Page 48 of Daughters of Paris

He bowed his head. He looked older. Smaller.

‘The shop and the small flat above it are mine. If you wish to keep the bookshop open, do so with my blessing. If you wish to sell what you can then close it, do that.’

‘I will keep it going as long as I can, but you can’t give it to me. Not to keep,’ Fleur protested.

He gave her a gentle smile. ‘When – if – the war comes to an end and France is victorious, I hope I may return to Paris. Then, if you wish, we can discuss who owns it.’

Fleur’s eyes filled with tears. What if Hitler continued his conquests and the war never turned in France’s favour? What if Germany won decisively? The rationing and hunger, the ever-present anxiety and checkpoints might be here to stay. Impulsively, she hugged Monsieur Ramper tightly.

‘Thank you.’

‘You have been a treasure to me. There is one other thing I ask of you. In the room upstairs you will find a shelf with some books that would not survive Nazi purges. If you can save one or two, my heart will be glad.’

‘Of course. I promise I will take care of your shop and everything in it.’

Monsieur Ramper left that afternoon, strolling out of the shop as if he was only going to a café. He carried the shabby briefcase he often did. His suitcase, he told Fleur, was at the house of a friend in the twelfth arrondissement, ready for him to collect on the first leg of his journey.

‘There are good people who help those of us who need to vanish,’ he told Fleur. ‘A line of men and women stretching the length and breadth of the country, I am led to believe.’

Fleur tried to picture what he described. Threads of bravery and trust spreading like spider webs across the country. Could such a thing really exist? She hoped so with all of her soul.

‘You will come back one day,’ she assured him as she gave him one last embrace.

‘I hope so,’ was all he said.

As she walked home that night her heart was leaden. The bookshop wasn’t the only premises to have been vandalised. Shops had windows smashed. Others were daubed with obscenities and, more ominously, yellow stars and the word ‘juif’ scrawled brutally over glass and brick. Paris was becoming ugly.

She forced herself to walk with her head up, swinging her large bag and humming instead of scurrying with her head down or looking behind her. It wouldn’t do to seem shifty when she carried three slim volumes of poetry by Jewish authors in her bag. Eyes were everywhere and paranoia was entirely justified. The sooner she was home and the books were safely stowed in the Secret Garden, the easier she would be able to breathe.

The door to the Secret Garden looked even more dilapidated and unused, and it was with some difficulty that Fleur pulled it open. Her eyes fell on the letters – SS – that she and Colette had carved in such innocence. It made her feel slightly sick to see them. They had stood for Secret Sisters, but now the initials took on a much more sinister meaning. How could she and Colette, two girls of eleven, imagine the horror that those two initials would wreak on the population of Europe? As she crawled inside the hiding space, she promised herself that soon she would bring a knife and obliterate the letters from existence. The rugs they had once lain on had rotted, but the glass cold frame was still in a good condition. She put the books inside and covered them with waxed paper, then put three shallow pots of soil on top. The books could lie in safety, possibly for ever.

The following morning she and Colette went shopping. They wore sturdy shoes and nibbled on yesterday’s crusts as they walked. Queuing for hours was no fun on empty stomachs.

‘It’s a shame Monsieur Ramper did not sell you a food shop,’ Colette mused as they edged slowly closer to the front of the line that snaked outside theÉpicerie Babineau.

Monsieur Nadon had been full of congratulations at learning Fleur’s good fortune and had poured out small measures of brandy for everyone to toast the new businesswoman.

‘You deserve it. You work hard and that has been rewarded,’ he had said.

Was Colette jealous of Fleur’s luck or Louis’ praise?

‘I’d have to sell the food if he had. It isn’t like books where I can read them and they still exist.’

‘That’s true. Food that never ran out no matter how much we ate would be incredible,’ Colette said.

There was trouble inside theépicerie. A stout matron with hair piled high began trying to elbow a young mother from the front of the queue. Three young children looked on, crying, while other shoppers stood uncertainly by.

‘It wasn’t yours,’ the mother was screaming. ‘I was here first.’

‘Leaving a child to queue does not count,’ the stout woman shouted back. ‘Take your grimy brats to the back of the line.’

The mother bared her teeth. ‘You don’t need it. You’re fat enough, you old sow!’

‘Ladies, please!’ The shopkeeper, Madame Babineau, stood ineffectually behind the counter waving her hands, one of which held a palm-sized piece of sausage.

Fleur leaned back wearily against the wall at the end of the queue. This sort of thing was happening more and more as food was becoming scarcer. This would add an unwelcome delay to the day.

‘Neither of them should have it,’ muttered an old woman halfway along. ‘Give it to me instead.’

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