American Duchess

by Karen Harper

  DESPITE THE WARM weather, the high-ceilinged, huge rooms at Blenheim kept us fairly cool, even when dancing. Sarah Consuelo’s debutante ball was a smashing success. It was indeed like the old days.

  Clemmie, however, was not speaking to Winston because he kept muttering—thank heavens where Sarah could not hear him—things like, “You know Nero fiddled while Rome burned. It is coming, Consuelo, dark days. I have done my last pretty peacetime painting.”

  Jacques and I relished the music and kept out on the floor, especially for each waltz. I could not believe I was sixty-three and he almost seventy-two, for, I believe, neither of us felt or looked our ages. How long and how far we had come since that first dance we had shared in Paris. As we left the dance floor again, my head was spinning with the “Blue Danube Waltz” and champagne when the Duke of Kent, the king’s younger brother, came up to talk more, for we had met him earlier. He and Princess Marina were such a handsome couple, and he greatly resembled his brother, the king.

  “You two must come dine with us next time you are in London,” he told us. “Consuelo, I have heard you were friends with my grandmother, Queen Alexandra.”

  “Indeed, for she was very kind to me when I first lived in England and I was a fish out of water. And she tried to help me with my hearing problem.”

  “Ah, she would. If this were a Catholic country, I would nominate her for saint. Without her love and that of my wonderful nanny, Charlotte Bill at Sandringham—of course my parents too—who knows what sort of layabout or ruffian I would be.”

  So he had a good sense of humor amid all the war talk. As for considering Alexandra a saint, I wondered if he was referring to King Edward forever “cheating” on her, as they put it now. But it was not long before the duke and Jacques were talking aeroplanes, for the duke said he had long been fascinated by flying.

  “I earned my pilot’s license in twenty-nine,” I heard him tell my husband, “and two years ago I became a Royal Air Force group captain.”

  And so, they were off to the races—the flying races. After a half hour of such chatter with much gesticulating while I talked to Princess Marina, the duke turned to me again. “I apologize for ‘capturing’ your husband,” he told me. “The next time we are in the same vicinity, as I said, both of you must be our guests. Either I will take your Jacques—and you—up in an RAF plane or he will take me up next time I am in France—that is decided. God bless you ladies who put up with the avid airmen the likes of us.”

  He took my hand, then started away. Soon I saw Jacques dancing with Sarah. She looked so young, so happy, and I prayed that is the way she would stay.

  OUR LAST NIGHT at Blenheim I felt like a silly schoolgirl sneaking out with Sarah at the top of the stairs, but she was still so excited she knocked on our door because she could not sleep. She and I were in nightgowns and robes, for the halls were cool at night. Because of the rising national tensions I was not sure when I would see her again, so I was happy for more private time with her.

  “You have a wonderful, blessed life ahead of you, my dear,” I told her. “But do not just be a social butterfly or gadabout. Find some way to help other people, and if—when—you find someone to love and make a home with, make your family your very first priority.”

  “I will, Granny. But did you miss your family terribly when you wed and even had to leave your home and country?”

  “Yes. My father and brothers at least, for I had a difficult mother.”

  “I remember hearing all that. I think I have rather a good one, because we have girl talks, just like you and I . . .”

  Her voice trailed off and she stared down the staircase into the darkness. No, not darkness for someone was coming up toward us, the footsteps clear, the old staircase creaking a bit. But there was no solid form there, only the shape of a woman with one hand on the banister and her head held high. She wore a tiara like the one passed down by Marlborough duchesses and a pale, flowing silk gown.

  Sarah gripped my hand so hard I flinched. I shuddered with goose bumps and scooted closer to her, pushing her over as a strange coolness wafted at us and I felt the air move.

  “No peace,” I thought I heard a female voice say, an angry voice, but then there was nothing.

  “It was her!” Sarah said, so quietly I could not really hear her, but I knew what she had said. “I think she said something, didn’t she? Well, I guess you couldn’t hear her, Granny. I think she was looking for a piece of something.”

  “Yes, that must be it,” I told Sarah. “And we shall tell no one of this, because they will think we are daft. She let us see her, hear her, so that is special that we were together. As I told you years ago, never be afraid of Duchess Sarah.”

  But I was afraid now. Here I was partially deaf without my hearing aid, and I would have sworn I heard “No peace,” a terrible omen from beyond.

  IN EARLY SEPTEMBER of that year, I held tight—very tight—to Jacques. We stood on the front lawn of our château while his motorcar loomed nearby. Jacques was in uniform, a colonel in the French Air Force. He had been away on duty but had come home and was leaving me here now. Germany had invaded Poland while France and England were waiting for Herr Hitler’s next move in a period the papers had dubbed “The Phony War” because we were not yet under attack. But there was nothing phony about Jacques’s departing for duty again. I planned to wait for him here at Saint-Georges-Motel, nearest to his airfield where he oversaw pilots, but I could not bear to let him go.

  “Consuelo, my love, I will be late, so I must go,” he whispered. But he held hard to me, too. “You . . . you do not have some special premonition, do you?”

  “About you? No. I just cannot shake this general feeling of doom. But I will keep busy here with the ill children. In case there is an invasion—”

  “More likely as the Huns get closer, it will be refugees streaming through here in the thousands, but I am sure our Maginot Line will hold.”

  “I could help with refugees, too. I just cannot bear it that the places and life we love, and came to so late, should perish.”

  He stepped back only to seize both my hands hard in his. “Listen to me, Consuelo. France will fight and I with it. And I fight for you, too, my wife and my life. You must be strong for me, because—”

  “Pardon, Monsieur Jacques, but there is a phone call for you,” our butler called from the front door of the château. “Important, the man insists, else I would not interrupt you now.”

  I bit my lower lip. He kept my hand in his, and we went back inside to his study where he took the call. I could hear rapid French, a deep voice, but could not catch the meaning of the words.

  My heart thudded. Something wrong at Blenheim, something about Ivor? “Yes, of course, I will tell her,” he ended the conversation and put the receiver back in its cradle.

  “Tell me what?”

  He sat at his desk and pulled me onto his lap. “No one is dead or even hurt,” he said, his voice tight, his face so stern. “But the Red Cross has learned there is a hostage list of wealthy people the Germans think they can kidnap to extort much money for their war machine.”

  “I heard they did that to Baron Louis de Rothschild in Vienna. It took his family millions of dollars to get him returned. And you are on that list? Then you cannot leave for duty, but must stay here since it has been deemed a safe area by the government.”

  “Shh!” he said and put two fingers on my lips. “Yes, I have been told this rural area is safe for now, and they would, no doubt, like to get their filthy hands on me. But the person who is on that Nazi list, my darling, is you.”

  Part Five

  Refugee, 1939–1940

  Fight and Flight

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  While Jacques was called away to advise reconnaissance pilots, I worked dawn to dark in the children’s hospital. Many of our nurses had been called away in case they were needed as French troops massed near the border, though most believed Hitler was all bluff. Some newspapers had be
en claiming that the real enemy was the Soviet Union with their dictator Joseph Stalin. However, in England, Winston, in speech after speech, harangued Parliament that another invasion of Europe and war could come.

  I had mixed feelings about allowing the now healthy ten-year-old Katrine to be my aide after school, since I was overseeing several village women who were filling in for nurses as well as doing my administrative job. But the adoring and adorable child stuck to me like glue, as did the two elderly male villagers Jacques had hired to protect me. We did not believe I was in imminent danger of being spirited away by the distant Nazis for ransom, but stranger things had happened.

  “Madame, must I wear this mask when you do not wear one?” Katrine asked, fidgeting with the half-face cotton protection I made her wear.

  “Since you have had the disease and insist on helping, my girl, yes. Otherwise, I must banish you to using that typewriter in my office.”

  “Yes, madame. But I am tired of hearing war, war, war.”

  “I too, but that is the way things are now. So we shall all stick together, like you and I do.”

  “No matter what,” she said and pulled down her mask for a moment so I could see her smile.

  She was like a bright and sparkling jewel to me, like another granddaughter, which made me miss Sarah even more. I felt so alone without Jacques, and missed Winston too. I could understand why he was on his own warpath, despite the fact even Clemmie had told him to tone down his inflammatory rhetoric. Hitler had taken Austria last year and was in league somehow with the Italian dictator Mussolini who had annexed Ethiopia, of all places. At least the German border was not near our part of France, for Belgium was closer here. Yet most people, Jacques included, believed that since we lived near Normandy, our little village would be safe.

  I put on a good front, yet I was secretly afraid. For France, for Jacques, for all we had built here, and for myself. I had told him if the Huns, mostly called the Nazis now, crossed France’s borders, we must move the patients in the children’s hospital farther south. But to where?

  “When I was ill and then got better,” Katrine broke into my agonizing, “I learned you keep your promises.” She pointed to a soft cloth doll in the arms of a sleeping young patient named Susanne we were watching through a glass divider. “I still have my doll. It meant so much that she could stay with me, and now I want to stay at your side, to help out.”

  I set the tray I carried aside on a cart and hugged her with one arm. “Little things like that, daily kindnesses and gifts, are more precious than gold,” I told her. “We must remember that with big things swirling around us. Come along now, and we will have a quick lunch at the château before we come back here.”

  Sometimes on weekends she stayed with me there, but I planned to send her home tonight, because I knew she helped her mother with the younger children. Katrine’s father had gone into the army and had trained near Paris. When he came home for a brief leave before being stationed in the east, he had assured us there would be no war, for the Parisians were enjoying life to the full, partying, shopping, dancing. His naïve, happy report made me wonder if I had once been like that. Too many grand parties, too much shopping for luxuries, even properties? But never enough dancing, not with my Jacques.

  I TOOK MY daily phone call from Jacques inside the château while Katrine sat out on the terrace. She looked so peaceful there, so young and pretty.

  “My darling,” came his voice over the receiver, “anything doing there? I miss you terribly, but these are terrible times.”

  “The usual at the hospital. Very quiet, normal, but for lack of men, including my dear husband. Are you quite all right?”

  “Flying, training, advising. Listen, Consuelo, I was thinking perhaps you should go to Blenheim to stay with Bert and Mary. You could see Ivor more. Britain is an island nation and, though Hitler has planes that could fly the Channel to get there—”

  “Surely not clear from Germany!”

  “If so, they will be met by the Duke of Kent’s RAF planes, just as we would resist here, but—”

  “Jacques, I am needed here. You are here in France. I am staying, as much as I long to see my sons. We decided I was safe here, at least for now, so have you changed your mind on France’s borders holding firm?”

  “No, but perhaps I have listened to Winston too long. Darling, if things get worse, do not be afraid if I do not call on time or call at all for a while. But now to my real news. I have been informed there will be a high-ranking official who will be visiting you tomorrow, General Armand Fuisse, to advise about a possible evacuation of your hospital.”

  “Oh, thank heavens! So you are thinking as I do, that if there are any problems at the border, I must move the children farther south. Perhaps he will know where I can take them.”

  “I do not know, but he is most insistent, and the hierarchy here know you are on that ransom list. I will be eager to hear what he has advised you. I love you, my dearest, and pray we will soon have our life together back.”

  “I too. Such treasures now, our memories, but we shall survive this and make more.”

  “I must go. General Fuisse, tomorrow or the next day. I know you will entertain him and win him over.”

  His tone had become more agitated, even, for my confident Jacques, a bit shaky. Win him over? So did he not like or trust this General Fuisse? And did he not really trust that I was safe here in our haven far from the German border?

  “AH, A LARGE château, some outlying cottages too,” General Fuisse said, scribbling notes after he had looked around the estate. He had come in a long, black motorcar with a driver and a guard. “And that hospital you have built—excellent.”

  I was already beginning to think of him as General “Fussy.” He was prissy and fastidious, drinking his coffee with his little finger in the air. His uniform boasted a billboard of medals. He had ordered his men to stay with their vehicle, although I had invited them inside, too. I told him, “I worry that if there would be some sort of . . . of invasion, the children in the hospital—”

  “If the Huns try,” he interrupted, “we will repulse them. But if there are some casualties, if refugees flee south from Belgium, that could be a problem here with our soldiers needing care.”

  “From Belgium? You do not think Hitler will be content to have Austria but will want Belgium, too? But that is right on our border. Then you agree with Winston Churchill. He is a relative and friend of mine, you see.”

  “Ah, I did not know that,” he said, putting his coffee cup in its saucer and writing on his notepad again. “Quite the rabble-rouser, is he not?”

  “And quite right on Hitler’s intentions, I believe, though my husband says we will repulse him.”

  He appeared to shake that off with a little shrug. He did not seem to take me seriously, which would not please Jacques and did not please me. He had skirted the question each time I mentioned protecting the ill children.

  “Madame Balsan, should there be casualties, Mother France will need hospitals and rehabilitation sites in the countryside for our soldiers. As you and Colonel Balsan are surely patriots, we know we can rely on you.”

  “But in what way? Unless I can be certain the children in our facility are carefully and comfortably moved to another, General, I do not see how this could be accomplished.”

  “I thought an American would be all full steam ahead on this, take charge,” he said, looking up and squinting at me. “We may indeed need not only the facilities of the hospital here for France’s soldiers but the château also.”

  I gasped and sat up even straighter.

  “I give you the duty,” he went on, “for you are, of course, respected and even honored here—of doing what you can to prepare for the worst.”

  “General, turning out our children would be the worst. The château and its outlying cottages can be used for the nation, but the sanitarium cannot just be requisitioned like that!”

  Frowning, he only scribbled away as if I had not
protested. I wanted to throw the coffeepot at him. I wanted to argue more, to absolutely refuse giving up the hospital, but I had to speak again to Jacques first. Had he realized what this man would ask—would demand? That Fuisse could commandeer the buildings of our estate was one thing, but is that why Jacques had sounded so nervous at the end of our last telephone call?

  “I understand, Madame Balsan, you are on a German ransom list, as they call it. It would do this estate good to be swarming with French soldiers, for you could surely keep a room for yourself and help with the nursing, too.”

  I stood as he rose. Thank heavens he was leaving, for I wanted so badly to turn into my mother to tell him off and throw him out.

  I HIRED SEVERAL villagers—they refused to take payment at first, until I insisted—to store items and some furniture from the château in our cellars, though I made certain there was space for people lest there was an air attack. I even brought in mattresses and cots when I could find them. I had lain awake at night thinking that—as in London during the Great War—the cellar would have to do for a bomb shelter as would those at the hospital. I gave notice to several artists, who were living gratis in our cottages, that they might have to move if there would be any injured French soldiers arriving. The general had mentioned refugees, too.

  After speaking to Jacques, who was furious and said he had been misled, I made several phone calls about facilities farther south to move our sanitarium patients if need be. But I got nowhere. I knew I would have to take a motorcar trip to look for sites myself, but Jacques forbid it until he could get a leave. He said he agreed we would have to help with wounded soldiers if it came to that, but he would try to get a promise the ill children would not be evicted.

  Yet again today he argued, “You are safe there, Consuelo, I know where you are and it is not far from me, so do not go south on your own or even with a companion or guard.”