A Week in Paris

by Hore, Rachel

  ‘Sofie’s in here, I’m teaching her to sew,’ and Fay went first into the room, Thérèse and Kitty following. The girl Sofie was by herself today, laboriously tacking a row of stitches across a strip of old sheeting. Fay sat down close beside her to watch her work.

  ‘Here, you want to do the same?’ Thérèse said to her, reaching into a cloth bag on the low table before them and withdrawing a patch of canvas. ‘I’ve a tapestry needle here, Kitty, not sharp at all. You can try this, Fay.’ Poking the needle into the canvas she showed the child what to do.

  They were watching her prodding at the cloth, her tongue poking between her teeth as she concentrated, when Mère Marie-François appeared at the door. There was something in her face that made Kitty rise at once and go to join her in the hall.

  ‘Kitty, how can we help you, my dear?’ Her voice was as calm and sweet as ever.

  ‘I . . . hoped to see Serge. There’s some news. No, not of his family, but our old teacher. I’m afraid he’s died and – well, I thought Serge would like to know.’

  ‘I can give him the message later. You can’t see him now, I’m afraid. The moment’s not convenient.’ She glanced towards the closed door of her private sitting room. Someone else was in there, more than one person. She could hear the murmur of voices, men’s voices. One, she thought, must be the curé. Was the other Serge? She felt her breath catch in her throat.

  ‘No,’ she heard the curé say, his voice suddenly nearer and louder. ‘No, no, it is not possible. There is danger enough.’

  The other man said something she couldn’t quite hear, but she knew its rhythms. At once she was alert. ‘Is that Eugene?’ she whispered in surprise, and when the nun did not deny this, ‘What is Gene doing here? Please, tell me.’

  ‘Perhaps you should go in,’ the Reverend Mother said wearily, and knocked at the door of her own room. The voices fell silent as they entered.

  Kitty could hardly believe her eyes. There was Gene, standing by the fireplace smoking a cigarette with an air of nervous strain. The curé was starting from his chair, his face suffused with emotion. The third member of the party she also knew: Dr Poulon from the hospital, the man who’d delivered Fay. ‘Mrs Knox,’ he said in his formal way, coming forward to shake her hand.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ She sensed a terrible tension in the room. She looked from Gene to Dr Poulon, alarmed by their sober expressions. Finally, Eugene spoke – gently, but in an urgent voice.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here, Kitty. Go home. Please, go home. I hope you haven’t brought Fay?’

  ‘What is this about?’ she asked, feeling a tingle of panic.

  ‘I simply can’t tell you, only that we’ve nearly finished.’ He sighed. ‘Perhaps you’d wait for us a moment outside, then I’ll take you home.’

  ‘Gene, please . . .’ The panic grew.

  ‘Kitty,’ he said, exasperated, but then relented. ‘All right. A cell we worked with has been betrayed. We are discussing new arrangements.’ The other men watched her, their faces impassive.

  It was Dr Poulon who spoke. ‘This is very discourteous of us, Mrs Knox, but I’m afraid we need you to wait outside.’ It was a voice that brooked no argument.

  Wordless, Kitty turned and left the room. Mère Marie-François followed, shutting the door behind them.

  ‘Come into the church, child,’ she said. Her light touch on Kitty’s shoulder was calming, but it was also a command. ‘Perhaps you’ll play for me while we wait.’

  She led the way through the passage into the pale light of the church. The protective cover of the piano had been folded back and the elegant lines of the instrument gleamed in the shadows. How lovely it appeared in the lazy sunshine, though Kitty hardly noticed.

  She sat at the keyboard and lifted its lid. ‘I have no music,’ she said dully, brushing her fingers across the keys.

  ‘Play whatever you can remember,’ the Reverend Mother said, sitting down on a chair in the front row.

  At first her mind was frozen, then she glanced at the row of chairs where Eugene had sat that first time, when he’d come into the church uninvited. And now it came to her what she needed to hear. And very softly she began to play the long, ethereal opening chords of the Moonlight Sonata.

  As she played, it was as though the music took hold, possessed her, and her anxiety ebbed away. ‘Listen,’ she heard Monsieur Deschamps’ voice say in her mind. ‘Listen to the music, make it sing to you.’ And she let it sing, and its powerful, brave beauty spoke of all her love for Gene, all her fear, feelings too deep to put into words. Music was her voice, and through it she would speak.

  When she came to the end of the movement and the last lingering chord faded away, a light rustle and a sigh reminded her of the presence of Mère Marie-François. Kitty looked up to see the old woman sitting straight-backed, her hands folded in her lap. Her eyes were closed and her cheeks glistened with tears.

  What happened next shattered the moment.

  Engines roared outside. The building trembled. Kitty covered her ears and flew to the window. She stood on a chair in time to see half a dozen motorcycles and a grey van surge into the square. There came the squeal of brakes, doors slamming, then all was a confusion of armed men and harsh voices.

  ‘The Gestapo!’

  Mère Marie-François gasped, then hastened to lock the main door to the street. Kitty leaped down and ran to the one which led back to the convent. Eugene, Fay – her only thought was to reach them. She gained the passage only to see the door ahead of her burst open. Fear possessed her but the man who rushed through, barging into her, was thankfully familiar. It was Eugene and he was carrying Fay.

  ‘Take her!’ He passed Fay over, then shut the door he’d come through and bolted it. Then, seizing Kitty’s arm, he ushered her back into the church. There they found that Mère Marie-François had pulled back a carpet from the floor by the piano and was wrestling with a brass ring set in a flagstone on the floor.

  ‘Help me!’ she cried. ‘It’s the crypt, you can hide,’ and Eugene went and seized the ring. The stone gave suddenly, lifting on its hinge to reveal stone steps down into darkness. Out of this a chill stole up, a chill of damp stone underground, and a stink of earth and death and decay. Kitty shivered and Fay cried out in fear.

  ‘I can’t take her down there,’ she whispered. ‘I simply can’t.’

  ‘It’s me they’ve come for,’ Gene said, his breathing heavy. ‘Me and Poulon. I’m sure of this, Kitty. It’s nothing to do with Serge, it’s the other thing. With luck they’ll let you go.’

  ‘Oh, Gene,’ she said, trying to digest this new and horrifying news. ‘What can we do? And Dr Poulon . . .?’

  ‘He’s safe, I promise. I had to find you, to let you know – not to tell them anything.’

  ‘Of course I won’t, but—’

  ‘There’s no time,’ the nun commanded in a tone Kitty had never heard before. ‘Go, monsieur. The Lord will look after Kitty and the child.’

  Eugene took one last loving look at his wife and went down into the hole. Kitty, desolate, set Fay on the ground and helped force the trap door shut. When it was done, they spread the carpet back over the spot. All the time Fay watched, clutching her zebra, her face a mask of distress. ‘Papa,’ she said. ‘Papa.’

  The piano. Kitty ran to its far side and gave it a shove, intending to shift it further onto the carpet, but it didn’t move. She pushed the heavy instrument again, harder, and this time she felt the castors give. She tried again and it moved a couple of inches further. It was half on, half off the carpet when there came the sudden sound of gunshots.

  Chapter 24

  ‘She stepped away from the piano,’ Mme Ramond’s voice was tense, ‘as a commotion came from the passage to the convent. The brutes had broken through the door. They rushed into the church and—’

  ‘Why didn’t she hide?’ Fay cried, unable to stop herself.

  ‘What?’ Mme Ramond was still lost in her story.

  ‘My m
other wasted time when she and the Reverend Mother could have escaped with me by the front of the church. After all, the Gestapo wouldn’t have known my father was in there. Would they?’ She faltered.

  ‘I don’t know – I suppose they did not. But Eugene would not have had time to explain that to Kitty. Anyway, who knows how any of us will act in a crisis? Perhaps they realized there were soldiers outside in the street. There probably were.’

  ‘If the door between the church and the convent had been locked from the church side, the Gestapo would have guessed they were hiding something.’

  ‘You may well be right.’ The woman sounded impatient. ‘Perhaps Kitty didn’t hide because she believed your father when he said that it was only him the Gestapo wanted. The raid was not about them hiding Serge at all. It was to do with one of the British patients at the hospital whom Eugene and Dr Poulon had helped. I’m certain of this.’ Her voice had risen in frustration. She had to compose herself before going on.

  ‘Four officers had arrived in the church, all armed. Kitty and the Reverend Mother were standing on the carpet, Kitty holding you, and they were surrounded straight away and questioned. “Where is Dr Knox?” their leader demanded of Kitty. There was no mistaking those almost colourless eyes. He was Obersturmführer Hoff, the officer who’d visited them at the flat and questioned Gene so coldly. Of course, she would not tell him anything. At his order the other three began to search the church, whilst he paced up and down, snapping out questions at Kitty. What was she doing here? Where was her husband?

  ‘It was then that Père Paul came hurrying in and remonstrated with them for disturbing the House of God, but the commanding offer told him to get out of the way. What else could the poor man do but stand aside and watch helplessly as they pulled up the skirts of the altar cloth, tore curtains aside and ransacked the vestry in their search.

  ‘And the irony was that all the time, they were standing by the piano, on the carpet that covered the place where Eugene was hiding. Fay, you began to cry, and Hoff lost his temper and directed the Reverend Mother to take you away. Even your mother seemed to think this was best. It must have been terrifying for you.’

  ‘When I visited the convent earlier this week,’ Fay said slowly, ‘I remembered the thud of boots on the stairs and people shouting . . . and the statuette smashing on the floor.’

  ‘When the Reverend Mother took you back into the convent, the men were still searching.’

  1942

  Fay had been sitting with Thérèse and the Belgian children having a drink in the kitchen, when she heard the roar of the vehicles and saw her father run past the open door. She cried out ‘Papa!’, left the table and followed him.

  Moments later, the Gestapo burst into the convent. Hoff ignored the curé’s protestations and set his men charging through the building. Shouts could be heard from overhead as they entered all the rooms, rounding up everyone they could find, including the Belgian family, and bringing them downstairs. Others began a detailed search of the ground floor. It was Hoff himself who shot out the locks of the doors to the church.

  Later, everybody was herded through to the church, to find Hoff and his oppos tearing the place apart.

  ‘Concern leaped into Kitty’s eyes when she saw you back again,’ Mme Ramond continued. ‘There you were in Sister Thérèse’s arms, wailing and holding out your arms to your mother, your cheeks streaked with tears, but she could do nothing. Hoff paced up and down studying everybody. His eyes were cold with anger, everyone could see that.

  Sister Gabriel and Sister Clare, who were the oldest, were allowed to sit, but the rest of us were made to stand whilst his men continued to ransack the church. Sister Gabriel started muttering prayers over her rosary as he paced, and he shouted at her to stop. There was a silence. Then you started to cry again.

  ‘It was after that when it happened. He crossed the floor to where Kitty was standing by the piano, as if to speak to her, and suddenly he stopped and looked down. He tested a patch of the carpet with his heel, before crouching to feel the spot with his fingers. Then Kitty was hauled aside whilst two men pushed back the piano. Her face, it looked so desperate, as he peeled back the carpet to reveal the brass ring in the trap door.

  ‘He took hold of the ring himself and he pulled. Everybody was so quiet, you could hear them breathing. The door opened on its hinge with a grinding sound and there came a rush of cold air from underground, a horrible icy cold like death itself. Sofie, the little Belgian girl, gave a gasp.

  ‘“Silence!” Hoff snapped.

  ‘He produced a torch and, going down on one knee, shone it into the hole. I don’t think he could see anything. He shouted, “Come out!” and we waited like Jesus’s friends who witnessed Lazarus emerge from his tomb. But nothing happened.

  ‘Hoff drew his pistol and fired it into the hole. The crack rang round the building. Kitty’s eyes were wild, her face bleached white. Again there was nothing. Hoff climbed down the steps with torch and gun. One could imagine his torchlight flicking over the stone coffins of the long-dead until it met Eugene’s eyes blinking out of the darkness.

  ‘What happened next I cannot exactly say. A shout echoed up from the hole, then came sounds of a scuffle. Kitty tried to run to the hole, but one of the officers dragged her back. Two of the others peered down, directing their torchbeams and arguing, then one climbed down after his leader. Kitty cried, “Gene!” and struggled in her captor’s grip, but he pinned her arms more tightly behind her back and pressed his hand over her mouth.

  ‘From down below came an explosion of shots. The nuns cried out in terror. Kitty struggled, but the man had her pinioned.

  ‘A moment later, a dishevelled Hoff emerged from the crypt, still holding his smoking weapon. His face was inscrutable.

  ‘“He resisted arrest,” he announced to the generality. Then, “Clear the church,” he ordered his men. “They can all go. Frau Knox, however, comes with us in the van.”

  ‘Kitty gave a terrible cry: “Gene . . .”

  ‘Hoff would not look at her.

  ‘It was over.’

  ‘He murdered my father,’ Fay whispered.

  ‘Yes.’ Mme Ramond spoke the word like a sigh. ‘In France, you know, we have the crime passionel – violence committed in the heat of passion. This killing was in cold blood: like an execution. I have often thought about why. Perhaps your father did or said something unwise down there underground. Perhaps the German could not bear to be humiliated in front of all those women. We will never know. I did not see them bring the body out. None of us did. They sent us all back into the refectory, whilst they combed the convent quickly once more. Perhaps they were looking for Dr Poulon or one of the Allied servicemen, I do not know. They left without finding the room where Poulon and Serge were hiding.

  ‘Your mother, they took away with them. She fought as they led her out to the van, her face ravaged with shock. She was searching for a last glimpse of you – her lips shaped your name. I stood by the window in the kitchen with you so that Kitty could see you. She gave you one final lingering look before they lifted her up into the back of the van and slammed the doors.

  ‘A moment later, she had gone.’

  The sun had moved off the window of the Ramonds’ flat and the room was falling into gloom. Hardly able to bear what she’d just heard, Fay rose and crossed to look through the glass down to the street below. Her gaze focused on a young man on a motor scooter who had stopped to speak to a demure girl clutching a music case and she heard their laughter. Further down, a portly man with a balding head and a white apron swept soapy water from the pavement outside his shop. A little girl skipped along beside her elegant mother. A withered old man in a jellabah loitered at the street corner smoking and looking up at the sky where Fay saw the silver glint of an aeroplane. Peaceful scenes, but only twenty years ago, any of these people might have been shot in cold blood, like her father had been. Or have witnessed it happen to someone else. It was difficult to believe, but it was
true.

  Was this the heart of her mother’s secret then, the story of how Fay’s father, Kitty’s beloved Gene, had been executed? Why hadn’t he been taken prisoner instead? How was it that Serge and the other man, Dr Poulon, had not been found? There was so much that might never be answered.

  There was something else that was troubling her, something worrying at the corner of her mind that Mme Ramond had said – but she couldn’t think what it was for the moment, couldn’t quite catch hold of it.

  But now her mind was moving on. She turned and asked Mme Ramond, ‘What happened to my mother? Where did they take her?’ She came and sat down on the sofa once more.

  ‘Initially she was taken to the Gestapo headquarters in the Avenue Foch. Père Paul was able to discover that much, but after that, for a long time, nothing more.’

  Fay suddenly remembered what she thought was odd. It was a mistake Nathalie Ramond had made. How had it not registered at the time? The woman had said it so naturally that Fay hadn’t noticed. Or maybe it was something that unconsciously she’d known for a long time. She knew who Mme Ramond was now.

  ‘You said “we”.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Just now, when you described the scene in the church. You said “we”. You were there, Mme Ramond, weren’t you? You saw it all.’ And now she felt anger, anger and frustration, that this woman hadn’t told her the truth. All this time she’d shielded her identity from Fay.

  But now, instead of being defensive, Mme Ramond’s expression grew tender. She smiled and in the soft light it was as though all the years fell away and the marks of pain dissolved and she was familiar. Fay remembered her. A gentle young woman with a serene face and an infectious laugh. Fay’s eyebrows knitted as she strained to recall her more clearly.