The Eden Inheritance (9 page)

‘Oh surely not! They wouldn't have had their photograph taken with him, would they? And he's not in uniform.'

‘No, but he lived at the château, remember, and he was a frequent visitor in the days before he turned the family out and took it over for his HQ. He might not always have worn his uniform then – when he had a day off duty, for instance.'

‘I still can't believe it.' Lise went on turning over photographs. ‘Look, here's one of you, Guy. Oh, weren't you sweet? You must be only about a year old. Get those chubby knees!'

‘Cheeky!' but he didn't feel like laughing, and a moment later he heard her draw her breath in sharply.

‘You were right, Guy. Isn't that the same man? Only this time he is in uniform!'

She pushed the photograph towards him. Guy picked it up and for the first time looked at the image of the man who was his quarry, knowing with almost complete certainty that it must be him.

The photograph had been taken more in close-up than the first, every detail of the face was clear, though the original black and white had faded to give a brownish tint. Guy looked at it and felt something closing up inside him as though a giant hand had taken hold of his heart and was squeezing it tight.

Von Rheinhardt, if indeed it was he, had certainly been a handsome man. The features beneath the close-cropped fair hair were classic Aryan and the cut of the uniform accentuated broad shoulders and a powerful frame. But the beauty was marred slightly by a scar running down his left cheek and finishing at the corner of his well-shaped mouth, and Guy thought he had never seen eyes colder than these. They stared arrogantly into the camera and, it seemed, beyond it, mocking whoever it was who had clicked the shutter and now, by a process of transference, reaching out across the years to mock Guy.

‘So that's the bastard I want,' he said slowly. ‘I'll check tomorrow with Grandpapa, of course, but I shouldn't think there's much doubt about it.'

‘If it is him it will be a great help to you, won't it?' Lise said. ‘He'll be nearly thirty years older, of course, but some things don't change. He's bound to still have that scar, for a start.'

‘I'd imagine so.' Guy took the photograph and slipped it into the breast pocket of his jacket, then gathered the other papers and photographs together and replaced them in the box file. ‘That's it, then. I'm going to bed now. Are you coming, or are you staying here?'

‘If you're going I may as well do the same,' she said reluctantly.

‘I must, Lise. I'm absolutely bushed. If I don't go to bed I'll fall asleep where I am.'

They turned off all the lights, closed the study door behind them and parted in the passageway, Lise climbing the stone staircase to her parents' apartment on the upper story, Guy letting himself into the room which had once, long ago, been his father's.

But in spite of what he had said it was a long time before he fell asleep. He lay staring into the soft dark, thinking about von Rheinhardt and what he planned to do when he found him. And when at last sleep did come, it was to dream of a handsome Nazi with a scar running down one cheek and a triptych depicting scenes from the life of the Maid of Orleans.

W
HEN HE RETURNED
home from France Guy telephoned Kathryn at her shop.

‘Just to tell you Grandpapa let me have details of all the missing items. I know you don't approve but I wanted to keep you in the picture. And I got something else, too – a photograph of von Rheinhardt.'

Kathryn felt her stomach fall away.

‘Really? You surprise me.'

‘I must say it surprised me, too. I wouldn't have expected Grandpapa to take snapshots of a Nazi, even if he was living in the château. But it's made me more convinced than ever that the man Bill met in the Caribbean is von Rheinhardt.'

Kathryn carried the telephone round her small cluttered desk and sat down in the chair behind it. Her throat felt tight.

‘What makes you say that?'

‘The man in the photograph has a long scar on his left cheek. That's exactly how Bill described the German he knew as Otto Brandt.'

‘I see.' She swallowed hard. ‘Do you know yet if you've got the job out there?'

‘It's not confirmed, but it's looking good. In this business nothing is certain until it's signed and sealed, of course, but I think it's very likely. The fact that Bill has put in a word for me should go in my favour – unless he blotted his copybook while he was there, of course.'

‘When will you know?'

‘I'm expecting a call at any time.'

‘But you won't be going before Christmas?'

‘Oh no, I shouldn't think so. I wouldn't want to miss your roast turkey, anyway.'

He said it lightly in an effort to be conciliatory – he always tried to spend Christmas with his mother and she always spoiled him disgracefully, producing a meal that made his mouth water just thinking about it. ‘Actually I could stay for a couple of days since I won't be seeing you for some time if I get the job,' he added.

‘What about Wendy? Won't she want to spend some time with you if you are going away?'

‘She's going to her parents in Yorkshire. You don't have other plans, do you?'

‘No – I'll look forward to having you.'

‘I'll see you on Christmas Eve, then. Early evening.'

‘Yes. Take care, Guy.'

‘And you.'

She replaced the receiver and sat for a moment with her hand still resting on it.

So – it was still going on, this relentless journey into the past. She had prayed it would stop but it had notstopped. There was still the chance that Guy might not get the job in the Caribbean, of course, and always the chance the man might not be von Rheinhardt. But in her heart she was already quite certain that he would get the job and very afraid the man was von Rheinhardt. If that was the case then she had no choice. She would have to tell him at least something of what had happened in France. She couldn't let him go blundering blindly on, oblivious of what he was about to uncover. But she didn't relish the prospect. In fact, it horrified her and she knew that it would horrify him. Perhaps, she thought, she could still stop him from going on with this. With all her heart she hoped so. But she couldn't help feeling that only the full facts would achieve that objective, and giving him the full facts was not something she was prepared to do.

Kathryn ran a hand distractedly through her hair. The ghosts of the past were very close now, filling the small room she used as an office, leering at her from the filing cabinet and the pile of catalogues, winking in the flame of the paraffin heater that was the only source of heat.

She had not wanted to face them. They reminded her too sharply of things she would rather forget – of a time when she had lived with terror and frustration, disgust and dread. France under the jackboot had not been a pleasant place to be, but that had not been the worst of it, for her at any rate. The worst had been the disillusion that had come from seeing the people she had loved and respected stripped of the niceties of their normal façade. When fear and desperation reigned the veneer of civilisation was thin indeed. She had seen those around her naked, defensive and afraid and she had not liked what she had seen. She had experienced extremes of emotion, learned both the treachery of betrayal and the extraordinary depth and meaning of true and selfless love. When it was all over there had been no going back for her. She had been affected too deeply for anything to be the same ever again. The ingenuous girl who had married Charles de Savigny and come to Charente as his bride had gone for ever, just as those who had died were gone.

Yet now, once again, they were with her in the small office behind her shop just as they had been through all the years. Charles and Christian, Otto von Rheinhardt and the man she had known as Paul Curtis. Most of all, Paul Curtis …

For a long while Kathryn sat quietly, lost in her memories.

‘I think perhaps we should have a talk, Guy,' Kathryn said.

It was Christmas Eve; Guy had arrived, his car stacked with presents, and they had eaten a delicious meal of cold ham and jacket potatoes.

But along with the presents, he had given her the unwelcome news that his job with Air Perpetua in the Caribbean had been confirmed, and Kathryn had realised that she could no longer put off telling him at least part of the true story.

‘About von Rheinhardt?' Guy stretched comfortably in the fireside chair. ‘Can't we forget him for tonight at least? It's obvious it upsets you, and it is Christmas!'

‘No, Guy, we can't forget it, I'm afraid. This will be the last chance we'll have to talk before you go and I think we should take it.'

Guy glanced at her, saw her serious expression, and felt a dart of apprehension.

‘I take it there's something I don't know about this business,' he said.

‘Let's say you're unaware of the whole truth.' She drew her russet suede waistcoat around her as if it could afford her some sort of protection and again he felt the disquiet gnaw at him.

‘Perhaps you'd better tell me then.'

‘That's what I am trying to do – in my own way,' she said quietly. ‘So far you have heard only the best side of what happened. But there was another aspect of it – not everything was quite as you imagined. I want to tell you how things were for all of us so that you will understand and hopefully not be too shocked at the things you might learn. I ask you to be generous in your judgement and not too ready to condemn. It was a harsh world then, harsher than you will ever know. People under stress behave in strange ways, Guy, and not all of them commendable.'

Her words sounded to him like an echo of what his grandfather had said. His unease grew.

‘I don't understand.'

‘I am trying to tell you the way it was – to explain the position we were all in. The Nazis were in control, remember – complete control – and they were utterly ruthless. Even though the château was just the Vichy side of the demarcation line it made no difference really. Oh, compared to the occupied zone it was paradise, I suppose – in the beginning at any rate. The Germans behaved very correctly, trying to impress us with the virtues of the society they wanted to propagate, no doubt. But that didn't last very long. Whenever they came up against opposition they showed their true colours. Although the Gestapo wore civilian clothes they were there, nonetheless, doing their evil work, and because Pétain was hand in glove with the Nazis the Vichy police were working for them too in practice.'

‘Mum, I already know all this,' Guy interjected. ‘There's no need for you to go over it again.'

‘I think there is, Guy. Because I am trying to explain to you why your grandfather took the view he did – that it was better to appease the Germans than to antagonise them.'

She saw the shocked look come into Guy's eyes and hated herself for what she was having to do.

‘What are you saying?' he demanded. ‘You can't be trying to tell me, surely, that my family were collaborators?'

Kathryn sighed. She would have given anything to have spared him this.

‘Yes, darling, I'm afraid that's exactly what I am saying. In the beginning that is what they were.'

‘I don't believe it! My father was decorated for his work with the Resistance, so was my Uncle Christian. As for Grandpapa …'

‘Your grandpapa did what he thought best. And besides, he was a great admirer of Pétain, who had been a hero of the Great War, remember. Pétain collaborated and he made it clear that it was the duty of every right-thinking Frenchman to do the same.'

‘But that is deplorable! Pétain was a traitor. And you are telling me that my own father and grandfather were as bad? I don't want to hear this!'

Kathryn sighed. She had known it would be bad, but this was worse even than she had imagined. How could she hope to explain to Guy what she had found so difficult to understand? How could she expect him to forgive what she had found unforgivable – at the time, at any rate. And how strange that she should be defending them now. At the time she had been as shocked and angry as he was now.

She looked at Guy, and his tight, shocked face reminded her forcefully of Charles. How like his father he was – physically at any rate.

‘Guy – listen to me,' she tried to say. ‘ Please, darling, really listen!'

But for a moment no words would come. It was as if it was Charles sitting opposite her in the flickering firelight, not Guy at all, and it seemed to Kathryn that instead of being at home in the New Forest with the lights of the Christmas tree winking cheerfully across the cosy room and the greeting cards strung on a scarlet ribbon across the fire breast, she was back in the Château de Savigny in the long hard winter of 1941.

‘N
O
,
CHARLES
,'
SHE
said. ‘I won't do it. I absolutely refuse. It's bad enough having to live with the Germans everywhere, strutting about and letting us know in no uncertain terms that we have to do as they say or pay the price. But I don't have to sit down to dinner with one, and I tell you I won't do it.'

They were in the drawing room of their private apartments in the Château de Savigny on a grey afternoon in early November. Winter had come early to Charente. Those workers who had not either been whisked away to do duty for the Germans in the arms factories or gone into hiding to escape that fate had toiled long and hard to harvest the grapes before the first frosts came; now the vines, like the trees that surrounded the château, were bare beneath a heavy grey sky and an icy wind blew up the valley and rattled the doors and window frames of the château.

It was cold in the drawing room in spite of a log fire burning in the grate, but Kathryn knew that the chill making her shiver now had more to do with the cold places inside her than with the temperature of the room. She was young, she was healthy, she was lucky enough to have plenty of warm clothes in her wardrobe, acquired before they, like everything else, became unavailable, but none of these things could prevent the aura of cold that crept over her skin and ran in her veins. It had been there even in the heat of summer so that she had felt as though she were walking in a shadowed lane which the sun never reached, and as the weeks and months passed it had grown steadily worse, isolating her in an alien world.