by Lou Cadle
“I know how to carry a fucking basket,” the girl snapped.
“What? My French,” Bernard said.
“She said ‘no thank you,’” Antonia said, first in English and then in French, shooting a stern look at the girl.
“You don’t want him to know real words?” Genevieve said, coming to the bottom of the stairs.
“No, I don’t want you to know those words.”
“I have a mother already,” she said. “And not even she cares about my vocabulary.”
“What about my vocabulary?” Bernard asked, looking from one to the other.
In English Antonia said, “We’re arguing about hers. And the appropriateness of it for a young girl.”
“A girl?” he said, looking back to Genevieve, adjusting his understanding of her sex. “Why, she can’t be fourteen, can she?”
Genevieve’s English was no better than Bernard’s French, but she grasped the gist of that. “I am fifteen, and as I will not be your whore, it shouldn’t matter to you if I am a girl or a boy.”
He looked to Antonia, his expression helpless. “She’s speaking too fast.”
“You don’t want to know anyway, believe me,” Antonia said. To Genevieve in French: “Have you brought us food?” She spoke slowly so Bernard might follow.
“This one,” Genevieve said, and thrust the basket at her. “The other one has a blanket and other things.” She set that one down.
“Do you know if they have found a different place for Bernard to sleep?”
“Claude said to tell you another night here will be necessary.”
Bernard had opened the second basket and was shaking out a worn quilt. “At least there is something to sleep on. And an oil cloth. We can make use of this as well.”
Again Antonia spoke in French to the girl. “Is there something wrong?”
“Leonce left a message that he spotted someone tailing him. In case of trouble, Claude has cut out part of the circuit. There are only four working on planning the operation. Including me,” she finished proudly.
“That is not many,” Antonia said.
“We have experience.”
“You’ve kidnapped someone before?”
The girl gave her a frustrated look. “We can do anything.”
“I hope that is so. And I trust you. But if you need me for something, anything of the planning, or if Claude does, please don’t hesitate to come get me.”
“Claude said he might. Or he might need both of you.”
Antonia looked skeptically at Bernard. “If he is out in the daylight, a healthy young man, people will wonder why he isn’t at a job.”
“We could make a disguise. Or use him only at night.”
“He is the only one of us who can do what he does, so Claude needs to take care in using him for anything else. He must be saved, for his talents are special.”
“So are yours,” Genevieve said. “You must trust us.”
She trusted Claude. And the girl was good for her age, but she was still a girl. “Come and get us when you need us.”
“D’accord,” Genevieve said, and she left.
Bernard said, “I didn’t catch one word in ten. Something about experience?”
She summarized the conversation for him, omitting Genevieve’s most colorful language.
“I’ll do what I can. But I’d hate to need to speak French out there for any longer than ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘thank you.’”
“With your accent, I’d hate to have you speak even that much.” She smiled to soften the words, but she meant them. “Let’s see what we have to eat.”
The basket was full. There were two loaves of bread, Madame Charlevoix’s, Antonia believed, and a quarter round of hard cheese wrapped in paper, and tiny pile of strawberries, not many, but a mouthful or two for each of them. A few spears of asparagus had been cooked, possibly last night, and were cool and limp now. “More than I often eat. We must make this last for tomorrow morning as well.”
“Nothing like the amounts I ate when I was a child.”
“No war then.”
“And I worked hard around the ranch and we ate well. Meat, potatoes, bread, pies.”
“You must break that habit of telling me details about yourself.”
“Right. Sorry. It is deuced hard to not be friendly, especially over a meal.”
She pulled out another package of two napkins and held them up. “There’s water as well. I think I’ll use this napkin to wash myself rather than dab at my lips.”
“I have soap, if you don’t”
“I have local powder.”
“I have a fresh bar of Lifebuoy.”
It sounded heavenly. “You won’t be here that long to use it all.”
“It’s yours to borrow if you want, and entirely yours once I leave,” he said. “Now let’s eat. There’s water, you say?”
She took out the last thing in the basket, a jar, and opened it. When she sniffed it, she corrected herself. “White wine.”
“Trust a Frenchman.”
She handed it to him.
“Don’t you want any?”
“No. I’d rather be alert, just in case.”
“A sip wouldn’t hurt you.”
“It could slow down my hand. Or change it, even worse.”
“Change your hand?” He was clearly confused.
She shook her head. She assumed he’d been told she was the radio operator. If he didn’t know, there was no reason to explain and every reason not to. “Never mind.”
“You won’t complain if I have some?”
“No. Go on, drink a glass or two. We should eat the asparagus now. In fact, since there is food and wine, it’s a good time to switch back to French. You can ask me for what you want—in French—and only if you make sense in the language will I hand the food over.”
“You’re devilishly clever,” he said, but he meant it as a compliment.
“In French.”
And so they spent the next hour sharing a meal, speaking—haltingly, in his case—in French, and staying away from personal topics.
He took a nap and, while he was sleeping, the owner of the house came home, fixed a meal, and she followed the sounds of the normal activity with something approaching nostalgia. She wanted to be here, she wanted to do the work she was doing, but to have just one meal she cooked by herself in a kitchen, and a bed in a room with a lamp and dresser, with curtains on the windows she could open on a warm night rather than packed dirt under her back—that was something she might never have again. Even the thin mattress of Madame Charlevoix’s attic was better than this.
The sound of water running when the house’s owner washed up woke Bernard.
“What?” He sat up and looked around. “Oh, right.”
“France,” she said.
“Beautiful France. Sunshine year round in the Cote d’Azure,” he said.
“I’m sorry?”
“A travel poster I saw once. I wonder if it’s beautiful there still.”
“I think it must be. The darkness that has descended over all Europe can’t entirely block out every light.”
“You must have been a poet. Back in England.”
“No,” she said before thinking. She tried to make up for the slip with a follow-up. “Or perhaps yes, I’m a famous one.”
“I know. Quit asking. Quit guessing.”
“Yes.”
“But I’d like to know what led someone like you to this place.”
“Fate, perhaps.”
“Do you believe in Fate?”
“I don’t know.”
“I do. Or I believe in something akin to it. Inevitability. That matters spin around in predictable cycles. You harvest the hay, and you bale it. Winter comes, and you pull a bale out to feed the flock. You break the ice so they can drink until it begins to thaw. Spring comes, and you plant and the young are dropped. Summer comes and the corn grows. The hay needs to be mown again. And it keeps going around.”
&nbs
p; “But that’s the natural world.”
“People are natural. Even civilizations are, it seems to me. Empires grow and go corrupt and they fall. Evil is ascendant for a time, but good rises up to beat it back.”
“Do you think the British empire will fall one day?”
“Certainly. So will Russia. Japan. Germany. Germany soonest of all.”
“I hope.”
“It will fall. The Russians have driven them back. They’ve all but lost Africa. We’ll push them out of France, and one day soon they’ll surrender.”
“Even if that’s how it turns out, they can hurt England—and other countries—a lot more before the end if this scientist Hesse develops his plan.”
“They’ll have to put it into production as well. But yes, even if we invade the Continent and push them back, if they are still launching V2s at us, if they can target them better, more people will die.”
“I wish no one else had to die. Except Nazis, of course.”
“I don’t look forward to killing someone I know.”
“Can you?” She appreciated his honesty, but the confession worried her.
He frowned. “I can, I believe.”
“Don’t hesitate if the time comes.”
“Could you?”
“Yes.” She would not tell him her background, but she would reveal herself about this. “I long to, to be honest. I dream of it. But I’ve not yet had the chance. It might be one of those things that when it comes to it, I can’t do. Or I hate doing. Or that I’ll have bad dreams about if I survive the moment.”
“I think a lot of blokes do. Have bad dreams. I had an uncle in The Great War.” He shook his head. “Sorry. There I go again, telling you too much about me.”
“A lot of men had uncles in the Great War. I wouldn’t be telling any Germans about it, however. They might want revenge for that as well.”
“If Germans are asking me questions, I have worse troubles than my uncle.”
“Indeed you do.”
“I was just a—” He stopped himself in time from saying something he shouldn’t, and he shook his head with a wry smile. “I didn’t have to think much about dying until this week. Or being captured. Or if I could survive torture. I’ve thought about it all of today. I dreamed about it last night.”
“How did torture feel, in your dream?”
“Shameful.”
“Because you told them secrets?”
“Because I’d been captured at all. I hope I wouldn’t tell secrets.”
“Most do. That’s what I was told in training.”
“What did they teach you to do then? To resist the torture?”
“To die first, if possible.”
He looked shocked.
“If we failed in that, then we should bear it as long as we can. And when we cannot bear it a moment more, we should give up some secret, some old secret, one they can confirm, and a new bunch of lies.”
“Like?”
“The name of someone you know is already captured, for instance, is a safe secret to tell. A dead drop that is no longer being used because they discovered it before. If they can corroborate what you say, they may think you have broken. And then you can tell lies upon lies, and they will waste time chasing those leads.”
“A complicated way to live.”
“By that point, it is more a complicated way to die.”
He shook his head slowly. “You’re cold.”
“Yes, frozen inside.”
“You’ve lost someone.”
“Who hasn’t?”
“That’s no way to live.”
To that she said nothing. It was none of his business, and she had no idea why she’d answered the last few questions.
“Couldn’t you find a new reason to go on?”
“I have a reason to go on. To help my circuit with a kidnapping.”
“That’s sad.”
She held on to her temper with an effort. “I’m not sad about it. If so, it hardly seems your place to be.”
“Women are tender, or should be.”
“Women are deadly, or can be.”
“I can’t imagine my mother enjoying thinking about killing Nazis.”
“Has she killed a cow? A chicken?”
“Well of course a chicken. And a pig. More than one.”
“There you are.”
“That’s different.”
“I think you should consider how your mother might feel if you are captured and tortured to death. She may well want to kill a Nazi as well.”
“Did you lose a child?” His face held such compassion, she felt bad about her anger and bad about his misunderstanding her in this way. The loss of a child was terrible, and not hers to claim.
“Let’s quit talking about personal matters,” she said. “We’re here to do a job.”
“But we’re not doing a job. We’re just sitting here in this cellar, slowly losing the daylight.”
“I’ll cover the windows soon so we can turn on the lantern for a short time.”
“No, I’m fine in the dim light. I have good night vision.”
“The moon will rise. Tonight it will give a good deal of light.”
“It’s heading for full. Maybe we should plan the kidnapping with that in mind.”
“Claude will be.”
“But when will he tell us? Tell us what’s happening and what I’ll be told to do?”
“When he needs to. Until then, we’ll keep working on your French and operational skills.” She was done with this needless conversation that kept coasting too close to the personal.
As she drifted off to sleep that night, lying on the oil cloth with the blanket all to herself, she realized that she was changing, despite her best intention. She did care about Madame Charlevoix, and Claude, and angry little Genevieve. Even this man, so ill-suited to Résistance work, was growing on her. Part of what was frozen in her was melting. She was not losing the sharp edge of her hatred for the Germans, but something else was pushing at it, demanding its own space inside her alongside.
That was dangerous. She would protect her circuit of course, but this caring about people would lead to no good. She needed to keep her heart frozen to succeed at her job.
Chapter 18
Claude arrived the next morning.
“Beatriz, we need you.”
“How about me?” Bernard said.
“Not yet.”
“Should I dress in my work clothes?” she asked. “The skirt?”
“Yes. Shoes too. You need to be your cover identity.”
“Okay.” She grabbed her valise and went to the area under the stairs to change, taking care not to knock over the chamber pot. It wasn’t entirely private back here, but she turned her back and was satisfied with that nod to modesty. If the men were bothered, that was their problem. She slid on her patched tights, buttoned her sensible blouse, and zipped her skirt. She pulled out her brush and ran it through her hair and then twisted it up and secured it in a conservative roll.
Every bit the shorthand secretary on an errand for a busy boss.
“I’m ready,” she said.
“Be careful,” Bernard said.
“You as well. Don’t go wandering around out of boredom.”
“I’ll manage. Bring back more food if you think of it.”
“I will. Finish the little that is left.” In fact, she would try to buy food, but there was no guarantee she would be able to find any.
Claude said, “If she doesn’t return by dark, don’t panic.”
“Do you think something will go wrong?” Bernard’s brow creased in worry.
“Something might always go wrong. But it may only be that she had to hide, or that a new opportunity presented itself. Yes?”
“I understand. I wait here.”
“Correct.” To Antonia he said, “You’re ready? Then let’s go.”
Halfway up the stairs she turned to Bernard. “If I do not come back—if no one comes to tell you anything
—after two nights have passed, destroy what is in my cases. You’ll be on your own. If I were you, I’d walk west under cover of night and try to make for Spain.”
He would no doubt think it was a heartless thing to say. It was, in fact, a kindness.
In the kitchen, she asked Claude if he had heard that.
“I did.”
“So if I am arrested or killed, send someone to tell him.”
“We will go forward with the operation, even without you.”
“As you should,” she said, surprised to think he’d believe there was any other choice.
“Remember where we met before the train sabotage? The back room?”
“I do.”
“Two minutes after I leave, you leave and take a direct route there. I will take an indirect route and meet you there in half an hour.” He walked out the door.
She waited after he left, looking around the kitchen. It smelled vaguely of fried onions. Hunger woke in her, but she pushed it aside. There were more important things to worry about than her belly. When two minutes had passed, she left.
The streets were quite busy, with the last of people still heading to work. It seemed odd that there was still such normal activity, jobs to go to, church services, shops open—or some shops, even if many shelves were empty. She saw a sign for toy trains in a shop window. On a bench, an old man sat huddled in an overcoat, waiting for a bus—or maybe he was waiting for the end of the war. He looked miserable.
As she turned a corner, she saw a crowd ahead, gathered in front of a business. She hesitated for a split second, but then realized she needed to walk on as before. Turning around for a crowd was more suspicious than merely going along her way, as if she was another working woman making her way toward her place of employment.
It was the butcher’s shop, she saw, as she approached. A man was in front, yelling over the noise of the crowd. “Half a pound limit. Have your coupons ready. There is plenty today. No need to shove.”
She passed the crowd of people anxious to get their allotment of meat. From Madame Charlevoix she knew that rationing was in effect and was strict. There was butter and meat to be had on the black market, but they were too dear for anyone but the very wealthy. A café at the corner had a German sign posted that her German wasn’t up to translating—or even guessing at. As she passed, she noticed two German officers sitting inside. Again, she made herself walk as she had been doing, though it felt as if their eyes must be on her, must know her for what she really was.
