Page 4 of The Paris Agent
“There was really only one way out and that was the escape lines operated by resistance volunteers. They made up false papers for me, then smuggled me through a series of safe houses, from Lille to Paris, where they paired me up with a girl...a resistance operative, of sorts. She also needed to get out, so we escaped via the Pyrenees.”
“But—the French-Spanish border is...what...500 miles from Paris?”
He gives a little shrug.
“Thereabouts.”
“So, you and some British girl just...what? Drove from Paris to Spain?”
Dad shakes his head.
“Oh no. We caught a train together to St. Jean de Luz, then a guide took us onward from there by foot through the mountains. I mean, it wasn’t as simple as a leisurely hike. Those mountains were riddled with people who wanted to stop evaders like me. First there was the German Gestapo, and the Milice Française, and of course, even the Spanish in the Guardia Civil wanted to stop us. It was an impossibly difficult twenty-four hours.” He glances down at his feet and mutters, “My God, by the time we reached the safe house in Oiarzun, even my blisters had blisters. Every step was agony.”
“Youwalkedout of occupied France. You just walked out through the mountains into Spain,” I whisper incredulously.
“I needed to get home and that was the only way to do so.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose and squeeze my eyes closed for a moment, trying to piece it all together. “When were you shot down?”
“June 19, 1940.”
“But...when did your family die?”
“August 29, 1940.”
“Oh, Dad...” I croak, eyes filling with tears. “When did you find out they were...gone...?”
“The day I arrived back here to Liverpool. July 27, 1941,” he whispers unevenly. “When I left, my parents and brothers were alive and well in our beautiful home. When I came back, our house had been leveled. The bomb caused a fire, so everything we owned had been burnt so even the rubble was cleared. The only thing I had left of my family was their graves and my memories. That was it.”
“My God, Dad. I’m sorry.”
“It was tough,” he says, but I catch a glimpse of the stoic father I’m used to as he clears his throat and straightens his spine. “Plenty of people had difficult stories through those years. Mine isn’t special. My family was gone, and your mother was right—I couldn’t bring them back by sitting in my misery. So I guess that’s where the story really gets interesting, because—”
He pauses for a moment, and when he speaks again, his tone has changed. It’s darker now—heavier, somehow. He stares out at the ocean, his shoulders slumped forward as he speaks.
“The Special Operations Executive approached me and invited me to try out to train as an agent to return to France. I owed my life to the French, and I wanted to do more to help the war effort after what had happened to my family. That invitation to join the SOE felt like an answer to my prayers.”
I’m aware of the work of the SOE. I’ve seen those old films about beautiful women acting as spies behind enemy lines, courageous and dashing British men working alongside them too. My father is nothing like those characters. He’s not physically imposing or courageous or especially handsome, or brilliant and charismatic like the actors in those films. Or maybe he is, and I’ve just never seen it, because to me, he’s always just been Dad—a dreadfully uncool, slightly shy man with a heart as big as the world itself.
He’s staring out at the water now, the wind tousling his faded brown hair, his gaze distant and somber. And for the very first time in my life, I wonder if I know my father at all.
“I just don’t understand why you would keep any of this a secret from us,” I say. Has Dad lied to us? Maybe not openly, maybe not directly, but even so, there’s a deception here. I try to ease the pain of that by staring into his kind eyes as he turns to me, but I can’t shake the sense of hurt.
“I never intended to lie to you and Archie. Your mother and I married right after the war ended and you were born ten months later. It all happened very quickly, Charlotte, so I wasn’t close to ready to explain when you were little, but even as you grew older...” He exhales, his eyes growing cloudy. “The truth is that my SOE days were very complicated, love. Not easy to reflect upon, even now. To be completely frank, I’ve spent a lot of my life tryingnotto think about those times. Speaking about it like this was out of the question for most of my life.”
Dad opens the thermos and pours out some tea, steam rising from the black liquid and dissipating into the cool air. He pours a second mug for me and when he passes it to me, I warm my hands around the metal. When he’s still again, I ask hesitantly, “This new project...it’s related to the SOE?”
“I almost died, you see. Something went awry on a mission, I think. There was the head injury and...well, I was shot—” He rubs his left shoulder absentmindedly.
“You always said that scar was from the car accident...”
“You first asked me about that scar when we were swimming at this very beach when you were three or four years old. Exactly how truthful do you think I should have been, even if I was ready to talk about it at the time, which I was not? Besides, from what I remember, therewassome kind of car accident. I just happened to be shot at the same time. I think.”
I’m trying to appear calm now because it’s clear this isn’t easy for Dad to talk about, but my heart is racing and it’s increasingly difficult to contain my shock. “I can’tbelieveyou never told us this.”
“It was complicated. Itiscomplicated,” he says hesitantly. “I woke up in a hospital bed. I had a hole in my shoulder and a skull fracture—my brain was all but scrambled. I had a sense that I was British, and I knew the war was raging, but I had no idea why I was in France. All the nurses could tell me was that my ‘friend’ Remy brought me in and saved my life.”
“Who was Remy?”
