‘I see you have a copy of the Métro. Are you a visitor to Paris?’
Claire’s heart almost stopped. It was him! The man sitting at her table was Thomas Durand! ‘Not exactly. I am in Paris to visit my grandmother, but thought I’d take in the sights while I am here. Are you a visitor?’
‘No, I’m here to meet a friend, but she appears to be late.’
That was Claire’s cue to leave. She stood up, put the money for her coffee on the table, and put the Métro back in her bag. ‘Goodbye. I hope your friend arrives soon,’ she said and left.
On the far side of the avenue she looked back at the café. Thomas Durand was reading Paris-Soir. Her eyes dropped to the table. The wallet had gone. She walked away, confident that the money she had delivered would buy much needed guns and ammunition for the Paris Centre Maquis group.
She turned towards the Arc de Triomphe and shortly afterwards arrived at the Champs Élysées. Stopped in her tracks, Claire gasped at the sight of the bomb damage. The underground newspaper reports had shown devastating photographs of German tanks thundering down the Champs Élysées, stormtroopers strutting through the streets of Paris. The German machine – convoys of armoured cars, trucks, and tanks – crushing everything in their way.
Seeing the destruction in person saddened her, reminding her how the Luftwaffe had bombed Coventry, Liverpool, Newcastle and many other British cities. And how they had blitzed London’s East End. Night after night throughout September and October of 1940 hundreds of German bombers, escorted by fighter planes, dropped their bombs on huge areas of East and South East London until many of the boroughs had been turned to rubble. The damage Claire was seeing now had been done by Britain and her allies as well as the Germans.
She looked along the street at burned-out and smoke-stained buildings that had every other window blown out of its frame. Windows that had survived the allied bombing were thick with dust and grime, their shutters dangling from tall sash windows in large square bays. Gates were hanging off their hinges and doors blown in. She turned away in tears.
Three stops on the Métro, a short walk, and she would have a safe place to stay tonight. Maybe tomorrow and over the weekend too, if Madame Marron was as generous as her husband.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Claire left the Métro at Les Sablons. Rue de Lesseps was wide and tree-lined. She took the first left, which Éric had told her was where his grandparents lived. She had to look for a tall arched window at the front. Most of the houses were three-storey and built of white stone. The upper windows had ornate black balconies; the lower and ground floor windows didn’t. On closer inspection Claire could see that most of them had once had balconies on the first and ground floor, but they had been removed. The further down the street she walked the more run down the houses became. Some had smashed windows, doors standing open, and the shutters of some were hanging off, exposing ragged curtains.
Claire stopped in front of the only house with an arched window and climbed the steps to a paint-chipped olive green door. She knocked, but there was no reply. After some minutes she knocked again. She was about to leave when the door opened.
‘Can I help you?’
‘Yes. My name is Claire LeBlanc. I am an associate of Madame Marron’s husband. I was fortunate enough to meet the Professor at the university where he works.’ A slight deviation from the truth, but I lived with her husband – under whatever circumstances – probably wouldn’t get her invited in to meet Madame Marron. She smiled and waited for the girl to decide whether she was going to ask her in or not. She was sure she’d said enough. If she hadn’t it was too bad. She wasn’t prepared to say anything else until she was sure she hadn’t knocked on the door of Nazi sympathisers.
‘Come in. I will see if Madame Marron is at home.’
The bare floorboards of the entrance hall creaked as Claire entered. Shooting Claire a sideways glance, the girl scurried across the unpolished floor and disappeared through a door on the right. Stairs leading from the centre of the hall rose steeply before branching left and right to landings with four doors on each side. The ceiling was high, with a circular pendant in the centre. It had once been a grand residence.
A minute or so later the girl returned. ‘Madame will see you. If you would like to wait in the salon,’ she said. Claire followed her into the room. ‘May I take your coat?’ It was sunny and warm outside, but the house felt damp and cold. Claire thought about keeping it on, but the girl was clearly suspicious of her, so she shrugged it off and smiled reassuringly. ‘Take a seat. Madame will be with you shortly.’ The maid did a little bob and left.
Claire perched on the edge of the nearest armchair and looked around. The shutters were almost closed but there was enough light to see that although the Turkish carpet was stained and threadbare in places, it would have cost a fortune in its day. The curtains, now frayed and hanging off their fittings, were thick velvet, and the tapestry-covered settee next to the chair she was sitting on was the best quality, or had been. A shame to let the place go like this, Claire thought. They might have lost everything in the Depression; many Parisians had. She looked along the wall of empty bookcases to a set of double doors and wondered where they led. Perhaps to more comfortable and better furnished rooms. She was pondering what lay beyond the doors when they opened.
‘Miss LeBlanc?’
Claire jumped up. ‘Yes, how do you do, Madame?’ She offered Madame Marron her hand, which the older woman shook with a guarded smile.
‘I understand you work with my husband?’
‘Yes.’ For the time being she would let Professor Marron’s wife think she worked at the university. To tell her the truth about how she knew her husband was unnecessary – and potentially dangerous. She would tell her the whys and wherefores if she got to know her better. She might even tell her about the work she was doing in France and that safe houses were needed in Paris, if she believed in a free France. With a husband like Professor Marron, it was hard to think she could believe in anything else.
‘Did you meet my children, Miss LeBlanc? Are they well?’
‘The children are very well. Éric is a charming young man. He likes his school. He excels at most of his studies and, as I’m sure you know, hopes to go to university.’
‘And my daughter?’
‘Mélanie is an amazing young woman. She is bright and pretty. She is very clever and has a mind of her own.’ Madame Marron nodded in agreement and laughed. ‘She misses you, of course, but she is a positive girl. She is certain that you will all be together when the war is over, if not before.’ Madame Marron took a handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed her eyes.
‘And how is my husband?’ she whispered.
‘He works all the time. He is respected and liked at the university, by his colleagues and his students. We didn’t speak intimately, but his face changed from The Professor to loving father and husband when he spoke of you and the children.’
Madame Marron inhaled and closed her eyes. When she opened them she smiled. ‘Thank you, Miss LeBlanc.’
‘Please call me Claire.’
‘And I am Antoinette. I am pleased to meet you, and pleased to hear about Auguste and the children. I miss them so much. I came to Paris to pack up my parents’ house. We were going to follow my husband to England, but the German High Command stopped Jewish people from travelling, unless it was to work in labour camps for the good of the Fatherland. Many Jewish people have been sent to Germany, or Poland. Repatriation, they call it. They break down our doors and take us from our homes by force.’
‘But they have not taken you, thank goodness,’ Claire said.
‘I have my husband’s name. Marron is a very old French name. My parents do not have the same name, obviously.’ Antoinette Marron’s almond-shaped, brown eyes filled with tears again. ‘The Germans are transporting whole families to these so-called work camps.’ Frowning, she searched Claire’s face. ‘Some say they are--’ She threw her head back and shook it as if sh
e couldn’t bring herself to say the word.
‘Prison camps,’ Claire whispered.
Antoinette Marron nodded. ‘Many of them are never heard of again.’
Claire shivered and pulled her cardigan around her middle. ‘You are cold,’ Antoinette said, ‘Let us go through to the back of the house where we dare open the blinds and let in the light. The rooms at the front of the house are always cold because we have to keep the shutters closed.’
Claire looked at the shutters at the large windows. Narrow shafts of light squeezed through gaps where they didn’t meet in the middle. There was some light, but not enough to give even the smallest amount of warmth. ‘Do you have to keep them closed?’
‘Yes. Many houses in this street and in neighbouring streets have been gutted. Families who had lived here for generations were evicted in the first few months of the German occupation. Whole families were turned out of their homes. They were only allowed to take one bag of clothes each. If they were seen taking more all their possessions were confiscated.’ Antoinette stopped speaking and took a deep breath. Claire put her hand on her arm, and she nodded. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, and carried on. ‘If they were found with valuables, or money, it was taken from them and they were given a beating. It seemed the world had gone mad. French citizens, who had lived and worked in Paris all their lives, were not only thrown out of their homes, but they were denied travel permits, so they could not go to family or friends who lived in unoccupied France.’ Antoinette Marron laughed bitterly. ‘The irony is, it is against the law to be homeless, so the same people who put the Jewish families out of their homes rounded them up like stray dogs and took them away in cattle wagons to God knows where.’
Claire wondered why Antoinette and her parents hadn’t been evicted. By the way she spoke, Antoinette was clearly not a sympathiser. No one who agreed remotely with the Germans would shed tears as she had done. ‘Please don’t think me rude, Antoinette, but why have the Germans left you and your parents alone?’
‘After the first wave of evictions it went quiet, so my neighbour and I threw bricks through our own front windows. We ripped most of the curtains and stained what remained, so it looked from the outside as if the damage had been done for some time. We wrenched the balconies from the downstairs windows, and used axes to damage the wooden blinds, even pulling some of them off their hinges. To all intents and purposes our homes were no longer habitable. From the outside it looked as if the Germans had looted our houses along with the rest of the street. So, like my neighbour, my parents and I live in rooms at the back of the house. Come,’ she said, ‘now I am sure you are not a German spy I will take you through.’
‘And now I know you are not, I am happy to come through,’ Claire laughed. It was clear to her, as she followed Antoinette Marron through a succession of rooms, that this Parisian townhouse had been beautiful in its day. For obvious reasons, the rooms at the front of the house were sparsely furnished with smashed light fittings and broken furniture, but as they walked deeper into the house the rooms were furnished comfortably. The furniture was old-fashioned, but even in the dim light Claire could see it was excellent quality. The ceilings were high with ornate floral cornices. Doors on either side of a bare hall led to a sitting room, dining room, breakfast room, study and library. Some of the furniture – large settees and chairs, corner seats, huge mirrors – were covered with dust sheets. Walking through the rooms now and seeing all the furniture covered like this, Claire realised how close Antoinette had been to getting her parents out of Paris. That she hadn’t saddened Claire.
‘My father was a banker in the city. He is retired now, I am pleased to say. My mother was a volunteer worker with an organisation that helped the poor.’ Antoinette turned to Claire. ‘They are good, honest people who enjoyed going to the theatre and the opera with their friends. Now they are too frightened to go out of the house.’
‘And their friends?’
‘Gone. Hopefully they got out of Paris, but...’ Antoinette shook her head. ‘No one knows.’
Sorry was an inadequate response, so Claire didn’t say anything.
In the back sitting room Antoinette’s mother sat at a large oblong table surrounded by pieces of a half-completed jigsaw puzzle. Her father was writing at a bureau.
‘Mama, Papa, this is Claire. She is a friend of Auguste’s, and has come all the way from--’ Antoinette Marron faltered.
‘Gisoir, near Orléans,’ Claire said. Antoinette’s parents looked up from their respective activities and eyed Claire in much the same way that the maid had done – with suspicion.
It was Antoinette’s mother who greeted Claire first. ‘How do you do?’ she said, smiling tentatively. Her father followed his wife’s lead, nodding and smiling.
‘We usually have something to eat at this time of day,’ Antoinette said. ‘Yvonne, our maid, went to the shops earlier – not that there is much in them these days, but she is a clever girl. She can make a meal out of very little. I’ll ask her to set another place at the table.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Claire knelt beside the river and splashed water onto her face. Sitting on her heels with her hands in the small of her back, she stretched and looked up. Rays of sunlight streaked through the trees warming her face. After a hot and humid August, September was warm and sunny with a refreshing early morning breeze. She unbuttoned her shirt and, leaning forward, dipped her hands into the cool river. Bringing them up to her throat, she allowed the water to trickle through her fingers onto her breasts. She closed her eyes and with slow circular movements gently rubbed her temples. She rolled her shoulders and with the tips of her fingers massaged the nape of her neck and down her back as far as she was able to reach.
André had arrived that morning on his way back to Gisoir after delivering money to a Resistance group near Fontainebleau. Claire asked him if he had news of Alain. He hadn’t. Pierre put his arm around her, as her father might do, and asked her if it was time she came to terms with possibly never seeing Alain again. Claire had reacted badly. She shouted at Pierre and had to be calmed by his wife, Yvette, who dug her husband in the ribs, saying no news meant good news. Yvette probably didn’t believe it, but it was all Claire had. It wasn’t all, but--
‘Who’s there?’ Sure that she had heard someone, or something, moving in the wood, Claire opened her eyes. Clumsily she got to her feet, stood perfectly still, and listened. She was getting jumpy. ‘What the--?’
‘Shush,’ a man said, behind her. She began to turn round, but wasn’t quick enough. The man put one hand over her mouth and the other round her waist.
Instinctively, she brought her free arm forward and in a flash of anger jerked it back, jabbing her elbow into the man’s ribs. He loosened his grip for a second, giving Claire time to lift her right foot. She brought it down on his shin, scraping the heel of her boot along the bone. The man fell to the ground cursing. Claire took a gun from her pocket and aimed. ‘Frédéric? What the hell were you doing, grabbing me like that? I could have shot you.’
Holding his hands up, Frédéric stumbled to his feet. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were--’
‘What’s going on?’ Pierre shouted, coming out of the woods.
‘If you say anything about-- I will bloody shoot you,’ Claire hissed.
Pierre looked from Frédéric to Claire. He took Claire’s gun and turned to Frédéric. ‘You idiot,’ he said. ‘What were you doing here while Claire was washing?
‘I wanted to say I was sorry that there has been no news of Alain. I didn’t know she was-- I thought she was drinking from the river.’
‘Get out of my sight. Go home. You are finished here.’
Claire quickly buttoned her shirt. ‘Frédéric was being mischievous, Pierre. He didn’t mean to insult me. I wouldn’t have used it,’ she said, when the Resistance leader gave the gun back to her, ‘not on Frédéric.’
‘Creeping up on you like that, how could you know it was him? And what if it had been a G
erman soldier, his aim to cut your throat? Would you wait to see if he was a friend or foe before shooting? I hope not.’ Pierre shook his head.
‘I know Frédéric didn’t think,’ Claire said, ‘but he will from now on.’ Ticking Frédéric off reminded Claire it was dangerous to be on her own in the woods with so many German patrols about. She needed to be more careful. ‘I shouldn’t have come to the woods on my own either. It won’t happen again, Pierre.’ Claire picked up her jacket and slipped her arms down the sleeves. She looked at Pierre. ‘Was there something else?’
‘I came to speak to you about Alain,’ Pierre said. ‘I am sorry for being insensitive. Alain is a strong man, a brave man. He will not give us away.’ Claire wasn’t sure this was what she wanted to hear. Giving resisters away meant torture, but that was not what Pierre meant. She smiled to let him know she accepted his apology. ‘So we are friends again?’ Claire nodded. ‘Good. Shall we go?’
‘Of course, but first-- Sending Frédéric home will mean one of the other men will have to blow up the German troop train tonight.’ As the leader of this Resistance group, Pierre was well aware of what sending Frédéric home would mean. ‘What I’m trying to say is none of the other men have had the experience that Frédéric has. They don’t understand explosives the way he does. Only Marcel knows how to set a detonator and he is not here. So I wondered if you would consider reinstating him.’
‘I don’t want to send him home but his behaviour was reckless.’ Pierre’s brow furrowed. ‘What he did was stupid and dangerous. He’s a hot-head who acts before he thinks. I’m worried that he’ll get himself killed one of these days.’
‘I don’t think he cares about his own life. He hasn’t done since his fiancée was found dead.’ Claire paused, realising she’d said too much. ‘But he cares about the group. He would never do anything to put his comrades in danger. His energy level is a little high now – it always is before a big sabotage job – but tonight he will be calm, focused, and precise setting the detonators. You know he always is.’
China Blue (The Dudley Sisters Saga Book 3) Page 18
