Crossings

by Danielle Steel

  They bantered back and forth with the girls on the way to Grand Central, and they reached it all too quickly. They walked inside to the tracks after Liane bought their tickets. She had thought about staying at a hotel in New York, but it was just as well for them to get back. If she had stayed in town, the temptation would have been too great to see Nick. He put their few belongings in their compartment, and then stood for a moment looking down at Liane as she and the girls looked up at him.

  “Good-bye, Uncle Nick. Come to see us soon.” Elisabeth extended the invitation, echoed by Marie-Ange. They had abandoned “Mr. Burnham” long since on the ship.

  “I will. And you take good care of your mother.” Liane could hear his voice grow hoarse with emotion, and once again she had to fight back tears. But they came anyway as she hugged him and he held her close and whispered softly in her hair. “Take care of yourself, my friend.” And then he backed away slowly, and with a last mute wave, he left them, and hurried on to the platform, brushing away the tears before the girls would see him again. He stood there waving, smiling broadly, as the three of them hung out the window, and then Liane forced the girls back inside as she blew him a kiss and he mouthed I love you, and he stood there for as long as she could see him, and with a terrible gulp of sorrow to stifle a sob, she pulled her head back inside.

  She sat back on the maroon velvet banquette as the girls squabbled over the assorted knobs and lights and levers, and she closed her eyes for a moment, seeing Nick's face before her, and longing with every ounce of her soul to touch him, just once more … for an instant … She saw herself back in the first mate's cabin, in Nick's arms, and felt a pain of loss almost beyond bearing, and then unable to stifle her sobs a moment longer, she said something to the girls and walked out into the hall, closing the door behind her.

  “May I help you, ma'am?” a tall, immaculate, white-coated Negro porter asked her, but she was unable to speak as she shook her head and the tears flowed. “Ma'am?” He was startled by the agony he saw but she only shook her head again.

  “It's all right.” But it wasn't. How could she tell him that in the last two weeks she had left her husband after the fall of Paris, and they had crossed the Atlantic on a freighter in defiance of German U-boats, watched a ship sink, and seen men lying dead in the water all around them, that she had nursed almost two hundred men suffering from wounds and burns … and fallen in love with a man she had just said good-bye to and may never see again … it defied words as she stood there, leaning against the window of the moving train with her heart breaking.

  And in Grand Central Station, Nick walked slowly toward the exit, his head down, his eyes damp, looking as though his best friend had died in his arms that morning. He hailed a cab on the street and went home to find the apartment empty. Mrs. Burnham was in Cape Ann with friends, a new maid told him. And the train to Washington sped on.

  iane and the girls checked into the Shoreham hotel at eight o'clock that night, and she felt as though she hadn't slept for days. They were exhausted and filthy and the girls were weepy. They had all been through too much in the last few weeks, and months before that, and now it was difficult to fathom that they were back in the United States. Everyone looked so happy and unconcerned and normal. There were none of the strained faces one had seen in Paris before the occupation, or the swastikas they had seen flying after the fall, there were no wounded as there had been on the ship. There was none of what had become familiar to them, and which was far from normal. And hour after hour, as Liane lay in bed in her hotel that night, she had to fight not to call Nick in New York, and reverse all the reasonable promises they'd made to each other based on their responsibilities to other people. Suddenly all she wanted was to be in his arms again. And in his bed in New York, Nick had to fight just as hard not to call her in Washington at the Shoreham.

  The next morning, she sent a cable to Armand to tell him they had arrived safely. The story of the Deauville was all over the morning papers, including a photograph of her kissing the cheek of the young Canadian on the stretcher as he left the ship. And in the background she could see Nick, watching her with a look of sorrow as others smiled with tears running down their faces. She felt the same lead weight on her chest again as she stared at the photograph in the paper, and the girls found her suddenly very hard to get along with. So much had changed so quickly for all of them that the girls were whiny, Liane nervous. They had been through so much and suffered so many losses that the backlash from it all was taking its toll, and when she finally decided to call her uncle George in San Francisco, to tell him they were back in the States, Liane almost snapped at him. He made an endless series of tactless remarks about the fall of France, and how the French had literally given Paris to the Germans on a silver platter and deserved what they got as a result. And Liane had to fight not to scream at him.

  “Well, thank God you're back. How long have you been here?”

  “Since yesterday. We came back on a freighter.”

  There was a pregnant silence. “The Deauville?” It was in the San Francisco papers that morning too, but without the picture.

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of crazy fool is your husband to put you on a ship like that? For God's sake, there must have been some other way to get you out of France. Were you part of that rescue at sea?”

  “I was.” Her voice sounded exhausted and defeated. She didn't want to have to defend Armand to him. She didn't want to think, because all she could think about was Nick. “We saved a hundred and ninety men.”

  “I read that. And there was only one woman on board, a nurse with two children.”

  Liane smiled. “Not a nurse exactly, Uncle George, just me, and the girls.”

  “For God's sake …” He spluttered on and asked her when she was coming back to San Francisco, and she said she wasn't. “What?”

  “We came to Washington last night. I'm going to rent a house here.”

  “I won't have it.” After what she had been through, fighting with him was too much.

  “This was our home for five years, we have friends here, the girls like their school.”

  “That's ridiculous. Why didn't Armand send you to me?”

  “Because I told him I wanted to stay here.”

  “Well, if you come to your senses, you're welcome here. A woman alone doesn't belong in a strange city. You could stay with me here at the house. It was your home before Washington ever was. What a lot of nonsense, Liane. I'm surprised you didn't try to go back to London or Vienna.”

  She was not amused by his remarks and spoke in a quiet voice. “I wanted to stay with Armand in Paris.”

  “At least he wasn't foolish enough to let you do that. And I imagine he won't be there long anyway. That fool De Gaulle is already headed for North Africa, and the rest of the government is scattered all over France, from what I hear. I'm surprised Armand is still in Paris. Did he retire?”

  She spoke in a quiet voice. She was not going to tell him that Armand was with Pétain. “No, he didn't.”

  “Well, he'll be on the run like the others, then. You were smart to come home with the girls. How are they?” His voice softened as he asked, and Liane gave him the latest report and then let them speak to their great-uncle, but it was a relief when the conversation ended. She and her uncle had never had anything in common. He in no way resembled her father. He had always disapproved of the way she had lived with her father, sharing his life and his concerns, and being informed of world affairs. He thought it no way to bring up a girl, and disapproved of her as a young woman. “By far, too modern for my taste.” He had made no secret of his disapproval. And he hadn't thought much of Armand when they had met. He thought him much too old for Liane and said so, and when she had married him and moved to Vienna, he had wished her luck and told her she'd need it. And in the ensuing years they had met seldom, and when they did, they found they disagreed on everything, above all, his policies for Crockett Shipping. But at least the firm had continued
to flourish, and although she disagreed with him, she had no complaints on that score. Thanks to Uncle George, business was booming, and one day it would leave her all the more to will to the girls, and that pleased her. But not much else about Uncle George did. He was opinionated, overbearing, old-fashioned, and extremely dull.

  She also called a real estate agent that morning, and arranged to see three furnished houses in Georgetown. She wanted something small and unpretentious, where she could wait out the war in peace with the girls, entertain a few friends from time to time, and lead a quiet life. Gone were the days of grandeur at the French Embassy and other places like it, but she knew she wouldn't miss it.

  She rented the second house she saw and arranged to move in in a week. Then she hired a maid to live with them, a very pleasant elderly black woman who cooked and loved children. She shopped for the girls and herself and they began to look as they once had. She even bought them some new toys, since they had brought none with them. And she was grateful for every single moment of activity and all the arrangements for moving. It helped to distract her from thoughts of Nick, at least for a few minutes at a time, but there were times when she really thought she wouldn't survive it. She kept wondering what he was doing, if he had gone to Boston and gotten John back. Her mind kept drifting back to the ship and it was almost as though that had been the bulk of her lifetime. It was impossible to believe that it had been only thirteen days. Again and again, she had to remind herself that she should not be thinking of Nick, but of Armand.

  She wrote to her husband and told him the address of the new house, and two weeks after they moved there, she got his first letter. It was brief, because he said that he was in a hurry when he wrote it, and half of what he had written had been blacked out by the censors. But at least she knew that he was busy and well, and he hoped that she and the girls were comfortable among their old friends. He asked her to give his best to Eleanor, and she knew that the President was also included in the greeting.

  But all in all, for Liane and the girls it was a long, lonely summer. All of their friends were away from Washington, in Cape Cod and Maine and other places. The Roosevelts were, as always, in Campobello, and it was September before they saw a soul. But long before that, Liane thought she would lose her mind trying to entertain the girls, and keep her mind off Nick. Every day she hoped he'd call, or that she would find a letter despite the vow of silence they'd made. Instead, every few weeks she received one from Armand, in which he told her almost nothing, and most of the letter would be blacked out by the Nazi censors. She felt as though she and the girls were living in a vacuum, and often wondered for how long she could bear it.

  And the world news only made her feel that she had left Europe to come to another planet. Three thousand miles away the war raged on, and here people bought their groceries, and drove their cars, and went to movies, while her husband existed amidst the Nazis in Paris, and the Germans continued to ravage Europe. And on the first page of a Washington paper, was carried the story that Tiffany and Co. in New York, the jewelers, had moved uptown to fifty-seventh street after thirty-four years in their old location. The new building was a marvel, with air conditioning, as they called it, which kept the store cool no matter what the temperature outside. With that item on page one, Liane wondered if the world had gone mad, or she had.

  On the seventeenth of August, Hitler had declared a blockade of British waters, and Armand had phrased it in such a way in his letters, that the censors hadn't touched it. But Liane had heard the news by then anyway. And on August 20, she read in the papers, Churchill had made a deeply moving speech to the House of Commons. Three days later London was bombed and the blitz began, with the shelling of houses and streets and people night by night until Londoners spent more time in bomb shelters than their homes. And by the time Elisabeth and Marie-Ange went back to their old school, the English were attempting to get their children out of London. Houses were falling, with entire families killed every night. Several ships had already left Britain, sending children to Canada for the duration of the war.

  And then finally, in mid-September, Eleanor called her, in her familiar, reedy voice, and Liane almost cried with relief, it was so good to hear her.

  “I was so pleased to get your letter in Campobello, my dear. But what a ghastly crossing you had on the Deauville.” They talked about it for a while, and it only fanned Liane's thoughts of Nick. And she sat alone in the garden for a long time after she hung up, thinking of him, and wondering how he was. She wondered how long she would feel that way, as though she were only half alive, as she pined for him. It had been two months since he had left her on the train in Grand Central Station and still he lived on in her heart. Every article she read, every thought, every letter, every day, seemed somehow to relate back to thoughts of him. It was a private hell she lived in, and she knew that his life had to be much the same. But she did not dare to call him to see how he was. They had promised not to call each other, and she knew she had to be strong. And she was, but she cried more easily than she had in the past, and the girls frequently found her testy. The benevolent maid they'd hired told them that it was because their father was away, and their mother would be happy again once he came home. And the girls agreed that they would all be happier when the war was over.

  Liane had no social life in Washington at all. The people who had invited her so constantly when they were stationed there, no longer knew whether or not to invite her. She was a woman alone, which made it awkward for them, and they promised themselves they would invite her eventually, but as yet no one had. Except, finally, Eleanor, who asked her to a small family dinner in the last week of September. Liane felt relieved when she arrived at the White House in a cab, and saw the familiar portico. She longed for intelligent conversation with someone. And she wanted to hear all the war news from Eleanor. She enjoyed the dinner to no end until Franklin took her aside quietly after dessert and spoke frankly to her.

  “I've heard about Armand, my dear. And I'm very, very sorry.” For a moment her heart almost stopped. What had they heard that she didn't know? Had the Germans ravaged Paris after all? Was Armand dead? Was there a secret communiqué of which she was not aware? She grew deathly pale and the President touched her arm. “I understand now why you left him.”

  “But I didn't leave him … not in that sense. …” She looked at him, confused. “I left because Paris was occupied and he thought we'd be safer here. I would have stayed if he had let me.”

  The President's face went taut. “Do you realize that he's working with Pétain, in collaboration with the Germans?”

  “I … yes … I knew that he was going to stay in Paris with—”

  But Roosevelt cut her off. “Do you understand what that means, Liane? The man is a traitor to France.” He said it like a death knell over Armand, and Liane felt tears sting her eyes. How could she defend him? She could not tell anyone what she knew, not even this man. She could do nothing to clear her husband's name. And she hadn't realized that news of it would reach the States. She looked helplessly at the President.

  “France is occupied, Mr. President. These are not … normal times.” But her voice faltered.

  “Those faithful to France have fled. Some of them are in North Africa now. They're equally aware that the country is occupied, but they are not working for Pétain. Liane, you might as well be married to a Nazi. Can you accept that?”

  “I'm married to a man I love, whom I have been married to for eleven years.” And for whom she had just given up someone she cared for deeply.

  “You are married to a traitor.” And it was clear by the tone of his voice that she was now considered a traitor by association. As long as he had thought she had left Armand for good, then it was all right. But if she insisted on standing by Armand, then she was as guilty as he. It was written all over his face and in the way he said good night to her.

  Eleanor did not call her again, and within a week word was all over Washington that Armand was a tr
aitor to France, and working for Pétain and the Nazis. She was shocked at the gossip that she heard. Two or three troublemakers went out of their way to call and tell her. And she wasn't sure what she was more grief-stricken over, the gossip about Armand being a Nazi, or the news that on October 2, German U-boats sank the Empress of Britain, a British ship carrying a shipload of children to safety in Canada. She felt sick as she remembered the Queen Victoria and the bodies floating in the water a few months before, and now the bodies would be those of innocent children.

  She felt as though she were living a nightmare underwater as she fought against her own depression over events, and her constant sense of loss. Somehow she managed to crawl from one day to the next, waiting for letters from Armand, and fending off phone calls from her uncle George, badgering her to move back to California. It had only taken him a few weeks to hear the gossip that was circulating like wildfire around Washington. There had even been a veiled slur in one of the gossip columns about the shipping heiress who now flew Hitler's flag over her Georgetown house.

  “I always told you the man was a son of a bitch,” George roared into the phone from San Francisco.

  “You don't know what you're talking about, Uncle George.”

  “The hell I don't. You didn't tell me that was why he stayed in Paris.”

  “He is faithful to France.” She was beginning to feel as though she were repeating empty words. Only she and Armand knew the truth. And there was no one she could tell. She wondered if by now Nick had heard it too.

  “My ass he's faithful to France, Liane. The man is a Nazi.”

  “He is not a Nazi. We're being occupied by the Germans.” She sounded as tired as she felt and she was near tears.

  “Thank God ‘we’ are not occupied by anyone. And don't you forget it. You're an American, Liane. And it's goddamn time you came back where you belong. You've been living in international communities for so long that you don't know who the hell you are.”