Lucie, the seamstress with an Italian soldier boyfriend, sobbed, her head leaning on her machine. Her face was blotchy and wretched, her eyes so puffy that she could scarcely see. She was pregnant. Desperate that her man would be sent away, she worried equally about what her mother would do when she found out. Marie-France knelt beside her. “It’s good if Italy makes peace. Then he won’t be killed.”
Her waist was thickening. From certain angles it was obvious. Ilse wondered if her mother already knew.
“But what if they’re all sent home, what if he doesn’t come back?” Her voice rose, quavering. “Then what becomes of me?”
“For God’s sake,” said Marie-France, “we’ve all had no word in seven months. At least you know where he is.” Lucie, overwrought, burst into tears.
Simone put her head in at the door. “Will somebody take her home?”
Marie-France rose. “Come on, don’t cry. I’ll walk with you.”
Fernand and Jean-Baptiste were somewhere in the hills. The Italians—heavily defeated in Sicily and Messina—could not possibly carry on. At the beginning of September, Montgomery’s Eighth Army landed on mainland Italy. The tide of war was turning towards the Allies. Ilse asked herself what would happen when the Italians went. In an emergency, a person needed cash. She took the silver photograph frame out, twisted the two tiny clasps. She kept her money there, on top of the fifty-dollar note which still held the tiny blue flower. She counted the worn bills twice. She had only two hundred and fifty francs, plus what was in her purse. She had given half her dollars to François long ago. The remainder, eked out over time, had bought such necessities as shoes and a coat, enabling her to keep her mother’s flower brooch and one gold chain. She gave Maman Bonnard most of her earnings for her keep. She had wasted money on cotton, for dresses; the woollen dress for Madame Dumont at Christmas had been very expensive, then there had been Marie-France’s nineteenth birthday. She touched her mother’s face and wondered: What would her mother do? What would her father do?
They were woken by wild rifle fire. Children were shooting off rifles they had found dumped in rubbish heaps. The Italians had surrendered to the Allies and Marshal Badoglio had signed the armistice. The radio broadcast the news and General Eisenhower himself announced it. At once a wild celebration broke out, with Italian soldiers embracing girls in the street, taking off and throwing away their uniforms. There was music and dancing all along the roads that led from the Croisette. By dawn the next day the Italians were gone. A swastika appeared on the Hotel Excelsior and on all public buildings: the Wehrmacht had arrived. The Germans set to work shooting any of their former allies that they could find, those who had not had the sense to flee. A thousand Germans arrived in Cannes by train, some SS troops and some in plain clothes. News spread instantly that these civilians were members of the Gestapo.
The German troops patrolled in couples. Unlike the Italians who had herded together on the main boulevards, the Germans went down every street and alleyway. The night was silent but for the tramp of their boots. At dusk, despite the heat, the girls closed all the shutters and stuffed twists of newspaper into them, and then shut the windows tight and drew the curtains across. It was airless in these tiny rooms as Ilse and Marie-France set about preparing supper for the three of them. They were fortunate. They had potatoes and onions to eat. They had one another.
Ilse woke in a sweat of anxiety, dreaming that she had been stopped with incriminating posters hidden in the bicycle pump. It took a little time for her to breathe more easily. Those days were gone. If she was picked up by the SS, her papers would not be sufficient: each ID had to be backed by a full set of papers, a French birth certificate, the parents’ marriage certificate, certificate of baptism and so on. For some time now she had held on to the idea that being called Laure was a kind of protection in itself, as if her mother was watching over her. She lay and worried about the papers. She should have kept her dollars and spent them on a better set. There had been a time of bad dreams when nightly her father haunted her; now her dreams were all to do with her own mistakes.
On Monday Lucie did not come to work. The next day she did not turn up either. Finishing their shift early, Ilse and Marie-France set off to see her. As they got near, they saw that the area near her home was cordoned off, the street blocked with a barricade; Vichy police stood outside every hostel and pension, and German troops with them. A soldier, seeing them, made a threatening gesture with his gun.
“They’re taking the Jews,” said Marie-France, tugging at her arm for her to come away.
They walked back. Ilse could not speak. It certainly never occurred to her friend that “Laure” was German, or part Jewish. Why should it? Uncle Willy in Morocco was a Frenchman, obviously. And when she talked about her Uncle Albert, he was French, too, and when she talked about her parents she said she was an orphan and, beneath the covers, crossed her fingers and toes and later whispered a special prayer, so that this catastrophe should not come true.
Marie-France went to hunt for cigarettes. Well before the curfew she returned to her mother’s flat, running up to the small back room the two of them shared with a face as pale as death.
“What happened?”
She sat on the bed, fumbling for a cigarette, daring only to whisper. “I met her neighbour. They took Lucie. She was beaten, her neighbour said. Anyone who resisted was beaten—they took children too.”
Ilse took her friend’s hand; she felt sick.
“The neighbour said—she had an Italian soldier in her place. A deserter. Another neighbour told them he was there. The Germans took him out and shot him.”
Ilse nodded.
“They’re going through the hospitals, churches, nursery schools. They don’t bother to look at papers with the men, the woman said. Just tell them to drop their trousers. And if a man has had—you know—the operation for another reason, they take him anyway.”
Now that it had come she felt completely calm. She wondered if the neighbour who had told Marie-France the news was actually the one who had denounced Lucie’s boyfriend. What people did no longer surprised her; there was jealousy and hatred everywhere.
“They’ll go through the whole town. Can you believe it?”
Yes, she could believe it. She looked at her friend’s brown velvet eyes, which were brimming with tears, and thought how much she liked her.
Marie-France stubbed out her cigarette with resolution. “I’m going to go and see her mother. She’s in a bad state, very bad.”
Later, as they tried to sleep, they heard a staccato outburst of gunfire in the next street, which went on and on. In the morning the girls went to work arm in arm, hugging each other tight, walking on broken glass. German soldiers, spotting a chink of light in the laundress’s window, had fired at it, peppering the room and all in it until they succeeded in putting out the lightbulb. The shop front was destroyed. There was no sign of the laundress or her husband.
Ilse kept her head down. When a German came your way, the wise course was to get right off the pavement and into the street. It was only a matter of time before her ID was checked by somebody. Germans were suspicious by nature. She darkened her eyebrows with a piece of burnt cork. She went back to wearing a turban tightly wrapped over her hair. Without the headgear, she was too noticeable. The Gestapo sent spies in private cars to patrol the streets, arresting anyone who looked Jewish, taking them off with their families. Anyone denounced as being Jewish was arrested. Anyone who protested was arrested. At the atelier, Simone whispered the horrible story that, when babies being taken away cried, they silenced them by smashing their skulls against the nearest wall. There were rewards. Rumour had it that the Milice could get as much as five thousand francs per Jew. Rumour had it that two Catholic nurses had been deported because one was named Esther and the other Rachelle.
Ilse and Marie-France came home one evening to find a young man in the hallway wearing a trench coat with a green fedora pulled low. The Gestapo wore such coats, s
o did the Vichy security police. The man stood very erect, had a military look to him. With a quick glance at each other, the girls went past.
The man reached out and touched Ilse’s arm. “You. Come, Mademoiselle. Quickly.”
Marie-France froze on the stairs.
Ilse felt nothing, not even surprise. “You go on up,” she told Marie-France, terrified that she might say or do something rash.
“Hurry up, Mademoiselle. You can take a suitcase. Five minutes.”
Ilse went upstairs to the room, packed mechanically as she had so often packed, quickly throwing her things together. Marie-France came in a moment later with a small bag: there was a tin of tuna in olive oil and another tin of sardines, a bottle of wine. Ilse’s head was flashing with quick thoughts. The roof ? No. There was no way out of the house that could avoid the front stair. She would not run. If she disappeared, they would take the others as hostages. She closed the case, knelt on it, clicked it shut.
“I’ll be back, don’t worry,” Ilse said.
They embraced. Marie-France, very white-faced, hugged her tightly.
“They’ve made a mistake. I’ll see you in the morning.” Ilse put on her jacket; it was the only warm thing she had. She walked slowly down the stairs into the fading light, the case in her hand.
They walked round the corner. Her feet kept moving. Would she run? There was a moment to run, a moment to save oneself. She transferred the case to the other hand; the man’s face flickered as he noticed the movement. She saw that there was something in his hand, in his pocket, the grip of a pistol. A black Citroën was parked at the kerb, the kind the SS used. Ilse slowed when she saw it. The man motioned to her to carry on, to hurry up, took her suitcase. He went up to the car and opened the back door. She got in, twisted round, the boot slammed shut. Her papers were in it. The driver, in the black uniform of the Milice, started the engine. The other man got in at the front, pulling the hat down low over his face. He had a sharp jawline, clean cut like a cartoon character. Gunning the engine, the driver pulled away.
Everything slowed down, was unreal. Ilse sat looking out at the streets of Cannes as so many pale faces had looked out of cars like these, at people on the streets like these people, crossing, walking, blurred figures who chose to look away. The glimpse of a child’s face, crossing the street, clutching Maman’s hand. Even the child knew to look away from the devil car. Inside, behind the glass, she was already in hell.
On the main boulevards they passed police, German troops, a cluster of officers, shades of grey on grey and the flash of Heine’s eagle. The car went faster. It was dusk. She kept one hand on the door handle, loosely but ready, thought all the time about jumping, soon, not now, not here, where the soldiers were, nearer to Petit-Clos, where she knew every backstreet. She sat forward, ready, her feet clenched, her mouth concentrating. The Vichy man took the pistol out of his pocket, held it in his hand, also in readiness. He turned and looked at her steadily. She looked away. Better to be shot than tortured. She stared at the streets, the corners, the places to hide. But they were turning and she had not done it, they were accelerating, they were going away from Montfleury. They picked up more speed. With a hot flash of despair, she knew that she was not brave enough to jump from a car moving this fast.
She flickered a glance at the Vichy officer; he was looking at her in the mirror. He smiled. She looked away, then back.
“Violaine, perhaps you know my name. I’m Marcel,” he said. It took some seconds for her to understand what this meant. This was Marcel, who had a clear head, who had been taken with François but had run and got away. Time passed. She allowed her hand merely to rest upon the handle. It was going to be all right. Time slowed down to its usual pace. She took a breath, leant back against the seat. Her head was thundering. She was so hot. She took the jacket off. The acrid smell was her sweat. Her jaw hurt; she had been clenching it so hard, grinding her teeth together. They headed out of town.
“Where are we going?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
In due course they would let her know what they needed her for. Nobody stopped them. Who would dare? In fifteen minutes they were out of Cannes and heading into the hills. Marcel knew the back routes, touching the driver’s arm to say now this way, now that. It was dark; the car was very fast. Arranging herself in the back of the car, Ilse flicked off her shoes and stretched out her legs. It was years since she had travelled in such comfort. She was flooded with relief, a strange metallic taste in her mouth. She woke and drowsed, looked at the dark and slept again.
They were in a wild place. The car was bumping slowly up a rutted track. Marcel walked ahead, to light the way. The beam of light from his torch swept from side to side in a neat arc. Then he switched it off again. It was a clear night, moonlit. The car went as far as it could. She saw that he was looking at the ground, worried about wrecking the suspension. They got out. The driver went somewhere, came back with sacks. He started covering the car. When he was done, they shook hands: he was called Gaston. She had still not seen his face properly. Marcel carried her suitcase. The ground was rough under her feet; she kept to the centre of the cart tracks, walking on the mound. After about fifteen minutes, she made out the farmhouse, nestling snugly in a dip in the hill.
Gaston led the way inside, then disappeared upstairs to change out of the black uniform. “Round here I’ll get shot in this,” he said.
Marcel put down her case, took off the hat and coat, lit candles. He was straight-backed, with dark hair and eyes and a serious expression. She looked round the room. The blackout curtains hung to the floor. The flagstones were neatly swept. A large table was flanked by a dozen chairs. There was no sign of any military presence.
“Do you want a drink?”
Ilse nodded.
Marcel found glasses and a pitcher of water. The water was tepid but good. “I was worried that you’d run away.”
“I wasn’t brave enough. It was a fantastic trick to pull off.”
“It’s the authenticity of fear we need, to make it work. But you were so cool. Quite wonderful,” he said. Ilse thought how wrong he was.
Gaston returned in normal clothes. “Are you too tired to go on?” His voice sounded different, louder, as if it had been strangled by the Milice uniform.
“I’m fine,” she said.
They probably wanted her for her German; Marcel presumably knew that it was her mother tongue. The two men nodded at each other.
“You stay here,” said Marcel to Gaston.
The ground was rough, hard going in espadrilles. Bonfires flickered. The land was scrubby, there were huge boulders which she stumbled against. The drone of an engine passed some way overhead.
Marcel stopped, listened hard. “A Halifax,” he said.
Ahead was a group of men. She could hear some of them talking Polish; it gave her the familiar pang. She smelt the donkeys before she saw them. A pair stood in harness at a farm cart. The drop had been successful. The metal containers were some two metres long and immensely heavy. It took four men to lift them; they had carrying handles. Ilse watched them being manhandled onto the cart. There were five such containers, an enormous load. They put the first ones on the cart. The donkeys shifted their feet, flattened their ears, were shoved forward. The cart wheels turned with difficulty. The cart edged on, then stuck. Men stood at either side, supporting it on the rough track. A man started to swear softly, in French and then in Polish. The hair on the back of Ilse’s neck stood up. They were very close, her shoe dislodged a stone which spun away.
“Who is it?”
A torch flashed in her face, she flinched, the torch went off.
“Violaine,” said François. The bonfire glinted on white teeth, as he smiled. There was a glimpse of his pale hair. Then the men were kicking the fires out, covering the scorch marks with scrubby bush. The cart was pushed loose where it had stuck fast. The donkeys were shoved onwards; the men talked softly, cursing when the canisters threatened to come loos
e from their moorings. It grew very dark, clouds covered the moon. All the way back to the farmhouse, François held her fast, his arm round her waist. She was stumbling and slipping and had lost her bearings. She stumbled, so he would hold her tighter.
The unloading had to be done before dawn. A dozen men worked flat out. They cracked the canisters open on the stone-flagged floor and unpacked them. The arms were taken away; three of the men went to dig a pit somewhere outside for these and for the explosives. The detonators went in a row of empty milk churns. There was real coffee, socks, armbands in patriotic red, white and blue. One parcel contained blankets, another full British battledress.
“I wonder when we’ll be using these.”
From time to time he smiled at her. The men called him Raoul. He was the leader, telling them what to do in a mixture of Polish and French.
The fourth canister revealed a real treasure: the wireless set he wanted, packaged neatly in a brown suitcase. “Marcel will be happy,” he said. “He’s the one who loves taking risks. He did a good job, fetching you, didn’t he?”
She smiled. The men went outside. She woke when François threw a canister of Player’s Navy Cut onto her lap. “Very precious. We wrap them up well and put them in the donkey dung, nobody goes in that stink,” he said. “Don’t look so shocked.”
She shook her head. Was she shocked?
“You’re exhausted,” he said. There was a tender note in his voice. He took her upstairs; they passed the farmer’s bedroom with its huge old-fashioned bed. There was a second bedroom. She could sleep there. Ilse sat on the bed. A cockerel was crowing somewhere outside.
“Why did you send for me?”
“To make sure you were safe.”
Of all the possible reasons, this one had not occurred to her.
She slept deeply. Waking in the late part of the morning, she went to look for him. There was a woman cooking whom she greeted, who seemed unsurprised to see her. The men were in the fields. François was out there, digging, in an old blue workman’s overall and shirt. In a little while he stopped and fumbled for a cigarette, threw one across to her. Navy Cut, the best, and very strong. She blew a smoke ring into the beautiful day.
The Children's War Page 38