by Will Belford
He got up slowly, walked to the sink, filled a cup and drank deeply. Three times he emptied the mug, then he stuck his aching head under the freezing tap.
He returned to the kitchen, piled coal into the stove and put the kettle on. Beside the sink was a framed photo of a man in a French army uniform. It was a stock-standard picture of the kind no doubt taken in a thousand studio photo in early 1940. The man was wearing his dress uniform. He had no insignia of rank and was staring at the camera if it were a ravenous lion. Even in such a small frame the fear in his eyes was palpable. The husband, presumably. About to discover for himself what it was like to have people trying to kill you by any means possible. Joe could understand his fear, but the reality was far worse than anything he’d ever imagined. A clock on the wall ticked. 6.55.
There was a rattle of keys and the door opened. The woman came in, locked the door and turned to him. She was carrying two bags, from one of which a baguette protruded.
‘How are you feeling?’ she asked solicitously, placing the bags on the table, “I’m sorry I’m so late.’
‘Okay thank you,’ replied Joe, ‘you realise you’ll be in a lot of trouble if the Germans find me here.’
‘Here, get out of those clothes and put these on,’ said the woman, passing him the second bag. Inside was a pair of brown trousers, a shirt and jacket. Basic workman’s clothing, not new, but clean and serviceable enough.
‘I would have given you my husband’s clothes,’ she said, ‘but he is much shorter than you, you would look absurd.’
‘Thank you,’ said Joe, taking the bag, ‘but why are you doing this?’
‘Because I have some small amount of pride left,’ said the woman, unpacking some potatoes and a small salami from the other bag, ‘and if you are English you must be here for a reason, and I assume that reason has something to do with defeating the Germans. So, it is my duty to help you. If I may ask, what is your name, and why are you here?’
‘My name’s Joe,’ he replied, ‘but I can’t tell you why I’m here.’
‘You realise you’ll be shot as a spy if they catch you,’ she said.
‘I try not to think about that possibility,’ said Joe, ‘and I’d better be going, I have to get to Pigalle.’
‘Then you’d better hurry,’ said the woman, ‘it’s past seven o’clock and the curfew comes in at nine. It will take you at least that long to walk there from here.’
‘Can’t I catch a tram?’ asked Joe.
She shook her head.
‘They stop running at 7pm. Let me tell you how to get there. When you leave, turn right and keep going until you reach the Avenue de Clichy. Turn right and follow it until you reach Place de Clichy, there is a statue of some Napoleonic hero there, then turn left and take the first right onto Boulevard de Clichy. Place Pigalle is only a short way down from there.’
‘Avenue-right, Place-statue-left, then right onto Boulevard Clichy. Sounds simple enough,’ said Joe, ‘but you haven’t even told me your name, just your first name though, best I don’t know your last name.’
The reason for not knowing too much hung unspoken in the silence between them.
‘It’s Marie,’ she said, ‘I hope you achieve what you came here for. Good luck to you.’
‘Thank you again,’ said Joe, ‘maybe I can repay you for your kindness when the war is over?’
‘Oui, of course,’ she said, smiling awkwardly, ‘now you’d better get going or you’ll be caught out after curfew.’
She opened the door. As he passed she leant in and kissed his cheek.
‘Bonsoir Joe,’ she whispered, ‘bonne chance, and take this, it belonged to my husband, but it is of no use to me.’
She passed him a canvas bag with something heavy in it, then she closed the door behind him.
The kettle was whistling. She took it off the stove and looked at the sepia photo of Pierre as she had last seen him, in his uniform, supposedly heading off to the front. But of course, he hadn’t gone. Instead, when she came home from work she had found him in the bathtub, still in uniform, his brains splattered over the wall. She’d known he was a coward—the bruises he had regularly given her in places that didn’t show proved that—but she hadn’t dreamt that he’d take his own life rather than have the truth come out in front of his peers.
‘Ah Pierre, you yellow bastard,’ she sighed, ‘why could you not have taken the chance? You might have died a hero, like that Englishman will.’
~ ~ ~
Joe pulled the cap down low and headed north at a brisk walk. He soon reached Avenue de Clichy and turned right. The sun sinking behind his lanky form threw a threw a long shadow down the pavement and turned the stone buildings pink.
For a second Joe imagined Yvette walking beside him in peacetime, her arm in his, the baby in a pram front of them. His train of thought stopped abruptly. Baby? How could he ever know if the child was his? He shook his head to clear that thought and reached into the bag Marie had given him. He felt the distinctive shape of a pistol.
Stepping under the lintel of a tobacconist’s, he opened the bag and looked in. It was an M1911 Browning .45-inch automatic pistol, a weapon his commando instructors had trained him to use, over and over again. At the practice range he’d hit a target at twenty yards with six of the seven shots that were standard for this gun. He ejected the magazine. Six shots. He wondered what the seventh had been used for. Still the gun was oiled and in good condition, no rust. He pulled the catch to let the magazine slip and quickly emptied the shells. Re-packing the magazine, he racked the slide and heard the satisfying snick of a round slotting into the firing chamber. At least now he could go down fighting.
He thrust the Browning into his jacket pocket, dumped the bag in a rubbish bin and set off again. As he walked, he thought about how best to play this. He could try to play it dumb and pretend that he’d been well away around the curve of the river when the bomb went off and had only seen the explosion in the distance, so there was no connection in his mind with the barge. It was a tenuous story, but if he admitted to knowing they’d mined the barge he was as good as dead, and he had to find a way to get Yvette out of there. As for Richter, his chances of taking him alive were even slimmer now he’d got mixed up with these bloody criminals. Maybe it was time to forget the mission.
In the end he decided he had to risk the bluff. He was so exhausted, he couldn’t think of another option.
~ ~ ~
‘The explosion was huge,’ said The Corsican, ‘one of the other barges must have had some sort of explosive cargo. I cycled past on the other side of the river this afternoon, the whole quay was blown to pieces and one of the warehouses was still on fire. The Australian must have been killed in a blast that big.’
L’Hydre sniffed his brandy balloon and lit a cigar.
‘One thing though,’ The Corsican added, ‘when I went down to the Quai Aulagnier there appeared to be a row-boat just like the one we had on the barge, tied up at the quay.’
‘There must be thousands of those boats on the Seine,’ said Claude.
‘Nevertheless,’ said l’Hydre, ‘we must be prepared in case the Australian returns. He is clearly a stubborn fool, and now he has nowhere to go except here or back to Bernard with his tail between his legs, and he didn’t strike me as the type who gives up easily. Now listen, if he comes we welcome him in and ask him what happened. We have no knowledge of the explosives.’
‘What if he saw them in the hold?’ asked Claude.
‘We deny all knowledge, say the Germans or another gang must have planted them,’ said l’Hydre. ‘Either way, we know nothing. He’s done his part of the bargain, I see no reason not to honour ours.’
‘You mean to give him the German?’ asked The Corsican incredulously, ‘why?’
‘Why not?’ said l’Hydre. ‘I intend to use this man to gain us some contacts with the British. If he succeeds in getting the German to England he will have credibility and we may
well gain an ally; if he fails, we lose little.’
‘But what if the German escapes and accuses us of taking him?’ asked Claude.
‘We won’t do it here you idiot,’ snapped l’Hydre, ‘as far as the Germans are concerned there will be no connection between this Richter fellow and this club, except for the fact that he left here in a taxi with one of our girls who, strangely enough, will also have disappeared. Who knows, perhaps they eloped? This Richter fellow may survive this attempt at kidnapping, but Hortense will most certainly not remain in Paris. I believe there will be a vacancy for her soon in Marseilles, if not, then …’ He made a throat-slitting gesture.
‘What do we do with the pied-noir we captured at the quay last night?’ asked Claude.
‘Leave him in the cellar for the moment,’ said l’Hydre, ‘we may be able to use him as a bargaining chip with the Maghrebi when they finally admit their error in taking us on. What did you do with the bodies of the other two?’
‘Threw them down there with him to keep him company,’ smirked The Corsican.
‘In that case you can carry them out again,’ said l’Hydre with a frown, ‘either now or in a few days when they have started to rot, I don’t care, but dispose of them in the usual way and be discreet about it.’
~ ~ ~
‘What do you mean “didn’t make it”?’ cried Yvette. It was 7pm and she had been brushing her hair in the small hotel room when Claude had knocked and entered. He looked dishevelled and tired and there was a bloodstain on his shirtsleeve.
‘I’m sorry mademoiselle,’ said Claude, ‘last night we were attacked just as the lieutenant left with the barge. The last I saw of him he was unhurt and sailing it downstream towards the port. He was supposed to meet us at the quay, but of course that was impossible after the gunfight, and how could he have survived the explosion?’ he said with a shrug.
‘Explosion?’ asked Yvette.
Claude nodded.
‘The barge must have been booby-trapped, on a timer or something. We heard it go off about half an hour after he left. He was probably just getting it into the dock. He might have survived but I doubt it.’
Yvette stared at him sightlessly. Joe. Dead? It wasn’t possible. She couldn’t go through this all over again. Her brain swelled and she felt as if she would explode, but then an ice-cold thought sliced through her turmoil. If Joe was dead then she was truly at the mercy of l’Hydre. Sophie Legrand’s offer had appealed to her. One part of her desperately wanted to fight the Germans, the other part just as urgently wanted to get out of this country, to run away to England where she could be safe from Nazis and gangsters, where people were still civilised and the rule of ultimate brutality hadn’t yet crushed the last ounce of humanity out of everyone. But if Joe was dead, then … then there was no escaping France. She was trapped.
‘If he’s still alive we expect he will come here,’ said Claude, ‘unless the Germans have him of course.’ Claude closed the door behind him, but Yvette was only alone with her desperate thoughts for a few minutes before there was a knock and Madam Legrand came in.
Unlike Claude, she had clearly slept well all day. The velvet gown had been washed and brushed down to remove the smell of stale tobacco smoke and sour wine. The thick make-up that had been streaked with black where her mascara had run the night before had been stripped and re-applied: perfect.
‘Sleep well?’ asked the madam.
‘Well enough, thank you,’ replied Yvette.
After her night in the observation room, Yvette had finally got to bed as the sun was rising. When she woke up, the sun was starting to set.
Madam Legrand lit a cigarette. The scratch of the match on the wall broke in on Yvette’s thoughts..
‘You were raised well, weren’t you girl?’ said Madam Legrand, blowing blue smoke, ‘taught to be polite and demure and obliging, just as I was. At least until Daddy and his friends decided I was old enough to have a bit of fun with. I was six at the time. How old were you when it happened to you?’
Yvette shook her head and said nothing. She was appalled. What was wrong with the world? Only six months before she’d been happy enough digging up Roman ruins and rejecting the advances of the local boys in Roubaix. Now … what did this woman think she was?
‘I can see it in your body language Yvette,’ said Madam Legrand, ‘whenever a man enters the room you instinctively guard yourself and get ready to strike if necessary. Your hands tighten into fists, your eyes widen, your blood starts pumping. Every man is a threat, isn’t that right? You were raped weren’t you? More than once I’d say.’
Yvette looked at the floor.
‘By this man Richter?’ asked Madam Legrand.
‘No, not him. I chose to sleep with him so I could get close to him,’ said Yvette, ‘we had it all worked out with the British. I would take him to a place where they could nab him. But it all failed, the men they sent weren’t up to the job. They let him escape.’
‘Let me guess, this Lieutenant Dean was one of them?’ Said Madam Legrand.
‘Yes, they did their best,’ said Yvette, ‘but nothing goes the way you expect it to.’
‘But there were more weren’t there?’ said Madam Legrand, ‘Germans, men who think that raping a Jew is their duty. How many?’
‘Why should I tell you?’ snapped Yvette.
The woman raised her hands in a pacifying gesture.
‘You don’t have to, but sometimes it helps to talk about these things.’
‘Just one,’ Yvette said quietly, ‘a spy who had joined Joe’s unit as a radioman before the invasion even. He’d been reporting on the British positions by radio for months and when they were stationed in Roubaix he was always … watching me. After the attack the British retreated through Roubaix and he took his chance to desert and came for me. He murdered my uncle and raped me. Joe found me and chased him off, but he came back for me when the British surrendered and held me captive for a week.’
Yvette shuddered at the memory she had tried so unsuccessfully to blot out.
‘How did you escape him?’ asked Madam Legrand.
‘One day when he undid the handcuffs I caught him off balance and killed him.’
‘How?’ asked Madam Legrand softly.
‘I beat him to death with a saucepan,’ said Yvette, ‘then I ran.’
‘And you’ve been running ever since,’ said Madam Legrand, ‘Alouette, you’re a brave and resourceful girl, but it’s time to stop running. If you try to work alone or with this Englishman, the Germans will capture you eventually. If you want to help France you need the support of our organisation. From what the boys tell me it’s unlikely that your Ossie survived the night. I’m sorry about that, but listen: we can help you, you can help us. Together we can kill many Germans. You must stay. Think of the work you did last night.’
But Yvette wasn’t listening. Her eyes filled, and she put her head in her hands and wept.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Hortense cursed and dropped the false eyelashes for the third time. What idiot man had invented such a thing she wondered? It would have to have been a man, no sane woman would inflict such a thing on her own sex. High heels too, no doubt invented by a man.
How many hours of her life had she spent in front of a mirror, applying foundation crème, mascara, eyeliner, eye-shadow, lipstick? And for what? To make herself more beautiful for some filthy pig of a man who somehow had the right to use her body for an hour then walk away. It wasn’t enough to be “naturally beautiful”, as her mother had always told her she was, she had to make herself artificially, superficially beautiful, conforming to some idealised stereotype, and who had invented it? Queen Cleopatra popped into her mind. Even she, queen of the most powerful country in Africa had to resort to harlot’s tricks to keep her throne. And to think they had told her she would only have to dance, that her long legs and arms and her training at the Opera National de Paris made her ‘invaluable’ on the stage. Lies
, filthy lies. She and all the other dancers were only there to be selected by the Germans in the audience, like cuts of meat on a restaurant platter, kept there only by the promise of the opium they had been forced to crave.
She fumbled in her purse for the marijuana cigarette and lit it with trembling hands. The Corsican had told her that she had a ‘special’ job tonight, and she knew what that meant. Fulfilling the sick desires of some Nazi in a hotel room. She had begged him to give her some opium before the show but he’d refused.
She drew deep on the spliff, holding the sweet smoke deep in her lungs as she looked at her reflection. She had to escape from this place. She knew that another month here and she would do something desperate, she could feel it building inside her, the awful pressure, she had to get out, but she could see no way out. Claude and The Corsican were always watching, and there was the ever-present threat of Jean-Paul. She’d seen what he’d done to one of the girls who’d fought back, the lithe little Moroccan. When he’d carried her moaning out of the cellar and dumped her in the hallway her body had been like a bag of sand, not a bone left whole. They’d put her in a sack weighted with rocks and thrown her into the Seine, alive. Bastards. God how she hated them.
The door to the dressing room opened and Yvette came in.
‘Please don’t tell me they’re planning on making you dance tonight,’ said Hortense, looking up.
‘Non,’ said Yvette, ‘but I want to tell you something. Something important.’
‘What?’ asked Yvette, getting up and closing the door.
‘I overheard l’Hydre and his men talking about you,’ said Yvette, ‘they were talking about the operation tonight and, well, I can’t be sure, but I heard them mention your name and Marseilles in the same sentence. Does that mean anything to you?’
Hortense felt a chill race up her body and back down again and shivered. It meant something. Marseilles was where The Corsican had come from, along with the girl Jean-Paul had broken and drowned. What was her name? Asmara? Adjanna? Hortense couldn’t recall, but she remembered well enough her tales of the brothel in Marseilles: drunk, violent, poxed sailors, night after night, far worse when the fleet was in. Beatings from the pimps, rape, degradation, forced drug addiction, exotic young dark-skinned girls from all over French Africa forced into unnatural acts of every description. She’d said that this place was a paradise by comparison. Hortense wondered what she could have done to deserve being sent there.
