Stranger at the Gates (4 page)

‘Don't go too quickly, darling. We'll be there soon enough.'

‘He makes me sick,' her daughter said furiously. ‘You shouldn't have come down; they're only going to make things difficult for you.'

‘They won't mean to,' Louise said. ‘Besides, I've made it difficult for them. Paul sounded terribly shaken on the telephone.'

‘Only because that damned Françoise had been at him. “Think of your career, think what will happen if there is a scandal”—I can just hear her saying it!'

‘You've got to promise me not to quarrel with them,' Louise said. ‘I've got to talk to Paul and find out what he wants me to do.'

‘He'll want you to protect him,' Sophie said angrily. ‘That's obvious. He should have thrown that woman out of the house instead of listening to her! I shouldn't have called you to the telephone! Anyway, whatever you say, Mother, I'm not going to stand by and let them bully you.'

Louise didn't answer. Her son's anxious voice on the telephone the night before had been completely unexpected. She had never thought for a moment that Ilse Minden would go direct to him. But she had, and the worried man, trying to seem calm, had begged her to come down to St. Blaize and discuss the problem with him. And with his wife, whose voice she could hear murmuring in the background. They would both be there, frightened and surprised, not knowing how to cope. The unexpected seldom disturbed their lives. She allowed herself to wonder how her son and his wife Françoise would have behaved had they faced the same situations as she had done. And her husband, whose portrait had been commissioned by Paul and now hung in the main hall of the Château. He was very proud of his father, who had been a hero of the Resistance. If she wore her own Legion d'Honneur ribbon, he was visibly gratified. She thought of the coming interview and shuddered. Not for herself. Since the telephone call last night her feelings for herself were numb. All she could feel now was sorrow for the others, the innocent whose safe illusions had been shattered. How much had that woman told Paul—how much would she have to tell Sophie, who might not be as immune as she pretended …

They had left the autoroute behind and were travelling fast along the country roads, passing through St. Leger en Yvelines, where her husband Jean used to hunt before the war, on to Houdan, and then across to St. Blaize, down the narrow road she remembered so well. It was a long time since she had been there, almost three years. Visits for the christening of her first grandson, then a grand-daughter, one painful Christmas spent with the family, who hadn't known how to entertain her, because her distress at being in the Château was so obvious. They had meant to be kind, Paul and Françoise, and Sophie, at that time in the first stage of a violent love affair with a popular guitarist, had been in America with him on a tour. She couldn't spend Christmas in Paris alone; it would be too painful. Against her will, and only to please them, Louise had allowed them to persuade her and she had come back to the house which had been her home, and which she never wanted to see again. Now, passing through the wrought-iron gates and turning up the drive, she saw the familiar turret, clothed in ivy and the handsome façade, surrounded by sweeping green lawns, the old trees giving their magnificent shade, unchanged by centuries. Dogs rushed out to meet her, the lean grey Weimaren hounds that her daughter-in-law kept, and which had replaced the spaniels which she and Jean had loved. And then her son, tall and anxious-looking, with his wife's slight figure, suitably dressed in tweed and English cashmere emerging from behind him. They kissed her; he was affectionate and warm, and pretended not to notice his sister's aggressive attitude as she walked into the house. Inside, Louise paused for a moment.

There was the hall, a large room with a Norman ceiling, the sixteenth-century tapestries which had been there since they were woven, and the portrait of Jean de Bernard, with a light over it, dominating the room. Françoise advanced towards her; she had a special tone for her mother-in-law, of whom she was very much in awe. It suggested that whatever happened she had to be humoured, and it never failed to make Louise feel like an intruder.

‘Would you like to go upstairs to your room, first, Louise? Then we can talk in the library?'

‘Yes, that would be nice. Where am I sleeping? The little blue room?'

‘Well, no,' Françoise explained. Her smile was strained and she looked as if she hadn't slept. ‘We've had that done for Christiane. You're in the second guest room. It's all been decorated; it's very pretty now.'

Louise smiled back at her and followed her up the staircase. A manservant was carrying her small case. They had insisted that she and Sophie stayed the night. It couldn't be discussed in a hurry. She walked slowly up the winding stone stairs and outside the bedroom door she hesitated. Her bag was inside, the servant stood waiting for her to go in. It was a room she hadn't seen for over twenty years. A room which held memories of such anguish and such longing that she felt her colour fading as she stepped inside it.

Nothing remained the same. The walls were a different colour, the old-fashioned four-poster bed had gone, the armchair, the Empire furniture, the ugly pre-war chintzes. ‘Thank you,' she said, not turning round, and the door closed. She was alone in the room which had been Roger Savage's bedroom. She went to the window and looked out. He had done the same, that morning in June, in 1944, drawing back the curtains and looking down. She hadn't thought about him, she hadn't let his memory return to spoil the last few years. Now there was no defence. Suddenly she dropped upon the bed, and found that she was crying. No defence at all. Her daughter-in-law had made the changes, turning the room into a pretty, chic guest bedroom, but she couldn't paint out the past, and it rushed at Louise, sharp and so real that the present seemed to have no substance. Roger Savage. And down the corridor Heinz Minden's room, and the room where Régine slept. They were all there, the ghosts and the living, crowding in upon her, demanding to be recognised. And Savage was the most real of all. She could see him standing by the window, tall and broad, the sun shooting rays of light around him as he blocked it out, looking down at the forty-foot drop below. She put both hands to her face and wiped away the tears. He had hated to see her cry. Even at the end when she was weeping in agony for him, he had been hurt by her tears …

There was a knock at the door. It opened without waiting for her to answer, and it was not Sophie, as she expected, but her son Paul.

‘Mother,' he said gently. ‘I had a feeling you'd be upset. Come downstairs; we're all waiting for you. We'll talk about it and find a solution together.' He put his arm around her, and they left the room.

There had been a row between Sophie and Françoise; she could feel it as soon as she went into the yellow salon. They were apart, the Comtesse de Bernard sitting very upright, her face pink and her eyes bright with anger; Sophie lounging like an urchin, a cigarette dangling from her mouth. Louise looked at them both and gently disengaged herself from Paul's arm. He couldn't support her. He belonged to his wife; he had a family of his own, a life apart from hers. His was the future. Ilse Minden had come into their lives, and the past was threatening them all. She was the direct link with it; the responsibility must be hers alone. But first, before any decision could be taken, there was something she knew she had to do. She had known in that upstairs room as clearly as if Savage had come back and told her.

‘Let's all sit down,' she said. ‘Paul, my dear, get me a drink, would you? A whisky and Perrier.'

‘Of course.' He looked relieved at having been asked to do something.

‘Françoise? Sophie?' Both women shook their heads. Louise took the glass from him and lit a cigarette. For once her daughter-in-law didn't rush forward with an ashtray.

‘I don't know what that woman told you,' Louise said quietly. ‘But I can imagine you've found a lot of it distressing.'

‘We didn't believe it,' her son said. ‘We would never believe anything …' He stopped, embarrassed. ‘We just wanted to discuss what should be done.'

‘You're not going to bully Mother into giving evidence to keep that bloody woman's mouth shut.' Sophie turned on him fiercely. ‘And that's what I gather you're proposing to do!' She gave her sister-in-law a look of fury.

‘No we're not,' Paul de Bernard said. He avoided his wife's anxious glance. ‘We're going to behave in a sensible fashion and talk this out. Nobody's going to do anything to upset Mother. So you needn't talk like that.'

‘None of you need get angry with each other on my account,' Louise said. ‘There's no need. I'm sure Ilse Minden told you she'd been to see me. She tried to blackmail me. As she obviously did to you, Paul. One thing is certain; she doesn't intend to give up. What we have to decide is whether to give in to that blackmail, or whether to resist it.'

‘There is another point.' Françoise de Bernard spoke for the first time. There was an expression on her face as she looked at Louise which had never been there before. ‘And that's whether, in conscience, Mother shouldn't do as she asks.'

‘That's true,' Louise answered. ‘And there's only one way to decide. And that is for me to tell you exactly what happened. The truth.'

‘Mother …' Sophie began, ‘we know …'

‘No, darling,' Louise interrupted. ‘I'm afraid you don't. But I am going to tell you. Then we will make up our minds what I must do.'

The Château de St. Blaize lay some fifty kilometres from Paris, and forty kilometres from the great medieval city of Chartres. The village of St. Blaize en Yvelines was dominated by the Château which watched over it from a slight rise in the ground. It was a small, turreted château of grey stone with a slate roof, a tower at its north side, approached from the road by a long gravel drive. For nearly six hundred years it had been the centre of life for the village, and the same family had lived there without interruption except for a period of exile during the Revolution. The bigger houses in the area were under German occupation, their owners quartered in a small portion of their homes, but St. Blaize belonged entirely to the de Bernards. The village, observing everything that happened at the Château, congratulated the Comte on having kept his home intact and admired his facility for coping with the occupying forces. He showed remarkable tact and foresight for a comparatively young man, and his lack of false heroics relieved the citizens of St. Blaize of any feeling of guilt for their own complaisance towards the enemy.

One experience of German anger had been enough for the most reckless of the men who sat round boasting and grumbling in the wine shop. They followed the example of the Comte and showed their wish to co-operate with the German authorities. As a result, their lives were undisturbed, and only one German officer, more of a guest than an intruder, lived at the Château with the Comte and his family. It was known that the Comtesse held different views from her husband and had never hesitated to express them, but since she was an American, her example was ignored. Nobody in St. Blaize wanted trouble, or to be forced to fight the Germans. They wanted to survive, like the Comte de Bernard.

One evening at the end of May in 1944 Louise took their coffee into the salon; for the last three months Jean de Bernard had insisted upon the German dining with them instead of in his room, and staying for an hour or two afterwards. Eating with him had been bad enough for Louise; his presence in her drawing room only increased her disgust with her husband. There was nothing obviously offensive about Major Minden. He was a quiet man in his thirties, unobtrusive and embarrassed by his being billeted upon them. He had gone out of his way to be self-effacing and when the Comte de Bernard offered him hospitality, he responded by generous gifts of things which were unobtainable for the French. He was always polite, tactful, appreciative of everything. He apologised for the situation in which they found themselves without ever putting his guilt into words, and he followed Louise with his eyes, mentally fornicating, until she could have screamed.

The meal this evening had been simple; food was short and luxuries like butter and sugar tightly rationed. Not even Minden's ingenuity could get them the rich veal and cream, the pork and game and poultry which had made the food at St. Blaize famous before the war. The cook had died in 1941, and now the cooking was done by Louise or Marie-Anne, who showed remarkable skill with vegetables, eggs and an occasional chicken. There was a splendid cellar at the Château, and they bottled a light white wine from their own vineyards in the Loire. After dinner, Minden produced a bottle of fine cognac and offered his host a cigar. Louise looked at him as he pierced and lit it. It was May, but the weather had been wet and cold; a log fire was alight in the wide stone grate, and the light flickered over the face she had loved, and caressed with her hands. He had changed very little in the eight years they had been married. His manner was the same; gentle, courteous, a little aloof but his laugh hadn't lost its warmth or his eyes their charm. She could see Minden responding to it, smiling and talking, leaning a little forward, the cigar jutting through his fingers. For a moment he was concentrating on the Comte and not slyly glancing at her, his tongue slipping over his lips. She hated the way he treated her, the spring to his feet when she came into a room, holding out her chair when they sat at the dining table, always polite, with his head a little on one side as if he were concentrating on every word. And she said as little as possible. She showed him that she resented him and disliked him, but his skin was elephantine. Nothing she said or did to convey her feelings made the slightest difference. He responded by bringing her a large bottle of the most expensive scent at Christmas which was exclusively exported to Germany. She would have respected him more if he'd tried to put his hand down her dress.