‘I’ll call you next week.’
‘Which day?’
‘I don’t know. When I’m back. Sorry, but—’
‘Back from where?’
‘Next week. You’re full of questions, aren’t you?’
‘But I may not be here! I’m a businessman, I can’t sit around all day just in the hope—’
‘We’ll have to chance it, that’s all. I am sorry.’
She hung up.
He must have been there when she’d called, she realized, and the man who’d answered had given him the option of not calling her back. Instant cut-out. And then any monitor on this line would have thought the subject was l’amour, a blind date in prospect – introduction by courtesy of the absent ‘César’, perhaps – and she’d been playing hard to get.
Which she had, of course. And so far, so good… Break the ice at Chez Jacqui this afternoon, find the garage afterwards. Back to the Bonhommes then – by bicycle, with any luck – and make an early start in the morning. With some food to keep one going, en route. The Bonhommes seemed to have plenty to spare. The barter system, she guessed: bread – which like everything else was rationed – in exchange for whatever else they’d want.
More than you’d get here, anyway. A plate of scraps – to be washed down with cold ersatz coffee now. Her thoughts drifted back to César – whose absence was convenient in a way, in the short term and for her own immediate purposes, but still worrying… She had enough of these rather pressing tasks to keep her busy for the time being, but by Tuesday, say – what if he wasn’t at the Belle Femme then?
To start with, tell Baker Street. She’d have to get out of town again to do it, and that would be her third transmission. The first – tomorrow – would report her own arrival, that she’d been in contact with Romeo but not yet with César, and that Louis had heard that a safe house in Lyon, Pension d’Alsace, was in German hands. Then tomorrow night or the day after, after seeing this Resistance character in Lyons-la-Forêt, a signal confirming that the drops should go ahead as planned.
Romeo had sounded all right, she thought. She’d been left with a reasonably good feeling about him. Although how one could possibly tell, from a brief and flippant exchange like that one, might have been hard to explain. Perhaps that flippancy was the key: a traitor might have tried harder to express concern for César, for instance.
Actually, he’d played it rather well. Brash salesman on the make. She sat back, lit a cigarette, thinking that she’d call him next after the Tuesday rendezvous with César. Knowing rather more clearly where she was by then: even – touch wood – where César was.
‘Want anything else?’
She glanced up at the waiter. ‘Such as?’
‘Well.’ A shrug. ‘There’s some cheese…’
‘No. But tell me – how would one get to Rue Bras-de-Fer?’
Rubbing his jaw. Muttering, ‘Bras-de-Fer…’ Then a nod: ‘Hold on.’ She saw him talking to the cashier: getting her bill at the same time. A shadow filled the doorway suddenly, blocking out the sunlight: a big man, civilian clothes, standing there with his hands in his pockets, staring in. His face was too dark to see, against the light, but she sensed that he was German: a type like those at the station who’d arrested Guillaume.
He was still there. Staring at her?
She was acutely conscious of the sample-case under the table between her feet, with the radio inside it.
Could they have traced that call?
Telephones were anything but secure. Baker Street’s advice was not to use them. But they’d given her Romeo’s contact number. And she’d cut it as short as possible…
The waiter was tapping his own forehead as he came back to her: muttering ‘Of course, of course…’ And the room had brightened, the doorway was empty, unobstructed. Not that it would be wise to count chickens… The waiter put down a grubby piece of paper with pencilled figures on it, told her ‘It’s in the direction of the Gare Rive Droite, more or less. From here you’d – well, straight up Rue Jeanne d’Arc. Quite a step, mind you: Or are you cycling?’
‘No—’
‘Well, keep on to where you cross Boulevard de la Marne. Sort of curve to the right and then left, more or less: there’s a fork, you can go up either Boulevard de l’Yser – then Bras-de-Fer’s on your left – or Rue de l’Avalasse—’
‘In which case it’s on my right.’
‘Precisely… You pay at the counter, mam’selle.’
* * *
It was only a short stroll to Chez Jacqui. Just as well, considering the trek she was in for later. It would be only one-way on foot, of course, as long as this Pigot had a bicycle for her.
But now – Jacqueline Clermont, alias ‘La Minette’…
A soldier – German – was staring at her, as she paused outside the brasserie, getting herself orientated. She turned away, dropped the stub of her cigarette and put her toe on it, then crossed the road and started across the old market – past the monument marking the spot where Joan had been burnt at her stake. She’d read somewhere that when they were burnt in that way it wasn’t as horrible as one might imagine, that they suffocated in smoke before the flames got to them. Might depend on the direction of the wind, she guessed. Picturing it: the devout, self-justifying executioners in a circle around the roaring flames, the nineteen-year-old girl’s face perhaps still visible above them.
Screaming? Praying?
For their souls, perhaps.
Slanting over to the right, into Rue de la Pie. Passing more swastika banners and a German lout on guard at a centuries-old stone doorway. Burn him, she thought…
But would you? Even one of them – if you had the chance? Could you?
Probably not. And they’d regard that as weakness. They’d burn you, all right.
Rue de Fontenelle. It was a long, narrowish slot of a street between uneven half-timbered frontages; Jacqueline Clermont’s hairdressing salon was on the other side and down towards the river.
8
The street door clicked shut behind her, and the dark girl fixing a stout, blonde woman’s hair glanced round expectantly. There were two other customers, both under driers. Rosie’s first thought was that Jacqueline Clermont in her former, part-time employment wouldn’t have needed to exert herself exactly to get any man into bed… The smile was fading, though: as if she was surprised to see a face she didn’t know. Taking in Rosie’s looks – clothes, hair, and the sample case.
‘Be with you in a moment. If you’d take a seat?’
She was an inch or so taller than Rosie – after allowing for higher heels. Long black hair swept back: elegantly slim neck. Full mouth, eyebrows arching over wide-set slanting eyes. You could see her mother’s Italian blood in her, for sure. She was about Rosie’s own age. She’d reached to touch a bell-push; it rang on the other side of a curtained doorway, and almost immediately a younger girl – contrastingly ordinary-looking, in a pale blue smock identical to her employer’s – came pushing through it.
‘See to Madame Dettrier please, Estelle.’
‘Yes… Was I too long?’
‘No, it’s all right…’ Stepping back. ‘We’ll give it just five minutes.’ She left the blonde one – might have been a touch-up job done there, Rosie thought – and came over to her, smiling. ‘Sorry to have kept you waiting.’ Sensational figure, under the smock: Rosie felt envious. Also, that this was somehow unreal: you’d discussed her, thought about her, made your guesses and built tentative, possibly farfetched hopes around her, and suddenly here she was – asking ‘You’d like an appointment?’ Getting a closer look at Rosie’s hair… ‘Yes. Well… But it’ll have to be next week, I’m afraid.’
‘You must be good, to be so busy.’
‘At the end of the week I do tend to be. Busy, that is. It’s when everyone wants to come, and I close on Fridays at midday, open again midday Mondays. Monday afternoon, I might fit you in. Or Tuesday?’
She had her appointment book open and a pencil
poised: glancing round to check on what was happening behind her. Rosie told her. ‘Tuesday’d be best. But there’s another thing – I mean I do want something done about this mop, but also I’d like an opportunity to tell you about our range of perfumes – Maison Cazalet, in Paris. The perfumes originate in Grasse of course, but—’
‘I did wonder what you had in that little case. But frankly, my dear, I rather doubt—’
‘Only a few minutes, just to tell you about them, let you try the samples?’
‘We could talk about it when you come in, I suppose.’ She shrugged. ‘Can’t very well stop a customer talking, can I?’ Another glance over her shoulder… ‘God knows there are times one would like to.’ A smile: ‘Tuesday morning?’
‘Could it be early?’
‘Nine o’clock?’
‘Perfect. We might come to a sale-or-return arrangement. If you were interested. Monsieur Cazalet’s concern is to have a stockist here in Rouen, another perhaps in Amiens—’
‘Amiens!’ The blonde woman let out a snort of laughter. ‘You might help her there – eh, Jacqui?’
‘I might, I dare say.’ An upward movement of her eyes indicated that she’d heard this kind of thing before, and that it bored her. Rosie looked at her hopefully, waiting to hear what the Amiens connection might be – apart from Colonel Walther’s headquarters being there, which would also account for this business being closed at weekends, in the absence of its proprietor. ‘La Minette’ added, ‘We’ll talk about it when you come. Would you like to leave the samples here meanwhile?’
‘Oh, no, I couldn’t—’
‘I thought for your own convenience. Dragging that heavy-looking thing around… But – Tuesday at nine.’ Pencil poised again: ‘May I have your name?’
‘Lefèvre. I’m a widow. On the other business, by the way – if you wanted a reference, the parfumeur – Pierre Cazalet, in Paris – he’s my cousin. I have his card here…’
* * *
Now for the long hike up to the garage. With a lingering thought in mind of Johnny – having mentioned her widowhood and seen Jacqui’s little conventional frown of sympathy – her thought was of the remoteness of her image of him, the ‘previous-existence’ quality which the world they’d inhabited more or less together had now acquired in her memory.
It could have been a film she’d seen. Dashing fighter-pilot, playing fast and loose in his spare time. Wife waiting for him really to come to earth: resentful, but ever-hopeful. Sucker…
Back up into the market square first, and across it. Germans all over, more of them than there had been earlier. She crossed the lower end of the square more or less diagonally, into the Rue Rollon and then turning left in Place Foch. Thinking about Jacqueline Clermont, how nice she’d been to her. Whether she could at heart be pro-German… More Nazi banners down to the right besmirched the vast grey frontage of the Palais de Justice, which being the local Gestapo prison was hardly named appropriately, in present circumstances. It had been mentioned in her briefing by the S.I.S. people: in the Middle Ages it had been home to the parliament of an independent Normandy. Some comedown, she thought. She was in Rue Jeanne d’Arc now, and the front of the Palais was out of her field of view. It fronted in fact on Rue aux Juifs – ‘the Jews’ road’: unless they’d renamed that one by now. She glanced at the near end of the building – grey, massive, threatening, with a sentry guarding a small side door where Germans were passing in and out under that foul emblem. Gaolers, interrogators, torturers? It was like coming across a wasps’ nest: you knew what it was because of the wasps going in and out. She thought again of the dramatic contrast – the crude brutality of those creatures against the elegance of the girl she’d just met.
Perhaps she shut her eyes, pretending it was someone else? Might be nuts about the bastard, too. Might under the veneer of charm be an enthusiastic supporter of the Third Reich. Or – like most of them – backing what she thought was the winning side.
The next crossing was at the Rue des Bons Enfants. She’d been in it at one stage of her wanderings this morning, had passed a picture-theatre plastered with swastikas and notices to the effect that it was reserved exclusively for the German soldiery. Soldartenkinos, they called them.
Over that road now, trudging on, the sample-case already about twice as heavy as it had been.
Would you like to leave your samples here?
Peculiar, really – even at its face value, only trying to be helpful. In the event, who’d have been waiting for her at nine o’clock on Tuesday? And then – imagining it – César at the cafe, worrying about where she could have got to. Might never have got to know, either. You’d simply have disappeared, into that chamber of horrors. As so many had already, in every part of France. Reports from former detainees in Fresnes prison – which as well as housing ordinary criminals was a stopover for those en route to the death camps in Germany – had provided answers in some cases.
Rue Thiers. A wide one, this. She had to wait while a convoy of four cars and a truck – petrol-driven cars, therefore Germans – drove past quite slowly, only one or two of the occupants turning their heads to stare at her. Boche V.I.P.s being shown the sights, perhaps. All motorcars had been requisitioned; to run even a gazogène you needed a permit. There were some exceptions: doctors were entitled to retain their cars, for instance, and some farmers their farm vehicles. And Romeo – and Louis – who’d mentioned that in Paris there were about 7000 licensed private cars, which gave one some idea of the extent of collaboration.
Still a lot of Rue Jeanne d’Arc ahead of her. The damn case weighed a ton: she was changing hands quite frequently. Thoughts of Jacqueline Clermont again; that quick warmth, spontaneity – as if they were friends already. Extraordinary: but very promising… Another crossing: Rue du Baillage. With a church off to the left… She paused halfway across for another military vehicle: a Mercedes, khaki-coloured with insignia on its mudguards, a soldier in the front passenger seat staring at her as it passed rather slowly from left to right.
Juddering to a halt. She’d only heard it happening – the brakes abruptly jammed on – looked back to her right now to see it swerve into the kerb and stop. Doors flinging open.
Christ. Christ, please…
Out-of-focus awareness of other pedestrians quickening their pace, turning abruptly to cross the road, pretending not to see. Along to her right, though, green uniforms stopping to watch. A yell, then: ‘You!’
They were waiting for her to go over to them on that side. An officer – quite young – and a sergeant. Abwehr, she guessed. At closer range she saw she’d guessed right.
‘Put that down. Your papers, please.’
She set the case down, rather carefully, and the sergeant snatched at it. She told him quietly – as evenly as she could – ‘It contains glass. Please be careful?’
‘Glass?’
She’d got her papers out, handed them to the officer.
‘Samples of perfume. I represent the Maison Cazalet, of Paris.’
The young man was flipping through her papers. The sergeant put the case down flat on the pavement and applied his thumbs to the catches.
‘Oh – you’ll need the key—’
He snatched it from her. She thought she wasn’t visibly shaking, but she could hear her heartbeats, feel them like fast internal hammer-blows.
Breathing wasn’t too easy either.
One fastener clicked up, then the other: he pushed the lid back. The lieutenant asked her, ‘Where were you going?’
‘To hire a bicycle.’ Past tense, she’d noted: as if she was no longer going anywhere. She nodded northward, the direction of the Rive Droite railway station. ‘Place I heard of – if I can find it—’
‘All right.’
She had her papers back. Had managed not to look down, to where the other one had the case open. She did now, though – had to – and saw him poking among the scent bottles in their little wool-lined niches with a blunt forefinger: he had the price-list i
n his other hand, must already have had a look at it. Glancing up: ‘Want some for your girl, Herr Leutnant?’
A frown: and a suggestion of a bow to her. ‘Thank you, madame. It’s routine, you know.’
A polite one…
Dry-throated, and feeling the coldness of all-over sweat, shutting and relocking the case, which the sergeant had left lying there open… She saw them climb back into their Mercedes and start away, on the move even before the slam of the second door. She got up: with the case locked again, heavy at her side. Disorientated, for the moment: she’d been in another world – or the anteroom to it. On her sore feet again now, getting herself together…
* * *
A sort of curve to the right, the waiter had said. Then there’d be a fork. This was the Boulevard de la Marne, all right: and the waiter’s ‘sort of curve’ was easy, only a matter of following the pavement around yet another ancient monument, a tower, crumbly-looking stone rising sheer from the cobbles. Looking for the fork, one branch of which would be Boulevard de l’Yser. Stay on this side, for the time being. Heart still thumping. If that sergeant’s thick fingers had probed just a little bit more cleverly she’d have been in the back of the Mercedes now with cuffs on her wrists. You had to put it out of mind, though. A near-miss, but a miss was as good as a mile. What was more, the sample-case had stood up to inspection. She’d crossed one small transverse road, and now a second, was about to ask for directions – from an old woman who looked as if she might have lived here all her life and might not for much longer, meanwhile despite the summer warmth was wearing a blanket with armholes cut in it – when she saw the half-obliterated road-sign: Boulevard de l’Yser. It was actually a continuation of Boulevard de la Marne.
Five minutes later, on her left and leading off from an open space where various roads converged – some unnamed Place – she found Rue Bras-de-Fer.
None too soon. Or as Ben Quarry might have put it, none too bloody soon. It was strange how he kept coming into her mind – even at a time like this – considering that for something like eighteen months all she’d done was try to forget him, his very existence… She was taking long, slow breaths, still needing to slow her pulse-rate.
Into the Fire Page 13
