by Tracy Groot
When Claudio left, she swept up the remains of the teacup and brushed it into the bin. She took the teapot out of the sink, and while she was examining it for chips, Colette appeared.
“I thought I heard something,” she said. “What happened to your lip?”
“I fell.”
“Klutz,” Colette said, lip raised in a sneer.
“I broke a teacup, too,” Brigitte said, trying not to sound cheerful as she examined the teapot. The teacups belonged to Colette.
“You klutz,” Colette said again, now angry. “I expect you to pay for it.” After a disgusted glare she whirled away and stumped up the steps to her room.
“I did,” Brigitte whispered.
She set the teapot down. She ran to the cupboard and pulled it open. On the shelf Colette had labeled Brigitte was a packet of Red Cross–issued crackers she’d been saving for a day when hunger was unbearable. Tiny bites of salty food could sometimes fool the stomach. She snatched it from the shelf and ran for her coat.
Curfew had started hours ago. She’d be arrested, if caught.
“Tiny bites of salty food can sometimes fool the stomach,” she whispered crazily to herself as she ran down the dark, deserted road to the château.
The gates were wide open because there wasn’t reason to keep them locked. It was a maternity hospital, mostly left alone by the Germans. In the summer, men whom she now suspected to be the same Allied airmen Madame Vion hid in the chapel tended the gardens and the walkways.
There were hungry Allies in the chapel. When hard things happened, when she missed Jean-Paul so deeply it scalded her insides, when she could not bear one more customer, one more humiliation, she came here as fast as she could.
She hurried along a tree-lined walkway. The walkway ended with the massive, imposing château on the left, the chapel, set back nearer to the Caen Canal, on the right. Between the two was a dangerous, open expanse. Usually she skirted around to the far right, came to the chapel from behind.
She looked around carefully. No one was about. No one would be, at five in the morning. She dashed across the open space and crept up the stairs of the chapel. When she reached the top, someone leaped from the shadows.
He shoved her against the chapel door, one hand stifling a gasp, another seizing her wrist.
“What are you doing here?” he hissed. “What is that?” He held up her captive wrist, looking at the packet she clutched. A change came to his face.
“Please, I’m just—”
“You’re the grateful patriot.” There was recognition in his voice. He let her go.
She was trembling. He was French, he wasn’t going to hurt her, and the relief made her a little foolish. “I—Tiny bites of salted food can, you know . . . fool the stomach.” She held out the packet.
“No one has ever met you.” He pulled off his cap as he took the crackers. “You can call me Sam. I’m a fan of Beckett.”
“I like him, too.”
“He is with the Resistance. Isn’t it funny? I have taken his name, and he has taken someone else’s.” He offered his hand, smiling. “I am glad to finally meet you.”
Brigitte took his hand and shook it, there in the cold March morning on the stone steps of the Allied chapel.
“I’m the lookout.” He nodded at the chapel door. “I bring them your gifts. I’ve only seen you a few times.” His tone was wistful. “I sometimes wondered if you were real.”
“What is needed most?” Brigitte asked. “Can I do anything else? Clothing?”
He shook his head. “You’re already doing it. Food is even harder to come by.”
“I bring so little.”
“No,” he said earnestly. “Whatever you bring is gratefully accepted. But it’s more than that.” He seemed suddenly bashful. “It’s your notes. They help me know I am not alone.”
The tears she had denied in the kitchen filled her eyes. She hoped it was too dark to see. “That is why I come, too.”
He glanced around. “You better get going. It will be light soon. The first patrol goes by the gate at 5:50.”
She started for the steps and said over her shoulder, “My name is—”
“Mademoiselle,” he said quickly. “We call you GP.”
She stopped, staring at him.
“Please, m’selle,” he said, nodding toward the gate. “Sometimes they are early.”
She was known. She was known for something other than lying on her back for Germans. The Resistance recruited her because she was a prostitute. Here, she was known for something else.
Her feet flew along the tree-lined path. When she came to the road, she looked both ways for Germans, darted out through the gates, and, coat flapping in the morning cold, ran the rest of the way home, sometimes laughing out loud, sometimes leaping.
Vince Calabrese, the waist gunner from the downed B-17, reminded Tom, after a few days, of all the things that irritated him about living in close quarters with a bunch of guys.
“You got a girl back home? I got a girl. She’s some honey. How many Krauts you taken out? You nail any of them 109s? You fighter pilots, you got some slick deal. You go up in a bathroom. Just you and your business. Me? I go up in a living room. Boy, oh boy, you got it made.”
Yet it wasn’t bad irritation.
“Clemmie says that little guy’s gonna pick me up in a few days once they got a route figured out. She says they’re gettin’ me back through the Pyrenees. Spain. Can you beat it? South enough for a suntan, with England in eyeshot. That’s a slow boat to China right there.”
It made Tom miss the guys all the more. The way Smythe clacked his dental bridge to drop his front fake tooth—it was funny the first time. The last thing he remembered saying to Smythe was if he did it again, he’d need another bridge. He did it on the spot, face frozen in that gap-toothed grin, and for some reason, instead of making Tom mad, it made him laugh.
He missed Captain Bill Fitzgerald and his annoying ability to drive the English girls nuts with those aw-shucks Gary Cooper looks. He missed Burke and his stupid corny jokes. Missed Markham, how he shared anything he got from home. He missed Oswald’s perpetual good humor, and the way he shouted, “Guts and glory!” before any mission.
He missed the swagger, the sweat, the lousy music some of them liked.
“Yeah, well, sometimes I wonder what it’s like to go up with a living room full of guys. Some days I’d like that.” It was a generous thing to say, and Vince knew it. No fighter pilot would ever swap seats.
“Nah. You guys are the cream. But I was glad to switch to a B-17. Used to be a waist gunner on a B-24.”
“B-24’s a beast,” Tom agreed.
“Froze my lovin’ keister off. Waist gunners had it worst. Open windows at the waist. You’d freeze over just like your guns.” Calabrese tapped the arm of the chair, and his knee began to bounce up and down. When next he spoke, it was softer.
“Lost my best buddy on takeoff in a B-24. Turret gunner. I was watching ’em go—the thing was headed down the runway like normal, just gettin’ off the ground, then all of a sudden the nose goes up, tail goes down, and just that quick you know she ain’t gonna make it. Pilot cut the throttle, the thing nosed over, and that’s all she wrote—flips over, blam. Blew ’em to pieces. Two thousand gallons of fuel. Five bombs. They didn’t suffer.” He nodded, and the knee bounced. “They didn’t suffer.”
After a moment, Tom murmured, “Sorry, Calabrese.” He wouldn’t have had to say anything if it was one of the guys. Silence worked for them. But he didn’t know Calabrese well, and he had a feeling that even if he did, he’d still need to say it.
A brisk three knocks came at the door, and it opened.
“Uh-oh. Here she comes, Tommy boy,” Vince boomed. He put his hands behind his head and his feet on the bed. “She’s got that light in her eyes, Tommy. She’s goin’ after them stitches and it ain’t gonna be pretty.”
Calabrese really wasn’t a bad sort. But Tom resented how he acted as though he’d
been staying at Clemmie’s for two months instead of two days. He treated her with a familiarity that had no basis. Clemmie was Tom’s. Not Vince’s.
Clemmie took it all in good humor.
She patted Vince’s head as she went past with her tray of medical supplies. “We four have the light in our eyes.”
“Four?” Vince asked with a grin. “You got some mice in your pockets?”
“Me, and Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” She put down the tray. “You should fear me too, Mr. Waist Gunner, with your burn. What a silly thing—waist gunner. You gun from the waist?” She struck a pose, holding her hands in the shape of guns at her waist, face screwed into a scowl that all enemies should fear. She looked like a grandma gunslinger at the O.K. Corral. Tom and Vince laughed. She broke the pose to pull back the sleeve of Vince’s pajamas. The scowl returned after she peeked under the soiled dressing. She adjusted her glasses. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”
“My mother would say that’s swearing,” Vince said.
She glared at him. “You will know when I am swearing. Then I will speak French so I do not damage you. That was—oh, what is the word . . . ?”
“An invocation?” Tom suggested.
“I do not know invocation.” Her finger came up as her face cleared. “It is a calling upon. Not a swearing.” She flicked Vince upside the head. “Telling an old lady she is swearing. Your mother will give me words if I send you back a bad-mannered cochon.” She flicked him again, more gently. “Say, I have news for you. That fellow made it.”
“Posey?” Hope bloomed in Vince’s face. He took his feet off the bed.
“He stays in Montebourg. It is too dangerous to move him right now. He broke his leg. But he is well.”
Emotion passed over his face. After a moment, he cleared his throat. “His was the only chute I saw, you know, and then comes the antiaircraft fire. You should see what that does to a parachute. Talk about Swiss cheese. Didn’t see any others. They didn’t have a chance ’cause they cut the beast in half, you know, like a giant kid broke it over his knee. Seventeen missions with those guys.” He rubbed his hands together. “I didn’t think he had a hope in the hot place. Good old Posey.”
Clemmie adjusted her glasses as she took Calabrese’s forearm and examined the burn. The mole mightily disapproved. “Some animal put grease on this. Grease is twice as long to heal. What happened to ‘you wrap it, then you soak it’?”
But Calabrese didn’t hear. His face was far away. Tom was glad for the talkative fellow.
It was another benefit of being a fighter pilot. Sure, you got tight with the guys in your squad, but not as tight as the guys on the bombers.
Clemmie wadded up the old dressing and used it to gently wipe grease from the edges of the livid burn, wincing a little, muttering all the while in French. She rewrapped it with cut strips of bedsheet. Then she flicked him upside the head. “You, waist gunner. Go downstairs and see Aunt Tatia. Tell her, J’ai besoin de le tremper dans l’eau froide. Comprehend?” She repeated it slowly and made Calabrese say it.
When Vince left the room, Tom said, “He gets to go downstairs.”
It was Tom’s turn for the head flick. “Old Man Renard is gone. What is more, I need to talk to you.”
He had a feeling he knew what it was about.
“We get those stitches out, we free your head.” She motioned to the chair, and Tom took it. She rummaged on the tray, selected tweezers and a razor blade, and went to work.
Presently she said, “You can say no to Rafael.”
Tom didn’t answer.
“He is a good boy. But his business is rough.”
“Isn’t your business rough?”
He hoped she would not speak of her granddaughter. He didn’t know what he would do. A ripple of panic brought the image of his mother next to the stove. He tensed and finally realized it hurt to have stitches out.
“Ouch.”
“I take out four, this is your first ouch.”
“I wasn’t thinking about it then. Ow!”
“Five more. Stop being a whine baby.”
“Crybaby.”
“Whine, cry, what difference.” Clemmie carefully cut through the next stitch with tiny brushes of the razor blade and tugged. New skin had grown into the threads. Tom could feel a sweat begin. The gentle tugging drove him nuts, he wanted to push Clemmie’s hand aside and just yank the things out.
She laid a stiff, bloodied thread on the cloth next to the others. “Four more.”
“You gonna miss me?”
“Not the whining.” Her lips twitched, and the mole lifted. Soon, however, it descended. “I miss all my boys. I want them to come see me when the world is safe. But they will have different lives.”
“Clemmie—”
But Tom wasn’t used to telling people how he felt. He had been raised by a quiet woman, with the help of a man who believed that to speak of private things was weakness.
“I’ll come back,” he said with resolve that he hoped she believed.
“Pfft. You will not even remember me.”
“No one could forget you,” he said quietly. “I’ll come back, Clemmie. I promise.”
She pulled back to look at him. “Is a promise in America the same as a promise here?”
“Do people keep them here?”
Her face clouded. She put her head over her task again. “They try, Tom Jaeger.” She tugged another stitch free and laid it on the cloth.
If she said a word about her granddaughter, he’d have to kill another Nazi. Rage would overrun the dike. He had control because she had control. She muttered in French over the next stitch. He held his breath.
This Jasmine had been tortured to death, a woman from the bloodstock of one who now fussed that his hair was not long enough to hide the wound. Ever since Rafael mentioned it, he had done his best to wall off thinking of it. Yet it moved along the edges like a silent serpent, and every now and then a fearsome thought got through. How could they torture a woman?
Women were supposed to be protected. They were to be taken care of, looked after. This was the job of men; that’s what he learned from his father, from his uncles, from the men in the town of Jenison, from Michigan, America, his world. Yet men here had tortured Clemmie’s granddaughter. It was unthinkable. What could they have—?
More unthinkable thoughts tried to take shape, and he repressed them with an effort that made him sweat.
“Ouch,” he said absently.
“Yes, that one hurt.” Her voice was gentle this time, and she put a cloth to the wound. “Two more. I do more damage taking them out than leaving them in.” She hesitated. “He will be here anytime. You can say no. I ask you to say no, Tom Jaeger, for your mother.”
Oh, Clemmie . . .
“I want you to get married, have babies, and tell them you helped an old lady win a war. You mix with Rafael, you don’t know what could happen.”
A tap at the door, and Rafael came in. He touched his beret to Clemmie.
“Ready, Cabby?”
Clemmie pulled back to stare down at Tom. The mole towered in high accusation. “You have taken a name.”
“Yes, Clemmie, I have taken a name. We won’t win the war without doing something.”
“You fight in the air!” she stormed, shaking a finger at the sky. “That is where you fight best!”
“I can also fight with my feet on the earth!”
They glared at one another. Then she went back to work, and this time the tugging was not gentle.
“Clemmie, listen to me . . .”
“Stupid youth. Stupid youth!”
He could not say, I’ll get even for you. I’ll make them pay for what they did. He could only vow it in his heart.
Clemmie dropped the razor and tweezers onto the tray. She reached into her dress pocket and took out a button. She rolled it between her thumb and finger, then took his hand and put it on his palm. She gave a last frown at the wound, checked more closely with her glasses, and blew some de
bris from it—then she paused, and laid her hand on his head. She gave it a gentle caress.
She took the tray and left the room, pulling the door behind her.
“That was good-bye,” Rafael said.
“What do you mean?”
He nodded at the button in Tom’s hand. “It is all the good-bye you will get. She will hide in the back of the house until we leave. Do not try to find her.” He handed him a brown-papered parcel. “Put this on. A pig farmer wore it. We have to bury everything else.”
Tom looked at the black button on his palm. “I have to thank her.”
“She knows, Yank.”
He took the crinkly parcel. “We have to bury everything? What about my gun?” He hated to part with anything in his pack. The Benzedrine tablets, the compass. The malted milk tablets—those he could leave for Clemmie.
“It is illegal to carry a gun in France, unless you’re a gendarme or a German; and they wonder why we starve, when we can’t even shoot game. If we are stopped, not even false papers will save you if you have a gun. We will retrieve your things later and put the gun to good use. We have a beautiful weapons cache. It will make a gorgeous addition.”
“My phrase book, in case we get separated . . .”
“Nothing could say ‘I’m a downed pilot’ more.”
Tom said nothing about the picture of Ronnie, lest he lose that, too.
“I have to tell her good-bye.”
“Good-byes are too hard for her.”
“I have to thank her.”
“I won’t let you.”
“Then get me paper! I’ll write her a note.”
“No. If her home is raided, they will find it.”
Tom was silent. “Listen, will you—”
“I will, Yank.”
After a moment, Tom put the button in his pocket and said, “Cabby.”
“Cabby.” Rafael nodded at Tom’s pocket. “She has a match for every man she’s helped. Keeps them in a jar. It is your photograph to her.”
It was the first time Tom had been out of doors in days, not counting the times he sneaked out to pee on the side of the house when it was dark. A man could bear someone taking away his sloshing bedpan only so many times.
