‘Have faith, Simone,’ Monsieur Dargent told me. ‘No matter what it takes, we will find them.’
Besides searching for information about Roger and my friends, I yearned to see my family. I had not had any contact with them since I had last left them for Paris, and after all the hardships we had lived through, my family, Madame Ibert and the Meyers were the people with whom I most wanted to celebrate the end of the war. In order to hinder the Germans and assist the Allied invasion, the maquis had blown up bridges, dug out railway tracks and cut telephone lines. As a result, it was almost impossible to make contact with people in the south. But as soon as the barest train service was reestablished, I was on it. I held out hope that maybe Roger had returned to France via the south and gone straight to the farm.
I reached Carpentras in three days and from there took a motor truck. The driver, who was from Sault, told me that the Milice and the retreating German army had been vicious in the last days of the war. Nearly fifty Resistants from Sault alone had been sent to concentration camps. I thought of Roger again and shivered.
The driver let me off a mile from the farm. It was early autumn and the countryside was peaceful after the chaos of Paris. I remembered how happy my family had been when Roger and I announced our intention to marry, and how it had lifted our spirits in the darkest of times. I tried to recreate that feeling of hope as I walked by fields of wheat and lavender that should have been cut months ago. I imagined how life would be at the farm once Roger and I were married. I saw myself tending a beautiful garden of roses and wildflowers in pots; little children running around the feet of my mother and Aunt Yvette while they cooked lunch in the kitchen; and Bernard and Roger standing side by side, surveying lush fields of purple.
In the last half kilometre before the farm, I became so elated at the thought of seeing my family again that I broke into a run. I caught a glimpse of my aunt’s house through the trees. There was no one in the yard or the fields. No drift of smoke from the chimney. I turned the bend in the road and the house came into full view. I stopped in my tracks, my legs almost giving way beneath me.
‘No!’
The lower part of the house was intact but the top floor was a desolate shell. Black burn marks scarred the holes where the windows had been. I turned to the empty space next to it, where my father’s house should have stood. There was nothing left except a mountain of blackened stones.
‘Maman!’ I screamed. ‘Maman! Aunt Yvette! Bernard!’
My voice rang off the trees, echoing like a gunshot in the air. But there was no answer.
I bolted towards the ruins of the house, my heart thumping in my chest. ‘Minot! Madame Ibert!’ I called. I struggled to think over the ringing in my ears. That the Germans or the Milice had done the damage I had no doubt. But where was everybody? I tried not to believe the worst. It was possible they had fled before this had happened.
I tried the door of the house. It was stuck. I shouldered and kicked it until it gave way and creaked open. The kitchen was undamaged and stood like a surrealist painting against the ruin of the rest of the building. The table was set for six people. Would they have set the table if they were preparing to flee? I pushed open the door to the storeroom. It was stocked with preserved food, cans and bags of grain. If the Germans had been here, wouldn’t they have ransacked it? Possible scenarios jumbled together in my mind. I opened the shutters and stared outside. Could a fire have started in my father’s house and somehow spread to the top floor of Aunt Yvette’s? Would that explain the damage? I turned the problem over in my mind. Something moved in the grass. There was a flash of fur. I stared at the green blades, trying to discern what it was. A rabbit? Two eyes blinked at me. No, not a rabbit. A cat.
I rushed outside and scooped Kira into my arms. I could feel her breast bone protruding through her matted fur and she was covered in thorns. She meowed feebly, revealing broken incisor teeth. I nursed her against my chest and carried her into the house. I recalled that I had seen bottles of anchovies in the storeroom, so I lowered her onto the table and mashed up the contents of one jar on a plate. I would get her water as soon as I had checked that the well had not been poisoned.
‘What happened to you?’ I asked, stroking her head gently with my finger.
An unsettling thought rose in my mind. If my family had been given enough warning to flee the Germans, why had they left Kira behind? Perhaps she had been hiding and they couldn’t find her? But I could not believe that. She was a house cat and barely left my mother’s side. I stood in the doorway and called out the names of the dogs and Chérie. But, as I had thought, Kira was alone.
I sank into a chair. It would take me an hour to walk to the village, but there was nothing else to be done. Perhaps my family was there. I watched Kira lapping up the anchovies, crouched on her bowed legs. She was eighteen, ancient for a cat. I wondered how she had survived with no one to feed her.
‘Hello!’ a man’s voice shouted. I ran to the window to see the grizzled figure of Jean Grimaud coming up the road. Another idea flashed into my mind. Maybe everyone had fled to join the maquis. But what had they done with Madame Meyer?
‘Jean!’ I called out, running into the yard.
‘I was in Carpentras,’ he said, grimacing. ‘I heard that you were making your way here.’
‘Where are they?’ I asked.
Jean swallowed and looked at his hands. And then I knew. The truth was all around me, yet I had refused to see it. I felt as though somebody had struck me in the heart with a pickaxe. I crouched on the ground. I wanted to sink into that chalky earth, to slip under it like a corpse, so I wouldn’t have to face the terrible thing that Jean was going to tell me.
Jean squatted down next to me. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, tears welling in his eyes.
Poor Jean Grimaud. Twice in his life he’d had to bring me bad news.
‘What happened?’
Jean put his arm around my shoulders. ‘They found the grenades Bernard was keeping for us from an Allied drop,’ he said. ‘There were three of us heading for the farm when we saw that the Germans were here. We hid in the trees. There was nothing we could do to save them. We were outnumbered.’
I choked on my tears. ‘Where were they taken?’
‘They were killed here.’
I pressed my face against his arm. ‘All of them?’
Jean squeezed me tighter. I looked up at him and he nodded.
‘You should be proud of them, Simone,’ he said. ‘They died like saints. They knelt down and held each other’s hands. Then the Germans shot them.’
Maman! The blood rushed to my ears. I clutched my fists against my head. Despite the danger I had put them in, I never once thought that harm would come to my family or friends. While the battle for Paris raged, I had been comforted by the fact that they lived in a remote part of the country. I barely heard Jean when he told me that the first German soldier ordered to perform the execution couldn’t bring himself to shoot Madame Meyer, so his commander shot him and performed the execution himself. I was too shocked to take in anything else.
‘I will walk with you to the village,’ said Jean. ‘You can stay with Odile. She has your dogs and one of your cats. We couldn’t find the other one.’
‘No,’ I said, wiping at my dusty, tear-streaked face. ‘She waited for me here.’
I did not return with Jean to the village. I told him I wanted to spend the night in my aunt’s kitchen. He didn’t argue, he only said that he would return the following day. Before Jean left, I asked him to show me where they had shot my family, Minot and his mother, and Madame Ibert. He pointed to a spot near the distillery door. In the dappled afternoon light I couldn’t see any marks in the wood, the way people said there were holes in the trees of the Bois de Boulogne.
‘They shot them from behind,’ Jean explained. ‘In the back of the neck.’
He left me with kisses on both cheeks but I barely felt them. I sat down on a stone looking at the spot where my family and frien
ds had died. Kira rubbed against my legs before settling down next to me. It was hard to imagine any violence had taken place here. When the sun began to disappear, a breeze rustled the trees and everything was peaceful. I remembered the first lavender harvest. I heard my father singing, saw my mother wipe the sweat from her face with the back of her hand, Aunt Yvette pulling down her sleeves against the harsh sun.
Someone laughed and I turned around before I realised that the sound was in my head. Minot was clinking his champagne glass against mine after my first performance at the Adriana. ‘Congratulations on a superb show.’ I thought of his mother, patting Kira while she waited for her train from Paris to depart. Then Madame Ibert loomed up before me, shovelling sand in the attic.
I couldn’t believe that it was all over, that I would never see those beloved faces again. When the sun finally disappeared and night fell, the numbness gave way to the full brunt of grief. ‘Can you ever forgive me?’ I wept into the silent blackness.
Jean had told me that the villagers had buried my family and friends in the churchyard, but when dawn rose the next day I realised that it would be a while before I could bring myself to visit their graves. I was stuck in a dream, sandwiched between a reality I did not want to face and the happy memories of life at the farm. I had no intention of returning to Paris.
There were vegetables in the garden and the water in the well was good. I cleaned out the kitchen and set up a bedroom in the front room, even though there was a gaping hole in the roof. I scrubbed the floors and the walls with lavender water, struggling to eradicate the stink of smoke. I busied myself tending to Kira and I fed her eggs, anchovies, sardines and tinned meat, hoping to fatten her up again. But one day she stopped eating. When I awoke the following morning, she wasn’t asleep next to me. I searched the house and the yard. It was not like her to wander further than that, but I could not find her anywhere. I ran out into the fields, terrified that an eagle had taken her as easy prey. I walked to the lavender fields and saw her lying on her side. She was panting. When I looked into her eyes, I knew she would not last the morning.
‘Thank you, my friend,’ I whispered, lying down next to her and stroking her fur. ‘You waited for me, didn’t you? You did not want me to have to discover what had happened here all alone.’
Kira stretched out her paw and touched my chin, as she had liked to do every morning.
I buried Kira near the graves of Olly, Chocolat and Bonbon. All my life people had laughed at me for my attachment to my pets, but having lived through a war, I had come to prefer animals to people.
In the afternoon, I walked to the village. Jean was talking with Odile and Jules Fournier near the fountain. Odile saw me coming first and ran towards me. My throat was so thick with tears I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. She wrapped her arms around my shoulders. Odile was a small woman, much shorter than me, and yet I felt the strength in her grasp. She was holding me up; grief had drained me.
‘I have your animals here,’ she said. ‘Would you like to see them?’
Bruno, Princesse, Charlot and Chérie were sunning themselves in the courtyard of the bar like movie stars on the Riviera. They jumped up as soon as they saw me and vied for my attention. I patted, rubbed and stroked them all, although I couldn’t stop thinking of Kira.
‘I have grown attached to them,’ said Odile. ‘They are good company.’
‘Can you mind them just a bit longer?’ I asked her, picking up Chérie. I felt barely capable of looking after myself let alone the animals.
Odile patted Chérie and stroked my cheek. ‘Come and get them whenever you are ready.’
She told me to sit at a table and she brought me a glass of pastis, although in my village it wasn’t a woman’s drink. It was strong and took the edge off the throb in my heart. Jean came in with Jules. I was grateful that no one expected me to talk. I listened to them chat about the change in season and the new crops. None of us wanted to discuss the war, but it was impossible to avoid it. It had changed everything. I wasn’t the only person to have suffered. Ten families in our tiny village had lost a father, a son or a daughter.
‘At least there were no collaborators here as there are in other villages,’ said Jean with pride. ‘We all fought as one.’
‘The collaborators are being let off easily,’ scoffed Jules. ‘Even Pétain has had his death sentence commuted to life.’
‘It depends how much money you have,’ said Odile, rubbing her fingers together. ‘If you are rich and famous or are needed in some way, you will be pardoned. Watch out if you are poor though. You will be shot as “an example to others”.’
‘No,’ said Monsieur Poulet from the bar. ‘De Gaulle has turned the whole of France into a nation of Resistants. It is the image he gives to the world so he can hold his head high when he stands with the other Allied leaders.’
De Gaulle, I thought bitterly, remembering the way I had idolised him. No hero is ever perfect.
That first afternoon broke my isolation. After that, I walked to the village each morning to send telegrams from the post office to Paris and Marseilles and letters to London. I was trying every link I could to find out what had happened to Roger. Each day I ate lunch with Odile before heading home. It was through her that I learned that the fashion designer Coco Chanel had not been charged with collaboration, even though she and her German lover had tried to influence Churchill to make a peace deal with Hitler. Perhaps if my family had not been killed, I would not have felt so bitter towards people like her. Her collaboration had not made her a happier woman, just a richer one. But why should my family have died trying to save the country when so many self-seekers were left unpunished?
The following day I returned to the post office to send more letters. ‘There is something for you,’ said the postmistress. ‘It looks official.’
Official, I thought, alarm bells ringing in my head. That was not good. What I was hoping for was a handwritten letter from Roger telling me that he was all right. I opened the envelope and saw it was an article that Madame Goux had cut out from Le Figaro. Camille Casal had been found guilty of collaboration. Her punishment was to be banned from performing in France for five years. I remembered her hard face staring back at me the day I went to Fresnes prison. She was not going to suffer for her collaboration the way I had for my resistance.
‘Is it good news?’ the postmistress asked.
I shook my head. ‘It is no news,’ I said. ‘No news at all.’
A few weeks later I received another letter from Madame Goux, informing me that the Red Cross had not been able to locate Roger. But she had heard from Odette. She and Petite Simone had reached South America and were waiting for passage to Australia, where they had been accepted as refugees. There was no word yet of Monsieur Etienne or Joseph. Madame Goux asked after my family and Madame Ibert, and I realised that she didn’t know. I had not told anybody in Paris.
I walked through the autumn fields, relieved to have heard news about Odette and Petite Simone but still worried about the others. Australia? The irony was not lost on me.
‘A lavender farm? Like those in France?’
‘Very much so.’
I tried to imagine Roger’s country as he had described it. I saw a rugged coastline and centuries-old wilderness, a place untouched by the bitterness of war. With no news from Roger, and more revelations of atrocities appearing in the newspapers every day, the grim possibility that he, Monsieur Etienne and Joseph were dead gripped my heart. I had lost my family, why not them too?
By the time I reached the farmhouse, a mistral was blowing. I built a fire in the kitchen but it wasn’t enough to keep me warm. What would I do here during the winter? I thought of all the people around the world who were trying to trace their loved ones. If I returned to Paris, I could help the Red Cross with their searches. Maybe André and I could put together whatever was left of our fortunes to help war orphans?
Then another possibility came to me: maybe I should go to Australia. Wi
th my family dead, and the hope of Roger being found alive growing dimmer every day, what was there to keep me in France? I could not imagine myself singing or acting in films again, unless to entertain wounded soldiers or people in refugee camps. Perhaps I could make a new life in a new country with Odette and Petite Simone. But no sooner had my heart lifted with the idea than it crashed again. Trying to begin a new life was too painful. It was easier to stay here, in my cocoon.
The mistral howled louder. I emptied the contents of my travel bag on the floor, searching for another sweater. Something rattled on the flagstones. I saw the pouch my mother had given me with the rabbit bone inside. You will need it. I can’t watch over you for ever.
You should have kept it for yourself, Maman, I thought.
I picked up the pouch and opened the drawstring. The bone was light in my hand. My mother hadn’t told me what part of the animal it came from but I guessed from the shape that it was the leg. Something caught my eye. I moved to the lamp and held the bone up to it. Etched along the side were words written in a shaky, unformed hand. I squinted to read them: A ma fille bien aimée pour qu’enfin brille sa lumière. For my beloved daughter who shines her light at last.
I stared at the words, knowing that my mother had written them. But how? When had my mother learned to write? Or had she known how to all along?
Tears pricked my eyes at the memory of the woman who had always been a mystery to me, and now would be for ever so. The dead took their secrets with them. For my beloved daughter who shines her light at last. At least I could be sure of one thing: how much my mother had loved me.
After the fire went out, I huddled under my blankets, gazing at the moonlit sky through the hole in the ceiling. Sometime in the early hours of the morning the wind died down. I woke up, the moon shining on my face. I lifted myself out of bed, drawn to the light, and wrapped my blankets around my shoulders.
Wild Lavender Page 59