Solitaire

by Jane Thynne

  For a second Jeanne’s eyes filmed over, as though imagining the horrors that might lie in store in the interrogation rooms now being set up across Paris, in requisitioned buildings and the basements of grand hotels. Then, briskly, she said, ‘So, Hans. Let me find something for you to carry them in.’

  As she disappeared to a room at the back Clara whispered, ‘Why is she giving them to you?’

  ‘Louis Cartier is, it’s safe to say, no sympathizer of the Nazis. He’s a strong supporter of the Free French – in fact he’s given over the upper floors of the Cartier building in London to General de Gaulle. He and Jeanne are exploring ways to get French diamonds out of the country. At the moment their only hope is a network of human couriers to take them down through Spain to the coast.’

  ‘And you’re one of these couriers?’

  ‘Not exactly. We’re passing the stones to men who have volunteered to carry them.’

  ‘Who’s we?’

  ‘You remember that my wife’s family is French? They’re part of a network here in Paris, trying to organize some resistance in the city. It’s very hard. The Gestapo are already making arrests. They’ve had spies here for years, making notes of residents and addresses, working out who to pick up when the time comes. On which subject, you mentioned you’re staying off the Avenue Foch. Be careful. The Gestapo have set up their interrogation headquarters there.’

  He looked down at her with a peculiar intensity.

  ‘Not that it matters where they have their HQ. They always get the results they want in the end. With their methods, anyone will confess to anything. All we ask of our agents is that they endure for forty-eight hours. If you can hold out that long before you start spilling names then it gives other people a chance.’

  Something about his demeanour alarmed her.

  ‘Why are you telling me all this?’

  ‘Because it affects you. Now that I know I’m being followed, I can’t afford to be found with these diamonds on me, but you’re under no such suspicion. Quite the opposite. You are on the Nazis’ business. You have a minister to vouch for you. So I’m asking you to deliver them.’

  A heartbeat’s hesitation. Too short, she hoped, for him to notice, but he did.

  ‘It’s all I’m asking, Clara. One trip across town. It will take less than an hour.’

  ‘What would it involve?’

  ‘There’s a safe place. A room above Café Jacques in the Rue Vavin. We’ve found that the Latin Quarter is the best place to meet right now because the streets are narrower and there are fewer Germans there. They seem to prefer big houses on the Right Bank.’

  ‘Is this a regular meeting place?’

  ‘No such thing. We don’t have anything regular. Nor do we meet in groups and we only send messages by word of mouth. It’s far too dangerous any other way. They’re expecting someone tomorrow morning. First thing.’

  ‘What shall I say?’

  ‘Tell them you’ve come about a delivery.’

  ‘Tell who?’

  ‘A man called Martin.’

  Jeanne Toussaint reappeared and placed two objects on the showroom table. A golden-crusted baguette, wrapped in boulangerie paper, and a matchbox. Peeling off the brightly patterned paper, she set the loaf lengthways and with a knife made a deft incision midway, lifting the crust and carefully excising a hunk of dough. Then she scooped the industrial diamonds in one hand, funnelled them into the matchbox and squeezed the box into the vacant space, before replacing the lid of crust, firmly rewrapping the baguette and tying it with string.

  ‘Here,’ she said brightly, presenting it to Clara like a priceless necklace packaged in satin ribbons. ‘Most baguettes in my showroom come in the form of rings, so I’m sorry I can’t oblige you tonight. Perhaps if you come back one day.’

  Clara took the loaf and tucked it under one arm and Jeanne Toussaint reached to give her a kiss on both cheeks in the French fashion.

  ‘Thank you. Each little consignment is a help, though there are many more stones we need to keep from Nazi hands. We have a plan, quite an audacious plan, but I fear very much that it will never come off now. We’ve left it too late.’

  She enfolded Reuber in an embrace then led the way to the door.

  ‘Remember, my dear friends, there’s a curfew in place. It’s nearly midnight already and one thing I know about you Germans, you just can’t help obeying orders.’

  Chapter Ten

  Clara woke before dawn. The first streaks of light were beginning to pierce the sky, and pure notes of birdsong quivered like arrows in the air. It was a good hour’s walk from the Right Bank to the location that Reuber had identified for her assignation, but although she was tense with anticipation, she welcomed the exercise. The day-old baguette was dry and stale, but she carried it purposefully, as if she had not positioned and repositioned the red and blue striped boulangerie paper numerous times and adjusted the piece of crust so that it was entirely invisible beneath its jaunty wrapping. She might be any other Parisienne, fetching the daily bread for her breakfast tartine before she headed off to an office or a shop. Who was to know it contained a cache of gems, a cluster of small drops in the invisible river of diamonds that was now flowing out of France under the Nazis’ noses?

  At the Pont Alexandre III she crossed the rippling quilt of the Seine, along the Quai d’Orsay, then down the Boulevard Raspail. It was still quiet, and in the glimmering moment before daybreak there were glimpses of the city that visitors rarely saw. Street sweepers, barely raising their eyes to a lone passer-by, supplies of food being trundled into the kitchens of the grand hotels that had already been requisitioned by the Germans, crates of seafood and oysters and Pouilly Fuissé. A priest hurrying to Mass. In the gloaming Clara saw a young woman in an alleyway with a pigeon hanging from her hand, feathers upended like a speckled bouquet.

  Everything was normal, in this most abnormal of times.

  Nonetheless, true to her training, she diverted sharply, and walked through the black gates of the Jardin du Luxembourg. Nowhere was better to spot a tail than the open spaces of a park.

  At first glance, everything about the loveliest park in Paris was the same as it had always been. Mist gathered in veils beneath the trees. The rigid formality of the garden, with its chestnut tree-lined avenues, parterres and geometric paths, the sparkling glass orangerie and statues of goddesses and French queens, still presented to the world an impression of serenity, as if nothing had happened to disturb its tranquillity since it was created three hundred years ago. As if Paris was still a city of elegance and order, rather than the distant playground of a brutal dictator. But at closer sight, one important constituent of the picture was missing. Until last month this spot so beloved of Parisians would have been full of small dogs on their morning constitutional, beautifully groomed and weaving their way on leather leashes around the octagonal basin. Yet now those beloved, pampered pets were absent, shot and dumped on the street corners like so much rubbish. Dogs were no different from the china, linen, paintings and everything else that people could not take with them in their desperate flight.

  Clara made a complete circuit of the park, and when she had satisfied herself that she was genuinely alone, she slipped out of the back gate closest to the Rue Vavin.

  At this hour it was hard to imagine anyone visiting the Café Jacques for a convivial drink. It was a narrow space, whose crepuscular mood was made gloomier by dark blinds installed for the blackout. There was a sign advertising Coca-Cola in the window and the floor was sticky with spilled beer. A lone flypaper flapped listlessly beneath a central fan. A middle-aged bartender was already installed, making desultory swipes at the glasses with a grubby cloth. He hesitated for a second when he saw her, then in reply to her expression of enquiry he gestured with a faint nod of his head towards a door at the back, leading to a steep set of pocked linoleum stairs.

  The door at the top was opened by a young man in a herringbone tweed suit and round horn-rimmed glasses, smelling of co
logne and tobacco. Despite his stylish dress and faintly dandyish air, his face was pasty with fatigue and a blue shadow of stubble. He looked terrified to see her.

  ‘I’m looking for Martin. It’s about a delivery.’

  ‘Why is the other man not here himself? Where is he?’

  ‘I was with him last night. He noticed that he was being followed so he asked me to come instead. My name is . . .’

  ‘Yes. I know who you are.’

  Clara was startled. In Germany she was used to being recognized but she was hardly well known in France where, unsurprisingly, no one had much of an appetite for German films.

  The man must be Martin. Yet even if he was, it would only have been a nom de guerre. He gave her a moment’s further scrutiny before making room for her to enter and muttering, ‘In here.’

  The shutters were closed, rendering the room in shades of charcoal. In the dim light, its contents seemed like something from a still life – a sketch of chairs and table, with a couple of bottles of beer and a jug and stove to one side. It took a moment for Clara to notice that they were not alone. In the far corner, a solitary figure was sitting smoking. He was well built, with a shock of dark hair that he rubbed reflexively out of his eyes and an anxious expression. In the dim light filtering through the shutters his face was slatted with shadow, poised between light and shade like a monochrome photograph by Lee Miller. At Clara’s approach he half-rose, but Martin waved and said, ‘Please sit down, Captain Russell. There’s no need to worry. It’s just a bit of business.’

  Clara stared. The man addressed as Captain Russell was in his thirties, wearing an ill-fitting jacket too short in the arms, and a pair of bluish sagging trousers that could never have belonged to him. An open-necked white shirt, stained and frayed at the collar, displayed a wedge of skin, heavily tanned.

  ‘Hello,’ she said in English.

  ‘Captain Russell was wounded after escaping the Germans. He has had quite a journey but he’s fortunate. We’ve been able to give him shelter and we will arrange him safe passage. You can talk in front of him,’ said Martin, adding tersely, ‘I take it you have the delivery?’

  Clara produced the baguette, placed it on the table and slid a finger beneath the crust to reveal the matchbox.

  ‘They’re in here.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Martin opened the matchbox and inspected its contents. ‘Thank you for coming so promptly. I’m afraid I have business elsewhere now, so I will say au revoir.’

  ‘Wait . . .’

  The Englishman had risen to his feet and was standing up with difficulty. Clara noticed that he instinctively clamped a hand to one side. The toe of his shoe was open and his bare foot poked through.

  ‘I wonder . . .’ There was a note of urgency in his voice. ‘If the lady might like to take a cup of coffee with me? If you’re not too pressed for time?’

  Clara was. She had a ticket for a train heading back to Berlin that afternoon, leaving her only a few hours to collect up her clothes and make her way to the station. Besides, her every instinct told her to leave the Rue Vavin as fast as possible in case anyone had witnessed her arrival. It would be foolhardy to linger at a safe house that might already be under Nazi surveillance. Yet the urge to stay and talk to this quiet Englishman surprised her. Was it loneliness, or a yearning for home? In that split second she quelled her fears and said, ‘Why not?’

  Martin looked from one to the other, shrugged and gave a curt nod before heading out of the door.

  Once they were alone Captain Russell shook his head. His high brow and angular cheekbones reminded her of a warrior on the face of an old coin, yet the strong features were mitigated by a warm, sensitive mouth that turned slightly down at the edges and eyes as soft as an English sky.

  ‘Please forgive me if I’m detaining you unduly. I’m sorry to sound desperate but the prospect of human company was just too enticing to pass up, especially when I heard you spoke English.’

  He was tall, but with a stoop that shortened him. His grip was firm and his hand rough against the smoothness of her palm.

  ‘I’m afraid we weren’t introduced properly. I do hate to neglect basic courtesies.’

  ‘I’m Clara.’ Something about the man – perhaps his remark about ‘basic courtesies’, the kind of thing that her own father might say – reassured her that she need not disguise her Christian name. Yet still she would not risk identifying herself any more than that.

  ‘And please call me Ned. Would you like a cigarette?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She lowered her face to his lighter then sat at the table opposite.

  ‘Have you been here long?’

  ‘In this room? Three days. In France, it seems like for ever.’

  His face was grubby, and grime had settled into the lines, so his eyes formed a net of wrinkles when he smiled. ‘It seems a long way from Yorkshire.’

  ‘That’s where you’re from?’

  ‘Originally. My family owns a farm in west Yorkshire. A village called Oxenhope.’

  The single word, and the way he said it, conjured a picture of the place itself. The twinned images, at once ancient and uplifting, of slow-moving cattle and sheer human endurance. The deep, northern edge to his voice was like the unyielding flint of some desolate moor.

  ‘Not to say I stayed there. I moved down to London some years ago. I was living in St John’s Wood until last year, teaching a rabble of little boys how to read English literature.’

  ‘Didn’t they miss you on the farm?’

  ‘Not one bit. Once they realized I could spout history and poetry my family thought I was too good for farming. They assumed school-mastering was a higher calling. I’m not sure they’re right but at any rate, as soon as war broke out I couldn’t wait to take myself off to the recruiting office.’

  ‘How did you end up here?’

  ‘You really want to know?’ He cocked an enquiring glance to distinguish genuine interest from mere politeness.

  ‘Very much.’

  ‘In that case, I’d better give you that coffee I promised.’

  He rose and took from the stove a battered iron coffee pot and poured out a thick aromatic trickle into two cups. The movement seemed to cause him some effort and she watched pain flash across his face as he gripped the side of the table. Then he sat down again and passed a hand across his brow.

  ‘You heard what happened in Dunkirk?’

  She nodded.

  In recent weeks the British Expeditionary Force had been hemmed in by German troops and pushed back to the coastal town of Dunkirk. It was a devastating retreat and for a few days it appeared that the core of the British army was about to perish, when a flotilla of eight hundred small ships, fishing boats, lifeboats, merchant vessels and pleasure steamers set sail from England to retrieve them, saving more than three hundred thousand lives.

  ‘We’d been in northern France for months. Sitting on one side of the Maginot Line waiting, the Germans on the other. We were so close we could hear the Germans communicate with each other by hooting, just like owls. Did you ever learn to do that? When you were a kid?’

  He cupped his palms together and blew into the gap between his thumbs. A low, cooing sound issued from his pursed lips and instantly it was as if the bird appeared, with a swoop of tawny feathers.

  ‘It was their call sign.’

  Clara stared transfixed at his large, rough hands, as the fluting notes issued from them. She pictured those hands farming, cutting hay, heaving sheep from the hillsides, delivering lambs. How his clothes would smell of loam and wood smoke.

  ‘Then suddenly in May, the blitzkrieg began. It was terrifying. Bullets flying, people you knew getting killed all around you. Stukas above, incinerating everything, even the Red Cross vans. Ammunition slamming into the ground. Body parts everywhere. You could taste the cordite in your mouth. We were driven back towards the coast.

  ‘Our lot was divided from the main army and pushed south into Normandy. We held the Ge
rmans briefly at the Somme but finally we retreated and were surrounded at the port of St-Valéry-en-Caux. The German artillery were in the hills above, pounding us, and we all of us could see defeat was coming. There was one British ship, the HMS Broke, that made a landing, but the bombardment was too intense. Men were climbing down the cliffs, falling to their deaths on the rocks. You could see them lying there still alive, crying out. In places the earth was sodden with blood.’

  From the street outside a few ragged yells arose, the early morning calls of delivery boys, and a ringing of bicycle bells, but in that room, the two of them were inviolate. Russell kept his eyes fixed on the enamel cup in front of him, his pupils dilated with the darkness of suffering.

  ‘Eventually the Germans breached our defences. Some lucky beggars were found by a crew for the Red Cross who disguised them as French soldiers and took them off to hospital. The rest of us had to survive as best we could. My group hid in a cellar but the Germans found us. There was a debate about whether to shoot us straight off – they did actually line us up against a wall – but after a while the Krauts changed their minds and forced us to march through the town and then across the fields.’

  He hesitated and dragged a hand across his face.

  ‘I can’t describe what it was like. The ground was littered with bodies, men with their tin hats still on. Young lads ripped from their lives. Flesh rotting in the sun, dead cows and horses too, everything bloated and flyblown. Dogs whining, running about. Some of the poor animals had been left tied up and howled at us as we passed but we could do nothing. We had no idea where we were headed. We were walking sixteen miles a day on nothing more than acorn coffee. They told us that anyone who stepped out of line would be shot, and, to tell the truth, at that moment I didn’t care. We slept in the open, or in ditches, and some of the men took greatcoats off the bodies of dead men. In the morning, farmers would put down pails of milk by the side of the road, but the Germans kicked them over before we could touch it. After a few days, they let us know where we were headed. We were marching all the way to Nuremberg.’