Chapter 12
TWELVE
MARGOT
Margot hadn’t slept well after seeing the plane smashing into the clifftop.
It came to her in nightmares of violence and fire, where books burned in the flames.
She had woken up again and again, her legs tangled in the bedsheets, her rose-sprigged satin quilt sliding off the double bed and onto the floor.
She laid her alarm clock face down on the little stand beside her bed to hide the luminous arms of the dial taunting her with how few hours she had left to sleep.
Even in the darkness, she knew that Serge was watching her from the photograph she kept by the bed.
It was at times like this that she missed him even more.
There were no arms open to her for a comforting embrace, no warm body to curl around to feel safe from her nightmares.
She was alone, in a bed that was too big for her.
She tried to comfort herself: at least Esther was safe.
The fire had lit up the night enough for Margot to see that the cottage had been preserved, but it had still shaken her to think that her friend and her baby had been in such mortal danger.
And as for the Professor, he couldn’t possibly have survived.
That morning, wrapped in her cardigan and a warm woollen skirt under her winter coat, Margot went to stand in the queue outside the baker’s again.
Queuing had become a daily feature since the occupation had begun.
Margot had stood outside the baker’s in driving sleet one day last winter and had shivered for the rest of the day.
The women all carried wicker baskets on their arms, or had string shopping bags gripped in their hands, as they waited to fill them with whatever they could find.
The cold breeze, which made the women’s scarves flutter, was welcome at first, chasing away her exhaustion from a broken night’s sleep. But the horrific sight she had witnessed and had haunted her dreams still lingered, playing on a loop in her head.
Some German soldiers pushed in at the front of the queue, and a ripple of complaint ran through the locals of Cordeval.
All that violence, driven by hate and division, and that was how it ended; in flames.
Professor Lauterborn was dead. She felt numb. She’d miss him coming into her shop. She’d miss him, even though he was a German.
The queue hadn’t moved for five minutes, because the gossip about the plane that had smashed into the cottage was fascinating enough to keep everyone from the business of the day.
At the counter Madame Losier, her arms folded across her plump stomach and propping up her enormous bosom, was making her feelings known to the nodding women who surrounded her, looking this way and that as she held court.
‘Well of course, we’re sorry to lose him, but he was an odd fish,’ she said. ‘Barely showed his face in the village, and when he did he had that funny eye looking at you.’
At her shoulder, Madame Michaud agreed. ‘Although he taught our Francine to play a lovely piano,’ she said. ‘I always told him, make more of yourself, Professor. Get out and have a drink, maybe get a nice lady on your arm, but all he thought of was that piano.’
‘But he was a genius,’ Elodie Masson, the schoolteacher said, her voice touched with sorrow. ‘I thought our piano at the school was hopelessly broken, but he fixed it and it plays beautifully now. It brings the children so much joy.’
She may as well have not spoken for all the attention that the others gave to her words.
Madame Losier nodded expansively, the wax fruit on her hat bobbing as she did.
‘Now, I’m not one to speak ill of the dead, but if we had to lose anyone he’d be the one.
’ She rapped her knuckles on the counter as though to emphasise the point.
‘A nice gentleman, I’m sure, but never really one of us. ’
The poor man had only just died. Margot thought of him coming to her shop to warn her. He hadn’t returned his brother’s Nazi salute; surely that meant something.
Once she’d bought her half-baguette, Margot went back home to have breakfast and get ready for the day. But she barely tasted the chicory coffee she’d brewed, as all she could think of were those words she’d heard in the bakery. An odd fish with that funny eye, who was never really one of us.
Suddenly the image of Serge came back to her, lying pale and unmoving in his coffin in his mother’s house before his funeral. Tall candles stood around him, the light flickering on his pale, still face as mourners came to say goodbye. She didn’t know who would say goodbye to the Professor.
Margot left her coffee cup half-empty and pulled on her coat again. She should’ve been opening the shop, but instead she scribbled a note and stuck it in the glass panel on the front door: Back in an hour. Then she headed outside.
She took the street to the harbour, tensing as German soldiers strode past as if they owned Cordeval now, their rifles mounted with bayonets against their shoulders.
The steel-grey waves washed the tired fishermen and their boats into the harbour after spending the night at sea.
They were despondent as they jumped down from their boats with their small catches, all they could manage because the Germans wouldn’t let them go out very far.
Their wives were waiting for them with baskets, their faces pinched with disappointment as they saw how little they hauled onto the harbourside.
Margot followed the road that rose on a slope up towards the cliffs where the Professor’s cottage had been. She saw a small group of children heading in the opposite direction, towards the village.
Like all the children in Cordeval, their clothes were patched and too small for them.
There was a tall, gangly boy, and a shorter boy beside him who was evidently still waiting for his own growth spurt.
A girl with dark, curly hair scrambled to catch up with them.
They were Beatrice’s friends, she realised, but the girl wasn’t with them today.
They waved cheerily at Margot, and she waved back.
A cold breeze was blowing in from the sea, carrying salt with it. She looked up and saw the wreckage; a mess of twisted metal and fallen stones where a cottage had once stood.
There were still wildflowers growing in the cracks of the low walls that fenced off the fields, with long, tough stems topped with puffs of dark purple blooms. Margot paused to pick them, then carried on.
She held the back of her hand against her nose, trying to avoid the acrid smell of burnt fuel, but it had seeped inside her.
She reached the garden wall, but little of it was standing.
It looked as if the plane, which was now just broken sheets of metal, black with soot, had ploughed through the garden wall and straight into part of the cottage.
There was nothing there at that end of the house, just stone thrown out in all directions under the twisted hunk of metal.
The rest of the cottage, what might’ve been a living room, was still standing, but fire had raged through it; the glass in the windows had been shattered by the heat, and the shutters had burned away.
The cold breeze scattered the ashes, carrying them away towards the cliff edge.
‘Oh, Professor,’ Margot whispered. Her tears were rising and she reached into her pocket for a handkerchief. ‘I’m so sorry.’
The cinders reminded her of the bonfire of books that the Germans were holding in Clarenville that evening; everything was being reduced to ash.
Even though she wasn’t particularly religious, under her breath she began to recite a Hail Mary.
‘Are you all right?’
Margot dabbed away her tears.
‘Beatrice?’ Margot turned and the girl was standing there right behind her. ‘What are you doing up here? It’s not safe!’
Her face was smudged with soot and Margot spotted something in her hand. A gun?
‘Where did you find that?’ Margot gasped in alarm.
‘I came up through the tunnels and through his cellar. I’ve been having a root about down there and found this,’ said Beatrice, as though there was nothing unusual in a little girl carrying a pistol.
She waved the gun in the air like an extra from a cowboy film.
‘And just like I thought, our wouldn’t-say-boo-to-a-goose Professor is a paid-up Nazi, reporting on us all to Adolf. Do you want to see?’
‘Put the gun down first, Beatrice,’ Margot told her, her voice stiff with fear. ‘And then I want you to show me.’
Beatrice heaved a sigh of resignation and carefully laid the gun down on the grass. Then she skipped towards Margot and took her hand as she said lightly, ‘It’s loaded as well. The Prof wasn’t going to take any chances!’ She looked up at Margot and smiled. ‘Come on!’
Margot held Beatrice’s hand tightly as they headed closer to the ruined cottage.
A high, unnatural whistling sound, like the wail of a Valkyrie, followed them to the door, and Margot realised it was the wind blowing through the wreckage of the plane.
She didn’t want to think about the dead pilot, charred inside the cockpit.
The Germans would surely be along soon to take away the remains but, as Margot looked back down the path to the village, there was no sign of them.
And somewhere in the ruins was the Professor. Going inside felt like trespassing on a tomb, but she steeled herself; she had to know what he’d been hiding.
The front door of the cottage had gone, leaving only a gaping hole into the burnt-out darkness inside.
Margot went first, leading Beatrice behind her.
The floor was made from stone flags, so at least that had survived, but nothing else had.
She saw a charred frame with bare springs, which had collapsed sideways.
It looked like all that remained of a sofa.
And there was something against the wall, something square, blackened and burned, with lengths of metal hanging loose inside it.