Escape From Paris (11 page)

What was happening at Hawkinge? Was his squadron already up? Someone would have packed his kit by now. Group Captain Arnold would have called his mother. Jonathan frowned. His mother had always been a strong woman. She had to have been, to have kept the family afloat after his father's death at Verdun in the Great War. But even a strong woman could bear only so much. His brother, Robin, was posted missing after Dunkirk. Now she must learn that he too was missing.

But maybe she would have faith enough to pull them all through. After all, he wasn't dead. Not nearly. He had felt when he first heard Robin listed as missing that he had been killed, but now, he felt a sudden surge of hope. Maybe Robin was somewhere here in North France, too, hiding from the Boche.

By God, maybe both of them were lucky.

Jonathan was smiling as he straightened up and stood beside the bridge. He kept his weight on his left leg. Cautiously, he stepped lightly with his injured leg. It hurt, it hurt like the very devil, but he could, just barely, manage to walk on it. With a stick or a cane or a crutch, he could manage.

For a long glorious moment, he stayed there beside the bridge, leaning on it, feeling the warmth of the morning sunlight on his face. His eyes moved restlessly around the small clearing and the patch of road he could see and along the wall of trees. No one there, no one coming. He took out his cigarettes, shook one free. Just one. That was all he would chance.

He smoked slowly, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs, savoring the acrid brownish taste. He put the cigarette out very carefully, making sure no spark danced into the dry weeds beside him. Then reluctantly, he swung himself back beneath the bridge, back into dusty dim safety. He stretched out comfortably, ate half the remaining cheese and two chunks of bread, and slowly drank some apple brandy. He lay back and stared sightlessly at his planked ceiling. It was mid-morning now. Thursday, August 15. Last year in mid-August, he had been on a walking holiday of Cornwall, tramping along the rugged rock-hewn coast. At Padstow one mid-week day, it might have been a Thursday, he had bought a pork pie and two bottles of beer and found a faint path winding down to a narrow pocket of sand circled by jagged tooth-edged boulders. The sand was wet as the tide had just raced out. He had spread his mackintosh for a blanket and eaten a leisurely lunch, then rested, hands behind his head, looking up at a milky blue sky and scudding clouds, thinking of the first lecture he would give when classes began. Just a year ago. He had thought Hitler menacing and evil, but he had never imagined the mustachioed German would change his life. His life and thousands of lives. But he could still think what he wished. With a slight smile, Jonathan said softly, “Gentlemen, we will consider both Chaucer the man and Chaucer the poet this term. We will begin by recalling the world as it was when . . .”

There had never been a doorman here, of course, but Eleanor remembered the apartment house having a down-at-heels blowsy charm. Now, the entry door moved on only one hinge and she had to lift the door to open it. The foyer was scuffed and dusty. Letter boxes mostly hung open and empty. The Durands, mother and son, had the second-floor back apartment. The smell of cooking cabbage flooded down the stairwell.

Eleanor hesitated. It was so dark and dirty. But if anyone would help her, it would be the Durands. She started up the steps, smiling. Paul was one of her husband's best friends, a fortyish sardonic professor of languages. His mother, Leone, cooked incessantly, talked without pause, welcomed his friends, bemoaned the lack of a daughter-in-law, and continued hopefully to match-make, undismayed by Paul's wry disinterest. Her round, plump face always smiling, tendrils of curls escaping from her bun, her good humor and kindness attracted students of all sorts. Once Paul had put his foot down firmly, “Mother, I know you have a soft heart. I appreciate it, I value it. But, nonetheless, I am not willing to share the front hall closet with that bedraggled girl from Tours. Send her home to her loving family. I wish once again to hang my overcoat in the front closet, place my boots in the corner, tuck my umbrella to one side.”

Leone had opened her huge blue eyes wide, tilted her head, and said slowly, “Oh Paul, I'm sorry about the closet. I would clear it out for you if I could. But Paul, Annemarie doesn't have a loving family.”

That had been that. Annemarie had lived with them for two years, then married a prim young pharmacist and moved two blocks away to a tiny room in a boardinghouse attic, but she still spent most of her day at the Durands. As Eleanor hurried up the stairs, she was listening. She was almost to the second floor when her steps slowed and she began to frown.

It was quiet. Too quiet.

It was never quiet at the Durands. Young voices, usually raised in excited loud discussion, reverberated until the early morning hours, Leone offering steaming mugs of hot chocolate or glasses of red wine. She knew each student by name, knew his hopes (“Michael, have you been accepted at the Institute, my dear, how wonderful! Dominique, you think twice my dear, don't be hasty. If it is really love, there is no hurry. Tell me your name again? Ralph? How do you say it? Ralph. And you've come all the way from Mexico? No? Oh, New Mexico. Where is New Mexico, Ralph?”) Cigarette smoke and the tart smell of wine, the warmth of people, laughter and movement, Paul smiling satirically but always gently.

Silence.

Eleanor almost turned away without knocking. Obviously, no one was home. Of course, the fall term hadn't begun. Perhaps Paul and his mother had left Paris in June, before the Germans came, and hadn't returned. If they had left soon enough, before the German onslaught swept past Paris and turned back the refugees, they might have reached friends in the South and be there now.

Everything had happened suddenly after the Germans stormed into Holland. Andre had only a week's notice when his unit was called up. He had tried frantically to arrange his affairs. That last morning, cramming an extra set of boots into his luggage, he had told Eleanor, “If you need help, real help, go to Paul Durand.”

Eleanor stared at the closed door to the Durand apartment. Usually the door had been ajar when they came in the evening, voices and music drifting down the hall. How dreadful that she had not even checked on Paul and his mother since Andre left.

But it hadn't seemed a time for visiting friends, not with half the shops in Paris boarded up and the hated green of the Germans everywhere you walked. It was better to stay home, shades drawn, shutting out all the hurtful sights.

She knocked almost perfunctorily. Once, twice. She turned away. She was midway down the hall when she heard someone coming briskly up the steps. They met at the top of the stairs.

“Annemarie? Yes, it is, isn't it?”

The thin young girl paused, nodded. “You are. . .”

“Mme. Masson. Eleanor Masson. My husband Andre and I used to visit Paul and his mother quite often.”

Annemarie smiled. “Oh yes, of course.”

“No one's home. I knocked but there wasn't any answer.”

Annemarie looked surprised. “Oh, I think you are mistaken, Mme. Masson. Mme. Durand is there. I am living with her now and she never leaves the apartment. I've been out shopping. You know how it is, you have to get to the shops so early. I was at the butcher's at eight this morning. I waited two hours and still there wasn't a scrap of meat left but I told him she was old and needed just a morsel and he found me a soup bone.”

Eleanor looked at the basket Annemarie was carrying. Why in the world would she be living with the Durands again? And, even if she were, why would Annemarie be doing the cooking? If ever there was a cook who took joy in her kitchen, who could create the most marvelous meals from the most meager ingredients, it was Leone Durand.

“You say you are living here now?” Eleanor spoke slowly, staring at Annemarie's dark face, hoping, but, in her heart, knowing the answer.

“Yes, since Professor Durand died.”

“I didn't know. Oh God, I'm so sorry.”

Paul dead. Intelligent, aloof, gentle Paul.

Annemarie was talking on, in that young matter-of-fact voice, “. . . the breakthrough at Sedan . . . a field hospital . . . he had volunteered as an ambulance driver . . . not in a reserve unit . . . asthma. The letter came the next week.”

“And Mme. Durand?”

Annemarie looked sad. “It is odd, you know, what happens to people when their world dissolves. She must have cared too much. I would have said, before the war, that she was the strongest woman I knew.” Annemarie unlocked the door and held it open for Eleanor. The curtains were drawn. It was so dark that it took Eleanor a moment to find Mme. Durand.

The older woman huddled in the wingback chair next to the fireplace. She didn't look up until Eleanor came and stood beside her.

“Leone.”

The once plump high-colored face was sunken and thin. Strands of lank hair hung uncombed. Dark brown eyes looked at Eleanor incuriously.

“Leone, don't you know me? It's Eleanor. Eleanor Masson.”

“How do you do.” The thin childlike tone prickled Eleanor's back. She looked at Annemarie pleadingly.

“Come now, Mama Leone.” Annemarie's hearty voice sounded shockingly loud in the stillness of the dusty dim room. “You remember Mme. Masson. Her husband is Andre Masson. You knew him. He was a professor, too, like Paul.”

Eleanor bent down, reaching for the thin hands that lay supinely along the chair arms. They felt cool and dry, scarcely more human than a bird's claws. “I'm sorry.” Eleanor's voice broke. “If I had known, I would have come sooner. Oh Leone, I'm so sorry. We loved Paul, too.”

“Paul. . .” The eyes flickered with life. She struggled to get up. “Paul will be home soon. I'll start dinner. Whatever am I doing, sitting here like an old woman? And it's so dark. I must have taken a nap. Here, let's get these drapes open and get things straight, well, I've never seen so much dust, and magazines scattered about. It's a disgrace and the students start to come, oh, about four, let me see, what time is it?”

She had slipped between them, darted to the windows, pulled the drapes wide, then turned toward the back of the apartment and the kitchen. Her voice muted now, floated out to them. Pans clattered, cupboard doors banged open and shut.

Then, abruptly, silence.

Leone stood in the middle of the tiny kitchen, clasping a brownish green pottery mug to her chest, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Eleanor recognized the mug. How many cold nights had they sat by the fire, Paul cradling that mug in his hands, sipping strong chocolate with its topping of cinnamon and cream.

Annemarie deftly took the mug, substituting her basket. “Look now, Mama Leone, you won't guess what I've brought today. Look now and give me a guess.” She gestured for Eleanor to leave the kitchen.

Eleanor waited in the silent living room. The sharp morning sunlight emphasized the smudged windows, the film of dust in the once immaculate room, the general aura of disuse and neglect.

Annemarie joined her in a moment. “I have her busy now, making the soup. If you don't mind, it would be better for you to go. When she remembers, it distresses her. When she doesn't remember. . .”

When she didn't remember, there was no point in staying.

Eleanor nodded and turned to go.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Annemarie asked diffidently.

Eleanor wondered if her tension was that obvious. She hesitated, looking again, almost as if for the first time, at Annemarie's young thin face. Dark eyes, sallow skin, a splotch of acne across her forehead. She had, when Mme. Durand first took her in, a hunted badgered look. Warmth and caring had filled out the thin cheeks, relieved the anxious look. Then love had brought a faint glow, a touch of radiance. Now, once again, her face was sallow and pale, her eyes somber.

What was her husband's name?

Annemarie watched her eyes.

Eleanor didn't have to ask.

“Jean-Paul's company was at Lille. The last time I heard.”

“Andre was at Bruges. The last I heard,” Eleanor said heavily. “So both of them were near Dunkirk.”

That was the secret hope, the dream of so many thousands of Frenchwomen. They had heard nothing and they knew, the newspapers and radio broadcasts had told them, that many died on the roads and in the fields as the French and English fell back. But they knew too that thousands of Frenchmen had escaped to England.

Andre and Jean-Paul?

The two women saw in each other's eyes grief and hope and the seeds of despair.

“We don't have much here,” Annemarie said awkwardly, “but if you need food?”

Eleanor shook her head quickly. “It's nothing like that.” She barely whispered the words. “Annemarie, do you know anyone who could help someone get to the Unoccupied Zone?”

Annemarie looked around the silent living room before she leaned close to Eleanor to whisper. “I have heard, I do not know if it is true, but I have heard that people can go to Saint-Quentin, you know it is a little village just next to the Demarcation Line, and that if you know the right people, you can be taken across.”