A Week in Paris (48 page)

In the half-darkness, Adam’s hand grasped hers and squeezed. The curé turned a key and shoved at the door until it suddenly unstuck. It opened onto a narrow yard. They stepped outside and followed the curé’s black-cassocked figure along a flagstone path that took them to a small graveyard behind the church that nobody would ever guess was there. It was tightly packed with graves, some large and ornate, others more modest. Many of the stones were ancient and crumbling, the names on them no longer legible.

‘Hardly anyone comes here now,’ the curé said, his voice echoing against the walls that overshadowed this hidden place. He placed his hand almost fondly on a tall, leaning stone. ‘Mère Clothilde here died at the time of the Prussian siege, 1871. Now, over here somewhere . . .’ he set off to walk between the graves, eventually stopping at a small cross squeezed between two long coffin-shaped edifices, ‘this is Sister Clare, who died during the Occupation. I believe she was the last nun to be buried here. There was no more room after that. Father Paul, my predecessor, he is buried in Montparnasse. We laid Mère Marie-François to rest there, too. That was a sad day.’

Fay listened to all this, wondering why he’d brought them here.

‘This is beautiful.’ Beside her, Adam was examining a stone statue of an angel, its wings sheltering the grave of a long-dead priest.

‘Yes, though I would prefer something much plainer myself when my turn comes,’ was the curé’s dry comment, ‘such as these over here – come, this is what I want to show you.’ He picked his way across the cemetery until he came to an area in the middle where there were a dozen modestly labelled graves even more closely spaced than the others. His eye scanned the scattering of gravestones, then he stepped across to one marked only by a simple cross, like Sister Clare’s. Another nun? wondered Fay, as she moved alongside. She stared down at it. In a vase before the cross was a single red rose, full blown, its petals starting to fall.

She crouched by the grave to examine the words cut deep into the stone, and as she read them a ripple of shock ran through her. She glanced up. ‘Adam,’ she whispered. She stared at the stone again, the words fixing themselves in her head.
Eugene Knox, 1912–1942
, and underneath,
In forever loving memory
.

‘My father,’ she breathed. Adam came to crouch beside her and laid his hand on her arm as he read the words.

‘I thought this must be him, my child,’ the curé said, coming to stand behind the stone. ‘I am sorry I did not remember this the last time you visited, but I rarely come here. The name Knox, when you said it, was familiar to me – but the way you said it was different to the way I pronounced it in my head, so I did not make the connection. Still, there is a reason that I ought to have done.’

He pointed to the dying rose, its petals scattered on the ground. ‘Every spring, one of those arrives. An early rose – I don’t know where they find it. There’s never any message, only the instruction to lay it on the grave. Mère Marie-François was very old when I came here a few years back and her mind was going, poor woman. She said the young man had been killed in the war, but she mixed up the story with others about airmen escaping and a girl she called Sofie. It made no sense to me.’

‘Poor lady,’ Fay said. ‘She was right though about my father being killed in the war. I’m afraid that it was here in the church that it happened.’

‘Was it?’ the curé said, dismayed. ‘I know that Father Paul used to hide people from the Nazis here. I found a letter from one of them in the drawer of his desk, thanking him.’

Briefly, Fay explained everything to him.

‘What a very terrible story,’ he said when she’d finished. ‘And Madame Ramond told you this? I did not know about her past here as Sister Thérèse. Mère Marie-François’s mind was very confused in her last days.’

‘Did she know who sends the rose every year?’ Adam asked.

‘I don’t remember us ever speaking about it,’ the curé said sadly.

‘I think I know who sends them,’ Fay said with quiet confidence. There could only be one person in the whole of the world who would remember her father every year and who would send him one of the flowers she grew – a red rose, the symbol of passionate true love. Her mother.

Fay and Adam walked hand-in-hand back across the river towards Notre Dame, to where it had all begun for them. As they approached the magnificent façade with its air of lightness and grace, they exchanged smiles. ‘Would you like to go in?’ Adam asked, but Fay shook her head.

‘It’s beautiful, but I’ve had enough of gloomy places for the moment,’ she said. ‘I’d rather find somewhere to sit down in the open air.’

They found a café overlooking the river with tables scattered outside and soon Fay was warming her hands around a large cup of creamy white coffee, whilst Adam sipped a tiny espresso.

‘I still can’t believe it,’ she said, ‘that my father was buried there and my mother knew all the time. It’s such a shock, and this might sound strange, but I feel I’ve found him properly now.’

‘I’m glad,’ Adam said sincerely. ‘It must make such a difference to you.’

There was the slightest of catches in his voice, and he did not speak for a while. Fay wondered whether he was thinking about his own father, who was very much alive, but with whom his relationship was tainted. She wanted to say something to him, but couldn’t think what. Perhaps it was something she could help him with in the future, to find his way back to him. Surely his father loved him and there must be hope.

She watched Adam, trying to absorb everything about him, so that she’d remember how he looked and carry the memory with her. Strands of his fine hair lifted in the breeze from the river, which blew away the ash from his cigarette. He gave her a lazy smile. ‘What are you thinking?’ he asked.

‘That . . . I’ll miss you,’ she said, and at once he moved closer and took her hand, lacing his fingers with hers.

‘I’ll miss you, too,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t bear the thought of you going. The week has passed so quickly. We’ve been together such a short time, yet I feel I’ve known you all my life.’

‘Oh, Adam, it’s the same for me.’

He leaned in and kissed her cheek by her ear so that she shivered with desire.

‘Where shall we go, what shall we do? Now, I mean. I don’t suppose we have time to go back to mine, do we?’

She smiled at his hopeful face and glanced at her watch. It was lunchtime nearly, but she wasn’t hungry, not really. She thought about it and finally the loving look she gave him and the way she squeezed his hand told him the answer.

Monday

Norfolk

The sun was low in the afternoon sky as Fay walked across the hospital garden towards her mother. It was little more than a week since she’d last been here, but already the weather was warmer, the air alive with the humming of bees. The tulip-like blooms of the magnolia tree were fully open now, and under its soft white canopy Kitty rested on a pillow on the arm of her bench, asleep. Fay pulled up a chair next to her, and Kitty’s eyes fluttered open. She raised her head, sat up smiling and gave Fay her hand.

‘Darling, you’re back. I hoped you might come today. Dr Russell said you would be too tired after your journey, but I’m glad he was wrong.’

‘I didn’t have very much sleep last night,’ Fay admitted, leaning to kiss her mother’s cheek, ‘but I wanted to come straight away. How are you?’

‘Oh, much more my usual self, I think.’ Fay thought her mother did indeed look better. Her eyes were bright, her expression alert, and she’d lost that fuzzy pallor that a stay in hospital can give people. ‘It must be those delicious oranges you brought me.’ Her eyes were full of mischief now.

‘If so, they must be magic ones,’ Fay told her and her mother laughed, but it wasn’t yet her old, happy laugh and Fay detected wariness in her manner.

‘How was your trip? Did the concerts go well? Tell me about it. You must have had a wonderful time.’

‘Wonderful is the word,’ Fay told her. ‘The performances went really well. The sponsors were so generous. We had some marvellous dinners and Paris was . . . well, beautiful. And, oh, I brought you a present.’ She handed over the prettily wrapped parcel and her mother exclaimed over the blue scarf. They talked for a while about the music and how Colin had promised Fay a permanent place in the orchestra following Frank’s departure.

Finally, it was as though a spell of quietness fell over them. Fay shuffled in her chair and said, ‘I don’t know where to begin. Mummy, you sent me a letter . . .’

‘Yes.’ Kitty paused, then said quickly, ‘Perhaps I over-reacted. I’m sorry, Fay, it’s just that when Dr Russell gave me your phone message, I was upset. Thérèse was the last person I thought you’d meet. I’d wanted you to find out . . . everything – but not from her. I was hurt by—’

‘
You
were hurt?’ All Fay’s pent-up frustration burst out. ‘What about me? Why did you never tell me anything yourself?’ Suddenly she was overwhelmed by it all over again. Last time she had sat here, a week ago, she had known almost nothing of her early childhood, had not even suspected that anything her mother had told her about herself had not been true. And now, after these dumbfounding revelations, Kitty was talking about her own shock, her own feelings. Fay turned her face away to hide her misery.

‘Don’t,’ Kitty said in a fluttery voice. ‘Oh, please don’t.’

‘Mummy . . .’ Fay began, still not looking at her. ‘I don’t know what to say to you.’

‘Tell me all about what
she
told you then,’ Kitty said urgently. ‘I need to know what I have to answer for.’

Fay met her mother’s eyes now and read so much in them. Pain, yes, but also courage. Most of all there was a strong, steady love, the love that had been there for her all her childhood, when there had just been the two of them, Kitty and Fay, living together in Primrose Cottage, secure and happy. If this cosy picture hadn’t been the whole truth then it was still part of the truth. Kitty had given Fay the life she had now.

‘All right,’ Fay said, and she related the story from the beginning, describing how, following the clue in the rucksack, she’d visited the convent and met the current curé, André Blanc.

When she broke it to her mother that Mère Marie-François was dead, Kitty cried out, ‘Nobody told me! Oh, that’s so sad.’ She had known, however, that Sister Thérèse had left the convent after the war and married Serge and that the couple had gone to America.

‘I wrote to the Reverend Mother once, soon after we moved to Primrose Cottage. I felt she should know that you’d been found and that we were all right. And she wrote back and told me. It was a surprise, I can tell you. Who would have thought it? A pair of dark horses. But don’t let me interrupt. Go on, do.’

So Fay related everything that Mme Ramond had told her, from the time of Kitty’s arrival in Paris and meeting Gene to the terrible scene in the church that had culminated in Gene’s death, and her journey down to Vittel with Fay. Occasionally Kitty corrected some small error of timing or the nuance of a reported conversation, but largely she nodded in agreement as she concentrated on the story. Fay stumbled as she told the most awful part of all, and when she glanced up at her mother, saw that Kitty’s eyes were squeezed shut, her mouth trembling as though she was trying not to cry.

‘Then his hiding place was discovered when Hoff felt the shape of the ring beneath his boot, and turned back the carpet to reveal the trap door.’

Kitty’s eyes flew open. ‘Tell me that again.’

‘Why? Is something wrong with what I said?’

‘No, nothing. Just tell me exactly what she said about how Obersturmführer Hoff discovered the crypt.’

Fay repeated what she’d said, how the man had been pacing up and down on the carpet and must have felt beneath his foot the awkward shape of the ring lying in its recess in the flagstone.

‘Didn’t Thérèse say . . .?’ Then Kitty stopped. ‘No, it doesn’t matter.’ She looked thoughtful for a moment, then much brighter. She said, ‘Go on.’

The next bit was worst of all. As Fay repeated in broken phrases what Mme Ramond had told her of how Gene was shot, Kitty stared out across the garden, an exquisite pain etched into her face.

‘She said you were taken away and sent to prison, Mummy. And then to an internment camp. She didn’t know all the details, only what she learned from the letters you sent Mère Marie-François.’

‘It’s true what she told you,’ Kitty sighed. ‘They took me away from you.’ She described how she’d been questioned by Herr Obersturmführer Hoff but that he’d had to let her go in the end. And how she’d been sent to Vittel and hadn’t been allowed either to leave or felt able to have Fay with her. Hearing her mother say this to her face helped dispel some of the anger and confusion Fay felt. It wasn’t that her mother hadn’t wanted her, it was that she hadn’t been allowed to come home to Fay. And, as Mme Ramond had said, Kitty had refused to put her daughter in danger by having her with her in the internment camp.

When Fay described how she and Thérèse had travelled down to Vittel and how Thérèse had put her on the train for Lisbon, her mother’s anger was unmistakable.

‘I have never forgiven her for that,’ she snapped. ‘The woman was an imbecile.’

‘I don’t believe she was. She had to make a difficult decision in a fraction of a moment.’ Fay explained it to her mother as carefully as Nathalie had done to her. How the young nun’s English had not been good enough to understand that the others on the train merely
thought
Kitty was on it too, rather than knowing for sure that she was. ‘She had no time to look for you properly, the train was about to leave. What would have happened if you
had
been on it and I was left behind?’

‘I simply dread to think,’ her mother said. ‘But I wouldn’t have got on the train without you. She should have known that, the simpleton. She should have made the guard hold the train whilst they found out if I was on board.’

They were both quiet again, thinking of the might-have-beens.

‘I’ve remembered it now,’ Fay whispered. ‘The train journey, I mean.’