Stranger at the Gates (5 page)

He and her husband were talking about the war; the room was full of the smell of cigar smoke; Louise poked at the logs and listened.

‘I didn't believe they'd ever invade,' Jean de Bernard said. ‘I still can't take it seriously.'

‘It's very serious indeed,' Minden said. ‘It's said there must be quarter of a million men waiting to leave England and land over here. Of course, it's the Russians pressing for a Second Front that's forced them into it.' He tapped his ash into a silver bowl.

‘You don't seem concerned. Major,' Jean de Bernard remarked.

‘I can't see them winning,' Minden said mildly. ‘I foresee terrific casualties and complete defeat.'

‘Aren't you being a little complacent?' They both looked at Louise.

‘I don't think so,' the Major answered. His tone implied that it wasn't a topic on which she would have anything sensible to say.

‘After all, the British Empire and the United States are a pretty formidable combination,' Louise went on, knowing how Jean hated her to goad the German. ‘You won't just flick off a quarter of a million men like a speck of dust.'

Minden nearly smiled. He had to be careful not to show the extent of his confidence but it was so much a part of him now that he couldn't pretend to be afraid. Invasion didn't trouble him. Victory was certain. He stared for a moment at the Comtesse's beautiful legs. American women had the best legs in the world. And the best teeth; hers were perfect. In spite of her colouring, brown hair and hazel eyes, she couldn't have been a Frenchwoman. She was too tall, too slim.

‘You must forgive me, Madame,' he said. ‘I believe our soldiers are the best in the world. I think we will beat the invasion forces when they come.'

‘And will you be going to fight them?'

His half-smile was still there, the light of admiration in his eyes as he answered her. Jean de Bernard re-lit his cigar, without looking at his wife. ‘Unfortunately, I shall still be attached to General Brühl. Believe me, I would like to be a combatant, but someone has to do the staff work.

‘It may be dull but it's better than being sent to Russia.' Louise lit a cigarette. Jean de Bernard got up bringing his cup.

‘Could I have some more coffee?'

She ignored the warning in his eyes. He was a coward. He was her husband and now she despised him as much as she had looked up to him and loved him. Let him crawl to the conquerors; she didn't glance at him. She poured the coffee which was real instead of the filthy mixture of acorns and chicory which was all the non-collaborationists had to drink, and gave it gack to him.

‘I think I'll go to bed,' she said. ‘I'm rather tired tonight.'

Immediately the Major was on his feet, his heels snapped together. She went out of the room, savouring the small exchange which was already beginning to look petty and pointless as she thought about it. Scoring off someone too insensitive to feel it was small compensation for the misery and shame which tormented her every time she saw him. He wasn't a brute, there was nothing of the strutting Nazi about him; he was an ordinary man, not remarkable in any way, but he was a German, the symbol of the disgrace of France and the capitulation of the man she loved. Jean had collaborated and the village had done the same. French girls walked the lanes with German soldiers and their families accepted cigarettes and food. France had lain down for her conquerors, it was not so much a rape as a seduction. Louise, who had loved all things French and embraced the culture and even, within two years of marriage, the faith of her adopted country, watched in horror as people she respected set about ingratiating themselves with the invaders, as the homes of their friends were filled with German officers on social calls, and there were dinner parties and murmurs of love affairs with women whose husbands had not yet been repatriated. The first shock had come that summer's day in 1940, four years ago, when she and Jean had stood together in the Château with his sister Régine, then a girl of fifteen, and seen the German scout car come skidding up the gravel drive, scattering the stones, and slam to a stop before the entrance. There were black and white crosses painted on its sides and as they watched through the window, three men got out in field grey uniform. He had held her in his arms, and she had gripped him tight, ready to die with him if he asked her. ‘Oh my God,' she had whispered to him. ‘What are we going to do …'

‘Learn to live with them,' Jean had answered. ‘Live with them and survive. And keep our home.' She hadn't believed him, she hadn't really understood. When the salon door opened and the first German officer stepped inside, she waited for Jean to move, to show resistance. Instead he had disengaged himself from her and walked towards them, one hand extended.

‘Gentlemen,' he had said. ‘Welcome to St. Blaize.' There were two of them, young men with anonymous faces under their peaked combat caps. Tears had come rushing into her eyes; she had caught Regine by the hand and dragged her past them and upstairs. As she ran into the hall she heard her husband say, ‘You must excuse my wife. She is upset. Please sit down.' From that moment the disintegration had begun.

When Louise had gone out, Minden stretched and sat down again. Jean poured some brandy into his glass and offered the bottle, but the Major shook his head. ‘I've got some work to do,' he said. ‘Brandy makes me go to sleep. I'm glad your wife went up early, I wanted to talk to you in private. You know there was an alert tonight?'

‘No,' Jean de Bernard said. ‘They must have been on their way somewhere else, nothing was dropped near here.' The Major had come back late; to Louise's irritation Jean had insisted upon waiting dinner for him.

‘It was a single plane,' the Major said. ‘We've had them come over before. Personally I believe it was a reconnaissance flight. On the other hand it may have been a drop.'

‘A drop—what do you mean?'

‘Enemy agents. It's not likely but we have to take precautions. There'll be road blocks tomorrow and a search. I wanted to warn you. I didn't want to worry Madame de Bernard.'

‘They won't drop anyone here,' Jean said. ‘It's two years since they tried that. Nobody at St. Blaize wants any trouble.'

‘We know that,' Minden said seriously. ‘There's no resistance in this area. Now that the resistance at Chartres has been broken …' He paused, regretting having mentioned the incident. ‘But I just wanted to ask you to use your influence with the village. If anyone should have landed here—I hope you'll impress on them how foolish it would be to shelter them. As I said, I'm sure it's a reconnaissance plane that probably went astray. It may have crashed somewhere nearer the coast; that's the official view, but we have to be careful.'

‘Don't worry,' Jean de Bernard said. ‘We're at peace, we get along with you extremely well. The last thing anyone wants to do is to spoil our relationship with the military. You have my personal assurance that I'll go down and speak to the mayor tomorrow. If the Allies have been stupid enough to try and involve us by dropping any agent here, they'll be given up to you immediately.'

‘Thank you,' the Major said. He got up. ‘I should make sure all doors are locked. I hope your wife won't be frightened; really there's no need to mention it. There'll be a routine search tomorrow, but I'll make sure you're not disturbed.'

‘That's very considerate of you,' Jean de Bernard said. ‘Louise wouldn't be alarmed but it might upset my father. He's getting so confused so quickly.'

‘I'm sorry to hear that. I must go and have a talk to him one evening. He isn't getting any worse?'

‘Not physically; age is a sad thing, Major. He's becoming more and more of a child.'

‘I'll say goodnight,' the Major said. ‘If you should hear any rumours tomorrow you will let me know?'

‘You can rely on me,' the Comte de Bernard said. ‘Goodnight.' He didn't leave the room after Minden; he stayed on beside the sinking fire, finishing the brandy. Enemy agents. A quarter of a million men waiting on the other side of the English Channel to launch themselves against the coast of France. A rain of shells and bombs falling on French homes and killing the innocent inside them. The giants squaring up for a fight to the death, with his people and his country as their battleground. Above all he didn't believe the Germans would be beaten. Their vengeance upon any who had turned against them would be too terrible to contemplate. Thanks to his efforts St. Blaize en Yvelines had suffered only two casualties since the occupation, and they were the direct results of night warnings like this one, of a parachute drop by the British … No more French lives were going to be sacrificed to the ruthless strategists in London. He finished his brandy, and lit a cigarette. He had better follow Minden's suggestion and make sure that every door and window was locked. And then he had to go and see his wife. In his youth there had been fifteen servants at the Château; now there were two, Marie-Anne and Jean-Pierre, husband and wife who had started working in his parents' time as kitchen maid and undergardener. They were in their sixties and Jean-Pierre had a stiff knee. Soon after Minden arrived he pressed his batman, a surly Rhinelander with a milky eye, into helping them and doing odd jobs in the garden. It was part of his plan to ingratiate himself. Jean de Bernard had accepted it as he did everything the Major offered. Cigarettes, the few petrol coupons that were more valuable than banknotes, brandy, cigars; the clumsy ogling of Louise … And so St. Blaize survived, his father lived in gentle senility upstairs, his son and daughter played on the green lawns and chased each other through the shrub gardens just as he had done. The village and its people lived in peace. Shortages would not last for ever nor would their occupation by a conqueror. France would outlast the Nazis; the Château with the scars of old sieges on its outer walls would stand intact when the occupation was just a section in the history books. What he was doing had to be done. It had cost him his pride, his self-respect, and the love of his wife.

He smoked his cigarette down and thought about her, his brow furrowed with unhappiness. They were completely different in temperament. She was passionate, impulsive, with the pride he recognised as truly American. Compromise disgusted her; unlike so many of her sex she never lied, or demeaned herself by petty actions. She was a woman of daring and character, bold and fiercely loyal to those she loved. Soon after they met in New York he had teased her that a hundred years earlier she would have taken a waggon out West and fought the Indians. Although it was a joke, he had come to recognise how accurately he had described her. She was truly the child of her New World, and he the product of the Old one. Now she despised and hated him for a cowardice she couldn't understand. She had expected him to fight; expected the people of St. Blaize to rush against the Germans with flails and scythes, like the mobs in a Hollywood movie about the Revolution. After eight years of living among them, Louise hadn't understood the villagers any more than she did him. He threw his cigarette away, placed a wire guard in front of the smouldering fire and fastened the window shutters before turning out the lights. It took a long time to bolt the windows on the ground floor, to lock the back doors and the massive entrance door with its iron hinges He checked that the little door leading from the cellar was also locked. Jean Pierre always fastened it from habit. Then he began to climb the steep stone stairs that led to the tower, built by an ancestor in the sixteenth century as a fortification for the house and the only means of reaching the upper floors. A nineteenth-century Comte de Bernard had built a back stairs to accommodate his staff, but the massive stone steps, hollowed in the middle by hundreds of years of use, had never been replaced. On the first floor Louise de Bernard slept in what had been their bedroom. At the top of the stairs he paused. In the first few months when Louise kept the door locked, he had taken a mistress. Outraged and bitterly hurt, Jean had turned to the wife of a neighbour who had been considered for him when they were both children, but it had been a tepid affair which died away in mutual disappointment. He wanted Louise; her substitute proved to be a vain and vapid shadow of whom he quickly rid himself.

Since then he had accepted the situation and only once tried to force a reconciliation when he got drunk sitting alone in the library one winter. His need and his loneliness had driven him upstairs to batter on the door. Her rejection of him had been angry and contemptuous. He hadn't tried again. Now she no longer used the key. It was finished for ever between them. He came to her room and knocked.

In London, blacked out against German air attacks, two men were sitting in the coffee room of the Garrick Club, smoking cigars and drinking liqueurs. To one of them the surroundings were familiar; it was a club patronised by the Stage and the law, famous for its unique collection of theatrical portraits and mementos, for the excellence of its food and service and the quality of its membership. The English Colonel had joined many years ago after establishing himself at the Bar; he hoped that his American guest was impressed by the grandeur and originality of the coffee room, and by the atmosphere of calm gentility which was not altered even by war.

There were a dozen people seated at the side tables, all of them male. The rule excluding women except as guests on Thursdays had not been relaxed, nor the tradition reserving the long central table in the dining room exclusively for men. They had eaten as well as rationing had permitted and drunk an excellent wine, which the Colonel appreciated and the American General tended to ignore. Colonel Fairbairn asked his guest for the third time whether he liked the brandy and the General said he did. He made no attempt to hide his preoccupation with something other than cognac and the history of the eighteenth-century portraits which the Englishman had been describing to him. General Frank Heidsecker was a big man, inclined to fat in spite of rigorous exercise and attention to diet, with a round, bland face, hair so crew cut that he seemed almost bald under the light, and mild blue eyes. He was a third generation American, his ancestors having come over in an emigrant ship to work the Pennsylvania mines. His grandparents had spoken German all their lives, his own mother's people came from Düsseldorf and he had married a girl called Susan Schwartz. In type and attitude, Heidsecker personified the humane, unpretentious American commander whose epitome was Dwight Eisenhower. Heidsecker disliked military pomp, ignored protocol whenever possible, and cared passionately about the men for whom he was responsible.