The Paris Secret

by Natasha Lester

  “Jenkins!” Nicholas’s voice fired.

  The men quieted immediately.

  The fiancée spoke in French-accented English. “How are you, Nick?”

  “This is Margaux Jourdan,” Nicholas said to Skye. “And this is Skye Penrose. A friend from childhood.”

  The strangest sensation swept over Skye—a narrowness in her throat that made it hard to speak. She remembered feeling like this once before: when her mother had told her she was sending Skye and Liberty to France for six months. Bereft. But what had she lost? Nicholas’s words were correct: she was a friend from childhood. But his words were devoid of everything she’d thought their friendship had been.

  “Did you know each other well?” Margaux inquired, as if she didn’t really care and was only making polite conversation.

  Margaux’s uninterested tone caused Skye to recover her voice. “Well enough for him to have seen my underwear,” she said. “And me his.”

  She left Margaux to swallow that and, buoyed by Nicholas’s laugh, followed the men across the airfield.

  But as she walked into the darkness, Skye understood what she’d lost, finally and forever: the shining idea of Nicholas, the boy with whom she had, once upon a time, discovered a lost garden, and danced on a clifftop, and lain in a cave in the dark, silently weeping. He was never coming back.

  Eight

  After Skye had found somewhere to change into her skirt and jacket—RAF rules forbade her from wearing her flying suit in an officer’s mess—O’Farrell, who said that even he couldn’t remember his first name, so long had it been since he’d heard it, was more than happy to escort her to the mess. He pulled out a chair for her.

  “You were on the cover of Picture Post,” O’Farrell said knowledgeably.

  “I was,” she said, stabbing her fork into the bacon and eggs—real eggs, not the powdered kind—and smiling, always smiling.

  “We don’t get many ATA pilots here,” another man said. “Wish we did,” he added wistfully, only to be silenced by a look from O’Farrell.

  “Where exactly are we?” Skye inquired. “I’ve ferried to almost every RAF airfield in England, but not this one.”

  “They’ve found a place for you at the Waafery tonight,” Nicholas Crawford cut in. He stood before her again, having momentarily divested himself of his fiancée.

  Skye felt the sudden alertness in the room, an alertness she recognized from spending time in other RAF messes: the poised-on-the-toes responsiveness of a squadron before their leader. But this wasn’t the fearful vigilance of a team whose wing commander ruled with threats and violence; it was the eager reverence of a group of men who respected their commanding officer.

  Nicholas had, it seemed, done everything he’d wished for when they’d sat together at her mother’s kitchen table doing homework. He’d well and truly escaped his past. His American accent had returned; all the smoothness his vowels had acquired during four years in Cornwall gone. With the accent had come a confidence of tone and manner that she supposed he’d always possessed but, because it was more innate and quiet than O’Farrell’s cockiness, it had been easy to overlook. Not anymore.

  She wanted to ask him how he’d done it, to talk to him properly. She was about to invite him to sit down when he said, abruptly, “You have everything you need?” He gestured to her overnight bag as if he expected her to put down her fork and leap to attention. It was impossible to imagine this man asking What’s wrong? and her telling him.

  “Do you mind if I eat first?” she said lightly. “I haven’t had anything besides a chocolate ration since breakfast. All that corkscrewing has given me an appetite.”

  “I’d rather you came now.”

  Skye matched her tone to his—cool, impatient. “I need to file an incident report with the CO. I’m assuming that’s you.”

  “I’ll write it for you.”

  “But I need to see it. Not everyone reports incidents that women are involved in accurately.”

  She thought she saw a flash of anger then—that she would doubt his integrity—but he was behaving like a stranger, so she had to assume she knew nothing about him.

  “Finish your supper.” He extracted a pen from his pocket and summoned the appropriate piece of paper. Nobody spoke as he scrawled a few lines across it. He handed her his pen and the report. “If you’re happy with that.”

  She read the account. It was a fair summary, so she signed her name at the bottom. Then she stood up. “Sorry, boys, seems I’m not wanted.”

  She smiled at the men, paying special attention to O’Farrell, ate a last mouthful of egg and picked up her jacket.

  O’Farrell stood up. “Why don’t I walk you out too?” he said.

  On the way to the Waafery, Nicholas said nothing but O’Farrell cajoled from Skye which pool she worked out of, when her next days off were, and tried to find a time when their respective leaves coincided. He was the epitome of the brash American flyboy and she knew her counterparts at Hamble would be swooning by now. But he was also funny and nice and had rescued her from an awkward situation.

  “You don’t need to accompany me,” she called out to Nicholas, who was striding a little ahead. “I know you both need to eat and debrief. And,” she added as Nicholas turned around, “that you have a fiancée somewhere who must be eager to see you.”

  “Peggy!” O’Farrell hollered, and a young woman in a WAAF uniform came running over. “Can you walk Captain Penrose to the Waafery?”

  Peggy batted her eyelids at O’Farrell, and then at Nicholas. O’Farrell grinned at the attention and engaged her in conversation, whereas Nicholas appeared not to notice Peggy was even there.

  “You’re at Hamble now?” he said quietly to Skye, obviously having overheard her conversation with O’Farrell. He caught her at the exact moment she was flicking her scarf carelessly over her shoulder in the same way she’d once flung beach towels. He must have had the same thought because he shook his head. “You know, in some ways you’re so exactly the same as you used to be that it’s like stepping out of now and into then. And in other ways, you are absolutely and completely different.”

  There it was at last: the empathy she’d expected. And it was strange, seeing flashes of their childhood ghosts in the adults they’d become. Perhaps that accounted for his behavior.

  “I’m sure you’re very different in some ways too,” she said mischievously, hoping to reestablish a status quo between them.

  Nicholas rubbed his hand on his jaw and then spoke determinedly. “I hope one of the things that’s different is you’re not so much of a daredevil. Jesus, Skye, you’re flying without radio, without weapons, without instruments—what if my squadron hadn’t been around tonight?”

  Skye halted, anger stirring. “Would you say that to me if I were a man?” she asked casually.

  “I’m saying it because I used to care about you, and that history means I still care about you.” His tone was flat and emotionless, as if he were trying to pretend, by using words like “care,” that he wasn’t giving her a ticking-off.

  “How dare you.”

  “What?” he said, head jerking back as if she’d slapped him, which she certainly felt like doing.

  “I’m a captain,” she snapped. “I’ve worked my way up from second officer. I was offered a promotion to flight captain, which I declined because it meant being desk-bound. I’ve landed planes without landing gear, navigated through storms without instruments, watched the propeller fall off my plane and still managed to bring it down safely. I have never once damaged a plane through my own actions. The RAF needs planes to fight a war and it’s my job to deliver those planes intact so we can win that war. A ‘daredevil’ would think of none of that. Please take your chauvinist concerns and apply them to the men in your squadron who have less experience than I do, and who are the daredevils who try out their first stall turn in an RAF plane, crash and take that plane out of action, so I have to ferry it around for repairs without a radio and without any in
struments.”

  She stalked over to the waiting Peggy and said, “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Nicholas swore as he watched Skye walk away. Why did that have to happen the way it had? Why did she have to appear again tonight, without warning, looping back into his life the same way she’d twirled into it fourteen years ago, upside down and with a smile brighter than anything he’d ever seen exploding into flames against a midnight sky.

  Margaux appeared at his side. “Are you ready? Or do you still have to debrief?” Then, “Do you think she’ll say anything about where she ended up tonight?”

  “I think that after I practically threw her out with what she thought was a reprimand, she’ll do her best to forget she was ever here.”

  “You couldn’t have done anything else.”

  Margaux lit a Gauloise and offered him the pack. He took one gratefully. She was right. But it didn’t make him feel any better.

  “You look like you just shot your best friend in the back,” Margaux said now. “How close were you two?”

  “I haven’t seen her for years. Besides one quick meeting at an airfield in 1940.”

  It wasn’t an answer to her question, but it was all he could say at that moment.

  If he’d been asked the same question ten years ago, he would have said that Skye was like his breath: essential. It was unthinkable that he would ever be without her. But he had been without her for a long time. He hadn’t written to her as he’d said he would the last time he saw her because it was too damn hard. In the passage of years she’d become, unquestionably, a woman. He hadn’t quite realized that when they last spoke, so intent had he been—and she too, he thought—on disburdening their pent-up fears. Perhaps she also had a fiancé. Although the way she’d let O’Farrell flirt with her suggested she didn’t.

  He ground his cigarette butt beneath his boot. Margaux slipped her arm into his.

  “How are you?” he asked softly. “Sorry I couldn’t pick you up. Engine trouble.”

  She shrugged. “I’m tired. Like you. Which means we both need a drink.”

  He tossed her a smile. Say what you would about Margaux—that she was cold, ruthless, marble-hearted—but she was always practical. “That sounds like a very good idea.”

  They walked to the Unicorn, deep in conversation, and drank more whiskey than they should have and smoked too many Gauloises, because what else was there to do?

  In the morning, Nicholas walked over to the Waafery to inquire about Skye and was told she’d already gone.

  This time, he would find her. He couldn’t explain most of his behavior, but perhaps he could explain enough that she wouldn’t hate him.

  PART FOUR

  Kat

  Nine

  SYDNEY, 2012

  When Kat arrived back in Sydney, rather than going home from the airport to shower and change and switch her jet-lagged brain to the higher-level functioning required to wrangle a five-year-old and a three-year-old, she collected her daughters from her ex-husband in a smother of hugs and kisses.

  She didn’t step into the house, hoping to avoid Paul, but divorce was the gift that kept on giving: pain, guilt and anger its usual offerings. Indeed, hardly any time passed before she was drawn into a not-quite argument, carried out in calm tones to disguise the petty words.

  “You didn’t tell me the girls were having French lessons,” he said.

  “They’re not,” she replied, immediately on the defensive. “I speak French with them occasionally. My grandmother does too. You know that.”

  “And you know as well as I do that bilingual children struggle in the first few years of school. We wouldn’t want them to fall behind just for the sake of learning a few French words.”

  “Then you must also know that bilingual children more than catch up by middle primary school,” she countered, “and usually move far ahead of their peers. Plus they have the added benefit of speaking two languages. I don’t see the problem.” She caught herself about to cross her arms and dropped them back to her sides, not wanting to appear vulnerable. “Besides, Daisy’s only in preschool; it’s not as if she can fall too far behind in coloring.”

  Paul leaned against the door frame and smiled as if his next words would secure victory for him. “Elizabeth can’t even spell ‘cat.’ At first she said it was K-a-t and then she said it was c-h-a-t.”

  A small laugh escaped Kat. “Lisbet,” she called. “How do you spell ‘cat’?”

  Five-year-old Lisbet reappeared, dragging her backpack behind her. “It’s c-a-t, Mummy. You know that.”

  “Et voilà,” Kat said to her ex-husband. “I don’t think that a child who knows how to spell cat three different ways is having any trouble at school.”

  Daisy skipped after her sister, pink galoshes in hand, dripping muddy splashes across the hardwood floors.

  Paul snapped at Kat as if that was her fault too. “I’d prefer you consult with me about any extracurricular activities you involve the girls in.”

  Kat could feel the girls’ eyes fixed on their parents. “Lisbet, take Daisy to the car,” she said. “I’ll be there in a minute.” As the girls trotted down the path, Kat spoke to Paul. “I’m not going to call you every time I use a French word or two with them. Nor is my grandmother. You were once excited by the prospect of having children who knew languages other than English. Try to remember that.”

  She left, sensing Paul watching her before he went inside to his new family, which Kat hoped wouldn’t break apart like theirs had. Divorce wasn’t something she’d wish on anyone, even her ex-husband.

  Lisbet and Daisy chattered excitedly all the way home. They were, as always, thrilled Kat was back, and her heart hurt from the quantity of love they showered upon her. Their enthusiasm dimmed a little when Kat told them she was taking them to visit their great-grandmother at Pambula Beach on the weekend, but she knew it was just because they hadn’t been home for ten days and wanted the security of their own rooms and their toys. Both girls loved Margaux Jourdan, although they would never appreciate her the way Kat did. To Lisbet and Daisy, their great-grandmother was an old woman who was often too pointedly accurate in her remarks. But for Kat, Margaux Jourdan was a surrogate mother, a woman who’d unquestioningly taken on the care of a week-old baby when Kat’s mother, Margaux’s daughter, could not.

  Kat decided not to mention the visit again as she drove to the little cottage in Birchgrove that she’d bought after she left Paul. She ordered pizza for dinner, let the girls have a bubble bath, and read them their favorite story—“Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”—for the hundredth time, lingering over their favorite part—when the thieves were boiled in oil. Then she tucked them into bed and gave them their special kisses: one on the forehead, one on the tip of the nose, one on each cheek, and one final kiss over the heart.

  Once the girls were asleep, tired though she was from jet lag, Kat turned on her computer and studied the pictures she’d taken of the dresses she’d found in the Cornish cottage. Open on her desk was a book about Christian Dior, full of beautiful images of his gowns, and she used that and the internet to prove a suspicion that had formed as she’d puzzled over the strange treasure on her flight home.

  The first photograph was easy for Kat, as a fashion conservator, to identify: the glamorous red of the Aladin cocktail dress from 1947. From 1948, the chocolate-brown panache of the Bon Voyage travel dress. 1949: another one Kat recognized on first glance; the froth and sparkle of the sequinned silk scallops on the Venus ballgown. 1950: more white, another ballgown; the Francis Poulenc in pleated taffeta.

  The dresses in her grandmother’s mysterious cottage were not just a random selection: there was one gown for every year from 1947, when the House of Dior opened, through to the present. Sixty-five gowns in all, chosen carefully to represent the best and most timeless pieces.

  Kat pressed her hand to her forehead and tried to think. When Margaux had inherited Kat, she’d started trading secondhand couture gowns so she
could afford the expense of raising a child, transforming the front room of her Potts Point terrace into a salon. Before all of that, when Kat’s own mother was small, Margaux had modeled for local department stores. It meant she knew the right people for her new business and could buy dresses from the women she’d once modeled for, women who wore their couture once or twice and had no further use for it. Then other women, those on the next rung down on the social ladder, would visit the terrace and purchase the gowns for about half the price of a new one.

  Kat had grown up surrounded by gowns, and thus had been born her love of fashion; a love that had proved more enduring than that which she’d shared with Paul. As a child she’d sat in her grand-mother’s lap when the buyers and sellers came, delighting in the faces of the women as they stepped into a couture gown for the first time; it was as if they’d been plugged into the stars.

  Margaux had always said that nobody could own the magnificence of the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris: it was a work of art that could only be visited, its memory taken away in a photograph. But a dress was a work of art to both lift the spirits and be taken home, to be worn whenever one felt like it, even to make the breakfast if that was what was required to revive the heart. Indeed, Dior had always maintained that his gowns endowed one with poetry, and with life, and her grandmother had agreed. “You’re not just sewing a seam,” Margaux would say, “but fashioning a new life.”

  Kat had believed her then and she believed her now. But how many new lives did her grandmother have hidden in wardrobes on the other side of the world?

  For it was impossible to imagine that the gowns in the cottage were a leftover from her grandmother’s business venture. Margaux hadn’t started it until 1973, and she had closed the business in the nineties. Kat had helped her sell off everything. The dresses in Cornwall spanned a much larger timeframe, and were Paris-made originals, rather than the licensed models that would mostly have been available in Australia during that time. Indeed, Kat would certainly remember if her grandmother had ever received anything as remarkable as the Venus dress to sell.