Wild Lavender (48 page)

‘I am willing to do whatever I have to in order to free France,’ I said. ‘Even if that means sacrificing my life. I will not rest or give in until the enemy has been chased out of our country.’

M
ouse and the Judge returned the following Wednesday evening. I was surprised to see that they had brought two men with them. One was around six foot two with a shock of black hair falling across his forehead from a slight widow’s peak. The other was short with blond hair so curly that it looked sewn to his scalp. The tall one gave me a nod before sinking into a chair. He had an air of quiet authority and self-assuredness. The younger one smiled with crinkles at the corners of his eyes. I assumed that they must be ex-Deuxième Bureau men too, but there was something not quite right about them. They were dressed in suits and carried their hats in their hands, but it was the way they moved that caught my attention. The one in the chair sat with his long legs splayed out; the other stood with his chin tucked into his neck.

‘Our “parcels”,’ whispered Mouse, a note of pride ringing in his voice. ‘Two RAF pilots who were shot down at Dunkirk. An Australian and a Scotsman. We are going to take them back to England with us.’

Of course, I thought, they aren’t French. But if I had noticed the stiffness of their gaits and their lack of gestures, wouldn’t the Germans too?

‘Mademoiselle Fleurier,’ Mouse exclaimed, ‘we have more serious worries than that. The Australian speaks French well but with a slight accent. The Scotsman doesn’t speak a word of it.’ Mouse must have seen the alarm on my face because he quickly added, ‘But we have cover stories to suit them. The Australian is now a Frenchman born in
Algiers and the Scotsman is a Czech composer, although he doesn’t speak Czech. But most of the Germans don’t either.’

‘I hope he plays the piano at least,’ I said, trying to keep my sense of humour. If I didn’t potentially have my neck on a chopping block, I probably would have found the situation highly comical.

‘He does, in fact,’ said Mouse, ‘exceptionally well. He was a student at the Royal College of Music when the war broke out.’

‘Are you afraid, Mademoiselle Fleurier?’ asked the Judge. ‘Are you having second thoughts? You had better speak up now if you are.’

The Australian stared at me. He had an intense, lean face but gentle green eyes. I guessed he was about the same age as me, somewhere in his early thirties, while the Scot was younger, not more than twenty-three or twenty-four.

‘I am not afraid,’ I replied. ‘I am just determined to get you all over the demarcation line.’

‘We had better get going if we are to make the train,’ said Mouse, tapping his watch. He gave me a quick briefing on everyone’s cover names and stories. He was Pierrot Vinet, my manager. The Judge was Henri Bacque, my artistic director. The Australian was Roger Delpierre, the stage director, and the Scotsman was a Czech composer by the name of Eduard Novacek.

The formalities over, I pointed to the line of suitcases and hatboxes by the door. We were travelling first class and Mouse had told me to pack like a star. Chérie was already in her cage and I opened my bedroom door and called the dogs. Mouse’s face turned white when he saw Princesse, Charlot and Bruno bounding towards him.

‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘They can’t come.’

‘Why not?’ I asked, bending down to attach their leads.

He raised his eyebrows. ‘We are leaving on a dangerous mission, Mademoiselle Fleurier. We can’t be worrying about a menagerie of animals.’

‘Well, they’re not staying here,’ I said, hooking the leads onto the dogs’ collars and standing upright again. ‘They
have been abandoned once before. I am not abandoning them again.’

‘Couldn’t your concierge look after them?’ suggested the Judge. ‘Until you come back.’

‘I won’t be back for a while,’ I said. ‘And my concierge is the kind of woman who would eat them.’

I had another reason for taking the animals. I had decided that if I was going to go to the trouble of getting myself over the border, then once I had delivered the Deuxième Bureau men and their ‘parcels’, I would go to check on my family and see if the others had arrived. I was having trouble obtaining enough food for the animals in Paris and I knew the dogs and Chérie would be welcome on the farm.

The Scotsman was wandering about the drawing room, studying my photographs and the ornaments on the mantelpiece. But the Australian had not taken his eyes from my face the whole time.

‘Well,’ said Mouse, straightening his jacket, ‘as leader of this mission, I am ordering you to leave those animals where they are.’

The skin on the back of my neck prickled. I could have told Mouse that, as financier of the mission and volunteer for General de Gaulle, the animals were coming with me or he and his mission could go to hell. But I did not want to do that. I wanted to help these men get to England. I wanted General de Gaulle to win back France for us. But when I looked at the trusting faces of the animals, I could not betray them.

‘I will leave my luggage,’ I said. ‘But I must take them.’

‘That won’t do,’ said the Judge. ‘An entertainer without luggage will arouse suspicion.’

Bargaining wasn’t getting me anywhere and I was tempted to resort to feminine wiles. But I was too angry to summon crocodile tears. It was inconceivable to me to leave the dogs and Chérie in Paris when there was no one I could trust to look after them. And I had no intention of abandoning them to the fate that their original owners had.
But I could see from the way Mouse had set his feet firmly on the floor that he was girding himself for battle.

He was about to speak when ‘Roger’, the Australian rose from his chair. ‘I think we are going to miss the train if this argument goes on any longer,’ he said in carefully measured French. For a moment I was hypnotised by his voice. It was rich and fluid, like an actor on stage. ‘If Mademoiselle Fleurier is prepared to risk her life for four men she doesn’t know from a bar of soap, then I think we can let her take her animals,’ he went on.

Mouse’s face turned from white to crimson. But whether it was from the embarrassment of being outdone in chivalry or because he was being challenged, I couldn’t tell.

‘Come on then,’ said the Judge. ‘We will each take two pieces of Mademoiselle Fleurier’s luggage.’

Mouse, chastised and annoyed, was the first out the door. Roger and I reached for the same suitcase. He smiled at me. The expression transformed his face: he was handsome rather than surly. I realised that he would probably have come across differently if he had not been a downed pilot, trapped behind enemy lines. My heart did a twirl in my chest. It startled me. I had experienced that sensation once before, many years ago. The blood rushed to the surface of my skin and I could feel my cheeks glow.

‘I grew up with dogs. Four of them,’ Roger said. He reached to pick up Chérie’s cage with his free arm. ‘I’ve never had a cat but I suspect I’ll like her.’

He was self-assured in the way he spoke but his smile was shy. It melted my heart.

‘I think a person who is kind to animals must be a good person overall,’ I said, trying to regain my composure. I was acting as if I was sixteen again—and we were in the middle of a war!

‘I agree,’ he said, standing aside so I could go through the door first. ‘And I think a woman who is loyal to her animals will not betray her friends,’ he added in English.

Roger’s voice was warm and rumbled like a tremor under the earth. He would make a good singer, I thought. The
charm of it made me want to learn…whatever it was they spoke in Australia. Australian?

We had chosen a day and time when Madame Goux normally visited her brother, so we all froze when we found her standing in the foyer. She was dressed in a travel suit with a suitcase by her side. The Judge glanced at me and Mouse gave me a nudge. It looked as though I was going to have to start with the cover story sooner than expected.

‘Good evening, Madame Goux,’ I said. ‘I would like you to meet my manager, Pierrot Vinet—’

‘My arse!’ she spat, lifting her eyebrow at me accusingly. ‘I know who they are. I heard through the air vent. Not as good spies as you think, are you?’

I was too surprised to say anything. I had told her that my two visitors the previous week were from the Propagandastaffel and she had given every sign of believing me.

‘Madame, may I ask what you intend to do?’ said the Judge. His voice was chillingly calm and I sensed that he was feeling in his pocket for a weapon. I was afraid that if Madame Goux said she was going to denounce us, he would kill her on the spot.

‘As you see,’ she said, pointing to her suitcase, ‘I am coming with you.’

‘Pardon?’ asked Mouse.

‘I am coming with you,’ said Madame Goux. ‘To fight for France.’

‘Oh,’ said the Judge, switching to a more gracious tone. ‘You could do that so well from here, Madame. We need a Paris coordinator.’

‘Don’t give me that shit!’ barked Madame Goux. ‘I’ve got my papers in order. You can buy me a ticket at the station. I’m going as Mademoiselle Fleurier’s personal assistant. Didn’t it occur to you that it would look strange for her to travel alone with so many men?’

It hadn’t occurred to me, but she was probably right. I glanced at Mouse who shrugged at the Judge.

‘Come along then, Madame,’ said the Judge, rolling his
eyes. ‘Before everyone else who knows Mademoiselle Fleurier wants to come too.’

We arrived at the station to find it crowded with German soldiers and French civil servants. With the luggage carriage filled to capacity, the conductor agreed to let the animals travel with us, although he warned that we would have to move if the Germans objected to them or the dogs started barking. My being given a compartment in first class was clearly an exception: the Germans were given the best seats first and the French had to settle for whatever was left after that. There were six seats in our compartment and, as it turned out, having an extra member in the party was to our advantage. If Madame Goux hadn’t come with us then a German soldier or French official would have taken the spare seat and maybe tried to make conversation.

Mouse and I sat opposite each other in the seats nearest the door. Roger sat next to me, with Charlot resting near his feet, and Eduard was placed by the window. The plan was that when the police came to check our tickets, Eduard would pretend to be asleep and I would speak for him.

I was aware that the compartment walls were thin and that we had Germans on either side of us, but I was fascinated by the two RAF men and wanted to know more about them. Especially Roger. I wondered what his true name was, but Mouse had forbidden me to enquire about any of the parties’ real lives, in case I was caught. ‘If they torture you, the less you know the better it will be for the rest of us,’ he had said.

Eduard had already ‘fallen asleep’ so I whispered to Roger, ‘You were born in Algiers?’ If I couldn’t have a real conversation with him, surely I could get myself better acquainted with his cover story.

Roger rose to the game. ‘My sisters and I went to live with my grandparents there after my parents were killed in a train accident. My grandfather was a retired naval
captain who had travelled to Algiers and never wanted to leave.’

Mouse frowned at me, then seemed to think better of it. Hadn’t he said himself that a cover story should be practised until it was flawless and all questions could be answered without hesitation?

‘And how come you are in France?’ he asked Roger.

‘My uncle invited me here to study law at the Sorbonne. I fell in love with Paris.’

‘Why weren’t you called up for military service?’ I asked, knowing this would be the first thing the Germans would ask of a man his age.

‘I’m diabetic,’ he answered.

Goodness, I thought, I hope if he is ever caught and the Germans bring in a doctor, he can fake that.

I tried to pick out what was true and what wasn’t in the cover story. I guessed that Roger probably did have two sisters. He may well have studied law, but not at the Sorbonne. What would be the use of knowing French law when you intended to practise in Britain or one of her dominions?

The ticket and papers check by the conductor when we boarded the train had gone without a hitch, but when we stopped at the demarcation line and four French policemen came on board, my pulse began to throb.

‘
Bonsoir,
Mesdames and Messieurs,’ said one of the policemen, peering into our compartment. ‘Your papers, please.’

As planned, Roger slipped Eduard’s papers from his pocket, put them on top of his and passed them to me. I handed all three of our passes up to the policeman, while Mouse did the same with his, the Judge’s and those of Madame Goux. The policeman studied them much more carefully than I had seen anyone do before the war. He checked my picture against my appearance and did the same with the others. But he stared uncomfortably long at Eduard’s.

‘Wake him up, please,’ he said, nodding his chin towards the Scotsman.

‘Is that necessary?’ I asked, laying my hand on the policeman’s wrist. ‘He has
la grippe
and has been sleeping since Paris.’

I hoped that my comment that Eduard had influenza would cause the policeman to leave our compartment quickly, but the expression on his stern face didn’t change. To my horror, he leaned out into the corridor and called for the other policemen to come. I glanced at Mouse. Outwardly his face and posture were calm, but I could see how white his knuckles were on the armrest.

Three more police officers arrived, blocking the corridor. My eyes fell to the revolvers on their belts. ‘There,’ said the policeman, holding Eduard’s papers towards them. ‘This document has all the details filled out correctly. This is what the Germans want to see. This is what a genuine pass looks like.’

The other policemen glanced at the paper and nodded their approval. ‘The French don’t realise how they hold things up by not doing things precisely,’ one of them said.

The first policeman handed back our papers, then touched his cap and wished us a good trip. We were careful not to relax our positions as soon as he left. It wasn’t until the policemen got off and the train began moving again that we let out a collective sigh of relief.

‘We will have to warn the forger you use in Paris,’ the Judge said to Mouse. ‘He might be too good.’