A Week in Paris (32 page)

Whilst Serge fetched his case, she snatched up her handbag, a few things for Fay, then scribbled a note for Gene that gave nothing away. She had an idea. All the while she was thinking, working it out.

Reaching the back stairs meant passing the nosy woman’s apartment. Kitty signalled silence to Fay and scooped the child up into her arms. They passed the door with the mat and Serge held open the door to the staircase and shut it behind them with a small sound that echoed its way down the narrow stair. This they descended and unlocked the heavy door at the bottom. Outside, they found themselves in a back yard shadowed by a high brick wall and lined with a row of dustbins. Kitty checked, but there was no one else about. They turned left and walked quickly down the path that skirted the back of the building, dodging right along another, eventually emerging onto a quiet back street. She knew at once where they were when she noticed the little piano shop that she used to visit.

‘Where are we going?’ Serge whispered to her, looking bewildered. Fay was whimpering and wanting to get down, but Kitty wouldn’t let her.

‘The convent,’ she said, and registered his surprise. ‘It’s the only place I can think of and it will only be for a short time. We must travel separately though. I can’t risk it with Fay.’

Serge looked so tragic that a pair of passing French policemen looked at them curiously, so Kitty leaned forward and kissed Serge on the mouth, saying loudly to Fay in French, ‘Say goodbye to Papa, he’s going to work,’ and waved Fay’s hand for her while the child was astonished into silence. ‘Rue St-Jacques, the bookshop by the Métro,’ she hissed to Serge when the policemen showed their backs. She gave him a little push and watched him set off down the pavement in a stiff wooden gait that in her anxiety she convinced herself would attract suspicion.

‘He’s not my papa,’ Fay said.

‘Shh, Fay, we’re playing a little game,’ Kitty said as they walked in the other direction to catch the Métro further along the line.

Fay liked games, though she didn’t know the rules of this one. She clutched her wooden zebra and snuggled into her mother’s shoulder.

The Métro was crowded. There were empty seats next to a pair of German soldiers who were talking and laughing together, but people chose to stand rather than take them. An elderly Frenchman in a pristine old-fashioned suit insisted on Kitty having his seat and she spent the journey with Fay held tightly on her lap, expecting at any moment that the soldiers would turn and see her and arrest her. However, when the doors slid open at St-Michel-Notre-Dame they got off unnoticed.

Fay insisted on walking up the steps herself, so by the time they reached the barrier, Kitty’s nerves were in shreds. She looked about for the bookshop, thinking at first it had gone, then realizing it was in fact several shops down from the Métro, not right next to it as she’d thought. To her consternation, some of the books in the window were in German, but she entered anyway, leading Fay by the hand and nodding at the middle-aged woman behind the counter who was thumbing through a sheaf of invoices. A quick glance about confirmed Serge’s absence.

‘Are there children’s books upstairs?’ she asked the woman, who nodded, but before she could move to the staircase the door opened and the bulky silhouette of a Gestapo officer filled the entrance.

Kitty gave a little gasp and gaped at him, but he merely inclined his head politely and turned to ask the shopkeeper in heavily accented French about a book he had ordered, so she recovered herself and carried Fay up the stairs. At the top she almost bumped into an agitated Serge. Wordlessly, she steered him round the corner of a bookshelf where they conversed in urgent whispers as Fay sat on the floor exploring a picture book and the officer’s deep voice rumbled up from downstairs.

After a minute or two, they heard the man leave the shop. Kitty managed to separate Fay from the picture book and carried her complaining downstairs, leaving Serge behind. ‘They are nice, but expensive,’ she said to the woman, who shrugged and did not return her goodbye.

Outside, as she waited to cross the road, Fay in her arms, she looked all about but could see nothing to worry her, no sign of the Gestapo man, nor anyone watching. A soldier seemingly on duty outside the Métro was flirting with a plump nurse.

She waited for a grey van to pass before crossing the road, looked around once more and set off down the street that led to Sainte Cécile’s Church and the convent. Just before the bookshop became hidden from view, she glimpsed the door open and Serge step out. She watched him saunter to the kerb in her wake. Good. But now, as they came to the tiny alley that led to the convent, different worries took over. What was she to say to the nuns? They’d looked after refugees, but could she persuade them to risk their lives by hiding a Jew, a man whose very religion they might abhor?

Some instinct told her they would. Anyway, there was nothing else she could do now. She hurried down the alley with Fay, her chin set with determination.

The convent was as it ever was, the small square empty and baking in the afternoon sun, the cherry tree in full leaf, the row of pots tended by the Sisters blooming with tiger lilies and jasmine. It immediately made Kitty feel safe and cared for, this refuge from the world, as it had on her first day in Paris. Fay was struggling so Kitty put her down and with a cry of joy she ran to push open the gate. Kitty waited until, a moment later, the nervous figure of Serge emerged from the shadows of the alley.

‘No one saw me, I’m sure,’ he told her, glancing behind him. ‘Is this the place?’ He looked up at the building, a doubtful expression on his face.

‘Yes. Don’t worry,’ Kitty replied, understanding his anxiety. ‘The nuns are friends.’

It was one of the older nuns, Sister Clare, who opened the door, peering over her wire spectacles in surprise at the three figures on the doorstep, but she ushered them in, closed the door and bolted it. ‘They’re all in the sitting room,’ Sister Clare said, smiling down at Fay.

She went and knocked on the closed door to Mère Marie-François’s small sitting room, listened, then pushed it open. Kitty walked in then stopped, struck with amazement.

There were three people in the room: the Reverend Mother and the curé, Père Paul, both seated. Coming forward to meet them, looking as astonished as his wife, was Gene.

Fay ran to him and her father swept her up into his arms. ‘What happened?’ he asked Serge and Kitty in urgent tones.

‘Oh, Gene, it was Lili.’ Serge was introduced and in a few brief sentences Kitty told Gene of her belief that their apartment was being watched, about Serge’s letter and Lili’s suspicious behaviour. ‘I couldn’t think where else we could go,’ she said, appealing to Mère Marie-François, who inclined her head, as serene as always. ‘And here you are, Gene, and . . .’

‘Come and sit down. You are very welcome,’ Mère Marie-François said to Serge, and, addressing the older nun, ‘Sister, perhaps you would take the little girl for Thérèse to amuse, then bring us all some of that disgusting stuff they call coffee these days.’

‘Yes, Mother.’

Sister Clare held out her hand, but Fay shook her head until Kitty said, cajoling, ‘Go with Sister Clare, sweetheart – maybe Sofie will be there,’ and the mention of the little Belgian girl was enough to make Fay change her mind. As she reached the door she looked back, clutching her zebra, and sent her mother the brightest of smiles.

‘
Un petit ange
,’ the curé murmured, rising to his feet. ‘Bless the child.’ Then with a kindly gesture, he said to Serge, ‘Come with me now, monsieur, and we’ll get you settled,’ and he unlocked a door at the back of the room which Kitty had never been through before.

‘Stay here, honey,’ Gene told her. ‘He’ll be all right.’

‘I should like to go with him.’

Seeing the stubborn expression on her face, Gene shrugged. He picked up Serge’s worn case and they followed the curé into a lobby which led to a utility room with a sink and a boiler that stood idle and silent. The curé pushed aside an old coat hanging on a nail and hooked his finger into a crevice in the wall behind. The wall hinged open – it was made of some light material – and behind was revealed a dimly lit room furnished with a pair of bunks and a table and chair. On the bottom bunk a figure sat up and a dark-stubbled face peered up at them in bleary confusion.

‘Serge Ramond, this is Squadron Leader George Craven,’ Gene said. ‘George,’ he added in English, ‘you have a pal for a few days. Don’t worry, we’ll get you both out of here soon.’

Serge and the pilot nodded to one another, then Serge shook hands with Gene and Kitty and thanked them, his brown eyes filled with anxiety, before the curé closed the gap in the wall once more.

Kitty’s mind was struggling to keep up. She’d hoped that in leaving Serge she’d feel the lifting of a burden, that someone else would be responsible for him now and keep him safe. Instead, with the appearance of the British pilot a whole new area of anxiety had opened up. They trooped back into the sitting room where the Mother Superior still waited.

‘We will look after them,’ Mère Marie-François assured them as the curé relocked the door, ‘with God’s help. Now, what can Sister Clare be doing?’ She went out to see.

‘How long have you been bringing people here, Gene?’ Kitty asked, her voice low and trembling. She felt betrayed. The convent was her special place, but all the time the curé and the Reverend Mother had been colluding with Gene and it didn’t feel like her safe place any more.

‘I dared not tell you,’ he said. His voice sounded calm, but there was a catch in it.

It was difficult to think straight. Her feet seemed to give way under her and she sank onto the hard settee. Despite Gene’s prevarications she had tried to kid herself that the rescue of the Welsh boy and Flight Lieutenant Stone had been isolated incidents. Now she was thoroughly disabused. It was clear that by treating and rescuing Allied servicemen, Gene was putting himself in constant danger. Gene had been trying to protect her by telling her nothing and she’d been happy not to know. Now, though, she glimpsed how lonely Gene must have been and felt guilty for her deliberate blindness – for she’d not been able to support him.

‘Are you all right, honey?’ he asked, coming to sit by her and taking her hand. She shook her head.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve been doing so much to save people and I’ve been no help at all to you.’

‘Of course you have,’ he said, his voice low, but full of passion. ‘Coming home to you and Fay is what I love best. You are my haven, Kitty. You know that.’ He smoothed back her hair and kissed her and she clung to him.

‘What do we do now?’ she said. ‘Maybe our flat has been searched. Surely we can’t return home?’

‘I think we have to. It would look wrong if we didn’t, do you understand?’

‘What happens if they’re waiting for us?’

But no one was. The flat was as she’d left it. There was no sign of forced entry, and nothing had been disturbed. And yet . . . As she walked through the rooms she caught the very faint scent of a strange tobacco, and some of the items in her chest of drawers appeared to have been rearranged.

‘I haven’t noticed anything,’ Gene told her.

‘Gene, I’m not a child. Don’t talk to me as though I were.’

‘I’m only trying to reassure you.’

They were both of them on edge though, over the following few weeks. Kitty, who’d expected to feel relief that Serge had gone and they were safe, felt quite the opposite.

The end of July and the beginning of August were days of oppressive heat. It made no difference if the windows were open or closed, people wilted. A silence descended over the streets. Kitty shopped early in the morning and she and Fay sweltered in the flat until late afternoon when the sun grew less merciless and they’d venture out. She avoided the park where they used to go in case they saw Lili. Sometimes she wondered whether she’d imagined Lili’s odd behaviour, but in the middle of the night she took the opposite view. Lili had come to the flat, something she’d never done before, and alone. Serge said she’d trespassed into the bedroom where he was hiding. She must have done this while Kitty was in the kitchen fetching the glass of water for her. Kitty was curious to discover whether Lili had found out any more about Jean-Pierre, her husband. Perhaps someone was using the situation to put pressure on Lili? She didn’t confide in Gene about this. He’d have said Kitty’s imagination was running away with her.

Still, she avoided the possibility of seeing Lili just in case. And when she entered or left the flat with Fay she always hurried, in case her neighbour down the corridor was watching. A French couple moved into Monsieur Zipper’s flat next door. They looked ordinary enough and nodded to Kitty in a friendly manner if they met each other going out or coming in, but Kitty was as unwilling to chat as they seemed to be. It was safer that way.

And so the weeks passed and she grew used to the tension so that it supported her, propelled her through the days. Her job was to watch over Fay and Gene, to keep them close. Fear made her do this job well. She could never be off her guard.

She tried not to think about Serge, shut in that cell-like room at the back of the convent, with little daylight, cut off from his beloved music. She quizzed Gene about the British man with him until he told her that he had been moved on in his dangerous journey home, but there might be others to take his place. Maybe, she imagined, Serge was allowed out sometimes, to sit in the quiet back courtyard or to play the piano in the church. She hoped so, or his place of safety would be to him a cruel prison. Awareness of his suffering made her realize how much she cared about him. He could be prickly with her, but there was something vulnerable about him that roused her sympathy, and she felt a deep connection to him because of that time when they’d both been lonely newcomers to Paris, and in their shared passion for music.

Towards the end of August the weather became cooler, and one afternoon Kitty set out with Fay to visit her old piano teacher Monsieur Deschamps. She hadn’t practised the Beethoven he’d given her as much as she’d hoped, but she remembered his complaint of being ill and felt guilty for not going before. To tell the truth, his bitterness over what he saw as Serge’s treachery had kept her away. She felt a certain loyalty to Serge and could not of course tell the old man about what had happened to him. She could not tell anyone. She sent a note to her teacher, but received no answer. This worried her and she became determined to visit him. He might after all be unwell again.