Authors: J. Robert Janes
‘Women make all kinds of mistakes this Occupation only reinforces.’
He added another dry stick to the tiny fire he’d built among some screening boulders. There was no possible warmth except for the mind and soul. ‘What will you do?’ he asked.
‘Lie low for a while. My SS guards watch me all the time. Neumann has been repeatedly eyeing the contents of the house and has made another list of his own: the small things that can be easily taken. He’s edgy, Tommy. It can’t have been easy for him having that train robbed. He’ll be worrying about the Russian front just like the rest of them.’
‘Was Schiller really sent there?’
There were so many things we didn’t know. One guessed simply because that was all one could do. ‘Maybe yes, maybe no, but deep inside me, I have to feel he’s near.’
‘And Dupuis?’
‘Just like Schiller, he believes I was involved in the robberies, but more than this perhaps, that I’m the key to the rest of you, so they both tolerate a modicum of freedom for me as they wait to see what I’ll do. I can’t become involved again, Tommy. I mustn’t. I don’t want to be the one who leads them to you and Nicki and the others.’
‘Marie seems very reliable.’
‘She and Jean-Guy argue vehemently. For days on end, she won’t speak to him, but when I ask, it’s always some stupid thing, never the real reason.’
‘Could she take a message into Fontainebleau?’
‘No! I absolutely forbid such a thing.’
‘I have to contact Matthieu and through him, Paul Tessier. We’re moving over to the offensive. Now that America’s in the war, it’s only a matter of time until the Allies invade the Continent.’
Pearl Harbour—yes, I’ve forgotten to mention it—7 December 1941. But you do see how small our war here really was? We learned of this tragic event both from the BBC French broadcast and the German-controlled Radio-Paris. We also knew that as Tommy had said, it would only be a matter of time.
‘We’ve a parachute drop in ten days, Lily, near that abandoned airfield.’
The caves and my mother’s farm.
‘Just hang on for a little longer. As soon as the drop’s done, we’ll clear off and leave you out of it. Some of the arms are to be smuggled into Paris. Marcel is working for us.’
‘You’ll all be arrested!’
‘Somehow I’ve got to contact Tessier. He’s the only one who can teach the others how to handle the explosives that will be dropped.’
‘I’m not hearing this. I’m really not! And where, please, do you intend to hide stuff like that?’
‘As far from the caves as possible. The loft of Clateau’s slaughterhouse probably.’
‘
Ah, nom de Dieu,
why? Barbizon is a little place that’s crowded with Germans and collaborators!’
Not only had he a place in mind, he let me say it: ‘My coach house, among the crates.’ Aghast that he should even think of such a thing, I offered an alternative: ‘The Poulins, Tommy. Yes, we must take it to their farm. Henri and Viviane will help us. It’s far enough from the drop zone and won’t arouse suspicion.’
Me, I knew he had planned it all along, for he finally said, ‘We’ll have to check the location out.’
I remember nodding with dread at this while gazing into the fire, remember saying, ‘You want me to go there tomorrow to ask them, and if I do, Marie must take a message to Matthieu? That restaurant of his is so full of the enemy, Tommy, the French ones especially will know who the hell my daughter is!’
‘But she runs errands for you? The post office, the shops, eggs even to the mayor.’
And he’d done it again. Led me straight to where he wanted. ‘All right, I’ll ask her to take Matthieu some eggs first thing in the morning. Jean-Guy can take five to the mayor, so as to divide the responsibility and silence the argument.’
‘Nicki will go to the Poulins with you.’
‘And yourself?’
‘Will be watching your backs.’
The surface of the millpond is dark and still, the geese tightly flocked before the door where Viviane used to feed them. They question, they wait, they crane their necks in expectation and complain to one another as I lean the bike against a tree and walk towards them. Me, I know what I’m about to find. Even so, I don’t take chances. The Luger is in my hand, the Schmeisser Matthieu got for me in the carrier basket beneath a blanket that hides it.
The geese see me and crane their necks my way. They fidget—the whole flock moves in unison, eddying in uncertainty only to flow right back to the doorstep as a burst of autumn sunlight makes their feathers a starker white against the russet hues of the fallen leaves and the chalk-white of the stucco.
Rubbing the glass of a windowpane, I peer inside. Grey-haired and tied to a chair, Viviane sits before a cold stove, and I know Schiller’s cut her throat.
The geese move towards me only to ebb, then wait. They’re in a constant state of flux, the poor things. Finding the pail of feed in the barn, I toss them handful after handful, throwing it towards the pond until the racket of them is more than I can bear and they’ve parted enough for me to see Henri.
Mired in their puddled excrement and feathers, he lies face-down. Though I’ve seen far too much of this, I bite my knuckles to stop the tears, for it’s not just that they’re gone. It’s all my fault and I know this. Am I softening, or is it simply my memories of this place and the pond that once held so much for me and the others?
The water’s cold, and I know I can’t go bathing, but on that spring day in 1942, it was deliciously warm in the shallows, and through the spray I could see and hear Tommy laughing at me. He had such a good laugh, strong and full, such a wonderful body. We came together—splashed—chased one another until we fell into each other’s arms among the tall grass and wild flowers, me touching his hair and his brow, and thinking of Henri Poulin who might be watching, though the pond seemed empty of his punt when I sat up to look.
‘Tommy, I’m worried about Marie. I must get back. It’s crazy for me to stay here like this,’ but he lay on top of me, and it felt so good to have him there.
‘Nicki and Dmitry are on the lookout. We’ll be okay.’
A wren flitted nervously among the flowering dogwood, and in the distance I could hear the geese. Viviane would be feeding them again; Henri would be …
‘It’s been ages, Lily.’
Halfway between the millpond and the village of Milly-la-Fôret there’s a place of much beauty called the Trois Pignons, the Three Gables. It’s a plateau of uplifted little escarpments that have been cut by gullies and strewn with scattered boulders.
Always when I come here, I feel wild and free, able to climb to the highest parts, breathless while looking out over the surrounding terrain. It’s windswept up here in the late autumn, open to all weathers, and I can’t resist the temptation to stand out and let Dupuis and Schiller see me holding that Schmeisser if they’re nearby.
Me, I wish I was wearing the brown beret, rucksack, Norwegian trousers, and boots that I used to have hidden with the Poulins, you understand.
Ah, oui, oui,
I always took precautions—everyone did. When things got tough, I had places to go to, but please don’t misunderstand. The Forest of Fontainebleau was far from wild and empty. During the Occupation, there were times when the Germans would come like tourists to hike or simply wander about, and times, too, when Parisians and others had to get out of the city, if allowed, to scrounge for mushrooms, acorns, and berries, or attempt to buy things from the surrounding farms.
There were, and still are, lots of little restaurants and cafés on the fringes, some even in secluded bits of woods. We never used any of them, but with the worsening of the Russian campaign, that feeling of emptiness grew because men and materiel were steadily being withdrawn to the east. The Nazis had also increased their demands for forced labour. Though the Service du Travail Obligatoire, the much-hated STO, didn’t officially come into being until February 1943, any man between the ages of eighteen and fifty-five could find life precarious. As a result, some took to the woods, and when we could, we helped those who wished to join the
maquis
, who were beginning to form in the mountains of the Auvergne and other places.
Tommy and Nicki were constantly on the move. I don’t think they ever stayed anywhere for long. A night, a few hours, no more.
Using the potting shed, Dmitry did, however, end up with me, and I came to like him less and less, for he tried hard to pump the location of the artwork out of me. I knew he must be working for Moscow, yet I couldn’t get word of this to Tommy and the others.
Of Dupuis, I saw little, of Schiller, nothing. It was as if the lieutenant had vanished. Occasionally, Nini brought word of Jules and the Vuittons, as did Simone and André, so it was, for me, mainly a time of summer, of working in my gardens and fields. That first arms drop was, however, a total bust since the aircraft never even showed up, but then it happened, right out there on that plain among the farms and fields. Clateau had given me a lift in his van with three others. The Feldkommandant in Barbizon had a taste for horsemeat, and Clateau had talked him into providing the necessary papers for being out after curfew. Tobacco smoke filled the cab, but I was hooked on cigarettes anyway and had brought some I’d filched from my boarders, cognac, too, and of course I was just as excited as everyone else. Scared, too, who wouldn’t have been, but I liked the company of these simple men. It felt good to be with them. And when we got to the drop site, everyone listened intently and craned their necks to search the darkened skies until, finally, the engines of a Whitley were heard and that drone increased with a slowness that was agonizing, for we all knew the
Boche
could also be listening.
Clateau flashed his torch on and off in sequences of three but no one could have seen it from up there, yet when the chutes started coming down, everyone started running after them. Step-ins, slips, a chemise, and a blouse were on my mind, for they were of such beautiful silk, those first chutes, and we had such luck that night. There were six canisters, but it wasn’t until we got them to the Poulins’ that they were opened. Mills grenades, blasting caps, sticks of Nobel 808, fuse, wires, and pistols, too: Webley .45s with fifty rounds each.
Tucked in amongst everything else were chocolate bars, cigarettes, even tea and a fifth of brandy. Every space had been used, and we knew that the British didn’t have much themselves.
A fortnight later, we met in the forester’s hut that nestles among the boulders on a rocky ledge not far below me. Even with the Germans insisting on the French constantly logging the forest, this hut had remained empty for years, just like the other one.
There’s still no sign of Dupuis and Schiller nearby, but far out on that plain, a small dark car is parked at the side of the road and the glint from a pair of binoculars is clear enough, for even as I have remembered the location of this hut, so have they.
Satisfied, I begin to pick my way down. The boards are weathered grey and someone has left the door slightly ajar, but are there trip wires?
Feeling around it, I search. The latch is but a simple hook and eye. My fingers move up some more, reaching out a little now, for the roof’s low, but there’s still nothing. Have I been wrong about their having anticipated me and having been here recently? Have they not remembered that we also used this hut?
Below me, the gully opens in ledges of rock, spills of boulders, and clumps of brush. Sparrows and finches are after seeds. I walk away, find a boulder, heft it as a cricketer might, and toss it at that door, knowing there won’t be time to duck, but nothing happens.
With the muzzle of the Schmeisser, I ease it open since I need to get in there, to remember how it was. The table’s still here—there’s a ruin of splintered chairs. Bullet holes are everywhere, the one little window completely obliterated, but as if God had willed it, the soot-clouded glass of the lantern is perfect even though glass was really what it was all about on that first night we met here. Broken glass, and Schiller will know this.
Paul Tessier lovingly held one of the time pencils. That badly disfigured face paused to search out each of us. ‘You crush the right colour, eh? It releases the measured amount of fulminate of mercury, which begins to eat its way through the wire. Thin for a fast delay; thick for a slow one, and very thick for much longer.’
About one-third of the time pencil was colour-coded. Tiny phials of fulminate—the acid—encircled the wire whose thickness varied with the colour and its length. ‘Red means a delay of four-and-a-half hours. Violet …’ He traced the length of the stem. ‘Violet,
mes amis
,
gives one of five-and-a-half days. Orange, yellow, green, and blue provide delays that are in between, so you squeeze the woman of your choice, break the cherry, let the acid flood out to contact the wire, and
voilà!
it eats its way through. The striker pin is then released and the detonator struck.’
I ignored the chauvinistic inference. No one stirred. There was not a murmur. All eyes were riveted to those hands until a finger was held up. ‘But beware,’ he said. ‘These things are sensitive to heat and sudden shock. The glass is so thin you could easily kill yourselves, so I’m recommending you carry them like this.’
He took off his beret and shoved the time pencil between the Croix de Guerre
and the material beneath it. ‘Mind you don’t become too hotheaded, though. Heat speeds up the rate of reaction.’
‘Aren’t there shorter delays?’ asked one of the railwaymen from Melun.
Paul was all gestures. ‘We’ll get them next time perhaps.’
***
‘And the “plastic,”’ asked another.
Tessier was firm with us. ‘For now, it’s the Nobel 808 and a much stronger stench of bitter almond, so don’t breathe in the fumes too long or your head will split.’
The map was unrolled. Roads, towns, villages became clear in miniature. The Forest of Fontainebleau was like a green stain. Railways were simple lines of black with tiny crossing lines spaced at regular intervals. Two for a single; four for a double.
‘The line from Paris,’ said Nicki. ‘London wants us to hit it close to the city where it will hurt the most.’ He was now totally committed to the offensive. What fools we were. Every person who was in this hut that night is dead except for myself.