The Girl Who Fell From the Sky

by Simon Mawer

  The street emerges into the great square with the bulk of the Panthéon, that temple to no god whatsoever, standing massive in the centre. She looks round quickly, trying to think, trying to remain calm. On her right is the long façade of the Sainte-Geneviève library with a gaggle of students hanging round the entrance; over to the left the architectural confection of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. She turns left and crosses the uneven pavé towards the church, trying not to hurry, trying to be a young woman who on a whim has decided to say a prayer. Pushing through a leather curtain she finds herself in the shadowy interior, immersed in the smell of incense and obfuscation but free for a moment. Thirty seconds, she reckons, maybe less. The skill is to throw the tail off without giving the impression that you know you are being followed. A delicate art. She looks around at the sanguine glow of stained glass, at flickering candles and shifting shadows of people at their devotions.

  Twenty seconds.

  The body of the church is divided across by a rood screen, an elaborate amalgam of spirals and arches. She hurries up the side aisle and through a door into the chancel. There are side chapels on the right, one of them holding a gilded sarcophagus where candles flicker and an inscription says Sainte Geneviève Ora Pro Nobis. An old woman kneels at prayer before the relic of the saint.

  Ten seconds.

  The aisle curves round behind the high altar. Ahead is a door to the sacristy and further round the curve, tucked in a shadowy recess, a confessional. The sacristy is too obvious. She walks round to the confessional, pulls aside the curtain, pushes her suitcase inside and crams herself after it. A musty darkness, redolent of anguish and guilt, envelopes her. She holds the curtain so she can peer out like a child playing Hide and Seek.

  Beside her the grille slides open. ‘Yes, my child?’

  Memories come flooding through the open trap – her convent school, the duties of penance and obligation, the odious smear of guilt. On the far side of the lacework of metal is the shadow of the priest’s face. ‘Oh, I thought …’ What did she think? What could she say? Through the gap in the curtain she watches the old woman get up from her prayers at the tomb of Sainte Geneviève and take her place to wait for the confessional. Immediately behind her the man appears, walking round the curve of the apse, searching.

  ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’

  ‘When did you make your last confession, my child?’

  For a moment the man stands indecisively by the tomb of the saint. He holds his hat against his chest and she can see his face in the candlelight. And she knows him. It is the man who accosted her before, the one who followed her out onto the embankment when she first arrived in the city.

  ‘Years ago, Father. Four, maybe five.’

  ‘That in itself is a sin, my child.’

  What should she say? She holds the curtain and watches the man’s movements. What is his name? She remembers. Miessen. Maybe she even has his card somewhere in her bag. Julius Miessen. German? Dutch? French? Who is he?

  ‘So what else do you have to confess, child?’

  ‘Confess?’ She hesitates. Impure acts, that’s what they used to say at school. I have committed impure acts. And the priest would make careful enquiry as to what these impure acts might have been.

  ‘What nature of acts, my child?’

  The man disappears into the sacristy. It’s obvious to try there: the open door, a light showing, the possibility of rooms and corridors and another exit. Should she go now while he is out of sight? ‘I’ve touched myself, Father.’

  ‘How many times, my child?’

  ‘How many times have I touched myself? I’ve no idea. I don’t keep a diary. And I’ve been with a man. Maybe that’s a little more important.’

  The priest is unfazed by irony. ‘How many times have you done that?’

  ‘Twice.’

  ‘With the same man?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Miessen reappears at the sacristy door. He’s panicking. He’s looking this way and that, and there’s something repulsive about the sleek look of his face in the light from the clerestory windows. Something shifts in her guts, fear and triumph swimming together.

  ‘And do you love this man?’

  Does she love him? She isn’t sure. She isn’t even sure what love is. She knows fear well enough. Fear she recognises. And hate. But love? ‘I’m very fond of him,’ she whispers, ‘and perhaps he loves me, I don’t know. We seem … suited to each other.’ Why is she telling the priest this? Why isn’t she making things up, giving Anne-Marie Laroche a whole set of her own sins?

  Miessen walks past, mere feet from where she kneels, and goes down the aisle back towards the body of the church, looking round anxiously, as though what he seeks might be hiding behind one of the pillars. The priest is lecturing her about fornication, its pitfalls and dangers, its effect upon God Himself. ‘Remember, you are not your own,’ he warns. ‘You were bought at a price.’

  What will Miessen’s next move be? Will he assume that his quarry has left by one of the side doors, or will he guess that she is hidden somewhere inside the building? And why, in God’s name, is he following her?

  ‘My child?’

  ‘Yes, Father?’

  ‘If you have finished your confession you must make your act of contrition.’

  She gets to her feet. ‘Thank you, Father.’

  ‘Your act of contrition, my child. Your penance—’

  She picks up her suitcase. ‘No penance is needed, Father. You see, my greatest sin is that I no longer believe in God.’

  She steps out of the box. The church seems cool and vacant, empty of anyone who matters. She smiles at the old lady who moves to take her place in the confessional, and crosses to the door marked Sacristie. There is a corridor, then a room with wardrobes and hanging vestments and a gaunt, polychrome crucifix hanging on the wall. She crouches to open her suitcase, trying to do things as calmly as possible, as surely and exactly as she is able. Don’t rush. Hâte-toi lentement, her mother always used to tell her when picking her up and tending grazed knees. There are nail scissors in her wash bag. She uses them to cut open the lining of the suitcase exactly between the two hinges. Inside is an identity card and food coupons in the name of one Laurence Aimée Follette. She slips the papers into her shoulder bag, closes the case and straightens up just as someone comes in, a priest in a threadbare soutane looking at her with startled amazement.

  ‘For the refugees,’ she says before he can utter a word. ‘I wondered where to leave them.’ She takes off her coat, folds it and lays it on the suitcase. ‘I only want to help, Father.’

  She smiles and slips past him. At the end of the corridor a door opens out onto the street. Daylight brushes her face with drizzle. Students are milling around the entrance of the lycée across the street and Laurence Follette hurries through the throng and turns up a side street into the rue de l’Estrapade. No one seems to be following but still she goes directly across the street and then takes two right turns, which bring her round to the familiar square. Marie answers the door to her knock, Marie with her stern face and faint air of disapproval, Marie who cannot be her betrayer because she already knows where she is staying, and surely the whole point of following her from the station is to find out where she has taken refuge in the city.

  Who is Julius Miessen? Who is he working for?

  She retreats to Madeleine’s room. For the first time she is afraid, truly afraid. Not the momentary fear of anticipating a parachute jump, or standing before a barrage and waiting to be searched, or finding that a man is tailing you through the streets of Paris. Not fear of something. Just fear, like a disease, a growth, thick and putrid, wedged behind her breastbone. Fear in each breath and each heartbeat. Fear rising up her oesophagus and souring the back of her mouth so that she finds herself swallowing a lot. Fear of what might happen, of what might be happening at this very moment while she sits, as helpless as an invalid, on the bed.

  ‘I’m off home, Mademoiselle,�
� Marie calls through the door. ‘Monsieur Clément will be back any minute.’

  She listens for the maid’s footsteps retreating down the corridor, and the front door opening and closing. What, she wonders, does Marie think about all this? Does she go home and talk about the strange, fraught woman who has appeared at the Pelletier apartment and been welcomed in by Monsieur Clément with open arms? Does she gossip? Does she talk about poor Madame Pelletier and her lovely baby and wonder aloud what the devil is going on, what on earth Monsieur Clément is playing at? Do her words filter through the intricate fabric of the city and reach the ears of the police or the Abwehr or the Gestapo?

  She finds some matches in the kitchen and solemnly, in the kitchen sink, performs the cremation of the young student Anne-Marie Laroche.

  II

  Laurence Follette from Bourg-en-Bresse in the department of Ain is the occupant of this room in the Pelletier apartment now. Laurence. Faintly androgyne, like so many French names, symbolic perhaps of a profound ambiguity at the heart of the French people who once advocated Liberty, Equality, Fraternity but now proclaim Work, Family, Fatherland; a people for whom the same word, baiser, does for kiss and fuck.

  Laurence waits. She waits for Clément, like a patient nursing her disease and waiting for the doctor who might at least offer a palliative to soothe her pain. The sound of the front door opening brings a great flood of relief, relief that must show in her face when she goes out to greet him for, after embracing her and telling her how wonderful it is to see her again and how much he has missed her, he holds her at arm’s length and sees the cold pinch of fear in her face. ‘Are you all right, Squirrel? What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’m fine. It’s just …’ What should she say? Confession or obfuscation? ‘Someone followed me. I think from the station. I threw him off but he knows I’m in the city. They know.’

  ‘Who knows?’

  She shrugs. ‘I’ve no idea. I met him before. He tried to pick me up the last time I came. I thought he was a pimp, or something.’ Pimp. She uses the English word. She doesn’t even know the French. Souteneur? Perhaps that’s it. ‘But now I wonder. Maybe he works for the police, maybe the Germans. Who knows? Anyway, now they can guess I’m staying somewhere in this area, in the Latin Quarter.’

  They sit in the kitchen, which gives the illusion of being the warmest room in the apartment. The scrubbed deal table replaces the barriers between them that fear has dismantled. He opens a bottle of wine, a Romanée-Conti that, he says, his father would weep to see being drunk like this. ‘So what happens now?’ His tone is different, as though now he is somehow part of what she does.

  She shakes her head. ‘Someone knows I’m here. I’m dangerous, Clément, and not only to myself. I’m dangerous to you.’

  He smiles. She can see what he is about to say. It’s obvious, really. And knowing it makes her want to weep and laugh at the same time. ‘You’ve always been dangerous to me, Squirrel. From the moment I first set eyes on you.’

  ‘You’d be safe from me in England.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want that kind of safety. I’d want you with me.’

  She looks up. She thinks of le Patron and Benoît, of all the people who depend on the circuit – Gaillard and Marcel and the collection of résistants who make up the réseau WORDSMITH. Gabrielle Mercey, and the family at Plasonne. She can simply step out of their world, without even saying farewell. ‘You’d be willing to go if I came with you?’

  He makes a small gesture of indifference. ‘I got a phone call from Madeleine yesterday. The ducks have flown, she told me. It sounds like one of those messages they transmit on the radio.’

  She attempts a smile, as though she has forgotten the trick and is having to relearn it. ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘That’s my nickname for Augustine. Mon petit canard. The ducks are her and Rachel. It means they’ve got across the border into Switzerland. So I’ve no reason to stay in France, have I? And if you were to come with me …’

  That evening she goes up to the roof again and sends a wireless message out into the wild autumnal air, a message as quick as she can make it, as sharp and clear as she can be. I have been followed, she wants to write. Someone knows I’m in the city. The city itself is watching, waiting, the detector vans listening for the faintest hint of me. The wolves are circling, sniffing the air, baying for blood. This message – they are listening to this message. But all she transmits is: MECHANIC IS CONFIRMED

  She knows what they’ll think at Grendon, and in the offices in Baker Street, as it comes off the teleprinters: Alice is winning. But she’s not; she’s panicking. And when you panic, you drown.

  She closes the transmission. The fragile lifeline with England is snapped. She packs the wireless set away and carries it downstairs, struggling to keep afloat, talking to herself, reassuring herself, trying to see the clear light of dawn in the dark of the evening. Fear is like a tide, under the influence of the waxing moon. She can feel gravity’s hand, that elemental pull draining the blood from her face and drawing it from her body. The moon period. What was it she told Benoît all that time ago in Oxford? We’re minions of the moon. Minions, slaves, worshippers. She takes the pistol from the spares compartment of the wireless case and puts it in her shoulder bag. ‘The full moon is next Saturday so we’ll go sometime this week,’ she tells Clément. ‘I’ll find out tomorrow.’ She feels the weariness in her smile. ‘I want to be safe, just for a few minutes I want to be safe. It’s so bloody tiring being afraid all the time.’

  III

  The café in the rue Saint-André des Arts is exactly the same as it was. Small, dull, of no consequence. As far as she can see no one has followed her. She walks in, feeling the weight of the pistol in her pocket, in the pocket of Madeleine’s coat that she has borrowed, the hound’s-tooth check that says, on the label, Molyneux. The man at the bar, a different man from her last visit, looks up with an equal indifference.

  Is la patronne around? He shrugs and calls over his shoulder – ‘Madame Julienne! Someone for you’ – and the door at the back of the bar opens and there she is. Claire. Looking worried, looking suspicious, giving a faint smile of recognition. ‘Come,’ she says. ‘Come round the back.’

  Claire’s little room has the same pictures, the same calendar with the same messages scrawled against the same dates. How do you recognise a traitor? What are the hints that give betrayal away? What are the lineaments of treachery? Claire is brisk and organised, like a travel agent who has booked an unusual but not entirely unknown itinerary. ‘It’s all arranged for the day after tomorrow, as long as the weather lifts. You’ll have to see Gilbert about the details.’

  Gilbert. She recalls that strange, oblique conversation in the office overlooking Portman Square, the tall and awkward Colonel with his even taller superior. Jill Bear’s our air movements man for the Paris area. The whole thing seemed a kind of fantasy, something that might never happen. And now it is happening – Gilbert is expecting her; she has to meet him in the Tuileries, on the other side of the river. She has to be there at a specific time, at the circular basin in the Grand Carré, beside the statue of Cain. The correct place at the correct time. She must make sure.

  ‘You know the Gardens, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  And there is a little rigmarole they’ll have to go through, a bit of question-and-answer. She and Claire rehearse it. ‘Make sure you get it right. He’s a stickler for detail.’

  ‘I’ll get it right.’ She takes her hand from her pocket and holds it out. ‘Thank you,’ she says. At the door she pauses, as though the thought has that moment struck her. ‘Why do you do it?’

  Claire looks puzzled. ‘Do what?’

  Alice gestures as though to indicate the bar but in reality meaning everything, the planning, the danger, the looking over your shoulder and minding your back, the whole nightmare anxiety of the clandestine life. Fear is a caustic that soaks into everything – your clothes, your possessions, your skin.
Perhaps you smell of fear as a heavy smoker smells of tobacco or an alcoholic smells of booze. ‘All this,’ she says. ‘For the Organisation.’

  The woman frowns. ‘Don’t ask fucking questions. You should know better than that. Questions require answers, and you don’t always know the answer so you start making things up. I just do it, right? I just do it. So do you.’

  There are few people around when she gets to the gardens. She remembers a painting in the Ashmolean museum in Oxford, something by Pissarro – The Tuileries Gardens in Rainy Weather. Reality mimics the painting: the autumnal trees, a scattering of rain, gusts of wind blowing women’s skirts, puddles gleaming like silver coins, the whole view blended and blurred into cloud and drizzle. She finds the statue of Cain Coming from Killing His Brother Abel and strolls towards it, looking for likely watchers. A couple of off-duty German soldiers approach and try to engage her in conversation.

  ‘I’m waiting for a friend,’ she tells them.

  ‘Un Français?’

  ‘Bien sûr.’ The gun, now in her shoulder bag, weighs heavily.

  ‘Germans are better men.’

  ‘Not if they haven’t got any manners.’

  She is saved – it’s ridiculous, an absurd risk – by a shout of, ‘Goodness, it’s been a long time hasn’t it?’ from a man who comes striding across the gravel towards them. He’s good-looking with a mop of wavy hair and eyes that do a lot of smiling. He nods at the Germans and takes her arm to draw her away. ‘Didn’t we last meet at Aunt Mathilde’s?’

  ‘It was ages ago,’ she agrees. ‘Before she moved to Montpellier.’

  He kisses her on both cheeks, then turns to the watching soldiers. If they don’t leave his cousin alone they’ll find themselves explaining their behaviour to their superior officer. Their expressions fall and they wander off. Gilbert grins. ‘The thing about our brave conquerors is that they always obey orders as long as they feel they’re coming from someone important.’