A Gown of Thorns: A Gripping Novel of Romance, Intrigue and the Secrets of a Vintage Parisian Dress (13 page)

‘What makes you say that Cyprien was young and Jean-Claude old?’ Laurent asked. ‘How do you know?’

‘Because it was
my
dream. I’m allowed to make up the characters.’ She tilted her head back and cupped his face. A face as exquisite as the carved heads in the nave of Chemignac’s church. ‘Actually, “old” is pushing it. Jean-Claude was only in his fifties, but that’s late in the day to be…’ She’d been about to say ‘throwing yourself out of Halifax bombers’ when the absurdity of the detail hit her. Why a Halifax? Actually, what the heck was a Halifax, apart from being a town fifty miles from her native Sheffield? ‘Don’t look at me like that. You’re worrying me.’

Laurent’s face tightened. ‘When will you accept the reality of these experiences, Shauna?’

‘I won’t, because they’re not real.’

‘In the forest, you discovered the memorial to the men of the Garzenac, the murdered ones.’

‘I told you I did.’

‘And saw that two of the names were English.’

‘Maurice Barnsley, George Sturridge.’

‘Whose code names were Cyprien and Jean-Claude.’ He ignored her intake of breath. ‘They were dropped into this meadow in June 1943, only just escaping an ambush that awaited them. Cyprien, who was twenty-one, suffered a bullet injury. Jean-Claude was unharmed but for a wrenched ankle. They were parachuted in to aid the Resistance circuit of which my grandfather was a member. My grandfather-
Écharde
.’

‘A thorn in Yvonne’s side,’ Shauna added, without thinking.

‘Cyprien was a pianist.’

‘No, an actor. An egotist. Heart-rending profile, mediocre talent.’
My God
, Shauna thought, who’s taken over my voice?

‘Radio operators were called ‘pianists’ because of their fast fingering,’ Laurent explained. ‘Jean-Claude was a talented photographer. His role was to take pictures along the Bordeaux to Limoges railway line, its depots and tunnels. Nobody knows why, though it was probably to aid the saboteurs that SOE intended to send in later. The men lasted less than two weeks before being murdered in our forest. How do you know their names, Shauna?’

‘I don’t.’ Ice entered her blood.

His gaze dug deep into hers. ‘Perhaps you read their story before you came here?’

‘That would explain it.’ Though, she had to admit, this region of France had simply not figured in her life before this summer. ‘I could be experiencing what they call “recovered memory”. Mum or Dad might have told me stories when I was little.’

Laurent made a doubtful movement of the lips. ‘The story of Chemignac’s Resistance was buried after the war. The memorial was only put up fifteen years ago, thanks to a local man. You know him I think. Monty Watson.’

‘Monty who runs the internet café?’

‘He came here in the eighties to renovate a farm the other side of the hill.’ Laurent jerked his thumb towards the rising land behind the château. ‘He became obsessed with the story of Garzenac’s Resistance. He interviewed all the old folk in the surrounding villages, digging out those who remembered the war years. A slow job, gaining their trust. He tried with
Oncle
Albert.’ Laurent put in a sardonic laugh. ‘From eye-witness accounts and reports drawn from local archives, Monty pieced together how the men died, but he never nailed exactly why. Chemignac finally honoured its heroes, but Monty couldn’t get his memorial placed in the square at Garzenac. It had to be the forest or nowhere.’

‘He didn’t know why?’ Shauna knew already. ‘Because they dropped out of the sky into blazing machine-gun fire. Which means that somebody informed on them. One of their own and who wants
that
commemorated?’

Laurent held her gaze. ‘Turn over a stone, Shauna, and you usually find something unpleasant. Vital pieces of the story are missing. People knew there was SOE involvement, but nobody could recall the men’s names until Monty Watson got access to documents released by the British Ministry of Defence. That was ten years ago, in 1993. Fifty years after their deaths! Did you not notice that Barnsley and Sturridge’s names were carved later than the others’? Their chisel marks are much clearer.’

She hadn’t noticed, but she did the maths. ‘My dad had been dead for over two years by 1993, so he couldn’t have told me about the men.’ Nor could her mother, who had hardly travelled out of Sheffield these last two decades. Shauna still resisted Laurent’s implication that she was somehow downloading knowledge from a supernatural source. There had to be a sane explanation. Ah, she had it! ‘Isabelle and my mother have been writing to each other for years. I’m sure your grandfather’s memorial would have been a huge event to Isabelle. She told Mum, Mum told me and I deep-filed the memory.’

Laurent shook his head. ‘Isabelle never speaks of what happened to her father. He brought those British agents back to Chemignac and it was his downfall. Isabelle was only eight years old. Can you imagine knowing your papa had gone out into the darkness, watching for him day after day, believing he would come back, only to hear adults whispering that he had been shot? She believes she heard it happen. She was being put to bed by her nursemaid and they heard distant machine-gun fire. She remembers scrambling to the window, seeing the sky lit by a summer moon.
Tante
Isabelle hates the month of July. She lives through her sadness every year, drawn back here, but she rarely speaks of it.’

‘The roses at the memorial… “
Never forgive, never forget
”.’

‘Not hers. She could not walk so far. She marks the anniversary in her own way. Alone.’

‘She had a migraine… Well, she said she did.’ Shauna cast her mind back to the linen piled in the kitchen on July 13th. Someone had later thrown the cloths onto the floor, as if in disgust or despair. There were hidden currents in this place, and within this family. Arriving from Garzenac in the pony trap, Shauna had imagined herself crossing an invisible boundary, entering an unreal landscape. She’d blamed it on dehydration.

It
had
been dehydration. ‘I don’t know how I came up with Cyprien and Jean-Claude. Barnsley and Sturridge, call them what you will. Wait a minute. Albert was at home with his brother in 1943. He was too young to go into the army at the start of the war. That’s what Isabelle told me.’

Laurent nodded. ‘He didn’t join up.’

‘So he would have been part of the Resistance. Perhaps he mumbles about it and I overheard him.’

With a shrug, Laurent strode to Héron. The horse lifted its head, still chewing a mouthful of grass. Laurent untied the reins, turned and said in a voice throbbing with vexation, ‘You can explain away a dream, and even a girl at a blocked-up window.’

‘I’m convinced now there was no girl.’

‘But you cannot unsay those names. Nor can you explain why you have my family’s crest tattooed on your arm.’

‘I told you, that was for Dad—’

‘And tell me why, when you put on another woman’s dress, you slid into a trance?’

‘Stress. Heat. Inhaling patchouli vapours.’

He vaulted onto the horse’s back and set off at a trot.

‘Anyway, what’s the dress got to do with anything?’ Shauna shouted after him. When he replied with a dismissive wave, she grabbed her blanket and ran after him. This, she supposed, was their first quarrel. Trust her to pick a man who had a horse. Forget slamming doors. This man could gallop off while pelting her with clods.

She panted in pursuit, resenting Héron’s effortless stride, wishing she’d chosen different footwear. Olive was a well-grown girl and her boots were a size too big for Shauna.

‘Bad science, Laurent de Chemignac!’ she yelled, hoping to shame him into slowing up. ‘A few unrelated events do not constitute a hypothesis. Rational people do not form conclusions then scrabble around for evidence. Ouch, damn it!’ She’d stepped in a rut, saving herself with an ungainly lurch. At least, hearing her cry out, Laurent slowed Héron to jog. Seeing a chance of catching up, Shauna broke into a faster run. ‘You are theorising that the past has returned to haunt us and that I’m some kind of conduit. A channel for extinct people and events’ – she gasped for breath – ‘for which the technical term is “bollocks”.’

Shauna trod on the toe of her left wellington boot and upended herself. Flat on her stomach, she stared up as Laurent wheeled Héron around, riding back towards her. Alarming – the horse looked huge from this perspective. Héron, fortunately, was sensitive to Laurent’s touch and came alongside her with a decent margin of safety. Laurent looked very severe, the beret accentuating the hollows of his face. He’d obviously skipped his morning shave and a night’s hair growth showed her what he’d look like if he ever decided to grow a moustache.

When he leaned down to offer his hand, she took it. Knowing that she could trust this horse, she leaned against its sturdy shoulder, then took the same risk with Laurent, placing a hand on his knee. ‘Running away solves nothing, you know.’

‘Shauna, why won’t you admit that something strange is happening? To both of us.’

She laid her cheek on his thigh and felt the involuntary flex of his muscle. Of course, there might be a simple way to shift his mind from this obsession. She slid her hand higher, to his belt buckle, and heard his soft, surprised gasp.
See? Easy to change the subject.
She crooked her fingers over the rim of his belt, finding a gap between his shirt buttons, skimming his belly. His hand came down hard on hers. ‘Look at me.’

Her eyes jumped to his. ‘Laurent?’ His voice had gained a rasp. It wasn’t Laurent looking down at her. It was a man
like
Laurent, but older. Same deep eyes, but the irises were flattened with anguish. A trick of shadow, or did he sport a thin moustache on his upper lip?

‘Why did you do it, Yvonne?’

‘I don’t know! It was so beautiful.’ The words jerked from Shauna’s mouth, all cut-glass consonants and rounded vowels. ‘I didn’t mean any harm. Forgive me.’ Shauna jumped away, making the horse start with surprise. She put her hands to her head. ‘What’s happening? What’s the matter with us?’

Laurent’s voice reached her, urgent, commanding. ‘Say what’s in your mind, right now. Just speak whatever comes.’

In that out-dated BBC voice, she answered, ‘Your friend Monty needs to get his chisel out again. There weren’t just two British SOE agents, there were three. Why is it that the girls always get forgotten?’

T
he children went
home to Paris – back to school, back to family life – and the atmosphere at Isabelle’s changed. Rooms felt bigger, an echo to them as if the château had expelled a breath. Some normality returned, though, when Louette swept back like a bracing sea wind. Currently with no freelance work, her children left to her husband’s care, Isabelle’s daughter threw her energy into a programme of cleaning and cupboard-emptying. Distressed, Isabelle confided to Shauna, ‘I hoped she’d stay in Paris. Isn’t that awful, to wish my daughter were not here? Why has she come back?’

‘She’s concerned about you and this is her way of showing it.’

‘But I have you, and Audrey too. I don’t need a bossy daughter to organise me! I keep catching Louette taking precious things to the dustbin. She calls them “rubbish” because she likes everything to be chi-chi and clean. “Is this what
my
fate will be in a few years’ time?” I ask her. She’s getting rid of my stuff because she’s certain I’ll die soon.’

‘I’m sure she isn’t.’

But Isabelle wasn’t convinced, and for the next couple of days, Shauna kept discreet tabs on Louette Barends. She was soon satisfied that Louette’s purpose in returning to Chemignac was an innocent one. Beneath the bossy exterior lay a childlike craving to be useful and to be rewarded with praise. It pained Shauna to see how Louette would draw her mother’s attention to some re-organising she’d done, only to be told that she needn’t have bothered. That as soon as she’d gone back to Paris, Isabelle would put it all back in its proper place.

Within three days, things reached a head. The catalyst was Isabelle’s antique dining table. Louette had it carried out, suitably wrapped in dust sheets, to a barn and had Isabelle’s bed brought downstairs. Blocking her mother’s protest with a raised hand, Louette said, ‘I’ve seen you hauling yourself upstairs at night,
Maman
, hanging on to the bannister rail. Why shouldn’t you sleep in the dining room for the few weeks you’ll be here? You always eat in the kitchen after all.’ Ignoring Isabelle’s reply that this was
her
home and she’d choose where to eat, Louette gave way to frustration.

‘I’m doing my best, can’t you see? Don’t become one of those elderly people who refuse every practical offer of help.’ She turned to Shauna, seeking back-up, but Shauna had no intention of being sucked in. Laurent had already warned her of emotional tripwires. Earlier, he’d whispered to Shauna, ‘Don’t become the thing that gets squashed between a rock and a hard place. Those two have to sort their history out for themselves. They’ve been battling for years.’

Shauna’s au pair duties had ended with the children’s departure, but following this argument, Louette again urged her to stay. ‘To the end of the month and beyond, if you would.’ She was admitting defeat, she told Shauna. ‘
Maman
needs help, but I only seem to make her angry and while I’m here, I’m neglecting Hubert and the children. I hate leaving my husband in sole charge. Hubert forgets to pick them up from school, and they end up going places with the wrong books or the wrong kit. One day, Olive will find herself playing tennis with her violin.’ Louette laughed, but Shauna heard tears in her voice. ‘So,
petite
, you will stay?’

Having already agreed to remain until harvest, Shauna now committed herself to staying into October. It didn’t take much arm-twisting, to be fair. She wanted to be where Laurent was. She did still worry that her research career might be slipping away from her, just as it hurt that she’d heard nothing from Mike Ladriss. She solaced herself by saying, ‘Science won’t disappear just because I’m taking a holiday. I’ll go back rested and with a new perspective. Everyone a winner.’

Isabelle certainly thought so. She beamed when she was given the news. ‘Laurent will be happy, so I am happy. Something tells me this year will be memorable for Chemignac.’

L
ate morning
, Saturday September 6th, Shauna and Laurent were huddled over the lab bench, shoulders fused, hair touching. They’d gathered sample grapes from every
parcelle
and had spent the last two hours analysing them for sugar content and acid levels. They were now comparing their findings against the previous year’s results. Laurent had been taught a rule of thumb while learning his trade in California. ‘If weight decreases sharply while sugar-volume increases, dehydration has started. Get picking.’

The grapes had ripened fast thanks to the searing July and August heat, and were bursting with sugar. Lots of sunshine-induced sugar often translated into an exceptional vintage.

‘If the air stays dry, it might be my best year yet,’ Laurent said confidently. ‘I think we’ll be picking the Sauvignon Blanc in five or six days, unless it rains or there’s a cold snap.’

‘Or your pickers fail to turn up.’

‘They’ll come.’ Laurent slung his arm around her waist. ‘And if they don’t, you and I will pick together, with extra hands from the village. Perhaps now you feel Chemignac has a claim on you?’

‘Its owner has.’ She drew him into a kiss that ended only when they heard a grumbling cough the other side of the door, warning that someone was about to join them.

A moment later, the door was rammed open and Albert hobbled over the threshold. Seeing Shauna, his mouth sunk, his bristling moustache folding in the middle like a wishbone.

Shauna was proud of her cheerful, ‘Good afternoon, Monsieur de Chemignac!’

Albert’s gaze fell on the beakers and phials on the bench. ‘Bah! Why do you spend so much time here when it is the vines that need your attention?’

Laurent explained the various pieces of equipment. ‘We’re recording mallic and tartaric levels versus sugar, versus weight. To gauge the perfect moment to begin harvesting.’

‘Pfah!’ Albert put a black grape into his mouth. His moustache wiggled as he chewed. ‘Five days to go for this one.’

‘That’s what we thought.’ Laurent’s gesture included Shauna.

Albert’s scowl deepened. He put out his tongue and tapped it. ‘This is what tells you when a grape is ready, boy. It comes free and it lasts a lifetime.’ He limped to the door, giving the impression that he’d have flounced away had his hip joints allowed it. But he paused, saying to Laurent, ‘I told Louette not to go into the tower. Yet as I came past, I saw her shaking a feather duster out of the window. Why must she?’

Laurent shrugged. ‘It’s her last chance to assault the cobwebs. She’s leaving soon.’

Albert caught Shauna’s eye properly for the first time since their initial encounter, ten weeks ago, at his front door. ‘Louette Barends has no business poking around in affairs that ended before she was born. Make her see it.’

Astonished at being appealed to, Shauna stammered, ‘It’s not my business, Monsieur.’

‘Try. It upsets Isabelle.’

And you even more
. Shauna nodded. ‘I’ll do my best.’

Albert’s reply was a grunt and a slammed door.

Laurent groaned. ‘I tried to work with him after my father died, making him a director, but he used the role to block every tiny change and improvement, until I was ready to sell Chemignac to strangers just to get away. He behaves as if everything here is his personal property, yet thanks to him we nearly lost everything.’

‘He has a point, though.’

Laurent looked at her sharply.

She put out her tongue. ‘Free and lasts a lifetime.’

He shook his head, then indicated the calculations and charts they’d created together. ‘Maybe Albert’s right. Science is vanity, and what I’m lacking is experience. After all, he’s been producing wine for sixty years.’

‘Hit-and-miss table wine that was fine in the 1970s when France had virtually no competitors. But the market’s moved on.’

He nodded. ‘The future is quality.’

‘So…’ She pinned up a graph showing a sharp, upward curve in Cabinet Sauvignon sugar levels. ‘Instead of spending sixty years amassing the know-how, you’ll get there in ten because you can match your instincts against hard data.’

He gave her a hooded look. ‘You know, when you talk sexy like that, all I want to do is drag you to my bed.’

The thought of him doing that, all the way up the track under the astonished eyes of the workers and Albert, made her laugh. He joined in and then they were setting each other off until they were sharing hiccups. They did not notice the door open. Nor did they see Rachel Moorcroft framed there, until she gave a little cough.

‘So sorry, you two, but you didn’t turn up for our meeting.’ Rachel’s eyes on Laurent were soft with reproach.

‘What meeting? I didn’t arrange anything.’

‘No?’ Puzzlement deepened. ‘Wasn’t it you outside my flat last night, calling up to me that you wanted to see me today, to talk our future over?’

‘No,’ Laurent said. Very firmly. ‘I’ve said everything I need to say.’

‘My mistake. Must have been a lucid dream. You, me, an assignation… I should never touch the cheeseboard after six o’clock. We used to call them ‘Camembert Dreams’ at boarding school. You’ll know what I mean, Shauna.’ Rachel finally included Shauna in her smile.

Shauna stared impassively back. ‘My school didn’t have bedrooms and ‘cheeseboard’ meant being fed up with Cheddar and crackers for lunch.’

Rachel clapped. ‘The old ones are the best! I’ll leave you to it, children.’

When she’d sauntered away, Laurent let out a weary sigh. ‘Don’t take anything she says seriously, Shauna. I was not hanging around the stable yard last night.’

‘No, course not.’

‘Would you come into Garzenac with me later? I’m meeting a supplier at the station.’

She jumped at the chance. Anything to get away from Rachel’s snide humour and Albert’s growling. Anything to distract Laurent from his anxieties. Shauna intended to help him in every practical way, including steering him away from the unsolvable mystery of Yvonne and her fellow Resistance fighters. Capable and loving as he was, Laurent had a vulnerable side. He needed protection, though from what she wasn’t entirely sure.

T
hey took
the 2CV for the drive into town, putting the roof down. Laurent always met delivery trucks, either collecting packages or escorting them back to Chemignac. Otherwise, their drivers got lost in the unmarked lanes around the winery. More than one lorry had trundled into the village’s medieval hub and got wedged between the church wall and the war memorial. One driver had made it to Chemignac only to get his rig jammed under the gatehouse, and because that section of the château was a scheduled monument, they’d had to dismantle the trailer from the inside, using chainsaws. It was less stressful simply to meet deliveries in town.

They were meeting today’s consignment at four, but it was a few minutes short of two in the afternoon when Laurent parked at the bottom of a hill, a short distance down from the internet café. Time for lunch, he said, and for some research. They were going to Monty’s to run a search on Yvonne. No interruptions and no vineyard tasks hanging over their heads.

‘I like the sound of lunch. Not sure about the rest,’ Shauna grumbled. So much for steering him away from his fixation.

He held out his hand to her and, a moment later, was striding up the hill to the café, his long legs forcing her to run.

M
onty’s place
was fuller than she’d ever seen it before. A group of young men had pulled tables together, creating a noisy island in the middle of the floor. They were barracking one of their number as he tapped away at a laptop. Shauna couldn’t quite work out what language they were speaking until one of them recognised Laurent and called out ‘
Olá!
’ Spanish, she presumed.

Laurent stopped, and enthusiastic hand-shaking and shoulder-slapping followed.

‘They’re here for the harvest,’ he said, after they’d secured themselves a laptop and found a quiet table outside beneath the courtyard pergola. ‘The same families come year on year and you get to know them. We get a real international brigade. Australians, New Zealanders, Moroccans and some Spaniards.’

‘I thought
they
were Spanish.’

‘Portuguese. The man I was speaking to, Adão, has come to Chemignac every September since I took over. He wanted to know if Rachel was working for me still.’

‘Hm. I thought I heard her name being mentioned.’ Shauna disguised her distrust by picking up the menu, burying her face in it. ‘Shall I ask for the house special?’

‘Yes, you choose.’

She went back inside to order two salads with warm Cabécou goat’s cheese and a savoury tart, bringing back bottled water and a half carafe of wine. She found Laurent clicking his knuckles impatiently while the laptop’s modem buzzed and whistled. It was a slow system, very different from the fast wireless connection Shauna was used to at university. She pulled up a chair next to Laurent.

Once a connection was made, he typed the words ‘Yvonne, SOE, France, 1943’ into a search engine. He scrolled down a long list of articles until he found a piece about a British agent called Yvonne Rudellat. A closer reading revealed that this was not the ‘Yvonne’ they were looking for, but a much older agent, captured in northern France and who died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1944. Typing in ‘Yvonne, Chemignac, Sturridge, Barnsley’ brought up an article by Monty Watson which attempted to shed light on the Chemignac forest execution. ‘Five men, their bodies strewn about a peaceful clearing,’ read the introduction. Other sites mentioned the same names, but as Laurent read them out, it became clear that they were simply parroting Monty’s research. Nowhere was there a mention of a female SOE agent in connection with Chemignac.

‘If Monty couldn’t find Yvonne, what makes you think we can?’ Shauna poured water and a glass of wine each. ‘Like I said before, chances are she got killed too, or was caught and deported. I mean, next to being a fighter pilot, being an SOE agent in occupied territory was about the shortest-lived wartime occupation going. Or perhaps there wasn’t an Yvonne at all.’

‘There was,’ Laurent said with absolute assurance. ‘My father spoke of her – from hearsay only, as he was a child of three in ’43, but Isabelle told him a little about her. “A flame-haired English girl whom Father hid from the Germans, in the tower.”’