I didn’t ask precisely what this was. A diversion, a wartime romance—or something even more serious? Whatever it was seemed quite outside of the present, but we did linger a little in the future. “When this is over,” he said, “I don’t want to make cognac.”
“Why should you?”
“Because my forefathers have been making cognac for generations. I cannot sell the family business to outsiders. I couldn’t do that to my sister.”
“Why not sell to her?”
“Sell it to a woman? She doesn’t have money.”
“Make her a loan. Why not?”
He smiled as he considered it. “What a brilliant creature you are . . . I’d like to write to you when I’m at the front. I’ll send letters by way of a friend and tell you of my deep affection for a lady named Marthe so the censors cannot gossip.”
I grinned and nodded my agreement. “Do me a favor and try not to get shot, won’t you?”
Then I planted a kiss on his lips. I’d never initiated a kiss before. With Willie, I’d never had to. I’d never even wondered whether or not I was the kind of girl who liked to kiss first, but now I wanted to find out, and all it took was a man who made me feel admired and adored.
I could get used to this, I thought, not wanting to worry about where it might lead.
TWENTY-FOUR
MARTHE
Chavaniac-Lafayette
February 1942
Madame Beatrice has sent word from New York that she hopes to get us another shipment of supplies come spring. Meanwhile, I still haven’t had a letter from Henri, and I don’t know why. Surely he’d have tried to scribble a postcard from his prison camp. Anna received a long letter from her husband about his winter in Germany. Maybe her husband is allowed to write because he’s a well-placed officer and nobleman, whereas Henri is only the son of a French farmer. It’s a bitter injustice, but injustice is the theme of our times.
In the Occupied Zone, Germans are executing French boys who pass out leaflets or chalk Churchill’s V for Victory symbol on park benches or street signs. We hear about more executions every day—for violating curfew, for gun possession, for infractions large and small. Here in Chavaniac, it makes us feel lucky to be in the so-called Free Zone, but we’re all on edge when one of those V symbols shows up on the side of our church and Sergeant Travert makes a few arrests in our snowy village.
Then he comes to the castle to question the teachers. When he gets to my classroom, he asks, “Can you account for all your chalk, mademoiselle?”
“I use exactly one quarter of a stick every week,” I say sarcastically.
Then I snort when the gendarme says, “I’d like to see your records of this regimented chalk use.”
“She’s joking,” Anna says, sweeping into my classroom to wrap her arm around me in an exuberant hug. “Marthe is wonderfully funny that way. She keeps everyone’s spirits up with her quirky sense of humor!” I steal a grateful look at her, trying to smother the pleasure I feel at her warmth and the comfort of her touch. Travert stares at us both, a little dumbfounded, but Anna has that effect on men—and on me. She gives him a bat of her eyelashes. “We’re ever so glad you’re on the case, Sergeant, but I’m sure none of us here at the castle know anything about the graffiti.”
And I hope we wouldn’t admit it if we did . . .
The gendarme leaves it at that, but the next day, Faustine Xavier suggests one of the kids might have stolen chalk from our classrooms. “Sadly, not all of our boys are upright and honest.”
Ever since the supervisor at the boys’ dormitory quit in protest over Madame Simon’s dismissal last autumn, the boys have been hard to control. Sam is supposed to be keeping them out of trouble, but sometimes he’s as bad as they are. They play pranks, leave the property without permission, and listen to both the BBC and the new Voice of America broadcasts on their dormitory radio, from which they’ve learned an infectious little ditty to the melody of “La Cucaracha.”
Radio Paris lies, Radio Paris lies, Radio Paris is German . . .
Fortunately, the little Jewish girl I’m hiding at the preventorium is too smart to sing along with the boys at recess on the playground; Gabriella knows better than to draw attention to herself. And one day, after spelling lessons, I ask, “You don’t know about any boys stealing chalk, do you?”
She gives a little squeak of denial. She’s my star pupil, but it bothers me how shy she still is. I know it’s hard for her being separated from her family and not having anyone to tell her secrets to. I think that’s why she clings to me, and why she’s adopted Scratch, a black and white piebald with a bent tail who hisses when anybody else pets him—but he’s all purrs for her. Maybe he just likes the warmth of her lap now that we’re in our fourth winter of the war . . .