by Susan Lewis
They were strange, the feelings that were running amok through her body. She felt dizzy, disoriented. Outwardly she was calm, but inside the feelings were beating at her heart, drumming at her mind. She must try to understand what they were telling her.
He hadn’t taken her. He hadn’t taken Élise Pascale to Germany, he had gone alone. But didn’t that only make it worse? Because though he had given up his mistress, he had still tried to give her, his wife, to another man. So ending his liaison with Élise had made no difference at all. Still he didn’t want her. And she would rather die than admit she wanted him, even though every fibre of her body was crying out for him.
Hardly knowing what she was doing, she got up from the table and put a shaking hand on Armand’s shoulder.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m truly sorry – for everything.’
‘There’s no need to be,’ he said, rising too and taking her in his arms. ‘I’m just glad I was there for a while to ease your loneliness.’
‘And I yours?’ she said.
‘Oh yes. You certainly did that. But now I feel more lonely when I’m with you than I do when we’re apart.’ He pulled her head from his shoulder and looked into her eyes. ‘Are you ready to admit now that you love him?’
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head.
‘Why?’
‘Because I can’t. Because I can hardly think of him without wanting to scream, or cry, or … I don’t know. I don’t understand the way I feel. We’ve never shared even a moment of affection, yet …’ She looked away. ‘I can’t, Armand. It’s as if there’s something deep inside me, so deep and so powerful that … I don’t know … All I know is that it frightens me and that I’ve got to keep it buried.’
She moved away and went to stand at the window. ‘I knew the day I married him the way I felt about him, but then I thought, after the way he made love to me that night … He was so cruel, so unfeeling, and yet, you’re right, the desire didn’t go away. It’s never gone away. But I’ve tried to bury it, along with the pain. It was the only way I knew how to survive my marriage. He never wanted a wife, he made that plain from the start, and he wanted me to despise him as he despises me – so I did. Then, when I met you, and you were so kind, so gentle and caring … I truly believed that it was you I wanted, you I loved. But I suppose now, looking back, that all I wanted, even then, was that François … That seeing me with another man, he would …’
She shrugged, but there were tears on her cheeks. ‘He didn’t care, though. His only concern was that the child I was carrying was his. And after Louis was born, when I saw the tenderness in his eyes every time he looked at him … Oh, Armand you don’t know how I’ve longed for him to look at me like that. I’m guilty of being jealous of my own son because his father loves him, can you imagine? But I still hate him, Armand. And it’s that hatred that will keep me together, that will stop me from throwing myself at him and begging him to love me. Because that’s what I want to do. I’ve failed in every other way, and now I want to beg him … But I’ll never do it, because if I did I’d end up despising myself as much as he does.’
She sat down then, and buried her face in her hands. ‘He’s a traitor, and a murderer, I know that, so why can’t I make myself believe it? Why can’t I just accept the fact that he doesn’t love me, and get on with my life? It’s as though he has some kind of hold over me, as though he won’t let go of me. But that’s not true! I’m the one who won’t let go – and I must! Yet even as I say all these things, I still don’t know what to do. It’s as if I’m drowning. As if someone has pushed me from dry land and now I’m being submerged by waves I can do nothing to control. But I will control them, Armand. I will! And the only way I can do that is to deny, to ignore, everything that’s happening inside me. So please, Armand, don’t force me into saying something I just can’t allow myself to feel.’
When she had finished there was a long, long silence. The rain had stopped, and the only sounds were of water running from the guttering into the barrels beneath, and the fire crackling in the hearth. She had said a great deal, much more than she had intended, but she could not allow herself to go any further. So many times in the past she had opened herself to receive his love – the day she married him, the day Louis was born, the night of the July ball – and on each of those – and on others too painful to recall – he had pushed her away. She couldn’t let that happen again.
Armand’s voice seemed to come from a great distance as he spoke into the darkness. ‘You’re only making it worse by hiding from it.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ she sighed. ‘But I don’t know any other way. How can I even begin to understand my feelings when they just don’t make sense? But I suppose that trying to tie love to logic is like trying to pin the sun to the moon. Once in a while they will meet, but even then one will always eclipse the other.’
‘You shouldn’t try to make sense of the way you are feeling,’ he said. ‘You should simply accept it. Maybe then you can decide what to do.’
‘Hasn’t he made that decision for me?’
‘Only if you let him.’
She turned in her chair to face him, and her heart contracted as she saw the tears on his cheeks.
‘No, don’t look at me, Claudine,’ he said, hiding his face. ‘I don’t want you to see me like this.’
She started to get up, but he held out his arm to keep her away. ‘Don’t touch me,’ he sobbed. ‘Please, just leave me alone now.’
‘But Armand …’
‘I’ve tried to be strong for you,’ he wept, ‘but I can’t take any more. I can’t listen to any more.’
‘I’m sorry!’ she said. ‘Oh my God, I didn’t think. I …’
‘No, you didn’t, did you?’ he said. ‘Because all you’ve ever thought about is him. Well, I can’t live in his shadow any longer. Find him, wherever he is, and go to him. I don’t want you near me. I can’t stand you looking at me with those accusing eyes, hating me because I’m not him.’
‘I’ve never done that!’ she cried.
‘Oh, but you have. And me, pathetic, used little man that I am …’
‘I’ve never used you!’
‘For Christ’s sake! What do you think you’ve been doing here today? You’ve used me from the start. You admitted as much yourself: you wanted to make him jealous. But it didn’t work, did it? But even then you couldn’t bear to be alone, so you kept coming. But what would have happened if he’d lifted just one finger to call you back to him? You’d have gone! You’d have left me as cruelly as he left you. You’re two of a kind, you and François, Claudine. You deserve one another. But don’t ever forget what happened to Hortense. She paid the price of loving him, and she paid it with her life. Now get your coat, because I’m taking you back to the château for the last time.’
She was dumbfounded, and could only stare at him. At last she got up from the chair and lifted her coat from the bed. ‘Armand,’ she said, as they started out into the forest. ‘Armand, you’re wrong, you know. I did love you. Perhaps not in the way you wanted me to, but I’d never have left you the way you say I would. Armand, I couldn’t bear it if we parted like this.’
‘Oh, you’ll learn to live with it,’ he said bitterly. ‘Just as you’ve learned to live with François’ rejection. You’ll bury it all, as though none of it has happened. And if anyone reminds you of it a few years from now, you’ll shudder with revulsion at the idea that you allowed your husband’s vigneron even to come near you. And where will I be? I’ll be there, tending the vines, looking after your estate and you won’t even be able to bring yourself to speak to me.’
‘That’s not true!’ she cried. ‘I don’t know why you’re saying all these things.’
He drew breath to speak, but she put her hand over his mouth. ‘No, stop! Please, stop it now, before we both say things we’ll only regret later.’
He shoved her hand away. ‘Are you giving me orders, madame?’ he sneered.
‘Arm
and! What’s got into you? Just now you were so …’ She shook her head. ‘I understand that you’re hurting, that it’s all my fault, but I had no idea you were capable of such bitterness.’
He closed his eyes. ‘I’m not,’ he growled, his voice thick with self-disgust. ‘I’m not even capable of that. But I’m trying to give myself something to hold onto.’ Suddenly he clutched her to him and buried his face in her hair. ‘Don’t desert me, Claudine!’ he sobbed. ‘Don’t leave me altogether, because I don’t think I could bear it.’
– 22 –
FRANÇOIS HADN’T REALLY expected Paris to look any different from the last time he’d seen it, but seven months is a long time, and he was relieved, and in some way comforted, to find that the city hadn’t changed. Perhaps there were many more bicycles than he remembered, a result of the petrol rationing no doubt, but otherwise the tree-lined avenues, the pavement cafés, the grey still waters of the Seine, the hurrying people –unmistakably Parisians – were the same.
Inwardly he shuddered as he remembered Warsaw: the smoking ruins, the terrified faces, the jack-booted German soldiers as they looted the debris and beat innocent people half to death. It all came so vividly to his mind that for a moment it was as though it were happening right in front of him. That Paris should suffer in that way was unthinkable. He hoped to God that if it ever came to it, someone would have the foresight to declare her an open city before the Germans razed her glory to ashes.
As he drove past the Tuileries Gardens, heading towards the Champs Elysées, he stole a quick glance at Erich von Pappen who was sitting beside him, his peculiar face turned towards the window. Von Pappen had been at the border to meet him when he drove through at five o’clock that morning in his own black Citröen, which von Liebermann had returned the day before. Thank God von Pappen had brought him a change of clothes, or he might still be wearing the commandant’s uniform the Abwehr had supplied him with before he left. Von Liebermann had insisted he wear it, no doubt to titillate his own perverted sense of humour, as very few members of the Abwehr wore uniform.
Once von Pappen had filled him in on what had been happening while he was away, they had spent most of the journey in silence. As yet neither had mentioned Élise, or François’ family. Now as François swerved to avoid a cyclist on the Place de la Concorde, von Pappen was the first to break the silence.
‘Do you think you’ve gained their trust yet?’
‘Only they know the answer to that, mon ami,’ François replied.
‘Max Helber tells me that they set you a test before you left.’
‘Mmm.’ François’ hooded eyes narrowed, and von Pappen felt rather than saw their virulence.
‘Did you pass?’
‘If you can call torturing two Frenchmen to the brink of death passing, then the answer is yes.’
Von Pappen twitched. ‘Did you know either of them?’ he asked, after a pause.
‘Yes.’ Then abruptly changing the subject, François said, ‘What have you discovered about Halunke?’
‘Not very much, I’m afraid,’ von Pappen confessed. ‘I’ve been through the list you gave me, I’ve even come up with some suggestions of my own as to who might have a grudge against you, but as yet I have nothing conclusive.’
‘Did you check on Hortense de Bourchain’s family?’
‘Yes. They’re all still in Tahiti, with the exception of her brother, Michel. He’s serving with the Seventh Army under General Giraud, and hasn’t taken leave since arriving in France.’
‘When did he arrive?’
‘Early in October. Two months after the attack on Élise.’
‘You’re certain of that?’
‘Absolutely.’
François didn’t bother to ask how von Pappen had got his information; he trusted him implicitly, and had never yet had reason to doubt him. ‘Is Élise up to giving a dinner party?’ he asked.
‘I think so. I think she’ll be glad of something to do. She rarely goes out these days.’
François’ mouth was set in a grim line. ‘How does she look?’ he asked.
‘Better than you might think. Naturally, I haven’t seen her body, though I imagine the scars are as yet barely healed. But her face is good. Her left eye is partially closed, but you have to look closely to notice. She walks with a slight limp.’
‘And her mind?’
‘She still has occasional lapses of memory, forgets what she’s saying or who she’s talking to. The nightmares, as you might expect, are still giving her trouble.’
François nodded. ‘Have you told her I’m coming?’
‘No.’
‘Then I’ll drop you at the avenue Foch now, and you can tell her.’ He leaned across von Pappen and, opening the glove compartment, pulled out a handwritten list of names. ‘I’d like you to arrange for as many as possible of the people on this list to come to dinner tonight.’
‘Your brief?’ von Pappen enquired, his face twitching as he looked down the list.
‘To persuade France not to go to war,’ François answered prosaically. Then drawing up the corner of his mouth in a smile, he glanced at von Pappen and said, ‘An easy enough task, wouldn’t you say, Erich?’
Von Pappen chuckled. He knew precisely what François meant. He would talk about capitulation tonight, of course, but neither he nor the Germans expected him to succeed in this mission – it was widely known in political circles that France and Britain were on the verge of agreeing that neither country should conclude peace separately. And if Winston Churchill had anything to do with it, the British would fight to the bitter end. No, the real reason why von Liebermann had sent François to France now was to discover how many of the country’s politicians and generals were still prepared to listen to a man who – according to rumour, at least – was a traitor.
‘There’s one other thing I’d like you to do, Erich,’ François said as they drove round the Arc de Triomphe and filtered off into the avenue Foch. ‘I’d like you to travel to Lorvoire tomorrow morning and speak to my father. Try not to be seen, the château will be under heavy surveillance now that I’m back in the country, which is why I can’t go myself. Use the bridge at the back and speak first to Corinne. She’ll arrange for my father to see you.’
‘You have a particular message for the Comte?’
‘I just want him to do as I instructed in my letter and disinherit me. It’s the only way I know of preventing the Germans from sending me back into France again. If I’ve been denounced, publicly, as a traitor, then I’ll be worthless as a spy against my own countrymen. It will cause my father a great deal of pain to do this, so you must make certain he knows all the facts. I want you to do this in person, so I can be sure it’s handled properly.’
‘Understood.’
‘And before you go, Erich,’ François said, pulling in to the side of the road outside Élise’s apartment. ‘D’you know if anything’s been done about my other instruction in the letter?’
Von Pappen pursed his lips. ‘You mean, concerning your wife? I’ve heard nothing.’ Then, when it was clear François was going to say no more, ‘You’re going to the Bois de Boulogne now?’
‘Yes.’
‘The staff are expecting you. I shall telephone you there later.’ And slamming the car door, he walked off across the pavement, his hairless head exposed unflinchingly to the wind.
When François arrived at the Lorvoire house in the Bois de Boulogne he found that fires had been lit in the drawing-room and study, and when he went upstairs to his bedroom, there was Gilbert, his valet, pumping the bellows at the hearth. François almost laughed then, as he thought how old Gilbert might have reacted if he had walked into the house wearing his German staff-officer’s uniform. He greeted him fondly, for he had known the old man since he was a child; then he went back downstairs to the study, where he ate the late lunch which had been prepared for him, and looked at the morning’s newspapers.
Afterwards, he went to sit in a chair beside the fire, int
ending to consider how best to approach the task in hand for the evening. But instead, he found that his tired mind was continuously and disturbingly arrested by a sense of impending doom that had been with him from the moment he set foot back in France. The mind very often played tricks when starved of sleep, he knew that, but the sense of foreboding was so strong that he found himself sitting forward in the chair and holding his head in his hands. He wished to God now that he’d killed those two Frenchmen before he left Germany. Never leave your man alive to tell tales, one of the first rules of the game. But von Liebermann had particularly required that they be left alive – and by now would almost certainly have tortured them himself and discovered exactly who they were. And once he knew that, he would understand why François had had no compunction about dealing with his fellow-countrymen in the brutal, merciless manner he had. In other words, torturing two French agents whom he knew for a fact to be working for the Soviets, was going to do nothing to prove his fealty to the Third Reich.
So now the question was, what would von Liebermann do to make his displeasure known? To teach him what a madman he was even to consider deceiving the Abwehr … Which led François to the most pressing question of all: where, and who the hell, was Halunke?
‘I don’t like it, Lucien,’ Claudine sighed. ‘Armand said he thought he saw someone this morning. I know it could have been anyone, but who in their right mind is going to go into the forest with this fog still hanging around? And what does this man want? What is he doing here when he must know that François is in Germany?’
‘Assuming you’re right, and there is someone out there,’ Lucien answered, lighting two cigarettes and handing one to her, ‘then I guess François is the only one who can answer those questions.’
Claudine turned to scan his handsome face. ‘What’s he done, Lucien?’ she said. ‘Do you know? He told me he thought this man had some kind of grudge against him …’
Lucien shook his head. ‘There’s a whole side to my brother that’s as much of a mystery to me as it is to you, Claudine,’ he said. ‘I imagine there are any number of people who think they have cause to hate him.’