Peach (24 page)

“I’m so sorry Ferdi,” she whispered.

He patted her head absentmindedly. “You were always a good sister,” he replied gently.

“I’d like to know what happened to you, Ferdi, how your life has been since it happened.”

They walked together across the little Pont Marie, finding a quiet café on a corner where over a bottle of red wine he told her of his arrest and court martial. He had been sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment and stripped of his rank, but his family had used their influence to have his sentence commuted to house detention for the duration of the war, pleading that he was needed in the family’s important steel works. By then the power of the Third Reich was already crumbling. Every night Ferdi had watched the Allied planes dropping shoals of bombs on to his city, destroying his factories, the armaments plants and steel mills.
And all he had felt was joy
. He had thought Lais dead, but then someone said no, she had been taken to hospital, first in Nice, then Paris. He had followed the trail here. “I couldn’t go back to the Hostellerie,” he explained, “I couldn’t bear to see where it happened. I would always have an image of her lying there, her eyes closed, covered in blood. I came here looking for a ghost …”

Leonore recalled Peach’s childish fantasy of Ferdi, but he was no longer the handsome young prince. Ferdi’s face was lined and his blue eyes stared blankly as though he were searching his memories and finding them cold.

When he took her back to the house on the Ile St Louis, Ferdi shook her hand. “I must apologise for the kiss,” he said.

Leonore felt the blush sting her cheeks. “It was understandable.”

“Leonore, tonight was the first time I’ve talked to anyone about things. Thank you for listening. I feel now I can face the future without her. I had to know for certain, you see.”

Leonore nodded, avoiding his eyes.

“Can I see you again? I promise I won’t talk about me all the time.”

His smile was boyish, a little wistful, and Leonore remembered his mouth on hers. “I’d like that,” she said quietly.

Ferdi bowed over her hand, always the German gentleman. “I’ll telephone you tomorrow,” he called, striding across the courtyard.

Leonore leaned against the closed door, a smile playing around her mouth. There had been eagerness in Ferdi’s eyes, a ray of hope when he’d asked her if he could see her again. Truly it was better that he thought Lais dead. Poor crippled Lais, her mind locked away in some other world. There would be no more schoolgirl silver trophies for diving and running, no more singing and dancing, no driving along the Corniche foot pressed hard on the pedal of the big dark blue de Courmont. Lais had her own world.

The last thing she thought of that night before she fell asleep was Ferdi’s mouth on hers, the firmness of his lips, the warmth of his body pressed against her.

Three weeks later Leonore sat beside Ferdi in a cinema on the Champs Elsyées. In the flickering light from the screen she could just make out Ferdi’s hand gripping hers. She wondered if he knew how tightly he held on to her, as though he were teetering on the brink of a cliff and her hand was his lifeline—only she could stop him from falling. Of course she had meant to return to the hotel but instead she had lingered in Paris, waiting around the house all day, afraid to go out in case she missed his call. Ferdi had called every day. Leonore never asked him to the house but always arranged to meet him at seven at the Café des Deux Magots where the waiters now gave them the grudging nod and
half-smile they permitted their regulars, bringing the wine they preferred without asking.

It was all perfectly innocent, Leonore told herself. She and Ferdi were simply friends. The
only
reason he had kissed her was because in his disturbed state of mind seeing her suddenly like that in the half-light, her blonde hair flowing free the way Lais used to wear it, he had
wanted
to believe she was Lais. Even though, as he told her later, he had known that she must be dead.

Leonore had felt no guilty pang listening to him talk of Lais as dead. And every night she saw Ferdi and he talked of Lais, it seemed more and more real. She could almost
believe
that Lais was dead now.

“Ferdi,” she said as they strolled through the Tuileries Gardens later that week, “it’s time I returned to the Hostellerie. I’m a working woman, you know.”

“But I don’t want you to go!” Ferdi’s lean, strong-boned face looked suddenly desperate. “You can’t imagine what it has meant to be able to talk to you, Leonore. You’ve made me see that life must go on. It’s all thanks to you,” he clasped her hands tightly. “Don’t leave me, Leonore,” he pleaded, “not just yet.”

A fitful wind tossed a strand of hair in her eyes and Ferdi brushed it aside tenderly, running his hand along her soft cheek, tracing the delicate curve of her eyebrow with his finger, and then her mouth. Their eyes met and for an instant they gazed at each other, reading each other’s needs.

“Leonore,” he said softly, and then his lips were on hers. Wrapped in his arms, away from the buffeting wind, Leonore knew this was what she wanted.

She had expected a bachelor’s
pied-à-terre
, or a hideaway in some picturesque Left Bank street, but the Merker family had always maintained an apartment at the Ritz and with the end of the war, it had become Ferdi’s second home.
Leonore wandered the apartment’s impersonal opulence nervously, touching the stiff flower arrangements, wondering if they were wax. She was horrified by the apartment’s impeccable neatness. There was no coat thrown casually over a chair, no shoe peeking from beneath a sofa, no newspaper tossed impatiently aside. There were no personal photographs on the desk, and even the blotter was unmarked. Ferdi’s bed had been turned down neatly by the chambermaid and a carafe of water with a glass stood on the bedside table.

Ferdi helped her undress and when he was naked he took her in his arms and they stood, warm body next to warm body, and Leonore thought that this was the way it must be for the “
filles de nuit
”. An anonymous hotel room and a man who replaced your face with another’s while he took your body. Ferdi’s mouth was on her breast, his hands pressing her closer. Lifting her he carried her to the wide bed. The linen sheets were cool on her back and then his heat filled her and she was dying with pleasure, moaning her lust the way any whore might.

When it was over he lay quietly beside her for a moment, without speaking. Taking his cigarettes from the bedside table he lit one, offering it to her.

“But I don’t smoke,” said Leonore in a small voice. It was Lais who had smoked.

She took the train south the next morning, leaving a message for him with Oliver, the butler, that she had been called to the Hostellerie urgently and expected to be away for some time and would be too busy to see him.

Noel’s dedication to the art of boxing took Mr Hill by surprise. He showed up with the other kids one Saturday afternoon, put on the gloves when his turn came to spar a round and he took a beating without complaint. Not only that—
Noel fought back
. Of course the lad was puny and slow and he didn’t stand a chance, but he was plucky in the ring, taking his punishment silently. And he came back again the following week—and the week after. This time Hill refused to let him in the ring—the kid would just get whipped again. Instead he took him on one side at the end of the session and asked him what the big idea was? Did he want to get himself punished? Was he some kinda masochist, or what? The kid just looked at him with those unfathomable light eyes and said, “I want to learn.” And that was it. Hill set the kid on a course of weight training, road-running, skipping and shadow-boxing that would’ve soon told him whether Noel meant business or not. And by golly he meant it! He stuck with it, practising with weights every night and getting up early to run four miles before breakfast—even in the winter’s bitterest cold, until the snow put a stop to it for a few months, and then he worked out in the hall, running on the spot, push-ups. The kid had proven a marvel—and now, at just fourteen, he could whip the best.

Mr Hill’s eyes held genuine warmth as he presented the cheap silver-plated cup to Noel. “For the winner of the Maddox Boxing Tournament—a true champion,” he said, smiling.

A spatter of admiring applause came from the audience of Maddox boys as Noel shook hands with Mr Hill. “Thank you, sir,” said Noel holding the trophy firmly.

“Give it back to me next week boy, and I’ll see your name engraved right there along with your title, Junior Boxing Champion, Maddox Charity Orphanage, 1946,” promised Mr Hill. “It was a good, clean fight, Noel, you did real well. Congratulations.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Noel slid his way under the ropes, walking through the ranks of boys seated on wooden benches towards the showers. Placing his trophy carefully on a chair, he stripped off the sweat-soaked shorts and turned on the water.

The hot spray stung the fiery red welts on his back and shoulders and Noel winced, forcing himself to stand there silently and bear the pain. After a few minutes he turned the shower to cold, gritting his teeth as the icy water flowed over him. Throwing back his head he let it stream over his face and through his short dark hair while he soaped his wiry, muscular body, willing himself to take the punishment of the frigid water. He counted off the slow minutes. Three exactly. Then he stepped from the shower, rubbed himself briskly with the thin towel and dressed rapidly. Standing in front of the mirror he combed his hair. Hill had said it was too long for a boxer, ordering him to crewcut it like everyone else, but Noel had ignored the command. His critical gaze in the mirror showed a thin but well-muscled lad of just fourteen—or he could have been fifteen, thought Noel. Maybe even sixteen. It was important to look older because you had to be older to work. At a proper job, that is, not just a Saturday one. And Noel was going to need a proper job.

He glanced around the shower room, taking in the scabby green wooden chairs and the old brass pegs that held the
sweaty paraphernalia of sport. Picking up his trophy he made quickly for the door just as the other contenders in tonight’s boxing tournament arrived.

“Hey Noel,” they called, “great stuff, you sure had him beat.”

“Thanks,” said Noel, walking down the brown linoleum corridor.

They watched him with puzzled eyes. “Gee, you’d think now he’s champ he’d loosen up a little,” grumbled one.

“Ah, he’s always been a loner,” someone replied. “Not even boxing’ll change
him
.”

Noel had decided to take nothing with him but the parcel of food he’d managed to save over the past week. That way he would avoid arousing suspicion. He wore dungarees, a denim shirt, a pair of new high-top sneakers—requisitioned by Mr Hill as part of his necessary equipment as a sports jock and which were the only thing in his entire life that had brought Noel pleasure of possession. A grey windcheater jacket and a woollen scarf completed his leaving outfit. Knotting the scarf, he pocketed the trophy and picked up the brown paper sack with the food.

Taking the five dollars—two notes and some small change—from its hiding place in a shoe, he slid the money carefully into the pocket of his jeans.

It was nine o’clock on a Friday night. Lights still burned in the Maddox Orphanage and boys chatted in the dining hall over the special treat of cold milk and cookies to celebrate the boxing tournament. Even the younger boys had been allowed to stay up for the event. Of course the girls were in a separate building and Mrs Grenfell and Matron had no wish to watch such a masculine sport. It was quite easy for Noel to walk down the rarely used front staircase into the darkened hall. His sneakered feet made no sound on the black and white polished tiles and he turned the big lock
carefully. It was very dark outside. The full moon was hidden behind dense scudding clouds, pushed by a wind that moaned across the bleak landscape.

Without a backward glance Noel closed the door behind him and walked down the worn stone steps. Keeping to the thin border of grass that ran alongside the gravel drive, he walked rapidly to the gates and rattled the latch impatiently. It must be stuck. Noel gasped as the full moon surged from behind the clouds lighting the driveway like a stage set. He could see that the gates were locked! Hesitating for a minute, he stuffed the parcel of food in the front of his windcheater then walked back a dozen paces. Turning he sprinted for the gates, hurling himself up half their height, clinging like a monkey and scrabbling his way up—and over. He dropped lightly down on the other side, and dusted the rust and paint from his hands. Straightening up he set off at a brisk jog down the road that led straight as a die, between the wheatfields to freedom.