The Girl from Vichy

by Andie Newton

  ‘Don’t look too excited,’ she said. ‘People will think it’s suspicious.’

  I kissed her again. ‘Bye, Mama.’

  21

  I arrived at the boutique earlier than normal, heart thumping the more I thought about the mural. Two old men stood on the corner gazing at the wall, but I wouldn’t dare look just yet for fear they’d know it was me. I unlocked the bolt on Charlotte’s door, and slipped inside.

  I did busywork until Charlotte came in through the back door. She threw her coat over a chair and sat down immediately. By this time, people had gathered in front of the wall and in the street. I folded pantaloons, pretending not to notice, mixing the cotton knits with the lacy garments. Normally, this would have bothered Charlotte a great deal, but she made no mention of it or of me from her chair in the back.

  ‘How’s Mama, Adèle?’ Charlotte said unexpectedly.

  ‘Mama?’

  Charlotte rubbed her belly in a swirly pattern, nodding from her chair. ‘I never thought I’d have to go through a pregnancy without my mother. She never leaves the estate. She never visits me here. What you said last night about her needling hats brought it all back up.’

  ‘Why don’t you visit her?’ I said.

  ‘And leave Papa in the city?’ she said. ‘He’ll think I’ve chosen a side.’

  ‘But he doesn’t think that of me,’ I said.

  Her hands stopped mid swirl on her stomach. ‘I know how she feels about my husband, Adèle. And this pregnancy so soon after the—’

  I looked at her.

  ‘You think I don’t know?’ she said, trying to get out of her chair. ‘She’s never supported my marriage.’

  ‘She supports you, Charlotte,’ I said.

  I moved to help her up, and once standing she finally noticed the commotion outside, looking around her boutique as if she heard music; something she couldn’t put her finger on. When I saw her take a deliberate glance out the window, I brought it up.

  ‘What’s going on over there?’ I said, and my heart jumped just mentioning it.

  Charlotte walked to the front. ‘What’s the fuss about this time? Another arrest? God—people need to stop caring about such things. Arrests happen all the time.’ She tried catching glimpses out the window of what they were looking at, but the crowd was too thick. ‘More RAF leaflets telling us lies about Pétain and our alliances?’ She turned to me. ‘We should burn them in the streets.’

  ‘It must be something important,’ I said. ‘Some fresh air would be good anyway. Let’s take a peek.’

  She hesitated, and I held my breath.

  ‘All right,’ she said, and I exhaled heavily, trying to hide all traces of anticipation.

  We walked outside, only she was moving too slow, so I took her elbow and walked her through the crowd. ‘Not so fast,’ she said, trying to pull back. ‘Adèle…’

  My pulse quickened once we made it across the street, remembering the excited moments it took for me to paint it, moving closer and closer, until the next thing I knew we were feet from the wall. I let go of her arm as much as she pulled away. My own painting had taken my breath away. I was speechless and proud—yet I dare not even smile about it.

  Charlotte stood quietly staring at the image before reaching out to touch the wall where some of the paint was still wet. She looked confused and distraught feeling the paint between her fingers. Some others stood stupefied as if in a dream, before backing up to the kerb, not wanting to be too close to it. Whispers of ‘Catchfly’ fluttered over the crowd.

  ‘Catchfly? Is that what they’re saying?’ She never looked at me but asked those around us, tapping shoulders. ‘Catchfly the weed?’

  An ageing man with his wife by his side leaned in. ‘It’s signed Catchfly,’ he said. ‘That must be who painted it.’ The pair smiled to themselves and then put their arms around each other as if they were looking at a piece of art hanging in a museum. ‘It’s very bold,’ he said. ‘Brave.’ He elbowed Charlotte, but she grimaced as if his touch hurt her like a poking finger.

  ‘This is not art.’ She wiped the paint from her fingers with a hanky she pulled from her pocket, and then folded her arms over the top of her tiny baby bump. ‘This is a disgrace.’ Her chin quivered. ‘Disgusting as the words painted above it.’

  Men took off their hats while women prayed openly for the members of the Résistance. Charlotte grew increasingly upset by the second, and pale, her skin looking pasty and white. A truck sped up to the station and lurched to a stop, spraying bits of rubble into the crowd. A handful of Milice jumped from the back, aiming their rifles at the wall as if it were alive. They looked over the crowd, yelling into people’s faces to back up.

  People scattered like flies when they aimed their guns into the crowd. I reached for Charlotte’s coat sleeve, but she’d waddled off ahead of me, holding her belly up from the bottom. ‘Wait!’ A stream of watery blood coursed down her leg, and I slipped in a small puddle of it left on the ground where she had stood. I gasped, taking only a quick moment to look at it before chasing after her. ‘Charlotte!’

  She ran into her boutique and flipped the closed sign over in the window. I tuned the knob over and over again, bumping my shoulder into the door asking her to open it, but she had locked it up good.

  Papa flew out of his wine bar when he realized something was wrong, looking somewhat upset. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said as my painting unveiled itself from the fleeing crowd. ‘Is it the picture?’ Papa tried turning the knob himself, mumbling under his breath, ‘Damn Résistance—upsetting everyone.’

  ‘Papa—’ A little boy hopped through Charlotte’s blood trail, stamping his feet on the cobblestones, giggling, as his mother shielded his eyes from the painting. ‘It’s not the Résistance,’ I said.

  ‘No?’ Papa let go of the knob and then smiled to himself after scratching his head. ‘Women! Reminds me of your mother when she was expecting.’ Papa motioned for me to follow him into his wine bar. ‘Come now, ma chérie. You know if Charlotte doesn’t want to open up, she won’t. You’ll have to wait.’

  I shook my head, looking at Charlotte’s door, and then to Papa’s as he’d led me inside. Unsure what else to do, I sat down at a small table next to the window, waiting for Charlotte to come out of her boutique next door, my stomach twisting into a knot.

  Papa reached for two glasses and a bottle of wine. ‘Papa,’ I said, swallowing. ‘It’s morning.’

  ‘Wine comes from the heavens,’ he said. ‘Morning, evening. Doesn’t matter. It always comes.’ He turned the bottle around so I could see the label. Mama had at least three of the same bottles in the root cellar, his best year. ‘Last one I have of these. Let’s savour it together.’ A sweet smile rested on his lips as he sat down and handed me a glass, but I felt dizzy and sick.

  I should have realized something serious was wrong with her—she was so different yesterday, but I wasn’t paying attention, not like I should have. I closed my eyes, wishing I could rewind time.

  ‘Adèle?’ he said, and I turned to him.

  ‘Yes?’

  Papa reached into his pocket and pulled out what was left of the letters Mama had me give him. ‘I’ve been thinking about your mother,’ he said. ‘Tell her I haven’t gotten to this one yet.’ He held up the letter that had been folded into a tight triangle; the one Mama wanted him to read last.

  My mouth hung open. ‘Papa!’

  ‘What?’ He looked shocked that I had yelled, which was unlike me—I knew it was—but with Charlotte, and now Papa wanting to talk about Mama, it was too much.

  ‘It’s been weeks since I gave you her letters.’ I felt my face scrunch. ‘Haven’t you two wasted enough time playing games?’

  A slight gasp followed a long pause. ‘Games?’ he said, pushing his wine glass away. ‘She kicked me out as much as I left.’

  ‘Ugh!’ I put my hand to my forehead with his scowl. All I could do was think about Charlotte and what she was doing, what was happening to her baby
on the other side of the wall. I got up to put my hands on the bricks. ‘Charlotte!’ I shouted into the air. ‘Are you all right? Charlotte!’

  Papa walked past me to his back office, stuffing the letter into his pocket as he closed the door behind him. I rested my head against the wall. ‘Open up,’ I whispered.

  An hour or more passed before Charlotte finally burst out her front door, her hair wild and curly and loose. I bolted outside, chasing her through the streets. A bottom-heavy bag hung from her clenched fist that looked plump and purple and seemed wet as laundry. Just when I thought I’d caught up to her, I lost her in a thin crowd near a park where a little old woman knitted socks next to a broken wagon.

  ‘You look lost, child,’ she said, looking up at me. Time had made its mark on her face in the form of a hundred wrinkles and creases. Her nose, the biggest thing on her body, was pitted from just as many years in the sun and in the cold.

  ‘My sister. I was following her, but now she’s gone.’ I looked out over the park; it was bare except for a lone goose picking at some brown winter grass. ‘Her name is—’

  ‘Charlotte?’ Her voice had perked, and she seemed surprised I was looking for her, setting her knitting needles and yarn into her lap. ‘I can tell you’re related by your deep-set eyes. The dimples threw me, but the eyes. The eyes say it all.’

  ‘You know my sister?’

  She smiled. ‘Yes, of course. I see her every Sunday.’

  ‘What for?’

  She flicked a wrinkled finger at me, asking me to follow her. ‘This way.’

  The old woman took a walking stick from the wagon, and I followed her around the corner to Claudeen’s hill, and the cemetery, perched on top of a mound of rock and dirt that shot straight up out of the flat ground, its all too memorable white picket fence bordering the top like a crown. Charlotte’s husband’s family tomb.

  ‘The cemetery?’

  The old woman nodded, hacking and coughing, motioning with her hand for me to keep following her. We stopped in the dirt at the base of the hill. ‘Sometimes she takes the path. But other times she goes this way.’ She pointed up the hill.

  ‘To do what?’

  I followed her straight up the hill through the dirt and rock—surprised by her spryness—I was more out of breath than she was when we got to the top. ‘She hires me for flowers,’ she said. ‘Every week I decorate their graves. Hydrangeas in the spring. Hearty ones in the winter months. Though not much coming up from the south anymore.’

  ‘Whose graves?’

  She turned me around by the arm. ‘There, dear,’ she said, pointing. In between the many raised tombstones was a flat area with a simple grave marker that had several cup-sized holes dug around it, a tiny mound of dirt on top of each one.

  ‘She buries her miscarriages,’ the old woman said.

  I stumbled backward, my body aching a sick little space for each hole I counted. ‘Five,’ I said, ‘graves… these are graves? All of them?’ My lips curled with a mix of disgust and horror.

  ‘Limbus infantium,’ she said. ‘Flowers for her babies in limbo.’

  I pressed my hand to my mouth, closing my eyes briefly. ‘But… there are so many.’ The old lady held out her hand, and I took it, withering to the ground like a violet under the weight of a heavy boot. A tear snuck down my cheek, now I realized why Charlotte had kept Mama and me away.

  ‘Oh, Charlotte.’

  *

  I hadn’t been to Charlotte’s new apartment, the one her husband bought her while I was at the convent, and I had to guess which corner of Rue Charasse it was on. I tried the doorknob, and to my surprise it was unlocked. Charlotte sat in her kitchen, the winter sun shining coldly through the window and onto her face, a half-empty bottle of gin in her hand as she sat back in her chair, a dazed, glassy look in her eyes.

  I shut the door behind me and Charlotte looked up, nearly spilling her gin.

  ‘How’d you get in here?’ she seethed.

  I looked around, walking closer. ‘Your door was unlocked.’ Jars and jars of baby food had been opened and left to spoil in the sun, hearty greens and sweet and sickly ham. I had to wonder where she got that much food to preserve. Each one had a different colour of ribbon tied around the neck. Yellow for fruit, green for vegetables and brown, I assumed, was the meat.

  She hiccupped. ‘Well, now you know,’ she said, hiccupping again. ‘Now you know…’ She swung the bottle around the room, gin spilling over her legs and onto the table. ‘And my husband is gone. Barely comes here anymore. Probably because I can’t keep his babies.’

  ‘Charlotte, that isn’t true,’ I said, bending to one knee. ‘He loves you.’

  ‘Love!’ she spurted out.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  She poured gin into a tall glass until it overflowed onto her tablecloth. ‘What do you know about love?’

  ‘I know he bought you the boutique, and he’s provided for you,’ I said. ‘Look at your new apartment.’ It felt odd not having been in her apartment sooner, not knowing exactly where she lived, looking upon her things for the first time, a stranger in my own sister’s home.

  ‘Look at your things.’ She had a light blue divan with hand-stitched pillows near a window with cushions too firm to have ever been sat on, and two cut-crystal vases stuffed with wax flowers I recognized from her wedding. Porcelain figurines from Limoges were displayed in a curio cabinet with glass shelves. Her very own painting of the promenade in an ornately carved wood frame hung on the wall—the only piece of artwork that had survived since her marriage. ‘Henri bought you all of this during your marriage.’

  ‘Marriage!’ she scoffed, kicking back the gin, glugging it like water. ‘You had a marriage all planned out—a brilliant union.’ She slammed her empty glass down on the table. ‘You threw it away with no regard to others. Now you’re doing it again, but this time right in front of our faces.’

  ‘Gérard?’

  ‘Oh, you remember his name? That’s amusing.’ She caught a glimpse of the necklace Luc gave me, squinting her watering eyes to get a better look. ‘What is that?’ She got up from her chair and stumbled into the table trying to grab for it in the air.

  I threw a hand to my chest, blocking her. ‘Gérard is not a man, Charlotte. He’s a tyrant.’

  ‘Gérard has importance, you ungrateful… imbécile!’ She held on to the table, creeping toward me. ‘All he wanted to do was love you, and you pushed him away.’ She looked directly into my eyes, her voice bitter as a salt lick. ‘You ran away.’

  ‘You’re drunk.’

  ‘Oh, the dimples… there they are!’ She threw the empty bottle of gin to the wall and it shattered everywhere. ‘Adèle and her dimples! Gérard is always talking about them. Too bad he can’t see you now. Look at you.’ She flicked her finger at me, mouth pruning. ‘Look at you!’

  Her words pricked like needles over my skin—I was angry about the way she spoke to me and who she had become. I wanted to lash out at her, but the miscarriages and her fragile state kept me from it.

  I threw open the door. ‘Pull yourself together,’ I said. ‘Then we’ll talk.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ she said as the door slammed shut between us, ‘run away again!’

  *

  The next morning Papa stopped me outside Charlotte’s boutique. ‘You can help me in the mornings full time. If you want. Charlotte isn’t herself and needs some time alone.’ Papa’s bottom lip quivered as if he knew as much as I did about her babies.

  I felt Charlotte’s eyes on me, peeping through her lace curtains. I thought for sure she’d have regrets after she sobered up. I was wrong. I looked at Papa. ‘I see.’

  Papa put his arm around me, leading me into his wine bar. Across the way, I could see the Milice had wasted no time covering my painting with black paint and Milice propaganda posters. Two Vichy police patrolled it as if I had the nerve to come back. Passengers on their way out of the city paused to look at the black blotches, talking among themselves as if reme
mbering the scene from yesterday.

  The little old woman who sold daisies from tin buckets rolled her cart up to Papa’s wine bar. She flashed an intriguing smile as she peered through the window, adjusting her gloves at the wrists.

  ‘Sure has caused a commotion,’ Papa said, sitting down with a glass of dark red wine. ‘That painting. People talking about the Catchfly all day yesterday in my store… in the street. In the toilets at the brasserie.’

  ‘You don’t say?’

  I watched the old woman walk around her cart and rearrange the simple mix of flowers she had for sale, petals drooping from the cold. She glanced up at me through the glass every so often while Papa breathed in the aroma of his wine, swirling it in his glass before taking a short sip and rolling it on his tongue.

  ‘Yes… quite the stir.’

  ‘Maybe there are others,’ I said as the old woman plucked a single daisy from her bundle and offered it to me from the other side of the glass. ‘Somewhere else in the city.’

  Papa glanced at the ceiling as if pondering the idea. ‘Haven’t heard.’

  I got up and went outside while Papa drank his wine.

  ‘For you, mademoiselle,’ she said, handing me the flower. I smiled, wondering why she’d give me a flower when I was the one who had always sought her out. ‘Your friend says—’ glancing at the wall where I had painted ‘—well done.’

  ‘My friend.’ I smiled. Marguerite. I took the flower, twirling it under my nose, taking a whiff. ‘Merci.’

  She moved her cart down the road while I walked back into the wine bar. Papa didn’t even know I’d left, only giving a fleeting glance to the flower in my hand. We watched the miliciens point their guns at the painted stones, laughing, acting as though they were shooting at people.

  ‘Catchfly,’ Papa said between sips. ‘It’s a damn weed.’

  ‘Drink your wine, Papa.’ I tapped the table near his glass.

  Papa looked at me as he drank. ‘Gérard came in yesterday asking for you.’

  I set the flower on the table. ‘Oh?’