by Valpy, Fiona
Mademoiselle Vannier had always made it clear that those who enjoyed the privilege of being accommodated in the apartment upstairs at the couture house were at her beck and call until she decided that their work was over for the day, even if sometimes that meant working late into the evenings on important commissions. Claire was annoyed at being made, as usual, to stay later than the other seamstresses and, in the haste born of her irritation, she caught the soft skin on the inside of her wrist against the edge of the hot iron. She bit her lip to stop herself from crying out at the searing pain of the burn. Any fuss would only attract the attention of Mademoiselle Vannier again and then her departure would be delayed by yet another scolding for not taking proper care over her work.
She hung the skirt on the clothes rail for the night, smoothing the softly stippled texture of the tweed over its russet silk lining and admiring the way the contrasting braid flattered the waistline. It was a beautifully classic design, typical of Delavigne’s work, and her own tiny, neat stitches were as good as invisible, befitting the elegance of the garment. The matching jacket was being finished off by the tailor and the new suit would soon be ready for delivery to its owner.
The sound of footsteps on the stairs and the door opening made Claire turn to see who it was, thinking it must be one of the other dressmakers who had forgotten something and come back to fetch it.
But the figure standing in the doorway wasn’t one of the seamstresses. It was another girl, whose dark curls surrounded a face grown so thin and pale that it took Claire a few moments to recognise who it was.
Mademoiselle Vannier spoke first. ‘Mireille!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’ve returned!’ She took a step towards the figure in the doorway, but then stopped and regained her usual formal demeanour. ‘So you decided to come back, did you? Very well, we shall be pleased to have another pair of hands. Your room upstairs is empty. Claire can help you make up your bed. And has Esther also returned with you?’
Mireille shook her head, pressing one hand against the door frame as if she needed the support. And then she spoke, her voice rough with sorrow. ‘Esther is dead.’
She swayed slightly and the harsh light in the sewing room made the dark circles beneath her eyes look like tender bruises.
There was a shocked silence as Claire and the supervisor absorbed Mireille’s words, and then Mademoiselle Vannier pulled herself together again.
‘Alright, Mireille. You are tired after your journey. This is not the time to talk. Go upstairs now with Claire. Get a night’s sleep and tomorrow you can take your place on the team once more.’ Her tone softened slightly as she added, ‘It is good to have you back.’
Only then did Claire, who had been frozen by the unexpected, altered appearance of her friend and by the shocking words she had uttered, move swiftly to Mireille’s side and wrap an arm around her in a brief hug. ‘Come,’ she said, taking the bag from Mireille’s hand. ‘There’s some bread and cheese in the kitchen. You must be hungry.’ With quick, light steps she led the way, and Mireille followed her more slowly up the stairs.
Sensing that Mireille needed a little time to readjust to being back in the apartment, Claire busied herself with making up the bed for her and then setting out a meagre supper for the two of them. Sharing her week’s rations, Claire wondered for a moment how they would eat tomorrow, but she shrugged the thought aside. It was more important that Mireille should eat properly tonight. Perhaps she’d be able to find some vegetables for a soup. And with Mireille here now too, they’d be able to get double the rations, which would help make things go further.
‘A table!’ she called. But when Mireille did not immediately appear, she went to find her.
Mireille had opened the door to the room that Esther had occupied when she’d arrived in Paris as a refugee from Poland, pregnant and desperate to protect her unborn child. A few months later, her baby had been delivered in the tiny attic room, and given the name Blanche. Claire remembered the awe she’d felt on seeing Esther propped against her pillows, holding her newborn daughter in her arms. She would never forget the look of exhausted elation on Esther’s face as she gazed into her baby’s dark blue eyes, the strength of her love seeming to be both instantaneous and visceral.
As Mireille stood in the doorway of Esther’s old room, Claire slipped an arm around her shoulders. ‘What happened to her?’ she asked, quietly.
Staring at the iron bedstead with its mattress stripped bare, Mireille’s face was expressionless as she told Claire in a low voice how they’d got caught up in the flood of refugees fleeing Paris as the German forces broke through the Maginot Line and advanced on the capital. The road south had been choked with the tide of civilians when the lone plane attacked, diving again and again to strafe the crowd with machine-gun fire. ‘Esther had gone to try to find some food for Blanche. When I found her, her face looked so peaceful. But the blood was everywhere, Claire. Everywhere.’
The expression of wide-eyed horror on Claire’s face crumpled as her tears began to flow. ‘And Blanche?’ she whispered. ‘Did she die too?’
Mireille shook her head. And then she turned to look at Claire, meeting her eyes at last, with a flash of defiance. ‘No. They didn’t get Blanche. She is safe with my family in the Sud-Ouest. My mother and sister are caring for her there. But, for her own safety, her origins must remain a secret as long as the Nazis continue their barbaric persecution of the Jewish people. Do you understand, Claire? If anyone asks, just say that Esther and Blanche are both dead.’
Claire nodded as she tried, ineffectually, to stem the flow of her tears with her sleeve.
Mireille reached out and grasped Claire by the shoulders with a fierceness in her grip that commanded attention. ‘Save your tears, Claire. There will be a time for grieving when all this is over, but now is not that time. Now we must do all that we can to fight back, to resist this living nightmare.’
‘But how, Mireille? The Germans are everywhere. There’s nothing to be done when our own government has given up on France.’
‘There’s always something to be done, no matter how small and insignificant our efforts may seem. We have to resist.’ She repeated the word again, with an emphasis that made Claire’s eyes widen in fear.
‘Do you mean . . .? Would you get involved . . .?’
Mireille’s dark curls danced with something of their old determination and there was defiance written across her features as she nodded. Then she asked, ‘And you, Claire? What will you do?’
Claire shook her head. ‘I’m not sure . . . I don’t know, Mireille. Surely there’s nothing ordinary people like you and I can do.’
‘But if the “ordinary people” do nothing then who is going to step forward and take a stand against the Nazis? Not the politicians in Vichy who are puppets of the new regime; and not the French army whose battalions lie rotting in shallow graves along the Eastern Front. We are all that is left, Claire. Ordinary people like you and me.’
After a pause, Claire replied. ‘But aren’t you afraid, Mireille? To get involved in such a dangerous way . . . and right under the nose of the German army? Paris is theirs now. They are everywhere.’
‘I was afraid, once. But I have seen what they did to Esther, and to so many others who were on the road that day. More “ordinary people”. And now I am angry. And anger is stronger than fear.’
Claire shrugged, causing Mireille to relinquish her grip on her shoulders. ‘It’s too late, Mireille. We have to accept that things have changed. France is not the only country to have fallen to the Germans. Let the Allies do the fighting. It’s enough of a battle to stay alive these days without going looking for trouble elsewhere.’
Stepping backwards into the narrow hallway, Mireille reached for the handle of the door to Esther’s room and pulled it firmly shut.
Claire tugged nervously at the hem of her shirt, uncertain what to say next. ‘There’s a bit of supper . . .’ she began.
‘That’s alright,’ Mireille replied, with a smile tha
t couldn’t erase the sadness in her eyes. ‘I’m not hungry tonight. I think I’ll just unpack my things and get some sleep.’
She turned towards her own bedroom, but then paused, without looking back. Her voice was calm and low as she said, ‘But you’re wrong, Claire. It is never too late.’
Harriet
As I lie in the unfamiliar darkness of my new bedroom, listening to the sounds of Paris by night wafting up from the streets down below, I mull over what Simone has told me of my grandmother’s story so far. It seems important to capture her words, so I’ve begun to write them down in the journal that I’ve brought with me. I’d intended to use it to record my year working in Paris, but Claire and Mireille’s story seems so connected to me, such a vital part of who I am, that I want to remember every detail.
As I read back over the first few pages, I have to admit to feeling a little disappointed that it was Mireille who wanted to join the Resistance and not Claire, who quite frankly seems to have been a bit of a wimp in comparison. But she was young, I remind myself, and hadn’t experienced the horrors of the war in the way that Mireille had.
The background sounds of the traffic a couple of streets away on the Boulevard Saint-Germain are interrupted by the urgent wail of police sirens. Their sudden noise makes my heartbeat race. As I listen to them fade, the city lights cast a dull orange glow through my attic window and I reach out a hand to steady myself, touching the bars of the bedstead behind my head. The metal feels cool, despite the mugginess of the city night. The mattress on my bed is clearly a recent addition and is comfortable enough, but could this be one of the original bed frames that was in the apartment all those years ago? Did Claire sleep here? Or Esther and her baby, Blanche?
I roll on to my side, willing sleep to come. In the dim light, the photograph on the chest of drawers gleams faintly in its frame. I can just make out the three figures, although I can’t see their faces in the darkness.
I recall Simone’s words of warning from earlier, that I should only ask questions if I am absolutely certain that I want to know the answers. Which is worse, I wonder: knowing the horrors of war like Mireille, or choosing to remain as unaware as possible like Claire?
Simone must have realised I’d feel a bit let down by my grandmother’s passivity and her reluctance to join the struggle against the Occupation. Maybe that was why she didn’t want to tell me the story. But how could any of us nowadays know what it feels like to have your country invaded? What it feels like to live with deprivation and fear, in the grip of foreign control, with the ever-present threat of casual acts of brutality? How could any of us know how we’d respond?
I fall asleep at last. And I dream of rows of girls in white coats, their heads bowed over their work as they stitch together an endless river of blood-red silk.
1940
Mireille shivered as she waited outside the tobacconist on the Rue Buffon, pretending to wait for a bus. It was bitterly cold and her feet were frozen. She knew that later on, when she washed them in a bowl of warmed water back at the apartment, her toes would itch and burn as the chilblains that pierced them thawed out.
To take her mind off the cold, she ran through her instructions in her head once again, making sure she’d got them straight. Wait here until a man in a grey homburg with a green band goes into the shop. He will come out carrying a copy of Le Temps. Go into the shop and buy a copy of the newspaper, asking the tobacconist whether he has any of yesterday’s edition left over. He will hand you a folded copy from under the counter. Keep it safe in your bag. Walk to the Métro at the Gare d’Austerlitz and catch a train back to Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Sitting at a table in the back corner of the Café de Flore, you will see a man with sandy-coloured hair wearing a silk tie with a paisley pattern. Join him as if greeting a friend, and he will order you a coffee. Put the folded copy of the newspaper on the table while you drink your coffee. When you leave, do not pick it up.
This was not the first time she’d passed messages on for the network. Shortly after she’d returned to Paris, when she was dropping off some silk at the dyer’s to be matched as a lining for an evening dress, she’d spoken to a contact there whom she’d guessed might be involved in Resistance activities. Through him, she’d been introduced to a member of the network and had soon been given assignments like this one. She was aware that they were testing her at first, making sure she was who she said she was and that she was a reliable courier. She wasn’t even certain whether the messages she’d been passing on had been real so far. But today’s assignment was a little different from the usual, and she guessed that the proximity of the pick-up point to the Gare d’Austerlitz, which was one of the arrival points in Paris for trains from the east and the south as well as a point of departure for transports to the work camps, held an important significance. So she tried to ignore the cold, which seeped through the soles of her shoes, worn thin by the miles she’d walked in them, and pretended to study a bus timetable as, out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed the customer in the homburg hat entering the tabac.
A cloud of warmth, noise and cigarette smoke engulfed Mireille as she pushed open the door and stepped across the threshold of the Café de Flore. She picked her way around the pillars, making for the back corner of the room by the wood-panelled bar, as directed. At a banquette near the door, a group of soldiers in Nazi uniform laughed uproariously and one clicked his fingers in the air, summoning the waiter and ordering another bottle of wine. As Mireille passed, one of the soldiers leapt to his feet, blocking her passage. Her heart thumped against her ribs at the thought that he might demand to see what she was carrying in her bag and discover whatever message was concealed within the pages of the newspaper. But instead he made an elaborate bow and pretended to offer her his seat, to the raucous cheers of his comrades.
Suppressing her first instinct to spit in his face, and her second instinct to turn and run, Mireille managed to summon a polite smile and, with a diplomatic shake of her head, she stepped past the soldier and headed for the table in the back corner where a sandy-haired man wearing a paisley-patterned silk tie sat sipping a café-crème, reading his own copy of Le Temps.
The man set down his paper and rose to his feet as she approached, and they embraced as if they knew each other well. For a second, she breathed in the expensive scent of his cologne – a subtle blend of cedarwood and limes – and then she settled herself on the banquette opposite him.
A waiter appeared and the man ordered her a coffee while she casually pulled the folded newspaper out of her bag and laid it on top of the one on the table. The man ignored it completely, pushing both papers to one side so that he could lean towards her as a lover would do.
‘I’m Monsieur Leroux,’ he said. ‘And you, I think, must be Mireille? It’s a pleasure to meet a new friend of our cause.’
She nodded, feeling awkward and self-conscious, unsure what to say to this man about whom she knew absolutely nothing, even though he clearly knew a bit about her.
She had fulfilled her task and now she wanted nothing more than to push her way out of the café and hurry back to the peace and safety of her attic room. But she forced herself to stay seated and to smile and nod, playing out the charade.
There was a momentary silence between them as the waiter appeared and set a cup of coffee down in front of Mireille, slipping a scribbled note of the price under the ashtray in the centre of the table. Monsieur Leroux used the opportunity of the arrival of the coffee to move the two newspapers, tucking them casually into the pocket of his overcoat which was draped over the back of his chair.
He watched her as she picked up the thick china cup and blew cautiously on the contents to cool them down enough to take a sip. The coffee wasn’t too bad – a little watery but not overly tainted with the bitterness of chicory.
‘So, you are one of Delavigne’s seamstresses? How is the world of couture faring these days? I hear special licences have been granted to all the major fashion houses to enable them to continue
trading. It appears our German friends like to dress their wives and mistresses in the best French finery.’
He spoke evenly, his tone pleasantly conversational, but she detected the undercurrent of scorn for the occupying enemy in his words.
‘We’re busier than ever,’ she agreed. ‘Even with two teams back up to full strength, we can scarcely keep up with the demand. Every well-dressed woman in Paris still wants her new suit and her evening dress for the season. And it’s true, even though the government rations the food we eat and the fuel to heat our homes, it has ensured that buttons and braid are not rationed. It can be hard to get enough material sometimes though, and the prices are extortionate, naturally.’
Monsieur Leroux nodded. ‘What a bizarre playground for the Germans Paris has become. While her citizens starve and freeze, her newest inhabitants parade around in world-class designs in the finest of fabrics, drinking vintage wines and entertaining themselves at the Moulin Rouge.’
Again, Mireille was struck by his facade of equanimity as he spoke; only the bitterness of his words belied the air of pleasant social conversation with which they were delivered.
As she sipped her cooling coffee, Monsieur Leroux asked her a series of questions about the atelier. What did her work involve? How many seamstresses were there? And how many lived above the shop?
When she set her empty cup back on its saucer, he reached across and put his hand over hers. To the casual observer, it would simply look like a gesture of romantic intimacy. ‘Thank you for helping, Mireille,’ he said. ‘I wonder, might you be interested in helping us a bit more? Although I must warn you, the dangers are very real and very serious.’
She smiled at him and withdrew her hand from his, the picture of bashful propriety. ‘I wish to do all that I can to help, m’sieur.’
‘Then there may well be a further role for you. Our mutual friend, the dyer, will let you know. Thank you for coming today, Mireille. Take care.’