‘They reminded me of you,’ Liberty said starkly.
‘Ah,’ Skye said. ‘I used to drink negronis for the same reason. But you forgot to be right-handed like Margaux.’
Liberty managed a smile. ‘I couldn’t smoke as many right-handed.’
Skye smiled too. ‘I could never quite get the hang of eating right-handed. I managed almost everything else though.’ Then she touched her sister’s shoulder. ‘And your baby?’
‘A German boot to the stomach took care of that.’
There was no emotion in Liberty’s voice and Kat understood that was how she had lived her life since Ravensbrück: alone, away from the world, devoted to a garden that couldn’t hurt her.
That she had chosen such a life made even more sense after the next exchange between the sisters.
‘Were you there at …’ Ravensbrück – they all heard the word Skye chose not to say – ‘… until the end? When the Russians came?’
Kat recalled what Elliott had told her: that the victorious, conquering Russians had raped the women left behind at the camp, over and over, no matter that what remained of each woman was no more than a skeleton.
Liberty nodded, wordless.
‘Then you were the bravest of us all,’ Skye said simply.
Liberty broke down at last.
Skye drew her into her arms and they cried together, true sisters for the first time in their lives. Sisters whom war and torture and lies and misunderstandings had not been able to tear asunder.
Thirty-Nine
Later, after the tears had been wiped away, Skye told Liberty about what she’d done in the many, many years since they’d last seen one another. About modelling and selling dresses, about raising a child and then a grandchild.
And Liberty told Skye about wanting to be near their childhood home but not having the courage to step inside it. Instead, she’d bought the adjoining property and resurrected the lost gardens, naming them after Lysander, the Shakespearean figure they’d learned about at school whose moniker had been adopted for a series of aeroplanes.
They parted at last, Skye explaining to Liberty that she hadn’t yet seen inside the old cottage, but very much hoped to take Liberty on a tour tomorrow.
‘We’ll walk along the cove. I’ll even let you put a crab down my back if you must,’ Skye said mischievously and Liberty laughed.
As they made their way to the cars, Elliott whispered to Kat, ‘I’m going into the village to get some food for tonight. That’ll give you and your grandmother time to talk. I’ll join you for dinner – I’m cooking.’ With that he left the two women alone.
‘You look happy when you’re with him,’ Skye observed on the drive to the clifftop house.
‘I am,’ Kat said. ‘Happier than I’ve ever been. I’m not just Kat-the-mother, or Kat-the-conservator, or Kat-the-granddaughter; I’m all of those things together. I’ve realised I don’t have to keep the parts of my life so separate and nor do I have to apologise when one spills over into the other.’
Skye nodded. ‘I’m looking forward to giving him the once-over at dinner.’
At the house, Kat helped her grandmother up to the room where some of the dresses were still hanging in the wardrobes. ‘Will you tell me about these?’ she asked.
Skye sat down on the bed and told Kat how she’d met Catherine – Caro – Dior while working for SOE, and how she, Caro and Margaux had become the fiercest of friends. Every time Skye said Margaux’s name, her voice trembled.
‘I didn’t know,’ she said eventually, ‘and nor did Margaux, that they were Red Cross buses in the woods that day. Not death buses. We didn’t know either that the Red Cross had always intended to take Caro. When I was being carried to the Revier, Margaux took out a knife she’d had hidden in her sleeve for months and she cut Caro’s leg with it, badly enough that she was sent to the Revier too – so I would have someone with me.’ Skye’s face crumpled. ‘Then the guards … they shot Margaux.’
Kat sat down beside her tiny, frail grandmother, a woman whose body and mind had endured so much, and drew her close. Skye sagged against her like a dress robbed of its mannequin, or a woman whose everything had been taken from her by the Nazis at Ravensbrück.
‘Only Margaux could have done such a thing,’ Skye whispered into Kat’s shoulder. ‘She was the kind of person who could do all the brave and terrible things that must be done during a war. I miss her so much.’
Skye wept again, and Kat did too, crying for a woman she didn’t know but who had given her grandmother a name and an identity.
‘Caro was a true heroine too,’ Skye said when her eyes had dried a little. ‘She wasn’t just Miss Dior – a name on a perfume bottle. Long before any of that, she was precious. I named you for Catherine Dior. Margaux was my strength and Caro was my hope.’
Kat gripped her grandmother’s hand.
‘Somehow, on the bus to Switzerland,’ Skye continued, as if determined to have it all come out, ‘I was recorded as Margaux Jourdan. I kept saying her name, because I knew she wasn’t with us – so the Red Cross thought that’s who I was. Then in France, when I read about Nicholas’s child in the War Ministry newsletter, I assumed he had married as Liberty had told me. I knew then I could never be Skye Penrose again. It was easy enough to change my identity. When you leave a place like Ravensbrück, you look—’
Skye pressed a hand to her mouth. Kat waited, silent, letting her grandmother recover. When Skye spoke again, her voice was thin, like water.
‘We looked very different. When the Swiss doctors boarded the bus to decide who could go on to France and who needed to stay in Switzerland in hospital – which I did – they all cried when they saw us. And when Vera Atkins from SOE came to see me, she believed I was Margaux. I was unrecognisable.’
Skye moved to the window overlooking the sea. ‘I never went looking for Nicholas. I truly thought he’d married, that he had a child with his wife. I couldn’t have gone to him, in the state I was in, and told him I was alive. I would never have asked him to leave a wife and child for the monster I’d become. I couldn’t look at myself, let alone bear anyone else’s gaze, even my Aunt Sophie’s. So I asked Vera not to tell anyone that Margaux had returned.’
Kat remembered what Elliott had said about the American diplomat who had thought the Ravensbrück women were a ‘terrifying spectacle’. Would she have had the courage, looking like that, to go to a man who had once loved her? She rubbed her arms, but the kind of chill she felt was impossible to warm.
‘It was better, I thought, to not be Skye any more,’ Skye said quietly, looking down at the Cornish bay where she and Nicholas had first met. ‘Some time later, Christian asked me to model for him. I didn’t have to think or talk; I had only to smile. I agreed. I also drank, quite a lot. When there was to be a show in Australia, he sent me. I stayed in Australia. And I drank some more.’
Skye fell silent then. Kat sensed there was more she wanted to say, and that she was searching not only for the words but the courage to say them. She sat in the window seat beside her grandmother.
‘You named my mother for Nicholas,’ Kat said gently. ‘Didn’t you?’
Skye drew in a long breath, then nodded. ‘I did. Nicolette Jourdan. It was the only part of her father I could ever give her. I should have given her more. I should have …’
Kat wound her arm around her grandmother’s shoulders through another long and tear-filled pause.
‘I didn’t do the best I could by your mother,’ Skye managed at last. ‘After getting her out of Ravensbrück against all the odds, I had what would now be called post-traumatic stress. Ravensbrück lived in me. I could never be rid of it. It made me hallucinate at night. And drink. Only at night and never in front of your mother, but still. I adored Nicolette. But perhaps I was suffering too much myself to be the best mother to her.’
‘Don’t say that!’ Kat cried. ‘You were the best mother anyone could have had to me.’
Skye interrupted her. ‘That was be
cause the day your mother died I stopped drinking. I sold the blue dress that Christian made for me, and sent the rest of them to England so I could truly put the past behind me. I had a caretaker from the village store them in the house, and take delivery of the dresses that arrived from each new collection. When Caro died four years ago, she left me her blue dress and I had it sent to Cornwall too. I knew I couldn’t look at that particular dress without remembering everything that happened.’
‘Did you sell your blue dress to someone named Madeline?’ Kat asked. ‘She was the woman who donated it to the museum.’
‘I did. I met her at my very first showing in Australia. She loved Dior. It was she who gave me the idea of the little business I had when you were living with me.’
‘It doesn’t look as if she ever wore the dress.’
Skye smiled, just a little. ‘She understood it was special. She probably didn’t wear it, merely safeguarded it. I’m glad she did.’
The next day, Kat and Skye went down to the cove. They were both wearing one of Christian’s gowns – Kat in the Soirée de Décembre, long and black, the same violent colour as the revelations of yesterday; and Skye in white, the Venus dress, its skirt made of overlapping shells.
Looking out over the water, hands joined, they wished Kat’s mother – Skye and Nicholas’s daughter – godspeed to peace. They wished the same for Margaux Jourdan. And Catherine Dior. And O’Farrell too.
The waves rushed towards them, cresting into a salute and then withdrawing slowly, as if they understood that the names they carried were treasure of the rarest kind.
After that there was just one more ghost to lay to rest.
Forty
Elliott drove Kat and Skye to the nursing home. Kat had explained to her grandmother where they were going and that Nicholas was, perhaps, unreachable. Skye had frowned and said nothing. Kat worried that her grandmother didn’t understand the gravity of the situation, but she also knew the meeting must take place. Skye had been holding on to Nicholas for seventy years and it was time to wish him godspeed too.
Elliott led the way to Nicholas’s room. ‘Hi, Grandpa,’ he said cheerfully, but Kat could tell it was forced, that Elliott was as worried as she about what might happen.
‘I need my pills,’ Nicholas said, as if he thought Elliott was the doctor. He added to Kat, ‘It hurts,’ mistaking her for staff too.
He merely nodded at Skye, as if she were another of the residents at the aged care facility. But Skye walked over to him, smiling.
Kat almost didn’t want to watch what would happen. She felt Elliott’s arm wrap around her shoulders.
Skye picked up Nicholas’s hand and held it tightly. ‘Do you remember a girl named Skye?’ she asked.
Nicholas stared at her, his eyes foggy, no light of recognition clearing away the mist. Kat waited, breath held.
‘She liked to swim,’ Skye continued, not letting go of Nicholas’s hand, not glancing away, even though it must be so painful to see the blank face of a man she’d loved so deeply, a man whose eyes must once have looked so very different whenever they gazed upon her.
There wasn’t a sound in the room.
Then, ‘Cartwheel.’ One word from Nicholas.
One small word that wouldn’t mean anything to anybody else, but Kat knew that to her grandmother it meant everything.
‘Yes. She liked to cartwheel.’ Skye’s voice was unwavering, not betraying any of the emotion she must be feeling.
Nicholas smiled. ‘Underwear.’
A long pause followed. Skye didn’t speak. Nor did she move. She just sat on the chair holding the hand of the man she loved, seeing again perhaps what she had beheld on a beach in Cornwall so long ago.
‘Yes,’ Skye managed at last. ‘She pulled down your trousers and laughed at your underwear.’
Kat could no longer watch Skye and Nicholas grasp at the edges of memory. She didn’t want to witness the moment when Nicholas’s memories faded and his eyes clouded and he became again a man without a past.
She turned around, buried her head in Elliott’s shoulder and sobbed.
It was a long, long time before she was capable of speaking, of wiping her face and gulping air rather than bawling.
Elliott cradled her head against his shoulder. ‘Don’t cry like that again,’ he whispered. ‘Nothing has ever hurt so much as seeing you cry like that.’
Which only made her start crying all over again.
Eventually, her tears lessened and they both heard Nicholas say to Skye, ‘Who are you?’
Kat froze.
‘Skye,’ she heard her grandmother say.
‘Out there,’ Nicholas replied, pointing to the sky beyond the window.
‘Yes.’
‘It’s a pretty name.’
It’s a pretty name. As if Skye were nobody. Kat saw one lonely tear streak her grandmother’s face.
‘I don’t want it to end this way,’ Kat said to Elliott. ‘Can’t you … I don’t know … rewrite it or something?’
She wished it were that simple; that a life could be changed in the same way words in a book could be recast into a different version, a better version. A happy ever after.
‘Look at your grandmother,’ Elliott said, voice low. ‘Do you think she doesn’t want this, even if it’s all there is?’
Kat could see that Skye hadn’t let go of Nicholas’s hand. Hadn’t taken her eyes off him. She was talking to him about Nicolette, in a soft and lovely voice Kat had only ever heard her use with her granddaughters, late at night when they were scared by a ferocious storm.
Somehow, Kat found a smile and she looked up at Elliott, the man she loved in the same way Skye loved Nicholas.
‘Will you marry me?’ she said. ‘I don’t know how it’ll work, other than I’ll at least be nearby in France for the next six months, but I don’t really care about the practicalities and the things I usually live by. I want every memory of you, from now until forever, to be mine.’
He didn’t answer. Instead he kissed her unrestrainedly and with far too much passion, obviously forgetting they were in a room with their grandparents.
Kat smiled against Elliott’s lips. ‘Does that mean yes?’
‘We’ll get married in Josh and D’Arcy’s chateau,’ he said, smiling too. Then he took her hand and drew her over to the bed. ‘Grandpa,’ he said, ‘I’d like you to meet my fiancée.’
‘Fiancée,’ Nicholas said. ‘I always wanted to get properly married.’ And then he looked at Skye.
Whether, for just a millisecond, he had remembered who Skye was and that he’d loved her, and with that look had wanted to convey that the only proper marriage would have been the one between her and him, Kat didn’t know. But it was what she chose to believe.
Skye leaned forward and kissed Nicholas’s lips. ‘We were always married, Nicholas,’ she said. ‘And it was magnificent. We were magnificent.’
As Nicholas drew Skye’s hand up to his cheek, Kat felt the years fall away. She saw a dark-haired man and a dark-haired woman on a beach, wrapped in a blanket and in one another’s arms, the woman’s finger wound with a seaweed ring. Across the sand, laughing, ran the ghosts of the girls they had wanted together; and around them all a vow that echoed through time: We are boundless.
Yes, Kat thought, smiling at Elliott. We are.
Author’s Note
The idea for this book came to me when I was reading Anne Sebba’s book Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940s. There, I learned of Catherine Dior – Christian Dior’s sister: her work with the Resistance throughout the war until her capture by the Nazis and her imprisonment in Ravensbrück concentration camp. How had I never heard of this woman, other than as the person after whom her brother Christian named his perfume, Miss Dior?
I determined to find out more and was shocked to discover that there is, sadly, little information about Catherine Dior, who was very reticent about her wartime activities. I did glean some scant facts from
Villa Les Rhumbs, the ex-Dior family home in Granville, now a museum, and some from Christian Dior’s autobiography. Catherine risked her life by working for F2, a British-supported Resistance organisation that primarily worked out of southern France. However, Catherine and her partner, Hervé Papillault des Charbonneries, carried out Resistance activities in Paris too, using Christian’s apartment as a meeting place for the network. For her work during the war, Catherine was awarded the Croix de guerre and the Légion d’honneur by the French, and the King’s Medal for Courage in the Cause of Freedom by the British.
As takes place in my book, Catherine was arrested on 6 July 1944 in Paris and sent on the last train to Ravensbrück. She spent some time doing forced labour at Ravensbrück satellite camps at Torgau, Abteroda and Markkleeberg. I have only included Torgau here, rather than have the reader jump to several different locations in a short space of time.
Until mid-2019, I hadn’t been able to find a consistent explanation about how Catherine left Ravensbrück in 1945. Most sources note only that she was ‘freed’ or ‘liberated’ near Dresden. Sebba, for instance, mentions only that Catherine was ‘released’ in April 1945. In the absence of certainty, I chose to place her on one of the Red Cross convoys that took French prisoners from Ravensbrück in April 1945. But Justine Picardie who, with the help of the House of Dior, is writing a book about Catherine Dior, published an immensely useful article in Harper’s Bazaar in March 2019 in which she states that Catherine escaped while on a death march from Markkleeberg satellite camp in April 1945. By the time I came across this explanation in May 2019, my book was largely finished. Therefore you will have to treat as fiction the section of my book where I have Catherine leaving on the Red Cross convoy. I look forward to reading Justine’s book and learning more about Catherine.
The Paris Secret : A Novel (2020) Page 39