CHAPTER 9

En route to France
Tuesday, June 15, 1943

NOOR SCANNED THE NIGHT SKY, looking out as ordered, for patrolling German night fighters. Thankfully, for almost an hour now, only the silvered dark rushed over the clear cowl-roof.

Edmond pulled a leather-jacketed hip flask from his raincoat pocket, unscrewed the top and proffered it. Noor shook her head. She liked a glass of wine on occasion, now Uncle Tajuddin was too far away to sour it with his frowns, but tonight she needed every sense alert.

“Landing soon.” The pilot’s shout burst against her eardrum.

He must have identified himself by s-phone to the waiting resistance team and the air movements officer, the lieutenant code-named Gilbert. Now he’d be searching for the inverted-L-shaped flare-path from their torches. Strangers—but please, Allah, not the Germans—were standing below with upturned faces, right now.

Noor’s stomach lurched as the Lysander began its descent. She was tipping backwards in her seat. She listed against Edmond’s shoulder as the small plane circled to come down against the wind. There was a bump, a jolt, a rise and another bump. The plane taxied down the long leg of the L, turned sharp right along the short leg and came to a standstill. The pilot throttled back his engine, exchanged a challenge question for the password from the waiting reception team.

The roof above Noor slid back. The dark shape of a peaked cap appeared over the rim.

“Venez—vite!” invited a hoarse voice.

She rose quickly in the cramped space and swung herself out, feeling for each rung in the ladder leaning against the plane. Halfway, strong hands gripped her waist, then someone lifted her bodily from the plane, held her a moment against the vigorous thumping in his chest, and set her feet on spongy, grass-stubbled ground. Slightly winded, she looked up into a flashily handsome face under the peaked cap.

“Bienvenue, mademoiselle,” he said with a chivalrous grin. “Wait here.”

A commanding overarm gesture marked him as the air movements officer. An experienced pilot, Edmond had said over dinner. Gilbert was trained by the SOE to select and arrange fields on which the cloak-and-dagger planes could land—nothing ploughed, no soft mud. The Loire was as the back of his hand, and, the pilot informed Noor, Gilbert was a walking Michelin guide to the best black market cuisine in northern France. Besides, since he had begun selecting landing sites, the squadron had not lost a single flight.

Three men carrying small valises and clutching their hat brims scurried past Noor to the foot of the ladder. Edmond lifted out Noor’s coat and handbag, his own valise and, with some effort, the long drum-like canister. These passed down the ladder to waiting arms of the departing passengers. Other figures crowded around and carried the canister away in their midst. Then Edmond hoisted himself from the plane.

How could three men fold themselves into the tiny gunner’s cockpit she and Edmond had just vacated? But they must have done so, and rapidly.

The roof of the gunner’s cockpit slid closed. A hand emerged from the cockpit window and wiped a smudge of oil from the windscreen.

The engine gave a bursting howl loud enough, Noor felt sure, to wake every German from here to Berlin. Gilbert gave the thumbs-up sign. In sixty yards the Lysander was airborne, the roar fading to a distant drone in the sky. Gilbert signalled and two men ran from the clump of trees behind Noor and pulled the guiding torches from the ground. Noor read her wristwatch by moonlight—00:45 hours. Landing and takeoff had taken only three minutes.

Edmond tramped across the pasture to wait at her side, hands in his coat pockets, hat brim tipped forward, eyes on the ground, discouraging conversation. Noor pulled the winding pin on her watch and reset it to Paris time as decreed by the Germans—an hour ahead, to coincide with Berlin.

Gilbert appeared at her side as if dropped by parachute. “Come with me.” He gave her the handbag and coat, his eyes darting left and right. Noor’s too, searching for German uniforms or anything suspicious.

The night was warm, but nerves taut as telephone wire drew the warmth from her skin. She slipped her oilskin on.

Two men stood waiting, guarding five bicycles. Father and son, it seemed, one too old for military duty and the other much too young. No greetings were expected or made. Gilbert pointed to a bicycle minus a crossbar, for Noor. She put her handbag in its basket and fell in line, following closely behind the father and son. Gilbert and then Edmond brought up the rear.

They wheeled their bicycles stealthily through the moonlit woods.

“My wife couldn’t manage for even one day with so little luggage.” Gilbert came up beside Noor and nodded at the handbag bouncing in her bicycle basket.

Noor gave him a hesitant smile. Mindful of security rules, she said nothing.

Gilbert whispered, “Vol de Nuit. The perfume you’re wearing—correct? The top note is there, I think. Very faint.”

Noor shook her head, eyes on the road. Wearing perfume on a night mission would leave her signature wherever she went—the sign of an amateur.

“What is a woman without perfume? But don’t worry, the pilot said he’ll be back in a few days with your luggage.”

“If there’s moonlight,” Noor said. No reason to be silent, since Gilbert seemed to know.

A few metres later he asked, “You’re the new pianiste?”

She gave another slight smile, but said nothing.

“A courier, then? I must know, you see, because I select the airfields and then radio London. I have orders to take you to Paris.”

“Yes.”

“I must know where to find so beautiful a woman again.”

“You will be told when you need to know,” whispered Noor, somewhat archly. Beyond the excitement of clandestine danger, she was enjoying the underlying banter of their exchange. Three years in London and she had never come to understand the dry wit of English men.

“Alors, you will want to tell people in London that you have arrived safely. So have your letters ready next week,” said Gilbert. “I’ll give them to the pilot of the next landing.”

“And where will I find you to give you letters?” asked Noor.

“I assure you we will meet again, and soon, mademoiselle. But in case you must send a message to someone in London about me, my code name is Gilbert. And yours?”

“Madeleine. But to people here I am Anne-Marie Régnier.”

The small caravan plodded on, wheeling their bicycles now side by side, now in single file. Too loud crunch of footfall on twigs, over fallen branches, roots and stones along the muddy path.

“You speak perfect French with no accent, mademoiselle,” said Gilbert. “Where did you learn?”

Only a Parisian would think her French was sans accent, so Gilbert was Parisian. The question was conversational, but again against the rules. SOE security precautions seemed to be ignored here, at least by Gilbert. But if she was to work with Gilbert and other resistants, she had to be accepted. She should make the first effort.

“I once lived near Paris,” she acknowledged.

“Aha! That explains it. Which arrondissement?”

“No, just near Paris,” she said, still guarded.

“Ah, the beautiful banlieue,” he said with irony. Most suburbs of Paris were dumping grounds for refuse and factory waste; they could scarcely be called beautiful.

Gilbert now fell back and began quizzing Edmond, who responded with grunts. Noor took the opportunity to memorize local landmarks, as the SOE handbook taught, in case she needed to return this way. People and animals had left signs everywhere. Covert ones, like the glove hanging from a branch, the remains of a poacher’s fire; overt signs, like the finger-post to a disused mine she had passed a few paces back, and a grotto of the Virgin Mary, her eyes shining like jewels. In India, Hindu idols dotted the landscape like the Virgin in France. French Catholics kissed her feet just as Muslims kissed the Ka’aba, each calling the other pagan.

A dormouse whistled and clicked in a tree hole above. Noor flipped her jacket button open, squinting in the moonlight, noting the direction of the tiny white N on the dial of her compass.

A dog bayed faintly. Uncle Tajuddin would say it was an unclean animal, but Noor had loved dogs as a child—that is, until a dog bite followed by fourteen injections against rabies.

The dog bayed again, sounding huge, wolf-like and far too close.

Another twenty minutes’ walking and a road broke across the dense woods. Here the father and son whispered low au revoirs, arabesqued over their bicycle seats and rode away into the night. She imagined the two cycling home in the dark. No one was paying them to risk their lives helping British agents bring in arms.

Gilbert mounted his cycle too, and motioned to Noor and Edmond to follow him.

“Where are you taking us?” asked Edmond.

Noor didn’t think he’d looked at his compass at all.

“To the railway station. At Le Mans.”

Noor and Edmond mounted and pedalled after him.

Moonlit vineyards, fields and hedgerows stretched away on either side of the road, tranquil as if no war had ever disturbed them.

The jumble of medieval buildings marking the centre of Le Mans loomed against the moonlit sky. Not a single light glinted; curfew was total. Gilbert dismounted and again walked his bicycle. Noor and Edmond did the same. At a small tool shed by a field of freshly cut wheat, they wheeled their bicycles in and closed the door. They set off, skirting the city. Within an hour Noor’s new shoes were chafing her feet.

A glow swung to and fro in the distance—a lantern. A cheminot’s lantern. Morning mist lifted, revealing tracks flowing through a station, wagons marked SNCF on sidings and then four being coupled near the station to a small locomotive. The first two were passenger carriages. At the third wagon a gendarme stood ramrod straight, overseeing the loading of wine bottles. The fourth was being loaded with boxes marked bustes du Maréchal—busts of Maréchal Pétain, Marshal of France, hero of the Great War, and now the Frenchman who had shaken Hitler’s hand.

“We part here,” whispered Gilbert. “Act as if we had never met.”

Edmond gave Gilbert’s hand a quick, grave tug and touched his hat in Noor’s direction. “You first,” he said. “I’ll take the next one.”

At the front of the station, a gendarme and a German grenadier were seated side by side at a desk beside the turnstile, a Thermos steaming between them. A quiver raced through Noor from head to toe as she approached the ticket counter.

It’s a play. Play the part, play it well.

She was Anne-Marie Régnier, she was from Bordeaux, she had a signed ausweiss authorizing unlimited travel. Imitation Anne-Marie would be better than any real Anne-Marie.

“One way to Paris,” she said to the official in his little cage, passing him a counterfeit note. She looked away as if impatient, while he grumbled about mademoiselle’s not carrying exact change. A white strip licked forward to her waiting hand beneath the grille.

She approached the turnstile for the next test.

“Papiers?”

Her gaze fixed on her hand, her hand offering the forged carte d’identité and the pale green ausweiss to the gendarme. Not trembling—good. Miss Atkins said women were less conspicuous operatives, unlikely to have trouble with documents. Few women had any identity papers before the war. Certainly she, Mother nor Zaib was ever issued an identity card or needed a licence to drive all the years they lived in Paris. Uncle Tajuddin never allowed Mother, Noor or Zaib to hold a bank account either, and all women in France needed permission from a male relative.

The gendarme bent his black cap over her papers, studying them a long time. Had he scented her fear? What if the forged papers failed to pass inspection? An oblique glance told her Gilbert had stopped at the newspaper kiosk. The gendarme finally completed his perusal and passed her papers to the German, who gave them a cursory glance, yawned and motioned her through the turnstile.

Take a seat in the first compartment so you can jump out and run if need be.

The compartment’s only occupant, a farmer in a jerkin, scarf knotted about his grey-stubbled neck, sat with legs crossed at the ankle, boots dribbling mud and clay onto the floor. He gazed at Noor from head to toe with frank curiosity—a young woman travelling alone, early in the morning. She clasped her hands in her lap.

He could stare as much as he liked. Anne-Marie Régnier was accustomed to making this journey every week. Aunt Lucille was very sick and would surely die if her loving niece failed to reach her today.

In a few moments a blank-faced Gilbert walked down the corridor past her compartment. The German soldier too mounted the train and leaned from the doorway. He gave a nod and it began chugging and clanging from the station. He passed down the corridor. Thin. Too young for a uniform. If all German soldiers looked like him, the war would be over soon. But of course they didn’t.

Noor settled back in her seat. She had read and heard so much in England about the German presence in France, but experiencing it was another matter.

He is the Boche; he is the enemy. Men like him guard Armand at Drancy.

Rain slanted against the window, strengthened to fine rivulets. Clear tadpole shapes smeared a horizontal path across the glass, then dried and stilled as the sun rose. Outside, wind ruffled the tall grass by the tracks.

A newspaper, Je Suis Partout, lay discarded on the seat beside her. A few days old. How was the German-controlled press presenting France to the French?

The very first article she read touted the number of French prisoners of war who had joined the Pétain league—at least 80 percent, it said, in camps everywhere. A second described with breathless earnestness how many volunteers were heading to Germany, where work was plentiful. One unnamed writer preached the duty of all French women to have children. The editorial by one Robert Brasillach denounced writers for disputing the great boon of being occupied by the Germans, and issued fatwa after fatwa calling for their deaths. Along the way he mentioned that Jews who once thought themselves safe in the unoccupied zone were scattering in all directions “like poisoned rats.”

A wave of nausea swept over Noor. Brasillach’s hatred was more elegantly and eloquently expressed than any propaganda pamphlet issued by the German Propagandastaffl. However, Brasillach had accurately assessed the situation: Armand and Madame Lydia had been in the unoccupied zone in the far south when they were arrested.

The farmer was still staring. She lowered her head and read on.

An anonymous article inched its way into a long diatribe alleging that POWs in Germany were being treated like kings while British barbarians kept German POWs enchained hand and foot in defiance of every treaty and international law. The accompanying sketch even showed a poor wretch manacled, a chain running from cuff to cuff, leg-ironed, chains running between his ankles and another long chain connecting the two—worse than a creature in a zoo. An insult to anyone’s intelligence! She set the paper aside, almost tossing it.

The farmer stood up, reached for the paper and, without a word, proceeded to tear it into strips. He used each strip to wipe his muddy boots, then opened the door of the compartment and carefully placed the whole wet mass squarely in the centre of the corridor. It was difficult not to give him a conspiratorial look. The German soldier would have to exit along that corridor. The farmer took his seat again, a pleased look coming over his face.

The journey continued in companionable silence over the plain, past the cream-painted brick stations of Beillé, Connerré, La Ferté-Bernard, Nogent-le-Rotrou, La Loupe, Courville-sur-Eure. Here the train was shunted to a siding and a long wait sorely tested Noor’s already taut nerves. Then it set off again past the cathedral of Chartres, through Maintenon and Épernon, climbing a little to Versailles Chantiers, towards Paris.

A lump rose in Noor’s throat as the train chugged into the great hall of the Gare Montparnasse in Paris. Memories surged like desperate fish rising against the nets of time. Whenever she came to this station, she felt twelve years old again, saw herself with one hand in Mother’s, the other in Kabir’s, waving Abbajaan goodbye. Zaib must have been too young to be with them that day. Noor and Kabir thought it so very exciting that Abbajaan was leaving for Bordeaux, to board a steamer to Bombay, then a train north from Bombay to Baroda. How they had pestered Mother that they wanted to go too, especially to anywhere in India. No one knew Abbajaan was leaving forever.

But perhaps Mother had realized.

Noor felt her hand slip from her mother’s again, saw her rush to Abbajaan and clutch the sleeves of his black shervani as he walked down the platform. Before Noor, her mother wept and clasped her arms around Abbajaan’s neck, begging him not to leave her. He had reached up and removed her hands, lips moving in his long brown beard. Noor and Kabir could not hear, but Abbajaan must have reminded Mother of where she was, in public, in a train station. He must have reminded her she could join him at any time, and bring his children to live in India, that it was by her own choice she stayed behind. Noor and Kabir waved to Abbajaan as the train hissed farewell, then turned to comfort their mother.

Noor’s glance flicked left and right, looking for German uniforms moving towards the train. Everything just as she remembered it. Women with hat boxes beside them, men scanning newspapers, waiting for trains. A woman with feathers in her hat pressed her cheek against an old man’s lapel, goodbyes lingering in the tears on her lashes.

Noor’s shirt collar had dampened though the morning air was pleasantly cool.

Pretend you never left. Pretend no one would have any reason to look for you.

A twelve-year-old girl and a sad-looking, gangly boy of about ten stood with arms looped about each other, unaccompanied, pale as Noor and Kabir must have looked the day Abbajaan left.

That day. Yes, Mother had known. Known Abbajaan wasn’t planning to return. She told them later that Abbajaan wanted all of them to move “home” to India. But Mother worried Abbajaan might be pressured into accepting more wives, and she didn’t want to live in seclusion under Dadijaan’s rule. When she opened the telegram announcing his death in India of pneumonia five months later, it was final, but over the years Noor realized that the moment of Mother’s abandonment took place here, at the Gare Montparnasse. Mother’s widowhood began the day Abbajaan left for Baroda in 1926, leaving her alone in Paris to look after Noor and Kabir and little Zaib, alone to tell the world of his Sufi wisdom, while he returned to the source of his music.

Perhaps on this very platform.

And other memories. Leaving from this station in 1927 with Mother, Kabir and Zaib to pay their respects at Abbajaan’s tomb in India, and returning home to Paris two years later. And soon after, greeting Abbajaan’s half-brother, Uncle Tajuddin, when he arrived from Baroda in 1929 to live with them and manage the school of Sufism. Uncle Tajuddin, who ran their lives after that, changing everything for Noor and Zaib. And Mother.

The train’s bump and sway subsided. Noor stood in the carriage doorway and looked out over the crowd milling on the platform, trying to stop her pulse from racing.

Clothes were shabby, even drab—not very different from Londoners, who in the last few years had learned to “make do and mend.” How different were they from Parisians of three years ago? Probably very different. Everyone had been altered by war. But something in the way they carried themselves was familiar.

People seemed self-conscious, as if they were performing for an audience, eyes straight ahead. This wasn’t the normal sensual awareness of Parisians, but the self-censorious awareness she’d seen in Indians whenever an Englishman was present. The audience: black and feldgrey uniforms moving among the Parisians. Everywhere, French milice, German soldiers and military policemen, with their rifles, waited for trains, smoked, kept an eye on the citizenry.

Noor dipped into her handbag, unfolded the brown beret with an attached black hairnet for her ponytail, and withdrew a pair of black kid gloves. Then she joined the crowd on the platform.

Walk, don’t run. Down the platform. Look straight ahead, purposeful as everyone else.

Gilbert had descended from the carriage behind hers and was making his way past her down the platform to a ticket counter. She followed, inquiring about the special line that ran between the Gare Montparnasse and Auteuil. It was not in operation; she would have to take the métro.

As she moved away from the ticket counter, her eyes met Gilbert’s for but a second. A surreptitious wink and he was gone.

Lose any Gestapo agent who may have followed from Le Mans.

She went to the WC and stayed there about half an hour for safety, then exited past a ring of anti-aircraft guns. The sky had lightened to pale June blue.

Paris looked familiar as when she and Armand met in cafés and talked for hours. Familiar, yet strange; she was alone.

She joined a tide of pedestrians on the boulevard Raspail, up to the boulevard des Invalides. The Musée de Rodin advertised its opening hours.

If she met any of these people, would she remember their faces? Too many.

Avoid looking anyone in the eye.

Walk normally. Notice everything.

For instance, how, past the esplanade des Invalides, the afternoon sun was glancing off panes painted navy blue, that no chink of light attract the attention of Allied bombers.

Don’t notice the hollow-eyed look those dark panes give the pale stone buildings.

She crossed the Pont Alexandre III. The usual bateaux-mouches slipped slowly beneath the bridge.

Ignore the swastika flags and banners adorning the Grand Palais. Ignore uniforms, and all the broad-shouldered, tall men.

Why had the Germans removed sandbags and scaffolding Noor remembered from 1940? But then, why should they care if French monuments were destroyed by Allied bombs?

Don’t notice that American and British flags are absent from their embassies.

Noor doubled back to the boulevard Champs-Elysées and detoured through streets taking their names from generals, battles, revolutionaries who fought for freedom, stood for individualism and liberty.

Chairs stacked behind glass doors began to appear on terrasse cafés. Sun strengthened, turning sheer to shimmer. Readers lingered in minuscule bookstores, grey-haired men played pétanque. But everywhere, finger-posts pointed in German, and the rumble of traffic she remembered so well was stilled. Even the confused buzz of outdoor conversations seemed muted.

Late in the afternoon, a very footsore Noor hesitated outside a pâtisserie. Slices of National Loaf in London were a poor substitute for the round, fire-tinged loaves in Paris’s boulangeries, and she was tempted to buy a café filtre and a brioche as she had before morning lectures at the Sorbonne. But did ration coupons need to be presented at a café or only at a grocer? A detail that her instructors had forgotten to include in her syllabus.

Hungry as she was, she could not buy food. But she went in, to rest her feet.

Allay any suspicions. Order a glass of Vichy water; they can’t request ration coupons for Vichy water.

It looked like any other water, tasted like any other. The spa water wasn’t responsible for the actions of Petain’s government encamped there. No ration coupons were requested.

If any German was following, he must have given up by now. Didn’t the Gestapo have more important things to do than follow a young woman from Le Mans all day? They should.

Head for the safe house.

Down a narrow wooden escalator into the pissotière smell of the métro. Noor showed her papers again at the checkpoint, and presented a ticket from the booklet provided by Miss Atkins. A train bound for the Étoile stood at the platform, the doors of its last carriage closing.

Squeeze in. Hurry!

She seized a hand-strap to brace herself. The métro began to worm its way into the tunnels. A burst of yellow caught her eye, then another and another. Her gaze leaped from star to yellow star patched to men’s and women’s clothing. Every one read Juif. The étoile jaune! She had been told Jews had to travel in the last carriage of the métro, knew about the yellow stars they were required by law to wear, but in her hurry she had forgotten. And only seeing the star actually being worn by people brought belief. The train picked up speed, and some glanced at her own lapel with its missing yellow star.

Oh, Armand, are you too wearing one of these?

The pungence of her fellow travellers’ desperation rose around her as the métro flowed through the dark under Paris. She was kin to these helpless people; had her marriage to Armand been solemnized, she might now be wearing the star with them.

Brakes squealed. Noor alighted at the next station with a stab of guilt for not riding further with the star-branded group. But she could not attract attention from officials.

Wait on the platform. Find a bench till the next train arrives. Look inconspicuous. Watch for anyone in the crowd, French or German, who might be watching you.

Two uneasy hours waiting for another train. This time she was careful to board a middle carriage on the métro bound for the Porte Maillot.

Sit beside the old woman with the shopping bag over her arm.

In this carriage, passengers had their inviolate bubble, a cordon of private space. Only the German soldiers stared, their gaze occupying each bubble by ignoring it.

She alighted at the Porte Maillot and headed for the point where tramlines knit dense patterns against the sky and tram tracks grooved the street.

Stop! No, keep walking.

Two German soldiers sat on a bench near the tram stop, poring over a thick Guide Bleu to Paris.

Do not turn, do not walk away.

She sat at the other end of the bench, heart racing at this proximity to the enemy. The two were deep in discussion, unfolding and smoothing maps bound to the inside cover of their translated guidebook.

Inevitably, one looked across at her and asked in broken French for directions to the Hippodrome in the Bois de Boulogne.

If they walked around the station from which she had emerged, they’d find themselves facing the Bois, and if they joined her on the tram opening its doors before the stop right now, they would pass the Hippodrome they sought. But she turned to them and pointed north.

“Continuez tout droit …”

The two thanked her courteously and set off in the direction she pointed. It would be a long time before they realized their mistake.

She closed her eyes for a moment once the tram chimed away. Her first act of resistance—such a small one. Strangely, venting her anger on the soldiers by sending them in the wrong direction brought little satisfaction. Instead, her act of revenge conformed to the trait Hitler had instilled in Germans, that of identifying others by race.

The tram rattled and clanked southwards down the allée de Longchamp past the stately old trees of the Bois de Boulogne. In her teens Noor came to know every inch of the Bois from trotting down its paths with her friend Josianne at the École d’Équitation. Knees tight, she’d urged horses over its small jumps and streams, and cantered tight dressage circles near the polo field.

Now down the boulevard de Boulogne, past the bus stop near the windmill. There were the locust trees under whose leafy shadows she said adieu to Armand; that adieu that should have been au revoir till they met again.

Her throat—dry and empty box. Heart—incinerated rag fluttering in a body cavity. Hands—once more enfolded in Armand’s. If only she had some small thing belonging to him.

It was still not dusk when Noor turned down the rue Molitor, though her watch said it was 21:00 hours—nine at night—Berlin time. She stopped before a window filled with mannequins as if to admire it. No one reflected behind appeared to stop. Still, she strolled up the rue Erlanger and back again before she began searching for number 40.

Forty seemed auspicious—the number of days Moses fasted, the number of days Hazrat Issa fasted in the desert. The Prophet, peace be upon him, was forty when the Qur’an was revealed, and forty was the number of years the children of Israel walked in the wilderness. But where was 40 rue Erlanger?

Number 41 sat just next to 36, and number 17 sat beside 24. Number 23 rue Erlanger was behind number 10. The second half of the rue Erlanger continued past the rue Molitor. She passed number 40 several times before she realized—a single-storey house crouching behind its garden far back from the street, crushed between two art nouveau apartment buildings, 41 and 40-bis. So close were the apartment buildings, their walls left no passage between them and number 40. The house seemed to match Miss Atkins’s description of its owner. She’d said an old lady, Madame Garry, would be waiting for Noor, that she was the only one who knew Noor would be arriving from London today.

Miss Atkins should have said something about what to do if Madame Garry was not home.

If she isn’t here, I’ll make my own instructions and follow them.

A caramel-brown turban poked from the shutters of a window next door. Probably the concierge of the apartments, hair bound up for cleaning.

“Leave any packages for number 40 with me,” said the towel-head.

Noor waved as if to say this wasn’t the address she was looking for. The brown turban retreated. Noor walked away.

A few minutes later Noor returned, unlatched a scrolled iron gate set in the low grille fronting the garden and walked up the stone path.

A serious-looking man of about thirty-five with receding brown hair and a pencil moustache came to the door. Square-shouldered as a claret bottle, with the compressed energy of a pugilist.

“Oui?”

“Madame Garry est là? She is expecting me.”

Large moss-green patches were sewn about the elbows of his well-pressed grey suit; there had to be a Madame Garry somewhere. But every house has its secrets. Was this a Monsieur Garry who didn’t know his mother, wife, sister or daughter had agreed to shelter a radio operator from London?

“I am Monsieur Garry.”

He did open the door.

Monsieur Garry led her to a drawing room, where a woman about Noor’s age came forward from a stool at the piano.

“May I present my fiancée, Mademoiselle Monique Nadaud.”

Burnished chestnut curls bobbed shyly at Noor. Merry-eyed Mademoiselle Nadaud was the same height as Noor. An hourglass figure made her worn burgundy dress and grey cardigan look positively chic.

Now a high-nosed woman in her late thirties with a cameo brooch at her lace collar left a game of solitaire spread upon a small table in a nearby alcove. She peered suspiciously at Noor, a single card held close to her chest. A streak of grey ran from the centre parting of her dark hair past her temples to join a tightly knotted bun.

“My sister, Madame Garry. Renée, you were expecting Mademoiselle …?”

“Anne-Marie Régnier.”

“Mais non,” said Renée. “I was not expecting anyone.”

Noor stood disconcerted, looking at the three, till Mademoiselle Nadaud smiled at her. “I was about to prepare coffee,” she said.

She and Renée left Noor alone with Monsieur Garry. How to force the issue or retreat gracefully? Noor was … mistaken about the house, had a poor memory for numbers—was really looking for number 44 …

No. Plunge in.

“The sky is blue,” she stammered in a tight, desperate voice. Said to a total stranger it sounded childish, foolish.

But Monsieur Garry responded with a large, welcoming smile, “But the bread will rise.”

Noor burst out laughing; after a second, Monsieur Garry joined her.

Soon Mademoiselle Nadaud returned with a tray of coffee.

“London doesn’t always know what is going on in Paris, Monique,” said Monsieur Garry. “Mademoiselle Régnier—Madeleine—was told I was a little old lady.”

“Oh, les Anglais!” said Renée Garry. “How can they not know you, Émile, after all you’ve done for them?”

“Not for them, Renée. For us. They help all of us.”

“Maybe. Excuse me, I must see if my Babette is still sleeping.”

As her heels clicked down a passage, Monsieur Garry and Mademoiselle Nadaud exchanged glances.

“Have you dined?” asked Monique Nadaud as if to change the subject.

“No,” said Noor. “Not since last night.” She sipped the barley infusion Monique had called coffee, and told them about landing at Le Mans and how she criss-crossed Paris making sure she was not followed.

“Good—be vigilant. Be alert,” said Émile.

Monique left the kitchen door open to listen as she goose-necked in and out of cupboards.

Renée returned to the drawing room just as Noor was telling Émile about her jumping into the last carriage on the métro. “You look Jewish,” she observed from the far end of the room. She took a half-knitted scarf from a basket beside her chair.

“Mais non, Renée—how can you say that?” Émile asked.

Renée shrugged, stitches clicking rapidly. “She is dark-skinned. Perhaps it is her nose.”

No one had ever remarked on the olive tone of Noor’s skin or her nose the many years she lived in Paris. Perceptions must have shifted radically in the last three years to match official attitudes. But one person’s opinion was no indication of everyone’s; in Paris you always found a myriad divergent ones.

“Her nose?” Monique carried a steaming plate to the table in the alcove. “What is it about her nose?”

Disarm with charm.

“My nose smells wonderful French cuisine,” said Noor. She took her seat in the alcove, opposite Renée’s abandoned solitaire.

“I saw pictures of people who looked just like her at the Palais Berlitz last year.”

Noor closed her eyes to say grace. Grace had returned to the family table in London once Uncle Tajuddin was back in India and could no longer protest the prayer as un-Islamic. The ritual touched Noor deeply during food shortages and whenever sharp hunger reminded her of the famine-hungry in India.

Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty …

She left out “through Christ Our lord,” ending with a mental Ameen.

“You went to the Exposition?” Émile was saying to Renée in a disbelieving tone.

“Oui, oui. I took Babette so she could see it too.”

Noor opened her eyes. “Which exposition?”

“They went to Le Juif et la France,” said Monique.

“Non, Renée,” Émile was remonstrating.

“Sometimes London sends you Jews,” said Renée. “Don’t they realize how dangerous that is for you? And she rode in the yellow-star carriage. The Gestapo may already think we are hiding an unregistered Jew.”

“The Gestapo may think? Gestapo men do not think!”

“Believe me, Émile, she has put us all in danger.”

Soothe her—this is her house. And it’s almost curfew—where can you go?

“I am not Jewish,” said Noor. “And no one followed me here.”

Why would they? A nursemaid visiting Paris to see her aunt. Only the truly egocentric believe they are so important.

She glanced at her plate—a pink, spongy slice of canned something on toasted black bread, and boiled vegetables. She took a bite of the vegetables. Delicious.

“Then what are you?” Renée fired at her. “You don’t look French. You look different, somehow.”

The expression on Émile’s face pleaded for Noor to exonerate herself. Monique seemed more dismayed by Renée’s discourtesy to a guest than concerned by the question of Noor’s heritage.

What was she? The one question for which Noor didn’t have a ready answer. Should she tell Renée the olive tone of her skin and the shape of her nose were East Indian and American, but not Jewish? But that would only increase the distance between Noor and Armand. It might also make Renée more uncomfortable; African Muslims were familiar to the French, but Indians might be far from her experience. Renée probably hadn’t travelled much, probably considered Paris the cultural pinnacle of the world. She seemed already confused between religion and race; supplying details of many allegiances would only confuse her further.

“I am French enough,” said Noor. “I lived here most of my life. And I am also British enough—the combination is common.”

“Most of your life!” Monique smiled, striving for levity. “You look about twenty-one.”

“I’m twenty-nine,” said Noor with droll dignity.

“We care little about origins and ages,” Émile said. “What is important, Anne-Marie, is what we can do to defeat the Germans.”

“You’re a métèque.“ Renée used the street term for a mixed breed.

“Hush, Renée!” said Émile.

The Resistance needed a radio operator; here she was—tired from walking all day, hungry, but very willing to work, even if she was a métèque or some other questionable thing. But there was no denying her hybridity, so Noor said only, “My transmitters will arrive soon.”

“I will take you to meet Prosper the day after tomorrow,” said Émile. “My headquarters is in Le Mans and I stay here with Renée when in Paris. All you need to know is I’m an engineer with the Société Électrochimie. I will call you Anne-Marie from now on.”

“You live under your own name?”

“It is only you British whose names don’t sound French,” said Émile with a teasing smile. “I don’t need a cover name. But of course in messages and transmissions I am Phono.”

Renée stood abruptly and returned to the kitchen. Through the open door Noor saw her place a wooden crate on the table and begin filling it—socks, a scarf, glass jars of jam, chocolate, even bread.

Noor had finished the vegetables. Delicately, she pulled the bread from under the pink sponge and continued eating.

“My sister is sometimes hasty, Anne-Marie,” said Émile in a low voice. “Never unkind, but hasty. Her husband …” He glanced at Monique.

“Her husband, Guy, is a prisoner of war in Germany,” Monique supplied. “Renée is so alone. How she worries. I help with Babette, after my work, but each day is exhausting for her and she cannot sleep at night. Guy is allowed only two parcels a month and two letters—not really letters, small postcards.”

Noor’s empathy came naturally, for she too had written letters and sent parcels to Armand on the front during the year-long Drôle de Guerre, the “Funny War” of ‘39, and longed for him since the Battle of France. In London she had written him many letters in the last three years, but they remained unposted—she did not know a destination. Two postcards from Armand, each with no return address. Oh, for just a glimpse of him, some reassurance! Renée would never know how much she and Noor had in common.

“So many Jews have also become prisoners of war since 1940,” Noor observed. “I’m sure Renée is sympathetic.”

“Mais oui, Anne-Marie!” said Monique. “All of us are sympathetic—it is much worse for them. But what can be done? Every day more Jews are hunted down and rounded up and held in camps. Not POW camps but Jew camps. Émile, how long has it been since the mass roundup at the Vél’ d’Hiv’?”

“A year, perhaps?” said Émile.

“And another huge roundup last February. Many are in hiding now,” continued Monique. “I work in the Hôtel de Ville, in the office that issues identification cards and ration books. When possible I bring home blank ones for the Jews, for British airmen, for French boys trying to hide from the STO, and for people like you. But you cannot believe what is happening till you have seen Vichy gendarmes breaking into homes, taking old Jewish men, mothers and children, and forcing them onto TCRF buses.”

Allah! Were Armand and his mother arrested like that?

The last postcard from Drancy. The blackened lines. Had Armand been subjected to such terrible treatment?

Could she ask Émile or Monique for directions to Drancy? Could she ask anyone? Anne-Marie Régnier couldn’t go to a train station and ask for a ticket to Drancy unless she knew where it was and had thought up an acceptable reason to go there.

Could she go there? Could she meet Armand, send him parcels as Renée was doing? Patience! Her hosts were still strangers. Armand was her secret, the secret she’d kept from family and friends alike. After Renée’s comments she couldn’t confide she was looking for a Jewish man, a dearly beloved Jewish man, and his mother.

Twenty-four hours of involuntary fasting had left her ravenous, but she toyed with the pink sliver on her plate. Was it pork? She shouldn’t ask if it was pork.

Ask more questions. Sound merely curious.

“Where do they take them?”

“To camps in France—Compiègne, Pithiviers, Drancy. Places of misery. Then, if one can believe what one reads in Combat and Libération—and I do—many are being sent east by train, some say to be resettled, some say to work.”

“What if they refuse to wear the star?” she asked.

“It’s true, some have escaped by not registering. They live among us,” said Monique. “We remain silent—that is the best we can do for them.”

Armand wouldn’t have registered as required by Vichy law; he had an artist’s wariness of edicts. Besides, he knew stories told by his refugee cousins and by students to whom he taught French at the Alliance Française. Yes, Armand and Madame Lydia would have relied on the silence of friends—that is, until someone they had relied on turned them in.

“With what are they charged?”

“Rien! Absolutely nothing. Yesterday, I was at a tailor’s shop and a man was arrested because a book he was carrying covered his yellow star. And the day before, I saw a Jewish woman arrested for shopping at 15:00 hours rather than 16:00 hours,” said Émile. “Surely they know of these crimes in London?”

Noor had heard rumours, read newspapers and seen French POWs in newsreels, but all rhetoric was passionate propaganda in England, as elsewhere. How could one know what to believe? Knowledge and power—they were inextricable. Hadn’t English newspapers suppressed counter-knowledge of famine reports from British India? Meanwhile, they had published the fictions of India’s British district collectors as news. But she had heard tales from escaped POWs at Piccadilly’s Café de Paris, or from downed airmen of the RAF who’d escaped out of Marseilles, Le Havre or Spain—tales of repression and mass executions of dissenters, and of unprinted and unprintable German savagery.

For the sake of her own hope she had not wanted, still didn’t want, to believe.

Noor’s appetite suddenly vanished. Émile’s words might apply to Armand. But she would not curb hope on her day of arrival.

Trust Armand. He’s a resourceful man with many friends.

Renée returned. What was she looking at? Noor followed her gaze to the small pink tongue left on her plate.

Challenge sparked in Renée’s eyes. Plainly, a test lay on the plate before Noor.

It’s ham. Eat the ham.

With every disgusting morsel that passed her mouth, she felt Renée relax a little. By the end of the evening the older woman was almost civil.

Flowered curtains drawn tight for blackout, two beds, a dresser and a small cot where a dark-haired little girl lay fast asleep on her side, an arm thrown round a china-faced doll.

“Renée could rent out the other room and get three hundred francs a month for it,” said Monique. “But she keeps it like a shrine waiting for Guy, and sleeps here in Babette’s room. You’ll sleep here too.”

“It’s difficult for her, I’m sure,” said Noor. How many sleepless nights had she spent, thinking of Armand?

“Babette is just nine,” whispered Monique, “but so intelligent. Émile is her godfather and like a father to her now. It’s three years since she saw her own—she loves him very much.”

“And you, I’m sure,” said Noor.

“Of course. I bring her boiled bonbons—one needs no ration tickets for those. She says she’ll love me more when I am her tata.”

“And when will you be her aunt?”

“It was to be three years ago, after Émile was demobilized. Pétain said the war was over. But after the armistice, Émile said the war will be over only when the Germans are defeated, and I agreed we should postpone our wedding. But this year, on Palm Sunday, I said to Émile, I said: ‘Émile, if we wait for the whole world to be at peace, we’ll never marry. We don’t know how long it will take to defeat the Germans. We should marry immediately and continue fighting together.’ We have registered our intentions now. We’ll be married on the thirtieth of June.”

Cool slim fingers touched Noor’s, and Noor sighed over each facet of Monique’s briolette cut diamond. Armand had offered her a ring many times.

I could have been with Armand now. We too could be fighting together.

“Émile says I’m too young for him, but often I think I am the elder. Our old friends don’t come to visit us any more. One’s circle shrinks to those one can trust, non?—those who are committed, who cannot suffer by associating with us. And you—you have family in France?”

“No.”

“Bon! You’ll be freer to act. You are married? Non? Then you have a fiancé?”

“Yes.” Noor’s face warmed. “At least, I think so. I hope so.”

“Is the gentleman here in Paris?” Monique’s whisper had turned arch.

With Jews being treated as Monique had described, she couldn’t say anything close to the truth.

“Oh, no,” she said, adding vaguely, “overseas.” Most young Englishmen, Frenchmen and many Indians were in the armed forces; why not a mythical fiancé?

There was a pause, then Monique whispered as if she understood the need for secrecy. “It is very difficult to be separated, even for a few weeks. But your presence cheers me, Anne-Marie. It means we are not forgotten, it means liberation will come.”

“When did you begin working against the Germans?” asked Noor.

“‘The work’ as we say? Just after I saw the Boche march down the Champs-Elysées.” Monique pulled open dresser drawers. “Not that much was possible then. Émile made leaflets, I made a few forgeries—I’m considered quite an artiste! Then last year I was ordered, along with the other women who work at the Hôtel de Ville, to the Préfecture to work on a card index file. Each card—and there were 27,400 of them—had to be duplicated and sent to Gestapo headquarters. All were foreign-born Jews. We worked for three days.”

Noor swallowed, found her mouth dry. If Armand hadn’t made evacuation arrangements for Madame Lydia to go south right away in 1940, both might have been arrested and taken to the Vél’ d’Hiv’ last year. Armand was born in France—but could the Germans redefine him as foreign? Madame Lydia was foreign-born, Russian. To be Russian and Jewish today in occupied France was ten times worse than being British.

“I came home and I said to Émile, I said: ‘Émile, the Boche are going to do something terrible.’ And they did, with the help of our own gendarmes. It took them a week to arrest fifteen thousand people—all Jews—and they crowded about seven thousand into the stadium with no food or water. I know because it took five of us to count and sort their cards. We still call it the Grand Rafle.”

No food or water for so many! The card from Armand was dated April ‘43, so Armand and Madame Lydia had been arrested after the Grand Rafle. There must have been similar rafles in other cities. Or they could have been arrested individually. Which was worse?

“We tried to warn those we could the night before, but some don’t speak French or, if they do, speak with accents. Most had no relatives in France. Where were they to flee overnight? Germany, Italy, over the Pyrenees or the Alps? The newspapers said they were all criminals and black marketeers—c’est impossible! Are we so stupid to believe that? Then why have they not been charged or tried? The chief of my department at the Hôtel de Ville calls it ‘preventive detention’—c’est incroyable! Today the Jews are persecuted, and tomorrow we’ll all be enslaved.”

So obvious it didn’t require comment, but it wasn’t obvious to most Europeans. Monique’s “we” meant France, but her words brought to mind the news buzzing through London’s expatriate Indian community. Dadijaan’s Urdu newspapers said the number of Indians gaoled in the past year of civil disobedience against the British Raj had risen to thirty-six thousand. Arrests and persecutions were continuing daily in every city. Those arrested had the comfort of knowing they were active protesters against the Occupation of India and, to her knowledge, their ranks didn’t include children. But they were no less in gaol, without trial, and still wasting away there like her poor Armand and Madame Lydia. And without breadwinners their families had to survive on savings and charity, and the Brits knew it. Such repression and persecution had been carried out by Europeans with impunity for centuries in the East, but never had it happened in Europe. Had a karmic madness afflicted the continent?

“Can we help them in any way?” she whispered to Monique.

Monique pulled open another drawer, wincing as it creaked, but Babette didn’t stir.

“Renée said we could bring our friends here and do the work so long as we don’t bring any Jews or Communists. We wouldn’t anyway—it is too dangerous to show interest in Drancy or Compiègne or any of the camps. It might attract attention of the Germans to this safe house, to the entire network. And there are Resistance groups working to help Jews. In fact, they have their own organization, the UGIF. They look after the children when the parents are deported.” Another drawer scraped open. “Attendez un peu! I’m looking for a nightgown for you. I keep a few old clothes of my own here, for escapees and people like you.

“Anyway,” Monique continued, rummaging through the clothes, “Émile was so shocked after that roundup, he contacted someone in London and said he was an expert in explosives. He didn’t know anything about making bombs, only firing them, but he was in the military and an electrical engineer, so he bought books, went every day to the Bibliothèque Nationale and learned quickly. He even taught me!” She gave a bell-like laugh. “There should be a nightgown right here. Renée keeps every cushion and curtain in place, whereas I—Voilà! You’re lucky we are about the same size. By the way, you’re wearing a well-cut skirt—it’s reversible? Maybe I can borrow it sometime to copy the pattern?”

She held up a gilt-edged red book: Mein Kampf, the French edition. “And look what else I found—a ‘present for newlyweds.’ From the German army, when we registered to get married. A present, but we had to pay for it!”

Monique’s shoulders shook with repressed laughter at the old practical joke, the same that France historically played on its colonies, Britain on India. The Germans were selling the French whatever they wanted sold. And the French had to buy.

Babette stirred in her sleep; the china doll gazed unblinking at the ceiling. Noor put two fingers to smiling lips. Monique sobered. “You have a long way to go tomorrow, Anne-Marie. And it’s late—Émile will take me home before curfew.”

In the bathroom adjoining Renée’s bedroom, Noor changed into her borrowed nightgown, washed, put on her headscarf and used the bath mat as a prayer rug. She wound her wristwatch, then got into bed and waited for Renée.

If anyone had followed her from Le Mans, Gare Montparnasse or the last carriage of the métro, she would have been arrested by now. She wasn’t important enough to be followed—why would they bother?

Even so, vigilance was essential; the Gestapo habit was to come in the middle of the night.

But it had been such a long day. Let the Boche come knocking—she would deal with it then.

Noor thumbed through the magazines on the nightstand between the beds by the light of an oil lamp. Pour Elle, a magazine full of airbrushed photos and articles suspiciously similar to the old Marie Claire. One called L’Illustration had rotogravure photos. And here was one she had never seen: Femmes de prisonniers. An article detailed what France’s million prisoners of war needed in Germany—tins of condensed milk, shoes, socks, soap, cigarettes, chocolate. Below it, an exhortation to wives of prisoners to keep themselves looking chic. On the next page a column of advice for wives who might have urges to be unfaithful, and in the middle of a column detailing how to refashion a jacket in these times of scarce fabric Noor fell asleep like a stone sinking into water.