Violins of Autumn (Lisette de Valmy) Read online

  As I stuff the helmet into my overalls, a beam of moonlight glints across the silver knife blade in my other hand. Without realizing it, I’d been flashing out my position all along. I sheepishly return the knife to its proper pocket.

  Heel to toe my feet silently roll forward, avoiding fallen leaves and branches. I stick to the shadows, like an owl on a nightly hunt for mice. But the longer I walk, the noisier I seem to get. I can’t help but focus on insignificant sounds. My body betrays me by pumping blood too loudly, forcing each breath to travel a bumpy road—whistling wind through a voice-box cave and nose-hair trees. I swallow. I blink. I can’t help any of it.

  “Adele.”

  Frozen in place, I stare at the spot where the voice came from, unable to see any telltale human outlines.

  “Adele.”

  There’s no mistaking that springy British whisper. I haven’t been left alone, after all.

  “It’s me,” I say, so quietly I doubt Denise heard. “Come out.”

  Seconds later, from behind a bush not five feet away, she appears, still in her jumpsuit. I jerk back, surprised to see how close she really is.

  I point to the bush. “How did you get there?”

  “Quietly,” she says.

  Denise closes the distance between us in three soundless steps.

  “Where’d you land?” I ask.

  “Not in the proper place, apparently. I saw your chute on its way down. I had a rough idea where to find you. So, you landed in the trees. How’s that for a welcome?”

  “I’m okay. No broken bones. My parachute is stuck in the trees, though.”

  “Mine’s tucked in a hollow log, near the field I came down in. And I found a couple of our containers.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Near the road.” Her outstretched arm shows me the way.

  Near the road. They may as well have landed on the steps of a gendarmerie. Sunrise is a few short hours away and curfew ends at five o’clock. The gendarmes know about our jump, and if they find our personal items inside the containers there will be no doubt that female agents were dropped into the area. As spies go, ordinary girls like Denise and me are unexpected. We need to use that to our advantage.

  “We need to move the containers, Denise. I think we might have fallen into a trap. Shepherd’s been taken. I saw it with my own eyes.”

  “Bloody hell.” She sighs. “I had a feeling something wasn’t right. What happened?”

  “Four gendarmes came at him from a roadside ditch. We could be next.”

  Denise pauses while taking this in.

  “We won’t be next.” She pulls out her pistol. “Follow me.”

  We slink through the woods. Each time the full moon goes into hiding Denise all but disappears from sight, only to reappear out of the darkness in front of me like a ghost taking form in the eerie moonlight. After a clumsy close call with an exposed tree root, I somehow recover my balance quietly. I speed up to shorten the space between us, trying not to crash through the forest like a rampaging bear.

  Through a break in the trees I see the field Denise must have landed in. She signals a message to me with her hands. We were taught not to use the same trail twice, to avoid a possible ambush. At the next fork in the path, she heads down the left branch.

  The trail meanders along a narrow riverbed. I kneel to roll a pebble over the edge. It bounces a short distance through the deepening black of the gully and skitters to a stop.

  “No splash,” I whisper.

  I climb to the bottom, checking the softness of the bank with my knife as I go, a trick I picked up playing cops and robbers with my brother, Tom, and his friends. I always played the part of beautiful bank robber Bonnie Parker, and my brother’s friend Nick was Clyde Barrow. The two of us got so good at being on the lam that sometimes Tom and the other boys couldn’t find us for hours. But after Bonnie and Clyde really were gunned down by police, the game didn’t seem as fun anymore.

  Denise joins me and we follow the dry riverbed, out of sight, without leaving behind a map of footprints on the bone-dry earth. At an old bridge in the country road, she motions for us to leave the riverbed. We climb to the top, concealed by the bridge.

  No matter how hard I squint, no unusual forms stand out among the shadows. The soft moonlight can’t locate our containers. Neither can I.

  We skirt the field and come to a shallow ditch alongside the country road. Denise stands next to me, silent, as she scans the darkness. Eventually she puts her mouth to my ear and says the words I don’t want to hear.

  “The containers are gone.”

  THREE

  The containers are gone. After everything else that’s gone wrong, I get a terrible sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, as if it’s another sign of things to come.

  I eye up the surrounding forest. Any number of sly German soldiers or French police like the ones who nabbed Shepherd might be hidden there in the pitch black. I shiver at the thought of them slipping out from the cover of those trees like boogeymen.

  Maybe someone should have done a better job of talking me out of this.

  “What should we do?” Denise asks. “They told us the safe house would be no less than a mile from the drop zone, but we can’t wander aimlessly in the middle of the night. If no one finds us soon, we’ll have to stay put and wait for first light.”

  I don’t like the idea of sleeping outside on the cold ground without a fire, but it’s looking like our only option.

  “Besides, we were dropped in the wrong place,” I say. “Who knows where the safe house and reception committee might be. I can’t wander around with a million francs stuffed into my jumpsuit.”

  “True.” Denise quickly ducks. She points toward the trees to our left. Three men walk onto the field from the forest at the roadside. I crouch, ready to withdraw my knife. “When I make a run for it, stick with me.”

  “Denise, wait—it’s Bishop,” I say.

  He runs toward us, waving his arms above his head. “Don’t shoot.”

  “However did you find us out here?” Denise asks.

  “We heard the two of you talking.” Bishop doesn’t sound at all happy about that, and my relief at being found turns to embarrassment. “Voices carry greater distances at night, girls, don’t forget that.”

  “Our containers,” Denise whispers. “Where are they?”

  “We have them. Your radio is safe, Denise, no need to worry.”

  “Shepherd has been captured,” I say.

  “Yes, we know,” Bishop says. “It’s unfortunate. We’ll discuss it at the safe house.”

  He and the two other men, part of the group that was to have met us on the ground, lead us through the woods. The long walk seems to take even longer because no one speaks. We come out near a stone farmhouse. Comfort is only steps away. How has it been hours, and not days, since we left England? It doesn’t seem possible.

  We were forewarned that the people of France are starving. The occupying Germans strictly ration most foods and restrict the diets of every French man, woman, and child to the calorie.

  The first thing I see when I enter the farmhouse is a long wooden table set for dinner.

  A petite woman rushes around the table to greet us. Her round cheeks remind me of pink lollipops. “Bienvenue. Bienvenue. Entrez.”

  The woman reaches around Bishop to fish me out. She throws her arms around me as best she can. My arms hang lax at my sides. I’m not sure what to do about this stranger’s eagerness to show me affection. Able to see clear over the top of her upswept graying curls, I count eight place settings at the table and wonder who will take up the extra one.

  “I am glad to have you here,” she says before moving on.

  Denise endures the woman’s enthusiastic squeeze until her steely British reserve wins out. I almost laugh when she squirms away and redirects the hug toward Bishop.

  He diverts the hug by politely extending his hand. “How do you do?”

  The exposed wooden beams
framing the slanted ceilings far above my head make the room seem grander than I would have expected. After introductions, the woman, Claire LaRoche, leads the way to a cozier adjacent parlor.

  “Take a load off your feet, ladies,” Bishop says to Denise and me, gesturing to two matching side chairs.

  Denise jumps to take up the offer. “Don’t mind if I do.”

  I don’t want to take a seat simply because I’m a girl, but I’m as sore and tired as anybody else now that the aftereffects of my jump and hard landing are catching up with me. That padded chair looks mighty comfortable.

  From a walnut curio cabinet, Madame LaRoche removes a seemingly endless stream of family photographs. She sets a photo of a wiry little boy with tousled brown hair in my hands. Even in the grainy photo, the mischievous gleam in his eyes is obvious. It’s that look boys get when they’re about to do something they probably shouldn’t.

  The front door swings open, and Madame LaRoche says, “Here is my handsome boy, Pierre, now.”

  Expecting to find a child in the doorway, I first notice Pierre’s battered military boots and denim trousers. My gaze moves higher and higher, past his gray woolen sweater and rugged shoulders. I stare directly into the face of the most handsome man I’ve ever seen outside of a movie.

  In the photograph, Pierre’s eyes hint that he’s ready for trouble. Now they make him appear dark and brooding. Maybe even dangerous.

  The door slams.

  “They sent us more girls? Girls. Again. My God.” Pierre’s pointed French words burst my bubble like tiny arrows. “How do they expect us to get our country back when all they do is send us these flimsy little girls?”

  “Pierre, you don’t mean what you say. These beautiful girls are guests in our home.”

  He clomps across the wooden kitchen floor, yanks a chair out from the table, and flings himself into it. Maybe he isn’t so far off from the child in the photo after all.

  After we’re seated, Madame LaRoche serves dinner. We eat our cold potato-and-leek soup in awkward silence. I reach the bottom of my water glass. The urge to get some much-needed sleep has snuck up and wrapped me in a woozy cocoon. Head heavy, eyelids heavier, I struggle to stay upright and alert as Madame LaRoche begins to explain how life in France has changed.

  Between the two world wars, France took drastic precautions to ensure that Germany could not attack again. Along the shared border, a massive fortification was built—large fortresses nine miles apart that housed one thousand soldiers each, and smaller forts in between that housed a few hundred men. This Maginot Line was vast, impressive, and impenetrable. Or so it was believed.

  Rather than attack through France’s stronghold, Germany went around the line, successfully invading Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg, and Belgium along the way. In early May 1940, armies invaded France through the unprotected—though thought to be impassable—Ardennes Forest. That France surrendered so easily came as a major shock and a blow to the pride of the people. They were assured that the Maginot Line would protect them and their country.

  “Premier Reynaud resigned, refusing to surrender to Germany!” Madame LaRoche exclaims. “And the new government dances for the Germans like wooden-headed puppets as they Nazify our country. They are imprisoning and killing our people. It makes me ill to think of it!”

  She downs several mouthfuls of wine.

  “One day they announced that Jews must sew a yellow star on their clothing. ‘Don’t do it, Hannah,’ I told my dearest friend. ‘They are making you stand out.’ She was such a good woman. She only wanted to do what was right. She thought that if she obeyed their rules, they would leave her alone. Then one day she went away. They took her.” Openly weeping, Madame LaRoche says, “What if I never see her again?”

  Pierre covers her trembling hands with his to steady them on the table.

  “And your poor papa, sent to his death. For what? Daring to speak out? It is a crime now, to tell the truth? They intend to comb all of France until they have done away with everyone who looks, acts, and thinks differently than they do? It is insanity!”

  I shrink down on my chair, as if that might help me disappear. As I pick at a loop of thread in the seam of my skirt, I notice the brief shake of Pierre’s head to his mother.

  “I apologize for my outburst,” she says.

  Bishop tears his bread into halves. “Please don’t apologize, Claire. In your shoes, none of us would accept what the people of France have been asked to accept.”

  “Some of us were not content to sit back and watch the Germans take over our country,” Pierre says. He gestures around the table. “Say one day you find strangers have moved into your home. They eat your food while you go hungry, sleep in your bed, hurt your family, steal what is rightfully yours. Would you give up and allow them to stay? And not only that, you find out you must pay for them to stay. Pay them to control your life? Bullshit! We risk prison and death to stand up and fight because we have to. Because it is the right thing to do!”

  I catch myself staring at Pierre in wonderment and quickly put an end to it. Abrasive and insulting people aren’t supposed to say things I agree with. I’d already made up my mind to dislike Pierre.

  While Madame LaRoche tells us about day-to-day life, how to use our ration coupons and identity cards, the gentle singsong of her voice does me no favors for staying alert. I pinch my leg.

  “Remain vigilant, always,” she says. “One slip, something as insignificant as ordering black coffee, will give you away. Milk is rationed here in France. No choices are available to you, so there is no need to specify. All café is black.”

  A burst of nervous tension sends my heart thumping. The potential for slipups extends beyond what I’ve already considered, possibly right down to how I hold my knife and fork. Only so much can be taught in a training school. Our education in nitty-gritty details is about to progress to the field, where we run the risk of learning lessons the hard way.

  “I’m sure lovely girls such as yourselves need not worry about this”—Madame LaRoche begins, and I have a hunch we’re about to be cautioned against something we enjoy—“but you must not smoke.”

  We’re already aware of this, but Denise groans anyway. The allure of smoking left me about the same time I moved to my aunt and uncle’s home in London. Away from boarding school, the pressure to fit in with other girls my age disappeared, and I felt free to be myself again.

  “Cigarettes may not be rationed in England, but they are rationed here.” Madame LaRoche pats Denise’s shoulder. “Most French girls can only dream of being able to afford such a black market luxury. They do not smoke, and therefore neither can you.”

  “Oui, madame,” Denise says.

  Pierre excuses himself from the table, and he leaves the house as quickly as he entered. The two men from the reception committee empty their wineglasses before rushing out the door after him.

  A quiet descends over the kitchen. Denise and I share our uncertainty in a quick glance across the table. Neither of us seems to know what to do next.

  “Girls, come with me,” Madame LaRoche says with a kind smile. “I will show you to your room.”

  She leads us from the kitchen and up a wooden staircase. Through an open bedroom door at the end of the hallway, I spot our suitcases on the floor. Madame LaRoche points to a low dresser below the room’s window. “There is warm water in the jug and basin. And a chamber pot beneath each bed.”

  We wish each other a good night, and Denise claims first dibs on the wash basin.

  I remove my watch and withdraw my one and only piece of jewelry—a silver charm bracelet—from the pocket of my skirt. I set both on the dresser and practically fall straight into bed. After tonight, who knows where I’ll be sleeping, possibly under the stars or inside barns. I can’t waste a moment in such a comfortable bed as this one.

  My unwinding mind wanders to thoughts of Shepherd. Better him than me. I have to watch out for myself. But still, I’m worried about his safety and wonder what
this mission might hold for me.

  When Denise finally blows out the candles, I close my eyes and curl up in the crisp blankets. The faint scents of fresh country air and flower gardens instantly remind me of my childhood home in Connecticut. I usually fight hard to forget those memories. It hurts too much to think about my life before the accident, a time when my mother and brother were still alive. To my father, their deaths were all that mattered, and not that I survived.

  Soon after the accident, he introduced me to a wealthy woman named Delores. Her movie-star beauty and glamorous clothes obviously impressed my father. I hated the way he looked at her. When we met, she coldly shook my hand, as if I were an adult and not a grieving ten-year-old.

  Delores had studied at a private boarding school near Geneva, Switzerland. My father assured me I would love the school as much as she had. I deserved the best education money could buy.

  The day he dropped me off at the school was the last time I saw him. I thought he would stay by my side while I settled in or walk me through my strange surroundings so I wouldn’t get lost. I didn’t want to be there. I was frightened to be left on my own.

  As I rested on the bed in my new room, still sick and exhausted from travel that seemed never ending, I tearfully watched my father button his coat and put on his hat.

  He patted my hand in the same no-nonsense way he did everything else, and said, “Be a good girl, Betty. Write to us often.”

  After he left, I began to wonder about his final words. Write to us. Much later, I learned he meant the beginnings of his new family. A family that didn’t include me.

  And here I am in a strange place, in a strange country all over again. This time I’m too exhausted to care. I drift off to sleep with Madame LaRoche’s sun-dried blankets clutched to my face, not wanting to let go.

  FOUR

  The morning gets off to an early start. I’m sure I closed my eyes for only a moment, but dusty rays of sunshine are streaming through the room.