War on the Margins Page 3

  She walked with agonising slowness to the cemetery gate and approached the small chapel next to the church. She pulled her bicycle out of sight of the road and stood with her back to the chapel, facing the cold ocean. The cemetery was deserted. She turned and looked at the door of the chapel. There was a hasp, but no lock. She took deep breaths, looked around. There was a jerry guard tower on a cliff to the right; had they seen her? Their light was not yet lit. She quickly opened the door and slipped inside. When she was able to calm the pounding of her heart she reached out and pulled her bicycle in just before the tower light went on. That and the tiny bit of light from sunset coming through the window outlined shelves on the far wall, with various candles and devotional cards. Keeping her head below the level of the window, she pulled out some of the kneeling cushions and arranged a kind of bed. Well, here she was, crouching. She removed her coat. It would be important to keep it clean so as not to attract attention. She did not want to rip the lining until necessary. A few biscuits secreted in her pockets were her supper. She carefully rolled her coat into a ball, rested her head on it, and lay awake for hours in the cold, damp air.

  CHAPTER 9

  La Rocquaise, St Brelade, Jersey

  March 1941

  The swede is not a glamorous vegetable. Hard, unlovely, humble. Something to use as a side dish at the occasional meal, hot and mashed and dressed with butter – maybe a tiny sprinkle of nutmeg. Now it was a vegetable of exigency, the main course, the roast, the joint, the centrepiece, the star.

  Suzanne Malherbe was in charge of the menu at La Rocquaise, as well as the director of graphic design. To her the swede had become just another medium, a tabula rasa. When there was enough wood to be had, she would just boil them up on the stove, chou-navettes, topped with a pinhead-sized lump of butter and a grind of pepper, and hungrily devour them with Lucille. Now that fuel supplies were unreliable, she had to be more creative. She found that slightly dried-out swedes were more amenable to being formed into sculptures and bas-reliefs; they had a somewhat more yielding consistency to the paring knife. She kept a small collection of them undergoing this curing process in a box in the cellar. Today she had two good-sized ones; she peeled them and put them on the cutting board. The peels would be dried for soup.

  Suzanne stood back and regarded them gravely. Taking up her knife, she began cutting regular slices and putting them in a single layer on another board. Then she took each slice and made it something; one was a flower with an eye in the centre. Another was a rabbit with wings. She carefully formed a breast with a clock, a seashell with wheels, a pair of pursed lips. She arranged the slices on two plates, poured two glasses of white wine, put it all on a tray, and took it out to Lucille in the dining room. Lucille rose, smiled and kissed her, then looked intently at the plates.

  ‘Cherie! They’re wonderful! You are a true genius! Without a doubt, nobody eats their swedes this way in Nantes.’

  ‘Thank you, cherie.’

  ‘To the Resistance!’ they cried, clinking glasses. They took up their forks and slowly chewed the transformed swedes. A half loaf of potato bread on the table, initially shunned, was more palatable after their first glass of wine.

  ‘It is at two?’ asked Suzanne.

  ‘Yes. I already have the songs typed.’

  ‘Wonderful! And the disguises?’

  ‘Let’s wear the same wigs and different coats this time.’

  ‘Lovely!’

  Suzanne cleared the dishes away and began to brew some tea. ‘We need to celebrate before our revolutionary action.’

  ‘But of course!’

  Lucille took out a flat box containing a profusion of pastel-coloured tissue paper. Another box contained pens and coloured pencils. All were laid on the dining table. Lucille removed a large envelope from underneath the blank papers and took out about twenty variously handwritten and typewritten notes. ‘Please proofread them once more, cherie. I worry I may not have copied your German correctly.’

  Suzanne scanned the pages. They were copies of a song the women had written.

  We are the heroes of the Master Race,

  We are the German soldiers.

  We have defeated all of Europe

  And seen the coast of Dover.

  And if I come home for the holidays,

  And my wife’s belly is big as a

  boulder, ‘Baby, don’t get mad at me,’

  she’ll say, ‘The Fatherland needs more soldiers!’

  And if I come home for the holidays…

  My skin was burnt to blisters,

  As I warmed up in Africa’s weather,

  The meat was rotten, the water stank,

  My burnt eyes as thick as leather.

  And if I come home for the holidays …

  And round and round the world this dance of death

  Goes faster and faster,

  Until we can no longer fight;

  And overthrow our masters!

  And if I come home for the holidays

  My wife will be looking much older,

  ‘Baby, to bed!’ she’ll say to me

  ‘The Fatherland needs more soldiers!’

  ‘I wish we could write music to it; they would be singing it all over the island. I will add some finishing touches.’ Suzanne took up a pen and made a few corrections. After she had blotted the ink and pronounced herself satisfied, the two women began balling up the papers like so much rubbish. They stuffed all the wads into two large handbags. Then they repaired upstairs to dress. Lucille took out a brown wig and stuffed her short red hair under it. Suzanne was handed a blonde wig; she did the same. Lucille, so used to dressing in various costumes in her younger days of gender exploration and self-portraiture, took easily to most disguises, although she preferred male dress. Suzanne, who had used the androgynous name Marcel Moore on her work as a graphic designer, had never thought of herself as a costume artist who played with identities; she was learning quickly. She removed her smock and trousers and pulled on a thick sweater and a black wool skirt. Lucille added some bourgeois costume jewellery to her wine-coloured dress. They threw on shapeless lightweight coats. A little touch of lipstick and they were off.

  First they walked past the St Brelade’s Bay Hotel. They bought newspapers, which they tucked under their arms; these could be used as tubes for launching the crumpled paper through a half-open car window. There were few cars there now, so they proceeded to the cemetery where the graveside service had begun.

  A young enlisted man had committed suicide. It probably had something to do with the deployment of the Afrika Korps. This occasion was fertile ground for their cause. Lucille and Suzanne walked towards the vehicles parked next to the cemetery. They avoided the hearse and walked from the back of the line forward. Many windows were open to air out the cars; they surreptitiously dropped paper wads through these windows and moved up the line. When they felt themselves getting too conspicuous, they walked into the cemetery proper, joining other curious civilians, and stood through the ceremony. It was a brilliantly sunny day; the enlisted men, already in a state of poor morale, were given permission to remove their coats, and they slung them over their arms. The two women walked by the clusters of men standing at parade rest, brushing by their coats, slipping wads of paper into the occasional exposed pocket. They kept a sombre expression on their faces to blend in with the expressions of the other attendees. When those assembled began to sing ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles’, they gave each other sly looks and muttered curses. Most of the other civilians looked equally uncomfortable, and left as soon as the song was over.

  After the young enlisted men were marched away, and the officers headed for their cars, Suzanne and Lucille hung back, slowing their steps until the Germans were gone and the other onlookers had dispersed. They stopped outside the little fisherman’s chapel to share a cigarette.

  ‘Well, cherie,’ said Suzanne, ‘they continue to commit suicide. I regret the loss of life, but I think it is a good sign, don’t
you?’

  ‘Well, if what we heard on the BBC is true, the war is not going our way yet. But if they are already committing suicide, things are bad for them, and will get worse.’

  ‘I suppose no army ever lost because of many suicides, though?’

  ‘No, cherie, I am not aware of any.’ They gazed out to the sea for a silent minute. ‘But it shows that we are not here for retirement, but once again for the advance of revolution and freedom. We are not old aunties yet!’ Lucille coughed as she chuckled and exhaled, and handed Suzanne the cigarette.

  Suddenly they were startled by the chapel door opening. Suzanne dropped the cigarette. A bedraggled young woman emerged, pushing a bicycle.

  CHAPTER 10

  Nantes, France

  Lucy Schwob had started life in Nantes with words on her side. She was doted on by her father, a newspaper editor, and her uncle Marcel, a writer. She was a very intelligent little girl with curly blonde hair and deep blue eyes. Hers was a wealthy literary family with a passion for words and truth. Books dominated the décor; poets and playwrights of the avant garde threw grapes at one another at the dining table. Lucy’s mother’s growing madness, her gradual slipping-away from reason, was all the more painful for this. Gradually, her mother developed complete disregard for the beauty of words, and turned the idea of symbols into weapons to use against the world. Maurice Schwob tried to ignore it, then to keep it a secret. His despair grew as his wife’s behaviour became more bizarre. When they were speaking English on holidays in England, she stopped using the word ‘go’: ‘I am coming to the shore,’ ‘You need to come to school soon,’ ‘The hot weather is coming away.’ Nobody said anything. When would four-year-old Lucille notice? Actually, she already had. She began by trying to fix her mother. ‘It’s not “come”, it’s “go”, stop saying “come”.’ Her mother ignored her.

  Back in Nantes, her mother spoke French in equally bizarre fashion. Often she would cut some obscure article out of the newspaper, something about farming or cattle exports, and show it to her husband, waiting for him to grasp its significance. Something was wrong, wrong, wrong. Lucy tried being extra-good. Her father tried courtesy, reasoning, pleading. Articles on peach hybridisation and bridge repairs were left on his breakfast plate. Lucy was puzzled, then terrified, as her mother began accusing Lucy of having ‘friends’ who stole household items and turned Lucy against her. Lucy stopped eating, began hiding in her room, picking at her scalp until it bled. Her mother would fly into rages, shouting at her, ‘Don’t you know I’m the best mother in the world?’ Lucy’s eyes would fill with tears, her nails would tear at her scalp. She was beginning to hate her mother, and she knew that was bad. She was a bad girl who made her mother talk funny. She started lecturing her dolls on good behaviour, hurling the ones who wouldn’t pay attention against the wall.

  She loved her father. She could tell him. One day as the two of them were going to see his mother in the Cambronne apartment building, she said, ‘Papa, I don’t like Maman. She’s bad to me.’

  His head whipped around. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She shouts at me and says I have friends who do things to her. Papa, I don’t have any friends! Nobody plays with me! I’m a bad girl. She says I’m bad all the time!’

  He looked down at his little girl, who looked up at him with complete trust, but also with anger, demanding that he understand her. She was thin and pale, with dirty, even bloody, fingernails. Her blonde curls looked patchy. But it was her gaze that unnerved him the most; he would never forget it. He turned his head away and composed himself. This wave of strange behaviour had so depleted his ability to cope, he had not noticed what was happening to his daughter.

  ‘Sweetheart, you are a very GOOD girl. Maman cannot help it.’

  ‘Yes, she can, Papa. I tell her to, but she doesn’t listen to me.’

  ‘Lucy, do you love your grandmother?’

  ‘Yes, I love Mamé. She gives me biscuits and little cups of tea, and we make up plays with all my dolls. Don’t be angry with me for drinking tea, Papa!’ She began to cry.

  ‘No, no, cherie. It is all right. I am not angry with you for anything.’

  ‘You aren’t?’

  ‘Lucy, what if you stayed with Mamé for a while until Maman feels better?’

  ‘Would you visit me?’

  ‘Oh, of course I would.’

  ‘I would like to stay at Mamé’s house, then.’ She tilted her little face to him with such a look of relief, he burst into tears and hugged her.

  CHAPTER 11

  St Brelade, Jersey

  Spring 1941

  ‘Excuse me,’ Marlene muttered, as if she were passing them in a shop aisle. They were two middle-aged ladies, one short and one tall and somewhat stolid. They looked dressed up for some occasion. She pushed the bicycle a few steps as they looked on, momentarily speechless.

  ‘Not at all,’ said a bemused Lucille with a smirk. ‘I do hope we did not disturb you.’ She instantly regretted her remark when she saw the look of hurt on Marlene’s face. Before Marlene could say something, she said, ‘Cherie, are you all right? Were you hiding from the German boy’s funeral? Did you know him?’

  This only served to distress her more. ‘What boy? I don’t know any Germans! I don’t know what they’re doing here! I … ‘ She put up a hand to her eyes but the tears had already begun to roll down her cheeks.

  Suzanne gave Lucille a disapproving glance, all too familiar with her tendency towards tactlessness. Lucille bit her lip as Suzanne approached Marlene, who looked twice as bedraggled as she had a minute before. Suzanne placed her hand on Marlene’s, which gripped the handlebar weakly.

  ‘Cherie,’ she said, ‘please excuse us. We did not intend to hurt your feelings.’

  Marlene shook her head, unable to speak.

  ‘Please come and have some tea with us. If you do not want to talk about your troubles, that is all right, but perhaps we can help you.’

  This brought forth more sobs from Marlene, but they discerned the word ‘job’ in her outpouring. They looked at each other, knowing that they trusted this woman and were going to help her. Now Lucille approached her.

  ‘Come, cherie, please have some tea with us and tell us your story.’

  Marlene nodded and they set off.

  La Rocquaise was dilapidated and adorned with photographs and paintings the likes of which Marlene had never seen. Women with large heads squishing out of tiny bodies, naked men, breasts surrounding eyeballs. A man-about-town leaning on a mantel, a kneeling Buddha, a woman in eighteenth-century costume, a woman holding a bar-bell and wearing a leotard emblazoned with ‘I am in training don’t kiss me’. Fashion watercolours from the 1920s with gamines in costume, cigarettes drooping languidly from red lips, adorned a separate wall. Only later would Marlene realise that all the photographs were of Lucille, and all the watercolours by Suzanne. Although the images were unnerving, she was quickly made to feel at home by the women’s hospitality and solicitude.

  Suzanne set down a strangely ornate coffee pot and poured parsnip ‘coffee’ (if you put it in a teapot it would be parsnip ‘tea’, really tasting like neither) and sliced heavy potato ‘bread’. She had changed into a smock-like garment and trousers, which Marlene found quite strange. Her hair was now dark brown, as if it had been transplanted from Lucille’s head to her own. Lucille, on the other hand, now sported short dyed-red hair that somehow complemented her wine-coloured dress. She was pale, with piercing eyes and a nose in the shape of a semicircle. She was quite animated, circling around Suzanne in a bird-like manner and chattering with her and, occasionally, with Marlene. Her hands fluttered about as she talked, and Marlene sat a little distance from her when she saw her gesturing a little too carelessly with a lighted cigarette.

  Marlene was pleased to realise that the reward for the risk she had taken was to meet these people, far more interesting than the girls from the office. The women seemed to like her, and when she accepted their offer of lodging and
a job they quickly negotiated an agreement. Marlene would work their kitchen garden, plus whatever other rows she could till. In return, they would hide her, using both the walls around the compound and their talent for disguise. This was a good arrangement for Lucille and Suzanne, who were used to city life and who found that the creeping joint stiffness and other maladies of middle age were obstacles to their reinventing themselves completely as farmers.

  Before the weather warmed, Marlene planted beans and lettuce as well as swedes. The ladies bartered some wine for a chicken; the resulting eggs were a welcome addition to their meals and also were excellent bribery material. Marlene carried at least two eggs on her at all times in case anyone should show too much curiosity about her identity. So far, nobody had. Nonetheless, the ladies decided that she should shave her head and wear one of Lucille’s huge collection of wigs, changing them often so that it looked as if one drudge after another was tilling their soil.

  Marlene had explained to them about her card, and Miss Viner’s; they had heartily approved. One morning, the three sat at the dining-room table after a breakfast of swedes, peas and a single egg divided three ways. Lucille spoke up.

  ‘As you know, we write letters to the soldiers encouraging them to mutiny. We do not wish to ask you to help us in this unless you know the risks and wish to take them. You have already done so much, you do not have to do any more if you do not want to.’

  Both women looked at her. Marlene twisted her calloused hands in her lap.