I remember this.” Eve pointed to the stone-arched bridge spanning the slow blue river that wound through Limoges. A Roman bridge, I thought, crumbling and romantic looking, the little French cars hooting and dashing across it looking incongruously modern. “It was twilight, not afternoon,” Eve went on. “René Bordelon stopped there, right by the river, and said he’d always thought outside seating an abomination for any restaurant that was not a common café, but if he could have that view, he might consider it.”
She turned away, hands thrust into the pockets of her fraying sweater, and looked along the grassy slope, the trees, the buildings stretching away along the bank. “The son of a bitch got his wish. He opened his second restaurant down the bank, with this view.”
She went striding off down the cobbled street. I looked at Finn, and we both shrugged in unison, wandering after her. Eve had awakened early, and we’d made good time from Paris to Limoges. Eve had been talkative again, so each mile brought more war stories, though some of them I had trouble believing (a failed attack on the kaiser?). She’d directed us to a hotel near Limoges’s medieval cathedral, sending Finn to park the Lagonda while she went in and interrogated the concierge in rapid French, waving the scribbled address I’d given her—the address of the second Le Lethe, where Rose had worked. As soon as Finn came back, Eve was setting out into the city on foot, leading us down twisting cobbled streets. Limoges was a pretty place: weeping willows drooping toward the river’s surface, Gothic church spires piercing the skyline, potted geraniums hanging from balconies—and it didn’t have the half-wrecked look of northern France, which had been more thoroughly overrun by Nazis.
“More peaceful here than in Paris,” Finn said, echoing my thoughts. He strode along in his shirtsleeves, drawing a few disapproving looks from Frenchmen in their crisp summer suits, but the women didn’t seem to mind his rumpled appearance if the glances were anything to go by. Finn looked back at all those passing faces—the bustling young mothers with their straw hats, the men frowning over their newspapers at café tables. “Pink cheeks,” he noted. “Not so pinched and bleak as the people we saw up north.”
“This was the Free Zone,” I said, finally able to keep up with Finn’s long stride now that I had flat sandals and cropped trousers rather than tottering heels. “The Vichy crew wasn’t anything to write home about, but the people here still had it better than they did up north.”
“Heh,” Eve snorted from ahead of us. “Don’t be so sure. They had the Milice to deal with, and the Milice were nasty buggers.”
“Milice?” Finn asked.
“French militia recruited to hunt their own for the Germans. I always hated those b-bastards.”
“But the Milice weren’t around during your war, Eve.” I tilted my head, curious. “You weren’t part of the last war.”
“Says you, Yank.”
“Wait, you did work in the second war, too? What did you—”
“Not relevant.” Eve stopped suddenly, cocking her head as the sound of bells drifted down through the lazy summer air. “Those bells. I remember those b-bells.” She resumed her straight-backed stride down the riverbank and I followed, shaking my head.
“When were you last here in Limoges, Gardiner?” Finn asked.
“August 1915,” Eve said, not looking back. “René Bordelon brought me for a weekend.”
Just a handful of words, but the suspicion I’d been nursing slid to certainty—a suspicion about the elegant owner of Le Lethe. I’d known from the sheer volume of loathing in Eve’s voice that he was something special to her; you don’t hate someone that much without a very personal involvement. Now I knew: he’d been her lover. Eve had climbed into bed with the enemy to spy on him.
I looked at her, her proud ravaged face and soldierly stride down the cobbled street. She hadn’t been much older than me at the time. Could you climb into bed with a Hun just to spy on him, Charlie? Pretend I liked him, smile at his jokes, let him unbutton my blouse, all so I could rifle his desk and his conversation for useful information? Knowing I could get shot any time I was caught?
I looked at Eve, and I admired her so much. I didn’t just want her to think well of me; I wanted to be more like her myself. I wanted to introduce Rose to her: “Meet the crazy cow who helped me find you when everyone else gave up.” I could imagine Eve giving Rose that down-the-nose gaze, and Rose giving it right back. I could imagine the three of us tossing back drinks and talking over each other, the strangest trio of women ever to become friends.
I wondered if Eve had ever had a friend who meant to her what Rose meant to me. In all her war stories, the only woman she ever mentioned was Violette, who in Roubaix had spat in Eve’s face.
“That’s a serious face you’ve got all of a sudden,” Finn said, looking down at me.
“Just musing.” I couldn’t manage to be sad. The sun was warm on my head, and my arm brushed Finn’s every other stride or two, which filled me with a ridiculous shiver of sensation. “Every step is another step closer to Rose.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “What makes you so certain she’s waiting to be found?”
“I don’t know.” I tried to put it into words. “The hope keeps getting stronger the closer we get.”
“Even though she didn’t write you in, what? Three, four years?”
“Maybe she did write me. Letters went astray all the time, during the war. Besides, I was only eleven when she last saw me. She might have still thought I was too young to hear something as shameful as—” I patted my stomach mutely. “I’m feeling more and more strongly that she’s here. Eve makes fun of me when I say I can feel her, but—”
Eve stopped so suddenly I nearly walked into her. “Le Lethe,” she said quietly.
It must have been a lovely restaurant a few years ago. I could see the beautiful lines of the building, old beams in the half-timbered style, a wrought-iron fence enclosing a dining terrace that took full advantage of the view. But the low-hanging sign with the carved gilt letters spelling out LE LETHE had been crudely splashed with red paint, and the broad front windows were boarded over. It had been a long time since waiters served vichyssoise and mille-feuilles here.
“What happened?” I asked, but Eve had already gone to the medieval doors, padlocked and barred. She gestured to the letters carved roughly into the wood, half obscured by slops of paint: COLLABOR—
“Collaborateur,” she said quietly. “Up to your old tricks, René? You should have learned the first time—the Germans always fucking lose.”