The Milliner's Secret (21 page)

A week into December, he asked her to marry him.

She said no. Twice in her life, she’d thrown herself into uncharted love. Twice-deserted and pregnant, she was wiser. And she didn’t love him. ‘And you, in your middle thirties, a steady wage-earner . . . there’s a reason no woman’s caught you yet. What’s in it for you?’

‘I have bedded many, many women, but never until now have I wanted to marry one. I like your spirit and I want your body.’

‘With another man’s child inside it?’ She’d intended to shock him. She failed.

‘I love children.’

Still, she held back. ‘I’m not a charity case.’

‘Far from it. But your child is.’ He knew how to aim his attacks. ‘Being a bastard is a bad deal. If you don’t believe me, wait till you go into hospital. See how the nurses treat you, and the officials at the
mairie
when you register the child’s birth and can’t put a father’s name to the form. Your little one will come home from school every day, crying. And just think, if you marry me—’

‘I get you every night!’ Could she live with his relentless vigour? She had not yet slept with him. He didn’t mind her belly, but
she
was sensitive about it. He would be a red-blooded lover and she needed to be strong.

‘I was going to say, if you marry me, it will really annoy Henriette. She cannot bear me liking other women. She is jealous when a fly lands on her food. It’s her nature and I smell the rivalry between you. You like to win.’ And the final persuasion: ‘I like you, Coralie, and respect you. I am willing to try to be a good husband. I think you need a man to care for you.’

The word ‘care’ broke her and she began to cry. He put his arms round her and it felt good to be held. They married a week before Christmas.

On her wedding day, she presented her false documents at the town hall and saw the presiding official accept them without a blink. Even the page of mad scrawl from Henriette, railing at her for having the temerity to marry
her
brother and palm off a bastard on ‘one of the oldest families in France’ – even that failed to dent her new-found security.

On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, 1937, Coralie was lighting candles in the shop window, dreaming up ideas for the spring collection, when pain tore through her, followed by a gush of liquid down her legs.

An American client in the fitting room heard her howl of dismay. As the salon girls fluttered about helplessly, the American came and helped Coralie to her feet. Supporting her until the pain passed, she said, ‘Honey, you’re going to be pulling Christmas crackers in hospital. You, Mademoiselle,’ she beckoned a
vendeuse
, ‘go holler at my chauffeur, have him drive right up on the pavement. Someone get towels and somebody else fetch the husband. This lady is in labour.’

At seventeen minutes past midnight on Christmas Day, Coralie’s daughter was born, weighing a shave over five pounds. They named her Noëlle Una. Noëlle because the midwife suggested it, Una in honour of Madame Una Kilpin, whose Rolls-Royce had ferried Coralie through the Paris traffic, and who later offered to stand as godmother.

Coralie took December and the whole of January 1938 off work. On the first of February, however, she left baby Noëlle with a nanny and took a taxi through the chilling rain to rue Royale.

It was a wrench, leaving her newborn, but Coralie knew that, professionally, she was riding a wave. At Ramon’s strong suggestion, Henriette had reluctantly made Coralie
directrice
and head designer, effectively giving her full creative control of the business. Then, still unwell and feeling ill-used by the world, Henriette had left for Italy. Her doctor had recommended the warmer climate for her lungs and she’d taken one of her nurses with her. Rumours soon reached Paris of a new relationship. Everyone agreed: Henriette would not be back for a while.

As 1938 unfolded, and profits rolled in, Coralie thanked Providence for her job. For all his promises, his passion, Ramon was not a good provider. His desire for her had not waned. He was an ardent, if sometimes thoughtless, lover. But his salary somehow always melted away before rent day. He had stopped going out to nightclubs so often, but was still addicted to dark basements. Only now it was to attend meetings of left-wing political groups. Coralie knew he was personally funding two or three, and supporting political refugees too. His only useful contribution to their household was coal, which he ‘liberated’ from the freight-marshalling yard alongside his office.

‘Be fair, Coralie,’ he would say, when she blasted him yet again for failing to pay her any housekeeping. ‘I gave you the best gift. My name. You are Madame Cazaubon.’

True. Thanks to her marriage, she was now a fully fledged French citizen. The secret English part of her slept.

PART TWO

CHAPTER 10

GERMANY, 6 NOVEMBER 1938

He’d stood motionless for so long that his feet seemed to belong to some far-off frozen continent. The leather coat protecting him from the icy rain was beginning to let the moisture through. His ears felt raw, but there was no point putting his hat back on because that was dripping wet too.

Hiltrud stood like a fur-clad pillar, seemingly untouched by the cold. He started to say something, then gave up. It was implicit that whoever broke silence at the graveside was the one who cared least. The one guilty of recovering from intolerable bereavement. It was invariably him.

Rain made the letters on the headstone shine darkly. ‘A beloved son, Waldo Dietrich von Elbing, 16 September 1921 to 28 July 1937’. Above Waldo’s name, the words ‘
Blut und Ehre
’; ‘Blood and Honour’. Above that, a tilted swastika. Hiltrud and her father had instructed the stonemason to make the swastika larger than the Christian cross at the base. It was Hiltrud who insisted they come out to this graveyard on the banks of the river Havel every Sunday, but what did she see here? That trumpeting stone or the pitiful mound under which lay their son?

Like many other youths of his age, Waldo had been sent to do his
Landjahr
, his year of service, learning to farm. Sent in spite of an inherited heart condition that resulted in defective oxygenation of the blood. Hiltrud and her father had hidden it from his supervisors because, in perfectionist Germany, inborn weakness was a cause of shame.

My shame
, Dietrich railed at himself, though he hadn’t known just how far Waldo’s health had deteriorated, that he was collapsing after long stints of outdoor work. Or that the other boys were mocking him, calling him ‘girl’ because he was so pale. Had Waldo said any of this in his letters, Dietrich would have stepped in. Instead, he’d persuaded himself that his son would emerge fitter and stronger from his experiences. He, meanwhile, had thrown himself into his love affair, into his Paris adventure.

His poor, beautiful boy. Taking advantage of Dietrich’s absence, Hiltrud and her father had arranged for Waldo to move on from farm work. To military camp, to learn artillery skills. Ultimately to become a member of an anti-aircraft battery. They’d been determined to make a soldier of the boy. The moment he’d learned their plans, Dietrich had left Paris for Hohen Neuendorf. It was unthinkable – a military camp, where boys were made to run miles every day with weighted backpacks? Where they loaded and fired guns, dragging them across rugged terrain while a
Gefreiter
screamed orders and smoke-bombs were thrown to mimic real warfare? For strong, war-minded boys, no doubt it was the best kind of life. For Waldo . . .

Arriving back in Germany, Dietrich had discovered that his son had already started his military training. During a tense family summit, Hiltrud had begged him not to rock the boat. Her father had called in so many favours to gain this cherished posting, it would be an insult if Waldo were recalled. Hiltrud’s father had thrown his weight behind his daughter, declaring he would not stand by and watch his grandson denied the opportunity to grow manly.

At artillery camp the bullying had worsened and Waldo’s letters to Dietrich that summer had echoed his grandfather’s phrase: ‘If I show them I am a man, they will stop.’

They hadn’t. Waldo had begun to fall behind in his studies and practical training, so his instructors had added their own threats. He’d been in Hell, and he’d finally written to Dietrich, confessing to daily black-outs. ‘
Mein lieber Vater
, I cannot go on. Please fetch me away.”

That letter had not reached Dietrich until it was too late.

On this occasion, it was Hiltrud who broke the silence. ‘We’d better go. I promised Father an early lunch. He has so many duties these days.’

‘Come, then.’ Dietrich offered his arm, but Hiltrud walked ahead of him towards the gates and his car. As they drove from the Lutheran cemetery, the swoosh of tyres on wet roads masked their silence. Only as they swept through the fringes of Hohen Neuendorf did Hiltrud speak again.

‘You will stay and dine with us? My father has a birthday gift for you.’

He’d planned to drive back to Berlin and fill his day with paperwork. He and Hiltrud had been living fully apart for more than a year, a brief reconciliation after Waldo’s death having proved unsustainable. He visited the family home only a couple of times a month now, to see his daughter. As for his birthday, what was a fortieth birthday when your son hadn’t reached beyond his fifteenth? ‘No presents, Hiltrud. Anyway, my actual birthday is two days off.’

‘I know that. But you’ll be with your mother that day.’

He wasn’t planning that either. He was going to Munich. To the beer hall where the Führer was to make his traditional annual speech.

‘So, will you take lunch with us?’

‘All right.’

His father-in-law’s gift was a framed photograph of himself at the wheel of his new Mercedes 540K and a sugarplum of news for which Dietrich had to wait. Lunch was tense, everybody so civilised, their knives and forks squeaking. Glancing at his daughter, Dietrich wondered if these Sunday rituals were setting Claudia up for a lifetime of chronic indigestion.

When, at last, the coffee pot was brought in, Hiltrud excused herself to make an urgent telephone call. Before she left, she added fresh logs to the fire in the grate.