A Week in Paris (40 page)

‘I don’t remember Sofie properly, but I’m glad that she found her father.’

‘You were close. She was like an elder sister to you, and when she and her brothers went away you could not be comforted. I did my best, but as I say, it was a time of great unhappiness for all of us.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I had my own private sorrow that I confessed to no one. After the Gestapo raid, the curé decided it was too much of a risk to hide Serge and Dr Poulon on the premises. We would be under surveillance, you see. Dr Poulon left during the first night. I don’t know what happened to him, whether he survived. We were told nothing; it was safer that way for all of us. Then nobody could put anyone else in danger if questioned. And Serge . . . I wouldn’t have known what had happened to him if he hadn’t told me. Neither the curé nor Mère Marie-François said a word. It was All Saints Day when I took him his lunch – I knew at once that something was wrong. He appeared agitated, and when I set down the tray, instead of sitting down to eat, he came and took my hands . . .’

Nathalie Ramond closed her eyes and turned up her palms and an expression of great tenderness passed over her face. ‘And he said, very gently, “I have something to tell you,” and his eyes were fixed on mine. “They’re moving me tonight, Nathalie,” he said.
Nathalie
. He’d never called me that before, but later I discovered that was how he thought of me, as Nathalie, not Sister Thérèse. I didn’t correct him, I was too stunned and upset. “I’m frightened,” he whispered.

‘“Oh don’t be, don’t,” I told him. One of us had to be strong and he needed my strength, for it was his life that was in danger. “Do you know where you’re going?” I asked him, but he didn’t and so he couldn’t tell me. He was leaving, I knew not for where nor whether I’d ever see him again, but there was nothing else to be done but for me to accept it. Just as I’d accepted all the other things that had happened in my life, which had always been directed by others. “I shall pray for you,” I told him, but he said nothing to that, just continued to hold my hands and to look at me, his face tender and expectant.

‘Then, “Nathalie,” he said again, only that, and I could not tear my eyes from him. He leaned forward suddenly and pressed his lips against my forehead. “When all this is over,” he said, “I shall come and see you again.”

‘“You must not,” I tried to say, but my heart was breaking and the words came out as a sob and I snatched my hands away. I don’t know what else we might have said or done had not the curé arrived at that moment to speak to Serge about arrangements. We sprang apart, but the old man was so distracted by worry himself, anxious that Serge be gone, that he did not notice anything amiss.

‘“I must speak with Monsieur Ramond now, Thérèse,” was all he said, dismissing me.

‘“Goodbye,’” I said to Serge. “May God go with you.” It was hard to keep my voice even, but somehow I managed it. Then I left the two of them together.

‘Serge left during the night, so quietly I did not hear him go, though my sleep was full of dreams of doors opening and closing, of voices calling for help. It was the last I saw of him for a very long time.’

Mme Ramond paused and her face was grave. Fay waited, not liking to interrupt. When the older woman spoke again it was as though she was speaking from somewhere deep in the past, unaware of Fay’s presence in the room.

‘For a long period after he went, I was miserable, utterly miserable. For the first time in my life, you see, I had fallen in love. Though I denied it to myself, of course. Such a thing was terrible for a nun. I simply told myself that I missed a friend and was worried for his safety. But as time passed I still could not sleep or eat much, and all I could think about was him and how happy I’d felt when I was with him. I knew it was wrong, but that happiness had seemed so wonderful I couldn’t think why it should be thought wrong. I became very confused. There was no one I felt I could speak to. I stopped taking the sacrament or going to confession, but for a while no one seemed bothered. We were in a state of such shock and confusion that my behaviour seemed no odder than anyone else’s.

‘As the weeks passed, the pain of separation grew less sharp, though I often thought about Serge. I wondered where he’d gone, but I don’t think even the curé knew for sure, or so he said when I asked him. A safe house not far away, was all he said, and so I comforted myself by imagining it: an upstairs room, maybe, an attic with a sunny window, and he’d have books to read, even if he couldn’t play his music.

‘And then one day, I took you out for a walk, Fay. The Jardin du Luxembourg wasn’t very far from the convent, and the shortest route took us down a narrow residential street where we heard the sound of loud piano music coming from an open window high above. I remember stopping in amazement to listen to the river of notes flowing out into the air, the brave passion of the playing. Although it was mid-morning, there was hardly anyone else about and we listened for a couple of minutes before the playing stopped abruptly and someone closed the window. Do you remember any of this?’

Fay shook her head.

‘I felt transformed with joy hearing that music. I got it into my head that it must be Serge, and after that I often used to take you that way. But I was always disappointed. I never heard the music again, yet I was sure that it had been him and it helped me to walk under that window and feel close to him.’

‘And was it him?’

‘No.’ For the first time for a long while, Nathalie Ramond smiled. ‘It turned out that he’d been taken to a house in the suburbs, nowhere close at all. It had been someone else altogether playing that day. But I always bless whoever it was, because it gave me something to latch onto, some kind of hope.

‘The other thing that helped me was you, Fay. You were only three, a lonely child and quiet, very different to how you had been. You rarely smiled and there was a tentativeness about you that I would have worried about if I hadn’t been so distracted by my own unhappiness. Still, helping Sofie’s mother care for you gave me pleasure, and when the family left, it was June of 1943, you became my responsibility and that was very good for us both.

‘But all that time, beneath the daily routines, the endurance, the waiting, I was changing. I was no longer the dutiful young girl who had done what was expected of her all her life. The routines of the convent were no longer enough for me. I still believed in God and tried to serve Him. I still liked the convent. The other nuns were mostly kind. Many of them I loved. But I did not feel as I once had, that I belonged there for ever. Loving Serge had opened my eyes to other possibilities. Those things I had believed did not interest me – a husband, children – I came to realize I wanted desperately. For the moment though, I had no courage to do anything but carry on as I had been. There was you to look after, and I could not leave you. And where would I go, anyway? My parents would be ashamed if I left the order and went home, and anyway, I did not know for certain that it was possible to be released from my vows.

‘Winter passed. The cherry tree blossomed again in the spring, but the daily routine became no easier. The search for food, the confusion of new regulations, the harshness of repression. Twice more the Gestapo visited us and the convent was searched, but after the second time they mostly left us alone. I could not get enough for us all to eat and some of what we did have the Reverend Mother made us give away. There were so many people in Paris with greater needs than us, you see. You had to be fed, Fay, and the children in the school, and then there were people who came to the convent seeking charity, desperate cases, some of them. We could not help them all.

‘During February, Sister Clare developed pneumonia and died. Sister Philippe passed away not long after – she was found dead in her bed one morning, poor soul. Both were elderly, and the extreme cold and lack of nourishment had weakened their systems. It was I who prepared Sister Philippe’s body for burial. I tell you, she was so light, hardly more than skin and bones.

‘Somehow the rest of us kept going, and news about the progress of the war brightened our spirits. I was like a magpie, bringing home small scraps of gossip from the shops, or the curé would tell us things. We began to hope – yes, hope. It was a long time since we’d had much of that.

‘It was in early 1944, before blossom time, that I went to the Reverend Mother and asked how I could be released from my vows. To my relief, she did not seem surprised and dealt with me kindly. She said she’d noticed how in all sorts of small ways I’d become more distant. I hadn’t been aware of this, but now I recognized what she meant. I had not often gone to confession, for fear I’d blurt out my secret about Serge, and I’d been wrapped up in myself, less open, less easy to read. It wasn’t that I did not wish to serve God any more, I promised her, but that I felt I’d changed somehow and that my future life lay beyond the convent. We agreed that I should think about it further, and if I still felt the same she would speak to the curé and they would see what could be done. After this conversation I felt much better. I did what she said and brooded deeply, but did not change my mind. Even if Serge never came back, I felt that I must leave. When the curé spoke to me in May, it was agreed that when France was free – and we had reason to believe that this would not be long coming – I would seek to leave Sainte Cécile’s.

‘You can imagine the excitement when, in June, came the news that the Allies had invaded Normandy. For me the joy was mixed with anxiety. What would I do with myself when I left the convent? And another very important question: what would happen to you, Fay?’

Mme Ramond sighed and Fay looked up to see her studying her with a tender look. ‘Perhaps we should have some tea,’ the woman suggested.

‘I’ll come and help you,’ Fay said, getting up, glad to leave the past for a moment. As she followed Mme Ramond to the kitchen, she saw how heavily she leaned on her stick and it was difficult not to feel sorry for her. Yet she sensed the woman’s pride, that she did not want Fay’s pity. Indeed, she would not let her make the tea, but insisted on pouring the boiling water herself and fetching the milk from the fridge, only accepting her offer to carry the tray, rather than using the small trolley she kept for the purpose.

When they were settled once more, Mme Ramond sipped her tea and warmed her hands on the cup, but it appeared difficult for her to continue her tale. Finally she said, ‘I hope that you will listen to everything I have to say. I must not rush, because every detail is important and I need to make you understand. Your mother does not know all of this. She only knows her side of the story. She never wanted to listen to mine.’

‘Of course I’ll listen,’ Fay said, wary, ‘but I wish I could remember more. Then it might seem real to me.’

‘I need to tell you about a decision I made,’ Mme Ramond said carefully. ‘At the time it seemed the right choice to make. But your mother has never forgiven me for it.’

August 1942

The cell in the prison in the Avenue Foch was long and narrow, and tapered inward at the window end, which made Kitty feel as if the walls were closing in. It contained a straw mattress, a wooden chair and a bucket. If she stood on the chair, it wobbled, but she could see out of the tiny barred window. It looked out onto the end of a brown brick building and a patch of sky, which was the only part of her surroundings that varied. She must have been on a side of the building that lay in shadow, for there was never any sun.

Not that she cared much, in those terrible long weeks, whether the sun shone or not. She just wanted to be assured that the world outside this cell still existed. It helped her to remember that she wasn’t alone.

After they brought her to this prison, handing her down roughly from the van, she was taken to an interrogation room where Obersturmführer Hoff questioned her for several hours in his clipped English. What had Gene been doing at the convent? Where was the airman he was hiding? Who else had he helped get away? Who else from the hospital was involved? To most of these questions she could answer truthfully, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know.’ Her husband had done well in protecting her. At one point she burst out, ‘Why are you asking me these things? My husband told me nothing. Nothing.’

‘Why were you hiding your husband then if you believed he’d done nothing wrong,’ the man shot back. His colourless eyes betrayed no warmth, no guilt, and she hated him.

‘Because he told me to. He’s my husband.’
Was
. ‘Why did you kill him? He wasn’t armed. He’d done nothing to you.’

‘He resisted arrest. But it is I who ask the questions.’

He asked them again and she gave him the same answers. We’re going round in circles, she thought and her attention roamed. A scene played over and over in her mind. It was of Hoff disappearing down into the crypt, his shout and the volley of gunfire that followed. Gene. She had not been allowed to see his body. They’d denied her even that.

‘Where is Dr Poulon hiding?’

‘Where have you taken my husband?’ she asked.

‘Answer my question, please,’ he said, but his hand, placing a cigarette between his thin lips, trembled slightly and she saw it. Even a man like this, with a cruel mouth and eyes like chips of grey metal, could be weak sometimes, and despite her misery the thought satisfied.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said, folding her arms and staring at him. She was beginning to think that he didn’t know much about the whole thing either. He’d suggested no names of Allied airmen, no specific incidents, there was nothing he could connect her with. He was casting about in the dark.

He switched the direction of his questioning to the convent and its inhabitants. Why had she been there? ‘It was my home when I first came to Paris. The nuns are my friends.’ Who were they hiding? ‘Nobody.’ But now she was frightened. Fay. Did they care that Fay was still there in the convent and that the child was her daughter? They must do, surely. She remembered Fay’s face, pale in the dimness of the church, her cry of anguish that made Kitty give up all hope, the last glimpse of her shadowy form through the window, one childish palm pressed against the glass, before they shoved Kitty into the van. That face and Fay’s cry were to haunt her for many nights yet, more nights than she’d known she could ever endure.