The Diamond Waterfall (86 page)

Indeed, one of her frights in the last month had been a possible sighting of Ferdy in the Colisée—all among the
zazous
and the black marketeers. The more she thought of it afterward, the more she was certain it
had
been Ferdy. And why not? Agreed, he had
used
to live in Liège, yet wasn't he often in Paris? But she had been walking past, he had been reading a newspaper. She had not lingered to find out.

People she knew in Paris—there was always this fear of seeing them. The fright on Monday of last week when she had seen a rather odd, gossipy woman, Céline Gauchet, a friend of Aimée's, whom she'd met a few times in 1939. “Greetings! Surely it's …” Cutting her, “refrigerating” her, as Saint had used to say in the twenties. “You have made a mistake, madame.” The puzzled but genuine apology.

Back in her apartment again, she picked up the phone. “Lucienne here. The person I should have met. He didn't … I thought of coming over?”

The voice answered, “Don't come this evening. It's not convenient. No one will be in.”

She hung up, satisfied. She hadn't heard the dreaded formula, telling her that the Gestapo had been, or were, there: “Yes,
do
come, we've visitors here, you're expected.” A child's form of code, playing contrary. But it made for safety. So far it had worked.

As well as a second cover story, she had another address in Neuilly which she had told to
no one,
and to which she could escape if in danger. She had been in her present apartment for about six weeks. It was in a street not far from the Gare de l'Est. Her balcony was patched up, the wrought iron broken. The family on the floor below, with a much larger balcony, had until recently been keeping hens on theirs. Anything to help with food.

It was already a home of sorts to her. The stairs, with their inescapable smell of stale alcohol, old polish, bleach, herbal tobacco. Two other apartments, also small, were on the same floor as hers and had in them a commercial traveler and an engineer, both of whom were either bachelors or living
singly. She saw them very little, hadn't exchanged more than a dozen words with either. The Chevillons, the henkeepers of the floor below, were a different matter. Although she had naturally to be careful whom she got to know, it would have been difficult to ignore this family.

The husband, an industrial chemist, was a prisoner of war in Germany. His wife, Jeanne, looked after the three children as well as her mother-in-law, old Granny Chevillon, with her pebble glasses, her down-at-heel shoes, and her heavy body. She seemed to clump up and down stairs most of the day— either sitting with the concierge, or going out to queue for Jeanne. Or visiting Teddy. She loved to talk.

Xavier, the eldest boy, was a
zazou.
This statement made by more or less rebellious adolescents was illustrated by outrageous clothes (wide shoulders on huge jackets, greased hair worn long, dark glasses, exaggeratedly tight trousers, and a general air of being out to shock). Teddy could understand it so well. It could not be easy being seventeen in these times. All around, the inevitable compromises made by many of their elders, compromises which often slipped over into collaboration. Sometimes she would think with dread of how it would be after the war. Those who had nothing to be proud of, or worse, something of which to be truly ashamed, would have to pay for it. And
all
would have to live together.

Xavier was on bad terms with Gabrielle, his sixteen-year-old sister: a tall, round-cheeked, striking brunette who looked already completely grown up. The youngest, Daniel, was the one Teddy saw the most of. He was nine, an afterthought perhaps—the baby of the family. He played ball near the concierge's room and in the doorway and generally made a nuisance of himself. Mme. Dastien, the concierge, whose husband had died just before Teddy came, suffered from nervous headaches and would shout at him. Another time he might be found teasing the German soldiers, the
frises,
bursting paper bags behind them. No wonder Jeanne Chevillon looked careworn.

Once, on the stairs, Teddy was introduced to Jeanne's sister, Pauline. She was a small wiry woman, very busy and efficient, who worked for the Red Cross. Her husband had been killed flying reconnaissance in early 1940, in the
drôle de guerre.
Jeanne had explained that Teddy traveled in cosmetics and had difficulty in getting ingredients. Pauline was just saying she thought she knew someone when Xavier had come out of the apartment—the complete
zazou
—on his way to a cafe. Jeanne had let loose a torrent of criticism and exasperation. His aunt had been more tolerant. She said, “His energies have to go somewhere. It's harmless enough, if he isn't too cheeky with it.” But Teddy knew that they worried he might be picked up in a street
rafle.
There was no peace of mind.

Pauline had been there earlier this week when Teddy had visited the Chevillon apartment, by invitation. Jeanne had returned home in the evening at the same time as Teddy. They had met in the hallway:

“Come in for a
tisane,
” she said. Then, once inside: “I know you don't have a radio down there. Do you want to listen to … you know … the BBC? Everyone does it. They know we do it.”

But they weren't lucky, the reception was very fogged, impossible to decipher. Then some anxious knob twiddling brought, loud and clear:
“Sie hören die Deutsche Rundfunk.”

“Merde,”
Jeanne said. Pauline also. She struggled with the set but with no success. Daniel chanted,
“Rundfunk, rundfunk,”
and roared with laughter. Jeanne cuffed him.
“T'es dingue …”

The circuit to which she was attached for her work met in different places, cafes as well as each other's homes. Her apartment was seldom or never used —particularly as there was no exit other than the front door. They were a small group. Jean Luc, their organizer, had strong views on this. Paris had had enough trouble. A chain, he said, precious cigarette dangling from his lips, was only as strong as its weakest link. Painfully obvious, and yet …

Jean Luc was a railway inspector for the SNCF, and so, helpfully, was able to travel about easily. In the '14-'18 war he had rescued a German from a burning house near Amiens, and had been awarded an Iron Cross. He wore it now in his lapel. “What could possibly make me safer?” he would say. “They daren't insult
that”

Teddy had said the first time she met him, “Perhaps they'll think you bought it?” He'd shrugged his shoulders and laughed.

“And what about other Frenchmen? Mightn't they misunderstand?”

“I'll worry about that when it happens.”

Then, she hadn't yet realized what a subtle art blending in was. How to
seem
to be
collabo,
the better to take advantage …

Another agent, code name Olivier, was a librarian. He was one of those who had a
laissez-passer
to travel after curfew, that much-sought-after permit with its Gestapo stamp of lovebirds. (When Teddy had first heard it described, memory had played a trick, sending her from one war to another: she and Gib in Brighton, 1917. Watching the lovebirds at the Metropole. “That's us,” he had said.)

Olivier and his Breton wife, Annick, lived on the Ile de St. Louis. Annick cooked wonderfully, and one of Teddy's real pleasures since coming back to Paris had been eating with them, Annick managing always to get hold of something both substantial and mouth-watering.

There was also Claude, a radio technician, and Marc, a postal worker. Besides Teddy, the only other British person was their wireless operator, seconded from the RAF. Code name Vincent, he had been trained before Teddy so that she had not met him at any of the schools. He had a French mother and had grown up bilingual. Shortish, with already receding hair and a dry sense of humor, he was very quiet. Everyone liked him.

Then there were the subagents scattered about the countryside, every one a possible weak link, or a great strength. Some Teddy marveled at, such as the bee farmer in Normandy who moved his bees about, ammunition hidden in the hives. What official would be brave enough to examine a hive of bees?

Tonight they were arguing, as they did so often, now that the Allied invasion, the Second Front, could not be far away, about the best way of doing everything. To go in for large-scale sabotage before, or after, the landings? Already they'd been successful with small efforts, stage-managed by Jean Luc. Sometimes nothing more dramatic than altering a lading bill so that goods went to a wrong destination. At other times a line put right out of action. Jean Luc didn't approve of the RAF bombing, and would try to needle Vincent. He argued, rightly Teddy thought, that a small bomb in the right place, planted by the Resistance, could do more damage than fifty hit or miss.

But mostly they saw eye to eye. All were in equal danger from the Gestapo—the dreaded Geste. She and Vincent faced possible torture, deportation, death. So, if discovered, did the rest—but
they
involved their families. The punishments for sabotage were fierce: all male relatives over eighteen, sons-in-law included: shot; women, sent to forced labor in Germany. Children taken away—God knew where.

How to live, she thought,
as we all must live,
with this ever-present threat. And if caught—to give nothing away. Or at the least to hold out forty-eight hours so that everyone concerned could go to ground. To fear for yourself, that you might be the one to break down and “finger” a colleague … Tales of the dreaded water torture alone had given her nightmare upon nightmare, of drowning, of suffocation.

Four days later the weather turned cold and sharp. In two weeks it would be Christmas. If anyone had told me last year that I should be in Paris …

Tomorrow she had a long train journey to Limoges. She would be alone both going and returning. How tired she had grown of station officials, French gendarmes who weren't too bad,
milice
who were despicable, Germans—including sometimes the
Geste
—all looking inside her samples case, that pathetic collection of ersatz cosmetics. The coarse rachel powder, the hard lipstick, crudely scented creams. “Yes, I make some of them myself.”

It was just after midday. She put some bean soup on to heat. She thought she felt hungry but wasn't sure. Perhaps what I really need is a
good
cigarette. She heard clumping on the stairs. A snatch of song,
“Où es tu, mon Espagne,”
in a nasal voice. Then a knock at her door.

Three guesses.

“Come in, Mme. Chevillon. No, of
course
you don't disturb me.”

There was a faded torn leather armchair which Teddy never sat in,
finding it uncomfortable. Mme. Chevillon settled into it at once. She asked Teddy, “Did you see Xavier just now? Rushing out just when his mother told him to be in—and going without his lunch. You'd think, a growing boy … Jeanne had some
escalope de poisson,
I queued for it—she won't keep his for him if he's not back.”

Better, Teddy thought, not to offer her an
apéro,
even some nonalcoholic
grenache,
or her tongue would become even more loosened. “Excuse me,” she said now, “something on the stove—”

“The trouble my daughter-in-law has with that boy, you don't know. But it's how they have to be when they're growing up. My son after '14-'18— the wild ideas. Now it's
his
son. Oh, he says, Grandmère, I'm
terriblement swing.
He thinks it's smart to talk like that. They all do. They get together in these places. I passed and saw him once, in the Select Bar, with all the pansies. I don't know where they get the clothes, they oughtn't to be allowed…”

Teddy, from the kitchen, made the right noises.

“I'll tell you a secret—Jeanne, she'd be so angry if she knew I was up here gossiping—‘You've to stop talking all over the place, she told me'—little Gabrielle—she goes out with
German officers.
And her with an angel's name too. My daughter-in-law, naturally she doesn't approve, but with a girl like that, and so tall she looks twenty-two, what can you do?”

As old Mme. Chevillon tut-tutted behind her pebble glasses, Teddy remembered she had been frightened just to see the uniform. The girl and the German, there in the hallway, out of sight of the concierge, embracing, then breaking off hurriedly as Teddy came in sight.

“Perhaps she has other friends who do it, and she doesn't want to be left out?”

“Oh, you young mothers—you're too easygoing. I'll tell you something,
I
know how it's going to end. A girl like that and a handsome Siegfried, one and one can make three all too easily, and
then
where shall we be? It's the same whenever there's a war. A young aunt of mine in '70 when the Prussians came … If anything happens,
I told you so,
I shall say to Jeanne. Over
eighty thousand
babies so far, they say.”

She eased her feet deeper into the slippers. “To tell the truth I'm more afraid for Xavier, thinking how they might pick him up just for being
odd.
He's a saucy one, he'll give some answer he shouldn't and find himself behind bars, and
then who knows?”

It was only necessary to listen.

“I wanted to try and borrow a little pink cotton thread from you, just to mend this old camisole, but the truth is I like a little talk—hearing your news, I've always had this interest in other people's lives, stuck as I am in that apartment all day.”

Jeanne rushed in, agitated, full of apologies. “Really, Belle Mère,” she could be heard saying down the stairs, “you
must not
make a nuisance of yourself.”

41 Valley Mount, Harrogate.
Saturday, 18 December 1943

Dearest Jay,