Her Darkest Hour: Beautiful and heartbreaking World War 2 historical fiction

by Sharon Maas

  Papa’s disapproval was expressed in postal silence. She had told him all about the new job soon after she’d started, let him know that it was not a sign of collaboration but the first step on what she hoped was a path leading to Paris, to him, whether or not the war lasted longer than they all hoped; which seemed absolutely possible. You see, Papa, otherwise I’m just stuck at home waiting for it to end so I can finally make the move; but even then, what would I do in Paris? This job will open doors for me, and I’ll be with you all the sooner!

  But Papa, whose letters of reply had always been prompt, had not deigned to respond. She knew what that meant. Papa was proudly French, and if there was one thing he and Maman agreed on, it was that the Germans were unwelcome and any cooperation with them was treachery.

  And then there was Jacques, and that was the worst of all. Jacques, whose words still reverberated in Marie-Claire’s head: The only reason to work for such a despicable enemy is to defeat him. Have you no conscience at all? Tante Margaux used to say that all the time: Marie-Claire is as shallow as a crêpe-pan; and I used to laugh it off and tell her she misjudges you. But I see now she was correct.

  Of all the people close to her, it was Jacques’ opinion that hurt the most, his censure that kept sleep at bay. His proposal that squirmed and wriggled against all the self-justifications that made up her inner armour. If ever you change your mind, speak to Madame Guyon, he had said. Now that she’d met Madame Guyon there was no excuse.

  Loyalty towards your nation’s enemy was not loyalty. It was betrayal.

  She was squandering a chance. To make a strike, however tiny, for France.

  To even agree to do so would be a step forward. It would, at least, ease her conscience. Moreover, even if there was nothing she could do, to agree to help would surely win Jacques’ approval, and there was nothing in the world she craved more – not even Paris. Paris would be, at most, a consolation prize. She would drop it all for Jacques; for a kind word, an approving word, from Jacques.

  What if…

  She couldn’t help thinking about it, picturing the Kreisleiter as he turned the safe’s combination lock back and forth, following a series of numbers. Five times, or maybe six.

  That glimpse she had had of a number written in the inner cover of the ledger, five numerals, or maybe six. That was the code. She was sure of it.

  What if she ‘worked overtime’ again? Managed to sneak into the office, got hold of the ledger, tried the code, just to see if it worked, and if it did, what was in the safe. It would be papers, of course, all red-stamped confidential.

  And if it did, what then? She couldn’t very well tuck the papers in her handbag and leave the building with them. Every day, when she left the building, she was given a cursory search by the security guards at the entrance. Nothing serious – she had to open her coat, allow them to peek in her handbag; that was it. They were unsuspecting, and lax, and lazy. And they were only human; over time they had all, every one of them, grown more familiar, interspersing their superficial searches with a few words of conversation, or admiration, mild flirting. She could, she was sure, wrap them around her little finger simply by dint of being female, and beautiful. Yet still: to walk out with a bag full of papers was ludicrous.

  No. This would take planning. First, a trial run, to see if the numbers actually worked. And if they did, if she managed to open that safe, then a talk with Jacques, to let him decide what to do. Just letting Jacques know that she was, after all, willing to help – oh, the relief!

  A weight fell from Marie-Claude’s heart. She would do it. She would! She smiled to herself, tucked the eiderdown more tightly around her, and promptly fell asleep.

  * * *

  The decision once made, Marie-Claire could not wait to put her plan into action. It was not difficult to invent work that would force her, once again, to stay on in the building once everyone else had left, and the following day saw her typing furiously, in German, some overdue reports on the Germanisation of schools in the rural areas of Alsace.

  One by one the other typists tidied their desks, stood up, pushed in their chairs, hung their handbags over their shoulders and walked out to retrieve their coats, hats, scarves, winter boots from the wardrobe area near the door.

  Marie-Claire had managed to build up, by now, a reasonably civil relationship with the German secretaries. As for her Alsatian colleagues: the initial resentment she had been confronted with had gradually melted over the weeks. After all, they were all equally guilty of collaboration and needed each other’s support in the increasingly hostile atmosphere outside the building. Marie-Claire’s rapid ascent to head secretary, and in particular personal secretary to the Kreisleiter, had at first been deemed suspicious, especially in view of her consistently stylish appearance, but once it had been established that there was nothing extracurricular going on between her and the senior officers and that she really was diligent and efficient at her job, the petty remarks and resentful glances had stopped. Now, as they walked past her desk, most of her colleagues granted her a smile, a farewell wave, a casual comment.

  ‘Who’s a busy bee!’ said one.

  ‘Don’t work so hard!’ said another.

  But most just glanced her way and gave her a half-smile, and at last they were all gone. She waited some more. The building had to be empty. She had ascertained it was empty. The door to the typists’ room didn’t actually have a door; it opened up into the hallway, and so Marie-Claire could see the stream of officers and other German employees as they hastened out for their Feierabend, their leisure time. She could hear their footsteps as they descended the wooden staircase. She heard their farewell greetings, wishing each other a pleasant evening, their see-you-tomorrows. And then, at last, all was silent.

  Marie-Claire left her typewriter just the way it was, a page half-written in the carriage, and slipped out of the room and over to the manager’s office. The hallway light still burned, but the manager’s office was in darkness. Light from the hallway illuminated the key safe. There, on the wall, was the small wooden cupboard where all the keys to all the doors hung; when she left, she’d lock that door and hand the key over to the security guards – a task always left to whoever was last to leave.

  With any luck— there! It was there. Hanging from a hook labelled Generaldirektion. The key to the Kreisleiter’s office. Before she had time to think Marie-Claire whipped it from its hook. Earlier in the day she had deliberately left a small notebook in one of the drawers of the smaller desk; in case she was unexpectedly discovered entering the room, she had to have an excuse. Such a surprise was, however, unlikely; the key safe was full, all the keys hanging from their respective hooks, all the offices locked up for the night.

  The stillness was unnerving. She could hear her own breathing, her own heartbeat. Her thoughts seemed to echo into the darkness, louder than actual shouts. Was she truly doing this? Spying. That’s what she was doing. Spying on her employer. Spying on the Nazis. If she were caught… she held no illusions as to what the result would be. There would be no excuse, no reprieve. The Germans were merciless – that much she knew. She would be tried as a spy and the punishment would be execution.

  Marie-Claire was not a person of great moral courage. Rather, she let things be and allowed others to make the decisions; as long as they left her alone to live her life. She enjoyed luxury, good food and lovely clothes and had to accept that, for the time being, she was obstructed from realising her goals because of this blasted war.

  Then there was Jacques. Marie-Claire couldn’t explain it, but given the choice between all the worldly goods and glamour she so craved on the one hand, and Jacques, only Jacques, on the other, she would choose Jacques. Every time. She was doing this for Jacques, because Jacques wanted it. And Jacques was the source of her courage right now.

  She found the ledger. It was in the top right-hand drawer of the main desk. She opened it. There, on the inside cover, was the string of numbers she’d seen. Six numerals. She read t
hem, committed them to memory and walked over to the safe.

  By now her heart was thumping so loudly she was sure the security guards downstairs could hear it. But that was nonsense. Of course it was. Her heart trembled as, one by one, she entered the numbers.

  Nothing happened.

  Perhaps she’d got the number mixed up. She walked back to the desk, checked again, tried the safe again. And again, nothing happened.

  Disappointment flooded through her. So much build-up, and no result! There had to be something, some little thing, she could do… She sat down at the desk, leafed through the ledger. It seemed innocuous, more a sort of diary of day-to-day goings-on, nothing that Jacques could remotely be interested in. How silly she’d been. Of course a senior Nazi officer would never do something as careless as write a code into a ledger and leave that ledger accessible! It had been a stupid idea from the start.

  She heard the footsteps on the hall floor outside just seconds before the office door flew open. Too late to do anything but shriek and spin around to face the intruder.

  Fifteen

  Marie-Claire stood frozen as the door opened, and even her brain seemed frozen as she scraped through it, trying to find a reasonable excuse to be here, at the desk.

  There was none. There was no reason on earth for her to be in the Kreisleiter’s office after office hours, sitting at his desk. There was no reason for anyone to be here except for something nefarious, something underhand, something anti-Nazi, and no excuse she could ever think up would be enough. And so her brain stayed in that state of frozen immobility – blank.

  The person behind the door stepped into the room and the relief flooding through Marie-Claire was so immense she almost fainted.

  ‘Madame Guyon!’ she breathed.

  ‘Yes, it’s me. And I am supposed to be here – but you? You, Marie-Claire? You are not supposed to be here. Not at all. Unless… unless?’

  She stood there in front of Marie-Claire, mop hooked in one hand, bucket in the other, and stared at her. Marie-Claire gulped, swallowed, but said nothing, just stared back.

  ‘Marie-Claire, is it possible that you have changed your mind? That you will, indeed, help us? What are you doing here?’

  Marie-Claire gulped again, and managed to stutter a few words.

  ‘Yes, I-I thought, maybe, maybe…’ She pointed to the safe, ‘I thought maybe I had the combination but I was wrong. I’m sorry. I should not be here. I will go home now.’

  Madame Guyon carefully set down the bucket. It was full, and a few drops of water sloshed onto the floor. She smiled and took a step closer to Marie-Claire, patted her arm.

  ‘You did well, Marie-Claire. Even if there is nothing to show for your effort, you did well in that you decided to help, to do the right thing. Now, you can continue in that vein. Jacques is desperately in need of an informer within the Mairie; I am useless without such a one. You can be that, Marie-Claire. You are a clever girl – you will find a way. Of that I am sure. But now you must go.’ She winked. ‘Remember to flirt with the guards when you leave. You must disarm them. That is much easier for a pretty girl than for an old hag like me. But, you know, even old hags have their uses. We are the last people to come under suspicion. They think we are too stupid. But now – go.’

  Marie-Claire muttered a thank-you, and fled.

  * * *

  Two weeks after her failed attempt at espionage, the Kreisleiter summoned Marie-Claire to his office through the direct telephone line. This was happening more and more often these days, increasingly to fulfil little tasks that, in her view, he could easily perform himself. What was it now, put more logs on the fire, rattle the grate? She sighed, stood up and made her way upstairs. The office was, as usual when he occupied it, filled with a smoky fug; she could hardly breathe. If only he would occasionally demand that she open a window! But he never did. She closed the door behind her.

  ‘How can I help, Herr Kreisleiter?’

  He was sitting at the typewriter desk in the far corner, and at first did not reply as he typed out a few final words. That done, he ripped the page, together with the sheet of black carbon paper and the duplicate page, from the typewriter, separated the sheets and placed the original and the copy on two separate heaps, the carbon, ready to use again, back in the flat box lying next to the machine. Only then did he look up, his eyes as blank as ever, impenetrable. That done, he picked up the cigarette smouldering in the ashtray at his side, took a long drag and replaced it. Smoke billowed from his nostrils.

  ‘The typewriter ribbon needs changing,’ he said as he stood up. He picked up the two piles of typescript and walked over to the main desk. ‘It’s so faint now it’s almost illegible. You should have seen to this already.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Herr Kreisleiter – I would have, but—’ She wanted to say that she’d been told the typewriter was off-limits, but he interrupted.

  ‘No excuses. Just do it, now. The maintenance of this machine falls within your remit. You must check that everything is in working order.’

  ‘Very well, Herr Kreisleiter. I’ll just go and fetch a fresh tape.’

  ‘And hurry up. I’ve more work to do.’

  ‘Very well, Herr Kreisleiter. I won’t be a minute.’

  She left the room, hurried downstairs as fast as was possible while still retaining the dignity of her position as assistant to the Kreisleiter, as fast as her heels allowed her. She headed for the storeroom at the back of the building. It was a room far longer than it was wide, with a dividing wall containing shelves stacked with various office supplies. At the front of the room sat the young storeroom manager, Tobias Heller, young enough to be called by his first name, the only employee in the entire building to be so addressed. He was a pleasant lad, with floppy hair hanging over his forehead, a native Alsatian of Germanic roots.

  ‘Hello, Tobias. I need a new typewriter ribbon.’

  ‘Coming up – for which typewriter?’

  ‘The Kreisleiter’s. Up in the Mairie’s old office.’

  It was possible to use words like Mairie and the occasional other French word with Tobias, he being, like her, fully bilingual. He grinned at her. She liked him; he was the only male in the entire Mairie who ever smiled. Women did; women, she conjectured, always helped to raise the ambience in any office because not only did they provide a decorative function, they also smiled. Even in wartime. But Tobias smiled too.

  ‘I meant, what make is it? Remington, Smith-Corona, Olympia?’

  ‘It’s an Olympia 8.’

  ‘Ah! I might have guessed that the Kreisleiter would use a German model.’

  They exchanged a look that stopped just short of being a roll of the eye. Both knew what the other was thinking, if not speaking: ‘German quality’ was a phrase often bandied about, the insinuation being that everything German-made was, by definition, head and shoulders superior to anything produced anywhere else; in fact, everything else was more than often met with a nose-in-the-air sniff: shoddy quality. Tobias stood up and walked along the partition shelves. He stopped, and rummaged in a box.

  ‘Yes. We secretaries still use Remingtons.’

  ‘As do most people in France. But of course, only the best will do for the Kreisleiter! Here you are.’

  Tobias handed her a new spool.

  ‘Tobias! Be quiet!’

  He grinned and winked. ‘The walls have ears, you mean? Well, between you and me…’

  He stopped and shrugged, pulled out a large book and opened it at a page half-filled with writing, wrote the date and next to it Olympia Ribbon and Margarethe Gauss.

  ‘I nearly wrote your real name there!’ he said with another grin. ‘Now, if you’d just sign here…’

  She bent over the book and signed.

  ‘I forget my name, the new one, often enough!’ she said.

  ‘Lucky me, to have always had a German name. I used to hate it – now I suppose I can call myself fortunate.’

  ‘Tobias! Ssshh! You shouldn’t say those things
aloud.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I know who I can say them to.’

  ‘Anyway, thanks. I’ll see you again, no doubt.’

  ‘Au revoir, Marie-Claire!’

  ‘Tobias!’

  His grin was wide and cheeky as he gestured goodbye.

  She returned to the Kreisleiter’s office, knocked and entered at his herein. She said nothing as she walked across to the typewriter and set about replacing the old spool with the new. It was quickly done. She coughed for attention and he looked up. She held up the old spool.

  ‘What do I do with this?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you think, girl? Throw it in the rubbish.’

  She opened her mouth to speak, and shut it again, holding back an astonished Really? Because right at that moment a light went on in her brain, and she knew exactly what she would do. It came to her in a flash of insight. A method of espionage that would, she surmised, make of her a hero – at least in Jacques’ eyes, and that was all that mattered.

  She chucked the used spool in the wastepaper basket, emptied the full ashtray into the fireplace, added a log to the same and left the room, lighter than she’d felt in weeks. Feeling smarter, much smarter, than one’s boss tended to have that effect on a lowly secretary. Especially one generally treated as a menial dogsbody to a Nazi’s every whim.

  Sixteen

  Marie-Claire could hardly wait to discuss her plan with Jacques. Not only would she be dependent on his material support, she couldn’t wait to see the light of approval in his eyes. Nothing hurt more than the knowledge of his condemnation of her. Marie-Claire is as shallow as a crêpe-pan… it hurt, oh how it hurt! The words were pinpricks of shame, constantly piercing her heart; though she had done her best to turn away from the insult, had launched herself body and soul into her work in order to forget Jacques’ throwaway remark, still it was always there, under the surface. It shamed her, and at the same time it was a goad. Hadn’t he, that night, expressed the hope that she could change; that she could do better; that she was, after all, not that shallow?