by Susan Lewis
He lashed out with his fist, so fast that Claudine didn’t even see it coming. She staggered across the room, fell against a cabinet and struck her head on the corner.
‘How does it feel, madame,’ he said, advancing towards her, eyes glittering and lip trembling, ‘to know that your husband has betrayed you?’ He caught her by the collar and rammed her head against the cabinet again. ‘Does it feel as good as knowing that you have sent an innocent man to his death?’
Tears of pain were streaming through the grime on her cheeks, but she didn’t make a sound as he hit her again, so hard that stars exploded before her eyes.
‘No, you’re not so proud now, are you?’ he jeered, letting her go and slapping her to the floor. His boot smashed into her thigh, then he grabbed her hair and jerked her to her knees.
‘You know what you’re going to do now, don’t you?’ he growled, and slammed his fist into her face.
Blood spurted from her nose and mouth, but as she made to cover them he caught her hair again and yanked back her head.
Oh God, let me die, let me die now, she prayed, squeezing her eyes shut against the searing pain. He slapped her again and again, harder and harder, until she started to gag on her own blood.
At last he let her go. She fell back to the floor, blood and saliva trickling from her mouth, her head rolling from side to side as she moaned softly at the terrible pain in her head. It was nothing compared to the pain and confusion in her heart, but still she wouldn’t let go, still she wouldn’t allow herself to believe that François had betrayed her, or that she had sent Armand to his death. ‘Lying,’ she mumbled through her swollen lips. ‘You’re lying.’
Blomberg seemed not to hear as he loomed over her, unbuckling his belt. ‘Take off your trousers,’ he snarled. ‘Take them off!’ And when she made no move and her eyes stayed closed, he whipped his belt from its loops and smashed his foot into her again.
She dragged her eyelids apart and watched as his hand reached inside his trousers. As he pulled out his penis her mouth flooded with bile.
‘Do as I say!’ he roared, and the belt slashed across her thighs.
Her fingers moved to her waist, but before she could get the first button undone the buckle smashed into her hands.
She screamed, which only seemed to excite him more. ‘Get on with it!’ he panted, and lifted his hand to strike again.
She cowered away, curling herself into a ball, and as his hand came down again and again, flogging her mercilessly with the belt, she willed herself to pass out. But she remained conscious, choking as she felt his hands fumbling with her trousers and breathed the nauseating stench of his sweat. She heard the fabric rip as he lost patience and tore her trousers open. Using his foot, he pushed her over and dragged them to her knees. The belt whistled through the air as he brought the buckle down on her naked buttocks.
He raised his arm again and again, so aroused now that he was on the point of ejaculating. He circled his penis with his other hand and frenziedly jerked it back and forth. Her white flesh quivered beneath the strap, and huge red weals striped her buttocks and thighs. Feeling the semen start to leap from his body, he triumphantly raised his arm again. He heard a noise behind him, but he was too far gone now to care. He jerked the belt for one last savage assault, saliva dribbling from his mouth. Then an unholy scream erupted from his lips as his arm was wrenched over his shoulder, and with a sickening crunch the bone was snapped clean from the joint. Then a fist smashed into his face. He flew across the room and sprawled in a heap on the floor.
For a moment François stared down at him. Then, slapping down on the floor beside him the order von Liebermann had issued for Claudine’s release, he turned to his wife.
With the utmost gentleness he covered her nudity. Then he lifted her carefully into his arms, and without uttering a word to any of the officers who had followed him, carried her from the château. He put her into the jeep, smoothed the blood-sodden hair from her face and closed the door. Then getting in beside her, he started the engine and drove away.
Claudine was barely conscious. She felt as if she was inside a dream. Sometimes she could not seem to understand what was happening. They passed a river, the evening sunlight dancing on the water, and French people and German soldiers walking together along the embankment. Surely that was the bridge at Chinon? What was happening to her? But behind the confusion, and the terrible pain of her bruised and bleeding body, there was a sense that she was safe. And though she could barely manage to turn her battered head to look at him, she knew he was there beside her. François.
Only one thing she said before they reached the château. ‘Have I been released?’ she croaked. ‘Are we going home?’
‘Yes,’ François said. ‘Yes. We’re going home.’
He carried her from the jeep and up the steps. She was dimly aware of people in the hall – Solange, Tante Céline, Jean-Paul – of shocked faces, cries of alarm. And then of everyone receding, and François carrying her up the stairs to their apartment.
She shut her eyes then, and tears of exhaustion started to seep from under her lids. She felt him lay her down on the sofa, and heard him close the door behind them. Then she opened her eyes. He was standing beside her, looking down at her.
She heard herself say, her voice so constricted with misery that the words were barely audible, ‘Did you spend the night with Élise before you went to Vichy?’
He only looked at her, but there was such love and passion in his eyes that she could not bear it. ‘Oh, François!’ she choked. ‘François. François.’ And suddenly he was on his knees beside her, and she was in his arms, and he was saying, ‘It’s all right now, my darling. ‘It’s all right now.’
‘I thought you loved me,’ she said, her face buried in his neck. ‘I thought it was over, you and Élise … Tell me it’s not true … Tell me you don’t love her …’
‘Sssh,’ he said gently, sliding his hand under her hair and stroking her neck. ‘Sssh. I love you, Claudine. I love you with all my heart.’
She clung to him then, and cried as he had never known her cry before. He held her tight, feeling the tortured sobs shudder through her body and into his. And Claudine felt the warmth and strength of his body draw out her fear, as if he was telling her to let it go, to let him take it, and just to let him love her.
But she couldn’t. Armand. Armand. Armand. His name echoed round her head as if it was blasting from the guns that had shot him. But it couldn’t be true, what Blomberg had said. It couldn’t. She concentrated on François, pressing herself to him, pushing her face into his neck and choking his name.
At last she grew a little calmer, and taking her ravaged face between his hands, François said, ‘We have to talk, chérie. I have a great deal to tell you. But I don’t think you are up to it now. Let me …’
She was shaking her head. ‘No, François. I don’t want to wait. I have to know … about you and Élise, I have to know now.’
He looked hard into her grimy, battered face. ‘All right,’ he said at last, and sitting beside her on the sofa he told her about Halunke’s attack on Élise, how damaged Élise’s mind had become as a result, and the terrible burden of responsibility it had laid upon him. All the more terrible now, because he knew that it had been carried out by his own brother – but he wasn’t going to tell Claudine that part of it yet.
‘So that’s why I lied to you about the time I was expected in Vichy,’ he said. ‘She needs me to spend time with her whenever I can, and I simply can’t refuse it, not after all she’s suffered. And because of the way she so often claims that she’s arranged to have you killed, neither Béatrice nor I took any notice of her warning.’
He was holding her hand, and watching her. When finally she looked up at him, her eyes were swimming with tears, tears that he knew were for Élise. ‘Why didn’t you tell me all this before?’ she said huskily.
He sighed deeply. ‘I don’t know. I suppose I was afraid you would want to see her, th
at you’d want to try and help her in some way, and I had to keep you away from her.’
Claudine smiled briefly. ‘You’re right,’ she said, ‘I would have wanted to help her. I still do. But if you forbid it I won’t argue. I won’t ever disobey you again.’
François couldn’t help smiling at that. ‘I know you don’t believe me,’ she said solemnly, ‘but if I’d done as you told me before, if I hadn’t gone out after curfew, none of this would have happened.’
‘It would,’ he said. ‘Maybe not in quite the same way, but it would have happened. It was all arranged by Halunke.’
Claudine’s heart lurched. ‘François, there’s something I have to tell you – about Halunke,’ she said. She could feel the hammer of dread start up in her head again, but she pressed on, telling him everything, from the day she had first suspected Armand, to Estelle’s murder, right through to the moment the guns had fired outside her cell. Yet all the time she was speaking, she could hear Blomberg’s voice. ‘I am sure it must have already occurred to you, madame, that you may have made a terrible mistake there too.’
‘But I didn’t see a thing,’ she finished. ‘And I think, no I know, that it was all a sham right from the minute they started torturing him. It was, I know it was,’ she cried, her voice beginning to shrill as François’ expressionless eyes stared into hers. ‘Why else wouldn’t they let me see him? Why else wouldn’t they let me see the body? It was a trick, François, don’t you see? They wanted me to think … François! Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘I’m sorry, chérie,’ he said sadly.
Panic threatened to engulf her. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ she breathed. ‘Armand is dead.’
Slowly, François nodded.
‘Oh my God!’ she spluttered. ‘No! François, you’re wrong! Don’t you see, everything I told you, everything …’
‘Chérie, Lucien escaped from the Château St Hilaire where they were holding you. He escaped the morning after you were all arrested. In other words, they let him go.’
‘No!’ She buried her face in her hands, wishing this nightmare would end.
François rose, and pulled her gently to her feet so that she stood facing him. ‘You must be strong, chérie’ he said, taking her hands in his. ‘You must listen to what I tell you now, and you must be strong.’
Her tormented eyes gazed up into his as, sparing her the details of his degradation, he told her everything Max Helber had told him the previous day. ‘And when I returned to the château last night,’ he finished, digging his hand into his inside pocket, ‘this was waiting for me.’
He passed her the note, and her fingers started to shake uncontrollably as she unfolded it. She looked down, and as Armand’s name danced before her eyes it was as though the hands of death had closed around her heart. ‘No,’ she whispered brokenly. ‘François … Oh my God, what have I done?’
She slumped forward against him, and for a moment he thought she had fainted, but then she straightened herself and looked at him. And it was only then, when she saw the anguish and bewilderment in his eyes, that she realized what all this meant to him. She was stunned by her selfishness. She had thought no further than her own guilt and grief, but what must he be feeling, knowing that his own brother…?
‘Did Helber tell you why?’ she said.
‘Apparently Lucien himself will tell me, when he is ready.’
A silence fell between them, and Claudine shivered. ‘Does that mean…?’
‘Oh yes,’ said François. He looked away, and for a moment he could not speak. ‘Oh yes, I’m afraid Halunke is still intent on his revenge, my darling.’ He looked back at her, and in the fading light she could see how he was suffering. ‘I want to kiss you,’ he said, forcing himself to smile, ‘but your mouth looks too painful.’
She touched her fingers to her swollen lips, then pressed them to his. But it wasn’t enough, so she took him in her arms and kissed him.
When finally she let him go, the cuts on her mouth had reopened and he dabbed at them gently, saying, ‘For the first time in my life, Claudine, I know what it is to need someone. And I need you, my darling. I need and love you so much that if anything were to happen to you I know I couldn’t go on living.’
‘Nothing’s going to happen to me, François,’ she whispered. ‘Not now.’
He gave her a bath then, dispensing with Magaly’s services and undressing her himself. Now that she was in the sanctuary of her own home, her exhaustion had finally caught up with her, her head lolled against his shoulder and her arm hung limply in the air as he carried her into the bathroom. But she was still fighting it, he could see her eyelids fluttering as she struggled to keep them apart. What strength and resilience she had. Her head was painfully cut and bruised, and there were terrible weals on her buttocks and her hands where Blomberg’s belt had caught her – but she had not once complained. He must get Lebrun to her in the morning …
He wondered about the internal wounds. It would be a long, long time before she came to terms with Armand’s death – sometimes, scars like those never healed. He’d already decided that it would be better if she never told Liliane what she had believed, just as he would never tell his mother about Lucien. Of course Solange already knew that Lucien was being hunted for Estelle’s murder, but she was convinced the gendarmes had made a mistake. However, if Lucien were caught … Well, that was a bridge they would have to cross when they came to it.
‘I got Magaly to put some salt in it,’ he said, lowering her gently into the bath. ‘It’ll help those wounds to heal.’
Claudine looked up at him. She felt her heart might almost dissolve with love, just as her body felt as if it was dissolving in the healing warmth of the water. ‘Have I ever told you,’ she said, ‘how much I love you?’
François smiled. ‘Several times,’ he said. ‘But I don’t mind hearing it again.’
Claudine didn’t wake the next morning until nearly eleven, and she made sure that the very first thing that happened – even before Magaly brought in her breakfast – was a visit from Louis.
It almost broke her heart to see how solemn-faced he was when he came in to her. He was used to a Papa who came and went, but not a Maman – and Maman had been gone for almost a week, and he had felt how frightened everyone in the house was; and he had been frightened too, but had known he must not show it because he was a big boy now, and a de Lorvoire. All this Claudine read in his face, and as she lifted him onto the bed and held his small body close to hers, it was all she could do not to cry.
‘I don’t like it when you go away, Maman,’ he said, looking her straight in the eye, ‘so please don’t do it any more.’
‘Oh no, I won’t, my darling, I promise you I won’t,’ she said, kissing him.
He looked at her consideringly. ‘You’re allowed to make my face wet this time,’ he said, ‘because you’ve got a bad bruise and I expect it hurts. But you’re not to do it again.’
When Louis had gone, François came in with her breakfast tray and sat with her while she ate. When she had finished she leaned back against the pillows and sighed.
‘Feeling better?’ François asked, one eyebrow raised.
‘Mm,’ she answered. ‘Real coffee. I’d almost forgotten what it tasted like. Where on earth did it come from?’
‘It’s some Solange has been saving for a rainy day.’ He smiled. ‘She’s longing to see you, of course, and so is Céline. Do you feel strong enough?’
‘Almost!’ she said. ‘And I want to see Monique, too. Is she here?’
‘Ah, Monique!’ François said with a smile. ‘Yes, she’s been released, and now she’s at Rivau.’
‘Rivau?’ Claudine was mystified. ‘Why Rivau?’
‘Because Rivau,’ François said, ‘is where Jack Bingham is. He’s been moved to safety to an old tower there and Monique’s keeping house for him.’
‘But …’
‘And before you say any more, it appears that Jack Bingham’s wi
fe died three years ago, and Bingham himself is improving every day, and Monique is very happy.’
Claudine was stunned. ‘I feel as if I’ve been away a year, not a week!’ She thought about it for a moment, then her smile faded, and her eyes met François’. ‘You haven’t told me anything about yourself yet, chéri,’ she said. ‘What happened in Vichy? Why did von Liebermann want to see you?’
François’ face was suddenly expressionless. ‘I and four others,’ he told her, ‘one of whom is Blomberg, are to oversee the rounding up of Jews from this area for transportation to an internment camp at Beaune-la-Rolande.’
She groaned inwardly. How much more could he take? ‘But do you have to do it, François?’ she said, ‘now that you know who Halunke is?’
‘If I don’t, von Liebermann will ally himself with Lucien again.’ He paused, then said quietly, ‘But there may be a way round it.’
She waited.
‘You remember Bertrand Raffault, at the Manoir de Pontoise? Where we spent the first night of our honeymoon?’
‘I remember,’ she said dryly.
‘I found out some time ago that he spends half his time working with the Resistance in Paris, and the other half in Poitiers smuggling pilots and agents through to the Free Zone. The trains carrying the Jews from Touraine will have to pass near Paris on their way to the internment camp, and if I can get a message through to Bertrand, he and his group may be able to ambush them.’
Claudine thought of the Jews she knew, of Gertrude Reinberg, little Janette and Robert. ‘Isn’t there anything else we can do to help them?’ she said. ‘Can’t we get a message through to the British?’
‘They already know. Jews are Jews, Claudine, and the British, French, Americans, Russians, all of them will save their own skins before they do anything to help the Jews. And even then …’