Citadel (14 page)
‘Got the leaflets?’ Gaston said when they drew level.
‘For Christ’s sake, Bonnet,’ snapped César, ‘don’t broadcast it.’
‘It’s been all over the radio as it is,’ Gaston said, but he lit a cigarette and shut up.
The group sat in silence. Laval watched the street. Gaston twisted a spent match round and round between his finger and thumb. Robert was tearing tiny shreds of paper from the corner of a copy of
L’Éclair
, another Vichyist newspaper.
Anticipation crawled over Raoul’s skin like pins and needles. He wanted to get on with it. Seven forty-five, seven fifty-five. The hands of the clock above the counter ground slowly on, counting down the minutes to eight o’clock.
Finally Laval stood up. ‘Time to go.’
S
andrine looked at the drift of clothes heaped along the back of the Chinese silk settee, the discarded shoes on the floor by the bamboo plant stand. She had slept well for once – no nightmares – and she was full of anticipation.
‘Darling, are you ready?’ Marianne called up the stairs.
‘Almost . . .’
She settled on a green dress with a white belt and buttons, which she thought made her look older. She paused for a moment to look at her reflection. The bruise on the side of her head was the colour of the sea at Narbonne in July, blue and green and purple, but the cut barely showed. She applied a little face powder, ran a comb through her hair, then began to search for a suitable pair of shoes.
‘Sandrine!’
‘
J’arrive
,’ she shouted back. ‘I’m coming . . .’
She buckled her shoes, then threw open the door and charged out on to the landing. The catch bounced in the latch and a funnel of warm air rushed into the room. It lifted the papers, her notes written in the police station and left abandoned on the tallboy, and sent them fluttering like a drift of autumn leaves. Sandrine picked them up and dropped them on the bed, then rushed back out.
The front door was open and Marianne was already waiting in the street. Marieta was hovering at the foot of the stairs.
‘You stay with your sister,’ she said. ‘Don’t do anything silly.’
‘I won’t, I won’t,’ Sandrine said, trying to get past her.
‘And don’t go getting yourself arrested again.’
Sandrine pulled a face. ‘I wasn’t arrested yesterday.’
‘The first sign of trouble, you come home. Do you hear me?’
Sandrine grinned. ‘And you put your feet up, do you hear me? You look all in.’
Then before Marieta could make any more fuss, Sandrine slipped past her and down the steps to the pavement.
‘I’m sorry. Marieta was fussing, though I think she’s proud of us actually.’ She jerked her head. ‘Which is more than can be said for that old witch next door.’
Marianne followed Sandrine’s gaze to see their next-door neighbour, Madame Fournier, peering out from behind a voile curtain.
‘She’s an awful woman,’ she said. ‘Take no notice.’
The rue du Palais was quiet. But as soon as the girls reached the boulevard Maréchal Pétain, it was clear many Carcassonnais had heard the illicit broadcast or been told of it. Everywhere, people.
‘Where are we meeting Lucie?’ Sandrine said, raising her voice to make herself heard over the noise of the crowd.
‘At the junction with rue Voltaire.’
Despite the serious purpose of the rally, there was something of a carnival atmosphere. Women in summer dresses, bare arms and flowered skirts, the clip of heels on the pavements. Men in their Sunday best, hats perched on the back of their heads, children carried on shoulders. As well as placards, there were flags – the red, white and blue of the murdered Republic, but also the scarlet and gold of the Languedoc. The colours of Viscount Trencavel. Some men had bottles of beer, women carried trays of cake or bread, biscuits, bonbons, each willing to share their meagre rations with those around them. For today, at least.
Sandrine felt a tap on the arm. She turned to see one of the teachers from the Lycée, a quiet and rather serious woman who taught the
première
. She had an idea she was married to a doctor.
‘Madame Giraud, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.’
The woman held up her hand. ‘
Aujourd’hui, appelez-moi Jeanne
,’ she replied.
Seeing her out of school, Sandrine realised Madame Giraud wasn’t actually much older than Marianne.
‘All right,’ she smiled. ‘Jeanne.’
‘It’s good to see you here, Sandrine.’
The crowd was continuing to build. Many people carried banners, words printed in block letters:
I
CI
F
RANCE
,
I
CI
L
ONDRES
,
V
IVE LA
R
ÉSISTANCE
,
V
IVRE
L
IBRE OU
M
OURIR
.
‘Live free or die,’ Sandrine said, reading a placard carried by a veteran. She smiled at him. The medals pinned to his black jacket rattled as he leant forward and clasped her arm.
‘I fought at Verdun, mademoiselle,’ he said. ‘But not for Vichy. Not for Berlin.’ He waved at the people all round him. ‘Today at least, today Carcassonne shows her true face.’ He put his hand up and touched her cheek. ‘It is up to you now. Old men should be put out to grass. Leave it to the young.’
‘We’ll do our best,’ she said, oddly moved by the exchange.
At that moment, the marchers began to move off. The old man nodded to her, then raised his placard and, with his eyes fixed straight ahead, walked on.
Sandrine and Marianne turned the corner into boulevard Barbès, where the crowds were even denser, more tightly packed. Chalk marks had been drawn on the road. Slogans and symbols, the Cross of Lorraine and the Occitan cross, the letters FFL – for
les Forces Françaises Libres
– and the letter H for
Honneur
. White marks of defiance on the grey tarmac. Men outnumbered the women here, men with dark jumping eyes and thin shoulders, scanning the crowd. And lining the route along the pavements Sandrine saw a line of police, guns cradled in their arms. Watching, all the time watching. She stole a glance at her sister and saw Marianne had noticed too.
Swarms of children were running up and down the paths below the old city walls of the Bastide. Two little girls of seven or eight were playing
cache-cache
, until the mother of one of them appeared, smacked the child on the back of her legs and dragged her away. The march shuffled past the Jardin des Tilleuls, where the Foire aux Vins was held each November. On a normal day, she thought, the old veteran might be sitting with his comrades beneath the trees in his dark suit and beret. Today the benches were empty.
On the far side of the road, Sandrine caught sight of Max and Lucie, standing with Max’s sister, Liesl. She had pale skin and wide brown eyes and wore her black hair long to the shoulder, not waved or pinned up.
‘Liesl’s rather beautiful, isn’t she?’ Sandrine said to Marianne.
‘Very.’
Lucie was wearing the same dress she’d had on at the river. She looked bright and eye-catching, as if she was going to a fair. She waved and they pushed through the sea of people to join them. Lucie kissed them both. Max, formal as always in a sombre black suit, lifted his hat. Liesl gave a quick smile but said nothing.
Then Sandrine noticed Marianne’s friend, Suzanne Peyre, Thierry’s cousin. At nearly six foot tall and with cropped hair, she was very distinctive, towering head and shoulders above everyone else.
‘There’s Suzanne over there,’ she said.
Sandrine tried to move forward, but she found her way blocked by Monsieur Fournier, their unpleasant next-door neighbour’s equally unpleasant brother. Sandrine disliked him, not least because he always stood too close. She wondered why he’d come. He made no secret of his support for Pétain, and his outspoken opinions about ‘the Jew conspiracy’, as he called it, were well known.
‘Mademoiselle Vidal,’ he said.
‘Monsieur Fournier.’
‘I’m surprised your sister allowed you to come.’
Sandrine forced herself to smile. ‘You’re here, Monsieur Fournier.’
‘What would your father have said?’ he said, taking a step closer. Sandrine tried to move back, but the crowds were too dense and they were being pressed together in the crush. She could feel his sour breath, ripe with tobacco, on her cheek. ‘Then again, he was another Jew lover, wasn’t he?’ he said. ‘Like Ménard’s girl over there.’
Sandrine was shocked by the blatancy of it all. Her mind went blank. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say to defend either her father or Lucie.
‘Problem?’
Somehow Suzanne had picked her way through the crowd and was now standing between her and Fournier.
‘Not really,’ Sandrine said.
‘My friend doesn’t want to talk to you,’ Suzanne said, turning to him, ‘so if you don’t mind?’
‘I’ll talk to whoever I like,
éspèce de gouine
.’
Fournier’s hand flashed out to grab Suzanne’s elbow, but she batted it away and put her own hand up to warn him not to touch her again.
‘Let’s go,’ she said, taking Sandrine’s arm. ‘Bad smell around here.’
‘
Sale pute
,’ Fournier hissed.
As Suzanne steered her back through the crowd, Sandrine couldn’t help herself turning round. Fournier was still looking after them with hate-filled eyes.
‘Don’t let him get to you,’ Suzanne said. ‘Not worth it.’
‘No. No, I won’t,’ she said, but she felt shaken all the same.
Some cafés were closed, but most on this section of boulevard Barbès had put out flags and bunting and banners. The Café du Nord was packed, people spilling out from the pavements into the road. The reason soon became clear. A display board was offering, at the price of only one franc, a special cocktail, ‘
la blanquette des Forces Françaises Libres
’. There were huddles of men standing around high bar tables set out on the street. Even though it was only just after eight o’clock in the morning, demand was already outstripping supply.
The house band from the Hôtel Terminus had set up on the terrace. The sheets of music, held in place by wooden pegs on the music stands, fluttered in the Tramontana breeze. Trumpet, horn, euphonium, brass glinting in the early sunshine, banjo, clarinet and drum, the accordionists apart from the others. The men wore black button-up uniforms and
képi
caps with their insignia on the brow.
Sandrine noticed an army of journalists and newspapermen camped on the opposite side of the street. Photographers with cameras and tripods jostled one another to get the best spot – first-floor balconies, the narrow perch of a wall. A reporter from
La Dépêche
was stopping people, asking why they had come, while a colleague snapped away.
‘Hey, girl with the white belt. Over here!’
Sandrine turned round, in time to be caught as the flash went off. Quickly she dropped her head and hurried to catch up with Suzanne.
‘Be in tomorrow’s paper,’ the journalist called after her.
‘We wondered where you had got to,’ said Marianne.
‘A photographer just took my picture.’
‘Sandrine!’
‘It’s all right, he didn’t get a proper shot. Although what’s the point in coming if we’re not prepared to be seen?’ She looked around. ‘They can hardly arrest all of us, there must be three thousand people here.’ She took a deep breath. ‘In fact, I’ve a good mind to go back and give him my name.’
‘Absolutely not,’ Marianne said. ‘No.’
Then someone started to shout. They all looked up. Sandrine felt nerves fluttering in the pit of her stomach and she reached for Marianne’s hand. For a moment there was no response, then a quick squeeze and their fingers intertwined.
‘They’re here,’ Marianne said. ‘Someone’s about to speak.’
R
aoul moved through the crowd, aware of César to his right and Gaston Bonnet somewhere up ahead. In the crush, he’d lost track of Laval and Robert Bonnet, and there was no sign of Coursan at all. He pressed leaflets into people’s hands and shopping baskets. So far, it had gone well. People were reading them, looking at the photographs. Raoul slid one under a door, another beneath the windscreen wiper of a delivery truck parked at the bottom of boulevard Barbès. People would see the leaflet and start to understand what was really going on. Understand that the newspapers were all propaganda and lies.
His eyes darted from side to side to side, occasionally recognising a comrade, greeting one another by a glance or a slight nod of the head. There was a strong visible police presence, though they were clearly under instruction not to intervene or prevent the demonstration from marching. The plain-clothes men were harder to spot, though he did recognise Fournier, a well-known local
collabo
. Despite the carnival atmosphere, Raoul knew the crowd was thick with collaborators, police informers, with Deuxième Bureau.
Close to the Place des Armes, there were a couple of newspapermen with cameras. Raoul turned his face away and crossed to the opposite side of the street. Then there was an outbreak of applause up ahead and he stopped and looked towards the monument, like everyone else.
The crowd surged forward, then again. Through the forest of arms and shoulders and backs, Sandrine could just make out the clutch of men standing in front of the empty plinth. She recognised Henri Gout, the former socialist deputy of the Aude. Each carried a green wreath.
Bons homes
, that was what Marieta had called them. Good men.
‘Who’s that with Docteur Gout?’ she asked.
‘Senator Bruguier,’ replied Suzanne. ‘A member of the Socialist Party before the war. He refused to support Pétain’s dissolution of the constitution. Voted against the proposals. Like Docteur Gout, he’s been relieved of his duties.’
Through a crackling loudhailer, Sandrine could hear Gout’s voice, then another man, then another. She couldn’t make out what any of them were saying, but the sentiment was clear. An outburst of applause, then another man, shouting and fierce, stirring up the crowd.
