The Woman on the Train by Rupert Colley Read Free Book Online Page B

this song?’ I asked on hearing something on the radio I hadn’t heard before.
    ‘Oh, it’s good this, isn’t it? It’s All or Nothing by a band called The Small Faces,’ she said, pronouncing the names in an exaggerated English accent.
    ‘Very good, Isabelle, you’d make a good English disc jockey.’
    She laughed. ‘Thank you kindly, Monsieur Conductor.’ A sudden movement of her hands knocked over the saltcellar. ‘Silly me,’ she said.
    ‘I didn’t know there was a new Kandinsk y exhibition.’
    ‘Yes, it’s got of a good review in Le Monde ,’ she said, pointing to the newspaper. ‘Did you read the paper yesterday?’
    ‘No, I never get the time,’ I said, scraping out the last of the egg.
    ‘So you wouldn’t have read about this case coming up with that woman from the war?’ she asked, wiping crumbs from her fingers.
    I stirred in an extra spoonful of sugar into my coffee. ‘What woman?’
    ‘She’s only just been found. She was a guard at Drancy, you know?’
    I spluttered on my coffee.
    ‘Are you alright?’
    ‘Yes, yes,’ I said, thumping my chest. ‘Drancy, the concentration camp?’
    ‘Yeah. A right bitch, by the sounds of it, working for the Nazis – doing their dirty work.’ She picked up her coffee bowl. ‘I hope she pays for it.’
    ‘Careful, Isabelle, we have no right to pre-judge.’
    Slowly, she placed the bowl on the table. ‘I can,’ she said in a flat voice. Her eyes changed, their brightness dissolving into something altogether darker.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    She held her breath and cast her eyes down at the tablecloth. ‘My father was sent to Drancy. He was on one of the last transports out of there to Auschwitz.’
    ‘Oh.’ I wasn’t sure how to proceed.
    ‘I’m Jewish.’
    ‘I see. I didn’t know.’
    She pulled a face. ‘So what? Does it change anything?’
    ‘No, of course not.’
    We sat in silence for a while. I wanted to ask whether her father had survived. Instead, I watched her as she made a circle of salt with her fingertip. ‘I’m twenty-three; born at the end of 1944. I never met my father.’
    ‘I’m–’
    ‘My parents were hiding out in a village up in the hills above Lyon. They were staying with good people, a whole community of farmers who wanted to protect the Jews. But it was getting more difficult. Twice, the Germans had come on searches, offering rewards to those prepared to denounce the Jews. My parents got away with it but they knew it’d be only a matter of time. And then Maman fell pregnant with me. This would have been in the last few months of the occupation, spring forty-four. They decided they had to do something before she became too, I don’t know, incapacitated. They tried to get to over the border to Switzerland. Lots of people had already gone that way. But someone denounced them, and they were arrested and sent to Drancy, where they were separated. They were kept in inhumane conditions, and beaten for no reason. The article says the camp was run by the Nazis. The French ran it at first until the Germans took over but they don’t mention that. Too ashamed, I suppose. Maman never saw Papa again. He was put on a train to Auschwitz, that much she knew. She was kept in Drancy. She always thought she’d lose me; they were all so undernourished. But she survived, and I too, as you can see, survived. I was born terribly premature. Explains, I guess, why I’ve always been so skinny.’
    ‘You’re perfect, Isabelle.’
    She smiled and reached for my hand across the table.
    ‘You’re too kind, Maestro. So you see, no one who worked at Drancy can be innocent.’ She rose from the table and fetched the newspaper. Flicking through the pages, she found the article. ‘Here it is. Her name’s Hilda Lapointe. Look at her, she looks like a right monster, don’t you think?’
    She passed the paper over the table. My mouth went dry on seeing her police mug shot. I was shocked by the intense coldness of her eyes, her thin