“You didn’t read the paper this morning?” Louise asked her. It was the first thing she did every day, and both women were current on world events and well informed. They read all the latest books, and shared them. Daphne always said her mother put her to shame, since as a busy physician she had no time to read novels, only medical journals. Gaëlle was a voracious reader, as was Louise.
“I hate reading the paper over breakfast,” Gaëlle commented. “It depresses me, all the tragedies around the world, the crimes against humanity and natural disasters. I didn’t bother today.”
“You should have,” Louise said cryptically, visibly pleased for her friend.
“Did the president have another affair? Did I miss the latest scandal?” Gaëlle asked her, looking amused.
“No, my dear,” Louise said fondly. “Then I am particularly pleased to be the first to congratulate you, as Madame Chevalière.” Gaëlle stared at her for a minute expressionlessly, unable to believe it.
“You’re not serious. You can’t be. Poor Delphine has been hounding the chancellery for years, but I never thought it would be possible.” Louise knew that Gaëlle had worked for the Resistance in her teens and risked her own life heroically during the war. And then had been falsely accused of collaborating with the Germans. It was a shadow that had followed her all her life, which her granddaughter had fought valiantly to dispel and clear her name. And finally she had.
“Well, apparently you’ve been cleared. Whatever Delphine said to convince them worked. You’re getting the honor and recognition you deserve.” Louise was visibly proud of her, as she knew Delphine would be. She must be over the moon.
“How do you know that what they said isn’t true?” Gaëlle asked her sadly, remembering back so many years. “Maybe I’ve been lying to you.”
“I’ve never doubted what you told me. I know you. It’s justice, Gaëlle. For everything you did.”
Gaëlle sat silently, staring into the fire for a quiet moment, and then looked at her friend. “It was all so long ago. What does it matter now? I’ve always known the truth. And there were so many lives I couldn’t save, or change….” Like Rebekah’s, she thought to herself. It had all started with Rebekah, the friend she’d lost when they were both seventeen. She still had a wisp of her hair ribbon in a little leather box in her desk, and she looked at it from time to time….Rebekah…her beloved friend.
“I should call Delphine to thank her,” Gaëlle said in a voice filled with memories. “She worked so hard on this.” Gaëlle was overwhelmed by the news, and Louise could see it, as she gently reached out and patted her hand.
“You deserve it, Gaëlle,” Louise repeated reassuringly. “You have nothing to feel guilty about. You did everything you could, for all of them.”
Gaëlle nodded, lost in thought. She only wished that that were true.
Chapter 2
In December 1940, six months after the Germans occupied France, Gaëlle de Barbet had turned sixteen a few weeks before. She lived with her parents in the family château at Valencin, in the countryside outside Lyon. Her brother Thomas was studying at the École Polytechnique in Paris, and was two years older than she.
Life had been difficult since the war had begun fifteen months before, food was growing scarce, and the Occupation had been stressful for everyone. Her brother reported that there were German soldiers and officers all over Paris, and they were enforcing strict rules for the Parisians, and curfews for everyone at eight P.M. There were checkpoints to verify people’s ID papers, everyone over the age of sixteen had to carry a national ID card, and two months earlier, in October, an edict called the “Statut des Juifs” had made clear the occupying army’s position about Jews. Many or even most Jewish French citizens had lost their jobs, as they were excluded from the army and government positions. Jewish journalists had been fired, and were banned from liberal professions. Many Jewish students had been expelled from the universities, and large numbers of Jews had been arrested, without reason, as undesirables. Detention camps had sprung up in the countryside, where Jewish families were being held, and their businesses and homes were seized by the Germans. The atmosphere was one of fear and unrest in the cities, though less so near Lyon, where the persecution of Jews was less acute than what Gaëlle’s brother reported in Paris. And their father had sternly told Gaëlle not to linger on her way to school, and not to talk to the soldiers, although her ID papers identified her as a Catholic. They were aristocrats who had lived in the region for three hundred years, and the occupying army had no quarrel with them. And her father continued to oversee their estate and tenant farms without problem. The wealthier Jews in Lyon had not been touched so far. But her father had told Gaëlle that the Jews would be wise to move before trouble started in the region. It all seemed unreal and hard to believe. But nothing unpleasant had happened to the Jewish families they were acquainted with.
Gaëlle’s closest friend was Rebekah Feldmann, whose father was the richest and most respected local banker. Their family had come from Germany originally, but the Feldmanns had been in Lyon for three generations, and had nothing to fear, or so they thought. Gaëlle had reported to Rebekah what her father had said, and Rebekah told Gaëlle her parents had discussed it too, but her father wasn’t worried. In fact, several of the German officers deposited their money in her father’s bank. But they’d all heard rumors of poorer Jewish families being forced from their homes in other towns, and of the detention camps in the area. Neither of the girls had heard of anyone they knew who’d been sent there, and for the moment it was all whispers and gossip.