Chapter 10 #2
‘I don’t know,’ Margot replied, running her hand through her brown hair.
‘There’s not much love lost between them – the Professor didn’t salute when his brother did, and then he told me…
’ She thought of the Professor’s sightless eye.
His brother was so vicious, so unthinking and cruel.
‘He was blinded by him, Esther. He was blinded by his own brother!’
Esther’s mouth fell open but, before she could speak, a young man’s voice echoed from the lane outside.
The words were in French, but spoken in a harsh German accent.
Margot could tell that whoever’s voice was echoing from a megaphone, it belonged to someone who spoke precious little French, despite having marched into the country.
‘All inhabitants of Cordeval are invited to gather in Clarenville town square tomorrow night at six o’clock.
Books gathered in the region that have been prohibited by the Führer will be put to the flames!
’ the voice announced. ‘By order of Obergruppenführer Lauterborn, all inhabitants are to present any forbidden books for burning.’
‘First the books,’ Esther murmured, reaching to gather up Isabelle.
She held the baby close, hushing the little girl as she griped at being suddenly disturbed.
‘Then the Jews. They have started already, Margot. I’ve heard that…
’ She paused, as though considering whether to go on.
Then she said, ‘Lauterborn has gathered us up and spirited us away everywhere he has gone. And now he’s here. ’
Margot put her arm round Esther’s shoulder. ‘Maybe we need to stop leaving the books around.’
She hated the idea of giving up their act of resistance, but it was too dangerous, especially for Esther.
But Esther shook her head. ‘No,’ she said with determination. ‘This is how we resist. We won’t stop. And one day, we’ll tell Isabelle what we did.’
If Esther was brave enough to put herself at such risk, then Margot could find the courage too.
The two friends sat together, chatting away into the evening about anything and everything that wasn’t to do with the occupation.
They could forget that France had been sliced in two, with barricades between the occupied zone and the ‘free’ zone.
What a joke it was to call Vichy France free, with its restrictive, fascist rules.
It was best, sometimes, to forget, and Margot couldn’t fail to do that when she was embraced by Esther’s warm companionship. But it was getting late.
Esther gave Margot a candle stub to light her way, so that she could get home through the narrow tunnels, as it was past the curfew.
She lifted the hatch in Esther’s sitting room floor and went down into the cellar.
After passing piles of crates and stacked furniture, she went through the old, creaking door into the tunnel.
She could hear the distant whisper of the waves and smell the salt from the sea.
She wished she’d brought the old map of the tunnels that she’d found in the shop’s cellar when she’d moved in.
The tunnels almost followed the road layout above, but Esther had told her to go straight ahead and turn left where the tunnels branched off.
She’d know the place because years before someone had carved a niche for a large candle at the spot.
Margot went as quietly as she could. The uneven limestone of the tunnel walls threw shadows in the flickering candlelight.
Something brushed against her face and her heart leapt – until she realised it was an ancient, dusty cobweb, draped across her path.
She swept it away and carried on, picking her way in the light of the candle.
A long time ago, gravel had been sprinkled here and there on the floor to even out the hollows in the path, but still Margot nearly tripped as she made her careful way along.
She’d taken the turning where the niche had been carved and was nearly home when she heard the drone of the air-raid siren starting above ground.
As she hurried past the doors that opened into the cellars, she could hear the residents heading down and settling in for the night.
They’d bring their blankets, suitcases of essentials, and hearts that were weary but full of hope.
Maybe tomorrow morning, they’d emerge from their shelters and discover their homes still intact.
Margot let herself in at her cellar door, then wound her way up the stairs to her flat to gather her things.
She paused as she threw her clothes into a bag, peering round the edge of the curtain.
From up here, she’d once seen a Luftwaffe plane get shot down, and seen it cartwheel away across the sea in flames.
She heard the roar of engines and could make out the dark shapes of bombers, which had flown in from Britain, against the silver clouds.
Around them were the smaller fighters that would escort them through the night to their targets in Europe, darting and fast around the more lumbering bombers that they were protecting.
Her heart beat faster as she thought of the young men facing so much terror, then she saw the small, nimble Luftwaffe fighters emerge from the cloud cover to engage the Allied planes.
The fighting was ferocious, but Margot tried not to watch as she gathered her things.
Time after time, though, she was drawn back to the window, peering round the blackout curtain to witness the furious battle taking place overhead.
She saw flashes in the sky and wondered at tomorrow night, when Lauterborn’s bonfire would make a target of the coast. They would be visible for miles around and Margot could only hope that Allied planes would leave them be.
There was a burst of gunfire, and Margot flinched.
A fighter plane bearing the swastika had been hit and it was engulfed in flames.
It tore its way down through the sky, its burning engines shrieking.
It was heading for the cliffs on the edge of the village, which rose up dark and looming in the night where the coast swept upwards from the harbour.
Where Esther lived with Isabelle. And the Professor. But Esther’s cottage was further back.
For a second, the Professor’s cottage was illuminated by the light from the flames. Then, with a crash that shook Margot’s house and the whole village, the cottage and the plane vanished into an inferno.
Margot thought of the Professor’s bicycle, the metal frame twisted by the flames. She thought of his gentlemanly ways.
She thought of his music drifting up from the bar; music she’d never hear again.