Louise's War (28 page)

‘You will never tell anyone, will you?’ she asked. ‘About, you know.’

‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘I know how to keep my mouth shut.’

She wiped her face with her handkerchief. It came away coated with make-up. ‘I must look horrible,’ she said.

‘Go on and fix your face,’ I said. ‘Supper will be ready soon.’

Ada wasn’t the only person in the house who got good news that evening. Madeleine, wearing the khaki suit with pink rickrack trim Ada gave her, floated into the kitchen right after dinner, full of the news she’d landed a job with the Social Security Administration punching out Social Security cards on a special typewriter.

‘The whole room was full of colored girls,’ she told us in the kitchen, ‘all high-school graduates like me. I’ll be making twenty-one dollars a week!’

‘What are you going to do when you get old, girl,’ Dellaphine said, ‘that’s what I want to know. When you can’t work that job no more, you be out in the street. I’ll always have a home here in this house. The Knox boys will see to that.’

‘Will you listen?’ Madeleine said to her. ‘Social Security, Ma!’

Dellaphine snorted. ‘By the time you’re old enough to collect it, there won’t be none left.’

I was in Madeleine’s corner. Unlike Phoebe, I didn’t want life to return to the way it was before the war. I no longer had any intention of returning to Wilmington, North Carolina, except for an occasional Christmas visit. After the war I’d finish college and have a real career. My own apartment, too. If I met a man I wanted to marry that would be nice, but I wasn’t planning my future around it. And as for Rachel, I felt at peace. I had, at last, done everything I could for her.

I went out on the porch alone. The evening sky rumbled, our usual afternoon shower on its way. I pulled the Lucky Strike I’d mooched off Dellaphine out of my pocket and lit it with the heavy marble table lighter I’d picked up off the hall table. I inhaled the calming nicotine deep into my lungs, then exhaled a cloud of smoke, relaxing with relief. I didn’t care if my throat ached all night. I needed a cigarette.

Epilogue

R
achel awoke in the dead of night struggling against the rough grip of the man who loomed over her. She recognized George Barellet, son of the Hôtel Bompard’s owner, from the odor of raw cheese and cheap red wine on his breath. He had one hand clapped across her mouth while the other pinned her to the floor.

‘Be quiet,’ he said. ‘You are leaving here tonight. You’ve been ransomed.’

Rachel quieted, confused by the word ‘ransom’. She’d heard that Barellet could be bribed to release internees, but the rumored price was so dear. Gerald, wherever he was, couldn’t possibly manage it.

‘Wake your children, quietly,’ Barellet said. ‘Come now, it will soon be too late.’

Rachel woke the children, shushing them as she pulled Claude to his feet and nestled Louisa into her shoulder. Claude was such a good child, he’d learned to be quiet without whining. The baby was sound asleep. Rachel had dosed her with a drop of the laudanum she’d bartered for the two packs of cigarettes from her Red Cross package. Barellet hoisted her valise, already packed to bulging for the train journey east. They’d been scheduled for the first group to leave tomorrow.

Barellet led them through the crowded hotel room and down the filthy staircase. He unlocked the front gate and then they were outside in the street. Clean fresh air filled Rachel’s lungs.

A cart loaded with shoddy household goods and a driver waited for them. The driver wore the rough clothing of a laborer, a stained felt hat pulled down over his face. The old mule hitched to the cart was too broken down for anyone to confiscate.

‘Get in, and go,’ Barellet said.

Rachel didn’t hesitate, and didn’t question the man who waited for her in the cart. She didn’t know what lay ahead but it couldn’t be worse than a labor camp in Germany. The driver reached for the children one at a time and laid them on a blanket behind the seat. Then he lifted Rachel next to him.

‘You are my wife,’ he said, ‘you are exhausted and terrified.’ Acting that part would be easy enough. ‘We are moving to my parents’ farm in the country. Do not speak, and cover your hair.’

Rachel wrapped her black hair, which she’d cut short for cleanliness’ sake, in a scarf and thanked God for her blue eyes. She turned to the children. The baby was already asleep again, but Claude sat up, wide-eyed.

‘Lie down,’ she said. ‘Pretend to sleep.’ Claude promptly curled up next to his sister with his thumb in his mouth.

Vichy policemen stopped the cart twice on its way out of the city, poked and prodded at its pitiful cargo, but let them continue.

They plodded west, then south, for what seemed like many hours, until Rachel could taste the salt tang of the Mediterranean in the air. Down a sandy track they came to a rickety dock that jutted out into a lonesome bay. Another dozen or so ragged refugees already waited on the dock.

Her escort, who never told her his name, helped her and the children down to the dock, carrying her valise.

‘Wait here, it won’t be long,’ he said, touching his hat as he left. Wait for what exactly, Rachel wondered.

Escape? She couldn’t believe it.

Because of the moonless night Rachel didn’t see the dinghy until it was nearly at the dock. The British seamen wore black, rowing with muffled oars. She and her children were in the first boatload to reach HMS
Splendid
, a British submarine out of Malta, she learned from the petty officer in charge of the dinghy. When she translated for the others in the boat they murmured with hope.

Seamen who tipped their caps to her and called her ma’am guided them below. The refugees spoke very little to each other. They all seemed stunned, almost to disbelief, to find themselves on a British submarine.

A young seaman brought them all blankets, sandwiches, tea, biscuits and cans of evaporated milk for the children.

The seaman told her the sub had offloaded supplies for the Resistance, small arms, food and clothing, and so had room to carry a few Jewish refugees to safety in Malta. She translated again for the others, and they all murmured in awe, ‘
En sécurité.
’ Safety. How in God’s name had this happened? Why had she and her children been spared from amongst the thousands penned up like cattle in internment camps all over the south of France?

She settled the children onto a cot to sleep. Once they were quiet she dug a thin pad of paper and a pencil stub out of her valise and began to write a letter.

‘Dearest Louise,’ she began. ‘
C’est un miracle!
’