Off the Wild Coast of Brittany

by Juliet Blackwell

  Just as she had back then, what Natalie needed now was an entrée, a way to get the families of those who had contributed the recipes to trust her, to open up and tell her stories of their parents and grandparents, the elders who had lived through the war, or heard stories from those who had.

  She needed the help of a local.

  She thought about François-Xavier’s aunts and uncle and cousins, but now that Natalie knew about his Parisian restaurant, she didn’t want them asking any questions she couldn’t answer. The same went for Christine; she was far too astute to fool with an easy cover story. What she needed was a local who wasn’t a relative and who wouldn’t ask a lot of uncomfortable questions.

  Milo.

  Alex had pronounced him a grump. But Alex had always been dismissive where men were concerned.

  Milo was handsome, but in a completely different way from the sleek, urbane François-Xavier. He was so not what François-Xavier was: He looked like he could hunt down a moose, if need be, while François-Xavier would be lucky to outrun one. Best of all, François-Xavier had never liked Milo.

  He was perfect.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Violette

  I worked in the garden alongside my mother, digging in the mud for the last of the potatoes and carrots. We had a few greens as well, some kale and cabbage, but they wouldn’t last long. And then we would be dependent on the supplies brought in by boat and on our ration tickets, supplemented only with dandelion greens, nettles, and more goémon.

  My mother didn’t believe in idle chat, so we worked in silence, the only sounds the scritch of the shovel in the dirt, the calls of the gulls overhead, and the rumble of the occasional charette as it passed on the other side of our garden wall. If not for the deep-seated, simmering terror at the thought of our dwindling food stocks, it would have been quite peaceful.

  “There’s been talk,” my mother said suddenly.

  “What kind of talk?”

  “You are too friendly with that soldier.”

  “‘That soldier’ has a name: Rainer. And he is helping us.”

  “I saw you came home with a new tea. And you were seen consulting with Madame Thérèse.” She fixed me with that look: disappointment but something else as well. Was it fear? “Violette, tell me the truth. Are you trying to rid yourself of the child?”

  I let out a gasp, a wave of indignation and self-pity washing over me.

  “Just the opposite,” I said, turning back to the dirt. “I found a little blood this morning, so I went to speak with Rachelle. She suggested I talk to the louzaourian. Madame Thérèse assures me everything’s all right, as long as I eat enough.”

  “That’s not likely, is it?”

  “We’re luckier than most,” I said. “Need I point out that it’s because of ‘that soldier’ that we eat meat and bread as often as we do?”

  “Watch yourself around that man, Violette. Young men and young women brought together under difficult circumstances . . . it is only natural that things occur.”

  I straightened to stretch my back and stared at her. My mother wasn’t given to such talk.

  “You are a married woman, daughter,” she continued. “And he is our enemy.”

  “I am well aware of who I am, Maman. And because he is who he is, he can make our lives easier or harder with a stroke of his pen.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I have something for you,” Rainer said the next day when we met in the hall. “But you must promise to keep it quiet.”

  “What is it?” I asked, my eyes searching his empty hands, hoping for a package of meat.

  He took two letters from his coat pocket and handed them to me. One was from my husband, Marc, the other from his brother, Salvator.

  “Where did these come from?” I asked. “I thought the mail from England was being intercepted.”

  “There’s an old saying: Do not look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  “This is . . . this is wonderful, Rainer. Thank you. Oh, and speaking of gifts, Madame Thérèse made some ointment for your knee.”

  He frowned. “Who is Madame Thérèse, and what does she know about my knee?”

  “She is our island cunning woman. She knows about medicines, and setting bones, and she is our only midwife. She saw you limping and made you a salve. I’ll leave it in your room when I do the laundry.”

  We heard the sound of boots on the stairs, and I tucked the letters in my bodice.

  “Danke schön,” I whispered as Hans came toward us, eyebrows raised.

  I hurried to the room I shared with my mother and shut the door. Greedily, hungrily, I sank onto the bed and placed both letters atop the quilt, studying them for a moment. I opened Marc’s letter first. It was short and chatty, full of details of their journey across the ocean, their landing and attempts to locate and join the French Free Forces. He wrote about their tasteless bully rations, and the passion the English had for tea. He sent much affection and wished me well, stating that he hoped I was looking in on his mother and sister. He expressed, almost as an afterthought, that he was over the moon to meet his baby, and he hoped it would be soon.

  I saved Salvator’s letter for last. Why had he written me again? I tamped down my guilt over my disloyalty to my husband, my hands shaking as I tore it open.

  Salvator’s letter was descriptive and lyrical, putting me in mind of Rainer’s poetry. He wrote of seeking glimpses of mermaids gliding below the surface of the sea, hoping for the glimmer of a silver tail, and what it meant to be exiled from his beloved France in order to fight for her. He described British naval traditions, how new and different it felt to serve on a vessel that did not seek to bring in a haul of fish. He could see massive schools of sea creatures just by looking down into the cool waters. Salvator had crossed paths with his baby brother once or twice, but they were not serving together. He wrote that he had shaken the hand of Général Charles de Gaulle himself, and that the good general had exclaimed that the fishermen from the Île de Feme seemed to make up half the Free French Forces.

  As my eyes reached the last paragraph, I thought I detected Salvator hesitating, his pen hovering above the paper, unsure how to phrase his thoughts. Finally, he wrote:

  I have heard that you are expecting a child. Most of my life people have told me I should be more like Marc: more thoughtful, more attentive, more responsible. I never minded the comparison and was always as proud of him as everyone else. But now, for the first time in my life, I find myself jealous—rabidly jealous—of my baby brother.

  I read and reread those final words, trying to decipher their meaning. Did Salvator mean he was jealous of Marc because he loved me and wanted to be with me? Or that he yearned to be a father himself? Or was there something else, some other possible meaning I had yet to tease out of those words?

  It was little enough to hold on to, yet I did, hugging the letter to my heart, and thinking of the man I loved.

  * * *

  • • •

  I showed Marc’s letter to my mother but of course hid the one from Salvator. It wouldn’t do for her, or anyone on the island, to know that Salvator was writing to me, his sister-in-law. It wouldn’t do at all.

  “I thought the mail was being intercepted,” said my mother.

  “It was. It is.”

  “Then how did you get this?”

  When I didn’t answer, she let out a long sigh and continued: “Are you going to show it to Marc’s mother?”

  I nodded. “I’ll go now.”

  “Do me a favor and ask for her recipe for yout lichon,” my mother said, handing me her cookbook. “And also her Breton Farz-forn. Hers is by far the best on the island. We have no milk, and precious few eggs, but perhaps I can find a substitute. And tell her she is of course welcome to any of my recipes.”

  I took the cookbook and hid Marc’s
letter in my bodice. Out on the stone walls of the quay, I noticed a large “V” painted in red. V for Victoire, I assumed. Who would dare paint such a thing with all these Germans swarming our island?

  I had just turned into the first passageway off the quay when a soldier stopped me and demanded my papers. By now most of the occupying troops spoke a few words of French, though they still insisted on speaking primarily German. So we Fémans had learned snatches of the invaders’ language—especially when they demanded something.

  “Ihre Papiere, bitte.”

  I handed him my carte d’identité. He was young and stern faced, and made a show of looking long and hard at the photograph and then at me. I tried to avoid his eyes, feeling uncomfortable standing so close to him in the tight passageway.

  After a long moment he nodded and handed them back.

  He gestured with his chin to the book in my arms, then put his hand out for it. “Was ist das?”

  “Un livre de cuisine,” I responded in French, not knowing the German word for “cookbook.” “Des recettes.”

  He flipped through the pages perfunctorily, his eyes moving rapidly over the handwritten recipes. He snapped it shut with a disgusted air and gave me another stern look.

  “Keine Gruppen über drei Personen,” he said.

  This was one of the German phrases we all knew by now: “No groups over three people.”

  He held up three fingers and shoved them close to my face, repeating: “Drei.”

  “Ich verstehe,” I said, rearing back and tried to hide my dislike. Rainer had told me that I had no face for poker.

  My heart pounded in frustration and anger when I was at last allowed to continue on my way. That I could no longer walk along the passages I had known all my life without being harassed, that I could be stopped and made to feel foolish and afraid at the whim of a soldier no more than my age enraged me. Still, I knew only too well that it could be much, much worse. Villages had been bombed, and hundreds of thousands forced to abandon their homes in L’Exode, the great exodus, as our compatriots fled the violence in the north of the country.

  Still, it was beyond galling.

  I continued on to 22 rue Saint-Guénolé. My mother-in-law, Gladie, was glad to see me, patting my stomach and fluttering around her kitchen, offering me a bowl of broth, which I accepted with relish though it wasn’t yet dinnertime. Now that the morning sickness had abated, hunger gnawed at me constantly.

  “Is Noëlle around?” I asked. “I have news.”

  “Noëlle!” Gladie called down the stairs into the basement. “Noëlle, come see who is here!”

  I heard boots on the wooden stairs, and Noëlle joined us in the kitchen, wearing what was now her typical sneer. She had been angry since this war began, and I doubted it would end anytime soon. Our childhood friendship seemed as nothing in the context of what we were dealing with now.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Noëlle. “What do you want, besides my mother’s soup?”

  “Noëlle!” Gladie scolded her daughter. “Violette, pay her no mind.”

  As before, I noticed ink stains on Noëlle’s fingers. As a child she’d had a knack for drawing, often doodling in the margins of her school papers. Now I wondered: What was she up to, down in that basement?

  “I have news,” I said, presenting Marc’s letter.

  Gladie cooed and Noëlle’s expression softened as they read his words, searching, as we all did, for meaning beyond the obvious.

  “Oh, my sweet, sweet boy,” Gladie said. “But he says nothing about his brother, my dear Salvator. . . .”

  “I bring my mother’s kitchen journal as well,” I said, feeling a twinge of guilt for not sharing Salvator’s letter. But I couldn’t. It wouldn’t do. “She was hoping you would share your recipe for yout lichon, and Farz-forn, and says you are welcome to anything of interest.”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” Gladie said, rising to retrieve a pencil and her own recipe book.

  “Where did you get this letter?” demanded Noëlle in a low voice when her mother’s back was turned.

  “It was . . . I don’t know,” I said. “It simply appeared at our house.”

  “Oh, I’m sure,” she scoffed. “What about the others?”

  “What others?” I asked.

  “All the letters the other men must be writing. Why haven’t they magically appeared?”

  I shook my head, feigning ignorance.

  Noëlle dropped her voice. “I have heard about you and that soldier, the GAST officer.”

  “What about him? He is living in our house.”

  “I’ve heard more than that.”

  “Then you are misinformed. It is because of him that my mother and I are able to eat,” I said, my hand going to my belly. “Able to feed Marc’s baby, among other things.”

  “But he listens to you. He has befriended you,” said Noëlle.

  “He has been helpful, that is all,” I said, glancing at Gladie, who was hunched over my mother’s cookbook on the kitchen counter, writing down her recipe.

  “If he could get this letter, he can get others.”

  “I don’t think it’s that easy. By the way, what were you doing in the cove the other day? I saw you there, in the fog.”

  “It wasn’t me,” she insisted.

  “You were meeting a boat that dropped something overboard. It was like a Bag-Noz, a ghost ship. It didn’t go through the GAST.”

  “A ghost ship? Ha!” Noëlle’s fake laugh ceded to a fierce hiss: “Just mind your own business, and get our letters from your boyfriend, Violette. You owe it to my brother, to my mother, and to your people.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Whispers began to follow me as I walked through town, weaving my way down the narrow paths.

  Maybe Madame Thérèse said something about seeing me with Rainer on the rocks, or perhaps young Ambroisine had mentioned that I defended him. Or his gentleness toward the islanders had been noted. But it seemed more likely that Noëlle was the source, her anger at the Germans fueling her nastiness toward me.

  Whatever the reason, people began to gossip.

  I didn’t care overmuch. I knew my association with Rainer was innocent. And in some ways it was a relief, the rumors throwing the gossips off the scent of my actual sin: loving my husband’s brother.

  As I gathered goémon, as I stood in line with my ration tickets, as I fell into bed exhausted and hungry, I thought of Salvator. Would he survive the war? Would I? What would life be like in the future, when I gave birth to my baby, the war came to an end, and my husband returned to the island? Would we move into his mother’s house, as was the local custom? And what of Salvator? Might he return to our island? My heart sped up at the prospect of our living under the same roof. It would be . . . exciting. And impossible.

  My unruly heart.

  That night, after my mother had gone to bed, I sat in the dark kitchen, reading and rereading Salvator’s precious letter by the weak orange light of a single tallow candle, running my fingers over the words, accompanied only by the low, vaguely threatening rumbling of the enemy conversing in the hallways overhead.

  * * *

  • • •

  I approached Rainer the next time I found him alone, reading in the parlor. Most of the other men had gone down to the café to drink, as they often did in the evenings.

  “Thank you, again, for the . . . for what you gave me.” I didn’t want to say the word aloud, in case anyone was lingering and might overhear.

  “Two men with the same last name writing you,” he teased as he stood to address me. “I suppose there’s a story there?”

  “One was from my husband, the other from my husband’s brother.”

  He nodded, still smiling.

  “But, Rainer . . .” I dropped my voice to a whisper. “Does this
mean you have access to the other letters?”

  A cautious look came over his strong features. “What other letters?”

  “Letters to the islanders from their men in England. Rainer, please, you must give them to me. It is cruel to leave people not knowing.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t do that, Violette. I know it’s not fair, but I can’t take the risk. I’m sorry.”

  “What if . . . How would we even know if one of our men was killed or injured in the fighting? Can you imagine what it feels like, not to know?”

  There was a pause, and we heard someone approaching.

  “I can’t,” he said curtly, and turned on his heel and walked away.

  * * *

  • • •

  The next day I cleaned the rooms and changed the beds of the officers staying on the second floor. Washing the sheets of so many, and hanging the linens on the line to dry, was no small thing. My arms ached as I carried the heavy wicker basket of wet linens upstairs.

  The clothesline was suspended across the yard, and was accessed through the window of the room Rainer was inhabiting. I had seen him leave the house earlier in the day, but knocked anyway, just to be sure.

  “Hello?” I said, walking in.

  The room was so tidy, it was hard to believe anyone lived here. I had always been chastised by my mother for failing to make up my bed, for leaving books and hair ribbons and dirty clothes strewn about. Perhaps it was military discipline, I thought, for all the officers’ rooms were tidy. But Rainer’s was more so, somehow. The only thing left out was a book on his bedside: Saint-Exupéry’s Courrier sud.

  I crossed the room, threw open the casement window, and began the laborious process of hanging the sheets on the clothesline. My fingers soon grew raw and numb from wrestling the wet linens in the wind off the sea, chilly despite the day’s bright sunshine.

  I finished at last, picked up my basket, and remembered the jar of salve in my pocket. I left it on top of Rainer’s bureau.