They laugh and she asks, ‘Who you brought for me tonight?’ She likes to know who is in.
‘A German colleague of mine.’
I spot the fleeting lift of her full lip, the closest she would permit herself to a snarl. I am confident my husband will have missed it.
‘And my sister-in-law,’ he adds.
As he speaks, the dancing couple detach from each other and make their way back across the crowded floor to rejoin us. Brick does not disguise her interest.
‘Well now, Flo . . .’ I hate her calling me Flo, ‘that’s a pretty little sister you got there.’
I ignore the inference that Romaine is younger than I am. I introduce them and we are all engrossed in pleasantries when a man approaches our table. Roland greets him warmly.
‘Herr Müller, I’m delighted you could join us.’
Join us? Roland told me nothing of this.
The German has presence. He draws glances, both male and female. He is a large man with arrogant eyes that smile at us, but they are made of fine grey steel. Hair greying gracefully at the temples, and the most beautifully cut evening suit that frames his wide shoulders to perfection. A military man if ever I saw one, though he does not use his military rank tonight.
But something happens. I don’t see it. Roland is talking with Brick and I am laughing at something she says, when I feel a sudden sense of shock. I know at once it is my sister, though I am not even looking at her. I turn to her, seated opposite me. Her face is as white as the tablecloth, her lips a sickly grey colour. No one else seems to notice. The two Germans are busy talking to each other and the tables around us buzz with champagne-fuelled laughter as the lilting music of Embraceable You swirls around us.
‘Romaine,’ I say urgently.
She does not hear. Her eyes have the glazed look of someone who has been slapped. Slapped hard. Her hand reaches forward, ignores her own champagne but grips Roland’s whisky glass and she drinks it straight down. She pushes herself awkwardly to her feet, deaf to all comments, and moves immediately to my side. She seizes my wrist, her fingers strong.
‘Come,’ she orders.
I am angry. I don’t know why, but I am consumed by an anger that burns the inside of my cheek as I try to bite back the words that threaten to burst out. What the hell is she doing?
I want to shake her.
But I look at the state of her and I can’t. She has dragged me into a powder room, flicked on the light and shut the door firmly behind us, leaning her back against it to prevent anyone else entering. The powder room is typical of Monico’s, an extravaganza of black and gold geometric design. Romaine’s face is still paper-white but two red flares have lodged high on her cheeks, and her amber eyes are the dull, lifeless colour of mud. Her hand does not release my wrist.
‘What on earth is the matter with you, Romaine? You must have scared the hell out of Horst.’
Her tongue flicks over her dry lips. ‘I was there.’ Her grip tightens till my bones ache. ‘I remember being there.’
I do not ask where there is. For both of us there is only one there.
My father’s study.
I stroke the back of her hand to calm her. Not that she is frantic or shouting. Nothing violent. Rather, she has turned inward, staring wide-eyed at whatever terrible sight has awoken inside her head.
‘Tell me,’ I say. ‘What happened just now?’
‘It was the Germans.’
‘What?’
‘Horst and Herr Müller. Hearing them talk.’
I frown, not understanding.
‘They were speaking German to each other,’ she explains, impatient with me. ‘The sound of it triggered a memory.’
‘What kind of memory, Romaine?’
But she does not respond. Her skin is cold. A corpse kind of cold, as though the warm blood has drained out of her. I can’t have her like this. It’s too dangerous. Not right under the Nazi noses. She is here to do the job of entertaining Horst, whether she wants to or not.
‘You must not let Roland down,’ I say quietly.
I break free from her hold on me and take her face between my hands, but it is like holding glass. I fear she will break.
‘Look at me,’ I order.
Slowly, painfully slowly, her unfocused gaze shifts and I see something slot back into place within her. She looks at me. Properly looks at me.
‘Florence, I heard someone speaking German to Papa that day. It came to me just now. I was curled up in his reading chair in his study and I must have fallen asleep because . . .’ She rubs a hand across her forehead, trying to drag the memory out by force. ‘Because I remember being woken by a voice . . .’ She pauses.
‘Whose voice?’
‘A German one.’
Papa’s reading chair was a black leather wing-backed chair on a swivel base. Romaine had been in the habit of sneaking in sometimes, snaffling a book and spinning herself in the chair, so that it faced the corner, hiding its occupant. It was hot that day, I recall, the bees droning in the honeysuckle, and it would be easy to nod off to sleep over a book. I can picture it. Her blonde head lolling against the wing of the chair, her book sliding to her lap, Papa entering, unaware of her presence in his study.
‘A German voice?’ I echo. ‘Why would there be a German voice in Papa’s study? He was alone. The police established that.’
‘I know. That’s what doesn’t make sense. Someone was speaking to him in German.’
I release her face and say softly, ‘It is not possible, Romaine. He was alone. You must have been dreaming and thought you heard someone else in the room but the conversation was inside your head. Part of a dream. Nothing more.’
‘It seemed real.’
It is her stubborn voice.
‘I’m sure it did, but the police report stated there was no one else in the house. Roland and I were in the garden, Maman and the maid in the kitchen so—’
‘Why would someone speak to Papa in German?’
‘Romaine, listen to me. It didn’t happen. Now let’s get back out there, the men will be waiting for us.’
There is a pause. It slots into the gulf between us and I wait for her to break it. Finally she moves away to the row of handbasins, turns on a gold tap and washes her hands in cold water. It goes on so long I think she is never going to stop scrubbing at stains that only she can see.
‘Enough,’ I say.
She stops. Dries her hands.
‘Roland will be worried. We’ll say you felt unwell.’
She joins me at the door.
‘Smile,’ I say.
She smiles. There is an awful stillness to her face. I open the door.
‘It was a dream,’ I assure her. ‘Just a dream’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Romy returned to Roland’s table. She didn’t want to sit down. She wanted to flee. But she had promised her sister, so she resumed her seat and did not risk looking in Roland’s direction.
She excused her sudden departure from the table earlier with some vague words about feeling briefly unwell, and brushed aside Horst’s expression of concern. He stared at her pale face and she could feel that he was about to say more, but his intelligent blue eyes softened and he gave a brief Germanic nod. Instead he murmured, ‘Let me pour you a drink,’ and lifted the champagne bottle from its ice bucket.
She declined the offer, though it was like declining air. A small fragile flame of memory had been lit. She had no intention of dousing it with alcohol. Not this time.
Had she really heard German spoken in her father’s study? Or was Florence right? Was it a figment of a dream that had floated up into her consciousness?
She drank a mouthful of water to dissipate the acid taste in her mouth and almost spat it out, it was so insipid. She felt confusion cloud her mind and then, hard on its heels, fear. It crept up on her, its breath cold on the back of her neck. Who was this person who seemed to be invisible inside her father’s house eight years ago, unknown to the police investig
ators or even to her mother in the kitchen? In her head she could still just catch the echo of the foreign cadences, faint and elusive, and she turned quickly to Horst.
‘Speak German to me.’
He looked surprised and she could see that he has misunderstood her.
‘You didn’t tell me you understand German,’ he said. ‘Du sagtest mir gar nicht, dass du Deutsch sprechen kannst. Möchtest du mit mir tanzen, Romaine?’
She concentrated, waiting for the sound of the words to settle in her mind, but it triggered nothing more. She closed her eyes but no image of her father’s study flared inside her head. Horst’s hand gently touched her arm and her eyes flicked open.
‘What is it, Romaine?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Would you like me to take you home?’ he offered in a voice too low for others to hear. ‘If you are feeling unwell, you shouldn’t stay here with all this noise and—’
‘Romaine, may I have a private word?’
It was Roland.
‘Whatever you have to say, Roland, I’m sure you can say it in front of your friend Horst.’
The smoothness of her brother-in-law’s smile didn’t falter but he ran the palm of his hand along the side of his glossy black hair, an unconscious gesture when he was annoyed. Romy had seen it over the years, too often for comfort.
But Roland sidestepped her. ‘Horst, mon ami, you don’t mind, do you, if I steal your companion from you for a few minutes?’
Horst Baumeister’s ice-cool blue eyes studied Roland for longer than was strictly polite and then switched to Romy.
‘On the contrary, Roland, I do mind. I have just asked Romaine to dance with me and she has kindly agreed.’
He rose to his feet, took Romy’s hand and led her quietly away from Roland towards the dance floor.
‘Merci,’ Romy said.
Romy could smell Horst’s cologne as they danced. He was holding her close. But not too close. Just enough for them to talk without having to shout over the music and the laughter of the other dancers. The whole ritual of dancing was odd to Romy, the whole idea that it was socially acceptable to be in an intimate position with a near stranger. Hip to hip, hands entwined. That was why Romy didn’t like to dance. If she was going to indulge in intimacy with a stranger, hell, she’d rather do it in a bedroom than a ballroom.
Horst was an excellent dancer. Light, skilled, attentive. He effortlessly avoided her missteps, but all the time as the band crooned out Dream a Little Dream of Me, she was acutely aware of his hand on her back. On her naked back, skin against skin. Was that why her sister had dolled her up like a mannequin with the back half of her dress missing? To tempt this German.
What was the purpose? Why did they need to tout her around for Horst Baumeister’s entertainment? Weren’t there enough putains in Paris already?
‘You don’t like your brother-in-law,’ Horst smiled.
‘Is it that obvious?’
‘You cover it well, I assure you.’
‘Obviously not well enough.’
He laughed, soft and easy, making her laugh too.
‘So if you don’t like your brother-in-law, why spend the evening with him?’
She liked that about him. That he talked straight. No hiding behind neat words.
‘What made you come here tonight, Romaine?’
‘You. It was Florence who invited me, not Roland. She said you would be here and I thought it would be an interesting evening. I was right.’
It was the truth. She hadn’t expected to find someone among the sparkling socialites at Monico’s nightclub who could talk Pratt & Whitney engines, as they had earlier. He was the reason she was here.
‘I’m glad you came,’ he said.
There it was again, that straightness.
He spun her expertly out of the path of a couple of dancers who were weaving unsteadily across the floor with an empty champagne glass still dangling in one hand.
‘You are the first female pilot I have ever met.’ He smiled broadly. ‘Certainly the first aviatrix I have danced with, so this evening is a special one. Tell me, Romaine, how you go it alone up there in a flimsy crate. It is beyond me. I admire your courage. And the way you are pushing the boundaries for women, opening up new horizons.’
‘I don’t think of it like that.’
‘How do you think of it then?’
‘I am opening up my own horizons. That’s enough for me.’
‘We will need people like you when war comes.’
Suddenly his German accent was heavier, his consonants more pronounced. Until now he’d spoken French with very little accent, but now Germany loomed larger in his mind. ‘Women are going to have to step up to the plate and do jobs that . . .’
When war comes? A shudder ran through Romy at the ease with which the words slipped from his tongue. She looked up at him intently. He was half a head taller than she was. ‘You really think it will happen?’
He danced her through a full ten bars of music before he replied, ‘No, I don’t.’
‘You are a poor liar, Horst Baumeister.’
He could have been annoyed at that. But he wasn’t. He laughed, a low rumble of a laugh, and tightened his hold on her as though fearing she might make a run for it. It was impossible not to warm to him. His eyes would be labelled blue, but it would be inaccurate because they ranged from a deep greyish-navy to almost ice-white at times, depending on the thoughts treading behind them. A perfect Aryan face. The face of Germany in Paris.
‘I am not lying, Romaine. I had dinner a couple of weeks ago with Generalmajor Hugo Sperrle who has Hitler’s ear. I assure you he was confident that there will be no war between France and Germany.’
‘Isn’t he the one who commanded the Condor Legion in Spain and bombed the hell out of Guernica? That Generalmajor Sperrle?’
The edges of his mouth tightened a fraction. ‘You are extremely well informed.’
‘I read the newspapers.’
But she had said too much.
He fixed his gaze on her face, sharp as a bayonet, and said softly, ‘The Führer does not want a war.’
She stared straight back at him. ‘Anyone who believes that is a fool.’
Romy didn’t know why she said it. So bluntly. So carelessly.
Anyone who believes that is a fool.
She regretted them now. When a saxophone riffed to the end of its solo, she and Horst had returned to their seats, her beaded hem swaying like a chill wave around her ankles, and Roland made no move to corner her again. Horst continued to be polite and attentive, but there was no more talk of courage or engines. She had forfeited that, it seemed. In his mind she had clipped her wings. Crashed and burned.
The rest of the evening flitted past in fits and starts, slightly out of focus, but punctuated by sudden moments of pinpoint clarity. Like when Roland kissed her cheek and murmured in her ear, ‘You are cleverer than I thought, Romaine.’ Or when their flamboyant hostess, Bricktop, delivered a sultry rendition of Cole Porter’s Begin the Beguine, caressing the microphone as if it were her lover’s lips. Then, crystal clear, came the sight of Florence frowning at her across the table, the muscles taut in her beautiful long neck, though Romy had no idea why.
The music shifted from the smooth and mellow tones of Sweet Jazz to the faster brasher sound of Hot Jazz. Around them the revellers in the nightclub laughed and drank and foxtrotted with a wildness, kicking up their heels as if the dance floor were made of hot coals. As if to stop would be to die. An air of desperation hung in the room, a sense of seizing the good times while they were here and wringing every last drop out of them. Dark shadows were stretching across Europe and no one knew what was hiding in them.
Herr Müller slid smoothly into the seat beside Romy, startling her. For a big man he moved well. She was boxed in between the two Germans and could not help feeling suddenly uneasy.
‘So where do you fly off to in this aircraft of yours?’ Müller asked with no more than what appeared to
be polite interest. His accent was strong, but so was his grasp of French.
‘To different parts of France mainly. Delivering packages or people.’
‘You fly abroad?’
‘Sometimes. Mainly to England. To Croydon airport. I was there last week, transporting a factory owner to a meeting in London.’
She looked closely at the military-looking man with his arrogant grey eyes that were too interested in her. Far too interested – she wanted to know why. He spoke French with a clipped delivery, as if his words came tightly packaged. She could imagine him laying down the law in meetings with his French counterparts, even with Deputy Premier Chautemps and Prime Minister Édouard Daladier, she could picture him placing his Nazi jackboot on their feeble and flaccid necks.
France was deluding itself. She was aware of that. Earlier this month Daladier’s government had flaunted its military power in Germany’s face, a slap of a Gallic glove across their Teutonic neighbour’s cheek. On Bastille Day, 14 July, the greatest display of France’s martial might for thirty years paraded down the Champs Élysées. A rippling sea of thirty thousand men had marched in strict formation from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde. They presented a rigid salute to the President of the Republic, Albert Lebrun, to Daladier himself and to César Campinchi and Guy La Chambre, ministers for the Navy and the Air Force.
Romy had been there. Stunned by the pride beaming from the faces of the young men in uniform, she had wanted to cry. Didn’t they realise what they were marching towards? The shouts and cheers from the crowd watching the parade had deafened her for the two hours of the march-past. The Guards, the Marines, the Chasseurs, the Cavalry, the Hussars, the Dragoons, the Cuirassiers and then the deep rumble of the heavy motorised divisions that made the air in her chest vibrate and heat up so she couldn’t breathe properly. Tanks rolled past her like tigers on fragile leads, row after row after row of them. A threat it was impossible for Germany to ignore.
Romy wondered now whether Herr Müller had been there on Bastille Day. Had he seen them? Did they make him nervous? She let her gaze linger on his straight, humourless mouth and the heavy bulk of his jaw. No, this was a man who didn’t frighten easily.
The Betrayal Page 8
