She upended the washing-up bowl and tipped the dirty water down the drain, thinking of the water beyond the harbour, the deep of La Manche. She thought of what lay across the sea, on the far side, beyond white cliffs and green fields, in some unimagined English village: Mademoiselle Sylvie in exile.
‘Heavens, it’s Saturday. I need to change her sheets,’ Adele cried out loud.
She dried her hands on the linen towel, picking up her engagement ring from the window sill and slipping it back on.
‘The safest place for a ring is on a finger,’ Madame often told her.
Even so, Adele always took Jean’s ring off when she washed up. She feared it slipping from her hand under the water unnoticed.
She squinted through the lace curtain at the garden baking in the heat. Madame was out there, harvesting the runner beans from the frames, plucking with fury. She saw Madame glance suddenly over her shoulder at a sound coming from the street. Adele cocked her head to listen for whatever Beth could hear. She caught unfamiliar voices calling; children crying. Adele ran up the stairs and up again to the first-landing window that looked out over the front courtyard and beyond the high gates. A straggle of people wandered by the front of the house. A wretched, weary crowd, their petrol having run out many miles ago, their cars probably abandoned by the roadside. Some were pulling their own farm cart, as if they were a beast of burden, loaded with bundles of possessions, a precious secretaire that could not be left behind, some lace curtains, a ticking mattress, a standard lamp with swinging tassels. And Grandmère, inevitably in black, beaten and head lowered, sitting on top of it all.
Adele was used to crowds in August in Montfleur, for this was the month for les vacances. Paris would be empty: the boulevards serene and quiet, left to the shade of the plane trees, the sparrows and the stray dogs. The small towns en route in the dozing countryside would be shuttered and sleeping. August was a drowsy month where all industry came to a halt. But on the coast, in the seaside towns of Normandy, of Brittany, of the Côte D’Azur, people would stroll along the promenade, gather under parasols with their best hats and take off their shoes on the beaches. They chattered; ate ice cream. Fairs came to town. Everyone laughed and they drank wine. But this August was different. The people arriving in Montfleur were not on holiday. They were shattered people. Refugees in their own country.
Adele went back down to the kitchen and caught sight of Madame through the window stuffing the last of the beans into her basket and hurrying back along the path towards the house.
Like the steady stream of people who first appeared two months ago, during that terrible June – the month of the inevitable, dreadful downfall – the truth of it all dripped through her mind. Jean had been wrong and it was not often that he was. The might of the grey army marched like a machine across La France, penetrated Paris, and reached them here, yes, even here, Jean, at the very tip of the Cotentin Peninsula.
Adele pressed her hand to her belly where an emptiness gnawed her. She was so hungry her bones felt hollow. Lack of provisions and empty market stalls were now their lot. She had learnt to quiet the rumbling of her stomach by drinking lots of water. She’d lost weight, as all brides-to-be do. But it wasn’t due to happiness or excitement. It was hunger and subtle, creeping fear.
Madame burst through the back door, along the stone passageway and into the kitchen.
‘These are the last of the beans, Adele,’ she said, out of breath. ‘I want them washed and out of sight in the cellar. I want you to preserve them somehow. In salt? In vinegar? As a conserve?’
‘I’ll see what I can do. Perhaps in salt. Do we have any?’
‘Merde! The soldiers took the sack when they came to take our potatoes. Did you know, that Monsieur Androvsky next door had to give up all his cabbages? His wife told me this morning. The soldiers just got out a spade and dug them up, happy as you like.’
Adele wondered if they had paid him and Madame said that she didn’t know.
‘They’re supposed to pay us,’ Adele said. ‘Didn’t Monsieur say that the Kommandant had put it out to his men that they must do good business with us, whenever, wherever.’ She took a handful of the beans and spun them under the running cold-water tap. ‘But then,’ she realised, ‘if we do business with them, we are disloyal to France. Disloyal to de Gaulle.’
‘Huh, that perfect idiot.’ Madame took the beans from her and laid them on a red striped tea towel on the table. ‘He can’t help us from London, can he? I think you are listening too much to Jean Ricard. Loyalty is all well and good, Adele, but we have to live. We have to eat.’
Adele glanced out of the window. Edmund and Estella had let themselves in the back gate and were running up the garden path. It was time to feed the rabbits. But what on earth with? She bent down to the bucket under the sink where a stump of cabbage and some carrot tops, remnants of yesterday’s stew, had been discarded.
The children knocked on the kitchen door and crept in quietly, their faces twitching with trepidation. Adele knew that they worried what sort of mood Madame was in.
‘Here you are, children.’ Adele handed them the bucket. ‘See what Sylvie’s rabbits make of this.’
Madame turned her back on them, muttering how she could see them all eating cabbage stumps soon.
Estelle thanked Adele, her dark eyes behind her huge glasses glistening with expectation. Adele noticed a scab on Edmund’s knee, the muddy smudges of a playful, unbridled boy. He piped up, addressing Madame Orlande. ‘Excuse me, Madame. Have you heard from your Sylvie yet, at all? We were wondering how she was. And her cousin, little Nell?’
Adele shook her head at him. Estella nudged her brother in the ribs.
Madame spun around, her eyes blazing. ‘How dare you ask me about my daughter. Impertinent boy. We will tell you when we hear from her, if it pleases us. Only if it pleases us. It’s none of your business.’
The children sank back together, clutching the bucket in front of them. Estella was bewildered. Edmund whispered his apology, his eyes wide with shame.
Adele urged them to go and go quickly, that the rabbits would be hungry.
‘I want those children to stop coming here,’ snapped Madame, as their footsteps receded up the passageway and into the garden. ‘It’s too much for my nerves. Isn’t it enough me missing Sylvie without them bringing it up like we haven’t a care in the world? And also, another thing. Monsieur thinks it’s best we don’t fraternise. Do you know what I mean?’
Adele watched Estella and Edmund run up the path, swinging the bucket between them.
Madame lifted the kettle onto the range. She sighed. ‘Monsieur Androvsky is a communist. He needs to be careful. But nothing surprises me any more, Adele. Look at the state of Montfleur. I just heard another rabble walk past not five minutes ago. Did you see them? Where are we going to put them all? You should hear some of the things Monsieur tells me. How is he going to deal with it all? And what about the harvest? Half the men have gone to munitions factories in Germany.’
Everyone must do all they can to preserve France, Monsieur had said, the France they loved. And if this meant working for the enemy, working in a factory in Bavaria during the armistice, then, he said, so be it.
Madame looked at her. ‘Jean Ricard is lucky he can stay. And Monsieur Androvsky too. As a teacher. He should count his blessings. That’s what Monsieur says.’
Adele watched her employer rub her hand fiercely over her forehead. She noticed how pale she was these days. She speculated if Monsieur would be back for supper.
‘I do hope so. He was summoned to the Kommandant’s office at the mairie for a meeting. That was over two hours ago. So, no doubt … What have we got?’
Adele told her she planned to do fried potatoes and omelettes. Plus a little ham. And tarragon, of course. Plenty of tarragon.
‘Yes, the soldiers seem to leave the herbs behind. I wonder if they think they are weeds. Ah, is that him? I just heard the gates. Bring us coffee to the salon, will you?’
/>
Adele rested the tray on the console table outside the salon and tapped on the door. Monsieur, still in uniform, sat with his boots on the fender, his hands clasped over his rounded stomach. Adele set out the cups, poured the coffee.
‘I hear you are going to delight us with omelettes tonight,’ Monsieur said to her, his eyebrows arched in some sort of suppressed amusement.
She told him that’s what she thought. There was not much else at the market to be had.
‘Never mind the market, take a look at this.’
Claude Orlande reached down to a canvas bag that was resting by his feet and pulled out a whole naked chicken by its feet, its feathered head dangling like an obscene gesture. ‘It’s plucked and ready to go,’ he said, evidently pleased with himself. ‘All thanks to the Kommandant.’
Madame exclaimed how marvellous it was, as a flush bloomed over her face. She couldn’t have faced omelettes again, even though Adele’s were very nice.
Monsieur thrust the chicken towards Adele. ‘It won’t bite you. The Kommandant wrung its neck himself.’
She asked where it came from and Monsieur tapped the side of his nose.
‘We don’t ask questions like that. Some farmer out near Valognes, perhaps. Take it, girl. What are you waiting for? No, just take it in the bag. Here, take the bag. It’s dripping a bit. Look.’
‘Oh, clean that up will you, Adele?’ said Madame, glancing at the drops of blood on the parquet. ‘And have you aired Sylvie’s bedroom today? I’m not sure I’ve seen the windows open.’
‘I’m sorry, Madame. I meant to do it earlier. And change her bed. I forgot.’
Monsieur grumbled at her. How could she possibly forget?
‘Oh, Claude,’ Madame laughed uneasily, trying to tease him. ‘Why don’t you go upstairs for your bath? I will run it for you … scrub your back … I hope you thanked the Kommandant.’ Madame pressed her hand on Claude Orlande’s knee.
‘Of course I did, woman,’ he said, his voice deepening. ‘But there will be a better way to thank him than that. And thank him properly.’
Adele began to walk out into the hallway carrying the bloody bag gingerly in front of her, but paused when she heard Monsieur speaking. He was telling Madame how the Kommandant had reminisced about hunting rabbits as a boy. Loved to give them to his Mutter to cook up in a pot. And so, he knew exactly how to thank him.
Madame’s voice turned high-pitched. ‘Sylvie’s rabbits? But just one of them, surely, Claude? We will need to breed from the female.’
‘No, give him both. Show him we are serious. When one’s wife is an Englishwoman, it is even more pertinent, don’t you think? Oh, don’t look like that, Beth. I’m joking. God damn it, woman, can’t you take a joke? Now where is my hunting knife? I’ll do it right now. They’ll need to hang for a few days …’
Adele shut the door behind her.
She had a quick hour before the curfew. Hurrying along the sea wall she watched the waves lifting seaweed from the rocks and settling it back down with every charge and retreat. Behind her, in the east, the placid sky was deep azure as the sun sank low, sending shafts of light breaking over the choppy waves.
At the squat granite cottage built just behind the sea wall, Jean’s mother opened the door to her furtive knock and let her in.
‘He’s upstairs with Simon,’ she said, her hard, long face straight, folding her arms.
‘May I go up and see him, Madame Ricard?’ Adele asked, unpinning her hat.
The woman cocked her head towards the staircase. ‘You know the way. But be quick about it, I don’t want any gossip.’
Adele watched Madame Ricard’s thin back as she scuttled back into her parlour. She knew that Jean’s mother did not trust her. She was, after all, housemaid to Claude Orlande, gendarme of Montfleur. Orlande who had signed away his soul to Pétain and Vichy France. Orlande who hobnobbed with the Kommandant, who had turned his back on the fight, the real fight.
She ascended the dark stairway, her shoes clipping away on the stone steps.
They had the curtains drawn against the evening. By the greenish glow of the oil lamp, they hunched over the table in the corner, tuning Jean’s wireless transmitter. Simon, frowning, had the earpiece held close against the side of his head. Jean was squinting in concentration, turning the dial. He was saying something about the state of the battery when Adele slipped into the room. He looked up and his face softened.
‘Adele, come and listen to this.’ He held out his arm to her and she went towards him and perched on his knee, encircled by his warmth and his familiar scent. He tugged the earpiece off Simon’s head and handed it to Adele.
She held it to her ear and listened. A signal rang deep into her brain, resounding, unfaltering. The same sound, over and over again. It was reaching her, she guessed, across many hundreds of miles of sea and sky. From somewhere in England, all the way to Montfleur and the bedroom of Jean Ricard.
‘It sounds like Beethoven’s Fifth,’ she whispered. ‘Three short sounds, then a long one. It keeps repeating.’
‘That’s London,’ whispered Jean. ‘GCHQ.’
‘GC …?’ Adele began and faltered over her English pronunciation of the letters. ‘What is it saying?’
‘It’s Morse,’ said Simon. He dipped his head as he ran his finger down a cipher list. ‘It’s the same signal, isn’t it? They fill that frequency with it. All day and all night.’
Adele closed her eyes and listened again. The signal, metallic and mechanical, rang in her head like a chime. ‘But what is it, what does it stand for?’
‘It’s the signal for “V”,’ said Jean. ‘They are sending us “V” in code. Over and over again.’
V for Victory, Simon told her.
Adele turned and looked at Jean.
‘Our victory,’ he said. His face was grave and stubborn.
Adele removed the earpiece and gave it back to Simon, who hunched back over the table, squeezing his eyes shut, listening.
Jean whispered to her, ‘Monsieur Androvsky came to see us today. Did you know that he is also a chemist, as well as being a maths teacher? He taught chemistry at a boys’ school in Paris. He can make explosives. He wants to help us. Join the network. He certainly has an axe to grind. We trust him. He seems all right.’
Adele put her hand over his mouth. ‘Don’t tell me any more,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t need or want to know.’
She got up from Jean’s embrace and knelt beside him on the floor, resting her arms over his legs.
‘How is the gendarme?’ asked Jean, touching her hair. ‘L’homme collabo.’
‘Jean, don’t frighten me. I hate it when you say that. It’s so hard to know what to think. But I can’t think that.’
Jean ran his hand down her back. ‘I’m sorry, ma petite. I am being harsh. It is his job. He has always been the gendarme. Except nowadays, it takes on new significance.’
‘He despatched the rabbits today,’ she said, leaning into him, shuddering at the thought of how the children would take the news; the empty hutch, the limp carcasses hanging by their feet from the rafters in Ullis’s stable. She said, ‘God knows how Sylvie will take it. I will write again but how can I tell her? How can I tell her this?’
‘The letter won’t get through anyway,’ said Jean with confidence. ‘Believe me, Adele, none of your letters have reached England.’
Adele glanced at Simon. His pen was scratching over the sheet of paper in front of him. He wrote down letters in sets of three. He looked up, his eyes blazing with excitement.
‘It’s just come through. I can’t figure it out.’
Jean reached forward and grabbed the earpiece. ‘Let me listen.’
Adele said, ‘I must get home. The curfew …’
Jean waved his hand at her, he did not look up. He took the pen from Simon’s hand.
Adele left the room and made her way back down the stairs. In front of the mirror in the dark hallway, she set her hat on her head and listened. From the bac
k parlour came the muffled, disembodied tones of an English voice. Jean’s mother had found the World Service.
Outside, the sky was deep navy, fragments of elderly stars hung over the sea. It would be dark in less than ten minutes. The tide was coming in, racing in over the narrow shingle beach, whispering over scattered pebbles. Beyond the waves lay the half-submerged barriers strung with wire, which glinted as cruel teeth in the dusk. They had no place here, she thought, no place at all.
Her footsteps rang on the cobbles of the harbour. A group of German soldiers were lighting cigarettes by the war memorial. The German flag, hoisted at the church, offensively, a few weeks before, hung limp in the still air. The soldiers were tall, broad-backed, imperious. Rifles were slung casually over their shoulders. She averted her eyes from the upright collars, the rounded helmets, the high boots – the sight of which made her stomach churn with loathing. One of them had taken off his helmet and his blond hair shone out in the darkness.
‘Bonsoir, mademoiselle,’ he said, his accent surprisingly good. ‘Voulez-vouz une cigarette?’
‘Non,’ she snapped, and increased her pace, her heels noisy and rebellious in the silence.
She heard another of them command that the curfew was in place, that she must return home. His voice barked hard at her: Schnell, schnell! Their laughter followed her as she hurried along the harbour front.
I will make a fur collar, she thought, shivering, thrusting her hands in her pockets as the wind picked up and the night turned a corner from balmy summer’s evening to an autumnal chill. I will use the rabbit fur and make a collar for Estella. The winter is going to be very cold.
Part Three
1941
Sylvie
The new sunlight brought them out as if from nowhere: stems of lanky buddleia, pushing blindly through jagged rubble and hanging off gaping broken walls. Their dusty leaves were a soft contrast to the innards of the terraces, houses and offices, the streets that were mapped out so innocently under the sharp sight of the bombers. But Maman always said that butterflies love buddleia, Sylvie thought. In the summer, here in the broken streets and squares of the West End, the droopy buddleia flower heads will be dancing with them.
The September Garden Page 14