Page 62 of The French Wife

‘No, no, you are far more useful to us going into the mairie as usual. We can manage.’

So the next day Amélie went to work just as she always did. She was on tenterhooks all day, wondering how Raoul and the others were faring. Would they be able to find all the people they’d identified? They hadn’t been completely sure of all the addresses, or even that the list was complete. Would they be spotted by an officious collaborator and reported? She could barely concentrate, worrying about it all.

At lunchtime, she walked round to the boulangerie to see if the Lalouches were still there. The building was closed and shuttered up, a few disappointed customers hanging around outside. She knocked on the door to the apartment, but there was no answer. The family must have left already.

‘Thank God,’ she breathed as she walked away.

At one point that afternoon she went to Hans’ office with some papers for him. He looked distracted, not his usual calm self.

‘Thank you, Amélie, ma chérie,’ he said once he’d read the papers. Then he put them on the desk and leaned towards her. ‘I’m so sorry, but I have some disturbing news,’ he added.

She felt a flutter of nerves in her stomach.

‘I have to tell you that some of my men have been asked to help Glock with the round-up tomorrow morning.’

Amélie stared at him in horror. ‘But why?’ she asked. ‘I thought you weren’t part of all that.’

‘I’m not, but the SS don’t have the manpower for it. I tried to protest, but was overruled by my superior officer.’

‘But what about you, Hans?’ she asked, her scalp prickling. ‘Are you involved too?’

‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘You know how I feel about it. I would never participate in anything like that. You know that, Amélie. I abhor what is happening to the Jews.’

She saw the anguish on his face and felt a wash of pity for him, but she knew equally well that others might not see it that way. To most people in this town there was little to distinguish Hans from Glock and the other fanatics in the SS.

She got to her feet. ‘I know, Hans. I know how you feel about it and I know how difficult it is for you. I just wish you could do something to stop what’s happening.’

When Amélie arrived at the farm that evening, she caught the sound of voices inside the house and when she entered the kitchen, she was surprised to find the room was full of people. Men, women and children. Some sitting at the table with the partisans and farmworkers, and others squatting on the floor. She recognised amongst them two men, Samuel Kohn and Gabriel Peretz, who worked for Bruno during the harvest, both of whom were Jewish.

Bruno was sitting at the head of the table. He beckoned to Amélie when he saw her.

‘These people have asked if they can shelter here when the Germans do the round-up tomorrow. I’ve said they can hide out in the cellar for a while. The men are making up some more beds for them.’

Amélie gave him a sceptical look – it was unlike Bruno to be altruistic.

‘Samuel and Gabriel will work for me during the daytime in return,’ he muttered.

She sighed. She should have known. ‘I thought you said you didn’t need any more workers.’

Bruno smiled his sly smile. ‘Unlike Moreau and his boy, these men will work for nothing. I can’t turn that down. At some point we’ll have to thin out some trees in the forest, or it will be too dense to hunt there anymore. I can use them to help with that.’

‘Isn’t the cellar a bit small for them all?’ she asked. ‘I mean with Ivy, Henri and Raoul already down there…’ She did a quick head count. ‘That makes ten people. They will be incredibly cramped.’

Bruno shrugged. ‘They can come out during the day and spend time in the herbergerie, but if we hear vehicles they’ll need to get down there quickly, and they’ll need to stay down there at night too. Just in case. There’s enough space for ten cots easily.’

‘Alright,’ she said, doubtfully. ‘Of course. Anything to help them.’ She turned to Raoul. ‘How did it go today?’ she asked. ‘Did you manage to warn everyone about the round-up?’

‘Not everyone,’ he said, looking a little shamefaced. ‘Some people weren’t at home, others we didn’t have the correct addresses for. We managed to get round most of them though, and some offered to warn friends and neighbours, so we’re hoping they’ll find out that way.’

‘That’s a relief,’ she said, thinking uneasily of the Lalouches, hoping they were on a train and well on the way to Marseille by now.

She went to the pantry and found enough vegetables to make a large batch of potato and turnip soup. Gabriel’s wife, Esther, and Samuel’s wife, Naomi, as well as Ivy, offered to help her and Lili peel the vegetables. The men went through to the herbergerie to talk and drink beer while the women sat at the table, peeling and chopping. Naomi held a tiny baby on her lap and Esther’s two small boys, aged three and five, played on the floor with Amélie’s pots and pans while the women worked. Esther and Naomi barely spoke, and, looking at their pale, tear-stained faces, Amélie could see how distraught they were at having to leave their homes, at the knowledge that the SS would be looking for them within a few hours, trying to hunt them down when they discovered they weren’t at home.

After the meal, and when the new cots had been installed in the cellar, everyone drifted off to bed. With Lili’s help, Amélie brought as many blankets, quilts and pillows from upstairs as she could find, but there were only just enough to go round. When everyone was settled in the cramped cellar room with a bucket in the corner, Bruno and Marcel pushed the bookcase into place in front of the door.

Amélie found it impossible to sleep. Her mind kept returning to the Lalouches, and all those in St Marie who had been forced to flee from the Nazis. And she couldn’t help thinking of Hans, of the look on his face when he’d told her about his men, of what a difficult and dangerous tightrope he and she were now walking.

The next morning, Bruno got up early to let everyone out of the cellar, and when Amélie went down for breakfast, the kitchen was full of people once again. She brewed a large pot of ersatz coffee and made a pan of watery porridge on the range. By the time she set off for work on her bicycle, the guests were all sitting around the table tucking in to breakfast, while the farmworkers had taken theirs through into the herbergerie.