courageous service in helping your countrymen join the Free French,’ he said. ‘It inspired me that not all the lights of Paris had gone out; that there was one still shining brightly.’
The great de Gaulle had found inspiration in me? I forgot my dishevelled appearance and thanked him for his compliment as if we were two guests who had just been introduced in an elegant salon. For his part, he seemed so caught up in victory that he didn’t appear to register my dirty clothes or my surprise. Instead he nodded to the superintendent, who pulled out chairs for me and the General, and scurried about serving us tea like an eager-to-please maid.
‘It is with great honour that I give you this,’ said de Gaulle, handing me a small box. I opened it to find a gold Cross of Lorraine inside—de Gaulle’s symbol of the Resistance. ‘You will have other honours,’ he said. ‘But this token must do for now.’
The saying ‘my heart swelled with pride’ suddenly made sense to me, for that was exactly what was happening inside me. My centre grew larger and wider. The world seemed to be opening up for me. It was the proudest moment of my life.
The General put down his cup then rose from his chair. ‘I hope that when things settle down, my wife and I can meet with you again, Mademoiselle Fleurier. But for now I have some urgent things which I must attend to.’
I stood and watched the superintendent rush to the door to open it for the General. Before he left, de Gaulle turned to me. ‘I too was charged with treason by the Vichy government when my goal was to serve the true France,’ he said. ‘I hope that you will wear this terrible misunderstanding as another badge of honour.’
I nodded, although if somebody other than General de Gaulle had suggested that to me, I would have bitten them.
‘Vive la France!’ he saluted me.
Without thinking, I jumped to attention and returned the salute. ‘Vive la France!’
It was unheard of for a military man to salute a civilian, and the exhausted de Gaulle must have forgotten himself. But I understood the sentiment; he was a man who respected fighters above anyone else.
Upon my release, the first thing I had to do was to find out what was happening with André. Now that I had been officially recognised by de Gaulle, my testimony would carry weight. As it turned out, I was just in time. André’s trial was scheduled for the following day. For some reason, he had been granted access to his own lawyer, while I had not. I stopped by my apartment for a bath and change of clothes, then went straight to his lawyer’s office to give my testimony.
Monsieur Villeret was an elegant man in his mid-sixties who had known André since he was a child. ‘You can’t imagine how pleased I am to see you,’ he told me, showing me to a seat. ‘André has been charged with collaboration and treason. I doubt they will even try him now.’
‘How soon can we get him released?’
‘Maybe not until the day after tomorrow. Executions are fast but releases are backlogged.’
‘I shall visit him this afternoon and tell him,’ I said. ‘So you can get to work on the release.’
‘Are you aware that Camille Casal is also being held at Fresnes prison?’ Monsieur Villeret asked me.
Something in his tone struck me as odd, but I assumed he was just letting me know the fate of someone with whom I had co-starred in a major show. Camille had been very public in her fraternisation with the Nazi high command. Although she was unlikely to be executed, she had too much weighing against her to escape prison entirely. I doubted whether any statement I could give would affect the outcome of her trial. But her connection with von Loringhoven had allowed me to sing the Africa song for the Resistance and to save Odette and Petite Simone.
‘I can make a statement in her favour,’ I said.
Monsieur Villeret looked startled. He raised his eyebrows. ‘You are aware that it was she who denounced you to the FFI?’
I was so shocked that for a moment I forgot where I was. My mind raced to come up with excuses for Camille’s conduct but I could find none. ‘She denounced me? Why would she do that?’
‘She has always been against you, Mademoiselle Fleurier.’
‘That is not true,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘That is only how we were portrayed in the press.’
‘You don’t know, do you?’ Monsieur Villeret frowned. He sat back and sighed, as if weighing up the consequences of what he was going to say next. ‘Can I rely on your discretion?’
I was reeling too much from the revelation that Camille had denounced me to take in his question. She must have done it to protect herself—or her daughter. Perhaps she had thought that I would denounce her first?
I looked back to Monsieur Villeret. He pulled a box out of a cupboard and placed it on his desk with the gravity of a funeral director arranging an urn.
‘When André was arrested, I went through his father’s files to gather support of his innocence,’ he said. ‘I came across some old correspondence between Monsieur Blanchard and Camille Casal. She was blackmailing him.’
The room went out of focus. I had no idea that Camille had ever known André’s father. ‘Blackmailing him? When?’
‘1936.’
That was the year André had turned thirty; the year we were supposed to get married.
‘She wanted money?’
Monsieur Villeret shook his head. ‘She wanted to ruin your happiness. She wanted Monsieur Blanchard to refuse to let André marry you.’
I thought the suggestion was ludicrous. Eve
n if Camille had been that malevolent, I couldn’t see how she could have had any power over Monsieur Blanchard. Contrary to his wife’s prediction that he would outlive us all, he had succumbed to dementia soon after retiring and now lived under a nurse’s care. But back in 1936 he had been arrogant and cocky. Even someone as manipulative with men as Camille wouldn’t have been able to fool him.
‘Why would somebody with Camille’s fame and beauty want to hurt me?’ I asked. But as soon as the question left my mouth the truth of what Monsieur Villeret was implying hit me. I remembered Camille’s reaction to André’s proposal to me in Cannes. And no one had been able to explain Monsieur Blanchard’s sudden change of heart when he had already agreed to let André marry me.
‘It was spite that made her do it,’ said Monsieur Villeret. ‘The workings of a jealous mind. There was a skeleton in the Blanchard family closet. She found out about it from someone high up in the military and she decided to use it against you.’
My eyes did not leave Monsieur Villeret’s face.
‘Laurent Blanchard did not die a hero at Verdun,’ he said. ‘That was a cover-up by the government in light of the Blanchard family’s importance to France. Laurent Blanchard incited his men to mutiny. He was shot fleeing the battle by another officer.’
My breath caught in my throat. ‘He was shot for treason?’
‘He was shot without a trial,’ Monsieur Villeret said. ‘And what he did was covered up.’
I stood up from my chair, my legs unsteady beneath me, and stumbled to the window. Out on the street some American soldiers were supervising the clearing of a burnt-out building. Ropes had been tied around the frame and the soldiers were pulling on it. Camille had destroyed my happiness with André because she was jealous?
Through the haze of confusion in my mind, I heard Monsieur Villeret ask, ‘Do you think that I should tell André?’
Onlookers gathered on the street to watch the Americans pull down the unstable building. At first it seemed as if the wood would not budge. But after a few minutes of determined tugging, the frame collapsed. The crowd cheered.
I turned to Monsieur Villeret, barely able to see him through my tears. If he told André about Camille, he would have to tell him about Laurent. I remembered the picture of the man with the soulful eyes in Madame Blanchard’s parlour. I suspected that Laurent had not betrayed his countrymen, rather he had been like many of the young officers my father had described: intelligent men who could not see the point of sending thousands of soldiers to slaughter just because some general ordered it. But none of us would ever know that for sure. The accusation of treason and cowardice would stain Laurent if the true circumstances of his death were ever revealed.
I thought of that cold morning in Neuilly, when André and I were broken apart for all time. What was the use of him knowing now? What good could come of it? I thought of Princesse de Letellier and André’s daughters, of Madame Blanchard and Veronique. André and I should have put our own happiness first all those years ago. It was too late to do that now. There were too many people to hurt. Part of me would love André for ever, and he might still love me, but I belonged with Roger.
‘No,’ I said. ‘We must never tell him.’
I took a package of clean clothes, linen, soap and food to Fresnes prison for André. He was brought out to me in prison garb with chains around his ankles. I was startled by his haggard appearance.
‘Simone!’ he said, his face brightening. ‘They let you out? Are you all right?’
I felt as if my own smile was forced. All that Monsieur Villeret had told me was weighing on my mind. I asked the guard if I could speak to André alone. Glancing at the Cross of Lorraine on my lapel, he nodded and left.
‘You won’t be tried, André. You will be released as soon as your lawyer can get the paperwork through.’
André gave a sigh of relief, and pressed his fingers to the grille of the window that separated us. I couldn’t bring myself to lift my hand to touch his. In front of me was a man I had loved with my whole heart. I would never do anything to hurt him or his wife and children.
‘Simone? What is it?’
‘I had better tell your wife that you will released,’ I said. ‘She must be worried. Do you have a message for her?’
André bowed his head. I sensed something shifting between us. Like two tectonic plates realigning themselves into more stable positions. He looked up again and our eyes met. ‘Only that…I love her and the girls,’ he said.
We both smiled.
‘And you, Simone,’ he asked. ‘What is your plan now?’
‘To go south to my family and wait for Roger.’
André frowned at the mention of Roger’s name, but it was with concern this time rather than jealousy. ‘Monsieur Villeret has been trying to track Roger Delpierre down. It was true that he was the contact for your song at the Adriana, but he was captured before he could get back to London. He was sent to a concentration camp. No one knows where he is now.’
My heart plunged. Surely that wasn’t possible? I couldn’t lose Roger twice.
‘No,’ I said, clenching my hands.
André brought his face close to the grille. ‘You love him, don’t you, Simone?’
I nodded, pushing away my tears with the heel of my palm. ‘He wanted to come back for me after the war.’
‘Simone, don’t cry,’ André said, ‘As soon as I am out of here, I will help you any way I can.’
On my way to the prison exit, the guard accompanying me asked if I could wait in the corridor for a moment. He disappeared into an office and I leaned against the wall. There were some men sitting on benches, their faces bloodied and bruised. I strolled to the window and looked out. A group of women were in the exercise yard. I was only one floor up and could see their faces clearly. None of them were in prison uniforms; they wore civilian clothes and looked ruffled and dirty. But they were not working-class women; they had the tailored dresses and high heels of Tout-Paris. Some had shaved heads.
My eye fell to a blonde woman standing in the corner of the yard, smoking. Her hard blue eyes were remote from the fear and chaos around her. I inched closer to the window. Without make-up Camille’s face looked haggard and old. I remembered her gliding onto the stage at the Casino de Paris and eyeing the audience, majestic in her skin-tight dress, her cape slipping to the floor. I had once been mesmerised by her beauty but the rot on the inside was starting to show through now. I remembered the cool mockery in Camille’s eyes when she looked out at an audience and realised why she had never suffered stage fright—every toss of her head and flutter of her eyelashes had been practised to military precision. Camille never gave anything of herself, just as any friendship she had shown me had no substance or truth to it. She had done the worst thing she could have to hurt me. But I was at fault too. There was a saying in Provence: ‘Those foolish enough to keep a snake as a companion will get bitten sooner or later.’
Camille looked up and our eyes met. She watched me without a trace of hesitation or fear. I understood then that she knew that I had found out what she had done, and she didn’t care.
‘Who are you looking at?’ the guard asked, coming out of the office. He glanced over my shoulder and gave a scoff. ‘Camille Casal? Your old rival? She doesn’t look so glamorous now, does she?’
‘She was never my rival,’ I said, remembering what Monsieur Etienne had always told me. ‘I was the better singer and dancer.’
‘And prettier too,’ the guard said, guiding me away from the window and down the corridor. ‘Camille Casal is a cold bitch. I was there for her interrogation. Did you know that she once had a baby? She left it in a convent and never went back.’
I stopped and looked at the guard. He had rosy cheeks and a rotund stomach, the signs of a happily married man. ‘Where is the girl now?’ I asked him. ‘She is a young woman.’
He shook his head. ‘She never grew up. The girl died of a fever when she was five years old. Camille Casal was already
a star then but she wouldn’t give a centime towards medicine for the child. She is buried in a pauper’s grave.’
The guard let me out of the prison gate and into the sunshine. I stood on the pavement for a long time, trying to take in all that I had learnt that morning. I ran over in my mind the things Camille had said to me over the years about supporting her child. None of it had been true. The image of Camille’s face staring at me from the exercise yard burned into my mind. She had been shameless until the end. She had used me to get back on the Paris stage with ‘Les Femmes’, knowing that she had destroyed my happiness with André. No wonder she never bothered to mention him.
A lump formed in my throat and I began to choke. I slipped down to sit on the cobblestones and covered my eyes. I wanted to go back and spit in Camille’s face, to tear at her arrogant flesh with my nails. For minutes, I could not imagine standing up again for fear that I might kill her, but something tingled in my heart and the rage passed. If I confronted Camille now, what would change? She had ruined my past but I wouldn’t let her touch my future.
Slowly my head cleared and my heartbeat returned to normal. I stood up and straightened my coat. I would cover Camille over as a dog covers over its dirt. I was done with her. I had no intention of attending her trial; there was nothing I could do to condemn Camille any more than her actions had already done. What I had to think about now was the future, and that future was Roger and my family at the farm.
THIRTY-FIVE
I wrote to General de Gaulle to see if anything could be done through his office to trace Roger. I gave Madame Goux instructions to make enquiries through the Red Cross on my behalf about him, as well as Monsieur Etienne and Joseph, while I tried to find out everything I could through network contacts. Von Loringhoven had refused to give confirmation that Odette and Petite Simone had actually left the country, and the best I could hope for was that Odette would write to me. Monsieur Dargent came to my apartment each day to help with my search. The underground newspapers were now openly published and it was in one of these that I first saw a grainy picture of skeletal bodies being bulldozed into mass graves in what were now being termed ‘death camps’.
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