by Andie Newton
Suddenly Charlotte walked around the corner and reached for Papa’s door. I panicked, wondering where I should stash the flowers but there was no time. She nearly ran into the deliveryman as he left, stomping inside. I hid the card behind my back, but those damn flowers were still in my arms.
‘Adèle!’ Upon seeing Papa, she pulled me to the side to talk. ‘What’s going on between you and Gérard?’ she whispered.
‘What do you mean?’ I played with the card behind my back. ‘I ran into him yesterday and he said you’ve been busy helping Mama, but we all know that isn’t true. What possible things could she need help with? She’s perfectly well.’
I wondered what Charlotte was doing near the Hotel du Parc to run into Gérard. Part of me wanted to tell her exactly where my mind was concerning Gérard, and that I had no intention of marrying him, but I knew that was too much for her to hear. ‘He’s been very busy with the police. He is just as much to blame.’
‘You make time to see him. He can’t be busy every second of the day. The more he doesn’t see you, the greater the chance he finds someone else. Adèle, think about what you’re doing…’ Charlotte suddenly looked very sad, the way her eyes drew downward and her shoulders too, but then she spotted the flowers and her mouth slowly gaped open. She reached for one of the roses, her finger very close to touching the velvety petals, before shooting her pointed glare back at me. ‘You’re insufferable.’
‘Me?’ I pulled her in close, squishing the flowers between us in my arm and crackling the paper. ‘Well,’ I said all breathy, ‘since we’re confronting each other…’ A little voice inside told me not to talk about it, not to bring it up, but I’d had enough of her brushing me off, and brushing Mama off and making her cry. ‘When are you going to take Mama to your child’s grave? You haven’t let her pay her respects. It’s been months and I’m starting to believe you’re keeping her away on purpose. Me too. I asked to go and you said no.’
The door flew open and four miliciens walked into Papa’s wine bar, startling both Charlotte and me with the clang of bells. Charlotte yanked her arm away, glancing up at the miliciens who were now closer to us both. ‘You’re bringing this up now?’
‘When else am I supposed to bring it up?’
‘Certainly not right now,’ she said, lowering her voice as they chatted next to her.
‘If you don’t want me to go, fine. But Mama—’
‘Leave it alone,’ she said through her teeth.
I turned my back on her after realizing I was getting nowhere. The miliciens helped themselves to the wine Papa had out on the bar, as if they were used to helping themselves to whatever they wanted, and then looked out the window and made comments about the prisoners. Papa still wouldn’t look up.
Charlotte struck up a conversation with the one she recognized, and they traded stories about their days together in school. ‘How’s your husband?’ he asked, alternating his gaze between Charlotte and the prisoners on the other side of the window.
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘He’s in Paris, though he should be back next month.’ Charlotte looked over his uniform and commented on the brass buttons pinned to his lapel. ‘I believe these uniforms are the best I’ve seen.’ She ran her hand down the arm of his coat, but then pulled it away when he looked at her.
‘Do you recognize that one?’ he said, pointing at one of the prisoners.
Charlotte squinted at the men lined up against the wall. ‘Should I?’ She laughed a sort of girly giggle. ‘I think all criminals must look like each other.’
‘I suppose.’ He sipped the wine he’d poured. ‘It’s Jean Paul. From school.’
‘Mmm,’ she said. ‘I don’t…’ Charlotte shook her head slowly then her eyes lit up. ‘Wait, I do remember him! He sat next to me once. Has a sister with curly hair—like mine—who bit her fingernails.’ The light in Charlotte’s face faded the longer she stared across the street at the man, the grim reality of his fate settling into his face as the Milice ordered them into the station where the Gestapo waited, eyes shifting, monitoring.
‘We arrested him this morning,’ the man said. ‘Our mothers used to put us in the same pram as children.’ He took another sip of Papa’s wine. ‘That one, right there.’ He pointed to a woman kneeling on the ground just outside Papa’s wine bar as she wept for her son, the sound of her wail seeping through the door crack should have been enough to make Charlotte cry out and ask “what are we doing?” but she only looked at the woman with a slight bit of confusion resting in her thinking eyes.
Charlotte turned around. ‘I have to go. But we’ll talk about this—’ she pointed at the flowers ‘—later.’
I exhaled, glad she was gone, but the miliciens were still inside drinking wine, waiting for their turn across the street. ‘What’s Albert got to eat back there?’ He snapped his fingers at me, motioning to the bar.
I begrudgingly served them the walnuts Papa had out, and was about to walk away, but then they sat down and talked about a meeting that was to take place that night.
‘What time is the meeting?’ one said.
‘Nine o’clock. Hotel du Parc. Arrive early, police and all the Milice. Supposed to take all night with Germans coming in from Paris.’
An all-night meeting?
I couldn’t believe my ears. Timing was everything, Marguerite had said. My palms turned sweaty, thinking the opportunity to use Charlotte’s paints had finally come. With the Milice and police occupied, nobody would be around to patrol the streets, or the train station.
One of them noticed me staring out the window into the sky, and he stood up, looking at me suspiciously.
‘Are you all right?’ he said.
I clutched the flowers in my arms. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of course. Can I get you anything else?’ I smiled, glancing briefly at Papa, who was still plenty busy with his wine crates, but they got up to leave. Throwing down their glasses in a hurry, and following the last of the résistants into the station, leaving the stone wall as plain as it was before the prisoners got there. I looked at my hands, feeling the perspiration on my skin.
‘Adèle?’ Papa said from the back. ‘Shouldn’t you be getting over to Charlotte’s next door? I can handle things here.’
‘Yes, Papa,’ I said, and I rubbed the sweat from my hands.
*
Charlotte had me switch out the silky peignoirs in her display window with the cheaper terry cloth robes from the back closet—still, few could afford the prices she charged. Some offered to trade ration cards for garments, but Charlotte wouldn’t consider something so illegal.
She spent most her day sitting in the back in her chair, giving me the silent treatment, which was fine by me. I found it incredibly hard to concentrate on anything other than the wall, just catching peeks of it while working made my heart bubble like a hot bath. I felt the paint tube Mama helped me hide in the lining of my coat when I went home for lunch, and then the gun in its holster under my dress. ‘Wait until everyone is asleep,’ Mama had told me. ‘And by God, be careful!’
‘Adèle,’ Charlotte called, and I broke away from the window. ‘Can we talk about what happened this morning? I’m exhausted and I don’t want to fight.’ The glow had drained from her face and she did look tired, more tired than I’d seen her. She hung her head down.
‘Charlotte,’ I said, setting down a pile of clothes. ‘I wanted to talk to you about that,’ I said, and she looked up. ‘I should have never brought up the… You know.’
She took a shuddering breath, and I thought she might cry. I held her hands.
‘I want to apologize too,’ she said. ‘I only want what’s best for you, sister.’ She paused, swallowing. ‘Best for all of us.’
I’d seen disappointment before, but never had I seen it hang so heavy as it did in Charlotte’s eyes.
‘Gérard,’ she breathed. ‘He’s—’
‘Let’s not talk about it,’ I said, and she took another breath.
‘I want us to be like we used
to,’ I said, and she nodded. ‘Remember when we’d drink wine together and cook in Mama’s kitchen. Mama would show off her herbs in the garden, and Papa with his grapes…’
‘And you’d burn the leeks,’ she said, a little smile lifting her mouth.
‘I never burned anything,’ I said, though she was telling the truth. ‘Well, there was that one time, but it’s probably because of all the wine you’d poured me.’
She laughed. ‘You loved it.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘So did you.’ I smiled.
‘I remember those times,’ she said, ‘like they were yesterday.’
‘Now, there will be a baby around, and maybe one day our children will run through the vineyard like we used to, feet black and giggling in the vines…’
‘It’s getting late.’ She looked down at her feet, exhaling.
‘Oh, ah… all right,’ I said, and she put her hand out for help from of the chair, but when she stood up, she unexpectedly wrapped her arms around me. No words. Just an embrace.
‘It’s hard being pregnant and alone,’ she finally said.
I pulled away to look at her. It was strange hearing her be so forthright.
‘My husband was expected home weeks ago.’ Her hands slid from mine and she shuffled away slowly.
‘Let me walk you home,’ I said. ‘I’m worried about you.’ I looked at her belly as if its size was an indication of her health. ‘And the baby… Do you feel all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘And it’s a short walk. I can go alone. I’m going to finish the yellow quilt I’ve been needling for my nursery and then go to bed.’
‘Mama’s been needling more hats for the baby too,’ I said, but she kept her back turned. ‘Charlotte? I said Mama—’
‘Well, I’m off,’ she said, slipping on her coat. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’ She buttoned it the best she could over her growing stomach before kissing both my cheeks. ‘Would you mind dusting the shelves before you go? They’re too high for me to reach in this condition.’
‘Of course,’ I said, and I watched her walk away across the square, toward her apartment.
I spent some time thinking about her after she left. She would have let me walk her home if something was wrong with the baby, I thought. It was her husband, I decided. She said it herself. She was lonely.
I dusted Charlotte’s shelves slowly, stretching out my time in her shop until close to midnight. With her gone, and the square dark and shadowy, all I thought about was getting caught. They’d send me to prison like the rest of the résistants who stood against the wall. Maybe even to a work camp like our French soldiers. I felt my throat constrict. Who am I kidding? Prison would be the least of my worries—the French loved a clean white neck.
I scolded myself for thinking such thoughts and pulled on my lapels, closing my eyes. If I only thought about getting caught then all those résistants in Laudemarière would have died at the hands of Gérard’s men, I reminded myself. I can do this. Romancing a collaborator is more dangerous. ‘Christ, it’s just a little paint,’ I said out loud, but then looked at my shaking hands.
I locked up Charlotte’s boutique and snuck outside into the cold dark, the tube of paint clenched in my hand. A dog barked somewhere behind me, and I wondered if someone could see me. Papa! I whipped around, looking at his pitch-black window as I clipped across the square to the wall.
I unscrewed the cap, and it fell through my fingers along with a few drops of paint. I gasped, looking around in the dark, and one more time up at Papa’s window, my warm breath like smoke from my mouth in the cold. Another dog bark, this time louder, closer, and more agitated, and I hastily squirted paint onto the brush, my heart pounding—thump, thump, thump.
I slapped the brush onto the wall, smearing paint this way and that, and then signed it like a real artist would, like I’d seen Charlotte do hundreds of times.
Catchfly.
I stepped backward, trying to get a look at my work, but then a hand gripped my wrist in the dark, and I threw myself against the side of the building. Luc. I smelled him first, and then I felt his warmth. ‘It’s you,’ I said, and we kissed. ‘I can’t believe it.’ We kissed again. ‘It’s been so long…’
He glanced back at the wall. ‘That’s certainly going to cause some concern tomorrow.’
Glass bottles crashed nearby, followed by clopping footsteps down the street. ‘Someone’s there,’ I said.
Luc put a finger to his mouth to be quiet, and we snuck away, the collar of his coat popped up against his face. ‘Where’s the car you’ve been using?’
‘It’s parked near the promenade, to save petrol.’
We hugged the darkest spaces of the street until we made it to the promenade that ran along the Allier River where the tree branches cracked and creaked from the cold. A RAF balloon flew over our heads, dropping leaflets all around, into the icy river lapping against the bank and over the pavement, where Luc stopped and twirled me in the dark among hundreds of falling white papers.
We hopped into the car, giggling, full of excitement, driving right past Monsieur Morisset’s and up the hill to Papa’s vineyard and rushing into the barrel cellar. I yanked on the lapels of his coat, pulling him in for a kiss as I kicked the door shut, smelling the salty sea on his skin from a distant land. ‘I want you so much,’ I said, and then was overcome by my own insatiable urges, pulling him into his secret radio room, tugging on his trousers and unfastening his belt, where we devoured each other in a fury of heated kisses and fast-moving hands.
*
I barely slept, waking several times throughout the night, thinking of the mural, and Luc, even as he held me. ‘Is it morning?’ I asked when I felt him stir. I breathed in an excited breath, and he rolled over to kiss me. ‘I can’t wait to see what the wall looks like.’
‘Wait,’ he said, ‘before you leave. I have something for you.’ He reached into the pocket of his trousers that lay crumpled in a pile on the floor. ‘Don’t look.’
‘What,’ I said, closing my eyes. ‘What is it?’ The kerosene lantern hanging on the hook warmed my face, and I pretended we were in the sun. I could almost smell Papa’s post-war grapes bursting from the vines. ‘The war is over and Hitler’s dead.’
He chuckled. ‘Not quite.’
Something dangled above my face, tickling my nose, which made me giggle.
‘All right. Open your eyes,’ he said, and I gasped, smiling. A heart pendant the size of a pea hung from a delicate gold chain. He clasped the necklace around my neck, centring it just below my collarbone. ‘A deserving gift after your success last night.’
I kissed him. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘It’s beautiful, and I shall never take it off.’
‘Shall?’ He smiled. ‘Now who is sounding British?’
He kissed me passionately, but I knew I had to leave. ‘I must go,’ I said. ‘I have a painting to see about.’ I slipped on my clothes, barely able to hide my excitement.
‘I’ll see you after,’ he said, and I kissed him one last time before hurrying off.
Mama was already up and in the kitchen. ‘Don’t move,’ I said, rushing past her for my bedroom. ‘I have a lot to tell you!’ I slipped on a new dress only to rush back into the kitchen to scrub off the paint in the sink and tell her all about last night. ‘It was dark,’ I said, ‘but I think it’s actually good. I’m off to see it now, helping Charlotte.’ I stopped short of telling her I’d spent the night with Luc, and she didn’t ask.
‘Were you scared?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ I said, and my stomach fluttered, thinking of the image, and how bold I’d been to paint out in the open. ‘Still am a bit. Nervous—an excited nervousness.’
‘I was scared,’ Mama said. ‘Oh, Adèle…’ I looked over my shoulder to her sitting at the kitchen table, surprised by her tone. ‘I was so worried. More worried than I’ve ever been when you’ve gone off with Gérard.’
‘What?’ I dried off my hands. ‘Mama…’
She put her hand up. ‘Never mind me,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s natural for a mother to be worried. Between you and Charlotte I don’t know who worries me the most.’ She lit a cigarette and smoked at the table. ‘I’ll be better after a smoke. How is she?’ she asked. ‘Charlotte. The baby.’
‘Come into the city with me, Mama,’ I said, and she shook her head. ‘And risk seeing your father? No. She can come here. She knows I want her to visit. Will you remind her? That I want to see her.’
I nodded. I’d remind her.
I turned the tap back on after noticing I’d left a streak of paint on my skin. I scrubbed a little harder this time. Luc’s smell lingered on me and in my hair. I closed my eyes, getting lost in his scent, while Mama smoked her cigarette.
‘I think you’ve got it all, Adèle,’ Mama said, and I looked her. ‘Wouldn’t want to wash off anything other than the paint.’
I turned the tap off. ‘You’re right, Mama.’ I smiled, but then remembered I still had Monsieur Morisset’s car. ‘Damn!’ I looked out the window. ‘I forgot to bring back the car.’
‘You’ll need to take care of him. Monsieur Morisset is as salty as they come, and greedy, which is to our benefit. Pay him off with some of the money I have bundled in the drawer under the woodblock. Tell him it’s so you don’t have to return it every night. I’m sure he won’t object.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because they eat more eggs than a family of two should. Both their boys were sent to the munitions factory, but you tell me why they still eat enough to feed them all? Food on the black market is expensive. He’ll need the money.’
‘Do you think he’s one of us? A résistant?’
‘I don’t know. My guess is someone in that house is—someone other than the two of them.’
‘I’ll go there now.’ I slipped my wool coat over my shoulders, tucking the money into my pocket. ‘I’ll see you tonight, Mama.’ I kissed both her cheeks while she exhaled, the heart pendant dangling from my neck.
‘You are very excited about it,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘Well why wouldn’t I be?’ I said.