‘Provided she’s a good girl and keeps eating her eggs,’ Joseph said, as he raised a spoon. ‘Open wide.’
*
Rosie was in a good mood as she rode into the village on one of the Blanc family’s horses. She had a good memory for places, but she wasn’t certain that she’d knocked on the door of the right cottage until eight-year-old Agnes opened the door.
‘You look much prettier,’ she told Rosie, as three-year-old Belle peeked out of a doorway in the background.
Rosie remembered that the last time Justin’s sisters had seen her she’d not washed or slept in days and was covered in coal dust.
‘Is your mummy here?’ Rosie asked.
Agnes shook her head. ‘She’s at work.’
‘What about Justin?’
Agnes nodded. ‘He’s sleeping.’
‘Can I speak to him?’
‘Is it important? He gets really cross if we wake him up.’
Rosie had thought Justin might be asleep. She’d even considered dropping by later, but was keen to make progress. Agnes led her up mildewing wooden stairs, beneath the gaping hole in the roof and into a small musty room. The window was blacked out and Justin was curled up on a straw-filled mat, snoring gently.
The arm and leg poking from Justin’s rough blanket were bruised from carrying coal and in this state he seemed more childlike than the cocky lad she’d met on the coal train.
‘Are you going to wake him?’ Rosie asked.
Agnes backed up to the doorway and shook her head warily. ‘I’d rather you did it. He might bash me.’
A big cockroach scuttled out of the way as Rosie crouched down and gently rocked Justin’s shoulder.
‘Bloody hell,’ he moaned, as he rolled over. ‘What?’
There was a smell of earth and feet, but Justin was young enough for Rosie to feel slightly maternal about his boyish blue eyes and scrambled hair.
‘Do you want coal?’ he said irritably, as he glowered at Agnes. ‘Why can’t she do it?’
‘It’s the girl you brought on the train, stupid,’ Agnes snapped back. ‘She asked to talk to you.’
Justin did several long blinks and rubbed glue out of his eye before apparently recognising Rosie. ‘You look really different,’ he said. ‘How’s your friend now?’
‘Fingers crossed,’ Rosie said, ‘she seems to be getting better.’
‘Great,’ Justin said. ‘What’s so important that you had to wake me up?’
Rosie looked at Agnes, ‘In private, if you don’t mind.’
Agnes looked put out, but a stern look from Justin sent her stomping back down the stairs.
‘You don’t look too great,’ Rosie said. ‘Are you sick?’
‘I’m always knackered,’ Justin said. ‘My mum earns next to nothing, and the coal train runs seven days a week, so I work it seven days a week. And even when I’m asleep, I get woken up by the girls. Or by someone wanting coal.’
Rosie felt even guiltier about waking Justin when he sat up, revealing a big red welt that ran from his upper arm and across his chest.
‘Railway cops,’ he explained, as he grabbed a grubby shirt off the floor. ‘Two nights ago. And the bastards stole my whole night’s coal.’
‘Sorry to hear that,’ Rosie said, then she began to explain about the bunker in the woods and how she needed to get close to it and take photographs. For security, she didn’t mention Dr Blanc’s role or the notebook. She just said that her boss in the resistance had asked her to get information.
By this time Justin had woken up enough for some of his cockiness to return. He scratched his chin with black fingernails before speaking.
‘What’s in it for me?’
Rosie smiled. ‘It’s for France. You said you hated the Boche when you met me on the train the other night.’
Justin shrugged. ‘I don’t much like ’em. If the Brits and Yanks sweep into town tomorrow, what difference will it make to me?’
‘Didn’t you say your dad was a prisoner? You’d be better off with him at home, wouldn’t you?’
Justin shrugged. ‘He’s a drunk.’
Rosie realised concepts like freedom and patriotism didn’t mean much to a ten-year-old who spent his life picking up coal scraps to earn enough money to keep his family from going hungry. But Rosie had money and resistance leaders like Eugene and Maxine paid people for their work.
‘How much do you earn selling coal on a good night? Whatever it is, I’ll pay you the same whenever you work for me. And I can get you some treats. I bought chocolate with me from Paris.’
Justin raised one eyebrow. ‘I’ll cop another beating if I’m caught on the train. What will I get if I’m caught helping the resistance? And what will they do to my mum and the girls?’
Rosie saw Justin’s point, but decided not to offer more. It was good to put things on a professional basis and reward people who helped the resistance, but offering large sums of money encouraged greed and led to suspicious behaviour when they spent it.
‘If it’s just about money, I can’t trust you,’ Rosie said, pretending that she wasn’t bothered either way. ‘I can tell you’ve got a good heart. You could have earned a fortune turning me and Edith in, but you did the right thing and sent for Dr Blanc.’
Justin went quiet, and stared at his filthy toes poking from the end of his blanket.
‘You can’t tell my mum because she’ll whip me. And the girls tend to speak without thinking, so keep them out of this too.’
‘OK,’ Rosie said, still not sure what Justin was offering.
‘I know a lot of kids who hunt in the forest, but what you really need are people who you can trust not to go running to the Germans, right?’
Rosie nodded. Justin was smarter than any ten-year-old ought to be.
‘There’s two guys about your age who spend a lot of time in the forest – Didier and Jean,’ Justin explained. ‘They’re from Rennes, but they went on the run when they got called up for labour service. They’re proper rough. I was scared the first couple of times I met them, but I trade my coal for their meat and they’ve never tried to rip me off.’
First Joseph, then the men in the apartment below in Paris, and now these two – Rosie was starting to feel that every young man in France was hiding out to avoid compulsory labour service in Germany.
‘Sounds ideal,’ Rosie said. ‘I’ll pay whatever you would have earned by selling coal. Is that a deal?’
Justin nodded. ‘Those boys move around, so we may have a job tracking them down. But they usually come into town once every couple of nights, selling hares or rabbits to the butcher’s shop near Dr Blanc’s surgery.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Rosie was in a rural area, with clumps of cottages sprawled out over family smallholdings. The local centre was a cluster of businesses where three dirt tracks joined the cobbled route into Rennes. This strip had no official name, but everyone called it the junction.
Along with Dr Blanc’s surgery and the butcher’s shop, the junction had a grocer, a bakery, a farm supply store and a blacksmith. A church with sprawling graveyard stood on higher ground a couple of hundred metres further along.
Locals walked or came by cart, while a vehicle from the German garrison passed through once or twice per day. It was the type of place where everyone knew each other and would gossip over anything unusual, so Rosie and Justin kept look out from an overgrown section of the graveyard. This gave them a vista over shop fronts on both sides of the road and multiple escape routes if anyone came near.
Monday was a waste of time, and Tuesday was early closing, but patience was rewarded on Wednesday when two furtive lads sprang from a field and bolted over the cobbles. They both carried poles hung with rabbits on each shoulder.
Rosie agreed with Justin’s assessment that they were about her age, possibly a couple of years older. Didier was tall and broad, with a tiny lower jaw and huge rat-like front teeth. Jean was short, but built tough with chunky limbs and bright red hair.
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A girl who worked as the butcher’s apprentice met the pair in front of the shop, as Rosie scrambled deeper into the graveyard so that she could still see the action. After a quick look and a sniff at the dangling rabbits, the girl took the poles inside, then quickly peeled off paper money and handed over a small cloth sack.
‘We need to start moving,’ Rosie told Justin. ‘If they cut back through a field we could lose them.’
Approaching Jean and Didier anywhere near the shops would guarantee curious onlookers, so Rosie planned to follow them out of town. After giving Justin a leg-up over the graveyard’s stone wall, she vaulted it herself and followed him through long grass.
As they reached the shops, Jean led Didier up an alleyway between the baker and blacksmith’s. Rosie was anxious not to lose them after their long stake-out, but stopped Justin from breaking into a run because it would then be obvious that they were chasing.
Rosie and Justin reached the uncultivated land behind the bakery as Jean and Didier stepped over a gate into a cow pasture fifty metres further on. Crossing open ground risked the boys spotting them if they looked back, but they’d started to run and she had to take the risk.
She reached the gate with Justin a few metres behind, then peered down the line of a tall hedge, where she was relieved to see that the two boys had slowed to a brisk walk. After following for several hundred metres, Rosie and Justin dived for cover in the hedge as Jean took the sack off his back and used a pocket knife to pull the cork from a bottle of red wine.
*
Five kilometres and two bottles of red wine later, Didier and Jean stumbled into a dilapidated cowshed that hadn’t housed an animal in years. There was a crash of metal, followed by howls of drunken laughter.
Rosie had said little during the walk, but her expression told Justin that she was having doubts about using the lads as her guides.
‘There is another boy who hunts,’ Justin whispered, as they crouched at the base of a tree. ‘He might help us, but he’s mouthy.’
Rosie gave her head a little shake, then told Justin to stay put while she crept up to the long shed. The sides were vertical wooden slats and she peeked through. The boys had only colonised one corner, and had some fairly nice kit: fold-out beds with proper mattresses, a rug on the dirt floor, a pile of books and gas lamps fixed to the wall.
As Rosie moved around the building, she was less impressed to find grass spattered with animal blood, an undisguised washing line and black patches left by regular fires. Anyone approaching the shed from this end would immediately know that someone was hiding out.
‘Need a piss,’ Didier shouted from inside.
‘Have one for me too,’ Jean said, before howling with laughter at his own joke. ‘I drank too fast. It’s all spinning!’
The accents intrigued Rosie. They looked a rough pair, but spoke more like the sons of lawyers than the sons of peasants. This hint at their background, plus the stash of books, made her hopeful that she could whip them into shape with some common-sense advice.
But it was starting to get dark and it didn’t seem like a brilliant idea to approach two drunken strangers, so she decided to return in the morning.
Didier’s urine noisily splashed grass as Rosie crept back towards Justin. She was at the corner of the shed when her canvas pump caught in a rabbit snare. As the wire pulled tight it cut into her ankle. She successfully stifled a yelp, but her stride was off balance. Her hand shot out instinctively, but while it saved a fall her palm had thumped the side of the shed.
Inside Jean turned towards the source of the noise. ‘Didier?’ he shouted. ‘Is that you back there?’
Rosie studied the trap anxiously. The snare had been anchored to a nearby bush and the trailing wire was pulled tight. She took out a pocket knife, but the flat blade skidded over the wire.
‘What have we got here?’ Jean asked, as he moved around the side of the hut, while hurriedly pushing his bits back inside his trousers.
As Didier came around the other side of the hut, Rosie pulled her sleeve over her hand then wound the wire around and ripped it away from the bush. This left her ankle in the wire loop with a metre of wire trailing freely behind.
‘This is better than catching a rabbit!’ Didier said, as he grinned foolishly.
Rosie felt a little scared with two drunken lads coming towards her from either end of the hut.
Jean saw less of the funny side and barked, ‘Who are you? Why are you snooping around here?’
Justin ran out of the bushes waving his arms. ‘Don’t hurt her. She’s with me.’
Jean glowered at Justin. ‘Did you follow us from the butcher’s shop? How dare you follow us, you little brat.’
Justin dived for cover as Jean chased him into the bushes.
‘Hey, you big bully,’ Rosie shouted.
Justin kicked and spat as Jean carried him out of the bushes, then plonked him on his feet and knocked him back hard against the wooden hut.
‘I told you to stop,’ Rosie shouted. ‘He’s just a kid. I asked him to help me find you.’
Didier moved closer to Rosie. Apparently toothbrushing facilities out here weren’t great because his breath was rank.
‘How did you manage to follow us?’ Didier demanded.
Rosie laughed. ‘You’re amateurs. You don’t double back on yourselves, you get drunk, you walk slowly. And this hut is surrounded by blood and cinders.’
‘We’ve survived out here long enough,’ Jean said, as he gave Justin a little slap across the cheek.
‘The only reason you’ve survived is that nobody’s been out here looking,’ Rosie said. ‘And if you touch him again …’
‘I think we should forget all about this,’ Didier said, slurring his words as he closed right up to Rosie and cupped his hand around her breast. ‘You’re really pretty, aren’t you?’
Rosie glowered. ‘You have three seconds to take that hand off my tit.’
‘Or what, darling?’ Didier snorted.
‘Two,’ Rosie said.
Justin looked really worried. ‘She’s got friends,’ he blurted. ‘If you hurt us they’ll come and find you.’
‘One.’
‘Oh, I’m scared, Justin,’ Jean said. ‘Cocky little shit-pants.’
‘Zero,’ Rosie said, as Jean gave Justin a harder slap on the cheek. ‘I told you to leave Justin alone.’
Rosie grabbed two handfuls of Didier’s shirt and gave him a powerful head-butt across the bridge of his nose. As he stumbled back, she kicked him in the guts and he landed on his bum before tilting backwards into a tangle of branches.
Jean could have backed away, but he didn’t think Rosie was a threat, so he was still rooted to the spot as she launched a high back kick. Her muddy heel hit the squat teenager square on the lips.
As he teetered, Rosie went into a boxing stance and went for the gut, winding Jean with three hard punches before getting a hand behind his neck and bashing his head into the side of the hut.
‘Bloody hell!’ Justin shouted, scrambling away as Didier crawled out of the bushes with a bloody nose and thorns bedded in his arms.
Didier didn’t have the appetite for an attack on Rosie, but Jean was more aggressive. He came at her like a wild thing with thick arms swinging. Rosie stuck her hand into a small shoulder bag and ripped out an automatic pistol as she took half a step back.
‘Do you want your head splattered up the side of this cowshed?’ she shouted, as she clicked off the safety. ‘Put your fat little hands in the air.’
As a gawping Jean did what he’d been told, Rosie swung the gun around so that Didier got a good look down the barrel.
‘Don’t shoot me,’ he begged, as he threw up his hands.
Rosie looked at Justin. ‘Are you OK, mate?’
He nodded, but was shocked and awed by what he’d seen Rosie do.
‘Since you two have behaved like pigs, I’ll treat you like pigs,’ Rosie said. ‘Get down on your hands and knees, and crawl back into
the shed.’
Justin stifled a smile as the two lads crawled through the bushes, around a corner, past the cinders from the fire and through a cracked wooden door into their den.
‘You don’t move unless I tell you to move. You don’t speak unless I ask a question. And don’t think I won’t shoot you because I’m just a girl. I’m well trained and I’ll execute you both in a heartbeat.’
As her two little pigs looked up, Rosie squatted on one of their filthy beds while Justin stood awkwardly in the doorway. They had a collection of hunting gear kept in good condition, but Rosie’s eyes were drawn towards the books, which included several anti-German pamphlets and a copy of The Communist Manifesto.
‘Which one of you read this?’ Rosie asked.
They were reluctant to admit anything with a gun pointed in their face. Didier’s nose was dripping blood into the dirt.
‘I had a copy once, but I never finished,’ Rosie said, trying to sound friendlier as she picked up one of the anti-German leaflets. ‘I can’t believe you’ve survived this long while being this stupid. They’re desperate for men in the factories, you know? If they catch you, they’ll ship you off to Germany. But if they catch you with communist literature and resistance pamphlets, they’ll pass you over to the Gestapo, who will torture you. Only a total moron would leave this stuff lying around next to their beds.’
Rosie threw the pamphlet and The Communist Manifesto at Justin. ‘Start a fire and burn these.’
As Justin walked outside, Rosie considered her position. She’d had no option but to fight and there was no harm in showing Jean and Didier who was the boss, but young men tended to have big egos and they’d hate her if she humiliated them for much longer.
‘If I put this gun back in my bag, are you going to be civil?’
‘Sure,’ Jean said grumpily.
‘He’s got half a bush sticking out of his arse,’ Rosie said, pointing at Didier. ‘Help him get the thorns out.’
‘Who taught you to fight?’ Didier asked, as he stood up and wiped his dirty palms down his trousers. He didn’t seem so drunk now, probably because the beating had generated an adrenaline kick.