Page 7 of The Resistance Book Club

The local men who’d been drinking in Petit’s bar across the road had gathered at the door to look outside. Margot turned the sign on her shop’s door toFermé –Closed–and she and Beatrice headed into the street. The noise was even louder out here.

She noticed a man on a bike riding by, his wheels turning through eddies of fallen brown and orange leaves. The end of his striped, knitted scarf flew out behind him and the bicycle’s basket was loaded with groceries. As he got nearer and she saw his neat moustache and tidily combed, dark blond hair, she realised it was the Professor.

His heavy overcoat was buttoned up against the October cold, and his brown lace-up shoes were polished to a sheen that reminded Margot of chestnuts. Everything about him seemed to be carefully tidied and locked away. Everything except for his damaged eye, which stared out sightlessly from his pale, unsmiling face.

‘Why doesn’t he go back where he came from?’ Beatrice said it loudly enough for the Professor to hear. It was a sentiment Margot had heard a few times since the Germans marched into France, but he had been here for far longer.

She could remember the Professor cycling through the village just after she was married. He always greeted her politely, but things were different now. Now he wasn’t simply the German émigré who lived in solitude on the edge of the village, he was just one more German in a region that was crawling with them.

‘Bea…’ Margot warned her. She’d have to speak to Joséphine about her daughter; she was going to put herself in danger. ‘You can’t say that.’

‘You!’ A young man whose uniform bore a swastika strode round the corner, barking orders in German-accented French. ‘Clear the street!’

The Professor pulled his bicycle in to the side of the street and turned to look behind him. As he did, Beatrice scowled up at him and whispered, ‘Go back to Germany.’

‘She’s just a girl,’ Margot pleaded with him, hoping he wouldn’t report them. ‘I’m sorry. She doesn’t understand.’

‘She does,’ the Professor replied in his quiet, careful voice. Margot wasn’t sure what to make of that, but his attention shifted then and he settled his gaze on the sight that had just rounded the corner of their little cobblestone street. Along the road, people were coming out of the shops and houses, and, as they watched, the door of Petit’s opened and Joséphine emerged, her hair in curlers and her silk dressing gown loose around her shoulders.

Margot heard the disapproving murmurs even over the noise, because the women who now folded their arms and regarded Joséphine with an even darker look than that which they reserved for the occupying Nazis meant Beatrice’s mother to hear.

Margot had heard it all before, and she hated that Beatrice had to hear what was being said about her own mother.

She followed the Professor’s gaze. Her fingers tightened round Beatrice’s arm.

Helmets, polished boots. Rifles, uniforms. The low, autumn sunlight glittering against bayonets. Margot was cold, down to her bones. It seemed as if a whole army was coming towards them, marching in perfect, relentless time. The faces were stern, the mouths set in firm, unsmiling lines.

Some of the old men who drank in Petit’s had fought in the Great War, some at sea, and some hundreds of miles away in the trenches. Margot glanced at their pale, worried faces. Goodness knew what memories were coming back to them as they watched.

The soldiers marched by, as if Margot and the rest of the village weren’t even there. Behind them came a row of armoured cars bristling with huge guns, their engines growling so fiercely they made the street shake. Even more soldiers followed, and then, coming up behind, a long-bodied Mercedes-Benz. Small flags fluttered across the polished black wheel arches of the gleaming silver car, the red fabric emblazoned with black swastikas that glared out from a white background. At the wheel sat a uniformed man, his face set like marble, while in the back of the car, like a monarch parading before his subjects, sat a straight-backed man.

Against the jet black of his uniform, the man looked deathly pale. A duelling scar on one cheek stood out in vivid, fleshy pink, and on his collar the sunlight glinted from the silver lightning bolts of the SS. It glinted too from the death’s head on his cap, and a chill went through Margot. At her side she caught the suggestion of movement as the Professor started. But a moment later, Beatrice darted across the path of the vehicle, dodging between the ranks of marching soldiers as she dashed towards her mother.

The man in the car said something and the car slowed to a near stop. As it crawled past, he looked towards Beatrice and said in a voice that was rich with mirth, ‘Be careful where you cross, little girl. We may decide to run you down one day.’

Anger blazed inside Margot. She bunched her hands into her fists, trying to hold it in. How dare these Nazis come to their village to intimidate them, threatening even the children? She felt the officer’s gaze sweep over her and willed herself not to react. He was taking everything in. The little shops, the drinkers who’d come outside the bar, Joséphine. Beatrice drew back against her mother, eleven years old again, and further along the road Margot saw Esther standing in the doorway of the bakery, so still that she seemed like a statue. Her hands were tight on the handle of the blue pram that she was pushing, her gaze fixed, unblinking, on the man in the car.

But the man in the car had found something else to occupy him. As its speed increased just a little, his head suddenly snapped round to where Margot and Professor Lauterborn were standing. His thin lips were creased to give the barest hint of a smile and he nodded an acknowledgement at the man who stood beside her. The Professor didn’t move, but Margot felt almost as though the air itself had changed, the warmth disappearing into a frigid cold.

Margot turned slowly to look at the Professor as a heavy, armoured car rumbled at the back of the procession on huge wheels, impassive soldiers visible through the darkened windscreen.

She tried to read the Professor’s frozen features. There was nothing to see though; his expression was utterly emotionless as he turned his head to watch the car pass by. Esther shrank back into the doorway as the man in the car continued on his journey. Margot heard Isabelle give a grizzle of discontent and Esther reached into the pram to gently soothe her baby, but thistime the car didn’t slow but carried the officer away through the village.

A shadow passed across Margot. Life in the village had changed again; darkness had arrived, deeper even than before. And she would do everything she could to fight it.

FIVE

LUCY

2025

Lucy had booked a room online at Jojo’s as she’d waited at the airport for her flight; she wasn’t ready to sleep in her grandparents’ flat. When Papi had died ten years before, Lucy had found it hard too, but Mémé had held her hand and they had gone upstairs together. But now that she had lost Mémé as well, she couldn’t bear the thought of going into the flat by herself, let alone staying there.

Besides, she had no idea if the beds were made up. And what would she do if the water was turned off? And Jojo’s rooms had looked gorgeous in the listing, as if they had escaped from a French farmhouse.

Like many buildings in Cordeval, several floors rose above the bar, each with antique wooden shutters. It had traditional metalwork balconies that burst with cascading red geraniums and were hazy with purple lavender in terracotta pots.

Tonight, the quiet, fairytale French hotel had burst into life. Music boomed and fairy lights chased each other around the front door, and balloons and streamersfilled the wide glass windows. Revellers had spilled out of the door and onto the pavement, where a dark-haired man was enthusiastically playing an old upright piano.