Judith Krantz

by Till We Meet Again

  “Prestige” and “high art” were now the key words in filmmaking, and producers sat in the commissaries debating the values of a script on the basis of whether or not it sufficiently glorified French culture and tradition. Occupied France was isolated from the world, but it would always own its sublime past. Backward the cinema turned, backward toward the proud nationalism of that former grandeur, backward toward a vision of past splendor.

  Many producers claimed that they used epics to offer hope and inspiration to the French people in this period of defeat; others, openly resigned to the new regime, admitted that they took a welcome shelter in the safe refuge of history, as well as in the timelessness of myth and legend, since no breath of the tragic reality of the present could ever be presented on the screen. The conqueror was far too shrewd not to understand that the show must go on, particularly for the people of a defeated nation who crowded the cinemas as never before.

  Delphine had worn period wigs and floor-length costumes in her last five films, all of which had been shot in châteaux that the Germans had made available for location work, or on elaborately decorated sound stages. Her scripts were full of high-flown literary language, and the action of the pictures took place within a strictness of form and a search for perfection of sentiment, a return to classicism that left no room for the spontaneous fun and sophistication of the early Continental films.

  Delphine searched her face with the cruelty of a professional in the mirror of her dressing room. Yes, she could still take the scrutiny of a close-up, although how this was possible, when she had not had a single postcard from Armand in almost four months, she could not understand. When she was at home alone, without makeup, she could see the traces around her eyes that were the residue of long nights of weeping, of trying to fight despair and sleeplessness. If she could see the marks today, the camera would see them tomorrow, she thought with concern, for, like everyone else, she could not afford to be without work. She had to get advice, had to talk to someone, Delphine realized as a diamond and emerald tiara was pinned onto the wig, or she would crack under the weight of her growing fear for Armand’s safety.

  But whom could she approach? She had kept up a constant correspondence with her grandmother at Valmont since 1940, finding the same comfort in pouring out her heart to the old woman as she would have felt if she had kept a diary. She received increasingly infrequent answers to her letters—it was almost like posting them in a bottle—yet it gave her a small, utterly necessary sense of family that was as comforting as a hand warmer carried in a muff by some Victorian lady. Certainly Anette de Lancel, in her eighties, could no longer find an answer for her granddaughter’s problems, as she once had, when she gave that midsummer dinner party almost seven—or was it seven hundred?—years ago at the château in Champagne, and changed Delphine’s life.

  Reluctantly, Delphine realized that the time had come to seek out Bruno. He had been right about the war, he had been right about the way the Germans would treat the Jews of France, and she wished, too many times to count, that she had possessed the common sense to listen to him. Now, with hindsight, it was almost impossible to believe how blindly she and Armand had continued on with their lives—and yet they had acted with as little foresight as almost everyone else, except for a wisely pessimistic handful—Robert Siodmak, Max Ophuls, Boris Kaufman, and Jean-Pierre Aumont among them—who had left France in time.

  When Delphine telephoned Bruno at Valmont, she discovered that he was spending a few days in Paris. She reached him at his hotel, surprised to hear in his voice as much pleasure as if their last encounter had never taken place.

  “Of course I have time to come and see you, you goose. How could I not?” he exclaimed, and they set a meeting for the next day, at the house on the Villa Mozart. Delphine dressed and applied her makeup carefully for the encounter, and when she was finished, she evaluated her image and decided that she looked not too different from the girl he had last seen almost four years ago. She must not appear to be filled with the panic that all but overwhelmed her, for her instincts counseled her against any display of weakness.

  She’s as exquisite as ever, Bruno thought, as he greeted her. Delphine was now twenty-five, and her poise, always formidable, had grown from that of a girl to that of a woman. The bewitching charm of her heart-shaped face, the placement of her huge, uptilted eyes, had a magical quality that time had only embellished. What, except actual privation, could rob Delphine of the power she possessed, he wondered, until he looked into her misty gray eyes and knew immediately that she was terrified.

  She gave him an aperitif and they chatted about nothing of importance for a few minutes, during which Delphine satisfied herself that Bruno was as unjudgmental, as easy to talk to, as he had been in the days when they had been so close, when they had done each other favors without asking reasons.

  “I’m worried, Bruno,” she said abruptly. “Armand was taken prisoner at Dunkirk and sent to Germany to work in a factory. Until four months ago he wrote me postcards to say that he was well … now there is only silence.”

  “What have you done to find out where he is?” Bruno asked in a businesslike way. So, he thought, it was still that damned Jew. How unfortunate, and how foolish. How unnecessary.

  “What can I do, Bruno? I don’t know where to start.”

  “But you must have friends … people who would take an interest …”

  “I have friends in the studio, pals, more than real friends, but how could they help?”

  “I don’t mean them. Delphine, chérie, I assume that you are invited to the salon of Obetz, the German Ambassador, and that of Herr Epting of the German Institute …”

  “Invited—of course—but go? I’ve never considered doing so.”

  “Now there is a mistake, little goose, if you’ll permit me to say so. You’ve cut yourself off from potential friends, from important contacts, from people who might be able to help you.”

  “The Germans?”

  “Who else? They control Europe—who else but the Germans?”

  “Why would any German help me find a Jew?”

  “Ah, Delphine, you see everything in black and white, just as you used to. It was a charming quality in peacetime but unnecessarily naïve in our present circumstances. You heard from Sadowski regularly for years—to me that indicates that he was considered a Frenchman of Polish origin, who was treated as any other prisoner of war. Was he circumcised? No? Well, that was his good luck. It would be clearly most unwise to run about in these times seeking news of a Jew named Sadowski, but of a French citizen, the well-known film director Armand Sadowski, why not? You would naturally be expected to use your influence to try to get news of him.”

  “My influence? What influence?”

  “You are far more famous today, Delphine, than you’ve ever been, don’t you realize that? And fame is influence, if it is properly managed. To leave such influence unused is like burning good money, my dear girl. It doesn’t keep forever, like gold bars under the floorboards.”

  “I wouldn’t know how to start.”

  “Isn’t that why you called me?”

  “I … I wanted to get your advice …”

  “Put yourself in my hands, Delphine.”

  “Oh, Bruno, do you really believe there is hope?” Delphine cried, unable to conceal the precariousness of her emotions.

  “Of course there’s hope,” he said reassuringly. “I’ll have to consider where best to start, but if you cooperate with me, if you follow my advice, you will be doing the maximum possible for Sadowski, wherever he is today.”

  “Oh yes, Bruno, yes, I’ll do whatever you say!”

  As he walked at a rapid pace back toward his little Left Bank hotel, Bruno hummed in a glow of satisfaction. Delphine’s departure from his life had left him shorn of an important asset. The possession of such a sister had been valuable in the past, and now it might well prove even more valuable. Obviously she needed to believe that the Jew was still alive. A pity—sh
e would be far more useful if she had the intelligence to realize that he must be dead. Yet, if she were deprived of that hope she would be worthless. Well, he could give her hope—hope cost nothing—but what could she do for him?

  He wanted no favors from the German Ambassador to Paris or from the representatives of German culture and arts, Bruno thought, as he crossed the Seine. It didn’t matter that Delphine hadn’t cultivated Obetz and Epting or even Greven, her boss at Continental, which would have been so ridiculously easy to do.

  His own General von Stern, on the other hand … yes, von Stern was another matter. The man had shown amazing dexterity in the matter of the champagne. Why should they not do more business together?

  As he walked along the pavements of Paris, Bruno considered the news, or rather the rumors, for the press presented almost no news, of the defeat of a vast German force at Stalingrad only a few months ago, in the early winter of 1943. Was it a sign, he wondered, that there was a possibility that the Germans might not emerge as the only power in Europe, or was it one miscalculation among many victories? After all, even Napoleon had not been able to conquer the Russian winter.

  It didn’t matter that he could not read the lesson of Stalingrad, Bruno decided, for whatever it meant, it only reinforced his conviction that the time to build his fortune was now, before the end of the war. Von Stern was too subtle a man not to agree. They both wanted the same thing, guaranteed wealth in the future.

  But von Stern wanted one other thing, that thing which every conqueror of a great and glamorous city has always wanted: acceptance. He had grown in power and position, and now his dinner parties were no longer confined to quiet fellow officers. He invited certain Frenchmen and women, just as did the Ambassador and the President of the Institute, and some—although certainly not all—came and dined with him at the Rue de Lille. He had often hinted to Bruno that he would like to have the honor of being presented to Delphine. Bruno had been forced to make excuses, embarrassing at the time, which now seemed fortuitous. How much better to be able to produce Delphine after von Stern’s past disappointments, than if he had done so earlier, when his cellars at Valmont were still full.

  Yes, Delphine could be controlled by hope. She would put on her most beautiful jewels and her most elegant evening gown and sit at von Stern’s table and he would say those few words that would permit her to hope. Each of them would get what each wanted … nothing more … but quite enough to be as valuable to him as Le Trésor, which now lay locked away and forgotten, as if it had never existed.

  She loved Freddy more and more, Lady Penelope Longbridge thought, as she bustled about in her flagstoned kitchen on an unusually hot Sunday in early May of 1944, organizing a picnic lunch for her family, but wasn’t she just a little too caught up in the business of flying huge bombers all about the countryside? It had been an entire year now since Freddy and Jane had both been trained to fly four-engined aircraft at Marston Moor, and you’d think that in that year Freddy would have grown accustomed to an adventure that, in her private opinion, was just a little … unladylike. It gave her an uncomfortable feeling to think of either girl at the controls of a bomber, even if they did have a Flight Engineer along, and sometimes a copilot.

  It was splendid for a woman to fly a one-seater Spitfire from the factory to the airdrome, delivering it to a fighter pilot, just as a stable lad would mount a racehorse and gently trot him out to the jockey waiting to ride the race, but, and this was something which she would never breathe to anyone except darling Gerald, it was, well, a trifle unbecoming for the girls to be flying the giant Stirlings and Halifaxes and Lancasters, to say nothing of those enormous Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses they’d been zooming about in since last summer. She’d never thought she’d spend an entire breakfast listening to her daughter and her daughter-in-law arguing about the boost pressure of an “electronic turbo-supercharger”—whatever that meant—while they devoured the scrambled eggs made from the absolutely splendid powder that Jock brought with him yesterday, when he’d arrived for the weekend. They’d sounded like two old mechanics in a grubby garage.

  What would Freddy do after the war, when she had to live an ordinary life, she’d like to know? The invasion of the Continent couldn’t be far off, to judge by the expectancy and tenseness she saw on the faces of Tony and Jane and Freddy and Jock. It had been ages since all four of them had managed to be here at the same time, Penelope Longbridge realized, as she sliced heaps of the rare and fabulously luxurious treat of tinned corned beef that had also been the gift of Jock Hampton.

  And why was she worrying about Freddy’s adjustment to the future, and not her own daughter’s? Was it because Freddy would be facing a new kind of existence entirely, while Jane would be returning to a life she’d been bred to? On the other hand, she didn’t expect Freddy to turn into a model Englishwoman overnight. She was too much of a pirate, with her flamboyant hair and her swaggering walk and her vivid gestures, for one to imagine her sliding without a problem into the role of lady of the manor. Yet … yet … one day she would become the mistress of Longbridge Grange, the wife of the Fifteenth Baron, and, in their part of Kent, the woman to whom others looked to set standards.

  It couldn’t be denied that Freddy didn’t have a clue as to what would be expected of her—although, of course, she was only twenty-four. The darling girl would simply have to learn to take more than a passing interest in the church fête and the Hunt Ball and the Ladies’ Guild and the hospital and the garden fête and the local horse show and the coming-out balls in the county—oh, after the war there was going to be so much to bring back to life! Did Freddy have any idea of the time and planning that went into giving a proper dinner party? Would she even know how to make out a shopping list? And was she prepared to learn bridge? She couldn’t flip cards into a hat that would be worn to Ascot! Surely she must understand that when she and Tony lived here in the country, bridge would be essential. Penelope Longbridge sighed without knowing it.

  As for Jane, she was so outrageous that a mother just had to fling up her hands in amusement, or she’d go mad. There was no point in being shocked—oh, she knew about Jane and men, although not even dearest Gerald suspected it, but somehow it didn’t disturb her. Every good family produces its legendary Jane from time to time—that naughty, naughty girl would marry well yet, never fear, very well indeed, and have half a dozen happy children—yes, Jane was a phenomenon, but not worrying, like Freddy.

  Time enough to think about it all when the war was over, Penelope Longbridge told herself briskly, as she contemplated her preparations. A basket of Milky Ways for dessert, a bottle of whiskey to drink before lunch, plenty of corned-beef sandwiches on thin slices of wartime bread, redeemed by the tinned butter spread on them, a salad of cold sliced boiled potatoes, Brussels sprouts and onions in her own dressing, which made up for its lack of oil by its vigorous use of pepper; it was a meal that, except for the bread and salad, had been made possible only by Jock’s largesse. Now that the Eagle Squadron had been turned over to the American Eighth Air Force, he never visited Longbridge Grange without a hamper of food supplied by his Mess Sergeant, to whom nothing was good enough for his Squadron Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Hampton. Darling Jock, thought Penelope Longbridge, what would they possibly have done without him?

  He loved Freddy madly, Wing Commander the Honorable Antony Longbridge thought, as he deposited a pile of moth-eaten blankets and pillows under one of the flowering pear trees near the dovecot for the picnic, but somehow she’d changed from the girl he’d married. Or, to be fair, could it be that he’d changed, since this fucking sinus condition had developed? The thing didn’t bother him at all except when he was climbing to twenty thousand feet, or diving from twenty thousand feet, but it had made him unserviceable, landed him at a desk, commanding a wing of thirty-six fighters, instead of being allowed to pilot his own kite. If you couldn’t fly to the limit, you were no damn good at all. Sinus! Christ, what a bloody bad show! To be fair, to be scrupulously f
air, even over-fair, was it perhaps the difference between the earthbound, like him, and the freedom of the pilot, like Freddy, that caused him to feel a difference in her?

  And what was that difference, exactly? Surely she hadn’t always had the aura of … was it command? … that she had now. She looked so damned dashingly on top of the world in that uniform he was planning to burn the second the war was over. Burn her uniform, weigh her black shoes with pebbles and sink them in the river, cut up her forage cap into a million small pieces, take her wings and hide them for a thousand years, make her grow her hair down to her knees and wear dresses that showed her tits right down to the nipples, to hell with what people would say, and give her a good spanking to let her know who was boss—he couldn’t wait! Surely she hadn’t always been so utterly enchanted by what she was doing, so that on the occasions when they managed to spend her two days off together, she rattled on about her bombers until he was tempted to tell her to shut up? He was proud of her, damn it—who wouldn’t be proud of a wife as brave as she was?—but a bomber was just a bloody lumbering big bus on wings, didn’t she realize that? Didn’t she understand that the messiah hadn’t come when they’d invented the Norden bombsight? Wouldn’t you think that she might be a little more … tactful … about the kick she got out of her work, considering that he couldn’t properly do his, not the way he wanted to?

  In fact, thought Tony, sitting down on one of the blankets and folding his arms around his knees, wouldn’t it have been normal if she’d retired from the whole show two years ago, when Annie was born? The ATA was a civilian organization, after all, and Freddy could have left without any criticism from anyone, but no, she flew every day right till the beginning of her sixth month, when she couldn’t squeeze into her uniform any longer, no matter how cleverly she eased her waistbands. Only then did she stay put here at The Grange, probably driving his poor Mum as crazy as she’d driven him—true, he admitted it, they hadn’t planned on having a child in the middle of a war, but when you got married these things had a way of happening; what was he supposed to do, apologize? Then she’d produced the kiddie at the end of eight months as if she didn’t intend to wait a second longer than necessary, and three months later she’d gone back to the ATA, as strong, as lively, as much of a buccaneer as ever, leaving darling little Annie with his mother and Eve and Sophie and Kate and Sarah and anyone else who felt like taking care of her, which, naturally, they all did, so that Annie probably thought that she had six or seven mothers, poor little bugger.