Butcher and Bolt Read online

  She had never considered herself to be French, or to be a Jew, she had always thought of herself as an individual, somehow different from the people in her town, an impression reinforced by those very people, who, aware of the tragedy of her family, saw her as somehow outside the normal round of daily life. Her parents had both died when she was a child. Her Jewish father had been killed in the defence of Verdun in 1916, only days after returning from the front and spending a single night in a forbidden tryst with her gentile mother. When she heard the news of his death, her mother had gone into a decline, and, shortly after the child was born she had been found stretched on her lover’s grave, both wrists slashed to the bone.

  Now once more, only twenty years later, here were the Germans again, pushing into their country with their weapons and their arrogance, and the mighty French army, so utterly confident of victory, had been swept away in just a few weeks.

  Could it really be only a year since the Germans had invaded Poland? she reflected. Europe had changed irrevocably in that time, and the whole world seemed to be holding its breath now, waiting to see what Hitler would do next.

  In France at least, his intentions were clear: the country was to be put to the wheel of the German war effort. The soldiers who had surrendered during the defence of France had never returned. The papers said they had been sent to work camps in Germany and the male population of northern France now consisted mainly of farmers, boys and old men.

  Those who remained were on ever-stricter rationing, their movements restricted by curfews and identity cards. The whole apparatus of occupation was aimed at keeping the population too busy trying to find food to put up a fight. Food became scarcer each month, and the conversation in the ever-lengthening queues was of rising prices and the prospect of a bad winter ahead. Those who could afford black-market luxuries, such as tinned food, stockpiled them against a future with no certainty except for the sound of German voices in the street outside at night.

  The frustration and impotent rage boiled in Yvette like a sulphurous cauldron. After weeks of self-doubt, and against all her instincts of self-preservation, she had decided to leave the farm near her home town of Roubaix, the farm where she had sheltered while the Germans advanced across France. The farmer there had said he knew of men who were planning to resist, but after her ordeal at the hands of the spy Schmidt, she had been too weak to do anything but rest and recover. One night, the farmer had given her a sleeping draught in her coffee and she awoke the next day in a room in the Hotel Les Mauves on Cap Gris Nez, between Boulogne sur Mer and Calais, near the town of Wissant.

  Beside the bed was a set of German-issued identity papers that stated she was Alouette Fontain of Wissant, daughter of Andre and Eva Fontain, both deceased. Whoever had arranged for her to be there and had produced these false papers was clearly someone with connections. As she pondered these questions the hotelier had opened the door to her room and said ‘Attention! Mademoiselle Fontain, you have been assigned to me by the Arbeitgefreiter as my new maid. Get up! You have work to do!’

  After two days spent mopping, sweeping and ironing in which she had barely had a moment to contemplate what had happened, she was pouring a man his breakfast coffee in the dining room.

  ‘How are you finding the hotel?’ asked the man quietly, without looking up from his coffee cup.

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean m’sieur,’ said Yvette, arranging the salt and pepper shakers and looking at him intently. He was unremarkable really: a small man in a three-piece suit with his jacket slung over the back of the chair. Dark hair stippled with grey, a strong chin and a bulbous nose seemingly founded on a bushy moustache. A French face, with dark penetrating eyes glaring out from beneath thick eyebrows. He could have been the local fishmonger or tobacconist, except for those eyes. She felt naked under their gaze, all her secret hatreds and revenge fantasies apparently observed, considered and dismissed for what they were: mere phantasms.

  He retrieved a fountain pen and a piece of card from his waistcoat pocket, wrote something on it and wrapped in a twenty-franc note. Grasping her hand, he thrust the note and the card into it. She started, but didn’t pull away.

  ‘Until tomorrow then Yvette,’ and he stood up, tossed a few francs onto the table and walked out.

  On the card in black ink were the words: ‘L’Espadon, Calais, 10pm. Marcel.’ She thrust the card into her bosom and quickly retreated to her room where she shredded the card and burnt the remnants in the ashtray as she smoked two cigarettes to the butt in quick succession.

  Chapter Thirteen

  That had been over a month ago. Now Yvette found herself sitting again in a corner of L’Espadon in Calais, casting nervous glances at a fly-specked clock on the wall. She’d left a message the day before in the dead-drop, a space behind a loose brick in an alley wall behind the fish market, and now Marcel and Etienne were late.

  She sipped at her sour wine and tried to ignore the sickly sensation of morning sickness. She’d thrown up that morning the moment she woke up sure enough, but her experience of being pregnant was of a generalised miasma of mind and body, not unlike a hangover that wouldn’t go away.

  A drunken and morose fisherman at a nearby table kept staring at her, and she pulled the scarf closer around her face. She was less afraid of his being a potential rapist as of his recognising her from the last time she had been here. This was not a good meeting place for her, too conspicuous, and no-one could be trusted these days.

  The door swung open and Marcel and Etienne walked in, Etienne making straight for the bar, Marcel to her table.

  ‘Bonsoir Yvette, what have you decided?’

  ‘We have to get him out.’

  ‘It will not be easy.’

  ‘Nothing is.’

  Etienne placed a carafe of Bordeaux and three glasses on the table, sat down and reached reflexively in his pocket for the packet of Gitanes that wasn’t there.

  ‘Damn! Bloody rationing. They’ll be stopping our wine next.’

  ‘Etienne, how much do you know about the gaol in Calais?’ asked Yvette, pouring them each a glass.

  ‘The gaol? Well I’ve been in it once, a friend of mine was locked up there back in ’37 awaiting trial.’

  ‘What for?’ said Marcel.

  ‘Murder,’ said Etienne, ‘he killed his landlord, with an axe, can you believe that? Must’ve been reading Dostoevsky and got the red mist on rent day. They let him out when the war came and brought him back to the regiment.’

  ‘Is he still alive?’ asked Yvette.

  ‘Oui, and here in Calais, like us he managed to avoid being captured during the fighting.’

  ‘I must speak with him,’ said Yvette, ‘he will know how we can get a man out of there.’

  Etienne looked at his watch.

  ‘Curfew starts in an hour, he lives not far from here, we could go and see him now. I will not introduce you by your real names, this man is not altogether trustworthy.’

  Five minutes later, a ground-floor door in a squalid block of flats opened to Etienne’s knock, and there stood Ricard Monschal. He was chewing a crust of bread, and gulped it quickly, as if he feared they would snatch it from his hands. The crust disappeared into a narrow-lipped mouth, and a pair of suspicious black eyes peered out from beneath a single eyebrow.

  ‘Etienne?’ said the man in surprise, ‘what is it? Who are these two?’

  ‘Let us in Ricard,’ said Etienne in an urgent whisper, ‘there are Germans about.’

  The building was old and in disrepair, and Ricard’s flat consisted of just two rooms. His state of poverty was clear from the lack of furnishings and he didn’t offer Yvette the chair that sat alone beside the table.

  ‘It’s been a while Etienne,’ said Ricard, ‘you survived the invasion then?’

  ‘Oui. Allow me to introduce Alouette and Roger, friends of mine.’

  Ricard ignored the introduction.

  ‘What’s this about then?’
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  ‘A friend of ours has been taken by the Germans and imprisoned in Calais gaol. Alouette here wants to get him out, we thought you might be able to help.’

  ‘Help? Why would I do that?’

  ‘He is a British officer captured during a raid,’ said Etienne, ‘and a personal friend of Alouette’s. Before he was captured he was seen in German uniform, and once they have interrogated him he is likely to be shot as a spy, so we don’t have much time.’

  ‘This is all rather interesting, but you didn’t answer my question.’

  ‘Because you will be helping your country,’ said Yvette.

  ‘Ah patriotism,’ said Ricard, and he spat on the floor, ‘I am done with that. What else can you offer?’

  ‘Before we discuss payment, perhaps you could explain what you can do for us?’ said Yvette.

  ‘What do you want to know? How to get your lover out?’ asked the man with a leer.

  ‘Oui,’ said Yvette unflinchingly, ‘that is exactly what I want to know.’

  ‘While I was inside I knew a man who escaped just after the war started. He had every opportunity to disappear, but what did the fool do? He volunteered for the army and was killed at Stonne trying to destroy a tank with a grenade. How do I know this? Because they awarded him a posthumous Legion d’ Honneur. It was in all the papers. Anyway, tell me how you will pay for this advice and I will tell you how he did it.’

  ‘What do you want?’ asked Yvette.

  ‘Some real food would be a good start. Meat, and wine, and cigarettes.’

  ‘Very well, we can provide those things,’ said Etienne.

  ‘Deliver them tomorrow night, and in the meantime,’ pointing at Yvette, ‘you must go to the prison tomorrow and apply for a job there as a cleaning woman. To bring someone out you need someone else in. If you can’t do that, you have no chance. Once I have the food I will tell you what you need to do.’

  ‘What if I can’t get a job there?’ asked Yvette.

  ‘Don’t worry, they’ll take a pretty little thing like you,’ said Ricard, eyeing her legs appreciatively.

  ‘We should go,’ she said, standing abruptly.

  With only ten minutes before the 9pm curfew, the three split up and Yvette walked through the streets to her own flat, a tiny place that she shared with a woman whose husband had gone missing during the invasion.

  She lay down on her uncomfortable bed, but sleep refused to come. Her mind raced with thoughts of what she must do in the morning. When she finally fell into a restless sleep, she dreamt of Joe’s face behind barred windows, and she was afraid.

  ~ ~ ~

  In his cell, Joe stared at the ceiling with a blank mind. He’d spent the last three hours in a state of panic: pacing up and down the five steps to the door and back, heart pounding, sweating with fear at what was to come, and eventually throwing himself to the floor and doing fifty push-ups just to move the focus from his mind to his body. This seemed to work, so he kept going, working his way through the sequence of squats, sit-ups and stretches that his Commando instructors had forced him and his men through three or four times a day. Finally, drenched in sweat, he lay down on the creaking wooden cot, put his hands behind his head, and tried to breathe himself into a state of calm.

  Why had he volunteered for this insane mission? What had he been thinking? That he could just sail over and snatch a German officer just by clicking his fingers?

  ‘You idiot Dean,’ he muttered to himself, ‘bloody, bloody idiot.’

  He thought about his parents. His French mother who had so carefully instructed him in her native tongue since he first started to talk; his father who had shown him and his brother the kind of strict discipline that comes from a military career. He pictured his father in this situation, standing ramrod straight and formally stating “Name, Rank and Serial Number, that’s all I can give you”. Joe smiled at the image. He’d respected his father, but he couldn’t say he’d ever really felt much affection for the man, with his obsession for obeying orders, doing his duty, never questioning authority. It was all faintly ridiculous. How would he have resisted torture?

  Besides, what did it matter if he talked anyway? He didn’t have any useful information. He could tell them a little of the techniques they’d trained in, but no doubt the German army was just as adept at training soldiers as the British. He knew the names and ranks of his two superior officers and little else. He didn’t even know the location of the barracks they’d stayed in before leaving England, as they’d arrived and left in the dark.

  As the night wore on, tears of self-pity began to trickle down his cheeks.

  ~ ~ ~

  Yvette rode her bicycle to the gaol at 8am the next day. She had taken particular care with her make-up, and put on her last remaining dress of any quality. She had padded her bra with folded newspaper, which itched against the underside of her breasts and, with some difficulty, tied her unfashionably long curly hair into twin plaits. Combined with the last of her pink lipstick, the overall effect was to make her look like a schoolgirl who was being sent to the headmistress to be reprimanded for raising the hem of her dress above the knees.

  She leant her bicycle against the wall of the gaol and approached the guard at the gate. Her heart was pounding in her chest so hard she though the man must surely hear it, and her hands shook involuntarily.

  ‘Excuse moi,’ she asked the soldier, ‘I’ve come about the cleaning job.’

  The German looked at her uncomprehendingly, gave her an up-and-down glance and pointed through the open gate to a set of steps leading into the main building.

  ‘Ansprechen die Unteroffizier.’

  ‘Merci.’

  The guard watched her walk across the cobbled square and whistled softly to himself. He wasn’t aware of any job on offer, but he hoped she got it.

  On her way across the courtyard, Yvette took a quarter of an onion from her pocket, squeezed it and, pretending to blow her nose. held it beneath her eyes until they began to sting and water. Entering the office, Yvette found a lieutenant sitting behind a counter, shuffling papers.

  ‘Excuse moi,’ she said, looking at him with lowered eyes, ‘I’ve come about the cleaning job.’

  ‘Job? What job?’ replied the man in French, ‘we already have cleaners, you must be mistaken.’

  ‘Non!’ she said firmly. ‘One of your officers, his name is Max Einden, he told me to come here and I would be given a job. He is, what do you call him, a Hauptsturmfuhrer?’

  ‘Sorry mademoiselle, there might be a dozen Hauptsturmfuhrers posted in this town for all I know, but none of them work here, certainly no Max Einden. I think you have been tricked.’

  ‘Non, surely not?’ cried Yvette, ‘he promised me that he would take care of me! He has used me for months and now has left me nothing!’ and she began to sob loudly.

  A door to her right flew open and an officer in a captain’s uniform burst in.

  ‘Was ist? What is all this racket Leutnant?’

  ‘My apologies, Kapitan Hetzel, this girl seems to think she has been promised a job here.’

  Yvette held her head in her hands, the fumes from the onion clutched in her handkerchief making her eyes run, then raised her distrait face to the Captain.

  ‘Oh sir!’ she said, ‘the Hauptsturmfuhrer promised me he would look after me! For months now he has promised, and now he has gone and I am …’ She gestured at her stomach.

  ‘Verdammt!’ exclaimed the captain, then switching to clumsy French, ‘who was this Hauptsturmfuhrer? Does he have a name?’

  ‘Einden, sir, Max Einden.’

  ‘And his unit?’

  ‘I don’t know sir, we never really talked about that. I think he said he was in the artillery, but I know nothing of these soldierly things.’

  By now the Captain had noticed Yvette’s figure and, through her tears, the fine angles of her face. He thought for a moment as he looked her up and down. He could easily sack of o
ne of the other cleaners he reflected, one in particular was a cranky old hag who muttered constantly as she worked—no-one would miss her—and he had no doubt that this girl could be induced to do more than clean, especially with the food he could offer her.

  ‘Ach, kommen sie,’ he said, pointing to his office, ‘was ist deine Name? Ach, Quel est votre nom?’

  ‘Alouette sir, merci sir,’ said Yvette as she sat in the chair opposite his desk and heard the door close behind her.

  ‘A cleaning job you say eh?’ said the captain. ‘Tell me, how did you meet this Hauptsturmfuhrer of yours? Did you know that is an SS rank?’

  Yvette knew all the SS ranks, but she looked wide-eyed.

  ‘SS? No I had no idea, he wore a grey uniform like all the rest. I met him when he was billeted to my father’s house. He was very kind, he brought me food and…’ she trailed off.

  ‘And he took advantage of your situation?’ said the captain.

  ‘Well sir,’ said Yvette, avoiding his eye, ‘we have been occupied and our Marschal has told us to co-operate. When a German officer wants something, he gets it.’

  ‘And if I give you a job here, with regular food and pay, what will you do for me?’ said the captain.

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ said Yvette.

  The captain stood up.

  ‘Come around here,’ he said, gesturing at this side of the desk.

  As Yvette rose and walked around, the man unbuttoned his flies.

  ‘You are right girl, you are a conquered people. Now, I’m sure you know what to do with this,’ he said, pulling his rapidly swelling penis from inside his pants.