Liane interrupted her at once, she couldn't bear it a moment longer. “I hate Germans! I hate them!” She walked to the door and pulled it open. “And I hate you, for what you allowed to happen to my children.”
“We didn't allow it to happen, Mrs. de Villiers. You did.” Her voice was frigid. “And I'm sure that you and they will be much happier with another school. Good day, Mrs. de Villiers.” Liane slammed the door to the office and walked out into the fall sunshine. When she reached home, the girls were anxious to know what had happened. Marie-Ange immediately came running down the stairs.
“Do I have to go back?”
“No! Now go to your room and leave me alone!” She walked into her bedroom and closed the door and sat down on her bed and cried. Why did it all have to be so goddamn difficult? And a little while later her daughters came in, not to pry, but to comfort their mother. She had got control of herself by then, but her eyes were still red from crying and she was angry at Armand as well as everyone else. He had placed them in an untenable position. She feared for him and she loved him, but she hated him too. Why in God's name couldn't he have come home with them? But it wasn't his home, she knew only too well. France was, and he had stayed there to defend the country he loved, but in a way she could explain to no one.
“Mommy? …” Elisabeth advanced slowly toward the bed and put her arms around her mother.
“Yes, love?”
“We love you.” The declaration brought fresh tears to her eyes as she hugged them.
“I love you too.” She looked at Marie-Ange then. “I'm sorry I shouted at you when I came home. I was just very angry.”
“At us?” Her eldest child looked worried.
“No, at Mrs. Smith. She doesn't understand about Papa.”
“Couldn't you explain it to her?” Elisabeth looked disappointed. She liked her school, even if no one invited her to their houses to play anymore. But she liked going to school, even if Marie-Ange didn't.
Liane shook her head. “No, I couldn't explain it, sweetheart. It's much too complicated to explain to anyone right now.”
“So we don't have to go back?” Marie-Ange hammered the point home.
“No, you don't. I'll have to find you both a new school.”
“In Washington?”
“I don't know.” For the last half hour she had been asking herself the same question. “I'll have to think it out.” The next weekend was Thanksgiving, But that afternoon was the last straw. She saw Elisabeth standing near the hall phone, crying. “What's the matter, love?” She suspected that she missed her friends, if she still had any.
“Nancy Adamson just called to tell me that Mrs. Smith told everyone we had been kicked out of school.”
Liane was horrified. “She said that?” Elisabeth nodded. “But it's not true. I told her …” She rapidly reviewed the conversation in her head, and realized that Mrs. Smith had told her that the children would be happier somewhere else and she had agreed. She sighed and sat down on the floor beside her youngest child. “We agreed that you shouldn't go back. No one kicked you out.”
“Are you sure?”
“I'm positive.”
“Do they hate me?”
“Of course not!” But after what they had done to the girls on Friday, that was a tough one to prove to either child.
“Do they hate Papa?”
Liane considered her words. “No. They don't understand what he's doing.”
“What is he doing?”
“Trying to save France so that we can all go back someday to live.”
“Why?”
“Because that's what Papa does. All his life he has represented France in a lot of different countries. He takes care of France's interests. And that's what he's doing now. He's trying to take care of France so the Germans don't ruin it forever.”
“Then why does everyone say he loves the Germans? Does he?” She was exhausted by the child's questions, but each one needed a thoughtful answer. What she said now would stay with the children for years, and she knew it. They would always remember what she said, and it would color their views about their father and themselves for a lifetime.
“No, Papa doesn't love the Germans.”
“Does he hate them?”
“I don't think Papa hates anyone. But he hates what they're doing to Europe.” Elisabeth nodded slowly. It was what she had needed to hear, and it made her father a good guy.
“Okay.” She stood up then and went slowly upstairs to find her sister. And that night, Liane thought long and hard. She had to do something, and putting them in another Washington school wasn't a solution. She already knew the answer to her own questions, but she hated to do it. She decided to sleep on it one more night, but the next morning, she still had the same answer. She dialed the operator and asked her to place the call. She had waited until noon eastern time to call, which was nine o'clock for him in California. He came to the phone at once, his voice gruff.
“Liane? Is something wrong?”
“No, Uncle George, not really.”
“You sound sick or tired or something.” He was a canny old man. In truth, she was both, but she wouldn't admit it now. She was going home with her tail between her legs and that was bad enough.
“I'm all right.” She decided to get right to the point. “Do you still want us to come out?”
“Of course!” He sounded pleased, and then, “You mean you've finally come to your senses?”
“I guess you could call it that. I want to change the girls’ school, and I thought that as long as I was doing that, we might as well make a big change and come out to California.” He sensed instantly that there were deeper reasons than that. She was far too stubborn to have given in unless she was almost beaten. And she was. More so than he knew.
They made arrangements, Liane all the while holding back tears of anger, but she was grateful that she had somewhere to go. Things could have been a lot worse. There were people all over Europe who were homeless. “Uncle George?”
“Yes, Liane?”
“Thank you for letting us come.”
“Don't be ridiculous, Liane. This is your home too. It always has been.”
“Thank you.” He had made it easy for her and he hadn't mentioned Armand. She went to tell the girls.
Marie-Ange looked at her strangely then. “We're running away, aren't we, Mom?”
It was almost more than she could bear. She felt so drained that she couldn't stand one more question. “No, Marie-Ange”—she spoke to her daughter in a voice that surprised the child—“we're not running away any more than we were when we left Paris. We're doing the right thing, at the right time, in the best way we know how. It may not be what we like, but it's the smartest choice we've got, and that's why we're going to do it.” And with that she told the girls to go out to play. She needed some time to herself. And she stood at her bedroom window, watching them. They had grown up a lot in the last four months, and so had she, more than some people grow up in an entire lifetime.
iane and the girls had a quiet Thanksgiving dinner alone in Washington before they left. It was as though they were living in a town where they were strangers. No one called, no one dropped by, no one invited them to share their turkey dinner. Like millions of others in the nation, they went to church that morning, and came home to carve their turkey, but they might as well have been on a desert island when they did it.
And the next weekend they packed up the things they had bought when they arrived, and Liane put everything on a train to the West Coast. On Monday, they boarded the train, and for just a brief moment, as they sat down in their sleeper, Liane thought of Nick and when she had last seen him at Grand Central Station. It seemed a thousand years ago now, though it had been only four months. But they had been very long months for Liane and the girls. She felt relief as the train pulled slowly out of the station. None of them were sorry to leave Washington. It had been a mistake to come back. Armand had told her to go back to San Francisco, right
from the first, but she couldn't have known then what they knew now, the price they would pay for his association with Pétain and the Vichy government.
The trip across the country was both monotonous and peaceful. The girls played and read, kept each other amused, and sometimes fought, which kept Liane busy. But much of the time she slept. She felt as though she were regaining her strength after almost five agonizing months of tension, not to mention the months of tension before that. In truth, life hadn't been normal for them for over a year. It never had been since they arrived in Paris nearly eighteen months before. And now suddenly she was able to relax and think of absolutely nothing. Only when they stopped in various stations and she read the papers was she reminded of the rest of the world, and their troubles. The British were being bombed day and night, and the streets were apparently filled with rubble. Children were still being evacuated whenever possible, and Churchill had ordered the RAF to bomb Berlin, which only redoubled Hitler's efforts to destroy London.
But all of that was hard to believe as they rolled through the snow-covered fields of Nebraska, and watched the Rockies appear in Colorado. And at last on Thursday morning, they awoke, within hours of San Francisco. They pulled into the city from the south, through the ugliest part of town, and Liane was surprised that it still looked so familiar. Very little had changed since she had come back for the last time after her father's death eight years before.
“Is this it?” Marie-Ange looked shocked. The children had never been to San Francisco. There had been no reason to bring them here. Her father was gone, and Uncle George had passed through the various cities where they had lived over the years.
“Yes.” Liane smiled. “But it's much prettier than this. This isn't a very nice part of town.”
“It sure isn't.”
Uncle George and the chauffeur were waiting for them at the station, and they were escorted to his home in grand style, in a Lincoln Continental. It had just arrived from Detroit and the girls thought it a very luxurious car. She could tell that they were suddenly excited to be here. And George had brought them each a new doll, and when they reached the house on Broadway, Liane was touched to see the trouble he had gone to, to arrange rooms for the girls. They were filled with toys and games, and there were pictures of Walt Disney characters on the walls. And in Liane's old room, waiting for her, there was an enormous vase of flowers. Even though it was the first of December, the weather was balmy, the trees were still green, and there were flowers in the garden.
“The house looks wonderful, Uncle George.” He had made some changes after her father's death, but on the whole the place had actually changed less than she had feared, and everything was well run and well staffed. He had settled down in his old age, abandoning the wild party days of his youth. He had done well by Crockett Shipping too. And in a funny way it was nice to come home. After the painful rejection they'd met in Washington for nearly five months, it was a blessed relief to be here, or so she thought until after dinner. The girls had gone to bed and she was sitting in the library, playing dominoes with George, as she often had with her father.
“Well, Liane. Have you come to your senses yet?”
“About what?” She pretended to concentrate on the game. She was stalling.
“You know what I'm talking about. I mean about that fool you married.”
She raised her eyes to his, with a cold, hard look, which surprised him. “I'm not going to discuss that with you, Uncle George. I hope I make myself perfectly clear.”
“Don't take that tone with me, girl. You made a mistake and you know it.”
“I know nothing of the sort. I've been married for eleven and a half years and I love my husband very much.”
“The man is practically a Nazi. And maybe ‘practically’ is being too kind. Could you really live with him again after knowing that?” She refused to answer. “For God's sake, he's almost six thousand miles away and you belong here. If you filed for divorce now, they would grant it to you under special circumstances. You could even go to Reno and have it over in six weeks. And then you and the girls could start a new life here where you belong.”
“I don't belong here. I'm here because I have nowhere else to go while France is occupied. We belong with Armand, and that's where we'll be as soon as the war ends.”
“I think you're crazy.”
“Then let's not discuss it anymore, Uncle George. There are things about the situation that you don't know.”
“Like what?”
“I'd rather not discuss it.” As usual, her hands were tied. And she didn't thank Armand for that. But she was growing used to living in silence.
“That's crap and you know it. And there's plenty I do know. Like what drove you out of town on a rail—the girls were kicked out of school, no one invited you anywhere, you were a pariah.” Her eyes looked sad as they met his. What he said was true. “At least you had the sense to come here, where you can have a normal, decent life.”
“Not if you go around calling my husband a Nazi.” Her voice was tired and sad. “If you do that, the same thing will happen here, and I can't pull up stakes every five months. If you talk like that, the girls will pay for it just like they did in Washington.” She didn't ask him where he'd gotten his information, he had connections and associates everywhere, and it really didn't matter. What he said was true, but what she was saying now was also.
“What do you expect me to say? That he's a nice guy?”
“You don't have to say anything, if you don't like him. But if you do, mark my words, you'll cry, the way I did, when the girls come home with paint in their hair, and their dresses torn off their backs, with swastikas painted on them.” There were tears in her eyes as she spoke, and he looked at her with fresh compassion.
“They did that to the girls?” She nodded. “Who?”
“Other children in school. Little girls from nice families. And the headmistress said she wouldn't be able to do anything to stop it.”
“I'd have killed her.”
“I would have liked to, but that wouldn't have solved the problem. As she put it, parents talk and children listen, and she happens to be right. So if you talk, Uncle George, so will everyone else, and the girls will end up paying for it.” That she did by now seemed normal. He was pensive for a long moment after she had spoken and he nodded slowly.
“I understand. I don't like it, but I understand.”
“Good.”
He looked at her gently then. “I'm glad you called me.”
“So am I.” She smiled at him. They had never been close, but she was oddly grateful to be with him now. He was giving her shelter at a time when she desperately needed it. And here life seemed so civilized and so far away from the war, one could almost pretend that it wasn't happening. Almost. But not quite. But it seemed blissfully distant.
They chatted on for a little while then, on safer subjects, and at last they went upstairs to their respective rooms, and when Liane went to bed that night, she fell into her old bed and slept as she hadn't in years. “Like the dead,” she told George the next morning. And after he left the house, she made several calls, but not to old friends. She hardly knew anyone here anymore, and he had already arranged a school for the girls. They were going to Miss Burke's and they were starting the following Monday. But there was something else Liane had in mind, and by late that afternoon, she had arranged it.
“You did what?” George asked in consternation.
“I said that I got a job. Is that so shocking?”
“I think so, yes. If you're anxious to do something, why don't you join the Metropolitan Club, or a women's auxiliary or something?”
“Because I want to do something useful. I'm going to work for the Red Cross.”
“For money?”
“No.”
“Thank God.” That would have been too much for him. “I don't know, Liane. You're a strange girl. Why would you want to work? And every day?”
“What do you think I shou
ld do? Sit here and count your ships going by?”
“They're not just my ships, they're yours too, and it wouldn't do you any harm. You look exhausted and you're too thin. Why don't you rest, or play golf or tennis or something?”
“I can do that on the weekends, with the girls.”
“You're a nut, and if you don't watch out, in your old age you'll turn eccentric!” But he was secretly proud of her, as he told a friend at his club the next day. They were playing dominoes at the Pacific Union Club, and he was boasting about Liane over a Scotch and soda.
“She's a hell of a woman, Lou. Intelligent, quiet, poised, she's a lot like my brother in some ways, and smart as a whip. She's had a very rough time in Europe.” He explained that she had been there during the fall of Paris, but heeding Liane's words, he refrained from saying that she'd been married to a man who turned out to be a Nazi.
“Is she married?” His friend looked at him with an interested eye. And George recognized it as an opening. He wanted to help Liane. He had been thinking about it for days, and he knew just how he wanted to do it.
“More or less. She's separated. And I think in a while she'll be going to Reno. She hasn't seen him in six months”—it was true, after all—”and she has no idea when she'll see him again.” That was true too. And then the biggie. “I'd like to introduce her to your son.”
“How old a woman is she?”
“She's thirty-three, and she has two lovely children.”
“So does Lyman.” George's friend won the game and sat back with a smile. “He's thirty-six, thirty-seven in June.” And he was one of the best attorneys in town and handsome as hell, or so George thought. He was from an excellent family, had gone to Cal, was respectable, and lived in San Francisco. He was perfect for her, and if she didn't agree, there were plenty of others like him. “I'll see what I can do,” Lou said.
“Maybe I'll arrange a little dinner.” George spoke to his secretary the next day, and a few days later he made some calls, and that night he told Liane when she got home from the Red Cross. She liked her job and she was in good spirits, and she had gotten a letter from Armand that day, it had been forwarded to her from Washington the day they had left. He sounded well, and didn't appear to be in any immediate danger. For her, it was a constant worry.
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