Duchess

Chapter 15

The next morning, Nancy left before the sun came up. The three of us ate a small breakfast together by the light of one dim candle (so as not to bring attention to ourselves) listening to Nancy give us instruction on how we should direct our future visitors over the Pyrenees mountains.
She gathered her small bag of belongings and left through our back door, thanking us profusely for our kindness.
We all decided that, although last night went well, we needed a system to alert our visitors when it was dangerous for them to come out of the hiding place—just in case.
The next day, Benjamin installed a buzzer system all throughout the house, including one downstairs at the reception desk and one in his examination rooms. It was just a low hum, something only those who knew the sound and were listening for it would recognize, but it was enough to give us an added layer of security.
The next few months were a whirlwind of activity for us, taking in whatever refugees or Jews that Defferre decided to send to us, corresponding with the OSS concerning everything from Nazi morale to the number of miles between certain streets in the city, and trying to blend in as normal French citizens.
     One day, while returning from the hairdresser, someone grabbed me by the arm and hurriedly pulled me behind one of the market stalls lining the street. I wrenched my hand away and elbowed the man hard in the chest, causing him to lose his grip on me and fall back in pain.
       Beginning to run away, I turned back when the man called, "Lux et Veritas, Madame Gilbert." That was the Latin motto of Yale University, and our signal phrase for the OSS whenever they needed to contact us. We were supposed to trust anyone who knew that phrase.
     "Qui es-tu?" I asked tersely, "Who are you?"
     He stood up with a groan and rubbed the place on his chest where I had hit him. "Are you Anne-Laure Gilbert?" he asked, evading the question in broken French.
     I was confused. He obviously wasn't with the OSS because he didn't seem to know my real name, but he didn't speak fluent French. I guessed from his accent that he probably spoke English, but I wasn't going to let my guard down that much.
     "You didn't answer me. Who are you?"
     "Listen," the man began to say in English before catching himself, "Écoute. I need your help. You have to...follow me."
     I scoffed and rolled my eyes at him. "No," I said, "how about you follow me?"
     I began walking towards an alley I knew would be deserted and—in desperation—he followed close behind. I wasn't even sure if he understood everything I had just said, because I spoke quickly and in the most colloquial French I knew just to make him uncomfortable. This was obviously not going as well as he had planned.
     Once in the desolate alley, I dropped the French. "Who are you?"
     He was so stunned to hear me speaking perfect English that he answered honestly. "First Lieutenant Carraway of the Eighth Fleet. US Air Force. I was told to find you. Who are you? Why are you here in France?"
     "It doesn't matter...you can call me Anne-Laure Gilbert.  Did you crash somewhere?"
     "There's twenty of us. It was a transport mission—just trying to get us all into Normandy—but there was a bird strike. Imagine getting knocked out of the sky because of birds when there's anti-aircraft missiles all over the place! A bird strike," he said as an afterthought, "is when birds get into the-"
     "I know what a bird strike is."
     "Just making sure."
     I sighed. "Is anyone hurt? Who told you to come to me?"
     "Minor injuries only. Someone from the Resistance...named Gaston, I think. He caught us disposing of our uniforms and almost shot us. He said we were lucky it was him and not someone else, and he said to send someone into Marseille to find you."
Gaston Defferre, I thought. The pompous socialist had apparently taken to rescuing lost Americans.
     "Alright," I relented, writing down my address on a thin notepad, "bring them here. As long as you can promise that they'll behave and keep quiet, you'll all have a place to sleep—although I can't promise a bed."
He grinned. "Thank you. Oh, I'm so relieved to bring good news back to them all. Thank you, Ma'am. You won't even know we're there."
"Well I certainly know that won't be true," I said with a small smile, "It'll be so cramped in our house there won't even be room to stand. Listen, two at a time at most should enter the city. At least thirty minutes apart, more if you can manage it. No uniforms, no English, no secret glances or winks or attempts at secret codes. I'm guessing you're one of the few that speaks any French?"
Nodding, he shrugged slightly. "The Captain is pretty fluent, but he's the only one. I wouldn't even call what I know 'speaking French.'"
"Alright. The signal for me to know who you all are will be silence. Approach the desk and don't speak. I'll know. Ask your Captain to come last if he wasn't already planning to. We'll stage all of you in one of the back examination rooms until you're all present—for the safety of both parties—and then we'll bring you all upstairs. There can be no sound coming from that room, so bring playing cards or something."
I leaned against the brick alley wall and put a hand to my forehead. Defferre was going to hear it from me later. Volunteering Benjamin and I to take on 20 American soldiers? We could barely handle a Jewish family of three at this point.
"Don't tell anyone I'm not French or even my name. Perhaps I'll tell your Captain once everyone is safely in the house, but I can't risk you all being captured."
He nodded. "I'll see you shortly then, Ma'am. I can't thank you enough."
"Thank me by not putting my family and my opportunities to help others in the future at risk. See you soon, First Lieutenant Carraway."
I quickly left the alley, meandering as far away from the area as I could before I even thought of turning around.
     A bell above the door jingled as I hurried into the waiting room, and Benjamin furrowed his eyebrows as soon as we made eye contact. Seeming to catch a glimpse of the distress in my eyes, he stood up from where he had put his feet up on the desk.
     I flipped the 'open' sign in the window to say 'closed,' and motioned with my finger for him to meet me upstairs. "Do you have any other appointments today?"
     "Just one, but I'll cancel-"
     "Don't," I said urgently. That would be too obvious. "Just come upstairs."
     He followed me up the elaborately embellished cedar staircase and took my hands in his as soon as we reached the kitchen.
     "What's wrong? Are we in danger?"
     "We're about to have twenty American airmen staying with us, Ben. Can you gather all the blankets and pillows and mattresses we own? I'll work the desk downstairs."
     Benjamin shook his head in disbelief. "Why are they in Marseille? How did they know-"
"Defferre told them, apparently. They're coming in groups of two...about thirty minutes apart. Their plane crashed after a bird strike and they need somewhere to stay--" I paused for a moment and added, "It was a transport mission."
     He looked up at me tentatively. That day in 1941 where my company of women crashed in the French countryside, we were on a transport mission. Benjamin knew that I felt compelled to help these men.
"Alright...we can probably fit eight or nine in the hiding place to sleep, and the rest can stay in the guest bedroom on the floor. If there's a threat or someone comes to call, they'll have to all squeeze for a while in the hiding place together. Ring for me if my four o'clock appointment comes in."
     I nodded and hurried down the stairs, sitting down tensely in the chair behind Ben's desk and trying to occupy myself. 
     Sure enough, the four o'clock appointment came precisely on time, and I called Benjamin down quickly, desperately hoping that the first of the American soldiers wouldn't walk in just at that moment.
     When Benjamin and his patient were closed inside the exam room furthest from the hidden stairwell, I relaxed slightly and watched the door carefully. A few minutes later, two tall, blond men wearing white undershirts and ill-fitting trousers came inside, looking at me worriedly.
     They approached the desk and didn't say anything, obviously unsure of themselves. I nodded silently and motioned for them to follow me into the back examination room that led to the stairway.
     "Make yourselves comfortable; don't say a word. Do you have something to occupy yourselves?"
     One of them pulled out a deck of playing cards from his pocket with a proud grin. I smiled.
     Locking the door behind them, I went back to my place at Benjamin's desk. I sat on my trembling hands, hoping to appear calm in case someone came in.
Two by two, the American flyboys piled into the examination room silently, Benjamin escorting them in while I prepared upstairs. When they were all accounted for and night had fallen, Ben unlocked the small staircase and jogged up to me.
"Lou?" he said, "There's twenty of them. Are we ready?"
"Relatively. I'll bring them up; you show them to where they'll be staying."
I couldn't help myself from shaking as I motioned for the men to come up the stairs.
"Come on, boys," I spoke in English but in a French accent, "My husband will show you where to go."
Each one passed and I patted them comfortingly on the back, their weary, tense faces softening at the smell of rationed eggs.
I nodded to First Lieutenant Carraway as he passed, and he smiled. One of them was holding his nose as blood dripped down his chin, and I held my hand out to pull him aside.
"You're going to need to get that cleaned up; I'll meet you in the kitchen. Don't bleed on my floor."
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Captain," I said to the last man in line, "I'm glad to see that you've all made it."
The man looked a little surprised at me. "I didn't expect you to know my rank; is that something they teach to ladies here in Marseille?"
I smiled graciously. "I am a Colonel in the Women's Army Service Pilots. Well, I act as an Agent now. I'm with the OSS."
He raised his eyebrows and took a step backward. "Oh. Forgive me, Ma'am, I believe you outrank me then. I didn't realize you were American."
Lowering my voice even more and dropping the accent, I smiled. "That's the hope. You may call me Anne-Laure, and don't tell your men anything. I'm just a Frenchwoman who wants to do her part, alright?"
"Yes, Ma'am. Thank you so much for your help...I thought I was going to lose all of my men."
"I know the feeling. You'll be safe here; just make sure they stay quiet tonight."
I went to the kitchen where the man with a bloody nose was sitting on the floor, trying in vain not to get blood on the floor.
"Alright, come on up and sit here," I said, pulling out a chair for him, "and don't worry about the floor. It's easily cleaned."
I pulled his hand away and wiped his face with a dishrag. "It's definitely broken," I said, "What's your name?"
"Charles."
"And how did you come out with an injury and everyone else seems to have escaped unhurt?"
He shrugged. "The birds hit the plane and it was suddenly like we were free-falling. It's not what they always say is supposed to happen when the engines fail, Ma'am. I wasn't sitting down like the rest of them, so I think I went flying all over the place. I don't remember."
Charles stopped, seeming suddenly overcome with emotion. "I thought I had already died. And now I'm alive? It's so—I don't know—scary."
I took his hand and looked him in the eye with compassion. "I know the feeling quite well. Everyone pats you on the back and tells you you're a hero, and that you have to be brave and think of victory, but all you can think about is how much you miss the way it was before you were a hero."
     He smiled a little. "That's exactly it. You speak as though you've seen combat, Ma'am."
     I shrugged sheepishly, feeling comfortable enough to let my guard down a little. "You boys have more allies than you know...stationed all over the world."
     Charles gave me a sideways glance, musing, "You're an American, aren't you?"
"I guess you'll never know." We both knew. 

"I've got a girl back home; her name is Dorothy. Do you think, perhaps, I could borrow paper and a pen to write to her? I told her I'd marry her as soon as I got back."

"Of course," I exclaimed, "I'm sure she's a doll."
Charles beamed with excitement as I left to go find him a pen. The sound of shattering glass made me turn in the other direction, and I found two of the men frantically trying to clean up the broken pieces of a vase in the hallway.
     "I'm so sorry, Ma'am. I'm sorry, we didn't see it-"
     I held up a hand and began helping them clean up the pieces. "It's fine. Don't worry about it; I don't even know where this vase came from."
     They continued apologizing profusely as we disposed of the pieces into the trash can, and Benjamin came to help escort them and the rest of the men into the bedroom and hiding place to get settled for the evening.
     I quietly excused myself, breathing heavily, and leaned against the wall in our own bedroom, unable to stop the tears from falling.
"Anne-Laure?" Benjamin said in a tentative whisper as he hurried in and shut the door behind him, "What's wrong?"
"They broke the vase," I sobbed silently, folding my hands and putting them to my forehead.
Ben put an arm tightly around me and pulled me to his chest. "What's really wrong?"
I paused for a moment, tears dripping onto my knees. "I wish I hadn't lied about my age on my enlistment form. Why would I do something like that?" I wrote that I was twenty-one, the minimum age for females in Britain at the time, although I was only nineteen.
He furrowed his brow and put a gentle hand to my face, wiping tears away with his thumb as he softly asked, "You mean back when you enlisted in England? That was 1940, darling, and you're too good at your job for anyone to call you out on it now. That'd be the Allied forces' biggest mistake. Again, I don't think that's really your problem."
I sighed. "I don't know, Alexandre. Everything is wrong, and hard, and scary now. Shall I start with the fact that I can't even call you by your real name in the privacy of our own room? I can't stop—" My breaths became short as I tried not to sob, "I can't stop thinking about the plane crash. Every time I—I close my eyes I can see it."
I let him take my hand as we sat on the floor, our backs against the sage green wallpaper.
Considering how much I'd suppressed my feelings concerning the event in 1941, Benjamin seemed a little taken aback by how much it had affected me. Perhaps I hadn't fully realized it until now, either.
"What can I do to help?"
     "I don't know."
     "Okay. We can just sit together."
     "Thank you."
     He kissed me gently on the forehead.

HI I LOVE YOU ALL I know it's been slow updating but slow and steady wins the race ?? Or whatever ?? Idk haha Thank you all so much for reading and stuff YALL ARE THE REASON I DO THIS