by Perrat, Liza
The bell chimed the end of Mass. ‘Now,’ he said, his expression softening, ‘let us name the Harvest Queen –– she who’ll wear the crown.’
The congregation traipsed outside as the music started up, and people began shouting out the names of the village girls.
‘Juliette Dubois!’ Patrick called. Miette giggled and blushed, though I’m sure she wasn’t the least bit surprised.
‘Agnes Grattaloup!’ Marc Dutrottier cried. Everybody laughed, most of all Agnes, who was close on a hundred and had no idea there was a war going on.
I glanced at Denise, her eyes fixed on Olivier as if willing him to call her name.
‘Céleste Roussel!’ Olivier said.
I thumped his arm. ‘One of your silly jokes?’
Denise’s mouth folded into a pout as she stalked off, her backside wobbling like jam.
In the end André Copeau’s girl, the raven-haired Ghislaine Dutrottier, with eyes her father claimed had caught the sky in them, wore the Harvest Crown. André’s lips spread in a great silly grin as we toasted Ghislaine’s success.
‘Strange, isn’t it?’ Denise said to me. ‘How Ghislaine got those blue eyes when everyone knows that’s impossible, with two dark-eyed parents.’
I shrugged. ‘Who knows, maybe it can happen?’
‘Yes, I suppose anything can happen when odd types mix.’ Denise’s eyes flickered to the Germans, sitting together at the furthest tables.
My pulse quickened, my eyes darting to the soldiers and back to Denise. She couldn’t possibly know about Martin Diehl. Could she? Because if Denise Grosjean found out, the entire village would know. That would be the end of me. And the end of Félicité’s plan.
‘First dance is mine,’ Olivier said, sweeping me from my plate of steaming boudin and roasted apple. He whirled me through the crowd, the odour of ginger snaps, buttery crepes and hot saucisson in my nostrils, the autumn scent of hewn grass in my hair.
‘Did you hear?’ Denise said, sidling up to us again, her mouth bursting with sugary crepe. Whatever she had to say, I was sure it was only another ruse to get Olivier’s attention.
‘People are saying the police know who blew up that factory last week.’ She raised her eyebrows at Olivier, as if expecting him to spill the whole story. ‘The one the Germans use to make parts for tanks and aeroplanes.’
‘Don’t believe everything you hear, Denise,’ Olivier said.
‘Believe me or not,’ she went on, ‘someone in that group is a traitor.’
‘How do you know this?’ I said.
‘Everybody’s talking about it,’ Denise said. ‘Get the potatoes out of your ears, Céleste. It’s only a matter of time before the police arrest the lot of them.’
‘Just another gossipy rumour,’ Olivier said, with a wave of his hand. He let me go and swirled Denise off into the crowd, who, in her giddy excitement, dropped her crepe.
I dropped into a chair beside Patrick and bit into one of Yvon Monbeau’s perfectly risen soufflés. ‘Do you think it’s true?’
‘Denise Grosjean talks straight from her fat arse,’ Patrick said. ‘Everything that comes out is merde.’
Despite my brother’s casual reassurances, I kept glancing nervously at the boys, but they continued swaggering about, grinning and getting drunker on beer and atmosphere. I did catch a few whispers though, between André, Marc and Gaspard, and Olivier’s foot tapping up, down, up, down.
‘To le maréchal!’ Fritz Frankenheimer cried, raising his beer glass.
‘To Marshal Pétain!’ the other Germans echoed.
Everyone looked around, and it seemed each of us was trying to mask our reluctance as we raised our glasses with the Germans to old man Pétain.
The chemist’s wife, Madame Laforge, lifted her gaze skyward and, behind the Boche’s backs, people started sending their usual little signals to each other.
‘They think we like them,’ Miette’s mother confided to mine. ‘When all we really like is swindling them. I mean everybody knows the grocer is watering down the milk he sells them, and charging a hundred francs for a bottle of Chablis.’
‘Olivier’s uncle is charging them five francs for a single egg,’ Ginette Monbeau said with a laugh. ‘Not to mention those pigs Claude slaughters illegally, selling the meat to the Boche at an outrageous price.’
‘Well let’s hope they’ll all soon be at the bottom of the English Channel,’ Maman said with a scornful sneer.
Yes, it seemed we’d invented a whole language of gestures and remarks to show we were still free in spirit, whilst under the thumb of the fair-haired occupiers.
I was sure the Germans noticed our sly exchanges but since so few of them understood French, they appeared to interpret them as admiration for their powerful physiques, their confidence, their starched uniforms, and kept smiling politely at us.
I hadn’t noticed him approaching, but Martin Diehl’s tall frame appeared, looming over me. He offered a creamy hand. I caught Maman’s disapproving stare, and hesitated. But all the villagers were dancing with Germans, and the drums and brass instruments that gave the tunes a victorious, heroic tone urged me to dance. After all, it had been forbidden for so long, it would be a shame to waste that rare occasion for which they’d waived the ban, not to mention the opportunity to delve a little deeper into the mind of Martin Diehl.
I flicked Maman a defiant look, tugged my dress down and took his hand. As he pulled me close and we danced to Edith Piaf’s rich voice belting out L’Accordéoniste, I was sure the officer could feel my heart pummelling against his chest, or at least hear its rapid beats. I wondered if his heart too, was drumming with the first tenuous throbs of our unofficial combat.
I glanced across at Maman again and almost laughed aloud as Karl Gottlob took her hand, muttered something close to her ear and forced her into a jig. They moved together like a single stiff rake, Karl with his mean cat-eyes and Maman obviously struggling not to cringe.
All the Germans joined in, singing the loudest with their throaty accents and with such gusto you’d have thought they truly belonged in Lucie. Fritz Frankenheimer looked like a pig in high heels, dancing with Agnes Grattaloup, who appeared to be enjoying herself without any notion that her partner was a Boche.
Oh yes, to the unknowing eye it must have looked like one great, frolicsome celebration.
‘I would have voted you Harvest Queen,’ Martin said. ‘Especially if you were wearing your nylons.’ He lowered his steady gaze to my legs.
I felt the blood rush to my face. ‘Don’t be silly, as if I could wear them here. Besides, Ghislaine’s the prettiest girl in Lucie, she deserves to be Harvest Queen. Anyway, who really cares about a silly crown?’
‘I would still have voted for you,’ Martin said with a smooth smile. ‘And I have another present for you. Do you want us to meet later? Near six o’clock?’
I thought for a minute, trying to master my rearing apprehension.
‘I know a good spot,’ I said. ‘Behind the Community Hall. There’s a secluded copse. Just cross over rue Emile Zola and walk up a bit. We won’t be seen there.’
My mind suspended in a blur of agitation, I barely recalled the rest of the festivities. I paid no attention to the whisper blowing across the square like a sly breeze; the rumour that a group of Lucie’s resistors had blown up a factory and taken German lives.
***
On the sixth chime of the church bell, I slunk away from la place de l’Eglise, alongside the church wall posters of Pétain’s fatherly face, a shiver rippling through me as I stepped into the shade of the mustard-coloured lime leaves.
I inhaled the sap-sweet air, the light shining a brilliant red-gold as the sun followed its westward arc towards the hills. I crossed rue Emile Zola and kept walking up to the Community Hall, continually scanning the street for curious eyes.
Once behind the building, I slid into the thicket. Camouflaged in his almond-green uniform, I almost didn’t see Martin Diehl leaning against the oak trunk, his
long legs entwined at the ankles.
‘I am happy you came, Céleste,’ he said, as he removed his jacket and spread it on the ground.
Fearful of saying the wrong thing, I kept silent as we sat side by side. Martin dragged a parcel from a pocket, and I tore the paper and pulled out a chocolate bar and a cylinder of lipstick.
‘You shouldn’t have. You spoil me.’
He took the gold-coloured cylinder. ‘Make like this with your lips,’ he said, pursing his own, and I struggled to stop my mouth quivering as he painted my lips with the scarlet-coloured gloss.
He leaned back, the blond head cocked as if admiring his art work. ‘So now, mam’zelle-I-like-to-win, I put you a challenge. You must eat all of the chocolate without smudging this lipstick.’
‘Easy,’ I said and began to eat the chocolate carefully, slowly, my lips spread wide. Besides the urge to meet his challenge, I’d not tasted real chocolate for so long and wanted to make it last.
‘Stop your tickling,’ I said, flicking his hand from my side, trying to mask the unease his touch stirred in me. ‘That’s cheating.’
I finished the chocolate and licked the silver paper, my mouth still stretched wide, and once it was clean I turned my unsmudged lips to him.
‘Look, perfect lipstick. Told you I liked to win.’
‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘So you did.’
He caught my hand, forcing me to meet his gaze. ‘Did you know your eyes are the same colour as the river? Grey-green, as the Vionne in a storm … river eyes and autumn hair.’
River eyes and autumn hair. It sounded like a famous actress.
‘Fiery hair, my mother says,’ I said. ‘To match a flaming temper. Though she’s the one with the real temper.’
‘I understand what you say,’ Martin said. ‘My mother was always preferring my two brothers over me.’
‘Mine too,’ I said, my lips curving in sympathy for that clever Boche boy who chose his words as precisely as he picked out the largest, ripest cherry from the mound at a market stall. ‘Oh I know I’m not beautiful and smart like my sister, or the funny, likeable Patrick. I was the difficult middle one; the disappointment who wasn’t a boy to take over Papa’s carpentry business. I wasn’t even meant to survive birth.’
‘This is a strange thing to say, Céleste Roussel.’ His eyes didn’t shift from my face, as if he was truly interested; as if he sympathised with my childhood –– the woeful tale I hoped would encourage him to reveal things about his own past.
‘I was born early,’ I went on, easing my hand from his. ‘I came out blue and they couldn’t get me to breathe for ages. That’s why my father chose the name Célestine, because it’s a fragile mineral, which is sometimes blue. You’d think a mother would want to protect a baby like that, wouldn’t you? But to her I was simply the weakling, nuisance girl-child who needed extra looking after.’
‘But what a prize jewel Célestine became.’
‘Nobody calls me Célestine, except my mother.’
I paused, gathering my thoughts, trying to find that blend of friendliness, shyness and flattery; that mastery of conversation to get him on side.
‘I want to get my Bac,’ I went on. ‘You know, the Baccalauréat? Do you have that in Germany? And study at university and get a good job, but my mother wants me to stay in Lucie, on the farm, get married and have a swarm of babies. Just like Marshal Pétain want ––’
I clamped a hand across my mouth, as if chiding myself for revealing too much. ‘Oh dear, I don’t suppose I should be saying that to a …’
‘You can tell me what you want,’ Martin said. ‘Nothing we say to each other goes further than here. Deal?’ He took my hand again and gave it a brief squeeze.
‘Deal,’ I said. He didn’t drop my hand and I resisted a shudder, as his index finger grazed my palm.
‘So your brother is taking up the family business?’ he said.
‘My father was training him to become a carpenter,’ I said, my internal antennae twitching at his mention of Patrick.
‘That is until Papa left to work for … for the Reich. The clamp tightened around my heart again, at the thought of my dear father working for the enemy.
‘Your brother does not appear to do a lot of wood-work,’ he said. ‘Always in the village, hanging about and chatting with his friend. What is his name, the friend?’
‘Olivier.’ I saw no harm in saying his name; Martin could easily have discovered everything about Olivier. ‘Yes, they’ve been friends –– we all have –– since we were kids.’
‘They are not interested to work in Germany?’ he said.
‘No, of course not.’ The very idea made me feel ill. ‘Anyway, they’re not even nineteen yet, not old enough.’
He stood and pulled me to my feet. I thought he was about to try to kiss me again, and I skittered away from his hold.
‘I must be going back for supper,’ he said, lean fingers flickering across the almond-green trousers as he brushed them down. ‘I do not live at the barracks like the soldiers. Officers are billeted. I am at the Delaroche house.’
I nodded. ‘I know of the Delaroche house –– fancy, a castle almost.’
‘Yes, and like the good aristocrat, they eat on time. I must not keep them waiting.’
‘You know it’s dangerous for us to meet like this,’ I said. ‘On a normal day when people are bustling about everywhere. I could be severely punished. Shot even. Perhaps we should find a safer place?’
‘What of the riverbank, where you were swimming after the cinema?’
‘The riverbank?’ I said. ‘Well yes, I suppose it’s the perfect spot. It’s too cold to swim now, so nobody will go back till next summer.’
‘We could meet there one time a week, on my day off … if that is what you want, Céleste? As we said, we can leave messages in the toilet of the bar, if something happens and we cannot make it.’
I remained silent for a minute, raking together a suitable answer –– something that would make me sound eager for secret meetings; nothing that would betray my tightening nerves as I acknowledged we’d rolled the first dice, neither of us knowing whose number would come up.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Yes, I’d like that.’
Martin smiled. ‘Very good. So, gute Nacht, Céleste Roussel. Schlaf gut.’
‘And gute Nacht to you too, Martin Diehl.’ It felt odd, saying the words in German, but I forced them, endearing myself to the officer and his hateful language.
As he slipped from the thicket, he laughed, perhaps at my accent, or my vulnerability, and how easily he imagined he was going to win the game; as simple as skimming river stones further than the next person.
I stood in the shadows for a moment, capturing the last haughty echoes of his voice.
11
We’d chosen to ignore the gossip flitting around at the Harvest Festival, so when they came to L’Auberge des Anges the following morning it was a jolt that startled me from my dreams like the bang of a single gunshot.
My eyes snapped open. I leapt up and ran to the window. Three black Citroën Tractions screeched into the courtyard. Seven or eight men, perhaps ten, in black uniforms, leapt from the cars and thudded up the steps.
I stumbled into the hallway, and down the stairs, at the same time as Patrick and Maman. Black-gloved hands levelled pistols at our faces and, from a pocket, one of them pulled a bronze badge bearing an eagle and a swastika.
‘Gestapo,’ he said, through a moustache the colour of old tobacco, and barked a stream of commands at his men. I didn’t understand a single word, which only heightened my fear.
My trembling hand clutched Patrick’s arm as we shuffled into the kitchen. Maman didn’t even blink and I detected only the slightest quiver of her upper lip. I thought of Max and his family, hoping they’d taken refuge in the partition behind the panel. There hadn’t even been time to remember the plan, to stand below the pull-down ladder and cough twice.
‘What do you want with us?’ my
mother said without the slightest grace.
‘Very sorry to disturb you, madame,’ the Gestapo man said. ‘But we’ve received information that a Resistance worker resides here. Patrick Roussel. We’d like to question him over the recent explosion at a factory, in which three German guards perished.’
‘I’m Patrick Roussel.’ My brother stepped forward, the vein in his temple pulsing like a panicked butterfly. ‘Don’t harm my mother or sister. They’ve done nothing wrong.’
‘We have no intention of harming your family,’ the moustached man said. ‘But we have orders to search these premises. The sooner we get it done, the sooner we can leave you in peace. So please, the ladies will wait here in the kitchen and you come with us, boy.’
He took my brother’s arm and headed directly for the cellar, as if he instinctively knew where it was, or someone had clearly explained to him the layout of L’Auberge.
Without a word, my mother and I sat opposite each other at the table. The men opened drawers and upturned Maman’s sugar, flour and coffee canisters that bore faded harvest scenes from last century. They inspected her gleaming pots and pans hanging from the rack above the cupboards, though what they expected we could conceal in them, I couldn’t imagine.
Maman didn’t give them a single glance, but stared straight ahead, her spine rigid, her arms folded tightly in her lap. I slid the egg-timer towards me and flipped it upside down.
‘… rice, noodles, salt, tins of sardines …’ we could hear the Gestapo man saying, from the cellar.
I kept my eyes on the stream of sand trickling slowly, surely, into the lower bulb of the egg-timer, as the Rubie clock tock-tocked its rhythmic, melancholy tones.
‘Black market … only for the black market,’ Patrick was saying, trying to fob him off with the cover story.
‘… Resistance group … informed … meetings,’ the man went on.
‘No, no … black market only,’ Patrick insisted.
No doubt the Gestapo officer suspected my brother was lying; that he was attempting to pass himself off as nothing more than a small-time black market dealer, but once the Gestapo discovered the propaganda sheets, the guns and dynamite, he would have certain proof of his suspicions.
