A Week in Paris

by Hore, Rachel

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘My mother found it a moment ago,’ he muttered in his hoarse voice. ‘She said to tell you it had been waiting in our flat when she and Papa moved in. She didn’t know what to do with it so she put it in a drawer and forgot about it. It’s taken her a few minutes to remember which drawer.’

  ‘She kept it all those years?’ Fay whispered in amazement.

  He nodded. ‘Was she your mother or something?’ he said, his eye on the envelope.

  Fay stared down at it. On it was written Mme K. Knox and at the top, in the corner, Privé. Private.

  ‘Is,’ Fay corrected him. ‘She is my mother.’ And as she said this she received a tender picture in her mind of her mother waiting for her in the hospital garden, and felt tears prickle behind her eyes.

  ‘You will give it to her?’ His voice squeaked. His boyish enthusiasm for this mystery moved her and she smiled at him, noticing the dark down on his upper lip.

  ‘Of course I will. I’m going back to England tomorrow night. Please, would you thank your mother for me?’

  ‘Yes. Wait, there’s something else.’ He lifted the flap of his jacket pocket and took out a small object, which he held out in the flat of his palm. ‘Is this yours? I think it must be. I found it a long while ago under a floorboard in my room. There was a gap by the skirting board and perhaps it fell down there once.’

  ‘Yes, it is mine,’ she said, taking it from him in surprise. She held it up, examining it. It was a wooden zebra, much smaller than Zipper, its stripes faded to grey. ‘It must be the one I lost from my Noah’s Ark,’ she told him. The one she had mourned, whom Zipper was to replace, though Zipper would surely have been too big for the ark. ‘I don’t know what happened to the rest of the animals, but it doesn’t matter really. It’s nice to know that this little fellow wasn’t completely lost.’

  ‘Would you like him back? He belongs to you,’ Bertrand said, using the ‘tu’ form, as for a friend. He sounded hesitant though, and she sensed his attachment to the toy. She imagined his secret delight in finding it, maybe when he’d been a quite small child himself.

  ‘No,’ she said, giving it back. ‘You’ve looked after him better than I did. You keep him.’

  And waving away his thanks, she bade him goodbye and watched him walk back inside. She still felt sorry for him, but he was a nice boy and perhaps he’d be all right.

  Chapter 28

  In a café by the river, Fay stirred sugar into her citron pressé and examined the envelope more closely. It told her little more than she knew already. It was of thick paper, and there was no show-through when she held it up to the light. The script of the address was distinctively French. She considered briefly the possibility of opening it – the tape would be easy to peel away – but rejected the thought immediately. The very idea was abhorrent. She had learned how her mother had lived through a time when ordinary people were spied on, when letters were opened by censors and black lines struck through private messages. If she opened a confidential letter addressed clearly to her mother, she’d be as bad as the censor. She unclipped her handbag and thrust the letter inside. It had waited many years to be read. It could stand a few days more.

  She sipped the bitter-sweet drink and watched tourists browsing the stalls on the quais for books and prints, or crossing the bridge to where the ornate façade of the Louvre gleamed downriver on the other side. Tomorrow evening she would have to leave this beautiful city behind and return to England. It saddened her. She had discovered so much about the past that tied her to Paris, but mysteries still remained. And most of all it would mean leaving Adam. She would see him tonight, after the concert, and as she finished her drink she enjoyed a little day-dream about their meeting. It was best not to think about tomorrow at all.

  A church clock struck nearby. Half past eleven already. Two hours to kill before going to Mme Ramond’s. Fay considered what best to do with her time. Visit the convent, perhaps, or spend an hour looking at paintings before a bite of lunch. She wanted to try the convent. Using a phone box inside the café she got through to the curé’s housekeeper with the tinny voice. No, the curé wasn’t in yet, but he was expected back for lunch at one.

  She left some coins on the table to pay for her drink and set off across the Pont Royal, which eventually brought her to the Tuileries Gardens with the Louvre to her right. And it came to her, looking across the barren expanse of ground in front of the museum, that she didn’t want to see pictures today. It was too lovely outside in the sunshine. So instead she turned left and walked briskly along the fine, tree-lined paths of the gardens. She could hear ahead, faintly, coming and going on the breeze, the brisk sounds of a brass band. Curious, she followed in their direction, and this took her all the way to Place de la Concorde.

  There, at the edge of the huge piazza, steel barriers had been erected to contain the crowds, for quite a number of onlookers had gathered, some using cardboard periscopes to get a view. As she approached, she could glimpse the nearer of the two great fountains that flanked the lofty Egyptian obelisk at the centre of the square. The road itself had been blocked to traffic. Tricolor flags flapped in the wind above a handsome mansion on the far side, lending the scene a bright, ceremonial air.

  The music grew louder, and she edged her way to the front to get a clearer view, wondering whether she might see Adam. Along the road towards her rolled two tanks. Behind them a military band was marching. She watched them pass, then came squadrons of soldiers in khaki and red berets, and a cavalry unit, the horses’ hooves ringing on the road. Soon after that, a fleet of cars followed. Their destination was the far side of the square where, in the distance, the parade halted and the squadrons turned at a shouted order to face the obelisk. Dignitaries stepped out from cars. The band started to play ‘La Marseillaise’ as in the distance, a long black saloon car with graceful lines swung slowly into the square from the Champs-Élysées.

  ‘Général de Gaulle, le Président,’ she heard people mutter. There was jostling as the crowd pressed forward. A few of them, she’d been noticing, were Algerians, brown-skinned men like the one she’d seen arrested at the Métro station, but women, too, in traditional dress with gold-threaded headscarves. They were being joined by others, and as their numbers grew Fay sensed tension build in the air. She glanced round nervously, wondering if she ought to leave, but the crowd was too dense now, pressing her against the barrier, and she couldn’t move. There was no sign of anyone who might be Adam.

  Across the square the black car slowed to a halt near the lines of soldiers. A young officer stepped forward to open a rear door and Fay craned her neck trying to see the figure who was climbing out, but now the reception party gathering around the car blocked her view.

  At that moment, as if at a signal, the crowd started pushing forward. Next to her, an Algerian man was pulling a board from under his coat. Others were doing likewise. Two men lifted the railing aside and people surged into the square, raising their placards and calling out slogans. The womenfolk followed, making strange whooping cries. All around the square it was happening. There were dozens, a hundred – no, hundreds – of Algerians, pouring into the road, moving as one body across the square towards the President. Two women stopped near Fay to unfurl a banner. On it were printed the words L’Algérie pour les Algériens.

  A whistle shrieked, then dozens of gendarmes appeared from the other side of the square and bore down on the demonstrators. Fay watched in horror as they thrust their way amongst the Algerians, threshing about with truncheons or with the butts of pistols, or simply wrestling them to the ground. The air was filled with screams, angry shouts and grunts of pain. A falling placard spun into the crowd, hitting Fay on the arm, then someone barged into her from behind; she stumbled and would have fallen, had not another bystander caught her arm and steadied her. He was middle-aged and French, in a working man’s jacket and a beret. He rescued her handbag and helped her towards some steps in the gardens, saying, ‘Are you
all right, mademoiselle? Les terroristes, that’s what these people are. They’re not in Algiers now. They should go home.’ She thanked him and politely refused his offer to find her a taxi. Eventually he went away still muttering about, ‘ces terroristes.’

  She was all right, she discovered, shrugging off her jacket and examining her arm. The placard hadn’t drawn blood, it had merely grazed her. There would be a bruise. Otherwise she was just shaken. She pulled on the jacket again and stood up, wondering which way to go. There were still gendarmes everywhere, but the altercation seemed mostly to be over. Dark blue vans were drawing up, and she watched with concern as some of the demonstrators were rough-handled into them and driven away. Then, in the distance, with a stab of joy, she caught a glimpse of a blond head. Adam! she thought, but then he was hidden again by the dispersing crowd, and though she strained to see, he was gone.

  She had begun to cross the gardens towards the Métro when she passed an embroidered slipper lying in the dust. On a nearby step two young Algerian women sat with their arms round each other. One was crying and the other was comforting her. All the while, the triumphant strains of the military band could be heard in the distance. The crying woman was missing a shoe and Fay went back and picked up the slipper and took it to her, a small gesture of how she felt. The other received it, giving a brisk nod of thanks, then her face changed to alarm as she saw a gendarme approaching, and she hustled her companion to her feet. They hurried away in the direction of the river. Fay, too, moved on, but more slowly and in the opposite direction.

  Back at the Madeleine, she sat alone in the café across from the hotel, picking at a sandwich and unable to get the disturbing events that she’d witnessed out of her head. She tried to tell herself, as she had with Adam only the other day, that the Algerians were trouble-makers. They couldn’t expect to spoil a solemn state ceremony without repercussions. After all, a small handful of Arab activists were violent, had killed innocent people, even Adam had admitted that. The demonstrators just now had been unarmed though, and the brutal response of the police, especially towards the women, had shocked her to the core. The irony struck her that twenty years ago, it was Parisians themselves who had suffered like this at the hands of the Nazis. How was it they appeared to have forgotten this recent past? Suffering did not seem to make people kinder.

  She was still wrestling with these weighty matters as she made her way to Place des Vosges for her appointment with Mme Ramond. She was almost there when she realized she’d been so caught up in her thoughts she’d forgotten to try the curé’s number again.

  Chapter 29

  July 1942

  The hidden room at the back of the convent had once been a storeroom lined with shelves of bottles and jars. It had been the curé’s idea to build a false wall to disguise the door, and an ingenious one. The room being long and narrow, with only one of a row of several skylights for a window, it would be difficult for the casual observer to notice its existence. Only if they looked down on the building from a bedroom window and counted, or compared the inside width of the scullery with that of the outside of the building, would they ever begin to suspect. The disadvantages were that the room was dark and cold in winter, and visitors had to pass through the Reverend Mother’s sitting room to get to it, but neither of these difficulties was insurmountable. The scullery was rarely used and there were long periods when the hidden room was empty.

  Only a few of the nuns knew about the men who came and went from it, and those who did were cautioned never to speak of the matter, even amongst themselves. Thérèse had to know because she prepared the food, and it usually fell to her to take it to them and fetch any small essentials that were required. She would wait for a quiet moment when there was no one around to ask questions, then tap on the door of the sitting room. If anyone did see her they might suppose that the tray she carried was for Mère Marie-François, although since the Reverend Mother normally ate in the dining room with the rest of the community, they might wonder.

  A deep-seated, childlike part of Thérèse thrilled to the business of knocking on the false wall and opening the secret door. She was ashamed of these feelings, for the poor wretches the room concealed went in fear of their lives and she dared not think what retribution might be visited on the whole community if they were discovered. The men would usually come out to sit at the table in the scullery, and while they ate she would clean their room. Afterwards, they might go out into the courtyard to walk and feel the sun on their faces and to smoke. They could not smoke in their hiding place – it was one of so many ways in which they might have given themselves away if ever the convent were searched. The courtyard was not overlooked by other buildings and the curé could not bring himself to forbid them the respite. It seemed safe enough.

  The British airman who was there when Serge arrived did not remain at the convent long, another three days maybe, and after that Serge was on his own in the room for several weeks before the Gestapo raid. He found solitary confinement testing and the loneliness got to him so dreadfully that Thérèse used to sit with him as he ate. Having had no company, he would talk too much, but she liked to listen and answered his eager questions about the world outside as best she could. She told him very little, in fact – that the bread today was greyish and gritty because that was all there was in the shop, that she’d visited Notre Dame that morning to pray because an errand had taken her past the West Door, that the stray cat she fed in the square had slipped into the convent and given birth to three kittens in the laundry cupboard. She didn’t tell him about the posters that had been pasted up in the Rue St-Jacques threatening death to résistants and their families, nor how she thought of him each time she saw a young man in the street wearing a yellow star.

  Serge liked to hear about her life in the convent. Although his mother was Jewish he’d been brought up a Catholic, if he’d been brought up as anything, and could not imagine how the nuns endured so many church services. She tried hard to make him understand. The women were at peace here, she said. They felt secure while pursuing their duties. Sainte Cécile’s was not a closed order and their life was not without its pleasures. And this was true, or at least, she’d been happy with it before Serge came.

  She told him about her upbringing. Nathalie Boulanger, as she had once been named, had been a tranquil child, always dutiful. Her elder sister, Louise, had been the tempestuous one who had upset their mother in particular, and it was in Nathalie’s nature to compensate for that. Shy, studious and musical – she had a lovely voice – Nathalie had not made friends easily in the raucous streets of the industrial suburb where they lived and where her father worked as a supervisor at the Renault factory, and this wasn’t helped by the priest at the school she attended marking her out as ‘spiritual’. When she was fourteen, he asked her parents whether she might have a calling to become a bride of Christ, and when they spoke to her about it the idea came to have a certain appeal. Being a nun would give her a position in life and a job to do, Nathalie thought, and it stopped her worrying about her lack of friends and her shyness with boys. Thereafter her mother and father spoke of her calling with pride, and so her future was sealed. It seemed that she wasn’t meant to marry and have children, she was to dedicate her life to God.

  Louise married at eighteen, having been seduced by a young mechanic, and their parents breathed a sigh of relief. Their daughters were settled. Louise and her husband Gustave had gone on to have two little boys, and Nathalie had become Sister Thérèse. It was terrible that war had come and Gustave had been forced to go to Germany where his skills with vehicles were being put to use making tanks.

  She explained all this to Serge hesitantly and over several mealtimes – the nuns were not encouraged to dwell on their past lives. He listened with interest and in return told her about his own childhood, and of the intense expectations his family had of him. Music was his passion and his parents had made real sacrifices to pay for his lessons and he’d felt he mustn’t disappoint them. And h
e worried about them now, for he’d had no news of them. Serge and Thérèse saw that though their upbringings had been quite different, in their strong sense of duty towards family they had something important in common.

  Still, there were some things Thérèse kept to herself, even at confession. Some of the nuns taught young children at a school nearby, and Thérèse longed to do this too, but the Reverend Mother said that because she was the youngest and fittest her work should be the shopping and cooking and heavy housework. She’d always been obedient to this, and by and large enjoyed it. Shopping, for instance, took her out of the convent and meant she could listen to people talk and learn what was going on.

  Recently, however, she’d lost her sense of contentment. She’d seen the cherry tree in the front courtyard blossom in the spring, then the dark green leaves come and the fruit form and swell, and knew that when the leaves reddened and died she would be here still, serving the other nuns and growing older. On the rare, precious occasions that she was allowed to visit her sister and the little boys, she was always left with a sense of wistfulness that there was something she’d missed.

  She did not speak to Serge about any of this, but it stole up on her bit by bit that she was dissatisfied with her life and that these shared few minutes with him were what she looked forward to most in her days. She admired his passion for his music, and understood his unhappiness at being cut off from it. He spoke bitterly of the situation he was in, how unfair he felt it was that he’d been labelled a collaborator by the teacher he revered, how he suspected that his supposed friend Mrs van Haren had betrayed him, although conceded that perhaps she hadn’t meant to.