A Week in Paris (44 page)

‘Kitty Knox, she is here?’ Thérèse asked a swarthy woman at a window in the next carriage. Again the woman withdrew and another consultation took place before she reappeared. ‘Someone says they might have seen her down at the front,’ she said.

‘
Excusez-moi?
’ The woman’s accent was difficult for Thérèse to follow.

‘That way,’ the woman repeated, pointing.

A whistle blew. ‘
Attendez!
’ Thérèse cried, hitching up her habit as she pulled Fay along to the next carriage. ‘Kitty,’ she cried, searching the rows of faces behind the glass. The women stared back, puzzled.

‘Hey,’ cried the swarthy woman from the previous carriage. Thérèse swung round wildly. ‘The front. Further that way,’ the woman said, pointing again up the train.

The train gave a sudden judder and the engine let out a great hiss of steam. ‘Kitty!’ Thérèse shouted in great alarm. ‘
Attendez, attendez
,’ but the guard was too far away to hear.

‘Please?’ She lifted Fay up to the woman at the train window.

‘Come on, ups-a-daisy,’ the woman sang out and the little girl flew through the air in her arms. For a crazy moment Thérèse wondered if she should get on too, but it was too late, the train was beginning to set off. She ran to a carriage door and managed to open it, but it moved beyond her reach. Further down the platform, a soldier leaped forward to slam it. The train gathered speed, then cleared the end of the platform and was away.

Thérèse was left standing there alone, gazing after it. Had she done the right thing? The soldiers glanced at her without interest as they passed, ambling off in a relaxed group to the exit, talking and laughing, their duty done for the day.

She went and sank down on a rickety bench, her heart full of grief and confusion. She’d not said goodbye to Fay, not properly, and now the girl was gone, caught up, swept away. The women would take her to Kitty, she assured herself. Kitty must be on the train. Hadn’t the swarthy woman said so? She, Thérèse, had done the right thing. So why was she visited by this sense of unease like smoke drifting from a smouldering fire? She pondered, and eventually the fire leaped into life as the truth came to her.
Kitty would never have got on the train without her daughter, if she could help it
. The knowledge surged through her veins like molten lead, heavy, hot, deadening. She sat motionless for a long time, unsure what to do. Then, slowly, she forced herself to stand. Step by reluctant step she made her way out of the station and looked for the entrance to the camp.

1961, Saturday

‘And that,’ Nathalie Ramond said, ‘was the last time that I saw you.’

‘The last . . .?’ Fay echoed, frowning. She was trying to catch the tail of a memory. A woman’s voice saying ‘Ups-a-daisy,’ then surprise and fear as a strong pair of arms pulled her flying through the air, the ground rushing away beneath her feet. She’d landed in a swaying carriage compartment where there was a crowd of strange faces. Fay closed her eyes, remembering an exotic scent and the sound of female laughter.

‘You were on a train going west,’ Mme Ramond’s voice brought her back. ‘All the way back to England, safe with your mother. Or so I believed. Only I was wrong. Your mother wasn’t on the train at all. When I asked at the camp, they searched for her and found she wasn’t there and for a while I was reassured. Then someone in the camp office remembered that she’d gone to Paris to collect you. No one had seen her return. Hearing this, well, you can imagine, I was horrified. I’d had only a split second to think and I thought I’d done the right thing – but I hadn’t, after all. If there had been more time I could have searched the train, but I still should have known that your mother would not have left for England without you. Not unless they’d forced her to.’

‘And what if they had – forced her, I mean? You couldn’t know.’

‘That is true, yes, but at the time I didn’t think about that. I simply believed the woman who said your mother was on the train. Anyway, the Kommandant’s secretary managed to speak to somebody at the convent, but for a time nobody knew where your mother was.

‘I stayed overnight in the town. It wasn’t until the following day that your mother returned. Her train had been held up by bombing damage to the tracks. When I told her what had happened to you, well, of course, you can imagine her distress. She begged and pleaded with the Kommandant to put her on another train so she could follow you, but it seemed this wasn’t possible at short notice. What we didn’t know at the time was that because of the fighting and attacks on railways by the Resistance in Southern and Central France, it was dangerous to travel. If your mother had known that, she’d have been even more worried about you than she was. The Kommandant kept saying there would be a train soon, and trying to reassure her that the other women would look after you, Fay. And after that I didn’t know any more. Your mother was furious with me. She questioned me and questioned me about my decision to put you on that train, and told me I was stupid. Stupid or bad, very hurtful things, but I accepted them. They were my due. I had failed her and, more important, I’d failed you. It didn’t count for her that I’d looked after you for so long. Still, I understood. If you’d been my child and someone else with responsibility for you had failed in that duty, I’d have been angry, too. I offered to stay with her, to travel to find you, but she wouldn’t have it. And after a day or two I was summoned back to the convent. I went to her room to say goodbye, but she would not even open the door. And so, utterly miserable and defeated, I returned to Paris.’

‘What did my mother do then?’

‘I don’t know. We didn’t hear anything. For us in Paris the climax to the war was not long in coming, and for a while everything was chaos. In the middle of August 1944,’ Mme Ramond went on, ‘as the Allied armies surrounded Paris, a great spirit of resistance began to burn in the city and the Germans found it impossible to keep order. On the twenty-fifth, Général de Gaulle marched in, triumphant. You can imagine the strength of our rejoicing. But there was confusion, too, and recriminations; awful things went on.’

The woman sighed, as though remembering these things, but then she smiled.

‘For me, a whole new life began. One day in early November, I was relieved and delighted to receive a letter from Serge. He’d been able to leave his hiding place, but life was still very hard for him. He had travelled at once to Orléans to look for his family, but found his childhood home boarded up and empty. When he’d questioned the neighbours he learned that his parents and siblings had simply been picked up by the police one summer’s morning in 1942 and taken away. No one had seen them since. He was trying desperately to make enquiries, but the authorities were deluged with such requests and he wasn’t able to find anything out. He’d recently taken a room near the Conservatoire and was back at his old job, playing the piano at the hotel. He asked if he might come to visit me at the convent.’

‘And of course you said yes.’

‘I did – after asking the Reverend Mother’s permission. The following spring I secured a release from my vows. The other nuns were surprisingly kind and I was very touched by this. And shortly after, Serge and I were married.’

Mme Ramond’s eyes were soft with love. ‘We have had some wonderful times together, you know, though there has been tragedy too. Serge was devastated to discover that none of his family had survived the war, and he will never recover from that. It might have helped if we’d been able to have children of our own, but we were not blessed in that way. And then this arthritis has meant I haven’t been able to support him in his work as much as I’d like. Still, Serge has had great success with his music, and we have each other. Yes, we have been happy.’

Fay sensed this to be true. Nathalie Ramond had always been loyal, but she’d also followed her heart. This thought reminded her of the letter her mother had sent warning her against believing the woman. She supposed that Kitty was referring to the young Thérèse’s mistake in putting Fay on the train alone. But Mme Ramond had admitted her mistake and had always rued it. Was her account true? Fay could hardly ask her. It would sound offensive. Instead, when she rose to go, she kissed Nathalie Ramond on both cheeks.

‘Thank you,’ Fay said. ‘Thank you for looking after me when I was small. Whatever happened to me after you put me on that train, I can see that it wasn’t your fault.’

‘Thank you, dear,’ Mme Ramond said, very moved. ‘That means a great deal to me.’

‘I’m not sure that I will be able to see you tomorrow, but I will write.’

‘Thank you,
chérie
, I should like that. And one day I long to see . . . No, I must not even hope . . .’

‘You would like to see my mother again?’

‘Yes, but I fear that she has never forgiven me.’

‘Maybe she will,’ said Fay, ‘when I explain to her how you told me the truth.’

After Fay had gone, Nathalie Ramond went to the window and stood there, staring out, but she did not notice the sunshine, or a pair of laughing young girls hand-in-hand on the pavement below. She was thinking about the nature of truth. She had been brought up by her parents always to tell the truth, and all her life she’d tried to do so. She knew that truth shone light in dark corners, that it enabled reconciliation and forgiveness. ‘The truth will set you free,’ the Bible had taught her, and she had always believed that. She had seen for herself how, when Serge found out the terrible truth of what had happened to his parents, his brothers and his sister, the knowledge had freed him. He had fallen into bitter despair, yet somehow, with her support and the succour of his music, he had found within himself the courage to go on.

She’d told this child Fay the truth about how she had mistakenly put her on the train in Vittel, and Fay’s reaction had been more generous than she’d hoped. The dear girl had forgiven her, and she blessed her for that. But there was something she hadn’t told her, something so dark and difficult she couldn’t think of it without pain.

Sometimes, as in this case, she disagreed with those who insisted on the sanctity of the truth. This was why she had chosen to lie about it to Fay.

She pressed her forehead against the cold glass of the window and closed her eyes, remembering again the horror of the day Gene died. The facts as she’d relayed them to Fay were shocking enough, but they weren’t the complete truth.

Only when one has been caught up in a chaotic, fast-moving and emotional event oneself can one fully appreciate how difficult it is to make good decisions in such a situation. Only she truly understood how she came to that spur-of-the moment decision made in good faith on Vittel station. And only the people present in the church when Gene was shot could comprehend completely what had happened that day.

Fay’s mother had obviously never told her daughter the truth about it, and Nathalie Ramond would not do so either. Never, ever. There are some truths that should never be told because they hurt and destroy more than they can ever heal. Eugene Knox’s downfall came as a result of his daughter telling the truth. Fay had been nearly three, too young to know how to lie. What she did was simply not her fault. It was what came naturally to her.

Mme Ramond pressed her fingers to her temples, wondering if one of her headaches was coming on. She closed her eyes, unable to fight the pictures flying into her mind. Of what happened after the Gestapo had rounded up everyone they’d found in the convent and sent them into the church.

Hoff and his men had practically given up their search for Gene, and Hoff’s frustration was plain to behold. There he was, standing at a loss before a bunch of terrified women and children and a fussy old priest who were all watching him, waiting for him to fail.

The tension was all too much for Fay in Sister Thérèse’s arms. She didn’t understand what was happening, only that everything was frightening and wrong. She began to cry. ‘I want my papa, I want my papa,’ she moaned, and Sister Thérèse had done her best to quiet her.

It was too late, however. Hoff’s curiosity was drawn. He consulted with the officer holding Kitty, then went across to the little girl and said to her, surprisingly tenderly, ‘Where is your papa,
Liebchen
?’

Kitty gasped, ‘No, Fay!’ only to feel a hand clap across her mouth.

Hoff asked her again.

Fay knew exactly where her papa was. She was afraid of this man, but she was an obedient child.

She pointed.

Saturday

‘You look as though you need a stiff drink,’ Sandra said as she stepped into a full-length black dress and pushed her arms into the sleeves.

‘I do, but I daren’t,’ Fay said, doing up the zip for her. ‘I’d really make a mess of the pieces.’

She’d left Mme Ramond’s flat to go straight to the rehearsal, where she’d found it impossible to concentrate. Her fingers had played the notes automatically, but her heart hadn’t been in the music. All she’d been able to think about was the death of her father, her mother’s suffering . . . then there was the account of herself as a small girl, sent far away all alone on a train full of strangers. What had happened to her next? If only she could remember! The scenes Mme Ramond had described spooled through her mind with such vividness that at one point she didn’t notice the conductor asking them to start a particular passage again and, scrabbling for the right page, she knocked the score off the stand. James’s eyebrows had knitted in disapproval.

She must, she told herself as she finished dressing, simply must focus her whole mind on the concert. Not only was it the climax of their tour, to be attended by an alarming array of dignitaries, but it was her final chance to prove to Colin that she was worthy of a place in his orchestra.

It was important to look her best, too. She leaned towards the hinged mirror on the chest of drawers to clip on a pair of sparkling zircon earrings, then sighed at her reflection. Tonight in the weary light of the room her dark eyes looked huge and luminous in her pale face. She patted on more face powder. As she slicked on pink lipstick, she thought of Adam, whom she’d see later. A rush of longing warmed her cheeks, to be succeeded by despair. She was going home tomorrow. This might be their last time together. Only for a while, she assured herself, trying to be reasonable, but couldn’t stop a lump forming in her throat. It would be unbearable to say goodbye.