The Tiger Claw Read online

  Edmond tramped across the pasture to wait at her side, hands in his coat pockets, hat brim tipped forward, eyes on the ground, discouraging conversation. Noor pulled the winding pin on her watch and reset it to Paris time as decreed by the Germans—an hour ahead, to coincide with Berlin.

  Gilbert appeared at her side as if dropped by parachute. “Come with me.” He gave her the handbag and coat, his eyes darting left and right. Noor’s too, searching for German uniforms or anything suspicious.

  The night was warm, but nerves taut as telephone wire drew the warmth from her skin. She slipped her oilskin on.

  Two men stood waiting, guarding five bicycles. Father and son, it seemed, one too old for military duty and the other much too young. No greetings were expected or made. Gilbert pointed to a bicycle minus a crossbar, for Noor. She put her handbag in its basket and fell in line, following closely behind the father and son. Gilbert and then Edmond brought up the rear.

  They wheeled their bicycles stealthily through the moonlit woods.

  “My wife couldn’t manage for even one day with so little luggage.” Gilbert came up beside Noor and nodded at the handbag bouncing in her bicycle basket.

  Noor gave him a hesitant smile. Mindful of security rules, she said nothing.

  Gilbert whispered, “Vol de Nuit. The perfume you’re wearing—correct? The top note is there, I think. Very faint.”

  Noor shook her head, eyes on the road. Wearing perfume on a night mission would leave her signature wherever she went—the sign of an amateur.

  “What is a woman without perfume? But don’t worry, the pilot said he’ll be back in a few days with your luggage.”

  “If there’s moonlight,” Noor said. No reason to be silent, since Gilbert seemed to know.

  A few metres later he asked, “You’re the new pianiste?”

  She gave another slight smile, but said nothing.

  “A courier, then? I must know, you see, because I select the airfields and then radio London. I have orders to take you to Paris.”

  “Yes.”

  “I must know where to find so beautiful a woman again.”

  “You will be told when you need to know,” whispered Noor, somewhat archly. Beyond the excitement of clandestine danger, she was enjoying the underlying banter of their exchange. Three years in London and she had never come to understand the dry wit of English men.

  “Alors, you will want to tell people in London that you have arrived safely. So have your letters ready next week,” said Gilbert. “I’ll give them to the pilot of the next landing.”

  “And where will I find you to give you letters?” asked Noor.

  “I assure you we will meet again, and soon, mademoiselle. But in case you must send a message to someone in London about me, my code name is Gilbert. And yours?”

  “Madeleine. But to people here I am Anne-Marie Régnier.”

  The small caravan plodded on, wheeling their bicycles now side by side, now in single file. Too loud crunch of footfall on twigs, over fallen branches, roots and stones along the muddy path.

  “You speak perfect French with no accent, mademoiselle,” said Gilbert. “Where did you learn?”

  Only a Parisian would think her French was sans accent, so Gilbert was Parisian. The question was conversational, but again against the rules. SOE security precautions seemed to be ignored here, at least by Gilbert. But if she was to work with Gilbert and other resistants, she had to be accepted. She should make the first effort.

  “I once lived near Paris,” she acknowledged.

  “Aha! That explains it. Which arrondissement?”

  “No, just near Paris,” she said, still guarded.

  “Ah, the beautiful banlieue,” he said with irony. Most suburbs of Paris were dumping grounds for refuse and factory waste; they could scarcely be called beautiful.

  Gilbert now fell back and began quizzing Edmond, who responded with grunts. Noor took the opportunity to memorize local landmarks, as the SOE handbook taught, in case she needed to return this way. People and animals had left signs everywhere. Covert ones, like the glove hanging from a branch, the remains of a poacher’s fire; overt signs, like the finger-post to a disused mine she had passed a few paces back, and a grotto of the Virgin Mary, her eyes shining like jewels. In India, Hindu idols dotted the landscape like the Virgin in France. French Catholics kissed her feet just as Muslims kissed the Ka’aba, each calling the other pagan.

  A dormouse whistled and clicked in a tree hole above. Noor flipped her jacket button open, squinting in the moonlight, noting the direction of the tiny white N on the dial of her compass.

  A dog bayed faintly. Uncle Tajuddin would say it was an unclean animal, but Noor had loved dogs as a child—that is, until a dog bite followed by fourteen injections against rabies.

  The dog bayed again, sounding huge, wolf-like and far too close.

  Another twenty minutes’ walking and a road broke across the dense woods. Here the father and son whispered low au revoirs, arabesqued over their bicycle seats and rode away into the night. She imagined the two cycling home in the dark. No one was paying them to risk their lives helping British agents bring in arms.

  Gilbert mounted his cycle too, and motioned to Noor and Edmond to follow him.

  “Where are you taking us?” asked Edmond.

  Noor didn’t think he’d looked at his compass at all.

  “To the railway station. At Le Mans.”

  Noor and Edmond mounted and pedalled after him.

  Moonlit vineyards, fields and hedgerows stretched away on either side of the road, tranquil as if no war had ever disturbed them.

  The jumble of medieval buildings marking the centre of Le Mans loomed against the moonlit sky. Not a single light glinted; curfew was total. Gilbert dismounted and again walked his bicycle. Noor and Edmond did the same. At a small tool shed by a field of freshly cut wheat, they wheeled their bicycles in and closed the door. They set off, skirting the city. Within an hour Noor’s new shoes were chafing her feet.

  A glow swung to and fro in the distance—a lantern. A cheminot’s lantern. Morning mist lifted, revealing tracks flowing through a station, wagons marked SNCF on sidings and then four being coupled near the station to a small locomotive. The first two were passenger carriages. At the third wagon a gendarme stood ramrod straight, overseeing the loading of wine bottles. The fourth was being loaded with boxes marked bustes du Maréchal—busts of Maréchal Pétain, Marshal of France, hero of the Great War, and now the Frenchman who had shaken Hitler’s hand.

  “We part here,” whispered Gilbert. “Act as if we had never met.”

  Edmond gave Gilbert’s hand a quick, grave tug and touched his hat in Noor’s direction. “You first,” he said. “I’ll take the next one.”

  At the front of the station, a gendarme and a German grenadier were seated side by side at a desk beside the turnstile, a Thermos steaming between them. A quiver raced through Noor from head to toe as she approached the ticket counter.

  It’s a play. Play the part, play it well.

  She was Anne-Marie Régnier, she was from Bordeaux, she had a signed ausweiss authorizing unlimited travel. Imitation Anne-Marie would be better than any real Anne-Marie.

  “One way to Paris,” she said to the official in his little cage, passing him a counterfeit note. She looked away as if impatient, while he grumbled about mademoiselle’s not carrying exact change. A white strip licked forward to her waiting hand beneath the grille.

  She approached the turnstile for the next test.

  “Papiers?”

  Her gaze fixed on her hand, her hand offering the forged carte d’identité and the pale green ausweiss to the gendarme. Not trembling—good. Miss Atkins said women were less conspicuous operatives, unlikely to have trouble with documents. Few women had any identity papers before the war. Certainly she, Mother nor Zaib was ever issued an identity card or needed a licence to drive all the years they lived in Paris. Uncle Tajuddin never allowed Mother, Noor or Zaib to h
old a bank account either, and all women in France needed permission from a male relative.

  The gendarme bent his black cap over her papers, studying them a long time. Had he scented her fear? What if the forged papers failed to pass inspection? An oblique glance told her Gilbert had stopped at the newspaper kiosk. The gendarme finally completed his perusal and passed her papers to the German, who gave them a cursory glance, yawned and motioned her through the turnstile.

  Take a seat in the first compartment so you can jump out and run if need be.

  The compartment’s only occupant, a farmer in a jerkin, scarf knotted about his grey-stubbled neck, sat with legs crossed at the ankle, boots dribbling mud and clay onto the floor. He gazed at Noor from head to toe with frank curiosity—a young woman travelling alone, early in the morning. She clasped her hands in her lap.

  He could stare as much as he liked. Anne-Marie Régnier was accustomed to making this journey every week. Aunt Lucille was very sick and would surely die if her loving niece failed to reach her today.

  In a few moments a blank-faced Gilbert walked down the corridor past her compartment. The German soldier too mounted the train and leaned from the doorway. He gave a nod and it began chugging and clanging from the station. He passed down the corridor. Thin. Too young for a uniform. If all German soldiers looked like him, the war would be over soon. But of course they didn’t.

  Noor settled back in her seat. She had read and heard so much in England about the German presence in France, but experiencing it was another matter.

  He is the Boche; he is the enemy. Men like him guard Armand at Drancy.

  Rain slanted against the window, strengthened to fine rivulets. Clear tadpole shapes smeared a horizontal path across the glass, then dried and stilled as the sun rose. Outside, wind ruffled the tall grass by the tracks.

  A newspaper, Je Suis Partout, lay discarded on the seat beside her. A few days old. How was the German-controlled press presenting France to the French?

  The very first article she read touted the number of French prisoners of war who had joined the Pétain league—at least 80 percent, it said, in camps everywhere. A second described with breathless earnestness how many volunteers were heading to Germany, where work was plentiful. One unnamed writer preached the duty of all French women to have children. The editorial by one Robert Brasillach denounced writers for disputing the great boon of being occupied by the Germans, and issued fatwa after fatwa calling for their deaths. Along the way he mentioned that Jews who once thought themselves safe in the unoccupied zone were scattering in all directions “like poisoned rats.”

  A wave of nausea swept over Noor. Brasillach’s hatred was more elegantly and eloquently expressed than any propaganda pamphlet issued by the German Propagandastaffl. However, Brasillach had accurately assessed the situation: Armand and Madame Lydia had been in the unoccupied zone in the far south when they were arrested.

  The farmer was still staring. She lowered her head and read on.

  An anonymous article inched its way into a long diatribe alleging that POWs in Germany were being treated like kings while British barbarians kept German POWs enchained hand and foot in defiance of every treaty and international law. The accompanying sketch even showed a poor wretch manacled, a chain running from cuff to cuff, leg-ironed, chains running between his ankles and another long chain connecting the two—worse than a creature in a zoo. An insult to anyone’s intelligence! She set the paper aside, almost tossing it.

  The farmer stood up, reached for the paper and, without a word, proceeded to tear it into strips. He used each strip to wipe his muddy boots, then opened the door of the compartment and carefully placed the whole wet mass squarely in the centre of the corridor. It was difficult not to give him a conspiratorial look. The German soldier would have to exit along that corridor. The farmer took his seat again, a pleased look coming over his face.

  The journey continued in companionable silence over the plain, past the cream-painted brick stations of Beillé, Connerré, La Ferté-Bernard, Nogent-le-Rotrou, La Loupe, Courville-sur-Eure. Here the train was shunted to a siding and a long wait sorely tested Noor’s already taut nerves. Then it set off again past the cathedral of Chartres, through Maintenon and Épernon, climbing a little to Versailles Chantiers, towards Paris.

  A lump rose in Noor’s throat as the train chugged into the great hall of the Gare Montparnasse in Paris. Memories surged like desperate fish rising against the nets of time. Whenever she came to this station, she felt twelve years old again, saw herself with one hand in Mother’s, the other in Kabir’s, waving Abbajaan goodbye. Zaib must have been too young to be with them that day. Noor and Kabir thought it so very exciting that Abbajaan was leaving for Bordeaux, to board a steamer to Bombay, then a train north from Bombay to Baroda. How they had pestered Mother that they wanted to go too, especially to anywhere in India. No one knew Abbajaan was leaving forever.

  But perhaps Mother had realized.

  Noor felt her hand slip from her mother’s again, saw her rush to Abbajaan and clutch the sleeves of his black shervani as he walked down the platform. Before Noor, her mother wept and clasped her arms around Abbajaan’s neck, begging him not to leave her. He had reached up and removed her hands, lips moving in his long brown beard. Noor and Kabir could not hear, but Abbajaan must have reminded Mother of where she was, in public, in a train station. He must have reminded her she could join him at any time, and bring his children to live in India, that it was by her own choice she stayed behind. Noor and Kabir waved to Abbajaan as the train hissed farewell, then turned to comfort their mother.

  Noor’s glance flicked left and right, looking for German uniforms moving towards the train. Everything just as she remembered it. Women with hat boxes beside them, men scanning newspapers, waiting for trains. A woman with feathers in her hat pressed her cheek against an old man’s lapel, goodbyes lingering in the tears on her lashes.

  Noor’s shirt collar had dampened though the morning air was pleasantly cool.

  Pretend you never left. Pretend no one would have any reason to look for you.

  A twelve-year-old girl and a sad-looking, gangly boy of about ten stood with arms looped about each other, unaccompanied, pale as Noor and Kabir must have looked the day Abbajaan left.

  That day. Yes, Mother had known. Known Abbajaan wasn’t planning to return. She told them later that Abbajaan wanted all of them to move “home” to India. But Mother worried Abbajaan might be pressured into accepting more wives, and she didn’t want to live in seclusion under Dadijaan’s rule. When she opened the telegram announcing his death in India of pneumonia five months later, it was final, but over the years Noor realized that the moment of Mother’s abandonment took place here, at the Gare Montparnasse. Mother’s widowhood began the day Abbajaan left for Baroda in 1926, leaving her alone in Paris to look after Noor and Kabir and little Zaib, alone to tell the world of his Sufi wisdom, while he returned to the source of his music.

  Perhaps on this very platform.

  And other memories. Leaving from this station in 1927 with Mother, Kabir and Zaib to pay their respects at Abbajaan’s tomb in India, and returning home to Paris two years later. And soon after, greeting Abbajaan’s half-brother, Uncle Tajuddin, when he arrived from Baroda in 1929 to live with them and manage the school of Sufism. Uncle Tajuddin, who ran their lives after that, changing everything for Noor and Zaib. And Mother.

  The train’s bump and sway subsided. Noor stood in the carriage doorway and looked out over the crowd milling on the platform, trying to stop her pulse from racing.

  Clothes were shabby, even drab—not very different from Londoners, who in the last few years had learned to “make do and mend.” How different were they from Parisians of three years ago? Probably very different. Everyone had been altered by war. But something in the way they carried themselves was familiar.

  People seemed self-conscious, as if they were performing for an audience, eyes straight ahead. This wasn’t the normal sensual aw
areness of Parisians, but the self-censorious awareness she’d seen in Indians whenever an Englishman was present. The audience: black and feldgrey uniforms moving among the Parisians. Everywhere, French milice, German soldiers and military policemen, with their rifles, waited for trains, smoked, kept an eye on the citizenry.

  Noor dipped into her handbag, unfolded the brown beret with an attached black hairnet for her ponytail, and withdrew a pair of black kid gloves. Then she joined the crowd on the platform.

  Walk, don’t run. Down the platform. Look straight ahead, purposeful as everyone else.

  Gilbert had descended from the carriage behind hers and was making his way past her down the platform to a ticket counter. She followed, inquiring about the special line that ran between the Gare Montparnasse and Auteuil. It was not in operation; she would have to take the métro.

  As she moved away from the ticket counter, her eyes met Gilbert’s for but a second. A surreptitious wink and he was gone.

  Lose any Gestapo agent who may have followed from Le Mans.

  She went to the WC and stayed there about half an hour for safety, then exited past a ring of anti-aircraft guns. The sky had lightened to pale June blue.

  Paris looked familiar as when she and Armand met in cafés and talked for hours. Familiar, yet strange; she was alone.

  She joined a tide of pedestrians on the boulevard Raspail, up to the boulevard des Invalides. The Musée de Rodin advertised its opening hours.

  If she met any of these people, would she remember their faces? Too many.

  Avoid looking anyone in the eye.

  Walk normally. Notice everything.

  For instance, how, past the esplanade des Invalides, the afternoon sun was glancing off panes painted navy blue, that no chink of light attract the attention of Allied bombers.