31.
WHEN SHE ARRIVED AT the house from the tunnel, Johanna was waiting in the cellar dressed in a pair of dark trousers, walking boots and a grey shirt. Johanna looked as though she was going on a hike, and it dawned on Fabienne that she had other plans.
“No, no, no.” She shook her head and held her hand up to Johanna. “You are not coming with us.”
Johanna gathered the children around her as if using them as a shield. “Come on, children, let’s go.”
Sister Jeanne glanced from one woman to the other with a deepening frown.
Fabienne gritted her teeth. She couldn’t create a scene or drag Johanna up the stairs in front of the children. She could help them through the tunnel and then come back home. “Fine. You bring the buckets.”
Johanna smiled and turned on her heel. “Fine.”
Sister Jeanne smiled sweetly at the children and then turned to Johanna and Fabienne. “It is my time to leave you.” She hugged them both. “I cannot thank you enough. May God be with you both, always.”
“Do you have enough food with you, Sister?” Johanna asked.
The sister patted her robe – a hidden pocket, no doubt. “Yes, I have plenty. Someone will be waiting for me at the other end. I will be back at the convent by the end of the day.”
She held the cross in her hand as she spoke. Fabienne wondered if what she’d said was really a prayer. “The children will achieve great things because of you.”
The sister nodded. “They will have an opportunity, because of all of us.” She kissed the children, left the cellar and started down the tunnel back towards the German border.
“Are you ready?” Fabienne said, glancing from one frightened child to another. “Come on, let’s go.”
The younger child stared at her vacantly. Her brother took her hand and encouraged her to move. Fabienne led the way, and Johanna followed behind the children.
As they reached the cottage, the youngest girl vomited.
Johanna knelt in front of her, studied her, and touched her forehead. “Are you feeling poorly?”
The girl nodded. Her cheeks were rosy and the area around her mouth was pale. Her skin was dry, burning hot.
Fabienne led them into the kitchen and gave them the bottle of doctored milk. The boy drank a third, then the eldest girl. The sick girl drank a little and started to retch. There was no way Fabienne could put her in the back of the van. “She will have to stay here until she’s well,” she said.
The boy put his arm around his sister. “If she’s staying, then we need to stay with her.”
The girl started crying.
They didn’t have room in the cottage to look after three children, let alone without identity documents.
Johanna clasped Fabienne’s arm. “She can travel in the front with me.”
“You are not coming in the van.” Fabienne shook her head.
Johanna glared at her, clearly disagreeing. “I’m going to church, and you are driving that way. I told my husband that you would drop me off.”
Fabienne widened her eyes. Johanna had already plotted this out, and the annoying thing was that she was in no position to discuss the increased threat in front of the children as it would only cause them to worry. “Okay.” She looked at the children. “Your sister will travel in the front with us. You must be silent in the back until I open the door. Understand?”
They nodded.
Fabienne got a blanket for the sick child and wrapped it around her. In the van, Johanna put her arm around the child who leaned into her side, shivering.
“We have to drop the children first, then I will go to the dairy.” It would make Fabienne early for Father Michel and late for her deliveries, but she could hardly drive to the dairy with a sick child in the front seat.
Johanna tugged the girl close and stroked her damp hair as Fabienne drove towards town. “Poor little one.”
They hadn’t travelled more than a kilometre when the flashlights appeared in the road ahead. Fabienne took a left turn off the main route, taking them further into the countryside. The road was bordered by hedgerows and ditches. “Damned patrols.”
After just over a kilometre, she took a right turn down a single-track lane, then another right. They hadn’t gone more than five hundred metres when there were more flashing lights on the road ahead. Only this time there was nowhere to turn. “Putain!”
Johanna reached out to Fabienne. She brushed her hand against Fabienne’s jacket pocket, the familiar shape and feel of the pistol beneath, and released a tight breath. “You won’t need that. I’ll talk to them,” she said.
Fabienne brought the van to a halt and wound down the window. Two officers approached them, one training his rifle at her head.
“Papers?”
Fabienne handed over the documents, her heart racing.
“You work at the dairy. That’s in the other direction,” he said without looking up.
She rested her arm on the window frame. “Yes, Herr Obersturmführer. We have a—”
“I am Kommandant Neumann’s wife.” Johanna leaned across Fabienne and held out her papers.
He took them, shone a torch at them, and handed them back. “Get out of the van.”
Fabienne did as he instructed.
“I said, I am Frau Neumann, the kommandant’s—”
“Yes, Frau Neumann.” He clicked his heels. “We still need to do our job. If you would also kindly step out of the vehicle, please?”
There were four guards in total, and no obvious signs of another patrol lurking. Still, that was too many men for Fabienne to challenge without risking their lives. But if Johanna couldn’t pull any weight with them, she might not have any other option but to engage.
“Open the back?”
The pallets had shifted on the uneven track roads, and part of the trap door was visible if someone had a keen-enough eye. She scratched her palm and saw the same recognition in Johanna’s eyes.
“I will inform my husband of this,” Johanna said.
He looked at her, unphased by the threat, and smiled. “Be my guest, Frau Neumann. My instructions come from higher up than your husband.”
Putain, putain! Fabienne stood still as he flashed the light around the empty van, working out the sequence in which she could take the guards down without getting either her or Johanna shot.
“What’s in the churns?” It was always the same question.
She put her hands in her pockets, casually, located the cold steel shaft of her pistol, and rocked on her heels. “They are empty. They will be filled as soon as I get to the dairy.”
He shone the light into her eyes, and she turned away. “You are going in the wrong direction for the dairy.”
“My daughter is sick,” Johanna said. She stepped between the officer and the back of the van. “That’s why we’re heading this way.”
“Why didn’t you take the main road into town?”
Fabienne remained silent. The officer looked from her to Johanna and back again.
“Where are the child’s papers?”
“I forgot them. I was in a hurry. She has a fever. I fear she has tuberculosis.”
He indicated to the soldier with the rifle directed at Fabienne. “Keep an eye on them.” He went to the passenger side door and peered in.
Fabienne slowly took hold of the gun, her finger poised on the trigger. Any attack she made would have to be swift and accurate.
The officer returned to the back of the van. He called the other two soldiers forward.
“Move the pallets.”
The two soldiers climbed into the van.
“Wait,” Johanna said.
All four men looked towards her. The man with the rifle lost his focus on Fabienne, shifting his aim to nowhere in particular.
It was a split-second distraction, but long enough for Fabienne to shoot him square in the chest, and then the lieutenant. The children beneath the hatch screamed, distracting the soldiers inside the van. The men grappled to align their rifles, which had been slung over their backs while shifting the pallets. They were not fast enough. Fabienne fired another two bullets, and they fell to the floor with a heavy thud.
“Putain, putain, putain!” Fabienne climbed into the back, checked the men were dead, and rolled them out of the van. “It’s okay,” she said to the children. You need to stay quiet again now.” If they were stopped again, they would not be able to explain the blood.
“We need to get out of here.” They got back in the front, and Fabienne drove quickly. The children would be battered and bruised by the time they got to the church, but that was a small price to pay for their lives. She parked at the back of the church, as always at this time of day, and banged on the church door until Father Michel opened it.
“You’re very early.”
“We had some trouble.”
Johanna carried the sick child inside, while Fabienne released her brother and sister from the back. They hurried into the church and the priest locked the doors.
“I need to wash the van,” Fabienne said.
“There is a tap on the wall on the other side, and a bucket. Come with me, children,” he said.
He led them into his private chambers. Johanna lay the child down on the couch. Her brother and sister sat close to her and put their arms around her. They were both pale and wide eyed.
Johanna’s hands shook, and she couldn’t think straight with sound of the gunshots still ringing in her ears.
“What happened?” Father Michel asked.
“The girl was sick so we couldn’t put her in the back. Then we were stopped by a patrol. The lieutenant discovered the trap door. We had no choice.”
“These guards, they are dead?”
Johanna felt the whole of her insides trembling. “Yes.”
Father Michel made the sign of a cross at his chest. “We have been lucky to get the children out. I fear it is only going to get harder.”
Johanna didn’t want to think that these three might not make it to their destination. They had come so far already. But they wouldn’t be collected for hours yet, and when the guards were discovered, there would be hell to pay.
“I’d like to stay here until they’re picked up,” she said.
Father Michel nodded. “That would be helpful. I have things I need to tend to.” He turned to the children and smiled. “Who would like something to eat and drink.” He bent down to the sick girl and touched her head. “I will get some medicine to help your sister too.”
At that, the two siblings smiled for the first time.
When the priest returned to the room, Fabienne was with him.
Johanna stepped towards her, desperate to hold her, then stopped herself.
Fabienne half-smiled, something she often did to show that she was fine, but she didn’t look fine. Frown lines ran deeper across her brow, and she moved her eyes skittishly. “I’ve cleaned out the van. I need to go to the dairy.”
Johanna reached out to touch her, then dropped her arm to her side. “I’ve said I’ll stay here.”
Fabienne looked at the children. “I’m sorry about the loud noises. You were all very brave, and now you are safe.” She indicated for Johanna to follow her out of the room.
She looked Johanna up and down. “How are you?”
Johanna stifled a laugh, bordering on hysteria. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
Fabienne rubbed her forehead and her eyes. “That’s why I had the gun. It was only a matter of time before the hatch was discovered.” She cupped Johanna’s cheek. “You saved us.”
Johanna felt the pride in Fabienne’s words, even though she didn’t believe them. She bit her lip to stop it trembling. Tears were building behind her eyes, not from sadness or guilt but from the shock. She felt faint and dizzy and took a few deep breaths because the children still needed her, and she had to be strong. “We would have been killed if it hadn’t been for you,” she said.
She wanted to hold Fabienne close and wipe away the memory. She clasped her hands together to stop them shaking.
Fabienne took a deep breath. “We need to get home as soon as possible. Once they discover the guards, they will take revenge.”
The pain in Fabienne’s eyes reflected Johanna’s. “We had no choice, you know.”
Fabienne sighed. “I know.”
“I’m not leaving until the children have been collected, by which time you’ll have made the deliveries. You can pick me up. We have nothing to hide now. And Gerhard will not question my account of our trip, should he ask for it.”
Fabienne stared at her for a long time before she half-smiled. This time it reached her eyes.
Johanna wanted to go with her to protect her.
“I have to go,” Fabienne said.
Johanna had never felt more alone as she watched Fabienne leave the church. She prayed she would make it back for her.