Darkest Longings (65 page)

quickly made their way down to the cellar, but Claudine

handed Louis to Monique and waited at the top of the steps

with Armand, where they watched the enemy aircraft soar

overhead and a few minutes later heard the dull boom of

exploding bombs reverberate through the hills. The

munitions factory on the road to Tours was undamaged,

they discovered later, but a busful of workers arriving for

their evening shift had perished.

In the end, the boys at the Army Cadet School, not ten

kilometers away in Saumur, were among the last to make a

stand against the great might of the German army. They

fought on, despite the fact that the Government had fled

first to Briare, then to Tours, then to Bordeaux and that

rumours of an armistice were growing stronger by the

minute. At the chateau, with the battle raging almost on

their doorstep, Claudine and the rest of the family went on

with life as best they could. Every day now was filled with the

doom-laden roar of Allied and enemy aircraft flying

overhead, gunfire echoing through the countryside, and the

acrid stench of explosives lingered in the still, hot air of

summer.

On 18th June, General Charles de Gaulle made a

broadcast from London calling upon all Frenchmen to

remember that’… whatever happens, the flame of French

resistance must not and shall not die!’ But apathy and a

sense of defeat were spreading now like a disease, and four

days after de Gaulle’s speech, Marshal Henri Philippe

Petain - the proud, erect man with pale blue eyes whom

Claudine had met once in Paris, and who had taken over the

Government after Paul Reynaud’s resignation six days

before - signed the armistice that betrayed Great Britain

and brought peace to France. But not even the indignity of

seeing its national representatives forced to return to the

railway carriage in the Forest of Compiegne where France’s

Marshal Foch had dictated terms to a defeated Germany in

1918, seemed to bother the French. There was a new

sound ringing through the countryside now - the sound of

rejoicing. The war, for France at least, was at an end.

Claudine was stupefied. That the French should welcome

surrender was horrifying enough, but when that

surrender called for three-fifths of France, including

Touraine to be occupied and governed by the German

army; when it called for four hundred million francs to be

paid every day to the Reich, and for over a million and a half

Frenchmen to be deported to prisoner-of-war camps - the

sheer atrocity of it was inexpressible.

The first Germans arrived in Chinon at four in the

morning on August 5th. There were no more than five of

them and they came on bicycles - so Monsieur Bonet, the

melon farmer informed Claudine.

‘They reached the statue of Jeanne d’Arc, fired guns into

the window of the laundry, then went away again,’ he said,

scratching his head in bewilderment.

He cycled off then, but returned at six that evening to tell

her that the Bodies were back, this time with the rest of their

company. They had taken over the Hotel de France on the

square, the Hotel Boule d’Or on the quay, and many of the

desirable residences on the rue Voltaire.

The following day Claudine and Monique cycled into

Chinon, neither of them knowing quite what to expect, but

unable to contain their curiosity. Nothing could have

prepared them for the shock of finding scores of young men

in dull grey uniforms swarming all over the town, wearing

rifles slung over their shoulders and thick leather belts full

of ammunition. The infamous jackboots were much in

evidence, as were Nazi flags, draped from the windows of

requisitioned buildings or fluttering triumphantly from flag

poles which only a week ago had flown the tricolore. But

more than all these things, what really shocked them was

that every soldier they came across was brandishing a

camera or licking an ice-cream, or shielding his eyes from

the sun as he admired the castle ruins on the hill.

‘Anyone would think they were on holiday,’ Claudine

said, and her look of incredulity turned to a scowl as she

read a notice in the florist’s window: La on park allemand.

They turned their bicycles at the statue of Jeanne d’Arc

and pedalled into the square. Three young German soldiers

saluted them cheerfully from the side of the street, and

several more who were sitting outside Madame

Desbourdes’ cafe laughed and joked with the locals as

though they were prodigal sons returned. None of them

could be in any doubt that they were welcome, or why: they

had money to spend, and the French, as ever, were only too

willing to take it.

‘They’re so good-looking,’ Monique murmured, as one

of them caught her eye and smiled broadly. ‘And so young.’

‘And so damned arrogant,’ Claudine seethed, turning her

back as another invited them to sit down. ‘Look, what’s that,

over there on the wall?’

They wheeled their bicycles over to the Town Hall to get

a closer look at the posters. They showed a German soldier

holding two children in his arms, with the slogan,

‘Abandoned population, put your trust in a German

soldier.’

‘That’s sick!’ Claudine spat, strongly tempted to tear

them down. ‘How dare they exploit children like that! And how dare they call us an abandoned population.’

‘But that’s what we are,’ Monique said softly. ‘We have no army now.’

Claudine’s eyes were blazing with indignation. ‘Come along,’ she snapped, ‘let’s go home. I feel unclean just being on the same street with them.’

But it was plain that no one else in the area shared

Claudine’s scruples, and when eventually the defeated army

started to drift back from the front, returning to their work

in the factories and on the land, the occupying forces

behaved with such extravagant civility that after a while even

Claudine found it difficult to dislike them. How could you

hate General Kahl, their commanding officer, for example,

who roamed the cobbled streets of Chinon each morning

with his pet poodle on a lead?

Then, to her amazement, she found herself inviting one

or two of the lower-ranking officers to drive out to Lorvoire

and join her and Armand at Gustave’s cafe. Armand, who

had teased her relentlessly about her sense of outrage at the

German presence, immediately accused her of fraternizing,

but when it came to it the afternoon passed perhaps more

pleasantly for him than for anyone else. In the end Gustave,

aided by one of the German youths, had to carry him home.

Claudine followed, and couldn’t help laughing at the look

on Liliane’s face when she saw her son draped over the

shoulder of a German officer. But to her surprise Liliane

invited him in, and in less than ten minutes had learned that

Einrich was nineteen years old, came from Hamburg, and

had four brothers, two of whom had been killed in the

fighting near Amiens. Also that his mother had suffered a

heart-attack when she heard of her second son’s death.

‘General Kahl for me to go home is to arrange,’ he told

them in his awkward French. ‘For few days only, but my

mother …’ He broke off, his eyes filled with tears, and

Claudine guessed that the lump in Liliane’s throat was as large as the one in her own. They were men like any others, she grudgingly admitted - in fact boys, most of them, a long way from their families and only too grateful for any little

kindness shown them. All the same her feelings towards the

Germans en masse had not changed. They had no right to be

in France, and if their families back in Germany were

suffering they had no one but themselves to blame; they

were the ones who had brought Hitler to power.

Then, to her surprise, graffiti declaring allegiance to

General de Gaulle started to appear, with the cross of

Lorraine scratched underneath. They were scrawled on

posters, on walls, even on the backs of German cars and the

facade of the Hotel de France, where most of the senior

ranking officers were billeted. Claudine wanted very much

to know who was doing it.

‘I’ve absolutely no idea’ Celine sighed when she asked

her. ‘Why on earth d’you want to know?’

Claudine paused in her weekly chore of polishing the

silver. ‘Perhaps because it tells me that there are some

people in France with a degree of integrity left.’

‘Meaning? No, no, I know what you mean. But this is the

way life is now, Claudine, you have to accept it like everyone

else.’

‘I have accepted it, as far as I can, but they’re still the

enemy, Tante Celine. And you’ve heard General de Gaulle

on the wireless these past weeks, he’s calling for all

Frenchmen everywhere to resist. And someone’s listening

to him, the graffiti proves it. I just want to know how to make

contact with them.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘Maybe I

could help them,’ she said.

Celine crushed out her red-tipped de Rezske cigarette,

put down her magazine and turned to face her niece.

‘Claudine,’ she began, ‘the war is over. The Germans are

here, and they are making life as pleasant as they can for us

under the circumstances. If you do anything to disrupt that

you won’t be doing anyone any favours, least of all yourself.

Now, take my advice and let it be.’

‘If Louis was here, d’you think he’d let it be? No, of

course he wouldn’t, it would make a mockery of all the lives

given in the last war, and this one too. Francois and Lucien

would feel the same.’

‘Oh la la! Celine laughed scornfully. ‘As far as we know,

Claudine, your husband is a traitor …’

‘And I’m beginning to feel like one too, socializing with

the Germans the way I do.’

‘Keep it that way! Make friends, not enemies, it will be

wiser in the long run.’

Claudine sucked in her cheeks thoughtfully as her aunt

confirmed the feeling she had had herself. ‘You’re right,’ she

said in the end, ‘but our lives aren’t our own any more. We have

to have so many passes and identity cards in order to be able do

anything or go anywhere. We have to queue for our food waiting

for the Germans to take their pick of everything first, of

course. We have to be indoors by ten every night… Oh, I don’t

know, the list is endless, and it makes me furious…’

‘All right,’ said Celine, ‘so life is difficult. But no one is

going to thank you for making things even harder, are they?

Which you will do if you antagonize the Germans.’

‘Hear! Hear!’ Monique said, walking into the drawing

room just then. ‘Speaking personally, I’m rather glad

they’re here, they’ve certainly livened things up a little.’ She

held out a card to Claudine. ‘It’s an invitation to a dance at

the Hotel Boule d’Or tomorrow evening. Shall we go?’

‘No,’ Claudine answered with finality. Then, seeing the

plea in Monique’s eyes, ‘You haven’t got an escort, so how

can you go?’

‘Armand says he’ll arrange one for me.’

Claudine threw up her hands. ‘Go then! There’s nothing

I can do to stop you, but I won’t be there.’

Just then they heard several vehicles coming up the drive.

It was such a rare sound these days that both Claudine and

Monique went to the window to look. A black Mercedes and

four outriders emerged from under the trees and swept

grandly across the top of the meadow.

‘What do you think they want?’ Monique asked, her eyes

searching the faces beneath the round tin helmets of the

German motorcyclists.

‘There’s only one way to find out,’ Claudine answered

tightly. ‘You two stay here.’

As the car came to a halt outside the front door, she

walked down the steps. ‘Can I help you?’ she said, shielding

her eyes against the dazzling sun as a uniformed figure

sporting an extravagant array of medals alighted from the

rear of the car.

The man nodded to one of his subordinates, who quickly

stepped forward. ‘Colonel Blomberg wishes to speak with

the Comtesse de Lorvoire,’ he barked.

‘I am she,’ Claudine said frostily, aware that her casual

attire and the duster she still held in her hand had fooled

them into thinking her a servant.

The Colonel removed his cap, revealing a balding head,

thick grey eyebrows and piercing yellow eyes. His bottom lip

protruded, and whiskers sprouted from the nostrils of his bulbous nose. ‘Madame? he said, having to tilt his head to look up into her face, ‘it is a pleasure to make your

acquaintance.’

Claudine took the hand he offered and was immediately

revolted by its limp and sweaty grasp. ‘What can I do for you,

Colonel?’ she said, forcing a smile.

The Colonel turned again to the sergeant beside him,

spoke rapidly in German, then waited while the officer

explained the purpose of their visit.

As she listened, Claudine’s heart sank. Friends of theirs

in other parts of northern France had been forced to