The Girl from Vichy

by Andie Newton

As much as I hated to admit it, she was right about the punishment. ‘What are you thinking?’ I expected her to say I’d have to do lavatory duty for the week.

  Marguerite walked to Mother’s coat closet and grabbed a shiny brass hanger that wasn’t being used. She turned on her heel, slapping the hanger into the palm of her hand as if she was about to whack something good—a book, a chair—I didn’t know what.

  Then she looked at me.

  7

  My hands curled up in to my chest, wearing them like a vest. ‘No!’ I said, but Marguerite shook her head and walked slowly toward me.

  ‘The girls will have a tough time believing you didn’t get expelled as it is. At the very least they’ll expect some whipped knuckles.’ She slapped that damn hanger into her palm.

  I took a deep breath, wondering what Papa would think if he knew what I had become: a résistant, about to let a woman whip my hand with a hanger. Mama would wonder why I let her do it when I had a perfectly good arm to do it myself, especially after Marguerite had already swatted me with a switch.

  I snatched the hanger away from Marguerite. ‘I’ll do it.’

  Marguerite folded her arms, watching me as I drew the hanger high into the air. I winced, pausing, before whacking my hand once. ‘Ouch!’ I cried, doing a little hop, and Marguerite held in a laugh.

  She found a bandage in one of Mother’s desk drawers. ‘Here,’ Marguerite said, hiding a smile. ‘Now, you better get back to the girls.’

  She saw me to the bottom of the stairs, but then disappeared down a dark corridor without saying goodbye. I walked back to the basement. A buzzing silence swept through the room. Claire kept her head down, turning slowly away from me as I shuffled to my cot. Others made quick glances at my bandaged hand before making busy work, tucking in bed linens and gathering up laundry. I hissed in pain for effect.

  My bed had been made, the wool blanket Marguerite had thrown on the floor tucked tight under the cot’s thin mattress. Mavis sat on her bed with her Bible placed squarely in her lap.

  ‘Can you look after the girls today?’ I said.

  She took a hard look at my bandaged hand before nodding.

  I fell asleep after Mavis gathered up the girls and left. Thunder rolling over the meadow behind the castle woke me in the afternoon, and rain, lots of it, some spitting through an open window. I started to worry about the delinquents out in such a storm when a handful of them rushed into the room giggling, chatting about the rain, their feet sloshing around in their wet summer shoes.

  Mavis herded them from behind, her voice barely able to rise above theirs, telling them to gather their journals and reflect on the messages God had given them throughout the day. Claire knelt next to my cot and whispered softly.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  She looked at my hand, eyebrows raised. ‘Because of what happened with Marguerite.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, though it did hurt. ‘May take a few days to heal.’

  ‘You didn’t get expelled. I’m glad.’ Claire smiled.

  ‘Just punished,’ I said.

  ‘I was worried sick, wondering what was going on in Mother’s office. Then when you came back… well… I’m just going to say it. I’m sorry for being aloof. I thought I was next.’

  ‘I told you before, Claire. This is between me and Marguerite. You’re safe.’

  Claire sighed, lowering her head. ‘I can’t go back home. My father’s in prison somewhere, and my mother—’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry. It’s over.’

  With that, Claire popped up with a smile and sat next to me. ‘It sure was fun, though. Breaking into her chamber. I haven’t felt that kind of excitement in a long time.’

  ‘I thought you were scared?’

  ‘I was!’ she said. ‘That’s what made it so thrilling.’ She bounced on the edge of my cot. ‘Let’s play a game!’ She smoothed her wet hair over one shoulder and played with the drippy ends. ‘It’s raining out—what else can we do? I mean, other than pray.’

  ‘No game,’ I said. ‘I’m not in the mood.’

  Claire patted my shoulder, her lips slimmed into a thin, apologetic smile. ‘I understand.’ Then she rushed to the opposite side of the room and joined two other girls gathered around a table dealing cards to each other.

  Mavis sat on her cot, her hair strung across her face in wet strands, ringing out her wet postulant’s veil. She seemed out of breath, and her eyes had lost their glow. I asked her if she was all right, and she fell backward onto her cot and lay there like a slug. ‘These girls are a handful.’

  I smiled, watching and listening to them. ‘I suppose they’re better than children. Toddlers, that sort of thing.’

  Mavis used her elbows to prop herself up, looking very confused. ‘Do you have children?’

  I laughed. ‘What would make you think that?’

  ‘I’m not sure. You’ve talked about men before…’ Her eyes rolled to the back of her head, and she collapsed onto her cot again. ‘I must have misunderstood you.’ The rain had picked up and sounded like a million tree frogs jumping on the cobblestones outside. ‘Children are a blessing,’ she breathed from her pillow.

  Charlotte. I sighed. She must be close to having her baby, if she hadn’t delivered already. I wondered what she’d say if she knew I had joined the Résistance—she wouldn’t like it, supporting Pétain as much as Papa, but still, I had to wonder what she’d think about me being part of a group who did powerful things.

  Mavis sat up again, giving me a very strange look.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I heard you sigh.’

  ‘Oh, that,’ I said. ‘I’m just thinking about my sister,’ I said, but then caught myself from elaborating further. I smiled.

  ‘Mmm,’ Mavis said, lips pressed.

  The girls danced around in circles with locked arms, giggling, slapping their wet braids on each other as if they were towels from the bath. Sister Mary-Francis brought in a tray of kettles filled to the brim with steaming hot consommé, which warmed the room with humidity. Mavis and I moved in close, joining a handful of girls who had poured the soup into chipped porcelain mugs that looked more like bowls. Claire, seeing us gathered in a circle sipping something hot, put down her cards mid-hand and joined us.

  Mavis’s slurp sounded like her voice, and I kept glancing at her to see if she was talking until finally, she did. ‘We never see rain like this in Aix.’

  ‘Is that where you’re from?’ I said.

  She nodded, licking her lips. ‘Where are you from, Adèle?’

  ‘Yes, where are you from?’ Claire said, followed by another girl, and when I paused, several more girls joined in. ‘Tell us! Tell us!’

  I gulped a mouthful of consommé. Our conversation happened so quickly, so easily, and I wasn’t prepared to answer such details. Marguerite had warned me not to say too much about where I was from, who I was, and I had already talked about having a sister. I slurped more consommé to buy some time, but spilled some on my dress from a sudden shake of my hands.

  I shot up. ‘Damn!’

  Mavis laughed softly. ‘That doesn’t sound like a good place.’

  The girls giggled when Mavis joked. I sighed, setting my mug down, hoping that would be the end of Mavis’s questions, but she pressed on.

  ‘Are you from Lyon, Adèle?’

  I patted my dress dry. ‘Paris,’ I blurted, and as soon as I said where my story fell into place—Mama spent her summers on a farm just north of Paris when she was a girl; that place was as good as any. ‘A village on the outskirts. I could tell you the name, but you wouldn’t know it. Lots of cows… dairy farms.’

  Mavis blew into her mug. ‘Paris,’ she said to herself. ‘Dairy.’

  ‘Well, where is everyone else from?’ I wanted to get the attention off me, and pointed to each girl with my eyes, but nobody seemed interested enough to answer, except Victoria, the girl with the chicken legs and ginger hair,
who sat up just slightly and moved the mug away from her mouth.

  ‘I’m from Colmar.’

  All conversation stopped. Victoria looked around. Claire stood up. Girls who had been sipping consommé set down their mugs; others sat still, everyone suddenly very interested. Colmar was a French border city in the Occupied Zone with a long history of having more Germans in it than French. And although we didn’t talk about it, nobody wanted to be friends with a German, even a mixed one.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Victoria said.

  ‘Are you German?’ Claire asked.

  ‘Claire!’ I shouted.

  Victoria squinted. ‘How dare you`!’ she said to Claire.

  ‘You’re from Colmar,’ Claire said. ‘What else am I to think?’

  An eerie stillness hung in the room. Rain ticked the ground outside and against the windowpane. Our eyes swung like pendulums between Claire and Victoria, watching them as they stared at each other in utter silence.

  ‘You. Think. Nothing.’ Victoria’s lips thinned.

  ‘Girls,’ Mavis said in her squeaky little voice. ‘We’re all in this together. God’s work, in God’s house.’ She smiled, and a twinkle set deep in her eyes lit up the dark, dank room as if they were lanterns, but none of the girls were paying attention to notice.

  ‘Listen to Mavis, girls,’ I said. ‘Let’s not talk about the war, the Germans. The convent is too nice and good to bring up such terrible things.’

  Nods and a few noises came from the girls, but Victoria and Claire remained locked on each other in a blink-less stare. Victoria’s hands curled into balls, and then in one quick motion she jumped from her seat and lunged at Claire. Girls shrieked, hands to their cheeks, scattering in every direction while I held Victoria back, keeping her from hitting Claire with one of her white-hot fists. Mugs rolled around on the ground, clinking and clanking against each other, spilling the girls’ consommé on the floor. Claire lay on her back, her hands and feet searching the ground for leverage, her face stretching like dough.

  ‘Victoria!’ I yelled, and she froze, her breath rumbling through her nose and throat like a muffler on a banged-up car. ‘This is not the answer.’ I couldn’t remember why Victoria had come to rehabilitation, but I guessed it had something to do with crime and penitence by the look in her eye and the strength in her lean, muscly arms.

  Sister Mary-Francis stood near the stairwell against the stone wall watching the scene unfold, her black habit camouflaging her body against the dark stones. I tried not to look at her and kept my eyes on the girls, as distracting as her willingness to do nothing seemed.

  ‘We’ve all suffered in this war. And those sufferings most likely played a part in what brought you here.’ I slowly pulled my stiff arm away from Victoria’s chest, just to see if she’d back off from Claire on her own. ‘Bashing Claire’s face in isn’t a remedy to heal old wounds.’

  Victoria’s shoulders relaxed and her breathing calmed. Then she burst into tears. I patted her on the back, and she latched on to me much like a young child would. Claire sat down on someone else’s cot, the terror in her face giving way to relief, before curling up into a ball and wrapping herself up in blankets.

  ‘We’re all here for different reasons,’ I announced, ‘and from different places.’

  ‘Why are you here?’ Victoria asked between sobs. ‘You’re not taking vows like the postulants.’

  Mavis bobbed up from the floor, sopping up spilt consommé with linens from the closet, as if trying to listen to what I’d say. I felt a shiver; suddenly everyone in the convent looked and sounded suspicious, even the girls who’d retired to writing in their journals.

  ‘Adèle?’ Sister Mary-Francis stepped into the light. ‘Would you help me?’

  Victoria got up to brush her wet hair out with a wooden comb while I piled dirty mugs and kettles onto the sister’s tray. ‘Thank you, Adèle,’ she said, and I followed her up the narrow stairwell to the kitchen, carrying the tray.

  ‘You handled that argument beautifully,’ she said.

  ‘Argument? Victoria had her fists clenched, Sister.’

  She stopped under one of the wrought-iron sconces bolted into the stone wall, its drippy, low-burning candle flickering yellowed light onto our faces. ‘Fight, I should say. At any rate, you handled the situation. You’re very good with them, Adèle.’

  ‘Thank you, Sister.’

  ‘I can take things from here.’ She slipped a piece of paper into my hand as she took the tray.

  ‘Sister?’ I said, but she had turned and charged up the stairs.

  The candle on the wall crackled. A message. I unfolded it quickly in the passageway. Meet at lights out, south stairs. Before I could think, I heard a noise down below—a scuffling of shoes against the cold stone steps.

  ‘Hallo?’ A moment passed in complete silence before I heard the panicked traipse of footsteps retreating down the stairs. ‘Who’s there?’ The door closed below. ‘Hallo?’

  8

  I dunked the note into a pool of hot candle wax and ran downstairs. I fixed my hair moments before opening the door, tucking loose strands back into the bun at the base of my head. Victoria was still gazing at her freckly face in the mirror, humming a strange tune and shaking water from her comb. Her eyes shifted to mine when I paused in the doorway.

  I flashed a quick smile. Mavis sat on her cot reading her Bible and Claire was still curled up on her bed. ‘Was that you I heard on the stairs?’ I said to Victoria, but she had gone back to combing her hair. ‘Victoria?’ I said, and she looked at me. ‘Was it you?’

  ‘What’s that, mademoiselle?’

  Hearing Victoria’s voice, Mavis had looked up and so had Claire. Then another girl from across the room stood up.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, my voice catching. ‘Never mind.’

  After dinner, I ordered the girls to bed early if only because I was nervous about the late-night meeting. ‘Lights out,’ I said, clapping at them.

  Victoria watched Claire from her cot, eating tree nuts she’d gathered from the garden the day before. Mavis watched Claire, and Claire looked at me, the crack and snap of nuts grinding between Victoria’s teeth.

  ‘Lights out means no eating,’ I said to her, and she stuffed her nuts away and flopped onto her pillow.

  ‘Finally!’ Claire said, and Victoria shot up, popping a nut in her mouth and chomping much louder than anyone ever should.

  ‘Enough!’ I said, ‘Mother will have both of you on toilet duty as it is. You want there to be more? Look at my hand, girls!’ I said, and that seemed to end it.

  My mind was a flurry, lying in bed waiting for the girls to fall asleep, wondering what secret kind of meeting Marguerite had planned. Then somewhere in between the fantastical thoughts of Marguerite giving me a gun, and thinking about Mother’s gorgeous long, blonde hair, I fell asleep.

  Marguerite pounced on me in the dark covering my mouth, and my heart leapt from my chest. ‘You fell asleep,’ she hissed. ‘Get up!’

  I rolled out of bed, and we snuck down the corridors through the empty, dark convent, and all the way to the south stairs. She stopped at a door I thought was a closest. ‘What are we doing?’ I whispered, and she opened the door. Though instead of opening to a closet, the door opened to another staircase, one that went down and down and down. Flickering light shone at the bottom. Marguerite pointed, and I did what she asked.

  The room was small and damp and smelled like the sewer. More like a prison nobody used, or had forgotten about, with two spindly chairs, a table with some metal instruments on it, and candles. Lots and lots of candles.

  Marguerite followed me downstairs after locking the door behind her.

  ‘Smells awful in here,’ I said, plugging my noise. ‘Worse than the toilets.’

  ‘You failed,’ Marguerite said. She walked to the table and picked through the metal instruments. ‘I asked you to meet me at lights out, yet you didn’t show up.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to,’ I said.
/>   ‘Tell that to someone when it counts.’

  The longer she stood at the table, picking through the instruments, the more I realized she had something serious planned, something other than seeing if I’d make the rendezvous on time. I held my hand, tightening the bandage. ‘What are you going to do to me?’

  She looked over her shoulder, smiling. ‘Nothing.’

  I laughed in jest. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  I noticed black tally marks on the stone wall, flickering under some candlelight. ‘What are those for?’ I said, pointing to the wall.

  ‘What do you think they’re for?’ she said, and I walked closer.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, shrugging. ‘Numbers.’

  ‘Hmm.’ She went back to the metal instruments, but then picked up two pieces of paper and a pencil.

  ‘You’re not going to tell me?’ I said, and she shook her head. There was a bottle of liquor on the table too, which I hoped to God wasn’t for sterilizing. ‘What about the scotch?’

  ‘That’s for after,’ she said. ‘You’ll want a drink when this is over.’

  I exhaled, very much relieved and she laughed.

  ‘Did you think—’ She smiled. ‘I’m not going to do anything permanent,’ she said, and my brow furrowed. ‘Adèle, this is your training. A series of tests. You failed the first one. Don’t let that happen again.’ She pointed to the chair. ‘Now, let’s get started.’

  She handed me a paper with three letter groupings strung out like sentences, but they were just letters. No words. I looked up from the paper. ‘This is what you woke me up for?’

  ‘You’re good as dead if you don’t learn some skills, fast,’ Marguerite said. ‘Be glad I’m taking the time. I never had training.’ She pointed at the paper. ‘These are the codes we’re going to use. Each grouping stands for a commonly used word. You need to memorize them. Meet, leave, drop, hide, help…’

  I counted the groupings as she talked. ‘There must be fifty,’ I said, looking up.

  ‘Be glad it’s not a hundred.’ Marguerite turned back around and picked through the metal instruments when I laughed.