by Peter May
Now foreboding gave way to fear.
But he clearly had no intention of discussing it further. At least, not there, not then. ‘I would like to see you again.’
She found her voice with difficulty. ‘Why would I agree to that?’
‘Because you and I have a very great deal to talk about, my dear.’ He turned a little so that the moon lit up his smile. ‘But next time I will not embarrass you by taking you to a restaurant.’ He paused. ‘Friday night?’
Georgette turned the key in the lock as quietly as she could, and eased the door open into the darkness of the hall. She stepped in carefully and closed it softly behind her. She stood then for several minutes, her eyes growing accustomed to what little light there was. Her own breath seemed inordinately loud, almost deafening in the quiet of the apartment.
She started taking silent steps towards her bedroom door. Rose should have gone to bed a good hour ago and would hopefully be asleep. Her fingers closed around the cold metal of the door handle as the door to Rose’s bedroom flew open, and she stood silhouetted against the light behind her. She wore her habitual dressing gown and hairnet and had clearly been awaiting Georgette’s return.
‘Well?’ Her voice barked into the darkness of the hall.
‘Well what?’
‘You know perfectly well what.’
Georgette drew a deep breath. ‘He has asked me to go to his apartment for a meal on Friday night. He wants to cook for me.’
‘Does he?’
Her next words lingered on her lips for only a second. ‘He knows why I’m here,’ she blurted. It had been her intention to keep this to herself, but fear made her want to share. She heard the consternation in Rose’s voice.
‘What do you mean?’
‘He knows people in London, he said. He knows what de Gaulle asked me to do.’
The silence in the apartment seemed almost tangible, and extended itself between them for a very long time before Rose said, ‘Then we have to abort your mission. And we need to get you out of Paris fast. Out of the country if possible.’
‘Why?’
‘Because your cover, such as it was, is in tatters. He could have you arrested at any moment.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, girl!’
‘I mean it. If he was going to have me arrested, he’d have done it by now. Why hasn’t he? And why hasn’t he shared what he knows with anyone else? I have eyes and ears on the ground in London that my superiors do not. That’s what he told me. So whatever he knows, he’s kept it to himself. He said we had much to talk about.’
Rose breathed her exasperation. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if his sole motivation was to get you into his bed.’
‘I don’t think so. He’s not like that.’
‘Hah! So you think you know him now?’
‘No, I don’t. But I think I should. It’s the only way we’re going to find out what this whole charade is about.’
Rose shook her head in exasperation. ‘I knew you were trouble from the moment you arrived. All you are doing is putting at risk everything I am working to achieve at the Jeu de Paume. And if that gets shut down, I’ll never forgive you. France will never forgive you!’
Georgette walked through the empty halls of the Louvre, sunlight falling through tall windows to lay itself in arches and oblongs on the floor beneath her feet and cast her shadow long across it. Her footsteps echoed back at her from naked walls.
She recalled the days and weeks she had spent here, working with teams of other students and museum staff in the race to pack everything safely into wooden crates for evacuation. It seemed a lifetime ago now. She climbed marble steps to the first floor and found the corridor she was looking for.
Jacques Jaujard’s office overlooked the cobbles of the courtyard below. A small, cluttered space, half of it taken over by an enormous desk littered with the debris of his working day. He sat back in a chair that reclined a little, and dragged languidly on his cigarette. A distinctive Paris skyline was visible through the window behind him.
Jaujard had the looks of a film star. Dark, abundant hair swept back from a handsome face defined by strong eyebrows and a square jaw. He wore a double-breasted lounge suit and button-down white collar with a red tie. He waved Georgette into the seat opposite and said, ‘Well, this is a fine mess.’
Georgette knew that it was Jaujard’s determination and vision, more than anything else, which had achieved the evacuation of the Louvre. History, she was certain, would recognise the role he had played in keeping the national treasures of France out of the hands of the Nazis. But right now she was stung by his words. ‘Not of my making,’ she said defiantly.
He flicked his cigarette at an overflowing ashtray on the desk and conceded, ‘Yes, that’s probably fair. But unfortunately, you are right in the thick of it. You’ve been compromised, Georgette. It’s as simple as that. I can hardly send you to Montauban to watch over La Joconde when the purpose of your presence there would be known to the German authorities. I don’t want to give them any excuse to start seizing inventory.’
‘But the general specifically—’
He cut her off. ‘De Gaulle is in London, we are here. And we have to deal with reality as it is on the ground.’
‘If Lange is such a threat, why am I not sitting in a Gestapo interrogation room right now?’
‘I have no idea. And let’s face it, Georgette, we really don’t want to find out, do we? At least, not in that way.’
She had no answer to this. ‘So what am I going to do?’
He sighed. ‘I think we have to play a waiting game. You will stay at the Jeu de Paume until it becomes clear what Lange is up to, or until he goes back to Germany and the dust settles. After all, it may be, as Rose suspects, that what he’s really after is getting you into his bed.’
‘So I should refuse the invitation to eat with him at his apartment?’
‘Good God, no. You can’t afford to offend him.’
‘And if he really does just want me to sleep with him?’
He leaned forward to stub out his cigarette. ‘That would be regrettable.’
Frustration gave way to anger, and anger to resignation. She was, she realised, a very small cog in a very large machine that could perfectly well function without her. But of one thing she was certain. Under no circumstances would she allow herself to be seduced into Lange’s bed.
When she got back to the Jeu de Paume, Rose was keen to hear what Jaujard had said to her and steered Georgette into her office. But Georgette did not want to go into details. She said, ‘He wants me to remain here in the meantime.’
Rose seemed disappointed. ‘Really?’
Georgette gave vent to her discontent. ‘It’s like being handed a jail sentence.’
Rose bristled. ‘Yes. And I’m the one who’s being forced to share the cell with you.’ She rounded her desk. ‘But since we’re stuck with each other, you might as well make yourself useful. A great deal of art has come and gone in the last few days. We need to re-inventory everything in the basement.’
Georgette stared at her angrily. ‘Consigning me to the basement? That’s your way of dealing with me? I’m supposed to be an assistant curator.’
‘And someday you might be one for real. But I am the curator here, and your job is to assist me. And you can do that from the basement until such time as Monsieur Jaujard decides what to do with you.’
Georgette spent most of the next two days working alone in the gloom of the basement. Not only a prison sentence, she thought, but solitary confinement. The only human contact she had for hours on end were the German soldiers who arrived with frequent deliveries of new stock which they would carry downstairs. Even if she had wanted to, she could not have engaged them in conversation, since almost none of them spoke French.
The days wer
e long, and filled her with resentment, and she found herself almost looking forward to Friday evening, and her dinner with Lange at his apartment.
He was waiting for her outside in the Tuileries when she emerged from the gallery just after seven. It was a cold, miserable evening, just five days before Christmas, though there was no sign anywhere in the city of preparation for the festivities. The temperature had hovered barely above freezing for most of the day, and a light drizzle fell now from low, brooding clouds in a black sky. His umbrella glistened in the rain, and she allowed herself to be drawn under its protection by his arm linked through hers.
She was acutely self-conscious, glancing around, certain that she would find every eye turned in their direction. But Lange was not in uniform tonight, and no one paid them the least attention.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘What for?’
‘Dispensing with the uniform.’
He smiled. ‘Well, I was told once that no self-respecting Frenchwoman would want to be seen dead with an officer of the occupying forces.’
Which drew a reluctant smile from her, in spite of herself. ‘I thought Germans were supposed to be notorious for their lack of humour.’
‘It’s true, George, that we don’t really do jokes. But I think we have a fairly well-developed sense of irony.’
She froze. ‘You called me George.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Isn’t that what your friends call you?’
Her heart pushed up into her throat, making it difficult to speak. ‘How do you know that?’
His smile was almost condescending. ‘By now, George, there’s very little that I don’t know about you.’
The walk to his apartment took little more than ten minutes and was made in silence. A confusion of thoughts tumbled one over the other in her mind. If he knew so much about her, then he must know that her position as an assistant curator at the Jeu de Paume was a sham. That she had been in London until the autumn and must have been smuggled clandestinely into France. And yet, here he was, entertaining her to dinner at his apartment as if none of it mattered.
He opened the door to number thirty Rue de Rivoli and shook his umbrella back out into the street, before leading her up an elegant curving staircase to the fourth floor. Electric bulbs had replaced the old gas lamps on wrought-iron lamp posts on each landing.
The apartment comprised umpteen huge rooms leading off a spacious entrance hall, parquet flooring reflecting harsh electric light as he flicked on light switches and led her through to a large comfortable salon. A sofa and two armchairs were gathered around a fireplace. An enormous gilded mirror set on the wall above it reflected the rest of the room, including the small table laid for two in the window alcove. Georgette could smell something delicious wafting through from the kitchen.
‘I’ve done most of my kitchen prep already,’ he said, ‘which means I can devote more time to entertaining you over dinner.’
He moved about the room, switching on standard lamps before extinguishing the overhead chandelier to bathe the room in softer light.
‘Here, let me take your coat.’ And he removed it carefully from her shoulders. ‘Have a seat at the table,’ he said over his shoulder as he disappeared into the hall. When he returned he used his lighter to raise flames on two candles set in silver holders on the table. ‘It’s a pretty view down into the street. Unfortunately we have to keep the drapes drawn. But at least they cut down the cold from the windows.’
He poured them glasses of chilled Chablis and served a starter of sautéed plaice in a creamy butter sauce with tiny new potatoes still in their skins.
‘Santé,’ he said, raising his glass. But she raised hers only to her lips and did not return the salutation.
For a while they ate in silence, and she was impressed by the starter. Although she had no intention of telling him so.
Almost as if he had read her mind, he said, ‘How’s the fish?’
And she found herself unable to lie. ‘Delicious.’
He nodded his satisfaction, and she glanced around the room.
‘Did the apartment come furnished?’ She felt ill at ease with the idea that she was enjoying the comforts of those things which had once belonged to others now stripped of their wealth and freedom.
‘No. I bought it.’
She was surprised. ‘Where?’
‘The ERR have a warehouse across town where they keep and sell confiscated furniture. A little like one of those New York department stores. We rent unfurnished and buy our own.’
Georgette said, ‘In my mother’s country they have a word for that.’
‘You mean Scotland?’
He really did know everything about her. But she was not going to acknowledge it. ‘It’s called reset.’
‘Meaning?’
‘In Scots criminal law, it is the possession of property dishonestly appropriated by another. For example, by theft.’
He ignored the implication. ‘Your mother was a lawyer?’
One thing, at least, that he did not know about her. ‘She took a law degree at Glasgow University. But never practised.’
Georgette finished her fish and laid her cutlery across her plate.
‘What do you want from me, Monsieur Lange?’
‘Paul,’ he said. ‘Please call me Paul.’
She ignored him. ‘For God’s sake, what do you want?’
He sat very still examining her face closely with eyes reflecting candlelight. They seemed to penetrate all her outer defences. Finally he said, ‘I want to know if I can trust you.’
She frowned her consternation. ‘Trust me? Trust me with what?’
He smiled. ‘Well, obviously that’s something I’m not going to tell you until I believe I am able to trust you with it.’
She shook her head. ‘And I’m supposed to trust you? Why would I do that?’
He tipped his head in acknowledgement. ‘You wouldn’t. As I wouldn’t if I were you. Trust has to be earned. And neither of us is going to be able to bank sufficient trust until we get to know each other better.’
He rose and lifted their empty plates from the table and disappeared into the kitchen. Georgette felt intimidated by him. Afraid of him. He was so self-possessed. So sure of himself. Leaving her each time floundering in the dark without the least idea of his motivation or his endgame. Knowledge, she knew, was power. And he had that power over her. Which made her determined to learn more about him, to share in the power, and try to find an equal footing in this disquieting relationship.
He returned with medallions of fillet steak in a cream-pepper sauce. It was cooked to perfection. Seared on the outside, pink in the middle, just a little blood marbling the cream. She said, ‘People queue in the street for hours outside butchers’ shops to buy cuts of meat far inferior to this. I bet you didn’t have to stand in line.’
‘No, I didn’t.’ A smile curled his lips but never quite reached his eyes. ‘To the victor the spoils, eh? Enjoy.’
He poured a rich red Côte du Rhone and they ate for some minutes before she spoke again. ‘Where are you from? In Germany, I mean?’
‘Ah.’ He smiled. ‘At last, a little curiosity.’ He took a sip of his wine. ‘I was brought up in the Bavarian city of Augsburg. A small town by German standards. It’s about fifty kilometres west of Munich. But it has a university, and is famous for being the home of the Fugger and Welser families that dominated European banking in the sixteenth century. My own family is descended from the Welsers.’
‘And did you go to university there?’
‘No. I went to Frankfurt to take a degree in art.’ He sighed. ‘It was my ambition to paint, to be an artist myself. But a simple comparison with my fellow students made it painfully clear to me that this was not my forte.’ He paused, remembering Hitler’s words to him at the Berghof. ‘It’s important to know
your own limitations.’
‘So what was your major?’
‘The history of art.’
‘And how did you become a dealer?’
‘Pure chance, really. I got a job at a gallery in Berlin. The curator was a marvellous fellow called Schäfer. Took me under his wing, initially as his assistant. He brought me here to Paris for the first time. We bought and sold in the sales rooms, and it seems he thought I had an eye for it. Because it wasn’t long before I was making these trips on my own. To Paris and London. And then New York. The gallery began to earn itself something of a reputation, and it wasn’t long before I was being approached by private buyers anxious for me to acquire art for their collections.’ He shrugged. ‘On such turns of fate are careers built.’
‘What happened to Herr Schäfer?’
Lange’s face darkened, and for the first time he avoided her eye. ‘Jewish,’ he said, and clearly did not wish to elaborate.
‘There are a lot of Jews in the art world.’
‘Yes. And I have many friends among them.’ Then he corrected himself. ‘Had.’ He gazed thoughtfully at the table, lost in some far-off reverie. ‘In Germany, those who saw it coming fled the country. Those who didn’t, were arrested.’
‘In France, too.’
‘Yes.’
‘Look at me,’ she said. And he lifted his eyes to meet hers, surprised by her strength of tone. ‘These people were your friends, Paul. Your own mentor, for God’s sake! And still you joined the Party that persecutes them, drives them out of their homes, puts them in prison. Murders them.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s an insane world, George. We do what we have to in order to survive in it.’ Then a tiny sad smile lit his face. ‘You called me Paul.’
‘Did I?’
He nodded and pushed away his empty plate as he stood up. ‘Perhaps I should take you home now.’
She sat for a moment, unaccountably disappointed, before standing up and lifting her satchel from the back of the chair where she had hung it. ‘Thank you for dinner,’ she said.