Waiting for the Violins (32 page)

“Where will you go?” Laura asked.

“I’m not sure. Into hiding for a while, with Sandrine. Someplace far away from Brussels. Any ideas?”

At the other end of the table, absentmindedly twirling one of her blond curls, Celine spoke up. “Stopping a train in full charge, what a coup. The maquis in the Ardenne could use someone like you.”

She leaned forward, elbows on the table, as if suddenly hearing her own idea. “I mean seriously. They really could. Especially if you bring guns and a wireless. Why not come back with me to the Ardenne? You’d be out of sight and at the same time still working.”

Antonia stared, not seeing her, weighing the suggestion. “Maquis? Yes, that
is
the sort of thing they do, isn’t it? Stop trains, I mean. But do you know how to link up with them? It’s not like we can simply hike into the woods and offer our services.”

Laura laughed. “Actually, you can.”

“My cousin Raymond is already with them,” Celine explained. “And my grandparents own one of the farms that provision them. I carried messages for the maquis a few times before I came here to be with Laura. Young girls with cute doggies make very good couriers. No one ever suspects us.”

“Cyprian, the head of the maquis around Marcouray, is an old friend from school,” Laura added. “The bravest person I know.”

“You think he’s brave? Myself, I think he’s a little crazy,” Francis scoffed. “But I suppose there’s a place in wartime for people like him.”

Laura ignored him. “You should join them. Both of you would still be ‘in the family’ fighting the Germans, but more out of reach.”

Sandrine caught Antonia’s eye. “I like the idea, don’t you? After what they put me through, I don’t want to just hide. I want to blow things up.”

“And live off the land?”

“Yes, even that. After Breendonk, a tent and bonfire in the woods seems idyllic.” She frowned with a sudden reservation and added, “But how would that affect your responsibilities to London?”

Antonia pondered for a moment. “Well, I have to check in with SOE, of course, to tell them my Brussels cover is lost. But I doubt they’ll be keen to bring me back if they can use me on another mission, and if I point out that the Ardenne is a zone of resistance, they should approve. I rather like the idea of being Robin Hood.”

“Who’s Robin Hood?” Celine asked.

“A twelfth-century English outlaw who lived with his band in the woods and fought the local tyrants.”

“Ah, English maquisards. You see? It’s in your blood,” Celine declared. “You’ll be great.”

Chapter Thirty-two

March 1943

Antonia stood awkwardly in the kitchen of the Delcour farmhouse, while Celine made introductions. “Grandmother, Grandfather, these are my friends from Brussels—Madame Toussaint, head of the Comet Line, and Madame Forrester, our Englishwoman and my wireless teacher.”

She paused for breath. “Antonia, Sandrine, these are my grandparents. Oh, and that’s my cousin Raymond.” She pointed toward a boy of about twenty, with the same sort of war-aged youth that shone in her own face.

“A pleasure to meet you,” Antonia said, shaking hands with all three.

“Thank you for your hospitality and protection,” Sandrine added.

Monsieur Delcour beamed. “Oh, we’re honored to have two people from the Comet Line with us. I understand you’ll be going up to the camp soon.”

“Yes, that’s the plan. We have to discuss all that with Cyprian when he arrives.”

“Oh, he’s already here, in the basement, sharpening some tools. The grindstone is too heavy to drag to the camp. Please sit down while you wait.” He gestured toward an oak table with half a dozen chairs.

Just then, the basement door opened and a tall, angular man of about forty emerged, wearing a generic military tunic. A pistol hung in a holster at his side, and he cradled an axe and a saw blade in his elbow. “Ah, our comrades from Brussels have arrived.”

Antonia was taken aback. She’d somehow expected a more heroic-looking man, or at least a more robust one. But Cyprian was the antithesis of robust. Wiry and gaunt, he had a sharply carved face, his features delicate. His gray eyes were hooded, as if his mind was elsewhere, and, most shocking of all, he was balding.

Ridiculous, that she associated physical courage with a full head of hair. She was embarrassed to have thought so.

She shook his hand, which was sinewy, like that of a carpenter or laborer, and the grime under his nails marked a man who worked on the land. “Nice to meet you,” she said blandly.

“Celine has told us about you and that you’re now fugitives. Well, a loss to the Comet Line is a gain to us.”

“I hope we’ll be a gain,” Sandrine said. “Antonia was a nurse and also has a radio transmitter. As for me, I’m a quick study.”

“I believe you, madam, and I’m sure you’ll be quite valuable once we teach you how to plant explosives.”

He turned to Antonia. “So tell me more about this wireless. You can transmit to London, to ask for arms?” Laying his heavy tools on the floor, he sat down at the table with them.

“We can ask for anything you want. Weapons, ammunition, explosives, though occasionally London can spare a few special items that are severely rationed here. You just need to give me the coordinates of a good drop site. I assume I can transmit from this house?” She directed the question toward Monsieur Delcour.

“Yes, of course you can, dear. We have a room upstairs where you’ll get better reception. I’ll bring up a map of the area,” he said, and disappeared down the stairwell from which Cyprian had just appeared.

“That’s wonderful,” Cyprian said. “But let me tell you about our little band of maquisards that you’ll be joining. We’re currently at about forty, though we have a second camp not far away of about thirty escapees and aviators from another escape line.”

“Another escape line?” Sandrine was intrigued. “Where are they going?”

“To Switzerland, by way of Bastogne and Luxembourg. Of course it never goes smoothly, and some of the men have been camped out for weeks. Our camp is less transitive. It’s mostly made up of men who fled the labor conscriptions and turned partisans, a couple of escaped soviets, and Tunisian prisoners of war. We even have a deserter, an Austrian.”

“Any women?” Antonia asked.

“Well, Celine and a few others like her in the town act as our couriers. In the camp, we have only one, Tineke, and I’m sure she’ll be glad to have company. Don’t worry. The men are all well behaved. More seriously, we’re short of arms. We have only a few pistols, light rifles, grenades, and some mines. We won’t be able to issue you a gun.”

“No need to worry. First of all, I have my own sidearm, and secondly, we should be able to increase your arms’ supply right away by contacting London.”

“Here we are.” Monsieur arrived at the top of the basement stairs somewhat out of breath with a map in his hand. He laid it out on the table and slid it toward Cyprian.

After studying it a moment he tapped one spot with a finger. “We can reach this valley here fairly easily with a couple of mules. The bottom is nice and flat, and the towns just south of it could act as a landmark.”

Antonia took note of the geographical coordinates. “I’ll radio a request tonight. It has to be approved, but I should think in a few days we’d have a delivery. Of Sten guns, at least.”

“That sounds fine. If you can transmit the request this evening, I’ll come by tomorrow morning and escort you up to the camp.”

“We’ll be happy to accommodate you both overnight,” Monsieur Delcour said. “You’re practically family.”

*

The attic of the Delcour house was much less spacious than that of the Château Malou, but in the end, it was warmer and significantly closer to the kitchen and fireplace. With the speed of long practice, Antonia set up the wireless antenna, and with a linen chest acting as a desk, she squatted with Celine before the wireless kit.

“I’m going to send the message, but I want you to listen.” She detached one of the earpieces from her headset and handed it to Celine.

“Afterward, I’ll leave the set here, so you’ll be able to send on it whenever I can’t. This way, I—or even Cyprian—can send down a message to you, and you can transmit it.”

“I like it,” Celine said. “More responsibility than delivering eggs and mail.” She pressed the earpiece against her ear. “Okay, go ahead. I’m ready.”

Antonia tuned the transmitter to the correct frequency and began the coded message, “hearing” the original words through each group of scrambled letters.

Made contact with ardenne partisans called maquisards stp mix of escapees pows evaders and misc illegals all combat ready stp need arms and money stp request drop at lat forty-nine degrees pt seven six two four six and long four degrees pt six two eight five one stp village of marcoury on south border stp wait for yr confirmation with message the dog is sleeping in the sun stp sophie end.

“So that’s done. Now it’ll be your job to check the BBC messages every evening and turn on the receiver regularly to look for London’s response. As soon as you report their reply to me and Cyprian in the camp, we’ll go out with a team to receive the drop.”

“I won’t let you down,” Celine said.

Sandrine came into the room just as she turned off all the switches and laid down the headset. “If you’re done with that, Madame Delcour has announced dinner. She’s also made up the three beds for us in the guest room.”

Antonia exchanged glances with her over Celine’s head, certain they both thought the same thing.
Three beds in the guest room. Another night kept apart. Oh joy.

*

The three-hour hike to the campsite was probably longer than it would have been under ideal conditions, Antonia thought. But rain made the ground slippery, and everyone was heavily burdened. Along with their own packs, Cyprian and Raymond carried tools, and she and Sandrine bore three-dozen eggs packed in straw, a kilo of butter, ten kilos of potatoes, and six loaves of fresh bread, wrapped in paper.

“Here we are, the heart of the Siroux Forest,” Cyprian said, parting the low-hanging branches of two pine trees.

In the morning light, the campsite looked welcoming and peaceful, in spite of the rain. She surveyed the motley collection of shelters, from parachute-silk tents and dugouts to wooden huts. Some dozen men were busy in the vicinity.

She had no way of knowing what they’d been before they fled to the woods. Some still wore the wooden sabots of the peasants or battered field boots, and a few sported the high black boots of the Germans. She smiled internally, imagining how they’d procured them.

Two of them, sawing wood under a tarp, had military tunics of some sort. But the others she could see, carrying jerricans of water or hammering planks or standing about smoking, wore drab shirts and loose trousers tucked into their socks. Almost all had dark berets hanging carelessly on the side of their heads, which seemed to be the sign of the maquisard. That and the pistol handles peeking out from above some of their belts.

Antonia’s rumpled shirt, that once belonged to Laurent Toussaint, the sweater and slacks she’d picked up at Christine’s, and the jacket she’d been wearing since she’d parachuted in, fit well into the motley maquis fashion. All they lacked were berets.

“You’ll be sharing quarters with Tineke,” Cyprian said, directing them to a shed with a corrugated roof covered with branches. Antonia perused it, grateful they had a roof rather than one of the tents spotting the hillside, yet faintly perturbed that they would once again—in fact, permanently—be deprived of intimacy. They would have to be inventive.

They stepped inside the roughly ten-foot-square wooden structure to the sight of two sets of bunk beds, only one of which showed any sign of use. The other three had a simple blanket rolled up at the foot of a bare mattress. The space between them was barely wide enough for someone to turn around in, and the absence of other furniture made it clear that they would spend most of their time outdoors.

“Set the food down here under the bed,” Cyprian directed them. “Tineke will be back this afternoon to make a meal out of it.”

Antonia’s ears picked up.
This afternoon
, he’d said. “That’s fine. In the meantime, may Sandrine and I have some time off from duties? She’s only just recovering from a week imprisoned at Breendonk.” She neglected to mention that Sandrine had rested quite well for a week in Brussels. “And I…” She thought fast. “I’ve been up all night repairing the wireless.”

“That’s fine. We’ll find some jobs for you around the camp this afternoon, after you’ve rested. I thought we could set up a little clinic where you could take a look at some of the men who have an ailment or injury.”

He stepped out of the shed and spoke to them from the ground outside. “No one expects major surgery up here, but it’ll reassure the men to know we have a medic on site.”

“Of course. That sounds like a great idea.” Antonia smiled and nodded, and when he was out of sight, she barred the door. With her back against it, she surveyed their new home. Solo sleeping. Well, she was used to that. The light came from a single opening over the door, its hatch propped open with a stick. Crates along one end of the shed were obviously intended to hold their private possessions. Fortunately, they had very little. She would miss having a flush toilet, though.

Perched on the edge of one of the lower bunks, Sandrine looked around as well. “Basic, very basic. But with you, it’ll be cozy.” She smiled up at Antonia. “Romantic even, with the rain. Don’t you think?”

“Very romantic. In fact, I believe we have an opportunity to seize.” She sidled over to the bunk bed and sat down. A gust of wind drove a splatter of rain against the wall behind them, confirming her observation. “I never thought a rainstorm could be so…stimulating.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Without preliminaries, Sandrine slid a hand under Antonia’s shirt and caressed her breast while covering her mouth with her kiss. Sudden as it was, the kiss enflamed her, and she gave it back while undoing Sandrine’s shirt and pulling it down from her shoulders.