“How did you get here, please?” Flip asked her.
“I came to look after you till Madame Perceval gets back from Montreux. I’m staying at the school chalet in Gstaad and I’m going back this evening since you’re all right and won’t need me any longer. Now if you’re a good girl and promise to lie still and not get excited, I’ll let Paul come in. He’s been waiting at your door all morning.”
“I’ll lie still.”
Flip lay very still while Mlle Duvoisine was gone, but she could not keep her heart from thumping with excitement. Paul opened the door and came in.
“Flip! Are you all right!”
“Paul! Are you all right!”
They spoke simultaneously and then they both laughed and Paul came over to the bed and kissed Flip and then stood looking down at her. Flip smiled up at him and strangely her eyes filled with tears.
“I thought he’d killed you,” Paul said.
“No, I’m fine, Paul. Are you all right?”
“Yes, Flip. Yes, I’m all right and there’s so much to tell you, only Mademoiselle Duvoisine from your school said that I mustn’t excite you and of course she’s right.”
“You won’t excite me. Please tell me.”
Paul climbed up onto the foot of the bed and sat there, leaning his dark head back against one of the posts. His eyes were ringed with black and his face looked white and tired and as though he had not slept.
“Tell me, Paul, please,” she asked gently.
“He’s not my father.” Paul closed his eyes and a look of relief came into his face. “He’s not my father, Flip.”
“He couldn’t have been your father,” Flip said. “Not that man.”
Paul opened his eyes and tried to smile at her. “After you locked me up in your room I shouted and banged and my father—I mean Monsieur Laurens—never even noticed.” Flip opened her eyes wide because it was the first time Paul had corrected himself when he called Monsieur Laurens his father. He continued. “He said he heard something, but he thought we were having some kind of a game with Ariel. He’d forgotten Aunt Colette had Ariel with her. Then Aunt Colette came home and let me out and I told her everything and we ran downstairs and roused Father and then we went to the château. Father took his gun. Sometimes he can be a very active man, Flip. It’s only when he’s writing that he seems to forget the world. We saw the man who said he was my father coming out of the château and Father captured him and the man told us a piece of shutter had struck you on the head and he thought it had killed you and he had put you in the château to protect you from the wind and he kept crying out that he did not want to be a murderer. And Aunt Colette and I rushed into the château and found you and—” Paul paused for a long time. Then he said, “I thought you were dead. But Aunt Colette said you weren’t and then you said something and moaned and we carried you home and called the doctor and Mademoiselle Duvoisine from your school.”
“Where’s Madame?” Flip asked him.
“She’s down in Montreux with the man who said he was my father. They’re at the police station. You see, Flip, that’s what he’s been doing. I mean, it’s his profession. He went around finding out about people who didn’t know who they were and then he pretended he was related to them and got money from whoever had become their new families. Aunt Colette said he was ill and not right in his mind. He admitted that he wasn’t my father, but it wouldn’t have mattered if he hadn’t, because when I saw you lying there all in a little heap inside the château in the dark and I thought you were dead, I remembered. I remembered who I was, Flip.”
Flip lay very quietly on the bed. She didn’t dare move, partly because it hurt her head to move, but mostly because it was another of those times when she knew it would be best for Paul if she was very still and very silent.
Paul put his head down so that his cheek pressed against Flip’s feet and a lock of his dark hair fell across his forehead. “I’ll try to be clear, Flip,” he said, “but I want to say it as quickly as possible because it’s a hard thing to say. My father was a writer. We lived in an old château—something like our château, Flip—that had always been in our family. During the war my father worked with the Maquis. He was the editor of one of the most important of the underground newspapers. I had an older sister, she was fifteen then, and she helped. So did my mother. Sometimes they let me run errands. Everybody helped who could possibly be used and sometimes I could do things without arousing suspicion that an older person couldn’t do.” He paused for a moment, and then went on. “One evening I was coming home after dark. I went in through one of the French windows. The room was dark and I stumbled over something. It was my sister. She was lying there just the same way you were lying in the château last night when I thought you were dead. I saw you lying there and you were my sister and it wasn’t last night at all but the night my sister was shot. It was shortly after that that all of my father’s work was uncovered and we were sent to a concentration camp . . . I think if you don’t mind very much I’ll have to let Aunt Colette tell you the rest.”
Again Flip wanted to say something that would give Paul comfort, but she knew that she was unable to. She lay there and felt the pressure of his cheek against her feet, until he lifted his head and stared up at her and his eyes were the grey of the lake and seemed to hold in their depths as much knowledge and suffering as the lake must have seen. He stared up at her and now Flip knew that she must say something. She pushed herself up very slowly on one elbow, raised herself up and beyond the pain that clamped about her head, and reached down and gently touched Paul’s dark hair. She suddenly felt much older, and, unconsciously, she echoed Madame Perceval’s words. “It’s all right, Paul. Everything’s going to be all right.”
_______
After a while Mlle Duvoisine came back into the room and sent Paul away and Flip slept again. When she awoke Madame Perceval was in the room and she took Flip into her arms and held her as her mother had held her.
“You were very brave, little one,” Madame told her.
Flip started to shake her head but stopped as the abrupt movement sent the pain back again. “I wasn’t brave. I was scared. I was—I was like pulp I was so scared, Madame.”
“But you went on for Paul’s sake, anyhow. That was brave.”
“Can you be brave and scared at the same time?” Flip asked.
“That’s the hardest and the biggest kind of braveness there is.”
“Oh,” Flip said, and then, because the thought of being brave somehow embarrassed her, she asked, “Madame, will this make me miss any skiing? I’m all right, aren’t I?”
“Yes, dear, you’re fine. It’s a miracle, but you didn’t have a concussion. You’re just a bit bruised and battered. The doctor will look in on you again later this evening, but he says you’ll be up and about in a couple of days and I’ll work with you every minute the rest of the holidays to make up for the time you’ll miss. Now. Paul’s asleep. Georges is writing and Mademoiselle Duvoisine’s gone back to Gstaad. How about eating something? Chicken soup and a poached egg? Thérèse will be miserable if you don’t eat. She blames herself for last night’s episode and she was very upset about losing her new boyfriend.”
“I’ll eat,” Flip promised. “Madame . . . Paul told me about himself . . . about having remembered . . .”
Madame Perceval looked at Flip gravely. “It will be better for him now, Flip,” she said, “in spite of the pain of the memory. Before, he had lost his parents completely. Now he can never lose them again.”
“And, Madame . . . there was more that Paul said you would tell me.”
“All right,” Madame Perceval said. “I’ll just run down and get your tray from Thérèse first. I won’t be long.”
When Madame returned with Flip’s tray she sat down beside the bed and said, “Mademoiselle Duvoisine thought I should wait till you were up to tell you about Paul, but he has already told you so much and he’s anxious for you to know everything so that the knowledge won’t b
e between you. I think you’re strong enough to hear. But eat your supper first.”
“Yes, Madame.”
When Flip had finished Madame said very quietly, “Paul’s parents were put into the gas chamber. He saw their bodies dumped with a pile of others afterward. The following month his little brother died in his arms. It happened not only to Paul, you must understand. It happened to thousands of other children.”
After a long silence Flip said, “We don’t know, do we, Madame? We can’t know. I mean none of us at school who haven’t been through it. I thought it was awful when my mother was killed and they didn’t tell me for a week and I couldn’t understand why she didn’t come to me, but it wasn’t like that. And even Gloria losing her teeth in the blitz. She doesn’t know.”
“No, Flip. Gloria doesn’t know.”
“I feel it deep inside, Madame. But I don’t know. How can you do anything to make up, Madame? How can you help?”
“Just never forget,” Madame Perceval said. “Never take it for granted.”
“I don’t see how anyone could forget.”
“It’s far too easy,” Madame Perceval told her. “But it’s important for us to remember, so that we can try to keep it from happening again. That’s one reason I’m not going back to school after Christmas.”
“You’re not going back!” Flip cried, and almost upset her tray.
“Steady,” Madame Perceval said. “I hadn’t meant to tell you so soon.”
“Oh, Madame,” Flip wailed. “Why aren’t you coming back!”
Madame got up and walked over to the window, looking out at the fresh white world, swept clean by the wind the night before. “I feel that I’ve outlived my usefulness at the school. After the war when my aunt started it up again she needed me to help her, because she’s not as young or as strong as she once was. But the school’s reestablished now. Everything’s running smoothly. I’m not really needed any longer. As a matter of fact”—Madame Perceval turned toward Flip with a half smile—“you’re partly responsible for my leaving.”
“Me? How! Why!” Flip cried.
“I think if I hadn’t seen your father’s letters with their drawings of forlorn and frightened children I might not have been quite so ready to accept when a friend I worked with during the war wrote and asked me to come and help her in a hostel for just such children. So that’s where I’m going after the holidays, dear. It’s on the border between Switzerland and Germany, right where I was during most of the war, so it will be good for me in many ways to make myself go there. Now, my Flip, I’ve talked to you far too long already. You’re supposed to be resting. Mademoiselle Duvoisine will be angry with me if I’ve excited you.”
“You haven’t excited me,” Flip said, and her voice was low and mournful. “Only I don’t see how I’ll bear it back at school if you aren’t there.”
“I’m surprised at you, Philippa.” Madame Perceval spoke sharply. “I didn’t expect to hear you talk that way again. I thought that was the old Philippa we’d left behind. Bear it! Of course you’ll bear it! Things won’t be any different without me than they were with me. I’ve never shown any favoritism at school and I never would.”
“I didn’t mean that!” Flip cried. “Madame, you know I didn’t mean that! It just helps me if I know that you’re there, and it’s because you’re so fair and—and just.”
Madame Perceval took her hand quickly. “I apologize, dear. Please forgive me. I’ve been very unjust to you. I know you’d never expect favors of any kind. I should have been accusing myself, not you. I said that because I’ve been afraid that I might show how particularly you interested me—and I’ve always prided myself on complete impartiality. But you remind me so much of Denise—my daughter. She died of pneumonia during the war. You look very much like her and she had your same intense, difficult nature and artistic talent . . . I said we weren’t going to talk anymore and I’ve been going a blue streak, haven’t I? Take your nap and Paul will come in when you wake up. Mademoiselle Duvoisine and the doctor both say that security and happiness are the best medicine he can have, and you can give him a great deal of both. By the way, his real name was Paul Muret. It’s nice that we can go on calling him Paul. Of course it’s a common name, but Paul says he’s always felt right being called Paul. It was my husband’s name.”
As Madame Perceval bent over her to put the covers around her, Flip reached up and caught her hand. “You’re right to leave school and go to take care of the children at the hostel, Madame. I do know that. There may be some older ones like Paul.”
During the remainder of the holidays Madame Perceval took Flip and Paul on skiing expeditions every day. Once they got on the train in the morning and traveled all day. Flip was beginning to feel more at ease on her skis than she was on her own feet. When she put on her skis her clumsiness seemed to roll off her like water and her stiff knee seemed to have the spring and strength that it never had when she tried to run in a relay race or on the basketball court or on the hockey field. Flip and Paul grew brown and rosy and the shadows slowly retreated from Paul’s eyes and Flip looked as though she could be no relation to the unhappy girl who had moped about the school and been unable to make friends. Now when they met other young people on their skiing expeditions she could exchange shouts and laugh with them, safe in her new security of friendship with Paul, confidence in her skiing, and Madame Perceval’s approval and friendship. She tried not to think that someone new would be taking the art teacher’s place at school.
“By the way, Flip,” Madame Perceval said once. “When the question comes up at school about the ski meet, don’t mention my part in the surprise. Just say that it was Paul who taught you to ski.”
“All right, Madame,” Flip said, “if you think it would be better that way.”
“I do.” Madame Perceval looked after Paul, who had skied on ahead of them. “After all, the credit is really Paul’s anyhow.”
In the evenings after dinner they sang Christmas carols. Flip had taught them her favorite, The Twelve Days of Christmas. She had loved it when she was very small because it was such a long one, and when she was told that she could choose just one more song before bedtime, that would be it. So she loved it for its memories and now for its own charming tune and delicate words, from the first verse
On the first day of Christmas
My true love sent to me
A partridge in a pear tree . . .
to the twelfth verse when all the twelve gifts are sung with a glad shout.
On Christmas Eve Georges Laurens stirred himself from his books and they all went out and climbed up the mountain and brought home a beautiful Christmas tree. Flip and Paul had been making the decorations in the evenings after dinner, chains of brightly colored paper, strings of berries and small rolled balls of tinfoil, and Flip had carefully painted and pasted on cardboard twenty delicate angels with feathery wings and a stable scene with Mary and Joseph and the infant Jesus, the kings and shepherds, and all the animals who gathered close to keep the baby warm. When the tree was trimmed they sang carols, ending up with The Twelve Days of Christmas. Paul took Flip’s hand and threw back his head and sang.
On the twelfth day of Christmas
My true love sent to me
Twelve drummers drumming
Eleven pipers piping
Ten lords a-leaping
Nine ladies dancing
Eight maids a-milking
Seven swans a-swimming
Six geese a-laying
Five gold rings,
Four calling birds
Three french hens
Two turtle doves,
And a partridge in a pear tree!
On Christmas morning they sat in front of the fire and opened their presents. Paul saved his gift to Flip till the last and then held out the small square box shyly. Flip opened it and lifted out of pale blue cotton a tiny silver pear on a chain.
“I couldn’t find any of the gifts from the carol,” Paul said, “but thi
s is a pear from the tree the partridge was in.”
Flip looked up at Paul’s eager face and her own was radiant. She wanted to say something to express her happiness but she couldn’t, so she just flung her arms wide as though she wanted to embrace them all.
“Why, Miss Philippa,” Georges Laurens said, “I never realized before what a little beauty you are. We should have Christmas every day!”
“Do you like the pear?” Paul asked.
Flip, her eyes shining, whispered, “More than anything.”
Toward the end of the holidays Flip persuaded Paul to stop off at the school chalet one day when they were skiing at Gstaad. She felt that perhaps it wasn’t very nice of her to want to show Paul off, but she couldn’t help wanting it.
“The really nicest ones went home for the holiday, which is too bad,” Flip told him. “Gloria’s all right. Oh, and I think Maggie and Liz Campbell stayed and they’re awfully nice. Maggie’s in my class and she’s always been polite and everything, not like some of the others, and Liz is two classes above. Jackie and Erna and Solvei are the ones you’ll like best, though. You’ll have to meet them when they come back.”
“Erna’s German, isn’t she?” Paul asked.
“Yes,” Flip answered quickly, “but Jackie Bernstein’s father was in a German prison near Paris for six months until he escaped and Erna is Jackie’s best friend. And you’ll like Erna anyhow because she’s going to be a doctor too.”
“Well,” Paul said, “let’s get this business at Gstaad over with before we worry about anything else. The important thing is for you to get used to the snow conditions at Gstaad before the ski meet.”
The trip to Gstaad went off very well. Flip was so preoccupied with putting Paul at ease that she forgot to be shy and awkward herself and astounded the girls by making jokes and keeping up a rapid stream of talk at the dinner table. And she and Paul kept having to remember that they mustn’t talk about skiing, or let on that they weren’t returning by train but had left their skis at the Gstaad station.
And Both Were Young Page 17