Chapter Thirty
For the rest of the winter, Mathilde kept a low profile in Madame Bertrand’s smallholding, only occasionally trekking into the mountains with supplies.
She found the camp a sad place without Stefan.
The number of young men (and a few women) joining the Maquis was growing exponentially and now, according to Sanglier, thousands were hiding out in the Vercors mountains.
Parachute drops of weapons and money were coming thick and fast, and an English colonel and an American marine had arrived to train the fighters.
Mathilde wondered whether Yves would ever come to the region.
It was over three years since she’d seen him, but she thought of him often, and would have asked Sanglier for news if she hadn’t been too proud.
She also worried constantly about Esmé. The Allies were bombing railways and canals in the south, aiming to disrupt German supply lines, and Avignon suffered particularly badly, being directly on the Marseille to Paris route.
Chateau Albertine had become an important strategic headquarters and was bound to be a target.
As spring arrived and the weather improved, trips over the mountains into Switzerland for Jews and downed airmen could resume and Mathilde was busy carrying messages and supplies between safe houses.
Communications were vital now there were so many people working for the Resistance, both within France and overseas.
Mathilde’s English wasn’t good enough for her to work as a wireless operator, but she knew who these people were and where the sets were hidden; one of her duties was to make sure their batteries were fully charged with the generator.
The airwaves crackled with a growing sense that victory was within reach.
Soviet troops were fighting back on the Eastern Front, liberating Crimea and Sevastopol, while Allied troops drove the Germans out of the strategic hilltop town of Monte Cassino in Italy, although it was a hard-won victory: thousands of men died in the assault.
Around Grenoble, Maquis attacks on the occupiers increased and, in retaliation, German troops and Milice launched more raids into the mountains, on one awful day burning a village on the plateau and shooting or arresting many of its inhabitants.
In the middle of May, Mathilde received word there was to be a significant parachutage of men, money and weapons at the full moon, and her help was needed to distribute the spoils.
Madame Bertrand was used to her comings and goings, so she merely said she’d be away for a couple of days, jammed on a woollen hat and cycled towards the mountains.
It was a clear night and exhilarating to be out alone, her senses on high alert.
At one point she saw the lights of a military convoy ahead, so threw her bicycle in the ditch and scrambled down to lie beside it while the lorries rumbled past. Maybe now there was a chance the war might end before her luck ran out.
A couple of hours later, she was wheeling her bicycle up a narrow path towards one of the makeshift airfields on the plateau.
Silvery moonlight bathed a stark, two-dimensional landscape, black rocks silhouetted against the vast backdrop of a starry sky.
Torchlight shone briefly to show her the men already in position and she hurried to join them: Sanglier and a member of the Maquis she didn’t recognise.
‘This should be an interesting one,’ Sanglier told her, smiling. ‘I’m glad you could join us.’
Before long, they heard the distant drone of an approaching aircraft and he jumped up to flash his torch in the agreed signal.
The Halifax turned and banked, and on its return journey left behind a shoal of pale canopies drifting through the dark like jellyfish.
Mathilde saw where the first one landed and ran towards it, knife in hand should she need to cut the parachute free.
Already the aeroplane was circling again to prepare for another drop, and now containers were falling ahead of her.
She paused to retrieve the nearest, detaching and rolling up its parachute so that no trace should be left for anyone to find the next morning.
Straightening up with the box tucked under her arm, she caught sight of a man in a bulky flying suit lumbering to meet her.
‘Patron?’ she said, and tore off her hat so he could see her face.
‘Lionne!’ His smile made her heart turn over. ‘I heard you’d made it here.’
But now Sanglier had arrived and there was no time to talk: they had work to do.
Yves and two Americans had arrived, along with eight containers of weapons, radio parts and money.
Quickly the men changed out of their flying suits and helped retrieve the supplies and load them into sacks for carrying back to camp.
The six of them split into pairs in case of an ambush.
Yves went with Sanglier and Mathilde took one of the Americans: a small, noisy man prone to whistling and asking incomprehensible questions.
She was glad to hand him into someone else’s care when they reached the camp.
She went looking for Yves the next morning and found him drinking barley coffee by the fire. He was invigorated, filled with that same energy and authority that had attracted her when they’d first met.
‘Things are finally moving,’ he said, taking her arm as they walked along the track to her favourite spot: a wide ledge looking out over the valley below. ‘I can’t say when exactly, but soon, and then all your preparations will pay off.’
Just seeing him and hearing his words filled her with hope. ‘Are you staying here for long?’
‘A few days, and then I’m heading south, to Marseille.’ He paused. ‘I heard about the Boche occupying Chateau Albertine. Is that why you left?’
She nodded. ‘Somebody from the Gestapo came looking for me. I knew him from Paris; he was a customer in my husband’s bookshop.’
‘We’ll take the chateau back,’ Yves told her, ‘you can be sure of that. I owe it to Fabrice, and the countess. She was very kind to me when I was a boy.’
Mathilde smiled, imagining the sort of child he might have been. He smoothed a strand of hair away from her face and said, ‘Maybe we’ll meet there someday when the war is over and talk about old times.’
‘Maybe.’ Mathilde dropped her gaze. What if she told him he had a daughter living at the house? He’d be distracted, blown off course at the very moment he needed to focus.
‘Have you had word of your husband?’ he asked, and she told him no, but that was only to be expected; she’d heard a rumour that Jacques had been sent to a prison camp but she wouldn’t believe it until she had proof.
‘Well, I’d better be getting back to Grenoble with a share of this loot,’ she finished, when there seemed nothing more to say. ‘Goodbye, Yves, and good luck. Look after yourself.’
He didn’t follow her, though she felt his eyes on her back as she walked away.
A month later, the day they’d been longing for finally arrived: Mathilde and Madame Bertrand gathered around the wireless, listening intently to BBC reports that D-Day had arrived: the invasion to liberate France had begun.
British, American and Canadian troops were landing along the Normandy coast and forcing their way inland.
Hand-to-hand fighting was taking place in the streets, supported by tanks and heavy bombardment from the air, and civilian inhabitants of Le Havre, Calais and Dunkirk were being warned to evacuate from the towns.
Mathilde couldn’t follow every detail but Madame Bertrand spoke better English and was able to fill in the gaps.
Mathilde left immediately for the mountains, to hear what Sanglier had to say and receive instructions. Rather than being overjoyed, she found him in a state of some agitation, pacing about the camp and swearing under his breath.
‘We need three times as many weapons as we have,’ he told her, ‘and there hasn’t been a parachutage for days.
Everything’s going to the north apparently, but this invasion was meant to be a joint operation – that’s why the Patron was here.
Are we expected to fight the Boche with our bare hands?
’ The Maquis were itching to play their part and he didn’t know how much longer he could control men who’d been living rough for months without much to do.
Mathilde told him she’d wait for further orders and went back to Grenoble; the camp seemed a restless place, on the verge of mutiny, and she didn’t want to spend the night there.
Days went past when she and Madame Bertrand were glued to the wireless, desperate for information.
The Germans fought fiercely but they were outnumbered, and just over a week later, the Allies had connected all five beachheads in Normandy and controlled that section of the coast. Artificial Mulberry harbours were built so that more troops, weapons and supplies could pour into France, and Resistance groups in that area supported them by sabotaging railway tracks, cutting telephone cables and blowing up electricity substations.
In the south, the bombing of bridges, viaducts and railway lines intensified, and one day Mathilde heard that the leaders of the various Maquis groups in the Vercors had declared the area a republic and were openly defying the Germans.
Now, at last, the parachute drops of weapons and supplies increased.
Mathilde was both exhilarated and anxious, fearing the reprisals that might follow but delighted by this new sense of urgency.
So many of the men who were needed arrived on the plateau that she could spend less time up there receiving parachute drops, but there were more messages to transmit and personnel to guide.
One afternoon, she had escorted a newly arrived Allied officer to the camp from Grenoble and was about to leave when Sanglier pulled her aside and said, ‘By the way, have you heard the news about Chateau Albertine?’