The Room on Rue Amélie(86)
Thomas didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to hurt his cause.
“Europe isn’t an option.” Vincent marked something in Thomas’s file and then flipped it closed with finality. “We’ll start you at Ras El Ma in Morocco. It’s being used as a staging post for now. From there, I suspect, you’ll be heading to”—he checked his notes—“Oujda. Also in Morocco. Rest assured, you’ll be a very important part of the war effort. That will be all.”
He stood and waited until Thomas, the breath knocked out of him, rose and made his way to the door. The poppy fields felt farther away than ever, but he was powerless to change that. If he needed to help win the war from the edge of Africa, that’s what he would do. After all, the base in Morocco wasn’t far from the European coast. And that was something.
IT TURNED OUT THAT INSTEAD of flying combat missions, Thomas’s assignment was to deliver Spitfires to airfields in Corsica through the heat of the summer. The aircrafts would be used in the upcoming liberation of France, so Thomas was able to rationalize to himself that in a way, he was protecting Ruby after all, even if he wasn’t doing so directly. But he longed to fly missions, and as the weeks rolled into months, he began to feel as if he would be stranded in Morocco forever.
On June 6, Thomas was on another continent as more than 160,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy to fight the Nazis head-on. The men storming through northern France were a mere 170 miles from Ruby, and he wasn’t there.
Thomas took a short assignment in midsummer training other RAF pilots to evade capture if they went down behind enemy lines. The tide of the war had changed after D-Day, and it was becoming clear that the Nazis wouldn’t be able to hold on. Still, they seemed to be hunting downed pilots ruthlessly. It was more important than ever for pilots flying over the Continent to know what to do if they had to eject over land.
“There are good people on the ground there,” Thomas said to a group of fresh-faced young men in late June. “People who rise above the danger and risk their own lives to help us. It’s why we will win the war, because the things we stand for are rooted in that sort of goodness.”
“How do you maintain your faith in humanity, sir?” asked a young pilot. “How should we go about believing that we will get home safely when the odds are against us from the moment we hit the ground?”
“You must think of the people you love the most,” Thomas said, “and remember that you’re fighting the war to make the world safe for them. Whatever becomes of you—whether you live or die—you’ll know that you are doing things for the right reasons. That’s how you maintain your faith.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
June 1944
Ruby was still imprisoned at Fresnes when she heard the news of the Allied invasion of Normandy. The end of the war, it seemed, was at hand. But how long would it take for the Allies to reach Paris? Would she survive that long?
Five and a half months into her pregnancy, her belly was growing, but the guards hadn’t noticed yet. In fact, they hardly seemed to notice her at all anymore. They’d tried to force the names of her associates out of her when they first captured her, but she’d maintained a steadfast denial, repeating that they were wrong, that she’d never worked for the Resistance, that she had no idea what they were talking about. She suspected the only reason she hadn’t been tortured or executed was that she was American.
Home was now a whitewashed cell ten feet long and six feet across with an iron cot attached to the wall and an open toilet in the corner. Every day, weak coffee was handed out in the morning, and just before noon, the soup cart came by. The same bland potage was served at dinner along with a small piece of bread. The prisoners were given minuscule amounts of cheese or meat twice a week, and sometimes, there were Red Cross food parcels filled with treats like chocolate, jam, and crackers. Some prisoners received clothing or food from relatives, but of course Charlotte couldn’t come forward with a delivery without revealing herself. Ruby received packages just twice, from her “cousin” Lucien, who wrote that his wife was fine and in good spirits. She knew it was his way of telling her that Charlotte was alive and well, and that knowledge brought her far more comfort and warmth than the wool socks and bread he sent.
Twice a week, the prisoners were taken into the courtyard for twenty minutes of exercise. Communication with prisoners from other cellblocks was forbidden, but Ruby was heartened to catch glimpses of Laure twice during the first few weeks. After that, the raven-haired courier was gone, and Ruby had no way of knowing whether she’d been released, sent east, or executed. She prayed for the first but knew the last was far more likely.
Ruby found she could communicate with the prisoners in the adjoining cells by speaking close to the faucets; somehow, the pipes went through the walls and carried sound next door. She learned that the woman to her right was a twenty-three-year-old named Angelique, accused of helping to distribute a Resistance newsletter. To her left was Jacqueline, who was forty-two and suspected only of being the girlfriend of a man who worked on one of the escape lines. Both women refused to admit any wrongdoing, and they were beaten regularly for it. Ruby found strength in their steadfast resistance, and she tried to draw upon that inspiration in her darkest hours.
And there were many dark hours. She was by herself for most of the day, but she wasn’t really alone, for she had the baby in her belly. Thomas’s baby, her source of strength. And if she was grateful to the Germans for anything, it was that they never tried to starve her as a tactic to make her talk. They took away every other freedom they could, but the fact that she was still able to feed herself meant that her baby was able to grow. At night, when she couldn’t sleep, she sang softly to her belly and hoped that the baby wasn’t somehow absorbing her fears. She prayed for a better life for her child, and she begged God each night to continue to conceal the pregnancy.