And it was happening to her – just like in the book.
Later, many years later, Marie-Claire was to look back to that moment of euphoria and pinpoint it as the trigger for the whole disaster. But that was after the war.
Right now, in Jacques’ arms, her heart soared, opened up and folded around him.
One
Juliette
1940 Alsace, France
They came at dawn. She heard them through closed windows: the perfect rhythmic thud of marching boots, the clip-clop of horses’ hooves, sinister against the early-morning stillness. Sounds that chilled the soul.
Juliette leapt from her bed to fling open her upstairs bedroom window. She leaned on the sill to watch. Across the street, up and down, other windows in other houses opened, other men and women, and some children, watched silently. The watchers glanced at each other and some gave slight waves to their neighbours, but mostly they simply watched the seemingly endless column of goose-stepping Germans, slate-grey-coated soldiers in perfect lockstep, left-right, left-right, arms stiffly swinging, rifles on shoulders. An occasional officer on horseback. A break in the column as a tank rolled in, or a jeep. Slow-moving motorcycles ridden by helmeted soldiers, escorting a long black car like a hearse, its windows blackened.
Juliette jumped as she felt a hand on her back, but it was only Grandma Hélène, still in her nightdress, like Juliette. She moved aside to make room. No words spoken. Arms around waists, they only watched.
And then the voice, strident through the megaphone, in German and in French: ‘Citizens of Colmar. Your city is now under the jurisdiction of the German National Socialist Government. When leaving your homes, you must carry identification papers with you at all times. Your curfew starts at 8 p.m. and ends at 5 a.m.…’ And so on and so forth.
Finally, they were gone. The empty street repossessed its stolen dawn silence. Juliette closed the window and turned to Grandma. They said nothing, not out loud. There was no need. Their eyes, locked together, said all that needed to be said, wordlessly. Then as if driven by a single impulse they fell forward, clasped each other, stood in shocked embrace for a few seconds before pulling apart, to stand, holding hands, gazing again at each other. Finally, it was Juliette who broke the mute wall of shock.
‘You must leave, Grandma,’ she said. ‘Immediately. You cannot stay here.’
‘No. I will not be chased from my home. I will not be driven away by a pack of thugs.’
‘Grandma. Be sensible. Strasbourg was evacuated; now it’s Colmar’s turn. This is no time for pride. I can’t stay with you, you know that, and you can’t stay alone. I’ll help you pack. I’ll take you to Papa. You must stay with him until it’s safe to return home.’
‘It’s sweet of you to worry, chérie, but completely unnecessary. If anyone is in danger it is you: a young, beautiful girl. They won’t harm an old woman. It is you who must go.’
‘Grandma! You know I am leaving anyway, back to university. But I’m not going to leave you here alone. I just won’t. Papa will agree with me. I’m going to get dressed now and run out as soon as the post office opens and ring Auntie Margaux. She’ll inform him and come and get you.’
Hélène tried to protest again, but Juliette, normally a soft-spoken, willingly compliant girl who went out of her way to avoid conflict or argument, was adamant, the inner steel that she kept concealed, ready for emergencies, finally emerging full-blown to assert itself, to stand tall at full height. It was Grandma’s turn for compliance in a reversal of roles.
Juliette and her grandmother enjoyed an unusually close relationship. When Juliette’s mother died in childbirth it had been Hélène who had dropped everything and rushed, husband in tow, to her son’s cottage nestled within the hillside vineyards near Ribeauvillé to take over the care of the baby. When Juliette came of school age, the three of them moved back to the family home in Colmar, this very house in which Hélène herself had grown up, leaving Juliette’s older brother, Jacques, with his father, the winemaker Maxence Dolch.
Thus, the Dolch family was split into two branches: Juliette and her grandparents, Jacques and Maxence, with Juliette flitting between the two, spending all her holidays with her father and term-time with her grandparents. She might call Hélène Grandma, but for all practical purposes she was a mother, a real mother. Grandpa had died two years previously, in 1938, and now it was just the two of them. With Juliette growing into maturity, her role was changing, and more and more her responsibility for her grandmother’s well-being came into focus. Grandma may have managed well on her own in this rather grand Colmar house, but now, with Nazis swarming through the town, it was unthinkable.
As soon as she had bathed, dressed and had her morning coffee, Juliette emerged into the street, identification documents tucked into the pocket of her jacket. The post office was a fifteen-minute walk away; it necessitated passing the town hall. It was now mid-morning, but already its façade had changed. Huge long banners hung from the upstairs window of the building: a black swastika on a white circle against a red background. Three jeeps were parked outside the building, all with swastika signs pasted onto the doors. Soldiers, proudly bearing swastika armbands, marched briskly in and out of the main entrance. Already they owned the place. Soldiers everywhere in the town square, pasting swastika posters to lamp posts.
She stopped and stared. Marie-Claire worked here, at the Mairie. Marie-Claire, the daughter of her father’s employer, Margaux Gauthier-Laroche. She and Jacques had grown up with the Gauthier children; Marie-Claire, and even more so Victoire, the youngest, were as sisters to her.
Bile rose in her throat. Where was Marie-Claire? Was she safe? And the mayor, a good friend of her grandmother – where was he? All the Mairie employees? Across the square she spotted Madame Bélanger, another member of Hélène’s wide circle of Colmar friends. She dashed across the square.
‘Bonjour, Madame! How are you?’
‘I am not well, chérie, who could be well on a day like today? This cursed war has finally come to Colmar.’
‘Yes – we watched them marching in, Grandma and I. It was shocking.’
‘I never thought I’d witness a day like today. Not after the last war. I thought humanity had learned its final lesson. I was wrong.’
‘Yes, but, Madame, do you know what happened, here at the Mairie? My friend Marie-Claire works here, and…’
But Madame Bélanger was already shaking her head.
‘The Nazis took possession of it even before the soldiers marched in. I don’t know how they got inside but they did. They simply swarmed through the place and owned it. Later when the employees began to arrive, one by one, they were sent home. They were told to return tomorrow. I know this because my nephew also works there. They will all lose their jobs, including your Marie-Claire. Colmar will now be a town administrated by Nazis. You can see how they have already decorated it in their stirring colours.’
She gestured towards the building, not looking.
‘I can’t even bear to look at it. Our beloved Mairie, festooned in swastikas. It’s a tragedy. So Marie-Claire will have returned home?’