Daughter of Riches (44 page)

‘Viv?' he said. And she knew him instantly.

‘Nicky! Nicky – is that you?'

‘Yes.'

‘Oh Nicky!' He knew she was crying, he could hear it in her voice, and his own face was wet with tears. ‘Nicky, where are you?'

‘In England,' he said. ‘But I'm coming home!'

‘When – when?'

‘As soon as I can.'

‘Oh – I can't wait! It's been so long! I thought …'

‘Viv,' he said, ‘there is something I have to tell you and if you don't want to see me I shall quite understand. I am in a wheelchair.'

He felt her moment of shock. ‘A wheelchair!'

‘Yes. So if you don't want …'

She did not let him finish. ‘Don't be so bloody silly! It doesn't matter, Nicky. Just as long as you are coming home. It doesn't matter at all!'

But of course it did matter. Not at first, maybe, because their euphoria at being together again was so complete there was no room for doubts. Those first weeks Viv was like a child with a new toy, insisting Nicky move in with her and her mother since Sophia already had her hands full looking after Bernard, Catherine and baby Louis. She waited on him hand and foot, there was so much to talk about, so much catching up to do, so much touching and kissing. They even found ways of making love, partly from Nicky's therapy lessons (‘She must have been quite a lady, your therapist!' Viv teased), partly from instinct and imagination.

It was only when the novelty started to wear off that Viv began to realise she no longer felt the same. At first she did not want to admit it, even to herself. She had Nicky back, as she had said to him that first day on the telephone, that was all that mattered. The trouble was he wasn't the same Nicky. He looked the same – well, more or less the same. A little thinner in the face and his legs were horribly wasted – Viv thought with a pang of the muscular tanned limbs that had been part of Nicky's attraction. He was kind. He was courageous – God, how she admired his courage! He had even managed to retain something of his sense of humour. But he wasn't dashing any more, he wasn't young and strong and invincible. People felt sorry for him now and although they might admire him too that admiration was for different qualities than the ones that she had found so devastatingly attractive.

On the surface Viv kept up the façade of sheer delight at having Nicky home again. Privately, to her own distress, she was beginning to have serious doubts.

Sophia, on the other hand, was very happy. It was almost as if the birth of baby Louis had marked the end of one chapter of her life and the beginning of a quite different one.

There were times when she still thought of Dieter – useless to pretend there were not – but he had become unreal to her now, a distant dream that had happened to someone else and not to her at all. Bernard was the reality now, not the old easygoing Bernard whom she had treated so badly, but a man who had grown in stature since the day he had laid down his ultimatum to her and was now very much master in his own home. Sophia respected him and was a little afraid of him though she would not let him see it. And she found that the uncertainty she still felt about him heightened the attraction he now had for her in a way that his earlier consideration never had.

Not that he was inconsiderate now – on the contrary he was a kind and generous husband – but always there was that edge and Sophia was in no doubt that if she ever deceived or let him down there would be no more second chances.

When the soldiers moved out of La Maison Blanche Bernard and Sophia went over to assess the damage. To their relief they found it was not nearly as bad as it might have been – some places, like The Pomme d'Or, were in a dreadful state. The main hotel where the soldiers had been billeted was in need of decoration and some of the furniture and fittings had been damaged or looted, but the officers who had used the cottage annexe had treated it with respect. Even Sophia's precious piano seemed little the worse for wear. Sophia played a few notes on it, listening critically to the pitch and feeling the joy that always came from making music mingled with regrets for her lost dreams. What a long time ago it seemed now since the days when she had hoped to win a place at music college and perhaps make a career on the concert platform! Such a thing was out of the question now, of course; with all her new responsibilities it was an ambition destined to remain unfulfilled. But at least she would still be able to play the piano for her own pleasure. That was something she could look forward to once they were back at La Maison Blanche.

‘We must get the decorations done as soon as possible,' she said, retracing her steps through the rooms and assessing them with a critical eye. ‘I think we should start with Mama's room. I want to have everything ready for her and Papa. They could be coming home any day and I want it to be nice for her. What colour do you think she would like, Bernard? Rose pink? That's a warm colour. Or yellow? Like sunshine?'

Bernard said nothing. Privately he thought she was taking a rather over-optimistic view but looking at her shining face he did not have the heart to disillusion her.

‘I'm sure they'll be so glad to be back in their own home they won't care what colour the walls are!' was all he said.

As the weeks passed with no news, however, even Sophia was hard put to it to remain optimistic. At first she was too busy with the preparations to move back to La Maison Blanche to have any energy left over for worrying, but as the gates of the prisoner-of-war camps began to be opened and the horror stories of the way the prisoners had been treated began to emerge, she was overtaken by a gnawing dread. Desperately she tried to discover the whereabouts of Charles and Lola but every effort seemed destined to end with stone-walling by the authorities and ultimate failure.

For a long while she kept her worst fears to herself, feeling almost superstitiously that to talk about them made them more real and Bernard, though he was growing daily more concerned as to Charles and Lola's likely fate, shrank from suggesting to Sophia that it was his opinion that her beloved parents might very well be dead. She was going to take it very badly, he thought. She had put so much effort into preparing for their return. And he wondered and worried about his own ability to help her come to terms with yet another crushing blow.

One evening in September Sophia took Louis into the garden to feed him. Although it was late the air was balmy and from the window Bernard could just see her sitting on the wooden bench, her back towards the house, completely screened from curious eyes. His heart contracted with love and the desire to protect her but he held back from joining her. He knew she liked this time alone with Louis.

As darkness began to fall, however, and Sophia still had not returned to the house, Bernard began to wonder what was keeping her. Surely Louis was satisfied by now? He was a quick, efficient feeder who did not take up hours of his mother's time as Bernard had heard many babies did. He waited a little longer, glancing occasionally out of the window at Sophia's motionless figure, then pushed open the door and went down the garden.

During their occupation the Germans had tended the vegetable patch but this year it had not been replanted and weeds now rioted where Charles's cabbages and beans had once stood in neat rows. The fruit trees had done well, however, producing barrow, loads of apples and pears and Bernard trod on the odd fallen one as he crossed the rough grass.

Sophia glanced up as she heard him approach. As he had thought, Louis had finished feeding and Sophia was holding him against her shoulder, one hand supporting his fair downy head. Bernard felt something sharp and painful twist inside him. Why the hell couldn't Louis have been his baby? He was a beautiful child, and very good, but Bernard could never quite bring himself to forget that his father had been a German soldier – a man prepared to rape if the desire took him. Perhaps, he thought, it would be different when Louis was older, a boy with a personality of his own. He never had been able to understand what people saw in babies and this one, good as he was, much as Sophia obviously loved him, merely reminded Bernard of things he would rather forget.

There was no moon yet it was far from dark, a soft ethereal dusk. Sitting there in the shadows Sophia looked very soft and very beautiful.

‘Are you all right, sweetheart?' Bernard asked, going up to her.

She was silent for a moment.

‘Mm. I've been thinking. About Mama and Papa. Do you remember when Papa went to Dunkirk? We were terribly worried about him but somehow I never doubted he'd come back.'

‘You were young then,' he said gently. ‘Terrible things weren't real to you.'

‘It wasn't just that. It was a sort of certainty inside even though my imagination was working overtime. But now it's different. I know it sounds dreadfully morbid, but I don't think they are going to come back. At least … I don't think Papa is. I'm not sure about Mama.'

Bernard, who had been wondering how to prepare Sophia for the worst, found himself hedging now that the moment had come.

‘You mustn't give up hope.'

‘No, it's not a question of not hoping – more a question of
knowing.
And anyway, to be honest, we should have heard something by now, surely? The camps are all being liberated. And when you think of what the Allies are finding …' She broke off, swallowing hard. It was almost beyond being borne, knowing that her parents might have been starved to skeletons, gassed or gunned down. ‘A lot of people have died in p. o.w. camps,' she went on when she had collected herself. ‘I think it might be sensible to assume Mama and Papa were amongst them. Don't you?'

‘I … don't know …'

‘I shall still continue to write letters, of course, to the Red Cross and anyone else I can think of. I won't give up until every last camp has been liberated and every living prisoner named. But it's no use going on in limbo. They wouldn't want that. I think we should plan our lives as if they were never coming back. And then if by chance they do it will be all the more wonderful.'

Bernard was so surprised by this strangely philosophical Sophia that he hardly knew what to say.

‘I suppose that is the sensible way to look at it,' he said.

‘Of course it is. Maybe I would have found it more difficult to say this if it hadn't been for the business, but I do have this very strong feeling that they would want us to get it going again, Bernard. It meant so much to them, they would be very sad if we just let it all go because they hadn't come home. Now the war is over I expect the visitors will start coming back – more than ever, perhaps, because they will be so fed up with no holidays and nothing nice happening for five years – and I think we should be ready for them. Don't you?'

‘Well – yes …' Bernard said, even more surprised. He had had similar thoughts himself about the likelihood of a tourist boom and wondered how he could suggest resurrecting the business without upsetting Sophia. The opportunities, he had thought, could turn out to be far too good to be missed, particularly for someone as eager to be his own boss as he was. But with Charles's fate so uncertain he thought that to do anything about it was in rather dubious taste. It smacked of opportunism and of stepping into dead men's shoes and keen though his ambitions were Sophia's feelings were more important to him than any advancement.

‘The guest house is almost respectable again,' Sophia went on. ‘We could be open to visitors next summer with no trouble. And you worked for Papa at the Agency. Would you be willing to run it now – for him – as a sort of memorial?'

‘Well, yes …' he said again.

‘There's only one thing. Papa would have given Paul a job in the company if he had wanted one – when he gets out of the RAF you must talk that over with him. And Nicky – well, Nicky will have to be provided for too. Maybe there will be something he can do, in the office or something. He's very good with people, of course, but I'm not sure what guests would think of him being in a wheelchair. It shouldn't make any difference, I know, and he's a hero. But will people want to be reminded now the war is over?'

Bernard shook his head. ‘I don't know, I really don't know. I need to think about all this. But I'm glad it's in the open.'

Sophia nodded. ‘So am I.' But he noticed she was shivering a little and he put his arm around her.

‘Come on, now, sweetheart, I think it's time we went inside. And it wouldn't be such a bad idea to get to bed before that little alarm clock you've got there decides it's time to wake up again and start demanding breakfast.'

With his arm still around her shoulders he guided her back across the apple-strewn lawn to the house.

The letter from the Red Cross arrived the very next week, so vague they were almost afraid to hope, let alone believe, and then, just when they were least expecting it, came the telephone call.

Sophia, who answered it listened in almost total silence to what was being said and then set down the receiver with exaggerated care.

Feeling almost numb she turned to Catherine, who was rolling on the floor tickling Louis.

‘Mama is coming home.' Her voice was flat, dazed.

Catherine froze. ‘Mama? What about Papa?'

‘I don't know. They didn't mention him. She's been very ill – too ill to be able to tell anyone who she was, and she had no papers on her.'

‘When? When is she coming?'

‘Today. They are flying her in – we have to meet her at the airport.'

‘Oh Sophia!'

‘Oh Catherine!'

‘I'm scared!'

‘So am I! Will she have changed much, do you think? She may still be really ill. They didn't say. Her old room is all ready for her, but do you think if Papa's not coming would it be better to put her somewhere else? I don't know!'

‘Give her her old room, of course. She may have been ill, she may be changed, but it's still Mama. She'd hate to be treated like a visitor.'