by Anna Fargher
‘Ma petite chérie –’ Madame Fourcade’s eyes darted about the animals, her brow furrowing with concern – ‘where is your umbrella?’
A lump swelled in Pip’s throat and she hung her head, trying to quiet the grief rising inside her. The umbrella had been with her since the day she was born, and she would miss it and Mama and Papa forever.
‘Dammit,’ GI Joe cursed, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think – I just wanted to get you outta there.’
‘We all did.’ Philippe sighed, flexing his wings and motioning his head to GI Joe. ‘Let’s go back and get it, GI.’
‘Wait . . .’ Pip’s voice wavered and all her friends’ faces fell. ‘I had to let it go. I couldn’t tell Lucia what I knew about Churchill’s Secret Animal Army and the Resistance. The Butcher Birds and the Goliath Rats destroyed it. It’s gone.’
Unable to stifle the urge to cry any longer, Pip covered her face with her paws and wept, and her friends enveloped her with kind embraces and sympathetic words. Behind them, Henri and the wolves stepped into the barn through the open stable door, with the Alsatians trotting after them and the seagulls flying over their heads.
Pip and her friends turned to the sound of claws pacing over the wooden floor and her breath caught in her throat, spotting Brian carrying the destroyed umbrella inside his jaws. Henri gently nudged Madame Fourcade with his nose and the hedgehog’s face brightened, seeing her old friend return with the wolves, who gently licked her hoglets, hiding shyly behind their mother’s quills.
‘We’re sorry, young Pip,’ Bing said as Brian gently placed the umbrella on the ground beside her. The sky-dogs sat on their haunches as the seagulls settled around the barn and Pip sniffed, seeing its devastation. Its ornate silver handle was scratched and only a few tattered wisps of the canopy remained, revealing its bare, misshapen skeleton from where so many teeth, beaks and claws had ripped it apart.
‘Wait a momento . . .’ Leo carefully examined its dislocated spokes. ‘This isn’t so bad,’ he said, realigning one segment after another. ‘We can bend these ribs back into place and it should open again. Hmmm . . .’ He scrunched up his face in thought. ‘The handle is scraped –’ his eyes pored over its structure from top to bottom – ‘but it’s not the end of the world. With new fabric, it will look better than ever.’
‘Do you really think so?’ Pip darted to his side, ears pricking with hope. She traced the naked umbrella frame with her paw and a rush of happiness tingled her fur, seeing that Leo was right.
‘The men and women who work in the umbrella museum will fix it when we get to Italy,’ Leo said. ‘They’ll make sure this one is well looked after. You’ll see.’
‘Have you been there?’ Pip asked, her whiskers popping on her cheeks with surprise.
‘Si.’ Leo beamed, standing taller with pride. ‘The artist I lived with used to sketch the parasols in the displays. I would sneak inside his pocket when he went on walks. I saw some beautiful umbrellas through his moth holes, but I never knew mice lived inside them. Philippe and I will take you there if you’d like us too, topolina.’ Leo glanced up at the parrot nodding beside him. ‘You’ll need another bird to help you carry the umbrella, and, when the time is right, we’d be honoured to show you the way. The umbrella museum is on a wooded hill only a few miles from my village beside Lake Maggiore. We’ll come and visit you when you are there.’
‘Only if you take me exploring with you,’ Pip said, feeling a weight lift inside her as she realized for the first time that she was nervous about her new life in the umbrella museum. But she immediately felt better knowing Leo and Philippe would be nearby.
Philippe winked. ‘It’s a deal.’
‘But you and your umbrella must stay with me until Hitler’s puppet, Mussolini, falls,’ Madame Fourcade said firmly. ‘It’s not safe for you to travel to Italy until then, and I’m sure you, Christian and Béatrice will enjoy each other’s company until that day comes. You all have the same courageous hearts,’ the hedgehog continued with a sigh. ‘My only fear is that, together, your combined mischief will turn my fur completely white!’
Pip grinned, wanting to spend as much time as she could with Madame Fourcade and her friends before she had to leave.
‘I’ll be staying with you too.’ Henri smiled and Pip beamed at having him with her again.
‘And me, liddle lady,’ GI Joe cooed. ‘I swore to Bernard Booth I’d keep you safe and you won’t be getting rid of me until you’re settled with your Italian family.’
‘There’s still much to be done,’ Madame Fourcade said. ‘We need to keep the enemy at bay and we must find and release any of our friends who may have been captured. We’ll go back to the forest in Normandy and wait for the rest of Noah’s Ark. Bernard Booth will be in touch with instructions. Together, we’ll do what we can to bring an end to the war.’
A broad smile drew across Pip’s lips as she felt a flutter of excitement for the time they had left together. The journey to the umbrella museum in Gignese was not over and none of them knew what lay ahead, but for now they were thankful this difficult chapter had closed.
The war was not won and many months of fighting were still to come, yet Pip and her friends had each other and the love they shared would stay with them forever.
EPILOGUE
Peter James Smith took his daughter’s small hand in his and hopped up the stone steps to a pair of large glass doors that reflected the bright summer sky and his rented Fiat 500 parked on the hillside under the shade of tall cypress trees gently swaying in the northern Italian breeze.
‘Come on, Gracie my love!’ he said at the top of the steps, turning to his wife behind them, who was lifting their chubby young son to her hip. ‘Last one inside is a nincompoop!’
Grace smiled with an affectionate roll of her eyes and joined her husband and daughter as they chuckled mischievously at the top of the stairs.
‘Without further ado,’ Peter said, pushing and holding the glass door open for his family to step inside, ‘may I present to you, the Museo Dell’Ombrello – the only umbrella museum in the world.’
‘Is this like the place where you grew up with Granny and Grandpa before the war?’ his daughter said, letting go of his hand and running to get a closer look at the rows of umbrellas on display before them.
‘Not quite.’ He joined her in pressing his nose against the glass in front of a long line of ornate tasselled parasols. Beside them, photographs of Ancient Greek vases depicted men and women using them to shade themselves from the sun. ‘The place I grew up was a shop, not a museum. We didn’t sell old-fashioned sun parasols like these. We sold modern umbrellas that my father – your grandfather – made himself. People came from all over the world to buy them.’
‘Were Granny and Grandpa’s umbrellas as pretty as these ones?’
‘Our canopies were not as intricate, but we did have beautiful handles carved into all sorts of things. Come on, let’s see what else they have here.’
He took her hand in his and they walked around each display, looking at the first sun parasols from Ancient China, Egypt, Rome, India, Greece and Persia.
‘Look,’ Peter said, enthusiastically pointing to pictures fixed on the wall, and his daughter craned her neck to get a better look. ‘In Siam, the monks used palm leaves for umbrellas and the Aztecs used canopies made out of feathers and gold!’
As they moved on, they passed more modern French, Italian and English umbrellas before they stopped in front of a cabinet in the far corner of the room, filled with beautifully sculpted wood, ebony, bone and silver handles.
‘What can you see here?’
The little girl took a deep breath and spoke quickly, pointing to each carving with her finger.
‘There’s a dog, a parrot, a flower, a scary head with a hat on, a bear, another dog, a horse head, a snake, a tiger, a duck, a crocodile, a mouse – actually lots of mice!’ She paused and looked up at her father, who was not listening to her and pressing the palms of his hands against the glass in asto
nishment. ‘What is it, Daddy?’
‘It’s impossible.’
‘What is, darling?’ Grace said softly, placing her hand between his shoulder blades and furrowing her brow with concern. ‘Are you all right?’
‘That umbrella . . .’ He pointed his finger to the display cabinet. ‘The open one in the middle – I know it.’
‘I’m sure lots of umbrellas look the same.’
‘No, you don’t understand,’ he said, speaking quickly with excitement. ‘This one was my mother’s favourite in the shop – there simply isn’t another one like it!’
‘What do you mean, sweetheart?’
‘Do you see the beautiful silver handle carved with fig leaves and inlaid with gold?’ His wife nodded. ‘It was given to the famous Jonas Hanway by the King of Persia while he was travelling there. It was originally meant to top a walking stick but Hanway added it to his umbrella in the mid-eighteenth century. It’s said that he was the first man to use an umbrella in England.’
‘Jonas Hanway the charity man?’
‘Yes, he was the one who started the Marine Society, built the Magdalen Hospital and helped to stop the child chimney sweeps being used as slaves. Before he started using this umbrella every day, wealthy people were used to taking taxis when it rained. My parents talked about him all the time when I was growing up. This umbrella was their pride and joy.’
‘They must have donated it to the museum before the bomb destroyed the shop.’
‘Impossible. They wanted to come to the museum themselves after the war. I still have the letters my mother wrote to me about what time of year would be best for us to come here – she didn’t want us to feel too hot. Besides, this umbrella was still at home on my last leave before D-Day.’
‘Three weeks later the shop was gone. Could they have sent it ahead?’
‘I don’t think so. Not when Northern Italy was still an Axis territory.’
‘Daddy,’ his daughter said, insistently tugging on the end of his suit jacket, ‘can we go and get some ice cream now?’
‘In a minute, darling,’ he said, staring rapt at the umbrella. ‘Why don’t you ask Mummy?’
‘Please, Daddy! You promised we would get ice cream after we looked at the umbrellas!’
‘All right,’ he said, turning to his wife with an innocent face that betrayed a hint of a mischievous smile. ‘I’ll meet you there in a minute.’
His wife eyed him suspiciously.
‘Ice cream!’ cried the little boy in her arms.
‘Come on, Mummy,’ her daughter said, bossily taking her free hand and pulling her to the museum exit on the other side of the large room. ‘Today, I’d like a pink scoop, a white scoop and a green scoop.’
‘Goodness! Certainly not!’ Grace said firmly, pulling the large glass door open and walking into the bright sunshine with her children. ‘One scoop is plenty.’
His daughter’s pleading voice faded behind the door, swinging closed behind them. Carefully looking about him to check no one could see what he was about to do, Peter lifted the metal latch at the bottom corner of the glass display cabinet and pulled it slightly ajar. Feeling in his pocket, he found a little domed chocolate coated in silver paper dotted with blue stars that the hotel waiter had given him after dinner the night before. He unwrapped it, broke off a piece in his fingers and slipped his hand inside the cabinet to leave the chocolate beside the Hanway umbrella handle. Drawing his hand out again, he closed the door and waited, his heart thudding inside his chest.
Minutes passed and Peter sighed with disappointment, turning to leave. But then he saw it in the corner of his eye. Moving slowly and stealthily, often pausing motionless against the silver fig-leaf carvings on the umbrella handle, a tiny mouse kitten clambered to the chocolate and picked it up in its little paws.
‘It can’t be!’ he said, leaping back to the display. But at once he clenched his jaw and scolded himself with a shake of his head. ‘It’s impossible! She’d be fully grown by now, probably even dead. For goodness sake, man! Get a grip! What did you expect? How on earth would she even get to Italy in the first place?’
At that moment, a shrill squeak sounded and the kitten looked up into the canopy. Just visible, another bigger mouse with a white underbelly hung upside down by its tail with its paws on its hips.
‘Could it be her?’ he whispered to himself, seeing the mouse’s familiar white stomach and gasping with delight. ‘My God – I think it is!’
Without a doubt, it was the same mouse he knew from long ago inside the umbrella shop. As the kitten dashed up the umbrella handle to join its mother inside the canopy, Peter distinctly heard disapproving squeaks and chatter. He pressed his ear to the cool glass, wishing he could understand what she was saying.
‘Hans! I told you not to leave the umbrella during the day!’ Pip scolded as two other kittens leaned over her shoulder with their noses twitching inquisitively. ‘It’s not safe!’
‘But you left London and brought the umbrella all the way here,’ her son said defensively, leaping over the metal stretchers to their family nest at the highest point of the umbrella. As he broke the chocolate into small pieces, he shared the treat between him, his mother and his two sisters and they nibbled it greedily. ‘That’s much more dangerous!’
‘That was different – we were at war.’
‘Tell us the story about the Dickin the rescue dog again, Mama,’ Pip’s youngest kitten said, her little cheeks bulging with chocolate.
‘Not that one! I want to hear how you met Papa when you were fighting in the Battle for Paris and how you saved the Eiffel Tower!’ her oldest daughter squeaked. ‘It’s so romantic!’
‘Boring! I want to hear about Noah’s Ark!’ Hans said. ‘Especially about the pigeon, the eagle and the hedgehog!’
‘And the stag and Hans the German rat,’ her daughters pleaded, ‘and the sky-dogs! And the white mouse!’
‘All right.’ Pip smiled as she lifted her youngest kitten to her knee while the other two nestled beside her, and she began her story in the same way she always did. ‘Once upon a time when the world was mad with war . . .’
‘Mama,’ Hans interrupted, his nose twitching in thought, ‘if we went to war again, would we have to move the umbrella and find a new home like you did?’
‘That would depend on what options we had. But we would have to choose carefully – after all, the choices you make can lead you down very different paths that you can’t always come back from.’
‘We won’t go to war again, will we, Mama?’ her youngest asked, with drooping whiskers and her little brow furrowing with worry.
‘I hope very much that we will never go to war again. It was a despicable time of suffering and hatred,’ Pip said with a sad shake of her head, and a lump suddenly swelled in her throat as she remembered all those she had lost. As she collected herself with a sigh, she looked fondly at each of her children with the same wise expression that her own mother had given her, long ago. ‘The most important thing is that we never forget what happened. Every one of us must teach our kittens about our mistakes and how to fix them so they never occur again.’
‘But how do we know it won’t happen again?’ her oldest daughter squeaked.
‘We don’t. All we can do is learn from the past and try our best to make each day a kinder day than yesterday. Life is difficult and you will have many challenges in your lives, but with courage in your hearts you can be the change we need for a better tomorrow – and you’ll never fail because you will have tried your best to make that happen.’
Suddenly Peter jumped with surprise away from the glass cabinet, feeling a determined yank at his sleeve.
‘Hurry up, Daddy,’ his daughter bossed with a halo of melted ice cream round her lips. ‘We’re missing you!’
‘All right,’ he said, lifting her into his arms and kissing her cheek. Drawing a handkerchief from his top jacket pocket, he tenderly wiped her face. ‘I’m coming.’
Walking towards his
wife and son, patiently waiting outside with their ice creams, Peter shook his head in disbelief and smiled, wondering about the little mouse’s adventures, delighted to think that the most extraordinary things can happen to the smallest of creatures.
THE END
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Umbrella Mouse to the Rescue is set during the final months of WWII and follows the events surrounding the Liberation of Paris in August 1944. It is just one story featuring members of the real French Resistance and this note explains some of the facts behind Pip’s adventure but there are countless other stories to be discovered.
Both the Umbrella Mouse books coincide with Operation Overlord that began with D Day on 6th June 1944 and ended on 30th August 1944 with German forces retreating east across the river Seine after their defeat at the Battle of Falaise and the Liberation of Paris. Umbrella Mouse to the Rescue ends with the dramatic battle for Paris, during which a verbal ceasefire between the Allied and Axis forces was instated. This bought time for the Resistance to convince the Allies to come to the fight. It also gave German troops time to retreat. The truce officially ended on 22nd August 1944. Over the next three days, more than 600 barricades appeared across the city. When the Allied armies arrived in Paris on the night of 24th August, all the church bells rang in the city for the first time since 1940, beginning with Notre-Dame.
The fire inside the Grand Palais witnessed by Pip and her friends, started on 23rd August after German Goliath tanks attacked it. Artistic license has let me compress the timeline and bend the truth on other events during that period. Most notably, the Eiffel Tower was never rigged with explosives. Hitler demanded that Paris be destroyed, but General von Choltitz, a commander in Paris, did not have the weaponry to do so. Only the telephone exchange and the Saint-Cloud Bridge were ever mined. Von Choltitz is sometimes known as a ‘saviour of Paris’ for refusing to carry out Hitler’s orders. Historians argue whether or not the city would have survived if he’d had the necessary arsenal. In fact, Paris was remarkably undamaged during WWII due to its swift defeat in 1940, never suffering a Blitz. Researching in Paris, I visited the mysterious and atmospheric catacombs. I have found no evidence of the Resistance using the limestone labyrinth, although Colonel Rol’s nearby civil defence shelter did house bicycle generators used during powercuts, but I couldn’t resist including this dark hideout beneath the city – perfect for my band of Resistance animals.