The Paris Apartment, page 32
Estelle saw the house before she saw the market. Millbrook sat up on a gentle rise, as if surveying its domain, and Estelle recognized it instantly from the photo she had once examined on a gleaming rosewood tabletop. The tall shrubs that flanked the house were the same, though the sprawling lawns that rolled away from the manor had been torn up and turned into vegetable gardens. Stakes and the occasional scarecrow dotted an expanse that had, at one time, been a manicured carpet of grass.
The black-and-white photo had also been unable to capture the color that blazed from the house itself. Windows reflected the sun in a glittering array, and the stone façade glowed a rich umber. The building was architecturally impressive, a proud ambassador to a time long past. But if Estelle had been asked to describe it, she would have said none of those things. She would have said it looked like a home.
Perhaps it was the crowds of people who swirled at the base of the long drive that made it appear so. It was here that the market was set up under a canopy of ancient trees, and it was a jaunty, bustling affair, as if it were deliberately defying the years of want. A large collection of booths and tables had been set up in two rows, and someone, somewhere, was playing a fiddle. Brightly colored ribbons had been tied to the top of each booth, adding another element of festivity.
In the distant past, Estelle imagined that the tables and booths would have groaned under the weight of their wares. Today, the offerings were sparse, but still a rainbow of vegetables stuck triumphantly out of crates, barrels of apples and pears were set in rows, and there were ropes of skinned rabbits for the stewpot. Estelle wandered down the first row, sidestepping those haggling and debating the best value. Toward the center, honey was being sold in a haphazard collection of jars and bottles, and, farther down, a young woman was selling scented soap and knitted socks.
And beyond that, there was a collection of paintings.
Estelle walked toward the last booth at the end, coming to a stop in front of the small wooden structure. There were no crowds here, though occasionally a child stopped to inspect a particular canvas before skipping away. Estelle stepped closer and examined the collection.
It was certainly a bright effort, the colors of each composition vivid, if a little one-dimensional. There were renditions of the sea, of grass-tufted dunes, and of copses of trees under heavy, leaden skies. More still were dedicated to the sailboats and fishing boats that plied the waters, and a few depicted fluffy white sheep grazing bottle-green pastures. At the bottom of each, William Seymour had been signed with a proud flourish.
These would be paintings done by William, the artist who liked cars and art and his bacon blackened at the edges. William, who had traded a rifle for a watercolor set on his eleventh birthday. William, who learned to shoot to please his sister and had learned to fly to please his mum. William, who had never lived long enough to sell a painting.
Estelle’s eyes burned. How was it possible that she still had tears left to cry? Maybe this hadn’t been a good idea after all.
“Good morning.” A cheery voice cut through Estelle’s thoughts.
She blinked rapidly and straightened. “Good morning.”
A buxom woman with kind eyes, a flushed face, and dark hair just starting to silver was watching her. She wore practical shoes, a simple dress the color of autumn wheat, and an apron tied about her waist.
“Can I help you find something, lass?” the woman inquired.
“I wish you could,” Estelle mumbled.
“You’re looking for art?”
“Um. No.”
The woman stared quizzically at her. “Then you were looking for William? I have to tell you, I’m not sure this is a good time.”
Estelle put a hand out to steady herself against the booth. “He came back? He’s here?” she blurted.
“Yes,” the woman replied slowly, still staring at her.
Something deep inside her chest constricted painfully, joy and grief flooding through her all at the same time. William Seymour had survived. He’d survived impossible odds. His sister had been right all along.
The woman brushed her hands on her apron and came out from behind the booth. “May I ask who you are?”
“A friend,” Estelle said. “Of his sister,” she amended, realizing that she had no idea what Sophie’s real name might have been. “I was a friend of his sister.”
“Ah.” The woman’s expression instantly crumpled. “I’m sorry,” she said, wiping at eyes that had gone misty. “You think you’ve overcome it, but it catches you at strange moments, the sadness.”
“I understand.”
“I’m Imogen,” the woman said. “The housekeeper at Millbrook. I’ve known Will and Sophie their entire lives.”
Estelle twisted the handle of her bag around her fingers, the strap biting into her skin. Sophie Seymour, she repeated silently in her head, letting the name sink in. Sophie really had been her first name.
“You’re French, are you, lass?”
“Yes.”
“You must have known our Sophie while she was studying in Paris, then?”
“Yes,” Estelle said faintly. “In Paris.”
“She is missed terribly. By none more so than Will.” Imogen turned slightly and tipped her head toward the base of a twisted oak.
A hunched figure sat in a wheeled chair, his lower half covered with a blanket even in the warm air, his head bent in what looked like defeat. From this distance, it was impossible to make out his features, but the hair that fell over his forehead and shadowed his face was a familiar shade of pale blond.
“He’s not himself yet,” Imogen said. “He was barely recognizable when he came home.” She sounded as if she was going to cry again. “They kept him in a…camp. He won’t tell anyone what they did to him. But they took his leg.”
“I’m sorry,” Estelle whispered.
“As am I.” Imogen wiped her eyes again with the edge of her apron. “Perhaps it was for the best that Sophie died long before the war ever became what it did.”
“What?” Estelle asked in confusion.
“Oh, lass. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this. Sophie was working in Warsaw when they bombed the city the first time.” Imogen sniffed, patting Estelle gently on the arm. “She died in that bombing. And it’s the only thing that offers any of us any consolation. Will especially. That she didn’t have to see or suffer what he did. That she didn’t have to grieve their parents.” She wiped her eyes again and let her apron fall. “Small mercies, I know. But now they are all we have.”
Estelle couldn’t speak. Didn’t really understand what had happened. What she did understand was that the British agent code-named Celine had kept many secrets, and not just from Estelle.
“I’m sorry, lass, for being so maudlin on such a beautiful day.” The housekeeper shook her head as if she might shed her sadness the way a dog shook to shed water. “I thought, in truth, that maybe bringing William out here in the sunshine, where he could see the market and see his paintings, would make him remember the better times.” She glanced at the hunched figure under the tree. “Would you speak to him? Will?”
Estelle shrank away. “I don’t know him.”
“But you knew his Sophie. Maybe you could share something with him about her? A happy memory, perhaps?”
“I don’t want to upset him.”
“I don’t think that there is anything that you could say that would make his suffering worse.”
Estelle bit her lip so hard that she tasted blood. Imogen was wrong. There was a great deal that she could say to the desolate man in the wheeled chair that would make this all worse. Estelle could tell him that she had not been able to save his Sophie. That his beloved sister and best friend had very likely died a slow, horrible death at the hands of the same monsters that had kept William Seymour captive for years. That Sophie had witnessed more hate and more evil than even an RAF pilot shot down in the opening salvos of the war.
“Please,” Imogen said. “Please just talk to him. The doctor gives him medicine but I don’t know that it helps any. It only seems to make him confused and nauseated. He’s but a shadow of himself, and I am powerless to do anything except watch him fade away. You can’t imagine what that’s like.”
“I can,” Estelle whispered. She knew this woman’s fear intimately and the feeling of helplessness that came along with it.
“Then you’ll speak with him?”
Estelle could almost feel the hope in that question right down through her bones.
“Of course.” She couldn’t answer otherwise.
“Bless you, lass.” Imogen was sniffling again.
Slowly, Estelle left the booth and walked toward the man in the chair. The ground was dappled here, the sun finding holes through the tree’s canopy to splash a pattern of yellow-gold and grey-blue across the overgrown grass. Here, only the cowslips on the ground and the sparrows in the branches above would overhear their words.
She stopped in front of William but the man seemed oblivious to her presence.
“Mr. Seymour?” Estelle tried.
No response.
Estelle set her bag down in the grass and crouched in front of Sophie’s brother. She looked up at him and sucked in a sharp breath. He was painfully thin, his face gaunt, with dark shadows beneath his eyes that could not hide the same magnificent bone structure that had made his sister a Nordic princess and, in a different time, would have made this man a Nordic prince. He had the same arresting, pale eyes as Sophie but, unlike his sister, Will’s were empty and flat, his pupils mere pinpoints.
Morphine, no doubt. Estelle had seen it a million times in the field, along with the muddled confusion and disorientation that came with it. In truth, it probably didn’t matter what she said to William Seymour in this moment because he probably wouldn’t even remember any of it.
His hands lay listlessly atop the blanket that covered his lap. His bony knees jutted out beneath the blanket, and on the right, a booted foot rested on the ground below. On the left, there was nothing but an empty space.
“Hello, William,” Estelle said quietly. She reached out and gathered his hands in hers. His skin was cold and clammy to the touch, and if he objected to her gesture, he didn’t show it. Estelle was quite certain he wasn’t even aware she was there.
“I was a friend of your sister,” she started. “She talked about you a great deal, and I could tell how much she loved you.” Her fingers tightened on his, as if she could make him acknowledge her by touch. “I didn’t know Sophie long but I wanted to tell you how brave she was. How smart and selfless and brilliant she was. I admired her, William, so much. I didn’t get the chance to tell her this so I’m telling you.”
Estelle stopped talking, her throat closing on her again. William didn’t stir.
“She saved my life,” Estelle whispered. “She saved so many lives. Almost no one will ever know what she did. What she accomplished.”
Because it had been Estelle who had watched the promised Lizzie drop from the sky at an alarming angle to land in a moonlit field. The little plane had been guided in by Vivienne’s resistance fighters, and after touching down, the pilot did not shut off the engine. Estelle had been waved aboard, along with a man who identified himself only as Henri.
Less than two minutes after the Lizzie had landed, it was climbing back into the sky and banking sharply for the shores of England, Estelle hunched inside, braced for the thunder of guns that never came. She had wept silently as land had given way to the silver expanse that was the Channel. She had wept again after she had handed the little box of film to the woman named Miss Atkins in a Baker Street flat cloudy with cigarette smoke and explained why the agent named Celine was unable to do so. What she had sacrificed.
In front of her, William Seymour’s eyes remained unfocused, his breathing shallow but steady, his hands limp in hers.
“So you don’t get to give up now,” Estelle said. “Because Sophie never gave up on you. Do you hear me?” She leaned closer to William. “When people told her that, even if you had survived the downing of your plane, you would not have survived being taken. And even if you survived being taken, you would not have survived the days and weeks and months that followed in whatever nightmare you were cast into. They told her that you were dead, and she refused to believe them. Do you understand?”
William’s fingers twitched beneath her own before stilling again. His slack expression remained unchanged.
“You don’t get to give up,” Estelle repeated. She pulled her hands from his and stood, brushing at the bits of grass and earth that clung to the hem of her cream-colored skirt. She snatched her bag from the ground. A thready anger had gripped her, and it was better than the omnipresent sorrow. “I failed your sister, and I will never forgive myself for that. So don’t do what I did. Don’t fail her, not when you have been given this second chance at life. A chance she never got. Find a way to live again, William Seymour.”
Estelle turned and walked away from him because she was afraid that anything else she said would be a continued, unjustified assault of harsh words borne from her own guilt and weakness and regrets. She stopped in front of the booth again, staring at the collection of landscapes and seascapes.
The housekeeper emerged from behind the booth to meet her, wringing her hands, her face a mask of worry. “Did he say anything to—”
“I’d like to buy a painting,” Estelle said.
Imogen’s jaw slackened before it snapped closed again. “I beg your pardon?”
“One of Mr. Seymour’s paintings. I’d like to buy one.”
The housekeeper was staring at her like she’d lost her mind. “Don’t feel like you have to—”
“This one.” Estelle stepped closer to the booth and lifted a small rectangular canvas that had been mounted in a simple wood frame. It was an image of Millbrook, the sky a bright blue over the distinctive house. The shrubs and greenery that had been dabbed around the base of the manor gave way to rolling lawns painted in sweeping brushstrokes.
She glanced back at William Seymour. He’d lifted his head and was staring out at something that only he could see.
“Why are you doing this?” Imogen asked as Estelle handed over her money. “This is too much.”
“I am making an investment,” Estelle replied. “One day, when he is a famous artist, this painting will be worth a hundred times what I paid today. You can tell him that I will accept nothing less.”
She left the housekeeper staring after her and retraced her steps along the old mill road, back to the center of town. She stopped at the edge of the sea, where she had stood when she first disembarked. The horizon was still where it had been, the sky and the sea meeting in a breathtaking blue vista. She set her bag down on the ground and opened it, sliding the little painting inside, next to the sheet of paper that Miss Atkins had given her the day before Estelle had left for Norfolk.
Because Estelle had never returned to France. Instead, she had remained in England, working for the Inter-Services Research Bureau, teaching other agents, agents like Sophie, how to act, how to speak, how to eat, how to smoke, what to order in a café. Tiny details that might one day save their lives. She had been invaluable, Miss Atkins had told her on the day when people had finally danced in London’s streets.
Estelle hadn’t danced. Instead she had asked the woman for a favour.
That favour now rested beside the hopeful painting of Millbrook, and Estelle withdrew the long sheet, looking at it again, though she knew it by heart by now. There were three columns of names, prisoners who had been incarcerated by the Nazis at Amiens Prison before it had been bombed. The first column was a list of all prisoners. The second column was a list of those who had escaped when the walls of the prison crumbled beneath the explosives dropped from the sky in 1944. The third was a list of prisoners who had been recaptured.
Jerome de Colbert’s name existed only in the first two columns.
It was time to return to France.
She would not return to the Paris apartment where her failures would forever haunt her. But the painting, along with the prison list, were reminders that second chances could exist.
That something lost could be found again.
Chapter
24
Gabriel
London, England
20 October 2017
10 July 1943
Dearest Will,
If you are reading this letter, then you did what I could not and found your way home. As I write this I do not know where you are or what you may be enduring, but I know with all my heart that you will survive whatever comes your way. You’ve always lived without fear of failure.
I didn’t live like that, not often enough and not soon enough. It may seem like I was daring and dauntless but I wasn’t, not really, not like you. I kept myself safely insulated by my strengths, hidden behind my books and lessons because those were easy. It took falling in love to make me understand that the things worth most in life are hard. I was married, Will, to a man you won’t ever get to meet, but whom you would have loved because Piotr was smart and funny and kind and he lived with the same courage you did.
I’ve tried to keep living like that. For you. And for him. To never give up, to keep fighting, to do hard things, and to refuse to fear failure. I hope, by the time you read this, I’ve made you both proud.
Good-bye, Will. Make every day count.
Your loving sister,
Sophie
Gabriel folded the copy of the letter and slid it back into the pocket of his jacket. He’d taken the letter out more from habit than anything else. From the number of times he had read it, Gabriel had it memorized. It was a strange feeling, knowing that the letter had been written to his grandfather yet feeling as though each word spoke directly to him.
