Escape by Moonlight (10 page)

‘I’m sorry, Jack.’ She put his head against her stomach and stood there holding him, looking over his tousled head at the portrait which took pride of place over the mantel. He had continued to work on it in fits and starts and had finished it on his last leave. She didn’t know anything about art or the value of pictures, but she valued it because he had painted it and it flattered her, or so she thought, though he said it was a good likeness. His shoulders began to shake and she realised he was sobbing. She said nothing and in a little while he lifted his head.

‘Let’s go to bed. I need you.’

It was afterwards, when they were lying side by side
on their backs, happily satiated and he was almost asleep again, that she broached the subject uppermost in her mind. ‘Jack, I’ve got something to tell you.’

Alerted by her tone he opened his eyes and turned his head towards her. ‘Out with it, then.’

‘I’m pregnant.’

‘The devil you are!’

‘It’s what happens, you know, when you … you do what we just did.’

‘I do know that, Lucy.’

‘I hoped you’d be pleased.’

‘Pleased isn’t exactly the word I’d have used.’

She was disappointed by his reaction; his face hadn’t lit up with pleasure as she had hoped it would. Perhaps he was too tired to take it in. ‘You’re not angry, are you?’

‘Angry?’ He laughed. ‘What have I got to be angry about? It’s my own fault. What are you going to do about it?’

‘What am
I
going to do?’ she squeaked. ‘It isn’t up to me on my own, is it?’

‘No, of course not.’ He backtracked hurriedly. ‘So what are
we
going to do?’

‘I’m not going to some backstreet abortionist, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ she said. ‘I heard the girls at the factory talking about it. One of them had been. It was awful. In any case, I can’t kill my baby, not nohow. He’s yours too, part of you.’

He turned on his side to face her. ‘I know.’

‘You couldn’t kill him either, could you?’

‘No.’

‘Then you’re going to be a father.’

‘When?’

‘In the New Year, so they tell me. I’ll work as long as I can, but after that …’

‘Sweetheart,’ he said firmly. ‘You and our baby will not suffer because of my carelessness. You will be looked after, as long as you need it, I promise you.’

‘I hoped you’d say that. A girl on her own without a man—’

‘You’ve got me. But if someone should come along who wants to marry you and you want to marry him, we’ll think again.’

He couldn’t understand why she burst into tears and put it down to her condition making her weepy. He comforted her as best he could and a little later left for Nayton.

Lucy had certainly given him something to think about. Why he hadn’t been more careful, he couldn’t say, but it was done now and he was going to be a father of a little bastard. He knew what that was like, to grow up not knowing the man who had conceived you, knowing you were different in some way from all the other boys and that it was something to be ashamed of. Poor little beggar! At least he could make sure neither Lucy nor the child suffered materially. Should he give her a lump sum or a regular allowance? Should it be hers to do with as she liked or put in trust for the child? Should he stop seeing her? After all, why did he keep seeing her?

The original offer to help her after that brute of a father had as good as turned her out had been made on the spur of the moment and it had tickled his fancy to set her up as his mistress, though the word had never been mentioned by either of them. But he found himself looking forward to his visits, to the restful atmosphere
she created, to her obvious adoration. Was he prepared to give that up?

He still hadn’t made up his mind about it when he left the train at Nayton Halt. Bert Storey was trundling a barrow loaded with punnets of strawberries down the platform and his wife was standing by the gates ready to open them when the train had gone. He wondered what they would say if they knew, but it wasn’t up to him to tell them and he didn’t think Lucy would. He bade them good-day and carried on his way. It was good to be home, and now he felt rested, he needn’t go into details of the horrors he had seen or the constant fear which every one of his pals felt but disguised with bonhomie and foolishness. No doubt his father would want to discuss the situation with him and ask him what he thought about Lizzie still being in France. And what could he say about that? It was up to Lizzie.

Grandpère had been right. France was defeated. On the day Italy entered the war as an ally of Germany, the French government had fled to Tours leaving Paris an open city. The Germans had marched in unopposed and now a Swastika was flying from the Eiffel Tower. The roads were clogged with refugees, trying to escape. They drove cars which had to be abandoned when they ran out of petrol; they harnessed horses to carts and loaded them with their possessions; they took bicycles and handcarts, anything which would carry what they considered essentials. Some, who had come from farms, were driving livestock, some of which died on the way and were abandoned on the roadside along with broken-down, petrol-less cars. Their presence prevented the remnants of the French army from
regrouping. ‘Half the time, they don’t know where they are going,’ Pierre told Elizabeth and his parents one day when he arrived on a visit to the farm. The streets of Annecy and the railway station were clogged with refugees, hoping to get into Switzerland. ‘As for the trains …’ He shrugged. ‘Lisabette is better staying here.’

On 16th June Paul Reynaud resigned as prime minister and Philippe Pétain took over. Almost his first act was to broadcast to the French people to explain why an armistice was necessary to save the country more bloodshed, a sentiment which those who remembered the carnage of the Great War agreed with.

‘I have this evening approached the enemy to ask if he is ready to try to find, between soldiers, with the struggle over and in honour, the means to put an end to the hostilities,’ he said.

The little group around the wireless set in the farmhouse kitchen looked at each other in silence. Albert reached out with his good right hand and switched it off; they needed to save the accumulators and they had heard enough. They might not call a negotiated armistice a defeat, but in the days that followed and the terms made known, it became apparent that defeat it was.

The German army was to occupy three-fifths of the country, the remaining two-fifths in the south being ruled by Pétain’s government from the town of Vichy. They would be allowed to maintain a small force to keep law and order, but all French warships must be laid up. Any French nationals caught fighting for Britain would be shot and French soldiers who had been taken prisoner would remain in German camps. British nationals must report to their local police station every day.

Albert looked at Elizabeth and smiled wearily. ‘Do you still say you are staying here?’

‘Yes, but if anyone asks, I’m French. I don’t trust them not to round up all the British citizens and throw them in jail. I’ll be Uncle Pierre’s child, if he agrees.’

They laughed. ‘I don’t know what Jeanne will say to that,’ Grandmère said.

Elizabeth took the replacement van into Annecy the next day to ask Jeanne and found herself witnessing the exodus of refugees. There was no panic; they seemed dazed, and shuffled along one behind the other in a kind of torpor. Luckily she was not travelling in their direct line and was able to find a way through them to the road leading to the vineyard.

Pierre and Jeanne readily agreed to acquire a daughter and they spent a little time discussing when and where she had been born and decided she had been privately educated in Switzerland; it was too easy for those in authority to check French schools. ‘You’ll need an identity card,’ Pierre said. ‘How are we going to get that?’

‘I’ll say I’ve lost it and get issued with a new one in the name of Lisabette Clavier.’

The boys, who had pleaded the necessity of working in the vineyard to avoid national service, laughed when they were told. ‘We’ve got a grown-up sister, would you believe,’ Philippe said, hugging her. ‘We shall have to take good care of her.’

‘I can take care of myself,’ she said. ‘And I’d better be off or I won’t be back before dark.’

Two weeks later, she was sitting at the supper table with her grandparents eating a rabbit stew, when the back door
opened and Justine came in. She was accompanied by a man in a heavy overcoat with a black hat pulled down over his eyes. He was bent and frail but he straightened up when he came into the kitchen.

‘Max!’ Elizabeth squealed, rushing to take his hand and pull him forward. ‘How did you get here?’

‘It’s a long story,’ he said. His voice and his whole demeanour betrayed immense weariness. He sank into a chair.

Elizabeth turned to Justine, who had been hugged by her mother and was being bombarded with questions. She, too, looked tired and not her usual chic self. ‘Maman, let me gather myself, then I’ll tell you everything.’

‘Are you hungry?’

‘Yes, but more thirsty than anything.’

Grandmère poured them coffee and heated up the stew again. ‘Eat and drink and go to bed. We’ll talk tomorrow. You aren’t in any trouble, are you?’

Justine laughed. ‘No, Maman. I have permission to visit my parents.’

‘And Captain Coburn?’

‘I don’t know anything about a Captain Coburn. This is my French soldier boyfriend, Antoine Descourt, who was wounded in the throat and cannot speak properly.’ She laughed. ‘His French accent is atrocious and I couldn’t risk it.’

That statement brought home to Elizabeth more than anything what had happened up to that point and what life in France was going to be like in the future. A small shudder of apprehension passed through her but was quickly suppressed.

Grandmère was as good as her word and refrained
from asking questions. She was just thankful to have her daughter safely under her roof. Justine did not say anything about staying or leaving, until she and Elizabeth were in bed. Max was occupying the spare room, so she took the second bed in Elizabeth’s room.

‘What’s it like in Paris now?’ Elizabeth asked.

‘Kind of peaceful if you discount the German flags flying from all the government buildings and their troops swaggering about, laughing and joking, filling the cafés and eating all our food. Half the population has fled and those that are left are going to work and trying to pretend everything is normal. How can it be normal? There are so many new regulations, it’s difficult to keep up with them, and everyone is fearful of what is going to happen next.’

‘How did you meet up with Max? He looks ghastly.’

‘He turned up on my doorstep early one morning before anyone was about. He was on the point of collapse, so I dragged him in and put him to bed and when he woke I fed him. I couldn’t let him go out again, he’d have been picked up straight away, so I had to think of something.’

‘How did he get to you? Where had he come from?’

‘No doubt he’ll tell you, though he might spare you the horror. I certainly don’t want it spoken of in front of Maman and Papa.’

‘Go on.’

‘He and the men he had with him were holed up in a barn on the Belgium border, trying to hold the Boche up so the evacuation could go ahead …’

‘You mean Dunkirk?’

‘Yes. They were overrun and had to surrender. He said they were marched for days without food or water, and when they complained about this they were all herded into
a shed on someone’s farm and shot. He was saved because the man beside him fell against him and took him down with him. The bullet intended for him grazed his leg. He was afraid the officer would go round finishing everyone off with a pistol, but luckily he didn’t. Max played dead until they’d gone.

‘He wasn’t sure if there were any British troops left in France and he hadn’t known there’d been an armistice, so he dragged himself back. God knows how he made it, but there he was in the middle of Paris, hungry, thirsty and exhausted with a nasty gash in his leg. He’d put a field dressing on it, but that was filthy.’

‘And you looked after him. Thank you, Justine.’

‘I didn’t have much choice, did I?’ she said with a chuckle. ‘But I was glad to do it. De Gaulle says we must fight on and if helping people in danger is the only way we can do it, so be it. I’d do it for anyone in a similar situation.’ General De Gaulle had escaped to England and was urging everyone not to give up, that they should continue the fight in whatever way they could, wherever they were. ‘Whatever happens,’ he had said in a broadcast to the French people from London, ‘the flame of French resistance must not and shall not die.’

‘What happens now?’

‘I’m going to see Max safely over the Swiss border so he can make his way home, then I’m off back to Paris.’

‘You’re not staying here in the
Zone Libre,
then?’

‘Free, you call it?’ Justine laughed again. ‘It might not be quite so manacled as the occupied zone, but believe me, it’s far from free. Pétain is pulling the wool over your eyes if you believe that.’

‘No, I don’t believe it.’

‘You could go back with Max.’

‘No, I’m staying put, but I’ll go as far as the border with you and see Max safely over. Do you think he’s up to the climb?’

‘He says he is. We’ll see how he is in the morning. Let’s go to sleep.’

It was a long while before Elizabeth slept. She had been shocked by Max’s appearance and the dreadful story of prisoners being shot. It was something she had never thought of, let alone considered possible. How thankful she was that Max had escaped and that he had thought of Justine. She would send him home with loving messages to her family.

Max came out to the yard next morning just as she was driving the cows in to be milked. He looked better after a good night’s sleep. He kissed her lightly and then stood leaning against the cowshed door while she did the milking.

‘I gather from Justine you’ve had a pretty bad time of it,’ she said, her head in the side of one of the cows, her hands moving rhythmically on the udders.

‘Yes, though others have fared worse. They shot my men in cold blood, every single one of them. What am I to tell their families? How am I to explain how I survived and they didn’t?’