The Best of Our Spies (47 page)

‘Get up, sir, and shut up. You know what they are going to do to us. Let them get on with it. We’re finished.’

‘Do not speak to me like that! I am your commanding officer!’

‘Then act like it, sir. Where is your dignity?’

The two men with machine guns had stepped forward now.

‘Ask them,’ said the woman, ‘if they have any last words.’

She translated.

The younger officer shook his head and looked slowly around him. The older one spoke quickly, looking at the priest as he did so.

‘I am a practising Catholic, even during the war. Please allow me to confess. Please.’

She glanced over to the priest who appeared to have caught the gist of what the German had said. He looked quizzically at her, the cross quivering in his hands as he did so.

She allowed the silence that had descended to linger. In that time a small flock of ravens descended on the trees behind the white wall.

She stepped towards the two officers. As she got nearer, she could smell the fear.

‘You’ve lost, haven’t you? Accept that.’

With that, she turned round and walked back towards the crowd.

‘What did he have to say?’ the woman asked her.

She shook her head. ‘Nothing. He just said to get on with it.’

One of the two men had trouble releasing the catch on his machine gun. When they fired, it was clear not much had been planned. Both fired at the older officer, leaving the younger one still standing – unscathed and shocked. There was no smile or defiance on his face now, just a wide open mouth, unseeing eyes and a look of utter fear. The two gunmen stepped towards him. One man’s gun jammed and the other only let out a short burst before stopping.

Above them, the sky had blackened as the ravens flew off in mass, their panicked shrieking merging with the ring of the machine gun fire.

The younger officer had slumped to the ground, where he was groaning loudly and writhing on the bright green strip of grass. The old man with the medals stepped forward. He was holding a pistol and stood no more than two feet from the officer. He was taking careful aim at his head, but he was shaking violently. His first shot missed completely, ricocheting off the white wall. One of the gunmen put his machine gun down and went over to grab the pistol from the old man. The officer had lifted his head off the grass and was trying to say something, blood seeping out of his mouth. The gunman knelt down next to him, placed the pistol against his temple and fired.

No one in the small crowd moved for a good minute, shocked at what they had seen and shocked at what they had done.

They were offered a bed for the night but decided to move on.

‘Victor’s justice,’ said Laurent as the village began to fade behind them.

‘What other kind is there?’ she asked.

They moved on to Reims, where they stayed until the end of September. Laurent had decided that he wanted to return to Lens. By now, he was beginning to be open about his desires towards her. The occasional friendly arm around the shoulder became more frequent, pulling her closer to him and trying to hold her there. The kiss on the cheek moved closer to her mouth and there were references to ‘we’. She realised that he was beginning to assume that ‘we’ had a future. She allowed herself to contemplate the prospect for a while. It was not without its attractions. Laurent was a decent man; intelligent, witty and resourceful. She could disappear into the anonymity offered by being a schoolteacher’s wife in Lens. Life there would be dull but safe, something that she could not contemplate.

She also realised that she needed to head on. He had no idea of where she came from and she needed to escape his attention and his affection before it became a problem. One morning when he was helping to clear roads she fell into conversation with an American officer who couldn’t believe she spoke such good English. The officer was about to head down to Lorraine and if she wanted a lift, he would be happy to oblige.

ooo000ooo

Nancy had been liberated by the US Third Army on the 15 September after a ten day battle, but in other parts of Lorraine the war continued.

She had intended to stay in Nancy until it was safe for her to move eastwards on the last leg of her long journey. Lieutenant Larry Jones had spent much of the first half of the journey from Reims to Nancy with his hand on her knee and most of the second half of the journey with it on her thigh. She wondered if she had made the right decision to abandon Laurent. But she needed Lieutenant Jones, even more than he apparently needed her.

‘Civilian control, ma’am. My mom is French-Canadian and I speak it as well as all of you, so I’m running the office in Nancy making sure everyone has the right documents.’

His French was not as good as he thought it was but it was passable.

‘I’ll let you practise on me later,’ she promised, which was all the encouragement he needed to book her into the one hotel that was still standing and pay for the room.

But more importantly, she needed new documents. He bought her story that her papers had been lost in Reims without too much difficulty and so the first thing he did when they arrived in Nancy was fix her up with an impressive new set. She was exhausted now; tired of moving, tired of not being sure of who she was meant to be and in no real physical state to do much other than rest.

She thought hard about the new identity Lieutenant Jones was fixing her up with. She could be anyone, apart from the one person she wanted to be and be with. Instead, she decided to revert to her real identity, which was something she had never given much thought to. It seemed to make sense. She had come full circle.

The hotel ought to have been the perfect place for her to stay: the sheets were clean and the small bathroom always had water. Downstairs there was a bistro attached to the hotel which had some food if you liked potatoes and Lieutenant Jones had assured her that her bills would be taken care of. He had even arranged for her to have a check up with an army doctor. All was well, she was assured. If only it was, she thought.

But there was an air about Nancy that made her uncomfortable. She had imagined that liberated France would be euphoric, that people whose dreams had come true and whose suffering had come to end would be happy. Yet all she could sense was an edge to the city. A tension that she found hard to describe flowed in on the River Meurthe and attached itself to the elegant but war-scarred buildings on the Grande Rue.

On her second night in Nancy she was in the bar adjoining the bistro. It was ten o’clock and Lieutenant Jones had left. He had joined her for dinner and realising that he was going to get no further than the ground floor of the hotel, reluctantly but politely bade goodnight.

The barman was polishing a beer glass in an extravagant manner.

‘Not your boyfriend then?’

‘No. He’d like to be. I’m married.’ She held up her left hand and wriggled her fingers.

The barman smiled. ‘What brings you here.’

‘The war. I got a lift here. I’m moving on soon.’

Outside there was a crashing noise, the sound of glass breaking and people shouting. The barman went into the street and returned, still polishing the same glass.

‘They’ve found another
collabo
then. It’s not a nice sight. Go and have a look if you want to see what a free France looks like.’

She got outside just in time to see a crowd of people disappearing down the small road outside the hotel. She followed them into the Place Stanislas, where a larger crowd had gathered.

A young woman, perhaps in her early twenties, had been pushed to the ground and was being made to kneel. A man was tying her hands behind her back while another had yanked up her long hair in his hands.

The crowd was quiet, muttering disapproval of the girl.

‘What is going on?’ she asked the woman next to her.

‘You don’t know? Sleeping with Germans. And she’s one of the lucky ones. They shot six men two days ago for helping the Germans.’

She was fixed to the spot, appalled at the spectacle in front of her, yet fascinated by it too. It was carried out in silence, the girl bowed and compliant, accepting of her fate. The older man finished tying her hands and then produced a pair of large tailor’s scissors and proceeded to hack away at her hair. The younger man had his hand under the girl’s chin, keeping the head upright. When most of the hair had been removed the younger man took out a cut-throat razor and scraped away at her scalp, nicking it and causing it to bleed. All along, the girl kept quiet and still, with not a tear in her eye.

She backed away from the crowd as it nodded its approval. A fear was gripping her now. She had been deluding herself over the past few weeks. She was worse than a collaborator, she was a traitor. If the truth were known about her, a far worse fate awaited her.

She ran back to the hotel, her worn shoes sliding against the cobbles. Outside the hotel she held herself against the wall while she vomited. She knew she must move on.

Inside the barman was holding the same beer glass, the bar still empty.

‘Not pleasant, is it?’ he said.

She nodded. A large cognac was on the bar in front of her.

‘I imagine you’ll want this. On the house.’

The next morning she told Lieutenant Jones that she was leaving Nancy. He understood. He had already realised that his interests in her were not going to be reciprocated. Frenchwomen looked like a lot of trouble anyway.

ooo000ooo

By the time she realised she had made a mistake it was, of course, far too late. If only Lieutenant Jones had tried to persuade her to stay in Nancy. He wouldn’t have had to try too hard. She would have been comfortable there, there were hospitals and it was away from the fighting.

The lorry that Lieutenant Jones had arranged to give her a lift had left Nancy early that morning, hugging the line of the Meurthe towards the Vosges Mountains. She was only about sixty miles from home. The front line was nearby and the lorry was delivering supplies to it. The driver apologised in the way that she had discovered Americans were good at.
I can’t take you any further. Sorry ma’am.
He sounded genuinely sorry.

The late summer sun was streaming down into the square of the village where she had been dropped. There was no shade in sight. Some of the trees were beginning to lose their leaves and a pyramid-shaped pile of them had been swept into a corner of the square. She deeply regretted leaving Nancy: she had been impetuous again, driven on by some kind of nesting instinct. She was feeling exhausted, weighed down by her pregnancy. She had underestimated how tired she would feel. Her back was hurting as it had been on and off for the past few weeks and her ankles were swollen. If only Lieutenant Jones had not been so obliging in helping her leave Nancy.

The
Mairie
next to the church was decorated with a row of bullet holes. Stacked up on one side of the square was a collection of dismantled German road signs. At first she assumed that the village was deserted, given its proximity to the fighting, but then an old lady dressed in black left a building ahead of her, slowly walking round the square, never taking her eyes off her. A family left the church, followed by a young priest with a wide-brimmed hat and a long black cassock who carefully locked the door with a key on a long chain tied around his waist. A
boulangerie
looked as if it had closed for the war and was yet to be informed it was over.

She sat on a bench at the edge of the square for a while. Her eyes filled with tears: until a few weeks ago she could not remember the last time she had cried. Now, she seemed to do so most days.

She couldn’t stay in this village, she must keep moving.
I can’t draw attention to myself
. A large black cat had circled her bench and was now sitting still in front of her, its head cocked as if it was expecting to be fed, the yellow eyes burning into her. A gentle breeze rolled across the square. If she was going to move, she’d need to do so now while there was still plenty of daylight.

She carried on walking. Heading east, always heading east. It did not take long for the village to fade behind her as if it had never existed, like a strange dream, and for the countryside to open up. Ahead of her, far in the distance, was the crump and smoke of artillery fire. Her urge to go home was instinctive, but she had no idea where she was going to spend the night. She wondered whether there was any way she could get back to Nancy.

She was climbing uphill and her pace had slowed to a near crawl. As the incline became steeper, she stopped every few paces. There was no breeze now and she felt light-headed. Although the sun had dropped, she felt unaccountably hot and nauseous. She paused, leaning against a narrow tree. She peered up through the branches; the sun appeared enormous, its yellow edges bleeding into the sky. As she looked down she was sweating profusely and felt unsteady. She had to hold the tree trunk tightly as she was violently sick. Strange, she thought: she had, mercifully, avoided morning sickness in the early part of her pregnancy. She carried on walking painfully slowly, the birds silent and the land swaying gently around her. She was concentrating so hard on reaching the top of the hill that she never heard the car until it stopped alongside her.

The last thing she remembered seeing was a tiny black car alongside her, with a man dressed in black in the driving seat. The words ‘where are you going?’ were the last ones she remembered hearing.

ooo000ooo

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Lorraine–Alsace border
October 1944

That night she was back home, being dragged through the Place St Étienne, stripped naked with an angry crowd hacking at her with razors.

That night she was curled up in bed with Owen in their large London house, their children sleeping peacefully in adjoining rooms.

That night she had her hands round the neck of German soldier in Lille, her well-practised smile fixed on him as she squeezed the life out of him as slowly as possible.