AllFreeNovel
Share Us
BATIGNOLLES, PARIS, 1942
In just two weeks the new restaurant would open its doors. The hand-painted sign, reading ‘Luberon’, sparkled in the late-summer sun.
Marianne and Gilbert had just returned from trawling a local brocante market where they had got an excellent deal on some old restaurant’s pots and pans. They had been about to leave when Gilbert spotted several funny posters. They were illustrations of cats who were cooking. One poster had a cat with a moustache and a chef’s hat. He started to laugh and he showed it to her.
She laughed, seeing it. ‘It’s perfect – we’ll put that in the kitchen,’ she said.
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, can you imagine the Germans’ faces when they see that?’
He’d laughed all the more.
She was hanging one of the posters up, along the front wall in the entrance, where Gilbert was sweeping the front step. She saw him stop as a pair of women outside began to whisper loudly. They wanted him to notice, so it appeared.
She heard one of them whine, ‘They say she had a special dispensation, to turn it into a restaurant.’
The other replied, ‘Yes, everyone else is starving, their businesses going under and she’s opening up – it’s little wonder how she achieved that.’
The first one sniffed. ‘Shameful, shameful. And the fact that she’s going to serve provincial fare, here, it’s like a double insult.’
Marianne tuned them out, focusing only on Gilbert, whose fists were balling at his sides. But she overheard:
‘Oh yes. She should have just saved herself the trouble and called it The Happy Collaborator.’
The two laughed, and then finally walked on.
Marianne could have laughed herself – it was exactly what she needed everyone to think if this was going to work.
Gilbert, however, was another matter. She’d come to care for the boy over the past few weeks. He was such a hard worker, and the fact that they were almost ready to open their doors was largely thanks to him. She really didn’t want him to get hurt in the process of working here. Sometimes, if she did feel any guilt at all, it was about him, what she might be putting him through.
As Gilbert threw his broom onto the floor and stepped onto the street, his mission was quite clear: to give those women a piece of his mind. Marianne grabbed his hand to stop him.
She smiled at him. ‘It’s not worth it, Gilbert. We need them to come around – and you can’t force that.’
‘But how can they “come around” if they don’t understand?’ he said with a frown, his freckles disappearing as his face turned red in annoyance.
‘They will, just give it time – something like this,’ she said, pointing to the building behind her, ‘well, it’s not an easy thing to just accept overnight. Not when everyone is facing such hardship. It looks suspicious, and we need to acknowledge that. Our job is to win their trust, slowly. We need patience,’ she said, with a wink.
Then she frowned. ‘You look tired, Gilbert. Your eyes have big circles underneath them – when was the last time you took a break?’ She knew his mother had been ill and that had been a big worry for him.
He shrugged, then gave her a crooked smile. ‘When was the last time you did?’
‘Touché. Tell you what – help me paint the last two skirting boards, and then we’ll have some coffee and maybe even an early day? Sound good?’
‘If you want?’
Just then, the sound of booted feet beat a tattoo, and involuntarily he flinched knowing it belonged to approaching Germans. They turned slowly to find a group of Nazi officers marching towards them.
Marianne’s throat turned dry. She would never get used to seeing Otto Busch coming towards her, even though he’d been making a point of stopping off almost every day since they’d begun work on making the shop presentable.
She knew that she had to work on this too, on being around him. On trying to pretend that being near him was the most wonderful part of her day. Sebastien had told her much the same thing when she’d seen him last, at the Saturday farmer’s market, where he’d bagged her a tomato and an onion, his disguise being that of a greengrocer.
After they’d had a quick catch-up, and he’d commented on how tired she looked, his eyes had turned sympathetic. ‘Are you up for this, Marianne? It’s not too late to back out.’
She blinked. ‘It is for me.’
He’d raised a black brow. ‘OK. But you know how to make this work – to ensure that they want to be there as often as possible. You’ll have to make him fall for you, you know that, right?’
