It is at the fourth meeting that she sees him. Julien. A decade has passed, and yet he has hardly changed. The hair is liberally streaked with grey, but the blue pirate’s eyes are the same. Beside him sits a young blonde, who looks up at him every few seconds with a gaze of total adoration.
Yves introduces him to the room as a hero, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, a long-standing member of the PCF. Julien sits and smiles modestly, looking about him at his audience. Alice has evidently changed more than he in the time that has passed, because he doesn’t recognize her. Or perhaps it is the context, the strangeness of her being here, that throws him. Eventually, however, his eyes return to her and he frowns. She sees him struggle to place her, and then she sees recognition.
Julien stands to deliver some rousing words on his experiences in Spain, of the guerrilla tactics that were vital to the Resistance there. Oh yes, thinks Alice – I remember that voice. Then he introduces the blonde young woman next to him. ‘This is Marcelette,’ he tells them. ‘She will be joining our efforts.’ Alice looks at her again, incredulous. She cannot be more than sixteen or seventeen, though the full cheeks and large round eyes make her look even younger. She is beautiful yes, but in the way a child is beautiful.
‘He must be joking,’ Georgette murmurs. ‘She’s a schoolgirl.’
Julien, it seems, has overheard. He flashes Georgette a quick smile. ‘I am completely serious. Marcelette may be young, but do not doubt her bravery, her dedication to the cause. She is to be our secret weapon.’ He smiles down at her. ‘Who could suspect such a face?’
He has a point, Alice thinks. Looking at her, it would be almost impossible to believe Marcelette capable of guile.
He comes to find her afterwards. ‘Alice?’
‘Julien.’ Alice can see the girl – Marcelette – watching them from the corner of the room.
‘I couldn’t believe it …’ He smiles, but she can see he is unnerved. She remembers, all in a rush, the last time she saw him.
‘Neither could I.’
‘Yes, but –’ he gestures ‘– this is my city; it’s where I was born. You … in Paris?’
‘I’ve been here for ten years.’
He laughs. ‘I don’t understand. Last time I saw you, you were an English schoolgirl …’
She shrugs. ‘I’ve changed.’ She does not choose to explain more, and he apparently knows not to ask.
‘Come for supper with me?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Please. It’s so good to see you after all this time.’
‘Fine.’ What harm can it do? ‘Will you bring Marcelette?’
He frowns. ‘Why would I?’
‘But she’s your …’ she pauses to let him give the answer and then, when nothing is forthcoming, supplies it herself: ‘… daughter?’
He laughs and shakes his head. ‘No. Not my daughter. A friend.’
He takes her to an anonymous bistro a few streets away from the bookshop. During the meal – an approximation of a cassoulet, indifferent in the way that all food in the city is now – she becomes aware of something. He has no power for her, any more. As he talks of his heroism in the Spanish Civil War, his promotion in the PCF, his charm separates, like soured milk, into its constituent parts. He is not a bad person – indeed, if even half of what he says of Spain is true, he is an extremely courageous one – but he is egotistical, self-interested. Alice congratulates her younger self: she might not have escaped his lure at first, but at least she did not give into him completely.
A pattern has been established. Less frequently now, but every few weeks, Georgette, Alice and Étienne meet with the rest of the cell. Yves, Julien, Marcelette and several of the others are involved in different work. Something that requires them to be away for weeks at a time. From the little that she has been able to glean, Alice’s suspicion is that it involves travel to the Free Zone. She has heard rumours of people being helped out of the country this way – and some, a smaller number, helped into it. In the Free Zone the Vichy authorities have a reputation for being less stringent in their attitudes to border control. All the same, getting people there and managing to help them across the border must be treacherous work indeed.
Compared to something of such scale and inherent risk, the task of producing pamphlets seems like child’s play. But no, Georgette reminds Alice, in many ways their work is as dangerous. The importance of propaganda to the Nazis can be seen on every street, where grinning, horribly caricatured Jews prey on cowering head-scarfed women, where British planes rain fiery death on unsuspecting French villages.
By day the museum functions as normal – though it is quiet enough that one or sometimes two of them can leave for an hour or so to distribute leaflets through the city. In the evenings, Alice goes home and works at her typewriter. Étienne and Georgette remain in the museum, copying those pieces that have already been typed up, working into the small hours. The three of them might be betrayed by their pallor and the blue smudges beneath their eyes, were it not for the fact that most Parisians – tired and malnourished, worn down by the daily struggle – share the same appearance.
Alice is accustomed to letting herself into the museum in the morning to a sleeping silence, knowing that Georgette and Étienne have probably snatched a few hours of rest from their work in the basement. Every day, she creeps downstairs to make a pot of strong coffee that they will drink together when the others wake. The morning Alice makes her discovery she does just this, lifting the trapdoor concealed beneath a thin rug, making her way carefully down to the musty warmth below.
There are two armchairs in the cellar. In the usual scheme of things, Étienne will take one, Georgette the other. On this particular morning, however, this is not the case. It takes Alice a moment to comprehend the scene before her. One of the armchairs is empty. In the other are two bodies. Curled about each other, so still that Alice begins to panic, until she sees Georgette’s exposed shoulder blade move, ever so slightly, with an indrawn breath. Georgette is nude from the waist up: her pale skin bluish in the weak electric light. A small white breast is visible in the crook of Étienne’s arm, which is thrown tightly about her. Georgette’s red curls spill over his shoulder, and one hand has found a resting place in the hollow beneath his throat. Her face is pressed into his chest. Étienne faces outwards, towards Alice. Even in sleep, he appears to be smiling.
Alice retreats as soundlessly as she can, clutching the coffee pot to her chest. She lowers the trapdoor, cringing as it sighs home. She makes her way to the front desk and sits, trying to collect her thoughts. Her whole body is shaking. She feels what – exactly? Joy, certainly … but undercut by something that feels rather like envy. She is worried for them, too. At a time like this, can such a thing have a future?
Over the next few weeks, Alice sees everything that must have slipped beneath her notice in the past. The looks they exchange when they think they’re unobserved, which belie their careful civility with each other in public. She still finds it hard to believe: Georgette with her beauty and confidence, Étienne so quiet and awkward. Observing more closely now, she sees how tender they are with one another. In Georgette’s presence, Étienne speaks and laughs more – is, at times, even witty – and in return her sharpness is softened by his gentleness.
One morning, they come to her – and she sees that they are holding hands.
‘We wanted you to be the first to know,’ says Georgette.
Étienne nods, and clears his throat. ‘We’re getting married.’
Alice’s surprise is only in part feigned. She had never quite imagined that it could come to this. Perhaps there is hope for the world after all.
The ceremony is small and cheap. Alice is the only person attending who is not related to the bride or groom. She sits beside old Monsieur Dupré, who sleeps through most of the proceedings. He wakes just in time for the final blessing and applauds loudly, as though he is at the theatre. Georgette’s mother, an austere professor of mathematics, surprises everyone by bursting into noisy tears.
Later, Alice will cling to this day – the joy and hope, the normality. She will invoke it as proof that there is something beyond the new truth of her situation. It will be the last day of her old life.