Survivor (41 page)

It was seven the following morning
before the English boat met up with the French one for the handover. The sky was
leaden and it felt as if more snow was due. Luc and Guy, the regular crew members,
greeted her. Guy was his usual sombre self, only nodding to her, but Luc seemed
preoccupied. They had become quite good friends over the past months but this time
he barely greeted her.

Once she’d put on her waterproofs
in the cabin, she went up to the wheelhouse with a cup of coffee for the men and
some cheese and onion flan she’d brought from home.

‘You made this?’ Luc asked
after he’d tasted it. ‘It’s very good.’

‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘Now, tell me what’s wrong?’

He gave a deep sigh. ‘It’s
children you’ll be bringing out tonight. Four Jewish children, and I believe
it’s far too risky.’

Mariette understood his fears. Children
could cry and give the game away, they couldn’t be left to use their own
initiative if things went wrong, they couldn’t run as fast, or help to push a
boat out. In every way they were a liability. But, to Mariette, children were the
future, and they were innocents who deserved saving. She’d been told about the
trainloads of Jews sent out of Paris, crammed into cattle trucks with very little
air or even water. She couldn’t bear the thought of anyone being submitted to
that, let alone children.

‘Poor little mites,’ she
said, imagining how scared they must be and what their fate would be, if they were
caught. ‘But I’m sure we can manage it.’

‘I never agreed to take
children,’ Luc said stubbornly. ‘The risk is too great. I have children
of my own to take care of; if
I get
caught, it will be the firing squad for me. And what will become of them?’

Mariette could understand his dilemma,
but she knew the people who organized the escapes must have a very good reason for
getting these four children out of the country. ‘Then we have to make sure we
aren’t caught,’ she said, rather more firmly than she felt.

Mariette hadn’t been able to go
to Celeste’s place for the last three missions because a niece turning up with
such regularity, and only staying a few hours, would begin to look suspicious. But
at least it meant she didn’t have to dress up for the part, and could stay in
her warm clothes.

There was only a light sprinkling of
snow on the harbour. She was whisked away from there, as usual, by Gilpin in his
fish van, and dropped by a shed in a back alley where she had to hide until Celeste
could come to her with further instructions. Gilpin seemed nervous too, and he
hardly said a word.

Mariette waited three hours in the
freezing shed before Celeste finally arrived, wrapped up in a man’s tweed
overcoat, with a red woolly hat dusted with snow pulled right down over her
ears.

‘I am so sorry,’ she said on
finding Mariette shivering in a corner with a sack around her shoulders. ‘But
it was impossible to get away earlier. Things get harder every day now, I have to be
so careful who I trust. But I’ve brought you some hot soup to warm
you.’

Mariette drank the hot soup gratefully,
even though it had no real flavour.

‘I used to pride myself on my
cooking once,’ Celeste said. ‘Now it’s so hard to get even the
basic ingredients, I just have to use whatever I can find.’

‘It’s the same back in
England,’ Mariette told her. ‘People
make jam from turnips, the dried egg is disgusting, and
the other day we got some dried potato powder called Pomme. You’re supposed to
mix it with hot water to make mashed potato, but it’s vile.’

‘I wish I could spend longer with
you today, or at least take you somewhere warm, but I can’t,’ Celeste
said, with sorrow in her eyes. ‘I think someone back at the café is informing
on me; I’ve seen a man watching the place. After this one, we must stop for a
while, it’s getting too risky.’

‘Luc said it’s children
tonight,’ Mariette said.

‘Yes. All I can tell you about
them is that they are the children of two of our people. The youngest is four, the
eldest fourteen, and we must get them to safety.’

Mariette guessed by the deeply troubled
expression on the older woman’s face that she feared if these children were
caught, they would be used as hostages to get to their parents and other people in
the escape chain.

‘Is it the usual plan?’ she
asked.

‘Yes. The children are already in
hiding close to the beach. The rowing boat will be in the same old place, and you
must leave by half past five because of the tide. The soldier on guard duty along
that stretch of shore normally reaches there at quarter to six. But as he always
comes into the café for a cognac when it is very cold, I will get him to linger a
little longer in the warmth.’

Mariette wasn’t going to ask if
Celeste was sure she could do that. She trusted her.

‘You leave here when the church
bell strikes five,’ Celeste said. ‘The oldest boy, Bernard, knows to be
ready too. As you approach the beach, give your usual signal so he knows it’s
you.’

Mariette nodded. She had invented her
signal herself; she rattled a few small pebbles in a tin because using a whistle, or
calling out, was too risky.

‘This may
be our last meeting,’ Celeste said, reaching out to hug Mariette. ‘I
feel better times will be coming soon. I hope I’m right. But if we don’t
ever meet again, I thank you now for all you have done for us. Your courage is
admirable, and I wish you every happiness in the future.’

Celeste left swiftly, leaving Mariette
feeling a little emotional. She had come to like and admire the older woman so much,
and she couldn’t really believe she might never see her again.

Huddled in the shed, she heard the
church clock strike one, then two, three and four. It seemed far longer than an hour
between each one because she was so cold. After four, it was getting dark. She got
to her feet and ran on the spot for some time, to get her circulation going.

Finally it was five, and she opened the
shed door cautiously, listening carefully. When she was sure there was no one about,
she hurried on down to the beach.

As usual, a night with no moon had been
picked, but she could just see the shape of the big rock where the boat would be
tucked away out of sight. Even over the sound of waves she could hear the tinkle of
the bell in the buoy, signalling the direction in which she had to row. She picked
up a handful of small pebbles, put them in her tin and rattled it.

At a faint sound she turned and saw the
four children slinking like shadows through the garden gate of the house closest to
the beach. Celeste had said the house belonged to wealthy Parisians who, before the
war, always spent the whole summer here. It was all locked up now, the shutters
closed and the doors padlocked, but Mariette guessed Celeste had the use of a cellar
or outhouse.

She went over to the children and
touched each of their cheeks in silent greeting. The oldest boy, who she’d
been told was named Bernard, was taller than her. Both he and the
other boy, who appeared to be around six or seven, wore
dark balaclavas on their heads. The two small girls wore dark coats and bonnets.

‘Come,’ she whispered in
French, holding out her hands to the girls. ‘I’ll put you in the boat
first and come back for your brothers.’

Telling the boys to go back into the
garden and hide behind the wall, Mariette hurried the girls down the beach. At this
point in a rescue she always feared the boat wouldn’t be there, or that a
soldier would suddenly appear. But the boat was there, secured in place, as always,
some hours earlier. She lifted the children in and told them to lie down out of
sight while she got the boys.

She had almost reached the two boys,
back up the beach, when to her horror she heard footsteps coming along the coastal
path from the little town. Just the heaviness of the footfall told her it was a
soldier in heavy boots, and her blood ran cold. If the girls in the boat called out,
or their brothers tried to reach them, all would be lost.

When she reached the garden gate,
Bernard’s anxious expression was evidence he understood the danger. She
silently indicated that the two boys were to hide under the wall, and put her finger
to her lips to remind them they had to stay silent.

While they crouched down beside the
garden wall, Mariette stayed by the gate. She hoped that, as the guard had come
early, his intention was to do his patrol as quickly as possible and get back into a
warm place. But to her dismay he stopped walking just a few feet from her hiding
place, gazing down the beach as if looking for something.

Although there was some snow on the
ground, it was less than an inch thick, and she was sure it was far too dark to see
all the footprints. But could one of the girls have cried out, or
spoken, and he’d heard? This seemed unlikely as
the noise of the waves slapping against the rocks was enough to drown out anything
but a loud scream. Was the soldier just watching to see if the few snowflakes
fluttering down were going to settle?

She waited and waited. But the guard
wasn’t moving.

It suddenly occurred to her that he had
been sent to guard that area, and he wasn’t going to move on. She felt sick
because posting a sentry here meant the Germans must have a suspicion that people
were being smuggled out from this beach.

Mariette was stuck in an impossible
position. She couldn’t get to the two little girls, and before long they were
likely to get so cold and panicked they would climb out of the boat. And there was
no way she could get the boys to the boat either.

The soldier would shoot the children, if
he saw them. She knew that with utter certainty. She couldn’t let that
happen.

PJ’s words came into her head.
‘You will find you will be able to use your knife, as I have shown you, if
your life or someone else’s depends on it.’

She put her hand in her pocket and
closed it around her knife. There was no alternative but to kill the guard. She
couldn’t let four children die just because she was afraid.

But she was afraid. If she had been
dressed in women’s clothes she could have boldly walked out of the gate, acted
surprised to see the guard there, and then said something flirtatious to get closer
to him. But dressed as she was, he would be suspicious of her immediately. That
meant she had to take him by surprise.

Taking her courage in both hands, she
first signalled to Bernard that he was to stay where he was. She then crept down
behind the garden wall, away from the guard, and stopped at a point where a thick
bush grew up over it.

Picking up some stones first, she
climbed on to the wall.
Then, hidden
from sight by the bush, she threw one of the stones. It made a sharp crack. Peeping
through the bush, she saw the soldier’s head turn in the direction of the
sound, but he didn’t move.

She threw another stone, this time
throwing it further on to the beach, where it made a rattling sound. This time, the
soldier did move. He began walking towards the place where she was hidden, peering
into the darkness of the beach as if he thought someone might be lurking there.

The path was no wider than three feet.
There was a short drop on the other side, which anyone would be wary of in the dark
as it was impossible to see how far the drop was, or even if it ended on rocks or
just sand and grass.

Mariette climbed silently down from the
wall on to the same path the soldier was on, still remaining hidden by the
overhanging bush. She was only four feet from him now, so close she could smell
tobacco on his greatcoat.

She weighed him up. He was only slightly
taller than her, but he was heavy and slow moving. His rifle was still slung over
his shoulder and he had both hands in his pockets. As long as she could spring at
him as quickly as she’d done in training, she could cut his throat before he
even got his hands out of his pockets.

In order to make herself do it, she
pictured the two frightened little girls waiting in the boat and the boys on the
other side of the garden wall, afraid that at any moment they would be caught and
then killed. She had to do this right for them. Failure would mean they would all
die, and Luc, Guy and Celeste would almost certainly face a firing squad.

She crept closer to the soldier’s
back. She hoped the sound of waves breaking on the beach would drown out any sound
she made.

Taking a deep breath, and rising on to
her toes, she leapt
at his back. Her
left hand grabbed his chin and yanked his head back to expose his neck. He made a
roar of surprise, and his helmet thudded against her shoulder. With the knife firmly
in her right hand, she slashed it hard across his throat.

He struggled, made a gurgling sound and
she felt blood spray out, warm against her cold hand and face. She could smell his
blood too, like iron in the icy air. He was sagging back against her, and she pushed
him forward so he fell on to his knees, then she ran for the boys.

‘
Vite, vite
,’ she
called.

They moved like lightning down the
beach, with only the briefest of sideways glances at the soldier lying on the
path.

Mariette had always moved slowly and
cautiously on the beach before, to keep noise to a minimum, but she didn’t
care now. Her only thought was to get the children into the rowing boat and out to
sea.

As Bernard tossed the younger boy into
the boat, the two little girls jumped up looking alarmed.

‘Stay down,’ Mariette
ordered as she pulled on the rope, which was attached to a metal stake secured in
the sand.

Bernard strained to help her push the
rowing boat into the water. The delay in getting down here meant that the tide had
receded some distance, and it was hard going. But finally, the bows reached the
water.

‘Jump in,’ Mariette ordered
Bernard. ‘I’ll just push it out a bit further, and then I’ll be in
too.’