The Heart of the Ritz

by Luke Devenish

  Polly was dismayed.

  ‘She is not his aunt,’ said Zita.

  Alexandrine didn’t move – and Zita didn’t look at her. ‘Take it from me,’ she went on, ‘I’ve loved Blanche since the old days when she hung around film sets giving stagehands the pox. That blond young man who is sort of Hungarian is her lover. She’s notorious for her cradle-snatching. When Auzello wakes up to it, she’ll be out on her fanny.’

  This was a shock to Polly. Yet Alexandrine almost seemed to relax. Polly deciphered what she imagined was the truth: Zita believed the gossip, Alexandrine did not. Polly quietly decided then that she didn’t believe it either. She looked to Suzette, perched on her cushions in the front.

  The old woman had heard everything, of course. Her grim mouth was twisted with the words she, too, was stopping herself from saying.

  5

  11 June 1940

  The dreadful scenes made Polly think of what it must have been like to have lived ignorantly, if uneasily, in ancient Pompeii. Having somehow got used to the threat from Vesuvius, each Pompeiian must have reached a point in those final days when the rumblings became unbearable, and then terrifying, which is when they finally fled. The unknown hazards of the open road would have seemed preferable to the horrors of staying at home. Each person on the narrow, poplar-lined road that Polly and her companions now found themselves travelling on, deep in the French countryside on such a clear-skied, warm summer’s day, had fled in terror of a different kind of Vesuvius. Instead of lava and pumice stone, they were running from Germans.

  Most of those fleeing were women, children and the elderly. The men were in the army. Schools had been closed and exams had been postponed. Polly had observed that it wasn’t just French refugees congesting the roads but desperate families from as far afield as Belgium and Holland. Some of those who fled used private cars. Others had taken to bicycles, or simply walked, sometimes pushing wheelbarrows or prams in front of them, cradling aged relatives as if they were babies.

  Polly and her guardians were luckier than many. They had a car. And thanks to Suzette’s considerable foresight, they also had spare gasoline. Unlike so many of the other vehicles with which they shared this nightmare journey, however, they did not have a mattress roped to the roof.

  ‘Perhaps we should try to find one from somewhere?’ Alexandrine was saying.

  ‘From where?’ said Zita.

  Alexandrine looked out the window on her side. ‘Perhaps from a farmhouse?’

  ‘We’re not stopping,’ said Suzette, perched on her cushions in the driver’s seat.

  ‘But people seem to think they’re essential.’ Alexandrine looked hopefully at the mattress tied to the roof of the car in front of them. ‘Perhaps we could offer to buy that one?’

  ‘Sleep sitting up if you’re so fucking weary,’ said Suzette, ‘although how you might be wearier than me I don’t know, Madame.’ She flexed and cracked her swollen knuckles at the steering wheel.

  Polly stirred from a doze. ‘They’re not for sleeping on,’ she said, yawning, ‘although that would be rather nice.’ The pace of advancement was so slow that the Mercedes was travelling no faster than those walking, and she had heard the mattresses explained by someone alongside the car window.

  ‘What else is a mattress for then?’ said Zita.

  Suzette was droll. ‘That such a question should come from your lips. What sort of prostitute are you?’

  ‘Shut up, you old prune.’

  ‘They’re for protection from the bombs,’ said Polly.

  This silenced them.

  After a while, Zita said, ‘I don’t know if a mattress would do much good if it comes to that then . . .’

  Polly didn’t think one would either and they let the subject of mattresses drop.

  Thanks to the forced confines of the journey, Polly had become privy to some marvellous details of her guardians’ lives.

  ‘Tell me the story again,’ Polly said, prodding Alexandrine.

  The Comtesse groaned.

  ‘Go on. I love hearing it,’ Polly pressed. Of the guardian aunts, it was Alexandrine who came from the most ‘establishment’ of circumstances, Polly had discovered. ‘You were born Alexandrine de Pelletier,’ she started her off, ‘the only daughter of Catholic aristocrats from the Burgundy region.’

  Alexandrine fluttered her eyes to Zita, making a pantomime of indulging Polly in such inquisition, even though she enjoyed it.

  ‘Your ancestors include a mistress of Louis XIV, a cardinal, and a general who served Napoleon,’ Polly went on. ‘And your beautiful mother, when still a ringleted girl, was the subject of the celebrated portrait by Renoir.’

  ‘Should have tossed it in the Seine . . .’ Suzette muttered from the driver’s seat.

  ‘Hush, you,’ said Zita, who was happy to share tales.

  ‘And you fell in love at fourteen,’ said Polly. ‘Tell me about that again.’

  ‘I thought I’d spoken of it rather expansively as it is.’

  ‘I want to hear it all again. I love the way you tell it.’

  ‘As you wish,’ Alexandrine acquiesced. She shifted her position in the big back seat and began. ‘His name was Philippe, the sweet-faced second son of a Burgundian Vicomte. He came with no title, but he would have made a kind husband.’

  ‘And why didn’t your families encourage the match? You were of the same class.’

  ‘Her family were broke!’ Zita cackled. ‘Happens to the very best of ’em, puss. That’s how they get to be the worst.’

  ‘My prospects were constrained,’ said Alexandrine, with dignity.

  ‘And what happened when you turned sixteen?’ Polly asked. ‘My age?’

  ‘With her poor heart broken by what could never be with the Vicomte’s boy, Alexandrine was “sold” into a profitable marriage, weren’t you, puss?’ teased Zita. ‘Profitable for the de Pelletiers.’

  ‘Who was your “buyer”?’ Polly prompted Alexandrine.

  ‘Unexpectedly perhaps,’ said Alexandrine, ‘he was no Bluebeard, darling. And Eduarde was the heir to a title – his late father was then still the Comte Ducru-Batailley – and with this came an absolutely splendid fortune.’

  ‘Was he nice looking?’ Polly wondered.

  Alexandrine seemed to let the image of Eduarde fill her mind. ‘He was darkly handsome, yes, and very dashing, too. He was – and still is – an exceptional equestrian.’

  ‘You should see him riding on his steed,’ said Zita. ‘Make a girl’s heart flutter.’ She sighed. ‘But then he was also a Jew.’

  Suzette pressed her fist to the car horn for no apparent reason.

  ‘You say that like it’s something awkward,’ said Polly to Zita, as they blocked their ears.

  Zita regarded her dryly. ‘Don’t be naïve, puss.’

  ‘I am naïve,’ said Polly, ‘as you like to remind me.’

  Zita looked at Alexandrine to furnish the details.

  The Comtesse inspected her nails. ‘My husband’s family are Jewish in the way that the Rothschilds are Jewish – or the Ephrussi family. Or the Camondos.’

  ‘You mean – famous?’ Polly wondered, slightly at sea.

  ‘Famous for being rich, maybe,’ said Zita.

  ‘The Ducru-Batailley family’s Jewish faith was something from a century ago,’ said Alexandrine, ‘when they’d been given their title by King Louis Philippe.’

  ‘Bought their title, don’t you mean?’ said Zita.

  Alexandrine gave her a chilly look. ‘You were there were you, darling?’

  Zita laughed. ‘The Jewish thing’s as good as forgotten now, puss, stop banging on about it.’ She looked at her own nails. ‘Practically forgotten, anyway.’

  ‘I didn’t know Catholics could marry Jews?’ Polly asked Alexandrine.

  Alexandrine made light of this. ‘I was expected to convert to Judaism first, darling.’

  ‘Which you did?’

  She was vague. ‘In that regard, rather more effective than
the boring old rabbi were the jewels and the haute couture that accompanied the process. All those Hebrew words he muttered at the Synagogue de la Victoire were quite meaningless to me, darling, and very soon forgotten, I promise you.’ She looked at Zita. ‘I certainly never went inside there again.’

  Zita shrugged.

  Yet Polly was left with the distinct impression she’d been privy to a face-saving line that Alexandrine had used before. Was it easier, she wondered, for Alexandrine to let others believe the conversion meant nothing, than let them discover that the opposite might be true?

  ‘Did you love Eduarde?’ Polly asked.

  ‘Darling, your questions!’

  ‘I’m sorry, was that rude?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t, puss,’ said Zita.

  Alexandrine gave Zita a narrow look but answered Polly. ‘I did love him. It wasn’t very difficult.’

  ‘Did Eduarde love you?’

  Zita chuckled. ‘You’re learning all the right stuff to ask fast.’

  ‘I’m sorry, was that rude, too?’

  ‘No,’ said Alexandrine, ‘it was very sensible. Of course, that is the very question you would want to know, and the answer is: he said that he loved me. Passionately.’ She touched the back of her hair. ‘But then he also said that to his mistress.’

  Polly was somewhat shocked.

  ‘Ah,’ said Zita, appreciating this reaction. ‘Now she’s getting the full picture.’

  Alexandrine gave Polly a teacherly smile. ‘Men are intemperate creatures, darling. The sooner you emulate them in all that you do – just as we have – then the happier you become in your independence.’ She looked at Zita. ‘What a good lesson for today.’

  Polly thought of her own resolve to stay above male disregard. ‘Are you saying you have no need for men?’

  ‘No one’s saying that,’ said Zita. ‘But what Alexandrine is saying, well, it’ll make more sense to you in good time, puss.’

  Polly found that it was making sense already.

  ‘Let me summarise everything else that you need to know about my husband and I,’ said Alexandrine, bringing this part of the conversation to an end. ‘He was compulsively promiscuous, a shameless womaniser who freely admitted as much when I asked him. And I wished I hadn’t asked him. By the time I knew the extent of his unfaithfulness I was pregnant – and taking far too many pills to get to sleep at night because of him.’

  ‘You have a child?’ Polly asked. ‘I didn’t know.’

  Alexandrine shook her head, and Polly saw then a glimpse of a desperate pain the Comtesse carried. She was mortified. ‘I’m so sorry, Alexandrine – I’ve been very insensitive.’

  ‘I gave birth to a daughter,’ Alexandrine said simply. ‘Louise. She was severely disabled.’

  It was Polly who found her eyes welling now.

  ‘She survived two days,’ said Alexandrine. ‘By then our marriage was dead. My husband knew that I blamed him entirely for the tragedy.’

  ‘Oh, Alexandrine, I’m so sad to hear that,’ said Polly.

  The Comtesse elegantly rearranged herself in the seat again. ‘Don’t be, darling, it happened so long ago, and while I would give the whole earth to have my little daughter with me again, in so many ways what happened proved the making of me. My marriage was dead, yes, but Eduarde and I did not divorce. That wouldn’t have suited either of us. We are French, after all, and born of the upper-class, and thus we are exceedingly civilized. What my husband and I have now, if not conventionally a marriage as others might think of it, is something that those in our circles infinitely prefer: we have an arrangement.’ Alexandrine gave Polly a secretive wink. ‘And I recommend it highly, darling.’

  Polly fell into contemplative silence again.

  * * *

  It seemed that none of the thousands of refugees along the road really knew where they were going. South or west seemed to be the general direction, in preference to north, which is where the Germans were known to be advancing from. Polly’s group were ostensibly headed to Saint-Malo, but the road they were on, which went west to Dreux, was simply where they had found themselves as they were swept along with the multitude.

  What other women had chosen to wear for the flight from the capital had been much commented upon by those in Polly’s group. Some women, it was noted, given the summer heat, had daringly put on shorts, perhaps in the belief they would not be on the road for long. Others, thinking longer term, had ignored the hot weather entirely and had chosen to wear a large portion of their wardrobes upon their backs. They were dressed in layers of clothes: winter coats over spring jackets; blouses over shirts, dresses over skirts; bizarre ensembles topped off with scarves, gloves and hats. Polly’s companions admired this practical attitude.

  ‘See, Polly,’ Alexandrine said, ‘the dress codes for women of fashion must never be ignored, even if the wearer becomes itinerant. Parisienne elegance must always be maintained, regardless of cost. These women are prepared.’

  Polly thought it was madness but didn’t say as much.

  Zita had identified a recurring style she christened ‘refugee chic’. This involved the teaming of a shirt with narrow trousers and as much make-up as if heading for an evening at the opera.

  One fashionable woman travelling on foot had tapped at the window of their Mercedes and asked if she could take a cupful of their gasoline to use as nail varnish remover. The colour of the hat she’d snatched from her boudoir when she’d fled didn’t match the colour of her nails. Alexandrine gave her a cupful of their precious spare fuel without even a moment’s hesitation.

  There was a line of trudging people on either side of the road. Ancient old ladies, more wrinkled and withered than Suzette, lay sprawled on the roadside, exhausted and unable to go on, lying next to families who were taking advantage of the sunshine to bring out picnics. Mothers breastfed in the ditch. Flirty girls in heels somehow found the energy to dance, catching the attention, and then a ride, with dubious men in a truck, who tossed cigarettes at an old man who scrabbled on the road to retrieve them.

  When Polly stirred from her doze again, she saw the others had their attention caught by something outside, beyond the windscreen. The long, poplar-lined road stretched before them, rolling down a hill towards distant Dreux. The line of cars, trucks and walking refugees stretched the full distance, disappearing into the summer haze. From that same haze came something travelling in the opposite direction, headed to where the Comte’s big, black Mercedes moved little faster than a crawl.

  ‘My God, what is that?’ said Alexandrine.

  The object wasn’t travelling along the road but flying not very far above it.

  ‘It’s a plane,’ said Zita.

  ‘Is it one of ours?’

  None of them could tell.

  ‘It’s getting closer,’ said Alexandrine.

  ‘Why is it flying like that?’ said Polly. ‘It’s down too low.’

  The crowd around them rippled as if rocks had been cast in their pond. From the distance came the unmistakable sound of machine-gun fire.

  ‘It’s shooting!’ Zita cried out. ‘It’s shooting at the people on the road!’

  Those on foot began to scream, abandoning prams and wheelbarrows. Some began diving into the ditches; others broke from the road and ran into the wheat fields.

  ‘It’s killing people – we’ve got to get out of the car!’ shouted Zita.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Alexandrine.

  ‘We’re sitting ducks in this big ugly thing!’

  ‘They won’t shoot us,’ said Suzette, eyes fixed on the approaching plane.

  ‘Of course, they will, they’re shooting everything else. Look!’

  ‘That’s why I took the Mercedes,’ said Suzette, tapping her nose. ‘It’s a kraut car. They won’t harm one of their own.’

  ‘You crazy old bitch, as if that’ll matter to them!’

  ‘I’m staying put,’ said Suzette. She looked to Alexandrine. ‘Just like Madame.’

>   ‘Puss, please,’ said Zita to the Comtesse.

  ‘I refuse to abandon my dignity by running into a ditch,’ said Alexandrine. ‘I refuse to abandon my dignity by running at all.’

  ‘This is insane!’

  Polly felt trapped between Alexandrine’s elegant refusal and Zita’s angry panic. ‘What should I do?’

  ‘You’re coming with me.’ Zita grabbed her by the arm.

  ‘Ow, you’re hurting me!’

  ‘Bullets hurt more.’ She sprang the handle and kicked the door open, pulling Polly outside with her.

  ‘My handbag!’ Polly managed to grab the Hermès purse. On the road, the roar of the approaching plane’s engine was near deafening, as were the screams of those still trying to find cover and safety.

  ‘You crazy cows!’ Zita shouted into the car. ‘Get out and save yourselves!’

  But Alexandrine was unmoving. In the driver’s seat, Suzette placed an unlit cigarette at her lips.

  ‘Any last words?’ the old servant asked Zita, with a wink.

  ‘Quick – run for God’s sake!’ Zita cried to Polly, pushing her forward.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The ditch – there’s nowhere else to go.’

  They fled towards the roadside, where a shallow trench was already choked with others trying to save themselves.

  ‘There’s no more room!’ someone yelled at them.

  ‘Screw you!’ Zita yelled back. She forced herself among them, making way for Polly to squeeze in beside her. The ditch was no cover at all. They were completely exposed.

  ‘They’re not gonna shoot you, they’re not,’ Zita swore, hugging Polly tight against her. She tried to cover Polly’s head with her thin arms, but Polly could still see everything. She’d lost hold of her handbag again in the rush. It had fallen open onto the road, some of the contents strewn about. She saw the little jar of face cream Lana Mae had given her, standing on its lid, unbroken. Amazingly, Marjorie’s gun was still inside the bag. Polly looked sideways at Zita and saw that her guardian’s eyes were on the sky. Polly tried to reach out and grab the green leather.

  ‘What are you doing?’ cried Zita, pulling back her hand.