Pagan Spring: A Mystery (A Max Tudor Novel)

by Malliet, G. M.

  “I don’t think any one of us is ever completely prepared to die.”

  CHAPTER 24

  With Sleep Come Nightmares

  “You haven’t told me the why,” said Max, watching her closely. “It was to do with the war, wasn’t it? The Occupation. You said Thaddeus had betrayed you.”

  She nodded. When she spoke, her tone had subtly shifted. She spoke now in a harsh whisper. Max shifted his weight, leaning in closer to hear.

  “It was everything to do with the waking nightmare that was the war,” she began. “With what happened to my family. With the loss of my family, of my home, belongings—of my self. Of all that might have been, the life I might have had, if not for the man who grew up to be known as the ‘famous’ English actor, Thaddeus Bottle.

  “I had to learn most of what I am about to tell you at secondhand, from a woman who knew my mother, Claude. A woman who was one of the survivors of that time. For of course my mother didn’t survive to tell me her story.

  “I’ll start with the earrings.

  “With my father, who gave my mother the earrings.

  “My father was a British airman whose plane had flown off course due to equipment failure. He’d finally had to ditch, to bail out. My mother found him washed ashore, only half alive. This was in Bordeaux. There were the bodies of other crewmen, and they all appeared to be dead, but then she saw one body move.

  “Other people had begun to gather. She bent over this man, gripped his hand as if taking his pulse, and whispered that he should be still, that he should play dead—faire le mort. He knew enough French to understand. And the urgency of her voice conveyed the danger he still was in. She saved his life.

  “My mother already was a passeur—one who smuggled people to safety. Many RAF airmen had to bail out of their planes during WW Two. I hardly need to tell you how dangerous this was for her to help them.

  “But this man she protected and sheltered and fell in love with, and I was the result. Quel scandale for those days. But it was wartime, with never a sense of what might happen hour to hour. Who was there to care?

  “I never learned exactly what happened to my father. My mother took him home, to where she lived with my widowed grandmother. When he was well enough to travel, they altered his appearance, as they did for many others, and gave him fake ID papers. The plan was for him to be passed along by helpers who would show him the way through the Pyrenees into northern Spain. Sometimes he would pretend to be a deaf-mute, to explain why he, a young man, wasn’t helping the war effort. He never knew of my existence, of my birth.

  “He would manage to get a letter passed to my mother now and then, but more and more it was like a fading transmission, a radio broadcast broken up by static. And then even the letters stopped.

  “Because, you see, what happened was this: To speed up progress to the border, he and his guide finally hopped aboard a train, which was risky. Too risky. They were spotted by a Gestapo agent. Perhaps he noticed my father could hear what he should not have been able to hear. They both were taken to the camps, undoubtedly to die there. My mother never was able to learn more of his fate than that.”

  “Your parents must both have been brave people, Gabby.”

  She nodded. “And my grandparents. I would give anything I own to have met them, even for a little hour.”

  “How did she become involved in the Resistance, your mother? You say she was a passeur.…”

  “Again, all I know came from a friend of my mother’s, a woman she would talk to, a woman who managed to survive it all. My mother helped write and distribute Resistance pamphlets against the occupiers, also using the beauty salon she ran with my grandmother as a cover for all manner of dangerous activities, including the manufacture of fake IDs and passes. She and my grandmother became part of a chain, hiding people and moving them across the demarcation line to the free zone. Beauty salons were perfect places for doing what they now call the ‘makeover.’ Dyeing or straightening or cutting hair, applying makeup, then having the photo taken for the fake ID, using a setup in the back of the shop, and the services of a photographer working for the Resistance. Salons also were good places to hide chemicals and powders. They figured, In for a penny, in for a pound. Even having the pamphlets in one’s possession was potentially fatal—what did all the steps that came after that matter?

  “A hair salon is where women gather and exchange information anyway. Nether Monkslip provides the perfect example. So how natural that an escape network should operate under the noses of the authorities, who probably regarded whatever went on in a salon as women’s foolishness and beneath their notice. What went on was quite a lot that would have fascinated them, including the forgery of identification papers, the creation of false certificates of baptism, and the distribution of tracts against the occupiers.

  “Mother’s clients would arrive with packages they would ‘forget’ to take with them. Then others would come and take the packages away. She didn’t always know what was in them. Guns or tracts, weapons or words—whatever might help put a stop to the hell that had sprung up around her.

  “Weapons for the resistors were often hidden under the vegetables in shopping baskets. And on at least one occasion, a tiny child, nearly newborn, was hidden that way, as well.”

  “And that child was you,” said Max softly.

  She nodded. “She left me with the nuns, at the orphanage. It was the only way she knew to save me, in case she was caught, in case the worst happened to her.”

  Her voice caught on the last phrase. After a long pause, Gabby went on. “She was right to be worried. False birth certificates, marriage licenses, permits, ration books—how clever they were! All of this forgery, with the equipment kept hidden behind a door in a closet that led to a secret room. Even owning a typewriter in those days could make you a suspect, because the sort of person who owned a typewriter was often the sort of person to be found writing propaganda.

  “Did my mother really understand the danger to herself? It is difficult to say. She was so young, and passionate, and certain in her knowledge that what was happening in her country was wrong. Liberté, égalité, fraternité—these ideas had gone out the window. Maybe she saw it as some sort of game of wits with the enemy—only this, of course, was such a serious game, with deadly consequences. But my grandfather, her father, had already been taken into custody and executed during one of the mass reprisals. She knew the risks.”

  “And Thaddeus? He was there somehow. He noticed what was going on, didn’t he?”

  Again she nodded. “He lived right next door. My family had always given a wide berth to those neighbors and had been careful to give them no hint of their feelings toward the Occupiers, never to complain, not even when my grandfather disappeared—especially not then. The neighbors seemed to buy their act, which included listening with apparent interest to their mindless bigotry. The mother of that house—Thaddeus’s mother—was a customer at the beauty shop. But her little boy, nearly always at her side—a mother’s boy—he was sharper than both his parents; he noticed too much. He would snoop; he would eavesdrop. No doubt he overheard the whispered talk—talk about my mother’s growing belly, just for one thing. And he was already an actor—a better actor at the time than he later became. Maybe the women didn’t guard what they said around him. He was only a boy, after all.

  “A monster of a little boy.

  “My mother knew that a pregnant woman, engaged in the type of activity she was engaged in, was at particular risk. Far from being a protected species, she, if caught, would be on the Nazi’s list of the expendables, along with the Romanies, the mentally ill, and the halt and the lame. In the camps, a pregnant woman or one with young children was considered a burden, unfit to work, and that was all that mattered in a world gone mad—the workforce.

  “So my mother hid her pregnancy as best she could and when the time came gave birth with my grandmother at her side. But they both knew there would come a day when my mother would have to make
a choice. And her choice was that her infant would be given the best chance of safety, given every chance to survive. People all around her were being rounded up and tortured for information, and even the best and bravest of them could be broken. So when I was just a few weeks old, she wrapped me in blankets and, in classic fashion, left me to be found by the nuns at the convent near her home. The Mother Superior was her mother’s—my grandmother’s—friend.

  “My mother left me with a letter that said that my name was Gabrielle Chaux. She also left with me a small toy, a stuffed animal that long ago went missing. Into the blanket she tied an earring—one of the unique pair of earrings given her by my father.

  “In the letter, she explained that she was leaving the mate to that earring in safekeeping with a friend. It was to be a sign to that friend, whenever the war was over, whenever I was old enough to come looking for my mother. A sign confirming who I was—that I was the daughter of Claude Chaux.

  “My mother may have gotten the idea of splitting up a pair of earrings from the tickets torn in half that members of the Resistance used to identify one another.

  “Into the hem of the blanket she also had sewn a photo of herself wearing those earrings. It was second nature to her by then, I suppose. The fail-safe. That photo and that blanket were the only things, apart from some books and some little awards for languages, that I took with me years later when I left the convent.

  “She put a drop of wine in my milk, just enough that I would sleep: It was vital that I not make a sound. Giving a child a sip of alcohol was common procedure back then. Of course now you’d have Child Protection all over you, but on this day—it was necessary.

  “These plans for my safety were meant to be a secret, of course, but they were overheard. They were overheard by a horrid little boy of ten—Thaddee, as he was then called. He was hanging around the salon with his mother, as usual, where no one paid him any mind. He was quiet and well behaved in those days, or he knew how to pretend to be.

  “Do you ever think, Father Max, how much the smallest chance plays a part in the biggest events? If the boy had not been out of school, kept out because of a little cold, but taken to the salon, presumably because his mother didn’t care if he infected everyone there? If he had not overheard my mother and grandmother talking and planning with others at the salon?

  “The earring with its distinctive design was meant to be my passport—to identify me to whoever held the mate. That also would be the person the nuns should release me to.

  “But that person never turned up because Thaddeus stole the earrings—first the one, then its mate—along with the message my mother had written to the nuns. And shortly afterward, the roundups began.

  “Thaddeus overheard my mother talking to her friend at the salon, confiding in her, as she gave her the matching earring and all the details of her plan. As my mother was to learn later, she had been followed by Thaddeus as she carried me, hidden in a basket, to the convent. He crept in right after she left and stole the single earring, and the letter. He left the photograph behind—it was sewn into the blanket, remember—and the toy animal. So of course the nuns never realized … Later at the salon, he stole the second earring from the pocketbook of my mother’s trusted friend. Then he told his parents everything he knew. Who, being the kind of people they were, told the authorities. The woman, the friend—I never learned her name—she was quietly rounded up.

  “Quietly, so the others could fall one by one, and lead others into a trap.

  “My mother’s friend was taken to the same prison where they later sent my mother. It was a sort of holding place on the way to the camp. From her and from others, my mother learned of Thaddeus’s betrayal. For Thaddeus, far from being ashamed, talked openly and proudly of the part he had played in sending my mother to her death.”

  She was silent. Gabby struck him as the type of woman who prided herself on never crying. And yet she wiped away a flood of tears now, using a tissue that had long since fallen to shreds. Max handed her his handkerchief and waited, listening with eyes half-closed, to the slight rustle of the leaves in the nearby trees and the murmur of the spring. At last, she drew a deep breath and looked at him, her eyes rimmed in red.

  “I am sorry,” she said. “I thought I could get through this.”

  Max shook his head at the apology. “You say your mother was led into a trap.…”

  Gabby nodded. “One day she returned home as usual. The dog didn’t bark his friendly bark, which might have told her to turn and run—the dog knew her footsteps, you see. He was a little terrier, not much bigger than a cat, and in his soul he believed he was sent to earth to guard her. He would become hysterical when a stranger came to the door, but he knew when it was my mother or grandmother.

  “They’d shot him, of course, when they took my grandmother. And when my mother went inside, they were waiting for her.

  “But Thaddeus—he didn’t tell them about you?” Max asked, picturing the helpless child she had been. “Where to look for you?”

  “Apparently not. And I will never know why. It wasn’t out of some sudden sense of decency, of that I can assure you. Maybe he did tell but no one could be bothered to come for me. Why would they bother? Perhaps he was afraid he’d be forced to give back the earrings if he told more of the story, even to his parents. Or perhaps even he realized that the lives of these women—their certain deaths—could be laid at his door. If he feared for his life—if he feared reprisal—he would have been right to fear. He may have come to realize it was not a game. He knew that to drag all the nuns in the convent into his betrayal, which already had had results beyond his wildest dreams, might mean their deaths, as well.

  “He was a child of ten. I try to make myself remember that this evil, stupid fool was only ten. My mother essentially was sent to her death over a trinket, stolen by a thieving child covering up his petty theft. I suppose these days we’d have to feel sympathy for him. We’d say he has a disease, he suffers from kleptomania, poor tyke, and we’d dose him with pills or send him for counseling. This leaves no room for the evil that you and I know, Father Max, is real.

  “It was many years before I learned of my mother’s fate from this woman who had been with her in the camp. Her name was Annabelle. She was one of the few who survived, and who had been returned to France in the summer of 1945. She carried a message to the convent for me, for Gabrielle—I was still far too young to understand anything that had happened. My mother, knowing she was dying of one of the diseases rampant in the camps, had told Annabelle about the convent and had said to her, ‘Tell Gabby, when she is old enough, what happened, to me and to all of us. Tell her I kiss her with all my heart.’

  “Annabelle delivered to the nuns the message that my mother was dead and then she went away, to try to piece her own life back together, to find her own children.

  “As I say, it was years later, but I managed to find Annabelle through a network of the survivors. She at first didn’t want to see me—the memories were too painful to relive, she said. She said I must understand that. But at long last, not long after my husband died, she sent me a letter, saying she would talk with me. I flew to Paris, where she now lived. We met several times at coffee shops or cafés, and in her home. Annabelle was very ill by this time—she had never fully recovered her health from being in the prison camp, and it wasn’t long after this that she died.

  “Annabelle told me she had tried to take care of my mother, who was little more than a girl. Her youth should have been a shield, but somehow it was the youngest who did not make it through the camps—and the oldest, of course. But it was as if the young had had no time at all to prepare, and no real experience that such evil could exist, and how to withstand it.

  “Then occurred the miracle of which I spoke earlier: Soon after my meetings with Annabelle, the contents of which had of course occupied my mind night and day, that magazine with that photo of Melinda wearing the earrings fell into my hands. The rest I have told you.”
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br />   In her eyes was a plea for understanding.

  “It was as if I literally couldn’t bear it, you see. After losing my husband, I couldn’t bear one more thing. It was like being flayed alive to hear what Annabelle told me. Perhaps … I have wondered if it would have been better had I not begged her to talk with me, to tell me all she remembered of my mother, and of her last days.

  “The oddest things began to remind me of what my mother, Claude, and other women like her went through in the prisons, then in the camps. Small things and large. It was Annabelle who told me she had a dozen phobias from those days, things she couldn’t bear to look at or be reminded of.

  “It is the trivial things that surprise you the most, that shock the most—because these sorts of reminders are everywhere. They are things you would think inconsequential and so easy to tamp down in one’s mind. But Annabelle told me that all those years later, she would flinch to suddenly see a striped pattern on clothing, on a package, on a wall. And when she told me why, of course I understood. I not only understood, I understood to the core of my being. The same loathing came to fill me, too. What it reminded her of, of course, was the black and white identifying stripes that the prisoners were forced to wear, to wear until they died. Many of the survivors of the camps carried this image with them forever, Annabelle had told me, and couldn’t bear the reminder.

  “She always wore long sleeves, Annabelle—to hide the tattoo, of course. Her prison number. She told me they all did—all the survivors.

  “And somehow once she told me this, I took on the phobia or superstition or dread—whatever you want to call it. I let it exist in me, too, in a sort of sympathy with these women.”

  “And that,” said Max, “is why you switched places at the table that night, so that you could put your back to that reminder.”

  “You noticed, Father Max. That night at dinner. But I don’t think you guessed the reason.”

  “I thought it was the painting that bothered you. But it was the design on the wall against which the painting hung.”