Page 57 of The Resistance Book Club

‘I’d love to,’ Margot replied, beaming at him. ‘But really, you don’t need to thank me. You’ve done so much. I wish we couldgo out to lunch now. But why don’t we go for a short walk? We could both do with the fresh air.’

Theo nodded and smiled. ‘A walk would be lovely.’

Margot let Aunt Sandrine know they were going out, then locked up before she and Theo headed outside. The air was thick with fear, but she couldn’t bear to be a prisoner in her own home any more.

As they walked along, she heard heavy footsteps on the cobbles from a nearby street and the growl of engines; the ever-present leaden weight of the enemy occupation.

‘All available citizens of Cordeval,’ bellowed a German voice in heavily accented French, ‘You are required in the square! All available citizens to the square!’

Margot’s breath caught in her throat as panic began to course through her. She gripped the sleeve of Theo’s coat. She hoped that Aunt Sandrine would stay indoors with Isabelle.

A bell started to clang, and Margot recognised the school’s bell at once. It rang from its brick tower that rose from the school building and called Cordeval’s children to their classes. But now, as its metallic ring echoed through the streets, it took on a far more ominous tone.

The street was suddenly busy, with shopkeepers coming outside, still in their aprons, and women carrying their shopping baskets, diverted by the soldiers barking orders.

‘What are they going to do?’ Margot whispered to Theo.

They headed towards the square in a sea of people. She took Theo’s arm, telling herself it was to stop them being broken apart. He glanced at her, his face pale, then dipped his head to her ear.

‘The prisoners,’ he whispered.

The square’s leafless linden trees reached for the grey, autumn sky with skeletal fingers. An unnatural, anxious hush had fallen over everyone, even the children who were filing in from the school and staring with huge, frightenedeyes. Among them, she saw Beatrice and her gang. Margot felt a tiny flicker of relief; she was safe, at least. The little girl was chewing her lip as she waited and Margot saw her move slightly, just enough to take the hand of the boy on one side and the girl on the other. All of the children were linking hands, she realised, holding on to one another for support.

Margot tried not to be obvious as she glanced around. In the crowd, she spotted Sylvie, disturbed from her work, with a pincushion clipped to her dress. She saw Henriette and her husband, with mud on their shoes; they must’ve just come from the farm. Standing not far from them she saw Brigitte.

Although Margot couldn’t see Claudine, who might’ve been out in the boat, some of the fishermen from the harbour were standing on the edge of the square in their oilskins as if they’d been collared just as they’d arrived with their catch. She couldn’t find Joséphine in the crowd either. She kept scanning the faces, as carefully as she could so she didn’t draw attention to herself. There was no sign of Colette. And where was Madame Guerin?

Margot’s heart seemed to stop hammering in her chest. Her fingers and her hands were suddenly numb.

She’d heard rumours of villages where the Nazis had taken revenge on the locals after the resistance had blown up a bridge or assassinated an SS officer. A freezing finger of ice ran up her back and she held Theo’s arm tighter. Were any of Cordeval’s residents – from the schoolchildren, to the women with their shopping bags and the old men who played pétanque – going to see their homes again?

She noticed the village’s mayor, Monsieur Delafosse arrive, wearing his tricolour sash. He stood at the front of the crowd, watching the locals with a tired expression, like a father who’d been worn down by his troublesome children.

A large van was parked at the edge of the square, its drab green paintwork bearing no insignia. Around it stood the troopsof the SS, guns at the ready, and Margot knew that Theo was right: the prisoners who had been his comrades were inside that vehicle.

The crowd fell silent and, above the birdsong, Margot heard the purr of an engine. The villagers turned to watch the gleaming Mercedes of Obergruppenführer Felix Lauterborn drive slowly towards the village square.

Margot trembled with anger, but she forced the feeling down. How she despised him, marching into her village and infecting everyone with fear. She noticed other heads turn, and the looks of hatred that were hastily hidden away behind blank expressions. Somewhere in the crowd, a baby started to cry, and the mother desperately tried to shush them.

The car drew to a halt and Lauterborn’s chauffeur climbed out. In the back seat Lauterborn was sitting poker-straight, his narrow gaze moving over the assembled villagers. Margot felt as though he could see right into her and, when Theo shifted slightly at her side, she knew that he felt the same way. It seemed impossible that the two men, one so gentle and one so brutal, could have sprung from the same parents.

The chauffeur opened the rear door of the car and Lauterborn got out. For what seemed like minutes he was silent, casting his gaze over the villagers. Then he turned toward the van and raised one leather-gloved hand to point towards the vehicle. At the gesture, the soldier opened the rear doors of the van and, as the shocked gasps and whispers of the villagers filled the air, the Germans’ prisoners were dragged down onto the cobbles.

Blindfolded, their hands behind their backs, the figures stumbled across the cobbles. Margot saw bruises and red trails of dried blood from cuts on what she could see of their faces. Their clothes were torn, their skin was dark with dirt. The men’s chins were rough with stubble; the women’s hair unbrushed and tangled.

A slender, white-haired man, who could’ve been someone’s grandad, was leaning heavily on one leg as if his other was too painful to use. He reminded Margot of one of the men who’d played dominoes at Petit’s before it’d been taken over by the SS; an old soldier from the Great War, who hadn’t wanted his own sacrifices in the trenches to have been in vain.

Their village mayor didn’t intervene. He looked angry, not with the men in uniform dragging his own citizens across the cobbles of the square, but with the prisoners themselves. He was washing his hands of them, Margot knew, and it tore at her to realise that he could care so little for the people who called him their mayor.

Margot tried to work out who each figure was. They were hard to recognise with the blindfolds and the bruises and cuts, the dirt and the blood. She saw a movement in the middle of the crowd and her attention was briefly snatched away from the figures to Joséphine, her face white with horror. Colette was standing nearby.

But they’d survived. They hadn’t been caught.

Margot followed Joséphine’s gaze back to the prisoners and noticed among them a woman with salt and pepper hair that fell in wild, uncombed curls. She suppressed a gasp.

It was Madame Guerin.

Her friend, her loyal customer who loved books, who always had at least one or two stashed under the counter of the café where she worked. She’d been almost as enraged as Margot had been when she’d found out that the Germans were banning books. A kind, funny woman, who’d lost her husband like Margot had, and who loved to dive into stories.