A Week in Paris (29 page)

She turned and hugged him close. ‘I know you have to do these things,’ she said in his ear, ‘but I hate it. What if something happened to you? What would Fay and I do?’ They’d be alone, poor, defenceless. Her mind ran ahead. They’d be sent to one of the camps, probably. Did they intern young children? She thought they must do if there was no one else to look after them. She ran over the names of people she knew. Who would have Fay? One of the French doctors’ families, perhaps – Dr Poulon, possibly, who’d delivered Fay. Or Lili, but she didn’t know Lili’s employers so that wouldn’t work.

‘If anything happens to me, Kitty – not that I’m saying it will – you’ll have the insurance. It’s not much, but it would be something.’

‘That’s not what I mean.’

‘No, but seriously.’ He kissed her bare shoulder, then she felt the warmth of his breath on her neck. She thought of something else, the thing that haunted her, that she usually pushed away.

‘You’re not doing anything . . . dangerous, are you?’

‘Of course not,’ he said quickly – too quickly, she thought.

‘Gene?’

‘Don’t ask me anything,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all. I cannot tell you.’

She had heard all she needed to know in the tone of his answer. He’d never spoken to her in that curt way before. She wriggled out of his grasp and shuffled over to the chilly extremes of the mattress.

‘Kitty,’ he whispered. ‘Kitty, darling,’ but she would not reply, and when he sought to comfort her, she pushed his arm away. She’d never felt so angry. Or frightened. Were she and Fay worth so little to him that he’d risk his life and maybe theirs helping strangers? And what would happen when America came into the war? They would all be enemy aliens then.

It took a long time that night for her anger to subside.
I’m being selfish. Whatever he’s doing I should be proud of him
, she told herself, but part of her refused to be unselfish and proud. She wanted to be safe.

Summer turned to autumn, and America moved closer to the edge. Snippets of news were greeted by the little expat community in Paris with a mixture of excitement and foreboding. The US government introduced a peacetime draft to call up soldiers for training. In November it repealed the Neutrality Act it had passed in 1939. Eugene and Kitty once more discussed leaving and this time, finally, decided they should do so, for Fay’s sake. They began to put together plans. But then something happened to make them delay.

It was a miserable rainy day in late November and the pavements were slippery with the last of the autumn’s dead leaves. Kitty held Fay’s hand as they waited to cross the Boulevard St-Michel. They stepped down into the road, but then a cavalcade of motorcycles roared into view and they retreated hastily to the kerb. Little Fay slipped and as Kitty jerked her upwards to stop her falling, she missed her own footing, her left ankle twisting under her. Because of the noise of the traffic she felt rather than heard the bone break. Quick hands seized her just in time, or woman and child would have fallen under the wheels of the sleek limousine that swept past, its swastika pennants snapping in the wind.

The accident required an operation to pin the ankle. As Kitty lay in bed in the American Hospital, sick and woozy from the anaesthetic, she knew that their travel plans would have to be put off. For a fortnight at least, Gene said, until the wound had healed and she was confident on crutches.

On 7 December they woke to the news that the Japanese had bombed American ships in the Pacific port of Pearl Harbor. Four days later, Germany saw fit to declare war on America.

Once again, Gene and Kitty had left it too late to leave.

‘It’s becoming chilly,
non
?’ Mme Ramond said, getting up to switch on the electric fire that stood before the grate.

‘A little,’ Fay conceded, privately thinking it perfectly warm in the room. It must be mid-afternoon, for sunshine still poured in through the window. ‘But what happened, Madame Ramond? Were my parents all right?’ She thought of her mother, injured, trapped in Paris. She herself must have been about two. If only she could remember clearly. There were things she recognized in Paris, the corridor of the apartment block where she’d lived, the sound of glass shattering, other fragments, but she could bring nothing back by will. It wasn’t surprising really. She had been too young to store proper memories.

Nathalie Ramond put her hand to her face in a brief, protective gesture, then glanced around the room, as though looking for inspiration. Her eyes alighted on the scrapbook lying on the table. It was old, the cardboard cover peeling apart at the corners, the spine worn down to expose the threads that bound it. She lifted it onto her lap and, holding it part-closed to stop loose pages from escaping, she searched until she found the page she wanted. Carefully, she passed the book to Fay, who examined it. And caught her breath.

She knew the man in the photograph at once. He was a little older than he’d been in that honeymoon picture at her mother’s bedside. His hair was shorter, though curly, but the smile was the same – a broad, open smile, that you couldn’t help liking. He was sitting on a low brick wall and his attention was fully on the little girl whose arms he held as she balanced on the wall before him, looking out of the picture with a shy, uncertain wonder. The child had a mop of shoulder-length wavy hair with a ribbon tied into it. It was as dark as the man’s was fair, but Fay could still see the likeness between them. It was something about the child’s eyes, she thought, the fullness of the lips.

‘I’ve never before seen a picture of myself when I was little. My mother told me they’d all been lost when our house was bombed. It is me, isn’t it?’ she whispered, looking up at the older woman with an expression of rapture.

‘Of course it is. It was taken near the time of your mother’s accident. You were two years old, a sweet child.’ She gestured with her finger and thumb. ‘A tiny edition of your mother. Ah, you liked to sing to yourself. Such a pretty voice. That was before they took your father away. You were never quite the same after that.’

‘Took him away?’ Fay echoed, and felt a responding emptiness. She studied the photograph one more time before closing the album.

‘Early one morning in the middle of December, your father was arrested at your flat and sent with other American men to an internment camp in the North of France. Your mother was beside herself, and of course she was left in charge of you, alone and with a broken ankle. You were too young to know what was happening and the arrival of the police that morning must have been very frightening to a young child.’

‘I don’t remember it,’ Fay said, closing her eyes. Her mind refused to try.

‘It wasn’t for long he was gone, a matter of weeks. Your father’s employers made an official complaint. He was vital to the work of the hospital, a good doctor, no threat to anyone, what was the use of imprisoning him? He was freed soon after Christmas. The whole thing had been – how do you say? – sabre-rattling by the authorities. At the time they guessed nothing of your father’s activities.’

‘My mother must have been terrified out of her wits.’

‘She was. You must have sensed that also. The Gestapo, however, kept an eye on them after that. They both had to report each week to their local police station, and sometimes they’d receive a visit from a Gestapo officer. His name was Obersturmführer Hoff. I remember your mother hated him even then. He was very correct in his manner, with eyes of such pale blue they were almost colourless. He would ask about their movements in great detail and examine their papers. She told me she was terrified of saying the wrong thing. She felt like a hunted animal that is tempted to give itself up. When he’d gone, your poor mother would be left literally shaking.

‘What with all this and the viciously cold winter that followed, when there was hardly any electricity or fuel and it was increasingly difficult to get food, how could you not be affected?’

‘By the early summer of 1942,’ Mme Ramond said, ‘instead of feeling relief after the terrible deprivations of the winter, life for Parisians became even more challenging.’

The war was not going Germany’s way. Their forces were engaged on too many fronts and their winter campaign in Russia had sucked up men, supplies and, crucially, morale.

In Paris, the Nazis were enraged by the activities of the Resistance, who were becoming increasingly sophisticated in their mission to make the enemy’s job more difficult. Hitler’s response was to clamp down hard. He gave the policing of the Occupied Zone into the hands of a man with a reputation for complete ruthlessness. His name was Major-General Carl Oberg, and he was a member of the Nazi Party’s security agency, the SD – the
Sicherheitsdienst
. In appearance he was like a cartoon evil Nazi, with a shaved head, rimless glasses and a fanatical expression. He was obsessed with two aims: to pack as many Jews as possible into trains to Poland, where they would be put to death, and to crush the French Resistance. His horrifying brutality was to earn him the nickname ‘The Butcher of Paris’.

Kitty and Gene sensed the change of mood immediately. New regulations were issued thick and fast. One morning at the beginning of June, when Kitty ventured outside she saw that new posters had been pasted on the hoardings at the end of the street. Instead of crowding round them as was the usual habit, however, people averted their eyes and hurried past. Kitty saw the word
Juif
and stopped to look, reading with a sense of increasing revulsion. All Jews, the posters said, were to wear the
étoile jaune
, the yellow Star of David, sewn onto their outer garments. They were forbidden to enter a variety of public places: libraries, swimming pools, restaurants, parks – the list went on. As she stood there, trying to come to terms with the reality of it, she heard an all-too-familiar sound, the regular tramp of hobnail boots, a voice barking ‘
Eins, zwei, drei!
’ She turned away as the patrol marched by.

That same day, she began to notice people in the street wearing yellow stars, shamed, cowed figures, branded for all to see. Her spirits lifted slightly at the sight of one angry-eyed man walking tall, wearing a row of military medals next to his star. A French youth spat on the ground as the Jew went by, but his older companion cuffed the boy’s arm, saying, ‘What are you doing? He fought for France, you fool. He is one of us.’

It happened late one morning a few days afterwards. Kitty returned from shopping with Fay to find an unmarked, matte-grey van parked outside their apartment block. Its back doors were open and the driver, a uniformed policeman, was pacing about smoking. He nodded to Kitty and closed one of the doors so she could get the pram past on the narrow pavement, but as she manoeuvred it into the lobby and unclipped Fay’s harness, she was filled with unease. The concierge was nowhere to be seen and in any case had stopped complaining about the pram, so she left it where it was and summoned the lift. She waited, but it didn’t come. It must be stuck somewhere. Her sense of unease grew.

‘We must take the stairs, sweetie, I’m afraid,’ she said to Fay. ‘See if you can count them.’ Fay’s little voice sang out, ‘One, two, one, two,’ as she climbed, clutching the iron railing.

At the second floor they paused to catch their breath. Up above, men’s voices could be heard, and odd thudding noises, echoing down the stairwell. These grew louder as mother and daughter resumed their climb. Halfway up the last flight, Kitty stopped. Whatever was happening, it was on their floor. Angry shadows leaped on the wall ahead. There came a muffled cry of pain and a roar of what sounded like ‘
Venez – vite!
’ then a door slammed and a tableau formed at the top of the stairs. Two policemen were dragging a man in a shabby black suit. It was Monsieur Klein. She caught a glimpse of his face. His spectacles were gone. He was deathly white and blood streaked his chin. Kitty gasped and drew Fay back into the shadows. After a moment she heard the lift grille clatter into place and then the whines and creaks of the machinery as the lift began to descend.

Fay had seen it all. ‘
Maman
,’ she whispered and buried her head in Kitty’s skirt. Kitty lowered her straw bag, hefted the child onto her hip and held her close. The bag toppled over and her shopping tumbled out.

Above, all was quiet now, so she abandoned the shopping, walked up the last few steps and peered into the corridor. Monsieur Klein’s door was closed. Something had been scribbled on it in white chalk, but before she could read what it said, she heard a sound and looked round. At the other end of the corridor a woman stood in an open doorway, her arms folded. When Kitty caught her eye, she retreated inside and closed her door without a word.

‘
M’sieur Zipper, maman?
’ Fay asked, twisting in her mother’s arms to face her.

Kitty did not answer. She was staring at Monsieur Klein’s door. The scrawled writing read
Sale Juif
. Dirty Jew.

‘I should have helped him,’ Kitty cried, throwing herself into her husband’s arms. She’d had difficulty getting Fay to sleep, the little girl was so agitated and afraid, but finally she’d fallen back exhausted in her cot, her long-lashed eyes closed, the hot tears drying on her flushed cheeks.

‘What could you have done, honey?’ Gene said, hugging her close. ‘You did all you could, keeping yourself and Fay out of sight.’

‘I don’t mean then,’ she wept. ‘I meant before. We should have seen what was coming.’

‘There was no indication of danger. Someone must have denounced him.’

‘But why? He was harmless. And kind, Gene, so kind.’

‘Life doesn’t work like that now. It must have been to someone’s advantage to get rid of him. We’ll probably never know.’

Kitty’s suspicions focused on the woman she had seen further down their corridor. A childless widow, she was the only inhabitant to have a mat outside her door for visitors to wipe their feet on. She also had a German lover who came by night. A dapper man, his soft footsteps could sometimes be heard padding down the corridor. Sometimes she’d smell his scented hair-oil in the lift in the mornings and know he’d been there.