A Week in Paris (39 page)

Only a few of the nuns knew about the men who came and went from it, and those who did were cautioned never to speak of the matter, even amongst themselves. Thérèse had to know because she prepared the food, and it usually fell to her to take it to them and fetch any small essentials that were required. She would wait for a quiet moment when there was no one around to ask questions, then tap on the door of the sitting room. If anyone did see her they might suppose that the tray she carried was for Mère Marie-François, although since the Reverend Mother normally ate in the dining room with the rest of the community, they might wonder.

A deep-seated, childlike part of Thérèse thrilled to the business of knocking on the false wall and opening the secret door. She was ashamed of these feelings, for the poor wretches the room concealed went in fear of their lives and she dared not think what retribution might be visited on the whole community if they were discovered. The men would usually come out to sit at the table in the scullery, and while they ate she would clean their room. Afterwards, they might go out into the courtyard to walk and feel the sun on their faces and to smoke. They could not smoke in their hiding place – it was one of so many ways in which they might have given themselves away if ever the convent were searched. The courtyard was not overlooked by other buildings and the curé could not bring himself to forbid them the respite. It seemed safe enough.

The British airman who was there when Serge arrived did not remain at the convent long, another three days maybe, and after that Serge was on his own in the room for several weeks before the Gestapo raid. He found solitary confinement testing and the loneliness got to him so dreadfully that Thérèse used to sit with him as he ate. Having had no company, he would talk too much, but she liked to listen and answered his eager questions about the world outside as best she could. She told him very little, in fact – that the bread today was greyish and gritty because that was all there was in the shop, that she’d visited Notre Dame that morning to pray because an errand had taken her past the West Door, that the stray cat she fed in the square had slipped into the convent and given birth to three kittens in the laundry cupboard. She didn’t tell him about the posters that had been pasted up in the Rue St-Jacques threatening death to
résistants
and their families, nor how she thought of him each time she saw a young man in the street wearing a yellow star.

Serge liked to hear about her life in the convent. Although his mother was Jewish he’d been brought up a Catholic, if he’d been brought up as anything, and could not imagine how the nuns endured so many church services. She tried hard to make him understand. The women were at peace here, she said. They felt secure while pursuing their duties. Sainte Cécile’s was not a closed order and their life was not without its pleasures. And this was true, or at least, she’d been happy with it before Serge came.

She told him about her upbringing. Nathalie Boulanger, as she had once been named, had been a tranquil child, always dutiful. Her elder sister, Louise, had been the tempestuous one who had upset their mother in particular, and it was in Nathalie’s nature to compensate for that. Shy, studious and musical – she had a lovely voice – Nathalie had not made friends easily in the raucous streets of the industrial suburb where they lived and where her father worked as a supervisor at the Renault factory, and this wasn’t helped by the priest at the school she attended marking her out as ‘spiritual’. When she was fourteen, he asked her parents whether she might have a calling to become a bride of Christ, and when they spoke to her about it the idea came to have a certain appeal. Being a nun would give her a position in life and a job to do, Nathalie thought, and it stopped her worrying about her lack of friends and her shyness with boys. Thereafter her mother and father spoke of her calling with pride, and so her future was sealed. It seemed that she wasn’t meant to marry and have children, she was to dedicate her life to God.

Louise married at eighteen, having been seduced by a young mechanic, and their parents breathed a sigh of relief. Their daughters were settled. Louise and her husband Gustave had gone on to have two little boys, and Nathalie had become Sister Thérèse. It was terrible that war had come and Gustave had been forced to go to Germany where his skills with vehicles were being put to use making tanks.

She explained all this to Serge hesitantly and over several mealtimes – the nuns were not encouraged to dwell on their past lives. He listened with interest and in return told her about his own childhood, and of the intense expectations his family had of him. Music was his passion and his parents had made real sacrifices to pay for his lessons and he’d felt he mustn’t disappoint them. And he worried about them now, for he’d had no news of them. Serge and Thérèse saw that though their upbringings had been quite different, in their strong sense of duty towards family they had something important in common.

Still, there were some things Thérèse kept to herself, even at confession. Some of the nuns taught young children at a school nearby, and Thérèse longed to do this too, but the Reverend Mother said that because she was the youngest and fittest her work should be the shopping and cooking and heavy housework. She’d always been obedient to this, and by and large enjoyed it. Shopping, for instance, took her out of the convent and meant she could listen to people talk and learn what was going on.

Recently, however, she’d lost her sense of contentment. She’d seen the cherry tree in the front courtyard blossom in the spring, then the dark green leaves come and the fruit form and swell, and knew that when the leaves reddened and died she would be here still, serving the other nuns and growing older. On the rare, precious occasions that she was allowed to visit her sister and the little boys, she was always left with a sense of wistfulness that there was something she’d missed.

She did not speak to Serge about any of this, but it stole up on her bit by bit that she was dissatisfied with her life and that these shared few minutes with him were what she looked forward to most in her days. She admired his passion for his music, and understood his unhappiness at being cut off from it. He spoke bitterly of the situation he was in, how unfair he felt it was that he’d been labelled a collaborator by the teacher he revered, how he suspected that his supposed friend Mrs van Haren had betrayed him, although conceded that perhaps she hadn’t meant to.

What an odd pair they were, the young musician and the nun. Each felt trapped in a different way by their situation. As they sat together at the worn table in the scullery, or on a bench outside in the sunshine, she found herself noticing things about him as she’d never done with any boy at school – the sharp planes of his face, the gloss of his black hair and his fine dark eyes. There was an unhappiness in him, a deep unhappiness born of frustrated ambition and loneliness, but she saw sweetness, too, and vulnerability, and longed to be able to comfort him. She brought him paper, so he could write music, and gave him an old book of Psalms from the church, with which he amused himself, inventing harmonies that they sang together softly, their voices intertwining.

‘All this went on for several weeks, but everything changed completely the day your father died,’ Mme Ramond said. ‘The whole community was in shock. Such brutality happening in our midst, in our very church – it was inconceivable. Many of us had known Eugene and liked him and, of course, we worried about your poor mother. And you, Fay – we had to look after you. It was a simply dreadful time.’

She passed her hand briefly across her eyes as though trying to shield herself from her memories and said, ‘I am not certain what to tell you next.’

‘My mother, surely. What happened to her?’

‘Yes, of course, your mother,’ Mme Ramond sighed. ‘It’s difficult to tell things in the right order. The following day, the curé went to Gestapo headquarters to ask after her, but they sent him away with the usual official language that told him nothing at all. It was some weeks before we heard anything definite. In late September there was another round-up of enemy aliens, this time mostly of American women. Kitty was lucky. They released her from prison, but sent her to an internment camp.’

‘Lucky!’ Fay broke in. ‘In what way was she lucky?’

Mme Ramond examined her with narrowed eyes and a humourless smile. ‘Because think what they
could
have done with her – if they’d decided she was guilty of something. She’d hidden her husband from them. Suppose they had accused her of collusion in his activities?’

‘If they’d found Serge, I suppose,’ Fay said, still confused.

‘Exactly. Or if the Gestapo had known about John Stone hiding in their flat. I suppose we’ll never find out what they knew and why they didn’t charge her. So yes, she
was
lucky. They only locked her up in a camp with other enemy aliens. I say only, but for her that was suffering enough. Because she was separated from you.’

Mme Ramond’s voice was gentle and when Fay studied her face she found in it only compassion.

‘What happened to me?’ Fay asked, but a part of her already knew. There were pictures that were coming into focus more clearly in her mind. Walking her toy zebra on a windowsill, being carried by a woman in a black dress, feeling the rough material against her cheek. She glanced at her left hand where there was a tiny scar on a knuckle, and she remembered her pain and distress after a white cat scratched her because she’d tried to play with its kittens.

‘You stayed with us in the convent, of course. Do you really remember nothing?’

‘I recall a little,’ Fay admitted, ‘but not much. It’s . . . well, it’s as if my mind won’t go there. There’s . . . a kind of emptiness.’ Yes, that word felt right. Or numbness, that was better.

‘You missed your parents so much, you poor child,’ Mme Ramond said. ‘I tried my best with you, so did Sofie’s mother, but we could see you withdraw into yourself. It was so sad. For a long time you would ask where they were. It was the Reverend Mother who explained to you that your father was dead. I don’t know if you really knew what that meant, except after that you stopped asking about him. We were at a loss as to what to tell you about your mother. We wanted to protect you, to keep you safe.’

And Fay remembered. ‘“She’s had to go away for a while.” That’s what you said, wasn’t it? “She’s gone away, but she’ll be back.”’

Mme Ramond nodded. ‘How could we get a child of three to understand about a war and an internment camp, about prison and barbed wire?’

‘Gone away,’ Fay echoed. ‘Those are dreadful words to a child. My mother had never gone away before. But something awful had happened and I didn’t know what, only that it was my fault that she’d gone. My fault.’

She looked at Nathalie Ramond and was surprised to see that the colour had drained from her face. ‘Your fault? Why should you think that?’ the woman whispered.

‘I don’t know, I just do.’

‘I don’t understand why you should think it your fault that your mother went away. There was a war on. Many children were separated from their parents, but they didn’t blame themselves.’

‘I think they did sometimes,’ Fay said carefully, still puzzled by Mme Ramond’s defensiveness, ‘because nobody explained to them.’

‘What good would explaining do? Children should be protected from the adult world.’

‘Is that why my mother told me nothing of all this?’

Mme Ramond stroked the knotted knuckles of her hands. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to ask her.’

It was the stern and evasive way she spoke that upset Fay and made her remember her mother’s letter.
Don’t believe everything she tells you. It was because of her I nearly lost you
. She had to ask, she really did.

‘Madame Ramond, what happened between you and my mother?’

The hands grew still. Mme Ramond closed her eyes briefly, then she said in the faintest of voices, ‘You must let me continue. The story is not told. Please let me do it my way, then maybe you will understand.’

Fay could see that she’d upset the older woman. ‘Of course,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’

It was as though Nathalie Ramond had not heard her. Her gaze was far away. Finally, with effort, she spoke.

‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘we would hear from your mother, but not often. And Mère Marie-François would never allow the letters to be shown to you. She feared they would make you unhappy, you see, and of course you could not read in either English or French.’

‘Which did she write in?’ Fay couldn’t help interrupting.

‘Oh, English, but the Reverend Mother could read English and would translate for us. The letters were always short. I think there was a great deal that your mother was not allowed to say. Perhaps writing was difficult for her, too. She would mostly write platitudes, that she was being treated well and that there was a great deal to keep them busy there. Oh, and there was good news. Miss Dunne was there, safe and well. And, of course, she asked after you.’

And apparently no one had told Fay this
. She supposed Mère Marie-François had thought she was being kind. Perhaps it was the way that she’d been brought up herself, with the understanding that the less children knew of sad things, the better. Yet she was sure that she’d have wanted to know what her mother had written to her, to have been told that she missed her daughter, even if it had made Fay distressed. A great sadness broke out in her now to think of all those missed chances.

‘You shared a bedroom with Sofie for several months,’ Mme Ramond said, ‘but then something happened, one of the few good things in that terrible time. Sofie’s mother heard from the Red Cross that they’d been contacted by her husband, who was looking for them! He’d survived! After the family had become separated from him he’d been gravely wounded by enemy fire, but had been looked after by a Belgian family and had eventually recovered. He had been trying to find them for some time, but all his attempts had failed. Until now. Sofie’s mother took the children and went at once to meet him near Rouen where he was living, and they simply never came back. She wrote to us from time to time and though they were experiencing many difficulties she sounded happy. We did not ever see them again, and we missed them.’