The Girl Who Dreamed of Paris

by Natalie Meg Evans

  Coralie was glad to be back on the Rive Gauche. She liked being a Right Bank milliner but the Bermondsey girl inside her was definitely Left Bank. Even so, she shivered in anticipation of the squall that would hit her when she re-crossed the river.

  She asked Frau Pfendt to raise her chin a little – and felt like adding, ‘All four of them, gnädige Dame’ – ‘I want to see if we need a little more height.’

  The face in the mirror was round-cheeked with quivering jowls. In happier times, Coralie would have created something dignified. But Frau Pfendt was a victim of ‘the game’. Thousands of French men were being sent as forced labour to Germany. Women too. Had Coralie not been married, she’d have been called up, as she was within the age range. The German occupation was siphoning food, labour, health from France – while making the victims pay twenty times over for every scrap thrown back at them. Anger needed an outlet. Coralie had her Resistance work, and this . . .

  She stood back to judge the effect of supple, red leather which, when sewn together at the back, would resemble a soft trilby. She’d adopted Violaine’s method of constructing directly on to clients’ heads, speeding through different shapes until one stood out as a perfect marriage for the face beneath. Or, as in Frau Pfendt’s case, as millinery grounds for divorce.

  Now that supplies had dried up almost completely, Coralie had put aside her blocks and devised templates to fit any reasonably-sized remnant. The leather she was using for this client had been acquired, by an indirect route, from the bombed-out Renault factory. In peacetime, it would probably have upholstered part of a car seat.

  Frau Pfendt would no doubt want some sort of fantastical trimming on it. One of Coralie’s current favourites was wood-shavings, which, when sewn in place resembled . . . wood-shavings. She’d never seen the point of pretending that ‘found’ materials were other than what they were. Ersatz hats were just that. Good enough. Ersatz coffee was unpleasant and walnut-juice ‘stockings’ fooled nobody.

  Taking a handful of stiff ribbon from a basket, she added bows and loops, which quadrupled the hat’s dimensions. Red and white, barber-shop colours. Solange Antonin would have carried it off beautifully, but on Frau Pfendt, the result was a hair’s breadth away from absurd. Teamed with the woman’s outfit, a red and white striped suit from Jacques Fath’s latest collection . . .

  Showing Frau Pfendt how to hold the hat together on her head, Coralie perched on the sofa arm and invited her to walk up and down. She called out, ‘Brava,’ while reflecting that short A-line skirts gave no quarter to stocky legs. Nor had Monsieur Fath designed the blouson jacket for matronly bosoms. Add grey pigskin ankle boots . . . ‘over-dressed teapot’.

  Coralie kicked one leg comfortably back and forth, watching her client contort. She’d embraced the new silhouette herself and was growing used to it.

  She sat Frau Pfendt down again and made some adjustments. She was jotting notes when the gunshot creak above their heads made them both jump.

  ‘Dear me!’ Frau Pfendt patted her chest. ‘Who’s walking about up there?’

  Coralie supposed it was the landlord or his handyman checking the place over. The rooms had remained empty through the winter but spring would surely entice new tenants in. Sometimes, at the end of a long day, she’d stand at the foot of the stairs and imagine she heard Violaine and Madame Thomas gossiping or teasing each other: ‘What d’you fancy for supper, dear? Lobster Thermidor or caneton Tour d’Argent?’ In the worst of her loneliness, Coralie had once called out, ‘Goodnight, you two.’

  ‘The new tenant’s a harp teacher,’ she improvised, to drive away those memories. ‘He drags his instrument around to catch the light from the window.’

  Frau Pfendt’s eyes widened. ‘I cannot imagine he has many pupils. Who will want to learn to play the harp with a war on?’

  ‘You’re right, so to fill the time, he does physical jerks. He crouches and dances like a Russian Cossack. Says it keeps him warm.’

  She expected ‘Really?’ or ‘Surely not!’ but to her great discomfort, Frau Pfendt began to cry. Tears ran down the pillow cheeks, losing themselves in the many chins. Coralie fetched a clean handkerchief. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘My son Wilhelm is at the Russian front.’ Frau Pfendt blotted her face. ‘Did you know, during the Russian winter, men freeze to their guns? What is it all about, Coralie?’

  ‘I don’t know, gnädige Dame.’ Coralie took a deliberate step backwards. Keep it formal. Friendship was dangerous, and human sympathy was rationed.

  She conducted Frau Pfendt to the pavement, holding an umbrella over her to her waiting car. Another vehicle was parked twenty strides along the street, and the service door to her building was ajar. So, it must be the landlord upstairs. Brrr! She hurried back inside. It was early still, just gone eleven, but even so, she doubted she’d get any more clients as it was Saturday. People would want to stay home with their families. She cleared the window display, pulled down the blinds and took her electric fire into the workroom.

  She was hopelessly behind, always having to explain to customers why their hats were not ready. What she needed, she decided, as she drew her stool up to her bench, was that squad of elves. Ten new hats in a line on the bench every morning. She wasn’t ready to appoint a human helper.

  ‘Coralie?’

  She screamed as a figure filled the doorway. The canvas head to which she’d been pinning pleated felt fell off the edge of the bench. She saw a black leather trench coat with wide lapels, a Homburg hat – and ice-water ran down her spine. The man removed his hat. ‘Dietrich!’ Or was she meant to call him ‘Generalmajor’ again? Actually, something more basic sprang to mind. ‘You terrified me. How did you get in?’

  He displayed a key. ‘I am the new tenant upstairs.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘No, I am not. But I am looking over the place, with the landlord’s consent.’ He sauntered in, checking her workroom in apparent fascination. Once again, he seemed neither civilian nor soldier. The ribbon of his Pour le Mérite was just visible inside his leather collar. Did it still contain that cyanide ampoule? Hers was in her handbag.

  He said, ‘This place is never the same two visits running. I hope you take photographs. One day, they will be a fashion memoir in pictures.’

  ‘I don’t even have a camera. What do you want?’

  ‘You. As you will not come to see me, I have run you to earth.’

  There was only one door, and no proper window. ‘I’ll scream.’

  ‘Go ahead. Shall I wait outside?’

  ‘Oh, damn you.’

  He was smiling in a way that suggested he was not entirely sure of his ground. ‘Will you trust me, Coralie?’

  ‘Shouldn’t it be the other way round? I mean, I know too much about you. I’ve been wondering for months if you’d track me down, to silence me.’

  ‘I think that would be beyond the scope of mortal hand.’

  ‘You did it to Teddy. Dealt with him, without proof he’d done anything wrong. I hate you and all your kind. I’d like to kill you all.’

  From beneath his coat, Dietrich took the pistol she’d seen in Ottilia’s dressing-table drawer. He pushed back the safety and held the grip towards her. ‘It is loaded, seven bullets. Even though you are not an experienced shot, you can almost certainly get one into my head.’

  ‘Just go away.’ She put her hands over her face. ‘You don’t understand what happened here. They took all of them. All my friends.’

  ‘I know. And I am sorry, more than I can say.’

  She sprang at him, making a rake of her nails. She got them caught in his medal ribbon and he raised his gun, pointing it up at the ceiling while with the other hand he prevented her from strangling him. ‘Do not punish me, Coralie.’

  ‘“Sorry” is an insult. “Sorry” pretends to care yet does nothing. Have you killed Hitler yet? That’s why you
went to Germany, isn’t it?’

  ‘You know perfectly well that Hitler lives still.’

  ‘You should give me the job. I wouldn’t keep putting it off!’ Her voice was rising. ‘I’d walk up to him, pull out a gun and bang! Done. You men talk but you don’t act. And I don’t believe you give a damn about my friends—’

  He got his hand over her mouth. ‘You are part of the Dachterrasse Circle, so stop behaving like Julie Fourcade.’

  When he took away his hand, she said, ‘I’m only part of Dachterrasse because you involved me.’

  ‘I believed in you, as that proves.’ He restored the gun to safety and returned it to its holster. ‘Come upstairs.’

  ‘What’s up there?’

  ‘You will see.’ But instead of leading the way, he held her away from him and slowly shook his head. ‘What are you wearing?’

  What she was wearing was a nipped-in dress with Gypsy sleeves, a skirt that swirled when she turned, a frilly peasant apron tied at the front. For warmth, she’d added a sleeveless bolero. ‘It’s the latest fashion.’

  ‘There are such shortages of cloth, of labour, of everything. Yet French couturiers are designing marionette costumes for women to traipse to work in. It makes no sense.’

  It did to her. She and her fellow milliners might be out of materials, but factories were weaving clothing textiles again. For French consumption, defying the pressure to shift production to Germany. ‘You lot don’t get it,’ she said. ‘And I mean that both ways.’

  They stared each other out until Dietrich said, ‘Come on. The young gentleman upstairs cannot wait much longer.’

  Chapter Thirty

  Young gentleman? He wouldn’t explain. Coralie mounted the stairs ahead of him. The door to Violaine’s flat was ajar and there she stalled. Her legs refused. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘It is only floorboards and bare walls.’

  ‘That’s why I can’t. Where’s Violaine? Where are Madame Thomas and Amélie? Where’s Amélie’s daughter?’

  ‘Lost in Germany or Poland, and I am ashamed.’ He ushered her inside the flat, impelling her until they were in the living room, which seemed vast. Violaine’s furnishings had been big because she’d needed landmarks to help her get about the room. She’d liked textures, too, and Coralie had watched her steer by them, her fingers finding a passimenterie trim or the taut skin of a lampshade. The furniture had been taken out a few weeks ago by a team of men. ‘I don’t know who they were,’ she said. ‘German, obviously.’

  ‘They call themselves M-Aktion Kommando,’ Dietrich told her. ‘The M stands for Möbel.’ Furniture. ‘Kommando implies, of course, a military operation.’

  ‘All her things.’

  ‘Really, they’re just a looting party but they’re thorough. I do not suggest you look in the bathroom. Take it from me, there is not even a toothbrush holder, flannel or a sliver of soap left. We have a reputation to keep up of impeccable efficiency. But look,’ he ironed the bitterness from his voice, ‘something else is here.’

  She had noticed the wicker basket in the middle of the floor, assuming it was something M-Aktion had left behind. Dietrich unfastened clips, reached inside. A moment later, he was cradling a cat, whose jet fur made his own leather coat look discoloured.

  A baritone miaou made Coralie gasp: ‘Voltaire? Where—’

  ‘In the Jardin du Luxembourg. The kitchen staff at the Palais have been feeding him.’

  ‘No wonder he wouldn’t go home. Traitor.’ She went up to offer a cautious stroke, noticing that his torn ear had mended in lumpy scar tissue. Perhaps she got too close to it because Voltaire hissed and lunged a paw. ‘Has he gone feral?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘I suppose I’m the lucky so-and-so who gets to look after him?’

  ‘You could, now you have no child to worry about.’

  ‘How did you know?’ Because he made no answer, she flung defensively, ‘Yes, I sent Noëlle away. You’d given me an Ausweis so I used it.’

  ‘You were wise, I think.’ Dietrich studied her. Voltaire purred noisily in his arms. ‘The permit had both your names on it so why did you not accompany her?’

  ‘I have other ties. I mean, hat-making – what did you imagine?’ She’d caught the flash of misgiving. ‘I have to make money. I won’t let Ottilia pay for my child to live.’

  ‘She would do so with great joy.’

  ‘And I’d still feel I was imposing. I’ll take the cat if that’s what you’re here for. We’ll rub along, won’t we, Voltaire?’

  ‘Au contraire, dear one. Once a daddy’s boy, always a daddy’s boy.’

  Looking into the doorway, Coralie gave a cry of disbelief. ‘Teddy! Is it you?’ He was thinner, but seemed otherwise well and was smiling in his particular way. ‘You utter bastard.’

  ‘Charmed to see you too.’

  ‘I thought Dietrich had killed you.’

  Teddy tapped his breast. ‘Quite solid, as you see. And, yes, I know what transpired at the Rose Noire and that I was in the frame as the arch-betrayer. Be assured, it was not me. I may tease the dear Graf – and you – with slanderous hints and libellous asides, but I am his friend eternally.’

  ‘I thought they’d chucked you into the Seine or something.’ Coralie ran to Teddy, laying her head against his chest.

  He stroked her hair. ‘It was Dietrich’s bomb-damaged friend who had the murderous intent that night. Kleber, fortunately, was decoyed to the Rose Noire while the Graf doubled back to the rue de Seine. Finding me at home in night attire, he became unspeakably domineering. Slapped my face.’

  ‘So I did, Clisson, because you needed to leave Paris at once, only you wouldn’t listen.’

  Coralie remembered Una’s report of raised voices. ‘So, when you went to find Teddy, it wasn’t to hurt him?’

  ‘I knew he was not our informant.’

  ‘I wish you’d told me!’

  She shrugged as Dietrich said, ‘How? When?’ reminding her that she’d done everything in her power to avoid him. ‘Where did you hide him?’

  Teddy answered. ‘The dear Graf put me on a train to Dreux. I have been living in the gardener’s cottage in the grounds of my château, incognito. Tomorrow,’ theatricality fell away, ‘I go to Switzerland because Graf von Elbing fears I may still be in danger.’ He turned to Dietrich. ‘Does the Freiin von Silberstrom like cats?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘You’re going to Ottilia? Noëlle’s there,’ Coralie said eagerly.

  Teddy smiled. ‘I know, and I’m sure it will be at least eighteen pages.’

  ‘What will be?’

  ‘The letter you will ask me to take to our little sprite. Get to it, as I cannot linger. Goodness, my dear—’

  She’d burst into sobs, emotion finally catching up with her. ‘I’ve lost everyone, Teddy.’

  Teddy gently detached her. ‘You have not. Though our friend here has more layers than an onion – and the onion’s talent for stimulating tears – you still have him and must never be afraid of him. Peel him, my dear. Make him reveal everything, and once you have done that, stand by him.’

  Chapter Thirty-one

  In her villa in Hohen Neuendorf in north-east Germany, Hiltrud von Elbing woke with a painful neck because she’d fallen asleep in her chair. Her knitting lay in her lap.

  Voices in the hallway alerted her to a visitor.

  ‘Who is it, Vati?’ she called, pushing the half-made sleeve into her knitting bag, then pulling down the cuffs of her jersey to hide the puckered scars that disfigured her wrists.

  Her father opened the door. ‘A visitor, Hiltrud.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but who – ah—’ The tupp-tupp of a walking-stick, the uncertain shuffle, announced the visitor’s identity. Finding a gracious smile from somewhere, Hiltrud rose and walked forward to greet her mother-in-law
. ‘Hannelore, you are welcome. How did you get here, though?’

  ‘By train. They are still running, despite the destruction.’

  ‘But so far, in this cold? And you so soon out of hospital.’

  ‘Everybody helps me. Soldiers, passengers, even some French labourers handed me down from the carriage, like a parcel. It was fun. Certainly, it beats sitting alone in my flat, waiting for British and American bombers.’

  This was a long speech for the dowager Gräfin von Elbing, and much of it was slurred. Her face drooped and her right foot turned inwards.

  ‘How did you get from the station?’

  ‘Mm?’ The dowager leaned on her stick as she made her way to the sofa. ‘I paid a man to bring me in his wheelbarrow. Your face, my dear. I paid a man to bring me in his car, better? Is this one going to loom over me?’ Ernst Osterberg had shadowed her in case she fell. ‘I don’t want him next to me. He snuffles.’

  Hiltrud made a face to her father, begging him not to react. ‘Vati, could you make us coffee?’ She said to her mother-in-law, ‘It’s awful stuff, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Then why offer it? I’ll have schnapps, Osterberg.’

  Ernst Osterberg left, muttering, ‘Since when did I become the butler?’

  Hiltrud sat down again, twitching at her cuffs. ‘Hasn’t the weather turned bitter? Will we ever see spring?’

  ‘No small-talk, I have not the reserves. I want to know why you are still in Germany, Hiltrud.’

  ‘Where else would I be? My father is here. Claudia can still come home when she has time off. And Waldo—’

  ‘Waldo’s dead, and weeping over his grave every Sunday won’t change that.’

  ‘Don’t. Please don’t.’ Hiltrud pressed herself back in her chair, wanting distance between herself and this drooping, wrinkled reminder of Dietrich. Her father came in with the schnapps, his expression saying clearly, Alcohol before lunch. I am humouring dissolute customs for your sake, Hiltrud.

  Oh, good God, what if her mother-in-law meant to stay? Hiltrud made a mental sweep of her kitchen cupboard. Dried mushrooms, preserved apples, a jar of pickled eggs. Hardly lunchtime fare for a woman who used to dine in the best houses in Berlin, who’d travelled through Europe in private railway carriages, guest of princes and industrialists. She remembered, then, the reason she’d become upset a few moments ago. ‘I am happy to see you, Hannelore, but please do not speak lightly of my son.’