by Amy McAuley
“The guest bedroom is upstairs, the second door on the left. I laid out some clothes for you. Feel free to take some or all of them. My wife won’t notice their absence.”
I remember what Pierre said: clean clothes boost his men’s morale. The prospect of trading my filthy skirts and blouses for a fresh nightgown thrills me.
“Thank you again, Dr. Devereux,” I say, standing. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Good night, Adele, I hope you have pleasant dreams. I’m sure it must be a great relief to no longer be stranded all alone.”
“Yes,” I say. “It really is.”
Dr. Devereux was referring only to the week I spent stranded and alone in France, of course. He barely knows me as Adele, and he knows nothing of who I really am deep down. He didn’t choose his words knowing they would have an effect on me.
I climb the staircase, remembering a time years before, when I arrived in London.
After Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, both sides stood at a standstill. It was a phony war, people said. Believing the phony war wouldn’t last, my father arranged for me to leave school and travel as far as Britain to stay with my mother’s sister, Aunt Libby, a woman I had never met.
One night my uncle Edward called me into the darkened sitting room. The glow of his pipe and a weak lamp lent soft auras of light to the room.
I sat in the high-backed chair opposite him, at the far reaches of the light.
“Are you happy here, Betty?”
I’d been yanked away from my friends. I didn’t want to live in the home of strangers, feeling as though I had nothing and no one. No, I wasn’t happy, but what was the point in telling him the truth? It wouldn’t change anything.
“Yes, sir, I’m happy to be here,” I said.
“Your aunt is delighted to have you with us. You are the spitting image of your mother at your age.”
“Did you know my mother?”
“We were childhood friends. But after the Great War, things changed for those of us who grew up together. Some friends came home. Some friends were never seen again. I was one of the lucky ones who came back. Your mother’s brother was not.”
“Yes, I know. He was a war hero, like my father.”
“Falling down a flight of stairs does not make one a hero. The only action your father saw was inside a hospital.” My uncle’s pipe flared brightly and cooled. “I do apologize, Betty. I shouldn’t have spoken about your father that way.”
My mother’s story of how she nursed my father back to health while they fell in love was one of my favorites. Uncle Edward was wrong about my father not seeing action. That wasn’t how the story went at all. My father was an admirable man.
“But I thought my mother went to America to marry him because he was a hero.”
“Betty, perhaps you should talk to Aunt Lib.”
“Please, I’d like to know. Really I would.”
“Well, your mother wasn’t the same after her beloved brother—” Seeming at a loss for words, he said, “After her brother didn’t return home.”
In 1917, my mother’s brother died. My uncle couldn’t say that outright, though, because I had lost my own brother. When people talked about death around me, they used pleasant words like “pass away” or “resting in peace.” A tear dripped to my hand.
“Your mum couldn’t escape her sadness here. She leapt at the chance to run away with your father because … she felt she needed to. To move on with her life.”
Everything I thought I knew about my parents was turning inside out. Feeling sick to my stomach, I remembered the way my father had looked at Delores, so soon after my mother’s death, as if she were the only woman in the world. As if my mother never mattered to him at all. Was that why he had sent me away? Because he hadn’t wanted to be my father in the first place?
“Aunt Lib wasn’t blessed with the daughter she always hoped for,” Uncle Edward said. “We’re truly happy to have you here, Betty. For as long as you’re happy to stay.”
My uncle misunderstood. Their home was only a temporary stopover, like the stepping stone Tom and I had used to jump from one side of the creek to the other. I had taken the first leap from school to London. I was sure my father wouldn’t leave me stuck in the middle. He would bring me home before the war started.
I refused to give up hope as days turned to weeks. Weeks turned to months. Then, in May 1940, German troops made their move, swiftly invading France. The war became terrifyingly real. And when it did, I didn’t ask my aunt for the truth. I already felt the pain of it in my heart.
I’d been stranded.
Dr. Devereux must have given Estelle a dead-on description of my appearance. When I turn down her busy street, I hear a woman call, “Adele! How splendid of you to visit!”
From the steps of an apartment building a gray-haired woman comes running. Her open arms give fair warning of the hug on its way.
“Hello, Great-Aunt Estelle,” I say, returning the hug.
To enter her building we will have to cross paths with an approaching German officer. I lower my head to walk past him without attracting notice.
Estelle walks right up to him, smiling, and says, “Officer Berger. This is my great-niece, Adele. Isn’t she lovely?”
He lights a cigarette and says an obligatory, “Hello.” Then he carries on. He couldn’t care less who I am. Little does he know an SOE agent just stood within his arm’s reach.
“Come with me, Adele. My sixteen-year-old granddaughter Marie has been awaiting your arrival all morning.”
Estelle’s sunlit apartment reminds me of a miniature version of my aunt’s house. I can’t pin down any real similarities, but I feel at home when I walk through the door.
“Allow me to take your suitcase for you,” Estelle says. She sets it on the gray marble top of an art deco sideboard my aunt would love to own.
“Why did you introduce me to that German officer?” I ask, rubbing my achy arms.
“Now, in his mind, you are my great-niece, Adele. He will not waste time inquiring about you, as he might if we had said nothing. You will fade from his view and he will move on to someone else. If you behave as though you are keeping secrets, the Germans will suspect you are keeping secrets.”
I can see why Dr. Devereux likes this woman.
The door to the apartment flies open. A young girl flings herself into the room like a wispy ballerina taking center stage.
“Is she here?” she says, bouncing on her toes.
“Be calm, Marie. Yes, this is Adele. Adele, this is my granddaughter. Take a seat on the sofa. I will get you a bite to eat.”
We sit side by side on the sofa.
Closing in on my face, Marie says, “Everyone in the building will believe we are related. Look in my eyes. Like yours, they are brown. Not dark like chocolate, but like bourbon. And here”—she gathers her dark hair in a bunch to drape it over one shoulder—“we have small birthmarks shaped like Spain on our necks.”
I put some distance between us on the sofa, laughing at how quickly she spotted our resemblances.
“How old are you?” she asks.
“I’m twenty-two.”
She dismisses that with a coy grin. “No, no, I don’t believe you.”
“I am,” I insist. “Although I’ve been told I look young for my age.”
“Well, I still don’t believe you.” She cups her hand to her mouth to whisper, “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. I’m very good at keeping secrets.”
I hope the Germans aren’t as astute as this sixteen-year-old girl.
“Soldiers are everywhere in the city,” I say. “You’ve lived like this for four years?”
“I was twelve when they invaded, so at first I didn’t really understand what was happening. Then horrible stories started to reach us. Soldiers were moving across the country, lining up men, women, and children, and shooting them dead for no reason. My mother, brother, and I had to leave our home and belongings behind to j
oin the evacuees fleeing south. Lines of refugees filled the roads and went on as far as I could see. It was such a bizarre parade of bicycles, wagons and carts, wheelbarrows and baby carriages. But what I remember most are the noises all around me, every minute. The wheezing of men and women moving carts. The complaining and shouting. The babies screaming until I wanted to cry myself. And I lost sight of my mother once. It scares me even now to imagine what would have happened if we’d gotten separated.”
“That sounds awful,” I say. “Did you ever get your home and belongings back?”
“No, we didn’t. We returned as soon as we heard it was safe to do so, but the Germans had moved in to our home. After that, we came to Paris to live in the apartment across from Grand-mère. I remember that time well, because it was fun. Our lives didn’t really change. The horror stories we had heard didn’t seem true. Very quickly after that, life became so much worse. My mother cried and cried in those days. She loved to cook us big meals, and suddenly there wasn’t any food for her children. We had no heat to get us through the winter. I still hate the Germans for making my mother cry.”
Estelle returns from the kitchen. Placing a small tray of grapes, cheese, and raw carrots on the sofa table, she says, “Eat up, girls.”
Marie snaps off a bit of carrot with her front teeth. “For a while there were no potatoes to be had, my most favorite food gone. So instead I ate carrots every day. My skin turned orange. I ate so many carrots I started to turn into one!”
I laugh along with her.
“Marie, you said you have a brother. Where is he?”
“Like other older boys, Sebastian was taken away to work in Germany. He and his friends didn’t have time to run from the Service du Travail Obligatoire. Soldiers pulled them from a line as they left a movie theater.”
“Oh no!” I cry, shielding my mouth as I chew on a grape.
“We miss him so much. But he’s smart and strong. I believe in my heart he’ll come back to our family.” She shrugs, but the sadness in her eyes is clear. “My friends and I used to joke that boys are too grubby and silly to deserve our attention. Now there are almost no boys left. We wish they could all come back. What will happen if they don’t? Who will we marry? The decrepit old men the Germans deemed too unfit for work?”
We make nearly identical disgusted faces at the mere thought of that.
Marie jumps. “What time is it?” Before I have time to answer, she grabs my wrist to check my watch herself. “I have to leave for work at the café now. Do you want to walk with me? I can show you the neighborhood.”
“Sure, I’ll go with you.”
Marie glides up from the sofa. “I can tell already we are going to be great friends!”
After we say good-bye to Estelle, Marie leads me to a café in another district. I learn the location of her friends, her enemies, the old man I’m to avoid at all costs, the kind baker who gives a little more than the daily allotment, several black-market restaurants, and Gestopo headquarters on Avenue Foch.
“Marie, you are a wealth of information,” I say outside the café, when she finally pauses to take a breath.
“Thank you. Have a seat on the terrace. I will bring coffee to you.”
I’ve barely settled onto the chair when Marie comes rushing back with the coffee.
“I added a tiny bit of sugar,” she says in my ear. She gives me a chipper wave. “Bye for now. I’ll see you back at Grand-mère’s after work.”
“Okay, good-bye, Marie.”
I reach for my coffee. The first sip nearly splatters on my new outfit.
It takes all my willpower to not leap up, waving my arms in the air. I convinced myself that I would probably never see them again. And there they are across the street, one looking bewildered and the other looking even more beautiful than before.
Without trying, I had found Robbie and Denise.
THIRTEEN
Appearing to be in good health, Denise and Robbie look no different from the last time I saw them, although Denise’s fashionable clothes protest loudly about being seen in public with Robbie’s typical French worker outfit. She knows better than to set them apart.
Where have they been for a week? I’m afraid if I blink, they’ll disappear. I can’t risk losing them again.
Denise holds up one finger to Robbie, says something that makes him wilt, and then she dashes into a clothing boutique across from the café. He slouches against the building, arms crossed. I doubt it’s the first time she’s left him unattended to wait for her.
As I push my chair from the table, six soldiers drunkenly stagger into the daylight from the Metro station across the street, hooting and singing at the top of their voices. One soldier goes out of his way to shove the driver of a passing bicycle taxi to the street. Blood drips from a gash on his chin when he retrieves his bicycle. He halfheartedly shakes his fist at the soldiers, but not until they’ve moved on to their next target.
Robbie.
Ignoring the soldiers does nothing to stop them. The beret that shields Robbie’s closely cropped hair from view is snatched from his head. His meek attempts to catch the hat as it’s tossed through the group always miss by a hair. I helplessly watch him be made a spectacle of, the humiliation on his face nearly too great for me to stomach.
The beret spins to the ground. Finished with their little game, the soldiers step aside, laughing. I ease back in my chair to wait to them out. My trembling hands raise the coffee to my lips but it splashes like waves battering a boat. Setting the cup on the table, I breathe slowly in and out.
Robbie bends to pick up the beret. The soldier who shoved the bicycle taxi driver sneers. His boot rises. It crashes squarely on Robbie’s hand, grinding fingers on stone.
I hear Robbie cry out.
My chair spins around behind me. I storm to the opposite side of the street. Blood rushes into my face. Guttural German growls up from deep in my throat. “Leave this man alone! My father is Lieutenant General Hausser. If he finds out about this, every one of you will be sent to Siberia.”
The electrifying supremacy of the moment, with German soldiers staring at me as if I could whip them to Siberia myself, belching fire and brimstone from my mouth, is like nothing I’ve felt before.
A soldier tugs on the sleeve of his comrade, motioning for them to get away before I can take names. Every soldier but the worst of the bunch and a cohort take off running like frightened schoolboys fleeing a tyrannical headmaster after a schoolyard fight. The remaining two soldiers can give me their menacing looks all they want, it won’t match the one on my face. I have reached a point beyond reason.
Our staring match goes on for what seems an eternity. Each pump of my heart, like a grenade going off in a hollow canister, sends blood and shockwaves through my limbs. I am not about to stand down first.
The soldier picks up the beret, dusts it off, and offers it at arm’s length.
Robbie has yet to utter a single word. Reluctantly, he takes the hat back.
Before leaving, the soldier turns to me. With a sly grin, he tips his helmet.
“Adele, what the heck was that?” Robbie whispers.
The effects of all those grenades going off in my chest set in.
“I feel sick.” I lay my forehead against the sun-drenched stone wall. “We’re not supposed to know each other. I shouldn’t be speaking to you in English. You never know who’s watching, and as far as witnesses are concerned, I left the café to help a stranger.”
Robbie grips the beret in his good hand. His wounded hand is rubbed to raw meat in places. I take his wrist to examine the seriousness of the injuries, hoping with all my heart that they aren’t permanent. If that awful German made it impossible for Robbie to play the piano again, I don’t know what to say or do to make it better.
“How does it feel? Can you move your fingers?”
Robbie’s voice shakes when he says, “I’m fine, Adele, really. But how are you?”
“I found the most splendid chenille”—De
nise bops out of the store, and we come face to face—“blouse.” Her mouth falls open. “You’re looking green around the gills.”
“Pretend you don’t know me. Meet at the Rue Montmartre station in half an hour?”
She nods.
I pat Robbie’s arm and return to the café.
When I arrive at the Metro station, Robbie and Denise are waiting at the entrance. Denise leads the way past row upon row of parked bicycles to a secluded area in a park.
“Ooh la la, take a look at you,” she says.
Mrs. Devereux’s expensive clothing and perfume feel maddeningly foreign on me, but they reinforce claims that I’m a German colonel’s daughter. Any suspicions the soldiers have now are a waste of time.
“You don’t look too bad yourself,” I say. “Where did you get that new outfit?”
“I bought it.”
“You bought it? With the SOE’s money?”
“I’m in Paris. I’m sure they would understand.”
I don’t think anyone at headquarters will understand Denise paying black market prices unless the blouses also shoot bullets and come equipped with grenades.
“Would you like to join me in getting a manicure?” she asks.
Ragged beyond help, my nails look worse off than normal, and that’s saying something.
“A manicure?” I laugh, not about to let her pull my leg. “You’re joking.”
She points to a street adjacent to the park. The electricity is out, as usual, and two barbers and a manicurist busily groom customers on the sidewalk.
“We’ll have plenty of money left. If we need more I’ll send word to London.”
I honestly don’t want to be forced to put my foot down or reprimand Denise. In my eyes, we’re equals. I want it to stay that way.
“We’re here to work, Denise. Let’s get that manicure some other time.”
Her lips purse sideways into an amused smirk. “The voice of reason. Where would I be without you?”
A tight hug squeezes out my breathy reply, “In shops and salons?”
