The lift began its journey. Suzette knew she should say something, but M. Raymond had spoken privately with the concierge about her and about the trouble she had mentioned. Monsieur Louveau had looked her over as they’d spoken-she knew he had. Even though she had instantly dropped her gaze, she had felt him doing so. A girl in an overcoat and slippers? A secretary who had been slapped hard but one who had also, he would have been told, deliberately misled a Surete just to keep him from this building where she lived and where there had been some terrible trouble-she knew there had.
M. Raymond didn’t say anything of what had happened in the building nor of what Concierge Louveau had told him about herself. Perhaps it was that someone had been taken away. People were being arrested all the time. No restaurant, cafe or bar was safe, no street, but surely not here, not when two of les Allemands lived in the building and all the other tenants must have been given security clearances, herself included?
The lift continued making all the noises that were usual in this quietest of residences. They reached her floor and Suzette watched as he opened the cage, she faintly saying, ‘It is this way.’ Had she not said that very same thing to him out on the street?
He was so silent and when, at last, they did reach her door, it was ajar. M. Quevillon had not pulled it tightly closed. Dieu merci, her handbag was still on the little table under the oval of the Empire mirror whose mahogany gleamed because she had made certain it would.
‘I’m so very lucky,’ she heard herself saying, her back still to him. ‘Never in a thousand years could I ever have afforded a place like this. There are so many beautiful things. A Beauvais tapestry chinoise that is very old, Galle, Lotz and Lalique glass figurines and vases, and others, too, from Czechoslovakia. An absolutely magnificent vitrine has a superb collection of Sevres porcelain.’
Had she said too much? M. Raymond was silently studying her reflection in the mirror, he having closed the door to lean back against it, but had he put the lock on? Had he sensed how uncertain she was, a girl who knew far too much? Was this why his gaze didn’t waver?
‘What else is there?’ he asked, giving her that smile of his, she instantly grinning with relief.
‘Fabulous dolls in one of the Boulle armoires. Jumeau Parisiennes and bebes, Kammer and Reinhardts and those of Armand Marseille. Their party dresses are of velvet, silk and satin, their jewellery so real, it must be.’
She swallowed hard. He didn’t move. ‘Was I not to have touched them?’ she heard herself asking. ‘I know the colonel has said I’m only to use the smallest of the bedrooms and that, from time to time, he would be sending others to stay here, but … but there hasn’t been anyone yet and if I’m to keep the flat clean, I … It does get lonely. One does wonder what’s in a drawer or armoire …’
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.