Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
Grenoble hummed with nervous energy. The curfew was brought forward increasingly early and people were afraid to spend too long outdoors, queuing outside shops only when strictly necessary.
Most of the Jews had gone, either arrested or melted away into hiding, but the Milice patrolled the streets alongside German soldiers, searching for them and maybe a Communist or two.
Chapuy feared and hated these paramilitaries more than the Boche, because they were local and harder to fool.
Despite the cold, Mathilde often spent nights in the open with Sanglier’s Maquis, receiving and distributing the weapons and money dropped by parachute.
She might end up cycling back to Grenoble with a couple of guns under the soap in her bicycle basket, though she found those trips particularly nerve-racking.
She didn’t keep a weapon with her but she knew various places where they were stored – spare bicycles, too, in case she were stranded without one, or escorting someone in need of transport.
On one of her trips into the Vercors, she learned that Sanglier was planning a more significant operation: bombing the ordnance store next to the barracks where Stefan worked.
Stefan had provided a map of the place and they were going to break in during the evening to lay the explosive charges, detonating them a short while later from a distance.
At that time, there were only two guards on duty and they could be easily overpowered.
The attack was to take place on the night of 11 November, Armistice Day.
The Vichy government had prohibited any sort of ceremony to commemorate the ending of the last war, but this year, demonstrations had been secretly organised by Resistance groups across Grenoble.
With the police diverted elsewhere, the bombing would be a grand finale.
‘It will show the Boche we mean business,’ Sanglier said, and Mathilde was exhilarated too, although she wondered what the repercussions would be.
The Germans were in the habit of taking civilian hostages and executing a few of them in revenge for any acts of sabotage, and blowing up their ordnance would be a major event.
‘Yet how many more deaths will be prevented if the explosives are destroyed?’ Stefan reasoned when they discussed the matter.
The day before Armistice Day, Mathilde had brought some of Madame Bertrand’s goat’s milk soap to sell at the weekly market in Grenoble, a useful place to pick up information.
That morning, the Place aux Herbes was buzzing: a Kübelwagen had been ambushed the previous night while on patrol and two German soldiers had been killed.
Mathilde packed away her soaps and was hurrying towards Les Deux Copains to see whether Chapuy knew anything about the attack when she ran into a chaotic roadblock near the Place Victor Hugo and, turning to retreat, found a line of soldiers across the road behind her.
They swept her forward with shouts and jabs of their guns, herding her into a side street to join a group of around twenty terrified Grenoblois.
What a fool she’d been, allowing herself to be taken hostage!
She should have steered well clear of the centre of town.
She made her face blank, hunched her shoulders and stared at the ground, along with everyone else trying to avoid attention.
Her papers might be forged but they were of the highest quality and she carried nothing incriminating, only a few tablets of soap she was legitimately trying to sell.
A few more stragglers joined their dejected party including, Mathilde saw to her horror, lovely dark-haired Coco, who served behind the bar at Les Deux Copains.
Naturally, they showed no sign of recognising each other.
After another hour or so, they were marched at gunpoint to the huge nine-storey building a few streets away that had been taken over by the secret police and was rumoured to house torture chambers as well as cells and interrogation rooms. At least, Mathilde thought, it would be useful to see inside the place – if she emerged.
The treatment she’d suffered so far at the hands of the Nazis had been fairly restrained, all things considered.
Would she give away names if, say, cigarettes were stubbed into her eyes?
It was impossible to tell, and she sent up a silent prayer of thanks that at least Esmé was safely far away and couldn’t be used to make her mother talk.
The hostages were held in a cell on the ground floor, still not daring to speak or even look at each other, from which they were taken one by one to be interviewed.
When her turn came, Mathilde was alarmed to see a member of the Milice there, alongside her German interrogator.
Yet she was able to give a good account of herself and her story added up.
There had originally been a Solange Courcel from Marseille, and the Nazis weren’t to know that this Madame Courcel had died there.
Mathilde claimed she’d moved to Grenoble to stay with Madame Bertrand, a distant cousin, because she was lonely after the death of her husband and enjoyed looking after animals.
It was a boring story, recounted in a dull, flat voice.
The SS man tossed her identity card across the desk. As she leaned forward to pick it up, he asked with sudden interest, ‘Is that a wig you’re wearing?’
‘I had rheumatic fever as a young woman,’ she replied, meeting his gaze. ‘Please, allow me some dignity.’
He looked at her with amused contempt. ‘Go back to the cell and wait. We’re done with you for now.’
They were kept all night in police headquarters, a smaller group now since five of those taken for questioning hadn’t returned: two teenage boys, a workman in blue overalls, a woman with a shopping basket that she’d tried to hide when apprehended – and beautiful Coco.
What could the Gestapo want with her? She wasn’t an active member of the Resistance, as far as Mathilde knew, but she must have overheard much of Chapuy’s business and would recognise the people who met in the café’s back room.
Well, there was nothing to be done. Mathilde chose a spot near the door and sat with her head on her knees to doze.
It looked like she would miss the next day’s protests but that was the least of her worries.
The morning light of Armistice Day filtered through a barred window set high in the wall, and still the hostages weren’t released.
Mathilde listened for a sign that would let her know when the protests had begun.
The first signal was some sort of commotion in the building, with banging doors and guards running up and down stairs, and shouting in the distance.
And then suddenly they heard the most extraordinary sound: hundreds of people singing the Marseillaise.
The hostages stared at each other in silence, until a nondescript-looking man who might have been a bank clerk stood and took up the refrain, in a clear tenor voice that stirred Mathilde to the depths of her soul.
One by one, they scrambled to their feet and joined in: a group of such ordinary people, picked off the street at random but now transcendent, united by their love of the song and everything it meant for their country.
At that moment, she would have given her life for any one of them.
‘Halt die Klappe!’ screamed a guard, banging on the cell door, but they ignored him.
Only when he unlocked the door, dragged out the nearest person – an elderly woman dressed in black – and held a gun to her chin did they stop singing.
Glaring at them, he threw the old lady back inside and slammed the door shut before hurrying away down the corridor.
They subsided into silence, listening to the hubbub outside. Mathilde thought of Sanglier and his men, no doubt already hiding in the woodland around the barracks, and wondered whether this new development would affect their plans.
Finally, hours later, they heard the sound of a key in the lock of their cell door and it was thrown open.
‘You’re free to go,’ the guard announced, ‘we need the space,’ before almost immediately pushing them back because a column of new arrestees was being marched by.
Mathilde, first in line to leave, locked eyes with the prisoner at the head of this procession.
Stefan was being hustled down the corridor, surrounded by guards, with his hands cuffed behind his back. She understood the warning he sent as he glanced briefly at her. It was all over for him – and maybe for the rest of them, too.
By the time Mathilde and the others emerged from the SS headquarters, the only people to be seen on the streets were gangs of soldiers and police.
Only a few signs of disorder remained: a bloodstained tricolour rosette, a discarded coat with a torn sleeve, a wine bottle with rags stuffed into the neck, floating in a fountain.
Tying on the red headscarf, she walked as quickly as possible back to the market to retrieve her bicycle from where she’d hidden it in the undergrowth the day before.
Her mind was sharp, focused entirely on what had to be done.
The barracks lay about half an hour’s cycle ride away and she needed to get there before dark – partly because of the curfew and partly because she needed Sanglier and the others to see her.
It was no surprise to find her bicycle was gone.
The nearest spare was located ten minutes in the other direction but she’d have no chance without it.
Mentally revising her route, she hurried to the repair shop on rue des Bains and hammered on the door, praying the owner would let her in.
Eventually he emerged, grumbling about the noise she was making, and finally she was adjusting the seat of a man’s bicycle before swinging her leg over the crossbar.
She went over the possibilities as she rode, calculating her chances of being imminently arrested.
Presumably Coco hadn’t identified her – yet – or she’d never have been released.
Was Coco the one who’d informed on Stefan?
Yet he’d only been to Les Deux Copains that time they’d first arrived in Grenoble, and she was sure Coco had no idea about the bomb plot at the barracks.
As for Stefan: he might break down under torture and then they’d all be done for.
In any event, she had to warn Sanglier that their circuit had most probably been betrayed and it was too risky for the mission to go ahead.
Approaching the barracks, it took all her resolve to cycle past as slowly as she dared, her red headscarf fluttering in the breeze.
There were bound to be extra guards watching from inside because of the disturbance, and probably others posted in the street, though she couldn’t see them.
The building was set among woods, where the Maquis fighters would be waiting until dark to break into the artillery store.
She had no idea how noticeable she was, or whether they were even in a position to see her from this distance.
Stopping at the end of the road to check the contents of her bag, she looked around, as though coming to a decision, and then turned to ride back the way she’d come, stopping at the guards’ hut by the barrack gates.
They sprang out immediately to challenge her: two young men, both bristling with weapons and equally forbidding.
‘I have a few tablets of soap left,’ she wheedled. ‘Would you kind gentlemen like to buy any at a knockdown price? My husband will be angry if I haven’t sold them all. It’s lovely goat’s milk soap, so soft.’
One of the guards told her to clear off at once, but the other held a tablet of soap to his nose and sniffed. It was indeed so much nicer than the regulation bars available from shops. Mathilde looked towards the woodland under the pretext of giving him time to think, feeling horribly conspicuous.
‘Two for the price of one?’ he said, picking another from her bag.
Reluctantly she agreed. ‘Only because I have to get home before the curfew.’
Her legs weak, she wished them good day and rode away. It would be too risky to go back to Madame Bertrand’s so, after checking repeatedly to make sure she wasn’t being followed, she headed into the mountains to wait for Sanglier to return – or not.
Mathilde spent a week with the Maquis. Sanglier and the others came back to camp one by one that night, having seen her warning, aborted the mission and split up for safety.
Over the next few days, news of the prisoners gradually trickled in from Grenoble.
Four of the hostages rounded up on Armistice Day in retaliation for the Kübelwagen ambush were shot by firing squad: the two teenage boys who’d been escaping compulsory work service, the workman who’d once been a member of the Communist party and the housewife who’d bought eggs and sugar on the black market to make a birthday cake for her child.
Coco was released after a couple of days’ interrogation.
She’d invented some visitors to Les Deux Copains and given the Gestapo a few names they already knew, but was tricked into confirming that the Chapuys had entertained guests after the curfew and discussed politics with them.
Monsieur Chapuys was executed along with the hostages and Madame Chapuys was jailed.
And Stefan committed suicide rather than talk, by throwing himself out of an eighth-floor window when left alone for a moment.
Mathilde went for a long walk into the mountains by herself, mourning the boy she’d loved like a brother.
She remembered his cheerfulness, the instinctive skill with which he shaped and tended the vines, his wonderful baritone, the long hours he worked without complaint.
He had an affinity with animals, with growing things and the rocky, sunbaked soil of Provence.
She recalled the way he was always looking out for her, his patience with her flashes of temper, his sense of wonder when Esmé had been born.
His acting ambition made her smile, but then again, he might have been all sorts of things; he was a generous, brave, exceptional person.
Now all that promise had been snuffed out in an instant.
Sinking to her knees, she wept for her loss, and the world’s.
By the time she’d dried her eyes and returned to the camp, her hatred of the Nazis had been kindled into a wild, roaring flame. She could have killed the lot of them with her bare hands.