Escape from Passion

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1942Fleur came from the room where the Comtesse de Sardou lay dead. After the heavy warm atmosphere of the sick room the air in the passage was chill but invigorating like a drink of cold water. She went to one of the windows and pulled back the thick curtains. Outside in the garden the first rays of a pale sun were dispersing the white ground mist which covered the green lawns. Fleur sighed and leant her hot forehead for a moment against the grey stone. There were dark lines of sleeplessness beneath her eyes, but she felt strangely at peace. Away on the horizon she saw a wisp of black smoke, dark against the hazy blue of the sky. She knew that it was from the destruction of yesterday. All night its fire had glowed fiercely red, the result of Royal Air Force machines swooping low over the country early in the afternoon. She had heard and felt the bombs that had fallen on the factory nearly ten miles away, a factory in which Frenchmen were turning out hundreds of lorries week after week for the use of their German masters. The house had shivered and rattled at the impact, but the Comtesse, when she had been told what was happening, had murmured, “It is good. Only the British can bring us freedom.” “Hush, madame,” Marie, her lady’s maid, had cautioned her. “It is not wise to say such things.” But Fleur had smiled proudly. Yes, it was her countrymen who would bring freedom to the cowed and conquered French nation. Now, looking at that thick pall of smoke, she thought of Lucien and thought how he too had ridden triumphantly through the skies only to fall, as some of those brave men had fallen yesterday, broken and burning to the ground. At the memory Fleur’s eyes filled with tears. ‘It is odd,’ she thought, ‘at this moment for me to be crying for Lucien and not for his mother.’ It had been almost like a stage death, Fleur found herself thinking. The fine aristocratic old lady with her white hair and finely chiselled features, a perfect portrait of the Grande Dame, the Priest beside her in his vestments and the grave grey-haired doctor. Marie was sobbing audibly at the foot of the curtained bed in which generations of the Sardou family had come into this life and had departed from it. Yet in the picture, unreal and slightly theatrical, there had been nothing to fear, nothing even of desperate unhappiness and misery. Only now it was over was Fleur conscious of an immeasurable personal relief. It was as if some part of her had been tense and nerved for something horrible had shrunk in sensitive anticipation from a terror that had never come. She had never seen anyone die and the thought of death was inexpressibly frightening until she found that it was nothing more than the closing of the eyes and the folding of the hands. But death was not always like that. It was not how Lucien had died, yet perhaps for him it was quick and clean suddenly in the battle and in a moment of triumph. For they had learnt that he had shot down his enemy, shot him down in flames and then met a similar fate himself. Lucien, gay, excited, laughing and falling out of the sunlit sky on to the earth of his beloved France. Fleur stirred and, turning from the window, walked along the passage to her room. Even after nearly three years it was hard for her to think of Lucien for any length of time without feeling that agony of physical loss that at first had seemed almost unbearable. In her own room she bathed her face and started to take off the crumpled frock that she had worn all night. While she was still half-undressed there came a tap at the door. It was Marie. In her hand she held a glass containing some whitish liquid. “What is that?” Fleur asked. “Monsieur le Docteur has sent it,” Marie replied. “You will drink it and sleep. You need sleep, ma pauvre, we all do.” Wearily Fleur let her last remaining garments drop to the floor and then slipping over her head the soft silk nightgown that Marie held out for her, climbed into the lavender-scented, hand-embroidered linen. “Drink this, ma petite,” Marie said soothingly and without argument Fleur swallowed the draught. It tasted slightly gritty and bitter so that she made an involuntary grimace as she handed the empty glass back to Marie and then snuggled down on her pillows. “I will call you later, mademoiselle.” Marie pulled the heavy curtains over the open window. The room faded into a grey twilight and she went softly out and closed the door behind her. Fleur closed her eyes. It was sheer ecstasy to feel her muscles relax and her limbs sink into the softness of the featherbed. She felt sleep creeping over her in soft warm waves, encroaching, retreating and each time a little more of her consciousness was enveloped. * She awoke suddenly with a start to find that Marie was standing by her bed with a tray on which there was a steaming cup of coffee and some biscuits. Fleur rubbed her eyes and sat up. “I have had a marvellous sleep, Marie. What time is it?” “Nearly three o’clock.” “As late as that? Oh, you should not have let me sleep for so long.” Marie smiled, her old eyes were swollen from crying but then she looked, Fleur thought, happier and less stricken than she had earlier in the day. “What has been happening?” “We have taken Madame down to the Chapel. She will lie there tonight and tomorrow and the day after will be internment.” Fleur sat up and put out her hand for the coffee. Then she gave a little exclamation. “But Marie! This is our best coffee from our store and Madame’s biscuits!” “Why not?” Marie asked defiantly. “What are we keeping them for? For those Germans? For those cousins who could not even come to receive her last blessing? No! You eat them, mam’selle, she would like you to have them. For the others, let them enjoy their ersatz.” Marie almost spat out the words and her old hands were trembling. “We must not condemn Madame’s relations unheard,” Fleur said reprovingly. “Perhaps they could not come here as permits from unoccupied territory are difficult to obtain.” “They have never tried to come,” Marie said, “not all this time since Monsieur Lucien has been gone. But now that they are sure there are pickings, you will see they will gather round like vultures ready for the feast.” “What do you mean?” Fleur asked. “The doctor notified them weeks ago that Madame was ill, but there was no reply. Have you heard now that someone is arriving?” Marie shook her head. “But they will come all the same,” she remarked. “And only you and I to receive them,” Fleur said, dropping her chin reflectively on her hands. “I shall have to go away, Marie. It is all very well to deceive the Bosche but the family will not be so easily taken in.” “But where will you go, mademoiselle?” “I don’t know.” Fleur reached out her hand and took one of the sweet biscuits sprinkled with sugar that had been kept especially for Madame during all these months of privation. But, although Marie might hide biscuits and brandy and other little delicacies to which Madame had been accustomed, she could not hide human beings and Fleur realised for the first time how dangerous her position was. The months had gone by like a dream, smoothly and uneventfully. The Germans had come to the house, it was true, but Madame had dealt with them, had made her own explanations and had granted their demands with a cool dignified disdain more insulting than abuse. The Château was off the beaten track, they had not been required to billet men or Armies and they had not been molested in any way save that a certain part of the farm produce was removed, the car that had belonged to Lucien was taken from the garage and various farm implements were commandeered without explanation or excuse. Otherwise the ways of the household had continued uninterrupted, except that at the back of their minds there was that fear, unexpressed but nevertheless as real as if each knew that they were being watched by some animal, crouched and waiting to spring. It was there, always there, never for a moment could one escape it. Even locked in her own bedroom two floors up in the Château and in the middle of the night, Fleur must take the wireless set from its hiding place, put it under the bedclothes and there listen in. Sometimes she chided herself for being so very careful, yet she well knew that it was not cowardice but a simple realisation that they were surrounded by the enemy, that every wall had ears and that the slightest slip might bring death and destruction not only to herself but to those others who loved and housed her. “We must think, Marie,” she said now. “We must think of something. In the meantime I will get up and dress.” She finished her coffee, drinking it slowly, savouring every mouthful. It was a long time since she had tasted anything so good. It was delicious. And the biscuits too, how she craved at times for something sweet! Marie pulled back the curtains and the afternoon sun, hot and golden, came streaming in. “There have been no aeroplanes this afternoon?” Marie shook her head. “None,” she replied, “but Fabian came up from the village a little while ago and he told me that those devils had two down yesterday and one fell about ten miles from here in a field. The villagers ran to help, but it was too late. The brave men were burned, all save one, and the Germans took him away to hospital.” “Was he badly hurt?” “Fabian did not know, but I would much rather be in the hands of le bon Dieu than at the mercy of those cochons.” Fleur swept back the hair from her eyes. For the thousandth time she wondered whether she would have preferred Lucien to have been a prisoner or to have been certain of his safe keeping, as Marie put it, in the hands of le bon Dieu. Stories of the prisoners being hungry and without heat or the proper clothing had been whispered over France after the departure of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk. But now, if one could believe such reports, things were better and there was always a chance that the French prisoners might be repatriated. Yet it was a slender hope as so very few had come back. There was a great deal of talk, a great deal of unquenchable optimism but nothing happened. Perhaps things were best as they were. But it was hard to be certain when one thought of Lucien, shot down that first fortnight in September 1939, when the world had hardly grasped the fact that hostilities had begun or that the last war to end all wars, which had slaughtered the flower of the European nations, had been a failure. In the first fortnight Fleur could remember, as vividly as if it was still happening, that moment of incredulous surprise, a moment more of astonishment than of agony, when she had heard that Lucien had been killed flying over the Maginot Line. It was then that the coldness between herself and Lucien’s mother had broken and the barriers had fallen. The two women had wept together, united by an agony of loss as they could not have had Lucien lived. Strange now to think how frightened she had been of the Comtesse and yet nothing in Fleur’s life had prepared her for someone like Lucien’s mother. Now, at last, she could understand what had seemed to be the mystery surrounding her own French grandmother, after whom she was named, and could realise why her mother had always spoken of her with what amounted to reverence rather than affection. Aristocrats! It was impossible, Fleur thought, for her or any of her generation to emulate the dignity, the poise and the composure of such women. ‘We do not have the leisure to be graceful and calm,’ she thought once. ‘So we have to grasp greedily at everything we want in case someone else gets it first.’ That made her think of Sylvia. Sylvia, with her red-painted nails, her red curving mouth and her bold eyes. Sylvia, slopping about the house until luncheontime in a tattered tawdry dressing gown and an old pair of slippers with worn down heels. Sylvia, blowsy untidy and sometimes dirty and yet always triumphantly beautiful with a lewd lustfulness that could not be ignored, flamboyant, gaudy and yet desirable. Fleur could still shudder at the agony of the days when her father had first brought Sylvia home. When she had laughed at the decorations and at the treasures tender with childish memories, when she had turned the place upside down, filling it with her mocking laughter, her lipstick-stained cigarettes and her noisy rollicking friends. Impossible to believe that any man could put such a woman in her mother’s place and yet, despite all her antagonism, despite what was a bitter live hatred, Fleur could understand a little of her father’s besotted infatuation. Everything that was fastidious and decent within herself was revolted by her stepmother, but then she could not help seeing Sylvia’s attractions, the attractions of an animal, but so obvious that they could not be ignored. At first Fleur had been bewildered, had withdrawn into an antagonistic reserve and then, when she realised the depth of Sylvia’s depravity she stood aghast, not for herself but for her father. It was only slowly that she began to notice and to understand. She had met a man who liked her and whom she brought to her home. Fleur was at first deceived by Sylvia’s acceptance of him and the charm with which she entertained him. Then, when the man himself began to make many hesitant excuses and to avoid her, first shamefacedly and then self-consciously Fleur realised what had happened. She could always remember walking right out of the house into a storm of teeming rain, tramping blindly along the cliffs, a mortal sickness making her oblivious of her surroundings and her soaked clothes. She stayed on at home because despite all his weaknesses she loved her father. Arthur Garton was a clever man as far as literature was concerned, as regards women he was a fool. He retired from the family business soon after he was forty-five and then settled down to write and to play golf, building himself a house bordering the links at Seaford. He was happy there, looking out over the downs, writing his books comfortably before his own fireside and trying all the time to improve his handicap. After Fleur’s mother had died he might have continued the even tenor of his ways until he was an old man had he not met Sylvia. Sylvia was looking for someone to pay her bills, someone weak and idealistic like Arthur Garton to give her a roof over her head. It was all too easy. They were married just a month after they had first met and Fleur was told only after the Ceremony had taken place. It was too late then for her to protest and too late for her even to remind her father of the woman who had given him twenty years of her life and who had died loving him. Sylvia saw to that. Sylvia was clever at anticipating danger and at turning it aside before it harmed her. Yet after four years of being married to Arthur Garton she had grown careless. She underestimated him and underestimated too, the essential decency of a gentleman. When he found out for certain what he must have suspected for a long time, Arthur Garton went for a long swim early one morning. It was August and there was nothing unusual in seeing a man leave his clothes in a neat pile on the stony beach at Seaford and strike out into the English Channel. He left no note behind, no farewells and to the unimaginative world it was an accident. Only Fleur was certain of the truth for it was at least ten years since her father had bathed in the sea. It was just before this happened that she had met Lucien. She had met him when she was staying in London with a school friend. He had been introduced to her casually and, yet the moment their hands met and Lucien was bowing with that graceful inimitable inclination of the head that was characteristic of his race, Fleur had known. She had felt something vivid and alive rise up in her throat, almost threatening to choke her, she had felt as if her eyes were shining like beacons that the message they carried must convey itself to him. Perhaps he had felt her fingers tremble, perhaps he too had known in that moment the wonder and beauty of a springing flame that would not be denied. It was a very short time before they acknowledged their love, before they clung together in ecstasy that was all the more poignant because Lucien was going away. He must return to France. He was an airman, he had come over to England on a mission to the Air Ministry. Now he must return and make his report. “When shall I see you again?” “Soon – very very soon, my darling.” “But when?” she had insisted. He had shrugged his shoulders and then, tipping back her head, he had answered her question with kisses. It was impossible at such a moment to believe that Fate could separate them or that they could be apart for long. Lucien had gone away and almost immediately after he had left, when she returned to Seaford, her father was drowned. Fleur had been frantic, so frantic that she had been almost deranged in her anxiety to leave the house that she had once called home, the house that sheltered now the woman she knew was her father’s murderess. She had packed feverishly. Without a word to anyone she had crossed the Channel and gone, white-faced and driven by a strong need that was almost beyond fear, unannounced to Lucien’s home. And he had been glad to see her. If he had been surprised, as his mother had been, at the unconventionality of it all, he did not show it, his expression and his words bore no trace of reproach. He had held her close, he had promised that they should be married and she had been utterly and completely content, caught up in a rapture that was beyond words. They had been together exactly twelve hours in the Château before Lucien was recalled. Neither Fleur nor his mother had been perturbed. They had paid little heed to the rumours and troubles of international relations so that, when France and England finally declared war on Germany, it came like a bombshell. Only then did they begin to understand what it was going to mean to Lucien and to them. A fortnight after war was declared Lucien de Sardou was killed. * Fleur fastened on her wristwatch and rose to her feet. “I am ready, Marie. Let’s go downstairs.” “You will come and see Madame?” “Of course,” Fleur answered, her voice softening, “but first I want to pick some flowers, the white roses that she loved so much.” The young girl and the old woman walked down the passage and as there came the sound of a motor car approaching the Château on the long gravel drive, which was now sadly in need of repair. They both with one accord stood still. Who was it? Their eyes met and they could see each other’s fear. Then Fleur moved towards the window that looked out over the front door. The car slowly encircled the sweep in front of the house. Instinctively Fleur reached out her hand and took Marie’s, her fingers, hard and strong clung to the older woman’s and the car drawing up at the front door belonged unmistakably to the Germans. They stood there as if they were paralysed as a uniformed soldier jumped smartly out on to the gravel and opened a door at the back of the car. A figure descended, they could see him distinctly, short and squat and wearing dark civilian clothes. He turned to say a few words to some hidden occupant of the car and then, as he raised his hand, they heard his voice ring out – “Heil Hitler!” There came the echo – “Heil Hitler!” and from the depths of the Château the clanging of the front door bell.