One of the two addresses was a grocery shop just a few streets behind the main shopping street they had crossed, the Rue d’Antibes. The shops were still shuttered. Ilse drifted along the Boulevard de la Croisette, past the Casino and the white stucco balconies and terraces of the Carlton Hotel. She chose a bench and sat with her suitcase on her lap, watching the light breeze ruffling the sea. A loudspeaker woke her. A patrol wagon inched along the Croisette, announcing that Italian troops were about to arrive. The voice appealed to the people to remain calm. People came out onto their balconies to listen. A big man cradling a cup in both hands drained it, went into his flat and returned with a little girl sitting on his shoulder. The child clapped her hands and pointed. From the distance came the sound of a military band. The Italian infantry wore highly polished boots, hats adorned with nodding ornamental plumes. They looked like cadets on a parade ground, not real soldiers at all. They swung their arms in time, not one of them carried a gun. It was a strange kind of an invasion. Ilse felt very calm. When the toy soldiers wheeled away, she made her way back to the grocer’s shop. A small man with a big moustache was unlocking the door. He rolled up the shutters, pulled down the blinds to shelter the façade from the morning sun. She went in.
“Bonjour, Monsieur.”
His eyes flickered down to the suitcase. A customer came in behind her. The grocer gestured to her to be silent as the woman was served. When the woman had gone out, he led her through the raffia curtain to a door at the back. It was a storeroom lined with shelves stacked with tins and dry goods with a camp bed in the corner. All day, Ilse slept in the smell of sugar and vanilla and bleach, waking fitfully from time to time when the shop bell rang, as it did each time a customer came or went. The shopkeeper had the thick accent of a Marseillais and in the evening fed her a stew of white beans and fish. She offered some of Raymond’s ration coupons; he waved them away and would not be thanked. He did not ask what her name was, nor what she was doing.
The red, white and green ensign of Italy hung above the portico of the Hotel Gallia. Perhaps she could get a job looking after children or in a shop. Of course, she was not qualified to do anything. She tired of looking at elegant shop windows, went back past the port and up the slopes of Le Suquet with an eye on the big church. She tried to find a way to it through the small backstreets, thinking to say some prayers there for Arnaud and for the Alliance network. A splash of white in a dingy window caught her eye. A tiny card announced that a seamstress was required with machine experience. She went in. The hall held a counter with a pile of fashion pattern books arranged on it, two chairs and a bell. She rang the bell. The woman who came out from the back had a huge mass of grey hair braided and wound round her head, and very big brown eyes.
“I’ve come about the job.”
The woman looked at her hands, then at her face. “What are your qualifications?”
“I can hem and roll handkerchiefs and embroider a little.” Her mother had taught her many different stitches and drawn-thread work, but she could not think what the words were in French.
“You’re very young,” the woman said.
“Nineteen.” Ilse shrugged and smiled up her age as nicely as she could.
The woman went away. In a moment she returned with a piece of white cotton cloth, dressmaker’s scissors, a needle and a spool of cotton thread. She walked noiselessly on soft-soled shoes like a young woman. Her hair made her appear older. “We need a machine operator, Mademoiselle,” she said, “to operate a Singer sewing machine. With a foot-treadle. But there is some hand work. Show me what you can do.”
Ilse sat down. It was quite gloomy. She could see that at the back, the light was bright in the workroom, where the sewing machines whirred. It did not matter. Her eyes were very sharp. She folded a triangle along the selvedge and carefully cut the cloth into a square. First she roll-hemmed one side of the cloth as neatly as she could with tiny, invisible stitches as though the cotton were silk, picking out one thread to attach the hem by so that nothing would show through from the other side. Then she hemmed a second side, making a wide border in cross-stitch as for a coat or dress and pressing the cotton at the fold into a sharp edge with her fingers. She stopped three-quarters of the way across, so part of the raw edge was left. Using the point of the needle as her mother had taught her, she began to count the stitches in a half-centimetre to make a simple drawn-thread border, which would come out parallel with the last selvedge edge.
The points of the scissors were too blunt for this task, but she cut a tiny hole and persevered. Absorbed in the work, she concentrated on pulling out the little threads, one by one, hemming round the square holes in the cloth as she created each one with the tiniest stitches to produce the decorative cutout effect. She forgot where she was and why. When the light clicked on, dazzling her, she realised that the woman must have been watching her for quite some time.
Monsieur Mallemet said that she could stay; she introduced herself as Laure Benoît, grateful that she had these papers at least. In the evenings, he prepared beans and fish in the little room that served as salon, bedroom and kitchen. When he knocked on the floor, she came up. Silently, they ate. She dared to ask if he had a family: he was silent for several minutes, then said that he had never married. After supper he took a book from his collection of literature on the kings and queens of France. This was the signal for her to wash up and leave. On Saturday night he opened a bottle of wine and drank it silently, then opened another. Then he started laughing and chuckling to himself. He told her that his was a fine name, for he sprang from a long line of aristocrats. His family had been betrayed.
“Comment aimez-vous Coh-ennes, Mademoiselle Benoît?88 Do you like our lovely town?”
She did not know what to reply. Into her mind floated one of François’s jokes:
“What is the definition of an anti-Semite?”
“I don’t know.”
“A Frenchman who hates Jews more than is absolutely necessary.” How deliciously his mouth had curved in laughter on those rare happy moments.
On Sunday, the grocer put on his Sunday best and went to mass. As soon as he marched away, she stripped and washed thoroughly in the sink in the corridor near the storeroom, something she had not liked to do when he was in the house. Later she went to Our Lady of Good Hope, in Le Suquet. She put her prayers in a particular order, for when God was listening she did not want him to think that she favoured any one person over another or that she asked for help only for the Jews. Instead, in alphabetical rotation, moving on to start with a different person each visit, she prayed for Albert, Arnaud, François, Lore, Otto, Renée and Willy, asking that each should be kept safe. Then she made mention of La Petite Louise and Raymond and Madame Dumont. She did not want to neglect anyone. If she said every prayer without a mistake, God would hear her. When her careful catechism in the place of hope was done, she would go out onto the terrace below the bell tower with its lovely view of the harbour and sit on the wall in a kind of dream, thinking of how François had looked when she saw him last, how gaunt and yet so handsome. It was wrong to think so much of him, but she could not stop herself. She closed her eyes and watched him blowing smoke rings of Virginia tobacco, while others smoked eucalyptus leaves. She saw the delicate fingers building a pyramid of glass. He sat with his eyes closed, feet propped up on a bar stool, while Marielle applied hair dye with a little brush which left a dark rim on his caramel skin.
Over several visits to Notre-Dame d’Espérance, she understood more clearly what had come to pass. For eighteen months she had been a member of the underground. That had been her father’s kind of life. He had been in the German underground, he had placed the struggle against the Nazis above all other things. She had tried to be brave, like him, but the little she did could never be enough. Her father had not saved himself. He could not be something other than what he was. Now that François had no need for her, she did not have to be her father’s daughter. Since nobody wanted her and nobody cared wha
t she did, she could now become her mother’s child. All her life she had belonged to her mother, body and soul. That was her rightful place. It was a deep satisfaction to be useful, to be doing work, which her mother had taught her. In this small life she felt close to her.
Each morning as she walked up to the atelier Ilse bought a newspaper. Along the Croisette a dark line hung in the sky for three days, as though the giant painter, bored with the blue, had dipped his thumb in the black and scrawled across his picture. The French had scuttled what remained of their fleet at Toulon. Though the radio maintained silence and the newspaper gave nothing away, everyone knew. It was whispered that some captains had chosen to blow themselves up and go down with their ships rather than surrender them to the Germans. The girls in the atelier, working overtime, described this behaviour as “impeccable.” Business was very brisk; every hotel in Cannes was overflowing. Jews were fleeing here from the newly German-occupied zone of France in the thousands and many were well-to-do.
The new German zone had swallowed up the greater part of France and stretched from the other side of Cannes all the way to the Spanish border. Official announcements multiplied: death to those who sheltered refugees illegally. The rewards for denunciation of foreign refugees increased. The word “Juif” was to be stamped on all ID papers of Jews in the zone; Jews were expelled from all départements with frontiers with Spain and Italy, and restricted in their freedom of movement. France was turning into Germany, as Albert had foretold. The newspaper reported these developments in a careful, neutral tone. General Vercelli, commanding the Italian Fourth Army, had chosen to live at the Carlton Hotel. On sunny days, sent to deliver a dress or coat, she found the terrace full of Italian officers in beautiful red uniforms. The women drinking and laughing with them were elegant and bejewelled, with elaborately waved hair. Many wore little fox or sable capes. The Italians were nominally in charge of Cannes; but their masters were also present. Everyone knew that the plainclothes Germans and spies had taken over the Hotel Montfleury, on the lower slopes of the ridge sheltering the town to the north and east.
“Marie-France! Come and show this!” The tall girl got up, smoothed back her unruly chestnut curls and went over to Madame Simone. Beyond the workshop was a large airy showroom for clients. She often modelled a coat or dress. Marie-France Bonnard could walk like a model with all the necessary hauteur; but when dared, she also turned cartwheels, like a naughty but very sexy child.
“Quel châssis magnifique!” said the old concierge every time Marie-France passed. Her tiny waist, full, high bosom and endless legs made every dress look wonderful. Her polished skin had the sheen of excellent health.
Ilse progressed to more complex work, found it deeply satisfying to set in a sleeve or turn a lapel. Mastering the machine, she continued to hand-stitch buttonholes, for her work was considered to be particularly fine. Her place was in the middle of the room where the girls’ chatter flowed over her. Marie-France could make Ilse’s mouth water with her description of how her elderly mother slow-roasted a pot-au-feu, the pastry she made with almonds and butter. The girls endlessly discussed the taste of real coffee and cream and croissants and jam. Then they planned their wedding dresses and trousseaux, full of the finest silks and fabrics, in every detail. Only eighteen, Marie-France was already engaged to Jean-Baptiste, the best friend of her brother Fernand. She swore undying love for this young man whom she had known all her life. Ilse often thought that if she had been a man, she would have fallen for Marie-France, whose gaiety and good humour were as alluring as her looks.
Squads of Italian soldiers exercised in shorts and vests on the beach. They outdid one another, showing off and being funny. Even doing callisthenics, they managed to flirt. Italian soldiers strolled along the Rue d’Antibes ordering handmade boots; they were battle ready with mandolins and guitars. Though the curfew started at sunset, the soldiers never enforced it in the backstreets. Instead, they stayed in groups in the big avenues, always bunched together. The girls called them “the sheep,” though more than one had found a new boyfriend in this occupying army of rams. Ilse was stopped and asked for her papers by a group of young men using this as an excuse to look her up and down, laughing as they gave the most perfunctory glance at the Benoît papers. The second time this happened, one of them held on to her card for a long time and then made her plead with him to return it, enjoying the joke with his friends. That night, though it was late when she got back to the grocery store, for a long time she could not sleep. The camp bed was very uncomfortable and sometimes she began to imagine that the shelves of tins might topple over her and then she felt almost breathless with anxiety.
Early in December, leaving the shop as Monsieur Mallemet rolled up the shutters, Ilse smelt Virginia tobacco. Raymond was standing a few metres away, leaning against the wall, smoking as he waited. She crossed the road; they walked on together. His dark head hung down.
“François was picked up in Marseilles by the Gestapo. Four days ago. He was with Marcel.” Ilse looked at her feet. She knew the name. Marcel was one of his most trusted men, “a clear head if you’re in trouble,” François had said. She had never met him. “Marcel got away.”
“That’s good.”
Ilse laid a careful hand on his arm. His eyes would not meet hers.
“They are still holding François. Four days.”
“Was he carrying anything?”
Raymond shrugged, shook his head.
“He knows the rules.” It didn’t matter what papers he carried. The maquisard with the white-blond hair was famous.
“When his hair grows out, they’ll know who he is,” she said.
He gave her a sidelong look. He was afraid.
“He’s very brave,” she said. She was afraid too. François knew everyone. It would please the Gestapo to torture everything out of him. “Renée?”
“Taken to Paris with others known to have worked for the Resistance.”
Silently, they climbed through winding cobbled streets until they reached the atelier.
Ilse stopped. “I work here,” she said.
“You know the little restaurant, L’Indo-Chine? In the Vieux Port?” Ilse nodded.
“They know me. If you need me, leave word there. Or Snappy’s Bar. They know me too. My little Ilse, you’d better think about moving on.”
“There’s no magic the ‘poilu’ can do for François?” She tried to smile.
“This time, Raymond fails.”
“Thank you, Raymond, for coming to tell me.”
She squeezed his hand and they parted without another word. She went in to work. L’Indo-Chine was a hole-in-the-wall place up a backstreet that served good food, bowls of rice and meat. She would think about that; she would not take a break, today, from her machine. She was not going to think about François. But every time she paused in the work and lifted the foot and turned the cloth to sew back over the last stitches, every time she stood to pass the work over to the next girl, the dark, sick feeling swept over her.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
Marie-France invited Ilse to pop out with her for a cigarette break. Madame Simone did not let them smoke inside, worrying that they would drop burning ash on a fabric or set the place on fire.
“You look awful. Is there anything I can do?”
Ilse shook her head.
“Man trouble, Laure?”
She flushed.
“Well, we all know about still waters.” She ground the cigarette out under a high heel. “Tell you what, I’ll fit an outfit for you. You could do with something decent to wear.”
“You’re so kind, but I can’t afford the fabric.”
“You leave that to me.”
Marie-France went away to model something and returned with fabric wangled from Simone; by the time work ended, she had half cut out a chic little skirt and jacket. They sat fitting it after the others had left.
“What a tiny waist, lucky you,” the tall
girl said. Bent over the stitching, glad of something to do, Ilse admired Marie-France’s oval face, her huge brown eyes, the shiny long eyelashes which curled naturally, her kindness. “I like you, Laure. You’re special. If you ever need anything, come to me.”
She waved away her gratitude.
That night, Ilse decided that she would not leave Cannes, where people were kind. François and Raymond knew where to find her here. François would not betray his people. And if he did, then they might as well come and get her too. If he died—well, her mind could not contemplate that possibility. If he died, nobody would know how to find her; perhaps she would not exist at all.
On Christmas Eve, Monsieur Mallemet offered her a glass of wine. She sipped it slowly. Silently they ate their fish and beans. “See? We’re winning the war,” he said, grown unusually prolix, with a hand indicating the lavishness of the stock. The shop was nearly empty, the storeroom stripped nearly as clean. After dinner, she presented him with a waistcoat she had made out of flannel fabric left over from a client’s coat, the back lined with a little piece of silk purloined from another client’s dress. Amazed, he tried it on. She had measured his grocer’s cotton coat carefully and was pleased with the fit. His mouth opened and closed several times and at last he spoke. “Mademoiselle Benoît,” he said with feeling, “if I still had the almond paste, I really believe I would give you some.”
Ilse smiled. A week earlier Maiffret’s, the best pastry cook in Cannes, had obtained permission to sell almond paste, and she had been sent to queue for the grocer’s share. Monsieur Mallemet had divided his parcel up similarly, kept the delicacy under the counter, slipping his favoured customers a hundred grams each. She knew his remark was a great compliment.
The Children's War Page 33