her finger angrily. ‘Yves, this is not a game! All of you kids get out of there before the Germans see what you’ve done.’
‘I’ll fight the Germans!’ Yves shouted, managing to sound brave and pathetic at the same time.
Marc shook his head and spoke to Sam. ‘They’re sure to hold ’em off with fourteen bullets and two old revolvers.’
Joel had just spotted Laure’s two boys jumping around in the crowd. ‘Go home, right now,’ he ordered.
The older lad shook his head. ‘Mummy said I can stay out until she calls me,’ he said firmly. ‘Unless the Germans come.’
Joel pointed at the French flag. ‘If the Germans see that, they’ll come all right. Now run straight home before I boot the pair of you up the arse.’
A few adults had come down the hill to see what was going on and the little Peugeot’s horn blasted as kids jumped about on the driver’s seat.
‘Bloody idiots!’ a man in a vest was shouting. ‘This is a peaceful neighbourhood. Why invite trouble?’
‘Take that flag down!’ the elderly teacher repeated.
‘We’ll fight and die for Paris!’ one of the Maquis shouted. ‘We’re not scared.’
Marc looked at Sam and Joel. ‘I don’t know about you but I’m getting out of here.’
Joel spotted Laure’s boys hiding in a doorway. ‘What did I just tell you?’ he shouted, as he grabbed both boys by their wrists and started marching them uphill.
‘If this is the standard of the resistance fighters, we’re really in the shit,’ Sam said.
*
By Saturday morning the outbreaks of gunfire had spread from central Paris to the suburbs. From apartment roofs you could see French tricolour flags and bursts of gunfire erupt every ten or fifteen minutes. Henderson and Edith walked downhill to see what was going on and found the six lightly-armed Maquis had been bolstered by several Maquis colleagues and a couple of elderly locals.
As a military man, Henderson saw little point in setting yourself up to be shot inside a building that was of little strategic value. But there was a festive atmosphere amongst the Maquis and the young people hanging around in front of the municipal building. For all their foolishness, Henderson couldn’t help but feel roused by the young Frenchmen, standing under their own flag with the confidence to shoot at Germans.
Henderson was halfway back up the hill towards the apartment when he heard vehicles crossing the bridge. After four years of not being allowed to drive, it was remarkable how many resistance fighters had taken cars out of mothballs and found a few litres of illicit petrol to get them running.
The two cars speeding across the bridge had FFI painted on the doors and the lead driver blasted his horn when he saw the French flag draped off the building. The atmosphere changed a minute later when a medium-sized Panzer tank started rattling across the bridge.
Girls and younger boys poured out on to the cobbles and started running home. Henderson took cover in a doorway 50 metres up the hill, with Edith gripping his arm nervously.
‘I doubt he’ll shoot,’ Henderson said, as they were joined in their hiding spot by a pair of teenaged sisters.
‘Why?’ Edith asked.
‘No need to get this close,’ he explained. ‘Tanks can strike accurately from half a kilometre.’
But as the tank neared the end of the bridge it slowed down and swung its turret towards the municipal building. One of the Maquis hurled a rock off the building’s roof. He missed by several metres, but a few more got thrown and at least one plinked harmlessly off the side of the tank before it moved off without firing.
Henderson smiled at Edith as the tank rumbled away. ‘Told you,’ he said.
Edith laughed. ‘Your brow’s awfully sweaty for someone so confident.’
‘It’s a warm day,’ Henderson said, smiling as he stood up to start walking again.
Edith spoke more seriously as they neared the apartment. ‘If the Germans attack, are we really going to sit in our apartment and let them kill everyone?’
Henderson avoided a direct answer. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, eh?’
*
The BBC’s 7 p.m. bulletin announced that Allied troops were now within 12 kilometres of Paris. It also warned that large-scale German reinforcements were on their way, and that heavy fighting could be expected either in or around Paris in the coming days.
The Germans deliberately switched all electricity off during the BBC’s evening broadcasts, but it came back on at ten to eight, so that people with mains-only radios could listen to the news on German-controlled