‘You’re going to drive all the way back to London tonight?’ Edward asks.
‘Think I might go back via Paris. There’s a friend I thought I might call in on.’
Something about the way he said ‘friend’ makes Hannah think he might have meant enemy. ‘Please thank your boss for us,’ she says.
‘I’ll write to him properly when we get back,’ Edward adds.
‘I’ll just wait for François to show up, then I’ll show you to your rooms. The fridge and the wine cellar are stocked and if there’s anything you need just make a list for the housekeeper. If you would like her to come in and have a clean, write a note, otherwise she will leave you in peace. We want you to relax and have a good time. You must treat this place as your home for as long as you want it, that’s what Mr Walser asked me to tell you.’
‘How about exploring the area?’ Hannah asks. ‘Is it best to hire a car?’
‘You could. Though I think the nearest car hire place would be Strasbourg. If you’re feeling energetic, there are a couple of bikes in the stable.’
‘Bonjour.’ The voice is frail, barely audible, coming from behind them. ‘Welcome to Le Jardin des Papillons.’
Edward and Hannah turn to see a bow-legged old man standing in the doorway. Already short, his height is further reduced by his stoop. It is as if an invisible hand is pushing down on his neck and he has to strain to look up. In his arthritically crooked hands he is carrying a rattling tray upon which three flutes and a bottle of champagne are cold-sweating in an ice bucket. He has a tanned and freckled scalp, a white moustache and pale, rheumy eyes distorted by thick glasses. The skin around his elbows is hanging in pleats. ‘I am François,’ the old man says in a voice that is more a croak, one that begins at the back of the throat and barely has the energy to leave his mouth. ‘I live in the gatehouse.’ He kisses Hannah’s extended hand, says: ‘Trop belle pour moi,’ then turns to Edward and says, ‘You had a good journey, yes?’
‘Très bon, merci. Je suis Edward. Et c’est Hannah.’
‘Your French is good,’ François says, ‘but I need to practise my English.’ He then shakes Edward’s hand and pats Mike’s back. He only comes as high as the driver’s chest. ‘You are staying with us tonight, Mike?’
‘No thank you, sir, got to get back.’
Edward and Hannah exchange a glance, surprised by Mike’s deference to the old man.
‘Shame,’ François says. ‘Never mind. We shall talk next time.’ With gentle, fussy movements he wipes condensation from the neck of the bottle, pops the cork and fills the glasses.
Hannah takes a sip from hers. She clinks glasses with Edward. ‘Santé.’
‘Santé,’ he echoes.
‘You are to help yourselves to wine from the cellar,’ François says. ‘The Alsace region is an odd mixture of French and German. White wine mostly. Riesling and Muscat. But we have some good Burgundy down there. I recommend the Pinot Noir. There’s some Italian, too. We want you to enjoy yourselves.’
Edward is intrigued by the way the old man refers to the house as if it is his own, as Mike had done. We want you to enjoy yourselves. ‘We’ll pay for anything we drink,’ he says.
‘That won’t be necessary, monsieur. Herr Walser would be upset if you did. Now, let me show you to your rooms and then I will leave you in peace.’
Mike steps forward to take the bags. ‘Let me do that, sir.’
‘No, Mike, you have a long drive. I shall do it myself. These are very special guests.’ François regards Edward for a moment, his head on a tilt. He then nods slowly to himself and smiles.
Mike strides to the car and, running a hand over its still-warm bonnet, says: ‘One part Mercedes, two parts Panzer.’
As she watches the car glide back down the drive, Hannah says in a whisper to her father: ‘Well, he wasn’t weird at all.’
Edward nods. ‘Wouldn’t like to cross him.’
When François attempts to lift the suitcase, Edward prises it from his grip. François does not protest – honour has been served – and they follow him along a corridor lined with free-standing, glass-topped display cabinets full of pinned butterflies. Hannah stops to read out loud some of the labels, translating as best she can from the French – ‘Green-veined White, Common Blue, Brimstone, Painted Lady, Small Tortoiseshell’ – a roll call that sounds like an abstract poem. Realizing François hasn’t waited for them, Edward tugs gently on her shirt.
When they come to an oak-panelled room with a vaulted ceiling they nod at one another, impressed. A carved marble fireplace dominates one end, a faded tapestry depicting medieval hunting scenes the other. Mounted along the wall opposite the windows are dozens of antlers, and the heads of a stuffed bear and a wild boar. On the wooden floor there is a faded black stain that could once have been ink, or ancient blood.
They are now at a wide spiral staircase made from white-painted stone. Following the old man up it is a slow process, as he has to pause every third step. On the landing he stares out of an armorial window for almost a minute then, at the top, his pace quickens as he shows them to their adjoining rooms. They are at the end of a long hallway which has four identical white bedroom doors either side.
François opens one of them and steps back. Hannah goes in first. ‘I bagsy this one,’ she says putting her rucksack on the bed. She moves to the window and opens it with a clatter. Below is a courtyard and, beyond that, the garden. ‘Wow,’ she says again. ‘What is that smell? Sweet alyssum?’ She inhales deeply. ‘And lavender?’
‘No good asking me,’ Edward says, touching his nose.
Hannah is now studying a series of six small erotic pastels hanging on the wall. She doesn’t need to check the signature to know they are by Gustav Klimt. One shows a semi-nude woman in a chair examining her foot. The drawing seems to throb steadily with life and she feels an urge to step inside it, inhabit its space, lose herself in its planes of shimmering, shifting colour.
‘Monsieur,’ François says, opening the door to the adjoining room and stepping to one side to allow Edward past. When Hannah comes through she sees he is staring at a dark mahogany four-poster bed; its tapering spiral posts are swagged with faded red velvet tied back with gold tassels. The canopy has an embroidered serpent winding across it and on the headboard there is a carved crest.
‘Want this one instead!’ Hannah says.
‘Too late,’ Edward says.
‘This is the bed in which Lord Byron slept,’ François says, pointing to a hand-painted plaque which reads: ‘Lord Byron a dormi ici 1817’. Then he gives an amused shrug as if to say ‘it takes all kinds’.
‘This place is breathtaking,’ Edward says. ‘How long has Mr Walser lived here?’
‘He bought it in, let me think, 1998 … The year France won the World Cup.’
Once they have done a little unpacking, father and daughter head back downstairs together and find François sipping champagne on the terrace.
‘Before I leave you there is something I would like you to see,’ he says, getting to his feet with the aid of a stick. The old man leads the way along an avenue of cypress, flowering cherry and magnolia, to a small stone bridge. ‘This was built by the Romans,’ he says. ‘Because it feeds down from the Vosges mountains, the river water is very pure. I recommend a swim in it, but not now perhaps. In the heat of the day.’
Beneath the sunbeams glancing off the surface of the river they can see fat trout poised motionless against the current. And on the far bank, near an elegantly rotting Doric temple, there is what looks like the darting shadow of a water vole. Scrambling for footholds in a ruined archway on the other side of the bridge are wild roses and bougainvillea tangled with ivy. Beyond these is a grove of petrified oak timbers, stripped and faded to the colour of old bone.
‘Beautiful,’ Hannah says in a wistful voice, momentarily forgetting her reason for coming here.
‘Beautiful,’ Edward echoes.
François looks pleased. He is staring at Edward a
gain.
After a light supper of aubergine rolls with spinach and ricotta left for them by the housekeeper, Edward blows out the candles, leaving a smell of snuffed-out wax in the air. ‘Think I might get an early night,’ he says with a yawn. ‘We can explore properly tomorrow.’
‘I might watch a DVD. I saw a machine in there.’
‘Or you could try the cinema.’
‘Another night. I want to watch this.’ She holds up a DVD of The Railway Children. ‘It came free with a Sunday paper.’
‘You brought it with you?’
‘Yep. Do you remember when we watched it together before you went away?’
Edward nods. ‘Put it on.’
After opening a bottle of red, pouring two glasses and slotting the DVD in the machine, Hannah presses play on the remote. When nothing happens she unclips its back, rolls the batteries from side to side and tries again. This time it works and, when she sits next to her father on the sofa, he places his arm around her shoulders. An hour and three quarters later, as it comes to the final scene in which the elder daughter looks down the platform as the steam clears, then runs into her father’s arms crying, ‘Daddy, my daddy!’ they look at one another, see they are both wet-eyed and splutter with laughter.
When Hannah sits up, little beads of sweat appear on her arms where their skin has been touching. She replaces the DVD with an old home movie that she has also brought with her and the two of them trade glances once more as they watch a two- or three-year-old Hannah riding her father like a pony as he crawls around on all fours. It then cuts to a Hannah who must be about six years old having a race across a lawn with him, before they are next seen playing rounders together on a beach. These clips are followed by Hannah at a school swimming gala, in a school play, and taking part in the long jump on sports day. There is also some footage of her that was taken after Edward disappeared. When Frejya’s voice can be heard giving a commentary, Hannah looks sideways at Edward again. ‘This is for you to watch when you get back, Ed,’ Frejya says. ‘I know you’re going to come back one day. Your little girl is growing up. She needs you.’
When the film has ended, Edward wanders into the kitchen and opens the double doors that lead out to the garden. He stands in the doorway, listening to the cicadas and staring up at the stars.
‘I haven’t been much of a father to you, have I?’ he says without turning round when he hears Hannah approaching from behind.
At which a laugh bubbles up in Hannah’s throat. ‘No, you’ve been bloody useless!’
Edward laughs too, moving over as his daughter joins him in the doorway. He puts an arm around her shoulders again as they watch a big-bellied formation of cloud momentarily obscure the moon.
‘I came back to a daughter I didn’t recognize,’ he says. ‘You should have been nine. I used to keep sane by thinking of you and then you were taken from me and replaced by a stranger.’
‘Then get to know me.’
‘Where do I start?’
‘Well, you could ask me what I like doing.’
‘What do you like doing?’
She takes hold of the hand that is draped over her shoulder and begins stroking it. ‘Um, playing pool. Drinking with my mates. And I like lie-ins, and cooking and watching X-Factor. And I go to Glastonbury, though I think it has become too commercial.’ Her brow furrows. ‘What else? Oh yeah, and surfing. I like to surf.’
‘I used to think about surfing when I was in the cave. Memories of being with you and Mummy in Cornwall …’ Edward trails off.
Hannah wants to keep him talking. ‘Were you any good?’
‘Don’t you remember?’
‘No.’
‘Then I was brilliant.’ He removes his arm, crosses the terrace to the lawn and lies down. Hannah joins him. With the top of her head to his, the two of them form one line.
‘How many constellations can you name, Han?’
‘Well, that’s Orion’s Belt. That’s easy.’ She points. ‘You taught me that. And that must be the Seven Sisters. And that one is Mummy.’
She points at a bright star in the north. Edward raises his arm and their fingers entwine.
PART FIVE
I
London. Early summer, 1944
THOUGH THE LONDON SKY IS NO LONGER BLACK WITH LUFTWAFFE crows, the capital is still bombed at regular intervals and, through his taxi window, Charles surveys the latest damage: rubble moved to the side of the road to clear a space for traffic, cracked windows in smoke-blackened buildings that are held together by their crosses of tape, a crater out of which is protruding the boot of a Morris Oxford. It looks like a torpedoed ship that is rearing up defiantly before sliding below the surface. The firemen have been at work here, too, judging by the dimpled pool of water that surrounds a collapsed wall. Steam as white as papal smoke is snaking across the still-hot bricks.
When the taxi draws into Carlton Gardens he sees the sandbagged entrance to a public air-raid shelter where once a café had stood. The iron railings outside the Forces Françaises Libres headquarters are all missing, cut down to two-inch-high stumps of teeth. No attempt has been made to disguise the five-storey house itself. There is a tricolour flapping on a pole outside it and a uniformed guard standing to the right of its black entrance door.
Having handed over two shillings for the taxi, Charles listens to the noise of its engine as it fades away. He then becomes enveloped in silence. The air smells of petrol and brick dust. There is a haze of it, clinging to his jacket. As he approaches the door, he brushes the shoulders of his uniform – unworn for three years, it smells of mould – and gives a half-salute. The guard salutes back. As Charles enters, he is immediately struck by an acrid smell of smoke and cleaning fluid. There are four buckets of sand, two either side of the entrance. Painted in red on a wall opposite the door is the Cross of Lorraine, the official symbol of the FFL. Alongside this is a photograph of General Charles de Gaulle, the unofficial symbol.
When the guard sitting at the reception desk sees Charles, he stares rudely at the scar tissue on his face, then says in heavily accented English: ‘Can I help you?’
‘I have an appointment with …’ he checks the piece of paper upon which Sir Kenneth Clark has written a name, ‘Major Lehague.’
The guard leads the way to a back room, stepping around a hole in the floor. ‘You can wait in here. He shouldn’t be long.’ The room has burnt timbers in the ceiling and a view over St James’s Park to the Foreign Office. Below the tethered barrage balloons across the park there are tulips. On the cherry trees there is blossom. It is an incongruous sight. Nature keeping calm and carrying on.
There is an oak desk and, behind this on the wall, a map of France marked with blue, green and red pins, swastikas and curving black arrows. The country is divided in two. There is cross-hatching in the north. The south has not been drawn upon.
That an Allied invasion of northern France is imminent is not exactly news. The south of England has become a giant sprawling army camp, with more than a million troops counting down the weeks to … when? That is the secret. And where? Where exactly? Calais? Probably. As for the build-up, the Germans do not need spies to monitor what is going on. They can probably hear it from France, a continuous rumble of trucks, jeeps and tanks, blocking the back roads as they make their way to Portsmouth, Southampton and Dartmouth. It is as if the whole landscape is moving. Operation Overlord.
There are also whispers that Charles has heard about Operation Anvil, an invasion of southern France, possibly at the same time as the invasion of northern France. Sir Kenneth had heard them too.
When Major Lehague enters and sees Charles studying the map on the wall he makes a point of standing in front of it, blocking his view. He is a short and wiry man with a neat moustache cut in the style of Clark Gable. In the corner of his mouth is a roll-up. He is wearing the uniform of the Free French Army.
‘Bonjour, monsieur. Je m’appelle Captain Charles Northcote.’
The Frenchman remov
es his kepi and stubs out the cigarette as he pretends not to notice the Englishman’s scars. ‘I am a guest in your country, Captain Northcote, we should speak English here. I am Major Lehague, London liaison for the Zone Libre.’ The Frenchman sits down and points at a chair for Charles. ‘How may I be of assistance to you?’
‘I was given your name by Sir Kenneth Clark.’
‘Yes, he has been in touch with General de Gaulle. You have friends in high places, it seems. You are a war artist? Into battle armed only with an easel and canvas?’
Charles has heard the tease before and has a ready response. ‘The paintbrush is mightier than the sword.’
‘Your accent is good, by the way.’
‘I have an uncle and aunt in Avignon. I used to spend holidays there, before the war.’
Lehague studies him. ‘You are fluent?’
Charles shrugs. ‘My spoken French is better than my written.’
Lehague opens his hands. ‘So …’
‘I was wondering if you knew anything about the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in Alsace.’
Lehague studies the Englishman again, cocking his head. ‘A little. It is a work camp. Most of the captured Resistance are being held there.’ He turns and contemplates the map for a moment before tapping a pin. ‘It is here, in the Vosges mountains between the Alsatian village of Natzwiller and the town of Schirmeck. The only such German camp on French soil, as far as we know.’
‘I imagine the liberation of Natzweiler-Struthof will be a priority for you, if the Resistance are held there.’
‘May I ask why you want to know about it?’
‘I have a friend who is a prisoner.’
‘I could find out from the local partisans what they know about individual inmates. I know they have contacts there.’
The Road Between Us Page 23