‘Oh, you do,’ he said. ‘And what do you think it is that I do?’
‘I don’t know exactly,’ I said, ‘and I don’t care. What I’m asking you is to help a Jewish family escape from Marseille. Rachel’s family. Time is very short.’
Joe took his pipe out of his mouth and looked at me incredulously.
‘If you think I can manage something like that you are sadly mistaken,’ he said. ‘I’m only a soldier, a private in my organization,’ he said.
I hooted.
‘What does that mean?’
‘I don’t believe it, that’s what it means,’ I said.
He put his pipe back into his mouth and puffed on it. Pipe-smoking, I thought, was an excellent way to gather one’s thoughts before speaking.
‘So, who are you,’ he asked, ‘that you can be asking such favors?’
‘I can’t say, you know that. And my request isn’t official. I came across a file. My people can’t take action on it.’
I handed him the papers. He frowned when he saw the Gestapo crest, and by the way his eyes traveled back and forth across the page, I knew he was reading the German document.
He looked up at me. ‘I can’t imagine what you must have done to get this,’ he said.
I didn’t answer him.
‘Tell me.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Louise, there must be more to this than a schoolgirl friendship, for you to take such risks. If you want me to help you have to tell me the truth.’
I had never told anyone. It was too shameful.
‘All right,’ I said. I took a deep breath. ‘I let Rachel pay for my last year at junior college. My parents couldn’t. She insisted. I let her. I told my parents I’d gotten a scholarship.’
Joe looked perplexed.
‘Rachel had a small inheritance from her mother – a bond maturing in an American bank account. She said it didn’t matter if she cashed it in because her father was so rich anyway. She said she didn’t want to finish St Martha’s if I couldn’t be there with her, that I was her only friend in the world. She withdrew the money and I let her pay my tuition and room and board. I was desperate to stay in college.’
‘Okay,’ Joe said.
‘Don’t you understand?’ I said. ‘The Nazis seized all Rachel’s father’s money. If she still had that bond in an American bank, who knows what it might be worth now, it might have qualified her for a visa.’
Joe tapped his pipe on the bench.
‘If I hadn’t finished my junior college course, I wouldn’t have gotten my job at the Wilmington Shipbuilding Company, or my job here,’ I went on. ‘I’m free and safe and employed, and Rachel and her children . . .’ I stopped, unable to continue, and buried my face in my hands. When I recovered my poise I turned to him. ‘Do you know what she asked me for in the letter Henrietta brought?’ I said. ‘A Red Cross package!’
‘Listen to me, Louise. You could not have known Rachel would need that money. There’s no reason for you to feel guilty.’
‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘Maybe so.’ Joe folded the papers in half and handed them back to me.
‘Please,’ I said, holding his hand back with my own.
‘I told you I work for a humanitarian organization,’ he said. ‘What influence we have we must use sparingly. Do you know how many people want to get out of Europe? So many more than we can help. We’ve booked every berth in every ship that will dock in Lisbon in the next year, and it’s not enough.’
‘If you knew what I’ve been through to get those papers,’ I said, then stopped. ‘Well, you’d help me. I know you would.’
‘Louise, for heaven’s sake!’
‘Please.’
‘All right. But all I can do is see that this information gets to our office in Lisbon. The decision won’t be up to me.’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘Can we go home now?’ he asked. ‘It’s hot as Hades out here.’
Once back in my room I drew on the white cotton gloves I wore to church in the summer. I located an eraser and rubbed it over as much of the surface of one set of Joan’s carbons as I could without smearing the words. Then I did the same with the Vichy memo. I carefully folded the two sheets and placed them in a fresh envelope, licked a stamp and affixed it. I addressed the envelope, in block letters with my left hand, to ‘Sir Julian Porter, Personal Secretary to the Ambassador, Embassy of Great Britain, Massachusetts Avenue, Washington DC.’ Porter was one of the two men I’d seen dancing together at that unconventional party behind Friendship House.
I placed the envelope in my pocketbook to mail on the way to work. Here’s hoping the European Foreign Service homosexual underground was as effective as Lionel said it was.
I did my best to erase fingerprints from the other documents, a task made more difficult by my trembling hands. That’s how I realized I was scared to death. I placed the documents in my pocketbook to take to the office.
I went downstairs and found Dellaphine in the kitchen, knitting. I sat down next to her and watched for a few minutes.
She looked up at me. ‘You jiggling the table with your knees, baby,’ she said. ‘You okay?’
‘I’m a little nervous,’ I said. ‘Big day at work tomorrow.’
‘Want a shot of bourbon? That should settle you down some.’
‘Yes, please,’ I said.
Dellaphine rose and took a ring of keys from her pocket and went into the pantry, where I heard her unlock a cabinet. She came back out with a tumbler holding an inch of gold liquid.
‘Don’t let the others see this,’ she said. ‘There are only a few bottles of Mr Knox’s stash of Jack Daniels left.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. I sipped and watched Dellaphine knit, her needles flashing, and thought of the unfinished socks in my own knitting bag.
‘I wish I could knit like you,’ I said.
‘You could, baby, you just not interested,’ Dellaphine said. ‘You’re a career girl. Like my Madeleine. Why should you knit when you can work at a good job and buy war bonds?’
I didn’t close my eyes that night. Not once. I lay in the dark and thought about what I intended to do the next day. I believe I was more frightened of trying to slip documents into OSS than I’d been of breaking into the Vichy embassy. Cold and clammy with fear, I turned off my fan and curled up under a sheet for the first time in weeks.
I kept picturing being searched as I went into my building. If the FBI suspected me of anything at all they could arrange it. What would happen to me if I were caught? What crime could I be charged with? Treason? Surely not that. Breaking countless OSS regulations? I heard about a woman once who’d been caught slipping documents into her briefcase at the end of the day. She was a Communist, it turned out, but her husband was a big-shot New Dealer so she only got fired. I couldn’t even think about losing my job. I’d almost rather spend years at the federal prison for women in Alderson, West Virginia, than find myself back at my parents’ fish camp. Finally dawn allowed me to get out of bed. I dressed and went downstairs to the kitchen. Dellaphine, still in her dressing gown and bare feet, looked up at me, surprised.
‘You up early,’ she said.
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ I said. ‘Give me something to do.’
She didn’t question me, handing me an apron. By the time Phoebe came into the kitchen we were nearly finished. The bacon was crisp, the toast buttered and the juice poured. Dellaphine finished whisking the eggs and poured them into her favorite cast-iron skillet. Phoebe and I carried the bacon, toast, juice and pot of coffee into the dining room where the others were gathering. If Joe and Ada and Henry were surprised to see me in an apron helping Phoebe they didn’t show it.
Phoebe picked up the tray of warm plates heaped with scrambled eggs and hurried into the dining room so the eggs wouldn’t get cold. I poured everyone’s cups full of coffee before I sat down, still in an apron.
I couldn’t eat. My stomach had shrunk into a tiny painful ball in my abdomen, while a sharp pain jabbed me in the base of my neck. When I was done pushing my food around the plate and the others had finished I helped Phoebe take the plates into the kitchen and stack them on the sink.
I removed my apron and hung it on a pantry hook.
‘Why, Mrs Pearlie,’ Dellaphine said, with a gleam in her eye, ‘ain’t you going to stay and help me scrub the floors and change the sheets?’
‘You don’t have any idea how good that sounds to me right now,’ I said.
The government car idled outside the old apartment building on 23rd and ‘E’ that housed OSS. Two G-men peered out of the side window.
‘Do you see our girl?’ the first agent asked.
‘Not yet,’ the second agent, who had a tiny yellow feather stuck in his hatband, said, lowering his binoculars.
‘I guess we have to wait. How long, that’s what I want to know. It’s blazing hot already.’
‘It’s early yet,’ the other agent said. He riffled through a sheaf of papers in his lap. ‘Let’s get this other stuff out of the way and come back later. She’s not going anywhere. She doesn’t suspect anything.’
TWENTY-ONE
I
stepped off the bus on the corner and stopped cold, frozen with dread by the sight of my office building. I was almost knocked down by the press of other departing passengers getting off behind me.
‘For God’s sake, lady, get out of the way,’ one of them said.
I forced my reluctant legs to move and found myself standing on the patch of withered lawn that fronted the building. I wasn’t sure I could go any further. My mind was supremely conscious of the danger posed by the folded papers in my pocketbook. Hadn’t I taken enough risks, hadn’t I done enough? I could tear up the documents into tiny pieces and discard them in the trash barrel over by the lamppost. For a second that seemed like an excellent plan, but I noticed all my fellow office workers entering the building carrying pocketbooks and briefcases just like always.
I moved up the sidewalk. Was I imagining things, or did there seem to be more soldiers about than usual? And weren’t they all looking at me? My God, they were! Every head was turned in my direction, every single one! Sweat broke out all over my body and I heard a deep ringing in my ears.
Then I realized the soldiers were ogling the peroxide blonde beside me, the one with long legs and high heels, swaying her hips in a fanny-hugging polka-dot frock.
My heart was pounding and I feared my red face would attract attention, so I detoured over to the shade of a nearby tree to compose myself. Vice-President Wallace’s dog, a Great Dane, woke from his nap and lifted his head. He accompanied Wallace’s daughter Jean to her job at OSS every day and walked her home in the evening. I scratched his head behind his ears.
‘Hey, sweet boy,’ I said. ‘If I get arrested, will you protect me?’
The big dog leaned happily into my shoulder and slobbered. I scratched him some more and babbled nonsense to him until I’d composed myself, and joined the throng of co-workers heading into the building.
‘Whatcha got in there,’ Private Cooper asked, gesturing toward my black handbag. He shifted the rifle on his shoulder.
‘What?’ I said.
‘In your bag,’ he said. ‘What’s in it?’
My tongue froze in my mouth.
‘You women and your knitting, and your magazines, and your lunches,’ he said. ‘You could supply a squadron with the stuff you carry to work every day.’
He squinted at my badge and nodded me into the building. Once over the threshold I felt such relief I could have melted onto the floor. I leaned against the wall for support for a minute before I headed down the hall.
Once in my office I set down my handbag on my desk. I was safe. Never even think of doing something like this again, I chided myself. Never. Ever.
Betty and Ruth were already at work. A few minutes later a new girl, who introduced herself as Brenda Bonner, arrived, standing timidly at the door, a stack of paperwork in her arms. She looked about twelve. I explained to her the procedure for typing up index cards, and the office settled down into its usual routine. Ruth pushed her cart stacked with files into the hall while Betty forced multiple pages of typing paper and carbon paper behind the bail of her typewriter.
I sat at my desk concealed behind the partition that separated me from the rest of the room and assembled a new and improved Bloch file. I included every document I had – the hydrology conference programs, the carbons Joan had given me, the reprints of Bloch’s journal articles, the photostat of the Vichy memo and the photograph of Metcalfe, Burns, and the Blochs in Edinburgh in 1936.
I collected a few random files and left the office, radiating a businesslike sense of purpose. After filing all the other folders I knocked on Don’s door.
‘Look what I found,’ I said, without introduction, and shoved the Bloch file at Don. ‘Gerald Bloch’s file.’
‘Really,’ Don said, taking it from me.
‘It was in the “P” file room, on top of a file cabinet.’
Don frowned.
‘I think that Mr Holman must have stuck it there, you know, confused because he was feeling ill, since it’s clearly marked to go to the Projects Committee.’
I turned to leave, eager to escape. But Don gestured to me to wait, so I sat and watched him while he carefully read through the file. I knew he could read French. And he was a bright man, and would want to be credited with this. Please let him notice. It would be too suspicious for me to show it to him. I might have to explain everything I’d done, I’d be in pure trouble, and the Projects Committee might be less inclined to help Rachel.
Don shook his head, minutely, and his brow furrowed. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it might not be too late to help. We’ll see what the Projects Committee recommends.’
He hadn’t noticed, damn it!
‘I skimmed the file myself, Don,’ I said. ‘I was curious, you know, it disappeared right out of Mr Holman’s office when he died. So odd.’
‘Like you said, Bob must have been feeling ill before his attack and left it in the main file room.’
‘Did you notice,’ I said, as evenly as I could manage, ‘that the titles of Bloch’s French articles on hydrology are the same as the titles of Charles’s articles he delivered at a conference here in 1939? When Gerald Bloch was in France?’