Never Leave Me (19 page)

Henri passed a shaking hand across his eyes. His face was ashen. It was he who had been responsible for Elise's presence at Valmy. If the girl had been arrested … killed. ‘And he let her go …' he said incredulously.

Her eyes were fierce in her tear-stained face. ‘Yes, he let her go. He would have let Paul and André go as well, if he could have done so. Please try and understand, Papa. I would never have wanted him to do what he did. I'm not very brave, but I would far, far rather have been arrested and taken to Caen than live with Paul and André's deaths on my conscience. But I didn't know about it. Dieter had only mintes in which to make a decision. If Paul and André went to Caen, then the chances were that within hours there would be an order for my arrest too. My arrest, and Elise's arrest. Your arrest. Perhaps even Maman's … What he did wasn't right, Papa, but it was the only thing he could think of in the circumstances. Please try and understand.'

He looked suddenly old, his face lined, his shoulders bowed. ‘I understand,' he said at last. ‘But I can't forgive it. I can't forgive any of it. Not their presence in my home, in my country. Not the abomination of their creed. Nor their arrogance. Not the blood that is on their hands and that nothing will ever wash away. There are so many other people you could have fallen in love with, Lisette. Why Major Meyer? Why a German?'

‘I don't know,' she said quietly. ‘I just know that I do, Papa. Nothing that anyone says or does can change it. I love him, and I want to marry him.'

‘Marry him?' He stared at her as though she had taken leave of her senses. ‘But you can't many him, Lisette. Germans don't many French girls.'

‘I'm having a baby,' she said quietly, ‘and I'm going to marry him, Papa.'

‘But my dear child, he won't marry you!' he said, his eyes anguished. ‘Such a promise is meaningless!'

She squeezed his hand tightly. ‘It isn't Papa. He asked me to marry him long before he knew about the baby. Long before there
was
a baby.'

Henri closed his eyes. She was his only child. He couldn't disown her. Couldn't cast her off. He tried to remember his first, instinctive feelings about Major Meyer. He had liked the man. He had sensed strength there, and courage. Then had come the shootings. He wondered if Lisette would have been arrested if Paul and André had been taken to Caen. It was very likely. No one could say for sure who would talk and who would not when subjected to the treatment the Gestapo meted out. In which case, at the cost of Paul and André's lives, Lisette had been spared arrest and interrogation and possible death. He sighed deeply, wondering what he would have done if he had been placed in the same position. What Paul Gilles would have done. There was no answer. There was no way that he could know. He could only guess.

‘It won't be easy,' he said, opening his eyes. ‘Whether the war is won or lost, you will not be able to raise the baby at Valmy. Not if his parentage becomes common knowledge.'

‘The war will be over soon, Papa,' she said, wishing that she could tell him of the plot to overthrow Hitler. Of Dieter's part in the conspiracy. ‘When it is, we shall live somewhere clean and untainted. Somewhere like Switzerland.'

He smiled and patted her head. ‘Yes,' he said, rising to his feet. ‘Of course you shall,
ma chére.
When the war is over.'

When Dieter arrived back at Valmy at dusk, Henri was waiting for him. ‘My daughter has told me of her relationship with you,' he said without preamble as Dieter strode into the stone-flagged entrance hall. ‘I naturally cannot condone it, but for her sake I shall tolerate it.'

‘Thank you.' Dieter inclined his head, not know quite what to say next. He knew the Comte was deeply hurt and that he was behaving with dignity in what was, for him, an intolerable situation. ‘Will you join me for a drink?' he said.

Henri shook his head. ‘No. I have no desire to alter our relationship in any way, Major Meyer.'

Dieter regarded him reflectively, wondering how best to continue. ‘You know that I want to marry Lisette?'

‘Yes.' Henri's voice was stiff. ‘She told me about the coming child.'

‘I would like to tell you about it also,' Dieter said gravely, ‘but not in an entrance hall. Please join me for a drink, Comte de Valmy, so that we may talk.'

Henri hesitated and Dieter took his arm, propelling him gently in the direction of the study. ‘I have already written to Field Marshal Rommel requesting an interview with him at which I will ask his permission for the marriage. That permission will, I am sure, be given.'

‘The marriage cannot be conducted here,' Henri said as Dieter opened the study door. ‘If it became public knowledge, Lisette would be branded as a collaborator. Both she and the child would be ostracised.'

‘I am aware of all the difficulties that Lisette and I will face,' Dieter said quietly, walking across to the drinks cabinet.

Henri stared at him. ‘You?' he asked. ‘What difficulties can you possibly face?'

A slight smile touched Dieter's mouth. ‘I have a mother, Comte de Valmy, and I doubt very much that she had envisaged having a French girl for a daughter-in-law.'

‘Ah yes, probably not,' Henri said, disconcerted. It had not occurred to him that German officers had mothers. And if they had, it had certainly not occurred to him that they might care what they thought.

‘Please don't worry. Her shock and disapproval will be short lived. What will you have to drink? A brandy or a whisky?'

‘A brandy please,' Henri said, feeling in sore need of one. He had intended having as few words as possible with Meyer. He had certainly not anticipated discussing his mother. He had only just, by the grace of God, managed to prevent himself from asking if Meyer and his mother were close. He shook his head, knowing that he was tired and that, over the last few months, he had aged years.

‘I have to ask what you intend for the future,' he said, making an effort to bring the interview back to a proper footing.

‘Of course.' Dieter found the Comte's dignity and formality in the bizarre circumstances in which he found himself, endearing. It would, he thought, swirling his brandy around in the glass, be easy to become very fond of his future father-in-law. ‘Let me say, first of all, Comte de Valmy, that I am very much in love with Lisette.'

Henri looked across at him; startled. He had long ago judged Meyer to be a man of deep reserve and few words. He had not expected such a public declaration of his feelings.

‘Falling in love with her is not a thing that I would have done by choice,' Dieter continued frankly. ‘But there was no choice. I met her, and though I tried hard not to, I fell in love with her.'

His eyes met Henri's and Henri sat down suddenly in a leather winged chair. There was no denying the depth of feeling in Meyer's voice – or the sincerity in his eyes. He was as much in love with Lisette as she was with him.

‘If only …' he said helplessly. ‘If only you weren't a German!'

Dieter's lips tightened fractionally and he put down his glass on the desk, saying, ‘I
am
a German, Comte de Valmy, and I am very proud of being a German. But if it is of any comfort to you, I am not and never have been, a Nazi.'

The room was quiet for a long time and then Henri rose heavily to his feet. ‘Then I do not envy you your moral dilemma,' he said quietly. ‘Goodnight, Major Meyer.'

Dieter watched him leave the room and then turned and poured himself another glass of brandy. His moral dilemma had been solved by his commitment to Black Orchestra and its avowed intention of removing Hitler from power. But Henri was right not to envy him. The strain of waiting for news from Berlin was crushing.

‘What is it Colonel von Stauffenburg intends to do? Lisette asked as they sat before a log fire in his room, waiting for the messages that followed the BBC news broadcast from Britain and that, now she was fully in his confidence, they listened to together each evening.

‘As a staff officer to General Olbricht, von Stauffenburg has access to Hitler's conference room. He will smuggle in a bomb concealed in a briefcase.'

‘But when? Why doesn't he do it now?' she asked impatiently, resting her head against his chest.

‘It isn't easy,' Dieter said gently. ‘Hitler is pathologically suspicious of everyone around him. He changes his timetable constantly. He leaves meetings early or he does not turn up at all. But the opportunity will, eventually, present itself, and von Stauffenburg will take advantage of it.'

‘Pray God it's soon,' she whispered as his fingers slid caressingly through her hair. ‘Before the Allies invade and hundreds of thousands more men are killed and injured.'

Above her head his eyes were grim. It had to be soon. Every day, every hour, he expected to hear that von Stauffenburg had placed the bomb and that their mission successful. His task then was to join Rommel immediately, and escort him to Berlin. During the following three hours, communications from Hitler's headquarters to the outside world would be severed.

The news broadcast came to an end and the messages to resistance units all over Europe began.

‘The Trojan War will not be held'; ‘Molasses tomorrow will spurt forth cognac'; ‘John has a long moustache'; the list went on and on but there was no quote from ‘The Song of Autumn'by Paul Verlaine. As the messages came to an end, Lisette hugged her knees with relief. For the invasion to be launched now, when Hitler was so near to being removed, would be the most needless and terrible waste of life. The news from Berlin had to come first.

‘How much more time can we possibly have?' she asked, turning towards him.

He shook his head, his wheat-gold hair bronzed by the firelight. ‘I don't know. The weather was perfect for a landing all through May. The long-term forecast now isn't good. It could be next month before they come.'

‘And by then von Stauffenburg will have seized his chance?'

‘Yes.' His eyes were dark. He felt isolated and cut off from his fellow conspirators. Stulpnagel was in Paris. Strolin was in Stuttgart. He needed to talk to someone to make sure that the plot was going ahead. ‘I think I will go to Paris this weekend,' he said, his eyes narrowing as he stared into the fire. ‘I need to speak to Stulpnagel.' His arm tightened around her. ‘And I will make arrangements for the wedding. You'll not be able to delay telling your mother any longer.'

‘It is Papa who doesn't want me to tell her,' she said, as his hand cupped her breast. ‘And I promised not to. Not for a little longer.'

‘It doesn't matter,' he said, his voice thickening as his hand slid down and across the still flat smoothness of her stomach. ‘There will only be you and I at the wedding. And the baby …'

His lips touched her, gently and then with increasing urgency. She shivered in delight, sliding her arms up and around his neck, refusing to think of what would happen to him if the plot on Hitler's life failed. If the conspiracy was revealed. Refusing to think of anything but the immeasurable joy of his body, hard and strong against hers. Of the heat of his lips on her hair and on her skin; of the utter delight of giving and in that giving, receiving treasures that she knew would be stored up in her heart forever.

It was a damp, misty morning when he left Valmy for Paris. She had risen early to say goodbye to him, wrapped in a blue velvet robe that had been her mother's last Paris-bought gift for her. He had kissed her in the privacy of his study, tracing the outline of her face with his forefinger, committing every tiny nuance of gesture and expression to memory.

‘Be safe,
liebling
,' he said huskily. ‘I'll be back in three days – four at the most.'

He had walked outside to his car and she had been overcome by such a feeling of loss and of impending disaster that she had run outside after him, flinging her arms around his neck, uncaring of his watching chauffeur.

‘Be careful!' she had urged, hugging him so tight that her arms hurt. ‘Please, please be careful!'

Gently he had lifted her arms from around his neck. ‘I'll be careful,' he said. ‘And I'll be back. I give you my word.'

He had stepped away from her and into the car, and she had stood in the centre of the gravelled drive, watching until the Horch had sped down the long length of the drive and had turned right, disappearing from view. The damp had made her shiver. It was the first day of June, but it seemed to Lisette, watching Dieter speed away from her, that summer had never been further away.

That evening, alone, she listened in on his radio to the BBC news broadcast and the messages that followed. ‘Sabine has just had mumps and jaundice'said the clear, unemotional voice from London. And then: ‘The long sobs of the violins of autumn'.

She froze, her heart slamming against her chest. It came again, ‘The long sobs of the violins of autumn', and then, ‘The children are bored on Sundays. The children are bored on Sundays.'

She could hardly breathe. Her throat was so tight that she thought she would choke. Dieter was in Paris and the invasion of Europe was imminent.

She stood for a few seconds, overcome by the enormity of the message she had just heard, and then turned, running from the room and along the long corridors to her father's study.

He was sitting at his desk, staring bleakly down at a large-scale map of France, a glass of calvados in his hand.

‘It's come, Papa!' she gasped breathlessly as she burst in on him. ‘The message to the Resistance to say that the invasion is imminent!'

He looked up at her, bewildered. ‘What message? I don't understand.'

She crossed the room towards him quickly. ‘Dieter told me of a message that the British would send immediately prior to the invasion. It is to come in two parts. The first part was broadcast from London a few minutes ago.'