A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [150]
‘I have some good news for you,’ she said.
Mama was tiny; even at thirteen Yvette was a little taller than her. Francçoise had once remarked that she looked faded, though until then Yvette hadn’t noticed. But she was right; Mama had faded from the raven-haired, curvaceous beauty with doe-like eyes that Yvette admired in the photograph on the dresser. Now, her slender shoulders were rounded through bending over her sewing-machine, and her hair was more grey than raven. Even her eyes had faded; they appeared to have a milky film on them the way chocolate went if it was kept too long. She was thirty-five, which seemed very old to Yvette, and her face, though not lined yet, had a yellowish tinge.
‘We’re going somewhere!’ Yvette exclaimed joyfully, for along with the clothes on the table was a canvas bag.
‘Only you, my darling,’ Mama said. ‘I have found some-where safe for you, until the Germans are gone.’
‘But I can’t go anywhere without you,’ Yvette replied, the pleasure of a trip vanishing all at once. ‘Why can’t you come too?’
‘Because you will be safer without me, and I have my living here.’
Mama didn’t often speak in that firm tone, but when she did Yvette knew she mustn’t argue.
‘Where am I going?’ she asked.
‘To a country town. You will get plenty of food and fresh air, and it will be a good life. I will come for you as soon as I can.’
‘Am I going soon?’ Yvette asked.
‘In a couple of hours,’ Mama said. ‘We will walk down to the market and you will be picked up there. I do not want Madame Chevioux to know you are going anywhere. I do not trust her.’
Yvette paused in her story, and Fifi realized she was crying silently.
‘Was that the last time you saw your mother?’
‘Yes,’ Yvette said, her voice gruff with emotion. ‘Yet I think in my heart I knew I was never going to see her or ze apartment again, for as I ate some bread and cheese and drank some milk, I seemed to soak up everything about them.
‘I can see it so clearly still, the wood floor Mama paint with the varnish, the rag rugs she sew, and her old sewing-machine. Only one big room really, we ’ave a bed behind some curtains, and the table was huge so Mama could cut out her dresses. We ’ave a kind of sideboard under ze window; a big cushion on the top to make it like a window seat. When it was sunny I’d lie on it basking like a cat. I used to watch ze people in the street below too, and look out over ze rooftops to the dome of ze Sacré Coeur. Maybe ze apartment very shabby, but I never think of it that way.’
After a while Yvette continued, telling Fifi she and her mama were duly met in the market by Madame and Monsieur Richelieu. They seemed warm, charming people, a little older than her mama, and they said they were going to tell people Yvette was their orphaned niece. They lived in Tours where they had a boulangerie, and Yvette could help them in the bakehouse. They also promised they were going to continue with her education, and that by the time the war was over she’d be able to return to Paris to go to the university.
‘I feel no suspicion about them,’ Yvette said. ‘I like them, so did Mama. They said it was best we didn’t write letters to one another, at least for ze time being, in case they were intercepted. But Mama had ze address where I was going, so that didn’t alarm me.’
‘Don’t tell me they were rotters!’
‘They were. The worst and wickedest kind, for they duped Mama. But at first it was just like they say. We took the train to Tours; the papers they ’ad for me were checked and accepted. There was ze boulangerie, in ze centre of ze town, and I ’ad a little room next to theirs in their apartment over ze shop. Tante Grace, as she said I was to call her, fed me well, didn’t work me too hard, and though I wasn’t allowed out alone, I thought that was to keep me safe.
‘But then one night about three months later, I was taken away by car. They must have drugged me for I remember nothing after eating my supper, and then ze motion of a vehicle. When I woke up I was in a room with bars at ze windows, and