Page 27 of Love in the Shadows

Frau Neumann frowned. “It’s an important job. I’m afraid I come from an entirely different background. My early years were strongly influenced by the arts, music, theatre and nannies. You would probably call me entitled.”

Fabienne assessed her. She looked like someone she would associate with good breeding, a fine bone structure, high cheekbones, slender build, and pretty, blue eyes. She wouldn’t dispute the differences in their heredity or their upbringing, but she hadn’t ever thought of Frau Neumann as entitled. “Kindness and compassion are similar in all cultures, are they not?”

Frau Neumann lowered her gaze. “We might be at war, but we must never lose our humanity.”

“Is everything in order, Frau Neumann?”

Ice threaded Fabienne’s veins at the sound of Müller’s voice. She excused herself, picked up the tray, and headed back to the kitchen to finish preparing dinner for the kommandant’s return.

Mamie’s cheek was swollen and her eye barely a slit by the time they finished work and headed back to the cottage. A tear leaked from it as she stood at the kitchen sink, and she wiped it away. Another came soon after.

Fabienne held her; she felt frail. “I have new instructions.” She released her and took the block of wax from the cupboard.

“I’ll make coffee. Do you want some?”

Acorn coffee was a poor substitute and serving the real thing to Frau Neumann had left Fabienne with a vicious craving that wouldn’t be satisfied by the bitter alternative. “I’ll have wine,” she said. She chipped at the wax to reveal the note buried inside.

Mamie poured them both a drink. “What does it say?”

“I need to decipher it.” She took their bible from the shelf, a piece of paper and a pencil from the drawer and sat at the table to work on the code.

Mamie stirred the pot of soup that would be their supper.

After half an hour, Fabienne looked up and shook her head. “We have to blow the bridge across the river on the evening of the seventh of April, to stop them transporting two hundred and thirty-six Jews to the German work camps.”

“That’s Good Friday.” Mamie made the sign of a cross against her body. “God help those poor people,” she whispered.

Fabienne put down her pencil. Her stomach turned at the thought of their plight. “They need our help, Mamie, not God’s.”

They had to succeed, free these people from a certain death, but how could they get them all to safety? She didn’t have an answer.

12.

LEAVING NANCY ALONE IN the house at the weekends was the thing that saddened Fabienne the most. Having the kittens to play with was some compensation, but she knew Nancy was terribly lonely. They all were in their different ways, but loneliness was the least of their problems and something that she hoped would resolve itself after the war. Fabienne, like everyone else, had to follow instructions and avoid drawing attention to herself, and that meant serving the Neumanns every day. Since Müller watched her closely, grabbing time to take care of her other duties was becoming more problematic.

A light frost had settled overnight again, and there was still a chill in the air as she crossed the yard to the house. Spring had threatened to arrive, bringing a few days of warmth, and then disappeared again. Snowdrops had come and gone unnoticed, and the early tree blossom had shivered from the trees all too quickly by mid-March. A grey mist reigned for most of the day, illustrating that this year was proving more punishing than previous years, and that meant they were low on both wood and food. Too many elderly people in town had been lost to either influenza or pneumonia since the turn of 1944. Could life get any harder? Fabienne prayed not, but time would determine their fates.

She had cut wood from trees in the forest during the previous summer, storing the logs in the cow shed to dry them and to keep them hidden. But that supply had depleted rapidly and now the cow shed was empty and there were only a few small pieces left in the woodshed next to the house. She would have to stray further into the forest to find the right logs to burn, and that took time, which Müller made sure she didn’t have, and they would also be too damp to burn well. If the cold weather continued into April, she would have to consider cutting down fences and breaking up furniture to feed the stove. The last resort would be to steal wood from the Neumann’s supply. Doing that, given Müller’s vigilance, would not be easy, and the cost if she were caught would be too great.

Maybe it was because her clothes were thinner that she felt the chill more easily. Her shoes had long since stopped protecting her feet, but she’d long since stopped caring too. She wasn’t the only one to suffer, there were others in more vulnerable positions than her, and it was this call to serve those less fortunate that drove her to continue to fight with everything she had for the liberation of France. Their next mission though would be bigger than anything they’d done before, and wondering how to get almost two hundred and fifty people to safety had kept her awake the past few nights. Hopefully, at the meeting with her colleagues this evening, they would come up with a plan. In the meantime, she had work to do and Hauptmann Müller to avoid.

She entered the house through the back door into the kitchen and inhaled the intoxicating aroma of fresh coffee.

Frau Neumann poured a little milk into a cup.

“Guten morgen, Frau Neumann.”

“Would you like a coffee?” Frau Neumann asked.

Fabienne checked herself before responding. Was this a trick? She would die for a decent coffee. Just the smell made her pine. She glanced through to the dining room to the foyer beyond. There was no sign of Müller or the nanny. But still, caution stopped her from accepting the offer.

“Hauptmann Müller has gone to collect rations. He will not be back until this afternoon.”

Fabienne raised her eyebrows and breathed a sigh. Thank God he would be out of their way.

“I realise you will feel you should refuse.” Frau Neumann smiled.

“It has been a long time since I had real coffee.” She couldn’t say no, though she should.

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