Darkest Longings (76 page)

told them exactly what had happened in the wine cave, well I

think they wanted the whole episode to receive as little

attention as possible. Armand never mentioned it, though

my father told me he had spoken to him, and he had

promised to keep everything to himself. Lucien never

mentioned it either. Whether he and Hortense had been

sleeping together I don’t know, it never seemed appropriate

to ask. But I think they had.

‘So there you have it, the murder of Hortense de

Bourchain. Why Erich thought it had some vital connection

with Halunke I simply don’t know. He checked on Hortense’s family and none of them were in France at the times that mattered. The only other people who know what

happened are Doctor Lebrun, my father, Lucien and

Armand, and as none of them could conceivably be Halunke

Looking up, Francois saw in the fading light that

Claudine’s eyes were shining with tears. ‘Why are you

crying?’ he asked softly.

‘I’m not. Not exactly. I just feel so sad. But you’re right,

none of them could be Halunke. The only one who has anything approaching a motive is Lucien - if he loved Hortense. And Lucien wouldn’t have killed his own father.’

‘So, we’re right back at the beginning. Erich must have

discovered something else, and we - I - have to find out

what that was.’

‘ We,’ she corrected. ‘Will you come here, please? I want to give you that kiss now.’

As he knelt in front of her, she put her arms round his

neck and said, ‘How does a man with such an ugly face and

such a chequered past manage to fill my heart with so much

love?’

‘I don’t know, but I’m glad I do,’ he smiled, lowering his

mouth to hers.

Five minutes later he was handing her up onto her horse.

‘That wasn’t enough,’ she said, looking down at him sulkily.

‘I didn’t think it would be,’ he answered with a wry smile.

‘Can we make love tonight?’

‘If you can make it sound like rape.’ He thought about

that, then his eyes met hers and they laughed.

‘How are you getting back?’ she asked, turning her horse.

‘There’s a tunnel. It leads from the river bank over there,

into the middle cellar.’

‘The middle.cellar!’ she gasped. ‘The boxes!’

‘Don’t tell me,’ he groaned. ‘You’ve opened them.’

‘It was your father’s idea,’ she said sheepishly. ‘But where

did all those valuables come from?’

‘Jews,’ he answered. ‘They belong to wealthy Parisian

Jews. I’m keeping them until they, or their descendants, can

come to collect them.’

Claudine smiled widely as tilting her head quizzically to

one side, she said, ‘Is that a halo I can see shining over your

devilish face?’

‘Get out of here,’ he laughed, and giving the horse a slap,

he sent her galloping off into the forest.

During the months that followed Francois’ return to the

chateau it was easy to forget that there was a war taking place

beyond the borders of Lorvoire - that was, if you ignored the drone of aircraft passing overhead, the daily wireless broadcasts and the presence of the Germans stationed in

Chinon. Even Claudine’s Resistance group went to ground

for a time, once she had warned the Jupiter reseau that the Germans knew about them. But as soon as Lucien returned from England with news that the RAF were to begin a series of fighter sweeps over northern France, the escape-line went back into operation and the search for safe-houses and

couriers began again. At first, though, the number of Allied

pilots needing to be escorted through France to Spain was

small, and Claudine was more than happy to concentrate on

other things.

As those balmy summer days passed, she could feel

herself inexorably changing. She was lightheaded with

love, with a sense of fulfilment, a feeling of well-being. She

walked taller than ever, her glorious hair bouncing on her

shoulders, and was so unmistakably radiant that Francois

was forced to see that continuing to try and delude the

family they were not in love was a waste of effort. But the

truth must go no further than that, he warned her. Apart

from anything else, her fellow Resistants would take a dim

view of her attachment to a collaborator.

He told her little about the days he spent at the Chateau

d’Artigny, though she knew that as yet he had been required

to do very little. Following the breakdown of the RussoGerman

non-aggression pact, Hitler had turned his army

east, and von Liebermann and his Komitee were heavily

involved in intelligence-gathering for the planned invasion

of Russia. Without von Liebermann’s specific instructions it

appeared that Francois’ commanding officers in Touraine

were at a loss to know what they should do with him. This

suited Francois perfectly, of course - though he was curious

to know why von Liebermann - or more accurately,

Himmler - had not yet ordered his execution. He had as yet

done nothing further to prove his fealty to the Reich, and if

he wasn’t to be actively engaged on the Abwehr’s behalf he

couldn’t see what purpose his staying alive served. Still, the

German plan for his fate would no doubt be made clear soon

enough, and meanwhile he and Claudine determined to

make the most of the reprieve.

It wasn’t long before Blomberg, whose discomfort since

Francois’ return had been painfully obvious, started to spend

more and more nights away from the chateau. This delighted

Solange, because it meant that the family - including Lucien could

spend the long, hot summer evenings together, singing

and dancing in the ballroom, or simply listening to Edith Piaf’s

lazy, seductive voice on the gramophone. Lucien couldn’t

come often, but when he did Francois allowed Louis to stay up

fate as a special treat. Solange, whose hair was back on end as

though the crazy ideas in her head were pushing up through

her skull, played loudly on the piano while Louis sang with

Monique and Claudine. And when Louis became tired and

snuggled sleepily into his father’s lap, the cries for Lucien to

sing next were almost as loud as the protests that were made

when Armand joined in. Liliane was often there too, and

neighbours from nearby chateaux took to bringing their

rations to Arlette so that they too could join the de Lorvoire

soirees. No one objected to Francois’ apparent allegiance to

the German cause since most of them, like Tante Celine, were Attentistes - waiting to see which way the war went before deciding which side to take. Besides, most of them played host

during the day to hunting and shooting parties in the Chinon

Forest which Francois and many other German officers

attended.

During those wonderfully light-hearted evenings

Claudine often found herself watching Armand as he

laughed and joked with Solange and Monique, twirled them

about the room or tossed them into Lucien’s arms. He was

at last his old self again, and she could see once more why

she had found it so easy to love him. She was glad that he

now seemed so relaxed - and it was obvious, too, that the

worry she had had that he and Francois would never

recapture their former friendship was unfounded. The two

of them were as easy in each other’s company as they were in ,

Lucien’s. There were times, though - particularly when she

danced with Armand, when she would catch Francois

staring at them, a black frown between his eyes and his

mouth a thin, tight line of concentration. Could her

invincible husband actually have fallen prey to jealousy?

‘What, when I know how utterly devoted you are to me?’

he would say when she challenged him. And then he would

pull her onto his lap and kiss her so soundly - in front of the

entire family - that she would almost blush.

‘Oh La la,’ Tante Celine would cry at these public displays

of affection. She still wasn’t quite over the shock of

discovering that Francois de Lorvoire had a heart, or that

her niece had, by some miracle, managed to capture it,

though like everyone else she was delighted for them, and

simply longed to tell Beavis - wherever he might be.

It was only on family evenings, when they had no guests,

that Claudine and Francois felt able to behave so freely with

each other, and only on those evenings would they dance

together, usually to an over-played, scratched record of Al

Bowlly singing ‘The Very Thought of You’ - the song

everyone remembered them dancing to at their wedding.

Later, if it was a night when Lucien was there and Louis had

stayed up, Francois would carry his sleeping son to the

nursery, then join Claudine in her room where they would

spend hour upon hour making lazy, luxurious, and increasingly

erotic love. Her room, like his, was bugged, but

now that Blomberg knew they were in love there was little

point in hiding it from the Germans, and if they had

anything of importance to say to one another they would

either walk in the forest or meet at Thomas’ fishing hut. In

truth, their recklessness caused Francois a great deal of

concern, but he said nothing; Claudine was so happy, and

he couldn’t bring himself to do anything to spoil it.

Summer turned to autumn, and as the German army

tightened its stranglehold on Russia, and the British

suffered incalculable losses in North Africa, in Lorvoire it

was time to harvest the grapes. As they did every year, the

locals came to help, and so did the German soldiers who still

visited Gustave’s cafe each Friday to drink an endless

supply of black-market spirits with Armand. As Claudine

had predicted at the outset of the occupation, befriending

these officers had proved extremely useful. Surprisingly

often they would let little nuggets of information slip to

Armand - troop movements, the location of roadblocks,

areas of concentration for radio detector vans. These details

were enormously useful to the group in their task of escorting pilots through the escape-line, or when they were trying to send messages to London.

On the night of the harvest there was a party. It was

nothing like the one in thirty-seven - but it amused

Claudine no end to be dancing with German officers when

no more than half a mile away, two British pilots and one

Canadian were spending the night at the forest cottage. The

following morning they were given black felt berets and blue

serge overalls tailored by Gertrude Reinberg, and a collection

of identity cards forged overnight by Theobald the

signwriter. Then, while their uniforms burned in the grate,

they ate a heartier breakfast than most of the locals had seen

since the outbreak of war, before being transported in broad

daylight to the demarcation line by old Thomas in his horse

and cart. The escape-line was now running so smoothly that

Claudine often had to remind the others - Solange and

Liliane in particular, who had appointed themselves her chief couriers - of the danger they all faced if they were caught.

It wasn’t until the following week that they heard that

while they had been celebrating the harvest, fifty Frenchmen

had been shot as a reprisal for the assassination of a

German officer in Nantes. Two days later, fifty more were

shot in Bordeaux where another German officer had lost his

life at the hands of the Resistance.

From that day on, all fraternizing with the Germans came

to an abrupt end. Even the Attentistes ceased their hospitality.

Resistance groups who had gone to ground over the

summer months began to re-form, and techniques of

sabotage and assault favoured by the Communists started to

catch on. It was a difficult time for Francois. He became a

major target for local hostility, and more than once he

arrived home with the windshield of his jeep smashed and

his face and hands covered in cuts. Claudine became

increasingly afraid for his life, but nothing she said would

persuade him to go into hiding with Lucien. There had

been no sign of Halunke for almost a year, but until he was

caught Francois was not prepared to do anything to

antagonize von Liebermann. And von Liebermann, he told

Claudine, was due any time now to arrive at the Abwehr

headquarters in Paris.

As it turned out, von Liebermann didn’t arrive until early

in the New Year, by which time Hitler’s invasion of Russia

was suffering severe setbacks, and the Japanese had

bombed Pearl Harbour, bringing America into the war.

This change of fortune for the Allies prompted many Attentistes finally to declare their allegiance, and the numbers of men - and women - who went into hiding in the

forest after successful sabotage attacks on German bases

started steadily to increase. Leopard, which was Lucien’s

code name as well as the name of their escape-line, now

prepared to transport American as well as British and

Canadian pilots out of the country and back to the war; and

though it was a bitterly cold winter, with heavy frosts, snow

and gales, neither Claudine nor any of her fellow Resistant! were deterred.