The Silent Hours (26 page)

ADELINE

1953, France

My legs feel shaky as I lower myself onto the smooth leather: there is no way back. Sebastien closes the door behind me, revs the engine and I try to nod, to convince, as he swivels slightly in his seat to look at me.

In a too-bright voice, he asks, ‘Ready?’

We are not.

It is the anniversary of the day it happened and there is to be a service in the village. He wants me to go with him. I can’t believe I am going back there.

The day is clear and the fields around the nunnery are a patchwork of yellows, browns and greens. Cows stand in the shade of the trees as we pass, a flock of startled birds soars quickly up ahead. We speak little over the rattle of the engine. Villages turn into towns and I stare in disbelief at the people walking by on their daily business. A woman, skirt skimming her knees, reaches down to talk to her daughter who has stopped to stare into the window of a bakery crammed full of pastries. An elderly couple sit and drink coffee on the edge of the pavement, both chairs turned towards the street so that they can observe the comings and goings.

It seems that the world has kept on turning: there were days when I felt it was just me in my room, in the stone corridors of the nunnery, as if France stopped at the edges of the garden.

I look over at Sebastien, at his profile. A straight nose, his hair even darker in the car, curling up over his shirt collar. Hands, resting on the steering wheel, clipped nails. I see a small scar on his left hand and comment on it.

‘First time my father allowed me out on a bicycle by myself. I had cuts all over both hands,’ he explains.

‘Where do your parents live?’ I ask.

He glances over at me. ‘They died during the war.’

I hadn’t expected it. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Belsen. 1943. Within weeks of each other.’

I haven’t heard of Belsen.

He explains. I hear the details of the couple I will never meet, an ordinary couple who were going about their lives in Limoges, a few kilometres away: another world.

The scenery grows familiar and I shift in my seat, clasp both hands together, twist my ring around and around. We are turning off the road and the sign points us to Oradour – a different direction, a newly built village of Oradour. It’s further up the hill.

Sebastien parks facing away from the village and I want to urge him to keep driving.

He sits there, turns the engine off and then gets out of the front seat and helps me out. He offers me his arm. I take it, breathing slowly, not able to look up yet.

‘We’ve arrived,’ he says softly.

We turn towards the old village and start walking. As we walk down the slope, my head is spinning with flurries of memories: the tram as it approached the arch; the signs to Limoges, Saint-Junien; the first building, low stone wall intact, grass mown neatly. For a moment nothing has altered. Then my head turns to gaze across the road at the shells of former buildings: the old town, the real town. We enter the high street, down past familiar buildings, their inhabitants all gone, their walls crumbling, weeds creeping unchecked through cracks in brickwork, through broken flagstones.

Sebastien has told me the details. The truth is everywhere. We move wordlessly past the tram stop, the post office, the old schoolyard. Its roof is coming away. As we walk towards the green my feet slip on the cobbles. I hear the rusty sign of Monsieur Renard’s garage as it swings lightly in the breeze, the owner dead, the bodies of his two sons never identified – shot in their garage with nine others, the place torched.

I have to stop in the road. Catch my breath. Up ahead of us, people are clustered on the green. More are arriving.

I stand looking at the façade of the shop. The walls have crumbled in, the back part of the shop is totally exposed, you can see past our old yard to the view of the hills beyond. It is as if there was never a second storey. It is as if no one ever lived there.

Everything I owned, loved, everything I held, sold, sat on, slept in, everything. It has disappeared; there is no evidence it ever existed, as if I am mistaken.

Sebastien takes hold of my arm and I am grateful as he urges me to keep moving. With one last look I allow myself to be led past the house.

There are more than a hundred people meeting by a simple stone memorial to the village. The mood is sombre and from my vantage point I can just make out the space where the spire of the church used to be. There is a flat line now, where it collapsed from the fire; it is no longer a sentry to the village, but another empty ruin.

I step a little closer to Sebastien.

The service passes quietly. Boys and men are holding their hats in front of them in respect, a couple of younger girls, faces I don’t recognize, are holding hands side by side. I see one blonde boy, in his late teens, standing in front of me, earnestly mouthing the Lord’s Prayer, his hand resting protectively on the shoulder of his younger sibling. The younger brother, with brown hair curling up at the ends, reaches to tug distractedly on the lapel of his coat.

Paul always resented dressing up in fusty attire for formal occasions, too.

The sun peeks from behind the cloud, and as its rays light up the group I can hear the voices of my own family. I close my eyes. They are saying goodbye to me, they are moving through the village and beyond to the hills and the forest and the Glane as it makes its steady path below us all; unstoppable, always forging a course through the landscape. I remember Vincent telling me once that water will always find a way through. I feel him by my side now, repeating this simple fact, my mouth lifting at his memory.

We lay flowers at the foot of the memorial and I move away to a shady corner of the green. Sebastien falls into step beside me. A younger woman holding a handkerchief to her face is comforted quietly, and a large group of women pass us with gentle nods.

As we turn to leave, the two brothers walk past us, the younger one turning to take his brother’s hand: ‘Tristan, wait …’

Something nudges at me. A faint laugh, tripping past us in the high street.

She is here.

THE END

HISTORICAL NOTE

I teach History at a secondary school in Berkshire and was looking for something to teach Year 9. A colleague of mine told me about this tragedy and I started to do some research. On discovering that there had been one survivor from the church that day, I started to build a story around her. The book grew from there. All the characters are entirely fictional.

On 10 June 1944, a small village near Limoges, Oradour-sur-Glane, was targeted by a small division of Nazi soldiers. It was a sunny Saturday and the village was bustling. Men were out collecting their tobacco ration, the hotels and restaurants were busy with inhabitants and weekend visitors, and the children were in school that day (although I have not adhered to this).

The SS arrived in the village at 2. 15 p. m. in eight trucks, two heavy-tracked vehicles and a motorcycle. People were aware of some troops moving through the region but it was assumed by most that they were headed north to Normandy and the new front opening up due to the recent Allied invasion there a few days earlier.

Most of the soldiers were aged between seventeen and twenty-five. They drove through the village to ensure both ends were blocked off. Soldiers stood on guard at the entrances and questioned anyone coming in or out of the village. The mayor and all the villagers were told they were there to carry out an identity check. The town crier, accompanied by two soldiers, was sent to bang his drum and order the villagers to the green, with their identity papers.

The villagers had no real reason to question this and while many were surprised, they were not afraid. The mayor seemed calm and this helped some who might have panicked. People were brought in from the surrounding houses, fields and farms on trucks.

The children evacuated from the school were largely unfazed: it was a break from their Saturday lessons and they had no reason to fear soldiers, having not seen them before in the village. This was not the case with the children from a smaller school, refugees from Alsace-Lorraine, who instantly started screaming when they saw the soldiers. The teachers had a much harder time getting them to the green. One boy, eight-year-old Roger Godfrin, escaped across the schoolyard and through a hedge. He was shot at by a soldier and fell down, pretending to be dead. Roger survived but the rest of his family, his parents and four siblings, did not.

Evidence suggests that when the women and children were separated from the men, and sent to the church, the mood changed. People were forcibly separated. Women were seen weeping, some barely able to stand, as they were led away. They were told they would be there while a search of the village was carried out. The men were divided into six uneven groups, and made to sit in rows of three facing the houses. They were then led in their groups to different locations in the village. The biggest group was led to Laudy barn.

At an appointed time, 3. 30 p. m. , it seems an explosion or burst of machine-gun fire was heard, which acted as a signal. The men were fired upon simultaneously in their various locations. Machine guns had been set up in the barns and garages where the men were being held (in some cases, the men had had to move carts, farm equipment and other items outside to ensure everyone could fit). Some survivors claimed that when the machine guns were being set up in the entrance to the barns, the soldiers were laughing and joking. One report talks of seeing one German soldier crying softly on some stairs. Many of the men were tense, some terrified, their only consolation being that the women and children were safe in the church.

The soldiers shot low and those who were not killed were hit in the legs which stopped them escaping. The soldiers then piled straw and wood onto the bodies, some of whom would still have been alive, and set them alight. Five men did manage to survive the shooting in Laudy barn and escaped the village when it became dark.

A ‘box with wires’ was dragged into the centre of the church. It appears to have been the source of the explosion but perhaps did not go off as had been planned. Hand grenades and machine guns ensured that any women or children fleeing were stopped. There was only one survivor from the church, a woman called Madame Rouffanche, who managed to climb up a ladder used to light candles and get out through a window about ten feet above the ground. She was shot during her escape and was wounded, but managed to cover herself in earth in a pea garden nearby until people found her the next day. The rest of her family were all killed. A woman holding her baby attempted to follow but both were seen by the soldiers and killed.

The soldiers searched the rest of the village and shot anyone found hiding where they were discovered: one old, invalid man was burned in his bed; other bodies were found dropped down a well; and the remains of a baby were found in the baker’s oven. After this the soldiers set the whole village on fire and left after a few hours, with looted valuables.

In total, 642 men, women and children were killed on that afternoon in a small village in France, which had been barely touched by the war up to that point. Whole families were wiped out: there were eighteen Bardets and twelve Thomases on the list of the dead.

You can still visit the village today, which remains as a memorial to this event.

No one is sure why the attack happened, and this is why I have left it as a question in the novel. There did not appear to be any weapons found in the soldiers’ search and there is no evidence that there was any Resistance activity in the village up to that point. There had been no attacks on the SS in Oradour or in the surrounding area. The SS themselves never gave a reason for the attack, even when on trial for their crimes in 1953.

Some people believe the attack was, in fact, aimed at the wrong Oradour. A Waffen SS officer, Helmut Kampfe, had been captured and was being held in a village called Oradour-sur-Vayres, not far away.

One thing is certain: the attack came as a shock to many. The unoccupied zone of France had been largely unaffected by war, and there did not appear to be an explanation for this massacre of an innocent people.

In January 2013, it was announced that there was be a new German inquiry into this event, after investigators uncovered reports in archived files of the East German Stasi secret police. Two SS officers, now eighty-seven and eighty-eight years old, are alive today, and the German prosecutor said he hoped a new legal process would begin in Germany.

On 8 January 2014, one of the men was charged with his involvement in the murder of twenty-five people, and with aiding and abetting the murder of several hundred others. He was nineteen at the time.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to the many people that helped make this book a reality.

To my colleagues at Bradfield College for being such a brilliant and inspiring bunch of people. To the girls of Palmer House who keep my feet firmly on the ground. To Trevor Kidson for telling me about this event in the first place and checking up on my progress. To Claudine Jones for talking to me about all things French and to the Goldings for allowing me to steal most of their names for this novel.

To early readers – Sarah Callejo for her fabulous advice, Naomi Billington for crying in a hairdressers, Caroline Hogg for her encouragement when I was just starting out, Kevin Collins for his insight, Cat Llewelyn for her excellent early notes. To Carol Roberts, Jill Bentley and Rose Darby for making some helpful editing suggestions.

To Clare Wallace, my fabulously thorough agent, for being such a support. For the hours she spent slaving over the manuscript, her perceptive editorial notes and her constant belief in this book. To the whole Darley Anderson team, an incredibly warm, welcoming group. In particular Vicki Le Fevre for her early edit, Keshini Naidoo for putting me in Clare’s path in the first place, Emma Winter for her work in the Rights Department, Sheila David for her work in the film department and of course the lovely Mary Darby for all her work trying to sell the book to different territories.

To the brilliant team at Corvus. To Anna Hogarty who first championed this book, to Maddie West and Louise Cullen for their work on it since and Sara O’Keeffe for her enthusiasm for the second book. To Alison Davies and the rest of the sales and marketing team for believing in this novel and working so hard to ensure it does well. To Anna Morrison for a wonderfully evocative cover.

To Wendy Wallace for her early endorsement of the book and the incredible quote. To James Rennoldson at the Writers and Artists website for letting me initiative a vlog takeover. To Susanna Scott at Brit Mums for making it one of their monthly Book Club reads and to my amazing online community of writers and bloggers who ensure I am never writing on my own. Particular thanks to some inspirational women and brilliant cheerleaders: Kirsty Greenwood and the Novelicious girls, Amanda Jennings, Hannah Beckerman, Rowan Coleman, Rosie Walsh, Liz Tipping, Josie Rose, Katie Marsh, Ali Harris, Cressida McLaughlin, Debs Carr, Lisa Dickenson, Liz Fenwick, Kerry Hudson, Cally Taylor, Kat Black, Emma Kavanagh and Tammy Cohen.

To my husband Ben who is incredibly patient when I am writing, or worrying about writing, who helps me with plot problems and feeds me when I have forgotten. Thank you for being amazing.

Lastly to my parents who read numerous drafts of the book and who have always been confident I would get there in the end. Your certainty in my eventual success has always made me believe anything is possible.