“Yes. When I came to see you yesterday afternoon. He—he approached me and asked to see my papers.”
Up went Grandmère’s eyebrows again. “Did he? Now that’s interesting. And it was after this little meeting that he invited himself to your dinner party?”
“If you care to put it like that.”
“Von Sternburg.” Grandmère frowned. “Von Sternburg. It does have a familiar ring. I’m quite certain . . . Max von Sternburg . . . a long time ago . . .”
“Perhaps he was one of your lovers,” Daisy said crisply.
“Perhaps,” said Grandmère, just as crisp, “but I don’t think so. I generally remember the names of my lovers, even if I can’t quite picture their faces. Never mind. He’s interested in you, that’s the point. You must let me know immediately if he pays you another visit.”
“Mon Dieu, Grandmère! I’m not going to—you can’t possibly expect me to—”
“You will do what you must, my dear,” said Grandmère. “That’s all any of us can do.”
“I’m a married woman. I have a husband.”
“A husband? My dear Daisy. We speak of Pierre.”
Daisy emptied her glass between her lips. “Yes?”
“Personally, I should drink poison if I were condemned to an entire lifetime of sexual relations with nobody but Pierre Villon. But perhaps you have a stronger constitution.”
“Grandmère!”
“Or else a far greater faith in some eternal reward.” Grandmère waved her hand upward to the trompe l’oeil ceiling, where a pair of leering cherubs lounged against a blue sky fleeced with clouds.
Daisy slammed her glass on the sofa table and jumped to her feet. “I am not you, Grandmère! I’m not my mother! As I have told you a thousand times! I cannot replace the child you lost. I’m sorry, but I can’t. I am just me. I’m Daisy, for better or worse.”
Her grandmother folded her arms and stared up at Daisy from a pair of narrowed eyes. Daisy knew her cheeks were hot, that her eyes blazed, and she didn’t care. This fury, where had it come from? She’d been simmering with it all morning. She’d been simmering ever since—oh, let’s be honest, Daisy, at least be honest inside your own head—ever since Pierre had prodded her awake in the coal-flavored dawn and pulled down her drawers, without any preamble, without even the pretense of a kiss or two, a caress, and stuck his thing inside her, morning-stiff. Because he had drunk so much wine last night, his breath was foul, and Daisy had turned her cheek and tried to breathe in the scent of the pillow instead. The sound of his grunting, the smack of his belly on hers, the creak of the bedframe repelled her so much, she squeezed her eyes shut, and because it was dawn, because she was still half-asleep and living inside some dream or another, God forgive her, God forgive her, she thought of somebody else. Without trying, without summoning him at all, she imagined thick brown hair and clever blue eyes, she imagined lanky shoulders and a smiling mouth, and as she burrowed her nose in the pillow to escape Pierre’s ecstatic puffing, she didn’t smell linen or sweat or laundry soap. She smelled—almost as if it existed—the sultry echo of tobacco smoke, drawn through a pipe. God forgive her.
And now she stood before Grandmère and the guilt flushed in her cheeks and her eyes, and this grandmother of hers, what did she do? She folded her arms and gazed at Daisy and smiled. Not the joyful kind of smile. The smile of a mother cat witnessing her kitten catch its first mouse.
“Now, that’s more like it,” Grandmère said.
Daisy turned and stalked to the window. Outside, a pair of women strolled wearily along rue Cambon, glancing through the windows as if their hearts weren’t in it. They passed a German soldier, who turned to stare after them, and Daisy wondered what he was thinking. Whether he stared because they were pretty and French, or because he suspected them of something, some infraction of the rules.
Behind her, Grandmère’s footsteps made soft noises on the rug. Daisy smelled the familiar perfume, the blend of roses and skin that was her grandmother. She heard her grandmother’s low voice over her shoulder.
“Daisy, listen to me. I received some interesting news this morning.”
“From Monsieur Legrand, perhaps?”
“It seems,” Grandmère said, ignoring the question, “that Berlin wants to remove Monsieur Vallet as head of Jewish Affairs in occupied France and replace him with someone else.”
“With whom?”
“It’s not clear. But I assure you, Daisy, the Germans don’t mean to replace him with someone more lenient.”
Daisy turned her head from the window. Grandmère stood a meter or so away, watching Daisy carefully. “Lenient?” she said. “Monsieur Vallet is hardly lenient.”
“No, he is not. But apparently that’s not enough. Apparently they’re planning something bigger, some great crackdown. They want every Jew out of Paris, every Jew out of France.”
“But where? Where will they keep them all?”
“Them?” said Grandmère. “You mean me, Daisy. Us.”
“Stop. We’re not . . . I mean, you are, we are, technically, but not . . . not . . . nobody knows—”
“They will know. That’s what this is all about, don’t you see? To discover who’s Jewish, to find out who has even a pint or two of Jewish blood and eliminate him.”
“Not eliminate, surely. The camps . . . they go to camps—”
“And what do you think happens in these camps, hmm? What do you think has happened to my dear friend Madame de Rothschild at Ravensbrück? Do you think they’ve been serving her coffee in a silver pot?”
“Of course not.”
“I used to think I could keep us safe. I used to think our rank, at least, would hold them back, so that I could help those who aren’t so fortunate. But poor Elisabeth . . . and she’s a Rothschild. A Rothschild! And she wasn’t even born a Jew, she married into the family, she’s estranged from Philippe. So you see, nobody is safe. We are all rats in a cage, waiting our turn to die.”
Daisy said nothing. She turned back to the window and ran her finger along the crease where the frame met the cool glass. Grandmère’s hand reached out to cover hers.
“Come with me,” said Grandmère.
Daisy allowed herself to be led from the window and across the room. The cognac had found her brain by now. A pleasant numbness dulled away the guilt and the rage, the unsettled nerves. Grandmère stopped before the curio case and reached beneath the cabinet to grope for something or other. Daisy gazed through the glass, the way she used to do as a child. The velvet was now so old and dark, you couldn’t tell which color it once was, sapphire or emerald or burgundy. Nestled inside its folds, the talisman had not recently been polished—by design, Daisy thought, because you didn’t want to draw attention to such a thing these days—and the jewels and the gold and the glass no longer sparkled. Still, it was a beautiful thing. Gazing down on it always gave Daisy a sense of peace.
“Ah!” exclaimed Grandmère. “There you are, little devil. Here. Daisy, give me your hand.”
Obediently Daisy allowed her fingers to be guided underneath the cabinet, where they encountered a small metal bump, almost a hook.
“Lift it upward with your fingernail,” said Grandmère, and Daisy caught the hook with her fingernail and pulled, an awkward, tiny movement that caused a soft click, a tremor of the glass case. “You see? That’s how you open it, my dear. If something should happen to me.”
“Happen to you!”
“You must take the talisman, of course. It belongs to you. You’re the daughter of the Courcelles, the next in line. The heiress. The demoiselle.”
“Oh, Grandmère. You know I don’t believe in any of that. What protection did it give my mother? None at all. She made it through the war and died of the flu.”
Grandmère clicked the glass case closed again. “It doesn’t matter if you believe in it. It doesn’t matter if I do. What matters is that other people believe in the talisman’s powers. What matters is the value of those stones and that se
tting, which amounts to a pretty penny, believe me. You are not to leave this priceless object to the Germans, do you understand me? It belongs to you. It belongs to France.”
Daisy mashed her lips together and regarded Grandmère through her cognac-glazed eyes. Her grandmother stood tall and very straight, at least so straight as her spine would allow. Her eyes flashed passionately. Her white hair resembled the clouds on which the cherubs lounged above her. Oh, that old and papery skin, so thin you could see the blood spidering beneath. When had Grandmère become so old? Daisy felt a wave of compassion. She took Grandmère’s hand to hold between her own, and the lightness of it surprised her, as if someone had filled her grandmother’s bones with air. “Of course, Grandmère,” she said. “I understand.”
“I doubt it,” said Grandmère, “but I suppose that will have to do. In the meantime, my girl, I have an errand for you.”
An errand. How harmless it sounded, how ordinary. Go to the bookshop and ask for Monsieur Legrand. He has a book for me. A book! How simple.
It had begun to rain, suddenly and with conviction, the way it often rains in Paris during the springtime. Daisy usually brought an umbrella with her, but today she’d forgotten—fury has a way of making you forget your umbrella—and she could only turn up the collar of her coat as she trudged past the shops, around the corner of rue Cambon, a quick dart across rue des Capucines, dodging the gathering puddles, and then—just as the rain began to lessen, naturally—rue Volney, and the familiar white lines of the bookshop, the windows, the books stacked alluringly behind the glass. Behind the books, a shadow shaped like a man.
Daisy paused beneath the tattered awning and clutched the collar of her coat. The rain dripped solemnly from her hair. Inside, warm and dry, the man seemed to be leafing through a book. Some customer, no doubt, browsing a possible purchase. Daisy stepped closer. He wore a shirt and a tweed vest but no jacket, and his right hand was so large as to dwarf the back cover. Daisy thought she caught a flash of gold on one finger, the ring finger or else the pinky. As he turned a page and moved the angle of his face, Daisy saw the pipe stuck between his lips, in the corner of his mouth.
Possibly she stood there only a second or two, watching him. But it seemed like longer, it seemed like a lifetime. She couldn’t seem to pull her gaze away. She had this uncanny sensation of familiarity, as if she’d known him for years instead of minutes, as if his presence in her bed that morning hadn’t been a dream at all, hadn’t been her imagination, but was instead reality. As if she hadn’t been married to Pierre all those years, made love with Pierre, shared a home and children with Pierre, but instead with this man. With Monsieur Legrand, whose name was most assuredly not Legrand.
She stared at his nose, his hair that shone in the golden lamplight, and thought, What is your name?
At that instant, he looked up, as if he actually heard the words in her head, this small and dangerous question. He was so quick, she had no time to look away, and for a second their eyes met through the glass, bedraggled Daisy and warm, sturdy Monsieur Legrand. The shock of recognition passed between them. She started toward the door and so did he, so that when she reached for the handle, it was already turning, the door was already opening, and Monsieur Legrand stood right there before her in his tweed vest and his smile. He took his pipe from his mouth. The gold ring flashed on his last finger.
“My dear Madame Villon,” he said. “Come right inside. I believe I’ve found you the perfect book.”
Chapter Ten
Babs
The Hôtel Ritz
Paris, France
April 1964
I awoke the following morning to someone banging a book against my head. Or that’s what it felt like at any rate. At least the pain in my head softened the ache in my heart. I’d been dreaming of Kit. We were in his library at Langford Hall, searching for a particular book, both of us becoming more frantic as we kept pulling the wrong volumes from the shelves, tossing them on the floor.
My eyes popped open, realizing two things at once—I’d left Kit’s copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel at the bar the night before, and someone was knocking on the door. I looked around at my strange and opulent surroundings, suddenly remembering where I was. And why.
I lifted my head from the pillow, immediately wishing I hadn’t. The banging on my head was actually coming from inside my skull, and in a horrendous flash of memory I recalled how much I’d had to drink the night before. And with whom. A particular recollection filled my mind in bright, violent colors. I clenched my eyes as if I could block out the memory, but it was there, too—right behind my eyelids. Good heavens. Had I really said rumpy-pumpy?
The knocking on my door continued and I stared at it in horror. What if it was him? What if he’d returned to take me up on my offer? Surely not. Mr. Bowdoin—Drew—was a gentleman. Although he had admitted he found me attractive. Hadn’t he? I was finding it very hard to sort through my memories because of the competing pounding from both my head and the door.
“Barbara? Are you awake? It’s Precious Dubose.”
An enormous sense of relief coursed through me at the sound of Precious’s voice. And a little bit of disappointment if I were to be completely honest with myself. “Coming!” I shouted, the word thumping about in my head like a cricket ball run amok and ricocheting against the stumps.
I slid from the bed in the darkened room, my foot getting caught in the rumpled bedclothes, propelling me forward onto the thankfully soft carpet. I crawled for a few paces before pulling myself up on the desk chair and making my way to the door. My eyes took a moment to focus as I made several attempts to unlatch the door and pull it open.
Precious Dubose, immaculately dressed, stood on the other side of the door. She leaned in conspiratorially and whispered, “Are you alone?”
It took me a moment to comprehend her meaning. As indignantly as I could, I said, “Of course I’m alone.”
She looked disappointed. “May I come in?”
I stepped aside and watched as she removed a Do Not Disturb sign from the door that Drew must have placed on his way out. Precious held it up for me to see. “When I saw this, I had great hopes that your rendezvous had been a successful one.”
“It wasn’t a rendezvous,” I insisted again, even though she was busily ignoring me by opening my drapes to let in the bright morning sunlight. Although I wasn’t exactly sure it was still morning. I blinked at the mantel clock and saw that it was nearly noon.
“I brought you a cold Co-Cola and some aspirin. Nothing is better when a girl has overindulged.” She set a little basket on the dressing table and with her back to me pulled out two green bottles and a bottle opener.
My mouth felt as if I’d slept with a wool sock thrust inside it and I was desperate for any form of liquid, as long as it didn’t contain alcohol. “Thank you,” I said as I padded toward her on the carpet and she popped off the caps with the opener.
She faced me, her eyes widening as I approached, a look of what could only be described as horror crossing her fine features. She placed the bottles on the desk with a small thump as if she no longer had the strength to hold them, then pressed her hands against her heart. “What in heaven’s name are you wearing? And please tell me your gentleman didn’t see you in it.”
I looked down at my clothing, remembering getting up at some time in the night and pulling off my stained dress then stumbling to the dresser to retrieve something to sleep in. I wore a one-piece sleeper, something usually found in children’s wear, but in a larger size for adults. It was pink flannel with a print of tiny little woolly lambs all over it and a fat wool ball toggle on the zipper. My darling children had pooled their pocket money and bought it for me at John Lewis for the first Mothering Sunday after Kit had died. They said they wanted me to wear it to keep me warm at night in their father’s absence.
I’d been so touched by their thoughtfulness that I wore it often and had brought it with me to Paris to remind me of them and of home. I hadn’t mean
t for it to frighten anyone. “It’s . . . warm,” I said in my defense. “And it was a gift from my children.”
“Do they dislike you?”
I glowered at her as I took my Coca-Cola bottle from the dresser and took a large sip, the bubbles tickling my nose. “Of course not. And there’s nothing wrong with it. It does keep me warm at night.”
“As would the small bonfire we could make using it. Please tell me your gentleman didn’t see it.”
“Of course not. And he’s not my gentleman. He’s a business associate, and his name is Drew Bowdoin.”
“Bowdoin—like the college?”
I stared at her for a moment wondering if I was the only person in the world who didn’t know about Bowdoin College. I shook my head. “Not according to Mr. Bowdoin.”
Her gaze swept over me again and she sighed audibly. “Apparently, we still have a lot of work to do.” She marched across the room to the closet and pulled it open. After some consideration, she took out a bright yellow dress with large white dots that I recalled trying on the previous day. It was another short dress, but not as short as the dress I’d worn the previous evening with the drink stain on the bodice. At least I wouldn’t feel as if I should be wearing trousers with it. But there’d been something else . . .
“It’s got the most adorable cut-out at the top—isn’t it just darling? It’s very clever the way it shows just a wink of your cleavage.” She held it against her chest for a moment, her eyes closed, and smiled. “Beautiful clothes can change your life, believe me.”
I wanted to believe it. That my life could change just by putting on a pretty dress and feeling the sun on bared skin. But I couldn’t. I felt a flicker of annoyance at this woman who’d somehow managed to barge her way into my life without knowing anything about me. “I can’t wear that. It’s too . . . happy.”
She lowered the dress. “And why don’t you feel you should wear clothes that are happy?”
“I’m a widow.”
Instead of replacing the dress in the wardrobe, she began taking it off the hanger. “And your late husband wouldn’t want you to be happy?”
All the Ways We Said Goodbye Page 14