Memory and Desire

by Lisa Appignanesi

  Sylvie shivered, despite the blazing sun, as if with premonition.

  Money was running out. Old Dr. Jardine’s clinic for workers had been closed and between them that group of doctors and psychiatrists seemed to be incapable of earning a penny. And they didn’t have ration cards. Which made the garden all the more important. And her own activities. She smiled a little proudly at herself. She was becoming quite adept at negotiating on the black market. Her job at the Hotel du Midi helped. Soon she might just take a permanent room there. She was sure Madame Castelnau would allow it.

  Two days ago she had fired old Dr. Jardine’s housekeeper.

  The ostensible reason had been money. But Sylvie had another purpose. She had a feeling that in the long term it would be better if no outsider knew what went on in the house. It was too risky. In any event, Caroline could manage things. It would give her something to do, keep her busy.

  She herself was more than busy enough. She had found her job just a few days after they arrived, as soon as she realised that she couldn’t bear sitting around in the bleakness of the house. She had brushed her hair into an elegant knot, donned uncustomary silk stockings and her celadine suit with its square shoulders. For once, despite the petrol rations, she had driven rather than cycled into Marseilles and done the rounds of the big restaurants and hotels. She had told them she could play the piano, sing, entertain, act as hostess, had done so in Paris. She named clubs.

  At the Hotel du Midi, the largest of the hotels in the Vieux Port, she had struck lucky. Madame Castelnau had lost her husband a year back; her son who managed the dusty, rambling hotel with her had still not returned from the front. She needed help, help with clients so she could be freed for other tasks.

  Small shrewd eyes had assessed Sylvie from the midst of a plump tranquil face.

  ‘Let me hear you,’ Madame Castelnau had said and led Sylvie into the bar where an old highly polished piano stood unused. Sylvie had played, a little Mozart, a playful Satie; and sung, some light boulevard songs, a mellow ballad, a risqué wartime number filled with innuendo which had been making the rounds. She stopped short at jazz.

  The old woman’s eyes had lit up. ‘C’est bien. When can you start?’

  ‘Now, tomorrow,’ Sylvie had answered. ‘When you please.’

  ‘And clothes? Have you got clothes?’ the woman made a suggestive gesture which looked comical on her portly form.

  ‘Some,’ Sylvie smiled, jubilant.

  Sylvie began to play. At lunch in the restaurant, some light classical music in the best of taste. The customers complimented Madame Castelnau, gave Sylvie tips. In the evening, in the bar, a melody of pieces which grew more risqué as the night progressed. By the second week, word of mouth had got round. The Hotel du Midi buzzed with new clients. ‘C’est bien. C’est très bien, ma petite,’ Madame de Castelnau congratulated Sylvie as she watched her daughter-in-law, Nadine, calculating the till receipts. Only the daughter-in-law with her thin, sallow face did not look on Sylvie with benevolent eyes.

  Sylvie didn’t care. In her third week at the hotel, she saw Andrzej in the bar. It was what she had hoped for. One of her prime reasons for making herself public.

  He was waiting for her when she had finished. ‘I had counted on your finding me,’ Sylvie said, letting him take her hand and kiss it with that effortless gallantry which he made particularly his own.

  ‘Had you any doubt that I would,’ he grinned, his long lips curling mischievously. ‘I promised you that if you came to Marseilles, I would find you. And I always keep my word.’

  Sylvie looked happily into eyes of a blue density that matched her own and which stood only an inch or two above hers.

  ‘C’est votre petit frère?’ Madame Castelnau interrupted their greeting.

  ‘Oui, presque. Almost my brother,’ Sylvie laughed. Andrzej, a year or two younger than her, looked absurdly boyish.

  Andrzej had bowed, then taken her arm and guided her out through the mêlée of darkened lanes towards a small secluded café.

  ‘You’re obviously well, a little tigress in performance,’ he poured water into her pastis, gave her his familiar crooked smile.

  ‘As you can see,’ Sylvie’s laugh tinkled more merrily than it had done for weeks. ‘And you, have you found what you came for?’

  He nodded mysteriously, offering no explanations. Instead he deflected her with a rebuke. ‘You’re using your name. You shouldn’t be. Or Jardine’s. At least not publicly, on stage. Tell Madame it’s too difficult. Get yourself a professional name, something simple. He gazed at the wine racked behind the bar and grinned with a flash of white teeth. ‘Latour, that will do. A fine Château. You can’t get any more French than that. No one wants Poles, and your husband’s family is too well known.’ He suddenly looked serious. ‘Has he come back yet?’

  Sylvie shook her head, apprehension marking her features.

  ‘Never mind,’ Andrzej’s low staccato raced on. ‘I’ll watch out for you, while I’m here.’ He stopped her querying interruption. ‘No questions. But will you do something for me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good. You can keep secrets, I know.’ He looked round casually and then presented her with a pretty packet which bore the hallmark of a leading patisserie. ‘It’s not for you,’ he threw her a dazzling smile, ‘though I wish it were. Take it to the Seamen’s Mission in the harbour tomorrow. Give it to the Pastor there, not anyone else. Only him. Ask him if there’s anything you can do for him. Tell him André sent you. Got that, André, not Andrzej.’ He rose. ‘I have to go now. I’ll walk you back to the hotel.’

  ‘When can I see you again,’ Sylvie asked before he left her. ‘Where can I reach you?’

  ‘I’ll reach you,’ he waved her a cheery goodbye.

  Sylvie, looking after him, had thought he resembled nothing so much as a carefree angular youth off on some devilish prank. But she knew, from their previous talks, that beneath the casual manner, there lurked a precise, methodical brain and a single-minded dedication: a dedication to a free Poland.

  She thought of all this again now as she approached the whitewashed facade of the Seamen’s Mission and she clutched her large bag to her side. She smiled graciously at a passing gendarme: she had taken to this game of smiling, making a virtue of being something of a local celebrity. It was better than shuffling past the brutes and exuding suspicion.

  Then she saw a familiar form coming towards her. She was about to call out ‘Robbie’, when she stopped herself and looked again. The clean-shaven man in the neat blue suit looked and didn’t look like Robbie, the British soldier who had driven South with them.

  He made no gesture of recognition as she came abreast him, but when she walked into the Mission, he followed her.

  ‘You had me frightened for a moment there, Sylvie. I thought you were going to shout at me in English right in front of the copper. You know they’ve got orders to round us up.’

  ‘I almost did,’ Sylvie said ruefully. ‘Stopped myself just in time.’

  ‘What brings you here?’ Robbie asked.

  ‘I’ve come to see the Pastor.’ Sylvie looked round. The room was filled with a bevy of men, all of whom seemed to have grown mute with her arrival.

  ‘It’s right through here,’ Robbie sped her up some stairs and then gave her a curious glance.

  ‘No, Robbie. I’m not taking up religion, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that young lady.’

  A voice with a softly distinct accent interrupted her. Sylvie looked up into a kindly, smiling face.

  Robbie coughed. ‘This lady asked to see you. She’s the one I told you about, the one who gave me a lift here.’

  The pastor ushered her into his office. ‘And what can I do for you, young lady.’

  Sylvie gave him the prettily wrapped parcel, mentioned André’s name. She peered inside the box as the Pastor opened it, thought she saw a stack of ration tickets, before he casually put the bo
x in his desk.

  The Pastor assessed her: from behind thick glasses grey eyes twinkled, saw a young woman of no little attraction, and what was it, something else, yes, a childlike impulsiveness. There it was, now. She gripped his hand.

  ‘André said I might be able to help. I should like to help.’

  The Pastor took his time, patted her hand. What had André told her? That young man too was a little reckless. But clever. He had already provided him with some useful tips, not to mention other things. The Pastor knew that he was involved in decoding work. There was a group of them in an old Château on the outskirts of Marseilles. Caution was necessary, on all fronts. Yet more and more fleeing British soldiers arrived at the mission every night. And money, materials and contacts were necessary if the task of getting them safely back to England were to continue effectively.

  ‘I could, for example, bring you… clothes,’ Sylvie said the first thing that came into her mind. They must need clothes, she told herself. Robbie had new clothes.

  The Pastor smiled. ‘That would be useful.’ He decided he would trust the young woman. Her instincts were good. He had learned to make snap assessments himself in the last few months. ‘But you mustn’t come here,’ he coughed, twinkled. ‘People would begin to wonder what a delightful young woman like yourself was doing in a mission which caters to vagrants and down and outs.’

  ‘Oh, I’m very charitable,’ Sylvie countered impishly and then grew serious. ‘But, you know, you can always send people to me. I see a lot of people in my work, a lot of men in particular chat to me.’ She said it matter-of-factly, with no trace of vanity.

  ‘I can well imagine,’ the Pastor murmured. He coughed, ‘That, too, could have its uses. Though you must be careful young lady. Many people now are quite happy with the situation, think France is safe, at peace. They may not look kindly on the help you’re giving us.’

  Sylvie nodded sagely, as if she fully understood his meaning. She didn’t until after she had spoken to Robbie who was waiting for her by the door of the Mission. He explained to her that he would be leaving France in a few days’ time, that he wanted to thank her. As she left the Mission, it suddenly came to her what the Pastor was up to. Clandestinely returning soldiers to Britain. The thought made her skin tingle. It made her want to help him all the more.

  The weeks passed. Sometimes to Sylvie the war seemed simply to be an elaborate game of hide and seek. A game she enjoyed above all others. She had learned not only how to barter for ration tickets but where to get counterfeit supplies. She made forays into houses she could only imagine were criminal, as well as visits to wealthy mansions. She became increasingly adept at dressing down or dressing up, one moment a streetwalker, the next a lady of rank. She passed packages, papers, books, newspapers, all containing illicit materials, and sometimes information, without batting an eyelid, only with a little pleasurable increase in her pulse rate. She still smiled at the police.

  It occurred to her that the art of counterfeit must be the only thriving one in this period. It was an art which exhilarated her. An art not so different, though better, than stealing apples in the marketplace.

  Andrzej was behind some of her activity. He had only come once more to the Hotel du Midi to hear her sing. More often she would find a note, couched as if it were a message from an ardent admirer, left for her at the hotel. ‘Mademoiselle, your singing is a delight. I would so like to express my regard personally. Might you consider meeting me at the Café des Quatre Sous on Wednesday at 4.00.’

  The first time, the note was signed, André Philippe. After that the names changed, but she always knew it was him. Andrzej gave her tasks. She proved efficient at them. They grew in riskiness. The greater the risk, the happier Sylvie was. Only once had she almost been caught out. She was picking up a newspaper left on one of the hotel bar tables, which she knew had been left for her.

  ‘I wanted to see that,’ Nadine, Madame Castelnau’s daughter-in-law, had all but torn it out of her hands.

  Sylvie had stilled her initial anger and smiled, ‘Oh please Nadine, I only have half an hour before my next act. I’ll give it to you then.’ She had raced up to her room, heart in mouth, taken out the offending envelope, and in less than the promised time, returned the paper politely to Nadine. She didn’t like that woman.

  One night in the bar of the Hotel du Midi, Sylvie was idly sipping her between-sets drink and chatting to the bartender when the drift of a conversation at a nearby table made her prick up her ears. Two men talking, one stroking his moustache over moist reddened lips, ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow morning will see the end of all that. The Rosbifs and their charming pastor have been getting away with things for too long.’ He banged his fist on the table and then catching Sylvie’s glance winked at her lasciviously.

  She gave him one of her cool professional smiles, but her mind was aflame. The pastor, the Mission. A raid might be imminent. She must warn him. There was no one else the man could be referring to. She glanced at her watch. Five minutes before her next set, ten at most. And it would be courting trouble to try to get to the Mission so late. What could she do?

  Sylvie sauntered slowly but deliberately through the crowd towards the door.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ an irritated voice stopped her. ‘You’re on in just a minute.’ Nadine tapped her pencil sharply against the till.

  Sylvie swallowed an expletive. ‘I’m just going up to my room to check on the lyrics for a new song I want to try out,’ she said sweetly.

  She tripped lightly up the stairs and raced to her room. Hastily, she scrawled a note, folded it into the first book her hands fell on, Andre Gide’s Les Faux Monnayeurs. Then, down the stairs and out the door. ‘A breath of fresh air. That’s what I need,’ she said to no one in particular.

  At the hotel door, she paused. Whom to trust amidst this gaggle of urchins and night strollers? She called to a young boy with a peaked hat and fixed him with stern eyes. ‘Take this to the Mission for me. Half your money now,’ she pulled out a hundred franc note. ‘Half when you get back.’

  The boy grinned, his face a mixture of cunning and greed. ‘Bien sûr, mademoiselle. Tout d’ suite, mademoiselle.’ He sauntered off. Sylvie only allowed herself a moment in which to look after him, before taking a deep breath and letting the hotel doors enclose her once more.

  She couldn’t sleep that night. At the first light of dawn, she pulled on the trousers she had taken to wearing in the daytime in order to conserve her existing clothes, and made for the mission. The youth hadn’t come back for the second part of his payment, and she had no idea whether her note had reached its destination.

  The sky was a milky grey, the harbour only beginning to struggle into morning life. Only the pavements still teamed with yesterday’s litter and sea-gulls aggressively asserted their rights over the remains of the night. A slow-moving sailor desultorily kicked an empty box of Gitanes aside and looked out on a placid sea. Sylvie carried her shopping basket. She had an excuse ready, if she were stopped. She wanted to be first in line at the butcher’s. According to the rationing calendar, it was a meat day. She had missed the last.

  And then, as she was nearing the Mission, she saw them. A group of eight gendarmes making their way determinedly towards their joint destination. Sylvie gazed into the murky water which lapped at the odd array of skiffs and yachts and feluccas moored closest to shore. With a sudden frenzied energy, she screamed. A resonant heart-stopping shriek. And then another and another. She looked round her wildly. She could see windows opening, heads bending to the scene. She hoped against hope that from the midst of the slumbering Mission, too, someone would hear her cries.

  Still screaming, Sylvie raced towards the policemen. ‘Come, you must come,’ she pulled the first one along with her. ‘Quickly. There’s a soldier in the water. A dead soldier,’ she howled. ‘All bloated. Horrible. Quick.’ They followed her suspiciously.

  ‘Look, there,’ Sylvie pointed to the edge of a boat where something bob
bed rythmically. She shrieked again. ‘The poor man. You must do something. You must get him out.’ She tugged frantically on the sergeant’s arm.

  The men stared into the water. ‘There’s nothing there,’ one of them murmured. She’s imagining it.’

  ‘I’m not imagining it,’ Sylvie bellowed. ‘I saw him, I tell you I saw him. Maybe he’s floated under the boat.’ She started to cry, great deep sobs, which shook her frame.

  ‘Can I help, Gentlemen? Can I be of any use? The lady seems troubled.’ The Pastor was at her side, concern wreathing his gentle features.

  Sylvie continued to sob, but from the corner of her eye, she saw the looks of consternation passing amidst the policemen.

  ‘She’s mad,’ one of them muttered. ‘She says there’s a dead man in there.’

  The Pastor shook his head sadly, ‘A poor old derelict, no doubt. They do throw themselves in from time to time. Come my dear,’ he took Sylvie’s arm, ‘let these gentlemen see to all this and let me find someone to take you home. A nice hot drink and you’ll feel better.’ He led Sylvie away. When they were at a little distance from the police, he winked at her, ‘All safe, my dear. We’re ready for them.’

  From the midst of what were now genuine tears, Sylvie returned his wink.

  Exhilarated and triumphant, she made her way back to the hotel by a circuitous route. There was a note waiting for her. She tore it open rapidly. ‘Even the execrable café national is not too bad at Le Petit Poucet. Meet me there today at noon? Antoine.’

  Andrzej. Sylvie smiled to herself, changed quickly and rushed to the Boulevard Dugommier. Andrzej wasn’t at the bar yet. She sat down at a small back table which she knew he would prefer and waited.