A Lesser Evil Part 28

Yvette felt giddy too. She'd had her last meal on Monday evening, not long before the man came and took her away. It was now Friday afternoon and she couldn't count half a pork pie and a bit of bun on Wednesday as a meal. There was only about two inches of water left in the bottle now and once they were forced to drink that she knew they would become really distressed.

In her heart Yvette believed they were going to be left to die. She had thought long and hard about it, and knowing what she did about the men behind all this, it made sense.

Why run the risk of being seen by someone coming out this way, of perhaps being outwitted as they attempted to kill them, when time alone would do it for them? It would be so much harder for the police to build a case against anyone when rain and wind had removed car tracks and any other evidence. She had no doubt that before using this barn, the men behind this had made certain that the owner wasn't going to turn up here for some time. The chances were their bodies would be completely decomposed by the time that happened.

Of course, only the most evil and cold-blooded person could let two people die of thirst and starvation, and she doubted that all the top man's henchmen and bully boys came under that category, but a powerful man would take that into consideration. Yvette had been taken by two different men to the ones that took Fifi. It would be easy enough to tell one set of men that the others were bringing them food. Yvette knew that when their bodies were finally found, none of the men involved were going to admit to any part of it, whatever their feelings. They would have to remain silent for fear of incurring a similar fate for themselves.

Yvette had often wished for death in the past, her life held nothing that she wanted to hold on to. She had no family to grieve, nothing to look forward to, and she'd gladly be released from her guilt. She didn't fear death in itself, but she was afraid of a slow and agonizing one.

She looked up at the bars above her. It would be so simple to climb up there and use the belt on her skirt to make a noose to hang herself. She had seen a man hanged in France, and knew death came quickly.

But she couldn't do that, not with Fifi with her. Fifi believed the best of people, and she would want to hang on, convinced that no one could leave a couple of women to die of starvation.

Yvette couldn't share her optimism. It wasn't as if they could count on the police finding them. Even if Dan and Frank were convinced that something bad had happened to Fifi, and had demanded the police search for her, they weren't likely to come out this way looking. And it might be days before anyone realized Yvette was missing too. If the police couldn't squeeze the names of the men who'd been at his card game out of Alfie Muckle, there was absolutely no chance he'd do or say anything to help find her and Fifi. Besides, Alfie was a mere p.a.w.n in this game. If he wasn't safely in prison, he'd almost certainly be dead, as John Bolton was.

Yvette knelt down beside Fifi and tenderly stroked her brow. She had become so fond of the girl, and that affection had grown during the time they'd been locked up in here. It had been Fifi who had held things together, right up till today. She certainly wasn't the rather spoilt child Yvette first took her for. She thought of games to play to pa.s.s the time, they had sung and made up stories. She'd made Yvette correct her as she tried to speak her schoolgirl French, and she had used many long English words and made Yvette tell her what they meant.

At night it was Fifi who'd drawn Yvette into her arms to keep her warm, and she'd kept her fears to herself.

Even the way Fifi always wanted to know everything about people didn't seem nosiness any longer, she was just curious to know what made them tick. She cared, and wanted to understand. Yvette thought that if there were more people like her, the world would be a far better place.

Fifi opened her eyes wearily and tried to smile. 'Dan will find us,' she said with conviction. 'I bet he's leant on every-one at the pub to find out what they know, and his mates at work will help too. You mustn't despair, Yvette. There's Martin as well, I haven't given up on him yet. He didn't seem so bad; he may have got in with a nasty crowd and maybe they've stopped him coming out here with food. But I'm absolutely sure he won't let us die here.'

Yvette's eyes filled with tears, for the younger woman's trust was so touching. 'I weesh I had your faith,' she said. 'But I 'ave seen such wickedness in my life that I doubt everyone.'

'Why don't you tell me about it?' Fifi asked. 'Come and lie beside me. We'll snuggle up under the blanket to warm each other. You and I are going to be best friends for life once we get out of here, because of this horrible time we've shared. So we shouldn't have secrets from one another, should we?'

Yvette was already very cold, the light was fading, and the prospect of yet another interminable night plagued with hunger pains, tantalizing visions of food and her limbs aching from scrunching them up to keep warm, was daunting. Telling Fifi about her demons might distract them both for a while, and maybe it might help the girl to see that the world wasn't the bright, beautiful place she believed it to be, and there couldn't always be a happy ending.

'I've kept my secrets for a long, long time,' Yvette warned Fifi as she lay down and cuddled close to her. 'It will be'ard for me to tell you them, but you tell me all about you, and maybe you should know me too.'

Yvette began with how it was for her as a child, the father she never knew, the tiny apartment in rue du Jardin, and her mother constantly sewing.

'We were very poor,' Yvette said. 'Sometimes when Mama's ladies didn't pay her, we were hungry, but we had very happy times too. Mama used to like me to read to her while she sewed, and I make dresses for my doll from ze sc.r.a.ps of ze fine fabrics left over. On summer nights when it began to get dark and she couldn't sew any more, we would go out for walks down by ze Seine and watch the boats going past. We peep in the windows of the big houses, and stop outside grand restaurants to hear ze music. Mama always say she missed me when I was at school, but she was very proud because I was clever, always top of my cla.s.s, she hoped that I would be able to get a good job and not have to work hard like she did.'

Yvette found herself slipping back to September of 1939 when she was twelve. She could see herself coming home from school with her friend Francoise, both skinny girls with olive skin, dark hair and eyes. They wore black wool stockings that slipped down in folds over their ankles, and their long plaits bounced and swung as they hopped over cracks in the pavements. People always thought they were twins because they were so similar, but Yvette thought Francoise was the prettier; she had dimples in her cheeks and perfect Cupid's bow lips.

At school their teacher kept talking about the war which had just begun, pinning up maps to show how the Germans were advancing through Poland, but it meant little to Yvette and Francoise, for Poland was so far away from Paris and neither of them had a father who would have to go and fight.

What Yvette remembered most about that time was the food in the shops and the smells that went with it. Perhaps it only stuck in her memory because that was the last time for many years she would see such abundance. Rosy polished apples piled high, luscious purple grapes spilling out of boxes, peaches, carrots and vivid red tomatoes. Freshly baked bread and croissants, the marble counter at the charcuterie laden with dozens of different cheeses, ham and paate. And so many autumn flowers too, tin buckets crammed with chrysanthemums, dahlias and purple daisies.

'It was Francoise who first told me that ze n.a.z.is didn't like Jews,' Yvette went on. 'She 'ad relatives in Berlin, and they'd written to her mother to say they were trying to get away as Jews were being attacked and their businesses confiscated. But Franccoise and me, we didn't really see ourselves as Jews, our mothers didn't go to the synagogue and they didn't keep up any of the traditions. To us we were just French, and whatever was happening in Germany had nothing to do with us.

'But by ze spring of 1940 I could see Mama was worried about something more than paying ze rent and whether ze war would stop her ladies having new clothes made. One day I ask her about it and she told me she was afraid for us.'

Yvette could remember having conflicting feelings as the Germans advanced closer and closer to France. There was a kind of raw excitement in the air, so many men in uniform milling around Paris, tales of heroism bandied around on street corners. To her and Franccoise it was something like waiting for Christmas, so much antic.i.p.ation and hope, yet because both their mothers were poor, there was also a faint dread as they were used to disappointment.

The casualties of war were already mounting, and the oldest people kept on recounting stories of the young men in their families who had died in the trenches of the First War. People married in haste without any of the customary ceremony and tradition. Young women who until then had been models of decorum were seen kissing young men pa.s.sionately in public. The bars, nightclubs and restaurants all grew busier and noisier. Churches were packed on Sundays, and people stayed out on the streets as the days lengthened; maybe it was only to discuss the war or gossip, but to the two young girls Paris had an almost carnival atmosphere.

Sometimes Yvette and Franccoise would go to the Gare du Nord to watch troops leaving on the trains. They were too young to fully understand the tears of sweethearts as they clung together, but old enough to want this heady drama for themselves. They threw flowers and waved hand-kerchiefs too. They even hoped that the war wouldn't end before they were adult enough to have someone to kiss goodbye.

But behind all this frantic activity throughout Paris, there was also a swell of anxiety and unease which grew steadily stronger through April and May. The teachers at school had very grave faces, and they seemed disinclined to show the Germans' advance through Holland and Belgium on their maps any longer.

Then at the end of May the whole of Paris was aghast as French and English troops retreated to Dunkirk. Church bells tolled and people flocked to pray that their menfolk were amongst those who were rescued from the beaches.

While everyone was still reeling from this disaster, the Germans were moving towards Paris. On 10 June the French government abandoned the capital because it could not be defended. While most citizens were glad their beloved Paris was saved from the destruction of siege and street fighting, they were still shocked and horrified to see the first advance units of German soldiers arrive in the city.

Yvette and Franccoise slipped away to see the German horse artillery pa.s.s through the Arc de Triomphe, and all at once they understood the reality of war as they saw the cold, stern faces beneath helmets, and the long trail of horse-drawn gun carriages. Within hours Paris was fully occupied, and although France didn't surrender until 22 June, for Yvette, the day the first Germans arrived was the start of her war. She experienced her first real pang of fear, a foreboding that nothing would ever be the same again. Much later she was to see that day as the last of her childhood.

'You've made me see it all,' Fifi murmured against Yvette's shoulder. It was dark now, and she could no longer see her friend's face. 'But go on; did the n.a.z.is come for you and your mother straight away?'

'No. But it was very frightening for everyone, Jews and gentiles. People were shot if they were caught in ze streets after curfew. The Germans walked into shops and demanded ze best produce, often refusing to pay for it. They would close businesses down, break windows, and often confiscated property. Just looking at them too boldly was enough to get punched or kicked.

'Mama said we must stay indoors and only go out to get food. But each day it grew harder to find any, sometimes we had to go a long way just for a loaf of bread, and the German soldiers were everywhere. We tried so hard not to be noticed, for they would call for you to stop and demand to look at our papers. Mama would slip out sometimes to talk to people she knew. I think now she must get word how bad it was for Jews in Poland, back in Germany and in Holland. But she say little to me, only that she must get me away somewhere safe.

'When Franccoise was sent away, I was jealous,' Yvette admitted. 'She had an aunt somewhere in the south to go to. I was lonely without her. Then a few weeks later Mama tells me I must go too.'

Fifi heard the catch in her friend's voice, and stroked her cheek to encourage her to carry on.

'You know, I can still see ze apartment, Mama's face, everything, just as if it were only yesterday, not twenty-three years ago.' Yvette sighed. 'But maybe that is because my leaving was so sudden.'

She closed her eyes as she remembered the last hours in the apartment, and she could see herself climbing the stairs, puffed from running home from school in the rain.

The staircase was stone, with rusting fancy ironwork banisters, and wound around the centre of the building. The only light came from a skylight up on the fourth floor, and from the front door when it was left open.

All the smells from the other apartments, and there were four on each floor, stayed trapped in the building in summer, a pungent warm soup of garlic, cheese, herbs, laundry soap and sometimes drains. Madame Chevioux, the widow who lived on the ground floor at the front, had the biggest apartment, and she lorded it over the other tenants because she was a relative of the landlord and collected the rents.

The tenants came and went frequently because of Madame Chevioux, but Yvette and her mother had lived up at the very top in the attic rooms since Yvette was just a baby. Mama smiled sweetly at the bully on the ground floor. She scrubbed the stairs all the way down every week, cleaned the bathroom on each floor, and occasionally made Madame a skirt or a blouse for nothing, just to ensure she wouldn't be evicted. Yvette had been warned a hundred times or more that she was never to be cheeky or rude to the woman, for cheap apartments were hard to get.

That day, as Yvette opened the door to the apartment, Mama looked round from folding some clothes on the table.

'I have some good news for you,' she said.

Mama was tiny; even at thirteen Yvette was a little taller than her. Franccoise had once remarked that she looked faded, though until then Yvette hadn't noticed. But she was right; Mama had faded from the raven-haired, curvaceous beauty with doe-like eyes that Yvette admired in the photograph on the dresser. Now, her slender shoulders were rounded through bending over her sewing-machine, and her hair was more grey than raven. Even her eyes had faded; they appeared to have a milky film on them the way chocolate went if it was kept too long. She was thirty-five, which seemed very old to Yvette, and her face, though not lined yet, had a yellowish tinge.

'We're going somewhere!' Yvette exclaimed joyfully, for along with the clothes on the table was a canvas bag.

'Only you, my darling,' Mama said. 'I have found some-where safe for you, until the Germans are gone.'

'But I can't go anywhere without you,' Yvette replied, the pleasure of a trip vanishing all at once. 'Why can't you come too?'

'Because you will be safer without me, and I have my living here.'

Mama didn't often speak in that firm tone, but when she did Yvette knew she mustn't argue.

'Where am I going?' she asked.

'To a country town. You will get plenty of food and fresh air, and it will be a good life. I will come for you as soon as I can.'

'Am I going soon?' Yvette asked.

'In a couple of hours,' Mama said. 'We will walk down to the market and you will be picked up there. I do not want Madame Chevioux to know you are going anywhere. I do not trust her.'

Yvette paused in her story, and Fifi realized she was crying silently.

'Was that the last time you saw your mother?'

'Yes,' Yvette said, her voice gruff with emotion. 'Yet I think in my heart I knew I was never going to see her or ze apartment again, for as I ate some bread and cheese and drank some milk, I seemed to soak up everything about them.

'I can see it so clearly still, the wood floor Mama paint with the varnish, the rag rugs she sew, and her old sewing-machine. Only one big room really, we 'ave a bed behind some curtains, and the table was huge so Mama could cut out her dresses. We 'ave a kind of sideboard under ze window; a big cushion on the top to make it like a window seat. When it was sunny I'd lie on it basking like a cat. I used to watch ze people in the street below too, and look out over ze rooftops to the dome of ze Sacre Coeur. Maybe ze apartment very shabby, but I never think of it that way.'

After a while Yvette continued, telling Fifi she and her mama were duly met in the market by Madame and Monsieur Richelieu. They seemed warm, charming people, a little older than her mama, and they said they were going to tell people Yvette was their orphaned niece. They lived in Tours where they had a boulangerie, and Yvette could help them in the bakehouse. They also promised they were going to continue with her education, and that by the time the war was over she'd be able to return to Paris to go to the university.

'I feel no suspicion about them,' Yvette said. 'I like them, so did Mama. They said it was best we didn't write letters to one another, at least for ze time being, in case they were intercepted. But Mama had ze address where I was going, so that didn't alarm me.'

'Don't tell me they were rotters!'

'They were. The worst and wickedest kind, for they duped Mama. But at first it was just like they say. We took the train to Tours; the papers they 'ad for me were checked and accepted. There was ze boulangerie, in ze centre of ze town, and I 'ad a little room next to theirs in their apartment over ze shop. Tante Grace, as she said I was to call her, fed me well, didn't work me too hard, and though I wasn't allowed out alone, I thought that was to keep me safe.

'But then one night about three months later, I was taken away by car. They must have drugged me for I remember nothing after eating my supper, and then ze motion of a vehicle. When I woke up I was in a room with bars at ze windows, and a woman came in to tell me that from now on I was her property.'

'What was this place?' Fifi asked. She had long since forgotten her hunger, the dark and the cold as Yvette took her back to France with her.

'A brothel,' Yvette almost spat out. 'Not that I even knew that word then, or what went on in them. I hadn't even started to menstruate or grow b.r.e.a.s.t.s. I knew nothing about the adult world. Just thirteen, a child still.'

Fifi gasped.

'I was made to bathe and wash my hair, and then I was given a nightdress to put on. I kept asking where Tante Grace was, and crying, but this woman she didn't even tell me 'er name, she slapped me, she say I am to do exactly what she tells me or be punished.'

Yvette relived that night again as she told Fifi about it. She could see the bare wooden stairs she was led down, the long gloomy corridor, and a door at the end of it. She was frightened, not by what lay ahead, for she had no knowledge of what was going to happen to her. But she was afraid of the woman, for she had a long bony face, sharp dark eyes, and her front tooth was missing, like a witch's in a fairytale book. She wasn't dressed like a witch her dress was dark blue creepe, and her blonde hair was set in tight waves either side of her head but the hand that held tightly on to Yvette's forearm was like a claw, and the large ruby ring on her finger looked like blood.

The room she was led into was dimly lit, heavy tapestry curtains tightly closed, and spa.r.s.ely furnished with just a bed and a couple of chairs. Sitting on one of the chairs was a man.

He was portly, and he looked old to Yvette, though he was probably around forty, and he wore a dark grey suit with a yellow waistcoat beneath it. He had a big, florid face with a double chin, and when he smiled as he saw her, she noticed he had wet, fat lips.

'You are sure she is intact?' he asked, looking Yvette over as if she were a prize sheep or pig. He was French, and a Parisian judging by his accent.

'I checked her myself. Not even hair on her f.a.n.n.y yet,' the woman replied.

It was that rude word that alerted Yvette to the nature of this man's interest in her, and she tried to shake off the woman's hand on her arm and run, but she was held too tightly.

The man got up from his chair and came over to her, grasping her by both hands and pulling her to him. 'Come, my little flower,' he said. 'I want to look at you.'

Yvette screamed then, and it seemed to echo around the bare room. The man laughed, and picking her up, tossed her on to the bed.

'You can go now,' he said to the woman. 'If she's all you said, you'll get your bonus.'

Every second of that terrifying and painful ordeal was still imprinted on Yvette's mind. She could smell the man's breath on her face, feel the heat of his body through his clothes as he wrestled with her on the bed. There was such shame as he tried to look at her private parts and the pain when he poked and prodded at them. She tried to fight him off, but he slapped her hard, and pushed her down on the bed so violently that she thought he would kill her.

Then he unb.u.t.toned his trousers, and such a fearsome thing reared out that she screamed again. She had only ever seen a little boy's p.e.n.i.s, never a grown man's, and although a girl at school had once shown her a drawing of one, she'd thought it was a joke.

'He forced it into me, Fifi,' she whispered. 'I felt as if I was being split in two. I was trapped beneath him and the pain was too bad, like being burned with a red-hot poker. It seemed like hours he was ramming it into me. I think I may have pa.s.sed out. I just wish I could have died there and then.'

Fifi cried with Yvette, as they held each other tightly and rocked together. All those questions she'd asked Yvette in the past, fishing as to whether she'd had a boyfriend or been married, and the jokes Dan made about the s.e.xy French mistress, shamed her now. She wished she could find words to show Yvette that she not only fully understood her suffering but shared her pain.

Much later Yvette finished the story. She explained that she was one of many girls brought there. The brothel had been running for some years; most of the older girls had come to Paris to find work and had been lured by the promise of a bed and a meal. Some of them had not been little innocents; a few actually liked what they saw as an easy life. But the war had made it far easier for the owners to acquire much younger girls who were in great demand with their most decadent clientele. Desperate Jewish parents, terrified by the n.a.z.is' hatred for them, wanted to find a safe haven for their children until the war over, and it was all too easy for unscrupulous people like the Richelieux to take advantage and make money out of their fear. Yvette had heard that young boys were taken to another house and used in a similar way.

Orphans who lived on the streets were picked up too and several girls had been brought over from North Africa. The African girls were the most pitiful of all as they were often unable to communicate with anyone else.

New acquisitions were kept under lock and key, controlled by fear until such time as they accepted that they were now wh.o.r.es, and were grateful for their board and lodging. But for the Jewish girls there was an extra dimension of fear, for they were told daily what would happen to them if they didn't please the men who came to use them. Enough information crept in from outside for them to know that trains left every day for Poland or Germany crammed with Jews being taken to labour camps.

In time, after many beatings and being starved and locked up naked in a cold room, Yvette knew the only way she would survive was to learn to smile and even pretend she liked what those terrible men did to her. Whether it was n.a.z.i officers or slimy French collaborators she had to entertain, she stifled her feeling until eventually she felt she had none.

Most of the rooms had locked shutters on the windows, but not the attic rooms where the girls slept. Yvette would stand for an hour or more at a time staring out over the rooftops, looking for a landmark she recognized. But she couldn't see the dome of the Sacre Coeur or the Seine, so she had no idea what part of Paris she was in.

Occasionally one of the newest girls would escape, but word always got back that she'd been shot or found drowned in the river. It wasn't just trigger-happy German soldiers gunning down someone with no papers either; often the execution was carried out by one of the men who owned this place and others like it. So the girls didn't dare trust anyone, not even one of their own, for anyone might be tempted to turn informer if it got them out of a night with one of the more brutal or perverted customers. Yvette became outwardly like all the other girls, docile, amenable, grateful for any little kindness.

'But I was not like them in my 'ead,' she said with a sharp edge of defiance in her voice. 'I knew they would stay wh.o.r.es when ze war end, but not me. I kept it in my 'ead that I would come to England. In that house I did ze sewing, I knew I was good at it. If I had not had ze dream of England in my head I would have gone mad.'

Fifi could say nothing. She had profound sympathy and admiration for the inner strength Yvette must have had to live through such terrible experiences. Yet at the same time she could see that her friend hadn't really won her freedom by coming to England. She had remained in a kind of prison, exchanging the men who ruled her life back in France for equally demanding women here whom she served by making their clothes.

She had no real life of her own. She went out only to visit her clients, and her cluttered flat was probably very similar to the apartment she'd shared with her mother back in her childhood. An empty life without any love or joy.

All at once Fifi felt a surge of shame that she had so often felt hard done by. She really had nothing to complain about she'd never known hunger or real fear until now. Poverty, sickness, homelessness, she'd never experienced any of them, or even true loneliness. No one close to her had ever died, and she was born into a good, loving family. Then there was Dan, her friend, husband and lover, who would probably die for her if necessary. So maybe her mother's disapproval of him was groundless, but mothers were the same the world over, they only wanted to protect their children.

Yvette's mama had let those people take her child away to what she thought was safety. If she had been faced with the alternatives of Yvette dying with her on the train to Poland, or going into the brothel, which would she have chosen?

Chapter seventeen.

Dan shivered as he walked down Dale Street to the phone box on Sat.u.r.day morning. There was a distinctly autumnal chill in the air even though it was only just the beginning of September, and that heightened his anxiety about Fifi. He was at his wits' end now; he had exhausted all possible places to look for her.

When he rang her office on Wednesday morning and found she had failed to turn up for work the previous day, and hadn't phoned in either, he knew something had happened to her. She liked the job too much not to let them know if she felt unable to work.

He phoned to see if she was at her parents' house, but she wasn't there either, and he could tell that Mrs Brown wasn't covering for her no one could feign such anxiety.

After that he systematically asked everyone in the street when they'd last seen Fifi, and if she'd said she was going away. The last sighting was by Miss Diamond who'd seen her going off to work on Tuesday morning at eight o'clock. She said she was wearing a blue and white checked jacket and a navy pencil skirt, and she definitely wasn't carrying anything other than her handbag.

That was when he went to the police, but the minute he admitted that they'd had a row over the weekend, the police seemed to think she had just taken herself off to a friend's place. Even when Dan said she hadn't taken any clothes or washing things with her they showed no concern.

On Friday Dan had gone up to Chancery Lane to Fifi's office. He'd spoken to her boss, Mr Unwin, and to every single girl who worked there, but not one of them knew anything.

The only person he hadn't been able to talk to yet was Yvette. And now he was getting worried about her too. Mr and Mrs Balstrode, who lived above her, hadn't seen or heard her since Monday teatime, when she gave them a parcel she'd taken in for them.