Skylark and Wallcreeper

by Anne O'Brien Carelli

  Marguerite drops her hands and chuckles. I give her back the photo, grab one of the couch pillows, and pull it into my lap. “I have a million questions after hearing those letters.” I don’t want to tell her that Granny never talked about her, but there’s a lot I need to know. Were they really in the French Resistance?

  Marguerite settles back in her chair. “It’s incredible that we have that picture, Lily. The Germans didn’t allow cameras, and we certainly couldn’t take photographs if someone could see us. But my father took the risk.” She gazes at the photo with a half smile and places it gently on the coffee table. Her smile widens as she looks at me. “Let me tell you what you need to know.”

  “Oh, here we go.” Simone slides the big plate of pastries closer to me. “Better fuel up and hang on to your hat, kid. Prepare to be amazed.” She walks over to the bookshelves and takes down an old, worn shoebox. As she places it on the coffee table, she looks directly at me. “Please remember that it’s not all glamour. Don’t get any bright ideas.” She turns to her mother and says clearly, “Right, Mama? You will stress the danger?”

  Marguerite waves her daughter off, mumbling a few words in French.

  “Lily.” Simone speaks so seriously that it sounds like she’s warning me of something. “My mama has traveled all over the world telling her story. She keeps the story alive so that no one will repeat what she had to go through. So you’ll excuse me if I retire to the kitchen since I’ve heard it a million times. But please remember that what she and your granny did was very, very dangerous.”

  Chapter 25

  Tools of the Trade

  Dangerous? I stack pillows behind my back so that I can sit up comfortably and hear every word.

  When Simone leaves the room, Marguerite shakes her head and points to the doorway. “Big chicken, that one. Not like my Collette.”

  I realize that I’m going to have to confess how little I know. “I’m sorry, but I don’t really know much about you and Granny . . . Collette. I learned a lot from the letters, and it sounds like you must have been in the French Resistance? Is that true?”

  Marguerite gasps, touching her thin fingers to her lips. “Collette never told you?”

  “She didn’t talk about France, and now she doesn’t remember much.” I figure that’s a better way than telling Marguerite that my granny never mentioned her until recently. “Her memory comes and goes.”

  Marguerite puts her hand on her heart and murmurs a few words in French. “She is well, though?”

  “She’s amazing. But I don’t want to leave her alone for too long. My mom will check on her, but . . . it’s not the same.”

  Marguerite flies out of the chair and around the coffee table to land on the couch and hug me. “I feel like she’s here right now,” she says, squeezing me. “You came all this way by yourself, but you want to be home caring for her. So much like Collette.” She kisses my cheek. “So good. You are so good.”

  Instantly my eyes well up, and I put my head down to hide my tears. Marguerite reaches for a tiny éclair and places it in my hand. “You eat. I will tell you our story.” I chew on the sweet éclair as she gently pats my back, returns to her chair, and slides over the shoebox.

  She carefully lifts the lid.

  One by one she places items on the coffee table and explains the missions of the French Resistance. First, a pair of black women’s shoes with thick black heels. She holds one shoe up, twists the heel, and a folding knife pops out. I slide forward to get a better look.

  She shows me a small box of soap with a wrapper decorated with the Eiffel Tower. The box has a false bottom, just enough room for a tiny written note.

  A man’s pipe also has a secret compartment, and Marguerite shows how a hidden piece of paper in the bowl of the pipe doesn’t burn when she lights the pipe. “For messages,” she says, pretending to smoke the pipe.

  There are lock picks, a miniature telescope, a compass covered by a belt buckle, and a cigarette lighter with a hidden camera. She picks up a coin and slides it open to reveal a swivel blade. “Tools of the trade,” she says as she lines them up neatly in front of me.

  She holds up a pencil from the box. “You have to be careful with this.” She points to the tip. “It’s actually a dagger.” She pauses and smiles to herself. “Don’t ever put it in your pocket. That’s not a very good idea.”

  “Did you use all of these?” I can’t resist looking through the tiny telescope, getting a close-up view of the ocean. The gray waves are still pounding over the top of a stone seawall.

  “I delivered these tools to Resistance fighters.” She picks up the box of soap. “I was able to bicycle around town in front of the Germans and the Milice—that’s the French police—because my father knew everyone and they knew me. I was always afraid that they would confiscate my bicycle, but I would wave at German soldiers on the streets of Brume and they would wave back. They never knew that in my basket would be boxes of soap with hidden messages, to deliver to members of Noah’s Ark. You know this—Noah’s Ark?”

  I think about what Rosie had told us, back at the Pen Emporium. “I know that people had animal names.”

  She claps her hands and laughs, then explains. She describes Panther, and Hélène, and my granny Collette as Wallcreeper—sneaking around the village at night collecting Xs in her notebook, climbing cliffs to drop off a dangerous chemical, counting German soldiers at a bridge outside Brume. She even shows me the small burn scar between her shoulder blades and tells me how she got it when a German soldier poked her with a hot stick. She continues at a rapid pace, describing life in Brume in 1944.

  She tells me that the shoes belonged to a Resistance fighter named Rabbit who worked in their kitchen and gathered information with Marguerite’s father, as they entertained German soldiers. “Rabbit made regular visits to the Marseille market on the Mediterranean Sea, and brought back tools for the resisters in Noah’s Ark. She often brought someone to help with the fight, hidden in the back of her wagon. She was so brave, so beautiful—always wearing a scarf painted with flowers.”

  The stories keep coming. I feel as if I’m five years old, when my mom read me fairy tales and I could imagine every scene. Marguerite acts them out like she’s in a play, climbing walls, riding her bike, hiding behind trees. She tells me about a British spy called “the lieutenant,” who wore red lipstick. “She saved our lives.”

  “How?” I ask. The stories are almost impossible to believe. But Marguerite is so sure of herself as she relives the memories.

  She picks up the pencil from the table. “Your granny Collette and I had to get a message to the lieutenant. She was hiding in . . . how do you say . . . outside toilet . . . ?”

  “She was hiding in an outhouse?”

  Marguerite nods vigorously and holds her nose. We both laugh as I join her in “Ewww!”

  “We had to hide there, too. We were in a storage bin attached to the back.” She drops the pencil on the table and curls into a ball on the winged chair, her knees against her chest, arms around knees, head down. She stays that way for a minute or two.

  I lean forward to try to see her face. She seems lost in thought. I don’t say anything, but I’m getting nervous.

  She finally looks up and stretches out her legs. “I don’t like tight spaces,” she says as she reaches down and grabs a book from a stack next to the chair. “I’ll show you why we met the lieutenant.” She hands me the slim book. Provence is written in fancy script across the cover, over a picture of fields of lavender and sunflowers. “Give me three numbers. The last two numbers have to be below fifteen.”

  I’m confused. “Three numbers?”

  “We’re going to decode. Go ahead—three numbers.”

  “Thirty-four, six, twelve.”

  She points to the book. “Open to page thirty-four.”

  I flip to a page of French text.

  “Now paragraph six.”

  I count down. “Twelfth word?”

  “Correct! What�
��s the first letter of the twelfth word?”

  “H!”

  “That’s the first letter of your secret message!”

  We try it again, and I decode quickly. I think about sending messages to Johnny, using our social studies books. “But how did you end up in an outhouse?”

  Marguerite tells me the entire story of the coded message and hiding in the storage bin. “The lieutenant distracted the Germans by offering them cigarettes. They had no idea the brass cigarette case was rigged to explode. She tossed it at them, and . . . boom!”

  “It blew up? Was she hurt?”

  “Oh, no! She took off. It was just enough noise to scare them so she could get away. We all made it to the olive grove, but she went her own way and we never saw her again.”

  I realized I’ve sucked in my breath, and I let it out slowly. I pick up the pencil. “Did you ever have to use one of these?”

  Marguerite is quick to respond. “No, we never did.” She reaches into the shoebox and pulls out a compact and flips it open to show the mirror. “This is just an ordinary compact that the lieutenant gave me from her rucksack, before she took off.” She hands it to me, and I imagine checking my lipstick. “She gave Collette a pretty pink beret.”

  I almost drop the compact. “She still has it!” We talk over each other, exclaiming about my granny and that old, worn-out beret.

  Simone drifts in and out of the room, adding plates of food, sometimes stopping to listen. “She has told these stories many times,” she says, shaking her head, “but you are her best audience.”

  I keep nibbling on the steady flow of food—chewy bread with a crisp crust, bites of weird-tasting cheese, even tangy olives. I try some café au lait served in a round, delicate cup, while Marguerite describes why the members of Noah’s Ark were so determined to drive the Germans out of their country.

  By this time I’ve settled into the cozy couch, wrapped up in a soft, worn quilt, trying to imagine the stories that she’s telling me. The more she talks the more I can see my granny, her hair exactly like mine in a pixie cut, wearing her brother’s big boots, brave enough to be a Resistance fighter. I wonder why didn’t she want to talk about it.

  She was my age. I wonder if I could be as brave.

  I want to get back to Brooklyn and ask Granny so many questions—if she can remember the answers. Right now Marguerite is my best source.

  I pull the packet of letters out of my backpack and hand them to her. She holds them to her chest while looking at me with delight, even though there are tears in her eyes. She takes a pair of half-glasses from her pocket and slides them on. As she reads through the letters, commenting on what she wrote to my granny so long ago, she fills in the details. “I was called Skylark because I could sing . . . and sing . . . and sing. That’s what skylarks do. They even sing when they are hovering in the air.” She stares out the window for a moment. “I still love to sing, but not in German. Never in German.” She points to a small desk with spindly legs hidden in the corner near the windows. “Look in the bottom drawer. The key is in the inkwell on top of the desk.”

  I find a tiny skeleton key inside a cut glass jar and wiggle it in the keyhole until the drawer pops open. Postcards, old letters, and folded sheets of yellowed paper are stacked neatly, filling the narrow drawer. At the top is a newspaper clipping with a picture of a younger Marguerite. “You were in the New York Times?”

  “We can look at all of that later. Dig around in the bottom.”

  My heart races as I pull out a thin stack of letters and postcards tied together with a pink ribbon and place them on Marguerite’s lap. “Are these from Granny?”

  Marguerite strokes the pile. “The only mail I ever received from her. It was impossible to get letters out of France after the war. The post offices had been destroyed and the postal vans were stolen by the Germans.”

  She fusses with the ribbon, and I help her untie the knot. The top envelope has red-and-blue postage stamps across the top and markings in black ink, long faded. Granny has simply written Brume, France in the corner, and a Madrid address in bold letters in the center. “This one is my favorite because Collette filled the pages.”

  I settle down at her feet and she begins to read, translating the French:

  March 1945

  Dear Marguerite—

  It took so long to hear from you! I have to write quickly because Hélène knows someone who is taking mail to Spain. We have no other way to send mail, and I have so much to tell.

  Marguerite pauses and looks out the window at the sea. “After the Germans left France, the Americans found thousands of letters piled up in German headquarters, never delivered. Everyone was writing to try to find lost relatives. Soon only postal cards were allowed—no more letters—but Collette slipped this through by getting it to Spain.”

  I urge her to go on. What would my granny Collette, a little older than me, write about after the war?

  It’s lonely here in Brume. Sometimes it seems as if the war isn’t over because we’re still not sure about our neighbors and what they did during the war. Papa saw a woman pelted with stones because she was friends with a German officer. It was wise for your family to leave Brume, even though your father was braver than any of them.

  Hélène and Rabbit are still very busy. I’m sure you know what I mean. They want every collaborator out of France. But they want me to go to school. No more deliveries.

  Marguerite again looks up from the letter. “Do you know who collaborators were?”

  “Yes!” I’m pleased I remember what Rosie had explained. “They were French people who made friends with the enemy.”

  Marguerite starts to say more, but she thinks for a moment and returns to the letter. “Collette writes about the liberation of Brume when the Americans arrived.”

  Marguerite—I got to see the American soldiers when they came through town! They were marching beside jeeps and trucks and huge tanks. They shouted “bonjour” and “liberation” in terrible French. Once we realized they were truly friendly, most of the village came to greet them. One of the soldiers gave me an American flag on a stick, to wave in the air. We are a small town, but we cheered so loud! I haven’t seen so many smiles in years.

  One soldier gave Papa a pack of cigarettes called Lucky Strikes. Mama hugged the soldier so hard we thought she would never let him go. Now she can’t stop crying. I think she wishes she’d been hugging my brother.

  We still don’t have much food, so Papa traded the pack for four eggs. The American soldier promised that sugar would be coming soon.

  Please write and tell me about your life away from Brume. Your house is still empty, but I picked a few of the forget-me-nots and snowdrops that are coming up near your back porch and brought them home to Mama.

  The train tracks near Brume have been repaired, and whenever I hear a train whistle, I think of my brave friend Skylark. Maybe someday I’ll go back to where we counted soldiers at the bridge, but not yet. Our scars are ugly reminders, aren’t they?

  Very few people have returned to Brume. Some of the boys released from German labor camps have come back to work in the fields. I am hoping your family might decide to come home.

  Your lonely friend,

  Collette (Wallcreeper)

  “She sounds so sad.” The letter reminds me of Granny’s first day at Rockaway Manor. “It’s lonely here,” she had whispered to me. After that, I was determined to visit her as often as I could.

  Marguerite selects a plain postcard and holds it up for me to see. “I could send letters through the embassy, but Collette had to write on these postal cards. You were allowed to write only about personal or family matters—nothing about the war.”

  “But the war was over!”

  “It took a few years to finish the war completely and to figure out who to trust. Would you like to hear about Collette’s life in Brume?” She doesn’t wait for my response. “She couldn’t fit much on a postal card, but she mentions Madame Monette and her stone cottag
e in the country, and that stinky outhouse!” She giggles. I join her, eager to hear more.

  June 1946

  Dear Marguerite—

  I never know if my mail can find you. I bicycle to Madame Monette’s, and together we write postal cards to you because letters in envelopes are no longer allowed. The cards go in a sack to be taken to Marseille or Paris, but do they reach you?

  Madame and I pick lavender and sunflowers and make jars of berry jam, and olives soaked in oil and herbs. We sell at the market on the Rue d’Azur. I’m saving to go to Paris someday.

  Please write back. I miss my friend.

  Wallcreeper

  P.S. Madame still has the same outhouse, and now she has a cow! Papa buys butter from her and made our first clafoutis in many years, with hot batter folded over dark, sweet cherries. We were in heaven.

  Marguerite shows me the postcard. My granny’s words are in tiny print, crammed onto the postcard. She’d sketched a bouquet of flowers in the center, two cherries with stems in one of the corners, and a string of blossoms all around the edges. Even then she was drawing pictures of flowers.

  “And then in 1948,” Marguerite continues, “I finally got another letter, not a card.”

  I was still looking at Granny’s tiny illustrations. “So much time between letters!”

  “She says in this letter that she was writing me, but letters got lost so easily. Don’t forget—we didn’t have internet back then, and even a phone call to another country was extremely difficult and very expensive.”

  Her words remind me of how I have a phone in my pocket that can connect me right away to anyone in the world. But sometimes it’s better if it’s not so easy. I’m not ready to use my phone yet. “Read the letter, please.”

  “She seemed to be in a hurry for this one. Wait until you hear Collette’s plans!”

  Chapter 26

  Les Belles Fleurs

  Marguerite adjusts her glasses and squints at the tiny print.