The Librarian Spy(44)
“I’m thinking of teaching her how to use the Minerva.” Marcel indicated to the smaller press.
“Are you?” Elaine’s pulse spiked at the possibility of moving beyond the small duplicating machine and her clerical duties. Printing wasn’t done by women. But then, there were few men now to choose from. Why not a woman?
“I’ll need to go to Grenoble soon.” Marcel removed a stack of papers from the press and relocated them to the table where several others lay. They not only printed Combat, which was written by their team, but also Défence de la France for the southern region.
“Grenoble?” Nicole interjected. “Why, I’ve just come from there and have your stamps.”
What she held in the wicker’s false bottom was a precious treasure. The stamps were priceless in a time when rubber was so difficult to obtain and so integral. As each new stamp was introduced for travel passes and identity papers and everything in between, an inside contact who worked as a secretary in Lyon’s town hall provided them with information to replicate the originals.
“You can bring them over there.” Elaine pointed to the room where Jean had gone and smiled to herself as Nicole click-clacked her way toward him.
Elaine turned her attention to Josette. “Are you doing well?”
The printing press banged, and Josette cringed. “Yes.” The smile she plastered on her dry lips was anything other than genuine. “Of course I am.”
Despite her obvious attempt to nudge away Elaine’s concern, Josette’s nerves were raw, her fear so visceral Elaine caught its metallic odor over the pulpy, velvety aromas of ink and paper.
“Denise has gone to join the Maquis, so it’s just Nicole and I now.” Josette brought her hand to her mouth and nipped at the cropped nail bed with her front teeth, the action distracted and without thought.
Her behavior was distressing.
Elaine had never been much of a maternal woman, but found herself wanting to draw Josette into her arms and comfort her as one did a frightened child.
“And you are certain you are well?” Elaine pressed.
Josette chewed at the mutilated nail, saying nothing for the moment stretching between them. Elaine almost thought the other woman might offer a real answer in the silence, but then Josette nodded, her eyes squinting in a mock smile. “I’m fine.”
She wasn’t fine. Alarmingly so.
Nicole sauntered over to them, her lightened basket swinging in her hand. Elaine embraced her and whispered discreetly into her friend’s ear. “Will Josette be all right?”
“I’ll be sure of it.” Nicole straightened with a bright smile, and the two were off to resume their work on messages for deliveries.
“What do you think of Josette?” Marcel asked after the women departed.
Knowing her reply might result in Josette being pulled from her duties, Elaine remained quiet. But no matter how hard she tried, she could not allow herself to be reassured by Nicole’s glib response.
Marcel didn’t press her, but narrowed his eyes slightly in thought, then shook away whatever was in his thoughts and waved for her to follow him. “Come, let me show you how to operate the printing press.”
ELEVEN
Ava
Ava was not the only one thrilled with the discovery of the clandestine French newspaper. Mr. Sims’s glower had lightened to a frown, and he informed her a month later that DC wanted more. She and Mike were to share the duty of photographing all the periodicals and publications, and she was to put extra effort into obtaining as many underground newspapers as was possible.
In the months that followed, she accompanied James to Estoril on enough occasions that she eventually acquired her own dinner party dresses and had Peggy teach her a few new hairstyles. Lamant met Ava often, providing her not only with French clandestine papers, but occasionally ones from Holland and Poland as well.
“There is an art to these,” he explained after handing her a small stack to tuck into her handbag at a soiree at the Estoril bar one night. “It is resistance among oppression, words rivaling heavy artillery, seemingly insignificant and yet still efficacious. This is strength in its rawest form. It is beautiful.”
Lamant was a rare soul who saw some element of magnificence in most things. She smiled at his assessment. “That’s poetic.”
“You must look beyond the page.” He lifted his drink but paused before taking a sip. A sliver of lemon bobbed in the clear liquid. “To the men and women who worked so seamlessly together. Not only the author who wrote it, but the typographer who meticulously assembled it, to the person manning the complexities of the printing machines, to the courier who delivered it and the citizen who smuggled it from French soil to end up here in Portugal.”
This was one of the things she enjoyed about the rare moments she spent with Lamant. Never had she considered more than the authors or the piece itself. But he was correct in his appraisal, at the string of involvement to bring these clandestine papers to her hand.
“Even you.” Lamant gestured to her with his glass, his cheeks slightly reddened from spending too much time by the ocean. “Those papers would die here in Lisbon. They would become rubbish over time, tossed out with the rest of the trash. History discarded. But you are sending them on to America. You are preserving these moments in time so all will look back on them later.”