Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

Kristina

Nice, June 1940

Initially it was all good news. Vive la France! We are winning! France triumphed before, and she will triumph again! The French people were assured the country’s tanks were superior and that the German army was retreating in the face of the French army’s might.

But the refugees pouring into Nice told another story. They were coming from everywhere. At first from Belgium and the Netherlands, and then the north of France and from the towns that bordered Italy. Tired, weary, carrying what was left of their possessions in wheelbarrows and prams. Those with money may have found a hotel room, while others were left to sleep under the palm trees in the parks. Kristina saw them whenever she went to run errands in town – women staggering under the responsibility of finding food and shelter for their young children, elderly parents and bickering inlaws. Their homes were gone, and their husbands and older sons were at the front. They waited in line for hours outside the hospital or the Town Hall for food packages. Sometimes all they could get were two boiled eggs to share between a family of six. Kristina was haunted by their dazed, hopeless expressions.

‘I can’t bear it,’ said Yelena at breakfast one morning. ‘It reminds me of fleeing Russia.’

Kristina’s mother found the suffering of others so unbearable, she volunteered at a soup kitchen run by a Catholic priest to help the refugees. And it was from them that she would convey the horror stories to Kristina and Serge.

‘The German pilots targeted innocent civilians,’ she told them one evening when she returned home looking wan and exhausted. ‘Women, old people, children – they gunned them down indiscriminately on the roads. And now refugees are starting to pour in from Paris. I’m sending Lorenzo back to his family in Italy. If Mussolini joins the war, who knows what will happen? We’ll have to manage ourselves with just Suzanne to help for a while.’

Kristina was glad that Nadia and Ginette had eaten early and were already in bed. She had tried to shield them as much as possible from the calamity that was unfolding, but she wasn’t sure how much longer she would be able to do so. She turned to Serge who looked as shocked as she felt. The war was truly here now. For the past year, they’d held the belief that it might be averted, that the Germans might come to their senses or that Hitler might be assassinated. After the initial flurry of preparations – air-raid drills, blacking out windows and buying gas masks – autumn, winter and most of spring had passed by uneventfully. In Max’s letters from the Maginot Line, he’d written about soldiers dying from boredom not bullets.

Now she hadn’t heard from him since his last leave over a month ago. ‘Keep painting,’ Max had reminded her when he’d left. But how could she paint when the future she had imagined for herself and her family was now only a great, uncertain hole?

After Yelena retired for the evening, Kristina sat up with Serge in the drawing room, discussing the latest events. He paced the floor, stopping every so often to peer through the blackout curtains at the sea.

‘Perhaps we should leave?’ she suggested. ‘Take Mama and the children and go to Portugal.’

But Serge continued to pace and didn’t answer her. His expression was stern and a bit sad. She knew he was thinking about his beloved paintings. What came to be known as the ‘Phoney War’ had gone on so long, he had been forced to return to Paris to do business so they would have some money. He’d held exhibitions and sold some paintings, and for a while it seemed things might even return to normal. But when the Germans came through the Ardennes in a blitzkrieg, he’d had to flee with only a couple of canvases rolled up in his suitcase. The car had been requisitioned and he’d come on a crowded train where the only room available for him was in a toilet cubicle. The rest of his paintings, apart from the ones in storage at Wacker-Bondy’s, were on the walls of the gallery. They were like his children. He felt as frantic about their welfare as Kristina did about Nadia and Ginette.

‘You can’t go back to Paris,’ Kristina said. ‘Please tell me that’s not what you’re thinking.’

Serge stopped his pacing and turned to her with a pained expression on his face. Then the tension seemed to go from his body and his eyes filled with tenderness.

‘I promised Max I would look after you and the children,’ he said. ‘And I will. I’ll look after you until the very end.’

Kristina’s heart swelled. She sensed a deepening of the profound connection they shared, the intense desire they both felt to protect each other. Serge had chosen them over his beloved paintings, and that meant everything to her.

*

In the middle of June, the radio that Kristina, Serge and Yelena gathered around each day brought them the worst news: Italy had declared war on France. The Germans had marched into Paris and Marshal Pétain, who had replaced Paul Reynaud as prime minister the day before, was seeking an armistice. All fighting was to cease.

They stared at the radio and then looked at each other in disbelief, their faces pale and their lips clenched. Nobody moved or spoke. Kristina could hear her daughters playing outside. Ginette was skipping rope and chanting: Chocolate cake, when you bake, how many minutes will you take? One, two, three, four... They had no idea that their sweet childhoods had just been taken from them.

‘It’s over?’ Yelena asked, finally breaking the silence in the room. ‘It’s over already?’

‘It must be a lie,’ said Serge, his voice hoarse. ‘France was not losing the war. Why the sudden capitulation?’

Kristina’s mind turned to Max. At least if an armistice was called, he would come home. Unless he was dead. She squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t allow herself to even think that.

*

‘Have you heard any news?’ a pregnant woman asked the group of housewives waiting outside the bakery. Kristina was there, not because she needed bread, but because she was getting more accurate news from the women of Nice than from any other source. Since the armistice, the country was divided, with the Germans occupying two-thirds of the north and the new French Vichy government occupying the south. News from the north was slow in coming and letters were censored. Some soldiers were gradually returning after demobilisation, but they only brought with them tales of slaughter and a sense of demoralisation.

‘The Maginot Line!’ spat a grey-haired woman with bitterness in her eyes. ‘The Germans not only bypassed it, they wheeled around and took the soldiers guarding it from the rear. The rumours are that nearly two million French soldiers are now prisoners of war. What was it all for?’

Kristina’s legs felt leaden as she climbed the hill back to the villa. The physical absence of Max had been hard enough to bear. She missed having him to talk to and his tenderness and caresses. But now this? Was he still alive and a prisoner? Injured and suffering? Or—? She stopped herself from following that last, terrifying thought. It was the not knowing, and the inability to find out, that was almost driving her crazy. She stopped. On the pavement ahead of her someone had painted a large ‘V’ in red. She didn’t know what it stood for. Perhaps the new Vichy government? But then she saw one on a building and another on a tree. The letters seemed to be leading down a laneway. Against her better judgement, Kristina followed them. Then she saw painted on the side of a building:

Vive de Gaulle! Vive l’Angleterre! De Gaulle, c’est la liberté!

Who was de Gaulle and why did he represent freedom? The message was also in support of France’s former ally, Britain. It was a dangerous act of subversion, as the French were now supposed to be cooperating with the Germans. Kristina quickly returned to the main street. Somehow, despite all her troubles, the message had lifted her spirits.

She had no sooner walked in the door than Suzanne asked if she could speak with her. Kristina ushered her into the drawing room.

‘My brother Jerome is in a camp near Paris,’ Suzanne said, holding out a card with the Red Cross emblem at the top. Beneath it was a short message: I am a prisoner and I am in good health .

It was such a brief message – all Suzanne’s brother had been permitted – and yet it was everything. Kristina could see the relief and hope on the maid’s face. She took her hand and squeezed it.

‘I’m very happy for you and your family,’ she told her.

Then more sadly, Suzanne said, ‘I must go back to my home in Saint-Agnès. With my father and brothers away, my mother is managing the grocery store by herself.’

‘Of course,’ Kristina told her. ‘I wish you well.’

Suzanne nodded and turned to leave. Then she looked back to Kristina. ‘I wish you well too. I hope Monsieur Bergeret returns home soon.’

Kristina waited for Suzanne to close the door behind her then went to the window. The Mediterranean was still so peaceful, so blue. It was difficult to believe that they were all living in hell.

*

One evening, when Yelena was serving the soup for dinner, her hands began to tremble as she lifted the ladle.

‘Here, let me do that,’ said Kristina, taking the ladle from her and urging her to sit down.

Since the war had started, Kristina had noticed her mother growing frailer at an alarming rate. Her skin was like parchment, dark veins visible beneath the surface. They had all lost weight from the food restrictions, but Yelena’s thinness was palpable. It filled Kristina with sadness. How would she hold up if she no longer had her mother? Could she stand on her own? She realised she would have to, otherwise who would look after everybody if she broke down?

She noticed Nadia studying her. She was twelve years old and slowly blossoming into a young woman. The war was taking away from her the years that should have been full of joy and discovery. Kristina didn’t want her to be burdened with any more hardship than she was already experiencing. So she plastered a smile on her face.

‘Will we leave some for Papa?’ asked Ginette, when Kristina placed the soup in front of her. ‘He will be home soon.’

Max had been in the army for nearly a year, and at eight years of age, Ginette had seemed mature enough to accept that he was away fighting to keep them all safe. But her sudden request had a note of desperation in it. Kristina glanced at Serge, tears filling her eyes.

Although there was barely enough food for them all as it was, he stood and held out his bowl for Kristina to fill. Then he placed it on the stove to keep warm.

‘Yes, sweet Ginette,’ he said. ‘We must remember your father tonight and every night. For while we may not know exactly when he will come back, we must be ready for when he does.’

*

The following morning, Kristina and Serge went to see édouard Fould. He had contacts in the government and they hoped he might be able to help them find out more information about Max.

‘If your husband is a prisoner of war, Kristina,’ he said with a voice full of regret, ‘it will be a long wait. I’ve read the terms of the armistice. The return of French prisoners of war depends on a peace treaty, and in my opinion the British will fight to the bitter end. If the Americans join the conflict and add their resources, which I believe they will, this war could go on for years. The Germans will use the French POWs to mitigate their labour shortages from having so many of their own men mobilised.’

‘France will collapse,’ said Serge, horrified. ‘We don’t have enough farm and factory workers. And we are paying the Germans millions of francs a day to occupy us.’

édouard nodded. ‘Exactly. France will collapse.’

‘We should have kept fighting, like Britain,’ Kristina said.

édouard turned to her. ‘Not every Frenchman has given up. There is de Gaulle in London.’

There was that name again. ‘Who is he?’

‘A dedicated soldier and an intelligent man,’ édouard explained. ‘He was promoted to general only a short while before the defeat. He escaped to London and has called all those who wish to keep fighting for a free France to meet him there.’

‘Well,’ she said, remembering how the ‘V’ signs had uplifted her, ‘if not all French people have given up, then neither should we.’

*

A few weeks later, Kristina and Yelena were in the garden pruning the roses. She had an urge to apologise to the plants for her inexpert hands, but she didn’t want to lose this precious inheritance because they had been her father’s pride and joy.

‘ Bonjour ! Madame Bergeret!’

She looked up to see a young woman waving from the gate. She was smartly dressed in a nipped-waisted suit. Kristina wondered how she knew her name.

‘ Bonjour , mademoiselle,’ she said, putting down her secateurs and approaching the gate. ‘How may I help you?’

‘I am Renée Masset, Inès Bonne’s niece.’

‘Yes!’ Kristina said, opening the gate. ‘How is she? I hope she’s all right managing the gallery on her own?’

‘My aunt is quite all right, although Paris is different,’ Renée said with a slight shiver. ‘It was right of Monsieur Lavertu to be wary about travelling there. It’s almost impossible to come to the free zone. I only received special dispensation because I’m a dermatologist, deemed to be an essential service.’ She reached into her purse and gave Kristina a letter. ‘This is from my aunt to Monsieur Lavertu. I must return to Paris in three days’ time. I’ll come by here before I go and collect your reply.’

Kristina thanked Renée, and after she left, ran inside to show Serge the letter.

‘From Inès?’ he asked, putting down the screwdriver he’d been using to fix the frame of a painting.

‘Come, let’s sit in the library,’ she told him.

They sat down in Mikhail’s favourite overstuffed armchairs. Kristina folded her hands in her lap with nervous expectation. Serge’s own hands trembled as he slipped the letter out of the envelope. Then he exhaled and read Inès’s message.

Dear Monsieur Lavertu,

I hope that you and Madame Bergeret are in good health. Has there been any news of Monsieur Bergeret?

Here in Paris, the German soldiers are behaving with restraint. So far there hasn’t been any trouble. They stand for the elderly on buses, step aside for women on the pavements, and address shopkeepers in polite — and often perfect – French. There are many here who are happy for their businesses. Signs reading ‘German spoken here’ are appearing everywhere. But the exchange rate between the franc and the Reichsmark means everything the Germans buy is a bargain. Carloads of loud crass Berliners arrive in Paris on the weekends to snap up everything they can set their eyes upon. Several have knocked at the gallery door, so I have put up a sign that we are closed for stocktake. But I won’t be able to keep that up for long before I am arrested for being uncooperative with our occupiers.

Then yesterday, I had a visit from Monsieur La Farge. He told me that all businesses owned by Jews will soon be ‘Aryanised’ as they were in Germany, and he made an offer to buy everything in the gallery including the building. The gall of the man! His offer was perhaps just over a third of the worth of it. I reminded him that half the business is owned by Monsieur Bergeret and that if he so wishes, Monsieur Lavertu could sell his share of the business to his partner. Although he appeared to concede to this, I was left with a lingering feeling that it is not the last I will hear of the man.

Please advise me what you would like me to do. I can pack up the rest of the paintings and put them in storage, or send them to you in Nice — although I think there is a good chance they would be stolen en route. For while the other galleries on Rue la Boétie are doing a roaring trade with our occupiers, I cannot but feel a bad storm is coming. The swastika hangs from every public building, and each day we are subjected to the sight of German soldiers parading in goosestep along the Champs-élysées...

Serge looked up at Kristina, a deep frown on his face. They had already discussed the trouble that was brewing. Pétain had only been in power for a month when the Vichy government had begun imitating the draconian Nazi laws against Jews. Those who had been naturalised recently were stripped of their citizenship, while French-born Jews were ousted from the army, civil service and universities. Ordinary people were losing their livelihoods and being plunged into poverty. Martin La Farge’s warning that the gallery was under threat of being Aryanised soon was most likely true.

Kristina shared the sense of foreboding Inès had described. Serge’s heritage hadn’t been an issue before. He was a Frenchman just like any other Frenchman. Thinking about the German refugees who had poured into Paris after Hitler rose to power, she realised many of them had been just like Serge: non-religious people who had been considered normal citizens for decades. But that didn’t stop the terror that had been unleashed on them.

‘As long as Max remains a missing soldier or a prisoner of war, his business interests are in my hands,’ she told Serge. ‘But as I’m not French, I’m not sure how much longer that will be the case.’

Serge came and knelt before her. The pain in his eyes was heartbreaking. ‘I’m losing everything,’ he said. ‘Max, and now the gallery.’

She held him to her. ‘You haven’t lost me or the girls, Serge. We’ll get through this somehow. Max will come back, and de Gaulle will defeat the Nazis. Then life will be beautiful again, just as it was before.’

*

‘Mama,’ Nadia called, pulling her head back in from the upstairs window. ‘Mademoiselle Masset has returned.’

Kristina had been busy letting down the hem on Nadia’s best dress. She was growing so tall, like an ostrich. Kristina went to the window to see Renée at the gate. It was almost four months since she had taken their letter back to Paris, instructing Inès to put everything in storage, and they had not heard from her in that time.

‘Come in,’ Kristina said, opening the front door for her. ‘Would you like tea? We don’t have real tea unfortunately, but we do have some dried linden leaves.’

‘I can’t stay,’ Renée said. ‘I’m meant to be in Menton by tomorrow. But my aunt said this letter is extremely important.’

‘Thank you.’

Renée left and Kristina went searching through the house to find Serge. But he wasn’t in the library or study.

‘Serge!’ she called, but when he didn’t answer she couldn’t restrain herself. She opened the letter. The first line made her heart sink.

The Gestapo came and took it all. Everything, not just the paintings, but all your furniture and that belonging to Monsieur and Madame Bergeret...

‘It’s bad news, isn’t it?’ asked Serge, appearing in the doorway. ‘I can tell by your face.’

She read the rest of the letter out to him.

They said that as you are a Jew and have not been heard of for some time, they had a right to requisition everything as ‘abandoned property’. I wanted to protest that you were in Nice, but then thought better of revealing your whereabouts. Instead, I made the argument that the Bergeret family were not Jewish and therefore they had no right to take their things. The man who was heading the requisition approached me menacingly and then struck me across the face. In all my life, I have never been hit by any man and the shock was as bad as the pain. After that I remained silent, because I knew that I had two things over them – I had already checked on the paintings at Wacker-Bondy’s and added your favourite Monet and Signac to the collection, and, with no clients, I’d had the time to photograph and record your inventory. That catalogue is now safe inside your violin, which is hidden at the back of my mother’s linen closet.

I am sorry I could not save your gallery and home. I believe that evil eventually burns itself out and one day France will be restored. I hope the catalogue will allow you legal claim on all that has been so wrongly taken from you. Until we meet again in happier times, please think of me always as a true and loyal friend.

Affectionately,

Inès Bonne

‘Good, dear Inès,’ said Serge. ‘If ever I find that Nazi who struck her, I’ll kill him with my bare hands.’ He looked at Kristina. ‘I’m sorry, because of me they have taken everything of yours and Max’s too.’

‘Because of you? No!’ Kristina said. ‘Because of the Nazis. They try to make everything look legal, but they are common thieves. What they have done to you they will do to the Wildenstein, Seligmann and Bernheim-Jeune galleries too. Only the Aryans like Martin La Farge will remain.’

*

It was a sorry little tart that Kristina and Yelena made for Ginette’s birthday, but they did the best they could with the ever-decreasing rations. They had saved up the flour allocations to make a rather dry pastry – butter and vegetable oils being in short supply – which they hoped the jam created from the last of the apricots from the garden would improve.

Ginette, who loved to be the centre of attention, seemed content enough to have her family around her, but Kristina wondered what her young mind made of this strange new world where there was always fear in the atmosphere, and small pleasures like walking along the seaside were no longer possible. She could only hope whatever deprivations her children lived with, it would not be a lack of love and affection.

Since Max had been mobilised, Kristina had been given a small military allowance. Now they no longer had the gallery, she was trying to make it stretch to keep everyone fed. She had so many worries that concentrating on painting was near impossible. She spent most of her day lining up for food or ration cards. But even if she had been able to paint, modern art was considered degenerate by the Nazis and she couldn’t hold an exhibition.

When her allowance didn’t arrive one week, she assumed it was an administrative delay. She went to her father’s library and stared at the Ilya Repin painting of Tolstoy he’d brought with him from Russia. Mikhail had treasured it, not only because the artwork was so finely rendered, but because both men had been his friends. ‘Did you know it took Ilya ten years to paint that?’ he would always say. The galleries and second-hand shops of Nice were full of beautiful paintings and objets d’art that the refugees had been forced to sell at bargain prices. It had been the same for the White Russians after the revolution.

‘You’re not going to sell your father’s paintings,’ Serge said firmly when she put the idea to him. ‘If we run out of money, I’ll sell the Matisse I’ve hidden away in the cellar first. It will fetch a good price.’

‘I thought the Germans weren’t buying degenerate art?’

‘They aren’t, but the French who can afford it are buying it by the truckload. Nobody trusts the currency anymore, so they’re buying art as an investment. The French art market is raking in millions.’

Kristina considered the paintings that had been stolen from their gallery. Then she thought of Martin La Farge, who was flourishing while Serge was struggling. It was hard to believe there were people becoming millionaires by buying and selling art, while so many other French people were starving.

‘You can’t sell the Matisse either,’ she said. ‘You like it too much. That’s why you have hung on to it for so long.’

Serge smiled whimsically. ‘I’m an art dealer, Kristina. The paintings I like best are the ones I can sell.’

*

When her next payment did not arrive the following week either, Kristina went to the military office in town. There was a long queue, and she took a ticket and waited for an hour between a matronly woman and a young woman with a child. A clerk called her number, and she showed him her identity card and papers. Then she had to return to her seat. A moment later, the young woman was called up. She spoke to the clerk and then emitted a terrible shriek and crumpled to the ground. Two other women rushed to help her up.

‘A death notice,’ said the matronly woman, leaning closer to Kristina. ‘They have been so slow to issue them. It’s been torture. I don’t know where my son is.’

Kristina murmured her sympathy, but when the matronly woman was called up, there was no news for her and she left. Kristina sat on the hard bench for another five hours. Her head began to throb and her mouth was so dry, her tongue felt like sandpaper. The other women came and went around her but she didn’t dare leave.

As the crowd began to thin, an elegantly dressed woman sized her up from across the room and then stood and approached her. ‘The allowance they pay is pathetic. How are we supposed to live? I’ve heard Paris is full of prostitutes now – respectable women trying to feed their families.’

Kristina didn’t want to hear any more of what the woman had to say and was relieved when the clerk called her back to the counter. His face was harsh as he shoved her allowance notice back to her. Stamped across it in red was one word: Cancelled.

‘What does it mean?’ she asked, thinking of the woman who had received the death notice.

But the clerk dismissed her abruptly and waved to the next person to come to the counter. Dazed, she sat back down on the bench, her eyes searching the papers that had been handed back, but they gave no clues.

‘If they suddenly cut off your allowance it means your husband has escaped from a German camp,’ the elegantly dressed woman whispered to her.

‘From a prisoner-of-war camp?’ Kristina asked. ‘But isn’t it the duty of a soldier to try to escape if held captive?’

The woman nodded. ‘Yes, in a normal war. But France is in bed with the Germans now. Your husband’s escape would be seen as an act of treachery. The Germans want his labour.’

The woman’s number was called and she stood up. ‘Well, goodbye, madame,’ she said. ‘I wish you well.’

*

It was early morning and the air was still. Kristina and Serge left the house with the painting by Modigliani that Serge had brought from Paris, rolled and hidden in a suitcase. They were on their way to see a collector who had agreed to buy it at a good price. The bus arrived and they climbed on board, alighting a few stops from the Promenade des Anglais just as the sky was lightening to a magnificent silvery blue.

‘Take my arm,’ Kristina said to Serge.

She hadn’t asked him for the comfort of his touch – they often walked arm in arm outside the house. Jews were forever being stopped and having their papers checked. Serge was not as well known in Nice as he was in Paris and had never practised any religion except the appreciation of art. He’d also been savvy enough not to register himself as of Jewish heritage with the Town Hall. But lately, the police had been dragging men off the street and forcing them to pull their trousers down. If they were circumcised, they were beaten and arrested. Because Kristina was so blonde and tall, she hoped that they’d be left alone if they were perceived as a couple.

‘Where are you going so early?’

The policeman appeared out of nowhere. Kristina pressed herself closer to Serge.

‘To the train station to visit my parents in Cagnes-sur-Mer,’ she said.

‘I wouldn’t go anywhere today if I were you,’ he said. ‘Stay off the streets until after four o’clock and stay away from hotels.’

‘Why, what’s happening?’ Serge asked, realising, as Kristina did, that the policeman was trying to warn them away for their own good rather than arrest them.

The sound of trucks rumbling along the Promenade broke the stillness of the air.

‘Go!’ he said.

They didn’t wait a moment longer. They turned back in the direction of the bus stop as three open trucks, the type used to transport soldiers, roared by them and came to a stop outside a small narrow hotel. The door to the café opposite opened and a grey-haired woman beckoned to them.

‘Get off the street!’

They bundled inside and she locked the door behind them, wiping her hands on her broad hips.

‘It’s a raid,’ the woman said.

Peering from behind the lace curtains, the three of them watched as policemen in blue Vichy uniforms jumped out of the trucks. One of them, red-faced and thick-necked, pounded on the hotel’s front door.

‘Open up! Police!’

A strained minute passed before it was opened by a terrified-looking concierge hurriedly pulling her shawl around her shoulders.

‘Monsieur, it is early .

But the woman had no chance to finish her sentence before the policeman roughly pushed her out of the way and stormed into the hotel. The others followed behind. The next moment there were shouts and the sounds of wood splintering and glass breaking.

Kristina’s eyes travelled to the top floor. A young woman in a nightdress was climbing out a window. She placed one foot on the ledge and grabbed the sill to lift herself. At first, Kristina thought she intended to hide herself from the police on the narrow balcony. Although her attempt would have been futile, Kristina mentally urged her on, wondering how secure the drainpipe was and if the woman was strong enough to inch her way down it. But it seemed she had another intention. The woman closed her eyes tightly then opened them again. After a moment’s hesitation she launched herself from the balcony. Her scream as she plummeted to the pavement below sent waves of horror through Kristina. She stared at the spot where the woman now lay, her eyes staring at the sky. Perhaps she was still alive and needed help? Kristina grabbed for the door, but Serge and the café owner pulled her back.

‘There is nothing you can do for her now,’ said the woman. Her tone was harsh, but her voice caught as she spoke. Her distress showed in her eyes.

The inhabitants of the hotel filed out, guarded on all sides by the police. The men had their hands on their heads and the women were clutching children. They were forced to clamber onto the backs of the trucks. An old man saw the body of the woman on the pavement and held his hands to his face before crying out. ‘Monsters! You are monsters!’

If Serge and the café owner hadn’t kept their hold of Kristina, she might have run out on the street and screamed curses at the police too. The misery on the faces of the captives reminded her of sheep she had seen on the back of farmers’ trucks on the way to the slaughterhouse. They sensed they were doomed but they were powerless to do anything about it. The policemen took out a blanket and rolled the dead woman up in it, her bloodied hair protruding from the end. They threw her body on the last truck, under the feet of the people on it. Their action was so callous it left Kristina trembling. It was only after the trucks rumbled away that she realised she’d clenched Serge’s arm so hard, he was bleeding through his shirt.

‘I tried to warn them,’ the café owner said, her voice low and despairing. ‘Some of them listened and left yesterday. But the others... they simply couldn’t bring themselves to believe their own countrymen would do this to them.’

Kristina was still too shocked to react but Serge was instantly curious. ‘How did you know there would be a raid?’ he asked.

The woman fumbled in her sleeve for a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. ‘I heard it on the radio.’

‘The BBC?’ Serge asked.

The woman seemed to regret her unguarded confession. She looked from Serge to Kristina uncertainly. It was illegal to listen to the BBC and she could have been thrown in prison if they decided to report her. But Serge was quick to reassure her.

‘You were brave to try to help the Jews,’ he said with an earnestness that was disarming.

The woman shrugged off the praise. ‘We must resist the Germans and we must resist the Vichy government.’

With the police and the trucks gone, the woman unlocked the door for them. But Kristina sensed her reluctance to let them leave. After witnessing such a distressing event together, a bond had formed between them.

‘I won’t open the café today,’ the woman said. ‘I only have chicory coffee to offer you, but I have some pastries that will go to waste if we don’t eat them.’

Kristina and Serge followed her through a curtain and into a small kitchen. The walls were covered in travel posters and a rack was laden with well-worn copper pots and ladles, but the cabinets and shelves were almost empty, a testament that all foodstuffs were in short supply.

‘What’s in there?’ she asked Serge, pointing to his suitcase.

‘A canvas,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘I sell paintings.’

‘By who?’

Serge smiled kindly. ‘Modigliani.’

The woman’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Modigliani! Why, he came here often when he was in Nice!’ The ice broken, she nudged Serge with her elbow. ‘I can tell you some stories. My name is Moira, by the way.’

Kristina and Serge introduced themselves and over the chicory coffee that Moira managed to make taste pleasantly nutty, and butter-less croissants, they listened to their hostess’s lively stories.

‘Modigliani wanted to paint me,’ Moira said. ‘But I always refused. He was talented but cruel to his models.’

Serge, usually reluctant to gossip, agreed with her. ‘I’ll never forgive his treatment of Jeanne Hébuterne,’ he said, his brow furrowed. ‘She was a loyal and kind woman. I have... I had one of her paintings in my possession. She was a very talented expressionist.’

As Kristina listened to Moira and Serge speak, her mind calmed, although the sadness from what she had witnessed remained. She rested her head on Serge’s shoulder and shut her eyes, hoping when she opened them again it would be in a different world where young women didn’t leap to their deaths to save themselves from worse horrors.

When it was time to leave, Moira went into the pantry and returned with a handful of pamphlets with the words ‘Help the Jews’ printed on them.

‘Put them in your suitcase,’ she told Serge. ‘Leave them on bus seats and put them in letterboxes.’

Kristina wasn’t quite sure if she was ready to be part of the Resistance. She had her mother and daughters to think about. But Serge accepted the pamphlets and put them in his suitcase.

‘Come back soon,’ Moira said as she waved them goodbye. ‘The more of us who resist, the sooner the Germans will go.’

It was a sad and sombre town they walked through after wishing Moira goodbye. The streets were empty except for a few people scurrying in and out of doorways like nervous mice. The patrons of a restaurant they passed looked dazed. There was no friendly chatter between diners or clinking of glasses. The atmosphere was foreboding and Kristina and Serge spoke in muted tones.

‘We’ll leave the collector for another day,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we should get the bus back either. It could be commandeered by the police.’

The journey on foot back to Mont Boron seemed to take longer than usual. Kristina’s throat was parched, and her heels were raw from her shoes rubbing against them. Serge took her arm to help her up the hill. When they finally reached the villa, Yelena was standing at the gate, biting her thumbnail and looking on the verge of tears.

‘I was beginning to think something had happened to you,’ she said, her voice brittle with nerves. ‘Come inside, quickly.’

‘I’m sorry we’re late. There was a raid in the town,’ Kristina told her.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘That’s why I was so worried.’

But Kristina sensed her mother’s distress was caused by more than their late return. If she hadn’t heard Nadia and Ginette playing in the garden together, she would have panicked that something had happened to them.

‘Mama, what is it?’ she asked. ‘You seem in a state.’

‘The police raided the soup kitchen,’ she said. ‘It was terrible.’ She lowered her eyes and her nostrils quivered slightly.

‘Oh,’ Kristina said, taking her hand and squeezing it. She’d forgotten it was Yelena’s day at the kitchen.

‘Come upstairs, there is something I need to show the both of you,’ she said.

Yelena led them up the stairs to Mikhail’s observatory. With so much on their hands with no servants, Kristina couldn’t remember the last time any of them had gone there.

Yelena took a key from her pocket. Since when did she lock the room? She pushed open the door, and in the fading daylight, Kristina saw a dozen faces staring back at them. There were three women and one old man, but the rest were small children – the youngest, a girl, looked to be no more than two years old. They were so pale and bedraggled that for an odd moment, she thought she was staring at ghosts.

‘One of the policemen turned a blind eye when I got these people out the back door,’ Yelena said.

The group wore the same beaten expressions as the people Kristina had seen taken away on the trucks. Their humanity had been stripped from them. Yelena ushered Kristina and Serge into the room and picked up the little girl. She buried her face into Yelena’s neck, terrified.

‘Her mother thrust her into my arms and begged me to take care of her,’ Yelena said. ‘How could I refuse?’ She nodded towards the people in the room. ‘We must help them.’

Kristina balled her hands in her pockets and thought of Ginette and Nadia downstairs, barely able to conceive the strength – and desperation – of the woman who had entrusted her child to a stranger.

‘It would be inhumane not to help these people,’ agreed Serge, a note of determination in his voice. ‘We have to help.’

Kristina’s attention settled on a young woman who resembled her long-lost friend, Madeleine. She sat with her hands between her knees, prayer-like, and rocked back and forth. The bushy-eyebrowed old man next to her looked the same age as Kristina’s father would have been if he was still alive. The others stared at her with pleading expressions, as if one word from her could save or condemn them.

She thought of the pamphlets Moira had thrust on them earlier, and her reluctance to take them. The horror was impossible to ignore any longer, no matter how frightened she felt. The stinging truth of it was etched on the faces of the people in front of her and it was not going to go away without action.

She looked at Serge then her mother, and nodded. They were part of the Resistance now. There would be no turning back.