Dusk was closing in and Nancy had managed maybe two miles—pathetic really—when she thought they’d got her. Lights shone on the road in front, perhaps five hundred yards ahead. So, they’d put out roadblocks even on these back ways. Her first thought was to stash the bike, find cover well away from the road and wait. Then she heard barking behind her, stopped pedaling and turned and looked. Torches bounced across the fields like marsh lights as far as she could see on both sides of the road—and they had dogs.
She needed help and she had no friends left. Then she spotted a farmhouse, perhaps a hundred yards off the road. In the dusk she could just make out a lighted window. Time to make new friends.
The woman took one look at her and tried to close the door on her, but Nancy leaned her weight against it, shoved one foot in and then groaned in agony as it was squeezed between the frame and the door.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” the woman said.
Nancy blinked, and looked at her properly. She was a girl really, early twenties. Her hair was clean and neatly tied in a bun, and her cotton house frock, though faded, had been pressed. The ideal pretty French farmer’s wife.
“Please let me in,” Nancy said. “For France, let me in.”
Then she saw the crucifix around the woman’s neck and touched the one around her own neck which Tardi had given her.
“One Christian to another.”
What clear skin she had, no makeup at all. Nancy could see her fear and doubt, then a slight firming of that thin jaw as she made up her mind.
“You can hide in the cellar.” The door was opened.
Nancy tumbled through, a kitchen, a staircase. The woman was opening a trapdoor under the stairs and Nancy found herself shooed down a short ladder and into complete darkness. She felt the tramped earth beneath her feet. It smelled of apples and straw. A little light leaked in through the slats of the trapdoor over her head. Just over her head. It was a low cellar, not enough room to stand up. She crawled into the corner under the ladder, undid the strap around her waist and felt the release and burn as her shoulders lost the weight of the radio. It thunked down the inch or two onto the earth floor, then like an echo she heard the thump at the front door of the little farmhouse. She drew up her knees, wrapped her arms around them. The light flickered above as the young woman went to answer the door again. Nancy waited, trying not to breathe.
“Good evening.”
“Good evening, Madame. We’re looking for a woman. A very dangerous woman.” A German voice. One of the Gestapo officers. “One of my men saw a woman approaching your house, moments ago.”
The woman’s voice was calm. “That was me, I imagine. I popped out to check the chickens were in for the night. Foxes, you know.”
She was playing up her accent a bit, Nancy noticed.
“Nevertheless, Madame… I hope you won’t mind if we conduct a brief search.”
“I have nothing to hide.” Her voice contained just the right note of restrained irritation.
The boots came into the kitchen, followed by the tap of the woman’s clogs.
“What’s down there?”
“Food. When we have any.”
He was right over her.
“If you could open it up, Madame.”
Nancy stopped breathing. The trapdoor lifted and the treacherous light illuminated the square of earth at the bottom of the ladder.
“I’ll just take a look. If you’d stand over there, please.”
A torch beam flicked on and began exploring the corners farthest from Nancy, a couple of crates, some half-empty hessian sacks.
The stairs to the upper story creaked and the torch whipped out of the cellar.
“Who is that?” the German said, his voice loud with alarm. Nancy heard the snap of leather as he unholstered his pistol.
“Maman?” The voice of a child, a girl. “What is happening? Who is that man?”
Her mother responded in soothing tones. “It’s fine, dear, go back to bed.” Then she continued, a fresh thread of indignation trembling through her voice. “I think you should leave, you’re scaring my daughter.”
The man said nothing.
“Unless you think my four-year-old child is a dangerous woman?”
A cough, then the sound of the gun being returned to its holster.
“No, Madame. Please do contact us if you see or hear anything suspicious however.”
“Of course.”
The footsteps retreated, and as the front door opened and closed again, Nancy took in a long slow breath. A phrase floated through her mind. Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. She smiled. She remembered the thrill of hope she had felt reading those words under her mother’s porch, between those other narrow beams of light.
The woman spoke upstairs, clear, conversational.
“I hope you haven’t died of fright down there. Perhaps you should wait a little before you come up, in case they come back. I shall get some supper ready. My name is Celeste, by the way.”
Pretty name, Nancy thought, then fell into a fitful doze.
Nancy didn’t even realize she’d been asleep until the creak of the trapdoor opening woke her. She picked up the radio—bloody thing still weighed a ton—and clambered, her legs cramped and shaking, up into the kitchen.
The table was laid for two. Nancy sat down, very carefully, and watched as Celeste ladled stew into white china bowls, then, sitting down herself, began to cut up a fresh loaf. Nancy’s mouth watered.
“Do start, Madame.”
Nancy did not need to be asked twice. The food was delicious, chicken and gravy, carrots and pearl onions, the bread light and airy. Bliss. Utter bloody bliss.
“So, you are a very dangerous woman?” Celeste said, starting on her own supper at a more sedate pace. “Never mind, it’s best I don’t know. I just hope you’re giving as good as you’re obviously getting.”
Nancy nodded, still chewing, then swallowed happily. “Where is your husband?”
“I am a widow,” Celeste replied. “My husband Guy was killed during the invasion.”
“I’m sorry.”
Celeste did not reply at once, and the click of their spoons against the china plates was the only sound in the room.
“I manage. But it is very difficult to keep up with the farm. One does what one must. For the children.”
The floorboard on the stairs creaked, and Nancy spun round, wondering if, for one foul moment, this whole thing, the kind welcome, the food, was just a cruel joke and the Gestapo were still in the house. It was the little girl who had disturbed the Germans’ original search. She was whip thin, long black hair almost down to her waist. She wore a pale blue nightgown and carried a teddy bear, swinging it by the paw from one hand.
“Maman?”
“Go to bed at once, Maria!”
The little girl thrust out her bottom lip. “But I am hungry, and I’m not tired.”
Celeste held up her hand. “You have been fed. Bed. At once.”
Maria threw down her teddy bear so it bounced down to the bottom of the staircase, then stamped angrily back up the stairs. Above them a door slammed.
Celeste went and picked up the toy, dusting him off and then sitting him in the rocking chair by the fire. Nancy could imagine the girl creeping guiltily downstairs to find him at dawn and her relief when she found he had not been too uncomfortable overnight.
“A very dangerous woman,” Nancy said with a smile.
Celeste returned to her chair and picked up her spoon again. “I hope so. I hope she stays fierce. It is so hard to bring up a little one by myself. She thinks I’m a tyrant, but I’m just trying to survive.”
Nancy had an image of her mother, a familiar one, turning from the food cupboards in the kitchen as Nancy came home from school, banging the door, dropping her coat on the floor and starting to shout at her. For the first time, though, she noticed how empty that food cupboard looked, how worn and faded her mother’s clothes.
She felt her throat tighten. “You are a good mother.”
Celeste nodded, taking the compliment as her due. “Are you finished? Give me your dress and I shall wash it while you clean yourself up and see to your wounds. While it dries you can sleep a little, then be on your way.”