The Girl in the Blue Beret - Bobbie Ann Mason [123]
“It is beautiful,” she said.
“Yes, from a distance.” He shaded his eyes and stared toward Spain.
“Are you sure you want to go?” she asked him.
“I’m willing to go—with you.”
“But do you want to go?”
No, he didn’t, but he didn’t say so. He just pointed and said, “It is beautiful.”
54.
MARSHALL WAS BECOMING ACCUSTOMED TO WINE IN THE evening. He liked red wine better than white. Annette had taken a brief nap, and she seemed refreshed, quick-witted, and positive. Her throat was soft, her voice a murmur punctuated with sharp little pings of enthusiasm.
They were drinking aperitifs at a small table in a faintly lighted corner of the hotel terrace. They had ordered their dinner, and she had selected the wine. A thick hedge sheltered them from the side street, and they had a view of the waning moon over the dark, silhouetted hillside to the south. Specters of the mountains lay in the back of his mind.
“Tell me more about Robert,” he said. The abruptness of his question surprised him, and he regretted asking when he saw the pain on her face.
“I can’t help wondering,” he said apologetically. “He is such a grand figure in my imagination.”
“Robert. Robert. Robert.” Her hands flew up as if to hold a headache. “He is such a trouble to me.”
“To everyone, it seems,” he said.
“I knew the real Robert,” she said. “Your Caroline may never understand this history, but I know it well.”
“Maybe she should hear it from you.”
Annette sipped her drink. She said, “One of his other daughters came to me once, pleading for information about him. She passed the night with me. She had come on the train from Paris, and we stayed up until late. She was troubled because she had seen him in the hospital. I did not know how I could help her. I was trembling. I could not visit the past for so long.”
“Can you speak of him now?”
She nodded slightly. “You may remember him enough to know that he was gentil, and sincere, and passionate about his work for the Bourgogne.”
She spoke slowly, her face pale in the candlelight.
“I told you that Robert hid at our apartment once because the French police had arrested him on his way back from Perpignan. They were suspicious of his papers, but they let him get away. We were afraid someone had followed him, but he assured us that he had taken several Métro trains, crisscrossing the city, and he had walked a random route before arriving at Saint-Mandé. He was hungry and frightened.
“But Robert was a bold person. He had a tendency to court danger, even though his emotions were in turmoil. On an earlier occasion, a terrible thing happened that haunted him dreadfully. He had escorted a group of aviateurs to Perpignan, and after they were transferred to the local convoyeur, he went on a mission to set up a new safe house in a village outside Perpignan—one of those hilltop villages, very remote. Apparently the Germans were not bothering themselves with that town. The family—a man and woman and their three children—had very modest means, but they were eager to shelter our aviateurs. Their house was conveniently set near the bottom of the hill, away from the street. Robert was satisfied, and he left to meet his ride on the main road. As he made his way in the darkness, he heard a foreign vehicle approaching. He jumped back from the road into a bank of bushes, and he wasn’t seen, but he could identify the car—a grand chauffeur-driven Horch touring car. Mon Dieu, it was likely the Gestapo. Robert saw the auto proceed into the village, and in a while he heard loud noises. He heard gunshots. He reached the main road, and in moments an old Citroën appeared, his ride to the train station at Perpignan.
“Robert didn’t know until some time later that the Gestapo had shot the family that night—the mother, the father, and the three children. He didn’t know why.”
“The Nazis didn’t always need an excuse,” Marshall said.
“Someone, probably a resident in the village, had denounced