The Sisters of St. Croix (13 page)

“I was considering it,” he admitted, “but having seen the place I do not think it will suit me. I shall take over the mayor’s house as my headquarters and live there.”

“But the mayor…” began Mother Marie-Pierre, startled at the man’s casual appropriation of someone else’s home.

“Will live somewhere else,” cut in the major. “I understand his son has a farm not far away. He can go there.”

Having made his decision, Major Thielen said, “And now, Reverend Mother, I have taken up too much of your time already. If you will kindly lead me through this rabbit warren back to the front door and my car, I shall leave you for today. I have, as you can imagine, much to do in such a place.”

“I’m sure you have,” murmured Mother Marie-Pierre, adding a little louder, “certainly, Major, if you’ll just follow me.”

The car pulled away and Reverend Mother stared out long after it had disappeared round the corner of the lane. She had found the major’s visit very disturbing and she needed to talk to someone, but her position as Reverend Mother was such that it made it almost impossible to confide in any of the sisters. There was one exception, however, and that was Sister St Bruno, her Aunt Anne. The old nun might be bedridden, but she was still mentally alert, making her physical reliance on others even more of a cross to bear than it would have been for someone less aware. Mother Marie-Pierre made a point of visiting her aunt at some point every day, usually in the recreation hour before compline, but the German major’s visit was too worrying for her to wait for evening. She wanted to discuss things with Aunt Anne now. She slipped into the kitchen to find Sister Elisabeth.

“I will take my meal with Sister St Bruno today,” she told her. “If you will put it all together on a tray I’ll take it up.” Sister Elisabeth did as she was asked and as Mother Marie-Pierre carried the tray to the door, she turned back. “Please ask Sister Marie-Paul if she will preside at lunch for me today.”

Sister St Bruno was sitting up in bed, her Bible lying open on her knees. She looked old and frail, propped up against the pillows, but when she saw who her visitor was her face cracked into a smile and her eyes glowed with pleasure.

“Mother!” she said. “How lovely!”

“I’ve brought up our lunch,” Mother Marie-Pierre said, setting the tray down on the locker by the bed, and plumping up the pillows so that the old lady could sit more comfortably to eat her food. “I thought we could eat together. Sister Marie-Paul will be only too happy to preside in the refectory.”

Sister St Bruno gave a wry smile and set her Bible aside so that she could take the plate that her niece was offering her. As they ate their meal Mother Marie-Pierre told her about Major Thielen’s visit.

“He was perfectly polite… correct, you know. But I felt the whole time that he was weighing up what we had here that he might use. He certainly took in what we’re growing in the vegetable garden,” she went on ruefully. “We don’t grow much to help feed the children and the patients, but I have a feeling his men will soon be up here, taking what little there is.”

“Privilege of an occupying power, Sarah,” Sister St Bruno replied with a sigh. As usual when the two of them were alone together, they ceased for the duration of their privacy to be Reverend Mother and Sister St Bruno, a senior member of the community, and reverted to being Aunt Anne and Sarah. It was Sarah who had insisted on this easy relationship; she loved her mother’s sister and would only allow her to treat her as Mother Superior in the public life of the community. Mother Marie-Pierre had no feelings of guilt about their two relationships; none of the nuns was cut off entirely from her family, the order was not an enclosed one, and Sister St Bruno and Mother Marie-Pierre were the only family that either of them had. Alone, they became Sarah and Aunt Anne, and both enjoyed the ease that was between them.

“The thing is, I need your advice, Aunt Anne. I am concerned about the children.”

“What about them?” asked her aunt when Sarah paused and did not go on. “They’re safe enough, aren’t they?”

Sarah told Aunt Anne about the major’s visit to the schoolroom. “David took one look at him and started to scream. He ran out of the room and I had to leave Sister Marie-Joseph to look after him while I dealt with the other children… and the major of course. I gave some quick explanation that David’s father had been killed in the war and that David was afraid.”

“And did the German accept it?”

Sarah shrugged. “He seemed to. I sent the other children off to get ready for lunch and brought him out of the children’s wing.”

“And he didn’t ask any more about David?”

“No, I thank the Lord,” Sarah said fervently.

“Then the children should be safe enough, wouldn’t you say?”

“I don’t know,” Sarah sounded anxious. “I’m not so worried about Paulette, Monique and Jean-Pierre, but David and his sisters could be at risk because they’re Jews. There’s no reason for the Germans to know that of course, except that there are other people who know it and secrets like that don’t stay secrets for long.”

“No, I agree with you there,” said her aunt. “But what use has he for any children, Jewish or otherwise? They aren’t old enough to be sent off to these labour camps, are they? They couldn’t work in the German factories, they’re far too young.”

“No, of course they couldn’t.” Sarah looked slightly happier. “But even so I shall keep them out of the way as much as I can, until people have forgotten where they came from. We may see nothing of the Germans up here anyway, but we don’t know how this occupation is going to be, do we? I mean how much the Germans are going to demand things.” She told her aunt about the major’s decision to turn the mayor out of his house so that he could use it himself. “He’s billeted his men around the village, but he is going to have to provide for them somehow.”

“You say he was considering using the convent himself?” asked her aunt.

“So he said, but thank God he realised how impossible that would be. I think if we keep a low profile he probably won’t interfere with us too much… except for allowing his men to forage in our garden.” She smiled ruefully. “I just wanted to discuss it with you really, just to see what you thought.”

“I think we are in the hands of the Lord as always,” replied her aunt with a serene smile. “All you can do, Sarah, is keep faith. You take your problems to Him in prayer and He will help you to make the right decisions if and when the time comes.” She reached for Sarah’s hand and said in a rallying tone, “Come on now, Sarah. At present the children are safe enough, all of them. I think you’re right, too. Our work in the village may change somewhat with the arrival of the German soldiers, but I doubt if they will trouble us much actually in the convent.” She looked across at her niece, adding with a twinkle in her faded eyes, “But it might be wiser if they didn’t find out that you and I are English, don’t you think?”

Sarah stared at her in surprise. “You won’t believe this,” she said slowly, “but that thought hadn’t even crossed my mind! I suppose we are enemy aliens or something.” She shook her head in disbelief. “I’ve been here so long I never even think about being English anymore.”

“Nor do I,” agreed her aunt, “but there are several people who are well aware that we are, and not just the sisters.”

“Well, we don’t have to worry about them,” laughed Sarah, “not the sisters. But I suppose there are people in the village who know that I’m English. I doubt if many remember that you are. You’ve been here for over forty years!”

“Maybe,” agreed the old lady placidly, “but we have to face the fact that there are people who are going to want to be on the winning side round here. Little snippets of information may find their way into German intelligence. So, keep your counsel.”

As the anniversary of the occupation came and went, the convent was largely ignored by the Germans. Occasionally soldiers arrived and relieved them of some sacks of potatoes or strings of onions, but Major Thielen seemed to have taken on board the fact that the nuns needed their produce to help feed the patients in the hospital, and the requisition was not, at first, excessive. The sisters went about their daily routine of prayer and service within its walls; the hospital was busy as always, and the nuns who nursed the elderly inhabitants of St Croix and the surrounding area in their own homes, travelled about the countryside unhindered. The children continued to be cared for in the orphanage and attend the local school. No one seemed interested in any of them, and Mother Marie-Pierre allowed herself to relax a little.

“It is amazing how little our lives have changed under this occupation,” Mother Marie-Pierre said to Sister St Bruno as they sat together one evening before compline, “except for the shortages, of course, and they affect everyone. Rations have been cut again. Poor Sister Danielle spent five hours at the food office in Albert today, getting the children’s ration cards properly stamped, and someone will have to go again next week to deal with all our cards.”

“I think we’ll find things get worse before they get better,” her aunt said. “Remember how scarce everything was by the end of the of last war?”

Mother Marie-Pierre did remember and she sighed. “You’re probably right,” she said, “but it doesn’t look as if we’re going to win this one.”

“Come on, Sarah!” Her aunt spoke bracingly. “Of course we’re going to win! Where’s your faith?”

St Croix gradually got used to seeing the men in German uniforms who had taken up residence there. Being the largest village in the area, it was used as a hub from which the spokes of the local occupation extended. From the town hall, now the German HQ, soldiers patrolled the surrounding country. Lists were made of the local residents and their families, to make a record of everyone in the area. French soldiers, returning, defeated and demoralised, to tend the land or the businesses that their wives had kept running during their absence, found themselves being noted, listed. If the work they had come home to do was not considered vital, able-bodied men were liable to be sent as forced labour to Germany to work in the factories. As this happened more frequently, such men began disappearing again; sons of local families slipping away before the efficient machinery of the German occupation gathered them into is jaws.

Sullen faces still greeted the German soldiers who carried out spot checks on papers, who travelled on the trains, who searched houses and barns for shot-down airmen, weapons caches and other works of a quietly growing resistance movement, but the cold loathing was reserved for those Frenchmen who collaborated with the Germans; opportunists who offered their services, passing on their local knowledge to the occupying power. Determined to be on the winning side when the war finally ended, they cheerfully gave information about local families, passed on anything they considered suspicious, betraying their countrymen without compunction.

Alain Fernand was one such. He lived in a house in the lane that ran behind the town hall, a house belonging to an elderly spinster called Mademoiselle Martine Reynaud. She had been forced to take in a boarder to make ends meet before the war, and once Fernand was ensconced she had been unable to get him out. He terrified her with threats to tell the Germans that her grandmother had been Jewish.

“But she wasn’t!” protested poor Mademoiselle Reynaud.

“Wasn’t she?” asked Fernand innocently. “Well, the Germans won’t know that, will they?” He smiled wolfishly. “If they took you away, I could have the whole house, now couldn’t I? Better not to upset me, eh?”

So he had stayed, and, confining Mademoiselle Reynaud to the room he had originally rented from her, he took over the rest of the house for himself. He was a plumber by trade, and this meant that he would not be called up for Service du Travail Obligatoire. As a skilled tradesman his work was too important for him to be sent off to Germany, and, while plying his trade in the surrounding area, he started to gather information about his customers, which he used to his own advantage.

Fernand had already informed on one young lad whom he found hiding in the barn of an outlying farm. The boy had finally returned from the war, only to hear that he was to be sent to Germany to work in a factory.

Tipping the Germans off as to the boy’s whereabouts had earned Fernand a cash reward; he’d been on the German payroll ever since.

“Keep your eyes and ears open,” Major Thielen had said. “We’ll always pay for good information.”

So, as he went about his business, Fernand had begun gathering information about his customers; who was hoarding food, undeclared in their barns, who was selling produce on the black market, which shops were saving goods for favoured customers, naming the children who had thrown cow dung over Major Thielen’s car. All pretty low-grade information, but it made him a little extra money and kept him in with the Germans. And that was what Fernand wanted most. Before long, he reckoned, the war would be over, and those who had been helpful to the victors would do very well for themselves.

He also ran a small blackmail business. When Fernand hinted at what he’d discovered about them, local people were prepared to pay him not to pass that information on. He would take their money for a few months, and then shop them anyway. He knew he was hated in the village, but he didn’t care. He had been rejected all his life. Unpopular at school, taunted for his lack of a father, bullied because he was too small to retaliate, beaten by his mother’s succession of lovers, Fernand became a survivor. He learnt early to look after number one, because if he didn’t, no one else would.

The hatred for such
collabos
smouldered beneath the surface of the entire community, liable to erupt without warning like a dormant volcano. Flashes such as these did little good, retaliation and retribution could be swift and cruel, but memories would be long and revenge was promised when the time was right.

Accommodation was requisitioned for the occupying soldiers. Madame Berniers, an old lady of ninety, was banished to the servants’ quarters of her own manor house. Her maid, Ninette, almost as old as her mistress, was told to look after her, while seven German officers took over the house and made free with the wine Madame’s husband had laid down in the cellar some forty years earlier. Major Thielen was satisfactorily established in the mayor’s house and the other ranks were billeted comfortably enough in the barns of two farms at either end of the village.