The Girl from Vichy

by Andie Newton

  He smiled. ‘We have something in common; there are about that many Gestapo at Hotel Terminus. Our headquarters here in Lyon.’

  Marguerite flashed him a quick smile. ‘Yes—Hotel Terminus. I know where it is.’

  ‘Oh, you do? That is good.’ He put a hand to his chin and tapped his lips just below his thin moustache. ‘That is good you know where it is.’

  There was a long, hot pause where he and Marguerite looked at each other and nobody talked. Perhaps it was his critical smile, or perhaps it was the way he stood back, relaxed near the crate of guns, watching his men circulate around the room rummaging through scraps of cloth near the sewing machines, but I felt he knew the answers to his questions before he asked them.

  ‘What’s this?’ He bolted toward the crypt door, and we followed. ‘Something valuable I can tell.’ He held the lock that dangled from the door handle in his hands, pressing his thumb into the key hole. ‘Impressive lock.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Marguerite said.

  His eyebrows lifted into his forehead, and his whole head rippled. He whistled with a flick of his finger, and another officer joined him at the crypt door.

  ‘This is our crypt,’ Marguerite said. ‘The bodies of the sisters.’

  Baader’s face relaxed. ‘Ja,’ he said. ‘I can smell it now. Das Stinkt!’ He turned to his men while pulling on the lock. ‘Tote Nonnen.’

  His men laughed when he said the one German word I understood, ‘dead’.

  ‘I can open it up if you like,’ Marguerite said.

  Marguerite held out her hand for the key, and I gave it to her. Mavis licked her shaking palm to smooth her hair against her head while Marguerite opened the door. The officers peered into the dark space, instantly covering their noses, the smell of death as thick as their wool uniforms.

  ‘Ach!’ Baader reached for the hanky tucked in his breast pocket and held it over his nose.

  ‘Do you want to go inside?’ Marguerite stood back and gave them more than enough room to charge down into the crypt if they wanted, but not one of them moved.

  ‘That’s quite all right,’ he said. ‘I think we’ve seen enough.’

  Marguerite closed the crypt back up, and they walked toward the door as if they were done looking the place over, the ruffle of her black habit and our quick feet hurrying them out.

  Officer Baader stopped a foot from the gun crate and turned toward Marguerite, his baton scraping against the wood, lifting the linen that covered it up just a hair. He squinted, turning slowly toward Marguerite. ‘Now, you—’ he snapped his fingers at her and then pointed them like a gun ‘—aren’t Mother Superior.’ Marguerite smiled and a bead of sweat snuck out from under her wimple and dripped past her eye. ‘You’re someone else.’

  ‘Mother Superior is at the convent on the hill. I’m Sister Marguerite.’

  ‘I had a sister named Marguerite,’ he said, eyes shining, ‘once.’

  ‘Something else we have in common.’ Marguerite’s bottom lip quivered. ‘Officer Baader.’ It was the first time in a long time I saw the mark of worry streaking in her eyes and face. We had talked about the possibility of a raid, prepared for one, but nothing can really prepare you.

  He smiled then turned toward the door as if he were about to leave for good this time, but stopped before setting a foot outside. ‘I’ve seen you before,’ he said, pointing a finger at Mavis. ‘But you.’ His finger moved to me. ‘I don’t think we’ve met.’

  I opened my mouth to speak, but Marguerite stopped me with a firm hand on my arm. ‘She’s one of our very own delinquents,’ she said. ‘Only recently decided to become a postulant.’

  ‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘What did you say your name was?’

  I smiled, my mind going white-blank, forgetting the name on my documents, watching Mavis out the corner of my eye smoothing her hair against her forehead, over and over again until it was slicked flat.

  ‘Jeanne,’ Marguerite said.

  ‘Jeanne,’ I repeated.

  He smiled, and then finally stepped out the door.

  I clutched my chest, suddenly feeling myself breathe. Marguerite pressed her back against the wall after she closed the door, looking at the ceiling and grasping for my hand, which she squeezed firmly. Mavis paced around the sewing machines with her arms folded.

  ‘He’s seen me before?’ I said.

  ‘He’s fishing,’ Marguerite said. ‘That’s what they do. They want us to misstep, get caught mixing up our own stories. It’s how they work.’

  I rested my head against the wall, exhausted. ‘The Milice just tell you what they know. Gestapo… they…’

  ‘The Gestapo want you to prove what they already know,’ Marguerite said.

  Mavis stopped pacing, her cheeks puffing nervously as if she was looking for the right words.

  ‘Merde!’ I said to Mavis. ‘I’m sure God won’t mind if you say it. It’s all shit!’

  Mavis leaned against the wall, her eyes welling with tears. ‘I’m… I’m worried.’

  Marguerite put both hands on Mavis’s shoulders, was about to say something, but then looked away.

  *

  In the late afternoon a rumbling lorry pulled up to the old convent. Two gruff men with grease-smeared jumpsuits hopped out of the side doors. They talked loudly in the street to Marguerite about what sewing machines needed to be repaired before all three of them ducked into the building and got busy loading the guns. Marguerite and I got in with the cargo, closing the doors behind us, settling into the stuffy hatch space that was full with bulging canvas bags and crates.

  She pulled her wimple from her head and then wadded up her habit. I crouched down in the corner, slipping the veil off my head as the lorry started up and then barrelled down the road. Out the back window I caught a glimpse of Mavis locking up the old convent’s front doors. I felt woozy watching her, my head light from being shut up with the dead sisters for so long and now being crammed into the back of a moving truck.

  A man appeared from around the corner and walked straight toward her with a determined, hand-pumping gait while her back was turned. I gasped. When he grabbed her by the arm, I shot up.

  ‘Mavis—’ Marguerite whipped her head away from whatever she had been looking at, but the hustle and bustle of the day’s busy foot traffic swallowed up the road behind us. A blink and Mavis had disappeared. I stuttered, not sure if I had actually seen what I thought I had. ‘She… she…’ A flit of cool air whistled through a crack in the hatch. We were long gone from the crypt now. I crouched further into the corner of the hatch and convinced myself I saw nothing.

  Marguerite closed her eyes.

  *

  We waited at the hill cottage for the Maquis to claim the cache of guns. Marguerite sat stiffly in a broken chair sipping cold lavender tea, her cup rattling in its saucer when it wasn’t held to her lips. Hours passed; Marguerite was now unable to keep still as a surge of rain splattered against the windows outside, her bottom lifting from her seat, shifting here and there every few seconds.

  ‘They’re just late,’ I said.

  The clock chimed and Marguerite bolted from her seat. ‘I saw it too,’ she said, pacing around the room. ‘Mavis—when we left.’

  ‘What? You did?’ I sat down, having not allowed myself to get frightened until she admitted she was scared too. ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ Mavis, her veil and devotion to Christ, wouldn’t be enough to save her from the Gestapo. ‘Mavis, tiny little Mavis—’

  ‘What could we do? We were driving away with a crate of guns.’

  Two other résistants, a husband and wife the Alliance called the Dove Birds because of their matching blonde hair and soft voices, sat on the ground poring over maps, glancing up at us in intervals. I threw my hands up, not knowing what to do about any of it—Mavis, and now the Maquis being late. ‘Do you think the Gestapo know about us, at this cottage?’

  Marguerite looked through a split in the curtains and into the dark night. ‘I don’t know.’
>
  The door flew open and a woman dressed in cut-off men’s trousers with a rolled-up shirt walked in. She adjusted the gun slung over her shoulder, shivering from being out in the rain. ‘The Maquis aren’t coming,’ she said. ‘Gestapo. They’re everywhere.’

  Marguerite hurriedly shut the door behind her. ‘Where?’ Her eyes were closed tight when she spoke, asking the question we needed to know.

  The woman used a candle from the mantel to light a loose cigarette she pulled from her pocket. ‘In the fields. Gunshots. A line of them.’ She took a nervous, deep breath. ‘Last time I heard a line of shots, twelve résistants fell backward into a trench.’ The Dove Birds sat up, looking at one another and then to the woman. ‘There was a raid, and not just one group but many. Maquis, Alliance… I had just left to come here when I heard the shots.’ She smoked through her cigarette and lit another, moving about the room, her feet clicking and clacking against the wood floor from wearing men’s dress shoes—a souvenir from someone she had killed. ‘An entire radio command centre not far from here burned to the ground. Took the men with them into the wilderness.’

  I sprung from my chair. ‘Radio operators?’

  She snarled. ‘Bastard Germans got ’em all and our notes—valuable ones if you know what I mean.’ She shook her head, peeking through the curtains. ‘Never heard them coming.’ I pulled the curtain closed, and she looked at me, shocked at first.

  ‘Was there an operator named Luc—medium-sized man, strong arms—’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, turning away. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘It’s Luc.’ I started for the door, but Marguerite stopped me by the arm.

  ‘In the morning, maybe there will be more news.’

  I paced the room, feeling very jittery, emotional, rubbing my hands together. The thought of never seeing Luc again alive suddenly felt like a reality. I can’t wait here till morning. I thought about the long months I’d been hiding out at the hill cottage. Not one moment went by without wondering where Luc was. His voice: I barely remembered what it sounded like. His face: vaguely familiar after an incredibly long absence; but the feel of his hands, his breath on my cheek when he kissed me, and the flutter in my stomach when he said my name—Catchfly—was as real as my heart beating in my chest.

  I thought I was going to burst from my skin if I didn’t get outside. I played with the heart pendant Luc gave me, glancing fleetingly at Marguerite, catching her playing with the silver locket her fiancé had given her. Philip. My stomach sank, remembering how he died. I took my coat from the hook and reached for the door. ‘I’m leaving.’

  Marguerite blocked me. ‘What do you expect to do? Wander around until you find someone, or someone finds you?’ The Dove Birds got off the floor and refolded their maps, wanting to get far away from our rising voices.

  ‘You can’t stop me.’

  An odd look strained in her eyes. I’d seen this face of hers before when we were at the convent together, and I remembered it very well. ‘I watched the man I loved die right in front of me and then be buried in that… that most brutal way. And what good came of it?’

  I shoved my hands into my coat pockets, staring at her. She wasn’t going to stop me, but it was up to her if she wanted to join me. ‘If you were me, would you stay here?’ The woman with the cigarette looked at me admiringly, while the Dove Birds got close, holding each other. I reached behind Marguerite and opened the door. Rain spat into the cottage as I waited for her to answer.

  ‘You’re impossible!’ Marguerite thrust a pair of Wehrmacht binoculars into my hands before throwing on her coat. ‘After you.’

  I tucked the binoculars into my pocket and we walked into the dark, rain-splattered night.

  26

  We trudged through a field of thicket until we got to an area Marguerite called the cradle, where the British dropped supplies in the middle of the night to résistants. Usually the valley bustled with activity, but on this night the only sound was the wind rustling through the tree limbs and the splat of raindrops blowing off leaves. Marguerite bent down to inspect the dirt road, which was muddy with puddles of rain filling in the tyre grooves. She pulled a lighter from her pocket.

  ‘There was a scuffle,’ she said, holding the flame to the ground. ‘Right here.’ She pointed to a swampy area with waterlogged footprints.

  People shouted from somewhere, and I latched on to Marguerite when she bolted to a stand. ‘This way!’ she said, and we climbed up the mushy hillside, using our hands, holding on to the grass to keep from slipping until we reached the summit. Dropping to our bellies, we peeked over the top.

  A line of men and women stood with their hands on their heads as the Gestapo pinned red paper to their chests for aiming. Their faces turned toward a barrage of headlamps shining from sputtering cars. ‘No! It can’t be—’ I pulled the binoculars from my pocket, scrambling to get a closer look.

  ‘Look at them all,’ Marguerite said. ‘There’s so many.’

  Faces of white, beards that needed to be shaved, mud on their skin and in their hair. Women with their dresses half-torn off, bare breasts and bruised faces—but no Luc.

  ‘He’s not there,’ I said, heaving with relief. ‘He’s not there.’ But then my heart broke anyway, gazing upon the résistants’ white-lit faces, thinking about their families, and whom they left behind. Some would never know what happened to their loved one, others would know and would be punished for being related to them.

  ‘Is that Mavis?’ Marguerite snatched the binoculars right from my hands, peering down the hill. ‘I can’t tell… I can’t tell!’ She fumbled with them, trying to get a clear view. Then the Gestapo raised their guns. My stomach dropped, a sinking feeling from knowing lives were about to end. Marguerite let go of the binoculars and laid her head on the wet ground. ‘What use is it now?’

  Headlamps flashed brighter; one German voice shouted over another; guns aimed straight. ‘The red paper… it’s meant to show where their hearts are.’ Marguerite squeezed my hand, bracing for the inevitable. ‘But their hearts are with France.’

  Pop, Pop, Pop—

  We flinched, and their bodies fell backward into the mud.

  Everything got quiet, like a hush after a thunderclap; smoke steamed from the barrels, bare legs lay crisscrossed on the ground, some jerking, fighting to live.

  As quickly as the shooting happened the Gestapo piled into their cars and started driving out of the cradle. ‘What do we do?’ I said to Marguerite, realizing they would see us if we didn’t hide. The roar of a sweeping, rolling rain suddenly poured from the dark sky, soaking our coats, the purr from their car engines getting closer, louder, and their lights brighter.

  ‘Hurry!’ Marguerite took me by the sleeve, and we slid down the muddy hill on our thighs. We clung to a tree trunk at the bottom, digging our fingertips into its knotty bark. Beams of light from oncoming headlamps shone through the hills. Marguerite turned to me, rain streaming down her face, her voice fraught. ‘In the bushes!’

  We ducked into a bushy area surrounded by rocks just as the cars cast a wide light over the narrow road cutting through the hills. We worked frantically to create a hollow to hide in, popping up every few seconds as the lights approached, moving rocks out of the way, water gushing through the cracks like a creek, only to move them back once we wedged ourselves inside. Our mud-scraped legs tangled with each other’s, and we listened.

  One car rumbled past followed by another, the ground shaking, worms wiggling from the wet soil onto our shoulders. I closed my eyes tightly, wondering when it would end, when they’d be gone, but then the heart-dropping sound of a cut engine shook me to the core. Every muscle in my body tightened. I searched for Marguerite’s hand, the rain calming into a sprinkle, dripping softly from exposed bush roots and onto the rocks.

  ‘Sieh!’ A German voice shouted, and my eyes popped open in the dark.

  Car doors slammed. The sound of people walking around through the slush at the base of the hill followed, very
close to where Marguerite and I were hiding. French mingled with German words—nothing audible enough for me to know what they were saying.

  ‘Adèle,’ she said. ‘No matter what happens. Never say a word.’

  ‘Shh,’ I said. ‘They’re close.’

  ‘Promise me, Adèle.’ She tugged on my hand, her breath but a wisp on my face in the pitch-black hole. ‘Tell me you understand. It’s what will keep us—your family—alive. If they catch us—’

  The hole started to cave in slightly on one side—the weight of someone standing above us—and my whole body shook, the sound of one German talking causally to another feet from where we hid. A flicked cigarette butt fell between the rocks.

  My teeth chattered, and I bit down hard to make them stop, squeezing Marguerite’s hand. A long pause followed, long enough for me to wonder if they were still walking around looking for us before I heard the rev of an engine and their car speed away.

  We waited in the hole for what seemed like many minutes before slowly, and very gently, crawling out of it on our hands and knees. Marguerite wiped dirt from her face and snot from her nose with the back of her hand. ‘I shouldn’t have let you go,’ she said. ‘I knew it wasn’t safe.’

  ‘I thought Luc was going to die. I wasn’t going to stand by and—’

  ‘You’re not invincible.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not?’ I wrung the rain from my hair. ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’

  ‘I’m the one who came for you,’ she said. ‘Let’s not forget that detail. It was very risky for me to travel that kind of distance, save you from the mess you got yourself into.’

  I felt a snarl on my lips. I remembered people throwing catchfly in the streets, men taking their hats off, women putting their hands over their hearts paying homage while I was tethered to the Morris Column, when I went by the name Catchfly.

  ‘I didn’t ask to be saved,’ I hissed.

  Marguerite’s arms dropped long at her sides, and she stared at me as I crossed my arms. ‘What do you mean… you didn’t want to be saved?’