The Occupation Secret

by The Occupation Secret (retail) (epub)

  ‘Of course. The medals are yours.’

  Jean-Baptiste raised his hand. He followed the other men into the darkness.

  Hervé tried the car again but it still didn’t fire. He reached under the front seat for the crank, got out, and gave the lever three yanks until the engine caught.

  He climbed back inside and switched the headlights on. He zigzagged the car through the slowly disbanding crowd.

  Then he began to pick his way, painstakingly, and with the perspiration streaming down his face, out beyond the town limits and in the direction of Flairac.

  The Shrine

  11 pm: Saturday 10th June 1944

  Hervé drove until he was well clear of the town. He pulled the Citroen off the road, near to the St Gervais shrine. He got out of the car and mopped at his face with the underside of both forearms, like a cat, his eyes wild with the events of the night.

  ‘Now you may look to him.’

  He stood by the cairn, in the light of the headlamps, and rolled himself a cigarette, his hands shaking with the sudden release of tension.

  Lucie stepped out of the car. She hesitated for a moment, her face disabled by grief and weariness. She felt beyond hatred. Incapable of registering the disgust she felt at Hervé’s betrayal. She opened the back door of the Citroen and crouched down in the well.

  Hervé lit his cigarette. He waited a few seconds for the tobacco to take effect, then he walked around the car and glanced inside.

  Lucie was cradling Max’s head in her lap. She looked up at Hervé, her face streaked with tears. ‘He’s not dead. You knew he was not dead when you carried him into the car.’

  ‘I knew it. Yes.’ Hervé moistened his lips with his tongue. ‘That’s why I moved him away from there so swiftly.’

  ‘But how…’

  ‘I shot beside the head. I counted on the blow that I gave him being enough to stun him and to prevent him giving me away. The concussion did the rest. The slug simply spent itself in the ground, beneath the car.’ He mashed the cigarette out with his heel. Angrily. As if he held a grudge against it. ‘People see only what they want to see, Lucie. It’s human nature. You must have realised that by now.’ He stretched a tentative hand towards her, but then stopped himself. He transformed the movement into a lunge for his pocket, from which he withdrew the faded square of linen that he used to mop his weeping eye. ‘Take this and go to the source. Clean it well. You must scrub all of the saltpetre out of his face, where it has seared its way into the wound, or it will infect him. Do it while he’s still unconscious, or he will struggle.’ His voice changed intonation unexpectedly. ‘I mean, you don’t want your handsome German to end up looking like me, do you?’

  Lucie huddled closer to Max’s body.

  ‘Relax. I’m not going to assassinate him while you’re gone. If I didn’t kill him back there when I had every chance, I’m hardly likely to hurt him now. I owed this man an unwanted debt. Now it’s repaid.’

  Lucie snatched the linen square from Hervé’s hand and ran with it towards the source.

  Hervé bent down, grunting with the pain of his cracked ribs. He checked over Max’s face, his fingers palpating the cheekbone as though he were dealing with a damaged piece of farm machinery, and not an injured man. When he was finished, he walked around the car, opened the far door, and leaned over to inspect the wound in Max’s thigh.

  ‘You’re a lucky bastard. Do you know that, German? We just keep on missing you, don’t we?’ He gazed at Max’s inanimate face as if his eyes might unexpectedly open and fix him with a dead man’s stare.

  Lucie hurried back, the square of linen cradled in her hands.

  ‘Get inside the car. You can tend him while we’re driving.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, as they were waiting for the all clear at the La Feyderie level crossing, Hervé twisted around in his seat.

  He watched Lucie for a few moments, as she dabbed at the powder burns on Max’s face, his gaze taking in the series of mottled bruises round her neck, the razor cuts on her scalp, and the faint outline of the swastika still visible on her forehead.

  ‘Check if he’s got any money in his pockets.’ His voice was gentler, now. More measured.

  Lucie glanced up, instinctively responding to the change in Hervé’s tone. ‘He has. Yes.’

  ‘Then give me a little. Enough to buy some alcohol. We must disinfect his face, now that you have cleaned it and while the wound is still open. That cut over your ear needs attention, too’

  Lucie felt in Max’s top pocket and brought out the wad of francs.

  ‘Putain!’ Hervé whistled through his teeth. ‘What bank did he rob to get all that? I’d sell him the farm for less.’ He shook his head. ‘You’d better give me a thousand. That should do it.’ He accepted the proffered money with a further muffled expletive, and stepped out of the car.

  The small roadside bar was shut for the night, but the glow of an oil lamp still shone from an upstairs bedroom. Hervé walked over and hammered on the door.

  ‘Who is it?’ A nervous voice came from behind the half-closed shutters above his head.

  ‘Maquis. This is an emergency. Open up, or we’ll break down the door.’ Hervé waved his pistol melodramatically.

  There was a clattering and a banging. Some curses. The clack of wooden-soled shoes coming down the stairs. The bar door opened a crack.

  ‘We need alcohol. To disinfect a wound.’

  ‘I don’t have any.’

  ‘I’m not looking for a handout. We’re prepared to pay.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Five hundred.’

  ‘That’s not enough.’

  ‘What then?’

  There was a short silence. ‘Seven fifty.’

  ‘Seven hundred.’

  The door eased back and a hand beckoned Hervé through into the dark interior. ‘Wait here.’ The faint light of a candle illuminated a nightcap-crested face.

  ‘Do you have any gasoline?’

  ‘Who do you think I am? Erwin Rommel? This a bar, not a supply depot.’

  ‘All right. All right. Keep your hat on.’

  ‘Where’s the money?’

  Hervé peeled off the notes.

  ‘Look at you people. Rolling in it. I should have asked for more.’

  ‘Get the alcohol, or I’ll blow your fucking head off. The devil has no use for cash.’

  Hervé returned to the car, shaking his head. He took the square of linen from Lucie’s hand and coated it in spirit. Then he tilted her head back despite her protests, and dabbed gently at the cut above her ear and at the bruises around her neck. When he was finished, he handed her the bottle.

  ‘When you’re done with his face, see to the wound in his leg. But don’t tear his uniform any more than necessary. I’ve a feeling we may be needing it before too long.’

  ‘Collabos’

  00:35 am: Sunday 11th June 1944

  Hervé stepped out into the road and flagged the car down with his pistol. He had already let four useless gazogènes pass by. This Delage was the first fuel-driven car he had seen in over thirty minutes of waiting. Collaborators? Maquis? Miliciens? Escaping German officials? With the Boche as good as gone from the area, the rats were emerging from the sinking ship.

  ‘Get out of the car.’

  The driver was grossly overweight, but his fashionably cut double-breasted suit, illuminated in the pooled lights of the two cars, gave him a certain grotesque dignity. ‘What do you people want? Why are you waving a gun at us? Are you criminals?’

  Hervé ignored him. ‘Now tell the woman to get out too.’

  The man hesitated. His eyes were fixed on the pistol as if it were a snake coiled for the kill.

  Hervé drifted the barrel downwards. ‘Your knee goes first. Then your elbow. After that, you won’t care what I hit.’

  The man made an impatient gesture with his hand. The wom
an, already middle-aged but with the platinum blonde hair and the tightly corseted shape of a person ten years younger, eased herself out of the car. She managed a drinker’s ingratiating smile. She negotiated her way along the running board, unsteady on her high heels.

  ‘What do you intend to do with us?’ The man’s oiled black hair shone in the headlights like a skullcap. ‘We’re not worth kidnapping. You must have the wrong people. If you think we’re Germans, you’re wrong.’

  ‘How much fuel do you have?’

  The man hesitated, as if weighing up what the information might be worth in the currency of hope. ‘Three quarters of a tank.’

  ‘Well, I don’t have any. So we’ll swop cars. How does that strike you? Give me your papers. You too, Madame. The car papers as well.’

  ‘But this is a 1934 Delage. Do you know how much such a car costs on the black market?’

  Hervé stepped angrily towards the man and his companion. ‘How did you earn the money for it? Eh? Who did you have to kill to secure the right to run a gasoline-driven car from the Germans?’

  ‘I didn’t kill anybody.’ The man’s voice shook with resentment. ‘I make bicycles. People always need bicycles. That doesn’t make me a collaborator.’

  ‘I don’t want your life story.’ Hervé snapped his fingers impatiently. ‘The papers. Now.’

  ‘You’re not going to abandon us out here?’

  ‘I’m not going to shoot you. Be grateful for that.’ Hervé scrutinized the papers in the Citroen’s headlamps. ‘Now help me get this injured man out of the back of the Citroen and into your car.’ He waved the pistol in encouragement.

  The fat man straightened his jacket and hitched his head at the woman as though she were his dog. His confidence was returning, now that he knew he wasn’t about to be shot. He strutted across the road and peered into the back of the Citroen.

  His body collapsed inside the carapace of his suit. His eyes widened, and his newly minted vainglory drained away. ‘An SS officer. Oh my God. You fool. You utter fool. You will get us all killed.’

  ‘This will get you killed.’ Hervé pointed the Luger at the man’s head. ‘This will get you killed now. This instant. The choice is yours.’

  ‘I’ll do it. I’ll do it.’

  With a furtive glance at Lucie’s shaven scalp, the man and his companion eased Max out from the footwell and manhandled him across to the other car. Lucie busied herself steadying Max’s head, touching his arm, and supporting his neck and shoulders, as the couple laid him out on the grey leather seats.

  ‘You won’t get blood over everything, will you?’

  Hervé laughed. ‘What do you care? You’re never going to see this car again.’ He took out the Citroen keys and tossed them into the nearby brush. He followed this with the crank handle. ‘You’ll find them easily enough, come morning. My advice to you both is to tuck yourself up inside the car and sleep off your hangovers. Then have your new vehicle painted, change the licence plate, and lock it away until after the war. Trust me – you won’t want to be caught with it in your possession.’

  ‘How can you do this to us? We are French too.’

  ‘Desperation. Anger. Boredom. There are other names for it too.’

  Hervé slipped the Delage into gear and accelerated up the road, the two illuminated figures behind him receding like jetsam from a crippled freighter.

  The Journey

  3 am: Sunday 11th June 1944

  ‘I must sleep. I can’t keep my eyes open anymore. If I drive any further, we’ll end up in the ditch.’

  Hervé pulled the Delage off the road and down a well-used farm track. When he decided that they were sufficiently well hidden from view, he backed the car into a suitable getaway position, parallel to the road, and switched off the engine. He twisted around to face Lucie.

  She was cradling Max’s head in her lap. Hervé even fancied (or was it some trick of the moonlight?) that he could make out the faintest glimmer of tears on her lashes. In the moon’s reflected light the naked dome of her skull seemed luminous, as in film posters of Maria Falconetti as the shaven-headed Jeanne D’Arc, he had seen as a young child.

  ‘You aren’t crying for the German, are you? Because the bastard doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t merit your tears. The Schleuhs brought all this on themselves.’

  Lucie didn’t move. Didn’t look at him. ‘I’m not crying for Max. I’m crying for my mother.’

  Hervé gnawed at his damaged lip. He could feel the blood flushing through his cheeks – pricking at the roots of his hair. ‘I’m sorry. Sorry for what our people did.’

  ‘Why should you be sorry? Maman always thought you were a fool. You ought to be relieved they killed her. She’s better off out of this place, anyway.’

  Hervé’s eyes widened in shock. He had never known Lucie talk in this way. For one panic-stricken moment he even wondered whether the horror of what had just happened to her might have contrived to drive her mad.

  ‘Why are you staring at me like that?’ Lucie spoke without glancing up from Max’s face.

  Hervé swallowed awkwardly, as if he had accidentally ingested a prune stone. ‘Because you’re beautiful.’

  Lucie shook her head angrily. ‘I’m beautiful because I’m looking at my lover. Because he’s alive. Because he came back for me.’ She brushed her tear-limned eyes with the sleeve of her dress. She was still refusing to meet Hervé’s gaze. ‘I’m grateful to you for sparing his life. But it would be impossible for me to give that sort of love to any other man. You must understand that.’

  Hervé sucked in his breath. He was on the verge of attempting a response when she broke in on him again, sabotaging his thoughts.

  ‘How long is he going to remain like this? Can you tell me that?’

  Hervé was pitifully grateful for the interruption. He could feel his cheeks burning with the shame of her rejection and with the acuity of Lucie’s insight into his feelings. ‘How should I know? The concussion of the shot. It was very close to his face. It would be like receiving a second, even more violent blow to the same spot.’ He shrugged in the semi-darkness, his heart churning with grief and disconsolation. ‘Even if he comes to, there’s a chance he may lose his hearing in that ear. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You did what you had to do.’

  ‘Did I have to do it?’

  Lucie met Hervé’s gaze for the very first time. ‘Of course you had to do it. He took the greater risk for you. That’s why he came back. That’s why he’s having to run from his own people.’

  Hervé allowed his fingertips to travel down his cheeks and across the swollen mass of his jaw as if he were following a complicated narrative in Braille. ‘I suspected as much.’

  Lucie’s gaze slid away from his face. ‘It’s for the best. For all of us.’

  Hervé shook his head in amazement. ‘How can you say that? After all that has happened?’

  ‘Nothing’s happened. Nothing of any note.’

  Hervé watched her for a second, then stretched himself out across the front seats. Perversely, now that he’d beached the car, he no longer felt in the least sleepy. ‘I would have tried to stop them if I’d known. From doing what they did to you. You believe that, Lucette?’

  ‘Then they would have shot you too. They had blood in their eyes, those people. They needed victims. My mother. Monsieur Fombert. Even sad old Madame Foulquier. All she did was to denounce the man who had robbed her husband of his land. She thought the Germans might be able to rectify what we French couldn’t.’

  ‘And you? You aren’t a victim?’

  ‘No. I’m simply a fool. I thought my family knew who I was. I was wrong.’

  Hervé lit another cigarette. He watched the smoke curl up towards the inside light fitting, separate, then sweep out in moonlit filaments through a crack in the window. ‘And you’re still convinced the German loves you?’

  ‘I love him. That’s more than enough for both of us.’

  Hervé lay for a long time in the d
arkness, listening to her breathing – trying to tell if she was still awake. And now the ultimate irony, he told himself. The crowning joke in a lifetime full of bad jokes.

  Here I am, finally sleeping beside the woman I love. Only, the man that she loves – the man whose life I have so improvidently spared and who has stolen her from me – still lies unwittingly between us.

  First Dawn

  5:20 am: Sunday 11th June 1944

  ‘It’s getting light. We need to be on our way.’

  Hervé’s eyes opened wide. He sat up, surprised that he should have slept at all given the mood he was in. His head had seemed so full of conflicting emotions the night before, that now, perversely, he began to feel as if he had let himself down in some way – diluted the quality of his affections – by falling asleep in front of Lucie.

  ‘The farmer will be coming out soon.’ Lucie’s voice was matter-of-fact – the voice of a woman who has lived by a set routine all her life. ‘We must leave.’

  Hervé glanced over the seat at Max. ‘Is he conscious?’

  Lucie shook her head. ‘He is sleeping. He opened his eyes about an hour ago and looked at me without seeing. Then he closed them again.’

  ‘It’s a good sign.’ Hervé had no earthly idea what he was talking about. He had never tended anything more challenging than an injured cow in his entire life. ‘He’ll be back to normal in no time.’ His tone didn’t carry much conviction.

  ‘Now will you tell me where you are taking us?’ Lucie’s voice seemed preternaturally intimate in the fractured darkness inside the car.

  Hervé cleared his throat. His voice sounded as empty as the early dawn. ‘A place called St Jean de Luz. It’s near to the Spanish border.’

  ‘Why there in particular?’

  ‘Call it an early wedding present.’ Hervé could feel the weight of shocked silence attending his words. He continued hurriedly on, desperate to dilute the effect of his sarcasm. ‘I have family there. Distant cousins. Fishermen. They may be able to help us.’ He made a placatory face. ‘Grand Jean is part Basque, though you’d never guess it to look at him.’