Page 7 of Love in the Shadows

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Fabienne had made her way south-west of the cottage, deep into the cover of the lush forest, and along a muddy path to the old stone mill.

She stood at the boundary checking around her, in the unlikely event that she been followed. The Germans didn’t stray too far into the dense woods, but she could never be too certain. Inside the mill, she set her bag on the ground and slipped through the narrow space between the large grinding stone and the floor, into a tunnel that led back to the kommandant’s house. This tunnel was one of several in the area that had been constructed before the First World War. As far as she was aware, there were no records of any of the tunnels, and to anyone investigating who didn’t know the area well enough, they would appear to lead nowhere.

In the advent of this war, Fabienne had constructed a wall inside the wine cellar below the ground floor of the house to create a secret cave in which they had initially stored food and supplies. Those items had long since been used up, and now the small space was home to wheels of cheese and pads of butter that she syphoned off from the dairy. The contraband was primarily for trading and gaining favours. She took what little she could justify, to supplement their meagre rations.

From inside the kommandant’s house, the wine cellar was accessed through a door in the kitchen. A featureless door panel that would reveal the secret cave could only be detected if a large section of bottle racks were moved, which no one would have reason to do, although sound travelled too easily through the thin wall, making the second function of the cave riskier to manage.

She reached the end of the tunnel under the house and lit a candle inside the cave. Across the space was the entrance to a second tunnel that led into the woods on the other side of the house, towards the German border. Where this tunnel ended, a series of paths and tunnels led eventually to the basement of an old mining house on the edge of a disused quarry, one kilometre inside Germany.

Fabienne’s cave had become a transition point in which she received prisoners, airmen and Jews, and others trying to escape from Germany. She moved them on to one of the safe houses in the town and from there they were helped to travel south to Switzerland for repatriation.

Carefully, she turned the two small cheese wheels to prevent the build-up of moisture and brushed the surface to remove any cheese mites. Hearing the voices and a child’s laughter on the other side of the wall, she froze. Her heart raced, and she hoped the prisoners wouldn’t arrive just yet. Time passed too slowly and the voices on the other side of the wall got louder. She closed her eyes and prayed.

Then the laughter faded, and she heard a door shut. She released her breath, took large gulps of air, and blew them out slowly.

Scuffling noises came from inside the tunnel and a few moments later a man appeared from the darkness, and then a second man. Their blue uniforms were torn and dirty and they smelled as though they hadn’t bathed for months, but she’d had prisoners arrive in a worse state before. She held up the candle to inspect their muddied faces. They winced and turned their heads from the light. One man held his arm tight to his chest, using his body as a splint. He had a pinched, pained expression and gaunt cheeks.

The other man sniffed the air.

“It’s cheese,” she whispered. She broke off a piece for each of the men and put her finger to her lips to quiet them. They ate hungrily. She licked the crumbs from her fingers, savouring the sour taste, and signalled for them to follow her. Slowing her pace to accommodate their fragile state, she led them back to the old mill. She’d stopped asking questions of the people she rescued more than a year ago because when she had asked, their stories had been too painfully vivid, and she worked better when she stayed focused on the task at hand.

She collected her bag at the mill, and they travelled on in silence along a path through the woods to an old barn that had once been used to store grain. Its rotting wooden doors hung defeatedly from broken hinges. More than half of the roof had caved in. But it was as safe a place as any.

She indicated to the space, rubble, broken beams and damp bales of old straw. “Sit down.” She took the wine from the bag, removed the cork and handed the bottle to the uninjured man. “You must be hungry.”

The men passed the bottle between them, taking small sips of wine. The whites of their eyes were even more evident in the daylight – startled, untrusting.

“Where are we?” the injured man asked.

“You’re in Erstein, in the Alsace. You’re almost home.” They would still have their work cut out to get to Switzerland, but they could relax for now.

The injured man wiped tears from his eyes. His hand trembled around the bottle as he took a sip. “Thank you,” he whispered. “I thought we were done for.”

“Are we safe?” the other man asked.

Fabienne took the bread and cheese from the bag. “For now. Tomorrow morning, at four-thirty, I will come for you, and we will go to the dairy where I have to collect the milk, then I will drive you to a safe house in town. From this place, you will be taken to Switzerland, and from there, repatriated. There is a stream behind the barn if you want to get cleaned up, but don’t stray any further. You cannot be seen in your uniforms, so tomorrow I will bring you some clothes.”

The injured man was still weeping, his shoulders hunched forwards, his head lowered. He looked too exhausted to wipe the tears away.

The other man touched his shoulder gently and leaned towards him. “We’re so close, Stephan. We’ll make it home.” His eyes became glassy as he spoke.

“You can see a doctor tomorrow,” Fabienne said. “I’m sorry we don’t have anything for the pain.”

“Are they close?” the injured man asked.

Both men stared at her with more fear in their eyes than she’d seen in a shot boar fighting for its last breath.

“Les Boches are always too close.” She glanced around. “This is not much, but you should try and sleep. There is no reason for the Germans to come searching.”

They both nodded.

“Now I must go. I will be back.”

4.

THE FLIGHT OF STAIRS on each side of the foyer had wonderfully ornate dark wood balustrades and a small mezzanine where they joined at the first floor that overlooked the foyer and front door. Johanna’s packing boxes had been neatly stacked on the Versailles-style oak parquet. An oak dressing table under the stairs hosted a large gilt-edged mirror. The glass was chipped in one corner, and she looked wider and shorter in its reflection. Heavy patterned wallpaper lined the walls from floor to ceiling, two storeys high. From the centre hung a damaged chandelier. The design told of its rich history, its current state of neglect.

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