Never Leave Me Page 4

  Pollarded trees lined Sainte-Marie’s streets, linking pleached branches, their buds already bursting into green. She cycled over the cobbles and into the square, leaning her bicycle against the side of the café. It was spring. Probably the last spring they would spend under German occupation. It was a heady thought and she hurried into the café, her spirits rising even higher as she heard the familiar tone of Paul’s voice.

  He was leaning against the zinc-topped bar, talking to André, his shabby corduroy trousers still discoloured by the dust of Vierville. He was bespectacled, tall and thin, his shirt and jacket sleeves never quite reaching to his angular wrists. He had been born and bred in Sainte-Marie and was a popular though unconventional schoolmaster. The children were at lunch now, and Paul was in the village café, as always. It was the one place all gossip reached, sooner or later.

  Their eyes met briefly, he smiled an acknowledgement and continued with his conversation. Lisette looked around the café’s interior. Madame Chamot and Madame Bridet were sitting at a corner table, their shopping bags at their feet, half drunk cups of chicory in front of them. Old Bleriot was sitting alone, wheezing over a baguette, and a soldier stood near the doorway, munching a croissant, his eyes on the square outside.

  ‘An anisette, André, please,’ she said, sitting with the two women.

  ‘Good morning, Lisette,’ said Madame Chamot, her black serge coat buttoned up to the throat, her steel-grey hair pulled tightly into a bun. ‘How is the Comtesse, your mother?’

  ‘Very well,’ Lisette replied, wishing that the soldier would go so that she could talk to Paul.

  ‘I am glad,’ said Madame Chamot, but her voice expressed disbelief. How could the fastidious and refined Comtesse de Valmy be well when her home was overrun with pigs? She glared venomously in the soldier’s direction as he wiped the crumbs from his mouth with the back of his hand, and sauntered back out into the street.

  ‘Salauds,’ she said expressively. ‘Did you see that, Madame Bridet? He never even offered to pay for this drink or his croissant. I wish I were a man! I’d show them!’

  ‘If you could terrorise the Boche the way you terrorise your husband, the war would be over by Easter,’ André said, leaning his muscular arms on the bar, his grin wide.

  ‘Bah,’ Madam Chamot said disgustedly, rising to her feet and picking up her bags. ‘I’ve more fighting spirit in me than you have, André Caldron! You should be ashamed of yourself, feeding the Boche free of charge! Goodbye Mademoiselle Lisette. Come along, Madame Bridet, there is work for us to do. We cannot be idle all day like some I could mention.’ Weighed down by their shopping, the two elderly housewives struggled out into the street and Paul crossed quickly to Lisette’s table, sitting opposite her, his thin-boned face grim.

  ‘I’ve heard about your guests. What is it like? Is it very bad?’

  Lisette pushed a dark tendril of hair away from her face. ‘It’s bearable,’ she said, her eyes dark with distaste. ‘Mayor Meyer has commandeered the chateau and his men are quartered in the servants’ rooms around the courtyard.’

  ‘You’ll be under much greater surveillance. It could make things difficult,’ Paul said, thinking of her vital runs to Bayeux and Trevieres.

  ‘I don’t think so. No one takes any notice of me. Why should they?’ Her eyes met his urgently. ‘The Major does not take orders from the GHQ at Vierville, Paul. He is responsible directly to Field Marshal Rommel.’

  Paul sat very still, his eyes sharp. André had turned his back and was whistling to himself as he restocked his bar. The old man was dozing. ‘His task is to strengthen the coastal defences. Rommel himself came to Valmy three days ago. He and the Major spent nearly an hour together in the grand dining-room. There are maps in there, Paul, I’m sure of it. Maps and plans.’

  Paul felt in his pocket for a cigarette and matches.

  Her voice held conviction. ‘The Major has had locks put on the doors and a sentry is on duty outside them twenty-four hours a day. The information must be vital, Paul. Rommel was not paying a social call.’

  Paul regarded her thoughtfully. He knew very well what she was suggesting, but she was inexperienced and if she were caught … He thrust away the memory of the entire Argent cell being lined up and shot at Gestapo headquarters in Caen because of a weak link in their chain.

  ‘It’s too dangerous,’ he repeated, holding his cigarette inward between his thumb and forefinger, inhaling nicotine in short, sharp puffs, his mind working furiously. If what she said was true, the information Major Meyer had access to was of incalculable importance. Obtaining it and transmitting it to the Allies could mean the difference between success and failure for the long awaited invasion forces. And defeat would ensure that the Nazi dream of a thousand-year Reich would become grim reality. His skin turned cold. Lisette was too young, too inexperienced to be entrusted with a mission of such enormity.

  ‘A skilled operator must be infiltrated into Valmy as a maid or a cook,’ he said tensely.

  ‘It won’t work, Paul. It would arouse too much suspicion.’

  ‘It must work,’ he said fiercely. ‘We have to know what those devils are planning. How much they know of the Allies’intentions.’

  A small frown puckered her brow. ‘But if Rommel is focusing his attention on Normandy, surely that is to our advantage? Everyone knows that when the attack comes, it will be at the Pas de Calais.’

  Paul Gilles’eyes met hers, the pupils mere pinpricks. ‘No one,’ he said steadily, ‘knows when the invasion will take place, or where. But if, just if, the Desert Fox has guessed correctly, then the results could be catastrophic.’

  Despite the warmth of her coat she shivered. It was as if the whole future of France had suddenly been placed on their shoulders.

  ‘The Major is too sharp, too intuitive to accept a new maid or cook at face value,’ she said, her knuckles clenching as she remembered the agonising moment in her father’s bedroom when his hard grey eyes had stripped her naked, knowing instantly the reason for her being there, disbelieving with contempt her futile lie. ‘His suspicions would be immediately aroused and security would be tightened to such an extent that not even a mouse would be able to gain entry to the grand dining-room.’ She leaned towards him, her eyes urgent. ‘Papa is already beginning to gain his confidence. The Major has invited him to share a cognac with him after dinner this evening. If Papa can help us, Paul, he will. He has given me his promise.’

  Paul stirred uneasily on his metal chair. As far as he was concerned, the Comte could have done much more far sooner. Sharing an after dinner cognac with the Boche smacked of collaboration, not espionage.

  ‘If your Major is one of Rommel’s golden boys, the information he has access to will be vitally important. We can’t risk the chance of not obtaining it. Your father is not a member of the Resistance. He has no experience of Resistance work. The task must be entrusted to one of our own, Lisette.’

  Her eyes sparked angrily. ‘Major Meyer is not my major, Paul Gilles! And my father is utterly trustworthy. I would stake my life on him!’

  A wry smile touched Paul’s thin lips. ‘By taking him into our confidence we will all be staking our lives on him,’ he said drily.

  Her flare of fury subsided. What he said was true. She was reacting with her heart again, and not her head. She pushed her hands deep into the pockets of her coat and stared out of the open door of the café. On the far side of the tree-lined square a German soldier lounged arrogantly astride his motorcycle. The two elderly women had parted company and were carrying their shopping home. Madame Pichon was hurrying off in the direction of the Telliers where young Madame Tellier was about to give birth yet again.

  She had waited for over a week to see Paul, confident that when she did so he would tell her what must be done. And now that he had, she was rejecting his advice, confident that she knew best. That she and her father did not need his help. That all they needed was for any information they obtained to be ferried to the Allies throu
gh safe channels. She sighed and pushed a silk-dark strand of hair away from her face. Paul was right. Neither she nor her father were experts at espionage. Her one attempt had been shamefully bungled and she had no way of knowing if any attempt her father made would meet with any greater success. An expert was needed, and it was up to her to give Paul all the support he needed.

  She drew her eyes away from the distant German and the sunlit square and back once more to Paul. ‘What is it that you want me to do, Paul?’ she asked, gracefully conceding defeat.

  Paul grinned. His sexuality was so low key that it scarcely ever troubled him. Yet he had long ago fallen under Lisette’s spell. Her directness and honesty beguiled him, as did the long sweep of her lashes against the pale perfection of her skin. If he thought for one moment that she regarded him as anything but an older brother, he would have had no hesitation in putting his bachelor days behind him.

  His grin faded. It was fortunate that Lisette regarded him with only sisterly affection. Comte Henri de Valmy would not regard a village schoolmaster as a suitable choice of a husband for his only daughter. He shrugged the dream aside and said in a practical vein, ‘Is Marie the only help you have at Valmy?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Who does the cooking?’

  ‘Maman.’

  Paul tried not to show his surprise. It had not occurred to him that the ice-cool, elegant Comtesse was familiar with her own kitchen.

  ‘Then tonight when your father joins the Major for a cognac, he must say that your mother’s health is not robust and that the occupation of her home has taken its toll. That with the Major’s permission he would like to employ a niece of Marie’s as a temporary cook.’

  ‘Has Marie any nieces?’ she asked, raising a sleek eyebrow quizzically.

  Paul laughed. ‘She has now. Don’t worry about questions being asked of Marie, or of anyone else. That is my concern. Just make sure that your father lays the groundwork well.’

  ‘And when Marie’s “niece” arrives?’ Lisette asked, rising to her feet.

  ‘Say nothing to her. She has come from Caen to cook. Treat her as a cook.’

  Lisette hesitated, a slight frown still puckering her brows, her hair falling forward in two glossy wings at either side of her face as she looked down at him. ‘And if an opportunity should present itself that only I or my father can take advantage of?’

  His thin, bony face looked suddenly old for his years. ‘Take it,’ he said briefly. ‘Goodbye, Lisette, and good luck.’

  She walked outside into the chill sunlight, wheeling her bicycle on to the cobbled road, her earlier optimism dissipated. The moment Marie’s so-called niece entered Valmy, all their lives would be at risk. Not only hers and her father’s, but mother’s as well. If only, she thought, pushing down on the pedals, bicycling away from the square and through the narrow streets towards the bridge, if only there was an easier way. But try as she might she could not think of one.

  The soldier lounging astride his motorcycle watched her leave the café and then settled back to wait a little longer. Not until Paul left did he kick the machine into life and before Lisette had reached the beech woods he had roared out of the village in the opposite direction, circling round until he reached the road, barred to civilians, that snaked along the cliff tops to Valmy.

  ‘You’re quite sure he was the purpose of her visit?’ Dieter asked sharply as the private stood to attention in the study that had previously been Henri de. Valmy’s private retreat from the world.

  ‘Yes, sir. She spoke to two old women but only briefly and her eyes were on Gilles. As soon as the women left the café, Gilles came over and sat at her table.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Thirty-seven minutes, sir.’

  Dieter frowned. It could have been a lovers’tryst but he doubted it. He couldn’t quite see the aristocratic Lisette de Valmy pursuing an alliance with a gangling schoolmaster.

  He dismissed the private, still deep in thought. He had made the unpleasant trip to Gestapo headquarters at Caen and had discovered that the Sainte-Marie-des-Ponts schoolmaster was high on the list of suspected members of the local Resistance cell. And Lisette de Valmy had cycled purposefully from Valmy to meet him for an intense conversation the moment he had been released from forced labour at Vierville. He sat down at the large Beidermeier desk, tapping a silver pen thoughtfully on its surface.

  Lisette de Valmy’s home had not appeared on any of the lists of known or suspected members of the Resistance, yet she had a bicycle and spent long hours visiting villagers both in Sainte-Marie-des-Ponts and the surrounding countryside. The local patrols probably took very little interest in her comings and goings. It was all highly suspicious and his jawline hardened. He hoped passionately that his instincts, always acute, were this time playing him false.

  ‘You mean that he is having dinner with us?’ Lisette asked her father, aghast. ‘You can’t mean it! You can’t expect us to sit down and eat with him!’

  ‘He’s here and we must make the best of it,’ her father said patiently. ‘So far, he has treated us with respect and we can do no less than follow suit.’

  Lisette tried to speak and couldn’t. Her throat was choked with distaste and panic and something else. Something too dark and fearful to even acknowledge.

  ‘I can’t,’ she whispered at last. ‘I would feel like dirt. Like a collaborator.’

  Her father put his arm around her shoulders. ‘You have no need to, my love. It will give us an even better opportunity of convincing the Major that your mother’s health is fragile and that extra help in the chateau is a necessity.’

  ‘He won’t believe you,’ she said, her voice low and choked. ‘I told Paul that he would not believe us, but he hasn’t met him. He doesn’t understand.’

  ‘Of course he will believe us.’ her father said serenely. ‘It is virtually the truth, so why should he disbelieve us?’

  She remembered the way Major Meyer’s eyes had held hers across the silk-draped bed. ‘Because he is a man who will never be taken in by falsity,’ she said, turning away from him as a flash of fear rippled down her spine.

  Out of the habit of a lifetime she changed for dinner but did not go down to join them. The pretence that he was a guest and not a ruthless, despotic invader would have been more than she could endure. She paced her bedroom restlessly, staring repeatedly out of the window towards the inky blackness of the Channel. If only the English would cross it! If only ships and planes and battalion after battalion of soldiers would bridge the narrow sea separating France from England! She pressed her fingertips against the icy coldness of the window pane. Such a narrow stretch of water and yet Hitler had not been able to breach it. England still remained unconquered and free. Her heart caught at the word. One day France, too, would be free.

  She turned away from the window, clasping her hands tightly, wondering if her father had already broached the subject of an additional member of household staff to Major Meyer. Would he give permission? And if he did so, would he permit her father to engage someone personally? Anxiety gnawed at her. Whatever else Major Meyer was, he was not a fool. She could quite well imagine him agreeing smoothly to her father’s suggestion that a cook be obtained and then, as her father thought the battle won, continuing in the hard, dark voice that sent shivers down her spine, that he himself would employ a suitable woman, thereby defeating the whole object of the exercise.

  ‘Damn him,’ she whispered fiercely beneath her breath. He would know exactly what it was her father was trying to do and it would, no doubt, afford him cynical amusement.

  The hands on her small ormolu and porcelain clock stood at nine-fifteen. Surely by now the major would have left the breakfast-room where all meals were now taken? Enduring his presence at dinner must have been agonizing for her fastidious, well-bred mother. Unable to stand the suspense any longer, she opened her bedroom door and walked quickly along the landing and down the winding stone stairs that led to the hall.

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nbsp; The door of the breakfast-room was ajar, the room empty. With a sigh of relief she crossed the hall and entered the main salon. For a moment shock held her motionless. The high-ceilinged room glowed in the light of the log fire and the oil lamps that her mother favoured. Her father was standing at ease in front of the fire, a pipe cupped in the palm of one hand, the other thrust deep into his trouser pocket as he said genially, ‘Lisette is the skier in the family. We have spent many vacations at Gstaad.’ He paused, looking up at her, his eyes meeting her shocked ones with sudden, crippling embarrassment.

  Major Meyer was sitting in the high-winged leather chair to the left of the fireplace, a glass of cognac in his hand, the top buttons of his tunic undone, a relaxed expression on his normally granite-hard features.

  For a moment there was a strained, taut silence with only the Major continuing to look at ease, and then her father said awkwardly, ‘Come in, ma chère. I was just telling the major what an excellent skier you are.’

  She sucked in a deep, steadying breath and moved forward. They needed the Major’s permission to bring a stranger to Valmy. A stranger who would defeat whatever end he was working towards. She sat down, straight-backed, at her mother’s side, her cool outward composure revealing none of her inner turmoil.

  Dieter’s eyes flicked across to her and then back, once again, to her father. He had been both relieved and disappointed that she had not joined them for dinner. He had known, of course, why she had not done so. Her father’s urbane explanation that she had a headache would not have deceived a twelve-year-old. She had been unable to face sitting down to eat with the invader of her home and country. He hadn’t blamed her in the slightest. If he had been in her position, he would have reacted in much the same way; possibly worse.