Among the plane trees around the Fontaine Médicis, lovers sat on stiff-backed benches holding hands and doing other things, though kissing in public was still illegal, as was dancing, and considered an offence to all our boys who were locked up as POWs in the Reich.
Lots of people were about, even though the afternoon, now late, was grey and cold. The puppets fought, as they always did. Out on the rue de Médicis, a calliope played while roasted chestnuts were sold near that gate and the trade was brisk. Around me, there were German officers and other ranks, most of them with their Parisiennes. Strolling flics were about, Gestapo gumshoes also, French ones too, and collabos, maybe even a few black-market dealers, but I saw no sign of my sister. Perhaps she’d not been able to make it. This I couldn’t bear to think, and with hands in the pockets of my coat, I started for the palais, only to remember that the Luftwaffe had taken it over and that it was not permitted to go near it.
But suddenly, I felt her slip an arm through mine, and she gave it a squeeze, was breathless, and said, ‘So you got through it, eh, but me … Ah, I didn’t think you would, but am sorry to have kept you waiting. Were you apprehensive about me?’
‘How long have you been living like this?’
‘Long enough. Look, it doesn’t matter. One lives the way one has to.’
It was an old argument. ‘Is everything set for tonight?’ I asked.
‘Yes, of course, but we have to talk, just you and me. With that thing inside you, it’s impossible. You do understand?’
We were near the greenhouses and the school of mines at the back of the gardens. ‘What, exactly, is it that you want to say?’
‘Schiller and Dupuis will guess who the father is, so what’s the sense of your hanging on to it? You’ll only have the child in prison. It’ll die anyways.’
‘But …’
‘Look, I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to live with the lie of your illness. A tumour, Lily. Cancer of the womb. André has agreed, under duress of course, since he’s holier than the holy, but has finally seen the sense of what I’ve told him at that office of his.’
Me, I couldn’t believe what was happening and finally blurted, ‘But what am I to do about the children, the house, my rabbits, the chickens, and the potatoes I still have to lift?’
Anything but what I really wanted to say, but it was Nini who insists. ‘Go and see Jules at the Jeu de Paume. Tell him you haven’t been feeling well and that you’re afraid it might be bad news.’
‘He won’t care, why should he? Besides, the children already know I’m expecting and that it’s Tommy’s child.’
‘Must you confide everything in them?’
‘One has to trust if one is to gain their loyalty.’
‘Schiller must see you talking to Jules. He must be made to think …’
I pulled her round to face me. ‘What?’ I demanded.
Nini never backed off when cornered. ‘Why do you think Schiller and Dupuis have left you at the house? They hope you’ll lead them to us. We were just lucky that the rafle in my street happened at the same time and that they didn’t know about it.’
‘But they know where you live. They can pick you up at any time. And Michèle and Henri-Philippe.’
Again, there was a look in her dark eyes that I’d never seen before, and I wondered if that was what the Occupation had done to her.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you because I must. There’s to be another big auction next Wednesday. Göring’s flying in for it. Schiller must think we’re going to try to knock it off, so we keep him thinking that. You go to see Jules, and Schiller sees you with him, and it all makes sense-you’re sizing things up for us, and he thinks he can use that stuff to bait the trap while we go off to blow up some other trains. It’s neat, Lily. Only, you absolutely have to have that tumour removed. You’ll be away from it all. He can’t connect you with any of it, and we’re safe as well.’
Bien sûr, I had thought of the dilemma. A child without a father is one thing, but a lot of women had those now, and I didn’t want to lose this one. Suddenly, it meant more to me than anything, and I said, ‘I want to talk to Tommy first. It’s as much his as mine.’
Gripping my hands, she told me that he mustn’t know, that we could always make another, that the war wouldn’t last forever, that the Russians had surrounded the Sixth Army on the outskirts of Stalingrad. ‘It’s happening, Lily. The end’s in sight.’
‘Dmitry …’
She turned away from me. ‘Yes, I know. Tommy’s told me. He was very useful, and I don’t honestly know what we’re going to do without him. I really don’t. Organize something, I guess. Always it’s me who has to cover things up and organize something to replace them.’
Turning back, she kissed me on both cheeks and said, ‘Now cheer up and I’ll take you to see that husband of yours who’s in bed with the Occupier. Perhaps if we’re seen together with him it will help the cause. Two sisters, yes. The nearness of the death of one of them, the anxiety, and a few tears, of course.’
There are only fragments of memory, glimpses of that business. Simone was so upset. For her, to lose a child like that was to commit murder. André and she argued, but I said so little. In the end, I think it was done at about two thirty a.m. I hadn’t even made out a will, had so little of my own, but what I did have, I wanted to see properly disposed of. When I came out of the anaesthetic, who should be sitting there but Dupuis, holding a large glass bottle in which a tumour was submerged in formalin.
Promptly, I threw up and passed out, but he was still there when I came round. ‘You’re full of surprises,’ he said.
I could hardly speak. ‘Have I been out for long?’
‘In and out for three days. It’s Wednesday.’
I shut my eyes and tried to slip back into unconsciousness, but his words, when they came, were of no help. ‘It’s not the length of time, madame. That’s only understandable. It’s the things you inadvertently said.’
‘What things?’
‘Rudi Swartz, madame? Orders for the Russian front?’
Me, I had to turn away, couldn’t bring myself to face him, though I had to say, ‘Poor Rudi, he was so terrified of being sent there.’
‘But there were no such orders.’
I had to face him, I needed to. ‘Weren’t there? Rudi thought so. Please don’t tell me he was mistaken.’
‘A cave, madame? “The cave,” you said and repeated it several times. Also, “the farm.” By that, I presume you meant your mother’s.’
‘I really wouldn’t know, Inspector. I’ve always wanted a farm of my own. It’s been a lifelong dream.’
‘And an emerald-and-diamond tiara? That of the Empress Eugénie? Has that also been a lifelong dream of yours?’
To this I could say nothing. Hunched in that chair of his, sucking on a cigarette, he took a moment before adding, ‘“Flames,” Madame? “Screams in the night. Must get away. Mustn’t let them find me here.”’
‘I was delirious, in shock, and in a great deal of pain.’
‘Bien sûr, but you kept asking God to forgive you for something. God and Thomas Carrington. “Tommy,” I believe it was.’ He consulted his little black notebook. ‘Yes, here it is,’ and he showed it to me. Tommy … Tommy, forgive me.
I think it was on the 18th or 19th of January 1943 that they took me to the farm. The Russians, I know, had lifted the nine-hundred-day siege of Leningrad. The German Sixth Army at Stalingrad had all but been destroyed. No one in the car said much. I think they were all wondering what it must mean for them.