Before the Dawn

by Candace Camp

  “What! How could it explode?”

  He shrugged. “They suspect sabotage. Several small explosions in strategic locations, probably dynamite.”

  “My God, why?”

  “A factory for trucks and heavy machinery is easily turned to producing military equipment. I imagine some of my countrymen decided they didn’t want it to fall into German hands.”

  “Oh.” A shiver ran through Alyssa. Somehow the news made the steady advance of the German Army seem frighteningly closer. “I see. But how terrible for you—a lifetime of work.”

  His face tightened, and Alyssa wished she could call back her words. What a clumsy thing to say—he was doubtless already aching at the loss. Philippe crumpled up the telegram and tossed it into the trash.

  “It can be rebuilt,” he replied shortly. He turned away. “Let’s walk. I need to talk to you.”

  Alyssa scrambled into the first clothes she found and they went down to the formal gardens in back, not speaking. Philippe slipped his arm around Alyssa’s shoulders and squeezed her close to his side as they went up the shallow steps into the small orangerie.

  They sat down on a stone bench there, and Philippe took Alyssa’s hand and gently rubbed it, watching the slow, circular motion of his thumb. Still not looking at her face, he rose and walked across the gallery to the lattice-framed window. He shoved his hands in his pockets and stared out the window. After a long moment, he turned back to Alyssa. His face was set in hard lines that made him look older than his years and the pale green eyes were carefully blank. “Alyssa, it’s time for you to leave.”

  Alyssa drew in a shaky breath. She hadn’t expected this. She had though his quiet and sorrow were solely for the ruin of his business. “No,” she protested automatically.

  “Yes. In a matter of days, the German army will be in Paris. It can’t be long after that before they reach here.”

  “You think there’s no hope?”

  “None. I am so in love with you I’ve tried to pretend that it could be otherwise, that by some miracle the army would hold its ground. It was foolish. I knew before the Germans attacked that the military would collapse. It’s run by blind fools. So is the government. France is about to become a German possession. You have to leave now. I don’t want you caught in the last-minute panic as the Gerards were in Paris. You mustn’t be on the road with the Luftwaffe strafing the cars. The Gerards will go this afternoon, I imagine. We will accompany them to Marseilles, and you can fly with them to Lisbon.”

  “No.”

  He glanced up at her sharply. “What? What do you mean? You have to leave.”

  “I’m not going without you.” Alyssa shook her head as Philippe started to speak and held up her hand to stop him. “I’ve thought about this a great deal the past few days. In fact, I’ve thought of little else.” She rose and went to him. “Darling, you must come with me.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  Alyssa gripped his hands hard. “Listen to me before you refuse. You said yourself that all of France will fall to the Germans. But there will still be one country left fighting them—England. Perhaps soon the United States can be persuaded to come into it, too. We’ll have to! The war won’t be over when Paris falls. Come with me to England. The Poles who were able to escape are in England fighting alongside the British, and I’m sure there are Frenchmen in the same position—those who escaped at Dunkirk, if no one else. They’d welcome you, I know. They’ll need all the help they can get in the next few months.”

  “No.”

  “Why not? There’s nothing left for you here, especially now that your plant’s burned down. But in England you could help win France back from the Germans. I’m sure there are hundreds of ways you could be invaluable. I’ve never told you, but I met a man in England, the uncle of one of my friends, who is working in secret. I’m sure he could use you, and I could do something, too. I’ve already gathered some information for him while I’ve been here. We’d be together and free and working for France’s liberation! Don’t you—“

  “No!” Philippe’s voice boomed out. “Merde! I don’t want you working for him. Do you understand? It’s dangerous. Don’t go near that man again.”

  “What is the matter with you? So what if it’s dangerous? It’s necessary. Don’t be so European. Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I can’t do anything. I have beliefs and principles too, and I’m as capable as a man of backing them up. Maybe I don’t know how to fight, but there are lots of things I can do. I’m smart; I can learn what I don’t know. I hate the thought of the Nazis occupying Paris. They simply cannot be allowed to swallow up the world! Don’t tell me I can’t fight them.”

  “I can’t bear for anything to happen to you.”

  “Then come with me.” She smiled her most beguiling smile. “Be there to make sure it doesn’t. Please, Philippe. Let’s go back to England together.”

  “I can’t. I won’t leave France. Whatever happens to her, this is where I must stay.”

  “Then I’ll stay with you.’

  “Alyssa! You can’t!”

  “I can.”

  “I won’t allow it. Don’t you have any idea what it will be like, being ruled by the Nazis?”

  “It will be less hard for me than for you,” Alyssa replied reasonably. “At least I have an American passport.”

  “And what if America should come into the war, as you said?”

  “It will be no worse than what you endure. I want to be with you, Philippe. I want to give you whatever aid and comfort I can. I know you. You’re planning to fight them here, aren’t you? You’ll need someone to help you. To listen to you. To love you. I want to be that person.”

  For an instant Philippe’s eyes flamed with light, and he reached up to cup her face. “You are so beautiful. So full of fire and strength. You’d give courage to any man.” He bent and kissed her, his mouth sinking into hers desperately.

  Then he jerked away, his face harsh. Not looking at Alyssa, he growled, “You don’t know me at all. Believe me, you don’t want to stay. You have a picture of me that’s not true, one that is colored with your own courage and ideals. I don’t have them.” He swung back to her, facing her squarely, his jaw set and his eyes hard. “Within two weeks you’d be cursing me. I don’t plan to fight the Germans, outside the country or in. I plan to get along with them.”

  Alyssa’s jaw sagged. She was as stunned as if someone had bashed her over the head. She couldn’t speak.

  “I’ve traded with German companies the past few years,” he went on. “I have several friends in Germany, some of them rather influential. Some in the army. When I return to Paris, I’ll remind them of that friendship. With their help, I’ll reopen my plant. I don’t intend to languish in poverty; I had quite enough of that in my early life.”

  Alyssa managed to reach the stone bench before her legs gave way. “You—you’re going to cooperate with the Nazis?”

  “Exactly. They’ve won, or they will have in a few days’ time. Whatever this country has been in the past, it will belong to the Nazis from now on. The only sensible thing to do is to recognize that. I don’t plan to be on the bottom ever again, so I have to join whoever’s on top.”

  Bile rose in Alyssa’s throat, and she pressed her hand against her mouth to hold back the wounded cry trying to burst forth. It couldn’t be true! It couldn’t! Yet it was. Philippe had just told her, without any apologies or embarrassment. He cared more for his wealth and position than for his country or anything else, including her. Her love shattered around her like lovely, fragile glass.

  Alyssa rose jerkily and started toward the door. Philippe took a step after her, then stopped. His face was bleak. “I’ll drive you to Marseilles.”

  “No!” Her shoulders stiffened. She didn’t turn around. “I couldn’t stand to be in the same car with you.”

  His eyes closed briefly. When he opened them, they were as hard and expressionless as marbles. “V
ery well. I’m sure Monsieur Gerard will take you with them. I will speak to him about it.”

  Alyssa wanted to clutch her stomach and run to the house. She was sick and broken. But she forced herself to walk with her back straight, her shoulders up, relying on years of training. She walked out the door, then stopped and turned, one hand on the door frame to hold her steady. “I thought I loved you. Now I see that there was nothing there to love. I don’t know how I could have been so blind.”

  She left the orangerie and strode across the garden. It wasn’t until she turned the corner of the building and left Philippe that she broke into a run, tears streaming down her face.

  Philippe looked after her, his hands clenched at his sides. Only the first, he reminded himself. The first rejection and contempt. The first cutting of ties. There would be many others. But he knew there could be none worse.

  *****

  Alyssa did not emerge from Philippe’s room until Monsieur Dumont had taken her bags down to the car and everyone was ready to leave. When she reached the front door, she saw Philippe standing on the steps, chatting with Kingsley Gerard. She glanced at him once, quickly, then turned her eyes away and walked past him to the car. She climbed into the rear seat, tying a scarf around her hair. Lora looked at her, surprised. Alyssa’s lovely skin was splotched, and her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy from crying. Lora glanced at Philippe curiously, but said nothing, simply got into the back seat with Alyssa. Philippe shook hands with the men and reached into the open car to take Lora’s hand and politely bow over it.

  “Good-bye, Madame Gerard. It’s been a pleasure having you here.”

  “Thank you. You’ve been very kind.” Lora’s eyes were puzzled.

  He spoke past her, “Good-bye, Alyssa.”

  Alyssa’s chin came up. She didn’t look at him. “Good-bye.”

  Claude started the car, and they drove down the driveway and out of sight past the stables. Philippe gazed down the empty drive for a moment, then returned to the house and climbed the steps to his bedroom. The fragrance of Alyssa’s perfume still clung to the air. He looked at the dresser. Her small jewelry box and silver-backed brush and comb were gone. He glanced into the bathroom. The vanity table was empty of Alyssa’s cosmetics and perfume.

  Philippe opened the large mahogany wardrobe. There was a small vacant space beside his clothes. No feminine shoes on the floor, no frilly hats cluttering up the top shelf. She’d been at the house little more than a week, yet she’d left a huge hole behind her.

  Two dresses hung at the end of the closet, light summer frocks she’d bought before they left Paris. They weren’t the expensive creations she usually wore; she’d purchased them off the rack in a hurry because the weather had turned too warm for the clothes she had brought with her. They were plain cotton and linen in styles hundreds of other women wore. Yet she’d looked as beautiful in them as she had in a Jean Patou. Philippe imagined that Alyssa could wear a sack with style.

  She probably thought they weren’t worth taking with her—or perhaps she disliked them now because she had worn them only with him. Philippe ran his hand down the smooth, cool cotton finish. There was another hanger behind the dresses, and he moved them aside to see what hung upon it. A simple, pale pink blouse. He remembered it well. Alyssa had worn it that day in the Bois de Boulogne, when they had first made love.

  Philippe jerked open the dresser drawers Alyssa had taken for her own. A pink cashmere sweater lay in the second drawer, neatly folded. Philippe crushed its exquisite softness between his fingers. He remembered how it had felt beneath his hands that day, how he had molded the soft material to her breast and felt the sweet response of her nipples to his touch. Tears glittered in his eyes. He brought the sweater to his cheek and rubbed it softly against his skin. Alyssa. Alyssa.

  He had known how it would end from the very first, and it had been foolish to let himself care too much. He had thought he would indulge his lust with a beautiful woman, a final present of pleasure to himself… and instead he had wound up losing his heart. He wasn’t a man who could afford to have a heart. Philippe threw the sweater back into the drawer and slammed it shut.

  *****

  It took Alyssa’s party three days to reach Marseilles from Philippe’s house. The roads were jammed with people fleeing their homes in all sorts of vehicles. Cars ran out of gasoline and were simply abandoned, often not even pulled off the road. Fortunately, the trunk of their car was half filled with extra containers of gasoline, so they didn’t have to face that horror. Still, it was slow, uncomfortable, and aggravating.

  Alyssa, numbed with pain and sorrow, hardly noticed any of it. She moved or sat as Lora and King directed, uncaring about what happened or what was said. The world was as flat and colorless as a movie, as disconnected from her. She had no feeling, no interest, no appetite or thirst. There was a vague pain in the region of her chest, but it wasn’t enough to pierce the fog around her. She simply existed, unable to absorb the shattering of her world.

  When they reach Marseilles, King managed to bribe his way into the best hotel, already stuffed to the exploding point. They were lucky to get in. Marseilles was swamped with the shocked, the desperate, the homeless. Red tape, confusion, and pain abounded. They were far better off than most, for they had American passports and King’s huge wad of American dollars. But no amount of luck, bullying, or money could get them on an airplane to Lisbon. The daily flight was booked solid for days, and they simply had to wait. Claude, once so reluctant to leave his country, now grew more jittery every day because he couldn’t escape it.

  On June 14, the German Army rolled into Paris. There was no resistance offered, and the city seemed emptied of people. Even the Champs-Élysées was deserted, the shops closed and shuttered. Within hours the swastika flew at every major landmark in the city. Within two days the German Army had chased the French all the way to the Loire River.

  Paul Reynaud resigned as Premier of France, and the aging Marshal Henri Pétain, the hero of the Great War, took his place. The government moved to Vichy. On the twenty-second of June, France surrendered to Germany.

  The news set King into action again. He had been resigned to waiting, no matter how little he liked it, but with the country surrendering to the Germans, he decided that he better act quickly. There was no telling what regulations the new government might put on Jews now in order to please the victors. That afternoon he went to the docks and hired a fishing boat to take them to Portugal.

  As they sailed to Lisbon, Alyssa’s shock began to wear off, leaving behind a pain so fierce and consuming that Alyssa longed to return to the robotic tranquility of shock. Philippe had trampled their love. He had betrayed her as fully as if he had taken another mistress while professing to love her. He was a man without a soul, she thought, not worthy of love.

  She had never really known him, Alyssa realized now. She had thought he was strong and principled, but he had been playing a part. He had not really loved her; he couldn’t. A man who would be a friend to the Nazis could have no heart with which to give love. She thought of the horrors she had heard the Nazis were perpetrating, and she shuddered. A man who would join them could be nothing but cold. Worse, he must be actually cruel.

  How could she have fallen in love with a man such as that? Why had she been so blind to his true nature? Somehow, because she had been so overcome with love and passion for him, she had managed to ignore what he was really like, and seen him only as she wanted him to be. She had given him qualities and principles he did not possess.

  Alyssa felt torn and bleeding inside. She had never imagined that a broken love affair could bring such pain. Her world was shattered. She had loved Philippe with all her being, and with that love torn away there was nothing left of her except hurt.

  When the boat arrived in Lisbon, King booked seats for them all on the first Clipper back to New York, but Alyssa refused to go. She was determined to return to England, and all their pleading couldn’t change
her mind. She had promised to bring whatever information she had garnered in France back to Ian. Heaven knows, it wasn’t much—she had been too wrapped up in her love to talk to many people. And with France overrun by the Germans, she doubted that Ian could use anything she had picked up. Still, she had an obligation to report to him.

  But more than that, Alyssa simply wanted to go to Jessica. She wanted to crawl in a hole and whimper with her hurt. She wanted comforting. New York and the theater would not provide her any of that. Nor could her mother, off in a hazy alcoholic world of her own, or her father, who was always busier than two men. Of all the people and places she knew, only Jessica and her home offered Alyssa solace.

  She caught the first plane to Southampton from Lisbon. On the train to London, she gazed out at the English countryside, gloriously alive and green as it always was in June, yet nothing that she saw raised her spirits—or really even registered. She might as well have been in a tunnel.

  It was late afternoon when Alyssa arrived at Jessica’s house. She knocked at the front door and was surprised when Jessica herself answered it. For a moment Jessica stared at her in amazement, then opened her arms wide. “Alyssa! My dear. What in the world—“

  Alyssa rushed into her arms, hugging her friend for dear life. “Oh, Jess!” She began to cry.

  Jessica’s arms closed around Alyssa, worry and fear twisting inside her. Alyssa looked thin and ghostly. What had happened to her? Jessica had been surprised when Alyssa did not return to England as soon as the Germans invaded Belgium and Holland, and as the weeks passed she had grown more and more worried. Alyssa’s state seemed to confirm her fears. Obviously something awful had happened to her.

  “Come in. Come in.” Jessica urged her inside. “Dearest girl, whatever’s the matter?” She turned and called down the hallway for her housekeeper. “Matty!”

  Jessica steered Alyssa into the sitting room. Alyssa’s sobs quieted gradually, and she released her friend, sitting down on the couch and shakily wiping away her tears with her handkerchief. Jessica’s housekeeper appeared in the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron.