THIRTY

A column of tanks rattled into the city. The smell of diesel was thick in the air, pushed around on a breeze that brought with it the chill of autumn. The ground shook as the tanks rolled over cobblestones and down the Champs-Élysées, their heavy armour burnt and punctured by bullets and shrapnel. They showed signs of makeshift repairs, ablative plates replaced by scrap metal from enemy tanks. But among the patchwork and battle damage, one thing was consistent: three stripes painted clear and polished every day. Three stripes were worn with pride on the shoulders of the drivers and the smiling wounded infantrymen who sat on the hulls. Three stripes flew on flags in the swarming crowds along the roadside. The tricolour. Vive la France.

Last night Duchene had stayed at the charcuterie just long enough to see the arm go into the flames of Guillaume’s smoke oven. As brief as that moment had been, Duchene could still remember the smell of burning flesh. Even though it had been spiced and preserved, there was something about the meat, perhaps the understanding it was human, that made his stomach roil. He’d spent a night plagued by bad dreams with no alcohol in the apartment to abate them.

A woman smiled at him. ‘You’re not happy?’ she asked, her voice hard to hear amid the cheering. There was a young boy at her side.

‘I am. Just cost a lot to get here.’

‘So it did.’ She remained smiling, but there was distance in her eyes now.

‘I can’t believe those soldiers are really ours!’ said the boy.

‘Yes,’ said Duchene. ‘The Free French, who’ve been fighting for de Gaulle.’

‘They’re not dressed like they’re French.’

‘I don’t care how they’re dressed,’ said the woman. ‘As long as they fly the flag, I’ll cheer.’

Despite running on little sleep, Duchene had been determined to come and see General Leclerc’s Second Armoured Division. These were men who had risked court-martial to defy the Americans. Men who had rushed deep into enemy territory to support the liberation of the city. Men who had fought the Germans until they had, like a struck wasp nest, burst into anger and fought a battle on these very streets.

The tanks drove on, and soon the cheering grew again as a random collection of trucks, tanks and cars flowed in unranked procession behind the Armoured Division. Now came the French Forces of the Interior led by Colonel Rol in his handmade uniform. He stood in the hatch of a German tank, FFI painted crudely along its side, his wide mouth beaming under a hawkish nose.

Around and behind him, men of all ages marched out of formation, dressed in civilian clothes and unified only by their black FFI armbands and seized German weapons. A group of young FFI fighters waved from the back of a truck. A few women were among their number, dressed in trousers and shorts.

Duchene pushed forward as they came nearer, his instincts taking control of him as he recognised a smile within the group and called out, ‘Marienne!’

The woman’s eyes held his for more than a second.

It was her. Marienne. On the back of a truck, a German submachine gun at her side. She leaned out over the street. ‘Papa!’ The truck was still moving. ‘Papa!’

Duchene ran over, gripped the trailer with one hand and reached up with his free hand.

‘Help me,’ Marienne called, waving for two young insurgents to work with her to pull him up.

Duchene struggled onto the truck, already short of breath. He let his legs dangle over the road beside hers.

She held him, and he hugged her back.

‘You’re safe,’ she said.

‘I am. And you too.’

‘I am.’

He nodded to the FFI fighters on the truck. ‘You’re with them now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fighting?’

She nodded.

‘So not entirely safe, then?’

‘Safer than if I’d done nothing. I could have still been called a collaborator. You’ve seen what they’ve been doing?’

Duchene nodded. Already today, he’d witnessed two firing squads in an alleyway, and three women, one holding a baby, having their heads brutally shaved on the street. Even with the smell of burning human flesh that wouldn’t leave him, he was relieved Guillaume hadn’t pushed him to go to the police.

‘Smart girl,’ he said.

‘Don’t be sad. It’s over now.’

‘They’re saying Rol will keep fighting the Germans, all the way to Berlin.’

She nodded. ‘He will.’

‘And you?’

‘I’m not sure.’ She frowned. ‘Sometimes people look at me who knew me during the occupation. In the shops where I used to go with Max – the shopkeepers, the regulars. My neighbours. Sometimes I think this armband is all that’s keeping me safe.’

Duchene looked at his daughter. She looked back at him without moving. A calm seemed to have found a place within her.

She reached out and placed her hand on his shoulder. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I understand now. She left because that was what she needed to do to survive this world. I can see that. I’ve lived it. I’m not angry anymore that you didn’t stop her from leaving. But I need you to do the same for me. I need to go and fight.’

He touched her face. ‘I don’t think I could stop you if I wanted to. And I don’t think it would be good for us if I did.’

Marienne smiled. ‘Sometimes there’s more strength, more courage, in letting go than in fighting to hold on. I can see that now.’

Duchene pulled a small photo from his wallet. ‘Take this with you. Your mother.’

Together they looked at the picture. There she stood, on a hillside in Spain. Rifle slung. She too was wearing trousers and an armband, but the resemblance was only in how they were dressed. She looked nothing like Marienne; neither did his daughter look much like him. What ancestral features she had were from some other place in their family. She was her own self.

‘You’ll write to me? You’ll try to call?’

She nodded. ‘Yes. Of course.’

‘I know you’ll be busy. But just every now and then.’

She nodded again. Duchene put his arms around her, and she hugged him back so hard it was as though she was trying to press a permanent imprint of him onto her, and fill up on enough of his love to last her when he was gone.

He didn’t want to let go. To leave her. But he knew that she needed his strength right now, as her parent, as her father, to show her that he could hold the pain of her leaving for both of them.

Sitting back from her, he smiled as the tears ran down her cheeks. He dabbed them with a handkerchief and passed it to her. ‘Good for something,’ he said, before he kissed her one last time on the cheek and slipped down from the back of the truck.

She stood and called back to him. ‘Keep safe.’

He tapped his hand to his hat. A moment later she was too far in the distance to see, and he moved off the road and back into the crowd.

On the streets, Parisians walked arm in arm or in groups of revellers. Peals of laughter rang out from the banks of the Seine, while on the balconies above him people cheered as they looked out over the city.

There was no question about it: Paris was finally free. What was uncertain was whether they could forget what they had done to survive.