Her Darkest Hour: Beautiful and heartbreaking World War 2 historical fiction Read online

  Her Darkest Hour

  Beautiful and heartbreaking World War 2 historical fiction

  Sharon Maas

  Books by Sharon Maas

  Her Darkest Hour

  The Violin Maker’s Daughter

  The Soldier’s Girl

  The Orphan of India

  The Lost Daughter of India

  Of Marriageable Age

  * * *

  THE QUINT CHRONICLES

  The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q

  The Secret Life of Winnie Cox

  The Sugar Planter’s Daughter

  The Girl from the Sugar Plantation

  Available in Audio

  The Violin Maker's Daughter (Available in the UK and in the US)

  The Lost Daughter of India (Available in the UK and in the US)

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Epilogue

  Hear More from Sharon Maas

  Books by Sharon Maas

  A Letter from Sharon

  Historial Notes

  Of Marriageable Age

  The Lost Daughter of India

  The Orphan of India

  The Soldier’s Girl

  The Violin Maker’s Daughter

  The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q

  The Secret Life of Winnie Cox

  The Sugar Planter’s Daughter

  The Girl from the Sugar Plantation

  Acknowledgements

  *

  Prologue

  Christmas Day, 1933. Château Gauthier, Alsace

  Marie-Claire knew the precise moment she fell in love with Jacques Dolch. They were both fourteen, she slightly older. It had been snowing all night, and a soft thick blanket of white covered the undulating hills around the chateau. She had risen early: the sun had just made its full and glorious appearance above the horizon, flinging a cloak of golden light over the land, and everything was sparkling and pure, as if the world was alive with a silent joyous song, so that she, too, felt sparkling and pure and full of joy. Village rooftops, just visible in a cleft between the hills below, and the meadows and rows of vines that combed the hills, all glistened as if with a million tiny diamonds; and the branches of the bare trees, silhouetted against the brilliant blue sky, were all etched in white; and life was whole and full of splendour. She opened the front door to all this, laughed out loud with glee and stepped forward, into the untouched snow.

  She loved the sound of thick, pristine snow crunching beneath her boots. She loved being the first to leave footprints in the virgin whiteness, breaking the deep silence of a winter morning. She welcomed the new day with a little dance of joy, and then she hurried back inside, summoned back by the book the Christkindl had brought her last night. She had spent most of the night reading, and it was pulling her back with the strength of a mighty magnet. It was a delicious love story, just the kind of book to wrap itself around her and sweep her away to a faraway world, a world of ballrooms and beautiful dresses – and, of course, of heroines swept off their feet by charming and handsome swains.

  Maman had already lit the poêle en faїence, or Kachelowa, as they called it here in Alsace, the wood-burning stove that provided heat for the entire ground floor, and the salon was filled with a delicious warmth, the kind of saturating warmth that sank into your being when you came in from a crisply cold day, the kind of cosy warmth that made you want to do nothing more than curl up with a good book. Marie-Claire was the reader in the family, and Maman had delivered gold with this particular book. She couldn’t wait to get back to it.

  And so, curled up in the massive armchair just next to the Kachelowa, was where Jacques found her hours later. She had even skipped breakfast, so absorbed had she been in the story.

  ‘Marie-Claire! You’re wasting the morning away! Come on out – we’re going to have a snow-fight, and we need one more person to even up the teams. It’s boys against girls!’

  He made to grab her book, but she pulled it away just in time.

  ‘Oh, Jacques, no! Go away! You really are a nuisance!’

  Jacques was not a reader, so he could never understand. Nobody understood. In her family, they were all energetic, outdoorsy people, and nobody knew the magic of a good book. The nearest anyone came to understanding was Juliette, Jacques’ sister, who also read, but a different kind of book: factual books, books about things, not people. And there was still hope for Victoire, her little sister and the youngest in the family, who was slowly learning; Marie-Claire had given her a novel suitable for seven-year-olds last night, and she had seemed genuinely pleased.

  Jacques and Juliette Dolch were not only their best friends and nearest neighbours: their mother had died at Juliette’s birth, and their own maman had played the mother role all their lives. Thus, they were like siblings to the four Gauthier children, and, as always, had celebrated Christmas with them last night. Their father, Maxence Dolch, was a good friend of their mother, as well as her winemaker, and the six children were in and out of each other’s homes. She had never thought of Jacques as anything but a brother, along with her own two brothers, Leon and Lucien. A quite annoying brother at that. Like now. He would not take no for an answer.

  ‘Come on, don’t be a boring spoilsport!’ He grabbed at the book again, and this time he was able to pull it from her hands and slam it shut, and hold it above his head, high up, so that she, considerably shorter than him, could not reach it, no matter how she jumped and tried to grab it back.

  ‘Now you’ve gone and lost my page! Jacques Dolch, I hate you!’

  ‘No you don’t. You know it’ll be fun once you get out. The book won’t run away, Marie-Claire. Come on! It’s beautiful outside. Look, here’s your book. Sorry I lost your page.’

  He handed it back to her. She took it, and leafed through it looking for the place she’d left off and, finding it, settled back into her comfy chair.

  ‘You’re really going to spend all morning there?’

  ‘Yes, of course, and what’s it to you?’

  Jacques shrugged. ‘I just thought y
ou might enjoy being with us, that’s all. But if you’re quite sure…’

  ‘Yes, I am, thank you very much.’

  She drew up her legs and, curled into a ball, began to read again, ignoring Jacques, who shrugged, turned and walked towards the door.

  Marie-Claire read a few more paragraphs but discovered that she couldn’t get back into the flow of events. Jacques had made her lose not only her place in the book but her place in the story. She was out of it, and couldn’t get back in.

  In the end she gave up. She placed the piece of red silk ribbon that served as a bookmark between the pages, closed the book, stood up and stretched. She might as well go outside now.

  The snow-fight on the meadow in front of the chateau was in full swing, all the children laughing as they zigzagged around the field, pitching hastily formed lumps of packed snow at each other. Marie-Claire bent down, picked up a lump of snow in her mittened hands, packed it into a ball and charged at Jacques, who had to be punished for the unforgivable crime of pulling her out of her book. Her missile hit him smack in the face; he laughed out loud and soon it was a one-on-one battle between the two of them.

  And then it was just as Jacques had said, girls against boys, for Leon and Lucien came to Jacques’ rescue, and Juliette and Victoire rushed in to defend Marie-Claire, and the clamour of laughter and screams was enough to bring the grown-ups – Maman, and Tante Sophie, outside, to stand before the chateau’s door and laugh with the children, egging on the girls, who seemed so frightfully disadvantaged by the sheer size and strength of the boys.

  And then, disaster. Marie-Claire, twisting around to avoid a particularly large snowball fired by Jacques, fell and, when she struggled to get back on her feet, cried out in pain. Maman, though wearing only slippers on her feet, rushed forward to help.

  ‘I can’t, Maman, I can’t walk!’ whimpered Marie-Claire as Maman tried to help her to her feet. ‘I think it’s broken!’

  ‘Nonsense! It’s probably just a sprain. Nothing a bit of rest and an ice pack won’t heal. Come on, arm around my shoulder. You can limp back.’

  Standing now on one leg, Marie-Claire gave a little hop, one arm around Maman’s neck, but lost her balance and fell again.

  ‘Let’s make this easy,’ said Jacques.

  He bent over and scooped Marie-Claire into his arms as if she were a child of three rather than a quite solid fourteen-year-old. Holding her aloft, he marched across the field to the front door. ‘I’m not too heavy?’ Marie-Claire asked.

  ‘You’re light as a feather!’ Jacques replied, and grinned down at her.

  He had lost his cap during the fight and a lock of dark hair hung forward over his eyes, and his grin was cheeky and his eyes sparkled in a way she had never noticed before; and being carried like this, by a boy as handsome and, yes, as charming, as Jacques – well, it was something very special indeed, a pivotal moment in her life. Only this morning, in the very book she was reading, something like this had happened to the heroine, a girl not much older than she herself, and even with a name, Marianne, similar to her own. And the girl had fallen head over heels in love, and it was the most delightful and moving scene in the book up to now.

  And it was happening to her – just like in the book.

  Later, many years later, Marie-Claire was to look back to that moment of euphoria and pinpoint it as the trigger for the whole disaster. But that was after the war.

  Right now, in Jacques’ arms, her heart soared, opened up and folded around him.

  One

  Juliette

  1940 Alsace, France

  They came at dawn. She heard them through closed windows: the perfect rhythmic thud of marching boots, the clip-clop of horses’ hooves, sinister against the early-morning stillness. Sounds that chilled the soul.

  Juliette leapt from her bed to fling open her upstairs bedroom window. She leaned on the sill to watch. Across the street, up and down, other windows in other houses opened, other men and women, and some children, watched silently. The watchers glanced at each other and some gave slight waves to their neighbours, but mostly they simply watched the seemingly endless column of goose-stepping Germans, slate-grey-coated soldiers in perfect lockstep, left-right, left-right, arms stiffly swinging, rifles on shoulders. An occasional officer on horseback. A break in the column as a tank rolled in, or a jeep. Slow-moving motorcycles ridden by helmeted soldiers, escorting a long black car like a hearse, its windows blackened.

  Juliette jumped as she felt a hand on her back, but it was only Grandma Hélène, still in her nightdress, like Juliette. She moved aside to make room. No words spoken. Arms around waists, they only watched.

  And then the voice, strident through the megaphone, in German and in French: ‘Citizens of Colmar. Your city is now under the jurisdiction of the German National Socialist Government. When leaving your homes, you must carry identification papers with you at all times. Your curfew starts at 8 p.m. and ends at 5 a.m.…’ And so on and so forth.

  Finally, they were gone. The empty street repossessed its stolen dawn silence. Juliette closed the window and turned to Grandma. They said nothing, not out loud. There was no need. Their eyes, locked together, said all that needed to be said, wordlessly. Then as if driven by a single impulse they fell forward, clasped each other, stood in shocked embrace for a few seconds before pulling apart, to stand, holding hands, gazing again at each other. Finally, it was Juliette who broke the mute wall of shock.

  ‘You must leave, Grandma,’ she said. ‘Immediately. You cannot stay here.’

  ‘No. I will not be chased from my home. I will not be driven away by a pack of thugs.’

  ‘Grandma. Be sensible. Strasbourg was evacuated; now it’s Colmar’s turn. This is no time for pride. I can’t stay with you, you know that, and you can’t stay alone. I’ll help you pack. I’ll take you to Papa. You must stay with him until it’s safe to return home.’

  ‘It’s sweet of you to worry, chérie, but completely unnecessary. If anyone is in danger it is you: a young, beautiful girl. They won’t harm an old woman. It is you who must go.’

  ‘Grandma! You know I am leaving anyway, back to university. But I’m not going to leave you here alone. I just won’t. Papa will agree with me. I’m going to get dressed now and run out as soon as the post office opens and ring Auntie Margaux. She’ll inform him and come and get you.’

  Hélène tried to protest again, but Juliette, normally a soft-spoken, willingly compliant girl who went out of her way to avoid conflict or argument, was adamant, the inner steel that she kept concealed, ready for emergencies, finally emerging full-blown to assert itself, to stand tall at full height. It was Grandma’s turn for compliance in a reversal of roles.

  Juliette and her grandmother enjoyed an unusually close relationship. When Juliette’s mother died in childbirth it had been Hélène who had dropped everything and rushed, husband in tow, to her son’s cottage nestled within the hillside vineyards near Ribeauvillé to take over the care of the baby. When Juliette came of school age, the three of them moved back to the family home in Colmar, this very house in which Hélène herself had grown up, leaving Juliette’s older brother, Jacques, with his father, the winemaker Maxence Dolch.

  Thus, the Dolch family was split into two branches: Juliette and her grandparents, Jacques and Maxence, with Juliette flitting between the two, spending all her holidays with her father and term-time with her grandparents. She might call Hélène Grandma, but for all practical purposes she was a mother, a real mother. Grandpa had died two years previously, in 1938, and now it was just the two of them. With Juliette growing into maturity, her role was changing, and more and more her responsibility for her grandmother’s well-being came into focus. Grandma may have managed well on her own in this rather grand Colmar house, but now, with Nazis swarming through the town, it was unthinkable.

  As soon as she had bathed, dressed and had her morning coffee, Juliette emerged into the street, identification documents tucked into the pocket of her jack
et. The post office was a fifteen-minute walk away; it necessitated passing the town hall. It was now mid-morning, but already its façade had changed. Huge long banners hung from the upstairs window of the building: a black swastika on a white circle against a red background. Three jeeps were parked outside the building, all with swastika signs pasted onto the doors. Soldiers, proudly bearing swastika armbands, marched briskly in and out of the main entrance. Already they owned the place. Soldiers everywhere in the town square, pasting swastika posters to lamp posts.

  She stopped and stared. Marie-Claire worked here, at the Mairie. Marie-Claire, the daughter of her father’s employer, Margaux Gauthier-Laroche. She and Jacques had grown up with the Gauthier children; Marie-Claire, and even more so Victoire, the youngest, were as sisters to her.

  Bile rose in her throat. Where was Marie-Claire? Was she safe? And the mayor, a good friend of her grandmother – where was he? All the Mairie employees? Across the square she spotted Madame Bélanger, another member of Hélène’s wide circle of Colmar friends. She dashed across the square.