by Perrat, Liza
The Germans patted their stomachs and got up, retrieving their caps and overcoats. Most of them left the bar, with their cackling, throaty laughs. The two who remained started moving amongst the lunch patrons, demanding their papers.
‘Ihre Papiere bitte,’ one of them said, his pale bulk towering over me.
The hand holding my spoon began shaking, soup dribbling across the table.
I fumbled in my bag for my identity papers and handed them to the officer. How sickening it was to have to submit to inspection by those people when all I wanted was to get on with my job.
‘Name?’
‘Gabrielle Fontaine.’
‘Occupation?’
‘Nurse.’
‘Date of birth?’
‘October 20, 1920.’ The first part was true, at least. My false papers made me three years older. Dr. Laforge reasoned that twenty-three seemed more likely for a trained nurse.
It had been easy enough to tell my cover story convincingly but seeing the details of my masquerade set out coldly and officially in the hands of a German gave me a shock. My photograph and the fine purple etchings of my fingerprints stared at me from the printed card as if it all said, “One Big Lie”.
‘Why are you shaking so, mam’zelle?’ he said, with a malicious grin. ‘What have you got to be nervous about?’
‘I’m not nervous. It’s nothing. It’s just …. I’m late. I need to get back to the hospital. There are patients who need me.’
‘You’d better get a move on then,’ he said with a sneer, handing me back my papers.
I resisted the urge to spit in his face, paid my bill and walked out of the café.
***
I spent the afternoon alone at the hospital. Dr. Laforge said it would look suspicious if we were seen together too often. There were far more visitors to the hospital in the afternoon, and fewer medical teams, and I understood why the doctor believed it would be safer to carry out the escape operation in the afternoon.
At 3.50 pm I went to the ground floor, recalling my instructions.
Shift change at four pm. Nobody there for a few minutes while they smoke a cigarette together before the new guard takes up his post. Check exactly how long post remains unmanned.
I nodded at the same guard as the morning, seated close to room 6.
‘How’s this assignment?’ I said, in a friendly voice. ‘Not too boring?’
He gave me a rueful grin. ‘Could be worse.’
The man seemed pleasant enough; the type who probably had a wife and children waiting for him at home, and it was hard to accept I might have to kill him. I wasn’t convinced I could murder anyone at all.
I entered room 6. Eight beds.
When I saw Patrick and Olivier’s battered bodies; their skin blistered with grime, I clamped a hand over my mouth and stopped myself from rushing to them. Their blackened eyes and the smears of dried blood trailing from their noses –– swollen to twice-normal size –– told a tale of torture. Teeth were missing from mouths that resembled open wounds. I wanted to bundle them up right then and take them home. They managed thin, bewildered smiles as I approached.
I took Patrick’s temperature, the perfect excuse to lean close to him.
‘Ate th-the sw-weets,’ my brother stammered. I reached for his hand, hiding it from the other patients. Though the rest of the sick prisoners, too weak from similar beatings, didn’t look the least bit interested.
I squeezed Patrick’s hand; it was hot and clammy. Good, the typhus was still keeping him feverish. ‘We’re getting you out,’ I whispered. ‘The day after tomorrow hopefully.’
I moved across to Olivier. ‘It will be as if they’re taking you both off for a Gestapo interrogation. Play your part, but don’t overdo it.’
Olivier clutched my hand, a faint light shining from his dark eyes, beyond the patchwork of bruises.
I left the room, my steps brisk to mask my shaking limbs.
The guard checked his watch and nodded at me as he got up and moved off down the corridor. ‘Au revoir, mademoiselle.’
‘See you tomorrow,’ I called in the chirpy voice.
I entered the next room, busied myself taking more temperatures, and counting the minutes before the next duty guard took up his post.
A far-off church bell chimed four o’clock. Five minutes. That’s all we’d have to get them out.
25
Dusk had already darkened the city by the time Dr. Laforge and I left Jacqueline’s flat after our debriefing. We almost bumped into a young woman cradling a baby, as she came in the front door.
‘How’s young Samuel doing, Ellie?’ the doctor said, patting the baby on the head.
‘He’s over his cold,’ the woman said. ‘Thanks to your treatment, doctor, which I insist on paying you for, as soon as ––’
Dr. Laforge waved an arm. ‘Don’t worry about that.’ He dropped his voice. ‘I’m more concerned about you and the child, here in Lyon. Have you thought about what I said; about new papers?’
‘Thank you, doctor,’ Ellie said. ‘But Samuel and I are leaving the city shortly. I’m taking him to the countryside.’
‘Well, just let Jacqueline know,’ he said, ‘if you change your mind.’
She nodded and started climbing the stairs. Baby Samuel wriggled a fist from his wrap and it bounced up and down in the air like a little drummer’s baton, in perfect rhythm to his mother’s steps.
‘Can you drop me off at the convent please?’ I said as we drove off in Dr. Laforge’s Traction. ‘I need to let my sister know the boys are still all right. I’ll make certain nobody hears us talking.’
Forty minutes later we pulled up at the foot of the slope from which the convent towered like a decrepit haunted mansion.
‘It’ll soon be gone curfew time,’ he said. ‘You’d best stay the night at the convent. I’ll pick you up in the morning for our next shift at the Antiquaille.’
I stepped out of the car. ‘Okay. Goodnight then, doctor.’
‘You did well today, Gabrielle.’
‘Thank you. As I told you, I’ll do whatever it takes.’ I waved goodbye and walked the rest of the way.
The same nun from my first visit opened the door. Without waiting for me to say anything, she ushered me inside, and it struck me that all the nuns were likely aware of the convent’s illicit business of concealing people.
‘Sister Marie-Félicité is in the kitchen,’ she said, a hand on her beads to still them. ‘I’ll take you straight to her.’
I followed the rustle of her skirts down the dank hallway, past the piled-up shoe cubbies where the children stored polish, rags and brushes.
The same pale light bathed the kitchen, drenched in the stink of old cabbage and cooking fat. My sister was sitting at the table with two other nuns, sewing by candlelight. She looked up at me and lay her darning on the waxed red cloth.
She rose in a swish of black and white, and kissed me on both cheeks. ‘Sit, Céleste. You look exhausted. I’ll fix you something to eat and drink.’
‘We’ll leave you to talk with your sister,’ one of the other nuns said. They both gathered up their embroidery and left the room, their coifs glinting in the candlelight.
I sank into a chair as Félicité crossed to the stove, and stood over one of the copper-handled cauldrons, her rosary beads clack-clacking softly as she stirred something that smelled of fish.
In hushed tones I told her about my day at the hospital.
‘Nothing can go wrong,’ I said, wringing my hands. ‘It’s our –– the boys’ –– only chance.’
She fingered her silver cross. ‘Patrick and Olivier will be all right,’ she said. ‘I feel it. They’ll survive this war.’
I grappled about my neck, but there was only a great gap where the pendant usually sat –– a space that seemed to penetrate the layers of my skin and, in that instant, I regretted leaving it with Martin.
‘You’re not wearing your angel?’ she said, placing a plate of fish stew
before me.
‘I left it with … I left it at L’Auberge. I hoped my sister didn’t detect the timorous crackle in my voice; my guilt at failing my mission with the German officer.
Love for Martin Diehl had come upon me as swiftly, and unexpectedly, as a March snowstorm. My feelings defined, my doubts flushed away, I found it hard to picture myself before, in a time we’d not been in love. I wanted to tell my sister how sweet it was; to explain those moments of petrified joy when I was with him and the aching desperation when we were separated. Not to mention the relief that dreamy love gave me from my hostile days with Maman. I wanted to tell her how, finally, I felt like a human being, in control of my own life.
If only I could share my dark secret –– that whole world beyond the one in which I fought to rid France of that same, hated man.
‘I’m not to wear anything conspicuous; nothing to identify me as Céleste Roussel. You’re to call me Gabrielle now.’
Marie-Félicité nodded. ‘Very prudent.’
‘How are the … the Faviers? Can I see them?’
She shook her head. ‘They went to their room straight after dinner. It’s like that most evenings.’
‘They’re all right, aren’t they?’
‘Bless them,’ Félicité said, the beads slipping mechanically through her fingers. ‘Sabine still puts on her cheery face, and dances to entertain everyone. She was obviously quite the ballerina before all this. But Max is fed up. His paintings tell the story –– wild splashes of colour that don’t make a lot of sense. He’s more and more fearful for his family and, of course, for us. I can tell Sabine is concerned about … about his mental state.’
‘Poor man.’
‘But the children are well,’ she said. ‘They both send you lots of kisses.’
‘I’d love to see them,’ I said, aligning my knife and fork on my empty plate. ‘Just for a minute.’
‘Jacob sleeps with his parents in their room,’ she said. ‘I don’t like disturbing them in the evenings, but Talia sleeps in the dormitory with the other girls.’ She got up. ‘She might be asleep already but come on, let’s see.’
I followed my sister upstairs to one of the girls’ dormitories. The silence made the room seem larger, and the scant light from the single bulb left pockets of shadow over the straight rows of beds, separated by small tables. Behind the windows, between which hung a wooden crucifix, the little girls’ breath floated through the air in frail gusts of vapour.
I gazed down at the sleeping Talia, her hair splayed across the pillow like the wingspan of a blackbird.
‘Keep safe, my Talia,’ I said, giving her a quick kiss on the forehead.
Talia screwed up her nose and turned over, but didn’t wake.
‘Let us all keep safe,’ Félicité said, as we tiptoed from the dormitory.
26
I returned to the hospital the following morning.
‘Bonjour, monsieur,’ I said to the same guard sitting outside room 6. ‘Cold out today, isn’t it?’
‘Touch of snow in the air, mademoiselle,’ he said, patting his hip. ‘So the old joints tell me.’
I saw Patrick and Olivier once more, both still feverish and horribly ill looking.
‘This afternoon,’ I murmured, as I took their temperatures. They answered with feeble nods, and closed their swollen eyes.
The morning crawled by. I busied myself pacing corridors and wards, glancing at patients’ charts from time to time, not daring to go near the boys again. I rehearsed my part, over and over.
Afternoon finally came, and my pulse quickened when I saw one of the two stolen Wehrmacht cars enter the courtyard –– a black Traction of the type the French and German police used, complete with fake license plates and German stickers on the windscreen. I recognised Pierre, my male nurse contact from the café, as the driver.
The other stolen car, an ambulance van, drove into the courtyard behind the Traction. Pierre and the three other “Gestapo” agents leapt from the two vehicles and marched into the building.
I could hardly believe it was really happening, and was thankful there wasn’t a second to dwell on what we were doing; the danger we were courting. I hurried back along the corridor to the prisoners’ section.
‘Must be nearly home time for you?’ I said to the guard. ‘I bet you’ll be glad to be out of that chair?’
He checked his watch. ‘Another minute and I’ll be a free man, mademoiselle.’ He sighed and tapped his fingertips against the barrel of his gun.
I thought of two others who, with luck, would also soon be free men.
A minute passed. The guard checked his watch again, got up and moved off down the corridor, his boots squeaking on the waxed floor.
The guard had not quite reached the exit when the fake Gestapo agents appeared in the corridor.
God help us, the rescuers had arrived a few vital seconds too soon.
The guard stopped. ‘Can I help you?’ he said to the “Gestapo” agents.
‘The presence of two prisoners is required immediately at Montluc Prison,’ one of them demanded in a German accent.
‘You’ll need permission from the hospital director to take any of the patients away,’ the guard said.
The “Gestapo” men remained motionless, as if they didn’t know what to say or do next.
‘You can’t just march in and take them like that,’ the guard went on.
‘We have orders from SS Obersturmführer Barbie,’ the agent with the German accent said. ‘To take two prisoners from room 6 for interrogation.’
‘I told you, the hospital director must give his authorisation,’ the guard repeated. ‘You can’t ––’
Before he could finish speaking one of the “Gestapo” struck him across the head with his gun. The man crumpled to the floor.
I felt a queasy jab of pity for him, thankful to see his chest was still rising and falling.
But there wasn’t a second to worry about an unconscious guard, as the agents pushed past me into room 6 and began sliding Patrick and Olivier onto the stretchers.
I stayed in the corridor keeping watch, my legs quivering so much I thought they’d give out on me. People would surely come running any second. The guard still lay on the floor, unmoving.
The agents moved out of room 6 with Patrick and Olivier on the stretchers and started hurrying back along the corridor. I ripped my hospital gown off, stuffed it into my bag and tore after them.
The agents were almost out of the entrance when the hospital director appeared, flanked by two new guards. Other staff members were also gathering around.
‘Arrêtez-vous!’ the director shouted. ‘Where are you taking those prisoners?’ His eyes flickered to the guard sprawled across the floor.
The new guards gripped me by the arms and sandwiched me between them. ‘What’s going on here, mademoiselle?’
I couldn’t speak, or move. All I could do was shake my head. I couldn’t stop shaking it. I could hear the director in room 6 on the telephone, signalling the breakout.
The guards kept a firm grip on me. ‘Well, mademoiselle?’ It felt as if my heart had stopped beating, but I remained wordless as the German-accented “Gestapo” man, with one of the others, reappeared in front of us.
A coldness froze me as, with steady hands, they raised their guns and shot both the guards in the face.
Their grips on me slackened. I shook their clinging fingers off and raced after the two fake agents, out of the building. Behind me, the shouts of the hospital director beat against my eardrums.
The ambulance van containing Patrick, Olivier, Pierre and another “agent” had already sped off. I dived into the Traction with the other two “Gestapo”, the driver hurtling off before we’d shut the doors.
I barely breathed, gripping the door-handle as the car screeched out of the courtyard and onto the street. As we careened away from the hospital, I let my breath out, but my heart still banged so hard against my chest it hurt.
‘Ho
ld tight,’ the driver said, as I heard the roar behind us. ‘Motorcycle on our tail.’
27
The police motorcycle caught up with us in less than a minute. I kept my head bent low, not daring to glance through the rear window.
Our driver sped up as we left the narrow streets of the old district of Lyon and reached the wider road that headed westward. The motorcycle clung to our tail.
‘Oh God, oh God,’ I kept saying in a panicked kind of whimper.
The two “Gestapo” agents didn’t say a word but the driver’s knuckles blanched as he gripped the steering wheel.
I stole a quick glance behind. The motorcycle was pulling out into the middle of the road to overtake us. So close it was, I could see the determination in the rider’s eyes. He drew level with us, then his eyes widened for less than a second as an oncoming van slammed head-on into the motorcycle.
I shrieked, the blood pulsing hard in my head, as our vehicle swerved to avoid the van. I snatched only a glimpse of the horrific smash littering the road behind.
‘That got rid of him, at least,’ the German-accented agent said with a smirk.
As we continued west, towards the Monts du Lyonnais, passing through familiar villages, I took in great gulps of air. I was still unable to utter a single word. We were soon driving through the autumn golds and crimsons of the foothills, violet fringes of heather lapping the slopes. We passed the Julien-sur-Vionne turn-off, then the road that led to Lucie, and when we’d climbed the hill to the village of Saint Martin-en-Haut, the driver veered off onto a dirt track.
‘You know why this is a good place to hide people?’ the driver said to me.
I shook my head. ‘No idea.’
‘Because the Boche absolutely hate driving up hills. They avoid coming here at all costs. Stupid pigs.’
The men laughed as the Traction bumped along the rutted track and I thought of how Marie-Félicité’s convent, too, stood on a hill.
We stopped in front of a small, tumbledown farm at the end of the stony, isolated track. I recognised Dr. Laforge’s car parked beside a chestnut tree. The ambulance van was there too, Pierre and the other fake agents unloading the stretchers and carrying Patrick and Olivier inside.
