Wild Lavender (54 page)

‘Shall we sit here for a while?’ Roger asked.

I nodded and we sat down together on a boulder that was still warm from the sun. We were both long-limbed and our legs sprawled out before us in the chalky dust.

‘That was your code name in the network,’ Roger said. ‘Wild Lavender.’

‘I didn’t know I had a code name. I never used it.’

He smiled. ‘Well, that’s how I always thought of you: tenacious and stubborn but also rather sweet.’

I was about to tell him I didn’t like that description much when he put his hand on my shoulder. ‘When this war is over, Simone, can I come back for you?’

His grip was gentle but energy flowed from it like a torch. I remembered how he had held me the night we danced the tango and drew closer. ‘I don’t even know if Roger is your real name,’ I said, tracing his widow’s peak with my finger.

Roger slipped his arm around me. ‘It is,’ he said. ‘Roger is every bit as English as it is French. But my last name is Clifton not Delpierre.’

He exaggerated the roll of r’s in his code name so much that it made me laugh. I pressed my cheek to his. The sun was still there in the heat of his skin. I breathed in his wonderful scent, like the smell of thyme simmering over the fire.

‘And when I come back for you, Simone, will you marry me?’

My heart skipped a beat. Was this real or a dream? ‘Yes,’ I said, surprised at how quickly I had accepted. I didn’t need to think about it. It felt natural to be with Roger, as if we were two pieces of a puzzle that fitted together.

Roger brushed his hand down my back. When he touched me I realised how the war had worn out my body, how tired and heavy I felt. But with each caress my skin tingled to life.

‘Who would have thought it?’ Roger said, laughing. ‘France’s biggest star and a boring lawyer from Tasmania. Only the war could have brought such an unlikely couple together.’

I remembered the way he had danced the tango and sung in Spanish. ‘You are anything but boring,’ I said. ‘Besides, you are a hero. And I pray that this war won’t last for ever.’

‘Well, we have to believe that it won’t now we are getting married,’ Roger said, kissing me. The softness of his lips was divine. Kissing him was like pressing my lips to a peach. I could have lost myself in his kisses for ever but I broke away for a moment to ask, ‘Where shall we live? In London or Paris? Or are you intending to take me to Tasmania?’

‘We can go to Tasmania for our honeymoon. But when we are married I want to live here.’

I sat back and looked at him. ‘In Provence? Or do you mean France?’

‘Here on the farm,’ Roger said, surveying the sky. ‘It’s so beautiful, I can’t imagine why anybody would want to live anywhere else. I’d be happy growing lavender alongside your family and raising our children here. Law seems such a pathetic thing to practise after all I’ve seen. Law relies on order. All I’ve seen is chaos.’

I loved Pays de Sault and my family too, but I had never imagined living here again. ‘I am not very suited to farming,’ I said. ‘I’m hopeless at it.’

‘Who said you needed to do any farming?’ he asked. ‘You’re a performer. If you want to go to Paris or Marseilles, I’ll fly you there.’

Tears pricked my eyes. The dream was so beautiful that I couldn’t bring myself even to imagine being that happy. I was afraid that if I did, the happiness would be snatched away, as had happened with André.

Roger brought his lips to mine and kissed me again. I pressed myself against him and he tugged me down onto the chalky earth. ‘Don’t put up barriers to happiness, Simone,’ he said, stroking my face. ‘After getting through this, I’m sure we can do anything.’

Roger’s hand glided to the opening of my shirt and curved over my breasts. I closed my eyes, quivering with desire.

‘Tenacious, stubborn but
very
sweet,’ he whispered.

At dawn the following morning, I slipped out of Roger’s embrace, pulled on my clothes and ran across the yard to my aunt’s house. My mother was in the kitchen, laying out plates for breakfast when I burst in the door. She jumped back a step, sending knives and forks clattering to the floor.

‘Sorry,’ I said. With the tension of the circumstances, it wasn’t considerate to surprise people. But my mother wasn’t annoyed.

‘Roger asked me to marry him,’ I said. ‘He has promised to come back for me after the war.’

My mother smiled but did not respond. She kept her eyes on me.

I stepped towards her. ‘Do you think it is all right to promise something like that while there is a war on?’ I asked. ‘He has to go back to London. We may never see each other again.’

My mother put down the plate she was holding and took my hands. ‘We are still alive, Simone. We must act as though we are living. Promise to marry him. He loves you.’

I threw my arms around her and hugged her harder than I had in years. My mother was petite in stature but strong. I could feel the hardness of her bones moving under her muscles. She pushed me back for a moment and looked into my eyes. ‘But is that what is really frightening you—the war?’ she asked. ‘Or is it something else?’

Under her gaze, I felt fourteen years old again. I didn’t need to tell her what was in my heart.

‘André?’ she asked, raising her eyebrows.

I nodded. The way I had felt about him when I saw him in Lyon had stayed with me. Although he was married with children, and both of us were dedicated to the cause, there had been a sense of unfinished business between us. Could I honestly give my whole heart to Roger if I still felt that?

My mother’s eyes softened and she kissed the top of my head. ‘I have seen you and Roger together,’ she said. ‘You have fallen in love under a trial of fire. What you have between you is strong. That man will never desert you. He might be leaving for now but if he promises to come back for you, he will.’

‘What if his family doesn’t approve of me?’ It was unlikely that Roger’s family was as elite as the Blanchards, but if his uncle was friends with Churchill then they were clearly people of standing in society.

My mother shook her head. ‘I am sure they would be proud to know that Roger wants to marry someone so brave and honourable. If your father could see the woman you have become, he would tell you exactly the same thing. The gifts you have, you inherited from him.’

Aunt Yvette’s footsteps sounded on the stairs. We both turned to see her come into the kitchen, tying a scarf over her angel hair. She stopped short when she spotted us, her face twisting into a puzzled expression.

‘Roger and Simone are getting married,’ my mother told her. ‘He is coming back for her after the war.’

Aunt Yvette’s face relaxed into a broad grin.

T
he morning Roger and I announced our engagement, we all sat down to the happiest breakfast we had enjoyed in years. Even the children in our care seemed in better spirits than they had the day before. My mother rested her hand on Roger’s arm as lovingly as if he were her own son. I told myself that the next time my mother and I had some time alone, I was going to ask her about my grandparents and if it was true that her mother was an Italian. I wanted to be as proud of my ancestors as I was of this gathering of family, friends and guests. Aunt Yvette and Bernard pulled out every childhood story they could think of to embarrass me in front of Roger, including telling him that my nickname used to be ‘the flamingo’ because of my long legs. But I didn’t mind. I was content to know that, despite the situation we were in, we could be cheered just by imagining a better future.

I had one last task in Paris before I moved south permanently. Roger had a code that he needed delivered to a network member. I had memorised it so that if I was searched it wouldn’t be found. The plan was for me to stay overnight in Paris, then to catch the first train back south. Roger and I would have one more night at the farm together before he had to leave France.

While I was packing my bag, my mother handed me a cloth pouch. ‘Don’t open it,’ she said. ‘You know what it is.’

I felt the spiky object and guessed it was a rabbit bone, for protection. ‘You will need it,’ she said. ‘I can’t watch over you for ever.’

I had long discarded my Provençal superstitions, but I tucked the pouch into my pocket with respect. My mother and I may have different weapons, but we were fighting the same war.

‘I shall keep it with me always,’ I told her, kissing her cheeks.

When I was ready to leave, I embraced my mother and aunt, Minot and his mother, Bernard and each of the children, and patted the dogs and cats, before following Roger out the door and into the sunshine. Kira tagged along with us until the stone wall, then watched as Roger and I headed through the fields towards the village, from where I would catch the motor coach back to the railway station.

When we reached the town hall, Roger and I kissed while the driver good-naturedly beeped his horn. ‘Come on, you two, the motor coach now runs on Vichy time.’

‘I love you, Simone Fleurier,’ Roger said, tucking a sprig of wild lavender into the buttonhole of my dress.

From the back of the motor coach I waved goodbye to Roger. One night in Paris and I would return to him and my family. That was the plan. But it never happened like that. It never happened at all.

I arrived in Paris late in the evening and caught the
métro
to the Champs élysées. Even in the short time I had been away, I could see that the mood of the people had sunk even lower than it had been before I left, although I didn’t yet understand why. Perhaps I was too tired to notice that the last two carriages of the train were empty.

Madame Goux opened the door for me. No sooner had I stepped inside than she poured out her story. ‘They have been rounding up the Jews,’ she said. ‘Not just the foreign ones any more but French people as well. They are sending them to camps in Poland.’

‘Who is rounding them up?’ I asked, slumping into a chair by the office door.

‘The Paris police.’

‘So the Nazis are getting us to do their dirty work?’ I said, leaning my head against the wall. To me, that was the most discouraging news of all. The Germans didn’t have to worry about spreading themselves too thinly when they had so many French people to act as accomplices.

Madame Goux clucked her tongue. ‘A dozen police have joined our network. They are disgusted by what happened at the Vélodrome d’Hiver.’

I looked up at her. ‘What happened?’

Madame Goux sniffed. ‘I saw the buses heading towards the sports ground when I was out on an errand. A crowd of us gathered near the entrance, wanting to know what was going on. Some of the police were ripping at the women’s clothing, searching for jewels or money. They separated the men from the women and children, then took the men away. The women and children were left without food or water for three days.’

I covered my eyes with my hand. ‘What happened after that?’

‘One of our police recruits was here earlier,’ Madame Goux went on. ‘He said the Germans had given orders that they only wanted children old enough to work. So the police pushed the young children away from their mothers with the butts of their rifles and water hoses. He said the screams will live in his memory for ever.’

I took my hand away from my eyes. How could anybody do that? I thought about the policemen I had seen in the days when Paris was left as an open city. The last command given to them had been to keep order. But wasn’t there a time for every person to question the instructions he or she was given?

‘Where are those children now?’ I asked.

‘Some have been snatched up by the network, but most of them have been left to fend for themselves,’ she said. ‘The policeman believes they will soon be rounded up too.’

‘Like hunted animals,’ I muttered.

‘A request has been sent to Germany that all children accompany their parents in the future. It is more humane,’ said Madame Goux.

‘More humane!’ I cried. ‘Those people are being sent to their deaths!’

When the foreign Jews were first rounded up and deported, most of us did not know about extermination camps, and the Nazis did a good job of propaganda by screening documentaries of Jews being settled in the east. Non-Jewish people even received postcards from their Jewish friends, assuring them that all was well. But the intelligence arms of the Resistance had been piecing together a different picture. Roger had told me about the suspected atrocities, but when underground papers such as
J’accuse
and
Fraternité
printed reports of genocide, people dismissed them as too horrible to believe or viewed them as Allied propaganda.

I thought of the five children Bernard had saved in Marseilles and the trouble Roger would have to go to in order to get them to safety. How was the Resistance in Paris going to save thousands of children, let alone their parents? We needed help. We needed Parisians to stop hiding behind the fiction that life was normal under the Nazis.

‘Do you think we can conceal children here?’ I asked. It was a heartbreaking question for me. I had committed myself to assisting Allied agents. If concealing children compromised the safety of those agents, the network would forbid me to do it.

Madame Goux’s expression changed. ‘You have two visitors waiting for you upstairs already. The woman wouldn’t say who they were, but I think they need your help.’

I was expecting my visitors to be agents, so I was surprised when I found a woman sitting at my dining table with a small child clasped in her arms. The woman spun around when she heard me come in the door. She had the same terrified eyes I had seen on the children at the farm. But I knew her instantly.

‘Odette!’ I cried.

She stood up and rushed towards me. I put my arms around her and stroked Petite Simone’s head. The girl was as pretty as her mother with a pert nose and luminous skin. But her eyes drooped wearily.

‘Let’s put her in my bed,’ I said. ‘Then we can talk.’

Petite Simone yawned and fell asleep as soon as her head rested on the pillow.

‘Leave the door open,’ Odette said, when she saw I was about to shut it. She sounded as if she were afraid that if Petite Simone was out of her sight for a moment, she would be snatched away.

We sat down on the sofa together and took each other’s hands. ‘Why are you in Paris?’ I asked her.

A wild look flashed into Odette’s eyes. ‘I should have listened to you, Simone. They took Uncle and Joseph. They took my parents. They have rounded up the Jews in Bordeaux. We thought we were safe because Uncle found a
passeur
willing to take us across the line. We were supposed to hide in the back of his clothing van. But he never showed up. He took nearly all our money but he never came.’

Tears welled in her eyes and she shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe there were people capable of stealing from the desperate. ‘The next day everybody was rounded up,’ she said. ‘Petite Simone and I were saved because we had gone to visit a Catholic neighbour. She hid us in her cellar until the raid was over. When I returned to our house, it had been turned upside down and everybody was gone.’

I buried my face in my palms. For the past two years I had given all my available resources and time to saving Allied servicemen and hiding British agents. Months ago we had been told that the Americans would swiftly end the war. Where were they all now? Couldn’t they see that everything was getting worse?

I went to the kitchen to make Odette some of the real coffee I had stashed away. I had to admit to myself that my true disappointment was not with the Allies but with the
French people.
Passeurs
who stole money from desperate Jews. Policemen who beat children until they let go of their mother’s skirts. ‘If no help is coming from the outside, then we must help ourselves,’ I muttered.

‘Odette, do you and Petite Simone have false papers or only your real ones?’ I asked, when I set down the cup of coffee before her.

‘The
passeur
was supposed to give us false papers,’ she said. ‘I have only our real ones, stamped “Jew”.’

‘How did you get to Paris?’

‘I had just enough money left for a ticket for me and Petite Simone,’ she said. ‘I got on the train with our Jewish papers and nobody stopped me.’ She gave a sharp, nervous laugh. ‘Perhaps they figured if the Germans missed us in Bordeaux, they would get us in Paris anyway.’

My mind ticked over. I had only ever picked up false papers from another member of the network, never directly from a forger myself. The good ones were too precious to the network to be compromised, so access to them was limited. For years I had simply taken orders. I had no idea how to go about getting Odette and Petite Simone across the demarcation line myself. My mind drifted to Roger. There was no way I could contact him now to ask him what to do. He had severed his ties with the network. When I didn’t turn up the following day, he might think that I had been caught. I hoped that it wouldn’t stop him leaving. I didn’t allow myself to think how disappointing it was that I wouldn’t see him; I was too worried about Odette and Petite Simone. Nor did I allow myself to think about Monsieur Etienne or Joseph and what their fate might be. If I had, I was sure I would have broken down. I had to think as Roger did when he planned a mission. I convinced myself to be like a machine, churning forward with only one goal in mind: to get Odette and Petite Simone out of the country.

The following morning, I made my rendezvous to deliver the code Roger had given me. I sat on a bench in the Jardin du Luxembourg, which was risky because a few people recognised me and asked for my autograph. Worse still, a German officer tried to flirt with me. I thought he was never going to go away, until I explained to him in German that I was waiting for ‘my man’.

When the contact arrived, I was glad that the officer hadn’t stayed around to see him. ‘My man’ had a stomach that was straining all the buttons of his shirt and three double chins. I gave him the code. He repeated it only once, perfectly. He was about to get up to walk away when I put my hand on his arm.

‘I need papers,’ I said. ‘For a woman and a child.’

‘Jews?’

I nodded.

‘Do you have photographs? Money?’ he asked. I handed him an envelope with the forger’s fee and the photographs I had snipped from Odette and Petite Simone’s real papers.

He slipped it straight into his pocket. ‘Be back here in three days’ time,’ he said.

For the next three days, Odette, Petite Simone and I stayed inside the apartment. Odette drew pictures to calm her nerves while I kept Petite Simone occupied. I had never had a chance to get to know my namesake and I enjoyed making paper dolls with her and playing cats and dogs on the carpet as much as she did. I had been given a porcelain doll some years before by an admirer. It was from Holland and had eyes that opened and closed. Not being particularly fond of dolls, I had put it away in my cupboard. I went to fetch it.

‘I would like you to have her,’ I said to Petite Simone, holding out the doll which was still in its box.

Petite Simone took the doll from me, a frown wrinkling her forehead. ‘She needs to come out of the box,’ she informed me. ‘Little girls need air.’

For the rest of the afternoon Petite Simone only had eyes for her new doll, who she named Marie. Odette and I
played a game of cards. ‘Petite Simone hasn’t had much of a childhood,’ Odette whispered. ‘I am frightened that she will grow up thinking that hiding is normal.’

At night Odette and I slept in my bed, Petite Simone squeezed between us. The little girl had a habit of locking her chunky arm around mine. I listened to her soft inhalations and the faint whistling sound she made when she breathed out and was struck with a sad feeling that perhaps I would never have a child of my own.

The second night, Petite Simone asked after her father and uncle. I waited to hear what Odette would say.

‘They are at work, my little darling,’ she answered. ‘Meanwhile you and I must go and find a new place to live, so they can join us afterwards.’

Odette sounded so calm that I could almost see Monsieur Etienne at his desk, making calls to theatres, and Joseph in his store. Where were my old friends now? What unspeakable things were they enduring?

True to his word, the contact who had taken the code was waiting for me on the bench in the Jardin du Luxembourg three days later.

‘These papers are not perfect,’ he told me matter-of-factly. ‘The Germans keep changing the requirements in order to catch people out. There are many Jews trying to leave the city. I made the woman your cousin. But if they catch you and check your birth certificates, you’ll be finished.’

‘I have no choice,’ I said. ‘I have to save her and the child.’

He glanced at me and nodded. Although his manner was abrupt, I could see the sympathy in his eyes. It encouraged me that I could look into the face of another person who had not lost his sense of humanity.