The Nightingale(78)

Frowning, she crossed the street, picking her way through the slow-moving traffic. On the other side, she moved briskly past the clot of Germans drinking wine in the bistro toward an apartment building on the next corner.

There, hidden in the dense shrubbery beside an ornate set of glossy black doors, she saw a man crouched down behind a tree in a huge copper urn.

She opened the gate and stepped into the yard. She heard the man scramble backward, his boots crunching on the stones beneath him.

Then he stilled.

Isabelle could hear the Germans laughing at the café down the street, yelling out Sikt! s’il vous pla?t to the poor, overworked waitress.

It was the supper hour. The one hour of the day when all the enemy cared about was entertainment and stuffing their stomachs with food and wine that belonged to the French. She crept over to the potted lemon tree.

The man was squatted down, trying to make himself as small as possible. Dirt smeared his face and one eye was swollen shut, but there was no mistaking him for a Frenchman: he was wearing a British flight suit.

“Mon Dieu,” she muttered. “Anglais?”

He said nothing.

“RAF?” she asked in English.

His eyes widened. She could see him trying to decide whether to trust her. Very slowly, he nodded.

“How long have you been hiding here?”

After a long moment, he said, “All day.”

“You’ll get caught,” she said. “Sooner or later.” Isabelle knew she needed to question him further, but there wasn’t time. Every second she stood here with him, the danger to both of them increased. It was amazing that the Brit hadn’t been caught already.

She needed either to help him or to walk away before attention was drawn. Certainly walking away was the smart move. “Fifty-seven Avenue de La Bourdonnais,” she said quietly, in English. “That’s where I am going. In one hour, I will go out for a cigarette. You come to the door then. If you arrive without being seen, I will help you. You understand me?”

“How do I know I can trust you?”

She laughed at that. “This is a foolish thing I am doing. And I promised not to be so impetuous. Ah well.” She pivoted on her heel and left the garden area, clanging the gate shut behind her. She hurried down the street. All the way home, her heart was pounding and she second-guessed her decision. But there was nothing to do about it now. She didn’t look back, not even at her apartment building. There, she stopped and faced the big brass knob in the center of the oak door. She felt dizzy and headachy, she was so scared.

She fumbled with the key in the lock and twisted the knob and surged into the dark, shadowy interior. Inside, the narrow lobby was crowded with bicycles and handcarts. She made her way to the base of the winding stairway and sat on the bottom step, waiting.

She looked at her wristwatch a thousand times, and each time she told herself not to do this, but at the appointed time, she went back outside. Night had fallen. With the blackout shades and unlit streetlamps, the street was as dark as a cave. Cars rumbled past, unseen without their headlamps on; heard and smelled but invisible unless an errant bit of moonlight caught them. She lit her brown cigarette, took a deep drag, and exhaled slowly, trying to calm herself.

“I’m here, miss.”

Isabelle stumbled backward and opened the door. “Stay behind me. Eyes down. Not too close.”

She led him through the lobby, both of them banging into bicycles, clanging them, and rattling wooden carts. She had never run up the five flights of stairs faster. She pulled him into her apartment and slammed the door shut behind him.

“Take off your clothes,” she said.

“Pardon me?”

She flicked on the light switch.

He towered over her; she saw that now. He was broad-shouldered and skinny at the same time, narrow-faced, with a nose that looked like it had been broken a time or two. His hair was so short it looked like fuzz. “Your flight suit. Take it off. Quickly.”

What had she been thinking to do this? Her father would come home and find the airman and then turn them both in to the Germans.

Where would she hide his flight suit? And those boots were a dead giveaway.

He bent forward and stepped out of his flight suit.

She had never seen a grown man in his undershorts and T-shirt before. She felt her face flush.

“No need to blush, miss,” he said, grinning as if this were ordinary.

She yanked his suit into her arms and held out her hand for his identification tags. He handed them over; two small discs worn around his neck. Both contained the same information. Lieutenant Torrance MacLeish. His blood group and religion and number.