She rented the second house she saw and arranged to move in in a week. Then she hired a maid to live with them, a very pleasant elderly black woman who cooked and loved children. She shopped for the girls and herself and they began to look as they once had. She even bought them some new toys, since they had brought none with them. And she was grateful for every single moment of activity and all the arrangements for moving. It helped to distract her from thoughts of Nick, at least for a few minutes at a time, but there were times when she really thought she wouldn't survive it. She kept wondering what he was doing, if he had gone to Boston and gotten John back. Her mind kept drifting back to the ship and it was almost as though that had been the bulk of her lifetime. It was impossible to believe that it had been only thirteen days. Again and again, she had to remind herself that she should not be thinking of Nick, but of Armand.
She wrote to her husband and told him the address of the new house, and two weeks after they moved there, she got his first letter. It was brief, because he said that he was in a hurry when he wrote it, and half of what he had written had been blacked out by the censors. But at least she knew that he was busy and well, and he hoped that she and the girls were comfortable among their old friends. He asked her to give his best to Eleanor, and she knew that the President was also included in the greeting.
But all in all, for Liane and the girls it was a long, lonely summer. All of their friends were away from Washington, in Cape Cod and Maine and other places. The Roosevelts were, as always, in Campobello, and it was September before they saw a soul. But long before that, Liane thought she would lose her mind trying to entertain the girls, and keep her mind off Nick. Every day she hoped he'd call, or that she would find a letter despite the vow of silence they'd made. Instead, every few weeks she received one from Armand, in which he told her almost nothing, and most of the letter would be blacked out by the Nazi censors. She felt as though she and the girls were living in a vacuum, and often wondered for how long she could bear it.
And the world news only made her feel that she had left Europe to come to another planet. Three thousand miles away the war raged on, and here people bought their groceries, and drove their cars, and went to movies, while her husband existed amidst the Nazis in Paris, and the Germans continued to ravage Europe. And on the first page of a Washington paper, was carried the story that Tiffany and Co. in New York, the jewelers, had moved uptown to fifty-seventh street after thirty-four years in their old location. The new building was a marvel, with air conditioning, as they called it, which kept the store cool no matter what the temperature outside. With that item on page one, Liane wondered if the world had gone mad, or she had.
On the seventeenth of August, Hitler had declared a blockade of British waters, and Armand had phrased it in such a way in his letters, that the censors hadn't touched it. But Liane had heard the news by then anyway. And on August 20, she read in the papers, Churchill had made a deeply moving speech to the House of Commons. Three days later London was bombed and the blitz began, with the shelling of houses and streets and people night by night until Londoners spent more time in bomb shelters than their homes. And by the time Elisabeth and Marie-Ange went back to their old school, the English were attempting to get their children out of London. Houses were falling, with entire families killed every night. Several ships had already left Britain, sending children to Canada for the duration of the war.
And then finally, in mid-September, Eleanor called her, in her familiar, reedy voice, and Liane almost cried with relief, it was so good to hear her.
“I was so pleased to get your letter in Campobello, my dear. But what a ghastly crossing you had on the Deauville.” They talked about it for a while, and it only fanned Liane's thoughts of Nick. And she sat alone in the garden for a long time after she hung up, thinking of him, and wondering how he was. She wondered how long she would feel that way, as though she were only half alive, as she pined for him. It had been two months since he had left her on the train in Grand Central Station and still he lived on in her heart. Every article she read, every thought, every letter, every day, seemed somehow to relate back to thoughts of him. It was a private hell she lived in, and she knew that his life had to be much the same. But she did not dare to call him to see how he was. They had promised not to call each other, and she knew she had to be strong. And she was, but she cried more easily than she had in the past, and the girls frequently found her testy. The benevolent maid they'd hired told them that it was because their father was away, and their mother would be happy again once he came home. And the girls agreed that they would all be happier when the war was over.
Liane had no social life in Washington at all. The people who had invited her so constantly when they were stationed there, no longer knew whether or not to invite her. She was a woman alone, which made it awkward for them, and they promised themselves they would invite her eventually, but as yet no one had. Except, finally, Eleanor, who asked her to a small family dinner in the last week of September. Liane felt relieved when she arrived at the White House in a cab, and saw the familiar portico. She longed for intelligent conversation with someone. And she wanted to hear all the war news from Eleanor. She enjoyed the dinner to no end until Franklin took her aside quietly after dessert and spoke frankly to her.
“I've heard about Armand, my dear. And I'm very, very sorry.” For a moment her heart almost stopped. What had they heard that she didn't know? Had the Germans ravaged Paris after all? Was Armand dead? Was there a secret communiqué of which she was not aware? She grew deathly pale and the President touched her arm. “I understand now why you left him.”
“But I didn't leave him … not in that sense. …” She looked at him, confused. “I left because Paris was occupied and he thought we'd be safer here. I would have stayed if he had let me.”
The President's face went taut. “Do you realize that he's working with Pétain, in collaboration with the Germans?”
“I … yes … I knew that he was going to stay in Paris with—”
But Roosevelt cut her off. “Do you understand what that means, Liane? The man is a traitor to France.” He said it like a death knell over Armand, and Liane felt tears sting her eyes. How could she defend him? She could not tell anyone what she knew, not even this man. She could do nothing to clear her husband's name. And she hadn't realized that news of it would reach the States. She looked helplessly at the President.
“France is occupied, Mr. President. These are not … normal times.” But her voice faltered.
“Those faithful to France have fled. Some of them are in North Africa now. They're equally aware that the country is occupied, but they are not working for Pétain. Liane, you might as well be married to a Nazi. Can you accept that?”
“I'm married to a man I love, whom I have been married to for eleven years.” And for whom she had just given up someone she cared for deeply.
“You are married to a traitor.” And it was clear by the tone of his voice that she was now considered a traitor by association. As long as he had thought she had left Armand for good, then it was all right. But if she insisted on standing by Armand, then she was as guilty as he. It was written all over his face and in the way he said good night to her.
Eleanor did not call her again, and within a week word was all over Washington that Armand was a traitor to France, and working for Pétain and the Nazis. She was shocked at the gossip that she heard. Two or three troublemakers went out of their way to call and tell her. And she wasn't sure what she was more grief-stricken over, the gossip about Armand being a Nazi, or the news that on October 2, German U-boats sank the Empress of Britain, a British ship carrying a shipload of children to safety in Canada. She felt sick as she remembered the Queen Victoria and the bodies floating in the water a few months before, and now the bodies would be those of innocent children.