by Maddy Hunter
“The Great Clock, known as Le Gros Horloge, was placed in its present location in 1527,” she told us, “but its inner mechanism dates from the 1300s, when it was first lodged in the belfry of the attached building.”
Feeling a raindrop splat on my nose, I looked up to see an ominous bank of storm clouds rolling over us … again.
“I hope you’re not fixin’ that we should set our watches by that thing,” Bobbi fretted. “I hate to be the one to point out the obvious, but it’s only got one hand.”
“It’s more of an astronomical clock than an actual timepiece,” said Madeleine. “The ball above the clock indicates the phase of the moon, and the inset below the Roman numeral VI specifies the day of the week. And even though the single hand only indicates the hour of the day and not the minute, two thirteenth-century bells inside the tower ring out the hour, half hour, and quarter—”
The clouds burst above us like water surging from a pitcher pump. Down came the rain. Up went our umbrellas. Out came the boo birds.
“I’ve HAD it!” snarled Bernice.
“Me, too!” spat Virginia.
Madeleine herded us beneath the shelter of the arch, where a flock of sheep grazed in magnificent stone relief above us.
“Take us back to the boat,” Bernice demanded.
“I am required to stay with the guests who want to continue the tour,” Madeleine explained in an even tone, “but if you would like to return to the boat, I will give you directions.”
“You brought us here, so you should take us back,” insisted Virginia.
“Non, non. I am not contracted to escort you back, but it is very simple. Walk back to the cathedral, turn right onto the Rue Grand Pont, and continue straight until you reach the river. The Renoir will be moored along the embankment.”
“Which cathedral are you talking about?” asked Woody. “The first one or the second one?”
“The one you can see from here,” said Madeleine. She gestured back down the mall toward Notre-Dame. “Turn right onto that boulevard.”
“But how do we find our way back to the boat?” fussed another woman.
“The boulevard to the right of Notre-Dame will lead you straight back to the boat.”
“How are we supposed to find Notre-Dame?” pressed Bernice.
Madeleine pursed her lips, her eyes shooting tiny sparks. “It is right there. At the end of the mall. Can you not see it?”
“I’m not sure how you expect us to find our way back by ourselves,” groused Virginia. “It’s outrageous that you’re just going to abandon us. The next time I take a tour, you can be sure it won’t be with any slipshod company like this one.” She flung a disgusted look at Victor. “This is all your fault. River cruise. I didn’t want to take a river cruise.”
“How many of you would like to leave the tour now?” asked Madeleine.
Bernice and Virginia shot their hands into the air immediately. Other hands drifted up more slowly. Bobbi. Dawna. Woody and his contingent.
“But I’ve got a question,” said Dawna, as she kicked rainwater off her alligator boots. “How do we get back to the boat?”
Oh, God.
“I’ll take them,” offered Cal. “Or at least get them on the right road. I’ve got a map.”
“Merci beaucoup,” Madeleine gushed, her voice dripping with gratitude.
“Not so fast, pretty boy,” taunted Bernice. “I’m not going anywhere until it stops raining.”
“Neither am I,” declared Virginia. “I’m staying put until the storm lets up.”
“Whatever,” said Cal. “Just don’t go wandering off. When we head out, we head out together.”
“But if the rain doesn’t stop in the next thirty seconds, I’m gonna shoot across to that shoe store to browse,” warned Bernice. “Pick me up when you head back.”
“Ewww!” cried Dawna as she followed Bernice’s gaze. “You can pick me up there, too. They’ve got boots on sale.” She hesitated. “Does Vente mean sale?”
“It means the place is air-conditioned,” said Bernice.
“It does not,” countered Virginia. “If the store were air-conditioned, why would they throw the front doors wide open?”
“It doesn’t seem to bother you at home,” Victor commented with some snark. “I thought you rather enjoyed cooling off the neighborhood with our central air unit. I can’t think of a better way for you to waste my money. Can you? ”
“I’ll work on it.” She leveled a menacing look at him, eyes narrow and splintered with ice.
While the deserters waited out the storm, the rest of us ventured out into the pelting rain, splashing past centuries-old buildings that were timbered in pink and red and inset with tiers of arched windows. We passed an optician, a tobacconist, jewelers, clothiers, shoe shops, and a confection shop whose specialty chocolates and pastel macaroons were stacked in sumptuous pyramids in the display window, filling the air with the aromatic scent of cocoa beans. Just beyond Foot Locker and the Swatch store, the mall opened up to a huge square that bore the look of an Old World market with its fresh flower stalls and farm produce. Sidewalk cafés sat cheek to jowl on the cobblestones, their boundaries blurred by their sheer numbers, their menus chalked onto freestanding blackboards, their tables empty in the rain. A children’s carousel stood deserted, while directly behind it, a structure shaped like the curved sidewall of a skateboard arena rose above a trio of shade trees. In a city where the architecture was as delicate as spun sugar, this piece, whatever it might be, looked as out of place as hiking boots at a prom.
As we traipsed behind Madeleine, past the square’s many cafés, I realized that the odd structure was actually a roof that looked like Darth Vader’s imperial flagship landing atop a squat concrete building that was being slowly crushed beneath its prodigious weight. After skirting an area in front of the building, where the ruins of an ancient stone foundation poked up from the ground, we detoured right, heading for cover beneath the extended roof of the building’s portico. As the handful of us who remained collapsed our umbrellas, Madeleine resumed her spiel.
“This is the Church of St. Joan of Arc and it sits atop the place where she was burned at the stake in 1431. Six hundred years ago, this lovely square was the site for public executions, so where tourists dine today, the people of Rouen once gathered to watch justice meted out to convicted criminals. The actual spot where St. Joan died is marked by a plaque just there.” She pointed to a fenced garden just beyond the church where a notably austere cross towered skyward. “I would recommend that you visit the spot and take a picture once it stops raining.”
“Is this church very old?” I asked, guessing the answer before Madeleine gave it.
“It was built in 1979, so by Rouen standards, it is brand new. The roof, with all its unusually placed points and peaks, is supposed to represent the flames that consumed St. Joan, but most people say it looks like the underside of an overturned boat, or, if you ask my twelve-year-old son, Darth Vader’s imperial flagship.”
I guess that clinched it. I had the imagination of a twelve-year-old boy. I was obviously spending way too much time with my five nephews.
“You can step inside the church to see the interior if you like. The inside is much more impressive than the outside. Do you have any questions before I turn you loose?”
“I have one,” said the woman beside me. “How do we get back to the boat?”
While Madeleine explained, yet again, which route to follow back, I dug out a gratuity and waited for the remaining guests to leave before I approached her. “Do you remember me?” I asked as I pressed a five Euro note into her hand.
“Of course! Osmond’s friend. But, Emily, you are much too generous.” She nodded to the fiver.
“No, no. You deserve a much bigger tip simply for your patience. How do you remain so even tempered when guests keep asking you the s
ame question that you’ve answered a dozen times already?”
“My temper is not even. I want to strangle some of these people with my bare hands, but I don’t. I celebrate their departure with a drink instead.” She smiled impishly. “Do you know why the French have become such great connoisseurs of wine?”
“Superb vineyards?”
“American tourists.”
Which prompted an idea. “If you have the time, could I buy you a glass of wine? The ship’s purser has been trying to contact you by email for us, but talking to you in person would be so much nicer.”
“My computer service.” She made a face. “It’s up. It’s down. It’s on. It’s off. But, yes, you and I must have a drink. My grandmother has asked for Osmond’s address and perhaps you are the person to give it to me. Oui?”
“Oui!” I was so thrilled by this unexpected twist of luck, I hugged her.
_____
“My grandmama thumbs her nose at my computer. She calls it ‘that silly box.’ But if I tell her ‘that silly box’ will allow her to send an instant message to Osmond and receive a reply within minutes rather than weeks, I guarantee she will insist on learning.”
We’d found a table in a bistro that overlooked the church, and even before our wine arrived, we’d exchanged contact information.
“Please tell Solange that Osmond can even receive email on his iPhone, so no matter what time of day or night she writes to him, when the alert dings, he’ll reply.”
“He will reply to her in the middle of the night?”
“Yeah. He probably takes the thing to bed with him.” I sighed. “They all do.”
“But then I will have to explain the iPhone to her.” Madeleine lifted her brow and puffed out her lips in a comic expression. “Better I tell her it happens by magic. In grandmama’s world, magic is much more believable.”
I took a sip of wine, steeling myself to broach a subject that Madeleine Saint-Sauveur might think I had no business broaching. “Seeing her with Osmond at your house … They had their own magic going on in the war, didn’t they?”
“The war threw them together for less than three weeks, but during that time, they kept each other alive. He needed her to help him survive physically. She needed him to help her survive emotionally. When they found each other—” She smiled. “You saw them together. There is probably not one detail of their encounter that they have forgotten.”
“Osmond told me she’s the only woman he’s ever loved. He apparently wrote to her after the war ended, but his letters were returned as undeliverable, and when he tried phoning, the operator couldn’t find a number. I think he eventually just gave up. It seems so unfair that two people who were so deeply in love ended up spending their lives apart. Do you think your grandmother ever tried to contact him? Do you suppose she ran into the same problem?”
“Non. I’m sure my grandmother never tried to contact him.”
Her certainty surprised me. “Why not?”
“Because her husband would not have approved.”
“Ahh. So she married again shortly after Osmond left?”
“Again? I do not know what you mean by ‘again.’ She was married to my Grandfather Spenard for over fifty years.”
“But … her name is no longer Spenard, is it? You introduced her by another name.”
“Oui. Ducat. Three years after my grandfather died, she married a man who had been a widower for many years, but they were only married a brief time before he passed away, too.”
“Okay, but Osmond told me that when he met her, she was a widow. That her husband had died in a German prison. ‘Barely a bride, and then a widow’ is the way he stated it.”
“Oui. My grandfather was arrested for engaging in subversive acts against German soldiers, so he was thrown into Amiens Prison. You have heard of Amiens, yes?”
I shook my head.
“It was a brutal place. No prisoner ever walked out of Amiens alive. It was where the Wehrmacht sent Resistance fighters to die. My grandfather was imprisoned for three years. He was never allowed to send a letter home, receive packages, communicate with anyone outside the prison. When my grandmother finally petitioned the German authorities to allow her to visit, they told her that my grandfather was dead and his body disposed of.” She sat back in her chair and took a slow sip of wine. “But they were lying.”
The down at the back of my neck stood on end. “He was still alive?”
She nodded. “He most likely would have died, if not for a British bombing raid four months before the D-Day invasion. Two hundred and fifty-eight prisoners escaped through a breach in the prison wall, my grandfather among them. Barely alive, but determined to survive. They searched for him with their dogs, but my grandpapa was too clever for them. He hid in the woods. In caves. He foraged for food. He crossed over into Belgium, in a direction completely opposite where Grandmama was. He knew the Germans would be looking for him at home, so he stayed away. Only after the Allied invasion did he think it safe to find his way back to his bride. And as you might imagine, after June 6, 1944, German troops found themselves battling American tanks and infantry, so they had more pressing problems to address than the escapees from Amiens Prison.”
“Oh, my God. What must your grandmother have thought when he showed up at her door?”
“She tells me that for the first and only time in her life, she fainted. Her husband come back to life? Non. Such miracles did not happen in occupied France.”
I couldn’t imagine the elation Solange must have felt when she regained consciousness to find the husband she’d presumed dead standing over her. There was probably no word in the English language that could adequately describe it. But this turn of events certainly cast doubt on the notion of Osmond’s fatherhood. It might all boil down to a question of timing.
I knocked back a swig of my wine. “Did you say what your grandfather’s name was?”
“Henri. Henri Spenard.”
“How long did it take him to work his way back to Normandy? Weeks? Months?”
“He was traveling on foot, so it took many weeks. And he was further delayed by the fighting in Caen. The Allies met strong German resistance there after the invasion. The town was virtually leveled. But when the Americans finally broke through, he was able to return home.”
“So when was that … exactly?”
“The Battle of Caen ended on July twentieth. Grandpapa managed to make it home four days later.”
About three weeks after Osmond had shipped back to England to recuperate. Boy, I wouldn’t even dare to hazard a guess about—
“It was a glorious homecoming, and so much celebrating that, as you might expect, late the following winter, my grandfather was presented with the son he never thought he would live to sire. Grandpapa wanted to name him Eisenhower, in honor of the American general who liberated France, but Grandmama insisted on naming him for the man who singlehandedly saved her and her family from the Germans. So she named him Osmond.”
“Aw, that’s so sweet.” But I couldn’t help wonder if that was the only reason she named him Osmond.
Madeleine laughed. “The next baby they named Eisenhower. And my mama was called Betsy after the woman who sewed your first American flag. The Spenards became known as the most American family in the village. Should I bore you with a photo?”
“Please! I’d love to be bored.” If there was a resemblance between Osmond Spenard and Osmond Chelsvig, maybe I’d be able to spot it.
Madeleine pulled her wallet from her purse and removed a small photo from a plastic sleeve. “It was taken in the early sixties when all seven children were in their teens. They were like little stepping stones.” She laid the photo in front of me and recited the names as she glided her finger over the faces. “From youngest to oldest—Amelia, Eleanor, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Betsy, Eisenhower, and Osmond. All still living, and with larg
e families of their own, many of whom are named after my Uncle Osmond.”
Yup. Did I call that, or what? Osmond was definitely going to need the senior discount if he invited the entire brood to Iowa.
I studied the handsome face of the teenaged Osmond Spenard with his angular face, narrow nose, expressive eyes, and mop of wavy black hair. Yes! There was a resemblance. But not to Osmond.
To Solange.
Osmond Spenard was the spitting image of his mother.
I sighed my disappointment. “It’s a wonderful photo.” I plucked it off the table and handed it back to her. “Your grandmother experienced the emotional rollercoaster of her life during the war, didn’t she? Henri pronounced dead. An American literally falling out of the sky to save her from a German assault. Henri returning from the dead like the risen Lazarus, and fathering seven children in quick succession.”
Madeleine smiled coyly. “But of course! He was French.”
“Did … did Solange ever confide to you how close she and Osmond became during those short three weeks?”
She averted her gaze as she slid the photo back into its sleeve. When she looked up again, the warmth in her eyes had disappeared. “My grandmother has never made a secret about the part an American soldier played in her life during the war. It’s a story she has told and retold for decades. But there is nothing more to the story than what she has shared. She lived through one of the most brutal periods in the history of the world, and for that she deserves our admiration and respect. Whatever my grandmother did to survive is entirely her business. Our family has never questioned any of her decisions or motivations, and we don’t expect anyone else to either. Ever.” She drilled me with a fierce look. “Do you understand?”