Near him, Jock lay frowning at the sky. What was wrong with Jock anyway, she wondered fleetingly. If only he hadn’t been so busy making out like a bandit, he and Jane might have made a couple, as she’d plotted they should. Then they’d all truly be one happy family. She lay back and closed her eyes again, thinking that some people—including Jock, she suspected—didn’t approve of her decision to return to flying so soon after Annie’s birth, leaving her at Longbridge Grange with her mother-in-law and her bevy of prepubescent aunts. But she had come to England in 1939 to do a job—never mind what had brought her here, never mind if she had been following in Mac’s footsteps rather than thinking for herself—and that job would not be over until the war was won. As one of the only thirteen women in England who had the training to fly four-engined aircraft, how could she even consider retiring to spend all her time on one small infant, particularly when Penelope was so willing to take Annie into her practical and experienced care?
Whenever she had her two days off, or even overnight, if she could get a lift from another ATA pilot to the little airport recently built near The Grange, she came home to her daughter, so long as she could report back, without fail, to White Waltham the next morning.
In what other country in the world were the airdromes so close to each other that they were like subway stops, she wondered? There was one less than every ten miles now, many of them on the vast lawns of great homes, on cricket fields, polo fields and soccer fields, many of them so new that they weren’t included on any maps, so that, like every other ATA pilot, she put in a lot of time at the Maps and Signal Office, memorizing the positions of the latest landing fields on her route and their surrounding landmarks.
Stirlings delivered to Keevil, Spitfires delivered to Brize Norton, Warwicks to Kemble, Mosquitoes to Shawbury, Halifaxes to Yorkshire, she thought in a sleepy litany—so went her days. The only plane she hadn’t been trained to fly was a Flying Boat, and she bet she could handle one if she had to.
Lying here with her eyes closed, Freddy visualized the island that was England as one vast, complicated map, crisscrossed by the many pathways that were so deeply engraved in her mind: the railroad lines, the roads, the forests, the factories, the rivers, the castles and manor houses, the narrow corridors created by thousands of barrage balloons that protected the big cities, the church spires and even the traces of the old Roman roads that still could be seen from the air. Would it ever become a three-dimensional countryside to her, turn into no more—or was it no less?—than this home, with its many rich acres clearly surrounded by boundaries and walls, or would it always remain a two-dimensional map?
Why wonder? Whatever happened after the war wasn’t worth bothering about, because the only thing that mattered now was winning. When? When would the invasion come? Baking here lazily in the sun made her feel as if she were goofing off, although the weariness of the last thirteen days was deep in her bones and she knew that she must take advantage of this respite. Jane was as tired as she … or was she restless? She’d been awfully snappy at breakfast. Did she just need to get laid?
And if only Tony too looked happier. That weary, tight, almost angry look he had on his lean, lined face seemed more set each time she saw him again, after the long absences their jobs imposed on them. It must be due to the weight of responsibility he had now. What could it be like to send thirty-six planes up every night, after spending all day making plans with the officers responsible for arming and fueling and maintaining each flight, and then sleeping only fitfully after the flight took off, for what wing commander could really sleep when his men were over Europe? Before they were due back, he’d be up, sweating out the return of his planes early the next morning. No wonder he looked so drawn and far away. She tried to chatter enough to take his mind off his preoccupations whenever she could, for ferrying was such a simple job compared to his, but it didn’t seem to help somehow.
Thank God they had The Grange to come back to from time to time. She lived with Jane and a bunch of other girls in a cottage they’d rented near White Waltham, while Tony lived at the base. It was a rotten way to conduct a marriage, but war was a rotten way to conduct a world, and until one was over, the other would have to be endured.
“Annie,” she said, half-opening her eyes, “do you think you could leave those nice men alone long enough to come and give your mother a little kiss?”
19
DELPHINE stepped resolutely out of her house on the Villa Mozart, but when she saw the huge black Mercedes parked on the cobbles of the narrow street, she stopped moving abruptly, as an involuntary prohibition rendered her incapable of entering the automobile that General von Stern had sent for her. She had been carrying a black chiffon wrap, bordered in silver fox. Now she flung it quickly over her shoulders and clasped it tightly around her with both hands, as if the flimsy garment could protect her.
“If you please, Mademoiselle,” the driver in his Nazi uniform said politely, opening the door. Only the familiar, courteous formula enabled her to force her legs to carry her into the car. During the drive to the house on the Rue de Lille, she sat rigidly, as far back in the seat as possible, so as not to be seen through the windows, yet unwilling to allow her back to actually rest against the cushions of the automobile. She breathed shallowly, her gaze riveted, in a trance of loathing, on the helmets on the heads of the driver and the armed soldier who sat beside him.
She had been obliged to allow the general to send his car for her. Delphine had had no car or driver since the Occupation began; there was no fuel for taxis in the spring of 1943, no transportation except by bicycle or foot or Métro—how, in her long, bare-shouldered evening dress and the diamonds Bruno had advised her to wear, could she otherwise have reached the formal dinner party? Bruno had promised her that the cultivated and surprisingly decent general who had requisitioned his house would listen to her fears and set in motion the search for Armand. He had further assured Delphine that she must not be nervous, for she was to be the guest of honor, and she would find herself among people of her own world.
Once she entered the house on the Rue de Lille, Delphine found that although everything should have conspired to make her feel at home, she remained numb and cold with disgust. It was not nervousness that made her awkward, but revulsion. Although Georges, Bruno’s butler, whom she had known so well in former days, greeted her with unsurprised warmth as he took her wrap, she could not meet his eyes, and she surrendered the wrap with reluctance. Although Bruno himself, smiling with the success of his plan, was waiting in the entrance hall to offer her his protective arm as she mounted the steps to the salon, her feathery black chiffon gown weighed her down as if it were chain mail. Although General von Stern greeted her with old-fashioned courtesy, bowing correctly over her hand, her lips were incompliant, and her thin smile owed everything to her training.
At dinner, as Delphine sat as stiffly upright as an Edwardian princess, in the chair that she had occupied on so many other occasions, she looked around the table in bleak, profound astonishment. Was there nothing short of downright cannibalism that could mar the worldly surface of a Parisian dinner party, she asked herself?
Arletty, the charming, dark-haired actress, was holding forth in her droll and witty way about the pre-production problems of her next film, Les Enfants du Paradis, which was scheduled to be shot in Nice in a few months. At the other end of the perfectly appointed table, Sacha Guitry, who had directed Delphine in one of the several Napoleonic films she had made, Le Destin Fabuleux de Désirée Clary, was vainly trying to turn the conversation in his direction, while Albert Préjean, Junie Astor and Viviane Romance, who was about to star in Carmen with Jean Marais, all listened, fascinated, to Arletty’s description of the plans for the most expensive film that had ever been planned in the history of French filmmaking.
It could be 1937, Delphine thought, drinking from a wineglass that had once been Bruno’s, a glass whose very weight and shape were familiar to her hand, if the charming young officer w
hom everyone in Paris knew was Arletty’s lover had not worn a Nazi uniform. She could be having a gay dinner with a group of colleagues if Junie and Albert and Viviane hadn’t been among the small group of Continental’s many stars who had gone to Berlin last year, and met with Goebbels in a show of Franco-German unity. Only the thought of Armand kept her from rising from her seat and running down the stairs and leaving this house in which the “people of her own world,” whom Bruno had promised her, were the most notorious collaborators of the cinema.
After dinner, Bruno guided her to the library where General von Stern sat apart, sipping cognac. He rose as Delphine gathered the folds of her skirt in one hand and sat down next to him, in the chair he indicated.
“I am a great admirer of your art, Mademoiselle,” he said eagerly, leaning forward to offer her a cigarette.
“No, thank you, General, I only smoke in films, when the script demands it.”
“You are under contract to Continental, I believe. Bravo, Mademoiselle.” He measured the tops of her breasts with his eyes, so swiftly that she almost missed his glance.
“Yes, General. I work for Continental,” she replied dryly.
“Greven is a good friend of mine. He has done wonders, has he not? he asked pleasantly, touching her bare arm lightly.
“I imagine the films are as good as can be expected,” Delphine answered, swaying gracefully toward the far edge of her chair and folding her hands tightly in her lap.
“General,” she began abruptly, unable to endure the small talk, “my brother told me—”
“I explained to the general that you have a certain concern, Delphine.” Bruno cut her short. “He understands your position.”
“As you know, Mademoiselle, we have always encouraged talent in the cinema,” General von Stern said with an expansive gesture. He smiled directly into her eyes.
“General, can you help me find Armand Sadowski?” Delphine exclaimed, her voice too loud, her question too specific, her manner too abrupt, for the delicate transaction that Bruno had planned.
“I should like to be able to relieve your mind, Mademoiselle, if it is in my power,” the general said, his smile losing none of its insistence.
“My sister means that she would be deeply grateful for any information that would allow her to hope, General,” Bruno interjected, gripping Delphine’s shoulder.
“You do understand that such … hopeful … information is normally impossible to obtain?” the general asked. “Even for me?”
“My sister is aware of the problem, General. She realizes how much she would owe you,” Bruno answered. “She understands that what she asks is most unusual, most irregular.”
“But will you try to find out where he is?” Delphine demanded brusquely, shaking off Bruno’s warning fingers with impatience. “Can I hope?”
General von Stern pursed his lips thoughtfully as he inspected Delphine openly, from head to toe. He was pleased as he measured the depths of her desperation, and he allowed time to pass without a word, as noncommittal as if she were a shopkeeper and he was turning a piece of antique silver over in his hands, inspecting its hallmarks and trying to make up his mind if—at a certain price, to be sure—it might prove to be an interesting purchase.
“To be sure, nothing is impossible,” the general agreed at last, his smile returning. “It’s a question of time … most careful inquiries … a matter that demands tact … delicacy … my personal attention. I should have to ask favors … important favors … favors that would have to be repaid. Hope does not come easily in these days, alas. But then you are a woman of the world, are you not? My friend, your brother, has surely made that all quite clear to you. Meanwhile, it would please me a great deal to receive you here often, Mademoiselle de Lancel. Very often indeed. You illuminate every room you enter. You grace my home.”
“Thank you, General, but about Monsieur Sadowski—”
“I won’t forget our conversation.”
He touched her arm again. Dismissively. Commandingly. Caressingly.
“Do have a drop of this cognac. You haven’t touched your glass. Did your brother tell you that I have seen every single one of your films? No? Well, he was at fault. I’m one of your greatest fans. Perhaps … who knows?… I may have some news for you soon … if matters proceed as they should. Now, Mademoiselle de Lancel, what do you say to being my guest at the theater next week? Raimu is opening in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme at the Comédie-Française. I have excellent seats—I hope I may count on you?”
Delphine made herself nod in false assent. No, she thought, no, you may not count on me, General, any more than I may count on you.
Bruno volunteered to escort Delphine home, and rode back with her, across the Seine, in silence. He told the driver to wait while he saw her safely into her house.
“Just a minute, Bruno,” Delphine said as she turned around, just inside the open door.
“I should be on my way. I don’t like to be out this late after curfew.”
“I won’t keep you long. What foul and filthy business are you doing with that general, Bruno?”
“How dare you! I do no business with him.”
“He treated me as if I were for sale. No, as if I’d already been sold and he was awaiting delivery.”
“General von Stern was perfectly correct. How did he offend your overdelicate sensibilities?”
“Bruno, you saw and you heard. Don’t pretend you don’t know what he expects from me.”
“Do you imagine that he would go to the trouble of finding your Jew for nothing? Are you that naïve? Are you so special that hope is due you? Of course you have to give him something in exchange.”
“Is that what you meant when you spoke of using my influence?” she said in such bitter contempt that he grew furious.
“You don’t deserve my help. You think that you can afford pride in times like these? Well, I have news for you, you stupid bitch, pride is for the conqueror, not for the vanquished. Do you think that your cunt is too precious to use to get what you want? You asked me to help you, you came begging to me, you were ready to do anything—’Help me, Bruno, help me, is there hope, Bruno, is there hope?’—and when I offer you a chance you’ll never get again, never, you throw it away. Let me tell you something, Delphine—if you want help, be prepared to pay for it! If you insist on hope, peddle yourself while you have a good customer!”
“His price is too high.” She threw the words in his face. “I’ll manage without it. But no price is too high for you, Bruno, is it? You still haven’t told me what stinking business the two of you are up to. You can’t merely be his pimp. What currency does he pay you in that’s so precious that you’d bring him your sister for his bed?”
“You’re insane! I won’t give you a second chance.”
“That’s the only good news I’ve had in a long time.” Delphine looked up at the darkness of Bruno’s handsome, vicious face and laughed tauntingly before she pushed him with all her strength so that he stumbled backward as she slammed the door in his face.
In her defiance of Bruno, Delphine found a temporary exultation that carried her through the next few days, but soon her brave words haunted her. She’d said that she’d manage without hope, she’d even believed it while she said it, but hope could not be cast off like an unbecoming dress. Hope was her torture and it had to be endured like a fever, a constant, capricious fever that rose and fell without warning, an irrational, harrowing fever that no medication could control.
She would wake abruptly in the night, as if someone had called her name, and feel the unwanted infection of the hope she’d thrown away, flaming so high that her hair was wet with sweat, her neck and forehead dripping. The next morning, while she was having a costume fitting, she would feel the residue of that fragile, stubborn, foolish hope drain out of her like a hemorrhage, as if the fitter, with pins in her mouth, had suddenly been endowed with the power to condemn her to death. A song—Chevalier, on the radio, jauntily singing “The Symphony of
Wooden Soles” in a bow to the fact that there was no more leather for shoes—could cause a forfeited, uninvited flare of hope to mount so high that she felt as if she could rise like a spark from the window of her bedroom and float over Paris. Yet, the same night, listening to Charles Trenet melodically lamenting “What Is There Left of Our Loves?” her heart would be invaded by a wave of vast, unexpected and total desolation, anguish such as she had never known, and she would pay ten times over for every moment of unreasonable, unbidden hope that had had its way with her.
Unsought, a sunrise or a new moon could sweep her into a moment of agonizing, groundless hope, yet she smelled despair in every dead flower, heard it in the cheep of a bird, saw it in dust on a staircase. Helplessly she was ground between the unreasoning welling-up of the hope she had vowed to do without, and the reality of bone-dry hopelessness, as peaceful as a grave, that she knew she should accept, but that she could not maintain.
Delphine became superstitious as she had never been before: she stopped reading newspapers, and while American troops debarked at Anzio and the Russians liberated Leningrad, she consulted a dozen fortune-tellers; she sought out astrologers as the Germans occupied Hungary and the Luftwaffe lost four hundred and fifty planes in just one week in February of 1944. When General de Gaulle was named commander-in-chief of the armies of the Free French in April of the same year, Delphine was hunting throughout Paris for palmists and clairvoyants. The only hope she could endure was one she knew was clearly artificial. Only false prophets could ease the pain of her heart’s inextinguishable hope. She grew steadily thinner and more beautiful. She was on the border of madness.
In all the long history of Paris, no plague, no coronation, no revolution, no wave of popular adulation, no reign of terror, could compare to the mass hysteria and frenzy that gripped the city by mid-August of 1944. Only wild rumor and uncontrollable uncertainty were free to race like a pack of rabid dogs through the streets that lay electric with possibilities under the summer sun. Bridges were barricaded by German troops, movement should have been impossible, yet people swarmed everywhere, they knew not why, and disappeared as quickly as they had arrived. Anticipation, fear and bewilderment were on every face.
Judith Krantz Page 51