Never Leave Me

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘Christ!’ he said again, swerving out of the woods and plunging down the long, linden-flanked drive. He felt as if he were about to enter into combat, not knowing what to expect, what he would be called upon to do.

  ‘Are you going to be able to talk me through this?’ he asked tautly as they screeched to a halt outside the stables.

  ‘I’m sure that babies who arrive in a hurry do so with very little help,’ she panted, trying to sound more confident that she felt, clambering from the car and then halting suddenly as another spasm of pain knifed through her.

  Luke ran to her side, slipping his arm around her waist. She leaned against him, panting for breath. The pain receded and she said urgently, ‘Help me up the stairs, Luke. I think time is running out.’

  He half carried her up the whitewashed stone stairs, shouting for Henri.

  The Comte rushed out of the room above them, staring down at them in alarm.

  ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’

  ‘The baby,’ Luke said tersely. ‘It’s on its way. Take the car and bring Dr Auge or Madame Pichon back with you!’

  Another wave of pain swamped her and she groaned, swaying against Luke’s supporting arm. ‘Quickly!’ Luke rasped. ‘There’s no time to lose!’

  Henri didn’t hesitate. He dashed past them, stumbling down the stairs and running towards the car.

  There were beads of perspiration on her forehead: ‘It’s coming!’ she gasped, seizing hold of his hand. ‘Oh Luke, the baby’s here!’

  He got her into the bedroom and to the bed. She collapsed across it, panting, bearing down, unable to hold back. He tore open her coat, pushing her skirt high, pulling her panties down and ripping them from her legs. There was no time for hot water. No time for towels. No time for anything. The baby’s head was already at the mouth of her vagina.

  ‘Gently, Lisette!’ he urged, as she groaned and the baby’s head crowned. ‘Gently!’

  The baby’s head emerged. Luke saw tightly dosed eyes; a wrinkled scarlet face. A mouth already opening to draw breath. Lisette gave a great gasp, there was a rush of liquid, and to Luke Brandon’s indescribable wonder, Dieter Meyer’s son slid, squalling lustily, into his waiting hands.

  By the time Henri returned with Dr Auge, the baby was wrapped in a shawl and Lisette was suitably clad in a nightdress, cradling it to her breast.

  ‘Good God!’ Dr Auge said, pulling up short in the doorway. ‘Is there anything left for me to do?’

  Luke grinned. ‘I didn’t cut the umbilical cord. I thought you’d prefer to do that yourself.’

  Dr Auge collected his scattered wits and bustled across to the bed. ‘And to think I thought this would be a difficult birth,’ he said briskly, taking the baby from Lisette’s arms and laying it on the bed.

  The baby, aggrieved, began to squall again. Dr Auge removed the shawl and regarded him with satisfaction: ‘Congratulations, Madame Dering. You have a fine son. A little small, perhaps, but that is to be expected after the hardship of the last months;’ He turned towards them. ‘Have you some weighing scales?’ he asked, certain that the baby’s weight was to everyone’s advantage.

  ‘Five pounds three ounces,’ he said a few minutes later, ‘He will need a little extra care, but he’s healthy enough if the sound he is making is anything to go by. Put him to the breast. I’ll call again tomorrow. Au revoir, Monsieur le Comte. Au revoir, madame. Au revoir, monsieur.’

  He hurried away, wondering who the Englishman was, and if he was the father. Somehow he doubted it. The Englishman’s colouring was distinctive. Black hair, blue eyes. The baby’s hair was dark gold and, in Dr Auge’s opinion, destined to stay dark gold. No, the Englishman wasn’t the father. And the husband wasn’t the father.

  He frowned as he threw his bag into the rear of his battered car. One solution had occurred to him, but he dismissed it as too bizarre, too ridiculous to be considered seriously.

  ‘What are you going to call him?’ Luke asked, sitting on the edge of the bed as she nursed the baby, her hair falling softly against her radiant face.

  She smiled. ‘I’d like to call him Luke, after you.’

  He gave her a lopsided grin. ‘Don’t do that, it would only confuse things more. Don’t forget that Greg believes it was me you were in love with.’

  Her eyes darkened, her happiness draining away. ‘Will he mind very much?’ she asked, desperate for reassurance. ‘He didn’t mind when he though that it was you I was in love with, but when he knows it was Dieter …’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said truthfully, turning his head away so that she could not see the expression that had flashed through his eyes. He hoped Greg Dering minded like hell. He hoped he walked out on her and never returned. When he had mastered his emotions he turned towards her once again. ‘Will it matter so much to you if he does mind?’ he asked tightly. ‘If he finds the baby totally unacceptable?’

  He wanted her to say no; that she wasn’t in love with Dering. That she never had been. That she was happy now, with the baby … with him.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and beneath the dark halo of her hair her face was pale, her eyes anguished. ‘It would be almost more than I could bear.’

  His mouth hardened. He’d been a fool to ask. But she was being loyal to a man she barely knew. He was certain, when Dering returned, she would be disillusioned. Until then, all he could do was to be supportive and loving. And wait.

  She called the baby Dominic. It was a name that was French in origin and yet would not sound strange in California. A name that began with the same letter as Dieter’s name. A name that had no other associations.

  He was a placid baby, not reminding her, temperamentally of Dieter at all. But there was no mistaking his paternity in the already firm lines of chin and jaw. The grey, black-lashed eyes and the burnished mop of dark gold hair.

  A week after the birth she was cooking and cleaning and shopping in the market, the baby constantly at her side in the makeshift cot that her father had made for him.

  In March she received a brief and hastily written letter from Greg saying that his company was pressing on towards the Rhine. By the end of the month the Rhine had been crossed and Luke assured her that the war was in its final stages. That the Germans had no alternative but to surrender.

  In April, Greg wrote her that American and Russian soldiers had met up on the bank of the Elbe. From the radio, borrowed from old Bleriot, they learned that Russian troops were advancing on Berlin; that the French First Army had reached Lake Constance.

  ‘The surrender can’t be much longer,’ she said, her eyes bright with expectation. ‘Once it is, it can only be a matter of weeks, perhaps days, before Greg returns.’

  She had misplaced her tortoiseshell comb and her hair dipped forward at either side of her face, brushing her cheeks. She was wearing a red silk shirt and a white linen skirt and looked as if she should have been on the Champs Elysée instead of in a converted stable in Normandy.

  ‘Where is Greg now?’ he asked, forcing her voice to be casual. He didn’t want Greg Dering to return. He didn’t want to witness a joyful reunion. Perhaps, incredibly, Dering’s acceptance of Meyer’s son.

  She looked at the last, hastily scrawled letter. ‘They’re moving south, towards Munich. He expected to be at a place called Dachau the day after he wrote. I don’t know where it is. I’ve never heard of it before. It isn’t on any of the maps.’

  Luke hadn’t heard of it either, but if the Americans were moving south so speedily, and if the Russians were in Berlin, then the end could only be days away.

  It came a week later. They heard the news of the German surrender on the radio and almost simultaneously the bells in Sainte-Marie-des-Ponts’church steeple began to peal.

  Luke lifted Lisette off her feet, swinging her round and round exultantly. Henri was nearly incoherent with joy. He kissed Lisette, he kissed Luke, he kissed the baby, he hung the Tricolour from the window. It was over. The nightmare was at an end. The Germans had been beat
en to their knees and Europe was once again free.

  Greg returned to Valmy a month later. Luke and Henri were in the village, visiting old Bleriot who had fallen in a drunken stupor and broken his leg. Lisette was arranging roses in a bowl near an open window, the baby in his cot at her side. When she heard the note of the approaching engine she froze, her hand in mid air. It was a jeep: an army jeep.

  She left the roses. She left the room. She hurled herself down the whitewashed stone steps, through the archway and onto the cobbles. He was in uniform. Strong, fit and unbelievably handsome.

  For a split second she faltered, then he saw her. He shouted her name, leaping from the jeep, his eyes shining, and as he sprinted towards her, her hesitancy vanished and she entered his arms like an arrow entering the gold. Only when she was crushed hard against his chest did she admit to herself how frightened she had been that he would never return. That he would be killed, reported missing: that she would never see him again.

  ‘Oh, I’m so glad you’re back!’ she cried joyfully, her arms tightening around his neck, and then, as he looked down at her and she saw the flecks of gold near the pupils of his eyes, the tumble of his hair curling low over his forehead, she said chokingly, ‘I missed you, Greg! Oh, how I missed you!’

  Relief rocked through him. It had been ten months since he had said goodbye to her. Long enough for her to have changed her mind about the hasty wedding he had talked her into. He felt her press herself against him. She hadn’t changed her mind, and she hadn’t forgotten. The memories of their wedding night had sustained her through the long months of waiting as they had sustained him.

  ‘No more partings,’ he promised huskily. ‘This time when I leave, you come with me,’ and then his mouth came down on hers, hard and hungry, and desire licked through her, scorching her nerve ends raw.

  He swung her up in his arms, carrying her with devastating ease up the stone stairs, striding with her through the sun-filled sitting-room where Dominic lay unnoticed in his cot, falling with her onto the bed in the room beyond. She tried to speak, to tell him about Dominic, but he gave her no chance.

  ‘Later,’ he said hoarsely. ‘We’ll talk later, Lisette. All I want to do now is make love to you. It’s been so long. Too long.’

  His fingers were on the buttons of her blouse, his mouth on her lips, her throat. She abandoned the attempt to speak, astonished at the ferocity of her own need. Her own passion and hunger.

  He tore himself out of his uniform. Within seconds her blouse followed his shirt onto the floor, her skirt his trousers; her lace-edged French knickers, his shorts. He was too impatient to wait until she removed her suspenders and cheap, rayon stockings. A tuft of night-black hair curled silkily against the fragile whiteness of her inner thighs. He groaned, burying his face in the sweet-smelling fragrance of her, his tongue hot and exploring. Her fingers tightened in his hair, her back arching with pleasure.

  ‘I love you … love you … love you …’ she gasped, and knew with delight that it was true. When he mounted her and she opened for him, she shivered with ecstasy, wrapping her legs around him, wanting to hold him inside her forever.

  Their climax was shattering, the reverberations going on and on until she thought she would die. As she looked up into his face, at his tightly closed eyes, at the expression of intense concentration, almost agony, furrowing his features, she was aware of a sensation she had never before experienced. Power and pleasure inextricably mixed. He was her husband. There was no shadow hanging over their love for one another. No darkness to blight the happiness they had discovered.

  He collapsed on top of her, murmuring her name, his hand on her breast, and the baby, unaccustomed to being neglected for so long, gave a whimper and then a cry.

  He jerked his head up. ‘What the devil is that?’ he asked unbelievingly.

  She was still trapped beneath him, her hair streaming over the starched white pillowcases. ‘It’s a baby,’ she said, the blood drumming in her ears. ‘My baby.’

  He stared down at her in incredulity and then leapt from the bed, racing across the room and into the sitting room.

  She scrambled after him, hastily pulling on her skirt and blouse. ‘I didn’t tell you in my letters because I thought you’d be angry …’

  ‘Angry?’ He stood naked in the sun-filled room, the baby held high in his hands. ‘But he’s magnificent! Incredible!’

  She sagged against the doorjamb with relief and then he was saying, ‘When was he born? How old is he?’

  ‘He’s three months old. He was born in February. His name is Dominic.’

  Greg laughed with delight. ‘He’s fantastic! Amazing! What did he weigh?’

  Her surge of relief died rapidly. He hadn’t understood. He had made a terrible mistake. ‘Five pounds three ounces,’ she said unsteadily. ‘Greg, he isn’t…’

  ‘That’s pretty good for a short term baby.’ Greg regarded Dominic admiringly. ‘My sister was short term. Born at seven months and weighing four and a half pounds. My mother never thought she’d make it. This little fellow is going to make it all right. Just look how he’s holding on to my finger!’

  The baby, fascinated at being held so high in the air, was clinging tightly to Greg’s finger, cooing cherubically.

  She knew if she moved she would fall. ‘Greg, please, you don’t understand. Listen to me …’

  The Citroen roared beneath the stone archway and into the courtyard.

  ‘I’ll talk to you later,’ Greg said to Dominic, laying him gently back in his cot, making a beeline for his clothes.

  She couldn’t tell him now, not with Luke and her father about to make their entrance at any moment. Luke. She still hadn’t told him about Luke.

  ‘Luke Brandon is with Papa,’ she said rapidly. ‘He didn’t die. He escaped. He’s been living here since January.’

  Greg halted in the act of buckling his belt. ‘Brandon has?’

  She saw his mind immediately fly to the baby. Saw doubt. Uncertainty as to what their relationship had been. She ran across to him, seizing hold of his arm. ‘Greg! I didn’t love Luke! I never have! That was all a mistake! He’s lived here as a friend …’

  There came the sound of Henri and Luke climbing the stairs. He seized hold of her wrists, so hard she cried out in pain. ‘Is that true?’ he asked urgently. ‘You never really loved him?’

  ‘No. I love you!’

  It was the first time she had told him so. His teeth flashed in a relieved grin. ‘That’s OK then,’ he said, releasing her and pulling on his shirt. ‘In that case I can afford to be sorry for him.’

  ‘Lisette? Is Greg here?’ her father called.

  She pushed a strand of sweat-damp hair away from her face. ‘Yes Papa,’ she said, taking a deep, steadying breath and walking from the bedroom into the sitting room. She would have to talk to Greg later. She would tell him then about Dominic’s paternity. That he had misunderstood her when she said that she didn’t love Luke. That she meant she had never loved Luke. That it had been Dieter Meyer she had been in love with. Dieter Meyer she had been talking about when she had told him, before their marriage, that she didn’t know how to begin to learn to love anyone else.

  ‘He arrived half an hour ago, Papa,’ she said, aware of Luke’s face tightening at the sight of her disarrayed hair, her rumpled clothes.

  ‘That’s wonderful news. Is he on leave? Home for good?’

  ‘I’m on leave, sir,’ Greg said, stepping into the room behind her.

  ‘It’s marvellous to see you again,’ Henri said sincerely, taking his hand and shaking it warmly. ‘How long is your leave? Twenty-four hours? Forty-eight?’

  ‘Twenty-four,’ Greg said, turning to Luke and proffering his hand. ‘It’s good to see you again, Brandon. I always thought you were too wily to be caught by the Krauts.’

  Luke fought down his jealousy. ‘It wasn’t easy getting away from them,’ he said wryly, knowing that however much he tried; he was never going to be able to hate the t
all, toughly built American. ‘What sort of war did you have after you left Valmy?’

  Greg’s brandy-coloured eyes darkened. ‘The Last few days were the worst. Have you ever heard of a place called Dachau?’

  Luke shook his head. ‘Lisette said you mentioned it in one of your letters. What is it? A town? A village?’

  The skin tightened across Greg’s strong-boned face. ‘No,’ he said and there was something in his voice that sent a shiver down Luke’s spine. ‘It’s a camp.’

  ‘A prisoner-of-war camp?’

  Greg shook his head, his eyes narrow. ‘No, a concentration camp. One of the camps the Germans used for containing Jews and undesirables.’ He moved across to the window, staring down into the courtyard. ‘There were thousands of them there when we liberated it. Men, women and children, starved and tortured; thousands of human beings, little more than living dead.’ His voice shook. ‘You can’t begin to imagine it. The stench, the bodies. The guards had fled but the inmates hadn’t fled. They couldn’t flee. They couldn’t walk.’

  He paused and then continued tightly. ‘There was one room piled to the ceiling with potties. Little zinc potties. The mothers had brought them with them for their children. God knows where the Germans had told them they were going.’ He passed a hand across his eyes. ‘They didn’t need those potties. When they arrived at the camp they were gassed. Hundreds of thousands of them.

  Men, women and children.’ His throat seized up and he couldn’t continue.

  They were looking at him in horror. Lisette’s eyes so widely dilated, her face so white that he thought she would faint. He said unsteadily, ‘Never, as long as I live, will I step foot on German soil again. Never will I stay in the same room as a German. Speak to a German.’

  The baby, aggrieved at being abandoned, began to cry. Greg crossed to the cot, lifted him comfortingly in his arms and Lisette crumpled, insensible, to the floor.

  When she recovered consciousness she was lying on the sofa and Greg was at her side, his face taut with anxiety. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. It was crass of me to tell you about that hell-hole when you’ve just had a baby and aren’t very strong.’