Voices on the Wind (23 page)

When Kate came downstairs she found Ma Mère fully dressed, with a canvas grip in her hand. She looked very old, and grey-faced.

‘You must go at once,' she said. ‘Remove all traces from that room, cigarette ends, anything to show you were there. Get your bicycle and go.'

Kate said, ‘What are you talking about? It's two in the morning! Where are you going?'

‘Away from here,' Ma Mère answered. ‘I have a feeling they've caught my son. If I'm wrong, there's no harm spent in a night in the countryside. I've done it before. But you must get right away. Hide till it's past the morning curfew, then go into the town. Be very careful before you approach your apartment or anywhere Janot knows about. I'm going to lock up now and walk.' She turned away, the old bag over her left shoulder. Kate came to her. She started to protest.

‘Let me come with you, then,' she said.

‘No. That way they'll catch us both. Hurry up, for God's sake.' For the last time she clicked her tongue. Kate ran upstairs. She glanced quickly round the bedroom. She straightened the bedcovers, thumped the pillow, pulled the chair away from the table where she set up her radio. She found two spent matches and threw them out of the window. She'd brought the little tin ashtray with its squashed butts down to the kitchen with her. In a few minutes she had strapped the suitcase back on to her bicycle. The moon shone brightly overhead. The dumpy little figure was in the doorway as she wheeled it out. She waved silently, then turned and Kate heard her locking the back door.

‘Ma Mère,' she called out. ‘He'll be back in the morning.…'

‘Pray God,' was the reply.

Kate mounted and started off down the narrow road. She was the other side of a hedgerow some half an hour later, coasting on the downward slope, when she saw the gleam of headlights approaching. She jammed on the brake and jumped off. There was no ditch, only a large tree up a slight bank. The light of the oncoming car cut through the darkness at the end of the corner. Fear gave her the strength needed to haul the cycle with its burden up the bank and lay it flat behind the tree trunk. Then she flattened herself to the ground. Instinctively she shut her eyes as the car passed her. When she opened them it had gone out of sight round another bend. She had no proof that it was German and on its way to the farm. But nobody else would be driving at that hour and at that speed. She dragged the bicycle upright, steered it down the little bank and on to the road. She jumped up and began pedalling as fast as she could. She didn't even know that she was crying.

Shops were opening and people were on their way to work. Another cloudless brilliant day, the sea sparkling blue like a sheet of ruffled silk. Window-boxes and hotel gardens were vivid with geraniums; lines of washing were strung from working-class flats like bunting on a festive day. Kate was so tired she wheeled the bicycle up the hill towards the little square where Dulac lived. There was a telephone booth on the corner. She parked the cycle and went inside.

She couldn't find the few centimes needed to make the call. No change. She could have beaten her fist against the metal box in frustration. She couldn't see his apartment from the kiosk. ‘Be very careful before you approach your apartment or anywhere Janot knows about,' Ma Mère had warned. He knew about Dulac, about her, about Beatrice in the grocer's shop. Kate felt sick. She left the kiosk and stood supporting herself on the bicycle for a moment. There was a pâtisserie doing a thriving trade on the other side of the road. She thought helplessly, I must do something. I can't stand the suspense of not knowing what's happened to him another moment. I'll go to the shop and ask to use their telephone. Otherwise I'll go to the apartment and to hell with the danger.… The proprietor of the baker's was a surly man.

‘Try the kiosk over the road,' he said and turned back to his customers. His wife saw the tired girl with despair on her face. She heard the lie. ‘Monsieur, it's out of order.' It wasn't because she had seen someone use it not ten minutes before and talk for quite a time. She beckoned to Kate.

‘Through the back here,' she said. ‘I'll show you.'

Kate followed, started to say that her father was ill and then stopped when the woman held up her hand.

‘Use the telephone,' she said. ‘I don't want to know anything about it. Leave the money on the table when you've finished.'

It rang for an eternity. When the maddening burr burr burr was cut off Kate held her breath. Dulac said, ‘Hello?' He sounded out of breath.

‘It's Cecilie,' she said. There was a pre-arranged signal if the Gestapo were there. All the agents had a code word to warn others not to come near. He didn't use it.

He said, ‘Darling, where are you? I was in the bath … you sound strange.'

‘I've just come down from Ma Mère,' Kate said, lowering her voice. ‘I'll go to the café the other side of the square. Come there and don't waste any time.'

She hung up. He was safe. He hadn't been traced, if Janot had indeed been arrested. From feeling sick, she felt dizzy with relief. She left ten francs on the table and slipped out, pushing her way through the queue of people wanting to buy bread. She found a table towards the back of the pavement, sank down into the chair and tried to stop shaking. An old man wiping his hands on a greasy apron shuffled over to her.

‘Coffee, please.'

‘You'd do better with hot water,' he mumbled. ‘Filthy muck, that's what it is these days.'

He went off and Kate fumbled in her bag for a cigarette. It was a test to hold the match steady. She saw Dulac cross the square. He hurried to her and before he could say anything she whispered, ‘Just sit down and listen. I didn't go to Beaulieu. I went to Valbonne. Janot didn't come back last night. Ma Mère thinks he's been arrested. She took off into the hills and I hid till the curfew was over and came down here.'

The old man brought a cup of dirty brown ersatz coffee and a little jug with some milk. When he had moved away Jean Dulac said to Kate,

‘Ma Mère did the right thing. So did you, my darling.' He rubbed his hand over his forehead. There was a sheen of sweat on it; he turned aside and choked back a cough. Kate reached out and caught hold of his hand.

‘It's probably a false alarm,' she said. ‘I think we both panicked. I expect that old rattletrap broke down and he'll be home as soon as it's mended.'

He wasn't listening; he was staring past her, to the square behind. She felt his hand grip hers till it hurt.

‘I don't think so,' he said. ‘Don't look round. The Gestapo have just driven past. They've turned up the street to my flat.'

He insisted that they separate. He gave her an address and made her memorize it as they hastened away from the square.

‘It's empty,' he told her. ‘There's a key under the oleander bush on the left of the back door. In a little flower pot. Let yourself in and wait for me.'

She held on to him for a moment.

‘Why don't you come with me? Darling, for God's sake, they're after you. You'll be picked up!'

‘No, I won't,' he said. ‘I have to warn Beatrice; if it's not too late.'

Kate remembered then. ‘Julie and Pandora,' she cried out, ‘they've got to be hidden. Let me get them.'

‘No,' he said again. He pulled her close to him, people passing glanced at them and then went on their way. Lovers saying goodbye. It was a common sight.

‘I love you, Cecilie. If I have to worry about you, I won't be able to do my duty for the others. I want to know you're safe and you will be if you go where I told you. Nobody knows of the place except me. I'll get to Julie and Pandora. Janot knew nothing about them. The link breaks with Beatrice. Kiss me.' She did and it seemed like the end of her life as they held each other. She could feel the tears spilling out and running down her face. He broke away from her, pushed her to the bicycle and turning, hurried in the opposite direction. Kate watched him go. She saw several people looking curiously at her. She found a handkerchief, wiped her eyes and jumped on the machine. Forty minutes later she was down a cul-de-sac ten miles from the centre of Nice. It had been a good residential area before the war. Most of the houses were windowless and overgrown with weeds that choked the entrances. There was a silent, desolate air about the place. She found the house, with its battered name on the gate: La Rosée. The key to the back door was in the pot, lying carelessly on its side under the oleander. She opened the door, heaved her cycle in after her and shut and locked it. Silence; heavy, stale air. Cobwebs, a buzz of flies in a corner. Dust floating in the shaft of sunlight through a damaged shutter. Slowly Kate walked from the back to the front. The carpets had been taken up. Patches on the polished floorboards showed where they had been. The same for pictures on the walls. Chairs and a sofa remained. The upholstery had been slashed. Beds on the upper floor, mattresses cut open. No ornaments, pictures; mirrors starred and broken. The place had been robbed of everything portable and what was left wilfully damaged. She sat down on the edge of a big mahogany double bed, its mattress protruding stuffing like entrails, and found herself curling up and closing her eyes. Exhaustion, mental and physical, overwhelmed her. In the stifling semi-darkness of the unknown bedroom, she fell asleep.

Dulac was too late for Beatrice. He saw the crowd gathered outside the grocery shop on the other side of the road. He kept in the rear and asked a woman what everyone was gaping at.

‘There's been an arrest,' she muttered. ‘I didn't see it myself. It's a poor widow, they say.' She glanced sideways round her. The word was a whisper. ‘Gestapo.' Dulac mumbled something and moved away. Beatrice and the baby. Oh, God, God, where are you? He didn't dare take the bus. He walked, keeping to the inner side of the pavements, stopping to look in shop windows, making sure he wasn't being followed. By the afternoon he reached the house where Julie and Pandora were living. He knocked and Julie opened it. He saw by her face that she had heard the news. She looked hollow-eyed and ghastly.

‘Marcel was in the town this morning. He heard there'd been a raid on your apartment.' She leant against the wall and gave a long sigh of relief. ‘He didn't know whether you'd been picked up. My God, I've never spent such a day!'

He didn't waste time. ‘Get ready and make sure you clean out your rooms. We're joining Cecilie. I can't travel by public transport because they'll be looking for me and checking buses. You can, so long as Pandora keeps his mouth shut.'

She looked defensive. ‘He's got his deaf-mute card,' she snapped. ‘He knows what to do. We've travelled before now. Come on, let's throw our stuff into a bag. Where do we go?'

Dulac didn't hesitate. Julie was experienced and convincing with a first-rate cover story and papers. But Pandora, with no protection but the forged deaf-mute card? No, they couldn't be trusted with the address of the safe house where Cecilie was hiding.

‘Wait for me outside the cinema in the rue de la Révolution,' he said. ‘Give me an hour's start. I'll walk there.'

She looked as if she was going to argue, but decided not to. ‘We'll be there,' she said.

Kate woke to find Jean sitting on the bed beside her.

‘Oh, thank God,' she said and threw both arms round him. He held her tightly, kissing her feverishly.

‘I need you,' he said again and again, as they made love. When they were quiet she remembered he'd said the same thing the first time, the night he sentenced Louis Cabrot to death. He didn't sleep; he lay beside her and stared at the cracked plaster ceiling overhead. The sadness that follows fulfilment. There was a Latin tag for it, she couldn't remember how it went. At last Kate said, ‘Did you find the others?'

‘Yes. They're here. They'd already taken Beatrice away. I can't bear to think of it.' He jerked away from her, sat up and covered his face with his hands. ‘When they took her husband she tried to kill herself. She was pregnant. I went to see her in hospital. I'd done a small conveyancing on the shop when they got married. I tried to give her a reason for living. She still had the child; she didn't seem to care. So I asked her to work with us. I said she was needed. I could justify what happened to Cabrot – I couldn't risk the network – but how do I live with what is happening to Beatrice? Tell me, my darling, how do I stop myself from going mad?'

Kate came to him, drew him back to the bed. She put his shirt on and buttoned it. He was shivering.

‘You mind so much,' she whispered, seeing the agony and unable to soothe it. ‘You can't torture yourself.'

‘They'll torture Beatrice,' he said. ‘Why didn't I let her die in peace and the poor little child with her? Why did I try to play God and have this happen to her?'

‘Because she
was
needed,' Kate answered. ‘She saved other people's lives and everything she did had one end. To win the war and avenge her husband. She knew that, my love, she wasn't stupid or blind. She knew the risks. They may not hurt her; you can't be sure.'

He didn't seem to hear. ‘Someone betrayed her,' he muttered. ‘Someone betrayed Janot. And knew that both of them would lead to me. Who did it? Who would do such a thing?'

Kate put her arms round him. ‘We'll find out in time. Are you calmer now? Please, darling, try to be calm.'

He looked at her. ‘I have blood on my hands,' he said. ‘Not even loving you makes them clean.'

Kate said slowly, ‘If you feel like this, perhaps you should give up.'

‘I've thought about it,' he answered. ‘When things went wrong and we lost people … forty were shot because I organized an attack on a train. It was a great night, Cecilie, we blew up the track and the train was derailed. It was full of German troops. Hundreds were injured and killed. We celebrated when we got back. We sang songs and got a little bit drunk. But forty men were shot as a reprisal. I knew many of them. I lived with that. I lived with it because I went on striking at the Germans. I gave myself no rest, I risked my life a dozen times to make sense of those French dead. How do I make sense of Beatrice? And poor Janot – with his simple trust in me. And what will happen to Ma Mère? How long can she hide?' He swung round on Kate in rage and despair. ‘We can't touch that convoy – we can't even come out of hiding to hear London's message, until we know who has betrayed us. We're shut up here, helpless, immobilized. I shall go mad unless I can take action.…'