Peach (19 page)

Clinging to the edge of the truck, Peach boosted herself up. Balancing precariously for a moment, she edged cautiously forward over the tops of the crates. At the fourth crate from the back, on the left, she knocked twice. An answering knock came from inside, and taking the screwdriver from her pocket she unscrewed the crate expertly. There were three crates, three men, and it took her two and a half minutes. “Quick,” she called as the men stood up, stretching cramped limbs and groaning softly. “Follow my sister.” She watched as they scrambled from the truck, running after Lais, wishing their footsteps didn’t crunch so loudly on the gravel. Quickly she rescrewed the cases and jumped from the truck. Lifting the flap she wound the chains around it and slipped on the padlocks. Loud voices came from the hotel. Through the windows she could see Kruger in the kitchens with the Gestapo men. Oh God, he was coming this way. The key fell from her suddenly nerveless fingers, dropping with a small tinkle into the darkness of the gravel by her feet. Peach glanced desperately towards the kitchen window.
Merde!
What had she done! She hesitated only a second. Kruger was already at the door. She was around the side of the truck in a flash and heading for the trees before Kruger had the door open.

*  *  *

Lais led the three men down the steps from the courtyard and into the cellars, weaving through endless corridors past racks of fine wines and champagne. The cellars ran the full length of the hotel and to those unfamiliar with them, they were as intricate as a rabbit warren, made even more so by the new series of false walls and dead ends. Shining her torch Lais led them along a small dark tunnel, lugging aside a pile of crates to reveal a manhole. Silently, she tugged at the metal ring, lifting the flagstone to reveal another flight of steps. “In there gentlemen, quickly,” she whispered. A dim light came from the single electric bulb in the ceiling of the room. It was small, only about nine feet by eleven, but an attempt had been made to make it comfortable. Bunk beds stood along two walls with clean blankets and pillows. A square wooden table with four chairs held bottles of wine and water, bread, cheese and fruit. And on a bench by the wall stood a radio-transmitter.

“Thank God,” cried one of the men. “We must get a message through to Marseilles at once. It’s vital, Mademoiselle. Vital!”

Lais picked up the earphones and switched on the set. It crackled for a moment and then fell silent. She could feel their tension and their eyes on her as she flicked the tuner across the dial desperately. It was no use, the radio was dead.

“An escort will be coming to take you along the coast tonight,” she said. “With luck you’ll be in Marseilles tomorrow night. Can it wait till then?”

“The Germans are planning to blow up the
Vieux Port
in Marseilles
tomorrow
. They want to flush out the Resistance workers and the guerrillas—as well as the deserters from their own army. They’ve tried to search that rabbit warren but it’s impossible. This is their answer. If we don’t get a
warning through many men will perish and much valuable equipment will be lost.”

Their tired, unshaven faces were haggard with worry, their eyes red and bloodshot. They had left behind wives and families not knowing when they would see them again, and their very future hung in doubtful balance, yet still they were concerned for the welfare of their comrades.

“I’ll see that the message gets through,” Lais promised. “Give me your contact there and it will be done.”

Peach zig-zagged down the hill from the village, the schoolbag jolting against her back as her long suntanned legs covered the ground in urgent leaps. At the gravelled courtyard in the rear of the Hostellerie, she paused to catch her breath, deciding against sneaking in by the kitchen door and risking bumping into Kruger who was bound to be lurking near the champagne truck. Instead she made her way through the gardens towards the front of the hotel so that anyone might think she had just come from her grandmother’s rather than all the way from the village.

The graceful pink hotel stood outlined against a clear electric-blue sky, framed with the black silhouettes of palms and umbrella pines. The familiar notes of Beethoven’s “Für Elise” filtered from the bar. It was still early and the bar seemed strange without voices and laughter and the clink of ice in tall glasses. Taking a deep breath to steady herself,
Peach slid through the french windows from the terrace. Kruger’s bulging marble green eyes followed her from his position at the piano as she wound her way through the tables to where Lais sat at her usual stool at the bar.

“Hello little one,” Lais said patting her sister’s tousled head. “You look thirsty,” she added as Peach wriggled onto the stool next to her. “We’ll have champagne,” she called loudly with an eye on Kruger, “after all, we just received a truckload of it.”

Her derisive laughter rang across the quiet room and Kruger glared at her. Draining his beer, he stalked from the bar. The Gestapo captain had checked the papers of the two truck-drivers and found them in order. Under Leonore’s eagle eye he had examined the suddenly produced delivery note and made only a cursory inspection of the truck. He had departed half an hour later after releasing the men and with a case of good Brut champagne in his car. The Gestapo captain had made his feelings about Kruger quite plain, accusing him of wasting the Gestapo’s time. Kruger was still seething and Lais was enjoying the success of their red herring and Kruger’s embarrassment.

The tense-looking Italian major who had thought he was making decent progress with Lais before the child arrived, insinuated himself pointedly between Peach and Lais, resting an elbow on the bar, picking up his flirtation where he had left off. Peach glared at his back furiously, wishing Ferdi were here; it would have been so much easier to talk to Lais. Her anxious eyes signalled her desperation but Lais didn’t seem to catch her gaze. “Lais,” she said at last, “I think I have something in my eye.” She rubbed her left eye ostentatiously.

“Allow me, please.” Flourishing an immaculate white linen handkerchief the Italian major tilted back Peach’s head, instructing her to roll her eye first up, then down.
“Nothing,” he said, mopping her now streaming eye, “it’s all right now,
bambina
.” His smile was directed at Lais.

Peach glared at him with her good eye. She was no
bambina!
She was almost eight years old going on eighteen. She was fighting for France along with the grown-ups.
And she had an urgent message for Lais
.

“Lais,” she tried again. “I’m not feeling very well. Will you take me to the powder room, please?”

Lais’s eyebrows rose. “Poor darling,” she murmured, putting an arm around Peach’s shoulders, “it must be the champagne that’s upset you.”

From his position near the reception Kruger watched the comings and goings both in and out of the hotel and the cocktail bar. Spotting Peach and Lais he followed them down the corridor that led towards the back of the hotel, catching up just as they swung through the doors into the ladies’ powder room. Rigid with frustration, he leaned against the wall, waiting.

With a finger against her lips, Lais checked the pretty, mirrored pink powder room and then the stalls of the lavatories to make sure they were alone. “Gaston says the escort for the escapees can’t come tonight,” blurted Peach, “they will have to wait.”

“
Wait!
How long?”

Peach shrugged. “Gaston said maybe a week.”

“Impossible! They must get to Marseilles in twenty-four hours otherwise they’ll be stranded. When the Germans blow up the old quarter everyone will be scattered, there will be no ‘safe’ houses … we don’t even know if our contacts will still be alive!”

“That’s the other thing,” said Peach. “Gaston can’t get the message through, there’s too much static on the radio. He thinks it’s being blocked and that the Germans might
know its location. He’s closing down for at least a week and hiding the set.”

Gaston was the mainstay of the Resistance movement in the region and Lais knew that if he thought that things were becoming too dangerous for him to operate, it must really be bad.

“He says it’s up to you to get the message
and
the men to Marseilles,” went on Peach, “but that he cannot help you.”

Lais flung herself despairingly into the little pink wicker chair banging her fist angrily on the dressing table. “How?” she stormed. “But how? Dammit!”

“There must be a way,” said Peach, upset.

The answer came to Lais suddenly. “Of course,” she cried, “the croupier.”

Peach recalled the fat moustached man in the croupier’s jacket who had picked up the note she had delivered on her way home from school.

“The croupier is
from Marseilles!
He knows the route and the contacts.
He
could do it!” Lais jumped up and made for the door. She stopped suddenly, her hand on the door handle. Of course it was impossible for her to go to Monte Carlo to alert the croupier, Kruger wasn’t letting her out of his sight. She remembered the anger in his glassy green eyes. And Leonore couldn’t go either. If she weren’t there to supervise Steinholz’s birthday dinner, Kruger would
know
something was up. Lais sank despondently into the wicker chair. “Then who?” she asked Peach, “who can contact the croupier in Monte Carlo and bring him here?”

Leonie drove the long, dark blue de Courmont easily along the Corniche, resisting the urge to push down her foot and get there faster. With a scarf over her hair she could be taken for Lais, on her way to meet some friends at the casino, as she so often did. The Nazis knew Lais, and knew
that von Steinholz personally supplied the petrol coupons for her car. They knew her reputation and of her German lover. Lais was accepted.

Monte Carlo glittered with lights, but the wedding cake façade of the casino looked shabbier than she remembered. Leaving the car in the drive Leonie strode up the steps to the imposing entrance, swept suddenly back into the past by the memory of the first time she had ascended these stairs, with five francs tucked into the top of her stocking as insurance, and the kitten Bébé on a length of pink velvet ribbon trailing behind her, seventeen years old and prepared to gamble all she had in order to survive.

Touching the statue by the door for luck, as thousands had done before her, Leonie strolled into the salon. A few men wore evening dress, but many more were in the hated grey-green uniform. Though Monaco was neutral, the Nazi presence, as well as that of the Italians, was strongly felt. At the outbreak of the war most of the international set had flown off to more settled climes and without them the casino lacked its old glamour, when the jewels blazed more brightly than the chandeliers and all the men looked debonair and handsome in white tie and tails.

Leonie had dressed discreetly tonight in a simple dark silk dress, so as not to be too noticeable, and she took a seat at the third table as Lais had instructed. The croupier was short and overweight. A film of moisture glistened across his forehead as he sweated under the lights and he dabbed at it with a handkerchief. With her eye fixed on him Leonie pushed across her money, receiving the plaques in exchange. The croupier glanced back at her with the bland indifference of his trade. There were just three other people at the table, a German officer with a young Italian woman, and a man in evening dress who looked Armenian. It was eight o’clock—too early yet for the post-dinner crowds. Leonie had exactly
one hour to accomplish her mission. Quietly, she placed her bet.

At eight fifteen she was fifteen hundred francs up. At eight thirty the German and his companion left to have dinner. Shooting a quick glance at the Armenian, Leonie knew she had to take a chance. Crooking her finger she beckoned the croupier. “I’d like to cash in my plaques,” she said.

“
Bien sûr, Madame. Un moment
.” He raked the plaques towards him.”

“For you,” said Leonie. She thrust the customary tip towards the croupier with a slip of paper wrapped around a plaque. His eyes met hers for an instant and then he covered the plaque and the note swiftly with his hand.

Tucking her “ill-gotten gains” into her purse, and without a backward glance, Leonie swept from the casino. It was only when she reached the car that she realised that she was trembling and she prayed that the Armenian had not seen her pass the note. She slammed the car into gear and drove through the hilly back streets of Monte Carlo watching through the rear-view mirror to see if she were being followed. The street was empty and, swinging the car around, she drove back down to the seafront and parked in a dark corner by the Hotel de Paris, waiting.

Amelie hadn’t thought her homecoming would be quite like this. Of course she hadn’t really ever thought of
how
she would do it, just of being there with her family. The last three nights had been spent in tiny hot rooms without even a functioning bath and her blonde hair was matted with the sweat and dust that had wafted through the bus windows, and she felt sure she smelled of the garlic and onions, cigarette smoke and body odours of her travelling companions. The skirt of her cotton print dress was crumpled and stained
and one sleeve was ripped where she had caught it on a wicker chicken cage in a village market place. Amelie grinned as the farm cart rolled slowly onwards, pulled by a meek-looking bay horse whose two speeds were slow and slower. She had given up trying to make conversation with the old man driving it, his answers to her questions having consisted merely of grunts and the occasional nod. But at least he was going to St Jean and had been willing to give her a lift. She knew her way from the village to the villa like she knew her own face. Her sore feet and broken sandals would be forgotten, as she ran along the dusty white lane, back home to Leonie as she had done before in her life when she was desperate. And soon she’d be with her girls, with Lais and Leonore. And her baby. Peach.