Hunting Ground (35 page)

It was Nicki who said, ‘What’s to prevent the engineer from stopping near La Chapelle-la-Reine and getting a warning out?’

This little village is about four kilometres to the south-southwest of Ury. ‘Dmitry will have cut the wires by then,’ said Tommy. ‘We have to trust him, Nicki. It’s all been arranged.’

‘That Bolshevik?’ said Nicki. ‘There’s far too much at stake for us to trust him.’

‘Listen, you two, it’s crazy anyway for us to attempt this. You’ve got to call it off. Paul’s certain it could be a trap.’

‘Tessier and those railway boys are just nervous, Lily,’ said another whose voice I knew well enough. ‘There are crates and crates of artwork waiting to be shipped to the Reich from the Jeu de Paume and the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg. It’s too good an opportunity. Dmitry’s one of us, Nicki. Me, I can guarantee him.’

I turned and my sister was there behind me, having watched my back without my knowing. There was a Walther P38 in her right hand, and I had to ask myself, Has she slept with Dmitry, and I had to answer, Probably. ‘Why does it have to be done, Nini?’

Unfortunately, those lovely dark eyes flashed a fierceness I’d never seen before. ‘Because for us, it’s to be the catalyst. A whole train, Lily.
Pour l’amour de Dieu
, think of it, will you?
No one has ever done such a thing. When word gets out, other
réseaux
will be sure to form and we’ll be stopping trains everywhere!’

‘What she means, Lily, is that London wants us to pull this off,’ said Tommy dryly.

Anxiously, I looked at Nicki who said, ‘To go forward, though, we’ll absolutely need you to help us.’

‘Me? Hey, monsieur, aren’t I too well known?’

‘Lily, that train has to be made to stop just before it’s switched on to the other line. That way it will be starting up and we can jump aboard just a little later, so you must get on at Avon. You can purchase a ticket for Saint-Léger, the crossing that is just to the south of Bourron-Marlotte. That doesn’t require an
Ausweis
for you, so no one will question it.’

‘Except the one who sells the tickets and the ones who punch them. You’re all crazy. There are German railway police on all of our trains; French ones, too.’

Again, it was Janine who insisted ‘We
can’t
chance its not stopping, can we?’

‘Tommy … Tommy, it’s impossible for me. I’d need a very good excuse to get off at that little place. The Germans are bound to question it. Schiller …’

‘She’s right,’ said Nicki. ‘We’ll have to think of something else.’

‘No we won’t,’ said Janine. ‘She needs wax to finish Göring’s sculpture and can easily visit the beekeeper in Saint-Léger.’

She had thought it all out beforehand. ‘Wax …
Ah, merde
, I …’ Why must she do that to me? ‘All right, I’ll do it. I can take my bike with me and still be home in time for curfew if I hurry.’

‘Lorries?’ asked Nicki. ‘What about them?’

‘We’ll “borrow” them from the Wehrmacht,’ said Nini. ‘There’s a driver I know who can be bought. I’ll tell him to bring a friend and make him an offer he can’t refuse.’ Herself.

‘We have lorries enough of our own. Would you insult their owners?’

Clateau and Matthieu Fayelle. ‘Of course not. We’ll use theirs as well, but the German ones will offer perfect cover. Now you’d better get home. Say hello to the children and give them each a big hug for me.’

Jules has moved the body of Madame Vuitton, though Schiller and Dupuis haven’t yet returned with André’s car, but the past still tugs and I can’t let go. It was the morning after I left Tommy and the others. Jean-Guy had given me a message and it took me down the road.

‘Georges, what is it you want of me?’

He gave a whack with the axe, and the head of another rabbit fell. ‘Madame, I must speak with you.’
Whack,
and it was the front paws that time, then the hind ones.

‘So speak.’
Merde
, had he an endless supply of rabbits?

‘The wife saw that sister of yours in the forest today. Janine, she was with two men.’

‘Since when has my sister not been with men? They were hikers probably.’

The skin was slipped off. Blood dripped from his hands. ‘They didn’t look like those to me.’

So he’d seen them too, had he? ‘Perhaps they were friends from Paris, but Nini hasn’t said anything of them.’

‘The one came here before the war, madame. I’m sure of it.’

I shrugged. I didn’t turn away nor avert my gaze from him, but had to wonder why Georges hadn’t let Dupuis know, and concluded he wanted something else.

It was not long in coming. ‘These times, they’re not easy, madame. Monsieur Jules … Sometimes he forgets to pay us.’

Ah, bon
, but had he really given me a possible hold over him? ‘Perhaps I could help. The Germans give me an allowance for their rooms and meals.’ It was an opener and he saw this, but I’d have to offer something else to pry the rest out of him.

‘One hundred thousand francs?’ he asked.

I wanted to fiercely object but couldn’t look in the least surprised. ‘That much, if necessary. Yes, I could manage that. I would have to go to Oberst Neumann, but there shouldn’t be too much of a problem.’

This caused him to grind his false teeth. ‘Not the Oberst, madame, nor Obersturmführer Schiller.’

To show a little surprise was then best. ‘Georges, are you asking me to pay for your silence, and that of Tante Marie?’

Again, he lifted that axe. Again, another rabbit lost its head and then its paws. Again, blood drained on to the chopping block as he paused to study me and I had to ask myself, Does he think the
Boche
might now lose the war, and if so, is this the only chance he’ll get to ask me because I’ll soon be taken away and Jules will never know about the money he’s demanded?

Salaud
, I wanted to cry at him but reason intruded. Capitulating, I told him, ‘Okay. You’ll have it in a few days.’

‘Tonight, madame.’

Cher Jésus
, what the hell was this? He was in far too much of a hurry and that could only mean he knew far more than he was letting on. ‘Georges, I can’t possibly get it that fast and you know it.’

‘Then take some of the silver. There’s so much of it, a little won’t be missed.’

‘One hundred thousand francs’ worth?’

‘A little more, I think, since it isn’t cash and time will be necessary to dispose of it properly.’

‘On the
marché noir
, is this what you mean?’

There was no answer, just the ruthless emptying of the rabbits, the kidneys, the livers, and the hearts being picked out. ‘All right, there’s some jewellery from the old monsieur’s mistress—I’m sure you and Tante Marie must have seen some of it in days gone by. Perhaps if I were to …’

‘That would be fine, but the silver also.’

November’s nights were damp and cold. It was the fifth, and in a few days I’d help to rob a train, but Georges and Tante Marie only made my worries greater. Long ago, it seems, I’d taken them some silver—a gorgeous tureen we never used, a sauceboat with cherubs and angels, salt and pepper cellars, some of the jewellery, also. A diamond pin, a brooch with studded seed pearls, some cufflinks of old Monsieur de St-Germain’s that Jules was saving for Jean-Guy, a small handful of rings, a topaz, an opal—those may well have been fake, but I knew I couldn’t leave it another day. Something had to be done, you understand? Please, you must. You see I had the lives of everyone to consider, not just those of my children, or of Tommy even. Nini had gone back to Paris; Tommy and Nicki were at mother’s. Paul Tessier and the others would be counting the hours.

Schiller and Neumann were away, Rudi Swartz fast asleep, and even from my kitchen I could hear his snoring.

Jean-Guy and Marie would sleep through anything, but would Georges be out trapping rabbits or watching the house again?

Dressing in dark clothing and bare feet, I took from the cellars the six bottles of petrol I had carefully hoarded before the war and its subsequent Occupation. I found some rags.

Clouds closed over the moon. It was perhaps two a.m., and there was a heavy frost that hung along the road and over the adjacent meadow, and as the moon crept out, an ethereal light made the frost ghostly. I was alone, and dear God, would I be able to bring myself to do it?

Georges and Tante Marie kept a dog. It had no name but that. I fed it the cheese I’d brought and some pâté—things I knew it loved.

The front door was bolted, the back, too. I set the bottles down and tried the windows. There was only one whose catch Georges had forgotten to repair, making me glad I wouldn’t have to find a rock and quietly break in, but could I really do it? Me, the mother of two children?

Opening it, I climbed in to hear that old clock of theirs. Close and warm, the air was ripe with all such smells. In the kitchen, the fire had been banked, but I knew I couldn’t chance it and told myself I had to start up the stairs. It was the only way.

There were two little rooms, just enough space on the landing to turn around. The one was for the son they never had; from the other came the sound of disturbed breathing, for Tante Marie had asthma. Mucus gurgles; Georges simply snored, yet I waited. Again, I told myself, I couldn’t do it. I really couldn’t.

May God forgive me, I had to.

Those cutters made such a tiny sound, my mind magnified it out of all proportion. The wire was stiffer than I’d have liked, and as I looped it around the doorknob and then one of the railings to tie their bedroom shut, I told myself
it must be done.

The smell of petrol was like no other and, suddenly, it was everywhere downstairs and over the front door, the inside and the out. The dog whined and fussed—it couldn’t understand, or could it? I nudged him away from my hands, hissed at him, ‘Bad dog. Don’t you dare bark at me!’ only to remember that he was always hungry and that he knew I knew this. ‘All right,’ I told him, and he took off like a rocket.

Then the match was in my fingers, its flame bright and brighter still as a corner of the rag caught fire. Even then, I could turn back, I told myself, but how could I, given what I’d already done?

I dragged that rag after me. I was moving fast, then to the front door I’d closed and wired, then to the windows and round the house to the back to drop it at last and run into the meadow as the place went up like a tinderbox, and I plugged my ears until the sky was filled with light and the air with their screams.

‘Madame, what has happened?’

It was Rudi, and he’d heard that dog at my kitchen door and come out to find me standing in the road.

‘The stove,’ I told him. ‘It must have been that. Georges was always going to clean the pipes but would never take the time.’

Rudi knew I was not wearing a nightgown. He could see this clearly for the moon had betrayed me.
‘Benzin,’
he said, giving the
Deutsch
for petrol. ‘I can smell it even from here.’

The little station at Avon is much the same. I lean the bike against the wall and walk towards the wicket. Few people are about. There are no guards, no swastikas or eagles, no signs in German, and I find this puzzling.

November’s greying light is impoverished. A flock of pigeons makes a circle, racing high above the empty tracks. Homing pigeons? I wonder. They’re against the law and anyway should all have been eaten by now.

This, too, I can’t understand.

‘A one-way to Saint-Léger, please. I don’t have an
Ausweis
. At the
Felkommandantur
in Fontainebleau, they have said …’

He looks at me and I wonder who he’s going to report it to, but he says, ‘
Pardonnez-moi
, madame, but there is no longer any need for such things.’ Begrudgingly he takes my money. He’s young and new. Me, I’ve never seen him before.

‘I’ve a bicycle,’ I tell him.

‘They’ll look after it for you.’

The return trip must be done by bicycle or else I must stay over. That’s all there is to it. But no one ever gets out at Saint-Léger. Thinking they won’t stop the train just for me, I drag another cigarette from the crumpled packet.

‘Madame, allow me, please.’

It’s the one from the house and I know he must be Gestapo! ‘
Merci
, monsieur. The train, it’s always late.’

He smiles that plainclothes smile. Very nice-looking, you’d think. A salesman perhaps. ‘It’s the war,’ he says. ‘It’ll take years to get things going properly again.’

I turn away, can’t look at him anymore—listen for the sound of the wheels—but he asks, ‘Were you in the camps, madame? Please forgive me, but I’m looking for someone.’

It’s all lies! I know that his accent is British, but that like others of the
Boche,
he’ll have learned that English first before the Parisian
français
. ‘Which camps?’ I hear myself asking, but with hand on the Luger in my pocket. I’ll shoot him if I have to.

‘Auschwitz and then Bergen-Belsen.’

He’s watching me too closely, and I know I’ll have to kill him but say, ‘I couldn’t possibly know anything about those places. I’m simply going to see my sister.’

He touches the brim of that fedora of his. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to intrude.’

That’s so British, I’m taken aback, but you can never tell with these guys. The lack of guards could mean they’re just waiting to pounce.

It’s an anxious time, and when the train finally does come in, there’s only an engine and several passenger carriages, and this, too, I simply can’t understand.

Taking a last drag, I grind the butt out under one of those shoes they’ve given me as my bike is taken by this man who offered me a light and earlier came to the house. He’s sticking close, so okay, he’ll soon know he shouldn’t.

As I hand my ticket over to be punched, the
chef de train,
is startled. ‘Saint-Léger?’ he says. ‘
Ah, non,
madame
,
a moment, please. I will have to consult with the engineer.’

It could take ages. ‘Saint-Léger,’ says the one with my bike. ‘Would you happen to know a beekeeper there?’

‘
Merde
, what would I want with beekeepers?’

The
chef de train
comes back. I’ve caused a great fuss, but they’ll stop the train only this once. Climbing aboard, it’s like a century ago for me. The coaches are crowded, the uniforms different—American, British, and French, but I see only German ones, hear only their loud laughter and boisterous talk, know only that Gestapo is still watching me and that I’m going to have to kill him and a few of the others.