Escape by Moonlight (21 page)

At the junction of rue de la Reine and avenue Versailles, Giles pulled up. It was just beginning to get light, but the curfew had not yet been lifted. ‘I should take a stroll in the Bois de Boulogne until there are more people on the streets,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘I shan’t expect you in school until this afternoon, Justine.’ He paused. ‘The road is clear. Go now.’

They tumbled out and ran, hand in hand, up the road to the park where they stopped and turned to each other, breathless and laughing. Suddenly their merriment ceased and they stood looking at each other. Without a word, Max held out his arms and she went into them. They stood for several moments, locked in an embrace that spoke volumes, though neither said a word. When she tipped her face up to his, he bent to kiss her. It was more than a gentle kiss of brotherly affection, much more; it was the kiss of a man in the throes of passion. She felt her insides flare up in response.

‘Let’s go home,’ he murmured when at last he raised his head. ‘I want to make love to you.’

They turned and still with their arms about each other walked through the park to the Port Dauphine and out onto Avenue Foch. By this time the streets were becoming
busy with people going to work, children going to school and shopkeepers opening their shutters, though there was little in their windows to sell. No one paid any attention to a lovesick couple who looked as though they had been out enjoying themselves all night and didn’t want it to end.

Once safely in the apartment, he turned to her, took both her hands in his and held her from him. ‘Yes?’ he queried.

‘Yes,’ she said, then led the way to her bedroom.

It was some time later before either spoke and then he said, ‘I suppose it had to happen.’

‘Yes.’

‘No regrets?’

‘No. And you?’

‘None.’ He paused. ‘What are we going to tell Lizzie?’

‘Oh, God, I’d forgotten all about Lizzie,’ she said.

‘She’ll have to be told.’

‘Told what? That you so far forgot yourself as to make love to her aunt?’

‘Correction. Fall in love with her.’

‘Have you?’

‘Have I what?’

‘Fallen in love with me? It’s not just some passing fancy?’

‘You should know me better than that.’

‘Yes, I suppose I do.’

‘What about you?’

‘My love for you has been growing ever since you turned up on my doorstep nearly two years ago, filthy, unshaven and wounded.’

He chuckled. ‘That was just pity.’

‘If it was, it changed when you came back into my life a second time. It was like being given another chance at happiness and I wanted to seize it while I could.’

‘So, is that what we tell Lizzie?’

‘We can’t tell her anything now. You’ve been expressly ordered not to contact her.’

‘I know. It will have to wait.’ He reached for her again.

‘No, Max, I have to get ready for school and don’t you have a rendezvous with Etienne?’

He sighed dramatically. ‘Oh, well, back to the war.’

They dressed, made some of the dreadful coffee which was all that was to be had these days, found a crust of bread and some jam her mother had given her the last time she was home, and after consuming it in silence, she kissed him and left the apartment, leaving him to follow a few minutes later.

The streets of Paris were alive with armed troops, searching for the perpetrators of the latest outrage. Hundreds of tons of guns and ammunition, not to mention fifty German lives, all gone up in smoke, and not only that, the track was unusable and would have to be re-laid. Someone was harbouring the guilty ones and they would winkle them out if they had to arrest the whole population to do it. Justine was unsure how best to behave as she set off to walk to school: curious or indifferent, unconcerned or frightened? Many of the people being questioned were looking terrified, though she knew they were innocent. Others blustered and threatened to report their rough treatment to superiors, which only made the soldiers laugh.

She would have liked to go back home and tell Max not to venture out, but she dare not draw attention to herself by turning back. She walked purposefully, but unhurriedly, along the street, though her instinct was to run for her life. She looked up as two men, one a German sergeant,
the other a Vichy policeman, stood and blocked her path. ‘Papers,’ the policeman demanded, holding out his hand.

She opened her handbag and handed them to him, forgetting about the pistol she had put in there the evening before. The soldier who, until then, had only been overseeing his colleague, grabbed her bag and turned the contents out on the pavement. ‘Ah, what have we here?’ he said, retrieving the pistol, her purse and her door keys from handkerchief, powder compact, lipstick and a couple of safety pins, which he kicked to one side. ‘I think, Ma’amselle, you had better come with us.’ He indicated a police van parked along the road.

‘What for? I’ve done nothing wrong.’

‘It is a crime for civilians to carry a gun.’

‘I’ve only got it to protect myself from terrorists. They are everywhere these days. Nowhere is safe.’

It was true about the so-called terrorists, gun-happy patriots who took every opportunity to shoot senior members of the occupying forces or those they considered collaborators. Justine had no reason to fear them, but many Parisians did. They wanted only to be left in peace, and though not actively collaborating with the occupying forces, were certainly accommodating. Life was easier that way.

‘Nevertheless, you will come with us,’ the policeman said, pushing her towards the van where several other people were being hustled inside.

They were taken to the headquarters of the Sûreté Nationale on the rue des Saussaies where they were herded inside. Here they were separated and Justine found herself in an office with a German major, who sat at a desk signing papers. The badge on his cap, lying on the desk, indicated
he belonged to the Gestapo. She made herself stay calm, though her heart was beating like a piston engine. She stood in the middle of the room, flanked by her escorts who each held an arm as if they expected her to bolt. Where was there to bolt to? After several minutes in which she tried not to shift impatiently from foot to foot, he looked up and barked, ‘Name?’

She felt like saying he knew her name since he had her identity documents, but decided not to antagonise him. ‘Justine Clavier.’

‘Age?’

‘Thirty-two.’

‘Address?’

She told him because there was no point in lying about it; they would soon find out the truth. She hoped fervently if the police went there, Max had gone.

‘You know it is against the law for a French civilian to carry arms?’

‘No, is it?’ she queried innocently. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘Ignorance is no excuse. Where did you get it?’

That posed a problem. Max had given it to her; it was part of a drop from London, though it was of French manufacture. ‘I bought it in a junk shop.’

‘Which junk shop?’

‘I don’t know its name.’

‘Where is this junk shop?’

‘I can’t remember. It was ages ago.’

‘Did you also buy ammunition?’

‘It wouldn’t be much good without it, would it?’

‘How much have you got?’

‘Not much, a few bullets.’

‘And do you know how to use it?’

‘I was shown, but I’ve never tried. I don’t think I could.’

‘Paris is full of hotheads who claim never to have used a gun and wouldn’t know how to, but they somehow manage it when the opportunity arises.’

‘Opportunity?’ she queried, still acting the innocent. ‘You mean in self-defence?’

‘No, I mean to shoot German soldiers.’ He thumped his fist on the desk, making the papers on it jump and his hitherto mild interrogation changed up a gear. ‘This cannot and will not be allowed to go on,’ he shouted. ‘Anyone carrying a firearm, however innocent they claim to be, will be shot.’

‘Without a trial?’

‘You think you deserve a trial?’ He left his desk and began circling round her. ‘Do you know what I think? I think you belong to one of these crackpot organisations who think it is clever to resist the lawful government of the country and blow up railways. It is not clever, it is foolhardy and futile.’ He signalled to her escort. ‘Take her home.’ Her relief at this was soon squashed when he added. ‘Search the place, I want evidence and when you’ve got it, bring her back.’

She was marched out of the building and pushed into the back of a car, an escort either side of her, which took her to the rue de la Pompe where it stopped outside her door. She prayed fervently that Max was not there and he had left nothing incriminating behind. But even if the apartment was empty, they would keep watch for anyone returning. Her heart was beating so loudly she felt sure her captors could hear it, as they hustled her up the stairs and unlocked the door with her key.

She hadn’t had time to tidy the apartment before she left and she remembered there were used plates and coffee cups
in the sink, evidence that more than one person had been in occupation the night before, and the bed had not been made. Now it was pristine. The bed was made, the cushions on the sofa plumped up, the fire cleaned out and ready to relight, and the washing-up was done. There was no evidence of Max’s occupation; everything belonging to him had gone. It left her feeling strangely at odds with herself. Had he already regretted the time they had spent in bed together and it was his way of ending an affair before it had really begun? No, she told herself; he was too honourable to leave like that. She preferred to think he knew she had been arrested and was, in his usual meticulous way, making everything right for her.

The searchers were thorough. They pulled all the covers off the bed and turned the mattress over; they emptied every cupboard in the kitchen and pulled every book from the bookcase in the drawing room, piling some of them up to take away. ‘Banned,’ they said before turning their attention to her desk. She held her breath. Had she left anything in there to connect her with
France Vivra
? Or notes about BBC news they meant to copy and print? Her diary was in there but she had been very careful not to put anything in it about her clandestine activities and appeared unconcerned when they added it to the books, along with her small portable typewriter.

‘What are these?’ the sergeant demanded in guttural French, pulling out a pile of school exercise books.

‘My pupils’ exercises. I am a teacher.’

He thumbed through them. ‘They are in English.’

‘Yes, I taught English before the war. The lessons have been discontinued since Marshal Pétain took over the government.’

‘You are an Anglophile?’

‘No, simply a linguist. I also teach French and Italian.’

‘
Deutsch?
’

‘Sadly, no. It was not taught at the school I attended.’ She did have a smattering of German but decided not to admit it.

The books were added to the pile to be confiscated.

Then, with a cry of triumph, they produced a bottle of ink she had bought for the school’s Roneo machine. ‘What’s this?’

‘Ink, by the look of it.’

‘Yes, ink for a duplicating machine, no?’

‘Yes, it says so on the bottle.’

‘Where have you hidden the machine?’

‘I don’t posses one.’

‘Then what is this doing here?’

‘I told you, I am a teacher. We have a machine at school and I sometimes need to copy lessons for my pupils and I provide my own ink. There’s nothing wrong in that, is there?’ It was taking all her self-control to keep answering their questions, while all the time she was listening for Max returning. She prayed he wouldn’t come, though there was no one she needed more at that moment.

Having turned the apartment upside down, they turned their attention to the rubbish bin. And here they found a page of
France Vivra
she had used to wrap some fish bones she had boiled up to make soup. It had not been a good copy, the ink had smudged and it had been rejected. ‘What’s this?’ the senior of the two demanded, holding it up between finger and thumb.

‘It looks like a sheet of newspaper.’

‘An illegal one. What were you doing with it?’

‘Someone put it in my shopping basket when I wasn’t looking. I don’t know who.’ She pretended to laugh. ‘You can see what I think of it, only fit to wrap fish bones.’

He folded it inside a clean piece of paper and added it to the items they were taking away, then they picked them up and escorted her back to the car.

They didn’t take her back to rue des Saussaies, but to the Prison du Cherche-Midi, where she was locked in a tiny cell. It had a bed with planks instead of springs topped with a straw mattress and a filthy blanket, a small table on which stood a cracked enamel bowl and beside it water in a chipped jug. In the corner was a slop bucket with an ill-fitting lid. Daylight penetrated through a fanlight high up on one wall and there was a naked electric light bulb dangling from the middle of the ceiling. The walls had been whitewashed, but they were filthy.

‘May I have pen and paper to write to my principal to tell him why I am not in school?’ she asked the Frenchwoman who had taken over from her escorts and was obviously in charge of the female prisoners.

‘Not necessary. He will hear soon enough.’ And with that she left, banging the door shut and turning the key in the lock.

As soon as she heard the footsteps of her gaoler receding, Justine collapsed onto the bed, every jangling nerve and sinew suddenly released of tension. The almost inevitable had happened and she had been arrested. Everyone had been told what to expect if one of their number was picked up. As soon as the news was passed round, all evidence of involvement with the Resistance would magically disappear and people like Max, his wireless operator and courier would scuttle under cover into safe houses and everyone
else in the circuit would go about their normal business. She hoped they managed to do that. But the reality was hard to come to terms with, especially now, when she and Max had only just discovered their love for each other. She had to keep him safe, safe from the attentions of the Gestapo, safe to carry on with the work they were doing, safe to be reunited with her at some time in the future. She prayed for it, prayed, too, that he would do nothing impetuous to try and free her and put himself and the whole circuit in danger. She was on her own and had only her own inner resources to call on, because this was not the end, far from it. She would be in for more interrogation and she had to hold out as long as possible to give everyone else a chance to escape.