Wild Lavender (53 page)

‘Ah,’ she said, her eyes sparkling, ‘you’re French but you’ve
forgotten. Napoleon attacked that inhospitable landscape and those hot-blooded people, and it was his undoing.’

I took heart from what she said but the subsequent reports filled me with shame. Not only was the ill-equipped Russian army fighting to the last man and woman, but their civilians were too. Why had France given in so easily?

In December, freezing again in our unheated apartments, we learned that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and that the United States had entered the war. At last, I thought. At last.

‘Surely, with help from the Americans, we can win the war now,’ said Madame Goux.

But any hopes we had of a quick end to the war were dashed by the summer of 1942. The Germans were on the verge of taking Stalingrad and, with it, the Caucasus and their oil fields. They were also in Africa: Alexandria and Cairo were almost in their hands. Despite the radio operator’s confidence that the Germans were spreading themselves so thinly that they would collapse, they now had Iran, Iraq and India in their sights. Who would have thought that one European nation could spread so quickly, like a dark stain on the map of the world? Perhaps they would swarm over the United States as well.

If I had sensed an inkling of evil in my encounter with Colonel von Loringhoven, then Paris and the rest of France were soon to see it too. Even some of the self-seeking collaborators started to wonder what malevolent force they had invited into their country. In July, the Nazis banned Jewish people from attending cinemas, theatres, restaurants, cafés, museums and libraries and even forbade them to use public telephone booths. They could only travel in the last two cars in the trains on the
métro
and had to wait for rations at inconvenient times. To identify them, they were forced to wear the yellow Star of David on their outer clothing with the word ‘Jew’ in the centre.

On my way to a rendezvous in Montmartre, I ran into Madame Baquet, who had given me my first job at the Café
des Singes. She was wearing a yellow daffodil in her hair and a yellow scarf around her neck. Her male companion, who she introduced as her new act at the club, was wearing a star on his jacket with ‘Musician’ embroidered in the centre of it. ‘We’ve seen lots of interesting stars in Montmartre this morning,’ Madame Baquet said. ‘Buddhist…Hindu…Human Being.’

I embraced both of them before going on my way. This was the France that I wanted to believe in: irreverent, egalitarian, humane.

But the German high command saw nothing humorous in the gentle protest. One man paraded down the Champs élysées wearing his war medals next to his star and was beaten up by some SS soldiers and shot in the head. The shame of what was being done to their friends and neighbours spread through the city’s inhabitants as the man’s blood spread out on the pavement. The fact that a French veteran was killed so openly and in cold blood was not lost on them.

A few days later, I received an instruction from Roger to cross the demarcation line and go to my family’s farm, accompanied only by Kira. Suspicions were becoming aroused and it seemed likely that I would soon have to move south permanently. Although I had registered with the Propagandastaffel, questions were being asked about why I wasn’t performing in Paris. With Maurice Chevalier, Mistinguett, Tino Rossi and others doing shows, it seemed my excuses were wearing thin. Adding to our problems was the fact that we could no longer receive radio operators in our building. Twice the German tracking vans had traced a signal in the area. Once we had been searched. Madame Goux hid the receiver by putting it into the cat cage and sticking Kira in front of it. The male radio operator and I stripped naked and jumped in the bath. We were so indignant when the Germans burst in that the red-faced soldiers withdrew quickly without noticing there was no water in the tub.

‘Crikey,’ laughed the operator afterwards, when we were
tugging on our clothes, ‘I’m standing here naked with Simone Fleurier. None of my mates will believe it.’

I arrived back in Pays de Sault when the wild lavender was blooming along the road and through the crevices in the rock faces. It filled the air with its sweet, uplifting scent. The road was dusty and Kira’s cage was heavy under my arm. I rested every so often, sitting down on my small suitcase and swiping at my neck with a handkerchief. Two kilometres from the farm I realised that I wasn’t going to make it if I had to carry Kira the rest of the way.

‘You are going to have to walk, my friend,’ I said, slipping her out of the cage and leaving it behind a rock.’

I expected her to sit on her rump and refuse to move. But she only gave a ‘
murr
’ and scampered along beside me.

‘If I had known you could be so cooperative,’ I said, ‘I would have discarded the cage long ago.’

We were passing the Rucarts’ old farm when I heard a vehicle rattle up behind us. I turned to see Minot waving from the driver’s seat of the Peugeot. ‘
Bonjour
,’ he smiled, pushing open the door for me to get inside.

I put Kira on the seat and tossed my suitcase in the back. Minot was wearing rough cotton trousers and a checked shirt with sweat patches under the armpits. It was hard to believe he had once been the suave artistic director at the Adriana. But then, in my grimy dress and scuffed shoes, I wasn’t exactly the Le Chat soap girl any more either.

‘Is Roger at the farm?’ I asked. I hadn’t seen him for months as he had been busy getting people over the Pyrenees. I secretly hoped that in moving south I would be with him more often.

Minot shook his head. ‘He is coming tomorrow with two agents he is taking to the
maquis
.’

The
maquis
were farmers who had taken to the hills to fight the Vichy
gendarmes
and the Germans. They
performed acts of sabotage and attacked strategic posts. They were being armed by both de Gaulle and Churchill—who seemed to have had some kind of falling out—in night-time drops. Their numbers had been greatly increased the previous month, when the Germans had tried to force Frenchmen to go to Germany to work in munition factories and on farms. Tens of thousands of young men had escaped to the hills to swell the numbers of those willing to fight.

‘I am worried about you and your mother,’ I said. I told Minot what had been happening in Paris. ‘The Vichy government is even more anti-Semitic than the Germans. It might be time for you to leave.’

He shook his head. ‘I can’t leave my mother. She is too old to even get on a ship. If worst comes to worst, we will have to hide her. I’ll take to the hills and fight with the others.’

I thought about how Minot and I had once been and how we were now. There was a time when I had thought being a star and being rich was everything. Not any more.

‘I am proud of you,’ I told him.

‘You should be proud of your village,’ he said. ‘They suspect that my mother and I are Jews, but not one of them has denounced us. Not even the mayor.’

When we arrived at the house, the dogs were sleeping in the garden. My mother and aunt were laying the table for lunch. I noticed the sprigs of cypress and bulbs of garlic hung around the door—the Provençal charm for protection. Bernard was seated at the table, talking to Madame Meyer. I hugged my mother and aunt. They were both much thinner than the last time I had seen them although in the countryside there seemed to be plenty of food to go around. My eye fell to the five extra plates on the table.

‘I thought Roger and the others weren’t coming until tomorrow?’ I said.

Bernard’s expression turned grave. He reached for the broom by the stove and made three knocks on the ceiling
with it. Instantly I heard the scurrying of feet. I had thought the previous group of soldiers had already been taken to Marseilles to wait in the house there. Then I realised that the footsteps were light.

The children stopped in the doorway when they saw me: two redheaded girls of about seven and nine, and three boys of around the same ages. I was taken aback by the combination of their innocent faces and the terror in their eyes.

‘I found them when I was settling the men in Marseilles,’ Bernard said.

‘Their parents were taken away,’ Aunt Yvette whispered. ‘A woman in the house next door to Aunt Augustine’s hid them.’

‘Come to the table,’ my mother said to the children, stretching out her arm. ‘This is Simone.’

As the children inched forward, she introduced them by name: Micheline, Lucie, Richard, Claude, Jean. Their eyes were globes in their heads. It pained me to see children scarred by mistrust. I called Kira over and picked her up so they could pat her.

‘What is her name?’ Claude, the youngest, asked.

‘Kira,’ I said. ‘She is Russian.’

‘She looks like Chérie,’ Lucie told me. ‘Chérie sleeps on my bed.’

The children patted Kira and scratched her chin, but their hands were trembling so much I wondered if they could feel anything at all. Anything, that was, except the cold, sharp sensation of fear.

After lunch, the children returned upstairs to play. I thought it strange that they couldn’t play out in the open. The farm was miles from anywhere.

‘The activities of the
maquis
mean that the
gendarmes
come by regularly to check that the people in the village and on the farms aren’t hiding stashes of weapons or wounded men,’ Bernard explained. ‘I would keep the children here but I’m not sure how long they will be safe. I am hoping Roger will offer a solution.’

Roger arrived the next evening with a weapons trainer and a female radio operator who looked no more than twenty. They had been parachuted into France the previous night. After dinner, we sent the trainer and operator to their rooms for a good night’s rest in a bed, and Roger and I went outside to talk. He was still as handsome as the last time I had seen him, in Paris, but there were circles under his eyes and the lines on his forehead had deepened.

‘You need a rest,’ I said.

‘So do you,’ he replied, grasping my wrist and examining it. ‘Look how thin you’ve become.’

I told him about the children Bernard had hidden upstairs in the house.

‘I know,’ said Roger, looking up at the moonlit sky. ‘He told me about them in Marseilles.’

‘Can we get them out?’

Roger leaned against the side of the house. ‘We’ve been sending Jewish refugees along the line for some time now. But those children will never make it across the Pyrenees with only a guide.’ He fell silent for a moment, turning the question over in his mind. ‘There’s a ship coming for the men in Marseilles in a few days’ time,’ he said. ‘It will be dangerous, but it’s the only way I can see that we can get those children out of the country.’ He turned to me and his breath brushed across my cheek. ‘I’ll be going with them, Simone. I have to leave France.’

My heart dropped to my feet. He was leaving.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘I’ve been compromised by a double agent and I must break with the network so I don’t lead him to any more people.’

Cold gripped my insides. How could I be so selfish? If Roger had been compromised then he was in grave danger. He had no choice but to leave. For a moment I considered asking if I could go with him, but I shook myself back to
where I was. France needed me, and my family and friends had put themselves at risk at my persuasion. I had to stay in the country no matter what my personal feelings were.

‘I’ll miss you, Simone,’ Roger said, reaching out and running his hand through my hair.

I turned away so that he would not see the tears glistening on my cheeks.

At dawn the following morning, Roger and I took the two agents to the local
maquis
whom they would be working with.

When we arrived at the camp, the first people I saw were Jean Grimaud, my father’s friend, and Jules Fournier, the brother-in-law of the mayor. It was only by their posture and eyes that I recognised them; both men had grown woolly beards and their clothes were mud-splattered and covered in pine needles. Their life of sleeping rough wherever they could had made them haggard, but the men greeted us in good spirits and invited us to share in their meal of wild mushroom omelettes. Roger and I declined; we knew that food was hard for the
maquis
to come by and that their wives and daughters took risks in bringing it to them.

While they were serving the meal, a young man with dark pools for eyes delivered a message to Jean from a neighbouring
maquis
. The boy looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t remember how I knew him. He noticed my puzzled expression and smiled.

‘Ah, it is you!’ he said, in an accent that wasn’t French. ‘I have never forgotten your kindness to me.’ He reached into his jacket and pulled out a sachet of lavender, grubby and withered with age and handling. ‘It has been my good luck charm all these years.’

And then I realised who he was. Goya, the young boy who had come with his family the first year we had harvested lavender. He told me that his real name was Juan
and we spoke briefly about our lives in the years since we had last seen each other. ‘My mother always joked that you were not a girl made for farm work,’ he said. ‘And look—her prediction was true.’

We stayed with the
maquis
most of the day. Roger exchanged information and the agents discussed strategies for weapons drops and contact with the Allies. I watched the operator set up her radio. Roger had told me that each operator had a special code to pass on to Britain to indicate if a message they were relaying was false. The operator would need it if she ever found a German gun pressed to the back of her head.

She probably has a lover and a family back home too, I thought, watching the set determination with which the young woman went about her task. If she was so strongminded then I must be that way also.

In the late afternoon, Roger and I wished the radio operator and the weapons instructor good luck and said farewell to the
maquisards
. We reached the edge of my family’s fields just as the sun was setting. The plants were lavandin now, the commercial hybrid, but Bernard had left a patch of wild lavender in the field closest to the house out of respect for my father. The soft light shimmered on the tips of the plants. My sadness at Roger’s impending departure pierced my heart like a sharp stone.