‘No names,’ said the schoolteacher. ‘From now on, please.’
‘It goes without saying, eh?’ I told him. ‘Of course, we’ll be careful. You also.’
‘I have a van,’ said Clateau. ‘I can help you with that.’
His grizzled moon face was deadly serious, and it was then that I realized he must have known Tommy and I were near the caves the night we saw him.
I nodded. I said, ‘I knew I could count on you.’ But could I really? One never knows. Even butchers can be tempted.
The glasses were filled, the cigarettes gathered. We drank a toast to our little venture and one by one left that place.
Those guys from Melun had come by bicycle as had Tessier, so I was glad I was not any of them. For me, there was probably only one patrol, for them perhaps as many as three and, of course, for me the distance was much shorter.
It seemed strange, listening for the departing squeaks of their bicycles. A dog barked. Clateau gave a muted curse as he slipped a parcel of sausages into my hands. Good ones, too. The night was full of rain, but that would make the patrols less likely. I passed the farmhouse of my mother, rode across the plain, and up into the forest. When I had to, I walked, and when, finally, I got near the house, I headed through the orchard to the potting shed and left my bicycle there.
Then I made a careful circuit and when I found Georges standing under an overhang, smoking his pipe, I knew I was going to have to do something about him.
I had only a brief memory of that next meeting with Paul Tessier. I knew that I had brought him something very dear to the hearts of all true Frenchmen. A bottle of absinthe, the real stuff-illegal, of course, since before the 1914–1918 war when the government banned it for fear of its causing a decline in the birthrate.
I didn’t know about that, but did know its happy combination of alcohol and aromatic herbs or whatever, would help him. He understood my unspoken reasons for the gift but said only an embarrassed thanks as he tucked the bottle out of sight in his haversack.
Matthieu Fayelle brought our ‘coffee.’ There were several Germans, and he was understandably nervous and quickly went back into the kitchen.
‘Madame …’ began Tessier.
‘Please call me Lily. It’s easier, and for what we have to do, less formal.’
‘Ah, bon, merci. So, Lily, listen carefully. What we need is a dummy railway truck. This must be the same in every way as to the one the Boche will use.’
‘Rolling stock is too hard to come by. Even I know they’ve taken far too much of it.’
‘Yes, but the impossible must be done. Somehow the switch must be made, then later we can cut open the other one and remove everything in relative comfort.’
I know I must have said something, but it’s lost to me. He spoke of welds and cold chisels, of the noise, the terrible delay the work of opening the railway truck would cause.
I was to organize the taking of the train only if all else should fail. ‘We have to trust them, Lily. Those two railwaymen will come through. Don’t worry so much. Just look after the emptying and hiding of all that artwork. You’ll have enough to do with those.’
‘And the schoolteacher?’ I asked. ‘What will he do?’
‘He has no more problems since he met with an accident on the road home. It was necessary. I’m sorry I couldn’t have tipped you off, but there was no possible way.’
The streets of Fontainebleau are almost deserted, the restaurant is half-empty. No one pays much attention to me. The bar, le zinc, is polished.
‘Matthieu, I think I’ll take you up on that offer of a bed for the night. I find I’m really quite tired.’
‘A little supper, madame? An omelette perhaps?’
‘Yes, but in the room. Let me eat it alone.’
Fayelle has his reasons for not having pointed the finger at my husband at the end of the war. Some of these reasons are bound up in his dealings on the marché noir, some in the actions of his wife’s father and brother, some, too, in what we had to do. The carpet of the past is a useful thing and it often hides so much.
Alone, like me, we are the only two who are left, though he obviously has his friends and I obviously know that he has them. The Schmeisser I’ve requested is lying on the bed beneath a folded comforter. There are two box magazines of ammunition, a British Mills Mark I grenade, and something else, a spool of piano wire and pair of cutters.
He’s thought of everything and swears he’ll help me if I need him.
The bed is like most others, not flat and of bone-hard, rough boards and so tightly cramped one can hardly move. It’s soft, a real bed like I had at the clinic. Clean and smelling of newly washed sheets, but I’m still far too used to the other. I doze, drift off fitfully. At twelve, I awaken with a start to hear the lonely whistle of a train. One, two, three short blasts and then it’s gone, straight through Avon without stopping. How is this, please? What has happened? Get up! GET UP! Something’s gone wrong.
A cold sweat has broken out all over me. Instinctively, I’ve slipped a finger through the loop of the grenade.
The door … Those steps out there … Are Schiller and Dupuis waiting for me?
The Schmeisser lies on the carpet. The Luger is hidden under my pillow, and I’m remembering. I can’t help but do so. It was late in the autumn of 1941, and I’d just been to Nemours to meet Paul Tessier. Paul had some questions, has raised an issue I can’t answer.
Word had filtered through to him that it could be a trap, that there would be no railway truck of paintings and other pieces, but one full of German soldiers, that Obersturmführer Johann Schiller had been to the Gare de Lyon to inspect the train and had given that empty railway truck more than a passing scrutiny.
In the morning, I find Matthieu and tell him I must borrow a bicycle with a carrier basket, and will need a lift to the railway junction that is just to the south of Bourron-Marlotte. ‘I must closely examine the line again so as to remember exactly how it was.’
‘You’re ill, madame. Why not leave all this to the work of others?’
‘Because they have their lives to live and mine is nearly over, so what about that bicycle, eh?’
His eyes dodge away and for a moment he tries to find a suitable answer, but finally confesses, ‘Certainly, madame. We have a very good one. A German soldier sold it to my wife at the Sunday flea market, just after they … they took you away.’
It can’t be my bicycle but it is. I’m so struck by this, I burst into tears, and for a few moments can only manage to stand in the yard holding on to it.
‘Madame … madame, you must try to forget, not to remember.’
I shake my head. ‘We must never forget, Matthieu. Never! Not in a thousand, thousand years.’
‘But what about those that are waiting at the house for you? Surely Dupuis and the others will begin to understand that you’re trying to remember things? They’ll start remembering, too, madame. They won’t just sit around and wait for you to settle on something.’
‘But that is what I want, Matthieu. They are also to remember how it was.’
Vineyards are on either side of the road, the air cool, the light so incredibly sharp. The last of the harvest is in, and I’m again remembering as I should.
The twin villages of Bourron-Marlotte are six or so kilometres to the south of Fontainebleau. Below the road, the land falls gently into the valley of the Loing, but here it is primarily on the north shoulder, next to the forest, that the climate and soil are suitable for grapes. Everyone who can has some. The enclosures are many, and from where I’m now standing, the rows of vines, unpruned as yet, are wine-red and ancient under the autumnal sun.
It is at once the most beautiful thing I have ever seen and yet the most frightening, for it’s here, a little to the south of Bourron-Marlotte, that the main line from Paris through to Nemours and on connects with a branch line that runs off to the southwest to eventually meet the one from Paris to Pithiviers.