The house on the rue Poliveau was gone – six dead Boches, a terrible complication no one could have foreseen. Hostages would have to be taken. Berlin would insist on nothing but the truth and in the process, their little reseau would be smashed and Jean-Louis and Hermann would be caught up in things and held responsible.
‘Alles ist Schicksal,’ she whispered bitterly, borrowing the saying from the German. Everything is controlled by fate. Janwillem De Vries had taken one flask of nitro and a dozen sticks of dynamite. More he couldn’t have carried and was to have come back but had buggered off on them and had severed all contact.
*
In the dank blue haze of the Gare Saint-Lazare the clock on the four-cornered tower registered 11.27 p.m. Giselle wondered what was keeping Hermann. He had gone into the ticket office hours ago, it seemed. Oona was watching him through the grating of one of the wickets.
People hurried, for the curfew was fast approaching and soon everything here would be closed up tightly, the wicket gates slamming down, the doors shutting while Hermann, he … he took his time.
She studied a faded poster that was behind wire mesh. Waving, sunburnt, big-breasted Rheinmadels smiled at marching soldier boys who lustily sang, ‘Wir fahren gegen England’.
We’re going to England.
‘Don’t believe a word of it,’ said someone in French. Startled, she turned to look up and into the bluest of eyes.
‘Where have you been all my life?’ he said. Those eyes of his danced over her, he taking in each feature to linger on her lips, her chin, her eyes and hair. ‘Enchante,’ he said, and he had the nicest of smiles and yes, it was good for a woman to hear such things.
‘Monsieur …?’ she began.
He was tall and thin – quite distinguished-looking, very handsome, about forty years of age, and the Hauptmann’s uniform he wore carried combat medals and ribbons on its breast.
‘Can I give you a lift?’ he asked.
‘Ah, no,’ she answered. ‘I … I’m waiting for someone.’
‘I thought so,’ he said and sadly shook his head. ‘Another time perhaps.’
She could not place his accent. Was he a Fleming? There were scars on his face, little slashes where the skin had been parted and left to heal unstitched. He set the fine leather suitcase down, the canvas rucksack too, and began to put on his greatcoat. ‘The Claridge,’ he said. ‘You can reach me there, or is it at the Ritz? I can never remember.’
He found a scrap of paper in a pocket and nodded as he read it. The hair was blond and closely trimmed, the nose was long but made his expression all the more engaging. A man, a little boy. Mischievous, serious – ah! there was laughter in his eyes as he watched her scrutiny deepen.
‘Your name?’ he asked. ‘At least allow me that.’
‘Giselle le Roy.’
‘Must you really wait for him?’ He nodded towards the ticket office and she realized he had known all along that Hermann was in there.
Two of the scars were high up on the cheekbones and equally placed. The third one was on the bridge of that nose. For a moment the hands of the clock stood still. Giselle tore her eyes away to the ticket office, to Oona who was starting towards them. Oona … she tried to cry out. The blast erupted. Flames, debris, dust and smoke flew at her, she shrieking, ‘Oona! Oona!’ as she felt herself being dragged to cover, to hit the floor and be buried under him … him … Bang … a deafening BANG!
No one came running. Dazed, some bleeding, people picked themselves up. A large piece of glass shattered at her feet. Another and another. Pigeons scattered. Sparrows grew silent.
Three of their number fell, and when their little bodies hit the floor, they bounced.
‘Hermann …?’ began Giselle. ‘Hermann!’
A hand caught her and dragged her back. She fought to pull away. She shrieked, ‘Let go of me!’ and he did, but did not smile.
The house at 3 rue Laurence-Savart was occupied and St-Cyr knew it right away. The perfume of smouldering animal dung was pungent. ‘We dry it first,’ said a female voice.
Startled, he looked questioningly at the century-old cast-iron stove in the kitchen where the last pages of About’s The King of the Mountains had disappeared. The smell reminded him of films he had seen of darkest Africa, of slaves and villages and King Solomon’s mines.
Madame Suzanne-Cecilia Lemaire, the veterinary surgeon and zoo-keeper from the Jardin des Plantes and the rue Poliveau, had moved in.
‘Hermann won’t believe it of the dung,’ he said. ‘He has the curiosity of a small boy towards all things French but this …’
‘Aren’t you going to try the soup?’ she asked and only then did he see her curled up on the floor beside the stove. ‘It’s warmer here.’
The soup was thick and of onions and garlic, yet the dung had purged the air of its aroma. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ she said. ‘One gets used to lots of things. This Occupation of ours teaches us that humility and ingenuity are blood brothers to survival.’
‘It has simply broken down a lexicon of social customs which should have been cast aside long ago,’ he said tartly. ‘Did Madame Courbet give you any trouble?’
The housekeeper who lived across the street and had a spare key … ‘She looked me over, tossed her head and clucked her tongue before raking me with that voice of hers. “Men, all they think about is rutting with a woman! Old enough to be your father, madame. A Chief Inspector of the Surete, for shame! His wife hasn’t been dead two months. The period of mourning must be respected!”’
‘For Madame Courbet it has to last an eternity,’ he sighed. ‘She questions everything. A pair of high-heeled shoes I brought home once. A heel was broken – did she tell you that? They were the shoes of a girl I had met on a street after curfew. She was avoiding the patrol and her feet were freezing.’
‘But you didn’t bring her home like me. Only her shoes.’ And so much for ‘social customs which should have been cast aside long ago’.
‘What else did the street’s most virulent gossip tell you?’
‘That you have; been seeing another woman, but that this chanteuse comes seldom and only in the small hours at curfew’s end, and sometimes with a general as her companion. That you desperately need looking after. That you are a hero to her son Antoine and the other boys of the street but that they are saying you were never home and that your poor wife – Ah! she was all but a virgin after five and a half years of marriage and, like the first wife, just couldn’t stand the stress of not having sex, so ran off, this one with a German officer who gave her a lot of it but … but she had to come home when he was sent away to Russia to die.’
A mouthful, and thank you, Madame Courbet! ‘Hermann had the house repaired. The bomb smashed the front wall and every pane of glass on the street.’
‘And now?’ she asked.
‘He’s at the Gare Saint-Lazare, I think. Looking into that robbery. Late, of course. One of us should have been on the scene as soon as we had word of it but …’
‘But the Gypsy kept you on the run.’
‘He tried to kill us again.’
Hurriedly she got out of the nest she had made for herself, dragging blankets she wrapped around herself.
‘Build up the fire. Open the draught. Buffalo is better but zebra will have to do.’
The snow was terrible, the quai Saint-Bernard an impasse into which the tiny slits of blue-shaded headlamps fought for visibility.
Gabrielle knew it was crazy of her to have come out on a night like this without a laissez-passer and so close to curfew, but Ceci had to be warned.