The Girl from Vichy

by Andie Newton

  ‘Does it say anything else?’

  Papa looked up, his eyes watering and blue, sliding the note across the table. There, scribbled in her best handwriting were the words to ‘À la Claire Fontaine’.

  ‘Our song, ma chérie. Long have I loved you…’ He couldn’t finish the words without breaking down. I put my hand on his.

  ‘Go,’ he said. ‘Tell her I’m coming home.’

  24

  I lurched to a stop near the patio and ran inside, only to realize something felt terribly off. The chateau was dead quiet—and in the middle of the day. The laundry was half-hung on the line outside, some of it dangling in loose dirt. The dog whimpered from behind the rubbish bin, her burnt little tail wagging cautiously between her legs, afraid to come any closer. That’s when I noticed what looked like two drops of blood spatter on the floor.

  I gulped—Germans.

  I ran upstairs to Mama’s bedroom. Two more drops led to three, then four—a trail—leading into her room, each one getting fatter, redder and less watery than the last. ‘Mama—’ I threw open the door and my hand flew to my mouth.

  She sat in a chair bound with ropes tied to her wrists and ankles, a rag wadded in her mouth to keep her from screaming. ‘Mama!’ Her head hung off to the side, the mark of someone’s knuckles pressed into her left cheek. A shallow slash across her chest oozed blood onto her apron, metallic-smelling, warming with the midday sun coming in through the window.

  I ran to her, taking the rag from her mouth and working to loosen the ropes. The one eye that hadn’t been bashed in, opening a hair. ‘Who did this?’

  She mumbled, her head lifting.

  ‘What are you saying?’ I untied a knot from her wrist. ‘Who did this—’

  ‘He knows,’ she moaned. ‘I don’t know how, but he knows.’

  ‘Who? Knows what?’

  The kitchen door slammed shut down below, the dog suddenly barking like a crazed animal. Four stomps of heavy feet—the dog yelped—and then there was pure silence. I raced to shut Mama’s door, locking it with a heavy bolt as the footsteps started up the stairs, one after the other. Thud. Thud. Thud…

  I worked frantically on Mama’s wrists. ‘Germans? Is it a German—’ A kick to the lock and the door burst open behind me, cracking against the wall, and Mama straightened with a jolt, her eye large and wide looking over my shoulder, her whole body shaking.

  ‘Gérard.’

  I flew to my feet and he grabbed my throat, pulling me to him, his wild eyes meeting mine before he threw me to the floor. ‘Not mine to torment,’ he growled, taking the little bit of rope I had managed to untie from Mama’s wrists and reaching for my hands. ‘A priest can’t tell the Milice what to do.’

  ‘Gérard. Don’t,’ I cried, one arm frantically searching for the gun Luc gave me, my fingers gracing the holster under my dress as he pinned my body down. ‘You don’t have… to do this.’

  He wound the rope around my wrists, tying one to the foot of Mama’s bed and the other to the leg of her vanity as I screamed.

  ‘Shut up!’ he shouted through clenched teeth, punching my face with a closed fist—a piercing blow of pain that left the grit of broken teeth loose in my mouth.

  He stood over me once I was tied down, first carefully hanging his blue Milice jacket on the back of a nearby chair and then unbuckling his belt buckle, ranting about the Catchfly and how I was a whore. He reached under my skirt and snatched the gun Luc had given me from its holster and stuck it behind his back. ‘I found your lover’s radio,’ he added, as Mama wept under the rag he had stuffed back into her mouth.

  Gérard hooked his finger on the top button of my dress and began to pull, popping every button from its hole. He flipped back both sides like a coat to get a good look at me. ‘Just a necklace?’ He rubbed my heart pendant in between his roughened fingers, a glaring eye examining every curve before yanking it off and throwing it across the room. ‘Or a gift from your lover?’

  He pulled a sharp knife slicked with Mama’s blood from a sheath tucked under his belt. Slowly, he cut my brassiere and panties from my body, pressing the tip of the knife into my skin, dragging it downward from my navel. ‘That’s for after,’ he said, sticking the knife back into its sheath. ‘First there’s this.’

  Gérard pulled a heap of white fabric out from under Mama’s bed and threw it at me. ‘Remember this?’ he said. Yards of Mechlin lace lumped around my neck—the weight of the heavy fabric on top of me an all too familiar feel from the last time I had it on.

  My wedding dress.

  Mama shook her crying head for having saved it after I thought she’d thrown it out.

  Gérard pulled Luc’s flask from his pocket and drank what alcohol was left inside, his brow furrowing from the taste of the English whisky. He mumbled in between gulps about the torturous things he was going to do to Luc when he found him. ‘Hang from a tree,’ he said. ‘Drain like a deer.’ I lay helplessly on the floor staring up at him, my eyes fluttering, on the verge of blacking out.

  Gérard threw the flask against the wall once he had emptied it. A swipe of his thick hand across his mouth wiped the gloss of whisky from his lips. ‘Merde! This is shit!’ he said with utter disgust. ‘Where’s Albert’s wine?’ he asked, though he didn’t expect us to answer. He stomped downstairs, slamming the door shut behind him so as not to hear us crying as he guzzled Papa’s wine in the kitchen. I could hear his heavy plodding from one wall to the next, smashing wine bottles.

  Mama spit out the rag. ‘My gun,’ she said. ‘Adèle, my gun!’

  ‘Gun?’ The word roused me like a splash of water to the face—I’d forgotten about the gun Mama had in the floorboard. The thought of escaping gave me enough strength to pull my hand from one of the knots and feel around for the loose board—frantically, frantically, and then I found it. I lifted the board up by my fingertip, unseeing, and grabbed the gun from the secret compartment. ‘I have it,’ I whispered, and Mama breathed heavily. I hid my whole arm under the dress, finger on the trigger. ‘Weep for Christ’s sake, Mama. Weep!’

  She went back to wailing while I waited, palms sweating, remembering what Luc had told me about aiming. Look down the barrel, close one eye and use the other to aim.

  I counted backward from ten in my mind, eyes closed, thinking of the grass and the sun and calming my nervous heart, breathing deeply, too deeply for my pounding heart. Then Gérard started up the stairs and my eyes popped open, listening to the thumps. The door flew open, slamming against the wall—only one shot. Mama hopped in her seat, her cry more like a squeal.

  ‘Enough!’ he yelled as he threw a full wine bottle at the wall. Crash! Wine splattered behind Mama like blood from a bullet to her head, her squeal turning into an outright scream as the shattered glass rained down on her skin.

  Gérard stood in the doorway unlooping the belt from his waist, his eyes pointed as daggers looking into mine. He paused when he noticed my arm wasn’t tethered to the vanity. Where’s—’

  I pulled my hand out from under the dress, Gérard’s face a mix of fear and anger as I aimed my one shot. Pop! My eye lay fixed down the barrel, frozen, as his body fell like a tree on top of me, onto the wedding dress.

  Mama’s wailing was now a search for air as I moved my body out from under Gérard’s, untying the rest of my limbs from the constraints he had tried to rape me in, the dress soaking up his blood.

  I felt a mix of sadness and loathing as I stared at Gérard lying motionless on Mama’s floor—Gérard, the good soldier I kept hearing about, really had died years ago, crushed by his own ambition and greed.

  ‘My God, Adèle,’ Mama said after I untied her, both of us moving to the floor, kneeling and gazing at his body. ‘My God!’

  ‘Better him than us.’

  ‘I know!’ Her voice was shrill. ‘Jesus Christ!’ Mama put both hands to her head, worry as much as fright keeping her swollen eyes open. ‘Let me think!’ she shrieked. ‘Let me think of what to do—’

  Géra
rd moaned and we both screamed. ‘He’s alive!’

  We scrambled to get clear of him, but his meaty hand latched on to my ankle. ‘I’m going to kill you.’ He spat blood spat from his mouth. ‘You and your mother!’ Mama went for his hands but he got her throat, the wedding dress pillowing underneath their knees as they both tried to gain a footing.

  ‘Reload,’ Mama rasped.

  I frantically tried to reload the gun with the extra bullets from the box. I had no time to read the directions, aiming straight for his heart and firing the gun.

  This time I was a perfect shot.

  ‘He’s dead,’ I cried out, using every bit of strength I had left. ‘He’s dead…’

  Papa flew into the room, bracing both sides of the doors with his hands, his eyes stretched in a million directions, first looking at Gérard’s body slumped on the floor and then at the gun still smoking in my hands. When he saw Mama pulling at her throat with blood streaking down her chest, I thought he might die right on top of Gérard. ‘Ma chérie!’ he cried, wanting to touch Mama but unsure where.

  Mama sobbed his name, the sound coming from deep within her body: ‘Albert.’

  Papa wept into Mama’s shoulder, saying her name over and over again as if an apology, wiping the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘I’m here,’ he kept saying. ‘I’m here.’

  Mama swallowed relentlessly trying to feel her throat again. Thin red veins had bloodshot her eyes. ‘Adèle, you must run,’ she said with coarse breath. ‘Run far away.’ She put a hand to her mouth as if she couldn’t believe she’d even say such a thing. ‘It’s the only way.’

  Papa’s eyes swelled pink. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Run away. Into the hills if you have to.’

  I scooted back, my body shaking, thinking about the consequences of what I had done. Regardless of what Gérard had planned for me, I had shot a member of the Milice.

  Mama grabbed my shoulders. ‘You’d be lucky to get a quick death if they give you to the Gestapo. Germans—they’re ruthless. My time as a nurse—’ Mama caught herself, a brief glance to Papa to collect her words; then the truth of what bound her and Mother Superior spilled from her mouth. ‘They killed my friend because they thought she was a spy. The way they killed her, pulling her organs out while she was alive, making me and Elizabeth watch…’

  I shrieked from her words and Papa wailed along with Mama.

  ‘Albert!’ Mama said, wiping tears from her face. ‘We’ll bury him in the field.’

  They talked in hurried whispers over Gérard’s body, deciding where in the field was the best spot while I ran down stairs, my heart racing, thinking about what I should pack, my feet skidding across shards of broken glass strewn across Mama’s parquet floor, the ringing of the gunshot still piercing my ears, and I stopped—right in the middle of the kitchen—my eyes clenched and my fists just as tight, until the sound of the gunshot faded and I could hear myself think: if I did run I’d only be known as the girl who ran away. Forever.

  Mama had started crying again upstairs, telling Papa who I really was. ‘The Catchfly,’ I heard. ‘Résistance, both of us.’

  The Catchfly.

  My hands stopped shaking; the glint of a paint tube lying on the kitchen counter amidst the rubble of glass caught my eye, and I knew what to do. A fleeting glance upstairs and a kiss meant for them both.

  ‘We do what we have to, Mama.’ I swung open the kitchen door, the paint gripped tightly in my hand. ‘When we have to.’

  The door swung back and slammed shut behind me.

  *

  I stood in the middle of the road, the train station at the end of it, cars swerving out of the way, honking for me to move. My dress looked like a mere shred of a rag stained with Gérard’s blood, held closed by one blood-stained hand.

  There was no time for a breath. People started to gather on the pavement, staring, wondering what I was doing and if I had gone mad. A shrug of my shoulder and my dress slipped off, falling into a lumpy, soiled pile at my feet—gasps, men pointing, women hiding their children’s eyes as I stood naked, a fire in my soul lighting up my eyes as I squeezed paint onto my fingertips, writing across my chest and breasts, the word in red bleeding from my skin: Catchfly.

  A stillness swept over the gathering crowd. Cars engines turned off. Women dropped their hands from their children’s eyes to place them over their hearts while men took off their hats. And I walked, straight toward two Milice standing under the large clock that hung above the station’s stone archway.

  There would be no running. Not today.

  Charlotte sat on the bench outside her boutique, shaking her head in her hands. She bolted to a stand when she saw me, her eyes like lemons and puffy from crying. She shrieked before dropping to her knees, begging for me to turn around. When she realized I wasn’t stopping, and that the Milice were seconds away from noticing me, she tried covering me with a lacy robe she took from her display window. ‘I’m sorry.’ Her face drooped like a melting candle. ‘I was delirious when I told him.’

  I gasped—Gérard. I thought an informant must have told him. Never once did I think Charlotte had something to do with it. ‘You told him?’

  She barely nodded—but it was there, a slight jitter of an admission. I shoved her from me, and she folded to the ground weeping. I turned toward the Milice, who stood dumbfounded as much as some others, the smell of last night’s champagne and black caviar wafting from their wool jackets.

  A shout, ‘Vive le Catchfly!’ rang out from the crowd. People clapped, low at first, but then it turned into an outright roar. The miliciens grabbed on to me, their hands like meat hooks, and dragged me to the nearest Morris Column, tying me to it with ropes they had looped near their waists like cowboys. They circled like vultures, blood in their eyes. They’d want me to scream. I pressed my lips together and hoped I could hold it in.

  ‘Say something,’ one said. ‘Ask for mercy—see if you get it.’ He pointed the barrel of his gun between my eyes, Charlotte’s horrific scream the only thing that stopped him from shooting as she crawled to her knees just a few feet away.

  ‘This is how we treat résistants,’ the other one shouted at the crowd, taking his thick leather belt from his trousers and holding it between his hands in the air, Charlotte’s body quaking at the sight of it.

  He swung his hand back, and in that split-second with his hand suspended in the air, my body seized up.

  Wpssh! My eyes bugged from my head when the leather struck my ribs, the pain like a million bee stings. Wpssh! Wpssh! ‘Forgive me, sister,’ Charlotte cried through heaving wails, and my mind travelled to a faded memory of Charlotte and I running barefoot through Papa’s vineyards, the cool-black volcanic soil heavy between our toes, a lofty giggle from us both, the sight of her dress ruffling against her calves as I chased her in the sun and through the grass—clear as my skin ripping under each lash. ‘Forgive me…’

  Everything got still, the smell of the leather against my wet-with-blood skin curdling under my nose. And then I heard what they had heard—a rumbling in the distance, people marching, an army if I ever heard one. Under the swell of a bruising face I saw the Milice step back, dropping the whip.

  ‘Riot!’ someone shouted, and people scattered. The miliciens ran to their truck as people with sticks poured out of the alley and rushed into the square, throwing what little food merchants had in their markets out into the street and tossing bottles into the air that crashed like bombs against the cobblestones.

  ‘Open the food reserves,’ they shouted. ‘Bastards!’

  A thin layer of smoke rose in the street, Prêtre Champoix appearing like an apparition, moving toward me from within the haze. He crossed his arms and stood like a wall with his back to me as two nuns untied the ropes from the Morris Column. I fell into their arms, and we slipped away into a building not far away, my whole body hidden in the thick folds of their black habits.

  The nuns held me up by the arms against the wall in a brick room—the only part
s of my body that didn’t ache—as people I couldn’t see talked about what to do with me next.

  A woman with oversized, black-rimmed glasses sitting on the tip of her nose, looked me over. ‘First, she needs some clothes.’ She slipped a thin floral dress over my head and then pulled it down from the hem, fitting it to my body as she talked. ‘No rosewater for you this time, Adèle.’ She wrapped a striped shawl around my shoulders, and then whispered near my ear even though she didn’t have to. ‘Now that I know who you are, love.’ She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and smiled.

  ‘Mme Dubois?’ I could barely push the words from my mouth.

  She nodded, putting a hand to my swelling face. ‘No need to talk. You’re sorely beaten. Rest.’ She helped me onto a beige divan set against the wall. ‘Sit here while we figure out how to get you out safely.’

  The nuns assembled an ice pack consisting of a lump of ice wrapped in a scrap of striped fabric and held it to my cheek. The initial sting of the cold, wet press made me scowl. ‘Christ!’ They moved it away from the welt, shock lifting their eyes wide open from hearing me swear. ‘Sorry,’ I said, motioning for them to try again. ‘It’s very cold.’

  A woman with her hair pinned back, thin as a rail, paced around, talking about the nearest safe house. ‘The best option is to get her out of Vichy,’ she said to Mme Dubois, exchanging something wrapped in brown paper. ‘Pack her with the shipment. I’ll radio for transport. You know where. Wait until sundown. I’ll need a few hours.’

  Mme Dubois nodded, glancing back at me. ‘She walked right up to them as if she wanted to die. Defiant, that one.’ After pondering her own thoughts she turned toward me. ‘What was in your head, love?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, not wanting to elaborate.

  The woman placed a hand on my shoulder. There was something about her touch, and in the long pause that followed, that made me think she knew what had been in my head, and she understood. ‘I wasn’t supposed to be in Vichy today.’ She leaned into the light coming from a lantern Mme Dubois had lit and placed on the ground. ‘After what you did for us at the Sleeping Lady, I couldn’t leave you tied to that column.’