Page 22 of The Dressmaker's Gift
Since the bombing of the Renault factory in Billancourt, the war had made its presence much more keenly felt in Paris. The city streets echoed with the sounds of marching troops and the rumble of military vehicles, as the rumours continued daily of Jewish citizens being rounded up in increasing numbers and held in segregated camps at Drancy and Compiègne.
One evening, Mireille arrived back in the Rue Cardinale to find the bicycle that she’d borrowed from her neighbour on the night of the bombing raid propped against her door. There was a note tied to the handlebars, and a sob caught in her throat as she read it.
For the mademoiselle with the dark eyes. I have to leave, so I want you to have my bicycle. It will be of use to you – and none to me, where I am going. Best wishes, your neighbour Henri Taubman.
Recalling the yellow star pinned to his coat, she fervently hoped that he was making his escape, rather than being sent to one of those camps in the suburbs.
A sense of profound unease spread through the city from one quarter to the next and spilled over into a demonstration one day when the Communist women of the Rue Daguerre took to the streets to protest against the now severe shortage of food outside warehouses that were filled with food for soldiers on the German front. Shots were fired, arrests were made and, Mireille heard on the grapevine, the instigators were sent to those same camps. They did not return. Against this backdrop the girls often lay in their beds listening to the thuds and cracks of explosions as the Allied bombing raids continued sporadically. And the Germans clamped down harder than ever with road blocks, barriers at the Métro stations that remained open, arrests and shootings to keep the local population in check.
Mireille’s missions for the underground network felt even more dangerous but, at the same time, even more vital. Visiting the dyer one day to collect some bolts of silk, he handed her a small packet for Vivienne, wrapped in brown paper, and then gave her a set of instructions of her own for that evening. She was to meet a man on the north side of the city and accompany him safely to the Arnauds’ house in the Marais, avoiding using the main Métro stations where the Germans were doing frequent spot-checks.
And so it was that she sat at a table at a café on a sloping, cobbled Montmartre street and sipped on her cup of ersatz coffee as she waited for her next ‘visitor’ to turn up. She was expecting a shabbily dressed refugee, perhaps, or another foreigner whose grasp of French was tenuous at best, so she was surprised when a young Frenchman slipped into the chair across from hers. He pulled a blue and white spotted handkerchief out of his pocket – the sign that she’d been told to watch for – and blew his nose; then he asked whether ‘Cousin Cosette’ was well, using the code word she’d been told to listen for.
‘Her leg is much better these days, thanks for asking,’ she replied, repeating the confirmation code that the dyer had given her. She downed the dregs of her coffee, making a face at the bitter tincture of roasted chicory and dandelion roots, then got to her feet and the young man followed her out into the street.
As they walked down the hill, she slipped him the false papers she’d been given for him and he tucked them into his pocket without looking at them. She took him to the Métro station at Abbesses and they stood on the semi-deserted platform waiting for a train. Cocooned underground and under cover of the noises of the railway, she felt able to talk to her charge a little more freely than usual, as long as they kept their voices low. The clatter of distant trains, the dripping of water and the sound of other passengers’ footsteps echoing off the tunnel walls, muffled their conversation.
His eyes, which were almost as dark as her own, held a gleam of determination in their depths, and the day’s growth of stubble etched on his chin helped to define its strength. His black hair sprung back from his forehead with a vitality which was mirrored in the confident spring of his step and the interest with which he watched her face as she talked. They didn’t exchange names – they both knew the dangers involved – but she recognised his accent as being from the far south of the country with the twang of a native of Provence or the Languedoc. He told her that he’d grown up near Montpellier, the eldest in a sprawling family of sisters and brothers, and that he’d signed up in 1939. He was one of the lucky ones in the French army who had been evacuated from Dunkirk, and he’d joined the Free French in England, continuing the fight under the command of General De Gaulle.
Mireille nodded. She’d heard from the dyer that sometimes messages were broadcast from England by the exiled General, rallying the troops that were left to him and trying to raise the morale of the people he’d had to leave behind.
‘I was parachuted in last week. Dropping off a few gifts for the folks in the homeland.’ He grinned as he said this and Mireille guessed that the ‘gifts’ were probably wireless sets or weapons or orders for covert operations, although she didn’t ask him to elaborate.
‘Got held up on the way, though. Turned out there was a Bocheunit camped out in the town so we couldn’t risk getting the plane back in. It’s easy enough parachuting in to France but getting back out is another story. So they fixed me up with your lot. Told me I’ll be enjoying a holiday in the Pyrenees in a few days’ time. But they said I’d need a specialist to get me across Paris. I can’t say I was expecting one as beautiful as you, though.’
Mireille shook her head and laughed. ‘Flattery will get you nowhere! But yes, I’ll try and get you through the city safely. I don’t know exactly which way they’ll be taking you after that, though – the routes change all the time to try to keep one step ahead of the Germans and the police.’
She kept her eyes on the tracks, watching the mice that scurried among the rubble between the sleepers when the station was quiet, aware that he was watching her closely and that it was making her cheeks flush. Shaking back her curls, she met his gaze boldly and said, ‘I know we’re not supposed to ask questions. But I do have just one: what happened to your parachute?’
He laughed, surprised. ‘I buried it in a turnip field, as instructed. Why do you ask?’
‘It just would have made a nice blouse and a few pairs of camiknickers too, for me and my friends.’
‘I see,’ he said, gravely. ‘Well next time, mademoiselle, I will be sure to keep it with me and bring it to you here in Paris. I’m sure General De Gaulle and the rest of the Allied Command would be delighted to know army equipment was being put to such very good use!’
All at once, the mice on the tracks scattered and a few seconds later they heard the sound of an approaching train, silencing them both.
They sat side by side, and Mireille was acutely conscious of the man’s arm touching hers through their jacket sleeves as the carriage swayed and jerked. They didn’t speak, as there were other passengers sitting within earshot, but she couldn’t help feeling the powerful undercurrent of attraction that passed between them.
She was jolted out of this pleasant reverie when the train drew to a stop at a station well before their own and a guard shouted that the train would terminate here. They followed their fellow passengers, some grumbling, some silently resigned, up the stairs to the exit.
As they reached the top of the stairs, Mireille’s heart beat against her ribs like a trapped bird. At the barrier, half a dozen soldiers were pulling people out from the crowd of passengers who’d been turned off the train. A few yards ahead of them, one man hesitated, looking around for another exit. His momentary delay caught the attention of two of the soldiers and they unceremoniously pushed the other passengers out of the way and seized the man by his upper arms, marching him off. Mireille noticed that they were stopping anyone who wore a yellow star pinned to their clothing. She drew the young man’s arm through hers, pulling him close so that she could mutter in his ear, ‘Don’t hesitate. Don’t look left or right. Just walk with me.’
When it was their turn at the barrier, Mireille forced herself to look relaxed, although her shoulders were stiff with tension. Through the sleeve of her coat she could feel the muscles of the young man’s forearm harden as he clenched his fist.
One of the soldiers looked them up and down and seemed about to stop them. But then he waved them through and turned his attention to the couple behind them, demanding to see their papers. Mireille breathed again, allowing her shoulders to relax just a little.
Outside in the street, a truck was parked on the pavement. A pair of guards leaned their rifles against the tailgate as they smoked cigarettes. Mireille glimpsed the pale, anxious faces of the people who’d been made to board it, as she and the young man walked on in sickened silence until they were out of earshot. Then Mireille withdrew her arm from his and tucked her hair behind her ears, her hands shaking with equal measures of fear and anger. She noticed that the young man’s fists were still tightly clenched and his jaw was set in a hard line.
‘So this is what they do,’ he said, looking as sick as she felt. ‘Herd people into trucks like cattle and send them to those so-called work camps where they treat them like slaves. We’ve heard the reports, back in England, but seeing it happening right in front of me ...’ He tailed off, swallowing his frustration.
‘I know,’ she replied, leading him towards the river. ‘It’s grotesque. What’s even more horrible is that half the time it’s the French police who man those barriers, not the Germans. It’s getting worse all the time.’
They walked on, subdued, alongside the mud-brown waters of the Seine. Mireille stumbled as her shoe caught on an uneven paving stone and he put out a hand to steady her. Wordlessly, he took her arm again and she gleaned a small degree of comfort in his proximity.
She didn’t want to risk going back into the Métro, so they continued on foot. He told her more of his life in the south as they followed the river upstream. He’d worked as a stonemason and had done his apprenticeship with his uncle who had been overseeing some maintenance work on the Cathédrale Saint-Pierre in Montpellier. He continued to hold her arm but his free hand described the complex, soaring lines of the Gothic arches he’d helped repair, painstakingly carving each piece of honeyed sandstone to fit perfectly where worn or damaged sections needed to be removed. She noticed the strength in his hands, and yet there was a grace in them too. As he talked, she could picture the delicate, lace-like detailing that he was capable of creating from such unyielding materials.
She told him a little about her life in the south-west too, about the mill house on the riverbank where she’d grown up, about the way the mill wheel was driven, harnessing the power of the water to turn the heavy millstones to grind the grist into flour as fine as freshly fallen snow. She described the kitchen, where her family would gather for meals cooked by her mother using the produce they grew in their garden, and the clear, golden honey that her sister produced from the beehives she tended, to sweeten their days.
