by Janet Tanner
She had looked at him across the table and felt her heart melting. She had passed him the bread felt her hand brush his, and thought it was like the touch of bare electric wires. He did not love her yet, of course, it was too soon by far for that. What they felt for one another was most likely an attraction born of shared danger. Yet her heart was telling her otherwise – that it was far, far more than that.
‘When this is all over, Kathryn,’ he had said, and though he had left it unfinished she felt she knew what he had been saying and hugged the words to her. ‘When this is all over …’
The unexplained promise was to her like a lantern sinning brightly in a dark world. And though it could not eclipse her fear of what might have to be lived through before that time came, what might happen to prevent the promise ever being kept, as well as lighting her world it warmed her and made her brave.
It was several days before they heard of the fate of the two men who had been captured several days of waiting in a state of unimaginable dread, wondering if they had talked. If they had, the cell, if not the entire circuit, would collapse, going down one by one like a set of ninepins, and at the end of the line Paul for certain and possibly Kathryn too. She was under no illusion now; all very well for Paul to say she could pretend to have been taken in by him but she did not think it would cut any ice with von Rheinhardt. He knew she was violently anti-Nazi – she had never troubled to conceal her hatred of him – and worse, she was English-born. Kathryn knew that the only reason she had escaped trouble before now was because she was Charles’ wife and Guillaume’s daughter-in-law. But if Paul was unmasked that would not save her. Nothing would.
And so she waited the tension mounting with every passing day. That first night the intoxication of what had passed between her and Paul had blinded her to it; now, as the first exhilaration faded no matter how she tried to cling to it, the fear began to creep in, cold and debilitating.
Yet if they had talked reason told her, Paul would have been picked up by now, or at least some of the members of the cell would have been.
Three days later Christian risked taking Paul to Périgueux again for a check-up on his wounded arm, and the doctor was able to provide them with some details. Someone in the village, when questioned, had reported seeing the fanner’s truck pass by his cottage soon after the aircraft had been heard overhead; a search of the farm had uncovered the presence of the agent with his incriminating papers, and the discovery of the radio set had turned suspicion into cast-iron certainty. The agent and the fanner had been taken away; nothing had been heard of them since.
‘Can’t we do something for them?’ Kathryn had asked when Paul told her, anguished at the thought of the torture the two men were, in all probability, enduring.
‘There is nothing we can do,’ Paul replied. ‘They are beyond our help. Von Rheinhardt’s HQ is as secure as Fort Knox. All we can hope for is that they have an opportunity to take their own lives before they suffer too much. Anything else would put the rest of the circuit at risk.’
‘Surely it is at risk if we don’t help them?’
‘There’s nothing we can do,’ Paul repeated his voice hard. ‘As for ourselves – we can only sweat it out.’
And so the waiting went on, debilitating and seemingly endless.
The news, when it came, was from von Rheinhardt himself.
He visited the château on the Sunday morning, driving up in his big black staff car. The family had been to church as was their custom and Kathryn, never the most religious of women, though she had converted to Catholicism when she married Charles, had prayed as she had never prayed before.
Von Rheinhardt came into the salon where they were gathered, picking up Guy and swinging him round while he screamed with laughter, and Kathryn longed only to snatch him from the arms of the man she thought of as a monster.
‘Oh, by the way,’ he said casually, putting Guy down at last, ‘ I think we can say the episode of the enemy agent is over.’
‘Why? What has happened?’ Guillaume asked.
‘He killed himself the same night we took him. He must have had a death pill concealed on his person.’
‘And the farmer?’ Christian asked.
‘Unfortunately the guards treated him too roughly. He died before they could persuade him to talk.’
‘So you couldn’t discover if anyone else was involved?’
‘No. Sadly. But if there was anyone else involved I think they will have learned their lesson,’ von Rheinhardt said smoothly. ‘ I don’t think we will have any recurrence of trouble, do you?’
Kathryn’s rush of relief was tempered by a chill of fear. It seemed to her that as he spoke von Rheinhardt was looking directly at her.
Chapter Twelve
SPRING CAME SUDDENLY to Charente. Almost overnight it seemed the small green shoots burgeoned into full growth, the fields were lush and the trees a mass of blossom beneath a sky that was clear and blue. The rivers ran full and deep from the winter rains between banks heavy with bulrushes, and the air began to feel softer and warmer, even after the sun had gone down.
With the passage of the weeks some sort of normality had returned to the château. There had been no more alerts and no more incidents in the village, except for the sudden appearance of anti-Nazi slogans painted overnight on the walls of the bakery. Guillaume had called the youth of the village together and pointed out, with some severity, the error of their ways, the slogans had been painted over and there was only a block of fresh whitewash to show they had ever been there at all.
Unobtrusively Paul had continued to build up his circuit. Known to him and to London by the code name ‘Mariner’ it consisted of five quite separate cells, the leaders of which reported directly to him through Christian, who acted as courier, and who was able to move about the district freely without arousing suspicion.
London had sent a new agent to replace the one captured so disastrously soon after his arrival, and though Paul still blamed himself for the débâcle he tried to put it behind him. In time of war, working in a country occupied by the enemy, these things happened. It was futile to waste time and energy worrying about it. The best one could do was learn from one’s mistakes and move on, and the new agent was a good man, quick, intelligent and slippery as an eel. In peacetime he had been a musician and the fingers that had once deftly plucked guitar strings now transmitted messages to London with the same effortless grace. His code name was Alain; Paul did not actually like him very much but that was neither here nor there. He was good at his job – that was all that mattered.
As for Paul’s arm, that was healing nicely now, thanks to the doctor at Périgueux and also to Kathryn, who had changed the dressings frequently enough to ensure that infection did not set in.
Paul knew he had been lucky. At best the wound could have meant he would have had to ask to be lifted out, at worst any part of the disastrous incident could have cost him his life. But luck, he knew, played a vital part in the success or otherwise of any agent. So far it had been on his side. He only hoped he had not used up whatever portion fate had allocated him, for he was going to need it in abundance soon. He was setting up an operation which would, if it worked, cause the Boche a considerable amount of trouble, but which was going to be difficult and dangerous.
One afternoon in May while Guy was out for a walk with Bridget, Kathryn came to his room as he had asked her to in order to talk about it.
‘I have a job planned and I think it would be best if I went away for a while,’ he told her.
Kathryn did not ask the reason. She knew that as usual Paul was trying to distance the activities of Mariner from the château; should anything go wrong he did not want her involved. His concern warmed her heart but did nothing to make the prospect any easier. Already she knew how it would be when he was gone – the same worrying, the same waiting that she had to live through every time he went out ‘on business’, wondering what he was doing, watching for his return tense with fear that he might, this
time, be caught. And if he intended going away for a while it would be a hundred times worse, for the waiting would go on much longer and she would have no way of knowing if the operation had been a success or even if he had fallen into the hands of the Boche. But she knew better than to argue. Kathryn, who disputed every single decision Charles made, had learned that she must accept Paul’s judgement as final.
‘Where would I say you’d gone?’ she asked.
‘To Bordeaux to visit a colleague I used to teach with. I have everything planned. I’ll take the train out in case anyone is watching, then, when I’m sure I’m not being followed, I’ll make my way back. Don’t worry. I’ll be out of sight – or unrecognisable, anyway. All you have to do is cover for me.’
‘When do you leave?’
‘On Monday, so we should tell the others tonight that I am going. I don’t want it to appear too sudden a decision.’
She nodded Monday was four days away.
‘You will be careful, won’t you?’
‘Of course.’ He was standing by the window. The sun, slanting in between the slats of the blind, was throwing stripes of shadow across his face and white shirt, open at the neck, and accentuating the thin covering of dark hairs on his forearms. Her heart lurched as it so often did when she looked at him, and now, more sharply then ever, her longing was tinged with fear for him.
‘I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you,’ she said huskily, and it was no more than the truth.
She saw his face soften, saw the mask of total implacable control slip a little, revealing the man behind the automaton he sometimes appeared to be. There had been other moments such as this in the weeks that had passed, moments of tenderness and mutual understanding, moments when the closeness between them was so real as to be tangible, moments when their very souls seemed to meet, sparking the depth of feeling that they shared more violently even than the light accidental touches or the quick squeeze of a hand. But there had been no more passionate kisses – by mutual agreement they had been postponed for a future they both knew might never come.
‘I mean it,’ she said. ‘I really couldn’t bear it, Paul.’
‘You would.’ His voice was low, detached. Only his eyes were betraying him. ‘If anything happened to me you would have to be doubly strong, to avoid suspicion falling on the rest of the family.’
She wrapped her arms around herself. Through the thin cotton of her dress her fingers encountered her ribs, prominent as a fisherman’s creel. She had lost a lot of weight recently and knew it was not only due to the fact that good nourishing food was beginning to be in really short supply. Mostly it was because she was living on the edge of her nerves.
‘I don’t know that I could, I really don’t. Sometimes, even now, I don’t know how to go on. The strain seems to get worse all the time. Instead of getting used to it it’s as if each time I’m worried or frightened it goes into a reservoir inside me that’s just getting deeper and deeper.’
His brows farrowed slightly.
‘Kathryn – you’re not going to crack, are you? Because if it is that bad perhaps I should move out permanently.’
‘No!’ she said quickly. ‘ You mustn’t do that.’
‘But if it’s getting to be too much for you it’s the only thing I can do. Everything depends on your keeping up the charade. You know that as well as I do. If your nerves start to show it could be the end – for all of us.’
She breathed deeply, steadying herself. He was right, of course – he always was. But the thought of him going – the certainty of not seeing him any more – was worse even than the constant anxiety.
‘I’ll be all right,’ she said, ‘ I guess I’m tougher than I think I am. I’m just so terribly afraid of what might happen to you.’
‘Come here,’ he said.
She looked at him, starded almost – in spite of the strength of feeling between them, the habit of restraint was so strong it was almost impossible to break.
‘Come here,’ he said again.
The longing to feel his arms around her overcame the self-imposed reserve. She went to him.
He held her gently at first, massaging her shoulders until he felt the tension begin to ease, then, as the awareness began to awaken both their bodies, he pulled her closer. Her hair smelled sweet – he buried his face in it and felt its softness against his cheek; the yielding pressure of her breasts against his chest started a fire within him. He moved his hands over her back, tracing the line of shoulder blades and spine, moving down to her waist, so small he felt that to snap her in two would be easy. Yet there was still a softness to her, a supple curve to her hips that was totally feminine, a warmth and a promise of passion that was making him forget all his good resolutions.
She moved a little in his arms, arching her neck and pressing her body close to his. He kissed her forehead beneath the soft fringe of hair, then her nose and lastly her lips. They were moist, trembling slightly with all the pent-up longing of the past weeks and months.
‘Kathryn,’ he whispered against them, then parted them with his tongue, thrusting into her mouth.
She pressed herself more closely against him, moulding her body and legs to his. His hand moved to her breast, squeezing, caressing, locating the buttons at the neck of her dress and unfastening them to slip his hand inside. Her flesh was slightly moist from the heat of the afternoon, her nipples firm and erect beneath his touch.
He wanted her now with a ferocity that banished all caution; the fire within him making him forget everything but her nearness and his need of her. Gerie, the wife he had adored, his little daughter Beatrice, his hatred of the Nazis, the work he had come to France to do, the mission, dangerous but worthwhile, which faced him, all were relegated to the periphery of his consciousness. Kathryn was the only reality, his fierce longing for her the only thing of importance.
Her tea dress was not belted; he ran his hand on down over her stomach, softly rounded between the jut of her hip bones. In spite of the warmth of the day she was wearing stockings – not to do so at the château would be unthinkable for a lady – and the wisp of suspender belt cut a slight dent into her stomach. He touched her thighs, brushed the soft tuft of hair between them, and began to ease her gently towards the bed.
And then, with a suddeness that shocked, he felt her tense.
‘No!’
He moved his head slightly, looking at her. Her face bad gone shut-in and she appeared to be on the verge of tears.
‘We want one another, Kathryn,’ he said in a low voice.
‘I know, but we mustn’t. We agreed. You know we did.’ She pulled away from him. ‘We agreed!’ she said again, stubbornly repeating herself.
‘OK, so we agreed,’ he said harshly. Frustrated desire was making him angry; he simply could not understand how one moment she could be so eager, so yielding, and the next so cold and unassailable, as if someone had simply tripped a switch and a light bad gone off. ‘It didn’t seem like that a minute ago.’
‘Paul, don’t be like this, please …’
‘I’m not being like anything.’
‘You are. You’re angry. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry …’
He sighed, running a hand through his hair, turning away from her.
‘For God’s sake – you don’t, have to be sorry. It was all my doing. I was the one who broke the rules.’
She buttoned her dress, took a step or two towards him. He could feel her there, feel her outstretched hand with every tiny nerve ending, but he continued to stare out of the window, not because he did not want to look at her or touch her, but because he wanted to – too much.
‘I’ll go,’ she said in a small voice after a moment.
‘Yes – sure. I’ll see you at dinner.’
He heard the door close after her and swore. What the hell had got into him? She was right, of course. They had agreed. But he had wanted her so much that agreement – and any other consideration – had ceased to matter. He had thought
she felt the same way. Obviously she did not. Well, the heck with it. He would do well to put the episode behind him and get back to concentrating on the job in hand.
But he knew it would not be that easy. For the moment the fire might have been doused but beneath the surface it would continue to smoulder.
He wanted Kathryn, wanted her with a ferocity that denied all reason. Nothing could change that.
Kathryn closed the door and stood for a moment leaning against it. She was trembling violently and close to tears. Dear God, how she loved him! It would have been easy, so easy, to let him make love to her. She had wanted it with every fibre of her being, just as she had wanted it every time she had looked at him these past weeks. Caring so much for him and yet unable to express her – feelings by anything more than a look, being so close yet not daring to touch him in anything but the most platonic way, had driven her crazy, so that the love and the longing had intensified way beyond the bearable. And for a few wonderful, exhilarating minutes there in his room everything – anything – had seemed possible.
But of course it was not. Thinking that it could be, even for a moment, was madness, and not only because it would interfere with the job he had to do. That was only a part of it – a small part. Kathryn, with her innate loyalty and well-developed sense of right and wrong, took her marriage vows very seriously. Whatever she might feel for Paul, however desperately she might want him – love him, even – she was Charles’ wife. Perhaps their marriage had become a sham, perhaps Charles was not, and never had been, the man she thought him, but she owed him a duty nonetheless. She had promised faithfulness and it seemed to her that that promise encompassed not only Charles but Guy also. He was her son, Charles was his father. His heritage was here at Savigny; her duty to him by proxy, as it were, of her vows to Charles meant the sanctity of the family unit.
She had, Kathryn thought, already betrayed both of them in her heart over these last weeks and months. She must not do so with her body.