by Karen Harper
“I just thought of something,” Jacques said, still squinting at the wet pavement and traffic splashing water at us. “My father was friends with the former Spanish ambassador to France. He lives now at Biarritz.”
“But we are almost to Bayonne! We will run out of petrol!”
“But you know how things work. I swear, we will find a mess again at the Spanish consulate. But with a paper to take us to the front of the line . . . Consuelo, you know I am not a betting man, but I think we should try. Coupons or not, we can find someone who wants French francs or that little bit of American cash you have.”
“I only brought those bills because my father gave them to me, told me to hold them for him one time, then never—never got them back—before . . .”
“We are both exhausted and on edge.”
“And hunted.”
“Are you with me?”
“I trust you, my love. Biarritz, it is.”
WE HAD TO wait an endless day for the former ambassador, Baron Almeida, to return to his home, but we slept in our car and saved our money. Then, armed with the special letter from him and having turned down a night in a lovely home because we were terrified the border would close, we finally reached Bayonne. And found another mob scene to face.
Our hearts fell when we heard the Spanish consulate insisted on there being a visa with the passports, so we rushed on foot to the nearby Portuguese consulate. After all, we had decided to leave Europe via Lisbon—somehow.
We were greeted by a crowd of people chanting over and over, “We want our passports! We want them now!”
We looked at each other in dismay, but we plunged into the crowd. We slid and squeezed our way slowly ahead. My height helped me to navigate. My panic grew that we would be trapped, found, imprisoned. I saw a slight space in the crowd as people shifted, shouting. With Jacques right behind me, I pushed ahead, up the stairs, which were also packed. Would this wooden staircase even hold?
I heard the man just ahead of us tell his younger male companion, “I know how to empty these stairs.” He began to shout, “Look out! These stairs are giving way! Too much weight! They will crash!”
Jacques grabbed my arm and turned to flee. “No,” I told him, amazed I had heard the man in this din, a gift from God. “That is a lie this man tells. Up, we go up!”
We made it up right behind the shouting man. The first door in the hallway was closed but there was a bell there, and we rang it while the other two men ran farther down the hall. We waved the ambassador’s seal on our letter in the face of the first man at the door. He took us in. When we explained, we had our visas in five minutes. Outside, with the rain still pouring down, I sobbed in relief.
BUT I SHOULD have known we were not home free—and certainly not even home yet. Once in Spain, where foreigners like us were frowned upon, we learned we must take a train to get to Lisbon where we could catch a plane. We realized we had not enough money for either, let alone food and a place to sleep before the train left.
We sold the Citroën that day for a wretchedly low price, but what choice did we have? I hated to see it go, our deliverer this far.
The travel bureau now controlling the train station asked an exorbitant price for our tickets. We could not afford a sleeper car but sat in seats as, thank God, the train finally headed for Lisbon. But we were frightened each time the conductor asked to see our precious papers. Here we were, refugees on a train, and it had been trains that had made my family its fortune. How I missed my father, and, yes, my mother too. She would have settled down those confusing and confused people in the places we had just been.
“Señor, señora, I must have your passports, please. You will receive them back later in Lisbon.”
“We do not wish to give them up,” Jacques argued. “Can you not examine them?”
“Do not worry. I will give you this official paper, and you will have them returned to you at the Passport Office.”
My stomach cramped, and I had to rush to the horrid, swaying toilet on the train while Jacques guarded our meager pieces of paper as our precious passports—our safety and our future—were taken away. The train was hours late and the hotels were occupied, but we finally found a single room with a bed so unkempt that we slept curled up together on the small settee. But we were together. We were out of France. But still far from home, and where was home now?
We stood in a long line, which they even dared to close for an hour for a siesta, but at last—at last!—we had what we needed and a moment of help, too.
“Oh,” the officer said. Thankfully, he spoke decent English since Portuguese was something neither of us understood well. That alone and his handing over our passports and visas made him a hero in my eyes already. “Here, it is yes—oh, two documents sent for you here.”
He squinted at the envelopes and handed them to me. One was a cable from my brother Mike, telling us he had followed Jacques’s request—which I had not realized he had sent from Biarritz—and had booked two spaces for us on a Clipper land-and-sea aeroplane to the United States via Lisbon. Even more amazing, the other missive was an invitation to a formal state dinner as the guest of Prince George, Duke of Kent, at a champagne reception and dinner that night, for he was in Lisbon on a diplomatic mission and had heard we were here to leave the country.
Our nightmare, I prayed, was over. I thrust both letters at Jacques and burst into tears.
IT FELT TO us surreal to be greeted by the duke amid happy chatter and the clink of goblets. Jacques wore his uniform, which he had hidden under the seat of the Citroën and had only remembered to rescue at the last moment when we sold it, but here I was at a formal dinner in a plain black day dress and no jewelry but my wedding ring and the family heirloom pin my husband had given me long ago at dear Crowhurst.
The duke understood when we told him what we had been through, but I was the target of a narrow glance or two from the Portuguese guests. Imagine, I thought. Ordinarily, I would have laughed it off, but I still felt so delicate—nearly traumatized. Here was Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, once a duchess, hostess of charities and parties, not dressed for the ball.
“Such an adventure,” the duke told me. He had kindly seated me on one side and Jacques on his other. “And I fear our beloved England is about to feel the upheaval, too. But with your cousin Winston at the helm, steady as she goes. A shame his influence does not reach here with the visa and passport people, but I fear not. Still, we are hoping your America will help us out as before.”
“I feel so out of touch with . . . with home,” I told him. “And I leave my family—on my side, not Jacques’s side—in England. I know both my sons, the Duke of Marlborough and Lord Ivor Spencer-Churchill, will serve to help protect their homeland.”
“I too, in the skies if the Luftwaffe dares to visit us. Jacques, we could use your skills.”
“I would fight them on the ground or in the skies.”
“I pulled a few strings to find out about your village,” the duke said as he slowly cut into his beef, which Jacques and I had tried not to gobble, for it was the best, heartiest food we had eaten in over a week. Still, I was so upset that nothing tasted quite right. Worry. Guilt over those on the roads, those in endless lines, those in our village. I held my breath as the duke went on.
“Ironically, the German general for the air command has taken over your château, but the hospital, which your butler, Albert, mentioned to my aide just before your house staff fled the village—is currently intact and operating, evidently to be left alone for now.”
I breathed out a sigh and clasped my hands to my chest. “Thank you so much for that kindness,” I told him. “And for having us here.”
“The least I could do for a French hero and an English—and American—duchess,” he said.
I ignored the bejeweled woman across the table who alternately glared at or dramatically feigned looking away from me. Here I was in a plain dress, with hardly any money to my name, no motorcar, no plush hotel room, no maid, and
only a settee on which to lay my head this last night before leaving. But I had my dear sons and family, I had my beloved hero Jacques, and I had memories of people and places I had loved. In that moment, if I could take on Hitler himself, I would.
“I HAVE NEVER been on a seaplane before,” I told Jacques as we boarded and strapped ourselves into our seats at the wharf along the Tagus River in Lisbon the next morning. And I have never flown the Atlantic in a plane—just give me a ship for that.”
“My love, you have not stopped talking. I know you are excited but—”
“Just happy. Relieved. Oh, yes, and in love with a Frenchman.”
He smiled and exhaled audibly. “I feel as if I am running, but I will come back—if I can help in any way. Winston said when he phoned to tell us he was P.M. months ago that he could use me.”
“He finally told me what this means,” I said, flashing him the two-fingered V sign. “When we were young—when I first knew him—I always thought of it as meaning vim and vigor, that was Winston.”
“Still is. If anyone can best the bastard Fuehrer, it is him. It is for victory, yes? He will use it, he will preach it and speak it.”
As the engines started, we held hands. I had made so many journeys, seen so much, met so many. Loved many, too, but the best was here beside me. I closed my eyes as we rocked a bit, moving away from the wharf, then I looked out the window as we picked up speed and lifted from the water into the clear, blue sky. I was heading home. Well, to one of the homes of my heart.
Epilogue
November 1943
Casa Alva, Palm Beach, Florida
I sat alone in the winter sun on the patio, listening to a two-month-old speech on the radio by Winston that had been recorded at the Royal Albert Hall in London. London, Blenheim, dear France—all seemed so far away and yet so near.
I had heard this speech before, practically had it memorized. Although Winston was a great orator, I liked this speech especially since he had given it to a meeting of six thousand British women. Mother would have approved. I wished I had been there, but I had promised Jacques, Bert, Ivor, and Winston that I would remain here until after the war.
Damn the war! Damn Hitler. Just when we were finally safe, Jacques had driven me crazy by insisting on going back, not to France right away, but to England to speak out for the French cause. The man was seventy-five, but then he was a man of honor, and I would have him no other way.
I missed my husband terribly. And I prayed he would never discover what I had done. I had telegraphed Winston to please—somehow—send him home. I had also begged Winston not to tell him I had done so.
I leaned toward the radio in the breeze and turned it up even louder as it came to my favorite part of this speech:
I have no fear of the future. Let us go forward into its mysteries, let us tear aside the veils which hide it from our eyes, and let us move onward with confidence and courage.
Tears blurred my view of the palm trees, the beach, and the blue Atlantic beyond our pool and breakwater. But the future seemed frightening with Ivor and Bert serving with the British forces. Ivor had been ill off and on, and my brother Willie, in New York, had a serious heart condition that concerned me, too.
But, I told myself fiercely, I have a strong heart, for all I have yet to face. I was still working on charities here. I planned to at least visit our Paris home someday and see that it went for a good cause, for we had planned to make America our home base now—even if the war ended well.
But poor France: Jacques had telegraphed that he heard the urban populations were close to starvation as were people in many rural areas. I worried over friends I had left behind, even little Katrine. I, too, longed to go back and fight for my two beloved European nations, so I guess I had better accept that Jacques had been driven to return.
I pulled on a jacket but kicked off my shoes and went to walk the beach. That helped—some sort of action. But I too often gazed out to the endless horizon and wished I were “over there.”
I strode faster, kicking at the cool winter waves. Pretty shells speckled the sand, especially the tiny coquina that were washed in but quickly upended themselves and dug in again to safety before the screeching seagulls could snatch them up, or before they were ripped away again by the tide. Yes, I would dig in too, but how I missed my man.
I turned to walk back to the villa I had named for my mother, the bane of my early existence and yet the woman who gave me my backbone. I smiled and shook my head. And Papa, so charming and so dear, had given me the gift of love—and the gift of my Jacques.
The wind stung my eyes, but I imagined my husband, as I did in dreams sometimes. Of course, this time, it was just a man I did not know down the beach in salt spray, built like him, when so much reminded me of my dear love.
But this man was wearing shoes, and striding right through in the lapping waves. He was in a uniform, though so many were these days, but not an American one. But as he strode forward, he waved. It was Jacques!
I ran toward him as if I were sixteen again. He was really, really here!
Arms outstretched, I hit into him and almost took him down, but he lifted me off my feet and spun me. “May I have this dance?” he asked, but his voice broke with emotion. I swear, even with the wind and waves, I heard every word he said, felt we had gone back in time.
We stood in the wash of water on hard-packed sand and held and kissed eternally.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded, out of breath, when we finally leaned back a bit to look at each other.
“I came on a transport at the last minute. I have orders from Winston—you will love this, my darling—to work stateside with children’s relief work. And I intend to make a case to Roosevelt’s government that they must end their food blockade of France. Things are bad there.”
“I will help you, write articles to newspapers. Put you in contact with New York and Washington people who can help.”
Despite the tears in his eyes, he broke into a smile as, holding hands, we walked back and turned up the sandy path toward Casa Alva. “I will help with all of that,” I promised yet again.
“You can help and always have. The allies must win this war together. And we shall be together in whatever we have to face, and not be afraid.”
I thought again of Winston’s brave words: I have no fear of the future.
With my hand held hard in my beloved husband’s, I could finally say that, too.
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Meet Karen Harper
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author KAREN HARPER is a former Ohio State University instructor and high school English teacher. Published since 1982, she writes contemporary suspense and historical novels about real British women. Two of her recent Tudor-era books were bestsellers in the United Kingdom and in Russia. Harper won the Mary Higgins Clark Award for Dark Angel, and her novel Shattered Secrets was judged one of the best books of the year by Suspense Magazine.
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Behind the Book
When I visited Blenheim Palace and Bladon Churchyard over ten years ago, I had no plans to write about Consuelo, the ninth Duchess of Marlborough. I wish I had, because I would have come away with more than a few photos, memories, and a guidebook on the palace. I don’t even recall seeing her grave, because my husband is a Winston Churchill buff, and we were focused on his tombstone. By the way, there is a lovely photo of a young Consuelo and Winston chatting at Blenheim that can be seen by Googling Consuelo and Winston Churchill sitting together at Blenheim Palace. That mere photo told me they were good friends.
Although Consuelo buried Jacques in 1956, as he wished in the Balsan
family tomb in the Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris, before she died in December of 1964, she chose to be buried next to Ivor. She did commission a memorial to Jacques, a French hero, in the park at Chateauroux near his family’s estate. Despite the fact that Jacques was the love of her life, she did not want to be buried “indoors,” though she had three huge family mausoleums to chose from. Despite her problems with her first husband, she did love the grounds and people of Blenheim. How lovely and plain is her grave under the open sky at St. Martin’s Church, Bladon, England. Photos of it are available online.
Sadly, Ivor died at age fifty-eight just two months after Jacques. Ivor had married in 1954 to Elizabeth Cunningham, and they had a son, Robert, that year, but Ivor had an inoperable brain tumor, discovered just when he had decided to be bold enough to fly to see Consuelo in Florida. Nursing Jacques at that time, she did not see her dear Ivor again, but she fulfilled the request he makes to her in this novel when he says, “If I lie here someday . . . stay a while with me.”
I came across Consuelo’s fascinating story in research for another of my Victorian/Edwardian novels in the book To Marry an English Lord by Gail MacColl and Carol McD. Wallace (Workman, 1989). Consuelo and the ninth duke are on the cover, and much about them is written in this photo-filled book. I then pursued this amazing woman’s story by reading her autobiography The Glitter and the Gold (St. Martins Press, 1953) though I am aware autobiographies can be slanted and even untruthful. Would you write some of the crazy or bad things you have done in yours?
So to balance that out, I also studied Consuelo: Portrait of an American Heiress by James Brough (Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, Inc., 1979) and Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt: The Story of a Daughter and Mother in the Gilded Age by Amanda MacKenzie Stuart (HarperCollins, 2006). Besides these excellent resources, I enjoyed researching a woman who has a great online presence in places like Pinterest and in the fascinating Smithsonian Channel Series Million Dollar American Princesses. The segment on Consuelo’s Wedding of the Century is available for free viewing on the Smithsonian Channel website under Million Dollar American Princesses.