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The Seven Letters

Page 28

by Jan Harvey


  I have a boy of my own, my beautiful Freddy. He and I have met a wonderful couple that have taken us to their hearts, they are called Elwyn and Catherine Benedict. I work for Elwyn as a translator, he is an entrepreneur, a superb businessman, I marvel at his abilities. I had to learn English very quickly and Elwyn tells me I speak it with a Welsh accent!

  I worked for Madame Odile in twelve Rue Ercol as a maid. I did everything I could to pass information on to the Resistance, I was told by a person I trusted that what I did made a difference. Only one person found out about me and he said nothing. It was a bordello, as you know, and I found it very hard at first. In the end, those women were amazing because they were survivors. Six of them were marched through the streets of Paris after the war finished. I was too. We had our heads shaved and they branded us.

  I escaped France with a little boy called Daniel, I was hoping I could give him a new life, a fresh start because his mother had killed herself. But that chance was taken away from me.

  I wanted to see you Yves because I never saw you again in Paris, I wanted to see how you were because Annalise said you were badly tortured during the war. I was very worried to hear this and I wanted to make sure you were better. It took me a long time to get over what they did to me and, even worse, they were the people I had helped in my work with the Resistance. Catherine is a psychiatrist and she has helped me overcome the nightmares and helped me to be strong again.

  I fell in love in Paris, Yves, deeply in love with a German officer, he left the city just before the end of the war, I pray that he made it home safely. That is wrong, I don’t pray, I lost all faith in a God that can stand by and let all those innocent people die in the camps. There never was a greater evil than the Nazis and I regret that I was ever involved with them at all. Only after the war did it all become clear to me how depraved they were and what they had done, none of us knew.

  Our town capitulated so quickly and everything seemed so normal until Vincent was killed. I still grieve for him because he would have gone on to be a great doctor. It is a true blight on all humanity what has been done and a sadness that will never leave us.

  I have a broken heart, but I never tried to mend it by finding Fritz Keber, my lover. I needed him to stay in my past, along with the death of my friends, and the stain Nazi Germany left on our country, which will take decades to heal.

  Freddy asks me all the time about his father and I tell him about the man I loved and not the soldier he was, I heard that he had done terrible things much later on, as the true story of our occupation became clear. In the end I did what I did for France and for any betrayal I may have subjected my country to, I paid for it.

  When I get home to England I will telephone you and I will tell you more, in the meantime, I send you my love, the one man I met in my life for whom I truly have undying respect and admiration. You made us fight and you were cruelly dealt with. I hope one day they all realise the sacrifices we made, but that we must leave to history.

  I enclose one of my written exercises that Catherine made me do. I am not looking for compassion or forgiveness, I would like this passed to a museum or a historian in France or maybe an author who might write about the Horizontal Collaborators; their page in history is as valid as any others.

  I leave you with my love and best wishes,

  Your friend.

  Claudette Bourvil.

  The old woman’s shrew face tightened above mean, thin lips. She was so close I could feel her hot, sour breath on my face. She held up a pair of heavy black scissors and wrapped a twist of my hair around her fingers. Then she pulled the strands towards her and the blades took hold, the softness trapped in the sharpened metal. She chopped and spliced until my hair fell in defeated heaps around me.

  A razor was dragged across my scalp, it nicked at the skin, slices of pain. If I raised my head even slightly I could see leering faces, four of them, so I kept my eyes fixed on the cracked tiles beneath me. When it was done I was trembling.

  ‘Get her up, make her stand.’ It was easy enough, I was thin and sapped of strength. Their eyes bulged, eager with excitement and anticipation. The words were hissed in my ear; ‘Strip her!’ I saw only her flat, dirty shoes. They didn’t stop to undo buttons but ripped and pulled apart my dress. Then, with a single slice of a blade, my bra was cut off so that my breasts were naked.

  ‘Go on!’ It was the oldest woman, the one in the widow’s weeds, her eyes glazed blue with cataracts. ‘Do it.’ They pulled off my knickers. The thin fabric tore away easily.

  A fifth one, in the shadows behind me, grasped at my buttocks, her dirty nails scratching the skin, the others howled with laughter. ‘Give her the child. Fetch him!’

  I snapped out of my trance, the whole room was suddenly loud and real and they reeked of old, rotted things.

  ‘No, not him!’ I cried. ‘Do what you will with me, but please not him.’

  ‘Whore, whore, whore…’ they chanted, ignoring my pleas. The door opened and I saw his little face grubby with the tell tale marks of tears on his sweet cheeks.

  The old man who carried him in sneered at my nudity, taking in the swell of my breasts with a lecherous grin. Yes, I thought, for all that I am a whore you too would have me right now, right here. He shoved the boy into my arms with a crude roughness, just as he might have treated a sack of kittens to be drowned. The child smelt foul, of dirt and grease and other people’s sweat. He had passed the stage of crying. Spent of tears, he sought me for comfort and nestled his face into my neck, his thin arms clinging on for all he was worth. I clung to him too, covering his face with my hand, as if it were possible in some way to shield him from what was to come. What hope was there of that?

  They opened the door and the noise from outside swelled. It was a dull late summer’s day, the branches of the plane trees stretched towards a colourless sky. Perhaps if I kept looking up towards the sky I would not see what was coming. Perhaps, I thought, even now God would look on me and take pity, but He wasn’t there for me, I knew it.

  The crowd mocked as the women pushed me forward into the street, their screeching exciting more animal noises from the mob. Someone was braying like a donkey and the man, his face melted from eye to chin, spat on me, a globule of green phlegm landed on my shoulder. I felt the blow of a missile as it hit the small of my back and trickled red down the inside of my legs. The remains landed between my feet, a blackened tomato. Then something else struck me on the forehead and I saw a rotten windfall apple on the road, the brown, dead skin oozing a slash of rotten flesh.

  We were both shivering with fear; I could hear a low animal moan running through him. I pressed his face to mine; his thin shirt and shorts were all that was between him and my cold flesh.

  I set my eyes forward as I took cold, hesitant steps along the wet road. I had no way of protecting myself from the things they hurled at me and there were hundreds of them lining the way. They were catcalling, howling and calling me a whore over and over again, until the sound was a wall around me.

  I desperately searched the crowd for his face, just one glimpse, just to know he had found out, that he had tried to do something to save me, but he was not there.

  Then I saw Pollo. Her hair was gone, her body was covered in red welts so, like me, she was pathetic. A large man hauled up her limp body, her head was lolling to one side, her once beautiful face distorted. Another man, his sleeves rolled back, turned towards her holding a long piece of metal, steam rising from the end of it. There was a smell of fire, burning metal and a glow of bright red.

  Someone in the crowd barged me, making me stumble so that I lost sight of her for a moment, then the mob roared and when I saw her again I realised what they had done. The smell of burning flesh seared through the wet air.

  They had branded her.

  Why didn’t she react? Why didn’t she scream? I couldn’t see. There wer
e people crowding round her, spitting on her, but I could do nothing except offer a prayer to God that she was already dead. I asked if he would take me too, kill me here on this cold, sodden street in Paris, but spare an innocent child who should live without blemish, despite all that I have done.

  Spare him, I cried from the depths of my heart. Please God spare him!

  Chapter Fifty Four

  They left Claudette in a doorway with the boy lying next to her. People passed by, she saw the shapes and muted colours of their clothes. She could hear the distant hum of a city wounded and unknown even to itself. There was a thrum of pain in her ear and the blood on her chest was running freely down her breasts. Daniel was asleep, his little body pressed into the curves and crevices of hers. His clothing was ripped and he smelt of urine and rotted food.

  She pushed herself up on one elbow. Instead of her hair hanging to each side of her face, there was nothing, a brightness flickering in her peripheral vision. Her eyes felt too tired to cope with the daylight. It was a man who stopped, a man in an ochre coloured uniform. He stooped down, laying his hand gently on her shoulder. When he spoke she realised he was an American. She didn’t understand what he was saying. His mouth was moving but his voice wasn’t clear, it had to compete against the noise in her head. Then, he was lifting her, his strength being all she could rely on, her legs were like jelly.

  Daniel woke up and began to cry, his eyes were dry and crusted, there were no tears. The American was speaking again. He slid his jacket off and slipped it around her shoulders, buttoning it up. It was huge on her.

  He bent down to pick up Daniel and then looked frantically around for help. He shouted ‘Parlez-vous anglais?’ in terrible French to passers-by, but they ignored him. Half carrying her and still holding Daniel he managed to get her to an old broken armchair, which had been used as part of a barricade across the street. The fabric felt rough against the back of her thighs. He had a metal canteen and he gave her some water, making her take small sips. Her lips were bruised and her jaw stiff.

  There were people gathering around now, looking at her and the boy as if they were part of a freak show. ‘Parlez-vous anglais?’ the soldier implored, begging one of them to speak to him. Claudette saw the shadows of people, the sounds of laughter mingled with the American’s voice.

  ‘I do.’ It was a young man, the first signs of stubble on his chin, answering the American’s plea. He came forward, his lip curled with the horror of the sight he saw in front of him. Claudette heard an exchange between them, then the young man was asking for her address. She could only mutter the words, they would not form properly in her mind.

  She felt a pain in her ribs as they lifted her up, the soldier one side, the young man the other. She couldn’t see Daniel, but the soldier said something and an elderly woman turned to pick him up.

  The door to the house was locked. The soldier asked if Claudette knew where there was a key and the young man asked in French. She shook her head. They knocked and she felt the despair of being barred from the place she lived, she had nowhere else to go.

  Suddenly there was sound behind the door and it opened. Marie was there and she cried out as she saw the mess that was Claudette. Moving to one side, she let everyone in, then Claudette’s world went black.

  When she awoke she was in Eva’s room. There was no furniture. The mirror on the wall had been cracked from side to side, it reflected a multitude of images in the shattered glass. It felt like morning, the strange pre-dawn greyness was lifting and a new day was beginning. The curtains were missing, the pelmet ragged.

  She tried to sit up, but the pain in her chest felt like her skin was ripping apart. She looked around for Daniel, but he wasn’t there. Instead, on the rug, covered in a single blanket, was Marie sound asleep and softly snoring.

  Claudette lay in the quietness of the room, her mind was full of flashing images, the man’s greasy hair, the feeling of him inside her, the foul smells, the women and the man with the melted face. Her body juddered involuntarily, the muscles waking up and bristling with stiffness.

  ‘You are all right, Françoise, you’re going to get better.’ It was Marie, her thin fingers rested on Claudette’s forehead.

  ‘Daniel?’ her voice was little more than a croak. Marie pulled the sheets up around Claudette and folded them back, neatening them out.

  ‘He’s fine, Madame Odile has him. He’s very shaken but he’ll be fine, he’s very young.’

  ‘It was terrible,’ Claudette felt the tears rise in her, she felt totally vulnerable. ‘They raped me.’

  ‘We know, so were all the others,’ Marie’s face darkened, she had grown up, she had her own demons. Her father would be facing his own conscience now somewhere in Vichy. ‘They are all here, and Jacques is laid out in the salon. But you need to rest now, it’s only six o’clock, go back to sleep.’

  Claudette slept again until twelve when the door opened and Daniel toddled in. He ran to her, throwing his little arms around her as she pulled him, painfully, into bed with her. Madame Odile followed, her hair hung around her shoulders, she was in an old housecoat and looked very worn and tired.

  ‘He didn’t sleep last night,’ she said. ‘He kept waking up and crying, I couldn’t do anything for him. He kept saying Mama, Mama.’

  ‘How is everyone?’ Claudette asked, her mouth still painful when she talked.

  ‘About the same as you, they have all been branded, all raped and all beaten. Nannette is the worst, for some reason they took it out on her, I can’t believe it.’ She looked desolate. ‘I thought it would be bad, but not this bad. I’m to blame for everything, everything.’

  Claudette reached out and put her hand into Madame Odile’s. ‘You couldn’t have seen this coming.’ Madame Odile was looking down at her chest, as if she was gathering the strength to speak.

  ‘Françoise, before Jacques was killed he was going to have to tell you something, something very bad indeed. It’s about your parents. The Germans put up a fight in the area surrounding Vacily. They held the town for two days and then, when they left, they detonated lots of explosives. The Allied bombings and the Germans between them virtually razed the town to the ground. Your parents were killed, I am so sorry.’ Claudette felt the tight constriction in her throat as she wrestled back a scream. It was the end of everything, for nothing was how it should be any more.

  Eventually she summoned up one word. ‘How?’ The images of Vincent Gabin were racing through her mind.

  ‘I don’t know, Jacques was terribly upset, he was waiting for the right moment. He thought the world of you, you know, you have lost your whole family and the brother who looked out for you.’ Madame Odile sat silently whilst their thoughts passed between them, unspoken, there was a feeling of loss so great neither of them could react any more. For a split second Claudette thought Madame Odile should know the truth of her identity, but something made her hold her tongue.

  ‘I have to go out and try to find food, I’ll leave Daniel with Marie. She has been a rock to us all, I never could have coped with all this without her.’

  ‘What if they come back?’ Claudette felt a panic, a fear that it wasn’t over.

  ‘They won’t. They have ransacked the house, everything is gone. They’ve smashed mirrors, thrown the paintings out of the windows onto the streets, the furniture is either slashed or stolen. Monique and Babette are in the same bed, all the others have been broken or taken, if they didn’t take it they smeared it with faeces. There was only one room untouched. They didn’t get into my office thank goodness because it was double-locked, but they have taken apart my apartment and I have nothing left.’

  ‘And Lilia’s room?’

  ‘They wrecked it, some things are left but everything of value is gone, except this.’ Madame Odile held out her hand and dropped the silver pendant into Claudette’s palm. ‘Your rosary and your valise
have gone but I found this on the stairs, they must have dropped it. Do you have your papers safe?’

  Claudette shook her head. She wrapped her fingers around the pendant. For a moment she could see Keber’s face, his beautiful eyes and the lips she had kissed so many times. Then he was gone, drifting away from her, faint as a ghost. ‘What will happen now?’ she asked.

  ‘I have a plan, I need to give the other ladies their papers and see that they will be all right. Luckily, they were in the safe in my office. Then I will concentrate on you, me and Daniel.’ As she left the room, and Marie came in to take Daniel away, Claudette realised she hadn’t asked where Madame Odile had been for the last twenty-four hours.

  Chapter Fifty Five

  I sat staring into space, I had read and re-read what Claudette had written. It was worse each time. She had risked everything at huge cost to herself. I wanted to reach across the years and put my arm around her shoulder to tell her I understood, that I knew her story. I also wanted to tell Matt, to bring everything to a conclusion for him. But that was the thing, it wasn’t concluded. Daniel didn’t even know who his mother was or what she did and he had presumed Fritz Keber had been in love with her.

  Did I leave him with that understanding, or did I tell him what I knew? Would I want to know if I were in his shoes? I decided to leave it as it was, then instantly changed my mind. Didn’t he have a right to know who rescued him and saved his life?’

  And Freddy, just what had he known of his mother? Did she tell him anything or had he found out later, or was it her murder that had torn him apart? I weighed it up in my mind, all the pieces of the puzzle where racing around in my head. I searched through Google abstractly trying to pull things together, but my eyes were heavy, I had to sleep on it.

 

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