Page 3 of The Paris Agent
Mum was a schoolteacher, just as I am, but Dad owns a small chain of auto mechanic shops—his pride and joy, second only to those of us lucky enough to be his family. He reaches down into the newspaper to withdraw a fat but likely cold chip. Wrigley watches hopefully as Dad raises the chip to his mouth, then slumps again when Dad chews the whole thing in one bite.
“The idea came to me when I looked at that photo, actually,” he says. “It got me thinking about those days again. You know I served.”
He rarely talks about the war, but I’ve seen photos of him as a young man in uniform, and in one, I recall he was holding a spanner.
“You worked as an army mechanic, right?”
“Well, no,” he says carefully. I glance at him in surprise. “I left school at sixteen to enlist.”
“Sixteen,” I breathe, shaking my head. “Dad, that’s so young.”
“Yes, I was young enough that they’d only take me with my parents’ permission, but my mum and dad were thrilled to give it. I’d never been good at school, but I was good with my hands, so it made sense for me to enlist and learn a trade. They were so proud when I qualified...” Dad trails off, draws in a deep breath, then finishes slowly, “...as a flight mechanic.”
A flight mechanic? I turn to Dad, eyebrows high.
“Wait. Are you telling me you trained on planes before cars? Why don’t I know this already?”
“It was always my dream to work on airplanes, right from when I was a little boy,” Dad says wistfully. “And it was incredible work. I loved the problem-solving and the challenge of it—I mean, honestly Lottie, it was just so bloody cool. I spent my whole school years feeling stupid, but I felt like the smartest man in the world once I knew how to make a plane work.”
Dad’s always shown a vague interest in planes, but he’s never seemed especially passionate about aviation. Not like this. Even as he’s speaking, there’s a wondrous glint in his eye.
“But you work on cars,” I say stupidly, as if he might have forgotten. “You always have.” Dad glances at me, and I add weakly, “At least, as long as I’ve been alive.”
“I came out of the war a changed man. I knew I needed to reinvent myself and to be completely frank, my mind wasn’t up to the challenge of resuming aviation work. I mean, cars are still plenty complex. Still challenging. But given my...” He waves toward his head, and my eyes widen.
“The car accident? I thought you said that happened when you were a kid.”
“Well, Iwasa kid. I was only in my twenties. And it probably was a car accident but...”
“But what?”
“My memories of that day aren’t perfect, that’s all. Anyway, after the war, it was helpful for me to go back to basics and learn a new trade. So, I went right back to the start of an apprenticeship, this time with cars.”
“You never told me any of this,” I say. Dad and I are close and I thought I knew his life well. It stings a little that this is a part of his past he’s never shared with me.
“There’s a lot I never told you, love,” he says gently.
“Well? What else?”
“When the war started, I had a promotion of sorts, and I ended up working as a flight engineer. It was marvelous fun at first, soaring into the sky with a crew that soon enough felt like brothers to me. But...everything changed in 1940 with the Battle of France. Me and the boys were so proud to be defending our neighbor—we knew England was at risk too and we wanted to do for France what we hoped the world would do for us if the Germans came to our shores. But one day, on a mission over Northern France, my plane took a brutal hit.” I gasp in shock, and Dad nods slowly, still staring out at the water, but his gaze is distant now and his voice drops. “We had no choice but to bail out and it was terrifying. Ian Owens’ chute didn’t open. No chance he could have survived a fall like that. The rest of the crew were captured pretty much right away.”
“And you?” I ask, stunned.
“Ah, I was the lucky one that day,” Dad says softly. “By some miracle a gust of wind caught my chute, and I was blown away from the others, right into the backyard of a sympathetic French farmer. He hid me for months while the area was lousy with Germans. He put me to work with his sons—fixing their cars, working on the fields—hiding in plain sight as it were. Not an uncommon thing for helpful Frenchmen to do for downed airmen at the time. Once that initial phase of the occupation had settled into something calmer—still awful, mind, but not quite as chaotic—the farmer sought out a local resistance group and in time, they took me into their network of safe houses. Your mum and I weren’t married yet, but we were dating, and she had no idea if I was alive or dead for over a year.” He shakes his head as he exhales. “I suspect that just about drove her crazy.”
“But...what?” The slight sting that Dad had been keeping secrets from me is now a soul-deep ache and confusion. “Dad.” He doesn’t react, so I say again, this time more urgently, “That’s how you learned French, isn’t it? You told me you learned at school...”
“Like I said, love,” he says quietly, “I didn’t want to lie to you and your brother, but it was easiest to give you both simpler explanations for these things at first. Then time got away from me. Some things are easier to forget than to confront.”
“Wow,” I breathe, shaking my head. “Dad! This is incredible.”
“They were wild times. Everyone my age has a story to tell about the war years.”
“But...butyou?” I suppose any daughter would be shocked to hear a parent had lived through such an ordeal, but my father is so quiet—at times, bordering on shy. I don’t think of Dad as weak but even so, I just can’t picture him living under such danger.
“And then, after I escaped France—”
“How did you‘escapeFrance’?”
