The Betrayal

by Kate Furnivall

  A triple strand of pearls accentuated her long creamy throat. There was no mark on it. No bone or tendon severed by the flash of a guillotine blade. A pain, short and sharp in Romy’s own neck, made her lick her lips. In need of a drink. Yet even now she admired her twin sister’s cool elegance. The sweep of her long blonde hair, like a swirl of sunlight, in a knot at the back of her head that looked so casual but had probably taken hours to perfect. And the way she carried her chin just a little higher than most people, daring the world to cross her.

  Florence’s huge blue eyes narrowed in an unconscious sign of displeasure as she listened to the maid and her gaze shot to the drawing-room door. At the sight of Romy standing there, she froze. No more than half a heartbeat. But Romy saw it. Then Florence hurried over with a wide-open smile and an outstretched arm.

  ‘Romaine, I’m so pleased you’re here at last.’ She brushed her sister’s cheeks with her own. She smelled expensive. ‘Come,’ Florence said, lowering her voice. ‘Let’s not disturb the children’s show.’

  She started to steer Romy from the room but a small head with golden ringlets whipped round and an excited young voice cried, ‘Tante Romy!’

  Feet scampered across the room and suddenly two small arms fixed around Romy. Instantly she scooped up her niece and whisked her out into the hall, away from watching eyes, where she kissed the rosy, flawless cheek. She felt the usual ache in her throat, as familiar and as destructive as the scent of roses in this apartment.

  ‘Bon anniversaire, little one. Are you having a happy birthday?’

  ‘Yes. Maman gave me a doll. It’s a princess in a shiny gown with gold . . .’

  Romy let the eager words wrap around her. The excitement of the six-year-old in her arms was infectious. Cornflower-blue eyes bright with laughter, breath as sweet as clover.

  ‘We expected you earlier, Romaine,’ Florence said.

  ‘I’m sorry. Bad weather messed up my flight.’ She eased the child to the floor. ‘But I’ve brought you something, Chloé.’ From her satchel she drew a rectangular box wrapped in a swathe of white silk that she had salvaged from a damaged parachute. The agent who’d dangled from the other end of it had broken his neck. Before his final flight Romy had shared a beer with him. Had spent the night with him. He had been her friend. After cutting around the machine-gun bullet holes in the silk last night, she had dreamed of him.

  ‘Thank you, Tante Romy.’

  ‘I warn you, it’s not a doll.’

  ‘May I open it now?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The small hands scrabbled with the white material and carefully unwound it. Both pairs of blue eyes, mother’s and daughter’s, grew as round as coins.

  ‘It’s an aeroplane,’ Florence exclaimed. Romy detected no pleasure in it.

  ‘It’s an aeroplane,’ Chloé echoed, her voice brimming with delight.

  ‘It’s a flying model,’ Romy explained. ‘It has to be assembled – that’s easy – and then it will fly. It is called a FROG Interceptor. Look.’ She lifted the lid. ‘Power-driven by a rubber band with a duralumin fuselage and doped paper wings.’ Her own fingers itched to take it out.

  Chloé’s smile set the hall alight. ‘Can I fly it now?’

  Before she could reply, a door opened. Romy felt a shift of air, sensed a tightening of the skin on her cheek as if it knew who was coming. She looked up at the library door, solid as a drawbridge. It swung wide and two men in summer suits, both in their thirties, emerged and crossed the hall. One was blond, tall and unknown to her. The other was a muscular figure with hair as black as an oil slick, and he strode chest first through the hall as if he owned it. Which he did. He was Roland Roussel. Florence’s husband.

  Romy could hear the snick of irritation in each step as he approached, but there was no hint of it in the tone of his voice.

  ‘Well now, what is all the noise going on here?’ He turned towards his sister-in-law. He greeted her with a smile that was polished to perfection like the blade of a knife. You could cut yourself on it, if you weren’t careful. ‘Good afternoon, Romaine.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Roland.’

  She matched his smile, tooth for tooth.

  ‘Tante Romy is here for my birthday party,’ Chloé announced.

  ‘Is she indeed?’ The words slid out smooth as glass. ‘In which case I’d have expected her to change into a party frock before she arrived.’

  ‘Oh no, Papa.’ The small hand touched the damp leather of Romy’s flying jacket, the way believers touch the stole of a priest. ‘I like it.’

  ‘Which is the reason I wore it.’ Romy grinned at the child and kept her eyes off her brother-in-law.

  The blond stranger stepped closer, tall and soft-spoken. He extended a hand to Romy. ‘At last,’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking forward to seeing you, Romaine.’

  ‘This is my sister, Romaine Duchamps,’ Florence said with a sharp warning look in his direction. ‘She is an aviatrix.’ It was a term that Romy had never heard her sister use before. It bestowed a glamour on the act of flying that didn’t exist in reality. ‘Romaine, let me introduce Horst Baumeister from Berlin. He’s here to work with – ’ her glance skipped to her husband ‘ – with a government delegation from Germany.’

  His handshake was firm and brief, but he regarded Romy with interest. Not the kind of interest that made her skin crawl, no, not like that. His pale blue eyes tightened as his gaze took in her face and her curly hair, cropped short as a boy’s. He took note of her flying jacket with its scuffs and mends. Her shoes, brown and practical. He observed her the way a scientist in a laboratory might observe a species of moth. That kind of interest. Studying her closely. She did not object. Did not feel the slither of scorn that often uncoiled inside her when men looked at her. Because there was something in his gaze that pleased her. It was respect.

  ‘You actually fly?’ he asked.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Roland, mein Freund, where have you been hiding this Fliegerin?’

  To Romy’s surprise, her sister laughed. ‘Don’t go encouraging her, Horst. We are trying to civilise her.’

  Civilise?

  Is that what the silk chemises and kid-leather gloves that arrived outside her door with monotonous regularity were for? To civilise her? As if she were some kind of illiterate barbarian. She looked at her sister and wanted to ask her which was more civilised. A person who knew how to wind her hair into an elaborate chignon and set a room on fire with a syncopated foxtrot? Or some grubby flier who could coax an aircraft over mountains to Spanish people in desperate need of arms and equipment in their fight to defend a nation against the stranglehold of Fascism. Which one, Florence? Which would you say does more for civilisation?

  ‘So, Fräulein Duchamps,’ the German continued, ‘where have you been flying today in this filthy weather?’

  ‘To Lyon.’ The lie came easily. ‘Delivering a business client to a meeting. I flew low beneath the cloud base and followed the railway line.’

  Well, part of it was true. Railway lines were an invaluable aid to navigation.

  ‘Do you fly?’ Romy asked.

  ‘No. But I love aircraft.’

  His eyes dwelled on the model plane in the box and he nodded approval, but it was Roland who drew the conversation to an abrupt end. ‘Chloé, I think you should go back inside the salon now and rejoin your friends at the party.’

  ‘And Tante Romy too. Please, Papa?’

  ‘No. Your aunt is leaving.’

  ‘Why?’ There was something fearless in the clear blue eyes that the child turned on her father. ‘Just because she is not wearing a party frock?’

  ‘Because she is busy.’

  But Romy did not let him get away with that one. ‘I am never too busy for you, ma petite,’ she assured Chloé.

  Though she was looking at the child, she caught the uneasy flicker of her sister’s eyelashes, the quick nip of her lip by perfect white teeth. It was always the same. That awareness. That cons
ciousness of her sister’s every movement even when her gaze was directed elsewhere, as if it were a continuation of her own movement. A shadowing. A ripple that flowed from herself to her sister, but one she couldn’t control.

  ‘But I want her to stay, Papa. To fly my aeroplane with me after my party.’

  Romy bent down, her face on a level with her niece’s. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘It’s too late now. I’ll come back tomorrow and we will fly it then.’ She touched a wave of the long silky hair, soft as a spider’s web. ‘Bright and early.’

  A small finger curled around one of hers. ‘Before breakfast.’

  Romy laughed. ‘No. But straight after, I promise.’

  She kissed the birthday girl’s forehead, said speedy goodbyes, shook hands with the German again, and without looking back she found herself descending once more to the ground floor in the lift with its beautiful Lalique pyramid electric lamps. Each one probably cost more than she earned in six months. There was a gilded mirror too, but she kept her back turned to it. She couldn’t stand to see her face.

  Somewhere deep in a cold place inside her chest there was the usual pain when she left this house, as though a propeller blade had nudged up against her ribs.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It was dark by the time Romy turned into rue Lamarck beyond the cemetery, eager to get her business over and done with quickly. She had other plans for the evening. She headed straight for the shop on the corner. The pinkish light from its window spilled into the street, turning a grey cat purple and painting the bumper of a parked Citroën the colour of candyfloss.

  She was back in the narrow streets of Montmartre where she rented a room in one of the dingy alleyways of the 18th arrondissement. She felt safer here. Though that was probably not the right word. Montmartre was anything but safe. It crawled with penniless artists and writers, pickpockets and addicts who would happily stick a knife to your throat in exchange for a handful of grubby centimes to buy their next glass of illegal absinthe.

  The wind had driven the clouds from the night sky and stars fought a losing battle with the sulphurous glow from the city. Millions of street lamps cast shadows over the worst of the grime and softened the city’s sharp edges. In Montmartre it was the dirt that seemed to hold the buildings together and it was best not to think about what lay underfoot on the cobbles.

  A bell rang above her head when she pushed open the shop door and entered its rosy interior. Strings of soft pink fairy lights garlanded every surface.

  ‘Mademoiselle Romy!’ exclaimed the man behind the counter. He blew her a kiss. ‘You brighten my dreary evening. I haven’t seen you for weeks and I’ve missed my favourite customer.’

  Romy laughed. ‘You say that to all the girls, I’m certain. And the boys.’

  ‘Ah non, chérie. Only to you.’

  He grinned, pulled out a bottle and two glasses from under the counter and proceeded to fill them with a heavy viscous red wine that was the product of his family’s vineyard. He was a slight, willowy figure with eyes that didn’t take life seriously. He was wearing a white shirt, a scarlet bow tie, a black velvet skirt to his ankles and poppy-red nail varnish. His name was Louis Capel and his shop bought and sold second-hand clothes. His weakness was for fur coats. Among other things.

  Romy placed her heavy satchel on the wooden counter in front of him. ‘How’s business?’

  ‘Slow. I live on bread and water.’

  ‘And wine,’ she added as she took a mouthful from her glass and felt the alcohol light a small fire inside her.

  ‘You have something for me?’ He prodded a finger at her satchel. ‘Another pair of kid-gloves?’ He rolled his eyes in mock exasperation.

  ‘No, Louis. I’ve brought you these.’

  Out of the satchel she tipped three guns. They clattered on to the counter. Then silence. It settled in the shop as softly as feathers and Romy gave a chuckle at the back of her throat to dispel it.

  ‘Interested?’

  Louis’ immaculately groomed eyebrows rose. ‘Spanish,’ he announced and picked one up. ‘A Star Bonifacio, but an early one. About 1919. 6.35 mm. The left grip is cracked.’

  ‘Interested?’ she asked again.

  ‘I won’t ask where they came from.’

  ‘I wouldn’t tell you if you did.’

  She glanced pointedly around the shop at the rows of shimmering gowns, velvet capes, flounces and feathers and glossy fur coats. She had no doubt that most of them fell out the back end of a burglar’s sack with no questions asked. Louis was good at keeping his mouth shut.

  She finished off her wine, licked her lips, leaned her elbows on the counter and watched him flutter his long black eyelashes at her.

  ‘How much?’ he asked.

  Romy knelt beside her bed.

  The air in the attic room was sticky. It felt as though it had been breathed by too many city people already and had found its way into her room to die in the corners. The electricity didn’t reach this high up in the house, so she burned cheap candles. She possessed an ancient oil lamp that she kept on a shelf, but kerosene cost good money, so she only lit it when she had to. Tonight she didn’t have to, so she put a match to the stub of a candle and her fingers worked efficiently in the gloom.

  They unlocked the bootstrap that tied up the split in the underside of the mattress, though it was more a gathering of lumps and bumps than a mattress. She thrust her hand deep into the stuffing of tangled horsehair and felt her heart perform its familiar skip of relief when her fingers closed on the small scrap of canvas tucked inside. It was still there. Her fear was that one day it would be gone. And she knew if that day ever came, she would not be able to stop herself rampaging through the rooms of the other tenants in the house with a carving knife in hand until she found it.

  She shivered. Hid that thought away. She’d done enough damage for one lifetime with a paperknife.

  Like most Paris streets, the house consisted of six storeys plus attic rooms that became a furnace in the summer and an icebox in winter. It was a crumbling, rumbling, shabby building with water pipes that shook the plaster off the walls, rats that camped out in the cellar and a roof that leaked. Romy kept a bucket in the middle of her floor for the drips, but on days like today it became a torrent that overflowed to the floors below. Other tenants came and went with regularity, except for Madame Gosselin on the ground floor who was a fixture. She was the black-clad concierge and kept an eye on everyone’s movements with a dedication that made Romy’s heart sink.

  If ever the mattress was empty, she would know where to go looking first. But today it wasn’t empty. She tugged on the canvas and out popped a small drawstring bag which she opened and carefully checked its contents. It contained a wad of neatly folded banknotes. She counted them twice and added to them the new roll of francs she’d earned today from flying down to Spain and from the sale of the three Spanish guns. Her mind flipped back to the Spaniard, the one with the bullet wound in his wheezy chest and the fear in his dark eyes as he climbed into her plane.

  ‘Take them,’ he’d said when she’d landed in the rutted meadow outside Béziers and he kissed her hand in gratitude. ‘Take the guns.’ He had thrust them into her hands, three old Spanish pistols. ‘I will be arrested if they are found on me.’ And now they were on Louis’ back shelf, wrapped in a length of oilcloth, waiting to be passed down into the hands of the criminal underworld of Paris. That was another thing Romy chose not to think about.

  She tightened the drawstring on the pouch of money, pushed it deep into the mattress and rethreaded the bootlace stitching, but not before she had removed two hundred francs and slipped it into her pocket. She was tempted to take more. To risk it. She had a feeling in her gut that the cards would dance in her favour tonight.

  That thought made her smile. A wary smile. She had once lost half her savings on a pair of aces. Never again. Two hundred francs. Not much. Inflation had destroyed the value of French currency. But that was all she allowed herself. First s
he had a meeting to go to and Martel would be there.

  She was still on her knees beside the bed, ready to rise to her feet and have a wash before heading out into the dark, when a sudden wave of tiredness hit her. It caught her off guard. The day had been long. Her emotions were wound tight. Without thought she rested her forehead on the mattress and immediately started to slide into that nameless, formless place that is the frontier of sleep, where all defences melt like walls of ice in the sun. Don’t risk it.

  But it was too late. She was tumbling on the very edge of sleep. The place where danger lay. Warm and defenceless.

  Mademoiselle Romaine, why you tell those untruths to the judge? The voice in her ear was soft-spoken and insistent. Why? You know I never went into the house that day.

  Romy’s eyes shot open. She was breathing hard. Staring wildly around the room. It was empty. Just the black window and the dusty naked floorboards. Nobody whispering. No body. No ghost. She jumped to her feet and thrust her hands into her trouser pockets to stop them shaking. Her heart felt as if it had split open and was trickling blood – or was it tears? – into her chest cavity. She spat on the floor, expecting to see scarlet, but it was only spittle that ejected painfully from her mouth.

  A long narrow face. Swarthy skin. Gentle eyes. Hair black as coal dust. They started to take shape inside her head. Emerging from the confusion of anger and fear. She clearly saw his full heavy lips open to speak again, but she wasn’t having that.

  ‘I need a drink,’ she mumbled and dropped to her knees again.