Page 44 of The Paris Agent
“Are you okay?” Chloe asked, her voice thick with sleep from the other side of the room. My face flushed with embarrassment, and I sniffed and rolled toward the wall.
“Sorry. I’m fine.”
“If you need anything—”
“I don’t.”
I spoke more sharply than I intended to, but Chloe’s breathing deepened again within minutes, and she was back to sleep.
“Can I ask you something?” Chloe said. It was midmorning the next day and we were sitting at Madame Célestine’s table sharing yet another cup of tea. Her home was lovely, but both Chloe and I were at loose ends waiting for the next phase of our deployment, and neither one of us was accustomed to having free time. “You have a family at home, don’t you? You don’t have to tell me the details,” she added quickly at my surprised look. “It’s just that when we first went for training, I noticed you had a tan line on your ring finger. And you’ve never mentioned any names but...” She cleared her throat. “Sometimes you toss and turn in your sleep. I think you might cry in your sleep sometimes too.”
“My husband is gone,” I said. It was against the rules to tell her anything at all about my personal life—but I could see no harm in telling her this much. As the words left my mouth, a memory flashed before my eyes. He was home on leave the last time I saw him. I had finally adjusted to the shock of finding myself pregnant after his previous visit home. Giles could not stop touching my belly. He kept telling me how beautiful I was—how excited he was that we were going to be parents.
We went for dinner with one of his squadron pals who happened to bring his camera along. After the meal, the friend insisted on taking a photograph of us. Giles was leaning against the wall of the restaurant, standing right behind me. He was beaming at the camera, his arms around me, hands resting proudly on my belly. I looked as carefree and happy as I’d ever remembered feeling.
Giles was a man of deep faith, raised Catholic by his mother. When he left for North Africa two weeks later, I gave him a copy of that photograph and a set of rosary beads attached to a little medal.
“St. Michael,” he had murmured, running his finger over the medal. “Patron saint of the military. He’ll watch over me to keep me safe.”
If only.
My eyes filled with tears at the memory and I blinked them away, embarrassed.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice sympathetic, and I felt myself bristle. I didn’t want pity—not even from Chloe who I genuinely liked and trusted, and who seemed a little distracted herself that day. In stretches of silence that morning I’d caught her staring off into the distance, her expression heavy with grief.
“That’s not why I—You don’t have to—” I broke off, then stopped and took a breath and all of a sudden words were pouring from my mouth and I could not stop the torrent. “Thatispartly why I’m here. My husband was killed in action and it’s so cruel how abrupt it was. One minute you’re a wife and the next you’re a widow, and the only thing that separates those two moments in your life is a damnedtelegram. There’s not even someone from the government there to shake your hand or to thank you for his service. Not even someone around to offer you an explanation, or even a bloody hug. It’s brutal and it’s cold and it’s cruel, and there’s no justice on offer at all for the spouse left behind.” My thoughts went to a parcel I had been given, still wrapped and unopened, in the drawer beside my bed. It was from Giles’s CO, and I knew it would contain his most personal effects—maybe even a letter for me. Two years after his death I had yet to open it. I was curious, but once I opened that parcel, there would be no more from Giles, and I could not bring myself to face that. “When Baker Street approached me for the SOE, it seemed like an answer to my prayers. I was going to lose my mind sitting at home grieving him. I had todosomething.”
“That makes sense,” she said.
“But when I...couldn’t sleep last night, I wasn’t just thinking about him,” I said stiffly. I cleared my throat again. In for a penny, in for a pound, I supposed. “I have a son. It’s never been easy to be away from him, even if it is necessary.”
“Where is he now?”
“My mother...” I sighed and reached for one of Madame Célestine’s cookies. They were made with saccharine and breadcrumbs, and had a coarse, dry texture that meant they could only really be enjoyed with a hot beverage. “My mother and I have never been particularly close, but her marriage ended just after my son was born and she came to stay with me. It turns out she’s a much better grandmother than she was a mother.”
That was an understatement, but I was sharing more with Chloe than I knew I should, and it was the easiest summation of a difficult situation. Maman was already pregnant when she married my father at just seventeen, and by the time she was nineteen, she was divorced with a toddler in tow. It seemed to me that she had always been searching for something and she’d gone looking in all the wrong places—trying to find peace within herself in boyfriends and her multitude of husbands. She left France a few years after I did, settling down with a Welsh farmer she met on the ferry, but by the time Hughie was born and I wrote her to let her know I was not just a mother, but a widow too, her marriage was on the rocks and she showed up on my doorstep.
I almost turned her away. At that stage, I felt only resentment toward her and I already felt overwhelmed by the circumstances of my own life. But I was also out of my depth, struggling to care for Hughie adequately in my grief, so I agreed to let her stay for just a few weeks.
Two years later, she was still there, and our relationship was better than it had ever been. My mother adored Hughie and but for her presence in our lives, I’d never have been able to train with the SOE. Sitting there with Chloe, I was shocked to realize I was almost as keen to see Maman as I was to see Hughie. That was a miraculous shift, especially given the reason I left France in the first place was that she and I could barely stand to be in the same room.
The joy of watching my son grow up together had brought healing to our relationship in a way I had never anticipated.
“Well, since you broke the rules and told me something about yourself, I’ll return the favor. I fell in love on my mission.”
“You...” I was almost speechless, until I burst out a shocked laugh. “Chloe!What?”
“I have you to thank for it, too,” she said, laughing in spite of herself. “They were going to send youto Montbeliard except that you hurt yourself on that test parachute jump.”
“I don’t need to tell you that you’re not supposed to have romantic dalliances on mission,” I scolded, still shaking my head even as I laughed. “You’re the last agent I expected to break a rule like that! You seem such a stickler for the straight and narrow.”
“I am,” she said, her smile fading a little. “But my circuit leader was actually an old friend and our cover story was that we were married. Now that I think about it, it was probably inevitable that something more would develop between us.”
“What happens from here?”
“We both survive the war,” she told me firmly. “And then we reunite and get married and live happily ever after.”
“I hope that’s what happens for you.”
