Survivor (38 page)

One by one the friends of the
feathered-hat woman chipped in with little anecdotes of ungrateful servants, and
Mariette smiled to herself. The tide had turned for such women. They couldn’t
get servants any more because no one wanted to be in domestic servitude when they
could earn far more in factories, and have no restrictions placed on their private
life. Without their maids and housekeepers, these women were in exactly the same
boat as the ordinary working classes, as likely to be bombed out as anyone else, and
existing on exactly the same rations. Many of the women, who lived in big old
houses, were struggling to hold their homes together as all the tradespeople who
once handled routine maintenance work had been called up.

Mariette didn’t have much sympathy
for them. She felt their female servants would probably have stayed with them, if
they’d been treated well and valued. She also despised the way such women
lorded it over those they considered beneath them. She hoped the war would bring an
end to class snobbery, but somehow she doubted it would.

Just after five, Mariette made her way
down to the harbour. It was pitch dark now, and chilly, but luckily there was very
little wind. She trained her torch on to the ground, slipping and sliding on the
cobbles. Her instructions were to stand by the lifeboat holding a white handkerchief
in her hand. The skipper of the boat would approach her.

She put her woolly hat on, pulling it
right down over her ears. It wasn’t just about warmth; with her hair covered,
she would be taken for a man and would not raise any suspicions.

‘Elise?’

The gruff voice
coming from behind her startled her, and for a split second she forgot she was to be
called Elise Baudin.

She spun round to see a short, squat man
with a bushy dark beard, but it was too dark to make out further details about
him.

‘
Bonsoir, je suis Elise.
Armand?
’

He nodded. ‘It’s OK, you can
speak English. Now follow me.’

Leading the way across the stony beach,
he didn’t speak again until they came to a rowing boat which had been pulled
halfway out of the water. He took her bag from her, threw it in, and told her to hop
in too. He pushed the boat out into the water, then jumped in and took the oars.

He rowed fast and so smoothly there was
scarcely a sound, reminding Mariette of the way her father rowed; the man was
entirely at one with the oars, as if they were extensions of his own arms. Just that
similarity was enough to calm some of her fears.

Armand reached a moored fishing boat,
caught hold of a ladder on the side to keep the rowing boat steady, then told
Mariette she was to go first. As she climbed up the ladder, another man appeared on
deck and held out his hand to help her.

Within a few minutes, the fishing boat
was chugging out of the harbour. Mariette had been ordered to put on waterproofs by
the second man, who said his name was Henri. By the light of a tilley lamp below
decks, Mariette saw that both men were at least fifty, possibly even older. They
were both English and, like her, they had been given French names for this mission.
They didn’t seem inclined to talk, but Henri told her the fishing boat was
fast, and it needed to be, as they had to meet up with a French fishing boat off the
Brittany coast before dawn.

Henri must have
realized she was puzzled, and he explained. ‘We can’t go right in as the
Germans would blast us out of the water, so we meet up with a French boat and pass
you on. As it’s such a dark night tonight, we hope we won’t be spotted
by anyone.’

The boat was a little larger than her
father’s boat back in New Zealand, and the engine was a lot more powerful. It
sped through the waves and, to Mariette, it was wonderful to be back on the sea at
last.

It was soon clear to her that neither
man wanted her in the wheelhouse – perhaps they were worried about it being unlucky
to take a woman aboard a fishing boat – so Mariette went into the tiny cabin and sat
down. It was just like every other fishing boat she’d been in; it smelled bad,
not just of fish, but of stale cooking, cigarettes and sweaty feet. There was a
narrow bunk fitted in towards the bow, while seating was on the boxes either side,
where equipment was stored, with a narrow table bolted to the floor between them.
The tiny galley fitted in between the bunk and the seating.

Everything was very dirty, but Mariette
was well aware that most fishermen, especially ones who go out in their boats night
after night, would not have the time to concern themselves with such things. She
could remember her mother tutting over the state of the cabin in her father’s
boat. She always said it was a waste of energy cleaning it up, it would be just as
mucky again the next time she looked. But after a few moments of sitting there
looking at unwashed crockery, Mariette put the kettle on to wash up.

Despite the speed they were chugging
along at, the boat remained surprisingly stable, and she was able to wash the
crockery and make coffee for Armand and Henri without being thrown around.

When she took
the coffee to the wheelhouse, both men looked surprised and pleased.

‘We’re making good
time,’ Armand said as he took his mug and waved away the tin of condensed milk
she’d brought with it. ‘If I were you, I’d try to get some sleep
now, we’ll have to call on you to keep watch for ships as we get closer to
France.’

‘I’ll try,’ she said,
knowing full well she was far too pent up to sleep.

‘Tomorrow will be a long day for
you,’ Henri said, and his smile was warm and even sympathetic. ‘With
luck on our side, we’ll be meeting up with the French boat again, with you in
it, around ten in the evening. Then we’ll be back to England at first
light.’

‘Have you done many of these
trips?’ she asked.

‘Don’t ask, Elise. Better
not to know.’

Lying on the bunk a little later, trying
to sleep, Mariette wondered what Henri had actually meant. Had the previous person
doing her role been captured or shot? Or did he just mean that it was best not to
ask questions about anything?

Armand woke her at four in the morning
and gave her some binoculars to scan the horizon for ships, while he had a sleep and
Henri took the wheel. Mariette saw the occasional light on a ship a great distance
away, but nothing worryingly close.

The sky was just beginning to lighten
when she spotted a fishing boat coming towards them. ‘Is it the one
we’re supposed to be meeting?’ she asked Henri.

He nodded. ‘Go and wake Armand and
get your bag, we need to do the changeover fast.’

The other boat came alongside, and
Mariette jumped across to it. Her bag was thrown after her.

‘Good
luck!’ Armand called out, and without a second’s delay sped away, back
towards England.

The two Frenchmen on the other boat had
quite a haul of fish aboard. They were younger than Armand and Henri, tough-looking
men with weathered skin and thick beards. They did not introduce themselves, just
ordered her down into the cabin in rapid French. They told her to stay there, out of
sight, until they called her.

Mariette lay on the bunk, thinking with
trepidation about what lay ahead. She knew that their destination was Portivy, a
tiny fishing village on the Atlantic side of a long, narrow isthmus. The Atlantic
side of this land was known as the Côte Sauvage, which, she guessed, would mean it
had high winds and rough sea. The inner, protected side that formed the Bay of
Quiberon would be far less hostile, but any attempt at making an unseen escape from
there would mean sailing right round the isthmus. At the top of the isthmus, only
about a mile from Portivy, stood Fort de Penthièvre, built back in the eighteenth
century to protect France from the English. It was now a German garrison, and Miss
Salmon had been unable to find out just how many soldiers were stationed there.

When they arrived at Portivy, Mariette
was to go to La Plume Rouge café on the harbour to see Celeste Gaillard, who ran it.
Celeste ran a brothel alongside her café, and as new girls came and went frequently
Mariette’s sudden appearance would not be thought odd. The cover story for
anyone who might question her was that her mother, back in Marseille, was an old
friend of Celeste’s. But then, if everything went to plan, she would be
leaving the small fishing village that same evening, hopefully without arousing
anyone’s interest in her.

Miss Salmon had said Celeste was a
member of a very
active Resistance group
in Brittany who were responsible for hiding many people until they could be got out
of France. Some of these were other Resistance members, but they also included
Allied airmen who had been shot down and some Jewish people escaping before they
could be sent to German work camps.

While Miss Salmon had been anxious to
point out that there were dozens of people who played their part in rescues, all of
whom risked their own lives, she had said Celeste was especially courageous as she
faced spite and condemnation from many local French people who had no idea of the
secret work she was doing and believed her to be collaborating with the Germans who
frequented her café and brothel.

Mariette hoped that some of
Celeste’s courage and dogged determination to thwart the Germans would rub off
on her. But she was all too aware that she was entering France illegally, with false
papers that she couldn’t be sure would stand up to scrutiny, going to a
brothel of all places. She just had to hope that those who had recruited her knew
what they were doing.

Soon after Mariette had caught her first
glimpse of Fort Penthièvre, which was a huge and forbidding grey stone building with
the German flag fluttering above it, one of the two sailors came into the cabin and
introduced himself as Luc. He was a big man, possibly thirty-five or so, with wild
dirty straw-coloured hair and a moustache to match.

‘You must stay in here,’ he
said, lifting the lid of a storage box which was used as a seat. ‘It has air
holes, and I will release you as soon as it’s safe. But it may be some time.
Often, German soldiers come straight to the boat to buy fish, and we have to pretend
to be glad of their business. When they are gone, we can get you to
Celeste.’

Mariette climbed in with some
trepidation as she could
see it
wasn’t long enough to lie out straight, and it smelled awful. Luc put her bag
in the storage box for a pillow, and she smiled weakly up at him.

‘There are worse things,’ he
said and he smiled back, suddenly looking far less fierce.

She heard the sounds of people in the
harbour even before she felt the slight bump as the boat touched the quayside. The
boat lurched as one of the men jumped off to secure her, and then there was thumping
and bumping as they carried the boxes of fish off the boat.

She could hear the two fishermen talking
to other people, but not clearly enough to follow what they were talking about. She
thought some of it was haggling over the price of the fish, but every now and then
there were bursts of loud laughter. Trapped, cold, hungry and very uncomfortable,
Mariette found herself imagining they were telling German soldiers where to find
her. She expected the lid of the box to open and to be hauled out at any moment.

The sound of voices moved away from the
boat, until all she could hear was the calling of the seagulls. It was very tempting
to raise the lid of the box just enough to see what was happening. But she
didn’t dare do it, for fear a German soldier had remained on the deck or was
standing close enough on the quayside to see into the boat.

After what seemed like hours, Luc came
back. ‘Quickly,’ he said. ‘Change your clothes, leave what you are
wearing now in the box, and then we must get you off the boat.’

He left her, and Mariette quickly
stripped off her trousers, thick jumper and heavy shoes, then put on a brown wool
dress, stockings, high heels and a camel coat with a red fox collar that Sybil had
given her. Mog had made and sent her the dress, and Edwin had always said she looked
sexy in it as it was pencil slim with a crossover neckline that enhanced her
breasts. With her bright red lipstick,
and her hair brushed and worn loose under an emerald-green beret, she was ready. She
slipped the flick knife into her coat pocket and picked up her bag containing her
black cocktail dress and washing things.

Luc smiled in surprise at the
transformation. ‘A friend will be along in his van to collect some fish, very
soon,’ he said. ‘He will pull up very tight to the gangplank. I will go
to the back of his van with the fish. You must peep out of the porthole, and when I
put my pipe in my mouth that means it is safe for you to come out. Run to get in the
front of the van, then lie down on the floor and cover yourself with a blanket. In a
few moments, my friend will drive off and take you to the back door of La Plume
Rouge. Celeste will give you the instructions for later tonight.’

Mariette couldn’t speak as her
mouth was too dry with fear, so she just nodded.

‘Most of the soldiers who were out
here earlier have gone now, but we don’t want anyone to see you come off the
boat. There are some in Portivy who would sell their own soul to the
Germans.’

Miss Salmon hadn’t told her any of
this. Mariette had imagined Celeste’s place was so close to the quayside that
she would just run there from the fishing boat. All Miss Salmon had said was the
next part: Mariette was not to divulge anything to any of Celeste’s girls and
must stick to the pre-arranged story that she’d had a fight with her mother,
back in Marseille, and had taken the train to Paris. When that didn’t work out
too well, she’d come here. Mariette needed to act as if a brothel was normal
to her, perhaps even give the impression she’d worked in one in Marseille.

A large old blue van, belching smoke and
backfiring, pulled up by the gangplank. Mariette went over to the porthole to peep
out. Portivy was tiny, just a dozen or so houses
clustered around the harbour, with maybe a couple more
streets behind them. She could see La Plume Rouge on a corner; it was an
unprepossessing place with steamed-up windows and peeling red paint. The little port
looked forlorn under the pewter sky, but she guessed it would be pretty in summer
with flowers spilling over the walls, and a blue sea rather than the cold grey
expanse it was now.