The Room on Rue Amélie

by Kristin Harmel

  Ruby was sure he wasn’t supposed to have filled her in in such detail. “Each of us only knows the next step in the line,” she said gently. “But please take care not to tell anyone else where you stayed at each step of the way. It could endanger the operation.”

  He narrowed his eyes, and she could tell in an instant he wasn’t accustomed to being chided. “I didn’t give you any details. Besides, surely you know all of this already.”

  “Actually, I didn’t.”

  “If you say so.”

  She didn’t like the way he was looking at her now.

  “Anyhow,” he said, “I suppose Fleur isn’t your real name.”

  “I suppose not.” She left it at that.

  “Well, then. My name is Lawrence. Not an assumed name, mind you. Lawrence Bartholomew Fischer. I fly Spitfires.”

  “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Mr. Fischer. And I think you’ll find the accommodations here quite suitable. I’ll show you to the closet.”

  “The . . . closet?”

  FISCHER WAS WITH RUBY FOR a day and a half, followed less than a week later by a bomber pilot named Harley Holt and then a gunner named Stephen Orlando. They ran together after that; one or two a week would show up at her door, and each time, she would welcome them, feed them, and sneak them into the hall closet, where they waited for Laure to pick them up.

  There were a few close calls—neighbors who happened to see the men coming or going, the infrequent appearances of the concierge, Madame Lefèvre, in the hall downstairs—but Ruby knew from their pursed lips that they assumed she was entertaining various gentleman callers. Just as well.

  Charlotte, however, was well aware of what was going on, and this concerned Ruby. She knew she could trust her young neighbor, but in the end, Charlotte was only a girl. What if she let something slip? Or what if Ruby was found out and someone believed that Charlotte and her family had been involved?

  Still, Ruby couldn’t turn her back on the men.

  In her third month working with the escape line, she was surprised to welcome an Air Force pilot on loan to the RAF who’d been raised in Palmdale, just ten miles from her own hometown. “Golly, miss, of course I know Lancaster!” he’d exclaimed when she told him where she was from. She knew she shouldn’t be handing out details like that, and normally, she was much more discreet, but she couldn’t help jumping at the opportunity to reminisce about Southern California with a stranger who had somehow found his way to her door on the other side of the world. “Your parents must be mighty worried about you. You hear from them often?”

  She shook her head. “It’s been months now.”

  “Damned war. Well, if you want, I can get a message to them on your behalf when I get home.”

  She hesitated. For a second, it sounded like a dream come true. But telling him her real name or who her parents were came with too many complications. She’d already said too much. “Just help the Allies win the war, will you?”

  “Yes, miss.” His expression was grave. “I will do my absolute best. It’s why I’m so eager to get out of this damned city. No offense intended, of course.”

  “None taken. It does feel a bit like Paris is damned, doesn’t it?”

  He nodded and looked toward her window. “I imagine this must have been a pretty beautiful place before the war.”

  “It truly was.”

  “You think you’ll move back to the States when this is all done?”

  “I honestly don’t know. I have trouble thinking beyond tomorrow.”

  “Strange how war changes things, isn’t it? I was supposed to be taking over my father’s tax business. Instead, I’m hiding out in a pretty stranger’s apartment in Paris. Never thought I’d wind up here.”

  “Neither did I,” Ruby said, and like the pilot, she wasn’t just talking about Paris. She was talking about the way life had twisted, the way she no longer recognized the ground she was standing on. “But the war can’t last forever, can it? Maybe it’s not too late to find our way back to the lives we’re supposed to have.”

  “Or maybe this is it.” The pilot smiled sadly. “Maybe this is exactly who we were meant to be all along.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  October 1941

  After Thomas left Ruby’s apartment, Laure led him to a train station in Paris, where there were three other British pilots waiting, each with his own guide. Thomas had been given strict orders not to acknowledge any of them—and certainly not to talk to them—but it was a comfort just to know they were there. He was no longer in this alone, which made him feel like he had a legitimate chance of survival.

  They boarded a night train to Bordeaux, and though Laure was in his compartment, he was not to look at her or attempt to communicate in any way. The value of a night train was that he could feign sleep each time a train official or German officer walked by, and that was exactly what he did, cracking his eyes open slightly only after their footfalls had disappeared. In the morning, they switched to a train to Bayonne, and he caught glimpses of the other pilots boarding cars along with their guides too. So far, so good; they were in southern France now, which seemed less perilous than Paris.

  In Bayonne, their guides left them with terse good luck wishes and handed them off to another man, who gave them each a ticket and put them on a smaller train to the tiny town of Dax. This, Thomas understood, was to be another dangerous part of the journey; the new man wouldn’t be accompanying them because of the risk of capture. They were to get off the train and try to appear inconspicuous as they waited to be picked up outside the station by another contact. “Rely on your false papers,” the man said quietly in French, which Thomas quickly translated for the others. “Say nothing, even if questioned.”

  On the train, Thomas watched with growing trepidation as a German soldier boarded the first compartment and began asking passengers for their papers. One of the other three RAF pilots seemed younger than the rest—nineteen, maybe twenty—and he was the first one the Nazi soldier reached. Thomas sat paralyzed as the young pilot looked blankly at the soldier who was barking an order at him. Give him your papers, Thomas thought, wishing he could come to the boy’s rescue without arousing suspicion. Damn it, just do what the guides told you to!

  After a few long seconds, Thomas watched as the boy reached into his pocket with hands that were clearly shaking and handed over his identity papers. The Nazi soldier looked at them for a moment and asked in French what the purpose of his travel was. The boy continued to stare, and the soldier, his eyes blazing with suspicion, repeated the question more loudly. Oh God, Thomas thought. He’s about to be caught.

  But then an elderly woman sitting across the row from the pilot spoke up, explaining to the German soldier that the boy was her grandson, that they were going to visit a distant aunt, and that the boy was deaf. “How dare you ridicule him?” the woman asked. The Nazi soldier looked uncertain, but the woman moved next to the young pilot and put an arm around his shoulder. “There, there, my boy. He didn’t mean any offense.” The soldier narrowed his eyes, but after a moment, he grunted in disgust and moved on.

  Thomas exhaled a huge sigh of relief, and although he dared not make eye contact with any of the other pilots, he did lock gazes with the elderly woman, who smiled slightly at him, nodded, and left to find a seat in another car. Thank God for Good Samaritans.

  When the train arrived in Dax, the four pilots got off and tried to blend into the small crowd as they handed their tickets in and left the station. Outside, a pair of men were waiting for them.

  “Welcome,” the taller one greeted them in English. He sported a mustache and a faded cap. Thomas didn’t think he sounded French, but he couldn’t place his strong accent. “We’re here to take the group of you to the mountains.” He lifted his chin at the six bicycles leaning against the wall beside them.

  There was no time to ask questions as they mounted up and pedaled out of the train yard into a quaint French village. Thomas could feel sweat beading on his brow as the
y passed a café with a few Germans at tables out front, but none of the soldiers gave them a second glance, and once they were around the corner, Thomas relaxed a little. They just might make it after all. There seemed to be far less of a German presence here than there had been in Paris, which boded well.

  They cycled all day in silence. The man who’d spoken to them rode ahead, and the man with him, who had yet to say a word, brought up the rear. Just before nightfall, with the Pyrenees looming in front of them, they pulled off the main road into a village, where they made their way down winding lanes to a small, isolated bungalow at the edge of the forest. “You will spend the night here,” the man in the faded cap said, looking at each of them in turn. “They are very nice hosts, very brave to shelter you. In the morning, we go.”

  “Go where?” asked the youngest pilot.

  The man jerked his thumb toward the jagged mountains, which cast a shadow over the town. “South. To Spain.”

  That night, over a hot dinner of lamb and beans, the pilots spoke to each other for the first time. Their hosts were a middle-aged couple who retreated to their own bedroom after dinner, leaving the men alone after explaining in French that their location far from the town center was perfect for concealing guests; the handful of Nazi soldiers stationed nearby didn’t make the effort to venture out this way.

  Thomas learned that the youngest pilot was named Norman Wimbley, and that he was two months shy of turning twenty. He was cocky, but as he related his story of being shot down over southern Belgium and encountering a farmer who was part of an escape line, Thomas could hear the tremor in his voice. The others—Scott Pace and Walter Caldwell—were closer to his own age and had known each other in flight school; Scott had been shot down just outside Paris, and Walter had gone down on the French side of the German border. Like Norman, they had both been assisted by locals with connections to the escape line. Thomas found himself wondering just how extensive the network was. It was amazing to think of all the French and Belgian civilians who were risking their own lives to return men to war.

  “Are we really supposed to climb over the mountains?” Norman asked, gesturing out the window into the darkness. “It sounds insane.”

  “We don’t have a choice,” Scott pointed out. “It’s the only way out of France right now.”

  “But climbing a mountain?” Norman persisted. “Have any of you done that before?”

  “No,” Walter said. “But do you want to get back into the cockpit or not? If you’re uncertain, you may as well stay behind.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying,” Norman grumbled. “Only that it’ll be hard.”

  “Life is hard,” Walter snapped.

  “Look,” Thomas said after a moment, “there’s no doubt this will be difficult. And we can’t let down our guard. But we’re going to stick together and do what the guides tell us, and we’ll make it through.”

  Scott and Walter nodded, and though Norman muttered something to himself, he eventually shrugged and said, “Fine.”

  The two men who’d picked them up at the station materialized again before dawn, waking the pilots after just a few hours of sleep. They introduced themselves as Florentino and Alesander and explained that they had been helping pilots over the mountains to Spain for the past few months. “Alesander speaks very little English and also little French,” Florentino said. “We both grew up with the Basque language. If you have questions, you ask me.”

  “How do you propose we make it over the mountain when none of us even has hiking boots?” Norman asked, earning him a hard look from Florentino.

  “With courage,” Florentino said, “and these.” He held up a burlap bag and dumped the contents on the floor of the bungalow. Inside were several pairs of shoes with soles made from thick rope. “They will help you with the mountain terrain. Put them on quickly, then we go.”

  “Espadrilles?” Norman snorted. “Surely you’re joking. They’re for women.”

  Florentino glared. “We’ve been using these shoes for hundreds of years. The soles mold to you, they help your feet to have air, and they help with the steep inclines. You wear your own shoes if you’d prefer. Just don’t expect me to help you when your feet bleed and you fall off a cliff.”

  Five minutes later, with the strange rope shoes tied on, the pilots were walking quickly toward the mountains with bags of bread and sausage over their shoulders. Each had also been given a goatskin bag of wine, which was to be consumed sparingly during the crossing. “We go,” Alesander grunted, the first words he’d said since meeting the pilots. He pointed to a narrow road that seemed carved out of the steep side of the mountain ahead. “Follow.”

  Thomas took a deep breath and fell into line. If this was the way home, he was determined to walk it.

  THREE DAYS LATER, THE GROUP arrived on the other side of the Spanish border, freezing and exhausted, having waded across the icy Bidassoa River separating France from Spain. Sometimes, Florentino said, he was able to take pilots over a bridge that spanned the water, but Alesander had gone ahead on this trip and had returned to report that the bridge was being heavily patrolled by Spanish police. Drenched below the waist and standing in an icy field, Thomas was sure he’d never been so cold in all his life.

  They had to stick to the shadows for the remainder of their descent, but they made it undetected. In a small town below, Florentino and Alesander led them to a barn, where they spent the night shivering under thick blankets. They hiked the next day to another town, where they slept in a farmhouse and had a hot meal of potatoes and mutton, and then on their third day in Spain, Florentino and Alesander brought them to a road, where they were picked up by a black car and driven to the coastal town of San Sebastián. From there, a car with Union Jacks drove them to the British embassy in Madrid, where they were heartily welcomed by the vice-consul, given new clothing, and lodged for two days. Thomas slept and ate well, but now that his journey was almost over, he found himself thinking not of how close he was to England but how far he was from Paris.

  Eventually, the pilots were driven to a port in Seville, where a Norwegian ship was waiting to take them to Gibraltar, on the southern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. There was an RAF base there, and Thomas and the others were given new uniforms before being sent on the final leg of their journey: a flight home to Britain. After a few days of questioning in London, Thomas was sent back to Northolt, where not even the sight of Harry was enough to pull him from the depression he’d slipped into.

  “But you’re home, my friend!” Harry said, pulling him into a bear hug. “Do you know the odds that were stacked against you?”

  “I had to make it here,” Thomas replied. “It’s the only way to get back to Paris.”

  “Back to Paris?” Harry chuckled. “I’d have thought you’d want to stick to this side of the Channel for a while. After I was shot down, I was in no great hurry to return to France.”

  Thomas shook his head. “It’s not France I’m eager to return to.” He left it at that, because he’d received very strict instructions that he was never to talk about any piece of the escape line. It was the one condition under which he’d been allowed to resume fighting over French territory, although he knew many returned pilots were now being redeployed to Africa.

  That vow of silence included Ruby, he knew. And so he tucked his memories of her away and vowed never to speak of the time he’d spent in her apartment. What would Harry or the others say, anyhow?

  But it had been real. He was sure of it. And as he was cleared to return to the skies and he began once again escorting bombers into France, he vowed that no matter what, he’d see her again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  May 1942

  Charlotte was very proud of Ruby, but it wasn’t as if she could say that. Thirteen-year-olds didn’t go around telling adults that they were proud of them; it sounded condescending.

  Though Maman and Papa had some idea of what had happened in Ruby’s apartment—how could they not after Maman’s
fall?—they didn’t know that the situation was ongoing. Charlotte spent far too much time watching through the peephole as strange men arrived at night and left a day or two later, but she made a habit of distracting her parents if they ever appeared ready to go out into the hall when it was occupied by Ruby’s visitors. It wasn’t that Charlotte thought she couldn’t trust her parents; it was that she didn’t want one more thing weighing on them. They were already drowning in their worries.

  Papa seemed to grow more frantic by the day, racing out to secret meetings with other men from their synagogue. Charlotte couldn’t decide whether he was taking the Nazi threat seriously or burying his head in the sand. He continuously swore to her that mass deportations couldn’t possibly happen here. Not to them. “Even in the east, the word is that they’re taking away only the riffraff, not the productive members of society. I’m still working, Charlotte. We’re contributing. Everything will be okay.”

  But she didn’t believe him. And what was more, she knew Maman didn’t either. Once strong and solid, Maman had become somebody different since the war started, and that was even more troubling to Charlotte than her father’s increased anxiety. While Papa seemed constantly wound up, her mother was wasting away. She was always sick with worry and malnutrition, and whenever Charlotte tried to comfort her, Maman’s eyes would fog over. “It’ll all be okay, dear,” Maman repeated over and over, a broken record.

  They were treating Charlotte like a child, and she was tired of it. Couldn’t they see that she was just as concerned as they were? That their soothing words felt flimsy? If only she could do something brave to help out in the war effort, the way Ruby was. Then her parents would have to take her seriously. Instead, she was mostly confined to the apartment, a prisoner to her parents’ fears that she could be picked up off the street and taken away without them knowing. Maman had given up on Charlotte’s lessons too. Her only links to the outside world were occasional trips out with Papa, the books in their apartment, and her weekly English lesson with Ruby.