The Secret Agent

by Elisabeth Hobbes

  ‘I think you might have something to tell me. Am I right?’ she asked hesitantly. ‘Is Monique a dog or a person?’

  The girl smiled and rolled up the dog leash. She tucked it under her arm.

  ‘I have a message for Monique. Your Tante Louise would like you to visit her at her house on Rue La Cholière. Do you remember which number she lives at?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sylvie admitted.

  ‘Number twenty-three,’ the girl said. ‘Maman asks, can you visit before tomorrow noon?’

  Sylvie had no idea who the girl’s mother was, or whether the message was even from her mother.

  ‘Of course. Tell your mother I will. Thank you.’

  The girl skipped off without a backward glance.

  Sylvie was elated as she climbed the stairs to her room back at the house. At last, a real job for her to do. She gathered her hat and the slice of tart and knocked on Céline’s door.

  ‘We found the dog,’ she announced. ‘A silly little ball of fluff. It was cowering in a doorway.’

  Fortunately, Céline seemed less interested in the dog than the tart and the hat. No further mention was made as they gossiped and stitched feathers onto their straw hats and ate slivers of cherry tarte.

  Sylvie avoided Felix at the ‘family dinner’ that evening. Two days had passed since their argument, but she still felt a lingering annoyance at him for his suggestions that she would willingly go to bed with Baumann. He seemed happy to ignore her too, even though they sat beside each other at the large, round table over dinner. He spent his time flirting with Céline so overtly that Emily, sitting on Sylvie’s other side, became so sullen she barely said a word.

  Poor Emily! Her love was not only unrequited, but went completely unnoticed. She must not realise how obvious her emotions were, but she had an expressive face that couldn’t mask anything. If her dark blue eyes had been pistols, Céline and Felix would both have been lying dead. Sylvie felt quite sorry for her, remembering how she had writhed in frustration as she had spent nights waiting for Dennis to ask her to marry him. Of course he never had.

  Sylvie ground the end of her baguette into the napkin, then wished she hadn’t because crumbs went everywhere, wasting some of the precious bread.

  ‘Some men are so fragile that they can’t survive unless a woman is paying them attention,’ she whispered to Emily as she scooped up the breadcrumbs and tipped them into her bowl of potage. ‘You’re better off with no man than one like that in your life because as soon as they become accustomed to your adoration, they start looking for it elsewhere.’

  Felix raised his head sharply.

  ‘You are talking from experience?’ he asked. ‘Or is that a general statement of damnation on all men?’

  Sylvie gripped her water glass too tightly. He’d been listening even though he had appeared rapt in what Céline had said, and she hadn’t realised. She was nowhere near as observant as she needed to be, and now he’d pounced on her slip. With his question about whether she had anyone special, she had let him see far too much of her.

  ‘You can decide for yourself whether my judgement on your sex is unfair,’ she muttered.

  There was an uncomfortable silence. Emily toyed with her napkin, Monsieur Julien and Alphonse stopped talking. Even Adele and Estelle, who sat together whispering, looked up.

  ‘Sylvie helped find a dog today,’ Céline said brightly. ‘Tell everyone what happened, Sylvie.’

  Casting her friend a grateful look, Sylvie recounted the tale, elaborating on the description of the fictitious bichon frise.

  ‘She had ever such an amusing name, didn’t she? Madeleine. No, Mariette.’ Céline frowned. ‘Monique! That was it. A dog with a human name.’

  Sylvie felt Felix’s eyes on her. He was the only other person in the room to guess the significance of the name, and she trusted he wasn’t so stupid as to comment on it.

  ‘Some people are strange, I suppose,’ she said lightly. ‘Anyway, the girl found her dog and went home. Can you pass me the wine please, Estelle? We don’t have long before we have to go change for tonight.’

  Estelle passed the wine and conversation resumed, but Sylvie could feel Felix glancing in her direction through the rest of the meal. When it was over, he stood behind her and helped pull her chair out.

  ‘Is there anything I should know or that you need help with?’ he murmured in her ear.

  ‘If you haven’t been contacted, then assume not,’ Sylvie whispered. She gathered the soup bowls and piled them up. ‘I’m not incapable, and I don’t need your help.’

  He looked affronted. ‘I didn’t say you were.’

  ‘No, you didn’t. That was rude of me,’ Sylvie said.

  ‘I accept your apology,’ he said smoothly, inclining his head towards her.

  ‘I didn’t give you one,’ she said.

  He put his lips close to her ear to whisper his answer. ‘Nevertheless, I accept it.’

  He took the bowls from her. His fingers brushed over hers. He’d done it deliberately, she was convinced of it, and it was even more annoying that even though she was irritated by him, his touch still made her quiver. He gave her an exaggerated smile.

  ‘You’d better go get dressed. There will be an audience ready to charm.’

  ‘And you should do the same,’ Sylvie replied. She returned his smile with one she hoped was equally charming. ‘There might be some mice for you to catch.’

  He laughed out loud, dipped his head and sauntered off into the kitchen with the bowls. Sylvie turned to go and saw that both Céline and Emily were waiting in the doorway. They might not have heard the details of the exchange, but they had clearly seen the way Sylvie and Felix had been whispering and would doubtless have drawn their own conclusions about what had been going on. And from their faces, neither of them was very happy about it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Scarborough, England

  1933

  If Sylvie had been asked to describe the exact opposite of Angelique, Maud Crichton would have been the result. She was short with intelligent, grey eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, ruddy cheeks and curly red hair that was tamed into submission by numerous pins. She wore plain, mannish-looking clothes and told Sylvie that she spoke plain sense.

  ‘I read classics at Oxford University,’ she told Sylvie in flawless French. ‘I firmly believe all women are capable of being educated to the highest level.’

  Maud was certainly intelligent. Even without Arthur’s admission of the truth, she was more than capable of doing the arithmetic required to place the Sylvie’s conception after her own engagement. That she was never unkind to Sylvie was something the girl appreciated from the start.

  ‘We’ll start on English lessons tomorrow morning, Sylvia. French will be permitted for an hour each morning and evening, but at mealtimes and all other times, you must speak in English, otherwise you will never learn to communicate.’

  Sylvie toyed with her spoon, pushing the heavy sponge pudding around the dish. It was delicious and unlike anything she had eaten before, but her appetite had gone completely, and she couldn’t force more than a few mouthfuls down.

  It became a world of Don’t, Mustn’t and Can’t.

  Don’t wear your hair like that, it’s far too adult for someone your age and makes you look fast.

  You mustn’t sing those songs; I know what the words mean, even if the other guests don’t.

  And worst of all, No, we can’t go back to France. I am too busy with my charitable causes and your father has his business to attend to.

  Arthur’s business was something to do with accounting. He had left the army after the Great War and returned to the profession he had been doing beforehand. The photographs of him in his smart uniform stood alongside his wedding-day photograph, Arthur dressed in a sober suit while a serious-eyed Maud stood beside him wearing high-collared lace and a veil.

  Sylvie could not imagine the Arthur in those photographs attracting the high-spirited and glamorous A
ngelique, however, one of the acts of kindness that Arthur did the grieving girl in her first months in England was to produce a small crumpled photograph and discreetly give it to Sylvie. Maud was out visiting the Young Mothers’ Welfare group she had established for the poor women of Scarborough, and Arthur appeared at Sylvie’s side when she was struggling over her English lessons.

  ‘I want you to have this, Sylvia,’ he said, speaking in French even though it was not the allocated hour. ‘Keep it safe and please don’t tell Maud of its existence. You’ll see why.’

  Sylvie took it from his outstretched hand, face down. Arthur looked hesitant.

  ‘Maud is doing a good thing bringing you into our house. She is showing you a great kindness, and I would not see her hurt for the world.’

  Sylvie nodded. Despite the rules and strictness, Maud did have a good and generous heart, and Sylvie did not wish to cause her any grief. She took the photograph to her room before looking at it. It was of a younger Arthur, wearing pyjamas and lying in a hospital bed, with one leg raised in some sort of sling contraption. Beside him stood a pretty girl dressed in a stiffly starched nurses’ apron and cap. They were holding hands and gazing at each other with such expressions of love that Sylvie could practically feel the heat in the air between them.

  The girl wore no makeup and the dark waves of her hair were concealed completely, so it took Sylvie a moment to realise she was looking at her mother. She clutched the photograph to her, and tears fell freely. She dabbed them away with a tissue. Crying openly was something else Maud disapproved of, saying a woman could be as emotionally strong as a man and that this sign of emotion was one of the things holding the women of the world back. Nevertheless, Sylvie cried, letting her grief well up and spill over. When her body finally ceased mourning and it felt she had no more liquid in her to expel, she looked at the photograph carefully once more.

  This Angelique was only three or four years older than Sylvie was now. Her face was young and pretty, but her eyes showed a seriousness and determination that was alien to Sylvie. The carefree, lively and flirtatious woman whom Sylvie had always known had somehow managed to rein in her impulsiveness well enough that she could become the serious creature caring for injured men in a battlefield hospital.

  She put the photograph safely with the only other one she had of Angelique – a publicity shot for Les Filles Luciole of her mother onstage, dressed in a flowing gown with a train of feathers, showing most of her shapely legs. The two images could not have been more different, and seeing them side by side gave Sylvie unexpected hope. If Angelique could emerge from the plain cocoon of starched aprons and caps to become the brilliant butterfly Sylvie had known all her life, then she too could burst free from the restrictive English life at some point and return to the one she had known and loved.

  When Maud and Arthur decided that Sylvie had learned enough English to be able to attend school, they sat side by side and explained the plan to her over Sunday lunch.

  ‘By boarding you will learn how English girls behave, Sylvia. You will pick up the language much more easily and make friends of your own age. It is better than living with only Maud and I for company,’ her father explained.

  ‘The Mount is an excellent school, Sylvia, and York is a fascinating city. I attended it myself, and from there I secured a place at university,’ added her stepmother.

  Sylvie accepted the decision eagerly. ‘It will be almost like being back with the women in The Firefly Girls,’ she explained.

  ‘Not quite like that, I hope,’ Arthur said.

  ‘But they provide for extracurricular classes. You could have ballet lessons as you like to dance,’ Maud added kindly.

  Sylvie dressed in her own stiff uniform of pinafore, blazer and straw hat to travel to York. She had packed the two photographs into her suitcase to take with her.

  She didn’t dislike the school, but after assuming the glut of female company would be reminiscent of The Firefly Girls, she discovered she was mistaken. Her tales of life in the theatres and clubs, and the varied people she had known, were met with raised eyebrows and scandalised giggles from her classmates and stern rebukes from the staff. The two precious photographs lay concealed in the frame behind one of Sylvie, Arthur and Maud underneath the whalebones at Whitby. Sylvie couldn’t see them, but it was enough to know they were there.

  Her father and stepmother had insisted on calling her Sylvia, as if this somehow changed who she was. She would answer to it, but in her heart she remained Sylvie. This was her cocoon and one day she too would burst free from it as Angelique had done.

  Nantes, France

  1944

  To make matters more awkward for Sylvie, Baumann arrived at the club at the beginning of the evening. As soon as the door was unlocked, he walked through in the company of a group of other young men in uniform and sat at the table closest to the stage. He was right within Sylvie’s eyeline from the stage as the girls began their first dance. Three bars in, he managed to catch her eye and gave her an awkward grin. His shyness was quite endearing. She flashed him a brilliant smile back, which caused his friends to guffaw and dig him in the ribs. Unfortunately, Felix caught it and he gave her such a withering look of contempt that she lost count of the beats and almost missed a spin.

  With both men there, she did not feel happy, especially because Felix knew about Baumann and that Marcel had been ambivalent about her encouraging him. It meant that when the first set was over and the German called her over to his table, she was conscious of Felix’s eyes on her as she adjusted the strap of her dress and took a seat. She remained conscious of him moving among the tables, working his charm on various female patrons even as she was introduced to Baumann’s friends. Valter, Nikki and Valter Hoch (which was not his surname but apparently meant ‘tall’, to distinguish him from his shorter friend, Baumann explained). Valter and Nikki were both Unteroffiziers, which would make them corporals, and Tall Valter was an Unterwachtmeister the equivalent to a sergeant.

  ‘You danced well,’ Baumann said.

  ‘Thank you, Herr Baumann. I’m learning the routines now,’ Sylvie replied. In truth, they weren’t hard to learn. She spent a lot of her free time choreographing more complex and interesting ones that she hoped to suggest as possibilities.

  ‘Please, call me Dieter,’ Baumann said. ‘Let me pour you some champagne,’ he said as Alphonse the waiter brought over a bottle and five wide-rimmed coupes.

  Sylvie raised her eyebrows. Mirabelle did not sell the highest quality, but even the smallest and cheapest bottle would have cost more than she could afford.

  ‘It is my birthday,’ Baumann explained, seeing her surprise. ‘It is an extravagance, but one my friends are happy to pay for.’

  ‘In that case I accept, and happy birthday, Dieter,’ Sylvie said, emphasising his name.

  Dieter filled a coupe and passed it to her. He and his friends raised theirs and drank. Sylvie took a sip and sighed appreciatively as the cold, tangy fizz filled her nose and slipped down her throat. She’d had champagne before, on her twenty-first birthday, and it was every bit as delicious as she remembered.

  ‘Lovely. Thank you.’

  Nikki said something in rapid German, his face a wide grin. Sylvie couldn’t understand all of it, but caught the word kosten and vögeln.

  Cost and fuck.

  There was an embarrassed silence. The two Valters looked intently at their drinks. Baumann went red. The meaning was clear. Nikki looked around, hands up and a bemused look on his face. Sylvie put the champagne coupe down and pushed her chair back. Dieter shook his head apologetically, but before he could speak, Felix appeared at the table. He put one hand on the back of Nikki’s chair and leaned forward ever so slightly. He spoke quietly, in fluent German. He smiled all the time, but his eyes were hard. Nikki made a move to stand up, but Dieter put a hand out and stopped him. Felix gestured to Monsieur Julien, who was watching from the bar, and Nikki settled down.

  ‘Glück an deinem geburtstag,�
�� Felix said to Dieter.

  He walked away. As soon as he had disappeared behind the curtains, Nikki drained his glass, slammed it down and stood.

  ‘There are better women elsewhere,’ he sneered and stormed out.

  Adele and Céline appeared at the table and laughingly pulled the two Valters onto the dancefloor, leaving Sylvie and Dieter alone.

  ‘What did Felix say?’ Sylvie asked.

  ‘Did you understand what Nikki said?’ His cheeks were brick red.

  ‘Some of the words.’

  ‘The piano player told Nikki that he had got the wrong idea about this club, and the women who work here. He said also that even though we are occupying your country, we should not assume we get to have your women.’

  Sylvie drew a shaky breath. What was Felix thinking of speaking to an officer in such a way?

  ‘I don’t want there to be trouble,’ she said.

  ‘There won’t be, at least not for your piano player. Tall Valter is Nikki’s superior officer and will speak to him tomorrow. He doesn’t have sisters like Valter and I have, and sometimes he forgets how to respect women.’

  Sylvie looked towards the dancefloor where Tall Valter was dancing with Céline, towering over her. His hands were roving across her back and his face wore a look of surprised delight. The dancefloor was filling up with couples.

  ‘I would like it very much if you would dance with me,’ Dieter said.

  Sylvie needed to change into her dress for the second half of the evening, but he had been abandoned by his friends on his birthday.

  ‘How old are you today?’ she asked.

  ‘Seven and twenty.’

  He looked younger. Sylvie was struck again by the innocence that seemed to radiate from him.

  ‘I’d like to dance too,’ she said.

  She let him take her by the hand and lead the way to the dancefloor. Dieter put one hand on her waist and took hold of her hand and they began to dance the Java. After his shy manner and awkwardness around her, Sylvia had unfairly assumed he would be poor at dancing, but surprisingly he had good rhythm, and she found herself enjoying dancing with him. Céline caught her eye and gave her a wink as they passed, spinning in the arms of their partners. For a few minutes, she allowed herself to get lost in the music and the beat, unconcerned by the fact that by spending time in his company, she was running the risk of her true identity being discovered.