Miss Carter's War Read online

  The motley crew waiting in a darkened yard behind the house had at first thought that the agent from England had not arrived, but when she was introduced by Marcel they gaped in disbelief. She had had the foresight to fill her pockets with cigarettes and some coffee beans with which she broke the ice, handing them round as though at a cocktail party. The men laughed at the incongruity of her behaviour – this strange English miss, who spoke perfect French. She then asked them to turn away whilst she pulled up her blouse to extract the money she had strapped to her waist. That went down very well. More even than her bosom. Marcel explained that they had not been paid for a long time and were dependent on local support, which was far from unanimous, for food and occasional shelter, although most of the time they slept rough on the Plateau de Vaucluse or Mont Ventoux as she was often later to do herself. They were hungry and Marguerite’s first show of authority was to stop them eating the pigeon.

  Looking around at the disparate collection of men she wondered whether she was up to her assigned task of forming them into a cohesive whole in time for the planned invasion. Gathered to greet her were representatives from several different groups operating in the Vaucluse area. Like wild gypsies, long-haired, unshaven, weather-beaten, dirty and smelly, they were an odd lot. Marcel introduced her to some of them that night but it took a few weeks for her to discover that the Maquisards were an eclectic mixture, made up of fiery Communists, extreme right-wing nationalists, deserters from the French Army who refused to do the forced labour the Germans were demanding of them, veterans of the Spanish Civil War, intellectuals like her parents, who were fighting the Nazis, as were the two Jewish members of the group that had escaped the purges. In addition there were several lads who just liked making trouble.

  It pained her to recall that that was the first time she had seen Jacob. She had been warned by headquarters, he needed controlling. No wonder, considering his story. Being Jews, he and his family had been taken to Les Milles, near Marseilles, where a converted factory was used as a holding pen before transit to the death camps. Some Quakers and a valiant pasteur, Manen, had managed to persuade the French commanders to let fifty children be rescued and sent to safety abroad. Jacob’s wife could not bear to let their two children be taken away for ever, so the night before their proposed departure, she jumped with them from the roof to their deaths. Jacob escaped before the transport to Drancy from whence it would have been to Auschwitz, vowing revenge. When Buckmaster told her what Jacob had endured and stressed the need to rein in his desire for vengeance, she knew he was warning her as well.

  As she sat in the plane sipping a glass of wine Marguerite dared to do what she had avoided for fifty years – think deeply about Marcel, the man with the bike. He was tall, with penetrating brown eyes in a sun-burnished face. Despite wearing a battered old leather jacket, well-worn Basque beret and heavy boots, he had a grace and quiet dignity about him that appeared to command the respect of the others. After the meeting in the farmhouse he helped her onto his pillion and as they rode through the night he told her he had organised a safe house for her in the hamlet in which he lived, and her cover was to be that of a cousin who had, with thousands of others, fled Paris in the occupied north of France to live in the south under the Vichy government. She recalled being pleased that she would be living near Marcel.

  As the plane landed in Marseilles Marguerite was swamped by a wave of anxiety. Her recollections of her arrival in France as a young woman had not distressed her as much as she had feared. But what lay ahead?

  Chapter 50

  She had booked into a hotel in Sault for her first night back in the Vaucluse after half a century. This town had been the centre of the Le Maquis de Ventoux. Because it was perched on a rocky hill it was easy to see anyone approaching from below and the residents, apart from those that joined the much-hated Milice, a French police force formed by the Germans to quell opposition, closed their eyes to what was happening, or actively helped, which bravery had earned the town the Croix de Guerre after the war.

  As Marguerite drove in her hired car up the winding climb to the town, she felt something of the excitement of her youth. The buildings were the same, but the streets were now thronged with laughing, chatting people, not deserted and fearful as they had been during the occupation. She parked her car and wandered towards the hotel.

  She found herself looking at the names on a memorial to the dead of the Second World War. She knew most of them; roistering, bawdy, brave men. Nearby was a group of old fellows absorbed in a game of boules, while at a concrete table several others were playing cards, shouting as they slapped them down, laughing and jokily punching one another, enjoying the pleasurable old age of which Antoine, Jacob, Jean, Georges, Roget and Philippe had been deprived. They died to make possible for others this comradely fun in the dappled shade. She continued on her way to the Hotel du Louvre.

  It was so changed since it had been a vital meeting place during the war that she had difficulty recognising it. Where there had been a bleak courtyard there was now an outdoor restaurant, all gaily coloured tablecloths and parasols. Inside, the café, which had been nothing but the habitual zinc bar smelling of garlic and the foul tobacco substitute herbs, was now part of a large hotel, walls having been knocked through and buildings either side incorporated.

  She registered at the reception desk. Upstairs not much had altered. The landlord showed her to the very room to which Marcel had carried her, traumatised after the massacre and her escape. She sat on the bed and put her head in her hands.

  Jacob hurls her in front of him through the barn door.

  ‘Vite.Tu’enfuis. Je te suivrai. Merde, ma chérie.’

  She runs. The shots, the shouts, she turns her head to see him weaving from side to side behind her, deliberately taking the bullets to shield her. She reaches the trees, turns to see him writhing, juddering on the ground.

  Marguerite took her toilet bag from her case and put it on the modern sink. After gently removing her filthy clothes, Marcel had brought hot water in a jug which he poured into a china basin, and using the corner of a threadbare towel wiped away the dust and sweat from her face and body. As she had then, she looked at the Provençal tiled roofs through the window and in the distance the white crest of Mont Ventoux, shale not snow. For a sacred hour they had escaped the turmoil and she had blanked out the image of the dying Jacob as Marcel stroked her as though she were a wounded animal. She had looked at the clock on the church tower as they sank into the feather bed and lay on their backs, hand in hand.

  ‘Lovely,’ she had whispered, meaning his gentleness.

  He misunderstood.

  ‘Yes, it used to chime every hour. The enemy took away its voice along with ours. But it will come back. As will ours.’

  And there it was now.

  She sluiced her face in cold water and went outside into the square. As she sat at a table among the dining holidaymakers a man with a clown’s white face and wearing a flat cap over a red wig, waistcoat and oversized checked trousers started to do a strange mime. Oh Lord, thought Marguerite, he’s going to do the window or mirror routine. But no, it looked as though he was walking an imaginary tightrope. He was absorbed in his own world. His movements were delicate and mesmeric. He didn’t appear to want money. He was on his own. The diners smiled, embarrassed, those that noticed him. Most didn’t, involved in their conversations. It was incomprehensible but beautiful to watch. No one reacted except a mangy cat who stared at him. The clown was now climbing onto a chair and making an imaginary noose. He mimed putting it round his neck. Marguerite felt a chill in the sunlight. With a sad gesture of bending his fingers in a tiny wave, he jumped from the chair and fell in a heap on the floor.

  The crowd cheers as the Milice’s body is cut down from the lamp-post. A man that Marguerite recognises as an informer kicks the corpse to more cheers. She says nothing.

  Those at the tables near the clown mumbled their disapproval, pulling their children close. He leapt to his f
eet, came over to Marguerite and performed an elaborate bow. She alone applauded and he blew her a kiss over his shoulder as he left, exactly as Marcel used to do.

  As she sat there in the sunny square, the cat now settled at her feet, her life during the war seemed as fantastic as the clown’s portrayal of a brutal reality. Did those things that scarred her mind really happen? She doubted if anyone laughing around her knew or cared. When no one remembers a thing does it cease to exist? Does that matter? Is it in fact a blessing? She had tried to forget some things, to obliterate them from the record, to make amends by the way she lived her life, so that, like the people at the tables, she could just enjoy the sun and feed the sweet little pussycat. Some things are best forgotten, so why did she now want to risk delving into them? Maybe it was a natural process of taking an inventory before death to try and justify one’s existence. Was it Descartes who said ‘We hold nothing entirely within our power except our thoughts’? It was within her power to find peace. Forget the past, enjoy the present. That corner on the way down from Sault would be a good test. Could she go there and just enjoy the view of the ravine and Mont Ventoux in the distance?

  The drive down the winding route was as beautiful as she remembered. When she got to the spot, she parked her car and stood on the edge of the road. Silence, apart from a light breeze rustling the leaves. She looked up at the cliff where she had lain in wait, the sun on her back, her lover by her side. That day she was fully alive. Heart beating fast, excited, happy. Yes, she was happy. Her older self looked back in disbelief.

  As the car comes into focus she sees the German soldier has blue eyes. He is sternly handsome. Attractive. Aryan. Bastard. They round the last curve until they are nearly level. As she pulls the pin from the grenade he looks up and stares into her eyes in wonderment like a beautiful child. Then his head bursts open and splatters all over the other men in the car. Marcel fires at the cars with his Sten. From the other side of the road grenades and bullets are flying through the air.

  In an instant, with one throw of a grenade, there had been rivulets of blood running into the flowery verge, bits of body strewn at random, jagged lumps of metal, screams and shouts and explosions. She looked for any clue that this peaceful place had witnessed such a dreadful scene but there was nothing but a plaque on the wall of the cliff, half hidden by ivy. Seven were killed, it said. Seven of the enemy. One had blue eyes. Let the ivy grow and obliterate the remaining evidence. Move on now, as nature had.

  It was market day in Saint Saturnin-les-Apt. Pungent smells of rôtisserie chicken, Arab spices, lavender. The market was packed with people of all nationalities. In one corner a strident German was rallying his party to return to their tour bus, oblivious of the bullet holes in the wall marked now with the names of the slaughtered. Marguerite looked up at the window of the Hotel de Voyager where she had secretly watched the young woman refuse to be shot in the back, facing her assassins with blazing eyes.

  ‘Shoot me as I face you. I die for France.’

  Another name on the wall, a woman who had been shot in her home for refusing to give away the whereabouts of her Maquisard husband. They had left her seven-year-old son alone in the house with his mother’s body. Marguerite forced herself to recollect how the cycle of violence continued further.

  She stands holding the small boy’s hand, watching the man shoot the girl in the flowery dress. Then he shows the boy how to hold the gun and helps him pull the trigger, ‘Good,’ he smiles and pats the boy’s head. ‘That’s for your mother,’ he says, as he pokes the body with his boot to check that it is properly dead.

  And she did nothing. She should not have done nothing. Later the girl was proved innocent.

  Vengeance was truly served by the rampage after the Liberation. L’épuration sauvage. Who could imagine this savagery on a colourful market day? Obese people wandering around, tasting, smelling this plentiful feast, could not conceive that some had starved in this town. They could not know what it was like.

  One person could. He would surely bear the scars of the war like her. They were a dwindling generation. She needed to share this burden. Say it aloud, give it credence.

  As a child she had paddled on the shingly beach and got caught in an undertow, the pebbles pulling her legs from under her, swirling her backwards, until she was thrashing about underwater, with nowhere firm to put her feet. Her father had carried her to safety. Now she felt the desperation of having no one to rescue her from this maelstrom. She remembered Marcel’s hand in hers or gently soothing her. Her tired old body yearned for him. He may very possibly be dead or married or senile but she could not leave without finding out.

  To not look for him would leave unfinished business and tying up loose ends was a necessary task before she died.

  Chapter 51

  Saignon, perched on the side of the Luberon Mountains, was now a centre for artists, and chambres d’hôtes for grey-haired ramblers. Alongside the winding lanes and alleys, the medieval houses sported multicoloured shutters. Marguerite took a room in the Hotel du Presbytère whose labyrinthine layout had proved useful during the war. Now it had a smart restaurant and the obligatory tables and parasols grouped around an encrusted stone fountain outside. Several houses had become cafés and for two mornings she sat outside Chez Christine with an old-fashioned bowl of chocolate and baguette with apricot jam, enjoying the gleaming white simplicity of the village church with its deafening half-hourly chimes. While tourists stopped their ears, she rejoiced that the bells rang out again.

  The old man across the lane from the café was cashing in on the upturn in fortune of the town. Whilst he reclined in a dirty deck chair his dog sat on a cushion beside him with a notice propped up behind forbidding photos without a payment of 15 francs. He was also selling grubby leaking sachets of lavender. As she sat there he sold nothing, possibly because he was continually talking angrily to himself and anyone in his vicinity. He must have been here during the war. Marguerite looked hard to see if she recognised him, but old age had dried up any semblance of the boy he was then. Was he one of her team or could he have been in the Milice? Or just trying to exist? So many secrets, so many wrong decisions made in one’s youth, so many regrets.

  After a few days she steeled herself to visit Les Galets where Marcel had lived with his family. It was a hamlet of five houses at the end of a dirt track surrounded, during the war, by neglected cherry orchards and vineyards. They seemed well tended now. Stones and trees along the path were marked with blue and orange paint laying out routes for hikers; this path that they had tried to conceal. And there it was. The oak tree – it was still there. Even more massive than when she lay against it with Marcel.

  She climbed the last remaining hill to the hamlet. She could hear voices and laughter and the familiar clicking of a boules game in progress. They were on the rough patch behind the barn, the men of the hameau. She hid behind a wall, heart pounding, trying to see if she recognised anyone. Was Marcel there or any of the brave souls who had hidden her identity and given her cover; had accepted that she was a cousin of Marcel’s family from Paris? That bent sunburnt man was surely Pierre, she recognised his laugh, full-blooded and loud. The tiny man giving a running commentary as he tossed his boule was surely Patrice. She knew the battered peaked cap he wore. Was it the same one after all these years? There were two other men but she could not identify them as Marcel.

  Then she looked across the field below the hamlet. Beyond it was an area of newly ploughed land. There were three lines of shallow trenches into which a man was studiously placing potatoes. There was something about the delicacy of his fingers as opposed to the solidity of his astride stance and Marguerite knew at once. She walked slowly across the field.

  She called his name.

  ‘Marcel.’

  He stood up, still straight and tall. The long hair was grey now. He looked at her.

  ‘Tu es venu.’

  ‘Oui.’

  ‘Enfin.’

  He held out his ha
nd. She took it silently and, hand in outstretched hand, they stared into one another’s lined faces. Eventually he pulled her to him and they stood on the pebbly earth, his arms holding her in a motionless embrace. The ground felt firm beneath her, his body strong. For a long while they did not move or utter. Eventually they walked back across the field, his arm tight around her shoulders.

  He still lived in the same cottage in which he had been born and grown up and it was little changed. He cooked his food in an ancient oven or slowly on the top of a log-burning black stove, the only source of warmth apart from an evil-smelling kerosene heater in the depths of the winter. He made her an omelette from the eggs that they gathered from the chicken run and they drank some local wine. Come nightfall she sat with him on a bench outside his house, marvelling at the myriad stars, invisible in London, and telling him something of her life, which sounded sadly ineffectual for one who had left him in order to change the world.

  ‘And what about you, Marcel?’

  There was not a great deal to tell. As she knew, his father had died when he was a boy so it fell to him to look after his mother till she had died in her eighty-eighth year. It had been his duty, as his two brothers and one sister were married with their own families, to care for her.

  ‘Did you not have a family of your own?’