The Invisible Woman

by Erika Robuck

  As she starts back for her safe house, she scans the side roads and buildings, turning on her route to avoid the Nazi hospital, swastika flag snapping in the wind. From behind the edge of the Hôtel May, she peers up at the second-floor window, and sees the pale face of the MP, his one-eyed gaze sweeping back and forth along the street like a searchlight.

  Before he spots her, she ducks into an alley.

  * * *

  —

  It’s their third reception night in a row, and they’re all sharing the handle of Beefeater gin Vera slipped in on the last drop. Virginia’s grateful for it. She can’t get the lingering unease of seeing the children herded like lambs to the forest out of her head, nor can she stop thinking of the MP in the window. Does Haas remember and recognize her? Though she’s disguised, she can’t change her bone structure or hide the limp.

  “I wish we’d been in Lyon at the same time,” Bob says, nudging her, pulling her from her thoughts. “We’d have raised hell together.”

  “What ended your mission there?” asks a maquisard.

  “A car accident,” Bob says. “Driving with no lights on sometimes leads to trouble.”

  “No surprise there,” says Edmund.

  The group shares a laugh. Bob loves to drive at breakneck speed in the dark, and he’s terrible at it. The Maquis have succeeded in repairing and filling the tank of a small truck, and Virginia is trying to teach the boys to drive. But without much time—and her having so little patience—she often takes over the driving herself, especially with Bob.

  “I wasn’t driving,” says Bob. “I didn’t know how to at the time.”

  “So, no different from now,” says Virginia.

  The boys laugh. Bob ignores the jab.

  “We were racing to a drop and hit a tree. I was knocked unconscious and taken to the hospital. It would have been all right if it weren’t for those pesky guns the gendarme found on us.”

  “Oh my,” says Virginia.

  “Yes. From civilian hospital to prison hospital we went.”

  “How’d you get out of that?” asks Dédé.

  “A cleaning woman. The boches had killed her son, so she helped me. She got me a rope and a cake we drugged that I shared with my guards. Once they were out, so was I.”

  “With a head injury?” says Virginia.

  “Yes. I passed out a few times, but luckily it was in the forest, so I didn’t wake up in any unwanted beds. Not that night, anyway.”

  Bawdy laughter titters among them.

  Since the drops have started, the atmosphere has changed. The boys at large are behaving more respectfully toward her, and now that they’re busy, they cause less trouble. There’s the tension of anticipation of the coming sabotage and ambush missions, but it’s laced with excitement. Now that the fires of her temper have been dulled, however, in the absence of blazing fury, she finds an undercurrent of sadness that sometimes threatens to pull her under. Attempting to distract herself, Virginia continues the conversation.

  “How’d you get out of France, after that?” she asks. He once made a vague reference to being trained by the Intelligence Service in London at some point but didn’t elaborate.

  “Out of France?” says Bob. “I never left France after I was dropped. I hid and hiked my way to the Haute-Loire, where I joined these fine boys of the Maquis. I’ve been here ever since.”

  He never left France after he was dropped, she thinks. Yet I could.

  “What about you?” Bob says. “How did it end for you in Lyon?”

  Sober, Virginia stands.

  “Enough,” she says. “We’re going to be late.”

  * * *

  —

  The drop goes well, the boys are efficient, and the whole operation is over in less than an hour. Still, the sadness that has crept in lingers, and Virginia is desperate for a good stretch of sleep before sabotage begins. Before she leaves the boys, Bob hurries over to her with a letter marked “Diane.” She thanks him, and bicycles to her safe house.

  Once Virginia puts on her nightgown and takes off her prosthetic, she hops to bed with the letter. Though the address has been thoroughly blocked out, she’d recognize her mother’s Box Horn Farm stationery anywhere.

  In the candlelight, through her tears, it’s hard to read, but she savors the words—the quality of which she has never received from her mother until this night. How could her mother have known how desperately she needed them?

  Dearest Dindy,

  I don’t know where in the world you are, though I have an idea, and that idea terrifies me. You’re my only daughter. The one I tried to restrain in bows and white dresses, whose knees were always more bruised than her brother’s. You are my rugged adventurer. Pirate, hunter, sailor, soldier. Yet also—somehow—scholar, linguist, actress, beauty. Lorna found the childhood picture of you with Daddy and your brother. It’s the one with Daddy reading Robinson Crusoe to you both but—while John sits politely paying attention—you straddle the arm of the chair like it’s your horse, your face blurry because you couldn’t sit still. It made me laugh to see it. I felt foolish for how that picture—that girl—used to vex me. How silly of me to try to tame you. How wrong.

  You are perfectly you, and I wouldn’t change you for the world. For the world needs you, just as you are.

  I pray every day that you come home to me when this war is over. Either way, I know I speak for your dear, late father and myself when I say how proud we are of you.

  With love,

  Mother

  Chapter 33

  Her mother’s words touch her deeply, and she gets her first restful night’s sleep in a long time.

  It’s a good thing.

  Sabotage begins tonight but, before they start, HQ ordered Virginia to take a day trip to check a report they’ve received that the German General Staff has left Lyon and is on its way to Le Puy. If this is true, it’s a major development in favor of the Allies. She dares not hope too much for what it means for the imminent liberation of Lyon and the people of her old network.

  Virginia wants to go to Le Puy by herself—old ladies on bicycles are still invisible—but Bob and Dédé insist one of them accompany her. Between the two of them, she’s almost never alone, and knows how seriously they take her safety. If they were any other boys, they’d drive her crazy, but these two are like beloved little brothers.

  “I’ll go,” says Dédé.

  “No, I will,” says Bob. “Your face is too young. I’m more weathered. I can dress up like an old man, and anyone who sees me with Diane will just imagine we’re a nice old couple out for a pleasure ride in war-torn France.”

  “Are you sure you’re up for a two-and-a-half-hour bike ride?” says Virginia. “I’m not stopping a hundred times along the way so you can smoke.”

  “Please,” Bob says. “I’m a professional.”

  She rolls her eyes as he disappears into the storage barn to find suitable clothes. When he leaves, she checks her padding and her old-lady makeup in the mirror. Behind her, in the reflection, she sees Dédé light a cigarette and hop to sit on the table, legs hanging like a little boy. She has an urge to wrap him in a hug.

  “It’s best you stay back,” she says. “You and the boys need to be fresh for tonight.”

  “And you don’t?” says Dédé.

  “I haven’t slept since 1940; there’s no sense in starting now.”

  She ties a kerchief around her hair to cover her auburn roots, and adds more powder and kohl to her face and hands. Dédé was able to find her a new pair of false glasses, so she’s back to having lenses. Once she’s satisfied with her disguise, she turns away from the mirror and notices the calendar hung on the wall. It’s July 30. As if on instinct she mentally calculates her grim statistic.

  One hundred thirty-two days.

  “You should know,” she says, attem
pting to keep her voice light, “I’m living on borrowed time. If I don’t make it back, Edmund can take over my duties. He knows how to operate the wireless.”

  “What do you mean, ‘living on borrowed time’?” says Dédé.

  “I was only supposed to have lived six weeks as a wireless operator in occupied France.”

  “How many have you lasted?”

  “Triple that. So, I expect to go any day now. Especially now that we’re getting closer to forcing the Nazis’ hand.”

  Bob emerges, cutting off the conversation. He looks like an old Frenchman, even finding a pipe for good measure. He hobbles to her and kisses her cheek.

  “Come, ma chére femme,” he says. “Let’s go for a bike ride and find a haystack to tumble in the way we used to when we were young.”

  Virginia laughs, but Dédé’s face is serious.

  “I would prefer to go with Bob,” he says.

  “I’m not tumbling in any haystacks with you,” says Bob.

  Virginia walks over to Dédé and touches his arm.

  “You’re needed here,” she says.

  He gives her a small nod, but his face remains troubled.

  Once she and Bob are on the road, he’s all business. She keeps count of the Nazi lorries they pass, the directions they travel, the children—so many children—not just in Chambon, but in all the surrounding villages.

  On the outskirts of Tence, Virginia stops her bike when she spots a girl with a polka-dot scarf—the girl from the bus ride she took with Estelle. The girl holds the hand of a smaller girl as they walk to a well in front of a quaint farmhouse. Her stride is strong, and her skin is flushed with good health. She has none of the fear on her face from that bus ride. Virginia is careful not to meet the girl’s eyes so she doesn’t shake anything loose inside her that might unsettle her. As Virginia rides away, she offers up a silent wish for the girl’s safety and peace, and another for Sophie’s, and Mimi’s, and Louis’s. It pains her that she can arm and train hundreds of Maquis, but she can’t do anything to help her friends.

  When Bob sees Virginia has fallen behind, he slows his pace.

  “Everything all right?” he asks.

  She nods, unable to find her voice from the lump in her throat.

  He takes her at her word and again pulls ahead, continuing on the road to Le Puy.

  The new bicycle Dédé found for Virginia is better than the first. It rides smoother and the seat is more comfortable, but even with the improvement, the ride is becoming brutal. Aside from the torture of mountain roads, the sun blazes forth, and—with a half hour left to go—they’ve drunk all the water in their canteens. Bob pulls off on a side road that leads downhill to the Loire River, but downhill means uphill on the way back.

  Along the shaded banks, they find a fast-running stream, where they refill their canteens. Virginia wants to remove the sweaty stump sock that’s chafing her knee, but that isn’t possible. Instead, she slips an aspirin from her pocket and takes it. Seeing Bob rubbing his temples, she takes out another.

  “What’s this?” he asks.

  “Aspirin. Does your head hurt?”

  “Yes,” he says. “It’s throbbing.”

  “You get headaches a lot.”

  “Have you met the woman I have to work with?”

  She smiles while he takes the aspirin and washes it down. When he does, she notices the flash of the revolver at his hip.

  “You need to hide that better,” she says.

  “Yes, sir,” he says, saluting.

  She helps him tuck in his undershirt around it. Then they walk their bikes up the hill to continue the journey. After a short while they reach the Le Puy city limits, and she’s impressed by the sight before her: miles of red roofs climbing the mountainous terrain to the peak where a grand statue of the Virgin overlooks it all.

  “Now that’s la Madone,” Virginia says.

  Bob looks to the huge Mary on the mountain. She’s red as blood, golden tiara gleaming in the sun.

  “Our Lady of Le Puy,” says Bob. “Made from two hundred melted Russian cannons after their capture during the Crimean War. A woman of iron.”

  He raises his eyebrows at her and continues on the road that winds down the narrow streets bordered by brick walls and stone houses, right into the heart of town. German headquarters looms with swastikas flying. The streets crawl with Nazis and the Milice, who’ve assumed a larger role with patrols since D-Day, now that so many of the French gendarme have abandoned their posts and taken to the woods to join the Maquis.

  Bob leads them to a café littered with Nazi soldiers. It’s only slightly less intimidating than the one full of Milice across the way, but at least it’s more likely Virginia’s accent will go unnoticed.

  In a short time, the loudspeaker issues a call for soldiers to report for exercises, and the café empties. The music of a German brass band plays while formations parade through the square. Bob leans close to her.

  “Do you know what Dr. Le Forestier did when the boches in Chambon used to do this?”

  “What?”

  “He’d blare his car horn over the music.”

  “Roger did that?”

  “Every day. They never could figure out who it was, especially when others in different places around the village would join in. All those cars sitting idle with nothing to run on were put to good use. Such a small act of subversion, yet strangely unsettling for the pigs. You could feel how uncomfortable it made them.”

  “It’s not the fists alone that win the fight,” she says.

  “I’ll drink to that,” he says.

  While they each sip their putrid café nationale, she thinks of Sophie, hoping for her safe arrival in London. Virginia is surprised how much she misses her. She was a good courier. Though, if she’s honest, she knows it’s more than that. For a moment, Virginia allows herself to dream of a time they could meet outside the strain of war.

  At twelve fifteen, Bob leaves to check in with his contact at the bookshop. They’ve discussed the plan in detail, and if he isn’t back at the table in fifteen minutes, she’s to leave without him and return to the spot where they stopped on the Loire River. If he doesn’t return there within a half hour, she’s to start back for Chambon alone.

  While he’s gone, she uses a ration stub to order the only menu item available: foul, watery cabbage soup. Choking it down, she watches the town, taking note of the bank, the post office, and the prefecture. The atmosphere here feels charged. The people are hurried and nervous. The Milice are watchful. The Nazis, menacing.

  Twelve twenty.

  She locks the bicycles to the fence and rises to use the café restroom. There’s a line inside, but she’s desperate so she has to wait. She doesn’t like how the hostess at the stand keeps looking at her. The woman appears to be in her twenties and is voluptuous and blonde. She’s bright with the Nazi soldiers but less friendly with the townspeople.

  You’ll pay for that, Virginia thinks.

  The woman’s head turns sharply toward her as if she hears Virginia’s thoughts.

  Virginia fixes her stare on the washroom sign. The line still isn’t moving, and the clock over the kitchen reads twelve twenty-eight.

  Damn.

  Pressure from her full bladder is painful, but she’s out of time. Besides, she needs to get away from this woman.

  She returns to the bikes, taking hers but refastening the lock on Bob’s. He has a second key. She gives the square one last look for Bob before walking her bike to the street. She senses a change in the air, an increase in motion. Suddenly, dozens of black, shining Mercedes with Nazi flags flying race into town and park along the street at the prefecture.

  My God. It’s them, she thinks. The German General Staff has been run out of Lyon.

  Struggling to keep her elation in check, she climbs on her bicycle and p
edals around the square, taking mental pictures of what she sees. On the way out of Le Puy, she passes dozens more Nazi vehicles, and spots a convoy of soldiers parked in formation along the road leading north. None of the fools pay an old woman like her any mind.

  Once out of their sight, pedaling with all her might, she turns off along the river path, drops her bike to the ground, and relieves herself behind a tree. Then, she hurries back to the path, gasping when she sees Bob already there. He leans against his bike, smoking.

  “It’s a good thing I waited here for you to finish,” Bob says. “I would have scared the piss out of you.”

  She narrows her eyes at him.

  “My contact told me the Lyon boches started arriving yesterday,” he says. “He thinks they must find Le Puy a more strategic location for reinforcement.”

  “No way,” says Virginia, a grin touching her lips. “Transportation from Lyon is far more efficient than from this region. It’s the Resistance.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Lyon Resistance has finally made Nazis there so miserable they’re sending them packing. Starting with the bigwigs.”

  “I can’t believe all this is finally happening.”

  “But that means the danger is higher than it’s ever been,” she says.

  He nods. He’s witnessed too much himself.

  “We have to get to Simon as soon as possible,” she says.

  If the Secret Army is able to ambush German convoys, surround Le Puy, and cut off the Nazis from communicating with other cities, they’ll be crippled. And then the Maquis can liberate the area.