The Girl in the Blue Beret - Bobbie Ann Mason [82]
“And you, Marshall? Please tell me everything.”
Marshall told her about his career and his family, trying not to dwell on the disappointment over retirement. As he told about Loretta, Annette reacted sympathetically, then poured him some more champagne.
“Were you happy?” she asked.
“I thought we were.” He paused, wondering what to say. “But after she died, I’ve been asking myself what that meant—to be happy.”
“You go through self-examination, I know. When someone dies, you start rearranging everything. It’s what we have to do, and you are behind. I’m ahead of you.”
She gazed directly into his eyes. He moved his glass around on the wobbly table.
In a swoop, he told her how his retirement had led him back to the crash site and then to France, in search of the people who had helped him during the war.
“And I am here!” She clapped her hands and laughed gaily.
Her sweetness, her vitality, had survived the years.
WHEN SHE EXCUSED HERSELF, he sat there in a champagne buzz. A bird stirred in the ivy, and a light breeze made the ivy vibrate. He felt as though he were inside a network of ivy, throbbing. He saw the dog rise, turn around, then settle down again. Nearby, a striped gray cat was washing its face.
Annette brought a tray of cake and chocolate, with a pot of tea.
After she had arranged their plates and poured the tea, he asked her how she became involved in guiding airmen through the streets of Paris.
“Oh, I am delighted to tell you this. My parents were outraged by the Occupation. Every evening there was intense political discussion, and I heard all of it. They were fervent Gaullists—that is, for France. And Charles de Gaulle—appropriately named!—was the symbol of France.”
Annette’s smile broke out. “It was easy to play the innocent schoolgirl, and it was amusing to confound the Germans. They tried to treat the schoolgirls with politeness. If you were on the train and they wanted to sit, you were supposed to stand and let them sit, so one always took the opportunity to make that difficult. When they asked for directions, we liked to send them the wrong way. Once, an officer was looking for Napoléon’s Tomb, and I sent him to the Père Lachaise! And when they weren’t looking I liked to draw the Croix de Lorraine everywhere—you know, the symbol of the Free French.
“Then in 1943, my parents began working for the réseau Bourgogne. You must understand that at the time people in the Résistance didn’t know there was a Résistance beyond two or three names. We had no way of knowing how extensive the network was, or even if it was succeeding, but my parents believed they had to do something, and this was a way to be résistant without violence.
“Then I began to participate as a courrier. I took the train to friends in Versailles and brought back tracts for clandestine distribution. I hid them inside my schoolbook bindings and inside the seams of my book sack—my vache. I found this little job very thrilling. I grew more serious then, and I was more careful about teasing the Germans.”
ALL AFTERNOON MARSHALL and Annette continued to catch up on their lives and to reminisce about wartime. After the war, she taught school in Paris, and later in Cognac; her children had married well; her sister, Monique, taught music in Paris. Annette’s manner was warm, filled with laughter. He felt at ease with her. He could sit there indefinitely.
Eventually, he couldn’t help asking about Robert. He told her about searching for him through Caroline and recognizing him in her box of photos.
“I remembered him so well, but that story seems to have a sad ending.”
Annette nodded. “Yes. Robert is a sad story. I can’t settle that in my mind. But yes, the time he worked with us in the Bourgogne—that was a challenge for all of us.”
“Is he still alive?”
“I assume so. But I do not know where he is at present.”
“I always pictured him out on daring missions for the Resistance,” Marshall said. “I imagined