Wolfsangel (4 page)

‘I am sorry.’ He gave me a small, chivalrous bow. ‘Please forgive me.’

‘I have to go. If anyone sees me here; catches me with …’

‘Will I see you again?’

‘You’re joking aren’t you?’ I said, shaking my head in disbelief as I strode off and straddled my bicycle. ‘I doubt that very much.’

I rode away without a backward glance.

6

The following morning I whisked through my farm chores, flung my tapestry bag over a shoulder and hurried down the hill to Lucie’s railway station.

I stepped off the train three stops up the line in Valeria-sur-Vionne, a village much like Lucie, nestled in a crook of the Monts du Lyonnais.

Quietly pleased to have my sister gone from L’Auberge –– less conscious of being the flawed second daughter rather than the long-awaited son; the frail infant who shouldn’t have survived –– I’d never been to the convent where Félicité was a novice, and a schoolteacher.

I didn’t have to walk far before I found the place, a bleak gothic-looking mansion perched atop a hill.

‘Sister Marie-Félicité
s’il vous plaît,
ma sœur
,’ I said to the nun as the heavy door opened with a rasp. ‘I know you don’t like outsiders coming here, but I’m Céleste Roussel, and I need to see my sister urgently. Just for a few minutes, please.’

The nun remained wordless, but nodded and I followed the quiet sweep of her habit down a corridor of chipped, rust-coloured floor tiles and stained walls on which ancient-looking religious paintings hung. The only light came from small candles set in carved wall sconces, and a musty odour seized my throat.

While I had expected something rustic, I was startled at how rundown the convent was. Paint was peeling off in uneven strips, revealing greenish-stained plaster. Sections had fallen from the ceiling. The wooden floor was damp and when I trod it gave way in places, as if my feet were sinking into sawdust.

My sister glided towards me, the white veil and coif flapping like two doves sewn to the sides of her head.

‘Céleste, what ––?’

‘Sorry to come and bother you here. I have to speak to you about something. It’s an emergency. I found a family –– ’

Félicité took my arm. ‘Hush,’ she said, leading me into a side room.

Besides a battered desk and two chairs, and a single cross hanging from the wall, the room was bare, and chilly despite the summer heat outside.

‘This is where guests are received,’ she said, nodding to one of the chairs. ‘Now, tell me what’s wrong, Céleste.’

‘I found a family hiding in the old witch’s hut in the woods,’ I said, and told her about the Wolfs, and how we’d taken them to L’Auberge attic. ‘They’re lovely people, but as much as I like having them at the farm, they can’t stay up there for long. It’s cramped and uncomfortable, and Maman won’t let them come downstairs, except at night, to help with housework. I keep telling her –– keep reassuring
myself
–– they’re safe up there, but I’m afraid for them. You know how rumours buzz around the village. And of course our mother is not happy about having them in her home.’

‘I’m not surprised she’s against concealing people, Céleste. I think she got her hand bitten many years ago, though I never knew the details.’

‘Ah yes, Maman’s dark secret.’

As a girl, I would ask my older sister why our mother was so hard and unforgiving; why I knew nothing of her thoughts and why I could never look lovingly into her cold, green eyes. Félicité said it was because a terrible thing had happened to her, but when I asked whatever that unbearable secret could be, my sister either didn’t know or wouldn’t tell me. Eventually I stopped asking.

‘I know she’d never turn the family over to the authorities,’ I said. ‘And risk the police coming up to the farm. But living with her thunderous looks every day, it’s so … so tiring.’

My sister fidgeted with the rosary beads dangling from her belt, her usually mellow gaze curdling, as always when Maman’s business was mentioned.

‘I thought they could come here to the convent? I know you have other people. Others like the Wolfs.’

Félicité sat in the chair opposite me and clasped her large silver cross.

‘We only have a few young girls. With false identities, we can pass them off under any name, and in the uniform, the students all look much the same. But an entire family?’

‘Couldn’t you get false papers for the Wolfs?’

My sister was silent for a moment, fiddling with the cross. ‘I’ll talk to Mother Superior, but it could take some time to organise. I pray these people can stay safe in the meantime.’

‘Thank you, and I’m doing my best to keep them safe for now.’ I took a deep breath. ‘There’s something else I wanted to mention. I met a German from the barracks, an officer I think. He seems to like –– to admire –– me.’ I faltered, aware of the nervous scratch in my voice. ‘He gave me a present. Nylons.’

Félicité’s eyes widened. ‘A gift from a German? You know how danger –– ’

‘Of course I do. And I’m not even sure he does like me. I mean, why would any man? Approving looks were always reserved for you. Men never …’

‘Go on, Céleste.’

‘I have a niggling suspicion he knows something about Patrick and Olivier’s group. I can’t help wondering if he’s trying to get close to me, to find out information.’

‘He might well be doing that, Céleste, it’s not unheard of.’

‘I know. So I’ve decided to steer clear of him from now on.’

‘Maybe you shouldn’t,’ Félicité said. ‘Keep away from him, I mean. This officer might be toying with you; using you to glean information, but he’s not the only one who can play such games.’

‘Games?’

Félicité took my fisted hands in hers. ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t shun this man. Let him get close, up to a point, of course. And see just how much he knows, if anything.’

I stared at my sister, certain I’d misunderstood what she was suggesting. ‘You want me to take up with a
Boche
? Never! Besides, you know what happens to girls ––’

‘Yes, I know.’ My sister’s dark eyes moved up the wall behind me, and fixed on the thin crucifix. ‘I also know you’re smart enough not to get caught. Besides, you’ve been hankering after joining Patrick and Olivier’s group from the start. Just think of this as your personal mission. An important, undercover job.’

‘Maman will have a fit. You know how much she despises the Germ ––’

‘But you won’t let Maman find out, will you? Just as nobody, besides Patrick and Olivier of course, can know what you’re doing. Not even your closest friends like Ghislaine and Miette.’

I pulled my hands from hers and leaned back in the chair. ‘You really think I can do it?’

‘I wouldn’t have suggested it, Céleste, if I wasn’t certain.’

‘Well, if it could help the boys’ group; keep them out of danger, I suppose I could try.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘But at the slightest sign of danger you must walk away from this man and never see him again. Don’t do anything to compromise yourself, and keep in touch with me by telephone, the one in Au Cochon Tué. And only come to the convent in an emergency. If this German thinks you know about a Resistance group, he might follow you here.’

My sister stood, and I trailed after her, back down the shadowy, cheerless corridor. As we reached the oak door, Félicité kissed me on both cheeks.

‘Keep your eyes and ears wide open, Céleste. And take great care.’

7

The heat intensified with every step as I climbed the attic ladder with a bag of sandwiches –– the sultry air the attic snared and confined, so that the Wolfs must have felt they were living in an oven.

I heard the soft tap-tap of Sabine’s steps across the parquet, and Max humming his usual tune to accompany his wife’s dancing. As I stepped up into the attic Sabine stopped mid-step and spun around, an arc of dark hair sweeping her pale face.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.’ I placed the sandwich bag on top of an old trunk. ‘Please, don’t stop. I love watching you dance.’

Talia started clapping. ‘Maman’s the best ballerina in the world, isn’t she Papa?’

‘The best,’ Max said, smiling at his daughter and his wife.

Jacob skittered to his mother’s side and clung to her legs. As usual, the little boy was clutching the toy soldier with the red coat.

Sabine sank down onto the straw mattress on which the family slept –– the only sign of their presence, which we could shove behind the panel if necessary. She hoisted Jacob onto her lap, kissed his forehead, and opened
Les Fables de Jean de la Fontaine
, a favourite childhood book I’d lent her.

‘I might have found a better place for you,’ I said. ‘Somewhere you can walk around, and where Talia and Jacob can play in a garden.’

‘Please don’t put yourself and your family in any more danger for our sakes,’ Max said. ‘You’ve done so much already.’

‘It’s my pleasure,’ I said, ruffling Jacob’s hair.

‘Aren’t we going home soon?’ Talia said. ‘Your attic is nice, Céleste, but I miss Cendres. And he must be missing me.’

‘I’m sure we’ll be going home soon, Talia,’ her mother said. ‘And we can give Céleste and her maman their attic back.’

‘Did you get the paints for Papa?’ she said.

‘Talia!’ her father said. ‘Céleste can’t magically get things like that, especially in wartime.’

‘I’m trying,’ I said, an image of Martin Diehl rippling through my mind.

‘Story, Maman, story.’ Jacob jabbed a stumpy finger at the book.

‘I’ll be back up later,’ I said, moving towards the ladder. ‘To see if you need anything else.’

***

I’d almost reached the bottom of the ladder when I heard muffled sounds coming from behind my mother’s closed bedroom door. I crept across the landing and pressed an eye to the keyhole.

Maman was shaving soapflakes from the block she made with plant oils and caustic soda, into a dish of boiled water. A girl, pale as the sheet on which she lay, stared at the ceiling, her tongue darting over her lips in needle-like movements. I didn’t know her, but that wasn’t unusual. Most of the girls who came to L’Auberge for Maman’s services were strangers, travelling as far as possible from their own village.

My mother followed her usual ritual, filling the tube with water, threading it between the girl’s spread legs and pumping the soapy mix into her.

While Dr. Etienne Laforge was Lucie-sur-Vionne’s legitimate medicine man, those who were suspicious of my mother’s herbal and floral remedies referred to Marinette Roussel as the village quack –– the charlatan. Others, ignoring her curt bedside manner, spoke of her as a healer-woman and swore by her omelette of oats and sawdust, which cured both snakebites and rabid dogs.

My mother was also Lucie’s reputed
faiseuse d’anges
–– an angel-maker –– her methods far superior to those common abortionists whose dirty curtain rails, knitting needles and mustard baths caused feverish sicknesses; deaths even.

‘You can get up now,’ Maman said as she withdrew the tubing from inside the girl.

I slunk away from the door, down the stairs and outside to the well. I drew water with the hand pump, inhaling the perfume from the knot of rose bushes beside the great brick well.

When I returned with my full bucket, the girl was standing in the kitchen clutching her stomach. Her face was the colour of week-old snow.

She looked away from me, at the wide stone hearth that housed the stove; at Maman’s gleaming pots, pans and utensils hanging from racks on the whitewashed walls. Her eyes roved across the ornaments on the mantelpiece as if a pottery dish containing a scattering of dried mugwort, a single cufflink and a broken ornamental comb were the most interesting things in the world.

The girl had the same embarrassed, fearful look as all of them. Poor thing, I itched to say, to get yourself in that bind. But my mother had long ago forbidden me to speak to her customers.

I took onions, carrots and potatoes from the cool room and started chopping them for supper. My knife
chack-chacked
against the chopping board in rhythm with the
tock-tock
of the grandfather clock –– the Rubie clock my grandmother had called it, because of its dark red fruitwood stain and because it came from an ancestor named Rubie, a celebrated midwife from the times of Emperor Napoléon.

I could hear Maman fussing about in her herbal room –– her sanctuary that was forbidden to us. But my mother’s rules had never stopped me as a young girl, and when she was out, or busy in the orchard, I would sneak into the narrow room with its casement windows that let in so much light and poke about at the drying frames netted with gauze, and the hooks above the small fireplace for heat-drying. I loved its smell, like something in the woods hidden under rotting leaves. With tentative fingers I would touch each neatly-labelled bottle, basin and earthenware jar lining the floor-to-ceiling shelves, and feel that chilling, though not unpleasant, sensation amidst the spicy scents. I imagined I was standing in the shadows of all the healer-women who’d inhabited L’Auberge
,
with their own herbal medicines. The lair of ancient witches.

‘Mix this with warm water and drink it,’ Maman said, pressing a sachet of dried flowers into the girl’s palm. My mother had never taken me with her to gather medicinal stocks, or explained how she used them, but I had picked up a few things over the years, like how she used sage, mugwort or rue to brew angel-tea.

‘Go now,’ she said to the girl. ‘It will all happen in a few hours.’

With another blush the girl glanced at me again. I gave her a brief nod as she scurried along the hallway, and from the window I watched her scuttle across the courtyard like a frightened rabbit.

‘You’re still doing that?’ I said, heating the pot of water on the stove. ‘Even after they guillotined the abortionist woman only last month?’

Maman didn’t answer as she untied her apron and took a clean one from the hook behind the door.

‘And not that I care a flip what Marshal Pétain says,’ I went on. ‘About there being too few children; that the women of France have neglected their duty by not having enough babies, but you do realise Vichy have strengthened their abortion laws?’

‘You know it’s simply a question of survival,’ Maman said –– the same argument she always came back with. ‘Even more so since the German pigs took your father.’ She glared at me as if it were my fault. ‘How else do you suggest I run the farm, buy food for us and the animals? Besides, of course the girls will keep their mouths shut.’

That was true enough. My mother protected her customers’ identity while they in turn kept quiet about her violating Marshal Pétain’s natal laws, a defiance punishable by death. I also sensed that behind the stony mask she believed, as I did, she was providing an essential service –– one she’d learned, like the herbal lore, from her lineage of angel-makers and healer-women.

Patrick kept his nose right out of my mother’s illegal business, shrugging it off as women’s affairs. But I suspected it was Maman’s angel-making that convinced Félicité to take the veil. As if that way she could atone for my mother’s sins. Or perhaps it was simply a handy excuse to get away from the farm and banish the ungodly act from her sight.

‘What are you gawping at, Célestine?’ she said, swiping at wisps of hair.

‘Nothing.’ I lay the knife on the chopping board and rocked my angel pendant back and forth along its leather thread. ‘I want to get my
Baccalauréat
and study at university in Lyon.’

I’d said that to her so many times I’d have thought she’d be fed up, and relent, but still she looked at me as if I’d said I wanted to move to Bordeaux.

‘You, study at university?’ She dismissed me with a flick of her wrist, her lips curving into a mean little smile. ‘Do you think this farm can run on its own? Besides, you’re nineteen. If you’ve got any sense you’ll find a good Lucie farmer to marry, have a family and settle down. Children and a family would curb that hot-head temper; would whip the rebel spirit out of you.’

‘Live on the farm. Be a wife. Have babies,’ I said, sliding the vegetables into the boiling water. ‘That’s all you think I’m good for.’ In my agitation, a clutch of carrots fell to the floor.

‘You’re just like Marshal Pétain, wanting to keep women in the kitchen with dozens of children hanging off their skirts. It’s people like you who keep women inferior to men,’ I said, crouching to gather up the vegetables.

My mother almost pushed me aside as she snatched the carrots and started rinsing them. ‘I don’t know where you’ve picked up these ideas. Why can’t you be like your brother, content to stay put in Lucie?’ She slid the washed carrots into the saucepan.

‘Of course Patrick doesn’t want to get away,’ I said. ‘He wants nothing beyond being a carpenter in Lucie the rest of his life. Besides, he doesn’t have to put up with your spite.’

‘Spite? Don’t be ridiculous, girl.’

People always remarked that I was like my mother, the only one to inherit the pale, almost transparent skin, the cinnamon-coloured hair and blunt manner. Like her, I was difficult and defiant, but as I grew older I sensed, more and more, those were things Maman could understand. She never knew what to make of the likeable Patrick or the God-fearing Félicité, so she left my siblings alone.

Now, as the war dragged on and my father had volunteered his carpentry skills for the
Reich
, Maman, while bearing her separation like the dutiful Frenchwoman, retreated further and further from us. She simply vented her inexplicable anger on the easiest target –– the person she knew like she knew herself.

‘The city is not the exciting, adventurous place you imagine,’ she said, slapping plates onto the table.

‘Well that’s something I want to find out for myself, Maman.’