[Fen Churche 02] - Night Train to Paris

by Fliss Chester

  ‘Will do.’ He threw her a quick salute and disappeared down the stairs.

  Fen waved and then slipped back into the apartment. She had become fond of him, especially now he was a lot less gruff than he used to be, but she had to agree with him, if anyone could fend for themselves in this world, it was ex-SOE operative Captain Lancaster.

  Four

  Fen picked up her suitcase from the hallway and carried it back into the studio room. Light was streaming in through the three large windows and Fen blinked a few times, her eyes smarting with tiredness.

  Rose stood waiting for her, holding open one of the doors that led off from the room.

  ‘The smaller of the two again, I’m afraid,’ Rose explained. ‘Dear Simone has taken the suite…’ she laughed to herself ‘… as l like to call it. I mean, it has a basin, that’s all.’

  ‘I thought that was your room, Rose?’

  ‘Ah, well, Tipper and I do just fine in the box room at the front of the apartment, you know the one between the studio and the kitchen. Closer for midnight snacks and you know…’ The older woman rubbed her thumb and forefinger together to indicate that Simone might well be paying a little bit more for the privilege of the larger room.

  Fen nodded. ‘Understood, and thank you so much for letting me stay. Of course I’ll pay—’

  ‘De rien, dear girl, I wouldn’t hear of it.’ Rose raised her hand to shush Fen. ‘And Simone being here is more of a favour to my friend Henri. He took pity on the girl during the war and asked if I could help her out. Poor thing had nowhere to stay after her last, well, dalliance broke down, if you understand my meaning. Now, pop yourself in there and grab forty winks or so. I’ll be quiet as a mouse out here, though I can’t vouch for Tipper.’ The dog woofed on cue and Fen laughed.

  ‘Don’t worry, Rose,’ she stifled another yawn. ‘I think I could sleep through the fall of Rome at the moment.’ She pressed her hand against her mouth again as another yawn came out.

  ‘Of course, dear girl.’ She turned to leave, then said, ‘Oh, and before I forget, a letter arrived for you yesterday, from England it looks like. I’ve left it on your bed. Unpack and settle in, dear. I’ll see you for a little drinkie later, and there’s some bread and pâté and yesterday’s soup I can heat up for you if you wake up in time for lunch. You know where the bathroom is, make yourself at home.’

  Fen smiled at her hostess and set her case down on the floor of the bedroom as Rose left and closed the door behind her. Fen looked at the bed – a double no less, with a pretty upholstered bedhead – and then noted the other, familiar, pieces of furniture. Opposite the bed there was a chest of drawers and a makeshift hanging rail for any longer garments. Just like in the studio, the walls were covered in a patchwork of paintings, some framed and some just canvases stretched across their wooden frames. A few looked familiar, as if they were copies of more famous works that Fen might have seen in art books or exhibition catalogues.

  Perhaps Rose was a famous forger after all, thought Fen as she crossed the room to the window that overlooked the courtyard of the apartments.

  As Rose’s flat was on the fifth floor, Fen could look down and see the crown of the tree below her and countless other windows, some still shuttered or with curtains closed and some allowing a direct view into the lives of the people waking up to the day in the flats around her. The window in this room was of a more normal size to the ones at the front of the building and Fen pulled the heavy curtain across it to block out the morning light. She turned towards the invitingly made-up bed and reached down to pick up the letter that was lying on the floral counterpane. She glanced at the handwriting and knew at once that it was from Kitty, her dear friend to whom she had only just sent a letter from the station.

  Fen shook her head slightly at the inconvenience of having letters cross in the post but opened it up, and despite having to practically force her eyes to stay open, she devoured the news from West Sussex.

  Mrs B’s kitchen table, Midhurst,

  Boring old West Sussex,

  October 1945

  Darling Fen!

  PARIS! I mean, that’s where you are by now, and it’s the answer to that clue you put in your letter from Burgundy. Do send more, and more letters too in general please, they’re a heck of a lot more interesting than reading whose sheep have got stuck in whose ditch as reported in the Midhurst Herald, that’s for sure.

  By Jove, what a time you’ve been having!! Mrs B says we should never have let you go gallivanting across the continent only to find bad news. And Fen, we are all really, really sorry about Arthur. He was such a nice and clever man. I hope you hurry home soon, dear friend, so we can give you one of these big mugs of tea and an even bigger hug. Gosh, now you’ve got me crying.

  Not much else to report here. Dilly has decided to move to London and learn secretarial skills. I’m sure she’ll be ace at it, she’s so good at everything. Mrs B says she’ll be wasted in town as she’d make such a good farmer’s wife, but Dil is adamant. I think I’ll stay on for a while longer. Mrs B’s knees crack every time she bends over to hang the washing from the basket and she’s slowing down on her knitting too. Still, cows to be milked and fields to be tilled. Yawn. But having Dilly in London will be a riot. We must go and visit her once you’re home and she’s got settled in lodgings.

  Kitty’s news trailed off and Fen read the couple of clippings from the local newspaper that Kitty had deemed worthy of the postage. She couldn’t work out if she was meant to be impressed or shocked at the size of Mr Rivers’s prize-winning marrow, photographed complete with bow and rosette, or if the piece about Reverend Smallpiece losing his spectacles at the church fête was meant to be comical or not. The mental image of the kindly old vicar from their local church on hands and knees under the cake table in the tea tent did make her smile though.

  Midhurst, West Sussex… Fen sighed as she pushed aside one of the heavy curtains and looked out over the skyline of Paris from her window. I couldn’t be in a more different place. As keen as she was to see Kitty, Dil and even old Mrs B, she was glad to be back in her favourite city, even if right now all she wanted to do was sleep.

  She clicked the catches of her suitcase open and fished out her nightdress. It felt odd undressing and putting her nightie on at the wrong time of day, but she hated the thought of getting in between those beautifully clean sheets in her travelling clothes.

  Folding the letter and slipping it back into its envelope, Fen slid in under the counterpane and crisp white sheets and, within moments, her eyes had closed and she had fallen asleep, the letter from her best friend still clasped in her hand.

  Five

  ‘Well, that just sounds incredible,’ Fen was listening to Simone talk about her work in the fashion atelier. She had slept all morning and most of the afternoon, and had finally roused herself as she’d heard Simone return home from work. Rose had been good enough to heat up the soup and fetch out the pâté from the refrigerator and the three of them had eaten together.

  Now the two younger women were washing up the dishes in the kitchen and Fen was running out of superlatives in reply to Simone’s stories. Hearing about the swathes of fabric in the cutting room had been ‘super’, the idea of modelling clothes for the wealthy aristocrats who came to purchase them was ‘simply splendid’ and Fen had even blurted out a ‘by Jove’ when Simone had told her about the possibilities of travelling abroad for photo shoots.

  ‘I swear, it is the most fun a girl can have, no?’ Simone asked rhetorically, describing a fashion shoot in which she had modelled recently.

  ‘A beautiful girl like you maybe,’ Fen blushed a bit. Her old land girl friends back at the farmhouse in Sussex would have died to be able to talk to a real-life model and hear about her day from the cutting room to the catwalk. Fen made a mental note to write to Kitty and Dilys and tell them all about this glamorous creature.

  ‘Fenella…’ Simone laid a slightly soap-sudded hand on Fen’s arm. ‘It is all a mask, see
…’ She pouted her lips and raised her eyebrows and mimicked putting on lipstick, rouge and mascara.

  Fen laughed at her, but didn’t disagree. Simone may be stunning, but Fen wondered if she was actually one of those quite plain girls underneath, who just knew exactly how to accentuate their best features. She took another sopping plate from Simone and started to dry it.

  ‘I can show you some tips. You have very dark eyelashes, which I would kill for…’ Simone winked at her and Fen smiled, ‘… and such good skin, if maybe a little weather-worn.’

  Fen put down the plate she had dried and raised her hand to touch her cheek. She felt like she was on a slide under one of Madame Curie’s microscopes and wasn’t sure she entirely liked the scrutiny she was getting from Simone, who now pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes to fully gauge Fen’s pores and wrinkles.

  ‘A few too many days in the fields, perhaps,’ Fen agreed and turned her face back to the drying rack, hoping Simone would stop analysing her. At twenty-eight she wasn’t exactly old, and she did rather pride herself on her appearance, albeit not in an overly vain way. She did wonder, though, if her nightly ritual of just putting on Pond’s cold cream and hoping for the best would pass muster here in Paris among the ultra-chic urbanites.

  Luckily, Simone turned back to the washing-up bowl and changed the subject. ‘Oh it was terrible though, you know, last week. We were posing on the steps of Montmartre modelling a new look, much fuller skirts, like this one,’ she swayed her hips at the kitchen sink to indicate the folds in the skirt, ‘and women – not men, mind you – women started shouting at us! Can you believe it? Every name under the sun!’ Her soft brown eyes looked imploringly at Fen, and Fen found herself just nodding along while she dried up one of the soup bowls. ‘It is a world gone mad. And you know why? Because apparently we flaunt the fabric. And it’s not de rigueur, you know, it’s not done. But it’s progress, it’s victory, that’s what we’re celebrating. Victory over oppression, victory over poverty.’

  ‘And victory over the Germans?’

  Simone shrugged. ‘Yes of course, and that too. After all, fashionable people suffered like everyone else. Models and designers were going missing all the time. Like Catherine, my friend, she is only just back from Ravensbrück, you know, and the things she tells me, ooh la la.’

  ‘Ravensbrück…’ Fen knew of the concentration camp since its name had been splashed on the front of the newspapers back home when it was liberated by the Soviets in April.

  ‘A camp.’ Simone looked imploringly at Fen. ‘A death camp.’

  ‘Oh my word.’ Since news of the death camps had filtered through to the allied press, Fen had wondered what it must have been like to live in fear of being plucked out of your home, or from the street, and condemned to that terrible fate. She wasn’t so naïve as to not realise that the grainy pictures she’d seen in the newspapers must have shown only a glimpse of what those ghastly places had been like. And to now hear of someone who had survived… Fen couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have survived such terror. ‘Is she quite well now? She must be traumatised after being held there.’

  Simone fell silent for a moment, then said, ‘She is well. But she said God never showed his face inside the camp. She was on one of the last prisoner convoys out of Paris to that hateful place, but that only meant that the camp had had time to become a complete cesspool.’

  ‘It’s so hard to imagine.’ Fen shook her head, unable to visualise the horrors of a death camp.

  ‘We should count our blessings that imagination is all we need. Catherine still wakes in the night, she tells me, and screams out loud; she is not freed from the camp, not fully, not while she is still there in her dreams.’ Simone jabbed a slender finger against her temple.

  Fen shivered.

  Simone turned back to the sink and carried on. ‘But she survived, heaven save us, and she’s back at the fashion house now, though she’s not so quick to laugh or make a joke as she used to be. Her brother Christian is our chief designer. He tried all he could during the last months of the war to help his sister – we had the wives of Nazi officers shopping in our atelier, you see – and he asked all of them for help, but he couldn’t secure her release any earlier. It’s all very close to home, you know?’

  Fen nodded, aware of how close to home losing someone really was. She almost couldn’t bring herself to ask another question, but it was out of her mouth before she had time to stop herself. ‘Why was she taken?’

  Simone stopped washing for a moment and turned to Fen. ‘Resistance,’ she whispered. ‘As if they ever needed a reason. She was caught carrying a pistol by the Gestapo. She resisted their torture, so they sent her to what would certainly have been her death, if the Allies hadn’t marched in just in time.’

  ‘Poor, poor thing.’ Fen shook her head, her heart full of pity for Simone’s friend.

  ‘She could have betrayed us all, but she didn’t.’ Simone looked thoughtful.

  ‘Us all?’ Fen looked up at Simone, who slowly turned to face her. ‘Were you…?’

  ‘Oh yes…’ Simone said and Fen thought for the first time how much older her make-up and fine clothes made her look. She must only be in her early twenties, but she suddenly looked world-worn, the weight of experience heavy on her powdered brow. After a pause, she added, ‘I was in the Resistance, too.’

  Six

  ‘Ladies, ladies!’ Rose called from the other room. ‘Come through, come through, you must be done by now and I’m simply yearning for some conversation!’

  ‘Coming!’ Fen and Simone called in unison, which made Simone laugh, breaking the tension that had built up as they had spoken. Her words still resonated with Fen, however, and she couldn’t help but think of Arthur and the part he played in the Resistance. Would he still be alive now if he’d been sent to a camp, rather than the firing squad? Alive maybe, she thought, but a different man, perhaps.

  Simone flicked the water off her hands and Fen, still deep in thought, passed her the already damp tea towel. A few moments later Simone touched Fen on the shoulder. ‘Coming?’

  Fen nodded and together they walked back into the studio to attend on Rose, who was draped over the chaise longue, cigarette holder in one hand, the other stringing out her long rope of pearls and winding it between her fingers.

  She had dressed up for the evening by adding a splendid orange silk turban to her outfit, and the light from the side lamps made it glow like a setting sun atop her head. Unlike the ancient château in Burgundy, where Fen had stayed most recently, this chic apartment had electric lights and the room was bathed in a warm glow as the incandescent bulbs did their best to illuminate through the dark, red velvet, gold-tasselled lampshades. Shadows now crept across the high ceiling and accentuated the pattern in the carved mouldings and ornate ceiling rose, from which hung a beautiful crystal chandelier.

  Fen sank into the sagging armchair that James had sat in a few hours earlier and Simone took the one opposite her. The gold of the many picture frames caught Fen’s eye and she tried to take them all in. They were hard to categorise and varied from landscapes in the style of Turner and Constable, to Dutch-style still lifes and more modern abstract pieces. Fen’s eye was drawn to several self-portraits, all of which held her gaze as keenly as if she was looking at the woman herself.

  ‘Now tell me, ladies…’ The real Rose took a deep drag of her cigarette and then flicked the ash in the vague direction of the ashtray on the coffee table. ‘What is your plan for tomorrow?’

  ‘Back to the cutting room for me.’ Simone smoothed out her full skirt over her angular knees. Fen looked down at her own pair (winners of a Knobbly Knees Competition in 1943, no less) and patted her tweed skirt down too. ‘We have a new design being cut and I’m the model they’re showcasing it on.’

  ‘Wonderful, dear, wonderful. And you, Fenella?’

  ‘Well, I’ll see if James, Captain Lancaster, drops me a line, then I… well, I rather hoped to visit some of the galleries,
the Rodin museum perhaps, and it might sound silly, but I’ve a hankering for just walking along the Seine and finding a café or two…’

  ‘Charming. Most of the cafés are open still and the Louvre is reopened now… and it even has some artwork in it.’ Rose took another deep drag from the elegant long black cigarette holder and laughed, waving at her own walls. ‘Not quite as much as I have, mind! I could come with you, though, I need to see Henri anyway.’

  ‘Who’s Henri?’ Fen quizzed her, while wracking her brains. She couldn’t remember an Henri from their shared past, but Rose had already mentioned him once today.

  ‘Henri Renaud,’ Rose replied and sat a little more upright. ‘I can’t remember what I told you when you stopped by last month, Fenella dear, but Henri and I worked together during the war.’

  That made more sense. Fen knew that sometimes one’s wartime acquaintances were on a ‘need-to-know’ basis. Her talks with Arthur, and latterly James, had taught her that. Still, she was curious as to their relationship. ‘You worked together? At the école?’

  ‘No, not there. Henri has his own art gallery, you see, quite close to the Louvre, which is where he is also a consultant, if you will, a sort of roving fine art curator.’ She waved her cigarette in the air as she tried to find the words. ‘Put it this way, he is very well connected and the Louvre was very lucky to have him on board when it came to finding places to squirrel away their works before the Germans came.’

  ‘Was the Louvre raided by the Nazis?’ Fen asked and looked at Simone too for confirmation.

  She stayed silent but raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Not raided so much, but leaned on rather heavily to send its masterpieces to the Fatherland for “safekeeping”. Ha! Safekeeping my derrière!’ Rose flicked ash across to the ashtray on the table and tutted to herself as she just missed. ‘Anyway, after all of that excitement, he was asked by the Germans to help with what they called the sequestration, or what we normal people would call the looting and pillaging.’ She paused for a moment, her brow furrowed. ‘The Germans wanted to steal as much art as they could from our galleries, both public and private, and from our homes.’