Chapter Twenty-Seven
Mathilde didn’t go to Doctor Pailleau’s house straight away. ‘I’ll meet you there,’ she told Stefan. ‘Just give me a couple of hours.’ It would be safer, anyway, if they travelled separately.
She waited for half an hour or so and then made her way through the wood and across the fields, still dazed with shock.
She was afraid, too. Of course no one in the household would publicly betray her to Werner Schmidt, but any one of them might approach him later and talk privately. She was living on borrowed time.
Paulette was in her back garden, digging up turnips. Pulling the shawl over her head, Mathilde crossed the lane and hurried down the side path to hail her.
Paulette put a hand to her mouth. ‘Dear Lord, you gave me a fright!’
Her expression changed, though, when Mathilde briefly explained the situation. ‘Come inside,’ she said, planting her fork in the ground. ‘Let’s see what we can do.’
‘Whatever you can think of,’ Mathilde said urgently. ‘I need to look completely different.’
‘Then you’ve come to the right place,’ Paulette told her. ‘And I’m glad to have caught you before you go.’
They were all on the move, apparently: she was heading back to Les Roches because she didn’t feel safe in this isolated spot with a load of Boche up the road, and Thierry was hiding out with the Maquis, deep in the Alpilles.
‘That bastard Corbeille’s rounding up all the young men to go and work in Germany,’ she said, cutting Mathilde’s hair close to her head. ‘Whose side is he on? Not ours, for sure.’
Mathilde looked anxiously at her reflection. ‘I don’t think this is going to do it. Maybe you should bleach my hair again?’
‘Just you wait,’ Paulette replied. ‘I’ll be back in a second.’
She returned with an armful of dark clothes and a couple of wigs.
‘These belonged to my mother – her hair thinned early on and she was very self-conscious about it.’ She chose one and fitted it carefully on Mathilde’s head, standing back to see the effect.
‘Is this better? You’ve aged about twenty years but I don’t suppose you care about that. ’
Mathilde was already getting up from the chair and reaching for the clothes. ‘Chère Paulette, you’ve saved me again. How will I manage without you?’
‘You’re a survivor,’ Paulette told her, ‘you’ll be fine. I shall miss you, though. Life’s more exciting when you’re around.’
Mathilde paused to hug her tight. ‘Keep an eye on Esmé until I get back, won’t you? Make sure the countess doesn’t send her away or turn her into a nun or anything.’
‘Of course,’ Paulette replied. ‘I delivered that sweet child – nothing bad’s going to happen while I’m here to protect her. Now look, if I may give you some advice: you’re older so you need to walk differently. I know you’re in a rush but you have to take things slowly.’
And so just another nondescript widow in black left Paulette’s cottage a short time later: mousy-haired, bespectacled and of no interest to anyone. Even Doctor Pailleau had no idea about this woman’s identity when she knocked on the window of his consulting room.
‘I was about to send you away with a flea in your ear,’ he said, helping her climb through. ‘Stefan’s waiting next door.’
The disguise was timely because he was about to take their photographs for the new identity cards, his medical store cupboard also serving as a dark room to develop them.
So now it was goodbye to Fleur Morrisot and hello to Solange Courcel, aged forty-two, who was travelling with her son, Guy.
Originally from Marseille, she’d moved to Grenoble on the death of her husband a few years before; they’d been visiting relatives in Marseille and were now returning home.
Poor Guy had been kicked in the head by a horse when he was young, which had left him hardly able to speak.
Stefan practised attempts at talking, and he and Mathilde rehearsed the story with Doctor Pailleau until they’d almost persuaded themselves it was true.
‘Thank you, Doctor,’ Mathilde said. ‘I hope you won’t get into trouble for helping us.’ Such weak words, given the debt they owed him!
‘It’s a risk I’m happy to take,’ Pailleau replied, ‘although things are becoming more difficult by the minute. The mayor was arrested this morning.’
‘Monsieur Rochefort?’ Mathilde was shocked. ‘What for?’
‘Apparently they found a cache of weapons on his property. It wouldn’t surprise me if it had been planted there – Captain Corbeille’s been looking for an excuse to replace him with someone more amenable.
’ Pailleau shook his head. ‘To arrest a mayor, though! If the Boche hadn’t arrived, he’d never have had the nerve. ’
‘We should leave as soon as possible,’ Mathilde said. ‘When I’m not back at the chateau by the end of the day, they’ll know something’s up.’
The doctor nodded. ‘Your papers should be ready in an hour or so and then you can catch the bus to Arles. In the meantime, I’ll bring you something to eat.’
When they were alone, Stefan and Mathilde looked at each other for a moment in silence. ‘Are you sure you want to stick with me?’ Mathilde asked. ‘Might be safer if you went to Switzerland by yourself.’
‘I think we’ll be better off together,’ Stefan replied.
‘And I’ve decided to stay in France for the time being.
It’s pretty useful, no one realising I speak German.
That Gestapo officer, for example: he’s very keen to get his hands on you.
I heard him telling the others you should be brought to him alive at all costs.
’ He opened his mouth to continue and then shut it abruptly.
‘What?’ Mathilde asked. ‘I need to know everything, no matter how bad.’
‘He said your husband was a troublemaker who’d been sent to a concentration camp in Poland,’ Stefan told her. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Mathilde dug her fingernails into her palms. ‘I don’t believe it. The Nazis told me Jacques was dead and that turned out to be a lie. They love to see people suffer.’
‘Of course.’ Stefan agreed so readily that she knew he was trying to be kind, but she wouldn’t entertain the idea of Jacques in such a place. Her heart was in pieces already.
‘By the way,’ he added, ‘I retrieved that gun you were hiding under the mattress and gave it to Doctor Pailleau. We can’t risk travelling with a weapon.’
He was right, but she felt even more vulnerable without it.
The bus journey to Arles was fraught. Mathilde was dreading seeing someone who might recognise her or Stefan, and as soon as she climbed on board, she spotted the local drunk, Tissier, sitting at the back.
Luckily he was already sozzled and paid them no attention.
The bus was stopped three times at roadblocks for everyone’s papers to be checked, but theirs passed muster, and so did Stefan’s inability to talk; the Germans regarded him with distaste.
Mathilde pretended to read a newspaper, willing the driver to go faster.
The train station was crowded with more soldiers, glaring beneath their pudding-basin helmets and shouting at the least opportunity as they patrolled the platforms, guns at the ready.
Mathilde kept Stefan close beside her, feeling as protective as any mother might.
She bought tickets at the booth for Grenoble, by way of N?mes.
They would have to spend the night in N?mes and catch an onward train in the morning, but at least they’d have left Provence before Schmidt realised she’d escaped, and they’d arrive in N?mes well before the curfew.
She found an out-of-the-way bench where they could sit and wait, expecting to be apprehended at any moment, but after an anxious hour, they were able to board the train and find seats in a crowded third-class carriage.
Because Stefan couldn’t communicate in public, Mathilde had to take every decision herself. ‘This will be a hard role for you to take,’ she whispered to him that night, in their bedroom at the cheap hotel she’d found near Nimes station. ‘Can you stick it out?’
‘I have to,’ he whispered back. ‘The Nazis killed my parents. Besides, it’s exciting.’
Mathilde smiled to herself in the darkness. He was only a boy, after all.
‘Actually, I’m thinking of becoming an actor after the war,’ he went on, ‘so this is good training.’
‘You’d be marvellous,’ Mathilde replied. ‘Can I come and visit you in Hollywood?’ Stefan – Guy, as she must think of him – was so convincing in his inability to speak, his frustration and impatience, that her heart went out to him even though she knew he was only pretending.
They left the hotel early the next morning to catch the first available train to Grenoble.
Even at that hour, the station was crowded with soldiers, and swastika banners now hung from the roof.
It was Paris all over again, and hatred coursed through Mathilde’s veins.
She glared at the Nazi who checked her ticket and identity card with such loathing that he laughed, and made some joke to his companion; she would have to ask Stefan later what he’d said.
Finally they were heading north. With every passing kilometre, Mathilde felt a fraction safer, though it was impossible to relax completely.
She would have to be on her guard, day and night.
After a couple of hours, the landscape changed as they passed through the forested slopes of the Vercors region, its deep ravines and rocky gorges even more dramatic than those she’d left behind.
For a moment, Mathilde forgot she was meant to be returning to her home town and stared in wonder.
As the train pulled into Grenoble, she could see the Alps, their peaks white with snow against the iron-grey sky.
She and Stefan were a world away from Provence, but was it far enough?