Paris: The Novel

his leg was badly broken, and ended with the single plea: HELP ME .
    “Why the devil did he send it to you and not me?” asked Roland, puzzled rather than angry.
    Marie didn’t tell him, but she had guessed at once.
    In Roland’s aristocratic world, a man might have the best of everything, but when it came to being injured at war, then you took whatever the army doctors offered and you didn’t complain. Charlie hadn’t actually been wounded in battle, but he’d fallen and been struck by a tank during maneuvers, and broken his leg in several places.
    “The military doctors know what they’re doing,” Roland told her. “If he walks with a limp, he walks with a limp. No dishonor in that.”
    Marie said nothing. She went straight to the telephone. Within an hour, she’d discovered the best surgeon for that kind of injury in Paris, spoken to his office and made all the arrangements. She’d even spoken to Charlie’s colonel in person. Using the combination of her rank and wealth, and the skills she had developed running Joséphine, she both intimidated and charmed the colonel. By that evening, somewhat sedated and strapped to splints, Charlie was being whisked in a private ambulance to Paris. Having discovered that the surgeon operated not only at one of the great Parisian hospitals, but also at the American Hospital at Neuilly, she had also gotten the surgeon to admit him there.
    “Charlie will be more comfortable at Neuilly,” she said firmly.
    “Women shouldn’t interfere in these things,” Roland grumbled, though Marie suspected he was secretly amused.

    The spring of 1940 was beautiful and surprisingly warm. Each day, on her way to see Charlie at the hospital, Marie would tell the chauffeur to take a route through the quiet boulevards and avenues of Neuilly—boulevard d’Inkermann was her favorite—so that she could see the soft lines of horse chestnuts putting on their leaves and breaking, early, into their white blossoms.
    The operation had been a great success. With luck, and careful treatment, Charlie would be able to walk quite normally. “But you must be patient,” the doctor told him. “This will take time.” By mid-April, it was agreed that, rather than go to a convalescent home, he should return to the apartment on the rue Bonaparte where Marie made arrangements for a private nurse to be in attendance.
    A string of friends came to see him, and he seemed to be constantly on the telephone. His father would read the paper with him each day and discuss the news. Marie would play cards with him. He seemed to be cheerful enough. Only one thing irked him.
    It started as a joke. One of his friends pretended to believe that his injury was a skiing accident. Within a day, the idea had gone around all his friends in Paris. It was meant as a harmless bit of teasing, yet it had to be confessed that behind it lay the perception that Charlie was the rich, athletic aristocrat who could do anything he liked.
    And Charlie would probably have taken it in good part if it hadn’t been for the circumstances.
    For in April, Hitler had been on the move again. Scandinavia this time: Denmark and Norway both fell, their monarchs unwillingly forced to acknowledge a German overlord. In England, the more pugnacious Churchill replaced Chamberlain as prime minister.
    “I should be back on duty, ready to fight,” he moaned. “And everyone is going to say I wasn’t there because of a stupid skiing accident.”
    “No one seems to believe that France will even have to go to war,” Marie said to comfort him. And it was perfectly true. Even now, as the warm days of May began, Parisians were starting to sit outside the bistros and cafés to enjoy the sunshine as if Hitler and his armies belonged in another universe.
    “But you think we’re going to war, don’t you?” Charlie replied. And she couldn’t deny it.
    To Roland she confessed: “I’m just relieved he isn’t on the front line.”
    Roland, of course, would never admit to such a thing.
    “The boy can’t fight on crutches,” he muttered, “and that’s all there is to say.”

    It came on the eighth day of May. Blitzkrieg. Straight through Belgium, the Netherlands, tiny Luxembourg and the Ardennes. The German armored divisions poured through between the end of the Maginot Line and the French and British forces guarding the northern coastal plain.
    It happened so fast that, in later years, people would say that the French collapsed and gave up in