by Thomas Wood
I risked poking my head out, just as a couple picked up their pace to stride past the room, following the trail of blood that the young girl was trying so desperately to scrub out.
I got her attention as I started hammering on Cécile’s door, far louder than I perhaps should have been doing, in case she was still fast asleep and needed a wakeup call. But she didn’t answer. I knocked again and again, but still there was no soft, attractive face, with slightly blushed cheeks to meet me at the door like usual.
I began to panic. I knocked harder and louder, almost bouncing up and down on the spot in anticipation. I began to think that if I knocked much harder that my fist would go straight through the wood and I would be able to see inside.
Then my mind began to conjure up all sorts of images; what if she had been taken as well last night, but she didn’t put up as much of a fuss as the man next door? What if she had decided that being with me, and helping me get away wasn’t what she had wanted after all? Was this it now? Was I alone again?
I didn’t want the answers to any of these questions, but at the same time demanded that they should be answered. If I didn’t have her by my side, I would surely be killed or captured. If she wasn’t there with me, every step of the way, I wanted to be killed or captured. At least then I would still be in France, in the same country that she was presumably in.
As I began to throw my hands through my hair I let out a kick at the door in sheer desperation, just as I noticed the young girl, who had been scrubbing till a few seconds ago, was standing by my side, staring at the distressed man before her.
“She went out this morning,” she said sweetly, “she said she’d meet you in the lobby.”
“When was this?”
“About five this morning, she will surely be back soon.”
“Merci. Merci.” I began muttering out of a complete relief that she was still here, she was still alive. I wasn’t even sure that the girl had heard me thank her, but she continued to swill her bucket round as she set to work on the bloodied carpet once more.
Downstairs the lobby area was empty, and just as I was about to take one of the two chairs that sat facing the window, the owner of the hotel, who had been so kind as to let us stay here free of charge for so long, began to make her way over to me.
“Salut,” I said, smiling as gently as I could, as I always did. My heart began to thump when she did not return my salutation, instead a worrying expression was stitched to her face, that seemed like it had been there quite a while.
“There is a man for you. Outside, he has been waiting for a while. You should go.”
There was indeed a man waiting for me outside of the hotel, leaning in a doorway on the other side of the road, nonchalantly smoking on a cigarette while he waited. When he spotted me, he seemed to almost stand to attention, rapidly flicking his cigarette over his left shoulder, as if he had been caught doing something he shouldn’t; I noticed that there was rather a large pile of discarded cigarettes on the ground beside him, and wondered if he had been standing there all night, or if he was just one of those people who enjoyed smoking more than chimneys do.
He strode across the road to meet me, his handsome, chiselled face coming into full view as he did so. His face was unblemished, his hair was styled in a way that told me that every single hair on his head was exactly where he had commanded it to go and I immediately got the impression that this young man, probably around twenty-seven or eight, was impressively disciplined, despite the careless exterior that he had given a few seconds before. He was stern faced, the kind that told me that he knew exactly what he was doing and that he had faced some pretty serious situations in his young life already.
I immediately had him marked as a military man.
“Jean Souess?” he queried, just as he made it up the kerb to me. As he spoke, it was only then that I realised the idling car engine just off to my right and caught a glimpse of its black paintwork as it screamed down the road towards us.
I didn’t have time to answer but was instead rugby tackled by the muscular figure of the man, smashing my skull against the side of the car as he bundled me in through the door that had been flung open for us.
I was lying face down in someone’s side and I looked up at a shocked teenage boy as I lifted my head. I wanted to mutter a sorry to him, but all that came out of my mouth was a tirade of questions.
“Who are you?! Where are we going?! Tell me!”
They sat in silence, all perching on their seats as if nothing had happened and that they hadn’t just been a part of an abduction on the streets of Paris.
“Where is Cécile?! Is she okay?!”
I got nothing from them, and my body was tussled in between the military man and his teenage counterpart, as we began haring through the streets of Paris at a worryingly fast speed. The others simply held on to the door frames as we skidded round corners, but I was thrown around like a tennis ball in the middle of a rally, taking me far too long to work out that there was a figure sitting in the front seat also, next to the driver.
They had really come prepared. What kind of a fight were they expecting me to put up that they needed four other bodies as back up?
“Shut up,” hissed Military Man as we slowed to pass by a parade of German soldiers, performing some sort of ceremonial changing of the guard outside the town hall.
I did as I was told and, before too long, we were on the outskirts of Paris itself, and the gaps in between houses and buildings got longer and longer until there was only farmland left. Thankfully, the driver began to slow once we hit the less built up area, my stomach reeling from the shakeup it had just been subjected to.
Suddenly, we began to shoot backwards and, as the engine screamed for the driver to stop, I realised that we had parked up in a barn. Before the engine was even shut down, Military Man was out of the car, calling to the teenager the other side to hop out as well.
“Out.”
Again, I did as I was instructed, fearful that these boys would have enough weapons and ammunition to put more holes in me than a rabbit warren, all within arm’s reach of them too. We all stood in silence for a few moments, as if they were experts at this and knew exactly how to throw me off even more. It was working, as I was looking around the barn, imagining that this would be the ideal place for an execution, my knees began to quiver slightly, even a mighty effort to stop them from shaking failed, and I could only hope that the movement wasn’t showing in my trousers for now.
I tried to wait and let them speak first, taking in each of their facial details and making assumptions over who these people were. Military Man stood in the middle and seemed like he was the kind of person that would only stand in the most prominent of positions, kicking up a stink if someone undermined him by taking up a more important standing.
The teenager stood to his left, occasionally looking up at Military Man for guidance and to see if he was standing correctly. He had dark hair, but he had a small fleck of orange at the edge of his fringe, just above his eyebrow, giving off the impression that the darker pigment was down to muck, concealing his true hair colour.
The man over to the right of Military Man was far older and had an aggressive stoop, one that made him look like he was about to topple over at any minute. He had been the driver and looked like the teenager’s father, from the way he kept shooting looks over to him, to check that he was okay. The fourth figure in the car, was nowhere to be seen and had disappeared completely; not lingering in the car, but not standing menacingly in front of me either.
I had to break the silence, it was quickly becoming unbearable. My breathing was laboured and wheezy as we stood in the quietness of the barn, the only noise from their side being the slight shuffling as the older man readjusted to stop himself from falling flat on his face.
“Where is she?” I asked, assuming that they knew exactly what was going on. Military Man seemed pleased that I had addressed him rather than the others and seemed to take pleasure in the fact th
at he held this much power over someone.
“She was unfortunately…” he spoke in English and began searching his mental dictionary for the right word, “…compromised? Yes, she was compromised. The Germans found out that she was helping a British soldier. You.” He pointed at me, as if I wasn’t aware of what Cécile had been doing for me. It was almost as if he was goading me, pushing me into trying to swing for him by being a pretentious, power hungry, jumped up little Frenchman.
“Someone found out who you were. Found out she was helping you. They went to the Germans about her, but not you. Why is that?”
“I…I don’t know. Honest I don’t.”
“I do not think that we can trust you anymore, Monsieur Souess, she was our friend. Now she is on the run and we probably won’t be able to see her again. This is all because of you.”
“She was my friend too!” I screamed, the three men before me almost flinching at the sudden eruption, “I even…I even…” my voice seemed to trail off as I thought of what must be happening. Someone had gone to the Germans and now she would be on the run herself, if she had not already been picked up by the Gestapo. They would beat her, get her to give up all the names of the people who had helped, before being taken outside and shot. It wouldn’t just be her on my conscience now, it would be all of them, Marcel, Andrè, Monsieur Paquet and even his daughter. If they were all still alive by tomorrow morning it would be a massive surprise. They would all have a round in between their eyes without even the slightest prospect of a fair trial.
“You even what?!” he demanded.
“I loved her,” I whispered, descending into a mess of tears and sobs.
Military Man basked in my grief for a few moments, before taking me by the arm gently, “Come on, let’s go inside.”
“Where is she? Do you know if she is still alive? What will she do?”
“I don’t know the answer to any of those questions. What she does now and if she gets away, is completely down to her. There is nothing we can do.”
28
I sat in the farmhouse for a number of hours with my new companions, noticeably lacking the female presence that I had grown to like for the last few weeks. They had softened considerably by the time that we made it indoors and that they were happy that I had played no part in the grassing up of one of their best friends.
It had turned out that Cécile had worked in the village close to this farm at one stage, with a few other nurses, all of whom were sent towards the frontline at the outbreak of war, nearly a full year ago. Cécile had cared for the older man’s wife in her last few weeks of life, cruelly having to leave her two days before she passed away.
The older man, Albert, was the teenager, Léon’s father and had lived without a woman in the house for the whole period of the ‘Bore’ War and now, whatever kind of war this was. Albert had fought in the last war and had spent a great many hours with a Scots regiment that he came to admire greatly for their courage and sense of humour, which is why he wanted to help me. I kept quiet about the fact that I was about as far away from being a Scotsman as he was, for fear that he would suddenly disown me and throw me to the wolves.
Military Man, Lucien, had been in the French Army, a Sous-Lieutenant no less, the same rank as me. He unashamedly told me how he had fought as hard as he possibly could and, when it seemed like the Germans would over run his position he, and a few of his men, scarpered. Lucien had been living life on the run, just as I had done, until the French capitulation gave him a degree of freedom once more. He was determined to run the Germans out of France and had already set about making arrangements to form a small band of men together to wreak havoc with the German’s communication network.
We sat for a while, discussing what we should do next and what we might all be doing if this war ever ended. As the conversation progressed, a feeling crept up on me that I never thought that I would experience. It was time for me to go it alone, I had endangered enough of these people’s lives and had quite possibly ended up killing the woman that I loved. Enough was enough.
Besides, I had been in Paris for weeks now, and these people would have to spend an indeterminable amount of time recovering after one of their own had been compromised, being forced to assume that Cécile would give up all of our plans. If I stayed with them, I would be starting from scratch, as if I had just arrived in Paris for the first time and I wouldn’t be able to deal with that. I wouldn’t have been able to cope with the daily reminders that Cécile had been in the room next door to mine, eating in the same restaurants and cafés that we had regularly frequented together. I could not do all that again, especially now that I was alone.
I contemplated how I would manage without any help or guidance as I went it on my own. Would I really get any further than I already had done? It was true that without these people I would never have made it this far, but I was feeling fitter now, I had some papers and a good understanding of their language and way of life. I also had money stuffed into my pockets thanks to a weekly allowance from one of Cécile’s wealthy benefactors. I had everything I needed, I just had to make the jump.
As we sat around in the living area of the farmhouse, debating about what our next move as a group should be, I finally decided that I would go it alone and subsequently withdrew myself from the rest of the conversation, muttering and murmuring every now and then in agreement of something that was said.
Instead of thinking about how we were going to leave together, I began to think about Cécile. As far as I was aware, they had said she had been compromised, not that she had been taken away by the Germans. Maybe they had got the wrong room at the hotel and they were meant to take Cécile? I had no idea whether she was still in the building when it happened or how she had known that she had to get out. Who came and told her? I had seen no one and heard nothing. Come to think of it, she had been acting oddly at dinner together, wistfully staring out of the window at the traffic and footfall of Paris while I nattered on. But was she looking wistfully, or had it been warily? Had she been expecting the Germans at any moment?
My thoughts rapidly moved on to who had been to the Germans or how they had found out. The obvious one was the priest; but I was sure that he had heard much darker revelations in the confessionals that he had managed to keep quiet and for far longer than he would have done.
Had I slipped up along the way somewhere? Had it been something that I had done at all? I thought about the evening in the restaurant with the German commanders; had it been then? Had I revealed myself, but it was Cécile who the German had remembered? It was unlikely, but not impossible.
I had so many questions about who had turned Cécile over, and why, but the mysterious figure in the front of the car, the one who had disappeared as soon as we had backed into the barn, kept cropping back up in my thoughts. Who was he? And why hadn’t he made himself known? As I followed another route that my mind seemed adamant on going down, I wondered whether or not the figure was still in the house somewhere, or if he was gone for good. Where had the others thought that he had gone?
The inner workings of my mind were suddenly cut short when Lucien announced that he would be heading to bed, offering to show me where I would be sleeping that night in the process. Leon and his father began to tidy up the last few china mugs and plates, before I heard their footsteps too, thumping up the staircase, to bed.
*Break*
The door squealed as I pulled it to and so I just stood for a second or two, to make sure that I didn’t hear the thump of footsteps advancing down the stairs after me. While I stood, I admired the darkness. I was up on a hill, I could make out that much, and was certain that in peacetime I would have been able to see the lights of Paris from here. But, there was a strict blackout in force now, forcing the whole country into a near perfect blackness, a blackness that made the stars burn even brighter than they normally did.
I walked back down the hill, in the hope that that was the right way back into Paris. I figured hiding in amongst the
swathes of people would be the best option for me; as well as the fact that almost all the trains south seemed to head out from Paris.
I picked up a good pace through the night, only stopping a couple of times to relieve myself in a nearby bush and, as dawn began to break, the gentle vague hues of the morning just kissing the horizon, I made it back into the outskirts of the capital.
I hid in doorways and ducked down alleyways when I heard vehicles passing, almost all of them a dull green colour of the Wehrmacht, and it wasn’t until I started to see swathes of French civilians walking the streets that I began to feel more comfortable. It was after five in the morning, the end of the curfew.
Sitting on a bench in the Buttes Chaumont park in Paris, I wondered what my next move would be. I sat staring at the large lake that was the centrepiece of this park, a mock temple sited high up on a miniature cliff, meant to be an Italian temple that was built in the first or second century. I had never been one to think too far ahead, and now I was paying the price. I would only be able to stay on this bench for up to an hour, before someone passed through the park a couple of times themselves and saw the same, strange man, staring at the same lake he had been doing since they last walked through.
I had walked past the park’s waterfalls and over the suspension bridges that littered the landscape, and I had taken in the vast array of cherry trees and the odd, dreamlike buildings that sprung up out of nowhere. After killing hours in the park, I decided it was time to move, it was time that I bit the bullet and made for the train station. It was me who had severed the connections with my French helpers, no one else, so I could blame my feelings of helplessness and loneliness on only one person.
I knew the route back to the Gare du Nord like the back of my hand now, and every time I walked past it, I thought of our encounter with the blue bereted girl and how she had led us so expertly to the Hotel La Romaine. As I got closer to the station, I hoped desperately that I would soon see her blue beret bobbing around and the newspaper tucked faithfully under her arm. I hoped that she would help me.
