A Week in Paris (49 page)

‘Have you really, darling?’ Her mother appeared troubled. ‘You were never able to tell me anything about what happened. I believed that you’d blocked it out along with everything else.’

‘It came to me in a sort of dream the other night, but when I woke I found I did remember bits. At least, I think I did. There was a woman called Cynthia who looked after me. At some point I stayed in a house overlooking the sea. I didn’t feel unhappy exactly in the dream, just very alone. There was a boy who taught me how to hold a violin and draw the bow across the strings. I remember how happy I was when I made it sound.’

‘I didn’t know that. How curious – that you became a violinist. You were nearly five in the summer of 1944, and most successful violinists begin that young.’

‘I’d forgotten all about it, but now my memory has started to come back. I remember the ship, how gigantic it was. What I don’t remember is what happened after we reached England. I can’t seem to link everything up. There was a man with very bushy eyebrows, I know that much because I was frightened of those eyebrows.’

‘I know who he was, Fay!’ her mother cried. ‘He was in the harbourmaster’s office at Southampton – the first person I found in England who remembered seeing you!’

‘How did you find me? What happened when you arrived back at Vittel and found that I’d gone?’

‘It was an awful shock. Frankly, I wanted to kill Thérèse. She scurried back to Paris. It was the doctor at the camp who helped me. He went to see the camp Kommandant and managed to put me on a train for Portugal the following day. It was the most appalling journey.’

Kitty paused to collect her thoughts, then went on. ‘The train stopped altogether at Lyon and there wasn’t another one for days because of the fighting. After that there was a hold-up just before the Spanish border. I was the only English person on the train and a German soldier who was checking everyone’s papers insisted mine weren’t in order. I think he had some grudge towards the English. He kept talking about how an English soldier – well, “swine” was the word he used – had “murdered” his brother. I was still on your father’s passport and there was some confusion as to whether I was English or American, and the ghastly man decided to make something of it. So there I was, tearing my hair out in a police cell at this little border town whilst they decided what to do with me. Finally they received instructions from someone further up and let me get on a train. But it was too late to catch you, far too late. By the time I reached Lisbon the
Marina
was a distant dot on the horizon.’

‘How did you find out I was on it?’

‘When I arrived at Lisbon I went straight to the British Embassy and besieged them with questions. Eventually they found a Major York, who told me he’d put you on board the boat himself. It had been on its way back from Egypt, he said. After that I didn’t know what to do. He said the Wren he’d put in charge of you was expected to hand you to the local authorities at Southampton. It’s difficult to explain what a muddle everything was. There were so many displaced people trying to get home, he was pulled every which way. He promised to try to get someone to radio the ship about you, but who knows whether this happened and if anything resulted from it.

‘I was put on a Swedish cargo ship that was going home via Liverpool. I can remember a week later a fellow passenger pointing out the coast of Cornwall, and feeling I would die of frustration because we weren’t stopping. Liverpool was so sad – the area round the docks had been flattened by bombs. It was a relief though, to be back in England. I took a train to London, then another down to Southampton. Southampton was in a terrible state, too. England seemed a different country to the one I’d left seven years before. Everyone looked so very drab and tired, yet there was this relentless cheerfulness, too. We were winning the war, you see.

‘At what remained of Southampton docks I spoke to a great many people before I found your man with the eyebrows. He thought he remembered you, but only in the vaguest way. He had so many such cases to deal with, I think, and one more lost little girl didn’t really register.

‘He had a note that some woman had arrived at the office when he wasn’t there and had collected you, but when I made enquiries no one could find any trace of who she was and where you’d been taken. I stayed in a guesthouse in Southampton whilst I searched, and Uncle Pepper’s lawyer wired me some money, but it was a couple of months before the truth emerged.

‘I went back to the Harbourmaster’s Office twice in that period to ask further questions, and it was only after the second time that I noticed an untidy row of office buildings near the quay that I hadn’t paid much attention to before. One of them had a battered sign up over the door on which was printed a name I recognized. The company was called something like Silver Stone Cruises, but it’s the proprietor’s name I’m talking about – John Stone.’

‘I know that name.’

‘He was our Flight Lieutenant Stone, who hid in our apartment in Paris. I remembered then that we’d talked about both coming from Hampshire and he’d told me about his family business. Well, I didn’t know what to expect, but when I went across to see, I found the office open, and I could hardly believe it when there was our John Stone behind the desk working away, surrounded by stacks of paper. He was just the same as I remembered, poor man. His face was awfully scarred and, well, there was something not quite right about his posture. He didn’t recognize me at first and was guarded, but when I told him who I was he was affability itself. We talked a for long time, and I learned that he hadn’t passed his medical exam to return to flying, which had set him back badly. He was most upset to hear about your father, of course, but when I told him I was desperately looking for you, he promised to help. It was marvellous finding somebody who cared and who knew what to do. Such a brick. It turned out he was a local councillor. Eventually he discovered that your case had been muddled with another child’s and that instead of waiting for me in Southampton you’d been sent to an orphanage. The only thing is, they didn’t know which one. Several weeks more went by before there was news.’

‘An orphanage,’ Fay said slowly. She had a picture in her mind of a vast Victorian building full of skinny ragged children like something out of a history book. But perhaps it hadn’t been like that.

‘The woman from the charity who’d fetched you had thought you were an orphan. There was some plan that you might be adopted. Fay, it was so awful. I might have lost you to another family. I tore off to find you immediately. Blackdyke House, the place was called. It was in Derbyshire.
Derbyshire.
Miles away. Apparently it had been based in Kent but they’d had to move somewhere safer because of the bombs, you see. The place was probably perfectly well run, but I can remember the shock of seeing it: it looked, well, so bleak, like its name. Matron told me it had been requisitioned from a local industrialist. Not surprising. From the outside the house looked as dreary as a factory.’

‘An orphanage,’ Fay whispered again. A fog was clearing in her mind. There had been a vast room filled with the voices of children. She had used to dream about it. Could that have been Blackdyke House?

‘The worst thing of all was that you didn’t know me at first. And for a long time, weeks and weeks, you would not speak. When finally you did, you wouldn’t talk about anything that had happened – and then I realized that you must have put it behind you, deliberately, that you’d locked away all your memories.’

‘But what happened next? What about the things you’ve told me about, living in London and the deer?’

‘That’s all true, Fay. I rented a house in Richmond at the beginning of 1945 and brought Uncle Pepper’s furniture out of storage to furnish it. I didn’t want to go back to Hampshire, you see, it would have been too sad, and I thought, well, in London, I would be able to find some sort of job with my music.’

‘And it was hit by a bomb?’

‘Yes. Oh, those horrible Doodlebugs. It must have been one of the last that fell. Fortunately, it happened while we were out one day. We came back to find our house and the one next door completely destroyed. I was in despair after that, as we’d lost practically everything. Then I remembered dear Adele Dunne. She’d always said that I was welcome to go to stay with her in Norfolk, so I thought that perhaps we would for a while, just until we sorted ourselves out. Well, the trouble is, I couldn’t remember where it was she said she lived. I only found it by poring over an old map in the local library until I found a name I recognized. Little Barton, near Norwich. I did recall that the house was Primrose Cottage and so I wrote to her there. And that’s where we ended up. She wanted to move to her parents’ holiday home near the sea, and suggested letting us have Primrose Cottage at a ridiculously low rent.’

So then had begun the life Fay knew. The life her mother wanted for her: a perfect, tranquil childhood with a perfect tranquil mother. If it hadn’t always been quite perfect, nor her mother quite tranquil, it had been most of the time.

‘I tried to make up for everything, Fay, all the bad things that had happened to us. When I realized that you didn’t remember anything from before, I was actually relieved. It gave us the opportunity to start again. I could pretend that you hadn’t ever felt abandoned and afraid. I still had that photograph of your father – I had carried it in my handbag always – but that was all there was left of our previous life.’

‘There was a postcard of the ship,’ Fay remembered, ‘in the frame with the photograph.’

‘Was there? I’d forgotten. Major York gave that to me in Lisbon. At the time it felt my only link to you.’

The sadness in her mother’s face was almost too much for Fay to bear. She’d come here frustrated and angry, but all the accusations, all the anger had faded away. It was as though she realized for the first time the weight of the burden that her mother had had to bear. After all, Kitty had always remembered everything. She had endured it alone. There had only been Miss Dunne to speak to who would understand, but she had died a few years after the move to Little Barton.

‘Did we see much of Miss Dunne?’ Fay asked. ‘I do remember her a bit. Didn’t she come to tea occasionally?’

‘Yes,’ her mother said. ‘But when she did, we were careful not to touch on the past. I think she was aware that I was trying to protect you. But I also sensed that she didn’t wish to dwell on the bad things that had happened. She was like that, always very positive, full of what she was doing in her village, her work with the church, and she drew and painted a great deal. In fact, we have one of her pictures – that snowy landscape hanging above the sofa in the sitting room.’

‘I didn’t realize that was by her.’ Fay had always been fond of the wintry scene with rosy-faced children throwing snowballs.

‘The vicar at her funeral was very surprised when I told him how brave she’d been during the war. Nobody seemed to know about the refugees she’d helped, or how she was involved in saving Jews at the camp. She wasn’t popular at Vittel because some people thought that by working at the Kommandant’s office she was collaborating, but she actually used the opportunity to access internees’ records. She would warn people who were about to be transferred, or put them in touch with local
résistants
who could help them to escape. And I do know that she hid a Jewish man in her room once. There was another woman from Vittel who came to the funeral, and she told me that. I dread to think what punishment Adele would have suffered if he had been discovered. And she never told anyone.’

Fay was moved beyond measure. Mme Ramond had certainly made Miss Dunne sound strong and high-principled, but she hadn’t realized that the woman had put herself in quite such danger to help others.

‘She was a modest person and would have been embarrassed if anybody had spoken about it or praised her,’ Kitty explained. ‘She was ill for some months before she died, but she hated anyone to fuss. “Worse things happen at sea,” she’d say, even when she knew she was dying. She was a good friend to us, Fay, and helped us so much.’

‘I wish I could remember her better.’

‘She was very fond of you. It was so wonderful, that time in Paris when she arrived through the snow with milk for you. Did you say that you visited our apartment? You are resourceful. I wonder if it’s changed much?’

‘I think some of the furniture must be the same, though there’s no piano. Oh Mum, I can’t think how I forgot.’ Fay reached for her bag and withdrew the letter that the boy Bertrand had given to her. With it came the photograph from Mme Ramond’s album. The wooden zebra was in her case, left in the reception hall of the hospital. She’d show her mother another time.

Her mother almost wept over the photograph, then her eyes widened as Fay passed the letter to her. ‘The woman who lives in our apartment now kept this for you. She said it arrived soon after they moved in, after the war ended, but she didn’t know what to do with it.’

‘I don’t recognize the writing,’ Kitty said, frowning. She turned it over and broke open the flap easily. The letter she slid out was written on two leaves of onion paper that rustled as she unfolded them.

Fay left her mother in peace to read the letter. She had noticed that a tea trolley had arrived in the garden room and went to collect tea for them both. When she returned, she was concerned to see that her mother was crying, the letter still open in her hand.

‘Mum, what is it?’ she asked, laying the tray down on the grass and going to her. Who could the letter be from?

Kitty was not able to speak for a moment. She took a handkerchief from her sleeve and blew her nose. ‘I’d always thought it was her fault.’

‘What do you mean?’ Fay asked, misunderstanding. Surely the letter was nothing to do with Mme Ramond?

‘It’s from my old friend Lili Lambert,’ Kitty said. ‘Here.’ She held it out to her daughter. Fay frowned as she studied it. It was written in French and the handwriting was still fresh and legible. The date at the top was 25 September 1944 – a month after Paris had been liberated, then. The first couple of sentences were easy to translate:
My dearest Kitty, I am leaving this with the concierge in case you return. You will be surprised
. . . but Fay could not quite get the sense of what followed.