Flame of Resistance

by Tracy Groot

  Her face was odd. The cheeks had a high flush, and the brown eyes were huge. She had a look of disbelief, or incredulity, Tom didn’t know what.

  She stood wordless, pressed against the door.

  “Sooo . . . ,” he said, rolling his hand to encourage her to start. “You got rid of him?”

  She nodded.

  “And it went . . . good?”

  She shook her head.

  “It went bad.”

  She nodded. She shook her head.

  He smiled. “You don’t know if it went good or bad. You want to sit down?” He went and put out his arm to escort her to the bed. She allowed him to lead. She sat down straight-backed, folding her hands primly in her lap. Tom went back to his chair.

  “I told him I converted,” she suddenly said.

  “You—?” He shook his head a little. “What?”

  “I crossed myself before I went down. It must have inspired me. It was the only way I could think to get rid of him. I am afraid I am rid of him . . . permanently.” Her face finally let down. “He is my source for the bridges. What have I done?” She looked at Tom. “If someone says she has converted, but she really hasn’t, what sort of sin is that? A remarkable one, n’est-ce pas?”

  Tom opened his mouth to answer, but shook his head helplessly.

  “I will have to ask Madame Bouvier,” she said thoughtfully. “In a way, I have converted.”

  “In what way?”

  “In the way I now move with the force around me, instead of wishing I did.”

  “What force?” His skin tingled. The precise word he’d used to describe her face to Ozzie.

  “The force for freedom and good. The force that wants the liberation of France.” Then, speaking the words as they came, “And . . . and . . . the liberation of me.” A delicate softening came.

  She rose from the bed and walked over to the wardrobe, where she touched a carved rosette. “Show me a liberation that . . .”

  Tom waited.

  And waited.

  “Erases it all?” he said tentatively.

  “No! Show me a liberation that . . .” She turned her back on him, pressing her forehead against the wardrobe.

  “Changes everything?”

  “Quiet!” she snapped, forehead still against the wardrobe.

  The moment became long. Tom could hardly stand her agony as she fought for the words. This was no matter of finding them in English. He suspected she didn’t even know them in French.

  Then the fierceness stilled. “I want a liberation that means a place for me,” she whispered, cheek against the wardrobe.

  “Why wouldn’t there be?”

  “He can say whatever he wants. They came to my door and wanted me gone.”

  “Who can say whatever he wants?”

  “Father Eppinette. He says there is a place for one like me.”

  “Sounds like a safe bet,” Tom ventured, hoping to be helpful.

  “All they care about is my past. The bad I’ve done. They seem to think I am unaware. I do not need the church to tell me prostitution is wrong.” Tears came, and she tried so hard for control, Tom wanted to go to her.

  Then her face changed in a flash. “I am so angry! How could he know that I do not want to be flogged forward? I want something there to bring me forward.”

  “It sounds like he is on your side.”

  “That is what makes me angry.” Her face turned away as she put her forehead on the wardrobe again. Her hands came up, she brushed fingertips and palms over the surface of the wood. “God has a place for me. That is what he is saying.”

  “Do you believe it?”

  Her hands stilled.

  “What’s it worth if you don’t believe it?”

  She looked over her shoulder. Tom didn’t expect a face ready to hatch a storm.

  “Well? Is it true for you or not?”

  Anger, then something else, then anger again, and then a helpless little sob. Tears spilled, and in a sudden burst of fury she pounded the door of the wardrobe, and the veneer of golden bird’s-eye maple cracked.

  She stared in horror. “The only thing of beauty I have!” She tried to put her arms around the whole wardrobe, sobbing, and Tom looked down. He wanted to go to her in the worst way. He made fists.

  “It doesn’t mean a thing if you don’t believe it,” he said. “What good is it, then? Oh, don’t listen to me.” He reached for his hat, set it back down. “I wish my mother was here. She’d say it better.”

  “I am not fit to be around her,” Brigitte spat, digging at tears with a fist. “Just like Alex’s mother. He has to clean me up first.”

  Tom shook his head. “That’s not who my mother is.” A thought came. “That’s not who God is. Brigitte . . . you just gotta have faith that he’s good. I think you do. And I think he never wanted to flog you forward, but get you there by setting out the good. You just have to go. When you do, I guess you’ll leave the rest behind. I think that’s the deal.” He thought about what his mother would say, then nodded. “He has a place for you.”

  She traced her fingers along the crack. Fresh tears spilled. “Look what I’ve done . . .”

  “Say it, Brigitte,” he said softly. “Just say it.”

  Fingers stilled. Lips trembled. And a crack came to beautiful veneer.

  “He has a place for me.”

  When she remembered there was someone else in the room, she looked over her shoulder, dark hair wispy, face flushed with leftover storm, and Tom didn’t think she had ever looked lovelier. “Why are you here?” she said.

  “They’re pulling me off the mission. Rousseau is under investigation.”

  “Oh no,” she breathed. She brushed hair out of her eyes. Then, tentatively, “Monsieur Rousseau . . . he is Greenland?”

  He hesitated, then nodded.

  “Has he been arrested?” She came around the corner of the bed and sat on it.

  “Not yet. Were you there the day they dumped Jasmine’s body near the cafés?”

  “No. Marie-Josette was,” she said quietly. “She cried for days. She didn’t even know her. It seemed as though a blanket of grief had fallen over the city, for this woman we did not know. I lit a candle for her.” She looked at him. “What will I do with you here?”

  “Tell them I’m your boyfriend. Tell them I’m moving in. Rousseau says word will come through the BBC of my pickup. They’re sending a plane to a little airstrip in a place called Le Vey. It’ll be sometime in the next several days, around the next full moon.”

  “What sort of hiding will this be? The girls will wonder if you don’t come and go.”

  “I don’t know. We’ll work it out.”

  “So the mission is over.”

  They were silent.

  “Some adventure, huh?” Tom said quietly.

  “What about the bridges? What about the charges, what about—?”

  “It’s out of our hands. Rousseau says other cells operate in this area. They’ll be on it.”

  Her face became blank. “I didn’t do anything real. Nothing that mattered.”

  “Sure you did. You opened your door.”

  They looked at one another until a faint pink came to Brigitte’s cheeks. She said with a slight smile, “You did not have to sell ‘round two,’ but we will have to sell you as my boyfriend. I think it wise if we march straight down there because they’d never expect it.” Her face sobered. “Something is going on between Colette and Claudio, and we do not know what it is. Marie-Josette overheard them in the kitchen last night.” She hesitated. “She heard the word Cabby.”

  Tom straightened, speechless.

  Brigitte flushed. “It is my fault. The other day Marie-Josette asked your name. I wasn’t thinking. Colette was in the room.”

  “What a pair we make,” he said in awe.

  “Why would they talk about you?” Brigitte wondered aloud. “How could they even suspect you? It does not make sense. Colette has never met you.”

  “No idea.�
� Such an eerie thought, a Milice and a woman he’d never met using his code name. “What could have happened? It can’t be Flame. No one would—Well, what do I know. I only know Michel and Rafael. Clemmie isn’t with Flame, and—Wait; there’s that Wilkie. I’ve only met him once, when he took my pictures. But they trust him completely.”

  “We must—Oh, what is the word . . . ? Defuse this.”

  “Go straight down there, set ’em back on their heels. Get ’em thinking.”

  “Exactement.” Brigitte clasped her hands, bringing them to her chin in quick thought. “If you are moving in, if we will make you my boyfriend, we must keep everything close to the truth. That is what Madame says. So we keep you working at the Cimenterie. But . . .”

  “Life at Michel’s apartment is dull.”

  “And now you heard he was a bad boy, and there is an investigation . . .”

  “And I wanted to get out of the way. I thought, hey, I’ll bunk here for a while since I’m your new boyfriend.”

  “Oui.” She looked a little uncomfortable. “But they know me. I have not been interested in anyone since—We will have to ‘sell it,’ as you say. They are watching.”

  “Seems a national occupation.” Tom shrugged. “Easy peasy. How did you act with—?” He suddenly wondered if that was precisely what he shouldn’t say. Was any time with Brigitte complete if he didn’t stick a jackboot in his mouth?

  “I will have to sit in your lap,” she said gloomily. “We will have to hold hands.”

  “Well, don’t let it wreck your day,” Tom snapped. “Back home I’m not half-bad. Nobody here believes it. Sorry I’m so distasteful to you.”

  Indignation flashed. “That is not what I—You’re the one who wouldn’t even sit on the—” She snatched a pillow and shrieked a few words into it, or just shrieked in general, Tom could not tell.

  “Occupation angst,” he said.

  She pulled the pillow away with dignity, then smoothed her mussed hair. “We cannot go down there like this. We are in love.” She flipped the pillow aside, got to her feet, and pulled on his shirtsleeve to make him stand. He felt obstinate. She pulled harder, declaring, “Oh, don’t be a child!” He got to his feet.

  She looked up at him. “Look into my eyes. Oh, do not be a—a dope, Cabby. This is real. This is your life. Outside my door is nothing but peril for you. Do not give them a reason to think twice about you. They know the name Cabby? What of it? You are Kees.”

  He looked into her eyes. The longer he looked, the more he felt flippancy drain away. She made it real. She made it life and death. And she didn’t want him in peril.

  “Put your hands on my waist.”

  He settled his hands on her waist, and did not feel awkward, not looking into her eyes.

  “Touch my hair,” she said, less stringently.

  He reached to smooth a dark strand of hair alongside her face, and his finger lingered on her cheek. He was right. He met a current and it went straight into him.

  “Voilà, here is our story: We are going to marry. You are going to take me away. You know I want to write travel books when the war is over. You want to take me to America, show me all the glories of America so I can write a travel book in French for the French.” Her eyes went a trifle distant, and she smiled a little at what she saw. “I will interpret the glories. That is a travel book worth reading.”

  “Travel book . . .” The lingering finger moved to trace her lip. He pushed the lip lower, gave a little examination, said, “Nice teeth.” She smiled against her will, and he grinned. He felt suddenly lighter. “You’d make a good leader, you know that? You could lead a whole Resistance cell. You should talk to Rafael, he could—”

  “Cabby, you must be serious.”

  “Don’t call me Cabby,” he said, quite serious. “Not when it’s just the two of us. It’s Tom.”

  Alarm leaped in the brown eyes. “No! I will not even think your name. You are Kees, you are Kees.”

  “I wouldn’t take you to America.” When she blinked, he said gently, “I’m not from America, remember? I’m from the Netherlands. You’ll interpret the glories of the Netherlands.”

  She pressed a palm to her forehead and muttered in French.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll do fine. I’ll do fine.” He slipped his hand from her waist. “Whatever we say, we’ll think twice before we speak. The minute we step out that door, I’m Kees, you’re my girl, and we’re in love.”

  He tried to give her as steadying a look as she gave him. He took his coat from the bed. She reached up to put on his hat. He put out his arm, she slipped hers into his, and they went downstairs.

  They paused just outside the sitting room. Tom’s gut felt like a couple of fighting rats. He ground his teeth. He’d put aside fear for Michel, for Rafael, for Clemmie, for his own sweet skin; he’d blank it all out.

  He was a Dutch Nazi. He was on the winning side, proud, to be feared. Hitler did not conquer his nation, he liberated it. Hitler gave him a reason to hold up his head. Hitler showed him what to do with defeat: ball it up, hurl it back.

  “Nice to hear Glenn Miller.” He seized Brigitte’s hand, cold as his own, and smiled at her.

  She looked up at him and whispered doubtfully, “We are in love.”

  He squeezed her hand and whispered, “Mad crazy love, sweetheart.”

  “Do you have a sweetheart?”

  “Only you, darling.”

  “I mean, back in . . . the Netherlands.”

  “I left behind a brokenhearted nine-year-old named Greetje.”

  “What about . . . ?”

  He shook his head. “My girl went down over Cabourg.”

  She smiled. “I will fill in for her.”

  “Tall order. She took one through the heart for me.”

  He looked away, pushed down the rats that tried to climb up his throat. Brigitte on his arm, he swallowed hard, stepped through the doorway, and when he did . . .

  Fear left.

  He made his gaze proud and austere; it swept the room as if he expected and received fanfare. He gave the dark blinking man who was surely Claudio no more than a condescending flick of the eyes, resting them instead upon the girl on his lap who had to be Colette, whom he deigned to give two uninterested seconds. The gaze swept on, acknowledging Marie-Josette as if they were old friends, taking in her soldier customer with the cool politeness of higher-ranking comrade meeting lower-ranking comrade, and moved on to Simone. He gave her a slight smile and gave the glowering creep at her side a small indifferent nod.

  Every move was effortless. He filled his uniform, he filled his own height, and filled it with a sense that had eluded him these past weeks: duty. It came in a rush of comfort; it had not forsaken him, and he had not forsaken it. He’d not blow this. He’d sell them on everything—on his rank, on his affection for this girl at his side, on all that made Kees Nieuwenhuis a Dutch Nazi.

  He had duty to America, the country he and his parents had come to love; he had duty to the girl at his side, to the man who couldn’t say good-bye and now worried about him in Caen, to an old woman in Cabourg who had fussed over his wound and given him a button. Most of all—and this feeling gripped his middle—he had duty to the guys in his squadron, to make it back and fight once more at their sides.

  He might have lost his girl, but he felt like he was flying now. He would survive this, he would get back to England, and when he returned, he’d come as part of a mighty horde, the biggest military invasion in history that would liberate not a godforsaken country, but a country God had not forsaken.

  He led Brigitte to the center of the room.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced in courtly fashion, every English word spoken in the Dutch brogue of his father, “please, to have your attention: My name is Major Kees Nieuwenhuis. I have pleasure to announce: today I asked this lady to be my wife.” He gazed down at her. Some aiding force made his heart swell as he took in the brown eyes. “And she has said yes.”

  He hea
rd whistles and applause and well-wishing, mostly from Marie-Josette and her soldier, but it seemed to dim the longer he looked at Brigitte. And before he knew it, he was selling it good and found out her kiss could light the room as much as her face.

  He hardly knew where he was when it was over. His hands were in her hair. He was breathless, disoriented. He wanted to be anywhere else with her instead of a room filled with people. He wanted to know just who had done the kissing: Kees or Tom.

  Marie-Josette was brilliant.

  Sure, she said she didn’t know what Brigitte was involved in, said she didn’t want to know. She knew Cabby had to be an Ally, after Brigitte told her what he had said about the coming invasion. She knew something was up with Claudio and Colette, after overhearing the name Cabby from the kitchen. And of all the girls, she knew Brigitte could not give her heart to another after Jean-Paul Dubois. And she was absolutely brilliant.

  She stood in front of Brigitte, hands clasped dramatically to her heart for a moment of dire sentimentality, then flapped her hands and shrieked and did a little dance in place and threw her arms around Brigitte.

  “Oh, I am so happy for you!” she cried, hugging fiercely, rocking back and forth. She released Brigitte, then stood on tiptoe to grab Tom’s lapel and pull him down for a kiss on the cheek.

  “Champagne!” she cried, appealing to the room. “We need champagne! Do we have anything bubbly?”

  “I have a bottle of Badoit,” Simone offered, grinning. “I was saving it for the invasion, but . . .”

  “We couldn’t possibly,” Brigitte protested, hands clasped about Cabby’s arm.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Simone said briskly on her way to the door. “I haven’t seen you this happy since I’ve known you. It is time to be happy.”

  “I look happy?” Brigitte wondered with a smile. She glanced up at Cabby, and oh, how easy this ruse. That breath-stealing smile, those blue eyes, like the sky from where he came; she found herself looking at his lips and suddenly grinned. He’d certainly played his part, and it helped her to play hers. Daringly, she lifted her face for another kiss, and she did not miss the answering sparkle of mischief as he bent to slowly accommodate. An appreciative whistle came from Marie-Josette’s soldier.