The Girl Who Fell From the Sky (20 page)

By the time they have finished breakfast Gaillard has come with the car. It’s a black Citroën
traction avant
with a large cylinder like a water heater at the back. ‘
Un gazogène
,’ he explains. ‘You have
gazos
in England?’

Alice doesn’t think so, but she doesn’t even want to consider the question. England is not where she wants to be, even in the minimal way of a fleeting thought. She is Anne-Marie Laroche who has never been to England.

They pile their suitcases onto the back seat and Benoît sits among them as the car jolts along narrow country roads. They travel through an empty countryside, on byroads that are devoid of traffic, past isolated farms and the occasional hamlet. Where are all the people? The countryside seems deserted, the villages empty. The size of the landscape strikes her, the miles and miles of farmland and woodland, the distant villages and even further towns, the vasty fields of France. What is she and what is Benoît in all this space? How can they achieve anything?

Benoît is dropped at one of the villages on the way. People are expecting him, a group who have already gone into hiding, young men who have evaded the forced-labour laws and live a clandestine life, sleeping in barns and in remote farmhouses. He gets out of the car and leans in at Alice’s window to give her a kiss. ‘Cheerio, Mouse,’ he says, in English. ‘Take care of yourself and keep your knees together.’

She doesn’t know whether to laugh or be angry with him. He has so often been like that, flippant and immature. It is something of a shock to see him go, and something of a relief. For the last few days he has been there to cajole her, laugh at her, show her how things are and how they might be, and now he is no more than a figure seen through the small rear window of the car, diminishing as they drive away, diminishing in importance as well as size.

‘He shouldn’t speak English,’ Gaillard says. He smokes as he drives, a cigarette wedged into the side of his mouth.

She shrugs, trying to feel indifferent about Benoît and his little quirks. ‘When do we get to Lussac?’

‘Not far now. You mustn’t worry,’ he adds, almost as though he can sense her anxiety. ‘There are no Germans there. The gendarmes …’ He shrugs, as though gendarmes are of no consequence. He keeps his eyes only partly on the road. Otherwise they are on her, on her face or on her bosom or on her knees. She tugs at the hem of her skirt, but somehow she is sitting on it and her knees remain resolutely exposed to his view.

‘Your stockings.’

‘What about them?’

‘Women don’t wear them round here. That’s Parisian.’

‘Well, that’s where I’m from, isn’t it?’ She stares out of the side window, not liking the man, uncomfortable under his gaze that is at the same time critical and lascivious.

‘You’ll need to think about these things. What to do and what not to do. When to order coffee and when not to order coffee, that kind of thing. However well you may think you know it, this is not the country it was, nor will it ever be again. Some things are permanent.’

‘I know all that.’

He smiles disparagingly, as though no one can know who has been away even for a few weeks. ‘At Lussac you’ll go to an address I’ll give you. Gabrielle Mercey is your contact. She doesn’t know you’ve come from London, all right? She’s a helper but she doesn’t know much. I’ve just picked you up from the station, from the Paris train. It’s better that way.’

‘They’ll think I’m French?’ Benoît’s ridiculous pose as an Englishman has infected her, and now the idea that she won’t only have to deceive Germans but also French men and women seems a task beyond her abilities.

‘Of course.’ That sideways glance, to face, to bosom, to knees. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she says, wondering if he is being sarcastic. ‘Of course.’
Bien sûr
.

Lussac is a small, dull market town with the memory of a castle in the centre and the vague recollection of walls round the periphery. Place de la République forms a triangle with a church at the apex and the
mairie
at the base, Church and State in uneasy juxtaposition as they have been for centuries. A
tricolore
hangs limply from the flagpole in front of the
mairie
. A couple of market stalls have been set up in the square where women in headscarves argue over the price of potatoes.

Alice walks the pavements of France for the first time, alone, like a child in a nightmare. The sun is bright on the
pavé
but there is something dark about the people, as dark and shuttered as some of the houses. They hurry past, heads down. One or two glance at her indifferently, although somehow she expects them to stare with wonder, as though it is written across her forehead that she does not belong, that she is a performer, an artiste who has swung down from the sky, the daring young girl on the flying trapeze. There is nothing to support her, no safety net beneath. She can ring no one, ask no one, rely for help on no one. She has nowhere to go but along this line of frontages towards an address that Gaillard has given her:
numéro
23, rue de la Bastille.

‘Tell her that Gaillard sent you,’ the man said as he dropped her off near a bus stop.

‘There’s no password?’

Gaillard laughed. ‘I can tell you’ve just come from London.’

Twenty-three, rue de la Bastille is on a side street off the main square. When she knocks, an elderly woman opens the door and stands there on the step looking down at her with suspicion. ‘Yes?’

‘Gaillard sent me.’ For a moment, looking at this pinch-faced woman with the scraped hair and the narrow mouth, she feels panic bubble up inside. ‘Are you Madame Mercey? Gaillard said you’d put me up for a few days. My name is Alice. I’ve been in Paris.’

Is the woman going to react? Alice looks round to see if anyone is watching. Never approach a rendezvous directly, they taught her. Always look for signs that the place is being observed. Always make sure that you are not being followed, that you are not leading them to the next link in the chain. If it’s a house, walk straight past the first time, as though you are going somewhere else. Watch for anything out of the ordinary. Watch for watchers. Watch for the man in the window of the house across the street, or the street sweeper leaning on a broom, or the couple talking and pretending to kiss. Only then, if everything seems OK, make another pass.

But she has done none of this. She has simply walked along the street and up to the door as though it were peacetime, as though the world weren’t at war and the country occupied by the enemy.

Tell them Gaillard sent you.

‘Please,’ she says. ‘Gabrielle Mercey?’

The woman shrugs, but stands aside and cocks her head to indicate that Alice should enter. At that moment there is a clatter of footsteps on the stairs and a younger woman appears from the floor above. ‘Alice!’ she exclaims. She is in her thirties, and bright and smiling in contrast to the older woman’s dour expression. ‘Are you Alice?’ She comes down the stairs and scolds her mother for not being more welcoming and grabs Alice’s hands to shake. ‘Come, give me your suitcase. I’m Gabrielle. You must be confused, but you’ll soon get used to us.
Maman
is a sour old puss. She’s always grumbling about me and my ways, but she’s good at heart. Come through to the back. Have you had breakfast? Did you sleep well? Goodness, you can’t have had more than an hour or two, can you? Are you exhausted?’

She leads the way through to the kitchen. The old mother is already seated by the kitchen range knitting a tube of brown wool. ‘Socks for the men in Germany,’ Gabrielle explains. ‘Isn’t that right,
Maman
? Socks for the prisoners.’ Her voice gets louder when she speaks to her mother, drops back to normal to speak to Alice. ‘There’s only the two of us, you see. Maybe Gaillard explained? Goodness, it’s wonderful to have you here at last. All the way from London!’

‘How did you know? Gaillard said—’

‘Oh, Gaillard. He thinks I’m a fool. We heard the plane last night. It’s obvious, isn’t it? You can work out the connection. But don’t worry. I’ll be very discreet. What are you called? I mean, who are you here? Not your real name, of course not. For us you’ll be Alice anyway, but just so I know.’

‘Anne-Marie Laroche.’

‘Anne-Marie. What a lovely name! I have a cousin called Anne-Marie.’ Gabrielle chatters on aimlessly, as though there is no war and no worries. ‘How long are you staying? It doesn’t matter to me. You can stay as long as you like. We’ll have fun together, won’t we?’

Fun?

‘I’ll say you’re my cousin, what do you think about that? No, I suppose that wouldn’t fit in with your cover story, would it? An old friend, then. Where did we meet? In Paris? I was in Paris for a year, living with a family and looking after the children. Les Invalides. You should have seen the house. He was a surgeon and she was, well, terribly chic, which meant that she really didn’t want to be bothered with kids. We could say we met in the Luxembourg Gardens, how about that? I used to go there with the children so it’d all fit in. Or the Champs de Mars. Wherever you like.’

‘I’m not sure …’

‘Where did you stay in Paris?’

Paris
. The name seems like a threat.

‘What do you mean?’

‘In your cover story, silly.’

‘Oh.’ She casts around for what to say, thinking of Clément. ‘In the fifth, I suppose.’

‘There you are, that’s perfect. We met there in the gardens and got talking and became friends, how about that?’

She’s being organised and she doesn’t like it; this woman trying to embroider her cover story and stepping into areas that are off the map, where she shouldn’t stray. ‘I think I’d better wait until the boss arrives.’

‘Just as you please. If that’s what you want I’ll leave you alone. Whatever you want. You’re the one who matters here, not me. I’m only a pawn, but you’re the queen.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘I’m not being silly. It’s true, isn’t it? They’ve all been waiting for you for weeks, and now you’ve come.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘I’m not stupid, am I? People think I’m stupid, but I’m not.’

Le Patron
comes the next day. That is how everyone refers to him.
Le Patron
, the Boss. Never by his field name. He arrives by bicycle and Alice listens to his heavy footsteps climbing the stairs towards her room and tries to picture him before he appears. It’s like trying to imagine an announcer on the wireless from the voice, and when the door opens he is nothing like she expected. He’s a short, nervous, sour-looking man with a toothbrush moustache, but a toothbrush that has been used for many months and become ragged and unkempt. She was expecting something better, but quite what she can’t say. Younger-looking, of course. Tall, if only as tall as she is. Maybe even handsome in a raffish kind of way but she knew that that idea came from the films, which was hardly a mature way of thinking. Yet not quite this inconsequential, anxious man, the kind her father
would refer to disparagingly as a travelling salesman type. Travelling in ladies’ underwear. That was one of his more risqué jokes.

‘Welcome to
WORDSMITH,
’
le Patron
says, looking her up and down. He laughs at something unsaid and fiddles open a packet of Gitanes. His hands are curiously effeminate, with narrow, tobacco-stained fingers and nails bitten to the quick. ‘You don’t smoke, do you?’

‘Not really …’

‘Good. Keep it that way, at least in public. Women don’t get a cigarette ration. You’d stick out like a sore thumb.’

His face is worn with tiredness and worry. She recognises the look from the days of the bombing in London, the expressions on the faces of the rescue workers, the men who tunnelled into the rubble to pull corpses out, the women who drove the ambulances through the wrecked streets, the people who were up all day and all night and lived constantly in the shadow of death.

‘Was the drop OK? I hear it went well. At least you and César got here in one piece.’

‘It went fine.’

‘Couldn’t do it myself. Jump, I mean.’ He laughs, as though being scared of parachuting is a sign of strength rather than a weakness. ‘Depending on the equipment like that. Depending on some bloody fool to pack the chute properly. Depending on the pilot not to drop you too low. Darn sight safer by boat. That’s how I came, by boat from Gib. So long ago I’ve almost forgotten. We landed near Narbonne.’

He walks towards the window, smoking and staring sightlessly through the glass. Maybe he’s remembering, or maybe he’s checking for an escape route. Alice has already worked it out. You lift the window – she has established that the sash is working – and climb down onto the kitchen roof immediately below. From there you can jump down into the back garden. Then there would be an eight-foot wall to negotiate before
reaching the alleyway that runs down the back of the gardens. She could manage the jump easily enough, and the eight-foot wall – the assault course at Meoble Lodge and the parachute school at Ringway saw to that. Physical confidence, that was what they tried to instil, and succeeded sometimes. It was the other kind of confidence that was more difficult.

‘I’ve brought the money,’ she tells him. ‘I’d rather hand it over straight away if you don’t mind. It makes me feel like a bank robber.’

‘Of course.’ She turns away from his gaze in order to pull up her shirt and undo the money belt. The notes are counted out in piles on the table, five hundred thousand francs in all. Two thousand five hundred pounds. More money than she has ever seen in her life. Some of it is stashed away in the pockets of his overcoat, and some in a suitcase he has brought. ‘You’d better keep some. You’ll need it to pay people.’

‘Don’t we have to keep accounts of some kind?’

He laughs derisively. ‘You must be joking. Write nothing down, didn’t they tell you that? No names, no addresses, nothing. Now, let’s have a look at your papers. Let’s see what London has given you.’

He flicks through the documents expertly, like a poker player assessing his hand, frowning slightly as though to mislead his opponent into thinking that he’s not got good cards. She asks, anxiously, ‘They’re all right, aren’t they?’