The Milliner's Secret

by Natalie Meg Evans

  ‘Then grab your things and get over here. I’ll hide you.’

  ‘And put Little One’s life on the line? No, it’s face-the-music time.’ A shaky laugh. ‘This is German–US politics and we’re caught in the middle, but I can’t think they’ll keep us too long. Can you come over, though, fast as you can?’

  For once, the Métro ran without stoppages. Even so, Coralie arrived to find Una on the pavement, flanked by German Feldgendarmarie. They were burly men with silver gorgets around their necks like over-sized dog tags. They had fighting-dog faces to match. Even so, Una was arguing.

  The men were trying to induce her to step into the open back of a troop truck. Coralie saw faces peering out from under the canvas. All female. All, presumably, American detainees. Some were dressed as if for a diplomatic reception. Others were bundled into mismatched clothes as if they’d been jerked out of bed or from their kitchens.

  A policemen ordered Una, ‘Get in, girl, quickly.’

  ‘Honey, I can’t.’

  Coralie saw the difficulty. Una had chosen to wear her plaid Javier suit, the one called Lomond, and its skirt was too narrow to make the step.

  Walking forward, Coralie explained the problem in German, at the same time pulling off her coat, making a screen of it so Una was able to hitch up her skirt and join her compatriots. ‘My suitcase,’ Una rasped.

  Coralie handed it into the truck. ‘Only field-police,’ she hissed in lightning-fast French. ‘No you-know-who.’ The absence of Gestapo suggested that Una’s Resistance activities were not the cause of her arrest. It looked like politics, pure and simple.

  ‘Tell Arkady I’ll be back soon as I can.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Vichy, playing at the Hôtel du Parc. Take care of him and here,’ Una dropped her house keys into Coralie’s hand, ‘use anything of mine you like, and please—’

  Coralie was pulled away from the truck so roughly, she felt the cartilage crack in her armpits. The vehicle was revving. A soldier pulled down the canvas flap, knocking Una backwards, but as the truck drew off, an immaculately manicured hand forced a gap. Una’s face appeared. ‘Feed the dog!’

  ‘You don’t have a dog.’

  ‘Sure I do. My bulldog. Take it to my good friends at the hospital.’

  In Una’s flat – her old flat – Coralie checked every room in case Una really had acquired a dog. An apricot toy poodle, she could believe. Or maybe a Maltese terrier dyed to match the McBride wardrobe . . . but a snuffling, bandy-legged bunch of muscle? That’d be the day.

  Finding no signs of canine occupation, she presumed that shock had temporarily addled Una’s brain. She unplugged the lamps, checked the gas was off on the stove and that there were no dripping taps. Finding notepaper on the dining table, she wrote a message for Arkady, telling him to call her. The radio was in its usual place among the pots of mustard and honey, and Coralie moved the dial from Radio Londres, where Una had left it. ‘You’ve been listening to the British Broadcasting Corporation – oh!’ Bulldog! British bulldog!

  Checking that rue de Seine was clear of uniforms, she fetched a broom and tapped on the ceiling hatch, calling out in English, ‘You can come down now. I’m a friend.’

  Moments later, RAF Pilot Officer Terrence Bidcroft was stretching his limbs and blinking. As she boiled water for coffee, Coralie explained that Madame McBride had been detained. ‘Looks like I’m your helping hand from now on. I’ll have to find out what I’m supposed to do with you. Meanwhile, how d’you take your coffee? Ersatz, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Who’s Madame McBride?’ Bidcroft asked anxiously, as he sipped the milkless brew. He had a ruddy complexion, sandy hair and a handlebar moustache.

  ‘Your hostess. The lady who lives here.’

  ‘You mean Paule? That’s what I was told to call her. This is dangerous work and operatives have code names. What’s yours, miss?’

  ‘I haven’t got one. Can’t you tell I’m new to this?’ As soon as the words were out, Coralie knew she’d re-voiced a pledge. She’d wanted to fight barbarity and the moment had arrived. And with it, lethal danger.

  Two days later, she was standing on a platform at Gare de Lyon, sobs splitting her throat. The Resistance had chosen her, forcing an agonising choice of her own. She was sending Noëlle to Switzerland in the company of Henriette Junot. In any other situation, she wouldn’t have entrusted a pot plant to Henriette’s care but war forced people to the strangest compromises. God protect her darling, and God help Henriette if she botched it.

  During the summer, Coralie and Una had exchanged letters with Max von Silberstrom, who had confirmed, in carefully coded terms, that he and Ottilia lived together in a quiet square in the centre of Geneva. Coralie was confident that Noëlle would find a loving foster home with them. Persuading Henriette to take the child there had not been easy, however.

  ‘I don’t like children and my memory isn’t what it was. I may leave her on the train. Anyway, the girl doesn’t have an Ausweis.’

  ‘She does.’ Coralie produced the permit that Dietrich had left for her. ‘It carries my name too, but you can explain that I was taken ill.’

  Reading in Coralie an unshakeable determination, Henriette had sighed. ‘Very well.’ When Coralie had given her the von Silberstrom address, her expression had lifted. ‘Goodness, that’s the finest square in Geneva. Is it the housekeeper you’re friends with?’

  ‘The owners, Henriette. Be civil to them – you might get on their dinner-party list.’

  Putting Noëlle on the train, passing up her little suitcase, checking she still had the address label around her neck should Henriette’s memory indeed fail, Coralie felt eviscerating pain. ‘You have that letter for Tante Tilly?’

  ‘Yes, Maman. Why aren’t you coming?’

  ‘It’s a holiday, just for you.’ The letter read, Please take care of her and tell her every day that she is all the world to me.

  She left as the train pulled out, and strode home, bellowing like a cow whose calf has been ripped away, heedless of glances and even the occasional snicker. In her flat, she cast herself on to the sofa and beat the cushions until her fists burned. By linking up with Una’s people at the American Hospital, taking Pilot Officer Bidcroft to a railway station and handing him over to a Resistance courier, she had crossed a line. She was part of something big, yet utterly alone. At least now she could give herself up to danger without putting her daughter at risk. Now she must wait and see what more the Resistance wanted of her.

  Nothing, it seemed. October arrived, the days merging one into the other. Then, around the middle of the month Coralie was closing for the evening, reaching into the window to pick up the last sunflower stalk, when she became aware of eyes watching her. Her stomach flipped but she opened the salon door with a show of confidence. ‘May I help you?’

  The visitor was a trim woman in a well-made suit. A good-quality hat, which had probably been bought as war broke out, covered her greying hair. ‘Mademoiselle de Lirac? Do you not remember me?’

  The voice was the key. ‘Mademoiselle Deveau!’ Coralie embraced her former tutor, squeezing a little too hard because nineteen days without human contact felt like a lifetime. ‘How lovely to see you. Have you come to buy a hat?’

  ‘May we talk privately?’

  In the workroom, Coralie learned that the American Hospital had passed her details to a Resistance circuit of which Mademoiselle Deveau was a member. Realising that she already knew the person being recommended, Mademoiselle Deveau had made more enquiries and had walked past La Passerinette a few times. ‘To see who comes and goes.’

  She was a member of the circuit known as Fortitude, she explained. ‘Now that Paule has gone, we need somebody to act as a courier for military intelligence and to operate a safe house. I hardly need add, that person must be loyal, intelligent and brave. If you are not that person, please say so now.’

  Coralie considered her answer. ‘You know that I had an affaire with Dietrich von Elbing, an
d that I serve more German than French women in my shop. Some would say I’m a collabo.’

  ‘They might indeed.’ Louise Deveau gave an inscrutable smile. ‘But I see that as an advantage. You speak German, and you stand over the heads of German women every day. Scraps of information from enemy lips can be sent to the Free French government in London. Every word is as good as a bullet. And should you ever renew your love affair . . . all the better.’

  ‘Dietrich is back in Germany. I reckon we’ll get back together the day Adolf Hitler joins the Red Army.’

  Louise Deveau made a gesture very like Una’s ‘Okay, okay’ hand wave. ‘Come to me at rue de l’Odéon when you’ve thought about it. I don’t need to tell you that it’s lonely work. You can trust nobody and confide in nobody.’

  ‘I don’t need to think. I made up my mind in July when friends of mine were deported. I can’t help them, but I can act in their name.’

  Mademoiselle Deveau nodded. ‘Your codename will be “Cosette”. You will not see me after today. Another agent, Moineau, will contact you from now on. Should you be arrested, you are on your own, though I will expect you to name me –’

  ‘I wouldn’t!’

  ‘– as I will name you under duress. It is why you will never know the identities of more than two operatives. We are spokes in a wheel. A couple of spokes can be smashed, the wheel still turns.’ She rose. ‘Guten Abend, Fräulein de Lirac.’

  Within a couple of weeks, Coralie-Cosette was picking up handwritten intelligence dockets from a butcher’s shop in rue Mouffetard. As the shop opened each morning, she’d buy a piece of meat, then cycle to a private address on avenue Foch, her secrets concealed in the false bottom of a La Passerinette hatbox in the basket of her bicycle. She’d toot her klaxon at German soldiers having their breakfast, singing under her breath, ‘Ça ira.’

  It’s all going on. It’ll be fine.

  In November 1942, in response to Allied advances in North Africa and the relentless bombing of Italy, the German Army occupied the whole of France. The Vichy government, unable either to respond or resist, was exposed as a toothless regime. There was no longer a ‘Free Zone’, no demarcation line to cross. For Coralie, in island-Paris, the impact was minimal. Of course, life grew harder, but it had been doing that for three years. German soldiers seemed edgier, more likely to shout and point guns at civilians. But ladies still wanted hats.

  A card came from Geneva: ‘Merci pour le cadeau de Noël.’ Thank you for the Christmas present. A few days later, there was a letter from Una. She was being kept at Vittel in the Vosges mountains, she wrote, and could send and receive letters through the Red Cross. ‘Write reams, and send books, magazines, anything.’

  Coralie did so, and food parcels, warm underwear and a brand new hat in a La Passerinette box. She suspected that the last gift had never reached her friend, as Una failed to mention it in her following letter. That was when Arkady lost hope of her imminent return. He was now in the Auvergne, perhaps with Ramon. Certainly with the Resistance.

  The winter of 1942–3 came like a malignant houseguest, reaching into every corner. Into bones and lungs. Coralie worked doggedly at La Passerinette to blot out that bleak, childless Christmas. She’d often sleep in her workroom because it was easier to heat than the flat on impasse de Cordoba.

  ‘Alone’ seeped into her soul. Even the Resistance didn’t want her, it seemed. Mademoiselle Deveau’s pledge that she’d be contacted by another agent had come to nothing.

  In January 1943, she received delayed Christmas letters from Geneva, from Noëlle and Ottilia, and cried until she was in danger of washing away the words with tears.

  All through that dark season, she gave what work she could to the Ginsler grandparents, but winter hit them hard and the old man died in the middle of January. His wife struggled on, often forgetting who Coralie was or that her family had gone. Coralie kept her fed, paid for her fuel and visited every other day. The old lady called her Amélie, and would snatch her hands to stop her leaving.

  February threw out one bitter night too many. Arriving at rue Charlot, wheeling her bicycle because of the snow, Coralie found neighbours in a solemn huddle outside the shop, a light on upstairs.

  Coralie begged an Almighty she no longer believed in for something – anything – to prove that life was more than a succession of heartrending failures.

  The Almighty obliged.

  Coralie was cycling to the salon when a man brought his bicycle alongside her. His black Dutch-boy cap was pulled down against the wind, a scarf knotted under his chin. All she saw were red-veined cheeks and a bit of unprepossessing earlobe. Thinking he was after a view of her pedalling thighs, she told him to buzz off.

  ‘I’m Moineau, idiot.’

  ‘You are? Sorry!’ This was her Resistance contact? Somehow, she’d imagined a looker like Robert Donat in The 39 Steps, complete with quizzical moustache. What a let-down. Moineau cycled beside her long enough to warn her to prepare for a ‘big parcel’ that would be delivered to her home.

  He slipped a booklet into her coat pocket. ‘Rations for Jean-Pierre Vavin, a retired bank clerk in his sixties.’

  She understood. Somebody would be needing her hospitality and to feed him she’d draw rations for this fictitious Jean-Pierre, whom she could probably pass off as her father.

  ‘Where shall I bring the parcel?’ Moineau asked.

  She gave him the address on impasse de Cordoba. ‘When’s he arriving?’

  ‘It’s a parcel. We don’t say “he”.’

  ‘Sorry. First time.’

  ‘Just get queuing, then wait till dark, all right?’

  She did as he said, spending hours in line for food, only reaching La Passerinette by late afternoon.

  As evening fell, her heart rate increased. Her first evader might already be on his way. She’d better close the shop and get home. Wheeling her bicycle on to boulevard de la Madeleine, she was hitching up her coat skirts when a shout made her turn. A man in German uniform was crossing the boulevard three or four shop widths away, holding up his hand to stop the traffic.

  Dietrich.

  She sped away, cycling on the pavement as far as place de la Madeleine. Pedalling blindly into the stream of traffic earned her a fanfare of honks from impatient drivers. Usually, the cycle ride home from Madeleine took her twelve minutes. This time, she did it in six.

  Moineau delivered half an hour before curfew. Answering his four-beat knock, she opened her door to find the pavement ¬glittering with hoarfrost. She coughed three times; the all-clear.

  Instantly, two dark figures peeled out of a doorway a little distance up the alley. One carried a suitcase and seemed to be wearing white gloves. Once inside, both men made a beeline for the electric fire. She had onion soup ready.

  Moineau ate his standing up, anxious to get away before curfew fell. After giving Coralie instructions for the next stage, he took spirit bottles from each of his coat pockets. ‘One to help the evening go with a swing, hey, Cosette? Take the other with you when you hand this gentleman on.’

  Her ‘parcel’ was Jan Brommersma, a journalist from Rotterdam found guilty of editing an anti-German newspaper. In English, their shared language, Brommersma told Coralie that he’d been on his way to execution, but one of the soldiers guarding the prison van had been caught short. Desperate to relieve himself against the van’s wheel, the soldier had left the rear door open.

  ‘His relief is short-lived, I am thinking.’

  Jan carried marks of beatings and cigarette burns to his face and neck and Coralie could not bear at first to look at his hands. He hadn’t been wearing white gloves; each finger-end was wrapped in scraps of linen, through which blood had soaked and dried.

  When he told her his exposed nail-beds were getting infected, she overcame her squeamishness and bathed his hands in warm salt-water, tearing new bandages from one of her own sheets.

  They drank a tot of the aquavit Moineau had provided, but Coralie advised restraint. Tomo
rrow was the hand-over, the most dangerous stage of an evader’s journey. After cooking him the heartiest meal that ration books could furnish – rabbit pie, macaroni and lima beans – she suggested they turn in.

  ‘You take my bed,’ she said, realising quickly that his feet would hang over the end. After elongating the bed with two suitcases, she lay down on the sofa. Sleep was impossible. She’d run away from Dietrich, left him calling her name in the street. Why was he back and what did he want?

  Once Jan had fallen asleep, his snores competed with the freight trains coming in and out of Gare Saint-Lazare. Coralie got up and, wrapped in blankets, cut out a pair of gloves from black felt, large enough to cover a Dutchman’s hands. Her needle paused only when Jan began a harrowing dialogue in his sleep, taking her into his nightmare.

  Jan Brommersma had been courteous from the first, appreciative of the risk she was taking but, even so, she felt uncomfortable to be sharing such a tiny space with a male stranger. One front door opening on to a dead-end was also far from ideal. She needed better accommodation.

  Over a breakfast of the previous night’s leftovers, Jan tried on his new gloves with a child’s pleasure, and asked her how she came to speak such excellent English.

  She lied, by habit. ‘From a boyfriend, before the war. He was an artist who came to Paris to rent a table at a Montparnasse café and sit in the shadow of Matisse and Picasso. He liked to paint me, and he’d talk.’

  Jan, in his turn, told her the unadulterated truth of the devastation of Rotterdam by German bombers, and also of the destruction of British towns and cities. He gave enough detail for her to guess that there must be a trade in intelligence across the North Sea, probably between the English east coast and Dutch ports, like Antwerp. He told her that Londoners had christened the nightly pounding of their city ‘the Blitz’.