The Rendezvous (5 page)

‘If I got her to the States,' Bradford said, ‘she can have the best …' He looked up at Kaplan. ‘Joe, I've got to help her. I'll do anything!'

Kaplan didn't answer immediately. ‘How involved are you with this girl? You're not kidding yourself you're in love with her, are you?'

‘No, I'm not kidding myself,' Bradford said. ‘Because I know damn well I am. All right, I know you're going to start talking about pity, and me feeling guilty because I was born rich and all the rest of the crap, but whatever the reason, I'm in love with Terese. I've got another couple of months before I get a posting and I'm not leaving her here for the Red Cross to pick up and send to some lunatic asylum. If I can get her to the States …'

‘Not a chance,' Kaplan said. ‘The only way you'd get her in would be to marry her, and I won't let you do it. I'll go to your colonel if necessary and that'll be the end of that. Besides, she's too sick to take outside the hospital. You think she's a lot better than she is, but that's because she's inside; she associates the hospital with being safe. You wouldn't get her past the door.'

‘Then you won't help,' Bradford said angrily. ‘Is that it?'

‘No, no, I didn't say that,' Kaplan held up his hand. ‘Sit down and don't lose your temper. I didn't say I wouldn't help. I was just trying to explain the problem to you. I know what's been happening between you and that girl. You've gone and got yourself all snarled up over her, and she's come to depend on you so much I don't know what effect it'll have on her when you leave the area. I'm thinking of both of you. I've had an idea – it's pretty experimental, Bob, but I think it might just work. Even if it didn't, she won't be any worse off.'

‘What is it? You wouldn't have any Scotch around here, would you?'

‘In the desk – right-hand drawer. Help yourself. Do you know what the human mind does when it finds a fact too much to bear? It forgets it. That's pretty normal, we all do it. If there's something unpleasant – something we're ashamed of, some awful grief – we forget it as soon as we can: or we try to. Amnesia is an extension of that, only it's an extreme measure taken by the mind, and it wipes out everything as well as the subject causing the problem. Often if that didn't happen the person would go crazy. There's a new theory, it hasn't been practised much, one or two cases have come up – it's called therapeutic amnesia. In other words the memory is erased scientifically, deliberately. This frees the patient of their immediate psychotic pressures and lets the doctor start from scratch. I think this might work with Terese Masson. If I can wipe out the last year or two – she might get well.'

Bradford poured out a second Scotch into the glass and drank it. ‘Is this really possible? You mean you could make her lose her memory?'

‘I don't see why not. She'd like to lose it; this is a big help. Her mind would like to forget what's happened to her. But I can't do it unless she agrees. And there's another point. She has no family, just one old aunt of seventy who lives some place in Brittany – she's going to come out of this without a past; I said two years, it might be her whole background, her identity! Who's going to be responsible for her then?'

‘I am,' Robert Bradford said. ‘You know that.'

‘I have to be sure,' Joe Kaplan said. ‘Think about it, Bob. Think what this really means when you say “I am”. It might be for ever.'

‘That's what I want,' Bradford said. ‘Will you let me talk to her about it?'

‘I was going to suggest that you did,' Kaplan said. ‘She likes you, Bob. You're prettier than me.'

‘You look better today. Did you sleep well?'

She looked at him and smiled. ‘They gave me something; I always sleep well now. Thank you for the dress. Robert.'

‘It suits you,' he said. ‘I'd like to see you in some really nice clothes.'

She smoothed the skirt of the blue linen dress bringing the edges of the pleats together very carefully. ‘It's beautiful,' she said. ‘I haven't worn a dress like this for years.'

‘Not years, Terese,' he corrected. ‘Not as long as that.' The large brown eyes turned to meet his and there were tears in them. She cried very easily, sometimes for no reason at all.

‘It seems like years to me. You're very kind to me. Robert. You've given me this dress, and all those nightclothes and my hairbrushes. Most of the people here haven't got anything but what the Red Cross can find for them. I feel quite rich.'

‘I'd give you more, if I could get it,' he said. ‘I'd give you anything. Think of something – think of something you'd like.'

‘It's a beautiful day,' she said suddenly. ‘I've been thinking how nice it would be if we could go out for a walk when you came today.'

‘Why don't we? That's a wonderful idea!'

Her blonde hair had been cut short, one of the nurses had curled it with a pair of tongs; rest and food had put flesh on her. She had begun to look young again. Sometimes she even smiled. Even then she was so pretty that it hurt Bradford to look at her; it made him ache inside when she smiled at him.

She shook her head. ‘I can't go out,' she said. ‘I'm afraid. I'm afraid of everything, really.'

‘You're not afraid of me,' he said. ‘Or Dr. Kaplan.'

‘No, not you. Most of all not you, Robert. And the doctor is kind. Everyone is kind here. It makes me feel so safe. He says I must try and take a bath soon. I can go into the bathroom and it's not too bad. But I won't let them turn on the water … I can't bear the sound of it.'

‘Of course you can't,' Bradford said. He moved his chair close to hers: a few weeks before she had shrunk away when he tried to get near her. Now she let him sit with her and even hold her hand. He understood about the bathwater. It made him feel ill with anger. He took hold of her hand and held it tightly. ‘Terese, I've got something to say to you. I want you to listen to me very carefully.'

‘What is it? Is it something bad …? Oh, Robert, are you going away?'

She had turned white and her mouth was trembling. ‘Are you leaving here?'

‘No, no, I'm not going anywhere! This is something good – good news, that's what I want to talk to you about. Listen, Terese – you said just now you wanted to go out? You want to get better don't you? You want to put all this behind you and live your life like other people?'

‘Of course I do,' she said. ‘But it's not possible. I know what I was like when I came here – I know what you and Dr. Kaplan have done for me. But I'm not a fool, Robert. I'm sick; I'll never be normal. If it hadn't been for you I think I would have killed myself. Life has nothing left for me.'

‘Supposing I told you it had,' he said. ‘Supposing I told you Kaplan could cure you, make you just like you were before anything happened. What would you say to that?'

‘How?' she said. ‘How could he do it?'

Bradford took her other hand and held both in his.

‘He can take the memory away. But it may mean that you won't remember other things as well. You won't remember who you are or where you lived or anything about yourself. You'll have to be – re-born, Terese. But you'll be well – cured. Will you let him do it?'

‘It sounds impossible. And frightening. What will happen to me afterwards?'

He bent his head and kissed her hands. ‘I love you.' He said it very gently so as not to frighten her. ‘I'll take care of you afterwards. Please, darling, let Joe do this.'

‘All right.' She said it simply and without hesitating. ‘If you'll promise to be with me.'

‘I promise,' Bradford said. ‘Right the way through.'

Colonel Baldraux lit a cigarette; he smoked continuously, lighting one Gauloise off the butt-end of the last. He sat in the Bradfords' Paris hotel suite wreathed in blue smoke. He was a tall, thin man with sparse fair hair and blue eyes and an Alsatian accent.

He was irritated by the American sitting opposite him; rich Americans annoyed him on principle, and he had found it difficult to track the Bradfords down. ‘You realise how difficult this sort of attitude makes our work, Major?' he said. ‘All I ask is ten minutes with Madame Bradford to establish a few facts.'

‘I've told you,' Bob Bradford said. ‘My wife was tortured by the Gestapo and spent ten months in Buchenwald. I wouldn't let anyone question her about it.'

‘Very well,' the colonel shrugged. ‘I can't force you to let me talk to her. Perhaps you can remember something that might help us. Does the name Brunnerman mean anything to you? Did your wife ever mention him?'

‘She's never talked about it, not to me. She was too ill. Who was Brunnerman, anyway?'

‘A colonel in the S.S., one of their best men,' Baldraux said. ‘It's on the Gestapo files that he questioned your wife. This was before she was tortured. We have arrested most of the Gestapo staff, including a man called Freischer who actually tortured Madame, and members of the Vichy Militia who were working with them, ex-criminals like Rudi de Merode – of course he had his own establishment at the Rue des Saussaies – your wife was lucky not to have been taken there; some of them were worse to their own people than the Germans.… But I am getting away from the point.…' He lit another cigarette and swallowed a huge mouthful of smoke. ‘We are interested in any lead we might pick up on Brunnerman because he seems to have escaped. All the Allied Security forces are looking for him, but he operated mostly in France, and naturally we want him. He was transferred to a Waffen S.S. division on the Eastern Front and that was the last we can trace of him after the retreat began. His division was responsible for the murder of twenty thousand Jews during the Russian campaign. It would be a pity if he were to slip out to Spain, for instance. We've lost hundreds of the top men in the confusion just after the war ended. I would very much like to find this one.'

‘I'd like you to find him too, believe me,' Bradford said. ‘But my wife can't help you. I promise you, Colonel, I'm not being obstructive; she has no memory of anything that happened during the war. That whole period is a blank, thank God. To be honest, she didn't even know her own name or anything about herself.'

‘She's very fortunate,' the colonel said. ‘How does she account for this gap in her life?'

‘She believes she was ill. That's all we told her and she hasn't ever tried to question any further. She's well and happy, and that's how she's going to stay.'

‘Nothing can bring the past back?' Baldraux said. ‘You are sure?'

‘As far as we know, nothing in the world.'

‘Very well then. Thank you for the interview, I shan't be troubling you again.'

‘I hope you catch the bastard,' Bradford said.

‘Ah, Major, so do I.' The slate-blue eyes were bright with hate. ‘And we will, don't worry. Sooner or later he'll be found.'

Ruth Bradford Hilton smiled at her sister-in-law and then at Karl Amstat. He had taken Terese's hand and seemed unable to let go of it; he hadn't said anything to her at all.

‘Darling, Mr. Amstat's an architect, isn't that fascinating?'

‘Yes.' Terese Bradford smiled. He had let her hand drop and there was a fixed, artificial smile on his face. He might even be a little drunk; so many people got high at cocktail parties and it was such a bore. ‘What sort of building do you design, Mr. Amstat?'

‘Industrial, mostly,' he heard himself answering, and his voice sounded quite normal. There were people pressing in all round him, it was impossible to get away for the moment. ‘And I do some private commissions, if they're interesting.'

‘I'm very ignorant about it,' she said. ‘I make all my family furious by saying I prefer traditional styles to the modern.'

‘It's really a question of extremes,' Amstat said. It was the same person. She was unmistakable: the same eyes, the same face, voice, everything the same, only older, more sophisticated. He must be going mad. She didn't recognise him; she was becoming quite animated talking about architecture, and there wasn't the slightest hint of recognition. He shivered in the hot-house atmosphere, and his hands shook round the empty glass he was holding.

‘Here, let me give you some champagne.' The English husband was back with a bottle, smiling under his ridiculous little brushy moustache.

‘Darling,' Ruth said, ‘you are sweet; where's that waiter got to, this is his job!'

Amstat's glass was filled, and he found himself drinking it straight down. ‘It's so hot in here,' he said to Terese Bradford. ‘It makes one so thirsty.'

‘It does,' she agreed. ‘I've been fifteen years in America and I still can't get used to the heating everywhere. There's a balcony over there – why don't we go out and get some air? I'm stifled.'

‘Why, yes of course, but I must watch the time.' He made a futile gesture of looking at his watch, but she had taken his arm and they were moving into a larger room. He opened the balcony doors and they stepped out. It was little more than a narrow ledge with a parapet; below them stretched a magnificent view of the glittering skyscrapers, and the incandescent, changing glow of neon signs like an electronic rainbow.

‘It's a wonderful sight, isn't it?' Terese said. He was standing beside her in the dark; the roar of the party went on behind them, and the roll of traffic in the streets far below came up very faintly like an echo. ‘Better than all the Swiss mountains – are you Swiss, Mr. Amstat?'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘My home was in Berne.' It was crazy to go on talking to her, but he had to be sure. ‘You're not American, are you?'

‘No, I'm French. I met my husband after the war and married him in France.'

‘I thought I detected an accent,' he said, ‘but being a foreigner myself I wasn't sure.' He took out his handkerchief and wiped the sweat off his face.