Never Leave Me

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘I have something to tell you,’ she said gently as the warm night air filled the room, carrying with it the fragrance of roses.

  In the palm of her hand his sex stirred and she moved her hand lower, to the lean muscles of his thighs, not wanting to arouse him again so soon. Not until after she had told him.

  The room was very still. A firefly danced around the flickering light of the lamp and in the distance the waves could be heard surging rhythmically up and down the deserted beach.

  His arm tightened around her shoulder. ‘What is it, liebling?’ he asked tenderly.

  She raised herself up on one elbow and looked down at him, her hair shimmering like silk in the lamplight.

  ‘We’re going to have a baby,’ she said.

  His eyes flashed wide. ‘A what?’ he thundered, pushing himself up against the pillows.

  ‘A baby,’ she said composedly.

  ‘Mein Gott!’ His grey, black-lashed eyes were incredulous. ‘Are you sure? How long have you known?’

  She twisted herself back on to her knees, her hands clasped lightly on her lap. ‘I’ve only known for a couple of weeks, but I’m quite sure,’ she said her pose and gravity that of a dark-haired, pagan madonna.

  She saw all the emotions that she herself had first experienced chase through his eyes. Stunned disbelief, dawning comprehension, exhilaration, and then, lastly, overriding anxiety.

  ‘What will you do? How will you manage? We’re bound to be separated. The deadline for the completion of the defences is June 18th. After that I could be sent anywhere …’

  A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. ‘I’ll manage like any other woman having a baby in the middle of a war. I’ll manage even better if I know that you are pleased about it.’

  He pulled her towards him, holding her close, an expression of such fierce love in his eyes that her heart rocked in her chest.

  ‘You know how pleased I am, liebling. And you know how concerned I am for your safety. For the baby’s safety.’

  She said tentatively, ‘Even if the Allies land, we will be safer here than in Paris, Dieter. The shortages there are truly terrible and I couldn’t bear to see Paris abject and defeated.’

  He had known all along that she did not want to go. He took hold of her shoulders, squaring her to face him, his face grave. ‘If Valmy becomes the centre of a battlefield, you cannot remain, Lisette. The coastline will be bombed with the same kind of ferocity with which they are bombing Cherbourg and Caen.’

  ‘My father has spoken to Marie. Her family live at Balleroy. We will go there. It is far enough inland to be safe for my mother and yet near enough for me to return within a day.’

  He nodded. The Comte was right. Balleroy would be a far better place for the Comtesse and Lisette than Paris. Their eyes held, violet and grey, both thinking of the coming baby. Of the future. She clenched her hands tightly. ‘Oh God, how I wish that we both wanted the same thing!’ she cried passionately. ‘I can’t bear it when we talk of defeat and victory, and we both know that victory for one is defeat for the other!’

  He took her hands, sliding his fingers between hers. ‘We do want the same thing,’ he said gently. ‘We want peace.’

  Her eyes were bright with tears of frustration. ‘There can never be peace under Hitler! Never! The Allies have to be victorious, Dieter. Surely you can see that?’

  His face was sombre. Slowly he released his hold of her and rose from the bed, crossing to the marble-topped cabinet and pouring himself a drink. She hugged her knees tight against her chest, knowing that now she had started there was no way of stopping. She had to carry on inexorably to the end, no matter what the price.

  ‘We have to want the same thing for the future,’ she said fiercely. ‘We have to want the same thing for our child. And I would rather he was never born than he should live his life under a monster like Hitler!’

  The abyss was out in the open, yawning between them. His face was closed, shuttered. The powerful lines of his naked body tense.

  Fear caught and clutched at her heart. Only a short while ago anything had seemed possible. Now she felt as if at any moment she might be plunged into a ravine that was bottomless. He swirled his brandy around in his glass and then, extinguishing the lamp, he pulled back the heavy drapes and stared silently out over the headland and the sea.

  He trusted her completely. Her loyalty was now utterly to him. As his was to her. He loved her. She was carrying his child. She was going to be his wife. ‘Our child will not live under Hitler, Lisette,’ he said quietly, not looking at her, staring out into the darkness. ‘Within a few months Hitler will be dead.’

  He heard her swift intake of breath and turned towards her, his handsome, hard-boned face tense. ‘Germany cannot afford Hitler any longer, Lisette. He is destroying her.’

  ‘I don’t understand …’ she whispered, her eyes wide. ‘How can you know that he is going to die?’

  He moved towards her swiftly, taking her hands in his, his voice quick and urgent. ‘Responsible army officers and leading civilian leaders are going to overthrow him. He will be seized, tried and executed. Then Germany will make peace with the United States and Great Britain.’

  She let out a long, shuddering breath. ‘Are you one of those officers?’ she asked, already knowing the answer.

  He nodded, feeling overwhelming relief at the admittance of it. ‘Yes. When the government of a nation is leading it to its doom, rebellion is not only a right but a duty. Hitler and his SS thugs aren’t fit to lead Germany. Bad decision after bad decision has been made. Attacking the Soviet Union was madness. We need a man of honour to bring us out of the nightmare we have been plunged into.’

  ‘Who?’ Lisette asked dazedly. ‘There is no one …’

  ‘Rommel,’ Dieter said, his eyes bright, his corn-gold hair silver in the moonlight. ‘Rommel will replace Hitler. He’s strong enough to prevent civil war breaking out between the army and the SS. There will be peace, Lisette! The minute Hitler is seized, Rommel will contact General Eisenhower and all further bloodshed will be forestalled. A peace treaty will be signed and then they will join with us in throwing back the Russians. There will be peace all over Europe before the year is out.’

  Her heart was slamming against her chest. She could hardly believe what she was hearing. ‘What if anything goes wrong?’ she asked, her lips dry.

  The skin across his cheekbones tightened. If anything went wrong, then he and von Stauffenburg and every other member of Black Orchestra, the group pledged to free the Fatherland of Hitler and Nazism, would die slowly and agonizingly in a Gestapo torture chamber dangling from a noose of piano wire.

  ‘Nothing will go wrong,’ he said tightly, drawing her to her feet and holding her close against him. ‘Germany will be free of the brownshirts she has had to live with for all these years. There will be no more Goebbels, no more Himmler. No more men who have never set foot on a battlefield sending hundreds of thousands to die futilely on the Russian front. The Gestapo will be crushed and the army will be able to operate freely under men like von Runstedt and Rommel. Germany will emerge bruised and bleeding but with honour.’ He cupped her face with his thumb and forefinger and tilted it upwards so that her eyes met his. ‘We will be able to live with ourselves and with each other, Lisette. In order to do that, no risk is too great.’

  Her arms tightened around him. The ground was solid beneath her feet. There was no abyss. There never would be again.

  ‘I love you,’ she said fiercely, as he lowered his head to hers, bending her in towards him.

  A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. ‘That’s good,’ he growled, kissing her, ‘because I’m going to take you to bed again,’ and he scooped her up in his arms, carrying her with ease across to the rumpled, inviting, brass-headed bed.

  He had known, the minute she had told him about the baby, that he would have to speak to her father. He could be withdrawn from Normandy at any moment. He had to make sure that she would be taken ca
re of, that the Comte knew his intentions were honourable.

  The next morning, before he left the chateau for his day’s duties, he sent a request to Rommel for a personal interview. The Field Marshal would not be pleased, but he would be sympathetic. Their mutual commitment to Black Orchestra bound them in a loyalty of the highest kind.

  As he stepped from the chateau into the brilliant May sunshine, he saw two figures, arms linked, walking across the terrace and towards the rose gardens. His eyes darkened with concern. It was Lisette and her father and he knew, instinctively, what it was she was telling him. For the first time in his life he was uncertain of what to do. He had envisaged telling the Comte himself; making sure that Lisette met with no parental abuse. They began to walk down the wide, shallow steps that led to the gardens and he was torn with indecision. Logic told him that his place was at her side. Emotion made him hesitate.

  There was something about the closeness of the two figures, father and daughter, that excluded him. He wondered how he would feel in another twenty years if he were having such a conversation with his daughter. His fists clenched. He was damn sure he wouldn’t want the bastard who had made her pregnant intruding on their private conversation. The very thought made the muscles in his neck clench. Mein Gott! Any man who laid a finger on his daughter would find himself with a broken neck! He allowed himself a grim smile, knowing how his reaction to the hypothetical situation would have amused Lisette, and then turned sharply on his heel, walking towards his car. He would talk to the Comte later that evening. Alone.

  ‘I don’t think that I want to hear what it is you have to tell me,’ Henri said as they walked down the moss covered steps.

  ‘I’m sorry, Papa, but it has to be said.’

  He halted at the foot of the steps, turning to face her. ‘Has it?’ he asked gently.

  She nodded. There were blue shadows under her eyes. She had slept very little, lying awake and wondering how best she could break the news to him. How least she could hurt him. ‘There isn’t an easy way of telling you,’ she said, as they began to walk down a gravelled path that led between lush-budded Ophelias and Glorie de Dijon.

  ‘No, I don’t suppose there is,’ he said, pausing to take a pair of secateurs from his pocket and clipping an early flowering, milk-white bloom for his buttonhole. ‘It’s Major Meyer, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m in love with him, Papa.’

  His hand shook, pain flaring across his face and she said urgently, ‘It isn’t as bad as you think. Please listen to me. Let me explain.’

  He walked away from her, towards a wooden seat that in another week would be half-hidden by roses. ‘How can you explain?’ he asked, sitting down heavily, his lips bloodless. ‘He’s a German. He shot Paul and André. What possible explanation can you have for consorting with a man like that?’

  She sat down beside him, taking one of his hands. ‘He shot Paul and André because of me, Papa,’ she said unsteadily. ‘The burden of their deaths is mine. I will carry it all my life.’ Her face was a mask of pain. ‘I would do anything, given anything, for it not to have happened. But at least I understand why it happened, Papa! The responsibility was mine as well as Dieter’s.’

  ‘How could it possibly have been yours?’ he asked in stunned disbelief.

  ‘Dieter … Major Meyer … knew that I was a courier for the Resistance. And he knew that was why Elise had come to Valmy. What her mission was. When Paul and André were arrested, there was no way that he could release them, Gestapo headquarters at Caen already knew of their existence. And Major Meyer knew what sort of interrogation they would face when they were taken there.’ She paused, her face white. ‘He was terrified that Paul and André would give my name under questioning. That I, too, would be arrested. It was because of me that he allowed them to escape in order that he could shoot them without the Gestapo becoming suspicious of his motives! It was my fault! If he hadn’t fallen in love with me, it would never have happened.’ Her face was ravaged by grief and guilt.

  ‘Are you sure that he knew Elise was a member of the Resistance?’ he whispered, horrified.

  She nodded, wiping her tears away with her hands. ‘Yes. He knew what she was trying to do. He knew all along that she had come to Valmy in order to gain entrance to the grand dining-room, and copy or photograph the maps and papers in there.’

  Henri passed a shaking hand across his eyes. His face was ashen. It was he who had been responsible for Elise’s presence at Valmy. If the girl had been arrested … killed. ‘And he let her go …’ he said incredulously.

  Her eyes were fierce in her tear-stained face. ‘Yes, he let her go. He would have let Paul and André go as well, if he could have done so. Please try and understand, Papa. I would never have wanted him to do what he did. I’m not very brave, but I would far, far rather have been arrested and taken to Caen than live with Paul and André’s deaths on my conscience. But I didn’t know about it. Dieter had only mintes in which to make a decision. If Paul and André went to Caen, then the chances were that within hours there would be an order for my arrest too. My arrest, and Elise’s arrest. Your arrest. Perhaps even Maman’s … What he did wasn’t right, Papa, but it was the only thing he could think of in the circumstances. Please try and understand.’

  He looked suddenly old, his face lined, his shoulders bowed. ‘I understand,’ he said at last. ‘But I can’t forgive it. I can’t forgive any of it. Not their presence in my home, in my country. Not the abomination of their creed. Nor their arrogance. Not the blood that is on their hands and that nothing will ever wash away. There are so many other people you could have fallen in love with, Lisette. Why Major Meyer? Why a German?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said quietly. ‘I just know that I do, Papa. Nothing that anyone says or does can change it. I love him, and I want to marry him.’

  ‘Marry him?’ He stared at her as though she had taken leave of her senses. ‘But you can’t many him, Lisette. Germans don’t many French girls.’

  ‘I’m having a baby,’ she said quietly, ‘and I’m going to marry him, Papa.’

  ‘But my dear child, he won’t marry you!’ he said, his eyes anguished. ‘Such a promise is meaningless!’

  She squeezed his hand tightly. ‘It isn’t Papa. He asked me to marry him long before he knew about the baby. Long before there was a baby.’

  Henri closed his eyes. She was his only child. He couldn’t disown her. Couldn’t cast her off. He tried to remember his first, instinctive feelings about Major Meyer. He had liked the man. He had sensed strength there, and courage. Then had come the shootings. He wondered if Lisette would have been arrested if Paul and André had been taken to Caen. It was very likely. No one could say for sure who would talk and who would not when subjected to the treatment the Gestapo meted out. In which case, at the cost of Paul and André’s lives, Lisette had been spared arrest and interrogation and possible death. He sighed deeply, wondering what he would have done if he had been placed in the same position. What Paul Gilles would have done. There was no answer. There was no way that he could know. He could only guess.

  ‘It won’t be easy,’ he said, opening his eyes. ‘Whether the war is won or lost, you will not be able to raise the baby at Valmy. Not if his parentage becomes common knowledge.’

  ‘The war will be over soon, Papa,’ she said, wishing that she could tell him of the plot to overthrow Hitler. Of Dieter’s part in the conspiracy. ‘When it is, we shall live somewhere clean and untainted. Somewhere like Switzerland.’

  He smiled and patted her head. ‘Yes,’ he said, rising to his feet. ‘Of course you shall, ma chére. When the war is over.’

  When Dieter arrived back at Valmy at dusk, Henri was waiting for him. ‘My daughter has told me of her relationship with you,’ he said without preamble as Dieter strode into the stone-flagged entrance hall. ‘I naturally cannot condone it, but for her sake I shall tolerate it.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Dieter inclined his head, not know
quite what to say next. He knew the Comte was deeply hurt and that he was behaving with dignity in what was, for him, an intolerable situation. ‘Will you join me for a drink?’ he said.

  Henri shook his head. ‘No. I have no desire to alter our relationship in any way, Major Meyer.’

  Dieter regarded him reflectively, wondering how best to continue. ‘You know that I want to marry Lisette?’

  ‘Yes.’ Henri’s voice was stiff. ‘She told me about the coming child.’

  ‘I would like to tell you about it also,’ Dieter said gravely, ‘but not in an entrance hall. Please join me for a drink, Comte de Valmy, so that we may talk.’

  Henri hesitated and Dieter took his arm, propelling him gently in the direction of the study. ‘I have already written to Field Marshal Rommel requesting an interview with him at which I will ask his permission for the marriage. That permission will, I am sure, be given.’

  ‘The marriage cannot be conducted here,’ Henri said as Dieter opened the study door. ‘If it became public knowledge, Lisette would be branded as a collaborator. Both she and the child would be ostracised.’

  ‘I am aware of all the difficulties that Lisette and I will face,’ Dieter said quietly, walking across to the drinks cabinet.

  Henri stared at him. ‘You?’ he asked. ‘What difficulties can you possibly face?’

  A slight smile touched Dieter’s mouth. ‘I have a mother, Comte de Valmy, and I doubt very much that she had envisaged having a French girl for a daughter-in-law.’

  ‘Ah yes, probably not,’ Henri said, disconcerted. It had not occurred to him that German officers had mothers. And if they had, it had certainly not occurred to him that they might care what they thought.

  ‘Please don’t worry. Her shock and disapproval will be short lived. What will you have to drink? A brandy or a whisky?’

  ‘A brandy please,’ Henri said, feeling in sore need of one. He had intended having as few words as possible with Meyer. He had certainly not anticipated discussing his mother. He had only just, by the grace of God, managed to prevent himself from asking if Meyer and his mother were close. He shook his head, knowing that he was tired and that, over the last few months, he had aged years.