The Paris Orphan

by Natasha Lester

  “So that’s where Joe Dearing vanished to,” Martha mused, the Collier’s photographer having been missing for a couple of days on sanctioned business.

  “You haven’t heard the best part,” the other man jumped in, eyeing Jess, and she let him sit closer than was comfortable because she was as keen as Martha to hear the rest. “Bob Capa had a party on the weekend and he and Bill Landry and Larry LeSueur got themselves as full as bedbugs on champagne,” he said. “They signed a contract with one of the PROs at the party, saying they’d go with him at eleven the next morning to do their training jumps. Only the press guy turns up to collect them and there’s no sign of Bob or Bill or Larry. He phones Bill who says he sprained his ankle. He phones Larry who says the same. He can’t find Bob anywhere. So—”

  “Three places allocated to train male correspondents to handle parachute jumps in preparation for the invasion went to waste because they were drunk,” Martha finished. “Good to see they take their responsibilities so seriously.”

  “Sorry fellas,” Jess said, finishing her whiskey and standing up. “But we have somewhere to be.”

  The men were not polite in their remonstrances to the women as they walked away, causing Marty to add fuel to the fire by blowing them a kiss. Jess led the way to her room, where she bashed out a letter on her typewriter, and then she and Martha went upstairs and banged on Warren’s door.

  He opened it with a smile when he saw who it was. “Two at once?” he said loudly, no doubt hoping anyone in the rooms beside would hear. “That’s too much even for me.”

  “This,” Jess said, ignoring the jibe, “is a letter officially requesting permission for Martha and me to begin parachute training in preparation for the invasion. I have a copy here for SHAEF PR, filling them in on details of wasted parachute training places, requesting your documented response within a week.”

  “Don’t,” he said, and this time when he looked at her, his exasperating smile was gone. “Don’t send it to SHAEF PR.”

  As he spoke, Jess saw the flicker of humanity in Warren; he didn’t want her telling tales to his bosses at the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, tales that might make the PR men in charge believe that Warren Stone couldn’t handle two little women like Jess and Martha.

  But any compassion she might once have made herself muster for Warren had abandoned her at the port in Naples, where it remained with the line of men who all had copies of Vogue, provided for them by Warren, to taunt her with.

  “I have to,” she said quietly.

  And then she turned around and stalked off, leaving even Martha’s experienced mouth hanging open.

  * * *

  Warren made them cool their already frozen heels for a week. The only burst of sunshine was a letter from Dan, with whom Jess had entered into a correspondence, by way of Victorine. Victorine had wanted to send Jess some pictures, Dan had explained the first time she’d received an envelope addressed in unfamiliar handwriting. Inside was a child’s drawing in smudged black ink of a little girl reading what looked like a book. On closer inspection, Jess realized the squiggly lines on the front of the book were awkward letters spelling Vogue.

  Jess had written back to both Victorine and Dan, and he’d replied. He’d written that, on returning to England, his company had been put through more training, then finally quarantined somewhere—of course he couldn’t tell her where. But Jess knew the U.S. Army had very few battle-experienced soldiers, besides the men from Italy. It was obvious to her that those men would be relied upon to teach the unblooded what to do when faced with an enemy more implacable than anyone had initially anticipated. And that Dan, as a paratrooper, would be among the very first men in France, parachuted in hours before any amphibious assault, attempting to secure strategic targets that would allow the infantry to advance. In the hands of all the too-young men like Dan, about to jump out of a plane and into the abyss, the future rested. If they couldn’t do what they were meant to, what would happen to the world?

  It was a line of thought she couldn’t let herself pursue. She shook her head and turned her attention back to Dan’s letter but then Warren slid into a seat at the bar next to her, his toothiness recovered, and she wondered if the previous week’s glimpse behind the facade had been a hallucination.

  “Well?” she demanded, stubbing out another of the countless cigarettes she and Marty were working their way through.

  “You’re to discuss the matter with your editors,” Warren replied as serenely as if they were discussing what to have for afternoon tea.

  “Why?” Martha asked.

  “It’s somewhat…delicate,” Warren said, unable to stop the corners of his mouth twitching.

  “More delicate than accusing me of sleeping with half the U.S. Army in order to get my stories,” Jess said collectedly.

  “You didn’t get the information about wasted parachute training places just by asking around.” Warren didn’t bother to restrain his smile this time. “The U.S. Army is very keen to protect your special skills.”

  Jess’s stomach contracted. She had no idea what he meant but she knew it didn’t sound good.

  “If you really would prefer to hear it from me, rather than someone who might handle it more sensitively, then here goes,” Warren continued with faux concern. “As you can see, none of the staff sections could provide any reason why women should be prevented the right to descend by parachute into France.”

  He passed a letter to Jess and her nausea somersaulted into excitement. She looked across at Martha and grinned. No reason they couldn’t go! Then they’d be at the next jump training session. But if Warren hadn’t got his way, his bosses at SHAEF PR were likely furious with him. So he should be downcast at the very least. Instead, he bore a strong resemblance to the proverbial canary-eating cat.

  “Except for a major in the office of the Surgeon General,” Warren said, leaning back and draping his arm along the back of Jess’s stool. “He was very concerned about the effects on the female anatomy of dropping out of a plane going 115 miles per hour. Add to that the brusque upward thrust of the opening parachute canopy and one doesn’t like to think about what might happen to the delicate female apparatus.”

  Absolute silence followed. Neither Jess nor Martha could make their mouths form a single word of response. How Warren must have searched high and low for that major. How he must have relished receiving that report and showing it to his superiors to prove that he was doing such a good job of keeping the women quarantined and out of the invasion fleet.

  Then Warren let his hand drop, seemingly accidentally, onto Jess’s shoulder.

  She shot to her feet. “And what does the Surgeon General’s office have to say about the effect on the dangling male apparatus? Oh, that’s right, it’s used to brusque upward thrusting but we women are too delicate to know anything about it. And I suppose if one has no balls in the first place, like PROs who sit in hotels rather than fighting for their country—for God’s sake, I’ve seen more of the war than you have!—then we shouldn’t be too concerned about any adverse effects on those balls.”

  Martha exploded with laughter, which set off the rest of the men at the bar, who’d heard all too clearly Jess’s tirade, delivered at full volume.

  Stone spoke so softly that Jess had to lean down, despite her disinclination to do so, to hear him. This time, there was no humanity, no vulnerability in him at all. “One day, Captain May, you will regret this conversation very much. And on that day, I will remind you just what you said about the brusque upward thrust.”

  With that he left, Jess’s victory as empty as any in Italy that had cost a hundred lives. By publicly calling him out on the fact that his “war” service was confined to hotel bars rather than battlefields, she’d openly and unwittingly skewered another of Warren’s most tender spots. Neither she nor Martha would witness the invasion by parachute, and now she had to also try to forget what he’d just said, and what he’d meant by it. Everything he’d done and sa
id to her before had been immature horseplay. But that threat wasn’t.

  She shivered and swallowed more whiskey.

  * * *

  At Portsmouth, it seemed incongruous that, across the Channel, one could see France, see the enemy. Today was invasion day plus one; yesterday, everyone had decamped to the south of England and Jess and Martha had had to sit and watch the flood of male journalists boarding planes that blackened the sky, watch the soldiers who’d never seen battle swarming onto ships bound for France, stand in this very spot and stare across at the war that no female was allowed to witness.

  But instead of letting Warren’s threat and almost obsessive interest in Jess get them down—what could he really do to her in a hotel full of people?—Jess and Martha decided to use it to their advantage. So long as Jess stayed in Warren’s line of sight, Martha could at least try to get herself across the Channel.

  It was dawn when Martha embraced Jess and said, “I sure am glad I saw you at that party in New York.”

  “Me too. Now go.”

  Jess made sure to stride provocatively into the bar and sit beside Warren, ready to engage him in another battle of words while Martha slipped off to the beach. Then, between taking Warren’s barbs, Jess imagined Martha creeping onto the hospital ship as planned, hiding in a bathroom—would it really work? It sounded so simple and foolish now—landing at Omaha Beach and getting her story. The first woman to set foot on French soil post-invasion, the first woman to tell people how it really was. Not the way the men saw it.

  After a good hour or two, when she was sure that Martha had got away, Jess turned her attention to a couple of officers and availed herself of a ride to the village school nearby; Warren had, of course, refused her a jeep. She walked up the driveway to the school and heard her name, screamed at the top of tiny lungs, then a little girl in a muddle of dark curls and a too-big uniform ran out to throw herself into Jess’s arms. This time it was Jess who picked her up and swung her around, for Dan, who could not.

  “You did come!” Victorine beamed and kissed both of Jess’s cheeks and Jess returned the gesture.

  A woman Jess assumed was the school mistress appeared and nodded at Jess. “You must be Miss May,” she said, a friendly smile on her face. “Why don’t you take Miss May for a walk, Victorine? You can stop by the kitchen and ask the cook for some cake.”

  “Thank you,” Jess said. “I’m sorry if I’ve caused any disruption.”

  “You haven’t,” the woman said firmly. “She’s been pining for Major Hallworth and while we try to supply as many hugs as we can, it’s not quite the same. It will do her the world of good to spend the morning with you.”

  So Jess and Victorine sat down on a stile in a field and ate chocolate cake. Jess told Victorine about her own parents, how they’d died too, just like Victorine’s papa at the hospital in Italy, and how, even though she was older than Victorine, she still missed them. “I thought maybe we could look after each other,” Jess finished. “I don’t have parents and nor do you anymore, and it would be nice to know that there was someone else who could be my family.”

  Victorine beamed. “I will be your family,” she said seriously. “And you will be mine. Dan is my family too. So now he is yours as well.”

  Jess grinned as she thought about writing that in a letter to Dan. All he’d wanted her to do was pay Victorine a visit and now they’d been proclaimed family. But she also knew that the most important thing was to get Victorine through this war. If they could do that, then everything else would work out too. Or so she was trying to make herself believe.

  But that belief lay in tatters later that day when she heard from the pilots who’d made three hundred and twenty-five missions over to Normandy the night before to resupply Dan’s airborne division. “We threw the stuff out for the poor bastards and prayed; the Army doesn’t know where they are so it’s anyone’s guess if they find their supplies,” one of them said to her between long drags of cigarette smoke.

  “What do you mean?” she made herself ask.

  “The fellas in the airborne division got dropped anywhere and everywhere because the Krauts were shooting down the planes. Hardly any of them are where they’re meant to be. That’s if they even made it to the ground alive, the way Jerry was shooting at them as they dropped.”

  Jess held up her hand. “I get it,” she said.

  Now she had yet another reason to find a way into France. To find out if Dan was okay. She wouldn’t be able to see Victorine again until she knew because Victorine would see it in her face: her fear that the worst had happened.

  * * *

  Warren Stone was waiting for her in the bar when she returned. “Your friend’s been arrested,” he said, triumph in his voice. “Mrs. Ernest Hemingway stowed away in the bathroom of a hospital ship and got herself onto a water ambulance that landed on the beach. As if that wasn’t stupid enough, she sent a story through to Collier’s, reporting what she saw. I picked it up from the censor. She convicted herself.”

  “I think that was her intention,” Jess said evenly. “One doesn’t stow away on a ship to get a story and then not write the goddamned story. Wouldn’t it be easier if you just let us go?”

  “How it must torment you; she got there and you didn’t.” Warren folded his arms across his chest as if he’d just made the final, winning rebuttal.

  “It doesn’t torment me at all.” It was true. Jess was having a hard time holding back the jubilation that Martha had really done it, and had beaten her husband to the story. Hemingway hadn’t yet landed on French soil; Martha had. She risked a smile and raised her voice so everyone in the bar would hear. “When I think about how you must have felt when you found out what she did, all I can do is laugh. And raise a glass to her.”

  “Shame you won’t have anyone to raise it with. Martha Gellhorn has been confined to a nurses’ training camp. She has no passport or accreditation papers. She’s not going anywhere.”

  “And I don’t suppose I should bother asking if I can see her?”

  “Only if you want to hear me say no to you one more time.”

  “Well, that’s just another in a long line of shitty decisions,” Jess said. “Martha’s got more experience reporting war than anybody. But she gets locked up for trying to do her job? Exactly how long am I, and every other female correspondent, going to be stuck here? What started out as a ridiculously sexist notion of imagining we might swoon at the sight of war simply because we’re women has become a stubbornly entrenched dictate that nobody in SHAEF wants to relinquish, just to prove a point. It’s childish illogic, especially now that the female nurses are finally going to France.”

  Jess felt someone step up behind her. She was just about to whirl around, thinking it would be someone come to defend Warren from the deranged and wanton Jessica May, when she heard a woman’s voice say, “Yes, we’d all like to know that.” It was Iris Carpenter from The Boston Globe. Not one of the novices.

  Someone else joined them. Ruth Cowan from Associated Press, another woman with experience. Soon there was a group of women around Jess, all of them staring implacably at Warren Stone, wanting Jess’s question answered.

  “If you don’t answer,” Jess said quietly, “we might think you don’t have the authority to do so.”

  “I don’t take kindly to being ambushed,” he replied.

  Despite the steel in his voice, despite knowing it would only strengthen his resolve to do whatever his obscure threat had promised the other night, despite knowing that she was once again starting a fire that Warren would do anything to extinguish before his superiors felt its heat, Jess made herself say it. “Then it’s a good thing there are better men than you fighting in France.” As she spoke, Jess could feel the held breath of every woman around her, all of them wanting to applaud while at the same time wishing Jess could take it back because what would Warren Stone do now?

  Jess didn’t wait for his reply. “Back when you quarantined us, you said we’d be able to go when
the nurses did. They’re going next week but we still don’t have our orders. We’ll put our concerns in writing,” she continued. “We’ll expect a reply within twenty-four hours. If that reply says anything about our delicate vaginas, then we will, every single one of us, publish it.”

  She turned away and walked over to an empty table. Iris dumped her typewriter in front of Jess. Ruth bought the drinks. And Jess bashed out their words. At the end they had a letter to SHAEF, signed by every single female correspondent who’d been in Europe for more than a month, demanding they be allowed into France.

  Eleven

  Two days later, Jess and Iris Carpenter were on their way to Omaha Beach on a plane. The first women into France—besides Martha’s unscheduled expedition—after D-day. They had thirty-six hours. No more. While SHAEF might be well aware that The Boston Globe wouldn’t print any military communication about women’s unmentionables, Jess knew they weren’t so sure about Vogue. And so her threat had worked. But it had come at a price. More new rules for “girl reporters” arrived from SHAEF as thick and fast as bombers in an invasion sky and any breach would result in court-martial. And she’d also heard that Warren Stone had been bawled out by his boss once again for his inability to keep the gals quiet. Which would only make him hate Jess all the more.

  But as she and Iris flew in lower toward the minuscule Saint Laurent airstrip, between Easy Green and Easy Red, Jess forgot about all that and wondered instead how anyone could land on or take off from the beach. Indeed the pilot looked taut enough to snap as they came in low over Dead Man’s Gulch through ashen bulges of smoke.