The Lost Girls Of Paris

“Decided?” Marie repeated, puzzled.

“Yes. You have to decide if you want to risk your life, and I have to decide if I can let you.”

Marie’s mind whirled. “I’m sorry... I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“You don’t know who we are, do you?” Marie shook her head. “Then what are you doing here?”

“A man in a café gave me a card and...” Marie faltered, hearing the ridiculousness of the situation in her own voice. She had not even learned his name. “I should just go.” She stood.

The woman pressed a firm hand on her shoulder. “Not necessarily. Just because you don’t know why you’ve come, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be here. We often find purpose where we least expect it—or not.” Her style was brusque, unfeminine and unquestionably stern. “Don’t blame the man who sent you. He wasn’t authorized to say more. Our work is highly classified. Many who work at the most senior levels of Whitehall itself have no idea what it is that we do.”

“Which is what, exactly?” Marie ventured to ask.

“We’re a branch of Special Operations Executive.”

“Oh,” Marie said, though the answer really didn’t clarify matters for her.

“Covert operations.”

“Like the codebreakers at Bletchley?” She’d known a girl who had left the typing pool to do that once.

“Something like that. Our work is a bit more physical, though. On the ground.”

“In Europe?” Eleanor nodded. Marie understood then: they meant to send her over, into the war. “You want me to be a spy?”

“We don’t ask questions here,” Eleanor snapped. Then it was not, Marie reflected, the place for her. She had always been curious, too curious, her mother would say, with never-ending questions that only made her father’s temper worsen as Marie progressed through her teen years. “We aren’t spies,” Eleanor added, as though the suggestion was offensive. “Espionage is the business of MI6. Rather, here at SOE, our mission is sabotage, or destroying things like railroad tracks, telegraph lines, factory equipment and such, in order to hinder the Germans. We also help the local partisans arm and resist.”

“I’ve never heard of such things.”

“Exactly.” Eleanor sounded almost pleased.

“But what makes you think I could have any part in something like this? I’m hardly qualified.”

“Nonsense. You’re smart, capable.” How could this woman, who had only just met her, possibly know that? It was perhaps the first time in her life that anyone had described her that way. Her father made sure she felt the very opposite. And Richard, her now-gone husband, had treated her as if she was special for a fleeting moment, and look where all that had led. Marie had never thought of herself as any of those things, but now she found herself sitting a bit taller. “You speak the language. You’re exactly who we’re looking for. Have you ever played a musical instrument?” Eleanor asked.

Though it seemed nothing should surprise her anymore, Marie found the question strange. “Piano when I was very young. Harp in school.”

“That could be useful. Open your mouth,” Eleanor ordered, her voice suddenly terse. Marie was certain that she had misheard. But Eleanor’s face was serious. “Your mouth” came the command again, insistent and impatient. Reluctantly, Marie complied. Eleanor stared into her mouth like a dentist. Marie bristled, resenting the intrusion by a woman she had only just met. “That back filling will have to go,” Eleanor said decisively, stepping back.

“Go?” Marie’s voice rose with alarm. “But that’s a perfectly good filling—just a year old and was quite expensive.”

“Exactly. Too expensive. It will mark you as English right away. We’ll have it replaced with porcelain—that’s what the French use.”

It all came together in Marie’s mind then: the man’s interest in her language skills, Eleanor’s concern over whether a tooth filling was too English. “You want me to impersonate a Frenchwoman.”

“Among other things, yes. You’ll receive training in operations skills before you are deployed—if you make it through training.” Eleanor spoke as though Marie had already agreed to go. “That’s all I can say about it for now. Secrecy is of the utmost importance to our operations.”

Deployed. Operations. Marie’s head swam. It seemed surreal that in this elegant town house just steps from the shops and bustle of Oxford Street, covert war against Germany was planned and waged.

“The car will be here for you in one hour to take you to training school,” Eleanor said, as though it were all settled.

“Now? But that’s so soon! I would have to sort out my affairs and pack.”

“It is always the way,” Eleanor replied. Perhaps, Marie reflected, they didn’t want to give people a chance to go home and have second thoughts. “We’ll provide everything you need and give notice to the War Office for you.” Marie stared at Eleanor with surprise. She hadn’t said where she worked. She realized then that these people, whoever they were, knew too much about her. The meeting in the café had not been by chance.

“How long would I have to be gone?” Marie asked.

“That depends on the mission and a variety of other circumstances. You can resign at any time.”

Leave, a voice not her own seemed to say. Marie was into something much bigger and deeper than she had imagined. But her feet remained planted, curiosity piqued. “I have a daughter up near Ely with my aunt. She’s five.”

“And your husband?”

“Killed in action,” she lied. In fact, Tess’s father, Richard, had been an unemployed actor who had gotten by on parts as extras in West End shows and disappeared shortly after Tess was born. Marie had come to London when she was eighteen, fleeing her father’s home, and had promptly fallen for the first bad apple that dropped at her feet. “He went missing at Dunkirk.” The explanation, a morbid lie, was preferable to the likely truth: that he was in Buenos Aires, spending what was left of her mother’s inheritance, which Marie had naively moved to a joint account to cover their household expenses when they had first married.

“Your daughter is well cared for?” Marie nodded. “Good. You would not be able to concentrate on training if you were worried about that.”

She would never stop worrying about Tess, Marie thought. She knew in that instant that Eleanor did not have children.

Marie thought about Tess up in the countryside, the weekend visits that wouldn’t happen if she accepted Eleanor’s proposal. What kind of mother would do such a thing? The responsible choice would be to stay here in London, to thank Eleanor and go back to whatever ordinary life was left during the war. She was the only parent Tess had. If she failed to come back, Tess would have no one but aging Aunt Hazel, who surely couldn’t look after her much longer.

“The work pays ten pounds per week,” Eleanor added.

That was five times what Marie made typing. She’d found the best work she could in London, but it hadn’t been enough. Even combined with a second job, the kind that would have kept her from getting up to see Tess at the weekends, she would not have made what Eleanor was offering. She did the calculations. She would have enough to keep up the house even after sending money to Hazel each week to cover Tess’s care and expenses, something that simply was not possible now. She imagined a new dress for her daughter, perhaps even a few toys at Christmas. Tess was unspoiled and never complained, but Marie often wished to give her more of the things she had taken for granted in her own childhood. It wasn’t like she could be with Tess now while she was stuck working in London anyway. And, in truth, Marie was curious about the mysterious adventure Eleanor was dangling in front of her. She felt so useless sitting here in London, typing endlessly. Might as well do some good, make a real difference in the war effort—if, as Eleanor had said, she in fact had what it took.

“All right then. I’m ready. But I have to phone and let my daughter’s caretaker know that I won’t be coming up.”

Eleanor shook her head firmly. “Impossible. No one can know where you are going—or even that you are going. We’ll send a telegram informing your family that you’ve been called away for work.”

“I can’t simply leave without saying anything.”

“That is exactly what you must do.” Eleanor stared at her evenly. Though her expression did not change, Marie saw a flicker of doubt behind her eyes. “If you aren’t prepared to do this, you can just leave.”

“I have to speak to my daughter. I won’t go unless I can hear her voice.”

“Fine,” Eleanor relented finally. “But you cannot tell her that you are going. There’s a phone in the next room you can use. Keep it brief. No more than five minutes.” Eleanor spoke as though she was in charge of Marie now, owned her. Marie wondered if accepting had been a mistake. “Say nothing of your departure,” Eleanor reiterated. Marie sensed it was some sort of test—perhaps the first of many.

Eleanor started for the door, indicating that Marie should follow. “Wait,” Marie said. “There’s one thing.” Eleanor turned back, the start of annoyance creeping onto her face. “I should tell you that my father’s family is German.” Marie watched Eleanor’s face, half hoping the information might cause Eleanor to change her mind about accepting Marie for whatever she was proposing.

But Eleanor simply nodded in confirmation. “I know.”

“But how?”

“You’ve sat in that same café every day, haven’t you?” Marie nodded. “You should stop that, by the way. Terrible habit. Varying one’s routine is key. In any event, you sit there and read books in French and one of our people noticed and thought you might be a good recruit. We followed you back to work, learned who you are. We ran you through the cards, found you qualified, at least for initial consideration.” Marie was stunned; all of this had been going on and she’d had no idea. “We have finders, recruiters looking for girls who might be the right sort all over Britain. But in the end I decide if they are the right sort to go. Every single one of the girls passes through me.” There was a note of protectiveness in her voice.

“And you think I do?”

“You might,” Eleanor said carefully. “You’ve got the proper credentials. But in training you’ll be tested to see if you can actually put them into use. Skills on paper are useless if you don’t have the grit to see it all through. Do you have any political allegiances of your own?”

“None. My mother didn’t believe in...”

“Enough,” Eleanor snapped. “Don’t answer a question with any more than you have to.” Another test. “You must never talk about yourself or your past. You’ll be given a new identity in training.” And until then, Marie thought, it would be as if she simply didn’t exist.

Eleanor held open the door to the toilet. Marie walked through into a study with high bookshelves. A black phone sat on a mahogany desk. “You can call here.” Eleanor remained in the doorway, not even pretending to give her privacy. Marie dialed the operator and asked to be connected to the post office where Hazel worked each day, hoping she had not yet gone home. She asked for Hazel from the woman who answered.

Then a warbling voice came across the line. “Marie! Is something wrong?”

“Everything’s fine,” Marie reassured quickly, so desperately wanting to tell her the truth about why she had called. “Just checking on Tess.”

“I’ll fetch her.” One minute passed then another. Quickly, Marie thought, wondering if Eleanor would snatch the phone from her hand the moment five minutes had passed.

“Allo!” Tess’s voice squeaked, flooding Marie’s heart.

“Darling, how are you?”

“Mummy, I’m helping Aunt Hazel sort the mail.”

Marie smiled, imagining her playing around the pigeonholes. “Good girl.”

“And just two more days until I see you.” Tess, who even as a young child had an acute sense of time, knew her mother always came on Friday. Only now she wouldn’t be. Marie’s heart wrenched.

“Let me speak to your auntie. And, Tess, I love you,” she added.

But Tess was already gone. Hazel came back on the line. “She’s well?” Marie asked.

“She’s brilliant. Counting to a hundred and doing sums. So bright. Why, just the other day, she...” Hazel stopped, seeming to sense that sharing what Marie had missed would only make things worse. Marie couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit jealous. When Richard abandoned her and left her alone with a newborn, Marie had been terrified. But in those long nights of comforting and nursing an infant, she and Tess had become one. Then she’d been forced to send Tess away. She was missing so much of Tess’s childhood as this bloody war dragged on. “You’ll see for yourself at the weekend,” Hazel added kindly.

Marie’s stomach ached as though she had been punched. “I have to go.”

“See you soon,” Hazel replied.

Fearful she would say more, Marie hung up the phone.

Chapter Four

Grace

New York, 1946

Forty-five minutes after she had started away from Grand Central, Grace stepped off the downtown bus at Delancey Street. The photographs she’d taken from the suitcase seemed to burn hot against her skin through her bag. She’d half expected the police or someone else to follow her and order her to return them.

But now as she made her way through the bustling Lower East Side neighborhood where she’d worked these past several months, the morning seemed almost normal. At the corner, Mortie the hot dog vendor waved as she passed. The window cleaners alternated between shouting to one another about their weekends and catcalling at the women below. The smell of something savory and delicious wafted from Reb Sussel’s delicatessen, tickling her nose.

Grace soon neared the row house turned office on Orchard Street and began the climb that always left her breathless. Bleeker & Sons, a law practice for immigrants, was located in a fourth-floor walk-up above a milliner and two stories of accountants. The name, etched into the glass door at the top of the landing, was a misnomer because it was just Frankie, and always had been as far as she could tell. A line of refugees fifteen deep snaked down the stairs, hollow cheekbones above heavy coats and too many layers of clothing, as though they were afraid to take off their belongings. Their faces were careworn and drawn and they did not make eye contact. Grace noticed the unwashed smell coming from them as she passed, and then was immediately ashamed at herself for doing so.

“Excuse me,” Grace said, stepping delicately around a woman sitting on the ground with a baby sleeping on her lap. She slid into the office. Across the single room, Frankie perched on the edge of his worn desk, phone receiver cradled between his ear and shoulder. He grinned widely and waved her over.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said as soon as he hung up the phone. “There was an accident by Grand Central and I had to go around.”

“I moved the Metz family to eleven,” he said. There was no recrimination in his voice.

Closer she could see the imprint of papers creasing his cheek. “You were here all night again, weren’t you?” she accused. “You’re wearing the same suit, so don’t try to deny it.” She immediately regretted the observation. Hopefully, he would not realize the same about her.

He raised his hands in admission, touching the spot near his temples where his dark hair was flecked with gray. “Guilty. I had to be. The Weissmans needed papers filed for their residency and housing.” Frankie was tireless when helping people, as though his own well-being did not matter at all.

“It’s done now.” She tried not to think about what she had been doing while he had been working all night. “You should get some sleep.”

“Don’t lecture me, miss,” he chided, his Brooklyn accent seeming to deepen.

“You need rest. Go home,” she pressed.

“And tell them what?” He gestured with his head toward the line of people waiting in the hallway.

Grace looked back over her shoulder at the never-ending stream of need that filled the stairwell. Sometimes she was overwhelmed by all of it. Frankie’s practice consisted mainly of helping the European Jews who had come to live with relatives in the already teeming Lower East Side tenements; it sometimes felt more like social work than law. He took all of their cases, trying to find their relatives or their assets or get them citizenship papers, often for little more than a promise of payment. He had never missed her salary, but she sometimes wondered how he kept up the lights and rent.

And his own health. His white shirt was yellowed at the neck and he was covered as always in a fine layer of perspiration that made him seem to glow. A lifelong bachelor (“Who would have me?” he’d joked more than once) approaching fifty, he was a dilapidated sort, five-o’clock shadow even at ten in the morning and hair seldom combed. But there was a warmth to his brown eyes that made it impossible to scold and his quick smile always brought out her own.

“You need to at least eat breakfast,” she said. “I can run and get you a bagel.”

He waved away the suggestion. “Can you just find me the number for social services in Queens?” he asked. “I want to freshen up before our first meeting.”

“You’ll do our clients no good if you make yourself sick,” she scolded.

But Frankie just smiled as he started out the door for the washroom. He ruffled the hair of a young boy who sat on the landing as he passed. “Just a minute, okay, Sammy?” he said.

Grace picked up the ashtray from the corner of his desk and emptied it, then wiped the top of the table to clear away the dust left behind. She and Frankie had, in a sense, found each other. After she had taken the narrow room with a shared bath off Fifty-Fourth Street close to the West River, she’d quickly run through what little money she had and started to look for a job, armed with no more than a high school typing class. When she’d gone to answer an ad for a secretary for one of the accountants in the building, she had walked into his law office by mistake. Frankie said he’d been looking for someone (whether or not that was the case, she would never actually know) and she’d started the next day.

He didn’t really need her to work there, she quickly came to realize. The office was tiny, almost too small for the both of them. Though his papers were seemingly tossed in haphazard piles, he could put his fingers on a single page he needed within seconds. The work was hectic, but he could do it all by himself; in fact, he had been doing it all for years. No, he hadn’t needed her. But he sensed that she needed the job and so he had made a place. She loved him for it.

Frankie walked back into the office. “Are you ready?” he asked. She nodded, though she still wanted to go home for a bath and a nap, or at least find coffee. But Frankie was headed purposefully toward his desk with the young boy from the landing in tow. “Sammy, this is my friend Grace. Grace, I’d like to introduce Sam Altshuler.”

Grace looked behind the boy toward the door for the others. She had been expecting a whole family, or at least an adult, to accompany him. “Mother? Father?” she mouthed silently over the boy’s head so he could not see.

Frankie shook his head gravely. “Sit down, son,” he said gently to the boy, who could not be older than ten. “How can we help?”

Sammy looked up uncertainly through long eyelashes, not sure whether to trust them. Grace noticed then a small notebook in his right hand. “You like to write?” she asked.

“Draw,” Sammy replied with a heavy East European accent. He held up the pad to reveal a small sketch of the queue of people waiting on the stairs.

“It’s wonderful,” she said. The details and expressions on the people’s faces were stunningly good.

“How can we help you?” Frankie asked.

“I need sumvere to live.” He spoke the broken but functional English of a smart kid who had taught himself.

“Do you have any family here in New York?” Frankie asked.

“My cousin, he shares an apartment vith some fellas in the Bronx. But it costs two dollars a veek to stay vith them.”

Grace wondered where Sammy had been living until now. “What about your parents?” she couldn’t help asking.

“I vas separated from my father at Vesterbork.” Westerbork was a transit camp in Holland, Grace recalled from a family they had helped weeks earlier. “My mother hid me vith her for as long as she could in the vomen’s...” He paused, fumbling for a word. “In the barracks, but then she was taken, too. I never saw them again.”

Grace shuddered inwardly, trying to imagine a child trying to survive alone under such circumstances. “It’s possible that they survived,” she offered. Frankie’s eyes flashed above the boy’s head, a silent warning.

Sammy’s expression remained unchanged. “They vere taken east,” he said, his voice matter-of-fact. “People don’t come back from there.” What was it like, Grace wondered, to be a child with no hope?

Grace forced herself to focus on the practicalities of the situation. “You know, there are places in New York for children to live.”

“No boys’ home,” Sammy replied, sounding panicked. “No orphanage.”

“Grace, can I speak with you for a moment?” Frankie waved her over to the corner, away from Sammy. “That boy spent two years in Dachau.” Grace’s stomach twisted, imagining the awful things Sammy’s young eyes had seen. Frankie continued, “And then he was in a DP camp for six months before managing to get here by using the papers of another little boy who died. He’s not going to go to another institution where people can hurt him again.”

“But he needs guardians, an education...” she protested.

“What he needs,” Frankie replied gently, “is a safe place to live.” The bare minimum to survive, Grace thought sadly. So much less than the loving family a child should have. If she had a real apartment, she might have taken Sammy home with her.

Frankie started back toward the boy. “Sammy, we’re going to start the process of having your parents declared deceased so that you can receive payments from social security.” Frankie’s voice was matter-of-fact. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, Grace knew. He was helping a client (albeit a young one) get what he needed.

“How long vill that take?” Sammy asked.

Frankie frowned. “It isn’t a quick process.” He reached in his wallet and pulled out fifty dollars. Grace stifled a gasp. It was a large sum in their meager practice and Frankie could hardly afford it. “This should be enough to live with your cousin for a while. Keep it on you and don’t trust anyone with it. Check in with me in two weeks—or sooner if things aren’t good with your cousin, okay?”

Sammy looked at the money dubiously. “I don’t know ven I can repay you,” he said, his voice solemn beyond his years.

“How about that drawing?” Frankie suggested. “That will be payment enough.” The boy tore the paper carefully from the notepad and then took the money.

Watching Sammy’s back as he retreated through the doorway, Grace’s heart tugged. She had read and heard the stories in the news, which came first in a trickle then a deluge, about the killings and other atrocities that had happened in Europe while people here had gone to the cinema and complained about the shortage of nylons. It was not until coming to work for Frankie, though, that she had seen the faces of the suffering and began to truly understand. She tried to keep her distance from the clients. She knew that if she allowed them into her heart even a crack, their pain would break her. But then she met someone like Sammy and just couldn’t help it.

Frankie walked up beside her and put his arm on her shoulder. “It’s hard, I know.”

She turned to him. “How do you do it? Keep going, I mean.” He had been helping people rebuild their lives out of the wreckage for years.

“You just have to lose yourself in the work. Speaking of which, the Beckermans are waiting.”

The next few hours were a rush of interviews. Some were in English, others she translated using all of the high school French she could muster, and still others Frankie conducted in the fluent German he said he had learned from his grandmother. Grace scribbled furiously the notes Frankie dictated about what needed to be done for each client. But in between meetings, Grace’s thoughts returned to the suitcase she had found at the train station that morning. Why would someone simply have abandoned it? She wondered if the woman (Grace assumed it was a woman from the clothing and toiletries inside) had left it inadvertently, or if she knew she wasn’t coming back. Perhaps it was meant for someone else to find.