Her Darkest Hour: Beautiful and heartbreaking World War 2 historical fiction

by Sharon Maas

  She supposed that was how humans managed to survive through hard times. They simply pushed their cares away and pretended they didn’t exist. These three women seemed happy enough, though all three carried a lurking anxiety in their hearts. As for her, she had no intention of showing her own inner pain, which had nothing at all to do with the war.

  She sipped her coffee and listened to the banter, not really interested, and certainly not participating. Where was Eric, she wondered, but could hardly ask. Jacques had said he’d be staying a day or two. Perhaps he was still asleep, in the room he’d shared with Jacques. Where was Jacques, for that matter? She was happy to note that she no longer felt shame. The last remnants of humiliation had miraculously transformed into something else far more worthy: a hardness like armour, outrage, and the need for vengeance. The table conversation swirled outside her bubble of inner strategising, and only at the third, and loudest, call of her name was she shaken out of her reverie.

  ‘Marie-Claire! Will you come too?’

  ‘Huh? What? Come where?’

  Margaux sighed. ‘Lost in her thoughts, again! Marie-Claire, one day you will get really lost inside that pretty head of yours, and never come back!’

  Tatie said: ‘Don’t tease her, Margaux. Marie-Claire, we wanted to know if you’ll come for a walk to the village. Margaux has made a delicious rabbit stew and an apple pie and she is going to visit a few old widows with a hamper of stew and pie, and pears and potatoes, and of course wine. Hélène and I are going with her. Would you like to come along?’

  ‘Oh! Oh, that’s very kind. But – well, no, I don’t think I’ll come. I-I have a bit of a headache.’

  ‘I didn’t think so!’ said Margaux to the aunts. ‘Well, I’ll leave this pot to simmer for a while – Victoire will take care of it when she returns. Let’s go, ladies. You’ll need long boots, the road down to the village is ankle-deep in snow.’

  The aunts both rose and set about preparing the baskets. ‘Oh, I love tramping through the snow!’ said Hélène. ‘It reminds me of when I was a girl. We all would come out and clear the road to the village, and then we children would have snowball fights, and…’

  The three older women, busy with the packing of hampers, all began to reminisce about the good old days when they were young and the world was whole, and how growing up here among the vines was the most perfect childhood of all, especially in winter – but of course, no comparison to the vendange – and how fortunate and blessed they all were, and what a pity the Nazis had to spoil everything – but – oh, we’re not going to talk about war today: one day, one day of not remembering the war…

  Marie-Claire drifted away on her own thoughts again, and as the others said their goodbyes, she nodded and conveyed her good wishes to the widows they’d be visiting. ‘Tell them I’ll visit them soon!’ she said, though she knew it was a lie. Yes, visiting and helping the old and frail was a convention and ritual that Margaux had installed in all of her children, but those days were long gone; the only one of the four who still did so, Marie-Claire assumed, was Victoire. Victoire, the goody-goody of the family. The angel, the saint.

  When the kitchen was finally empty and silent, Marie-Claire stood up. She was still hungry; she still hadn’t had breakfast and nobody had offered to make it for her. She’d have enjoyed a fried egg, or even a boiled one, but the egg-basket was empty, and anyway, she had forgotten how long it took to boil an egg. Maman had taught them all, but without practice – well, one forgets such details. She glanced out of the kitchen window, which looked out over the courtyard. Beyond the shed and the hen-pen, she saw them: Victoire and Eric.

  There they were, next to the woodpile; Victoire, in her old ugly duffel-coat, as usual, her hair falling out beneath her cap, wielding an axe, holding it high above her head, and laughing her head off, Eric holding up a thick block of wood, laughing as well, pulling away his hands, the axe dropping and the block splitting into two. Eric clapping, Victoire dancing a jig, as if she had achieved some major victory. It was as if her very name gave her the authorisation to chalk up every little thing that happened in her life as well as some wonderful achievement, a victory.

  Now here she was, flirting with Eric. As if she had a chance. Just the way she’d flirted with Jacques, and she hadn’t even taken that particular defeat seriously. Victoire and Jacques had always been so close, and that irked Marie-Claire. It irked her that Victoire didn’t even begin to hide her admiration and love for him. It had always been crystal clear that she wanted him, and Jacques had indulged her in the most obscene manner. Taking her on camping trips into the forest, and the like. He had never asked her, Marie-Claire, to go camping. Had he done so, they’d have been a couple long ago. The funny thing was that though Victoire had enjoyed such intimacy with Jacques, and still did, she didn’t seem to mind in the least that it had come to naught; that he treated her, Victoire, with the same annoying platonic equanimity that he did her, Marie-Claire. Well, that was one good thing, at least. It would have been unbearable had Jacques and Victoire become a couple. Not only was she far too young for him, she didn’t possess a fraction of her, Marie-Claire’s, beauty, and such an outcome would have been a stinging slap in the face. Nevertheless, she had always regarded the two of them with suspicion – and, yes, a mite of jealousy.

  Now here was Victoire, behaving with that same boyish over-excitement with Eric. She had obviously set her cap at this new addition to the household. One could almost pity her, so innocent she was of the ways of women. Still basically a child, in spite of her womanly figure. And yes, Marie-Claire did concede that Victoire’s figure was excellent, even concealed as it was beneath ill-fitting men’s clothes.

  She continued to watch them: Eric, with admiring eyes (yes, he’d be a good catch, if a bit young), Victoire, with deep criticism, tinged with an instinctive rancour she didn’t understand and couldn’t shake off. Victoire was no competition, she told herself sternly. She couldn’t be – just look at her, a wild thing without a modicum of allure. Victoire had never once worn lipstick, and had never once asked her, Marie-Claire, if she could try hers, just once, the way any normal growing girl would. Marie-Claire snorted. She felt sorry for Victoire. She’d probably end up marrying some boring winemaker’s son, but not Jacques, never Jacques.

  But, how quickly she had forgotten Jacques! Look at her now, pretending to attack Eric with the axe, laughing as she did so! Surely that was a heavy flirt! What did she think she was… oh! Eric now grabbed the axe, wrenched it – carefully – from Victoire’s hand, and – my goodness, no! NO! – he had grabbed Victoire, pulled her to him! His arms round her now, hers round him – and they were kissing! Kissing! Standing in the disturbed snow, fragments of wood all around them, oblivious to the world… standing there. Wrapped together, kissing!

  What on earth…?

  Thirty-Five

  Victoire

  1941

  After the exuberance of Christmas, it seemed the chateau could not wait to empty itself and return to its static state of edgy anticipation, always on the edge, always on tenterhooks. Change had come, but they were changes that lent themselves to the holding of breath, a sense of the shifting of circumstances, the clearing of a theatre stage while the next set of props and actors waited in the wings.

  Leah and Estelle were no longer in Victoire’s care. Just two days after Christmas there’d been a big thaw and Jacques had immediately arranged for their evacuation. He and Eric had taken them over the mountains, returned three days later with news of their safe arrival at a farm near Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, from where they’d progress on their southward flight to Vichy. The route had all been worked out, an escape from safe house to safe house, escorts from towns to village, forged documents – all had been meticulously planned and Jacques was at the centre of it all.

  Marie-Claire had been in a hurry to leave, pestering Maman until she, Maman, had agreed to drive her and Aunt Sophie back to Colmar along with the thaw. Aunt Sophie, Victoire thought, would have
liked to stay on for a few days but Marie-Claire, in vintage Marie-Claire fashion, had overnight woken out of the state of bored lethargy she had demonstrated through the festivities and proclaimed the urgent necessity to be back at her job; this, even though the Mairie was closed until the new year. But, it seemed, Marie-Claire was one of the skeleton staff urgently and immediately required. Leon and Lucien had taken the opportunity of a lift to Colmar, intending, they said, to travel on to Strasbourg in search of work.

  Jacques and Eric, too, had returned to Strasbourg. She missed them, especially Eric, but Jacques had promised they’d be back, and that he’d have more work for her – soon.

  As for Eric: just thinking of him brought a smile to her face. So this was how it felt, to be in love, to be loved! A warm, safe centre, like an inner refuge, a place to retreat to when the worry and the fear and the fury got too much to bear. They had spent five wonderful days together, not counting the three days he’d been gone with Jacques. She’d missed him desperately in that time, but the joy she’d felt on his return made up for the agony of being apart. And the knowledge that it was mutual, that he felt the same, missed her and thought about her day and night – it was a new thing for her, a wonderful thing. She had stumbled into love at a time when she’d least expected it, and it had mitigated the sense of emptiness and uselessness that had plagued her ever since the invasion. Now she was not just a me, she was part of an us, and that made all the difference. But it had now been weeks since she’d seen him, spoken to him. There could be no contact when he was away; she could just hope and long and yearn for his return.

  Fortunately, life had offered her a new beginning, a new direction. The year had started well; she had plunged wholeheartedly into the Red Cross training, and now, at last, she had a sense of contributing something, anything, to history, and her inherent impatience was somewhat stilled. She now rose an hour earlier each day to take care of the animals, walked down to the village and took the daily bus to Colmar – or Kolmar, as it had been renamed by the Nazis. Maman had sighed a little, scoffed a little, but in the end consented and even employed a lad and his sister – Pierre and Jeanette – to help Aimee in the house and the yard.

  It was as if the whole household had given itself a good shake, thrown off the old year with all its aches and problems, and had started anew, in a state of cautious and expectant waiting. This year, anything could happen. This year, the war would end. This year, France would surely find its heart and its courage and its allies, and repel the virus that had invaded it. How could it possibly be otherwise? Because ‘otherwise’, a worsening of circumstances, was unthinkable. The time of togetherness over Christmas had brought with it a sense of optimism, optimism founded on nothing more than the overpowering sense that it just could not be. Alsace could not remain in this state of limbo: no longer France, unwillingly claimed by Germany. It could not be. And every night, Victoire knelt at her bedside, closed her eyes tightly, clasped her hands and prayed with every fibre of her being: Please, please, let us be free again! I will do anything!

  * * *

  The hallway telephone was ringing. ‘I’ll get it,’ Victoire called to Margaux, who as usual was in her study buried in paperwork. The transition from business dealings with retailers in France to those in Germany was proving more difficult than she’d envisioned; and then there was a constant demand from Nazi officers billeted in Colmar, all of whom required discounts: discounts she could hardly afford in these hard times, yet impossible to refuse, constantly reminded as she was that they could, actually, requisition the whole lot if they so chose and that they were actually doing her a favour. Margaux had always loathed the paperwork of winemaking, yet here she was, buried in accounts, sometimes well into the night.

  ‘Hello?’ said Victoire into the receiver, and then, in delight, ‘Jacques! How are you? What—’

  ‘Can’t say much,’ Jacques interrupted. His voice was short and sharp, and Victoire snapped to attention. This was not a social call.

  ‘I’m listening,’ she replied.

  ‘Uncle Louis is coming to visit,’ said Jacques. ‘Do you have a room for him?’

  She understood at once. This was the code they had arranged for when and if a Jew needed to be hidden, in case the phone was tapped. This would be the first ‘visitor’ since Leah had left.

  ‘Yes! Yes, of course! He’s very welcome – I look forward to seeing him. It’s been ages!’

  ‘Good.’ His tone relaxed immediately. ‘And I’ll come a day later. I’m bringing Juliette with me.’

  ‘Juliette! Oh, my goodness, wonderful! I can’t wait to see her!’

  ‘And your petit ami.’ Her heart lurched.

  ‘You mean…?’

  ‘Yes, of course I mean him. We’ll be there in two days. Goodbye.’

  Typical of Jacques: his deep distrust of modern amenities, as well as a wariness, a suspicion that German spies were hiding round every corner and listening to every conversation, meant that telephone conversations were always reduced to just the bare essentials. For Jacques, a telephone was a shortcut that speeded up the exchange of essential information, no more, no less. He disdained its use for any kind of useless exchange of pleasantries, unlike Victoire. But the curt information she’d just received was enough. She knocked on the door to Margaux’s office and put her head round it.

  ‘What are you grinning at? You look like a Cheshire cat,’ said Margaux, looking up from her ledger.

  ‘Jacques is coming, and Juliette, and Eric!’

  The frown melted from Margaux’s face. ‘Really! When?’

  ‘He said in two days.’

  ‘We’ll need some flour. And butter. Jacques and Juliette both have ration cards, so that’s fine. You’ll look after that, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘And you must be happy that Eric is coming back!’

  ‘Oh, Maman! Yes! I’m happy!’

  She skipped over to her mother, bent over to plant a kiss on her cheek. Margaux reached up, cupped a hand around her daughter’s head, rubbed it, smiled.

  ‘First love is a beautiful thing, and Eric is a good boy. I’m happy for you.’

  ‘Oh, and Jacques said we’d have a visitor. For the cellar, I mean. A man, apparently.’

  Margaux’s forehead creased again.

  ‘Did he now! Well, then, we need even more food, and whoever it is, he won’t have a ration card. So remember that. It’s back to walking on eggshells and alarms, and you’ll be the main carer again. We can’t let Pierre, Jeanette and Aimee know, so be careful. And…’

  They spoke for a while on the minutiae of keeping a refugee hidden in the wine cellar, and then Victoire went out to secure the hens in their coop, still smiling. It had been weeks since she’d seen Eric. It was time.

  * * *

  Two days later she was in the kitchen, reading, after a long and busy day, the kitchen being the warmest room in the house. It was late, Maman had already gone to bed. The book she was reading was a medical one; she had struck up a friendship with one of the doctors she trained with, and he had lent it to her. It was called A Textbook of Medical and Surgical Emergencies, and she found it fascinating, inspiring and depressing all at once. This damned war! Were it not for the war she could have finished her schooling and, perhaps, gone on to be a proper nurse. Or even a doctor. One of her trainers was a female doctor. They did exist. Were it not for the war, she could have continued, uninterrupted, along that path. But war was the reality, and this course was all that was available to her at this time. Perhaps the war would end this year, and she could pick up the pieces of her life where she had dropped them, and set off on something bigger, better. As it was, this was all she could do. She sighed, and turned the page.

  ‘Oh!’ Startled, she dropped the book; it crashed to the floor. A sudden knock on the door, loud, confident, brash, like a gunshot; her heart bounced, her breath stopped and she leapt to her feet. Three sharp knocks. She waited, and then relaxed. They came again, those
three sharp knocks, and then a third time. The signal. It must be Jacques. Jacques, and Eric…

  She flew to the door, turned the key, opened it, and was about just about to cry his name; instead, a second Oh came out, surprised and disappointed. It wasn’t Eric and Jacques who stood just beyond the doorway, but a tall, hollow-cheeked young man, a man she had never seen before.

  He spoke: ‘Monsieur Michaud would like to order three cases of Pinot Noir.’

  She relaxed. The reply to the password was ‘Unfortunately we have no more Pinot Noir. I can offer you a dry Riesling instead.’

  They both smiled, then. She stepped aside to allow the young man to enter. He removed the woollen cap that hid his forehead and she saw that despite the pallor of his face and his haggard expression his eyes were wide and bright, and his smile was warm and embracing.

  ‘I am Nathan,’ he said. ‘Jacques must have told you I would come.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, he did. Come, sit down. Let me make you some coffee, and we have some bread, and some cheese – you must be hungry! You have come from Strasbourg, I believe.’

  ‘Yes, yes, from Strasbourg, and all on foot. And I can only move at night. Fortunately, there are enough hospitable people who helped me on my way.’

  ‘We have a room for you. You can stay as long as you need. Unfortunately, it is underground, behind the wine cellar, so it is dark, but for that reason it never gets too cold.’