The Flight Portfolio by Julie Orringer

Author:Julie Orringer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: 2019-05-06T23:00:00+00:00

20

Camp du Vernet

By the time he woke the next morning—naked and warm in Grant’s bed, the down coverlet a shell against the chill—Grant had gotten up and bathed and dressed, and was sitting at the desk with a newspaper, one long leg crossed over the other.

Varian sat up in bed. “What time is it?”

“A quarter to nine,” Grant said. “I’ve been downstairs already.”

“Any sign of Mary Jayne?”

“None.”

Varian got up and dressed, then went to his own room and bathed and shaved and dressed again. Mary Jayne was a late riser; she might not appear before eleven. But he and Grant must go down and wait for her, for whatever news she might deliver. They met in the restaurant and sat over cups of the café national, which, Varian noted with some surprise, had ceased to seem offensive, so distant a memory was the genuine article. The newspaper narrated a failed plot by the vice-premier, Pierre Laval, to oust Pétain and set up a government of his own; Laval had envisioned ruling from Paris, under the Nazi flag, and leading a grand charge against Great Britain. Reichsführer Hitler had expressed his approval of Pétain’s decision to remove Laval, calling Pétain a more apt collaborator. The article induced a headache by the time Varian had reached the end of the first column.

At ten o’clock the restaurant door swung open and in came Mary Jayne, dressed in a caramel-colored herringbone suit with nacreous buttons. A froth of white pleats spilled from her collar; her shoes reflected the restaurant’s polished brass. Her hair was sleek and neatly curled, her makeup a paler version of the previous night’s. On her lips, a carefully composed smile. Grant rose to pull out a chair for her, and she winced as she lowered herself into it. Her mouth trembled slightly as she reached for the menu. Varian and Grant sat in silence, trying to read her.

“Well, gentlemen,” she said, in a low, taut-strung tone.

“Well,” Varian said.

She raised her eyes to them, and the look there was terrible: injured, triumphant, raw. “If the commandant’s a man of his word,” she said, “we’ll be on the train with your protégé by nightfall.” She lowered her eyes and made a subtle amendment to her white pleats.

“Mary Jayne,” Grant said, covering her hand with his own. “Are you all right?”

She shifted in her seat. A muscle contracted at the corner of her mouth. “I achieved my goal,” she said. “That was what I wanted. The commandant—” She paused and drew a long breath. “The commandant’s tastes weren’t particularly surprising.”

“Mary Jayne. I’m asking you. Are you all right?”

“As long as we get out of here with that boy, I’ll be fine,” she said, studying the menu.

Varian put his hands together as if in prayer, resting his chin on his thumbs. He had led her into all this, had made her do whatever it was she’d done. He’d known she still felt contrite about Feuchtwanger, he’d known she wanted to prove she wasn’t a dilettante.

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