Jewels (28 page)

“Pretty ugly.” He told her what they knew, or some of it, of what had happened in Warsaw. The ghetto, the pogroms, the mountains of bodies, even those of children who had fought and lost. It made her cry when he told her. There were tales from Germany that were pretty ugly too. There were fears that Hitler might make a move on the Low Countries, top, but he hadn’t so far, and they were keeping him at bay as best they could, but it wasn’t easy. “I’d like to think it’ll be over soon, but I just don’t know. Perhaps if we scare the little bastard enough, he’ll back off. But he seems pretty gutsy.”

“I don’t want anything to happen to you,” she said, looking anguished.

“Darling, nothing will, it would be such a dreadful embarrassment to them if anything happened to me. Believe me, the War Office will keep me wrapped up in cotton wool. It just gives the men a bit of heart to see someone like me dressed up in a uniform and playing the same games they are.” He was thirty-seven years old, and they were hardly going to use him in the front lines at this point.

“I hope you’re right.”

“I am. And I’ll be back over to see you before Christmas.” He was beginning to like the idea of her staying in France. Things seemed so frenzied and so frightening in England. And here, everything seemed so peaceful by comparison. It almost looked as though nothing had happened at all, except that there were no men visible anywhere, or at least no young ones, only children.

They spent their last night together in bed, and eventually Sarah slept in his arms. And William had to wake her when the baby cried for her. She had been in a deep, happy sleep. And after she fed the baby, they made love again. And William had to drag himself out of bed in the morning.

“I’ll be back soon, my love,” he promised as he left, and this time his leaving didn’t seem quite so desperate. He was well and safe, and he didn’t seem to be in any real danger.

And true to his word, he came back to see her a month later, two days before Christmas. He spent Christmas Day quietly with her, and he noticed something he’d seen before, but couldn’t quite fathom this time.

“You’ve gained weight,” he commented. She wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or a complaint. She had gained it around her waist, and her hips, and her breasts seemed fuller. It was only a month since he’d been gone, but her body had changed, and it made him wonder. “Could you be pregnant again?”

“I don’t know.” She looked a little vague, she had wondered the same thing once or twice. She was feeling vaguely nauseated from time to time, and all she wanted to do was sleep. “I didn’t think so.”

“I think you are.” He smiled, and then suddenly he began to worry. He didn’t like leaving her alone here again, particularly if she was pregnant. He said something about it that night, and asked if she would be willing to go to Whitfield.

’“That’s silly, William. We don’t even know if I am.” She didn’t want to leave France, pregnant or not. She wanted to be here, at their château, hammering and banging away until it was fully restored, and taking care of her child.

“You think you are, too, don’t you?”

“I think I might be.”

“Oh, you wicked girl!” But all it did was excite him again, and after they made love, he gave her the only Christmas present he’d been able to bring, a beautiful emerald bracelet of his mother’s. It was made of large cabochon stones surrounded by very old diamonds, and had been commissioned years before at Garrard’s by a maharaja. It was hardly something she could wear every day, but when he came home, and they went out again, it would be splendid. “You’re not disappointed I don’t have more for you?” He felt guilty not to have brought her anything else, but he really couldn’t. He had grabbed that out of the safe at Whitfield, with his mother’s blessing, the last time he’d seen her.

“This is awful,” she teased. “What I really wanted was a set of plumber’s tools. I’ve been trying to fix some of these damn toilets they started to install last summer.”

“I love you.” He laughed. She gave him a beautiful painting they had found hidden in the barn, and an old, well-worn watch that she loved, that had been her father’s. She had brought it to Europe with her, as a souvenir of him, and now she gave it to William to carry with him. And he genuinely seemed to love it.

The Duke and the Duchess of Windsor spent their Christmas in Paris, busy with social events, while the Whitfields worked side by side, reinforcing beams in their barn, and cleaning out the stables.

“Hell of a way to spend Boxing Day, my dear,” William said as they stood side by side, covered in dirt and dried manure, holding their hammers and shovels.

“I know,” she said, grinning, “but think how great this place will look when we’re finished.” He had given up trying to talk her into going to Whitfield. She loved this place too much, and she was at home here.

He left her again on New Year’s Eve, and Sarah saw the New Year in alone, in their bed at the château, as she held their baby. She hoped that it would be a better year, and the men would all soon be home again. And she crooned “Auld Lang Syne” to Phillip as she held him.

By January, she was certain that she was pregnant again. And she managed to find an ancient doctor in Chambord, who confirmed it. He told her that the old wives’ tale that you couldn’t get pregnant while you were nursing was sometimes true, but not always. But she was very happy about it. Phillip’s baby brother or sister was due to arrive in August. Emanuelle was still helping her, and she was excited about the baby too. She promised to do everything she could to help the duchess with the new baby. But Sarah also hoped that William would be home again by then. She wasn’t afraid. She was pleased. She wrote William and told him the news, and he wrote back and urged her to take care of herself, and said he’d try to come over as soon as he could, but instead they sent him to Watton in Norfolk with the 82 Squadron Bomber Command, and he wrote her again that there would be no hope of his coming to France for several months now. He did mention that he wanted her in Paris by July, and she could stay with the Windsors if she had to. But he didn’t want her having the baby at the château again, particularly if he wasn’t there, which he hoped he would be.

In March, she received another letter from Jane, who had another little baby girl, and they named this one Helen. But Sarah felt strangely distant from her family now, as though they were no longer intimately a part of her life, as they once had been. She tried to stay abreast of their news, but letters came so late, and so many of the names they referred to were unfamiliar. For the past year and a half, her life had been totally removed from them. They all seemed so far away now. She was totally involved in her own life with her son, restoring the château and listening to the news in Europe.

She listened to every broadcast she could hear, read every newspaper, listened to every bit of gossip. But the news was never very good, or very hopeful. Only in his letters, William kept promising that he would be home soon. Hitler seemed to be stalling for time in the spring of 1940, and William and some of his friends began to wonder if he wasn’t going to back off. In the States, they were calling it the Phony War, but to the people in the countries Hitler had occupied, it was very real and far from phony.

The Windsors invited her to a dinner party in Paris at the end of April, but she didn’t go. She didn’t want to leave Phillip at the château, even though she trusted Emanuelle. Also she was five months pregnant, and she didn’t think it proper to go out without William. She sent them a polite note instead, and in early May she caught a terrible cold, and she was in bed on the fifteenth, when the Germans invaded the Low Countries. Emanuelle came rushing upstairs to tell her. Hitler was on the move again, and Sarah came downstairs to the kitchen to listen to their radio, and see if she could pick up a broadcast.

She listened to what news she could find all afternoon, and the next day she tried to call Wallis and David, but she was told by the servants there that they had left for Biarritz the previous morning. The duke had taken the duchess to the South for her safety.

Sarah went back to bed, and a week later she had a raging case of bronchitis. And then the baby caught it from her, and she was so busy taking care of him that she scarcely understood what it meant when she heard the broadcast about the evacuation of Dunkirk. What had happened to them? How had they been driven back?

When Italy entered the war against France and England, Sarah began to panic. The news was terrible, and the Germans were attacking France, and everyone in the country was terrified, but no one knew where to go or what to do. Sarah knew they would never give in to the Germans, but what if they bombed France? She knew William and her parents must be frantic about her, and there was no way for her to reach them. They had been cut off from the world. She hadn’t been able to call England or the States. It had been absolutely impossible to get a connection. And on the fourteenth of June, she and everyone else sat in stunned silence as they heard the news. The French government had declared Paris an open city. They had literally handed it to the Germans, and they had marched in, in waves, by nightfall. France had fallen to the Germans. And as she listened, Sarah couldn’t believe it. She sat staring at Emanuelle, as they listened to the news, and the younger girl started to cry when she heard it.

“Ils vont nous tuer
…” she wailed. “They will kill us. We will all be dead.”

“Don’t be silly,” Sarah said, trying to sound stern, and hoping the girl wouldn’t see how badly her own hands were shaking. “They’re not going to do anything to us. We’re women. And they probably won’t come here. Emanuelle, be sensible … calm down….” But she didn’t believe her own words as she said them. William had been right. She should have left France, but now it was too late. She had been so busy taking care of Phillip that she hadn’t seen the warning signs, and she could hardly make a dash for the South now, as the Windsors clearly had. She wouldn’t have gotten far with her baby in her arms, and she was seven months pregnant.

“Madame, what will we do?” Emanuelle asked, still feeling that she owed it to her to protect her. She had promised William.

“Absolutely nothing,” Sarah said quietly. “If they come here, we have nothing to hide, nothing to give them. All we have is what we’ve grown in the garden. We have no silver, no jewels.” She suddenly remembered the emerald bracelet William had given her for Christmas, and the few things she’d brought with her, like her engagement ring and the first Christmas gifts William had bought her in Paris. But she could hide those things, there weren’t many, and if she had to, she would give them up to save their lives. “We have nothing they want, Emanuelle. We are two women alone here, with a baby.” But nonetheless, she took one of William’s guns to bed with her that night, and slept with the baby in the bed next to her, and the gun under her pillow. She hid the jewelry under the floorboards in the baby’s room, and then nailed them down again expertly, and spread the Aubusson rug on top carefully.

Nothing happened for the next four days. She had just decided that they were as safe as they had been before, when a convoy of jeeps appeared, coming down the
grande allée
, and a flock of German soldiers in uniform jumped out of the jeeps and ran toward her. Two of the soldiers pointed guns at her and signalled to her to put her hands up, but she couldn’t because she was holding Phillip. She knew that Emanuelle was clearing away the breakfast things in the kitchen, and she prayed that she wouldn’t panic when she saw them.

They shouted at her to move, and she stood where they wanted her to but she tried to appear unruffled as she clung to Phillip with shaking hands, and spoke to them in English.

“What can I do to help you?” she asked quietly and with great dignity, trying to give her best imitation of William’s aristocratic and commanding demeanor.

They rattled at her in German for a little while, and then another soldier of obviously superior rank spoke to her. He had angry eyes, and a nasty little mouth, but Sarah tried to force herself not to notice.

“You are English?”

“American.” That seemed to stump him for a while, and he rattled on with the others in German, before speaking to her again.

“Who owns this house? This land? The farm?”

“I do.” She spoke firmly for all to hear, “I am the Duchess of Whitfield.”

More chattering, more German, more consultation. He waved her aside with the gun again. “We will go inside now.”

She nodded her agreement, and they went into the house, and as they did, she heard a scream from the kitchen. They had obviously startled Emanuelle, and two of the soldiers brought her out at gunpoint. She was crying as she ran toward Sarah, and Sarah put an arm around her and held her. They were both shaking as they stood, but nothing on Sarah’s face would have told them she was frightened. She was the portrait of a duchess.

A group of soldiers stood guarding them, as the others reconnoitered inside. And then they returned as a fresh line of jeeps came up the driveway. The first soldier in command came back to her then and asked her where her husband was. She told him he was away, and he showed her that he had found the gun she had concealed under her pillow. Sarah looked unimpressed and continued to watch them. And as she stood, a tall, thin officer emerged from one of the recently arrived jeeps and walked toward them. The man currency in charge spoke to him, showed him the gun, and waved at the women as he made his explanations, and then waved toward the house, obviously explaining what he had found there She also heard him say the word “Amerikaner.”

“You are American?” The new officer asked, in very clipped British tones, with only the faintest hint of German. He clearly spoke excellent English, and he looked very distinguished.

“I am. I am the Duchess of Whitfield.”

“Your husband is British?” he asked quietly, his eyes looking deep into hers. In another place, another time, she would have thought him handsome. And they probably would have met at a party. But this was not. It was war, and they both kept their distance.