The French War Bride

by Robin Wells

  47

  AMÉLIE

  1946

  Once I started adjusting to the idea of going to Montana, I began thinking, would it be so bad, really, if Elise grew up believing that these strangers were her grandparents? It was a place to go, and these people were likely to love her. But could I tell such a lie to such vulnerable people? Could I live such a lie for my entire life? I doubted it.

  When in doubt, buy some time. It was a lesson I had learned in the Resistance. I didn’t have to decide about Doug’s parents right now; right now, I simply had to get away from that dreadful ship until it had set sail.

  Not knowing what else to do, I went along with Jack’s suggestions. We took the cab back to the hotel where he was staying. Along the way, he held Elise and jollied her out of a bad mood. He charmed her completely; he had been able to do that, even in Paris. Jack had a way with her; he talked softly, he smiled, he held her gaze. He treated her the way I began to wish he’d treat me.

  When we got to the hotel—it was a nice place, not overly fancy, but with doormen and bellmen—there was not another room to be had.

  “Well, then, we’ll just have to share,” Jack said to the clerk.

  The man peered over his glasses, his mouth pursed, as if Jack were suggesting something immoral. “Are you two married?”

  Jack’s ears turned pink. “As a matter of fact, we are.”

  “I will need to see some identification.”

  Jack asked me, in French, to hand the clerk my passport, which had been changed to my married name.

  The clerk’s face was red as he handed it back. “I’m sorry. It’s just that this hotel has certain standards, and since you first asked for separate rooms, I thought . . .”

  “My wife has just arrived from France, and . . . and . . . it’s been a long separation,” Jack awkwardly explained. “I thought that perhaps she and the baby would be more comfortable in their own room this evening.”

  “I see.” The clerk was clearly as discomfited as Jack. I was amused that an American hotel would try to police the morality of its guests. “Well, I can send up a crib for the baby.”

  “That would be very helpful. Thank you.”

  Jack put his hand on the small of my back and steered me toward the elevator. We went up to the twelfth floor—far higher than I was accustomed to.

  “You take the bed,” he said. “I’ll sleep on the sofa.”

  The room had—merci Dieu!—its own bath. After the ship, it seemed like an unimaginable luxury. I bathed Elise, then put her in the crib. When she fell asleep, I went in the bathroom and drew a bath for myself. I sighed with pleasure as I sank into the warm water.

  Through the door, I heard Jack on the phone. I heard him murmur in a low tone. I thought I caught the word darling. A stab of envy shot through me. The woman whom he was to marry was a lucky girl. She would have stability and a home. Her children would have a caring, loving father and never have to worry about their next meal.

  And she would have Jack in her bed. This last thought made my stomach flutter.

  He tapped lightly on the door. “I’m going to run down and get some extra blankets,” he called. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  I murmured my assent. I came out, wrapped in my old robe, and was glad for the chance to brush my hair and climb into bed without him in the room.

  He let himself in with the key a few minutes after I had settled myself under the covers. The bed was soft and lush and large, with clean-smelling sheets. It felt like heaven. I realized I had not been in a bed that comfortable since before the war.

  Jack made up a bed on the sofa across the room, then went into the bathroom and showered. I was exhausted and by all rights should have fallen asleep right away, but I was keenly aware that he was naked on the other side of the door. He came out, bringing soap-scented steam into the room, and settled on the sofa.

  “Bonne nuit,” I whispered.

  “Bonne nuit,” he replied.

  I could hear his bedclothes rustling, then hear him breathing—not the regular, slow breathing of someone asleep, but the breathing of someone lying awake in the dark, just like I was.

  I thought about saying something, but I couldn’t figure out what to say, so I just lay there. I listened to the city—a city very different from Paris—a city with different sirens, louder traffic, and people speaking English. I listened to Elise’s slow, somnolent puffs of air. I listened to Jack’s steady breathing in the dark. I listened to the overly loud pounding of my heart.

  Sometime in the early morning hours, I must have fallen asleep, because when I was awakened by water running in the bathroom, sunlight was streaming in the window.

  48

  AMÉLIE

  1946

  Jack came out of the bathroom freshly shaved and smelling like toothpaste, wearing a sleeveless undershirt. His chest was broad and his arms were muscled. Our eyes met, and he froze.

  “Bonjour,” he said.

  “Bonjour.” I saw his gaze lower to my chest. I realized my nightgown was washed thin, nearly transparent. I rapidly reached for my robe.

  Almost simultaneously, he grabbed a shirt from his suitcase and pulled it on, then turned his attention to Elise, who was sitting up in her crib, cooing. “Good morning, sunshine!” he said.

  I struggled into my robe and tightly belted it. “I’m sure she’s a bit cloudy in her diaper.”

  He smiled. “I’ll take care of it.”

  I was surprised, but I welcomed the opportunity to visit the bathroom myself. When I came out, his shirt was buttoned and tucked in, and he was leaning over Elise, who was now lying on a towel-covered part of the sofa.

  His face was a study of concentration as he tried to insert a diaper pin. “I’m afraid of poking her or making the diaper too tight, but instead, I end up making it too loose.”

  “I’ll get it.” I reached over. My arm brushed his. His skin was warm where it touched mine. We both pulled back abruptly.

  “This isn’t something they taught in medical school,” he said.

  “Maybe they should.”

  He grinned. “Probably so. That diaper pin is as sharp as a scalpel.”

  “It doesn’t require the same degree of expertise.”

  “Elise would probably disagree.” We smiled at each other for a moment. “Why don’t I go find us some breakfast? That way you’ll have a chance to get dressed in private. “

  “That would be very nice.”

  He brought back tea, coffee, milk, juice, fruit, and an assortment of pastries. I mixed Elise’s formula with the water from the teapot. We sat at the table, with Elise on my lap, sipping from her bottle and eating bites of muffin and fruit from my plate.

  “When did you wean her?” he asked.

  “Wean?” I wasn’t sure what he meant, since she was still drinking from a bottle.

  “Stop breastfeeding her.”

  “Oh! I, uh, never did that.”

  “Really?” The surprise in his voice put me on high alert.

  “I heard that formula was better.”

  “Some doctors—and I’m one of them—think that nature is always best.” He looked at me intently. “How did you afford it? Wasn’t it hard to come by?”

  “Well, um, one of my friends . . . she became pregnant, too. Her baby’s father acquired a shipment of formula and stockpiled it for her.”

  “He stole it?”

  “I don’t think it is stealing if it belonged to the Nazis.” I had to think fast. “Anyway, she miscarried—and . . . and I got it.”

  “I’m surprised the father didn’t want it back to sell it.”

  “He was gone by then.”

  “He was caught?”

  “We think so.” Oh, why couldn’t my mind work more quickly? “In the war, people sometimes just disappeared. He worked f
or the Resistance.”

  “I see. This friend . . . where did you know her from?”

  “We met at the hotel where I worked.”

  “This was before Elise was born?”

  I was getting in over my head. I didn’t know when he thought I’d started working at a hotel. “Um . . . yes.”

  “So you were in Paris before Elise was born? I thought she was born in Normandy.”

  Oh, la; I was getting in deeper and deeper. Stick to the truth. “She, um . . . no. Elise was born in Paris. I went there after my parents’ home was bombed.”

  His brow creased. “But you said the she was delivered by a midwife. That’s why she didn’t have a birth certificate.”

  “She was delivered by a midwife in Paris. I was very poor. Life was very grim. I didn’t have money for a hospital.”

  “I see.”

  What he saw, I feared, was that I was lying. I gathered Elise onto my lap and made a show of looking at the clock on the bureau.

  “Oh, my—look at the time! The morning is slipping away. Shouldn’t we be heading to the train station?”

  “Yes, we should.”

  We moved on to packing up our things and talking about other topics, but I could see that the doubts he’d had about me since my arrival had rekindled in his mind.

  49

  AMÉLIE

  1946

  My worries increased as we left the hotel. Jack had asked the concierge for directions to the train station, then headed the other way.

  “Where are we going?” I clutched Elise as Jack guided us down the crowded sidewalk.

  “We need to pick up something.”

  “What?”

  He grinned down at me. “Your photos.”

  “My . . . photos?” I froze, and was almost knocked down by a man walking close behind me. “From the camera? Oh, I can’t possibly afford . . .”

  “Oh, it’s my treat. I saw an all-night photo shop around the block, so I took the film last night while you were in the bathtub. They said the pictures would be ready this morning.”

  “That is very considerate of you,” I managed. It was, of course. Very considerate and kind and . . . nosy. Or was it just my paranoia? Oh, la—what was on that roll of film? Yvette had owned the camera.

  I hurried beside him as he turned into the store.

  Jack greeted the man behind the counter. “I’m here to pick up some photos. The name is Jack O’Connor.”

  “Oh, yes.” He smiled at me. “Your hair looks much better now than it did in the pictures.”

  I must have looked shocked. I remembered, gratefully, that I was not supposed to understand English.

  “Don’t you want to look at them?” Jack asked. “I’ll hold the baby.”

  “Not now,” I said. “Later, when I’m sitting down.”

  “We’ll have plenty of time on the train.” He handed me the packet, and I tucked it into my purse. We went back outside, into the noisy, chilly air, and crossed the street, where he hailed a cab.

  “Penn Station, please,” Jack told the driver.

  —

  The ticket clerk looked down at a printed schedule. “It’s a twenty-two-hour trip to Chicago, and then you’ll have to change trains. From there you’ll take a train to Williston, North Dakota, and change trains again. That’s about a fifty-six-hour trip. Then it’s just a twelve-hour trip on to Whitefish.”

  “All right,” Jack said. “How many days are we talking?”

  “With wait time between trains, four.”

  Jack blew out a sigh. “Okay. We need two tickets for the whole way, with separate sleeping berths for the overnight portions, please.”

  The man peered over his wire-rim glasses, his expression curious. “It’s just you and the missus, right?”

  “Well, yes—and the baby.”

  “One double berth should work. The baby can sleep in one of your suitcases. That’s what most folks do. There’s just enough space on the floor.”

  “We’d like separate berths, please.”

  “Separate?” He glanced at me and back at Jack, then quickly looked down. “I’ll, um, see what I can do. We’re awfully full up, what with the war over and everyone being transferred around and trying to get home and such.” He went to a Teletype machine, keyed something in, then pulled out a small piece of paper. He carried it back to the window. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to double up for at least part of the trip, if you want to leave today. If you insist on separate berths the whole way, you’ll have to wait . . .” He punched more keys. “Whew—looks like three weeks. We’ve got a bunch of military movements coming up.”

  “Three weeks!” Jack exclaimed.

  The man’s eyebrows rose. “You two are married, right? So there’s really no reason that you can’t share.”

  “Well, yes. It’s just . . . well, we . . . I—I—I snore.”

  Jack was a hysterically horrible liar! I don’t know if it was my fatigue, Jack’s obvious discomfort, the clerk’s confused expression, or a combination, but I couldn’t help it; I burst out laughing.

  Jack stared at me, his expression so odd I thought he was signaling me to corroborate his story.

  “He snores like a freight train,” I said. “It usually doesn’t bother me, but, well, I’m pregnant, so I don’t sleep very soundly. But we’ll be fine with a double berth.”

  The clerk smiled, his eyes friendly. “Congratulations on the new little one! My wife is expecting, too.”

  He turned back to his machine, but Jack continued to stare at me. It was then—only then—that I realized he was looking at me strangely because I’d understood, then spoken, English.

  My heart sank. Mon Dieu! I’d made it through the war pretending that I couldn’t understand a word of either German or English, keeping my secret for years. One day in Jack’s company, and I’d already given myself away.

  I turned aside, pretending that Elise needed rocking, and stared at the passengers streaming off a train while Jack paid for the tickets. I was sick with anxiety.

  He carried both of our suitcases, but still managed to take me firmly by the elbow. He steered me toward a bench. “I didn’t know that you spoke English.”

  “I—I don’t,” I responded in French. “N-not much.”

  “You seemed pretty fluent a moment ago.”

  “I—” I bounced Elise as I tried and failed to think of an excuse. I was too nervous to sit down.

  A nerve flicked in Jack’s jaw. He was angry. Very angry.

  “Where does a Normandy farm girl learn to speak perfect English?” he asked in English.

  It was futile to continue the ruse. I responded in his language. “My English isn’t perfect.”

  “You seem to understand me quite clearly. Don’t pretend you don’t.”

  I lifted my shoulders.

  “When did you learn?”

  “As a girl.” Stick to the truth. Act as if you are forthcoming. “It so happens I speak German, as well.”

  “Good God.” He stared at me. “How?”

  Tweak the truth. That way the story rings true. “My friend’s father was a linguistics professor.”

  “A linguistics professor—in a rural farming community?”

  Have a logical explanation. Keep it simple. “He was paralyzed. A—a motor accident. He and his wife and daughter moved there to live on his father’s farm. He taught my friend and me and my brothers English and German. He tutored us after school and in the summers.”

  “And your parents went along with this?”

  “My parents were simple, but they understood the value of a good education. They wanted a better life for me and my brothers.”

  “Why did you hide this from me?”

  “I . . . didn’t. You spoke French so well that it just never came up.”

&
nbsp; His lips were tight, and his eyes flashed. I wasn’t afraid of him, exactly, but I was glad we were in a public setting so he couldn’t give his temper full rein. “You never once tried to talk to me in my own language, and you let me translate everything everyone has said since you got here. Why? Why on earth—why?”

  Elise pulled at my hair. I adjusted the collar on her dress. “It just seemed awkward.”

  “Awkward?” He scowled at me. “As if translating everything wasn’t awkward for me! What kind of answer is that?”

  “I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t find the right moment, and then it had gone on so long that it seemed as though I’d lost the opportunity. I just didn’t know how.”

  “How about saying, ‘By the way, I speak English beautifully?’”

  “I didn’t want you to think I had a problem with your French. I—I didn’t want to be rude.”

  “Rude?” A vein stood out in his temple, beside his eyebrow. “You thought making me translate everything was being polite?”

  When he put it like that, I felt like an idiot. “I didn’t say anything at first, because I was in the habit of hiding the fact I could understand what was going on around me. And then, when I realized I should tell you, well, it had gone on so long that I was embarrassed.”

  “Whoa. Hold it right there.” He put up his hand.

  Elise chose that moment to start crying. She no doubt could feel the tension between us. “Excuse me,” I said. “I need to find a place to change her diaper.”

  —

  When I returned, Jack seemed to have calmed down quite a bit. He waited for me to sit on the bench and settle Elise on my lap, then he sat down beside me. “What did you mean, you became used to hiding the fact you could understand what was being said around you?”

  “Well, you know I worked for the Resistance during the occupation. I continued to do so after I moved to Paris. I got a job as a maid at a hotel and used my language skills to spy on German officers.”

  “You worked while you were pregnant?”

  It made me very nervous, talking about myself. I was afraid I would say something that would contradict what I’d already told him. “Yes. I didn’t show very much, and I am clever with a needle. I was able to hide my pregnancy until the very end. I worked until a month before Elise was born.”