Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
MARGOT
The heavy atmosphere in the candlelit cellar had changed to one of astonishment. Margot gasped and excited chatter ran around the circle.
Esther, her friend, a widow who took in sewing and looked after a baby all on her own, was a resistance fighter. And her husband wasn’t dead at all.
‘You’re Chevalier?’ Brigitte exclaimed. ‘Both of you? And Daniel’s still alive – thank God! But where is he? We all thought…’
‘Esther, this is just extraordinary,’ Margot said. ‘None of us had any idea. I can’t begin to tell you how relieved I am that Daniel’s alive.’
‘They got too close,’ Esther explained. ‘Daniel was sure they were about to identify us and put our baby in danger. I told him he had to get away so we could go on with our work. So we came up with the idea of saying he was lost at sea. And two weeks later, Isabelle was born.’
Margot glanced down at the sleeping baby in Esther’s arms, her long eyelashes lying softly against her cheeks.
‘We’ve spoken on the radio, but he’s never met his little girl,’ Esther continued. ‘We had to put the resistance work first. We’ve been getting people out, you see. People the Nazis would kill. People like our little family.’
‘What a hero!’ said Margot. ‘And you too. Esther, it won’t go any further than this room.’ Steel had entered her voice, but she was sure there was no one in this circle who’d betray them. ‘What do you need us to do?’
‘We need maps. Desperately,’ Esther explained.
‘We have people here who don’t know the region.
Downed airmen, agents running for their lives.
The coastlines around here are so remote, they make excellent pick-up points for rescue, but the lanes…
it’s like a labyrinth. The people we’re helping need to find their way.
I can pay, Margot, but we need all the maps you can lay your hands on.
And we need to distribute them, just as we do the books already.
I can tell you where the drop points are.
’ She looked around the room at all their faces.
‘If any of you don’t want to help, I won’t blame you. I know it’s asking too much.’
‘I won’t take your money, Esther,’ Margot said, shaking her head.
‘The maps are yours. I’ve got some stock in the storeroom upstairs – tourists used to buy them when they came here on walking holidays, but it’s not as if we’ve had a run on them lately.
’ No one came on holiday to the area now, except the Nazis, who had taken over Clarenville as their personal spa resort.
‘There’s some for sale upstairs as well.
You can have those, too, although I’ll need to leave some out – if we get any Nazis who want a hiking holiday, it might be a bit obvious if I don’t have any to sell them. ’
‘I’ve got some at home,’ Brigitte replied. ‘I bought them just before the war when I was getting used to visiting patients who live outside the village. I know my way around the lanes now.’
‘Nautical charts are more my thing,’ Claudine admitted, ‘but I’ll help distribute your maps, don’t worry about that.’
Esther smiled. ‘We’d be grateful for any of those too.
’ She sat up a little straighter then. ‘The people we’re helping have nothing at all.
I know I can’t ask you for more, we all have so little, but…
anything that might seem worthless to you might mean the world to them.
But we have to watch for Lauterborn. There’s more to him than any of you know. ’
‘We’ll gather some things together,’ Aunt Sandrine said, and her friend Henriette nodded in agreement. ‘I remember in the first war, when the poor Belgians had to flee with nothing. We can’t have that happening again.’
‘I can spare some food from the farm,’ Henriette offered. ‘Not much, the Germans are watching, but whatever I can bring, Esther, it’s yours.’
‘I grow some vegetables on the side,’ Colette admitted. Her florist shop had a garden and a greenhouse. ‘Whatever I can hide among the flowers. I’m sure we can spare something as well.’
Joséphine and Beatrice suddenly stepped into Margot’s mind, resplendent in their new outfits. They were so fancily dressed at Lauterborn’s expense, when her friends would be collecting clothes full of darns and patches for Esther’s refugees.
‘Esther… what do you know about Lauterborn?’ Margot asked.
Esther drew in a breath, then pressed a kiss to the forehead of her sleeping daughter.
‘You all have heard of the internment camp at Bergères-sur-Seine,’ she said. ‘They filled it with Parisian Jews, those who weren’t born in France. They’re under French guards, but the Germans pull the strings.’
The camp had been built just outside a small town on the banks of the grand river that swept in from the Normandy coast, heading through Rouen to eventually wind its way through Paris.
‘There’ve been escapes,’ she told them. ‘A lot of escapes. So many that the Germans think our gendarmes have been helping them. At the start of spring, Lauterborn was put in charge of the camp.’ Esther shuddered.
‘How can they do this on French soil? To people who chose to live in our country?’ Margot sighed heavily. ‘At least our gendarmes were helping people to escape. But now…?’
She couldn’t bear the thought of it; the camp secured behind high fences, patrolled by enemy soldiers.
‘The place was dreadful before he arrived. But he turned it into hell,’ Esther explained.
‘And he revelled in it. Our friends and family… Isabelle’s family— Daniel and I have both lost people to that camp.
’ Tears began to roll down her cheeks, but she went on.
‘So many of us have just disappeared into that place.’ She dashed away the tears with the back of her pale hand.
‘Lauterborn doesn’t just give out the orders; that’s why they gave him the name of the Beast of Bergères-sur-Seine.
And he’s come here to look for me and my husband. ’
No one said a word. And then into the silence, bursting in like the beat of a drum, Margot heard a heavy knock on the door upstairs.