The Girl Who Dreamed of Paris

by Natalie Meg Evans

  ‘Oh! Voltaire! He’s come home. No, darling, I’ll catch him.’

  Teddy Clisson had left ahead of the Germans’ entry into Paris, heading for his country house at Dreux. Around that time Voltaire, terrified by nights of shelling and the crump of bombs on the western suburbs, had vanished. Coralie had joined with Teddy, calling his name frantically through the traffic-clogged streets, fighting through the exodus of terrified citizens, all the way to quai Voltaire where Teddy had first found the cat as a stray.

  He’d be overjoyed to know his darling was alive, though how she’d send the news, with the postal service suspended, Coralie couldn’t imagine.

  ‘You’ve been fighting,’ she accused the cat. Voltaire was decidedly less glossy than before, and one ear hung oddly. ‘That needs bathing. Maybe I should fetch your basket . . .’ But as she bent forward, Voltaire shot away. ‘Never mind,’ she comforted Noëlle. ‘He’ll be back when he gets really hungry.’

  Coralie herself was starving, her belly tucked inwards like a dented tea tray. She and her houseguests – Una, Ottilia and Arkady Erdös – had dined well on the first day of their self-imposed incarceration, less well on the second, and for the past two days, only Noëlle had eaten. Coralie craved bread, but would any bakers have stayed open? They needed fresh produce, too – fish, milk.

  Turning back towards the house, she saw her companions looking up and down the street as if they feared she, like Voltaire, had vanished. She called, ‘It’s like the plague’s been and we’re the last people left alive.’

  ‘Let’s go forage.’ Una had a shopping basket over her arm. She’d locked up her avenue Foch apartment on the same day Teddy had left town, feeling uncomfortably close to the undefended edge of the city. She’d collected Ottilia from rue de Vaugirard and arrived at Coralie’s, announcing, ‘We’re going to pool resources and your place is easiest to heat, being small.’ Discovering that one of Coralie’s two ‘evaders’ was still in residence, she’d added a cheer. ‘I’ve always hated all-women affairs. Gorgeous Arkady can play us to sleep with his violin. Though, hah, his glissandos do put fire in my veins . . . Does one still have to climb a ladder to get into his roof-space?’

  Coralie had suspected an attraction between the two at Christmas and told Una that Arkady had jolly well better pull up his ladder whenever he went to bed. ‘Una, you can share mine – it’s huge. Ottilia can have Noëlle’s, and Noëlle can snuggle next to me.’

  ‘You’re the boss.’ Una had brought linen and blankets, a steamer trunk of clothes and ‘a box of gold-dust’, which turned out to be a dozen bars of hard soap stacked on top of wads of French francs. She’d emptied her bank account a month before, she’d said, when it seemed clear that the drôle de guerre was going to stop being funny all too soon.

  Ottilia had arrived with her makeup case, two fur coats, a canister of Indian tea and all the currency she’d brought from London, stuffed into a hatbox.

  After consulting with Arkady, they agreed that rue Mouffetard was their best bet for provisions as its market had traded almost without pause since the Middle Ages. There, they found a few stalls open and filled Una’s basket with red-stalked chard, potatoes, radishes and bruised apples. From a traiteur, they bought chicken baked with tarragon, and pigeon breast with Puy lentils. Best of all, they found a café open.

  They ordered coffee, fresh bread and butter. The Germans had shipped in bread flour, the patron said. ‘They are well organised, and we won’t starve. But our army . . . how could our magnificent army simply collapse? I blame the British, taking to their ships, leaving us undefended. Perfide! Another pot of coffee?’

  ‘Might as well,’ Coralie said. Ramon had taught her to love coffee. It had been a slow affair, but once she’d finished breast-feeding Noëlle, the smell no longer nauseated her. He’d failed to convert her to his other vice, cigarettes. She could see Arkady rubbing his fingers together, a sure sign he’d run out of tobacco. Hiding a smile, she said, ‘The Germans won’t be sharing theirs, Arkady. Better try to give up.’

  After breakfast, Arkady and Ottilia went home with the shopping. Coralie, Una and Noëlle continued towards the river. Time to brave the unknown and find out how her business had fared. She was anxious for Violaine, whom she’d not seen since the day panic had gripped Paris.

  *

  Coralie’s first season at La Passerinette had proved more interesting than profitable. Without the capital to finance a full collection, she’d created a range of house models. Customers chose a basic shape, taking away a hat trimmed to suit them. But every time Coralie or Violaine finished a model, somebody would buy it. They could never keep the window full and, after a while, word spread that they’d gone out of business.

  Coralie’s response had been to shut up shop for two weeks in April while she and Violaine did nothing but make hats. They blocked baku and sisal shells into summer shapes. Taking La Passerinette’s signature pink and grey as their theme, they’d added swathes of net and silk flowers to give the impression of opulence. With millinery supplies ever harder to come by, Coralie had experimented with layered tarlatan and buckram, which, when covered with silk, organdie or taffeta, transformed low-cost materials. In Violaine, Coralie had a fast-fingered helper who made three hats to her every one, and who was seldom discouraged by outré ideas. For her part, Violaine had greeted Coralie’s arrival with pleasure, once she was assured that her job was safe. Her poor eyesight made her fearful of the world beyond a few familiar streets and she was happiest in La Passerinette’s workroom, behind the salon. She liked to work without interference, to be allowed a lunch hour and to have her salary paid on time, modest requirements that Lorienne Royer had found impossible to meet. From their first day together, Coralie had been determined to show Violaine that she was valued.

  She’d watch Violaine sewing millinery wire through two thicknesses of buckram, or painting shellac on to silk, and be reminded of a favourite bedtime story of Noëlle’s: ‘Once upon a time, a shoemaker took on too many orders. Kindly elves slipped in at night, and stitched for him till dawn . . .’

  *

  With Noëlle between them, Coralie and Una’s first promenade through occupied Paris was necessarily slow. Expecting burned buildings and bomb craters around every corner, they were pleasantly astonished by the complete absence of damage. Paris had fallen, it seemed, with the grace of a lady swooning on to her sofa. Only when they reached the river did they encounter their first field-grey uniforms. Sentries stood guard at pont du Carrousel. Two stepped forward, sub-machine guns at the ready. ‘Halt!’

  ‘I leave all my worldly goods to you, honey,’ Una muttered – dangerously – in English.

  ‘Likewise,’ said Coralie. But they were politely waved through.

  ‘Why have men got pans on their heads?’ Noëlle demanded. At two and a half, her speech was already well developed – Coralie put it down to her being the only child among garrulous adults.

  ‘Not pans, darling. Helmets. So their heads don’t get hurt.’

  ‘How hurt?’

  ‘By birds dropping from the sky,’ Una ad-libbed. They’d told Noëlle that the bombing of the Renault car factory at Boulogne-Billancourt was men practising drums for the 14 July parties.

  Mindful of the guns behind them and uncertain what lay behind the hulking Palais du Louvre on the opposite bank, Coralie tried to maintain normality. At least the Seine hadn’t changed, glinting platinum where the morning sun smashed its surface. From her first days in Paris, Coralie had loved the river. Crossing it was to be suspended between different lives – troubles always belonged to one side or the other.

  ‘Dear God, will you look at that!’ Una had stopped and was staring back towards the Left Bank. Above a skyline of grey roofs poked the Eiffel Tower. A banner fluttered from its summit. ‘I’m certain that’s a swastika.’

  Coralie thought so too.

  ‘Want to go back home?’r />
  ‘Maybe . . .’ Coralie knew if she turned tail, it might be days before she summoned the courage to try again. And the sentries had smiled. They made it to the Right Bank without hindrance, but on quai des Tuileries, a line of khaki motorbikes and sidecars screened the embankment wall. ‘Looks like a whole platoon has gone swimming.’

  They peered over the parapet down to the wharf below. Where lovers used to stroll and artists would sit sketching, soldiers walked with a steady, patrolling beat.

  On place de la Concorde, the familiar sight of the Egyptian obelisk swaddled in sandbags was almost comforting. Not so the machine-gun posts at each corner of the square. Important-looking staff cars, swastikas flying from the grilles, shared the road with military trucks crammed with troops under canvas tilts. Not a French vehicle to be seen.

  Coralie said, ‘Listen.’ From the head of the Champs-Élysées came the sound of martial music, underscored by a rhythmic pounding, like neatly sliced thunder. An old man – the only other civilian in the square – told them what it was.

  ‘A victory parade. That is the noise of a thousand goose-stepping boots.’

  ‘Noëlle, no!’ Coralie stopped the child from reaching out to pet the man’s dog, a wiry terrier. Friends were always telling her that she was over-protective. How stupid to be afraid of a dog when armed soldiers were about to engulf them. La Passerinette was so close. She could see the Madeleine at the top of rue Royale. A trick of perspective put it right between the French naval headquarters and the Hôtel de Crillon. Five minutes’ walk at most.

  The old man followed her gaze. ‘The Crillon’s theirs now, headquarters to the German commander of Paris. German commander of Paris.’ He turned away, calling his dog to heel.

  Coralie’s nerve broke. ‘Let’s get home.’

  *

  It was five days before she tried again. A little after midday, alone this time, she unlocked La Passerinette’s front door and called, ‘Violaine? It’s me.’

  A terrible stench stopped her dead.

  She thanked the caution that had made her leave Noëlle at home. Swatting through a wall of flies, she went straight upstairs to Violaine’s flat. Getting no answer to her knock, she tried the door. It was unlocked. ‘Violaine?’ Dust on the dining-table and a pot of mould-pocked coffee suggested the place had been empty for some time. Had Violaine joined the mass exodus after all? It seemed so unlikely – a stampeding crowd would be Violaine’s worst scenario – but she might have been swept along in the frenzy . . . But that smell, and the flies . . . A more probable story offered itself. Tying a silk scarf around her lower face, Coralie went downstairs to face the inevitable.

  At the door to the ground-floor workroom, Coralie selected a key from the bunch in her hand. She unlocked, pushed, stepped in. An outrush of flies and a stupefying reek made her gag.

  Violaine lay curled on the floor. A basket was upended, something vile oozing out of it. Mackerel, rotting. Afraid to touch, even to look, Coralie darted a glance around a room as familiar to her as the back of her hand. It was empty. Hats, blocks, machines and tools, gone. Rolls of fabric, gone. Another story began to form in Coralie’s mind. Robbers, looters. Violaine knocked down, locked in.

  The workroom had no window, just louvred slats that sucked light from a walled courtyard beyond. The slats were open and a chair had been pulled up beneath them. Violaine must have screamed for help but, with a million people leaving town all at once, her cries had gone unheard. Without water—

  Muttering unintelligible prayers, Coralie crouched beside her assistant. She brushed the hair off Violaine’s face and felt warm flesh. Lifting an eyelid, she saw the pupil flicker. ‘Violaine? Thank God! I’ll get help. No – water first.’ Upstairs, she filled the first suitable vessel she found and a minute later was spooning water between cracked lips. ‘I’m going to get help. Stay here.’

  Stay here? Shock made you say the most stupid things. ‘It may take a little while because—’ No. Not the moment to reveal that Paris had become German. She considered knocking on doors higher up the building, but brooding silence hinted at abandonment. Only Violaine still lived there, she realised.

  A minute later, she was haring down rue Royale towards place de la Concorde, wishing she’d put on flat sandals and a more sensible hat. At least she’d worn a loose summer dress. She could have gone to the nearest police préfecture, but knowing Violaine needed help fast meant she was going to the one place she knew had working telephones. The day after the invasion, German soldiers had been seen laying cables across the courtyard of the American Embassy on avenue Gabriel in order to connect the Hôtel de Crillon to the exchange. Let the Germans call an ambulance.

  Sunshine lanced off the rifle barrels of the guards marching up and down in front of the Crillon. Coralie approached, eyes lowered. So far, she’d found the Germans to be polite, respectful, even. She supposed that finding Paris open to them, they felt more like guests than conquerors. And they were men, after all. At just the right moment, she’d look up and smile. The hat she was wearing, which Una had christened ‘Daytime Seduction’, would declare her to be the opposite of a threat. She’d be waved into the gilded lobby.

  ‘Halt, nicht weiter!’

  Gun barrels pointed at her. Not sure whether she was meant to raise her hands, she explained the emergency in the German she’d learned in her time with Dietrich. She was told to go to the nearest police prefecture, talk to her own people. She stood her ground, mostly because she was afraid to turn her back on those guns. ‘I need an ambulance or a car.’

  Go to your own people.

  ‘But it’s urgent! My friend is—’ She stopped as a new voice demanded to know what the disturbance was. The guards leaped to attention

  ‘Generalmajor!’ the soldier rattled out, in a defensive volley. ‘This woman—’

  ‘Stand aside. Let me see her.’

  A tall man in a blue-grey uniform strung with medals, a high-peaked cap and black leather boots subjected Coralie to a long stare. The silver eagle above his breast pocket, the Iron Cross in the apex of his collar, the blue and gold cross hanging over the breastbone marked out his rank. But it was his eyes, firing with recognition beneath his black visor, that told her the waiting was over. He was back.

  She said in German, ‘I need help.’ She so nearly added, ‘Dietrich.’

  ‘Come.’ He indicated she should follow him into the hotel.

  ‘It’s Violaine,’ she said. She was addressing his back. ‘At La Passerinette?’

  He walked on, boots hard on chequered marble, forcing her to keep up until they reached an inner office, where military men and a few young women in uniform sat in front of banks of telephones. He called one of the men over, rattled out an instruction, then left.

  She tried to follow but the telephone operator caught her arm. Her German deserted her, so she explained her dilemma in slow French. The man clearly grasped her meaning because he noted down her request for medical assistance, asking for the precise address on boulevard de la Madeleine. He would deal with the matter, he said, but she must stay here. ‘Order of Generalmajor von Elbing.’

  ‘But my friend’s lying on the floor. I have to go to her.’

  ‘You do not understand, Fräulein. You are under arrest.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  She took the seat offered to her, assuming the tidy posture she’d learned in Javier’s salon, and wondered what Dietrich would say to the idiot who’d misunderstood his orders. Arrested? For wearing a pillbox hat with a rose silk tassel? For running in a pink dress with a frivolous pattern of navy-blue cherries? Or because her skirt revealed tanned legs from the knee down? Perhaps she’d offended a new puritan code. Judging by those girls in their uniforms, chic had not made its way into Germany. But, actually, the dress was a boon, with sunshine pouring through west-facing windows. She ignored disapproving glances from the buttoned-up female operators, an
d she felt like saying, ‘You’re in Paris now. Get used to us.’

  Poor girls, though. In grey smocks, ankle socks and black lace-up shoes, they looked as if they’d been dragged out of reform school and forbidden to smile.

  She amused herself by wondering what Javier would have designed for them. When that palled, she twisted the coral bracelet that had been Ramon’s wedding gift to her. Irritably, then anxiously. Perhaps an hour after she’d sat down – she hadn’t worn her watch that day – her name was called. Two men in plain suits stood in the doorway. One beckoned.

  She got up eagerly. ‘Where is D— I mean, Generalmajor von Elbing?’ she asked in German.

  They said nothing, but ushered her down a corridor and on to rue Royale. The sight of a black car swallowed her concerns for Violaine, replacing them with inward-pointing fear. ‘Where are you taking me?’

  ‘Please get in, Fräulein.’

  It was a long time since she’d ridden so comfortably, but all she could do was envisage a series of ever more menacing destinations. Every street now had a German name sign. She took stock of them as they drove towards the river. At pont de la Concorde, a motorcycle sentry signalled them on. Once over the bridge, they swept down boulevard Saint-Germain.

  Then they were on boulevard Raspail and in a moment, they’d reach the intersection with rue de Vaugirard. The hairs rose on the back of her neck. Had Dietrich come to Paris to deal with Ottilia’s art collection? Had he found signs of Ottilia living in the house? And . . . Oh, God. What if Ottilia had given more pictures away and Dietrich thought she, Coralie, was to blame? That would account for his frigidity.

  To her relief, the car stopped in boulevard Raspail, in front of the Hôtel Lutetia. A swish place. She’d been there a couple of times with Teddy and, suddenly, she was glad she’d worn high heels and a snazzy hat. If Dietrich meant to meet her here for a drink, she didn’t want to look like a drab who had spent two years pining for him. She intended to rage at him, let him know what she thought of him, while appearing peerlessly groomed.