An Ordinary Life

by Amanda Prowse

  The door to the back room slammed open, missing Molly by inches. Her legs almost giving way beneath her, she was rooted to the spot, fighting an overwhelming desire to urinate.

  Two German soldiers came into the room, dragging what she took to be a weighty sack. Only when they dumped their cargo and Molly saw it hit the deck face down, arms which in life would have been raised to protect the face before it smashed onto the flagstones lolling at the sides, did she realise it was a body.

  The leg lay partially shattered, revealing the pale gleam of bone; the set of the leg was so odd it made her gut churn, but not as much as the back of the head, which was a red, gooey mass. Molly found it hard to look away.

  The soldiers were shouting loudly and, in the melee and with her mind reeling in shock, she found it hard to decipher some of the words, but one was clear enough:

  ‘Resistance!’

  The shouted word made her bowels turn to ice. One of the officers hooked his foot under the body and kicked it over until the face was visible.

  The breath caught in Molly’s throat. She looked immediately from the body on the ground to Violet, still motionless in the middle of the room, as she too stared down at the body and the unmistakable handsome face of her beloved Pascal.

  Oh, dear God, no! No no no!

  Molly remained frozen. Her heart told her to go to Violet and take her in her arms, but a small voice of reason was telling her not to give herself away. As far as anyone knew, she was not involved here, did not know this man. Violet seemed to sense her stare. She looked up and for no more than seconds she and Molly locked eyes across the room, as both understood in that moment that, although friends for the briefest time imaginable, they were now powerfully and irrevocably linked by this event.

  The Nazi officers began to rally, running from the building with weapons raised. The General, back in his hat and authority restored, barked orders. One of the soldiers grabbed Bernard and threw him to the ground, hitting him full in the mouth with the butt of his gun. Molly saw two little white squares tumble from his bloodied mouth and roll along the floor. Bernard’s teeth: a small part of him that was to be trodden underfoot in the panic that now ensued.

  Violet gazed on the face of her love and let out a cry of distress. Herr Heistermann lifted his pistol and aimed it at her.

  No! Molly shouted in her head. ‘Herr General!’ she called loudly and, miraculously, he looked in her direction, his expression quizzical, as the muzzle of his gun drooped. It was barely an instant, but that was all that was needed.

  Almost in slow motion, Violet grabbed two of the sweets from the plate. Molly watched as she threw them in her mouth, powerless to stop her. Knowing that to intervene now would only make things worse, further muddy the chaos, not to mention her overriding thought that she had a child who relied on her survival.

  With Herr Heistermann now being bundled out of the back door, Molly remembered her training and planned for her exit.

  ‘You are much harder to hit if you drop and keep low, out of sight, out of range, behind objects or walls or cars. As low as you can, but always moving towards the exit or a safe place to wait it out.’

  On her belly, she slid under the curtain and out of the door, crawling behind the high bar in the main room, where she rose up onto her hands and knees. She kept going, head down, picturing the truck with Jacques in it, waiting for her, and thinking of Joe, who needed her to arrive home in one piece. Her body moved deftly now, but in her head she flinched, as if expecting to feel the sharp crack of a bullet against her bones any second, or the rough grip of a leather glove on her skin. She shook her head in an effort to remove her last image of Violet, who, having bitten down hard on the bonbons, had thrown her head back and fallen to the floor, landing on top of Pascal. The sounds she had made were ones that Molly knew would haunt her always.

  Somehow she made it outside, slipping out into the darkness just as everyone else was dispersing or trying to get inside the building. Every second she survived felt like a small triumph, and as her adrenaline soared so did her courage and this gave her a strange sense of calm. Standing in the shadows behind the shutters of the frontage, she looked down and spied the older woman who had served her only that morning, coiled into a ball with her hands over her ears, her knees up to her chest and her eyes screwed up tight. Molly bent down and touched her shoulder, feeling every inch of her tremble.

  ‘You’re okay, you’re going to be okay. When you can, get as far away from here as possible. Go home.’ The woman looked up at her with eyes as big as saucers and nodded.

  Molly scanned the pavement ahead of her and noticed Pascal’s motorbike lying on its side, abandoned. She swallowed the sob in her throat – this was not the time for emotion; she needed to keep her wits about her and stay focused. She noticed suddenly the other motorcyclist: Jean-Luc, sitting astride his bike. Their heads close, he was chatting to a German soldier, who gave him a cigarette. Jean-Luc patted the soldier in return, a backslap that was friendly, jovial, congratulatory, intimate even, and in that split second she knew where she had seen Jean-Luc before, and her heart beat quickly at the realisation. He had been one of the marching men she had seen when she left the station earlier in the day. He had been wearing a red scarf around his neck, a bandage on his head; she remembered his imploring dark eyes . . . but he hadn’t been a prisoner at all! He was Jean-Luc, part of the Maquis, trusted by Pascal, and also, she now knew, the mole.

  Molly felt sick. It had all been a trap set by Jean-Luc – Pascal had never stood a chance. She looked down the road in the direction of the station and took a deep breath, ready to run to Jacques in the truck, but something stopped her. The information she had was useful, vital even, and so she stood with her back against the wall. Her heart beating in her ears, she then slipped back into the bar and, dropping down, spied the unshaven accordion player of earlier, ducked down at the other end of the counter. He turned and did a double take, before scooting across the broken glass towards her.

  ‘What in God’s name are you still doing here?’ he said in perfect English, in an accent not dissimilar to her own, which surprised her.

  ‘I know who the mole is. Jean-Luc! I saw him this morning being marched with the prisoners by the Nazis, but he’s out at the front now with them – friends!’

  ‘Go! Get out of here – run run run!’

  Even as she shuffled back towards the door a Nazi officer grabbed the accordion player’s wrists and hauled him out from behind the counter, throwing him to the ground in the way they had with Bernard.

  ‘Know when to take orders. They may come from the most unexpected sources, but you will know when they are to be acted on. Never question them. Simply do as you are told. It could mean the difference between life and death.’

  And so she ran.

  Still terrified that this was the night she might die, she ran in the shadows, staying within the line of trees or using the shade of buildings to make her way to the top of the main street. Her body sagged with relief at the sight of Jacques’ truck parked up at the end of the main road a little way out of town. She banged on the door with the flat of her palms and climbed in with lungs that felt as if they might burst from her ribs. Jacques, she noticed, had removed his straw hat and was weeping silently.

  ‘My son!’ he sobbed. ‘My Pascal!’

  Molly reached over and wrapped the man in a brief, tight hug before slumping down in the front seat, her hand resting on the worn leather where only an hour ago Violet had sat, looking beautiful.

  At the drop-off point, she and Jacques nodded a tearful goodbye.

  Quite overcome by all she had seen, Molly slept on the train, exhausted, as if her body had needed to switch off. And before she knew it, as day began to snake over the horizon, she was running towards the light aircraft, barely visible in the half-light. The sound of the plane engine as it rose high into the sky was something she would never forget.

  It was intensely cold in the plane. She huddled inside th
e sheepskin jacket the pilot had thrust at her with the command to ‘put it on’. He had then remained silent throughout the journey, but when she touched down on the Kent coast Mr Malcolm was waiting in his customary coat and hat, with a cigarette in his mouth and his hands thrust deep in his pockets.

  ‘Welcome home, Miss Collway.’

  He handed her a blanket, which she wrapped around her shoulders before trembling in the back of the jeep all the way home to London.

  Molly climbed the stairs of her digs in St Pancras and fell into bed, still wearing the pretty dress she had put on in the old farmhouse on the outskirts of Saintes. The same dress in which she had danced with the General. Finally her tears came and her body shook, clinging to the bedclothes and trying to stop the sensation of the earth trembling beneath her. She cried for Johan and for her baby Joe, of course. But now she cried also for Violet and for Pascal, recalling the way he had run his thumb along the jawline of the girl he loved and how he had looked at her! Molly cried at the horror of seeing his bloodied body lying slumped on the floor; and the last look Violet had given her before biting down on the poison; and then the sight of Violet’s face, head thrown back, before she toppled . . . The poison Molly had carried to her in France. The key. She herself had been the key and the task had been given to her because she was just what they were looking for: someone almost broken.

  TWELVE

  London

  November 1944

  Aged 19

  ‘It’s so good to hear your voice!’ Molly stood in the telephone box and could tell Joyce was smiling down the phone. It made her smile too. She was glad to be back on home soil. In the week since she had returned, the events that had occurred in the Café Hubert seemed more and more surreal. She buried them and it was only when nightmares yanked her from sleep that she was forced to relive the heart-racing horror of what she had seen.

  She had walked the route to Whitehall for her debrief with Mr Malcolm, Mr Greene and a Mr Markham, looking at the people she passed in the street, ordinary people like her, all going about their business as best as they could in this time of war, except that she now carried a secret on her tongue and in her thoughts. She had been at the very heart of the conflict, smuggled poison, danced with a Nazi general and seen a shot man thrown to the floor like mere detritus . . . She would have been hard-pressed to explain exactly how, but she knew she had come back changed, a little hardened maybe to the world around her and with a newly reinforced perspective on the capacity of mankind for wickedness, if that were possible. It strengthened her resolve to get Joe back, to keep him close, safe.

  ‘How’s he doing?’ she asked, the phone gripped close to her face, ignoring the smell of stale tobacco, no doubt from the breath of the previous occupant, and aware of the background growl of army trucks noisily trundling along the road behind her. She concentrated on Joyce’s voice, not wanting to miss a nuance, a breath, when hearing about her baby boy.

  ‘Oh, Molly, he’s so sweet, so lovely and growing fast!’

  ‘I bet.’ She swallowed to push the arrow of envy back down in her gut, lest it should rise up in her throat and force misplaced words of pure jealousy onto her tongue.

  ‘I was cooking yesterday and he started to fret so I lifted him from the crib and he licked my finger, which had some lemon juice on it – his little face, Molly! He cried! But then, after I’d settled him, he grabbed my hand and went back for more, can you believe it? Albert says he’s going to love a good gin and tonic when he’s older.’

  Molly tried to laugh, but the thought of him crying and, worse somehow, being comforted by someone other than herself was hard to hear. Not that she wasn’t grateful to her sister and brother-in-law – she was, immensely – but still she felt the desperate need to hold her baby and to remind him that she was his mum.

  ‘And he took to the formula milk okay?’

  ‘Oh, absolutely. He guzzles it, no problems whatsoever.’

  ‘That’s good.’ She was delighted that her boy was thriving, but felt also the bite of redundancy at her throat – happy that he was doing well without her, while at the same time hoping that he might when reunited be reminded of the breast that had fed him. ‘I do miss him, you know.’ She bit her lip.

  ‘Of course you do, darling. And he misses you, as do I. Not much longer now.’ And just like that, sweet Joyce knew what to say to bring comfort and reassurance.

  ‘Yes, not much longer.’

  ‘Where are you working? What are you up to?’

  ‘Starting a new, erm . . . a new assignment, immediately. So all good.’

  ‘Righty-ho. Well, take care of yourself, Little Moll, and I’ll take care of your little man.’

  ‘Love you, Joycey.’

  ‘And we love you!’

  ‘Can you put him on the phone?’

  ‘Yes, of course! Hang on a mo’!’ There was muffled background noise and then came the unmistakable sound of Joe’s sweet burble and his snuffly breathing.

  ‘Hello, darling! Hello, Joe!’

  His wail was loud and instant.

  ‘Sorry, darling, he’s not that keen on the phone, it would seem.’ Joyce smoothed over the cracks.

  Molly hung up, determined to get him back as soon as was possible. No matter how necessary, she could see this separation was damaging to their relationship. And she didn’t like it one bit.

  The debrief led by Mr Markham had been intense and detailed until she felt quite irritated at the prospect of going over it yet again.

  ‘Did you see Jean-Luc make contact with any of the soldiers as they were marched out of town that morning?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And Pascal never raised his suspicions to you about Jean-Luc?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did Pascal or Violet mention that Bernadine was in a relationship with Jean-Luc?’

  ‘No, but I guess that would explain why she cried off that evening, if she knew something was afoot.’

  ‘So you believe Bernadine had prior warning and was maybe allied to Jean-Luc?’

  ‘No, I’m not saying that. I don’t know her and I don’t know them. I never met her.’

  ‘Could we just go over it again?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ She kept her composure and sipped at her tea.

  It did nothing for her mental well-being to keep reliving every small detail of such a harrowing experience. On day two and with a different approach altogether Mr Markham asked her directly, ‘How do you think you coped with the role in Saintes?’

  ‘I think I coped well. I improvised and was adaptable and did what was asked of me.’

  He nodded and looked briefly at Mr Malcolm and Mr Greene. It unnerved her and made her feel judged, as if she had not done as well as she had thought.

  ‘How have you been sleeping since you got back?’

  She met his gaze, hoping he didn’t catch the fear that must surely have flickered over her face. ‘I don’t sleep well, but that was the case before I went to France and will probably be the case for a while now I’m back.’

  ‘I see.’ He lit a cigarette and flicked out the match with his thumb and forefinger. ‘Would you be interested in undertaking another job?’

  ‘Similar to . . .?’ she started.

  ‘Yes, similar to but not the same. Again in France – Paris, to be exact.’

  Molly sat up straight and folded her hands in front of her on the tabletop, feeling the pull in her gut to hold her boy. ‘The thing is, Mr Markham, I want to work. I need to work and I want to do what I can for my country, but I am also mother to a baby boy.’ She felt simultaneously emboldened and proud to be voicing it out loud.

  He nodded, as if this was not news to him.

  ‘And I would prefer not to be put at risk in such an obvious way. I know there’s danger in simply walking down the street in London at this time – who knows what’s around any corner. We are, after all, at war.’

  ‘Indeed.’ He took a deep drag and walked to the window, listening to her a
s he peered down to the street below.

  ‘But I would prefer to minimise that risk while doing my duty and furthering my career, if that were at all possible.’ She felt conflicted, wanting to do her bit, of course, but at the same time not willing to give her life freely, simply to be another statistic and to leave her beloved boy without either parent.

  ‘There is another role that does not come under my jurisdiction that you might be suited for. A liaison position,’ he said to the window, and she got the distinct impression that, with her response, he had lost interest altogether.

  ‘Liaison?’ It sounded vague, but then so had the term ‘courier’ . . .

  Molly walked away from the telephone box and did her best to put Joyce and baby Joe out of her mind. She found this the best, if not the only way to go about her day without the weight of longing for her boy dragging her concentration from each and every task. And she needed to concentrate; today she was starting her new assignment, liaison . . . She had a train to catch that would take her within a whisker of where her darling boy was living in the Kent countryside. It was this kind of thought that was derailing and she shook it from her head.

  Her new role was indeed different and, while outwardly calm in her neatly pressed blouse, soft cardigan, calf-length skirt and sensible laced shoes, her mind was racing and she sincerely hoped she had the reserves to deal with whatever lay ahead. The man who had briefed her, Mr Allan, had been very specific.

  ‘Not everyone feels inclined to mix with those who are considered to be on the wrong side of this war—’

  ‘And you can hardly blame them!’ Her reaction had been raw and unfiltered as she pictured the red and black flag fluttering over the façade of the mairie and heard Mrs Duggan forming the words . . . ‘Very unexpected . . . It concerns her brother, Johan’ . . . This was followed immediately by Joyce’s happy tone: ‘Albert says he’s going to love a good gin and tonic when he’s older!’ ‘Everyone has a story of loss or hardship. Hate is easy to lasso; it becomes a driving force.’