Paris: The Novel (141 page)

“I thank you for the compliment,
mon colonel
,” she said. “But I am preparing a new room in there.”

“Really?” Schmid cut in. “Will you tell me what? It would be interesting to see the work in preparation.”

Again, the woman turned to the colonel.

“You surely would not wish to ruin my surprise?”

Colonel Walter stepped forward gallantly, and took Schmid’s arm.

“My dear young man,” he said kindly, but with a trace of admonition, “one does not interrupt a great artist in the middle of their work.” He turned back to Madame Louise. “We shall look forward to seeing your next, astounding creation when it is ready.”

So Schmid allowed himself to be conducted along the passage, and soon had other things to think about.

And Louise wondered what on earth she was going to do with that room now.

And, unaware of what had passed outside the door, little Laïla Jacob slept in Babylon that night.

The following day, just after noon, Charlie de Cygne swept up to the guard post in his big car. The guards recognized him at once. Not many Frenchmen had such a car, or a pass to drive up and down from their family château, nor could they possibly get the fuel to put in the car to make the drive.

But this aristocrat, whose family were such firm supporters of the regime, had all these things.

As he pulled up, they noticed a small girl, swaddled in a blanket, huddled in the back of the car. She looked pale.

“Our housekeeper’s granddaughter,” Charlie announced calmly, and waved a letter from a fashionable French doctor in front of them. “Taking her down to the country.”

The young officer glanced at the letter, which Charlie had procured that morning.

“No doubt the country air will do her good,” he remarked politely.

Charlie looked him straight in the eye and made a face the little girl could not see.

“We hope so,” he said quietly.

The officer waved them through.

It wasn’t long before the reports came to Charlie. The police had been looking for Laïla. Schmid and his men had taken all the work from Jacob’s gallery. The Jacob apartment had been let to someone else. Clearly they weren’t coming back.

For a small payment to one of the guards, one of Charlie’s men was able to ascertain that the Jacob parents were being held at the big camp at Drancy. Since they were French, they hadn’t been shipped east yet, although trainloads of foreign Jews had already gone that way.

Meanwhile, though Roland de Cygne was a little astonished to find a little Jewish girl living at the château, he and Marie kept up the story that she was a granddaughter of the old housekeeper in Paris, and no one was any the wiser. To be on the safe side, she was called Lucie. As for the little girl herself, she understood very well what she must do.

“Have they killed my parents?” she asked Marie, who told her no, not yet.

“Shall we pray for them each night, just you and I?” Marie asked her, and Laïla nodded.

She read with her each day, and Roland would take her for walks and taught her to fish in the stream.

She was an enchanting child: small, very pretty. If she was a little reserved and watchful at first, that was only to be expected, but it was clear that once she learned to trust the inhabitants of the château, she was full of life.

Charlie found a little bicycle he’d had when he was her age, cleaned it up and asked if she knew how to ride it.

“Oh yes,” she told him. “Mama and Papa liked to ride together on a Sunday afternoon, all the way to the Bois de Boulogne. I haven’t been there yet, but they taught me to ride in the park near where we lived.” And she had taken great pleasure in riding on the paths around the château.

It had taken some time before Charlie had learned for certain, but as winter began, he confided to Marie that the Jacobs were no longer in the holding camp at Drancy. They’d been put on a train that would take them east, along with many others, including the brother of Léon Blum, the former prime minister. When did it happen and where were they sent? Marie had asked.

“September. To Auschwitz.”

The three de Cygnes had discussed for some time whether they should tell Laïla. In the end, no one wanted to.

“Let’s wait and see what happens,” said Marie.

The rescue of Laïla had one other, unforeseen effect. Charlie started worrying about his son.

Right at the start, when he had first suggested to Louise that she might pass on information about her German customers, he had realized that there was a risk. Like many operatives, she had taken a code name. “Let them call me Corinne,” she had said. But in the early months, the sort of material she had been able to give him, though useful, was not sensitive. He knew all the officers who came to her establishment, their duties, and sometimes more. It was all excellent background for the future, and he passed it on to Colonel Rémy’s network. Occasionally she had come up with something which could be used locally—for attacks on Germans, or the sabotage of a goods train here and there. This information he passed on to Max Le Sourd and his boys. He did not think any of this information could have been traced to her.

In hiding a Jewish child, however, Louise had crossed a line. Had she been discovered, she would have been arrested. And what would have happened to little Esmé then? Would he have been able to claim him? Perhaps. But doing so, at such a moment, would have invited suspicion. Sooner or later, Louise might place herself in danger again. Despite her earlier insistence on keeping Esmé all to herself, Charlie felt he had to challenge her.

“Don’t you think it’s time we told my father he has a grandson, and sent Esmé down to the château where he would be safe?” he suggested. But she still wouldn’t hear of it.

“I’m not giving away my child,” she told him. “Never.” And no arguments, however reasonable, would sway her.

Meanwhile, very gradually, news came through that brought hope. Soon after the rescue of little Laïla, a brave Canadian and British force attacked the coastal town of Dieppe in northern France. The attack was a disaster, yet Charlie took comfort from it for two reasons.

“In the first place,” he remarked to his father, “it proves that the Allies can strike back and rescue France. And secondly, the fact that the hidden German gun emplacements caught them unawares at Dieppe proves to Churchill and de Gaulle that the French Resistance, not just the Free French Forces outside the country, but the fellows here on the ground will be critical to their success.”

In the east, as the weeks went by, word came that the Germans were held at Stalingrad. Then in November, from North Africa, came the wonderful news that Montgomery had smashed the German Afrika Korps at El Alamein, and chased them all the way back to Tunisia. In the Pacific, the Americans had already decisively defeated the Japanese fleet at Midway back in June. By the end of 1942, therefore, on every major front, there seemed to be signs that the tide of war could be turning.

In Paris, Charlie had plenty to occupy his mind. The Resistance movement was growing. In the southern Vichy zone, people were referring to the Resistance as the Maquis—since that was the wild bush terrain in the mountains where the guerrilla groups were forming—and soon Resistance fighters all over France were being called
maquisards
. But what really mattered now, Charlie thought, was that they were being properly organized.

In the spring of 1943, soon after the joyful news that the Germans
had finally surrendered at Stalingrad, another important development occurred.

“There’s been a big meeting in Paris,” Charlie told his father. “De Gaulle’s right-hand man, Jean Moulin, was there. People came from all over France. They’ve coordinated all the Resistance networks, and they’ve pledged allegiance to de Gaulle.” He smiled. “When, eventually, the Allies come to rescue France, we shall have an entire Resistance army ready to help them.” He grinned. “You will be glad to know that the network set up by Colonel Rémy took the name the Confrérie Notre-Dame. As good Catholics, we place ourselves under the protection of the Virgin.”

His father smiled.

“I shall pray to the Blessed Virgin to keep watch over you when you are out with our communist friends as well,” he remarked.

“Please do, Father.”

Charlie was always grateful that Max Le Sourd let him take part in his operations. He hated to be doing nothing, and the communist Resistance didn’t mind accepting help from any political quarter.

“I’ve made you an honorary communist,” Max had told him wryly.

Max’s men were a loose-knit group, drawn from several parts of the city. Charlie never knew exactly how many men there were. There were the Dalou boys from up on Montmartre. Sometimes old Thomas Gascon came out with them, especially if there was any work that required dismantling bridges or railway couplings. Once or twice he’d brought his brother, Luc.

Twice, agent Corinne had provided information that had led to action. She had heard of a troop train coming in from Reims, and Max and his group had taken part in a successful attack on it. Another such tip had led, through Colonel Rémy’s network, to a train being bombed by British planes.

Charlie had taken part in attacks on guard posts, and a successful raid on an explosives store. But by the summer of 1943, Max and his men had been ordered to hold back a bit.

“We don’t want to lose you just now,” Max was told. Radio operators were getting caught all the time because the Germans could track their signals. The large and vicious German reprisals on whole communities
where outrages occurred might be having some effect. “What we need is for you to build up a larger force to prepare for the really big operations in the future,” they promised him.

For it wasn’t as if Paris was short of Resistance activity. The group that the Germans feared most was led by a poet.

“They say that poets and intellectuals are the best terrorists,” Roland had remarked to his son. “I don’t know why.”

And certainly there was no one better than the poet Manouchian.

He was Armenian. A few of his group were French, but most were Polish, Armenian, Hungarian, Italian or Spanish, and half of those Jewish. By the late spring of 1943, he and his group had swung into a frenzy of action. All through that summer and into the autumn, the Germans in Paris had been terrorized by Manouchian. Once, thanks to a tip from Louise, Roland had been able to get some information to Manouchian that allowed him to take out one of the most senior Wehrmacht officers in France.

It was fascinating to see the nervousness of German officers and men in the street, after that. Now they know what it feels like to be terrorized, Charlie thought. Anything that was bad for German morale.