The Girl in the Blue Beret (17 page)

A pleasant woman at the counter of the neighborhood
tabac
directed him to a department store near the Denfert-Rochereau Métro, and without—he hoped—seeming too stupid he selected a pair of sheets, a light fuzzy blanket, and a flat pillow. In the apartment, he arranged his possessions. He set his brain bag and typewriter on the table that would be his desk and stowed his clothing in the plain, massive armoire, which smelled like old shoes.

He examined his place. The wood floors were worn, the radiator was dusty. There was no TV, no radio, no clock. All he could hear was the murmur of the small refrigerator and the occasional sounds of traffic. This, he realized, was the only home he had made for himself since he arranged his corner of the barracks at Molesworth.

He was alone. No one back home knew where he was.

WIDE AWAKE IN THE MIDDLE
of the night, he did a preflight walk-around, then ran through a preflight checklist in the cockpit. Instead of counting sheep, he tried to count and name all the switches, controls, and dials in a 747 cockpit—tachometer, fuel-flow indicator, radar altimeter, autopilot trim indicator, airspeed … flap position … hydraulic-system pressure …

He had to get his bearings. The search for long-lost friends from the war was beginning to seem absurd. He wanted to find Robert and the Vallons, but maybe finding the Alberts was enough. Marshall was officially an old man, booted from his job. Yet here he was, traipsing around France, indulging a pointless nostalgia. Trying to speak French was ludicrous. The Alberts must still be chortling over his awkward American drawl.

As dawn approached, he sank into slumber at last.

Late in the morning he bought a telephone, but there was nowhere to set it except on the floor by the window. In search of hardware, he wandered the neighborhood until he came upon an odd little shop that he had passed once or twice before. It called itself a
librairie-papeterie
, a bookstore-stationery store, but the windows displayed cases of small items—clothespins, light bulbs, shower caps, transistor radios, doll clothes, candles, hedge clippers.

“Bonjour, monsieur,”
said the man behind the counter. He was wearing the typical long blue work smock.

“
Bonjour, monsieur
. I see that you have a little of everything here.”

“
Oui, monsieur
. Just ask me for anything.”

It took Marshall a moment to summon the French words. “Shoe polish.”

“Oui.”

“Clock radio.”

“Bien sûr.”
The man tapped the counter confidently, his gold ring clicking.

“Hammer. Nails.”

“You are a good client! The Americans are the best clients, because they want always everything.”

“You have everything I need here,” Marshall said. “This is the Everything Store!
Le magasin de tout?
”

“It is a
bazar
,” the man said, smiling.
“C’est le bazar ici.”

Marshall left with all the items on his list, and also a notebook, envelopes, a supply of batteries, a flashlight, an extension cord, a small table for his telephone, and an antique postcard of Napoléon’s Tomb.

THE CONCIERGE WAS
astonished that Marshall’s telephone service was hooked up in two days.

“People wait and wait,” she said. She was sweeping the floor and smoking. She mumbled something about the weather.

He called Albert, to let him know where he was, and asked him to call Mary for him.

“Mary was sick last week,” Albert said.

“Oh, what?”

“She had food poisoning—salmonella, I think. She was really sick for about four days, but she’s over it. I never trusted her cooking.”

“Should I call her myself?”

“No, I’ll call her. She’s O.K.”

Albert reported that a tree had come down in a thunderstorm, but he had called the Garden Angels, who had dealt with it promptly. It was the tree in the back outside Marshall’s den. Marshall would miss the shade—if he returned to New Jersey. At the moment, he couldn’t quite imagine living there again. What was there for him in New Jersey?

“I’m sorry to hear that, Albert. But thanks for dealing with it.”

“It missed the other trees, and it missed the shed. So I guess we’re pretty lucky.”

“Yeah. Don’t forget to send me the bill.”

“I forwarded some mail for you to the American Express.”

“Thanks, Albert.” After an awkward pause, he said, “Well, gotta go.”

“Wait. How’s it going over there, Dad? Did you find those people you were looking for?”

“Some of them. I found the family that helped me in that little town. They were still there, same house, all these years.”

“That’s good.”

“It was great to see them again.”

“Great. What else are you doing? Going to museums?”

“Not much. I haven’t had time. But that sounds like a good idea.”

“Don’t worry about the house.”

“O.K. I appreciate it. Take it easy, Albert. And tell Mary I’m glad she’s O.K.”

Marshall left a message for Nicolas, giving his new number, and another one on Jim Donegan’s answering machine.

Later, as he was walking through the parc Montsouris, he looked up to see a 747 above the city, on its way out of De Gaulle. The gear was up, the wings clean, the nose jacked high. Things would be quieting down in the cockpit, the crew squaring things away, getting ready to hand control over to the autopilot. “Let George do it,” they used to say.

19.

A
SMARTLY DRESSED WOMAN SAT AT THE SMALL ROUND TABLE
next to his on the sidewalk at a corner brasserie on the rue d’Alésia, where he was waiting for Nicolas. Struggling with the diabolical crossword in
Le Monde
, he was aware of her sitting with her hands resting lightly on the table, a demitasse before her. She had shoulder-length blond hair. Her skirt was short, riding up her thighs. Her legs were crossed, and she was wearing stiletto heels with dark stockings. She was sitting there, doing nothing. She had been there perhaps twenty minutes. When he glanced her way, she looked away. He knew he was still attractive to women, at his age, even without his flight uniform. He wondered if she was waiting for him to speak to her. He heard her let out a sigh. She was waiting for someone who wasn’t coming, he thought. He was stuck on a seven-letter word for
échelonner
. The crossword was impossible. Abandoning it, he read news from the States. Mount Saint Helens was still belching, and the hostages languished in Iran. Marshall was still angry with President Carter for failing to rescue them. The woman next to him was attractive, and he thought perhaps she was an actress, studying for her role as a woman of the café scene. Or waiting to be discovered by a film director.

Nicolas appeared, having taken the train in from Chauny, and they did the two-cheek. All smiles, he brought greetings from the family and a gift of damson jam from Gisèle.

Marshall wanted another coffee, but the waiter, who had seen Nicolas arrive, began clearing another table.

“I’m too impatient,” Marshall said to Nicolas. “I’ll never learn your easygoing ways here.”

“You are so fast, Marshall. Quick to the draw!”

Marshall forced a smile. “Gary Cooper, that’s me. But you know, when I went back to the States in ’44, still gung-ho to fight the Nazis, I was sent to Texas to train bomber pilots. It was a letdown.”

The waiter interrupted, and Nicolas chatted with him about an impending football match. Marshall wished he had a gift for small talk. He saw the woman at the next table pay her bill and walk away, not even wobbling on her stilts.

“I made an interesting discovery, Marshall,” Nicolas said after they had ordered coffee. “There was a youth fascist group who wore the blue beret.”

“Are you serious? How could the schoolgirl who helped me escape have been a fascist? It doesn’t make sense.”

“I know.” Nicolas laughed. “Perhaps it is the French beret that is the problem—it is like a symbol, it can mean anything anyone wants it to mean.”

Marshall stared at a pigeon eyeing a chunk of baguette the woman in high heels had dropped on the cobblestones. The pigeon came strutting across a large manhole cover wrought in the pattern of a star.

“Nicolas, I’ve been thinking. I can’t really imagine what it would have been like if America had been occupied and stressed to the limit the way the French were. What would we have done?”

“You would have risen to the occasion, Marshall.”

“I don’t know.” The pigeon seemed to be looking at him. He said, “I can’t imagine my children doing what the young people here did.” He wondered about Loretta, what she would have done. “What about your daughters?”

“I would like to think that they would be strong.” Nicolas smiled. “We speak often of this question.”

A flock of nuns passed by, and the pigeon skittered away.

“Do you recall a Robert Lebeau?” Nicolas asked. “Robert Jules Lebeau?”

“No. I don’t recognize that name.”

“Lebeau may have been the one who was with you in Paris.”

“The guy I knew as Robert? I don’t think I ever knew his last name.”

“I have run across Lebeau’s name in association with the Vallons, and I believe it’s probable that he came to the apartment where you were sheltered. He worked for the Bourgogne line.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

“He owns an
épicerie
in Saint-Mandé. A small grocery. I have just been there, but he was in Provence, inspecting crops. I don’t know how long he stays, and his daughter at the shop would not say.”

“Why not?”

“I had the sense that she did not want to expose her father to a stranger. In any case, we must wait a few days for him to return.”

When the waiter brought a press-pot of coffee and a pitcher of hot milk, Nicolas offered more pleasantries. He was no doubt popular with his students, Marshall thought, for he had an easy, jocular manner. Marshall regarded the short-cropped dark hair and brown eyes of the slim Frenchman. He was wearing dark pants, a blue shirt, and thin leather shoes. His long, delicate feet matched his graceful hands.

“So who was this Robert Jules Lebeau?” Marshall asked when the waiter was finished. He hadn’t imagined Robert as a shopkeeper. He had thought Robert might be a diplomat. Or a journalist perhaps.

“He was a
convoyeur
who met
aviateurs
north of Paris,” Nicolas told him. “I’m guessing that he was the contact for the Vallon family and very possibly the youth you remember coming to them on his bicycle.”

Nicolas gave Marshall a brief history of the various escape networks for downed airmen. After the largest one, the Comète, was infiltrated by the Gestapo and nearly destroyed, the Bourgogne smuggled airmen from Paris to Spain.

“Did you ever hear of Dédée de Jongh?”

“I don’t think so.”

“She was a young Belgian woman
très forte
, very strong, very courageous. She began the Comète and escorted many
aviateurs
herself across the Pyrenees. She was just a girl. But never mind. You could not have known her.”

Nicolas sipped his bowl of coffee and winced at its heat. Marshall liked the idea of drinking coffee out of a bowl, but he had poured in too much milk, making the coffee too weak. A loud bus whooshed past, flooding them with fumes. Nicolas waited for the noise to subside, then reported some findings about the chief of the Bourgogne network—Georges Broussine, a well-known journalist.

“One of Papa’s old contacts remembered Broussine, and he knew that Lebeau had been to Chauny to meet flyers, and then Papa recognized the names. So I think it is likely that they are links between Chauny and the family you stayed with in Paris.”

“Your father said he didn’t know any names.”

Nicolas shrugged. “Papa knows more than he allows. Anyway, the Bourgogne chief still lives here, but he does not answer me. He may be out of the country. Perhaps in the meantime we will find Monsieur Lebeau and get our information.”

Bells in the nearby church were ringing the hour. Marshall had walked past that church, at the intersection of Maine and Leclerc, several times on his way to the Métro, but he had paid no attention to it.

He said to Nicolas, “That church has probably been standing there for time out of mind, tolling its bell. I never took time to notice things like that before. Not since I was in hiding during the war.”

Nicolas said, “Marshall, the churches did not ring their bells during the Occupation. You heard no church bells then.”

20.

M
ARSHALL WALKED AROUND THE CITY AIMLESSLY, HIS HEAD
in a muddle. He was in a detective story, yet he wasn’t the detective. He was the reader, or an innocent bystander caught up in an intrigue. He was tempted to chase down Robert Jules Lebeau the
épicier
himself, but he recognized that Nicolas wanted to help, and Marshall didn’t want to deprive him of that satisfaction.

Nevertheless, a couple of days later, he found himself in the nearby suburb of Saint-Mandé on the
épicier
’s block, a short street of small shops off the avenue du Général de Gaulle. The fruits and vegetables were in bins outside the shop. It was a simple grocery store. At the small counter inside stood an attractive young woman in an Indian tunic and jeans, her limp hair tied in two loose hanks. He selected a plum and went inside to pay.

“Bonjour, madame,”
he said.

“Bonjour, monsieur. C’est tout?”

“Oui.”
She was occupied with tying some string on a package, and he waited to ask about Lebeau. He paid for the fruit, then hesitantly asked for water to wash the plum.

“It is clean!”

“Vraiment?”

“Vrai.”
She was shooing him from her shop.

“O.K.,” he said, wondering which one of them had been rude. Maybe his French was at fault.

At the door, he turned. “Is your name Lebeau?” he asked.

“
Non
. He is not here.”