‘Don’t you want to see your fiancé?’ Copper asked gently. As yet, Hervé had not even been told that Catherine was alive, something Copper had found puzzling.
Catherine grimaced. ‘He thinks I’m dead. And perhaps it’s better that way.’
‘Why do you say that?’ Copper exclaimed.
‘I don’t know if we can continue; if we should continue.’
‘Because of what’s happened to you? You’re beautiful, and you’re getting stronger every day. Your hair will grow. He’ll be overjoyed to see you.’
‘There’s more than that,’ Catherine replied wryly. Leaning on Copper as they walked, Catherine began to tell her some of the story of her love affair with Hervé des Charbonneries.
She had fallen in love with him in a coup de foudre, love at first sight. She’d walked into a shop to buy a radio. Tall, suave and handsome, he had shown her the latest model. Their eyes had met – and her heart had been captured.
‘But there was a catch,’ Catherine went on. ‘Hervé was never my fiancé. That would be impossible. Hervé is married.’
‘Oh,’ Copper said.
‘Yes – oh.’ Catherine imitated Copper’s flat tone. ‘And he has three young children. A man can hardly be more married than that. But I was infatuated and so was he. He was a founder member of the Resistance and he enrolled me at once. So we worked in secret and we loved in secret. Our life was full of secrets. I loved him so much; adored him, in fact. If it were not for that, I think I would have broken under the Gestapo. But I knew that if I gave up Hervé’s name, he would be killed. I endured everything they did to me, and thank God, I was able to protect him.’
Copper’s eyes filled with tears. ‘That’s the bravest thing I ever heard.’
‘Love makes one brave.’ Catherine shrugged. ‘Or perhaps foolish. Who can tell the difference?’
‘Hervé should hear what you endured for him,’ Copper said.
‘Do you think so?’ Catherine shook her head. ‘I think it would put unfair pressure on him. If I asked him to come back to me, I would be asking him to leave his wife and his children. Before all this’ – she made a gesture to encompass her frail state – ‘it was an adventure, an escapade. Now it is serious. So many have died; so many have suffered. I don’t know if I can face any more suffering, or ask others to endure any more for my sake.’
‘So long as he thinks you are still imprisoned or even dead, he’ll be suffering anyway.’
Catherine smiled crookedly. ‘You see things so clearly, my dear Copper.’
‘I try to. Not seeing things clearly has led me into a lot of mistakes.’ She paused. ‘Do you still love him?’
‘I’ve thought of him every hour since the day I was separated from him. Does that answer your question?’
‘Yes, I guess it does.’
‘And what about you?’ Catherine enquired. ‘You are waiting for someone, too, aren’t you?’
‘I suppose your brother has told you about him.’
‘He sounds very glamorous.’
‘Yes, he is that.’
‘He wants to marry you.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you love him?’
‘Yes, I love him. But—’
‘But you cherish your freedom,’ Catherine said, looking at Copper shrewdly.
‘Something like that.’
‘You Americans and your freedom. There are more important things, you know.’
Copper laughed. ‘Is that the opinion of a heroine of the Resistance?’
‘Well, you see where fighting for freedom got me,’ Catherine said, pulling off her scarf to show her bald head. ‘Freedom is precious, but other things may be even more precious.’
‘I’d like to write a story about you, Catherine,’ Copper said.
‘There is nothing remarkable about me,’ Catherine replied.
‘Of course there is. Your bravery, what you’ve been through, how you’ve survived – all that is deeply inspiring.’
Catherine was cautious. ‘Do you mean for the newspapers?’
‘Well, I was thinking of a magazine article, with some photographs.’
‘Photographs of me? Now? In this condition?’
‘Yes, absolutely. You won’t always look like this, you know.’
‘I don’t think I want that,’ Catherine replied hesitantly. ‘Let me consider it for a week or two.’
But it was only a couple of days later that Catherine came back to Copper with her decision made.
‘Yes, I will let you write about me. And photograph me. Not because my story is unique, but because it happened to so many others, and so many others have not survived. People should know what happened to them.’
Catherine agreed to pose for some portraits that would unflinchingly show what the Nazis had done to her. Copper knew that it took courage for her to do this, knowing that she would be seen by thousands of readers; but Catherine Dior certainly did not lack courage.
And she was willing to talk about her experiences.
After her arrest, she had been interrogated with the utmost savagery, beaten with fists and a leather whip, her arms wrenched out of joint, her head held under water until she was drowning. She had said nothing, though she had heard others betraying their comrades.
When they’d accepted that she wouldn’t talk, she had been dispatched with two thousand others, packed into cattle trucks, to Ravensbrück. People started to die on the agonisingly slow train journey in the summer heat with no air or water. After a few days, they were jammed in with hundreds of already rotting corpses. Less than half arrived alive at the railway station of Ravensbrück, where women from all over the lands conquered by the Nazis were being shipped.
Ravensbrück had been touted as a ‘model camp’, a shining example of Nazi social engineering, where firmness and kindness were to heal those infected with diseases like religion or socialism.
In reality, it was a place of unspeakable horrors.
‘The women who didn’t die of typhus,’ Catherine told Copper, ‘were worked to death in the factories. They sent the young ones to what they called “the hospital” for medical experiments. They cut them up without anaesthetics, amputated their legs or took out their organs to see if they could survive without them. They injected them with chemicals, tested drugs on them. Every day we carted trucks of corpses and severed limbs to the crematorium.’
Copper could hardly bear to listen to all this. The fate of the children was too terrible for Catherine to talk about.
‘After that, they sent me to Buchenwald, to the explosives factory. They were pitiless there. They picked out the weakest ones every day. We could hear the firing squads every morning. Then I was moved again, this time to a potassium mine. It was really an underground slave-labour camp. The air was poisonous and I nearly died. And then they started moving us from place to place as the Allies came closer. To an aircraft factory in Leipzig. And then to Dresden, where the Russians liberated us. I think I was by then a month away from death. Perhaps less. The Russians had liberated other camps, so they knew what to expect. They were so kind – they fed us and clothed us, and handed us to the Red Cross. Do you know what kept me alive all that time?’
‘What?’
‘The thought of returning to Tian. I used to dream I was back with him in Paris, laughing, eating lobster. I hated to wake from those dreams.’
Copper was deeply moved. ‘Tian never stopped believing that you would come back. He consulted an astrologer about you every week.’
Catherine nodded. ‘He was forever hunting for four-leaved clovers as a child, collecting charms, dreaming up spells. I remember once, a gypsy at a fair read his palm. She said women would be lucky for him, and he would make a fortune out of them. He was so excited. How our parents laughed. The idea of Tian making money out of women – well, you know how he is.’
‘Yes, I know how he is.’
‘If he hasn’t exactly made a fortune out of women, he at least makes a living out o
f them.’
‘If he were to break away from Lelong and open his own house, he might make that fortune yet.’
‘He was the kindest and most loving of brothers to me, Copper. He made my childhood so happy when it might have been miserable.’
‘Why do you say that?’
To Copper’s surprise, Catherine portrayed her mother as a disciplinarian who was cold and remote with her children.
‘I am sure she loved us. But she was very strict. She was always busy. She didn’t encourage displays of affection. We weren’t allowed to just run up to her and hug her. If you dared crease her clothes, you would get a stern rebuke. You had to earn her affection, and that wasn’t easy. We all learned to tiptoe around her – all of us, except Tian. He followed her everywhere. He learned the names of every flower in her garden, even the Latin ones. Our brothers were cruel to him and called him a mama’s boy, but he didn’t care. He set out to win her love.’
Copper thought of Dior saying that he lived only to please others. ‘And did he win her love in the end?’
Catherine hesitated. ‘I think she let him get closer to her than any of the rest of us. He was the only one she took to Paris to see her modiste.’
Copper was interested. ‘Was that a special privilege?’
‘Oh, yes. Not even my sister or I were allowed that. Her name was Rosine Perrault, and she had her atelier right here on the rue Royale, a stone’s throw from this apartment.’
‘He doesn’t move far from his roots,’ Copper murmured thoughtfully.
‘I think it made a deep impression on him – seeing her fitted, watching the dressmakers at work. It was a mysterious world that he longed to belong to. After those visits, he used to dress me up, playing at being a dressmaker.’
‘Yes, he told me that.’
‘We had to keep it a secret. Our brothers would have teased the life out of us if they’d found out. Of course, I loved the attention. I worshipped Tian and I adored to be fussed over by him. Oddly, I lost most of my interest in clothes as I grew up.’ She ran her hand over the stubble that had started to grow on her scalp. ‘Though Tian was the one who worked hardest to please her, Bernard was the one who got the most attention. He grew stranger and stranger, and we could hardly cope with him. And then our father’s business collapsed. We lost that lovely house overlooking the sea and the garden that our mother made with so much care. When Bernard finally had to be put in an insane asylum, our mother died of grief. Tian was just a young man and her death shattered him. I saw him turn from a bright, happy person into a shy introvert. I think he felt she was taken away from him before he could win her approval.’
Copper felt a deep sadness for Catherine. She had defended her lover with her life, literally; and yet now she could not claim him as her own. Copper spoke to Dior about this bitter irony.
‘I knew there was something going on,’ he said. ‘But I had no idea she was in the Resistance. No idea at all. She would arrive out of the blue, full of life as always. She would spend the night sometimes, and then pedal away furiously on her bicycle.’ He sighed. ‘I thought the big mystery was that she was having an affair and sometimes I asked her, but she would never tell me who the man was. Of course, I assumed there was some complication – that he was married, for example – and that there was a need for discretion. I thought the biggest risk was that she would have her heart bruised, and I warned her against that. I didn’t know that she was carrying secret information in her head. I only found out about that, and about Hervé, after she was deported.’
‘You know she told them nothing, Tian. She endured terrible things to protect Hervé.’
‘I know. When she was arrested, I went completely crazy. I rushed around to everybody I knew, begging for help. People just slammed the door in my face. None of them wanted to be in any way associated with the Resistance – though now,’ he added bitterly, ‘those same people claim they were heroes. The only person willing to help was the Swedish ambassador, and by the time he intervened, it was too late. Catherine was already on the train to Ravensbrück. As for the rest, all those rich people who might have done something to save her, they showed themselves for what they are – miserable creatures hiding behind imposing façades.’
‘You said you would find Hervé and tell him she’s alive.’
Dior hesitated. ‘I have found him. He’s here in Paris. I haven’t spoken to him yet. Catherine asked me to say nothing.’
‘I think she’s longing to see him. It’s a horribly difficult situation. She’s pining for him. And sooner or later he’s going to find out that she’s alive anyway, isn’t he?’
‘Yes. But perhaps she wants it to be his decision whether he comes to her or not.’
‘It’s not your storybook romance, is it? If he comes to her, he’ll break up his family. If he doesn’t, he’ll break her heart.’
‘Love is seldom like the storybooks, my dear,’ Dior responded. ‘Our lives are too tangled for happy endings.’
Twelve
It was a few days after this conversation that Copper opened the door to a knock and found a stranger on the doorstep. He was about forty years old, tall and willowy, wearing a tweed jacket and nervously fiddling with a felt hat. She felt at once that this was Catherine’s Hervé. He seemed too emotional to speak, so she spoke for him. ‘You’re looking for Catherine?’ He nodded. ‘She’s sleeping. Would you like to come in and wait until she wakes up?’
He took a step back. ‘I’ll come back later. I don’t want to disturb her.’
Copper was not about to let him escape. ‘Don’t go. She always has a half-hour nap at this time of the morning. It won’t be long before she wakes up. She’ll be so pleased to see you.’
Reluctantly, he allowed himself to be led inside and seated in the plush little salon. Dior was at Maison Lelong and she had been writing an article while Catherine slept. She offered him coffee, but he declined. ‘You’re working,’ he said, gesturing at her papers. ‘I’ve come at a bad time.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ She decided to be direct. ‘When did you find out she was back?’ she asked him.
‘A friend saw her walking in the Tuileries with someone the other day. That was you, I suppose?’
‘Yes. We walk there most days if the weather is good.’
He was fair-haired with a feathery moustache and an aquiline profile. He reminded her of the swashbuckling actor Errol Flynn, and it was easy to see how Catherine had been struck by his athletic good looks. But right now, he was almost painfully edgy, turning his hat round and round in his long fingers, and speaking in a nervous voice.
‘How is she?’ he asked.
‘She’s improving. She was very weak when she arrived, but she’s started to recover.’
‘They say you’re working miracles with her. Has she – has she mentioned me?’
‘I don’t know. You haven’t introduced yourself yet.’
‘My name is Hervé des Charbonneries.’
‘I believe she has mentioned your name,’ Copper replied gravely. ‘Once or twice.’
‘I don’t understand why she didn’t come to me directly,’ he said, getting up restlessly and pacing around the room. ‘How could she come back to Paris and not tell me? It’s so cruel.’
‘She has suffered a great deal,’ Copper replied. ‘Perhaps more than you realise. It hasn’t been easy for her. I don’t suppose coming back from the dead is ever easy.’
‘I thought she was dead. I never expected to see her again. And she has let me continue thinking that. While she was here, alive!’
‘Catherine has suffered things that nobody should suffer. She’s been in places that you and I can’t even imagine, and seen things that would strike us dumb. Nobody can go through that and remain undamaged. But she can be healed. Especially by love. And especially if you can learn to stop thinking of yourself and start thinking of her.’
He was silent for a while. ‘I apologise,’ he said at last, stiffly. ‘But this is hard fo
r me, too.’
‘She sacrificed a great deal for your sake. She saved your life.’ Copper studied him critically. ‘You’re what – fifteen years older than she is? And a married man with three children.’
‘Well?’
‘You got her running errands for the Resistance and you got her into your bed. Which came first?’
The colour was mounting to his angular cheekbones again. ‘Madame, you have never known what it is to have an enemy occupying your country. France called for a sacrifice from all of us. But of us all, only a few answered the call. Catherine was one. France will remember that forever.’
‘You have quite the gift of the gab.’
‘It seems you have appointed yourself Catherine’s guardian,’ he said shortly. ‘But you are not her family. You are not even French.’
‘You’re right, I’m neither. But I see myself as her friend, not her guardian. She’s frail, and if I didn’t try to protect her, I wouldn’t be much of a friend, would I?’
Copper thought she heard a sound from Catherine’s bedroom. ‘I’ll go and check on her.’
She found Catherine awake and sitting on the edge of her bed. She sat beside her and took a fragile hand in both her own. ‘He’s here,’ she said quietly.
‘I know. I heard his voice.’ She was trembling.
‘Do you want me to go out?’
‘No. Please stay in the apartment. But send him in here.’
Copper went to call Hervé. ‘She’ll see you now.’
Hervé went into Catherine’s bedroom, still holding his hat. Copper closed the door on them and went to work at the dining room table. For almost an hour, she heard nothing from Catherine’s room except the occasional murmur of voices. At length, Hervé emerged. He said goodbye to Copper curtly, and let himself out. She heard his rapid steps descending the stairs outside.
She went into Catherine’s room in some trepidation. Catherine was standing at the window, looking out. To Copper’s alarm, she looked feverish, her eyes unnaturally bright and her face flushed.
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