ALSO BY MARIUS GABRIEL
Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye
Take Me To Your Heart Again
The Original Sin
The Mask of Time
A House of Many Rooms
The Seventh Moon
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2017 by Marius Gabriel
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781612185811
ISBN-10: 1612185819
Cover design by Debbie Clement
Cover photography by Barnaby Newton
For Mervat
CONTENTS
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
One
Copper had only been married for eighteen months and did not consider herself an expert on marital relationships. But she fancied she knew when a marriage was in trouble. And she was pretty sure her own was.
As she listened to her husband interview the French partisan, she reflected on the advice she’d gleaned from the women’s magazines that were, in the absence of a mother or available friends, her source of wisdom. She didn’t ‘nag, pester or complain’. She certainly didn’t ‘constantly demand new dresses’, yet she successfully avoided ‘looking slovenly and unkempt’. As for not dishing up ‘unappetising meals, served on unclean crockery and stained linen’, she did her best, given the constraints of wartime Paris.
But refraining from all those sins didn’t mean she knew where her husband had been until two a.m. that morning, or whose lipstick was smeared on his uniform collar, or why he had taken to treating her like part of the furniture.
‘Is there anything to eat?’ Amory Heathcote asked, tossing her a sheet of scribbles. As his assistant, it was her job to type up his shorthand notes so they could be sent back to the States by the news service. As his wife, she also provided a moveable household, surrounding Amory with comforts, catering to his needs and insulating him from life’s discomforts as far as possible.
‘There’s wine, bread and cheese.’
Her husband looked displeased. ‘Nothing else?’
‘I’ll ask the landlady.’ The citizens of newly liberated Paris were touchingly generous with gifts to Americans, but since the French themselves were half-starved, provisions were not easy to come by.
She went to see the landlady and returned with a prize of half a French sausage and four boiled eggs. Amory and Francois Giroux were smoking on the tiny terrace overlooking the rue de Rivoli, which still bore scars from the street battles of the recent Paris uprising. They were watching an American patrol of four soldiers flirting with a group of French girls, whose laughter floated up from the street.
‘You know what we call your GIs?’ Giroux said. ‘We call them chewing-gum soldiers.’
‘That doesn’t sound very grateful,’ Copper said.
Giroux scowled at the scene below. ‘They swagger around Paris, handing out candy bars. We’re not children.’
‘They’re just trying to be kind.’
‘I am a Frenchman and a communist, Madame. I prefer to be under nobody’s boot, German or American.’
‘I wonder if you’ll ever forgive us for liberating you?’ Copper said. French pride, after years of humiliation and misery under the Nazi Occupation, was like a hedgehog: prickly on the outside and sensitive underneath.
‘Our streets used to be full of field grey. Now they are full of khaki.’ Giroux had been regaling them for the past hour with stories – some taller than others – of the heroic part he had played in the Liberation of Paris. Sensing that their interest in him was waning, he said, ‘Maybe you would like to see something remarkable this afternoon?’
‘Remarkable in what way?’ Amory asked.
Giroux pinched out the Camel he’d been smoking. ‘The collaborators think they can hide from us, but we know where they are. We find the traitors, one by one, and we deliver justice.’
‘The épuration sauvage?’
‘That’s what we call it. We will punish someone today.’
Amory pricked up his ears. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’d like to see that. We’ll wait for Fritchley-Bound. He’ll want to come along.’ He turned to Copper. ‘Where is he?’
‘Where do you think?’ she replied.
With the Liberation of the city from the Germans, an almighty party had started, and George Fritchley-Bound, otherwise known as the Frightful Bounder, had never been able to resist a party. He was a British journalist who had attached himself to them some weeks earlier. An Old Etonian, he was more or less constantly drunk, but they had grown fond of him.
The Frightful Bounder had yet to return by the time the meal was laid out, so they started without him. The bread was stonier than the saucisson, and the wine was stonier than that, but they were all hungry.
‘Who is this traitor?’ Amory asked Giroux.
Giroux sawed at the saucisson with his clasp knife. ‘Someone who did great harm to France,’ he replied grimly. ‘You will see.’
‘Will they kill him?’
‘Maybe.’
Copper winced. They had already seen so many horrors left by the Allied invasion – a vast wave of men and machinery rolling across Europe towards Berlin. Paris was still bobbing in its wake.
Amory was seemingly unmoved by the horribly maimed, the newly dead. But then, Amory was a war correspondent, hardened to such things. And, though she loved him, he was the coldest man she knew.
Five minutes later, the Frightful Bounder arrived. However, his reappearance was more in body than in spirit, as he was carried in, dead drunk, by two GIs.
‘Nice guy for a Limey,’ one of them panted (Fritchley-Bound was a large man, and there were several flights of stairs up to the apartment). ‘But he doesn’t know when to quit. Where d’you want him?’
They took Fritchley-Bound from his drinking companions and dumped him on his bed. From past experience, Copper turned him on his side and put a chamber pot where he could reach it. Unexpectedly, Fritchley-Bound opened one bloodshot eye and peered at them. ‘Have I disgraced myself?’
‘No more than usual,’ Amory replied. ‘But you’re missing an opportunity. Giroux’s taking us to see the Resistance dish out frontier justice.’
‘Bugger. The rag would love that.’ He tried to sit up, then clutched at his chest. His face, a crimson leather mask, turned white. They had to grab him to stop him from sliding to the floor. He looked up pleadingly at Copper. ‘Copper, old thing.’
‘No, George. I don’t want to see anybody killed.’
‘Please. Do it for me.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Could be the making of old George. Double spread. Happy editor. Save career.’ He clutched at her arm. ‘Camera i
n the wardrobe over there. Should be few shots left on roll.’
‘Damn it, George,’ she said angrily. ‘You can’t keep doing this.’
He waved a large, limp hand – either to concede that she was right, or to brush away her protest, she couldn’t tell which – and slumped back, his face corpse-like.
Amory raised an eyebrow at her. ‘The dying man’s last wish. Are you going to refuse?’
‘For two cents, I would.’ Copper stamped to the wardrobe. ‘I’m not reloading the camera. If the film’s all used up, that’s it.’ She examined the back of the battered Rolleiflex (ironically, Fritchley-Bound insisted on sticking to his pre-war German camera). There were half a dozen frames left. ‘Damn!’
‘You can stay home if you want,’ Amory said.
Fritchley-Bound snorted into wakefulness. ‘No, don’t. Brave girl. Salvation of old Frightful Bounder. Eternally grateful.’
‘How many times does this make?’ she demanded, shouldering the camera. ‘You all make a convenience of me. I’m sick of it. Come on. Let’s go.’
She couldn’t count the times she’d stood in for Fritchley-Bound because he’d been too drunk to work. She’d taken his pictures, and even written his articles for him. All he’d done was make a few corrections with a trembling pencil and sent off her work as his own. She’d got nothing out of it except Fritchley-Bound’s gratitude and the knowledge that she was literally saving his career. Fritchley-Bound was a catastrophe waiting to happen. One of these days his newspaper was going to find out what he really was, and that would be that.
Bouncing on the hard seat of the jeep, she watched Paris sweep past her. The air smelled richly of horses and their dung. Deprived of gasoline, the city had returned to the nineteenth century, with horse traps and carriages clattering down the boulevards. The only automobiles were a few taxis, or jeeps like their own, full of soldiers, journalists and war-tourists.
Buildings were pockmarked here and there from the uprising, and they passed some burned-out trucks and a shattered German tank in the Tuileries Garden; but by and large Paris looked magnificent. Certainly compared to London, where they’d been earlier in the year, Paris was gay, tipped with gold and lined with green, the proud sweep of the Eiffel Tower rising above trees and rooftops against a cerulean sky. The Tricolour flew everywhere, and the streets were full of girls on bicycles.
‘You wouldn’t think there had been a war,’ Copper said.
‘There wasn’t,’ Amory replied ironically. ‘Giving up is a lot easier than fighting back.’
Giroux gave him a dirty look. ‘And you, Monsieur,’ he enquired pointedly. ‘May one ask why you are not fighting?’
Amory laughed, unfazed by the challenge, as always – he wasn’t fazed by many things – but Copper rose to his defence. ‘My husband is exempt from military service. He has a weak heart.’
‘A weak heart?’ Giroux commented, staring at Amory’s lanky, six-foot frame.
‘He had rheumatic fever as a boy.’
Giroux smiled. Copper had seen that disbelieving smile many times.
Having a father in banking had done more to keep Amory out of the army than the boyhood rheumatic fever, if the truth were known. Amory was the scion of a well-off New England family, and a Cornell graduate. He took his own superiority for granted. Copper, whose background was different, and who’d only been to typing college, was more sensitive to slights.
She’d allowed him to seduce her one summer afternoon on Long Island, her first lover, and somewhat to her surprise, he had married her six months later.
Neither family had been happy with the match. On the Heathcote side, there had been dismay that Amory hadn’t chosen one of the eligible young butterflies who made their début each year. Copper’s father, a widowed Irish millhand, had felt that Amory was the wastrel offspring of the very people who had their boot on the neck of the workers. And as one of her brothers had brutally put it, Amory was also probably a bastard with women.
However, Amory had professed to admire her family’s struggles against the evils of capitalism. Like many upper-class intellectuals, he liked the idea of being rather on the left. Perhaps it had simply been the attraction of opposites. And possibly the fact that she had been open to sex in a way that girls from the gentry weren’t.
She had been drawn to his film-star good looks. He had thick blonde hair and eyes of an electric, almost violet blue; a colour she’d never seen in anyone else. He also had a born-to-it sophistication and an easy familiarity with a world she didn’t know but secretly aspired to.
He had come to Europe as a war correspondent. She’d refused to be left behind, so he’d brought her with him, using his family’s connections to get accreditation for them both. It was to be their great adventure. He said that everyone had the right to get something back out of the war. In his case, a Pulitzer Prize. He was writing a novel that was going to be the biggest thing since Hemingway (whom he’d sought out as soon as they’d arrived in Paris). His brilliance was unquestioned, in Copper’s mind, whatever his faults.
His brilliance was the main reason she was still holding on, eighteen months into the marriage, when most of her illusions about Amory had worn thin; in particular her expectation that he would be faithful. He was a bastard where women were concerned. Her brothers had been right about that.
One night, very drunk, he’d revealed that his father had been unfaithful to his mother all through their marriage, and that his mother had ‘learned to accept it’. The implication was that she should do the same.
Copper put her head back and let the wind take her hair. Long, abundant and golden-red, it was the source of her nickname, and at twenty-six, she was now more used to Copper than Oona. Her hair went with her pale skin and grey-green eyes, proclaiming her Celtic bloodline. She relished the breeze tugging at her hair.
The women she saw on the street were so well-dressed compared to Americans. They strutted on wedge heels, had square, mannish shoulders and extravagant hats, and they mounted their bicycles with immense aplomb. Their skirts were short, showing off their calves. How did they manage? Rationing at home and in Britain had meant plain, drab clothes for the past four years. How did these Frenchwomen, under much stricter privations, look so chic? There was some Gallic secret and she was suddenly determined to discover it. To hell with ‘not asking for new dresses’.
Copper leaned forward, shouting against the wind. ‘I want a Paris frock.’
Amory half-turned his head, showing his Grecian profile to advantage. ‘What?’
‘A Paris dress. I want a Paris dress.’
He was scornful. ‘I never thought of you as a clothes horse.’
‘Well, I want some new clothes,’ Copper insisted. ‘I’m sick of khaki.’ And indeed, she was weary of the olive-green dungarees and ugly uniforms that made up her entire wardrobe. She felt she was an affront to this beautiful city; a laughing stock to these haughty Parisiennes.
‘What do you say, Giroux?’ Amory asked.
Giroux glanced at Copper over his shoulder with a particularly sour expression. ‘Women. Always the same. I have someone for you. But business first, Madame. Then pleasure.’
‘Pull up here,’ Giroux ordered. Amory parked the jeep where the Frenchman directed, next to a knot of young men who were loitering on a street corner in Montmartre. They were wearing shabby clothes too light for the weather.
‘Are they Resistance?’ Copper asked Amory.
‘They look like it.’
Copper focused through the viewfinder of the camera. The men posed happily for the photo, puffing out thin chests and waving their caps and whistling.
There was a call from down the street. With a shout, the men set off round the corner, their espadrilles slapping on the cobbles. Giroux jerked his head at Copper and Amory to follow. ‘Now you will see what happens to collaborators,’ he said.
They ran after the little gang into the next street – a row of ordinary houses. The group of men had cornered their quar
ry, a young mother who had emerged from one of the houses pushing a pram. She was trying desperately to open the door and get back inside, but the men dragged her and her perambulator down the stairs.
‘It’s a woman,’ Copper exclaimed. The scuffling intensified. She was horrified for the baby, whose wails could now be heard over the shouts and screams. Amory held her arm to stop her from going forward.
‘Don’t interfere.’
The woman had been wearing a coat and a beret. These were torn off her and thrown into the gutter. Her curly blonde hair broke free around her face, which was stark with terror. She was, Copper saw, no more than nineteen or twenty years old. Someone yanked the baby out of the perambulator. The mother tried to plead with the men, holding out her arms to the child, but someone struck her across the mouth and she crumpled. They pulled her back to her feet and started to rip her clothing off.
Copper’s heart was in her throat. ‘What has she done?’ she asked.
‘She was the lover of a Gestapo man,’ Giroux said. He didn’t take part in the attack, but watched shrewdly, a cigarette in his mouth again, eyes squinting against the smoke. ‘The child is his.’
‘What are they going to do to her?’
‘Look how fat she is. The sow,’ Giroux said bitterly. ‘She fed on butter while we starved.’ The woman was almost naked now, clutching her breasts and trying to hide her face. Her body was pale and soft, already marked with red handprints.
The street, which had been almost deserted at the start of the incident, was suddenly crowded. People were coming out of the houses to join the mob, or yelling from their windows. The wave of hatred was like a hot wind. A man was holding the screaming infant aloft, as though about to dash it on to the cobbles. The mother desperately tried to reach her child, but she was pushed from person to person, each assailant striking her or pulling her hair as they chose. There were streaks of blood at her nose and mouth.
The shouting rose to a sudden roar. Someone had produced an old kitchen chair and a noose.
‘Oh no,’ Copper gasped. She jerked her arm out of Amory’s grasp and ran forward.
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