‘But … but you can remember it so vividly?’
‘Une sacrée bonne baise, eh? Is that what you mean?’
‘You know it is. You needn’t be embarrassed.’
‘Ah, bon, Mademoiselle la Doctoresse Laurier, what I remember most is his smile, the look in his eyes, their happy, mischievous glint, their warmth for me and my children. These I must never lose. All the rest pales by comparison, though I enjoyed it, of course.’
‘What will you do when you get to the house?’
Have I told them to meet me there? This is written all over her. ‘The house might not even be there anymore. It might have been bombed to pieces or burned to the ground. Me, I don’t know or care. I only know that the forest will be waiting.’
In the morning, after that night of illicit love, two partridges were hanging by their feet against the redbrick wall of the courtyard. My breakfast had been laid out on the kitchen table: coffee with milk, porridge, two eggs, toast, jam, sliced pears, and apples. Enough for ten. Jean-Guy was to be waiter.
I had to laugh, had to kiss and hug them both. Jean-Guy was so excited. ‘Maman, I have hit one! Monsieur Tommy, he has held the gun, but I have pulled the trigger.’
Nothing would suffice but that I be shown the bullet holes. Both partridges had been killed by a single shot to the head. Marie-Christine, still in her nightie and one slipper, looked at me in such a way I had to wonder if she had seen the love in my eyes for Tommy, but will I ever know? This, too, has haunted me day by day for it carries its measure of guilt.
We decided to go for a drive, and I took him first to the Caves of the Brigands. There the hills of the Fontainebleau Forest break into tangled, scrub-clad rocky gorges that slope down to interfinger with the flat farmlands to the northwest. Stubbled grain fields, haycocks, and newly plowed fields are pastoral under a bright autumnal sky across which white clouds lazily drift. A few people were about on the land. Some were harvesting root crops, others onions and cabbages. In one distant field, three women gleaned stubble as women have for hundreds of years.
I lifted my arm and pointed, heard myself saying, ‘Barbizon, as Millet and Sisley would have painted it. The dappled colours, the froth of gold the autumn brings, the touches of green and brown from the branches. Ancient roofs and broken fences. Look how the light plays on them, Tommy. It’s incredibly beautiful, n’est-ce pas?’
My mother’s farm was at a crossroads out on that plain. It’s about two kilometres from the caves. The low, tiled roof of the house is set in the midst of an isolated copse and half-hidden by the hanging branches of a giant willow, now golden. Before the farm, the fields are flat; beyond it, the same, but to the southwest are the first scatterings of the village and the road we took that day.
Barbizon had only one major street, a line of dusty shops, the bakery and pâtisserie, a milliner’s, wine merchant’s, two hotels and restaurants for the tourists and people from Paris, lace curtains in the windows of the houses, sunning cats, and one dog that almost missed us.
We were through the village in an instant and all too soon at the farm. Unbidden, the children noisily got out of that great big car to run and shout to their grandmother … But I can’t go on. Please, it isn’t necessary now. Suffice it to say that mother only confirmed what I wanted to hear her say. That we should go to England with Tommy. Never mind the things that Jules was having sent from the Louvre. Never mind the house. Just go. Leave while you can! Live while you’re in love.
I never questioned anything else. I closed and locked the château, threw the key away. Finished, or so I had thought, but life is not so simple, nor is it so kind.
The wind was raw. It was another morning—later by a fortnight, and all the guilt and agony of that crossing are behind me. The refusal of the military at Le Havre to let us leave the country. The threat of submarines, the endless hours of seasickness cooped up belowdecks with the children, bundled in our life jackets all the time, the stench of stale tobacco smoke and vomit everywhere.
Tommy never took no for an answer, not if he thought the objective necessary. We had driven to Cherbourg. He had paid handsomely, under the table you understand, and we had crossed over from there.
This wind was from off the Bristol Channel, from over the highest peaks of the Quantock Hills, and I was standing beneath the spreading, empty branches of a massive beech in the graveyard that was beside the little stone church at Aisholt, in Somerset. I shut my eyes and ran fingertips over one of the ancient headstones. I felt the damp withdrawing into the pits and hollows of letters that were all but gone.
From Taunton, the road runs east to Curry Rivel, Langport, Somerton, Lyndford-on-Fosse, and Camelot, its castles, knights, and kings, if one believed.
With eyes still shut, I remembered it all, the days, the drives, the man, my father leading Nini and I on a chase through time. How very different he was from Jules, how so like Tommy.
I had come home to a death, to a first hard casualty in what was soon to become my private war, my own little bit of hell. Me, I had thought myself so lucky. Suicide is an unpleasant thing, so hard to accept in one you’ve loved.
Now, of course, I can understand the need for such a thing. But in those days … ah, what can I say? I was simply too naive.
The church, the rectory, the stained-glass windows I had so often viewed from within and without, all drew my attention to a God no different than the one to whom I prayed at Mass in France.
That little church had been built in the fourteenth century. The bell tower had tolled its call to the faithful ever since, its warnings of war as well.
A figure emerged from the manse, bareheaded as usual and wearing the threadbare tweeds and gumboots I will always remember. The hair was wispy-silver and a little too long, the man short, swarthy, and ruddy faced with sincere and honest grey-blue eyes and wire-rimmed spectacles whose lenses were bifocal and octagonal.
He addressed the day with the vigour he always had. He was nearly eighty, or was it eighty-two? George Arthur Martin, our padre, my father’s greatest friend and caretaker.
Would the talk today be of infidelity, the need to forgive, that of a husband for his wife, the children for their father, or of common sense and the war? So far he had said so little of any of these things it made me wonder about him.
‘Lily, you mustn’t dwell on things. Now, you really mustn’t. He’s gone to his Maker and the sound of the guns has been silenced at last.’
No more screams in the night, no more terror. The legacy of that other war that ended such a short time ago. The reason my mother could no longer live with my father. Well, one of them. Perhaps you have noticed that my little sister was typically French, whereas me, I was …
‘Is it time for coffee, do you think?’ he asked.
A wisp of hair fell over the Saxon’s brow. I gave him a smile that pleased him immensely. I said quite gaily, ‘Let’s walk a bit. I want to see the hills once more.’
They were to the west, north, and south of us. By making a circuit of the garden, we could compass some of the finest scenery in England. Arthur let me take him by the arm and gave a contented sigh. ‘You’ve no idea how good that feels to a man of my age. Just because I wear the cloth, doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the company of a beautiful woman. I’ve seen you blossom again, in just these past two weeks. You’ve got rosy cheeks, my girl. You’re beginning to think you can cope with life—no, I don’t want to hear about it unless you want to tell me. It’ll take time for the place to get inside you. It has a way of its own. Do you know, when I first saw you I thought, dear Lord, that girl’s been ill, but now … why now, you’re one of us again. It’s a right proper feed, isn’t it, this place of ours?’
I squeezed his arm, drawing myself closer to him. Together we looked to the east, towards Avalon, then north across the Quantock Forest to Longstone and Beacon Hills. Heather and gorse lay on the crowns of the highest hills, while on the slopes below, there were oaks and beeches.
Neither of
us spoke, for to do so would interfere with the moment. To the west, the Quantocks rose to their highest, while beyond them lay the Brendon Hills of Exmoor. To the south lay Aisholt Common, Cothelstone Hill, the Vale of Taunton Deane and the Blackdown Hills beyond.
‘It’s a land of poets and kings, Lily. Of writers, too.’
‘Father was very ill, wasn’t he?’
‘No more, no less than when he first came home from the Great War, and your mother saw the difference it had wrought in him. Time and the peace of our countryside did a lot for him. It was good for him to come back here.’
For the sake of us girls, our family had spent the war years here. My father had wanted to become a writer, but had ended up being a schoolmaster and then going off to that war. Trapped, that’s what he’d been. Trapped by the need for money a growing family presented, trapped by the love he had borne the woman of his dreams, the girl he’d met as a student while travelling in France.
‘Come now, let’s have that coffee. There are some things that we must discuss.’
He had put the kettle on the hob. Coffee wasn’t his usual. First thing he liked a good cup of tea, but ever since I’d been coming to the hill of a morning, Arthur had thought the change would do him good, and I had made it for him. The book-lined study of dark oak contained not only a fireplace, ample desk, and leather-bound chairs, but also a big bay window whose leaded glass overlooked the garden.
There was a bench before that window, its plush wine-red morocco just as worn as when I first remembered it. Leaning against the backrest, I stretched out my legs and cradled the cup and saucer in my lap.
Arthur indicated the garden with its wealth of hidden paths and rose arbours. Of a spring or summer, there would be banks and banks of colour in wild profusion with phlox, lavender, nicotiana, and so many others piled against sky-blue asters, white daisies, and goldenrod.
The apple trees, the Damson plums. ‘God is out there, Lily. Do you know, I’ve a confession to make. I’m afraid I’ve made a very poor clergyman. I feel Him most when working in my garden. Some Sundays, I can hardly wait to get out of that pulpit.’
‘It’s always so lovely, even at this time of year. Nini and I still speak of it.’ He would tell me now, in his own good time. I knew he was hunting for words.
‘This young man of yours. I like the cut of him, but Aisholt’s a little place. People talk—my good godfathers don’t I know it. He’s not involved in the war—that’s a strike against him, even if he is an American and they’re not in it yet. The point is, my dear, if Jules were to …’
‘He’ll never give me a divorce. The Church wouldn’t allow it. In any case, he must know by now that I’ve run off. This will hurt his precious vanity. I love Tommy, Arthur. Heart, soul, and mind—every particle of me. I’ve never felt this way before.’
‘But you hardly know him?’
Again, I heard myself saying, ‘It doesn’t matter. Not with us.’
‘What’s he do for starters?’
‘He’s in insurance.’
‘Fairfax, Gordon, and Scharpe, the underwriters. Number 83-A Lime Street. Back to back with Lloyd’s and very thick with them, I should think. Rates within rates. The point is, what’s it all mean?’
I heard my cup rattle against its saucer. ‘Has something come up that I don’t know?’
Arthur didn’t avoid it. ‘You have your doubts. I knew you had. This “treasure,” Lily.’
‘What “treasure”? Please, what is this? Has Jean-Guy …’
‘My dear, your young man has a secret compartment in the boot of that motor of his. Ideally suited to smuggling, I should think. Apparently, he took this “treasure” when you left your husband’s house.’
‘Arthur, that’s simply not true.’
‘I take it then that you’ve no knowledge of his having done. Perhaps he did it to help you financially? I gather there’s some jewellery, a tiara … Jean-Guy called it a crown.’
‘It’s paste, Arthur. A fake, for heaven’s sake!’
He set his cup and saucer aside. ‘Have a look around. I’m sure you’ll find it then. But wait. Half a minute now. This firm of his doesn’t just underwrite insurance policies. They underwrite the underwriters.’
‘We are the select, la crème de la crème, Madame de St-Germain. A pool of very wealthy, influential families are behind us. Need I say more, hmm? We cover colleagues who have taken positions on objects of great value and when we get burned, we employ men like Tom Carrington to apply the salve. He’s in East Anglia at the moment, commiserating with the Count Alexis Nikolai Ivanovich Lutoslawski.’
‘A Polish count?’
‘That is correct. A refugee.’
‘Who’s been robbed?’
The man behind the antique desk nodded. ‘Robberies like this seldom get into the press. One doesn’t want the world to know, hmm? They were very good, very select. German or Russian agents must have tipped them off. Paintings, Old Masters, tapestries, a quantity of Russian silver, small pieces of sculpture—very early things those. A matched pair of duelling pistols …’
‘A tiara.’
‘Yes, a fake unfortunately, as you’ve admitted to our Tom. The questions we must ask ourselves, my dear woman, are how on earth did your husband come by it, and where, please, is the real one?’
I sat there in that office, cold tea before me in a fine china cup. The muted sounds of London’s traffic filtered through the oak-panelled walls and the leaded windows across which great x’s of tape had been pasted.
Charles Edward Gordon was the son of one of the original founders. He had a high, domed forehead, a thin tonsure of brown hair, the stooped shoulders of a big, tall man whose frame had long ago resigned itself to overwork, overweight, and the years.
The face was fleshy, the jowls drooping like those of an old bulldog.
The eyes … I can still remember how he looked at me with suspicion, curiosity—amusement, too, because he obviously must have known something about Tommy and me—and what else? A sense of wanting to go deeper, a gamble, too, perhaps? Ah, it was hard to define.
He reached for his pipe and began to pack it, the motions a ritual he had no need to concern himself with. ‘At least one hundred thousand pounds, Madame de St-Germain, probably a good deal more. The tiara of the Empress Eugénie, sold at auction with the rest of her jewels after the flight to England in September 1870 and the collapse of the Second Empire.’
‘France would love to have the real one back, I suppose.’
‘The Royalists at any rate,’ he said, as if sucking it from his pipe. ‘Your husband, madame, is he a member of the Action française?’
Those were not quite Royalists but close enough. ‘Jules? Ah, no. Jules wouldn’t wish for the end of the Third Republic and a return to the days of the royalty.’
Or would he have? The Action française were notoriously Fascist and very far to the right, the Vuittons too, no doubt. But Nini … Nini was to the left of centre and would have warned me. She wouldn’t have put up with him for a moment.
Intently, Gordon watched me, but all I saw of him behind that cloud of tobacco smoke was the smile he momentarily gave as he asked, ‘Think about it, will you? Let Carrington know. Our Tom’s a good chap, very thorough. Been with us for … now let me see.’ He fished about for a notebook he’d no need of. ‘Five years. Has it really been five? Seems like forever. War heating up in France, is it?’
The British were already calling it the Bore War; the French, La Drôle de Guerre, the Phony War. ‘This business seems so far from it,’ I said weakly.
‘Oh, my goodness, no. We reinsured the policies on the Lutoslawski collections back in ’38. They were shipped here from his estates in eastern Poland last summer, as per the conditions of our agreement. Out in the nick of time only to be stolen, madame. Stolen. A good bit of them at any rate.’
‘How much of a bit since that tiara was a fake?’
I think then that he suddenly realized I might not be so easy. �
��Four-and-a-half million pounds. Priceless objects of virtù. A terrible shame, what with this war and all. Still in their crates and only just off-loaded. Whisked away, shipped back to the continent, no doubt, and quickly sold off to be quietly hidden. God only knows. Need I say, the war has put us in a very difficult position? The firm has always backed its colleagues. There are no risks in this business, only bad rates. Still, it’s not going to be easy. It certainly isn’t. Carrington is one of our fast-dwindling links with the Continent. Most of our chaps have already been called up. Tom has an American passport, the eye and mind of a hunter. Go and see Lutoslawski for yourself. Let me ring Tom and tell him you’re coming. Yes, I think that would be best under the circumstances. We’d like to have you on our side.’
* * *
Lowestoft is on the Suffolk coast. Tommy stood at the far end of that platform in the greying light of a grey day in that third week of November 1939. I remember that his overcoat was of a flecked beige tweed, that the collar was up, the fedora pulled well down against the wind, and that his hands were in the pockets. I think then that he thought he had lost me. I knew I feared I’d lost him.
‘Lily, it’s good of you to have come. Did the kids mind it very much? They’re okay, by the way. I’ve only just spoken on the phone to Arthur Martin and his housekeeper.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d taken that box? Oh, for sure, I can understand why you took that tiara, Tommy, but Jules … Did you not ask yourself what he would do to me when he found out, even though he must have stupidly bought it on the sly?’
‘I’ll take it back to him. We’ll let him keep it because it’s not the one we want.’
He took the shopping bag from me—I’d managed to buy a few things in London. Still distant from each other, we walked into town. Lowestoft was a seaside town, though not so popular as Blackpool or Brighton, but the war was everywhere in signs, warnings, places one could no longer go, shore batteries, too, the Royal Navy. We finally found a small restaurant. Over chowder, bread, and tea, I still couldn’t face him.
Hunting Ground Page 8