Excerpt From Jo Grant’s Journal:
…I went to church yesterday for the first time since Tommy’s funeral and left before the last hymn. I knew what it’d be like, and I couldn’t face everybody telling me how sorry they are and what a fine fella he’d been, and there “hadn’t been a running back a hundred miles from Lexington like Tommy Grant since he’d graduated. And then he became a paratrooper too, and that was one tough bunch!”
There’s also the contingent of female Sunday School teachers who remember him vividly for the way he used to look out for Billy Barnes, who’d spent two years in an iron lung, and Junior Terry too, who was what folks used to call slow.
And I knew some guy about T’s age would take me aside and say he remembers when Tommy took that big galoot Jerry Joe Priest off behind the Presbyterian church on Pisgah Pike and beat the crap out of him for making fun of Junior.
It’s not that I wouldn’t want to hear all of it sometime. It just seems too soon. I think of myself as being somebody who’ll blurt out just about anything, as though talking makes it easier, but maybe I’m not, under duress. Maybe when it really hurts, I go and clam up…
Tuesday, April 24, 1962
It was a hot morning, one of the hottest there’d been that spring, and Jo had left Toss and Buddy and the farrier sweating in the main broodmare barn. Buddy was holding horses for Jimmy, as he trimmed feet and set shoes, while Toss rolled around in his wheelchair hosing water into stall buckets and shooting the breeze with Jimmy.
Jo had wanted to strangle Toss before six that morning. He’d pulled himself up in bed, using the trapeze they’d hung above his head to make it easier to sit. But then he’d tried to stand on the leg with the cracked thigh bone instead of sliding into his chair, and lost his balance and fell. Which scared Jo to death, and probably Toss too. Everything about it had made him furious, and Jo had had to wrestle him up and into his chair, which made him even madder. He wasn’t mad at her – it was having to be helped that made him crazy. But that didn’t make it any easier to know how to deal with him, while worrying about what he’d do to himself.
Buddy was good with him, when they were in the barns. He could pick him up better too, if Toss were to fall.
But Jo had said, “God help me!” and meant it, as she drove down their long drive to McCowans Ferry Road where she turned left toward Versailles and the start of her drive north to Frankfort, and west from there to Louisville.
She thought about Alan off and on as she drove, and why he was willing to help Jack the way he was. She wondered about his family, and whether he’d ever been married, and how badly he’d been hurt in France, and how far he could walk with his injured leg. It seemed as though he did fine for a mile or so, but she wondered if he could manage several, if she ever decided to invite him to hike through the woods around the farm.
She knew he’d joined a “Y” so he could swim, and he’d said something about lifting weights. He looked like he was in really good shape, so he had to be doing something. And she figured that if he was serious about learning to ride, she could put him up on Sam sometime and give him a couple of lessons and see if it bothered his leg.
It bothered her that he still rode a motorcycle. Like a sitting duck, exposed to the world, at the mercy of every other driver. Which meant Alan could die the way Tom had through no fault of his own.
She stopped herself then, and asked what she was doing. She hadn’t spent this much time thinking about a man since Nate two-timed her in Michigan.
Of course, her mom getting sick had had something to do with that. There hadn’t been time for much of anything but her mother and her job at the architectural firm that didn’t deserve to be called one.
She also hadn’t seen a man who’d interested her. Who had character, and enthusiasms, and perspective worth thinking about. Not till she read what Tom said and then spent time with Alan.
Who probably thinks I’m an immature little sister, or a cold, selfish, snit who only cares about herself.
Not that it matters in the greater scheme. I’ll get through this time with Toss, and then go see great architecture so I can do work that’s worth doing. My life is going to be more than doing dishes, and taking care of a herd of horses, and cleaning up after a man.
Although Alan doesn’t seem like someone who’d want a woman limited to that. He’s deep. He thinks. You can trust him too, the way you could Tom. Or at least it looks like it now.
What you need is to keep yourself busy. Working on White Hall will help. And doing the lab for Alan.
And maybe it’s time to try to write again. You could do a memoir of Tom, maybe. Bringing in bits from the journal. Or a story about the war – about being a kid growing up then. You spent your whole childhood writing stories. Why not start again?
Jo thought about that for quite awhile. What she might want to write, and why, and began to get really interested in what that might be, and how she’d do it.
Then she listened to music, and got bored and shut it off, and began thinking about Grace Willoughby and how she ought to approach her. She’d sounded polite and pleasant when she’d talked to her the night before, though a little concerned too about what Jo might be after.
She’d ended up saying she’d be happy to see her. But there’d been something reserved in her voice. Something that made Jo think of England. Of Jane Austen, and sharp-eyed hostesses, and proprieties to be observed.
Grace’s house, when Jo found it, was east of Louisville on Blankenbaker Lane, and she had to drive past Locust Grove to get to it, the old Georgian house where “The Longknife”, George Rogers Clark, Revolutionary war hero, had lived and died of a stroke.
Grace Willoughby’s house was much smaller and newer, though probably built in the late eighteen hundreds – a modest-sized Italianate Victorian, a two-story terracotta brick with a bay window in the front to the right of the broad double doors.
They were set back under a porch roof, and were made of intricately carved mahogany with etched glass panels on the top and a round brass doorbell set in the middle of the right hand door.
Half-a-minute after Jo figured out how to turn the brass knob and make it ring, a tiny white-haired woman opened the lefthand door, holding her glasses in one hand, while smiling up at Jo. She was dressed neatly in a tan tweed skirt and cream-colored blouse, both old but well cared for, and sturdy black pumps that were worn but polished.
She stepped back and ushered Jo in, while asking about Jo’s trip, then led her into the living room where tufted Victorian sofas and chairs were centered around the fireplace, and starched open-work white lace curtains hung in front of the tall bay window and the two windows flanking the hearth.
The woodwork was heavy and dark. The floors bordering the blue Chinese rug were polished and almost black against pale robin’s-egg aqua walls. All the upholstery was worn velvet in dark teal and maroon. And the coffee table – Victorian too – was set with flowered china teacups and a plate of lemon curd tarts.
They both drank Earl Grey tea and wiped tart crumbs from their lips with embroidered linen as they discussed Locust Hall and the Clark family, William Clark in particular, of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
They talked about Louisville and compared it to Lexington, and the places Grace Willoughby had lived as her husband was called from one church to another.
“I’m very fortunate to have settled here. Very fortunate indeed. Donald and I lived in manses all our married lives, and never would’ve expected to own our own home.” She smiled, as she twisted her narrow gold wedding band, and then poured Jo more tea. “It was a wonderfully kind spinster, a member of my husband’s last congregation, who had been born and raised in this house, who enabled me to purchase it.”
“Did she?” Jo watched the old woman’s face – the gentleness and the softness, and the kind of delight she usually saw on children and dogs who’ve been properly civilized – but there was something firm and disciplined in her eyes. The old-world dignity of a woman raised to be staunch as well as lady-like, whether anyone else is or not.
“She was ill herself at the time of his death, and I’d taken to visiting her, as one would, and we enjoyed each other’s company a good deal. Yet it still came as a very great surprise when she offered to sell me her home and furnishings for a very modest sum. She did so with the understanding that she would continue to live here until she passed away.”
“That’s unusual, isn’t it?”
“Oh, my dear! You can’t imagine how surprised I was. She intended her estate to be shared between her niece and nephew, but wished not to burden them with the selling of the house and contents. She gave them, before her death, the sum I’d given her, and continued to live here after I joined her.”
“So you acted as her caregiver?”
“In a manner of speaking. She wished to remain as self-sufficient as possible and maintain her own sense of dignity.”
“And it was when your husband had a church here in Louisville that you met Tara Wilson?”
“I’m so sorry, my dear. I digress entirely too much these days. Perhaps it’s having fewer visitors with whom to converse.”
“No, please, it was interesting.”
Grace Willoughby crossed her well-shaped ankles, then brushed a crumb from her skirt. “I wonder if you would be willing to explain a bit more about why you wish to enquire into Tara’s past?”
“A friend of mine has recently become engaged to Tara. I know for a fact that she treated a young man very unfairly when she was a teenager, and I’ve recently learned from Tara’s aunt that she’s done similar things since. I want to give my friend an opportunity to investigate her past for himself before they’re actually married. I know he may not thank me for doing it, but I do feel obligated to place a few facts before him before it’s too late.”
Grace Willoughby tucked a strand of soft white hair into her French twist with a small arthritic hand, then slowly sipped her tea. “I can sympathize with your intentions, as I said last night. I have certainly known of situations where such intervention might have prevented great misery. But that is only one consideration.”
She paused then, and toyed with her reading glasses, before adjusting the small pearl earring that had almost slipped from her ear. “You see, my dear, it seems to me we would all be done a great disservice if the measure of our characters were to be taken in our teens and twenties. It’s a time of great upheaval and temptation, as well as vulnerability.”
“So you think we change over time?”
“Experience can teach, can it not? One may become more discerning and mature. Discipline may develop. One may broaden and strengthen. Or soften, perhaps, instead. For there are some who would do well to empathize more fully with those more fragile than they.”
“I hadn’t stopped to think about it in exactly those terms.” Jo studied Grace for a moment, and then ate the last of her tart.
“I do not wish to be unfair to Tara. There were admirable traits to be taken into account. She’d applied herself, on her own, to earn some sort of accounting credentials, as well as her G.R.E. degree in college preparatory subjects. She was given natural intelligence and some degree of intellectual curiosity, and she seemed to be reasonably self-motivated. Though a number of her actions did cause me grave concern.”
“Having to do with men?” Jo smiled sardonically, while watching Grace for her reaction.
“In part. Though certain of her proclivities were not easily observed. My husband, God rest his soul, did not at fist notice the earliest signs of questionable behavior that I found disturbing, but once he became aware, his ire was harder to dampen.”
Grace Willoughby smiled then, and gazed across at a photograph on the writing surface of a walnut secretary – an eight-by-ten black and white photograph of a strong-looking man in three-piece tweeds, holding a walking stick in one large hand, on the edge of a mountain lake. “I couldn’t have asked for a more admirable or congenial husband, and I very much miss his conversation. Still…”
Grace set her cup back in its saucer and smoothed her skirt across her knees. “In answer to your previous question, I met Tara when she visited my husband’s church. She was just nineteen, as I recall. And after attending a second or third service, she asked to speak to Donald in private.
“She told him she’d had a child out of wedlock, that the baby’s father had taken the daughter and run off to parts unknown, leaving her homeless and destitute. She said she’d been searching for work, but so far in vain, while sleeping on a neighbor’s couch. She was presentable and polite and well spoken, and seemed to him a fragile waif blown upon our shores by the very real tempests of everyday life.
“My husband invited her to stay with us, which was very much his way. We’d taken in others on several occasions in the past, and I was happy to welcome Tara as well. Donald was instrumental in finding her a secretarial and accounting position in a Louisville car dealership owned by one of our deacons, and she lived with us for three or four months. I don’t remember precisely.
“Long enough, I will say, for her to stop cleaning her room or helping with household chores.” Grace smiled without looking at Jo and paused before she spoke again. “It was as we talked during those early weeks that I began to notice discrepancies in the stories she told of her past.
“One of the most telling examples was at the very center of her narrative – that she had been left penniless with nowhere to live. That she had been seduced by an unscrupulous older man and left with no way to recover her child, though she’d searched for her as best she could.
“And yet, I never saw the first indication that she was searching for her daughter. When she received a call from the child’s father—”
“How would he know where to call her?”
“He’d phoned an army friend of his in Louisville with whom Tara had kept in touch.”
“Ah.”
“When the father called, I answered the telephone in the living room where I was working. The father told me he was phoning to tell Tara, as he said he had several times before, that her daughter was very well, and that an experienced babysitter cared for her when he was at work. He said he wanted to make sure that the money he’d left her had seen her through. And he also claimed to have paid six months’ rent in advance. Which led him to ask why she’d moved.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Yes. So I told Tara she had a call, and gathered up my papers with the intention of leaving her alone. The phone in the living room was the only one we possessed. And since I was a university instructor then and had term papers scattered hither and yon, it took me a moment to collect them. She spoke to him only briefly and didn’t ask about the child or when she could see her. He may have volunteered the answers to such questions, but all I heard Tara say was she still hadn’t gotten over how badly he’d treated her, and she expected him to send more money. She hung up as I left the room, so no more was exchanged.”
“That’s illuminating.”
“Perhaps. Though he might have been deliberately misleading me. Going out of his way to tell me he’d paid the rent and left Tara money, and that the daughter was being well cared for. When it might or might not have been true.
“But then I discovered Tara still possessed the apartment and had actually sublet it, and was putting away the income while living with us at our expense. The young woman renting it got our number from the father’s army friend, whom I met later. She phoned and left a message with me saying she was trying to determine Tara’s intentions, for she wanted to stay there for a year or more instead of renting on a monthly basis, and was also interested in buying Tara’s furniture.”
Jo said, “Why am I not surprised?” as she reached for another lemon tart.
“It was shortly after that that I began to notice Tara was going out of her way to solicit the attentions of my husband’s associate minister. He was a very kind fellow, still quite young, and unhappily single, and very inexperienced in the ways of the world. One could see he was becoming quite enamored. And once I saw the way the wind was blowing, I tried to put him on his guard.
“As a result, he began to notice how forward her behavior toward him was. And how increasingly frequent were the demands she made upon his time. She’d begun acting as though she had a right to expect to be catered to by him. And he subsequently asked more probing questions concerning her past. Eventually, he started to avoid her. And she accused me of interfering and ruining her life. She created a scene in the nave of the church, screaming very unsuitable remarks, until my husband took her by the arm and propelled her out of the church.
“She immediately phoned a young man of her acquaintance, the soldier who had been a friend of her daughter’s father, the young man I mentioned before, asking him to come right away and help her move out. He was a shy young man I thought, and clearly solicitous of Tara, though he remained perfectly courteous to us and thanked us for what we’d done.
“She may have moved in with the young woman subletting her apartment, or she may have moved in with the young man. In either case, it would only have been for a matter of weeks. For the young man was shortly to be stationed in Germany, and within the blink of an eye they had married, and she had accompanied him to Europe.
“He visited us again before they departed and brought us household goods that may have been his or Tara’s, for us to sell in our rummage sale. He was a very kind person, I thought, and protective of her, and very unaware of what I took to be her manipulation.”
Jo said, “When the Tara I knew didn’t get what she wanted she’d get very nasty.”
“Yes, sad, isn’t it? And such a terribly unfortunate way of perceiving compassion, and friendship, and love as well. As though they’re simply to be used in achieving one’s personal ends. I’ve often thought how unhappy she must be. No one and nothing will satisfy her. She’ll never garner enough attention or love or security to fill the emptiness that torments her. Or so it seemed to me.”
“I guess I feel sorrier for the people she hurts.”
“I understand that, yes, I do too. But I should imagine there’s psychological disturbance involved that plays a part in her behavior as well.”
“She was diagnosed with some sort of mental illness when she was a teenager. Her aunt says she refused treatment and wouldn’t believe the diagnosis.”
“I don’t imagine that’s unusual. Though I’m certainly no authority.”
“I do know she deliberately slammed the doctor’s hand in his door when she left the last time.”
“Oh, my.” Grace Willoughby’s broad face, etched with crosshatching wrinkles, looked shocked then and appalled.
“Tara’s marriage to the soldier ended badly too, by the way, from what her aunt says. And now she has custody of a second daughter and is raising her in Lexington.”
“That would be a concern too, wouldn’t it? How does she appear to be treating her?”
“Her aunt thinks she cares about her in her own way. More than she ever has anyone else. But she’s setting a disturbing example.”
“One can only pray that the child won’t be damaged.”
“Yes. So would it be okay for me to give your name and telephone number to Spencer Franklin, her fiancé? And let him get in touch if he wants to?” Jo sat up straighter in her chair, her dark pony tail falling forward across one shoulder, her blue eyes searching the soft, still face. “I’ll make notes of our conversation, but if you’d—”
“I’d be willing to speak with him, yes. Though I would like to think Tara has learned to treat people better than she once did. Or will, at least, in the future.”
“You think she will, do you?”
Grace Willoughby didn’t say anything for a moment. She folded her napkin and laid it beside her teacup on the marble-topped table and settled her hands in her lap. “No, my dear. I don’t. But I hope I’m wrong. Like all of us, in different ways, and in varying degrees, she’s made herself and her own desires the center of her universe, in the very place God should be given. She’s chosen darkness. One small choice after another. And choosing to turn away from the dark can become harder over time. And of course, there is the illness itself and whatever effects that may have.”
“I’d be very surprised if she changed for the better.”
“But should we allow ourselves to relish that possibility? To feel superior and contemptuous if she doesn’t? You and I are honor bound to hope she chooses to change for the better.”
“I agree. Theoretically. But I’m not able to feel that yet. Though I do know what you mean.”
“My husband used to say that when he considered how he treated himself, he saw that he wished himself well, and was saddened when he behaved badly and pleased when he behaved rightly. And that trying to emulate that attitude to himself in his response to others might be a practical approach to loving one’s neighbor as oneself.”
Jo nodded, feeling slightly ill at ease, and found herself changing the subject. “I think you’ll enjoy talking to Spencer. He’s a very nice guy.”
“You have no personal interest in him, do you? You’re not involving yourself because you wish he would turn his attentions toward you?”
“No! No, nothing like that. He was a friend of my brother’s, and mine too when we were growing up. But no, I have no romantic interest in him at all.”
“Good.” Grace Willoughby smiled and then laughed at Jo, apparently at the surprise and embarrassment that had swept across her face. “I’m sorry, my dear, to have startled you so. I do believe you. In fact, the strength of your reaction leads me to believe your interests may lie somewhere else entirely.”
Jo looked even more taken aback, and then she laughed too. “I can’t say that they do at the moment. But I think interests like that can sneak up on us when we least expect them. Anyway, thank you so much for talking with me, and for the tea and the lemon tarts.”
“You’re very welcome. I hope your efforts will help. And I do hope you’ll come again. Since my retirement, I don’t spend time with young people nearly as much as I would like.”
As soon as Alan got home from work, he pulled on his leathers and helmet, and drove his Bonneville from one climbing, winding, twisting road to the next.
They were roads made for motorcycles. For leaning over hard around curves, trying to shoot the apex; for feeling the cool of the valleys wash over him and the heat of the hilltops lick it away; for tasting the scents of damp woods and wildflowers streaming in through his helmet; for feeling the whine and rumble and vibration run through his blood and bone, making him feel alive.
And yet Alan didn’t take chances. He was still riding, after starting as a kid, because he clamped his boots on the ground at stop signs, and slowed for every intersection, and drove as though no one else could see him and he had to think for them.
Though he didn’t think while he rode, exactly. Not the way he did in a car. Not about work, or what he was reading, or what was happening with Kennedy and Khrushchev. He didn’t dwell on Jo, or Jack, or how to deal with Brad. He lived right then, inside his body. Part machine, part road, part wind hitting him hard as though it could blow right through him. Forgetting the past and the future – and what he’d choose for both.
He set the kickstand and pulled on the cover while Jack took steaks off the grill. They sat on the screened-in porch in the back and ate as the sun slipped down behind the hill, washing blue sky with waves of salmon from a burning merthiolate core.
They started with what the doctors were saying, and how much better Jack was doing, and that he felt he was ready to start looking for a job. Alan told him about Blue Grass Horse Vans possibly needing maintenance help. And that Jo had said that when Jack got a job, she’d let him drive her pick-up as long as Toss was laid up, and she could drive his.
Alan had been looking for an opening for days, and when Jack told him about living in Paris, running up and down the Tuileries as a child, Alan said, “Maybe we should talk about what happened in Tours. I don’t mean to rush you. If this doesn’t seem like a good time, that’s fine with me.”
Jack was quiet, as he stacked their plates, and pulled out his Camels. “Would you mind if I smoke out here? I won’t, of course, in the house, as you know, but—”
“No, it’s up to you.” Alan finished the last of his salad and set the bowl on the plates.
Jack lit his cigarette with a kitchen match and stared toward the white rope hammock hanging between two trees just beyond the porch. “I told you in the hospital that Jean Claude Lebel was the leader of the F.F.I. in and around Tours. Correct? The Forces Françaises de L’Intérieur.
“You told me there was an effective leader, but you didn’t mention his name.”
“And you know that the F.F.I. were the moderates who supported DeGaulle before ’44?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Lebel was the only person in the Resistance in that region who could’ve held the factions together. The Communists and the Rightists were at each others’ throats, and no one else in the F.F.I. had the leadership abilities or had earned the general trust to direct the sabotage and intelligence gathering carried out by the Resistance.”
Jack settled a metal ashtray on his knee and rolled the ashes off the end of his cigarette before he spoke again. “When an organizational meeting was to be held, none of those attending knew where it would take place. Couriers would be informed the day of the meeting and told where to meet the people they’d escort. Those asked to the meeting would be told where to meet the couriers that same day.
“Each courier escorted one person. And contact procedures always differed, just as new signs and passwords would be used in every case. A woman courier might come up to the man she was escorting, slip her arm in his, and walk with him several blocks, then kiss him goodbye in front of a building, indicating thereby that this was the meeting place.
“Another courier might only walk by an attendee on a street corner and let himself be followed, after passwords or signals had been exchanged. Once the location was reached, the courier might indicate the building by bending over and tying a shoelace, or slipping a newspaper from one pocket to another, if that was the pre-established sign. The passwords and signals used were only communicated the day of the meeting, so as little opportunity as possible existed for betrayal.”
Alan nodded, as he poured himself coffee. “It sounds like a good approach.”
“Yes.” Jack was playing with his cigarette, circling the crushed end in the ashtray, tracing a path through the ashes. “The night we were rounded up by the Gestapo, we were to meet in a café on the Rue Jules Favré, not far from the opera house on the Rue de la Scellerie. We were to order and eat, either alone or with others, and study the room for indications that any of us had been watched or followed. If and when we were convinced all was well, and Lebel gave us the signal, we would then assemble upstairs in a rented bedroom, ostensibly to play cards.
“There were five of us altogether, counting Lebel and myself. A rightist O.R.A. member, Michel Pascal. Gabriel Aubrac, another moderate F.F.I. Étienne de la Rochère, second-in-command of the Communist F.T.P. None of us saw anything suspicious, and we were about to move upstairs when the Gestapo and the Vichy police crashed through the door. Lebel escaped out the back but was shot climbing the garden wall. I very much doubt they intended to kill him. He was worth far more alive than dead. That was why he had no intention of being taken alive.”
“Are you saying he let himself be shot?”
“No. He tried to escape. But he knew the identity of too many in the Resistance and every operation as well, and we all understood from the fate of others how effective Nazi torture was. He would’ve used his suicide pill if he hadn’t been killed. He’d made that abundantly clear.”
Jack dropped his cigarette butt and drank half his water, then lit another Camel with a slow, unsteady hand. “The rest of us and three bystanders from the café were rounded up and thrown into vehicles belonging to the Gestapo and the Tours police.
“I was pushed, on my own, into the back of a German staff car with the Gestapo officer and his aide. Our car drove off first, and we’d begun to pick up speed down a narrow side street when the aide suddenly threw open the door – one of those doors that were hinged at the back – and shoved me out on the street.”
Jack was quiet for a moment, turning a kitchen match end over end, staring at the table. “There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that there had to have been an informer. And because I was the only one released, I seemed the likely candidate. I was an inexperienced American. They hardly knew me. I could have drawn the attention of the Gestapo by a breach of procedure or a stupid mistake, without deliberate intent. I also had relatives in Paris the Gestapo could have threatened to harm if I didn’t cooperate. Though I never once mentioned them, so how anyone would know, I certainly couldn’t say.”
“Why would anyone compromise the group? Why do it deliberately?”
Jack coughed hard and sat back for a moment, then lit another cigarette, his thin face paler and more haggard than it had been in days, the fingers of his left hand tapping the arm of the chair till he looked down and made them stop by deliberately gripping the arm. “To say that I’ve given it a considerable amount of thought would be something of an understatement.”
“I’m sure.” The misery and humiliation on Jack’s face made Alan stare up at the hilltop where cattle were making night noises in the dark beyond the barbed-wire fence.
“I think the betrayal must have resulted from the conflict and hostility among the Resistance groups.”
“You mean politics as usual?”
“There and then, yes. As I said, Jean Claude Lebel was the leader of the F.F.I. The F.T.P., France Tireurs et Partisans, was the largest Communist faction across France. Like Communists everywhere else in the world, they hadn’t opposed the Nazis when Stalin and Hitler were allies. It wasn’t until Hitler invaded Russia that they became Resistants. They also took orders from Stalin’s foreign intelligence service, which we now call the K.G.B., and that didn’t endear them to anyone else in France.
“O.R.A., the rightest group, the Organization de Résistance de l’Armée de l’Armistice, was largely affiliated with the army. Many had resigned from the army under the Vichy government. Others stayed in to undermine Vichy and pass military information to the Allies. They were sometimes monarchist and often devout Catholics, and were as hostile to the Communists as the F.T.P. members were to them.”
“I saw that tension in northern France everywhere I turned.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to waste your time with information you already possess.”
“No, no, I was just agreeing. It helps for you to explain exactly what you found in Tours.”
Jack stubbed out his cigarette and drank more water. “By April of ’44, not too many weeks before D-Day, the leaders of all these groups believed that the Allies would defeat the Germans, and they were beginning to shift their focus to who would seize political control of France after the war.
“In the Loire valley, in Tours certainly, the Paris-appointed Prefect who governed the whole Loire area was universally hated, and the local mayor and his officials were widely detested. The only leader who had general support amongst the Resistants – who were the only locals who were armed and experienced, and could mobilize easily and wield political power too – was Jean Claude Lebel. Anyone who sought power after the war would have to be able to defeat him and his centrist supporters.”
“So eliminating him would open up the political field for someone ambitious, either for himself or for his faction?”
“Precisely.”
“You have anyone in mind?”
“I have my suspicions. But no proof of any kind.”
Jack didn’t say anything else for a moment, and Alan watched him without prodding, giving him time to tell it whatever way was easiest for him.
“One of the couriers was a woman. Camille Reynard. A painting restorer by training and inclination, who taught at the lycée – what we would call high school – in Tours during the war. She was married to the leader of the local F.T.P.”
Jack stopped. And lit the two candles stuck on plates in the center of the table.
Alan waited. Longer than he wanted to before he said, “So?”
“She’d been a committed Communist herself earlier in the war, but by the time we met I saw in her a growing disdain for the party and the tactics they often employed. The assassination the F.T.P. had arranged in Nantes is a good example. There was an important German submarine base there, and the F.T.P. brought in a Communist assassin from another city to gun down the Nazi Commandant. The Commandant had actually been one of the few high-ranking officers in the Loire who’d treated the French with fairness and civility. And the Nazi retribution for his assassination was swift and terrible. They seized and executed a number of local hostages. Which did much to alienate many in the Loire region from the F.T.P.”
“Was the F.T.P. in Tours involved in the assassination?”
“No. But Camille’s husband and those he led tried to justify the decision. In fact, it looked to me as though the arrogance and brutality Camille’s husband sometimes exhibited offended and distressed her. He was a womanizer too. I’m sure that played a part. And I had the distinct impression their marriage was coming apart.”
“So how does that—”
“Her husband, Henri Reynard, was a very ambitious man. A highly intelligent man as well, who worked undercover for the Resistance as a photographer for the local newspaper. He took photographs of crime scenes for the Vichy police and Gestapo as well, thereby developing useful contacts in both that allowed him to gather information to help the Resistance. His loyalty to the Resistance seemed beyond question.”
“But you had reason to doubt that?”
“Primarily in retrospect. One could certainly see the intensity with which Henri Reynard fought with Lebel for supremacy, even though his tactics were subtle and his demeanor was well controlled. Lebel would put forth a plan for sabotaging a manufacturing plant or gathering intelligence in the Prefecture, and Reynard would put forth another. He would eventually acquiesce if he saw Lebel was supported by the rest, and he did so with reasonable grace. Reynard was not a hothead, but a careful political strategist. Who, I think, made it clear that he planned to pursue political power after the war.”
“So he didn’t cross the line and challenge Lebel head-on?”
“It would have been pointless. He tried to persuade and gather support with his verbal acuity and abilities.” Jack picked up the matches before he said anything else.
“The significance of which is?”
“Everyone knew Lebel carried a suicide pill. He’d made it clear on many occasions that he wouldn’t let himself be taken. And if Lebel were eliminated, there wasn’t a centrist, a rightest, or a leftist in the local Resistance who had the trust and the leadership qualities to keep Reynard from taking the reins from Lebel then, or after the war, either one.”
“So if the Gestapo attacked, and Lebel didn’t escape, everyone in the Resistance knew he was a dead man.”
“Yes. But Reynard was not in Tours the night of the meeting.” Jack lit another cigarette, then got up and paced the porch. “When the message was sent early that morning telling him of the meeting, he’d already left town on his bicycle. At least that’s what he said. He’d gone to Esvres-sur-Indre, west of Tours toward Nantes, to meet a petty gangster who sometimes helped the Resistance by supplying transport and materiel. When working with the Resistance, the gangster, Emil Bouchard, invariably traveled some distance from Nantes, and would only meet with Reynard, changing the location each time.
“He claimed that Reynard didn’t leave the old mill, where they met downriver from Esvres-sur-Indre, until five that afternoon, which wouldn’t have given him time to bicycle back to Tours before the meeting.”
“And how would he have known where the meeting was, even if he did get back in time?”
“He wouldn’t, in the normal course of things, but I think it could’ve been done. Couriers were sworn to secrecy, of course. And knowing what I know of Camille, I believe she wouldn’t have told him a meeting was taking place or where it would be held. He went to meetings she didn’t know about. She acted as a courier for meetings he didn’t attend. No information was to be shared by husband or wife. He certainly knew there would be a meeting sometime that week. Lebel had said that at a meeting Reynard and I attended the previous Tuesday.
“So let’s say Reynard left the apartment early each day, before his wife, then followed her to work, intending to see if she was contacted and given instructions for leading someone to the meeting place.”
“So—”
“All he had to do was give himself an alibi, in this case in Esvres-sur-Indre, though I’m sure he could’ve come up with something else. So let’s say the day of the meeting, he’d seen her contacted on her way to school and knew she’d be acting as a courier that night. He’d simply establish his alibi for the day, then follow her from school in the evening and see where she led her Resistance contact. He could then phone a contact of his own in the Gestapo, having already arranged that he’d do so, and tell them where to go and to use me as the scapegoat.”
“Okay, but how did he get back from Esvres-sur-Indre in time? If the man he met with there was telling the truth?”
“What if he wasn’t? He was a petty criminal. A comrade of Henri’s, who only worked for the F.T.P. He lied as a way of life. And even if he didn’t this time, Henri could’ve hitched a ride with a truck. One of the gazogenes coming east from Nantes. Throw the bike in the back, and bob’s-your-uncle, he’s back in Tours in plenty of time to follow his wife.”
“Could be. Maybe. But he couldn’t count on a truck picking him up.”
“No, but—”
“Did he take over after Lebel was killed?”
“Yes. What there was left of the cell. Three were imprisoned and tortured, and twelve other arrests resulted, so the effectiveness of the group was destroyed overnight. At least from what I’ve been told. The O.S.S. got me out right away, with a great deal of difficulty, I might add. As I said before.”
“Through Spain?”
Jack nodded, but didn’t answer, as the memory of crossing the mountains on foot swept across his face – the danger and pain, the frostbite and exhaustion, which Jack and Alan both knew had killed many more than survived.
“So what do you want me to do?” Allan sat slouched back in his chair, his hands clasped on the top of his head, his green eyes watching Jack blink and turn away.
“I’ve been told the gangster from Nantes, Emil Bouchard, was arrested for stealing Vichy property in Tours the day the Americans moved in. The police in Tours interrogated him, but he and his network were so prominent in the black market in the Loire, the Americans might well have questioned him too in the days that followed. Maybe the Army has records that would indicate something that could lead us to him now.”
“It’s been eighteen years, Jack.”
“I know. I realize that’s a stumbling block, but—”
“What do you know about Henri Reynard after the war?”
“Very little. I know he ran for local public office, and tried for a national position as well, and never achieved much success. When I first got back to the States, I was able to follow the elections in Tours by corresponding with a French professor who had ties to the University of Michigan whom I’d written to for help. But that didn’t tell me anything very useful. And once I went up north, I… I abandoned the search. Reynard worked as a photographer right after the war, but then disappeared overnight. His disappearance was so complete, he must have changed his name and established another identity.”
“You don’t even know if he stayed in Tours, or moved somewhere else?”
“No. But Paris would be an easier place to create a new persona.”
“Right.”
“Do you know anyone in the army now, or from the O.S.S. who went to the C.I.A., who could help sort through the records for Reynard and Bouchard?”
“Possibly. Let me give it some thought. Though it doesn’t look to me like there’s much of a chance of finding real proof of what actually happened. Reynard is only one possibility. You know there must be others. Someone somewhere in the chain of couriers and those who went to the meeting could simply have been overheard and followed by a collaborator. It could’ve been that simple.”
“Perhaps.” Jack started coughing then and poured himself more water. “Except I was made the scapegoat. The American outsider. Who wouldn’t live there after the war to become an unwelcome adversary.”
“Still, the Gestapo could’ve picked you at random when they tossed you in the car, to protect the real informer. It wouldn’t have had to be planned.”
Both candles blew out in a gust of wind from the south. Alan and Jack sat in silence in the dark till a screech owl called across the night from somewhere above the hill.
“Can you imagine what it’s like knowing that people you worked with in France, and in the O.S.S. too, think you’re a traitor? That, or a total incompetent who gave the game away?”
“It matters that much? After all these years?”
“Yes! How could it not?”
Alan was thinking about his time in France, and the year he spent in the hospital. But all he said was, “I’m glad you told me. I’ll call a couple of people I know and see what I can find out.”
“I don’t know how to thank you.” Jack’s voice was dry and shaky. “Letting me live here. Helping me get a job. At the risk of repeating myself, I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.” Alan was glad he couldn’t see Jack’s face. The wavering voice was enough to make him squirm. All he said was “I’ll do the dishes if you put away the grill.”