by Lily Graham
‘No visitors.’
‘Please.’
His face was immobile, and he carried on filling out his list.
‘Please, M’sieur, my father needs me. I am worried about him. Can I see him, just for a moment?’
‘No,’ said the guard, his face impassive. ‘He has committed a crime.’
Mireille felt her heart sink into her feet. ‘Can you give him a message, please?’
‘No messages.’
She closed her eyes. He hadn’t even bothered to look at her. Her fingers balled into fists as a group of Nazi officers filed past her, each eyeing her appreciatively. She swallowed her frustration and left the prison, her shoulders stooped.
When she got back to the apartment, she saw a thin man with dark hair waiting outside the shop. He seemed to be looking in through the window, peering into the glass. He was French, down on his luck – judging by the state of his clothes and his demeanour.
‘Can I help you?’
He looked at her, then straightened up, his face hardening slightly. He looked scruffy, as if he hadn’t bathed or shaved in days. ‘You the bookshop brat?’
She frowned at his rude tone. ‘Excuse me?’
He smirked as he continued more politely, but sardonically, as if she were dim-witted: ‘Your father owns this shop?’
‘Yes.’
He snorted and scratched his head, looking at it. ‘Must be nice,’ he said, his dark eyes glittering with resentment, then spat close to her feet. ‘To have a rich Nazi looking out for you. I see you put that pretty little body to good use. All right for some, isn’t it?’
Her eyes widened, and she let out a small gasp. ‘What?’
He sucked his teeth, giving her a look of pure loathing. ‘Nothing.’
He looked down the street, then back up at her, daring to ask, ‘You don’t have any extra food in there, do you?’
‘I don’t.’
He swore, calling her a Nazi whore, before moving off to the other side of the street, where he lingered, his gaze never leaving hers.
Mireille stood for a moment, rooted to the spot as if she’d been slapped, then went to open the door to the bookshop, her fingers fumbling with the new keys, which she dropped on the pavement, her throat constricting. It was only when she’d locked the door again behind her, leaning her head against it, that she began to stop shaking.
The man was still there several hours later, across the street. It made her nervous. She wished he would go away. His dark eyes trailed her every move, with their mix of loathing and greed. It seemed that he’d stationed himself there, but for what reason, aside from trying to make her feel like some kind of traitor, Mireille couldn’t say.
As a result, she hadn’t even opened the bookshop for the day. Valter Kroeling and her father going to prison, not to mention the angry, homeless Frenchman across the street, all seemed combined to ensure that she felt like a trapped animal inside her own home.
Chapter Eighteen
1962
Madame Joubert’s words echoed in Valerie’s head like a gunshot blast. ‘The war would never be over. Not for you, not if you stayed.’
Valerie looked at her with a frown. ‘What do you mean?’
She shook her head, and said, ‘I just mean that your grandfather had his reasons – most of all he wanted to protect you.’
‘Protect me from what? Knowing the truth about who I am, where I come from?’
Madame Joubert sighed, and put down her glass of wine. ‘Yes, but it was more than that. You don’t know – you haven’t seen how they treat children like you here. It was for the best, trust me.’
Valerie slumped back against the sofa. Children like her? What did she mean? And then all at once it hit her, the truth, and what had been kept from her, why she’d been sent away. She doubled over, unable to breathe.
She saw stars, and for a moment, she thought she might be sick.
Through glazed eyes, with her head on her knees, she turned to Madame Joubert, who was crying again, and said the words, dragged the dark secret they had tried to keep from her out into the cold light of the apartment, where it slithered like a living thing with a poisonous sting. ‘My father was a Nazi.’
And all Madame Joubert could do was nod, and then weep, along with her.
Valerie had left the apartment in a hurry after that, barely able to see where she was going through the haze of tears that fogged her eyes, her hands shaking uncontrollably, as the bedrock of who she was crumbled to dust before her feet. ‘Don’t tell M’sieur Dupont about who I am, please,’ she’d said, before she went. ‘Not yet. I want to know the rest, what happened to my mother – a-about my father.’ She’d swallowed. ‘You were her friend – her best friend. You owe her daughter that, please? Afterwards I will tell him.’
Madame Joubert had closed her eyes and nodded in the gloom, in defeat. ‘All right.’
Valerie had taken a breath, then leant against the banner of the stairs. ‘Thank you. I’ll come back – I don’t know when – to hear the rest, but tonight, I can’t hear any more, I couldn’t bear it.’
Madame Joubert had wiped her eyes; she looked drawn out herself. ‘I understand.’
Valerie spent the rest of the evening walking the streets of Paris. It felt as if someone had thrown a grenade in her path and she was trying somehow to make her way out of the wreckage. She didn’t take in much, didn’t see the sights of Paris at night, lovers walking along the Pont Neuf, or the Eiffel Tower bathed in lights. Didn’t hear the music from a jazz club, or the sound of laughter carried with the cool night air along the Seine.
Somehow, though she couldn’t have explained how, or which streets she’d taken, or how long she’d walked, she found herself at Freddy’s apartment. Her mascara ran in two deep rivers down her face. He opened the door in shock. He was still in a suit, his white shirt open at the throat, his dark hair sticking up all over the place. ‘Val, love,’ he said, seeing her face. ‘What happened?’
She shook her head, and her face crumpled. ‘I f-found out why they g-gave me away.’
He led her inside the apartment, then pulled her into a tight hug and whispered by her ear, ‘They told you, then? About your father?’
She looked up at him, frowning. ‘What?’
‘That he was a German officer,’ said Freddy. The word ‘Nazi’ was heavy in the air.
The air seemed to leave her lungs in a rush. ‘You knew?’
He nodded. ‘I guessed,’ he said, not letting her leave his embrace, even as she struggled against him, tried to push – he was strong despite his wiry frame. ‘But later, I looked it up. I’m a journalist,’ he said, by way of defence.
She sank onto his small couch – it was sagging in the middle, the stuffing exposed like a bulging belly – and drank the glass of vodka he had poured her, which he’d put into his toothpaste mug as the rest of his dishes were piling up in the mouldy sink in the corner. It tasted slightly of peppermint.
‘You guessed.’ She repeated his words in disbelief. She had never imagined such a thing. Never. But now, sitting there, staring at the peeling green wallpaper, the stained mattress in the corner, and the small envelope of a window that overlooked a bistro, where jazz music could be heard even now at three a.m., she realised that it made sense, that guess. In retrospect.
He sat down next to her, but didn’t say a word. His large brown eyes looked worried.
He hadn’t been kidding: the apartment was undeniably a garret, and unbearable in general.
It was so horrid that despite her recent woes she couldn’t block out how deeply, horribly awful it was. ‘I can’t believe you live here.’
He shrugged. ‘Which is why I spend most of my time at the Cafe de Flore.’
She took another sip of the toothpaste-flavoured vodka, then nodded. ‘Hemingway?’
‘Hemingway,’ he agreed.
The vodka began to have a slight numbing effect. She didn’t smile, just shook her head and repeated, ‘You knew. This whole
time.’
‘Not the whole time. But most of it, yes.’
She closed her eyes; she didn’t know what she felt at that – betrayal? Anger? ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I…’ He hesitated. Then he moved closer to her, his hand touching her knee. ‘I knew that this was how you’d take it – as if it meant something about you.’
She opened her eyes and frowned. ‘Doesn’t it? My father was a bloody Nazi. What does that make me?’
He shook his head, picked up her hand, and gave it a squeeze. ‘It makes you, you. You’re still the same person. I know they were following the most twisted, evil guy alive, but—’
‘Don’t do that, Freddy, just don’t – just because this feels like hell, don’t try and justify what they did.’
He ran a hand through his hair, which stuck up even more wildly. ‘I won’t, but don’t go thinking that his choices are yours. And even then, you don’t know what was in his soul – he might have been the nastiest guy alive, but that’s not you, Val. I think, if it helps, you need to think of it as a cult: they were brainwashed… and not all of our guys were that great – they raped and pillaged too, I’ve come across some things, you know. I’m not excusing either, I promise you that, I’m just saying that it’s not as black and white as we all like to make it out, and you shouldn’t let it change how you feel about yourself.’
‘Yeah,’ said Valerie, ‘but it does, though, doesn’t it?’ She wasn’t sure how it couldn’t help but change how she thought of herself. She finally understood now what Aunt Amélie had meant. She couldn’t close that Pandora’s box, not now after she’d opened it. She could understand now why Amélie hadn’t wanted to tell her, why she’d said those words: ‘Only he could tell you.’ Only Dupont. Amélie didn’t want to be the one responsible for shattering everything Valerie knew about herself. For making her feel ashamed, somehow. She knew then in that moment how much this revelation would colour everything after.
She closed her eyes as she realised, ‘Who could ever love me, knowing this about me?’
Freddy touched her face. ‘I could.’
Tears slipped down her nose, and she opened her eyes to look at him, shaking her head. ‘I mean, really love me.’
He smiled, his mouth soft. ‘Yes.’
She sucked in air. ‘Don’t tease me, Freddy.’ Her eyes were clouded with tears.
‘I’m not teasing you.’
‘Stop it,’ she said, wiping her fingers beneath her eyes. She was getting angry now. To him this was always some game and she was tired of it. ‘You know how I feel about you. You must have always known.’ All her secrets were coming out now, and like a runaway train hurtling off the tracks, she couldn’t stop it even if she tried. She was in full self-destruct mode.
‘I always hoped that some day you could feel the same way, but now… how could you? Still to tease me about it…’ She sniffed.
He looked at her, his dark eyes full of disbelief. ‘Are you seriously this blind – about everything?’
She stared at him in confusion.
He gave a low laugh. ‘Did you really think that I would choose to live here of all places if I didn’t bloody love you?’
She looked at him, tears in her eyes. ‘You were worried about me, that’s what you said.’
He laughed. ‘Yes. I was worried. You’re my best friend.’
She closed her eyes in pain; it just kept coming tonight. ‘I see.’
‘I don’t think you do. Which is kind of bonkers. Because the whole world seems to know except you.’
Then he kissed her.
She opened her eyes in shock, and he moved aside her curtain of hair, then laughed at her, in a gently teasing sort of way. ‘You really can be the biggest idiot sometimes, you know that? There’s never been anyone else, you twit. If I hadn’t been in love with you since I was about nine, do you think I would have followed you here? And I don’t care what you say, you’re still you, Nazi father or not. It’s never going to make a difference to how I feel about you, because that was him, not you.’
She thought about his other girlfriends. About how he always seemed to have a woman on the scene. ‘But Freddy, there was always someone else. Some pretty girl… how could you have always loved me?’
He laughed again, and his fingers went to his hair, as though he were a little embarrassed. ‘Call me old-fashioned but you were a bit young – I’m quite sure Amélie would have had me locked up if she knew how I felt about you… so, er, I had to look elsewhere, till you were old enough.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I’m still a bloke, what can I say?’
She grinned. It shouldn’t have been funny or strangely sweet, except that it was, somehow, and soon their laughter turned into something else, as they began to kiss. Desire unfurled in her chest, raw and all-consuming, as she sank into it, her hands rough in his hair, pulling her to him as she sat on his lap. Freddy had never been Prince Charming, but then he had never pretended to be: he was real, and kind, and hers, at last.
Chapter Nineteen
The bookshop cat had made himself at home on Valerie’s bed, following her down to the shop every morning where she put out milk and food for him. Dupont, she could tell, hid his jealousy, but the cat was loyal to the man, and only ever slept during the daylight on his old, overstuffed chair, despite the smoke and the clutter.
Since she’d found out that her father was a Nazi, Valerie had become quiet, less prone to argue, less prone to much of anything, if truth be told. Her one source of joy and comfort was Freddy, though that had gone now too, temporarily at least, as he had been sent on an assignment to cover the new addition to the Berlin Wall. Since the wall dividing East from West had been put up overnight, in August the year before, to prevent the refugees fleeing, the story had made headlines: children, men and women being shot for trying to leave their own country. In early June, the second fence had been built further into East German territory, making it even harder for their citizens to leave. Already it had been called the Death Strip.
She’d always known that loving a political journalist wouldn’t be easy, but this was the first time she’d ever truly worried about his safety. Telling herself that it was only for a few weeks didn’t help. There was no arguing when you had entered the dark place, as Freddy liked to say.
‘The good news,’ he’d told her, while they lay in his small, sagging bed, sharing a cigarette, which he said made them rather French indeed, ‘is that after a few more assignments like this I’ll probably be able to get a better apartment. Better pay.’
‘Danger money,’ she’d said, snuggling into his arms. Her green eyes looked worried.
And he’d shrugged, and agreed, ‘Danger money,’ and kissed the curve of her neck. No one got too close to that wall if they could help it.
Since they’d told each other how they felt, they had spent a lot of time together in Freddy’s bed, making love and hiding out, creating a fortress from the world.
Freddy had come around and met Dupont shortly after they’d started dating officially. The two seemed to enjoy riling each other up; Freddy made a point of telling him how much he loved James Bond, which caused the old man to turn puce, and Dupont threatened to throw him out of the shop, especially when he insisted that they all go to watch the latest film. Instead, somehow, they ended up having a beer, and Freddy stayed for dinner. When Valerie had asked Dupont what he thought of Freddy after he left, he’d said, ‘He needs a haircut, but you could do worse,’ which was about as close to a nod of approval as she could ever have hoped for.
But now Freddy was gone, and all she had were her worries and the cat. She decided that beggars couldn’t really be choosers, even if the cat stank of sardines.
Madame Joubert had come over the next day to see how she was, and they had spoken, though somewhat more stiffly than they had before. Gone, for now, was their easy conversation, the laughter, and the shared sympathy of dealing with the grouch that was Dupont.
It made little sense for Valerie
to feel angry with her; keeping this secret had not been her idea, and neither had telling her, but there was a part of Valerie that was angry with her nonetheless. She had been her mother’s best friend – surely she could have said or done something to stop Dupont from giving her away, no matter how much pain he thought he was sparing her from.
‘Come over tonight, chérie,’ said Madame Joubert. ‘Let’s talk, all right?’
Valerie nodded.
‘You are under the weather?’ asked Dupont later that afternoon.
Valerie shook her head. ‘No, I’m fine.’
He flung the copy of Gigi by Colette onto his messy table, muttering, ‘Sentimental garbage.’
Valerie didn’t respond. She just sighed, staring out the window at the cold late November day. Not really taking in what she saw, people walking past, their breath coming out in fog, tightly wrapped up in thick woollen scarves and coats. All she could think of was Freddy, in Berlin. And her father, a Nazi.
‘Did you not hear what I said?’
Valerie let out a sigh. ‘I heard you,’ she said, as the cat, sensing her despair, came forward, rubbing himself along her bistro chair, and then jumping onto her lap, kneading Valerie’s mustard corduroy skirt with its needle-like claws. ‘You said it is sentimental drivel.’
He blinked. ‘Last week you told me that if I didn’t like Colette then I needed my head examined, and I should question my French blood. You made me read this,’ he said, looking down at the book in despair. As if he would never get those few hours of his life back.
She sighed again. ‘Yes.’
He frowned. ‘Are the hours too long?’
She looked up. ‘No. Why?’
‘I was just checking. It’s just you are not yourself lately.’
She stared. Dupont had noticed that she was out of sorts. Dupont. And he actually cared.
