Page 73 of The French Wife

‘He doesn’t trust me either,’ she said and with a shudder of disgust she told Hans about the times Glock had tried to intimidate her.

She had never stopped fearing the man. Each time she passed him in the corridor, he narrowed his eyes and stared at her as if he knew she’d been smuggling information out of the mairie since the day he’d arrived. She feared that one day he would stop her and search her bag. Then she would be finished. There would be nowhere to turn. She had no idea how Hans would react in those circumstances. Even if he wanted to help her, if the worst happened, he wouldn’t be able to protect her.

Each time Glock brought Amélie papers to type up, he would stand over her and stare down at her openly, frowning and tapping his fingers on the desk. Often, he wouldn’t say anything, but his looming, accusatory presence sent chills of fear through her. She would lie awake at night thinking about it and after a time she became convinced he knew she was passing information to the Resistance. She racked her brain, wondering what she could do about it. In those moments, she felt very alone. It was something she couldn’t mention to Hans and she didn’t want to worry anyone at the farm with this, particularly not Bruno. She would have to deal with it by herself.

It wasn’t long before her worst fears surfaced. At the end of a working day in early May 1943, she was leaving the mairie to go home. She walked down the main stairs on her way out, and when she arrived at the bottom and turned towards the back door, she saw with horror that Glock was standing there, deliberately blocking her way to the courtyard outside. She stopped in front of him and raised her eyes to his, trying to keep her gaze steady.

‘Untersturmführer Glock?’ she said.

He folded his arms and looked at her with his mocking gaze, rocking backwards and forwards on the heels of his long, leather boots. She was painfully aware of the secret papers folded and hidden in her powder compact. It felt as if the strap of her bag was searing her shoulder, but she resisted the urge to touch it.

‘I have been watching you for weeks, Madame Garnier,’ he said. ‘And I have to tell you, I don’t trust you. Not at all. And I don’t trust your husband either.’

She continued to look up at him, not knowing what to say. But he didn’t seem to expect her to speak.

‘I know for a fact you are harbouring undesirables at your farm,’ he went on. ‘And I also know you have gone out of your way to pull the wool over the eyes of my poor, naïve colleague, Hauptmann Bauer. It is precisely for that reason and that reason alone that he has overruled me and seen fit to release several of your workers from custody. It has happened on two separate occasions now. The latest ones were clearly foreign Jews. Their papers were an obvious sham.’

Amélie swallowed hard, willing herself not to flinch in the glare of his piercing, stone-cold gaze.

‘I’m sorry to tell you this, Madame Garnier, but because I can’t trust you, I will continue to keep you under surveillance. From now on, you will be subject to rigorous searches each time you leave the building.’

She felt her stomach turn to liquid and her legs go weak at his words.

‘Now, hand me your bag and raise your arms.’

Trying not to let Glock see she was trembling, Amélie did as she was told.

Glock put the bag on the floor, then approached her. She shivered and held her breath as his hands touched her body, patting her down, feeling her all over; even in the most intimate of places – running over her breasts, under her arms, between her legs, down her thighs, her calves, her ankles. She felt violated and disgusted.

Finally, he stepped away from her and picked up her bag, rummaging through it, opening her makeup bag and emptying its contents onto the floor. She stared, transfixed, as the powder compact landed on the marble tiles and bounced. She prayed that catch wouldn’t burst open and reveal what was inside, that Glock wouldn’t pick it up and open it.

But at that moment she heard footsteps on the stairs. She closed her eyes and let out a long, slow breath when she heard Hans’ voice speaking to Glock urgently in German. She looked up and relief washed through her as Hans approached. He beckoned Glock to speak to him a little way away from Amélie and she watched as they had a heated conversation. At last, Glock turned back to her, red in the face, his eyes narrowed.

‘You can go, Madame Garnier,’ he said. ‘I haven’t found anything incriminating on you on this occasion, but please don’t underestimate me. I will continue to search you when you leave the building each day.’

She glanced at Hans, who was frowning deeply. He said something else sharply to Glock, then he came close to Amélie.

‘Please don’t worry, Madame Garnier. Collect your things, you are free to leave.’

She knelt and, scrabbling on the floor, gathered her belongings and stuffed them back into her bag. Then, shaking from head to toe, she went out to the courtyard, collected her bicycle and pedalled away.

That night, lying awake while Bruno snored away beside her, she realised she would have to do something to protect herself in case Glock discovered the hiding place in her powder compact. She knew the sensible thing to do would be to stop smuggling documents, but she wasn’t going to do that. Why should she stop taking risks when Henri, Ivy and Raoul took them every day in their fight against the Nazi occupation? There was something she could do to lessen the risk though, and that was to smuggle out the documents earlier in the day when nobody was watching. The saddle on her bicycle was loose, so she could take it off and hide the letters inside the hollow, metal frame beneath it. That way, she was less likely to be detected.

But she needed something else too. Something to protect herself against Glock. And in the dead of night, she realised what she must do.

The next morning, as always on a Tuesday, Glock was going up to Carcassonne for his weekly meetings with the senior SS officer stationed there. Amélie let herself into his office on the ground floor of the mairie and closed the door behind her. She’d often been in there by herself before to deliver papers, but this time she made sure nobody saw her go inside.

She hurried to Glock’s desk and began searching through the drawers, rifling desperately through piles of documents, both official and personal. There was nothing in the first two, then, in the third drawer, tucked inside a diary, she came across an envelope bearing a French stamp and a Paris postmark. It was addressed to Glock in neat, flowing writing. She opened it with trembling hands. A photograph fell out. It was of a woman with dark, wavy hair and a lot of lipstick, smiling tentatively for the camera. Amélie looked at it in disbelief. The woman had a yellow star on her coat. She was clearly Jewish.

Amélie hated reading the letter, but she knew she had to do it. The letter was in French and had originally been sent to an address in Paris.

My dearest Heinz,

I can’t thank you enough for what you have done for me over the past months. But for you sparing me from arrest I would be in the camp at Drancy by now, or somewhere worse like so many others. I will always love you, Heinz, and I long for the time you will return to me, and we can be together again.

Your ever loving,

Sara