The Girl in the Blue Beret (27 page)

“The French police had kept his papers. He was disturbed, but he hadn’t lost his courage. He thought the police had let him go in spite of their suspicions. That happened sometimes, even with the Germans. Once he and my father were escorting
aviateurs
from Belgium, and he noticed that the German police seemed to recognize that there were
aviateurs
with them. But then the Germans looked the other way! Maybe it was too much trouble to arrest them. Or maybe it was only that they were looking forward to their beer and sausage. Still, it was all very dangerous.

“After Robert’s misadventure, the chief of the Bourgogne stopped him from going to Perpignan. He instructed Robert to bring the identity-card equipment to our apartment, and my mother began to make the false papers, as she did when you were there. Then I began guiding
aviateurs
to the
photomaton
at the Louvre to get the photos for the false identities.

“That is when I began going with Robert to escort
aviateurs
coming down from the north. We would meet them at the Gare du Nord and guide them to their shelter family, then later we put them on the train at the Gare d’Austerlitz for their southern journey. I went on Friday afternoons, after school.”

Marshall said, “When I was trying to find you, I started thinking how amazing it was that a young girl would be out on such a dangerous mission.”

She laughed. “Oh, there were many occasions that could have been the end! Once, we were with a group of five
aviateurs
at the Gare du Nord, when we passed five others at the stairs to the street! We recognized they were Americans by their large boots and, of course, their height. We didn’t dare acknowledge them, and our group had been instructed not to notice anyone, not to respond or react. What a job! The
aviateurs
did not always take it seriously, and the Americans were likely to produce their chewing gum
—mon Dieu!
Or ask for a fire for a cigarette. Oh, they weren’t stupid, but we had to teach them not to smoke in public! You remember that.”

“A Yank is a Yank,” he said, laughing. “It’s hard for us to wise up.”

“The Germans did not always pay attention. I think they were just happy to be in Paris. They thought they had already won the war. The French police were more likely to notice the large boots. When Robert and I went north on the trains—what chances we took! It was an advantage to behave as a romantic couple—flirting, holding hands. We weren’t suspected. Oh, I had a
petit penchant
for him,
bien sûr
—”

She paused, gazing at a bird rippling the ivy. “Robert … It’s very sad.”

LATER, AFTER THE CHAMPAGNE
had worn off, she suggested a walk.

“Do you ride?”

“Ride?”

“I have horses.”

They walked outside the courtyard to see the horses.

“My son and I hike,” she said. “Sometimes my daughter. And all of us ride, so I keep their horses here with mine. My husband always had horses. You noticed the chickens. There used to be a goat, a donkey, a pony, all kinds of wounded things that we rehabilitated. An owl used to live in the rafters over the terrace, but I have not seen any owls there in three years.”

They walked down the street to the small field where the three horses grazed. The dog came with them, playfully running ahead.

“Bernard,” she called after him. “Don’t be a child.”

“I’ve never been on a horse,” Marshall admitted.

“You wanted Pegasus,” she said, smiling. “But is it true you are not permitted to fly anymore?”

“Not on the airlines. I could rent a plane and tool around. Or I could buy a plane if I had the money. But the airline tells me I’m too old to fly for them.”

“But you must fly! If you rent a plane, I will go with you! You must not give up what you love.”

He grinned, immediately imagining the two of them on a sky jaunt, performing barrel rolls and nose-dives. The horses had come running to her, and she held out some carrots for them. She stroked them and called them by name—Peppy and Fifi and Charleroi, or something similar-sounding. Marshall enjoyed watching her caress the horses. She was more than fifty years old now, but she still seemed youthful. She had ample, well-formed breasts, and her skin was smooth and fresh.

They walked down a road to the river, passing stone dwellings that could have been there for centuries. The vegetation was thick along the side of the road, and gardens were bursting with tomatoes and squashes. It had been a long time since he had paid attention to anyone’s garden. His grandmother had grown vegetables in the holler below the mountain, and he remembered her singing as she worked her slanted patch of ground. He remembered her shelling a basket of beans.

Blackberries grew in profusion by the side of the road. “My grandmother picked wild blackberries in the mountains of Kentucky,” he said. “I picked them too when I visited in the summer, but I had to be forced to do it. I loved to eat them though.” He laughed, as if he were unfamiliar to himself.

“These are not ripe yet,” Annette said. “Oh, look.”

Resting on a blackberry leaf was an unusual brown-and-yellow butterfly with ovoid wings.

“I have always loved these butterflies,” she said.

“I don’t think we have that kind in America.”

“A butterfly is born to fly, just as you were,” she said, smiling up at him. “But the butterfly flutters and takes its time to see the sights.”

“It doesn’t burn jet fuel,” he said. He remembered once flying through a swarm of butterflies during a takeoff. A flash of color, a cloud, gone before he truly saw it.

They passed a field of what appeared to be corn. “It grows nicely,” she remarked.

She called out some greetings to a man and a boy fishing from the riverbank. “They bring me fish sometimes,” she said.

They walked on, making idle observations. He didn’t want to go back to Paris. He could sleep behind her armoire, he thought.

SHE INVITED HIM
to return the next day. After that, she would be in Normandy with her family for a week. She recommended a modest hotel in Cognac, on a street of ancient stone structures. After checking in, Marshall walked around in the fading light. Cognac seemed both ritzy and ruined. At a sidewalk café he ate a fish of some kind, just off the boat. He didn’t want any wine. A light rain fell briefly, then cleared.

He managed to sleep in the hot, tattered room above the hotel bar, and the next morning he read the newspaper in the cramped breakfast room. The United States seemed remote, caught up in provincial political squabbles. He would be happy to get rid of Jimmy Carter—the jerk still hadn’t gotten the hostages out of Iran—but electing an actor seemed far-fetched. There were few details on the election campaign, so he devoted himself to a great deal of information about the upcoming Olympics. In his mind he was with Annette. Her youthful purity had lasted with her, but her womanliness surprised him. No husband. A preposterous coincidence, he thought.

He went for a walk along some narrow streets. On the main boulevard two girls on bicycles, baguettes in their baskets, whipped past him. He could almost feel the warm breath of the freshly baked bread as they went by. A fast car passed him from behind, the sound of its horn trailing in its wake.

36.

H
E FOUND ANNETTE GROOMING THE CHESTNUT HORSE IN THE
small field next to the compound. Bernard came running to him, barking joyfully. Marshall said
“Bonjour”
to him. Bernard was a briard, she had told him, a French breed of herd dog. She waved, and Marshall made his way through a wooden gate toward the shed, a shelter for the horses. Next to the field was a sizable garden, with bald cabbage heads, thin sticks supporting bean vines, and some sprawling vines of melons or perhaps pumpkins. He recognized tomatoes.

After greeting him warmly—the two-cheek kiss this time—she explained that she had ridden down to the river on some back trails. He decided she smelled like lavender—as if he knew his scents.

“Go on, Charleroi,” she said affectionately to the horse, who had a splotch on his forehead shaped like Great Britain.

Charleroi galloped off, and Annette and Marshall trotted to the house.

While she was changing her clothes, he wandered around the courtyard. The chickens were scratching in the dirt. Bernard, enthusiastic and attentive, accompanied him, like a guide pointing out the sights. Marshall exchanged
bonjours
with the workmen, who were repairing the stonework of some of the small buildings. He did not see the woman with the rake. He peeked into the small stone henhouse, observed the roosts, smelled the heavy aroma. He recalled his grandmother’s ramshackle chicken house, which he had not thought of in years. He remembered reaching under a hen to steal an egg, his other hand pushing her head aside. He remembered his grandmother giving chickens grit for their craws, a gravelly stuff with tiny seashells in it. Why did they need grit for their craws? He had no idea.

“I wish you had gone riding with me this morning—it was so lovely!” Annette said, finding him examining some old farm machinery. He guessed that the rusty implement he was studying was a harrow, to be hitched to horses. It was structured with intricate tines.

“As a boy I rode Shetland ponies at the fair. They were about the size of Bernard.” He gave the dog a vigorous pat. “You’re right. I wanted Pegasus.”

She laughed. “Of course. That was the way with you boys. Your airplanes were so romantic.”

“Until they crashed,” he said.

“The war was very hard for everyone, as you know. But if it weren’t for our ‘visitors,’ it would have been even more bleak.” She waved her hand in front of her face, as if to erase the thought. “I’m so happy you returned home safely!”

She was a stylish, confident woman—not girlish like Caroline, in those Indian getups and jeans. Annette was wearing dark slacks and a long-sleeved white shirt. He felt she was making no statements. She was just being herself.

SHE INSISTED ON SHOWING
him some of the scenery of the region. She drove her car, so that he was free to look around. He had always thought the French were notoriously daring behind the wheel, but she drove sensibly. The windows were down, and the rush of wind reminded him of the early days flying in an open cockpit. It would not have occurred to him to sightsee this way, he explained to her. He had always seen the landscape from above, where fields and rivers became abstract—elements of a painting. Now it was as though he were in a labyrinth, circling and winding and backtracking—with no headers or gauges or timetables. Without ailerons and throttles, riding became a pleasurable drift.

Annette’s husband had practiced in a wide area—driving to people who owned large farm animals, going out on calls at dawn or late at night, any time of day—and she still kept in touch with many of the clients. She stopped at a vineyard, where she bought some bottles of wine from a man who had a pair of friendly briards. Then she drove to another village to take flowers to an ailing man who kept geese.

“Now, a surprise,” she announced, as they pulled back onto the main road. “I have a friend who is passionate to meet you. She is another who helped to hide pilots in the war, and her experience was so much more dramatic than mine. She had a great deal of courage. I want you to hear what she did during the war. It is extraordinary.”

The friend, a schoolteacher, lived in a town near Angoulême. Their common past aiding Allied aviators had drawn Annette and Odile Durand together.

“I thought you and your parents were pretty extraordinary,” Marshall said.

Annette laughed. “Oh, we did what was necessary,” she said. “Nothing more.” She slowed down to make a turn. “Odile’s daughter married last year and has gone away on some type of global adventure with her new husband. Odile is troubled—there are so many dangers in the world.”

Annette turned into a street so narrow they nearly scraped the walls on both sides. Expertly she pulled into a tiny apron of stone in front of a small stucco house with a red-tile roof. The door flew open immediately.

The women exchanged kisses, with affectionate hugs.

“
Voilà
, my pilot!” Annette said.

“
Monsieur, monsieur, bienvenue
. I am delighted.”

Odile grabbed him and bussed both cheeks. She was small and wiry.

“Odile, I have brought you some eggs,” Annette said. “My chickens engage themselves in a contest, to lay so many eggs!”

“Merci beaucoup, Annette. Tu es très gentille.”

They sat in the small garden behind the house. It was quiet except for the chatter of the women. Odile said her daughter had written from Bangkok and had ridden an elephant. “Mon
Dieu
, what next!”

“Remember, Odile, what you were doing at her age. She will be all right.”

“Elephants I trust, but she and Giscard are on airplanes so often, and I do worry about that. Tell me,
monsieur
, am I right to worry?”

“Travel today is simple, madame,” he said. “Airline travel is safe.”

“Did you ever have a crash?”

“No, no, not in the airlines.”

“Sometimes they crash.”

“If you were to look at a timetable, madame,” he said, like a professor, “you would see how many flights there are in one day just on one airline—thousands. And they all arrive safely.”

“Marshall knows everything about airplanes,” said Annette assuringly.

Marshall enjoyed watching Annette with her friend. Annette’s good humor balanced Odile’s sober nervousness.

After Odile had served them some of the wine Annette had brought, Annette urged her to tell Marshall about her pilots in the war. Odile jumped up, grasped both of his hands, and gazed hard into his eyes for a moment. She was close to his age, he thought. Her hair was gray, with springy curls running willy-nilly up her temples.

“I am so glad you have come,” she said. She let go of his hands and sat down.

Quickly she launched into her tale, as though she had been waiting for the chance to blurt it out. Her voice was raspy, as if she was getting over a bad cold, but her French was clear, easy for Marshall to follow. Annette sat comfortably in a straight-backed chair, and Marshall cocked his chair onto its two back legs, rocking a bit now and then.