Sophia clung to Édouard’s other shoulder, her face frozen in fear.
“Pigs!” spat Falk from the seat in front of them. “Rest assured, the perpetrators will be caught, and I will interrogate them personally tomorrow.”
“Really, Falk, it’s not a problem,” said Édouard hastily. “It was only a few eggs, not guns. Just a bitter patriot who has yet to see the light.”
“The sooner they do, the better for us all,” Falk retorted.
Inside the supper club, as Édouard excused himself to go immediately to the washroom to clean himself up, Frederik guided Sophia carefully down the steps. “Your poor hand is shaking,” he said gently.
“I don’t like violence of any kind.” Sophia shuddered.
“And neither do many of us,” he replied, squeezing her hand tightly and leading her through the crowd to their table. As he sat her down, he put his hands on her shoulders and whispered in her ear, ‘Do not worry, Mademoiselle Sophia. You will always be safe with me.”
• • •
Falk’s hands ran up and down Connie’s back as they danced. Every time his fingers touched the bare skin between her shoulders and her neck, Connie felt a shudder of distaste and terror. Those fingers, she knew from Édouard, thought nothing of wrapping themselves around the cold metal of a trigger and shooting a human dead at point-blank range. She smelled Falk’s rancid, alcohol-infused breath on her cheek as he tried to maneuver her lips toward his.
“Constance, you must know how much I want you, please say I can have you,” he moaned as he nuzzled into her neck.
Filled with disgust, Connie steeled herself not to follow her instincts and break free of his grasp. She realized that, whatever this man’s nationality might have been, she would still have flinched at his touch. She glanced around at the other Frenchwomen dancing with Germans in the club, none of them dressed in the expensive way she was herself. By the look of them, some of them were little more than common prostitutes. But how much better was she …?
She saw Sophia across the floor, partnering Frederik. They were not dancing—they were hardly moving at all. Instead, Frederik was holding her hands in his and talking to her quietly. Sophia smiled, nodded, and moved closer into his arms. Connie noticed how he held her tenderly to him, as her head rested naturally against his chest. There was a—Connie searched for the right phrase—an intimacy about their body language, a togetherness that belied they had only just met.
“Perhaps next week we’ll escape the clutches of your protective cousin,” Falk said to Connie with a glance at Édouard, who was watching their every move from the table. “And we can be alone.”
“Perhaps,” said Connie, wondering for how much longer it would be possible to evade this man, who was used to choosing what he wanted and getting it. “Excuse me, but I must go and powder my nose,” she said as the band played the final notes of the song.
Falk gave her a curt nod and followed her off the dance floor.
When Connie arrived back at the table from the powder room, she listened to Falk and Édouard talking.
“My friend would prefer a Renoir, but if that’s not possible, he’s also fond of Monet.”
“As always, Falk, I’ll see what I can do. Ah, Constance, you seem fatigued,” sympathized Édouard as she sat down at the table with them.
“I am a little, yes,” she answered truthfully.
“We’ll leave as soon as we have managed to drag Sophia and Frederik from the dance floor,” Édouard said.
“Yes”—Falk grinned, taking a further large slug of his brandy—“it seems the men of my family are partial to the women of yours.”
• • •
A Gestapo car took the three of them home and deposited them outside the house on the Rue de Varenne. Connie was silent on the journey, as was Sophia. Édouard’s attempts at conversation fell on deaf female ears. As Sarah opened the front door, Connie said an abrupt “Good night” to brother and sister and made for the stairs.
“Constance,” said Édouard, stopping her as she began to mount them. “Come and join me in the library for a brandy.”
It was not an invitation, but an order. As Sarah guided a beatific Sophia up to bed, Connie turned and followed Édouard into the library.
“No brandy for me,” she said as Édouard poured himself one.
“What is it, my dear? It’s obvious you’re very distressed. Was it the rotten eggs they threw at us? Falk’s attentions?”
Connie slumped into a chair and put her fingers to her forehead. Tears came to her eyes and she could not stem them. “I just …” She shook her head in despair. “I just don’t think I can stand this. I’m betraying everything I was taught and believe in. I am living a lie!”
“Come, Constance, please try not to upset yourself. I understand completely what you feel. To the outsider, perhaps many would think you’re having an easy war. But what the three of us are living—you, simply through coincidence, myself, through belief, and Sophia through association—is indeed torment to the soul.”
“Forgive me, Édouard, but at least you know why!” she cried. “Whereas I have no proof that what you tell me is true! I’m a trained agent of the British government, here to defend the two countries close to my heart, not dine and dance and make small talk with German officers! Édouard, tonight, when I heard the woman screaming ‘Traitor!’ I had never felt more ashamed.” Connie wiped the tears roughly from her cheeks. “Maybe she will die because of us!”
“Yes, maybe she will, and maybe she won’t. But perhaps also,” Édouard said, his steady hazel eyes fixed on Connie, “because of tonight, I may be able to warn a dozen men and women who are meeting tomorrow night at a safe house not far from here that the Nazis know of it. And, therefore, they may not only save themselves, but the other brave souls who number in their hundreds and work for the network.”
Connie stared at him in surprise. “How?”
“The operatives belong to a subcircuit of the Scientist network and their names were extracted by torture from the agents who were captured in the last round of arrests. While you were powdering your nose, Falk himself told me. He was full of delight at this development. I know him well—he’s always indiscreet after too much brandy. And his arrogance betrays him time and again. He wants me to know how well he performs at his job. And, yes”—Édouard sighed despairingly—“he is indeed far too good.”
Connie was silent for a while, staring at him, wanting to believe him.
“Please, Édouard, I beg you, tell me who you work for, and then at least I can sleep at night knowing I do not betray my country.”
“No.” Édouard shook his head. “I cannot do that. You’ll simply have to trust it’s true. And perhaps you’ll hear proof from another source sooner than you think. After all, it’s not the last we’ll be seeing of our friend Falk. If he’s gloating over a new round of arrests, then, yes, I’m the traitor you accuse me of being. But if, by chance, the safe house is deserted when the Gestapo pounces, then maybe I speak the truth. Constance”—Édouard sighed again—“I accept it’s hard for you, as you didn’t choose this path. But I can only promise, as I have many times before, that we’re both fighting on the same side.”
“If only you could tell me who you work for.”
“And risk your life and that of many others?” Édouard shook his head. “No, Constance, not even Sophia knows the details and that’s the way it must stay. And now, it seems the stakes have been raised. Falk’s brother, Frederik, is already known to me. He’s one of an elite group of SS officers from the SD, the intelligence branch of the Gestapo. He reports directly to the highest powers. If he too is to be a regular visitor to this house, then we must be even more circumspect.”
“He seemed very taken with Sophia, and, more worryingly, she with him.”
“As I’ve mentioned before, both brothers come from an aristocratic Prussian family. They are educated, cultured men, and yet, I saw tonight, very different from each other. Frederik is the in
tellectual, the thinker.” Édouard paused before he looked up at her. “I may have liked him, had he been on the right side.”
They sat in silence for a while, lost in their own contemplations. “And as for Sophia,” said Édouard eventually, “she’s very naive. She’s been protected from the world, first by my parents and then by me. She has little knowledge of men or love. Let us hope that Herr Frederik returns soon to Germany. I too saw the chemistry between them.”
“And what do I do about Falk?” asked Connie finally. “Édouard, I’m a married woman!”
Édouard nursed his brandy goblet in both hands, gazing at her steadily. “We’ve just agreed that we must sometimes live a lie. And, Constance, you might ask yourself this question: If I were the head of the network you were originally assigned to, and I ordered you to continue and promote your relationship with Falk, hoping he might drop some useful titbit of information that could help compatriots in the fight, would you refuse to obey me?”
Connie avoided Édouard’s gaze. She understood clearly what he was saying. “Given what we have discussed, I would agree, of course,” she answered reluctantly.
“Then perhaps in your relationship with Falk you can separate yourself from your soul and remember each time you wish to move out of his embrace that you’re helping a cause larger than your own disgust while you are in it. It’s what I must do twenty-four hours a day.”
“Do you not care that your countrymen think you are a traitor?”
“Of course I care, Constance. But that’s hardly the point, is it? I think more about my fellow French citizens locked away in their stinking jails, being tortured and abused, or losing their lives, than of my reputation. And I believe then that my lot is comparatively easy. Now”—Édouard stood—“I must leave you. I have work to do.”
He gave her a short smile and left the room.
13
Although Connie could not prove for certain it had been Édouard himself who had alerted suspected traitors to the threat of German arrest, both Falk and Frederik were full of the story when they came for dinner a few days later. Falk was furious, perhaps even more so because his brother was present to watch his failure. The enmity Falk showed toward Frederik was palpable; sibling rivalry at its most raw. Frederik had flown far higher and was, on every level, superior. Connie wondered if Falk’s legendary aggression toward those he netted in his trap was fueled by frustration at feeling he could only ever be second best.
“The Resistance are becoming more troublesome by the day,” grunted Falk into his soup. “Only yesterday a German convoy in Le Mans was attacked, the officers killed, and the arms stolen.”
“They are indeed well organized,” agreed Frederik.
“And it’s obvious they’re receiving inside information. The Resistance seem to know exactly where and when to attack. We must discover the weak link, Brother,” added Falk.
“If anyone can, I’m sure it will be you,” answered Frederik.
Falk left early that night, saying he had business to attend to at Gestapo headquarters. That he was preoccupied by his failure to stamp out the Resistance and had been less attentive toward Connie was small compensation for the excruciating two hours of hearing how he would achieve it. Frederik said he would stay on for a while longer, but as he accompanied Édouard and Sophia into the drawing room, Connie excused herself and went upstairs to bed. She closed the door behind her, feeling mentally exhausted with the strain of the constant deception. Even though she was living in the center of a city that was currently the focus of the world, she had never felt more alone. With only the propaganda-filled Vichy newspapers to read, Connie felt completely cut off. She had no idea how the Allies were doing, or whether the invasion that had been promised and hoped for just as she flew into France was still scheduled to take place.
Édouard refused to be drawn into conversation on such subjects; and often, when she joined Sophia downstairs for breakfast in the mornings, Édouard was already out. She had no idea where he went or whom he saw. Surely, Connie thought, if F Section had been told by Édouard where she was, they would try to make some kind of contact with her? Not leave her like this, helpless and flaccid, living behind a useless facade of pampered luxury when she had been trained to kill… .
“Oh, Lawrence,” she sighed in desperation, “I wish you could tell me what to do.”
Connie lay down, her thoughts bleak, and wondered for the hundredth time if she would ever see him again.
• • •
Connie was at least comforted when August came, and with it the stepping up of Allied bombing raids on the outskirts of Paris. The cellar, in keeping with the luxury the de la Martinièreses were used to, had been furnished with a number of comfortable beds, a gas ring to provide coffee, and all manner of parlor games to keep its residents occupied. At least, thought Connie, reading a book as the thunderous sound of the planes flew overhead, this indicated that perhaps the longed-for invasion was imminent. For her, it could not come soon enough; one way or the other, it would release her from the surreal scenario she was living.
August, as always in Paris, proved unpleasantly muggy, with the barest hint of a searched-for breeze. Connie took to sitting out in the garden every afternoon with Sophia. As Édouard had once mentioned to her, Sophia had a remarkable skill as an artist. Connie would find a flower or a piece of fruit and give it to Sophia to hold for a while. Her tiny hands would explore the shape of the object, and she’d ask Connie to describe it to her. She would then take her charcoal pencil to her sketchbook, and half an hour later there would be a perfectly formed lemon or peach on the paper.
“How does it look?” Sophia would ask eagerly. “Have I captured its shape and texture accurately?”
Connie’s answer was always “Yes, Sophia, you have.”
One particularly sticky August afternoon, when Connie felt she would go mad unless the overripe, mackerel-colored clouds above them dropped their cooling load, Sophia gave a small tush of irritation.
“What is it?” asked Connie, fanning herself with a book.
“It seems I’ve drawn the same fruits for weeks now. Can you not think of others? At our château in Gassin, we have an orchard full of many different trees, but I can’t remember the fruits they bear.”
Having run through the gamut of every fruit she could think of, Connie nodded. “I’ll do my best,” she said, relief flooding through her as she felt the welcome coolness of the first raindrops. “We must take shelter. The storm is coming, thank goodness.”
Guiding Sophia inside and handing her over to Sarah so Sophia could freshen up, Connie walked into the library. She stood by the window for a while, listening to the unearthly roar of the heavens, comforted that this sound was natural and not produced by the hum of aircraft signaling imminent destruction. The storm was spectacular, and as it continued, Connie began searching the shelves of Édouard’s library for inspiration on other fruits Sophia could sketch.
Édouard entered the library, looking unusually tense and drawn.
“Constance”—he gave her a strained smile—“can I assist you in your search?”
“I’m looking for a book that describes fruit. Your sister is bored with drawing oranges and lemons.”
“I think I may have just the thing … I acquired it only a few weeks ago.” His long fingers reached up to a shelf and he pulled out a slim volume. “Here.”
“Thank you,” Connie said as he handed her the book. “The History of French Fruit, Volume Two,” she read out loud.
“That should give you many ideas. Although I doubt you’ll be able to find many of its contents available in wartime Paris,” Édouard added morosely.
Connie turned the pages of the colored plates, which described their subjects in pictures and words. “These are simply gorgeous,” she said in wonder.
“Yes, and very old. The book was printed in the eighteenth century. My father had already bought the first volume for the library at our château in Gassin. And, by chance, a
dealer acquaintance of mine discovered the second volume here in Paris a few weeks ago. As a pair, they’re extremely valuable. Not that I collect books for that reason, merely because I think they’re objects of beauty.”
“This is indeed exquisite.” Connie ran her fingers lightly over the delicate-green linen binding. “Over two hundred years old and yet almost untouched.”
“I’ll take this copy down to our château the next time I visit. Together, the two volumes will make a perfect reference companion to our orchard there. Please, feel free to use the book. I know you’ll take care of it,” he said with a nod. “Excuse me, Constance, I have some business to attend to.”
• • •
As August moved into September, Connie noticed Sophia was distracted. Usually when Connie read to her, she would listen attentively, asking Connie to repeat a sentence if she’d misunderstood it, but now she seemed to be barely listening. The same lack of concentration showed with her sketching; often, when Connie had used all her powers of imagination to describe a bulbous, purple damson, Sophia’s pencil would hover over the empty paper as her thoughts moved elsewhere.
She had taken instead to scribbling in a small, leatherbound notebook. Connie watched, fascinated, as Sophia stared up to the heavens, obviously in search of inspiration, her hands feeling the size of the page and her judging the placing of her pen accordingly. But when Connie asked to see what she was writing, Sophia refused to show her.
One afternoon, as they sat together in the library, the unusually chilly September day engendering the first fire of the season, Sophia said suddenly, “Constance, you’re so good at describing things to me. So, can you explain how love feels?”
Connie’s teacup hovered in surprise halfway between the saucer and her mouth as she surveyed Sophia’s dreamy expression. “Well,” Connie said, having taken a sip of the tea and replacing the cup on the saucer, “that’s really very difficult. I think it’s a different feeling for everyone.”
The Lavender Garden Page 14