the words, and the flattened vowels of his English accent made both women wince.
One thing was certain: she would have to do the talking if they were stopped and asked for their papers. She’d been briefed on his false identity and she knew he’d have an ID card tucked into the pocket of his coat, procured from who-knows-where, to match her story.
As they walked arm in arm through the Marais, looking like a young couple out for a few drinks to celebrate le Réveillon, she tried to make it look natural, as if he were supporting her rather than the other way around. She planned her route. She would need to try to use the Métro as far as possible to minimise his walking. At the same time, she knew she would need to avoid the busier stations like the one at the Place de la Bastille, which would be mobbed and would be more likely to have guards on duty checking papers.
She guided the man through the streets, making the occasional encouraging remark to him although she had no idea how much of what she said he could understand. But as they approached the Saint-Paul Métro station, she was horrified to see two German guards standing outside the entrance. They had stopped a man and were shouting at him to hand over his papers as he fumbled in his attaché case trying to find them.
Thinking fast, Mireille steered her ‘friend’ on to the Rue de Rivoli. It would be better to mingle with the pleasure-seeking crowds and move on to another stop on the Métro. They were jostled and pushed by a sea of merrymakers and the man gasped as someone stumbled into him, the pain making his leg almost give way.
‘Hold on to me tightly,’ Mireille muttered in his ear, wrapping an arm around his waist. With any luck he would just look like another party-goer who had drunk too much Ricard, whose girlfriend was trying to get him home to bed. They staggered along like that for some way, past the Hôtel de Ville where yet more Nazis were checking papers. By now the man was sweating with the pain from his injured foot and Mireille was struggling to help him stay upright. They would just have to risk it at Châtelet, even though it was one of the busiest stations on the line. Les Halles, the wholesale market which ran close to the Métro station, was known as a hotspot for black market activity, although this usually meant that the Germans were more likely to be shopping there than checking papers. She sent up a silent prayer to anyone who might be listening that, on Christmas Eve, the soldiers would be more interested in laying their hands on a little extra steak or a few oysters than on stopping an exhausted couple who were wending their weary way home, so obviously the worse for wear.
They slipped, unnoticed, past a group of noisy soldiers who were too busy whistling and cat-calling at a group of girls dressed up for a night out on the town to pay attention to anything else. When shouting broke out and a whistle blew shrilly, Mireille almost froze in panic, but she forced herself to keep on moving, leading the man towards the staircase which led down to the platforms. Allowing herself one quick backward glance she saw that, thankfully, the target of the police’s attention was a pickpocket. In the confusion, she imagined that she heard someone calling her name, but in that crowd it could have been aimed at anyone and so she kept going, conscious of the man’s gasps of pain at each downward step.
In the dim light on the platform, his face looked greyer than ever and she was worried that he might be about to pass out. If he did, it would make them the centre of everyone’s attention and that was the last thing they wanted. She glanced up at him anxiously and he smiled at her. She smiled back, reassured. They would make it. She could see he was a fighter, this man, determined to keep going. He would do whatever it took to escape. The worst was over now. She calculated the journey . . . They just had to get on to the next train to come along, and then change to line nine, as long as the station at Rond-Point was open tonight, which would take them all the way to the