The Milliner's Secret

by Natalie Meg Evans

  It was addressed to Madame McBride, and the unsigned message read, ‘O, Joyeux Noël, Noëlle.’

  ‘Can you break the code?’ Una grinned.

  Coralie laughed suddenly. ‘“O Happy Christmas, Noëlle” . . . “O”! It’s from Ottilia!’

  ‘She took her time, but our friend seems to have developed a cryptic turn of mind.’

  Coralie thought that highly unlikely.

  Una agreed. ‘Which is why I think she’s living with her brother Max, who inherited all the family brains. He’s taken Swiss citizenship and has rebuilt a sizeable business so I might be able to get his address through one of my government contacts. Then we can write a cryptic message back.’

  As spring gave way to summer, Coralie immersed herself in work, always the antidote to doubt and loss. As was scavenging for materials. Of course, every day brought reminders of Teddy, of whom not a word or sighting had reached her, and of Dietrich. She missed them both, but Dietrich was the one she called out to in the early hours.

  On 1 June, La Passerinette ran out of buckram. Coralie spent the next day, between clients, varnishing linen with rabbit glue and shellac, creating a fabric stiff enough for blocking. She’d snapped up two dozen fire-damaged hotel sheets at a stall on rue des Rosiers and hoped they’d sustain her through the summer. The sister-assistants, Didi and Paulette, complained that the shellac fumes were giving them headaches, so Coralie sent them to parc Monceau, to find feathers. Pigeons were attractive meat, these days, and the grass was often strewn with their plumage – and with city milliners determined to get to it first. She was hanging up squares of linen to dry when Violaine came into the workroom to chivvy her into going home. ‘My head is spinning too, so I don’t know what yours is like.’

  ‘My head’s been spinning since 1937.’ They wished each other goodnight, and a moment later, Coralie heard Violaine’s tread on the stairs. Seconds later, a piercing scream.

  Coralie was out of the door in a moment and found Violaine rooted to the landing, staring in horror at Madame Thomas, who must have come down from her flat with the intention of doing some early-evening shopping. The older woman wore a hat and carried a basket. A bold star had been sewn to the bodice of her dress.

  Two days ago it had become been compulsory for all Jews in France to register with the police and wear the six-pointed yellow star on their outer clothes. ‘Why?’ Violaine’s voice shook with more than shock.

  ‘Because we must,’ Madame Thomas stammered.

  ‘You trotted along to the préfecture because you were told to? Would you jump off the roof of this building if they told you to?’

  Though affronted on Madame Thomas’s behalf, Coralie felt Violaine was overreacting. ‘My friend Una is American and she goes once a week to a police station at Neuilly to have an attendance card stamped. Lots of people have to.’

  Violaine turned on Coralie. ‘Just because an ordinance goes out, we don’t have to obey it.’

  ‘It is the law,’ Madame Thomas insisted. ‘We have to obey the law.’

  ‘Why? You’re a French citizen! They have no right to number you and make you wear a label.’

  ‘No,’ Madame Thomas sought Coralie’s eye, ‘but isn’t it better to go voluntarily than have the police fetch you?’

  Violaine was beyond the reach of moderation. ‘You came to France fifty years ago. You have no accent, you aren’t religious, your husband was not Jewish. Who would have known if you had kept quiet?’

  ‘There must be records. Somewhere it will say that I came originally from Prague.’

  ‘So let the Germans search the records! They want you on a list so they can deport you!’

  Madame Thomas shook her head. ‘The poor creatures being deported are all foreigners and refugees.’

  Coralie agreed, to soothe her own apprehensions as much as Violaine’s. ‘The authorities won’t turn on their own citizens, just because they happen to be Jewish or American. They wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘No,’ Violaine came back sarcastically, ‘because then we might vote them out of office.’

  With four women working together, emotional flare-ups were inevitable at La Passerinette. But the rift grew wider. Violaine never ceased to regard Madame Thomas’s yellow star as if it were an open wound, while Madame Thomas regarded Violaine with steady reproach. Was prejudice Violaine’s vice? Coralie had never suspected it, but people were deep. Take Henriette, handing over keys. Una, evolving from socialite to dedicated nurse. Silly man-mad Julie . . . No. She still couldn’t think about Julie.

  Didi and Paulette were openly anti-Semitic. The elder, Paulette, told Coralie one day, ‘Madame Thomas mustn’t come into the salon. It isn’t just that ugly star. She’s barred from public spaces now. If word gets out, we could all be in trouble.’

  But Coralie couldn’t bring herself to make such a speech and took her feelings out on Paulette, and on Didi, standing a step behind her sister. ‘If you object to Madame Thomas, we must part company. I will write your references while you collect your things. I don’t expect to see either of you at La Passerinette again.’ She then told Madame Thomas that she was free to come and go through whichever door she chose.

  It was only when Amélie Ginsler delivered the final consignment of the horsehair rosettes she and her grandparents had made that Coralie woke up to the danger she and her staff were in. Amélie knocked at the side entrance. Coralie poked her head out, calling, ‘Come in through the salon.’

  ‘I’ll use this door. This says I have to.’ Amélie pointed to the étoile jaune above her heart. Meeting her in the corridor, Coralie saw beads of sweat on the girl’s brow. Though it was a cloudless June day, Amélie had on a thick coat.

  ‘I refuse to sew that wretched thing on to my dresses. So I’m forced to wear my one coat everywhere.’

  She’d walked all the way from the Marais, with heavy bags, because taking the bus or Métro had become a humiliation. People would move away from her, she said, or refuse to let her sit down. ‘I can’t stop at a café table or peer into the window of a shop for fear of being moved on. We must keep moving, like stray dogs, and though some people feel sorry for us, there are plenty who think we’re getting our just deserts.’

  ‘If you want to sit in the salon and drink tea, be my guest.’ Coralie was astonished to see Amélie’s brows tilt angrily.

  Madame Thomas came out of the salon just then. She’d been out on an errand and wore a bolero over a summer blouse. Seeing a yellow star that matched her own, Amélie exclaimed, ‘If a customer were to report you, Madame, and La Passerinette closed down, we would all lose our work. It is this,’ she gestured at the bags she’d put down in relief, ‘that feeds my daughter and my grandparents.’

  ‘I will use the side entrance from now on,’ Madame Thomas said meekly, and Coralie nodded agreement. It felt like colluding with injustice, but fighting back would only make things worse. Her friends must keep their heads down, tread quietly through life, survive. Then, when the world returned to normal, they could congratulate themselves on having acted right.

  The end of a stifling July day. Coralie stepped off the train at Paris’s Montparnasse station, reaching to take Noëlle from Una’s arms. Arkady unloaded their suitcases and, carrying the heaviest ones, led the way to the ticket barrier. They’d just enjoyed a week away, Coralie’s first proper holiday ever. A friend of Una’s had lent them a house near Rambouillet, to the south-west of Paris. Standing deep in the woods, the cottage had been basic, but that hadn’t mattered. They’d filled their days with picnics and walks, boating on the river Eure, cooking outdoor suppers on fires Arkady had lit in the garden. He had played his violin while they sang English and American songs, and French ones with outrageous anti-Vichy lyrics because nobody could hear them. Coralie had done things she’d never done as a child, with all the pleasure of doing them now with her own little girl. As the Paris suburbs filled the train window, she’d felt a tug of regret.

  At the Métro entrance, they were told that
lines twelve and six were closed. ‘Walk to Duroc station,’ they were advised.

  They could have separated then, Arkady and Una to walk to rue de Seine, Coralie and Noëlle to take the Métro to the Right Bank. But a strange noise seemed to be coming from the west, from the river, like distant thunder mixed with the roar of a football stadium.

  ‘Sounds like planes.’ Coralie scanned a sky as violet-blue as a chicory flower. The RAF and its Allies had re-bombed the western suburbs back in March, targeting weapons plants. Four hundred people had died.

  ‘Such noise would have to be many planes, and they do not come in daytime,’ Arkady said.

  ‘Sounds to me like a big game’s in play,’ Una said. ‘Honey, we’ll all stick together.’

  They headed west along boulevard du Montparnasse. The Eiffel Tower above the rooftops was their beacon as they walked towards Duroc where, by mutual agreement, they proceeded past the station entrance. Noise drew them on. It was when they reached the Champs de Mars, the open space surrounding the Eiffel Tower, that they finally identified where the noise came from. It rose from the Vélodrome d’Hiver nearby. The ‘Vel’ d’Hiv’ was a covered cycle track. Evening sun streaked the western sky, but over the stadium lay a halo of bluish light.

  ‘They don’t usually race this time of the year,’ Una commented. ‘And it’s Sunday.’

  ‘That’s not the sound of cheering.’ Coralie’s shoulders were aching because Noëlle had wanted to be carried since Duroc. A headache was taking hold, made worse by a smell on the breeze. Sulphurous – familiar. What exactly?

  It came to her. Once, on a hot day, her father had told her to empty the piss bucket in his workshop. It was a metal canister with a lid, like a milk churn. Pouring the stagnant contents into the yard drain, she’d almost passed out.

  ‘A rally?’ Arkady suggested. ‘Perhaps Hitler has come to visit again.’

  ‘Could be,’ Una agreed. ‘It’s a feral sound.’

  ‘Let’s turn back.’ Urgency gripped Coralie, as on the day she’d heard soldiers marching down the Champs-Élysées. For all she hated the Métro, she wanted to get underground. She turned on her heel and the others followed. But at Duroc a milling crowd suggested that another line had been shut.

  ‘What do you say we all go to ours?’ Una suggested. ‘Have tea and wait for the engineers to sort things out.’

  A welcome idea. But as they re-crossed the intersection of rue de Vaugirard and boulevard du Montparnasse, they discovered a rough blockade had been thrown up. Gendarmes stood guard, their numbers swelled by cadets and youths in shirtsleeves. ‘What’s going on?’ They were about to find out. Coralie saw the policemen crane forward, as if watching for something.

  Within minutes, there came the snarl of engines and a policeman shouted to the cadets to ‘stand by’. A moment later, a motorbus chugged by. Coralie saw children’s faces, their features indistinct through the sheets of wire mesh that covered the windows. They wore sun-hats and bonnets, and her instant thought was, They’re going on holiday. But so late in the day? And why the mesh windows?

  It couldn’t be a prison bus because it bore the insignia of CTRP, the Paris-region public-transport company. And what prison bus took little children? There were adults too. The vehicle braked, giving her time to see a woman mouthing something at her through a square of window. Her face was locked in disbelief. It was also familiar.

  ‘Amélie!’

  Françoise too. The child lay awkwardly across her mother’s body, a patchwork blanket rolled for a pillow under her cheek. Coralie ran alongside the bus as it picked up speed, Noëlle’s head bumping against her shoulder. She shouted, ‘Amélie!’

  A hard hand grabbed her, an equally hard voice ordered, ‘Don’t run!’ It was one of the gendarmes.

  ‘I know that girl – she’s my friend. Her child’s very sick. Where are they taking them?’ She was being pulled back towards the barricade. In a moment she’d drop Noëlle.

  ‘Get back, woman. This is none of your business.’

  ‘But where are they going?’

  ‘To Pithiviers, to the assembly camp. They’re going to be counted.’

  ‘Counted . . . So they’ll be let go?’

  The policeman took stock of her smart travel suit, her eighth- arrondissement shoes, her La Passerinette hat. ‘Of course, Madame. It is just a formality.’

  Next morning, Coralie got herself to La Passerinette as early as Noëlle’s routine allowed. It was the school holidays, and while Mademoiselle Guinard was away, she was bringing her daughter into work. They walked hand in hand and, for once, the child’s chatter failed to divert Coralie. She couldn’t get the sights and smells of yesterday out of her mind. Why send people away to be counted in a different town? Last night as darkness fell, she’d walked through an eerily empty Marais, even though she’d known Amélie wouldn’t be there. Such silence . . . as though a monstrous machine had sucked the inhabitants away. In rue Charlot, she’d found the doll shop unlocked, Amélie’s grandparents sitting side by side on the stairs. Monsieur Ginsler had stared mutely the whole time she was there, as waxen as one of his dolls. His wife’s voice had crackled like a worn-out tape-recording, the sound turned low. ‘They came on Wednesday. We wait for Amélie. They do not take us because we are too old.’

  Too impatient to walk all the way to boulevard de la Madeleine, Coralie waved down a vélo taxi, a bicycle pulling a small cabin on wheels. Noëlle sang with delight. Her favourite form of transport!

  Expecting La Passerinette to be open, Violaine there to welcome them, Coralie surveyed the locked door, the drawn blinds, and her stomach turned over. Violaine was always at work by now. She wasn’t the sort to take advantage of the boss being on holiday. Telling Noëlle sharply to stop hopping, Coralie found her own keys.

  No hats in the window. Just a couple of dead bluebottles – Coralie shuddered: she retained a horror of flies. The workroom was locked, too. ‘Right, up the stairs,’ she said brightly, while her heart thudded. Violaine’s flat was empty, and in Madame Thomas’s, she found the landlord’s handyman turning off the gas.

  ‘It’ll go back on when the new tenants come in,’ he said, giving Noëlle a friendly wink. ‘We’ve a full set of empty flats, all the way up to the roof. You’d get a good bargain, if you fancied moving into one of them, Madame.’

  ‘Where is Mademoiselle Beaumont? Where’s Madame Thomas?’ Coralie demanded. ‘They can’t both have left.’

  ‘Jewish, hein? The police had a round-up while you were away. Nice and neat, none of us saw it. All the Jews in Paris to the Vel’ d’Hiv and shipped away.’

  ‘They’ve made a mistake.’ Coralie wanted to slap the stupid grin off his face. ‘Madame Thomas is a French citizen and Violaine isn’t even Jewish!’

  The man made a face implying, ‘What am I supposed to do?’ Downstairs in the salon, Coralie found a letter on the mat. It had been there when they came in because Noëlle’s small footprint was on it. It was dated Wednesday, 15 July:

  You will be wondering why. Her name is Vadia Bermanski and she is a Polish-born Jewess. She thought nobody knew but that is because she does not realise that files can be opened and records searched. She is also obdurate and physically deficient. She always made my skin crawl. I watched the police take her and the other woman away. Vadia dropped her spectacles and a policeman trod on them. Digest that image, Coralie de Lirac. Imagine her final fumbling views of Paris, and you will now understand the cost of sabotaging my life and my work. How will you fare without your ‘right hand’? Who will prove herself the better milliner now?

  It was signed ‘LR’.

  ‘Maman?’ Noëlle plucked at her sleeve.

  ‘I’m all right, precious.’

  A Romany woman had once told Coralie that she would kill and she’d found the idea laughable. Back then, she’d not understood the complexities of friendship and love. Neither had she known that people like Lorienne Royer existed.

  She gazed around her salon. I’m an English
woman who loves France and I will fight this evil, whatever it costs.

  It would cost, and she would start paying when a honey-sweet autumn turned Paris once more into a city of gold.

  Another Thursday morning, towards the close of September. Coralie dropped Noëlle off at her new school on boulevard de Courcelles. It was a private one, recommended by Mademoiselle Guinard. Noëlle was ready for proper school, she’d said. The child was gifted.

  It was just a hop from the Hôtel Duet, and after she’d left Noëlle, Coralie cycled through parc Monceau, where the ghosts of her youthful love affair still walked. She had not given up the business of hats – not with private education to add to her other bills – but because La Passerinette now consisted of herself, alone, she had established a new regime. Arriving at half past nine, she manufactured until lunchtime. After lunch, she took off her apron, turned the ‘Fermé’ sign to ‘Ouvert’ and became fitter and vendeuse. At six, she went home.

  There had been no autumn–winter show, the grief-laden summer sucking creativity from her. She now made hats to suit the individual customer, each one absorbing her until it was complete, when she would jump, like a grasshopper, to the next. She had put up her prices and, rather to her surprise, was ridiculously busy. Wheeling her bicycle into La Passerinette’s lobby, she heard the telephone ringing in her workroom.

  ‘Possess your soul in patience,’ she muttered, digging for her keys, which, inevitably, were right at the bottom of her bag. The telephone rang stubbornly on. At last, she picked up, giving her usual, ‘Bonjour, La Passerinette.’

  ‘Please come over – now.’ A woman.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I just got home from a night shift and learned that soldiers called at my door at six this morning. Looks like today’s the day.’

  ‘Una? You sound like a guitar string about to break. The day for what?’

  ‘They’re taking us Americans in. I called the hospital and some of my colleagues have already been arrested. I’ve maybe got a few minutes, an hour if I’m lucky.’