a joke about her as she left, because the bar dissolved into echoes of laughter behind her as she closed the door. She was pretty sure it was something crude and didn’t want to know what it was. As she strode home she thought about her great-aunt again and she wondered about what kind of a person she was. Even with what was pointing to a tragic end, Vivienne must have been confident and self-assured, not like Sophie, who had somehow lost herself along the way. Maybe as she uncovered more of this story she would find out where that audaciousness came from, what it was that drove Vivienne, and what motivated her to do such daring – and dangerous – things.
15
1943
As Vivi continued living in Paris she felt such a mixture of emotions, but mostly she swallowed down her feeling of being terrified and reminded herself she was doing this for England. Her country and the Allies were counting on her to do her job. In a way she was no different to the thousands of young men who marched off every day to do battle. She just wished she felt more sure of herself, more brave. She now saw all her bravado and rebellious ways of her youth through the lens of a harsh reality. And who she had been now seemed so vapid and translucent in the face of the courage she had seen in the French people every day. But nevertheless she kept moving forward, doing the best she could. Some days it felt exciting. Vivi remembered standing next to a German officer on a bus one day, her jacket padded with false ration cards, with her heart trying to thump its way out of her chest. But when he had nodded in her direction before exiting the bus, she had felt exhilarated because he hadn’t suspected a thing, and she had felt the win. She was a spy and she had just defeated the enemy in her own small way.
Her work for F-section kept her busy as a courier and a wireless operator. The only feeling of normality for her was in returning home in the evening to the family she lived with who treated her with great affection.
Mr Renoir, Pascal, was a scholarly type. He read a lot and kept up on all that was happening in the war via any newspapers Vivi could obtain through the underground. His wife, Florence – or Maman as they all called her – was ever practical and modest, and she cooked the most wonderful meals even from the war rations. She insisted that her family assemble for dinner each evening despite the fact that food was scarce. Their conversation lingered late into the night, and Vivi became truly attached to the family in an extremely short amount of time.
It was there, one evening, she learned about why they’d joined the Resistance. The whole family and Vivi had been enjoying a delightful dinner, on the finest blue china, and they’d had candles lit, not because they craved the ambiance, but because the Nazis restricted the electricity throughout the day. They had been chatting about the war, when suddenly Florence became wistful.
‘This war is very personal to us, you see, because as well as Yvette we also had another child. A son who has passed away… Patrice.’ Silence fell around the table as the Renoirs stared into their soup, lost in their memory of him.
Vivi found the courage to ask them, ‘Tell me about your son.’
Florence smiled, and there was a gentle reverence for his name upon her hostess’s lips. ‘Patrice was a wonderful boy. Strong-willed, and with intense feelings about this war. He was too young to fight in the Great War, so when we faced this atrocity a second time, he couldn’t wait to sign up to fight for his country, to free France from the Germans.’
Florence crept silently from the table and picked up a photo in a silver frame from a drawer in a sideboard – obviously placed there, apparently still too painful to be out on display. She passed it to Vivi, and she stared at the picture of the brave young man with defiant eyes. A younger version of his father stood in his uniform, captured, as Pascal added his thoughts to the conversation.
‘Taken the day before he went off to fight this war. He would have been twenty-four now,’ Pascal said. ‘Twenty-four years old. He died at twenty-two, right before his twenty-third