Page 103 of The Last Restaurant in Paris

PARIS, 1942

Marianne had a basket ready to be filled and Sebastien was waiting to serve her, coming over to help her pick the best tomatoes, carrots and aubergines. As he pointed out several that were good for stews, she quickly told him how things were going. The restaurant had now been open for a month and she finally had something valuable to share. It was the name of an important General named Karl Fuegler, who was known to be a key figure involved in the deportation of people the Nazis deemed ‘undesirable’ east to the concentration camps they had begun to build en masse. He was arriving from Berlin, and she overheard the route and time they were expected to meet him. She gave Sebastien the name and what she had overheard on a slip of paper along with her ration card when she made to pay.

Nothing happened with Fuegler, and she heard no news of sabotage. In fact, when several days had passed, Otto Busch told her that he wanted to invite someone special to dine there and she realised that it was the same person. She smiled, and said, ‘Of course.’

When she met Geoff, her contact at the butcher’s, they were able to speak slightly more freely. ‘It was too risky to do anything with your information,’ he explained. ‘There were officers crawling everywhere. I figure, well, it might have been a test.’

‘A test?’ she asked, eyes wide.

He nodded. ‘Think about it – after a month this was the first bit of real information you gathered and it was huge. If we’d taken Fuegler out, they would have been able to trace it back to you. But even if we had wanted to, he was too protected. It was like they were waiting for us to do something.’

Marianne swallowed.

‘But it is good news.’

‘It is?’

‘Yes, because now, well, we know he likes you – but now he’s starting to trust you. We just need to ramp that up a little more.’

She frowned. ‘How?’

‘There’s going to be a small, targeted attack on the restaurant.’

Her eyes widened.

He continued. ‘It will give him a moment to be your hero, to offer you comfort.’

She closed her eyes in revulsion, pulling a face.

Then nodded.

They didn’t waste time. Just three days later a man threw a brick into the restaurant window and then climbed through it.

Gilbert and Marianne were in the kitchen when they heard the noise. They raced to the hatch and saw a man breaking up furniture. Gilbert shouted at him to stop, but Marianne held him back. The man had covered his face with a black scarf – but he wasn’t someone Marianne recognised. He reached inside his trouser pocket and withdrew a knife, which he flicked open. She swallowed. Even though she’d been warned, this seemed worse than what Geoff had described. The man jumped through the hatch and she and Gilbert stepped backwards. Gilbert cried out, ‘What do you want?’

‘Me?’ said the man. ‘I want you scum to die for what you’re doing here.’ He lunged, slashing the knife against Marianne’s arm, as she jumped in front of Gilbert. Then he turned and ran.

Marianne didn’t need to feign her distress. Her hands shook as she began to tend to her cut. Gilbert raged against the intruder even as he helped her bandage her arm.

Afterwards, she felt in desperate need for a whisky and to be anywhere but there and she sent Gilbert home. He left reluctantly.

‘You’ll be all right? What if he comes back?’

‘He won’t press his luck. It won’t be long before the Germans start arriving. Perhaps you could just leave a sign outside saying we’re closed for now?’ she asked.

He nodded.

When Busch found out what happened that afternoon, he raced to find her at her apartment upstairs.

‘Madame,’ he cried, knocking on her door with heavy impatient fists.

Marianne took a deep breath before she opened up. Then she allowed the tears to fall.

‘Oh, Herr Busch, you are here,’ she said, and then she began to cry.

‘Oh, madame, I got so worried – I saw your window. Gilbert said that some madman attacked you! Are you all right? Why didn’t you send for me? What did he look like – we will find him, trust me, he will pay for this.’

‘And then another will just take his place,’ she said with a sigh. Then her lip wobbled. ‘I don’t understand why they are so hateful. I am just trying to help feed them good wholesome food.’

It was true, actually. While she did want desperately to find a way to sabotage the Germans – which was her main goal – she was and always would be in her heart a cook, and she knew that cooking simple, nourishing meals for the locals would be a small act of defiance too. Every mouth she was able to feed, to keep alive, was another person who defied the order of things. To live to fight another day.

She allowed herself a small, final tear which she quickly wiped away. Then she looked at him. ‘Why can’t they see that? It really is better for us all to work together.’

‘Yes,’ he said, coming forward, and pulling her into his arms. ‘It is, and we will help with that. We will try harder to get them to see that.’

‘You will?’ she asked. ‘Oh, Herr Busch, thank you.’

When he kissed her it was all she could do to not scream. But thankfully it was over quickly, and it was worth it to see the tender expression in his eyes.

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