The French Promise (14 page)

He returned to his father’s writing. Kilian spoke affectionately of the Tuileries, the Luxembourg Gardens, the Louvre and how a lot of its paintings had disappeared. ‘
There is a rumour that a farmer somewhere in France is sleeping
with the Mona Lisa staring down on him,’
he
read, and Max could hear his father’s glee at such a notion
. ‘I wonder if I shall ever send this? he continued. ‘If it were intercepted, my detractors would certainly feel their misgivings were well guided! So much for the proud Kilian military lineage, ending abruptly on the end of a rope.’

His father switched subjects with the date change. Even the ink on the page looked different
and his writing was slightly smaller as though he were trying to cram more onto one page.

‘I’ve decided to take only one meal daily. Given that many French are starving, my conscience won’t allow me to indulge as so many of my colleagues do. Dare I say wealthy Parisians are having a wonderful war, unlike our boys at the Front who are being slaughtered in unimaginable numbers. Believe me when I
say we will lose this war because of our aggression in the east and grandiose aspirations to crush Russia. Anyway, enough gloom. This evening I am off to a famous Parisian watering hole that has been and still is host to writers, painters, philosophers … and of course us Nazis.’

Max could almost hear the distaste in his father’s mind as his hand wrote that last phrase.

‘Lex Deux Magots,’
his mother sighed aloud as he read the same words. He increased his grip on her hand as hers seemed to lessen and continued.

‘I’m meeting a banker. Walter Eichel is a gentleman and has a fine appreciation for music, art and literature; he’s also a sensible German who I suspect shares my views on the folly of our ways. I think I shall be in good company this cold evening for a cognac.’

Max looked again at his mother. The letter was written
over several weeks, it seemed. As that was the end of the second entry, he thought it a good place to pause. Her lids were half-closed now.

‘Don’t stop yet,’ she whispered. ‘Please.’ Her voice sounded far away.

Max moved on to the next entry, dated 16 May.

‘Something has happened, dearest Ilse. Something as unexpected as
it is perhaps faintly ridiculous. Forgive me that I share it with you but I have no other friend, you see. I spoke of meeting Walter Eichel earlier this month and on that evening I also met his goddaughter, Lisette Forestier. Her father was German. We’ve struck up an unlikely companionship and she is like a refreshing summer breeze to blow out the cobwebs of my grumpy mind. I would be lying if I
didn’t say I was enjoying her presence. She works at Eichel’s bank but I’m hoping to persuade her to work for me as she is fluent in German and French, which is precisely what I require if I’m going to do the trip around France to meet the clergy that I’ve promised to do since I took over this curious role. Lisette is twenty-five and far too pretty and fun to be spending her time with me. Nevertheless,
she has rekindled a sense of hope and more so a joy that has been absent in my life since the start of the German insanity’
. Max wished his mother hadn’t asked him to read on – she’d known this admission was coming and even he found it awkward and painful. He could only imagine how she had felt when reading it for the first time.

‘
Mutti
,’ he said, as gently as he could. He could see
her eyelids remained half-open. ‘Shall I stop there for today?’ he murmured, reaching to touch her shoulder. A soft but shrill alarm had begun to sound at the back of his mind that his mother was too still. ‘
Mutti
?’ He pulled his mother’s shoulder
towards him and slowly she rolled onto her back with a low sigh, her mouth slightly open, and eyes staring sightlessly.

The grief that had
been threatening since Dr Klein picked him up at the railway station wearing a sympathetic expression that said far more than any words could, finally arrived and clogged his throat … heavy and painful. He put his arms around his mother and held her close, allowing himself to cry now through the churning feelings of relief and gladness that her pain was over.

She’d left him without saying goodbye
to spare him that trial. His mother had known she would die today. Why else had she chosen this morning to show him the letters, make her admission … confess her secrets to him?

He hugged her for an eternity, it felt, but finally the sound of a door slamming somewhere snapped him from his silent mourning. He laid his mother back onto the pillow gently, as though she slept and he was determined
not to disturb her. Max took time to close her eyes, ensure the satin bow on her nightie was tied perfectly – as she would want – and straightened the Hermès scarf, which had slipped to one side on her head.

The ghost of the soft half-smile that she’d worn moments before her death haunted him; but she’d died on her own terms with Markus Kilian in her mind and her son’s voice soothing her off.
Under the circumstances it was a good death, he reassured himself. It was painless and peaceful in the loving home of her childhood and she had drifted into her longest sleep with the two men she loved most at her bedside. It didn’t matter to her, he realised, that one was a ghost.

But it did to him. It mattered enormously that this ghost
now shared his life, walked alongside him. Was that a gift
or a curse?

Max gathered up the envelopes from the box and slid them into his backpack. He would read them at length later. Making a final check that his mother was fit to be seen, he kissed her cheeks tenderly before he stepped outside and called down the stairway to where he could hear Klein murmuring to his grandparents in the reception hall.

‘She’s gone,’ he said, when all three
looked up, and was surprised his voice was so steady.

Jane ducked out of Swan & Edgar and experienced the strange sensation of walking into night while knowing it was late afternoon; winter was closing in fast this year. Britishers accepted the inevitable chill with good cheer but this October, barely the middle of the month, it was already the kind of cold that could not only bite
at exposed skin but made a solid effort at penetrating even the most determined woollens. Jane’s fingers, still burning from the slow thaw she’d achieved inside the department store, now protested at being thrust into the freeze again. She’d been fleetingly tempted to warm them up in the ladies’ bathroom with hot water – just for a few moments – but experience had taught her it was the fool’s
path. Initially the warmth brought respite but galloping behind that momentary pleasure was pain.

Bear up,
she’d told herself; it was one of her mother’s favourite sayings in her days of lucidity. How long ago was that now? More than a decade, she realised, unaware that
a bitter expression now matched her mood; she caught a snapshot of herself reflected in a shop window, blinking at it as fresh
despair washed over her.

Farmers were predicting a bitter winter and forecasters were suggesting a white Christmas was riding in with the reindeer. She shivered beneath her thick coat, tugged her scarf up higher to cover her mouth and heard her mother’s voice in her mind asking if she was wearing a vest.

Jane smiled sadly within herself as she emerged onto the corner of Regent Street,
as frantic as ever with swirling traffic and pedestrians on a mission. Rain as light as fairy dust kissed her face but Jane could only see its shimmering presence because it was backlit by the lights of the London streets she was mindlessly walking. She’d not needed anything in the store but her roaming had chewed through another twenty minutes, taking her closer to the moment when she knew she
couldn’t linger any longer in town and must begin the trek home.

Jane looked up into the black dome of night and wondered what she would face behind her front door: would it be the needy, gentle John or the hostile demon that had possessed him well before she’d met her husband and was only now showing its sinister teeth? Curiously, he behaved well – if distantly – for the housekeeper who’d been
employed by his family to give Jane some time to herself. Even his brothers could see that she’d given up enough for her husband: her carefree spinsterhood, her independence, her bright career, even her dreams; she’d be damned if she’d give up her weekly jaunt into the city to visit her beloved museums and galleries. There were moments when her Friday in the city was all that kept her going … just
moments, though. Mostly she had
become resigned to this strange life of melancholy and was sure plenty of other women were coping silently with similar post-war trauma with their men.

She lifted the collar on her coat, dipped her chin further into her scarf, dug her hands deeper into her pockets and skipped out into Piccadilly Circus, ablaze with its cheerful neon signs.
Healthful
…
Delicious
…
Satisfying
, Wrigley’s promised. ‘Healthful’? Was that even a word? She shook her head and wandered by Saqui & Lawrence, remembering happier times when John had courted her, tricked her into telling him which of the rings in this very window she liked most. He’d presented the dark sapphire and diamond engagement ring less than a month later, on his knees, with her laughing hysterically
because the grass of the picnic field he’d brought her to was still dewy and she could see the wet patches forming as the damp soaked into his trousers. She’d accepted. Of course she had! She had loved him. She still did, despite her despair, but she felt that love in mainly a dutiful way now, and was still hoping to rescue them both from the war. The Player’s sign winked at her. She’d give anything
for a cigarette right now but had given them up when they’d married. She wanted children and her sister-in-law was the one who’d warned her off smoking.

Jane looked away from the vivid neon advertisements and wondered at which point in her toleration of John’s decline into his mood swings had she accepted that she would likely never be a mother. That was probably the most painful resignation
of all – that children were arguably out of her reach now, as she had no intention of bringing a child into their uncomfortable and tense existence.

She crossed the street, intent on getting to the bus stop. Although the queue was long, she was sure she would be able to clamber aboard the next bus to Battersea.

People hurried past her. Dark moving shadows each focused on getting somewhere
to someone who was waiting for them: a wife with a meal she was keeping warm, a child impatient for a bedtime story, a friend queuing outside a theatre to see a film. Or a rendezvous at a pub, perhaps; even a lover in a hotel room hoping for a few stolen hours. Jane envied all those who were waiting for their friends and loved ones … but she especially envied her fellow pedestrians who had someone
on the other end of their journey to welcome them.

She had only her memories to cling to, and those were being increasingly usurped by the ghost who masqueraded as her husband.

John loved her. He always had, since that day at the museum when she’d shared a coy smile across the expanse of
The Toilet of Venus
, which they’d both chosen the same moment to admire in the National Gallery. She could
remember the richness of the crimson velvet drape of curtain, painted so exquisitely to contrast acutely with the smooth, pale skin of the goddess.

‘She looks so at ease with herself, don’t you think?’ Jane remembered remarking to the stranger standing nearby, only vaguely conscious of the nudity in the portrait.

She’d liked the way he’d cocked his head and studied the portrait, not
saying anything for a few long moments. ‘Why do you think that is?’

Surprised, she’d smiled again; having expected him to make a roguish comment perhaps along the lines of pinching
the goddess’s exquisite bottom. She hadn’t been ready for his more philosophical enquiry.

Jane had shrugged. ‘Contentment, I suppose. My sister-in-law tells me she’d never felt as confident and sure of herself
as the day she first held my nephew. Here’s Venus, totally at ease with her body, knowing she’s achieved the most amazing feat a woman can.’ She’d gestured at the infant who held the mirror to his mother. ‘Cupid, her son.’

John – she hadn’t known his name then – had nodded seriously and glanced her way. ‘Does every woman want children, do you think … even goddesses?’

‘I have no idea. Most, I suppose,
goddesses included.’

He turned to regard the painting again, giving her an opportunity to study him more closely. He was attractive in a non-conventional way; neither short nor tall. His frame was broad but he was thin – too thin, perhaps. But she liked the first hint of silvering around his hair, which he wore short and neatly parted on one side with only a hint of Brylcreem to keep it in place.
He looked back at her and she once again noticed his penetrating grey gaze, which was vaguely unsettling when it fixed upon her, but softened immediately.

‘Do you come here frequently?’

She’d nodded. ‘As often as I can. I like all the museums and galleries. I make sure I get to each at least twice a year.’

Once again he’d returned his attention to Venus. ‘She’s very lovely. It makes you want to
reach out and touch her.’

‘She’s loved and she loves,’ Jane had said, successfully keeping all self-consciousness from her tone.

‘Do you have children?’ he’d asked, although she sensed he knew the answer.

‘No. I’d have to meet someone first.’

He’d beamed such a bright smile, it had dazzled her momentarily. ‘You just have. I’m John Cannelle.’

She giggled, delighted by his jest. ‘That
sounds French.’

‘I suspect it is.’

She could do nothing but offer her own hand, laughing. ‘Jane Aplin.’

‘Mrs Aplin?’ he’d asked, a glint of amusement ghosting through those pale eyes.

‘
Mademoiselle
, she’d corrected with equal humour.

‘Well, then, Jane. I hope you don’t mind me calling you Jane?’

She’d shaken her head softly.

‘Now that we’ve formally introduced ourselves, will you allow
me to whisk you out of here and over to the Ritz?’ He’d grinned mischievously. ‘For a drink, of course.’

Their friendship had moved quickly to romance over the following weeks. John had continued to make her laugh as easily as if she were a child at the circus watching the clowns. He had been attentive, affectionate and generous, picking her up from her work as a designer with one of the city’s
fashion houses and treating her to dinners, musicals, theatre. She’d learnt he was in the grocery business with his family and only later that he had fought at and survived the very bloody battle of Monte Cassino with the 8th Army.

‘You were injured,’ she said, glancing at his leg that showed a pronounced limp. ‘You never talk about it.’

‘I’d rather talk about us,’ he’d replied and she realised
then he had smoothly been deflecting her questions about his wartime experiences since they’d met.

Except she knew him better now and wasn’t to be put off so easily. ‘But the past is what shapes us, John. You know
everything about me. I know so little about you. You’re one of our heroes. It was for you and all the men like you that we kept the home fires burning.’

‘Look, I don’t talk
about the war, Jane,’ he’d said over their afternoon tea at Fortnum & Mason. ‘I find it … difficult.’

‘I understand. But maybe if you—’

‘Don’t pry!’ he’d snapped and then looked at her, mortified, reaching for her hand, refusing to give eye contact to those around them who had glanced their way at his harsh tone. ‘Forgive me, my darling. I can become rather emotional; the war took many close friends
from me.’

Perhaps his outburst, brief though it was, should have been her warning sign. But by then Jane had been stung by the arrow of the son of the goddess that had first brought them together and she had let his brief explosion and her curiosity slip.

It had been late September and cool enough that damask had been favoured for her wedding gown of her own design. Her bouquet of pale-pink roses
and orchids had been preserved but was now as dry and lifeless as her four-year marriage. She hadn’t seen the disintegration coming. Its insidious shadow had stolen into their lives, although Jane was now assured its toxic presence had been lurking inside her husband for years; he’d just hidden it well. John’s doctor had called it melancholia. But the physician that his family had finally insisted
he consult after several weeks of John refusing to leave his bed had termed it clinical depression. Privately, to Jane and to Peter, John’s elder brother, the physician had added that it was mildly manic and suggested that John’s war experiences were the likely culprit.

‘But he seemed so cheerful, so dashing when I met him,’ she’d bleated to the physician.

He had nodded sadly. ‘This
happens, Mrs Cannelle. It is a wicked affliction that can take great glee in delivering its host periods of what we’d consider absolute normality and then, in a blink of an eye, he could become what we term elated or manic, capable of wild ideas and actions. He could just as swiftly be plunged into suicidal tendencies – the flip side, you could say.’

‘And my husband? Be specific. What’s happening
to him?’ she’d asked, in a whispered tone of shock at learning this was a known syndrome.

Jane could remember that scene in Mr Carter’s rooms as though it were yesterday, her own distress still so vivid. Peter had kindly taken her hand and given it a squeeze. The three brothers were close and he was as concerned as she. Jane had barely been able to breathe – the physician had suggested she stand
by the window, which he’d opened a notch, and take some deep breaths.

When he was sure she was calming, he continued. ‘John’s mania is mild. It manifests itself simply as John at his charming best, when the ghosts of his past leave him be for a while and he can feel a sense of freedom from the demons that plague him. You’ve been married for how long?’ he said, looking down at the notes in his
file.

‘Four years next month,’ she’d murmured, not even looking at him.

‘And apart from this recent development of him not wanting to face the day – for want of a better phrase – may I ask if you found that he was sleeping fitfully lately?’

‘He was restless, yes.’

‘Mmm. Irritable?’

She shrugged. ‘John doesn’t like being questioned.’

‘About the war, you mean?’ Carter had queried.

‘About
anything.’ She folded her arms and sighed. ‘But especially the war. It’s as though he was never there. As though it didn’t happen.’

‘Mrs Cannelle, shellshock is a terrible thing. I’ve seen it in so many of our fine young men. You say right now he’s not eating?’

‘He doesn’t eat a lot at the best of times. When he goes off his food entirely I know we’re in for a rough patch. John refers to guilt,
but he won’t explain what he means by it. I think he means the friends he left behind, dead, in Italy and the fact that he survived.’

‘You’d be right. No talk of ending his life?’

She’d swung around with horror, looking between the two men. ‘No!’

‘Do you think he might attempt suicide?’ Peter had asked Carter, throwing a look of concern at Jane.

‘I can’t provide a definitive answer, I’m afraid.
Each sufferer is so very different but there are markers. When he’s low, incommunicative, not eating, perhaps hostile … these are the periods to be especially cautious. During these times John should have twenty-four-hour care.’

Jane’s shoulders slumped. ‘I do my best, Mr Carter.’

‘Yes, you do, Jane,’ Peter admitted. ‘But I’m going to employ a housekeeper – a trained nurse – who can offer this
additional support he needs.’

She’d given him a sad, crooked smile of thanks, knowing not to knock back a gift horse. ‘That would be reassuring.’

Carter nodded his agreement. ‘Good. He must be watched and you must ensure he takes the lithium.’