“You’re being unfair and disloyal. The Boche are blitzing London, so how is the girl supposed to travel back home?” Claudette replied, her tone heated.
Marguerite giggled. “It’s so romantic watching them.”
Claudette objected to gossip about the duchess, a woman she idolized, but she too had been speculating about this gentleman. At dusk the day before, from her chamber window, she had studied him in his fitted brown jacket and leather riding boots as he paced the field that had been mowed after the harvest. He crossed the field’s entire length, looking down as if measuring it.
Marguerite handed Claudette a romance booklet from a new series. Instead of a delicate heroine wearing a flouncy, lacy dress, this cover featured a woman in a commanding stance wearing a khaki-colored uniform. Claudette leafed through the pages and stopped at the drawing of a woman crawling under barbed wire. The next picture showed a huge explosion in red and yellow with the woman in the distance, her blond hair wild, raising an arm in victory.
Claudette had never imagined a woman in such a role. “A guerrilla fighter?” she murmured in awe.
“The Communists recruit women. I told Silvain Auguste I wanted to volunteer, but he wouldn’t hear of it,” Marguerite whispered, referring to the duchess’s chauffeur. Rumor had it that he held a leadership role in the Maquis, although he hadn’t quit his job to join them in the forest.
Claudette fished in her pocket and handed Marguerite a centime for the booklet. The maid had become her friend because her sister was also an invalide, although Marguerite’s sister couldn’t even sit up and had to be carried around.
“What will you do for the underground, blow up bridges?” Claudette whispered, glancing at Madame Couture to make sure she was not objecting—or listening—to this idle chat.
“The Germans are gentlemen; they aren’t suspicious of women when they cross the checkpoints. I can deliver messages and ammunition.”
Claudette envied Marguerite her courage; she never dreamed of performing heroic acts. All she wanted was for the war to be over so she could use her love of lace, colors, and silk to embroider shawls and embellish dresses for the duchess.
Duchess Silvia de Castellane, whose voice was soft and who smelled of lavender, was a beautiful woman, tall and slender like the models in the fashion magazines to which Madame Couture had subscribed before the war.
The wide gallery outside the atelier led to the duchess’s apartment, and now the duchess and two friends entered. Claudette lowered her head out of respect for the visitors. Madame Couture’s sewing machine came to a halt.
The duchess touched Claudette’s shoulder. “Mademoiselle Pelletier is my treasure,” she told her companions. “With no Parisian fashion available, she’s transforming my mourning wardrobe.”
Claudette blushed. The woman she idolized appreciated Claudette styling her clothes: a hint of lace encircling a blouse collar, delicate twisted piping on a jacket’s cuffs, and discreet embroidery on a dress’s pockets.
One of the guests handed Claudette a silk nightgown. It had a row of twenty covered buttons that had to be removed before it was laundered and sewn back on afterward. Claudette set out to work on it, loving the cool feel of the finest silk. She had not known such fine fabrics existed until she’d arrived here.
The guest asked Marguerite to fetch them coffee, and the three women settled on the velvet sofa to chat. Their conversation was a world away from the giggly chatter of the village girls in Mémère’s home. Their Parisian accent was both nuanced and enunciated. These powdered, bejeweled, coiffed women who trailed scents of fine perfumes grumbled over losing their villas in the French Riviera and their châteaux in the Alps, now fallen to the Nazis.
“There’s no one left in Paris,” one guest complained. “My tailor, my cobbler, and my jeweler—the Jews are all gone.”
Claudette’s hand, holding a pin, halted in midair.
“The Jewish musicians from the opera have disappeared too,” said the other. “At least the Nazis haven’t bombed the building.”
“They adore classical music,” the duchess said, “but Wagner? It’s so melancholic—”
“Frankly, I didn’t mind the worldly Jews. They could pass for French. But the refugees from Eastern European countries? What a stinking mess,” one friend said. “There were so many of them, you could trip over them in the street.”
“Remember my Jewish neighbors, the bankers? They sold their art collection in haste. I was lucky to buy masterpieces for a few francs before the family was deported.”
“Those rich bankers are probably on vacation in London,” replied her friend.
The first woman shook her head. “No vacation. A new family has moved in.”
The hair on Claudette’s arms stood up. What did they mean by gone and deported? She glanced at Madame Couture, who was pinning a hem by her sewing machine. The jolly plump woman’s lips were pressed together tightly.
A cloud passed over the duchess’s brow. Her tone was uncharacteristically emphatic when she said, “The French Jews are French.” She checked a fingernail and stood up. “I must find my maid.”
The three women departed, but a sense of disquiet lingered in the room. Claudette didn’t know what questions to ask Madame Couture. What had befallen the Jews? None of the refugees she’d seen in La Guerche looked like the Jew or had his foreign accent. Claudette knew no Gypsies, whom Monsieur Lefebvre said the Nazis were also deporting, but would the Nazis now come for the invalides?
Claudette’s unease grew as she trekked the long distance to the kitchen for the midday hot meal. Unlike the insouciant atmosphere upstairs, here, the air of France’s humiliation was thick, overpowering the rich smell of the root soup. The servants living in the village faced food shortages at home, made worse by the continuing flood of refugees. Two maids cried often for their fiancés in Nazi prisons, surely being tortured.
But here, at the servants’ table, Claudette could listen and try to make sense of the events.
“What can de Gaulle do from London? Even the Brits dislike him,” a butler said.
“Only he can form a strong new army here,” said Silvain Auguste. “Jean Moulin, his deputy, is organizing the fractured Résistance cells. When the Nazis cross the demarcation line, they’ll meet their match.”
Alarmed, Claudette asked, “The Nazis will come here after all?”
“The Loire Valley is the breadbasket of France. Greed will make them break their agreement with the Vichy government,” a footman told her.
Claudette’s head reeled. She didn’t know which of the four factions to put her faith in. The Pétainists in the free zone were committed to collaborating with the conquerors, trying to make the best of a bad situation. The Communists were despised because their allegiance was to Russia, a country that seemed to Claudette as distant as the moon. Then there were the Maquis, whose loyalty to France was different than that of the nationalists supporting de Gaulle. If only she knew which faction the duchess supported, she’d follow her lead—but the duchess was from Spanish aristocracy, had married German nobility, and was living as a Frenchwoman.
Monsieur Vincent, the business manager, rose. “We’re issuing you all identity papers.” He touched his potbelly as if that gave him even more authority than his lineage did—like Madame Couture’s family, his had been in the service of the duke’s ancestors since Napoléon’s days. “A photographer will be here soon to take everyone’s photos. Tomorrow, Silvain Auguste will drive you in shifts to the village hall.”
“What do we need IDs for?” Marguerite asked.
“To show the préfet that your name isn’t Jewish,” he replied, referring to the local governor. “I’ve given him my word that no Jews are employed here.”
“What about Gypsies?” Claudette asked.
He sent her a perplexed look. “What about them?”
Claudette heard sniggering at the other end of the table. Her stomach tightened. “Imbécile,” someone said.
