‘I don’t see her,’ Dior said wretchedly, trying to peer through the fog. ‘She’s not there!’
‘She must be,’ Copper said, squeezing his hand. In his agitation, he had crushed the roses. She had brought her camera to record the great moment. She checked it now, making sure the film had been advanced and the shutter cocked.
After a wretched hour, the first arrivals had been processed and had started to make their way along the platform with their relatives. The crowd, which had been noisy, even belligerent, fell silent now, staring at the revenants. Who were these phantoms who shuffled in scarecrow clothes many sizes too big for them, and stared ahead with unseeing eyes set in dark hollows? Who did not speak, or who croaked with voices like rusty tin? A man uttered an exclamation of pity and disgust, and a woman burst into loud sobs.
There was not a sound on the platform now apart from the steady hissing of steam and the clank of cooling metal. The voices of the Red Cross officers could be heard calling out names.
‘Dior! Mademoiselle Catherine Dior!’
‘Here! I am her brother.’ Dior ran forward. But the figure that waited for him between two helpers hardly seemed like a woman at all. The gaunt skull was hairless; the body, like a winter tree, thin and frail. She held a little suitcase in one hand. With the other, she reached out to her brother, her lips stretching in the caricature of a smile.
‘Christian!’
Dior was weeping helplessly. He had dropped the bouquet of roses. They were trampled underfoot, unnoticed. Copper had forgotten to use her camera; it swung uselessly as they took charge of Catherine. Copper reached to take Catherine’s little suitcase.
‘Oh, thank you. But I am stronger than I look.’ A label with her name written on it had been fastened to Catherine’s coat. The photographs Copper had seen had shown a fresh-faced, pretty woman with a mass of curly hair. Nothing remained of that prettiness now; and only the beaky nose that was so like Dior’s bore out the name on the label. ‘Don’t worry about me, Tian. I’m sorry I’m so ugly. My hair will grow again.’
‘You are beautiful,’ Dior sobbed.
‘I told them nothing, you know,’ Catherine said, as they made their way through the staring crowd. Like the other survivors, she walked in a slow shuffle, her legs apparently barely able to support her. She was in her twenties but she seemed like an old woman. ‘They hurt me, but I told them nothing. You must tell everybody that. Even if they don’t ask you. Tell them I remained silent. I betrayed no one.’
‘Don’t worry about such things now,’ Dior replied. ‘Nobody will dare accuse you.’
Copper could feel that Catherine’s cardboard suitcase was very light. There obviously wasn’t much in it. ‘Do you have clothes?’ she asked.
‘Only what the Red Cross gave me. Nothing fits, but at least I was warm. They told me to bring my clothes to Ravensbrück when I was arrested, but they took everything away from us the day we arrived. And the Russians burned our prison clothes because they were full of lice. I would like to have kept them. I grew attached to them.’
Why hadn’t it occurred to either of them that Catherine would have nothing to wear? ‘I’ll bring you some of mine,’ Copper promised. ‘I’m about the same height as you.’ She forbore to add that Catherine was several sizes thinner.
‘Well,’ Catherine said, perhaps catching Copper’s thought. ‘This is what a year as the guest of the Germans did to me. Don’t cry, Tian. I’m much stronger than I look, I promise you.’
She kept repeating this phrase during the drive to the rue Royale. Dior had himself under control now and was kissing his sister’s hand again and again on the back seat. She stared out of the window with hollow eyes. ‘My God. How wonderful to see Paris again. It’s like a dream.’ She gave a little, uncertain laugh. ‘I’m not dreaming, am I?’
‘No, chérie, you’re not dreaming.’
She saw a kiosk. ‘Oh, can we buy a newspaper? We heard nothing about the war for months, only what people whispered.’
They stopped to buy a copy of Le Monde for Catherine. She did not try to read it, but pressed the newspaper to her face, inhaling the scent of newsprint and ink luxuriously. ‘This is what freedom smells like.’
Dior was talking cheerfully. But because she knew him so well by now, Copper could see how shocked he was by Catherine’s appearance. It wasn’t only her emaciated state; there was something brittle about her. She was trying hard to be bright, but beneath that was exhaustion and desolation. She was struggling to hold herself together, as though she didn’t know what would happen if she allowed herself to relax; as though she didn’t know how to be herself anymore.
Copper rushed home and selected some of her clothes for Catherine. Her wardrobe had swelled with Suzy’s generosity and she had spares. Some pretty underthings might be welcomed, she thought, and jerseys for that wasted frame, which must surely feel the chill. And a hat for that poor, naked head.
When she returned, Dior was in the kitchen, busy with the soufflé. Catherine sat at the window in a shawl, looking out over the rooftops. She turned with that crippled smile to look at Copper. ‘It’s so good to see the rooftops of Paris again. One grew so weary of the barbed wire and the distant trees one could never reach.’
‘I brought you some clothes.’ Copper held out the offerings. ‘Please help yourself to whatever you think you can use.’
‘Ah, Copper. You are as kind as my brother says you are.’
‘It’s the other way around. He has been kindness itself to me.’
‘Kindness is the currency of humanity. Even in the camps one found it. Debased and broken, but one found it.’ She leaned forward to look at the clothes. ‘You have lovely things.’ But she made no effort to touch anything.
‘I thought you might like this cardigan. It’s very warm – lamb’s wool. And this beret, until your hair grows.’ Copper held the garments out in an effort to get Catherine interested.
‘So pretty.’ At last, Catherine reached out hesitantly and stroked the pale-blue wool. With a shock, Copper saw for the first time that on Catherine’s left wrist a number had been crudely tattooed, indigo against the white flesh: 57813. ‘Ah, yes. My number. I hate to see it.’
Copper tried to hold back her emotions. She had heard of these things being done, but it was the first time she had seen them. ‘Perhaps it can be removed.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘I’ll get you some gloves, if you want them.’
‘A pair of cotton gloves? That would be most kind. I’m so ashamed for Hervé to see me like this. He won’t recognise me.’
‘He will understand. Won’t you try the cardigan on? You must feel the cold.’
Stiffly, Catherine pulled on the soft wool garment. ‘It does feel very nice,’ she sighed, hugging herself. ‘Thank you.’
‘Please keep it. I don’t need it.’
‘That I find hard to believe. But you are most kind,’ she repeated.
Dior emerged from the kitchen, drying his hands on his apron. ‘We are nearly ready. To the table, please, ladies.’
They sat at the little dining table. Dior brought in the food, which let off a mouth-watering aroma. He had baked the soufflés in individual ramekins, and they were perfect, each with a fluffy, golden cloud of crust. He opened a bottle of Chablis and filled their glasses. ‘To Catherine.’
Catherine laughed, but Copper noticed she barely tasted the wine. She put down her glass and sat looking at the soufflé before her, in much the same way as she had looked at Copper’s clothes.
‘Eat,’ Dior coaxed. ‘I’ve made it just the way you like it. Like at Granville. And we have to feed you up.’
‘Yes,’ Catherine said. But it seemed to be an effort for her to pick up her fork. She took a mouthful and closed her eyes. Dior was watching her expectantly.
‘Is it good?’ he asked.
She swallowed. ‘It’s a masterpiece.’
He beamed. ‘Go on. You know a soufflé doesn’t last forever.’
&n
bsp; Catherine took a few more mouthfuls. Suddenly, she pushed her chair back and stood up. ‘I’m sorry,’ she gasped. She ran to the toilet, where they could hear her being painfully sick. Dior looked appalled.
‘What is wrong with her?’ he whispered to Copper.
‘I think it’s too rich for her,’ she whispered back.
He struck his own forehead. ‘My God. What a fool I am.’
Catherine came back to the table. ‘I’m so sorry, Tian. Your soufflé is delicious. But my stupid stomach doesn’t know how to behave anymore.’
‘Oh, chérie, I am so sorry.’
‘What can you eat?’ Copper asked.
‘In the prison, they gave us potato soup every day. It was really just dirty water. If one found a scrap of potato, one hoarded it all day. We were lucky. We worked in the factories, so they kept us alive. The others often got nothing at all . . .’ Her voice trailed off, her eyes growing absent, looking into another world.
Copper went quietly to the kitchen. There were a few potatoes, some carrots and leeks, and a bunch of parsley. She chopped them finely and put them on to boil. She could hear Dior and Catherine talking in low voices.
When the vegetables were tender, she took them in to Catherine. ‘I feel I’m being a dreadful nuisance,’ Catherine said. ‘I’m not really a fit companion for decent people anymore. I’m so sorry about the soufflé, Tian.’ She began to eat the soup slowly and carefully, while Copper and Dior watched in silence. Neither of them had any appetite now, and the soufflés deflated slowly in their ramekins, untasted.
Catherine wasn’t sick again, but after a while, her eyes began to close, and her shaven head drooped on its slender stalk. She dipped her spoon into the dish one last time, and then seemed unable to lift it out again.
‘You must sleep,’ Dior said.
Catherine raised her head wearily. ‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t sleep on the train. I was so excited to see you again, Tian. And now that I’m here, I’m such poor company . . .’
Between them, they helped her into her bed and tucked her in like a child. She was asleep before they closed the door.
In the sitting room, Dior whispered, white-faced, ‘She’s dying.’
‘Don’t even think that. She’s come so far.’
Dior covered his face with his hands. ‘I never thought I could hurt anyone. But I could kill the people who did this to her.’
‘So could I,’ Copper said quietly.
Over the next days, Copper learned something of Catherine’s history. She had fallen in love with a dashing young man in the Resistance, Hervé des Charbonneries. Before long, she was involved in the secret struggle against the Nazis. It was her task to memorise critical information about German troop movements and weapons production and relay them to General de Gaulle’s Free French. They’d hoped that a pretty young woman on a bicycle would escape the attention of the Gestapo, but they were wrong. She had been betrayed. A message to meet an agent at the Trocadéro had turned out to be a Gestapo trap. She had been arrested and tortured in the notorious dungeons of La Santé prison.
‘The most terrible thing,’ Catherine told her, ‘was that we were tortured not by Germans, but by Frenchmen. Our own compatriots.’
Christian had tried frantically to get her released, begging his wealthy clients to intercede on Catherine’s behalf. None of them had been willing. Christian himself had been lucky not to be arrested, too.
Now he was overjoyed at Catherine’s return, but her weakened state terrified him. He talked of sending her to the country for the clean air and healthy food that were so hard to find in Paris, but he could not bear to be away from her, and in any case, she was exhausted and in no condition to travel any further.
‘She was always my pet,’ Dior whispered to Copper as Catherine lay sleeping, bundled up in blankets. ‘When we were children, I seldom played with my brothers. But Catherine—’ He smiled tenderly. ‘Catherine was special. I wasn’t allowed to have dolls, of course, so she became my doll. I would do her hair in ribbons and bows. I loved to make outfits for her, dress her up and take her out to show her off. With her, I could indulge all my secret passions for lace and frills.’
‘She was your first muse, in fact.’
‘Yes, she was. And such a sweet-tempered little muse she was; always smiling, always serene. My childhood would have been wretched without her. One of my brothers was insane and had to be put in an institution. My poor mother died soon after. I was never close to my father or my other brother, Raymond. I was a dreamer, living in my own world. Catherine was the only one who could enter that world with me. I really think that losing her would kill me.’
‘You haven’t lost her,’ Copper pointed out gently.
Dior laid his hand over Copper’s. ‘She needs a woman’s touch.’
‘I’m not much of a nurse, but of course I’ll do whatever I can, Tian.’
Copper took Catherine to see a doctor. The doctor, Séverine Lefebvre, was middle-aged and kindly, which was why Copper had chosen her. Catherine asked Copper to be with her for the examination. Standing on the doctor’s scales in her underwear, Catherine was even thinner than Copper had realised, her legs and arms stick-like, her ribs and hip bones prominent under the pale skin, which bore so many discolorations and bruises. The examination was very thorough and included an eyesight test.
At length, Dr Lefebvre invited them to sit at her desk while she wrote out, in her old-fashioned hand, a diet for Catherine to follow.
‘You are severely malnourished,’ she said as her pen scratched away. ‘And it’s essential that you receive the correct vitamins and minerals to make a recovery. It will not be easy for you, Mademoiselle Dior, but you must follow my diet to the letter.’
‘I will try.’
Before they left the surgery, the doctor embraced Catherine, and kissed her three times on the cheeks. ‘You are an example to all of France, Mam’selle,’ she said quietly.
Getting Catherine to eat was the greatest challenge of all. The doctor’s diet, full of nutritious meat dishes, was well-meaning, but Catherine was unable to keep her food down. Overstepping her capacity by even a spoonful would precipitate retching that would leave her exhausted and weaker than before. This occurrence regularly reduced both Dior and Copper to despair.
Nor was food easy to obtain in Paris now that the war was in its final phase. There were no more lobsters from Granville to be had. Even if there had been, the trains were no longer running. Between the strikes and the war, in fact, the shops were empty, and people were reduced to scavenging for scraps, as they had done during the darkest days of the Occupation. The meat and wine that Dr Lefebvre had prescribed were almost unobtainable. It was heartbreaking to see Catherine bring up the beef or chicken that had been bought at such expense and with such difficulty.
Copper was starting to worry. Catherine had not put on an ounce – in fact, she had lost a little every day since her return. Copper had been brought up poor. She knew something about making nutritious dishes, and she told Dior so.
‘This is all very well in theory,’ she said, indicating the diet sheet the doctor had given them. ‘But it’s not working in practice. If you let me, I’ll try and feed Catherine my own way.’
‘Whatever you think best,’ Dior agreed with a tremulous sigh. ‘We can’t go on like this.’
‘Right, then.’ Copper went to the market and returned with a laden basket.
‘What on earth are those things?’ Dior asked in horror, as Copper triumphantly unloaded her shopping.
‘My mother called this a neat’s foot,’ Copper said, examining the grisly object with a critical eye. ‘It’s a cow’s shin and hoof.’
‘But is it edible?’ he demanded.
‘Very much so. This is what my mother made us when we were ill.’
‘I thought America was such a rich country,’ Dior said, backing away from the stove.
‘Not my part,’ Copper replied. ‘We had to feed seven of us on a millhand’s wages.
And we didn’t get lobsters, believe me.’
Several hours’ hard work reduced the neat’s foot into a wholesome broth and a translucent, amber jelly. To Dior’s delight, Catherine partook of the broth – and wasn’t sick.
‘You’re a genius,’ he exclaimed, hugging Copper in the kitchen.
From then on, she produced the dishes of her childhood for Catherine. Her mother had died young, but not before passing on the cookery of her native Ireland – meals that were healthy and nutritious but far from rich. In the absence of chicken, she made rabbit pie; with a few beef bones, she made a delicate broth. Above all, she made vegetable dishes. The humble potato was a godsend now, as were barley, cabbage and beans. Her instinct was that before Catherine could digest the protein dishes the doctor had prescribed, she needed bland, starchy foods that would give her energy, allow her stomach to recover and restore her appetite.
She found that Catherine could be tempted with sweet things. Apple jelly and stewed fruit were dishes she could absorb, and though there was no wine to be had, Copper made a syrup from raisins that was pronounced a great success. Tapioca puddings and blancmanges also made a regular appearance, sweetened with jam if sugar could not be found. Catherine’s deadly weight-loss slowed, then halted. The triumphant day came when the weight on the scale had to be shifted along the beam a notch, proving that she had started to put on flesh again. They celebrated with a dish her mother had called ‘boxty’ – potato pancakes made on the griddle. This dish had to be accompanied by a song Copper’s mother had taught her:
‘Boxty on the griddle,
Boxty in the pan,
If you can’t make boxty
Sure you’ll never get a man!’
Catherine grew strong enough to take short walks. Because her eyes were weak from malnutrition and suffered in the sunlight, Copper bought her a pair of sunglasses. She often took Catherine, wearing these and a silk scarf to cover her head, to walk slowly through the Tuileries. The burned-out German tank that had sat there had now been removed and the gardens were starting to be gay with flowers.
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