The French Promise

by Fiona McIntosh

  After a brief discussion with the hotel switchboard operator and giving her the number he required, he waited, all but holding his breath as he heard the whirrs and beeps of his connection go through and the line begin to ring.

  ‘Allo?’

  Luc breathed; heard the switch operator click off once the connection was made and closed his eyes momentarily. This was it; no turning back if he replied.

  ‘Is that Maximilian Vogel?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Who is this, please?’

  ‘Lukas Ravensburg.’

  The silence was so palpable it was like a third listener on the line.

  ‘Are you still there, Mr Vogel?’ Luc asked, aware that his own heart was pounding.

  ‘I am. Please call me Max.’

  ‘All right.’

  Neither spoke for a moment. It was hard to know where to begin.

  ‘I … er, got your letter. And I’m very glad you made it to France,’ Max said, breaking the drought awkwardly.

  ‘We’re in Paris at present.’

  ‘How did your daughter manage the long journey?’

  ‘Well, thank you. It feels like an eternity ago. Jenny loved London, predictably, but Paris is the jewel she’s been looking forward to seeing.’

  ‘Who could blame her?’ Max said.

  They’d run out of small talk so Luc opted to be blunt. ‘Would you like to meet me here or would you prefer me to come to you?’

  He heard the younger man take a breath. ‘I’m more than happy to catch a train and maybe it’s easier as there’s only one of me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bring Jenny,’ Luc said, his tone perhaps too sharp. ‘Forgive me, but she knows none of this.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Max said. ‘I’ll come to you. Can you make arrangements so we can talk freely?’

  ‘I’ll organise something,’ Luc said. ‘When?’

  He heard Max blow out his breath at the other end of the line. ‘How about if I leave Lausanne on Friday, get there in time to see you for Saturday?’

  End of the week. Luc could give Jenny some days of sightseeing in that time. ‘That’s fine. We’re staying at the Grand.’

  ‘By the station?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Shall I call, or …?’

  ‘No. I’ll expect you. I’ll wait in the lobby. Shall we say ten a.m.?’

  ‘I’ll be there. Er … Mr Ravens, how will I know you?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll know you. See you then, Max,’ he said and put the receiver back with a number of emotions tangling in his mind.

  Determined not to penny-pinch as he had all of his life, it was with a keen sense of déjà vu that Luc took Jenny’s hand and helped her from the taxi as they drew up outside the Hotel Ritz in the Place Vendome. A flood of wartime memories washed through his mind but he had prepared himself for the wave and refused to drown in it. Paris was French again and this hotel was no longer the stomping ground of Nazis or even Colonel Kilian’s special birthday surprise dinner venue for Lisette. This was simply one of Paris’s finest hotels where he would treat his daughter to the meal of a lifetime at the fabulous L’Espadon.

  ‘Ready, Jenny?’ he asked.

  ‘So ready, Luc,’ she replied loftily and giggled.

  ‘I prefer “Dad”,’ he whispered.

  ‘Thank you for insisting I learn French,’ she whispered back in French.

  He nodded and switched effortlessly and delightedly into his native tongue. ‘I knew it would come in handy,’ he replied.

  ‘Can you smell the real coffee?’

  ‘Of course. Wow, Paris smells foreign.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘It reeks of elegance.’

  He smiled. ‘Come on. Let’s kick off our first Paris evening with a cocktail.’ She looked thrilled until he continued with, ‘Non-alcoholic for you, of course.’

  Inside the Ritz, near the entrance from the Place Vendome – which he could recall being off limits to most people except Germans the last time he was in the city – he and Jenny, wearing her new miniskirt, took a seat in the cocktail bar. A waiter arrived almost immediately. ‘Monsieur, mademoiselle, bonsoir. Are you dining with us?’

  Luc nodded. ‘We have a reservation for seven p.m.’

  ‘May I offer you an aperitif, sir? Young lady?’

  ‘Can you suggest a most elegant non-alcoholic cocktail for my daughter, please?’

  The waiter frowned. ‘I shall speak with our cocktail bartender. And for you, sir?’

  ‘I’ll have a gimlet,’ Luc replied. The man nodded, placed down some salted nuts and moved back to the bar.

  ‘What are those?’ Jenny asked, intrigued.

  ‘Pistachios. You shell, like this,’ he said, throwing the greenish nut with its blush of purple into his mouth. ‘Delicious.’

  She followed suit, agreeing with him that the nuts were ‘scrumptious’.

  Their drinks arrived. ‘This is a vodka daisy, miss,’ the waiter explained, ‘without the vodka,’ he said, glancing at Luc. ‘Lemonade, lime and grenadine. I hope you enjoy it.’ Jenny smiled at the triangular-shaped martini glass, with the layer of bright pomegranate juice sitting beneath the fizzing lemonade and spritz of fresh lime. A curl of lemon peel twisted in the glass and a half slice of lime adorned its sugared rim. ‘Your gimlet, sir,’ he said, placing down Luc’s glass.

  ‘Thank you,’ Luc said. As the man left he raised his glass. ‘To you, Jenny Ravens. Welcome to my homeland … especially welcome to Paris.’

  They clinked glasses and Jenny announced her faux vodka daisy to be ‘perfect’.

  ‘So,’ she continued, ‘did you and Mum come here?’

  Luc shook his head, explained that the hotel had once crawled with the Germany Nazi hierarchy and that they were too poor anyway. He didn’t want to lie, though; he’d made a promise to himself that he would be honest with Jenny about everything. All they had was each other and candour was the best currency for her strong personality. ‘Your mother did come here once, though, as a guest of a German colonel.’

  ‘We know Mum was a spy but neither of you ever opened up about the war years.’

  ‘It was a painful time, Jen. You can’t imagine it. I can’t really describe it even. Death was around every corner. Your mother was the bravest of the brave … truly.’

  ‘Tell me how you met.’

  ‘You know that,’ he said, sipping and frowning.

  ‘I know Mum’s version. Tell me yours.’

  He took a slow breath. Maybe it would help them both to talk about Lisette. He decided to tell his daughter everything he could recall about that fateful meeting in a tiny village one wintry evening in 1943.

  ‘It was not unlike the November evening we have now,’ he began.

  His story, lengthened by her questions, stretched well beyond their cocktails, and almost through their exquisite seafood dinner. He’d skirted the truth of Lisette’s affair with Kilian but could sleep straight knowing he’d told no direct lie.

  ‘You must have been so jealous!’ she said, wide-eyed, carefully forking the last morsel of fish into her mouth.

  ‘I was! I had to sit out in that freezing car and wait for them to finish their meal and then drive him back to his hotel and your mother back to her apartment, pretending all the while.’

  Jenny’s intrigued expression told him he’d certainly entertained her. He hoped she would ask no deeper questions, though.

  The maître d’ arrived at their table.

  ‘My swordfish was perfect,’ Luc replied, relief tumbling through him. ‘Please thank the chef.’

  ‘And I could lick my plate,’ Jenny answered in flawless French, which raised a twitch of a smile from the man.

  ‘May I send the dessert trolley?’

  Jenny shook her head. ‘Not if I want to fit into the Paris fashions,’ she replied.

  Luc could barely believe it. It seemed as though Jenny was ageing in front of him.

  ‘Coffee?’ the man asked poli
tely.

  ‘Please,’ Luc said.

  ‘For you, mademoiselle?’

  ‘Yes, black please,’ she said, despite Luc’s glare. When the man melted away, she admonished her father. ‘Come on, Dad. Don’t tell me French children aren’t drinking coffee from a young age. They drink wine from birth, Mum said.’

  ‘Your mother, as always, exaggerated. I don’t like you drinking caffeine.’

  ‘Why? It’s really no different to the amount in tea, and we drink that by the gallon.’

  He stared at her helplessly. ‘You exhaust me.’ She gave him a cheeky grin.

  They left the Ritz feeling so full they both groaned. ‘Do you feel like a walk?’ he asked. ‘Or are you tired?’

  ‘I don’t think I can sleep after my nap this afternoon. Let’s walk.’

  It was going to be cold but they were properly rugged up and hand in hand they strolled through the hotel, past the bar made famous by Ernest Hemingway. ‘I’ll take you into the Tuileries tomorrow; they’ll lead us all the way through to the Louvre and then we can cross over onto the Left Bank and walk through Saint Germain, Jardins du Luxembourg and so on.’ They walked out through the side entrance of the Ritz into rue Cambon and he heard Jenny gasp. ‘Dad!’

  Luc whipped around, on edge.

  ‘Chanel!’ she finished, her tone filled with awe.

  Luc breathed out. He’d forgotten the original salon was located there and watched amused as his daughter skipped over the small road to press her nose almost onto the windows filled with square bottles of the famous fragrance to pay homage. She reminded him of Holly Golightly staring into the window of Tiffany’s. What did I recently privately vow about Chanel No.5 and my dead body? he thought with an inward smile of irony. He managed to tear his child away from the fashion house with promises they would return when it was open and he led her back onto the rue Rivoli, to pass the Hotel de Crillon.

  ‘Look – bullet holes sustained during the Liberation of Paris.’ He pointed, privately amazed, remembering the exchange of fire.

  Jenny was not nearly so enthralled. ‘What about the Eiffel Tower?’

  ‘I’ll take you there this week. The Parisians cut the cables so Hitler couldn’t ascend the summit – he’d have to walk. I gather he never did make the climb.’

  ‘Good,’ she said.

  ‘It’s hard to describe how this city looked in the forties, Jen. There were street signs in German and swastika flags hanging everywhere. People were starving; they grew vegetables in those gardens where I suspect tomorrow you’ll see beautiful beds of flowers,’ he said, and glanced once again at the pockmarks standing out in stark relief beneath the Hotel de Crillon’s illuminated facade. They moved off the rue Rivoli and he walked Jenny back up through the fashionable district until they stood on the steps of La Madeleine and admired her soaring colonnades.

  ‘The famous cakes are named after this place,’ he remarked. ‘There’s also a photo of Hitler on this very spot during his single visit to Paris when the Nazis first occupied our country.’

  ‘Dad, can I get my hair cut? Cropped, I mean?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ he replied, inwardly amused by her lack of interest in his narrative, and urged her to keep walking because even he was beginning to feel the bite of the November night air.

  They made it back to the hotel fatigued and Jenny fell asleep holding his hand across the small gap between their twin beds. He didn’t know if her blossoming love was breaking his heart or filling it. Why had it taken Lisette and Harry’s deaths for him to appreciate how much he cherished this girl? With her face relaxed, asleep, and her lips slightly parted she looked even more like her mother with half of her long dark hair draped across the pillow, the other half floating in a soft cascade over her shoulder and outstretched arm.

  How could she possibly consider cutting it?

  After a modest breakfast, they walked into the Palais Garnier opera house, Luc keeping up his narration of all that he knew about it but allowing Jenny to read to him from her trusty guidebook. They both marvelled at the glittering spectacle of the Grand Foyer and its magnificent split staircase.

  ‘You’ve seen this before, haven’t you?’ she accused.

  ‘Once as a little boy. My father walked me through,’ he replied, remembering a happy time when Jacob Bonet had been trying to encourage his adopted son to consider taking up music.

  ‘… where the infamous Phantom of the Opera novel is set,’ she read.

  ‘Jen,’ he said, glancing at his wristwatch, ‘we may have to get a hurry on as I have to get to rue Scribe, to American Express.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you are so expensive to keep in Paris,’ he answered archly, hurrying her out of the fabulously ornate building and across one of the many avenues that intersected the madness that was L’Opera. It had been busy enough in the war but now it seemed Parisians sat on their car horns for the entire time they negotiated the lively Place de l’Opera.

  Luc became convinced that every single tourist had chosen this moment to visit the triangular American Express building that sat like a fortress in between rue Scribe and rue Auber as they converged to meet Place Charles Garnier. Here they could send and pick up cablegrams and money orders, convert their traveller’s cheques and generally do business from ordering tours and sightseeing tickets to getting help with lost passports and missed connections. It was like a major arterial railway station during rush hour. Luc and Jenny stood mesmerised at the entrance, scanning huge, sweeping teak veneer service desks for the one with the tall metal sign that said ‘Traveller’s Cheques’. Jenny spotted it first.

  ‘Over there!’

  As Luc stepped forward he knocked the shoulder of a woman passing by. She wore a flattering smoky-grey swing coat trimmed at the neck and cuffs with silver fur. ‘Pardon, mademoiselle,’ he said, lifting his hat.

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ she said in English and he was surprised, fully expecting such an elegant woman to be French. He smiled at her, first noticing her intoxicating perfume and then her eyes, which she quickly averted; they were a dark khaki, shot through with deep chocolate flecks. Her hair was a lustrous warm nut-brown, cut fashionably at shoulder length and tousled, as if carelessly styled. He watched her step onto the newfangled moving staircase. He’d never seen one before. It ascended achingly slowly, giving him the opportunity to watch the Englishwoman until she turned slightly, lifted her gaze and met his. There was a single powerful beat in his chest, as though a winged creature had just taken flight. He could still smell her scent – fresh, sparkly – and while seemingly inappropriate for the onset of winter, it hinted magnificently towards a French spring. He smiled to himself that he led his life by bouquets, whether sniffing the air and knowing rain was coming, to smells that could transport him back decades – like that of the just-baked baguettes or freshly ground coffee that had enveloped him on the first morning they woke in Paris. But it was perfume that interested him most. He smelt no note of lavender in it but he liked it all the same and wished he could know what brand it was.

  It felt good to notice a woman again.

  ‘Dad, can I wait here for you?’ Jenny said.

  He glanced around the busy menagerie of people, unsure. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘I just feel a bit queasy … and I can feel a headache coming on. I’ll sit over there and wait.’

  She pointed to a bucket seat in the corner by big arched windows looking out onto the frenzied intersection, while the doors kept swinging as the visitors continued to swarm in. It was nearing lunchtime, so it was especially busy.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Plan our route down to the Louvre and everything else you’d like to see today.’

  ‘Okay. Hey, Dad?’ He turned back. ‘You know that girl I was speaking to in the dining room over breakfast?’

  He nodded. ‘Juliette, you said her name was.’

  ‘Her father runs the hotel.’

  Luc waited.

  ‘I like her
,’ Jenny continued. ‘She said if I felt like sleeping over one night, I could.’ He still said nothing. ‘I was thinking Saturday … um, if you didn’t have anything planned.’

  He grinned, shook his head. ‘In the hotel?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said eagerly. ‘Apparently they have a huge suite of rooms. Her mother said I could.’

  Luc raised his eyebrows. ‘It sounds organised.’

  Jenny gave him a sheepish glance. ‘Well, they phoned while you were in the bathroom. I said I’d ask.’

  Friends for Jenny were hard to come by, he knew this. And Saturday night could work out perfectly for him. ‘You have asked and I’m fine with it.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad.’

  ‘Don’t talk to strangers,’ he warned.

  She threw him one of her best withering glances and buried her head in her guidebook.

  Luc marvelled again at the moving staircase as he passed by. Surely these wouldn’t replace elevators all over the world? He joined the swarm and continued across the pale chequered floor heading for the counter. He queued patiently but always felt that the other line was moving far faster than his. As he finally arrived at the desk he was captivated by a familiar, invisible cloud of scent. He turned to his left and there was the graceful Englishwoman again; she was standing next in line in the queue alongside his, unaware of his interest while she dug in her handbag, soft tan gloves in her other hand.

  ‘Monsieur?’ repeated the man behind the counter.

  ‘Pardon,’ he said for the second time in a few minutes and proceeded to get on with converting some of his traveller’s cheques. He wanted to buy Jenny something special and he had to accept that nothing would be more memorable than a purchase from Chanel’s flagship salon. He sighed and added another few cheques to the pile to be signed off.

  The Englishwoman’s line moved and before he knew it, the coat he recognised suddenly swung into view and the perfume filled his mind again. She glanced at him and smiled briefly.

  ‘Hello, again,’ Luc said, in English. ‘Are you visiting Paris?’