The French Promise

by Fiona McIntosh

  Irene had already brought Harry and Peanut home and when they arrived back at the cottage, the house was warmed, the kettle was on and Harry was sleeping. Peanut gave them a rousing welcome and Irene nodded.

  ‘Well, well. Look at you both! You’re glowing, Lisette.’

  ‘Tea?’ Lisette offered.

  ‘No, I mustn’t. Pete’s got work tonight, but we enjoyed having Harry – he’s such a sweetie.’ She stood on tiptoe to peck Luc on the cheek. ‘I put the post on the table,’ she pointed.

  Lisette linked arms and accompanied her friend to the street. ‘I can’t thank you enough. We really did have a splendid time.’

  ‘Well, it shows! Blimey, you’re a handsome couple. And I’m happy for you. Harry had a late night, so let him sleep.’

  ‘I feel like I’ve been away for days.’

  ‘You look so happy. I can well believe you’ve made another baby in the last twenty-four hours,’ Irene quipped as she kissed Lisette goodbye.

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ Lisette giggled. ‘And you’ll be the first to know!’

  She waved off her friend and wandered back indoors, parched and looking forward to a cup of tea. Could she persuade Luc to learn to love tea as much as she did, she wondered? She was still smiling at the mention of a new baby and the memory of their feverish lovemaking the previous night and their more languid version before dawn today. Something special had been rekindled between them. She could hug herself. Suddenly their future felt bright and Luc seemed different, too. London had been a blessing; the start of a new life.

  ‘I’m making a pot of tea,’ she called brightly. Harry could sleep through an earthquake. ‘Where are you?’ she called more loudly.

  There was no answer.

  She busied herself, warming the pot. ‘Luc?’

  The house was silent. She frowned, left the tea and went looking for her husband. She walked into Harry’s room and gazed down at her perfect child. She bent over his bed and kissed him gently, loving the smell of his Ovaltine breath. Lisette tucked Woolly in near to the boy’s face and he hugged his best friend close. She watched him seconds longer, his breathing regular, and finally wandered into the bedroom.

  She was shocked to see Luc sitting on the floor, holding his head almost between his knees.

  The dog sat against him. Peanut’s tail wagged ferociously but Luc didn’t move. Lisette held her breath.

  ‘Luc? What’s happened?’

  In his hands was a crumpled letter; its envelope she now realised was on the floor beside him. It had German postal markings on it and she froze momentarily. Then, because he was so still, she reached down and eased the letter held limply in his fingers. He didn’t stop her. Peanut licked her knee affectionately.

  With a heavy heart she carried the letter to the light by the window and quickly scanned its contents. It was on formal letterhead.

  The Central Tracing Bureau, set up by Allied Forces, was now called the International Tracing Bureau and just last month they’d received notification that it was now under the management of the Allied High Commission in Germany. She knew what this was before she began reading and her bright mood vanished in a heartbeat.

  The letter informed with grave respect that the family Bonet had been traced to the Auschwitz-Birkenau prison complex through the records of Miss Sarah Ruth Bonet and Miss Rachel Arella Bonet, which confirmed that both women had perished at Birkenau camp, during the spring of 1943. Lisette checked her rising emotion as she looked over at Luc. He had slumped down further. She clamped a hand over her mouth and read on, tears for him helplessly welling and spilling so fast she could feel them trickling through her fingers.

  Reading the letter was hard. The words were so blunt and yet news of death could never be softened: The abovementioned person – Sarah Ruth – was arrested on July 18 in 1942, transferred on July 20 to Drancy and on October 4 in 1942 to CC Auschwitz. It went on in the same concise manner to register her arrival, her prisoner number and, finally, to date her death as May 3, 1943. According to the records, Sarah died of heart failure. But then so had Rachel on precisely the same day. It was obvious that the Bonet sisters had been killed by the Nazis’ brutal gassing method.

  The question of the Bonet elders and the youngest sister could not be answered with the same authority, although even the most hopeful of people could see the dark shadow hovering above their names and the implication of the letter. Nevertheless, the sender had diligently and painstakingly traced their names – Jacob David, Golda Dana and Gitel Eliana, of Saignon in Provence – as having passed through the Drancy prisoner camp in Paris and been sent by rail to the Auschwitz-Birkenau work camp at Oświęcim in Poland, near Krakow. The date of their transportation matched that of Sarah and Rachel. So the family had been together right up to their arrival at the prison camp.

  Luc had learnt from his research that the fate of those deemed unfit was never known. The three Bonets – eldest and youngest – had no numbers registered against their names from the ITS search of the records but definitely had their departure listed from Drancy on the rail transport.

  The wording was simple and heartbreaking: No news since.

  Through the clouded vision of tears, Lisette could read between the lines. And so could Luc. All his remaining family members had been murdered in the Nazi death camp outside Krakow.

  She couldn’t hold back her sorrow for him and rushed to put her arms around him, weeping into his shoulder. He said nothing. He felt like a statue. Time passed and they remained like that, their limbs growing numb, Peanut making a bed of Lisette’s lap and falling asleep while Harry called out from his room.

  ‘Luc …’ she whispered.

  ‘Go see to him,’ he said. His voice was calm but cold.

  She knew much of her grief was for the happiness that had been given to them so briefly, now evaporated. There was so much she wanted to say. But she knew Luc. Now was not the time. Lisette slowly stood.

  ‘If you’re going out, take Peanut with you,’ she said quietly, second-guessing him. She moved to Harry’s room, her tears dried but her heart feeling dark, and impotent anger levelling itself at the sender of the letter from Bad Arolsen in Germany.

  ‘Hello, sweetheart,’ she said.

  ‘I missed you, Mummy,’ he replied, surging into an excited report of everything he’d been up to in her absence. She let his happy words flow over her like a warm soothing bath. She hugged Harry close. Oh, my little boy, how are we going to help Daddy now?

  Lisette heard the back door close softly. Peanut peered around the doorframe of her son’s bedroom and her heart lurched. She walked into the kitchen to watch her husband leave. Right enough, there was the man she loved walking away from them, shutting her out, believing himself strong enough to carry the burden of pain alone.

  The Festival of Britain and all of its gaiety was forgotten. As she settled Harry to listen to story time on the radio before she made him a meal, she noticed a crumpled paper had fallen out of Luc’s overcoat beside her. With Harry intently listening to the soft tone of the announcer, she settled back and unravelled the piece of paper she’d found, glad of the distraction.

  It was a brochure from P&O about assisted ship passages being offered from Britain to Australia. ‘Ten pounds,’ she murmured. She’d heard about this on the radio. ‘Populate or perish’ was the motto in Australia. She remembered how her father used to read about this great continent in the southern hemisphere with vast open spaces and a night sky so different to their own. He was fascinated by Australia and would sit down over their evening meal and teach her about it. It was Maximilian Foerstner’s dream to travel the vast distance and see the continent for himself. It was a place where oceans and massive sandy beaches would change to parched red desert and that desolate yet beautiful landscape would ultimately give way to tropical rainforest. She couldn’t imagine a place so big.

  ‘They have farms there, Lisette, that span not hundreds but thousands of miles.’ The numbers were too big
for her to grasp but she could tell from the awe in her father’s voice that she should be mightily impressed. ‘And the climate is magnificent. Hot and dry through summer, with cold, wet winters in some states. Snow too. The further north you go, the more temperate and then humid it gets.’

  ‘And south?’ she’d asked, enthused by her father’s excitement.

  ‘Oh, well, the further south you go, the more extremes. Beyond Australia there is only the South Pole,’ he’d quipped. ‘We shall go one day. We’ll ride camels in the desert, you and I, and play in the surf of Australia’s majestic ocean beaches.’

  He’d always made it sound so romantic and so attainable.

  Lisette stared at the brochure and blinked. It was attainable. It was possible on ten pounds! A whole new existence was being carved out by adventurous people who wanted to escape their lives here in Europe. She and Luc were adventurous, weren’t they? Could she imagine a couple with a more daring past than herself and Luc? She couldn’t. Most of the women she knew had sat out the war at home while their men had fought. Everyone was brave, but few had looked into the eyes of the enemy as she and Luc had … and survived.

  She folded up the paper and tucked it into her pocket, her mind wandering now to a sunburnt land. If she wasn’t mistaken, its aridness could be the answer to her prayers.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Luc put his arm around his wife and looked at her red eyes. ‘You’re sure about this? It’s all happened so fast. There’s still time to change your—’

  She shook her head and smiled through the tears. ‘No. We’re going.’

  It was early December and privately Lisette was glad to be dodging another vicious English winter on the windswept Downs. However, she wished once again – she’d lost count of how many times – that they could have left after Christmas and had one more celebration with her grandparents; for Harry to have one more delirious holiday with his great-grandfather masquerading as Father Christmas. But it wasn’t to be. This was the last sailing for the year.

  They were standing at Tilbury Docks, east of the city, which sat on the tidal flats of the Thames. The smokestacks of London belched in the distance and Lisette realised this was possibly the last time – or at least for a very long time – that she would see her beloved London cityscape.

  Her view, staring down from the deck of the 21 000 tonne SS Mooltan, was far-reaching and a final treat to see London from this vantage. She told herself to imprint it firmly in her mind and lock it away.

  She gazed down again and could see her stooped grandparents, looking tiny on the wharf. Granny was waving a bright-blue scarf to make sure that Lisette could pick her out. She would not see them again – they all privately knew it – and so the final farewell had been gut-wrenching. They’d even agreed to take Peanut, who knew them well and had taken to living with the old couple with an easy affection.

  ‘Maybe I’ll persuade Granny to get aboard a ship one of these days,’ her grandfather had said, generously pretending for the sake of her aching heart.

  Lisette nodded through the tears.

  Granny was inconsolable at losing her grandchild and Harry, her only great-grandchild. ‘I want a new photograph every month,’ she urged. ‘My beautiful little Harry,’ she wept.

  Lisette had fled, grabbing Harry’s hand and swinging him up the gangplank between herself and Luc, making a big joke of it all, while her heart quietly broke.

  Departure was imminent; she didn’t need to be told, she could feel it in the air – a different energy emanated from the crew, who were going about their checks briskly and efficiently. This was it … she was headed for the other side of the world. Harry was too young to understand and already she could see him yawning in his father’s arms as he waved his small hands, covered with the red mittens that Granny had knitted last winter. Lisette swallowed another sob that lurched to her throat and gave a watery smile to Luc. He looked alive. He hadn’t been able to wipe the grin off his face all day. Perhaps it was the adventurer in him but more likely the sense of escape. This ship was about to sail him as far away from Europe and his sorrows as it possibly could.

  Apart from the day in London at the Festival of Britain eight months ago, she had not seen that smile emerge for anyone except Harry. She was starved of Luc’s affection and he’d even begun accepting two-month-long postings at the lighthouse … anything to stay away from home and the reminder of that letter.

  She was tired of it. Weary of the all-pervading grief, and the closing in of her life because of his sorrow. She was the one who had driven the idea of casting aside caution and trying for a new life on the other side of the world. Luc hadn’t heard her at first. There had been a sort of madness to his grieving; he wanted no consolation from her. He wanted it to hurt. She had no way in to his pain to comfort him but she navigated his moods and his deliberate distance, relentlessly easing her way through with talk of Australia and how it had always been her dream to go. It was a lie. But she didn’t care any more; she had to do something radical enough to shake them out of this gloom or they might as well all jump from Beachy Head.

  She’d snapped one morning last summer when he’d returned from eight weeks at the lighthouse and couldn’t break a smile for her. ‘If you don’t do something now, you’re going to destroy your family that’s alive and loves you, for the family that has been dead for eight years!’ It was said in anger, primed by months of frustration. Instead of raging back at her or stomping from the cottage, he’d caught his breath and stared at her in shock.

  ‘Why throw us away?’ she’d continued. ‘We haven’t done anything but love you.’

  And that was it. The turning point had been reached, no doubt aided by Luc’s chilling discovery of a body being knocked between some rocks in shallow waters at the base of the 400-foot cliff. He’d discovered it the previous morning on his way home from the lighthouse on a rostered day off. It had shaken him – as it would anyone – but it had particularly jolted him from a stupor of self-pity. Luc was disturbed by the tragedy and having to pull the body to shore alone. He had been glad it wasn’t Eddie. ‘You’re right. None of this is your or Harry’s fault.’

  ‘But we’re paying the price for what the Nazis did.’

  He’d held her then. Kissed her, hugged her, wept with her.

  ‘I won’t mention them again,’ he’d promised. ‘No, Luc. That’s not the answer. We have to change our lives. Have you heard anything I’ve been saying about Australia?’ He nodded. ‘All of it, but it’s so hard.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Harry and—’

  ‘Harry’s turned four. It makes no difference where he grows up, so long as he’s got two parents who love him and especially a father who’s engaged in his life.’

  ‘What about all your friends?’

  ‘We can write!’

  ‘Your grandparents are—’

  ‘Old. Yes, they’ll miss us terribly but they’d be the last people on earth to try to hold us back. Do you want this? Can you do it? Can you leave behind France, which you gaze out to every time you walk out of this door?’

  He’d nodded. ‘I have to.’ Her heart had swelled at his admission.

  ‘I think you do. I think everything must change. And you’re going to plant those seeds.’

  ‘Lisette—’

  ‘No buts! Listen to me. You might think yourself the world’s greatest lavender grower, but I’ve been doing a little research myself. Hear me out. The wild alpine lavender that you grew in the Luberon is forty degrees north, right?’

  He gave a wry shrug. ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I do. Now, this is important. There’s a tiny island off the mainland of Australia that’s called Tasmania. I doubt your thick French brain has ever heard of it.’ He’d laughed at her and she’d smirked that he’d taken the insult so well. This was the Luc she knew.

  ‘Go on, teach me,’ he’d said, amusement finally sparkling in those blue eyes of his.

  ‘Well, the land of norther
n Tasmania is forty degrees south.’

  He’d blinked, caught her meaning immediately and even though she’d begun reeling off all sorts of facts, she knew he wasn’t listening any longer. He’d walked over to the sink and stared out, thinking hard.

  ‘Tell me about the climate,’ he’d interrupted over her stream of information about places called Hobart, Launceston and Devonport, and facts about convicts and sea all around.

  ‘Well, forty degrees south … it’s going to mimic the Luberon. Australia House tells me we can count on cold winters, wet springs and a long, hot and extremely dry summer.’

  ‘Height?’

  ‘Five foot four,’ she’d replied, and grinned with him.

  Lisette had then shrugged. ‘No idea. That’s important?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘I don’t,’ she replied breezily. ‘I think you French lavender growers are so pretentious and protective that you have to say something to isolate your flowers from us English growers.’

  He had chuckled. ‘Climate, altitude, latitude, longitude – it all comes together to form the perfect Lavandula angustifolia, he said in a derisive and lofty tone.

  ‘Well, three out of four isn’t half bad, surely?’

  ‘No, it’s not bad,’ he said, pecking her lips gently. ‘You never fail to surprise me,’ he said, kissing her again. ‘You’re not just a face, as you English say.’ She had to stifle the laugh. He’d pulled back to stare at her and she’d seen the love, and felt the relief like a warm tide through her. ‘I owe you so much.’

  ‘Then pay me,’ she’d pleaded. ‘Say yes. Let’s get the hell away from here and leave all of our bad memories – yours, mine, Britain’s, France’s – and go somewhere fresh and free of war for Harry’s sake. Let’s start our lives again, Luc. We’ll be strangers together and honour your family by planting your lavender seeds in the earth of Tasmania and we’ll raise our children on that earth and never regret we took the chance.’