by Janet Tanner
From a cold place somewhere deep inside her she seemed to hear his voice speaking to her in what seemed now to have been another lifetime.
‘They’ll never take me alive.’
The memory cut through her hysteria and froze her sobs, turning the whole of her body into a solid block of ice through which breath had to be forced and blood could scarcely flow. She could not move, could not think, but thought was unnecessary. Knowing was enough – knowing indisputably, with every fibre of her being, that this could end in one way only.
Maybe at this very moment Paul was dying or already dead. She would never see him again, this man whom she now knew she loved more than life. It was over.
With an instinctive movement she pulled Guy close so that her face was buried in the soft soap-scented cap of his hair. Her little boy – her son – somehow she had to be strong for him and for the unborn child she was carrying within her.
They were all that was left to her now.
Chapter Seventeen
Bristol, 1971
‘SO,’ KATHRYN SAID, looking steadily at Guy, ‘ now you know. In the early part of the war, at least, your father and grandfather were collaborators. They positively encouraged von Rheinhardt and called him their friend. That much, at least, is bound to come out if the man you have found living in the Caribbean is von Rheinhardt and if you bring him to justice.’
She was standing now beside the fireplace, leaning back against the stone ledge that ran from the overmantel to the wall. Whilst she had talked she had prowled around the small comfortably furnished living room as if she could not bear to be still; now only the fact that she fiddled incessantly with the bracelets that hung around her wrist beneath the sleeve of her cream sweater gave any indication of the agitation she had experienced reliving the events that had turned her world upside down more than a quarter of a century ago.
For long minutes Guy was silent, sitting in the fireside chair, one leg crossed over the other, nursing his chin in his hand whilst his elbow rested on his knee. Because his head was bent forward his face was in shadow and Kathryn could not read his expression. But she knew her revelations had been a shock to him – how could they possibly have been anything else, raised, as he had been, on stories of his family’s heroism? And she still had not told him all of it. The part about his father’s treachery she had kept back. She herself had learned of it only after the war was over from a broken Guillaume, who could no longer bear alone the guilty knowledge of what his son had confessed to him. ‘It was my doing Papa,’ Charles had told Guillaume. ‘I didn’t know Kathryn and Guy would be there, of course, but that’s no excuse. I was mad with jealousy and I was responsible for the deaths and torture of men who had only the good of France in mind.’ He had done his best to make up for it, of course. When the Communists had carried out their unsuccessful attempt on the life of Heydrich, the SS officer, and hostages had been taken, Charles had offered himself in place of one of them. It had been a brave gesture but she did not want Guy to know the truth of it – that it had been Charles’ way of ending his life because he could no longer live with the terrible guilt of what he had done. She hoped with all her heart that what she had told Guy would be enough to make him forget his plans to rake up the past. Then there would never be any need for him to find out the truth about his father.
She looked at him, sitting there assimilating all she had said, and felt her heart swell with love for him just as it had swelled that long-ago night when she had looked into the bedroom at the small sleeping figure with a thumb pressed into his mouth. Guy was a grown man now but that did not mean the maternal instinct was any the less strong. She could soil sense the vulnerability beneath the hard masculine exterior, all the more poignant because of it, and she still wanted to protect him. It was different now, of course, and in a strange way she felt even more helpless than she had done all those years ago when all she had wanted was to keep him safe from harm. She had been afraid then of circumstances beyond her control, but one could at least manipulate a child into the position which afforded the best protection. It wasn’t possible to do that when the child was grown. They went their own way – that was as it should be and she had learned to accept it. Throughout his first forays into the adult world, his first motorcycle, the first times away from home, the first broken heart, she had trained herself to stand back on the sidelines. She had offered advice but never tried to enforce her will, for she felt her role now was reduced to a loving, supportive one, counselling, standing back, and if necessary comforting and being there to pickup the pieces. But it didn’t make it any the easier, didn’t mean that her heart did not bleed for him or that she felt for him any the less acutely. One still wanted everything to be right for one’s children, no matter how old they might be. It would be the same, she suspected, if she lived to be a hundred.
Eventually Guy looked up at her, still massaging his jaw with long fingers the exact same shape Charles’ had been.
‘So – early in the war they collaborated,’ he said, ‘ It’s nothing to be proud of, I agree, but I don’t see it’s such a big problem as you are making it out to be. They thought it was for the best. They were mistaken, of course, but knowing what Savigny means to them I can almost understand it. And it wasn’t so long after that that my father died a hero’s death. When the chips were down, when the hostages were taken and shot as a reprisal for the attempt on Heydrich’s life, my father offered himself in place of one of them. You can’t get braver than that.’
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘You can’t.’
‘So why should I or anyone else be ashamed of what went before? It’s not very nice, I admit, to think of them entertaining Nazis in the family home but I’d already guessed that much from the photographs I found in Grandpapa’s box, and quite honestly I think my rather more than made up for that by giving his life in exchange for the life of one of the hostages.’
Kathryn ran a hand through her hair, the bangles jangling cold against her hot face. It was as she had feared, Guy wasn’t convinced by half a story. Unless she told him the rest he would refuse to see it any differently. And telling him the rest was not something she could bring herself to do, though she was very much afraid that it would all come out if von Rheinhardt was brought to trial.
‘Uncle Christian was a hero, too,’ Guy went on. ‘He went on working for the Resistance until he was captured and executed. No, what has really shocked me is that you betrayed my father with the British agent – Paul Curtis, or whatever his real name was. How could you do it, Mum? I’d never have believed it of you.’
His eyes met Kathryn’s in a cold blue stare and she experienced a wash of horror. He wasn’t seeing things from her point of view at all but from his father’s. She should have known, of course, that he would. His father had been a hero-figure to him for too long, canonised almost by his heroic death, and she had encouraged that, feeling that Guy needed it and driven also, perhaps, by a guilt she had been unwilling to acknowledge. She had loved Paul so much that it had never seemed sordid or wrong to her – on the surface anyway. But that wasn’t the way it looked to Guy. To him it was simply a betrayal of the father he idolised. And perhaps, deep down, she felt it too – that she had been guilty of a disloyalty too deep to contemplate and had, in her own way, been as responsible for what had happened as Charles had been.
‘You never saw him again, I take it?’ he said. His voice was cold; she did not think she could ever recollect having heard him use this tone with her before.
‘I never saw him again,’ she agreed. ‘He died the night we escaped to England.’ She hesitated. ‘You should thank him for that, at least, Guy. If he had run with the others he would have stood a chance. As it was he stayed by the plane, shooting at the Germans to keep them back until we were able to take off.’
‘We shouldn’t have been there at all,’ Guy said harshly. ‘We shouldn’t have deserted Papa. Our place was with him, at the château.’
‘You were a little boy, Guy. I wa
s afraid for your safety. And Celestine was desperate. The Nazis might have taken her if she had stayed. They would certainly have taken her baby. Your cousin Lise is half Jewish – the Nazis would have taken them away to the death camps when they realised it.’
‘And your baby?’ Guy asked in the same cold, hard voice. ‘What happened to that? Do I have another brother or sister somewhere I know nothing about?’
‘Of course not!’ Kathryn flared. ‘I lost my baby that night.’
She closed her eyes momentarily, reliving it. She had been so dazed with shock she had not even really been aware of the flak as they passed over the French coast or the desperate ducking and weaving and low flying the pilot had engaged in to avoid it, much less the first warm trickle of blood that had heralded a miscarriage. Celestine had told her afterwards of the hazards of that flight; she had crouched in the Lysander holding Guy tightly in her arms, thinking that the dull ache in the pit of her stomach was the beginnings of grief and not noticing the hot wetness between her legs until she was soaked with it. They had taken her to hospital in Tangmere when the Lysander landed and they found the floor awash with blood, but it was too late. She had lost the baby and scarcely even cried for it. All her tears were for Paul and for a future in which she would never see him again. It was only much later that she started to grieve for the little life snuffed out before it had begun, but even then she had not really known what to think about it. If she could have been sure it was Paul’s child she would have welcomed it, cherished it as a part of him left to her. But she was not sure and she did not think she could have borne to live with a constant reminder of the night Charles had raped her.
‘Well that’s something, I suppose.’ Guy stood up. ‘I think I need a drink. Can I help myself?’
‘Of course you can. This is your home!’ she said defensively.
He glanced at her. Is it? that look seemed to say. I’m not sure of anything any more. But he said nothing, simply crossed to the sideboard and took out the bottle, pouring himself a generous measure and tossing it back.
‘You can get me one too,’ she said.
He poured some whisky into a glass and passed it to her. She sipped it, neat, feeling the liquor burn her throat and stomach and spread a little warmth through her veins.
He was refilling his own glass.
‘Don’t have too much, Guy. Remember you have to drive.’
He did not answer, carrying the glass over to the window and looking out at the winter-bare garden.
‘What are you going to do?’ she asked after a moment.
‘What am I going to do?’ He repeated it almost reflectively. ‘ I’m still going to the Caribbean, of course. I still want the man who murdered my father and I still want the family heirlooms he stole back where they belong. He took over the château for his headquarters soon after all this happened, I suppose.’
‘Yes. But you already knew that. He ordered the family to move into the gîte where the attempt was made on Heydrich’s life and moved his own staff into the château. He’d always coveted it – you could see it in his eyes – and I think it was a double pleasure for him, knowing the de Savignys were having to live in the house that had seen the attack that cost your father his life. Heydrich, understandably, didn’t want to use it any more and it satisfied von Rheinhardt to know that every time they looked at the bullet holes in the walls they would be reminded of the folly of trying to kill a Nazi general.’
‘The cruel bastard.’ Guy set his glass down on the table with a thud. ‘If anything, I want him more than ever.’
‘What he did was unforgivable,’ Kathryn said, ‘ But I still wish you’d let the past lie.’
‘I’m sure you do.’ Guy’s voice was hard, full of hidden meaning. She looked at him questioning and he went on: ‘Are you sure you’ve been honest with me, Mum? Are you sure the reason you don’t want any of this to come out isn’t because you don’t want anyone to know about your indiscretion?’
‘Guy!’ She was shocked now. ‘How could you think such a thing?’
‘I’m sorry, but that’s the way it looks to me. In any case, nothing you’ve told me changes the way I feel. I hate the Nazis and I hate von Rheinhardt in particular. I’d bring every last one of them to justice if I could. I can’t do that but I can go after this one.’
‘I hate them too, Guy,’ she said. ‘I have more reason for hating them than you know.’
His eyes narrowed.
‘What do you mean?’
She shook her head. It was something else she had decided a long while ago never to tell him – or anyone. Like so much else it was her closely guarded secret. She had her reasons and though those reasons had rebounded on her now it made no difference.
‘I just think that sometimes it is best to leave the past where it belongs,’ she said lamely.
‘That is where we shall have to agree to differ,’ Guy said. ‘Look, Mum, I suggest we forget all about this now and try to enjoy the rest of the holiday. It’s Christmas Day, for goodness’ sake.’
‘Is it?’ Kathryn glanced at the clock, the hands of which now showed ten past midnight. Christmas Day had arrived whilst they were talking and she had not even noticed it!
She opened her arms to him pleadingly.
‘Happy Christmas, darling.’
‘Happy Christmas.’
But there was something less than his usual warmth in his embrace and Kathryn’s heart sank. She had tried her best and failed. Now there was a barrier between them which might never be broken down.
I have lost him, Kathryn thought wretchedly. I have lost him as surely as I lost Paul, and to no avail.
Suddenly she wanted to weep.
Guy left on Boxing Day afternoon. The holiday had been a less than comfortable one and now his thoughts raced as he drove home towards Bristol.
He had known, of course, that things were not right between his mother and his French family but, fool that he was, he had never guessed the real reason. No wonder she didn’t ever want to talk about the war, no wonder she had tried to stop him exhuming the past.
He should have guessed, of course. The small clues had been there, half buried in his childhood memories, impressions, perhaps, more than clear pictures, but none the less telling now that he came to think about them.
Was she being entirely truthful, he wondered, when she said she had never seen the man he had known as Monsieur Paul after the night they had flown out of France? It seemed reasonable to suppose that he had indeed been killed if things had happened the way she had told it. And yet …
She had been absent for a long time during his early childhood, he remembered. For several years he had lived with his English grandparents whilst she was, supposedly, working for the Ministry of Defence in the wilds of Scotland. Now he found himself doubting even that. If she could have concealed her affair from him all these years could she also have concealed something else? He had the unmistakable feeling that there was something she was not telling him. Could it be that Paul had actually escaped too and she had … gone off with him? As recently as two days ago he would never have believed such a thing of his mother, now he was no longer sure of anything. She had become an enigma to him and he realised that in spite of having lived with her for so many years he really did not know her at all.
And there was something else, too, tugging at the edges of his memory – something that was, for the moment, eluding him.
Still, he wasn’t going to worry about that now. Better to give his full attention to trying to find out once and for all if the German on the Caribbean island was, in fact, von Rheinhardt, and if it was, to bring him to justice and recover his family’s stolen treasures.
He owed it to his father’s memory. Kathryn might have been unfaithful to Charles; Guy at least was going to ensure that he did not let him down.
He pressed his foot down hard on the accelerator again and headed for Bristol
PART TWO
Retribution
Chapter
Eighteen
New York, 1971
THE LETTER BEARING the exotic Caribbean island stamp was the first one Lilli Brandt noticed when she picked up her mail, and immediately she experienced a pang of homesickness.
She had been in New York for almost four years now, but her longing for the island paradise where she had been born and raised was as sharp as ever, particularly on days like this one when the streets of Manhattan were cold and windswept and the thick blanket of grey cloud that hid the tops of the skyscrapers threatened snow. Simply holding the envelope in her hands conjured up a vision of palm-fringed beaches and sea as blue as sapphires, the balmy warmth of the sun on bare skin and the scent of nutmeg and frangipani, and made her ache with longing. That her departure for New York had been in a haze of emotional pain made no difference, nor the fact that as she had looked down through the window of the little twin-engined plane at the speck of land in that sapphire-blue sea growing smaller and smaller she had promised herself that she would never go back. If anything it made it worse, for the pain was superimposed on memories of a childhood idyll and beneath it the nostaligia for those lost years of innocence ached and throbbed all the more poignantly.
Madrepora, my island paradise, thought Lilli, shivering in the biting cold of a New York winter. Madrepora, where the shutters at the window are to keep out the blazing sun, not the icy wind. Madrepora, where I lay on the beach with the gentle surf breaking over my sun-warmed limbs, where I snorkeled in water so clear I could see right down to the stony coral that gave the island its name. Madrepora in the days when my father was my hero, indestructible, and master of all he surveyed, and my mother was a beautiful memory, a hybrid of saint and movie star, a beautiful dark-skinned princess with scarlet lips and nails, enveloped in a haunting perfume as exotic as the islands, who had died, as all the best heroines should, before the years could fade her beauty and humble her with the ordinariness of old age. Madrepora in those blissful days before my father married Ingrid, the days when it seemed childhood would never end. Before I was forced, so brutally fast, to grow up. Before Jorge. Yes, most of all, before Jorge.
