V for Vengeance (6 page)

‘You—you really mean that you're prepared to help the men who killed Georges!' gasped Madeleine. ‘You can't! It's horrible! Utterly horrible!' And with a little cry of despair she ran from the room.

Monsieur Ferrière sadly shook his narrow head. ‘Poor little one!' he murmured. ‘I am so distressed for her; but she is still quite young. She will live and learn that we older ones are right.'

Having kissed Madame Lavallière's hand and thanked her for receiving him, he let himself out.

In her bedroom, with her face buried in the pillows,
Madeleine lay sobbing out her heart. To her the ‘Mayor of Batignolles' attitude seemed utterly incredible; yet she knew that he not only represented official France, but also a great section of French opinion. Her mother, although she had said little, had obviously sided with him. Then there was Pierre. He too, although a young man, so obviously preferred surrender at any price to the risk of death, mutilation, or even discomfort. Far away across the English Channel Churchill was still roaring defiance at the common enemy of all mankind; but what could he and the British do now that France had deserted them? Were all Frenchmen cowards that they should have refused his appeal to fight on? No, that was impossible; there were Frenchmen who would still risk everything for the true honour of France. Georges would have done so had he lived. He had told her that he had secret orders to stay in Paris and operate from underground against the enemy, whatever might happen, until a full and proper peace was signed. There must be others like him. She herself would never, never submit to the Germans and treat them as friends. As long as she lived she would look upon them as the brutal beasts they were and hate them from the very bottom of her heart. Yet where could she find those who felt the same? She felt so desperately alone.

It was just then that the door-bell pealed. Checking her sobs with an effort she quickly attended to her face and went to answer it. On the threshold there stood a middle-aged doctor, under whom she had worked on various occasions and who was a visiting surgeon at the Hôpital St. Pierre.

‘I hope you'll forgive my calling at such a late hour,' he said, ‘but I've come to see you about your Russian friend.'

For a moment she stood with her mouth open. In the terrible stress of the events of the last few days all thought of Kuporovitch had passed from her mind, and she now remembered her promise to Gregory to see that his friend received a decent burial.

‘I'm so sorry,' she said. ‘I ought to have called at the hospital long before this to make arrangements for the funeral. I suppose you're anxious to have him removed from the morgue. When did he die?'

The doctor smiled. ‘He didn't die. Why, I can't think. His
skull must be made of steel to have survived the injuries that he received; but he lived through the night after you brought him in, and the following day, as his heart seemed perfectly sound, we decided to try a trepanning operation. I'm happy to say that it's proved extremely successful.'

‘But how marvellous!' she exclaimed. ‘I'm so glad! I must come round to the hospital tomorrow morning to see him.'

The doctor hesitated. ‘Well, as a matter of fact, Mademoiselle, that's just the point I came to see you about. It will be a long time before he's completely recovered, but he seems to have the constitution of an ox, so he's already off the danger list, and the Germans have commandeered practically every bed we've got for their wounded. You know how impossible it is to shift them once they've made up their minds about a thing, and they wouldn't give us any time at all. We only heard late this afternoon, and the orders were imperative that we should have one hundred and fifty beds cleared before midnight, whoever we threw out. We've been making frantic arrangements to remove the patients all the evening, and, of course, most of them can be transferred to their own homes; but this Russian has no home, and all the other hospitals in Paris are in the same overcrowded state as ourselves. I hope I'm not wrong, but I gathered that you were more or less responsible for him, so the fact of the matter is that I've brought him along to you. He's in an ambulance downstairs.'

Madeleine was so surprised that she hardly knew what to say. Her mother's apartment was a very small one, but there was the little spare-room.

‘You see, if you can possibly take him in,' the doctor hurried on, ‘it would be a great blessing, because as a professional nurse you would be able to look after him; but quite frankly, if you can't I'm at my wits' end to know what to do with the poor fellow.'

‘But of course I'll have him here,' Madeleine said at once. In such circumstances it would not have occurred to her to refuse to accept a stranger, at least for a few days until some other arrangements could be made, and Kuporovitch was already something more than a mere acquaintance from the very fact that she had been with him when he had met with his frightful accident.

While the doctor left her to go downstairs she hurried into the little spare-room and quickly prepared the bed. A few moments later the ambulance men brought Kuporovitch in on a stretcher. White bandages now covered the whole of the upper part of his head, and his black eyebrows stood out more than ever in startling contrast to his pale face. He was unconscious, and so a dead weight, but the orderlies helped her to get him into bed. The doctor felt the Russian's pulse, declared himself satisfied, gave Madeleine certain instructions and, promising to look in the following morning, wished her good-night.

When they had gone she stood for a few moments looking down at the broad, stocky figure which now occupied the bed upon which her dear Georges had lain in death only three nights before. There was nothing particularly handsome about the Russian's face, but even in sleep it had a tremendous rugged strength and determination.

As Madeleine stared at him she was suddenly conscious of a new thought. This man was Gregory's trusted friend. Even from the very little which she had heard them say to each other, she had learned that the two of them were inveterate enemies of the Germans. Kuporovitch had told her himself that morning when they had had drinks together in the Rue Royale that he would stick at nothing to kill any Nazi.

For the first time since Georges' death Madeleine smiled naturally. In this helpless, unconscious figure that lay motionless as a corpse beneath the sheets she knew that at last she had found an ally. He was now as weak as an infant and the flame of life in him still burned very low, but she would nurse him back to health and strength to aid her in her vengeance. She was alone no more.

She was with Kuporovitch again the following morning when he opened his eyes, but as she bent over him there was no trace of recognition in them. The first glimmerings of consciousness had only returned to the injured man for a short time on the previous afternoon, and it would be some days at least before he would be able to attempt to speak or lift a finger for himself. The main thing was that he should get as much sleep as possible and never be disturbed unnecessarily. French medicine places more importance upon rest than the passion for washing patients which is a great feature of English nursing; so Madeleine made no attempt now to lather her patient with soap and water, but, fetching some broth which she had already heated on the stove, she poured a few spoonfuls of it between his almost colourless lips, and he soon dropped off to sleep again. The only thing she could not manage was to move her heavy patient, when necessary, alone; but Pierre willingly agreed to come in and help her with this night and morning.

Madame Lavallière's reactions on being told about their unexpected guest had been extremely mixed. With a selfishness which was to some extent pardonable in a cripple she habitually regarded all problems as they affected herself. At first she rather resented the intrusion, as her financial resources were very limited and the future so uncertain. There was no guarantee that the French Government would now be able to continue paying the pensions of people like herself in German-occupied France, and if Madeleine was tied to the apartment for a considerable period nursing the Russian she would be unable to undertake any paid work which might
offer outside. However, when Madeleine pointed out that she still had the six thousand francs which Gregory had left her for the Russian's burial and that this money could now be used for his keep, Madame Lavallière began to take a better view of the matter and to consider the advantages which might accrue to herself from it. As long as the Russian was unable to care for himself Madeleine would be prevented from taking other work, which meant that she would have her daughter's companionship. Then, once the Russian was convalescent she would also have his company, and that, in view of the loneliness she had suffered for many months, was a pleasant change to which to look forward.

Kuporovitch had been brought to the apartment on the Monday evening, and the week that followed seemed to drag by, while all France waited in miserable suspense to hear the result of the armistice negotiations. On the Tuesday Hitler and Mussolini met at Munich to agree on the terms. On the Wednesday the French plenipotentiaries left Bordeaux. On the Friday the terms were presented to them at Compiègne. With his usual love of the dramatic and as a shrewd move to enable the German people fully to savour their revenge, Hitler had decreed that the French should accept the terms in the same railway coach in which Marshal Foch, Haig, Wemyss and the other Allied plenipotentiaries had sat on that grey morning of November the 11th, 1918. General Huntziger and the other Frenchmen appointed by Bordeaux took the seats which had been occupied by the defeated Germans; von Keitel then read the preamble to the terms.

That occupied less than half an hour. When it was done Hitler abruptly got up and contemptuously left the carriage, followed by all the rest of his Staff, except General von Keitel. There were to be no concessions and no arguments. The French must swallow the terms whole, or the conqueror would occupy the rest of France. As he stalked from the clearing the German engineers were already defacing and destroying the French memorials to their honoured dead of the last war. That night the French plenipotentiaries telephoned the terms to Bordeaux. On the Saturday they were accepted.

Much doubt still existed as to what attitude would be adopted by the overseas territories of the French Empire,
and many rumours were rife. On the Sunday General Mittel-hauser, who was commanding in Syria, declared his intention of continuing hostilities. In Morocco, Senegal, the Cameroons and Jibuti various Generals stated that they meant to fight on with Britain.

On the Tuesday combined forces of the British Navy, Army and Air Force made raids along the French Channel coast; on the Wednesday the British Government declared the blockade extended to France, and at the end of the week they officially recognised General de Gaulle as the leader of all Free Frenchmen. There no longer seemed any doubt that the British were fully behind Churchill and meant to fight to the last ditch; but on the 30th a portion of the armistice terms were disclosed by the announcement that the Germans had completed their occupation of the whole of the northern and western seaboard of France right down to the Spanish frontier. So ended for France the tragic month of June.

Rumours of continued resistance in various parts of the French Empire were still rife, but it was apparent now that the prestige of Pétain, Weygand and Admiral Darlan was having its effect. They had taken the line that unity was all-important, as the only way in which the mother-country could be saved from being completely ravaged was by full compliance with the armistice terms; and these stipulated that the French Forces throughout the whole Empire should lay down their arms. Numerous appeals were made to this effect in broadcasts by the French leaders, and the German-controlled Paris radio lost no opportunity of hammering home the point.

Madeleine's only contacts in those days were Pierre, the doctor's visits to Kuporovitch and her brief calls at the local shops. The few people with whom she talked all sympathised with the plight in which the British found themselves, but held the view that France must look after herself. Then on July the 4th there came the, to them, astounding news that the British Fleet had attacked the French Fleet at Oran, sinking or putting out of action a number of France's largest warships and killing or wounding many hundreds of French sailors.

An immediate revulsion of feeling against Britain set in. Even before that many people had sought to explain away the defeat of the French Armies by the failure of the British
to break through from the north and rejoin the main French Forces on the Somme. To cover their own shortcomings the French politicians and military commentators had suggested in many newspaper articles that the British had virtually run away from the enemy and that their evacuation from Dunkirk had been much more hasty than it need have been. Now, with the news of the bombardment of their Fleet, which they regarded as an act of the most vile treachery, French opinion almost universally swung away from their ex-Ally. The German propagandists were able to make splendid new capital out of the affair for their old argument that the British had never cared a rap about France but used her only as a catspaw. Even Madeleine could not understand this apparently unprovoked attack, as the German radio was now jamming the B.B.C. broadcasts, so she was unable to hear the British explanation as to why they had been compelled to take such drastic action.

On the 4th of July the Pétain Government broke off diplomatic relations with Britain, a move which had the full support of the now embittered Parisians; and their anti-British feeling was still further aggravated a few days later when the news came through that their latest battleship, the
Richelieu
, the pride of the French Navy, had been torpedoed and put out of action at Dakar.

It was now three weeks since Kuporovitch had been brought to the Lavallières' apartment. At first he had lain almost comatose for days on end, but gradually a little strength had begun to flow back into him. He still had to lie full-length, but for the past week he had been able to talk a little and was fully conscious of all that was going on around him.