The Woman From Saint Germain

by J. R. Lonie

  ‘Paddle, for God’s sake, paddle,’ Vidal hissed.

  She went through the motions. What was the point?

  Henk had been painfully right about her believing she could sit out the war. Even the discomforts of daily life under the occupier she had enjoyed in a perverse way. She’d certainly enjoyed complaining about them. Her grief over Claude’s death – even that had been fake. What she had done was wallow in her loss while her anger at what she took as Claude’s betrayal festered away, repressed and unrecognised. Even then, had she not been the progenitor of her own misery?

  If grief be the price of love, she certainly knew it now. Vidal could hear her weeping. Strange woman, he thought. Why would you cry at shooting a German?

  ‘Paddle, madame, please,’ he kept encouraging. ‘One, two, one, two.’

  Eleanor did as he asked, for his sake, not hers.

  ‘One, two,’ she said along with Vidal, even after they were a little more secure under the sound of the rapids and Vidal got the motor running. Still, they needed to paddle hard to keep up against the current.

  VAL D’ASPE TO THE VAL D’OSSAU

  Between 8.30 and 9pm, Monday, 15th December 1941

  Within an hour, she was on the back of Vidal’s motorbike, her arms aching so much she barely had enough strength to place them tight around his waist. After only a few minutes, she was so cold that had her life depended upon it, she couldn’t have let go. Soon even Vidal felt like a block of ice. For all she knew, he might have died and it was his ghost guiding the bike around the curves, on and on, ever higher, no headlight to guide their way. In her ears, the roar of the little motor as Vidal constantly changed gear seemed so loud, it astonished her they hadn’t alerted every policeman between Oloron and the frontier, paid off or no.

  How long they took to reach Vidal’s farm, which was in another of the valleys heading into the mountains, she had no idea. They left the asphalt and rode along a gravel track up through a higher valley, a seemingly never-ending slip-slide affair through mud and mush, around the steep slopes, ever higher and higher. After they arrived, and for some time, she could hear nothing but the motor’s high pitch. Nor could she move. Things did not much improve once she had been thawed before the fire. Her bones, her muscles and her limbs, unused to exertions beyond the demands of a shopping expedition, were stiff and painful. But she felt safe in the hands and hearth of this kindly, young Béarnaise farmer.

  She counted the francs she’d removed from the dead German. Over 9,000, a fortune, 3,000 more than the cost of her trip.

  ‘These are for you,’ she said, leaving it to him and his conscience to return some of them to the statue. He nodded and took them. She also handed him the Mauser.

  ‘Where and how the hell did you get it?’ He’d been meaning to ask since it saved his life.

  ‘A comedy of errors,’ Eleanor replied, which made her even weepier.

  ‘You might need it more than me,’ he said.

  She doubted that, she replied. To be found with a Mauser on the other side of the border seemed to her to be asking for trouble.

  ‘I’ll keep it for the journey,’ he said in concession to her present emotional collapse. It might even come in handy if things went wrong.

  NEAR GOUST, VAL D’OSSAU TOWARDS THE COL DU POURTALET, PYRÈNÈES

  Wednesday into Thursday, 16th and 17th December 1941

  The weather worsened during the night of their escape, a blessing according to Vidal, who let Eleanor sleep inside his house, albeit in the attic. She did sleep, then she wept, then she made plans to write a novel of her love, this escape, something, anything. She was still angry, at the Germans, at herself. Most of all, she felt a simmering anger against God. They waited out the following day, not knowing when they might be able to move. Or if at all. She could see up the valley: the skies were clear cobalt blue. Why they couldn’t go now, she didn’t understand. She kept her impatience in check. Vidal said they would go when it was safe, which meant when the clouds were low and the mists heavy. Bad weather but not too bad. German patrols were still about in the high passes, so he’d heard.

  ‘We leave in one hour,’ Vidal said to her. They had just finished dinner. She was still sore from head to foot but strangely not at all weary. What was said about the hardiness of New Englanders was true, at least in her case. What she looked like was another matter. Since she’d lost her compact mirror, she couldn’t check the damage. All she had was her reflection in the windows: an old hag with bags under her eyes from weeping.

  They left before midnight on horseback. Eleanor was no novice when it came to horses, having ridden in Bar Harbor. That had been quite some time ago, but needs must. Vidal had to help her. ‘You look after me, darling,’ she said to the horse, ‘and I’ll look after you.’ Quite how she might keep her end of the bargain, she did not know. She knew that you had to talk firmly but with respect to horses, and she hoped the animal would sense her need. As they set off along a track up to the pass, it seemed to Eleanor that it was doing no such thing. Every cell in her body juddered. She eyed the rifle Vidal had draped across his back. If only she hadn’t given him the Mauser, she could put a bullet through the wretched beast’s head. That this would also have ended her own flight didn’t enter her thoughts. The revenge she’d wreak on this hack, if she could, helped not only to boost her spirits but also to keep her on its miserable back.

  After an hour of this torture, they dismounted at a wooden barn, where Vidal watered and fed the horses and wiped them down.

  ‘Thank God,’ Eleanor said, looking spitefully at the horse which responded with what Eleanor took as a vicious smile and she snarled at it.

  The rest of the route was to be on foot, taking them away from Vidal’s family’s land and up into the high pass, towards the frontier at the Col du Pourtalet.

  ‘Are you up to it?’ he asked.

  ‘Vidal,’ she said firmly, ‘if I do drop, just leave me. On no account are you to risk yourself trying to save my sorry arse.’

  He chuckled at her colloquial French, not taking her seriously. She made him promise. If there was to be any further death, it was to be hers only.

  They spent the night in one of the huts used during the summer months by generations of shepherds who built them using the stones that lay so liberally about. But, as Vidal told her, despite Matthew’s observation that the wise man built on the rock, the mountain gods often knocked the huts over if they were so minded. Repairs, especially to the roofs, were always necessary and were made during the summer months. Summertime was also when they were stocked with firewood, which had to be brought up on horseback from lower down. Eleanor did not mind sheltering there. It was better than any alternative currently on offer.

  They ate some of the food Vidal’s wife had prepared, and then they slept. When Eleanor woke, some time into the day, Vidal was gone. His rucksack was gone. She looked at her watch. Three in the afternoon. Outside, the sky was clear. In the strange stillness, she hoped she might hear him nearby. All she heard was her anxious and heavy heart. Perhaps she’d find kindling to help light a fire.

  They were above the tree line. The succulent grasses that sprouted from the thin soil among the unforgiving granite and the rocky detritus of ancient glaciers were now burnt and brown. Yet their roots gave sustenance to the chamois, who were still poking around, although soon even they would leave for the lower slopes. Gnarled, woody bushes survived here and there in the shelter of rocky ledges, tiny miracles. No matter that Eleanor pulled and sawed at them with a sharp rock, they refused to give up a single fibre to her. The only piece of wood she found was a wispy stick. In the stillness, she heard the sound of running streams and the rattle of the pebbles and stones being washed down. She looked up. The sky was deep and empty, so blue and endless it was oppressive. Her ears, tuned to silence, heard the chirping of small birds. She could not see them, however she looked. Hearing a cry above, she looked up and saw a lone vulture passing overhead effortlessly, and then another, goi
ng south, late departures for warmer parts. Of all the ill omens to encounter, she thought, even for someone who didn’t believe in them.

  A failure as a collector of firewood, she found a rock to sit on. She was beyond caring. Her aches were now either gone or she was numb to them. Where was Vidal? What if he didn’t come back? She was as alone as she’d ever been in her life. She’d not thought to ask him the direction – though, on reflection, hadn’t the vultures shown her the way south? What then of the ill omen? She wasn’t alone. She was back up that tree in the garden of their house at Bar Harbor. Her little brother Will was below, gazing up at her. ‘You talking to God up there again, Elly?’

  The fury that suddenly engulfed her had her up on her feet, her fists raised against the heavens, her voice screeching.

  ‘Menteur!’ she raged up at God – Liar! She continued in a mixture of profane English and French, spitting out words she never used in either language. He was ‘une con, une fucking menteur, vous m’avez promis que vous le soignez. I’ll never forgive you.’

  She was so caught up in her rage that she wasn’t aware of the mist rolling down from the mountain until she could barely see further than a few feet. This shut her up. She fell back onto the rock she’d been sitting on, exhausted.

  ‘Fuck you,’ she muttered in English, spent. She decided to give up the ghost now. If only that Mauser was in her pocket instead of Vidal’s. Instead, she would just lie here, go to sleep and be frozen to death.

  Hardly seconds later, Vidal found her.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he spat under his breath, angrily hauling her up.

  She said nothing, allowing him to lead her back to the hut, where he made a fire with logs from the wood pile and kindling he had found. If the Germans really wanted to put a spoke in their wheels, they’d simply visit the shepherds’ huts and burn up all the wood gathered during the summer. It hadn’t come to that yet. As he arranged the precious wood, he demanded to know why she’d been advertising her presence to every Boche and cop this side of the Spanish border? He didn’t give her time to answer. He’d been searching frantically for her, he continued. He’d not been able to call out to her. ‘For obvious reasons,’ he added. ‘Except you – ’ He stopped and stoked the fire rather than his anger.

  ‘I didn’t bring you all this way for you to give up,’ he said, once the flames had taken. His temper had subsided. ‘You want those shits to win?’ he asked.

  It hadn’t crossed her mind she might have been attracting a German bullet. She might have yelled louder. Yes, it had been the rage of a child, sore as her heart was – a tantrum. But hadn’t she killed one of those shits, as Vidal called the Boches, three if she included the two killed by Henk, four if she added the grasping treacherous concierge? This made her feel a little better, although her anger at God had not abated. She wasn’t going to apologise to Vidal for that. But he was right. Did she still not have a mighty score to settle with the whole benighted Germanic lot of them now?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘It won’t happen again.’

  TOWARDS THE COL DU POURTALET, PYRÉNÉES

  Afternoon, Friday, 18th December 1941

  The clear skies kept them in the hut on Thursday night. The stars were so bright and momentous she could have reached out and touched the Milky Way. Their silhouettes against the rocky landscape would have been perfect targets. Armed with his rifle, Vidal kept watch from an eyrie above the hut with a view of the track. They couldn’t afford a fire now. Eleanor insisted she swap places with him once she realised what he was doing for her. Besides, inside the hut without a fire was as cold as outside.

  ‘I can shoot,’ she told him. That he knew, so he relented. He was in need of sleep.

  By Friday, Vidal was anxious to move. A new moon would rise tonight. They needed to get off the mountain before it waxed too much. Bad weather was coming. He could sense it before it arrived. No sixth sense, just his observations from a lifetime living here: the birds going to ground in advance of the snows. He hoped the weather would worsen but not too much.

  They set out early on Friday afternoon. With luck, they’d be at the frontier before midnight. He told her he was making a detour to avoid the pass where, a couple of days earlier, the police, gendarmes and the Germans had run into each other and a tiny war had broken out. Everyone knew about it and had been delighted. Then he’d heard some French boys had been captured. Two had also been killed, so it was said. Eleanor bit her lip.

  ‘We cross to Spain near the top of the same pass,’ he explained, drawing in the dust with his finger before rubbing it all away. ‘The frontier post is closed there now. It’s still a dumb time of year to be doing this,’ he muttered, as much to himself as to her.

  Once outside, light sleet stung their faces. Their boots crunched all too loudly along the stony track through the intermittent mist. Vidal was carrying his rifle. He handed Eleanor the Mauser.

  ‘Just in case the Boches make an appearance,’ he told her. Did she know they came in from Orthez via the Spanish side of the frontier? ‘Chauffeured up by Franco himself.’

  They traipsed on for an hour. Light sleet continued to fall. Then, pebbles, followed by larger stones, started to fall around them and roll down the slopes. Vidal pushed Eleanor off the side of the track, where he crouched with her behind a large boulder. The stones kept falling around them.

  ‘Chamois,’ he whispered to her, ‘heading to lower ground to get away from the weather.’ He couldn’t see them, but this was a sign the weather was worsening. They had to hurry if they were to make the hut at the frontier before the snows set in. He scanned the landscape up and around. There they were, the chamois. He pointed. Eleanor saw them, two females tripping with sure feet down the steep sides of a draw, followed by the buck. In other circumstances she would have been charmed.

  A shot rang out, its sharp crack echoing around the rocky pass like the snap of a whip. Vidal pushed Eleanor’s head back down.

  Another shot.

  One chamois fell. The others appeared, flying through the air, so it seemed to Eleanor, as further shots followed.

  ‘German,’ Vidal whispered to Eleanor. They were shooting at the chamois, merely because they could. He beckoned her to follow, as he crept further out of sight. Given her stiffening limbs, Eleanor surprised herself by scrabbling after him like a crab. How long it took before they heard the crunch of German boots along the scree, she did not know. It seemed like ages and their passing seemed to take an eternity. She even heard the Germans’ voices, joking and cursing, until a sharp word from their leader shut them up. Vidal looked at Eleanor; his finger went to his lips. He wasn’t confident that she might not leap out and start firing at them. There was no need for her to do so. The ribaldry of the Germans was a clear sign they’d stood themselves down from duty, at least in their own minds.

  They waited for some time after the German patrol had passed. Night was already upon them. The sleet was turning to snow. Before they started out, Vidal handed her a flask of brandy mixed with milk. ‘Drink,’ he ordered. ‘More,’ he urged, after she had sipped daintily as if in a chic bar and not to keep herself alive. Now, so encouraged, she took a couple more generous draughts, fuelling her spirit as much as it moved her limbs.

  COL DU POURTALET, PYRÉNÉES

  After midnight, Saturday, 19th December 1941

  Eleanor stuck to Vidal like glue for the hours it took them to struggle through the falling snow up what was no more than a summer cow path to a track leading to the top of the pass. How he knew where to go was a miracle to her. Snow a foot deep had covered everything. Inside Eleanor’s layers of refugee chic was a sauna. Vidal had them stop every hour to drink water. Eleanor asked for brandy.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Only when we arrive.’

  She was numb to anything except the movement of her legs, when suddenly, she bumped into him. He’d stopped.

  ‘We’re here, madame, thanks be to Our Holy Mother,’ he told her. ‘You’re in Spain.’


  She didn’t quite believe him. At the beginning of her journey, she’d fancied her escape into freedom in quite a different way – a blue Mediterranean sky, a clear view of France behind her and a warm Spanish welcome before her, and in the distance, Madrid, a warm bath, bed and a branch of Wells Fargo. Now she could barely see the hand she held up in front of her. Although Vidal was with her, although he had carried her through, grief at Henk’s death gripped her heart. He had been dealt such a lousy hand. She was still too furious with God, her mouth too full of ashes, to exalt at her escape.

  UNION STATION, PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND

  11am, Thursday, 15th April 1943

  Eleanor’s two sisters, Constance and Muriel, stood either side of their mother on the concourse, as much to shield her from the cold, which had returned the day before, as to provide support for her against what they already knew but she did not. Nor, indeed, did Constance’s and Muriel’s own families know. Nosy as they were about the return of their gorgeous and scandalous aunt, today their young ones were all at school or in the services. Their husbands had come, however, including Joe, Muriel’s husband, who was home on leave from the navy. They weren’t going to miss this special occasion and stood in a male huddle with Eleanor’s older brothers, Charles and Jim, all physicians, like Eleanor’s father. You could hold a meeting of the AMA at a family dinner.

  The senior Dr Gorton, grey-haired and erect, usually the epitome of a rock-faced New Englander, was like an excited child. He pressed against the gate to the platform. While he didn’t play favourites, he’d always had a soft spot for dreamy Eleanor. She could do no wrong, which in her case over the years had certainly covered a lot of the waterfront.

  Only Will was missing, the hole in the family fabric, killed in action with the 43rd Infantry Division on Guadalcanal the previous October, which made the return of the prodigal daughter and sister the more poignant.