by Perrat, Liza
I reached the clearing beside the railway tracks –– the main line the Germans used to transport munitions and fighting vehicles, and stopped well away from the boys. I concealed the bicycle in the undergrowth, and crept closer to where they were hunched down at the track.
A twig cracked behind me. I spun around, to the luminous amber-green stare of a fox. But the fox too, seemed afraid, and slunk away through the scrub with furtive elegance.
I moved a little further along and crouched behind a rocky cleft, my breath quick and shallow in the cloying air, my eyes and ears alert for the slightest sound or movement.
Patrick, Olivier, André and Gaspard were still down at the track, while Marc Dutrottier moved off up the line to –– I supposed –– his lookout post.
An owl hooted into the darkness and I jumped. My quivering fingers grasped my angel pendant, and I willed its strength to my brother, forced to become the man of our house when the Germans took our father for “voluntary” labour service.
Nothing could happen to Patrick and Olivier; to my memories of summers on the Vionne River, of winter snowball fights, of dancing and drinking cider and feasting on stewed meats and pastries at festival time. The little angel seemed to reassure me that even if it meant taking human lives, we were doing the right thing. We had to drive the Boche away.
They were still bent over the railway line, Patrick’s ear against the silvery-blue sheen of track. Even as I felt the pulse of my frustration with them, for refusing to let me join in, I was excited to be there, part of the Resistance –– that mythical organisation where rumour scrambled after counter-rumour and nobody was certain who was friend and who was foe. It was a word that conjured images of secret meetings, midnight escapades, the thrill of danger.
Patrick raised his head from the track. ‘Now!’ he cried.
Hands moving like darts, tongues out, sweat glossing their brows, the boys secured the dynamite beneath the rails.
‘Time?’ Patrick said.
Olivier glanced at his watch. ‘Two minutes.’
I could almost hear the seconds tick by, and feel the night air tense with our anxious breaths.
Olivier whistled to Marc, who started jogging back to the others, unravelling the electrical wire as he came.
The train appeared around the twist of valley, belching mushrooms of smoke. Heavy with tanks silhouetted against the mountain range, its rhythmical dd-dd-dd-dd seemed more urgent the closer it came.
‘Hurry,’ Gaspard hissed, and they plunged back into the foliage, hunkering behind a rock.
The helmets of the German soldiers perched atop the train gleamed in the moonlight. I stared at them with hatred, those sinister sentries cradling their guns, their eyes peeling the countryside for danger, and saboteurs.
I kneaded my angel talisman harder.
Dd-dd-dd-dd. Faster, it seemed, and deafening, as the train was almost upon us.
‘Go!’ Olivier shrieked. ‘Now! Get down!’
André hit the button and any further sounds were lost as the train exploded in a golden shatter of fireworks. Bursts of sparks fanned into the navy sky, metal shrieking as if it were in agony.
Our hands clamped over our ears, we cowered from shards of flying metal. The Germans were shrieking –– one continual, torturous wail –– their helmets and uniforms flaming torches as they tried to flee the burning wreckage.
The locomotive screamed like a shot horse and groaned as the whole train lurched sideways, cavorted off the rails and crashed into the ravine on the opposite side of the track.
‘Let’s move it,’ Patrick said.
The moonlight lit their smiling faces as they hurtled back along the woodland path to the bicycles.
I breathed out, long and slow. Another success for la Résistance.
3
As the sun reached its blistering peak the following day, we flung our rakes and forks aside and sank down in the shade of the oak tree.
Olivier’s Uncle Claude lost his wife to tuberculosis last winter, leaving him with four young children, and since L’Auberge des Anges no longer cultivated crops, Patrick and I and our friends Juliette and Ghislaine had come to help Uncle Claude with his harvest.
‘I think we’ve earned a dip in the river,’ I said, looking around the circle of my friends. ‘Coming?’
Beneath my shirt, sweat plastered my swimsuit to my skin as we tramped along the ridge towards the river. As children we’d sat here with my father, listening to his tales, and I felt again the pang of his absence.
‘You always stop and look at it,’ Olivier said as we reached the small stone cross immortalising the two children who’d drowned in the river.
‘I can’t help it,’ I said, one hand shielding my eyes against the sun, the fingers of my other tracing around the heart shape carved into the old stone. ‘First the river stole their lives and now sun, ice and frost have robbed them of their names. I feel as if I knew those lost little ancestors.’
‘Come on, you two,’ Patrick called, ‘or there’ll be no time to swim.’
We slithered down the grassy slope to where the Vionne River channelled its timeless notch through the Monts du Lyonnais. Frogs croaked incessantly, a bird whistled a merry chip, chip and the hot breeze shifted the treetops and puckered the surface of the river.
I swiped a palm across my brow as we threaded between the willows that ribboned the banks, Patrick and Olivier teasing and jostling each other as if they were still young schoolboys sneaking off for a swim.
‘Such a magical spot,’ Miette said as we reached our special place, flung our clogs aside and stripped down to our swimsuits.
‘I don’t know about magic,’ Patrick said as he and Olivier waded into the shallows. ‘More like the only safe place nowadays, away from the eyes of the Boche.’
The Boche.
As the coolness of the river numbed my burning feet, I recalled the pale German from the marketplace. I’d spoken to Germans before, of course, but that had been my first real encounter with the enemy. Like all the villagers, I’d watched them arrive earlier that year to occupy Lucie. We’d all stopped what we were doing. Housewives held mops and dusters in mid-air, the clog-maker’s hammer fell silent, the baker stopped kneading his dough and even Père Emmanuel rushed out onto the church steps. It seemed the whole population was standing in shopfronts or leaning over balconies to witness the arrival of the blue-eyed warriors. Officers astride magnificent horses followed the soldiers, motorcycles, and the grey jeeps bearing swastikas. Great armoured tanks pounded the cobblestoned streets and rattled the church windows, small boys brandishing sticks and lengths of wire –– anything from which they could make a gun to fire at the enemy.
Despite their professional-soldier expressions, I saw, beneath the Wehrmacht caps, their guarded looks about the place that was to be their home. And from the shadows, old women folded their arms over their aprons and frowned.
‘I bet they’ll take our best linen,’ one said, with a starchy nod.
‘My mother would turn in her grave,’ said another, ‘if she knew the Boche were sleeping on her sheets.’
The invaders had swerved then, to avoid a cluster of girls skipping rope. They tied their horses up to the lime trees beside the War Memorial on the square and the sound of boots, foreign voices and the rattling of spurs filled la place de l’Eglise.
‘Come on, Céleste,’ Ghislaine called, startling me from my thoughts.
In a few easy strokes I joined the others in the deep pool, a place where the sun’s rays stretched right down to the riverbed; where fish darted like fireflies and moss glowed the most startling green.
I leaned back against a boulder alongside Ghislaine and Olivier, and we tilted our faces to the cascading water. Patrick kept diving deep, clutching Miette’s ankles. She shrieked each time, but we all laughed. It was no secret my brother had been sweet on Juliette Dubois since they were at nursery school together.
‘What’s so interesting down there, Patrick?’ I sa
id. ‘Those creatures from Papa’s stories with a hundred eyes, horns and fins?’
‘All those stories, just to scare you two off swimming,’ Ghislaine said with a laugh.
‘Not that his scary tales ever stopped you,’ Miette said.
Patrick flung an arc of hair from his face. ‘Not us. Félicité maybe.’
‘It wasn’t fear that stopped Félicité,’ I said, the rush of water massaging my harvest-weary shoulders. ‘She just found our games pointless. That’s what she said, “a frivolous waste of time”.’
No, unlike us, our saintly sister never became aware of every ditch of the Vionne, every spot where a whirlpool might snag a person and drag them into the depths. She never learned, like Patrick and I, not to fear la Vionne Violente.
***
We headed back to Uncle Claude’s farm with the afternoon sun beating down on our backs. We’d almost passed the old witch’s hut when I glimpsed a crack of white through the splintered wood.
‘There’s someone inside.’ I clutched Olivier’s arm. So well camouflaged amongst ivy, oak leaves and branches, I’d thought no one besides us knew about the hut.
The white of the eye disappeared and Olivier beckoned to Patrick. As they stepped closer, I heard a whimper, and a gasp, from inside.
‘Hello?’ Patrick called. Even from that distance, I could see the vein in his temple pulsing. ‘Anybody in there?’
No answer.
‘Who’s in here?’ Olivier said.
Still no reply. The ancient hinges whined as he pushed the door, and we stood in silent expectation as our eyes adjusted to the weak light. I squinted at the outline of four people huddled in a corner.
‘Who are you?’ Patrick said.
‘What are you doing in here?’ Olivier said.
The people remained wordless, and I could almost smell their fear –– the terror of hunted prey –– and then I saw it in their wide, dark eyes and on their faces, white as milk.
A thin woman, with the same dark beauty as my sister, clutched a small boy in her arms. The man gripped the hand of a girl about eight or nine years old.
‘Don’t be afraid, we won’t hurt you,’ Patrick said.
The people still didn’t speak; they barely breathed, and the sour air of filth and hunger clung to their soil-streaked clothes.
Olivier nodded. ‘Please, you can trust us.’
I edged forward and laid a hand on the woman’s arm. ‘Don’t be frightened.’ She flinched, and tightened her hold on the child. ‘We wouldn’t harm you.’
‘My name is Sabine Wolf,’ she finally said. She looked up at the man whose round spectacles were foggy with his breath. ‘This is my husband, Max and our children, Talia and Jacob.’
I smiled at the children but they remained motionless, saucer-eyed.
‘We’re from Julien-sur-Vionne,’ the woman went on. ‘The Gestapo came to our street … rushed into people’s homes before they knew what was … we hid … saw them dragging the people –– our friends –– away. They herded them into trucks, like cattle.’ Sabine clutched her little boy even closer to her breast.
‘The Germans didn’t find us,’ her husband said, stroking his ragged beard with quick, rabbity movements. ‘But we knew the trucks would be back. It wasn’t safe to stay. We had nowhere to go so we ran into the woods.’
‘Papa found this hut,’ the girl said, still clasping her father’s hand.
‘What have you been living on?’ I said, looking about the dark, dank place. ‘There’s nowhere to sit, or cook. No place to sleep.’
‘Papa caught a rabbit.’ Talia looked up at her father. ‘And a fat trout in the river. But they tasted awful because Papa says we can’t light fires.’
‘Quiet, Talia,’ her father said, with a prickly glance at his daughter.
Talia was obviously a talkative girl, yet little Jacob remained mute, as if he’d been trained to stay quiet.
‘You can’t stay here,’ I said.
‘No you can’t,’ Miette said. ‘They’ll find you here, eventually.’
‘Nobody can hide from them for long,’ Ghislaine said.
‘I know a place,’ I said, on impulse. ‘It’s small but you’ll be safe, just till we can organise something better.’
‘Are you certain, mademoiselle?’ Sabine said.
‘No, mademoiselle,’ her husband said. ‘It would only cause trouble for you.’
‘Please, call me Céleste. And this is my brother, Patrick, and Olivier, Ghislaine and Miette. And you are no trouble at all. We’re very glad to help, but we have to finish today’s harvesting, so we’ll come later, and take you to our farm.’
‘Can I go home and get Cendres, and bring him to the safe place?’ Talia said.
‘Who’s Cendres?’ Ghislaine said.
‘My cat,’ Talia said. ‘He’s called Cendres because he’s all grey and fluffy, like ash.’
‘You know we can’t go home yet, Talia,’ her father said. ‘Don’t worry about Cendres, he’ll catch plenty of mice for his supper.’
‘So, we’ll see you all later then?’ I said.
‘Yes, it’ll be safer this evening,’ Patrick said.
‘The Boche probably won’t be out and about,’ Olivier said, waving an arm towards the Monts du Lyonnais, from where grey-tinged clouds were gathering. ‘With this storm brewing, they’ll be indoors, scoffing my uncle’s best food and getting drunk on his wine.’
The Germans had come to Uncle Claude’s farm only yesterday, taking cheese and pâté, a side of salted pork, a barrel of oil and several bottles of ill-concealed wine.
They’d not yet visited L’Auberge des Anges to requisition food, animals or anything else they fancied, but our luck wouldn’t last. Nobody could escape them, their presence in Lucie like a persistent, sucking leech.
‘You know Maman will never allow this,’ Patrick said, as we continued on, back to Uncle Claude’s.
‘So what are we supposed to do?’ I said. ‘Leave them here for the Boche to catch?’
‘We can’t let that happen,’ Ghislaine said.
‘Well, no,’ Olivier said, ‘but it’s dangerous to hide people. We could be …’
‘I know it’s dangerous,’ I said, trying to keep the snap from my voice. ‘But now we’ve found this family I can’t turn my back on them.’
‘Couldn’t they go to Félicité?’ Patrick said.
‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘But I need to speak to her first. For now, we need to get them out of that hut, to a dry place, with proper food.’
‘What if somebody finds out?’ Miette said. ‘You know what the village gossips are like.’
‘We’ll just make sure they don’t,’ I said. ‘All of us will keep our mouths shout, and Maman, well …’ I flicked a willow branch aside. ‘Maman wouldn’t say anything to the Gestapo or the French police. She’d hardly want to attract any kind of attention to L’Auberge des Anges, would she?’
4
‘Did you hear about the Resistance coup last night?’ Denise Grosjean said. ‘Everybody in Lucie’s talking about it.’
‘I wouldn’t know anything about that,’ I said, as Ghislaine, Miette and I continued raking the cut grass into piles, and Uncle Claude’s horses kept tramping up and down the field with their slow, measured sway.
Ghislaine gave Denise a sharp look. I knew Ghislaine was aware her brother Marc was part of Patrick’s group, but as ever mistrusting of people like Denise Grosjean we kept ignoring her as we flung the pyramids of grass onto the cart until she finally gave an exasperated sigh and shut up.
As well as constantly fluttering her doe-eyes at Olivier, Denise worked at the post office where, it was said, she read everybody’s letters. She only came to help with Uncle Claude’s harvest in the hope of picking up gossip and, of course, to flirt with Olivier.
By the time the sun slanted low along the bleached grass we were parched again, and slid down against the trunk of an oak tree. Uncle Claude’s other workers –– the city boys who’d come to
Lucie for the harvest work and countryside food –– lounged in the shade of the hedge. The two boys who’d taken refuge on Uncle Claude’s farm to escape Vichy’s compulsory labour service sat with them.
The field ticked with insects, feathery stalks of the still uncut grass haloed in the afternoon sun, and in the distance Mont Blanc shimmered like an ancient volcano. The dogs barked and dashed about with Olivier’s cousins –– the twins, Justin and Gervais, and Paulette and Anne-Sophie –– their grimy cheeks the colour of bruised peaches.
‘They remind me of us as kids,’ I said, watching the twins scale a tree. I sat cross-legged beside Olivier, and passed him the water pitcher. ‘And you and Patrick sniggering at me when I wanted to climb trees too, and saying girls don’t do that. You made me so mad.’
‘Probably why you turned out the best tree-climber in Lucie,’ Ghislaine said.
‘Even better than them.’ Miette nodded at Patrick and Olivier as she handed around the basket of raspberries and gooseberries.
The boys gave us wry smiles, but said nothing, chewing their hunks of bread and saucisson.
‘I suppose I’ll have to be hiding those two,’ Uncle Claude said. My nostrils filled with the sweet aroma of tobacco as the farmer jabbed his pipe at the horses nuzzling across a fence. ‘The Boche’ve demanded everyone take their horses to the Town Hall for more requisitions. I don’t know how we’re supposed to manage without them, especially at harvest time.’
‘Are they paying well?’ Olivier asked.
‘Not likely, son. The going price for a mare is sixty or seventy thousand francs. They’re promising to pay — only promising mind you –– half that.’
‘Do the Boche expect us to work with our bare hands?’ Patrick said.
‘Exactly what I told the mayor,’ Uncle Claude said. ‘And I warned him that if the farmers can’t work properly, the whole village will starve to death. They’ve taken our men,’ he went on, waving his pipe towards the boys hiding from the dreaded labour service. ‘They took our bread, wheat, flour and potatoes. The petrol and the cars went too. And now the horses! What will they take tomorrow?’
