Chapter Five
That Sunday, Mathilde felt especially restless.
Pierre was out at a motor rally and wouldn’t be back till late, and Renée had taken Louis to visit a friend.
She jumped on her bicycle and headed out of town, following a road that ran beside the railway line.
It had been weeks since she’d heard from Jacques and the conviction was growing on her that something awful had happened to him.
Even one of those pre-printed forms with phrases to tick and his signature would have been better than nothing; at least then she would know he was still alive.
She was pedalling against the lively breeze that had sprung up, hoping to wear herself out, when her eye was caught by a flash of white on the wide verge.
Stopping to investigate, she found a familiar van had been parked off the road, half concealed beneath some trees: Pierre’s Citroen, splashed with the Garage Bouchon logo.
She was immediately curious, since the rally he was meant to have been attending was supposedly in Arles, some distance away.
Had the van broken down? But its bonnet was closed and all the tyres were intact, and Arles lay in the opposite direction.
Just beyond the van, a narrow lane rutted with deep potholes led away from the main road.
Mathilde turned down it and rode slowly along, hairs pricking up on the back of her neck, until she felt too conspicuous and hid her bicycle in the hedgerow before continuing on foot.
The lane petered out in front of a derelict cottage, rotten shutters hanging from their frames and its roof pitted with gaps where tiles had fallen.
The house looked long abandoned, yet she caught a flash of movement behind a downstairs window and darted behind a tree to watch more safely.
Thorns pricked her ankles as she pressed herself against the rough bark, peering ahead.
Another bicycle had been propped against the side wall, she noticed, but there were no further signs of life.
She must have waited half an hour at least before the front door opened and a man emerged, wearing blue worker’s overalls with a rucksack on his back.
She recognised him immediately as one of Pierre’s garage plotters, as she thought of them.
And there was Pierre himself, following his companion out of the cottage and locking the door behind him.
Mathilde craned to watch as he hid the key under an upturned flowerpot, then glanced around to make sure he was unobserved, adjusting the straps of his own rucksack.
She shrank back and when she looked again, both men were disappearing down a track beside a field to the left of the house.
It was too risky to follow; they were bound to see or hear her.
She waited until the pair were well out of sight before darting forward to retrieve the key from the flowerpot.
Surely Pierre wouldn’t have locked the door if anyone had been still inside but even so, her heart was in her mouth as she eased it open and stepped over the threshold.
The ground floor of the cottage consisted of a single room with a fireplace to the right, splattered with birds’ droppings.
The only furniture was a table in one corner and a couple of stools beside it; the floor was littered with cigarette ends and spent matches, and an empty wine bottle lolled beside one of the crates.
Mathilde walked over to the window in the back wall and looked out through a mass of tangled creepers to see the railway line running through a grassy embankment below.
Perhaps a signalman or a stationmaster had lived here at one time, she thought, looking around the dark, desolate space and imagining it bright and cosy, with a cooking pot hanging over the fire.
A ladder led up to what she assumed had once been a sleeping loft.
Cautiously, she put her foot on the first rung and began to climb.
A black railway tarpaulin had been thrown over the platform above; drawing back one corner, Mathilde discovered a stack of packing crates and boxes.
The first one was packed with bottles of whisky and gin, lying on a bed of cigarette packets, while the next contained large sausage-shaped lumps of a putty-like material she only realised must have been explosive when she found a separate box of detonators.
There were several rifles and pistols in a wooden chest, along with boxes of bullets, a couple of lamps and coils of rope.
She also discovered a German soldier’s uniform, complete with boots and coal-scuttle helmet cradling a clutch of grenades.
Her heart beating wildly now, she replaced everything she had disturbed as neatly as possible and retreated down the ladder on shaky legs.
She almost forgot to lock the cottage door behind her and had to run back with the key in her hand, so desperate was she to get away before anyone surprised her there.
She had heard about raids on a good train, but until now hadn’t given much thought to what was involved: explosives and weapons.
Clearly a section of the railway line had to be blown up to bring the train to a halt before it was boarded and the supplies stolen.
She retrieved her bicycle from the hedgerow and pedalled back to the road, filled with a savage joy.
At least someone was telling the Nazis they couldn’t have things all their own way.
How dare they march into the Piquemals’ yard and demand their horses, as well as half the contents of the cellar!
The very next day, a German winemaker was coming to supervise collection of the wine that had been sold for export at a knockdown price: three-quarters of the previous year’s vintage.
The Boche were stealing everything from France – not just the country’s harvest but her dignity and self-respect – and she was proud of her cousin for standing up to them.
Pierre didn’t come home till late that night, well after Mathilde had gone to bed. She rose early on Monday, to make sure of seeing him before he started work, but Renée and Louis were already in the kitchen so there was no chance to talk.
‘How was the rally?’ she asked.
He met her gaze. ‘Very interesting. I met up with some old friends.’
‘Odd they should hold such a gathering when petrol’s in short supply,’ Mathilde said, pouring herself a cup of the watery ersatz coffee made from acorns. And she watched how his expression changed.
Renée looked out of the window. ‘I think the mistral’s coming. See the sky?’ The horizon burned in the distance with a dull red glow. ‘You’ll have to take care on the road.’
‘I don’t suppose you could give me a lift to work?’ Mathilde asked Pierre, but he told her unfortunately the van was out of fuel.
A likely excuse, she thought, unchaining her bicycle from its spot in the workshop; he just didn’t want to be alone with her and have to answer awkward questions.
There was an unusual energy in the air, as though the atmosphere had been stretched taut, and the temperature had plummeted.
Mathilde was used to the mistral by now, the ferocious wind that blew night and day for hours on end, leaving everyone tense and irritable.
She had to pedal hard to make headway against the chill breeze nipping at her ankles, and a roadblock on the outskirts of town delayed her further.
A stern policeman demanded to see her identity card and even lifted the cloth to search her bicycle basket, though he wouldn’t tell her what he was looking for.
‘Has something happened?’ she asked a woman driving a trap laden with burlap sacks on the other side of the barricade.
The woman leaned down, lowering her voice. ‘There was another raid on a goods train last night. Good luck to ’em, I say.’ And she smiled grimly as she cracked the pony’s reins.
Proof, if proof were needed, of what her cousin had been up to the night before.
Mathilde smiled to herself, too, as she gave up fighting the wind and pushed her bicycle along the road.
The Pierre of her childhood was back: a brave, resourceful leader, standing up for what was right.
Now all she had to do was persuade him to let her into the gang.
‘There’ll be no pruning today,’ Monsieur Piquemal greeted her, ‘but the mistral will do half the work for us.’ Dead wood and vegetation would be scoured from the vineyard, allowing fresh air to revive the vines and encouraging their roots to grow strong.
‘Nature’s spring cleaning,’ he added. ‘We shall all feel rejuvenated once the mistral’s come and gone.
And no doubt when Herr Weber’s come and gone, too. ’
Weber was the Weinführer, as they were called in the business, who’d be arriving that day with a van to collect the wine he’d requisitioned.
He and Monsieur Piquemal knew each other, having met at various European wine fairs and exhibitions in the past. ‘He’s not a bad fellow,’ Piquemal had said.
‘You have to think he’s only following orders. ’
Mathilde was infuriated by his passivity, his refusal to confront the reality of the situation and stick up for himself. The man was as bad as Renée, if not worse. When did a reluctance to cause trouble become weakness?
All morning, the wind howled and gusted around the winery as they waited for Herr Weber.
Tarpaulins flapped in the yard and a tile slid down from the roof, shattering into fragments with a crack that made Mathilde jump.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Emile Rambert smirk.
He and Monsieur Piquemal were deep into the assemblage process: the skilled blending of wines from different grape varieties to achieve a smooth yet complex final result.
The table in front of them was littered with bottles and glasses, but from the sound of things, the blending was not going well.