10.
August 1942
Marie was enormously cheered by Barbara’s arrival. First, it meant that someone in the world outside cared about France and was sending help. That mattered and allowed one to hope that their struggles were not in vain, that liberation would come eventually, whether Marie would be alive to see it or not.
But a big part of it was Barbara herself. Marie had never imagined that a woman could be so strong, so competent, that she could jump from an airplane into a place where every day she faced capture and death, or things worse than death. Her courage gave Marie courage.
And, though she showed as much courage and skill as any man, there could be no doubt that Barbara was a woman. That first night when Barbara had stripped down to her bra and panties, Marie couldn’t help noticing her well-formed figure, and when she had put on her garters and fashionable summer outfit, she cut a figure that even the people in Paris before the war would have looked on approvingly.
Marie had watched Pierre and Alain looking at Barbara. Oh, that Alain! Marie was quite disgusted with him. First he had put Barbara down, angry that London had sent a mere woman to do what he saw as a man’s job. But then he looked at her with such undisguised lust.
Marie had found excuses the few times Alain had wanted to meet her in one apartment or another for sex. And the excuses weren’t hard to find now, because Barbara trusted and believed in her and wanted her along on the missions they would carry out.
The missions were more frequent and more urgent than they had been. The Vichy government was getting worse and worse, stripping Jews of their citizenship on ridiculous pretenses and handing them over to the Germans. Some, like Robert and his parents, had arrived in France recently, from Germany or from countries in the east, but others had been French for generations.
So, when they could, the Resistance would try to get them to safety in Switzerland. Using a small part of the money Barbara had brought from England, the Resistance bought an old Citroën camionette. One of the men, who had a small auto shop, outfitted it with a false bottom in which three or four people could fit. Of course, a thorough search would find the modification, but it wasn’t obvious from a cursory inspection from outside.
Barbara would often drive-Marie had never learned how, since her family hadn’t been able to afford a car-very fast, or so it seemed to Marie. They would skirt the southern edge of les Dombes, where Barbara had landed, past the beautiful medieval village of Pérouges and then follow the Route Nationale towards Geneva.
Sometimes, they would try to cross near Geneva, from one of the many small towns on the French side. When they got near the border, they would hide the van in some bushes and escort their passengers through pine forests, routes Barbara had learned from her SOE training, until they were within sight of the first house that flew the red flag with white cross.
There, they would hug their charges and Barbara would hand them the address and telephone of the SOE contact in Bern, along with enough Swiss Francs to make their way to the capital, then they would make their way back to the van.
Other times they would continue past Geneva following the southern, French side of Lac Léman until the road began to climb into one of the passes through the Alps. They would leave their passengers to make their way, hopefully being able to duck behind one of the large boulders that lined the road if a patrol passed by.
They knew there were many patrols along the border, but they counted on the corruption and incompetence of everyone associated with Vichy. One time they came around a bend on their way back from the border and saw a roadblock up ahead. “Open the top two buttons of your blouse,” Barbara had told Marie as she undid the buttons on her own blouse.
They pulled up to the roadblock, which was manned by three policemen, two of whom were sitting in the shade of a large tree by the side of the road drinking beer to stay cool against the afternoon sun.
Barbara smiled at the one standing beside the makeshift barrier and handed him her passport and Marie’s Carte d’Identité Nationale. The man pretended to look at them, though his eyes seemed to be focused down Barbara’s blouse.
“Where are you ladies going?”
“We’re on our way to Annecy from Lyon and we made a wrong turn,” she said sweetly in her perfect Swiss French.
“What are you doing there?” he asked.
“My French assistant and I have an appointment to show watches to a jeweler there,” Barbara answered. “We Swiss make the best watches in the world, you know.”
The cop looked like he knew very little. He shrugged.
Barbara reached into her purse and extracted a small blue velvet drawstring bag, which she had brought with her from England, sewn into the lining of her leather jacket. She loosened the string and showed him the watches inside. She pulled one out, a Piaget. Marie couldn’t even imagine how much that would cost-certainly more than she earned in a year at the bank.
“Look, it’s the exact time down to the second.” He glanced at his own watch and shrugged.
“Which jeweler are you visiting?”
“Monsieur Moulin in his shop on the rue de la Gare,” Barbara said. Marie had no idea if such a person and such a store existed, but it seemed to satisfy him. And, of course, if he were to check later with the store, M. Moulin would be happy to say that he had been very happy to see that Swiss woman with the latest watches.
But of course, he wouldn’t. What he would do was join his two comrades in the shade and have a nice cold beer and make up stories about what they would do with those two very pretty ladies in that camionette.
“Have a safe drive back to Lyon,” he told them, enlisting the help of his two seated comrades to move the barrier. Marie blew the men a kiss as they started up and she and Barbara laughed all the way back to Lyon.
It was a few days after that incident, on the 19th of August, that Marie heard on the BBC that Canadian troops had landed at Dieppe, along the Channel coast. What a glorious day! The liberation had arrived! She imagined hundreds of thousands of men, American, British, Canadian, Free French pouring ashore, heading to Paris, driving the Nazis back to Germany or straight to Hell.
She ran to tell Barbara. “Did you know about this?” she asked her.
“Of course not. London would keep something like this top secret. It’s good news, of course. At least I hope so.”
“You think maybe it isn’t?”
“I don’t know. I know the German defenses along the coast are very strong.” That night they listened to Vichy radio, which said the attack had been completely repulsed with many thousands of dead among the attackers. But of course that was propaganda, licking the boots of the Germans.
However, slowly, over the next day, the reports from the BBC sounded worse and worse. It became clear that the attack had failed, and failed miserably. The Liberation might come some day, but not today.
Marie was devastated. She began weeping for France and for all those dead boys, wasted in such a disaster. Barbara put her arm around her and hugged her tight to try to console her. “It will happen, Marie. I know it. We must keep working.”
“You are so strong and brave, Barbara, but I feel helpless,” Marie said.
“No, Marie, you are strong and brave too, more than you know.”
Marie didn’t know why she did it, but, without thinking, she kissed Barbara on the lips and whispered, “I love you.”
Barbara took Marie’s face in her hands. “You mean that, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Have you ever been with a woman?” Barbara asked.
Marie looked a bit shocked. “You mean like with a man?”
“Yes.”
Marie shook her head. “No, never. Have you?”
Barbara smiled. “A few times. It was nice. I like men, but I like women, too.”
“And when you are with a woman, you do…”
“The same things as with a man,” Barbara replied. “Well, not exactly the same, of course, but something like..”
“Show me!” Marie said.
“Do you mean that?”
“Yes, yes I do!”
If you had asked Marie before the war and the Resistance and British agents falling out of the sky, whether she would ever find herself lying naked on a mattress on the floor with another woman, also naked, she would have probably turned red and shouted “Mais, non! Impossible!” and very possibly have slapped your face.
But she would never have imagined herself risking her life against powerful forces, and, yet, here she was. Following such a course of action can’t help but have an effect on a person. And when the woman is someone you admire for their bravery and skill given to that same cause, it is perhaps not so surprising that there would be feelings.
So, when Barbara kissed Marie and placed her right hand on Marie’s left breast, it felt right. And when she bowed her head and took the nipple into her mouth, it felt even more right. And when she laid Marie on her back and traced down her stomach with her tongue, it couldn’t have felt more right.
When Barbara slowly moved lower and reached that spot between Marie’s thighs, Marie cried out. She had, a few times, experienced some strong feelings in her loins with Robert, though not with Alain, and the sense of daring and transgression she felt from feeling those same things with a woman was powerful.
It felt so good that Marie couldn’t move, could barely even breathe. Every muscle in her body was tense as the excitement built.
Barbara’s lips and tongue continued their gentle yet insistent stimulation until Marie felt her head swimming, like she might pass out, pleasure rushing up and down her body in waves. Finally, she collapsed, limp onto the mattress.
Barbara slid up Marie’s sweat-sheened body, their breasts sliding against each other and kissed her. “You see, women can do that too,” she told Marie, laughing.
“Do you think even I could do that?” Marie asked, her eyes twinkling.
“I think so, but perhaps we should see,” Barbara said. And with a little help from the older woman, her mentor in this, as in spycraft-“Lower, Marie, yes, that’s good, oh, right there…”- Marie found that, yes, she could indeed.
