The Heart of the Ritz

by Luke Devenish

  But Lana Mae couldn’t answer. ‘You’ll know when you find it,’ she whispered. ‘But I also want you to know that I love you – with all of my heart. We all do.’ She blew a kiss to her.

  Her handbag on her arm, Lana Mae opened the office door.

  11

  13 December 1941

  The Canadian Doctor Mandel, once resident at the Ritz, knew that as far as imprisonment went, things could always be worse. Indeed, they had been worse for him when first he’d been taken, within days of the Germans’ arrival. He’d expected arrest, and French friends had begged him to leave in the exodus to prevent it, but two decades’ service at the American Hospital of Paris was not something to leave behind lightly. And so, he hadn’t left. They’d arrested him while he was doing his rounds on the wards. What rankled the doctor most was that it wasn’t the Germans who’d taken him, but the French police. Their switch from enforcing the laws of the French Republic to enforcing the laws of whatever it was that was now in its place was seamless. He could only assume that laws were just laws to the gendarmerie; it didn’t matter who was issuing them. It didn’t matter about conscience.

  Mandel’s first months of internment were spent in a prisoner-of-war camp along with French soldiers, where conditions had been unspeakable. Blameless civilian men like himself had died pointlessly, along with countless uniformed French. There had been sore need of his medical skills, but no supplies and equipment to apply them. He’d done what he could. But when the British turned the tide on the Luftwaffe, winning the Battle of Britain, the Germans gave up all ideas of a quick victory. This necessitated a different solution for the interned. The British had apparently learned of the poor conditions the internees were being subjected to and, it was rumoured, threatened to send their own interned German civilians to the arctic wastes of Canada. Whether this was true or not, there had come a sudden change. Doctor Mandel, along with two thousand or so of his fellow internees, had been transported to the spa town of Vittel, east of Paris.

  With the enticing name of ‘Frontstalag 121’, this camp consisted of requisitioned hotels grouped around a large park. Here, despite a barbed wire perimeter and patrolling armed guards, conditions were better. The internees could do their own cooking. The hotels mostly had heat and running water. People could send and receive mail. Red Cross parcels made it to them, delivered through neutral Sweden. This supplemented an otherwise monotonous diet and gave them items to barter with French civilians through the fence wire. They were not subjected to forced labour, mercifully. They organised classes and lectures for the young. Films were shown on weekends, albeit German ones. Most important of all, from Mandel’s perspective, was that they had the very basics of a hospital. People could be treated, if not always cured.

  Of course, it was all for propaganda purposes. It was said that Joseph Goebbels carried photographs of Vittel to show how well the Germans treated foreigners. Mandel didn’t expect these conditions to last. If the war turned against Hitler, why bother caring for the enemy interned? He feared they were all of them living on borrowed time.

  But for now, the hospital gave him purpose; something he clung to. He had been issued a hotel room of his own when he first came to Vittel, but he gave it up, sleeping instead in a cold, grubby office off one of the wards. It was a sacrifice he had gladly made. He only wished he could somehow make more. Purpose and sacrifice were notions he had not understood until he had served in the trenches at the end of the Great War. France had given him his understanding of what both notions truly meant, and for that he was eternally glad. It was why he had given himself to France in turn.

  These thoughts were in his mind now, as they so often were, as he began his morning rounds. His English nurse, Fiona, a fellow internee in her fifties, once a doughty nanny for a family of wealthy Parisian Jews, apprised him of events that had occurred overnight. Rarely for Mandel, he’d slept right through. Patients had been admitted without him even stirring in his cot.

  ‘There was an American woman admitted just before dawn, Doctor. She was in a great deal of pain.’

  ‘The area?’

  ‘Abdominal.’

  Mandel saw the name on the admissions list. He looked hard at Fiona. ‘But you know who this is, don’t you?’

  ‘I do, Doctor.’ There was emotion in her face.

  ‘Has her complaint been diagnosed?’

  ‘I had thought appendicitis. But there is rectal bleeding.’ She bent her head closer to his. ‘Our morphine supplies are so minimal, as of course you well know, reserved for the worst cases.’

  He waited.

  ‘I gave her some all the same. Not because of who she is, but for all that she’s done.’

  He touched her arm. ‘You did well, my old girl. Where is she then?’

  Fiona led the way to a ward upstairs, where the woman was the only patient. When Mandel saw her he was almost overcome. His time at the Ritz seemed so long ago now, his life having changed so entirely. It seemed almost obscene, in truth, that he ever took such luxurious cushioning for granted. Now, faced with someone else who had lived in it, someone also brought low by the war, it was almost too much for the Canadian doctor.

  There was a chair near the bed and he sat down in it. He looked to Fiona. ‘She is a friend.’

  Fiona understood. ‘I’ll return shortly, Doctor.’ She left them alone.

  Lana Mae’s hand rested on top of the blanket. Mandel took it in his. The air in the ward was chilly, but Lana Mae’s skin was hot to the touch. She had the remnants of a fever. He placed a palm to her forehead, brushing the henna-red hair. ‘Mrs Huckstepp?’

  She stirred, seeing him. She smiled in recognition. ‘Why, it’s Doc Mandel . . .’

  He smiled back. ‘Paul.’

  She squeezed his hand. ‘Are we home at the Ritz?’

  He shook his head, sadly. ‘Not this time. But you are safe.’

  She closed her eyes, grateful.

  ‘Are you still feeling pain?’

  She wasn’t for now, or not much anyway. ‘That Fiona was kind.’

  He stroked her fingers. Given all that he knew of her actions since the Germans had come, he knew he couldn’t lie to her about what was most likely ahead. She had proved herself stoic. She would understand that if she was seriously ill then he could not save her in Vittel. ‘I must tell you that our facilities are almost nothing, Mrs Huckstepp. I have not examined you, of course, but if surgery is required, as I fear it might, well then . . .’ He trailed off.

  She opened her eyes again. Her voice was painfully weak, but her good humour remained. ‘I know what’s wrong with me, honey, you don’t have to fret.’

  ‘What is it?’

  She told him.

  His surprise at the truth returned a humour of his own. He found himself chuckling.

  ‘The cops didn’t even realise,’ said Lana Mae, grinning at him. ‘My last six rocks, swallowed like a handful of uppers.’ She felt her bowel churn. ‘Oh God.’ The effects of the morphine were beginning to wear off. She looked at him imploringly. ‘Will the rocks kill me, Doc?’

  He didn’t think so. ‘The bleeding is to be expected, I suppose, but I doubt they’ll be fatal.’

  She looked relieved, briefly, before a look of determination replaced it. She peered around at the ramshackle ward. ‘This is what you call a hospital here?’

  ‘We are interned at Vittel, Mrs Huckstepp. This is the best our hospital can be in the circumstances.’

  ‘Vittel, Vittel . . .’ The name meant something to her. ‘You know, I took the waters here once. It cleared up a yeast infection.’

  He chuckled again.

  ‘What do you need? What sort of supplies?’

  He gestured helplessly. ‘Where do I start with that question?’

  ‘Maybe let’s start with some more goddamn morphine,’ Lana Mae suggested. Her bowel churned again. ‘Oh God.’

  He bent closer to her. ‘Mrs Huckstepp, this is delicate, I know, but have any of your jewels so far –’
He made a motion suggesting the miracle of birth.

  ‘No,’ winced Lana Mae. ‘I’ve had boiled English ox tongue that got out of me quicker.’ The twisting in her guts was audible. ‘I think the sextuplets are about to come home . . .’

  Mandel stood up. ‘Perhaps a bedpan.’

  Lana Mae clutched at his arm. ‘I mean it. What do you need for medical supplies?’

  ‘You’re in no fit state for this, Mrs Huckstepp.’

  ‘Call me Lana Mae, for Christ’s sake, and listen to me. When my rocks arrive, we’ll have something.’

  ‘You’ll have something. They’re your gems.’

  Hurt, her eyes pricked with tears. ‘Do you know nothing of me?’ She reconsidered this. ‘Maybe you don’t, you’ve been locked up.’ She looked at him imploringly. ‘Please, Doc, listen. I’ve changed. I’m not the same stupid, self-centred woman I was before the Germans got here – that woman you knew at the Ritz.’

  ‘I know of what you’ve done for wounded French soldiers. Of course, I know.’

  She was pleased, then emotional. ‘But you don’t know how I’ve done it. My funds were frozen. Roosevelt left me broke. But I still had all my rocks with me, didn’t I? So many damn rocks. And the Ritz is stuffed full of those greedy kraut pigs.’

  He realised now how she’d achieved it. Mandel’s notions of purpose and sacrifice came flooding back to his mind.

  She pointed at her belly. ‘So, when the kids show up again, which won’t be very long, we’ll put ’em to use, Doc. We’ll get the supplies, the equipment, everything you need.’

  He knew it was unethical, yet he suddenly felt a great desire to scoop the voluptuous patient from her bed and plant a kiss on her.

  ‘But we’re gonna need a real good plan,’ Lana Mae told him. ‘A serious one. To fool the goddamn krauts. Something that’ll let me get in and out of here when I need to . . .’

  * * *

  Crouched in Tommy’s attic room, on the floor, with the volume turned down as low as they could get it while still being able to hear something, Tommy, Polly and Odile pressed their collective ears to Odile’s little radio, pilfered from Blanche.

  It was not long after nine o’clock in the evening, and the radio was tuned, as were so many other secret radios throughout Paris, to the French language news broadcast across the English Channel by the BBC. The news so far had been enlightening, but not yet what the three of them half-hoped, half-dreaded to hear. They’d so far learned that Romania and Bulgaria had joined Germany in declaring war upon Britain and the United States. They’d been told that the Japanese destroyer Hayate had been sunk by American coastal defence guns. They had tried to comprehend that part of an Andean glacier had collapsed into a lake in Peru, causing a lethal landslide. Then the announcer moved on to a Paris item:

  ‘From the German-occupied French capital comes news of the first seeds of civilian uprising sown among starving Parisians. A German naval officer was shot and killed while boarding the metro at Barbès-Rochechouart. The assassin escaped German arrest, but left a calling card, stating allegiance to the underground movement, the Freedom Volunteers. This group has previously been known for its distribution of anti-German leaflets. The killing marks an escalation in resistance activity in Paris, and with it an escalation in German reprisals. Occupying authorities arrested twenty French civilians from a Paris bread queue, mostly women. All have been executed by firing squad in retaliation for the killing –’

  Tommy, Polly and Odile clutched each other’s hands in learning of this brutality.

  ‘– General Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French Army in exile, praised the actions of the Freedom Volunteers, while condemning the German atrocity. “The Freedom Volunteers grow in strength,” said de Gaulle, “numbering not a few, but thousands. Their courage serves France. When the day of Liberation comes, I will be proud to shake every one of them by the hand.”’

  They listened to the rest of the news broadcast before turning the radio off. They spent some minutes saying nothing.

  ‘De Gaulle thinks there’s thousands of us,’ said Odile, eventually. ‘Maybe he could learn to count better.’

  ‘Who says there’s not thousands?’ Tommy said. ‘There’s the assassin, and he must have some friends. We don’t know what else is going on out there, Odile. People could be resisting in ways we haven’t heard of.’

  ‘I think Claude’s doing something,’ said Odile. ‘I’ve heard his telephone calls. He thinks because I’m blind that I’m deaf too.’

  Tommy was surprised by this because resistance seemed out of character for obsequious Claude. Then he reconsidered it. ‘Claude’s well placed to be doing something if it’s true. He deals with more krauts than anyone.’

  ‘Then we should join in with him.’

  ‘We will not,’ said Tommy. ‘Block your ears to his telephone calls, Odile. You know it’s safer if we don’t hear about it. We don’t want him discovering what we’re doing either, even if we’re all trying to do the same thing.’

  Odile snapped. ‘I’m sick of being alone in this!’

  ‘You’re not alone,’ said Tommy. ‘There’s you and there’s me and there’s Pol.’

  Odile said nothing, glowering. Tommy looked apprehensively at Polly, crouched in silence on the floor. ‘We’ve never made you tell us who prints the butterflies, have we, Odile?’ he pressed.

  ‘Sometimes I want to tell. You’d be amazed if you knew.’

  ‘And what if someone gets taken by the krauts?’ Tommy threw back at her. ‘The more resisters a person knows, the more resisters they’ll name. We can’t take the chance. No one can.’

  ‘That’s only if they force it from you,’ said Odile, angry. ‘How is a “bathtub” a torture weapon?’

  The Gestapo’s interrogation method had acquired a name, but only that. They knew of no one who had faced this bathtub and returned. If Guy had met his fate with it, no one had heard so. ‘Just do as I say,’ Tommy mumbled.

  Petulant, Odile sat up on the end of Tommy’s bed. She started bouncing on it.

  ‘Stop it,’ Tommy told her, hiding the radio away. ‘Someone will hear the springs.’

  ‘They’ve already been hearing them for months. Just not when it’s me . . .’

  He flushed with embarrassment at what she implied and couldn’t look at Polly. ‘It’s not like that between Polly and me at all.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  He hesitated a second too long. ‘We’re friends – colleagues in resistance. Like you and me, Odile.’

  Odile said nothing. And in her silence, Polly thought she heard what Odile was not saying.

  ‘What would you know about it anyway?’ Tommy scoffed, self-conscious now, before playfully slapping at the back of her head.

  Odile put her hand to the impression Tommy’s hand left in her hair and seemed to be made wistful by it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Tommy said. ‘Did that hurt you?’

  She shook her head. ‘We can’t do any more butterflies,’ she told him, eventually.

  ‘No. We can’t,’ Tommy agreed. To Polly, still watching in silence, it was clear he was experiencing a sudden and overwhelming urge to sit next to Odile on the bed. Polly looked on as he now did so, Tommy trying to make it seem casual. The edge of his hand touched Odile’s on the quilt. He let it stay where it was. Polly knew he was imagining Odile in ways he’d not done so before.

  She felt a flare of jealousy and sprang from the floor.

  ‘Where are you going, Pol?’ Tommy looked up at her.

  She had come to a decision. ‘L’Espadon.’

  This startled him. ‘You said you’d never go in there again.’

  ‘That was before today happened. Now I see I shouldn’t have stopped going.’

  Tommy stood up from the bed. ‘Please. It’s a disgusting place. It’s not safe in there. You know it’s not, Pol.’

  She did know. ‘I let myself have the luxury of a conscience about it. That was wrong. And I’ve been a fool. I’v
e got the perfect disguise right in front of me and I’ve not even thought of it in that way.’

  ‘A disguise?’ said Tommy, lost.

  ‘Just like yours – just like Odile’s. Both of you hide in plain sight from them. So, what do I look like?’ she asked Tommy.

  Tommy didn’t have an answer.

  ‘Remember what you called me that night I first came up to this room? Remember what you thought of me the day we first spoke in the Cambon bar?’

  Tommy did remember. ‘I’m ashamed of that.’

  ‘You said I was a silly little rich girl.’

  ‘But that’s not who you are at all, Pol. I only said it because of your clothes.’

  ‘Thank you, Tommy.’ She was pleased. ‘I should hope it’s not me.’ She took a deep breath. ‘But I think, because of those clothes, it’s who I should be.’

  Tommy saw it now.

  ‘Who’d be threatened by someone like me? A stupid featherbrain, thinking only of the latest fashions? It’s time I start dressing like a BOF properly.’

  He laughed. ‘But not that flag skirt,’ he warned. ‘It’s asking for the wrong kind of attention.’

  She had to agree. She had taken an unacceptable risk with that outfit and would not chance wearing it again until the day the Germans fled Paris. Polly felt renewed in determination. ‘I’m returning to l’Espadon,’ she told them. ‘I have thought of a way that the Freedom Volunteers can get hold of a new gun . . .’

  * * *

  Lately, in order to go on, Zita had rediscovered a little line of ‘powder’. She’d been familiar with it back in the old days – the early ’20s – when she was still very young. Back then, she had loved the lift the powder gave her, the firing up of her confidence, the charge to her sexual appetite. It had all been such fun, the means to enhance a good party. That was until she saw too many others discover that nothing came free of cost in this life. She’d been frightened enough to stop the powder cold. But now here she was back with an amusing old pal again, wholly aware of the consequences, and not giving a damn about them. The dope addict’s life couldn’t be worse than the life she had been living without it, she rationalised. And besides, she wasn’t just doing it for her benefit.