A Gown of Thorns: A Gripping Novel of Romance, Intrigue and the Secrets of a Vintage Parisian Dress

by Natalie Meg Evans

  She breathed, ‘There will be a “next time”, because I am staying as long as it takes for Cyprien to recover. And when I finally leave, I want memories worth taking with me.’

  He kissed her hand. ‘Then I will consider ways to provide them.’

  A routine established itself. Yvonne stayed at the invalid’s bedside during the greater part of the night, relieved by Jean-Claude in the early hours. Jean-Claude would limp from his quarters among the geese, happy to take up vigil in a warm and well-lit room. He was always cheerful, in spite of the broken nights and his torn ligaments. Once she had debriefed Jean-Claude, Yvonne would slide away to her bed in the tower. She never grew to like that room.

  When he could, Henri joined her for the night watches. Cyprien remained in a fragile condition, often feverish, needing cloths wrung out in ice-cold pump water to be laid on his brow. He was relentlessly thirsty too, and had to have water spooned into his mouth. After a second clandestine visit to Amillac, Henri acquired quinine, which lowered Cyprien’s temperature a couple of degrees.

  Through the long hours, Yvonne and Henri would read to each other. Or recite snatches of remembered poetry. Or they would talk, relating the adventures of their lives. She told him about her childhood, and her early visits to France with her mother. Henri in turn told her about his children, a daughter and son, both of whom he clearly adored. He’d sent them away for their safety, he explained, though only to a neighbouring farm. He spoke only once about his wife, telling Yvonne, ‘Marie-Louise died three years ago this month, when our son was just a few months old. He, of course, never knew her and so does not miss her but my daughter, Isabelle, still cries out for her. I never thought I would say this, but I think I would like some day to marry a woman capable of understanding my passionate little girl. Believe me, it is not a job for just anyone. Perhaps it is only suited to the sort of woman who falls from the sky.’

  It was an intense time and the bond between them grew fast and strong. On the last day of June, Henri got news about the safe house that Yvonne, Jean-Claude and Cyprien were supposed to have progressed to. It had been compromised, its owner arrested. Another location would have to be found, but until the Garzenac Resistance had re-established itself, nothing could be offered. At Chemignac they must all stay.

  It was a frustration, a reprieve. A courtship, of sorts. Though they never gave in to physical attraction, Yvonne and Henri’s eyes would snatch at each other across Cyprien’s bed. The brush of fingers, or shoulder accidentally meeting shoulder, would send sparks between them. Only a matter of time… But when and where?

  June melted into July, and Cyprien’s pulse remained erratic and fast. He drifted in and out of disordered sleep, periods of lucidity alternating with delirium when he would gasp out muddled speeches and soliloquies, or shout names that meant nothing to Yvonne, but which, if they were ever voiced in the presence of an enemy, would condemn him instantly. Most worryingly, his muscles were wasting and there were the early signs of a lung infection. ‘He isn’t going to be able to fulfil his mission,’ Yvonne confided to Henri at the end of the first week of July. ‘Not without a period of convalescence and some hearty feeding, and where’s he going to get that? No, I need to get to Bordeaux. I hope the wireless op is still in business there. I need to organise Cyprien’s repatriation.’

  ‘Send him home? Will SOE pick him up?’ Henri looked sceptical.

  ‘There might be plans to land a Lysander somewhere nearby. Agents are sometimes landed rather than dropped, and the pilot takes others home. They might allot Cyprien a space. But doubtful, I agree. Mostly likely, he’ll have to get across the border into Spain and make for neutral Portugal.’

  ‘The other side of the border is the Pyrenean Mountains.’ Henri sucked in a breath. ‘Even in summer, for someone in Cyprien’s condition… Non.’

  ‘Then what?’ she demanded helplessly. ‘We weren’t dropped here at huge risk and expense so we could fanny about doing nothing! What a ghastly hash-up.’

  ‘This is war,’ Henri reminded her. ‘There is no handbook. No timetable. I will enquire again about your safe house and will put out feelers about your ‘pianist’ in Bordeaux. Isn’t that what you call your wireless operators, because they practice their finger work on the keys every day? But, my love, you must continue to be cautious and not step outside, not even in the moonlight. The négociant called here last night to discuss the yields I can expect from my vines this year, and he told me that there have been more arrests in Garzenac, connected to the gun battle twelve days ago. Everybody is jumpy; nobody trusts anybody. Better to shelter here, no? At least from here, you can escape.’

  ‘True. Your splendid tunnel!’ As the second week of July commenced, Yvonne’s residence at Chemignac still had no definite end date.

  On July 9th, shortly before midnight, Henri joined Yvonne in the sickroom as usual. Only this time, he was so preoccupied he didn’t notice that instead of her customary brown check skirt and beige blouse, she was wearing workman’s blue overalls. Raymond had presented them to her, along with a green cotton shirt. They’d belonged to his older brother, who’d been transported to Germany to work in a munitions factory. Thanking the boy profusely, Yvonne had immediately washed the garments in the kitchen sink. They’d smelled strongly of tobacco and stables. Once dry and ironed, they provided a welcome change. They buoyed up her spirits as much as a trip to the shops. In this perilous, twilight world, she was learning that tiny luxuries meant everything.

  She twirled for Henri, showing off her new outfit in the rhapsodising tones of a fashion commentator; ‘“Yvonne wears our dashing summer evening-pyjamas, in a shade we call ‘bleu’. Teamed with a frog-green chemise, this combination is perfect for a day’s sailing or a game of croquet on the lawn—” Hello Central, we’re not getting through! What’s wrong, Henri?’

  He didn’t want to say at first, but in the end he told her. ‘My friends, Luc Roland and Michel Paulin – nobody’s heard from them since they went into the tunnel.’

  ‘You said yourself, they’d escape into the woods and lie low.’

  He nodded. ‘But Luc has a wife and Michel a mother and sisters. It goes against the grain to leave families frantic with worry. We have a code, a way of saying ‘I am alive and well’. It is to send a button in an envelope, with a note; “You lost this the last time you called on me.”’

  ‘And they haven’t? There may be many reasons why they can’t send notes.’

  He agreed. ‘And none of them are good.’ And then, because Cyprien seemed to be enjoying one of his rare, peaceful sleeps, he reached for Yvonne’s hand and said, ‘You look lovely, by the way. Froggy green suits you. I can’t offer croquet on the lawn, but let’s go for a walk.’

  She jigged like a child. ‘You’re actually going to allow me to progress beyond the courtyard walls?’

  ‘It’s time you had some exercise and there’s hardly any moon tonight. I’m confident nobody will see us.’

  She skipped ahead of him to the door, tutting impatiently when he insisted she put on his brown work jacket.

  ‘I don’t want another layer. Anyway, it’s too big.’

  ‘But it will make you look more like a man than a woman, just in case anyone catches a glimpse of us together.’

  ‘You mean Albert?’

  ‘I mean ‘anybody.’ If I am seen with a shadowy woman, with abundant hair and an hourglass figure, gossip will break out like influenza.’

  Sighing, she slipped the jacket on. Henri found a dark beret, just like his own. Scooping her hair into a loose knot, he fixed it on her head. When she glanced at herself in the hall mirror, she saw a shapeless column.

  She stopped caring once they were outside, walking between the rows of vines. Yvonne breathed in the soft, night air with the same raging urgency that Cyprien took his cups of water. ‘Tell me all about your grapes,’ she said. ‘What sort are these?’ She trailed her hand through springy foliage, feeling the hard bounce of unripe fruit. The vines stood lower
than she’d imagined they would. As a child with her mother, she’d visited vineyards in the Loire Valley where the rows had towered high over her head. Of course, she’d been much shorter then.

  Henri explained, ‘I prune the vines down because it discourages pests. Nor can I get copper sulphate to spray on them. All the French copper is shipped to Germany. All we can use is a mix of vinegar and water, with a little soap added. So, keeping the vines low gives some protection from airborne pests. The air near the ground is warmer too. Can you feel it around your feet?’

  She could, and marvelled at it. ‘I’d have thought it would be cold near the soil, warm at head-height.’

  ‘No, because the soil absorbs the heat of the day, and releases it at night. Like a free radiator! I work with nature to get the best yield I can, but, as I was obliged to tell the négociant the other day, this year’s crop will be severely reduced. Without the muscular labour I am used to, I cannot keep the soil between the rows ploughed. I can’t pull all the weeds out either, nor can I check every single leaf every day for pests.’

  ‘I wish I could help. I would wear a headscarf and tie my shirt at the waist, and sing as I worked.’

  He sighed, communicating a like-minded wish. ‘I have to make the authorities understand that everything is against me, or when it comes to the end of harvest they will accuse me of hiding quantities of wine from the Germans.’

  ‘And don't you?’

  ‘Good heavens, Madame, what a thing to suggest!’

  The laugh tagged on to the end suggested that, in spite of regulation and government interference, Chemignac had a trick or two up its sleeve.

  As they walked up and down the slopes, Henri named the varieties he grew, though every few strides he’d bend to pull up some weed, muttering the French equivalent of ‘Dratted thistle!’ or ‘Blasted Vetch!’ He grew mostly red grapes, he told her, Cabernets Franc and Sauvignon, Merlot and Petit Verdot, all of which he blended to create the deep-coloured, full-bodied wine she had already tasted at their evening meals.

  ‘I have a few parcelles of white Semillon, Muscadelle and Sauvignon Blanc for our sweet dessert wine, which goes in its entirety to Germany. What doesn’t go for sweet Monbazillac makes our local Cognac. Our government at Vichy takes a great deal of that for its own needs.’

  ‘Do ordinary French people get to drink any at all?’

  Henri paused, considering her question. Or was he inspecting the sky, where thick clouds raced past, obscuring then revealing the curve of a waxing moon? He’d told her earlier that there hadn’t been a drop of rain in the two weeks since she’d arrived, but by the look of it, the drought would end tonight or tomorrow. At last, he said, ‘If anything persuades my fellow countrymen and women to rise in revolt, it will be the murderous reprisals in every commune and forced labour. It will be the recruitment of our own thugs into the Milice and the imposition of a forty percent tax on wine. Even I am not allowed to keep stocks for my own drinking.’

  ‘Not a drop?’

  ‘Well, not a great deal. There might be a few bottles hidden here and there.’

  ‘A few?’

  ‘Mm… A lot. Come.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  He took her into a stone outbuilding that he called the chai, where cobwebs hung like grisly bunting from every crossbeam. Along a wall stood racks of bottles, also thickly laced with cobwebs. Taking a bottle out, Henri showed her an impressive-looking label, drawing her attention to the date. 1934. ‘Thirty-four was a spectacular year, the only really good year in the whole of that decade. We call this our ‘rare vintage Clos de Chemignac’ but actually, it is a nothing-sort of wine from the year thirty-nine. Ha, what does the enemy know when he gets drunk on it over his fried pork and cabbage? He would drink water from a puddle if it was the right colour and came with a good label.’

  ‘The label is false?’

  ‘A work of fiction. Raymond and I plaster the bottles with cobwebs which we grow specially,’ Henri pointed to the roof, ‘and the German merchants nod when we tell them what they are buying has been stored in a cellar for almost a decade.’ Henri took her to the far wall, flattening his hand against it. ‘Feel this.’

  Yvonne didn’t want to, so spider-spun were the stones. Eventually, she conquered her squeamishness. It felt like an ordinary wall and she told him so.

  ‘Ah, but it’s brand new, though built from old blocks. It is an art, getting the colour and texture of mortar correct so it looks as old as the rest.’ He whispered to the stones: ‘Bonjour, my darlings. Sleep well.’ He grinned at Yvonne. ‘Walled up are my remaining stocks of that thirty-four vintage. Whoever gets to sell it or drink it will be very lucky. Now, come see. This is what you have been quaffing since you came here.’ He showed her a row of stout oak barrels labelled ‘Vin Ordinaire’. ‘It’s very good stuff, as you can testify, but we roll the bottles in dirty sand, and the labels are hand-written by me, with my left hand. It looks like the work of an idiot.’

  ‘Yet it is the work of a genius.’

  ‘Why should we give the sweat of our brows, our wealth, to others because they demand it? Defiance is the spice of life.’ That irresistible smile was rimmed by a moustache in need of a little trim. Yvonne traced Henri’s upper lip with her finger. She felt his breath against her knuckle, felt the flinch of his muscles as she stroked the sensitive flesh.

  ‘Shall we go back outside, Henri?’ Her body knew that the time had come.

  ‘If you are sure.’

  After locking the wine store, he led her across an irregularly-shaped courtyard she’d not seen before, where she noticed a twisted tree, encircled by a low wall.

  ‘This is the Chemignac thorn,’ Henri told her. ‘I have planted cabbages beneath it but they won’t thrive. It doesn’t matter. Below the soil lie sixty bottles of our finest wine from last year. A gift to the future. To celebrate a wedding, or a christening perhaps. Whoever digs up that trove will be happy.’

  ‘It had better be you, Henri.’ A treacherous tear edged over the rim of her eye. ‘Who else should it be?’

  ‘I hope so. Would you like to take a turn in the meadow?’

  ‘I can think of nothing better.’

  They walked in silence, the fabric of their trousers sweeping herby scents from the dry grass. After a while, they stopped and looked back towards the great house, a bank of buildings silhouetted against a sky a shade or two lighter. Yvonne unbuttoned the jacket Henri had made her wear and let it fall to the ground. She pulled the beret from her head and felt her hair tumble around her ears.

  Henri was taut as wire. As for her, she’d spent so many days thinking about their first kiss, she didn’t know how to start it.

  He did. He stepped forward, hands circling her waist, finding its curve through her overalls. His touch was confident, yet she discerned a faint tremble in his fingers. When their lips met, it was tentative. Without greed or even hunger. She’d wondered on first meeting him what it might be like to be kissed by a man with a shadowy moustache. She could say now that it was exquisite, a blend of soft lips and harsh bristle. The perfect reminder of the differences they would soon explore more deeply. As he kissed the sides of her mouth, the lobes of her ears, his hands moved upwards, learning her shape. A hum of pleasure escaped him as he encircled her breasts. He broke away to say, ‘You are a magnificent woman, Yvonne. I fear I am not worthy of you.’

  ‘You are! Every inch.’ True, he was no bear of a man. Rather, he was tall and wiry, and undoubtedly leaner than he had been before the privations of war cut down his nourishment. But the small imperfections in his body only made her love him more. The smouldering physicality that she had ignited, which was now trained upon her, sent her into a spiral. ‘I want you, Henri. But, sorry, I want you right now.’

  He helped her out of her overalls, and she sank down and stretched herself on the grass, using his jacket as padding, joking that he’d made her wear it with this in mind. He had done no such thing, he insisted. But that laugh… That smi
le.

  He shrugged off his waistcoat, his belt and the trousers that were made of the same cloth as her overalls. They kissed again, and she helped him draw off his shirt, and he did the same for her. His body, raised over hers, borrowed a faint outline of moonlight. The heat of his skin radiated onto hers. When her fingers roamed they found chest hair, nipples, the undulation of ribs and stomach, hips and thighs, and she felt his readiness. Emphatic and proud. But even so, he would not hurry.

  He trailed a kiss along her throat, to her breasts, between and down. Naked and with every nerve-ending receiving the touch, she learned how an unshaven upper lip, jaw and chin feels against yearning, tormented flesh. When she curled her legs around him, abandoning herself to him, he balanced passion with restraint. He knew when to thrust deep and when to slow down until she was almost out of her mind.

  They climaxed and rested, and began again with inexhaustible fire, until streaks of pink announced that the dawn of July 10th was breaking.

  ‘“It is the east and you, my sweet, are the sun.”’ His words, soft against her ear, made her wish she could command the rising sun to go back to sleep.

  ‘I love you, Henri.’

  ‘I know,’ he said confidently. ‘I too am in love, because I have drunk the Gods’ nectar. I am in love!’ He pronounced it as a revelation, and had he added ‘Eureka!’ she wouldn’t have been surprised. ‘I am in love. It has happened. My God.’ Then, his tone sinking into gravity, he said, ‘We must return inside. My darling, I have to leave you for a few days – I did not want to say it earlier. I will be travelling this evening.’

  She sat up, cold suddenly. ‘Where are you going?’

  Henri reached for clothes, sorting them out, handing her shirt to her. ‘I can’t say, it wouldn’t be fair or safe. It is work.’

  ‘Does it involve guns?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And danger?’