‘That’s because no one ever asked.’
‘Not your mum?’
‘Not anyone. That’s the thing about Irene. She’d made me so strong. She’d made me so calm. She’d once told me that if anything was ever to happen to her then I still had to believe, still had to go to the Meeting House, still had to be there for everyone else who was suffering. And I tried, Nell. I really did. But then that last raid happened, that following summer, just the one plane, and you know where the bomb dropped? Right by the Meeting House.’
‘You make it sound personal.’
‘It was. That’s exactly what it was.’
Nell was gazing into the firelight.
‘So that’s why you joined the RAF?’ she said after a while.
‘Yes,’ Billy nodded. ‘It was revenge, really. I was so angry. Not just about Irene but about everything. All those raids. All those bodies. You’ve no idea how hard it is to stop being a conchie. It’s all paperwork. They never want to believe you. But I think I was lucky. The Air Force seemed to have broader minds. As long as you qualify, pass the tests, all that, then you’re in.’
‘You told me you wanted to be a pilot.’
‘Of course. Everyone wants to be a pilot. Except I was hopeless. That’s why I ended up as a Wireless Op.’ He lay back on the settee, closing his eyes. ‘I’ve just done my thirty ops, Nell, and I’m still here. That makes me the luckiest bloke on earth. But I’ve seen some terrible things, some truly terrible things. You know what they never tell you? That we’re very, very good at killing people. Not hundreds of people, not thousands of people, but tens of thousands of people. And that’s in a single night. And you know something else? Way up there in the sky, where it matters, the Germans are very, very good at killing us. Does that bring me any closer to God? Will it ever? I don’t think so.’
Nell put her arms around him. The fire was starting to die but the room was still warm.
‘You’re shivering,’ she said.
‘Am I?’
‘Yes.’ She kissed him again. ‘And that’s another reason why I’m taking you to bed.’
10
Hélène was in the kitchen at the chateau when she heard a shout from upstairs. It was Malin.
‘The Boches are coming,’ he yelled. ‘Tell the girl.’
‘The girl’ was Agnès. She was sitting at the long table, as moody as ever, dipping chunks of bread in her bowl of coffee. Getting her down from the room where she slept for something to eat had been the work of nearly a week. Hélène, weary of playing the waitress, had issued an ultimatum. Either you’re part of this household or you move on. Now this.
Agnès was already out of the room. Hélène listened to her bare feet racing up the stairs. Then she collected the bowl from the table and emptied the contents down the sink. Germans had an eye for detail. They were hard to fool.
The big drawing room at the front of the chateau offered a view of the drive. Malin was right. She recognised the low-slung Citroën Hauptmann had requisitioned from a family in Tours. At least he was alone in the car, driving himself.
She stepped out into the sunshine, waiting at the top of the steps. She and Müller had met on a number of occasions and she’d always treated him with a chilly politesse. He was in charge of the soldiers down in the village, a pudding of a man, too old and too fat for the Eastern Front. He laughed easily, laughter that reached his eyes, and she rather suspected he could be convivial company. Not that she ever intended to put him to the test.
Her fear was the farmer, Benoit. Had he betrayed her? Had he slipped a note through Müller’s door? Directed his attention to the mistress of the Château de Neaune and her surprising interest in short-wave radios? Somehow she doubted it but one of the lessons Hélène had learned in occupied France was never to make assumptions. These were the strangest of times and country folk could be the strangest of people.
‘Bonjour, madame.’ Müller offered a courtly little bow. His accent was execrable and the flight of steps had left him short of breath.
Hélène returned the greeting. She enquired how she might help him. Müller produced an envelope. The handwriting was as bad as his French but she recognised her own name.
‘Is that for me, Herr Hauptmann?’
‘No, madame. For me.’
He tore the envelope open. A single sheet of paper was typed on one side. He scanned it quickly, and then glanced up.
‘SS Oberst Klimt? You know this officer?’
‘I do, yes.’
‘He presents his compliments, madame. He requests your company. He’s in Paris. He also requests that you bring something suitable to wear at a formal occasion.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, madame.’
‘What kind of formal occasion?’
‘I’m afraid he doesn’t say.’
‘Then I shall telephone him.’
‘That won’t be necessary, madame.’
‘May I ask why not?’
‘Because he wants you there this afternoon.’ He beamed at her a moment, then took a tiny step sideways and nodded down at the car. ‘It will be my pleasure, madame. I’m at your service.’
Müller waited in the kitchen while Hélène selected a dress or two. She had no idea what had sparked this sudden invitation. Klimt always phoned, always made a point of keeping their communications direct and intimate. It was one of the ways he had of telling her that she – they – were more important that all the other official nonsense. You owed people you loved a conversation. Not fat little Hauptmann Müller with a typed set of instructions.
Pausing at her dressing table to sweep her make-up into a bag, she glanced at her face in the mirror. She’d always been proud of her ability to mask her emotions. It was, after all, one of the tricks that men like Nathan, and now Klimt, appreciated. It spoke of strength, of dignity. But there were lines around her mouth and shadows under her eyes that she didn’t recognise and for the first time she wondered exactly how long this putain of a war would go on. Her red beret hung from a corner of the mirror on the dressing table. Wearing it always made her feel better. She tucked it in her bag and headed for the door.
Müller, at her invitation, had helped himself to coffee from the pot on the stove. Agnès had left her borrowed slippers beneath the table but Hélène doubted that the German had noticed them.
‘You look wonderful, madame.’ He was on his feet already. ‘Allow me to carry your bag.’
They drove back to the village. Müller apologised that standing orders forbade him to make a long journey alone. He was obliged to travel with an escort, a young infantryman who’d picked up a bullet wound in North Africa and had been posted to la France profonde to speed his convalescence. Young Norbert, he said, would be taking the wheel. That way he and Madame Lafosse could enjoy a proper conversation in the back.
Hélène’s heart sank. Norbert turned out to be a lanky blond in late adolescence with playful eyes and much better French than his Wehrmacht boss. Hélène spent most of the first hour of the journey quizzing him about what he made of the village and the area beyond. By the time they were on the outskirts of Tours, Müller was asleep.
*
They reached Paris in late afternoon. Müller, awake now, showed off his knowledge of the city by directing his young escort to the headquarters of the Military Governor of Paris. When they pulled to a halt outside the Hôtel Meurice, Müller struggled out of the car and held the door open for Hélène. A word to the sentries at the foot of the steps got her into the hotel, and she waited in the reception area while Müller announced their arrival.
SS Oberst Klimt, it appeared, was busy. Another first. When Müller offered to stay and keep her company, Hélène extended her hand and told him that wouldn’t be necessary. Doubtless they’d meet again before too long.
‘A pleasure, madame.’ Another little bow. ‘As ever.’
Hélène waited for him to disappear before she sank onto a threadbare banquette within sight of the brisk you
ng men at reception. In truth, she was worried. What if Müller took this opportunity to take half a dozen of his soldiers up to the chateau and have a good look round? Who would they find and where might that lead? And more troubling still, why was Klimt suddenly playing the senior Abwehr officer? With the kind of curt invitation he’d never have dreamed of sending before?
She let the questions swirl round her head, irritated that this sudden attack of uncertainty had got the better of her. Then she told herself to relax, to look on the brighter side. Klimt had never let her down. Not once. And she thought she knew enough about his kind of men to know that there’d be an explanation.
She was right. She sat waiting for nearly an hour. Before the war, she’d known this hotel well. Nathan had been on the best of terms with the maître d’, a teasingly good-looking Austrian from Trieste, and they’d regularly entertained guests in the restaurant. She remembered the silky taste of the chef’s blanquette de veau and her husband’s insistence on ordering impossibly expensive bottles of Côtes du Rhône for clients whose taste he appreciated. Back then, even in the late thirties, it would have been impossible to imagine these elegant spaces peopled with an occupying army of busy Germans, no matter how well turned out, and she marvelled at how easy it had been to deceive themselves. Peace, if you have money, is something that will never end. How wrong could she have been?
‘Madame Lafosse.’
It was Klimt. Not for the first time, he’d taken her by surprise. He extended a hand and helped her to her feet, escorting her across to the lifts. They went up to the third floor. Here, most traces of the hotel she’d known had disappeared. Wherever she looked there were signs in German. Every bedroom door appeared to open into an office. Even the fire extinguishers were a uniform grey.
Klimt stopped at a door at the end of the corridor. He produced a key and let her in. She’d never been here before.
‘This is where you work?’
She was looking round. A simple desk but not small. Piles of paperwork, neatly arranged. Three telephones. A long line of files on a single shelf. A street map of Paris, heavily annotated in Klimt’s careful script. Evening dress had been laid on the single bed.
‘You sleep here?’
‘When I have to.’
The news surprised her. For the last year and a half she’d gladly surrendered her own place to Klimt. His first months in Paris had been spent in a neighbouring apartment, quickly requisitioned, but after they’d been together for a while she’d seen no point in Klimt not moving in. For one thing, he could keep the apartment secure. And for another, it put their whole relationship on a more intimate level. Relaxed, out of uniform, a drink in his hand, evenings with Klimt felt part of a life that had nothing to do with an office like this. Was that another act of self-deception on her part? And, if so, did that make her foolish, as well as wrong?
‘You’re looking surprised, Hélène.’
‘I’m not surprised. I’m curious.’
‘About this?’
‘About me. I somehow…’ She shook her head. ‘… It doesn’t matter.’
He held her gaze for a moment or two and she tried to imagine those eyes across a desk. This was becoming uncomfortable, and they both knew it.
‘So what happens next?’ she asked.
‘Now? I order champagne. My aide-de-camp brings canapés. We make love.’ He stepped closer and kissed her on the lips. ‘That’s a joke, by the way. I hope Müller played the gentleman.’
He made space on the bed and invited her to sit down. Then he drew a chair up until they very close. This evening, he said, Otto Abetz was throwing a party. His wife, the lovely Suzanne, had especially requested that Oberst Klimt and Madame Lafosse attend. He smiled. His hand found hers. Then he was suddenly on his feet.
‘Excuse me. I have a call to make.’
Hélène stared up at him. He was gesturing towards the ceiling. Then he put his finger to his lips. Hélène, bewildered, watched him as he crossed to the desk. He picked up the telephone, that same finger anchored on the receiver, while he began to speak. A false call, she thought. A call to no one. The faux-conversation over, he lingered a moment, scribbling himself a note. Seconds later, she found herself looking at a single word. Mikro, he’d written, pointing to the ceiling again.
She nodded. She thought she understood. The room, probably every room in this warren of a hotel, was wired with hidden microphones. Someone, somewhere, was listening to everything. Even pretend conversations on the phone. The spies spied on, she thought. Only the Germans.
‘About the rue de Lille,’ she said. ‘Tell me more.’
The rue de Lille was behind the Gare d’Orsay. It housed Abetz’s sumptuous residence, the Hôtel de Beauharnais. As the German Ambassador to France, he deserved nothing less.
Klimt explained that Abetz had tired of the interminable days of high summer. Paris was too empty, too hot, too dead. He wanted to add a bit of style, a bit of movement, a bit of culture. And so he and his wife had decided to throw a little party.
Hélène suspected it was a lie. Was this for the Mikro or was Klimt trying to fool her too?
‘Lovely. Exquisite.’ She glanced down at her bag. ‘Shall I get dressed?’
Klimt left the room while she stripped naked, braced herself for a cold-water wash in the room’s hand basin, dried herself on a tiny rectangle of grey towel and then put on the dress she’d brought. She’d only worn it once before. It was a Coco Chanel design, part of her spring ’38 collection, a stylish confection in black silk net that had been yet another douceur from her husband. Nathan had loved it, especially the effect it had on other men, but she’d never had the opportunity to wear it since.
Klimt was back. He closed the door carefully behind him then studied her for a moment.
‘Schoen,’ he said softly.
*
A uniformed driver took them across the river to the Left Bank. After three years of occupation she’d yet to get used to the absence of traffic, to the bareness of the Place de la Concorde. There were more bicycles than vehicles and some of the cars, with their bulky wood-fed generators, looked like props from a stage production that had never quite worked. The giant swastika flags, on the other hand, hung from every building; set dressing that robbed every glance of the Paris she’d once known. An entire city, she thought. Stolen.
The driver turned into the rue de Lille. Ahead, at the end of the street, Hélène could see guests embracing on the pavement outside the Ambassador’s residence. Klimt told the driver to pull in.
‘We’ll walk the rest of the way,’ he said.
Alone on the pavement, Hélène took Klimt’s proffered arm. No Mikro, she thought. She was half expecting some clue to why Klimt was being so wary, but instead he told her the good news about Éclairage. The mare was officially in foal. The French businessman planned to present her to Otto Abetz at the Longchamps races at the weekend. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars would be with Hélène by the end of the month.
‘How?’ The Nazis had a habit of freezing French bank accounts.
‘In cash. I’ll bring the money down myself.’
‘To Neaune?’
‘Of course. It’ll get me out of Paris.’
‘You never needed an excuse before.’
‘I know. But times are changing.’
‘Should I be concerned?’
He paused on the pavement, just yards from the guests, and looked her in the eye.
‘Trust me.’ There was a slight lift at the end of the sentence. It felt like a question rather than an order. She didn’t reply.
They joined the guests filing into the Ambassador’s residence. Hélène knew many of these faces from her pre-war days with Nathan: leading industrialists, a banker or two, starlets from the movies, fashion designers, a chef she’d last met at a function in the Louvre. Some of them still lived in her own area, Neuilly, in the 16th, and she exchanged smiles and the occasional embrace.
Abetz himself was waiting i
n the mirrored hall, his French wife on his arm. He was a good-looking man with pale eyes and carefully parted hair and he had a talent for hiding the more brutal truths about the Occupation from occasions like these. Senior German officers were everywhere, immaculate in full dress uniform, and they circulated among the guests as if these people were old friends. The war, the invasion, the débâcle, might never have happened, thought Hélène. The German guests were obviously hand-picked. Unless you were prepared to speak fluent French all evening, you didn’t make it through the door.
Hélène was deep in conversation with a woman named Corinne she’d known through Nathan when the SS officer approached. She’d been aware of him watching her for a while.
He waited for a pause in the conversation. Then came a click of his heels and a word of introduction. In a setting like this, the man’s formality was jarring.
‘Sturmbannführer Johann Huber, madame.’ Half expecting a Nazi salute, Hélène was relieved to accept the outstretched hand.
Hélène introduced Corinne. Huber summoned a passing waiter and insisted on more champagne. Hélène, unsure about the wisdom of accepting a third glass, was scanning the salon for Klimt, of whom there was no sign.
They talked about horseracing for a minute or two. Huber seemed very well informed. The previous weekend at Longchamps had, he said, made him feel positively French. The ambience. The company. And the fact that he’d made a little money.
Hélène asked whether he was new to Paris.
‘I am, madame.’
‘And what do you make of it?’
He seemed unaccountably surprised by the question. He said he’d had the privilege of visiting many cities over the last year or so, especially in Holland and Belgium. Rotterdam was a tragedy. Amsterdam, if you half closed your eyes, was still a treasure. Antwerp needed a great deal of what he called ‘attention’. But Paris? Paris was untouched. Still luminous. Still beautiful. Still unique.
‘That’s because you didn’t bomb us.’
‘And that’s because you opened the city gates and made us welcome, madame. There’s nothing in this world that can’t be resolved with patience and good sense and to our immense relief Paris had plenty of both.’
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