Page 84 of The Resistance Book Club

‘Professor Lauterborn – Theo – gave her the bear,’ Margot told him, tears gathering as she thought of Theo. ‘He was…well, Corbeau will have told you. They took him away in an ambulance. You will tell me how he is, won’t you? Only…we’re very close friends, and I’m so worried.’

‘Shot by one’s own brother. But our friend Corbeau resolved the matter of that particular gentleman.’ MrGray winced and shook his head. ‘Professor Lauterborn is receiving the best care, Madame. Please try not to worry.’

There was a knock at the door and a woman entered, carrying a tray of tea things. She set them down on the desk and MrGray gestured for Margot to sit. Once they were alone again, he poured the tea and invited Margot to tell her story. The story that had led her to leave the only life she knew far behind.

Margot started her tale with the day that she and her friends started their resistance book club. As she reached the end of her story, she told MrGray, ‘I promised Daniel, and I promised Esther, that I’d look after Arielle for them.’ She went on, ‘But I want to work. I don’t want to be a burden, not when everyone is struggling. I just have to find something I can do that means I won’t break my promises to Chevalier. After all the sacrifices they have made, it’s the least I can do for them.’

MrGray listened closely, his fingers steepled beneath his chin. Only when Margot had exhausted her story did he say, ‘I’m sorry that you’ve had to give up so much and come here. You’ve already lost so much, but I promise you, Madame, that I’ll make sure you’re properly looked after. And the little one too. You’re both safe here.’

MrGray arranged for Margot and Arielle to stay at a hotel, out of the city and along the coast. It commanded a clifftop and had a beautiful sunroom populated by elderly women who wore pearls and cooed over Arielle. The trees in the hotel’s grounds were golden with fallen leaves, and some branches were already bare. Like the sunroom’s wide glass panes, the large bay window of Margot’s room was criss-crossed with tape and looked out across the sea to France. Margot stood by the window, holding Arielle and pointing across the flat, grey expanse to where her father was.

After she’d got some milk from the hotel’s kitchen and bathed Arielle, Margot gratefully climbed into bed and slept, only waking now and then when Arielle cried. She couldn’t remember her dreams, but she knew that Theo was there with her, and she hoped that meant he was all right.

Some young ladies in uniform came to see Margot. They spoke good French, and they asked her what she needed. She wished she’d had a chance to pack a suitcase, and as she asked for the clothes – resorting to pointing and gesturing at times – she thought of her dresses hanging untouched in her wardrobe in Cordeval.

She was amazed when the women came back with clothes and shoes and toiletries for her, and all kinds of things that Arielle needed. Despite the shortages, they had been able to spare enough for them. They put together a crib in Margot’s hotel room and Arielle happily lay on the new mattress, cooing and kicking her feet.

She wheeled Arielle along the promenade in a second-hand pram that had been found for her. The beach here was covered with barbed wire too, and barrage balloons hung above them inthe sky as a large, dark-grey battleship moved across the water. She longed for a time when the war was over and normal life would go on. She sat on a bench and stared across the sea to France, wondering what was happening to her friends, and how Joséphine was getting on running the bookshop.

As she read to Isabelle fromThe Three Musketeers, Margot remembered the day when Beatrice had run into the shop with the news of the book-burning in Rouen. She thought of Aunt Sandrine polishing the shelves, Madame Guerin choosing a novel to read, and Esther bringing Isabelle in her pram. That was the day Margot had decided to set up the book club. Two of those women were now dead, and Margot had no idea what had become of everyone else. She reached into her pocket for her handkerchief. She was cut adrift from everyone and everything she knew.

Where would they go? They couldn’t live in a hotel for ever. She’d surprised everyone, not just herself, by arriving here, and no one had made arrangements for her.

‘Autumn is rolling in fast,’ said a voice, speaking in French. Margot looked up to see MrGray approaching, striding towards her at a clip. Today he was wearing a vivid red tartan, and beneath his arm he carried a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. He paused at Arielle’s pram and beamed in at the little girl. ‘I have gifts for you, mademoiselle. Some clothes that belonged to my own children.’ He added in a whisper, ‘No clothing coupons required, eh?’ Then he nodded to the bench beside Margot and asked, ‘May I?’

‘Of course.’ Margot smiled, patting the space beside her. ‘Everyone has been so kind. Doesn’t Arielle look happy in her pram?’ Then she sighed and asked him, ‘And Theo? How is he?’

‘Expected to recover,’ he said and smiled. ‘Although I’m afraid I can’t say for sure when you’ll see one another again. There are certain protocols we need to follow, given his nationality and unfortunate family ties. I hope you understand?’

After all Theo had done for the Allies, the sacrifices he had made, he was still regarded with suspicion.

‘He is a good man,’ Margot insisted, but she knew that she and Theo were powerless. She hated the thought that he’d survive his wound just to be put in a prison cell for the rest of the war. ‘He’s nothing like that monster – you know he blinded Theo when they were children? You must believe me, Monsieur Gray.’

He nodded and said kindly, ‘I know. And I believe all will be well for the gentleman; I hope you will trust me when I say that. He has worked on our behalf for a long time and at great risk.’ Then MrGray drew in a deep breath and went on. ‘But I have good news for you and Arielle, madame. A safe home, a worthwhile job and the chance to settle and see out the war until you can go home.’

‘Oh, monsieur, thank you so much,’ Margot said. She almost hugged him, but realised British people were reserved and he might be taken by surprise.

‘My family seat up north at Rievaulx has been requisitioned for the war effort. I need someone who can operate a radio and might be willing to do a few extra hours here and there cataloguing the family library,’ MrGray explained. ‘There’s a little cottage in the grounds going begging and my darling old ma just a stone’s throw away, desperate to coddle a baby now all of my lot are grown and flown. What do you say, madame?’

Margot couldn’t have imagined anything more perfect; the only thing it lacked was Theo.

Gray arranged for Margot and Arielle to travel up to Yorkshire, a long journey from the south coast. She saw so much of England on their journey; the damaged towns and cities, and so many people in uniform. The population looked tired and their clothes were almost as darned and makeshift as Margot had become used to in France.

But there were no German soldiers here. No one wasmarching along the streets or bellowing through megaphones; no SS were knocking at the doors to drag people away.

Instead, she saw colourful posters at the stations they passed through, with English words she could pick out here and there, encouraging the nation to do what they could to carry on. She got the impression of a country who had united to fight an enemy, despite the suffering they were having to endure.

As they travelled through the countryside, Margot saw wide, tilled fields with birds swooping above them, which, in a few months, would ripple with crops. Then the landscape changed; the fields were smaller now, populated by sheep, and on the horizon she saw the looming shapes of huge hills.

A cheery young woman in an army jeep met Margot and Arielle at the station. She had neatly braided hair and a tidy uniform, and she spoke near-perfect French. Arielle stared at her with fascination and the young woman merely chuckled when the baby tugged her cheek. There was something about her that reminded Margot of Monsieur Gray, and eventually she realised that she was being driven by Gray’s own daughter.

The jeep went through a pair of stone gates topped with heraldic shields held by carved unicorns. After a long drive down a wooded avenue that had turned golden with autumn, Margot saw rows of twinkling windows that had caught the setting sun. Monsieur Gray’s house was like an English version of the famous chateaux in the Loire Valley in France, albeit one with military vehicles lined up neatly in the carriage circle. Although the elaborate fountain with its dramatic stone statues in front of the enormous stone house wasn’t spouting water, Margot could imagine how grand it looked when it did.

Monsieur Gray’s daughter led the way to their cottage in the grounds of the house. The gardens were a mixture of topiary, roses clipped back for winter, empty summer houses, and canes marking out vegetable patches. Men and women in uniform, who worked in the house, chatted and smoked insmall groups before heading back indoors across the wide lawns. Arielle cooed in surprise as a peacock trotted past them, before he paused beside a sundial to display his wide fan of feathers. Margot wished Theo could’ve been there to see it; she would’ve truly felt as if they were in a fairy tale if he had.

The cottage looked out across an orchard. Few leaves were left but the trees promised an abundance of blossom come springtime. Margot felt a pang for the home she’d left behind; the scent of apples that were turning soft on the grass reminded her of Normandy and walking through the chilly autumn air with Esther. But then, the orchard was something familiar for her to hold on to, and she hoped she could make some Normandy specialities with the harvest to share with everyone at the main house.

Margot’s new home was built from stone with a slate roof and roses, not yet in bud, would grow around the door by summer. The kitchen had a large metal range, and there was an old, out-of-tune piano in the parlour, which made Margot miss Theo with all her heart.