The Paris Time Capsule (24 page)

Camille vomited on the side of the alley, but the men shouted at her to go! They dragged Isabelle’s limp body off to the side of the lane and when Camille turned around and made one last move towards her mistress, wanting to check if Isabelle were alive or dead, one of the men pointed his gun straight at Camille’s head. The other one shouted at her again to get out.

So was the beginning of Camille’s war.

Camille lumbered towards the Seine, dragging both her and Isabelle’s small suitcases to the tiny apartment that Zach rented on the Left Bank. The disgust, the guilt, the anger and the shame that she felt at Isabelle’s death were all rolled into one great cloud of shock as she fought her instinct to crumple, or to jump off one of the bridges into the Seine.

She made it to Zach’s apartment, somehow, some way. As she went up the stairway, everything was silent.

The thin walls of the old building were not reverberating with the sounds of families talking loudly in the tiny apartments that ran off each floor. Nor were there noises of pans and pots clinking against as housewives carried out the jobs that took up their days.

As Camille climbed further and further up the narrow staircase, lugging the suitcases behind her, she fought agains
t her sickening instincts that things were about to get worse. When she arrived at Zach’s floor her stomach sickened again.

His door was flung wide. Camille didn’t have to do anything more than stick her head inside it to know that everything of his had been stripped. She stepped into the room. The mattress on the bed in the corner had been thrown half off its base. It hung, suspended like Paris on the eve of the invasion.

Every drawer in Zach’s tiny kitchen was hurled open too. His cooking things were thrown on the floor, the egg flip that he had often used to make herb and cheese omelets after they had made love leaned against a cupboard door. Zach’s clothes were strewn over the floorboards, pockets wrenched inside out, their random shapes casting desperate patterns on the Turkish rug that Camille had helped him choose at a market the year before. And yet this was just the beginning of what was going to be the vilest invasion of his dignity, his privacy, and his rights as a fellow human being.

Camille clung onto the doorway, her hands slick and shaking. Her
mind, which had become a haze of its former self knew that she should go to the hospital where Zach worked. He would be there. He had to be. He had to be safe. She turned, her hands grasping the suitcases again as if they would save her.

Someone was coming up the stairs. Camille pulled the suitcases into Zach’s apartment. There was nowhere else to hide. His was the only flat off the minute landing. She closed the door, soft as a whisper.

The person knocked.

“
Bonjour?” It was a woman.

Camille stood sentinel in the middle of the room. Could the person hear her breathe?

Bonnie, I have something that I need to add to my letter. What I am going to tell you may come as something of a shock. That is because the woman standing outside Zach’s apartment was I, it was I, Louise Delfont.

“
Monsieur Lapointe?” His assistant popped her head in the door.

Cat and Monsieur Lapointe jumped as if woken from a dream.

“Je suis occupe,” he said. I am busy.

“
How are we going to tell Sylvie?” Cat half whispered into the room.

The
assistant rattled off something fast and urgent sounding in French.

Monsieur leaned heavily on his desk.
“I have a meeting about which I had forgotten, Madame Jordan. Oh, mon dieu. This is …” He looked at her. “Can you please wait for thirty minutes?”

Cat put the letter down on the table.

She nodded.

She wandered out into the street, still in the past, not at all in the present. She had seen photographs of the Nazis marching down the Champs Elysees on the day of the occupation of France. June, 1940. It had been summer, then, warm, time for the seaside, for picnics in the countryside, not time for an invasion, if ever there was such a time. Nothing could have prepared her for the personal horrors that every day citizens on both sides must have endured. And nothing could have prepared her for the fact that
it looked like Loic’s grandmother was not Isabelle de Florian, but the girl who had been reported dead in the Paris newspapers instead, Isabelle’s maid Camille Paget.

“I think we will read on and talk afterwards,” Monsieur Lapointe said half an hour later.

Cat took out the letter.

The government organization that I was working for at that time had been alerted that Zach had been removed from Paris, along with other foreign Jews. We were watching Camille’s activities as well as we could given our resources and the panic. We knew that we had to remove her from Paris before the Nazi arrival.

Having been to the apartment on Rue Blanche, finding it empty and shuttered up, I went straight to Zach’s apartment. Camille wouldn’t let me in for a long time. I had to convince her that I was working for the French government, or what was left of it, and when she let me in and I told her that she would have to pack what she wanted to
take with her in either her or Isabelle’s suitcase, no questions to be asked. Camille was in terrible danger. She knew too much. She was shaking and frantic, but she re packed. And at the same time she told me about Isabelle’s murder.

I took the other suitcase and all Camille’s documentation.

No one could know that Camille was still alive.

She took all of Isabelle’s documentation
, the stash of photographs that Isabelle had brought from Rue Blanche, and just some of Isabelle’s smart clothes. I helped Camille into one of Isabelle’s unfamiliar and elegant dresses, then we left the apartment and I accompanied her out of Paris.

We went first to the government building where I worked. Trucks had been removing things for days, people, documents, everything. I provided Camille with false documentation and a new name that we had assigned for her, Sylvie-Marie Augustin. 

We were supposed to catch a truck on the outskirts of the city. We walked for hours. We were only two of thousands of desperate Parisians. The roads were clogged. Camille only answered me in brief monotones.

It was when we left the perimeters of the city that I answered the one question that Camille had been asking from the moment I met her. I didn’t know where Zach was other than that he had been sent south to one of the camps for Jewish refugees. Camille hardened further. She told me that she would go to the south of France and find him.

We walked, took rides on government trucks when I could sweet-talk the drivers into giving us a lift. Finally, I left Camille at a government house in Rennes. She made her own way to the south of France.

Camille went to Sarlat, then southwest to Albi. Later we learned that Zach was interred at Rivesaltes, so close to Albi. It was tragic. And yet she never would have been able to see him.

Camille made her way across to Provence, following a false lead from a contact of the woman with whom she stayed in Albi.

Her pregnancy advanced. She planned to give birth, then when her child was old enough, she would resume her search for Zach. When she could travel no more, she sought refuge in a nunnery, in a small village called Saint-Revel for her confinement.

That was when she took on Isabelle’s name. Sylvie-Marie Augustin was too dangerous given the nature of our government at the time. They had access to everything and Camille was not safe as she had “worked” for both the Germans and the French. Camille hid and took on the simpler task of working for the nun. She gave birth to a baby girl, calling her Sylvie, instead. I don’t know whether this was done wittingly, or not, but the use of the code name along with that of the false Isabelle de Florian helped us to be more certain when we located Camille again.

The war intensified. Once she had her baby, Camille could not leave her in order to search for Zach. She did all she could from her place of refuge.

By 1942 I had started working for the resistance and through my contacts I was able to discover that Zach Marek had been rounded up by the Germans along with so many other Jewish people and taken to Auschwitz by train travelling for several days with no water, no toilet facilities, no food, jammed up in a stinking carriage full of poor people who were forced to stand only. There was no room even to sit. Those who survived this, and Zach did, were gassed almost immediately on arrival.

And so
was the end.

I located Camille
and her baby daughter Sylvie Rose after an extensive search. I had to tell her the tragic news.

Camille became determined to join the resistance. She was determined to
operate under her code name Sylvie-Marie Augustin and to do this, she had to move out of the nunnery. Camille bought a small apartment in Saint Revel, but it was only recently that Camille told me how she managed to pay for it.

It was only last week that Camille told me how she had
taken Isabelle’s jewelry when she swapped suitcases in Zach’s Paris apartment, jewelry that had belonged to the famous Marthe de Florian. Isabelle had packed the most valuable pieces, diamond earrings, a sapphire necklace, and a ruby bracelet that she had worn nearly every day when she was old.

Camille planned to look after it all, take it back to the apartment after the war, to keep it all safe for who knew what and whom, but when she saw that the jewels would be far better used helping the resistance, she didn’t
hesitate to sell it.

Camille sold the pieces for a fraction of their value in Aix
. No one questioned that Isabelle de Florian would be selling such items, especially since Camille wore Isabelle’s smart clothes, just before she burned them and destroyed Isabelle’s photographs. No one was paying anything for anything during the war but Marthe’s Belle Époque jewels at least gave Camille enough to buy a safe apartment in Saint Revel for those unfortunates running from either the Vichy government or the Nazi occupation or both.

Camille
housed resistance workers, parachutists and refugees trying escape across the border. Camille’s English grew stronger during the war and she became a valued and reliable contact for us. She did not take ridiculous risks. She was steady. We could trust her, just as Marthe did.

However,
I know now that Camille was terrified that she too would be incarcerated just like Zach for stealing her former employer’s name, not to mention Isabelle’s valuable jewelry collection.  Furthermore, Camille had not reported her mistress’ death and to her dying day I think this will haunt Camille no matter what. One thing was for certain and that was that Camille was determined to do something to help both those she loved and her country, France.

After the war, after the heady liberation of France, Camille begged me not to reveal that she was not Isabelle de Florian.
I was the only one who knew and if anything were to happen to Camille, this would only leave Sylvie alone and vulnerable … just like Isabelle was. Camille saw it as a great failing that she had not been able to protect either Zach or Isabelle. She would not let her daughter out of her sight.

But
Camille’s deceit or what she still sees as her deceit no matter how noble her aims were in everything she did, is something she refuses to pass on to the innocent Sylvie. I know Camille feels it was her own actions that actually killed Isabelle.

Camille never trusted
the world in which she lived after that war, and like so many others, she did not trust that she could share what had happened with those she loved because no one could understand what decisions had to be made unless they had lived through that time themselves.

I know that Camille acted in order to protect those she loved from Zach, to Isabelle to Sylvie. Bonnie, that is the story of why you are the rightful heir to the apartment in Rue Blanche.

Camille sends you her blessing and asks that you do what is right for everyone.

A bientot, my dear.

Louise Delfont.

Several
months seemed a sensible period of time to wait. Cat had sent a copy of Louise Delfont’s story straight to both Loic and Sylvie while she was still in Paris.

She had followed this up
only recently given the shock that Loic, Sylvie and Josephine must have experienced, with letters offering Sylvie a sizable share of the estate. There had not been a skerrick back. It seemed sensible to regard the time in France as like a Boldini, ethereal, beautiful, but over in the swish of a second. 

The apartment that she and Christian had moved into was a few minute’s walk from Central Park. Cat and Christian had settled into a rhythm that suited them both just fine.

The surprising thing was the friendship she had formed with Elise. Cat had taken to having breakfast with the other girl a couple of mornings a week. As summer approached, they had started running together through the park. Elise was the only person apart from Christian with whom Cat had shared the entire story behind her apartment in Paris.

And now, her wedding was in three weeks time. There was an urgent need to sort out Isabelle’s estate as much for the immediate French tax purposes as to allow things to move on.

She and Christian had taken to having a late breakfast on a Sunday. Cat would spread the newspaper out on the coffee table in the apartment’s all white living area.

Cat scanned the financial section, not stopping to read about the latest deals in any depth. But, as she turned a page, something caught at her eye and she read the article properly.

“
No.”

Christian looked up at her, his green eyes curious.

“Billy Walker’s lost everything! His company develops treatments for restoring cancer patients’ immune systems. But that’s not all. He was going to donate part of his profits towards funding treatment for a sick child. I read about it. The little boy is only three. He has no hope without vastly expensive treatment. Billy Walker had pledged to pay it all. Something’s wrong when that sort of thing happens.”

“
You sound like a walking advertisement for the guy.”

“
It’s not often that you read about someone like that, Christian!”

“
You’ve got the wrong idea. He got too big for himself, that’s all.”

“
How can that be?” Cat put the paper down.

Christian stood up, went over to the kitchen, rinsed out his coffee cup.

“I mean, everything he was doing was aimed at helping people and look what happened! Sometimes I do wonder about this planet, Christian.”

Christian dropped a kiss on her forehead.
“You don’t understand, Cat. I’m going to the gym.”

“
He started his company from scratch! His aim was to help people from the outset. His mother died of cancer. I’ve read interviews with the family he was going to help. He was going to help other children as well.”

“
Cat, if you don’t pay off your debts, you lose your company. Be reasonable.”

“
Surely, if he was going through a rough period, someone out there could have helped? I mean, we live in New York, for goodness sakes!”

Christian picked up his sports bag.
“I’m looking forward to dinner, new wine list, apparently. See you then.”

Cat waved, but she pulled out her laptop.

The restaurant was decorated for Christmas
. Tasteful wreaths lined the walls, and the open fireplace threw out the scent of burning pinecones. Everyone seemed to be in a good mood and there was a buzz about Cat and Christian’s wedding. Elise, who seemed to have become a proxy member of Christian’s social circle, sat next to Cat.

“
Sweetie, we’ve put your name down for four committees at four top schools. It’s all going in the right direction for you.” Elise threw her right arm around Cat’s shoulders and squeezed.

“
How strategic you are, Elise.”

“
Once they know you, your children are far more likely to get in. I know all about these things.”

Christian’s eyes flickered over their way.
“Elise is doing a brilliant job.”

Elise smiled at him.
“Cat’s one of us now.”

Cat put her wine glass down on the table carefully.
“Tell, me Elise, are you going to continue to manage me once the wedding is done, or will you simply push me aside and move onto my children?”

There was a silence around the table.

“Cat.” Christian stood up and moved to stand behind her. He smiled at everyone. “Pre-wedding nerves. That’s got that over with, honey. Sorry everyone.  Cat’s under a lot of pressure. I’m sure you understand.”

Elise launched into a story about a bride who had threatened to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge if she couldn’t ride up the aisle of St Barts, Park Avenue accompanied by an entire cavalcade of Harleys. Everyone laughed and the conversation picked up.

“Everything okay, Cat?” Christian leaned across the table, tried to take her hand.

Cat pulled her own hand back.
“It’s the Billy Walker thing. I was concerned at your attitude.”

Scott and Eric appeared to tune in.

“Not now, Cat.”

Cat felt flushed. She looked across the table at Christian.
“I researched some more. It’s a disaster. There are follow up stories about that little boy. It’s awful. Brutal.”

Christian low
ered his voice to a whisper. “That Walker fellow had it coming to him, Cat.” He enunciated each word with care.

“
So, you’re saying that we shouldn’t care?”

A hush fell over the table.

“Be quiet, Cat.”

“
What did you say to me, Christian?”

Christian leaned forward, closer to her.
“That little Walker fellow’s loss as you call it, will pay for your wedding so shut up, okay?”

Cat felt herself blanch.

“We just picked up the company assets for half their market value. All the bank needs to do is wait six months, sell the assets and make twenty to thirty million dollars with the sale of the patents alone.”

He
moved back to his seat. “What were we talking about?”

Cat folded her napkin and put it on the table.
“Excuse me.”

“
Going to the rest room?” Elise stood up.

“
No. I am … way too hot. I’ll see you all later -”

“
Tomorrow,” Elise said, quickly as a rabbit. “Brunch with your in-laws. My apartment. Can’t wait.”

“
Right.” Cat rested a hand on the back of her chair.

“
Cat!” Christian sounded jovial. “I’ll come with you.”

“
No. You haven’t finished.”

“
Sure, honey?”

“
Positive.”

“
I won’t be late.” He moved over to her, kissed her on the cheek.

Cat swayed out of the restaurant, to the warm street outside.