“Today, chéri, you are my chauffeur,” Madame told Henry when he answered her knock at 6 a.m. She held up a grey uniform and cap. “You and my driver will exchange papers. He can make his way across the lake through friends. You will be Robert Messien. You will drive me across the border at Geneva. Dress quickly. Robert will show you the car.” As Henry took the clothes, she teased: “You do drive better than you speak French?”
Henry blushed at her playfulness. His mother had teased him, but it’d felt different. Madame looked to be about the same age as Lilly, but while it was clear his ma had once been exquisitely beautiful, this woman still was. He couldn’t help but wonder if her life had been easier, if his mother would look more like Madame.
They motored along Lake Léman from Montreux to Lausanne, heading towards Geneva, past promenades lined by palm trees. Henry nearly drove into the back end of another car as he stared at them. How did trees like these grow in Switzerland? Didn’t they freeze?
“It is a marvel, isn’t it?” Madame said, reading his thoughts. “The lake retains heat and the mountains protect the area from the winds. The weather is quite mild here, far gentler than where you are going.”
Henry caught his breath at the sight of several massive magnolias, their huge white blossoms beginning to open. The sight made him think of home, remembering the day he’d cut branches and branches of magnolia blossoms from a tree down by the creek and brought them home to his ma. The flowers were a thank-you for her promise to take him to Boy Scouts. Clayton had refused to drive him to the meetings, said it was foolishness, a waste of work time.
“Oh, Henry,” his mother had exclaimed as she buried her face in the blossoms. When she lifted it, her face shone, free of the worry that generally shadowed it. “Isn’t the world just a miracle, honey? Can you imagine anything more beautiful than this? I hope to get to heaven someday for sure, but I’m gonna hate leaving the smell of magnolias.” She’d caught him for a long, tight hug. “You are my sunshine, Henry.”
Henry’s grip on the steering wheel tightened, remembering how easy it was to make his ma so happy, and how infrequently she was that relaxed. Lilly always worked so hard to give him a happy, normal childhood, despite the Depression and despite Clayton. There was so much work to do at the farm it would have been easy for Henry to have dissolved into nothing more than a child-size field hand, his spirit completely broken by the weight of the labour. That’s what Clayton would have reduced him to, because that’s all Clayton himself seemed to be – a body to toil and scratch the dirt, then die.
He could see his ma now, fretting about him, staring out their kitchen window, hoping, frightened, as she made dinner – only Clayton coming in to eat to interrupt her worries about whether Henry was alive or dead. Clayton would be telling her that she was a fool to hope. But Lilly was hope. Hang on, Ma, Henry thought. I promise I’ll be home as soon as possible. I’m going to waltz up our drive and give you the best surprise of your life.
Henry checked the rearview mirror, afraid Madame might have noticed his sadness. She was staring out the window, unusually silent. Or was that her real personality? Henry assessed her elegant attire. Another well-cut suit buttoned to her throat, with just a hint of a lace blouse at the collar. Once more, she wore a long, sweeping silk scarf, this time draped like a shawl across her shoulders. It had an elaborate design of finely etched flowers and ferns, which accentuated the deep forest-green colour of her suit. Wouldn’t his mother just love something as pretty as that scarf?
“Is that a special kind of scarf, Madame? Would I be able to find one for my ma back home?”
Madame’s eyes met his in the mirror. “It is an Hermès scarf, chéri. It is very expensive, I am afraid. Does your maman like scarves?”
Henry laughed. “She’s never had one. But she loves flowers. She’d love to wear something like that on Sundays.”
“Your maman is special, yes?”
“Very special, Madame,” said Henry quietly. “She is very kind, very loving, very strong, really. She was the county beauty when my dad snared her. She could have married anyone, lived in a fancy house, I bet. But she chose my dad. We do pretty well on the farm, but she sure isn’t a lady of leisure, like…” He broke off, embarrassed at his rudeness.
“Like me, chéri?” Madame finished his sentence. “That’s all right. It is quite true. I have been very fortunate. I have had the best education and travelled to many beautiful places.” She leaned forward and patted Henry on the shoulder, “But I can tell you right now, chéri, that the best gift you can give your maman is not a scarf but your return.”
It took two hours to drive to Geneva, then another bone-chilling hour of waiting at the border. A German captain in charge of the checkpoint insisted that Madame have a cup of tea with him before she passed through. Henry pretended to sleep with his chauffeur’s cap over his eyes, his feet on the dashboard.
Under the brim of his hat, Henry saw Madame approaching, still dogged by the Nazi officer. Like flies to honey, Henry thought with exasperation. What if this man spoke to him? What should he do?
As the German opened Madame’s door, he spoke in perfect French to her, “J’ai oublié de vérifier les papiers du chauffeur. Est-ce que je peux les voir, s’il vous plaît?”
Henry caught the words: papiers and chauffeur. But before he could reach into his pockets, Madame began berating Henry for sleeping on the job. “Tu as dormi tout ce temps? Pourquoi n’as-tu pas poli la voiture pendant toute cette attente? Espèce de paresseux!”
She turned to the German officer to continue a tirade of complaints about Henry’s inabilities as a servant. Ending with a pointed comment that the war had robbed her of good help and that she was terribly late, Madame slapped Henry on his shoulder with her gloves and snapped, “Allez, Robert, vite.” She waved at the German captain and off they drove, leaving behind the barbed wire fence that cut off France from Switzerland.
When the Nazi finally vanished from sight, Madame apologized. “I am sorry to speak to you that way, chéri. But I have found that the best way to make people forget about checking papers is to make a fuss about something else. Then you must fly before they regather their wits. That man is useful to me, however. It is through him that I buy black-market petrol. Next time, because of the scene I just made, I can tell him I fired you if he is surprised by a new face.”
Next time? “Do you do this often, Madame?”
She smiled at him. “Ask me no questions, young man. It is better for you that way.” She leaned back onto the leather seat and closed her eyes for a nap.
They reached Annecy that evening. Madame lived just outside town in a walled mansion overlooking another, smaller lake. Henry had never seen such a grand home. Huge Oriental rugs covered the black-and-white marble floor of the foyer. Portraits and oil paintings lined the walls of the staircase. The house smelled of lemon oil and well-rubbed wood. Madame’s butler led him up the grand staircase with a carved banister to a small room on the top floor. He pointed to a suit of clothes on the bed and said, “Le dîner sera servi à huit heures.”
At eight o’clock, when a half dozen clocks chimed the hour throughout the house, Henry found his way to the drawing room. Madame was sitting on a plush couch, propped up by embroidered and tasselled pillows. Her poodle slept on an open book. “Ah, chéri.” Madame rose and complimented him. “Tu es très beau.”
“Merci,” Henry answered shyly. “The suit fits perfectly, Madame.”
She nodded and straightened the shoulders for him. “I thought you were about his size,” she said more to herself than to Henry. Her gaze was distant.
“Who?”
Madame stiffened, her characteristic frivolity gone. “My son.”
“Where is your son, Madame?”
“He was captured at the Aisne River when Hitler invaded and Paris fell. He is one of the thousands of French prisoners of war held in Germany. They are hostages really. For each German officer killed by the Resistance – ‘terrorists’ Hitler calls us – several Frenchmen are taken out and shot. He was still alive six months ago. I have not been able to get word since.” She turned away from Henry and headed for the door. “Time for dinner. Come.”
Henry remained with Madame a week. Each night they dined together, with her laughing gently over his confusion about salad, dinner, and dessert forks. Henry’s family had felt lucky to have ten regular silver forks for Thanksgiving dinners.
She taught him to play bridge. She talked of French philosophers. She played her piano for him – Mozart and Debussy and Chopin, she said. Henry had never heard the pieces before. They were beautiful, airy, and delicate.
On the seventh evening she chose to play a melancholy piece called the “Moonlight Sonata” by Beethoven. Henry was drawn from the sofa to the edge of the grand Steinway piano. While she concentrated on the music, he watched her face. It glowed with a rapt appreciation of the music, making her beauty even more intriguing. She obviously found a peace in the melody like that he found in a quiet sky. And yet he could sense it was a more intellectual, complicated joy than the instinctive pleasure Henry felt in flying. He could tell, too, that she was so engaged, so elevated by creating this moment of musical beauty, she had completely forgotten his presence, forgotten the sorrow of her imprisoned son, forgotten the danger of her clandestine work. It was as if he were witnessing a rebirth, a brand new butterfly shedding ugliness and discovering with some surprise and delight that it had wings.
Captivated, he studied her more closely. It was hard to gauge her age exactly. She had lines around her eyes, but they seemed etched more by laughter than by age. She also wore makeup beyond the simple lipstick that Patsy and his mother applied for church and special outings. Yet it was subtle, like the perfume she wore, simply accentuating a sophisticated femininity that was already there. He watched her hands lilt across the piano’s bright white keys – her own fingers long and creamy, unblemished by sunburn or picking crops.
But it wasn’t so much her well-preserved beauty that mesmerized him. It was a cultivated intelligence that Henry couldn’t quite understand, a completely new world of arts and books and refinement that she represented. She had an aura of knowing sadness that she counterbalanced somehow with a determined generosity and hope for happiness. She seemed so unwavering. He could see why fliers followed her through checkpoints.
That was it, he told himself. It was her strength that fascinated him. Sadness had seemed to forge her, rather than leave her broken, as it had so many of the people he’d seen worn out by the Depression and its deprivations. He didn’t detect any of the bitter anger that drove Clayton either.
Just then, Madame’s hands began to falter. She paused to look up, the minor-key chord she had struck still resonating in the air. Henry hadn’t realized until that moment that he had inched quite close to her, close enough to hear her catch her breath. Her eyes caught his. He could feel his pulse throbbing in his temple.
A slow, thoughtful smile crept onto her face. “You flatter me, chéri,” she whispered, and looked back down to the keyboard.
Henry waited, trembling slightly, confused, eager but afraid at the same time for something – he didn’t know what – to happen.
The tantalizing silence lasted only moments, but felt like for ever.
When Madame looked back up at him, her face was masked with a slightly flirtatious, wry smile that Henry had seen as kind and warm but now recognized as anything but intimate. “Do you know American ragtime, young man? It comes from your area of the country, does it not?” And she kicked the piano into a Scott Joplin jaunt.
Henry went back to the sofa and picked up her little dog.
The next afternoon, Henry wandered the house as he was free to do as long as he never lingered in front of a window. He wanted to get another book from Madame’s well-stocked library. Most of the volumes were in French, some were even in Latin, but he’d found about three dozen in English. He’d read two books and even tried making his way through his favourite Jules Verne, untranslated.
He studied the many paintings hanging in her house as he made his way to the library. He’d already discovered several spots on the wall where something had used to hang and no longer did. He speculated this was how she kept herself afloat financially – selling off family heirlooms to the Nazis down the street. The idea made him furious.
During the past week, Madame had identified many of the remaining paintings for him. “That is a Renoir,” she’d said, for instance. “My father collected the Impressionists. And this is by Morisot. She was a woman, you know. Just as good as the male Impressionists, don’t you agree?”
“Impressionists?” Henry had asked, feeling like an uneducated bumpkin around her. But Madame never patronized him. She seemed to enjoy educating him. Henry sucked in the information, hungry to learn new things, realizing how much he missed school, how much he thrived on someone treating him with respect and fuelling his mind.
Running his hand along the shelves, Henry found a volume of English poetry by William Wordsworth. He cracked it open. His eyes fell on the line: “For I have learned to look on nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth; but hearing often-times the still, sad music of humanity…” The words touched him, reminding him of Madame playing the piano the previous night. Henry took the book into the drawing room, where the piano was, where it was sunniest.
When he opened the door his heart jumped. There was Madame standing in front of a painting, staring at it. It was one he’d puzzled over before. It was very odd. There was a nose here, an elbow beside it, crisscrossed eyes and legs where the head should be. She turned to look at him and her expression seemed full of regret.
“Do you know Picasso?” asked Madame.
Henry shook his head.
“I know Picasso,” she said in a low voice and with a bittersweet smile of remembrance.
Henry felt himself blush at the warmth of her voice and the obvious meaning of her comment.
Madame’s throaty laugh embarrassed him further. “Ah, chéri.” She tucked her arm through his. “I didn’t mean to shock you. You have not known a woman yet, have you?”
Henry was mortified by the question. He felt his face flame red hot. He looked at his shoes and muttered, “No, ma’am.”
She pulled him close to her and said gently, “I hope when it happens, chéri, it is as full of passion and love as the time I knew with Pablo. Remember to cherish your lady when you hold her. I can tell that you will love completely when you do.” She looked back up to the painting. “Pablo was a monster when he turned on a lover. But before” – she paused – “il était superbe. I will always have that.”
The butler entered the drawing room. Madame stepped away from Henry’s side, and he felt the loss like a cold draught. “Je dois vous parler, Madame,” said the man.
“Stay here, chéri,” Madame told Henry as she glided out of the room.
That night, as Henry lay in bed, he heard voices outside his room. He peeped through the door and saw the butler ushering a man and woman into another bedroom across the hall. They lugged suitcases, several bundles, and what looked like violin cases – as if they were carrying all the possessions they possibly could. The butler re-emerged, holding two coats. On the coats were yellow stars.
Madame met the butler at the top of the stairs. “Brule-les immédiatement,” she told him. There was urgency in her voice.
Henry opened his door and asked, “Can I help, Madame?”
She put her fingers to her lips and signalled for him to go back into his room. She followed and closed the door behind them. “They must not know you are here, chéri,” she whispered. “And you must not know they have come.” She looked at him meaningfully. “Tu comprends?”
Henry nodded.
“The time has come to part. It is too dangerous for you here now. This evening I procured a train ticket and papers for you to travel to Grenoble. You must trust me. Someone will wait for you there. Do exactly as they say, yes?”
Henry nodded again.
She paused. “I have enjoyed our time, chéri. Be careful.” She kissed his cheeks and left.
Henry did not see Madame the next morning. The chauffeur waited in the foyer to lead him to the train station. Before departing the grand house, Henry took one last look into the drawing room, where he felt he’d received so much education in such a short time.
Picasso’s painting was gone.