“What time would suit you, monsieur?”
“Seven o’clock would be convenient?”
“Perfectly.”
“Very well. Until then, madame.”
He gave her a glance, which Fleur realised was meant to be gallant and left the room with a swagger, as one who imagines that a woman is admiring him.
Fleur stood very still. She waited until she heard the front door close and the footsteps scrunching on the gravel came fainter and fainter until there was only silence.
Then she sank down on the sofa and put her hands over her aching forehead. Slowly she felt her tension relax.
“I must think,” she said out loud. “I must think.”
What was she to do? How could she escape from the trap that she felt was slowly closing round her? Why had Marie said that she was Lucien’s wife? It was madness and yet what else could she have said? He might have asked to see her papers and then any subterfuge and any other lie might have made him more suspicious than he was already.
How had she been so crazy, she wondered, not to have anticipated all this, to have gone away before and yet she knew that it would have been just impossible for her to leave the Comtesse while she was dying.
She had loved the old lady, had been afraid of her, had not understood her and how could she understand someone of another type of life and of another nationality? But she had been her last link with Lucien and Fleur had clung to that, happy in the fact of being in his home.
Yes, it had been impossible to leave, impossible to go and forsake all these things which had meant so much and yet now she saw the danger.
The ability of the Comtesse to arrange certain matters had rested on her own personal influence and on the power she exerted in the village traditionally because of her position. Now her place would be taken by another and a very different personality – Monsieur Pierre.
Fleur had often smiled at the memory of the Mayor coming up to the Château at the Comtesse’s command.
However much France boasted of democracy, in these outlying villages the aristocrats still had their importance and still held their place in the local hierarchy.
The Comtesse requested his presence and the little man, who was a grocer by trade, came apprehensively into the salon where Madame was waiting for him. He was sweating a little, Fleur noticed, and he turned his hat round and round as he listened to what Madame had to say.
“Monsieur le Maire, our beloved country has been invaded again by Barbarians. Once again our soil is violated and the sacred blood of our countrymen cries out for revenge. You agree, Monsieur le Maire?”
“Yes, Madame – but Madame will pardon me if I suggest that she does not speak of such things quite so loudly.”
The Comtesse had smiled.
“I am an old woman, Monsieur le Maire, and I can only die once. My son has already given his life for France and I should be proud to offer mine in the same cause.”
“Madame is brave.”
Nevertheless, as if he spoke them out loud, Fleur had guessed that his thoughts were of himself, of his large fat wife to whom rumour had it he was consistently unfaithful and of his six children, the eldest of whom was a prisoner in Germany.
“We understand each other,” the Comtesse then went on. “There is no need for me to say more. But, monsieur, in my anxiety to speak of politics I have omitted to present you to my daughter-in-law, Fleur, Monsieur le Maire, Madame Lucien de Sardou.”
Just for a moment the little man had looked surprised and then with the quickness of his race he understood.
“Enchanté, madame, my sincere felicitations,” he had murmured and then he had waited, understanding now what was expected of him.
“My poor daughter-in-law,” the Comtesse continued, “has had an unfortunate accident, monsieur. A little fire occurred here last night, nothing very serious, we were able to put it out ourselves, but unfortunately Madame’s papers were burned including her carte d’identité. There is nothing left and, still more unfortunate, no one had thought to keep its numbers.”
“I understand, Madame, they can be replaced.”
“Thank you, Monsieur le Maire, it is most agreeable of you.”
The Comtesse had held out her hand, the Mayor had bowed over it and the interview was at an end.
The next morning his second son, Fabian, had arrived on his bicycle. An identification card with her new name with the date of issue mysteriously smudged, had been handed over.
Yet now Fleur saw the pitfalls of what had seemed an easy subterfuge. Most of all she regretted that the Comtesse had made her burn her British passport.
“It is dangerous,” Madame had insisted and, despite all Fleur’s protestations, the flames, real ones this time, had licked greedily round the blue canvas cover and the page that held the Foreign Secretary’s name.
Yet how right the Comtesse had been!
The next day the Germans had arrived. Marie, a scared look on her usually placid face, had fetched the Comtesse and Fleur from the garden.
“Madame! Nom de Dieu! excuse me, madame, but there are Germans at the door.”
She was panting and the frilled cap that she wore was askew on her grey hair.
“Germans?”
“Yes, madame. They wish to speak to you.”
“Thank you, Marie. You will be calm, Marie.”
“Oui, madame.”
“And your cap is crooked, Marie.”
“Pardon, madame!”
The Germans then searched the house. They looked in every nook and cranny for French soldiers. They took away the pigs and chickens and a side of bacon that had been hanging in Marie’s kitchen. They drained the petrol from the car standing in the garage and made a note to send later for the car itself.
They came again a few days later and then took away Louis, the man who worked in the garden, no one was told why. At first they did not know whether the Château and the village would be in occupied or unoccupied territory.
They did not talk about it, but Fleur guessed that the Comtesse prayed that they might be favoured in the little grey Chapel where the flags captured by de Sardous in battle hung above the altar.
One day they learnt that the line had been drawn and they were some twenty miles inside German-occupied France.
*
Fleur stood up suddenly and walked to the window. The garden was quiet and peaceful.
Strange to think that there was terror and brutality over the whole Continent, men being shot and imprisoned, concentration camps where those who entered them were beaten into insensibility or tortured until they died or became insane.
Fear and misery everywhere, panic and sorrow, privation and sheer sadism.
‘Oh, God, I am afraid!’ Fleur thought to herself.
Then she knew that somehow, in some way, she could and would escape these horrors.
CHAPTER THREE
Something was happening, something was frightening her.
Fleur stirred convulsively and tried to scream.
Even as she did so a hand was pressed down over her mouth. She experienced a moment of sheer terror and then she heard Marie’s voice,
“It’s