The Girl from Vichy

by Andie Newton

  Mama flicked her chin at it, and I reached in. ‘Easy, Adèle. There’s a bullet in it.’

  I looked it over from side to side, checking the gun for markings, but the sides were smooth. ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘The Résistance gave it to me when Luc showed up. It’s from America—the Liberator, they call it.’

  ‘Have you shot it?’

  ‘God, no,’ she said. ‘But there’s directions.’

  I pulled a sheet of paper from the box that had twelve numbered pictures on it, each demonstrating how to hold the gun properly and fire it.

  I held the gun, aiming at the wall. ‘Luc must know how to use it,’ I said.

  ‘Throw the directions out and ask him how to shoot it if you want,’ Mama said. ‘But I wouldn’t want you to do anything too unpleasant.’

  ‘Luc’s arms wrapped around my body, showing me how to aim does sound very unpleasant indeed.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Mama repeated.

  ‘Have you seen him lately?’ I said.

  ‘The last time I saw Luc he was in my kitchen kissing you.’

  The mere mention of the last time I saw Luc got me warm and flushed. ‘What do the instructions say?’

  Mama glanced at the instructions, flipping the page over where it was blank. ‘You have to reload after you shoot it, and the target has to be close up.’

  Gooseflesh bumped over my arms. ‘I hope we never have to use it.’

  ‘I forgot I had it, to tell you the truth, Adèle. You know as well as I that if the Germans come this damn thing isn’t going to help us. I never believed in Satan until I met my first German. I’m sure Elizabeth would agree.’

  I held my tongue, waiting to see if she’d say anything else about her and Mother Superior unprompted, but she looked rather breathless and weak from having just mentioned her name.

  ‘As dangerous as the Résistance is, you know what would happen to us if someone knew we had a gun? Put it away, makes me nervous,’ she said, and I put the gun back in the floor. Headlamps shone through the window and Mama looked alarmed. ‘Jesus Christ, is that—’

  ‘He sent a car,’ I said, and she heaved a sigh of relief.

  ‘I don’t want him in my home. I know you said he wasn’t going to show up again uninvited, but I don’t trust him. Not one bit.’

  I straightened myself after having been on the floor, tucking in loose hair strands and checking my makeup. ‘How do I look?’ I said.

  ‘Adèle,’ Mama said. ‘Be careful. Don’t anger him.’ She kissed my cheeks, and the driver knocked on the door. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘I understand,’ I said.

  *

  I felt the stuffiness of the room even before I opened the door to Antoine’s brasserie. There must have been at least twenty police, all similarly dressed in evening suits, standing around tall bistro tables without any stools. Beautiful women gathered around them, taking sips from fancy cocktails in crystal glasses.

  I stood in the doorway after taking my coat off and looked for Gérard, through the haze of cigarettes and cigars, trying to remember all his rules. ‘Don’t look like a prostitute,’ he’d said, and a flit of warmness came between me and the chiffon dress, which suddenly felt like an invitation.

  ‘Adèle!’ Gérard barked from the bar, and I waved.

  He commanded the waiter to fetch me a drink with a snap of his fingers, but I had grabbed a glass of gin off the bar myself.

  ‘Bonsoir, Adèle.’ He kissed both my cheeks, the stink of a cold cigar souring on his breath.

  ‘Bonsoir.’

  He smiled, smoothing his jacket against his chest. ‘Aren’t you going to say anything about my suit?’

  I drank heartily, the jewelled pin in my hair blinding one eye. The maître d' answered for me in passing while I sucked the gin down. ‘Extraordinary.’

  I should have known Gérard would say nothing about how I looked, and instead seek out compliments for himself. He cosied up next to me at the bar, sticking a cigar in his mouth. ‘It’s a good night for us, Adèle.’

  I pulled the glass from my lips. ‘For us?’

  He chuckled as if I should have known better. ‘The police.’ He lit his cigar and let the smoke balloon from his mouth in clouds. ‘A very good night.’

  I downed the rest of my gin and then asked the waiter for another. ‘Whatever do you mean, Gérard Baudoin?’

  He leaned into my ear. ‘Résistants,’ he said as the waiter handed me a fresh glass of gin. ‘We got some. Important ones.’

  ‘Résistants?’ I tried to act more afraid than concerned, jolting to a stiff stand, spilling a drop of gin from my glass as the waiter poured a generous amount of lavender syrup over the ice. ‘Here?’

  ‘Not here! Lord, Adèle. A résistant wouldn’t survive a minute in this place with all these police—we’re trained to sense a traitor’s blood.’ He laughed, and I saw clear into the back of his throat.

  ‘Then where? You’re scaring me, Gérard—all this ado about the Résistance.’

  He swung his arm around the back of my neck, pointing at the crowd of police before us. ‘You’re in the safest place in Vichy. No need to worry.’

  A woman slunk past wearing a floor-length satin dress. She had an eye for Gérard and she let him know it, smoothing her dress against her thighs as she walked. His arm slipped off the back of my neck from the distraction, but when I moved, he pulled it back up.

  ‘What do you mean you have some résistants? As in tied up, prisoners?’ I tapped my foot on the floor as if checking for a loose board. ‘In the basement?’

  ‘Ahh, you are intrigued?’ Gérard smiled, his eyes gleaming.

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Maybe not.’

  Gérard held me close, his warm hand above my dress, sliding down my back to my waist. ‘We paid a man,’ he whispered. ‘Le mouchard—the informer. Turns out he’d tell us anything we wanted to know for a little money and two tickets to Cannes.’ He nuzzled my neck, lips skimming over my skin with small kisses. ‘The Résistance won’t know what happened when my men drive into Laudemarière tomorrow, take them by surprise.’

  My heart raced. A raid? I moaned, pretending to enjoy his kisses, but inside I was spinning. ‘Laudemarière?’ I said, and he pulled away. ‘What could possibly be there but some gnarled grape vines and abandoned spas?’ My hands shook a little from learning so much information in just a few minutes.

  ‘I can’t say any more—it’s fragile still, the operation.’

  The waiter asked him if he wanted another drink, and I counted backward from ten in my mind, thinking about lying in the grass in the sun just like Marguerite had taught me, breathing slowly. My hands stopped shaking. I touched my chest, feeling the thrash of my nervous heart and my warming skin, and thought some more about the grass, sipping my gin slowly. Don’t push, I thought, be nonchalant.

  Gérard took a bottle of champagne from the bar meant for someone else and mixed his own drink with gin and lime before tossing it down his throat in one gulp.

  I helped him make another—hoping then he’d tell me more about le mouchard.

  Two men, one in a suit, the other in a guard’s uniform, walked up to Gérard, drinks in hand. They looked me up and down, one of them settling his eyes on my breasts as if he could see through the chiffon.

  ‘So, this is the nun, huh Gérard?’ one of them said, laughing.

  Gérard shrugged, looking away, setting his elbows onto the bar. He was either incapable of defending me, or unwilling.

  I held my head up high, waiting for them to finishing eyeing me in Charlotte’s gala gown. ‘Do I look like a nun?’

  One of them noticed Gérard’s reddening cheeks. Nothing could clear a room faster than Gérard’s temper. The man tugged on his friend’s sleeve and they moved away from us both.

  ‘Why do you have to do that, Adèle?’ He talked into his glass as he drank, shaking the ice that was left at the bottom.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Look so dam
n irresistible. Make men notice you.’

  I choked down a laugh. ‘Irresistible is a strong word.’

  Gérard’s eyes rolled over my body, a slight scowl brewing on his face. ‘You’re a tease, and you know it. Why didn’t you wear the pink dress I bought you?’

  ‘It’s a day dress,’ I said.

  He gulped the last of his drink, the ice clinking against his teeth. He was angrier than I thought. I knew not to move until he had calmed down. ‘Gérard, I—’

  He slammed his empty glass down, and everyone at the bar jumped. ‘Don’t move,’ he gritted, and then took the hand of the woman who’d slunk by earlier and pulled her into the middle of the room where cheers and glasses chinked together.

  ‘Kill the traitors!’ they shouted.

  Elbows nudged me to join, but I drank quietly at the bar.

  Gérard smiled as the woman placed her hands on his chest, her dark brown hair looking very black against the grey smoke hovering in the air and her lips a deep scarlet red—a distraction that cooled his temper. I retreated to the street-side windows near the door and lit a cigarette the bartender gave me, watching passers-by outside, some trying to catch a peek of the excitement inside the brasserie.

  I leaned into the folds of the velvet curtains, repeating Gérard’s words to myself about the raid as I smoked, wondering what kind of person would be so selfish to give up the Résistance’s whereabouts for two train tickets. Down the street, just behind a patch of fog misting over the roadway was the square where I’d seen Les Femmes de la Nation. The chanting booming behind me was an eerie contrast to what I’d seen, and a reminder of what the regime had done to us.

  ‘Adèle!’ Gérard grabbed my hand and I instinctively pulled away, but his nose turned up and, remembering where and whom I was with, I apologized. ‘Don’t scare me like that, Gérard. I’m having a cigarette. You want to kill me like you do your résistants?’

  ‘I wouldn’t kill you,’ he said. ‘Not yet, anyway. I’ve invested too much time.’ He moved in for a kiss, but noticed a black car drive up outside. ‘René Bousquet,’ he said, letting go.

  The head of the police. I perked up.

  Bousquet walked briskly from the car and into the Hotel du Parc, motioning for Gérard on the other side of the window with a wave of his hand. ‘Le mouchard,’ Gérard said, eyes wide. ‘He’s here!’

  I put my hand to the glass, catching first glimpse of the informant Gérard had been waiting for, and I was surprised to see it wasn’t one person, but two. A man and a woman. They got out of the back of Bousquet’s car, walking together, holding hands. I inched closer to the glass, watching in earnest, thinking I saw something familiar in the way they looked, their walk, the way they held their heads.

  The man lifted his hat.

  ‘Mother of Christ,’ I breathed, and I collapsed into the curtains, grasping at the folds to stay upright.

  18

  The bald man and his wife. They looked the same as they did all those months ago, greedy, and angry as the day they buried Marguerite’s fiancé. The pair stopped on the pavement while the wife adjusted her wool coat, sliding a thick roll of francs into her cleavage. Marguerite, the raid. They must have told the police all about her, and the Alliance. I could barely breathe.

  ‘Be here when I get back,’ Gérard said, pointing at me as I hung on to the curtains, and he rushed out of the brassiere. People on the dance floor stopped and stared, first from the commotion of Gérard leaving and then from me and my desperate bid to stay upright. I swallowed, hand to my chest.

  The waiter came by with his tray. ‘Another drink, mademoiselle?’ He looked at me strangely as I struggled to compose myself. I snapped my fingers. ‘My coat!’

  I ran down the street and around the corner, breathless in the cold air. That’s when I saw what I already knew: the flower cart was bare; the old woman had long since gone home. I raced back to the brasserie and hopped into the car I arrived in, waking up the driver who’d fallen asleep with a newspaper over his face. ‘La maison! La maison!’ I said, closing the door. ‘I’m not well!’ The driver crumpled up his newspaper and started up the engine. ‘Now!’ I laid my hand against my forehead and moaned, thinking about Marguerite and the ambush the police had planned.

  The driver sped away, shooting sharp glances at me through the rear-view mirror. ‘Don’t vomit in the car!’ He tossed a paper bag into the back seat as we squealed around a corner. My heart raced thinking about Luc—he was the only other contact I had—and I prayed like hell he’d be in his radio room when I got home.

  The driver nearly kicked me out of his car thinking I’d throw up. I waited until he was completely out of sight before running over to the barrel cellar in search of Luc. The room was dark, even after I left the doors wide open. I pounded on the trapdoor. Nothing. ‘Luc,’ I yelled, futilely.

  Mama ran barefoot into the barrel room dressed in her peignoir. ‘Adèle!’ She shouted at first but then whispered, ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘There’s a spy in the Résistance,’ I said. ‘I have to inform Luc.’

  The trapdoor flung open. Mama jumped back while I peered down the ladder and into the room. A dimly lit lantern shined on two faces: a man I’d never seen before, small, with thin brown hair, and a woman with piercing eyes, the kind that could look right through a person, see their guts and tell you what was inside.

  ‘What do you know?’ the woman said.

  I stared at them, unsure who they were and if I should talk. She climbed up the ladder, the man right behind her, the scratch of Luc’s radio a nervy cadence deep below.

  She held the lantern up to my face. ‘What did you say about a spy?’

  I looked at Mama and then to her, still not answering.

  She shook me by the shoulder. ‘Adèle, I know who you are and where you have been. Tell me, what did you hear?’

  Her eyes burrowed into mine, and it was then I recognized who she was. Dressed in the same tan trousers and white shirt she wore in the crypt all those months ago, she was the one they called Hedgehog, the leader of the Alliance. Résistance.

  ‘You remember me, no?’

  Her hair was darker than before and she was skinnier, but there was no mistaking that look of hers and the paralyzing feeling I felt in my knees when she locked eyes with me. I nodded.

  ‘Then tell me what you know,’ she said.

  ‘There’s a raid planned for tomorrow. In Laudemarière.’

  ‘I must hurry,’ she said to the man beside her. He pulled a gun from each pocket, and she hid them on her person, one in a holster around her calf, the other down the front of her shirt. ‘Stay here and man the radio,’ she said to him. ‘If I’m not back by sunrise, then something went wrong.’

  Her eyes flicked to mine. ‘I hope I’m not too late.’

  I paced inside Mama’s dark kitchen, trying to find a way to calm the pulse in my veins that had been thumping since I left the brasserie. Changing into a comfortable housedress didn’t help. Mama did nothing but watch me from the woodblock, her backside flush against the counter.

  ‘What’s wrong with you, Adèle? You did well tonight. Now be at rest with it.’

  I laughed in jest. ‘I feel like a revved car lurching and stopping, lurching and stopping, all the way down the road. I’m either on full alert or left to wait, and wondering what the hell to do.’

  Mama lit a lantern with her lighter. ‘Follow me,’ she said, walking toward the cellar.

  ‘I need more than a drink, Mama.’

  ‘Just follow me, Adèle.’ The hem of Mama’s crème peignoir brushed the dirt floor and got dirtier and dirtier as she moved toward the back of the cellar, her feet black from being outside without shoes. Bottles of wine had been pulled from the racks and sat upright against the wall, showing Papa’s dwindling supply. Mama waved a hand at the wine. ‘Not this,’ she said. ‘That is not why I asked you down here.’

  ‘Then why?’ I said. ‘If we’re not going to drink…’

  M
ama opened Charlotte’s chest of paints. ‘Why don’t you paint?’ Mama said, taking a tube of paint into her hands.

  I laughed. ‘Paint?’

  ‘Painting always relaxed Charlotte. It’s why she got started.’

  I glanced at the paint in the chest, the metal tubes shining from the lantern’s light. ‘I don’t know how to paint, Mama.’

  ‘Have you ever tried?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘actually I have. Besides, Charlotte wouldn’t want me using her paints.’

  ‘Charlotte isn’t here, now is she?’ Mama pulled Charlotte’s old painting palette from the chest and stuck it under her arm as she dug through the paints. ‘Someone might as well use these.’

  Painting at the convent felt like a task. I didn’t see how it could be relaxing. ‘I don’t think—’

  ‘You have someplace else to go?’ Mama said.

  ‘But what about the slashed canvases? Should I paint the walls?’ I joked.

  ‘Yes,’ Mama said, looking up from the chest. ‘Paint the wall. Nobody will ever see it down here.’

  ‘You’re serious?’ I watched Mama pick through the tubes; she was intent on me painting, no matter what I said. I sighed, studying the stones and feeling them with both of my hands. The cracks and grooves between the rocks were rough, not smooth like a real canvas, but I wasn’t painting a masterpiece—it didn’t have to be perfect. And like Mama said, nobody would see it. ‘And you think it will help?’

  ‘I really do, Adèle.’

  I held my hand out. ‘Give me the paint.’ I squeezed paint from several different tubes onto Charlotte’s paint-stained palette, choosing from an array of brushes tucked inside her cotton organizer. I picked the fattest brush, as Mama suggested, and twirled it in a blob of red paint, slapping it onto the wall. The bristles glided over the stones, sticky, slippery, swirling.

  ‘The colour’s bright.’ Even in the dimly lit cellar, the red jumped from the wall like a flame. ‘Unusually bright.’

  Mama lit a cigarette and talked as she puffed it to life. ‘That’s because of the cadmium in the oils—expensive little suckers. Charlotte had to have the best paint.’

  ‘Of course, she did,’ I said.