The Prisoner (16 page)

‘I’m sure I could find my own way,’ Marc said.

The gendarme flashed with anger. ‘To go on the run again?’

‘I just don’t want to waste your time, that’s all,’ Marc said.

‘Besides, you can’t travel unaccompanied. You’ve got no papers, have you?’

Marc knew better than to suggest returning the false ones.

‘I’ll have a report typed up, saying that you’ve reported your identity documents missing,’ the gendarme said. ‘The orphanage shouldn’t have much problem getting you new papers if they have that.’

Note

  
⁸
 
Luftwaffe – the German air force.

Marc stared at the shabby three-storey orphanage like a ghost raised from the dead. He’d lived here for the first twelve years of his life, one of a hundred orphan boys looked after by nuns, under the command of Director Tomas and his steel-tipped cane.

Marc’s departure two years earlier had involved stealing clothes and boots from fellow orphans, smashing a kid’s head through a pane of glass and robbing Director Tomas’ bicycle. But while Marc didn’t expect an easy ride either from staff or the other kids, the orphanage offered food and shelter while he built up his strength and planned the next stage of his escape.

And yet sisters Madeline, Mary and Raphael ran smiling when they saw Marc approach with the gendarme.

‘God be praised,’ Madeline gushed, as she pulled Marc into a tight hug. ‘You were in our prayers every day.’

In the two years Marc had been away it had never once occurred that he’d been missed by the women who’d fed him, scrubbed his clothes and cared for him since he was a baby. The orphans tended to think of the nuns as harsh and slightly witchlike, but Marc now had enough of an outsider’s perspective to see that a hundred boys took a lot of looking after. It wasn’t that there was no love in this place, just that necessity meant it was spread thin.

Little details filled Marc with nostalgia. The creak of the main door, the way morning sun reflected off the highly polished floor. Above all, the smell of boys – socks, bad breath, pee and farts. It wasn’t nice, but it had an innocent charm when compared with the stench of BO and cigarettes made by grown men.

Sister Mary looked at the elderly gendarme who’d accompanied Marc from Paris. ‘Would you like a plate, sir?’

They went to the kitchen. Marc got bread, cheese and carrot, while the gendarme was also treated to wine and chopped sausage.

The nuns spent their lives boiling clothes, bleaching toilets and scrubbing floors with scalding water. As Marc ate, he found Sister Madeline hovering over his shoulders, inspecting him for lice. His stubbly hair passed muster, but she made a tiny yelp when she pulled back his shirt collar and saw a pair of tiny body lice.

‘I’ll draw a hot bath,’ she said urgently. ‘He needs a
thorough
delousing and we can soon boil his clothes.’

After a second glass of wine, the gendarme shook Marc’s hand and told him to look after himself. Marc thanked him, and repeated his promise to behave.

The two things that had most struck Marc since arriving back in France were the vast resources the Germans had to devote to keeping the French population in line, and the fact that officials such as gendarmes and the woman at the identity office weren’t keen on enforcing German regulations. Even the girl who’d been snogging a German had sided with him.

For all the propaganda posters, smart German uniforms and swastikas flying from important buildings, Marc got the feeling that occupied France was like a beautifully iced cake, being devoured from within by an army of tiny pissed-off ants.

Marc went rigid when he recognised the distinctive click of Director Tomas’ office door. But he glanced back into the hallway, and was surprised to see Sister Raphael step out of his office. She was a short woman, with pudgy white hands that always reminded Marc of balls of dough.

‘Has Director Tomas said anything about me?’ Marc asked nervously.

Sister Raphael smiled. ‘The director is no longer in the service of the church. We sisters run the orphanage now, under direct authority from the bishop.’

Marc didn’t know what to say, but his relieved smile said enough.

‘We seem to get along well enough without his guidance,’ Sister Raphael said, a cheeky smile creeping into her stern expression. ‘But just because you’re taller than me,
don’t
think I can’t take a cane to your backside if you err from the path of righteousness.’

Marc had never heard the nuns openly criticise Director Tomas, but they’d never liked the brutal way he’d treated the orphans and Sister Raphael was clearly well shot of him.

‘Is Tomas dead?’ Marc asked hopefully.

‘The Germans took a liking to our director,’ the sister explained. ‘He’s working for the Requisition Authority in Beauvais. But he still comes back to his cottage at night, and you’d do well to steer clear of him. He wasn’t very happy when you stole his bicycle.’

‘Avoiding him sounds sensible,’ Marc agreed.

‘I’ll need to get a photograph for your identity papers,’ Sister Raphael said. ‘I’ll tell them you were born in 1929, instead of 1928, which will keep you out of the factories for another year. You used to work for Morel the farmer, didn’t you?’

Marc nodded.

‘I’ll send you to work for him. No point restarting school at your age after two years absent.’

Marc’s mouth twisted awkwardly. ‘The last time I saw Morel, he threatened to chop my …’

Marc tailed off, because he didn’t know how to refer to his balls in front of a nun.

‘Farmer Morel needs labourers,’ Sister Raphael said. ‘And this orphanage relies on the extra food he supplies. He’ll work you hard, your wages will be used to pay for the boots you stole and the glass you broke when you ran away.’

‘I
kind of
tripped Farmer Morel’s daughter into a pit of manure,’ Marc said delicately.

Sister Raphael wagged her finger. ‘He’s a good Christian. I’m sure he’ll forgive you.’

Marc wasn’t convinced, but didn’t argue because in the twelve years he’d lived in the orphanage he’d had hundreds of disputes with the nuns and had won precisely none of them.

‘Sister Madeline will have the water hot for your bath shortly,’ Sister Raphael said. ‘Go help her drag the tub out into the yard.’

*

Even in freezing weather, orphans bathed in a tin bath on the patio behind the kitchen. On busy days, three baths were lined up, with boys hopping in one after another and the nuns scooting back and forth from the kitchen with hot kettles to warm up increasingly filthy water.

Sister Madeline was in her twenties, and Marc suspected she was rather sexy behind her black habit and veil. She’d probably seen him naked a hundred times, but puberty had properly kicked in and he turned bright red as he stripped naked. He dipped a toe in the steaming water, but that only earned a rebuke.

‘Not yet! I’ve got to get the delousing powder.’

The white powder came in a huge aluminium can. Sister Madeline used an enamel mug to scoop some out. She sprinkled it over Marc’s head, then followed up with a bucket of steaming hot water.

‘Oww, Jesus!’ Marc moaned.

‘You’ll burn in hell taking our lord’s name in vain,’ Sister Madeline snapped furiously, as she gave his wet back a hard slap. ‘And fancy a big boy like you making more fuss than a six-year-old!’

The insecticide powder fizzed on contact with water, and Madeline tipped another cupful into Marc’s hands and told him to rub it into all his hairy bits. When he was white all over, the nun left him to cook naked in the sun, while she sprinkled more delousing powder over a smaller tub filled with boiling water into which she dunked Marc’s clothes.

The older orphans were out at school, but Marc being white and naked greatly amused a group of three-to six-year-olds who’d emerged from a game in the surrounding fields with a teenage nun who Marc had never seen before.

‘He ran away,’ one of the oldest boys said authoritatively. ‘He’s called Marc.’

After ten minutes standing with the fizzing insecticide powder on his skin, Sister Madeline reduced the young spectators to howls of laughter as Marc hopped about under a cold hose, before finally allowing him to settle in the tin bath.

There was no soap and Sister Madeline insisted that Marc scrubbed himself thoroughly with a pumice stone, before she broke off and mischievously chased the little spectators with the hose. Marc sat in his bath with his head tipped back, watching the little boys throwing off their shirts and squealing under the cold water.

If Director Tomas was still around, he’d have stormed out of his office, grabbed the first two noisy kids he could lay hands on and brought them inside for a good thrashing. The orphanage was a happier place for his absence, and Marc was glad to know it.

For two years, he’d seen brutality and suffering, as the Nazi’s turned Europe into a gigantic slave camp. But here, in a little orphanage in the back of beyond, he’d found something that had actually got better.

*

It was only 12:30, but the nuns had seen how skinny Marc had got and they let him eat again when the six-to twelve-year-olds arrived back from the village school and ate lunch.

‘AAARGH!’ Jacques screamed, fighting off happy tears as he gave Marc a hug. ‘I can’t believe you’re back.’

Jacques was eleven now. He’d slept in a bunk below Marc from his fifth birthday when he’d been moved out of the nursery, until the day Marc ran away. He was the nearest thing Marc ever had to a little brother.

‘You’ve really grown,’ Marc said, as he noticed a surprising lack of familiar faces among the boys returning from school. Clearly the war had made an excellent job of creating new orphans.

‘You remember Victor?’ Jacques asked. ‘He got moved up to our attic dorm. We’re mates now.’

‘I remember trying to steal a pair of boots, and you trying to stop me with a broken arm,’ Marc said, putting the truth right out in the open and hoping Victor wasn’t holding any grudge.

‘Everyone thought you was dead,’ Victor said.

‘Nope,’ Jacques said. ‘I
never
believed that.’

‘You bullshitter,’ Victor scoffed. ‘
Everyone
thought Marc was dead. I mean, no other kid ever ran away for more than about two weeks.’

‘OK, I had my doubts,’ Jacques admitted. ‘But I always
hoped
you were alive. So where have you been? What have you been doing?’

Marc couldn’t tell his fellow orphans the truth about the last two years of his life. Even if he had, none would believe that he’d got mixed up in plans to steal the blueprints of a miniature radio transmitter, helped destroy Nazi plans to invade Britain, then escaped across the Channel, where he’d been given espionage training by the British Secret Service, before being captured and sent to prison in Germany while on another undercover mission to sabotage U-boats.

When Marc ran away he’d never been further than Beauvais, six kilometres south of the orphanage. He’d never been on a train, never eaten in a cafe or restaurant. That was still true for most of the kids in the orphanage, so they were easily impressed.

After a satisfactory afternoon nap on clean orphanage sheets, Marc woke just before 6 p.m. and found a group of little kids badgering him with questions. It was all little stuff, like what the Paris Metro was like, had he seen a Panzer tank, was Paris near the sea?

The older boys were more interested in how Marc had survived on his own for two years. He told them he’d spent the whole time in Paris, living in empty houses, making money doing odd jobs. He even jazzed the story up with a couple of hot girlfriends.

Marc got full-on hero worship from everyone until his old nemesis Lanier returned from his job at the local bakery.

There’s usually a pecking order with kids: tough dominates weak, clever outsmarts stupid, tall looks down on short. Marc and Lanier’s mutual hatred grew out of the fact that they were so alike. Same age, same build, both quite clever. Lanier probably had more of a nasty streak, but in the charged and occasionally brutal atmosphere of a boys’ orphanage Marc had been no angel.

As they sat at tables behind the dilapidated orphanage eating their evening meal – the first time Marc had eaten three meals in a day for what felt like about a million years – Lanier squatted on the table’s edge in a sweat-stained baker’s overall and took every opportunity to remind the others that during Marc’s escape, he’d stolen a boy called Noel’s working boots and smashed another boy’s head through a window.

‘Sebastian’s got scars on his cheek,’ Lanier said. ‘He’s working in Germany now, but you’d better steer clear if he ever comes back.’

There used to be kids of sixteen and seventeen in the orphanage, but Marc had noticed there was nobody older than fourteen now.

‘Are they all in Germany?’ Marc asked, depressed at the thought.

Forced labourers got paid wages and were treated better than prisoners, but there wasn’t much in it.

‘Some work in factories here,’ Jacques explained.

‘Noel?’ Marc asked.

‘Director Tomas sent him to work on the wall, I think,’ Jacques said.

‘Wall?’ Marc asked.

‘Atlantic wall, dummy,’ Lanier said, delighting in Marc’s ignorance. ‘Building defences along the coast, in case the Yanks and Brits invade.’

‘Ahh,’ Marc said.

He’d rarely heard the news in prison camp. When you did it was hard to separate facts from rumours, but the tide of war did appear to be turning: twenty months earlier, Marc had helped to destroy barges for a planned German invasion of Britain. Now, Hitler was building coastal defences to stop Britain and America coming in the opposite direction.

‘When are they expecting the invasion?’ Marc asked.

‘Everyone says it has to be summer to invade,’ Victor said. ‘Didn’t you see any news in Paris?’

Marc realised he’d slipped up. If he’d really been in Paris for two years, he’d know a lot more than a bunch of kids in a remote orphanage.

‘I was busy looking after myself most of the time,’ Marc said unconvincingly.

‘I reckon they’ll invade tomorrow afternoon,’ Jacques joked. ‘Liberation by Sunday teatime.’