Page 10 of The Paris Agent
“No boyfriend,” I said lightly. “I’m stopping in Rouen to see if I can find an uncle who disappeared on a business trip some weeks ago. The British have bombed the city so much that my aunt is convinced he’s been injured or...” I tried to feign some combination of concern and dismay. “...well. Or worse.”
There was sudden movement beside me. The colonel had reached into his jacket and now passed a small white business card toward me.
“What a concerning situation that is for your family, mademoiselle,” he said gravely. “I’m staying at this hotel in Rouen for a week. If you need help, please contact me.”
I murmured my thanks and forced a shy smile as I took the card and slipped it into my shoulder bag, right beside the hidden compartment stuffed with forged currency and identity papers.
I’d expected my mission in France to be wild—exciting, dangerous, meaningful—butthis?This was utterly surreal. Over the next few hours, I chatted with the young soldiers as they talked about the brief reprieve from the war they’d enjoyed on leave in Paris. I was careful not to speak too much myself, but did gradually relax as I realized that my slight accent was not likely obvious to these men—the young soldiers’ French was so woeful the conversation was half chit-chat, half French lesson, and the colonel himself spoke fluently but had such a thick German accent that at times, I had to strain to make sense of him.
The younger men seemed to share a strange delight at conversing with me—as if my presence on that carriage extended their leave by a few more precious hours. There was an innocence to the conversation that might almost have blinded me to their uniforms for a moment or two along the way. Most were junior Wehrmacht soldiers—by that point in the war, almost certainly conscripted. Perhaps they were reluctant players in this battle, just as, I supposed, most of us were—drawn into the war if not by conscription, then by circumstance, just as I had been.
During my training I had learned that when it came to a cover story, revealing less was always the best strategy, so I tried to deflect the focus back onto the men as we talked. I asked about their lives back home, and some flashed me faded, well-worn photographs of young wives or tiny children. Others had photos of beloved pets. The colonel carried a well-loved photograph of himself, seated in a leather armchair with an enormous cat in each arm.
But if, for even a second, I had felt a shred of empathy for those men given how polite and respectful they had been toward me, the reminder that some had wives waiting at home was like a slap to the face.Iwas once a wife sitting at home waiting for the return of my husband away at war, andhehad been taken from me, by men likely wearing uniforms not dissimilar to these. It made no difference if the man who shot down my husband’s plane at El Alamein was young or respectful or even conscripted against his will. Giles was still dead. The world would offer no justice for that so I had to eke it out myself.
But I could not afford to become distracted by thoughts like this. I knew when I left Britain I would need to stop my mind from wandering to my grief for Giles, or longing to be with my son Hughie, who was back home in Bexley with my mother. My boys would never be farfrom my mind, nor could they be front and center. I could not afford to lose focus. Distraction meant carelessness. Carelessness could be catastrophic.
So I maintained my polite facade by reminding myself that I was playing along with the charade so that later, I could wreak havoc upon these men and everything they stood for.
C?H?A?P?T?E?R4
CHARLOTTE
Liverpool
May, 1970
At first, Dad is so cheerful as he goes about his project to find Remy that I feel certain I’m right to ignore Aunt Kathleen’s warning. I don’t mind that my skirts are soon snug from the endless stream of rich meals he’s cooking for us, I’m just pleased to see he’s filling out in the face a little too. He clams right up when I try to talk to him about the project or ask questions about his war days, but I remind myself that Dad told me about the SOE when he was good and ready, and he’ll tell me more when the right time comes, too.
He was semiretired before Mum died. He still worked five or even six days a week, but they were short days, focused on oversight of his managers at each of his six workshops rather than business specifics. He had reached a point where he was financially secure and didn’t need to continue expanding the company so instead, he delighted in extra time for family, golf and gardening.
Right after Mum’s death, Dad went back to working full-time and then some, but now for the first time in months, I’m leaving the house before him and returning to find him already home. He’s in his study most waking hours around his work, on the phone or reading or pecking away at a typewriter. Letters come in the post with return addresses from all manner of government agencies across the UK and even France.
But his mood slowly drops again. First, he starts leaving for work earlier, and then I come home a few nights in a row to find he’s still at the office and the kitchen is dark and still. Within a week or two, the light has faded in Dad’s eyes. He once again looks on the outside as I feel on the inside—frustrated, depressed, angry.
Has he found Remy? Does he have any answers about that wartime accident? I’m curious about what he’s discovered that’s caused such a change in his mood. I’m also starting to think I should have listened to Aunt Kathleen, because Dad does not look happy. He doesn’t even look well.
One night, he comes home from work late and sits down to the subpar sausages and mashed potato I’ve prepared for us. The bags under his eyes are shadowed and heavy. He sits slumped and weary at the dining room table and my heart aches as he shovels my terrible food into his mouth.
“How’s the SOE project going?” I ask gently.
“Ah, that.” He swallows the last chunk of potato on his plate, then dismisses me with a limp wave of his hand. “I never thought it would be easy to find Remy but I assumed I’d at least be able to confirm that he was an agent. It turns out even that is just about impossible. I’ve gotten nowhere.”
This surprises me. I foolishly assumed he learned something upsetting or was finding it challenging to confront the past. It didn’t occur to me that he isn’t finding answers at all.
“Have you given up?” I ask him. I’m equal parts relieved and concerned by the thought.
“I think I’m running out of people to approach, to be honest.” He pauses, then laughs self-consciously. “I’m a silly old fool, Lottie.”
“You’re none of those things—” I start to say, but it’s clear Dad is ready to change the subject, because he stands and forces a smile.
“You cooked. I’ll do the dishes,” he says, even though most nights recently he’s been doing both. Wrigley, who had been asleep by my feet as I worked at the kitchen table, stands and follows Dad toward the sink, shooting me a doleful look.
Dad is gone when I wake up the next morning. I dress early and plan the school day in my mind, groaning as I ponder the long list of things I have to do before I can crawl back into bed—end of the school year is a brutal time for teachers. I pass Dad’s study on my way out but pause, staring inside. When Mum was alive, Dad was perpetually untidy but now, he keeps most of the house pristine, just as she preferred. The only place he allows his own standard of cleanliness to stand is this study, which is in its usual state of chaos.
I glance back down the hallway, double-checking that Dad has really left the house, then step into the room. The rubbish bin is overflowing and one of the cabinets where he keeps his business paperwork is half-open, overstuffed files peeking out the top. I straighten the folders then push the drawer closed before I wander to his desk. There’s a leather folio beside the phone and I pull it toward me, then open the front cover to find dozens of pages of handwritten notes. Each page is a long list of times, dates, phone numbers and remarks. Every entry has been crossed out. Some of those lines are drawn with a heavy hand, the page almost torn with the force of the slash. I flick across a few more pages and find more of the same.
Poor Dad. No wonder his optimism is fading. As far as I can tell, he’s contacted just about every government department and military organization in existence but if this list is anything to go by, he really is getting nowhere. On the corner of one page, he’s scrawled a note diagonally in letters so heavy I can picture the confusion and disbelief on his face as he wrote them.
