The Milliner's Secret

by Natalie Meg Evans

  He took them to a favourite restaurant on the south side of the Jardin du Luxembourg, choosing an outside table under a waterproof awning. The menu was short – three dishes and no mention of ice-cream or any dessert.

  Coralie settled down for a two-hour recess. Teddy’s lunches were always long. She chose blue-cheese omelette, her appetite rising at the prospect of eggs. But it was obvious from the first forkful that the eggs had been watered down. As for cheese, somebody had waved a grater over the top. Where once there’d have been golden sautéed potatoes and crisp lettuce, her plate was bulked out with macaroni and more of the interminable haricot beans. Watching Noëlle tuck into strips of pink-braised liver while keeping up a conversation with Teddy and Micheline, Coralie thought, She chose better than I did. I have a raised a perfect little French girl, mannerly, epicurean and chic. And if Serge Martel harms one atom of her, I will tear him to pieces.

  ‘. . . how delightful. I adore coincidence though what one generally calls “coincidence” is either statistical inevitability or bad luck.’ Teddy was rising from his seat, extending a hand, and Coralie fought her way back from murderous thoughts.

  Somebody spoke her name. ‘You,’ she said.

  ‘I had wondered if Paris had swallowed you up,’ was Dietrich’s inscrutable reply. ‘Teddy, my good friend, how are you? And?’

  Coralie made the introduction. ‘Mademoiselle Hascoët, my nanny.’

  Dietrich was in uniform and Micheline threw Coralie a shocked look. ‘And this lady?’ Dietrich asked. ‘Is this perhaps Noëlle?’ He took off a leather glove and put out his hand. Noëlle took it in both hers, her fingers curling over his. He said, ‘You are a beautiful child. Eyes as dark as a woodland floor and as bright as an otter’s. Noëlle Una Cazaubon.’

  Coralie tensed: she was back in the Lutetia, watching Dietrich note down her daughter’s name.

  ‘Do you speak French like a native, little Noëlle?’

  Noëlle gave Dietrich an unswerving stare and replied, ‘Hering, hering, fass wie Göring.’

  Dietrich tossed Coralie a silent question.

  ‘We . . . overheard it in a restaurant. Army officers – yours.’ They’d heard the phrase on Radio Londres, actually, in a satirical verse with a German chorus, comparing Hitler’s newly promoted Reichsmarschall to a bloated fish. From now on, the radio would stay off until Noëlle was asleep.

  At Teddy’s invitation, Dietrich joined them. He had been at Luftwaffe HQ all morning, he told them, dictating letters, but had been tempted out by the view from his window. ‘There is something irresistible about a wet garden. Trees shine like polished candlesticks. Who would be shut indoors at such a moment?’

  ‘Me,’ said Teddy.

  ‘You always were more cat than dog, Clisson. Will you permit me to order coffee?’

  ‘If you mean that concoction of roast barley and stable-sweepings that passes for coffee, these days, no, thank you.’

  ‘Ice-cream!’ Noëlle shouted hopefully.

  ‘I will ask.’ Dietrich went inside. They couldn’t see who he spoke to, but a few minutes later, a pot of excellent coffee came to the table, along with two crème caramels floating in a syrup of burned sugar. ‘No ice-cream,’ he told Noëlle, ‘and they had only two crèmes, but they have provided three spoons.’

  ‘Not for me,’ Coralie said, though she’d have dived in had Teddy been the provider. Then, belatedly, ‘Thank you.’ She opened her handbag under the table, felt for a pencil and a scrap of paper and wrote, ‘We have to talk.’ She found Dietrich’s hand and pushed the paper into his palm.

  When it was time to leave, Dietrich said to Coralie, ‘I will walk you home.’

  Conscious of Micheline’s glances and Teddy’s snuffle of amusement, Coralie’s courage failed. ‘You don’t need to. We’ll take the Métro.’

  ‘Go with the dear Graf,’ Teddy urged. ‘I shall linger over the last drops of nectar.’ He meant his coffee. ‘If I stay here long enough, a friend is bound to pass by.’

  ‘And I might go to rue des Écoles,’ Micheline said, ‘to call on Florian. If you don’t mind, Madame?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Coralie said. ‘Give him our love.’ Florian was a regular visitor now, having taken rooms near the university, a few streets away from rue de Seine. So many students had been called up, or had failed to come back from the exodus, that the building’s owner had feared his property would be seized as a billet for German troops so he’d offered rooms to cash-strapped musicians. Micheline often spent her free afternoons listening to Florian, practising his guitar or dulcimer while she darned his clothes. ‘They are falling off him and he doesn’t know how to thread a needle,’ she’d explained, and Coralie hoped that she wasn’t about to lose a second nanny. Love was a gross domestic inconvenience, all told.

  So it was Coralie, Dietrich and the child who set off across the park. The rain had stopped and the paths steamed in the golden afternoon sun, drifts of leaves giving off a smell of sweet decay. They took a meandering route toward the exit on rue de Vaugirard, and when Noëlle flagged, Dietrich swung her on to his shoulders.

  At her door, Coralie took out a bright gold key, and couldn’t resist checking Dietrich’s reaction to it. He had yet to apologise for kicking her doors in, though she presumed it was he who had sent the carpenter to repair them. When she’d asked the workman who was paying him, the man had replied warily, ‘One of them.’

  Dietrich didn’t notice her key, as Noëlle was pushing his cap over his eyes. He lifted her down and the moment the front door was open, she sped upstairs shouting, ‘Tante Nou-Nou! Arkady! Papa!’ because she still expected the house to be full of adults, even though Coralie had explained that they now lived alone. Dietrich stopped Coralie following.

  ‘What did you wish to tell me?’

  She described Serge Martel’s visit. ‘He thinks he has something on you and wants me to provide details.’

  ‘And if you don’t?’

  ‘He will denounce me as an Englishwoman.’

  ‘What do you imagine he has on me?’

  She shook her head. ‘He might think you’ve compromised yourself by helping Ottilia.’

  ‘Perhaps I have.’

  Not what she wanted to hear. She needed Dietrich to dismiss Martel’s threats as the ramblings of a deluded narcissist. To say that he, Dietrich von Elbing, was one of an invincible elite, and that he cared enough for her to protect her and her child. But though he was looking at her, she felt he wasn’t seeing her. He didn’t even notice when the rain began again, a few drops at first, then a cloudburst.

  ‘Can we go inside, please?’

  Dietrich came back from his distant place. ‘When I knew I was being posted to Paris, I hoped you would be here.’

  Her heart skipped. He was hers still, in spite of the uniform and the overbearing manner. Afraid of his feelings, yes, but that was understandable. The world had changed. They had changed. ‘Where else would I be? Come inside, please.’

  ‘I hoped you would be here. I wanted to find you. To make you suffer. I wanted to make you feel the laceration of the soul that I endured and still endure every day.’

  She gaped at his blasé brutality. ‘You had your revenge at the Lutetia.’

  ‘You believe so?’ Like German officers of all branches of the army, he wore the Schirmmütze, the cap whose exaggeratedly high peak changed the proportions of the face. Rain slewed off its waterproof visor, darkening the stiff collar of his jacket, the ribbon of the swallow-tailed cross around his neck and the Iron Cross on his breast. He allowed her to pull him into the lobby and they stood facing each other at the foot of the stairs, a puddle forming around their feet.

  ‘I believe it!’ Coralie didn’t trouble to keep her voice down. She hadn’t seen her shopkeeper neighbours for months. They’d never reopened after the defeat of France, so she let her anger ring. ‘I was in your power and had no idea if I would see –’ her voice shook ‘– see my child again. I know I did a dreadful thing in taking that l
etter but you put me through the wringer and humiliated me. What else do you need to prove?’ She pushed past him and climbed the stairs, pulling the headscarf off her hat because it was dripping down her neck. She heard the front door slam and thought, Good riddance.

  He caught up with her at the turn of the stairs. ‘What more to prove? I will tell you, Coralie, and you will hear me out.’

  She strode on, unbuttoning her coat as she went, but she left the door to the flat ajar. She sensed it would be futile to shut him out. He might kick his way in again.

  Throwing her dripping coat into the bath, putting her hat on the hallstand along with her keys, she went into the lounge. Noëlle was spinning in the middle of the floor, arms wide, squealing, ‘Papa, Papa!’

  Sprawled in an armchair, beret pulled down to one side, the neck of his sweater pulled up over his mouth, was Ramon. A glance behind revealed Dietrich putting his hat next to hers on the stand, removing his leather gloves. She hissed, ‘Perfect timing!’

  ‘Papa got bad tooth,’ Noëlle chanted, still spinning.

  Ramon got up, cradling his jaw. Dietrich came in. What could a soaking wet German officer and an anarchist with toothache say to each other? Nothing, it transpired.

  ‘Ramon, come to the kitchen,’ Coralie said tersely. ‘Stay here, sweetheart,’ to Noëlle. ‘Play with your bricks. Herr von Elbing, please make yourself at home. I won’t be a moment.’

  The kitchen was just big enough for her and Ramon to get inside and close the door. He smelt of wet wool, of some sweet, female scent. ‘Couldn’t you have taken off your outdoor things before you sat down?’

  ‘I’m soaked to the skin. I got your note.’ Ramon pulled crumpled paper from his trouser pocket. ‘“Black Roses have the sharpest thorns and get everywhere.” I suppose the “gardening advice” is to tell me that Julie has left me for Serge Martel?’ He gave a humourless laugh. ‘I did notice.’

  ‘So you’ve been living with my Julie?’ Seeing the answer in his eyes, she slapped him hard. And then remembered he had toothache. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Yes, it’s true, but it’s over. Julie went to Martel last night, bags packed, even though I warned her what he was. I told her, “He’s a Gestapo lapdog,” but she laughed in my face. Her parting words, “You next, Bolshevist.”’

  ‘That’s awful.’

  ‘I know. I kept telling her, “I’m an anarchist. I am beyond factional politics.”’ Ramon pulled his jersey down. He looked drawn, but there was no sign of a swollen gum. ‘Stupid girl. Greedy, stupid girl.’

  Coralie’s resentment boiled up again. ‘“Oh, Julie, I can’t live without you.” Did you have her here, in my house, with my baby asleep in bed?’

  ‘What do you think I am?’

  ‘A cheat. A liar, even to yourself. If you didn’t have toothache, I’d punch your jaw.’ She poked his cheek. ‘You don’t even have toothache, do you?’

  ‘It was all I could think of when Noëlle told me that Maman was coming upstairs with a German who calls her an otter and materialises desserts from café kitchens by magic. “Make yourself at home, Herr von Elbing,”’ Ramon mocked. ‘You have questions to answer too.’

  ‘Go to hell— Oh, God!’

  She’d assumed he was scratching his armpit until he produced a revolver with a short black barrel. Its brass plating was worn, as was its grip. All firearms were to have been handed in to the authorities weeks ago and the penalty for being caught with one was death. She mouthed, ‘Take it away!’

  He swung open the cylinder to show her six empty chambers. ‘My father’s infantry sidearm, from the last war.’ He returned it to the webbing holster under his jacket. ‘Shall I try it out on your German? Show him how we French fight back?’

  ‘Yes, do that, because I really want a corpse in my sitting room. It would be the perfect end to the day.’

  He grinned. ‘Sarcasm is wasted on anarchists – we have already shifted our moral boundaries. Anyway, I’ll say what I came to say. This is goodbye, Coralie. I’m calling on Henriette, then leaving.’

  ‘Without a proper coat?’ She didn’t believe him. Didn’t want to. For all her grievances, having him nearby was a comfort.

  ‘I’ll steal one of Tattie’s.’ His childhood name for Henriette. He pulled her into a hard embrace, his moustache like wire on her cheek. ‘Be careful, my wife. Life isn’t a game, it’s a dirty pool full of circling insects all trying to survive. Now there is a new little predator in the pond.’

  ‘You mean Martel?’

  ‘I mean Julie.’

  ‘What’s she got against me? I was good to her.’

  ‘We don’t always like those who are kindest to us. And,’ he whispered against the lobe of her ear, ‘women don’t like hearing other women’s names called out in the heat of passion. I am too careless sometimes.’

  She pushed him away. Hopeless, incorrigible. When he died, they’d probably find he’d smuggled a harlot into his coffin. ‘How will you live?’

  ‘I’ll get over the demarcation line where security is weak and head into the wilds, link up with men like me. If you need me, go to my sister. And, Coralie? Keep an eye on Henriette. She’s not what she was.’

  ‘That’s no bad thing.’ Coralie opened the drawer where she kept tablemats and, at the bottom, emergency currency. She took out all there was, wondering how much she could spare. For all his talk of joining up with ‘men like him’, she couldn’t believe it was so simple. Wherever he went, he’d need food and lodgings. And luck: the moment he made contact with an underground network, he’d be a marked man. In the end, she gave him all she had. ‘Happy birthday.’

  He gaped. ‘So it is! I’m thirty-seven. Dear God.’ With a nod of thanks, he pocketed the notes. ‘Promise you’ll check up on Henriette? Prison ripped the veneer off her. They put her in with drunkards and prostitutes, and during questioning, they forced her head under freezing water until she blacked out. They only let her out because they knew she would die if they kept her longer. Her lungs. . .’

  Coralie put a finger to her lips. The sitting-room door had just opened and closed. A moment later, the door to the flat clicked shut.

  ‘Thank God,’ she said, in her normal voice. ‘He’s Dietrich von Elbing and once, long ago, he half loved me but now he hates me.’ She laughed shakily. ‘We all seem to hate each other, these days!’

  Ramon stroked her cheek. ‘I am glad you are not keeping a pet German on a lead. Though,’ he frowned, ‘people speak of lines of uniforms outside your shop.’

  ‘I’m selling hats, to survive.’

  ‘Come the Apocalypse, people will remember the selling, not the hats. Got any proper food? I’ll go when I’m sure that bastard’s left the street.’

  He consumed the last of her olives and a heel of cheese, and downed red wine from an open bottle. Then he put his hands either side of her face, kissed her and said, ‘I mean what I say. If ever you see Julie Fourcade, walk in the other direction.’

  ‘Wait.’ Coralie fetched a tin of medicines from the cupboard, dribbled clove oil into her palm and slapped it over Ramon’s jaw.

  ‘Now I smell!’

  ‘Exactly, and if you bump into Dietrich, he might believe you have a bad tooth.’

  Ramon kissed her again. ‘Now you are beginning to think like a man! Tell Noëlle goodbye for me.’

  Coralie wiped off the kiss, then washed the pungent oil from her fingers. The flat was silent. Noëlle often fell asleep mid-afternoon. If so, she’d catch forty winks herself. Heaven help her, she needed it after the day she’d had. When she entered the lounge and saw Dietrich at the dining-table, skimming a newspaper she’d bought a couple of days ago, she was baffled. He’d left, hadn’t he?

  He looked up. ‘What is it?

  ‘Where’s Noëlle?’

  He looked towards the sofa, then at her. ‘She went to find you. You were shut away rather a long time with your visitor.’

  ‘Husband.’ The correction was automatic. Coralie was already out of the roo
m, calling, ‘Noëlle?’ She checked the bathroom, both bedrooms, then the kitchen in case the child had somehow doubled back. They often played hide-and-seek, and there were not many hiding-places. Returning to the lounge, she checked behind the sofa, even under the table and behind the curtains.

  Dietrich, meanwhile, folded the newspaper. ‘Not here?’

  ‘No.’ A dreadful apprehension grabbed her. ‘I heard the door go. I thought it was you – oh, God.’

  Dietrich followed her into the hall where he reached for his cap and gloves, and the house keys – the speed of his movements suggesting his own automatic responses. ‘Put your coat on. She cannot have gone far in the rain.’

  ‘So why isn’t she back?’

  But he was already on his way out. She followed, calling after him, ‘This is your fault. Kicking my doors in? The locksmith only had materials for downstairs, so the top one doesn’t lock properly and Noëlle is just tall enough to open it. If anything’s happened it’s—’

  ‘My fault. All right, but I slammed the front door when I came in and your husband will surely not have let her out as he left?’

  All true, but where was she? Coralie tried to see over Dietrich’s head, hating him for being just tall enough to block her view of the downstairs lobby.

  No sign of Noëlle. ‘Can she have got into the shop?’ Dietrich asked. There was a service door off the lobby and he pushed it. Solid, padlocked. Impossible for a child to get through.

  ‘She must be upstairs still,’ Dietrich said.

  ‘But I heard the flat door open and close.’

  ‘Leaving her on which side of the door?’

  But Coralie didn’t know, and was thinking only of wasted time. She ran out into the rain, calling her daughter’s name left and right. She went to Teddy’s door, because Noëlle might have tried to find him in his shop. But the shop was locked, the shutters down. She crossed the road to the pâtisserie where they used to go every Saturday to choose a tart or a cake. Thrusting open the door, she called wildly, ‘Have you seen my little girl? Anybody? Small, dark—’