Duchess

Chapter 14

     I leaned against the wall across from Benjamin, fiddling with his stethoscope in my hands.
     "Maybe he's not coming," I suggested softly in French as we waited together for someone to come into the doctor's office, "It's been two and a half weeks."
     Ben groaned and laid down on the examination table with his hands behind his head, grumbling, "Il ferait mieux de venir. He'd better come. I haven't slept in days trying to finish the false wall so he'd have a safe place to stay; if he doesn't show up I think I'll have to drag someone in from the street so at least someone can get some use out of my hard work."
     I laughed and squeezed in beside him on the table, looking up at the water-stained ceiling above us.
     Since Gaston Defferre's last visit, we had worked constantly in preparation for the arrival of our first refugee of the Resistance. In addition to simply working to create a hidden panel behind the guest bedroom, we had begun to establish rapport with the neighbors and others in the area, and many had already made medical appointments with Benjamin. Things were going quite well.
     The front door creaked open, and I leaned my head out of the back examination room we were in to see who it was. I looked back at Ben in disappointment.
     "C'est une femme." It's a woman.
     He sighed, sitting up in resignation and fixing his hair before going out to greet her. I stayed in the back and listened absentmindedly. Wednesdays seemed to always be quiet days in Old Marseille, but even more so when we were expecting a visitor.
     "How can I help you, Madame?" he said cheerfully.
     "Lately I've been feeling rather ill; my ear is aching miserably and I believe I've just broken my thumb. Imagine that! How clumsy could I be?"
     I sat up in surprise, and Benjamin's silence showed his confusion as well. Staying in the darkness of the examination room, I stood up and watched the situation unfold. Defferre had clearly not indicated that we should expect a woman, but she had complained of the very two symptoms we had been told to look out for.
     "Well," Benjamin stammered, "I, ah, believe we should be able to help you with that. If you could please tell me your name, I'll be sure to bring you back in a moment."
     "Merci," she said shakily, looking back and making eye contact with me for a split second, "I am Madame Andrée. I am fine to wait." I couldn't stop the smile from sneaking across my face.
     Ben turned and made a beeline for me when she had sat down, a look of panic on his face. I chuckled a little as he took my hands in his and whispered, "What do we do?"
     "Bring her in here!"
     I began to turn to unlock the hidden staircase that led to the hiding place upstairs, but Benjamin grabbed my arm.
     "How do you know it's not a trick? Defferre never mentioned a woman."
     I grinned. "Do you not know who that is? That's Nancy Wake. The White Mouse. A five million franc bounty on her head. That's our Resistance member, darling, I have never been more confident about anything."
     Benjamin raised his eyebrows and looked back at the slender, dark-haired Frenchwoman sitting anxiously in the waiting room. "Are you sure?"
     "Yes. I'll go get her."
     He seemed to relent, taking over the task of removing the furniture that blocked the false wall as I approached the front of the office.
     "Madame Andrée? My name is Anne-Laure Gilbert, your doctor's wife. May I escort you back?"
     She looked up at me, gathered her bag in her hand, and whispered, "Madame Tallmadge. I've heard a lot about you, my dear."
She knew me.
     She followed me into the narrow staircase inside the examination room wall panel, and Benjamin trailed after us.
When we were safe in the guest bedroom upstairs, Benjamin shook her hand, saying, "Miss Wake. I am assuming you are the one who will be staying with us for a few days? My wife seems to know you, but I admit I don't think we've ever met."
She smiled a little and looked at me. "We female fighters have to stick together, Monsieur Tallmadge. Her escapades are big news among the Resistance."
My heart soared with exhilaration at her high praise. To know that others knew and cared about my loneliness, injuries, and mistakes as an agent was comforting, and it made me feel like what I was doing was actually worth it.
"And," she added, "I won't actually be staying for three days; I need to leave in the morning. The Gestapo have tracked me down sooner than we expected. Your hospitality, though, is still so wonderful."
Benjamin excused himself to go back to work downstairs, and Nancy and I went into the kitchen to find something to eat.
     With two cups of rationed coffee substitute before us, I looked her intently in the eye. She was putting on a strong face, but she seemed distraught.
     "Qu'est-ce qui ne va pas?" I asked, "What's wrong?"
     A tear rolled down her face and she sighed. "I don't want to leave Marseille. They're going to go after my husband Henri, and I didn't even get to say goodbye to him. I never thought—" she paused in misery, "that it would be this hard."
I pulled her into my arms, letting her cry freely. I knew what she was feeling; the aching pain of wondering what to do next when everything has been stripped away was so familiar to me.
"I'm sorry," she whispered in French, "for coming into your welcoming household like a wet blanket."
Holding up a hand, I softly replied, "Shh, don't be sorry, darling. Cry as much as you'd like."
We drank our coffee in comfortable silence, both of us thankful to be in the presence of someone who fully understood the hardships and triumphs of our profession.
     About an hour later, Benjamin came in from downstairs in his white coat and his hands full of medicine bottles, chattering on about some patient that wouldn't answer any of his questions correctly as he poured himself a glass of water.
     When he saw our faces, he stopped talking and bit his lip. "Am I interrupting something?" he stammered softly in French.
     "No, but you should probably go downstairs anyway. I love you, darling."
     He raised his eyebrows and walked out awkwardly, the sound of him sipping from his glass following him all the way down the stairs.
     Once he'd left, we snickered at the exchange.
     "You two are perfect for each other," she said with a smile, "You can just feel the chemistry between you when you're together."
I grinned sheepishly. "Thank you. This whole marriage adventure," I said with a chuckle, "is not as easy as they make it sound. We fight constantly."
     "Of course you do! That's how it should be; what kind of relationship would it be if you constantly agreed with each other, constantly bended to the will of the other? 'Our marriage is worth fighting for, my dear.' That's what my Henri always says."
     Contentment filled my heart. Besides Benjamin, I had never had anyone understand me, sympathize with me, connect with me like she did. It was refreshing.
     That night, we cleared the house of any traces of her presence, and the three of us sat by the sputtering heater in our nightclothes, listening to the Nazi radio absentmindedly.
One small brown strip of paper had been inserted into the government-issue radio machine, and that was all that separated us from listening to BBC, Radio Moscow, Beromünster of Switzerland, and Voice of America. But we could never risk it, not with Nancy's life in our hands.
Later into the night, Benjamin pulled me into his arms as we laid in bed, both of us unable to stop thinking about the fugitive sleeping just behind the wall. If the Gestapo knew who she was, surely they were tracking her every step, and that would lead them straight to Monsieur Alexandre Gilbert, M.D. and his intelligence agent wife Madame Anne-Laure. We would be found out.
As though it were possible to turn my thoughts to reality, there was a strong knock on the door. My heart stopped, and I could feel Benjamin's hands around my waist and shoulders grow cold. I imagined Nancy sitting up in the small cot we had dragged into the hiding place, clutching the quilt with both hands.
Pensively, Ben slid out from under the covers and whispered, "Stay in bed. I'll tell them you're sick with a fever and a toothache, okay? If they come in, you act frustrated that they're bothering us. Stay calm."
I nodded and he kissed me softly on the forehead before hurrying out into the sitting room, wrapping his robe around him.
"Are you Herr Alexandre Gilbert?" I heard a man at the door say. It was a thick German accent.
Benjamin cleared his throat and seemed to have nodded in the affirmative.
"We are looking for this woman; have you seen her?" My heart sank.
The best case scenario was that they were showing Nancy's photograph to everyone on our street and we were simply one of the many asked to identify her. This, however, would put us at risk if one of the neighbors saw her come into our doctor's office that afternoon.
The worst case was that they already knew she was in our house, and they were trying to catch Ben in a lie.
Ben, of course, played right along, saying, "Well, I can't say she looks familiar, but I'm not good with remembering people, sir. Where would I know her from?"
My hands were shaking. I could practically feel Nancy's fear from the hiding place. Or maybe it was just my own.
"She's a fugitive, Herr Gilbert, we believe she is working for the enemy as a courier."
     "Oh my! I can't say I recall her face, but I'll certainly keep an eye out for her!" Benjamin said cheerily.
"Do you live alone?"
I furrowed my eyebrows at the strange question, but Benjamin answered calmly. "No, sir. My wife is in the other room; she isn't feeling well. You know how this cold weather is on the ladies."
They grunted in agreement and one asked, "Are you going to take her to a doctor?"
"Oh, well, I'm a doctor," Benjamin explained, "I own the office downstairs. I'm hoping it's just a cold but I'll give her something for it tomorrow."
"Good," one answered, "Perhaps we'll visit your office sometime; it's so hard to find good French doctors."
I was impatient to get them out of our house, but Benjamin was obviously being more opportunistic. Nazi patients would certainly be an easy way to get information.
"Oh, you certainly should! My wife speaks much more fluent German than I do, but I do pride myself on being a quick learner. You can expect service similar to what you're used to in Berlin or Kaufbeuren. Where are you two from, anyway?"
Despite the fact that I knew Ben was trying to build rapport and keep their guard low, every second the conversation continued added to my stress. Nancy was probably terrified.
"I live in Frankfurt, but born in Vienna."
"Herrsching," the other said, "it's a small town."
I tensed. That was the location of the safe house I was attacked at before being picked up and taken to England. Touching the scar on my neck from where a bullet grazed me, I wondered if he knew the man who had shot me.
     "Wonderful!" Benjamin said, finally seeming to be wrapping up the conversation, "Well, I hope to see you two again sometime soon, and good luck with the search!"
     I heard the door close, and Benjamin hurried back into our room with his eyebrows raised. Just as he was about to speak, I jumped out of bed and put a hand to his lips.
     "Check for listening devices," I mouthed silently, putting on a robe over my nightgown and following him back into the living room.
     Silently, we went meticulously through the routine we had practiced ad nauseam in training. Any time someone came into our house, we would have to do the same search.
     When we were finally satisfied that it was bug-free, I dragged Benjamin by the hand into the guest bedroom beside ours. Removing all the books on the bottom two compartments of our bookshelf, I revealed the tiny door that would lead to the hiding place where Nancy was sleeping.
     "You first," I said, "I'm in my nightgown."
     Benjamin began to slide himself through the door. "We're married, darling."
"I know," I smirked, "but it's still indecent."
     He chuckled and helped me through. Benjamin turned the corner to where Nancy was sleeping first, and he whispered, "You're never going to believe this, Louisa."
     "What?"
     I reached where he was standing and gasped. Through all of that, Nancy had slept peacefully, her hair tied up in curlers like mine and blankets pulled up around her face.
     "And I was afraid she would worry herself to death back here," I whispered with a laugh, "Let's not wake her; she has a long walk ahead of her tomorrow."
     We climbed back into bed quietly and Benjamin pulled me into his arms.
     "Why are you shaking?" he asked gently, taking my hand.
     I raised my eyebrows. "How are you not shaking after what just happened?"
     He shrugged and yawned softly, tugging on one of the metal curlers in my hair. "I don't know; I guess I haven't seen as much as you have. It doesn't worry me as much."
      Benjamin was right. The mere thought of being found out scared me. I couldn't help reliving the night I was stabbed in my apartment in Munich, or the sinking feeling of finding Herr Ziegler dead on his kitchen floor in Herrsching.
     Despite all my espionage work, I wasn't one for confrontation. I liked to operate in the background, hidden just long enough to get away before the enemy discovered me. Any disruption of that method made me deathly afraid.
     "Well if you aren't thinking about capture, what are you thinking about right now?" I asked Benjamin as he stared up at the ceiling.
     "I miss my leather jackets."

FRENCH WORDS WHOOP WHOOP:

Il ferait mieux de venir - He'd better come
C'est une femme- It's a woman