The Sea Garden (31 page)

“My mother despised her.”

“Mavis Acton was not universally liked,” said Iris. “She recruited women into the SOE as agents in France, when no women had ever been to war in quite this way before. She coordinated their missions and worked tirelessly after the war to trace the final movements of those who did not return. She pursued this with great determination—against much opposition from those who were equally determined to wrap the recent past in convenient silence.”

The speech came out pat; she had used it before. There was much to admire about Miss Acton, and Iris would always defend her if she was asked her opinion of her former boss, having learned to keep her real thoughts to herself. “Strong meat, that was Miss Acton,” she would say. “A powerful personality. Well, one had to be, didn't one?” Mavis Acton could have done no more; after the war she traced all her girls; it was a great pity that Iris never managed to persuade her to keep going on the men.

“You kept in touch with her when the war was over, though?”

“Yes. I was her assistant.”

“You were good friends?”

“I wouldn't go that far. We worked well together.”

Iris had seen Miss Acton only once more after their tea at Fortnum and Mason. The occasion was Colonel Tyndale's funeral in London. It wasn't so much respects Iris was paying as hoping to run into one last chance, among the assembled signatories of the Official Secrets Act, of finishing what she had started all those years before. But Miss Acton appraised her beadily, as she always did, and made it clear that her inquiries had met a dead end a long time ago. She lit one of her strong cigarettes and dismissed her with the same hand that tossed the match.

That had angered Iris. If anyone should have understood how she felt, it should have been Mavis Acton, but the woman displayed a perplexing lack of empathy. She showed no heart, though clearly she had one.

“I have not been successful in finding many declassified papers about the SOE women,” Laurent was saying.

“I gather there are very few actual SOE papers that survive,” said Anna. “They were due to be handed over to the Foreign Office, but there was a fire.”

“A most convenient fire.”

He straightened his cutlery, smoothed his napkin. This was a man who would have loved to light up a cigarette as he always used to in restaurants, thought Iris. He caught her gaze.

“How did you feel when you first found out that the real agents were being held and manipulated by the Gestapo, and that SOE was unknowingly making arrangements directly with the Nazis?” he asked Iris.

How do we feel?
Always the same question, so lazily emotive. It was invariably asked on the radio and television, when it was facts that were required. It wasn't possible to begin to express how they felt, and certainly not for public consumption. Iris pushed away the hundred thoughts that threatened to engulf her. Had she made a mistake in coming? But she of all people knew that if you never took the risk, you might never find what you were seeking.

“I was furious. It was the first time I realized that those in charge were not taking women like me seriously.”

They had known—or rather some of them had known. The women who would gather to gossip in the ladies' cloakroom on the half-landing at Norgeby House knew, but they spoke only among themselves and said nothing to their superiors, because they were not supposed to know.

“It seems astonishing, but the position of women in society has changed so radically from those times that it barely seems possible now,” said Iris. “But back then, that was the way it was.”

“And it was left to two women to track down what had happened to the SOE women who never returned.”

“That's right. It was important to know what happened, for the families of those who never came back, even if the conclusion of the story was harrowing. . . . For some it was many years spent not knowing, and in some ways that was worse. . . .”

“But you were satisfied that you managed to find out exactly what happened to each of them?” asked Laurent.

“Yes.”

Anna said nothing, but listened intently.

“Does the name Rose mean anything to you?”

Iris straightened her back and gave up the pretence of eating. She put down her knife and fork. “It was a code name.”

“What happened to Rose after you sent her over here?”

“She was arrested while working as a wireless operator in Paris. She spent some months being held by the Gestapo, before being helped to escape, along with another woman agent.”

It was strange, thought Iris, how readily these facts came to her, when the details of other, far more recent memories remained frustratingly elusive. “The other woman, Thérèse, was flown back to London. Rose went south with Xavier. It was he who had organised the escape. We had only sporadic contact with her after that.”

“Why was that?”

“By 1944 the RAF and the American Air Force had bases in North Africa, Corsica, and Italy—most of the resistance communications from the South of France would have been to those bases. It seems that she was arrested again. There is circumstantial evidence, unproven, that she was sent to Natzweiler, a concentration camp in Alsace. She died there, executed as a spy.”

They were silent for a few moments.

“No,” said Laurent. “Rose didn't die in a concentration camp.”

Iris frowned. “What are you saying—that you knew her?”

“Rose was my mother.”

 

L
aurent summoned the waiter to pour more wine, and said, “Rose was still working as a wireless operator for the man known as Xavier Descours in August 1944. He was the man who habitually took enormous risks . . . and she kept pace with him. But he abandoned her, left her to fend for herself after a big air operation upcountry in Provence went wrong. She was told to lie low and wait for him, but Xavier never came.

“She was arrested by the Gestapo as she was making for the plateau above Manosque where the lavender grows. She had a transmitter—she would have been shot as a spy immediately at any other time—but the Germans knew the tide was turning. It was only days before the Liberation began. They took her north to Digne, threatened her, trying to get as much information as they could, but they didn't kill her. That night, a young German officer helped her get away. Maybe he just wanted to save his own skin at the end, but he saved her too.”

“Why did she never make contact with us in London?” asked Iris. Too many disconcerting thoughts were chasing themselves. Too many questions.

“She felt she had been badly let down. Perhaps she had no reason to go back. She took the chance to make another life for herself here.”

“Many people did, after the war. For a long time, I thought that was what Xavier must have done.”

“It always comes back to Xavier. Do you know, Mrs. Corbin, that it was because of Xavier that my mother met my father? Charles de Fayols—code name Maurice—was one of those who had helped her escape the first time in Paris.

“Rose met Charles again sometime after she fled Digne. She must have gone south, possibly still looking for Xavier. Anyway, she married Charles in 1946 and became châtelaine of the Domaine de Fayols. I was born two years later. She kept the name Rose, by the way—she liked it. Rose was who she had become.”

Iris pressed her fingers into the linen tablecloth. Her ears buzzed, and too many competing memories derailed her train of thought. Rose and her neat crochet work in the bathroom at Orchard Court, her silence and self-possession, the history that was still being rewritten.

“She must have told Ellie the story in the notebook,” said Iris eventually. “But . . . how did Rose know who Ellie was, her connection to me?”

“A newspaper article, I gather.”

“It would explain the ‘message for Iris,' ” pointed out Anna.

“I suppose so.”

Iris tried to stay calm. Too many different strands of thought still coiled in her head. When had Xavier given Rose the message intended for her? Just before he had disappeared? She had never conveyed it to Iris, so was it possible that she had only recently passed it on via Ellie? It seemed absurd, but it was the only logical explanation.

Laurent twisted the stem of his wineglass. “It was my mother who persuaded me to try an English designer for the memorial garden—one designer in particular. Ellie Brooke. She was most insistent. I thought it was a good idea, something that would make her happy. She was not well, had not been well for many years . . . she was unpredictable . . . there were episodes of mania. . . .”

Unexpectedly, Laurent reached over the table for Iris's hand. “I will tell you now what I think happened to your granddaughter—including what I did not tell the police while Rose was still alive.”

Time slipped as she looked into his eyes, so like Xavier's brown eyes.

“On that last evening, my mother was very unwell. All day she had been in the grip of a manic episode. She was convinced that she was seeing Xavier, that he had come for her at last. She was screaming and shouting that she was in greater danger than before, and that Jeanne and I were the ones who had to help her now.

“She was so disturbed, gibbering about evil spirits, cowering in her chair and crying that we did as she demanded, and called a priest who agreed to come and bless the house. Whether it was a real exorcism or not, the incense and the chanting calmed her for a while. She slept that afternoon, a relief to all of us.

“Not long after six o'clock, Ellie arrived to collect her phone. I'm sorry to say that my mother had picked it up and kept it when Ellie left it in the library where she had been working on plans for the garden. We were having an apéritif, Ellie and I, when Rose appeared. She seemed improved at first, but then her mood reverted. She pulled out an old pistol. I had no idea she possessed such a weapon. Perhaps it had been my father's. Even when she took it out, I thought it was not real, that it could not possibly be loaded, or even if she pulled the trigger, it would never fire. But it did. I was moving carefully behind her, intending to take it from her, but then the gun went off. She fired twice. One bullet hit the floor and the other hit a case of butterfly specimens. The glass shattered, but no real damage was done. Ellie ran. Not just for cover, but out the doors and down the terrace steps into the garden.

“I have to tell you, she was nervous, agitated that evening. Different from the confident young woman I first met. I tried to go after her, to reassure her that she was in no danger. My mother dropped the gun as soon as it went off—she was in shock, and Jeanne was calming her.

“But Ellie—she ran fast. A storm was breaking. It was raining. It is steep on the path down to the
calanque
, and slippery underfoot. You can trip over stones. It's hard enough to walk down in daylight, but on a wet night . . . to fall . . .”

Iris stared up at the murals of coastal scenes set high on the walls, at the painted ceiling, hearing the noise of the lunch service and the conversations over white-clad tables, holding her emotions in check. Carefully, she brought her eyes back to Laurent. It was only then that she became aware of the men sitting at the next table. She recognized the way they held themselves as they sat, alert and quietly powerful. Laurent de Fayols had not come alone to tell her; he had been escorted by the police.

“There is one last thing you need to know. As I say, Rose was aggressive as well as unbalanced, and it was difficult. It was only after she died that we found out why. The myrtle liqueur she drank was contaminated with datura—a spectacular but highly toxic plant. The effects can be hallucinogenic. Perhaps her illness as well as her behaviour that night can be partly attributed to her regular consumption of it.

“It was analysed after she died, and was found to contain an alarming quantity of datura poison. I don't believe she added it deliberately, or at least, I don't want to believe that. That part of the garden had been neglected over the years, and the datura had spread in an extraordinary way alongside the myrtle hedge, threading itself through the place where she always picked the berries. The liqueur killed her, in the end. I'm sorry to say that it's possible that Ellie drank some too.”

Laurent looked ashamed. “I am so very sorry. Until my mother told me exactly who Ellie was, I knew nothing of these old connections. Rose was hardly making sense by the end, but when she was lucid, it was all about the past. When she was dying, she kept repeating the name Xavier, and that I should tell you she was sorry. I gave her my word.”

There was a long pause, then he turned to the men at the next table. “Lieutenant Meunier? Thank you. It is done.”

 

S
uzie was waiting when the Eurostar came in at Ebbsfleet. Nearly seventy years old now—unbelievable!—but she looked younger. The family resemblance was strong, particularly the height and the dark blond hair, now artificially ash blond, but she had her father's perceptive brown eyes and olive skin. Even now, her face was not lined as deeply as that of most English women her age, but Ellie's death had snatched away the natural exuberance and self-confidence.

She drove Iris home, concentrating on the road, changing lanes in her usual deft manner, asking no questions, aware of the undercurrents as ever; waiting until the time was right, insisting that Iris rest for a few hours when they arrived back at The Beeches.

Late in the afternoon they shared a pot of tea in companionable silence, Iris both marvelling at her daughter's composure and concerned by it.

“Come with me,” said Iris. “Let's take a turn round the garden.”

They went on patrol among the leaves and petals, dealing with any unwanted developments, the sooner the better. In the kitchen garden a few tomatoes had ripened, and Iris pulled them off the vine for Marion to serve with supper. Waste not, want not.