At Long Last Love

by Milly Adams

  She didn’t want to know how many days or weeks he had been here. There were no more taps.

  She dozed, her head bursting, her chest rattling. The shapes returned, coming closer, then receding. Closer, then receding. Were they real? But no, they were floating. She needed to drink. She tried not to pee, because she must retain liquid. She moved to the far corner. Peed. Returned, feeling her way around the damp, freezing walls. There was no sound for what seemed like hours. The boots came again, nearer, nearer. They stopped. Was it at her door?

  There was a clanking. Dim light fell into the cell. She squinted, hiding her eyes with her hand. Then a shape loomed, a real shape. She laughed. It was a strange sound. Then a second shape. She said, in French, ‘Good, you’re real – just men.’

  They said nothing. Simply walked her from the cell, almost like gentlemen. Almost, but their grip was savage. Sarah walked in bare feet. They had taken her shoes from her when she was processed. She was so cold that her feet were numb. They marched along the corridor, and their boots should be striking sparks on the stone, so violently did they slam them down. She could barely keep up.

  They took the basement steps two at a time. She stubbed her toe, but her numb feet felt nothing. She was panting, her head was bursting, her chest rattling; she was coughing and she couldn’t put her hand in front of her mouth. How rude, they’d catch her germs. Good. Very good. She coughed again.

  Another guard stood at the top of the stairs and was doing what guards do: standing firm in front of a heavy metal door, his legs wide, his arms folded, his rifle slung over his shoulder.

  ‘So this is the bitch who missed Gerhardt? Silly bugger tripped, so make sure you tell her or she’ll think she’s a good shot.’

  Sarah didn’t react. She was Cécile and knew no German, or English.

  ‘Open the door, and shut your mouth,’ one of her guardians grunted.

  ‘Yes, Sergeant.’ The guard stood to attention, drawing back the bolt on the door.

  The sergeant said, ‘Check cell four. He’ll be dead by now. Cracked skull. He should have answered the questions with a civil tongue.’

  Was this for her benefit? Again Sarah didn’t react. She was marched along the corridor. She looked down. Her stubbed toe was smearing blood on the flagstones. Good, something for them to clean up. She still felt nothing. Her feet were white. Her mother would not put red and white flowers in the same vase. Blood and bandages. Death.

  No. She was Cécile. Her mother lived in Limoges and would not, perhaps, have said that.

  When the feeling returned to her feet, the pain would begin, but pain didn’t kill.

  Sarah walked as though she had a pile of books on her head, as their mother had said. That had got Kate laughing as they tried it, but Kate was always laughing, her blonde hair flicking, her eyes blue like their mother’s, alive with such energy. Her father had come in and they’d stopped. Had they been frightened of him? Or was it just that it was a rule not to laugh, not to disturb, not to make waves? Had it been her own rule with Lizzy? Was she her father in disguise? Was it someone she really wanted to be? No, she was Cécile, from Limoges.

  It grew lighter as they climbed yet more stairs, and this time the door was unguarded. ‘Open it,’ the sergeant instructed the private. She thought they were Wehrmacht, but wasn’t sure because her brain wouldn’t work; it was crackling with dehydration, not fear. Of course not fear.

  The light was bright in this corridor, streaming in through large barred windows. They continued, clump-clump. Where were the sparks from their boots? Kate could have made a song of it. Go on, Katie Watson, make a song. Once upon a time Sarah had danced when Katie sang. When had it stopped? Ah, when her father didn’t like it, but it hadn’t stopped Katherine, Kate, Katie, lovely Katie. Yes, she used to call her that, but her father didn’t like it, after her mother died.

  Was it because her little sister was too like her mother? Did it remind him of her? Did he have to squash it out of lovely Katie, the part of her that was full of joy? Is that what she, Sarah, had done too? Is it what she was doing to her lovely daughter?

  Her legs were tired now. Sarah just wanted to sag and let them carry her. Why not indeed? Why not? Because she was Cécile from Limoges and she didn’t know Katie, or Kate, or Elizabeth or Lizzy. She pictured the map, the streets, the house where she had lived, the canary she had kept in a cage in the hamlet near Limoges. You had to put a cover over it, to stop it singing, and clean it out every few days. How many days? Three? She couldn’t remember. And the butcher’s in …

  They stopped outside a door, a white door; no, a cream door. The sergeant knocked. ‘Enter,’ the man inside said in French.

  They entered. An officer – was he Wehrmacht too perhaps? Were any of them? She couldn’t think. He sat at a desk, his back to a barred window. The light shone in, too bright. Which way did the window face: south, north? She didn’t know, so how could she work out the sun’s position and therefore the time, if she was to escape? Was that snow on the roof opposite? He sat back, looking at her as she stood between the guards. Chin up, she told herself. Balance books. She smiled.

  Surprised, he returned the smile and gestured to the chair on Sarah’s side of the desk. ‘Please, Mademoiselle.’

  She sat, balancing the books on her head. Coffee steamed in a silver pot on a tray. There were two cups. If offered one, she would accept, though she should spit in it. She’d prefer water, as coffee was dehydrating, but she loved it, as long as it was real. She saw her reflection in the pot; it made her look like a gargoyle, but that was because it was a curved surface. She actually looked like a queen: upright, balanced. No books wobbled. She sat even straighter.

  He looked at the tray. ‘Would you care for a cup?’

  She nodded. He waved his hand towards the coffee pot. ‘Perhaps you would pour me one too.’

  She reached out and poured. Her hand was shaking, but not through fear, just cold, that was all. She felt the guards move closer, and coughed. Were they about to knock it from her hand, scald her? She didn’t flinch, but passed a cup to the major, her shaking hand causing it to spill into the saucer. She placed it on the pristine blotting pad in front of him, then handed him a serviette that was folded on the tray. ‘I’m sorry, I’m a little cold and therefore shivering. You might like to place your cup on the serviette to absorb the coffee, or it will drip on your uniform.’ She sat back, the books still there. She stayed quite still.

  He nodded, reaching for the serviette. His uniform sleeve rode up. She read the time: three o’clock, but which day?

  She also took a serviette and placed it on her lap, lifted her own cup and drank. It was real coffee, and not too hot. It wouldn’t burn, if knocked from her. She downed it almost in one and poured herself another. The major watched, smiling. ‘Ah, we have a coffee lover. Yes, I hear that coffee is in short supply in England.’

  Sarah shrugged. ‘I do not know, I am Cécile Lamont, and have no idea why I am here.’

  He took a cigarette from a silver box on his desk and lit it, smiling through the smoke. ‘Oh, both you and I know why. You fired at one of my soldiers, and missed. You were not well trained.’

  Ah, but Sarah was, and would remember every lesson.

  He said, ‘We need to chat until we reach the truth, Cécile Lamont, or, sadly, my men will have to take you across the road to our less respectful comrades.’

  Sarah knew he meant the Gestapo. She shrugged again. ‘Ah, the truth? You clearly do not recognise it when you hear it, Herr Major. I am Cécile Lamont, from Limoges, and was frightened by your men, so I defended myself.’

  ‘With a forbidden revolver.’

  ‘Well, a girl out on her own is increasingly in peril, it seems.’ Would she be here if she hadn’t used her revolver? But if she hadn’t caused a diversion, the other two might also have been caught. Do the arithmetic, that’s what her father had always said.

  He smiled again, sipping his coffee. He stared from one guard to the other, turned s
lightly to look out of the window. She checked his rotational silver calendar. It was 2nd December. He turned and slammed his cup down into the saucer, shattering both, then leaning across and striking the cup from Sarah’s hand. She had been expecting it, and just stared at him as the cup, half full of coffee, hit the sergeant.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘That means another cleaning bill. Not the first, I suspect. I am Cécile Lamont, from Limoges.’

  ‘Where in Limoges?’

  Sarah told him, describing the hamlet, the shop next to their small house, and the canary, knowing it all existed and had been lived in by Cécile’s family, now all dead, the house empty. ‘I cleaned it out every three days. Was that right? What would you have done?’

  The major nodded. The sergeant moved and dragged her head back by her hair. He spat in her face and released her.

  Sarah used the serviette to wipe her face. ‘Dear, dear,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you haven’t a canary.’

  There was another nod from the major. She braced herself, but all that happened was that the guards gripped her beneath the armpits, lifted her to her feet and marched her from the room. There was blood on the floorboards from her toe. They marched her back to her cell and flung her in, but they had forgotten to take the serviette from her, so she sat on it. It gave a modest warmth, but it was a huge victory. This was only the first skirmish in the battle, though.

  The next day they did not drink coffee. Later, she was dragged back to her cell, and Sarah reminded herself that pain could not kill her, as the throbbing of her ribs, and her jaw, and her head, where a clump of hair had been yanked out, threatened to make her groan aloud.

  Sarah tapped, ‘I am Cécile.’ There was no answer, and loneliness almost drowned her.

  Day followed day, and then she was dragged across the cobbled courtyard to the Gestapo, still without shoes. They interrogated her in a damp underground room, dimly lit. They showed her maps, wanted her to pinpoint where and who the members of the groups in her circuit were. ‘Their container dumps, their dropping zones.’

  ‘I am Cécile, from Limoges. I don’t know what you mean.’

  They shone the lamp into her eyes, like a spotlight. The tune ‘Jealousy’ began to play in her head and Kate danced, just for her. Sarah watched the fall and swing of her sister’s beautiful blonde hair, her wonderful face, which shone with a sort of joy, but not as it had been when she was a child, not nearly, for it cloaked a sort of nothingness. She looked harder now. Yes, she could see that inside there was nothing. What did that mean?

  On the fourth day the Gestapo had finished with her toes and started on her fingers. After an hour a guard held her hand, with its bleeding fingertips, out over the map. ‘Show me, tell me.’

  Sarah wouldn’t. ‘I am Cécile …’

  His fist swung and ‘Jealousy’ played again: the saxophone, the bass, the piano, and Kate’s voice, her dance, her partner. Was it Derek? No, of course not, he was missing; he was why she’d come, once upon a time, but … No, it was not Derek Baxter of Little Worthy; it was a young, young soldier. Sarah had watched him dance the tango with Kate in the Blue Cockatoo, harmonising the dance to the music. Did the young man still live? Please let him, so he could dance again.

  On the fifth, sixth or was it the hundredth day, she wished her body was still numb because she was wrong: pain was more than just pain, it was something that coiled, smothered and must surely kill, and she could no longer lift her head and had long ago let the books drop. Again, she was dragged across the road after a night spent in the cell, feeling at one moment the cold of the floor, the burning heat of her body, the pain, and spinning with Kate in the spotlight while people threw white and red roses.

  It was a different interrogator, a big man with stubble. He oozed even more hate than the others, and it burst from him, like a raging animal. ‘You lie,’ he roared.

  ‘I am Cécile from Limoges.’

  He slapped her with his great hairy hand. ‘You lie. You wouldn’t know the truth if it stared at you.’

  Suddenly Sarah was at Little Worthy. These hands and contorted face were her father’s, and these words too. Kate’s head had rocked back, as hers did. This man, this Gestapo slime, knew – just as all these men had – that she, Cécile Lamont, was lying. But now she saw Kate so clearly, and she wasn’t lying. Kate didn’t lie, ever. She never had. She had always braced her shoulders, held her head high and told the truth, just as her mother had always insisted.

  ‘Oh, Kate,’ Sarah whispered. ‘Oh, my dearest lonely Katie, who missed our mother, what have we done to you?’ For it was then, at that very moment, that her sister’s nothingness had begun.

  ‘What? What did you say?’ The man behind came to her side. She didn’t feel anything because she was not here; she was in Little Worthy, watching the hate and anger that had beaten against Kate. Through bruised, half-closed eyes Sarah looked up at the interrogator and round at the guards. Since she had been captured she had been amongst enemies, people who had no respect, people who thought the worst of her. Poor Kate had lived for years like this.

  The man was busy, his great hands bunched, but she felt nothing, because she was thinking of Kate, who had re-entered a world that thought her wanton, where respect lay dormant and contempt reigned. Why? Because a child born of rape had need of her.

  She gritted her teeth. ‘Bastards,’ she muttered. ‘You all are utter slime. You are …’ The map was held up. She shook her head.

  Later, with a nod of the head, she was taken away. Was it over? Would she be killed? At least Derek might come home; at least Kate would look after Lizzy, teach her to dance, to sing, to laugh, to live. It was more than she had done, so determined was she to destroy the gypsy in the child, the wildness, lest Lizzy became as Kate had been.

  She was flung in her cell. She lay there and, for some strange reason, she slept, and the pain flowed from her. It returned when the guards came for her yet again. She thought she couldn’t bear it, but she must, for as long as she could. Bernard would suspect that she had been taken; he would know she wouldn’t withstand too much, and would have enacted plans to disperse the group. But always it had been stressed that they must hold out for as long as possible.

  She was taken to yet somewhere else, a light, warm office. A Gestapo officer in a grey-green uniform sat behind the desk. How strange. Previously they had been in civilian suits. He smiled; again, how strange.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I am Major Fischer, and for you, Cécile Lamont, we have welcome news about Derek.’

  Sarah stared. Derek?

  ‘Ah, my dear Cécile, I will call you that, because you prefer it to your English name, but we have discovered that your Derek is in a Stalag. And I think, don’t you, that it would be good to save your husband’s life?’

  Derek? Her mind played with his name, much as her tongue played with the cuts in her mouth and the broken tooth. Somehow one couldn’t get away from something in the mouth. Her toes, her fingers, everything else – well, somehow they weren’t as bad. For some moments the major talked about Derek, how he was thin but well, how he sent his love.

  ‘You could save him so much pain before his death. You could, in fact, save his life completely, and be with him. We would sort out accommodation until the war’s end, after which Britain will be under German occupation. We would need something in return of course. You know what.’

  She stared. Derek? She tried to see his face. He was thin? There were his brown eyes, his mouth. How did he look, now that he was thin? She couldn’t think, couldn’t remember; nothing would stand still, or stay in her head.

  One of the guards gave her a glass of water. She held it with two hands and gulped it down, before it could be slapped from her. It wasn’t. She replaced the glass on the desk. Her hands shook so much it tumbled over. Her raw nail-less fingers left blood trails on the desk.

  She had come to save Derek. Now she could, and yes, she knew how. She would have to turn; glean information so that the Gestapo could h
aul in the whole circuit, and take over the transmitters to lodge misinformation, catching more agents as they arrived. But no, how could she? Yes … no. Her mouth was dry, her chest hurt, everything hurt. She couldn’t think.

  He talked details. She tried to listen. She tried to think. She argued with herself. Derek? He was alive? It wasn’t real. Nothing was real. She could hear her chest, feel the pain of her ribs, her cut lip, her black eye. Was her nose broken? Her ribs, her toes, her fingers … Her thoughts came and went. Derek? She couldn’t see him. She saw Katie dancing, and heard ‘Jealousy’ playing. She saw Lizzy skipping with Derek. She smiled. Once she had lived in that world. Her lip bled. She licked it.

  Derek? How could she let him die, when she had come to save him? But how could she kill Bernard? What about Pierre, Florian, Renée and all the others? They would be compromised, perhaps captured, certainly killed.

  In her cell that night Sarah thought about so much. Bernard and Derek. Derek and Bernard. Pierre, Arnaud, Florian, Renée, all of them. She told the major the next morning that she had made no decision. He returned her to her cell, without further hurt, but as he left he said, ‘Derek is not well. He has been hungry for so long. I advise you to save him quickly or it will be not at all, for he will not live.’

  Sarah shook her head. ‘How can I work with you? It is without honour.’ The next morning she was taken to another room, with a comfortable chair, even a camp bed on which she lay. For the rest of the day they fed her plain food that her stomach would accept, and water, lots of it. They gave her medicine for her cough, and cup after cup of coffee. They explained their needs again, and talked of Derek’s failing health. Her mind was too tired, it couldn’t think; but overnight, back in her cell, it began to work.

  The next day Sarah spoke to the guards. Her shoes were brought and placed inside the cell door. She forced the shoes on and walked unaided, the guards keeping pace, but not manhandling her. She crossed the courtyard and climbed the stairs, holding on to her thoughts this time.

  The guards took her to the same office. The same Major Fischer was there. He poured coffee for her, and passed a plate heaped with biscuits.