Violins of Autumn (11 page)

“Adele, how lovely to see you! Do come in.”

The woman blocks my path. “Really, François! Why must you help each and every needy person who comes to our home?”

He looks her in the eyes to say, “Because I am a doctor.”

“I am leaving to do my shopping. You
know
how I feel about strangers in our home.”

With an exasperated huff she slides outside, her back pressed to the door to avoid contact with me. Reeking of expensive perfume she strolls away, one of the last women in Paris unwilling to give up the haute couture lifestyle the war stole from the city.

“Adele, please come in,” Dr. Devereux says. “I apologize for my wife’s behavior. She isn’t usually like that.”

I enter his home, cheered by how clean it smells. I could twirl about like a little girl in a meadow of pink and yellow flowers. And I’m not even the twirling type.

François closes in to get a good look at my face. “Have you eaten?”

My pride tells me to lie, but my hunger begs me to confess.
“I’ve eaten, but only a few proper meals. I don’t have the correct ration booklets.”

“There are ways to get around that.”

“Yes, I know about the black market restaurants.”

“Would you like to wash up?”

I look down at my arms, smudged with dirt and train soot, wanting to shout, “My God, yes! Lead the way!” I take a calming breath. “I don’t want to impose on you.”

“Nonsense. Come with me.”

I tiptoe downstairs, combing my fingers through my damp hair.

“Adele, I’m in my study,” Dr. Devereux calls. “Can you come here a moment?”

I follow the sound of his voice to a small, dusk-lit room off the front foyer. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases line the walls, filled with exotic souvenirs and books. I’ve never seen so many books in a home. I study the framed bird-watching chart on the wall, wondering how many of those beautiful birds Dr. Devereux has seen with his own eyes.

“Take a seat,” he says, nodding toward a chair on the opposite side of his desk.

I sit and fold my hands on my lap.

“Adele, if you don’t mind me asking”—Dr. Devereux leans forward, his kind eyes pinched with worry—“how old are you?”

“I’m twenty-two,” I say as convincingly as I would to a German interrogator.

“Do you have a safe place to stay the night?”

I don’t know what to say. His wife will never let me stay in her lavish home.

“I don’t have a place to stay.”

“Tonight?” he asks, settling back in his chair. “Or no place to stay at all?”

“I don’t have any place to stay.”

“My wife is spending the night at her sister’s home. You are more than welcome to stay in our guest bedroom.”

If I turn down a night of luxurious sleep in favor of the train, my aching body will never forgive me.

“Thank you. I will stay, but only tonight. You’ve been too kind to me already.”

“There is no such thing as too kind,” he says. He removes a tablet of paper and a pencil from the center desk drawer. “I can help you, Adele, if you’ll let me. My good friend, Estelle, takes people in. You will be safe there. She is an extremely conscientious woman.” He slides a sheet of paper across the desktop. “That is Estelle’s address. I will telephone her in the morning to make the arrangements. She has many contacts. She may be able to point you in the direction of someone who can help you more than I can.”

“Thank you,” I say, shocked by how drastically my luck has turned. If only I had reached out to Dr. Devereux days ago.

“The guest bedroom is upstairs, the second door on the left. I laid out some clothes for you. Feel free to take some or all of them. My wife won’t notice their absence.”

I remember what Pierre said: clean clothes boost his men’s morale. The prospect of trading my filthy skirts and blouses for a fresh nightgown thrills me.

“Thank you again, Dr. Devereux,” I say, standing. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Good night, Adele, I hope you have pleasant dreams. I’m sure it must be a great relief to no longer be stranded all alone.”

“Yes,” I say. “It really is.”

Dr. Devereux was referring only to the week I spent stranded and alone in France, of course. He barely knows me as Adele, and he knows nothing of who I really am deep down. He didn’t choose his words knowing they would have an effect on me.

I climb the staircase, remembering a time years before, when I arrived in London.

After Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, both sides stood at a standstill. It was a phony war, people said. Believing the phony war wouldn’t last, my father arranged for me to leave school and travel as far as Britain to stay with my mother’s sister, Aunt Libby, a woman I had never met.

One night my uncle Edward called me into the darkened sitting room. The glow of his pipe and a weak lamp lent soft auras of light to the room.

I sat in the high-backed chair opposite him, at the far reaches of the light.

“Are you happy here, Betty?”

I’d been yanked away from my friends. I didn’t want to live in the home of strangers, feeling as though I had nothing and no one. No, I wasn’t happy, but what was the point in telling him the truth? It wouldn’t change anything.

“Yes, sir, I’m happy to be here,” I said.

“Your aunt is delighted to have you with us. You are the spitting image of your mother at your age.”

“Did you know my mother?”

“We were childhood friends. But after the Great War, things changed for those of us who grew up together. Some friends came home. Some friends were never seen again. I was one of the lucky ones who came back. Your mother’s brother was not.”

“Yes, I know. He was a war hero, like my father.”

“Falling down a flight of stairs does not make one a hero. The only action your father saw was inside a hospital.” My uncle’s pipe flared brightly and cooled. “I do apologize, Betty. I shouldn’t have spoken about your father that way.”

My mother’s story of how she nursed my father back to health while they fell in love was one of my favorites. Uncle Edward was wrong about my father not seeing action. That wasn’t how the story went at all. My father was an admirable man.

“But I thought my mother went to America to marry him because he was a hero.”

“Betty, perhaps you should talk to Aunt Lib.”

“Please, I’d like to know. Really I would.”

“Well, your mother wasn’t the same after her beloved brother—” Seeming at a loss for words, he said, “After her brother didn’t return home.”

In 1917, my mother’s brother died. My uncle couldn’t say that outright, though, because I had lost my own brother. When people talked about death around me, they used pleasant words like “pass away” or “resting in peace.” A tear dripped to my hand.

“Your mum couldn’t escape her sadness here. She leapt at the chance to run away with your father because … she felt she needed to. To move on with her life.”

Everything I thought I knew about my parents was turning inside out. Feeling sick to my stomach, I remembered the way my father had looked at Delores, so soon after my mother’s death, as if she were the only woman in the world. As if my mother never mattered to him at all. Was that why he had sent me away? Because he hadn’t wanted to be my father in the first place?

“Aunt Lib wasn’t blessed with the daughter she always hoped
for,” Uncle Edward said. “We’re truly happy to have you here, Betty. For as long as you’re happy to stay.”

My uncle misunderstood. Their home was only a temporary stopover, like the stepping stone Tom and I had used to jump from one side of the creek to the other. I had taken the first leap from school to London. I was sure my father wouldn’t leave me stuck in the middle. He would bring me home before the war started.

I refused to give up hope as days turned to weeks. Weeks turned to months. Then, in May 1940, German troops made their move, swiftly invading France. The war became terrifyingly real. And when it did, I didn’t ask my aunt for the truth. I already felt the pain of it in my heart.

I’d been stranded.

Dr. Devereux must have given Estelle a dead-on description of my appearance. When I turn down her busy street, I hear a woman call, “Adele! How splendid of you to visit!”

From the steps of an apartment building a gray-haired woman comes running. Her open arms give fair warning of the hug on its way.

“Hello, Great-Aunt Estelle,” I say, returning the hug.

To enter her building we will have to cross paths with an approaching German officer. I lower my head to walk past him without attracting notice.

Estelle walks right up to him, smiling, and says, “Officer Berger. This is my great-niece, Adele. Isn’t she lovely?”

He lights a cigarette and says an obligatory, “Hello.” Then he carries on. He couldn’t care less who I am. Little does he know an SOE agent just stood within his arm’s reach.

“Come with me, Adele. My sixteen-year-old granddaughter Marie has been awaiting your arrival all morning.”

Estelle’s sunlit apartment reminds me of a miniature version of my aunt’s house. I can’t pin down any real similarities, but I feel at home when I walk through the door.

“Allow me to take your suitcase for you,” Estelle says. She sets it on the gray marble top of an art deco sideboard my aunt would love to own.

“Why did you introduce me to that German officer?” I ask, rubbing my achy arms.

“Now, in his mind, you are my great-niece, Adele. He will not waste time inquiring about you, as he might if we had said nothing. You will fade from his view and he will move on to someone else. If you behave as though you are keeping secrets, the Germans will suspect you are keeping secrets.”

I can see why Dr. Devereux likes this woman.

The door to the apartment flies open. A young girl flings herself into the room like a wispy ballerina taking center stage.

“Is she here?” she says, bouncing on her toes.

“Be calm, Marie. Yes, this is Adele. Adele, this is my granddaughter. Take a seat on the sofa. I will get you a bite to eat.”

We sit side by side on the sofa.

Closing in on my face, Marie says, “Everyone in the building will believe we are related. Look in my eyes. Like yours, they are brown. Not dark like chocolate, but like bourbon. And here”—she gathers her dark hair in a bunch to drape it over one shoulder—“we have small birthmarks shaped like Spain on our necks.”

I put some distance between us on the sofa, laughing at how quickly she spotted our resemblances.

“How old are you?” she asks.

“I’m twenty-two.”

She dismisses that with a coy grin. “No, no, I don’t believe you.”

“I am,” I insist. “Although I’ve been told I look young for my age.”

“Well, I still don’t believe you.” She cups her hand to her mouth to whisper, “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. I’m very good at keeping secrets.”

I hope the Germans aren’t as astute as this sixteen-year-old girl.

“Soldiers are everywhere in the city,” I say. “You’ve lived like this for four years?”

“I was twelve when they invaded, so at first I didn’t really understand what was happening. Then horrible stories started to reach us. Soldiers were moving across the country, lining up men, women, and children, and shooting them dead for no reason. My mother, brother, and I had to leave our home and belongings behind to join the evacuees fleeing south. Lines of refugees filled the roads and went on as far as I could see. It was such a bizarre parade of bicycles, wagons and carts, wheelbarrows and baby carriages. But what I remember most are the noises all around me, every minute. The wheezing of men and women moving carts. The complaining and shouting. The babies screaming until I wanted to cry myself. And I lost sight of my mother once. It scares me even now to imagine what would have happened if we’d gotten separated.”

“That sounds awful,” I say. “Did you ever get your home and belongings back?”

“No, we didn’t. We returned as soon as we heard it was safe to do so, but the Germans had moved in to our home. After that, we came to Paris to live in the apartment across from Grand-mère. I remember that time well, because it was fun. Our lives didn’t
really change. The horror stories we had heard didn’t seem true. Very quickly after that, life became so much worse. My mother cried and cried in those days. She loved to cook us big meals, and suddenly there wasn’t any food for her children. We had no heat to get us through the winter. I still hate the Germans for making my mother cry.”

Estelle returns from the kitchen. Placing a small tray of grapes, cheese, and raw carrots on the sofa table, she says, “Eat up, girls.”

Marie snaps off a bit of carrot with her front teeth. “For a while there were no potatoes to be had, my most favorite food gone. So instead I ate carrots every day. My skin turned orange. I ate so many carrots I started to turn into one!”

I laugh along with her.

“Marie, you said you have a brother. Where is he?”

“Like other older boys, Sebastian was taken away to work in Germany. He and his friends didn’t have time to run from the
Service du Travail Obligatoire
. Soldiers pulled them from a line as they left a movie theater.”

“Oh no!” I cry, shielding my mouth as I chew on a grape.

“We miss him so much. But he’s smart and strong. I believe in my heart he’ll come back to our family.” She shrugs, but the sadness in her eyes is clear. “My friends and I used to joke that boys are too grubby and silly to deserve our attention. Now there are almost no boys left. We wish they could all come back. What will happen if they don’t? Who will we marry? The decrepit old men the Germans deemed too unfit for work?”

We make nearly identical disgusted faces at the mere thought of that.

Marie jumps. “What time is it?” Before I have time to answer, she grabs my wrist to check my watch herself. “I have to leave for
work at the café now. Do you want to walk with me? I can show you the neighborhood.”

“Sure, I’ll go with you.”

Marie glides up from the sofa. “I can tell already we are going to be great friends!”

After we say good-bye to Estelle, Marie leads me to a café in another district. I learn the location of her friends, her enemies, the old man I’m to avoid at all costs, the kind baker who gives a little more than the daily allotment, several black-market restaurants, and Gestopo headquarters on Avenue Foch.