J. Janes - Tapestry

Where, please, had it all come from-wasn’t this what the silly thing was wondering, but something would have to be said. ‘From time to time Colonel Delaroche picks things up and keeps them here or in one of the other flats the agency has for clients who feel they have to leave home for a little. Some of them have very young children who are desperately in need of reassurance, and for each child, he tries to find what’s best.’

‘There’s a teddy bear in my room,’ Suzette heard herself saying but was he demanding she tell him everything? ‘His eyes are like polished anthracite. There are little felt pads on his paws.’ Pads that she kissed every night-would he wonder this? ‘I … I keep him on the side table next to the music box I borrowed whose larks sing to me every morning when the lid is opened, after … after I’ve managed to switch off the alarm clock.’

How young and inexperienced she must seem to him-young and with a tongue that had been loosened? ‘The music box is of gold and enamelled flowers and was made in Geneva in 1825, but its wind-up mechanism was stuck. I felt I might have broken it and was so very worried, but Monsieur Freres Rochat, its maker, did exceptional work, so the trouble was not his or mine but simply the dust of the years.’

The girl had taken it to a shop.

‘But I really don’t know much about such things,’ she gushed. ‘How could I, coming from where I do?’

Charenton and the house of the aunt and uncle who had taken her in before the Defeat, the father having been called up and now a prisoner of war. ‘You must know the Bois de Vincennes well.’

One of the city’s largest and most popular of parks. ‘A little, yes. Charenton is right next to it and when I visit with my aunt and uncle on the last Sunday of every month, I … I sometimes go there afterwards.’ Why had he asked it of her?

He said no more of this but did he know they had put themselves out to send her to secretarial school and that she was trying to pay them back and desperately needed to keep her job, that with the rationing it helped them tremendously to have her living here? He must know that Maman and the rest of the family, except for Papa , were at home in Dreux, at least eighty-five kilometres to the west of the city and that she sent money and things to them when she could but hadn’t been home since coming to Paris, not with the travel restrictions and the need for laissez-passers and sauf-conduits . The cost too.

Indicating that she should show him the flat, he told her he had best look through it but didn’t explain further. She took off her slippers, he his shoes, which he set neatly side by side, even to cleaning a bit of mud from the toe of one.

But had he really put the lock on? wondered Suzette. The Savonnerie shy; carpet in the salle de sejour was soft and warm underfoot, the living room perfect-Louis XVI chairs and sofas she never sat in, lamps she never used, even a glazed cheval screen before a fireplace in which she had never once lighted a fire, the stove in the kitchen being hers to use. Oil paintings hung on the walls with the tapestries-landscapes, portraits, sketches-beautiful things were everywhere and worth an absolute fortune and yet … and yet it was but one of such flats the agency kept for its clients-hadn’t that been what he’d said? Flats here, flats there. ‘I … I don’t use any of the rooms except for the kitchen and my bedroom,’ she said.

Teddy was waiting. Teddy would look up at him. ‘It does get lonely,’ she said and stupidly had to shrug, was nervous too, nervous at the nearness of this man she had sometimes thought about when in bed with Teddy-would he have realized this? ‘Working six days a week, I … I haven’t had a chance to contact any of my friends from school here and am not from Paris anyway- ah, mon Dieu, how could I be?’

Which only showed how well Abelard vetted their secretaries, thought Raymond, but he wouldn’t give her one of those rare smiles she welcomed, not yet. He’d make her wait for it.

The girl followed him to the kitchen, but had she realized he’d known of the teddy bear? She would take that music box to have its mechanism freed, a problem for sure. An offer would have been made, but had she been stunned by the value and come away only to then realize what the contents of the flat itself must be worth?

‘Colonel Delaroche gives me vouchers,’ she said of the kitchen. ‘I use them with my ration tickets but only at certain shops. He has said my time is better spent at my desk and not in the queues, so I … I just hand the vouchers in and each shopkeeper takes what tickets are needed and I, in turn, take what I’ve been given.’

She had set the table for two and had piled books on to the chair opposite the one she would use, the day’s events at the agency to then be relayed to her little friend. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays were meatless days, and though there must be meat available, the frying pan hadn’t been taken down and set to ready on the stove. Instead, noodles were in soak. The Marechal Petain would have been pleased.

‘Were some of the shopkeepers I go to once men under the colonel’s command?’ she asked. ‘Most are veterans, many from Verdun. Some even wear their medals and ribbons on their smocks.’

Fear of himself, of a man and all that it must entail yet the forbidden excitement of it, too, had made her breath come quickly, but she wasn’t aware of this and certainly the little fool had been taking note of far too much. ‘Look, I must get back to the office. Please don’t worry about Hubert. Everything will be fine.’

Pressing her forehead against the door, her fingers still on the lock, Suzette didn’t hear him take the lift. He had gone down one of the staircases. A floor, two floors-on which had the trouble been and why, please, had he to check? Hadn’t Concierge Louveau told him all about it?

Teddy didn’t help. Teddy said, Don’t you dare!

The side staircase was the closer, stocking feet the best, no sign of M. Jeannot Raymond in the corridor below, nor was he on the third floor, not that she could see, but one of the flats nearest to this staircase had been sealed with stickers, they having been placed both above and below the lock and covering the seam between the door and the jamb. Stickers whose eagle clutched a swastika.

‘ “Zutritt verboten. Defense d’entrer ,” ’ she whispered as she read the notice. ‘ “ Befehl der Kripo Pariser-Zentrum. Par ordre du Prefet et de la Police Judiciaire.” ’

Herr Kohler had signed the notice. The building was quieter than quiet but … Suzette glanced up at the ceiling-had she heard someone in that corridor?

There was no one there, and Dieu merci , it was the same on the fifth. The door to her flat was still tightly closed, she having silently eased it shut. Hurriedly she stepped inside, closed the door, put the lock on … warned herself to do so quietly.

Sighed when it was done, and pressed her forehead against the door again. ‘There,’ she said but couldn’t find the will to turn, couldn’t find her voice anymore, knew only that she wasn’t alone and that he was right behind her.

The cigarette box that Hermann kept digging into on the colonel’s desk was Czechoslovakian, the mid-1930s and a time when such things could still be made. It was of beautifully banded, polished malachite, whose frosted green glass lid held in relief, as if in gauze, a reclining nude, full exposure. At once it was evocative and provocative, and one had to wonder if the box had been deliberately placed there to incite further jealousy in already embittered female clients.

‘You enjoy the finer things in life, Colonel. Again I commend your taste,’ said St-Cyr. Quevillon, Garnier, Hermann and himself were sitting in front of the desk, the colonel behind it, his gestures effusive, the cigar hand slicing the air when emphasis was needed.