“It is all a matter of perspective, of course,” said Grandmère. “Some would say that the occupiers get what they deserve. That these scars you speak of—”
“I beg your pardon,” Daisy broke in. “Do you mean to say that you knew my mother? That you occupied her château?”
“Yes, it’s true.”
“And you said nothing to me of this before?”
“I told you I had heard of her. But it took me a little by surprise, you see, when your husband announced this connection at the dinner party. And I did not wish to discompose you in public with my importunate questions.”
“How kind of you.”
“But I have been reflecting, you see, over these past weeks. I have been thinking about those months at the château, and the time that came earlier, when I was in Paris before the war, a time I count among the happiest days of my life—”
“Surely not,” said Grandmère. “Surely you have since married and had a family.”
He stared at her. “In fact, I have not.”
“I am sorry to hear that. My daughter, as you know, was fortunate to escape the horror of German occupation and the terrible fire that destroyed her ancestral home, to make her way to Paris, God be praised, and to marry a good French husband and bear his child, though poor Monsieur d’Aubigny was killed soon after. But at least those two had some joy together, fleeting though it was. She deserved it, after all she had endured at the hands of the Germans.”
“I have no doubt of that. And when the product of this union is a woman so charming as Madame Villon, who can begrudge them their happiness?” said Von Sternburg.
“Who, indeed.” Grandmère rose from the table. “Children! If you have finished your sandwiches, we shall now play at cards.”
But Olivier did not want to play some stupid cards. He was hot and fretful and restless and wanted to go back to the park. Max von Sternburg bent on one knee before him.
“I suppose you want to go on the carousel, young man,” he said. “Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But a ride on the carousel costs two francs, doesn’t it? Have you got two francs?”
“No, sir.”
“Hmm.” Von Sternburg peered at Olivier’s right ear, and then his left. “That’s strange,” he said.
“What’s strange, sir?”
Von Sternburg reached behind Olivier’s ear and drew out a coin. “It seems you’ve been hiding something from us, eh?”
Olivier squealed and clapped his hand over his ear. Madeleine ran over and clamored, “Check my ear, Herr von Sternburg!”
“Hmm. I don’t know.” He looked carefully at her right ear. “No, I’m sorry, there’s nothing there. It’s a very pretty ear, of course, but I’m afraid it doesn’t . . . now, wait a moment . . . hold very still . . .”
Olivier jumped up and down. Madeleine tried very hard not to move, but her mouth twitched and twitched. Von Sternburg took a piece of her brown hair in his fingers and tucked it gently behind the curve of her ear, the better to peer inside.
“Here we are!” he said triumphantly, and out came a coin from Madeleine’s ear. He presented it before her, and she stared at him in astonishment.
“For me?” she breathed.
“Of course it’s yours. Did it not come from your own ear?” He turned back to Olivier and handed him the first coin. “As for you, young fellow. You will now take better care of this valuable object, won’t you? Not go leaving it carelessly inside your ear again?”
Olivier was giggling so hard, he could hardly speak. “Yes, sir!”
“Very good.” Von Sternburg glanced at Daisy and lifted an eyebrow. She found herself nodding. He turned back to the children and lifted the scattered deck of cards from the sofa table, which he gathered in a stack between his long, elegant fingers. The children watched, mesmerized, as he spread them out in a fan. “Now, let’s see. These playing cards of yours. A very interesting pack. These are pictures of France’s great heroes, aren’t they? That’s Henri Quatre, and there’s . . . er, Robespierre. And who’s this, Mademoiselle Madeleine?”
“Joan of Arc!” she exclaimed.
“Very good. Now, mademoiselle. I should very much like you to do me the favor of selecting a card from this stack. Yes, yes. Quite at random . . .”
Daisy folded her arms and turned to Grandmère. She spoke in a voice that was soft enough to go unheard, but not so soft as to draw suspicion. “Can you keep them with you tonight?”
“Of course. Why?”
“You’ll find out tomorrow, I hope.” She watched Madeleine—her grave, reserved Madeleine!—pluck a card eagerly from the array. Her face was round and soft with excitement. Von Sternburg’s eyes were closed, as if he were concentrating very hard, or else drawing inspiration from the ether. In the same quiet voice, Daisy said, “I have a book for you in my handbag.”
“That’s wonderful. From that lovely bookshop?”
“Yes, the one on rue Volney.”
“Splendid. I’ve been needing a good book lately.”
Both children squealed and turned to each other, jiggling up and down. Apparently Von Sternburg had guessed Madeleine’s card correctly. Daisy uncrossed her arms and padded to the commode near the door, where she had dropped her handbag upon entering the suite. She rummaged inside. Behind her, Von Sternburg was explaining to Madeleine, with faultless logic, how he had known she picked the seven of hearts. Daisy’s brain was still a little numb with the knowledge that this man, this German officer, had known her mother. Had briefly occupied the Château de Courcelles with her, during the war. All those stories about her mother’s heroism—had he witnessed them firsthand? The abuse she had suffered? The pigeons, the chapel, the great fire? The terrible Courcelles fire that had destroyed her ancestral home—this was what had caused that terrible scar on his face? She had a thousand questions, and she couldn’t think of a single one to ask him.
She found the book and slid it free from the handbag, and she saw that her hands were shaking. With anger? Why hadn’t he told her, why hadn’t he said something? My God. He had known her mother; he had seen her daily, probably, when Daisy hadn’t known her mother at all. She couldn’t remember the curve of her mother’s cheek, or the sound of her voice, all those precious things a daughter craves from a mother, but this damned German could. Von Sternburg could remember them. He had no right, she thought. No right to her mother, when Daisy herself had nothing of her, not a single memory. The book turned blurry. Daisy blinked her eyes and returned to Grandmère.
“Here.” She thrust the volume into Grandmère’s hands. “It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
Grandmère turned it over. The leather binding gleamed in the hot sunlight that spilled through the nearby window. “Thank you. One of my favorites.”
“Ah, The Scarlet Pimpernel,” said Von Sternburg.
Daisy started. He had moved like a ghost, this tall, sturdy German, rising from the rug and joining them without a sound, while the children remained near the sofa and exclaimed over the cards, burrowing through the deck to discover his secret. Now he ran his finger over the letters on the ancient binding in Grandmère’s hands.
“English books are so rare in this city,” he said.
“It’s nice to read in my native language, from time to time,” said Grandmère.
“Yes, of course. You were born in America, I remember. May I?” He didn’t stop for permission, but rather drew the book from Grandmère’s fingers and settled the spine in his palm while his other hand thumbed through the pages. “I read this when I was a boy. My tutor wanted me to improve my English, you see, and it had just been published to great sensation. I must have fallen in love with Marguerite Blakeney a thousand times over.”
Daisy glanced at Grandmère, who made an almost imperceptible shake of her head.
“Ah yes,” said Von Sternburg. “Here it is. ‘Pride had given way at last, obstinacy was gone, the will was powerless. He was but a man madly, blindly, p
assionately in love; and as soon as her light footstep had died away within the house, he knelt down upon the terrace steps, and in the very madness of his love, he kissed one by one the places where her small foot had trodden, and the stone balustrade there, where her tiny hand had rested last.’” He looked at Daisy. “How must it affect a man, do you think, to love a woman so deeply?”
“I can’t imagine,” Daisy said.
“Uncomfortable, I should think,” said Grandmère. “What if it had rained, and the terrace steps were wet?”
Von Sternburg shut the book and handed it back to Grandmère. “You are not a romantic, I see. But then, you never were. All those fellows in your salon, they were resolutely Modernist. This is why I learned not to open my mouth there.”
“Very wise.”
He looked back down at the book tucked between Grandmère’s hands. “Marguerite,” he said. “That’s your given name, isn’t it, Madame Villon?”
“You have an excellent memory, lieutenant colonel.”
“Not so excellent as that. It’s the name itself that has a particular meaning for me.” He smiled at Daisy. “As I said, I must have fallen in love with her a thousand times, when I was young.”
Daisy left an hour later, having kissed both children several times in the fullness of her guilt, in her anxiety and excitement for what was to come, and told them to behave themselves for their great-grandmother. When she closed the door at last and started down the corridor to the stairway, she thought her heart might punch through the wall of her chest.
At the bottom of the stairway, a man rose from the bench. Von Sternburg, of course, waiting for her in his immaculate double-breasted suit, his solemn, scarred face. Bernard, standing at his post near the door, looked at them both and raised his eyebrows to Daisy. Did she require some assistance, perhaps? Daisy shook her head.
“Lying in wait for me, I see,” she said to the German.
“I beg your pardon, madame. There was something I wished to communicate with you, and I found no opportunity upstairs. Shall we walk out together?”
Daisy didn’t reply, only started walking across the lobby, heels clicking against the marble. Von Sternburg kept pace beside her. He said nothing until they had stepped through the doorway and onto the pavement outside. Rue Cambon lay hot and quiet on either side of them.
“I only want to say—as a well-wisher—that I admire your spirit very much,” he said. “I admire, in particular, your selfless work at this bookstore of yours. Delivering books to those in need of them.”
Daisy’s mind went numb. She kept walking, however. Feet now clicking against the pavement, the same precise rhythm as before. “How on earth did you know I work at the bookstore, lieutenant colonel?”
“You may call me Max, if you like.”
She said nothing.
He continued, “I confess, since I learned of your connection to a person—to a place that keeps its own particular shrine in my memory, I have made it my business to—how shall I say this?—to assure myself of your continued welfare.”
“You’ve been spying on me, you mean.”
“That is a terrible word.”
“Well, you have. And what have you discovered, hmm? Do you suspect some nefarious motive? Coded messages hidden in these books I deliver to the infirm and the elderly, plotting the destruction of the Reich? Do you mean to report me to the Gestapo?” She spoke recklessly. Without noticing, she increased her pace, while Von Sternburg loped along persistently beside her.
“You remind me so much of your mother,” he said.
Daisy stopped and wheeled to face him. “I’m not a bit like my mother. Anyway, I have a father. Nobody ever thinks of him, but he’s there. He was kind and good, and he loved my mother. He created me with her, and then he marched off to Verdun to be killed by some German. He’s part of me, too, and I expect I’m a great deal more like him than her. The so-heroic Demoiselle de Courcelles.”
Von Sternburg simply stared at her, and it occurred to Daisy that his blue eyes had grown glossy, that his expression had become one of immense longing. He wore an ordinary trilby hat with this civilian costume of his, and it cast an arc of shadow on his face. Suddenly he seemed human, diminished. Even a little old.
“Of course, I wouldn’t really know, either way,” she heard herself say, sounding for an instant like the old Daisy instead of this new, impudent one, who felt unaccountably free to spar with German officers. With this German officer. “They’re both dead.”
“I am so sorry,” he said hoarsely.
“So am I. Have you anything else to say to me? Is it now forbidden to bring the comfort of literature to the destitute of Paris? Can I expect the police to knock on my door in the middle of the night and raid my children’s rooms?”
“Of course not. I only mean to tell you this. If you have need of a friend at any time, for any reason, I hope you will consider me that friend.” He took a small rectangular card from his pocket and pressed it into her hand. “I live at the Hôtel Meurice, on rue de Rivoli. The number is here.”
Before she could reply, he walked away, in the opposite direction. The heat shimmered around him. Daisy watched him go, until his trilby hat and his broad shoulders simply disappeared around the corner, leaving her alone and unsettled, yearning for something she couldn’t name.
Chapter Nineteen
Babs
Paris, France
April 1964
I sat with Drew at a table outside a small café on rue de Richelieu feeling rather alone and unsettled, yearning for a cup of strong tea that seemed strangely absent from the café’s menu. I felt very out of place surrounded by beautiful, chic people at neighboring tables, most smoking and chattering loudly in French while they sipped coffee or wine. Even Drew, with his large Americanness, seemed to fit in. He wore sunglasses, and his long legs were stretched out under the table, his ankles crossed, making him look quite bohemian. Except for the broad shoulders and tan, of course.
When we returned from Picardy the day before, Drew had rushed off to his office, so we hadn’t had the chance to go over everything we’d learned at the ruins of the château. Or the reason why I still felt his hand where it had clasped mine as we’d descended the hill. I found myself stroking my hand with the other and immediately sat on them. It had been a successful strategy to stop biting my nails when I was a child, after all.
The hand stroking had started the night before when I’d gone to Margot Lemouron’s room to read to her from Les Misérables, but she’d fallen asleep after just a few pages. I’d stayed with her for a long while, to see if she might awaken and need something, and as I sat I’d replayed the day in my head, still feeling Drew’s hand on mine.
“Are you all right?” Drew asked, his dark glasses masking his eyes so I couldn’t tell if it was real concern or if he might be laughing at me.
Realizing that I must look like a schoolgirl waiting outside the headmistress’s office, I immediately returned my hands to my lap. “Quite. I’m just a bit eager to see what you’ve turned up. You weren’t really clear in your message.”
He took a sip of his coffee, the tiny cup looking Lilliputian in his hand. “I’m not sure yet, myself. Someone from the office should be here shortly to bring the papers I requested. It’s a nice day so I figured we’d mix a little business with pleasure.”
He grinned at me, as if the word pleasure held all sorts of meanings. Which it did, of course, but surely not in the way I was thinking.
I looked down at my coffee cooling in its cup, the cream beginning to stick to the sides. I took a brief sip, trying not to make a face. The war years had taught me not to waste anything, which meant if I ordered a coffee, I would drink it.
A waiter approached our table with a teapot, creamer, and a clean cup and saucer. He set it before me and nodded before turning away. I looked at it with surprise.
“I asked for them to make you tea. I’m not sure what kind it is, but at least it’s not coffee, right?” Drew’s
boyish grin made me want to kiss him, right there in the middle of a Parisian sidewalk. “I made sure they included cream since I know you like that with your tea.”
“Thank you,” I said, oddly teary. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had considered what I wanted.
I focused on making my tea, recalling something he’d said the day before after I’d told him that I hadn’t exposed my bare skin to him on purpose. But I wouldn’t have minded. I blushed at the memory.
With the fortifying tea bolstering my courage, I looked up at him. “Drew, yesterday when you said that . . .”
“Andrew, there you are!” An extremely long and leggy woman approached us from the sidewalk. She wore an elegant suit of cream camel hair, her long, blond hair pulled back in a high silky ponytail. I wanted to shrug out of the lumpy cardigan I’d thrown over my new yellow sleeveless dress with the low neckline so I wouldn’t feel like this exquisite creature’s mother.
Drew stood and they kissed cheeks before Drew turned to me for introductions. “Barbara Langford, this is Gigi Mercier. She’s the law firm librarian here at our Paris office—she’s an absolute genius at organization and management, and just about everything else.” He winked at Gigi and she smiled back.
I took a long sip from my cup, if only to avoid looking at her.
“But Andrew is the real legend at our office,” Gigi protested. “He’s just too modest.”
They regarded each other for a moment of mutual admiration while I stared stupidly. Finally I held out my hand. “Barbara Langford. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Her grip was surprisingly strong, her face friendly. “So nice to meet you. We’ve been wondering who Andrew has been meeting. He’s been gone from the office so much since he’s arrived, we knew a woman must be involved. Nothing wrong with a little afternoon assignation, oui, Andrew?”
All the Ways We Said Goodbye Page 27
