Page 31 of Summer of Fire
‘But I won’t be alone,’ said Lizzie, in between mouthfuls of dry black bread. ‘I’ll be meeting the contact from the café, which is what we were hoping for all along.’
Jeanne reminded Lizzie of her mother—always looking out for her.
‘You must miss your daughter very much,’ said Lizzie.
‘Yes, I do. I haven’t seen her since before the war started. She’s in the Free Zone with my granddaughter. How I wish they had come to stay with me. So much for thefreezone,’ she said disparagingly. ‘It’s nothing but a bunch of Nazi collaborators.’
‘Is she able to write to you?’ asked Lizzie, thinking that her family was in a similar situation and how much she missed her grandparents.
‘The last letter I received from her was months ago, and it didn’t say much. The mail is heavily censored, so I was just relieved to hear from her. Lord knows where my poor son-in-law is—in a labour camp in Germany probably, or worse.’
Jeanne dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief, suddenly overcome with emotion. ‘I’m surprised I have any tears left,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d cried them all for my dear Auguste.’
Auguste was Jeanne’s husband who died tragically at the Battle of the Somme in the First World War.
The previous evening after their illicit high of tuning into Winston Churchill, Jeanne had poured them each a glass of eye-wateringly strong homemade wine. She confided in Lizzie that Auguste was the reason she helped the Resistance. ‘What was it all for? He can’t have died for nothing,’ she said, shaking her head.
It was heartbreaking. Lizzie didn’t know what to say, so she squeezed the older woman’s hand and kept her company as they sipped the wine. Jeanne reminisced about her life with Auguste before the war so cruelly tore them apart.
They had an extremely happy marriage, but for years struggled to have children. Fortunately, after several miscarriages, Jeanne gave birth to a daughter in 1912. ‘She was the light of our lives. I thank God that Auguste got some precious time with her before he left for the Front. My daughter doesn’t remember her father at all, and now the same pattern is repeating itself all over again with my granddaughter and her father.’
They both grew sentimental with the wine, and Lizzie thought of this generation of young men who were fighting for their lives. She thought of the women they left behindfighting their own war on the home front. Mothers like her mother, doing their best to get through each day, trying not to think about whether their boys were lying dead in a ditch or in a prisoner of war camp somewhere. Wives and fiancées like Juliet, pale and sick to the stomach as they worry about what has become of their men.
‘War is a cruel business,’ said Lizzie. ‘Let us hope this really will be the last one.’
Jeanne shook her head. ‘The Germans love picking a fight for one reason or another. They’re not happy unless they are trying to dominate the world. Where this will all end, I don’t dare to think.’
‘Think of the Allies as victorious. Think of our young men coming safely home. It is the only way to think, or we shall drive ourselves insane,’ Lizzie said.
Jeanne assessed Lizzie. ‘You’re a wise young woman. Much wiser than your years. You’ll make some lucky man a fine wife, one day—when Europe stops burning and this Nazi madness is over, that is.’
Jeanne had brewed a pot of tea and Lizzie watched as she poured the aromatic water into two fine gold rimmed cups. Lizzie settled back against the sofa to enjoy hers.
‘Wait,’ Jeanne said, touching Lizzie’s wrist when she stood to clear the cups away.
‘Flip your cup like this.’
Lizzie watched as Jeanne slowly swirled the remnants of the tea from left to right around the base of her cup in a hypnotic fashion. She repeated the ritual twice.
‘Three is a magic number, so I do it three times. Now you do the same with yours,’ she said.
Lizzie did as Jeanne instructed, holding her cup out in front of her. ‘Like this?’
Jeanne nodded. ‘That’s it. Look, do you see how the leavesform patterns? These patterns can help us understand the past and see into the future.’
Lizzie was mesmerised as she studied the glossy dark patterns pooling in the bottom of her cup. All kinds of shapes had formed, and she wondered what they could mean. She’d heard about tea leaf reading but had never seen anyone do it.
‘It’s all about energy and intuition. Tea diviners say it opens the soul, you know,’ said Jeanne with an air of mystery. ‘The ancient art of reading the leaves is called Tasseography.’
‘Do you know what the patterns mean?’ Lizzie asked. The tiredness that had been creeping over her evaporated as she peered into the cup.
‘My mother knew how to interpret the leaves. She was a psychic and people used to come from miles around to this very cottage for her to do readings for them.’
‘How fascinating. Did she teach you?’
Jeanne reached over for Lizzie’s cup. ‘Yes, a bit. Let me see what message there is in the leaves for you.’
Lizzie leaned closer and stared into the cup.
