by Sarah Shaber
‘I hope you and Madeleine saved some of this for yourselves,’ Joe said, rounding up crumbs from the piecrust with his fork for a final tiny mouthful.
‘We made us a little tart from the extra fruit and pastry,’ Dellaphine said. ‘We’re going to have it with our coffee after we clean the kitchen.’
‘I’ll help you,’ I said.
The words slipped out of my mouth. I wasn’t sure who looked the most shocked, Phoebe, Henry, Ada or Dellaphine. Joe smiled behind his hand, like he always did when amused by American customs. For a minute I was astonished, too. Had I just offered to help the colored cook clean up the kitchen?
I folded my napkin and left it at my place.
‘Since I didn’t crank,’ I said, ‘and you saved me ice cream, it’s the least I can do.’ I helped Phoebe and Dellaphine clear the table, and went back into the kitchen. Phoebe gave me a perplexed look before she left and went to join the others in the sitting room. Madeleine, who was scraping food scraps from our plates into a bowl to take out to the chickens, stopped to watch me put on an apron and pick up a dish towel.
‘I’ll dry,’ I said, as Dellaphine plunged her hands into a sink full of suds and dirty dishes. We worked quickly, talking about the weather and war news, and not how I was helping them with the dishes. When we were done I hung up my apron and went upstairs, ostensibly to take a nap.
When I got to my room I met Ada coming out of it.
TWENTY
‘Hi, dearie,’ she said, ‘I borrowed some face cream, hope you don’t mind.’ She had my blue jar of Pond’s in her hand. I was surprised that she would go into my room alone, and it must have shown on my face, because she quickly apologized.
‘You were busy downstairs, and I just ducked in,’ she said. ‘I want a bath, and I couldn’t find my own cream.’
That seemed unlikely to me. The woman had enough creams and lotions scattered around her room to moisturize a battalion of WACS. I put on an unconcerned face.
‘Of course, Ada, you can borrow anything you like.’
She crossed the hall to the bathroom. Ada did have a towel and robe with her, I noted, but if she were a German spy, she would be prepared to back up her bath story.
Ada a German spy, what nonsense. My imagination was working overtime.
I went into my room and closed the door, leaning against it. What an idiot I had been not to lock my room when I went down to dinner, with all those papers spread out over the bed. We usually did lock our rooms, Phoebe insisted, but on the weekends, when we were all in the house together, it didn’t seem so necessary.
I sat down on my bed and crossed my legs. The papers seemed undisturbed, thank God. And the German memo was face down, so the Nazi letterhead wasn’t visible. If Ada had caught sight of that while crossing the room she would surely have stopped and looked at it, anybody would. I couldn’t remember turning the memo on its face, but I must have done, mustn’t I?
I put Ada out of my mind and concentrated on the task at hand. I began by leafing through the programs for the 1936 and 1939 hydrological conferences. I’m not sure why I took the 1939 program from Metcalfe, since Bloch didn’t attend, but maybe I could use it to illustrate the importance of hydrography to the war effort. I scanned the 1939 document. Our own Charles Burns had made quite a bit of academic progress in the years between the two conferences. In 1936 he and Metcalfe together had presented ‘An Analysis of Recent African Atlases’. Three years later, in 1939, Burns alone offered ‘Mediterranean Sea Circulation and the Algerian Gyres’. No wonder he’d been recruited to the OSS Map Division. But something about that title rang a distant bell in my head.
I turned to Bloch’s journal reprints. I’d roughly translated their titles in the library after getting them from Metcalfe, on the same day that I saw those awful pictures in Life.
For a few minutes I could hardly breathe, much less think. At last I understood exactly what had happened to the original Bloch file. The implications of the discovery stunned me. Gerald Bloch might well be a valuable Resistance recruit, but his file wasn’t stolen for political reasons. The thief who capitalized on Bob Holman’s death to steal Bloch’s file had a purely personal motive.
If I had looked closely at the 1939 conference program, as soon as I’d got it from Marvin Metcalfe at our second meeting, I would have known who stole Bloch’s file before I even thought of breaking into the Vichy embassy.
I still had to figure out how to help Rachel. I hadn’t risked my career, maybe my freedom, involved Joan and Dora, to stop plotting now.
I decided what to do with the ‘extra’ documents. I folded a carbon of the Resistance note, the SS memo and one of the 1936 conference programs into an envelope, tucked it into my pocket book and went downstairs to find Joe.
Thank God he was alone in the lounge. ‘I can’t sleep,’ I said to him. ‘It’s too hot. I think I’ll walk down to the park and sit under the trees in the shade for a while. Maybe get a Coke on the way. Want to come?’
Joe looked up from the Sunday newspaper. ‘Sure,’ he said.
We stopped at the filling station on the corner and got two ice-cold Cokes out of the red chest refrigerator.
The first shady park bench we passed was occupied by a sleeping GI who must have missed the last Saturday night bus to Fort Myers. He clutched an empty bourbon bottle and a paper lunch bag with a USO label to his chest, snoring. We didn’t disturb him. He was already AWOL and another couple of hours wouldn’t make a difference to his sergeant.
We picked a bench under a cherry tree, its blossoms long gone, leaves limp with thirst, and watched the traffic go by on Pennsylvania Avenue.
‘Before the war this city would be quiet on a Sunday,’ I said. ‘No traffic, no restaurants open, that filling station where we got our drinks would be closed. Doing anything except going to church was sacrilege.’
‘I wasn’t living here then,’ Joe said. ‘This has been my only experience with the States. It’s like a beehive. Even London is quieter.’
‘I wonder what life will be like after the war,’ I said. ‘It can’t return to the way it was.’
‘You have more hope of that here than we do in Europe,’ Joe said.
‘Joe,’ I said, summoning all the courage I had, ‘I need to talk to you about something. Or rather, someone.’
Joe pulled out his pipe and began the ritual of loading, lighting and smoking it by knocking it on the corner of the bench to loosen the ash.
‘All right,’ he said.
I withdrew the precious envelope from my purse, turning it around and around in my hands while I talked.
‘I saw you on Friday,’ I said, ‘when you went into that house with the black door.’
‘What are you talking about?’ he answered, drawing on his pipe, very calmly, I thought, under the circumstances.
‘I was on my way home from an errand at George Washington University. You went into an unmarked house. I believe that’s where you work.’
‘Oh, you do,’ he said. ‘And what do you think it is that I do?’
‘I don’t know exactly,’ I said, ‘and I don’t care. What I’m asking you is to help a Jewish family escape from Marseille. Rachel’s family. Time is very short.’
Joe took his pipe out of his mouth and looked at me incredulously.
‘If you think I can manage something like that you are sadly mistaken,’ he said. ‘I’m only a soldier, a private in my organization,’ he said.
I hooted.
‘What does that mean?’
‘I don’t believe it, that’s what it means,’ I said.
He put his pipe back into his mouth and puffed on it. Pipe-smoking, I thought, was an excellent way to gather one’s thoughts before speaking.
‘So, who are you,’ he asked, ‘that you can be asking such favors?’
‘I can’t say, you know that. And my request isn’t official. I came across a file. My people can’t take action on it.’
I handed him the papers. He frowned when he saw the Gestapo
crest, and by the way his eyes traveled back and forth across the page, I knew he was reading the German document.
He looked up at me. ‘I can’t imagine what you must have done to get this,’ he said.
I didn’t answer him.
‘Tell me.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Louise, there must be more to this than a schoolgirl friendship, for you to take such risks. If you want me to help you have to tell me the truth.’
I had never told anyone. It was too shameful.
‘All right,’ I said. I took a deep breath. ‘I let Rachel pay for my last year at junior college. My parents couldn’t. She insisted. I let her. I told my parents I’d gotten a scholarship.’
Joe looked perplexed.
‘Rachel had a small inheritance from her mother – a bond maturing in an American bank account. She said it didn’t matter if she cashed it in because her father was so rich anyway. She said she didn’t want to finish St Martha’s if I couldn’t be there with her, that I was her only friend in the world. She withdrew the money and I let her pay my tuition and room and board. I was desperate to stay in college.’
‘Okay,’ Joe said.
‘Don’t you understand?’ I said. ‘The Nazis seized all Rachel’s father’s money. If she still had that bond in an American bank, who knows what it might be worth now, it might have qualified her for a visa.’
Joe tapped his pipe on the bench.
‘If I hadn’t finished my junior college course, I wouldn’t have gotten my job at the Wilmington Shipbuilding Company, or my job here,’ I went on. ‘I’m free and safe and employed, and Rachel and her children . . .’ I stopped, unable to continue, and buried my face in my hands. When I recovered my poise I turned to him. ‘Do you know what she asked me for in the letter Henrietta brought?’ I said. ‘A Red Cross package!’
‘Listen to me, Louise. You could not have known Rachel would need that money. There’s no reason for you to feel guilty.’
‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘Maybe so.’ Joe folded the papers in half and handed them back to me.
‘Please,’ I said, holding his hand back with my own.
‘I told you I work for a humanitarian organization,’ he said. ‘What influence we have we must use sparingly. Do you know how many people want to get out of Europe? So many more than we can help. We’ve booked every berth in every ship that will dock in Lisbon in the next year, and it’s not enough.’
‘If you knew what I’ve been through to get those papers,’ I said, then stopped. ‘Well, you’d help me. I know you would.’
‘Louise, for heaven’s sake!’
‘Please.’
‘All right. But all I can do is see that this information gets to our office in Lisbon. The decision won’t be up to me.’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘Can we go home now?’ he asked. ‘It’s hot as Hades out here.’
Once back in my room I drew on the white cotton gloves I wore to church in the summer. I located an eraser and rubbed it over as much of the surface of one set of Joan’s carbons as I could without smearing the words. Then I did the same with the Vichy memo. I carefully folded the two sheets and placed them in a fresh envelope, licked a stamp and affixed it. I addressed the envelope, in block letters with my left hand, to ‘Sir Julian Porter, Personal Secretary to the Ambassador, Embassy of Great Britain, Massachusetts Avenue, Washington DC.’ Porter was one of the two men I’d seen dancing together at that unconventional party behind Friendship House.
I placed the envelope in my pocketbook to mail on the way to work. Here’s hoping the European Foreign Service homosexual underground was as effective as Lionel said it was.
I did my best to erase fingerprints from the other documents, a task made more difficult by my trembling hands. That’s how I realized I was scared to death. I placed the documents in my pocketbook to take to the office.
I went downstairs and found Dellaphine in the kitchen, knitting. I sat down next to her and watched for a few minutes.
She looked up at me. ‘You jiggling the table with your knees, baby,’ she said. ‘You okay?’
‘I’m a little nervous,’ I said. ‘Big day at work tomorrow.’
‘Want a shot of bourbon? That should settle you down some.’
‘Yes, please,’ I said.
Dellaphine rose and took a ring of keys from her pocket and went into the pantry, where I heard her unlock a cabinet. She came back out with a tumbler holding an inch of gold liquid.
‘Don’t let the others see this,’ she said. ‘There are only a few bottles of Mr Knox’s stash of Jack Daniels left.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. I sipped and watched Dellaphine knit, her needles flashing, and thought of the unfinished socks in my own knitting bag.
‘I wish I could knit like you,’ I said.
‘You could, baby, you just not interested,’ Dellaphine said. ‘You’re a career girl. Like my Madeleine. Why should you knit when you can work at a good job and buy war bonds?’
I didn’t close my eyes that night. Not once. I lay in the dark and thought about what I intended to do the next day. I believe I was more frightened of trying to slip documents into OSS than I’d been of breaking into the Vichy embassy. Cold and clammy with fear, I turned off my fan and curled up under a sheet for the first time in weeks.
I kept picturing being searched as I went into my building. If the FBI suspected me of anything at all they could arrange it. What would happen to me if I were caught? What crime could I be charged with? Treason? Surely not that. Breaking countless OSS regulations? I heard about a woman once who’d been caught slipping documents into her briefcase at the end of the day. She was a Communist, it turned out, but her husband was a big-shot New Dealer so she only got fired. I couldn’t even think about losing my job. I’d almost rather spend years at the federal prison for women in Alderson, West Virginia, than find myself back at my parents’ fish camp. Finally dawn allowed me to get out of bed. I dressed and went downstairs to the kitchen. Dellaphine, still in her dressing gown and bare feet, looked up at me, surprised.
‘You up early,’ she said.
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ I said. ‘Give me something to do.’
She didn’t question me, handing me an apron. By the time Phoebe came into the kitchen we were nearly finished. The bacon was crisp, the toast buttered and the juice poured. Dellaphine finished whisking the eggs and poured them into her favorite cast-iron skillet. Phoebe and I carried the bacon, toast, juice and pot of coffee into the dining room where the others were gathering. If Joe and Ada and Henry were surprised to see me in an apron helping Phoebe they didn’t show it.
Phoebe picked up the tray of warm plates heaped with scrambled eggs and hurried into the dining room so the eggs wouldn’t get cold. I poured everyone’s cups full of coffee before I sat down, still in an apron.
I couldn’t eat. My stomach had shrunk into a tiny painful ball in my abdomen, while a sharp pain jabbed me in the base of my neck. When I was done pushing my food around the plate and the others had finished I helped Phoebe take the plates into the kitchen and stack them on the sink.
I removed my apron and hung it on a pantry hook.
‘Why, Mrs Pearlie,’ Dellaphine said, with a gleam in her eye, ‘ain’t you going to stay and help me scrub the floors and change the sheets?’
‘You don’t have any idea how good that sounds to me right now,’ I said.
The government car idled outside the old apartment building on 23rd and ‘E’ that housed OSS. Two G-men peered out of the side window.
‘Do you see our girl?’ the first agent asked.
‘Not yet,’ the second agent, who had a tiny yellow feather stuck in his hatband, said, lowering his binoculars.
‘I guess we have to wait. How long, that’s what I want to know. It’s blazing hot already.’
‘It’s early yet,’ the other agent said. He riffled through a sheaf of papers in his lap. ‘Let’s get this other stuff out of
the way and come back later. She’s not going anywhere. She doesn’t suspect anything.’
TWENTY-ONE
I stepped off the bus on the corner and stopped cold, frozen with dread by the sight of my office building. I was almost knocked down by the press of other departing passengers getting off behind me.
‘For God’s sake, lady, get out of the way,’ one of them said.
I forced my reluctant legs to move and found myself standing on the patch of withered lawn that fronted the building. I wasn’t sure I could go any further. My mind was supremely conscious of the danger posed by the folded papers in my pocketbook. Hadn’t I taken enough risks, hadn’t I done enough? I could tear up the documents into tiny pieces and discard them in the trash barrel over by the lamppost. For a second that seemed like an excellent plan, but I noticed all my fellow office workers entering the building carrying pocketbooks and briefcases just like always.
I moved up the sidewalk. Was I imagining things, or did there seem to be more soldiers about than usual? And weren’t they all looking at me? My God, they were! Every head was turned in my direction, every single one! Sweat broke out all over my body and I heard a deep ringing in my ears.
Then I realized the soldiers were ogling the peroxide blonde beside me, the one with long legs and high heels, swaying her hips in a fanny-hugging polka-dot frock.
My heart was pounding and I feared my red face would attract attention, so I detoured over to the shade of a nearby tree to compose myself. Vice-President Wallace’s dog, a Great Dane, woke from his nap and lifted his head. He accompanied Wallace’s daughter Jean to her job at OSS every day and walked her home in the evening. I scratched his head behind his ears.
‘Hey, sweet boy,’ I said. ‘If I get arrested, will you protect me?’
The big dog leaned happily into my shoulder and slobbered. I scratched him some more and babbled nonsense to him until I’d composed myself, and joined the throng of co-workers heading into the building.
‘Whatcha got in there,’ Private Cooper asked, gesturing toward my black handbag. He shifted the rifle on his shoulder.