quickly made their way down to the cellar, but Claudine
handed Louis to Monique and waited at the top of the steps
with Armand, where they watched the enemy aircraft soar
overhead and a few minutes later heard the dull boom of
exploding bombs reverberate through the hills. The
munitions factory on the road to Tours was undamaged,
they discovered later, but a busful of workers arriving for
their evening shift had perished.
In the end, the boys at the Army Cadet School, not ten
kilometers away in Saumur, were among the last to make a
stand against the great might of the German army. They
fought on, despite the fact that the Government had fled
first to Briare, then to Tours, then to Bordeaux and that
rumours of an armistice were growing stronger by the
minute. At the chateau, with the battle raging almost on
their doorstep, Claudine and the rest of the family went on
with life as best they could. Every day now was filled with the
doom-laden roar of Allied and enemy aircraft flying
overhead, gunfire echoing through the countryside, and the
acrid stench of explosives lingered in the still, hot air of
summer.
On 18th June, General Charles de Gaulle made a
broadcast from London calling upon all Frenchmen to
remember that’… whatever happens, the flame of French
resistance must not and shall not die!’ But apathy and a
sense of defeat were spreading now like a disease, and four
days after de Gaulle’s speech, Marshal Henri Philippe
Petain - the proud, erect man with pale blue eyes whom
Claudine had met once in Paris, and who had taken over the
Government after Paul Reynaud’s resignation six days
before - signed the armistice that betrayed Great Britain
and brought peace to France. But not even the indignity of
seeing its national representatives forced to return to the
railway carriage in the Forest of Compiegne where France’s
Marshal Foch had dictated terms to a defeated Germany in
1918, seemed to bother the French. There was a new
sound ringing through the countryside now - the sound of
rejoicing. The war, for France at least, was at an end.
Claudine was stupefied. That the French should welcome
surrender was horrifying enough, but when that
surrender called for three-fifths of France, including
Touraine to be occupied and governed by the German
army; when it called for four hundred million francs to be
paid every day to the Reich, and for over a million and a half
Frenchmen to be deported to prisoner-of-war camps - the
sheer atrocity of it was inexpressible.
The first Germans arrived in Chinon at four in the
morning on August 5th. There were no more than five of
them and they came on bicycles - so Monsieur Bonet, the
melon farmer informed Claudine.
‘They reached the statue of Jeanne d’Arc, fired guns into
the window of the laundry, then went away again,’ he said,
scratching his head in bewilderment.
He cycled off then, but returned at six that evening to tell
her that the Bodies were back, this time with the rest of their
company. They had taken over the Hotel de France on the
square, the Hotel Boule d’Or on the quay, and many of the
desirable residences on the rue Voltaire.
The following day Claudine and Monique cycled into
Chinon, neither of them knowing quite what to expect, but
unable to contain their curiosity. Nothing could have
prepared them for the shock of finding scores of young men
in dull grey uniforms swarming all over the town, wearing
rifles slung over their shoulders and thick leather belts full
of ammunition. The infamous jackboots were much in
evidence, as were Nazi flags, draped from the windows of
requisitioned buildings or fluttering triumphantly from flag
poles which only a week ago had flown the tricolore. But
more than all these things, what really shocked them was
that every soldier they came across was brandishing a
camera or licking an ice-cream, or shielding his eyes from
the sun as he admired the castle ruins on the hill.
‘Anyone would think they were on holiday,’ Claudine
said, and her look of incredulity turned to a scowl as she
read a notice in the florist’s window: La on park allemand.
They turned their bicycles at the statue of Jeanne d’Arc
and pedalled into the square. Three young German soldiers
saluted them cheerfully from the side of the street, and
several more who were sitting outside Madame
Desbourdes’ cafe laughed and joked with the locals as
though they were prodigal sons returned. None of them
could be in any doubt that they were welcome, or why: they
had money to spend, and the French, as ever, were only too
willing to take it.
‘They’re so good-looking,’ Monique murmured, as one
of them caught her eye and smiled broadly. ‘And so young.’
‘And so damned arrogant,’ Claudine seethed, turning her
back as another invited them to sit down. ‘Look, what’s that,
over there on the wall?’
They wheeled their bicycles over to the Town Hall to get
a closer look at the posters. They showed a German soldier
holding two children in his arms, with the slogan,
‘Abandoned population, put your trust in a German
soldier.’
‘That’s sick!’ Claudine spat, strongly tempted to tear
them down. ‘How dare they exploit children like that! And how dare they call us an abandoned population.’
‘But that’s what we are,’ Monique said softly. ‘We have no army now.’
Claudine’s eyes were blazing with indignation. ‘Come along,’ she snapped, ‘let’s go home. I feel unclean just being on the same street with them.’
But it was plain that no one else in the area shared
Claudine’s scruples, and when eventually the defeated army
started to drift back from the front, returning to their work
in the factories and on the land, the occupying forces
behaved with such extravagant civility that after a while even
Claudine found it difficult to dislike them. How could you
hate General Kahl, their commanding officer, for example,
who roamed the cobbled streets of Chinon each morning
with his pet poodle on a lead?
Then, to her amazement, she found herself inviting one
or two of the lower-ranking officers to drive out to Lorvoire
and join her and Armand at Gustave’s cafe. Armand, who
had teased her relentlessly about her sense of outrage at the
German presence, immediately accused her of fraternizing,
but when it came to it the afternoon passed perhaps more
pleasantly for him than for anyone else. In the end Gustave,
aided by one of the German youths, had to carry him home.
Claudine followed, and couldn’t help laughing at the look
on Liliane’s face when she saw her son draped over the
shoulder of a German officer. But to her surprise Liliane
invited him in, and in less than ten minutes had learned that
Einrich was nineteen years old, came from Hamburg, and
had four brothers, two of whom had been killed in the
fighting near Amiens. Also that his mother had suffered a
heart-attack when she heard of her second son’s death.
‘General Kahl for me to go home is to arrange,’ he told
them in his awkward French. ‘For few days only, but my
mother …’ He broke off, his eyes filled with tears, and
Claudine guessed that the lump in Liliane’s throat was as large as the one in her own. They were men like any others, she grudgingly admitted - in fact boys, most of them, a long way from their families and only too grateful for any little
kindness shown them. All the same her feelings towards the
Germans en masse had not changed. They had no right to be
in France, and if their families back in Germany were
suffering they had no one but themselves to blame; they
were the ones who had brought Hitler to power.
Then, to her surprise, graffiti declaring allegiance to
General de Gaulle started to appear, with the cross of
Lorraine scratched underneath. They were scrawled on
posters, on walls, even on the backs of German cars and the
facade of the Hotel de France, where most of the senior
ranking officers were billeted. Claudine wanted very much
to know who was doing it.
‘I’ve absolutely no idea’ Celine sighed when she asked
her. ‘Why on earth d’you want to know?’
Claudine paused in her weekly chore of polishing the
silver. ‘Perhaps because it tells me that there are some
people in France with a degree of integrity left.’
‘Meaning? No, no, I know what you mean. But this is the
way life is now, Claudine, you have to accept it like everyone
else.’
‘I have accepted it, as far as I can, but they’re still the
enemy, Tante Celine. And you’ve heard General de Gaulle
on the wireless these past weeks, he’s calling for all
Frenchmen everywhere to resist. And someone’s listening
to him, the graffiti proves it. I just want to know how to make
contact with them.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘Maybe I
could help them,’ she said.
Celine crushed out her red-tipped de Rezske cigarette,
put down her magazine and turned to face her niece.
‘Claudine,’ she began, ‘the war is over. The Germans are
here, and they are making life as pleasant as they can for us
under the circumstances. If you do anything to disrupt that
you won’t be doing anyone any favours, least of all yourself.
Now, take my advice and let it be.’
‘If Louis was here, d’you think he’d let it be? No, of
course he wouldn’t, it would make a mockery of all the lives
given in the last war, and this one too. Francois and Lucien
would feel the same.’
‘Oh la la! Celine laughed scornfully. ‘As far as we know,
Claudine, your husband is a traitor …’
‘And I’m beginning to feel like one too, socializing with
the Germans the way I do.’
‘Keep it that way! Make friends, not enemies, it will be
wiser in the long run.’
Claudine sucked in her cheeks thoughtfully as her aunt
confirmed the feeling she had had herself. ‘You’re right,’ she
said in the end, ‘but our lives aren’t our own any more. We have
to have so many passes and identity cards in order to be able do
anything or go anywhere. We have to queue for our food waiting
for the Germans to take their pick of everything first, of
course. We have to be indoors by ten every night… Oh, I don’t
know, the list is endless, and it makes me furious…’
‘All right,’ said Celine, ‘so life is difficult. But no one is
going to thank you for making things even harder, are they?
Which you will do if you antagonize the Germans.’
‘Hear! Hear!’ Monique said, walking into the drawing
room just then. ‘Speaking personally, I’m rather glad
they’re here, they’ve certainly livened things up a little.’ She
held out a card to Claudine. ‘It’s an invitation to a dance at
the Hotel Boule d’Or tomorrow evening. Shall we go?’
‘No,’ Claudine answered with finality. Then, seeing the
plea in Monique’s eyes, ‘You haven’t got an escort, so how
can you go?’
‘Armand says he’ll arrange one for me.’
Claudine threw up her hands. ‘Go then! There’s nothing
I can do to stop you, but I won’t be there.’
Just then they heard several vehicles coming up the drive.
It was such a rare sound these days that both Claudine and
Monique went to the window to look. A black Mercedes and
four outriders emerged from under the trees and swept
grandly across the top of the meadow.
‘What do you think they want?’ Monique asked, her eyes
searching the faces beneath the round tin helmets of the
German motorcyclists.
‘There’s only one way to find out,’ Claudine answered
tightly. ‘You two stay here.’
As the car came to a halt outside the front door, she
walked down the steps. ‘Can I help you?’ she said, shielding
her eyes against the dazzling sun as a uniformed figure
sporting an extravagant array of medals alighted from the
rear of the car.
The man nodded to one of his subordinates, who quickly
stepped forward. ‘Colonel Blomberg wishes to speak with
the Comtesse de Lorvoire,’ he barked.
‘I am she,’ Claudine said frostily, aware that her casual
attire and the duster she still held in her hand had fooled
them into thinking her a servant.
The Colonel removed his cap, revealing a balding head,
thick grey eyebrows and piercing yellow eyes. His bottom lip
protruded, and whiskers sprouted from the nostrils of his bulbous nose. ‘Madame? he said, having to tilt his head to look up into her face, ‘it is a pleasure to make your
acquaintance.’
Claudine took the hand he offered and was immediately
revolted by its limp and sweaty grasp. ‘What can I do for you,
Colonel?’ she said, forcing a smile.
The Colonel turned again to the sergeant beside him,
spoke rapidly in German, then waited while the officer
explained the purpose of their visit.
As she listened, Claudine’s heart sank. Friends of theirs
in other parts of northern France had been forced to