Page 7 of The French Wife

Amélie’s heart started hammering when she heard the slam of the front door as the Germans entered the building, their heavy boots on the wooden stairs. She felt trapped. Like a butterfly pinned to a board.

And then the door opened and there they were, entering the room in single file. The first man looked to be the most senior. He was tall and heavily built, probably in his mid to late fifties, and he wore a leather greatcoat over a grey uniform with oak-leaf motifs on his collar. Amélie shivered when she recognised the eagle-and-skull insignia of the SS on his peaked cap; she’d read about that in a newspaper report at the beginning of the war, but had never thought she would have the misfortune to see it close up.

The second man was also tall, but much younger. He looked to be the leader’s adjutant and was also dressed in SS uniform. The other two men were dressed in greatcoats over the uniform of the Wehrmacht – a similar grey-green colour to the SS uniform, but without the skull motifs. One looked to be in his forties, clearly the senior of the two. He was heavily built with dark hair, but the other, in his early to mid-thirties with blond hair and pale-blue eyes, hung back a little, almost as if he wanted to distance himself from the two SS officers.

‘Who is in charge here?’ the senior SS officer said in heavily accented French.

The mayor stepped forward. ‘Me, sir. I am Claude Colbert, the mayor of St Marie-des-Champs,’ he muttered, barely able to look the German in the eye.

‘I am Gustav Schneider, the SS Standartenführer. Equivalent to Colonel. I have overall command here, assisted by Untersturmführer Glock, while Major Schiller and Hauptmann – that is Captain – Bauer here represent the Wehrmacht. That is the German army, for your information.’ He fell silent then, his hands behind his back, watching the mayor intently, waiting for him to speak.

Several seconds of silence passed, then, when it became clear the mayor wasn’t going to respond at all, the officer went on.

‘Hauptmann Bauer and the men under his command will be in day-to-day charge of the town and the local area. Major Schiller and I will be working from headquarters in Carcassonne, but Untersturmführer Glock will remain here in the town to observe and report back to me. He will focus on security matters. We have heard there is a significant Resistance presence in this region, and our intention is to come down hard on them, monsieur.’

‘I understand,’ the mayor said at last.

Amélie dropped her gaze, nerves rushing through her at the mention of the Resistance. Her mouth was so dry, she could barely swallow. She was all too aware that outside the window behind her dozens of soldiers were lined up in the square, motionless, waiting for orders.

‘Very well. And who are you?’ the colonel asked, turning to the other Frenchman.

‘I am Henri Gilles, sir. Commissaire of police for the local area.’

‘Good. We will need your full co-operation. Colleagues from the Gestapo and the SS will be joining you shortly with a brief to stamp out any dissident activity.’

‘Of course,’ Gilles said.

‘You will work alongside them and assist them at all times.’

Monsieur Gilles nodded.

‘In a few minutes, we will have a little show for you in the square. A demonstration of how we mean to enforce the law in this town now we are in charge.’

Gilles remained silent and the German went on.

‘We caught a small group of amateurs trying to impede our progress on the road. They were attempting to blow a bridge between here and Trèbes. They will be dealt with harshly as a warning to others who might be tempted to try to challenge German rule.’

Amélie drew in a sharp breath and muffled it with a cough. Perhaps these were men she knew. Men who’d picked grapes for Bruno, stayed on the farm, maybe. Most of Bruno’s workers were anti-Vichy and anti-German, some were even active in the Resistance. She mustn’t think about that now though, she told herself, and she made an effort to keep her breath even and her eyes cast down, focusing on the pattern of the parquet flooring.

Finally, though, the colonel addressed her. ‘And who may you be, madame?’ he asked, his tone less gruff, a little playful even.

With an effort of will, Amélie lifted her eyes to his face. She could feel her body trembling slightly and hoped none of the men noticed. The officer met her look with a stony gaze.

‘I’m just a secretary, sir,’ she managed to say, her voice cracking. She cleared her throat.

‘You will stay and work for us,’ he said.

Her heart sank. How stupid she’d been. She should have got on her bike and pedalled home to the farm as soon as she’d discovered the Nazis were on the edge of town.

‘Yes, sir,’ she said, dropping her gaze again, quaking inside. She knew she had no choice but to stay here and work for them, but how could she work for the enemy, the conquerors, after all the stories she’d heard of their cruelty? How could she betray her country and everything she believed in? And what would Bruno say? That thought troubled her almost as much as the thought of working for the Nazis did.

She looked anxiously at the faces of the four officers. The colonel had the flint-like gaze of a fanatic, his adjutant’s grey eyes were stony cold. The dark one, Major Schiller, looked slightly less fierce, but only one of them looked vaguely human – the other Wehrmacht officer, Bauer. His face was softer and his eyes gentle, even. But the SS officers looked like undiluted evil.

‘Good,’ said the colonel. ‘Your first task is to draw up a list of houses where my officers can lodge. We will need twenty of them. They must be in the town so they are close to the troops, and they must have a comfortable spare room. Our regular troops will be billeted in accommodation in the abbey.’

The abbey? On the other side of the river, the beautiful Abbaye de Sainte-Marie was a haven of tranquillity. An ancient, sacred place, where monks in their long, white robes lived together in peace and contemplation. They were self-sufficient, tilling their gardens and working the small farm and extensive land in the valley around the medieval building. It was separate from the town, but the monks would come across the bridge to work in the community, helping the poorest villagers, tending to the sick, distributing food. But although they all lived in harmony, the villagers themselves rarely ventured across the river to visit the abbey. To think of stationing enemy troops there, of soldiers inhabiting that beautiful building, trampling over those carefully cultivated grounds was unthinkable; it felt like sacrilege.

‘Yes, sir,’ she said, looking up and meeting his gaze.