The Prisoner Read online

  The Luftwaffe facilities around Beauvais were high-value sabotage targets and Marc wondered if there had been a resistance operation in the area.

  ‘Are you looking out for anything in particular?’ he asked.

  The officer shrugged. ‘We’ve not been given details, but we’ve been put on our highest alert status. All our leave has been cancelled and there’s an emergency 8 p.m. curfew tonight, for French and off-duty Germans.’

  The extra security made Marc curious, but there was no panic in central Beauvais. Relaxed figures in Luftwaffe uniforms dominated the bars and cafes as Marc delivered vegetables and bags of flour. He’d never driven the delivery cart before and everyone kept asking if Nichol was OK.

  Marc had only been to Beauvais a couple of times in the seven weeks since he’d returned and didn’t know anyone well enough to ask what they knew about the curfew and the extra security. But he did overhear tantalising snippets of conversation between two senior Luftwaffe officers drinking wine in a cafe.

  They didn’t suspect that the French boy in grubby farm overalls understood German and while the background noise made it tough to catch every word, he picked up several references to a large-scale Allied landing in Dieppe that morning.

  The two horses were sweating from the heat, so Marc stopped at the next drinking trough, doused them in cool water and gave them a handful of bushy green carrot tops.

  ‘Well, well,’ Mr Tomas said, as he stepped across the cobbles. ‘Look who’s back in town.’

  Marc baulked as he recognised the face from all his childhood nightmares. This was the former orphanage director who’d thrashed him on at least a hundred occasions, put him on bread and water for talking back and made him spend a week sleeping in a frozen barn for walking upstairs too noisily.

  Tomas was physically strong, but Marc drew some confidence from the fact that he was now as tall as his former tormenter.

  ‘Hello, sir,’ Marc said, feeling like he was five years old again.

  Tomas wore black trousers and a brown shirt with a red swastika armband. It reminded Marc of Sivertsen, the Danish prison guard aboard Oper who’d always been keen to prove that he was a better Nazi than any German.

  ‘Where are these vegetables being delivered to?’ Tomas asked, as he lifted up a couple of boxes to see what was inside. ‘Do you have proper documentation?’

  Marc wondered if he was supposed to be paying Tomas some sort of bribe. ‘I took over the delivery route for one day,’ Marc said. ‘I don’t know all the details, but I’m sure Farmer Morel keeps things in order.’

  ‘Ahh, so this is Farmer Morel’s cart?’ Tomas said, puffing his chest out importantly. ‘He ought to know that all farm produce must be registered with and sold through the Requisition Authority.’

  ‘I’m just a delivery boy,’ Marc said irritably. ‘Maybe you should speak to Morel about it.’

  Tomas raised an eyebrow. ‘And what about my bike? I reported it stolen, you know.’

  ‘It never got far,’ Marc said. ‘A tramp ran off with it before I even got past Beauvais.’

  ‘I’m sure the gendarmes would be most interested to know that you’re back in town, Kilgour. Stealing a bike is a serious offence.’

  Marc would have loved to punch his former tormentor in the mouth. But while Tomas had aged in the two years since Marc last saw him, this was still a man who’d regularly kicked well-built sixteen-and seventeen-year-olds around the courtyard behind the orphanage.

  ‘I’ve got a job to do,’ Marc said. ‘If you want to know about the cart, speak to Morel about it.’

  ‘I’ve got my eye on Morel,’ Tomas said, cracking the exact smile that used to come before a beating. ‘If you keep me well informed every time food leaves Morel’s land without clearance from the Requisition Authority, I might forget to remind the local gendarmes that you stole my bike.’

  Marc snorted. ‘I’d just deny it,’ he said. ‘Nobody saw me. There were bombs going off, and thousands of troops in retreat that day. You’d never prove a thing.’

  Tomas reared up on his heels and hissed, but Marc was determined to show that he wasn’t scared of his old tormentor.

  ‘Look at you with your stupid little trousers and homemade swastika,’ he spat. ‘When this war’s over, traitors like you will be put up against a wall and shot.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  When Marc got the cart back to the stables beside Farmer Morel’s house he thought he ought to warn someone about his encounter with Director Tomas. Felix the farm manager wasn’t in his office, but Marc bumped into Morel and told him what had happened instead.

  ‘Tomas has always had it in for me,’ Marc explained. ‘I hope I didn’t do anything that backfires on you.’

  Marc felt anxious as Morel looked him up and down.

  ‘Felix says you’re a good worker,’ Morel began. ‘A quick learner, who can be left alone to get on with things. And it must have taken some intelligence, surviving on your own as a runaway these past two years.’

  ‘It wasn’t easy, sir,’ Marc answered awkwardly.

  ‘Step inside,’ Morel said. ‘I’ll show you what Felix and I have to put up with.’

  Morel led Marc back into the farm office, which was actually two stables knocked into one. There were bundles of unbound paperwork stacked from floor to ceiling.

  ‘The Germans make me account for everything I grow, down to the last grain of wheat,’ Morel explained. ‘The Requisition Laws say I have to sell all the food I produce to the Requisition Authority, which is run by your old friend Mr Tomas. Even if I want to use grain I’ve grown to feed my own livestock, I’m supposed to sell it to the Requisition Authority and buy it back from them at three times what they pay me.’

  ‘That’s mad,’ Marc said.

  Morel nodded. ‘And the prices the Requisition Authority buys my food at are below my cost of production. So every farmer has to sell locally on the black market to survive. But I can be given a lengthy prison sentence for selling black-market food. The system effectively turns every farmer in France into a criminal.’

  ‘That makes no sense,’ Marc said.

  ‘Doesn’t it?’ Morel asked. ‘The Germans like having us all walking on eggshells. They’ve got half a dozen reasons to lock me up if I do anything that displeases them. It doesn’t help me to sleep at night.’

  Morel had always struck Marc as a towering, all-powerful figure, so this vision of him as a pawn trapped between conflicting Nazi demands was an eye-opener.

  ‘Your old friend Mr Tomas has had his Requisition Authority inspectors up here half a dozen times: poring over ledgers, hunting through barns and counting cauliflowers,’ Morel explained. ‘One time he even had all my manure weighed, to see if I was hiding cows.’

  ‘Sounds stressful,’ Marc said. ‘Makes me glad I’m a nobody.’

  Morel laughed noisily. ‘Fortunately, I’m friendly with a couple of the senior officers billeted at my house,’ he explained. ‘The Luftwaffe are keen for the cafes they frequent in Beauvais to serve decent food, so some nice cheese and the odd bottle of wine dropped into the right Luftwaffe officer’s pocket helps keep Tomas off my back.’

  ‘I got the impression that he had it in for you,’ Marc said.

  ‘Tomas fell out with me when he was orphanage director,’ Morel explained. ‘When my regular labourers got conscripted into the army before the invasion, he charged me an absolute fortune to employ boys like you from the orphanage. By all accounts Tomas was keeping some of the money for himself. When the Bishop found out, Tomas got sacked. He thought I’d spoken to the Bishop, but I had no idea what was going on.’

  Marc nodded. ‘I’d bet it was one of the younger nuns. They would never say anything to Tomas’s face, but they hated the way he treated us orphans. It wasn’t just older kids like me. He’d use his cane full force on little five- and six-year-olds. You’d see them stagger out of his office, clothes soaked in blood.’

  ‘And now he parades around town wearing his
little swastika, poking his nose into every farmer’s business,’ Morel said. ‘So keep your eyes open and be sure to let me know if you hear anything else about him.’

  ‘For sure,’ Marc said. ‘I’ve got as much reason to hate Tomas as you have.’

  As Marc followed Morel out of the office, Jae was crossing the courtyard outside. Marc suspected she’d been listening.

  ‘Daddy,’ Jae said brightly, as she gave her father a kiss on the cheek. ‘I was looking for you all over. There’s a rumour going around that the invasion has started. Allied troops landed in Dieppe this morning.’

  Marc felt awkward in the combined presence of the girl he was crazy about, and the father who had threatened to thrash him if he so much as looked at her.

  ‘I’d better head back to the orphanage,’ Marc said, shuffling past stacked papers towards the arched doorway.

  ‘Did you hear anything about an invasion in town?’ Morel asked.

  ‘There was extra security on the main road,’ Marc replied. ‘They asked me if I’d seen any paratroopers. And I overheard some Germans saying that all their leave had been cancelled.’

  ‘Must be some truth in it then,’ Morel said thoughtfully.

  Jae broke into a huge grin. ‘Daddy, this could be it,’ she squealed. ‘The Allies could really be coming! We could be free again.’

  Morel furrowed his brow and stroked the hair on his chin. ‘Or we could find ourselves stuck in the middle of a long, bloody battle.’

  ‘Might be an exercise,’ Marc suggested. ‘You know, making sure all the Germans are on their toes.’

  ‘That would make sense,’ Morel said. ‘Hopefully we can listen to the BBC tonight, if they’re not jamming the signal.’

  Jae nodded. ‘You know, Daddy, I’ve hardly got any friends my own age now. Marc’s been working really hard on the farm. Do you think he could have dinner with us tonight?’

  A look of horror flashed across Morel’s face and Marc’s heart rate shot up, but Jae kept pleading eyes fixed on her daddy.

  ‘Well, I suppose,’ Morel said grumpily. ‘Tell cook to expect an extra guest. And you’ll have to find him some decent clothes if he’s going to eat dinner with us.’

  *

  As a dinner guest Marc could have used the front door of the Morels’ grand house, but the habit of a lifetime meant he used the servants’ entrance around the back. A young servant girl led him up to the main hallway, where Jae spotted him straight away and led him up to the first floor.

  ‘Are you mad?’ Marc asked, as he walked behind Jae. ‘Why did you ask if I could come to dinner?’

  ‘Food’s nice here,’ Jae said airily. ‘Daddy needs a chance to get to know you. And you were getting on well enough in the office earlier.’

  Marc found himself being led into a young man’s bedroom – it belonged to one of Jae’s older brothers, who’d been captured during the invasion and had spent over two years held prisoner in Germany.

  ‘Put that on,’ Jae said, as she pulled a tie out of a wardrobe.

  ‘How?’ Marc asked. ‘I’ve never worn a tie in my life.’

  ‘Ignoramus,’ Jae said, half joking.

  She kissed Marc quickly before pulling up his collar and starting to knot the tie.

  ‘Daddy thinks you’re a good worker. I’ve told him you’re my friend. He misses having my brothers around, so just laugh at his jokes and pretend that you’re interested in car engines.’

  Marc didn’t seem sure. ‘Inviting me to dinner and making me put on your brother’s tie won’t cut it. Orphans don’t mix with posh little girls like you.’

  ‘Posh little girls don’t shovel manure on farms either,’ Jae said, as she pulled up the tie and turned Marc towards a mirrored wardrobe door. ‘You don’t scrub up too badly. And those boots are very nicely made. Where did they come from?’

  Jae had only heard Marc’s cover story about spending two years in Paris, so he couldn’t say he’d stolen them from a dead soldier’s bedroom in Germany.

  ‘Somewhere down the line,’ Marc said vaguely.

  Farmer Morel was already at the dining table when they got downstairs. Jae’s mother had died when she was seven, and her father had remarried a woman called Stephanie who spoke so rarely that she barely seemed to exist.

  The final guest at the table was Karsten, one of the four Germans who lodged at the Morel house. He was a senior Luftwaffe pilot, but out of respect for his French hosts he’d changed out of uniform into corduroy trousers and a hand-knitted cardigan that gave him the look of a teacher or university professor.

  With several hundred acres of land under their management, no member of the Morel family ever starved. Marc was impressed by a starter of baked Camembert cheese, served with apricots, grapes and the first white rolls he’d tasted since leaving England over a year earlier.

  ‘So, Herr Karsten, should we be concerned at the security alert in Beauvais today?’ Morel asked, as he wiped a generous lump of butter on to his roll.

  Karsten gave a conspiratorial smile, the kind that says I shouldn’t talk about this, but I’m going to anyway. ‘The information we heard was patchy.’

  ‘Was it an exercise?’ Morel asked.

  ‘No, I believe there really has been an Allied landing at Dieppe. Bigger than anything that’s happened before, but nothing like a full-scale invasion. The oddest thing is that the Allies on the beach had almost no air support.’

  ‘We must listen to the news on the wireless,’ Jae said, as she pushed her foot towards Marc beneath the dining table and stroked his calf with her toes.

  Marc almost inhaled a grape. And while the foot felt nice, he didn’t like the way Jae regarded her father’s threats as a big joke.

  ‘Perhaps we should see what the BBC says in their seven o’clock bulletin,’ Karsten said.

  Marc looked around to see what the reaction to this was: most French people listened to British radio broadcasts, but it was illegal, so Marc wasn’t sure if the German’s suggestion was serious.

  Apparently it was, because after a main course of beef and potatoes cooked in red wine gravy, Jae went off to warm up the valves of the radio in the drawing room and the cook was asked to bring coffee and desert through on a trolley.

  For all Farmer Morel’s difficulties with the German occupation, his family diet certainly wasn’t suffering. As Jae fiddled with the radio, Marc sat in a winged armchair, thinking guiltily about hungry prisoners as he ate strawberries and whipped cream, served on a bed of warm puff pastry.

  BBC France fought a constant battle with German attempts to jam its signal, but after much fiddling Jae managed to tune a voice that was echoey but mostly comprehensible:

  The ministry of war has announced … Small-scale raiding force landing at Dieppe, beginning at 5:50 this morning … Three thousand Canadian and British troops landed … Critical objectives were achieved, but the force withdrew after heavier than expected casualties. The exact objective of the raid remains classified, but it is believed to be the beginning of a summer campaign in which German defences around occupied France are probed by ...

  The radio broadcast broke up for several seconds after that, and when it came back the news had moved on to a story about American military production: eight ships, fifty bombers, ninety fighters, two hundred tanks and two thousand freshly trained soldiers every single day. All lined up and ready to crush the Hun!

  ‘Not full-scale invasion, as I suspected,’ Karsten said.

  The German was clearly relieved, but also aware that this might not be regarded as good news by the people in whose home he was staying.

  ‘I wonder if there will be a full-scale invasion attempt this summer,’ Jae’s stepmother said.

  ‘The Americans are nowhere near ready,’ Karsten said. ‘U-boats are playing havoc with their shipping, and autumn is almost here.’

  Farmer Morel nodded. ‘But with so much effort going into the Atlantic Wall, Britain and America will surely want to invade across the Channel as soon as it�
�s feasible?’

  ‘I’m a pilot, not a field marshall,’ Karsten said. ‘But if I had to bet on an invasion, I would guess June 1943. But if Russia is defeated first, a great mass of forces can be moved from the eastern front and an invasion would surely be impossible.’

  Marc was intrigued by Morel and Karsten’s frank discussion of the war, but with no imminent invasion, Jae had lost interest and tugged on his arm.

  ‘Permission to be excused, Daddy,’ Jae said politely. ‘May I take Marc up to my room and play some records?’

  Marc already felt that Jae had pushed it with the dinner invite. The thought of Marc in Jae’s bedroom was clearly too much for Morel and he practically wedged himself between the two teenagers.

  ‘You can go and listen to your records,’ Morel said firmly. ‘I think it’s time for Marc to walk home.’

  ‘Daddy …’ Jae said pleadingly, but her father held his palm in front of her face, and there was a hint that this might become a slap if she protested further.

  ‘Bed, now,’ Morel said fiercely.

  Jae looked close to tears as she swept out of the drawing room and thumped upstairs to her bedroom.

  Morel pointed Marc out towards the hallway. His face was bright red as the grandfather clock became a countdown to doom.

  ‘Is that my son’s tie?’ Morel growled.

  ‘Jae lent it to me,’ Marc said, as he freed the knot and handed it to Morel.

  ‘You’re a good worker, but that’s all you are,’ Morel said. ‘You’re a handsome boy and it’s understandable that my daughter is fond of you. But she’s fourteen. It’s much too young to be carrying on like this. The next time she invites you somewhere, you will decline politely but firmly. Is that clear?’

  Jae was the best thing in Marc’s life and he felt a little surge of anger. But he wasn’t brave enough to defy Morel inside his own house.

  ‘Thank you for a nice dinner, sir,’ Marc said meekly. ‘I’m sorry I caused you trouble.’