The Girl Who Fell From the Sky

by Simon Mawer

  Her panic subsides to be replaced by something else, a sense of detachment. ‘You frightened me,’ she calls out to them. ‘What do you expect, charging around like that? What do you want?’

  ‘Venez.’ The nearer one beckons her forward, and like any innocent civilian she’s obeying. She’s anxious, but she’s obeying. ‘I’m coming, I’m coming. Who are you looking for?’

  ‘Take your hand out of your pocket!’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ She doesn’t understand his accent. She wants to obey but she can’t quite understand what he is saying. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Your hand!’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  She’s closer now. A dozen yards. Too far, but it’ll have to do. She knows the distances and the angles, she knows the timing. Mere fractions of a second. Make the first move and they’re always on the back foot, always trying to catch up. It’s the only advantage you’ll have.

  ‘Haut les mains!’ the man shouts.

  As though trying to obey, she holds her shoulder bag out in front of her and carefully puts it on the ground. Is that what they want? Their eyes follow her movement, watch the bag as if that is what they’re after, the bag and all that’s in it. Maybe it gives her a second’s advantage, maybe as much as that. She pulls the pistol from her pocket and racks the slide all in one movement, like on the range at Meoble Lodge, dropping to a crouch, the pistol extended and gripped with both hands, covering the further of the two. The Fairbairn-Sykes position. Two shots, double tap, the reports sharp and irrevocable in the narrow space of the impasse.

  Time slows.

  The nearer man flinches. His companion folds up as though he’s been punched in the stomach. She shifts rightwards, covers the nearer man, squeezes the trigger twice more. Another two shots, quick succession, the slide flashing back and forth, empty cases tinkling out on the ground like something from a Christmas cracker. The man shouts and goes down on one knee, holding up his left hand as though he might ward off further bullets.

  Somewhere, someone shouts. Alice runs forward. The man nearer to her is pulling something from his waistband. She fires again, at two yards, into his head. A shot in the abdomen kills, the instructor said. It’s the biggest target in the body and it kills because the contents of the gut spill out into the abdominal cavity and infection sets in and there’s nothing anyone can do. But it may take a day or two. A head shot’s more difficult but it’s decisive.

  The other man lies there with a vacant expression, staring up at the sky through the one eye that remains intact. She goes to recover her shoulder bag, then runs past the two bodies back into the square. The queue of housewives has dispersed. Two people peer out from a café doorway. Faces watch from windows. The Citroën is still there, the engine running.

  Where is Miessen?

  She looks round the square at the five other roads that converge on it. Thin slices of buildings like narrow wedges of cheese divide the streets. Beneath the sign for rue des Envierges someone has painted a red hammer and sickle on the wall, by accident or design both dripping blood, and the slogan Front National. Is that what attracts her? She runs into the street as fast as she can and down towards the end, oblivious to the pounding of her heart and the straining of her lungs. At the far end of the street there’s light and, through a gap in the buildings, the sudden sight of the whole of the city laid out below her. The view brings her to a halt. The cloud has begun to break up and a watery evening sunlight slides across the sea of tiles, catching the odd window, bringing a meretricious shine to the view. The Eiffel Tower stands away in the distance and the dome of Les Invalides, symbols of an ideal Paris; but reality is close by and it’s drab and squalid, the ground dropping steeply down what may once have been a country hillside but is now an urban precipice with rotting tenements clinging to the slope.

  For a moment she hesitates. Something wells up, bubbling behind her breastbone, something sour and intrusive. She bends over, retching, gasping, spitting out saliva and bitter slime from deep down inside her. And all the while a small fragment of her mind remains cold and objective, watching her from a distance as though detached from all this emotion. They’ll encircle the butte, it tells her. Once they discover those bodies they’ll be deploying troops. They’ll come after you and they’ll watch all the ways out, guard the métro stations, keep you penned up like a rat in a drain. You’ve got no more than a few minutes in hand.

  And where is Miessen? Was he really there, or has he become a creature of her imagination? She draws in air and waits for the nausea to die down. The objective mind is louder now, her thinking clearer. The pistol is more of a liability than an asset. The gutter at her feet runs into a culvert. She swings her arm and throws the weapon into the shadows as far as she can. Then she sets off down the hill, down broken steps and steep, winding alleys, going by instinct, knowing that sooner or later the alleyways will level out into the boulevard that runs across the base of the hill, which is where they’ll be waiting. There are few people around. Many of the houses seem abandoned, the windows empty, doors gaping. Washing hangs like bunting celebrating a long-forgotten victory. A woman stands at one door with arms folded across her chest and her mouth turned down in disgust. ‘What’s the hurry?’ she calls. ‘It’s already too late.’

  Her laughter seems to follow Alice down. Already too late? At the bottom of the hill a dog sniffs hopelessly at a pile of rubbish, slinking away as she comes near. Out of a side street a handcart rumbles across her path and brings her to a halt.

  An old man peers out from behind a heap of used clothes. He’s as wrinkled as a walnut and wears a woollen cap on his head that makes her think of the tumbrels that rolled through the city during the Terror. This is new terror, with new myths and new nightmares.

  ‘One of your coats,’ she says. ‘I’ll swap with mine.’

  He looks her up and down, munching on the inside of his lips. ‘I dunno about that.’

  ‘It’s Molyneux.’

  ‘Why would you want to get rid of that, then? You nick it, or what?’

  ‘And I’ll throw in a thousand francs if you’ll give me a beret as well.’

  A thousand! The deal is done. She scrabbles in her bag, hands the money over, grabs the first coat that seems to be her size and pulls it on. The cloth smells, of damp, of sweat, of age, of decay and despair. Who wore it before? Some Jew, probably. There’s a glut of Jewish clothes on the market. She feels in the pocket of Madeleine’s coat for the small bullet of the L pill and slips it into the new coat. Then she puts Maddy’s on the cart, careful to push it beneath other clothes.

  ‘The beret?’

  The old man rummages through the heap of cloth, finds a pancake of black felt and tosses it towards her. What would her mother say? Lice, fleas, scabies, all those creeping parasites that you might catch. She pulls the hat down over her head and tucks her hair up. ‘The best deal you’ll do today,’ she tells him and he shrugs indifferently and rattles off across the cobbles. Cautiously, like a small mammal listening for the sound of predators, she approaches the end of the street and looks out at the boulevard de Belleville.

  The street is lined with autumnal trees and wide enough to accommodate two roadways, with a space down the middle that might have once been gardens of a kind but is now just a strip of muddied gravel. Down either side of the street is a line of drab market stalls. There aren’t many customers, and those that there are have all stopped to watch an army lorry parked fifty yards away with soldiers piling out of it. Another rafle? Whistles blow. More vehicles arrive. Barbed-wire barriers are being dragged into place along the pavement, turning the boulevard into a line of demarcation. A radio babbles from a Kübelwagen while an Unteroffizier shouts orders. People at the market stalls stare, wondering what is happening, who will be rounded up, who will be searched, whether or not to pack up and go home.

  Alice steps back out of sight. Time is racing now, leaving her struggling in its wake. In a few minutes the soldiers will be moving forward into the na
rrow streets. Can she bluff her way out? They’re looking for a woman with long, fair hair and wearing a hound’s-tooth check coat. Maybe they know her as Anne-Marie Laroche. Maybe, if Yvette has talked, they know her as Marian Sutro. So maybe they won’t think twice about Laurence Aimée Follette from Bourg-en-Bresse, dressed in drab brown and a black beret; maybe she can just walk up to the barricade and show her identity card and be waved through.

  But she has only one chance, a single cast of the dice, with her life resting on it. So she hesitates, holding the dice, summoning up the courage to throw.

  It’s then that she sees the children. They’re behind her, coming from a church, shepherded by two nuns with wide, starched headdresses: a gaggle of little boys, maybe three dozen, coming round the corner towards her, their clogs rattling on the pavé. They are meant to be walking in pairs but discipline is breaking down – they’re jostling and pushing, spilling across the pavement and onto the narrow street. Where, she wonders, are they heading?

  ‘Rue Timbaud,’ the nun replies when asked. ‘The orphanage of the Daughters of Charity.’ She has a pallid face of dough and the smell of sanctity about her, musty and faintly scented, as though she has spent most of her life in an atmosphere of candle smoke and incense. Alice remembers the smell and the look, a world in which cleanliness is equated with godliness, where faces and floors are scrubbed with equal energy.

  ‘There’s a barrage up ahead.’

  ‘A barrage?’ Panic opens the nun’s eyes. ‘We’ve got to get the children back home. They can’t wait.’

  ‘They must be looking for someone. Who knows? Look, if you like, I’ll help you.’

  The nuns smile. Alice smiles. ‘I’m Laurence,’ she says, lifting one of the errant children in her arms and moving to the head of the crocodile. ‘Come on, let’s see if we can march properly,’ she calls. ‘Can we march like men? Left, right, left right, arms out straight. Can we do that?’

  ‘Ladies don’t march,’ one of the children complains.

  ‘This one does.’

  ‘Are you a soldier?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I am.’ And as if to demonstrate the fact she strides forward. Giggling and swinging their arms like puppets, the children follow her out into the open space of the boulevard, their clogs clattering. Across the road in front of them, soldiers are now drawn up for a hundred yards or more. Under-officers are calling orders, getting them into line, preparing to advance into the side streets. The children stumble to a halt. Some of the men smile and point. ‘Die französische Armee,’ one of them says. The French Army. There’s laughter in the ranks.

  ‘Allons enfants!’ Alice cries. Her squad of infants gathers itself and is about to advance once more when a lieutenant steps forward with hand raised. ‘Excuse me, Mademoiselle, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait.’ He seems no more than eighteen or nineteen, a bright, fresh-faced boy with nervous eyes. His French is solid and accurate, the French of the schoolroom polished perhaps by occasional summer holidays across the border.

  ‘What d’you mean, we can’t pass?’ she cries. With the toddler still clinging to her neck she turns to display her flock. ‘These children need to get home. They need a wash and their supper and then they need to get to bed.’

  ‘We have orders,’ the lieutenant insists.

  ‘To stop children? How can that be possible?’

  ‘Not to stop children. To close the area. There’s a dangerous terrorist at large.’

  ‘Well, we’re leaving, aren’t we? So we cannot be in any danger, can we?’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘Surely it is exactly the point. These poor children, victims of the bombing, need to get to their home.’

  He looks at the line of children behind her. ‘Are they Jews?’

  ‘Of course they’re not Jews. They’re with the Sisters, aren’t they? They’re Christians, living with the Sisters on the rue Timbaud. You can check if you like. The Daughters of Charity.’

  He sniffs, as though wondering which way the wind’s blowing. Then he seems to decide. ‘Your papers, please.’

  As she rummages in her bag for her identity card, one of the children pulls at her coat. ‘Daniel’s wet himself, Miss.’

  She looks round. The child in question stands there with a thread of urine dribbling down his leg. A nun hurries forward. ‘This is disgraceful!’ she cries as she crouches to deal with the boy. ‘Frightening God’s creatures.’

  Alice turns back to the officer. ‘Now look what you’ve done. May I speak with your superior officer, please? There must be someone in charge round here.’

  The young man blushes. ‘I’m in charge.’

  ‘Then I demand you stop frightening these children and let us through.’

  He’s confused, torn between his duty and the palpable stupidity of corralling a bunch of babies. ‘Go through,’ he says, brushing her identity card aside. ‘Get out of here.’

  Behind him, the ranks part. One of the soldiers wolf-whistles. ‘Die Rattenfänger von Hameln,’ a voice shouts. The Rat-catcher of Hamelin. More laughter. The Pied Piper smiles and makes a gesture that’s half a wave, half a salute and the column of children moves forward through the line of soldiers, through the trees and the market stalls of the central reservation, across the roadway on the other side and into the opposite street. Suddenly they are away from the noise of the military and into an illusory calm.

  The Sister takes hold of the toddler. ‘Thank you for your help,’ she says. ‘I imagine you’ll want to be moving on.’

  ‘I’m afraid I have to.’

  ‘Don’t use the métro,’ the nun warns her. ‘They’ll shut it down. They always do.’ She smiles sympathetically. ‘And God bless you,’ she adds.

  V

  She walks through the gathering dusk of the city, hurrying through the back streets, crossing boulevards like an animal slinking across an open field where predators lie in wait. Military vehicles roar past while she hangs back in doorways. Crowds issuing up from the métro mill around helplessly in the darkness. For some of the way she joins up with two girls who are trying to get home to Issy in the south. They are speculating about what has happened. A power failure was one possibility, but that doesn’t explain the military vehicles. ‘There’s always something going on,’ one of the girls complains. ‘Maybe it’s the Jews again. I mean, there’s still hundreds of them around. If not the Jews, then it’s communists.’

  Once across the river Alice separates from them, apologising for leaving, agreeing that they should meet up again, taking down a phone number. She watches them go with regret. Fear stalks her once she is on her own, fear that is only partly assuaged when the door to the apartment on the place de l’Estrapade finally closes behind her.

  ‘You look a complete mess,’ Clément exclaims. ‘What have you been up to? And where on earth did you get that coat? Didn’t you take one of Maddy’s?’

  She detaches herself from his embrace and lights a cigarette, her hands shaking. ‘I had to give it away.’

  ‘That’ll make her happy.’

  ‘They nearly got me, Clément. They had me bottled up in Belleville—’

  ‘What the hell were you doing in Belleville? It’s a slum.’

  ‘Meeting Yvette.’

  ‘Who the hell’s Yvette?’

  ‘Yvette,’ she repeats, as though it’s obvious. ‘Yvette. I went to meet her and they almost caught me.’ She looks round, looks at her watch, looks for distraction. There are things to do, preparations to make, decisions to reach; anything but thinking. ‘The radio. Radio Londres. We need to know if the pick-up is on.’

  He leads her into the salon, pours a glass of wine, tries to sit her down on one of the uncomfortable sofas. ‘There’s time yet. Tell me what happened.’

  But she can’t sit down. Sitting down would mean inertia and she cannot sit still, not at the moment. There are voices in the background, high-pitched, angry voices chattering words that are not quite audible, like an angry con
versation taking place in another room. She tries to look at him but somehow she can’t do that either, she can’t look at anything for any length of time, can’t concentrate on anything, can’t bring her mind into focus on any single thought, certainly can’t sit down. ‘Will Madeleine really be cross about the coat?’

  He laughs. ‘Maddy? I shouldn’t think she’ll notice.’

  Madeleine won’t be cross. It’s a blessed relief. She pauses to listen to the voices. But the sane part of her mind is still there, struggling for command. You’re imagining things, it tells her. It’s the stress. Hysteria. She draws on her cigarette, feeling the bite of smoke in her lungs, and looks round for something to do. The cigarette. She concentrates on that, on how to breathe the smoke in and how to expel it. That’ll do for now. That, and trying to ignore the voices.

  ‘You haven’t told me what happened, Marian.’

  ‘I killed someone.’ She says it quietly. Perhaps he won’t hear what she said. Would that make the confession invalid, if the priest didn’t hear it exactly? But he has heard. He stands there looking at her with confusion in his face. ‘You’ve done what?’

  She turns her head away. ‘Two men. Maybe both. I’m not sure. Yes, I’m sure. Both.’

  He bends and puts his hands on her shoulders and tries to look into her eyes, as though he might read the truth there. ‘Two men? What on earth do you mean?’

  Isn’t it clear enough? She has killed people. That’s what the voices seem to be saying. They’re murmuring, just below the level of audibility so that she isn’t certain they are even there: she has killed two men. Killing is what everyone else seems to be doing at the moment, except that they mostly do it at one remove, dropping a bomb or firing a shell or launching a torpedo, or even sitting at a laboratory bench and designing weapons. But she has done it exactly as they promised at Meoble Lodge – at close quarters, hand to hand. Double tap. And in cold blood, more or less. A good term that, cold blood. Because blood’s never cold. Not until you’re dead, anyway.