Seventy years later, asked whether she thought it right for a mother to jeopardize her daughter in that way, it seems clear this is a question Marie-Claude has often asked herself. She replied evenly that her mother ‘could never have been different. That was who she was.’ But she admitted that Odette herself later questioned whether it had been right, as a mother, to undertake resistance work. ‘Would it have been better if we’d had a peaceful family life in Le Lavandou, all three of us, or would living in a fixed abode in a group have hastened our departure to Auschwitz? Those were the decisions we faced.’
Odette was not good at taking orders and clashed with the formidable chief, Marie-Madeleine. Odette complained she was being given the boring jobs, however crucial, such as noting the arrival and departures of Lysander aircraft flying from England,* rather than operating from the Grand H?tel at Marseilles, which was where everything happened, not least foreigners searching for a boat or for a visa from any of the consulates. ‘She criticized me and didn’t like me,’ Odette maintained. So she left Alliance and joined a different resistance network, OCM, the Organisation Civile et Militaire. Almost immediately, she was sent to meet the charismatic leader of the Sailors’ Union in Marseilles, Pierre Ferri-Pisani, a forty-one-year-old Corsican well known as the boss of the entire port, to enlist his help in getting regular information about everything going on there. Ferri-Pisani was a self-taught anti-fascist agitator who had fought in Spain for the republican cause and, in 1940, was briefly put under house arrest by Vichy. He knew he was under surveillance and was well protected by his associates. But eventually Fabius was taken to meet him at a rendezvous in the Café des Marins. She had prepared carefully for the meeting, choosing an elegant Lanvin suit but no hat or gloves, contrary to the rules for women of good society. Her one accessory was a copy of Das Kapital by Karl Marx, which made Ferri-Pisani laugh. She was immediately struck by the man’s imposing presence, charisma and directness. Where was the money to come from to pay for information, he asked? He went away and minutes later returned with a diamond. Odette never knew the provenance but guessed it might have belonged to his wife. He asked, could she sell it anywhere for a good price? So, in early December, Odette made her way to Vichy to visit her friend and former bridesmaid Rachel Van Cleef, now known as Renée Puissant, running the Van Cleef & Arpels boutique. When Odette explained the problem, her friend gave her much more than she had expected or indeed than it was worth. Ferri-Pisani was extremely impressed with his new recruit. Before the year was out, the two had become lovers.
Eight days after this transaction, on 12 December, the body of Renée Puissant was found in the street, officially described as suicide but her death a mystery, probably caused by her increasing realization that no one in Vichy was looking out for her. For more than two years she had managed to maintain a semblance of normality in Vichy, walking along the lakeside and around the park where Pétain went for his daily constitutional with his doctor, Bernard Ménétrel. As the Vichy population swelled to 120,000 (of whom 45,000 were bureaucrats, many of them married), it must have seemed that life was safer than in Paris. Although there were still long queues for food, the prospects for selling jewellery were at least as good as they were in Paris, if not better. In Vichy people took pleasure from playing golf, bicycling and watching horseracing.
But all that changed after 11 November 1942 when German troops occupied the former free zone in response to the successful Allied landings in North Africa. Four days previously US and British forces, commanded by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, began Operation Torch, the amphibious invasion of North Africa. This was intended to ensure Allied control of the Mediterranean, a preliminary to the opening of a second front in Europe which would relieve the pressure on Russia from Axis forces. Although Vichy French forces initially resisted, they were quickly neutralized and had ceased armed resistance by 11 November. Admiral Darlan, formerly Vichy’s deputy leader and one of Pétain’s closest advisers, defected to the Allies and, as he was in North Africa at the time, ordered French forces there to join the Allies. To prevent the seizure of their Mediterranean fleet by the Germans, the French wrecked their own ships, mostly by capsizing them in the harbours of Toulon, on 27 November.