Peach (6 page)

One night she awoke with a pain in her stomach. She didn’t know how late it was but she climbed out of bed and went in search of Lais. She hurried along the corridor relieved to see that there was a chink of light beneath Lais’s door. Opening it she gazed puzzled at the two people there. She didn’t recognize Lais at first because she was sort of buried beneath the man. They looked so cosy, she thought enviously, with their arms around each other, but she still wondered why didn’t they have their night clothes on?

“My God. Peach!” Lais leapt from the bed wrapping the sheet around her. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“You shouldn’t say that word,” said Peach disapprovingly.

The man started to laugh and Lais glared at him angrily, grabbing Peach’s hand and marching her from the room. She gave Peach a glass of water with a hand that shook. “Promise,” she said, “that you’ll never tell
anyone. Anyone at all
. Especially Maman and Gerard.” Peach promised, though she did wonder why it should be such a secret.

The very next day they travelled down to St Jean Cap Ferrat and it was wonderful to see Grand-mère. She looked so much like Maman, and that was comforting because she did miss Maman so. And there was Jim who made her laugh and played games of hide-and-seek with her and helped her with her swimming and took her fishing. And Leonore, her other sister, who looked like Lais but was different. Of course she loved Leonore too—but not quite like Lais.

After a while Peach began to notice strange things. People would break off their conversations when she came into the
room, they’d put on that special sort of bright face that grown-ups use when they want to “amuse the children”, but their eyes weren’t smiling the way they used to. And when they thought she wasn’t around their faces were long and serious. “War,” they said, “it’s war after all.” Peach stared at the disbelief mirrored in their faces, sensing the fear that lay behind the unknown word.

Suddenly there was a flurry of activity, their bags were packed hurriedly and they were to leave that very day. Jim had managed to get them berths on a ship. “One of the last,” Peach heard him telling Lais, “there’s no time left. You must leave
now
.”

Peach rubbed her aching head tiredly. “Please can’t I stay?” she begged, clinging to Jim’s hand. “Don’t you and Grand-mère want me any more?”

Jim swung her up in his arms. “We want you,” he smiled, “but so do your maman and papa. We’ll see you again soon, little Peach—and anyway, I’m driving you to Marseilles so it’s not quite goodbye yet.”

On the journey Peach slept at first, but they seemed to be stopping and starting all the time and the car was stuffy. She peered out of the windows and noticed that everyone else seemed to be driving the same way—west towards Spain. “Please,” she begged, “can’t we go back? My eyes hurt and my head.”

“Stretch out on the seat and try to sleep, darling,” commanded Lais, sitting in the front with Jim, “this looks like being a long drive.”

“But Lais, my head really hurts.” Peach leaned forward, threading her arms around her sister’s neck and resting her aching head against Lais’s cool cheek.

Lais took Peach’s hand in hers. “Jim,” she said in a small voice, “I think we’re in trouble.”

Jim tore his anxious gaze from the road and their glances met. “She’s burning with fever,” Lais said quietly.

Lais held her in her arms all the way back to the villa. Leonie hurried to greet them, surprised and dismayed by their return. She swept Peach off and plunged her into a bath of cool water, gradually adding ice until the coolness penetrated Peach’s very bones. Then the doctor arrived and examined her gravely. Lais laughed when he said it was measles—a severe case. “I always thought measles were simple,” she said. “Trust Peach to exaggerate them.”

“We’ll get the next boat,” Jim said wearily.

Peach grew worse. Her head felt as though it would burst and her legs hurt. Then her chest began to feel as though it were crushing her. “Papa,” she cried, twisting her head from side to side to try to rid herself of the pain, searching in vain for a cool spot on the pillows that were soon soaked with her sweat. “Papa.”

“It’s not measles, its poliomyelitis,” said Doctor Marnaux at the hospital in Nice, “a rare disease that affects mainly children and young people. She will be put on a respirator to help her breathe, but Madame and Monsieur,” his large brown eyes faced them sadly, “I’m afraid I cannot offer much hope.”

Lais hurled herself at the doctor. “What do you mean?” she cried. “Are you saying my sister is going to die?” Gripping the lapels of his starched white coat fiercely, she looked ready to kill him.

“Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle—please,” he tried futilely to remove her. “I cannot say. It is a disease of which we have little knowledge. We can only hope.”

Lais’s hands dropped limply to her sides and the doctor smoothed his ruffled coat nervously. “I will do my best for her, of course. We all will.”

“Doctor Marnaux,” said Leonie in a high, clear voice.
“My granddaughter will not die
. You understand, Monsieur.
She will not die
.”

Doctor Marnaux eyed the frantic young woman and the quietly desperate older one nervously. “Of course not, Madame,” he replied soothingly, “of course not.”

“I will stay with her,” said Leonie, walking to the severe white door behind which her granddaughter lay.

The doctor glanced at Jim and shrugged helplessly. “As she wishes, Monsieur,” he murmured. “We have done all we can.”

All transatlantic telephone lines were occupied and calls were already being censored or curtailed. It took Jim two days and considerable influence to reach Gerard in Miami.

“I’m leaving right away,” said Gerard, his voice tense across the crackle and woosh of the line.

“Things are already difficult here,” warned Jim. “Remember, once you are here as a French citizen you may find it impossible to leave.”

“Even if Peach were not so ill,” replied Gerard, “I would return to do what I can for my country.”

Gerard had only ever taken a nominal interest in the de Courmont business empire built by his father, preferring to leave the running of Monsieur’s vast automobile plants and their peripheral companies, the monumental iron and steel works, the rolling mills and the factories at Valenciennes that had produced guns and weapons for other wars, to the capable management of governing boards. And even the fact that the empire was now in jeopardy with the country at war, came a far second in his priorities to the fact that his beloved little Peach was desperately ill.

By pulling strings he was able to get a plane from New York to Lisbon. After two days spent waiting for a flight to Paris that never took off, he wangled his way on to a plane to Madrid and from there took a crowded, slow-moving
train to Barcelona, where he persuaded a reluctant taxidriver to drive him as far as Gerona. He scoured the town for a car but, ironically for a man who owned one of the oldest automobile companies in Europe, there was not a vehicle to be found anywhere. Desperate with worry he stormed the steps of the American consulate, elbowing his way past the line of sullen, anxious people awaiting visas, that stretched down the stairs and around the block and never seemed to move. His business card, sent in via a supercilious lackey who was wielding his petty bureaucratic power with relish, brought an instant response. De Courmont was not a name to be ignored. The consul’s own car and driver were placed at his disposal immediately and Gerard crossed the border, covering the endless kilometres between Gerona and Nice in a vast Chrysler flying the American flag that turned heads in the queue of traffic heading the other way towards the border.

Even unshaven and weary after almost six days of travel and with very little sleep, Leonie thought that Gerard was still a very handsome man—like Monsieur. But Gerard’s strong face and steady blue eyes held none of the cynicism of his father’s. Though he had Monsieur’s powerful shoulders and forceful stride, Gerard was a gentle man whose consuming interests were in his chosen career of architecture, and in his family. He had none of the lust for power both personally and in business that had motivated Monsieur.

Leonie held his hands tightly in hers. “Peach is still gravely ill, Gerard,” she said quietly, “but she’s been the same for over a week now. It’s a sign of hope.”

Peach knew as soon as he took her hand that it was Papa, even though she couldn’t open her eyes. When he bent over to kiss her she could smell his cologne and feel the slight roughness of his face against hers. It would be all right now. Papa was here.

Doctor Marnaux seemed surprised by the improvement in Peach’s breathing. He had been confident she would not last the night—but then, he’d thought that every night for nine days as he’d watched the grandmother sitting there, holding the child’s hand in hers, talking to her in a low murmur, sometimes even singing to her, as though she were well and quite normal. And the improvement didn’t stop there. The next day Peach opened her eyes. The following day she was pronounced out of danger.

“The only thing left,” said Dr Marnaux at a conference in his efficient book-lined office, “is to assess the damage.”

They gazed at him enquiringly.

“To the limbs, you see,” he added apologetically.” The disease has attacked the muscles and now we must see what is affected.

“You mean Peach may be
crippled?
” Lais’s voice was filled with horror. “But that can’t be.
She’s only five years old
.”

Dr Marnaux shrugged. “We must hope for the best.”

Leonie was beside Peach’s bed that night when she awoke, just as she had been every night of her illness. Her own face looked tired and worn but she managed to smile for the child. “Hold out your hands to me, Peach,” she murmured, “let me catch them.”

The child smiled and lifted her arms, feeling Leonie’s secure grasp on her small hands.

“Now,” murmured Leonie, “you’ve been in bed so long, your muscles have become tired. Let’s give them a little test, Peach. Wiggle your toes for me.”

Peach tried and tried, but the toes wouldn’t wiggle. Her high, childish laugh cut through the silent room, a sound that gladdened Leonie’s heart, only to turn to stone again. “I think they’re too tired, Grand-mère Leonie,” whispered Peach, “I expect tomorrow they’ll be all right.”

*  *  *

The day they clamped the steel braces with the ugly black leather straps around Peach’s small wasted legs was the day that Gerard was summoned to Paris by the wartime government of France. “It’ll just be a few days, sweetheart,” he promised her, “and then I’ll be back with you.”

“But what will I do without you, Papa?” Peach’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Why have they put these things on my legs? Why can’t I run and skip any more?”

“You will, Peach, you will,” cried Leonie, throwing her arms around her. “We just have to teach those muscles how to work again. They are still there, you know, but they’re just being lazy.”

“Promise me, Grand-mère,” begged Peach. “I want to chase the little brown cat so badly.”

Leonie managed a laugh. “I promise,” she vowed.

Gerard’s few days stretched to a week, and then two. He managed to call them to say he was being sent to Valenciennes to meet with the management, that things were chaotic and he would call as soon as he could. Then for a month there was silence.

Leonie worked every morning with Peach. And every afternoon and again in the evening. She fastened small weights to the child’s legs and lifted them up and down, she massaged them, she hauled Peach to her feet and forced the legs out in front of her until Peach was close to tears. And then one day Leonie carried her into the warm, blissful sea and Peach felt her legs floating with her like they used to, freed from their cruel steel braces.

Gerard returned in the uniform of a major in the French army with the news that he must go back to Paris in two days’ time. He had spoken with Amelie who, though still incapacitated with her broken hip, was desperate to see Peach. What few sailings there were, were overcrowded and
dangerous. One ship loaded with women and children had already been sunk. Peach and Lais must stay with Leonie, and Gerard would come to them whenever he could. They all prayed that the war wouldn’t last long. He left almost immediately without telling them his mission and Peach’s eyes followed him anxiously as the grey army car with a uniformed driver at the wheel disappeared down the road in a cloud of white dust. She’d promised her father that she would be walking by herself the next time she saw him and she would try to keep that promise.

The months drifted into winter and still Peach and Leonie swam every day in the now deserted hotel pool, braving its cool depths together as Peach slowly gained strength.

Six months later, in February, Dr Marnaux was able to remove the calliper from her left leg. But the right, where the muscles had suffered more severe damage, was weaker and still needed the support of the hated steel frame. Sometimes Leonie would observe Peach with her right leg stuck out in front of her, just staring at it with such an unchildish look of loathing on her face that it shocked her. “I hate it, Grand-mère, I hate it,” whispered Peach. “One day I shall throw it into the sea for ever.”

“In a way,” said Jim on a chill March morning as they drank their coffee and tucked into a fresh batch of Madame Frenard’s brioches, “it’s a good thing you’ve got Peach here. And Lais and Leonore.”

Leonie paused in mid-bite and looked at him in surprise. “Why now, especially?”

“I’m off to Paris tomorrow, my darling,” Jim set down his cup and took her hand in his. “They may consider me too old to fight but at least they can use my organising and administration experience.”

She might have guessed he would do something like this.
Jim wasn’t the sort to sit around and let someone else fight his war. Gerard was already involved, she didn’t know exactly how but they heard from him intermittently, when he told them about Amelie, alone in Florida, worried about her family—and especially Peach. “Amelie will be all right,” Gerard had said on the telephone, “just look after her girls for her.”