by Hore, Rachel
What an odd pair they were, the young musician and the nun. Each felt trapped in a different way by their situation. As they sat together at the worn table in the scullery, or on a bench outside in the sunshine, she found herself noticing things about him as she’d never done with any boy at school – the sharp planes of his face, the gloss of his black hair and his fine dark eyes. There was an unhappiness in him, a deep unhappiness born of frustrated ambition and loneliness, but she saw sweetness, too, and vulnerability, and longed to be able to comfort him. She brought him paper, so he could write music, and gave him an old book of Psalms from the church, with which he amused himself, inventing harmonies that they sang together softly, their voices intertwining.
‘All this went on for several weeks, but everything changed completely the day your father died,’ Mme Ramond said. ‘The whole community was in shock. Such brutality happening in our midst, in our very church – it was inconceivable. Many of us had known Eugene and liked him and, of course, we worried about your poor mother. And you, Fay – we had to look after you. It was a simply dreadful time.’
She passed her hand briefly across her eyes as though trying to shield herself from her memories and said, ‘I am not certain what to tell you next.’
‘My mother, surely. What happened to her?’
‘Yes, of course, your mother,’ Mme Ramond sighed. ‘It’s difficult to tell things in the right order. The following day, the curé went to Gestapo headquarters to ask after her, but they sent him away with the usual official language that told him nothing at all. It was some weeks before we heard anything definite. In late September there was another round-up of enemy aliens, this time mostly of American women. Kitty was lucky. They released her from prison, but sent her to an internment camp.’
‘Lucky!’ Fay broke in. ‘In what way was she lucky?’
Mme Ramond examined her with narrowed eyes and a humourless smile. ‘Because think what they could have done with her – if they’d decided she was guilty of something. She’d hidden her husband from them. Suppose they had accused her of collusion in his activities?’
‘If they’d found Serge, I suppose,’ Fay said, still confused.
‘Exactly. Or if the Gestapo had known about John Stone hiding in their flat. I suppose we’ll never find out what they knew and why they didn’t charge her. So yes, she was lucky. They only locked her up in a camp with other enemy aliens. I say only, but for her that was suffering enough. Because she was separated from you.’
Mme Ramond’s voice was gentle and when Fay studied her face she found in it only compassion.
‘What happened to me?’ Fay asked, but a part of her already knew. There were pictures that were coming into focus more clearly in her mind. Walking her toy zebra on a windowsill, being carried by a woman in a black dress, feeling the rough material against her cheek. She glanced at her left hand where there was a tiny scar on a knuckle, and she remembered her pain and distress after a white cat scratched her because she’d tried to play with its kittens.
‘You stayed with us in the convent, of course. Do you really remember nothing?’
‘I recall a little,’ Fay admitted, ‘but not much. It’s . . . well, it’s as if my mind won’t go there. There’s . . . a kind of emptiness.’ Yes, that word felt right. Or numbness, that was better.
‘You missed your parents so much, you poor child,’ Mme Ramond said. ‘I tried my best with you, so did Sofie’s mother, but we could see you withdraw into yourself. It was so sad. For a long time you would ask where they were. It was the Reverend Mother who explained to you that your father was dead. I don’t know if you really knew what that meant, except after that you stopped asking about him. We were at a loss as to what to tell you about your mother. We wanted to protect you, to keep you safe.’
And Fay remembered. ‘“She’s had to go away for a while.” That’s what you said, wasn’t it? “She’s gone away, but she’ll be back.”’
Mme Ramond nodded. ‘How could we get a child of three to understand about a war and an internment camp, about prison and barbed wire?’
‘Gone away,’ Fay echoed. ‘Those are dreadful words to a child. My mother had never gone away before. But something awful had happened and I didn’t know what, only that it was my fault that she’d gone. My fault.’
She looked at Nathalie Ramond and was surprised to see that the colour had drained from her face. ‘Your fault? Why should you think that?’ the woman whispered.
‘I don’t know, I just do.’
‘I don’t understand why you should think it your fault that your mother went away. There was a war on. Many children were separated from their parents, but they didn’t blame themselves.’
‘I think they did sometimes,’ Fay said carefully, still puzzled by Mme Ramond’s defensiveness, ‘because nobody explained to them.’
‘What good would explaining do? Children should be protected from the adult world.’
‘Is that why my mother told me nothing of all this?’
Mme Ramond stroked the knotted knuckles of her hands. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to ask her.’
It was the stern and evasive way she spoke that upset Fay and made her remember her mother’s letter. Don’t believe everything she tells you. It was because of her I nearly lost you. She had to ask, she really did.
‘Madame Ramond, what happened between you and my mother?’
The hands grew still. Mme Ramond closed her eyes briefly, then she said in the faintest of voices, ‘You must let me continue. The story is not told. Please let me do it my way, then maybe you will understand.’
Fay could see that she’d upset the older woman. ‘Of course,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’
It was as though Nathalie Ramond had not heard her. Her gaze was far away. Finally, with effort, she spoke.
‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘we would hear from your mother, but not often. And Mère Marie-François would never allow the letters to be shown to you. She feared they would make you unhappy, you see, and of course you could not read in either English or French.’
‘Which did she write in?’ Fay couldn’t help interrupting.
‘Oh, English, but the Reverend Mother could read English and would translate for us. The letters were always short. I think there was a great deal that your mother was not allowed to say. Perhaps writing was difficult for her, too. She would mostly write platitudes, that she was being treated well and that there was a great deal to keep them busy there. Oh, and there was good news. Miss Dunne was there, safe and well. And, of course, she asked after you.’
And apparently no one had told Fay this. She supposed Mère Marie-François had thought she was being kind. Perhaps it was the way that she’d been brought up herself, with the understanding that the less children knew of sad things, the better. Yet she was sure that she’d have wanted to know what her mother had written to her, to have been told that she missed her daughter, even if it had made Fay distressed. A great sadness broke out in her now to think of all those missed chances.
‘You shared a bedroom with Sofie for several months,’ Mme Ramond said, ‘but then something happened, one of the few good things in that terrible time. Sofie’s mother heard from the Red Cross that they’d been contacted by her husband, who was looking for them! He’d survived! After the family had become separated from him he’d been gravely wounded by enemy fire, but had been looked after by a Belgian family and had eventually recovered. He had been trying to find them for some time, but all his attempts had failed. Until now. Sofie’s mother took the children and went at once to meet him near Rouen where he was living, and they simply never came back. She wrote to us from time to time and though they were experiencing many difficulties she sounded happy. We did not ever see them again, and we missed them.’
‘I don’t remember Sofie properly, but I’m glad that she found her father.’
‘You were close. She was like an elder sister to you, and when she and her brothers went away you
could not be comforted. I did my best, but as I say, it was a time of great unhappiness for all of us.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I had my own private sorrow that I confessed to no one. After the Gestapo raid, the curé decided it was too much of a risk to hide Serge and Dr Poulon on the premises. We would be under surveillance, you see. Dr Poulon left during the first night. I don’t know what happened to him, whether he survived. We were told nothing; it was safer that way for all of us. Then nobody could put anyone else in danger if questioned. And Serge . . . I wouldn’t have known what had happened to him if he hadn’t told me. Neither the curé nor Mère Marie-François said a word. It was All Saints Day when I took him his lunch – I knew at once that something was wrong. He appeared agitated, and when I set down the tray, instead of sitting down to eat, he came and took my hands . . .’
Nathalie Ramond closed her eyes and turned up her palms and an expression of great tenderness passed over her face. ‘And he said, very gently, “I have something to tell you,” and his eyes were fixed on mine. “They’re moving me tonight, Nathalie,” he said. Nathalie. He’d never called me that before, but later I discovered that was how he thought of me, as Nathalie, not Sister Thérèse. I didn’t correct him, I was too stunned and upset. “I’m frightened,” he whispered.
‘“Oh don’t be, don’t,” I told him. One of us had to be strong and he needed my strength, for it was his life that was in danger. “Do you know where you’re going?” I asked him, but he didn’t and so he couldn’t tell me. He was leaving, I knew not for where nor whether I’d ever see him again, but there was nothing else to be done but for me to accept it. Just as I’d accepted all the other things that had happened in my life, which had always been directed by others. “I shall pray for you,” I told him, but he said nothing to that, just continued to hold my hands and to look at me, his face tender and expectant.
‘Then, “Nathalie,” he said again, only that, and I could not tear my eyes from him. He leaned forward suddenly and pressed his lips against my forehead. “When all this is over,” he said, “I shall come and see you again.”
‘“You must not,” I tried to say, but my heart was breaking and the words came out as a sob and I snatched my hands away. I don’t know what else we might have said or done had not the curé arrived at that moment to speak to Serge about arrangements. We sprang apart, but the old man was so distracted by worry himself, anxious that Serge be gone, that he did not notice anything amiss.
‘“I must speak with Monsieur Ramond now, Thérèse,” was all he said, dismissing me.
‘“Goodbye,’” I said to Serge. “May God go with you.” It was hard to keep my voice even, but somehow I managed it. Then I left the two of them together.
‘Serge left during the night, so quietly I did not hear him go, though my sleep was full of dreams of doors opening and closing, of voices calling for help. It was the last I saw of him for a very long time.’
Mme Ramond paused and her face was grave. Fay waited, not liking to interrupt. When the older woman spoke again it was as though she was speaking from somewhere deep in the past, unaware of Fay’s presence in the room.
‘For a long period after he went, I was miserable, utterly miserable. For the first time in my life, you see, I had fallen in love. Though I denied it to myself, of course. Such a thing was terrible for a nun. I simply told myself that I missed a friend and was worried for his safety. But as time passed I still could not sleep or eat much, and all I could think about was him and how happy I’d felt when I was with him. I knew it was wrong, but that happiness had seemed so wonderful I couldn’t think why it should be thought wrong. I became very confused. There was no one I felt I could speak to. I stopped taking the sacrament or going to confession, but for a while no one seemed bothered. We were in a state of such shock and confusion that my behaviour seemed no odder than anyone else’s.
‘As the weeks passed, the pain of separation grew less sharp, though I often thought about Serge. I wondered where he’d gone, but I don’t think even the curé knew for sure, or so he said when I asked him. A safe house not far away, was all he said, and so I comforted myself by imagining it: an upstairs room, maybe, an attic with a sunny window, and he’d have books to read, even if he couldn’t play his music.
‘And then one day, I took you out for a walk, Fay. The Jardin du Luxembourg wasn’t very far from the convent, and the shortest route took us down a narrow residential street where we heard the sound of loud piano music coming from an open window high above. I remember stopping in amazement to listen to the river of notes flowing out into the air, the brave passion of the playing. Although it was mid-morning, there was hardly anyone else about and we listened for a couple of minutes before the playing stopped abruptly and someone closed the window. Do you remember any of this?’
Fay shook her head.
‘I felt transformed with joy hearing that music. I got it into my head that it must be Serge, and after that I often used to take you that way. But I was always disappointed. I never heard the music again, yet I was sure that it had been him and it helped me to walk under that window and feel close to him.’
‘And was it him?’
‘No.’ For the first time for a long while, Nathalie Ramond smiled. ‘It turned out that he’d been taken to a house in the suburbs, nowhere close at all. It had been someone else altogether playing that day. But I always bless whoever it was, because it gave me something to latch onto, some kind of hope.
‘The other thing that helped me was you, Fay. You were only three, a lonely child and quiet, very different to how you had been. You rarely smiled and there was a tentativeness about you that I would have worried about if I hadn’t been so distracted by my own unhappiness. Still, helping Sofie’s mother care for you gave me pleasure, and when the family left, it was June of 1943, you became my responsibility and that was very good for us both.
‘But all that time, beneath the daily routines, the endurance, the waiting, I was changing. I was no longer the dutiful young girl who had done what was expected of her all her life. The routines of the convent were no longer enough for me. I still believed in God and tried to serve Him. I still liked the convent. The other nuns were mostly kind. Many of them I loved. But I did not feel as I once had, that I belonged there for ever. Loving Serge had opened my eyes to other possibilities. Those things I had believed did not interest me – a husband, children – I came to realize I wanted desperately. For the moment though, I had no courage to do anything but carry on as I had been. There was you to look after, and I could not leave you. And where would I go, anyway? My parents would be ashamed if I left the order and went home, and anyway, I did not know for certain that it was possible to be released from my vows.
‘Winter passed. The cherry tree blossomed again in the spring, but the daily routine became no easier. The search for food, the confusion of new regulations, the harshness of repression. Twice more the Gestapo visited us and the convent was searched, but after the second time they mostly left us alone. I could not get enough for us all to eat and some of what we did have the Reverend Mother made us give away. There were so many people in Paris with greater needs than us, you see. You had to be fed, Fay, and the children in the school, and then there were people who came to the convent seeking charity, desperate cases, some of them. We could not help them all.
‘During February, Sister Clare developed pneumonia and died. Sister Philippe passed away not long after – she was found dead in her bed one morning, poor soul. Both were elderly, and the extreme cold and lack of nourishment had weakened their systems. It was I who prepared Sister Philippe’s body for burial. I tell you, she was so light, hardly more than skin and bones.
‘Somehow the rest of us kept going, and news about the progress of the war brightened our spirits. I was like a magpie, bringing home small scraps of gossip from the shops, or the curé would tell us things. We began to hope – yes, hope. It was a long time since we’d had much of that.
‘It was in early 1
944, before blossom time, that I went to the Reverend Mother and asked how I could be released from my vows. To my relief, she did not seem surprised and dealt with me kindly. She said she’d noticed how in all sorts of small ways I’d become more distant. I hadn’t been aware of this, but now I recognized what she meant. I had not often gone to confession, for fear I’d blurt out my secret about Serge, and I’d been wrapped up in myself, less open, less easy to read. It wasn’t that I did not wish to serve God any more, I promised her, but that I felt I’d changed somehow and that my future life lay beyond the convent. We agreed that I should think about it further, and if I still felt the same she would speak to the curé and they would see what could be done. After this conversation I felt much better. I did what she said and brooded deeply, but did not change my mind. Even if Serge never came back, I felt that I must leave. When the curé spoke to me in May, it was agreed that when France was free – and we had reason to believe that this would not be long coming – I would seek to leave Sainte Cécile’s.
‘You can imagine the excitement when, in June, came the news that the Allies had invaded Normandy. For me the joy was mixed with anxiety. What would I do with myself when I left the convent? And another very important question: what would happen to you, Fay?’
Mme Ramond sighed and Fay looked up to see her studying her with a tender look. ‘Perhaps we should have some tea,’ the woman suggested.
‘I’ll come and help you,’ Fay said, getting up, glad to leave the past for a moment. As she followed Mme Ramond to the kitchen, she saw how heavily she leaned on her stick and it was difficult not to feel sorry for her. Yet she sensed the woman’s pride, that she did not want Fay’s pity. Indeed, she would not let her make the tea, but insisted on pouring the boiling water herself and fetching the milk from the fridge, only accepting her offer to carry the tray, rather than using the small trolley she kept for the purpose.