I heard old René mutter,
‘
Sacre bleu!
’
‘You are welcome to see the rooms,
Herr Kommandant. But you will find that your predecessors have left us
with little. The beds, the blankets, the curtains, even the copper piping that fed the
basins, they are already in German possession.’
I knew I risked angering him: I had made
clear in a packed bar that the
Kommandant
was ignorant of the actions of his
own men, that his intelligence, as far as it stretched to our town, was faulty. But it
was vital that my own townspeople saw me as obstinate and mulish. To have Germans in our
bar would make Hélène and me the target of gossip, of malicious rumour. It was
important that we were seen to do all we could to deter them.
‘Again, Madame, I will be the judge of
whether your rooms are suitable. Please show me.’ He motioned to his men to remain
in the bar. It would be completely silent until after they had left.
I straightened my shoulders and walked
slowly out into the hallway, reaching for the keys as I did so. I felt the eyes of the
whole room on me as I left, my skirts swishing around my legs, the heavy steps of the
German behind me. I unlocked the door to the main corridor (I kept everything locked: it
was not unknown for French thieves to steal what had not already been requisitioned by
the Germans).
This part of the building smelt musty and
damp; it was months since I had been here. We walked up the stairs in silence. I was
grateful that he remained several steps behind me. I paused at the top, waiting for him
to step into the corridor, then unlocked the first room.
There had been a time when merely to see our
hotel like this had reduced me to tears. The Red Room had once been the pride of Le Coq
Rouge; the bedroom where my
sister and I had spent our wedding
nights, the room where the mayor would put up visiting dignitaries. It had housed a vast
four-poster bed, draped in blood-red tapestries, and its generous window overlooked our
formal gardens. The carpet was from Italy, the furniture from a château in Gascogne, the
coverlet a deep red silk from China. It had held a gilt chandelier and a huge marble
fireplace, where the fire was lit each morning by a chambermaid and kept alight until
night.
I opened the door, standing back so that the
German might enter. The room was empty, but for a chair that stood on three legs in the
corner. The floorboards had been stripped of their carpet and were grey, thick with
dust. The bed was long gone, with the curtains, among the first things stolen when the
Germans had taken our town. The marble fireplace had been ripped from the wall. For what
reason, I do not know: it was not as if it could be used elsewhere. I think Becker had
simply wanted to demoralize us, to remove all things of beauty.
He took a step into the room.
‘Be careful where you walk,’ I
said. He glanced down, then saw it: the corner of the room where they had attempted to
remove the floorboards for firewood last spring. The house had been too well built, its
boards nailed too securely, and they had given up after several hours when they had
removed just three long planks. The hole, a gaping O of protest, exposed the beams
beneath.
The
Kommandant
stood for a minute,
staring at the floor. He lifted his head and gazed around him. I had never been alone in
a room with a German, and my heart was thumping. I could smell the faint hint of tobacco
on him,
see the rain splashes on his uniform. I watched the back of
his neck, and eased my keys between my fingers, ready to hit him with my armoured fist
should he suddenly attack me. I would not be the first woman who had had to fight for
her honour.
But he turned back to me. ‘Are they
all as bad?’ he said.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘The
others are worse.’
He looked at me for such a long time that I
almost coloured. But I refused to let that man intimidate me. I stared back at him, at
his cropped greying hair, his translucent blue eyes, studying me from under his peaked
cap. My chin remained lifted, my expression blank.
Finally he turned and walked past me, down
the stairs and into the back hallway. He stopped abruptly, peered up at my portrait and
blinked twice, as if he were only now registering that I had moved it.
‘I will have someone inform you of
when to expect the first delivery of food,’ he said. He went briskly through the
doorway and back to the bar.
‘You should have said no.’
Madame Durant poked a bony finger into my shoulder. I jumped. She wore a white frilled
bonnet, and a faded blue crocheted cape was pinned around her shoulders. Those who
complained about lack of news now that we were not allowed newspapers had evidently
never crossed my neighbour’s path.
‘What?’
‘Feeding the Germans. You should have
said no.’
It was a freezing morning, and I had wrapped
my scarf high around my face. I tugged it down to respond to her. ‘I should have
said no? And you will say no, when they decide to occupy your house, will you,
Madame?’
‘You and your sister are younger than
I am. You have the strength to fight them.’
‘Unfortunately I lack the firearms of
a battalion. What do you suggest I do? Barricade us all in? Throw cups and saucers at
them?’
She continued to berate me as I opened the
door for her. The bakery no longer smelt like a bakery. It was still warm inside, but
the scent of baguettes and croissants had long since disappeared. This small fact made
me sad every time I crossed the threshold.
‘I swear I do not know what this
country is coming to. If your father could have seen Germans in his hotel …’
Madame Louvier had evidently been well briefed.
She shook her head in
disapproval as I approached the counter.
‘He would have done exactly the same
thing.’
Monsieur Armand, the baker, shushed them.
‘You cannot criticize Madame Lefèvre! We are all their puppets now. Madame
Durant, do you criticize me for baking their bread?’
‘I just think it’s unpatriotic
to do their bidding.’
‘Easy to say when you’re not the
one facing a bullet.’
‘So, more of them are coming here?
More of them pushing their way into our storerooms, eating our food, stealing our
animals. I swear I do not know how we will survive this winter.’
‘As we always have, Madame Durant.
With stoicism and good humour, praying that Our Lord, if not our brave boys, will give
the Boche a royal kick up their backsides.’ Monsieur Armand winked at me.
‘Now, ladies, what would you like? We have week-old black bread, five-day-old
black bread, and some black bread of indeterminate age, guaranteed free of
weevils.’
‘There are days I would consider a
weevil a welcome hors d’oeuvre,’ Madame Louvier said mournfully.
‘Then I will save a jam jar full for
you, my dear Madame. Believe me, there are many days in which we receive generous
helpings in our flour. Weevil cake, weevil pie, weevil profiteroles: thanks to German
generosity, we can supply them all.’ We laughed. It was impossible not to.
Monsieur Armand managed to raise a smile even on the direst of days.
Madame Louvier took her bread and put it
into her basket with distaste. Monsieur Armand took no offence:
he
saw that expression a hundred times a day. The bread was black, square and sticky. It
gave off a musty smell, as if it were mouldering from the moment it left the oven. It
was so solid that the older women frequently had to request the help of the young simply
to cut it. ‘Did you hear,’ she said, tucking her coat around her,
‘that they have renamed all the streets in Le Nouvion?’
‘Renamed the streets?’
‘German names for French ones.
Monsieur Dinan got word from his son. You know what they call Avenue de la
Gare?’
We all shook our heads. Madame Louvier
closed her eyes for a moment, as if to make sure she had got it right.
‘Bahnhofstrasse,’ she said finally.
‘Bahnhof-what?’
‘Can you believe it?’
‘They will not be renaming my
shop.’ Monsieur Armand harrumphed. ‘I’ll be renaming their backsides.
Brot
this and
Brot
that. This is a
boulangerie
. In rue
des Bastides. Always has been, always will. Bahnhof-whatsit. Ridiculous.’
‘But this is terrible!’ Madame
Durant was panic-stricken.
‘I don’t speak any
German!’
We all stared at her.
‘Well, how am I supposed to find my
way around my own town if I can’t tell the street names?’
We were so busy laughing that for a moment
we did not notice the door open. But then the shop fell abruptly silent. I turned to see
Liliane Béthune walk in, her head up, but failing to meet a single person’s
eye. Her face was
fuller than most, her clear skin rouged and
powdered. She uttered a general ‘
Bonjour
,’ and reached into her
bag. ‘Two loaves, please.’
She smelt of expensive scent, and her hair
was swept up in curls. In a town where most women were too exhausted or too empty-handed
to do anything but the minimum of personal grooming, she stood out like a glittering
jewel. But it was her coat that drew my eye. I could not stop staring at it. It was jet
black, made of the finest astrakhan lambskin and as thick as a fur rug. It had the soft
sheen of something new and expensive, and the collar rose around her face as if her long
neck were emerging from black treacle. I saw the older women register it, their
expressions hardening as their gaze travelled down its length.
‘One for you, one for your
German?’ Madame Durant muttered.
‘I said two loaves, please.’ She
turned to Madame Durant. ‘One for me. One for my
daughter
.’
For once, Monsieur Armand did not smile. He
reached under the counter, his eyes never leaving her face, and with his two meaty fists
he slammed two loaves on to its surface. He did not wrap them.
Liliane held out a note, but he didn’t
take it from her hand. He waited the few seconds it took her to place it on the counter,
and then he picked it up gingerly, as if it might infect him. He reached into his till
and threw two coins down in change, even as she held out her hand.
She looked at him, and then at the counter
where the coins lay. ‘Keep them,’ she said. And, with a furious glance at
us, she snatched up the bread, and swept out of the shop.
‘How she has the nerve …’
Madame Durant was never happier than when she was outraged by somebody else’s
behaviour. Luckily for her, Liliane Béthune had granted her ample opportunity to
exercise her fury over the past few months.
‘I suppose she has to eat, like
everyone else,’ I said.
‘Every night she goes to the Fourrier
farm. Every night. You see her cross the town, scuttling like a thief.’
‘She has two new coats,’ Madame
Louvier said. ‘The other one is green. A brand new green wool coat. From
Paris.’
‘And shoes. Of kid leather. Of course
she dare not wear them out in the day. She knows she would get lynched.’
‘She won’t, that one. Not with
the Germans looking out for her.’
‘Still, when they leave, it’ll
be another story, eh?’
‘I wouldn’t want to be in her
shoes, kid leather or not.’
‘I do hate to see her strutting about,
rubbing her good fortune in everybody’s faces. Who does she think she
is?’
Monsieur Armand watched the young woman
crossing the square. Suddenly he smiled. ‘I wouldn’t worry, ladies. Not
everything goes her way.’
We looked at him.
‘Can you keep a secret?’
I don’t know why he bothered asking.
Those two old women could barely stay silent for ten seconds at a time.
‘What?’
‘Let’s just say some of us make
sure Miss Fancy Pants gets special treatment she wasn’t expecting.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Her loaves live under the counter by
themselves. They
contain some special ingredients. Ingredients that I
promise you go into none of my other loaves.’
The old women’s eyes widened. I dared
not ask what the baker meant, but the glint in his eye suggested several possibilities,
none of which I wanted to dwell upon.
‘
Non!
’
‘Monsieur Armand!’ They were
scandalized, but they began to cackle.
I felt sick then. I didn’t like
Liliane Béthune, or what she was doing, but this revolted me. ‘I’ve –
I’ve got to go. Hélène needs … ’ I reached for my bread.
Their laughter still ringing in my ears, I ran for the relative safety of the hotel.
The food came the following Friday. First
the eggs, two dozen, delivered by a young German corporal, who brought them in covered
with a white sheet, as if he were delivering contraband. Then bread, white and fresh, in
three baskets. I had gone off bread a little since that day in the
boulangerie
,
but to hold fresh loaves, crusty and warm, left me almost drunk with desire. I had to
send Aurélien upstairs, I was so afraid he would be unable to resist the temptation
to break off a mouthful.
Next, six hens, their feathers still on, and
a crate containing cabbage, onions, carrots and wild garlic. After this came jars of
preserved tomatoes, rice and apples. Milk, coffee, three fat pats of butter, flour,
sugar. Bottles and bottles of wine from the south. Hélène and I accepted each
delivery in silence. The Germans handed us forms, upon which each amount had been
carefully noted. There would be no easy stealing: a form requested that we note
the exact amounts used for each recipe. They also asked that we
place any scraps in a pail for collection to feed livestock. When I saw that I wanted to
spit.
‘We are doing this for tonight?’
I asked the last corporal.
He shrugged. I pointed at the clock.
‘Today?’ I gestured at the food. ‘
Kuchen?
’
‘
Ja
,’ he said, nodding
enthusiastically. ‘
Sie kommen. Acht Uhr
.’