Chapter Nine
Juliette loved putting on events at the Forgotten Bookshop.
It was wonderful to see the store full of people and she had the sense that Jacques, the original owner, would have approved.
He still seemed very much in evidence there: his framed photograph hung by the cash register and she would tell anyone who showed the slightest interest about the wartime hero who had saved so many people’s lives by hiding them in a cell behind the bookshelves.
This room had been recreated in a museum devoted to the French Resistance, along with the crates of banned books by Jewish authors that Jacques had kept hidden, and the notebooks describing the fugitives he’d sheltered.
All the same, Juliette would sometimes release the hidden catch behind one of the bookshelves and swing a whole section aside so she could step through and simply stand in that dark, musty space, imagining how it would have felt to spend days or weeks there, and the courage Jacques Duval must have needed to help strangers, knowing his life was at stake.
Would she have done the same in his shoes? It was a hard question to answer.
‘So romantic, the way your parents fell in love without being able to talk to each other,’ Juliette told her, as they were waiting for the guests to arrive and the event to begin. ‘How they were able to communicate without words.’
‘I know,’ Molly replied. ‘I’m so glad they agreed to tell me everything while there was still time. It’s a shame you weren’t able to ask your grandmother about her experiences.’
‘I don’t think she’d have shared them,’ Juliette said. ‘We didn’t even know she’d been married to Jacques Duval before she came to America.’
‘You’re kidding! She kept it a secret?’ Molly raised her eyebrows. ‘I wonder why? Well, you have a ready-made story right there.’
And again, Juliette felt ashamed of knowing so little about her family history.
She’d been so intent on uncovering the history of her bookshop that she’d neglected her very own grandmother.
‘We think Mémé spent most of the war in Provence,’ she went on.
‘I don’t know exactly where, though, or what she did there. ’
‘Then she might have been involved in the Resistance as well,’ Molly told her. ‘The movement was strong in the south, especially once the compulsory work order was introduced. Do you know about that?’
‘Remind me,’ Juliette said, as though she’d just forgotten.
‘So the Germans were running short of labour with all their men away fighting, and they ordered hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen – some women, too – off to Germany to work in factories and farms. The Vichy regime tried to enforce the deportation, but lots of young men refused to go and hid out in the hills with the Maquis, the Resistance fighters. You should really go to Provence. It’s one of the most beautiful places on God’s earth, and the history is fascinating. ’
‘Well, actually—’ Juliette began, but now the bell over the door was tinkling and Molly was hurrying forward with her arms outstretched to greet the first arrivals. This was her evening, her celebration, and Juliette hadn’t the right to claim attention with her own family’s stories.
What she had been about to say was that a visit to Provence was already in her diary: the next weekend, she was going there with Sophie to meet her parents and explore the local area, including the church where the wedding ceremony was to take place.
Ben had gone back to the States, so it was a girls’ only trip; Nico had been invited but he had to work – or so he said.
‘Anyway, Ben is your son,’ he told Juliette. ‘This is your show. I don’t want to intrude.’
Nothing she could say would change his mind. ‘You are coming to the wedding, though, aren’t you?’ she asked, suddenly anxious.
‘Of course.’ He kissed the top of her head. ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world. And we can go back to Provence sometime, just the two of us.’
It was perfectly natural he should feel a little awkward about a family occasion, she told herself, although she did wonder how long it would take her to trust Nico completely – or any man, come to that.
Finding out about her husband’s affair had broken something in her that would take a long time to heal.
The conversation with Molly reminded Juliette that she still hadn’t retrieved her mother’s photograph albums from Nico’s storage unit.
The day after Molly’s launch party – which had been a huge success, with emotional speeches in French and English from members of both families and tears all round – they went to the lockup to fetch them.
‘Is there anything else you’d like to take?
’ Nico asked, eyeing the stack of boxes, but Juliette wasn’t remotely tempted.
Even the things she’d chosen to keep belonged to another life, and she didn’t need them now.
She had all she wanted: a few favourite books, these photograph albums, and the painting of the Place Dorée that had hung in her grandmother’s bedroom and started this whole incredible journey.
It was liberating to feel so unencumbered.
‘One day soon I’ll throw the rest of it away,’ she promised, though Nico told her there was no hurry.
They looked through the albums after supper that evening, talking late into the night about their childhoods and the people and places that had influenced them.
They had several things in common, both having one sibling, a brother, living in the States, and their parents having divorced when they were young.
Nico’s mother had died not long afterwards so he and his brother had been brought up by their grandparents, and Juliette had lost her father, an alcoholic, when she was a teenager.
‘I owe Zizi everything,’ Nico said. ‘I’d have run wild without her. And my grandfather, too – he was a wonderful man.’
‘Tell me about him.’ Juliette poured them each another glass of wine. Henri Bertillon had been Jacques Duval’s closest friend, and she was interested in him for a number of reasons.
‘He could make anything with his hands,’ Nico said.
‘Well, you’ve seen the secret doorway behind the bookshelves: that was his work.
He loved fishing and being outdoors although he lived in Paris most of his life.
Most of the people he fought with at the start of the war were taken prisoner when France was defeated by Germany, but he escaped and made his way back to Paris from Alsace on foot.
Then a couple of years later, he left Paris to join up with the Maquis in the south. ’
‘When the compulsory work order came in?’ Juliette asked. ‘I was hearing about that yesterday.’
‘That’s right. He told me once that he’d tried to persuade Jacques to go with him, but Jacques wouldn’t leave the city. Said he had important work to do.’
‘Hiding those refugees, I suppose,’ Juliette said.
Jacques and Mathilde came alive again as candlelight danced on the walls of their salon, in which Juliette sat with the man she loved. How lucky she and Nico were to have found each other at this stage in their lives, and to be planning a future together!
She turned the next leaf of the album, and there it was: the trip to Provence in June 1978, a double-page spread of small, vivid photographs neatly arranged and captioned in her mother’s swirly handwriting.
The skies were intensely blue and the children’s blond hair shone like silver in the sun as they sat on a sandy beach.
She would have been five and Andrew seven.
She took one of the photos out of the square corner mounts to look at it more closely, her heart swelling at the smiling, innocent face of that little girl.
She’d been so open then, so trusting and hopeful, despite her parents’ fights and her father’s terrifying unpredictability.
It’s going to be all right, she wanted to tell her younger self. There will be some hard times but you’ll come through.
Nico looked over her shoulder. ‘You were adorable.’
‘Kids are so vulnerable,’ she said. ‘It’s enough to break your heart.’
Jacques had saved several Jewish children from deportation to the prison camps and certain death; he’d rescued three and handed them over to Zizi’s family just before he was arrested.
Juliette sighed, replacing the photograph – and there, right below it, she found the very picture she’d been looking for.
She and Andrew were holding hands in a vineyard, squinting into the sun.
Just as she remembered, serried rows of vines stretched away up the hillside behind them and she could almost feel the heat radiating from a cloudless sky.
The caption underneath was no help whatsoever: In the vineyard!
Suzanne had written jauntily. ‘Thanks, Mom,’ Juliette muttered to herself.
The picture beside it was equally tantalising.
Her mother and Mémé were standing in the same vineyard beside two women, one older and the other maybe in her thirties, like Suzanne.
This photo had no caption at all. It was unremarkable at first sight but, when she looked closer, Juliette was intrigued by the expression on the women’s faces.
Suzanne was the only one smiling, though her grin seemed a little forced; Mémé looked glum and the older woman was actually scowling, while her daughter (presumably) glanced anxiously towards her.
Nobody seemed to be having a great time.
A picture on the facing page taken from the other direction, looking down the hillside, showed the turreted walls and slate roof of a creamy stone building below, helpfully captioned, The chateau!
In another shot, the two Frenchwomen were shown standing by the massive front door at the top of a flight of steps, the younger smiling shyly but her mother still hatchet-faced, and there were several pictures of the chateau’s stunning gardens.
‘What a beautiful place,’ Juliette said, showing Nico the photos. ‘I don’t suppose you recognise it?’