In the small rented apartment in the rue Georges Clemenceau, Liesl Blum glanced at the clock for the third time. She didn’t understand why Max hadn’t come home last night when they had arranged to have supper together. Nor this morning either. This was how it had started in Paris. Men disappearing in the night or being arrested at dawn. Her father, their friends and neighbours. But not in Carcassonne.
Liesl had fallen asleep on the settee waiting, but when she’d woken and checked Max’s room, his bed hadn’t been slept in. She was trying to carry on as usual, though the dread was hard in her chest. She drank a glass of water and ate some bread, though she had no appetite, returning every few minutes to look out of the window. Willing herself to see her brother’s long, lean figure striding along the pavement.
Still Max did not come.
Liesl made herself sit down at the table in the living room, which was already covered with paste and scissors and paper. Her camera too, though it was hard to have film developed now. There was no ink, no good-quality photographic paper.
Since they had arrived in Carcassonne, Liesl had kept a scrapbook, everything that had happened since she and Max had left Paris two years ago when the Nazis marched in. It was foolish, in a way, but their father had always impressed upon them the importance of recording everything, writing things down. That whatever new laws were brought in, each new iniquity, they should continue to behave as they saw fit in the privacy of their own home. Liesl tried to live by his example. This scrapbook was her own small act of defiance.
She turned the pages, looking at the black and white photographs. Her eyes stopped on a portrait of her parents, her father’s arm proprietorial around her mother’s waist. Both elegant, both serious, staring straight into the camera. They had heard nothing from him – about him – for over a year. Liesl had been a little scared of him. Neither of their parents had paid much attention to her or to Max, farming them out to the care of neighbours while they campaigned and electioneered and organised rallies.
But Liesl felt she was carrying on her father’s tradition. He used words, she used images. He had been a prominent anti-Nazi campaigner, working tirelessly to expose what was happening to Jews in the countries annexed by Germany. Individual arrests at first, then the rafles, everybody rounded up at the same time and confined in ghettos. Now the same was happening in France. Little by little by little, the poison was spreading.
She turned the page, running her hand over the rough, blotting paper, this section a record of the mass arrests of Jewish families, of the thousands of Jewish men sent to camps. She stuck another cutting in, this one taken from La Dépêche. An old, but poignant image. Students in Paris had taken to wearing ‘butterflies’, anti-German stickers, and carrying their books against their chests, obscuring the yellow stars that Jews in the zone occupée were forced to wear.
Liesl glanced at the clock again, the trepidation building in her chest with every minute that passed without Max.
‘Jew!’
She jumped in alarm as a stone hit the wall next to the sitting room window with a loud thud.
‘Putain, we know you’re in there.’
Liesl turned. The boys hadn’t come last night – perhaps because there’d been too many police on the streets – but she hadn’t expected them this morning.
‘We know you’re in there, juive.’
Ugly voices shouting up at the window from the street. Another stone ricocheted off the woodwork. Liesl tried not to take any notice. They might be out there for up to half an hour, depending on who came along the street and was brave enough to make them stop.
‘Let us in, Jew. You know you want to.’
Raucous laughter. Liesl tried to stop her ears, tried to concentrate on what she was doing. They’d get bored. They usually did. What had changed? It was a normal day, why was nobody doing anything to stop them? Then another stone and the sound of the window shattering. Liesl leapt up as a shard of glass struck her on the cheek. Felt the trickle of first blood.
She ran to the door to the apartment to check it was locked and bolted. As she did so, she heard the street door downstairs bang back against the wall, and a cheer. For a moment she froze. How had they got in? Had someone let them in?
The sound of boots on the stairs propelled her into action. Liesl rushed to the table, her terrified hands trying to clear away her precious scrapbook. The smash of a fist on the inner door to the apartment made her jump, the papers slipping through her fingers. She realised she was holding her breath, as if that would keep her presence a secret.
‘We know you’re in there, garce.’ The same vile voice, now just the other side of the front door.
Another thud, a fist against wood. Then a boot. The entire door shook, the reverberations skimming along the wall.
Liesl swallowed a cry. She couldn’t believe they would break in, attack her in broad daylight. She didn’t see how such a thing could be happening. Then, the crack of wood as one of the panels in the door split. A roar of triumph went up from the boys outside. How many were there? Three? Four? More? Hateful voices getting louder, more frenzied.
‘We’re going to teach you a lesson, Jew girl.’
The boots harder against the door, the lock wouldn’t hold. They were almost inside.
Un, deux, trois, loup, the words of the children’s playground rhyme went round and round in Liesl’s head. ‘Coming to get you, ready or not.’
The sound of the front door splintering, the sound of blind hands reaching into the apartment, turning the lock. The rasp of the bolt, then a cheer as the door was flung open and the mob of boys stormed into the flat.
‘Wake up, darling.’
Sandrine heard Marianne’s voice, then felt the weight of her sister’s hand on her shoulder, shaking her awake.
‘What time is it?’ she said, sitting up. Her neck was stiff and the bruise from Monday was throbbing where she’d leant against it.
‘Half past ten.’
For a moment, Sandrine felt all right. Normal. Then she remembered, and misery pressed down on her shoulders.
‘He’s gone,’ she said.
‘I know, Marieta told me.’
‘I didn’t want him to go.’
Marianne nodded. ‘I know, but it’s for the best. Come inside, have something to eat.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘There’s a little bread left, and some butter.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ she repeated.
Marianne held out her hand to pull her up. ‘Don’t be silly.’
Sandrine followed her back into the kitchen. She felt cold and woolly from lack of sleep. She sat down heavily on a chair, watching as her sister poured them both a cup of ersatz coffee from the pot Marieta had left on the stove, then got out a plate and knife.
Marianne sat down on the opposite side of the table. Sandrine sipped at the coffee and started to wake up. She took a piece of bread, dipping it in her cup to soften the crust, surprised to find that she had an appetite after all.
‘Have Lucie and Suzanne gone?’ she asked.
‘Suzanne, yes, about half an hour ago. Lucie felt rather unwell, so I’ve put her in Papa’s room to sleep it off.’ She paused. ‘Since the bed hadn’t been slept in . . .’
Sandrine flushed. ‘We stayed up talking all night. In the garden. That’s all.’
Marianne stared at her. ‘Glad to hear it.’
‘I gave him one of Papa’s jackets and a hat. I hope that was all right.’
‘Of course. No sense wasting things.’
Sandrine ate a little more. ‘Just as he was going, Raoul told me I should talk to you.’ She watched Marianne’s reaction. ‘I said we were always talking, but I think he meant something in particular.’
On the other side of the table, her sister became very still.
‘What else did he say?’ Marianne asked. Her voice was measured, but the atmosphere was suddenly taut.
‘Just that.’
Marianne still didn’t move.
‘What did he mean?’ Sandrine asked.
Marianne hesitated a moment more, then got to her feet, went to the door and closed it. She turned round with her arms crossed. Sandrine’s heart started to hammer against her ribs. Her sister looked so determined, so resolute. And the door between the kitchen and the hall was never shut.
‘What?’ she said quickly, nervous now.
‘Listen carefully. Don’t interrupt. You have to promise that you will never breathe a word of what I’m about to tell you to anyone. No one, not a soul.’
Sandrine felt her stomach lurch. ‘I promise.’
Marianne sat down again and placed both hands flat on the table, as if trying to anchor herself.
‘Raoul guessed. Almost straight away, I could see he knew.’
‘Knew what . . .?’ Sandrine began to say, then she stopped. She felt a strange calm come over her. She knew what Marianne was going to say. All those nights her sister was late back from work and with mud on her shoes, disappearing for an hour here or there without explanation. The ‘friends’ who arrived after dark and went before it was light.
‘You’ve been helping them too,’ she said.
Marianne’s eyes flicked up. ‘You knew? But you never said anything.’
Sandrine shook her head. ‘No, not until now.’ She paused. ‘Just you?’
‘Suzanne too.’
‘Not Lucie?’
A smile flickered across Marianne’s lips. ‘She only cares about Max, nothing else matters. She hopes if she closes her eyes to what’s happening, it will go away.’
‘Max doesn’t know?’
‘Nobody else knows,’ Marianne replied.
‘Not even Marieta?’
Marianne hesitated. ‘I’m sure she does, but she acts as if she doesn’t. She clears things away, things that get forgotten.’
‘I found a man’s razor in the bathroom once. It wasn’t Papa’s.’
Marianne smiled. ‘Marieta carries on in her usual way. Posts letters for me, drops things off if I ask her. I try not to call upon her too much.’ She shrugged. ‘And I go along with her pretending she doesn’t know. It’s safer that way.’
Sandrine’s head was spinning as she tried to take everything in. A snapshot of so many tiny incidents, none of them big enough to have drawn her attention at the time, but now combining to make a clearer picture.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked quietly. ‘Didn’t you trust me?’
Marianne sighed. ‘I wanted to, but I didn’t want to put you at risk, and besides . . .’
‘. . . you were worried I’d let something out.’ Sandrine finished the sentence for her.
Marianne nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, holding her gaze. ‘I’m sorry. Can you understand?’
Strangely, Sandrine realised she did. A few days ago, she would have lost her temper or sulked or argued. Not now. After a night of talking with Raoul, listening to what he had done, how he had been forced to live, she thought she did understand.
‘I feel such an idiot. Not noticing.’
‘I did my best to make sure you didn’t notice anything. That you could carry on as usual.’
Sandrine thought for a moment. ‘Why are you telling me now?’ she asked. ‘Simply because of Raoul?’
Marianne shook her head. ‘I’d decided to tell you anyway,’ she said. ‘I was just waiting for the right moment. The way you marched into the police station – although I was cross with you about that too – the way you coped with what happened at the river. Then at the cathedral yesterday . . .’ She shrugged. ‘You held your nerve, you didn’t make a fuss. You were a help and it made me realise that . . .’
‘. . . I’d grown up.’
Marianne smiled. ‘I wouldn’t have put it quite like that, but I suppose so, yes.’
Despite her exhaustion and all the complicated emotions battling inside her head, Sandrine felt a shot of pride.
‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.
She sat in silence for a moment, letting her sister’s words take root in her mind. Looking back on everything that had happened, trying to make it fit. Finally putting two and two together.
‘The people you work with,’ she said after a while, ‘do you know who they are?’
‘No, we never meet. No one knows anyone except their immediate contact. It’s safest. That way, if we were caught, we couldn’t give much away.’
Sandrine felt sick as the reality of the risks Marianne and Suzanne had been taking started to sink in.
‘That’s what made Raoul suspicious,’ her sister continued. ‘He mentioned César Sanchez and Suzanne reacted. He noticed. Sanchez is a good friend of hers too – that’s where she’s gone now, to see if she can find out what’s happened to him.’
Sandrine thought for a moment. ‘How long have you been . . . helping?’
‘I can’t even remember quite how it started. Right at the beginning, the autumn of 1939 and the following spring, there were lots of German émigrés and Jewish dissidents, a few members of the Dutch Resistance, all trying to get out of France this way. We had plenty of space here.’ She shrugged. ‘Suzanne asked me if I could help from time to time, and it seemed such a small thing to do, to give someone a bed for the night. After we surrendered and the North was occupied, things changed. I volunteered for the Croix-Rouge, helped in that way instead.’ She paused. ‘But things have been getting worse. In January this year, the last few of my Jewish pupils simply disappeared from class. One day they were there, the next they’d gone and no one could – would – tell me what had happened to them. I was appalled and said as much to Suzanne, who admitted she was running a few errands for the Resistance – that’s how they put it – so I decided to do the same.’
‘When you say errands, what do you mean?’
‘Delivering papers mostly. False documents, sauf-conduits, identity cards, ration books, coupons. Dropping off leaflets to collection points – boîtes aux lettres – for someone else to pick up and distribute, all sorts.’
‘In Carcassonne?’
Marianne smiled. ‘Yes, darling. There are several places in the Bastide, in the Cité too.’
‘Why don’t people stay here any more?’
‘As I said, fewer people come through Carcassonne. But mostly since Madame Fournier moved in next door to keep house for her brother. She’s always snooping, reports everything to him.’
‘He’s a vile man,’ Sandrine said, remembering how he had spoken to her and Suzanne.
‘Worse, he’s dangerous. He’s an informer.’
‘Oh.’
Marianne let her shoulders drop, clearly relieved that the secret was out in the open. Sandrine had a hundred questions racing around her head, but her sister had stood up.
‘You have to forget I ever told you any of this. I mean it. Say nothing, don’t think about it. Don’t bring it up, even with Suzanne.’
‘I won’t.’
Marianne opened the door to the corridor. ‘I’m going to check on Lucie, she was awfully sick in the night. Then I am due to go to the station. To meet other Red Cross volunteers.’ She paused. ‘You can come with me if you want.’
Sandrine looked up. ‘You mean it?’
‘If you do precisely what I tell you, then yes. Why not? But we have to go in ten minutes. I won’t wait if you’re not ready.’
‘Marianne . . .’
Her sister turned again. ‘What is it?’
‘I just want to say . . . I’m proud of you,’ she said in a rush, feeling ridiculous to be saying such things to her older sister. ‘Proud of you for being so brave, for standing up for—’
Marianne shook her head. ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m not brave. I hate it, I hate it all. But there’s no choice.’