The Paris Agent(6)

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 trying not to 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, there was some 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’t believe you never told us this.”

“It was complicated. It is complicated,” 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?”

“That’s just the thing—I had no idea at first. I didn’t even know my own name right at the start. Many memories returned eventually, but even now, I look back at the war years through a thick mental fog. In time, I became reasonably certain Remy was an agent like me. But if I’m right about that, there’s a good chance I never knew his real name.”

“You’re going to try to track this Remy down?”

“Everything I’ve enjoyed in this life in the years since then—marrying your mum, the honor of being her husband for decades, being Dad to you and Archie, even being little Poppy’s grandfather… I’d have missed all of it but for this Remy. You and Archie and even Poppy might never have been born. Isn’t that strange to think of it like that? This man’s actions changed the course of all of our lives and I have no idea who he was. After so many years, maybe the best I can do is lay some flowers on his grave, or make sure his family knows what he did for me. But I need to do it. I need to try to find him.”

“But…why now, Dad?”

“It’s like I said: life moved on so quickly after the war. First I had to focus on my recovery from that head injury and that really was a full-time job. Even once I found my feet, it was better…so much easier…to avoid examining those years too closely. The downside is that there are things about my own past I don’t know and plenty of things I don’t understand. I’d like to change that and I just have an inkling that Remy is the key to it all. I’ve set myself a real challenge because I’m not even sure where to start, but having a goal has left me feeling much more myself, even if I’m not sure how to achieve it.”

“I’m glad, Dad. Maybe I need to find a project of my own,” I say, but then slump. Even thinking about finding a new project is too exhausting for me. The way Dad glances at me tells me he understands.