Page 31 of The Dressmaker's Gift
As she opened the door to the apartment, one of the men grabbed her arm and held it in a steely grip. She could feel the fingers of his black leather gloves bruising her skin through the layers of winter clothes she wore. The other two kicked open the doors leading off the hallway and Claire caught a glimpse of Mireille’s empty room. Then she saw Vivi’s startled expression and the quick movement of her hands as she pulled what looked like a pair of earphones from her head. Some sort of radio set sat on the table beside her.
‘Well, well, what have we here?’ The Gestapo officer shot a triumphant grin at his colleague. ‘We thought we’d come to trawl for sardines and instead it looks as if we’ve caught a shark in our net. What an unexpected pleasure!’
Claire made as if to run to Vivi, but the man gripping her arm shook her so hard that she bit her tongue, her mouth filling with the metallic taste of blood. ‘Oh no you don’t!’ he shouted at her. ‘And where’s your other friend? We were told there were three of you.’
Claire shook her head. ‘She’s not here. She left.’ Thinking fast, she said, loudly enough for Vivi to hear, ‘She went out one day last week and never came back. We don’t know what’s happened – perhaps you can tell us, monsieur?’ Defiantly, she looked him in the eye.
He raised a black-gloved hand and slapped her cheek, hard. ‘We ask the questions and you give us the answers. I hope you are a quick learner, mademoiselle, otherwise you’re going to make things a whole lot worse for yourself. And for your friend, here, too.’
Tears ran down Claire’s face, their saltiness mingling with the blood in her mouth, but she pressed her lips together and refused to cry out. She heard a crash from Vivi’s room and craned her neck to try to see what was happening, but the man pushed her into her own room and slammed the door, barking, ‘Stay there until I say you can come out.’ She heard his footsteps crossing the hallway as he went to join his colleagues.
Desperately, she cast around for something she could do to distract them from Vivienne. Could she create a diversion? Lead them away? Go and get help? For a second, she wondered whether she could squeeze through the tiny window and escape across the rooftops, but even if she could get out she knew that she couldn’t leave Vivi, the friend who had sat by her bedside, soothing her in the aftermath of her nightmares, calming her fears.
It had become clear that Vivi held a key role in the network and that she must have been passing on crucial information to the Resistance, but she’d never suspected that Vivi had a wireless receiver hidden in her room. What other secrets was Vivi party to? Her close relationship with Monsieur Leroux could be the downfall of the whole network. Claire trembled as she thought how many lives were at stake.
All at once, Claire knew what she needed to do. She had to try to stick with Vivienne, to help her stay strong and not divulge what she knew. Together, they had to hold out for twenty-four hours, that’s what they’d been told. Mireille would be able to alert the others. It was up to Claire and Vivienne to buy them the time to cover their tracks. Wherever they were going, she was determined that they would go there together.
Quickly, she started pushing as many warm clothes as she could into a bag. Then she jumped with fright as her bedroom door was kicked open again. ‘Well done, mademoiselle, I see you have had the foresight to pack for a little holiday,’ sneered the officer. ‘Well, let us see how you like our departure lounge on the Avenue Foch.’
The other two were already marching Vivi down the stairs as the man pushed Claire out of the apartment. She hurried to try to catch up with her friend, dropping one of her gloves as she went. She tried to pick it up but he gave her another shove, sending her sprawling headlong on to the next landing. Again, she felt the vice-like grip of his fingers as he pulled her to her feet and forced her to continue onwards down the stairs and out into the Rue Cardinale.
A black car was parked there and Claire found herself bundled into the back, next to Vivi. She shot a glance at her friend’s face. One eye was swelling, beginning to close, but otherwise she just looked deeply shocked. Claire felt for her hand and squeezed it. ‘I’m here,’ she whispered, echoing the words Vivi used to say when Claire’s nightmares woke them both. ‘Everything will be alright.’
Vivienne turned to look at Claire then, as if only just registering her presence for the first time. Her eyes were glazed with fear, but she focused on her friend’s face and nodded once. Then she gave Claire’s hand a squeeze in return and they held on to each other tightly as the car sped through the streets of Paris, heading west.
Harriet
Shocked by the knowledge that Claire was arrested and taken to the Gestapo headquarters for questioning, I’ve been reading some reports that I’ve found online about inherited trauma. There’s no doubt my grandmother must have been terrified at being captured and that she must have felt horrendously guilty that Vivi was caught too, apparently operating a wireless radio set from her attic room.
I read an article that says new research in the field of genetics has shown that an increased likelihood of suffering from depression can be inherited. Trauma can cause changes in some areas of a person’s DNA, it says, and these changes can be passed on to the next generations, one after the other.
I’m beginning to see how high the odds were stacked against my mother. Was there a genetic fragility in her make up – changes to her DNA that she inherited from the trauma Claire suffered – that caused her to snap when life’s knocks came? In her case, they came one after the other, like powerful waves knocking her off her feet. Abandonment, divorce, the demands of raising a child alone ... Each time she tried to get up again, another wave knocked her back down. Some of the anger and hurt that I’ve felt towards my mother for years begins to shift slightly as I re-examine her life in this new light.
It takes me a few days to pluck up the courage, but after Simone tells me of Claire’s arrest I feel I have to go and see where she was taken. I have to be brave enough to trace her terrifying journey through the streets to a leafyarrondissementon the west side of the city. I ask Thierry to come with me to the Avenue Foch, for moral support.
These days, the former Gestapo offices are highly respectable apartment buildings in one of the most sought-after areas of the city. But in 1943, the elegant road was known by the French as ‘The Street of Horrors’. We stand in silence outside the cream stone facade of the buildings. A pigeon flutters on to the grey slate roof of number eighty-four, crooning softly to itself as it nods its way along the guttering.
‘Are you okay?’ Thierry asks, turning to look at me.
It’s only then that I realise I’m crying. It takes me by surprise. I almost never cry. He must think I make a habit of it though, after our trip to Brittany.
He takes my hand and then pulls me to him, kissing my hair as I bury my face in the folds of his jacket and sob.
I cry for all the people who were brought here, for their terror and their pain.
I’m crying for Claire.
I cry for humanity, for a world which can so easily be broken.
I’m crying for my mother.
And – at last – I find I’m crying for myself.
1943
It was several days before the dyer would allow Mireille to return to the apartment above Delavigne Couture. He and his wife hid her in the cellar of a safe house a few streets away from the shop and, despite her protestations that she had to go back to the Rue Cardinale, he insisted that she stay put. ‘We have eyes and ears on the streets,’ he told her. ‘We know that your friends have been taken to the Avenue Foch for questioning. If they are forced to talk, the Gestapo will come back for you as well. You know the rules: the first twenty-four hours are critical. We have to get a warning out to the rest of the network. Even after that, it will be too dangerous for you to be in the apartment while they are still holding your friends. What if they come back to search again and they find you there?’
‘But what if Claire and Vivi don’t talk? If they are released, I want to be there when they return.’
