The House of Dreams (19 page)

“Are we expecting anyone?” Danny said quietly.

“No. Varian won't be back from Vichy for a day or two.” Beamish jumped up. “Stay there,” he said under his breath to the men around the meeting table. “Turn out the light.” He pulled the office door to and locked it behind him. “Open up,” he said to Charlie. He sat quickly at the table beside me and picked up a pack of cards, dealing four hands. My fingers trembled as I fanned the cards he dealt me. Someone knocked again, harder this time.

“Hey, fellah, keep your hair on,” Charlie said, noisily working his way through a hoop of keys until he saw that Beamish had settled back, casually picking through his hand of cards. Charlie ran downstairs and unlocked the main door, opening it to the street. A car rumbled by in the darkness, its dim blue lights sweeping up the staircase wall. “Why, good evening Detective Dubois,” I heard Charlie say, loud and clear. “Come in out ah the cold.” Charlie walked back up to the office, followed by the policeman. I glanced at Beamish, saw him pause, ready to lay a king down on the table. In the silence, I heard the click of the card on the wood.

“Monsieur Fawcett,” Dubois said, taking his hat off. “Hermant, Gussie.” He glanced at me. I felt the hair at the nape of my neck prickle. “May I come in for a moment?” He went to the window and lifted the blind a crack, watching the street.

“How can we help you?” Beamish said.

“Is Monsieur Fry here?” Dubois glanced at the locked office.

“No,” Beamish said. “He left some time ago, for Vichy.”

“No matter. It is you I came to see, Monsieur Fawcett.” Dubois turned to Charlie. “It's time for you to leave town.”

“Me? Why?” Charlie paled.

“You're going to be picked up in the morning.”

“In the morning? But why? I haven't done a thing,” Charlie said, his voice tight with anxiety.

“How do you know?” Beamish asked Dubois.

“Because you're going to be picked up,” Dubois said, “by me.” He put his dark trilby back on his head and stepped toward the door. “Unfortunately, Monsieur Fawcett, your gallant—if bigamous—efforts to free Jewish women from the camps has been uncovered. A couple of days ago, two Mrs. Charlie Fawcetts turned up in Lisbon at the same time.” He held Charlie's gaze, his eyes crinkling. “I'll be here at six
A.M.
sharp.”

Charlie held it open for him. “Thank you,” he said, shaking his hand.

“I hope I won't be seeing you in the morning.”

“You can count on it.”

“Alors, bon soir, et bonne chance.”

We waited until we heard the street door close behind Dubois, and then we exhaled as one.

“Jeez, Charlie,” Gussie said. “You kept that one quiet. Just how many girls have you married?”

“Five or six. I kind of lost count.” He raked his hand through his hair. “Darn it, of all the rotten luck. Imagine two ah them turning up on the same day. There was never anything in it for me, you know, it just seemed like a good way to get the girls out of the camps.”

“Well, good for you, Charlie.” Beamish knocked the table as he went to unlock the office, and the playing cards scattered on the floor.

“Was that Dubois?” Danny marched over. “What did he want?”

“They're coming for Charlie,” Beamish said.

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Then you must leave tonight.” Danny clapped his arm around Charlie's shoulders. “Don't worry, my friend, we'll get you out of here.”

The meeting broke up, and one by one the men slipped away into the night. I stayed behind with Danny and Gussie to help Charlie get ready. We worked through the night. On a small table in the kitchen, Charlie tucked some documents into the hollow center of some of his sculptures, and I helped him reseal them with plaster of Paris. Next, he rolled translucent paper lined with tiny script into narrow tubes and threaded them into the third valve of his trumpet. I knew better than to ask what the documents were—I'm not sure if Charlie knew, either, to be honest. He just wanted to help Varian get information to the United States about some of the clients in greatest danger.

“What if they ask you to play something?” I said.

“It's okay,” Charlie said. “I know a few tunes where I only need a couple ah valves.” The smile on his face faltered as he looked at the maps on the table. “It sure looks easy, doesn't it, when you just trace a line on a map via Gibraltar or Casablanca. Freedom seems so close.” He cleared his throat. “Danny?”

“Hm?”

“It's been crazy, man, hasn't it.…”

Danny punched him on the arm. “This isn't good-bye, Charlie.”

They glanced up as Beamish tapped out the code on the front door. Gussie ran down and let him in. “Right,” Beamish said. “It's all arranged. You're going out through Spain,” he said to Charlie, pulling off his woolen hat. “We're going to get you out through the station, and then in Madrid you look for the red-haired porter.”

“He's a good chap,” Danny said. “He's helped a lot of our clients and he'll get you to the safe house until your train for Lisbon is ready.”

“But what about the border, what if I'm stopped?”

Beamish tossed a dozen packs of Gauloises Bleues and Gitanes Grises and Vertes down on the table. “These are for the guards. Just keep your head and you'll be fine. You're simply an art student, heading south. You'll have to get rid of that,” Beamish said, pointing at Charlie's ambulance uniform. “Are you packed?” Charlie nodded. Beamish checked that the top of the suitcase was secure. “Good. The border guards are idiots. They never think to check for a false top to a suitcase, they're only ever interested in false bottoms. Did you manage to get everything in the sculptures? We may as well get as much information out with Charlie as we can.”

I tapped the base of one. “Just about dry. If they look too closely, they'll guess.”

“I know!” Charlie said, pulling a sketchbook out of his case. He dragged over a stool and quickly sketched out a voluptuous woman straight out of a pinup. “Say, Lambert, give me a hand here.” He tore off a couple of sheets and handed them over to me. As Danny and Beamish wrapped the sculptures in Charlie's clothes and tucked them in the case, I sketched a leggy art deco beauty, her body entirely Vita's, her face … I hesitated. I had drawn Vita so many times, but now her image was fading for me. The face was Annie's. “There we go,” I said, tossing the nude casually on top.

Charlie whistled in appreciation, slotting his own sketches underneath. “Hopefully, if they stop me, they'll take one look at these and won't bother searching the rest of the case.”

“You know, it might just work,” Danny said, tilting his head to look at the drawings. Charlie clicked the case shut and picked up his trumpet.

Beamish looked at his watch. “Come on. We need to go.”

Gussie opened the street door and shook hands with Charlie. “Good luck,” he said.

“You too, kid,” Charlie said.

Danny embraced him. “Stay safe, you hear?”

“Will you say good-bye to Varian and the others for me?”

“Sure.”

Charlie shook my hand. “Like Varian always says, I'll see you soon, in New York.”

 

TWENTY-FIVE

M
ARSEILLE

1940

G
ABRIEL

I never knew for years what happened to Charlie. He made it through the border safely enough, thanks to his cigarettes and our saucy drawings, but it turns out he was arrested in Spain. They brought him back to France to be interrogated by the Gestapo, but the guards can't have been up to much. They left him unattended in the railway waiting room for a moment, and Charlie calmly picked up his trumpet and his little suitcase with all the hidden information and jumped onto a train that was heading down to Madrid. He was one of the golden ones, old Charlie—slipped right through the fingers of death time and time again.

Like I said before, people disappeared all the time in Marseille. It was an easy place to get lost in. The winter days rolled into one another, and I could have been there two days or two months, it felt, as I wandered the streets and waited to see Annie again. I'd taken to hanging around Air-Bel every day in the hope of seeing her, but it had been a week since the Sunday we first met, and I longed to be with her, counting the hours until our arranged meeting after her ballet class.

I was early. Of course I was, I was longing to see her. As the Saturday crowds milled around the pavements, I walked the streets, burning off some of my nervous energy. I happened to see Annie, across the road, jumping down at the tram stop on La Canebière. I raised my hand, about to call to her, but I felt foolish suddenly. I didn't want to come across as too keen. But the sight of her—I couldn't wait another hour to be with her, so I followed her to her ballet lesson like a stray puppy; she was talking and giggling with her friends, completely oblivious. The other girls were like children to me, mousy and unformed, but Annie—she was radiant, the winter sun on her blond ponytail, the sure carriage of her head. They ran up the steps to a hall near La Vieille Charité, and I snuck around the side of the building into the alley. My heart was beating fast as I climbed the old metal fire escape, the treads creaking under my boots. I could hear the piano player warming up in the hall, scales and arpeggios drifting up from an old upright piano. At the top of the fire escape, I settled down on the low wall and leaned across, peering through the clear glass corner of one of the large skylights. The girls must have still been changing, because all I could see was the gray head of the piano player, bent over the keys as his hands swept up and down. Up there, I could see across the terra-cotta tile roofs to the old baroque chapel. The delicate dome and the stonework were falling apart in those days, before Le Corbusier took an interest in the place after the war. The music stopped, and I saw the class lining up at the barre, and the gilded crown of Annie's head. Her arms unfurled like the black stamens of a flower. The girls all wore black leotards, black tights, and shoes. None were as lovely as she. I laid my cheek against the cool glass and watched her for an hour, imagining how it would feel to place my hands around that waist, so slender I was sure my fingers would touch. I think I knew I was in love with her then, as I watched, and I grew self-conscious. I slipped away and walked for a while to give her time to reach the café.

I strolled up, ten minutes late. The red awning flapped and snapped in the breeze. She was sitting outside on a bentwood café chair, her ankles crossed elegantly in front of her. She has beautiful feet still—gorgeous toes, a ballet dancer's arch, slender ankles. She was wearing a gray dress with a full skirt and a white collar. She looked a little like a novice nun, with her hair piled up on her head, but there was something in her gaze as she looked at me that sent my guts falling away like the drop of a roller coaster. Then she smiled. That little gap between her front teeth.

“Mr. Lambert,” Annie said. I took her hand and pressed her fingers to my lips, our gazes meeting. From the flush in her cheeks, she felt it, too, the energy flowing between us the way the sky becomes alive before a storm. She introduced me to her friends, but I barely registered them. I felt myself expand, looking at Annie, the world shrink around us to a fine point, to her. I was polite enough, made small talk with her friends—even then I was smart enough to realize their approval would count. I ordered a coffee and cognac, and cordials for them. Annie asked for a tisane of chamomile. Once the waiter had served our table and the other girls were chatting happily over their drinks, Annie cradled the steaming white cup in her hands and blew gently, raising her gaze to mine.

“So,” I said, leaning toward her, the old wicker chair creaking beneath me. The table was narrow. I could feel my leg brush lightly against hers, and our elbows were just a hand span apart.

“So,” she said, her eyes creasing with amusement. “What did you think of our ballet class?”

“You saw me?”

“Of course.” She glanced down the table, making sure her friends weren't listening, a smile playing on her lips. “I saw you crossing the road just after the tram stopped.”

“Why didn't you say something?”

“I wanted to see what you would do.” She leaned closer. “I don't think you would make a good spy, you stand out in a crowd, Mr. Lambert—”

“Gabriel.” I was so close to her, I could smell the sweet herb scent of her tea. The cognac warmed my stomach. I could feel a golden heat thawing the coldness from my torso, my limbs, my fingertips. Or was it Annie made me feel like that?

“I felt you, watching from the skylight like a naughty black cat.”

“But you didn't look up once.”

Annie shrugged. “Didn't want to spoil your fun.”

I pressed my mouth to my knuckles to stop myself laughing in my embarrassment. “I'm sorry. I couldn't resist. You looked so beautiful.” She lowered her eyes. “Are you angry with me?”

“No, I'm touched you wanted to see me again so badly.” She blinked. “I did, too.”

“I've thought of little else all week,” I murmured. The space between us seemed to contract. I felt light-headed with longing for her. A raucous shriek from one of the other girls broke the moment. A couple of boys they knew dragged over a table to join them. Annie introduced me to them, and we waited for the table to settle down. She looked from the boys to me.

“How old are you?” she said quietly, leaning toward me again.

“How old do you think I am?”

She cupped her chin on her hand and studied my face. I wondered what she saw. The flecks of gray at my temples, the dark olive skin?

“Too old,” she said, a smile playing on her lips.

I folded my arms and leaned in to her. “Too old for what?”