Chapter Twenty-Five #2
‘Of course they’re new and it’s bound to affect the wine, but what does that matter?’ Monsieur Rousseau said gloomily. ‘We all know where it’s going to end up.’
The weather was cooler than the year before, so they picked in the daytime rather than at night, assembling early in the morning for a casse-cro?te breakfast of bread and sausage, washed down with piquette.
Once again the harvest was a collective effort, with Paulette and Thierry and many other familiar faces around the table.
The women clucked over Esmé, and while there were a few disapproving looks aimed Mathilde’s way, most were sympathetic.
Mathilde worked with the baby strapped to her back, managing a couple of hours before Esmé began to cry.
She sat in the shade of a nearby tree to feed her.
Next year, her daughter would be walking by the time harvest came around, and she had no idea how they would manage then.
Perhaps she could pay Odile to look after her?
Yet some instinct she didn’t fully understand warned her against relying too much on Odile.
‘Here, Mathilde.’ Stefan had appeared with a canteen of water. ‘You must drink.’
She thanked him gratefully as she downed it.
Ever since the night of Esmé’s birth, he’d taken a particular interest in both mother and daughter.
This interest was only benign, Mathilde was sure; they were three misfits together.
Esmé was illegitimate and she was an unmarried mother, while no one in Les Roches trusted Stefan because of his accent and the Germans wanted to kill him because he was Jewish.
What was to become of them all? She sighed and scrambled to her feet.
There was nothing to be done but take each day as it came.
One by one, the large baskets were filled to the brim and Mascotte took them down to the winery.
In just four days, the harvest was done.
The yield was down even on last year, which was bad enough; they’d not been able to apply fertiliser in the spring, and the weeds were rampant.
The Germans wouldn’t be pleased, but what did they expect?
They’d had an insatiable appetite for France’s riches, and now the land was barren and everyone hated them.
The Boche were coming deeper into Provence these days, the women said, raiding farms for food; there had even been a couple spotted in Les Roches.
Mathilde shivered, remembering those loathsome grey-green uniforms flooding Paris.
Autumn came, with crisp mornings and afternoons bathed in a soft golden light.
The olives were harvested next, milled and pressed into oil.
Mathilde and Esmé went foraging for mushrooms and gathered chestnuts which Odile ground into flour for cakes and pastry; Georges hunted duck and partridge with the rifle he’d refused to give up.
They also ate hedgehogs that had been baked in clay, which peeled away when they were cooked, taking the spines with it.
Odile, Anna and Ernestine were busy in the kitchen, laying down supplies for the harsh winter months to come: drying apples, bottling plums, preparing confit duck and preserving garlic in olive oil.
If the weather was bad, Mathilde left Esmé in a playpen by the stove with the girls keeping an eye on her, running back from outdoors to check periodically.
In November, news came over the airwaves that the Americans and British had invaded North Africa, which had been under Vichy control. Everyone was galvanised. What could it mean? Paulette was jubilant. ‘This is the beginning of the end, you mark my words,’ she told Mathilde that Sunday.
One rainy morning around the middle of the month, Stefan and Mathilde were walking through the vineyard, checking to see whether the vines were dormant and pruning could begin.
A boy of about seven, one of the sons of a nearby farmer, came scrambling towards them with a note in his hand, which he thrust at Mathilde before stumbling back down the hill.
‘What’s this?’ she called after him, but he didn’t turn to answer.
She unfolded the paper. Meet me at the usual place. Come alone, and tell no one, it read. There was no signature but she didn’t need one: there could be only one person in the world who would send her such a message.
‘I have a quick errand to run,’ she told Stefan, tucking the note in her pocket. ‘Could you tell Odile I won’t be long, if I’m not back in time for lunch?’
There was no time to change out of her work clothes and make herself pretty, but there was nothing to be done about that.
She ran downhill and along the back path to the lane, the breath tearing at her chest. She had no idea what they would say to each other.
Would she tell him about Jacques? Or indeed about Esmé, banging saucepans in the kitchen?
Through the gate into the field and she was walking quickly now, a stitch in her side.
She had visited the camp only once since the night Esmé had been born, to replace the rations as best she could with tins of corned beef and sardines.
It would certainly be strange to find Yves there, after what had happened.
By the time she reached the clearing, nerves were leaping in her stomach. Here was the rotten tree stump she remembered; she would round the next corner and see him.
‘Lionne!’ He was sitting under the shelter – whose roof, she noticed, had been reinforced with a tarpaulin – beside another man she didn’t recognise. In a few steps, they were together and he was embracing her.
‘I’ve missed you,’ he whispered into her ear, before kissing her chastely on each cheek. ‘Come, meet Renard.’
A tall, sandy-haired man with a ginger beard nodded at her – a little morosely, she thought.
Maybe that was understandable: the camp was a different place on a rainy morning, with no crackling fire to bring comfort.
She and Yves stood some distance away from Renard to talk, but it was hardly private.
‘How have you been?’ she asked, scanning his face.
He looked older, with lines etched across his forehead, dark circles under his eyes and days of beard growth, yet all her desire came flooding back.
She remembered the feel of his body against hers and yearned to hold him again – until she remembered that she was still a married woman, and those days had gone.
‘Busy,’ he replied tersely, and she realised now was not the time or the place to bother him with personal matters, however vital they might seem to her.
‘I’m sorry not to have been in touch,’ he went on. ‘Things have been difficult. But listen, I’m here to warn you: the Germans are about to take control of the south. They’ve lost patience with Pétain since the Allies invaded North Africa and Vichy did nothing about it.’
His words sent a chill through her. ‘What can I do?’
‘Nothing for the moment – just sit tight and be careful. Trust no one. There seems to be a leak in the area and we think it might be coming from the chateau.’
‘Chateau Albertine?’ She was stunned. ‘There are so few of us, though!’ The countess, a couple of loyal servants who’d worked there for years, a handful of young people from the village and the latest Jewish arrivals.
Surely Stefan and Anna wouldn’t betray their rescuers?
Her thoughts turned to Gustave and Marcel, Georges’ lads – it would have to be either of them.
‘It only takes one,’ Yves said grimly. ‘Look, if you’re in trouble, head for the Vercors area. Sanglier is there and he’ll help you. There’s a café in Grenoble called Les Deux Copains, just off Place Victor Hugo. Ask for Hortense and they’ll point you in the right direction.’
Mathilde nodded. ‘How about you?’
He scratched his head, gazing back at the camp. ‘I have to get to Marseille, which might be tricky, given the current state of affairs. The Boche are on the move but we can’t stay here like sitting ducks.’
Renard got to his feet and stormed towards them. ‘This was a fool’s errand, Patron! We should have been in Marseille days ago and now we’re trapped.’
‘Be quiet!’ Yves growled. ‘When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it.’ Yet Mathilde could see he was rattled, and that frightened her.
‘I have an idea,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Come to the winery tomorrow morning at dawn – I’ll unlock the door for you. There’s a way of getting you out of here. It’s risky but it might be your only chance.’
After a moment’s pause, Yves nodded.
‘Are you seriously going to trust this woman?’ Renard burst out. ‘Making a detour so you can see her is what’s landed us in this mess.’
‘What choice do we have?’ Yves said wearily. ‘Thanks for the offer, Lionne. Tell us what you have in mind.’
Mathilde was back at the chateau in time for lunch, though she didn’t have much of an appetite.
The rain had stopped, so in the afternoon, she kept Esmé beside her in the pram while she dug up the last few potatoes and weeded the vegetable patch.
Checking first to make sure no one was around, she scraped aside a corner of the gravel garden until she could see the tarpaulin beneath and was able to chop a hole in it with the sharpest spade.
Reaching down, she retrieved two of the bottles and hid them among the potatoes in her sack.
It was for a good cause, she thought guiltily.
For a moment, she contemplated telling Madame what she had in mind, but decided against it; the countess would be safer not knowing.
As soon as she’d finished work, she hid the wine under the pram mattress and pushed her daughter up the hill to visit Monsieur Lebrun, the tonnelier.
‘It might work,’ he told her, when she’d explained her idea, ‘but a hundred and one things could go wrong. Have you heard the news? The Boche have arrived.’
‘Please, Monsieur, can we at least try?’ Mathilde urged. ‘The man I want to help is of great interest to the Nazis. We can’t let him fall into their hands.’
‘I heard a rumour someone valuable was in the area.’ Lebrun blew out his cheeks, considering. ‘In that case,’ he said finally, ‘why don’t we give it a go? Keep your wine – let’s drink it together when France is free again.’
Mathilde thanked him profusely and made her way down the hill, stopping only to buy a newspaper from the tabac to see the photographs of German tanks thundering into Vichy France.
She kept Esmé awake longer that evening in the hopes she’d sleep long and deep, and set her alarm for early the next morning.
As the day was breaking, she crept downstairs and from the kitchen to the cellar.
The harvest had been so meagre that only six of the eight barrels were full; the two that were empty stood a little apart.
One by one, she rolled them along the tunnel and hauled them up into the winery, where she sat beside them, waiting for the men to arrive.
Yves and Renard were the first, followed shortly afterwards by Monsieur Lebrun, carrying his tool bag over one shoulder. The three of them shook hands and Yves stood beside the barrel, measuring himself against it. ‘Glad I’m not your size, Renard.’
Renard only glowered, shooting Mathilde a filthy look.
He’d clearly decided she was responsible for everything that had gone wrong on their mission.
Being unknown to the police, though, he was going to travel by train from Arles to Marseille in the usual way; only Yves would be hidden in a barrel.
The only way to get him inside would be for Lebrun to take the cask to pieces and then reassemble it around him.
The process would have to be repeated at the other end to release him, which would be Renard’s job.
‘So watch carefully,’ Lebrun instructed as he removed the iron rings and tapped the staves apart.
Yves and Mathilde walked to the far end of the winery to talk.
‘I’m sorry to have neglected you,’ he said, putting his arm around her shoulder.
‘But things are moving faster now, Lionne. More people are joining us every day and change is coming. I’ll be back, I promise.
’ He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket.
‘In the meantime, here’s something to remember me by. ’
And he dropped a silver pendant into her hand: a Cross of Lorraine, with his pet name for her etched into the back. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, moved more by the inscription than the gift itself. She let the chain pool from one hand to the other. ‘Yves, there’s something I have to tell you.’
He looked at her gravely. ‘Go on.’
Even then, she didn’t know what would come out of her mouth. ‘My husband is alive,’ she said eventually. ‘The Nazis lied to me.’
She saw the shock in his eyes, but it was only there for a moment. ‘Are you glad?’ he asked, and she nodded.
‘Then I’m glad for you too.’ He raised her hands to his mouth and kissed them. ‘I shall never forget the time we shared. Maybe we’re destined to be together in another lifetime.’
She made herself smile. ‘Maybe.’
‘What is it?’ he asked, seeing her hesitate.
‘Oh, nothing.’ How could she burden him with the knowledge he had a child? ‘Take care of yourself; that’s all.’
‘You too,’ he replied. ‘God willing, one day we’ll meet again.’
Although, at that moment, the chances seemed remote.