Darkest Longings (50 page)

age - to defend herself. Armand will have to go, he’ll want to

go. It may seem petty, just at this moment, to remind you of

the man who is watching you, watching all of us, but when I

tell you that he’s working for the Abwehr - German

Intelligence - you will understand why you’re in danger if

you stay in France. Will you reconsider your decision now?’

‘The Abwehr?’ she breathed. ‘He’s working for the

Abwehr? My God, Francois, what have you been doing?

Why have you put us in this danger?’

‘Will you reconsider your decision?’ he repeated firmly.

‘No! No, damn it, I won’t! And I want you to come home.

I want you to explain this to me, and make me understand.

Do you hear me?’

‘I hear you,’ he said, ‘but I won’t be coming. You have to

stand on your own feet and take responsibility for your

decision. I’ve tried to help you, and believe me, if I was there

I’d force you to leave. Listen to your Prime Minister at

twelve fifteen, maybe he will change your mind.’

‘Francois! Don’t go!’

‘I’m still here,’ he answered.

‘ She didn’t know what she wanted to say, but just knowing

he was at the end of the telephone gave her sense of security that would start to crumble the moment he rang off. She needed to hear his voice again. ‘Where can I contact you?’ she said.

‘You can’t. I shall contact you.’

‘Why?’ she shouted. ‘All I need is a telephone number!’

‘Listen to Chamberlain,’ he said, and the line went dead.

She turned as the door opened and Louis and Solange came into the library. ‘What is it, cherie?’ Louis asked, alarmed by her stricken face. ‘Who was that on the telephone?’

‘Francois,’ she answered.

Louis and Solange exchanged glances. ‘Did he say where he was?’ he asked.

‘In Paris,’ Claudine said - and Louis seemed almost to crumple with relief.

‘Louis,’ Claudine said, putting a hand to her head as if trying to hold in her sanity. ‘Can you tell me what’s going on? What is Francois doing? Who is he with?’

‘Cherie, please don’t ask questions you would rather not know the answers to,’ Louis said.

‘Don’t patronize me! I have a right to know. He’s my husband, for God’s sake!’

‘In name only, Claudine.’

She looked from Louis to Solange, then back to Louis. For a moment it was as if they were strangers instead of the people she had come to love as her own parents. She took a step back, as if to run away, then checking herself, she raised her chin and said, ‘I didn’t deserve that, Louis. Your son has never shown me a moment’s affection in the entire two years we have been married. I tried to love him at the beginning, I tried, but he pushed me away, he didn’t want me. He still doesn’t want me. So if there are accusations to be made, they should be made at him. And if I’m facing danger

because of something he has done, and you know what it is,

then I think you owe it to me to tell me.’

Louis looked at her for a long moment. ‘I think we could all use a little brandy, cherie’ he said to Solange, and while Solange went to fetch the cognac, he beckoned Claudine to ; the chair beside him. ‘Sit here,’ he said. Then he turned to

face her and removed his glasses.

‘If I knew what Francois had done, Claudine,’ he said

earnestly, ‘I would tell you. You have my word on that. But

as it is, I would only be guessing. And I beg your forgiveness

for what I said earlier. You are right, you didn’t deserve that

There are difficult times ahead, and Francois will be involved in a way I neither understand nor approve of…’

He paused, and turned his pale grey eyes to the hearth.

‘Louis,’ Claudine ventured, ‘Francois mentioned something

about the Abwehr. Is that… ? Does that mean… ?’

Louis shook his head. ‘If you’re going to ask me if he is

working for them, then the answer is that I don’t know,

Claudine. I hope to God he isn’t. He’s my son, and I love

him, but if I ever learned that he’d become a traitor to his

country…”

Claudine looked at him, aghast. She hadn’t been going to

ask that at all, it had never even crossed her mind that

Francois might be working for the Abwehr. ‘Did you know

we’re being watched?’ she said. ‘AH of us.’

Louis nodded.

‘Francois says the man is affiliated to the Abwehr. So

surely that must mean he is as much their enemy as we are?’

‘If only it were as simple as that, cherie,’ Louis sighed.

‘There was a time when Francois always took me into his

confidence. Now he tells me only what he wants me to know,

which over these past few months has become less and less.’

‘Why were you so relieved just now, when I told you he

was in Paris?’ she asked, after a pause.

‘Because I was afraid he had gone to Berlin.’

Solange came back into the room then, with a decanter of

brandy and four glasses. ‘Monique is about to join us,’ she

told them.

‘Good.’ Then turning back to Claudine, Louis said,

‘There’s always the hope that he’s keeping us in the dark for

our own protection. That there’s a method in the madness

of what he’s doing which one day we will understand.’ He

looked away, and the tired lines around his eyes visibly

deepened. ‘But you have my solemn promise, Claudine,

that as soon as I find out exactly what he’s doing, and for

whom he’s working, I will tell you. As you said before, you

have a right to know.’

Solange handed them both a brandy, then sweeping the

morning’s papers from the sofa, she sat down herself.

Claudine watched as with a trembling hand she lifted her

glass to her lips. Of all of them it was Solange who had taken

the greatest strain these past few weeks. Monique’s broken

heart was as big a sorrow to her mother as it was to

Monique, and with her constant, almost irrational, terror

for Lucien, her fears for Francois and her anxiety over

Louis’ obviously diminishing health, Claudine wondered

how much longer her mother-in-law would be able to hold

on. She knew then, as she looked into that beloved,

startlingly jovial face, that no matter what Neville

Chamberlain had to say, and whether Francois’ morbid

predictions came true or not, she had been right to tell him she wouldn’t leave Lorvoire - and she would stay as long as Solange needed her.

She went to sit beside her on the sofa. ‘Francois says that

Britain is about to declare war,’ she said in a trembling voice

to no one in particular. ‘Apparently Mr Chamberlain is

making a broadcast at twelve fifteen.’

Louis nodded. ‘And France?’

‘Later today, Francois says. He didn’t say what time.’

Solange looked at her watch. ‘It’s almost one fifteen,’

she said. ‘I wonder if Francois gave you British or French!

time?’

‘Well, there’s only one way to find out,’ Louis said,;

pulling himself from his chair and walking across to the wireless. As they listened to the crackling and whining of his search for the BBC’s World Service, Monique came in and

took the remaining glass of brandy from the tray.

They had no more than two minutes to wait before

Neville Chamberlain’s sombre voice came over the

crackling airwaves. ‘I am speaking to you from the Cabinet

Room at Ten Downing Street,’ he began. ‘This morning

the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German

Government a final note, stating that, unless the British

Government heard from them by eleven o’clock that they

were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from

Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell

you now that no such undertaking has been received, and

that consequently this country is at war with Germany …’

There was more, but none of them heard it. Louis looked

at Solange, and with tears running down his face, said, ‘In

nineteen eighteen I looked around for the men I’d known,

but they were all gone. The battlefields were strewn with

their brave young bodies. One and half million of them gave

their lives in that war, Solange. Their hearts numbed by the

cold, their skin crawling with filth, their nostrils filled with

the stench of blood and decaying flesh. I never thought we

would come to this again, Solange, I never thought…’

Solange wiped the tears from his eyes, and as the British

National Anthem started to play on the wireless, Claudine

let herself quietly out of the room and went upstairs to the

nursery. Louis was playing with his toy car, but when he saw

her come into the room he ran into her arms.

‘Corinne,’ Claudine said; settling Louis on her hip.

‘Madame?’

‘I want you to teach me the skill of unarmed combat.’

Francois’ black eyes moved meditatively about the room.

‘ The creamy-white walls were unadorned, apart from a

crucifix between the windows, and the bare tiled floor was

scrupulously clean. The smell of disinfectant lingered in the

air churning his empty stomach, making him feel bilious.

Next to the brown leather armchair in which he sat was a

small iron-framed bed, and through the windowed walls

facing him he could see white-overalled doctors and nurses

in stiff uniforms going about their business.

Earlier, the air-raid sirens had sounded, and he had

heard the commotion in the street outside as Parisians

rushed panic-stricken to the shelters. When it was over

several women had been brought to the hospital, stifled and

half-fainting in their gas-masks. It had been another false

alarm.

‘ He closed his eyes as the Herculean burden of his

tiredness weighted his limbs. But still sleep eluded him, as it

had done for days. He was now a machine, operating

ceaselessly, monotonously, without feeling… All the same,

he grinned when he recalled his conversation with Claudine

that morning. Her passionate refusal to leave France had

not surprised him, but he would telephone again later for

her final decision. If she was determined to stay he wouldn’t

argue, he had no time for it now … Just as he had no time

for the self-recrimination that was razoring his mind of

sleep. It was too late now to regret the path he had chosen, to

regret his marriage, to regret, most bitterly of all, what had

happened to Elise.

He turned to look at her, but she was still sleeping, and

resting his head against the winged back of the chair, he

stared sightlessly up at a corner of the room. A few days ago the doctor had told him that she was at last out of danger, but the road to recovery was going to be a long one, he had

warned, and she might never reach the end of it. Her breasts

and her buttocks would always bear the scars of the knife,!

but that was nothing to the way her insides had been ripped. I

It was doubtful if she would ever be able to make love again,

and the memory of the last words he, Francois, had spoken

to her on the night they entertained Helber would remain

forever branded on his mind.

‘Do you want to make love, Elise?’ he had asked her.

‘Yes, oh yes,’ she had moaned, turning in his arms.

‘Then as a professional whore you should have no trouble

in finding someone to satisfy you,’ he had said, and letting

her go, he had turned and walked out of the room.

He would never have said that if he had not known

Helber was listening at the door, and now that he knew the

extent of Elise’s injuries he had vowed that one day he

would sever the man’s genitals from his body, so that he too

should be denied the pleasures of love.

But that would never give Elise back what she had lost

He sighed, and again closed his eyes as the choking monster

of guilt heaved in his chest. He had tried everything he

could to stop her falling in love with him; at times he had

disgusted even himself with his brutality. But despite all his

efforts he had failed. To her he had been the ultimate

challenge, and she had believed herself strong enough,

clever enough, brave enough to take him on, together with

the world of intrigue in which he moved. She had never

stood a chance. Her sophistication lay in her body, not in her

mind; in her beauty and her matchless bedroom skills. Yet

for a while she had held her own, had surprised even him

with her determination and her ruthlessness.

But he should have known that something like this would

happen in the end - that von Liebermann would find her

Achilles heel. She had wanted to become the Comtesse de

Rassey de Lorvoire, and no doubt that was what von

Liebermann had promised her. If only she had listened to

him, believed him, when he told her he would never marry

her! But the blame was his, he should have acted the moment

he realized von Liebermann had got to her. Instead he had

merely kept her ignorant of what he was doing, thereby letting the Abwehr know that he no longer trusted her.

And it was that, as much as anything else, that had sealed

her fate. Knowing that Elise was no longer in his confidence,

could supply no more useful information on him, von

Liebermann had unleashed on her the man Helber had told

him about, as a warning of what would happen to those he

loved if he failed to cooperate …

Now, hearing Elise stir, he braced himself for the thin,