The Invisible Woman

by Erika Robuck

  “No, though he complains and tries to be troublesome, Cuthbert is stubbornly operative.”

  Still not looking at her, Vera raised her eyebrows.

  “What did your training for the French ambulance service entail?” Vera asked.

  “Basic first aid,” Virginia said. “Automobile repair and operation. Physical fitness.”

  “Good. I hear you’re a linguist. Which languages do you speak?”

  “French, Italian, Spanish, and German, fluently. Passable Russian.”

  If Vera was impressed, she didn’t show it.

  “Tell me about war,” Vera continued. “What has surprised you?”

  “Human capacity for evil.”

  “What about yourself?”

  “Endurance.”

  As Vera completed the puzzle, the waiter arrived, placing two steaming, gravy-soaked plates of roast and potatoes before them. Conversation ceased while they ate. Virginia savored bite after bite of the tender meat and made quick work of devouring the feast.

  “You eat with the fork in your left hand, tines down,” said Vera.

  “I picked up the habit in France. It’s more efficient than switching hands after the meat is cut with your right hand, wouldn’t you agree?”

  The waiter returned and whispered in Vera’s ear. She reached in her handbag, placed the ration cards on the table—which he whisked away—and began erasing random letters on the crossword. When she finished, she dropped the pencil in her handbag.

  “Forgive me,” Vera said. “I must go. I have enjoyed this thoroughly, and hope we meet again soon.”

  Virginia hardly knew if she could say she enjoyed the experience, but it was interesting, and the food was a treat.

  “Thank you,” said Virginia. “I haven’t eaten this well in months. I hope I can repay you someday.”

  Vera nodded and left her. Virginia watched her go, noting the pointed glance she gave the waiter. What a strange woman, she thought. Vera wanted something from Virginia, and she didn’t know if she gave it. There were many heavy things in the air that seemed unsaid between them. They existed like missing notes in a symphony. Like missing letters.

  In a crossword.

  Virginia sat up straight and glanced around the room, where she saw the waiter staring at her. He turned his attention to the table nearest him as if he were not. Her eyes returned to the crossword puzzle. She reached out, slid it so it faced her, and began to scan the words, noting the letters Vera erased.

  N. O. R. T. H.

  North. North what?

  U. M. B. E. R. L. A. N. D.

  The Northumberland Hotel in Charing Cross was a setting used in The Hound of the Baskervilles. Did Vera mean the Hotel Victoria on Northumberland Avenue, where members of the War Office often congregated in the pub? Her heart quickened. She searched the puzzle but could find no further clues as to when she should go there. While she thought, the waiter returned, placed the ticket on the table, and cleared the dishes.

  Vera already paid.

  Virginia’s heart continued to pound as she scanned the scribbled handwriting on the lunch ticket.

  Tea 1.10. Roast and potatoes, 2 × 7.00.

  January 10. Fourteen hundred hours.

  When the tenth arrived, at the appointed time, Virginia had shown up at the Victoria, had asked for Vera at the pub on the first floor, and was led to the hotel upstairs. When the door to room 238 opened, Vera had beamed at her from behind a veil of smoke.

  “I knew you’d come,” Vera said.

  “It was simple to figure out,” Virginia said.

  “For you. You’d be surprised how many have failed that exact test. And that just gets you in the door.”

  The room wasn’t a hotel room at all, but a dingy, smoky, paper-filled office. Heavy blackout curtains framed boarded windows. Virginia scanned a long table littered with ashtrays, pencils, and dirty teacups. A photograph of her own face stared up from a thick file folder. She felt both flattered and violated.

  “Who are you, really?” asked Virginia. “And what do you want from me?”

  Vera motioned for Virginia to sit across from her while closing Virginia’s file.

  “As you have deduced, I do not work for the War Office. Not exactly,” Vera said. “In July of last year, Churchill found out about a network of clandestine, nonmilitary groups across Europe who had been gathering intelligence and sabotaging Nazi efforts at advancement by any possible means. He organized the forces and set the wheels in motion for them to grow, officially creating the SOE.”

  “SOE?”

  “Special Operations Executive. In charge of coordinating and supplying local Resistance groups and engaging in espionage and sabotage in enemy territory. I am with F Section, for France. We work with the RF—de Gaulle’s Free French forces—to undermine and make the Nazis in France as miserable as possible. We also provide safe houses along escape lines for downed pilots, wanted Resistance members, and Jews. I am recruiting you to join us.”

  After years of treading water at American embassies, banging her head against a secretary’s typewriter, desperate for someone to give her a chance to make a real difference in the world, Virginia felt as if a weight crushing her chest were released.

  “I see your elation,” Vera had said, “but you must understand the magnitude of what I’m asking and know that nothing after today will be simple again. Only twenty-five percent of recruits make it through training. You will be expected to take orders without question or explanation. You must become a link in a chain, only aware of those immediately around you, doing work you might not understand but that somehow connects a vital network. It’s also best if you sever personal relationships.”

  Already done, she’d thought.

  Her beloved father, dead from a cardiac arrest brought on by the Depression. A mother who had never understood her. A brother with a life and family of his own, half a world away. A niece and a nephew too young to remember her if she never returned. A broken engagement with Emil, a Polish junior officer from her time at the Warsaw embassy, just before her accident. For all intents and purposes, she was unmoored.

  “You will receive no praise or accolades for your service,” Vera continued. “Without military uniform, if captured, you will not fall under Geneva protection. As a woman, you will be doubted and resented, even by some men within our ranks. You’ll be lonely—far more so than you can imagine—and in constant danger. We are the smallest organization of war services with the highest casualty rate.”

  Still, Virginia was certain. As she was about to accept, Vera pushed a pile of folders across the desk.

  “Open these. Look at the faces.”

  Virginia opened each file, looked at the man or woman, noted the stamp.

  KIA. MIA. KIA. KIA. MIA.

  “That’s only a sample, and it’s just the beginning,” Vera said. “Their relatives have vague letters of lies. There will be no parades in their honor. If they are lucky, their deaths came swiftly—a bullet to the head. If not, they were raped, tortured, hung from a tree near a town square as a warning.”

  Virginia could imagine the knock at her mother’s door, Mother opening it, receiving the news with stoicism—her unease betrayed only by her hands fluttering along her pearl strand. Her mother would say to her brother, “I told Dindy. I knew it. Why couldn’t she stay home like a good girl?” But Virginia knew her mother would crack in the night. She would sob in bed all through the dark hours, the way she sometimes did when the facade became too much.

  Nauseated, Virginia stood and walked to a window with no view. The air was thick with cigarette smoke. Half the lights in the room weren’t working. She had the sudden certainty she was being watched. Her eyes settled on the closet door.

  “Paranoia,” Vera continued. “Malnutrition, exhaustion. Also, you can expect Nazi retaliation on innoce
nt civilians for every act of sabotage you incite. Cruel, brutal retaliation. Guilt will be your constant companion. But if we in the SOE are to ‘set Europe ablaze,’ as Churchill directed, these are the necessary casualties of war.”

  There was still no question in Virginia’s mind. She was convinced everything she had experienced in her life—everything she had suffered—was preparing her for that moment. She hadn’t felt this alive since she’d watched the sun rise over Paris, all those years ago. Virginia glanced once more at the closet and turned to look Vera in the eye.

  “I accept,” she said.

  “Then welcome,” said Vera, “to the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.”

  Chapter 4

  After taking the cows to pasture, and finding a good field for a drop, Virginia returns to the farmhouse to begin the work of recruiting. This is the hard part: trust. Building it and practicing it. Especially with a ticking clock. But she has managed before, and she’ll manage now.

  In Lyon, a doctor was her first recruit. Though he was only seven years older than she, he seemed more so because he was bald, wore glasses, and had a wise, kindly air about him. On their first meeting, she’d walked along the bookshelves of his cozy study, reading the spines, stopping to run her fingers over the words of a thick, brown book lettered in gold.

  La vie et les aventures surprenantes de Robinson Crusoé.

  “A favorite of mine,” the doctor had said.

  “It was also my father’s favorite.”

  “Is he where you get your courage from?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And from your mother?”

  “My strong opinions.”

  She can hear his laughter in the echoes of her memory, and it both lifts and crushes her spirits. Will she ever see him again?

  Virginia soon spots Eugène. After scanning the surrounding fields and road to ensure they’re alone, Virginia joins him in the backyard.

  “Monsieur Lopinat, a word.”

  He either doesn’t hear her or chooses not to.

  The SOE courier for this region had to escape, and when he returned to London, he warned HQ that Eugène, a distant cousin of his, was a tough nut to crack, made worse by the feeling that the region had been abandoned. The courier assured them, however, of Eugène’s absolute reliability. Skepticism and caution are traits Virginia prizes in her contacts. She’s found that the friendlier the person, the more dangerous they tend to be.

  The betrayer of her Lyon network had been friendly. He knew all the right things to say. And yet she’d had a gut feeling that something was off. She’d disregarded it because HQ vetted him, and because of who he was—the regret she feels burns sharp and painful. Never again will she ignore her instincts.

  “Please, I need to speak with you,” she says.

  Eugène stabs a bale with his pitchfork and spreads the hay over the mud, still crispy from the morning’s frost. His breath comes hard, encircling his head like locomotive steam.

  “I need a name,” she says. “One person willing to help me. I’ll take it from there.”

  He mumbles something.

  “What’s that?” she asks.

  “I said, what kind of organization uses old women to do their dirty work?”

  “A desperate one,” she says.

  He wipes the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief and resumes working. She picks up a rake and helps him. After a long while, he again speaks.

  “What kind of help do you need?”

  “An Allied plane is going to parachute a container of supplies for the Resistance here. I need a group to help receive it, and a barn to store it. It’s a dangerous job. Those who do it must stay up all night crouching in a cold field, break down the container, and scatter supplies in wagons.”

  “We’ve been promised drops from your people before, but they’ve never delivered.”

  “I know. But that’s about to change. All we need are moonlight and manpower. The container is packed and ready with food, medical supplies, weapons to defend the power plant here the Nazis will no doubt try to destroy on retreat, and explosive kits strong enough to demo the bridges leading to the plant.”

  A bitter laugh escapes his mouth.

  “You must have the wrong place,” he says.

  “I assure you, I do not. The invasion is approaching. The Allies will make it here. And when they do, we need you to be ready.”

  “Invasion—bah! We’ve heard about that for years and it hasn’t happened.”

  He stabs the hay bale and walks away from her.

  “Do you want to live this way forever?” she says, following him. “In fear? Watching the Nazis steal food from your mouth? From your mother’s?”

  “Of course not. My brother was killed at Dunkirk. My father died after France surrendered because we no longer had access to insulin. Thirty thousand diabetics dead in two weeks because of a simple shot they couldn’t get.” Eugène’s voice catches, and it takes him a moment to recover. “I’m only able to stay on here because I farm, so the boches can use me. Otherwise, I’d be in a work camp in God knows where.”

  His shoulders slump. She notices the rope holding up the pants that are too large for him—pants that might have been tight before the war started. She feels a pang in her heart. No matter how much she loves France, she knows she can only understand a fraction of what he’s been through. This is his home, and, unlike her, he has no choice but to be here.

  “The injustice is agonizing,” she says. “I know. Believe me. But soon you’ll see.”

  His posture softens, but he still doesn’t agree.

  “I can get things for you, personally,” she says. “If you help. A small reward. Something just for you in the container.”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything. Ask for it.”

  He pauses, looking around at the sad farm, the scrawny chickens, and the ancient toolshed.

  “A wife.”

  “How about something that fits in a metal canister packed with ammunition.”

  “Steak,” he says.

  She frowns, looking at the cattle.

  “The boches have my cows tagged and numbered,” he explains. “When they want beef, I have to butcher under military guard. All day long I look at meat and can’t have it.”

  “I’ll get it for you.”

  Eugène smiles. How could she not have thought about first appealing to a man’s stomach? She’s been out of the fray for too long.

  “I won’t give you names, though,” he says. “I’ll ask my friends. If they want to help, they’ll show up. If not, you’re on your own.”

  “Fair enough. Tell them to listen to the BBC tonight. Before the end of the broadcast, when they read personal messages, I’ll have headquarters get this one through: ‘The cow is medium rare.’ When they hear that, have them meet me at your southernmost field with flashlights and a cart.”

  “A medium-rare cow? That’s ridiculous.”

  “Haven’t you heard the crazy messages read over the BBC each night?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re put there by agents communicating with the Resistance. They’re memorable and unique, and the Germans have no idea what they mean.”

  Eugène is skeptical, but he’ll soon see.

  “Once I get the supplies for you,” she says, “do you have a storage place for it and men who will actually use it?”

  “You just deliver and let me worry about distribution.”

  She’s about to protest but thinks better of it once she realizes she’s gotten further with him sooner than she thought she would.

  That afternoon, she transmits her strange phrase and requests to headquarters. That night, she follows Eugène to the barn. Along the way she recites the D-Day poem in her mind, embedding its lines within her, wondering if tonight will be the nigh
t.

  Les sanglots longs / Des violons / De l’automne. When a sighing begins in the violins of the autumn song.

  She thinks each line all the way to the end, to the ones that will light the fires of the Resistance all over France.

  Blessent mon coeur / D’une langueur / Monotone. My heart is drowned in the slow sound, languorous and long.

  When the Allied armies invade from the north, Resistance fighters will need to rise from the south and the east and the west. The cost of life will be high, but it will be worth it if they’re able to drive out the Nazis. The alternative is unthinkable.

  They cross the road and climb the fields to the barn. Once inside, Eugène kicks hay off the floorboards, lifting them to reveal a radio and an old car battery. She watches as he connects it to the device. In moments, a welcome sound reaches their ears: the opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth. These broadcasts—The French Speaking to the French—are the lifeblood of the French people. The Nazis control Radio Paris, spewing lies and intimidation, but the BBC gives hope. It reassures. It allows them dispatches from General de Gaulle, inspiring those brave enough to risk listening.

  When the news concludes, personal messages begin. On and on the phrases and codes go, with no mention of medium-rare cows. Eugène paces. Virginia feels a trickle of sweat on the back of her neck. She isn’t a praying woman but finds herself imploring whatever powers that be to help her.

  “And that concludes our broadcast,” the announcer says.

  Damn.

  Eugène swears and crosses the barn to switch off and hide the radio. But then, the announcer’s voice returns.

  “I’m sorry,” the announcer says. “Hope you’re all still listening. One more bit from a breathless messenger in the hallway. ‘The cow is medium rare.’”

  Eugène looks at her with his mouth open wide. She grins at him, giddy with relief.

  “Come,” she says. “Your steak awaits.”