The Milliner's Secret

by Natalie Meg Evans

  Dietrich might never forgive her. Knowing what she now knew of his double life, he might not even be inclined to spare her. But there was no going back.

  Luck was with her as she stepped on to rue de Vaugirard. The moon was behind cloud and the Luftwaffe sentries at the furthest point of their patrol, in rue Guynemer. With Noëlle heavy in her arms, she took the opposite direction, into rue Tournon. A true moment of fear came when headlights flared at the junction of Tournon and rue de Seine. Coming towards her. She ducked into a doorway and Noëlle whimpered.

  ‘It’s all right, darling. We’re going to Tante Nou-Nou’s and we’ll pop you into that big warm bed.’

  On rue de Seine, Arkady opened the street door at the second rap and it was clear that he’d only just come home. He wore his outdoor coat, his violin case in his hand. ‘All right!’ He raised his arms, as if fending off ill luck, then dropped them as he recognised her. ‘You! Sorry, I thought I was in trouble for breaking curfew. I walk home always after work, because I must get out of the Rose Noire. Filthy place. But what is wrong? Noëlle is ill?’

  ‘No, but I’m in a terrible fix.’

  He ushered her up the stairs, where they found Una dozing on the sofa, a candlewick housecoat over her evening dress, her hair in sponge rollers. She sat up, saying muzzily, ‘Darling – oh, my stars, what’s up?’

  Coralie gave them a filleted version of events. Nothing about the assassination plot or of Martel’s foiled attempt to denounce Dietrich. All she said was that Teddy had fallen foul of the German authorities and that Dietrich had gone, with another man, to settle the score.

  ‘Settle how?’

  ‘They took a gun.’

  Una pulled in a breath. ‘I heard a car shortly after I was dropped home this evening. A door slammed and I had three heart attacks because I thought – well, we always think they’re coming for us, don’t we? Then I heard hard knocking just down the street. Yellow-belly that I am, I kept the lights off and my back to the wall. It was Teddy they were after? Dietrich was part of it? Why?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ She wanted to tell Una and Arkady everything but she was ashamed of her own part in the situation, and of Dietrich’s readiness to exact revenge.

  ‘We know why.’ Arkady was stirring up the fire, adding chunks of broken-up vegetable crate. ‘His life is not natural. He goes to bed with men.’

  ‘We don’t judge, honey.’ Una made space on the sofa so Coralie could lay Noëlle down.

  ‘We do not judge so hard, but they do. Often Teddy is seen dining with young men. You want tea, Coralie, or chicory mud?’

  ‘Neither, thanks. Did you hear –’ she hated to say it ‘– a shot?’

  ‘Gunshot?’ Una shook her head. ‘I heard doors slamming, and men’s voices.’

  ‘Shouting, arguing?’

  ‘Fear. I heard fear.’

  Arkady offered Coralie a cigarette, and when she refused, said, ‘Sorry, I forget. You can stay here as long as you need. I go back up into the roof to sleep, yes?’ He gave a rueful grin. ‘Excuse me, I am very tired.’

  ‘One more thing.’ Just one little thing. ‘The Gestapo took Julie tonight.’

  Getting no response, Coralie wondered if they grasped what that meant. ‘She will talk and she knows that you escaped from the camp at Gurs, Arkady. She was here when you and Florian arrived, one suitcase between you. She knows you fought in Spain for the anti-Fascists and she knows your origins. Florian’s too.’

  ‘You think they will arrest me, this Gestapo, because I am manouche? Or because I fight on the losing side in Spain?’ Arkady took matches from his pocket, only to find the box empty. ‘A mean-face woman came up to me the other day. Demanded to know if I was Gypsy. I said, “Are you witch?”’

  Una pulled her knees up, hugging her chest. ‘It’s true, what Coralie says. We sat at this table, talking about costumes for the Vagabonds.’

  Coralie nodded. ‘And I kept going on about big Gypsy sleeves and playing up the romantic foreigner. At least Ramon should be safe – the Auvergne’s a big place. You know he and Julie lived together?’ Seeing a glance pass between the others, she slowly nodded. ‘Clearly, you did.’

  Una admitted it. ‘Arkady’s shoulder is the one Florian cries on and, yes, we should have told you, but I said you had enough on your plate.’

  Coralie reflected that it hardly mattered any more who was in bed with whom. ‘I’m scared for you,’ she told Arkady. ‘They have camps for Gypsies now, just as they have them for Jews.’

  ‘Your German tells you that?’ Arkady found a lighter in another pocket and snapped down on it, getting a short-lived flash each time. ‘Damn and hell. Out of fuel. Everything runs out but trouble.’

  ‘Here, emergency supply.’ Una took a box of matches from under a sofa cushion and struck a light. Arkady crouched in front of her, cigarette glued to his bottom lip, and Coralie watched a tender ceremony take place between them. A moment later, tobacco smoke hit her, transporting her back to her father’s yard in Bermondsey. To an iron chair by a wall where Jac would smoke his Navy Cut. She frowned at Arkady. ‘Where’d you get that English cigarette from?’

  It was Una who replied. ‘Nose like a bloodhound. One of our guests left it.’

  ‘Guests . . . an evader, you mean? English?’

  ‘A tail-gunner. “Tail-end Charlies”, they call them. His plane crashed just this side of the Belgian border but don’t ask more.’

  Arkady went to sit by the window, opening it slightly to let his smoke drift outside. Full as she was of brawling emotions, Coralie appreciated his consideration. He returned her look. ‘I am not leaving. Who will protect Una if I go away?’

  Una blew him a kiss and added, in her brightest voice, ‘I was born under a lucky star, and Arkady’s mother told fortunes. She always said her son would die on a carpet of leaves. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘A bed of leaves.’

  ‘So, as long as he stays out of the park in the autumn, he’ll be fine. But how about you, honey? Can you be safe?’

  The answer was easy. Dietrich had once told her how difficult it was to make friends in Paris and, in defiance of that, she had made friends. But, one by one, they were disappearing. Ottilia, Ramon. Even Julie. Poor, silly Julie. And now Teddy, taken to God only knew what fate. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t ever be safe.’ She looked at Noëlle in her blanket and wondered if Dietrich would follow her here.

  Maybe, but where else could she go?

  Next to Una in the great bed, she lay awake, trying to dispel images of the gun in Fritzi Kleber’s handbag and the look on Dietrich’s face as he had left the flat with Kurt. Teddy was beyond her help, and she must plan for herself. More particularly, for Noëlle. She’d known for a while that Paris was unsafe for her child. No putting it off.

  As Una turned and muttered in sleep, Coralie went through the names of everyone she’d ever met in Paris. Who among them might offer asylum to a little child? One name jumped forward, one so unlikely, she accused her mind of mocking her.

  The following day was Thursday, Una’s day off from the hospital. Leaving Noëlle behind, dressed in a plaid Javier town suit her friend had lent her, Coralie took the Métro to place de la Concorde. On rue Royal, she entered Henriette Junot, braced for a fight. She said to the first person she saw, ‘I need to see the proprietress.’

  A vendeuse, arranging narcissi and willow stems in a wicker trug, hardly glanced up. ‘Upstairs. Keep climbing until you reach the ivory tower.’

  On the stairs, Coralie stood aside to let a young girl come down.

  ‘Merci, Madame,’ the girl murmured.

  ‘Loulou?’ Behind the polite demeanour, Coralie recognised the skinny child who’d watched her fumble with Henriette’s left-handed shears five years ago. ‘It is you!’

  ‘Oh, Madame Cazaubon. I beg your pardon, I was far away. Madame Junot is in her studio, but isn’t very well. Please don’t tire her.’

  ‘Don’t ruffle her, you mean? I’ll do my best.’
<
br />   The sound of a hacking cough made Coralie pause. Was she wasting her time? Henriette in health was a hyena. Henriette ill was likely to bite her head off before she’d got two words out. All the same, she had to try.

  Knocking and entering, she inhaled a blast of pine oil and balsam. A figure in wide-leg trousers and a fisherman’s sweater was bent over a metal bowl, a cloth over their head.

  ‘Henriette?’

  A hoarse ‘What do you want?’ confirmed the identity.

  ‘I need somewhere to hide my daughter deep in the countryside and I’m hoping you can help. That place you stayed at, the château de Jarrat in Ariège . . . is it owned by friends of yours?’

  The cloth was flung aside, revealing a face the colour of mashed strawberry. ‘Kiss my arse. You put me in jail. Why should I do you any favours?’

  ‘I’m asking for Noëlle. She’s Ramon’s daughter, too, and he would help if he could.’

  Henriette walked up to Coralie and slapped her face, buckling over into a paroxysm of coughing. Coralie, reeling from the blow, watched without pity until Henriette began making a dry, screeching sound. ‘On your hands and knees,’ Coralie ordered, pressing hard on Henriette’s shoulder. ‘Drop your head and breathe shallow. Shallow in, deep out. That’s better.’ She massaged Henriette’s shoulder-blades until the spasm passed. There’d been some terrible lung disorders at Pettrew’s, the air being constantly full of fluff and fur particles. They’d all been taught how to help a colleague having an asthma attack. Looking down, Coralie saw how thin Henriette’s hair was. Once blue-black, it was woolly in texture, like that of an aged dog.

  She helped Henriette to a chair and poured her a glass of water.

  ‘I’m dying.’ Weakly, Henriette indicated her worktable. Apart from the pungent bowl and a water jug, there was nothing on it. ‘I spent three months inside La Santé, being plunged twice a day into ice-water.’ She lifted her head, a snake-like movement. ‘Help you? I wish you’d never crossed my path, or Ramon’s. The bitch who left him – what was her name, Julie? – you brought them together and she made a fool of him, so he ran off to join some band of free-shooters. If he dies or the Gestapo get him, it’s on your conscience.’

  ‘Men like Ramon are born, not made, Henriette. Look, whatever you think of me, Ramon loves Noëlle. I reckon she’s the only person he truly loves – next to you, of course. So I’m asking help for his sake. Not mine.’

  Henriette made a snarling noise. She’d lost teeth. ‘Everyone cheats me. Lorienne, Rosaire, that bastard accountant I brought in, they’re taking my world from me, bit by bit. It’s “Lorienne Royer for Henriette Junot” but soon, it will be “Lorienne Royer for herself”.’

  A racking cough took over. Henriette put her hand to her mouth, and afterwards wiped blood off it. ‘Ramon said you had a German sniffing around you. He was ashamed of you and so am I. Get lost.’

  Coralie had one last card to play. To be precise, a photograph.

  Taken at Noëlle’s baptism, it showed Ramon cradling her. It could have been any baby, just a crochet bundle with a button-nosed profile. But the photographer had caught Ramon smiling down like a man witnessing a miracle. Henriette stared at it. Coralie knew it could push her either way.

  After a minute or so, Henriette dropped the picture and sighed. She opened a drawer and removed a pair of keys, which she tossed towards Coralie. ‘Seventeen, impasse de Cordoba. It’s a back-street, linking with rue d’Édimbourg in the quartier de l’Europe, good for fast escapes. The flat’s above a boarded-up printer’s shop. It’s cold as charity and nobody knows about it, not even Ramon.’

  ‘It’s yours?’

  ‘All mine. You can move in there with your bastard.’

  Coralie gritted her teeth. ‘What do you use it for?’

  ‘Trysts.’ Henriette coughed again, grabbing the cloth that had been covering her head. When she finally looked up, she seemed surprised that Coralie was still there. ‘What more d’you want?’

  ‘To say thank you.’

  ‘All right. I’m sorry, by the way.’

  ‘What – for sacking me? Cheating me?’

  ‘Not that! All’s fair in fashion. No, for that girl we hurt, the one who works for you.’

  ‘Violaine?’

  ‘Lorienne swore she would return and release her. I didn’t know she had not.’ Henriette closed her eyes. ‘There’s a proverb where I come from – “Feed the crow, it will still peck your eyes out.” Lorienne knows I’m finished. But . . . I shall evade her.’

  ‘You’re going home?’

  Henriette found sufficient strength for a flash of disdain. ‘No. I’d go back to Italy if I could, but I shall go to the next best place. Switzerland.’

  Back at rue de Seine, Coralie found Noëlle in a lather of excitement. ‘Oncle Dietrich came,’ she said. ‘I pull his necklace and say he is an otter. He said, “No, you are an otter.”’

  ‘It was an argument hopelessly circular,’ said Una. ‘If he hadn’t been wearing that Blue Max, I wouldn’t have known him.’

  When Noëlle was at last quietly drawing pictures in the margins of a newspaper, the two women sat down to talk.

  Una explained, ‘He came in the form of a human telegram, delivered a few formal lines, clicked his heels and went. Though had he found you, not me, I suspect a quiver of emotion would have been detectable.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  Una took up the stance of a Prussian officer. ‘“You are safe and have no more to fear today than yesterday. I wish you had understood that I had to take extreme action last night and wish you had not meddled.” At that point, honey, he stopped being a telegram and became just a little human. I have to know what you did.’

  ‘Another time, Una. What else did he say?’

  Una became Prussian again. ‘“I accept that the time has come for us to part and wish you well. You may return to rue de Vaugirard any time.”’

  ‘I can’t go back there! I can’t see him.’ Coralie twisted her coral bracelet, which snapped in two. She gave a cry and buried her face. ‘Course it’s over. Course it is!’

  Noëlle, looking up from her drawing, immediately burst into copy-cat tears, which forced Coralie to pretend the whole thing was a game. Later, she gave Una a broad description of the previous night’s events – though saying nothing about the plot to kill Hitler. ‘Dietrich and his friend Kurt believe the war will be lost. Somebody overheard them saying it and informed on them.’

  ‘You mean Teddy informed, and that’s why Dietrich went after him?’ Una thought about it. ‘I don’t believe it. Know why? Teddy’s in love with Dietrich. You only have to watch him when you two are together. The sight of you, so entranced, is unspeakably painful to him.’

  ‘Are you serious?’ Coralie chewed her lip. ‘I never saw it.’

  ‘Because when Teddy’s with you he dilutes the impression by saying rude things about Dietrich. Oldest trick in the book. Here’s what I think. Teddy’s missing, but if anybody’s killed him, it’s the other fellow, Kurt What’s-his-name. Your Dietrich is not a natural assassin. Sure, he’s hurt that you double-crossed him, but he also knows he’s drawn you into something murky. So, he’s letting you go by going away himself. He’s returning to Germany. Actually . . .’ Una looked at the clock – just gone two ‘. . . he’ll be on his way by now.’

  It took all Coralie’s resolve not to start crying again. Even among all this swirling distrust and confusion, she wanted Dietrich. Love had seeped back into her bones. Nothing would kill it. Her eyes brimmed again when Una gave her an Ausweis that Dietrich had left for her. It bore Coralie and Noëlle’s names, an official Luftwaffe stamp and signature, and carried an open date. It meant she and her child could leave Paris swiftly, should they need to.

  Arkady came home with the news that he’d called at rue de Vaugirard and found Florian and Micheline packing. The couple would be out of Paris by the end of the day. ‘They go to Micheline’s parents’ farm, by the sea. So, we will not see them aga
in. Bloody war. Bloody occupation.’

  Coralie couldn’t stop herself. She wept, and even Una joined in.

  The sad, anxious spring of 1942 included one sharp moment of joy. Coralie cycled home one April evening to the pied-à-terre on impasse de Cordoba where she and Noëlle now lived, the fingers on her handlebars fuchsia pink because she and Violaine had been dyeing goose feathers all afternoon.

  A familiar fragrance on the stairs – Worth’s Je Reviens – alerted her to a visitor and she found Una drinking chicory coffee with the retired teacher Coralie now employed to collect Noëlle from nursery school each day. ‘I have news,’ Una whispered, as they kissed cheeks.

  ‘I will say goodnight, Mesdames.’ Mademoiselle Guinard put away her books. She was coaching Noëlle in reading and arithmetic. Coralie had struggled with spellings and her times tables at school, but Noëlle loved the work. Probably because nobody had yet told her it was work.

  Once Mademoiselle Guinard was gone, Una said, ‘Well, this place is certainly snug.’

  ‘Poky is what you mean.’ The flat’s main room served as sitting room, dining room and kitchen, with a window providing a view of sullen impasse de Cordoba, a dead end, closed off by a railway line. Coralie and Noëlle shared a box-bedroom. The bathroom was little more than an alcove. Coralie had learned the timetable of nearby Gare Saint-Lazare from the shaking of the walls. In fact, the place reminded her of her father’s shed. Its one virtue was that only her closest friends knew of its existence.

  ‘Good news or bad?’ she asked, as Noëlle put on the radio and began to dance. Dancing was the child’s way of celebrating the end of the school day.

  As a sobbing soprano filled the room, Una handed Coralie a postcard. A winter scene, city roofs with snow-capped mountains in the background. ‘It’s from Geneva,’ Coralie said. ‘Who do you know in Switzerland?’