The Paris Agent

“But despite all of that I loved children, and desperately wanted some of my own one day. I didn’t begrudge a single decision my mother had made along the way, but I wanted a different life for myself—a house full of laughter and contentment, a loving husband, as many children as my body would allow me to have.”

Because Josie has spent her life battling chronic illness and pain, she develops tremendous resilience and learns to face down any challenge that confronts her, and she also uses her triumphs over her past experiences to calibrate a realistic view of her own dreams and aspirations.

“After all of that, it was heartbreaking to think that within two days of my arrival, a stranger on the streets had identified me as a visitor simply from a handful of words. I told myself to be grateful—that this wasn’t a failure but a blessing. Now that I knew about my accent, I could be careful how I spoke, and even when I spoke.”

Eloise left Paris as a teenager to join her father in London. She assumed that her Parisian background would benefit her as an agent, but in this moment, she is shaken to learn that her taxi driver immediately recognizes that she is not a native Parisian. Although the situation is not a crucial one for her mission, it nonetheless inspires new worries and an increased sense of vulnerability, for the safety of undercover agents is only as good as their ability to embody the details of their cover stories.

“So I maintained my polite facade by reminding myself that I was playing along with the charade so that later, I could wreak havoc upon these men and everything they stood for.”

While Eloise finds it excruciating to act friendly towards the German soldiers, she knows that this short-term sacrifice will enable long-term success. Driven by vengeance, she hopes to use her hidden rage to fulfill her broader mission and help the Allies to secure a victory against the Germans.

“But I could not afford to become distracted by thoughts like this. I knew when I left Britain I would need to stop my mind from wandering to my grief for Giles, or longing to be with my son Hughie, who was back home in Bexley with my mother. My boys would never be far from my mind, nor could they be front and center. I could not afford to lose focus. Distraction meant carelessness. Carelessness could be catastrophic.”

Rimmer includes multiple interludes that reveal Eloise’s inner contemplations and highlight her intense motivation to succeed as an agent. While memories of her son and husband occasionally threaten to overwhelm her, she controls her emotions and fuels her rage productively. The iron will of her mindset also adds nuance to the recurring explorations of The Psychological Toll of Espionage.

“Now, now, Ms. Peters, that’s not an insult at all. I’m sure Mrs. White just meant that in the sense that none of us are paid in a professional capacity to work with history, we are technically amateurs.”

Theo assures a member of his family research group that their skills are not diminished by being labeled as “amateurs.” The perceived division between “amateur” and “professional” in this case is understood to refer to compensation rather than skill level. As Theo assures Ms. Peters that her skills are good enough to deserve to be compensated, he offers a unique glimpse into the subjective ways in which history is preserved and conveyed, raising the question of who can truly call themselves an expert if they did not experience the events for themselves.

“For the very first time, I wonder if the gaps in his memory aren’t just from his injury…but maybe from trauma too. And maybe that’s why my mother was so determined that Dad should just look forward, never back.”

While Charlotte is initially ecstatic to help her father with his new project, she begins to wonder about her mother’s motivations for preventing him from pursuing this line of inquiry. Charlotte begins to recognize that while she has always put her parents on a pedestal, they both kept secrets that she might not want to know about.

“He had been one of my favorite instructors, tough but cheerful and positive, a dedicated and passionate Frenchman who, like me, had escaped occupied Paris during the early years of the war. I admired and trusted every member of the SOE’s leadership, but I knew no one would hunt down a mistake that cost French lives like Turner would.”

In the beginning of the novel, Rimmer strategically inserts multiple examples of praise for Turner’s competence as an operative, making it clear that his fellow operatives hold him in high regard. This initial scaffolding sets the stage for the later reversal, when both Josie and Eloise are shocked to realize that he is the double agent whose actions have compromised them and other fellow operatives.

“The young woman’s nose was red and raw and her eyes swollen as if she’d been crying. Still, she looked at the child with such love in her gaze. As if he were her most precious treasure. As if he was all she had left in the world. My vision blurred, and for just a moment, I was in her shoes, staring into the eyes of a child who trusted me completely. A child I would die to protect.”

As Eloise watches a stranger caring for her child, she feels a tremendous pang of affection and longing for her own son, and the situation highlights the bitterness that accompanies the Sacrifices Made by Wartime Operatives. In this moment, Eloise must work hard to remind herself of her reasons for tearing herself away from Hughie and risking her life for a larger cause.

“‘I love history, Noah,’ he begins, ‘but I don’t like to think back on my own.’”

Jean (code name Remy) regrets the secrecy that working as an operative required him to maintain. Now that he knows the truth about Noah and Josie, he regrets that he spent 25 years believing that Noah was the double agent who betrayed him and his team.

“Your mother was so wise, wasn’t she? She was always so sure I should never look back at my SOE days. Perhaps I should have thought some more about that before I started all of this.”

Noah initially believes that his research into his past will help him to heal from the pain of Geraldine’s passing. However, as he dives deeper into his own unresolved trauma from World War II, he wonders whether Geraldine was right to discourage him from engaging in this project. His uncertainty reflects the deep loss of identity and confidence that accompanies The Secrets of War that now haunt his family history. Although he experiences these misgivings and has more pain yet to endure, the process of rediscovering the truth will prove to provide a sense of closure that he never could have gained by conforming to his wife’s wishes.

“One minute you’re a wife and the next you’re a widow, and the only thing that separates those two moments in your life is a damned telegram. There’s not even someone from the government there to shake your hand or to thank you for his service. Not even someone around to offer you an explanation, or even a bloody hug. It’s brutal and it’s cold and it’s cruel, and there’s no justice on offer at all for the spouse left behind.”

In this passage, Eloise ponders the ways in which war has changed her life in a moment. Her deeply destabilizing internal shift in identity from wife to widow motivated her to become a stellar agent in order to exact an indirect form of revenge, but although she is fully committed to this cause, she has not healed from the violent changes in her life.

“Our hopes and dreams that would never come to pass. The pendant, representing Giles, and his deep faith and hope. And the box itself—a little piece of Paris that would represent the city of my birth. The city that made me.”

Eloise was broken by her husband’s death, but she hopes that her son can achieve the future that she and her husband once dreamed of. She buys a box engraved with the Eiffel Tower and uses this to store the letters, rosary, and photograph that Giles’s commanding officer sent to her, hoping that this symbols will one day help her son to understand the ideas that she values.

“In that moment, jealousy and gratitude were at war in my gut. I wanted to hug her to thank her with every ounce of strength.”

Eloise makes the sacrifice to leave her son in the care of others in order to work as an operative. While watching her son from afar, she feels tremendous gratitude towards the woman who is taking care of him, but she also acknowledges the jealousy that she feels as a result of this woman’s proximity to Hughie. In this moment, she stands alone and looks back at the philosophical crossroads of a choice already made, both regretting her decision and taking pride in it as well.

“It’s been hard to carry my grief all alone but I told myself it was easier to do that than it was to try to share it with someone else only to have them push me away. I turn back to Theo, expecting to find him staring awkwardly at the ground. But no—Wrigley is at his side, tail wagging vigorously as he leans against Theo’s leg, but even as he pets the dog Theo is looking right at me, his eyes brimming with compassion. What a relief it is to find myself in the company of a man who is not terrified of difficult emotions.”

Charlotte has struggled tremendously since her mother’s death. Her fiancé broke up with her because she was “too depressed,” and as a result, her fear of finding another source of emotional intimacy has isolated her from those around her. However, as an amateur historian well-acquainted with myriad causes of grief, Theo is not deterred by the same emotions that her former fiancé loathed.

“Sorry. Of course. I don’t mean to insult you, Fleur. Nor do I mean to suggest that Chloe is anything but fiercely capable. Sometimes I feel this war goes against every piece of common sense and social convention I’ve ever understood. And I don’t just mean about women—I mean, my God. These bastards have no respect at all for human life, and I always thought that was one thing we’d evolved to agree upon. It’s like the rules are topsy-turvy and sometimes I just can’t make sense of it.”

Noah is furious that Eloise and Josie were tasked with undergoing such extreme physical duties after so little training. He feels very protective of them and reflects that the war is making him question his worldview; previously, he assumed that institutions would also operate with the chivalry that he demonstrates.

“I toyed with the Germans. I rationed those bullets as if they were made of pure gold—firing rounds, pausing and allowing them to come closer, firing more. I felt no guilt when I saw some of those men go down hard, but I was somewhat surprised to find I also felt no joy. Collectively, the Germans had taken so much from Europe and they had taken so much from me, but when the moment for revenge came, I fired that gun for an altogether different reason.”

After dropping Noah and Remy off at the farmhouse, Eloise turns her Sten gun on the enemy soldier. As her rage fuels her determination to hold them off as long as possible, she simultaneously analyzes the emotions fails to feel upon actively taking German lives in cold blood. Her reflections imbue the action scene with a grim, melancholy tone of reflection even amidst the carnage that she so dispassionately causes, and the author implicitly invokes the tragedies in Eloise’s past to explain the operative’s reasons for feeling as she does.

“You probably don’t want to hear this about your own parents, but they rushed into that second courtship, racing toward the altar like marriage was a competitive sport. It was not a good combination of desires. Noah just wanted to settle down, to have a family quick smart because he was all alone in the world. And Gerrie just wanted to tie him down, probably before he could fall in love with someone else and leave her heartbroken. Again.”

In this moment, Kathleen confides in Charlotte that her parents’ courtship was not the idealized relationship that Charlotte believed it to be. War changed the concept of romantic relationships, and marriage often became a promise of stability during a tumultuous time. As a result, Charlotte’s parents ultimately married for all the wrong reasons, and the long-term issues in their marriage stem from the violence and anguish of the war years.

“Sweetheart, we have to grieve who she really was, not who we wanted her to be. And she and your dad ultimately built a great life together, but that does not mean it was a healthy relationship, especially right at the beginning.”

Charlotte is devastated by Kathleen’s account of Geraldine’s actions. While Charlotte wants to believe that her mother is a flawless person, she must come to accept that her mother’s actions regarding her father’s past were less than admirable, fueled as they were by unexpressed anger, resentment, and jealousy.

“‘My mother used to say that even in the worst of times, we must look for ways to do good,’ she said quietly. ‘I think I had forgotten until just now. So thank you.’ I felt Giles with me in that moment. This was the spirit with which he’d lived his entire life, and it was how I too could find meaning, whatever came next, even with all of my fear for my son and my uncertainty about my own future.”

In this passage, Eloise and Josie comfort each other in prison even as they face the likelihood that neither of them will survive the war. Josie recalls her mother’s ability to bring her comfort when Josie felt physical pain, and Eloise uses the memory of her husband and child to motivate her to carry on.

“I am an adult, fully grown and independent, but I feel like a child waiting for a scolding after confessing a schoolyard sin. When my father finally speaks, his voice is so faint I have to strain to hear it.”

Charlotte struggles to confront Noah about the secrets of his past. She is anxious to learn about her father’s errors, and the unearthing of his past causes her deep uncertainty as she beholds her father’s hidden vulnerabilities and is faced with a side of him that she has never seen before.

“It was such a shock to me when my parents died, Lottie. You have a taste of this now that your mother is gone. While your parents are alive a part of you remains a child. But once they are gone…”

As she has a heart-to-heart conversation with her father, Charlotte agrees with him that “everything feels different… like your safety net has disappeared.” Noah asserts that one’s identity completely changes upon losing both parents. Noah’s sense of self completely changed during the war, and losing his parents motivated him to build a strong relationship with his children.

“I saw him growing up in a world where hate had been conquered, and freedom had won. Surely, if the Allies won the war, humanity would reject bigotry and cruelty and the world would be a better place forever. Surely, if the Allies won, the world would learn to reject hate, and embrace love.”

Eloise finds it very difficult to leave her son Hughie. She is motivated to fight for the Allies because she hopes that this sacrifice will help to build a better world for her son. In moments when she deeply regrets her separation from him, she clings to this vision of an improved world so that she can reassure herself that she made the right choice.

“My heart was beating faster, a dull thud that seemed to echo through my body, as if my very spirit were clinging to those last few precious beats. ‘I’m glad you told me, but your instincts were right. Sometimes courage simply means letting someone else feel peace for as long as they can.’”

When Eloise and Josie are transferred to the concentration camp, Josie is able to communicate with the guards and learns that they are to be executed. However, because Eloise and the other female operatives do not speak German, they are unaware of the fate that awaits them. Demonstrating her own courage and strength, Josie is determined to make their final moments as peaceful as she can, and she therefore lies and tells them that they will receive an inoculation.