Madeleine's War (40 page)

“Why not a proper hospital, now this part of France has been liberated?”

“This
is
a hospital. It has acted as a hospital, secretly, throughout the war. It has doctors—doctors everyone in the Resistance knows—and it has an operating theatre and a supply of medicines. The nuns are excellent nurses. It's as good as any other hospital in the area in the aftermath of occupation and the locals trust it.”

I nodded.

“May I see her now? Where is Philippe now? Is he with her?”

“A few more details first. You'll see why.”

She fingered her necklace again.

“That all happened about ten days ago.” She eyed me levelly. “What you don't know, what she was frightened to tell you, in case you stopped her being flown to France, is that Madeleine was pregnant—”

“What?”

Mrs. Dirac nodded. “I didn't know either, not until I got the call in Blakeney to come as soon as I could. And what you need to know is that, amid the excitement and danger of the escape, and the trauma of the explosion, Madeleine went into labour. Her daughter—your daughter—was born in a farmhouse between La Rochelle and here.”

I had a daughter.

She smiled a sad smile. “The baby is doing fine—”

“What do you mean by that? What about Madeleine?”

She reached out gently, took my chin in her fingers, exactly as Madeleine used to do, and turned my head until it faced her. “First, you should
know that I was sent for because no one knew how to contact you. Obviously, Madeleine's radio transmitter was confiscated when she was arrested. Like Madeleine, I had the number of Hamilton Place in London, but there was never any reply when I phoned. Since the organisation you work for is secret, no one knew how to contact you. Philippe had been told by his Resistance colleagues in Paris that SC2 had showed up there and he was about to try to contact your organisation when…”

“When what?”

She looked at me. “Philippe died of his wounds the day before yesterday.”

I didn't know what to say. The taxi driver who had brought me obviously hadn't heard the latest news.

It was a long time before either Victoria Dirac or I said anything.

Then, still speaking softly, she murmured, “One other thing.”

I shifted on the bench.

She pulled hard on her cigarette. “While Madeleine was imprisoned she was badly treated, and she caught typhus, either from the lice or the rats. Or…it's possible that the Nazi doctors experimented on her, gave her typhus deliberately to see if they could manipulate it. We don't know, but there are all sorts of rumours floating around.”

She sniffed. “The important thing for you to know is that complications set in—kidney failure and pneumonia.”

She looked up at me.

“The baby is doing well, Matt, but…Madeleine is not so good. Her kidney failure is quite advanced and the pneumonia…It's…it's not good.”

Mrs. Dirac touched my knee. “Madeleine doesn't know it—but she hasn't got long to live.”

I stopped breathing. My chest tightened.

“I'm sorry. We are all…it's terrible. It's a matter of days, hours even—she may not last the night. I brought some photographs for her to have near her bed, for comfort.”

Stunned, I said nothing. I couldn't speak.

Then I tried. “How…how weak
is
she?”

“Even talking is an effort.”

“Then let me put my questions to you.”

“I'll do my best to answer.”

“Why was Philippe reported dead when he wasn't?”

“Ah, yes. I know the answer, now. You speak very good French, Matthew, you have an accent, but your French is first-rate. But you are not French and so, perhaps, you can't understand.

“It was his mother. Philippe's mother always hated the fact that Madeleine was a Protestant, when her son was a Catholic. When Philippe was seriously injured and captured at the beginning of the war, and before he escaped, his mother got word to Madeleine that he was dead. She thought that would kill whatever there was between them. As it did. Without that, Matt, Madeleine would not have turned to you.”

I swallowed.

“There's something else.”

She picked up my hand and held it. “When Philippe rescued Madeleine, he knew she was pregnant. It was part of the intelligence he got from his Resistance colleagues in Paris.” She squeezed my hand. “He went ahead anyway.”

She squeezed my hand again. “And of course, he was present, at the farm, when Madeleine gave birth.”

A farm, I registered, thinking back to that other farm, where it had all started.

“I talked to Philippe before he died. He was delighted for Madeleine that she has a daughter. His own mother is dead now, but he still blamed her for her deception. Had she not interfered, maybe Madeleine and he could have picked up where they left off when the war ended. But he went through a war like the rest of us, and he told me he'd seen enough to know that all manner of…that things like this happen. And, since he knew Madeleine was dying, he was happy for her that she has a child. It is the one thing that comforts her in her last days.”

The cigarette she held in her fingers was shaking. A tear fell quickly down her cheek to her chin. She dropped the cigarette to the floor and crushed it with her shoe.

She wiped her face with the ball of her hand. “Now you know everything.”

We sat, side by side, for a while, neither of us talking.

Then she whispered, “Let's go in.”

I LET THE TAXI DRIVER GO
. Through the brown wooden door, the corridor seemed endless. It seemed at the time like the longest walk I had ever
made. We passed several niches, in each of which there was a marble bust, as I recall, and some landscape paintings of Mediterranean scenes. I have no idea why I registered these details. My mind felt numb.

At length, Victoria Dirac stopped and lightly touched my arm.

“She's very thin. Try not to look too shocked, when you see her.”

We went through a door, where two nuns were sitting. They both stood up.

That room gave on to another, with windows high up in the wall, but covered with blinds.

This inner room was shady rather than dark. There was a bed in the corner with a figure in it.

Victoria Dirac was right. Madeleine was shockingly thin, her slight frame made her unruly hair seem more untamed than ever.

But it was her. Not quite the Madeleine of The Farm, or the beach at Ardlossan. Not the Madeleine of the Southwater meadow, that May night, in a blue cotton dress.

But nearly. The eyes, brown like whisky. The cleft in her chin. Her ballerina's neck.

Victoria left us.

Madeleine and I were alone.

“Hello,” I said, bending down and kissing her cheek. My stomach was chopping and churning again. Tears did their best to break out over my cheeks but I wouldn't let them.

I kissed her again. “That's from Zola.”

She closed her eyes and smiled. I could see that even that was an effort.

Then she opened them and, for a moment, they were bigger than ever.

Then she closed them again.

The truth was, she was weaker than I had expected.

I sat on the bed and held her hand.

“So…how are you feeling?”

“Weak,” she said. “But I'll get stronger now you are here.”

“We'll both get stronger, now.”

“You have a daughter.”

“
We
have a daughter. Where is she?”

“Being fed. I'm too weak. They will bring her in soon.”

“What shall we call her?”

“You choose.”

“No, let's choose together. How about your mother's name?”

“No, not that. Something…to remind you of me.”

“What do you mean? Don't talk like that—you'll be getting stronger now that I'm here.”

She closed her eyes again and nodded.

“Your mother has told me everything. About how Philippe came back from the dead, how he came to save you even though he knew you were pregnant. The injuries which…which ended his life.”

She opened her eyes. “He was a good man. You are a good man. I've been lucky.”

Seeing her lying there, pitifully weak, thin, pale, save for the shadows under her eyes—how could she say that?

But she did.

I blinked back my tears again.

“Speaking of good men,” she said, in barely more than a whisper, “I have a favour to ask.”

The sound of the door opening interrupted us. It was the nursing sister bringing a little bundle into the room.

I stood up and took the bundle from the nurse.

She was so small she was barely there at all, but even so, as she wriggled, and as she squirmed, I could feel the energy coiled up in her tiny body. The strength of her minuscule fingers wrapping themselves round my thumb, the gummy lips that twisted into the first smile she would ever direct at me, her vivid whisky-brown eyes—just like her mother's—trying to focus and to work out what I was, holding her.

I kissed her forehead. How close to tears can you be and not actually cry?

“She's beautiful,” I whispered, lowering her to Madeleine.

“Not yet,” she replied. “Not yet, but if genes are all they are supposed to be, then, with yours and mine, she stands a good chance of being beautiful someday. If not, you'll love her anyway.”

I laughed. “We'll both love her always.”

Madeleine closed her eyes and nodded.

“I have an idea,” I said softly.

“Yes?”

“Philippe rescued you, knowing you were pregnant with someone else's child. He gave this little bundle a chance to live. Let's call her Philippa.”

Madeleine smiled. A radiant smile. Like that day in the Lagonda, with the top down, speeding down the Chiltern Hills.

“You wouldn't mind?”

“It will keep part of him alive.”

“Philippa…Philippa Hammond. Will people call her Pippa, do you think?”

“Will you mind if they do?”

Still smiling, she shook her head. “With any luck, she'll never need a code name.”

I laughed.

Looking down, I could see that Philippa was already fast asleep in Madeleine's arms. Totally content.

“What were you going to say? You mentioned a favour.”

Madeleine nodded weakly. “I am alive—little Philippa is alive, we are both alive—because Philippe rescued us.” She paused. “I thanked him—of course I thanked him.”

She closed her eyes and waited for a moment, gathering her strength.

“But Philippe knew about my capture, and where to find me, because of the Resistance in Paris, one man in particular, their head of intelligence, who kept an archive and who was informed that I was captive in La Rochelle.”

She breathed out, the air escaping from her lungs with difficulty.

“When you get the chance, when you eventually get back to Paris, I'd like you to thank him personally from me. From us, from all three of us, from Philippa in particular, who probably would not have lived but for him.”

She coughed. Her whole body shook.

“His name, Philippe said, is François Perrault.”

Moments before Madeleine spoke, I had anticipated what she was going to say. I could see the shape of the words forming on her lips and I wanted to cry out, “No! Don't say it, please don't say that name!”

My throat was dry, the palms of my hands were clammy. Suddenly I was burning up. The sunlight of Madeleine's radiant smile had disappeared.

I had to calm down, but that was easier said than done. Should I tell her straightaway that François Perrault was dead? That I had…? No, she wasn't strong enough.

I took Madeleine's hand and squeezed it lightly.

“Of course, I'll do as you say.”

The sound of the door opening made me turn around. It was the nurse.

“That's long enough now, sir. Madeleine must rest.”

But Madeleine was not playing ball.

“What time is it?”

I looked at my watch. “Nearly three.”

“Come back at seven. I have dinner at six thirty. You can take me for a walk in the garden. There's a full moon tonight.”

I STOOD BY THE ENTRANCE
to Madeleine's room and watched the nurse wrap a shawl and a coat around her. What there was of her.

The nurse had warned me that a walk at night was not a good idea, that Madeleine wasn't strong enough, that her pneumonia was so far advanced that a little night air could tip her over the edge.

I hadn't insisted.

But Madeleine had. She was going to take a walk. There was a full moon that night and that was that.

The very sick have a moral authority that is hard to refuse.

Before she had put on her shawl and overcoat, she had sat on the bed and combed her hair, applied a touch of lipstick and rouge to her cheeks. She had a bit of colour. But she was undoubtedly weak.

She stepped into her slippers and pulled her belt tightly around her waist. Her hair fell about her shoulders as unruly as ever.

“Ready for take-off,” she said softly.

I held out my arm and she slipped hers inside.

We went out into the corridor.

Several nuns were there, and her mother.

She looked at them but said nothing. We crossed the corridor and went out into the garden.

There were hedges and bushes, long arrays of roses, what looked like willow trees in the distance, a lawn directly in front of us, and the sound of running water somewhere.

“Look at that,” she said. “Look at the light.”

The moonlight bathed the garden in a white light, a light quite unlike any other form of light, casting indistinct shadows.

We looked up and the moon looked down.

Around the rim of the moon, the sky was indigo blue.

“When you took off that night in Sussex, I stood and watched your plane. It flew directly towards the moon, or it appeared to, a black silhouette getting smaller and smaller until it was no more. For ages I could hear the plane, but in the moonlight I couldn't see it.”