by Lynn Sheene
Claire peered down at the deep blue awning below the balcony at her feet. The faded lettering of La Vie en Fleurs looked murky grey against the dying light.
Everyone saw her beauty, Claire knew. They always had. But Madame saw something more. Something worth saving. Claire felt a surge of heat in her chest. She straightened her shoulders, felt a warmth spread throughout her body.
Beauty might be a gift to our souls from the heavens. Luxury, purchased. But suddenly she understood. There was strength in elegance. Claire wouldn’t let the shop fail. And she knew, first thing in the morning, before Madame arrived, she would mop the damn floor.
Avenue Montaigne. September 26, 1941.
The midday sun felt thin, hinting at fall’s chill. The pressing heat of summer was a memory. Broken clouds stirred over the city. It would pour by nightfall.
Claire breathed deep at the scent of rain in the air as she walked slowly by the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. The façade of the theater was beautiful, pale white carved limestone. A mix of Art Deco and classical styles, a good five stories tall, judging by the windows of buildings on each side. The gold-framed windows were oversized. At the end of avenue Montaigne, Claire crossed Place de l’Alma and meandered along the Seine toward the Eiffel Tower.
Madame Palain was out today. Another day spent in line to get her Ausweis, her permit to travel south to Nice in the unoccupied zone. They had no business to speak of, but the florist wanted to ensure they could procure stock for the long winter ahead.
Claire went to the Hôtel Emeraude to see Leluc. She wore the thin pale blue dress she knew he liked, forced a gay tone. Surely such a distinguished hotel would need increased orders for the holidays. A deposit would be available now, perhaps?
“I will need to check.” Leluc hedged, his expression pinched, as he sat back in the chair behind his desk. He meant no.
Claire had learned there were many degrees of No in France. She played with the curl over her brow, settled a hip on his desk and twisted her body about to face him. “Ah, Monsieur, in times like these, a gift of beauty would mean so much.”
A sigh rose from his feet, then Leluc relented they might need something soon. He pulled a small pile of francs from his desk. “The gift of beauty.”
Claire judged the thickness as she slipped the money in her pocket, offering Leluc la bise good-bye. Enough to keep the shop going for a few more days but nothing more.
She squeezed the bills as she turned into the park at Trocadero, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower across the Seine. She traced her way along the looping paths through the broad leafy trees. A beautiful fall day, she was in no hurry to face the empty shop.
She heard footsteps approach. She turned, hoping to be met by Grey’s steel-colored eyes and a bemused smile. An older man hurried by her. Thin white hair, hunched shoulders.
Claire sighed. She wasn’t angry at Grey. Not anymore. She thought back to the day they walked nearby and remembered the force of his gaze, the steadiness of his arm around her waist.
She wished for his company. He would let her be. What? Herself? Perhaps. Or someone close to it.
The papers said half of London was destroyed in the Luftwaffe bombing. She hoped it was propaganda. Then she dug out Madame’s hidden radio and listened to the BBC one night in bed. Thousands had died. But London stood strong.
For the moment, the Nazis had turned their attention away from air raids over England. Still, she didn’t doubt Grey had gone where his strength was needed most. No. She wasn’t angry.
An hour lost in mindless reverie, only her feet noticed the distance she traveled back to rue du Colisée. As Claire unlocked the shop door, she heard the phone ringing. She lunged for the phone.
“Allô?” Claire gasped.
“La Vie en Fleurs?” a low voice said.
“Yes.” Claire grabbed the notebook and pen under the register, tried to calm her breath.
“I would like to place an order for Christophe.”
A message then, not a paying order. Claire crumpled the paper in her hand.
“A white posy. Delivered to 17, rue Perrault. Take the Métro to the Louvre station.” The line went dead.
Claire dropped the phone in the cradle and examined the shop. The long, barren shelves, the stack of empty tin buckets. The few flowers they had were artfully arranged on a center table, but they might well die there and join their brothers in the rubbish. La Vie en Fleurs couldn’t go on this way.
She hadn’t been able to swing a deal with the Comte. She would just have to try a different route. Resolution squared Claire’s jaw. This dirt farmer’s daughter had survived worse times. And she’d learned a thing or two since then.
A vase of white sweet peas intertwined with a single shell-pink rose caught her eye. Not exactly a white posy, but . . .
Claire climbed aboard the Métro at the Saint-Philippe-du-Roule station. She settled back in the seat, resting the paperwrapped bouquet on her lap. A young woman in dirty brown trousers sat across the aisle. She looked about fifteen; her face still held the roundness of a child. Only unmarried women were allowed to work. Or widows. With so many men gone, Claire imagined the girl on her way home from a factory.
The girl stared at the flowers the hungry way Claire used to stare at jewels, but she wouldn’t meet Claire’s eyes. These days no one met one another’s eyes. They still waited for the retribution to end. For the guillotine to drop.
At the Tuileries stop, two police officers came aboard the car. They walked down the aisle asking for identification. Claire slipped hers out and held it in front of her without looking up. After a moment, they passed on.
The air smelled of rain when she exited the subway at the Louvre station. Odette waited out front.
“Where’s Christophe?” Claire asked, not bothering to appear to be pleased.
“Nearby.”
“What? Worried I wouldn’t come if you used your own nom de plume?”
Odette shrugged, her lips pinched like her face ached. “You must understand why I pressed you to act.” She looked around. “Let’s walk.”
They strode side by side along rue de Rivoli, turned onto rue Perrault.
“We are in a war, Claire. I must sometimes act as a soldier, not as a friend.”
Claire nearly stopped at this. After Odette threatened her? “A friend?”
“Yes.”
Well, at least Odette sounded ashamed. The way Claire had saved their skins, she should be. “A friend who doesn’t act like one,” Claire said. “What would you call that?”
“Pained,” Odette said.
They turned to face a large church. An imposing bell tower, ornately carved stone colored soft pink against the cloudy sky. Gothic spires pointed out from the corners. An enormous stained-glass window overlooked the oversized wooden doors.
“Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois.” Odette motioned for Claire to step inside.
Claire led the way down the center aisle of small wooden chairs. Odette touched Claire’s arm and pointed toward a man sitting near the front, next to a thick stone column at the end of a row. It was Christophe. Kinsel. His head was bowed. Claire sat in the chair next to him, arranged herself on the braided fiber seat and held the flowers in front of her. Odette crossed herself and walked away.
Christophe opened his eyes and faced Claire. “Bonjour, Evelyn. I hope you are well?” He took the flowers and set them carefully on the seat next to him.
Claire held his gaze, kept a faint smile on her face. Pleasant, was what she called the expression, perfected by Madame. As if daring the recipient to offer something wonderful, with a warning not to disappoint.
“I am well, merci.” Then added as if an afterthought, “Of course we have lost a great deal of business, due to the latest unpleasantness.”
“Things will only get worse.” He stared at the golden cross in the nave below the windows. “There will be more attacks. More reprisals. Many innocent people will die. Nazi evil sets no boundaries.” He turned to
face her, head on. “Do you know what is happening on the streets as we speak? A mass arrest of Jews. Why? In retaliation for acts against the occupying power. Thousands of people—thousands—are being pulled out of their homes. Taken away to Drancy. Nazis call the Jews vermin. What do you think will happen to them next?”
Claire shrugged, her chest heavy. When she was a child, her father drowned what he called vermin inside an old burlap bag in the cow pond. You don’t waste bullets on vermin, he’d said.
“Who is implementing this Nazi order? The Parisian flics,” Christophe said. Our police. “There was a time when we could believe this would pass. A few months perhaps, then our life as the French would return to normal. But the Nazis want to remake the world. There will be nothing left of our life. Join us.”
Claire ignored the ache in her throat. Christophe wasn’t wrong. But this life she had, like a spring bud, was so young, so fragile. “The risk—”
“Yes. Always. But we do what we can.”
“You are asking me to endanger the shop.”
“Your position there gives you access to what we need. It is necessary.”
Necessary. A good word. But then, Claire knew what was necessary. He was trying to get her riled up, as if she were a soldier before battle. But she knew what she fought for today. She made as if to rise from the chair.
“What do we fight for, Claire?”
“Liberté, égalité, fraternité,” she said. Liberty, equality, fraternity. The motto of France. At least before Pétain. She met his eyes, her voice sweet. “Expensive, these things.”
He closed his mouth on his reply and appraised her. His eyes cold, like steel bearings. “The price is high. In lives or in treasure. You were offered one. Not both.”
Claire fought the urge to backpedal. A dark hardness stirred in his eyes. She knew what happened to people who turned against the Resistance. No torture, but death just the same. But she also knew what this money could buy. Desperately needed food for Madame, perhaps even replace the pair of shoes that Georges outgrew. She ransacked her mind for a weapon. Real or not. She smiled, her mouth sweet, eyes cold. “Yes. But that is the manner I work, Monsieur Kinsel.” His real name bled out between her teeth. “The circles I move in. I meet interesting people. Like Comte Jean-Luc de Vogüé.”
“I am familiar,” Christophe said.
“He too appreciates my particular abilities. And has made a proposal of a certain nature. I am a businesswoman. I must weigh all offers on the table.”
Claire held her breath as Christophe leaned back, crossed his legs and adjusted a pant leg. Either she had him where she wanted him, she thought, or he was about to kill her.
“And?” Christophe examined her face. “What is your price?”
This was for Madame. She smiled at him, fingered a button on her coat. “Six thousand francs.”
A small smile, too tight. “You are quite confident in the importance of your particular abilities. Perhaps you haven’t yet been introduced to your own limits.”
“You, Monsieur, have personally benefited.”
He shrugged, the slightest nod. “Perhaps. Two thousand, then.”
“Tellement petit!” So little. A dramatic sigh. The smallest shake of her head.
“A generous offer. And only because of the courage you displayed at the train station,” Christophe said, his quiet voice strained.
Claire smoothed the skirt against her legs and stuffed back the doubt that snaked into the edges of her mind. There was no room for doubt or conscience. Not now. “Four thousand francs. On the first week of every month. I will let you choose the manner of delivery. That is your area of expertise.”
He stared at her a moment longer, the skin around his eyes tight. “Very well. One day, Claire, you will understand. And then you will sacrifice everything for something greater than the indulgence of a few sparkling diversions.”
Claire exhaled slowly, kept the smile. One day inferred she would see tomorrow. And Madame and the shop would survive.
“In addition to your reports, you will get phone orders, like you did today, for certain locations. On the route, you will be handed a message to slip inside the flowers. You won’t see me again.”
“Vive la France,” Claire said, her mouth dry.
He reached down for the flowers and turned them over in his hand. “Very beautiful. You are a talented woman. For the price, you’d better continue to impress.” He walked out.
Claire sat back in the chair and took a deep breath. The church smelled of incense, wax and the wear of hundreds of years. She would have prayed, if she were the type. Instead she pulled out a pocket mirror, smoothed her hair and applied her lipstick. She puckered her lips at the serious face staring out at her.
She would have been happy with three thousand.
Still, she did the right thing. She knew it by the warm fire she felt deep in her chest. Madame had given her a new life, and she, in return, would do everything in her power to save her friend. But Claire Badeau better be damn careful.
Two weeks later, Claire swept the sidewalk in front of the shop as the sun dipped into the horizon. A stiff breeze whipped hair into her eyes and tossed fallen leaves faster than she piled them. Still, she hummed as she worked.
That morning, a small boy selling newspapers approached Claire as she opened the shop for business. Inside the day’s edition of Le Temps, a small bundle. Her heart in her throat, she finished sweeping, then went inside and up to her room. The size of a cigarette case, wrapped in tattered paper. Too small to be a bomb. She ripped into it.
Four thousand francs, in one-hundred notes. Half she tucked behind the dresser, the other went into the till. An order from the Comte, she told Madame, a regular payment. They were to give flowers for the War Relief Committee. A Frenchman underneath it all, he must feel sympathy for the wounded French soldiers. At this price, Madame asked, amazed. Madame, he is not that good of a Frenchman, Claire told her. For him, the price was doubled. His money is better with us than with the Germans.
Gripping the broom, Claire smiled again at the memory. Tonight she planned a special surprise for Madame. Georges had just dropped off a box by the door. Nearly like the old days, a bottle of wine, a loaf of real bread, a square of cheese.
A man passed by, head down, hands in pockets. Thinning grey hair, sharply drawn mustache. A polite bonjour as he stepped around her broom.
A flash of warm recognition and Claire grinned. “Monsieur Oberon?”
He looked puzzled. “Madame?”
“I am the woman you picked up on the road and brought to Paris almost a year and a half ago. Claire, Claire Badeau.”
A wan smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Ah, Madame Badeau.” A nod at the name change. “Of course.”
“I am so pleased to see you again. I’ve thought of you and your wife often.” He looked thinner, she thought. Worn around the eyes but well enough.
“Oh? How kind. Your speaking has greatly improved.”
“It is a constant effort. How is Madame Oberon?”
“She is well,” he said, though Claire wondered at the tone.
“And your son? Michele?”
A muscle in his jaw ticked. Claire knew the answer before he formed the words.
“He was killed in the fighting. We heard last summer.”
“I am so sorry,” Claire said. Knowing words weren’t enough. She remembered the grainy photo Adele had shown her, tattered from the years. The family kneeling in the sand on the beach, a grin took up the boy Michele’s entire face. His smiling parents were draped around either shoulder like a loving blanket.
“Please, wait one moment.” She dropped the broom against the doorway and bolted inside. She pulled out a dozen roses, white for honor, light pink for sympathy, wrapped them in silver and white paper. On the way out the door, Claire passed Georges’ box.
The Oberons might have saved her life by giving her a ride to Paris. But more than that, they offered her compassion in the form of
shared sandwiches, friendly though stilted conversation, a warm embrace. She tucked the roses inside the box and walked out the door out with it in her hands. “For you,” she said.
His gaze flicked over the bread loaf, the wine bottle, the flowers. “That is too much. I could not take it.”
“Monsieur, I have not forgotten your generosity that day. Please allow me to repay you and your wife. Please.” She held the box in front of her.
He reached out tentatively, his face slack, eyes moist. “Merci. Merci beaucoup. Adele will be so pleased. It has been a difficult time. Things—” He cleared his throat, forced a smile, met her eyes. “Adele would welcome your company. The house feels so empty now.”
Claire swallowed the knot in her throat. What could she offer Adele besides flowers? A smile and a kiss on his cheek, her regards to his wife, and she watched him walk away.
Across the street, the policeman who stopped Claire last December stepped from Epicerie Dupré. He caught her gaze and pointed a thick finger to his eye. Claire grabbed the broom and walked inside.
Madame Palain examined her. “Who was that gentleman, Claire?”
“An old friend.”
Jardin des Tuileries. May 16, 1943.
The sky was deep blue and the air filled with the fragrance of blooming flowers. Gnarled chestnut trees, their heavy limbs weighted with vibrant green leaves and waving wands of white flowers. Claire could feel spring down into her bones as she entered jardin des Tuileries off rue de Rivoli.
It was a season she thought would never come. It didn’t seem possible Paris had another spring in her, given the death and war boiling over the whole world.
Children kneeled on the edge of a large octagonal pool. With Maman keeping a watchful eye, they dangled over the water directing small wooden sailboats with prods from worn sticks. Claire wondered how many of their papas had been killed or were prisoners in Germany.
