Page 32 of Tides of Resistance
‘Jacques is a good boy. He took a baguette to Father Guérin at the cathedral when he could.’
Lizzie blinked. After several false starts, the woman had replied with the coded information she needed to find the radio.
‘I will pray for his safe return,’ Lizzie promised, and she meant it.
Madame Moreau was keener to talk now and dropped any pretence of secrecy, but she kept her voice low. ‘They turned the shop and our apartment upstairs inside out looking for something. I don’t know what, but they didn’t find it. They said as much. Jacques warned me that something might happen to him. That’s why he left that message for you. He didn’t say more than that.’
Tears slipped from the woman’s eyes and fell on her lined cheeks.
Lizzie wished there were more she could do for her, and she reached out to pat her arm.
‘Thank you, madame. Jacques is brave, and I am very grateful.’ Lizzie didn’t want to talk about the missing contact as if he were dead when there was a possibility he would return.
Lizzie slipped out of the bakery, and Madame Moreau closed the door behind her and turned the closed sign outwards.
She had been lucky to catch Jacques’s mother when the shop was empty, and now she made a show of rustling the paper with the pastry inside so that any casual observer could see she had purchased something and was a legitimate customer. She popped the small package into her pocket and retraced her steps the way she had come.
Young men in grey-green uniforms patrolled the city in pairs, like the other day, and she forced herself to relax as they passed her. One of them greeted her in German, and she nodded back. She knew from experience; it was a fine line between attracting attention from German soldiers by being friendly, or being rude, so they grew angry.
She walked back to Livres Cohen, as Sophie referred to it in private, and she wondered if Jacques was still alive. The name took her thoughts right back to her Jack, and how easily the roles might have been reversed. If she could achieve her mission objectives in a short time, she would see him again soon.
That was if she got out alive.
The frightening thought hovered at the back of her mind, and she pushed it away. The sun was high in the cloudy sky, and a blustery wind blew in her face as she navigated the narrow cobblestone streets. Something caught her eye, and she tilted her head upwards. The cathedral’s spire dominated the sky and presided over the medieval city walls like a protective mantle.
There was no time to waste. Lizzie’s next step had revealed itself.
CHAPTER 19
That afternoon, after working in the storeroom helping organise the stock, Lizzie said she was going to take a walk to see the beautiful cathedral.
Sophie said, ‘My parents attend Mass on Sunday mornings. We can go together then if you want some company?’
Lizzie wore her coat and perched the beret on her head at a jaunty angle. Glancing in the mirror, she noticed her black hair gleam in the sun shining through the window. It made her look different, and she still wasn’t used to it.
The bookshop base was proving invaluable as cover for being in the city, but she had to be careful what she said to Sophie. They were so close when they were younger, and Lizzie wasn’t used to keeping secrets from her.
‘Thanks, Soph. I need some air, so I’ll take a walk now, but maybe I’ll come on Sunday as well. Sounds lovely. Will Fabian come too?’
Sophie shook her head, and a tendril of blonde hair escaped its knot and fell across her forehead. ‘He could be conscripted for labour service, despite being wounded in the fighting, so he lies low in St. Lunaire. He’s an amazing craftsman, you know,and eeks a living repairing furniture in the grounds of an old farmhouse, so it suits him.’
Lizzie had fond memories of Fabian and was curious to see how he was doing living alone in the seaside town. And if her memory of the Brittany coast served her correctly, St Lunaire would likely be included in Hitler’s plans for the new defence fortifications, so a casual trip with Sophie could be worthwhile.
‘Could we visit him soon?’ Lizzie asked.
Sophie’s eyes were fearful, but she said perhaps it would be possible to arrange it if she could find Lizzie a spare bicycle.
Lizzie wondered what her cousin was afraid of, but didn’t press. If she had learnt anything on her missions in wartime France, it was that everyone had a secret, and sometimes it was better to let them be. Perhaps there was more to what was going on with Fabian than the family felt safe to reveal.
‘I’d like that. It would be good to see dear Fabian again after so long.’
As Lizzie walked, she ached with nostalgia when she remembered the time the family attended Mass at the cathedral together. It was when Lizzie was very young, and Nan and Pops were visiting too. The nostalgia twisted into a sharp-edged, painful melancholy at the thought of her grandparents, who were now so close and yet still so far away. How could she be in St. Malo and not be able to visit them?
The war had a surreal effect, when ordinary things people used to take for granted became extraordinary and beyond reach. Sometimes Lizzie felt powerless, like they were all being swept away on a giant tidal wave they couldn't control.
Images of Seagrove, her family home, tumbled through her mind. Her favourite spot, where she loved to sit and read, overlooked Portelet Bay with its lulling sounds of the waves foaming on the golden sands and the cooing of seagulls overhead.
Her early morning swims in the bay, with the Martello Tower rising from the water as light replaced the shadows of night.
