Summer 2006
Adelaide Talbot leaned back against her pillows and sighed. “So there you have it,” she said. “I came back to England and when I’d been debriefed, I was given wireless training and then sent back. Different area of course, where I was completely unknown. Normandy. I worked with the local resistance as a courier and liaison until the Allies landed.”
She smiled at Rachel Elliott, journalist from the Belcaster Chronicle, who had come to interview her. “I was lucky to survive, hundreds of us didn’t.”
The old lady fell silent and closed her eyes. Wondering if she had fallen asleep, Rachel glanced across at James Auckland, sitting on the other side of the bed holding his grandmother’s hand.
“What a sad story,” Rachel murmured. “Sad and brave. I wonder what happened to them all, Sarah, Sister Marie-Marc, Marcel and the children.”
She was just reaching forward to switch off her tape recorder when Adelaide’s eyes opened again and she said softly, “It was all so long ago, so long ago.”
“Did you ever find out what happened to Sarah?” Rachel asked gently, sitting back again and letting the tape continue to run.
“Yes, I did,” replied Adelaide. “It took some time, of course. Everything was in chaos at the end of the war. The Allies discovered places like Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz. Hundreds of thousands of people had disappeared and those that had survived were refugees; no homes, no families and nowhere to go. We traced Sarah to Ravensbrück, the concentration camp for women. Some of the survivors remembered her, and spoke of how she did all she could to alleviate the suffering of those around her. One woman said that ‘Mother’ was always wherever she was needed, nursing, encouraging, keeping her faith strong to strengthen others. Even most of the German guards treated her with some sort of respect, occasionally giving in to her demands for an extra ration of food to be shared among those too weak to collect their own portion.” Adelaide gave a rueful smile. “She died as she had lived, always caring for those around her, putting their needs first. She finally caught typhus, which in her weakened state carried her off very quickly.”
“And Sister Marie-Marc? Was she with her?” asked Rachel. She had been completely caught up in Adelaide’s story and felt she had come to know the people who had played their part.
Adelaide shook her head. “I asked, of course, but no one I met remembered her. I think she probably died en route to the camp. She was in a dreadful state when she was loaded onto that lorry, and it’s unlikely she survived the journey. I imagine they went first to Drancy, the transit camp outside Paris, where the conditions were said to be absolutely appalling.” Adelaide gave a rueful smile. “Dear Sister Marie-Marc, she was so determined to outwit ‘Les sales Boches’ who stole her chickens.”
Silence settled round them and the old lady again closed her eyes. Rachel didn’t speak; her mind was teeming with everything she’d heard. There was such a story here; far more than she had ever anticipated when, at the suggestion of James Auckland, she’d asked the old lady for an interview. James had sent the book he had written about his grandmother’s exploits in the war to the Chronicle for review, and Drew Scott, the editor, had given it to Rachel to read.
Rachel had been fascinated and had rung James up to arrange an interview.
“It’s not me you need to talk to,” he said. “It’s my grandmother. I’ll introduce you if you like.”
Rachel had accepted the offer with alacrity, and here she was hearing the story, first hand, from the woman whose story it was.
“You didn’t think of writing the book yourself?” Rachel had asked her.
With a laugh, the old lady shook her head. “No, I’m far too old. I’ll be ninety in September. No, it was James who suggested it. I didn’t think anyone would be interested, but he said they would, so I left it to him.”
“And you simply told him what had happened.”
Adelaide shrugged. “I told him what I knew. I don’t know exactly what did happen when Sarah was arrested and questioned, but,” she added grimly, “having seen her and Sister Marie-Marc and the Auclons when Hoch had finished with them, I could guess.” She sighed and again lapsed into a silence broken only by the summer sound of someone mowing the grass below the window.
Already Rachel’s journalistic mind was sorting and cataloguing what she had heard, the story she would write already taking shape in her head. The details of the fear and the courage that had emerged as she’d spent the afternoon with Adelaide were safely trapped on tape, ready to be replayed as Rachel worked on her story. No simple book review now; but an in-depth piece of journalism.
“But of course I did find the twins,” Adelaide said suddenly as if there had been no lapse in the conversation. “Jacques and Julien.”
“Did you?” Rachel was startled back to the present. “How marvellous! Where were they?”
“In the convent in Paris. Father Bernard had managed to get them there and Mother Magdalene kept them. She gave them new names and managed to get them new identity papers. When I went back to try and find Sarah, I went to the mother house in Paris in case they had news of her. They hadn’t of course, but Mother Magdalene mentioned that the boys were still there and I asked to see them. They didn’t remember me, but I knew them at once.”
“And their parents?”
“Enquiries had been made about them, but nothing was known about either of them. Almost certainly they were sent to one of the extermination camps, but there was no record. They simply disappeared among the thousands of others.”
“What happened to the twins?” wondered Rachel.
To her surprise both James and Adelaide laughed. “Well, that I can tell you,” Adelaide said. “I adopted them and brought them home to England. We anglicised their name, Auclon, to Auckland. James is Julien’s son.”
“What?” Rachel stared at James in disbelief. “You’re joking!”
“Never more serious,” he grinned. “My dad, Julien Auckland, is a doctor, and my uncle Jacques is a solicitor, or they were before they retired.”
“And they’re both still alive?”
“And kicking!” James agreed cheerfully.
“It really is the most amazing story,” Rachel said. She turned back to Adelaide. “And Marcel? Did you ever discover who Marcel really was? Did you ever find out what happened the night you made your escape?”
Adelaide smiled. “Oh yes,” she said. “He told me himself.”
“But I thought he was…” began Rachel.
“So did I,” admitted Adelaide, “for the rest of the war. But he wasn’t. Because he wasn’t working with the reception party, he wasn’t out in the field when the Germans opened fire. Only he and Rousseau survived that attack. It turned out that Benoit, the young man they had been discussing, had turned traitor.” Adelaide’s voice hardened. “Like Fernand, Benoit wanted to be on the winning side and had been selling information to the Germans.” A shadow passed across her face as she added, “Needless to say, he did not survive the war. Anyway, Marcel managed to get away, and to gather another group round him. He continued his fight until France was liberated and the war ended. And then he came to find me.” Her face lit up at some private memory. “He was a lawyer. His name was Antoine Talbot, we were married for forty years.”
The End