His smile flattened into a vulnerable sheepish thing that made me wary.
“You’ve lost me. Can we start over?”
Mat took a sip of coffee. “A couple years ago, the Atlantic picked up some pieces I wrote on history and how we remember it. World War Two stories about all the monuments under construction at the time, both in England and here. My guess is that the look back was as commemorative as it was therapeutic . . . When people feel anxious about the future, and globally we’ve been through the wringer, they look to the past and tangible reminders that things ended well before and, therefore, can again. I—”
He pressed his lips shut as if realizing he’d gone off topic. “My current idea isn’t about the stories we want to remember. It’s a counterpoint perspective, featuring a story most—your family specifically—would rather forget. My belief is that those stories, your story, also provide a sense of hope. They assure us that when bad things happen, life continues, and that we humans are resilient and endure. Hope emerges from tragedy.”
He stalled and stared at me. Barely understanding, I stared back.
“In World War Two, no one can deny there was a real mix and mess of loyalties. It must have felt like the world was ending and life would never be the same. What’s more, the enemy was sometimes within your own home.” He dipped his hand toward me as if I could relate to that point. “In France, you’ve got Free France, Occupied France, brothers and sisters turning on each other. In England, you’ve got the Mitford sisters fawning over Hitler, Edward and Wallis Simpson, and even Edward’s agreement to the whole German plan to get him back on the throne before he got shipped off to the Bahamas . . . There are lots of stories that show family life was real and messy and carried consequences.”
“Okay?” I drew the question long.
“Your great-aunt is one of those stories. A woman, daughter of an earl, no less, who worked as a secretary for the Special Operations Executive, then crossed the great divide and ran away with her Nazi lover? You have to admit, it’s compelling.”
He took another sip, assessing me over the rim of his cup. When I said nothing, he set it down. “I didn’t do that well . . . I practiced how to reach out to you a million times this past week because, while I could hand it in as is, I know you. I didn’t want this to surprise you or hurt you if you read my name on it. I also hoped you might comment.”
“Comment how?” I sat back. “You’ve found the wrong Caroline Waite, Mat. My aunt died from polio in childhood. I’m named after her. I should know.”
Mat mirrored my defensive cross-armed slouch. His eyes drew tight as he watched me. “Is that what you’ve been told?” He reached into his messenger bag, pulled out a standard manila file, and opened it. The top page was a photocopy of a short letter in Courier type, with the salutation handwritten in a large swirling script.
He slid it across the table.
20 October 1941
My dear John and Ethel,
It is with real sorrow that I write this letter, for it brings you, I am afraid, very bad news about your daughter, Caroline Amelia Waite.
Without permission, she boarded a transport boat to Normandy on 15 October and was identified outside Paris two days later. She joined German Gruppenführer Paul Arnim, with whom we have confirmed she had a previous romantic connection.
I am beyond sorry, John and Ethel. I can only imagine how hard this news will sit with you. She did good work at the Inter Services Research Bureau and we did not anticipate this action. I want to reassure you she was not involved in anything delicate that should incite your concern for our efforts.
That said, I do not write these words without heartbreak for your loss.
I send this letter with consideration and sympathy.
Hugh
I slid it toward him. “Impossible. This is dated 1941.”
“Do you know who Hugh Dalton was?” Mat tapped on the name. “He was the Minister of Economic Warfare, tasked to form the SOE, the Special Operations Executive. They called it the Inter Services Research Bureau, the ISRB, but that was a front.”
His chair screeched as it scraped forward across the stone floor, closer to the table, closer to me. We hovered inches apart. I resisted the urge to shift back in retreat.
“It was a whole new idea, Caroline, set on espionage, sabotage, reconnaissance, and establishing guerrilla resistance groups. Rough and tough stuff, modeled on IRA training and tactics from the Irish War of Independence. It’s incredible really . . . No gentleman, and back when it started in 1940, certainly no lady, was part of it. Women weren’t actively recruited until 1942 as spies, so your aunt probably worked—”
He drew another slow breath. “The beginning,” he said more to himself than to me. He used to do that in college. He’d get carried away with a theory or an idea then need to remind himself to go back to the beginning and bring the rest of us along. Sometimes I sent us down conversational rabbit trails just for the fun of setting him off.
The memory brought a fleeting smile. Fleeting because Mat didn’t recognize it, reciprocate it, or make any gesture at all that we’d once been more than a cold call about a story.
With a frown, he continued. “The Arnim family hired me for a project. He’s the Gruppenführer mentioned in the note. His granddaughter owns all these famous dresses he bought for his wife from a salon in Paris, so after checking his German files, that’s where I headed to start building texture for their project. Two names popped up—your aunt’s and a Christophe Pelletier.
“Pelletier was the salon’s security guard and general bully, arrested and sent to Auschwitz in November 1941. He died in 1943. Your aunt, however, proved more interesting. She worked at the salon, knew Arnim there, then headed home when the Germans invaded France—almost a year after the declaration of war. Following her trail to England, I found her involved with the SOE and the Gruppenführer mentioned in the file. My guess is that she was his lover turned informant.”
Mat straightened the paper between us. “It’s beyond anything I could have imagined. Think about it—I get hired by a family in New York to trace their German lineage, and here we are with an incredible story, having coffee in Boston.”
“But it’s still wrong . . . It can’t be my aunt.”
Mat’s brown eyes lit a notch brighter. His excitement fueled the gold flecks along their edges before he caught something in mine. The light dimmed with a crinkle of concern. It was so swift, gentle, and kind, my breath caught. He was suddenly the boy I once knew.