Chapter 6
SIX
MARGOT
It was nearly midnight when Margot softly closed the door to her flat above the bookshop and began to make her way down the unlit staircase.
They had to observe the blackout, even if Margot wished she could turn on every light in the house and wave across the Channel to England.
She took each step on the stairs softly, although there was no one to hear them creak in the close darkness.
She carried an oil lamp, and the flame jolted in a chilly breeze that came from the empty floor above.
No one had lived in the flat at the top of the house for some time, and she couldn’t imagine she’d find a lodger as it seemed as if half of Hitler’s army had arrived in Cordeval.
She certainly wouldn’t find anyone coming to Cordeval for a holiday as it was now the end of October.
Still, she’d left the advert in her shop window. She could do with the money.
Margot shuddered as she drew her cardigan more tightly round her, and wound her way down the stairs, past the back of the bookshop, down further into the earth where the cellar awaited her and the rest of the book club.
One by one, she lit the candles that she had spared to light the cellar for the book club’s weekly meetings – some in niches in the old walls, another on a saucer on an upturned barrel.
She unfolded a long picnic table and, as she laid out the newspapers and string, her heart rushed in her chest. She nearly dropped one of the banned books because her hands were shaking so much as she took it out of a waiting crate.
Then she heard a tap on the door that opened from the cellar into the tunnels that ran beneath Cordeval. The book club members were here.
Margot opened the heavy oak door, and the smell of the sea came in; cold, and heavy with salt. She could hear the waves whispering, the sound amplified by the tunnels.
Aunt Sandrine arrived, bringing her friend Henriette, a farmer’s wife with ruddy cheeks.
Madame Guerin appeared at the same time as Claudine, and after them Sylvie and Brigitte, and each took a place along the picnic table to start wrapping the books.
Colette arrived next, the tips of her delicate fingers green from arranging flowers.
Not far behind came Esther, who emerged from the shadows in the tunnel, with Isabelle safe in her Moses basket, bundled in her blanket with her goose tucked in beside her.
The little girl had been a ray of sunshine in Esther’s life after her husband had been lost at sea on his fishing boat.
And in Isabelle’s features, Margot could see Daniel’s shadow.
She shared his dark eyes, that sparkled when she blinked up at her mother.
Esther kept his memory alive for their daughter.
Margot hugged Esther. ‘How are you?’ Her question went deep; one young widow speaking to another. ‘Are you both all right?’
Esther nodded, but her face was drawn with worry. ‘I hadn’t thought—’ She shook her head. ‘That man is dangerous.’
Margot thought again of the officer in the staff car with the duelling scar carved down his face.
‘I hate to see those monsters in Cordeval,’ Margot replied. Trying to reassure her friend, she went on, ‘Let’s hope they don’t stay long. There’s no Chevalier here.’
Esther put Isabelle down on a chair in her basket, and the women joined the others in wrapping the banned books.
‘I loved reading Grand Hotel,’ Madame Guerin said, as she wrapped a copy to be hidden somewhere in the village.
‘So glamorous! Even though I’d probably be working at the hotel rather than staying there.
No wonder the Germans have banned it; they don’t want anyone to have fun, do they? A bit of harmless escapism.’
Esther nodded. ‘And some welcome elegance.’ She looked over at Sylvie. ‘I pictured them wearing the sort of gowns that you make to send to Paris. Shimmering!’
Sylvie beamed at her. ‘Oh, exactly! I filled a page of my sketchbook with the gowns I was picturing. All that silk, all those embellishments… it’d be a joy to make them.’
‘I’d love to wear one,’ Colette said, a daydreaming tone in her voice as she tied a bow in the string. ‘I’d dance down that sweeping staircase at the big hotel in Clarenville!’
‘These books’ll be a treat for whoever finds them,’ Brigitte said, as she wrapped a copy of the novel in a sheet of newspaper. ‘Like being given a box of chocolates!’
The women chuckled. When had any of them last seen a box of chocolates for sale in the shops, let alone tasted them?
‘I remember watching the film,’ Henriette said. Grand Hotel was a world away from her life of draughty cowsheds and muddy fields. ‘I was transported. Remember Greta Garbo?’
‘I vant to be alone!’ Margot heard Beatrice before she saw her, her impression of Garbo echoing along the tunnel a moment before she emerged into the candlelight.
‘Beatrice!’ Margot chuckled. Teasing, she said, ‘I thought it was Garbo herself for a moment.’
Beatrice beamed and dropped into a bow. ‘I’m just like her, I know.’ With a laugh, she tucked the hair that had escaped from her plait back behind her ears, then turned to greet the other women with a nod, as bold now as ever. ‘Who d’you think that is in the staff car?’
‘Beatrice,’ Esther whispered. ‘You shouldn’t—’
But Beatrice wasn’t about to be deterred.
‘It’s the Prof’s brother, that’s who. He’s getting slaughtered on the best red over the road right now and he’s telling everybody who’ll listen that he and Adolf are like that.
’ She held up her hand to show entwined fingers.
‘So I’ll bet you the Prof’s his mate too. Germans are all the same, aren’t they?’
Margot’s grip tightened on the book she was holding.
‘I’m sure there’s a lot of SS officers who want everyone to think they’re best friends with Hitler,’ Margot said, glancing at Esther. ‘That doesn’t mean it’s true. And are you sure he’s the Professor’s brother?’
‘He said it himself,’ Beatrice said and Margot wondered again at this child, sneaking beneath the village at midnight as her mother held court with the Germans. ‘And the Prof was supposed to be playing the piano at the bar tonight and didn’t show his face.’
Margot didn’t say a word as she absorbed this. She closed the door to the tunnel and pulled the latch down securely, before coming back to join the others at the table.
Esther looked towards Isabelle as she murmured, ‘His name is Obergruppenführer Felix Lauterborn.’ She looked towards Beatrice, her eyes heavy with grief. ‘He’s a murderer. Beatrice, you and your mother…’
But the words fell away because what was there to be said?
They all knew that Joséphine would take his money if it was offered.
Yet Joséphine loved her daughter. If she knew she wasn’t safe in her bed now, Beatrice would be in trouble.
Beatrice was good at sneaking out and, so far, her membership of the book club had remained a secret.
‘They’re all murderers,’ Brigitte remarked bitterly as she smoothed out a sheet of newspaper. ‘Every Nazi has blood on their hands.’
They’d all read the stories in the newspapers about the invasion; the lines of escaping French civilians strafed with bullets from planes.
‘Esther, what are people in the village saying about this Felix L-Lauterborn?’ Margot was so stunned that the Professor’s brother could be a Nazi officer, bringing what looked like an army with him to Cordeval, that she stumbled over his surname.
She’d said it and written it in her order book often enough whenever the Professor came to the shop, looking for some obscure piece of music, but connecting that name with a murderer had left her shaken.
‘He has plans for France,’ Esther whispered. The words seemed to hang in the air, chilling the shadows around the flickering candle flames. Then she drew in a deep breath. ‘I don’t know any more than that. We need to be very careful now he’s here.’
‘We’ve already left the banned books around town, though,’ Sylvie said, her voice hushed with worry. She paused halfway through knotting a piece of string round a book. ‘What if this Lauterborn finds out they’ve come from here?’
Brigitte shook her head. ‘I went to see a patient the other day, down by the harbour. I won’t say who it was, but I spotted a copy of Grand Hotel!
’ She smiled, tapping the book she’d just covered in newspaper.
‘They’d hidden it under a sofa cushion, but the corner was sticking out and I knew what it was.
I pretended not to have seen it. There’s banned books all over the village.
Who’s going to know where they came from? ’
‘The Nazis want us to be afraid, and follow every last rule they force on us,’ Margot said. ‘But we’re not going to let them intimidate us. They’re hunting for Resistance fighters – they’re not going to be worried about a few books.’
She looked at the line of her friends, standing along the table, their faces lit by the little flames around the shadowy cellar. Margot was trying to sound brave, even though inside she trembled. She could see it in her friends’ faces, too; their expressions were a mix of trepidation and steel.
‘Nothing to be scared of,’ Beatrice said bravely, looking around at the women. ‘This is our town, right?’
Margot nodded, even though she knew, like everyone else in that candlelit basement, that if the banned books were traced back to her shop the punishment would be swift and brutal.
‘It is. Our town, our country,’ she replied. ‘And we’ll read whatever books we want.’