It was only for that night, Claudette told herself as she entered Mémère’s room. She came out with the chamber pot and saw that the nanny had claimed her sofa.
“You’re not supposed to be inside,” Claudette said.
“I can’t leave the children unattended, can I?”
They would all be gone tomorrow, Claudette told herself, and soon after, she crawled into Mémère’s bed.
When she entered the kitchen in the morning, the nanny was working by the sink. Her large hips filled the small space, and Claudette couldn’t get to the stove, which was taken anyway by a pot of porridge.
“Excuse me,” Claudette said. “What are you doing?”
“Madame said to make the children’s breakfast.”
“Not here, though.”
When the woman didn’t move, Claudette called Belle and walked out to the yard. The elegant woman was washing her face in a bowl resting on the rim of the well.
“Good morning,” she said to Claudette. “Thank you again. We were so exhausted from two days on the road. What a beast of a trip.”
“Your nanny is in my kitchen.”
“Do you mind? Please. My children haven’t had a hot meal in two days. We’re also out of provisions. Who could have imagined such a disaster? My husband has gone out to get some food and petrol. When he returns, we’ll be on our way.”
The man returned in the afternoon, his jacket folded on his arm, and from the way he swung the petrol can, Claudette could tell that it was empty. Back in her kitchen, they helped themselves to the oil and the sack of potatoes in the corner, then left money on the table. After supper, the couple sat in the front room and talked in hushed voices. The nanny had retired with the children upstairs, and Claudette was again relegated to Mémère’s bed.
On the third day, Claudette protested to the man. “I never agreed to any of this. My grandmother is sick and I—”
He peeled more money off his wad of cash. “How much do you want?”
“It’s not about money, it’s—” Claudette could hear her own weak voice. Belle started barking.
“Do something about this damn dog. It frightens the children and gives my wife migraines.”
“I’d like you all to leave. Please.”
“Do you think we want to be stuck in this wretched house?” The corners of his mouth pulled down in distaste. When Belle continued barking, he kicked her.
“Don’t touch her!” Claudette cried out. Belle retreated with a whine.
A week later, the family had taken over the house, discovered the storage cellar, and were eating Mémère’s preserves. They hadn’t bothered to tell Claudette their names. They didn’t address her. They acted as if she were made of air.
“You are thieves,” Claudette told them, and the man threw more bills at her. She shouted, “I don’t need money—there’s nothing I can buy with it!”
Only the children seemed to notice her yelling. Their mouths gaped in fright. The nanny told them, “Keep away from this witch, or she’ll cast a spell on you, turn you into grasshoppers.”
Their beautiful mother lowered her eyes whenever Claudette passed by. She no longer apologized or asked permission to collect the one egg the last chicken had laid.
The mayor had gone to serve in the war. His wife, the town’s midwife, had turned the town hall into a makeshift clinic with no doctor. “Armistice doesn’t mean the end of war, only more ruthless occupation,” she said to Claudette when she came seeking her advice. Her eyes were hollow from hunger. “I pray for it to end.”
When Claudette went to the tavern to appeal to Monsieur Lefebvre, she found him drunk again. Fleeing soldiers who had dragged themselves into town filled the barroom, their stinking uniforms bloodstained and torn. A patron turned the radio dial as another manipulated the circular wire antenna. Crackling words came through with news: The Nazis no longer bothered taking French soldiers prisoner. They just beat them senseless and took their weapons.
Then a hush fell over the room as de Gaulle, in London, broadcast a call for French resistance: “Be brave. Together we’ll defeat the enemy.”
All Claudette saw was chaos and danger.
* * *
The day’s heat was suffused with the dampness of a heavy rain. In her bed, Mémère shivered. Her skin had withered after her plumpness drained from underneath it. From the front room came the sounds of the two children running and squealing. “Who are the people in my house?” Mémère cried. “Are my sons back?”
“Squatters.” Claudette placed at Mémère’s feet a brick she had heated in the oven.
“Go fetch Dorothée Poincaré.”
Rain pummeled the windows. The wind thrashed the trees outside. “Now? Whatever for?” Claudette plumped Mémère’s pillow, which needed no plumping. Solange and her mother were supposed to be back from their week of traveling. The refugees bought woven boxes and suitcases, sturdier than their cardboard valises.
“Don’t tire me with your questions.” Another coughing fit seized Mémère. The phlegm she spat into a saucer was bloody. Her head dropped back on the pillow. “Ask for the priest too.”
Not the priest! Not him—and not yet! A sob broke out of Claudette. The priest never told the children who threw stones at her and Solange that it was wrong. He never spoke of the cruelty of man toward man the way the Jew did, only about man’s sins toward God. Claudette and Solange were invalides, the priest said, because they were being punished for some grave sins. The Jew, who almost never contradicted the priest’s sermons, told Claudette that her and Solange’s disabilities meant that God loved them more, not less.
Claudette crossed the front room, trying not to trip on the interlopers’ mattress and valises. In the vestibule, she picked up her cane, put on her rain cape, and grabbed an umbrella.
Her shoes filled with water as she sloshed in the streams rushing down the cobblestones. She left a message for the priest with his housekeeper, then dragged herself to Solange’s house on the other side of the village. Tilting her umbrella against the rain did little to avoid its assault.
Solange gave her a tight hug in spite of her soggy clothes. Dorothée hitched her horse to the cart, and twenty minutes later they all stood by Mémère’s bed. Her teeth chattering, Claudette took off her wet coat and toweled dry her face and hair.
Mémère was short of breath when she spoke. “You know someone at Château de Valençay, right?” she asked Dorothée.
“The cook’s first assistant, Lisette, is my cousin.”
