Voices on the Wind (13 page)

He rammed the phone back on the hook, took a deep breath and threw the towel into a corner. Minna, he thought, why wouldn't you marry me and come here. I wouldn't need a dirty little French tart if I had you to love me. I only do the things I do because I don't want to think of you when I'm with them. Remembering that last night, and how tender they had been, he wondered again if she was pregnant. His desire had drained away, leaving him angry and depressed. He put on some clothes and decided to cancel the girl. If there even was a girl.

There was a knock. He called out, ‘Come in,' and the door opened. She was a chambermaid, still wearing the drab uniform, with a creased white apron. She had taken off the ugly little cap and stood shuffling her feet, looking at him like a rabbit confronted by a stoat. She had dark hair and large brown eyes in a pinched, white little face. She reminded him of Minna.

‘What do you want?' Eilenburg asked, although he knew.

She answered in a low voice, just above a whisper. ‘Claude said you wanted someone, Monsieur. He sent me.'

‘I asked for a prostitute,' Christian Eilenburg said. ‘Not a human sacrifice. Go away.'

The big brown eyes looked sadly at him. ‘He will sack me, Monsieur. Please.'

Suddenly he was dead tired. The anti-climax was complete, and with it came a terrible thought: if we lose the war, this could be Minna. He sat down, reached out for a cigarette.

The girl said desperately, ‘Monsieur, I am a prostitute. I do that in my time off.'

He glanced at her briefly. ‘Don't lie,' he said. ‘Never lie to the Gestapo. That's something to remember. You needn't worry about Claude. Now get out.'

The door closed very quietly behind her. He could have touched the silence. The girl went back down the corridor. There was nobody in the laundry room at that hour. Claude would think she was upstairs. She sat down and stared at her clenched hands. They opened and lay quietly in her lap. The young German was the most beautiful-looking man she had seen in her life.

Jean Dulac had congestion of the lungs. Ma Mère came downstairs and told Kate, shaking her head.

‘I've put a steam kettle in the room,' she said, ‘and made him sit up, but his fever's high and you can hear the phlegm rattling when he breathes. Janot will bring the doctor. When he comes, you stay in the back. If he sees you, you're Janot's friend, you understand. Staying for a night on your way to Marseilles. But with luck you can stay out of sight.'

‘Why don't I hide?' Kate asked. ‘Isn't that the easiest?'

Ma Mère looked impatient. ‘You're not hiding here,' she said. ‘Behave normally. And don't ever try to “hide” on the spur of the moment, unless it's an emergency. People always leave things around when they stay in a house. Like that extra coffee cup for instance. Three cups on a table and only two people? Nobody's blind in France these days. We are all suspicious, especially the bad ones!'

She busied herself while she talked, a little woman with rapid movements and a sharp intelligence.

‘He's quite ill,' she said. ‘He mustn't try to get up. He hasn't a woman to take care of him.' She shook her head and clicked her tongue. It would madden Kate after a time. Not long afterwards the old van bumped up the road, and an elderly man followed Janot into the house. Kate effaced herself as they hurried upstairs. Afterwards the doctor came down and sat at the kitchen table. Ma Mère offered him some wine. She introduced Kate. ‘Mademoiselle Latour, from Marseilles,' she said, and winked. ‘Janot's girlfriend. Run out and see what he's doing. He has to take the doctor back to town.'

The doctor said, ‘Keep him in bed for a few days if you can. I've left you some inhalant to clear the congestion and he has to sleep sitting up. Watch the fever and if it gets higher than this morning, call me. He may have to go to hospital.'

‘Not while I can nurse him,' the old woman declared. ‘He's never charged me a penny for all that work after my sons died. And what a mess it was – sorting out the boundaries between everybody – any other notary would have beggared me with the cost. No, he stays here and I'll get him on his feet. I can persuade Janot's girl to stay on and help me.'

The doctor wasn't really listening. He knew Dulac's reputation for helping poor people with legal problems. He had heard whispers of other activities but closed his mind to them. He didn't want to know. He had his family to consider and a large practice in the town where his father had been a doctor. He lowered his voice and said anxiously,

‘You haven't heard what happened in town yesterday?'

Ma Mère shook her head. She poked it forward like a turtle ready to snap. Her eyes were sharp, watching him. Whatever it was, it wasn't good news.

‘The Gestapo arrested about thirty people. Just picked them up and took them to the Villa Trianon. There's a new man sent down from Paris,' he muttered. ‘They say Stohler has been sacked. Thirty people, Madame! What does it mean?' He looked grey and anguished. ‘There's been no sabotage or murders lately. Everyone is stunned!'

The turtle head drew back; cunning veiled the eyes. She said, ‘Doctor, this is terrible. I knew nothing, how could I? We stay so quietly up here, my son only goes down to the town to sell his vegetables. Thirty people you say?'

‘I've heard it was more,' he said gloomily. ‘I know one of them, he's my patient. His wife came to me last night, weeping and in such a state, poor soul. He's a consumptive. He's only a street cleaner, what would the Gestapo want with him?'

‘God knows,' Ma Mère answered. There was a knot in her chest that was tightening as he spoke. She knew a consumptive who cleaned the streets for the municipality. And he was a patient of the man sitting at the table. She pushed back her chair and said, ‘I'll go and call my son. He'll take you back. What terrible times we live in. Those poor people!'

She found Janot outside. He was loading the back of the van with empty boxes. Kate was helping him. The old woman came up to him.

‘Thirty people were arrested last night. I think Louis Cabrot was one of them. Pass the word, and then come straight back here. Take the doctor home now. Cecilie, you come into the house with me. Say you'll stay and help me nurse the notary and make it convincing. He's seen you and he's so frightened he'd betray anyone if he was asked a question. Hurry, Janot.'

She sped back inside the house and Kate followed, her heart thumping with alarm. If she couldn't act the part for a simple country doctor, what chance would she have with the Gestapo?

It wasn't difficult. He didn't want to linger and talk; he said he was glad she would stay because the old lady would get over-tired, shook hands briefly and hurried out to the van.

Ma Mère said, ‘You were good, but not good enough. We're peasants; you're too middle class to be interested in my son. Next time don't be so ladylike. Now run upstairs and see if he wants anything. And don't tell him anything about the arrests.'

He was propped up high on pillows; there were red patches on both his cheeks. Kate stood by the bed and said, ‘The doctor says you'll be fine if you rest and let us take care of you. Just for a few days.'

He held out his hand. She took it and felt how dry and hot it was. ‘I think Louis Cabrot was one of them', wasn't that what Ma Mère had whispered to her son? Thirty people! She smiled down at him.

‘Would you like anything?'

‘I'd like you to sit down and talk to me,' Jean said. He turned aside and coughed. ‘Damn this stupid illness! But it won't take me long. I get over things very quickly.' He coughed again, longer and harder.

‘I'll get some water,' Kate said.

Thirty people and a new man sent down from Paris. The man Jean Dulac wanted to challenge by a double assault on the convoy and the power station. He had struck the first blow instead. A hammer blow. She poured water and held the glass for him. Who was Louis Cabrot, and how much did he know?

‘I'm better now,' he said. ‘Don't look so anxious. I've always had weak lungs. But I'm strong, I'll be up by tomorrow.'

Kate sat on the edge of the bed. ‘No, you won't,' she said quietly. ‘You'll stay and rest till you're fully better. You talked last night about being responsible for people. And it's true. You can't afford to be obstinate and put them at risk.'

‘You're very serious,' he said. ‘Are you still angry with me?'

‘Of course not,' she said. ‘I was over-sensitive; it was silly of me.'

Suddenly it was difficult to talk to him. The danger hung in the air, unknown to him, and Kate couldn't stop thinking about it. Last night, while she was transmitting to London, the man called Louis Cabrot was being interrogated. After a few minutes of awkward silence, she got up.

‘I'll go and see if I can help Ma Mère,' she said. ‘Why don't you sleep?'

The very dark eyes watched her to the door.

‘Come back in an hour. I want you to do something for me.'

‘All right. But only if you've been sensible and gone to sleep.'

She closed the door and hurried down the narrow stairs. Ma Mère was outside, stacking seed boxes. It was unusually warm. The sun beat down upon them. On any other day the backdrop of the mountains against the brilliant sky would have been idyllic. The scent of pine strees and wild herbs, wafted by a light breeze, teased the senses. They could see the rooftops of the town below them.

Kate said, ‘Who is Louis Cabrot, and how much does he know?'

The old woman paused in her work. ‘He was one of the committee who brought you off the beach,' she said. ‘He knows you and the others who came with you.'

‘The man with the cough,' Kate said. ‘I remember him.'

‘Janot has gone down to pass the news and see what he can find out.' Ma Mère went back to work. ‘If they've arrested them to frighten people, Louis will be all right. They won't question him too hard. If there's a connection between the arrests,' she shrugged, ‘we're all finished.'

‘We can run for it,' Kate countered. ‘We'll have a start on them.'

‘You can run,' was the answer. ‘But I can't. And he can't upstairs.' She looked at Kate. ‘There's nothing we can do till Janot gets back,' she said. ‘Help me put these in the shed there.'

Janot drove down the twisting roads and on to the main road into Nice. The doctor lived in a fashionable suburb, in a large nineteenth-century house with tall palm trees and a fine garden, now sadly neglected. He got out and hastened inside. Janot waved, rammed the gear lever into position and with much rattling and protest from the engine, coaxed the old van through the last part of the journey. He stopped outside the grocer's shop where he had collected Dulac and Kate the night before. Two old women were inside, picking over the vegetables. Beatrice waited for them to make up their minds. She looked so pale and hollow-eyed that Janot hesitated. She saw him and said,

‘I've got some of that cheese you asked for – bring your ration card, it's in the kitchen.'

He followed her. The baby slept; a large tabby cat uncurled from in front of the stove, stretched its legs and wandered out.

‘Thirty people taken? Louis Cabrot?' Janot whispered.

Beatrice watched the women through the doorway. ‘Not thirty. That's rumour. More like eighteen or twenty. And they've got Cabrot. Nobody knows why or what they're accused of. Relatives are down at the Villa waiting for news.'

‘Anyone else from the network?' Janot demanded. Beatrice was the cover house for Dulac's couriers. News was brought to her and collected from her.

‘No. It's more of a random pick-up. They took people from several districts. There's no connection. I can't stay any longer. I've got to serve the customers and get them out.'

Janot waited. He was not as slow-witted as his movements suggested. A quiet man, barred from the army by a heart murmur and so far not netted for the German labour camps. A taciturn man, who was content to say very little. He had learned to watch and remember. When the women had gone he went back to the front of the shop.

‘Jean is sick,' he said. ‘We're keeping him with us. But if there's trouble we should move him. I must get my mother away. How soon can you get any news?'

Beatrice hesitated. Then she made up her mind. ‘I can go and see Cabrot's wife. She may know something. Get rid of your van round the back and stay with Louise. There's some juice in the bottle there if she wakes. I'll be as quick as I can, but I can't say how long.'

She closed the shop door and locked it, twisted a fly-blown sign that said in home-made letters,
Fermé jusqu'à trois heures
. She changed into her only pair of street shoes, kicking the slippers into the corner, and went out by the back door. Janot drove the van round to the narrow alley at the rear and came back into the kitchen. The cat had reappeared. It looked at him with indifferent, yellow eyes and went under the kitchen table. The baby stirred and mewed in its sleep, but didn't wake. Janot sat down to wait.

While the hours passed in agonized uncertainty for Kate in the house in the hills at Valbonne, and for Janot in the stifling kitchen; while the relatives of the men and women in custody begged for news from the Gestapo officials at the Villa Trianon, Christian Eilenburg was collecting information in his office.

At the opposite end of Nice, on the way to the tiny fishing village of Villefranche, the man known as Pierrot came out of his apartment in a small block of flats near the harbour at Beaulieu. He looked back before he shut the front door and called out.

‘I shan't be long, my darling. Eat your lunch and I'll be back as soon as I can.'

He didn't have far to go. One flight down to the second floor and he knocked at another front door. It was opened and a man said, ‘You're late. Come in – we've got some coffee left.'