Page 30 of The Mademoiselle Alliance

29

You Matter

Paris and London, July 1943

At the Gare de l’Est, I’m very aware that I’m in the open with a price on my head that makes me a lucrative investment for any Nazi, criminal, or desperate Frenchman. My hat is pulled so low I can barely see Lucien waiting farther along the platform.

We take separate carriages to Nanteuil-le-Haudouin, where Mahout meets us and leads us to a roadside ditch that we all climb into. There, I finally embrace Lucien.

“Any word from Amniarix about the new weapon?” I ask.

“It’ll come on the next Lysander,” Lucien says, face grave, and my gut recoils, unable to imagine what further horror the Nazis have in store for us.

“Tell her to be careful,” I say. “MI6 needs that intelligence, but she needs to stay alive.”

We’re interrupted by the sound of an arthritic car driven by the doctor who helped me escape from Tulle. “Mahout tells me you never accept anything,” I say once we’re on our way. “Not even money for fuel. There must be something I can give you.”

The doctor considers, then says, “I’d love a good bar of soap. There’s nothing worse than visiting the sick without really clean hands.”

So I add soap to the list of gifts I’ll buy in London. A robe for Coustenoble. A rattle for Achille. Books for Béatrice and Christian. Underwear for Monique and Marguerite. And something perfect for Léon.

At 10:00 p.m. , the doctor parks beside a corn rick. On the field before us, Mahout’s team is engaged in a strange kind of dance, marking out the shape of an L where the plane will land.

“It’s so peaceful,” Lucien says.

Yes, the moon is a benevolent eye keeping watch over us, redirecting the clouds to other skies. The air is as soft as a lullaby.

But the longer we wait, the more the moon starts to seem too bright. It’s casting our silhouettes onto the ground, beckoning the Nazis toward us. A breeze carries every sound: the rustle of a shirt; our thoughts, which are a too-loud coalescing of worry. Will the Germans come? Will the plane find the field? Will the weather change?

I try to think of the baby.

Then, figures glide onto the field. Mahout and his team, who’ve heard the distant thrum of a plane. They fire up their flashlights, one positioned at the head of the L, another at the heel, and the last at the toe. Mahout flashes the Morse letter M into the sky; the Lysander replies.

And everything is beautiful again. Mahout looks like a sorcerer, hands sweeping elegantly through the night, summoning the plane to him.

It deposits itself precisely at the head of the strip, then taxis toward Mahout. He keeps the Lysander steady as I haul myself up the ladder, Lucien following. No more than two minutes pass by before the plane taxis away and we’re in the air and on to London, a land that isn’t ruled by Nazis.

—

A driver takes us from Tangmere Airfield in the south of England to a delightful cottage surrounded by flowers. “It’s like a fairytale,” I whisper to Lucien, who’s so stunned by all this careless beauty that he can’t speak.

I step out of the car and a voice cries, “You must be Marie-Madeleine. I’m Barbara. And this is my husband, Major Bertram.”

Barbara ushers us inside, explaining that they use their cottage to look after travelers who’ve just arrived from France.

Crane, whom I met in Madrid, is waiting for us. “Golly, we’ve been worried about you,” he says. “You look like you need a good supper. Luckily we have that in hand.”

That’s when I see something even more spectacular than the cottage. A dining table laden with eggs and bacon and bread and butter and a strange yellow fish and tomatoes and beans.

I hear myself swear softly in French, then clap a hand to my mouth. “ Pardon . I’ve spent the last three years surrounded by men—”

Barbara smiles. “I’d be more surprised if you’d never uttered a curse living beside those damn Germans.”

I laugh. Then I eat. And at last, I sleep.

—

Bang! Bang, bang!

My eyes fly open. Someone is pounding on the door. Gestapo. I’m on my feet instantly. Why did I sleep? I never sleep.

“Marie, it’s time to go to London,” a voice calls.

Who’s Marie? London?

I blink and remember—I’m in England. There’s no Gestapo here.

I open the door to find Crane smiling brightly. It’s too much. Too much joy. Too much food. Too many flowers. Not enough agents and family and friends.

I should never have left them.

Desolation lands in my stomach alongside all the food from hours ago. I want to throw up. The tears come in such a rush I have no chance of stopping them.

“Oh dear,” Crane says.

There’s nothing to cry about. And I don’t want Crane to think I’m a weak woman who shouldn’t be left in charge of MI6’s most important Resistance network. But I can’t stop. I don’t even know where the tears are coming from, just that they won’t be brooked.

I’m fraying, like an old dress whose threads have been tugged one too many times. Would a man fray, too?

But a man will never know what it’s like to watch a baby slide out of his body, all the while knowing he can only hold that child for one short week.

I don’t even realize Crane has left the room until he returns with another man. A doctor, who gives me a similar prescription to the one I was given in France. Rest. Peace.

He also hands me vitamins. A little pill for my body. But nobody has a prescription for my soul.

I’ve left that behind me in France.

—

“So this is the terrible woman who had us all scared,” Claude Dansey, the head of MI6, says to me one day later in the luxurious hotel room I’ve been given to live in. It’s so grand I hardly dare sit on the chairs.

Dansey takes my hands. He’s balding, with round glasses that make him look like a discontented pig, which is an uncharitable thought, especially as his next words are, “It’s good to have you safely here.”

“Just for a month,” I say, something weeping inside me still—a strange need to get back to the place most people want to run from.

“We’ll see,” he says in that way men have of pretending to listen to a woman. “Averages tell us a Resistance leader can’t last more than six months. You’ve lasted over two and a half years. It’s sheer witchcraft.”

Before I can respond, he launches into a profusion of gratitude. “We’re indebted to you and to Alliance. We wouldn’t be planning an invasion without everything you’ve told us. Thank you.”

I relax a little. Stress and anxiety have misaligned my gut’s compass. This man is on my side, a fact proven when he says, “What can I do for you in return?”

“I want to write to my children in Switzerland.”

I don’t say, And my baby . Nobody in England can know that I’ve had a child. An illegitimate baby is a sin so colossal they might throw me out of my own network. I also don’t want them to think of me as a woman. Because woman still equals weakness in the eyes of most military men. Especially the one in front of you, my gut whispers, still mistrustful.

Dansey concludes our meeting by saying, “In the meantime, relax. I shall be very angry if I hear that you’re working.”

“I’m here to work until the Nazis are gone.”

It seems impossible that I can sit and put uncoded words into a letter that Béatrice and Christian will soon receive. I fill pages and pages, trying to picture their faces, but the faces I see are the ones from a couple of years before, not the faces they must wear now. But I know their hearts, and it’s to those two strong hearts that I write, hoping they don’t imagine me wallowing in a London hotel room while they’ve been in a Swiss refugee camp for months before finally being found and taken by Yvonne to my mother’s chalet.

When I’ve finished, I walk to the MI6 offices and begin the work I need to do, despite what Dansey said. I start in the building—a whole building!—dedicated to radio transmissions, the Tower of Babel come to life. Into it flow coded messages in all languages. Hundreds of men and women seated at desks listen and decode. I tell the head of this operation that Magpie wants the British to call us first, rather than the other way around.

“Out of the question,” he says.

I grit my teeth. I bet he goes home to the same house each night, doesn’t scramble to six different addresses like Magpie does.

I try again. “I’m tired of listening to radio operators pleading, Come on, pick up, risking their lives because you aren’t answering. Last month, ten minutes went by before Magpie could rouse anyone. That’s half the time he has to spare. If you call us at the agreed time, we’ll pick up straightaway. Then we can use the entire twenty minutes to transmit messages. It makes perfect sense.”

“Tell them to change frequency. That’s how they’ll avoid detection,” the obstinate little man replies.

“Have you ever seen a Gestapo detection-finding van?” I ask coolly, and he blinks, offended by my persistence, and I want to strangle him for insisting on these laws that someone who’s never been in France has made.

London might be a world where I’m meant to bow down to maleness and might, but my hip’s too stiff for bowing.

I march to Dansey’s office and tell him I want Magpie brought over at the next moon. If anyone can show that idiot exactly what a radio operator is risking, he can.

“All right,” he says pleasantly. “But—”

I cut him off with a feminine little smile. “I’m going shopping,” I say before he can tell me to relax again.

I meet Lucien on Oxford Street. He’s doing a training course to land heavy bombers in his sectors, and the responsibility has made him grow about another foot taller, almost matching Vallet’s height. And here, without the threat of Nazis, the memory doesn’t ache. It makes me smile to think of how lucky I am to have been granted the privilege of working with men like these.

“Shall we?” I say, holding out my arm. He takes it with a grin, and we set off for Selfridge’s, which is full of glorious things.

I locate the men’s robes and it’s my turn to grin as I tell Lucien, “You’ll have to model it. Coustenoble deserves the best.”

He can’t argue with that so, beneath the saleslady’s bewildered eye, I have Lucien try on about a dozen different robes, rejecting black, red, and green in quick succession.

“Would your…er…your…” She looks back and forth between Lucien and me, hoping for a clue as to how we’re connected. She tries again. “Would the gentleman like it in navy?”

“What do you think, dear wife?” Lucien says. “Does navy suit me?”

An actual giggle escapes me. I don’t think I’ve giggled for years. “You always look dashing in navy, mon cher .”

The saleslady darts off to get navy and I erupt into laughter.

“You’ve learned too much devilry from Léon,” I tell Lucien. “I’m ten years too old to be your wife.”

“Commandant Faye is about ten years older than you,” Lucien counters, and I shake my head, still laughing, unable to believe that Lucien can now flirt with the best of them.

I settle on the grandest and most English of all the robes. When I picture Coustenoble opening it and laughing, it makes me smile, as does the sight of Lucien purchasing the navy robe for himself.

“Have you already met a nice English girl you want to impress?” I ask, and he blushes redder than the pillar boxes outside.

“Aha!” I cry. “Bring her over for dinner.”

He rolls his eyes but looks happy as I help him choose shoes for Josette and a lovely brooch for his English amie . “I’ll probably never see her again after I leave,” he says as the saleslady wraps the gift. “But sometimes when you can’t sleep, it helps to think that maybe someone is remembering you. That you mattered, just a little.”

Oh, mon Dieu . I want to wrap a bandage around his heart. All I can do is reach for his hand and tell him, in the sparkling jewelry department of a store full of dreams, “You matter. To me. To Alliance. To the world. Whenever your friend looks at that brooch, she’ll know she was lucky to have met one of the best men in the world.”

He tips his head back and stares at the ceiling, blinks, exhales. Then he says to me, “Forged by one of the best women.”

I do my best to stand dry-eyed beside my lieutenant. There have been enough tears already.

So I slip my arm into his again and we walk away from the sentiment but take with us the affection as we set ourselves to purchasing a dozen cases of soap for the doctor; stockings and underwear for Monique, Marguerite, Bee, and Ladybug; and gifts for my children.

In one of the shops, a pair of cuff links catches my eye. Two eagles.

I ask the sales assistant, “I don’t suppose you have a hedgehog?”

“We could have one made if you wish.”

The eagle and the hedgehog cast in silver: real, solid, sparkling.