I unfolded the next letter, hoping for more of the story, more of that night, but the pile was not chronological. The next letter was dated several months later and, like the first, it was soft and worn from continuous reading.
The order of the bundle didn’t feel random. While part of me wanted to search for George and Caro’s next chapter, another part wanted to understand my grandmother and how she approached these letters. Why were these four tied separately? Why wasn’t this ribbon pristine like the others, but soft and frayed instead?
Something about these four letters mattered to Grandmother—which meant they mattered to me.
Nine
London House
26 August 1940
Dearest Margo,
I’m sorry I yelled last night. London is more unnerving than I anticipated and that bomb dropping three nights ago made it feel real and dangerous. Reports say it was one of the first direct hits to the city and more will come. Part of me wants you here with me. The better part of me wants you to stay far away and safe at Parkley.
But I can’t leave, Margo. Please don’t ask again. I know you feel working here rather than at home is reckless, but I need to be here. I’ve put in for a transfer to the Inter Services Research Bureau and hope it will come through soon. This other work is important, Margo. I feel it in every fiber of my being. And it can’t be done in Derbyshire.
I need to apologize on another count as well. I wasn’t very kind about Mrs. Bevington’s death. With all your other duties, placing her children cannot be easy. But I miss them—the children—and you still see them at home. You hear them. Blame that insensitive outburst on ugly jealousy.
You wrote to me last year that they’d all left London, but I couldn’t envision what that meant—the quietude, the loss of hope. The clubs are hopping at night with plenty of laughter, but it’s that frenetic kind, with the high notes trying to outrun reality. I’ve heard them before. I’ve pushed them out before. We drank too much, laughed too loud, and yelled about how fine we were in Paris, especially in Montmartre, talking art and revolution until the wee hours of the morning. We felt invincible. How little we knew.
It’s no different here. London carries those same frenzied tones trying to fashion a new reality from thin air as the world crashes around us. Only now we know we are vulnerable—and there is no young hope, no skipping girls and naughty boys pulling their bows, to counterbalance our fear and chase the demons away.
I got a letter from Martine yesterday. She relayed that the Schiap Shop remains open under some sort of police protection. She didn’t go into specifics and I bet she doesn’t know them. Schiap trusts Martine with everything that requires a needle, but she knew Martine didn’t share her political leanings, and I’m sure everything is more tense now. Martine remarked that Schiap is more mercenary than Communist these days. I can believe it, but I fear Martine should not write it.
Because if the House of Schiaparelli stays open, it provides Martine and others work, salaries, and a modicum of protection. I wrote back advising her not to think deeply about its cost and to certainly not write about it. If she does, and gets fired for it, she’ll be on the streets. No Jewish woman could survive that, not with the Germans in charge.
There’s a cold efficiency about the Nazis, Margo, a soulless cruelty that still makes me shudder. We laughed at them after war was declared and nothing happened. Like England, we called it the Phoney War and remarked on their absence from Paris. After all, it had been a great game when I first arrived to make fun of their stiff stomping as they ran drills in their embassy’s courtyard. They were like guard dogs held back on chains, dressed in a horrid brown. We wanted to rattle them, shake their chains, fully believing those strong links kept us safe. Then, even before the declaration of war, they were suddenly all gone. Gone to fight other enemies.
It was an illusion. They were always our enemy. While they were fighting in the east, swelling their ranks, they were lying in wait until the time came to devour us. Their strength, their speed, their inhumanity is terrifying. I tasted it those few days I remained after the invasion, racing west, and I can feel the fear in Martine’s missive. The Nazis are ravaging all of France and Pétain’s Vichy government is letting them.
Martine says they hold Dunkirk up to them as a show of British cowardice and report that our blockades continue to keep their food and fuel scarce, rather than German gluttony. I hate that she thinks that about us, about me. I hate that all France might. I must remember that I can’t believe what I read or hear; I must believe what I know to be true.
I know you, Margo. That is why I fell apart and yelled so badly on the telephone. You keep me safe, and sane.
Thank you for sending me that care package and for telephoning, despite Father’s grumbling over the expense. Please know I heard you last night. In many ways, I can’t deny I want to come home. But . . . I can’t. Father and Mother need you. We both know I have hurt them again and again, and I can’t imagine that will change. I never meant to. It’s just that things got tangled between us and I’m not sure the threads will ever run straight.
Father wrote to me last year that I was “amounting to nothing.” I hope he doesn’t truly feel that way, but words have power and those now sit between us. You don’t believe that. I can feel it. Remember that. Remember that no matter what happens tomorrow, next week, or next year, you and I are one—and you, of course, are our better half.
Yours, as always,
Caro
My eyes scanned the words again. Amounting to nothing. They weren’t simply words on a page. Crossing eighty years, they were daggers. While I hadn’t heard that exact configuration, I’d felt the black abyss of similar statements. Quitting law school after two years is a waste . . . You need to grow up . . . Finish anything . . . Stop acting like a child and commit.
That particular dynamic between my father and me solidified when I was eight. Perhaps he retreated in his grief or disappointment. Perhaps he really thought so little of me. I didn’t know his side of our story. I only knew mine. I pulled away in fear, in sorrow, and in guilt for being the child still alive and, perhaps, chased anything and everything I thought might assuage that agony.
Amounting to nothing. Yes, I could understand that pain.
Rather than dwell on it, I turned to the next letter and noted that we were going back in time . . .
Paris
16 June 1937
Dearest Margo,
Did you see the Lobster Dress in Vogue? Gene Tierney, that American girl at school, used to say, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” I suspect she’ll end up in the movies someday saying plenty more than that—but I digress.