Something Dangerous (Spoils of Time 02) (65 page)

He had gone to the police, asked if they could help, if he gave the number of his car and a detailed description of Adele and the children; but they literally laughed at him.

‘There are over a million people on those roads, Monsieur. We would never find her. And besides, we have more important things to do.’

He had walked back slowly to the apartment; Mme André was nowhere to be seen. He climbed the stairs wearily, went in – and saw the letter on the table. It seemed to need reading over and over again, in spite of its brevity: he found it difficult to absorb properly what it said. Not just that she was leaving, going to England, taking the children: but the reason for it, that she had discovered he had gone back to Suzette, that she found it impossible to stay with him on that basis. There was no reproach, no anger even; it was just cold, simple, a statement of a few facts. That made it far worse. He could have done with a bit of flagellation.

He debated getting a car to try to follow her; but he knew she would be impossible to find. Reports were coming through now of the massive crowds on all the roads south, of the impossibility of moving at all, let alone overtaking people, of finding anyone. And he had no idea which way she would go, what road she would be on. How had she found out? How? He had been so careful: no one had known, he was quite sure. Would Suzette herself? No, surely not. It was a hideous thought; that she could have committed an act of such betrayal. Added to his rage now was fear: conditions on the road were frightful, it was said; people were fighting over bottles of milk and water. How would Adele fare on her own with two tiny children? His children: how dared she, how could she expose them to such risk? It was outrageous: outrageous and terribly, dreadfully wrong. When he finally saw her again, he would make sure she realised that, the enormity of the wrong she had done. Then he thought that it was quite possible he would never see her again, and he started to weep.

He got up, made himself some coffee and switched on the radio. It was full of warnings that people must prepare for a siege, for street fighting. It was frightening.

He went down to the
tabac
to buy cigarettes and found it closed; a lot of small shops were shuttered this morning. But the
boulangerie
was open, and full of people, talking, shouting, arguing. It was all rumour; there was still no real information. The Germans were at the gates of the city; they had already entered it, raping and looting; a rebel army had already been formed; de Gaulle was still at the Ministry of Defence; General Hering’s army was holding the city; nobody had any real idea what was going on. Paris was still, waiting, frozen in impotence. Some shops were being looted, a few hotels had been taken over and were being held by a bunch of
poilus
, the veterans of the First World War, hospitals were turning people away, even women in labour, if they did not have identity cards. But there was nothing organised, no plan by those in charge to care for the city and its citizens.

Luc decided to go for a walk; no point staying at home. Half the telephone lines were dead, Adele could not phone even if she wanted to. And work would help, would help to distract him from his fear. Not only now for Adele and his children, but also for himself.

He walked slowly back to the apartment; as he pushed open the big door from the street, he saw a young man hailing him. Very handsome, very well dressed, probably a homosexual, Luc thought; well, he was out of luck.

‘Monsieur Lieberman?’

‘Yes,’ said Luc.

‘Philippe Lelong. I met your very beautiful wife a little while ago. I promised to give her these – here.’

He handed Luc a large envelope; Luc opened it slowly. And found himself staring into the face of his daughter; several faces, several photographs of her laughing, jumping, and in one, just staring at him solemnly against a background of the St-Sulpice fountains. His eyes filled with tears; he stood looking stupidly at Philippe Lelong.

‘Monseiur? Are you all right? Is Madame all right?’

‘Oh – yes. She has gone to England.’

‘Gone? But I thought – oh well. She changed her mind.’

‘Yes,’ said Luc shortly.

‘I think she may have been wise. I wish I had left Paris myself, but – where would I go? Foolishly, perhaps, I am hoping for the best. As you are, Monsieur?’

‘Yes.’

‘What else can we do? I am sending some photographs and an article of mine to England today. In great haste, before it is too late. To
Style
magazine, through our courier service.’

‘Really?’ said Luc. Did this tiresome young man really think he was interested in such details?

‘Yes. It may be the last I am able to send for some time. I should have given them to your wife, their arrival would have been better guaranteed.’

‘I doubt that,’ said Luc.

Philippe Lelong looked at him. ‘You have not arranged a safe passage for her?’

‘I don’t think that is anything to do with you.’

‘Forgive me, Monsieur. Goodbye. May I give you my card, in case you would like more copies of the photographs?’

Luc took the card without thinking, stuffed it in his pocket. It was the easiest thing to do: although it seemed to him extremely unlikely that he would want to communicate with some arrogant homosexual.

‘You must excuse me now,’ he said shortly. ‘I have work to do.’

He sat staring at the pictures of Noni all the way to l’Opera on the metro, wondering how he was going to endure life without her. Her and her mother. And how he was going to be able to live with himself without them.

Adele decided to move on, while the children were still asleep and it was still cool. They would have to get out later, have a break. But for now—

She took the next turning right, a very small road; there was still a line of refugees, but fewer cars, it was possible to actually make some progress. The countryside looked beautiful; amazed that she was even able to notice it, she stared at the golden cornfields, the brave scarlet poppies, the swoops of land, studded with trees and felt comforted.

A village. Good. She might be able to get some coffee here, perhaps even a
petit déjeuner
. Thank goodness she had some money.

As she pulled into the village, she realised there was little hope of coffee. Or of anything. A vast queue of people stood patiently at the village pump, holding cups, jugs, anything that would take water; a man stood there operating it, charging ten sous a glass, two francs for a bottle. Bastard, thought Adele: she wasn’t going to give him any of her precious money. How dared he take advantage of all these poor people at the pump, where water should be free? He deserved the arrival of the Germans, that was for sure. She wondered how near they were and shuddered. And drove on.

Two kilometres further down the road, she saw a farmhouse. A perfectly normal farmhouse, not very big, just below the road, down one of the tracks around which French rural life revolves. Was it worth it? Should she try? It would be marvellous. They might even let her use the lavatory, wash her hands. You never knew . . .

An old man came to the door: with a gun. He looked frightened. He had thought she might be the Germans, Adele realised, and hurriedly explained: that she was from Paris, trying to get south with her two children. She didn’t say she was English; that might upset him too, arouse nationalistic notions.

‘I wondered if, Monsieur, you could – sell me a cup of coffee? Just a small one. And—’

She was shocked to see him start to cry, tears rolling down his wizened brown face. So shocked that she stepped forward, put her arm round his shoulders. ‘Monsieur, don’t cry. It will be all right, I promise you.’

He wiped his eyes, began to explain in a French so gutteral that she could hardly understand it, that he was alone, that his son had left to join the army, and his wife had died, only a week earlier.

‘It was the shock, Madame, the shock of all this—’ He stopped.

‘Oh dear. Well—’ It seemed awful to continue to press for coffee; perhaps she shouldn’t. But then –

‘What do you want?’ It was a woman’s voice: hostile, harsh. Adele turned round; she was quite young, white-faced, holding an old rifle.

‘Get out, go on—’

‘Nothing, I don’t want anything, well only coffee, or even some water, and I would pay for it—’

‘Get out, I said. We don’t want your money. What use is money to us? When the Germans are nearly here?’ She waved the gun at Adele. ‘Get out of here.’

Adele left.

A little further on, they found a stream by the side of the road; miraculously there was no one else there. The children were awake now and fractious; she got them out, washed them as well as she could, changed Lucas, let them play while she made breakfast. She spread the last of the bread with apricot jam, gave them some juice, heated some water for coffee on the little stove, which she had set rather precariously on the running board of the car. It tasted like nectar.

Her spirits rose: they would get there. Of course they would.

But she decided just the same to rejoin the other road. At least that way she didn’t have to worry about the route.

Halfway through that morning, Philippe Lelong was just packing up his pictures and captions to take to
Style
magazine to catch the courier when his phone rang. It was the unpleasant man, married to Cedric’s friend, the one who had been so ungracious to him that morning. He was tempted to cut him off; but something in his voice was different, less hostile, there was a note of pleading in it. Slightly against his will, he found himself agreeing to meet Luc Lieberman at the
Style
offices: ‘But don’t be more than thirty minutes, Monsieur. Then it will be too late.’

He had a nerve: asking such a favour of him after he had been so rude. But this was a very special circumstance. They all had a common enemy: a dreadful one. They had to remain united; or the enemy would become twice as strong.

‘Beware the Hun in the sun.’ It was a well-known saying among pilots. They literally seemed to come out of the sun at you, you were dazzled; what was more you were confused, not sure if it was actually an enemy or a friendly plane. Above them, looking down, you could tell from the wing shape, but blinded by the sun, it was almost impossible, it could be a Messerschmitt or a Stuka. Or it could easily be another Spitfire or Hurricane.

The Germans had been playing a cat-and-mouse game that early June; 32 Squadron was sent out to patrol the French coast, to ‘show they were still in being’, as the order was phrased. It seemed to them all after a bit to be a bad idea: the Germans would watch them flying past and then wait for them to come back before pouncing. It meant people were being lost unnecessarily. Those patrols were being stopped now and the raids were beginning in earnest . . .

Kit was supremely confident now; reaping the benefit of his long, careful training. Such training was becoming a luxury; months had become weeks, and, it was rumoured, would soon be days. But it was the new boys who were far more likely to be shot down; it was said if you could survive three weeks, you could survive. Not quite true, of course, but still. It was a thought to hang on to. There was another saying, slightly at odds with it; that there were old pilots and bold pilots, but no old bold pilots. Kit knew he was a bold pilot; confidence gave him courage, enabled him to take risks. He just tried not to think about being allowed to grow old, or even its likelihood.

The great fear was of being burned; they all felt it. Death, hopefully, was quick; but the living hell of fire haunted them all.

The worst thing was the waiting; waiting for the phone to ring, the order to scramble. It remained for Kit an absolute purgatory; he never got used to it. He had just about learned not to throw up, but he shook quietly, biting his nails to keep his hands still, smoking hard. They all smoked.

It was all so incongruous; one moment you were half lying in a deck chair in the sun, playing chess, pretending to read, fooling around, the next the phone would go. It didn’t always mean scramble either, it could be a time check, a change of duties. That made it worse, the prolonged agony. But then it would come – ‘Squadron scramble’ – the ground crew would ring the bell and that was it.

‘We run to the aircraft,’ he wrote to Catriona, ‘the ground crew start the planes, and we just put on our parachute packs, and get in. While we’re being strapped in, we put on our helmets. And then that’s it, we’re up and away. All very exciting indeed.’

That wasn’t quite true; but he knew it was what she would want to hear, would find less worrying.

What he found harder to describe was the change in his mood once he was up: the sense of absolute concentration which drove every other emotion away. But knowing that was to come didn’t seem to help him through the waiting.

Catriona was enjoying her nursing training; her great ambition, she said, was to go and nurse abroad. ‘Or in London, that would be grand. Anywhere the action is. But the rate I’m going, the war will be over before I finish emptying bed pans at the Infirmary. Although it’s a lot faster than the usual nursing training; the older nurses, sisters and so on, are rather shocked by it, keep telling us we’re having it easy and we’re not properly trained.’

All their letters to one another ended the same way: with the words ‘Love for ever and ever’.

‘Look, I know it isn’t very important. In the larger scale of things.’

‘No, Oliver, it isn’t.’

‘But Celia, we still have a publishing house to run. And if this bill goes through . . .’

The bill was one proposed by Kingsley Wood, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to subject books to purchase tax, it was seen as a death knell by the trade.

‘I honestly don’t care if it goes through. And I don’t see how you can either.’ Celia glared at him across the breakfast table; she seemed even to herself to be in a perpetual bad temper these days, driven to it, by anxiety for her children, three of the four in dreadful danger. She was surprised by how powerful and invasive the anxiety was; she had felt just as terrified for Oliver in the last war, but somehow she had managed to set it aside at least while she was at Lyttons. But now, not even work could distract her; everyone noticed it, the uncharacteristic lack of opposition, the nod of slightly uninterested approval at anything she was asked to approve and, most notably, the lack of inspiration emanating from her office. Barty noticed it most and hated it, it added to her general depression; Celia’s perfectionism was what most inspired her at Lyttons, made her struggle to match it. Suddenly life as one of Lyttons’ major editors was absurdly easy; the taut wires of command and communication from her office had gone slack. And it was not a happy thing.