The French War Bride

by Robin Wells

  “Well of course, I was so happy, I couldn’t speak. I just nodded with a big lump in my throat. And then I threw my arms around his neck and he kissed me, and then I dashed out of the parlor, nearly banging into Mother and Daddy—I think they’d been listening at the door. ‘Guess what?’ I told them. ‘I’m engaged!’”

  “I assume that meant Jack was, as well,” Amélie interrupts.

  “What? Of course.”

  “You said you were engaged.”

  “Well, they were my parents.”

  “I see.” She gives a dry smile that can’t mean anything good.

  I feel the bile of resentment and dislike flood my mouth. She is trying to imply that I made it all about me. Oh, dear—had I? The question briefly flickers in my mind before I dismiss it.

  “They were very happy about it, I am sure,” she says.

  “They were thrilled. Daddy already had champagne chilling—as Baptists, we hardly ever drank, but this was a very special occasion. Daddy popped the cork, and it flew across the room. And Daddy toasted to our wonderful lives together, and Jack toasted me, saying he was the luckiest man ever, to be getting such a beautiful bride and marrying into such a wonderful family.”

  I sigh, remembering. I had felt as if I were dancing on clouds. It had been the happiest night of my life.

  “Why didn’t you marry right away?” Amélie asks.

  “Well, we needed time to plan the wedding, of course.”

  “Of course,” she repeats in that dry way of hers.

  “Plus Jack was still in school until May. He was at the teaching hospital around the clock—they worked the interns and residents to death. They slept on cots in closets and were constantly on call. And Jack’s salary as an army major wasn’t enough to really establish a household.”

  “I see,” says Amélie, in that quiet, shrewish way that seems like an insult.

  “And we already knew he was shipping out as soon as he graduated. Daddy thought it best I stay in college, and married women couldn’t live in the dorms.

  “And my mother . . . well, she had another reason she wanted me to wait. I was her only child, and she wanted only the best for me. ‘What if he’s terribly wounded?’ she said. ‘You might not want to be saddled for life to a man who is disfigured or loses a leg or is an invalid.’

  “I was horrified. He was to tend the wounded, not get wounded himself! What was she thinking, to suggest such a thing could happen? I told her in no uncertain terms that I would always love Jack regardless of what condition he returned in.

  “Of course, at that point, I never dreamed that he might return already married.” I give Amélie a pointed look. “With a baby.”

  Amélie has the grace to look down.

  “That’s the part of the story I really want to know about,” I press. “How did he come to marry you?”

  “I am almost there. If you would like for me to continue . . .” Her eyebrows lift to an empirious high.

  Oh, she is so aggravating! The words are bitter on my tongue. “Yes. Please.”

  “Very well.” She rises from her chair in a fluid movement. “Would you like coffee or tea?”

  “I—” I start to say I don’t need a drink; I need her to get to the point. But my hospice counselor’s words echo in my ear as I watch her walk to the kitchenette: Patience and kindness, Miss Kat. Patience and kindness are the golden tickets. “Tea, please.”

  She nods and settles the kettle on the stove. “I was about to tell you about the Normandy landing.”

  Finally, we are getting somewhere. “Jack shipped over to arrive just after D-day.”

  “Yes.” She opens a cabinet and lifts out two china cups and saucers. She places them on a tray, along with cream and sugar, two spoons, and cloth napkins. She carries them over and sets them on the coffee table.

  “He left just after his graduation,” I say. “I was there, of course—at his graduation. My parents and I went to New Orleans and stayed at the Roosevelt Hotel. I was so terribly, terribly proud of him. He shipped out two days later with a Medical Corps unit. We learned later that it reached France right behind the Normandy landing.”

  “You did not make love with Jack before you sent him off to war?”

  “Why—no!” The question stuns me. “No, of course not! I was not that kind of girl. Jack didn’t ask . . . he didn’t expect . . .” What did she think I was? In her world, I was probably a prude.

  “Why, we hardly had any time alone together!” I sputter. “Besides, I was saving myself for marriage. That was the way it was done. That was what was expected.”

  “By Jack?” She looks at me intently. “You discussed this?”

  “No. It needed no discussion. It was just how things were.”

  “Ah.” She gives that small smile I find so annoying, then heads back to the kitchen, lifts the kettle from the stove, and pours boiling water into a little teapot with a single tea bag in it. I sigh; I should have known better than to let a Frenchwoman make me tea.

  “You told him not to send you a breakup letter,” Amélie says as she pours boiling water into a coffee carafe with a complicated press.

  “It was a joke. I was teasing him, reversing the cliché.” I sit and tap my toe, waiting for her to carry the carafe and teapot over to the table. She finally does. She leans forward and carefully pours me the weakest tea I have ever been served, outside of a Chinese restaurant. The cup, however, is thin as an eggshell, rimmed in gold with blue and purple flowers. It is absolutely stunning. So is the elaborate, heavy sterling teaspoon.

  “You were about to tell me about the Normandy landing,” I prompt.

  “Yes,” she says. “Yes, I am about to get to that part of the story.”

  God help me, I think, helping myself to a large spoonful of sugar. This story might take longer than the time I have left on earth.

  28

  AMÉLIE

  1944

  The Resistance became more organized and more effective as time went on. In large part it was because everyone listened to the BBC French broadcast from London. The Germans tried to scramble the signal, but they were never able to snuff out the broadcasts.

  French citizens were not allowed to have radios, of course, but we all knew someone who had one, hidden in a washroom, a closet, or a pantry. The hotel had several radios for the Germans to use, and those radios always found their way to the French broadcast at night.

  Over the airwaves, the British would send secret messages to the Resistance through the programming. Jean has a very long mustache might be a key for a southern pocket of the Resistance to block the train tracks in order to thwart a Nazi shipment of arms. The secret obscure messages became more frequent.

  Acts of open sabotage against the Germans accelerated. The Boches retaliated by carting off large groups of French citizens, executing them and publicizing the punishment to halt further insurrection.

  It did not stop us; it only made us more stealthy. We knew that the Allies were planning an invasion. The question was when, and where.

  The Germans knew it was coming, too. They grew nervous and unsteady. Sometimes they ignored insults and bad behavior from the citizenry; at other times they responded with brutal force and twitchy trigger fingers.

  I continued to serve as a courier. The need to get information to the Resistance had increased.

  I met with Yvette less frequently. We were careful not to discuss specifics, but we shared general information. We usually talked as we walked along the Seine.

  “The Germans are scared,” she told me. “They believe the Allies’ invasion will happen any day now.”

  “Mon Dieu, I hope it comes soon.”

  “I believe we will be singing by autumn.”

  I smiled. “So I have heard.”

  The code that the invasion was two weeks away would be the first l
ine of the poem “Chanson d’automne”—“Song of Autumn.”

  “So tell me—how is your officer?”

  “He is very sweet, actually.”

  “A sweet Nazi?”

  “He is not at all like the last.” She pulled out a cigarette and offered me one. I shook my head; I had only toyed with smoking, and now that everything was so scarce, I was glad I’d never taken to it. It was one less thing to yearn for. Bad enough to long for food.

  Yvette lit a match and put it to her cigarette. “He is in love with me.”

  “How could he not be?” I teased.

  “No, I mean it. He truly loves me.” Her voice was very matter-of-fact, as if she were saying the sky was blue. “He loves me the way I loved Pierre.”

  The mention of my brother’s name was a little dagger to my heart. “Do you still?”

  “No.” She lifted her shoulders and took another puff. “But perhaps I am still in love with the image I had of him as a little girl.”

  “You had a crush on him when we were younger?”

  She nodded, then looked away, uncharacteristically shy for a girl who was usually so bold and confident. “Remember when we used to play house?”

  My thoughts slipped back. We couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old. Pierre always played the father, going off to work and teaching classes, and Yvette was the mother. Thomas and I were the children, relegated to taking orders, misbehaving, and being punished.

  “I used to believe it could be that way. That we would be a couple like that we when grew up.”

  I had not realized she’d harbored any such dream. I had thought we’d told each other everything. Evidently not.

  “When we started writing, after he joined the army and went away—well, I realized I’d been waiting my whole life for him to notice me. I think I was only interested in other boys as a way to try to attract his attention.” She flicked away the ash of her cigarette. “But I was in love with a fantasy of Pierre instead of the real man. The real Pierre . . .” She broke off. “I shouldn’t say bad things about your brother.”

  “He is no longer my brother,” I said staunchly. “I have no brothers left.”

  We walked a while in silence.

  “What about your Nazi?” I asked.

  “Dierk is not really a Nazi.”

  Oh, no; she had gone over to the enemy!

  My face must have looked as horror-stricken as I felt, because she grinned. “Do not look at me like that. It is not what you think.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I have learned that not all German soldiers are Nazis.”

  “You have been brainwashed.”

  “No. Dierk is German, yes. He is a soldier, yes. But he does not believe the Nazi doctrine and is not a member of the Nazi party. He is as horrified as we are at what is happening to the Jews and Gypsies and crippled.”

  “So why does he fight for them?”

  “He fights for his fatherland, as his father and grandfather and great-grandfather and generations of family before him fought for their home. As our forebearers fought for France—for Napoleon, for example. If you recall your history lessons, he invaded other countries—countries who no doubt felt about the French as we feel about the Germans.”

  She drew another drag from her cigarette. “Dierk has a good and decent heart. Under any other circumstances, he would be an admirable man. His character—what he is like at the core—is steady and fair and intelligent, thoughtful and patient and, yes—I will say it—kind.”

  “Now I have heard everything,” I said.

  “German soldiers are just like French soldiers. They can be kind, they can be cruel. We all have both within us. It is a matter of what predominates. And in Dierk . . . he looks for the good in others. He wants to treat others well.”

  “You sound like a woman in love.”

  “No. I do not think I have it within me to love again. And I am well aware that he is the enemy. Even if he weren’t, he is a married man—the father of three children, no less! Three children he adores—and he is cheating on his wife. And yet . . . he tries to give as much as he takes.”

  “From whom?”

  “From everyone. But especially from me.” She blew out a perfect circle of smoke.

  “In the bedroom?” I questioned, frankly curious.

  “Yes. Especially there.”

  We had never had the frank conversation about this that I longed for. “So what is it like?”

  “It is good. Amazing, actually.”

  “Better than with Pierre?” What was I asking? I quickly added, “Not that I want details.”

  “Dierk is a generous lover. He understands a woman and he knows what he is doing. He seeks my pleasure before his own.” Her hand arched gracefully as she tapped ash from her cigarette. “He is the type of man a woman could build a life with. He is not a perfect man, certainly, but he has many excellent qualities. I wonder if his wife knows how fortunate she is.”

  “It certainly sounds as if you love him.”

  “I enjoy his company. I like him. He gives me great pleasure. But all the same, I spy on him and his friends. I work to thwart his plans. I use him.”

  “He uses you, too.”

  “It truly does not feel that way. I have awakened to see him watching me when I sleep, his eyes full of tenderness.”

  “Does M. Henri know that you feel this way?” I said sharply.

  “He knows that Dierk loves me.”

  “Does he know that you reciprocate?”

  “I don’t.” She frowned at me. “Truly, I do not. I fear that the part of my heart that can love a man has been crushed forever. The only emotion I feel for him is this: I am not as full of hate as I should be.” She tossed the cigarette to the pavement and ground it out with her foot. “That does not mean I will not kill him in his sleep if I am told to do so.”

  “Could you?”

  “Yes. I would regret it, but yes.” She sighed. “As I said, I am not as full of hate as I should be.”

  “There are no hard-and-fast rules,” I said.

  “But there should be, don’t you think? There should be just a few. Simple ones, such as if you are French, you should hate all German occupiers. And I do hate them, collectively. It is on an individual basis that things become muddy.”

  I turned this over in my mind long after we went our separate ways. Was liking an individual German officer any worse than despising a member of your own family?

  In the eyes of God, perhaps they are separate sides of the same coin.

  29

  AMÉLIE

  June 5, 1944

  Did you hear it?” Tante Beatrice asked the moment she opened the door for me.

  “Hear what?” I stepped inside, the onions and sulphur in the poultice wafting around me like the odor around soft cheese. The new bowl inside the basket did not contain the smell as well as the previous one—or perhaps the warmer weather was to blame.

  “The BBC broadcast.” The elderly woman’s eyes gleamed with excitement. “‘Wound my heart with a monotonous languor.’”

  I was certain that Mme Zouet had lost her mind.

  “Oh, mon Dieu!” gasped Mme Molin. “At last, at last! It’s really about to happen!”

  “What’s about to happen?” I asked, feeling like a child whose parents were talking above my head.

  “The Allies are coming! ‘Wound my heart with a monotonous languor’ is the second line of ‘Chanson d’automne.’”

  My heart raced. About ten days ago, the BBC had broadcast the first verse: “Long sobs of autumn violins.” That was to put the Resistance on alert that the Allied invasion would happen within two weeks.

  Mme Zouet had already taken my basket and was lifting my shirt to undo my waist packet. “You need to turn around and go right home.�
�

  “What? Why?”

  “Because Pierre Manquin rode by wearing a green shirt, and I heard that the Curvaises had a green kerchief tied around the basket of acorns by their door.”

  “Plan vert!” cried Mme Molin.

  Again, I felt like the left-out stepchild. “Which is?”

  “It’s a signal for the Résistance to sabotage the railroad system.”

  “Which railroad?”

  “Only those who are to do it know. But you should get home as soon as possible, in case it is yours.”

  “Perhaps I should stay here,” I said. The thought of tanks and guns and man-to-man combat—or of the Luftwaffe bombing the Allies, or the Allies bombing the Germans—seemed more terrifying in a city setting than in the country.

  “No. We will need ears in Paris. You must leave now.”

  “Won’t people think it is strange if I leave as soon as I arrive?”

  “Simply say that I have a contagious rash and you were afraid you would catch it.”

  “That will work?”

  “Like a charm,” said Mme Molin. “If there’s anything the Germans fear, it’s illness.”

  Mme Molin drove me back to the station and I caught the first train back to Paris, hugging the knowledge to myself like a secret love. The Allies were coming! I wondered who else knew.

  Right before the Toulouse stop, a small Frenchman from the side of the car ambled up and sat down beside me. “I love to sing in the autumn, don’t you, Mademoiselle?”

  I did not know if it was a trap. I kept my eyes straight ahead. For all I knew, he worked for the Germans. “I love music year-round,” I said carefully.

  “Yes, but especially in the autumn, n’est-ce pas?”

  “I do not know what you mean.”

  “I see you on this train every few weeks.”

  “I go to visit my ailing aunt.”

  “Of course you do.”

  I did not like the slyness in his eye. “What about you? Why are you on the train so often?”

  “I go to the country to trap.”