Romeo Blue (28 page)

We found Danny’s cell and he stood up from the floor where he lay, a terrible, thin scarecrow, a battered, wounded, bedraggled scarecrow. Danny was given the priest’s black jacket, tunic, trousers, a black felt hat, and white priest’s collar. The second sleeping man was dragged into the cell and covered under the blanket.

Then we headed for the stairs. Soon a young guard came towards us and Gideon ordered him aside. “We will be inspecting the prison tomorrow. Oh yes, young man, things will be changing around here. I suggest you go up and discuss this matter of rearranging things this evening with your higher-ups. I am under orders from the top.”

Soon we walked by the front door. “I shall be back in the morning,” said the colonel to the next guard. “I should warn you all that cleanliness and order will be a high priority in the inspection tomorrow. Good night for now. I will be staying at the Hôtel de France until my rooms are ready. I can be reached there if any problems arise. These guards here will help me out.” He handed the assistant the keys. “You’ll need these, I would imagine. Keep on your toes and I shall see you in the morning,” said the colonel, smiling. “Early!”

We walked out into the courtyard where the car Gideon had driven in was waiting for us. We immediately climbed in. Gideon drove up to the gate and the guard saluted to him and let us pass. We drove off, following the prescribed route. And I must commend the planners who worked under Bill Stephenson. They thought of almost everything. We drove fast as we guessed within moments the whole area would be on our tail. But oddly it was quiet. The guards we tranquilized probably were sleeping peacefully, snoring away while the various lesser officers hustled about cleaning up the offices on the top floors.

On a back street in the next town, we let the two men out who were dressed as guards. They disappeared, headed for a safe house not far away. And then we drove on into the night. All was well until we came to a small town some thirty-five miles from Limoges. A sleepy, dark town, all the shutters closed up and the streets narrow and empty as we drove through. Still, on the street in front of us, two Gestapo officers were walking along, having just emerged from a bistro. They were drunk and singing, blocking the road and waving their arms at us to stop. “We’re having a dance at the officers’ club up the street. Why don’t you join us?”

“Oh no, I must continue. I am Colonel Ludswig. I am doing inspections in the town ahead early tomorrow. I must get to my hotel before it closes.”

“Colonel Helmut Ludswig? But I just talked to you by telephone an hour ago. You were in Berlin.” He squinted in at us. “You don’t really look quite right. I mean for one thing, Ludswig has shaved off his mustache. He did it on a bet. I only saw him a day ago.”

“As a matter of fact, I am his brother. Uh, I shall telephone him tonight when I get to the hotel,” said Gideon.

“He doesn’t have a brother,” said the man. “Perhaps you had better get out of the vehicle.”

Gideon then gunned his motor and took off. But one of the men shot at us, hit the side window with the first shot and the second shot hit Gideon’s back on his left side. His jacket was soon covered with blood. Danny shot at them. We do not know if he hit one officer or both of them. Perhaps he hit no one at all. We could only keep driving.

Even though he’d been shot, Gideon stayed at the wheel, keeping his foot on the gas pedal. There wasn’t time to stop. At the edge of town we took a turn off the main road and careened along the river. The moon was out and the car rushed through the speckled larch trees and the wind shuddered and brushed through the empty branches around us and we listened for cars or sirens but we heard none. Finally, Gideon stopped the car and slumped at the steering wheel.

Now Danny and I carried Gideon to the backseat. He lay beside me and we pressed on, Danny driving, using only back roads and moonlight. We turned off our headlights. In the darkness a mother deer and her winter fawn hurried across the road in front of our car and for some reason that made me cry.

Gideon was bleeding profusely. I held his head in my arms. I tore some fabric from my habit and tried to make a bandage for him. He was losing so much blood. He looked up at me as we drove and he said, “Oh my God, Winnie, if I had known that I would be lying here in your arms.”

We drove all night along the back roads, unpaved, some of them clotted with snow. Sometimes cows or long-horned sheep loomed up in the darkness.

We approached Aubeterre-sur-Dronne. It seemed to be part of the sky, perched high on the side of the hill above a river. As we drew up the climbing streets, I put a blanket over Gideon in the backseat and got in the front seat. Then we were simply a priest and a nun headed for the convent. We passed through the elevated town square, where a narrow park waited among beech and oak trees in the darkness. Farther up the hill, Danny stopped the car in front of the large stone convent with its heavy, arched, wooden doors.

“There you go, Winnie,” Gideon whispered, leaning forward and trying to sit up but not opening his eyes. “Off you go now. A guide will take you over the mountains when you are ready. Your papers are all in order. Everything is in order.”

“Yes, but you are not in order, Gideon,” I said. “What about you? Danny, he’s so badly wounded. I can’t leave you. Where will you go?”

“Dr. Sachet in Chalais. He will help us. I will take my brother there,” Danny said.

“I want to go with you,” I said. “Please let me go with you.”

“All this has been arranged. Winnie, think of what’s at stake. We haven’t any more time,” said Gideon in his faint, breathy voice.

I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek and then I leaned forward and kissed Danny. Danny smiled at me and said, “Give my love to Felicity. Tell her I miss her.” I looked back at Gideon and his face was full of pain at the mention of Felicity’s name.

I forced myself to get out of the car. I struggled with reluctance up the convent steps and I knocked on the door.

The sisters surrounded me like a flock of dark swans and they pulled me in. They said when they saw me that I made a perfect nun. They fed me some thin soup. I remember the warm bowl in my hands. I was led to a plain room with a small, cold bed and I lay there awake for the rest of the night. We had not prepared for this. Danny had not told me much about Dr. Sachet. I did not know where Danny and Gideon were going. It was the last time I saw the Bathburn brothers and I had loved them both so dearly.

“Flissy McBee,” The Gram called from downstairs, “will you come here, please? Dimples has locked herself in the pantry and she’s in there eating all the cookies we made last night. Will you talk to her, please?”

I closed the journal and I sat there for a moment. I could not close away the image of my father lying in the backseat as my Danny drove over bumpy roads towards some doctor that might not even be there when they arrived. Try as I would, I could not shut out what I had just read and the pages of Winnie’s journal seemed to flutter and fold open even when I closed my eyes.

I went downstairs. Night was falling. Passing the front door I saw Winnie was out on the porch, all alone in the darkness.

Winnie’s journal threw me into a bit of a panic. It seemed as though everything in my life was funneling and spinning in a great vortex and I was lost in the middle. I had tried to ring up Stu Barker because I wanted and needed to talk with Derek, but their telephone had been disconnected. Well, they had a ten-party line anyway and you never could get through.

The next day I sat with The Gram in the hallway upstairs. She was unpacking a chest and stacking all the bedspreads and old linen sheets on the hall rug. Then the chest was empty except for a tortoiseshell hair comb and long, ornate hairpins lying on the bottom. One of the long pins had a silver filigree butterfly perched on a tiny spring at the end of the hairpin so whenever someone wore it in their hair, the butterfly would bob at the top of their French twist or braided bun. I picked it up. “Have you rung up Derek since he left?” I said. And then I added, “Winnie would probably like this hairpin because of the butterfly.”

“It’s a treasure and it’s part of this house and I wouldn’t give it to
her
,” said The Gram. “She’s caused enough trouble, hasn’t she? Why should she have something that belonged to Ada Bathburn?”

“But you are talking with her now,” I said.

“Well, Winifred and I do share certain interests, you being one of them. Take the hairpin for yourself, dear. It’s yours. When you are a little older, you can pull back your hair with it and show off your lovely Bathburn forehead.”

Perhaps The Gram was right about Winnie. I wasn’t sure anymore. I had wanted to smooth out the wrinkles and rumples between the Bathburns and the Budwigs and now I too was all mixed up and muddled. I could hear Dimples shouting from the parlor, “Felicity, you’ve got another letter. You get all the letters here and my mum never writes to me.”

“She has to send a telegram and they are expensive, Dimples,” I called as I clumped downstairs to see what she had for me.

Dimples saw me and started piloting through the house in her invisible airplane, rising up in her Halifax bomber, with an envelope in her hands. She soared by me, waving it at me. I grabbed it.

I saw immediately it was another prewritten card from my father. I could tell by the stamps. The Gram swooped down from upstairs and watched me from across the room with a look of great sorrow looming over her, like a dark mountain full of rainfall. I took the card out to the porch. I tore open the envelope. On the front was a sketch of Bugs Bunny sitting in a bathtub eating a
carrot. Inside it said,
Mr. Bathtub says READ!
And then in small letters it said,
But what’s he reading?

I sat on the top step of the stairs to the sea. There it felt like the whole world was falling away below me. I stared out across the ocean. From here I could not see the bombs falling or the sky burning red in Europe but I could feel it.
Mr. Bathtub says READ!
What had my father meant when he had written that card to me, so many months ago? Whose child was I? I knew
where
I belonged, but
whom
did I belong to?

It had been almost a week that Derek had been visiting the Barkers. I quite missed him and I would be glad when the Barkers left and Derek came home. If only he loved me as he had before. Of course I was beginning to understand that you could not control love. It went where it wished and it did as it pleased, just like the hiccups. Still, if he loved me, I felt I could endure the low pressure and the dense air that seemed to be hovering in the Bathburn house. The needle on the Stormoguide in the dining room almost seemed to register all that was inside my heart.

As school was soon starting again after spring break, The Gram and Dimples and I were going into town. Dimples would be allowed to buy a set of paper dolls because she had knitted so many pairs of socks. I had grown taller and hoped the five-and-dime would have a light skirt for a thirteen-year-old, size 12 girl, which I now was.

“Oh, you’re going shopping for clothes. Oh, poppet, I wish I could go,” Winnie said, looking sadly at me.

“No,” said The Gram. “You need rest. And we’re used to shopping together, aren’t we, Flissy McBee?” The Gram drew me towards her.

As we got in the Packard, I waved to Winnie and I hoped while we were gone, she would manage being
alone. She was working on some project in a scrapbook she wouldn’t let me see. Perhaps that would occupy her. I didn’t think I was still mad at Winnie for leaving me for so long or for not telling me things she should have. But now I wasn’t sure. I did not think I was mad at her really for what happened in France with my father and yet when she looked at me in that sad way, I felt awkward and looked away. I knew it was hard for her to be here. She was jumpy and nervous and she didn’t eat much. As we drove off she stood there in the garden, waving in a wistful way. I was torn between anger and pity. Yes, it hurt me when The Gram barked at her.