Before last night I hadn’t seen him and I doubt I will see him again. You brought something for Hirondelle, I suppose?’
‘I was told someone would be waiting for the bag.’ Now Keth was wary.
‘There you are then. Next time that man comes out of hiding he will have a different codename. No one knows more than two people at the most. Until you came, Tante Clara was the only other contact I knew. Here in France people like us don’t play games. It is all very serious, though I’m not important. Anyone could be a messenger,’ she said scathingly. ‘I know very little and I like it that way. The less I know, the less I can tell them.’
‘But how would you explain being here, at Clissy, if you were stopped and asked for your papers?’
‘My papers are false, like yours. It wouldn’t do to have a Jewish name on them. My parents took care of it all long before I was sent here. They knew, you see, what would happen to them eventually. And when France was invaded, they sent me to Tante Clara at once. We heard, later, there had been a search in Paris and that every foreign-born Jew was taken away. After that, I had no more letters from them. They probably went to Belsen. I think it is one of those places; killing places.’
‘Natasha! How can you talk like this?’
She rose, shrugging, throwing logs into the wheelbarrow.
‘My papers say I lived at Dunkirk, not Paris, and if anyone asked they would be told my parents were killed there at the time of the evacuation of your army, Gaston. Many civilians were killed there.’
‘Yes.’ He had been in America at the time.
‘It’s strange, but I have had three names in my life. The name I was born with, the name I was given when I was adopted and the name on the papers I use now. The first I do not know. I wasn’t told until the war started that I was an adopted child. When I asked about my parents all they would tell me was that my father was unknown and my mother’s name was Natasha.
‘It’s why I used it when I met you; it is the only name you will know me by. It is unlikely you will get into conversation with anyone from Clissy – you won’t be here long enough – but if you do, you must refer to me as Madame Piccard’s niece.’
‘Very well. But how can you be so blasé about it all? How can you bear to talk about your parents without –’
‘Without breaking down; without weeping?’ She lifted her shoulders in an unchildlike gesture. ‘Because although I tell myself they are dead, I refuse to weep for them until I know for certain they are.
‘When I was three months old, I was adopted. I had black hair and brown eyes – Jewish colouring even if my nose was not kosher. I was reared in the Jewish faith, though now, of course, it is wisest I worship with Tante Clara. She belongs to the Roman Church, and believes in miracles. It is why she thinks I should pray to St Jude. He’s the patron saint of lost causes, you see.’
She said it without bitterness, wheeling the barrow to the woodshed beside the gate, back stiff, head high and he ran after her.
‘I’ll help you stack them, Natasha!’
She turned and smiled – to let him see she was not crying, he supposed – and for the second time since their meeting he felt a wash of tenderness for her. Had he had a sister, he thought, she would probably have looked like Natasha. The same dark hair and eyes as his. Funny, that, when you thought about it.
‘Pass them to me. I’ll pile them up. I’m good at it. When I was sixteen, I always chopped the logs at home. But tell me,’ he felt safer talking to her within the confines of the shed, ‘you said “every foreign-born Jew”. Where were your parents born?’
‘My adoptive parents? In Russia. In Moscow. They got out before the Czar was shot and came to Paris to live. I think my natural mother was Russian, too, her name being Natasha, I mean. She went to the nuns to have me but that’s all I know, except that I was born in Paris.’
‘I know someone who had to leave Russia,’ Keth offered. ‘Were your parents rich, then?’
‘No, though I suppose you might have called them middle class. My Jewish mother was a milliner – had her own shop she told me – and my father was a musician. Most of what they had was taken. What they could carry away helped them bribe their way out of Russia. They never had children so they adopted me,’ she said softly, sadly. ‘I can tell you no more. I would like to know about you, Gaston Martin, but I won’t ask, though I think you were born in the country, the way you can use an axe,’ she smiled as Keth began splitting logs again.
‘The country,’ he nodded.
‘And your French? Where did you learn that?’
‘In school, and then by speaking it to a governess. Not my governess,’ he added hastily. ‘I have no father, and my mother isn’t well off. If I see this war through, though, I’ll make sure she never wants.’
He turned sharply as the dogs began their barking and Natasha ran to the gate, smiling. ‘It’s Tante Clara!’
‘So! You have got yourself out of bed,’ Madame Piccard admonished. ‘Here – take my shopping into the house and be careful of the eggs!’ Then turning to Keth she said, ‘You, too, M’sieur. The kitchen, if you please.’
She clattered down the path, then closed the door behind them, taking off her hat.
‘They know you are here – or they will before so very much longer.’
‘They?’
‘The people who are expecting you. I mentioned in the boulangerie that my gardener had arrived. That was all I needed to do. Now it will go down the line and you will be contacted.’
‘How, Madame?’ Excitement beat in Keth’s throat.
‘How do I know? You must learn not to ask questions. You will not be given what you came for until your way out has been planned. It takes time. Be patient – and meantime do what you came to do – tidy my garden and dig over the vegetable plot! I hope you can use a spade, too?’
‘I can. But how will I recognize my contact?’
‘I don’t know yet. Perhaps tomorrow, when I go to buy more bread, someone there will tell me. You must learn to wait for things to happen.’
‘Patience,’ Keth smiled, because he liked Clara Piccard in spite of her brusque way of speaking; appreciated, too, the risk she ran taking him in. ‘I’ll chop the wood first, then get on with the digging. And, Madame,’ he said as he opened the door, ‘thank you.’
‘Ha!’ The elderly woman made a dismissive gesture with her hand. ‘Your thanks are not needed – and anyway, I do it because I hate Germans. They killed the man I married in the last war. Just a few weeks a wife – I didn’t even have the joy of a child. What little I do is for my Henri. He would want me to.’
Keth closed the door gently. Tomorrow, they might know more. Things were moving and of course, he conceded, plans took time. Messages to be passed, London to be contacted. Here, in occupied France, a wireless operator must always be on the move; must never transmit twice from the same place. He, who knew more than most about the interception of signals, knew that detector vans were always vigilant, hoping to home in on an operator.
He wondered if the valves he had carried were now in use, and, more soberly, if some secret armourer had been able to repair the firing mechanism of two pistols.
Keth looked down at his right hand and the blister already forming there. A long time since he chopped logs, he smiled wryly, wrapping his handkerchief around his hand.
He took up the axe again, thinking that the first day was almost over – day one to be crossed off his mental calendar, his first day as Gaston Martin. To forget that identity, even for one unguarded moment, could cost him his life. And the lives of others.
He raised