by Cathy Gohlke
“I had to wait for the Home Guard to pass on. He always stops for a cuppa with Da on his rounds. Did you bring it?”
“Did you? I want to know what you’re offering before I agree.”
“Follow me; I brought a torch to show you, but we need a place the light won’t be seen.”
Josef followed, feeling his way through the cemetery gate behind the church, not at all certain this was a good idea. And what about that cough? Did Wilfred have bigger boys lying in wait to jump him? He had no reason to trust Wilfred, except that the older boy had sounded desperate in his plea. Josef’s jaw stiffened. He should have left the tolley at home, insisted that they trade in daylight. No one even knew where he’d gone or that he’d left Bluebell Wood.
“Here—” Wilfred broke Josef’s train of thought—“behind the mayor’s stone. This makes a little cove what you can’t see from the road.” He pulled something slim from his pocket and flicked on the torch.
“A pencil? You think I’m going to trade that tolley for a pencil?” Now Josef was certain it was a trick.
“That’s what it looks like, what it’s meant to look like. But it’s more. Just look.”
Wilfred pulled the eraser from its end. “This here is a compass.”
“What?”
“A compass—it gives directions, north, south—”
“I know what a compass is!”
Wilfred twisted the pencil in a way Josef could not quite see, even with the torch. “And the barrel holds a map.”
“Ja, sure,” Josef said sarcastically.
“See?” Wilfred pulled an even slimmer cylinder partway from the barrel. “There’s a map of Germany in here—but if I unroll it, I’m not sure I can get it back in. It’s thinner than regular paper.” He sat back on his haunches. “It’s a spy pencil. For the RAF—if they get shot down in Germany. Looks like an ordinary pencil to the Germans, but our aviators break it open and the map helps them get to a safe route where the Underground can help them. The compass tells them which direction to go.”
Josef was stunned. “Where did you get it?”
Wilfred did not answer.
“I’m not trading unless you tell me.”
“I took it from my uncle’s bag. I heard him talking to my da about it. They work at the pencil factory in Keswick, so I guess they’re both in on it. Top secret, I heard them say—nobody’s to know. So you can’t tell anybody. It’d be treason.”
“I’m not the one telling.”
Josef sensed Wilfred’s uncomfortable shift. “You’re not going to help the Nazis.”
“No, I’m not.” Josef warmed with that bit of trust.
“I told you it was good.” Wilfred hesitated. “Is it a deal?”
It was a good trade. What did Josef care for Wilfred’s tolley, anyway? But the pencil, a real live spy pencil, was a coup, even if he couldn’t tell anyone.
Uncomfortably, the scrolled map inside the pencil casing reminded Josef of the mezuzah at home in Germany—the tiny rolled parchment inside the casing that hung on their front doorpost containing the words of the Shema from Deuteronomy, exhorting him to keep the words and commands of Adonai constantly in his mind and heart. He doubted Adonai looked kindly on the deal he was going to make or his motivation.
Then inspiration flashed through Josef’s mind: a Christmas gift—an ordinary-looking pencil for Fräulein Claire, who loved to write, with a note coiled inside, or an intimate poem he’d write especially for her. That might please Adonai and would make her forget Arnaud and turn her eyes from Herr David. She need never know the pencil once held an aviator’s map. He’d keep that forever, a fine wartime souvenir.
“Ja, okay.” Josef pushed any twinge of guilt away and pulled the tolley from his pocket. They traded, hand for hand. To seal the deal, to make certain Wilfred would forever look on him as an equal, Josef stuck out his hand.
Wilfred did not hesitate, but shook it firmly. “Ta.”
Josef grinned in the dark. “Ta.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
CLAIRE PICKED UP TWO LETTERS from the post office the first week of October. One was for Aimee, from Mr. Lewis.
“The Mr. Lewis?” Mrs. Newsome asked incredulously as Claire dropped the mail into the housekeeper’s hands.
Claire didn’t answer, but took the stairs two at a time to her room and locked the door. She’d been just as flabbergasted at Mr. Lewis’s return address as Mrs. Newsome, until she’d seen the other letter, addressed to her, from Sylvia Beach, by way of Sylvia’s parents.
Claire ripped her letter open. Sylvia wrote that she expected this would be her last batch of letters to get out of France for the foreseeable future, so she was writing everyone she could. The first part seemed nearly a form letter, probably copied from letters she’d written to other family and friends.
Between Sylvia’s nationality and her Jewish affiliations—especially the hiring of an eighteen-year-old Jewish girl—the Nazis had pretty well finished Shakespeare and Company. They were compelled to declare themselves to the Kommandantur and to register once a week. Sylvia didn’t know how long she could keep the bookstore open, or what the future might hold for her or their friends—so many of whom had moved away or emigrated to other countries—but wrote that she’d never be sorry she’d come to France. She finished the front page of her letter, “France is my home, my life.”
Claire turned the single page over. There, everything became personal.
I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Josephine has begged me to write you. Last week, she and her husband were shot by a German patrol while helping a local family. She said you would understand what that meant.
Arnaud was killed instantly, and Josephine severely wounded. She is in hospital but receiving poor care. The Germans let me see her only once. She was barely conscious and is not expected to live.
I suspect they have questioned her rather brutally. Her main concern was for you, Claire, and that I tell you she is so very sorry, and that she loved Arnaud with all her heart. She also said something I am not certain I have right: that Arnaud was not delayed, that his intention all along was to send you to safety.
I never quite understood why you left Paris so abruptly, Claire. Josephine said you were called suddenly away. I assumed that meant your aunt needed you, once I learned where you’d gone. Now I wonder if there is more to that story.
Know that you have my sincere sympathy. We will all miss Josephine, and Arnaud was . . . Well, he was our charming Arnaud, so full of life and fun. I know they were your close and particular friends. I remember the gay times you three enjoyed in the bookstore of an evening. Arnaud and Josephine seemed very happy, very much in love. I hope that knowledge will be of some comfort to you.
If I am able to send further word of Josephine’s condition, I will, but do not expect it. I fear our mail, even to America, will be cut off very soon.
Claire dropped the letter, curled into a fetal ball, and wept.
For four days Aimee clutched her letter to her chest inside her vest. A letter! For me!
Aimee had never received a letter. She had hoped for a long time that one might come from her maman or papa, that they might write and say they were coming to take her home. Perhaps they would write that they were coming to England to live, or perhaps they would just appear on the doorstep one day, having been smuggled into the country as she had been.
But after so many months, Aimee had stopped believing, stopped hoping, even stopped fantasizing that such a thing might happen. Madame Newsome said that her letters could not reach Paris now, because of the war. But Mademoiselle Claire had said they could go all over the United Kingdom. Aimee decided if she could not write her parents or they her, then she would write Mr. Lewis. She liked his voice on the wireless. He sounded like a kindly man, a grandfatherly man, a man who understood the ugliness of this war that tore families apart and the need for kindness among people. Madame Newsome said he was an author, like Mrs. Heelis. Mrs. Heelis appreciated Aime
e’s drawings; perhaps Mr. Lewis would as well.
When Aimee had drawn her picture for Mr. Lewis and Mademoiselle Claire had mailed it with a letter of her own explaining, it was like sending a note in a bottle on Lake Windermere. Aimee hardly imagined it would truly reach him, let alone that he would respond.
Then Mr. Lewis’s letter came, and it was as if a new world opened—as if, in the moment Madame Newsome handed her the envelope, she’d stepped through glass doors into a world beyond her own, or fallen down the rabbit hole in Alice’s world, from the story Mademoiselle Claire had read especially for her. The only person Aimee wished to share her letter with was mademoiselle, but she seemed terribly preoccupied and distressed.
So Aimee did not open her letter all that day or the next, or the next, though everyone from Mrs. Newsome to Madame Langford urged her to do so. She waited until the fourth day, until bedtime, until all the other children were tucked into their beds and she could hear their soft, whiffling breath. She even waited until she heard Mademoiselle Claire’s weary steps trudge up from the library, and until she heard the latch click on her bedroom door.
Aimee slipped from her bed, clutching her now-wrinkled envelope, and padded down the hallway to Mademoiselle Claire’s room. She knocked softly. No answer. She knocked again, this time a bit more loudly.
“Yes? Is someone there?” Mademoiselle Claire’s voice came weepy and hollow from the other side of the door.
“Oui, mademoiselle. C’est moi—Aimee.”
“Aimee?” Mademoiselle Claire swung open the door, swiping at moisture overflowing her eyes. “What is it? Are you all right? Is anything wrong?”
“Oui, mademoiselle, I am well, and, non, nothing is mistaken.” Aimee hesitated again, aware that mademoiselle seemed burdened with her own troubles. But Aimee could wait no longer. She pulled the letter from behind her back. “Will you read it to me?”
Mademoiselle Claire’s eyes blinked and blinked again. Her bosom heaved a sigh and a frown creased her forehead. She looked as if she would refuse, and then a sad smile slowly dawned in her weary eyes, a smile that rose the sun in Aimee’s heart. “Oui. You haven’t read it yet? No one’s read it to you?”
Aimee shook her head. “I want only you to read it, je t’en prie. You helped me to write Monsieur Lewis, to send him my drawing. It is for you and for me to know what he thinks.”
Mademoiselle Claire tilted her head in the kindly way grown-ups did and reached for Aimee’s hand, sending a thrill through the little girl. Aimee followed her into the room and to the pretty blue-and-wine-colored braided rug near the fire. Mademoiselle set pillows against the chair and invited Aimee to join her. She climbed immediately into Mademoiselle Claire’s lap and tore open the envelope.
The letter was written on cream-colored stationery, very thin with little white space between the lines. Aimee gasped in disbelief. She shook the envelope and peeked inside, in case there was something more, then let out a disappointed sigh. “There are no pictures, mademoiselle! Not one!”
Mademoiselle, even through her watery eyes, looked as if she was trying not to smile. Aimee’s back straightened, and she squirmed from Mademoiselle Claire’s lap. Do grown-ups understand nothing?
“Wait, Aimee.” Mademoiselle pulled her back. “Don’t you want to know what he says?”
“What does it matter? I sent him my best drawing of the newborn lambs on the fells. Perhaps he did not think it pretty.”
“But he did. And he sent you a picture with his words—just like when we read stories at night. Lean in and close your eyes. Imagine what the words would look like in a picture. Listen to what he writes:
Dear Aimee,
I am very glad you wrote and sent me your fine drawing. I have always wanted to visit the Lake District in springtime and see the newborn lambs frolicking over the fells. Now, thanks very much to you and your drawing, I have. I especially liked how jolly the two in the meadow appeared, dancing on their hind hooves and tossing bouquets of tufted purple vetch into the air. The foxgloves made fine parasols, though I’ve never seen ones so big. Perhaps they grow that way in the Lake District.
I was not surprised to learn that the lambs in Windermere wear brown brogans. Those things seem appropriate for a mountainous region where it rains a great deal. I think your friend Mrs. Heelis would approve.
When I was your age, my brother, Warnie, and I created a world of creatures that walked about on two feet and wore clothes, much like your young lambs. We called our kingdom Boxen. All the animals spoke Boxonian. Being boys, our stories were consumed with battles and espionage by such creatures as sword-wielding mice.
Like you, I was inspired by Miss Beatrix Potter’s (whom you now know as Mrs. Heelis) books of talking animals. She is a wonderful artist and storyteller. If envy weren’t such a difficult character trait to overcome, I might envy your opportunity to meet with her and learn from her.
Keep drawing, Aimee, and keep faith. I hope the very best for your dear parents. I know they miss you very much. Let me know how you get on.
Yours ever,
C. S. Lewis
Snuggled on the rug by the fireside, her head on mademoiselle’s knee, Aimee felt toasty and cozy. But that was nothing compared with the sleepy warmth that spread through her. Content. It was a word she’d heard from Madame Newsome—a good word, and it fit the moment.
The last thing Aimee remembered was Mademoiselle Claire lifting her up and pulling her head to her shoulder. She heard mademoiselle sniff back tears, but Aimee was too sleepy to speak. She reached for mademoiselle’s cheek to comfort her and patted it with her hand, precipitating a fresh flow of tears. She hoped mademoiselle knew that she loved her.
Mademoiselle Claire smelled of lilac water, so that was what Aimee imagined as she was carried back to her room: lilacs and springtime, frolicking lambs and sword-wielding mice swashbuckling and victory-parading up and down the fells. Aimee’s last thought was that Evelyn might make a very nice name for a little lamb sporting a yellow bonnet festooned in pink rosettes. She would draw her first thing in the morning. Monsieur Lewis might be interested, especially if Evelyn rowed across Lake Windermere and met a mouse prince in his land of Boxen. Mr. Lewis hadn’t said if such a prince might be handsome. She would leave that to Evelyn to decide.
Claire rubbed the weariness from her eyes. Three in the morning, and she hadn’t slept. For days and nights she’d wrestled with the ghosts that Sylvia Beach’s letter had resurrected. Arnaud—dead. Arnaud and Josephine—a couple—married. It seemed an impossibility, and yet one she’d known might come, had suspected in the depths of her soul. And for all its horror, she knew the relationship to be true, to be right between them.
Even Josephine knew it would comfort Claire to know that they had truly loved one another . . . or was that Sylvia? Claire buried her face in her hands. She couldn’t remember, couldn’t sort it out. She didn’t want Josephine to suffer, didn’t want her to die, and yet, perversely, Claire wanted her to feel shame for taking Arnaud, for loving him when she’d known that was the dream Claire had nurtured. Why? Why—any of this?
For months Claire had hoped and waited for reassurance of Arnaud’s love—reassurance that never came. And now, in one unexpected moment, it was as if all that waiting had been a dream, and her time in France, believing he’d loved her, a farce. Josephine, her best and closest friend, had betrayed her. Claire should be livid, but she realized at last that she wasn’t. She wasn’t anything. Everything is so mixed up. I don’t know what to feel, to think, only that I can’t be loved. I’m not worthy of being loved by anyone. I knew this before. I’ve feared it always. Why am I surprised when the history of my life repeats itself?
And yet, this evening Aimee had crawled into her lap and leaned her tousled head against Claire’s heart, vulnerably offering her own heart. Aimee needed her, wanted her love and care. Aimee loved her; Claire saw this.
But Claire had almost pushed love away again. It wasn’t the romantic love she’d craved
from Arnaud, the thing she so desperately wanted.
Why do I do that? Why do I push away what’s offered and crave what I can’t have?
Because you’re afraid.
The voice wasn’t audible but spoke itself into Claire’s mind as clearly as if someone had walked into the room and tapped her on the shoulder. Of course I’m afraid. I’m terrified that if I love someone, they’ll leave me—just like Arnaud, like Josephine, like my father did. Just like my mother, who was there, but never there, not really. I’m afraid of losing anyone I love, of being rejected, so I withhold love from those who want it and seek it where I can’t have it. What kind of crazy, sick cycle is this?
And then came revelation. I don’t want to live like that—like this! But I can’t change. Help me! Oh, please help me!
I love you.
Claire gasped. The voice in her head again—or was it her heart?—came so clear.
She turned off the light and lay back against the pillow. C. S. Lewis, in one of his broadcasts, had talked about God’s rebuilding project—how you so want to be a decent little cottage, but He rearranges and knocks the house about in a way that hurts abominably, adding a wing here and a floor there, running up towers and making courtyards with the sole purpose of building a palace that He intends to come and live in. Claire certainly felt rearranged and knocked about. Dared she believe God loved her, that He wanted to build within her a place to live—a palace?
Claire punched her pillow and closed her eyes. The clock ticked on and on, each tick driving her eyelids wider. Before dawn she dressed and paced the floor. Finally, she scribbled a note and slipped it beneath David’s door, then walked downstairs to wait in the library.
A half hour before breakfast, David opened the library door, his forehead creased in worry. “I just saw your note. Are you okay? One of the kids sick?”
Claire shook her head. “Nothing like that. I need to talk to someone.” She couldn’t keep the trembling from her voice.
