‘I need a room,’ she said in French. ‘I’ve come from the station.’
The man motioned for her to wait. A minute later, when he appeared at the door, she could see how he had aged since the last time she’d been here. His hair had turned completely white and he seemed smaller. But then, it had been twenty years. Her eye was drawn to the blue woollen dressing gown wrapped around his shrinking frame. Its belt was tied in such a complicated knot that she wondered if he would ever manage to untangle it.
The old man peered into the dark street, stroking his unshaven chin. The light of recognition almost sparked in his eyes but not quite. Mirabelle decided not to remind him. She wasn’t proud of the nocturnal escapades of her youth. Fired by cocktails, they’d come back from dancing at four in the morning and played the piano, disturbing the entire block. Her friends had found it amusing.
She reached into her bag and pulled out some francs. ‘Trois nuits,’ she said.
Three nights should be enough. At the sight of the money the man’s face softened. He beckoned her inside and removed a key from its peg behind a little reception desk. Only three rooms were taken, Mirabelle noticed. The hotel was quiet, which was all to the good.
‘Anglaise?’
Mirabelle nodded.
‘Londres?’
She nodded again. There was no sense in making things more complicated, and the man might never have heard of Brighton, which, in any case, would be difficult for him to spell when he came to fill in the hotel register. He pointed to the dingy staircase. Mirabelle lingered. She remembered the hotel being prettier. In the old days the hallway had had fresh flowers displayed on every ledge, although admittedly it had been summertime. Now there was only a box of dried lavender on the landing and a row of empty jugs decorating the sill. The old man grabbed Mirabelle’s case with a surprisingly firm fist and accompanied her to a room on the first floor.
‘Et voilà.’ He opened the door with as much flourish as he could summon at such an early hour. Mirabelle peered inside. The room was clean and it was to the rear of the building so it would be quiet. The window looked over a courtyard and the bed appeared comfortable. She ran a hand over the turned-down sheet. The French always had good quality linen.
‘Merci,’ she said, removing the key from the lock.
The old man turned to go. Making sure he had left, Mirabelle closed the shutters and laid her suitcase on the bed. She opened the catch and piled her clothes and toilet bag against the pillow, reaching inside the case to carefully flick a switch that was built into the brown taffeta lining. The bottom of the case sprang open, revealing a hidden pocket no more than an inch thick. She had flouted the currency restrictions, changing the permissible value of pounds into francs but also concealing an additional stash of notes. Paris, she recalled, was an expensive city and government limits on the movement of money were on the tight side. She balanced this with the universal truth that information cost. With a smile, Mirabelle smoothly removed the tidy sheaf of notes and slipped it into her handbag. Then she turned to the enamel sink in the corner and washed the travel stains from her skin. She checked her appearance in the mirror, and, pleased enough with what she saw, picked up a thin scarf from the pile of clothes on the bed and tied it at a jaunty angle – a certain style was mandatory in Paris. Then, nodding at her reflection in the mirror, Mirabelle left the room. If she walked to the American Hospital, she’d get there by nine o’clock when the administration department and archive opened. The hospital was situated in the leafy Seine-side suburb of Neuilly where some of Paris’s most prestigious families were housed. It would be a pleasant walk, and if Mirabelle wasn’t mistaken she would pass Parc Monceau on her way. She left the room key on the reception desk and slipped back onto the street.
The first watery light of the morning was seeping into the sky. Paris woke slowly, like a giant lumbering to its feet. Mirabelle made her way towards the river. The air felt fresh as she came to the park. Watching the bare trees behind the railings she made out one or two people up early walking their dogs. As if there might be a ghost, Mirabelle decided not to walk inside the gates. In her imagination, her grandmother’s old-fashioned ankle-length dresses and laced winter boots passed in a flash of nostalgia. It must have been 1922 when the old woman died. Now Mirabelle kept her distance, skirting the wide pavements at the perimeter of the park. On the other side of the boulevard the houses were ornate, their pale stone carved with panache and thin wrought-iron balconies stocked with terracotta plant pots. Several delivery vans were in evidence and men in suits bustled towards the Métro, newspapers tucked firmly under their arms. Open-fronted cafés lit braziers outside. There seemed less bomb damage than in London, but in places some of the stone was pockmarked with bullet holes. The Resistance had put up a fight on the streets here and there. At least London had never had to endure that.
Cutting north away from her childhood memories, Mirabelle made for the river. The walk was refreshing and it was pleasant to see people going about their business, children on their way to school and staff smoking outside shops waiting for the manager to arrive with the key. Paris was gloriously green, trees lining the main streets, cutting through the buildings in a swathe, fanning out from the Champs-Élysées.
It was almost nine o’clock when Mirabelle arrived at her destination. As she remembered, the buildings in Neuilly were imposing and the boulevard Victor Hugo was easy to find. The hospital took up almost a block – a brick-built, two-tone complex with ambulances parked in the courtyard. Mirabelle entered the main door smartly and asked a porter for directions to the archive, which it transpired was located in the basement. She took the stairs and was perched on the bench outside the office door at nine o’clock sharp when a flustered chubby woman in a pale blue winter coat arrived in a cloud of floral scent. Her scarf trailed across the tiled floor as she fumbled in her handbag for her keys, pulling off one glove and holding it in her mouth as an unruly blonde curl escaped from the rim of her hat.
‘Bonjour.’ Mirabelle sprang to her feet.
‘Bonjour,’ the woman said, an American accent spread as thickly as peanut butter over her vowels. She removed the glove from between her teeth and smiled, her plump cheeks rosy from the cold and her blue eyes shining. ‘Bonjour,’ she tried again.
‘Do you prefer English?’ Mirabelle asked.
The woman’s smile opened into an unimaginably broad grin that was startlingly white.
‘Yes please,’ she admitted as she turned the key in the lock.
‘I rang yesterday …’ Mirabelle started, just as a slim young man appeared behind her – a chap of a more tidy disposition. He reminded Mirabelle of a filing cabinet with its drawers tightly shut.
‘Bonjour,’ he said curtly, nodding in the women’s direction.
‘Ah, perhaps this is the gentleman to whom I spoke.’
‘Claude?’
The man stiffened as the American woman continued in the worst French accent Mirabelle had ever heard. ‘Avez-vous parlé avec cette dame-ci?’ Have you spoken to this woman?
‘Je ne sais pas.’ I don’t know, Claude ground out, his expression closing like a steel trap.
The American waved him off. ‘Perhaps it would best if I dealt with your enquiry,’ she told Mirabelle.
With barely disguised outrage, Claude strutted into a room at the rear of the office and switched on the lights before pointedly closing the door.
‘He’s French,’ the woman mouthed, as if it was a never-to-be-guessed secret and something of which to be ashamed. ‘I don’t think he likes females at all, you know.’
She removed her scarf and hat and tossed them untidily onto a chair. This action alone was so expansive that it seemed to fill the room.
‘It’s an English chap I’m looking for,’ Mirabelle said. ‘He passed through the Red Cross’s hands around the time Paris was liberated in 1944, and I understand the papers relating to his injuries and his release might be here. I hope you can help me find him. The man I s
poke to said you had records that sounded as if they’d be relevant.’
‘Name?’
‘Philip Caine. He was Royal Air Force – a flight lieutenant.’
The woman paused. ‘I meant your name.’
‘Oh. Mirabelle Bevan.’
‘And you’re a relation?’
Mirabelle hesitated She expected her heart to sink but it didn’t. Instead, this time she squared up to the enquiry.
‘Not exactly.’ Her tone was very matter of fact. ‘I worked for the chap who was trying to get Caine back to England. He seems to have failed in that. And I suppose you could say that I’m here at the behest of the man who was Caine’s escape partner when they gave the Germans the slip. Though that was a couple of years earlier – 1942.’
The unkempt blonde slumped onto a seat in a manner reminiscent of Vesta. ‘My, it sounds as if this fellow has quite some story.’
‘I’d like to find out more of it.’
‘I’m Maisie du Pré.’ The woman held out her hand. Mirabelle shook it, her surprise clearly evident for Maisie went on. ‘The name is how I got the job. They thought I was French and spoke some English. Instead I’m American and I speak only a little French.’
‘The records are in English, are they?’
Maisie shrugged. ‘That depends on the nationality of the doctor and the nurses. We have records in just about every language from Hindi, which we can’t read, to Russian – we’ve found a couple of people who can help us with that though the diplomatic service don’t like us doing it. An international service is supposed to be a boon. Let me tell you, international records most definitely aren’t.’
Mirabelle nodded sympathetically.
‘Date?’ Maisie enquired.
‘August 1944. De Gaulle entered the city on the twenty-fifth or thereabouts. On that day, or close to it, my man was in a Red Cross field hospital near Longchamp.’
Maisie indicated a table set up for six readers. She strode over and pulled a little cord that switched on a lamp, which in turn illuminated the green leather insert.
‘Dinky, isn’t it? Wait here and I’ll see what I can dig up.’
Moving more quickly than might have been expected, Maisie du Pré disappeared through a door at the rear. Mirabelle removed her gloves and took a seat. She became aware of the clock in the corner ticking. There was something sterile about the office; Miss du Pré was the only lively thing about it. Even with her hat and coat strewn beside her desk, it was like sitting in a mortuary. The clock’s hand moved slowly and Mirabelle squirmed in her chair. A full twenty minutes later Maisie reappeared with a large pile of papers that she managed to lever onto the table.
‘There were a lot of injuries in Longchamp that week,’ she said. ‘The Germans mined the roads when they left.’
Mirabelle undid her buttons and slipped her coat over her shoulders. ‘Thank you. That’s very helpful. Well, I’d best get to work.’ She picked up the paper on the top of the pile as Miss du Pré went back to her desk.
Mirabelle wasn’t squeamish by nature but the records went into gruesome details of injuries and operations. The hospital had been set up to the west of the city in the open space afforded by the racetrack at Longchamp. It didn’t only offer first aid – there was also a surgical unit dealing with gunshot and shrapnel injuries. And it helped the local community. Mirabelle found civilian records – two boys who had contracted mumps and a woman who went there to give birth. While photographers snapped the crowds rejoicing in the streets around the Champs-Élysées as the French reclaimed their city, some poor souls were having limbs amputated or bullets removed. In those last weeks Paris had stood up to the Nazis. There had been widespread strikes and the Resistance had staged a series of incendiary attacks against German targets. In retaliation, as Maisie had pointed out, the Nazis had mined the roads, hoping to strike the Allies as they arrived. Occasionally a mine hit home. The whole operation had resulted in extensive injuries – not on the scale of an actual battle, but bad enough.
Mirabelle read the medical details of the ensuing devastation for a good two hours before she encountered a familiar name. When she did, it was not Philip Caine, the man she had expected to find. Instead, she turned over a piece of paper and there he was. Jack Duggan. From beyond the grave. His name loomed towards her, his familiar signature on the form confirming that the J.M.R. Duggan in question was the man she had known it must be. The twenty-fifth of August – the day the Germans had surrendered the city. Yet Jack had told her he had never been here. They had joked, she remembered, about her showing him the city where her mother was born. Jack had said he wanted her to be his tour guide. ‘You’re the one who speaks French,’ he had said. Mirabelle had blushed and given a demonstration. ‘Well, you’ll be in charge when we get there,’ he had promised with a grin. ‘I’d love to see Paris.’ The lie made Mirabelle uneasy. What else had Jack not told her? She rifled through the papers for more information and settled down to read.
Now she knew when Jack had been at Longchamp she could search more accurately by date, and she soon discovered that before he arrived he had sent a communiqué to the hospital, enquiring after the whereabouts of one Mademoiselle Moreau. Curiosity twisted in Mirabelle’s chest. Who on earth was she? Soon after that she turned up an accommodation allocation in his name. Jack was quartered near the hospital, put up by the Red Cross in their doctors’ quarters. He had been allocated two bunks – numbers thirteen and fourteen. The accommodation block was communal and almost certainly male only – there would be another block for the nurses. So, she deduced, did Jack have Matthew Bradley with him? Had they arrived together – Bradley in one bunk and Jack in the other? However they got there, the day the men came, Mademoiselle Moreau was under treatment. She had been beaten. The notes detailed several cracked ribs and a broken right arm. The poor woman was also treated for burns on her back and arms. There were three black-and-white photographs of these injuries that made Mirabelle wince. It looked as if someone had attempted to brand Mademoiselle Moreau’s back and had stubbed out cigarettes on her arms.
Treatment at Longchamp was swift and the woman signed herself out on the twenty-sixth of August. Mirabelle squinted to read the spidery, barely legible scrawl that, she reasoned, given the circumstances, must have been written using the woman’s left hand. Christine Moreau. Christine. Was this the woman Eddie had said she should try to find? Mirabelle checked Jack’s bunk allocation again. The day Christine Moreau was discharged Jack retained his two bunks. He stayed at Longchamp for another twenty-four hours.
Moving on, she carefully searched the treatment roster for that week in August 1944, and there he was. Philip Caine. His injuries, it seemed, were relatively slight. He had shrapnel wounds but the doctor bandaged him up and discharged him within six hours. He signed his discharge form in a well-formed hand and left with a bottle of painkillers. Here it was – confirmation that Caine was alive in August 1944. He had given his address as 17 rue du Jour – the street Eddie had steered her towards. That was interesting. Mirabelle turned over the form as she considered. She cocked her head. On the back, scrawled in French, someone had written, ‘The British officers were removed and treated for bruising. An orderly had to restrain the patient when he became distressed.’ And then one word: Mal. Bad? Sick? What did the person who wrote it mean by that? Was Caine in the wrong? Was there more to it than the distress of a man who’d had his fiancée whipped from under his nose by a friend? Was he sick? Or was he crazy? Lots of men had been damaged by their wartime experiences and ended up removed from the world, depressed, mad or simply violent. Either way it looked as if there had been bad blood over Caroline Bland after all. Caine had struck out against Bradley and Jack so forcefully they’d required medical attention.
Mirabelle suddenly remembered the day Jack had asked her if she’d marry him if he freed himself from his wife. It was the end of August that year – 1944. They had been picnicking and drinking gin all weekend, down near Hampton Court. Jack wanted to
get out of the city and they’d put up in a boarding house in East Molesey. They’d called themselves Mr and Mrs Horton, she recalled. It was a sunny Saturday and they hired a boat on the river. Jack rowed and Mirabelle flung herself at him when he’d brought up the subject.
‘Yes,’ she cried. ‘I’d marry you like a shot, you idiot! Don’t you know that?’
And as she hugged him he’d cried out in pain.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ she asked as the boat rocked dangerously.
‘I went riding while I was away, my love. I was thrown.’
It hadn’t felt like a lie, but then Jack was adept at managing information. And in his personal life he hadn’t seemed the least bit wayward. He must have been in France that week. She recalled that he had waved a hand as if trying to pluck somewhere out of thin air when she asked him where he had been. Perhaps he was reaching for somewhere he could admit to having visited. Up north. That’s what he’d said. Up north. Where Caine was from and where Bradley returned to make a home with his wife and child. Mirabelle frowned. It was difficult to accept that Jack had really been in Paris, but it made sense. And he had proposed to her as soon as he came back. Had the liberation of Paris made him sure for the first time that the Allies would win the war? Or had he seen what fighting over a woman could do? Perhaps he’d learned a lesson and had decided to come clean to his wife. Not then, of course, but later, when the girls were old enough. Either way, that week he decided to mark out his intentions for the future.
British Bulldog Page 10
