by Peter May
Reluctantly he said, ‘Do you want to talk about that?’ He had no real desire to rake over the ashes of those events that had led her to this end, but thought that maybe she would. Even if just to apologise.
To his relief she said, ‘Good God, no! We’ve done well thus far in avoiding it. Let’s not spoil things now.’
And silence descended again between them. A difficult silence, reminding them both that it was using up what little time they had left. He had no idea what to say. And in the end resorted to the prosaic. ‘Do you share? A cell, I mean?’
She shook her head, resigned to the fact that the remainder of his visit would be conducted in an exchange of the banal. ‘I have a single cell. They force me to exercise every day and eat their lousy food.’ And then for just a moment she lit up. ‘A Michelin-starred chef came once to do a cookery course with us, and we got to eat the food that he’d taught us how to prepare. What a treat after the pigswill they feed us here. All that was missing was a fine wine.’ She smiled sadly. ‘No doubt you could have suggested something appropriate.’
He returned an equally sad smile.
‘Of course, that was before Covid. I can taste nothing now. Even if you took me to the best restaurant in Paris there would be no pleasure in it.’
More silence. The door behind him would open any moment, and Enzo found himself wishing that his visit would not end this way. That he would not have to go and leave her like this. Even though she had attempted to kill him twice, he felt no hatred for her in his heart. Only the pain of remorse, and a deep hollowing sadness that her life would end so unhappily in this miserable place.
And even though he was expecting it, he was still startled when the door actually opened. The officer who had shown him in stood in the doorway. ‘Time’s up,’ she said.
Charlotte remained seated as he stood. He knew that she didn’t want him to go.
‘See you,’ he said.
‘Will you?’ Her voice was tiny.
He said, ‘I’ll come again.’ Though both of them knew that he wouldn’t.
At the door he glanced back. She remained in her chair, hands clasped in her lap, tears running down her face.
Enzo was numb as he walked back out into the sunshine. If there was any warmth in the air, he could not feel it. Only the chill of the wind that stirred the faded French flag flying over the car park.
He slipped behind the wheel of his car and pulled the door shut, cocooning himself in its silence. A silence in which every movement he made seemed unnaturally loud, his whole world reduced to this tiny space where only he existed. He stared sightlessly through the windscreen at the sixties world of concrete and glass that contained and constrained the woman he had once loved. And maybe still did. In a life of many lows, this was one of his lowest.
He had left his phone in the glove compartment of the car, and an alert from within reminded him now that it was there. It startled him out of his reverie, and he opened the glove box to reclaim it. The home screen revealed several missed calls and a text from Dominique. Ironic, he thought, that it was Dominique who had interrupted his thoughts of Charlotte. He tapped the text icon to bring up the message.
Sophie has been rushed to hospital with pain and bleeding. Come as soon as you can.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The old lady sits in silence. Her eyes closed. And he watches the infinitely slow rise and fall of her chest as she collects her thoughts.
Suddenly she opens her eyes again and turns her head to look at him. A sad little smile animates her face, and she continues with her story . . .
Georgette was in Paris for more than a year, monsieur. To her it felt like a lifetime of incarceration. All through that winter of 1940 into 1941, and then the next. 1941 into 1942. Spring was on the horizon. A change in the air. Gone were the February frosts, and warm air was pushing up from Africa to bring leaves prematurely to the trees of the city’s boulevards.
All that time she had spent buried away in the basement of the Jeu de Paume. Cataloguing incoming art, keeping a secret log for Rose of all outgoing shipments. The Friday evening meals at Lange’s apartment had become both a fixture and a bright spot in her dull routine. A routine that seemed to hold out little hope, if any, of the chance to fulfil the role with which she had been charged by de Gaulle.
From time to time Lange returned to Germany for short periods of leave, and she found that she missed him. Missed his dry sense of humour, the way he poked gentle fun at her. Missed their lively exchanges long into the evening on subjects as diverse as art and politics, philosophy and literature. Missed his cooking, and the sound of his voice when she made him laugh. Missed the way he looked at her with fond, smiling eyes when she told him stories of childhood, of growing up in Bordeaux. His periods of absence seemed interminable, even if only for two or three weeks. Those Friday evenings at his apartment in the Rue de Rivoli were all that kept her sane during these long months spent treading water at the Jeu de Paume.
And yet in all that time, there had never once been a hint of impropriety. No accidental touching of hands, meaningful looks or nearly kisses. Nothing to suggest that he had designs on her in any sexual sense. And although, perhaps, some part of her felt disappointed that he showed no interest in her that way, she had long since stopped feeling threatened by him, or trying to discern some hidden motive for his weekly invitations to dine at his apartment. They were simply two people taking comfort in the predictability of an uncomplicated relationship in an uncertain world.
It was a beautiful early spring day, some time in mid-March, when Georgette heard a commotion from the main gallery upstairs as she was cataloguing a fresh arrival of artworks in the basement. There were raised voices, and footsteps clattering across the parquet, and she hurried up the stairs to see what was going on. Several staff were running out into the gardens, Rose among them. German soldiers who were a fixture at the museum followed curiously in their wake.
Georgette ran the length of the grand gallery, casting her shadow through the wedges of sunshine that fell from arched windows, and out into the Tuileries. She smelled woodsmoke, and the antiseptic perfume of hot turps and burning oil, and saw clouds of dark smoke billowing up into the clear blue of the Paris sky. Several tarp-covered troop carriers were pulled up side by side on the path. Soldiers inside were throwing frames and canvasses out of the trucks. A hushed crowd had gathered around the blaze. A large bonfire that crackled and burned, and threw up sparks with the smoke as soldiers on the ground piled yet more paintings on to the flames.
Georgette elbowed her way to the front of the crowd, and stopped, open-mouthed, as she saw priceless works consigned to the conflagration. Hitler’s ‘degenerate art’. A Picasso that she recognised. Works by Degas, and Manet, and Henri Matisse. Van Gogh. André Derain. It was unthinkable. She wanted to scream at them to stop. But knew it was pointless. Someone somewhere had ordered this vandalism. To prove what? Power? Strength? Stupidity?
To the soldiers carrying out orders, it meant nothing. The burning of refuse. Bits of wood and canvas. But Georgette could see the dismay on the faces of those German officers permanently stationed at the gallery. Mirroring the stricken look on the face of Rose Valland who stood on the far side of the flames. Georgette caught her eye through the smoke and the air that shimmered in the heat of the fire, and each shared the pain of this moment of barbarism.
Among the crowd, but a little apart from it, stood a man she recognised. He wore a black leather flying jacket and a peaked cap embellished with the insignia of the Luftwaffe. It took her a moment to remember him as the officer who had berated her on the steps of the museum during Göring’s visit the day after her arrival in Paris. His face was set, his skin pale. Whether simply a winter pallor or shock at what he witnessed, she couldn’t tell. His eyes flickered in her direction and he saw that she was watching him. She looked quickly away, and when next she dared to steal another
glance, he was gone.
A hammering on the door echoed through Rose’s apartment, and startled Georgette awake. She had been so deeply asleep that it was some moments before she could shake herself free of it and make sense of what it was that had wakened her. She turned on her bedside lamp and sat up, reaching for her watch. It was after two and there was rain pattering against the window in the darkness outside.
She heard Rose’s bedroom door opening and her footsteps in the hall. Something in the small, hurried steps conveyed fear. The banging on the door had not stopped.
Georgette slipped from her bed, pushing her feet into a pair of slippers, and wrapped a towelling robe around herself. The hall light was on as she stepped out of her room, and she saw a dishevelled Rose, tying her dressing gown at the waist as she opened the door.
The landing light threw the long shadows of two men across the hall floor. They each wore three-quarter-length leather coats and wide-brimmed black hats. One of them stepped forward and barked in Rose’s face. ‘Georgette Pignal?’
Rose took a step back in fright and half turned towards Georgette.
Georgette hurried quickly towards the door. ‘That’s me,’ she said.
In bad French the one who had barked at Rose said, ‘You come with us.’
‘Who are you?’ Rose stood her ground defiantly.
‘Geheime Staatspolizei.’
Words that chilled Georgette to the bone. The Gestapo.
‘What do you want with her?’ Rose demanded.
‘None of your business!’ He looked beyond her at Georgette. ‘You come. Now.’
Georgette was gripped by panic, her breath coming in short bursts. ‘If you give me a minute to get changed . . .’ Anything to delay the moment.
‘No need for that.’ He took three quick steps into the hall and grasped her arm. Fingers of steel clamped around soft flesh. She almost fell as he pulled her towards the door. When they reached the landing the second Gestapo officer grabbed her other arm, and between them they half dragged her towards the stairs. Georgette was in tears by now, and threw a panicked backward glance towards Rose who stood helplessly in the doorway, all colour leached from her face.
The room was dark. There were no windows. Georgette sat in a chair at a scarred wooden table stained by blood and tears. A solitary desk lamp, its cable trailing away across the floor, cast a pool of cold harsh light on the wood. Otherwise the room was empty. The night outside was warm, a soft mist lingering on the river. In here the air was cold and fetid and Georgette shivered in her robe and slippers, hugging herself to keep warm.
Neither Gestapo officer had spoken to her on the journey through Paris to the apartment block at eight-four Avenue Foch, an address known to every citizen in the city. An address that inspired fear. An address whose visitors walked upright through the front door and left horizontally via the back. They had marched her up stairs to the sixth floor. Then left her alone, seated at this table which bore witness to all those who had passed through here before her. She faced the door and dreaded the moment it would open again. If she closed her eyes and wished long enough and hard enough it might never happen. And she would waken to find herself in her bedroom at Rose’s apartment realising it had all been a bad dream. But the light on the desk burned red through her eyelids, and no matter how hard she tried, reality closed in all around her, like hands in the dark.
The sound of the door opening crashed through her desperate attempts to wish it all away, and she opened her eyes, temporarily blinded and blinking in the light, to see the figure of a man silhouetted against the illumination of the hallway behind him. He closed the door and was consumed by darkness before stepping up to stand just beyond the circle of light around the table. He held his shiny-peaked Luftwaffe cap in his hand, and his leather jacket hung open. He placed his hat on the tabletop and turned the chair around. He sat, straddling the seat, and arranged his arms on the back of it. Then leaned into the light.
He gazed thoughtfully at her for a very long time. She stared back at him. He had such cold blue eyes, and dark hair so black she suspected it could be dyed. In other circumstances she might have thought him handsome. Ages, perhaps with Lange. And suddenly she remembered his name. Wolff. She heard Lange’s voice on the steps of the Jeu de Paume as clearly as if he were in the room with them. And how ardently she wished that he was. Lay off her, Wolff, it was an accident. Was it a Christian or a surname? She took a gamble, based on Lange’s tone, and tried to keep the tremor from her voice.
‘Why am I here, Herr Wolff?’
He raised a lazy eyebrow in half surprise. ‘So you know my name?’
‘It’s on the lips of every socialite in Paris.’
He frowned and she saw that she had disconcerted him, if only momentarily. ‘No doubt Herr Lange has discussed me with you at length.’
‘Actually, he’s never mentioned you. Not even once.’
‘So how do you know my name?’
‘It’s what he called you when you were so rude to me on the steps of the Jeu de Paume.’
He considered this for some time, pursing his lips and nodding almost imperceptibly. ‘What is your relationship with Paul Lange?’
‘I have no relationship with him.’
‘Yet you spend every Friday evening at his apartment.’
‘Not by choice.’
He canted his head sceptically. ‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘Do you have sex with him?’
‘Of course not!’
It was clear he did not believe her. ‘So what do you talk about during all those long evenings?’
‘He cooks for me. And we talk about art.’
‘How very cosy. You know that he is married.’
It wasn’t a question. But as a statement of fact it struck her with the force of a blow to the midriff. And he saw that he had hit home. Not that Lange had ever told her he wasn’t. The subject had never arisen. And why would it? They were not in a relationship, after all. Still, it felt like something of a betrayal. For more than a year, they had been spending their Friday evenings together in his apartment. Why wouldn’t he have told her?
‘And two children.’ Wolff smirked. ‘Where do you think he goes when he returns to Germany on leave?’
Georgette tried to recover herself. ‘Home, of course. And why wouldn’t he?’
‘So he told you?’
And for some reason she found herself unable to lie about it. ‘The question never came up.’
He smiled again. ‘I bet it didn’t.’ He reached into an inside pocket of his leather jacket and drew out a folded wad of papers which he carefully smoothed out on the table in front of him. Without looking up, he said, ‘Where were you between May and December 1940?’
Fear prickled all across her skin. ‘I was unwell. I spent most of that time recuperating at the home of friends of my parents in the Charente.’
‘Ye-es . . .’ he drawled. ‘So you said in your statement to the occupying authority.’ Now he looked at her very directly. ‘But I have obtained papers from official French records which show that you volunteered for the Armée de Terre in the autumn of 1939, and that in May of 1940 you were given compassionate leave to travel to London following the death of your mother.’
And she knew that she was finished. If Wolff had acquired official French records then she had been caught cold in a lie. It was almost a relief to no longer have to carry on the subterfuge. Still, she was not going to admit to anything. Her eyes flickered towards his cap on the table.
‘You’re not Gestapo,’ she said.
‘Good heavens, no!’ As if he might have taken offence had she suggested it. ‘But I have some influence. And they have their uses.’
‘So what do you want?’
‘I want to know about your relationship with Lange.’
‘I told you. I
have no relationship with him.’
At which he leaned further into the light, an intensity burning behind the cold light of chilling eyes. ‘I don’t think you understand, mademoiselle, just how much trouble you are in.’
The sound of the door slamming open behind him startled Wolff out of the circle of light. He jumped to his feet and spun around. A fine plaster dust from the hole punched in the wall by the door handle billowed into the room.
Even in silhouette, Georgette could see that it was Lange. He wore his greatcoat, and army cap, and seemed enormous, framed as he was in the doorway. He reached for a light switch and a single, overhead lamp washed the room in sudden cold light. One of the Gestapo officers who had brought Georgette to Avenue Foch stood agitating at his back.
‘You cannot come in here, Hauptmann.’
Lange turned slowly to cast him a withering look. ‘I am here on the authority of the Führer himself. If you have a problem with that, then you had better take it up with him.’
He stepped around Wolff, who stood rooted to the spot, and took off his coat to drape over Georgette’s shoulders and raise her gently to her feet. ‘I’m deeply sorry for this,’ he said. ‘Let’s get you home.’
As he guided her towards the door Wolff moved to block their way. The two men were face to face, just inches apart.
‘Get out of my way, Wolff.’ Lange almost spat the words in his face.
Wolff was unflinching. ‘You’ve gone a step too far this time, Lange.’
‘Have I?’
‘Maybe you think a piece of paper from the office of the Führer can keep you safe forever. But you’re wrong.’ He pushed his face even closer. ‘Sooner or later I’ll deal with you.’ And he turned his contempt towards Georgette. ‘Both of you.’
Lange placed a hand squarely on Wolff’s chest and pushed hard enough to make the other man take a backward step. ‘I’m not the pushover I was twenty years ago, Wolff. If you mess with me again you’ll do so at your cost.’