Never Leave Me (15 page)

Footsteps rasped on the cobbles of the courtyard below her window. ‘Are you leaving for Caen immediately, Major?' Lieutenant Halder asked, his voice slicing through the still air of late afternoon.

Her eyelids flew open and there was sweat on her brow. She had been dreaming. She had believed that the horror had never happened; that he had walked out of her room after kissing and holding her, and there had been no search in the village; no airman to be found and captured.

‘Yes. There have been more arrests. The local Maquis seem to be primed to an invasion on this part of the coast. I want to hear for myself what they have to say.'

Her breath came fast and shallow. Her German was not good, but the question had been unmistakeable. ‘And the airman we captured in the village, sir?'

‘As you might expect, he knew nothing at all about local activities. He was shot two days ago.' His voice was crisp, matter of fact. The voice of a stranger and an enemy.

The lieutenant spoke again but she could no longer hear what it was he was saying. Their footsteps faded, and she gazed up at the ceiling, rigid with pain.

Shot. As Paul and André had been shot. She wondered if the Englishman, too, had been shot in the back. A great shudder ran through her body. She had given herself to Dieter Meyer mentally and physically and even now, when sleep robbed her of the safeguards that sustained her, at some deep, primeval level that she was powerless to control, she was still his. Bile rose up in her throat and she swung her legs off the bed, fighting down wave after wave of nausea and self-loathing.

He was going to Caen. Now. Immediately. He would be away for at least two hours. Possibly longer. If she was ever going to take the risk of storming the grand dining-room now, surely, was the time to do it.

But how? The question had racked her every hour of every day since Elise had left. The only person who could give her help was the unknown Jean-Jacques and she had been unable to make contact with him. She had to have a key and only Dieter had a key. There were no duplicates. Not even for the sentries. Her head ached and she pressed her fingers to her throbbing temples. If she had become his lover there would have been opportunities for her to have removed the key from his possession. He would have taken off his jacket, his breeches. The blood pounded behind her eyes and she sprang to her feet with an inarticulate cry, thrusting the image away from her. She had not become his lover. She would never become his lover. Never, never, never!

A car engine revved into life and she stood, waiting until it faded into the distance. He had gone. She waited for a feeling of exultation but it did not come. There was only cold and pain and a desolation so terrible that she knew it was destroying her.

She turned away from the bed, knowing that sleep was an impossibility. If she closed her eyes she would see the crumpled bodies of Paul and André; the face of the airman as he had looked up at her seconds before he was dragged away to his death in Caen. And Dieter's eyes, hot and urgent, as he pleaded with her to forget them; to forget that it had ever happened.

She walked decisively out of the room. She would prepare tea. She would walk around the outside of the chateau and check again that all the grilles barring the grand dining-room windows were locked. They had been left unlocked once. It was not beyond the realms of possibility that they would be accidentally left unlocked again. She remembered the expression in the Lieutenant's eyes when he had realised how Paul and André had made their escape. He had been stunned at the carelessness that had made so vital a room insecure. Such carelessness would not be allowed to happen again. Her sortie would be a waste of time. The grilles would be locked and her movements watched, but she had to do something. She had to keep busy, keep moving.

As she approached the head of the stairs she saw that the hall was still and silent, the young sentry on duty standing impassive-faced. She looked down at him with hatred. He had no right to be in her home. To be fouling it with his presence. As she watched him from the shadows at the top of the stairs he shifted his stance, glancing down at his watch. Her pulse quickened. He was bored and his commanding officer was well on his way to Caen. Perhaps…perhaps…

‘Please God, let him desert his post,' she prayed silently. ‘Please,
please.
'

The sentry looked once more at his watch and then, with a barely perceptible shrug of his shoulders, strolled away from the grand dining-room towards the front door. She saw him remove a packet of cigarettes from his trouser pocket and then he swung Valmy's great oak door open wide and stepped out into the late afternoon sunlight.

Her breath was so tight in her throat that she could hardly breathe. If he remained in the open doorway she would be unable to do anything. She saw him pause, look right and left, and then step briskly away in search of a less conspicuous spot in which to enjoy his illicit smoke.

The door was unguarded. But it was still locked. Her heart began to hammer fast and light. If Elise had been there, Elise could have taken advantage of the situation. Elise could have picked the lock; could have gained entry to the room. She began to hurry down the stairs, her legs trembling, her hands filmed with perspiration. There had been one act of carelessness. The window grille had been left unlocked. If the door should be unlocked too …

‘Please,' she prayed feverishly. ‘Oh please, God, let it be unlocked! Let this be my chance!'

There wasn't a sound in the empty entrance hall. It was as if Valmy had been deserted, abandoned. If only the ornate doorknobs on the carved double doors opened to her touch …

She ran fleet-footedly across the hall, grasping hold of them, praying as she had never prayed before in her life. With eyes closed, she turned and pulled and with old, familiar ease, they opened wide. She gasped and half fell, the blood drumming in her ears and behind her eyes. The miracle had happened! She had been given her chance! The camera. She had to have the camera!

She spun on her heels, hurtling down the corridor towards the kitchen. The sentry would not be long. He would smoke one cigarette, perhaps two, and then he would return. She half fell against the kitchen door. Five minutes. She had perhaps five minutes in which to retrieve the camera, return to the room and photograph whatever documents she could find. She scrabbled for the door handle, yanking it open, racing across the room to the cupboards.

Her fingers slid and slipped over tins of chicory, tins of carrots. Dear God! Why couldn't she move faster? She grabbed the tin of dried milk, pushing the lid off, granules of dried milk spilling to the floor as she extricated the camera. She clutched it tightly to her chest. How long had she taken? Sixty seconds? Two minutes? As if the hounds of hell were at her heels, she leapt once more for the door, running full pelt down the corridor. Time! All she needed was time!

The grand dining-room doors still stood open. The hall was still deserted. She gave a strangled sob. Just a few more minutes! Only a few more minutes! She darted into the room, her hands trembling violently as she closed the doors behind her. She had to be calm! She had to work swiftly and efficiently. There was a map of the coastline on one wall. A blotter on the table, an ink stand, a tidy pile of paperwork beside it. At least she wasn't faced with such an array of documents that she had to spend time judging which were of vital importance and which were not.

She hurried round the corner of the long, polished table. The papers were in meticulous order and would have to be found in meticulous order after she had left the room. She could not allow carelessness now to defeat her chance of success. She was going to win. She was going to serve her country; help the Allies; render worthless all Dieter Meyer's carefully laid plans.

On top of the pile of papers was a memo to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, Commander-in-Chief, Army Group B. Taking a deep steadying breath she focused the camera, pressed the shutter …

‘You idiot,' he said quietly from behind her. ‘You empty-headed, stupid little idiot.'

She spun round so suddenly that the papers scattered to the floor. She couldn't breathe. Couldn't speak. He was walking towards her and through her terror she was aware that there was no rage on his face or in his voice. Only deep weariness.

‘You cannot really have believed, Lisette, that the door to this room would have been left unlocked and that the sentry would have abandoned his post, just at the precise moment you were about to descend the stairs?'

She fought for composure, for air. ‘The window grille was left unlocked … I took a chance. As Paul and André took a chance.'

He halted a mere two yards from her and said, his voice oddly flat, ‘You fell into a trap. As Paul and André fell into a trap.'

There was no more room for terror. Another emotion had taken its place. An emotion far more terrible. She seemed to shrink visibly before his gaze.

‘I don't understand you,' she whispered, her eyes dilating, her face chalk-white.

He wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her. Instead he said cruelly, ‘You cannot for one moment believe that Gilles and Caldron's escape was chance. The grille was left unlocked, the window opened purposely so that they would attempt to escape – and be shot whilst doing so.'

She had thought that she had come to terms with horror, now she knew that it was not so. That it was a bottomless pit whose depths could never be plumbed. She shrank back against the table, sending another flurry of papers showering around her.

‘Why?' she choked. ‘What kind of man are you?'

He looked at her long and silently and then he sat on the corner of the table, one gleaming booted leg swinging free, the other touching the floor. ‘I did it for you,' he said abruptly, the lines around his mouth hardening. ‘You were responsible for their deaths, Lisette. You and your stupid, childish attempts to be a heroine for France.'

She didn't speak; didn't move. Silence stretched between them and he knew when it ended that her innocence too would have come to an end.

‘Paul Gilles was a local Resistance leader. You were a courier. If Gilles had ever reached Gestapo headquarters in Caen how long do you think it would have been before I was ordered to arrest you?'

‘Paul Gilles would never have betrayed me,' she said, and his heart ached at the brave certainty in her voice.

‘Paul Gilles didn't,' he said tersely. ‘It was Caldron who betrayed you.'

He saw her flinch, saw her valiant attempt to mask her feelings and knew that the private battle he had been waging was lost. He would never be able to pretend that she didn't exist. It was not humanly possible.

He rose to his feet and stepped towards her, his eyes dark. ‘Listen, Lisette,' he said in a quick urgent voice, ‘you must, please, make some effort to understand. What I did, I did for you. Gilles and Caldron would have died anyway. They would have died after days, perhaps weeks, of torture. Instead they died quickly and cleanly here at Valmy.'

‘Cleanly!' She recoiled from him, her eyes blazing in her stricken face. ‘My God,
cleanly!
How can you say the word? You murdered them! You murdered Paul and André and the Englishman! You're an animal! No different from the SS sadists in Caen! You're a murdering, filthy
Nazi!'

Rage at the circumstances in which they found themselves, fear for her safety, frustration at her inability to understand, all overcame him. His hand sliced through the air, slapping her across the face with such ferocity that she fell to her knees. ‘Jesus God!' he shouted, furious with himself for what he had done, furious with her for goading him to it. ‘Why can't you see sense? Caldron betrayed you and Caldron died! Paul Gilles would far rather have died at Valmy than in a stinking prison cell knowing that he was taking you and perhaps untold others to their deaths!'

She was sobbing, blinded by her tears, the marks of his fingers rising in scarlet, ugly weals across her cheekbone. ‘And the airman?' she gasped. ‘Can you justify his death as well?'

He dropped to his knee in front of her, seizing her shoulders so savagely that she cried out in pain.
‘To hell with the bloody airman!'
he thundered, and as she cried out in protest his mouth came down on hers, hard and powerful and unyielding.

From the moment he had laid hands on her he had known that there was no going back. His physical desire for her was too great. It was as if he had touched a live switch. The electrical excitement that had spiralled between them from the very first convulsed him. He pressed her beneath him, plundering her mouth, uncaring of her tears and her fists beating on his shoulders. All his life he had had whatever he wanted, and he wanted Lisette. He had been prepared to dismay his family, outrage his friends, defy army regulations, in order to make her his wife. She alone, torn apart by divided loyalties, had thwarted him and she was going to do so no longer.

He caught hold of her wrists, pinioning them high above her head with one hand as with the other he tore away the deep-drowned purple of her skirt, the creamy beige satin of her slip until he reached the exquisite lace that lay beneath and the soft, sweet velvet of her flesh.

Desire roared through his veins. He heard her cries, saw the desperation in her eyes, and then, his eyes so dark they were almost black, he crushed her beneath him, parting her thighs viciously, thrusting deep inside her in an agony of relief.

She was moaning beneath him, her face wet with tears. His breath came in harsh rasps. God in heavens, what had he done? To what depths had he sunk? He eased his weight from her, looking down at her, knowing that she had fought him to the bitter end.

‘Lisette?' He raised his hand to wipe away her tears and she jerked her head to one side, her hair spilling acoss her face, fanning out over the deep-shaded tones of the carpet.

‘Lisette,' he said again, his voice raw with urgency. ‘Lisette, look at me. Listen to me.'