The Paris Agent, page 26
A tiny nail rested where the wall met the floor. With my bloodied, swollen hands, I picked up that nail and marked my name at the bottom of the list, so that one day someone might remember that I had been there too.
I had done my best to make a difference. I had done my best to survive. If there was any justice in the world, that had to count for something.
* * *
I tried not to count the days. Time meant something different now, and I knew I would be more afraid if I understood how long my imprisonment had been. The physical torture stopped once I was moved to Pforzheim Prison, but the mental torture had only just begun. I was in my cell alone all of the time—each day punctuated only by the morning and nightly visits from unfriendly guards. I had no bed—just a simple wooden plank affixed to the wall, with a thin, dirty blanket to cover myself with. I had no toilet, only a metal bucket. I was still wearing the clothes I was arrested in. I was shackled at my hands and my feet.
They brought me two meals a day, sometimes a miserable, watery soup with a few chunks of potato or carrot floating in it, sometimes a boiled potato or even two, almost always with a chunk of stale bread. In the first week I refused the bread, but by the second week my hunger was so intense I could not resist it, even knowing that it would make me ill, and it did. But still, I ate that bread because the bloating and the cramping were worth even a short break from the constant, gnawing hunger.
I dreamed of mattresses and cushions and the soft embrace of my mother’s arms. I dreamed of Noah—simple dreams of watching him smile or sleep or reach toward me, love shining in his eyes. I dreamed of softness, because my entire world had been reduced to hardness, and even more than the pain of stone walls or a wooden bed against my bony body was the monotony and coldness and aloneness of it all.
There was a window in my cell. It was small and high, covered with metal bars to prevent escape, and the glass was filthy and smeared. But through that window, I had a glimpse of sunlight and the spectrum of gray and white in the clouds and the smudgy blue of the sky.
I loved that window because through it, I saw change—night and day, sunshine and rain, even while everything else in that cell remained constant.
I had never learned how to pray—never thought I’d be someone who would want to. But in that prison cell, every single day, I prayed to thank God for that window.
* * *
I knew right away that I was no ordinary prisoner. The Germans around me in the prison assumed I did not speak their language, but I did. They used one phrase repeatedly—almost every time they spoke my name.
“Nacht und Nebel.” Night and fog, a special designation of prisoner. Schulte told me they would “disappear me” and I had no doubt that’s what was happening. The sounds of the prison through the day led me to believe it was full and busy, and I knew instinctively that solitary confinement was not a punishment meted out to all prisoners. The endless aloneness was punishment for my role with the SOE.
And endless it seemed. My ribs showed through my skin and I developed pressure sores that would not heal. There was never enough water so I lived in a perpetual thirst. My broken tooth ached and the taste in my mouth left no doubt that it was festering.
How best to make the days of monotony and pain mean something? I asked myself this question day and night. If every human life had value, and I believed that to my core, how could I make those days matter? I couldn’t connect, or help, or create.
All I could do was wait. All I could do was to tell myself that there was dignity in surviving and power in holding onto hope, especially because the enemy wanted nothing more than to leave me hopeless.
C H A P T E R 21
* * *
CHARLOTTE
Liverpool, 1970
“I can’t tell if you’ve been avoiding spending time with me or if I’ve been avoiding spending time with you,” Aunt Kathleen says as she hands me a cup of coffee the next morning. She glances across her dining room, to the chair where Mum always sat—the one near the big bay windows. “But either way, we need to get better at catching up. She would want us to do better.”
“I know, Aunt Kathleen,” I say. We’ve spoken on the phone, but this spontaneous visit I’ve made to her home today is the first time we’ve been in the same room for months.
It’s hard for me to sit here with her now, to sip coffee alone, just the two of us, when almost every other time in my life Mum would have been seated at this table too. They’d talk in that unique way they shared, talking so fast they almost spoke over the top of one another. And I’d sit here, the third wheel to their duo, nursing my coffee while I waited for one of them to ask me a question so I had my chance to join into the conversation.
“It’s not the same, is it?” Kathleen asks, still looking at that empty chair. “Nothing is the same since she died. I’ve been divorced twice and both times were very bloody hard, but neither hit me like your mother’s death has.” She offers a wan smile. “Husbands come and go, but sisters are for life. I really thought she’d outlive your dad and we’d end up in side-by-side beds in a nursing home.” I smile sadly at that. I can easily picture the future Aunt Kathleen had imagined for them, though knowing the way those two could talk all night and day, some long-suffering nurse would probably have had them separated before long. “This isn’t just a catch-up, is it? I can see something in your face.”
“You knew my dad before the war.”
Aunt Kathleen picks up her coffee and straightens her spine. She flicks me an irritated glance, then sighs.
“We’re talking about this then, are we?”
“Please. I really need to understand.”
“I’m guessing you didn’t manage to convince your father to forget about his trip down memory lane.”
“He needs to do this, Aunt Kathleen,” I say emphatically. “And to help him, I need to understand what it all means.”
“Gerrie had been besotted with him from the first moment they met. She didn’t want him to enlist in the first place, not even as a flight mechanic. She thought it was too dangerous, but he just would not listen. Do you know he was missing in action in France for over a year?” I nod, as Aunt Kathleen’s gaze hardens a little. “We all told her he was probably dead, but she waited for him. He returned and then his whole family was gone and of course that was terribly sad, but you know how hard she loved him, Charlotte? Day and night, she was there for him when he felt like he had lost everything. And how does he repay her? They’d been talking about marriage. He sat her down and she was convinced he was going to propose then and there and do you know what he does instead?” Her nostrils flare. “He broke up with her. He didn’t really explain at the time. Just said he wasn’t ready to settle down and she should move on with her life.”
“Ouch,” I say, wincing.
“Of course, we later learned about the SOE secrecy rules, but you’ll never convince me he couldn’t give her some clue about what was really going on. He disappeared for years after that. Your mother and I graduated and we started our first jobs and she mourned that relationship for such a long time. In early 1944 she finally started seeing a lovely young man and bam, your dad reappears to throw it all into chaos. Again.”
“You’ve never liked Dad much, have you?” I say.
Aunt Kathleen sniffs before she says, “I grew to love him in time especially after he blessed your mother with you beautiful children. But no. For too many years, I was too angry with him to like him.”
“I found letters from a university professor who wanted to interview my dad about his wartime service. Dad had never seen them. Mum hid them in her sanitary napkin basket.”
“Ah,” Kathleen says and I know immediately that this is not news to her.
“She told you?”
“I knew some archivist had been trying to reach your father regarding his service, and Geraldine thought an interview was a horrible idea,” Kathleen says. She pauses, carefully sips her coffee, then admits, “I didn’t know she’d gone as far as to hide letters from him, but it doesn’t surprise me much. She was ruthless in her love for your father right from the minute he resurfaced in 1944, even though he was an absolute mess when he came back.”
“Because of his head injury?” I ask hesitantly. She raises one slim shoulder.
“Partly that. Partly the trauma of the war, I suppose you’d say. And of course, at the time, he was grieving another woman.”
“Another woman?” I repeat, eyes wide.
“Oh yes, darling,” Kathleen says, pursing her lips. “Your lovely father broke my sister’s heart to go off to fight that noble battle for freedom, and while he was in France, found the time somehow to fall in love with someone else.”
“Mum wasn’t put off by this when he returned?” I say, stunned.
“My God, she was so hurt. But he was in desperate need of help and she still loved him. She rearranged her whole life for him—broke up with the new beau, convinced Mum and Dad to let him move into the spare room. I’m not sure how he’d have managed if she hadn’t, to be honest. The SOE just dumped him back in London and left him to his own devices.”
“That’s so unfair!” I exclaim.
“You don’t know the half of it, love. His memory was shot, he couldn’t concentrate to so much as read a newspaper headline, and all he ever talked about was the war.” Kathleen murmurs, “In those first few weeks, he was like a broken parrot—just weeping all the time about his ‘guilt.’” There’s that word again. My heart sinks. “Oh, yes, darling. Whenever we asked him what he’d done, he’d just weep—he couldn’t tell us. Well, he wouldn’t. Perhaps part of the memory loss was the head injury, but I’m convinced a big part of it was that he did not want to remember. Your mum always discouraged him from looking back at the war years not just because she was worried it would set him back, but because we were all terrified of what he’d find if he did.”
“And despite all of this, he and Mum still somehow ended up married?” I say, rubbing my forehead. “At the start of 1946, no less?”
“In late 1945 Gerrie told me they were dating again. The war had just ended and the whole world was celebrating, so I figured they’d just gotten a little carried away and I begged her to take some time to reconsider. I wasn’t just concerned for her, believe it or not. I was still angry with Noah for everything he’d put her through over the war years, but he was obviously vulnerable. You probably don’t want to hear this about your own parents, but they rushed into that second courtship, racing toward the altar like marriage was a competitive sport. It was not a good combination of desires. Noah just wanted to settle down, to have a family quick smart because he was all alone in the world. And Gerrie just wanted to tie him down, probably before he could fall in love with someone else and leave her heartbroken. Again.”
“Aunt Kathleen,” I say defensively. “Don’t say those things. They were madly in love.”
She peers at me thoughtfully, then lowers her cup to the table so she can reach across and squeeze my hand.
“Darling,” she says. “I loved Gerrie with every bit of my heart and I will miss her every waking hour. But surely you know—your dad is not perfect. Hell, your mum was not perfect.” I open my mouth to protest this, but Aunt Kathleen gives me a pointed look. “She was a jealous woman. Controlling. She could be downright mean. She was arrogant—God, I never heard that woman admit she was wrong, not once in fifty-three years! And you know what?” I stare at her, eyes narrowed, but her face softens as she finishes, “I adored her anyway. I don’t need to pretend she was someone she was not in order to honor her, Lottie. Frankly, if I pretend now that my sister was an angel I’d be doing myself a disservice.” She gives me a sad look, and reaches to brush my hair back from my face. “Sweetheart, we have to grieve who she really was, not who we wanted her to be. And she and your dad ultimately built a great life together, but that does not mean it was a healthy relationship, especially right at the beginning.”
“So this is why you never liked Dad? Because you’re convinced he did terrible things during the war?” I blurt. Aunt Kathleen sits back in her chair and sighs softly.
“All I know for sure is that he came back from France twice, and both times he’d been with that same woman. The first time he tried to convince your mother that their relationship was platonic, but Gerrie never really believed it. There was something about the way he described that other girl—even I could see the magic in his eyes. And then he went back to France for the SOE and this time he did admit he’d been madly in love with the other woman. And—”
“It wasn’t the same woman though,” I interrupt, frowning. “Was it?”
“Oh yes, my darling. It absolutely was the same woman. He walked the escape line with her and then by some mysterious coincidence she ended up with him on whatever mission he was sent into France to complete. That’s the woman he was heartbroken over in 1944. Now tell me that’s not suspicious as all hell.”
Dad was in love with Josie Miller? That’s shocking enough, but another thought hits even harder: Could Theo be my half brother? Oh God. My stomach churns violently at the thought and I decide I had better examine that reaction more closely later.
Aunt Kathleen squeezes my hand again. “Over the years, as I said, he endeared himself to me, and believe it or not, I do love your father now. I just never wanted my little sister to wind up with a man who would not choose her first and always.”
C H A P T E R 22
* * *
ELOISE
Karlsruhe Region, Germany
September, 1944
“Where do you think they’re taking us?”
I was shackled at the ankle to Romilly, a young French woman who was arrested for carrying resistance newsletters. We had been stuck for hours in a crowded boxcar as it crawled across Europe at a snail’s pace. At first, Romilly didn’t seem to want to speak to me, but as time passed and our dignity faded away, she was opening up. She was about my age but was not coping particularly well. I found myself trying to console her.
“I imagine we’ll end up in camp,” I told her gently. “Whatever happens though, we will hold our heads high. The end of the war can’t be too far away.”
Was I really so optimistic? I had been forcing myself to appear so for long enough that I was no longer sure how I really felt. In the months since my capture at Salon-La-Tour, I had been volleyed between Fresnes Prison near Paris and 84 Avenue Foch for interrogations. I’d been beaten so badly that my nose now sat at an angle. They had almost drowned me more times than I could count. I was threatened with rape and paraded around naked before the eyes of leering German soldiers. Sometimes, they would offer me special treatment in exchange for the simplest of facts about the SOE—day trips, fresh clothes, better accommodations. Other times, they would point out to me that they already knew almost everything anyway.
“Milton Maxwell has two cubes of sugar in his tea,” a smug interrogator told me one day. “And he prefers scones to cake. That’s the level of detail we hold about your organization. Why would you put yourself through this suffering for nothing? If you work with us, you’ll only be telling us what we already know and your life will be so much easier.”
They were toying with me but I knew it, and that made it easier to keep my mouth shut. They might have known what Colonel Maxwell had for morning tea, but that didn’t mean they knew anything of consequence. The Germans sometimes seemed panicked, and many of the questions they pushed me on were things I had no idea about anyway. Things like the advance of the Allies across France, and their terror at that prospect was music to my ears. I just had to hold on, and liberation might still come.
And then all of a sudden, a group of us prisoners from Fresnes were crammed into boxcars. I suspected we were presently en route to Germany and I took that as another good sign. If the Germans were moving political prisoners back into secure territory, the Allies were likely in or at least nearing Paris.
“At least we are far away from Avenue Foch now,” I said to Romilly, who mumbled something in agreement, but still sat drooping and despondent. At least I’d been prepared for the torture during my training. Perhaps part of Romilly’s problem was that she was just a civilian who had been trying to do her part to help and was unlucky enough to be caught.
A distant explosion rang out, and the train suddenly braked, throwing Romilly and me into the prisoners beside us. The sound of buzzing overhead brought another explosion—much closer this time—and then boots on the ground as guards ran past our carriage, fleeing the train to hide. The rapid thumping of bullets hitting the ground rang out as the planes buzzed again.
“They’re just going to leave us here to die, aren’t they?” Romilly said miserably.
“It must be the Allies,” I reminded her. “They might destroy the railway tracks but they won’t hit the train intentionally. If the guards had any sense at all, they’d stay onboard.”
But she seemed unconvinced as we heard still more boots on the ground, and panicked cries from the Germans as they fled the train. Romilly cowered beside me, crying softly, but I stiffened, my ears tuning in to another sound.
“Help! Is anyone there? Can someone help us?”
An American man was shouting out for help in the next carriage. No one said anything in reply at first but when he called again, his voice breaking with desperation, I called back, “Sir! Are you on the train?”
“Yes! Do you have water? We haven’t had water for many days,” he shouted, and I detected now in his voice a level of utter desperation.
“I’m so sorry. We don’t have any water either.”
