The Secret Agent

by Elisabeth Hobbes

  Sylvie’s heart lurched. She buried her nose in the cup. ‘He’s nice to look at but rude.’

  Céline yawned. Sylvie noticed her posture was beginning to loosen and she was slumping into the chair. Sylvie gave a huge yawn herself. It was important Céline did not suspect why she was suddenly becoming tired, or that she was alone. It was maddening that they had only just begun to discuss Felix but now she had to bring the conversation to an end before Céline collapsed in the armchair for the night.

  ‘I feel so tired. I should go to bed now,’ Sylvie said. ‘I think the chamomile is making me sleepy. You can take yours with you and give me the cup back tomorrow.’

  ‘No need,’ Céline said. She drained the rest of the wine and stood, wobbling slightly. ‘Oh dear, I feel tired too. Is this what running in the rain does to us?’

  The two girls clutched each other and giggled. Even without drugs in the wine, Sylvie’s nerves were so stretched that she was more lightheaded than she would be on such a small cup of wine. Céline dropped her head onto Sylvie’s shoulder and gazed up with heavy-lidded eyes.

  ‘Do you know Adele and Estelle are lovers? They think no one knows, but I saw them kissing once.’ She brushed her lips over Sylvie’s cheek. ‘Do you think kissing a woman is different to kissing a man?’

  Sylvie leaned back. This was definitely something she did not need to deal with now.

  ‘I don’t think I care to find out, thank you, Céline.’

  Céline giggled and allowed Sylvie to escort her onto the landing. She patted Sylvie’s arm and leaned in.

  ‘You should go to bed with Felix. He’s a good lover. Very…’ She raised her hands, holding them some distance apart, and giggled. Her voice was beginning to slur more obviously. ‘I think your German would be too scared to touch you with the lights on. I don’t think you’ve ever been made love to well.’

  ‘Yes I have,’ Sylvie said, a little shocked at the intimacy of Céline’s announcement. ‘I just don’t like to talk about it. Why do you think that?’

  ‘I’ve seen the way you dance. You want to be expressive, but you hold back.’

  Sylvie manoeuvred Céline onto her bed, said goodnight, and went back to her own room. She sat on her bed hugging her knees, listening to the rain hammering down. Out in the darkness, windows were being broken and locks were being forced. Men were risking their lives. Felix would be waiting with rifle at the ready.

  Sylvie lay back, picturing the intensity of his gaze when he was deep in thought that always made her heart stir. Had she ever truly lost herself in passion? Dennis had always turned the light off before undressing, and even in daytime, he had drawn the curtains when they made love so they were in semi-darkness. It had been exciting at first, but as it went on, there had been an air of caution to it.

  She wished she had never brought Felix’s name into the conversation because Céline had effectively given her blessing; the balance between restraint and temptation was tipping firmly one way.

  The alarm clock vibrated, waking Sylvie with a jolt. In the silence, it sounded desperately loud. She reached her hand under the pillow to where it was hidden and muffled it. She had never believed she would be able to sleep with the anticipation and nerves, but by two in the morning, she had felt her eyelids drooping and had decided to close her eyes for a moment. How fortunate that she had put the clock beneath her pillow because she had slipped into a heavy sleep, no doubt helped by the wine.

  She was dressed, so it took seconds to slip on a dark sweater and her slippers. She tiptoed downstairs, remembering to avoid the middle of each step, which had a tendency to creak. The sleeping powder should keep Céline knocked out until morning and Madame Giraud was practically deaf, but it was still unnerving to be sneaking around. She reached the front door without awakening anybody at four minutes past five.

  She sat on the doorstep and shivered in the grey light of the morning. The rain had eased to a fine mist. It was colder than she had expected given how hot the previous day had been, and she wished she had brought a blanket to wrap herself in.

  Presently a figure slunk into view, dressed in dark trousers and a sweater. He had a beret pulled down forward over his face. She thought at first it was Felix, and her heart skipped a beat.

  ‘Duchene?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The stranger tossed her a rolled-up newspaper tied with string, then hurried off. Sylvie crept back to her room, not at ease until she had closed her door behind her. She stuffed the roll into the biscuit tin and put that in a string bag, then hid it outside the window. Satisfied with her work, she felt the weight of tension drop from her shoulders. It was twenty-two minutes past five. She put on her pyjamas, went back to bed and slept more peacefully than she had for many nights.

  A knocking woke her from a dream. She had been in England, waltzing with Dennis until he had told her he needed to go and play the piano in London to earn food tokens. The fug of sleep cleared and she remembered where she was. Céline was at the door, looking grumpy. She pushed her hair back from her cheeks and winced.

  ‘You too, Sylvie? My head feels awful. It’s almost eleven and I only woke up about ten minutes ago! What did we drink last night?’

  Sylvie wanted to laugh with relief. It seemed Céline didn’t suspect there was any reason out of the ordinary why she had slept so well. She ran her fingers through her own hair, which still had a couple of grips in the roll at the front, and leaned against the door.

  ‘I don’t know how I could have slept this long. My head feels awful too. I don’t ever want to smell chamomile again!’ She opened the door wider. ‘Let’s have some coffee. Even chicory will taste better than that horrible cocktail we drank last night!’

  Chapter Twenty

  Marcel’s trailer, laden with tins, was parked outside Mirabelle when Sylvie arrived. The windowsills were now smooth and glossy black. Monsieur Julien had brought a stool outside and was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette as he watched the painter at work. Beside him was propped a bicycle with a wire basket on the front that looked so old it could have found a home among the exhibits in the British Museum.

  ‘My friend here has persuaded me to employ him.’ Monsieur Julien puffed at his cigarette. ‘He says it is for the greater good of our cause. I say it costs me money, but there we go.’

  He flicked his cigarette end into the gutter and went inside. Sylvie took his place on the stool.

  ‘I’ve brought you a gift,’ Marcel said, indicating the bicycle. He leaned down beside Sylvie to load more paint onto his brush. ‘Is the delivery safe?’

  ‘Perfectly. No one will find it unless they search my room inside and out.’

  Marcel grunted and started to paint over the wooden boards covering the glass.

  ‘Maybe I’ll do a mural here. Dancing girls like our faded beauty on the sign. Tomorrow afternoon, take it to Tomas Julien’s shop. He’ll be expecting you.’

  His switch of subject confused Sylvie momentarily. She pictured arriving at the butcher’s shop with the sign from the club. Marcel grinned when she explained.

  ‘It takes a while to get used to subterfuge and keeping so many thoughts in your head. When this is all over and we’re back home, we must meet and you can tell me how you got into this business.’

  Back home. There was a thing. Her room and the club felt more like home after a few short weeks than Arthur and Maud’s house ever had. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to go back. Even with the threat of exposure and capture hanging over her head, she was more alive than she had been for years.

  ‘You mentioned at Madame Barbe’s house that Monsieur Julien lets you place agents in his club. Is there another agent I don’t know about? Felix hasn’t told me anything.’

  She hoped the slight heat that washed over her at Felix’s name didn’t manifest into a blush on her cheeks.

  ‘Felix wouldn’t. His loyalty is absolute.’ Marcel said. ‘Though in this case, he did not know of her identity. My woman was the dancer you replaced.’


  Sylvie blinked. ‘Marie-Elaine? She fell pregnant, I believe.’

  Marcel frowned and continued to paint the window, not looking at Sylvie. ‘She didn’t fall pregnant – that was just the excuse she gave so her leaving Mirabelle would not be questioned. She had become a little careless and attracted the attention of the milice. She was taken for questioning and brazened it out, but it shook her nerves too much. I thought it wise to withdraw her before she was arrested and revealed who she really was. I arranged a route for her as far as Lyon – the network there would have helped her reach Switzerland and from there to England.’

  ‘Would have?’

  Marcel laid down his paintbrush and shook his head.

  ‘She never arrived in Lyon. I hope one day I will hear from her, but…’

  Sylvie grew cold thinking about it. Marie-Elaine would have known and accepted the risks when she joined SOE, as Sylvie had, but it meant the authorities were aware that the Resistance were working in Nantes.

  ‘You didn’t think to tell me this?’

  Marcel shrugged.

  ‘It happens. Perhaps I should have warned you. Would it have changed anything you have done?’

  Sylvie bit her lip. Confidences over wine with Céline. Emily’s probing questions. It was always possible one of the staff might have informed the milice. She might have been more wary if she had thought officials had already been interested in the club.

  ‘Does Felix know who Marie-Elaine really was?’ she asked.

  ‘No. I only took him into my confidence that you would be arriving because I had to leave Nantes. As far as anyone at Mirabelle knows, Marie-Elaine left in disgrace when she discovered her pregnancy and went back to her village. If there is anyone who knows differently, they are keeping it close to their chest.’

  Sylvie thought back to the first day she had danced and the conversation that had taken place around the table with the other women.

  ‘The other girls think Monsieur Julien is the father of Marie-Elaine’s baby,’ she told Marcel. ‘It doesn’t seem fair on him.’

  ‘He knows, and he finds it highly amusing,’ Marcel said. He leaned in close. ‘In these dark times, it is good for a man like Antoine to be connected intimately with any woman, if you understand what I mean. It alleviates suspicion of a different kind.’

  A man like Antoine. It took Sylvie a moment to understand his meaning.

  ‘He’s a homosexual?’

  ‘Here and now is not a time to be indiscreet,’ Marcel said darkly.

  ‘I’m not shocked. Or disapproving,’ Sylvie added. ‘I knew other men of that inclination when I toured with my mother in the cabarets and theatres.’

  Marcel cocked his head at the painted sign with the dancing woman on it. ‘You might like to ask Antoine how he came to own so many elaborate costumes.’

  ‘He was Mirabelle?’

  Marcel’s mouth twitched. ‘I have never asked why he chose that name but I believe mirabelles are small, sweet plums that one can fit in the mouth whole.’

  ‘That’s so rude!’ Sylvie laughed in delight. ‘Antoine was a female impersonator! I really would not have guessed. Well, I should be going in. It is my turn to cook the family dinner.’

  She went up to the kitchen and began to assemble what she could of a cassoulet, slicing the sausages thinly so that everyone would be sure to get a few pieces and stirring them in the pot with chicken bones and haricot beans that had been soaking overnight. By the time the meal was ready, the rest of the staff had appeared and the apartment was filled with bustle. Monsieur Julien joined Sylvie in the kitchen, adding dried herbs to the pot. Sylvie proposed her new dance routine ideas, which he received enthusiastically.

  ‘Perhaps we could alter some of the costumes upstairs,’ she suggested. ‘Your costumes, I mean.’

  ‘Our friend Marcel has a loose tongue,’ he sighed. ‘Yes, I suppose I have no use for them any longer. Those days are gone and even if they return, my figure is not what it was. Take them with my blessing, my child.’

  He picked up the wine and carried it out with a slightly theatrical flourish. Sylvie followed with the iron pot and placed it down on the table. As they ate, she glanced around her. Adele and Estelle, side by side as always, two blonde heads bowed in conversation and what Sylvie now knew was more than friendship. Monsieur Julien with his inclinations kept secret. Céline flirting with Alphonse in her customary carefree manner. Felix, for once, sitting beside Emily. She was fretting over a vibrant coloured bruise that he sported on the side of his face in quite an intrusive manner, but he seemed to be accepting her fussing with good humour and more tolerance than he usually did.

  And there sat Sylvie among them, laughing at the jokes and joining in the songs, demonstrating new dance steps to the beat of forks on cups, all the time with her real identity hidden. And it was so easily hidden now. Cool, cautious Sylvia Crichton, buried deep beneath the Sylvie she felt she could always have been. Might have been if she had not been taken from France to England.

  These people had become her family. She was accepted as one of them. She wondered what other secrets were being kept and what the future might hold for them, whichever side of the conflict triumphed. And what would become of Sylvie herself? She had twice given everything up and started a new life, and this one would be hardest to give up of all.

  They finished eating, and Felix and Monsieur Julien began to clear everything away. Sylvie pulled her silver compact out of her bag and checked her hair.

  ‘Oh,’ Emily said, wandering over. ‘Did you find that in the bibelot box?’

  ‘It was a present from my godfather. Which box would it be in?’

  ‘In the cupboard beneath the stairs. Monsieur Julien puts everything customers lose in there in case they come back. Hair slides, handkerchiefs, that sort of thing. If enough time passes without anyone claiming them, he lets us have them. I saw the compact three or four weeks ago and meant to take it because it was so pretty, but when I looked it had gone.’

  ‘It definitely wasn’t this one.’ Sylvie briefly showed it to Emily, then closed the lid and slid the compact into her bag. Emily’s gaze followed it.

  ‘One of the others must have taken it,’ Emily said with a disappointed glance at Sylvie’s compact. ‘Or the owner must have come back.’

  Sylvie went down to the dressing room thoughtfully. She could only think of one person who might have a compact like that. The missing SOE agent, Marie-Elaine. She hoped Marie-Elaine had taken it before she fled and that before too long she would appear safely in Lyon.

  Sylvie delivered the package containing the food tokens to Tomas Julien’s butcher shop as the shop was closing for the afternoon. She was greeted at the door by a large young man who was in the process of sluicing out the shop floor with a pail of water and a mop. He wore an expression that suggested the task needed a lot of concentration.

  ‘The butcher is my father,’ the man said slowly, in response to Sylvie’s query about the whereabouts of the butcher. His voice was ponderous and it seemed to take him a long time to consider what the correct reply was. ‘I will go now and bring my father to you. Don’t touch my mop. It is mine.’

  Sylvie promised not to, and the son lumbered off inside. Tomas duly arrived and Sylvie handed over the parcel. He was very like his brother, Antoine, though built on a larger frame with less elegance of movement.

  ‘I’ll see these get to where they need to be,’ he said. He gave Sylvie a parcel in exchange, wrapped in brown paper and string.

  ‘Three trotters and a rabbit. Don’t ask where they came from but give them to Antoine with my compliments and tell Marcel yes to tomorrow night.’

  Sylvie gingerly placed the parcel in the basket of her bicycle. She had intended to spend the afternoon in bed trying to catch up on sleep, but the day was uncomfortably hot, with no clouds to give respite from the baking sun. She didn’t relish the thought of the meat warming on her table at home. The trotters could sit in a pan of cold water in the
kitchen at the club until the following day before needing to be dealt with.

  When she arrived at the club, Marcel was outside again. He had made good on his promise of painting a dancer on the blacked-out window. Felix was leaning against the bollard at the end of the alley, chatting and observing the progress.

  ‘Here’s the muse herself,’ Marcel said as Sylvie leaned her bicycle against the drainpipe.

  She stood back and examined Marcel’s handiwork, struck by how good an artist he was. The woman on the window did look a little like her, though more curvaceous and with a sultry expression and pout that promised all sorts of delights were on offer. She seemed to be finding it hard to keep the strap of her dress up too as it had slipped over one shoulder, so the black, slinky dress was held up by the jutting of her breast alone.

  ‘Very flattering!’ she remarked drily.

  ‘You missed her glare,’ Felix said, laughing. He left his position by the wall and came to stand at her side. ‘This Sylvie looks as if she actually likes people rather than pretends to. She’s smiling.’ He put his hand on his heart and gave her a look of mock distress. ‘She never does that to me.’

  Sylvie couldn’t help grinning. Playfully, she put her hands on Felix’s shoulders, noticing how his body tensed at her touch. He was wearing the cologne Sylvie liked.

  ‘Don’t tell me to smile. Give me a reason to do it,’ she said in a breathy, seductive voice, catching another hint of the cologne. As his eyes widened, she dropped her hands and stepped back.

  ‘I have a bag of pigs’ trotters from Tomas that really needs to be dealt with. There is a message too, Marcel. He says yes to tomorrow night.’

  ‘Good. I think I’ll watch the show tomorrow. Felix tells me you are rather good.’

  She left them to continue their conversation and went up to the kitchen. The club was deserted and silent aside from faint strains of forbidden jazz floating down the stairwell from Monsieur Julien’s apartment.