The Resistance Girl

by Jina Bacarr

  How could you do this to me, Sylvie Martone?

  I’m more confused than ever.

  What happened next?

  If a picture is indeed worth a thousand words, then the only hope I have of continuing Sylvie’s story is to decipher what I can from the photos and old films neatly compiled in the box where I discovered the diary.

  I hunch over the box, the muscles of my neck and shoulders tightening as I reach inside and pull out the heavy photo album. It’s filled with press clippings, publicity photos, and folded-up movie posters from Sylvie’s films.

  I also find what appear to be well-preserved 35mm nitrate prints of her films, Le Masque de Velours de Versailles and Angeline, along with boxed small reels of home movies. According to the labels on the boxes, the rare color film was shot in Paris and on location on a movie set in Versailles during 1942 and 1943.

  I’m dying to see the home movies, hoping they’ll shed light on what happened to Sylvie. When I ask the Mother Superior if the nuns have an old film projector, I’m delighted when her eyes light up.

  ‘We may, mademoiselle. When I first came here as a young postulant, the Mother Superior at the time was keen on preserving the history of the village during the war. From what I understand, when the movie theater in the village was bombed in 1943, the projector survived, and the theater owner showed films here on Saturday nights in the Grand Hall to keep everyone’s spirits up.’

  ‘Do you know where the projector is?’ Bold on my part, but I see enthusiasm light up the Mother Superior’s grey eyes.

  ‘No, but I believe what you and Sister Rose-Celine are doing is important work.’ She grins. ‘I shall set a committee of sisters in motion to find it.’

  ‘Merci beaucoup, Reverend Mother.’

  Which leaves us the massive photo album.

  After two hours of reading press releases and looking at publicity stills of Sylvie in various films, Sister Rose-Celine and I both gasp. I swear our hearts stop at the same moment.

  ‘Mon Dieu, mademoiselle.’ Sister Rose-Celine puts her hand to her mouth and makes a gurgling sound.

  I can’t believe it either.

  Stuck in the back of the album is the original photo from the Paris newspaper Ridge showed me on old microfilm. The picture isn’t so grainy, the photo crisp and new-looking, Sylvie smiling and holding on to the arm of a dashing Nazi SS officer and standing with him in front of a black Mercedes touring car on the streets of Paris.

  Why did she put such an incriminating photo in the box for her daughter to see?

  Or that matter, for anyone to see?

  I don’t understand it.

  I’m at an impasse. The diaries chronicling Sylvie’s life as a film actress end in 1939 with nothing more. Publicity photos, yes, old home moves, yes… there’s got to be more. I’m determined to find out the truth about Sylvie. I can’t believe this is a dead end. Maybe the best solution is to take the films back home with me and work with Ridge while the two of us go about identifying Sylvie’s royal lover.

  I turn the photo over and my pulse races when I see something written in French to my mother:

  I saved him the day this photo was taken, mon enfant… saved the man I love… your father… and fooled the entire SS. I’ve never given a better performance.

  Saved who? It sounds like she means my grandfather. She can’t mean the SS officer in the photo with her. It doesn’t make sense.

  I sigh. Another part of the puzzle that’s missing so many pieces.

  I show the writing on the back of the photo to the nun and she makes the sign of the cross.

  ‘I don’t know what to do, Sister. I have more questions now than when I arrived here.’

  ‘Look again in the box, mademoiselle,’ Sister Rose-Celine implores me. ‘God has His ways of coming to our aid when we need Him.’

  I wipe my forehead with the back of my hand, wet with the sweat of my frustration, then dig in. Old newspapers from 1950 rumpled up into a ball. Another folded-up poster stuck under the newspapers. Then guilt washes over me for giving up so quickly when I find something shaped like a large spiral notebook neatly wrapped in tissue stuck in the bottom of the box. My heart pounds. Sister Rose-Celine was right. I close my eyes and cross my fingers.

  I pray it’s another diary.

  18

  Sylvie

  When one door closes… another one opens

  Paris

  1939

  The day starts out with a 6 a.m. call for hair and makeup. I’m finishing up a modern drama about a woman who leaves her husband for a racecar driver. Lots of racing action, romance, great clothes. I’ve been so busy shooting the interior shots here on a soundstage in Paris, I haven’t seen Jock for two weeks. Resting between takes, I sway back and forth with a smile on my face when I remember the riotous last evening we had together. Dining on Langouste en Bellevue and petits eclairs filled with chocolate cream at our favorite restaurant near the royal park in Marly-le-Roi at the hostellerie. We enjoyed slow, leisurely bites of the rich meal, taking turns feeding each other with forks said to have graced the table of Marie Antoinette. Juices dripping on chins, busy tongues tasting, licking. A lovely anticipation heating bare skin yearning to be touched. A more sensual meal I’ve never had… nor a more passionate night with my royal lover in the charming hostellerie outside Paris with its original seventeenth-century décor. A place where we can escape…

  Jock carried me up to our room along the narrow winding staircase where we collapsed on the canopied four poster, laughing. Our need for each other flooded the room with life, love, and hope. My world spun when I arched up to meet him and he leant down and whispered, ‘Je t’aime, Sylvie Martone.’ When I woke up in semi-darkness to see la madame moon bidding goodnight to her cast of sparkling stars, I remember thinking, I could live with this man forever.

  We bid au revoir in the morning with promises of ending this idyllic summer in each other’s arms.

  Then I heard nothing. As if Jock had vanished.

  I can’t deny, I’m worried.

  Meanwhile, Winnie writes to me often, telling me about her beaux and I sense she’s trying to keep me cheerful. She came to Paris for a few days to visit me on the set and I introduced her as Lady Revell, a charming fellow traveler and fan I met in Monte Carlo. We were careful not to give any indication she’s more than a casual acquaintance.

  She’s also my go-between when I can’t make direct contact with Jock.

  Winnie whispered to me that Jock was tied up night and day with politics. He couldn’t turn his back on his duty when he received a personal plea from the PM’s office to give his take on the current state of affairs in Europe. A small, embarrassed smile crept onto her face. A sign of truth about what they were doing in Monte Carlo. Seems he and Winnie did a lot of traveling on her birthday grand tour. A ‘look-see’ on Jock’s part to do casual spying in the major European capitals. Also, Jock received news about Winnie’s friend from boarding school that was quite disturbing. She won’t tell me what it is, only that it affects my relationship with Jock.

  I was so naïve, I didn’t see anything but him, making me wonder if I wasn’t merely a diversion for him. I toss that aside. No, he wouldn’t have taken the enormous risks to be with me if that were true.

  Before she left for London, Winnie slipped me a note.

  Jock will call you on Friday and explain everything.

  Today is Friday, September 1st. Late afternoon. I’m alone in my dressing room when my phone rings.

  ‘Allȏ?’ I gush into the fancy black receiver, my throat tight with nerves.

  ‘Sylvie—’

  ‘Oh, Jock, I’ve missed you so… when can I see you?’

  I hear him breathe heavily into the phone. ‘I only have a few minutes, mon bel ange… I’m calling from Scotland.’

  ‘Scotland?’ I mutter, unable to keep the surprise out of my voice. I was hoping we could rendezvous in our usual place by the royal park. That dream is dashed.

  ‘
Yes, I can’t tell you where. I’m meeting with several important political figures from the PM’s cabinet.’ A pause. ‘Sylvie—’

  ‘Is the lake monster as big as they say?’ I interrupt him with a tease in my voice.

  ‘I’m tangled up here in meetings. I have no time for rendezvous at fancy hotels to indulge your whims. I have to cancel our engagement in Paris.’

  His cold words course through me, as if he’s rehearsed what he’s saying. I notice a distance in his voice, as if he’s reading the words. When he didn’t laugh at my joke, I knew I was in trouble. Jock and I have an intense, sexual relationship. We also love to play silly games, tease each other with not-so-subtle innuendos… write letters in code. I wish we didn’t have to be so secretive. No doubt the pundits would argue an English duke linked with a French actress with a questionable past is political suicide if he wishes to advance his career in Parliament. Yet I can’t tell you how happy I am when we’re together. But in my heart, I know it’s over between us. I can’t move, can’t think.

  I’m no fool. I imagine the stuffy political sods advising him made it clear that if he continues our affair it leaves him open for accusations in the scandal sheets, how he’s neglecting his national duties during a momentous time of upheaval in Europe to gallivant around Paris with a flighty actress.

  What if Jock is trying to protect me? My career has had its ups and downs, but never a major scandal with a royal. It could go either way. Either I gain sympathy from my fans for being ‘dumped’, or they turn against me for hiding the affair and tarnishing my image.

  What burns me is when Jock tells me his superiors discovered our affair from an unlikely source.

  Winnie’s friend from boarding school.

  Her name is Princess Claudina and she claims her title from a minor Italian principality before she took up residence in Monte Carlo a year ago. She’s alleging Jock promised to marry her so she could stay in England. Ridiculous. She just turned nineteen. She’s a mere child. Jock is twenty-six, seven years older than this girl, and she is a girl. Not a woman. Round face. Dark eyes that followed me everywhere when we had tea that afternoon in Monte Carlo. I thought then she still had her teddy bear sitting on her pink chenille duvet.

  I know differently now. She was planning to unmask me all along.

  When Jock wouldn’t agree to the engagement, she went to an old connection of her father’s and spilled the whole story about how she met me and saw Jock and I together several times in Monte Carlo. It didn’t help when the two English snoops validated her story.

  ‘I’ll tell the concierge at the hostellerie we have other plans, Jock,’ I acquiesce, keeping my voice even, plaintive. I love him too much to make it any more difficult for him.

  ‘Godammit, Sylvie, you don’t think I wanted to say those horrible things?’

  ‘Jock… I don’t understand…’

  ‘I wish I could take back everything I said, that I’ll be there to hold you in my arms. I can’t. I made that ridiculous speech about having no time to see you to give you reason to break it off with me. The truth is I love you. I’d defy the whole damn system and marry you tomorrow if I didn’t believe we’re in for a long, terrible war with Germany.’

  ‘I’d never ask you to turn your back on your country, Jock, my darling. Like I’d fight for France.’

  ‘How did I ever deserve a woman like you?’ His voice is warm, wanting.

  ‘Because you’re the most wonderful man and I will never love another.’ Desire for this man threads through me.

  ‘I can’t stop seeing you, Sylvie. I love you too much.’ I hear him inhale sharply. ‘I’ll figure something out.’

  ‘Surely this Hitler business will be over soon. Till then, never forget me, my darling,’ I whisper, a tear spilling down my cheek. My voice catches when I finish, ‘And I’ll love you always.’

  There. It’s done. Jock and I must go back to the way things were before we met. He alluded to a suspicion Princess Claudina is a German spy… which makes it even more important he doesn’t compromise his position with the Foreign Office. Our love affair makes him vulnerable to scandalous talk that could expose his clandestine comings and goings. What if the British press follows him to Paris to see me? And I can’t go to London – that would make matters worse.

  Which kills Emil’s deal with the British film studio to dub my films. The project is put on hold.

  I didn’t think I’d get hit in the gut like this on the same day Hitler invades Poland. I head back over to the soundstage to shoot the next scene. The intense heat from the hot lights sits on my face, melting my makeup as I attempt to say my lines, everyone on set waiting… waiting… while I try to process what Jock told me minutes before Emil ordered me back on set.

  I get so rattled I flub my lines. Over and over… I can’t concentrate, I can’t find my mark. Emil halts shooting for the day.

  I call for a studio car to take me back to my posh apartment in the Trocadéro, order the driver to stop at a my old haunt behind a chocolate shop, a centuries-old wine and spirits cave where I toss down enough francs for several bottles of their best brandy, then go home. I put my feet up on my black suede ottoman, grab the brandy, and lament over how I can’t escape this damn Nazi Party screwing up my life.

  I gulp down the alcohol straight from the bottle.

  I never meant to go off on a drunken binge in the middle of shooting a picture. But my world is shattered. My brain has been knocked out of my head, my heart is bleeding, and I can think of only one thing. What goes through an alcoholic’s mind when they’re triggered.

  Just one… I can stop… just one.

  Then one turns into… well, this time I can’t fight it. I relapse. My impulse explodes when the early September weather in Paris gets so stinking hot. I grab another bottle and guzzle it down.

  Jock can never find out I slipped. There’s nothing more heartbreaking for an alcoholic than to let down the one person who means the most to you.

  My body shivers with an uncanny premonition when I catch part of a special radio news broadcast about Hitler’s army devastating the Polish countryside with bombs, destroying the railroad lines, then tanks and soldiers ransacking the soul of the country with their guns and swastikas. I can’t imagine such a thing happening in France… and never Paris. No, the French people who brought down a monarchy won’t stand for that little man and his funny-looking moustache muddying up our beautiful Champs-Élysées with his dirty, hobnail boots.

  Besides, Poland is more than fifteen hundred kilometers from Paris… God will save us from this monster. He can’t keep closing His eyes to this horror, can He?

  I ignore the headache already pounding my brain and remember what I told Jock in Monte Carlo. The shop girl always loses the lord of the manor at the end of the fourth reel. I told him it wouldn’t work between us, but like every girl who comes to see my pictures, I wanted to believe it would. He did, too, but with the craziness in the world and his place in politics, our love story has come to an end.

  I’ve fought long and hard to have control over my life, to battle against the bad guy on screen and off. But this time, I’m up against a madman in Berlin who’s determined to rule the world.

  I can’t let a scandal involving me ruin Jock’s work with the Foreign Office. The world of espionage is a delicate balance between truth and fantasy, something I know about, seeing how I played a spy in Retour à Venise. His public persona must remain above suspicion. I can’t take him away from the important business of stopping Hitler because he’s worrying about me getting hurt by scandalous talk.

  So we’ve ended the affair. It’s better this way.

  That doesn’t change anything. I love him. I always will.

  ‘I refuse to do this script, Emil.’

  I throw the pinned-together notebook across the room. This part isn’t me. I’ve made a few bombs in my time, but my pictures are stories about strong women in unconventional roles overcoming hardship and fighting for their man, the
ir home, their children. This is a silly comedy with bad dialogue and too much slapstick. My fans don’t want slapstick and Emil knows that. He’s trying to take advantage of me at a weak moment with a lousy script acquired from a questionable source. An investor who wants to make money, not art.

  Emil is no slouch. He ducks the script I throw at him and my outburst. ‘You have no choice, Sylvie, you’re under contract to do another picture.’

  ‘Then find me a new script the fans will love. Not another divorcee melodrama with a swooning lover draped all over me and a cigarette holder hanging out of the side of my mouth. The world has changed with Herr Hitler writing his own scripts. We’re at war, Emil.’

  I calm down, think this out. I have every intention of fulfilling my contract for another picture, but it’s got to be a good story.

  I stand up and look out the wide window of the bedroom of my Trocadéro apartment. It’s rained steadily all day, big drops that splatter against the glass. Down below, a sheen of mist glistens on the wet pavement. The hot days of August then September have vanished, but some things never change. The Eiffel Tower stands strong even in the thrashing rain. What has changed is, Britain is at war with Germany.

  And God help me, so is France.

  There’s nothing like a war to put things in perspective. I’ve been sober for thirty days and I intend to stay that way. I’m so ashamed of how I acted, relapsing because I had to let Jock go. His work is vital to the British government. I’d never stand in the way of that. I’m lucky the studio didn’t fire me, but they need the picture finished and distributed to the movie theaters as soon as possible. No one knows what’s going to happen with everyone scrambling to meet the government’s demands to fight the Nazis, increasing the French Army to massive proportions, and scaring everyone in Paris with training on what to do during an air raid and turning Métro stations into bomb shelters. What’s next… rationing? Then what goes? Going to the pictures?